by Lucia Ashta
“Maybe she had to tinkle,” Shawna interjected.
“Makes perfect sense,” Luanne continued. “And the dude found her, thought she was adorable because he can’t hear her talk like you can, and took her.”
“Because he thought she was adorable?” I asked through the open door, from where I could see that my aunts appeared to have drained their tea—and Mabel’s medicinal herbs.
“Exactly,” Luanne said while Shawna nodded and beamed at me.
I threw my hands in the air. “Well, seems as good an explanation as any. So now we’re maybe solving the mystery of the missing Spanx and a missing hedgehog.”
Wanda grinned. “Sounds fun.”
“I’m pretty sure Mindy won’t think it’s fun,” I muttered.
“Oh, don’t worry so much, Marls. This is Gales Haven, remember? I’m sure she’s fine. She probably just took off. It’s not like she needed a permission slip to leave. She’s a creature, not a child.”
“And the scrap of Spanx?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Who knows? But nothing bad ever happens here.”
Jadine scoffed. “Excuse me?”
“Nothing seriously bad ever happens here,” Wanda amended.
Even so, unease filtered through me as I considered the possibility, however slight, that Mindy might have actually been kidnapped. I was feeling strangely protective of the tiny magical creature whose hobbies included raising orphans and giving me grief.
Wanda was probably right. Why would anyone take her? There was no good reason for it.
Then again, there seemed no good reason for stealing Spanx either…
Mindy must have left on her own and shed a quill on her way out. It wasn’t like she was the most patient of creatures. She could have grown bored of waiting for me while Jadine droned on about her precious Spanx, and decided to mosey on out on her own.
Then the doorbell rang, pulling me away from my worries, and because it was a magical doorbell that wasn’t actually electronic but governed by a small spell, it sounded like charging horses were racing toward us. Despite my knowledge that we weren’t about to be mowed down by a stampede, I still flinched and held on to the porch railing for good measure.
“I’m coming,” Jadine hollered and crossed the kitchen in the direction of the front door.
“You hear that?” Aunt Shawna giggled. “She’s coming.”
“Maybe all she needed was to loosen up the hold those Spanx things had on her crotch,” Luanne responded, mischief animating her face. “So she could loosen up all over.”
My aunts laughed at their inappropriate line of thought as I heard Jelly Frumpers’ voice at the door.
I released my hold on the railing and entered the house, Mindy’s quill still in hand.
If Jelly had more predictions about me, I was liable to slam the door right in his face.
Chapter Eight
Jelly was much as I remembered him. Even as a teenager, he’d been round and grumpy. Now, he was even more so. A pot belly hung over his pants, straining the limits of his button-up shirt. Small flashes of flesh peeked out from the gaping holes between buttons. His nose and mouth were scrunched together in bitter lines.
My first thought when I saw him was, Crap, what now? The second was, Why wouldn’t he go see Mo Ellen about a spell? Just as soon as I solved this caper, I was literally running to see her. For one, I could really use a nice run to relieve some of the stress of all the happenings since I’d arrived in town. But mostly I just wanted free rein to eat all the food—and not end up looking like Jelly.
When he lived in a place replete with magic, where he could literally eat whatever he wanted and not balloon out like he was nine months pregnant with twins, why would he want to look like he did? More so, why would he want to feel like he must look like that? There was no way he could bend over or even see his toes. He probably had to fumble around just to find his limp noodle.
Ew. No. I was so not going there.
“Marla,” he said by way of greeting, dragging me away from thoughts I had no business having.
“Hi, Jelly,” I said.
“Whaddya want, Jelly?” Jadine asked, better matching his level of friendliness.
“Bessie Gawama had one of her feelings that I’d find Marla here. She says Marla listened to me and is solving crimes now.”
Theoretically, I’d been more or less ordered to play detective, but I didn’t suppose I had to tell him that. Though his sour attitude really made me want to. Still, he could tell a bit of the future. I didn’t think he had any control over what happened, but it seemed safer not to mess with the curmudgeon. I didn’t need him reading itchy rashes or monstrous zits into my future just to spite me.
“Yeah, so?” Jadine said. “Why are you here?”
I wondered if she and Jelly had history of some sort. Jadine was far from being sugary sweet, but this outward aggression wasn’t like her either.
Jelly pushed his chest forward, which meant he ended up pushing his sizable belly out too. “I thought the new Gales Haven detective would want to know that I just saw the leprechaun I predicted was going to be in town.”
I sidled up to Jadine. “You actually saw the leprechaun?”
“Sure did.” He struggled to stuff his hands in the pockets of his pants, also tight on him, but he managed it, grinning a bit smugly. “Saw him running by with a bag of loot clutched in his hand.”
I sighed. “A bag of loot?” I’d been hoping I’d be able to solve the Case of the Missing Spanx before picking up my kids from school, but now there was Mindy. And if there was even more…
I rubbed a hand across my face.
“I knew it,” Jadine snarled, spinning to face me. “I knew that leprechaun would be up to no good, none at all.” She side-eyed Jelly, then spoke through the corner of her mouth, speaking just as loudly as before, but giving me something to chuckle at. She was no good at all at discretion.
“I bet that leprechaun’s carrying around my … you-knows … in that bag of his.”
“What are your you-knows?” Jelly asked right away.
“Dammit, Jelly,” Jadine snapped. “I wasn’t talking to you. I was being all discreet-like. You weren’t supposed to listen.”
“But you were talking right in front of me.”
“And a polite person wouldn’t have listened.”
“But—”
Jadine cut him off with a hand and a look that would’ve shut me up too. “My you-knows are none of your business.”
“Then why are you saying you-knows? That implies I should know, because when you’re saying you it’s actually me.”
“No, Jelly, you is never you when I say it. You can bet on that.”
If they kept going like this, my brain was going to tie itself into a pretzel. “Jelly, where did you see the leprechaun and what did he look like?”
Wanda walked up behind me to listen in, but Aunt Luanne and Aunt Shawna’s laughter filtered in from the kitchen. They were useless as detective’s aides or whatever Nan sent them along to be.
“If we’re going to talk, can I come in?” Jelly asked Jadine.
“You should bloody well know the answer to that, Jelly,” Jadine answered right away, convincing me they definitely had some sort of history together. “Whatever you have to say, you can say it from my front steps.”
“Fine.” He huffed, then gazed out into the distance for a moment before focusing on us again. “Wanda.” He nodded at Wanda, and she nodded back. “I was walking back from my appointment at Hair for Hotties & Hatties…” he began.
When Jadine opened her mouth, I pressed an elbow into her ribs. If she kept dragging this out, I was going to lose my mind. Jelly was all but bald, and not by choice.
“It’s such a nice day that I decided to take a stroll and head on over for a treat at Three Hundred Sixty-Nine Fabulous Feisty Flavors. The special of the week is cherry chocolate and that’s my favorite.”
With effort, I forced myself not to yell at him to get on with it
already.
“I was eating my triple scoop ice cream, with chocolate syrup and nuts on top, while I walked, taking my time. We’ve been enjoying such nice weather lately, I didn’t have anywhere I needed to be just then. I hate it when I have to rush and be somewhere. It puts me in a bad mood.”
My right eyelid twitched. I was starting to regret not having added shots of Mabel’s concoctions to my tea.
“There were a lot of people walking around when I was.”
“Oh my knobby knees, Jelly,” Jadine, who had round, not knobby knees, growled. “Get on with it already. Some of us do have places to be!”
He scowled at her. “I was on Magical Main Street, almost at Moonshine Park, when a leprechaun streaked by, carrying a bag behind him.” He crossed his arms, leaning them on his belly. “There, are you happy?”
“I’ll be happy once you’re not darkening my steps,” Jadine said.
“What did this leprechaun look like?” I asked for the second time. “And how are you sure he was a leprechaun?”
“I guess I can’t be one-hundred-percent sure,” he said, “but since I saw a leprechaun coming with my future-telling magic, and this guy was tiny, red-haired, and sprinting by me, I figured that’s what he was. I almost dropped my ice cream when I saw him. Thankfully, I didn’t. It’d be a sin to waste all the chocolate cherry.”
“So how tiny is tiny?” I asked. After all, I’d been dealing with Mindy lately.
“I’d say he’d come up about to mid-thigh on me. Maybe he was shorter. It was hard to tell he was moving so fast. He was also really skinny, like he only ate once a week. His hair wasn’t quite as red as yours.” He pointed to my curls. “It was more orange-y.”
“Got it,” I said. “And how was he dressed?”
“Oh, that’s what was really interesting. The rumors about leprechauns have it wrong. They don’t dress in button-down green suits with shiny black shoes. And they definitely don’t wear hats.” His face scrunched up in confusion. “But I didn’t think they’d dress like this either.”
We waited for him to continue on his own, but he didn’t, lost to his memories.
“Jelly?” I prodded before Jadine could rip his head off with her bare hands.
“Oh, right. It looked like he was running around buck naked but for a black shiny thing hanging from him. A shirt or something. You could even see his butt cheeks hanging out from under it. When he ran, the shirt lifted up and, boy, did I get an eyeful.”
Jadine narrowed her eyes at Jelly in place of the leprechaun. “How shiny was his shirt? Like satin shiny, like plastic shiny, or another kind of shiny?”
“I’d say like satin shiny. The whole getup looked pretty decent on him, I suppose. If the alternative was a stuffy green suit, I’d probably do the same.”
I swallowed thickly. There was no way I wanted to imagine Jelly running around buck naked but for Jadine’s Spanx. And by now I was deducing that’s exactly what the leprechaun was clothed in. From the depth of Jadine’s scowl, she’d guessed that too.
“I’m gonna kill him,” Jadine said.
Jelly’s hands shot up. “Hey, I’m just telling you what you asked to know. You can’t kill me for that.”
“Not you, ya eejit. The leprechaun. He stole from me.”
“Oh.” Jelly dropped his hands back to his belly, where they rested comfortably. “What’d he steal, then?”
“I won’t be telling you now, or ever, so you’d best not bother asking.”
He frowned. “But—”
Jadine leaned forward and glared at him so hard that he shut right up.
I was so glad I wasn’t on Jadine’s bad side…
“Did you see where he went?” I asked Jelly.
“He ran into Moonshine Park, of that I’m sure, but he was going so fast I doubt he’ll still be there. I went to find Bessie right away though. Well, after I finished my ice cream of course.”
I smiled lamely at him. “Of course. Could you tell what he was carrying in the bag?”
“Not really. Now that I think about it, the bag might’ve been made of the same material as his shirt. I couldn’t see through it at all. Though it did look to be moving a bit.”
“Moving how?” Wanda asked.
I followed up, tensing all over: “Like something alive might be in it?”
His eyes widened. “Yeah, exactly like that. Like something was bouncing around in there. You think he had something alive in there?” His eyes bulged. “Is he a rotten kidnapper?”
He looked to me for an answer. But for all I knew, Mindy might be squirreled away somewhere safe and sound with her many children and her not-all-there husband. I was starting to seriously doubt it, however. Making itself at home in my gut was the unpleasant feeling that Mindy was exactly what was writhing around inside the leprechaun’s Spanx loot sack.
“Is there anything else you can tell us that might help us find the leprechaun, Jelly?” I asked.
“No, that’s it.”
Jadine slammed the door in his face.
“A thank you would’ve been nice,” he shouted through it. “I went out of my way to come over here.”
“No one asked you to come,” Jadine yelled through the closed door, and Wanda and I backed away.
“Well, it’ll be the last time I do anyone a favor. Do good, and look what it gets you.”
“You didn’t do us a favor. We didn’t want you here. Now go away.”
“Finally you ask me to do something I want to do. You’re freaking nuts.”
“Then you made me that way ‘cause you were nuts first.”
Jadine’s fists bunched at her sides while she waited for a response. But none came.
“That wanker,” she growled, turning toward us. “He knows how much I hate it when he doesn’t let me keep fighting. Of course he’d just walk away! He’s trying to drive me crazy.”
Pursing my lips together so I wouldn’t reveal my true thoughts on the matter, I exchanged a look with Wanda while I waited for Jadine to calm down on her own.
My friend clapped a hand to her mouth so she wouldn’t laugh. A giggle escaped, and I lost it just like we used to when we were teenagers, known for laughing at the most inappropriate moments. But was there any better stress relief?
I bent over at the waist, laughing.
Until Jadine said, “You’d better not be laughing at what just went down here.”
I tried not to laugh so hard that I choked.
“Did you and Jelly have a fling?” Wanda asked, undeterred by the murderous eye daggers Jadine was throwing our way.
Jadine tipped her chin up. “Maybe we did. I told y’all I’m husband hunting.”
“Woman,” Wanda said, “if you think Jelly is good husband material, you need to think again.”
“Why?” she accused. “‘Cause he’s round? Round people deserve love too, you know.”
“Of course it’s not because he’s round. It’s because he’s grumpy. He’s always in a bad mood. This was the happiest I’ve ever seen him.”
“That’s because he was seeing me. He’s been trying to see me for weeks, but I’ve been turning the other way whenever I see him on the street.”
“You make him happy?” Wanda blurted out, sounding shocked.
Jadine blushed. “I think so.”
“Wow. Okay, then. How ‘bout that? Never thought I’d see the day Jelly Frumpers would be happy. Good for you guys.”
Jadine scowled. “Oh, there is no us. No way. He’s an ass.”
“I thought you just said…” Wanda trailed off.
“I know what I said, and I never said he wasn’t an ass.”
“Alrighty then,” I jumped in before things could get out of control.
Who was I kidding? Things were already out of control, and I hadn’t even started hunting down a bare-assed leprechaun.
I made my way into the kitchen, calling as I went. “Aunt Luanne? Aunt Shawna? You ready to go?”
They looked up, mildly glassy-eyed, bu
t looking so happy I couldn’t blame them for it.
“Where are we going?” Shawna asked.
“To find a leprechaun who’s apparently wearing Jadine’s Spanx as a shirt. We need to get Mindy back.”
Shawna gathered her empty cup and her sister’s and walked them over to the sink. “And how are we going to find him? Didn’t sound like Jelly knew where he was now.”
“No, but someone in town must have locator magic. Who?” I asked, excited that this idea just occurred to me. I was starting to get used to thinking in terms of magic again.
Luanne waggled her lips left and right while she thought aloud. “Well, Dixie can locate all sorts of things. I’m not so sure about people though. Wait, are leprechauns people?”
“I have no idea at all what a leprechaun is,” I said, “but I am sure he’s trouble. Trouble I’m so not in the mood for.”
“Oh, come on.” Wanda patted me on the back. “Drop the hard-ass act. You’re having fun.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
In a huff, I turned on my heel and stomped toward the front door, all the while trying to hide the smile tugging at my mouth.
Maybe Wanda was right. Though if I was having fun, I really needed to better define the term.
And I knew just who I’d like to help me with that. But I had to solve this caper before I could focus on Quade Contonn. Once I had time alone with him, I didn’t plan on anything interrupting us. We had lots of missed time together to make up for.
Chapter Nine
Dixie lived a few blocks down the street from Jadine, so we decided to walk there. Aunt Luanne, Shawna, Wanda, and I waited for Jadine to lock up her house—with its absurd amount of deadbolts—while my aunts made faces behind her back. Every time Jadine would turn to look over her shoulder at them, they feigned innocence. I was a spinoff of Snow White stuck with the reject dwarves, Dumpy and Stumpy.
Whatever was in Mabel’s tinctures was good stuff. I’d have to make time to stop by her shop soon. My aunts weren’t taking a single thing seriously. I was totally jealous. They were having so much more fun than I was.