The Hitwoman and the Neurotic Witness (9 page)

“No. I took a nap.”

“Avoiding a problem isn’t the same as solving a problem,” Susan lectured.

I rolled my eyes, having heard that bit of advice numerous times growing up.

“Very mature,” Susan groused.

The shrill beeping of the kitchen timer saved me from yet another oft-repeated lecture. Jumping out of her seat, Susan hurried into the kitchen. Bob followed close behind.

“I hear beeping,” Leslie announced.

“It’s better than seeing dead people,” I told her.

“I see dead people,” Gypsy said from the doorway.

We all turned to look at her. Most of us wrinkled our noses as the pungent aroma of patchouli drowned out the scent of silver polish and potpourri.

“You see dead people?” Leslie asked, wide-eyed.

The Griswald brothers shared a loaded look across the table.

“Zeke’s looking for you,” I interjected, not wanting the conversation to go any further considering an FBI agent and U.S. Marshal were listening.

“I like Zeke!” Leslie crowed triumphantly.

“Bully for you,” I muttered, desperately hoping for some sort of divine intervention to save me from this dinner from Hell.

“Hey, Chiquita!” a familiar voice called.

I should have known things could only get weirder.

It’s a sad state of affairs when I think of Armani as my savior, but that was exactly the thought I had as she limped into the room.

Leslie stared at her disfigured hand in horror. “What happened to you?”

Armani gave me a questioning look. After all, they’d met before. More than once.

I twirled a finger near my ear indicating that Aunt Leslie was a whack-a-doodle. I figured that was safer than pointing out to the law enforcement officials at the table that she was doped up on some illegal substance.

“I had a run-in with a Zamboni machine,” Armani answered my aunt.

Leslie shivered.

“It was my own fault,” Armani continued cheerily. “If I’d paid attention to my own psychic prediction, none of it would have happened.”

“You’re a psychic?” Gypsy asked.

“Uh huh,” Armani said, settling into the seat beside me. “Tell ‘em, Maggie.”

Despite the cynical glances of the Griswald brothers, I said, “She reads Scrabble tiles.” Without prompting, I drew seven tiles from the purple cloth bag she held out to me. I placed them letter-side-up and in alphabetical order (DEEIRRW) in front of her and watched as she shuffled them around on the table like a street hustler playing Three Card Monte.

“I like Scrabble!” Leslie declared a tad too enthusiastically.

“Scrabble tiles?” Gypsy asked, shuffling closer to the table.

My eyes watered and I wondered if it was possible to asphyxiate on patchouli fumes. “Like tea leaves,” I choked out. “You pull seven and she predicts your future.”

“Drew ire,” Armani declared in her best all-seeing-psychic voice.

“That’s past tense,” I told her.

“But you have pissed a bunch of people off lately,” she countered quickly.

“By definition past tense is not a prediction,” I groused.

Armani, who didn’t seem to be affected by the stench, swung her purple bag o’ tiles enticingly to the rest of table. “Go ahead. Give it a try.”

“Me first!” Leslie cried, flying across the room, almost knocking Gypsy over in her haste to reach the bag.

“Seven,” Armani instructed dramatically.

Leslie nodded and with great concentration pulled a tile from the bag.

“Six more,” Armani coached.

Slowly and deliberately, Leslie pulled out the rest of the tiles.

“Place them face-up on the table,” Armani intoned in her best ninety-nine-cents-per-minute-phone-psychic voice.

I fought the urge to giggle, but Leslie and Gypsy hung on her every syllable.

Leslie laid them out.

Armani read them aloud. “N, G, N, O, A, W, O.”

“What does it mean?” Leslie asked breathlessly, staring at the little wooden blocks like they really did hold the key to her future.

“Give me a moment,” Armani said. “I must seek guidance from the world beyond our own.”

With a shake of her black, commercial-worthy hair, she closed her eyes.

I’d never been privy to her entire “I’m a psychic” act before. Covering my mouth with my hand to keep from laughing, I watched Leslie’s and Gypsy’s wide-eyed wonder.

“I see it!” Armani shouted suddenly, startling her enraptured audience so badly that they both jumped.

The Griswald brothers chuckled.

I bit my thumb to keep from joining them.

Opening her eyes, Armani scowled at the non-believers before reaching her good hand toward the tiles. Using just her finger, she rearranged them, spelling out their message. “On Wagon,” she declared, her voice resonating.

Leslie gasped. “What does it mean? Am I going on a trip to the wild, wild, West?”

Sitting back in her chair, Armani looked up at my chemically-enhanced aunt. “No,” she said gently, with more tact than I knew she possessed. “It means you’re going to get
on the wagon
. You’re going to get clean. You’re going to stop using whatever it is you’re using.”

Taken aback, Leslie blinked. She would have moved away, but Armani grabbed her hand.

“This is your future,” Armani told her.

Leslie hesitated. “But…”

The situation had suddenly morphed from humorous entertainment to the possibility of a life-changing decision. I held my breath.

“I’ve seen it,” Armani insisted. “Besides, haven’t you seen the commercials? That shit you’re doing can fry your brain like a huevo.”

“Huevo?” Leslie parroted back.

“Fry it like an egg.” Armani delivered the news like it was a scientific fact. “On Wagon.”

“On Wagon,” Leslie repeated.

“Hey, gorgeous,” Zeke swept into the room, planting an affectionate kiss on Armani’s cheek and disrupting the loaded moment.

Releasing my aunt, Armani pulled Zeke in for a tight hug, pressing her ample chest against him and wiggling flirtatiously. “I missed you.”

“You don’t say,” Zeke chuckled, disentangling himself from her embrace with easy charm.

“I have to go to a meeting,” Leslie declared.

“Good for you,” Armani beamed.

“Now,” Leslie asserted.

“Dessert’s ready,” Aunt Susan trilled, carrying in a batch of still-steaming cookies.

“I can’t have dessert,” Leslie cried. “I have to get on the wagon.”

“There are no wagons, dear,” Susan admonished absent-mindedly, pulling a pile of cloth napkins out of her apron.

“I have to get to a meeting,” Leslie snapped.

Susan blinked. “A meeting?”

“It’s probably a good idea,” Armani said, reaching for a cookie.

“Now,” Leslie insisted.

Susan looked at me expectantly like I was wearing a chauffer’s cap or something.

I shook my head.

“Why not?” Susan asked.

I couldn’t tell her that the idea of leaving my psychic friend, a could-be medium, and two law enforcement officers together was more terrifying than having a gun pointed at me…but it kind of was. “She j-just got here,” I stuttered nervously, jerking my head in Armani’s direction.

“Where do you need to go Leslie?” Zeke asked.

“To a meeting,” she replied.

“Yes. The whole world’s already heard that,” Aunt Susan groused, tossing napkins at people like they were deadly throwing stars.

Zeke smiled gently at Leslie. He spoke slowly and clearly so that she couldn’t misunderstand his question. “Where is the meeting you want to go to?”

She blinked and focused. “The Church of Our Redeemer.”

“Over on Hill Road?”

She nodded.

“I can take you there,” Zeke said.

Leslie offered him a tremulous smile of thanks.

“Are you sure?” Susan asked.

Zeke nodded. “I’ve got a couple of errands to run in that direction. I’ll drop her off and then pick her up on my way back.”

“Thank you,” I sighed with relief.

My gratitude must have seemed a bit overblown because Zeke looked at me strangely and I sensed Armani watching me curiously.

“If you’re sure,” Susan said, unconvinced.

“He’s sure,” I snapped.

She threw a killer napkin at me. “Don’t be fresh.”

“C’mon, Leslie,” Zeke urged, taking her by the arm. “Let’s get you to your meeting.”

“You’re a good man, Zeke,” Armani said.

“Not that good,” he muttered.

“You don’t say,” Armani purred flirtatiously.

Chuckling, he bent to stage-whisper in her ear, “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

Armani giggled girlishly while Zeke led Leslie from the room.

“Thank you,” I called after them.

“Don’t worry,” Zeke yelled back. “I’ll make sure you pay me back.”

“Cookie, anyone?” Susan held out the plate.

“Don’t mind if I do,” Bob said, snatching one and popping it into his mouth.

“Careful,” Susan and I warned simultaneously, “they’re hot.”

“But I’m sure they’re delicious,” U.S. Marshal Griswald interjected, taking advantage of the fact Bob couldn’t speak at the moment.

“You haven’t introduced me to your friends,” Armani pointed out.

“Guests,” I corrected automatically. There was no way I was going to consider a U.S. Marshal, an FBI agent, and a woman who saw dead people to be my friends.

“But we’re all friends here,” Susan said, shooting me a dirty look.

“It must be a challenge,” Aaron Griswald mused.

“What must be?” I asked the FBI agent suspiciously.

He plucked a cookie from the serving plate. “Maintaining a professional relationship with people who are living in your home.”

I nodded my agreement, grateful for the out he was providing.

“It’s the same way in our line of work,” he continued, fixing his brother with a hard look. “We get to know people intimately, build a relationship with them, and then we never see them again.”

His older brother glared at him and a loaded tension filled the room.

“So,” I said awkwardly. “Armani Vasquez, I’d like you to meet U.S. Marshal Griswald, his brother, FBI agent Griswald, and this,” I said, waving a hand in the pungent medium’s direction, “is Gypsy. I’m sorry, I don’t remember your last name.”

“It’s just Gypsy,” she replied quietly.

“Like Madonna?” Armani asked.

Gypsy shrugged. “I guess.”

“Or Cher?”

She nodded.

“Or The Rock?” my semi-psychic friend continued.

“He has a real name,” I interrupted.

“Gypsy
is
my real name,” I was informed snippily by the patchouli-wearer.

“It’s a good name,” Armani soothed. “Valuable.”

“Valuable?” Gypsy asked.

Knowing where the conversation was headed, I grabbed a cookie. Armani connected the Scrabble point values of people’s names to their worth as people.

“It’s worth 14,” Armani told Gypsy. Looking across the table she asked the FBI agent, “What’s your name?”

“Aaron.”

The dark-haired beauty shook her head. “
Six
. Not a good name.”

Before Armani could make her way further around the table to tell Susan she’s a paltry five, I offered my friend a cookie and asked Gypsy, “You’re finding your room comfortable?”

She nodded.

I took that to mean it wasn’t haunted.

“Care to have your fortune told?” Armani asked the table at large. She shook the purple bag, filled with tiles, enticingly.

“Can you tell me whether I’ll win my case?” Aaron asked taking another cookie.

“You’ve got all the evidence you need,” his brother interjected.

“So I shouldn’t be able to screw it up?”

The older Griswald flinched at the sarcastic barb. “That’s not what I meant.”

“No, no,” Aaron said, standing up. “I get it. After all, if it wasn’t for your interference in my case, I wouldn’t have the evidence.”

“I wasn’t interfering.”

“That’s what you say,” Aaron shot back.

“I was chasing after an escaped prison convict,” the Marshal reminded him. “That’s my job. I certainly didn’t plan that Archie Lee would hold the key to your case.”

“Wait!” Armani interrupted excitedly. “You’re the one who was trying to put Maggie’s dad back in jail?”

Griswald nodded.

“And now you’re staying here?” Armani continued. “Aren’t you afraid she’ll stab you in your sleep or poison your cookies or something?”

Griswald slid a sideways glance at the plate of cookies.

“
I
would never poison you,” Susan assured him. “I’ve never even liked Archie Lee.”

“That’s reassuring,” Aaron murmured, taking yet another cookie. “What about you, Maggie? Are you in the habit of killing people while they sleep?”

I’m pretty sure that for a long moment my heart stopped beating. I know that I stopped breathing. Was this how I was going to get caught? Sitting at the dining room table? Inadvertently outed by one of my best friends?

Prison orange is so not my color.

When I didn’t respond right away, the whole table watched me curiously.

I offered them a weak grin, forcing myself to take a shaky breath. “I’d never stab anyone while they slept.”

“Ah, but you admit you do it when your victims are wide awake?” Aaron teased.

Swallowing hard, I pasted a smile on my face. “But of course.”

“See,” Aaron said, “if all killers were so forthright my job would be a hell of a lot easier.”

“It’s not about the job being easy,” his brother chastised.

“You were born without a sense of humor,” Aaron sniped. “We’re just fooling around.”

“Who’s fooling around?” a sexy female voice asked.

We all turned to find Marlene lounging in the doorway, wrapped in a red silk robe emblazoned with an “L,” a cigarette dangling between her fingers.

“Smoking!” Susan shrieked, jumping to her feet.

“Chill, Suzie,” Marlene drawled. “It’s not lit.”

Susan and I sucked in equally horrified breaths. No one dared call her Suzie.

“Who’s she?” Armani asked.

“My sister.” I muttered, sending Marlene my strongest “shut the hell up before the witches boil us alive and we scream like lobsters” look.

“Wow,” Armani said breathlessly. “I’ve never seen a dead chick before.”