Witch at Heart: A Jinx Hamilton Witch Mystery Book 1 (The Jinx Hamilton Mysteries)

by Juliette Harper

  She gazed adoringly into Zeke’s eyes and I felt my throat constrict. I couldn’t even imagine how alone this poor child had been for the last thirty years.

  Grace saw me looking at her and misinterpreted my expression. “I won’t bother anything,” she said earnestly, “I promise.”

  “I’m not worried about that, honey,” I said gently. I really wanted to go over to the couch and give her a hug, but I think giving her four cats to pet probably meant more to her right at that moment. “Make yourself at home,” I said. “We’ll be back as soon as we can.”

  13

  Tori and I drove to the Sheriff’s Department even though we could have walked since it was just on the other side of the courthouse square. I wanted to make sure we had our own transportation. After a little initial confusion, the elderly dispatcher agreed to call the deputy, who was playing in a local softball league game.

  He showed up in uniform, but not the right one. No small town sheriff’s department is broke enough to have a Curly’s Crispy Chicken sponsorship logo on the back of their shirts. The deputy listened as we related our story again, and then disappeared into the back of the office to change his clothes.

  When he re-emerged, now in the correct uniform, he explained he was going to get the Sheriff, who was attending a family reunion.

  “Oh,” I said, “I’m so sorry to pull him away from that.”

  “Don’t be,” the deputy said. “It’s his wife’s people. He’ll be tickled pink.”

  We were given instructions to “get on back up to the trail” and to wait in the car until the local authorities arrived. “Now don’t you all be going back up there to look at those bones again,” he admonished us through the open window of his cruiser.

  “Don’t you be worried about that,” I assured him, and I meant it.

  Tori and I had been in the lot for about 15 minutes when the Sheriff’s car pulled up beside us. The deputy made perfunctory introductions, which the Sheriff cut off with a crisp, “Okay. Show us.”

  We did as we were told and dutifully led the way up the trail. No one said anything until we reached the clearing and started down toward the creek. The Sheriff stopped and stared pointedly at the “Stay On The Path” sign.

  “I’m assuming you ladies can read?” he said gravely.

  “That’s my fault, sir,” Tori said quickly. “I really wanted to win that photo contest I was telling you about.”

  “Uh-huh,” the Sheriff grunted noncommittally. “All right. Go on.”

  With me in the lead, our little group retraced our earlier path to the decaying hickory. When we drew to a stop, I pointed to the tree and said, “The skeleton is in there.”

  Unclipping a MagLite from his belt, the Sheriff circled the tree, then leaned down and shined the light inside. He stayed in that position for a minute or two before straightening up and pushing his hat back on his head. “Okay. You want to take me through exactly how you managed to spot that skull back in there?”

  Tori’s demonstration was an an Oscar-worthy performance. She produced her first “mushroom” photograph, all the while boring the socks off both men as she rattled on about how and when to use a fill flash. She even pulled up the current spate of “Signs of Decay” entries on her phone and showed the contest site first to the Sheriff and then to the deputy. By the time she was done, they were both more than ready to believe our story just to get her to shut up.

  From there, the legal process pretty much took over. The Sheriff called the State Police for backup, and told us to go back to the clearing and wait to give our statements. A quartet of burly State Troopers arrived in less than 30 minutes. They separated us to take our statements, and then told us we were free to go.

  As we were starting to walk away, I called out to the Sheriff. He excused himself and left the troopers talking to a newly arrived team of crime scene techs.

  “What can I do for you, Miss Hamilton?” the Sheriff asked.

  “I was just wondering if you could let us know what you find out about those bones,” I said. “I mean, if that’s not against procedure or something.”

  The Sheriff was a big man and vaguely stereotypical in that famous Southern sheriff kind of way. He seemed to have made up his mind that Tori and I weren’t some sort of criminals because his earlier official brusqueness had now been replaced with genial good humor.

  In response to my question, the Sheriff rolled his omnipresent toothpick over to the other side of his mouth and said, “Miss Hamilton, in a town like Briar Hollow, there’s no keeping anything secret. I knew you moved into Fiona’s shop with four tomcats before you even got their litter boxes filled. I was real sorry about her passing on so sudden like.”

  Okay, that was a good sign. He’d known my aunt and apparently liked her.

  “Thank you,” I said. “And my name is Jinx. I guess you do have a point about small town . . . information sharing.”

  “The word you’re looking for is gossip,” he grinned.

  “How did you know my aunt?” I asked.

  “Well, pretty much everyone knows everyone else in Briar Hollow,” he said, “but I played dominoes with Fiona at the VFW Hall on Friday nights. My name is John, by the way,” he finished, offering me his hand.

  John Johnson? Seriously?

  “I know,” he said, reading my reaction to his name on my face as we shook hands. “My folks didn’t have much imagination in the naming department.”

  I glanced left and right and then said in a stage whisper, “Don’t tell anyone, but my real name is Norma Jean.”

  Sheriff John let out a big belly laugh. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Your secret is safe with me. I’ll come by the shop and let you know if we find out anything.”

  I thanked him and then said, “Uh, John, isn’t this the place where the local Jane Doe was found in 1995?”

  The Sheriff looked at me appraisingly. “How do you know about her?” he asked.

  “I found a whole file of clippings about the case in my aunt’s shop,” I answered truthfully. “It looked like Aunt Fiona had an interest in the case.”

  John pushed his hat back again and let out a little puff of air. “That she did,” he said. “Fiona always blamed herself for not getting that little gal’s name when she was in her shop the week before she was found dead up here.”

  Tori cleared her throat and the Sheriff looked at her questioningly.

  “Isn’t it kind of . . . well . . . more than a coincidence that there’s another body pretty much in the same spot that other girl was found?” Tori asked.

  The Sheriff looked at her. “Who are you again?” he asked.

  “Tori Lewis,” she said. “I’m Jinx’s best friend. I’ve been helping her get settled in at the shop this weekend.”

  “You like to watch a lot of those CSI-like crime shows and such?” the Sheriff asked.

  I knew for a fact that Tori hated those shows, but she had sense enough to play dumb and to play along. “Yes, sir,” she said feigning sheepish embarrassment. “I do.”

  “Well, don’t get it in your head this is anything like one of those programs,” he said firmly. “That skeleton probably just belongs to some drifter who climbed in there to get warm and died.”

  Uh-huh. That was small-town-sheriff speak for, “I think we’ve got a serial killer on our hands, but I’m not about to say so.” We pretended to buy his explanation and left.

  On the drive back to town, Tori was strangely quiet.

  “Okay,” I said. “What’s going on in that head of yours?”

  Out of nowhere, she said, “I think I need to ask Tom for some time off.”

  “To do what?”

  “Help you get really settled at the store and solve these murders.”

  Somehow I think she reversed the order of importance there, but I let it slide.

  “You can’t ask Tom for more time off right after I up and quit on him. He’ll flip out.”

  Tori stared out the window for a minute and then sa
id, “Maybe I wouldn’t mind if he did flip out.”

  I recognized her tone of voice. It was the same one she used with sentences that began, “Hey, Jinksy, I’ve been thinking,” and ended up with me jumping out of an airplane or something equally insane because “it will be fun.”

  “Are you trying to get yourself fired?” I asked. But I already had a pretty good idea where this was going.

  She turned to look at me. “You need help,” she said again.

  “Those girls aren’t going to get any deader in the next week,” I said. “Come back next weekend.”

  Tori sighed. “Okay. I guess I’m going to have to walk you through this step by step. You need to hire me to work in the store with you, and since I’m going to be living in a room out back, you don’t have to pay me very much.”

  “There’s no room out back of the store,” I said, frowning.

  Did I mention I can be ridiculously literal at times?

  With infinite patience, Tori said, “There will be a room when we have it built, which I will help pay for. There’s plenty of space between the back door and the alley.”

  Now, before you start thinking Tori is the pushiest woman on the planet, we’ve been talking about running some kind of business together since were were six years old and opened up our first lemonade stand. The plan has changed a lot over the years. We’ve envisioned ourselves as everything from bookstore owners to furniture refinishers. (The last idea went by the wayside when we realized how hard that is on your nails.)

  In that weird, Vulcan-BFF-mind-meld thing we do, Tori basically read my mind.

  “The shop is pretty much every idea we’ve ever had under one roof,” she said excitedly. “Myrtle just makes it all a jillion times better than we could have ever imagined. If we start carrying a few books and put in an espresso bar, people will start coming in to hang out. Remember how Chase was talking about all those local musicians? We could have live music nights and . . .”

  While she kept talking, I started thinking. When I first learned Aunt Fiona left me the store, I’d been a little apprehensive about becoming a storekeeper, but I’m a fast study. Then I realized I was theoretically in charge of a store with a mind of its own. So far Myrtle was cheerful and helpful, but what if that changed?

  Then there was this whole witch thing. In the last three days I’d gone from talking to my cats to moving objects with my mind and asking stray ghosts to come home with me. As long as Tori and I kept up our constant running chatter of clever jokes and bright ideas, I was fine.

  I hadn’t bothered to mention waking up three times the night before from heart-pounding nightmares, all with scenarios where my newfound magic went horribly wrong and hurt the people I love. Even though the circumstances had changed considerably, I was still going with my original plan. I was faking confidence on pretty much every front right now.

  Tori had finally noticed that I wasn’t saying anything. There was a worried note of doubt in her voice when she asked the next question. “Don’t you think it’s a good idea?” She faltered, “I mean, I kind of thought you would have come up with it yourself by now.”

  Which I should have. #BestFriendFail

  “Which good idea?” I asked, intentionally flashing her both a big grin and an apology with my eyes. “You’ve spit out about six dozen of them so far. And I’m sorry, Tori. There’s just been too much going on for me to think straight, which is what I have you for.”

  When I saw the incredible relief on her features, I felt even worse for making her think even for an instant that I had given up on our long-held entrepreneurial dreams. “That’s okay, Jinksy. I know you’ve been on overload. So, first, I tell Tom I quit, and then we hire a contractor.”

  I laughed. “Okay. Plan revision time. First off, it is a great idea, but you have to give Tom at least a month’s notice. He hired us right out of high school and he’s been a good boss even if he does holler all the time. We can’t just both up and quit on him.”

  Blowing out a sigh, Tori said, “You’re right. Man, it sucks to be a grown up.”

  “Agreed,” I said. “But seriously, it’ll take at least a month to get that room added on. You have to go back to your place so you can be in at 5:30 a.m. on the dot for the 6 o’clock breakfast run. I can hold down the fort until you get back next weekend. It’s not like we don’t talk, text, email, and Facetime every day. You’re not going to miss anything good, I promise. And besides, you’re going to have to tell your mom about this plan.”

  Tori’s face fell. “I thought maybe you’d tell her.”

  “Oh, hell no,” I said emphatically. “I’m still trying to recover from the fit my mom threw when I told her I was moving to Briar Hollow. You’re on your own with Gemma.”

  “Coward,” she accused.

  “Guilty,” I confessed.

  “But overall we have a plan, right?” Tori asked.

  I took my right hand off the wheel and held out my fist. We did a celebratory bump. It was a plan, one that was forged just as I pulled up in front of the shop and spied Grace through the big display window.

  “Huh,” I said, as I got out of the car, “Grace is downstairs.”

  The instant I unlocked the door, Grace said, all in a guilty rush, “The cats are safe upstairs. I didn’t open any doors or anything.”

  See what I mean? So not a wild child.

  “I wasn’t worried,” I assured her. “Did you just decide to come down and have a look around?”

  “Myrtle asked me if I wanted to come down and talk to her,” Grace said happily. “This place is great!”

  “Oh my God!” Tori gasped. “Myrtle talked to you . . . is talking to you? Have you seen her? What does she look like? Is she a ghost?”

  The shop itself laughed and Grace joined in. “Myrtle says you ask too many questions all at once. She says she’s not a ghost.”

  “Then what is she?” I asked.

  “She’s the store,” Grace said matter-of-factly, and then she immediately shifted into a more complicated gear. “So now that you’ve told the police about my skeleton, can we call my mom? Please?”

  14

  It took us the better part of an hour, but we finally made Grace understand that the police couldn’t ID her from skeletal remains without running a lot of tests and plugging them into the missing person’s database. Then she hit us with a question we couldn’t field. “What if no one reported me missing?”

  “Well,” I said, “that might make it harder, but we’ll still figure out who you are.”

  Yeah, I know. I just walked right out on a limb there, but you try denying a 30-year-old ghost who just wants to talk to her mother.

  By that time Tori had thrown her stuff into her bag and was getting ready to take off. We said our good-byes out front on the sidewalk.

  “You gonna be okay?” she whispered against my ear when we hugged.

  “Yeah,” I said, “but I’m already looking forward to Friday.”

  When I went back inside, Grace was floating around peering into the display cases. “Hey,” I said, “I’m really beat. I’m going to go to bed. Do you . . . uh . . . need anything?”

  “No,” Grace said. “I’m fine. I’ll just stay down here and talk to Myrtle. I don’t want to keep you up.”

  Obedient and considerate. This was my idea of the perfect houseguest.

  I was so worn out from the weekend’s activities; I had no trouble falling asleep. The cats woke me up the next morning at 5 o’clock on the dot. They apparently didn’t intend to change their schedule just to accommodate me.

  While I drank my coffee, I made a list of things I wanted to get done for the day, including going next door to “say hi” to Amity. The real reason was to get a good look at her shop. I didn’t want to start stocking anything that would put me in direct competition with her because, after all, we were neighbors. I thought she mainly had regional pottery and paintings, but I needed to make sure before I started motoring around talking to local craftsmen.
/>
  I also wanted to ask Chase if he could recommend a contractor to discuss the addition to the back of the store. There was a long email from Tori waiting in my InBox describing what she had in mind. The major points were: galley kitchen, Murphy bed, and “awesome” shower. She was already living in less than 400 square feet, so I had no doubt we could make this work for her.

  Grace was standing at the front of the shop looking out the window when I came down. “Good morning,” I said. “How are you?”

  “Good,” she said. “There’s so much more to see here than up in the woods. Can I go upstairs and be with the cats?”

  “Of course you can,” I said. “Would you like me to turn the TV set on for you?”

  “Oh!” she said. “Is All My Children still on?”

  “Sorry, it was cancelled.”

  Grace gasped. “They cancelled Erica? Who was she married to when the story quit?”

  I winced. “I honestly don’t know.”

  “Well, what about One Life to Live?”

  “Also gone,” I said, shaking my head.

  “General Hospital?”

  “That one is still on,” I said, “but not until this afternoon.”

  “Oh, okay,” Grace said. “I forgot about time being important. I’ll just go see the cats now.”

  And like that, she was gone.

  “Myrtle,” I said, “take care of her.”

  The lights dimmed and came back up as if the store had just nodded. Good enough for me. I went out the front door, locking it behind me, and greeted Festus, who was sunning on the bench outside the cobbler’s shop.

  “Good morning, you old con artist,” I said, scratching his ears. “Your dad ratted you out. I know about the zoomies.”

  Festus made a point of ignoring me, choosing instead to fix the courthouse with his thousand-yard stare. For the uninitiated, that’s the feline version of pleading the Fifth.

  Chase was at his workbench behind the counter when I walked in, putting a new pair of heels on a pair of western boots. “Good morning,” I said brightly. “Ready to tackle a new week?”

  “Well, hi!” he greeted me, putting down his tools and wiping his hands as he stood up. “You’re up bright and early.”