Play That Funky Music White Koi (A Lemon Layne Mystery Book 2) Page 16

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “We’ll have to think of a hand signal for murderer, because for sure you didn’t get the one where I told you there was an emergency at the store. I wasn’t sure Rupert was the killer. Not one hundred percent, but I had a suspicion, and when I saw you in there but he kept saying you weren’t, I thought he was trying to hurt you. So, I was trying to get you out of there, Mom. Next time, work with me, huh?”

  She laughed and pressed kisses to my forehead and cheeks. “I was just tryin’ to do something nice for your birthday, honey.”

  When I saw Cappie hovering behind everyone, the crowd over his shoulder all gawking at us, I held out my hand to him. “C’mere, hero,” I whispered, barely able to contain more tears.

  He took my hand, but his face went sheepish. “Aw, don’t call me that, Lemon. I ain’t no hero. Just doin’ what I gotta do to protect a fellow Figger.”

  I pulled him into a sweaty, fishy, beer-smelling hug, and I didn’t even care. “Where’d you learn to react so quickly, Cap? That was something else.”

  He untangled himself from my grip and said, “I saw your mom come runnin’ outta that store like the devil himself was chasin’ her, screaming for help, so I went in to see if I could help. ’Nam taught me a lot more than just the government’s run by a bunch o’ bots, ya know.”

  My throat threatened to close up. He’d done more than that, but I didn’t want to embarrass him. “Thank you, Cappie. You saved my life. I’ll never be able to thank you enough.”

  He backed away, his bare feet dancing on the hot pavement. “It wasn’t nothin’, Lemon. But maybe I could get a free catfish every now and then?”

  “You can have as many catfish and brisket and whatever you want until the real apocalypse happens and there are no more smoked meats to be had,” I said, before he winked and skipped off to wherever Cappie spent his days.

  “Leave it to me to pick the one guy in town who’s got a thirst for killin’ to buy my art from, eh?” Mom joked, pressing another kiss to my cheek.

  All three of us laughed until Justice approached, his face serious.

  I sat up straight and finally looked at my hand, which did indeed have a small gash, but it wasn’t serious. However, I absolutely would not let him give me hell for being involved in yet another investigation when I tried to do the right thing this time.

  But first I needed to know, because somewhere deep inside me, I’d truly liked Rupert. “Is he…”

  “Dead?” he asked tiredly, dark circles under his eyes. “Yeah. He’s dead. It couldn’t be helped.”

  My heart tightened then released, and I sighed. But then I remembered I was probably in for a good old-fashioned Justice Carver lecture—for which I was not going to put up with.

  “Before you get started, I called you, Justice Carver. Oh yes, I did. I texted, too, but I couldn’t waste time waiting on you because Mom was in that gallery and I was terrified. I planned to go in and get her out like I knew nothing then head straight to the station. So don’t you go accusing me of meddling. Because I did not.”

  Then he did something that surprised us all, I think. He laughed until he had to bend over at the waist to stop the hyena-like giggles pouring from his throat.

  Mom poked him in the ribs. “What the heck’s gotten into you, boy?”

  He straightened immediately and sobered. “I think I’m just tired, Mama May. I think I’m so tired, I don’t even care what the story is or how Lemon found out about Rupert. In fact, I think I’m giddy-tired.”

  I held up my hand. “Okay, so I have two questions for you. First, I’m calling in my IOU. Did you take Thea in for more questioning because of the barrette?”

  He nodded, scrubbing his hand over his stubbly jaw. “Yep. We found her hair follicle in it, but she swore she’d only borrowed it from Abby and had given it back a few days before she was killed. She swore Abby had it in her store.”

  “Right, and according to Rupert, Abby was wearing it the night he killed her. He’s who whacked me over the head. He said he was afraid his fingerprints might be on it but he didn’t remember it falling from her hair until after he’d killed her—so he went back to the scene of the crime.”

  “You’d know better than I, Detective Layne,” he said on a husky chuckle. “I hope you’ll explain it all to me when you and Mama May give your statements.

  Oh, I heard that tone—the tone that said I was where I didn’t belong, but that just wasn’t true. “I’m telling you, it wasn’t my fault I found out before you. But forget that. Second question. Ready?”

  He drove his hands into the pockets of his trousers. “Shoot.”

  “Why the heck are you like, everywhere these days? Do you ever sleep? You’ve been at every single crime scene, my clunk on the head, the VFW hall, today… Shouldn’t you get some sleep so you can freshen up for the next lecture you’re going to have to give me? I can’t spar with you if you can’t use your words because you’re fast asleep on your desk.”

  Justice gave us all a secretive smile. “There’s a reason I’ve been working so hard and so much. A good reason, as a matter of fact.”

  “And that is?” Coco asked, her eyebrow raised.

  “Detective. I wanted to make detective. And I just got word today about my test.”

  “And?” we all asked in unison.

  He shrugged as if it were no big thing, but he said, “And I made detective!”

  I hopped off the edge of the ambulance. “Aw, man. Now the lectures are never gonna end, are they, Detective Carver?”

  He grinned, his handsome face bright under the hot sun. “Never ever.”

  And we all laughed again as we threw ourselves at him and smothered him with hugs and kisses, and the kind of love and pride only people who call each other family can.

  The End

  Thank you so much for joining Lemon and gang! I sure hope you’ll come back for more in Total Eclipse of The Carp—coming soon!

  Preview another book by this author

  Dewitched

  Witchless In Seattle Mysteries, Book 3

  Dakota Cassidy

  Chapter 1

  “Are you Stevie Cartwright?”

  A really good-looking older man dressed in a black suit with a lavender shirt and deep-purple tie stood at the opening of my door, where, just behind him, chaos ensued on my front lawn.

  In the middle of the swirl of activity, I couldn’t help but notice he stood out like a bright plate from Pier One in a sea of Corningware. Not that Corningware isn’t perfectly lovely. It is. It’s reliable and functional. But it’s not exactly Waterford—which is what Win informs me is the best of the best, in his snobby opinion.

  Me personally? I’m just fine with a paper plate, but Win (he’s my dead British spy ghost) insisted I at least consider upping my taste game and contemplate a more refined set of dinnerware.

  Looking up at the stranger decorating my doorway, his good looks so devastatingly handsome, I forgot the question.

  “So you are Stevie Cartwright, correct?”

  I scanned him from head to toe once again. Wow, the caterers didn’t just dip into the handsome lottery pool when they hired the help, they dove in head first.

  “You must be the greeter, right?” I stuck out my hand and he took it, though he looked a little confused.

  But no worries. My house was enormous and there was more activity going on than at a beehive convention, as everyone prepared for my housewarming party. I was just as confused as him, to be honest. So I waved him in distractedly. What was one more person in the madness?

  I scanned him from head to toe again, noting his outfit didn’t match the rest of the caterer’s staff, but then, his job was to address the guests as they arrived. He should be showier.

  Sticking out my hand, I smiled. “It’s nice to meet you. Gosh, I hope you don’t mind me saying, but you’re really good looking. So I’d better warn you now. The mature ladies of Ebenezer Falls are going to have to be herded like cattle or you’ll
have a backup at this door worse than anything you’ve ever seen on the I-5 freeway. Just a head’s up for efficiency’s sake.”

  At first he stood up straight and appeared to preen a little, but then he cocked his head, a head with just enough gray at the temples to be dangerously delicious. “I’m sorry, say again?”

  I winced, tightening the belt on my bathrobe. “Did I offend you? Sorry. Sometimes I say things before I think them through thoroughly. It’s a curse, I tell you.”

  “No. No, I’m not offended. Not at all. In fact, I’d quite agree,” he said on a velvety chuckle, smoothing his full head of thick black hair. “But I think we have our signals crossed—”

  “Stevie!” Win, my ghost I mentioned earlier, yelped in my ear, his distress crystal clear.

  I winced and held up a finger to the man who was still talking, his words muffled due to Win.

  Dollars to donuts my spy was all up in arms over some minor detail that wouldn’t make a hill o’ beans difference after tonight was through, but that didn’t stop him from nitpicking me to death anyway.

  We’d only been planning this housewarming party for a month. Yep, that’s right. It had been almost thirty full days of torturous choices—dinnerware, cutlery, silk or rustic-themed napkins, colors, ice sculptures, flowers, lighting, entertainment, and so on. Hence my analogies to Corningware.

  Torture, I tell you.

  I pressed my fingertips to the Bluetooth I used as my beard for communicating with Win when others were around. I’d been caught a couple of times talking to him as though he were in the room with me, not just in my ear, and it always proved awkward.

  So I wore the Bluetooth almost as an accessory nowadays.

  “What now? Swear, Winterbottom, if you’re interrupting me when I’m with the staff—the staff you insisted we hire for this housewarming—just to tell me some Cirque du Soleil member with a fancy, unpronounceable one-letter name is stuck at the airport with her leotard and satin rope again, I’m going to kill you!”

  “Now that’s simply impossible, isn’t it, Cheeky One?”

  I bobbed my head, turning around to attack the next problem in the kitchen, when I distractedly noted that the handsome man followed. “Fair point. But I’ll think of some way to make you wish you’d never met me if you throw one more problem on my plate. This housewarming was your idea, International Man of Mystery. I would have been fine just inviting everyone from town over for some Cheese Whiz and Triscuits—maybe even pizza or weenies in a blanket if ambition really struck. I’ve never hosted a party of this size before—let alone with fancy dishes, a string quartet, and some guy hanging from the ceiling in the parlor by a ruffled sheet! Give me a break, would you? It’s been Stevie, Stevie, Stevie all day long!”

  “Your husband, I presume?” the debonair man asked with a smile.

  “I’d rather eat toxic waste,” I replied. Curious as to why he was following me around.

  Petula, from Parties By Petula, the catering service we’d hired, said her people were go-getters, initiators. She must’ve said that a hundred times while we planned this party. As handsome as he was, he needed to go take some of that initiative.

  “Toxic waste, Dove? Really? Why do you have to be so curmudgeonly?”

  “Are we going to get into the million reasons? After you just finished asking me to shine the handle on the fridge with a cloth made of cashmere?”

  “Bah! I didn’t. I just said it had a lot of fingerprints and it should be freshened. Be careful not to scratch it, use a soft cloth. A mere suggestion, nothing more.”

  “Okay, fine. Let’s get to the point. I still have to dress and do my makeup before my mother arrives. I’ve told you about Dita, haven’t I? She makes me unreasonable, surly even. I want everything in place before I have to locate her world and make it revolve around her. So what’s the problem this time?”

  “Your mother’s attending the party?” the stranger asked, catching a glimpse of himself in the freshly shined fridge. He stopped for a moment in front of the French doors and smiled at his distorted image.

  No, he really did. It was exactly like you’d see on a cartoon where the character catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror, smiles, and his teeth sparkle. He flashed a million watts while he lifted his chin and checked each angle with a tilt of his head. Then he gave himself a thumbs up—two, if I’m to be precise.

  Healthy self-esteem is a good quality for sure.

  But I had things to do. So I tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to the entryway. “Listen, er…really great-looking guy. I have five hundred million things to do before this shindig starts. So if you’d just go wait by the front door for instructions from Petula, I’m pretty sure you won’t lack for company.”

  I didn’t bother to wait for his answer of compliance; I had a dress to squeeze into. Waving to the chef in our amazing new white and Italian marble gourmet kitchen before grabbing a blob of cheese with some brown thing under it, I zipped out of the kitchen and up the gorgeous new staircase, alight with twinkling fairy lights.

  Racing down the wide hall, I didn’t even take the time to admire the smooth, creamy-colored walls or the pictures of scenic cottages Win had personally picked out.

  Skidding around the corner, I fell into my bedroom where my familiar, Belfry, napped on the furry back of our rescue dog, Whiskey.

  Setting my blob of cheese on the nightstand, I did take the time to appreciate my bedroom.

  Gosh, I loved this room. It was every dream I’d ever had as a teenager. Especially my bed, literally built against the tall windows facing the Puget Sound. Framed with wainscoting in pale lemon and a bookcase built into the headboard, and blue and white chintz bedding with tons of fluffy French country pillows. It was, in a word, magnificent.

  A hanging chandelier cast a warm glow over the room, the sparkly multi-shaped jewels making shadows on the walls. A white brick fireplace—which I wasn’t able to take for a test drive right now at the end of May—sat on the far wall, and would keep me toasty come December. A matching wingback blue chintz chair with a warm cashmere pale lemon throw draped over its back sat by yet another set of windows overlooking the front lawn. To top it off, a big braided rug lay in the center of it all.

  It was heaven.

  And I really wanted to crawl back into that heaven and forget this whole party thing.

  But I’d promised Win I’d get involved with my fellow Ebenezer Fall-ers, and he told me this was the best way to do it. Good food, expensive wine, and ridiculous ice fountains were the way to reintroduce myself to the people I’d grown up with and forge new adult friendships.

  He’d said this was how to welcome everyone into my life again after having left when I was just out of high school to move to Paris, Texas, for training as a paranormal 9-1-1 operator for my coven of witches. Who were no longer my coven, by the by.

  This party was a friendly way to say “howdy neighbor.” For some reason, probably because not so long ago I’d lost everyone in my life, Win felt it important to thrust me into the face of anyone who crossed my path because he never wanted me to be alone.

  Which I mostly never was. Not with him in my ear, our new dog Whiskey and my bat familiar Belfry. This particular worry of his made me worry about Win’s future on what we laughingly called the place he was spending his afterlife—Plane Limbo.

  Where spirits who aren’t yet sure they’re ready to cross hang out and linger. Or in Win’s case, turn their afterlife into one big party, conga line included. I wondered if all this getting-me-involved meant he was considering crossing over for the first time since I’d met him.

  Win had refused to cross over from the start, but I wasn’t pushing him to, either. He was one of the reasons I’d been able to keep my head above water after I lost my witch powers. But I worried someday he might not have a choice, and as selfish as it seems, he was my tether these days. My glue. I needed him, and I’d mourn his loss for a very long time if he left.

  Whiskey, our St. Bernard,
stretched on the bed, his mahogany and white fur rippling as he groaned his pleasure, rolling over for tummy scratches.

  “Duuude!” Belfry chirped his discontent. “A little warning before you do that, huh, buddy? You could crush me and then what? Who would you have to pretend-throw the ball to you when these lugs are too busy solving murders?”

  I giggled. Belfy is a cotton ball bat. Two inches of snarky, snarly, snow-white, loveable, forever-napping bat, and I’d have never made it this far without him after being kicked out of my coven and losing my powers. He remained steadfast in his loyalty to me as my familiar, the coven be damned.

  Plucking him from the bed before Whiskey crushed him, I held him up and looked him in the eye, his yellow snout and ears twitching as he asked, “You ready for tonight, Cinderella?”

  “I’m afraid of tonight,” I replied, eyeing my glittering red designer dress. A brand-new designer dress Win insisted I purchase, rather than dig into my stash of secondhand vintage clothing.

  I love the coup of finding a designer label in a secondhand store. There’s nothing more fulfilling when it comes to shopping for clothes. Win insisted I could more than afford all new designer clothing, but he missed the point entirely. If I can just buy whatever I want, it takes the fun out of the hunt. Also, there was a time when I couldn’t just buy what I wanted—before Win gave me all his worldly possessions.

  “You’re not nervous, are you, Stevie?” Bel asked. “You know all these people, for cripes sake. What’s the big hullabaloo?”

  “They’ve never met me this way, Bel. I used to be just Stevie Cartwright, brooding, pouty, Goth-black-makeup lover. And when we moved back here, I was thrown into the position of Madam Zoltar, medium to the heavens, before anyone really had a chance to see all this. But no one knows this Stevie. The one with all the money for a champagne fountain and Italian marble countertops. It feels kinda showy, don’t you think?”

  Belfry twittered his wings. “If I were you, I’d worry less about that and more about the fact that I have something to tell you. So get dressed. It’ll keep your hands busy so you can’t grab something and throw it at me.”