Death of a Neighborhood Witch (Jaine Austen Mystery)

by Laura Levine

  “Beautiful choice,” Estelle assured me with a nicotine-stained smile.

  “What’s this?” Lance asked, picking up a large plastic skeleton’s skull from a display on the counter.

  “It’s a bumper decoration for your car,” Estelle enthused. “Only nine ninety-nine. And the skeleton’s eyes light up.” She flipped a switch on the back of the skull, and indeed, its eye sockets lit up in bright red.

  “I love it!” Lance exclaimed. “I’ll take two.”

  “Two?” I asked. “Why do you need two?”

  “One for me and one for you.”

  “I don’t want a skeleton’s skull.”

  “Of course you do, Jaine. If any car was screaming out for a skull, it’s your Corolla. It’s practically haunted by the ghosts of dearly departed Quarter Pounders.”

  And before I could stop him, he was buying the darn things.

  “C’mon,” he said when we got out to the parking lot. “Let’s put one on your car.”

  “I am not putting a skeleton skull on my car.”

  “What’s wrong with you, Jaine?” He tsked in disapproval. “Where’s your Halloween spirit?”

  “Oh, all right,” I caved.

  Maybe it would be fun to get into the Halloween spirit for a change. And besides, it was actually sort of sweet of Lance to buy it for me.

  He clamped the skull onto my front bumper and turned on its blinking red eye sockets. It was beyond tacky, but what the heck? When it comes to gifts, it’s the thought that counts.

  I got in the car in a much better mood than when we started out.

  “Thanks for the ride, hon,” Lance said as we pulled out of the parking lot.

  “And thanks for the skeleton skull.”

  “Oh, it was nothing. That’s what friends are for. You can pay me back when we get home.”

  “Pay you back??”

  “Omigod!” he gasped. “Is that a pizza crust in your glove compartment?”

  And out came the moist towelette.

  I squeezed the steering wheel as hard as I could, pretending it was Lance’s neck.

  Still fuming over my “gift” from Lance, I stomped into my apartment.

  Talk about no good deed going unpunished. Here I’d been kind enough to drive him across town in LA traffic and what did I get for it? A tacky skeleton skull, hurtful slurs about my trusty Corolla, and a massive dose of moist towelettes.

  Of course, he had a point about the Corolla. Maybe my car did need a bit of a pick-me-up. So as much as I hated to admit he might be right, after a calming dose of Reese’s Pieces, I headed back outside to clean up the litter.

  I’d parked my car in front of the Hurlbutts’ house, and as I walked across the street, I saw Mrs. Hurlbutt out on her front lawn, hacking away at her flower bed with a hoe.

  “Damn that Harold,” she was muttering. “He never turns the soil right. Does a lick and a promise and then it’s back to the Weather Channel.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Hurlbutt,” I called out.

  “Oh, hello, Jaine.” She eyed my trash bag. “Come to clean out your car? It’s about time, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  Of course, I did mind her saying so, but I just slapped on a phony smile and restrained myself from telling her that her rusty old Camry with the Garfield bobblehead in the backseat was not exactly a painting in the Louvre.

  “So are you going to Peter’s Halloween party?” she asked, her eyes lighting up with excitement.

  “Yes, I’m going as—”

  “That Peter!” she gushed, clearly not interested in my choice of costume. “What a looker! If I were twenty years younger . . .” She sighed with longing.

  Oh, for heaven’s sake. Was there no one on the block who didn’t have a crush on the guy?

  But then Mrs. Hurlbutt forgot all about Peter.

  “Goddamn slugs!” she shouted, glaring down at the upturned earth at her feet. “Stop eating my impatiens!”

  And with that, she took her hoe and began stabbing at the critters with a vengeance.

  Leaving her to her killing spree, I returned to the chore at hand and began cleaning out my car.

  I must say I was quite surprised to see how quickly my few measly wrappers managed to fill up a rather large trash bag.

  On the plus side, I found an earring I thought I’d lost two years ago.

  I had just finished tossing the trash into the garbage can when my cell phone rang. It was Kandi.

  “Meet me for lunch at Century City,” she said without preamble. “I’ve got the most amazing news.”

  No way could I meet Kandi for lunch. I’d already wasted the morning at the costume shop, and I really had to finish those Larry Lumbar spots.

  “Sorry, honey. No can do. I’m swamped with work.”

  “I’m thinking a Fuddruckers burger,” she said. “With extra cheese.”

  “See you in a half hour,” I said, reaching for my car keys.

  What can I say? Apparently I’ve got tapioca where my spine should be.

  A half hour later, I was parking my Corolla in the Century City Mall parking lot. As I got out of the car, I noticed a teenaged boy gazing at me in unabashed admiration.

  Whaddaya know, I thought, with a carefree toss of my curls. I’ve still got it.

  “It’s neat,” the kid said, “the way the eyes blink.”

  Oh, for heaven’s sake. He was talking about the stupid skeleton skull.

  “Thanks,” I replied with a weak smile, and headed up to the food court.

  It was a beautiful California day. The early morning fog had burned off and the sun was shining its little heart out. The food court was filled with the usual weekday assortment of retirees, shopaholics, and bizpeople from the nearby Century City law firms.

  Kandi had nabbed a table on the outdoor terrace.

  “Over here!” she called out, waving to me.

  She was dressed in her “work” clothes, which in Hollywood means designer jeans, T-shirt, and blazer.

  “Hi, sweetie!” She got up to give me a hug. “I ordered your lunch!”

  I looked down at the table, expecting to see a Fuddruckers burger bursting with extra cheese. Instead, all I saw was a depressing plate of chopped vegetables.

  “What happened to my burger with extra cheese?”

  “You don’t really want a fattening burger, do you, hon?”

  “Yes, I do want a fattening burger.”

  “Well, too bad. I got you a lovely chopped vegetable salad. Now eat it. It’s good for you.”

  Sometimes Kandi labors under the illusion that she is my mother.

  I picked away at the shards of lettuce, trolling for croutons, while Kandi told me her amazing news.

  “Remember Madame Vruska, my psychic?” she asked.

  “Indelibly,” I assured her.

  “The woman is a genius! One of the things she predicted was that I would come into unexpected riches. And I did!”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, I was in Bloomie’s just now, trying on a blazer, and guess what I found in the pocket?”

  “What?”

  “A dollar!”

  She whipped out a dollar bill from her purse and waved it in triumph.

  “Kandi, hon,” I pointed out, “a dollar isn’t exactly ‘riches.’ ”

  She graced me with an exaggerated roll of her eyes. “Must you be so literal? It’s the principle of the thing.”

  “Did you buy the blazer?” I asked, eyeing a shopping bag at her feet.

  “Yes,” she admitted.

  “How much was it?”

  “A hundred and eighty dollars.”

  Thanks to her job dashing off quips for animated insects, Kandi can afford to drop one hundred and eighty clams on a blazer without blinking.

  “So let’s get this straight. You found a dollar. And spent a hundred eighty. And you came into riches how?”

  “Oh, don’t be such a spoilsport,” she said, shoving the dollar back in her purse. “Madame Vruska said
I’d come into money, and I did. And she said I’d meet my true love in the arts. And I will. I just know it!”

  She had so much hope in her eyes I couldn’t bear to disillusion her.

  “Of course you will,” I murmured, patting her hand soothingly while nabbing one of her croutons.

  “So how’re things going with the new guy on your block?” she asked.

  “Peter? He invited me to his Halloween costume party.” Eagerly I told her about the flapper outfit I’d just rented.

  “Sounds adorable!” she enthused.

  “It will be, if I remember to suck in my stomach all night. It’s a little tight around the tummy area.”

  “Tight around the tummy?” She perked up in that way she gets when she’s about to wax euphoric. “Then you must, absolutely must, get a Tummy Tamer.”

  “A Tummy Tamer?”

  “A spandex miracle worker that takes inches off your tummy instantly,” she said, morphing into an infomercial spokeswoman before my eyes. “I simply adore mine.”

  “Why on earth are you wearing a Tummy Tamer? You don’t even have a tummy.”

  “That’s because I’m wearing my Tummy Tamer. You wouldn’t believe how fat I am without it.”

  Don’t you just hate it when skinny women talk about how “fat” they are? Don’t you want to just choke them with a celery stick?

  “Honestly, Jaine,” she said with a missionary gleam in her eye. “You have to promise you’ll get one for Peter’s party.”

  I could see there’d be no living with her unless I promised.

  “Okay, okay. I’ll get a Tummy Tamer.”

  Of course, I had no intention whatsoever of buying one of the silly things. Girdles are just too darn uncomfortable.

  But after Kandi and I had hugged good-bye and I’d sneaked back to the food court for a giant salted pretzel, I happened to be walking through a department store I shall, for legal reasons, call Floomingdale’s, when I ran smack into a display of the very Tummy Tamers Kandi had been raving about.

  There they were, stacked high on a table, with the most amazing Before and After pictures propped up in the middle of the display. I gaped in amazement at a woman, who in her Before picture looked a lot like me after a rendezvous with Messrs. Ben and Jerry, and in her After picture resembled a runway model in Milan. Like magic, her tummy had disappeared.

  “It’s a miracle, isn’t it?” a seductive voice whispered in my ear.

  I turned to see a stick-thin saleswoman at my side.

  “I’m wearing one now,” she confided, running her hands down her size 0 body.

  And for one crazy minute, I actually imagined I could look like a Milan fashion model with the help of a piece of spandex.

  As if in a trance, I reached for a box.

  “Is it very uncomfortable?” I asked, wondering what price I’d have to pay for such a fabulous body.

  “Not at all,” Ms. Stick assured me. “You’ll hardly even know you have it on.”

  And like a fool, I believed her.

  Chapter 8

  T here’s got to be a special place in hell for the guy (it can’t possibly have been a woman) who invented the Tummy Tamer. A place of honor right next to the guys who invented bikini waxes and rice cakes.

  It was the night of Peter’s Halloween party, and I’d waited till the last minute to try it on.

  Freshly showered, my hair blow-dried to perfection, I was standing in my bra and panties, admiring my newly sleek tresses, thinking how cute they’d look with the feather headband that came with my flapper costume. Prozac was stretched out on my bed, watching me get dressed, taking an occasional time-out to claw my comforter.

  Up until that moment, everything had been humming along smoothly.

  And then I reached for the Tummy Tamer.

  When I took it out of the box, I groaned to see it was the size of a Barbie headband. Surely there had to be some mistake. Obviously someone had put a toddler’s Tummy Tamer in the wrong box.

  But no. When I checked the label on the Tummy Tamer, I saw it was the right size.

  Gingerly I stepped into it, wondering if I would be able to get it up past my ankles.

  You’ll be happy to know my ankles were a breeze. The rest of the journey, however, was a struggle of monumental proportions. I tried valiantly to tug the diabolical band of elastic past my thighs and up around my hips, grunting and groaning every step of the way. All the while, I swear I could see Prozac snickering from her perch on my bed.

  At last the battle of the bulge was over. Gasping from the exertion, I checked myself out in the mirror and was pleasantly surprised to see that the Tummy Tamer had lived up to its name. It had, indeed, whittled inches off my tummy.

  True, it felt like my internal organs had been sucked into a space bag, but on the plus side, I couldn’t help thinking how wonderful I was going to look in my flapper outfit.

  Suddenly all the effort seemed worth it.

  I was busy admiring my almost-washboard tummy in the mirror, imagining myself as a Keira Knightley-esque waif in an Upstairs, Downstairs/English countryside/Masterpiece Theater production when there was a knock on my door.

  “Hey, Jaine, it’s me,” Lance called out.

  He’d graciously offered to pick up our costumes on his way home from work, and now I slipped into my robe to let him in.

  He stood there with a garment bag in one hand and a large plastic shopping sack in the other.

  “Hand it over,” I said, reaching out for my adorable flapper costume.

  “Tiny problemo, honey,” he said, an undeniably shifty look in his eyes.

  “What tiny problemo?”

  I didn’t like the sound of this.

  “Estelle accidentally rented your flapper outfit to someone else.”

  “What??!”

  “But don’t worry. I got you something even better!”

  He unzipped the garment bag, and to my horror took out a large hunk of matted black fur, reeking of mothballs.

  “What on earth is that?” I asked, in shock.

  “An ape suit!” he said, whipping a repulsive ape head out of the plastic sack. “Isn’t it a hoot? And the best part is, you won’t have to worry about wearing makeup!”

  “You did this on purpose!” I said, advancing on him with fire in my eyes. “You switched my outfit so I’d look awful in front of Peter.”

  “Why, Jaine,” he said lamely. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, come off it, Lance. If you looked any more guilty, you’d be in a mug shot.”

  “Okay, okay, I did it,” he said, sinking down onto my sofa with a heavy sigh, John Barrymore at his absolute hammiest. “I don’t know what came over me. I’m a terrible friend. I wouldn’t blame you if you never spoke to me again.”

  He blinked his eyes furiously, in an unsuccessful attempt to work up some tears. “Can you ever forgive me?”

  “No. Never.”

  “I’ll make it up to you somehow, sweetie. I promise. I know! Want me to help you pick mothballs out of the ape’s fur?”

  “No!” I shrieked. “Just go!”

  I shoved him out the door, wondering how the hell I was going to get out of this mess. Maybe it wasn’t too late to drive over to the costume shop. But when I called the store, all I got was their answering machine. It was almost eight, and they were closed.

  I considered going to the party in street clothes, but I didn’t want to be the only one there without a costume and have Peter think I was a poor sport. I also considered wrapping myself in a sheet and going as a ghost, but unfortunately all my sheets have Martha Stewart daisies on them, and that didn’t seem terribly ghostlike.

  Oh, what the heck. I’d wear the damn ape suit. With any luck, Peter would think it was funny.

  Wearily I tossed on jeans and a T-shirt. Then, taking a deep breath, I stepped into my costume. The stench of mothballs was overwhelming. I’m guessing the last time that ape suit had been worn was at the premiere of King Kon
g.

  But I had to look on the bright side, to think positive thoughts.

  If Peter really liked me, surely an ape suit couldn’t come between us. Somehow I’d dazzle him with my witty repartee. Peter would see beyond my moth-eaten exterior to the charming, intelligent woman in the CUCKOO FOR COCOA PUFFS T-shirt beneath. And Lance, the traitor, in his werewolf togs, would watch me, wringing his hairy hands in jealousy.

  Yes, I could make this thing work if I really tried.

  And so it was with a spring in my step, hope in my heart, and an ape head under my arm that I headed up the street to Peter’s party.

  The party was in full swing when I showed up, with lots of people milling about, drinks in hand, the “Monster Mash” playing in the background. Most of the guests seemed to be Peter’s friends and work colleagues, but sprinkled among them were a few of the neighbors.

  Mr. and Mrs. Hurlbutt were there, decked out as Frankenstein and—in a perfect example of art imitating reality—the Bride of Frankenstein.

  “Don’t come whining to me when your dentures come loose,” I heard Mrs. Hurlbutt tsk as Mr. H. scarfed down some candy corn.

  Next I spotted Kevin and Matt Moore, the His ’n’ Hers realtors, dressed as a pair of pirates, handing out their business card to a guy in a Tarzan loincloth.

  As I glanced around, I was dismayed to see that half the people weren’t even in costume. Indeed, there was little Amy Chang, the grad student, looking way too fetching in Capri jeans and a ruffled tee. If I’d known people were going to show up in street clothes, I never would’ve worn my ghastly ape suit.

  Which, after only two minutes at the party, was beginning to get awfully warm.

  And I couldn’t help noticing that as I made my way through the crowd, people were giving me a wide berth.

  “P.U.!” I heard Kevin say as I walked by, wrinkling her nose. “Something smells like mothballs.”

  Why did I get the feeling I wasn’t about to be the life of the party?

  Lance had Peter cornered over by the fireplace, and as I approached, I could hear him yakking about Thomas Mann and Marcel Proust as if he’d actually read a syllable more than their reviews on Amazon.