Witching You Were Here (Wicked Witches of the Midwest Book 3) (28 page)

“Don’t you live in Canada?” Thistle asked.

“Yeah, but when you get snow up there it’s not as big a deal,” Byron shrugged. “Here, you get a foot of snow and it shuts everything down for three days. That’s not normal.”

“Who are you talking to, Byron?” Mrs. Baker – or Lillian Hobbes, I guess – wandered up behind her husband. She didn’t look surprised to see us.

“Thistle, Bay, what a nice surprise.”

“You don’t seem all that upset to see us,” Thistle said.

“It was just a matter of time before someone put it together,” Lillian said. “We were hopeful that we might be able to get out of town before the police realized that the Bakers only existed on paper – but we were doubtful that would be feasible.”

“Why did you abandon the boat in the middle of the channel?” I asked.

“We wanted a new life,” Lillian said. “We wanted to just disappear, letting everyone think we were dead, and then just find a new place to live out our golden years.”

“We were going to go someplace warmer,” Byron said. “The blizzard kind of messed us up, though.”

“Why would you want to disappear?” Thistle asked. “What about your family?”

“You haven’t met our family,” Lillian said. “They’re all lazy losers.”

“Not a one of them has a job,” Byron agreed. “Our kids sponged off us their entire lives. It was our fault, I know that, but they don’t have a work ethic. We got sick of taking care of them.

“Then, when they had kids,” he continued. “They taught their offspring that work was a dirty word and all they needed to do to get money was ask us for it.”

“I don’t understand,” I admitted. “Why didn’t you just cut them off?”

“You can’t just cut off family,” Byron said. “Trust me, I’ve tried. The tears, I tell you.”

“The crying, the wailing,” Lillian supplied. “And that was our son.”

“So you were going to fake your death? I don’t get it,” Thistle said honestly.

“Our family isn’t exactly normal,” Byron admitted.

“Whose is?” Thistle said bitterly.

“Oh, honey,” Lillian grabbed Thistle’s hand compassionately. “You have no idea how lucky you are.”

“Have you met my Aunt Tillie?”

“A woman that loves you with her whole heart.”

“And the devil horns she keeps hidden under that curly cap she calls hair,” Thistle supplied.

“She has a few quirks,” Lillian acknowledged. “But you live in a family that loves each other. It’s not about the money. It’s about the . . . magic.”

Thistle shared an uncomfortable gaze with me before turning back to Byron. “I still don’t understand why you just can’t cut your kids off. Give them a date where they have to get a job and stand firm.”

Byron sighed and sat down on the couch. “You see, we’re rich people.”

“I noticed,” I replied, glancing around the boat appreciatively.

“The thing is, we didn’t exactly make our money the old-fashioned way.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Thistle said.

“Well, you see,” Byron hedged. “We own a string of laundry facilities.”

“Like Laundromats?”

“Yes,” Byron nodded.

“What’s wrong with that?” I asked.

“It was a good living,” Lillian supplied. “It just wasn’t going to make us rich.”

“Not filthy rich,” Byron agreed. “And we wanted to be filthy rich.”

I had no idea where they were going with this.

“So,” Byron continued. “When a local businessman approached us with an opportunity that would allow us to bring in five times the money we were making on a monthly basis, well, we jumped at it.”

“And how did you do that?” Thistle asked suspiciously.

“We took on a series of investors that would give us a sum of money,” Lillian said quickly. “We would then give those same investors – under a different name, of course – most of that money back. We would keep a portion of the money ourselves for our trouble.”

“I still don’t get it,” Thistle looked befuddled.

“They’re money launderers,” I supplied.

“Oh,” Thistle said. “Oh!”

Byron shrugged apologetically. “It’s a living.”

“It’s a crime,” I countered.

“They don’t exactly look like criminals,” Thistle said.

“We’re not criminals,” Lillian corrected Thistle. “We’re the people that help criminals.”

“Well, that makes it better,” I said sarcastically.

“I still don’t understand why that stops you from cutting your kids off?” Thistle said.

“Well,” Lillian shifted her gaze to her husband. “You see, our daughter happened to marry one of the individuals we worked with.”

“Your daughter married a mobster?”

“Yes,” Byron nodded.

“And he threatened you?”

“Alex? No,” Byron laughed. “Alex never threatened us.”

“Then I still don’t understand,” Thistle pressed.

“Our daughter and Alex’s son is a different story,” Lillian said.

“He threatened you?”

“Not exactly,” Lillian said. “It’s more like he used some of our property, this boat for example, as a way to get involved with his father’s business.”

Realization finally dinged in my foggy brain. “He used your boat to run drugs between Canada and the U.S.”

Lillian pursed her lips and nodded. “We didn’t know,” she said hurriedly. “Not until we got on the boat to leave.”

“We knew that he was hiding stuff in our house,” Byron said. “We found bags of powder and pills hidden in our basement.”

“What did you do?”

“We told him, if he did anything like that again, that we would call the police,” Byron replied.

“And how did he take that?” I asked.

“Not well,” Byron said. “He said, if we even thought of calling the police, he would kill us.”

“Your grandson threatened to kill you?” I asked incredulously. “Why didn’t you tell his father?”

“Well, you see, we found out he wasn’t running drugs for his father,” Lillian said. “He was running drugs for one of his father’s rivals. If we told Alex, there’s a good chance that our grandson would have been killed.”

It was like a soap opera, for crying out loud.

“So you decided to take yourselves out of the equation,” Thistle said sympathetically.

“Pretty much,” Byron agreed.

“So what went wrong?” I asked.

“When we took out the boat, our plan was to abandon it in the water and then pick up a new life in a new state,” Lillian said. “We had a bag of fake blood to leave on the deck and we had made arrangements for another boat to pick us up in the channel and a vehicle waiting for us in town. We figured we would be long gone before anyone found out we were even missing.”

Thistle and I both waited for Lillian to finish the story.

“We found something on the boat, though.”

“Drugs,” I supplied.

“Drugs,” Lillian nodded. “Apparently, our grandson had left his latest delivery on our boat and he wasn’t exactly happy about us taking our boat. We knew he would be following us, but we didn’t realize how close he was.”

“He’s here, isn’t he?”

“He is,” Byron said. “He’s staying at your inn, in fact.”

Thistle’s eyebrows nearly shot off her head. “It’s Sludge, isn’t it?”

“No,” Byron shook his head quickly. “Those boys are innocent. They’re just here for the snow.”

“That leaves Brian,” Thistle said dubiously. “We know who his family is.”

“You’re forgetting someone,” I said.

“Who?”

“Trevor.”

Tears flooded Lillian’s eyes. “Yes, Trevor is our grandson.”

“Why didn’t you just give him the boat and continue on with your plan?” Thistle asked.

“He doesn’t just want the boat,” Lillian said. “He wants what was on the boat. He’s been following us around for days and demanding that we return his property.”

“The drugs,” I said. “Where are the drugs? Did he take them from you?”

“No,” Byron said. “We hid them.”

“At the Dragonfly?” Thistle looked really confused right now. I didn’t blame her.

“What’s the Dragonfly?” Now Lillian looked confused.

“It’s a burned out inn down Maple Road,” Thistle said.

“I don’t know about anything about another inn,” Lillian said. “Besides, Trevor doesn’t have the drugs. He doesn’t have any idea where we hid the drugs.”

“Where did you hide the drugs?” I asked the question, even though I didn’t want to hear the answer I knew in my heart was coming.

“In the basement of your mothers’ inn,” Byron admitted. “In the room your Aunt Tillie has been brewing her special wine.”

Crap, crap, crap!

“Let me get this straight,” Thistle pursed her lips dangerously. “You’re running from your murderous thug grandson and you stole his drugs and hid them in my mom’s inn?”

Lillian looked uncomfortable. “Well, we didn’t know what else to do.”

“How about going to the police?”

“We didn’t want to go to jail ourselves.”

“
Sonofabitch,” I swore. “We have to get back out to the inn.”

“Why?” Thistle looked confused.

“Because I think that’s where Trevor went.”

Thistle and I both swung to leave the cabin of the yacht and froze when we saw Aunt Tillie on the bottom step. The set of her jaw was grim, and she looked like she wanted to kill someone. My guess was that Byron and Lillian were at the top of that list – right next to their delinquent grandson.

“How much did you hear?”

“Most of it,” Clove supplied from her spot behind Aunt Tillie.

“We have to get back out to the inn,” I said to Aunt Tillie, forcefully shaking her out of her murderous reverie. “I think Trevor is out at the inn now looking for his drugs and if our moms get in the way . . .”

“He’ll kill them,” Aunt Tillie said. She was succinct in her determination but she wasn’t moving. I was starting to wonder if she was in shock.

“So we need to get going,” Thistle took a step forward.

Aunt Tillie ignored her. She was staring down Lillian and Byron like they were flies and she was the swatter. “How dare you,” she finally gritted out. “How dare you bring drugs into my home.”

Lillian and Byron looked properly abashed, while Thistle and I exchanged wary glances behind Aunt Tillie’s back. That was pretty rich from a woman that cultivated her own pot field on a yearly basis.

“We didn’t know what else to do,” Lillian shrugged helplessly.

“So you were just going to run again and leave us with the cleanup?”

Now that was a pretty good question.

“We figured, once he knew we were gone, that Trevor would follow us again. We just needed a head start.”

“You just thought he’d abandon his box of drugs?” Clove didn’t look like she believed the statement.

“We didn’t know,” Lillian admitted. “And it’s a big bag, not a box.”

“Cripes, we can’t stay here any longer,” I said irritably. “We have to get back out to the inn.”

“You should call Landon,” Thistle said quietly. “Maybe he and Chief Terry can get out there faster than us.”

I paused at the suggestion and turned to Aunt Tillie, a question in my eyes. “What do you think?”

Aunt Tillie finally turned to me, seeing me for the first time since she’d entered the boat’s cabin. “Call them,” she said finally. “We’re going out there, too. Thistle, go get my plow truck.”

“Wait,” I grabbed Thistle’s arm. “If Trevor is there, he’ll see – and hear – that truck coming from a mile away.”

“So?” Thistle looked confused. “Isn’t that what we want?”

“Not if it’s going to set him on edge,” Aunt Tillie said sagely. “He’s already teetering. We saw that this morning when he jumped on Brian.”

“You weren’t even outside,” I pointed out.

“How many times do I have to tell you? I see all and know all.”

“Whatever,” Thistle grumbled. “She’s right, though, we can’t send him over the edge.”

“How do we know what they’re telling us is true?” Clove piped in. “Maybe they’re the drug dealers?” She still didn’t want to give up hope on Trevor, that much was obvious.

“They’re money launderers,” I said firmly. “They’re not drug dealers.”

“We don’t have time to deal with your crap right now,” Thistle interjected angrily. “We have to get out to the inn. We’re going to take the snowmobiles.”

I turned to her in surprise. “We are?”

“We can sneak up to the back of the inn that way,” Thistle said. “They’re already gassed up.”

I tilted my head to the side, considering. “Okay,” I agreed. “Let’s go. I’ll call Landon and Chief Terry on our way back to the stables.”

We started to climb the steps. When we got to the deck above, Aunt Tillie paused.

“What are you doing?” Clove turned around to watch Aunt Tillie.