Second-Hand Murder: Book 1 in The Bandit Hills Series Read online

  “He talked to the Arborton coroner directly.”

  “Okay, that’s something,” I say. “So she lived in Arborton? That’s not far. Do you have an address?”

  “I might. Why?” he asks suspiciously.

  “Let’s go check it out.”

  “Check it out? And do what? Dust for fingerprints? Find an untraceable poison? Come on. This is real life, not TV. What would we do there that the cops haven’t?”

  “I just want to see,” I tell him as the light turns green.

  Last night, after finding the voodoo doll perched on my dresser, I was a bit freaked out, but after I called Dash the spooky stuff stopped for the night. I still didn’t get much sleep, and the idea of spending the afternoon on a computer sounds exhausting. And, truth be told, if Stephanie’s ghost really is haunting me for some reason, I want to see where she lived. What her life was like. Sort of a “getting to know you” kind of thing, I guess. Of course, I don’t tell Dash this.

  “It’s not far to get to Arborton,” I say. “And I have the whole afternoon. I told Mom we were out on a—” I stop myself just before saying the “d” word.

  Dash glances over at me inquisitively, but he doesn’t say anything. I didn’t lie to Mom; not really. I just sort of… took advantage of her fixation on seeing me not single. This morning I helped her unpack the new donations, and then around mid-morning I told her that Dash and I were going to go to lunch. I saw that weird light dance in her eyes again, and she told me not to worry, she’d handle the store, take as long as I wanted, and practically pushed me out the door. I mean, all we need to do is grab a sandwich somewhere along the way and it’s technically not a lie.

  Dash sighs. “Fine. We’ll go see her place. But then we’re going back to the office and doing things my way.”

  “Yeah, totally,” I agree. Now that was a lie.

  ***

  Stephanie Marshall lived in a two-bedroom townhouse in a nice part of the Arborton suburbs. Dash pulls into the lot, facing her unit, but keeps the engine running.

  “There it is. That’s where she lived.”

  “Great. Let’s go take a look—” I start to get out of the car, but Dash grabs my arm gently.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” he asks.

  “I’m just going to peek in the windows.”

  He grunts in frustration. “You can’t go peeking in people’s windows. Even if they’re… not alive anymore.”

  “Just a quick look. It’s the middle of the afternoon on a weekday; no one’s around.”

  “Cassie…”

  I reach into my purse, pull out the little voodoo doll and stick it in his face. He recoils as if I pulled a knife or something.

  “Tell the doll.”

  “Cass…”

  “Go on.” I wiggle the doll a little an inch from his nose. “Tell the doll that I can’t peek in the windows.”

  He cuts the engine and makes a big show of yanking the keys from the ignition. “Just a quick peek.”

  I smile and stash the doll back in my purse. After what I hope is an innocent inspection of the area to make sure that nobody’s watching us, I cup my hands around my eyes and peer in through the front window.

  “There are boxes… and some furniture. Looks like someone’s been packing up her stuff.”

  The view of her living room suddenly makes my heart feel heavy; it looks like Stephanie could have just been packing up to move, but really it’s that someone close to her is boxing her belongings for what is likely the last time. This was her life, all this stuff, and while I don’t know where it’ll end up, the thought of it no longer being Stephanie’s stuff almost brings a tear to my eye. I straighten and compose myself.

  “There aren’t any lights on.” I jiggle the front doorknob. “It’s locked.”

  I kneel to take a look at the lock, as if there were something I could do about it. Behind me, I hear Dash suck in his breath quick, like my mom used to do when I was little and getting on “her last nerve.”

  “Think you could pick this?” I ask him, pointing to the knob.

  He stares at me for a long moment. “When you and I are sharing a jail cell, we’re going to have a very long conversation about what it is you think I do.”

  “I’ll take that as a no.” I wink at him. “I’ll be right back.”

  Before he can protest, I jog around to the other side of the row of townhomes. Luckily, there’s no fence, just an expanse of green grass and a few trees. Behind Stephanie’s unit are a sliding glass door and a small window that looks in on a kitchen. The door is locked. The window is not. I’m not exactly the most nimble of folk—I trip on Xerxes all the time, even when he’s not really there—but somehow I manage to pull myself up and in without breaking anything (of Stephanie’s or mine).

  But I must have made a heck of a racket, because when I unlock the front door and let Dash in, he’s pinching the bridge of his nose and looking rather glum.

  “Come on in,” I say brightly.

  Chapter 7

  “Do you think your mom will bail us out?” Dash asks as I close the door behind him.

  “Stop being such a sourpuss. Look, if anyone finds us, I’ll give them my business card and tell them I got a call for some donations.”

  “And that the door was unlocked? And that we let ourselves in? This is breaking and entering, Cass.”

  “Nonsense. I didn’t break anything.”

  I look around Stephanie’s living room. There are divots in the carpet where a sofa and loveseat must have recently been, and several half-empty cardboard boxes litter the floor, labeled in Sharpie as “winter clothes” or “kitchen utensils” or “purses.”

  “I could lose my license for this,” Dash mutters behind me.

  “Look,” I say, more sharply than I had intended, “we’re here. Let’s just have a quick look around. You’re an investigator, right? So let’s investigate.”

  I wander back into the kitchen at the rear of the townhouse as Dash sighs and lifts the lid of a box.

  The kitchen has been almost completely cleaned out already, with the exception of a few items clinging to the refrigerator. One of them is a business card from Miss Miscellanea.

  “Weird,” I say softly.

  I don’t recall ever seeing Stephanie Marshall in my store, but then again it would be impossible for me to remember every face that ever came through. Maybe she’d donated a few items in the past. On the side of the fridge, hanging from two sturdy magnets, is a kitten calendar. This month’s kitten is an adorable calico half buried in a pile of yellow and orange leaves. But that’s not what’s notable about the calendar.

  “Dash, come take a look at this.” He enters the kitchen and peers over my shoulder. “Look,” I point at the two weeks preceding Stephanie’s death. “She had four doctor’s appointments within a two-week span. That seems odd, doesn’t it?”

  “Hmm,” is all he says. He rubs his chin in thought. “If the reason for the doctor’s visits had anything to do with the nature of her death, they would have mentioned that in the report, I would think.”

  “Unless they didn’t think they had anything to do with the nature of her death.”

  I pull the thumbtack out and flip through the last few months of the calendar.

  “There are no other appointments anywhere all summer, and then four in two weeks? That’s too weird to be coincidence.”

  I flip through June, July, and August, but there’s no other indication that Stephanie had something wrong with her before those two weeks.

  “Looks like she went on vacation last month, though. Just a couple of weeks before the doctor’s visits. Think she could have caught something?”

  “Where’d she go?”

  “Doesn’t say. Just says, ‘vacation’ across these five days.”

  Dash shakes his head. “Like I said, the report claimed no virus or bacteria.”

  I refasten the calendar to the wall and leave the kitchen. “There’s gotta be something mor
e here.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier just to get a Ouija board?” Dash asks, grinning mischievously.

  I shoot him a look. “You’re from Bandit Hills. You should know better than to mess with those things.” I start up the stairs. He sighs and follows me.

  Upstairs is just a bedroom and a bathroom, and they’ve both been almost entirely emptied, except for a couple of cardboard boxes stacked on the floor in the bedroom. I sneak a peek into the top one. It’s mostly books. The topmost book intrigues me—it has a purple cover and looks pretty old. In red letters is the title, The Serpent and the Rainbow. I lift it out of the box and flip through its dog-eared pages. A photo flutters out, a four-by-six. It looks like Stephanie hadn’t finished reading it, and was using the photo as a bookmark. I inspect it, and recognize Stephanie immediately, smiling, sitting in what looks like a bar. Next to her is a young man, maybe early thirties, with shoulder-length brown hair, a deep tan, and penetrating green eyes. They’re both smiling, but I definitely get the idea that they’re not together.

  “Weird.”

  “What’s weird?” Dash asks.

  “This picture looks recent. I mean, who prints photos anymore?”

  Dash shakes his head. “There’s nothing here. Can we go now—?” He stops suddenly, his mouth a perfect O of surprise.

  I hear it too. Downstairs, the door opens, and soft footsteps fall over the carpet. I put my finger to my lips, take him by the arm and tiptoe into the adjacent bathroom. As quietly as can be, we step into the tub, hidden behind the floral print shower curtain.

  The footsteps are on the stairs, and then the hall, and a moment later I almost gasp as the bathroom light flicks on. I don’t dare move, or even breathe. I catch a whiff of a woman’s perfume. I’m certain that at any moment whoever it is will throw the curtain aside and catch us. But then the light goes off again, and the woman moves on. I hear a small grunt of exertion, which I assume is the woman carrying the last two boxes from the bedroom. Her footsteps are heavier on the way back down the stairs. Neither of us moves, standing practically nose-to-nose in the small tub. I know it sounds weird, considering our predicament, but I notice that Dash’s breath smells faintly of spearmint, and that (thankfully) his cologne is subtle, yet pleasant. Then the front door opens again, closes, and all is silent in the townhouse. Still we stay like that for a while, just in case the woman returns.

  After a couple of minutes that feel like an hour, Dash whispers, “Can we go now?”

  “Lead the way.”

  We climb out of the tub and creep down the stairs, wary. We check through the window to make sure the coast is clear, and then we jump into Dash’s car and he roars away. After about two minutes of driving in silence, I let out a nervous laugh. Dash looks at me like I’ve gone crazy, but then he grins too.

  “Alright, we tried it your way,” he says. “And now we have more questions than answers. Can we try my way now?”

  “Sure, Mr. Professional.” I roll down the window a little to get a breeze blowing through the car. “I’m starving. Want to swing by Tank’s for a bite?”

  He agrees, and fifteen minutes later pulls the El Dorado into the diner’s parking lot. We’re still kind of high on the adrenalin of nearly getting caught, so we don’t even notice Phil’s cruiser parked a few spaces down.

  Chapter 8

  April smiles at me from behind the counter. “Twice in two days, Cassie? Did you miss us that much?”

  Then she sees Dash behind me, and her smile grows wider. As much as I want to protest against whatever’s running through her head beneath those golden curls, I hold my tongue and instead just shrug a little.

  “Y’all sit anywhere you’d like,” she says with a wink.

  We settle across from each other in a booth and order a couple of sodas. I pull out my phone and open the internet.

  “Okay,” Dash says, like someone might when they’re starting a meeting. “What do we know? Stephanie Marshall went on vacation. She came back. Things were fine for a couple of weeks. Then she went to see the doctor for some reason—and then again, and then again, and then again. And then she died. And they don’t know why.” He looks at me with a forced, fraught smile. “That about sums it up?”

  “Mm-hmm,” I say, but I’m distracted. “One more thing, though. That book I saw, The Serpent and the Rainbow? I just looked it up. That’s a book about—”

  “Well, well!” a voice suddenly booms, cutting me off. “If it ain’t Dash and Cassie. What are you folks doing ‘round here on a weekday afternoon?” Phil smiles down at us, but from the angle I’m sitting at, it looks more like a leer.

  “Hey Phil,” Dash nods. “We’re just grabbing some lunch.”

  “That so? Mind if I join you for a moment?” Before either of us can answer, Phil lowers himself onto Dash’s side of the booth, his keys and various police-stuff jingling from his belt.

  Phil was a senior when I was a freshman in high school. We weren’t exactly friends, but we knew each other. Truth be told, back then I thought he was kind of a doofus—quarterback of the football team, big-man-on-campus sort of guy—but later he enrolled in the police academy and really straightened out. Last year, when Sheriff Ray retired, Phil became the youngest sheriff in Bandit Hills history (on a police force of four officers and a dispatcher, but still, good for him). He’s helped me out with shoplifters on more than one occasion. Funny how people you thought you knew have a way of surprising you.

  “How are you, Phil?” I ask him casually.

  “Me? Oh, I’m grand, Cassie, just grand.” He smiles wide, like the cat that ate the canary. I get a sinking feeling in my stomach, and I can tell by Dash’s expression that he feels it too.

  “In fact,” Phil continues, “I got a funny story for you. Wanna hear a funny story? So we got a call just a little bit ago from Arborton PD. See, there’s this little old lady, retired, got a lot of time on her hands, and she’s knitting by her window when she sees what she calls a ‘suspicious-looking vehicle’ outside, and a couple of people skulking around somebody’s home.”

  I know I should be really concerned right now, but for some reason all I can think of is, Who uses the word “skulking”?

  “Now, these old folks, god bless ‘em, they always have some reason to be suspicious. But she swears up and down that these two people disappear for a little while, and then later come right out the front door of this house.”

  Dash kicks me under the table. I scowl at him.

  “And here’s the real kicker,” Phil says, still smiling. “The car she described is a classic El Dorado.”

  This time I kick him under the table. What kind of private eye drives such a conspicuous vehicle, right?

  “Now I don’t know about you two, but I don’t think I’ve seen another dark blue El Dorado within a hundred miles of Bandit Hills.” Phil looks at me for an uncomfortably long time, and then at Dash, before he continues. “This could be nothing. Could be you two were just visiting a friend. Or maybe Dash here took you on a ride-along. So, if you tell me it was nothing, I’ll leave it at that. But if I find out later that it was something for me to be concerned about, we’re gonna have a much bigger problem.” He lays his palms flat on the table. “So, Dashiell, Cassandra… is there anything we should talk about here?”

  Now look, I don’t make a habit of lying, especially not to the police. But there’s no way I could look at Phil and say, Well, you got us. We broke into a dead woman’s house because her ghost wants me to find out how she died. And by the sound of things, Phil doesn’t have any evidence, other than the testimony of an old woman glancing out her window.

  I look at Dash, and it’s pretty clear he’s expecting me to answer. I make a mental note to chew him out later, and in what I hope is my most casual tone, I say, “We did just come from Arborton. A young woman passed away recently, and I went to check it out. See, sometimes a family will donate to the shop if I help them clean house. I know, it sounds morbid, but it’s good for business. But
no one was home. And we most definitely did not come out the front door; we just peeked in the windows is all.” And I smile sweetly.

  Phil nods slowly. “Okay. I believe you, Cassie. You’re both upstanding folks; no reason to think otherwise.” He stands from the booth and smiles again—this time genuinely, not the sly I-know-something grin he wore previously—and puts his fingers to his forehead as if he’s tipping an imaginary hat. Dash and I watch through the window until the cruiser is out of the parking lot before either of us speak.

  “Phil’s a friend,” he said quietly. “That felt wrong.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. But we couldn’t really tell him the truth, you know?”

  “Just promise me we’ll do things the right way from here on out. And by the right way, I mean the legal way.”

  “You got it,” I tell him, my fingers crossed under the table.