“Whose fault is that, Spy Guy?”
“Forget my prior profession, Stevie, and focus on having somewhere to rest your lovely head—rent free,” he reminded, his voice tinged with impatience.
I crossed my arms over my chest again with a cluck of my tongue. “All right, let’s forget your profession for the time being. Explain this to me. Wouldn’t something like this house—a large, probably valuable piece of property—go into probate as a part of your estate? Or to a family member when they read your will? How can you just let me move into something that technically isn’t even yours anymore? Or is that a super secret, too?”
I wasn’t entirely dumb to human legal practices, if that’s what Win was hoping. Possessions such as a house went into probate until your will was read and an inheritor named.
“I’ve got that all covered,” was all he said.
I ran a hand over my damp, frizzing hair in aggravation. “Is an explanation out of the question? Because as an FYI, it’s not you they’ll be hauling out of here for squatting. It’s me, and I’m no good in jail. I can’t seem to make soap on a rope work for me.”
“I doctored my will.”
Suspicion instantly reared its ugly head. I lifted one eyebrow to convey as much. “How can you doctor something without a physical form here on this plane?”
“I bribed Madam Zoltar, the medium. She doctored. I instructed her on the doctoring.”
“Medium?” I barked out loud and dismissed him with a wave of my hand. I hadn’t said a word before, but now I couldn’t contain myself. “You do know almost every human who claims to be a real medium is eyeball-deep in baloney, don’t you? They steal your money and the only spirit they have contact with is the spiriting away of said money from your bank account.”
“Have you gone mad? Are you telling me Madame Zoltar isn’t a real medium? That she bamboozled me? The horror!” Win squealed.
I fought the impulse to grin. “Even as well-loved as she seems to be by the community, that’s exactly what I’m telling you. You’ve been had.”
Now his grating sigh whispered across the room. “Of course I knew she was a fake. I was a spy, for Pete’s sake, Stevie.”
“Right. An international man of intrigue.”
His silence made me decide to play out this game with him. I didn’t know where it was leading, but he seemed like the kind of voice who liked a good cat and mouse. What spy didn’t like a good cat and mouse?
“Okay, first, why did you choose Madam Zoltar to communicate with?”
“You’ll find this odd, but it was her staunch belief in the afterlife. Even though she couldn’t really communicate with the dead, she wanted to with everything in her. She still believed it was possible, whether she had or not. That touched me.”
Fair enough. He’d clearly known what he was getting into with Madam Zoltar.
“So how did you get Madam Zoltar to doctor your will?”
“I made promises, Stevie. Dirty, dirty promises. Some of which left me feeling cheap and used.”
“I can’t believe I’m even asking, but I’m just going to cannonball into the deep end. What did you promise her? Spill.” I tapped my toe and waited.
I was pretty sure I felt his eyes roll back in his head in aggravation before he said, “Oh, okay. I said I’d attend two séances and some medium convention called The Crystal Ball Is Your Oyster Con. Not a big deal in the scheme of things. And all I had to do was show up and do spooky stuff, like make the table levitate, maybe flicker the lights on and off. You know; typical séance fare.”
“And in return she did what to your will?”
“Changed the name of the sole beneficiary of my worldly possessions at my lawyer’s office from my greedy cousin Sal to someone else…”
“Wouldn’t your lawyer know who the original beneficiary really was?”
“I’m counting on the fact that he comes from the Mesozoic era and is incredibly forgetful. It was frightfully easy. Madam Zoltar printed up a new, fake document under my instruction, and voila. Instant revision.”
“So you had her break the law for you. A nice little old lady like that?”
“I would never have allowed her to be caught, and I broke the law to save this side of the pond from Cousin Sal. You’ll thank me, should you ever meet.”
It was my turn to sigh, tiring rapidly of the spy game. I plunked down on the bottom step of the huge staircase, mindless of the debris. “So you had her change it to who? What does that mean?”
“It means I left my house and all my worldly possessions to you.”
Chapter 6
All the blood drained from my face. My mouth opened, but it didn’t want to cooperate with words. Not even smallish ones. It just hung there, all unhinged.
“I can see by your jaw scraping the floor I’ve surprised you.”