Witch Slapped (Witchless In Seattle Mysteries Book 1) (6 page)

I stopped walking and scooted into an alleyway so no one would see what looked like me essentially talking to myself. “Listen up, Winterbourne—”

“You’re just being facetious now, Stevie,” he teased. “It’s Winterbottom and you know it. But most everyone calls me Win. That’ll do for now.”

I narrowed my eyes at the empty space in front of me. “Oh, will it? Thanks for giving me permission,
Win
. Which, by the by, is the least of what I want to call you. You knew I was going in there blind. You knew I’m not a witch anymore. That I can’t defend myself the way I used to. Under normal circumstances, I’d have snapped my fingers and we’d have been out of there in a puff of my signature smoke and no one would have ever been the wiser.”

“How was I to know you’d actually show up? I spent a bloody torturous hour trying to get through to Belfry here, and even then he only caught bits and pieces of what I was attempting to communicate. But you did show up, Stevie. That means the experiment worked and we were fated to meet.”

“
The experiment
?”

“A very long, exceptionally harrowing story from my training days I’ll share at a later date. For now, don’t you find it incredible I’m able to communicate with
you
, someone with no powers, from the grave no less? It’s damn well fantastic.”

Yeah, yeah. It was a fantastic way to have the rug yanked out from under me. When I wasn’t under suspicion for Madam Z’s death anymore, I’d investigate further. Until then, no hope-dashing. If nothing else, his back story about an experiment was fascinating and deserved some attention.

“Your training days?” Gah. My endless curiosity always brought trouble.

I imagined Win waving his hands dismissively to pooh-pooh me. “Never mind that now. We have things we must accomplish. The first of which is finding you a place to live.”

Had he been listening in on my conversations? “How do you know I don’t have a place to live?”

“Hah. The afterlife is rich with chatter about you, Stevie. How do you think I found you in the first place? It’s taken me a month to get in touch with you as it is.”

That pang of longing for my old life struck me hard. So hard, I leaned back against the brick wall in the alley.

Clearly it showed.

“Chin up, Stevie. We have no time for self-pity today. We have shelter to find and a murderer to catch.”

“No. I have a long overdue lunch to eat and a motel to get back to.”

“I’ll buy you lunch if you’ll hear me out,” Win tempted with a voice low and deep.

“With what, your ghostly rupees?”

“Fine then. I can’t buy it right this moment, but rest assured, I’ll buy you all the lunch your witchless heart desires if you’ll just hear my story.”

This was crazy. But it wasn’t the craziest thing I’d ever done. It had to be my lower-than-low blood sugar that made me agree. I stood up straight and squared my shoulders. “Okay, tell me your story.”

“Not here.” He sounded offended.

“What’s wrong with here?”

“Simply everything,” he drawled. “Come with me and we’ll get your lunch. You can eat it while we discuss the matter at hand.”

I nodded my head, too hungry to argue, exiting the alleyway and heading toward the taco food truck. My stomach cheered my decision.

I stopped at the corner where Madam Zoltar’s store was located, glad to see the crowd had dispersed. There was official yellow police tape barring the door, and a man dressed in a long tan trench coat—a Burberry, if I was seeing right—and plastic on his shoes, ducked under the tape.

He looked pretty official, leading me to believe maybe they’d brought in some detectives. I wasn’t sure if I felt relieved or sadder than I had been before. I couldn’t stop thinking about Liza and her anguish. I hated that she thought I’d set out to comfort her to cover something as treacherous as murder.

But I forced that from my mind and inhaled a deep, relieved breath. Tacos, here I come.

I began to make a beeline toward the taco truck when my ghost grunted his disapproval. “Ick. Must you?” Winterbottom asked with plain distaste.

“Must I what?”

“Eat tacos?”

“Right?” Belfry chimed in. “I’m always telling her she has the taste buds of a twelve-year-old trucker.”

He made it sound like I was eating toxic waste straight from the hazardous barrel with a spork. “I promise, next lunch I’ll eat at the Dom Pérignon and Caviar Made with the Tears of a Dutch Virgin truck. But for now, tacos are all I can fit into my rapidly dwindling budget. Or didn’t the afterlife gossips tell you that where my savings account once resided now lives an old troll and a tumbleweed?”

“They didn’t. But they did tell me you had an incredibly delightful sense of humor. I’ll definitely give you cheeky.”

“Ooo. Talk dirty to me,” I joked, crossing the street.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Forget it. It’s a crass American joke form an even crasser American ex-witch. Now back off and let me get my tacos made from recycled lettuce and the maw of dandelion.”

“Is this my cue to let you have a moment to yourself?”

My head bounced up and down as I gave my eye of the tiger to the taco truck with its candy-striped awning and fun dancing tacos wearing sombreros hand painted on the side. “It’s your cue to let me wrestle with some mystery meat and extra cheese in peace.”

“Very well. Peace you shall have.”

The cool/warm encompassing me, a strange yet indefinable sensation I’d felt as I talked to Win, evaporated, meaning he’d gone back to the plane he was from to let me think.

Waving to my favorite taco vendor, I skipped to the window of his truck with one thought in mind—eating. I met Tito two days after I’d arrived back in Ebenezer Falls, and we’d been making beautiful music in my mouth together since.

I loved his thick Spanish accent, his adorable attempts at broken English—which he had once confided he practiced often in order to get his permanent visa here in the US—his jovial smile, his generous helpings that kept me full enough to sometimes skip dinner…a blessing on my wallet.

Thankfully, he was sans his usual long line of hungry lunch crowd. Peering up at him, I smiled.

And Tito slammed the window shut in my face with a scowl.

I looked at the hours on his sign and frowned. It was only three and it said he was open until ten. Standing on my tiptoes, I rapped on the window. “Hey, Tito! You’re supposed to be open until ten. I get bankers’ hours, but even bankers don’t call it a day at three.”

Nothing but silence and the sounds of the street greeted my ears.

So I knocked again. “Tito?”

There was a low mumble of something, something I couldn’t distinguish. I leaned in closer, my calf muscles straining, and then I saw the top of Tito’s head, his thick, dark hair just cresting the window before falling away from my limited line of vision.

And now I was getting angry. “Hey! I know you’re in there. I can see you! What’s the world come to if a starving woman can’t get a taco at three in the afternoon when closing time isn’t until ten, Tito?”

And then the vendor appeared at the window, pointing his chubby finger at me in accusation. “We don’ serve murderers!”

No
bueno
.

M
urderer
. I’d been branded a murderer. By a taco vendor, no less. Boy, did that cut deep.

I plucked at my soggy drive-thru burger, dropping an equally soggy French fry into my mouth as Belfry munched on his apple slice in my purse, and Win reassured me one more time he would pay me back for the cab fare to wherever this 711 Samantha Lane was located.

“I promise you,” he said. “You’ll have all the money you need if you’ll just indulge me.”

I’d waved him out of my ear. “Reign in the sunshine. Still a little raw here, Win.”

After that, the ride was mostly silent. Me sitting shiva at my accused murderer pity-party, Win humming some odd tune I didn’t know.

When we pulled up to the address he’d given me, I realized my wallowing had kept me from paying attention to my surroundings. How had we gotten out here to the bluff?

Closing my eyes, I inhaled the scent of the Sound. I loved this place. I loved the stretch of a quarter mile of nothing but trees and the occasional break in them where the mountains peeked through. I’d come here hundreds of times during my childhood, taking the two-mile bike ride from the outskirts of Ebenezer Falls right here to almost the end of our small town.

Everyone always thought it was spooky out here, but I was a witch who talked to the dead. Naturally, not a lot spooked me. I couldn’t remember anyone ever living in the house Win claimed was his, but I did remember it hadn’t looked quite so haunted Victorian as it did today.

As I took in the decaying house at the top of the cliff, I groaned. This was what all the chatty buildup had been about? All the, “Just wait, Stevie, it’s smashing. You’re going to love it. It’s right on a cliff overlooking the Sound. Private, sprawling, plenty of room for Belfry to fly” had been over this?

This?
It was a monstrosity. A falling-apart-at-the-seams, crumbling-in-almost-every-corner monstrosity.

But I held my tongue. Mostly because I was still too angry with Win for ruining my torrid affair with my favorite taco truck to speak, and it didn’t really matter if I was angry here or back in my hotel room.

I paid the driver and slid out, bracing myself for the wind and rain that would surely pummel my face. Thankfully, I still had my galoshes on. I’d need them if I had any hope of climbing the steep, muddy incline leading to the crooked front porch.

The concrete stairs had caved inward at some point, cracked and certainly too dangerous to walk on. Not to mention, a good deal of the wrought iron railings were missing, too.

I stopped when we were almost to the top, gasping for breath, and that was when I got a close-up glimpse of the underside of the porch steps, rotting away as we stood there.

The wind picked up, pushing me forward so hard, I had to steady myself. “Is it safe?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Would I take you anywhere that wasn’t safe?”

“Would you take me somewhere there’s been a murder? I think the answer is yes. So forgive me if I question your definition of safe.”

His sigh rasped in my ear, going in one and out the other. “How long will you grudge, Stevie?”

“For as long as I’m connected to Madam Zoltar’s suspicious death, and probably long after that. So in non-ghost speak—
forever
.”

“Forever’s a long time, now hurry along. We have things to discuss.”

I plowed up the remaining bit of hill and hit the front porch steps with a wince, my mind still so full of the images of today. Liza’s raw grief. Mr. Sherwood’s face when he accused me of hurting “his Tina.”

And that Senior Alert necklace Liza made mention of that wasn’t around Madam Zoltar’s neck or anywhere near her fallen body. Maybe I’d just missed it, but it was poking at me something fierce. I didn’t want to believe she’d been murdered, but my gut said something quite different.

As I climbed the steps, I wondered if they’d even hold my weight. I was no size two. I wasn’t even a size eight. And they looked mighty weak. I’d had a hella bad day. Adding falling through some rotting stairs to my death to the roster would send me right over the edge.

I stepped onto the porch with great care and took my first look around. The stained-glass door with a beautiful pattern of greens, blues and maroon I couldn’t make sense of was warped, but could be quite lovely refinished and re-stained. It was wide and thick, handcrafted rather than bought at a local box store.

The sprawling porch, flanked by four pillars, wrapped around each side of the three-story house. Planks of wood popped up, the boards were loose and splintered, the paint peeling everywhere. An enormous hole by one of the thick pillars looked like someone had dropped a heavy ball through it.

“The key’s under the mat.”

Winterbottom’s statement made me wonder how long he’d owned this dump. I stooped, lifting up the disintegrating, soggy mat covered in slimy leaves, and found a shiny brass key. Pushing it into the keyhole, I turned it—with no luck.

“It’s jammed. Bummer. Guess I’ll have to pay for another cab ride home you can put on your final bill. Too bad, so sad.”

“Did you always give up this easily when you were a witch? Lift the handle and turn.”

With a defeated sigh, I did as instructed. Popping the door open, I squinted and scanned the gigantic square entryway as my eyes adjusted.

Someone had knocked the wall out between the parlor and the entry. I say “knocked it out” because it literally looked as though someone had plowed through it with their body. The hole was jagged and rough, the sheetrock crumbled and littering the floor.

I gave a good look around the place, my eyes going to the staircase on my left, winding upward to the second floor where window upon window lined the head of the steps.

If you looked directly across the entryway and down the short hall, there was a room I guessed was a kitchen, but I couldn’t see much other than more windows and junk. All manner of fast-food cartons and pizza boxes, crushed beer and soda cans were strewn from one end of the entry to the next. It was filthy and smelled like desperation and cat urine.

“So, what do you think?” Win asked, as though he were proudly asking me to rate on a scale of one to ten how cute his newborn baby was.

“Who’s your decorator, Marilyn Manson?”

“Oh, it’s all fun and games until you find out I actually know a Manson. Charlie, to be precise. Isn’t that right, Stevie Like-Nicks-the-Singer?”

Laughter gurgled from my throat against my will. I’d give Mr. British Guy this, he could make with the funny.

But how peculiar he should mention knowing one of America’s most controversial serial killers. What had been Winterbottom’s profession before he’d died? My guess was prison guard.

My eyebrow rose as I stepped over a torn bag of Funyuns and an empty six-pack of Dr. Pepper. “You know Charles Manson?”

“Well, I don’t
know him
know him. We don’t lunch or anything. I met him. Once. I interviewed him about another case that didn’t involve him, but was similar to his portfolio of crimes.”