Witches and Ghosts Supernatural Mysteries

by Angela Pepper

  When the Copeland Police Department received the tip, they wasted little time in getting a car over to the home of Piper Chen, one of a handful of Asian-Americans living in the town. It was Winnie who'd answered the door, expecting to see Piper with lunch. One misunderstanding led to another, and soon the two officers were searching the home. They didn't even have a warrant, but Winnie gave them verbal permission, or so they claimed.

  They hit the jackpot once they reached the pool house. Officer Jerkface was the one who looked inside the TV cabinet and discovered a candlestick holder suspiciously bundled inside three layers of plastic bags. He recognized it as the missing twin of the one at the Morrison residence. He quickly transferred it into an evidence bag and questioned Winnie. She claimed to have never seen the candlestick holder before—which wasn't entirely true—and things got a little feisty. Winnie pushed back when Officer Jerkface encroached on her personal space, and that was when the proverbial dog doo hit the fan.

  The only charges issued so far against Winnie were related to her scuffle with Officer Jerkface. The lawyer assured Piper over the phone that there was nothing to worry about, but Nancy Dowd wasn't so calm. In her career, she'd seen innocent people get blamed for crimes and even go down for them. It was the reason she kept doing her job, despite having more than enough money to retire. She used the cash from the high-profile celebrity cases to fund pro bono work for desperate people. Winnie was not a celebrity (yet), nor did she qualify as being desperate, since she drove a Lexus, but Nancy Dowd still wanted to help.

  Nancy Dowd wanted the inside scoop on the celebrity murder scandal of the decade.

  But at least she was there, and she was helping.

  “We can solve this,” Nancy Dowd said as she closed the doors of the now-empty TV cabinet with a solid, sure-sounding thud. The police had taken the candlestick holder along with everything else in the cabinet, from old movie DVDs to jigsaw puzzles. The Chen family's entire collection of wholesome entertainment was now evidence in a murder investigation.

  “Hmm,” Piper said, which was all the enthusiasm she could muster.

  “My research assistant is currently digging up information about Pandora Lee and her precocious daughter, Coco.”

  Piper's body had been limp from a distinct lack of go-go juice, but the idea of Coco, a teenaged girl, visiting George's house made Piper shudder. Coco was only fifteen. Winnie had called George a pervert. What if she was right? What if he'd done something awful to young Coco, and Coco had acted in self-defense, pushing him down the stairs, killing him by accident? Or what if she'd called in her mother, and Pandora had gone all Tiger Mom and struck the killing blow? Now Pandora was dating Officer Jerkface. But why? He didn't have much going for him, other than being an inside source on the investigation.

  Nancy and Piper had already grimly discussed all of these possible scenarios. The man of the hour, the murdered author, had not appeared at sunset or since. But even if George had joined them in the pool house, would he admit to taking advantage of an underage girl? Some men had a way of unabashedly denying the truth, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. Especially in front of a panel of their peers. When faced with the possibility of, say, losing tenure, some men would gleefully throw a young student under the bus, painting her as a liar, a crazy girl with Histrionic Personality Disorder.

  Piper shuddered again. She didn't want to think about her old nemesis, Professor Koch, but the roof always leaks on a rainy day.

  She had been taken advantage of, and her attempt at justice had resulted in a nervous breakdown (hers), and a not-so-dignified exit from an Ivy League school. Piper's parents had tried to be supportive. It was time for a lifestyle change, they claimed. Dad had been working too hard for years, and it was time to slow down and savor life. They pulled up roots and moved to a small town in Arizona. They would all try harder to live the middle way, to not pressure Piper to be the top of her class, or even to complete her engineering degree.

  But early retirement hadn't agreed with the elder Chens. There was only so much golf and gardening they could enjoy. Copeland was small. The house they'd bought wasn't quite right. Plans were drawn up for a renovation, plus an addition, and the project commenced. But then the scope grew and grew in scale. The lot next door came up for sale, and new plans were drawn, including the pool and pool house. When the last of the landscaping trucks pulled away, all that remained of the original home was a mailbox, and even that had been professionally sandblasted and repainted. They “relaxed” by the pool for all of three months before Mr. and Mrs. Chen left for a short vacation in Taiwan. Two weeks into the trip, they extended their stay to look into some business ventures with old friends. That had been three months ago, and no return flights were booked yet. Piper had been left on her own, alone in the huge house, alone to figure out what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. She wondered if this had been her parents' plan from the start.

  They'd be horrified if they knew what was happening now. It would only take one phone call, and they'd be back on the next flight, the pair of them taking control of the situation as a team. The immature part of Piper desperately wanted them to come home, to solve her problems or let her run away again. That part of her kept directing her eyes over to the telephone on the credenza.

  The telephone.

  She looked at the ceiling, the floor, then back at the telephone. Her head buzzed.

  What was she forgetting? She could… make one last call. Something awoke in her mind.

  Her hypnosis session had made her remember, but then the shock of seeing Winnie get arrested had made her lose track of the memory temporarily. It all came flooding back. The basement. The angry female ghost. The important message she needed Piper to see, the message her dear son had left as a clue.

  “The phone,” Piper said. Her mouth was gummy and her voice came out cracked.

  Nancy Dowd looked up from her work. She'd been typing on her laptop in between scribbling diagrams and timelines on loose sheets of paper spread out across a table. “What? Did you say something?”

  “The phone,” Piper repeated.

  Nancy turned toward the phone on the credenza. “Want me to hand it to you?”

  “Not mine. The one from George's mom's house. We need to get it back!”

  Nancy frowned at her notes. This was the first thing she'd heard about a phone, and she was confused.

  Piper groaned as she got to her feet, her knees weak and trembling from the stress of the day.

  “Long story,” Piper said. “But I threw an old phone into some bushes near the Morrison house. We need to get that phone back. I think it's evidence.”

  Nancy couldn't have known what Piper was talking about, but it was enough of an explanation for her. She stood up and headed to the door, keys in hand.

  * * *

  The November sun had set hours earlier, and the shrubs near the Morrison residence were dense enough to block the streetlights from their underbrush.

  “What we need is a flashlight,” Piper said. She pulled out her phone and pressed the command that would use her photo flash as a light source for a few minutes before depleting the battery.

  “Like this?” Nancy flicked on an honest-to-goodness flashlight. She wrinkled her elfin nose. “I wouldn't be deserving of the name Nancy D. if I didn't have a respectable flashlight.”

  Piper laughed. The journalist was referring to famous girl sleuth Nancy Drew, whose name was similar to her own, just a few letters off. Piper wondered how many Nancy Drews existed in the world, and how they felt about their famous namesake. As her mind wandered, she felt herself detaching from the strange scene, as though part of her was floating above the pair of them searching the bushes. Was this really happening? Her hands kept moving, aiming the dying light from her phone, but the hands seemed to belong to someone else. A lizard skittered out of the bush, giving her an irritated look about being disturbed, but she didn't even flinch at the sudden movement. All was calm. If she wanted to, she co
uld probably keep floating up and disappear, leaving this whole mess behind for other people to deal with. Was this how George felt? And where was he?

  A hand on her shoulder brought Piper lurching back to earth. She sucked in a deep gasping breath.

  “It's just me,” Nancy Dowd said soothingly. “I found the phone, or at least I found a phone. I don't know if it's the one, but what are the odds?” She directed Piper to a plastic object a few feet away.

  “That's it,” Piper said. This was the phone she'd grabbed from the Morrison house and clutched until Winnie made her drop it on their way home. She got out a fresh plastic bag and delicately extricated the phone from the bushes. She held it for a moment silently, waiting to feel something. She expected it to suddenly ring, or glow, or burst into flames. Nothing like that happened.

  Nancy Dowd broke her professional demeanor with a girlish squeal. She pointed at the old-fashioned number buttons. “Is that what I think it is?”

  Piper quipped back, “Do I look like a crime scene investigator?”

  “That's got to be blood,” Nancy said. “Careful. Don't disturb the fingerprints.” Her hands fluttered nervously. “Are those fingerprints?”

  Piper took a closer look through the clear bag. “If these aren't bloody fingerprints, I don't know what they are.”

  Nancy tilted her head to the side. “Whoever dialed that phone wasn't using it to call 9-1-1. The 9 and the 1 button are clean.”

  They stared at the phone in the yellow glow of the streetlamp for several minutes. Off in the distance, a coyote sounded his yip-yip cry and another answered.

  Piper gasped and broke the silence. “George left us a clue. These have to be his fingerprints. Right before he died, he used the keypad to spell out the name of the killer.”

  “I don't have my reading glasses with me,” Nancy said, patting her pockets. “I can't read the tiny letters underneath the numbers.”

  “I can,” Piper said.

  “Well? Don't keep me in suspense! What does 2-6-7 spell?”

  “C-O-P,” Piper said, gasping. “Cop. It was a cop who killed George.”

  “A police conspiracy,” Nancy said excitedly.

  “Not so fast. Three numbers with three letters under each number. That makes twenty-seven possible combinations.”

  “But you must have picked COP for a reason. You have a psychic connection with the victim.”

  Piper looked up and studied the journalist's face in the yellow glow of the streetlamps. She seemed awfully decisive about the killer being a cop, never mind the other twenty-six possibilities.

  Nancy glanced around the neighborhood furtively. She murmured, “Let's get back to the car. We're probably being watched by that nosy tattletale neighbor. I can practically feel them calling the tip line right now.”

  Piper agreed, and they wasted no time getting back into Nancy's car.

  While they drove, Piper worked out more combinations of letters.

  The secret message spelled out COP, but it also spelled SAM, PAN, and even ROB. That cast suspicion on the Copeland Police Department, George's sister, the president of his fan club, and even his long-time editor.

  Even COP could mean more than just cop. If it were initials, it could stand for Carl Otis Plummer. Rearranged, that would be the Realtor's son, Otis Carl Plummer. Funnily enough, it could even be someone driving in that car with Nancy Dowd. Piper's middle name was Ophelia, making her initials POC.

  Typical George, she thought.

  He did love his complicated mysteries with a multitude of suspects.

  * * *

  Winnie was released by the Copeland Police at midnight, without an apology. The police requested she not leave the state for a little while. Her parents insisted she return to the family home that night, which she did, not even stopping over at Piper's house for her overnight bag. And who could blame her? The police were probably waiting in the bushes, planning their next raid of the Chen residence. Or perhaps they were waiting for the lab results on the bits of dried matter embedded in the cracks of the candle holder, and then they'd pounce.

  Piper knew they would be coming to question her next, and she crossed her fingers that the lawyer had scared them enough about searching without a warrant that they'd hold back long enough for the Big Plan to be enacted.

  She changed the sheets in the pool house and made sure Nancy Dowd would be comfortable there. Nancy had offered to return to her hotel room, or stay there, whichever Piper preferred. It was Teddy who made the decision, stealing Nancy's shoes and hiding them. Piper was horrified at Teddy's thievery, but Nancy Dowd laughed it off and said her assistant would bring over fresh clothes in the morning.

  “Now go to bed,” Nancy said, waving toward the pool house door. “Tomorrow's a big day, and you need your sleep.”

  “About tomorrow,” Piper said slowly. “Maybe I should sit this one out.” The Big Plan could work just as easily with one person.

  Nancy opened her purse, took out a brush, and began brushing her red hair to a silken shine. She looked so casual and relaxed, like she was just a regular girlfriend staying overnight, that she did this sort of thing all the time.

  After sixty hair strokes, Nancy said, “No guts, no glory.”

  “You can have all the glory,” Piper said. “You're the one with the guts. I've got nothing.”

  “Excuse me? You've got nothing?” Nancy kept brushing her shimmering red hair. Her small nose pointed up, giving her an elfin look. “Which one of us discovered two key pieces of evidence? And which one of us infiltrated the Copeland Police Department?”

  “Exactly,” Piper said with a smile. “I'm all tapped out. You've got the next part. You could do it with one hand tied behind your back.” She paused for drama. “You only want me to do the speech because it would make a more interesting story.”

  Nancy's eyes twinkled. “Just come with me, and we'll see how you feel once we get up in the air.”

  “Up in the air?” The ground seemed to fall away underneath Piper's feet. She really needed to eat something.

  Nancy winked. “It's George Freakin' Morrison, honey. The man's larger than life, even in death. He didn't want his ashes sitting around in urns on bookshelves, or getting parceled out and sold by the gram as collector's edition ashes on eBay. Tomorrow at noon, we're getting into an airplane with his friends and family, and we're going to scatter his ashes over the Grand Canyon. You have seen the Grand Canyon, haven't you?”

  “Yes, I've seen it.”

  “But not from the air.” Nancy counted her last two brush strokes aloud. “Ninety-nine, one hundred.” She set down the brush. “It's all set up,” she said with finality. “My pilot friend who owes me a favor has come through just in time. The Big Plan is happening mid-air. You can't ask for a more captive audience.”

  “Mid-air?” Her empty stomach did flip-flops.

  “This is your last chance to finally get that interview with Robert Jones,” she said, eyes twinkling.

  “I swear I was going to call around to the local hotels, but I kept getting sidetracked.”

  Nancy's expression softened. “You've done great. Things have worked out different than I expected, but better. Investigations often turn and twist, so it helps to be flexible. And I have total confidence you can pull off pretending to be a crew member on the airplane.”

  “As stewardesses?”

  Nancy snorted with amusement, looking even more elfin and mischievous. “It's not that sort of plane. You'll be in overalls, or maybe a gray flight suit. Not the most fashionable of attire, but one must make sacrifices in the name of justice!” She raised her hand as though toasting with an invisible glass. “For justice.”

  Piper raised one tired arm with great effort. “For justice,” she said grimly.

  Chapter 20

  Day 12

  Tuesday, November 8th, 10:22 a.m.

  The Roadrunner Café

  Piper was exhausted from the previous evening, but her nervousness about seeing Otis again
chased away any lingering yawns. She tied Teddy to the same tree where he'd sat nine days earlier, on her first visit to the Roadrunner Café. After a quick check of her hair and makeup, she entered the restaurant. Obeying the sign at the front, she sat herself at a free table. She crossed her hands on her lap and glanced up at the ceiling. Was Otis up there in the spartan apartment that very minute? Was he looking down at the floor, thinking about her? His mother had promised not to reveal any details from their therapy session, but could she be trusted?

  A waitress came to offer coffee and a menu. Piper accepted both, and asked if Otis was around.

  “He sure is, honey,” the woman said, casting her a matronly look. “You want me to tell him you're here? What's your name?”

  “Piper. No, wait. Tell him it's Coco. I'm not actually Coco, but that's who he knows me as.”

  The woman took it all in without so much as a facial twitch. “All-righty then.” She filled Piper's coffee cup and walked away.

  Piper picked up the laminated menu and blinked repeatedly. Her eyes wouldn't focus. Or they would, but her mind was too nervous to convert the squiggles and dots into words. Why was she bothering with the menu? After yesterday's starvation, she wanted carbohydrates and lots of them. Pancakes. She didn't need a menu, especially not one so blurry and utterly unreadable. She set it down and rubbed her eyes.

  Since the discovery of the phone with the blood-smeared code, she and Nancy Dowd had been very busy.

  Today was their Big Plan, the climactic finale, and there were so many things that could go wrong, so why had Piper come to the Roadrunner?

  Because of Otis.

  Things could get dangerous today. If something was to—heaven forbid—happen to Piper, she didn't want to leave behind unfinished business. Then she'd be forced to continue as a ghost. It would be rather ironic to come back to haunt Otis, but still be unable to talk, to speak a word of English to him.