Witch Slapped (Witchless In Seattle Mysteries Book 1) (12 page)

Win barked a laugh, the vibe between us easing from intense to more relaxed. “Mars is bloody hot, Stevie. Besides, we made a deal. A deal you can’t break because your strict code of ethics says you can’t. As for the rest of it, I say bollocks. A pox on the loathsome lot of them!”

“Hear-hear to poxes!” Belfry cried.

“You don’t need any of them, Stevie. You have a home and enough money for five lifetimes. So do you feel better for telling me?”

I actually did, and I couldn’t help but tease Win because of it. “You know what would
really
make me feel better?”

“What’s that?”

I smiled coyly. “Telling me how you died. Were you on a crotch-rocket, racing along an opening drawbridge trying to escape the bad arms dealer, saw an opening on a big oil tanker in the water ahead that turned out to be the
Exxon Valdez
, thought there was a slim chance you could stick the landing, but because your timing was totally off, you fell to your watery death in the Pacific Ocean?”

“My timing is never off,” he offered dryly. Which meant, he wasn’t going to tell me today. “Now, lovely lady, we brush ourselves off, pick ourselves up and get to the business we need to attend. We have to clear your good name and any further suspicion of wrongdoing, but more importantly, we have a killer to catch in order to free up your taco-buying privileges. So our first order of business? Connecting you with a lawyer I have on retainer, on the off chance Sardine comes looking for you again.”

I giggled, rising from the seat, the heavy weight in my chest easing. “Sandwich. His name is Sandwich.”

“Everything is a blur after mayonnaise and sardines and vomit.”

“Speaking of Sandwich, he told me something interesting. I don’t know if you heard, but he said Madam Z had been strangled.”

“Wait! Shhh!” Win ordered, making me stand up straighter at the urgency in his tone. “Madam Zoltar! It’s smashing to see you. You look lov—What’s that, Madam Zoltar?”

There was a pause as the wind howled and the rain fell, one I strained into as I rigidly stood at attention while I waited for a communication from MZ.

Win made me jump when he blurted an astonished, “
Cluck-cluck
?”

“
What?
” I asked. “Are you hearing her right?”

“Madam Zoltar, have you been dipping into the wine? What do chickens have to do with this?”

“You have wine in the afterlife?” I asked.

“A buffet table, too. Quite an abundant spread, in fact,” Win responded, and then he groaned. “She’s off on a tangent again. I think she’s well knackered.”

I began to walk again with determination, this time directly across the street with the idea I’d head back to Madam Zoltar’s and see if I could sneak my way in there somehow. I needed to look more thoroughly at the crime scene. I still didn’t understand how Madam Zoltar had been electrocuted and strangled at the same time, sitting at her tarot card table.

My mind raced, replaying visions of the scene, but all I could recall was poor MZ on the floor.

“So what does a chicken have to do with any of this, do you suppose?”

“
Who?
” Win asked.

“A chicken,” I repeated.

“Not you, Stevie. I’m still talking to Madam Zoltar. Say the name again, MZ,” he encouraged.

Another long pause filled the air, making me wish I still had a way to communicate one on one with the spirit world. Everything was always so much easier if I could see an apparition’s face and read their expression.

“Dan. She said Dan knows.”

I stopped just as Madam Zoltar’s store came into view, a frigid chill running up my spine, making the hair at the back of my neck stand on end. “Who’s Dan and what does he know?”

Win groaned. “Aw, hell.”

“
What
? Tell me! Who’s Dan?”

“Dan is her son.”

“
C
rispin Alistair Winterbottom?”

“You’re using my full name. As I recollect from my childhood, this is a parental tactic used to show one means business.”

“
Shut. Up
. Shut up now. Stop reciting your spy DIY tips. I don’t know if it escaped you, but I don’t have a bungee cord I can repel down the back of the building with.”

“Oh stop. Don’t exaggerate. I didn’t tell you to use a bungee cord to do anything. That’s only for the skilled, and while the time will come when all my secrets will be revealed, you haven’t earned your wings just yet. I said, dig a hairpin out of your purse to pick the lock, and make sure you use a tissue so you don’t leave behind fingerprints on the doorknob.”

I rolled my eyes, keeping them peeled in the alleyway behind Madam Z’s. “And then you went on and on about types of locks and cylinders and torque or something. What’s next? Lipstick machine guns?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Stevie. I never used a lipstick gun for anything. It’s a pen. Ball point, to be precise, and if you’re not ready for bungee cords, not a chance in all of my mother country would I allow you a pen gun at this stage of the game.”

“That’s not my point. My point is, shut up. All your gibberish about locks is making me nervous and confusing me. Now be a good lookout and cover me!”

I knelt down again and looked at the lock, forgetting Win’s advice and remembering what Jo-Jo Swenson taught me in the sixth grade about breaking into my locker because I could never remember the combination. I jammed my hairpin into the lock and lifted, saying a small prayer.

The tension eased on the lock’s pins and my hand twisted the doorknob with ease. “Hah!” I yelped triumphantly before covering my mouth and taking another furtive glance around.

I scooped Belfry from my purse and set him in the corner under the awning of Madam Z’s back door, stroking his tiny head. We’d agreed prior to this break in, he’d be our lookout. He’d make the sound of a crow if trouble were afoot.

As I entered the dark store, Win was right behind me. “Do you have a to-do list?”

“Nope, but I’m considering writing up a kill list.”

“You joke, but there’s this list circulating in the Maldives as we speak—”

“Win! Can it!”

“I was merely going to suggest we add a tension wrench to your spy accessory kit to enhance your next lock-picking experience. No need to be so huffy.”

“Listen, we’re breaking the law here. I don’t have clearance from Tom Cruise and his
Mission Impossible
posse to be in here. If we get caught, I get arrested. You get to float around and annoy me in my ear while you walk free, and I eat stale bread and creamed corn. So forgive me if I’m a little tense.”

I picked my way through Madam Z’s small living space, which was nothing more than a very basic studio apartment, careful not to disturb anything. The connecting door was ajar, and as I faced the room where Madam Zoltar had fallen out of her chair, I sucked in air before entering.

Forcing my feet to move, I eyed the fallen chair and the chalk outline of Madam Z.

The tarot cards hadn’t been cleaned up either, so I stooped to get a better look at what Madam Zoltar had dealt while I wondered if she’d been in the middle of a reading when she died.

If she had, then the devil and death card could have some meaning. It caught my eye and made me wonder, if the cards were for a client reading, did it mean there was a devil mucking up their life? Or the client was the devil intent on death?

“Do the cards mean anything to you?” Win asked.

“Well, if she was doing a reading for someone, they’re not good, but it also depends on the order she pulled them. Sometimes during a reading, you pull cards reflecting your own feelings. If that’s the case here, she had a hint he was her killer.” I stopped for a moment and gazed down at the corner of a card I was pretty sure was the King of Cups, but I couldn’t get a good look at it without disturbing the order of the cards. “I think that’s the King of Cups, which, if this was the client’s reading, speaks of a family member bringing them to this point.”

“But to the point of murder? Did she know she was going to die?”

I swallowed hard when I heard the evident distaste and upset in his question, and bit back my own disgust. “I don’t know because they’re such a jumble.”

“So if this wasn’t a client reading, then we can consider Dan or Liza as suspects. They’re certainly family.”

“It’s a definite possibility. And see the competition card? That suggests someone who needs to be noticed. It represents brashness, someone who doesn’t care who they anger.”

“And the one to the right there—with the woman bound and blindfolded?”

“It’s the card of a victim…” I whispered, surer than ever this reading had been for whoever killed Madam Z. “And the card with the cup, that represents relationships…and if I’m reading it from the killer’s standpoint, he kills because the victim has what he wants.”

“Which makes Dan a prime suspect,” Win spat.

“Maybe, but what did MZ have that he wanted? The store? According to Liza, she had no money but her pension.”

“We certainly need to talk to Liza.”

I’d managed to find Dan’s number in the phone book, but according to his dog-sitter, he and Liza were out of town in Tacoma due to a death in the family, and wouldn’t be back until tomorrow. “Well, we can’t do that until tomorrow when they come back from Tacoma.”

I rose as I took in the scene again, including the scattered cards. “You know what I don’t get? If MZ was strangled, what happened to her foot? If that hole in the ball of her foot was the point of entry, which is what I suspect, how did she electrocute herself like that? Did she step on a live wire?”

Win grunted low. “I’m just now remembering. Madam Zoltar had a pedal, almost like one you’d use to run a sewing machine. It was right under this table.”

I looked to the floor, but the pedal Win mentioned was gone. “And what did she do with it?”

“The usual psychic fare. She used it to control the lights flickering on and off, move items and such.”

“Okay, so then maybe it was an accident after all? Maybe the wiring was faulty.”

“Or maybe someone tampered with the wiring. But if what Sandwich says is correct, strangulation was the cause of death—so the point is moot.”

Win’s voice had sailed across the room to an outlet on the wall next to the table. The white outlet plate was scorched, as was the wall itself.

Hands on my hips, I eyed the outlet. “Well, I’m no electrician. Any thoughts on how we’d even be able to tell someone tampered with it—or
why
they’d tamper with it?”

“Not a one. But after your explanation of the tarot cards and the talk of strangulation, it still means murder—by whichever means came first.”

That’s when I remembered the necklace. “Do you remember Liza mentioning a Senior Alert necklace she’d given Madam Z? She said they’d given it to her because she was keeping late hours here just to keep the place running. But I don’t remember seeing it because she had a scarf on.”

“I distinctly remember hearing Liza mention it, but I don’t remember seeing it around her neck during any of our conversations. Of course, she did always wear a scarf. Maybe it was to hide the necklace. She mentioned a time or two how her family worried, and she did whatever she could to alleviate their worries while she went right on living her life out loud.”

“You think she was embarrassed to wear it? Sort of like a babysitter she didn’t want or need?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me.”

“So why wouldn’t she press the dang thing?” I muttered, squatting down to look around the water cooler.

“That could be one of three things. One, if there was foul play, she didn’t sense any danger from her assailant. Or two, someone took it to cover their tracks. Or three, she did press it, and the investigators have it in evidence. There’s likely a chip inside that would have recorded a help signal when she pressed it.”

“Or maybe she just didn’t wear it at all. I’m more inclined to go with my first theory that Madam Z was a tough old bird and she didn’t like the idea she needed help at all.”

Win laughed softly. “You have the right impression. She was independent and funny and determined to make contact with the dead. She believed in the afterlife and ghosts and that’s all there was to it.”

My heart softened for this woman I’d never know, but who had stayed the course despite, I imagine, her fair share of mockery.

“Even though she’d never actually made an afterlife connection?”

“She confided something in me during the course of our conversations. It was the deciding factor in choosing her as a way to contact you—aside from the fact that she was wide open when it came to believing. Those are always the easiest people to contact.”

His statement left me confused. “Then why didn’t you just contact me directly? If anyone’s wide open, it’s a former medium.”

“Because believe it or not, Miss Medium, you were like a firmly shut door. I’m assuming your troubles back home had soured you, closed you off or something. I couldn’t get your attention no matter what I tried. And I did it all. Made scary ghost noises, flickered the lights, I even attempted a message on your hotel bathroom mirror.”

That was a fair assessment of where my head was and sort of still is. I was heartsick at the idea I’d never be able to communicate with the dead again. It had been my way of life for so long, it felt like I’d lost an arm. It made sense I’d also lost my fine-tuning.

“So what did MZ confide in you that made you choose her?”

“Madam Zoltar said she knew it was wrong to give people the impression she really could talk to their dead relatives, and even take their money for it, but what she hoped they took away from a tarot card reading or séance was comfort. As in the case of Chester.”

I smiled. “Forrest mentioned Chester and Madam Z spent a lot of time together.”

“According to her, she would often check up on some of her customers in the hope she’d helped them move forward by telling them their loved ones would only rest easy if they began to live their lives to the fullest again. She picked up on small clues about the recently departed and she’d use those clues to convince her clients she’d made contact with the other side. Her heart truly was in the right place.”