A Charming Crime (7 page)

Charms?
Faintly I
remember the man in the top hat telling me about this place. I had no clue that
my landlord was the owner. I hurried over to see her selection, hoping there
was a turtle to replace my lost one. Maybe I could get a real charm bracelet
that fit.

“Your signs said
the hours are morning to night. I assume you are open.” I craned my neck to get
a better view of the charms.

She stood up and
adjusted her shirt. No turban. Bella’s round cheek’s balled up through her
grin, exposing the small gap between her two front teeth. Her long blonde hair
framed her face, and cascaded down her small frame. There was no way she was
any taller than five foot two.

“Get back here!”
I yelled for Mr. Prince Charming who had jumped on the clean glass counter, and
over to Bella’s side. I reached over the counter to get him, but he was already
out of my grasp. “I’m so sorry.”

“You must be June.”
Her smoky eyes twinkled with laughter. “And I’ve heard about you, Mr. Prince
Charming.”

Great!
I bet the whole
town heard about the new girl fighting with Ann. I chalked one up for the new
girl. . .me.

Completely
embarrassed, I hid my face when I noticed Mr. Prince Charming had crawled into
the jewelry case.

“He must like
the lights.” There weren’t any other explanation. He loved to sun himself.
“I’ll get him.”

Before I got
around the counter, he was already out and dropped something out of his mouth
on the counter.

“It looks like
he wants to give you a charm.” Bella waved the silver charm in the air. “A
square, Celtic knot. Good choice, Mr. Prince Charming.”

Mewl, mewl.
He tiptoed
around in circles, wagging his long white tail from side to side.

“I’m sorry. We have
a strange relationship.” I pulled the rent check out of my pocket. I had to get
out of there before the darn cat destroyed the place. “Here’s your rent. Thank
you so much. I will be looking for a place soon.”

“Don’t worry
about it. In fact, the cottage has the most beautiful view. Nothing else in
Whispering Falls compares to it.” Her fingers worked on a piece of jewelry.
“Here you go. Welcome to Whispering Falls.”

She uncurled her
hand. Between her finger and thumb dangled a real charm bracelet with the
Celtic knot attached. She shoved it towards me.

“He wants you to
have it. Celtic knots protect you from evil spirits.” Her eyes darkened as she
moved it closer. “Take it as a welcome gift.”

Evil spirits?
What was it with
this town and evil spirits?

“I. . .I
couldn’t.” I wanted to so bad, and my gut told me to take it. “I can pay for
it.”

“No.” She
grabbed my wrist and clasped it on before I could object. “It fits you
perfect.”

She was right.
It wasn’t like the other bracelet that I had to clasp on a different link in
order for it to fit. I let it fall, showing how well it really did fit.

I told her about
how Mr. Prince Charming had showed up on my tenth birthday with the turtle
charm attached to his collar and how I had lost it today.

“Fate.” She
smiled.

“That’s
something Darla would say.” I laughed, but abruptly stopped when we heard a
blood curdling scream coming from outside.

We ran out into
the street along with everyone else in Whispering Falls to see what the ruckus
was about. Constance and Patience were standing by the lake just beyond A Dose
of Darla pointing to something. Patience had her face in a handkerchief,
sobbing.

“It’s Ann!”
Patience screamed.

Chandra, Gerald,
and Izzy ran to see what she was talking about.

The sky darkened
like the lid of an eye.

I reached into
my black bag and pulled out my cell phone.

I called Oscar’s
cell phone. “Something is going on. You better get over to my shop.”

Within seconds,
Oscar stood next to Izzy, while the rest of us waited in the distance,
wondering what they were looking at.

Slowly, Bella
and I made our way toward them, as did the rest of the village. There were feet
sticking out of the long brush that grew on the banks of the lake. We watched
Oscar pull the body out. It was Ann.

Quietly we all
waited to see what was going to happen. Oscar was bent over her. Had she passed
out? Was she sleeping? She wasn’t responding to anything Oscar was doing. He
stood up, ran his hands through his dark hair. He turned to the crowd that had
gathered behind him, me included.

“She’s dead,” he
announced, but focused on me. “It appears she has been strangled underwater.”

There was a
collective gasp. I looked around at everyone’s faces. Shock and outburst of
cries filled the empty air.

“There is a
killer among us.” Gerald’s voice echoed over Whispering Falls and it hung there
like a thick fog.

He and Izzy
whispered a few words between them before he walked over to me.

“That’s
terrible.” My nerves tingled, thinking about a murder. I couldn’t recall any
murders in Locust Grove, and I remember Oscar telling me that there was zero
crime here.

“We need to
talk.” He pulled my sleeve toward him. “You need to come to the station.”

Constance and
Patience ran up. “Do we need to collect the body?”

“Yes, collect
the body?” Patience repeated.

“Please.” Oscar
nodded. He pulled his note pad from the pocket of his uniform jacket and wrote
some things down. “I will need an autopsy as well.”

The twins didn’t
hesitate. They folded their hands in front of them, and rushed back to the Two
Sisters and A Funeral Home to retrieve the items they needed to get Ann’s body.

“They are the
coroners too?” I asked Oscar. I shudder to think of Patience’s repeating
everything Constance said during a coroner’s “Y” cut.

In silence, I
followed him down to the street. The station was just a little beyond the shop
and in walking distance. I glanced back toward the Green Machine where Mr.
Prince Charming was cleaning himself on the roof of the El Camino.

The police
station was a little more modern than the other buildings. The concrete
building had big, round windows that let in a lot of light. No matter where you
stood in the office, you could see all the way down Main Street on both sides.
I guess this was good for Oscar to be able to keep an eye out.

“Everything is so
new.” I ran my hand along the gold name plate with Oscar’s title engraved on
it. The paper sitting on the copier hadn’t even been taken out of the
packaging. And each pen still had a perfect cap on it. No teeth marks.

“This is
serious, June.” A sudden chill hung on his words, making me stop and look at
him. “There is something you need to know about Ann.”

“Well, if you
ask me,” I said and plopped down on the chair with wheels and slid across the
room with my feet in the air, “she probably has pissed a lot of people off with
her snide comments. She was rude. Not that I wanted her dead. Think about it,
she treated me terrible and I had just met the woman. I wonder how she treated
the people she really knew?”

Oscar cleared
his throat. “June.” His stern voice was cold.

I dragged my
feet across the floor to stop the chair. I swung around in his direction.

“Why so
serious?” I smiled, hoping he’d lighten up, but I was sorely wrong.

The bracelet
that I thought I’d lost dangled in the air from Oscar’s fingers.

“Where did you
find it?” Excited, I jumped to my feet, and the chair flung behind me, hitting
the wall. I grabbed it out of his hands.

“Oh!” Oscar
tried to take it back, but I held onto it. “That was in Ann’s grasp. I had to
pry her fingers apart to get it. Like she had been struggling with someone and
she grabbed it off them. Now you have compromised the finger prints.”

“What?” I tried
to sort through his words.
Ann’s hands?
I dropped the bracelet on the
floor. I didn’t want anything to do with it. “How did Ann get it?”

Having touched
something that was in a dead person’s hand gave me the heebie-jeebies.
Eww.
. .
I rubbed my hands down my shirt.

“I was hoping
you’d answer that for me.” His voice faded, losing its steely edge. It was a
tone I knew well. The way he spoke about his other cases and suspects from Locust
Grove was the same.

“Are you
accusing me of something?” I drew back and looked him square in the face. “Because
if you are, you’d better spit it out, Oscar Park.”

“No, but isn’t
it evident that something is not right. You had words with her yesterday. She
accused you of threatening her and then she shows up dead with your bracelet,
that you lost, in her cold, dead hand?” Oscar marched back and forth rubbing
his chin, and stared out the window.

“Do you honestly
think that I killed Ann?” I nervously laughed. If anyone knew me better than I
knew myself, it was Oscar. There was no way he could think that I would harm a
flea, much less Ann.
Did he?

“Great.” He
stood still and leaned to the right to get a better view of the street. “It
looks like members of the council are coming this way.”

Yep, my
intuition told me this wasn’t going to be good. I would give anything to have a
Ding Dong.

Chapter
Seven

Izzy, Chandra,
and Gerald hurried down the road. Izzy led the way as fast as her pointy-toed,
ankle boots could carry her.

“That’s the
council?” I asked.

“Mmmhmm.” Oscar
nodded.

“I wonder what
they are saying.” I peered over Oscar’s shoulder, watching the three of them
banter back and forth. It didn’t look like a pleasant conversation. Izzy wrung
her hands, Gerald gritted his teeth and Chandra had a nervous smile.

Gerald had his
top hat off, and held it close to his chest while his other hand twirled one
end of his mustache. Chandra tapped her blue nails together.

“You should have
seen this coming.” Izzy grumbled. She held the door to the police station.
Gerald and Chandra kept their heads down as they passed her. She shut the door
and locked it. “Ann said that the crystal ball went crazy when June looked at
it.”

“I don’t read
the crystal ball. I read palms. Remember?” Chandra’s eye blinked rapidly.

The three of
them huddled without paying a bit of attention to us.

Palm reading?
I had come to
grips with the Madame Torres globe, but palm reading?

I reached in my
black bag for my phone, trying to remember if I had stored Alexelrod Primrose’s
number. Surely the new home owners weren’t moved in yet. I could probably tell
him that I wanted to move back to Locust Grove. Or better yet, move to the
country like Oscar originally suggested.

“No.” Izzy’s
head popped up out of the huddle. Her blonde locks swung in Chandra’s
direction, catching Chandra in the eye.

“Ouch!” Chandra
went down holding her hand to her face. “You have got to let me cut that stuff
off.”

Izzy shooed
Chandra and continued to focus on me. “No. You will stay here in Whispering
Falls. We have an agreement. Besides, Alexelrod is one of us.”

“What?” Oscar
looked between the two of us. “June, are you planning on leaving?”

“I. . .I. . .” I
held my hands behind me as I backed up to get as far away from Izzy as I could.
Truth be told, I was freaking out. How did Izzy know what I was thinking?

Everyone stopped
when someone tapped on the door.

“Thank God, Mac
is here.” Izzy flung the door open to Mr. McGurtle. “Please get in here. We
have an issue.”

“What’s he doing
here?” I asked about Mac. Wasn’t it enough that I had to put up with this nosy
man in Locust Grove?

“Mr. McGurtle?”
Oscar stood very still. His eyes narrowed. “What is going on here? I thought I
was the law?”

“You are hired
by the village council.” Izzy circled her long, thin finger between Chandra,
Mac, and Gerald. “We are the council.”

“I. . .I. .
.need a Ding Dong,” was the last thing I remember saying before the lights went
out.

“June? June,
dear?”

I felt a faint
wind on my face that I wasn’t familiar with, but the rough tongue on my nose I
knew. Without even trying to open my eyes, I reached out to pat Mr. Prince
Charming. For a moment, I thought I was in my bed at the Locust Grove house
until my senses rushed back to me and I realized the smell wasn’t different
homeopathic ingredients, but the smell of sugary things.

“I think she’s
with us.” Someone patted my hand.

Mewl, mewlllll
, Mr. Prince
Charming seemed to beg me to open my eyes.

Chandra stood over
me, fanning me with her long scarf, her turban sitting cock-eyed on her head.
Mr. McGurtle sat next to me and patted my hand.