Inconvenient Murder: An Inept Witches Mystery (2 page)

She’d sold it, and she would never walk inside of it again.

The couple who had bought the house had told her of their life and of traveling across the world—they had gone beyond Oxford and Stratford-Upon-Avon. She’d wanted to travel, but Harrison had already seen the world. He hadn’t wanted to go the places she wanted to. Ingrid had wanted to lay on a beach in freaking Thailand. She’d wanted to drink whatever the Thai drink and spend most of a few weeks tipsy in between making love with Harrison.

But he’d wanted to go back to England.

The first time was exciting.

The second time was fun. She’d revisited places she’d enjoyed the first time.

The seventh visit left her so full of desperate boredom that she’d had to go to a spa to recover interest in anything.

Emily, however, ignored all that, though she knew that Ingrid was thinking of it. She focused on the shoes, like good friends do.

“Pointy shoes. Or sandals. I don’t know. Something sexy. Something to distract Sheriff Hotpants.” Ingrid said it dryly but Emily would know Ingrid was faking. She was dying inside a little bit. She’d loved Harrison. Still did, even with the letters. She wanted to curl up next to him while he re-read stupid Julius Caesar and smell his cologne and feel his skin.

But Emily could cry with Ingrid when she got back. Properly. With wine. And fattening exotic food.

“We could lay a love spell on Gabe.” Emily’s voice sound too intrigued.

“That’s rapey,” Ingrid said absently, scowling at the stupid little Prius that Harrison had bought her.

“Is it though? He’d probably not even need to be drugged if you approached him right.”

“Really?” Ingrid asked, intrigued.

“Um, maybe not,” Emily sounded as if she were translating Latin. “I mean I spent most of my high school setting things on fire with matches since I suck at magic and skinny-dipping with my boyfriend, Justin, but I’m pretty sure Gabe’s more. . .homespun than that. You might want a different baby daddy. He’d probably want to be involved.”

“Ugh,” Ingrid said. “I’ll call you back. I’m going to buy a bunch of things until I feel like eating again and then get those éclairs.”

“Totally get an espresso machine. The diner across the way makes the worst coffee ever. I’ve been slowly and terribly dying, but I didn’t want to say anything since I come and have coffee in your apartment every single day. But espresso is what I’ve been needing. It’s the key to my happiness.”

“Will do,” Ingrid said. Right after she bought a new wardrobe, a new car, and perhaps got a cat. Or two. Maybe little yippy dogs instead. One for her and Emily. Oh, and wine glasses. She had some drinking to do.

“Oh, wait,” Emily said. “Hazel wants to know if we’ll come to the coven thingy.”

“When is it?” Ingrid asked as she unlocked her car, glanced around, noticed the gray skies and thought she needed some cute rain boots, too.

“Tomorrow at one.”

“One p.m.?” Ingrid asked, realized that must be what Emily meant, and said, “That interferes with my nap.”

“Right,” Emily said. “Mine, too. I’ll tell Aunt Hazel that we’ll have to do it next time.”

“They need to pick an evening time. With wine. And they should feed us. I need someone to cook for me. It should be them. They’re old, so I assume they can make more than Hungarian mushroom soup and grilled cheese.”

“Oh, man,” Emily said and all the pep was gone from her voice. “Dickhead’s coming tomorrow anyway. He wants to ‘survey the property, takes some photos, and see if we can come to a mediated agreement.’”

“Dickhead should go ahead and suck it,” Ingrid said. “I will help you fight this from now until forever just so he can’t have anything. Because in the end, my pockets are deeper than his, and I’d rather give every bit of what I’ve put into the building again to a lawyer than let him have one single cent. Also, he can’t go into my apartment. He’ll mess with the aura or something, and then we’ll have to burn some sage or a candle or whatever, and maybe it’ll never be the same again and we’ll have to evict the rest of our tenants so I can remodel their floor instead because I won’t live where dickhead has dared to breathe.”

“Well,” Em said, sounding amused, and Ingrid grinned in triumph.

“Also, I can’t believe you ever had sex with him. You should go boil your privates.” Ingrid turned off the phone without saying goodbye and drove aimlessly until she passed her old home one last time. Then she went and bought the biggest and shiniest car she could find.

2

Wednesday Night, 9pm

Emily Brown sat on her couch eating Chinese noodles with her platinum chopsticks. With every bite she thought about having to deal with her future ex-husband tomorrow. She stabbed the noodles with fury, imagining she was putting his eyes out with each jab. Dickhead, as Ingrid liked to call him, cheated on her, left her, and then had the nerve to try to take half of her building from her. Aunt Danna, one of many aunts that made up the local coven, left her the building that housed her magical bookshop, Enchanted Tales, and Ingrid, Emily’s best friend, used her massive fortune to renovate it.

“Ugh, hate that guy. Totally screwing with my fresh start.”

She tossed her take-out carton in the garbage, unable to think about Owen Brown and have an appetite at the same time. Instead she poured herself a tall glass of red wine. Emily stood by the window, looking down on the quaint main street of this little town where she’d grown up. She’d left for college, but Sage Island was her home. Seattle had been fun. College with Ingrid had been fun. Who was she kidding? Anything with Ingrid was fun. But she was thrilled to be back, even with some of the bad memories that haunted her from her time as young witch on the island. She shivered as the image of the charred boy flashed through her mind, then stomped it out. Hard. Those things were in the past. Just like her relationship with her soon-to-be ex-husband. Over and done. Or nearly so. She fantasized about seeing Owen tomorrow and stabbing him in the neck with those chopsticks and then drowning him in a bucket of red wine.

“A perfect ending for my fresh start,” Emily said to herself.

Her crazy self-talk was interrupted by voices coming up through her open window from the street below.

“I’ll kill him. When I get my hands on him, he’s a dead man. And you—young lady—you are grounded for the rest of time. Or at least your natural life. Do you know what this information could do to the custody battle if your grandparent’s find out?”

“But I love him, dad.”

“Sex is not the same thing as love, Mary. You couldn’t possibly know what love is. I don’t even know if I know.”

Emily listened to Doug, the creeptastic guy who ran the gallery that took up one section of the retail space on the bottom floor of their building. He was constantly yelling at his daughter. He was going to have to go. His vibe screwed with Emily’s mojo. She strained to hear Mary’s quieter voice. “Whatever. You aren’t even my real dad. I don’t have to listen to you. No wonder Mom left you. All you care about is your stupid art.”

Gallery guy’s voice was thin and cold. “I’m not the only one your mom left. Now, get inside, young lady. Right now. You aren’t seeing him again. Do you want a court to force you to live in Seattle with your grandparents? I didn’t think so. Now, get inside.”

Mary grumbled, but followed him inside.

Emily sighed in annoyance and closed her window. If Ingrid were home tonight, Emily would have called the cops so the sheriff Ingrid was crushing on could come over. But she wasn’t. And Emily wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone.

She swallowed two Advil and then changed into her pajamas. She wrapped up in her super soft robe and lay on the couch to watch TV until Ingrid got back on the late ferry. She would need help unloading whatever nonsense she’d bought while in Seattle to make herself feel better after dealing with Harrison’s brats.

She called Ingrid to see if she made the last ferry out of Seattle but got her voice mail.

“Ingrid, did you make the ferry or get caught up shopping and have to stay the night? Call me when you get here, and I’ll help you unload your stress purchases. Hope you got me something good, like new chopsticks. I’m gonna use my good set to murder Owen. See you in a few. Oh, hey, bring me a pack of Mentos from the store on the ferry. Fruity goodness is just what I need to get the sour taste of dickhead out of my mouth. I’ll probably fall asleep on the couch, but I’ll leave the ringer on. Also, if the ferry sinks, be sure to put on your life jacket. Not that it matters. You’d probably still end up as a whale appetizer, but whatever. ‘Night.”

She tucked her phone in her robe pocket and laid her head back on the sofa. Emily drifted off in a wine-induced haze with crazy images of Owen drowning in a sea of Chinese noodles. Her lip curled in a satisfactory smile, and she fell asleep.

•

Wednesday Night

Ingrid drove the Escalade onto the ferry. The boat was loaded to the rails, but she needed a coffee, and she needed it right that second. She hopped out, weaving through the cars and almost racing to the top of the ferry to get a coffee before the line was insanely long. She was only two people from the cashier when she glanced around and saw Sheriff Hotpants.

“Oh,” she said. She grinned at him and waved. He nodded. It was a friendly nod, and she decided it was time to seek him out. She ordered two coffees and two brownies and wove through the crowd to sit next to him by the windows. “Hello again. I’m Ingrid, if you don’t remember.”

She handed him the coffee, and her fingers touched his, and she felt as giddy as a tween talking to her big crush.

“Hello,” he said. “I remember. Enchanted Tales right? Danna’s old shop?”

“Yup,” she said. She stared at him for a long moment before sipping her coffee. He was just so attractive she wasn’t sure she could compete. She wasn’t ugly. She had nice skin, straight teeth, a long swathe of dark hair and a pretty good body. But he was…just perfect. “So, I’ve decided I want you for my own.”

He choked and began coughing. She walloped him on his back and then added, “I just figured it’s better to not play games.”

“So you’re just going to say it like that,” he wheezed. But his eyes sparked at her, and she saw the way he examined her legs and glanced at her chest.

She grinned and nodded. “I’m not easy. You’re going to have to date me for a while first. I’m going to need both food and dancing before anything else is on the table.”

“Uh.” He shifted a bit, wordless.

She grinned at him, smacked his arm as casually as an old friend and said, “It’s okay. I only seem crazy. I’m mostly, well, not normal, but I’m mostly harmless. Hey look, whales.”

He turned his head, and they watched the massive bodies move through the water in the lights cast by the ferry.

“Whales,” she said, changing the subject, “will absolutely eat your face and your dog.”

“I don’t have a dog.”

“I’m more of a cat person myself.”

“You’re a witch right? Part of the Sage Island Coven.”

“Technically speaking,” Ingrid agreed, crossing her legs and leaning back. It was cold, and she snuggled right into him. He froze for a moment but relaxed as all she did was steal a bit of his warmth.

“What does that mean?”

“Honestly,” Ingrid looked up at him through her lashes and said, “Emily and I might be the worst, most terrible, completely inept witches this island has ever seen.”

“So you can’t do magic?”

“Oh, we can do it,” Ingrid countered. “Or maybe it can do us. It never goes quite as planned.”

He sat up suddenly and looked down at her. “Are you why my hat keeps flying off?”

“Oh, yeah,” Ingrid nodded, laughing as she snuggled back into him. “You do have just the most amazing butt.”

“So are you the reason my head is pounding?”

“Um, no, of course not,” she said, nodding. She reached toward his head, right where he hit it against the bricks, and somehow—this time—she knew just what to do. She could almost feel his pain pulling into her fingertips as she rubbed his hair and then dissipating. “There,” she said, “all better.”

•

Thursday Morning, 2am

When the ferry docked, Ingrid waited for Gabe to go to his car, but he stood and headed toward the pedestrian line.

“No car?”

He shook his head and said, “It’s in the downtown lot.”

“I will absolutely give you a ride those three blocks and offer you some Chinese leftovers in exchange for manual labor.”

“What kind of manual labor?” His eyes narrowed, but he followed her to her car and didn’t seem bothered. She grinned at him. Talking over random things on the ride and getting to know him had just made her want him all the more. He was in the breathing-in stage of drinking wine. She was letting him sit to savor him more later, and she looked forward to each step of the process.

“Mostly lifting and carrying,” she said as they looked at the back of her loaded Escalade.

“Did you buy a new car to be able to bring all of this back?”

“Not exactly,” Ingrid said. “But the new car certainly allowed me to buy more.”