“Mother, what did I tell you just this morning? You can’t go anywhere with anyone! How can you even consider hunting down a new husband when all the town’s eyes are on you right now? Your husband just died yesterday, for gravy’s sake!”
“I’ll wear my sunglasses. They’ll simply think I’m out with a dear friend who’s come to help me through my grief, Stephania. Now, let me go!” She yanked her arm from my grip and ran to the door, flinging it wide to reveal a very handsome man in a tan suit.
Dark and muscled, lean and sensuous, he lifted Dita’s hand and pressed a light kiss to it. His charisma alone, if bottled and packaged, would make millions.
And my mother giggled like a schoolgirl. “This is my daughter, Stephania,” she said in her dismissive tone.
Raul didn’t even have the time to greet me before she was pulling him out the door and down the steps, the clack of her heels echoing in my ears.
“Murder is wrong, Stevie,” Win singsonged.
The cool breeze blew in the door, ruffling the leaves of the arrangements on the dining room table. Defeated, I went to close it, avoiding looking at the parlor. There was no helping her if she didn’t want the help. If she landed in human jail for her behavior, Baba would come and snatch her up so fast, her head would spin.
And it’d serve her right. I hope if she does end up in the clink, she has to eat creamed corn every single meal of her prison sentence.
Just as I was about to shut the door on any hope my mother would ever behave like an adult, Hardy’s face appeared. “Stevie?”
“Oh, Hardy, I’m sorry. I didn’t see you. What can I do for you?”
He smiled and handed me a package wrapped in brown paper and addressed to me. “Figured I’d drop this on the way home. Missed it when I made my deliveries earlier today. Guess I’m still kinda shook up after yesterday.”
I leaned against the door and smiled tiredly, taking the lightweight package from him. “That was very sweet. Thank you, Hardy. You have a good night, okay?”
He held up a slender finger as I began to close the door. “One more thing. You kept calling that varmint Bart. I thought it was strange, maybe a nickname for him or somethin’, but the papers called him that, too.”
There was that tingle in my spine. I frowned. “We called him Bart because that’s his name, Hardy.”
Hardy’s face went hard with a scowl, the sun shining on it and accentuating his high cheekbones. “Not when I knew him, it wasn’t.”
“What was his name?”
“I’ll never forget it as long as I live. It was Andrew Forbes.”
Chapter 12
After I set the package on the dining room table, I raced to the kitchen to grab my laptop.
“Andrew Forbes, eh?”
“You heard the man, and according to him, he told the police Bart wasn’t Bart but Andrew. Which means, they’ll be looking into it just like we’re going to. It’s just a matter of who finds what first. So, I need to see if I can look up pictures of the Anchor Yacht Club parties. Maybe we can see if he’s mentioned in there.”
“My guess is Bart stole identities. Bad Bart,” Win commented.
I stopped halfway to my laptop and looked at the Bats and Bel, trying so diligently to clean up Dita’s mess. “Guys? Take a break. This wasn’t your mess to clean. I’ll take care of it, but thank you for looking out for me.”
“Wahooo!” Wom screeched, kicking up a cloud of the cleanser as he soared to the ceiling.
But Bat Dad flapped his wings in a curt reprimand. “Wom Bat, you get down here right now, young man! Stevie was kind enough to allow us to stay in her home, the least we can do is help out when she’s in need.”
Wom dropped to the kitchen’s center island like a bomb, dragging his body back to where he’d been scrubbing. “Fine. Let’s go on vacation somewhere else next year, huh? How do you feel about Bali?”
I chuckled, tucking my finger under Bat Dad’s chin. “I appreciate it, Melvin, but you guys go.” I swished my hands at them to shoo them off to better things. “Scoot. You must be due for a nap by now.”
Bel flapped his wings and hovered in front of my face, his eyes searching mine. “Boss? I’m gonna be honest. Your mother sucks dirty toes. She’s horrible, and I can’t stand to watch any more of this kind of behavior from her. Either you handle it, or I will. I don’t care if it’s overstepping my boundaries as your familiar or not. Someone needs to put her in her place. She’s mean to you, and I don’t like it.”
“I know I need to speak to her, Bel—”
“No. You need to set boundaries with her, Stevie. Boundaries. Like the kind that make it perfectly clear you’re not her punching bag or her cash cow. Enough’s enough.”
He was right. Everyone was right. It was just summoning up the courage and making the promise to myself that I’d stick to my guns and no longer allow it.
“You’re right, and I promise when this is over, I’ll talk to her.”
“Fair enough. C’mon, guys. Let’s let Stevie do her thing. Whiskey!” Bel whistled. “C’mon, buddy, let’s play ball!”
As the Bats, Bel, and Whiskey left the room, I sank into one of the kitchen chairs and sighed in relief. The peace settling over the house wasn’t just audible, it was spiritual. I felt my mom’s tense, hyper presence leave my space and took a deep breath.
“It’s been a very long day, yes, Dove?”
I tucked my chin into my hand and kicked off my work boots. “Yes, Spy Guy. Very long.”
“What shall we do about your mother? Bel’s right, Stevie,” Win said, his tone soft. “I don’t know that I had the entire picture, or if I really thought any parent could be as despicable as Dita is. Even after you warned me, described her to me. But I have it now. I, unlike Bel, am not afraid to overstep anything when it comes to her poor treatment of you. She might not be able to hear me, but there are other ways to be heard. This must end.”
Flipping open my laptop, I shrugged my shoulders. “What can I do? It’s clear whatever I say means nothing to her. Which is probably why I avoid confronting her to begin with. It’s a very bad idea for her to be out with Rrraul right now, but you see how well she listens to me. She’s impossible.”
“Was she really always like this?”
As dysfunctional as the day was long. “As far back as I can remember. There were no cookies and milk when I got home from school. Actually, come to think of it, when she was between husbands and low on cash, the house kind of looked like the kitchen does right now.”
“My heart is heavy for you. You were so under-nurtured. I don’t understand how you became so nurturing.”
My cheeks went hot. Must have gotten that from my father’s side of the family. “I wasn’t totally under-nurtured. Dita had witch friends from her coven who dropped by from time to time. I could always call them if I needed anything. Mostly, anyway. She was never one to coddle or dote. Everything is always about Dita. Every once in a while she’d do something nice for me. Buy me a cake at the supermarket for my birthday or whatever. I often wondered why she had me in the first place. It’s obvious I wasn’t planned.”
Win enveloped me in his warmth. “She had you so you could help others like Madam Z and Liza and Carlito, and most especially, me.”
I wondered what it would be like to have a real hug from Win, but I brushed that thought aside as I focused on this new information about Bart or Andrew or whoever.
As I looked at my computer screen, I rolled my eyes. “If you were ever wondering how Dita found so many millionaires, I think this is our answer.” Pointing to the screen, I almost laughed at the site she’d visited.
Millionaires.com: Where money can buy happiness.
“Bloody hell, that woman is relentless,” Win growled.
Rubbing my hands together, I asked, “So where do we go to find out if Bart is stealing identities? How do we find out?”
“Well, as it so happens, I know a person who knows a person. Now, if I can just recall the person who
knows a person, we’ll figure out a way to contact him.”
“Okay, you think about your person, I’ll go to the Anchor Yacht Club’s website and see if we can find any pictures.”
“Then let the games begin,” Win said, but with that hint of glee in his tone, a tone that only poked its head out when we were hot on the trail of solving a mystery.
* * * *
Munching on a leftover platter of chicken shish kebab from the party, I stretched. We’d been at this hunt for other identities for Bart for almost two hours and we’d finally hit the motherlode.
Bart—also known as Andrew Forbes, Baker Thompson, Joel Lamar and who knew who else—had certainly been around and back again.
He’d been scamming women for many, many years, living off their money then leaving them high and dry once he’d filled his pockets. How he’d managed to escape Baba Yaga and the council was a mystery unto itself.
The only trouble with Bart’s scheme was that my mother had been better at the scam than he’d been. He’d likely hooked up with her thinking he could get a little cash out of her to tide him over until he found his next Mommy Got Rocks. Little had he known…
I’d laugh if it all weren’t so horrible and, above all, deceptive and cruel.
Win had remembered his person, who, after I’d called and given him the secret spy password, got me access to a national database where I was able to do some serious tracking with the little information my mother had. I began with the name Bart Hathaway—or Bartholomew Hathaway, as I came to find was his full name—and that led me to hundreds of people around the country with that name.
But this particular Bartholomew Hathaway—my mother’s Bart, with matching social security ID? Well, he’d been dead since the age of ten. That particular lead opened the door to all of the other aliases Bart used. I wasn’t even sure what his real name was. If I were still in touch with my coven members, I’d call in a favor and ask them what his birth name had been.
“There!” Win shouted. “That picture there. Do you see the gentleman with Bart/Andrew/Baker/Joel?”
The pictures from the Anchor Yacht Club had also opened up tons of doors to other pictures of Bart from all over the country, at fancy charity, racing and auction events, to name a few.
“You mean the guy who’s almost a head shorter than Bart? The one with the blond hair?” I looked at the picture again to locate him. “Handsome guy, huh?”
“Yes! He’s been in several pictures with our man Bart. They might attempt to disguise themselves by changing their hair colors and the styles, but there are a million other things about them that are distinguishable. See the way he has his right hand protectively on his tie? He does that often, and in several of the pictures. Possibly the two are cohorts in crime?”
The movie Dirty Rotten Scoundrels came to mind as my eyes zeroed in on the gentleman Win was talking about. One Aiden Gailbraith—that was the name used in the pic at the Anchor Club, anyway. But in the picture at some charity event to save the whales, his name was Ian Solmes.
I gasped. “I think we have a connection!” Sure enough, this man, frequently posing in pictures with Bart, was in a bunch of pictures with—of course—women. Very rich women.
“Isn’t being this rich a small circle? Like, didn’t any of these women ever talk to each other if they frequent the same events? Maybe in the bathroom at some swanky party? You know, ‘hey, I met the hottest guy today, his name is blah, blah, blah. Wanna see a pic?’ If we don’t look out for each other, who else will?”
“Well, as you can see, they took pains to disguise themselves to a degree. Mustaches, facial hair and so on. But even if some of the women knew, you’d be surprised how little the rich wish to share being fooled, Stevie.”
Sighing, my lips thinned. “So much for female solidarity. Jeez.”
“Type this Aiden bloke’s name into the database and see what you can find. Maybe we can locate him,” Win urged.
“But to what end? How’s he going to tell us who killed Bart?”
“Any lead is a lead, Dove. Surely I’ve taught you that by now? Maybe he knows someone who’d want to kill our favorite scam artist? Certainly Bart’s racked up kill points with these debutants? Were I dating him, and he scammed me, I’d want to kill him. Or at the very least maim him for a good long while, wouldn’t you?”
Win was right. Sometimes I didn’t always see the trees for the forest. “Agreed. Though, I can’t say I recall any rich women at the party with torches and grenades,” I joked.
Win chuckled deep in my ear. “Can’t say I recall anything like that either, Dove.”
As I tinkered with the database, I hit the jackpot. “Winner-winner-chicken-dinner!” I hunkered down and looked over the information for Bart’s friend and his aliases.
“Aiden Gailbraith, also known as Ian Solmes and Hart Lincoln, is now serving time where, Dove?” Win asked, his tone giddy with mischief.
My mouth opened and my jaw unhinged. It did that a lot lately. “Washington State Penitentiary, for fraud and tax evasion.”
“Bloody well done!”
“Okay, so now what? It’s not like we can get in to visit him and ask questions, right?”
“Stevie.” Win’s warning tone sounded in my ear. “No. You cannot just drop in and pay him a visit with a casserole.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I can’t cook. Why would I bring him a casserole?”
“Don’t get cheeky with me, Mini-Spy. When one is in prison, one does not receive unannounced visitors.”
“But that’s in places like Alcatraz, right? He’s in minimum security holding, for goddess sake.”
“Prison is a form of punishment, Stevie. They don’t just let anyone in there or it wouldn’t be prison. While he’s in minimum security, you still have to be approved to visit an inmate. Approval takes all manner of paperwork.”
“So what kind of paperwork do we have to do to get approved? Maybe I should join one of those inmates-for-lovers sites or something?”
“The what?”
“Yeah, you know, women who marry guys they’ve been pen pals with. Happens all the time. Don’t they have a group for that?”
“Stephania Cartwright,” Win chastised. “You are absolutely not going to join a group like that! I for—”
He’d stopped speaking for a reason, and if I could see his face, it would be sheepish. We’d already been down the road of forbidding me to do anything.
Okay, so he’d been right the last time he’d told me not to do something, but that was then and this was now.
Narrowing my eyes, I shook my finger in the air. “Do not use the word ‘forbid’ with me, International Man of Intrigue. No one forbids me to do anything.”
“Well, someone should take you to have your noodle examined, at the very least. That’s an absurd notion. To attempt to visit a prisoner by pretending you want to be his pen pal is, as you say, bananapants. It will never work.”
Looking at the time on my laptop, I wrinkled my nose. “Fine. But I’m not giving up the idea totally. I think I could pull it off. But for now, I have to meet Petula at her store. We need a list of the people she hired for the housewarming. You coming?”
“As if I’d miss it?”
I pushed the chair back and called out, “Bel! Whiskey! Going for a ride. You guys wanna come?”
Whiskey trotted down the stairs, his gait slower than normal. When he appeared, Bel was on his back, tucked against his ear. “Dude and I are tuckered from playing ball, Boss. You need us?”
I smiled. The two had really bonded. I loved that. Running my hand over Whiskey’s spine, I shook my head. “Nah. We’re good, buddy. I’m taking Win. You rest up, and forget about this mess, okay? Leave it for me and I’ll get it in the morning.”
“And if Momster comes home? Want me to leave her a message?”
Tucking my purse under my arm and slipping back into my work boots, I thought about that for a minute. “Yeah. Tell her we found a rap sheet for Bart as long as
the state of Texas, and if she doesn’t want one, too, she should quit pretending to be something she’s not.”
“Um, no,” Bel said on a chuckle. “I’ll just tell her you said to sleep tight.”
Laughing, I stroked his head before I was heading out the front door once more, ignoring the wreck of the parlor and the ugly image stuck in my mind. But the package Hardy had delivered did catch my eye. Though it would have to wait for now.
The ride to Petula’s gave me time to think about what to do with my mother. I could be spiteful and report her to Baba. That would, at the very least, thwart further machinations and scamming. But then she’d only hate me more than she already did for giving a voice to the conscience she lacked.
All the talking, all the reprimands and chastising in the world were never going to stop her from doing what she did, because they hadn’t so far.
Even if she hadn’t nurtured me, even if her treatment of me could be callous and dismissive at times, she was still my mother. We’d had some good times, they weren’t all bad, and I felt a crazy need to protect her—to protect our lives together. Whether she deserved it or not.
Just as we were about to pass The Sunshine Inn, I noted police cars and a crowd had gathered outside the charming inn’s front.
Instantly I thought of my father, and my stomach sank right to the brakes I slammed on to stop and find out what was happening.
My heart chugged in a staccato beat of fear as I looked for Hugh. I saw Officer Nelson first, and pushed my way through the crowd of acrobats and onlookers to catch his gaze.
“What’s happening?”
He didn’t even give me that look I’d become so accustomed to. The one that said, “Will she never go away?” He simply directed his gaze to CC, who was handcuffed and being stuffed into one of the patrol cars. Her long legs, still in her workout clothes, dragged unwillingly.
“I am innocent!” she sobbed, tears falling down her face, her once-neat bun at the back of her head now scruffy and tangled.
“Wait!” I cried, scanning the police and civilians until I found the familiar face of Sandwich, who was holding the crowd of angry acrobats at bay.
Dewitched (Witchless In Seattle Mysteries Book 3) Page 14