Spells and Spirits, page 44
I crossed my arms. “Are you insinuating I killed Xavier?”
“No,” Alice growled. “Of course not. Why would you have killed him? It was somebody else.”
“Then what are the two of you doing here?”
Ruth and Alice exchanged guilty looks. “Well,” Ruth started, “we wanted to see if Xavier had any equipment we could borrow.”
I quirked a brow. “You mean steal?”
“It’s not stealing if he promised it to us before,” Alice said. “He said if he ever died, we were entitled to take a look at his stuff, go through it and see if there was anything we could use. Well, the guy’s dead, isn’t he? So now we can plunder his riches.”
I snorted. “I don’t know if I’d call it riches. It was mostly EMF-looking equipment.”
Ruth grabbed Alice’s arm. “She’s seen it. You’ve seen it. Tell us, what was it like?”
Voices came from the front door.
“It’s the police,” Ruth whispered. “Let’s get out of here.”
“You broke his window,” I said.
Alice hitched a shoulder. “Maybe they won’t notice.”
Before I had time to argue, Ruth grabbed my collar and pulled me. She was awfully strong for being old. Alice yanked the kitchen door. It creaked. I could feel the sound all the way to my bones. There was no way we were going to escape without getting caught.
I shut the door behind us as the front one opened. Ruth and Alice were already sprinting toward the bushes.
Sprinting?
Yes, indeed they were.
I followed them, clueless as to where we were heading. I pushed away poking hedges in time to see Alice and Ruth jump into an all-terrain vehicle.
“Get in,” Ruth said.
It was a two-seater, and Alice and Ruth had already taken up the bench.
“Where?”
Alice thumbed behind her. “The back.”
The back, as she called it, was nothing more than an open utility carrier meant for hauling things like firewood. It was corrugated like the bed of a truck, yet much, much smaller.
“How am I going to fit in there?”
“You’re small.” Ruth started the engine. The motor roared.
“I think I’d rather walk.”
Just then, the sound of voices came from the back of Xavier’s house. My hair stood on end as I realized the cops had just discovered the broken window. Which meant they knew someone had attempted to break in. Which also meant that in about three seconds they would be crashing through the hedges looking for us.
If they found me, someone who had been at the scene of the crime but had conveniently disappeared, stalking about Xavier’s house, odds were I’d find myself being slapped with a murder charge.
So I hopped in the ATV as Ruth slammed the accelerator. I lurched back, toppling over. My shoulder slammed into the corner of the bed, and my head jerked to the side.
“Dear Lord, where’d you learn to drive?” I said.
“On my husband’s tractor,” Ruth yelled back. “He’s dead now.”
“No doubt from your driving.” I rubbed my aching shoulder.
We rumbled through the woods. The voices from the house lessened until they were out of earshot. The ATV bumped and jostled. I clung to the sides for dear life.
My heartbeat jumped into my throat. Any second now I was sure we’d crash into a ditch, tip to the side or I’d just bounce right on out of the vehicle onto the road. Of course I’d break my neck in the process. No doubt about that. I’d be dead and these two old ladies would be fighting about who got my belt or something.
“Hold on,” Alice yelled over her shoulder. “We’re hitting the bridge.”
I leaned over to get a look. The bridge as Alice referred to it, was nothing more than two strips of two-by-fours covering a creek.
Ruth was going full speed. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t stop for anything. But right at the last moment she slammed the brakes. My head knocked into a pole holding the canopy.
I saw stars. “Ouch!”
“I said to hold on,” Alice said.
The ATV slowed as we crossed the two-by-fours. Next thing I knew, we were bursting from the forest and hitting a residential street. I blinked. We were back by the bed-and-breakfast. We swung past and crossed over a couple of streets.
A garage door opened to a small cottage, and Ruth barreled the ATV inside. She slammed the brakes again. This time I was ready. My body was braced against the back of the vehicle.
She pulled the emergency brake and hopped out. “Everyone okay?”
I rubbed my head. “If by ‘okay,’ you’re asking if I don’t have permanent brain damage, I think I make the grade.”
Ruth grabbed a flashlight and peeled back my eyelids. She shone the beam into both my eyes. “Looks good. Come on. Let’s get inside in case Kency decides she needs to pay us a visit.”
I frowned. “Why would she pay you a visit?”
“I might’ve left our business card on the counter back at Xavier’s place.”
Alice smacked her head. “Why would you do that?”
Ruth opened the door to the house and grunted. “It just didn’t seem right stealing his equipment without at least leaving a note. He’s got all that good stuff, but what if someone needed it? I wanted them to know where to find the goods.”
Alice cursed under her breath as she waddled in and took a seat at the kitchen table. “I swear, I don’t know why I go anywhere with you. We were supposed to be looking for the good stuff. Xavier always claimed he wasn’t working on a contraption to catch ghosts, but I didn’t believe it.”
Ruth pulled a pitcher of tea from the fridge. “Anyone for a glass?”
My throat was so dry I could’ve used it to sand wood. “Is it sweet?”
She smiled widely. “Sweeter than a baby’s bum.”
“That’s a strange thing to say,” I admitted.
She shrugged. “It’s sweet. Want a glass?”
“Sure.”
Ruth poured up three glasses and lit a low lamp. I took a long, luxurious sip. Sugar immediately crystallized on my tongue. This was absolute heaven. It was amazing. It was… actually blissful.
After we’d each savored our sips of tea, Ruth placed her glass on a cork coaster, elegantly draped one hand over the other and tapped her fingers. Alice’s gaze shifted to Ruth, and the women exchanged a glance.
Ruth spoke first. “I know what the two of us were doing in Xavier’s house, but what about you? Why were you sneaking about?”
My throat closed. What was I supposed to tell them? The truth? No. We weren’t supposed to talk about the Team. Apparently that hadn’t stopped Anita from blabbing to Xavier.
I cleared my throat. A touch of honesty was usually the best policy. “Before he died, Xavier told me about something in his possession that I need. Something very important to me. So I went in looking for it.”
Alice’s bushy eyebrows shot up. “Before the police went in?”
I gave her a pointed look. “Same as the two of y’all.” I sighed. Maybe these two old ladies could help me. You never knew. “It was on his computer but now it’s gone. I was looking at surveillance video when you two broke in. Someone came and stole it—after the murder. But I never found out who.”
Ruth and Alice exchanged another look. Ruth leaned over, cocking one eye wide. “Who are you? You show up in town, get to eat lunch with a ghost. Oh yes, we know all about that. Xavier tells you something, and you just hop on over to his place, sneak in and look over his cameras. Are you sure you didn’t kill him?”
Maybe I’d been wrong to place any faith in these two after all. Maybe I shouldn’t have told them. What was to stop them from going to the cops and telling what they knew—I’d been at the murder scene and then broke into Xavier’s house under suspicious circumstances, same as them.
The doorbell rang.
Alice’s eyes widened. Ruth’s turned to saucers. She gave me a look. “Nobody move.”
She disappeared to the front of the house. I heard the door open and shut. Voices drifted inside. A moment later Ruth reentered, followed by a tall redheaded woman.
The woman took turns glaring from Alice to me and then back to Alice. Her gaze darted back to me. She crossed her arms and sank to one hip. The woman oozed attitude out the wazoo.
“You must be the missing Blissful Breneaux.”
“That’s me,” I said.
She flashed a badge. “I’m Sheriff Kency Blount.”
Then it hit me. All at once. Captain Blount and Farmer Kency from the graveyard. “Your relatives didn’t like each other much, did they?”
She blinked. “No. What’s that got to do with anything?”
I shrugged. “Nothing. It’s just something I heard in town.”
She sniffed really hard, like she was trying to pull a booger up to her brain. “I didn’t think anyone spoke about it anymore.”
I hitched a shoulder. “Must’ve been something I heard randomly.”
She stared at me so long I think her goal was to intimidate me. I batted my eyelashes at her, trying to throw her off. “First thing in the morning I need you to come down to the station, give a statement on what happened tonight.”
“Why? What happened?”
“Xavier Bibb was murdered.”
I jumped from my chair. “No! That’s awful!”
Kency didn’t respond. Instead she skewered Alice and Ruth with her gaze. “And do the two of y’all care to tell me why in the world you broke into Xavier Bibb’s house tonight? And I’m assuming you took Miss Breneaux with you?”
Alice’s mouth opened and shut like a fish. Ruth held “uhhhhhh” so long it sounded like the only word she knew.
“We didn’t break in,” Ruth said.
Kency smirked. “I found your business card and heard what sounded like an ATV driving away from the house.”
Uh-oh. Think fast, Blissful.
“Sheriff, these ladies have been with me all night. I left the haunted house screaming, ran into them. I was so scared I started crying. Ruth and Alice, these nice old ladies, brought me back here where we talked about life, pantyhose and monogramming for the past few minutes. Ruth promised to teach me how to bake a chess pie.”
“Pecan,” Ruth said. “I don’t like chess.”
“I think it was peach,” Alice said.
I shot them both dark, scathing looks. Would they shut up? Kency Blount would believe me if the two of them simply sat and nodded as if they were deaf, mute and dumb.
But at the moment I was thinking they would score a one hundred on the dumb part of an exam.
The sheriff pursed her lips. She eyed Alice. “Is all that true?”
Alice sat in front of me. She twisted her fingers behind her back. It was the universal signal that she was lying, but because her fingers were crossed, it was okay.
“It’s all true, Kency.”
Kency gave a quick nod, stared around the room and turned to go. Her boot heels hit the floor hard. She stopped, twisted back. “Do one of y’all care to tell me why I found your card in Xavier’s house?”
“He promised them an estimate on some equipment,” I said.
Her eyes narrowed. She dragged her gaze from me. “Is that true, Ruth?”
Ruth placed a hand over her heart. “May the Lord strike me dead if it isn’t.”
Kency gave another nod and headed for the door. “First thing tomorrow, Miss Breneaux.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The door shut. The three of us stared at one another. Then Ruth jumped up and slipped into the living room. She popped back in a second later.
“She’s gone. Driving off.” Ruth clapped her hands together.
Alice slumped her head to the table. “I lied. I hate lying.”
“You crossed your fingers, didn’t you?” Ruth said.
“Of course. But I still feel bad.”
“Ah, don’t feel bad. Blissful—that’s our new friend’s name—she lied worse. She covered for us.”
Ruth turned her gaze on me. “Why’d you do that?”
What was I supposed to say? That I didn’t want a couple of old ladies to go to jail for a crime they didn’t commit? I knew they were innocent, felt it in my gut. But someone wasn’t. Someone had killed Xavier Bibb and possessed the evidence I needed to get my old job back.
I shrugged. “I was only trying to help you out.”
Ruth rubbed her jaw. She glanced at Alice and then back to me. “I think it’s about time you started telling the truth, Blissful Breneaux. Why don’t you start right now?”
ELEVEN
“What makes you think I’m hiding something?” I said.
Alice shifted her Coke-bottle glasses. “Why would you help us?”
“Call me stupid but I have a feeling you didn’t have anything to do with Xavier’s death. I thought I’d make life a little easier for you.”
Ruth thumbed her chest and then pointed the digit at Alice. “The two of us aren’t town gossips. We let people be who they are. Only a few folks have ever seen the Teenybopper ghost. She certainly doesn’t show herself in daylight. Then Xavier let you go on the hunt with him. He’s never let us do that. Or, he never did—may his soul rest in peace. So who are you?”
I swallowed a knot in my throat. I could lie. I really could, but as I studied the two older women, I realized that they might be my greatest assets in this town.
“What did you say you do for a living?”
“We run the ghost investigation service in town,” Alice said. “We try to clean up the ghosts by scaring them off or capturing them. We’re not into that hocus-pocus séance sort of stuff. We’re scientists.”
“Where’d you study?” I said.
Alice cleared her throat. “In our basements. We’re homemade scientists. But,” she added quickly, “we’re almost positive we can capture a ghost.”
I hid my amused smile behind my hand. “And what will you do with a ghost when you catch one?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Ruth said, “sell it to the government. Let them experiment on it.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. It was the funniest thing I’d ever heard.
Alice’s face reddened. “You just wait here. I’ll show you.”
She retreated into the house and returned a minute later. I was expecting her to bring out that ghost-busting looking box that they swore would help them catch a ghost, but instead what she held in her hand was a rope.
“Where’d you get that?” Ruth said.
“I left it in your living room. Was going to take it with me when I went home.”
I eyed the thing. “What is it?”
“It’s a fiber-optic rope. Attached to one end is an energy pack. It works on the same light frequency as ghosts.”
I stopped and stared. The Ghost Team used tools very similar to this to capture spirits. Not all spirits were easy to convince over to the other side. Some fought like the devil. Those that did were captured—usually by someone else and then brought to me, where I would guide them over.
I brushed my fingers against the smooth surface. “Who made this?”
“We did,” Ruth said.
Alice gave her a funny look.
“Okay, Alice did. But I helped.”
“All you did was bake cookies and tell me where things should go.”
Ruth shrugged. “That’s called supervising.”
I couldn’t contain the surprise on my face. “Does it work?”
“Beats us,” Ruth said. “We haven’t been close enough to a ghost to find out.”
I stared at the lasso and at the women. It would work. Or it could at least hold a spirit for a minute or two.
“Ladies,” I said, “I’m looking for a spirit.”
Ruth cocked an eye. “What do you mean, ‘you’re looking for a spirit’?”
I cleared my throat and closed my eyes. I didn’t want to put the Ghost Team at risk, but I sure could use this rope to catch Lucky Strike.
“Have you ever heard of a ghost named Lucky Strike?”
Ruth and Alice exchanged glances and then each in turn shook her head. I folded my arms and rested them over the table.
“In Haunted Hollow lives one of the fiercest spirits known—Lucky Strike. Remember the blackout a few years ago that took out the entire Southeast?”
“Of course I remember,” Ruth said, grabbing a tin from the counter. She opened it, took a cookie and dunked it in her tea. “Want one?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll take two,” Alice said.
“Two won’t help your figure,” Ruth chided.
“I’m sixty-five. What do I care about my figure for?”
Ruth shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. Seems Mr. Hodges might like you a little smaller.”
“Who’s Hodges?” I said.
“Owns the bookshop. It’s haunted, you know. Most of the stores are.”
“Except the bed-and-breakfast,” I said.
Ruth and Alice exchanged a look. “It’s supposed to be ghost-free,” Ruth said, “but we don’t believe it.”
“Yeah, there was something fishy about the Storm family,” Alice seconded. “Old Mr. Storm—the grandfather, not the father—he was a real piece of work.”
Ruth raised her hand. “We’re getting off topic. Blissful wanted to talk about a spirit—Lucky Strike, is it?”
I took a bite of cookie. “That’s good shortbread.” It was. It melted in my mouth, leaving a buttery residue on my tongue. “I could eat these all day.”
“I do,” Ruth said.
“We all know you have a high metabolism,” Alice snapped. “There’s no need to brag about it.”
“I wasn’t bragging.”
Alice mumbled, “Right.”
“Anyway, I’m looking for Lucky. I need him for, um, reasons. He’s very smart and totally good at evading folks. No one’s ever been able to catch him.”
Ruth fixed an eye on me. She stared so hard I felt that she was seeing all the way to my soul, or at least my stomach. “And why do you need him?”
“Because he does things like cause blackouts. He’s dangerous. Word is he’s gearing up to do something else—something big. I need to find him before it’s too late.”
