School's Out for Murder (Schooled in Murder Book 2) (19 page)

He stopped in front of my desk, six feet of gangliness with newly blond hair, courtesy of my sister Sherri. The two of them had met at my near-death experience, when Wally had boldly come charging to the rescue well after the danger had passed, and they'd hit it off like a sort of role reversal Archie and Edith. Sherri called the shots, so much so that when she had demanded he dye his hair blond to meet her personal requirements in a mate, Wally had gone off and done it. Blond wasn't a good look for someone rooted in tall, dark, and dorky. I couldn't see their relationship going the distance, but Sherri was desperate to snag a husband, and Wally was better than her former choice, Frankie Ritter, the human troll. Problem was, Frankie was like herpes. He never really went away, just faded into the background for a while.

"Your sister," Wally said, "is not returning my calls."

Uh-oh. I knew Sherri's MO. First she didn't answer the phone. Then she didn't return calls. For some reason, she had one foot out of his BMW. "You should apologize," I told him.

He drew back. "Apologize? For what?"

I shrugged. "It doesn't matter."

"Do you think it'll work?" he asked doubtfully. "I'll do it if you think it'll work."

"It can't hurt," I said.

"Isn't that the truth," Missy muttered from across the room.

"I should buy her flowers." Wally whipped out his cell phone and worked it over for a second before glancing up. "What kind of flowers does she like?"

"Orchids."

He bent his head over the screen a few more seconds before I heard him suck in some air. He looked up again. "What about carnations?"

"Forget the flowers," I told him. "Flowers die. Apologies are forever."

"Isn't that the truth," Missy muttered from across the room. I frowned at her, but she was busy examining the heel on one of her Louboutins. I don't know how Missy could afford Louboutins when she made the same salary I did, and I was wearing shoes from the BOGO sale.

Wally shook his head. "I don't understand it. Every time I call her at the store, she's too busy to talk to me."

The store was Williams Bridal, where my sister worked selling overpriced gowns to girls barely old enough to drive. Or so she claimed. I took her at her word, since I stayed as far away from the place as I could to avoid catching her wedding fever. Sherri had wanted to be tethered to a husband since the day my mother had bought her a Ken doll to ease Barbie's loneliness.

"What if she's cheating on me?" Wally asked suddenly, looking stricken by the thought. "Is she seeing someone else?"

I was pretty sure the signs were there, but I shook my head anyway. "I don't think so. I know she's been working a lot of overtime at the bridal shop."

"Winter brides," Missy said somberly. As if that told me something.

He scrubbed his hand across his face. "I knew it. She's cheating on me."

He looked so upset, I almost felt sorry for him. Then I glanced at my monitor, where Darius Snodgrass was hoping to collect his million bucks. "You know what they say about relationships begun under traumatic circumstances," I said.

His hand dropped to his side. "What traumatic circumstances? I met her here in the office."

I stared at him. "The night I was almost killed."

He hadn't even heard me over the crashing tide of his nostalgia. "She looked gorgeous that night. That dress. Those legs." He narrowed his eyes at me. "What did I do wrong? Tell me. She must talk to you."

"I'll see what I can find out," I said with a sigh. "We're having lunch tomorrow."

"See if you can get his name," he told me. "I want to know who she's cheating on me with. I have to talk to him, man to man." He whipped a pink hankie out of his breast pocket, wiped his eyes, and sniffled into it.

Missy glanced at me and shrugged.

Geez. He must really care for Sherri. Maybe Wally had a softer side that I'd never seen before. Maybe he actually was capable of warmth of emotion and generosity of spirit.

"And get those Krimpets off your lap," he snapped, picking up his briefcase. "This isn't a diner, Winters."

Or maybe not.

CHAPTER TWO

The rest of the day passed quietly, with few phone calls, little mail, and not much in the way of new work. I created a file for Dorcas Beeber and printed out Howard's letter of representation to be sent to Looking Glass, Inc., the manufacturer of Dorcas's cracked crystal ball. Which, by the way, she'd scooped up with one hand on her way upstairs. Show-off.

While I was at it, I sneaked a peek at Howard's scribbled notes. Dorcas charged $125 for a half hour reading and claimed she'd already lost two clients outright, with a third blaming her new antidepressant prescription on Dorcas's doom-and-gloom readings. Not to mention the intentional infliction of emotional distress, blah, blah, blah. My eyes were riveted to the $125 for a half hour. Maybe I'd ask Dorcas about an apprenticeship.

At five o'clock I shut everything down and headed into another exciting night of watching television in my pajamas. The excitement was compounded when I got caught in a traffic jam on the way home. It wasn't unusual to run up against a traffic jam in New Jersey—generally speaking, there were about twenty minutes each day when it wasn't a sure thing.

After nearly an hour parked on the interstate listening to news updates warning commuters to avoid the interstate, I rolled up to the curb at home. My apartment was on the second floor of Curt Emerson's house in Mapleton, a small town across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, on a street with lots of mature trees, well-tended lawns, and midsized sedans in the driveways. Curt's house, like all the others, was a Cape Cod, on the small side but immaculate with tan vinyl siding, a brown roof, and dark green shutters. He'd done lots of renos, adding the siding and landscaping and a general air of being cared for. He lived on the bottom floor, which came in handy since it made it easier to invite myself to dinner.

When I got home from work, Curt's Jeep was in the driveway behind the turquoise Honda Civic he was keeping for his niece, Maizy, until she got her license. The lights were on in the house. I knocked on the back door and stepped into Betty Crocker's kitchen. A couple of pots simmered on burners, and the oven exhaled the scent of garlic and roast chicken, making my stomach growl.

Curt sat at the table with Maizy playing poker. There had been a time when the two of them had barely spoken, let alone eaten together, but they'd smoothed things over after Maizy and I had found Santa Claus after he went missing the Christmas before. But that was a short story for another day. Reconciliation looked good on Curt. Anything looked good on Curt. Tonight it was his usual faded jeans, with thick-soled hiking boots and a flannel shirt worn open over a red T-shirt. The red accented his dark hair and eyes. The T-shirt accented his killer physique.

Maizy had a stack of quarters at her elbow. Curt had nothing but table at his, which was about right. Maizy was smarter than all her blue Smurf hair suggested. Curt's brother Cam was her dad, and
he
was smart enough to realize that overlooking a little blue hair could go a long way to strengthening the father/daughter bond. Cam fought the battles that mattered. Because of that, Maizy was one of the most well-adjusted and deep thinking seventeen-year-olds I'd ever met.

She was a work of art besides. Thin as a pipe with a bushy thatch of hair that was alternately blue, red, green, and, for really festive occasions, purple. Her belly button was pierced, and her lower back was tattooed, and she could talk her way out of pretty much anything. Plus she had more social conscience than all of Congress put together.

After hugs and kisses had been passed out and collected, and Maizy's coat, gloves, hat, scarf, and backpack were cleared off a third chair, we all sat down again, and Curt said, "You're late. Lucky for you, Maizy forgot to turn the oven on in time tonight."

"I didn't forget," Maizy told him. "I'm fighting sexism in my own way. We women don't belong only in the kitchen anymore, Uncle Curt."

"Some of you never did," Curt said with a pointed look in my direction. "Putting in some OT?" he asked me.

I did a
not important
wave. "Caught in traffic."

"A royal flush," Maizy announced, laying down her cards in triumph. Curt muttered under his breath and tossed his hand on the table.

I took a deep breath. "Funny thing happened today."

Curt's head snapped up. His definition of "funny thing" was a little different than mine.

"Do either of you believe in psychics?" I asked.

"No," Curt said flatly.

"Yes," Maizy said. Her eyes were bright with interest. "Did you get your future read?"

"Sort of. She said I have an undesirable man in my life with brown or blond hair." I glanced at Curt's shoulders and chest. Nothing undesirable about that. Then I looked at his dark brown head and sighed. "I'll want to get rid of him."

"Well, we had a good ride." Curt leaned back with a grin. His grin came with dimples. I didn't want to get rid of those dimples, and I sure didn't want to lose the good ride.

"Uncle Curt, don't." Maizy's expression was serious as she dealt another hand. "There are lots of things beyond our knowing. The paranormal world just exists on a different dimension than ours. Sometimes something comes through a portal, and that's probably what the psychic saw."

"Or sometimes," Curt said, "psychics are scammers." The muscles in his jaw flexed when he looked at his cards, as if he was biting back a groan.

"How can you say that?" Maizy asked. "Don't you believe in the spirit world?"

"If you were a spirit," he said, "would you stick around New Jersey?"

Maizy rolled her eyes. "You believe her, though," she said to me. "Don't you?"

I shrugged. "Not really. Maybe a little. I don't know." I didn't
want
to believe her, I knew that much.

She laid down her hand. A straight. Silently, Curt swept up the deck, wrapped them in a rubber band, and tossed them aside. "That's enough for tonight. I'm broke, and dinner's almost ready."

"Don't forget you owe me another five bucks," Maizy told him. "I saw a gold tongue stud over at the mall and—"

"You're not getting your tongue pierced," Curt said.

She gave him an innocent look. "Of course I'm not. I just want to put it in my jewelry box and look at it once in awhile."

I hid my grin. I really liked this kid.

Curt heaved a sigh. "You," he told her, "are a hundred percent teenager."

"That's my job," she said brightly. "Hey, I know." She turned to me. "Let's go get a reading. I've always wanted to do that. Maybe she'll tell me I'm going to be rich. It'd be great to be rich. I'd like to know when to expect that, 'cause I gotta get insurance on the Civic."

"You don't have your license yet," Curt reminded her. "You don't need insurance."

"Details," she said with a wave. "I'm taking the test in two months. It's a no-brainer. So, what do you think?" she asked me. "You think she'll tell me I'm gonna be rich?"

Curt got up to check on the food. "Of course she's going to tell you that. Isn't that what those people do?"

I thought of Dorcas's dark visions and the undesirable mystery man in my life and thought,
not so much
. "I don't know," I said. "She's a little bit of a crackpot."

"Of course she is," Curt said over his shoulder. "She's a client of Parker, Dennis."

He pulled a roast chicken from the oven and shut off the burners. "Little help here?"

I got some bowls from the cupboard. "I never said she was a client."

"You didn't have to." He transferred green beans to a bowl and handed it to me. "So what happened to this one? Burned herself on her incense?"

I found the potato masher and gave it to him. "Not quite." I cleared my throat. "Her crystal ball is defective."

Curt's laughter was amusing and infuriating at the same time. I leaned against the counter to wait him out. Maizy watched us with wide eyes, clearly uncertain whether the crackpot was the client or her Uncle Curt.

He thrust the bowl of mashed potatoes into my hands. "That's a first." His eyes were watering. "I think I might have to see this one."

I stared at him. "What are you saying—you want to get your fortune told?"

"Not on your life," he said. "I'll catch her on Springer. I'm sure she'll be there soon."

Maizy and I traded smiles. Looked as if it was going to be a girls' night out. As long as we could get the Parker, Dennis discount, that is.

MOTION FOR MALICE

available now!