by Nic Saint
The moment they’d stepped behind the fence, it was as if they’d entered a different and uglier world. The construction site was a dump, with a half-constructed edifice crumbling into a pile of concrete rot and rust, and a deep pit where the foundation was supposed to be. And down in that pit the body of a smartly dressed woman lay, face upward.
“Talk to me, Jacobs. What’s the verdict?”
Angela shrugged. “Preliminary findings would suggest she was strangled with some kind of garrote. Not an iron wire or cord, though. Something smooth that doesn’t leave a trace and extends all the way around the neck.”
He shared a look of concern with Pierre. It was the invisible choker all right.
“And when did this happen?”
“In the last hour or so.”
Sam looked up, surprised. “She was discovered so quickly?”
“A bum who likes to call this place home was just returning to put away some stuff when he happened upon her. He was so kind to call it in.”
“Very nice of him,” Sam thought as his mind flashed back to the silver-toothed vagrant he’d seen earlier. No connection to this case, of course.
“I’ll file a complete report once I’ve got her back at the lab.”
“Thanks. Appreciate it, Jacobs,” he muttered, then slowly picked his way down to the bottom of the construction pit, along several plateaus. He stared down at the body, lying in a puddle of sludge. “What a waste,” he muttered.
Pierre seemed to concur. “She was really pretty, wasn’t she?”
“Yeah, she was,” he agreed, kneeling down next to the body. He studied her earrings. One was still attached to her ear, while the other had seemingly gotten loose in the fall. Special earring, too. A small golden angel, a diamond in the place of its head. Whatever this was, it wasn’t a robbery, for her wallet was still in her purse, and those earrings also cost a pretty penny. Even her wedding ring was still on her finger. And as he stood, his face grim, he announced, “We better have a chat with Mr. Bloom. Tell him the bad news.”
It wasn’t one of his favorite tasks, but someone had to do it, and since he might give them some indication what his wife was doing here, there might be something gleaned from the interview. “Maybe we can have another shot at Brigham Shatwell,” he told Pierre and watched the man’s eyes light up.
Yep, the guy had a sweet tooth, all right.
And when finally they were on their way back to Manhattan, he found his mind returning to the previous day and to Ernestine Flummox, for no reason whatsoever suddenly wondering what the woman was doing right now.
Chapter 20
As it so happened, Ernestine was at that exact moment thinking about Sam. She was on her way to the office, after sharing her concern about Gran with her two sisters. They’d decided to hold off on turning the garden into a pool and Jacuzzi area and the greenhouse into a garage, ‘with a nice big slab of concrete,’ as Gran had added before she ran out the door for some errand.
Breakfast had been an unmitigated disaster, as Edelie had tried to whip up something edible by using her magic skills and had failed spectacularly.
She loved watching the Food Network for inspiration, but she could have fooled Ernestine. What she’d come up with were fritters of some kind that looked and tasted—according to Strel—like deep-fried rats’ guts—not that she would know what rats’ guts would taste like, of course. Disgusting, was the consensus, not to mention that Ernestine, as a vegetarian, didn’t eat rat. Though Estrella, who wasn’t a vegetarian, seemed equally repulsed by the savory dish.
When it was all over, tiny bits of rats’ guts were covering the floor, walls and ceiling, as if an explosion had taken place in a rats’ guts processing plant, if such a thing existed, which Ernestine sincerely hoped it didn’t, for even though she wasn’t particularly fond of the critters, they were still part of the animal kingdom and as such shouldn’t be subjected to critter fritter cruelty.
And as she rode the subway into Manhattan, she found her thoughts suddenly wandering to Sam Barkley again, and wondered what he would have to say about this whole mess with Gran. Would he agree that something really weird was going on? Or would he simply ascribe it to that knock on the head the woman had suffered, like Estrella did? Strel insisted Gran would simply ‘snap out of it’ sooner or later, and go back to normal, but Ernestine shared Edie’s pessimistic view that something else was going on.
Gran’s entire personality had changed overnight, and then there was the fact that she couldn’t practice magic anymore, which was even more worrisome. She’d always been the one to protect the three sisters and the house from being overrun by powerful forces of evil, so where did that leave them now? Vulnerable and weak and prone to attack, which wasn’t good.
And now she wanted to tear down her own life’s work and destroy the flower garden and greenhouse that were as close to her heart as the triplets.
Ernestine had been thinking hard about what spells it would take to turn the garden into a pool and the greenhouse into a garage and frankly she didn’t have a clue. She wasn’t a very talented witch at all, and neither were her two sisters, so why would Gran want them of all people to fix the garden?
And as she sat gazing at the man seated across from her, she thought he looked remarkably like Sam. Then she decided not to dwell on the detective. For one thing, she’d never see him again, not unless someone was suddenly murdered at Safflower House—which she sincerely hoped would never happen—and secondly, he obviously was a Neanderthal who hated her.
She got off at her usual stop and joined the throng of commuters to reach the office building where Boodle, Jag, Lack & Noodle had made their home.
Arriving on the tenth floor, where Spear Boodle, son of founder and partner Nixon Boodle, held court, she popped her head into Mr. Boodle’s corner office to say hi and was surprised to find him absent from the scene.
Moving over to Spear’s personal secretary Mary Winters, she asked, “Isn’t Spear in today?”
The woman looked at her owlishly through horn-rimmed glasses not unlike her own and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Oh, he’s in, all right. He’s in the conference room with the police!”
“The police? What do they want?”
“Apparently something’s going on with one of his clients,” Mary said, her voice still down to a whisper. She wasn’t merely a remarkably able secretary but also a remarkable force of gossip around the office.
“Which client?” she asked, a sense of foreboding stealing over her.
Mary looked around as if expecting Boodle, Jag, Lack & Noodle to suddenly jump up from behind the office ficus and drag her gossiping ass away.
“Lyndon Bloom.” Then she frowned. “Wasn’t he the one you had that interview with yesterday?”
Her heart now beating a mile a minute, she asked, “Did something happen to Mr. Bloom?”
“Not to Mr. Bloom,” she said. “But to Mrs. Bloom.”
“What…” She gulped a little. “What happened?”
“Didn’t you hear the news? She was murdered! They found her body just now. Strangled on some deserted construction site.” Her eyes went wide, an effect magnified by her glasses. “They say it was the invisible choker!”
As Ernestine hurried into her own office, she tried to calm her frayed nerves. She plunked down in her chair, placed her purse on the desk, and stared before her, unable to move. She’d talked to Mr. Bloom yesterday, and he’d been telling her all those stories about how his wife had cheated on him. What were the odds that she was murdered today? Could he have done it himself? But why would he go and do a horrible thing like that?
She almost yelled out when the door to her office suddenly opened, and Spear Boodle stuck his head in. “Police want a word with you, Ernestine. Do you have a moment? In the conference room,” he added when Ernestine quickly got up and hurried over. He grabbed the legal pad and pen from her hands. “You won’t need those,” he said grimly, and then jerked his head in the
direction of the conference room, indicating she better hurry on up.
And as she moved as fast as her heels allowed, the parquet floor noisily clacking under her feet, she felt a distinct flush rising up from her chest, along her neck, and coloring her cheeks. Oh, God, she thought. Was she going to have to tell the police all about the weird faces she’d pulled yesterday? Had Lyndon Bloom complained about her? What was she going to say? She couldn’t tell them about the cheating with twenty-four lovers, could she? Didn’t that fall under the client-lawyer confidentiality thingy?
She arrived at the conference room, coincidentally the same one where she’d terrified Mr. Bloom, and knocked before a gruff voice told her, “Come!”
She strode in and saw a broad-shouldered man gazing out the window, his back to her. There was a second person present, a smallish man who was eating a donut and looked a little bored. She seemed to recognize him.
“I’m, um, I’m Ernestine Flummox,” she announced, “You wanted me?”
The man turned around, and she gasped when she saw that it was… Sam Barkley! He gave her a look of surprise. “I’ll be damned. Miss Flummox.”
She nodded, her frayed nerves becoming even more frayed. “Detective.”
He gestured at a chair. “Close the door and take a seat, please.”
“Take a donut,” the little man suggested, indicating a box of donuts.
“No, thanks. I’m fine,” she said, trying to keep the tremor from her voice.
“So,” Detective Barkley began, “what’s all this I hear about you and Lyndon Bloom? Your boss told me you interviewed the guy yesterday?”
She raised her chin. “I’m afraid I can’t discuss any part of that conversation, Detective Barkley. The lawyer-client privilege prevents me.”
“Cut the crap, Miss Flummox,” he growled. He’d strode over to her side of the table and was now towering over her. “Like I said, I talked to your boss, and he assured me of your full cooperation. In case you didn’t know, Mrs. Bloom’s body was found an hour ago. Murdered. We’re still trying to track down her husband, and anything you can tell us is highly appreciated.”
She slumped a bit, the fight leaving her again. “Of course.”
The detective took a seat on the edge of the table and folded his arms, bearing down on her with the full force of his personality. It made her feel distinctly out of sorts. “So you’re handling the Bloom divorce?”
“Yes, we are. That is to say, Mr. Boodle is. I was interviewing Mr. Bloom to gather some preliminary information. I’m one of his legal secretaries, you see.”
“So what did the guy have to say?” And before she could respond, he held up his hand. “And don’t give me that lawyer… client privilege crap again.”
She bit her lip. “Yes, Detective. Of course.”
“A woman’s been murdered,” he growled and tapped the table smartly.
“Did he—did he kill her?”
“Too soon to tell,” he allowed, then placed a small recording device in front of her, and pressed record. “Talk to me, Miss Flummox. Take me through the interview and leave out nothing. Your loyalty right now is to truth and justice, not to your client. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, of course,” she said, eyeing the device and wondering if this was how it felt to be in a courtroom, questioned on the stand. Even though she’d wanted to be a lawyer her whole life, she’d never been in this situation before, and it wasn’t a very pleasant experience. And as she took Detective Barkley through the interview, she did decide to leave out the part about pulling strange faces at Mr. Bloom in an effort to appear more appealing. She didn’t feel this would further the cause of ‘truth and justice’ to any distinct degree.
“So he said his wife cheated on him no less than twenty-four times, huh? And she told him every time? Even made him shake hands with her lovers?”
“That’s what he said.”
Sam whistled through his teeth. “Twenty-four motives for murder.”
“He also said he now regretted staying married to her for so long, but at the time he didn’t feel he could leave her.”
“So the guy shook hands with his wife’s lovers and still didn’t think to divorce her?” He tapped his teeth with his pen. “Did you ask him why?”
“I think mainly because he was afraid to be alone,” she intimated.
He fixed her with a curious look. “I’m not a shrink, but that sounds like aberrant behavior. If someone did that to me, I’d divorce her so fast her head would spin.”
She smiled. “Those were my thoughts exactly.”
“Are you in a relationship right now, Miss Flummox?”
Her lips pursed. “As a matter of fact I’m not.” She gave him a hard stare. “Does this have any bearing on your investigation, Detective Barkley?”
The little guy smirked at this, even as he sank his teeth into a donut, and Barkley blinked. “No, it doesn’t,” he admitted stiffly. Then he finally stood. “Thank you for your cooperation, Miss Flummox. If something else comes to mind, give me a call, all right?” He handed her a card, and she tucked it away.
“This interview is over?”
“Yeah, I guess it is. Unless there’s more you want to tell me?”
“No,” she said, greatly relieved. “No, that was the extent of the conversation I had with Mr. Bloom yesterday.”
“I’ll leave you to it, then,” he said, extending a hand.
She shook it, and was surprised how warm and large it was, and how strong. And as she gazed into his eyes, she saw a twinkle of humor there that surprised her even more. She’d figured the man was a knucklehead, gruff and rude and unpleasant, but he was more intelligent than she’d taken him for.
“Thank you, Miss Flummox.”
“Ernestine, please.”
“Just call me Sam. How’s your grandmother, by the way?”
“She’s… fine,” she lied, not wanting to involve Sam in the Gran mess.
“That’s great to hear. Frankly, I was a little worried when I saw Ronny Mullarkey with your grandmother. Seriously, that guy’s bad news.” He shook his head. “If I were you, I’d keep your granny far away from him.”
“I will, detective—Sam. Thank you for the advice.”
“You’re welcome… Ernestine.”
And after a quick smile and a nod to the other detective, who was still munching donuts, she left the room. Her head was spinning a little, and this time it wasn’t from nervousness but from something else entirely…
Chapter 21
Edelie was in a funk. For the second day in a row she’d arrived late to work, and this time, Ginger had told her, there would be no more reprieves. One more incident and she was out. Apparently, it had been quite the busy morning, and customers had been lining up on the sidewalk. When finally she’d managed to make the kitchen look presentable again that morning, she’d known she’d never make it to work on time, so she’d called Ginger and told her Gran was sick, and she needed to take her to the hospital.
It was a feeble excuse, and Ginger hadn’t accepted it.
The worst part was that now she’d finally proven to herself and her family that she couldn’t cook. She loved cooking, like Estrella loved singing and Ernestine loved the law, but she simply sucked at it. They all sucked at what they loved, and even more at being witches. They were simply three losers.
Maybe it was time to drop the dream of being a chef, she thought as she handed a businessman with perfectly coiffed hair his preferred caffeine treat. Maybe she should just accept that she would be a coffee shop girl for the rest of her life, never fulfilling her dream of being the next cooking sensation.
Then her thoughts returned to Gran. What was the matter with her?! The woman was completely out of control, as if that bump on the head had somehow rendered her mentally unbalanced and had turned her into a completely different person. Now she didn’t even like flowers anymore!
She looked up when a handsome guy tried to attract her attention.
&nb
sp; “Two coffees to go and what do you have by way of pastry?” he asked. “My partner has a sweet tooth,” he added, giving her a comical grin.
Partner? He didn’t look gay, but then you never knew, of course. But then she caught a flash of his badge. Duh. He was a cop, of course.
“What brings you out here, officer?” she asked as she prepared him two large coffees and picked up the tongs to start fishing around for pastry.
“Oh, you know, the usual,” he said, leisurely leaning his large frame against the counter. “Mayhem and murder.”
“Mayhem and murder in Manhattan, huh? Now that’s a first.”
He grinned. “Yeah, well, it’s all these banker types lurking around and stalking the streets. Murdering maniacs, every last one of ‘em.”
“Should I be afraid now? I mean, this is their hunting ground.”
He gave her a mock serious look. “As long as they’re properly caffeinated they’re not so dangerous. It’s when they don’t get their daily dose of coffee that you have to watch out. They can get really vicious when that happens.”
“Is that your professional opinion, officer?”
He gave her a grin and a wink. “Public service announcement from your friendly neighborhood cop, honey.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” she said, as she offered him a baggie with two chocolate cupcakes. “Here, let me know if your partner likes them.”
“Will do,” he said, tipping an imaginary cap as he took the paper baggie and the cup holder.
She watched him stride out and heaved a wistful sigh. If only she could bag that kind of man…
“Hey! Edelie!”
“Yes, Ginger,” she said automatically.
“Stop ogling the customers. Serve them instead!” her boss yelled as she pointed to two more people waiting in the queue.
“Yes, Ginger,” she repeated, trying to control her eyes’ habit to roll around every time Ginger opened her mouth.