The Innocent Dead: A Witch Cozy Mystery (The Maid, Mother, and Crone Paranormal Mystery Series Book 1)

by Jill Nojack

  “I met Cin when she was doing readings at one of the witch trial tourist spots here last summer, and I gave her my card. Not for a job, but oh well, that’s what I got out of it. She told me she hadn’t been able to find any general handymen in the area, so I found a few places that would let me post flyers. I did some work for Caroline and her husband last month, and I’m up at the Frank place now doing some plastering, painting, general rehab stuff. It’s in pretty good shape. Just needs a touch up.”

  “Fascinating,” Natalie said, drawing out the word in a way that made it clear it wasn’t. “So you met this Caroline when you worked for her?” Natalie looked down as she started jotting again.

  “Yeah. Not really my type. I like strong women, don’t get me wrong, but she was beyond aggressive in her approach to things. She came on to me, and I was like, why not?”

  “Even though she was married?”

  He shrugged. “Like I said, she came on to me. If it wasn’t me, it woulda been some other guy. It’s not like we were out in the woods making a love connection, you know what I mean? It was just harmless fun.”

  “Until she turned up dead out in those same woods, you mean,” Natalie said.

  “I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

  “Then who else knew about you and her?”

  He shrugged. “I may have told a few people. I don’t worry much about gossip.”

  Natalie blew out air between closed lips. “Phht. You like to brag about your conquests, you mean.”

  He cocked an eyebrow and smirked. “Maybe.”

  “Did you tell anyone who would tell her husband?”

  “Don’t think so: Cinnamon, a couple of the dudes I hang with around here, Lou Frank, the artist I’m doing the work for—he just moved to Giles from New York. He’s one for the ladies, maybe as bad as I am. Can’t see him interfering. He’s never said he knew her.”

  Natalie sat silent, nodding slightly. “That’s it, then? No one else?”

  “That’s it. It’s not like I took out a billboard on the interstate.”

  Natalie reached down to pick up the red bag she had earlier parked at her feet, opened it, and put her notebook away after tearing out a leaf and handing it to him. “That’s my phone number. If you think of anything, please give me a call.”

  “Seriously? And why would I want to do that?”

  She looked at him piercingly. “Unless you want the kind of show that happened in Giles at the Witching Faire to happen in your apartment, you’ll take my request seriously.”

  As she held his eyes, he saw things swirling in her pupils that shouldn’t have been there. When he looked away, he couldn’t remember exactly what had scared the cockiness right out of him, but the sense of what he’d seen lingered. He got to his feet when she rose from her chair to leave.

  “Ms. Taylor,” he said, “I will always take any request from you seriously.”

  ***

  Natalie was so absorbed in her thoughts when she left the young man’s apartment that she hadn’t noticed the specter until it was right in front of her.

  “Hippity hopping hangnails!” She stopped short and looked into the filmy eyes of a woman who would have been in her midthirties when she’d died. Maybe a little younger. She looked hard done by in any case. This one carried a lot of baggage with her into death.

  The spirit put icy hands on her shoulders, “Ooooh, tell him to stop. Please. Please. Make him stop.” The wailing was so loud that Natalie covered her ears, breaking through the ghostly arms with flailing elbows. The cold made her shiver. She knew she was the only one who could hear or see what was happening, but she looked around just the same. No one in the hall.

  If Sean had killed the woman in Giles, was this another of his?

  “Who?” she asked the ghost. “Stop who?”

  The specter look surprised. Her voice dropped to a girlish whisper as her eyes focused on Natalie’s now, realizing Natalie could see her. “My husband. Terrance. My sweet, sweet Terrance. He’s hurting me.” A tear rolled out of a puffy, blackened eye. “Can you make him stop?”

  Sean wasn’t responsible for this one, then. Natalie looked around for a portal. Nothing. Without grave dirt and a brush-up on what her grandmother had taught her, she couldn’t bring a skipped doorway back. She stepped to the side and went around the lost spirit. It forgot about her once Natalie was no longer directly in its path and drifted slowly down the hall, moaning.

  She looked down at the red purse that hung on her arm, disapproving. It looked exactly like the last one, but this one was only good for ferrying around essentials. She sighed. The purse was stylish but useless without the spell three generations of her family had placed on the last one. She deeply missed her ward at times like this.

  At least William couldn’t follow her this far out of town. He’d want her to help the woman who was trapped in the corridor by her trauma; if he knew about it, she’d never hear the end of it until she did. But she’d need to brush up with her grandmother’s notes to help the poor creature. And he was probably right about her; fifty years ago she would have done it without prompting.

  She turned back to watch the specter make its mindless way along the corridor. After a while, her chest felt tight and she turned away. No one deserved to spend their afterlife like that. What harm would it do to take a peek at grandmother’s grimoire?

  ***

  Natalie swung the door shut. The bell above the door tinkled merrily, causing that blasted kitten to come running out, expecting fun.

  She pushed it aside with her foot, then stomped a warning when Cat lifted a paw to give the hem of her black pantsuit a bat. It ran off, keeping a wary eye on her from the safety of its basket.

  “That’s right,” Natalie warned. “Not every witch enjoys the company of cats. You can wait right there until Gillian gets here to feed you.”

  She headed for the counter, noticing that the nearest set of shelves looked wrong. Rearranged? Hmmph. Gillian’s work, she assumed. And right when she’d gotten it exactly the way she liked it. What was that woman thinking putting the Ouija boards in easy reach like that? They were far too dangerous in the hands of the gifted but uneducated. She wished the shop didn’t carry them at all. She started toward the shelf, but changed direction when she heard muffled voices coming down the hall from behind the counter. She wondered why Gillian hadn’t left the door unlocked when she’d come in. She headed for the back, ready to part with a loud and sharp piece of her mind, and peered into the small kitchenette. No one there.

  She tried the hallway door. It was locked. Of course—Cassie’s friend was scheduled to move in. Still, that wasn’t a female voice. In fact, that big bass voice could only be Chief Denton, even though it was the wrong kind of voice to come out of such a scrawny man. Natalie cocked an ear and put it closer to the door.

  She didn’t think that a teenage girl would have what it takes to do what had been done to Caroline, but it wouldn’t hurt to listen in. It might save time if she didn’t have to question the girl herself. That was, of course, assuming Denton had got it right.

  Natalie had her doubts. Hopefully he’d read the files she’d pointed him toward and knew to ask the right questions. At the moment, he was just making conversation, trying to get on the girl’s good side, trying to make her feel like he was a friend.

  Natalie preferred a more direct route. Had anyone ever been fooled by the “good cop” routine?

  “Oh, so you two met in Spanish class? You interested in languages?” the chief’s voice boomed.

  “Not so much. But you have to have one to get into a lot of colleges,” came the girl’s reply.

  “Yeah? What about your boyfriend? Marcus, right? He interested in languages? Got a couple on the go?”

  “No. But he’s got a lot better shot of getting into a good college than I will, at least if a scholarship comes through.” Natalie heard the pride in the girl’s voice.

  “That right? Basketball player or something?”

>   “Sure. ‘Cause that’s the only way a black kid gets himself a scholarship, right? No, he’s not a baller. He’s got top scores in all of his classes. Including Spanish.” Natalie smirked. She would have liked to have seen Denton’s face when the girl called him out.

  “Fair enough,” Denton said. “I see where I assumed too much. I apologize.” Natalie couldn’t tell through the door if he was being sincere or not. The man was hard to read in the best of circumstances.

  He continued: “Let’s just talk about what happened the other day, if we could. Had you ever seen Caroline Akers before the accident?”

  “No.” Twink had a girly voice, but the response was firm.

  “So tell me about it. What caused it?”

  “We were hungry and there’s not a single fast food place in town, so we were going to get something at the diner. Marcus had his signal on, and he was backing into a parallel parking space—which, by the way, he’s great at—and this woman pulls out of another space with her head buried in her phone and plows right into us.”

  “Hmmmm . . . ‘zat so?” Denton said. “And then what did your boyfriend do?”

  “Same thing anyone would do. He got out of the car to see if she was okay and to look at the damage.”

  “And was she okay?”

  “If you call being crazy okay. She ran right up to him and started smacking him with that expensive bag of hers. He would never get in a fight with a woman. He let her hit him. So I got out of the car to help.”

  “And did what?” the chief asked when she didn’t continue.

  “Told her to leave him alone. And then she started hitting me instead.”

  “And Marcus let her do it? Not much of a boyfriend.”

  The girl’s reply was vehement. “‘Course not! He tried to take the bag away from her. She stopped hitting me after he grabbed it.”

  “What happened next?”

  “She snatched it away like it was precious and she hadn’t just been using it to beat us up. And she accused him of trying to rip her off. Then the bag, it started smoking. Like she’d dropped a cigarette or something into it before she got out of her car. She was drunk, that’s what I think.”

  “Anything else after that?”

  “That bag lit up. I mean, flames and everything, so she dropped it and started trying to stamp out the fire. Marcus and me got in the car and took off. It would have been stupid to hang around.”

  “Where’d you go?”

  “He dropped me off at Daria’s mama’s house, where I was staying,” the girl replied.

  “What time was that?”

  “I don’t know. About the time school would have got out if we’d gone to school,” she said.

  “So he would have had plenty of time to go back and take care of business with the crazy lady.” Denton’s voice sounded cocky.

  “Sure,” she said. “If he hadn’t parked the car around the corner and come back to the house so I could let him in at my window.” Her voice went soft and low. Natalie stopped breathing, straining to hear. “He didn’t leave until real late, you know what I mean? I’ll bet he made it back to the place where he stays in Boston before sunrise, but it couldn’t have been much before that.”

  The chief didn’t sound quite so full of himself when he responded, “‘Zat so? That’s all I need, then. Thank you for your cooperation.”

  Denton took his leave. Afterward, an older, but still young, female voice said, “Twink, so help me . . . if mama ever finds out you had that boy spend the night in her house . . . you and I, we’re both going to have to move out of state. Maybe all the way out of the country.”

  “Whatever,” Twink said. Natalie heard the sound of rapid footsteps pounding up the stairs.

  But Natalie hadn’t been convinced by the girl’s performance. It was clear from what she’d heard through the door that this young lady was smart, way too smart to pull something as likely to doom her as sneaking a boy into Ella Barton’s home. No, she’d given the boy an alibi, that was what she’d done; Natalie was sure he had been nowhere near Twink’s bedroom that night.

  The real question was, was there a reason the boy needed the alibi she had been so quick to give him?

  ***

  Sean finished taping off the ceilings at the Frank place that he’d painted a few days before. He was doing the walls today, and he wanted a crisp seam between them. He was careful not to shake the rickety wooden ladder his employer had supplied for reaching the top of the vaulted bedroom. He didn’t think any more of the choice of black for the bedroom walls than he did of Lou Frank’s choice in ladders, but he wasn’t the artist, and the artist said that when the bronzes and the watercolors in their wide white frames were placed, it would turn the room into a showpiece.

  He grinned to himself. As he stepped carefully down to the next rung, he wondered if the man would be asking women in to see his etchings. Seemed like the kind of thing the snobby old sleaze would get up to.

  There was a sudden crack and Sean lurched downward. He yelled something his mother would still wash his mouth out for as he fell backward, pulling the ladder with him as he smashed into the mystery pile of furnishings hidden beneath the drop cloth he’d moved everything under the day before.

  Wow, his head hurt. But the ceiling looked great. A clean, smooth white that really would contrast nicely with the black walls he’d be painting today.

  So long as he didn’t have a concussion.

  He rubbed his skull where a bump was just starting to rise before getting up and pulling up the drop cloth to view the damage underneath it.

  It was easy to tell what he’d clobbered—one of Lou Frank’s precious bronzes was missing a limb. He was lucky the thing hadn’t gone right into his brain; the hand still attached to the broken arm was definitely pointy enough. Although everyone always said he could be hardheaded, this was the first time he’d realized it could be useful.

  He knew his jerk of an employer was going to blame him for the damage, even though it was his own deathtrap of a ladder that caused the problem. And he hadn’t made a dime on the job yet. The advance had gone for the materials. If his employer found out about this, he wasn’t going to end up with anything for his labor.

  Yeah, well, he better not find out about it then, Sean told himself. He went out to the truck and dug around through his tool boxes for a tube of epoxy. That should do it. The crack might show, but with luck, the old goat wouldn’t ever look at it close enough to see it until Sean had the money for the job in his pocket and was long gone.

  ***

  When Cassie arrived at the gallery for her afternoon shift, she was surprised to find her boss, all smiles, talking to Lou Frank, who she had to admit looked very dashing in a much-older-man way in khakis and a white button-up shirt with a colorful fringed scarf wrapped loosely around his neck. The swooping shock of white curls really finished the look. She got why Dash had such a crush on him.

  Dash turned to her. “Cassie! Lou brought us another painting to replace the one he gave to you. It’s . . .”

  Lou turned to face her directly, interrupting. “I didn’t come just because of the painting. I owe Dash an apology. I was completely inside my own head when I left here the other day. I’m afraid I may have appeared rude, and I had to make it up to him.”

  “Oh, wow, that’s really nice of you.”

  “And presents!” Dash said, holding up a bottle of wine. “Such a nice vintage,” he added, looking down at the label. “Lou, if this is how you make up after a fight, you can be rude to me any time.”

  “Never again, Dash. It was thoughtless of me. Thoughtless.” He patted Dash’s hand and her boss beamed.

  “So gracious. But you must show her the painting!”

  It was only about six inches by six inches, but it was clear who the subject was. It was her. Her own face peered back at her in the luminescent tones characteristic of Lou’s work. But instead of eyelashes, her eyes were ringed with flower petals and her hands were clasped over her m
outh as if she was keeping a secret.

  She had no idea what it meant, but it was remarkable. She blushed a deep-down blush.

  The artist set the painting on the counter and rushed toward her, taking her hand. “I’m truly sorry if I’ve embarrassed you. But you have a beauty that I had to paint. It’s what distracted me as I was leaving the other day. I have an excellent memory for visuals, and I was concentrating so hard to keep your face fresh in my memory until I could complete a reference sketch that I forgot to be civil, and I didn’t realize until later how it must have appeared.”

  Cassie stopped blushing when she realized that her face would be hanging in a stranger’s home and that no one had asked her if she was okay with that. “The painting is amazing, but . . . I don’t know how I feel about you having painted me, I . . . I didn’t know that I would be a painter’s model. I’m not sure my husband would want . . . and until Granny’s inheritance is released, I can’t afford . . .”

  Dash stopped her. “It’s okay. I’ve bought it for the gallery’s permanent collection. It will come to you when you buy me out many years from now when I’m too decrepit to make it in to work anymore. Tom doesn’t have to share you with anyone.”

  Cassie sighed, relieved. “Dash, you’re the best boss ever!” She threw her arms around him, glad she didn’t have to explain to Tom how her face had ended up for sale. He wouldn’t have made a big thing out of it, but she knew it would have bothered him.

  “Well, the sale is almost complete . . .” Dash said when she let him go. “I had to promise I’d let you go for lunch on company time with our favorite artist to sweeten the deal.”

  With her excellent boss pleading with his eyes like that and Lou Frank having turned out to be not at all the creep she thought he was, she couldn’t say no. She owed him. “Sure. How could I not?”

  Lou offered her the crook of his arm. “I have a picnic waiting. It’s a lovely day if you like your weather cool. We can enjoy our meal in the town center by the gazebo, if that suits you?”