by Ani Gonzalez
And what about the local fortune teller? Was it a coincidence that they got hit by the Lucky Ghost scam as soon as she arrived in town? It might be, but he had to make sure, so he'd already asked for more information about the mysterious Luanne LaRue.
She didn't look like a scammer, he had to admit. With wild red hair and gold hoop earrings paired with jeans and a colorful top, she looked like a modern version of the stereotypical fortune-telling gypsy. Her look probably helped her business enormously. Her eyes, however, did not match her careless facade.
Her eyes were wary.
Olivia, the officer on duty at the front desk, looked up from her screen and waved him over. The young African American woman was a Banshee Creek native and she knew the town like the back of her gloriously manicured hand. He walked over, feeling his muscles tighten. The last time a dispatcher had asked him for help...well, he had several nasty scars on his shoulder to remind him of that.
She held her hand over the mouthpiece of her headset. "Our calls blotter went viral," she whispered.
He relaxed. He'd forgotten he wasn't in Manhattan anymore. His Banshee Creek workload didn't involve murders and gang wars. It was all locals calling in spooky noises, tourists with Sasquatch sightings, and the blotter where all those calls were memorialized.
"Email me the websites," he said. "I'll look them over tonight."
She frowned. "You're not going to Zach's? There's free Fettuccine Alfredo with scallops, which sounds delicious. The scallops are supposed to be alien eggs, which, frankly, doesn't make my mouth water, but I think we can all agree to ignore that. I mean, pasta with cheese sauce, who can say no to that?"
He smiled. "I'll think about it."
"You do that," Olivia said. "You work too hard."
It would probably be a good idea to stop by the pizzeria. As the new sheriff, he should try to mingle with the residents. The alien egg pasta didn't sound enticing, but he knew the cheese pizza was good. It was real hand-tossed New York pie, which he hadn't expected to find in Virginia. Maybe he could finish his paperwork early.
He shrugged. "I didn't realize the job came with so much red tape."
That made her laugh. "Promotions always come with red tape."
"You're right about that." He headed for his office.
The station was small and outdated, and his office was no exception. It had red brick walls and gray linoleum flooring. The only wall hangings were a white eraser board with random scribblings, and an "I Want to Believe" poster left by his predecessor as a joke.
He needed to get new decor. X-Files posters were not appropriate station decor, even in Banshee Creek.
He sat behind the desk, turned on his computer, and checked his emails. Olivia had already sent him the link. He clicked it and was sent to a popular news site. He glanced at the comment count. Oh, yes, they'd definitely gone viral.
But that was to be expected when half of your emergency calls dealt with UFO sightings and cryptid encounters. He glanced at the blotter in question. One visit to PRoVE, the local paranormal investigations group, to handle a trespassing complaint. Three devil monkey complaints. Two reports of strange lights in the sky.
All perfectly normal.
He forwarded the email to their beleaguered public relations representative, and scrolled down. Surely there was something a bit more interesting in his inbox.
Bingo.
He still had friends in the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and one of them had come through. Sean now had a surprisingly large file on Luanne LaRue.
He took out his phone and punched in a number. Unlike the Banshee Creek sheriff's office, the U.S. Attorney's office would still be full of people.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Mandell answered on the first ring. "Hey, how's life in the country treating you? You got my email?"
"Yes, I did." Sean leaned back in his chair. "I'll look through it tonight. It's a bigger file than I expected. Can you give me the highlights?"
"Sure. Six months' probation, fulfilled. It was one of those Madoff-type schemes. Not as big, though. The name was Global Trend Investments, and their clients lost about half-a-billion dollars."
Ah, Manhattan. The only place in the world where a five hundred million dollar loss was treated as a pittance. "A Ponzi scheme? And she only got six months?"
You didn't get probation for financial fraud, not in New York. Not even if the scam netted a measly half-a-bil.
"She was just the back office and she cooperated. Her job was to do the technical analysis and put out a buy list of stocks. The head of the firm sent out the list to the investors and told them that's what they were buying. He also sent out false profit and loss statements as if they had bought the stocks."
"What's technical analysis? It sounds like stock picking."
"Technical analysis is to stock picking as astrology is to astronomy. You pick the stocks based on market movements, not financial statements. Most reputable traders think it's a gimmick."
"So her trading strategies didn't work?"
"That's the weird part. They did work. If her boss had actually invested the money the way she told him to, he would have doubled the money in the fund. Her picks were consistently good. The problem was that the fund didn't actually buy her stocks. The guy bought a Greek island instead, and ICE caught him on his way to Europe."
"Was she on her way to Greece too?"
"Nope. Apparently she didn't know about the scam. She put her inheritance in the fund and lost all of it. However, she still got indicted. You know how that goes."
Sean nodded to himself, not surprised. The Southern District didn't mess around. They'd indict a paper bag if they thought it would help their case.
"So, she's in your neck of the woods now?" Eric drawled. "That surprises me. I would have expected her to head to Jersey. What's she doing?"
"Fortune telling."
His friend laughed. "For real? She can't be that good at it. She didn't even know that her money would disappear."
"I guess her crystal ball was blurry."
"Must have been. Well, I gotta go. Take care of yourself, okay?"
"I will. Thanks for the file. I owe you."
"No problem. I may drop by to collect soon. My kids want to visit your town. They love those ghost-hunting shows, so we may take a weekend and head south. Is that okay? Or are you incognito?"
"I'm not in witness protection or anything. Just keeping a low profile."
"You do that. Those guys are bad people."
"I know. Let me know when you plan to come and I'll show you around. If you want ghosts, you'll get them."
Sean hung up and pulled up Luanne LaRue's file. The facts were just as Eric had described, but it was hard to reconcile the blonde girl in plain business clothes sitting for her mugshot with the exotic gypsy he'd just met. Miss LaRue had engineered a dramatic transformation. Had she made over her finances as well? According to this file, she was totally broke.
That fit her behavior in Banshee Creek. Fortune telling at the botánica was steady, but not very lucrative work. As far as he could tell, she lived frugally and spent little money. She'd even rented 17 Foxglove Street, a house that appeared at least once every cycle in his blotter because of neighbor complaints. It held, according to PRoVE, the town record for paranormal manifestations, no small feat in Banshee Creek.
Maybe she didn't make her money in town? He checked her Madame Esmeralda website, which was clean and well-designed with large disclaimers that announced "For Entertainment Purposes Only." She had a funny blog with themed astrological profiles like "The Star Signs Ordering Ice Cream" or "Tipsy Tarot Reading." You could subscribe for free and get a personalized reading for less than ten dollars. A monthly horoscope was ninety-nine cents.
That didn't seem like a lot of money. He checked his free sample star chart. He didn't believe in this claptrap, of course, but he wanted to see what she was doing.
This month Aries would see plenty of challenges. Mercury and V
enus something, something...house of something...blah, blah blah. The star goat's bank account would be diminished, but a new love would appear. This new relationship would cause old wounds to reopen. Secrets would be revealed. Aries would learn something about himself, and that knowledge would change his life.
Well, the money thing was true. His new car payments were really doing a number on his bank balance. The rest of it, though, was pure balderdash. Did people really pay for this?
He checked her site ranking and crunched some numbers. She was making money, barely. Enough to pay rent on a borderline dangerous abode and cover some business expenses, but not much more.
Was she making money somewhere else? Maybe from the Lucky Ghost scam?
"Are you coming?" Olivia stuck her head into his office. "There's a pepperoni calzone calling my name."
He pushed out his chair and got up. LaRue's file had given him a lot to think about, but he could think and eat pizza at the same time.
"Might as well," he said, straightening. "But I'll shower and change and meet you there. Can't be too careful. According to my horoscope, I'm supposed to meet the love of my life this month."
Olivia raised a brow. "Don't look at me, boss. I have standards."
He laughed and turned off the computer. Their equipment wasn't exactly top-of-the-line, so Luanne LaRue's picture stayed on the screen for a minute, then slowly faded from view.
She'd shown up right around the time the Lucky Ghost scam started. It could be a coincidence.
But maybe it wasn't.
CHAPTER THREE
"I'M NOT sure about the scallops," Kat said, pushing the offending shellfish to the side. "The cheese sauce, however, is amazing. If I could marry this sauce, I would."
"It's a winner," Luanne agreed, glancing at her plate, empty except for a pair of scallops in the corner. "They just need a new name and maybe a different type of shellfish, like lobster."
"I think they know that." Kat waved a yellow postcard with the Poltergeist Pizza chainsaw-wielding ghost logo on the back. "They want us to write down possible names."
"How about Fabulous Cheesy Lobster Pasta? That's pretty descriptive."
Kat shook her head. "No. It has to have a horror element to it. That's the restaurant's schtick."
And the pizzeria took it very seriously. The walls were covered with horror movie murals, including the playground scene from Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, Christopher Lee's iconic Dracula, and Janet Leigh's Psycho scene. The dishes all had names like Bela Lugosi Lasagna and Shirley Jackson Spumoni Surprise. The staff all wore t-shirts with different "How to Survive a Horror Movie" tips. Their waiter's shirt, for example, read "Number 7: Yes, the Zombie Bit Her. Shoot Her Now."
The slasher flick theme worked. The restaurant was, as always, full to capacity.
"How about the Horror from the Deep?" Luanne suggested.
Kat grimaced. "That doesn't sound like something I'd want to eat. I like Lovecraft Lobster Linguini."
"Doesn't Lovecraft involve tentacles?" Luanne looked down at her dish and tried to imagine it with some octopus chunks. That would definitely be worse than the scallops. "We probably shouldn't give them ideas."
"They don't need to use real octopus. They could just use those tentacle forks they gave us with the Cthulhu Calamari." Kat wrote her suggestion down. "I think this could work."
Luanne drank her white wine—a local vineyard provided the restaurant with its branded table wine, "Sleepy Hollow Orchards - So Good, It's Spooky"—and looked around. The tables were full, and everyone was busy jotting down names for the dish. A couple of people were taking pictures of their pasta, and she had a feeling that #HorrorMoviePasta would soon start trending on social media.
She made a mental note for future reference. This was really good marketing, and she should find a way to adopt it. She wasn't sure how, though. After all, she couldn't ask people to name a tarot card or an astrological sign. But she had to try. This fortune telling gig was her last chance at supporting herself.
It had to work.
Unfortunately, several things could turn her plans awry, and one of them was entering the pizzeria right now.
Sheriff Stickley had changed into jeans and a plain gray shirt. He greeted Zach Franco, the owner of the pizzeria, with a hearty slap on the back. With short brown hair and a muscled body, Sean Stickley looked exactly like you would expect a plainclothes policeman to look, down to the oh-so-cool leather jacket that, she was sure, covered his sidearm.
Only much more attractive.
She dismissed the thought. She had no business admiring the local heat's good looks. She was smarter than that. Her new business was completely legit and she followed the law to the letter, but the last thing she needed was a cop sniffing around her new enterprise.
She knew how badly that could turn out.
Unfortunately, the all-too-handsome enforcer seemed to be heading straight for their table. Luanne drank down the rest of her wine. Great, just great. The local police was checking her out. She'd known this would happen as soon as she'd realized that the Lucky Ghost scam was a Ponzi scheme, but she'd hoped it would take him a few days to find out about her past.
Sheriff Stickley worked fast.
"Hello, Sheriff," Kat said, smiling. "Are you going to try the special? We're all trying to figure out a good name for it. It has to be spooky."
Sean glanced at the menu and grimaced. "How about Chum Bucket From Hell? That seems accurate." He waved to a waiter wearing a "Tip Number 54: Don't Take the Stake Out" shirt. "Bring me a couple of slices of cheese pizza and a beer. Hold the weird parsley thing you like to put on top. I don't eat vegetables."
"Parsley isn't a vegetable," Luanne said. She instantly regretted the comment. She shouldn't be attracting attention to herself.
The sheriff took her comment as an invitation to join their table. He pulled out a chair and sat down. Their traitorous bus boy quickly added a plate setting, and their waiter brought him a cold beer.
Luanne tried not to sigh. She didn't need her powers to figure out that in a couple of minutes Sean would find a way to convince Kat to leave the table. Sheriff Stickley wanted to have a quiet chat with her.
And she knew exactly what he wanted to discuss.
"I think my idea is better." Kat handed him her card. "I may have a real chance of winning this time."
"What's the prize tonight?" Sean asked, reading the card with a smile. "Your entry is really good."
Kat's eyes sparkled with excitement. "The House Haunters wardrobe mistress is offering a style consultation and a five hundred dollar shopping spree."
Sean and Luanne stared at her.
"What's House Haunters?" Sean asked, taking a sip of his beer.
"It's a reality show about selling haunted houses," Kat explained. "Elizabeth, our local real estate agent, is the host. She's always dressed impeccably, so a personal consultation with her stylist is a very tempting prize."
"Sounds great," Sean drawled. "You should hand in your entry at the bar before it's too late."
Kat grinned. "I should, shouldn't I?" She got up. "I'll bring back a pitcher of sangría. I'm feeling good tonight."
"Good luck." Sean watched Kat hurry toward the bar, hiding a smile behind his beer bottle.
"Thanks," Luanne muttered grimly. "I'll need it."
He laughed. "C'mon. It's not going to be that bad."
"She's not going to win. Holly from the library is going to get the makeover. She's Kat's sister-in-law."
He raised a brow, and she decided not to elaborate on her statement. The less he knew about her powers, the better off she'd be.
In any case, it wasn't her fortune-telling he was interested in.
Might as well get this over with. She straightened and looked him straight in the eye. "I am fully licensed and meet all state and county regulations. The Banshee Creek town code allows divination businesses to operate, as long as they make the proper disclosures." She crossed her arms. "Which I do."
He rolled his eyes. "Our town code positively encourages divination and other paranormal businesses. Your friends at PRoVE made sure of that. And I'm well aware that your Madame Esmeralda business is fully compliant." He leaned forward. "That's not what I'm here to find out."
The waiter interrupted him, placing a plate of salad in front of him. Sean glared at the offensive greens.
"What is this? Do I look like a rabbit?"
"It's our Lon Chaney Caesar Salad and it comes with the pizza." The waiter refilled Luanne's wineglass and left.
"This is a travesty," Sean muttered. "Real New York pizza doesn't come with salad."
In spite of herself, Luanne found herself laughing. "The pizza is really good. I think Zach's family lived in the Bronx for a while."
"Yeah, they got the crust right." He pushed the salad away. "That's why I'm willing to forgive him for this atrocity."
She sipped her wine. "So, you're a New Yorker too. Which borough?"
He nodded. "Brooklyn, the only one that matters."
The waiter returned with the pizza, a steaming platter with a full-sized New York pie. The smell made Luanne's mouth water. Sure, she'd just eaten her own body weight in scallop-laden cheese pasta, but as far as her stomach was concerned, there was always room for a slice of pizza.
Sean reached for the red pepper flakes and applied them liberally.
"You're a long way from home," she said. "What brought you to Banshee Creek?"
He paused for a second, then continued seasoning his pizza without looking up. "I just needed a change."
Right. According to Kat, he'd left a senior position at the N.Y.P.D. and a guaranteed pension to become the sheriff at a podunk Virginia town. No one would do that without good reason. She watched him eat, letting her mind wander. Usually this triggered her gift, causing images from her subject's past, present and future to drift through her mind.
But not today.
This is why her talent never worked with poker players, scammers, or cops. The professionals instinctively knew how to block her. She'd need to do a tarot reading, or, better yet, a full horoscope, to get a good handle on Sheriff Sean Stickley.