Witch Slapped (Witchless In Seattle Mysteries Book 1) (7 page)

A case? Curioser and curioser.

“Okay, so did his cellmate help you decorate this place?” I asked, my fingers trailing over the thick covering of dust on a three-legged end table by the side of the stairs.

“They were beyond helpful in my quest to make sure the paint peeled in all the right places.”

I glanced around again at the wall that looked as though someone had tried to scratch their way out of the parlor from behind the sheetrock and nodded. “Tell him job well done. He’s an overachiever.”

Winterbottom’s chuckle, deep and rich, swirled in my ears, sweeping over the room. “And it’s all yours.”

Say what now?

I kept my surprise on the inside, but I gripped the wobbly square finial on the staircase banister to steady myself.

“It’s what?”

“All yours, if you’ll have it.”

I held up a hand, setting my purse on the warped hardwood floor so if he chose, Belfry could poke his head out when he was done napping. “I think I need some clarity. Who were you when you were alive and how can you give me an entire house?”

There was a pause, as though he was gathering steam to prepare me for something heinous. It hadn’t occurred to me up to this point, but what if he was a bad guy? What if he was some crappy shyster of a real estate developer who stole from seniors, or a Bernie Madoff type dude?

“Are you ready for this?”

“Do you really think anything you tell me can move the register on my surprise meter any higher after the events of today? Divulge or I go back to my hotel room.”

“I was a spy.”

My head cocked to the right while his words nested in my brain. “A spy as in private investigator, Inspector Clouseau…or a spy like the spy in the show
Alias
?”

“Oh, definitely an
Alias
-caliber spy. Sydney’s my hero.”

Visions of Sydney Bristow danced through my head. Images of this faceless man, with his educated, succinct words and light disdain, wearing a wig for a disguise, swiftly followed.

“You’re very quiet, Stevie.”

I gnawed on the inside of my cheek. While intrigued, I was far from sold.

“Well, here’s the thing. You could tell me you were the King of Prussia and I’d have no way to prove you weren’t, right? I can’t see ghosts anymore, so visible identification is out. Do you have a driver’s license or something? Some kind of ID?”

“I have ten. Or I
had
ten. I also had ten matching passports, a killer Aston Martin and lots of zeros at the end of the numbers in my various bank accounts. Of course, that was before I was dead. Who knows what’s happened to my locker back in London by now though. Oh, and the King of Prussia looks nothing like me. His name was Wilhelm, as a point of reference.”

Ignoring his glib history lesson, I plowed ahead. “So your home base was in London?”

“It was,” he purred. “Rather a command central, if you will. A place where all good spies go home to rest after they’ve finished a grueling mission wherein one is shot at from a helicopter while hanging by the skids.”

I fought a roll of my eyes. Win was coming off like the crackpots on the Internet who wove tales of great heroism when in real life they were plumbers. Everyone was a superstar until you could prove otherwise.

“Sounds like the stuff
Mission Impossible
movies are made of.”

“I’m better looking than Cruise,” he said on a chuckle.

Crossing my arms over my chest, I asked, “So, is that how you died? Were you shot while hanging on to the skids of a helicopter?”

“The time will come when I tell you how I died. For now, just know I’m pretty dead.”

I found it almost laughable he thought I was supposed to just accept his explanation because he said I should. I added arrogant to my list of rapidly growing Winterbottom characteristics.

But I wasn’t letting him off so easy. That he expected me to simply take his word for it was, in another word, insane.

Planting my hand on my hip, I lifted my chin and gave him some of his arrogance right back. “Can I call someone at spy command central and ask about you? Get references?”

“You could, but no one would answer your questions. That’s why I was called a spy, Stevie. Secrets and lies are heartily encouraged.”

Of course they were. “Again, I’ll remind you, you can pretend to be whoever you want to be and I won’t know any different.”

“Would you like an afterlife reference? Someone who goes by the name Digby Reynolds?”

That stopped me cold. Digby had died a particularly untimely death back in Texas. While witches and warlocks were immortal, if taken by surprise, we can still end up really dead.

Digby died when an oak tree in the center of Paris was split by lightning and fell on him. His cat, Maynard, was the only family he had, and Digby came to me, asking that I rehome him.

“Okay, ask Digby what his cat’s name was?”

There was a pause and then Winterbottom’s voice echoed in my ear. “Maynard. A tabby you were kind enough to find a new home for with a woman named Greta, who runs some sort of halfway house for witches in Paris, Texas, with a friend of yours named Winnie Yagamowitz.”

Hearing Winnie’s name made me smile. I missed Winnie and her daughter Lola.

Okay, so he could talk to some of the people I’ve helped. That proved nothing. “Do me a favor?”

“Anything.”

“Tell Digby to stop waffling and make a decision. He passed well over eight months ago. It’s time to choose a path to the light, or accept the afterlife plane he’s on as his eternity.”

“He stuck his tongue out at you.”

I chuckled. That definitely sounded like Digby. Yet, it still didn’t change much. “So you can talk to people on the other side. I didn’t
doubt
you were on the other side. That still doesn’t prove you were who you say you were.”

“But it does prove I know some of the ghosts you were in contact with. You came so highly recommended. I thought you’d be thrilled to your knickers to help me.”

“Ghosts are a chatty lot. If you’re on the plane where people who are undecided land, they love to gab in order to put off making a choice. You might be a spy, but I know ghosts. And my knickers have skeptical written all over them. How do I know you’re not setting me up?”

“We’re getting nowhere fast.”

“Whose fault is that, Spy Guy?”

“Forget my prior profession, Stevie, and focus on having somewhere to rest your lovely head—rent free,” he reminded, his voice tinged with impatience.

I crossed my arms over my chest again with a cluck of my tongue. “All right, let’s forget your profession for the time being. Explain this to me. Wouldn’t something like this house—a large, probably valuable piece of property—go into probate as a part of your estate? Or to a family member when they read your will? How can you just let me move into something that technically isn’t even yours anymore? Or is that a super secret, too?”

I wasn’t entirely dumb to human legal practices, if that’s what Win was hoping. Possessions such as a house went into probate until your will was read and an inheritor named.

“I’ve got that all covered,” was all he said.

I ran a hand over my damp, frizzing hair in aggravation. “Is an explanation out of the question? Because as an FYI, it’s not
you
they’ll be hauling out of here for squatting. It’s me, and I’m no good in jail. I can’t seem to make soap on a rope work for me.”

“I doctored my will.”

Suspicion instantly reared its ugly head. I lifted one eyebrow to convey as much. “How can you doctor something without a physical form here on this plane?”

“I bribed Madam Zoltar, the medium. She doctored. I instructed her on the doctoring.”

“Medium?” I barked out loud and dismissed him with a wave of my hand. I hadn’t said a word before, but now I couldn’t contain myself. “You do know almost every human who claims to be a real medium is eyeball-deep in baloney, don’t you? They steal your money and the only spirit they have contact with is the spiriting away of said money from your bank account.”

“Have you gone mad? Are you telling me Madame Zoltar isn’t a real medium? That she bamboozled me? The horror!” Win squealed.

I fought the impulse to grin. “Even as well-loved as she seems to be by the community, that’s
exactly
what I’m telling you. You’ve been had.”

Now his grating sigh whispered across the room. “Of course I knew she was a fake. I was a spy, for Pete’s sake, Stevie.”

“Right. An international man of intrigue.”

His silence made me decide to play out this game with him. I didn’t know where it was leading, but he seemed like the kind of voice who liked a good cat and mouse. What spy didn’t like a good cat and mouse?

“Okay, first, why did you choose Madam Zoltar to communicate with?”

“You’ll find this odd, but it was her staunch belief in the afterlife. Even though she couldn’t really communicate with the dead, she
wanted
to with everything in her. She still believed it was possible, whether she had or not. That touched me.”

Fair enough. He’d clearly known what he was getting into with Madam Zoltar.

“So how did you get Madam Zoltar to doctor your will?”

“I made promises, Stevie. Dirty, dirty promises. Some of which left me feeling cheap and used.”

“I can’t believe I’m even asking, but I’m just going to cannonball into the deep end. What did you promise her? Spill.” I tapped my toe and waited.

I was pretty sure I felt his eyes roll back in his head in aggravation before he said, “Oh, okay. I said I’d attend two séances and some medium convention called The Crystal Ball Is Your Oyster Con. Not a big deal in the scheme of things. And all I had to do was show up and do spooky stuff, like make the table levitate, maybe flicker the lights on and off. You know; typical séance fare.”

“And in return she did what to your will?”

“Changed the name of the sole beneficiary of my worldly possessions at my lawyer’s office from my greedy cousin Sal to someone else…”

“Wouldn’t your lawyer know who the original beneficiary really was?”

“I’m counting on the fact that he comes from the Mesozoic era and is incredibly forgetful. It was frightfully easy. Madam Zoltar printed up a new, fake document under my instruction, and voila. Instant revision.”

“So you had her break the law for you. A nice little old lady like that?”

“I would never have allowed her to be caught, and I broke the law to save this side of the pond from Cousin Sal. You’ll thank me, should you ever meet.”

It was my turn to sigh, tiring rapidly of the spy game. I plunked down on the bottom step of the huge staircase, mindless of the debris. “So you had her change it to who? What does that mean?”

“It means I left my house and all my worldly possessions to
you
.”

A
ll the blood drained from my face. My mouth opened, but it didn’t want to cooperate with words. Not even smallish ones. It just hung there, all unhinged.

“I can see by your jaw scraping the floor I’ve surprised you.”

“Only confetti and a clown car would match my level of surprise.”

Had he been kidding when he’d said he’d left the house to me? I looked out the big bay window in the parlor overlooking the Sound at the choppy gray waters and blinked.

“And I guess you want to know why I’d leave my most treasured possession to you, and not a family member—or the DIY Channel.”

“I can’t make a decision. I mean, there are a whole list of pros and cons I need to make before I decide if I want to know why.”

“I left it to you because you need this house, and it needs you. And the afterlife says you need help, and, above all, you can be trusted.”

I scratched my head. “Is this your big afterlife pay-it-forward? Am I the charity case of the millennium to make up for all the charity cases you ignored in your former life? What are they feeding you in the afterlife to make such a big decision?”

Win scoffed at me. “I’m insulted you think I ignored charity while I was here on Earth. That cuts deep.”

“Do spies donate to charity?”

“You’d be surprised what we spies do for a good cause. Haven’t you ever heard of Spies For Tots? Never mind. Scratch that. No one’s supposed to know we exist.”

I fought a chuckle. “So why would you leave all this to me? You don’t even know me.”

“Honesty?”

“Should there ever be anything else between an ex-witch and the specter who’s attached himself to her like a boil on her butt?”

“The truth is, I can’t stand Sal. He’s a bag of utter dicks. He’ll turn this place into some ugly eyesore full of sterile chrome, white walls, and high-tech gadgets. Also, he’s awful. The kind of awful that kicks puppies and pulls walkers right out from under the elderly. A place like this needs attention to detail, Stevie; it needs to be filled with things from days gone by. It needs love. I didn’t have time to change my will before my untimely demise, but when I found this place just before I died, I’d already decided to do just that. I just ran out of time. But that’s all handled now.”

“It needs a whole lot more than love. It needs a backhoe.”

“Bite your tongue.”

I let my arms rest on my knees and looked at the sprawling home, most of which I hadn’t even seen yet. It could really be something, given serious attention. It could be a dream come true. My mind raced with the possibilities, the potential, but my life was a wreck. I didn’t have time to babysit contractors and subcontractors. I needed to find a job and some self-worth.

“Listen, it was really weird…nice, but weird of you to leave me your dilapidated fixer-upper, but in the interest of giving this house some love, love costs money. In this case, it’s going to cost a lot of money. I don’t have enough money for my lunch. I certainly don’t have enough to not only get a place like this up and running, but keep it running. So thanks, but you’d better start making dirty-dirty promises to another psychic to fix your will again. Oh, and while you’re hanging around the afterlife, please tell them thank you for the sterling references.”

I would smile at the trust and friendships I’d built over the years with many a spirit, but the loss was still so fresh, it felt wrong to feel anything but sorrow because it was just a memory and no longer my reality.