7
No happy story has ever included the words “Ouija board.”
—A Guide to Traversing the Supernatural Realm
Although I was sweaty, disheveled, and drained, I was serenely happy as Miranda’s car rolled up the driveway to the Victorian just before one A.M. I’d stayed at the clinic long after the last patient had been released, clearing off the front desk and putting the waiting room back to rights. Dr. Hackett had given me keys after I filled out my employment paperwork. After informing me that everything valuable or prescribable had been locked up tight and that this was a test of my character, he marched out the front door at midnight.
And then, because I’d left my car keys on the counter in the bookshop and was embarrassed to admit such a blunder to an exhausted Dr. Hackett, I’d called Miranda. To my surprise, my favorite chauffeur to the undead was already awake. She’d done the “lost keys/embarrassing emergency walk of shame” enough times that she was happy to help out another damsel in frequent distress.
“You’re just lucky I keep vampire hours,” she told me. “And that Collin is in the middle of a History Channel marathon on the War of 1812 on his TiVo. I love him dearly, but I will use any excuse to get out of watching that.”
“I am ever so grateful to serve as that excuse,” I told her, closing my eyes and resting my head against the seat rest.
My bones ached. My feet were screaming. There were substances I preferred not to think about on my clothes. And I was dozing off in the front seat of Miranda’s SUV. All I wanted to do was shower and crawl into bed.
“Wow,” I heard Miranda say from the driver seat. I opened my eyes and saw her staring through the windshield, her expression one of delighted awe.
My own mouth fell open in astonishment. It was the first time I’d seen the house in its fully refurbished state. My home looked like something out of a fairy tale. The siding had been replaced and painted a fresh, vibrant yellow that shone in the weak light of the fingernail moon. The roof had been reshingled. The porch had been painted to match the trim. Dick’s work crews had added flower boxes to the railing, bursting with a profusion of pansies in yellow, purple, and white.
I knew about the changes to the interior. My rooms had been painted a cheerful pale pink. The dark wood and gothic wall sconces had been replaced with what Andrea called comfy farmhouse chic. The huge bank of cabinets in the kitchen was gone, and in its place was an old-fashioned tin-front pie safe. The appliances were new, and the tub upstairs no longer threatened to fall through the ceiling. The remaining cabinets had been painted white and artistically distressed. I’d drawn the line at Dick buying me new bedroom furniture. I was truly frightened by the prospect of what he would choose.
I climbed out of the car, marveling at the changes Jed’s crew had made. “Thanks, Miranda!”
“No problem, babe,” she called. “There’s a whole series of specials on the Spanish American War next week. Call anytime.”
I waved at her as she backed out of the driveway, then returned to staring at the house in the moonlight.
“You know, you keep your mouth open like that, you’re gonna catch mosquitoes.”
My jaw snapped shut. I turned to find Jed, wearing an actual shirt with sleeves, standing in his front door.
“I thought that was flies.”
He smirked. “Not around here.”
“You do beautiful work,” I told him. “It’s just gorgeous altogether.”
“Thanks,” he said, his smile boyish and pleased as we circled each other. “We’re finished here and movin’ on to Dick’s house. Andrea saw some of the things Sam did here and wants them for their house, too. It’s roofin’ tomorrow, which means an early start before the hottest part of the day. It’s a shame. I liked being able to take my coffee breaks in my own kitchen. So what have you been up to? I haven’t seen you in a few days.”
“I accidentally started a new job tonight.”
He frowned. “Accidentally?”
“It was totally unintentional. I fell right into it.”
“Oh, honey, you didn’t answer one of those ads on Craigslist, did you?” he said, his eyes wide and intentionally shocked.
“Hey, the nice man in the unmarked panel van said the nudity will be tasteful!” I exclaimed, making him laugh.
“Well, congratulations on your new Internet porn job,” he said. “Do you want to come over for dinner tomorrow night to celebrate?”
“I have plans tomorrow night.”
I really did have plans. I had to retrieve my car keys and make up for lost research time. But he didn’t need to know that.
“Plans.” He frowned. “Like a date? So the very serious boyfriend crashed and burned already?”
I had to bite my lip to keep from smiling. Why would he be worrying over whether I was dating? Unless . . . “You like me!”
“Me? Like you?” He shook his head. “Can’t prove it.”
“You like like me,” I singsonged.
“Now you’re just being ridiculous,” he said, scowling as he stepped forward, trapping me between his body and the wall. I could smell that forest-and-field scent rolling off of him, and the heat of his skin made me feel as if his hands were rubbing against my arms. He bent his face toward mine, and warm, minty breath feathered over my cheeks. “If I like liked you, trust me, you would know it.”
My eyes locked with his, light meeting dark, and I couldn’t move. This was completely unfair. He was a human thought scrambler, sent to make me lose all semblance of dignity. His lips were just a few heartbeats away from mine.
“I don’t have a date. I’m working,” I told him softly. Sorting through the contents of an occult shop to find magical knickknacks could be considered working, right?
The crescent moon rose slowly over his shoulder, giving him a faint halo around his shadow-cast face. I shivered. He looked down at me for a long, silent moment. I could feel his breath moving against my cheek like a caress. I honestly thought he was going to kiss me. And then he gave me one of those warm molasses smiles. “Well, good luck to you.”
He stepped away and sauntered back to his door. He knew what he was doing, walking like that. It was patently unfair to leave a girl high and not quite dry and then walk away with his buns twitching under skintight denim. I called after him. “Thanks.”
He waved his hand over his shoulder without even looking back at me.
Completely. Unfair.
* * *
Over the next week or so, I fell into a routine. I worked at the clinic each day until five and then researched at the shop until just before sunset to avoid uncomfortable interactions with certain vampire landlords. Then I hightailed it home, leaving Jane detailed notes on what I’d searched through that day and any materials I’d taken home for the night. Occasionally, Jolene would drag me out of the shop to Southern Comforts, the vampire-friendly restaurant she managed with her friend, chef Tess Maitland. Jolene was apparently worried that I wasn’t getting enough smoked pork in my diet. I’d discovered that this was a grave concern for Kentuckians.
I enjoyed working at the clinic. I’d tamed the chaos of the front desk and organized the patient records into a more user-friendly configuration. I wore scrubs for the first time since nursing school, as Dr. Hackett didn’t believe jeans were a professional look for a medical setting. I had to pass a background check, which was disturbingly easy considering that I hadn’t lived in the country for more than ten years.
I explained my dilemma to Dr. Hackett, and he helped me apply for the paperwork I would need in order to help people rather than just run the office. Until my papers came through, I would not be responsible for patient care. It was just too risky. In the meantime, he was happy to listen to my “instincts” about a patient’s condition based on my observations and the intake questionnaires. After hearing him referring to some of his contemporaries as hippies, I decided not to bring up my diagnostic abilities. But if I noticed something about a patient, say, black radiating pain flaring out from his stomach, I would advise Dr. Hackett that the patient was most likely suffering an ulcer.
It was a little bit of a relief, not being entirely responsible for treatment. And I found I had a talent for the administrative duties that I wasn’t allowed to do back home.
After hearing so many “free clinic” jokes over the years, I expected to see nothing but patients with questionable rashes. But each day was much like the first: sick kids and overwhelmed adults. There were a lot of young mothers with children who didn’t have health insurance. And seniors who couldn’t afford to see doctors without the free services Dr. Hackett provided. Like any other doctor, he had “regular” patients he saw frequently, and their files were kept in a special filing cabinet separate from those of the walk-in patients. It was a sad commentary on the state of the health-care system, but I was glad that the patients were getting the help they needed.
The job was tiring, and Dr. Hackett was right when he’d told me he wouldn’t be able to pay me much. But it was rewarding, and it was nice to take my mind off of the Elements for a few hours each day.
I arrived home around the same time Jed did nearly every evening. Sometimes he was waiting on the porch with a beer for each of us. (I didn’t have the heart to tell him that we would call that stuff water back home.) Other times, we just had some brief conversation about the house or work before retiring to separate corners. He was always flirty and mildly inappropriate, but he never took it past that level. He moved in close but didn’t touch beyond the occasional casual brush of the arm. He spent half of our conversations staring at my mouth but never so much as kissed me on the cheek.
And it was driving me bloody insane.
Jed was an enigma. He was a prime specimen, but he never dated. He was clearly intelligent, although he tried to play it down with Southern-fried, aw-shucks-ma’am charm. He was friendly and warm, and then, when he decided our conversation was over, he ran. What sort of man flirted like that and then managed to turn it off completely and walk away? Was there something wrong with me? Was I too much of a Yankee? The wrong size? The wrong gender? Was he doing this on purpose? And if he was, was he aware that he was the biggest tease in the world? Was he trying to drive me round the twist?
I knew this wasn’t really my problem. I had more pressing matters to worry about. It was a waste of time to spend my nights wondering what the hell was going on inside Jed’s head. His dense, beautiful head.
* * *
One not-so-special evening, I was searching through Jane’s sales records from two years ago and found a thread of old ritual items sold to a collector in upstate New York that looked promising. Gabriel was hanging another photo on the wall, a shot of a Halloween party in which Jane and Tess Maitland were dressed as Elvira and Wonder Woman, respectively. The Mistress of the Dark herself sat discussing new titles at the coffee counter with Andrea. Dick was absent. The girls claimed he was on another business trip, but given the way Jane’s mouth quivered when she said it, it seemed a little suspicious.
Neither Jane nor Andrea was thrilled with the news about my hiring at the clinic. The idea of my working seemed to make Jane feel guilty. She twisted a tea towel between her hands and shot Gabriel distressed looks as I described my evening at the clinic. “You’ve got too much on your plate already, Nola. What if I gave you an allowance from your fair share of the shop?”
“I can’t take money from you, Jane.”
Jane scoffed. “Why not? This is money I wouldn’t have had without Mr. Wainwright leaving me the shop. And if he’d known about you, I’m sure he would have wanted you to have a stake in the store. I thought about it when your great-uncle Emery came to town, but he was a gigantic douchebag.”
“You mentioned him before,” I said as Andrea’s lips peeled back from her teeth in a growl. And after hearing Jane’s succinct explanation of my great-uncle’s time in the Hollow, I couldn’t blame her. The moment Emery had rolled into town, he’d started sifting through the stock, stalking Andrea, and generally annoying the hell out of Jane. They’d found later that he was a mole sent by another vampire trying to steal an important book from Jane’s collection. This vampire had turned him in exchange for his service, and he had kidnapped Andrea and turned her against her will. Jane had taken great pleasure in turning Emery over to the Council for punishment.
“Hell, if that was the precedent set, I’m surprised you let me through the shop door.”
Jane gave a sincere shudder, her mouth crimped into an expression of distaste. “The point is, you’re here doing something I’m sure Mr. Wainwright would have wanted you to do. There’s no way I’m going to let you spend valuable time waiting tables when you could be looking for these artifact thingies.”
“I’m working at a medical clinic. I’m hardly slinging drinks,” I protested.
Jane gave me an expression she called the “stink-eye.” I returned it with the bitch-brow. And we sat back and let the two expressions battle it out.
“What do we do now?” Andrea whispered to Gabriel.
“Stay still and try not to attract their attention?” Gabriel whispered back.
Eventually, Jane won the staring contest, because I’m pretty sure she never had to blink. I hated to admit it, but Jane had a point. I wouldn’t be making much at the clinic. In fact, I would make more money waiting tables, but it made me feel better to know that I was doing something I was (sort of) qualified for, and I was helping people. Also, it gave me something to think about besides the search. It couldn’t be healthy for me to obsess over it every minute of the day.
But I knew I would probably have to get another part-time job, in addition to the clinic, to make ends meet. It would be terribly convenient to spend those working hours here in Jane’s shop. I blew out a breath and thought about what Nana Fee would say. McGavocks had their pride. But if she thought that my pride was keeping me from fulfilling my purpose, she would probably whack me one with her walking stick and tell me to stop behaving like the back end of a mule.
I growled in defeat, holding up one hand and giving her a stern glare. “Agreed, but I’m keeping my job at the clinic and you’re not giving me anything. I’m earning a wage. I don’t know what I’ll do for you, but it will be an honest day’s work.”
“OK, I hereby appoint you director of magical artifact location.” Jane shook my hand, her tone prim.
She gave me a “job” doing exactly what I was doing anyway. “You’re a smart-ass, Jane Jameson.”
I barely noticed Andrea’s grumbled “I will never be as smart as Jane Jameson-Nightengale” from the end of the bar.
“See, you’re adjusting to the corporate culture already,” Gabriel said brightly, tossing me a midnight-blue Specialty Books T-shirt.
“I’m glad we have that settled.” I sighed, leaning back in my chair. Jane gave my shoulder a little squeeze and handed me a cup of chamomile tea. “But it doesn’t get me any closer to finding the other Elements. And I’m running out of places in the shop to look.”
“Well, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” Jane said. “I thought we might try asking Mr. Wainwright.”
“The deceased Mr. Wainwright?” I asked while Jane cringed and nodded. “I swear to all that’s holy, you lot, if I find out that Mr. Wainwright is a vampire, or in the witness-protection program, or any condition other than dead, I will throw a hissy and destroy that very expensive display of crystal figurines over there.”
“See what happens when you hire people without a background check?” Andrea asked Jane.
“Shut it, you,” I retorted.
Jane was back to twisting the tea towel between her hands. “Look, I wasn’t quite sure how to tell you this, but your grandfather only moved onto the next plane a few months ago.”
“Next plane?”
Jane nodded, clearly trying to choose her words carefully. “He died here at the shop. I found his body a few hours later. His spirit was already haunting the shop. He said that he was far too interested in what was happening here on earth to move on just yet. Of course, I didn’t know at the time that part of ‘what was happening’ was his dating my aunt Jettie, who was also a ghost.”
I wouldn’t quibble with a vampire about the existence of ghosts. It seemed like a doomed argument. And Nana Fee had all but told me she would come back to haunt me if I didn’t accept her task. I sincerely hoped that she’d run out of postmortem steam with her otherworldly reminders and had moved on to the next plane.
“Wait, ghosts can date?”
“Apparently,” Jane said. “The pair of them stuck around for almost a year. Until they both decided that it was time for them to move on. They couldn’t define it, and I don’t want to try to explain it, but wherever that is, we aren’t supposed to be able to contact them.”
“So why are you telling me this?”
“We aren’t ‘supposed’ to be able to contact them, but that doesn’t mean we can’t. I haven’t tried yet because I wanted to respect their wishes. But I figured between a vampire mind-reader and a witch, we might have enough mojo to make a connection for an emergency call.”
I grimaced, thinking of my surreal chat with Mr. Wainwright in the panda dream. If that was the sort of conversation I could expect, I wasn’t sure I wanted to make that call. Of course, it might be different, since, ostensibly, we would be speaking to Mr. Wainwright and not my imagination’s version of him. I hoped it would be different. I didn’t think my imagination was being very kind to him.
Then again, Ouija boards weren’t something my family toyed with. We respected the life cycle. While it was often devastating, death was as much of the process as life, so it didn’t make sense to bother a spirit after the person had moved on. For Nana Fee’s sake, I hoped she’d moved on. I didn’t like the thought of her hovering around semirural Kentucky just in case I needed her. “So, what, we’re going to break out a Ouija board and leave him a voice mail?”
Jane shook her head vehemently. “No, no Ouija boards. The channel is too wide open. You don’t know whom you’re inviting into your emotional space. Plus, every scary story that ever started with a Ouija board ended in bloody, grisly death. Or getting in touch with Jim Morrison.”
“Does this conversation seem circular to you?” I asked Andrea. She shushed me.
“I think we need this.” Jane held up an oddly shaped hunk of red plastic.
Andrea tilted her head. “Is that a—”
“A twenty-sided die from my parents’ Scattergories game, yes,” Jane said. “I figured we would ask questions while we roll the dice. We would have just as good a chance of getting a message spelled out this way, maybe without the spooky ironic death messages.”
“How is this different from a Ouija board?” I asked.
“Well, we’re not going to keep our hands in constant, sustained contact with this. Less chance of the wrong spirits getting a connection.”
“You just pulled that explanation out of your bum, didn’t you?”
“It’s a total rationalization,” she admitted. “But it’s all I can think of.”
“I’m leaving before one of us gets possessed by the spirit of an evil prom queen,” Andrea said, turning on her heel toward the door. Jane and I caught her through the elbows and dragged her back. Jane flipped the sign on the door to “Closed,” which made sense. I would hate to walk into a bookstore and find the staff trying to commune with the dead.
As we sat around one of the coffee tables, prepping the “board,” Jane turned off the lights and lit a few candles for the right ambience. Gabriel shared a commiserating look with me. “I’m only here because Jane thought it would be strange to leave a seat open at a four-person séance table. Which only goes to show that some of the etiquette lessons her grandma tried to hammer into her skull took root.”
“Bite your tongue,” Jane warned him.
“And I would like to go on record as saying this is a stupid idea and will only lead to trouble,” Andrea said.
“Noted,” Jane said, handing her a notebook. “Now, you take down the messages. You have the neatest handwriting.”
Andrea grumbled, “Yes, because penmanship is going to make a huge difference when we accidentally contact that demon from The Exorcist.”
Jane ignored her. “OK, Nola, have you ever done any meditation or visualization exercises?”
“No.”
“Oh, good.” She sighed. “They’re for hippies. What we’re going to do is close our eyes and clear our minds.”
Andrea rolled her eyes but complied with Jane’s instructions. I exhaled slowly through my nose. I tried to picture myself standing in a bright, white room, empty of people, colors, and sound. But I kept thinking about Jed, about my grandmother, about the Elements.
Jane cleared her throat. “Clear your head, Nola.”
“I am,” I whispered.
“No, you’re not. I can tell, remember?”
I harrumphed, which made Andrea snicker.
“I want you to picture Mr. Wainwright. His gray hair is all frizzy and standing off of his head like he’s been struck by lightning. He’s smiling, because he thought he’d lost his glasses again, but they were just stuck on top of his head. Can you see him?”
I nodded.
“So talk to him.”
“I feel silly,” I whispered.
“Mr. Wainwright has seen us do far stupider things than this,” Andrea muttered. “Someday we’ll show you all the pictures from the Halloween party.”
“Gilbert Wainwright,” I called. “This is your granddaughter. I need your help. Please, wherever you are, please come closer to this place, where you used to spend so much time, and speak to your friends.”
I sighed and rolled the dice several times. The letters spelled absolute nonsense. Sheepishly, I told Jane, “I feel ridiculous.”
“G.R.F.K.B.,” Jane said. “Maybe it’s a Klingon ghost?”
Andrea buried her face in her hands and dropped her forehead onto the table. I giggled and took the die. “Please,” I whispered, completely sincere. “I really need help. I don’t know what I’m doing. Anything I’ve managed to accomplish is the result of blind stinking luck. I could really use a clue or a hint or something.”
“K.J.O.W.P.L.,” Jane said as I rolled the die.
“Come on!” I cried. “My grandmother made a glowing moon appear against my ceiling. You can’t play a silly word game with me?”
“S.O.R.R.Y.,” Jane read, grinning widely and jostling Andrea’s arm while she bounced up and down in her seat. “Mr. Wainwright? Thanks for talking to us. We miss you. Is Aunt Jettie OK?”
“L.O.V.E.”
“Aw, that’s nice,” Jane said. “Tell her I love her, too.”
“Very sweet,” I agreed. “It’s nice to, uh, meet you. Mr. Wainwright, I’m sorry to cut to the chase, but I’m afraid we could lose this connection any second. I need to find the objects Nan—Fiona gave you.”
“N.O.T. G.I.L.B.E.R.T.”
Gabriel’s eyebrows shot up, his hand gripping Jane’s even more tightly. “Not Gilbert?”
“I told you!” Andrea hissed. “This way leads to pea-soup vomiting and madness.”
“Who are you?” Gabriel asked.
“N.A.N.A.”
“Nana Fee?” I shouted.
I couldn’t seem to find words or air. I’d missed my grandmother so much, and here she was, talking to me through a silly party game. Even though I’d had time to prepare for her death, there were still so many things I wanted to say to her. I felt the tears trail down my cheeks. Jane slipped her arm around my shoulder and squeezed me against her side.
Jane rolled the die again. “M.O.T.H.E.R.”
“My mother’s dead,” I whispered to Jane.
“Maybe it’s mother as in my mama?” Jane said.
“Well, your mother had the candle. Maybe she’s referring to that,” I said. “Yes, Nana, we know Jane’s mother’s had the candle. Do you know where we might find the other three?”
“M.O.T.H.E.R.,” I said after we rolled the dice and it spelled the same word.
“G.” Jane said. “A.G.A. Was your nana a Lady Gaga fan?”
Glaring, I took the die and rolled. “D.E.S.K.”
“Mother Gaga desk?” I said. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“L.O.V.E.,” Andrea said, after rolling the die. “Aw, that’s nice.”
“Love you, too,” I told her. “And please, don’t stick around this plane for me. I need to know that you’ve moved on to a better place. And that you’re happy.”
Gabriel rolled nothing but As over the next few minutes.
“It would seem your grandma took your advice,” Andrea said, nudging it with her pen.
We tried rolling the die again but ended up with more nonsense Klingon words.
“I think that’s all we’re going to get out of her. I’m sorry I put you through all this, Nola. I don’t think we got a lot of usable information,” Jane said, pushing up from the table.
Andrea grabbed her wrist and dragged her back into her chair. “Sit down!” Andrea yelped. “You don’t leave the table without closing the circle, the portal, the connection, or whatever. Otherwise, the spirit can attach itself to you like a parasite and hitch a ride to your house.”
“What movies have you been watching?” I asked.
“You are on a strict regimen of the Oprah network after this,” Jane told her. “No more Celebrity Ghost Stories for you.”
“Please?” Andrea pleaded.
“Fine,” Jane sighed, then called, “OK, spirit world, we are hereby hanging up, closing the channel. Don’t call us. We’ll call you.”
I asked, “Don’t you own a whole section of books on appropriate ritual language? And it’s not true, what you said earlier. We did learn quite a bit tonight. We learned that Nana was a closet Gaga fan.”
“What do you think she meant? Love. Mother. Gaga. Desk. Those words don’t make any sense,” Andrea complained.
“Maybe I need to look through your desk again, Jane,” I said, returning some of the candles to the display shelf.
“You looked through my desk?”
“We refinished Jane’s desk before we moved it into her office. There were no papers or anything left in the drawers,” Andrea said, squinting when I turned the lights back on.
“Are you sure your mother hasn’t taken any other objects out of the shop?” I asked, my voice trailing off as I noticed one of Jane’s photos hanging over the shelf where the candles were displayed. It showed Jane’s mother, wearing a black T-shirt with two white triangles on the chest and a logo that read, “FFOTU.” Was this more Klingon nonsense? She was standing next to the cash register with this thunderstruck expression on her face. Jane’s mama was a funny little thing. It seemed odd that Nana would mention her twice, when we’d already located the candle. What did Nana want us to know about Jane’s mother?
I looked at the picture more closely. “Hey, Jane, what’s that?”
“It’s a picture of our first meeting of the Friends and Family of the Undead. It was the first time my mother saw the shop, and Andrea wanted to capture my mother’s stunned expression when she saw how nice everything was.”
“That’s horrible,” I told Andrea.
Jane shook her head. “No, it’s fair. The moment she stepped inside, she said Andrea must have worked very hard to organize and decorate everything.” Andrea snickered when my face drooped in disbelief. Jane added, “Mama and I used to have a pretty rocky relationship.”
I poked at the photo, my hands shaking. “And that little brown blob by the cash register? The one vaguely shaped like an acorn? The one I’m pretty sure is the altar plaque representing Earth?”
“Our take-a-penny dish?” Jane asked, peering around the maple and glass counter, as if she were looking for it.
“Take a penny?”
“You know, when you get pennies back as change, you leave them in the take-a-penny dish, so when other customers are trying to give exact change, they don’t have to dig around for them,” Andrea said. “Pennies are basically the redheaded stepchildren of the currency world.”
“You were using my family’s centuries-old altar plate as a change dish?”
“Have you noticed the Irish accent gets a lot stronger when she’s angry?” Jane asked her husband.
“We didn’t know that’s what it was. I found it lying loose in Mr. Wainwright’s storage room!” Andrea exclaimed. “It looked a lot more acorn-like in your sketch, by the way. In reality, it’s just blobby with a stem hanging off of it.” I glowered at her. She threw up her hands. “OK, you’re right. Not the appropriate time to criticize your family’s prowess at arts and crafts.”
I looked toward the register, but the spot to the left of it was being used to display copies of a book called The Guide for the Newly Undead. “Where is the dish now?”
“It was right here,” Jane said, looking under the counter and behind the promotional supplies, just in case the plaque had fallen.
Andrea’s expression was a mix of confusion and guilt. “Jane, when I think about it, I don’t think I’ve seen that thing for months. I thought you’d moved it.”
“When was the last time you remember seeing it?”
Andrea chewed her lip. “A month or two ago. The day Mama Ginger came in.”
“Mama Ginger?” I said. “Another mother? Starting with a G?”
“Mama Ginger is Zeb’s mother. She and Jane have a checkered history,” Gabriel told me quietly.
“Don’t you remember, Jane?” Andrea asked. “She ‘dropped by’ before opening hours to give you your extremely late wedding present . . . and you kicked her out of the store . . . and banned her for life?”
“Why did you do that?” I asked.
“Well, kicking her out was part of my New Year’s resolutions,” Jane said. “The lifetime ban was because I caught her swiping some of our fairy figurines and shoving them into her purse. She was standing right by the register, like I was too dumb to see . . . oh, hell. The plaque was right here next to the register. She must have taken it.”
“We can’t prove that.”
“It’s Mama Ginger,” Jane said with some emphasis, as if Andrea was missing some important and obvious point.
“OK, but we can’t just go into someone’s house accusing them of theft.”
“It’s Mama Ginger,” Jane said again. “That happens to her at least once a week.”