Unbinding Love: An Angela Panther Mystery Novella (The Angela Panther Mystery Series)

by Carolyn Ridder Aspenson

  Mel shook her head and sighed. “Keep swimmin’ in denial, woman. That’ll help your kid.”

  “I think we’ve got enough,” I said. “Thank you for your time, Ms. Marx.”

  She jiggled the ice in her cup and sipped the few drops left. “Tell that ex-husband of mine to get lost and not come back. I’m tired of him making my life hell.”

  I nodded. “I hope you find your son.”

  Mel had already stuffed the notebook and pen back into her bag. “You need help,” she told Emma, and with her NIKE tennis shoe, stepped right in the scotch and shards of glass covering the floor, making little crunching sounds from the pressure.

  “Stepping in the scotch on the floor? Point made,” I said when we got into my car.

  Mel’s jaw dropped and then slowly formed into a smile. “What point? It was in my way.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Well, seriously. I get that she’s got a problem, but it’s her son. How does a mother act like that when her son is missing?”

  I wondered the same thing. “I don’t know.” I pulled out of Emma Marx’s driveway and headed toward the coffee shop, picturing my son, Josh, and the psychotic state of panic I’d be in if something ever happened to him. I’d kill someone with my bare hands if they tried to hurt my son or my daughter Emily, even though she often drove me to the brink of punting her through our front door.

  “So her ex was pretty scary, huh? Throwing all that stuff around the house like that,” Mel said.

  “He’s worried about his son. I can empathize, but it definitely won’t help find the boy.”

  “You gonna ask me to help or what?” The voice bellowing from the back seat belonged to my mother, Fran Richter. She had a knack for popping in unannounced. “I’ve got some free time, ya know.” She hovered close to Mel’s head and then blew in her ear.

  Mel swatted the air away and Ma giggled. She blew again, and added an earlobe tug for effect.

  Mel batted both hands at the sides of her head, tilting and shaking her ear. “What the heck?”

  I tried not to laugh, but in doing so, sucked in a snort.

  She whipped her head toward the backseat, her jaw clenched shut. “She’s here, isn’t she?” Her head shifted back and forth, searching for something she’d never see. Mel didn’t have the gift, and no matter how badly she wanted to, she couldn’t see ghosts. “Fran, stop messin’ with me. You’ll give me nightmares.”

  “Not if ya got that sexy detective in the sack with you,” my dead and completely inappropriate mother said.

  I cringed. “Good grief, could you not go there, please?”

  “What’d she say?” Mel asked.

  “She made reference to you being in bed with my boss.”

  “He’s not really your boss since you don’t get paid.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Just sayin’,” Mel said.

  “Subject change,” I said. “Ma, about helping us, you sure you got the time?”

  “If I said I got the time, then I got the time. And why wouldn’t I? I’m a celestial super sleuth, remember? It’s what I do, investigate crime during my free time.” She laughed. “Look at that. I’m a poet and didn’t know it. I rhyme all the time.” She dragged out the -ime in time.

  Lord, help me. “I thought you might be too busy bowling or hanging out with dead celebrities.” Since her death, my mother had made a few celebrity friends in the afterlife. Johnny Cash and his wife June were her current besties.

  She flicked her hand in the air. “Yah, I do that too, but I got priorities.”

  That was Ma code for I’m bored.

  “Okay, then yes, I could definitely use your help. How about you celestial super sleuth it to wherever Justin Marx is and let me know where to find him? ‘K. Thanks. Bye.” I wiggled my nose like Samantha on the original BeWitched.

  Mel and my mother both laughed.

  I shrugged. “I knew it was a long shot but I had to try.”

  “The universe don’t work that way, Ang. You know that. You gotta do the work. It’s kinda like that diet you’re always on. If you don’t work for it, you’ll pack on those pounds. ‘Specially with all them cupcakes and fru-fru drinks you get at Starbucks. Whatever happened to a good old cup of Folgers? Madone, what I’d give for a cup a that stuff.”

  I’d call her rude if she wasn’t so right.

  “She’s talking, isn’t she?” Mel asked. “What’s she saying? Is it about me and Aaron?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Not everything is about you, ya know.”

  “I know. And why is that? It sure as heck should be.” She smirked.

  I filled her in on my mother’s mini-speech.

  “Poor Fran. I can’t imagine not being able to have coffee. “How can Heaven not include coffee?”

  “Oh, it’s in Heaven,” Ma said. “They got all kinds of coffee up there, the hoity-toity stuff, that is. They just don’t got the good stuff, like Folgers.”

  That was news to me. She’d been complaining about the lack of coffee in the afterlife since she’d kicked the bucket on earth. “Since when?”

  “Beats me,” she said. “We don’t deal with time up there, but I’d say a few days ago if I had to put it in your kind’s language.”

  My kind?

  “They have coffee,” I told Mel. “Got it a few days ago, based on our theory of time, that is. Just not Folgers.”

  “Well, thank God for that.” Mel held her nose. “My mother used to drink that stuff. It smelled like cat pee.”

  A paperback flew out of the backseat and whopped Mel on the head.

  She leaned forward. “Holy son of a b—“

  I stopped her. “Now you know how it feels.”

  “You only got whacked with a puny granola bar, and that was months ago. I got hit with…” She grabbed the book. “The Theory of Everything by Stephen Hawking?” She held the book up for me to see. “Lemme guess. This belongs to Josh.”

  I nodded. “Last summer’s reading project.” My son was an old soul. He played lacrosse and gamed, but also had a need to know a lot about everything, and fulfilled that need with cable TV channels like The History Channel, books, and the Internet.

  “I knew it. The question is, why’s it still in your car?”

  “Because he never took it out and I’m refusing to do it and I’m not going to discuss it further or my OCD will kick in and I’ll have to bring it inside.”

  Thinking about my kid brought me back to Justin Marx. “So what can you do, Ma?”

  “Lemme see what I can dig up,” she said, but before she shimmered away, she added, “Well, lookie who’s come to hang out.”

  I couldn’t turn and see, and since apparitions didn’t have reflections, I couldn’t check the mirror either. “Who?”

  “Am I dead?” the ghost asked.

  I recognized that voice and slammed my right foot onto the brake. The car jerked to a stop. I whipped my head back and couldn’t believe my eyes. “Oh crap.”

  ***

  There have been days that, halfway through, I realized I should have never gotten out of bed. I should have just buried myself under the covers and waited for the day to pass, praying the whole time for the next day to be better.

  As I cut off two cars to switch lanes, I knew I shouldn’t have gotten out of bed that morning. I dropped the F-bomb and Mel’s eyes popped open.

  “Rut-roh,” she said. “It’s never good when you say the f-word. What’s up?”

  I made a u-turn at the next light and pulled into a strip mall parking lot. “Mel, call Aaron and tell him to send someone to the Marx house ASAP.”

  “Is it Justin?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “His mother.”

  “Crap.”

  “Yup.”

  “I don’t understand,” Emma Marx said. “How did I get here?”

  “She look funny to you?” Ma asked. “She’s not sparkly like me.”

  “Emma, do you know who I am?” I asked.


  “You’re that woman the detective sent over.” She scanned the car. “What going on?”

  “You kicked the bucket, lady. That’s what’s goin’ on.”

  My mother never minced words.

  Emma Marx screamed—a high-pitched, ear-piercing scream.

  “Stop screaming,” I screamed back, knowing that was counterproductive.

  “I…I gotta go home. I gotta get my…”

  “No, Emma, wait,” I said, but it was too late. She’d already disappeared. “Great. Just great.”

  ***

  Three squad cars and Aaron’s unmarked cruiser were parked in front of the Marx house. An ambulance with its doors open sat in the short driveway. I pulled up next to Aaron’s car and kept my motor running.

  “Let’s go,” Mel said, already halfway out the door.

  I grabbed her shoulder and squeezed. “Hold on. Let’s give him a few minutes.”

  Mel grimaced. “Ouch. You need to dial back on the weight training, woman. Your grip’s harsh.”

  I snorted. “You’re just uber fragile.”

  “Like a French leg lamp, baby.”

  I got caught her reference to the movie A Christmas Story and was impressed. “Good one.”

  A woman in a pair of blue very short shorts and a matching tank top jogged by. She smiled at me and I smiled back. I watched as she jogged away and noticed her feet weren’t touching the ground. I liked when spirit acknowledged me but didn’t ask for anything, though I couldn’t help but wonder why.

  An officer appeared and tapped on my window. “Ma’am. You need to move along please.”

  Mel leaned over my lap, her low-cut tank top dropping open to reveal her B-cups jiggling inside a zebra print push-up bra. I wanted to barf but held it in.

  She hit the window button. “Oh, hi officer…” She pulled her sunglasses low on her nose and read his tag. “Miller. It’s okay. “Detective Banner is waiting for us.”

  Officer Miller’s eyes darted to Mel’s pumped up cleavage. A slight smile took shape, hinting at a sense of humor under the authoritarian attitude, but he caught it and it flipped into a scowl, directed right at me. “Your name?”

  “Angela Panther.”

  The officer spoke into the mic on his left shoulder and gave Aaron the 411.

  Aaron’s voice squawked out of the speaker. “Is she alone?”

  “No, sir,” the officer said, giving Mel’s perky boobs another onceover.

  “Send Ms. Panther, but tell the other one she’ll need to wait in the car,” Aaron responded.

  Mel growled. “The other one? He’s so not getting lucky tonight.”

  The officer’s mouth twitched.

  I suppressed my chuckle. “Official business and all that.” I said, “Sorry, Mel,” and got out of the car. “I’ll be back in a sec.”

  “I’m goin’ in too,” Ma said, and shimmered away.

  Aaron met me on the front porch. “Looks like she took a tumble down the stairs. Coroner is on his way, but it’s pretty clear her neck is broken.” He moved to open the door, but I stopped him. I wasn’t a fan of the bodies spirits left behind. I’d seen a few and made an effort to not see them if I didn’t absolutely have to. “Don’t need the visual.”

  He nodded. “She tell you anything?”

  I shook my head. “She was actually pretty surprised to hear of her own demise.”

  “Interesting.”

  “It’s not uncommon from what I understand.” I asked him for more information on Emma’s death.

  “There’s a bottle of scotch on the stairs. Looks like she came up to grab the bottle from the linen closet, and fell on her way back down.”

  “Linen closet? What’s that have to do with anything?”

  “Alcoholics typically hide their liquor. A linen closet is a common place, though they don’t realize that. The door’s open and looks like the bottle left an indention on a towel.”

  “That’s some serious detective work right there.”

  “As you say, it’s a gift.”

  He knew me well. “She was already tanked this morning, so you’re probably right.”

  “She give you anything new this morning?”

  “Nope, nothing you hadn’t already told me, but it was interesting, how she interacted with her ex-husband.”

  He raised his eyebrow. “I’ll never get used to this.”

  “It’ll happen eventually. It did for me,” I said, and winked.

  “One can hope,” he said. “We’re trying to locate the vic’s mother.”

  I was flummoxed. The whole situation didn’t sit right with me, but I couldn’t figure out why. “I’d like to go with you to talk to her. Something’s off here but I can’t quite figure out what.”

  He nodded. “You and me both.”

  ***

  Mel and I sat at our favorite table on the patio outside Starbucks.

  “You know what I don’t get?” she asked.

  “Lucky often enough?” I giggled at my own joke.

  “I’d give you the details but you’d throw up a little in your mouth.”

  “There is that.”

  She stirred her drink with her straw. “Why can’t Justin’s dead father see him?”

  I’d pinged the same question around in my brain. “That’s the million dollar question. Both parents should now be able to see him, dead or alive. And if he’s dead, I should be able to too.”

  “Clearly, you’re not as advanced in your ghost whisperer skills as Jennifer Love Hewitt.”

  “Jennifer Love Hewitt and I don’t have a lot in common.”

  “That’s true. She’s younger and prettier for starters.”

  “And she doesn’t have a sex-crazed pain in the arse best friend.”

  “Too bad for her.” She laughed and then pulled her pen and notepad from her purse. “Here’s what we know. Justin Marx went missing two days ago. Emma Marx tumbles to her death today.” She drew a timeline, labeled the previous few days on it and jotted down the details in order, adding Emma’s unfortunate death.

  I grabbed the pen and drew a circle around the area before Justin Marx went missing. “So what happened here?”

  “He was home playing video games.”

  “Before that. Something must have happened here—“ I tapped the pen on the circle. “—that plays a role in his disappearance.”

  “Maybe a fight with his mother? Or maybe he got tired of her drinking?”

  “Wow. Look at you, getting all crime solver-like on me. I’m impressed.”

  “Contrary to what you think, Aaron and I don’t spend all our time together bumping uglies.”

  “And contrary to what you think, I actually don’t think about your sex life at all.”

  “That’s too bad because it’s pretty incredible.”

  I grimaced and gave her a please don’t go there hand wave.

  “Party pooper.”

  “We need to find Emma Marx. My spidey senses tell me she knows more than she’s letting on.”

  “I agree, so go on.” She waved her hand at me. “Get your ghost whisperer on and conjure that there spirit.”

  “Really? Wow.”

  She shrugged. “It’s all I could come up with on the fly.”

  “Yeah, well, I suck at summoning spirits and you suck at coming up with stuff on the fly.”

  “Yeah, but for you, practice makes perfect.”

  “I hate you.”

  “I love you too. Now go on, conjure.”

  “Fine,” I said, and closed my eyes. I focused on Emma Marx.

  “Well?”

  My right eye popped open. “Shush. I’m concentrating.”

  A man’s voice said, “Maybe you’ll have better luck than me.”

  Both eyes popped open. Bill Marx hovered beside Mel. “Well, I got it half right,” I said.

  “You got half of her?”

  “Nope, but I got her ex.”

  “Oh, I don’t like him all that much.”

  “I’m with
you on that,” I said, and glanced at the ghost. “You haven’t seen her?”

  “No, and I’ve been looking.”

  “What’d he say?” Mel asked.

  I held up my index finger, said, “Gimme a sec, Mel. Bill, do you know what happened to her? Were you there?”

  “No. I was looking for my son.”

  “Did you find him?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t understand that. You should be able to see him.” I knew firsthand that spirits could move between my world and what came next. “Have you checked up there?” I pointed to the sky.

  He cocked his slightly transparent head and raised an eyebrow. “I, uh…I tried, but I don’t believe he’s dead.”

  “You tried? What does that mean?”

  “That’s irrelevant. The point is, I don’t think he’s dead.”

  “I don’t either.” I dropped the issue regarding his inability to check for his son in the afterlife for the time being.

  My mother shimmered in on the opposite side of Mel. “For cryin’ out loud, he ain’t dead,” she said. “So let’s get a move on and find the boy. I got celestial stuff I gotta take care of.”

  Celestial stuff?

  “He ain’t?” I asked, intentionally using her poor grammar.

  “Don’t know for sure, but don’t think so,” she said. “If he was, we’d know by now, dontcha think?”

  “So how do we do it?”

  “Do what?” she asked.

  I rolled my eyes. “Find the boy.”

  “That ain’t for me to determine. You gotta figure that part out. I’m just here to offer my celestial assistance.”

  “Good grief. You’re not helpful.”

  She shrugged and I filled Mel in.

  “It amazes me that I can’t even feel their presence,” she said. “Also pisses me off.”

  “You’re not missing much,” I said.

  My mother stuck her tongue out at me, and, like mother, like daughter, I returned the gesture.

  “Something doesn’t feel right about this, but I can’t quite put my finger on it,” I said.

  My mother’s smile shifted to a straight line. She pointed at Bill Marx. “You need to tell her.”

  He shook his head. “It has nothing to do with my son.”

  “You don’t know that,” she said.