Waving to my favorite taco vendor, I skipped to the window of his truck with one thought in mind—eating. I met Tito two days after I’d arrived back in Ebenezer Falls, and we’d been making beautiful music in my mouth together since.
I loved his thick Spanish accent, his adorable attempts at broken English—which he had once confided he practiced often in order to get his permanent visa here in the US—his jovial smile, his generous helpings that kept me full enough to sometimes skip dinner…a blessing on my wallet.
Thankfully, he was sans his usual long line of hungry lunch crowd. Peering up at him, I smiled.
And Tito slammed the window shut in my face with a scowl.
I looked at the hours on his sign and frowned. It was only three and it said he was open until ten. Standing on my tiptoes, I rapped on the window. “Hey, Tito! You’re supposed to be open until ten. I get bankers’ hours, but even bankers don’t call it a day at three.”
Nothing but silence and the sounds of the street greeted my ears.
So I knocked again. “Tito?”
There was a low mumble of something, something I couldn’t distinguish. I leaned in closer, my calf muscles straining, and then I saw the top of Tito’s head, his thick, dark hair just cresting the window before falling away from my limited line of vision.
And now I was getting angry. “Hey! I know you’re in there. I can see you! What’s the world come to if a starving woman can’t get a taco at three in the afternoon when closing time isn’t until ten, Tito?”
And then the vendor appeared at the window, pointing his chubby finger at me in accusation. “We don’ serve murderers!”
No bueno.
Chapter 5
Murderer. I’d been branded a murderer. By a taco vendor, no less. Boy, did that cut deep.
I plucked at my soggy drive-thru burger, dropping an equally soggy French fry into my mouth as Belfry munched on his apple slice in my purse, and Win reassured me one more time he would pay me back for the cab fare to wherever this 711 Samantha Lane was located.
“I promise you,” he said. “You’ll have all the money you need if you’ll just indulge me.”
I’d waved him out of my ear. “Reign in the sunshine. Still a little raw here, Win.”
After that, the ride was mostly silent. Me sitting shiva at my accused murderer pity-party, Win humming some odd tune I didn’t know.
When we pulled up to the address he’d given me, I realized my wallowing had kept me from paying attention to my surroundings. How had we gotten out here to the bluff?
Closing my eyes, I inhaled the scent of the Sound. I loved this place. I loved the stretch of a quarter mile of nothing but trees and the occasional break in them where the mountains peeked through. I’d come here hundreds of times during my childhood, taking the two-mile bike ride from the outskirts of Ebenezer Falls right here to almost the end of our small town.
Everyone always thought it was spooky out here, but I was a witch who talked to the dead. Naturally, not a lot spooked me. I couldn’t remember anyone ever living in the house Win claimed was his, but I did remember it hadn’t looked quite so haunted Victorian as it did today.
As I took in the decaying house at the top of the cliff, I groaned. This was what all the chatty buildup had been about? All the, “Just wait, Stevie, it’s smashing. You’re going to love it. It’s right on a cliff overlooking the Sound. Private, sprawling, plenty of room for Belfry to fly” had been over this?
This? It was a monstrosity. A falling-apart-at-the-seams, crumbling-in-almost-every-corner monstrosity.
But I held my tongue. Mostly because I was still too angry with Win for ruining my torrid affair with my favorite taco truck to speak, and it didn’t really matter if I was angry here or back in my hotel room.
I paid the driver and slid out, bracing myself for the wind and rain that would surely pummel my face. Thankfully, I still had my galoshes on. I’d need them if I had any hope of climbing the steep, muddy incline leading to the crooked front porch.
The concrete stairs had caved inward at some point, cracked and certainly too dangerous to walk on. Not to mention, a good deal of the wrought iron railings were missing, too.
I stopped when we were almost to the top, gasping for breath, and that was when I got a close-up glimpse of the underside of the porch steps, rotting away as we stood there.
The wind picked up, pushing me forward so hard, I had to steady myself. “Is it safe?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Would I take you anywhere that wasn’t safe?”
“Would you take me somewhere there’s been a murder? I think the answer is yes. So forgive me if I question your definition of safe.”
His sigh rasped in my ear, going in one and out the other. “How long will you grudge, Stevie?”
“For as long as I’m connected to Madam Zoltar’s suspicious death, and probably long after that. So in non-ghost speak—forever.”
“Forever’s a long time, now hurry along. We have things to discuss.”