Ain't Love a Witch? (Witchless in Seattle Mysteries Book 6) Read online

  After what I’d seen today, all sorts of gruesome thoughts flitted through my brain. Panic rose and fell in my stomach like a swift tide of terror as I ran down the row of chips and candies with Jessica Fletcher clinging to my head.

  I skidded to a halt—to find Mom in her favorite recliner, positioned just left of the long counter filled with lollipops and treats from the local bakery. The slight rise and fall of her chest had me reaching out for the scarred countertop in blessed relief.

  Straightening my wobbly legs, I heard the pound of Justice’s feet, followed by the clack of Coco’s heels as they raced right behind me just as I reached down and squeezed her shoulder.

  I composed myself, or tried to enough not to frighten her. Inhaling the distinct smell of the brisket in our smoker, I was glad to replace the damp, coppery smell of death.

  “Mom? Wake up.” I nudged her again before giving her shortly cropped hair a gentle run through with my fingers, smiling fondly at the electric-blue fuzz she’d dyed to match the color of her eyes.

  Mom, or May to the rest of the world, is eccentric, to say the least. To say the most would need way more time than I had to spare.

  She popped upright, her bright blue eyes wide open just as I exhaled a whoosh of air in relief. I love my mom something fierce. She’s seventy, but she has the spirit of a fifteen-year-old, and the hairstyle to match. Sometimes I wonder if some Freaky Friday-like thing happened to us when I was born.

  I’ve always been practical and cautious, and some would say I act more my mother’s age than my own thirty-three. May, on the other hand? Totally throw caution to the wind and watch it whizz by you as you jump out of a plane.

  Which she had, by the way. Jumped right out of that airborne piece of metal and wings like she was “Free Bird,” and from the headcam footage, giggled like a teenager with a schoolgirl crush the whole way down.

  Mom grabbed my hand, looking up at me. “What happened to your head, Sugarbuns?”

  I waved off my head wound. “I tripped and hit my head. No big deal.”

  Her sleepy eyes darted toward the flat screen TV I’d had installed in the far corner just so she wouldn’t miss her shows. “Did I miss it?”

  I closed my eyes and swallowed the lump of undeniable love in my throat for this whacky woman who was nothing like me, but everything to me. “Well, define missed, Mom. You definitely missed something this morning. If you’re wondering if it’s your doctor’s appointment, then no. You didn’t miss that.”

  “Damnation,” she said with a pout of her neon-pink lips and genuine disappointment in her reply.

  “What is this I hear in your voice?”

  Like I mentioned, my mother hates the doctor, but if it kept her blood pressure down and her life expectancy up, by golly, she wasn’t going to miss a single appointment. Not on my watch.

  “Duh, Lemon. Look at the time.” She pointed to the big rooster clock on the wall above the TV. “It’s almost eight, which means, I missed The Rock on The Today Show. He’s so muscly, and he makes me melty. I tried keeping my eyes open, but that damn Ambien always leaves me woozy the day after I take it. I figured I’d just nap until Leon got here.”

  “You missed something way bigger than The Rock.”

  “What’s bigger than The Rock?”

  “Mrs. Layne?” Justice stepped around me, putting his body in Mom’s line of sight.

  A grin spread across my mother’s heart-shaped face. “Well, if it isn’t my boy, Justice Carver. What brings you here before lunch, handsome? And Coco? Shouldn’t you be at that persnickety, dark overlord’s office by now, getting him coffee and washing his delicate socks in the sink or something? Honestly, that Vern thinks he’s the cat’s PJs since he became coroner, doesn’t he? When we all know all it takes to become King of the Dead is a course online.”

  My mom loved Justice, and I was going to try really hard to keep him from ruining that with his official line of questioning. I wanted to be the one to tell her Myron was dead.

  “It takes more than that, Mom. Vern’s just—”

  “Fanatical? Radical?” she asked with a chuckle. “He’s plain old power crazy. That’s what he is.”

  I set Jessica Fletcher on her lap and gave Justice a dirty look that said ease off the NYPD Blue routine, while steadfast Coco followed up with a pinch to his arm.

  “Vern and his heavy hand aside, I have something to tell you, Mom. But I want you to promise to stay calm, deal?”

  Her eyes, covered in silver and green glitter eye shadow, still heavy from sleep, assessed me. “Did you forget to set the timer on the smoker, Lemon? Do you have any idea what it’s like when the boys from the fire station come in here, looking for a rack of ribs, and all I have to offer them is Cheetos and Boston peanuts?”

  Okay, guilty. Sometimes I get wrapped up fixing a car or poring over an old Corvette manual and forget to set the timer before I go to bed. “No, Mom. It has nothing to do with the ribs. So I need you to promise you’ll stay calm.”

  She stroked Jessica’s back, straightening the newborn T-shirt around JF’s legs in a motherly fashion, and nodded. “You got it, Sugarsnap. I’m like a cucumber.”

  “Myron’s dead, Mom.” I held my breath along with her hand, smoothing my fingers over the wrinkled softness of her skin.

  For a brief moment, her sharp blue eyes registered sadness, and then her self-defense snark kicked in. She looked right at me and scoffed, “Was he cheating on Febreze, too?”

  Oh, my mother. Such a funny lady. She’d thought she was all shades of hysterical when she created that nickname for Myron’s wife.

  I sighed and sat on my haunches alongside the chair. She was, of course, implying maybe he’d done Fabritzia wrong like he’d done her, and the Latvian beauty had taken it upon herself to kill him. But I really wanted her to can the mention of any kind of killing while Justice was in cop mode.

  “No, Mom. Rather, I don’t know if he was or not. That’s beside the point. I found him in our men’s bathroom this morning.”

  Her eyes widened as she pushed the recliner down and slid to the edge of the tan leather seat. “Why, of all places on earth to die, would he choose our bathroom? Oh, that man! It wasn’t bad enough he was sticking his gordita where it didn’t belong, but he had to come back here and ratchet up my humiliation a notch by making our bathroom his final resting place?”

  “Mom!” I chastised, frowning at her. Sometimes she has no filter. Most times it’s a laugh-riot. Today? No bueno. “First, you promised you’d be calm. Second, be nice. You know you don’t really mean that. Third, it doesn’t look like Myron chose our bathroom to die in just to spite you post-mortem. It doesn’t look like he chose death at all.”

  She harrumphed me in only the way my mother can. “I hear you, but you’re not making any sense t’all, Lemon.”

  I grimaced. “Okay, straight shooting here. I found Myron this morning on my bathroom rounds. It looks like someone killed him. We don’t know if it happened in the bathroom or if it happened before and he was just dumped there.”

  Now her eyes went wide, and she gripped Jess to her chest. “Killed?”

  There was a commotion at the front door as it opened and shut, the chilly wind whispering its way across the store, with the scent of more rain to come in the air. The bells on the door clanged like church chimes, but it felt like they were warning me of something much bigger than a customer.

  Chief Burrows plowed his way down the aisle with that evidence bag in his hand and Leon, one of our cashiers, hot on his heels.

  Coco rushed over then, kneeling down in front of my mother and squeezing her hands. “Mama Layne, Justice and Chief Burrows might have some questions for you, but say nothing. Hear me?” she whispered, her eyes intense and bright.

  Mom looked astonished. “Questions about what, Coco?”

  Chief Burrows plodded toward us. The hard look on his face made my heart begin to race all over again.

  Mom hopped up from her chair and pointed to the
evidence bag. “You found my earring! I’ve been looking for that everywhere. Give it here, Ainsley,” she ordered, handing JF back to me.

  My stomach did a backflip. The vibe was all wrong as the chief stared my mother down, his small eyes roaming her face. “This is yours, Mrs. Layne?”

  Mom rolled her eyes. “I just said that, didn’t I? Now give it here, please.”

  Coco gripped Mom’s arm as a warning, but Mom wasn’t catching on.

  Chief Burrows popped his lips and rocked back on his heels. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Mrs. Layne. I need you to come with me to the station, please.”

  I stepped in front of my mother to shield her, reaching behind me to find her hand, entwining it with mine. Her fingers shook, and that made me angry. “For what? What’s going on, Chief Burrows?”

  He pointed to the evidence bag with a flourish, his thick lips forming a grim line. “We found this on the floor under Myron. If you look closely, it has blood on it. Your mother just admitted it was her earring. Not to mention, we have an eyewitness who says they heard her threaten to kill Myron. Now Myron’s dead in your bathroom, Lemon. I think that’s cause enough to bring May down to the station for questioning, don’t you?”

  Mom gasped behind me and yelled, “You think I knocked off Myron? You bloomin’ idiot! I’m not going anywhere. You hear me, Ainsley Burrows?”

  A flash of the chief’s handcuffs, gleaming under the store’s lights, sent my stomach into a nosedive.

  He postured, letting the handcuffs swing on his forefinger. “We can do this nice and easy and you come willingly, or I can cuff you and put you in the cruiser. Up to you, May.”

  Pushing me out of the way, Mom narrowed her gaze and approached Chief Burrows, hands on her hips—never a good sign where Mom’s concerned. “You’d better make sure you make ’em nice and tight, buddy!”

  Before I could stop him or my tiny terror of a mother, the chief was reading Mom her rights. “May Layne, you have the right to remain silent…”

  Now, I don’t know if I mentioned this, but JF is very good at reading emotions. Spider monkeys have a pack mentality. They don’t like when they or any members of their pack are threatened. They’re very possessive and territorial, and because Mom and I we’re essentially her parents.

  And one of her parents was being threatened.

  JF lunged from my shoulder to Chief Burrow’s face with a long yowl. She landed on him in a crab-like clutch, clinging to his face and adhering to it like a jellyfish, looking to suck his soul from him by way of his nose.

  Digging her claws into his balding head, she gripped the fringe of hair surrounding his skull like a three-quarter bowl and screeched her displeasure.

  And Chief Burrows wailed an ear-piercing scream in return as he tried to knock JF away. “Get it off! Get it off!” he bellowed, waving his arms, blinded by Jessica’s body clinging to his face.

  “Jessica, no!” I hollered as I dove for her, but I crossed streams with Coco, who was doing the same, and we collided, stumbling and falling into Justice.

  We crumbled like dominoes, toppling to the ground in grunts and limbs clashing together, knocking over a stand of postcards with a loud clatter.

  As we all rolled around like some kind of human bowling ball, attempting to untangle ourselves, a flutter of paper fell from Jessica Fletcher’s T-shirt.

  I caught it out of the corner of my eye just before Coco stuck one of her pointy high heels in my thigh, making me yelp in pain.

  But that wasn’t going to stop me from getting whatever Jessica had.

  I rolled to my side and scooped the paper up with quicker fingers than I’d have given myself credit for.

  A swift glance showed it was from Lester’s Pawnshop in town.

  And it had Myron’s name listed as the customer.

  I hastily stuffed it inside my sweats for further investigation and began the tedious process of peeling Jessica Fletcher from Chief Burrow’s face.

  “Jessica Fletcher! You let go of Chief Burrows right now, or there’ll be no NCIS for you!”

  Chapter 3

  The ride from our gas station to the precinct takes all of five minutes from start to finish. Though it seems as though we’re pretty isolated, that’s only due to the dense trees between our property and the harbor.

  As Mom and I entered town, passing the horseshoe of ice-cream colored shops nestled around the rim of ocean and docks, each decorated with strings of fun, colorful lantern lights, I clenched the steering wheel.

  Not even Rainier, with its glacial white tips and sprawling peaks, was soothing me the way it normally did.

  I didn’t experience the usual peace overtaking me when I saw the enormous, almost black rocks out at the point amidst the beige sand and purple-tipped waves. They often reminded me of Avalon, especially when the mist rolls in and the tide is low enough to walk out to them.

  I looked wistfully out to the pier, where the water was currently dancing up in frothy sloshes between the rows of boats and thought again about my koi pond.

  I needed some quiet time to think. I needed to consider what my dad would do if he were here and he knew his beloved May was a possible suspect in a murder.

  Begin at the beginning, Lemonade, he’d say with a chuckle and a ruffle of my hair, using one of his many nicknames for me. Use those sharp ears and eyes, stay in the background, observe, observe, observe.

  I shivered, determined to keep it together, not just for my mother, but my dad. He’d do whatever it took to protect my mother from being wrongfully accused.

  As we made a left into the parking lot, I fought the vision of Myron, his lifeless body in the stall of the bathroom. And then I also remembered the prawn next to his body—odd for sure. So odd it made me shake my head.

  That part of this whole mess made no sense. How did a nearly pristine crime scene with little to no visible evidence house a prawn, and if this was murder, who would leave something like that behind? But I had to set all of it on the back burner for now.

  When we arrived at the station, pulling up to its weather-beaten red and white brick front, sandwiched between the courthouse and, strangely enough, a place to rent jet skis and book boat tours, Mom was in fine May form.

  After literally peeling JF from the chief’s face—where thankfully, she’d done little damage to anything but his ego—I’d caged her and offered to drive Mom to the station peacefully.

  Chief Burrows was too busy regaining his composure to protest, so Justice gave us the go-ahead. Plus, seriously, Mom’s a handful, but she’s not exactly a flight risk.

  My cut wasn’t nearly as bad as all that blood led one to believe, so I butterflied it with a Band-Aid, ran a brush through my wet hair, put it in its customary braid to tame my mass of curls, and took a couple of aspirin to thwart the onslaught of a headache.

  I was all the better for those aspirin, too, because Mom was currently frothing at the mouth and on the hunt for her prey.

  Inside the police station, Mom stomped past the wall, featuring pictures drawn by the local elementary students, and up to the front counter, her colorful sneakers squeaking on the white floor.

  Mom pounded the flat of her hand on the long front desk, taking Officer Thurman Wheeler by surprise. He pushed back from the desk, knocked over his steaming cup of coffee, and yelped.

  When he saw it was my mom, he cleared his throat and smiled at her. His watery blue eyes crinkled at the corners as he mopped up the mess of coffee with a plaid napkin his wife Lainie had likely packed with his lunch.

  “Mornin’, Mrs. Layne. How can I help? Another shoplifting incident?”

  Mom shook her head and stuck her wrists out, palms up. “Nope. I’m here to be booked, Dano.”

  Thurman blustered, looking around his brightly lit desk. “Who’s Dano? I’m Thurman, Mrs. Layne. You remember me, right? The guy who used to deliver your newspaper when I was in high school,” he said gently, as though Mom had finally gotten to the age where she’d up and caught a whop
ping case of dementia. “Do you need to sit down, maybe?” Then he looked to me with a sympathetic gaze.

  Mom rolled her eyes. “Forget it. Just put the cuffs on me, and if you’re gonna do a cavity check, I’m puttin’ you on notice. I haven’t showered yet this morning.”

  Fighting a snicker, I looped my arm through hers, directing her to one of the black plastic seats lining the front entry. “We’re just waiting on the chief, Thurman.”

  “And I don’t have on any underwear either!” Mom chirped as she sat down.

  Patience, be my guide.

  “You know that’s not how it works, Mom. They haven’t arrested you for anything. They just want to ask you questions.”

  She snorted, tucking her patchwork purse under her breasts and crossing her feet at the ankles, the multicolored laces of her high-top sneakers flopping to the floor.

  “This is a waste of time, and they know it. If I was gonna kill the two-timer, I’d have done it when he told me about Febreze!”

  Understand, our police department is pretty small. There are maybe a hundred employees total, working the various shifts. So when everyone turned from their desks located in the pit of the station and stared at Mom as the harsh glare of the fluorescent lights beat down on us, more than seventy-five percent of the officers there knew May Layne and her unfiltered responses. And at least half of them had been to our house at one point or another when we were kids.

  But suddenly, all these people had become the enemy. Everyone had their law enforcement ears on. And I had to make Mom understand no one was looking at her like May Layne, the gregarious if not outlandish mother of Lemon Layne and the widow of an ex-biker beloved by the town he’d loved right back.

  They were looking at her as if she were a suspect in Myron’s murder.

  I sat up in my seat and looked Mom directly in the eye. Keeping my voice low, I gave her a dose of reality. “Mom? For the love of pulled pork, if you don’t stop flapping your gums, I’m going to have to take extreme measures here and use the Gorilla Glue on your lips. Stop talking about, mentioning, voicing, whatever, anything about killing Myron, okay? He. Is. Dead. It looks bad for you as his ex-DVD-shooting girlfriend. Get it?”