Inconvenient Murder: An Inept Witches Mystery (3 page)

When they arrived at the square, brick building, she pulled around back and parked in her space. The basement was storage, the main floor was shops, the second floor was divided into four apartments that were full. The third floor was all Emily’s. They’d turned the four apartments into one massive one for her. The top floor was Ingrid’s. And the roof was, or had been, a garden. Right then it currently had dead plants, a couple of lounge chairs, and a lot of seagull excrement.

“So I just need it loaded into the elevator,” she said while heading for the double doors that were used only by the residents. It was open. She frowned at it and then glanced over at him. He was holding one of the espresso machines and waiting for her to swing the door back. “That’s weird.”

“What?” He sounded so patient, she kinda wanted to scratch his ear for being a good boy.

“Well,” she said, “these should be locked. They’re on auto-lock, so unless someone fiddled with that, we should have to use our keys.”

Gabe set down the espresso machine just as she pulled the door back.

“Let’s just,” but he paused as her head cocked.

She looked past him into the little foyer. This was the employee and resident entrance. To the right was the back of the bookstore and a hallway down to the other shops. To the left was a double-doored wrought iron gate that divided off the stairs and old-fashioned gated elevator for the residents. Both doors were standing open.

Both should have been locked.

“What is it?” He sounded worried now, just from her reaction, and she could almost see the awareness settle over him.

“Oh.” She stepped farther into the hallways toward the bookshop. The entrance was standing open. “I’d say it’s probably Em. But it isn’t Em. I don’t know.”

“What is it, Ingrid?”

She glanced up at him. “The bookstore is unlocked. We never do that. There isn’t anything to steal, but Em and I both lived in Seattle so long, we don’t even think before locking doors behind ourselves or locking up as we leave. Half these stores might be unlocked, but ours never is. It’s why we have auto lock and the gates over there are closed. We’re a little paranoid.”

“Just stay here and I’ll check it out.”

Gabe went forward and Ingrid followed.

“I asked you to stay.”

“Yes,” Ingrid said, “but the shop is such a mess you won’t know if there’s a problem without me.”

Gabe didn’t object after she hung back to give him room. The light above the bookstore was out.

“Was it like this before?”

She shook her head. She wasn’t that worried. Even if they’d been robbed, there wasn’t much of value in the store. Maybe some of the magic stuff in the basement could be valuable, but she and Em would never even know if they’d lost something of worth since they had no idea what most of it was.

Gabe took a flashlight from the utility closet and shined it into the bookstore. “This place is disgusting,” he said.

“I know,” Ingrid whispered. “We should probably just hire someone since Em and I aren’t going to ever get it pulled together.”

She looked around the store with him. The stacks of books and debris and dirt and cobwebs all looked about right. Except…

“The basement door isn’t usually like that,” she said. She wondered if she should feel scared, but mostly she just felt happy to be with Gabe.

He opened the door to the basement and shined his light down the old stairs.

“Is that a foot?” Ingrid gasped and grabbed his bicep. “It’s a foot. That’s a pant leg. Oh my goodness, oh my goodness, that’s a body.”

“Stay here,” Gabe snapped, heading down the stairs.

Ingrid looked around the bookstore and then shook her head. Whoever did this could be hidden anywhere within the bookstore. She was staying with Gabe or making a run for it. She followed him down the stairs, saw him glance at her, scowl, and then he crept down farther.

“Oh, what a dickhead!”

“Excuse me,” Gabe asked, but Ingrid brushed passed him and snapped on the downstairs lights. Dickhead, Emily’s husband, lay dead on the floor. A cup was beside him and there were herbs all over the place.

“Dickhead, you dickhead,” Ingrid said, squatting down on the side of the body, noticing the vomit just in time to avoid it. She looked him over. “He died here, just like a dickhead. What a freaking headache!”

“I take it you know who this is?”

“It’s Emily’s husband. The dickhead. But he wasn’t supposed to be here until tomorrow. Oh my goodness, Emily!”

Ingrid’s hand was shaking as she pulled her phone from her pocket. “He smells,” she told Gabe.

“That’s pretty cold,” he said as he pulled out his own phone to call for an ambulance and the other policemen.

“Well, considering that I’d have gladly shot him in the face, backed over him with my car or stabbed him in the kidneys, mostly I’m just completely unsurprised that in dying he managed to be as big of a dick dead as he was alive.”

The phone picked up for them both, and she demanded, “Emily, are you all right?”

“What? Yes. Are you okay? Where are you?”

“In the basement. Em, dickhead is dead. He died in our shop. What a dick.”

“What?” Emily’s voice was foggy and shocked.

“Em!” Ingrid gasped, her voice shaking a bit as she said, “Owen, Em, he’s dead. In our basement. It looks like he…”

She looked down at him. At the pool of vomit, the weird look on his face, his dark blue lips, the sort of crawled up version of his fingers, and she said, “Honestly, it looks like someone slipped him some poison or something. He’s super, vomitty dead. You should probably come down here, Em.” This time Ingrid’s voice was fully serious. “I think this might be bad.”

She hung up with her friend, texted Hazel, and then opened the door for the ambulance guys and the other policeman. They’d arrived quickly, but she imagine they didn’t mess around when their boss called in a dead body.

3

Thursday Morning, 2:30AM

Emily’s heart pounded in her chest as she hung up her cell phone and slipped it back into her robe pocket. Ingrid’s phone call woke her from a dead sleep, except she was on the roof instead of the couch where she’d fallen asleep. And she wasn’t actually asleep. She’d been painting her fingernails. Sleep painting? Whatever. She tried to wipe the bleariness out of her eyes and then pushed the button that would call the elevator. She took the newly renovated elevator down to the shop level, made her way through the iron gates that separated the public area from the apartments, and shakily approached the door that would let her into the book shop. The glossy paint on her nails was still wet, and as she reached for the doorknob, she wondered if she were losing her mind. How had she gotten to the roof? And why was she there in the middle of the night? The old, brass knob squeaked as it turned and announced her presence to Ingrid and her sheriff, who stood on the other side of the door.

“Em! Are you okay?” Ingrid crossed the room and hugged Emily. “I was so scared. I saw him, and I thought you might be hurt. Gabe needs you to ID dickhead’s body. Which is stupid because I am perfectly able, but he says it should be you. Are you okay?”

Emily forced her shaking hands to steady as she gently closed the door behind her. She totally had morning breath and crazy bed head, her unruly curls sticking up in seventy directions. And wet nails. She patted down her hair. And felt the paint on her nails smudge. Damn.

“Of course, I’ll be fine. I hate that guy. Where is he?”

Ingrid hugged her tighter and whispered into her ear. “It’s okay if you’re all wonky. You were married to him.” The words were soft and unnecessary. Emily already knew that Ingrid would accept whatever Emily needed. It was why they were the best of friends.

Ingrid’s sheriff spoke up then. “Downstairs, Emily. If you will follow me?”

He asked politely, but she knew it wasn’t really a question.

Gabe walked in front of her, Ingrid behind, and the sheriff led them down the creaky stairs of their own shop to the dark basement. Emily sighed, thinking about all the work that still needed to be done down there. She noticed the way Gabe’s boots squeaked with every step.

Huh. She had a random thought about time slowing and how strange it was to notice irrelevant details when there was a body in her basement. Owen’s body.

Gabe reached the bottom of the stairs and turned to offer a hand to her.

“It’s just this way, in the corner.” She could hear the regret in his voice. “I’m sorry to ask you to do this.”

Emily whispered, “It’s okay.” Even though it wasn’t.

Emily gulped in a large breath as Gabe stepped aside, revealing the body of her not-yet-ex-husband. She felt detached, almost like she was submerged in quicksand and time was slowing, as she noticed details about his now-dead body. He was a bit pale, and there was some kind of white, frothy vomit around his mouth, and his lips were a creepy dark shade of blue, but otherwise he looked like he was sleeping. He looked better dead than alive. That was something.

Gabe was speaking somewhere in the distance, and she could hear him but didn’t understand what he was asking.

“Emily?” Ingrid’s hand rested on Emily’s shoulder, and her best friend’s words penetrated her foggy thoughts.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” She forced herself to look up from the body and to focus on the face of the officer. “What did you say?”

His voice was gentle for the harsh words that came next.

“Emily, is this your husband, Owen Brown?”

This. Owen was no longer a he—he was a thing. He’d been a thing in her head for a while now, but this was different. And he was different as an object. Her head felt woozy as she answered. “Yes, officer. This is Owen Brown. My husband. If you insist on calling him that.”

Suddenly, her throat felt very dry and she didn’t feel like she could get enough oxygen into her lungs. She began gasping for air and looking between Owen and her old, high school crush who would now have to investigate her husband’s murder. This was embarrassing. Or surreal. The room started to spin, and she tried to get a grip on herself.

“Ingrid? I need to get out of here. Out of this basement. Right. Now. Please. Okay? I just need to go.”

Officer Gabe spoke, looking at Ingrid. “Stay close. But go if you need.”

She could hear Ingrid’s voice again somewhere nearby, but Emily couldn’t understand any of the words. Emily felt herself being led up the stairs. The dark of the basement was closing in. And it was cold down there. So cold.

She felt Ingrid’s hand holding hers, towing her up and out of the horrible dank basement.

•

Thursday 3:30AM

“Thanks for letting me ask you questions tonight,” Gabe said. The three of them were in Emily’s apartment, which was decorated in a rustic Craftsman style. It reminded Ingrid of visiting her mom’s home. Comfortable, familiar, and someplace she could be entirely herself.

Ingrid looked at her future lover and scowled. There wasn’t enough napping for this kind of middle of the night crap. She turned her gaze to make a note of it for future guilting of him. It was 3:42am, and her eyes burned.

But perhaps not as bad as Emily’s, who looked hungover but also drunk. Her big brown eyes were red from exhaustion and stress with dark circles under them. If they weren’t up in the middle of the night after finding the body of Emily’s ex, Ingrid would be dragging her friend to car and forcing her to see a doctor. The woman looked like she had contracted the plague. And her nails. Had she been drunk when she painted them? Holy manicure emergency!

“So…”

Ingrid and Emily’s gazes met.

“So,” Ingrid said.

“So,” Emily repeated, laying her head on the table.

“You were in the middle of a breakup.”

“Yup,” Emily said to the tabletop, and then yawned in a way that made her whole body join in.

“Quit tiptoeing around the subject,” Ingrid said. “Emily and dickhead were breaking up. He was a cheating bastard, and she was always too good for him.” There might have been the scold of a long-time girlfriend in her tone. She reminded herself that she had yet to make him her own.

“Okay,” Gabe said, brows raised.

“I’m tired,” Ingrid said. “We’re both tired, so just ask. We’re gonna tell you whatever.”

“Unless we lie,” Emily said to the tabletop.

“Right,” Ingrid nodded. “Except when we lie.”

She stood and began setting up the espresso machine. She couldn’t function without coffee at this time of the morning. Good thing she’d insisted on the apartments being plumbed appropriately. Not taking in mind your espresso machine when designing a new kitchen was idiotic.

Gabe stood and helped her lift it into place as she hooked up the water connections.

It didn’t take long, and she was making coffee for them all as he asked his questions.

“You were fighting over money?”

“He was greedy,” Emily yawned. Ingrid handed her the first coffee. She’d made it heavy on the shots but counteracted the bitterness with magic.