“Both." Jenx surveyed the waiting room. Except for the receptionist who’d tried too hard to help, we were alone. “Let’s go someplace we can talk.”

  “What’s wrong with here?” I said. “I’m waiting for news about Faye.”

  Jenx squinted up at the fluorescent lights. “I don’t trust the force field."

  So we headed for the cafeteria, where we huddled over cups of hot but stale coffee.

  “Once upon a time, the Schuyler family did a lot of good in Magnet Springs,” Jenx began.

  I said, “Something tells me this isn’t a fairy tale.”

  “Nope. The Schuylers made a lot of money building railroads. Then their luck went bad. Real bad. Everything they touched turned to shit. And the crap’s still coming down even though nobody named Schuyler lives in Magnet Springs anymore."

  “Is there still a Schuyler somewhere?”

  Jenx looked uneasy. “I’ve signed so many damn gag orders for Wee Sweeney I can’t remember what I’m allowed to say.”

  “He made you sign gag orders, too?”

  “Anybody involved with either the tiara or the estate has to. I’m up to my eyeballs in both."

  “How?"

  I understood that the local police force had to keep order during the Miss Blossom contest. But I couldn’t imagine their role at Winimar. Based on what Sweeney had told me, plus the fact that I’d never heard of it, I assumed the estate lay outside Jenx’s jurisdiction.

  “It’s in our jurisdiction,” Jenx said.

  “Sweeney said it was a few miles outside of town.”

  “So’s Vestige, and we come when you call.”

  Indeed they did.

  “You’re saying there’s a curse on the estate and on the crown?” I asked.

  “I didn’t say that!" Jenx held up her hands. “I can’t say anything.”

  “Okay. . . . Can we play Twenty Questions?”

  “You can try.”

  I sipped my bitter coffee and thought about what had happened today, including what Crystal Crossman had told me. I also recalled the tragic fate of Mar Schuyler, the first Miss Blossom. And the first former Miss Blossom.

  “Is it true that former Miss Blossoms are cursed?” I said.

  Jenx stirred her coffee for a long minute. Finally, she said, “Maybe.”

  “What kind of answer is that?”

  “Keep going.”

  I rephrased the question. “Do bad things happen to former Miss Blossoms?

  “Sometimes,” Jenx mumbled, still stirring her coffee.

  “Have a lot of them died? Wait!" I reconsidered my approach. Since the contest dated back to 1847, most former Miss Blossoms would have died by now. Presumably of old age. Or not. I tried again: “Have most former Miss Blossoms died prematurely?”

  Jenx nodded emphatically. I remembered Odette saying that we’d need to get Faye out of town if she won. Did she mean during or after her reign?

  “So . . . Miss Blossom is in danger after she gives up her crown?” I asked.

  Jenx nodded again. I thought about Crystal’s comment that Faye had a curse on her head.

  “Is she in danger while she’s still wearing it?”

  The Police Chief shot me a look overloaded with emotion. During the few seconds when our eyes locked, I read fury, sorrow, and worry there. She resumed stirring her coffee with so much energy that it sloshed onto the table. I grabbed a napkin and blotted the spill.

  “Is Faye in danger?” I whispered.

  “She’s in the hospital, isn’t she?” Jenx whispered back.

  “Is this connected to the curse on Winimar? Or are there two separate curses?"

  Jenx nodded. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but it couldn’t be good. My head throbbed. I’d never had to deal with a curse before, and now there were probably two. I’d agreed to try to sell one. My dog had stolen the other.

  A cell phone bleated. When I reached for mine, I realized that the paramedic had failed to return it. Damn.

  “Chief Jenkins." Jenx’s paint-spotted face darkened. “I’ll be right there.”

  Grimly she announced, “There’s been a car accident. A girl is dead.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “Anyone we know?"

  Jenx’s eyes were bulging again. “The former Miss Blossom, Crystal Crossman."

  Chapter eight

  “Are you sure it was an accident?” I asked Jenx. “Or was it the Schuyler curse?"

  “Either way, the state police are at the scene, and we’re going to join them.”

  “We are? Last time I checked, I sell real estate. Nice clean work with very few corpses.”

  Jenx raised her eyebrows. “Not the way you sell real estate.”

  She was referring to my unfortunate tendency to attract clients who are criminals. I’d like to claim it’s a professional hazard, but I’m the only realtor I know with that problem.

  “You don’t want my help,” I said. “I have a weak stomach. . . .”

  “You’re all I got,” Jenx said. “I can’t release Brady and Roscoe from Abra duty. So try not to barf or faint—and, whatever you do, don’t talk about the curse.”

  “What about Faye? I want to be here for her.”

  Jenx reminded me that CMC has the slowest ER in Lanagan County. We could survey the crash site and get back in plenty of time to assist Faye.

  “Let me tell her we have an emergency,” I insisted. “So she doesn’t think we abandoned her.”

  “Okay, but you’re not naming names. It won’t do Faye any good to hear that her friend just got killed!"

  I agreed and went to look for my office intern in the maze of ER. I didn’t get far before a nurse in scrubs stopped me and asked if I was Faye’s next of kin. When I explained that her parents were in Venezuela, and I was her boss, the nurse hesitated. So I added, “You know there’s a curse on her head."

  Big mistake. The nurse called Security, and I was about to be escorted out, or trundled off to the psych ward, when Jenx intervened with her trusty badge and ID. So we were allowed to leave without an escort. Also without seeing Faye, who was having her insides scanned.

  I had some good luck: I got my cell phone back. Turned out the paramedic had left it and a note with the ER receptionist: “Caution: Owner may be deranged."

  After all that, the prospect of visiting a fatal crash site seemed less daunting. I climbed into Jenx’s personal vehicle, a badly dented Ford pickup.

  “Doesn’t it send a mixed message when the chief of police drives a smashed-up truck?”

  “Why?"

  “It looks like you’re an unsafe driver!"

  “Hey, it’s not my fault people hit me,” Jenx said. “It’s my magnetic field. I attract oncoming vehicles."

  With that, I cinched my seatbelt tighter and kept my eyes peeled for suspiciously swerving cars. The new fear only briefly distracted me from thoughts of Crystal Crossman. She said she was going to Vegas to beat the curse. But she hadn’t made it.

  One advantage to arriving as late as we did: the dead body had already been removed. The scene of the accident was a narrow gravel road about eight miles from Interstate 196, which leads to Grand Rapids. I couldn’t tell what kind of car Crystal had been driving since its front half was now an accordion attached to a big tree. There was no other vehicle.

  When Jenx jumped out to join the state boys, I stayed in the pickup. She made me. That was okay since I desperately wanted to avoid getting a closer look. One glimpse of Crystal’s shattered windshield told me I’d seen enough. I took out my cell phone and checked for missed calls. There weren’t any. Then my phone rang; I recognized the Caller ID.

  “Please tell me you’re tracking that diva dog,” I told Deely Smarr.

  “Brady and Roscoe are following one set of tracks. Judge Verbelow, Mooney and I are on another.”

  “Why are there two sets of tracks?” I asked.

  “Because Abra stole the crown twice today, ma’am. We’re not sure which trail is hotter, so we’re following them both."

  “Have you found anything interesting?”

  Deely paused. “I’m not at liberty to say, ma’am. But I’ve informed Avery that I’ll be late starting tonight’s shift with the twins. She said it doesn’t matter because they’re all going over to Mr. Grant’s house. To spend the night.”

  I felt sick. Absolutely overcome with the urge to hurl. My hostile, ungrateful, unattractive stepdaughter was blatantly courting the man I wanted. Never mind that he was the father of her children. She didn’t deserve him. Hell, she didn’t deserve me. Moreover, Nash had told me months ago that they were never in love. He had worked hard to find her and the babies when she didn’t want to be found. His reason? The man had a burning need to acknowledge and support his children. Apparently, he was a moral icon. I was still mystified as to why he’d ever tangled Avery’s sheets in the first place. And I certainly didn’t want to believe it could happen again. But if Deely was right—it was happening. I couldn’t stand it.

  “Are you there, ma’am?” she asked.

  I choked out some kind of reply and hung up. Then I slammed my head four times, hard, against Jenx’s padded dashboard. It hurt like hell, but it helped the way a broken foot distracts you from a toothache. I nearly jumped out of my skin when someone rapped on the window.

  Jenx was motioning for me to roll it down. I was surprised that the window was manual; I’d almost forgotten how to operate that type.

  She said, “Having a seizure? Or just bored?

  “Why?”

  “Looked like you were trying to knock yourself out. My truck was rocking!”

  “It didn’t work,” I sighed. Then I told her what Deely had said. All of it.

  “So what if Abra left two trails?” Jenx said. “We got two good tracking teams."

  “That’s not the problem! Avery is sleeping with Nash!”

  “You just figured that out?"

  Speechless, I cranked up the window and lay my aching forehead on the dash. I must have dozed off because I dreamed briefly about my first husband Jeb Halloran and woke up feeling better. Jeb often had that effect on me. Even so, I’d refused to have sex with him since Leo died. It just didn’t seem right. After all, Jeb and I had gotten a divorce; we must have had a good reason. Jeb was currently on tour promoting either his Celtic CD or his rockabilly CD, I couldn’t remember which. He was versatile but penniless.

  “That was no accident,” Jenx announced, slamming her door. “Somebody ran Crystal off the road.”

  “Do you have a witness?”

  “Not yet. And not likely.”

  “Then how do you know she didn’t just lose control of her car? She was in a big hurry to get out of here."

  “Tire tracks,” Jenx said. “The gravel doesn’t register specifics, but it gives us a picture. Looks like a big heavy vehicle came up behind her real fast. And stayed behind her, till she got out of the way.”

  “Too bad you don’t know more than that,” I yawned.

  “We do. We know what color it was, and pretty soon, we’ll know what kind."

  “How?”

  “The other guy nudged Crystal’s bumper a few times. Looks like she sped up and then started fishtailing. She must have been all over the road just before she sailed off it. The other car got a little too close. Crystal’s swung into him." Jenx smiled with satisfaction. “We got some of his paint!”

  “How do you know it’s a him?” I said.

  “When the law gets broken, it’s usually by a him. Especially if there are fast cars involved."

  “Okay. What color is ‘his’ fast car?"

  “Black.”

  “Oh yeah, that narrows the field.”

  Jenx seemed on the verge of dissing me, but she refrained and added a line to her notebook instead. Then she turned the ignition key and stared at something just above my eyes.

  “Nice bump on the ol’ noggin, Whiskey.”

  I felt my forehead and groaned. Not just from the pain but also from the realization that I was sporting a lump the approximate size and shape of a sparrow’s egg. Lucky for me, the only mirror in Jenx’s truck cab was the rear view, and she wouldn’t let me move it.

  “You really don’t want to see that,” Jenx said. She was trying hard not to laugh.

  I suggested Jenx wash her face and change her clothes before we made a second pass at CMC. She agreed, which meant we had to swing by the Magnet Springs police station downtown. Brady and Roscoe were there; they appeared to be on break.

  “I thought you guys were trailing Abra!” I exclaimed, more upset with the German shepherd than his human counterpart. The dog works full-time and gets good benefits.

  “We lost her,” Brady said. He didn’t bother to look up from his computer screen.

  “Were you on the hot or the not-so-hot trail?” I asked.

  “Hard to say. They merged.”

  I waited for him to offer encouragement or at least say something more than a few syllables long. When he didn’t, I did what my next-door-neighbor Chester recommends: I asked the dog what was new. And I asked him nicely. But here’s the difference between Chester and me: he can talk to dogs, and frankly I don’t know how. I smiled. I made eye contact. I even got down to Roscoe-eye-level. I stopped just short of sniffing his ass. Or letting him sniff mine. Then I made a few gurgling, whimpering sounds that should have translated. I was asking for help, one dog to another.

  Roscoe licked the lump on my forehead and yawned. Then he circled a few times, lay down on the linoleum at Brady’s feet, and started snoring.

  “Damn,” I muttered, still on my knees.

  “He thought you were telling him to take a break!"

  I didn’t wonder for one second who was talking. What I wondered was how he’d gotten here.

  “Hey, Chester,” Brady said. “Are you here to join the posse?”

  “Yup. Deely called to say they could use another tracker, so I got a cab and came right over.”

  “Any idea where Abra went this time?” I said.

  “Not yet, but we’ll find her. Hey, do either of you guys have change for a fifty? I need to pay the cabbie.”

  That wasn’t as unusual as you might think. Though only eight, Chester inhabited a superstar world and lived in a castle. The Castle was the actual name his mother had given their home. She was Cassina, the internationally renowned harpist-singer-diva. Fabulously rich, she’d built a 20,000-square-foot palace next door to me. In it, she employed an ever-changing army of cooks, maids, drivers and gardeners, none of whom kept tabs on Chester. He regularly showed up at my place, claiming to be locked out of his. I didn’t doubt it. Cassina changed staffs so fast that many hirees probably never met Chester. And she was too engrossed in her career to remember that she was also a mother.

  “Why didn’t you use one of Cassina’s drivers?” I asked, rifling through my wallet.

  “Because she’s using one, and Rupert’s using the other.”

  Rupert was Chester’s biological father and brand new to his life. Following a near-death experience, Rupert had decided it was time to get to know his son. So he made up with Cassina, and was now functioning as her producer and presumably her lover. Chester hadn’t said much about it.

  I traded him four tens and two fives for his fifty. When he slipped out to pay the cabbie, Brady said, “He’s a good kid even though he’s rich and his home life’s a mess. Is Cassina going to let him keep Prince Harry?”

  I shrugged. Chester loved Abra and her illegitimate son, Prince Harry the Pee Master, a Golden-Affie mix, or so we guessed. Cassina didn’t want animals in her house excepting her band members. So she was opposed to letting Chester adopt Prince Harry, but she allowed the five-month-old pup to live with him part-time. We all hoped that Cassina would eventually consent to adoption. The key was housebreaking Prince Harry. Deely and Chester were tackling that issue.

  “What are you looking at?" I indicated Brady’s computer.

  “A little background." After clicking a few more keys, Officer Swancott gave me his full attention. “The missing tiara is part of the Schuyler trust, along with Winimar. You knew that, right?”

  Since about four o’clock, I thought resentfully. “You can talk about it? You didn’t sign a gag order?”

  “Oh, everybody signs a gag order.” Brady made a face. “But we’re conducting a criminal investigation. I just ordered copies of the two books written about Winimar and the Schuyler curse. For the Department."

  “Online? I thought they were out of print.”

  “You’ve heard of used booksellers? If it was ever in print, you can probably find it somewhere. If you know where to look.”

  “And you know where to look,” I echoed.

  “Any graduate student worth his salt would.”

  “Hey, Grad School Boy! What did those two books set us back?” his boss inquired. Jenx had just emerged in uniform from her office. Her hair was wet from her quick shower, but I could still detect flakes of red paint on her fresh-scrubbed face.

  “Nothing petty cash couldn’t handle,” Brady replied. “I ordered them delivered overnight. We should have both books by Monday.”

  “Which is when you can read them,” Jenx said, toweling her hair. To me she added, “If it’s longer than a memo, I assign it to Brady. I hate to read. Always have."

  “If you hate to read, how’d you get to be Chief of Police?” I asked.

  “Big Jim got sent to detox and never reported for duty again. I thought you knew that."

  Of course I knew that. But it felt so good to mess with her. Chester bounded back in, Prince Harry yapping at his heels.

  “What’s he doing here?” I asked. “He’s no tracker. He can’t even pee where he’s supposed to."

  “Deely said Prince Harry knows his mom in ways nobody else does,” Chester replied. “So he might be able to detect something Roscoe or Mooney would miss."

  “I seriously doubt it." We were all watching Prince Harry lift his left rear leg against Brady’s desk.

  “At least he’s peeing like a man dog now,” Brady observed. “Instead of squatting like a little girl."

  Chester chortled as if that was the funniest comment he’d ever heard. Then again, it might have been. Life with Cassina and Rupert probably wasn’t a laugh-a-rama. More like a drama-rama. From what I’d seen, they craved daily theatrics.

 

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