“Who’s Win?”
“Oh, wait. Maybe you don’t call him Win? I mean Crispin. Your cousin the spy? You know him, right? Evasive, shady, kinda snippy and sometimes even snobby. Golly, him and his food requirements alone qualify him as a snob. Anyway, he’s here right now. He told me all about how he’d left this house and all his money to you. He was very upset by what he thought you’d do to this house, Sal. He wants to restore it, but he said you’d turn it into a monster of steel and chrome.”
“I did say that, didn’t I?” Win chuckled, the deep sound settling in my left ear.
I looked to my left and nodded, fighting another wince of pain. “Yep. You sure did, Win. So he had Madam Zoltar change his will. He did it from the afterlife, too. Crazy, right?”
Sal leaned forward, gripping the top of either side of the chair and leering at me. “Are you mad?”
I paused in thought. “Define ‘mad’. Do you mean as in appointments-with-psychiatrists-and-meds mad? Or like angry mad? You British have different meanings for stuff than we do. For instance, we call—”
“Who are you talking to? Crispin’s dead!” he screamed at me, the veins in his forehead popping out.
I hitched my jaw at his face, fighting fear with a glib approach. “You have a little something in the corner of your mouth.”
He gave the chair a hard shake to let me know he meant business. Man, he was strong. It was as if I only weighed fifty pounds soaking wet—which is awesome if he’s your boyfriend, because believe me, I weigh at least a hundred pounds more. But not so awesome if he’s your killer.
“How do you know him? I’ve never heard of you before.”
“That’s because I’d never heard of Win before he popped into my life just after you killed Madam Zoltar.”
“Is Win his super-secret spy name—a code name for Mr. Bigshot?” Sal sneered, his handsome face twisting into a mask of hatred.
“It’s what he told me to call him—”
“You lie!” he bellowed, those thick veins of his popping back out again—all along the column of his neck and his forehead.
Win whistled in my ear. “Stevie! Stop taunting him right now. He’s not right in the head. I’m ordering you to stop this instant! You’re only provoking him.”
But the heck I was going to die before I had some answers. “Swear it on a blueberry Pop-Tart, Sal. Those are my favorite, BTW. I’m a medium. Sort of like Madam Zoltar was. You know, the nice old lady you killed? What I can’t figure out is why you killed her. What did she have that you wanted?”
Why wasn’t I able to put this all together? I was struggling to figure out what Madam Z had to do with Sal, and how he’d come to kill a woman he didn’t even know.
Reaching behind him, Sal yanked something from his waistband. Something I knew couldn’t be good. When he held up his hand, I saw the gun, viciously gleaming silver.
Perfect.
Sal waved it at me before jamming it in my face. “Does any of it matter? You’re going to die, Stevie Cartwright. Just like Madam Zoltar.”
Chapter 16
“Waitwaitwaaait!” I screamed in panic as he took a step backward. “I thought we had a killing-courtesy thing here? All I want to know is why you killed Madam Z! Also, maybe if you told me why you want me dead, I’d rest much more peacefully. So c’mon. It’s like a last-wish thing. Please? Pretty please?” I fought the tremble in my voice with every word I spoke.
Sal made a pouty face at me. Now he had a secret and it appeared as though he was rather enjoying this turn of events. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? She did something. Something very bad. She changed Crispin’s will and put your name in it.”
Ice coursed through my veins, icy talons of fear. “How do you know that?” Both Win and I asked simultaneously.
Sal looked like he’d decided to play my game when he smiled and said, “A woman called me. Quite out of the blue, in fact. According to her, the change had already been made. Imagine my surprise when I realized he’d originally left everything to me, and I had to make it here to quaint little Ebenezer Falls before the will was opened and read if I hoped to change it back. Getting here all the way from across the pond in enough time proved stressful. I was dreadfully late.”
My heart crashed against my ribs hard, but I kept pushing for more answers. “What woman?”