The Old Witcheroo

by Dakota Cassidy

  “Wouldn’t miss celebrating the life of Sophia for all the pomegranates in Seattle. “Course I’m comin’. Just dump me in that dungeon of a purse of yours when you’re ready.”

  I nodded, stroking his back. “So, Win, have you heard the latest?”

  “You mean about that tosser Arkady?”

  Biting the inside of my cheek, I nodded. “You know?”

  “That one of my longtime nemeses has become your new BFF?”

  I smiled. We were back on track. “He’s not my new BFF. But if it means anything, Adam Westfield was the one who told him to contact me. It’s not really his fault. Not that I’m sticking up for a bad guy who wanted to blow up the world or anything, but you know what I mean. He’s kind of in the middle.”

  “Istanbul. He wanted to blow up Istanbul. And I’m troubled by Westfield sending him to you. I don’t like that he’s so familiar with your life.”

  “You have any thoughts on how to prevent that? It’s not like you have guns for hire in the afterlife.”

  “No. That’s true. But I can keep a closer eye out. Now, about Arkady…”

  I smoothed some lotion over my hands and dabbed a bit of perfume behind my ears. “Are you angry I talked to him?”

  “Don’t be a ninny. I suppose all is forgiven here in the afterlife. We rather had a cat-and-mouse relationship—a friendly rivalry and an admiration for one another’s spy skills, so to speak.”

  “You mean the kind of rivalry where you were friends unless you had the chance to take him out?”

  “That’s a fine way to put it, I suppose.”

  I set the perfume bottle back on the decorative table by the claw-foot tub. “So you don’t hate me for talking to him?”

  “Oooh, not at all, Dove,” Win drawled with his best uppity British accent. “Far be it from me to tell you with whom you can converse.”

  My shoulders slumped. “Are you still grudging?”

  “Maybe just a little. That was petty of me.”

  “I did apologize.”

  “You did. I accept. Let’s move on.” I wasn’t sure that meant he was totally over it, due to how clipped his words were, but Win and I were almost always honest with each other. Maybe he just needed a little more time to get past our tiff.

  “Ahhh. I love when comrades settle disagreements without tear gas and grenades! You are, as you Americans say, cool with one another now?” Arkady chimed in.

  Win spewed a hearty chuckle. “Arkady, my old friend! How are you?”

  “Good-good! So nice to see you here, Zero! A welcome sight, indeed. You look well. Death has been good to you, eh?” Arkady clucked.

  I imagined the two of them shaking hands and slapping each other on the back, which in turn made me smile.

  “It’s just Winterbottom now. Or Win. And I am well, I’m pleased to say. So how did you end up here? Did that old dog Heinz finally get his crafty little German hands on you?”

  “You will not believe when I tell you, old friend!” Arkady answered on a hearty guffaw.

  And so it went, as I gave Whiskey a quick kiss goodbye and gathered a sweater and headed out to the rental car. The two of them chatted and ribbed one another as if they’d been separated by years since high school graduation, not terrorists and water torture.

  They were still yucking it up when I pulled up to the library and looked for a place to park. I wanted to check the caches on the computers inside before it closed for the memorial.

  The parking lot was already filling with cars—so much so, some had to park down by the beach to the left of the library, where a long dock took you out over the water. The dark water was calm tonight, almost as if it knew Sophia deserved a peaceful place to celebrate her life.

  Sighing, I turned the ignition off and clapped my hands. “Boys? I have to go do some snooping. Could you two take this elsewhere for the time being? I don’t think I can concentrate while you’re both clapping each other on the back over old times.”

  “You mean like a couple of sac scratchers?” Win asked, playful sarcasm dripping from his tone.

  I looked in the rearview mirror as though they sat with me in my rental car. “Is this going to be a running gag between us?”

  “Maybe.”

  “For how long?”

  “My time knows no bounds, Dove.”

  I sighed, rubbing my temples. “I thought you said you forgave me?”

  “You did!” Arkady declared in his chummy tone. “I hear you say this to my little tulip. You cannot deny it.”

  “Fine then. Now where are we in this, Dove? I think Belfry updated me to the point of the picture you found. We’re going into the library to do what?”

  “Check the caches on the computers. You heard what Chester said, right? Sophia was looking something up and misty-eyed about whatever she’d found. I’m hoping no one cleared the history on the computers and we can see what she was surfing. It wasn’t that long ago.”

  “Seems like a long shot, Stevie,” Win commented.

  Grabbing my purse, I peeked in on Bel, who was, as usual, burrowed into a napkin fast asleep. “I know, but I have to at least try, Win. You never know. I could get lucky. I mean, it’s a library. Maybe they’re not as diligent about clearing their caches. It’s not like you can look up porn on them. They have safety measures installed to keep things on the up and up for the children and such.”

  “You know this how?” Win asked.

  I sniffed then regretted it, because it stung my aching nose. “Chester told me he caught Mendall Latimer trying to look up Cougars Abroad or some such website, because Tessie, his wife, caught him doing it at home and took his laptop privileges away.”

  “Hah! Poor Mendall.” Win cackled then asked, “Another thought while I have you. Have you contacted the police yet about the picture you found in the stuffed bear?”

  “Negative, International Man of Mystery. If they don’t find it today when they do the search, I’ll tell them, but I want to show it to Dana first—see if maybe he’s seen it before and can tell me anything about it.”

  “Good enough. Onward ho then, Mini-Spy.”

  I popped the car door open to the rush of muggy air and pushed my way out. “Are you two going to stay here and reminisce about carrying a stealth missile on your backs uphill both ways barefoot in the snow to spy camp while I take a solo flight—or do you want to come with?”

  “I think you’re safe in the library for the moment. If you need me, all you have to do is call my name,” Win said, the warmth in his voice finally returning.

  “Mine as well, my gentle butterfly,” Arkady chimed in. “Now, Winter-Man, about how I died…”

  I think I needed to be more worried about losing my BFF to Arkady than the other way around. I chuckled to myself as I made my way across the parking lot to find Liza, Carlito, Chester and several of the Senior Book Club members setting up flowers on the wide steps leading to the front door.

  Globe candleholders sat beside each bouquet, and we’d all set carnations free in the Puget as a group later, after the memorial service.

  “Stevie!” Liza waved from the steps, a bouquet of flowers in her hand.

  I loved our little library, with its brick and white siding and arched peacock-blue door. The small steeple on top of it for no reason other than the architect who’d donated the building way back in the sixties thought it represented what a small church in a glen looked like. Which was, according to the story attached to his design, how he felt about going to the library—he said it was just like going to church, and each book should be treated with quiet reverence, no matter the subject.

  The library sign, attached to a white post in the small garden at the bottom of the steps, the words written in calligraphy, swayed with a creak in the warm breeze as the sun began to set. The water lapped at the shoreline, and against the dock you could frequently find Sophia and Officer Nelson sitting on as they had lunch together almost every day since they’d begun dating.

  I waved to Liza, m
aking my way up to the middle of the steps to give her a quick hug. “Thanks for doing this, Liza. I know Sophia would be honored.”

  “Oh my gosh, your nose, Stevie! Chester told me what happened. Are you okay?”

  I often wondered if Liza really believed I could speak to the dead or she just went along with it because I was her employer. But I smiled at her anyway. “I’m fine. Just a little ghostly mishap. Now what can I do to help?”

  “Any luck finding a picture of her?” she asked.

  I put my finger to my lips and winked, looking over my shoulder as a crowd of people began to arrive. “Shhh. I have to keep how I managed to get into her apartment before the police did a secret, and I had to be quick. I only found one picture, and it was of her and Officer Nelson. I wasn’t sure if we should use it…if it would upset him.”

  Liza plucked at an arrangement of beautiful sunflowers, straightening it. “It’s okay. I found a couple of her here at the library, taken when she was heading the Senior Book Club. So we’re good.”

  “Hi, Miss Cartwright!” Carlito waved from the library door.

  “Stevie! It’s Stevie. Quit calling me Miss Cartwright, Whippersnapper. It makes me feel ancient,” I teased, running the rest of the way up the steps to give him a quick hug.

  “Okay then, Stevie. How are you? Chester told us about your nose. Just looking at it even hurts me,” he commented. Carlito was a good guy and he was crazy about Liza. His warm smile, Latin good looks, and lean, well-muscled body made Liza’s attraction to him a no-brainer.

  “I’m fine. Just fine. No big deal. Now, I just have to pop inside for a minute to grab a book and I’ll come help you two. See you guys in a sec.”

  Slipping past him, I patted Chester’s arm as I squeezed into the door, only to find several of the police officers and my favorite pair of detectives milling about.

  Detective Moore tipped his Styrofoam cup at me, his hard glare no different than last night, when he’d stared me down in the interrogation room as though he could extract info just by eyeballing me. “Miss Cartwright.”

  “Sipowicz,” I said, acknowledging him with a brisk nod as I breezed past him, Detective Montgomery, and several of the officers from the force, heading for the first of three computers.

  Pulling out the chair, I grabbed the mouse and went straight for the computer’s history.

  “Snooping, I presume?” Sandwich drawled from behind me.

  I clutched the mouse and shook my head when I turned to look up at him. “Nope. Looking up prices for kale chips in bulk. You know, taste like dirt but oh so good for your cholesterol?”

  His eyes went wide in his red face when he got his first glance of my nose. “Holy frack, Stevie! Now what happened? Did you get into another fight with somebody you think is a suspect? You look like somebody’s punching bag!”

  But I waved him off just the way I had everyone else. “No fights with anyone. I’m fine. Just an accident. No big deal.”

  “That’s what you said the last time you broke your keister,” he said with a wave of his finger and concerned eyes. “You’d better have the doc in town check that.”

  “I’m fine. I can still breathe out of it, it’s not broken. Just ugly. I’m resilient. Just ask the table I ran into.”

  Sandwich dropped into a chair beside me, setting a strawberry-frosted donut and some coffee in front of him, and peered at me intently. “Funny as always. So, heard from Dana?”

  I stopped skimming the browser history and turned to look at Sandwich to test his body language to see if he was perhaps fishing. “Why?”

  He shrugged and almost had me believing he was disinterested in his colleague’s well-being. Almost. “Just checking on him is all. I haven’t seen him at all since last night. Did a couple of drive-bys at his house last night and today, and he never came home. Leastways not while I was on duty. Just thought you might have heard from him. I’m worried.”

  I avoided the question entirely and instead turned the tables. “Any more news from the coroner? Or at least something new happening?”

  Now he avoided looking into my eyes entirely. “Nothing new so far.”

  Or maybe they were waiting on some news and it had Sandwich on pins and needles? “I overheard those two new officers last night as I was leaving the station, talking about a gun they found at Dana’s. You guys don’t think—”

  He threw one of his broad hands up in my face. “Don’t even. I’m not getting caught up in your web tonight, Black Widow. I don’t know anything more on the investigation at this point, and that’s that.”

  I set my chin in my hand and looked at him over my engorged nose. “You do too. You just don’t want to tell me. That’s fine. I get it. The law’s the law. But I’d bet my Kenneth Cole knockoffs the report on the gun isn’t back from forensics yet.”

  Sandwich fought a grin, but I saw it was a struggle. “You can bet whatever guy you want. My lips are sealed.”

  Laughing, I kept browsing, but asked, “Are you guys here to scope the place out—see if anyone suspicious shows up?”

  “We’re here to keep a lookout, yep. All very standard.” He took a big bite of his donut and munched while I skimmed until I hit on a site for a funeral home in Chicago called Sabatini and Sons.

  Why would someone perfectly healthy like Sophia look up funeral home sites online? And why was it in Chicago? Had she had a foster home there at one point? Did she have a friend or someone who’d moved there?

  I leaned into my arm, resting my head in the crook of it in the hopes Sandwich would get the idea I wanted to be alone. But he continued to sit next to me, thumbing through a car magazine and sipping at his coffee.

  Maybe it wasn’t a big deal if Sandwich saw me looking at the browsing history of the library’s computer, but maybe it was, and if he caught me, he’d have me back in trouble with Simone and Sipowicz for impeding a murder investigation or something.

  So I did something shady. I stretched and yawned, sticking my arms straight out until my fingertips just reached his cup of coffee. Then I wiggled them, successfully tipping the cup over and onto his lap.

  “Stevie!” he yelped, hopping up and away from the hot liquid’s splash. “Jeez o’ Pete! Watch what you’re doin’!

  I jumped up with him, an apologetic look on my face—or as best I could muster with my nose in the way of every facial expression I made. “OMG, Sandwich! I’m sorry! I was just stretching and—oops! Here,” I reached for my purse and began to dig to look for napkins, “let me clean you up.”

  But he backed up as the coffee dribbled onto the floor. “Uh, no. Just back away,” he warned, his cheeks red.

  I pulled out some napkins and began mopping the mess. “You go get cleaned up and I’ll take care of this.”

  He stalked off, pushing his way past a book cart and heading toward the bathrooms at the back of the library, and I mopped the mess as quickly as I could before settling back in to investigate that link. Dumping the whole mess in the trash, I tucked my purse on my lap and scrolled back to the computer’s history.

  Clicking on the cached link, I fully expected it to take me to the Sabatini and Sons home page, but it didn’t.

  Instead, I was routed to a page dedicated solely to condolences for one Gino Fratiani.

  As in Gino Fratiani, son of the Fratiani mob boss, Loosey Luciano?

  Chapter 11

  I still hadn’t quite figured out why Sophia would have looked at a page dedicated to Gino Fratiani, but I didn’t have time to investigate any further before Liza came and asked me to help light the candles on the steps leading up to the library door and hand out carnations.

  But it made sense it was a memorial site after hearing Chester say she’d been teary while looking at something about Chicago. How did someone like Sophia know a man like Gino Fratiani? Did she know him at all?

  I was so pleased to see the turnout for Sophia; droves of Eb Fall-ers had turned out as the parking lot filled up. Lots of the children from her reading groups had
come with their parents. They’d made a sign with hand-drawn angels and puffy blue clouds that read, “Miss Sophia—We Love You.”

  “Hey,” a soft, husky voice whispered from behind me in the crowd gathered in the parking lot.

  I turned to find Forrest, dressed in a pair of black trousers and a black shirt, looking as handsome as always. “Hey,” I whispered back as I positioned myself to see Liza take the small podium at the bottom of the steps, where a floral wreath made of hydrangeas and roses hung on a stand with a beautiful picture of Sophia in the middle. She was animated about something, her expression full of life, her eyes alight, her hands fluttering about her face.

  Forrest leaned into me, his lips at my ear. “So, I wanted to apologize for earlier today. It’s not my place to tell you what you can and can’t do. I just worry is all.”

  I was over it for the most part. To show him as much, I reached behind me and grabbed his hand, giving it a squeeze. “It’s okay. Sorry I was so rude to you, but I promise, I’ll be more careful.”

  “Fair enough,” he whispered, just as Chester horned his way in between us and tucked his arm around my waist, giving me a pat.

  “That picture up there,” he said on a sniffle, his tone full of remorse. “She was in the middle of talking about a book club book. Cain’t remember the name of it off the top o’ my head, but she was all excited when we discussed it afterward. She loved to read. Especially espionage and spy novels.”

  Nodding, I fought the lump in my throat. “I heard. Gosh, she was so beautiful, wasn’t she?”

  “Yep. Sure ’nuff,” Chester agreed, wiping his nose with a checkered handkerchief and driving his thumb under his signature suspenders.

  As Liza began to speak, the crowd hushed, settling down to listen to her words and the soft bagpipes Rory McTavish had offered to play in Sophia’s honor.

  While Liza listed Sophia’s many contributions to Eb Falls, the book clubs she’d started for young and old alike, the reading program for the dyslexic elementary school children she’d gotten the senior center involved with, tears streamed down my face.