by Nic Saint
“Well, I do. You snapped, Harry. I don’t know if it’s all this wraith wrangling you’ve been doing—but you snapped and killed me, didn’t you?”
“I’m sure I didn’t,” I said feebly. To be honest I had no recollection of anything past falling face first into a slice of Lidl sticky toffee cake.
“How could you, Harry?” asked Mavis, shaking her head ruefully. “How could you murder your high school bestie? I wasn’t ready to die yet.”
“I’m sure I didn’t do it, Mavis. I would never kill anyone.”
“Oh, sure. Just look at me, Harry. Just look at what you did.”
I did look, then, and was starting to feel weak at the knees again. This wasn’t happening! “But Mavis, I would never—I mean, I’m not—this is impossible!”
“Well, it happened. You murdered me. Now what are you going to do about it?”
I had no idea, actually. No idea how I’d gotten in this situation. Had I blacked out or something? Where did this big bloody knife come from? Why was it in my hand? And how had Mavis ended up dead on the floor?
“I must have blacked out,” I said, touching a distraught hand to my face. “And then someone must have snuck in here and killed you. That’s the only explanation.”
“The only explanation is that you killed me, Harry,” said Mavis, giving me a steely look. She flapped her arms. “And now look at me! How am I ever going to become the first female PM now? Dead people don’t go into politics, Harry—and they definitely don’t get to run the country.”
“There’s already been two female PMs, Mavis,” I countered. I was loathe to argue with my friend, but I couldn’t help point out this flaw in her plan.
“Nonsense.”
“Margaret Thatcher beat you to it—back in the eighties.”
“I’m pretty sure someone would have told me about that.”
“And Theresa May? She’s a woman.”
“I’m pretty sure Theresa May is a bloke.”
“Whatever. I hate to tell you this, Mavis, but you were never going to be the first female PM.”
“No, that’s definitely off the table now, isn’t it? No thanks to you. I should have known better than to invite Harry McCabre, famous wraith wrangler, into my home. I should have known you’d go all whacky on me.” She shook her head. “This is not the Harry I knew and loved, Harry. You’ve changed!”
I gave her a feeble smile. “At least you can see I wasn’t lying about there being ghosts, right?”
“Ha ha, very funny. I didn’t have to find out like this!” She stared down at her hands. “Though it is kinda cool to be a ghost, I have to admit.” She jumped off the counter. “So what happens now?”
“Now we have to find your killer and help you come to terms with what just happened,” I said, slipping into my wraith wrangler persona.
“Well, that’s easy. You did this, Harry. You killed me. You’re still holding the bloody knife, for Christ’s sakes.”
She was right. I let the knife drop from my blood-streaked fingers and it clattered to the floor.
Just then, a voice sounded in the living room. When I recognized it, I looked up with relief bordering on incredulity.
“Harry? Harry, where are you?”
“In here!” I cried.
“Who’s that?” asked Mavis. “And how did they get into my flat?”
A stringy young man with flaxen hair and a deep tan came hurrying into the kitchen. When he saw the mess on the floor, he gulped. Jarrett might be my fellow wraith wrangler but that doesn’t mean he enjoys the sight of blood.
“Oh my,” he said, holding a hand to his face. “This is a disaster!”
“Hey, that’s my bloody body lying there dead!” Mavis snapped. “Show some respect. Who are you, anyway? And what are you doing in my flat?”
“This is Jarrett,” I said. “Jarrett, meet Mavis, my friend from high school. Jarrett is also a wraith wrangler,” I explained to Mavis. “He’s my partner.”
“Oh, I see. First you kill me then you bring in your assistant to clean up the mess. Is this the moment he starts chucking acid into my bathtub to dissolve my body? Yes, I’ve seen Pulp Fiction. You’re Harvey Keitel, aren’t you?”
“No, my name is Jarrett Zephyr-Thornton the Third,” said Jarrett, simple pride lending his features the nobility his family’s vast fortune warranted.
“No, you’re the cleaner. You’re going to wash me down the drain till there’s nothing left! Not a strand of DNA—not a single trace. I’ll be erased! Gone!”
“Does your friend always talk this much?” asked Jarrett.
“Yes, I always talk this much,” Mavis snapped. “Especially when I’ve just been murdered by a friend I haven’t seen since high school! How was I to know she’d secretly turned into a serial killer with mob connections?!”
Jarrett cut a quick glance at me. “Did you do this, Harry?” Then he held up a smartly gloved hand. “Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.”
“Of course I didn’t do this!” I yelled. “I would never kill anyone, least of all my best friend from school.”
“That begs the question: who did?”
I shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know! I was passed out in my cake!”
“Oh, is that what that brown stuff on your face is? I thought you’d enjoyed a mud mask.” He glanced over at what was left of the cake and took a slice. “Do you mind? I had a very light lunch.”
“Don’t touch that!” I said. “I passed out after a slice of that cake.”
“Isn’t it bad enough you killed me?” asked Mavis, clearly offended. “Now you have to go and insult my baking skills?”
“You didn’t bake this. You got it from Lidl.”
Jarrett uttered a sound of disgust and quickly dropped the cake. Since Lidl wasn’t on the list of Royal Warrant holders, it probably was beneath him.
“How did you get here anyway?” I asked Jarrett.
“Buckley told me you were in trouble so I immediately hopped into my Rolls and—ta-dah. Here I am. Your rescuing angel at your service.”
“Buckley is here?”
“He’s the one who let me into this nice lady’s flat.”
Mavis narrowed her eyes at Jarrett. “Flattery won’t save you, mister. And before you start dissolving my body in some nasty-arse acid, let me tell you—”
Unfortunately her words would be lost to history, as Buckley chose that moment to make his entrance. The frizzy-haired dapper little gentleman zoomed right through the kitchen wall and gave Mavis the fright of her life. Buckley took one look at Mavis and his amiable hobbit face turned grim.
“Nasty business, Harry,” he said. “Very nasty business indeed.”
“Who are you calling nasty, you Bilbo Baggins wannabe?” Mavis demanded.
“I’m not referring to you, dear lady,” said Buckley graciously, “but to the circumstances surrounding your most unfortunate demise.”
Mollified, Mavis asked, “And who are you, then?”
“I’m Harry’s former employer and now ghost assistant.”
“Oh, God. You’re here to oversee the body liquefaction, aren’t you? You can’t do this, sir. I deserve a proper burial same way as the next gal.”
Buckley, feeling these were deep waters, blinked once, then turned to me. “You have to get out of here, Harry. You have to leave right this instant.”
“But please clean yourself up first,” Jarrett suggested. “You’re not getting into the Rolls looking like that.”
“I can’t just leave,” I said. “I can’t leave Mavis.”
“Mavis is dead, Harry,” said Buckley. “There’s nothing you can do for her. But her blood…” He pointed at the pool at our feet. “… has been dripping through the cracks, alerting the neighbors, who have just called the police.”
“Thank God for my neighbors!” Mavis cried. “Bless their Tory-loving hearts!”
“So you see,” Buckley continued, “if you don’t leave now, you will be arrested for murder.”
He glanced down at the knife. “As far as I can tell, your prints are all over that knife. And if I’m not mistaken that’s the murder weapon.”
Mavis had drifted up to Buckley and was studying him closely. “So you’re a genuine ghost, eh?”
“Yes, I am,” he said with a smile. “And I’m afraid you are, too, my dear.”
She heaved a deep sigh. “Yeah, I’m starting to see how that might be true.”
Buckley placed his hands on Mavis’s ectoplasmic shoulders. “My dear Mavis. Harry didn’t do this—I’m positive. I’ve known Harry for a long time and she’s not a murderer. From one ghost to another—trust me on that.”
She stared at him. “Of course you would say that. You’re Harry’s friend, aren’t you? So it’s only natural for you to try and sow doubts in my mind. But it won’t work. Harry did this, Mr. Ghost Man. No one else was here.”
“Harry would never do such a thing, Mavis. Never.”
“Well, prepare yourself for a big shock. Cause she did. Harry McCabre killed me in cold blood. Yes, she did,” she insisted when Buckley started to protest. “She killed me and now she’s going to face the consequences.”
Chapter Three
We were back at Jarrett’s suite at the Ritz-Carlton. Jarrett isn’t merely a wraith wrangler, he’s also the son of one of the richest men in England, multi-billionaire Jarrett Zephyr-Thornton the Second, after whom he was named. Before becoming a wraith wrangler Jarrett was a jack-of-all trades, but in that very peculiar billionaire set style: he started a space airline, he was on Celebrity Big Brother, dabbled in rock stardom, figure skating, Formula One, Taekwondo… You name it, he did it. Until he found his calling by chasing wraiths and trying to solve their murders with little old me.
“Oh, dear,” said Deshawn the minute we stepped into the luxury suite. “You look positively ghastly, Harry. Straight to the bathroom. Chop chop.”
I followed him to the bathroom. Deshawn, a stocky man with immaculate manners, is Jarrett’s fiancé. He’s also Jarrett’s former butler, and still enjoys running the household at Casa Zephyr. He now led me to the marble-floor bathroom with the gold fixtures and instructed me to strip off my bloodied clothes, place them on the floor, and give myself a good long scrub.
But not before enveloping me in a hug.
“Oh, Harry,” he said. “I’m so sorry about what happened to your friend.”
I stifled a sob. “It’s horrible, Deshawn. It’s all so terribly horrible.”
“I know, darling,” he said, holding me at arm’s length for a moment while fixing me with an encouraging smile. “But we’re going to get to the bottom of this, I promise you. Now go and stand under that shower for half an hour, and don’t come out until you’re squeaky clean. And don’t worry about your clothes. I’ll simply throw them into the incinerator and have a fresh set laid out for you when you’re done.”
“The incinerator? You’re going to burn my clothes?”
“Of course I am. We can’t have you involved in this nasty crime, can we? Did you remove your fingerprints from the murder weapon?”
“Yes, I did,” I said, flashing back to the moment Jarrett had taken the knife between thumb and forefinger and dropped it into the dishwasher along with the cups and saucers and forks and knives Mavis and I had used. In spite of Mavis’s protestations Jarrett had quickly pushed the button and had then proceeded to wipe every possible surface to remove any other trace of me.
“But it’s not right, Deshawn,” I said now. “I shouldn’t be doing this.”
“You should if you don’t want to go to prison for murder,” he insisted.
“But if I didn’t do it, who did?”
“We’ll figure it out,” he promised. “Now shoo. Get yourself cleaned up.” He glanced down at my fingers. “Is that blood? Please scrape scrape scrape.”
“Oh, God. I’m a killer, aren’t I?”
“No you’re not, darling. The Harry McCabre I know and love wouldn’t hurt a fly. Whoever did this is trying to frame you.”
And with these words, and after giving me another warm smile, he left the bathroom.
I stood under that shower for what felt like hours. As the spray nozzles pummeled me from all sides, and the dinner-plate-sized shower head pounded down on me from above, I slowly started to feel human again.
I soaped myself up at least three times, and rinsed off the delicious-smelling—and probably extremely expensive—shower gel with a purple loofah each time, to get the grime and horror of the murder out of my system and my body. When I finally finished, I walked out of the shower cabin into a steamed-up bathroom, a set of fresh clothes placed on the pink marble sink like Deshawn had promised.
I slipped into the Saint Laurent skinny jeans and Chanel T-shirt and found them to be exactly my size. In spite of the circumstances I produced a feeble smile. Deshawn was amazing. He’d even gotten me a pair of Raf Simons sneakers, and, like the clothes, they were a perfect fit, my feet slipping into them as if they were tailor-made.
I walked out of the bathroom and found my friends in conference in the spacious and perfectly-appointed kitchen. Jarrett, Sir Buckley and Deshawn all looked up when I walked in, their faces etched with expressions of concern.
“Oh, Harry,” said Jarrett the moment I stepped into the kitchen. “How are you holding up, darling?”
“I’m fine,” I assured him. “It’s not me you should be worrying about. It’s Mavis. We have to find out who did this to her.”
“Whoever it was, they’re obviously trying to set you up,” said Jarrett. “And there’s no way I’m going to let you go to jail for a crime you didn’t commit.”
“You weren’t there by any chance, were you Buckley?” I asked the aged ghost, who was directing a longing look at the tiny shrimp salad sandwiches placed on a silver platter on the counter.
“No, I wasn’t, I’m afraid,” he said. “I was down at the Hippodrome when I had a sudden premonition something terrible was happening with you. So I immediately rushed across town and arrived just in time to see you passed out on the kitchen floor, a knife in your hand, and your friend dead next to you.”
“Wait, I was passed out on the floor, right?” I asked as memory returned.
“Yes, you were, clutching the big bloody butcher knife in your hand.”
“But when I passed out I wasn’t anywhere near the floor. I was on the balcony. I’d taken a sip of my tea when the world suddenly turned dark.”
“So whoever killed Mavis must have drugged either your tea or your cake, and then moved you so it would look like you killed her,” said Jarrett thoughtfully.
“Well, at least we managed to thwart their devious plan,” said Buckley. “No way the police will be able to connect you to the crime now.”
“But we still have to solve Mavis’s murder,” I said. “That’s our priority.”
“Our priority is to keep you as far away from this case as possible,” said Deshawn. “You can’t be seen anywhere near Mavis or her flat, Harry.”
“Did anyone see you enter the building?” asked Jarrett.
“Maybe—I don’t know. I didn’t really pay attention.”
Suddenly the bell to the flat chimed and we all looked up.
“Are we expecting someone, Deshawn?” asked Jarrett.
“No, sir,” said Deshawn, swiftly slipping into his butler routine, as was his habit when the doorbell rang. Like a horse pricking up its ears at the sound of the racing bell, Deshawn’s butlering had a habit of resurfacing at odd times.
He moved to the door with professional alacrity, head held high, posture rigid, expression supercilious. I heard him answer the door and I shared a look of concern with Jarrett. Moments later, Darian Watley came walking into the kitchen, followed by a heavyset woman with flaming red hair and an apologetic look on her face, Deshawn, still in full butler mode, trailing them.
“Inspector Darian Watley of the Metropolitan Police Service,” Deshawn announced from the door with perfect diction, “accompa
nied by Inspector Tilda Fret, also employed by Scotland Yard. Here on official police business.”
“Darian? What are you doing here?” I asked.
Darian, a large and handsome man who could have been a professional swimsuit model if he hadn’t opted for a career in law enforcement—and also my boyfriend—gave me a look of concern. “Harry? I’m afraid I have to take you in for questioning in connection with the murder of Mavis Bletchley.”
Start Reading Ghostlier Things Now
About Nic
Nic Saint is the pen name for writing couple Nick and Nicole Saint. They’ve penned 70+ novels in the romance, cat sleuth, middle grade, suspense, comedy and cozy mystery genres. Nicole has a background in accounting and Nick in political science and before being struck by the writing bug the Saints worked odd jobs around the world (including massage therapist in Mexico, gardener in Italy, restaurant manager in India, and Berlitz teacher in Belgium).
When they’re not writing they enjoy Christmas-themed Hallmark movies (whether it’s Christmas or not), all manner of pastry, comic books, a daily dose of yoga (to limber up those limbs), and spoiling their big red tomcat Tommy.
www.nicsaint.com
Also by Nic Saint
Washington & Jefferson
First Shot
Alice Whitehouse
Spooky Times
Spooky Trills
Spooky End
Ghosts of London
Between a Ghost and a Spooky Place
Public Ghost Number One
Ghost Save the Queen
Box Set 1 (Books 1-3)
A Tale of Two Harrys
Ghost of Girlband Past
Ghostlier Things
The Mysteries of Max
Purrfect Murder
Purrfectly Deadly
Purrfect Revenge
Box Set 1 (Books 1-3)
Purrfect Heat
Purrfect Crime