Witch Slapped (Witchless In Seattle Mysteries Book 1) (21 page)

Fish-and-chips man.

But Sally hadn’t mentioned he was British… Wouldn’t he stick out like a sore thumb in Ebenezer Falls with an accent like that?

He bent down on his haunches beneath the harsh glow of the glaring light bulb in the ceiling, allowing me my first glimpse at my captor.

I hate to admit it. I should be all kinds of freaked out, but he was, as Sally had described, pretty good-looking. Dark hair, thick and falling to just above his chin, blue-blue eyes the color of Caribbean water, with thick eyelashes that made his eyes look like he’d rimmed them in black liner.

And he did smell good. Really good.

I gulped because he also held the pizza delivery kid’s hat in his hand, which instantly made me worry he’d killed him, too.

Leaning forward, I asked, “Who are you? I mean, not the part about the guy who’s going to kill me. I get that. Your name. What’s your name?”

He lifted his square jaw and gave me the once over. “Why does it matter? You’re going to die tonight. Names aren’t important.”

“Well, gravy’s sake. Why do you
suppose
it matters? If I’m going to die, I’d at least like to know the name of my killer. It’s like a killer courtesy or something.”

He barked a laugh, a laugh that suspiciously sounded like Win’s…

Well, huh.

“It’s Salvatore. Salvatore Finch. Does that ease the stress of dying at the hands of a stranger, Stevie Cartwright?”

A.k.a Sal? The Sal of too much chrome and steel? Naw. How…? Oh boy. It was all coming together for me now.

Win cleared that right up for me. “It’s my cousin
Sal
, Stevie! I can’t believe I’d forgotten how much he loves fish and chips. It never occurred to me he’d come all the way here from Lancashire. I never made the connection. Especially since he had no idea he was named in the will to begin with.”

“Some kind of spy you are,” I muttered to Win.

Sal lifted his chin, his eyes narrowing. “Say again?”

The mention of spies made Sal take notice, and if I hoped to consider getting out of here alive, I decided to at least try to disorient him with some ghost talk.

So I sat up straight and enunciated my words. “I was talking to your cousin. I told him he was a crappy spy. He didn’t properly decipher a clue. A big one.”
A really big one
.

Sal rose in a swift movement, his eyes scanning the entire length of the basement. “He can’t be here. My only cousin is dead, you sod!”

I smiled as though I had a secret I wasn’t willing to share, fighting to keep myself calm. “But he is. In fact, he just told me you come from Lancashire. Is it nice there? I’ve always wanted to go to England, you know. I’m a little put out I’ll miss it because you’re going to kill me. Do you think you can see England from up there?”

Sal’s blue eyes went icy-hot when he raised his hand, fist balled, and clocked me in the eye, knocking me and the chair I sat in backward.

With no way to brace myself, I fell to the concrete floor, cracking my head against the hard surface.

But the good news was, the rope around my feet had loosened. I mean, good in that, maybe I could give him a swift kick in his taters before he annihilated me.

If I was going out, I at least wanted to do it kicking and screaming—literally—so I worked at untangling my feet. My head swam and I think my eyeballs crossed as the sharp sting of my head bouncing off the concrete floor swirled around my skull.

But that didn’t stop Win from chewing my ear off. “Stevie, listen to me!” Win barked his order, as usual.

“Win! Shh!” I said on a wince. “I’m trying to get to know your cousin, is it, Sal? Right, you’re Win’s cousin?”

“Stevie…” he warned.

Sal was suddenly eerily calm. He yanked my chair back up, bringing me with it, driving me back into the hard seat with rough hands without even noticing I’d managed to almost free myself from the rope. “You know what I think the bigger question is here, Stevie? How do you know who I am?”

Rolling my eyes even as my head swam in dizzy circles and my face throbbed, I stated the obvious. “Duh. I just told you—your cousin. Though, one quick question. How did you get past Sally at the B&B with that accent? She never mentioned it.”

Sal’s grin was sly, a total pat on his own back. “Lots and lots of American television as a child. Smart, right?” he asked in what was definitely a very good American accent.

“Was it you I saw going into Madam Z’s store in the Burberry trench coat?”

“Stevie! This isn’t show and tell time,” Win griped, his tone urgent.

Sal grinned, his gorgeous eyes shiny and bright. “You can never go wrong with a Burberry. Was it
you
poking around in her store the other day?”

“Well, seeing as we’re sharing confessions. Yeah. I managed to squeeze out of that tiny window in her bathroom. Imagine that, huh?”

Sal cocked an eyebrow. “Imagine that.”

“You planted Madam Z’s Senior Alert necklace here then tipped the cops off anonymously with that awesomely done American accent, didn’t you?”

“I did indeed.” And then he wiped the smile from his face. “Now, I repeat, how do you know who I am?”

“Because of Win.”

“
Who’s Win?
”

“Oh, wait. Maybe you don’t call him Win? I mean
Crispin
. Your cousin the spy? You know him, right? Evasive, shady, kinda snippy and sometimes even snobby. Golly, him and his food requirements alone qualify him as a snob. Anyway, he’s here right now. He told me all about how he’d left this house and all his money to you. He was very upset by what he thought you’d do to this house, Sal. He wants to restore it, but he said you’d turn it into a monster of steel and chrome.”

“I did say that, didn’t I?” Win chuckled, the deep sound settling in my left ear.

I looked to my left and nodded, fighting another wince of pain. “Yep. You sure did,
Win
. So he had Madam Zoltar change his will. He did it from the afterlife, too. Crazy, right?”

Sal leaned forward, gripping the top of either side of the chair and leering at me. “Are you mad?”

I paused in thought. “Define ‘mad’. Do you mean as in appointments-with-psychiatrists-and-meds mad? Or like angry mad? You British have different meanings for stuff than we do. For instance, we call—”

“
Who
are you talking to? Crispin’s dead!” he screamed at me, the veins in his forehead popping out.

I hitched my jaw at his face, fighting fear with a glib approach. “You have a little something in the corner of your mouth.”

He gave the chair a hard shake to let me know he meant business. Man, he was strong. It was as if I only weighed fifty pounds soaking wet—which is awesome if he’s your boyfriend, because believe me, I weigh at least a hundred pounds more. But not so awesome if he’s your killer.

“How do you know him? I’ve never heard of you before.”

“That’s because I’d never heard of Win before he popped into my life just after you killed Madam Zoltar.”

“Is
Win
his super-secret spy name—a code name for Mr. Bigshot?” Sal sneered, his handsome face twisting into a mask of hatred.

“It’s what he told me to call him—”

“
You lie!
” he bellowed, those thick veins of his popping back out again—all along the column of his neck and his forehead.

Win whistled in my ear. “Stevie! Stop taunting him right now. He’s not right in the head. I’m ordering you to stop this instant! You’re only provoking him.”

But the heck I was going to die before I had some answers. “Swear it on a blueberry Pop-Tart, Sal. Those are my favorite, BTW. I’m a medium. Sort of like Madam Zoltar was. You know, the nice old lady you killed? What I can’t figure out is
why
you killed her. What did she have that you wanted?”

Why wasn’t I able to put this all together? I was struggling to figure out what Madam Z had to do with Sal, and how he’d come to kill a woman he didn’t even know.

Reaching behind him, Sal yanked something from his waistband. Something I knew couldn’t be good. When he held up his hand, I saw the gun, viciously gleaming silver.

Perfect.

Sal waved it at me before jamming it in my face. “Does any of it matter? You’re going to die, Stevie Cartwright. Just like Madam Zoltar.”

“
W
aitwaitwaaait!” I screamed in panic as he took a step backward. “I thought we had a killing-courtesy thing here? All I want to know is why you killed Madam Z! Also, maybe if you told me why you want me dead, I’d rest much more peacefully. So c’mon. It’s like a last-wish thing. Please?
Pretty please
?” I fought the tremble in my voice with every word I spoke.

Sal made a pouty face at me. Now he had a secret and it appeared as though he was rather enjoying this turn of events. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? She did something. Something
very
bad. She changed Crispin’s will and put your name in it.”

Ice coursed through my veins, icy talons of fear. “
How
do you know that?” Both Win and I asked simultaneously.

Sal looked like he’d decided to play my game when he smiled and said, “A woman called me. Quite out of the blue, in fact. According to her, the change had already been made. Imagine my surprise when I realized he’d originally left everything to me, and I had to make it here to quaint little Ebenezer Falls before the will was opened and read if I hoped to change it back. Getting here all the way from across the pond in enough time proved stressful. I was dreadfully late.”

My heart crashed against my ribs hard, but I kept pushing for more answers. “What woman?”

Sal waved the gun in the air in a dismissive gesture. “Bah. I don’t know. She called anonymously. Isn’t that always the way? But she certainly knew a lot about yooou,” he drawled, then threw his dark head back and laughed at himself. “She told me, under Cris’s instruction, this Madam Zoltar had changed the sole beneficiary from my name to yours. I didn’t know anything about his will or a house, but still, I couldn’t figure out why Cris would do such a thing. I was so hurt. Devastated, in fact. Why leave all of his possessions to a complete stranger? We’re family! So who are you to him, Stevie Cartwright?”

I ignored his question and shook my head, tears stinging the corners of my eyes. “But you killed her a day
after
Win’s will was read. Why would you do that when there was nothing you or she could have done to change it anyway?” This was all so senseless. Madam Z never had to die at all.

He used the butt of the gun to scratch his forehead. “Oh, she carried on about that. She told me the will had already been changed and there was nothing I could do. That made me mad.
So mad
. The caller did say someone despicable was going to get their hands on his money if I didn’t change the will back. To think, if my flight hadn’t been delayed, I’d have arrived on time and I could have changed it back and no one would have had to die.”

Who?
Who had called Sal to warn him? Who could have possibly known? Win was already dead by the time he’d asked MZ to change his will. Would one of my coven do something so awful? Had someone else been communicating with the afterlife in my stead?

And then it hit me in a sick wave of understanding, but Sal was still droning on and I had to focus.

“Mr. Bigshot, always wandering around like he was James Bond reincarnated while I worked a menial nine-to-five, slogging back and forth on the tube day in, day out. Everything was some important secret with Cris. My nana used to gush all the time about him to her friends and I was sick of it! Even when we were young blokes, he always thought he was better than all of us—me especially!”

Win sighed in my ear, grating and long. “Still slagging me off even in death. Sal is a jealous Nancy. Always whining about something. Surely you can see why I didn’t want to foist him upon the good people of Ebenezer Falls?”

I shook my head as though it would extract Win. “I still don’t understand why you killed her, Sal? She was a harmless old lady who’d never hurt anyone.” The thought tore at my heart.

Liza’s face flashed in front of my eyes, her sorrow, her raw pain. And that made me angry
. So angry
.

Sal became agitated again. In fact, every time I mentioned him killing Madam Z, he became edgier. Now he paced back and forth in front of me. “Because she wouldn’t tell me whom he’d given all this to! That’s why!” He spread his arms wide to encompass the basement. “
You
got all his money and this shambles of a house and I got nothing! I was going to force her to change the will back until I found out the deed was already done and there was nothing I could do about it. That made me
furious
, Stevie. So furious. If not for you, she’d still be alive. It’s all
your
fault. You have no one to blame but yourself!”

I swallowed hard. “So you made her call the Senior Alert line to keep help from coming and then strangled her to death?”

Sal instantly stopped pacing, his focus solely on me, his blue eyes soft and melty. “I promised not to kill her, you know—if she called off the cops.” He smiled as though the memory were a fond one, making my stomach somersault.

“I’ll kill him,” Win growled, harsh and angry. “
Kill him
.”

But I remained silent, my mouth dry. I wasn’t sure I could keep Sal talking long enough before I vomited at his filthy feet.

“But I gotta give it to the old bird; she wouldn’t tell me whose name was on that will, no matter what I did. Doesn’t matter. I found a copy of it just this afternoon. Took me a couple of days, but it was easy enough once the cops cleared out. Lost a nice pen in the process, too. The pen
Win
had his secretary send me for Christmas one year, the braggart.”

The Montblanc. How could Win not have made the connection?

“Before you go accusing me of not catching that clue, I have no idea what my secretary sends to anyone for Christmas,” Win defended. “And who knew this sod could mimic an American accent?”

Running his hands through his hair, Sal shook his head, as though he regretted killing Madam Z. “I couldn’t let her live, of course. She’d have ratted me out to the authorities. Boy, but she was tough. Held out right until the very end. Right up until the bitter end, in fact. Struggled so hard, she jammed her foot against that pedal she had under the table—blew the socket right out of the wall!”