She could have sworn that the wink of the three foot tall, tartan cap-wearing, ashtray-bearing dragon that held open the door was more pronounced as she sidled inside.

  Bea was sitting there, seemingly having a conversation with the little black sheep that she’d placed on top of the cash register. “… But we’ll see,” she said to the toy.

  Winnie winced. She really wasn’t much of a believer that Bea was able to talk to inanimate objects, and that Amanda was able to talk to ghosts. It all made her very uncomfortable. “I’m back,” she announced.

  Nutmeg barked once, welcoming her return.

  Bea looked up guiltily, as though worried her sister had eavesdropped on her conversation with Pim, the toy. “Okay, I’m going to go. You sure you can hold down the fort?”

  Winnie nodded.

  It didn’t feel great that her sisters had so little faith in her, but she couldn’t blame them. She’d shown no interest in the running of the shop. She was happy to work behind the scenes on the financials and things like that, but she was uncomfortable with customer interaction. Still, she knew she had to do it. If she’d been more involved with her customers in her ad agency, instead of having her partner deal with that end of things, she’d still own her business.

  Bea grabbed the sheep, and headed out the door, her gait still a little awkward on her crutches.

  Winnie settled herself behind the cash register and surveyed the shop. It was full of old junk. At least that’s what she thought. There was nothing new in the store, just pre-owned, “pre-loved” items, as Letty liked to refer to them.

  She didn’t understand why this was the way her godmother had chosen to spend the last couple of years of her life. After Beatrice had moved out of the house, she’d been free.

  The bell over the front door jingled, and Winnie looked up to see a man carrying a clipboard march in. “Inspection,” he announced like the world should stop spinning because of his arrival.

  Winnie blinked. Her sisters had not told her about any upcoming inspection. She thought they would have. “Excuse me?”

  “Fire inspection,” the man said, puffing out his chest with self-importance.

  Winnie eyed him suspiciously. Something about him rubbed her the wrong way. Maybe it was his officious attitude, but she wasn’t willing to just let him go strolling through the shop without knowing he was there on official business. The fact that Nutmeg hid behind her validated her concern.

  “I assume you have a card or something,” she said. “I would have thought you would need identification?”

  The muscle in his jaw jumped and she could tell he was gritting his teeth. “Of course.” He pulled one off of the clipboard and thrust it at her.

  It looked legitimate enough. Not that she’d know.

  “What can I help you with, Mr. Richardson?” she asked, using her most professional tone.

  “I just told you,” he said smarmily. “It’s inspection time.”

  Behind the cover of the cash register, Winnie balled her hands into fists, not liking his tone one bit. “And I asked you how I could help,” she countered smoothly.

  Richardson glared at her, obviously unaccustomed to being challenged in any manner. “Just stay out of my way.”

  Realizing that an adversarial relationship was not going to make matters any better, Winnie nodded her acquiescence. “The place is yours.”

  Richardson stalked toward the back of the store, and Winnie spun in her seat so that she could watch him. She didn’t think she had a way to stop him from going through things, but she certainly wasn’t going to let him do it unattended.

  “Excuse me,” a female voice called from behind her. She glanced over her shoulder and saw an older woman smiling tentatively.

  “Welcome to One Woman’s Junk,” Winnie said automatically. “How can I help you?”

  “I recognize you from Letty’s service,” the woman said. “I’m so sorry for your loss. She was such a wonderful woman.”

  A lump rose in Winnie’s throat. “She certainly was.”

  Richardson scribbled something on his clipboard as he stomped up the stairs to the living quarters above the store.

  Winnie desperately wanted to follow him, but she couldn’t very well do that with a customer in the shop. “Was there something I could help you with?”

  The woman nodded. “I’m looking for morning jewelry.”

  “Morning jewelry?” Winnie parroted, wondering if that meant jewelry with the sun on it.

  “From the Victorian era,” the woman explained patiently.

  Winnie nodded with a tight smile, wondering what the hell Victorian suns looked like.

  “It’s made with hair.”

  Winnie blinked. “Hair?”

  “Human hair, so that part of the deceased would stay with the mourner.”

  Winnie swallowed hard, imagining how she was going to explain to her sisters that while on her watch she’d had to deal with the fire inspector and a woman who collected the hair of long-dead strangers.

  The woman smiled expectantly. “Sometimes Letty had them because she knew I collect them.”

  Winnie managed to keep her expression neutral, wondering why anyone in the world would collect mourning jewelry. “I’m not all that familiar with the stock of the store yet,” she said, “But please help yourself and look around.”

  The woman nodded, smiled, and began to explore the perimeter of the shop.

  Winnie glanced at the stairs, wondering if there was a way to dash up to get a look at whatever it was Richardson was doing. She sidled toward them.

  “Oh,” the woman called excitedly. “There is one.” She held it up as though she were a prizefighter who’d just won a huge boxing match and this was her trophy.

  “That’s great,” Winnie said with a smile. She wondered what Bea had thought of the value of what looked like a glorified hairball coughed up by a cat. “Would you like me to ring you up?”

  The woman shook her head, carried it up to the cash register, put it down and said, “No, I’m going to keep digging, you never know what treasure you’ll find here.”

  Winnie fought the urge to roll her eyes. “You never know.” Personally, she didn’t think there was any treasure in here, unless, of course, you counted the money in the cookbook upstairs.

  “Go see what he’s doing,” she whispered to Nutmeg.

  As though the dog understood her, he raced up the stairs.

  “It’s too bad none of us can talk to him,” she muttered under her breath.

  “Sorry?” the customer called. “I didn’t quite catch that.”

  “Nothing,” Winnie said easily. “I was just talking to the dog.”

  “Letty used to talk to Angus,” the woman revealed.

  “Angus?” Winnie asked.

  “You know,” she said, pointing to the statue holding the door open. “Angus. Letty used to say he guarded her secrets.”

  “Did she?” Winnie asked. Somehow, she wasn’t surprised. Her godmother had gotten into the habit of doing some really strange things in her later years.

  “You can’t go wrong with a Scot in a kilt,” the woman said.

  Winnie did not point out that the Scot in the kilt was some sort of dragon or something.

  After a few minutes, the woman decided she wasn’t going to find any more treasure that day and paid for her blinged out hairball. She walked out with a wave, promising to return soon.

  The second she was out the door, Winnie raced for the stairs, concerned that Richardson had been spending an excessive amount of time in the apartment.

  She ran up them and found him standing over Letty’s desk.

  “Is there a problem, Mr. Richardson?”

  He glanced back at her, startled by her arrival. “No problems up here, but the downstairs is not zoned for residential and you’ve got a bed set up down there.”

  “It’s a cot.”

  He sneered. “It’s a place for someone to sleep.”

  “My sister can’t climb the stairs.”

  “It’s a code violation, a fire hazard. Plus, the place is a firetrap with the rear door being bolted closed like it is.”

  “I’m new to the business,” Winnie said. “So how do things work now?”

  “I write up my report, you get a copy, and you have a set period of time to remedy the infractions before I re-inspect,” Richardson replied. It was obviously a canned response from the quick, almost rehearsed way it rolled off his tongue.

  Nodding her understanding, she waited, watching him as he continued to write on his clipboard, occasionally glancing over at her.

  Winnie had the distinct impression that they were in some kind of standoff, neither one of them willing to budge. She didn’t want to leave him alone up here, not that there was anything to find, except for the hidden cash, and that wasn’t a fire hazard, but she felt something off about the amount of time he was spending in the apartment.

  Nutmeg stood by her side. She was grateful for the reinforcement, even in canine form.

  Finally, realizing she wasn’t going to leave him alone, he headed for the stairs.

  She stepped aside to let him pass, but he made a point of stepping too close to her, intentionally invading her personal space.

  “I could shut you down,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “I thought you said it was just a couple of infractions,” she said, refusing to panic at the threat.

  “A lot of things are up to my discretion.” He gave her a leering smile. “But if you wanted to work out some sort of personal arrangement…”

  “I don’t,” she told him coldly.

  He shook his head. “It’s a shame that women like you act like you do.” He walked down the stairs before she even had a chance to formulate a reply.

  She considered whether it would be worthwhile to report him to his superiors, wondering how many other women he harassed under the cover of his job.

  “I’ll get you the report,” he said. “And I’ll be back.” He walked out of the store.

  Nutmeg let out a bark that seemed to say, “You’re not welcome.”

  Winnie bent down and patted the little dog on the head. “You didn’t like him, either, did you?”

  The dog barked once.

  Winnie sighed, wondering how she and her sisters were going to deal with this new problem.

  3

  When Richardson was gone, Winnie looked around the store and sniffed the air. “Lilies again,” she muttered to herself.

  Nutmeg, sitting at her feet, cocked his head to the side and looked at her inquiringly.

  She wasn’t about to launch into an explanation for the dog. The next couple of hours passed uneventfully, with just a few customers coming through. For once, Winnie felt like she had everything under control.

  When Bea returned, she looked exhausted from her physical therapy as she wobbled in on her crutches.

  “Are you okay?” Winnie asked worriedly.

  Bea grunted an unintelligible response.

  “Can I get you anything?”

  “A cup of tea would be nice,” Bea said weakly.

  “I’ll make some upstairs,” Winnie said. She bounded up the stairs, eager to do something to help her younger sister. They didn’t always get along, but she hated seeing Bea in pain. She quickly rifled through the kitchen, looking for the tea. She knew Letty had to have some, she was always pushing some herbal creation or another.

  While she looked for it, she noticed that some things seemed to be a little off from where she remembered them being. She wondered if Richardson had gone through the kitchen, too, but she didn’t see how that could have anything to do with a fire inspection.

  “Is anybody here?” a female voice trilled from downstairs.

  Not wanting Bea to have to deal with a customer, Winnie rushed down the stairs shouting, “I’m here.” She stopped midway down the flight when she saw who had yelled out.

  Harmony Divine, a cloud of tie dye enveloped in an almost visible cloud of lavender, patchouli, and smoke, smiled beatifically at her.

  Winnie’s stomach dropped. Her sisters seemed to have accepted the older woman, Letty’s friend, but she wasn’t overly fond of her. “What can I do for you, Harmony?” she asked slowly, continuing to the base of the stairs.

  “It’s what I can do for you,” Harmony said. She held up the biggest bunch of dried sage Winnie had ever seen. “I’m going to smudge this place for you. Clean it out.”

  “Not during business hours you’re not,” Winnie told her testily. “And I’m not sure you’re going to do it at all, that’s something for my sisters and I to decide.”

  “I don’t think it would hurt to dispel the negative energy,” Bea said weakly.

  Winnie pivoted her gaze to her younger sister, who was slumped in the velvet-covered chair near the dressing room.

  “But it already stinks in here,” Winnie complained. “Those lilies are driving me crazy.”

  “What lilies?” Bea asked.

  Winnie’s forehead scrunched. “You can’t smell them?”

  Beatrice shook her head.

  “I don’t smell anything, either,” Harmony said. “Except, of course, for your beloved Letty’s orange and cinnamon.”

  “Well, then we should leave the beloved smell as it is and not pollute the air with more smoke,” Winnie snapped.

  Amanda walked through the door, heard her sister’s harsh tone, and asked, “What’s going on?”

  “Harmony wants to smudge,” Bea told her.

  “Excellent,” Amanda declared.

  “I didn’t know that,” Bea said. “Cool.”

  Realizing she’d lost the anti-smudging campaign, Winnie turned around and walked back up the stairs.

  She couldn’t quite make out the conversation between Bea, Amanda, and Harmony, but she found Letty’s tea and brewed a cup for Beatrice.

  She knew if she was going to be polite, if she was being the kind of person Letty would have wanted her to be, she would have offered a cup to Harmony. She wasn’t feeling that generous.

  She carried the mug down to Beatrice and handed it to her.

  “Thank you,” Bea murmured.

  “Harmony was telling us there was a fire inspector going through all of the shops,” Amanda said.

  Winnie nodded. She didn’t want to tell the others about the bad feeling she’d had about the man in front of Harmony.

  “Did we pass the inspection?” Amanda asked, unwilling to drop the subject.

  “We have some code violations,” Winnie admitted. “And apparently, this place is a firetrap because the back door is bolted shut.”

  “Hank could take care of that for you,” Harmony suggested.

  The Concordia sisters all focused on her.

  “Who’s Hank?” Amanda asked.

  Winnie had the feeling she already knew, thinking that was the name she’d heard Piper call the grizzled old man in PerC Up.

  “He’s the neighborhood handyman,” Harmony explained. “If you need something fixed, or painted, or moved, Hank is your man.”

  “I’m sure Ash could do it for us,” Bea said.

  Harmony shrugged. “I’m sure he could, but Hank could use the work.”

  “Well,” Winnie said. “If Ash could do it for free…”

  Harmony shook her head. “Trust me, it will be good karma if you hire Hank. You won’t even have to pay him in cash, just pay him in something in here.” She waved her hands to encompass the shop.

  “Oh no,” Winnie said. “We’re not going to be responsible for another homeless person.”

  “Edwina Lily Concordia,” Amanda said, standing up straight and sounding an awful lot like Letty had when she’d been outraged. “You know better than to treat people like that.”

  “Letty raised us to be better than that,” Bea added softly.

  “I wasn’t saying don’t help the homeless,” Winnie said, shaking her head. “All I’m saying is that we’ve already taken responsibility for Rena.” She shrugged helplessly. “We can barely take care of ourselves; we’ve got the dog, we’ve got Rena…” She trailed off, realizing this was another argument she wasn’t going to win. And truthfully, she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to be the kind of person who wasn’t willing to help somebody else who was down on their luck. She sighed. “How do we find Hank?”

  “Not to worry,” Harmony said with a big smile. “I’ll send him over to talk to you.” She handed Amanda the giant bunch of sage, formed a heart with her hands, and offered it to each of the sisters, then strolled out of the store whistling off key.

  “How did your appointment go?” Winnie asked Amanda, not wanting to launch into another conversation about the fire inspector, or the handyman.

  Amanda glanced around to make sure there were no other customers in the shop, before confiding, “I went with Detective Keller back to the scene of the crime.”

  “Dun, dun, dun!!!” Winnie couldn’t help but do an impersonation of a dramatic soundtrack at her sister’s choice of words.

  “You went to where Letty was killed?” Bea asked breathlessly.

  “Hang on,” Winnie interjected. “I thought the detective said that her death being intentional ‘might’ be a possibility.”

  Amanda nodded. “But the more he looked into it, the more he suspects foul play.”

  “We have to find Letty’s killer,” Bea said.

  “Let me just remind you that the last time you tried to do that, you almost got blown right off of a building,” Winnie reminded her.

  “That doesn’t mean that Letty doesn’t deserve justice,” her younger sister retorted.

  Winnie sighed. She didn’t disagree with her sisters, but she wasn’t convinced that they were the ones cut out to do the investigating.

  “You didn’t finish telling us about the fire inspector,” Amanda said, seeming to be willing to change the conversation.

  “I didn’t like him,” Winnie said.

  “I don’t think you have to like somebody,” Bea said. “The man was just doing his job.”

  “There was something about—”

  “Hush,” Amanda ordered. She was staring off toward the bookshelf.

  Winnie knew that that meant that she was probably listening to the ghost. If one believed there was a ghost here, that was.

 

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