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“What?” Mel asked.

  “He’s gone.”

  “Son of a bi—so what do we do now?”

  “We keep following the fedoras and call Aaron.”

  “I don’t think we need to do that.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  She held up her cell, and his picture flashed on the screen.

  “Oh boy.”

  She nodded and answered. “Hey, babe. You’re on speaker so you can yell at us both.”

  And he did.

  “Where’s the freaking lock box?”

  I was surprised he didn’t drop the real f-bomb. “Aaron, Bill Marx killed his wife and Juan Garcia for the money in that box. He’s desperate to save his son. We need that box to strike a deal with the people he owes the cash to.”

  “Where. Are. You.” His tone was so stiff the sentence wasn’t posed as a question.

  “We’re—“

  I interrupted her. “Going for cupcakes.”

  “Angela, I’m only going to say this once. Whatever it is you’re doing, stop right now. Let us handle this. Do you understand? These people are dangerous. You’re not dealing with an average criminal. These people mean business.”

  “You don’t want us going to get cupcakes? That’s kind of ridiculous, don’t you think? Oh, look, a tunnel. I think we’re going to lose you.”

  We both made fake static sounds, and Mel said, “Love ya, babe,” then clicked the disconnect button on her phone. “I’m so gonna pay for that later.”

  “Probably.”

  We tailed the fedoras for several miles and into a parking garage near Turner Field, which wasn’t the greatest area, especially for two unarmed women following—most likely—well-armed criminals. I pulled into a spot a few rows down from where they parked, turned off my car, and waited.

  “This doesn’t feel good,” Mel said.

  I didn’t disagree. “Let’s just wait it out and see what happens. So far it doesn’t look like they’ve even got out of their car.”

  Just then, one of the fedoras tapped on my window.

  “Holy mother of God,” Mel said.

  I didn’t open the window. “Yes?”

  “Ma’am, please step out of the car,” One of the fedoras said.

  “Are you the police?” Mel asked. “Because we’ll need to see some form of identification first.”

  The other fedora moved his suit jacket to the side and revealed his gun.

  “Oh, is this a game?” Mel asked.

  I shot her a look, and she smiled.

  “You know that you show me yours and I’ll show you mine one?” she asked, and then lifted a gun from her purse, and wiggled it at fedora man number one.

  “Holy crap,” I said. “Who knew?”

  She winked at me.

  “’Cause I got me one of those cute little things too,” she said.

  She drew back the top of the gun, held it in her hands, and aimed it straight at the window. The two fedoras backed up and bowed up. They drew their guns, and when the first shot blasted through the window, I dropped down, and screamed for my mother louder than a kid on Christmas.

  I heard the glass shatter onto the ground along with the loud thud of bodies slamming against concrete. When one of the men yelled get the hell off me, and the other man shrieked a streak of curse words followed by I’m hit, I’m hit, I figured I was alive, and that Mel had fired, and her shot hit one of them. I peeked over the edge of the car door and saw my mother hovering above them, flicking her wrist.

  “You don’t mess with my kid, ya hear?” She shook her finger at the men, and their guns flew five feet across the ground. She kept her finger steadied on them, and they lay frozen on the pavement.

  “Yes,” I said, and pumped my fist. “You rock, Ma.”

  The man on top struggled to move and pitched a fit when he couldn’t. “What the hell? Someone help me.”

  I glanced back at Mel. “I think you hit one of them.”

  She was still holding the gun, her eyes focused on it. “Holy crap. Did I? Aaron said I was a good shot, but I didn’t believe him.”

  “You okay?”

  She nodded, but, her hands trembled and betrayed her faked confidence.

  “Put it down, Mel. The gun, put it down.”

  She did.

  “Get an ambulance, I’m hurt,” the man Mel had shot said.

  “He’s fine,” Ma said. “It ain’t nothin’ but a flesh wound. A little nip on the arm is all.”

  I peered out the window. “Looks okay to me. The cops are on their way,” I lied. “They’ll get someone to take care of you.” I jumped out of the car, landed on my good leg, corralled one of the guns, and pointed it at the men, praying they wouldn’t try to take it from me. I stood on the other side of my mother. Every bone in my body ached. “Who are you, and what the hell is going on?”

  The man trapped on top spoke. “You followed us. You tell us what you’re doing here first.”

  “That’s not how this is gonna work,” I said. “You’re the one in trouble. You’ve got about five minutes to tell us what’s going on.”

  He told me where I could go, and it wasn’t a nice place.

  “You wanna play it that way? Fine.” I glanced at my mother. “Do something.”

  “Like what?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Something to make them talk.”

  The men both gaped at me like I was a crazy woman, their mouths gaping, and their eyes bulging.

  I narrowed my eyes at them and pushed the gun toward their faces. “Whadda you lookin’ at? Stop it.”

  My mother laughed. “They think you’ve lost your marbles.” She made circles with her finger next to the side of her forehead.

  “Wouldn’t be the first time someone’s thought that,” I said.

  Mel climbed from the passenger side of the car, gimped over on her good leg, and held her gun at them. Her hands trembled “You want me to shoot you too? Tell us why you’re after us, buckos. Whadda ya want from us, huh?”

  Buckos? I swallowed my laugh.

  Ma didn’t. “Ah Madone, that ain’t gonna help.” She flung her hands in circles, and the two men bounced up and down. The man with the injured arm squealed in pain when his arm slammed on the ground twice. I winced too. That had to hurt.

  The man on top knew a boatload of swear words and liked to use them. I was pretty sure he’d invented a few of his own.

  “You gonna talk now?” I asked. “Something other than swear words, I mean?”

  Mel kept the gun pointed at them.

  I wanted them to talk about Bill Marx, who had gone MIA again, of course, but they didn’t, so I finally did. “Fine, you don’t wanna say it, I will. You want the money in the lock box, don’t you? Well you can’t have it; it’s ours, so there.”

  “We gotta get that money,” the man on top said.

  “Yeah, I know, and if you don’t get it, you’re gonna kill his kid, right?”

  “We ain’t gonna kill his kid, lady,” the man said.

  “You’re not?”

  “That ain’t us. That’s our boss. He’s already sent somebody to get the boy and his grandma. We’re just gettin’ the cash. The boy’s probably dead by now.”

  That time the boatload of swear words came from me.

  “I’m on it,” Ma said, and she took off.

  “Whadda we do?” Mel asked.

  The men realized they weren’t trapped anymore and jostled themselves up.

  “Uh oh,” I said.

  “Uh oh is right,” Mel said.

  She pointed the gun at the first man and told him to freeze, or she’d shoot. He froze.

  I raised my left leg and sent my foot soaring into his privates with the force of a high school girl dumped by her boyfriend the night before her senior prom. He clutched his crotch and went back down, screaming. I raised my hands to the other guy. “You want some of this too?”

  He held his hands up in surrender. “Don’t, please. My wife, she wants another kid.”
r />   “Down to the ground, buddy,” Mel said. “Or I’ll shoot ‘em off.”

  I kicked him with my bad foot. “Manache!” Swearing in Italian for me was rare, but it happened. I let out another stream of curse words. “For the love of Mike that hurt.”

  I grabbed my son’s lacrosse head string from the back of my car, and we tied their hands up. The knots wouldn’t win us any Boy Scout badges, but they’d do. Mel sent Aaron a text and told him where to find them, and we jumped—or hopped—like injured bunnies, back into the car, and burned rubber out of there.

  “I thought we were dead,” Mel said. “Where’s your mother?”

  “She went to find Justin.”

  “Dear God, I hope he’s not already dead.”

  “I hope not too.”

  “Where’re we goin’?”

  “To Justin’s Grandmother’s house.”

  “Damn it. Bill screwed with us, didn’t he?”

  “I think so.”

  “He wanted to get us off track on purpose. He wanted to make us think we were going to the people that were the bosses, didn’t he?” she asked. “Because he’s going to the bosses.”

  “So he can kill them and save his son,” I said.

  “Exactly,” she said.

  “Son of a beach ball.” I hit the gas harder.

  I sped the whole way, and we both ignored Aaron’s phone calls and text messages. When we arrived at Justin’s grandmother’s house, everything appeared status quo. The house wasn’t shot up, the windows weren’t busted, the front door wasn’t kicked open, and Bill Marx was MIA.

  “Dang, either we’re too late, or they’re not here,” I said.

  “Is Fran here?” Mel asked.

  “I dunno.” I checked out the area. “Ma? You here?” The air didn’t cool, and none of the hairs on my neck lifted. No normal signs of dead people went off around me. “I got nothing,” I said to Mel. “No dead people.”

  “That’s not good.”

  “Maybe it is. Maybe it means no one is dead here.”

  “There’s that,” she said.

  We got out of the car and slinked toward the house. The hairs on my neck stood. “Crap.”

  “What?”

  “I feel dead people.”

  “Crap.”

  Emma Marx shimmered in front of us. “They’re alive, but they’re not here.”

  I latched onto Mel’s arm. “Oh, thank God, they’re alive.”

  “How do you know?” Mel asked.

  I explained.

  “Where are they?” I asked Emma.

  She crooked her partially transparent index finger. “Follow me.”

  We followed the ghost behind her mother’s house and down a path into the woods.

  “Shouldn’t we be going through the woods to grandmother’s house?” Mel joked.

  Under normal circumstances I would have laughed. “Does Bill know where they are?” I asked Emma.

  “No. My mother has protected them from him again, but it’s not going to last.”

  “Before you were confused but now—“

  She held out her hand. “I see things clearly now. All is well within me. I am here to protect my child from them. I will not let them hurt him.”

  “Can you tell us who that is?”

  “There is no time. We must hurry,” she said, and practically speed-floated through the woods.

  We followed until we reached a small shed, and Emma disappeared inside.

  I pulled on the door handle, but it wouldn’t budge. “She’s inside here.” I knocked. “Hello? Emma?”

  The door cracked opened, and Emma’s mother peered out. “Who else is with you?”

  Before I could finish saying Mel’s name, a loud blast boomed through the air, and the door flew open. Emma Marx’s grandmother flung backward and fell to the ground, blood pouring from her forehead.

  Mel and I ducked and ran for cover as bullets shot from all sides of the woods. Mel screamed. I screamed. Someone else screamed.

  More shots fired, and more people screamed, but if anyone yelled actual words I couldn’t tell because it was mass hysteria. Mel and I clung to each other, our bodies flinching each time a shot fired. I prayed she wouldn’t get hit. I prayed none of us would get hit.

  Out of nowhere a man showed up next to Mel’s shoulder and pointed his gun straight at my face. I froze. My mother showed up, and swearing in Italian, swung her arm wide, and sent the man’s gun flying out of his hand. She swerved and whipped her other arm and sent him five feet into the air. He landed on a tree stump with his knees bent the wrong way. I cringed.

  “Run,” she said, and pointed left. “Aaron’s car is there. Go. Now.”

  I yanked Mel’s arm, and we sprinted, injuries be damned, toward Aaron’s car parked in an open area of the woods.

  Ten minutes later, out of breath and exhausted, we’d made it to his car, and two uniformed officers we both knew.

  “Thank God,” I said when they handed us bottled waters. “I’m so thirsty.” We collapsed onto the side of the car, winded.

  My attempt at humor was met with frowns.

  “Wait here,” one officer said.

  So we did.

  Aaron showed up about thirty minutes later.

  “How’d you—“

  He shook his head. “I put an app on Mel’s phone. You think I’m stupid? I knew you’d try and find the kid on your own, and I knew you’d lead us to whoever Bill Marx owed the money to.”

  “We almost didn’t,” I said. “Bill tried to fool us, but we figured it out.”

  Two officers walked up from the woods with Justin Marx. His mother floated next to him. She smiled at me.

  “Wait,” I said. “Aaron, may I talk to him?”

  “Sure.”

  I glanced at Emma. “Do you have anything you’d like me to say to your son?”

  She placed her hand on her child’s chest, and I watched as he caught his breath, and put his own hand on his chest.

  “No. He knows. Thank you.”

  The only thing I could think of was that her mother had the gift too, and was able to communicate with her. Her mother appeared next to her and the two of them shimmered away.

  Tears formed in the boy’s eyes, and in mine too.

  “Justin,” I said. “You know your mom and grandmother loved you very much, right?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Don’t forget that, okay? They’ll always, always be with you.”

  “I know. I can feel them in my heart.”

  Mel sobbed. The kids always got to her.

  Aaron nodded to the officers, and they took the boy to a car, and left.

  “What’ll happen to him now?” Mel asked him.

  “He’s got family he’ll go to,” he said. He held my arm. “We got the lock box from your car already. And the people Marx owed money are dead. It’s over. Emma Marx and Juan Garcia’s murders will remain unresolved, ,end up in the cold file eventually. We can’t close them with their killer being a ghost.”

  “He was desperate to save his son, I guess.”

  Bill appeared. “I didn’t kill my ex-wife.”

  “Bill’s here,” I said. “He didn’t kill Emma.”

  “It may look like that, but I really didn’t. They did it. They wanted the money, but she wouldn’t give it to them. She wouldn’t tell them where it was. She wanted it so she could use it to live. They killed her for it.”

  “Does he have any proof?” Aaron asked.

  Bill shook his head.

  After I told Aaron, he said he could use the information to try to close the file on Emma Marx’s murder, that it would be a logical connection to closing Juan Garcia’s case too, but he didn’t know if it would happen without any real proof.

  “Justin will grow up knowing his father was a criminal already and that’s bad,” he said. “If we can get anything to prove his father tried to save him, we’ll do it.”

  Not every story has a happy ending, but at least Justin Marx
was alive, and would live with family, family that would be safe from people Bill Marx had owed money.

  Mel and I walked to my car with Bill Marx floating next to us.

  “Bill, you don’t have to stay any longer, you know,” I said.

  “I’m not quite ready to go,” he said.

  “What’s keeping you here?”

  “I’m afraid I won’t go to a good place because of the bad things I’ve done,” he said.

  I stopped. His point was valid. He’d done some bad things. I’d be afraid too. “Do you see a light, Bill?”

  He glanced around. “No.”

  Oh boy. “Look hard.”

  “There is a light, Angela, but before I go, you need to know something.”

  “Yes?”

  “You need to be careful,” Bill Marx said.

  “Someone knows.”

  “Someone knows what?” I asked.

  But it was too late. Bill Marx had already crossed over.

  The End.

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  Read on for chapter one of

  Unfinished Business

  An Angela Panther Mystery

  The first book in the Angela Panther Mystery Series

  Unfinished Business

  An Angela Panther mystery

  by

  Carolyn Ridder Aspenson

  Praise for

  Unfinished Business

  An Angela Panther mystery

  "I laughed and I cried...and laughed...and cried...throughout the entire book! This book was so real (yes even with the heroine seeing her mother's ghost) and the emotion in it will stay with me for a long, long time!"

  —Joe Cool Review

  "It definitely touched a chord with anyone who has ever lost a loved one. The writing was strong and the dialogue -- which many people simply cannot write—was terrific."

  —Christie Giraud, editor, Editingpro.com