by Amy Vansant
“Ah…but I’m filthy with personality…” he purred in her ear.
Declan was mortified. “I thought you preferred older women?” It took every shred of willpower not to grab his uncle’s arm and yank him away from his ex. He couldn’t stand the idea of anyone playing into her hands. He couldn’t turn back his own history but he could spend the rest of his life saving others.
Seamus stepped back and winked at Declan. “It’s a man’s prerogative to change his mind, isn’t it?”
Declan opened his mouth and then shut it with plans to deal with Seamus later. He trained his gaze back on Stephanie. “Where is it?”
She rolled the bell clapper between her fingers.
“Where’s what?”
“The napkin.”
She looked at the frame. “Why it’s right there, silly.”
“That isn’t it and you know it.”
“Did you look behind the desk? Maybe it slid…”
“Stephanie, I’m not playing these games with you. Give me back the napkin.”
“I will. I might. I don’t really need it. What I have is ironclad. A real will trumps the scrawlings of two drunken Irishmen.”
“I resent the implication. Who said we were drinking?” asked Seamus.
“It’s a bar napkin.”
“You’ve never heard of tonic water?” He waited a beat before continuing. “Just kidding. We were snockered.” He turned to Declan. “Sorry, I couldn’t keep a straight face any longer.”
“Don’t give her more ammunition. Knowing her, she’s probably recording us.”
“That would be inadmissible in court, so no point, really,” she said.
“Why are you here?”
“I missed you. And I need a lamp for my new house. Mom’s stuff was all junk. Thought I’d pick one up here…”
“There’ll be no shopping today, missy,” said Seamus taking a step forward. “I think you’ve made your point. You can go now.”
“But—”
Seamus shooed her along and she began a slow, slinky walk toward the front door.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll see you soon, baby. Pick me out a lamp.”
Declan watched from his office. She turned and waved to him as Seamus ushered her out the front door and locked it behind her.
“We can’t keep the door locked. We’re open,” said Declan.
“Let’s give it a second. Until she’s gone.”
“What, are you afraid of her now? A minute ago you were flirting with her.”
Seamus laughed. “I wasn’t flirting!” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a square napkin covered in blue ink.
Declan gasped. “Is that—”
“It is! I’m a bit of a dip.”
Declan raised his eyebrows. “Well I can’t argue with that.”
Seamus grinned and then sobered.
“I meant a dipper. A fingersmith.”
Declan continued to stare.
“Which is to say I’m a bit of a pickpocket. I wasn’t flirting. I was distracting.”
“Ah. Why am I not surprised? Give it to me. That’s going right in the safe. How did you know it was my napkin?”
“I saw the paper in her handbag and thought it might be it. Worst case scenario it turned out to be a dirty tissue.”
“Gross.”
“Indeed.”
“She has the will in her purse too. In a plastic tube. I don’t suppose you grabbed that while you were at it?”
Seamus grimaced. “No. I wish you’d told me she’s keeping it close before I showed my hand. Once she realizes we have the napkin she’ll be more careful.”
“Hm. Still… I’m relieved. I was a little horrified by your behavior.”
“No worries…she’s not my type. I do like them older, but no less crazy, I’ll give her that. Makin’ a necklace outta your bell clapper…she’s a right nutter. Clever though. Gotta give her that.”
Declan opened the safe and set the napkin inside. “It must give her a thrill to keep what we want so close and then not give it to us.”
“Or she knows how easy it would be to ransack her house in her absence.”
A car pulled into the shop’s lot and Declan stared at it, rubbing the back of his neck. He could already feel the tension in his shoulders growing. “I’ve got customers. I have to open the shop. Do you want to help me dust today?”
Seamus grimaced.
“I was thinking I’d borrow your computer and look for a house. It’s about time I gave you your space.”
Declan headed towards the door to unlock it. “I mention dusting and now you want to look for a house. You’re a wily old coot.”
He turned in time to see Seamus grin.
Chapter Eight
Charlotte tried Declan’s cell phone again but he didn’t answer. He’d said he’d call back, but that had been hours ago. Now she had to tell him about the case of the stolen witch and death threats and the fire. Things were piling up. She considered calling his shop but decided against it. It felt a little stalky. She didn’t want to be that annoying girlfriend, hunting him down. He’d probably gotten some customers and forgotten or was just too busy.
Be patient.
She changed out of her bathing suit and redressed to continue canvassing the neighborhood for clues. As she left the house, she stared at her phone, willing it to ring. They needed some alone time. A romantic outing. Who was supposed to run point on something like that? Traditionally, men were in charge of planning romantic outings…but… why? After all, they were in this together.
She sighed. The phrase in this together made their burgeoning romance sound as if they were plane crash survivors in search of rescue before they were forced to eat each other.
Maybe she should let him handle the romantic bits. He had to be better at them than she was. On the other hand…maybe some gentle poking…
She texted him Crazy things happening today! as she walked to the next house on her list.
Maybe it was okay to be slightly stalky.
By the time she’d knocked on every door, Charlotte had twenty-two switched items in her official notebook. No one had seen anything odd or bumped into a giant inflatable witch. Her only leads were two hooded youths and the fact that someone wanted to kill Gloria, which, when she thought about it, seemed a little more important than a missing witch did.
Not that she’d ever share that thought with Darla.
Detecting was hard work in the Florida sun and thanks to Gloria’s fire, she smelled like a hot dog.
Why does smoke make people smell like hot dogs? If I dated a fireman, would it make me like hot dogs more, or less? If a fireman broke up with me, would I feel sad every time I went to a barbeque?
She took a quick shower to remove the hot dog perfume and the sheen of salt covering her body.
Feeling refreshed, she decorated her home for Halloween. She owned a box full of ghosts, skeletons and other scary doo-dads. Thanks to the ladies in the neighborhood, she had enough ghouls to decorate fifteen houses. The locals loved giving holiday-themed gifts, so she had a dozen crocheted pumpkins in both 3D round and flat coaster-style, scarecrows in various sizes, a never-ending array of ceramic witches and ghosts (some that served as salt and pepper shakers), and a plastic flamingo zombie she’d bought herself. She didn’t always decorate but thought Declan might get a kick out of her collection. Thanks to his pawnshop, and generosity, she had new furniture which meant a plethora of new, flat surfaces to cover with terrifying kitsch.
She grabbed a few of the smaller pieces and placed them around the room. Abby stuck her head in the box, nipped a crocheted ghost between her front teeth and wandered down the hall. The next time Charlotte peeked at the dog she was laying with her chin on the flattened remains of the ghost, stuffing strewn around her head.
“I saw you take it, you’re not that sneaky,” she mumbled to the dog.
Abby grunted and rolled to her side, stretching.
Charlotte passed her chal
kboard wall and paused. A few coats of chalkboard paint had provided her with a place to keep organized and the list was impossible to avoid, serving as a giant constant reminder of things to be done. Misplacing a notepad could kill a day’s productivity. She couldn’t misplace a wall.
She wrote “Current Casework” at eye level. That sounded official. Beneath that, she made her list:
Find Darla’s witch
Find who switched all the decorations
Find who is threatening Gloria
No. That wasn’t the right order.
Possible homicides should go first.
She erased them and reversed the order. Then she added an addendum to two items.
Find who is trying to kill Gloria (and why)
Find Darla’s witch
Find who switched all the decorations (and why)
She didn’t need to write why next to Witchy-Poo’s line item. That thing was obnoxious. Why not was more like it.
There was a knock on the door and Abby bolted from the hallway to bark her unalarmed-but-compulsory staccato woofs. Charlotte peeked through her window before answering. Normally she wouldn’t think twice about her safety in Pineapple Port, but things seemed different. Maybe that was the downside of crime investigation; suddenly, everything appeared more sinister.
She spotted little Gloria standing on her porch. The woman’s ruffled, flowered tank top and neon, differently flowered skirt did little to distract from the red canvas suitcase in her hand, her large, green-rimmed sunglasses and the waist-length dark wig covering her tawny helmet of hair. She looked as if someone had shrunk Cher, dragged her through a flower patch and then kicked her to the curb.
She pushed Abby back with her leg and opened the door.
“I was just thinking about you…” Charlotte’s gaze fell to the suitcase as she undertook the Herculean task of not ogling the wig. The sheer ugliness of the hairpiece was nothing compared to the strange and barely-controllable urge she felt to braid it. “Uh…how are you?”
Gloria flipped up her glasses.
“It’s me, Gloria.”
“I know.”
“Even in the disguise?”
“Yep.”
Gloria’s shoulders sagged. “Shoot.”
“What’s up?”
“You said you wanted to talk to me.”
“I do I—I’m sorry…is that a suitcase? Are you going somewhere?”
“Well, I wanted to talk to you about that. Can I come in?”
Charlotte searched for potential murders and Sonny Bono impersonators in search of a partner. The coast was clear.
“Of course.”
Gloria stepped inside and took a seat on the sofa. No sooner had her tush hit the cushions than Abby hopped beside her and plopped her head on her lap. Gloria stroked the dog’s ears as if they performed the routine daily.
Abby was shameless that way.
Gloria tried to slide her sunglasses to her head and, realizing the task couldn’t be completed without pushing the wig off her skull, instead placed them on the living room table. Her fingers lingered on the wood as she stared at the furniture.
“Is this Holly’s table?” she asked.
“What’s that?”
“Holly Thompson. Remember her? She lived down the street from me. Died six months ago? Emphysema.”
People in Pineapple Port never mentioned a deceased person without including the cause of death. Many searched the Internet daily for the various ways they might meet their end. Noting how other people died also gave friends new things to talk about with their doctors. A typical exchange went something like:
Pineapple Port Resident #1: Remember Bob? Cerebral Autosomal Dominant Arteriopathy with Subcortical Infarcts Leukoencephalopathy?
Pineapple Port Resident #2: Ooh, I’ll have to look that one up. I wonder if my doctor knows about it. I better ask. How do you spell Leukoencephalopathy?
Charlotte looked at her table with new eyes. “I didn’t know Holly well. Why?”
“This looks just like her coffee table…”
Charlotte grimaced. “I don’t know. I guess it could be. I got it from Declan’s pawnshop…”
Oh boy. All my furniture is from dead people. Why did I waste time putting out Halloween decorations when my actual furniture is probably haunted?
Gloria shrugged and sat back. A silence fell, awkward to everyone but Abby who leaned into her ear scratching. She stretched out a paw to untangle it from Gloria’s Cher wig and pulled the whole mop askew, leaving the center part shifted to the right.
“Can I get you anything?”
“Do you have any sweet tea?”
“I have unsweetened…”
Gloria grimaced as if she’d been offered cyanide.
“I could put a Sweet-n-Low in it?”
“Oh, yes! That will work.”
Charlotte stood. “I got you, babe.”
“What?”
“Nothing. I’ll be right back.”
As Charlotte poured the iced tea she noticed the light in the house changing. She didn’t think much of it, clouds were as common as sun in Florida, but when she turned to reenter the living room, all her blinds had been closed.
She put the tea on the sofa table using a book as a coaster. Glancing at the chalkboard wall, she wondered if it would be rude to take a moment to jot down coasters on her shopping list. Declan probably had some at the shop but she didn’t want any more dead people items in the house. There had to be a scientific ratio of dead-people-items to ghosts-attached-to-them and if she wasn’t haunted yet, she didn’t want to push her luck.
Charlotte sat in the deep reading chair Declan had given her. She loved the chair, but now she wondered who’d been sitting in it before her and what had taken the sitter’s life.
“Is this Holly’s chair?” she asked.
Gloria studied it. “I don’t think so.”
Good. Maybe the former owner just didn’t appreciate it.
“Is the tea sweet enough?”
Gloria nodded, mid-sip. “Oh yes, perfect, thank you.”
The room again fell silent. After a few minutes, Charlotte couldn’t take it any longer.
“Gloria…we need to talk about the elephants in the room.”
“What?”
“You have a suitcase and you’ve scalped Cher.”
“Oh…” Gloria’s hand fluttered to her head. “Yes…” She slid the wig off the back of her head and leaned forward to set her tea on the book-coaster. “I guess I don’t need to wear this here, but you can’t blame me for being careful; someone’s trying to kill me!”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Who do you think?” She grabbed a notepad from the table beside her and held a pen poised to jot down the particulars of Gloria’s case.
“Who what?”
“Who’s trying to kill you?”
“Oh, I don’t know…” Gloria looked down and fiddled with Abby’s ear.
“You have no idea? There must be something. People don’t usually threaten people unless they have some reason. And they definitely don’t then try to burn down their house.”
“It was just a box of leaves.”
“Still…”
Gloria sighed. “Well…I guess there might be a couple possibilities…”
“A couple? Like what?”
“Well…I used to be in real estate…”
Charlotte waited for more but nothing came. She needed to coax more information from the little woman before Gloria stole her dog’s love from her forever.
“Last I checked, selling houses isn’t a capital offense.”
“No, but selling someone a snake house doesn’t put you on their Christmas card list, either.”
Charlotte sat up in her chair. “Did you say a snake house?”
Gloria nodded. “The house had a bit of a snake problem. Basement was full of them. Every time the owners reached for the TV remote whoops! it’s a snake! Need an umbrella? Too bad, it’s a snake! Th
at’s what they said, anyway. Sounded like a bit of a stretch to me. Though…I believe them about hearing them in the walls. There were an awful lot of them in the walls…black ones, brown ones, little ones, big ones…”
“Cripes! You knew about them?”
“Yes… At first I refused to take the listing but then…”
Gloria leaned forward to reclaim her tea. Charlotte shifted to the edge of her seat.
“But then what?”
“But then I got this awful client. A capital B-rhymes-with-witch if you know what I mean.”
“Got it. I’m a detective, remember.”
“I figured she deserved the snake house. When I showed her the house I went to the appointment early and scared the stragglers back into the walls before she came to view it.”
Charlotte slapped her hand to her cheek, speechless and tried to shake the image of snakes crawling through her walls before continuing.
“Okay…so…I can see how the lady who bought your snake house might be a little angry. How long ago was this?”
“Oh, twenty-odd years ago.”
“Hm. That seems like a long time to collect magazines for a threatening collage, though I’m not going to take her off the suspect list. Anyone else?”
“My ex-husbands…”
“Husbands with an ‘s?’ What did you do to them?”
“Well, one went bankrupt…”
“That’s not your f—”
“…after selling a house full of snakes.”
Instead of finishing the word fault, Charlotte made an airy fuhhh noise like a deflating balloon. “Wait. You said you sold the house full of snakes.”
“I did, but my husband owned the real estate office where I worked.”
“And he knew about the snakes, too?”
“No, he had no idea.”
“But…he went bankrupt?”
Gloria nodded. “And did a little jail time.”
“He went to jail?”
“I might have implied to the judge that my husband changed the contract and removed the bit where the seller revealed the house was full of snakes.”