Witch Slapped (Witchless In Seattle Mysteries Book 1) (8 page)

Still, Win wasn’t giving up. “I have money.”

Grabbing my purse, I began to make my way toward the front door, fully intending to take myself back to the hotel and come up with a plan B. Because this was on par with ludicrous. Who signed over all their money and possessions on the word of dead people to someone they didn’t even know?

“So you said. But I can’t access money from a man who essentially claims he doesn’t exist anywhere but in his head.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t exist. I said London would tell you they’d never heard of me. It doesn’t mean I can’t prove to you I have a bank account, Stevie, or that I didn’t see to it that all my money becomes yours.”

I reached for the rusty doorknob, only to watch it turn and seize up. Ah. I knew this sort of ghost. The kind who liked to play rough and dazzle me with his otherworldly powers.

I narrowed my eyes at the room. “You know, Winterbutt, under normal circumstances, I’d break out my wand and zap you right into plane eleven for even considering holding me hostage in this heap of a dump.”

“Scary, Stevie. What’s plane eleven?”

I smiled smugly. “The plane where anyone who’s willfully taken a life spends their eternity. Serial killers, mass murderers. You know; the typical types.”

“Then it’s a good thing for me petulant ex-witch’s wand is out of service.”

“I’m not petulant. I’m skeptical. I’ve only just met you and so far I’ve found a dead body, been questioned in a possible murder investigation, slandered at my favorite taco truck, told I’m going to inherit a house straight out of
American Horror Story
and a buttload of money, and now you’ve threatened me. Forgive my hesitance to jump into your pool with both feet.”

“I did not threaten you. I was just trying to keep you from making an unwise decision and at the same time, flexing my newbie ghost muscles, if you will.”

I let go of the doorknob. “An unwise decision?”

“Stevie?”

“Winterbutt?”

“The time, please?”

My sigh of impatience rang in the wide entryway as I reached into my purse and pulled out my phone without disturbing Belfry. “It’s five-fifteen. Do you have a hot afterlife date?”

“Check your bank account, please. The one at Paris Spells Savings and Loan, and tell me the balance.”

I flicked my finger over the app to access my pathetic savings account, preparing to see the last of my miniscule thousand dollars depleting rapidly. I fully intended to hold the phone up to his faceless voice and prove to him he was crazy as a bedbug.

Oh. Hold that thought. How in the world…?

I knew I was openly gaping, but I couldn’t help it.

“Do tell, what does your bank balance say, Stevie?” Win asked, a playful hint to his tone.

“Uh…a lot. It says…a lot of those lunches you mentioned,” I muttered, unable to believe my eyes. “How did you…?

“I told you, Madam Zoltar and I had a deal of sorts. I talked to the dead for her; she helped me change my will.”

But then a very nefarious thought hit me in the gut.

My hand went directly to my hip in righteous indignation. “How do I know it’s not drug money, or laundered money, or just plain old dirty money?”

“Because I have immaculate tax records that are a testament otherwise.”

“How do I know they’re not forged or fakes? What if you made Madam Zoltar do something illegal and she didn’t think to question you because she was so blown away by finally contacting the dead and your spiffy British accent?”

“Stevie…”

I sucked in my cheeks. “Am I trying your patience?”

“I didn’t think anyone could match my irritation after the last jewel thief I apprehended in Monte Carlo, but you’re this close.”

“Ooo, did you have to crawl under deadly laser beams that could cut you in half if you moved a millimeter the wrong way to catch him?” I mocked.

“Stevie!” His voice reverberated through the house, bouncing off the fifteen-foot ceilings.

“Fine. Carry on.”

“Please, if you’d indulge me, check your voice mail.”

“I’m afraid.”

“I promise not to think less of you for behaving so cowardly. Please check.”

I clicked the app for my voice mail, noted there was a message, and put it on speaker. There was a crackle on the line and then, “Miss Cartwright? This is Davis Monroe, Esquire. I’d been instructed to contact you upon the confirmation of the death of one Crispin Alistair Winterbottom. Please return my call promptly, as we need to discuss your inheritance.”

Forget my alleged inheritance—Winterbottom’s first name was Crispin?

I began to laugh, my head falling back on my shoulders while I tried to catch my breath. “Crispin Alistair?” I sputtered.

Win cleared his throat. “Ahem. Pardon me, but it’s a prestigious birthright and well respected where I come from. Certainly nothing a heathen like you would understand.”

I snorted again, but I also realized I now had a name. A full name to research.
Google, be my guide.

“Before you warm up your fingers to Google me, do note, you’ll find nothing about my profession as a spy online. Crispin Alistair Winterbottom was a mild-tempered grade-school teacher, at least according to Google.”

“Riiight. Got it. When you look me up? Don’t believe LinkedIn and my former job as a 9-1-1 dispatcher. I’m really a prima ballerina with the Bolshoi Ballet.”

“For your information, I wouldn’t believe that even if I saw you in a tutu and tights, not after your blatant Peggy Fleming in Madam Zoltar’s store.”

“That’s because you’re a super spy with an antenna for lies, right?” Then I began to laugh again, bending forward at the waist to try to catch my breath.

“Can we please set aside the fact that you’re calling me a liar and focus on the tasks at hand? I did just make you rich, did I not?”

I clicked on the app again and typed in my password. Yep. The money was all still there. But it didn’t mean it was staying there or that it wasn’t dirty.

“You did. You also gave me a house that’s about to fall down around my ears. You’re a total peach.”

“This house can be restored to its former beauty and I know just the person. But we have other things to do right now. Right now, we have to help Madam Zoltar and find her killer.”

My shoulders sagged as I hauled my purse to the crook of my arm. I was tired. It had been a long, grueling day. I wanted to go back to my cheap hotel room with the paper-thin blankets, take a shower and sleep for a year.

“Can we do that tomorrow?”

“And that brings me to this…”

“What’s ‘this’?”

“The deal.”

I nodded my head knowingly. “You mean the strings, right? Because no one gives someone a boatload of money and a house on the bluff, even if it’s falling to pieces, without strings. No one. What’s the deal?”

“I propose this. You can have it all,
all
of it. My house, my money, my toothbrush, which is the only personal possession I own, aside from some very expensive suits, but only if you agree to work with me to help find who killed Madam Zoltar—”

“But—”

“I’m not done yet. You must also agree to renovate this house for me under my instruction, and you have to remain here until its completion.”

I lifted my shoulders. “Is that all? So basically, give up my entire life to live in a drafty, dirty wreck and figure out who killed Madam Zoltar, all while everyone in town calls me a murderer?”

“You have no life, Stevie.”

“That’s mean.”

“It’s true.”

My finger shot up in the air. “First of all, we don’t even know she was killed. Maybe it was just a heart attack or a stroke or any number of things. Second, why the fudge don’t you just ask Madam Z what happened yourself? You
are
in the afterlife with her, aren’t you? She should have arrived by now. What kind of spy are you?”

“Now, Stevie,” he said with that superior tone of his. “You know full well when a soul passes over after they’ve left your plane in a traumatic incident, they’re confused and disoriented. Madam Zoltar is a wreck of emotions. She’s gobsmacked, and no one can get through to her or understand all her rambling. She’s been drifting around from plane to plane since this afternoon. But because she’s so confused, that means only one thing. You know it and I know it. She was
murdered
.”

“Why do you care so much about this woman, Win? What aren’t you telling me?”

His reply was stiff and very British. “I’ve told you everything you need to know about my relationship with Madam Zoltar.”

“So why does finding her murderer mean so much to you? You hardly knew her.”

“Because justice should be served in healthy portions. And I liked her. I liked her a great deal. She reminded me of my grandmother. Not to mention, she helped keep this house and all my extraordinarily hard-earned money from my cousin Sal.”

Something about the way he spoke, the warmth in his voice, made me cave just a little. Clearly, he’d grown fond of Madam Zoltar. But I also wondered how long he’d known her before she was killed. My impression was it had been a short relationship, yet his tone almost suggested otherwise.

Which begged the question… “Why did you put Sal’s name on the will if you didn’t want him to have the house?”

“Because when my lawyer called me to arrange the will, he phoned when I was at the height of a very delicate interrogation. I was pressed to name someone and then I forgot all about it. Sal is my only living relative. He was the first person to come to mind when the word ‘familial’ came into play.”

“What do you suppose Sal will have to say about this startling turn of events?”

“He never knew he was named to begin with, so he won’t say a thing.”

“You don’t have any friends? A BFF?”

“Spies don’t have BFFs.” His response was curt and screamed this area of his life was none of my business.

Tucking my chin in my hand, I parsed the deal out in words. “So all I have to do is stay here until the house is done, which could take a hundred years and a hundred backhoes, help you figure out who killed Madam Zoltar, and I can keep the money and the house?”

“And you must agree to renovating
my
way.”

Really, what did I have to lose? If everything checked out, if the money was clean, it was just a house. It wouldn’t eat up even a quarter of the money he’d dumped into my account, and I’d still be in the black. If nothing else, it meant Belfry and I would eventually have somewhere warm and dry to hang our hats.

“And you’re sure there’s no illegal attachment to this money or this house? Some drug lord from Constantinople won’t come knocking on the door wanting his cash?”

“The chances of a drug lord from Constantinople are slim to none. Now, Columbia?” he rumbled. “That’s a more distinct possibility.”

“Winterbottom!”

“Joking. No drug lords or otherwise.”

I took a deep breath and looked around at this heaping mess of debris and crumbling walls, rotted wood and graffiti from squatters, and as the light began to rapidly fade, I made a decision.

My first big, possibly life-changing decision as a human. As much as I longed to go back to my friends in Paris, as much as I missed being a witch, I was no longer welcome in the coven. So it was move on or give up.

I decided to move on.

“Okay. It’s a deal. I’d shake on it but, well, you know—ghost and all.”

“I’m thrilled right now. I wish you could see my face.”

I wished I could see his face, too. It would be nice to have a face to attach to the whiskey-rough but smooth-as-melted-chocolate voice.

“Are you smiling?”

“I don’t smile, I smirk.”

“As all good spies do. So what do we do next?” I asked, reaching for the rusty doorknob.

“We plan a strategy, Stevie. A strategy to smoke out a killer.”

“Can we do that after I have some dinner?”

“We can begin tomorrow. Bright and early.”

I twisted the doorknob and was relieved to feel it turn beneath my fingers. “Oh, one more thing.”

I felt the cool warmth of his aura surround me. I use the words cool and warm because he had the feel of a ghost in that spin-tingling sense, but his aura was warm. “What’s that?”

“About that Aston Martin you mentioned…”

“Not even if your life was hanging in the balance.”

I giggled as I stepped out onto the porch, using my phone as a flashlight to find my way down the stairs.

Something clicked inside me at that moment. Something felt innately right, and that was when I decided I felt more like myself than I had in over a month.

Just like the old Stevie, but without a wand and a curse-you-and-your-damnable-soul-to-the-fiery-depths-of-Hades spell.

“
G
ood morning, Mr. Sherwood!” I called as I entered the near-empty Strange Brew, the coffee shop next door to Madam Zoltar’s.

The shop was filled with pastel-colored wrought iron tables, cheerful bud vases with pink carnations, and a glass counter with fat muffins in every flavor imaginable. I liked the vibe in here.

It was easy on the eye, and the smooth coffeehouse jazz playing over the sound system soothed my nerves for what I was about to do. Which was behave as though Chester Sherwood had never accused me of murdering “his” Tina. Keep your enemies close and all.

“How about you not be so nice to the guy who accused you of hurting ‘his Tina’,” Belfry chirped from inside my purse, still cross he’d missed my deal-making with Winterbottom.

When he’d heard about our newfound riches, he’d been thrilled. Until he heard I didn’t fight for the Aston Martin. Then he’d pouted for two hours after the most sumptuous breakfast I’d had in years—courtesy of my fat bank account. After taking a cab into Seattle and finding a place to dine where no one would label me a murderer, I’d treated Belfry and myself to the first decent meal we’d had in weeks.

There’d be plenty of lunches I’d have to eat while skulking in some cold alleyway, considering the hate everyone in town was expressing about my alleged involvement with Madam Zoltar’s death. I figured it was only fair we begin the day pampered.

“Chester’s a fine man, Belfry. He was simply reacting to his grief. It’s natural.”