A Charming Crime (3 page)

My eyes
narrowed, and I studied him for a moment.

“What’s up with
him?” Oscar tilted his head to the side to get a better look at my disgruntled
cat.

“I have no idea.
He’s been acting strange all afternoon.” I ignored Mr. Prince Charming. I
wanted to get back to this Izzy person. “How did she find me? Especially my
home
?”

Oscar stood up
to throw away his trash. “It’s not like Locust Grove is so big. If she stopped
and asked about you someone would tell her where you live.”

True. It just sucked
that she came on the day of the big fire. After seeing all the trouble I’ve
caused the town, she might’ve changed her mind. No wonder Isadora Solstice
high-tailed it after she handed me her business card.

“Did you take
the job?” There was no way his uncle Jordan was going to hear of him leaving Locust
Grove department.

“Not yet.”

“Did you tell
Jordan?”

“Nope. No need
to just yet.”

Now who was
being aloof?

“Are you really
thinking about it?”

“What if I am?”
His blue eyes narrowed speculatively. “I’m a big boy.”

Chapter
Three

Last night
before Oscar left, he gave me directions to Whispering Falls. They didn’t seem
particularly hard to follow. And since the flea market was only open on the
weekends, and my lab had burnt down, and I didn’t have anything to do with
myself, I jumped in the Green Machine, my two-toned green ‘88 El Camino and
headed toward Whispering Falls.

I’d never been
this far out of Locust Grove. The roads twisted and wound around bends, making
me drive much slower than I and the Green Machine were used to.

Oscar was right.
About thirty minutes of swerves and curves, a clearing popped up as if it had
magically appeared.

I pulled over to
the side of the road to get a better view of the town. A calmness came over me,
something familiar, like I’d been there before.

Nah.
I shook the
notion out of my head. This didn’t look like a place that was forgettable.

“Welcome to Whispering
Falls, A Charming Village,” read the old beat-up wooden sign. I smiled. It did
have a ring to it.

Mewl, mewl.
Mr. Prince
Charming crawled from underneath the seat and jumped next to me.

“What are you
doing here?” I picked him up, looked him square in the eyes, and warned him,
“You are going to have to stay in the car.”

But I knew
better. Many times I’d tried to sneak out of the house over the past fifteen
years, but Mr. Prince Charming always either followed me or mysteriously showed
up.

The old Green
Machine crept down the main street into Whispering Falls. Almost everyone on
the sidewalks took time to stop what they were doing and wave at me. I didn’t
pay much attention to them because the town was nothing like Oscar described
it.

It was as though
someone came in and carved the town into the side of a mountain. The moss
covered cottage shops were nestled deep in the woods, and had the most
beautiful entrances I’d ever seen.

Each shop had a
colorful awning, displaying its name over the top of the ornamental gated
doors. It had a magical feel.

Mr. Prince
Charming’s paws were planted on the window sill, and he stared out the window
as if he knew this was a special place.

I pulled the Green
Machine into the parking space in front of Mystic Lights, the shop Isadora
Solstice owned. I couldn’t wait to see what was inside. The outside was
definitely mystic. The hunter green wood door was encased in the most beautiful
stone archway. The heavy black metal door handles added to the old world charm.

“You stay here,”
I told Mr. Prince Charming as if he understood me. I rolled the windows down a
little to let some air in, not like I was going to be in there for a long
period of time, but just in case.

With my purse
strapped across my chest, I grabbed the cardboard box of homeopathic remedies
from the bed of the El Camino and walked up the stone steps. I turned around to
make sure the cat was okay, and he seemed to have found a nice sunny spot on
the dash to curl up and nap.

“Excuse me.” A
petite round woman used her elbow to push me out of her way, and then opened
the door. She looked back at me, gesturing with her stubby fingers. She
snarled, “Well, are you coming in or just going to stand there in everyone’s
way?”

“I. . .yes.
Thank you.” Tightly I held onto the box as though it was my comfort and
followed the woman inside. If my intuition was right, and generally it was, she
was not a happy soul.

I decided there
was no way she could be a member of the Whispering Falls village. She certainly
wasn’t friendly. This woman was short and her yellow turban didn’t look great
perched on top of her short bleach blonde hair. The green and purple cloak
perfectly covered what seemed to be a plump-sized woman.

“Izzy, you have
company!” The woman ran her eyes up and down, taking in every inch of me. “And
she’s not from here!”

“I’ll be right
out,” Isadora hollered from the back of the building.

I smiled politely
at the woman and sat my box of remedies on the glass counter. With my hands in
my pocket, I walked around to see exactly what Isadora’s shop sold.

“Are you from
another spiritual village?” There was a pensive shimmer in the shadows of her
eye.

“A spiritual
what?” I laughed. The only spiritual anything I ever got was going to church
with Oscar and Uncle Jordan and from Darla’s little tidbits of Karma wisdom.

“Um, hmm. I
didn’t think so,” she replied with a heavy sigh and walked into the other room.

We were standing
in the middle of some kind of light shop. Above our heads were all sorts of
hanging lights with all sorts of crazy shade designs. Some with stained glass,
some with globes, but mostly chandelier type. I wondered if most of the houses
in Whispering Falls had these types of decorative lights.

I noticed a few
snow globes in a glass case, but saw nothing to do with pharmaceuticals or
remedies. They weren’t like any snow globes I’d seen before. A few were sparkly
and the water was black, not clear like most of the snow globes I had seen.
There was one snow globe that lit up every time I tilted my head to the side. I
leaned in closer, to get a better look.

Ah!
I jumped when a
face appeared.

“Boo!” The globe
radiated purple with yellow lines rotating around like there was static in it
and then went black.

I squeezed my
eyes shut, and then opened them. It had to be one of those fancy musical snow
globes with a Halloween Theme.

“Do you think I
like being cooped up in here?” a voice came out of nowhere.

I pinched myself.
I had to be in the middle of a nightmare. “Ouch.” I shook my arm in the air to
shake off the sting. I looked into the globe because it appeared to be dark
again.

“Still here.” A
woman’s face appeared. She threw her head back and cackled. Her turban fell
off.
Did everyone in Whispering Falls wear a turban?
I rolled up on my
toes to see where it went. Her face appeared, taking up the entire globe,
making it hard for me to see. “What? What are you looking at?”

“I. . .I,” I scratched
my head. If this wasn’t a nightmare, what was it? I looked around Mystic
Lights. The fake blond was nowhere to be found. I looked at the round glass
ball and asked, “Who are you? What are you?”

“I’m Madame Torres,
voice to the spirits. Who do you seek? Or shall I say who seeks you?” She
continued to babble more and more. I continued to stare, not able to wrap my
head around what I was hearing.

“This is not
happening to me,” I repeated over and over, though my intuition told me it was.
“This is not happening to me.” The more I repeated it, the brighter the globe
got.

“Silence!” she
screamed, causing her head to spin around and around. “Whom do you seek, June?”

“No one!” I
shook my head. Madame Torres was demanding. “I seek no one. How do you know my name?”

“A devils curse
seeks to destroy you. Lift us, lift us up to the light and glide June through
this stormy life.” Her globe illuminated a bright purple and in a flash went to
black like when I found it.

“No, no. Don’t you
wish any evil spirits on me!” I picked up the globe and shook it.

“What are you
doing?” The mean woman approached. She stood stiff, her muscles tensed. The
blood seemed to have drained from her face. “Did you see something?”

“I. . .” I
looked at the snow globe again, but nothing was there. I put it back in its
place. Obviously my mind was playing tricks on me.

“Ah, welcome to
my little part of the world, June.” Isadora walked out of the door she had
disappeared into earlier, and held her long skinny hands out. This time they
weren’t covered in gloves. She had a huge ring on her middle finger that looked
like a sleeping cat.

She must’ve
noticed me staring at it.

“Isn’t it fabulous?”
With her long fingernail, she flicked the cat’s back open to reveal a tiny
mouse with diamond eyes. “I did notice you had a cat.”

“Yes. Mr. Prince
Charming.” I tried to glance out the door, but couldn’t see the Green Machine
from here. My eyes wandered back to the snow globe. A light flickered.

Mewl, mewl
. Suddenly Mr.
Prince Charming was doing figure eights around my ankles.

“You brought him
with you.” Isadora clasped her hands together, bent down, and picked him up.

“Oh, no you
don’t want to do that,” I warned her. “He doesn’t like to be picked up by
anyone but me…”
and apparently her
. He was purring so loud, I was sure
the woman in the snow globe could hear him.

“I’m so sorry. I
left him in the car.” I took him from her, and he bounced out of my arms. “Mr.
Prince Charming, how did you get out?”

“He’s fine. We
love cats, don’t we, Ann?” Isadora looked over at the other woman. Ann was bent
over rubbing her back.

“
You
do,”
Ann snarled. She made her way behind the counter; she sat down on a stool, and
continued to knead her back with her fist.

Isadora turned
to me and tried to disguise her annoyance. “Were you looking at my crystal, er,
snow globes?” She pointed to the glass case.

“I was. I, ah,
have never seen snow globes like that.” The one that I had seen the face in was
glowing. “They sure do make them fancy now. Sort of like those crazy eight
balls.”

“Well, they are
special. They work off of people’s. . .um. . .energy.” She chose her words
carefully. “Now then, let’s go in the back and take a look at your homeopathic
cures. Ann, do you think you can do your job and watch the shop?”

Ann’s eyes
narrowed, and she snipped, “Of course I can.”

I took the box
off the counter.

Isadora spun on
her black, laced up pointy-toed, high-heeled boots and walked to the back of
the shop. Mr. Prince Charming and I followed her. Her wavy blonde hair swung
side to side along her shoulder blades in step with her long black A-line
skirt.

“Don’t mind
her.” Isadora pointed toward the front of the shop, referring to Ann. “She only
works here as a favor. She couldn’t keep a job in Whispering Falls for the life
of her. Now it’s my turn to put up with her and her gimpy back.”

My brows lifted
in amusement. I didn’t know Ann or Isadora for that matter and none of it was
my business.

“I think Oscar
might have misled you about what I really do.” I set the cardboard box on her
desk and opened it up. I took out the prettiest bottle I had.

Gently I held
the lime green glass bottle with the tiny lizard corked on top. The glass had a
hint of swirly gold throughout the bottle.

“Stunning,”
Isadora gasped, taking the bottle. She opened it up and smelled the contents.

“I. . .um. .
.don’t have cures, just homeopathic remedies that might or might not help what
ails you,” I stuttered. “No. . .um. . .not cures.” Darla’s recipes were never
potent.

Her long lashes cast
a dark shadow on her cheeks. With her eyes still closed, she wrapped her long
thin hands around the delicate bottle, and drew in a long, deep breath. She
smiled.

“We would love
for you to open a shop here.” Her eyes popped open and she sat the bottle on
the desk. She walked around the desk and sat down. Slowly she opened the drawer
and pulled out a packet of papers. “We will need you to fill this application for
the council. But don’t worry. You are a shoo-in.”

Mr. Prince
Charming jumped into her lap and dragged his tail along her pointy nose and
down her chin. I wasn’t sure, but he looked like he was grinning.

“Oh, now I know
we have something backwards.” Open a shop? Where did that come from? I stood up
and put the bottle back in the box. Talking snow globes, a grinning cat, open a
shop. . .something definitely wasn’t right.