Witch at Heart: A Jinx Hamilton Witch Mystery Book 1 (The Jinx Hamilton Mysteries) (8 page)

I
t took
us the better part of an hour, but we finally made Grace understand that the police couldn’t ID her from skeletal remains without running a lot of tests and plugging them into the missing person’s database. Then she hit us with a question we couldn’t field. “What if no one reported me missing?”

“Well,” I said, “that might make it harder, but we’ll still figure out who you are.”

Yeah, I know. I just walked right out on a limb there, but you try denying a 30-year-old ghost who just wants to talk to her mother.

By that time Tori had thrown her stuff into her bag and was getting ready to take off. We said our good-byes out front on the sidewalk.

“You gonna be okay?” she whispered against my ear when we hugged.

“Yeah,” I said, “but I’m already looking forward to Friday.”

When I went back inside, Grace was floating around peering into the display cases. “Hey,” I said, “I’m really beat. I’m going to go to bed. Do you . . . uh . . . need anything?”

“No,” Grace said. “I’m fine. I’ll just stay down here and talk to Myrtle. I don’t want to keep you up.”

Obedient and considerate. This was my idea of the perfect houseguest.

I was so worn out from the weekend’s activities; I had no trouble falling asleep. The cats woke me up the next morning at 5 o’clock on the dot. They apparently didn’t intend to change their schedule just to accommodate me.

While I drank my coffee, I made a list of things I wanted to get done for the day, including going next door to “say hi” to Amity. The real reason was to get a good look at her shop. I didn’t want to start stocking anything that would put me in direct competition with her because, after all, we were neighbors. I thought she mainly had regional pottery and paintings, but I needed to make sure before I started motoring around talking to local craftsmen.

I also wanted to ask Chase if he could recommend a contractor to discuss the addition to the back of the store. There was a long email from Tori waiting in my InBox describing what she had in mind. The major points were: galley kitchen, Murphy bed, and “awesome” shower. She was already living in less than 400 square feet, so I had no doubt we could make this work for her.

Grace was standing at the front of the shop looking out the window when I came down. “Good morning,” I said. “How are you?”

“Good,” she said. “There’s so much more to see here than up in the woods. Can I go upstairs and be with the cats?”

“Of course you can,” I said. “Would you like me to turn the TV set on for you?”

“Oh!” she said. “Is
All My Children
still on?”

“Sorry, it was cancelled.”

Grace gasped. “They cancelled Erica? Who was she married to when the story quit?”

I winced. “I honestly don’t know.”

“Well, what about
One Life to Live
?”

“Also gone,” I said, shaking my head.

“
General Hospital
?”

“That one is still on,” I said, “but not until this afternoon.”

“Oh, okay,” Grace said. “I forgot about time being important. I’ll just go see the cats now.”

And like that, she was gone.

“Myrtle,” I said, “take care of her.”

The lights dimmed and came back up as if the store had just nodded. Good enough for me. I went out the front door, locking it behind me, and greeted Festus, who was sunning on the bench outside the cobbler’s shop.

“Good morning, you old con artist,” I said, scratching his ears. “Your dad ratted you out. I know about the zoomies.”

Festus made a point of ignoring me, choosing instead to fix the courthouse with his thousand-yard stare. For the uninitiated, that’s the feline version of pleading the Fifth.

Chase was at his workbench behind the counter when I walked in, putting a new pair of heels on a pair of western boots. “Good morning,” I said brightly. “Ready to tackle a new week?”

“Well, hi!” he greeted me, putting down his tools and wiping his hands as he stood up. “You’re up bright and early.”

“I have a question,” I said. “Would you happen to know a good local contractor?”

“I do,” he said. “Mark Haskell is the best in the county. Are you going to do some remodeling?”

“Kind of,” I said, filling him in on the plan for Tori to join the business.

“What a great idea,” Chase said. “She’s right, there’s plenty of room back there. And Mark did a similar job on the other side of the square last year. Remember the pizza guy? He lives behind his shop, too. I’m sure he’d let you and Tori see his place if you ask. Mark told me there’s all kind of great space-saving ideas worked into the design. I’ll introduce you if you like.”

“I would like that,” I said.

“We could go over there for supper one night this week,” Chase said. “He has pasta dishes at night.”

For just a minute I couldn’t speak. Chase McGregor had just very smoothly asked me to dinner.

When I didn’t answer, he said, “I mean, if you like pasta.”

“Pasta. I do. Like it. Pasta, I mean,” I babbled. “Uh, yes, thank you. Just, uh, let me know when.”

Chase grinned. “It’s a date.”

A date. There it was. He used the word. Date. But it wasn’t a date date. It was more like a date -- as in a day on the calendar -- with a number. Right? Hamilton, get ahold of yourself.

“Right,” I said, a little too brightly. “It’s a date. Okay. Well, I’ll let you get back to work. I need to go see Amity. I’ll . . . talk to you later. . .”

Chase grinned at me all the way out the door. I was hoping that was because he thought I was cute, not because I sounded like a complete raving idiot.

As I came out the door, Festus gave me a pointed, “Meowrr.”

“Hush, you,” I said under my breath. “Keep your opinions to yourself.”

My visit with Amity was considerably less eventful, but equally satisfying. Although she billed her shop as “local crafts,” it was really an art gallery that also carried pottery and a few sculptures. Nothing I was planning on investigating for my own place would compete with her. In fact, when I told her I was considering putting in an espresso bar and having live music on occasion, she grew more excited by the minute.

“Fan-tas-tic,” she enthused. A word she then repeated several times, varying the emphasis on the syllables until she sounded like she was chanting some kind of New Age mantra.

“We could do event nights,” she said. “The customers could drink wine and try to draw with me, and drink coffee and listen to music with you.”

As Amity expressed it, the concept was a little amorphously free form, but I got the jist of where she was headed. In fact, if several of the businesses on the street stayed open the same night, we would all benefit from the evening traffic. I couldn’t wait to share
that
idea with Tori. We could really be onto something here!

I managed to extricate myself from Amity a little before 9 o’clock, so I was only a few minutes late turning the orange-and-black sign in the front window from “Closed” to “Open.” For a brief 10 minutes I thought I had this retail thing nailed, and then my first customer did his best to knock the wind out of my sails.

An elderly gentleman came marching in the front door, approaching the counter with such a commanding demeanor; I had to fight the urge to take a step backwards. “I’m here for my regular order,” he announced, and then just stood there glaring at me.

No name.

No clue what that order might be.

Not one thing to help me do my job.

But he was nursing a serious case of impatience I could see growing by the second.

Mustering my best the-customer-is always-right face, I said, “I’m so sorry, sir. You may have heard that my aunt, Fiona Ryan, passed away last week. She left me the store and this is my first day. Would you mind telling me your name and giving me an idea of what I’m looking for?”

“I do mind,” the old coot snapped.

Gritting my teeth to keep my smile in place, I said, “Well, sir, if I don’t know your name, how can I look for your order?”

“She never knew my name and she figured it out,” he said. “Improvise.”

Great.

“Let me look in the back,” I said, excusing myself to the relative privacy of the storeroom.

Glancing over my shoulder to make sure my irascible customer hadn’t followed me, I whispered urgently, “Okay, Myrtle, sorry to bother you, but what does this guy want?”

Surprisingly, it was Rodney who answered me. As soon as the rat heard my question, he came out from behind his liniment-can fortress and trotted over to a small brown bag lined up with several others of its kind on a shelf in the corner. I peered at the bag. In Aunt Fiona’s neat handwriting, the label read, “Monday, 9:30 a.m.” I glanced at my watch. 9:35. This had to be the man’s order.

Curious, I gently opened the bag, careful not to wrinkle the paper, and drew out a ziplock bag full of some green plant neatly chopped . . . oh God . . . was Aunt Fiona selling pot to the locals? Then I saw the second tag, which read “horny goat weed” and gave instructions for steeping tea with the leaves inside the plastic bag.

From the front of the store, the old guy barked, “I don’t have all day, young woman.”

Returning the ziplock bag to the discreet confines of its brown outer wrapper, I returned to the counter and made my first sale. I was in luck. The price was written on the bag. The old man left without thanking me or acknowledging my less than heartfelt “have a good day.” In fact, the guy slammed the door behind him so hard the pane rattled.

As I watched the man stomp across Main Street without looking right or left, oblivious to the cars that came screeching to a stop to avoid hitting him, I took out my phone and looked up horny goat weed.

Squinting to make out the tiny words on the screen, I read, “According to folklore, horny goat weed's reputed aphrodisiac qualities . . . ”

Whoa!

Too. Much. Information.

I hastily closed the browser. I was going to need brain bleach to get the image of that old guy . . .

La la la la la la la la.

Since Rodney had done me a solid, I cut a slice out of the apple I was planning to have with a sandwich for lunch and went into the storeroom. When I called, my new rodent sidekick came out and gratefully accepted the treat.

“You saved me, little man,” I said, lightly scratching the bridge of his nose and giggling when he wiggled his whiskers and scrunched up his face with pleasure. “I don’t suppose you happen to know where Fiona kept a list of her regular orders?”

Without hesitation, the rat carefully put the apple slice down, trotted the length of the shelf, and executed a perfect jump to the top of the old wooden file cabinet. He leaned over the edge, patted the top drawer with his paw, and gave me a look that said, “You getting this?”

I went over and opened the drawer. To my surprise, when I leaned to look inside, Rodney jumped on my shoulder and lightly held on to my blouse as he, too, peered into the drawer while squeaking instructions.

“Okay, okay,” I said, “hold your horses, Rodney.”

I thumbed through the folders, and sure enough, the third one back read, “Standing Herb Orders.” There was not only a list, but also phone numbers for suppliers. I cross-referenced the list against the rows of brown paper bags on the corner shelf. I would have everything covered until Grandpa Stud Muffin came back next Monday.

With Rodney’s help, I checked the shelves, figured out which herbs needed to be restocked, and called the appropriate outlets. Everyone I talked to was serenely Zen in a way that suggested at least some of them used herbal products they
didn’t
list in their catalogs. I honestly don’t remember ever saying “namaste” before that morning, but by noon I’d uttered the word at least two dozen times.

When Rodney tugged on my blouse and nodded toward his cage, I was actually sorry to let the little guy down from my shoulder. To show my appreciation, I gave him a second apple slice. “Sorry if I wore you out, little guy,” I said, as the rat trotted off with his reward.

To his credit, Rodney gallantly looked back over his shoulder as if to say “don’t mention it,” before going home for what I assumed would be a well-earned mid-day snooze.

The rest of the day was pretty quiet. A couple of people dropped by just to say hello and to offer me their condolences about Fiona’s passing. A tourist couple came in at 3 o’clock and waxed rhapsodic about the “rustic charm” of the shop. I suspected they were eyeing my wares for resale on eBay, but they left empty handed.

All in all, I had more than enough time to think about the fact that I would be having dinner with Chase McGregor that night. We had agreed via text message to meet out front about 6 o’clock for the walk across the square. I planned to close at 5 o’clock so I’d have enough time to check on Grace, who had been absent all day, feed the cats and freshen up a little bit.

Freshen up.

That’s girl speak for “obsess about what I was going to wear.”

Which was silly, since I looked perfectly fine to go to the local pizzeria with my next-door neighbor / business acquaintance. Except that Chase had already edged over into the next-door neighbor / friend category, and had the potential for a complete re-classification to a different level if things went well.

There was just one problem that had me chewing the inside of my lip with worry.

My re-classifications of male acquaintances rarely went well.

O
kay
. So, let me tell you about my love life.

Don’t worry. This won’t take long.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Unlike Tori, I don’t have a preference for mildly “bad” boys. I’m not being disloyal. She has her standards and they do exceed “tattoos must be correctly spelled.” But even she will admit that none of the guys she’s dated know the difference between Mensa and Mentos.

After graduation, Tori and I both stayed with our high school sweethearts through that first summer. By the fall, however, mine was off to college and hers was doing a nickel in the state pen for stupidly believing his buddy Luther when he said, “Just sit in the car and wait for me while I pop into this liquor store. Oh, and dude, keep the car running.”

My boyfriend, Billy Wayne, loved
Star Wars
and his engineering textbooks more than me, or really more than anything in life. He could tell you in excruciating detail why some guy’s Boba Fett costume at ComiCon was inaccurate, but he couldn’t remember my birthday to save his life.

Like many high school couples before us, college doomed any future we might have had, mainly because he actually went to college and I stayed in my tiny home town and waited tables at Tom’s Cafe.

Unlike Billy Wayne, who was our class valedictorian, I was just an average high school kid. No scholarships for me. And my folks just couldn’t afford to send me to college. I could have applied for student loans and probably gotten them, but I really couldn’t see how going into debt until I was 90 was going to make my life better, especially since I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do with my life.

Billy Wayne took to college like the proverbial duck to water. I don’t imagine he ever was very popular, but he had droves of fellow
Star Wars
nerds to hang out with in the engineering department. In fact, he married one of them. She dressed as Princess Lei for the ceremony, complete with those cinnamon bun hair things on either side of her head.

Tori and I spent that first winter after graduation not dating. In fact, we had a lot of those “men are worthless jerks” conversations over junk food and chick flicks, that is until she met Cody and I started seeing Jesse. You can probably just go by the names here to see where this is all headed.

We’ve never had any best friend chick drama over the guys we’ve been involved with, but Cody and Jesse were the exception. I couldn’t stand Cody and Tori couldn’t stand Jesse, and we let each other know our viewpoints in a series of wholly uncharacteristic cat fights. The two guys, however, loved each other. In fact,
they
probably should have been the ones dating -- except for the fact that even making that joke would have sent the pair of them into a redneck, testosterone-infused fit of homophobia.

I really don’t know what I was thinking going with some guy who was so conservative he had a Confederate flag “tastefully” painted on his truck. Tori and I were dragged along to various activities that involved Cody and Jesse pointing loaded guns at pretty much anything that moved, until I finally cracked and admitted that I thought the NRA was wrong on the issue of gun control.

You want to sink a romantic relationship in the South in under 30 seconds? Share with your man that you think the federal government has a right to tell him how many firearms he can own and where and when he can carry them. Honey, you will get voted off the island so quick your head will spin.

In a show of brotherly camaraderie, Cody dumped Tori because he just couldn’t go with someone who had a “crazy bitch for a best friend.” Note that said diagnosis of my mental health was made because I don’t think it’s necessary to have a loaded gun on your person at all times. Color me unstable.

Frankly, we were both relieved. We might have been without boyfriends, but we had our friendship back. We both apologized over several bottles of commiseration wine, and once again, swore off men.

For the most part, I meant it. Or at the very least I attempted to date within my own species in future encounters. Other than a few dinners and an occasional concert or something, none of the guys who asked me out were interesting enough to stay on my radar. Tori, on the other hand, went through quite the who’s who of Southern manhood. We’re talking the kind of guys who think it’s romantic for the two of you to wear matching John Deere tractor caps, thus proclaiming your commitment to the world.

Thankfully, none of them tried to put a ring on it, because I really did not want to have to play out the second lead in a real-life version of that Dixie Chicks song, “Earl.” Hurt my BFF and I will end you. It’s pretty much that simple.

By the time I inherited Aunt Fiona’s shop, I hadn’t been on a date in at least a year, maybe two. Can you tell the last one was so memorable the experience never made it past the first layer of brain cells and into deep memory? I think we went for fried chicken and talked about NASCAR, but I can’t be certain. In conversations like that, I tend to make noncommittal ambiguous noises that could be taken for agreement, interest, or a coonhound yawning.

One of the reasons I was so excited to be having dinner with Chase was that he didn’t seem remotely interested in any activity that involved trucker hats or guns. Also, he was college educated -- I know this because I can just make out the word “university” on the gold class ring he wears on his right hand -- and not only gainfully employed, but a bona fide business owner. He also mentioned that he needed to swing by the library that evening to return some books. Ladies, you may not believe this, but literacy is a real plus when choosing a significant other.

I shared all of this with Grace in a highly encapsulated form as I was feverishly changing tops while I was getting ready. For all that she was non-corporeal, Grace was the only other female present to offer an opinion on my clothing choices.

“That one kinda makes you look like someone’s grandma,” she said, as politely as possible, when I emerged in a blouse with some sort of ruffly thing around the collar that I only bought because it was on sale.

Even if her fashion sense was arguably 30 years old, I had to agree with her.

“Why don’t you just wear a solid top and keep your jeans on,” she said. “You look good for a woman your age.”

What? Wait. A woman my age?

“How old do you think I am?” I asked indignantly.

“I don’t know. Maybe 25 or something?” Grace asked. She was sort of floating cross-legged over the foot of my bed watching me as I stared at myself in the mirror for the umpteenth time.

Since she had just made me four years younger than I actually was, she was immediately forgiven.

“Close enough,” I said. “And thanks about the jeans, I think.”

Truth be told, she was right. When in doubt, simplify. I picked out a navy top with a v-neck, kept my jeans on, and at the last minute remembered to change out of my running shoes in favor of sandals. (Trust me, when you’re a waitress, comfortable shoes trump fashion.)

“So, what do you think?” I asked.

“You look nice,” Grace said. “Just right for going out for pizza.”

“Will you be okay here if I leave the TV on for you and the cats?” I asked.

“Oh, sure,” she said. “I’m fine.” Then she added, shyly, “You’ll come back and tell me all about your date, right?”

The way she said it made me realize she seemed sadder than she’d been when we first found her in the woods.

“Grace, honey,” I said, “are you sure you’re okay?”

Her form faded in and out a little as if she was uncertain how to answer. “I’m just realizing how much . . . life . . . I’ve missed,” she finally said.

Being dead will do that to a person.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Is it harder being here?”

“Oh, no,” she said, “please don’t make me go back.”

“I’m not going to make you go back,” I said. “I’m just worried about you.”

“Oh,” she said again, “thank you. I . . . I think I might be missing my girlfriends.”

Now this could mean progress.

“Have you remembered something about your life?” I asked.

“Not really,” she said. “It was just that when you were trying on clothes it felt like I had done that before and that it was fun. Or at least I think that’s what I was remembering. It felt like I might have been happy.”

For just a minute, I realized that our roles really should have been reversed. I should have been the one watching her get ready for a date. It broke my heart that I couldn’t do anything about that, but as awful as it sounds, dead really is dead.