Moonlight Murder: An Inept Witches Mystery Read online

  Emily’s eyes were glazed over though, a sure sign she was in deep concentration.

  Ingrid recognized that look. “Oh man. Hit me with what you’re holding back.”

  “Well, you’re right. We didn’t kill him—do we even know it’s a him at this point? I have just been assuming it was a guy. Anyway, yeah, we didn’t shoot him unless you can magically, accidentally duplicate a gunshot. BUT—and it’s a big one—guess what else wasn’t out there when I went to look for the body?”

  Ingrid had no idea what Emily was talking about. “Em, you must start getting more sleep at night. Not only is a lack of sleep bad for your skin, it’s—”

  “The wine bottle, Ingrid. The wine bottle wasn’t there. I figured it out in the dark, horrible woods all by myself. I realized that we must have left the bottle in all that muck from the body and the exploding earth. The body is gone, but so is our wine bottle. The one from St. Maarten’s. With our finger prints all over it. It’s only a matter of time before your lover-sheriff runs those prints and comes searching for us. Again.”

  Ingrid plopped down on the kitchen bar stool. “He won’t need to. As soon as he sees the bottle, he’s going to know it was us. I don’t know how to feel. On the one hand, I am not a murderer, and there is really just no understating how good that feels. On the other hand, Gabe is going to kill me. Which makes me sad. But now I think I’d feel far less guilty about using my money to not go to jail. I mean…are we witches or are we witches?”

  “I think most of the coven would debate that. Though I would then beat them to death with their own brooms.”

  “A cauldron,” Ingrid said seriously, “is also an excellent weapon for murder.”

  They sat at Ingrid’s kitchen table and stared into the distance while they each considered what move to make. Ingrid was at a loss. She wasn’t cracking jokes or mocking her. Truthfully, Emily probably didn’t know either.

  “I left a message for Hazel, figured we’d need an aura cleanse but she hasn’t gotten back to me.”

  Ingrid made a noncommittal sound while chewing on her fingernails.

  She watched Emily’s face and could tell the beginning of an idea form. Ingrid would hate it. Like worse than hate. She would probably never agree to it. But Ingrid had cleared Emily’s name when she was the prime suspect in her ex-husband’s murder. If Ingrid wouldn’t go with the plan, she knew that Emily would take one for the team and go for her.

  Emily spoke, confirming Ingrid’s thoughts. “Ingrid, I’m gonna get us out of this. You don’t have to worry about your sheriff finding out anything.”

  Ingrid nodded, still not speaking.

  Damn. She was very clearly worried. Just how bad did Ingrid have it for Gabe?

  “We need to go to the coroner. We will have to figure a way in, but we need to see if we can learn the identity of the dead person. Then we need to see if we can get into the evidence locker at the police station and get that wine bottle out of there.”

  Ingrid perked up at Emily’s morbid suggestion. “Um, coroner? No. That. Is. Not. Happening. Remember all the dead person gook I had on me before we went on vacation. I do need my aura cleansed, but not for murder. Just for constantly doing things with dead people.”

  “Uh,” Emily said, “I don’t know if you realize what you just said. What exactly is it you plan on doing with dead people, Ingrid? I’m not going to judge you, but I just didn’t know you had a thing for uh, that type.” Emily was unable to keep the snark out of her voice.

  Ingrid retaliated. “That’s disgusting. Seriously, though, all this touching of the dead people. I’m not cut out for it. It’s just…gross. What is the identity of the dead guy even going to do for us?”

  Emily relaxed her shoulders. “Okay, fine. You’re right. Now that we know we didn’t kill anyone, we should just confess. If you don’t want to do the coroner thing, that’s fine. But if we don’t do something with the evidence, Gabe is going to find out eventually that we were near that body. And I think it would be better if he heard from you. Agreed?”

  Ingrid paled. “No. No. No. We are not confessing to tampering with a body. Absolutely not, ever.”

  Emily stood up, hands on her hips. “We’ll figure out who died, find their family—it’s always family that kills the dead guy—and we’ll truth serum them before Gabe gets to question them. What’s it gonna be, my friend? Confession or Coroner?”

  “I hate you.”

  •••

  Emily had to drive Ghosty, the Camaro’s new nickname, because Ingrid had refused to get behind the wheel while her aura was still tainted with dead people juices. “I don’t think this car likes me. It only does weird stuff when I’m driving.”

  Emily laughed as she maneuvered down the highway to the warehouse that housed the island’s coroner’s office. “Or in it. Or near it. But I wouldn’t take it personally.”

  Ingrid rolled her eyes but remained silent, her normal sarcasm buried under heavy anxiety. The realization of not being a murderer was probably fading as she imagined how mad Gabe was going to be once he figured out what they did. Even solving the crime ahead of him wouldn’t keep him from wanting to strangle them a little bit. That would probably make his murderous feelings intensify.

  Emily had been rolling over the plan in her mind. They couldn’t just walk into the coroner’s office and ask to see the body that was found in the woods last night. Too suspicious. How were they going to get in? They’d worked that out at the house, and as usual, truth serum to the rescue. They would truth-serum the shit out of people until they found out what they wanted.

  But what they would then do with that information was still up in the air.

  “Okay, Ingrid. Here’s what we do. I’ve got a couple plans. Let’s call this one plan A. You distract the receptionist. I think you are being super weird right now anyway, so it shouldn’t be hard to make her think you are crazy. I think Kimmie’s sister is still working in that office. Just talk about nails and Kimmie. It’ll be fine. Once you get her distracted, I’ll say I’m going to the bathroom, and then I’ll sneak into the back room where all the drawers of dead bodies are waiting, and then I’ll find the one that belongs to the dude we almost-murdered.”

  “Okay, whatever. Mean dove.”

  Damn, Emily thought. “Snap out of it, Ingrid. You’ve got to get yourself together here. We aren’t murderers anymore. I don’t know what your issue is. Gabe isn’t going to find out. We will clear this up in a jiffy. You’ll see.”

  Ingrid shrugged and said, “I’m fine,” in a voice that convinced nobody that she was in fact fine.

  It was possible, Emily thought, that Ingrid did not have faith in her plan.

  Emily put the car in park and drummed her fingers on the leather steering wheel. What was she going to have to do to get Ingrid out of this funk.

  “I’ll do magic. How about that?” Emily asked, grasping for anything that might get Ingrid’s attention.

  And there it was. Ingrid snorted and then belly-laughed. “You want to use magic to learn the identity of the dead body in the forest? Next you’ll want to remove your fine lines and wrinkles with magic. And make coffee with magic. Okay, fine. I get it. You are trying to cheer me up. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It’s Gabe, I think. He was just supposed to be fun, but he’s…different. I think I want to keep him, but I’m worried we messed everything up. Also, I’m not sure I can handle another keeper.”

  Emily turned off the car and opened her door. “Of course you can. Let’s fix this mess, and you’ll see. It’s not going to fix itself. Quit moping. Let’s go.”

  She got out and slammed the heavy door behind her and watched out of her peripheral vision as Ingrid followed suit.

  Good. That worked.

  “Okay, so you’re good to go, right? You distract the dead body receptionist—ha! She’s like St. Peter—”

  Ingrid crossed her arms and stared at Emily.

  She leaned against the car, unable to breathe she was laughing so hard. “Hahahaha. Ba. Hahahaha. Ha. Get it?” she said, gasping for air, “St. Peter? Receptionist for dead people?” Emily finally gathered herself and looked suspiciously at Ingrid, who should have found that a very funny joke. “What?”

  Ingrid’s face split into a wide grin. “That is pretty damn funny, Emily. Now, let’s get our witch on and solve this. I’m tired of worrying about it.”

  They strolled in to the lobby, attempting to look super casual and not at all up to anything illegal.

  Ingrid started talking to a woman behind the desk, but she was very stiff. “Hi. I, that is we, um, we wanted to take a tour of your facility.”

  The woman, who looked vaguely like their nail chick Kimmie, gave Ingrid a blank expression. “Tour? Why?”

  “Well, my best dove and I,” Ingrid said, putting an arm around Emily to draw her close, “have always just really liked horror movies and novels and decided we wanted to write a horror book. ” She was quickly catching her deceitful stride. “And we can’t write horror without dead bodies, and a coroner’s office seemed like the best place to get a feel for dead bodies.”

  “We don’t do tours,” the woman said flatly with none of Kimmie’s pizzazz.

  “Oh, well, there must be something we could do. Maybe if we made an appointment?” Ingrid flashed her sweetest smile, and Emily almost choked on her gum. Given Ingrid’s abhorrence of dead bodies, she was playing it pretty cool. But the woman at the desk wasn’t budging. Ingrid was getting nowhere. Fast. She could get farther driving around in a possessed Ghosty than she was with this chick.

  Emily took over, pulling the thermos full of serumed-coffee out and pouring some of the magical liquid into the thermos cap. She passed it across the desk to the woman. “What my friend is trying to say is that we
are actually thinking of opening a coffee shop and are giving free samples to local businesses to see if you like it. Would you be willing to taste it? It really tastes like magic. We were thinking of calling the coffee shop ‘Magic Beans.’ What do you think? Catchy, right?”

  Ingrid’s jaw dropped open, practically to the floor. Emily knew she was veering from the plan. Completely. But she was also running out of patience. Something had to be done.

  Emily watched as the receptionist first started to shake her head, but then she got a whiff of the warm coffee and hesitated. Emily watched as Ingrid used magic to send the scent wafting right up the woman’s nose.

  “Well, okay. I do love a good cup of coffee and it does smell like magic.”

  “Oh it’s chock full of magic,” Ingrid said, batting her lashes.

  Kimmie’s sister accepted the thermos cup and took a tentative sip. Then she groaned a little as the delicious liquid gold tantalized her palette. She chugged down the whole cup’s worth in a large gulp. “That was the best coffee I've ever had. What is in it?”

  Ingrid shrugged, “Oh, a little of this. A little of that. I’m glad you like it. So, tell me, my St. Peter dove, what reason would we need to give you for us to let us in to see the body that was brought in from the woods last night?”

  The receptionist’s face twisted in confusion, but then relaxed and answered. “Actually, the only way I can let you in is if you have authorization from the Sage Island sheriff.”

  Ingrid smiled. “Oh, well, that’s wonderful because that is exactly why we are here. The sheriff has asked us to ID the body.”

  Emily groaned. No way Sheriff Hotpants would give permission for them to be in the middle of this.

  “Oh, well, why didn't you say so.” Just like that, the woman pushed the button that let them past the receptionist desk. She said, “Through these double doors. Dr. Jenkins is in his office at the end of the hall. He’ll show you where to go. Shut the door behind you, we don’t want anyone to escape.”

  She laughed at her own joke and Ingrid joined in, somewhat hysterically. But Emily wanted to throw the receptionist off the roof. She’d barely gotten Ingrid this far. The last thing Em needed was Ingrid thinking about the dead rising. She’d start wondering, start imagining, set something on fire, and they’d all get caught.

  The hall was a typical hospital hall with fluorescent lights and cheap linoleum, but they were in the basement of the building with no windows and—Emily had to acknowledge—no escape for the risen dead.

  They tiptoed down the hall, careful not to alert the morgue doctor, and peeked into the meat locker type room to make sure it was empty. Luck was on their side for once as they snuck through the doors, easing them closed. They fumbled around until they found the one occupied drawer.

  There was a name on the end of the drawer.

  John Doe.

  “So it was a him. Interesting,” Ingrid said.

  “At least they don’t know who this is either. We’re ahead of them.”

  “Guess they don’t, but I’m pretty sure that Gabe not knowing who it is doesn’t make us ahead of him. Since he has all the evidence and stuff against us.”

  Emily eyed Ingrid sideways. “Uh, we are going to have look at him. Maybe there is enough to identify him.”

  “Oh, I knew you were going to say that. Why? Why do we even have to know who he is? Who cares? I don’t have to care just because Gabe is going to either dump me or kill me or both!”

  Emily pulled open the drawer that was John Doe’s new residence and grimaced when she saw the tarp covered chunks of body underneath. This obviously wasn’t a whole body. They knew that, of course, because of the hand Ingrid had come across after the explosion but seeing the visual reality of it made Emily want to vomit. Again.

  Emily lifted the sheet very carefully and stopped when saw a hand. “Look, a college ring. This guy was totally educated. See, we know stuff already. Totally worth driving over here. Also, they should totally have removed this ring and stored it with the evidence. Obviously, the corner doesn’t watch enough Law and Order.”

  “Ugh. Put it away, Emily. Fine, you win. I’ll confess. No more coroner.”

  Emily felt very irreverent all of sudden and picked up the arm, waving it at Ingrid. In her favorite high-pitched chipmunk voice she said, “I need a body. I’m lost. Please help me.”

  Ingrid was pale, but Emily watched her gaze lock on the hand Emily was holding. “No way. No way. No way.”

  “What? I’m sorry, okay. Just trying to lighten the mood. Murder really drags me down, you know?”

  “No, look,” Ingrid said and pointed at the thumb of the hand. “Look at that. The missing jagged tip of thumb. Oh my goodness. I’ve seen this before.”

  Emily leaned close. “Shut up,” she whispered.

  “We…I nearly murdered my already dead ex-boyfriend. This is Sheldon, Em.”

  “Damnation,” Emily muttered. “Every time I think I’ve figure a way out of jail for us, we get some new revelation. You, my friend, girlfriend to the esteemed Sheriff Hotpants of this quaint island, are so incredibly screwed.”

  Chapter 3

  Into the Fire

  Thursday Afternoon

  “You do it.” Ingrid said. They were walking up to the apartment from the morgue and she wanted to curl into her bed, slam her head against the wall, and scream in sheer frustration. What was wrong with them? They were idiots. Even she could see that. They were utter idiots. Gabe…he was going to kill her and put her out of her misery. And then dump her.

  Damn it, she wasn’t ready to be dumped.

  “No, you.”

  “You.”

  “You,” Emily said.

  “I had to bribe Hazel last time,” Ingrid replied, the whine in her voice dramatic. “Thank goodness we didn’t kill that jerk, Sheldon. I mean…explain that one away…”

  “I don’t want to. I have to have lessons with her. This is your murder.”

  Ingrid gasped. “You were the one who used magic to bury the body!”

  “You were the one who exploded things and made us think we’d killed him.”

  “You were the one who promised we’d go to that stupid ritual in the first place.” Ingrid slammed into the apartment and went straight to the espresso machine. “This never would have happened if I’d been having my way with my sheriff.”

  “I don’t need to hear about your sex life! I want one. I mean…I have one, but Fireman Sam makes my face hurt. Make a thermos full. Hazel loves your coffee.”

  “Damn it, Emily you evil dove, I know. Call Papa Pandolfi’s and order pastries. Lots of them. Also Fireman Sam makes everyone’s face hurt. Dump him already. He’s awful.”

  Ingrid made the coffee, added a liberal—okay all—of the amaretto and then sealed the container. It was enough coffee to share with whoever was in the house. Holy doves, Ingrid thought, please let Autumn be elsewhere. She tried not to think about the low blow that Emily wasn’t delivering. The one where Gabe realizes what they did and then kills them.

  Ingrid drove while Emily tapped her fingers against the thermos. Sure, she said she wasn’t going to drive. But she needed control over something.

  “I have to say it,” Emily said, looking over and meeting Ingrid’s gaze, “we should not do magic and drink.”

  Fuzzy dice from Emily’s dead uncle were hanging from the rear-view mirror and swayed in the breeze, the windows were rolled down, and the wet, perfect air flowed through the car. The smell made her feel better. But then she remembered what they’d done and how much trouble they were in. Ingrid snorted and added, “We should never, ever go into the woods again. There’s a reason my mom stopped harassing me about magic. It’s because I burn things. I just…burn them.”

  When Ingrid stopped the Camaro outside of Hazel’s house with its wide inviting porch and picture windows, she wanted to run away. But not in the Camaro. She didn’t like it. It had been giving her the creepy vibe. It was too old, she thought, considering just speeding away. She’d get rid of the Camaro and buy something new. Used cars were gross. Maybe it was just this one.

  Except, Gabe…damn it. Why did she have to date the sheriff? She was dating him, she told herself. She was not in love. She was just in like with a healthy dose of lust. But even without that, there was the whole probability of DNA evidence at the crime scene. And how it was her ex. Whose finger she had once cut off with her magic. Who was also texting her for weeks. Sexy texts that she’d ignored rather than telling Gabe about. Who was her boyfriend.