The Old Witcheroo (19 page)

“Dove, watch where you’re going, please!” Win shouted tersely.

I righted the steering wheel and tried to focus on the road to the diner, where Eleanor’s aunt would be this early in the day, but my nose had begun to throb and the AC in my rental was out. “Got any answers, International Man of Mystery?”

“I have nothing. I have nothing other than my word this man is a rat. He’s lying,” Win spat, the harsh tone to his voice a very unusual occurrence.

“Well, the DNA says otherwise. So what do we do now, Win? Will he have your fingerprints, too? Where’s the proof your fingerprints exist and why hasn’t MI6 sent them to Davis Monroe? If he can prove he’s you, and I can’t prove I came by that will of yours honestly, what then? I think going with the ‘I hit the afterlife lottery’ explanation just won’t cut it.”

Gosh, I was in a mess of knots over this. This was no longer just a subtle threat. This was very real. Our home and our lives were officially in jeopardy.

“We must make sure Luis connects with Davis Monroe. I didn’t take this seriously enough, I suppose, and for that, I’m quite remorseful. Davis has my contacts at MI6, and they can confirm not only my position with them, my DNA and my fingerprints, but my death.”

“Will that matter? He has DNA to prove he’s you! I bet he somehow got fingerprints, too!”

“I’m going to be quite honest and tell you that isn’t impossible on the black market if you know the right people, Stevie.”

“Perrrfect,” I drawled with sarcasm. “So how are we going to prove he’s not really you? Is MI6 going to give him the spy test to prove it? Are they going to make him jump from tall building to tall building in hot pursuit of some arms dealer? Ask him to show them how tight his water torture skills are?”

Win’s sigh rasped in my ear. “Stevie, I don’t have the answers. I only know Davis will know how to handle it. He’ll contact MI6, and they’ll straighten this out.”

With a roll of my eyes, I pulled into the diner’s parking lot. “Right. I passed that on to Luis, that it’s imperative we get Davis to talk to his contact at MI6, but I don’t know what good it’s going to do us at this point. We have a walking, talking guy wandering around pretending to be you, and then we have you.
A ghost
.” Leaning forward on the steering wheel, I tried to catch my breath and get my head together enough to talk to Eleanor’s aunt Tippy.

Dana’s bail hearing was set for tomorrow afternoon. I wanted to prevent him being in the pokey for any longer than the evening. So I had work to do, and I had to try to focus on that rather than lament this thing with Fakebottom or I’d lose my mind.

“Okay, I’ll be back in a few minutes. If you think of anything—anything that will help us get out of this mess, I’m all ears.”

Pushing open the door of the car, I stepped out into the muggy, ceaselessly ugly sun and strode toward the diner, waving to Baron, the short-order cook, outside on a smoke break.

As I climbed the steps and strode through the door, I mentally prepared how I’d go about asking these very sensitive questions of Tippy. It was quiet right now, in the middle hours between breakfast and lunch with only one patron, Abe Benson, sipping a cup of coffee on a stool at the diner’s counter and enjoying a piece of their specialty, pineapple upside-down cake.

I stayed at the far end and waved when I saw Tippy pop her head out of the square cutout that separated the backside of the counter from the kitchen. She saw me, but her eyes weren’t smiling the way they normally did when I dropped in for lunch or dinner.

I hitched my jaw to the kitchen doors and asked, “Can I speak to you for just a minute, Tippy?”

Tippy’s nod was curt, the flipped ends of her short, frosted blonde hair bristling with the motion. When she came out the swinging red doors, she sighed, braced her rail-thin body against them and said, “I’m sorry about last night, Stevie. What can I do to make it up to you? Free breakfast for a year?” Her words came through as weary—a bone-deep tired that even I felt.

“Don’t be silly, Tippy. I’m fine. Really.”

Tippy pointed to my cheek and grimaced. “That doesn’t look fine. I’m so, so sorry.”

“It’s just a bruise and I’ll heal. I startled her and she reacted.” I paused a moment, still a bit hesitant, but made the snap decision to see what I could find out anyway. Anything could be helpful at this point. “Listen, can we sit and talk for a minute, Tippy? I know you probably have your hands full, but I just need a couple of seconds of your time.”

“Sure,” she said, motioning to a red vinyl booth overlooking the parking lot. “You want coffee?”

I shook my head and smiled as I slid in opposite her, folding my hands on the table. “No, thanks. I’m fine. So about Eleanor…how is she today?”

“She’s upset, which is to be expected, I s’pose. They took her to the station last night to question her. Detective Moore was actually very gentle with her.”

“And did they clear her?”

Tippy’s eyes filled with tears. “Thankfully, yes. She was with me all night the evening Miss Fleming was killed. I can vouch for that. Listen, Eleanor’s a good kid, Stevie. She’s had some hard times growing up. Her mother, my sister Ophelia, abandoned her when she was only five, poor angel. Just up and left her with me one day and never came back, twenty years ago now, and I’ve tried. Heaven help me, I’ve tried so hard to take care of her, do right by her, but she has some…well, peculiarities… I just don’t know what to do to curb them sometimes. I’m still learning, as is Eleanor. I love her like my own. Her heart is pure, she just doesn’t have the kind of censor you or I have, you know?”

My shoulders slumped. This made me feel just dreadful. I didn’t want to embarrass Eleanor or Tippy, but I also had to make sure I was doing right by Dana by crossing my T’s and dotting my I’s, and that meant asking all the uncomfortable things.

I grabbed Tippy’s hand and squeezed it reassuringly before I let go. “I understand completely. Eleanor’s never been anything but an angel to me whenever I come in. She’s a great waitress. Promise. I know she’s a bit shy, which is why I was so surprised by what happened last night.”

“The doctors say she’s on the low end of the spectrum for autism. I wish like heck I’d known that when she was little. It explains so much of her childhood. So I take her to all sorts of group therapies and she sees people who can teach her to cope, and usually she’s okay.”

I was relieved to know that, if nothing else, Eleanor had people helping her manage her life. “So, her locker… It was covered in pictures of Dana. Did you know she’d taken all those pictures of him?”

Tippy shook her head, her brown eyes going dull with defeat. “I didn’t know anything about it, I swear. She loves her camera. It’s her way to connect with the world because she struggles so with real connections. She takes pictures all the time—all over town, at the beach, of everything and everywhere. I think she’s a little smitten with Dana. He was always so kind to her whenever he came in for breakfast. He looks past her awkwardness with people and focuses on how sweet she is, how shy she is. He tips her well, too. Officer Nelson’s just an all ’round good guy.”

“So a crush, huh?”

Tippy nodded, the lines around her eyes wrinkling when she smiled in irony. “Yes. But not exactly in the way you or I would crush. It has nothing to do with the physical aspect, if you know what I mean. Eleanor’s way to express herself is to obsess over a particular subject sometimes. Once when she was fourteen or so, she took almost three hundred pictures of an old stuffed dog she’d had since she was little. She loved that dog, and taking pictures of it was her way of showing others the joy it brought her.” Tippy stopped and shook her head. “I know it sounds kooky, but that’s how she processes things.”

I smiled at Tippy, sensing her discomfort, the effort she was putting into trying to explain Eleanor’s behavior. “I don’t think that’s kooky at all. I’d take three hundred pictures of my coffee cup every morning if I was any good at taking them because, well,
coffee
,” I said on a chuckle.

Tippy chuckled, too, the tension in her face easing some. “Eleanor just gets caught up, which is something we’ve been trying to teach her can make people feel uncomfortable if they don’t understand autism. I suspect that’s why she reacted so harshly to you. She knew she was going overboard, taking so many pictures of Dana, but again, she has trouble separating the world she creates in her mind and the real one sometimes. So she hides things. People weren’t always so kind to Eleanor when she was a child, which lent to a lot of secrecy. If I’d known, I would have told Dana, and I would have done something about it. I would have explained it was inappropriate and it would upset people if they saw it.”

“Was she upset when Sophia and Dana came into the diner together?”

Tippy fiddled with her gold stud earring; her eyes, looking out the window into the parking lot, were far away. “That’s the funny thing about this. She loved Sophia. Really loved her. She loved to go to the library and, well, you know Sophia. She was so kind and sweet, I don’t think anyone didn’t love her. I’m not sure Eleanor really understands those kinds of relationships—intimate ones, you know? I wonder sometimes if she didn’t think they could both be Dana’s girlfriend. He made her happy, and she admired him, so she expressed it in her pictures.”

That made total and complete sense. “I understand completely. And I have to say, the small glimpse I got of the pictures sure looked like she has a good eye. They were really terrific.” And that was the truth. Now that I understood Eleanor, I saw her pictures much differently. Rather than stalker-ish, they were more like an homage of how she felt about Dana and his kindness, and it was pure and genuine.

Her face brightened considerably. “She really is pretty good, isn’t she?”

I patted Tippy’s hand and grinned. “She really is. You’ve done a terrific job raising her. So, before I leave you and go back out into the mouth of Satan, a.k.a this infernal heat, did you ever chat with Sophia at all? On a personal level? Well, more personal than just the normal ‘how are you’ and such.”

“Not really. I never had much time, I guess. Though, something like this thing with Sophia and her death makes me realize I should make time. The only thing I do remember was this one phone call she took. Eleanor and I were at the library and Sophia was on her cell, talking to someone. She looked pretty upset. It struck me as strange because Sophia was always so serene.”

My ears perked. “Did you happen to hear anything she said?”

Tippy closed her eyes, as though she were trying to recollect the moment. “I remember she spoke in a foreign language. Maybe it was Greek? Italian? But I did hear her say a name. It’s on the tip of my tongue, I just can’t remember it. Dang, I’m getting old.”

I pulled a Madam Zoltar card from my purse and pushed it toward Tippy. “If you happen to remember, would you give me a buzz? My cell’s on the card.”

“You bet. I know you’re worried about Dana, Stevie. We all are. He would never hurt Sophia. Never. No one can make me believe otherwise.”

I began to slide out of the booth, dragging my purse over my arm. “That’s what I’m hoping to prove. Anyway, thanks for your time, Tippy, and tell Eleanor if she ever has a second, I’d love to see her pictures the next time I come in for lunch.”

“Oh, she’d really love that, Stevie. And I’ll make sure she apologizes for hitting you with her shoe.”

“Totally unnecessary.”

But Tippy insisted with a firm smile, her lean face brightening considerably. “No, in learning about the world around her, and how to interact, Eleanor has to know how to own her mistakes and treat others with respect. It’s important—her therapists all say so. By looking at her, people can’t tell she has struggles with others, and she can’t expect them to or make excuses for herself. She has triggers of all kinds, but she also needs to understand her triggers and deal with them appropriately when she meets people who don’t know her. She’s getting there, it just takes time.”

I smiled and nodded, slipping from the booth. Gosh, Tippy had really gone the extra mile for Eleanor. I admired that far more than I was capable of expressing. “Okay then. When next we meet, I’d love to chat with her. Until then, have a good day, Tippy.”

I gave her a quick hug and made my way back out to the parking lot.

“Stevie?” Win said, soft and husky in my ear as I strode to the car, not looking forward to getting into it without the benefit of AC.

I popped open the oven door, er, I mean my car door, and let it air out. “Yeah, Win?”

“I love your soul.”

I smiled and climbed in, my chest tight. That was nice. So nice.

* * * *

Setting my turquoise-blue turban with the gaudy silver scorpion in the center on my head, one of my favorites by the way, I tucked my hair into it and straightened my Madam Zoltar caftan. After dropping off the piece of material I’d found stuck on my hedges with Detective Montgomery, I decided to come back to the shop on the off chance some stray tourists wanted a tarot reading.

I had no appointments booked until tomorrow, but I needed some time to clear my head, and sometimes readings were just the thing to help do that. Also, the summer was coming to a close and the tourists would be few and far between. Stockpiling money for the fall and winter months ahead was prudent. Especially if Fakebottom was going to try to take everything we owned.

I flipped the neon sign on outside to read open and sat down with my laptop to surf the web until a customer came in.

“How are we this afternoon, Dove?”

“At a standstill. I don’t know what to do about Fakebottom, and I just can’t put this thing with Dana together, Win. I can’t make a connection with anyone here in town or anywhere else to Sophia. How about you?”

“Stumped on both counts.”

I nodded, resting my chin in my hand. “This can’t be good for our record.”

“We have a record?”

“Three for three. We’ve solved three murders up ’til today. Four isn’t looking so bright.”

“Some murders take longer than others, I suppose. When I was a spy, we spent months, sometimes years looking for the bad guy, you know. Long nights of surveillance, thousands of tactical maneuvers just to get to where we needed to be.”