twenty-five

Yawning, I drove past burger joints and brick buildings. The road dipped beneath the freeway and into San Benedetto’s industrial/agricultural area—corrugated iron buildings surrounded by vineyards. The early morning fog was oddly bright, reflecting rather than diffusing the sunlight. I squinted and flipped down the truck’s visor.

My nerve endings twitched. I’d slept badly the night before, unable to stop thinking about Mason and Jason. Was I into guys whose names rhymed? Maybe I shouldn’t have called Jason for help with Belle’s disappearance. Now he thought Mason and I still had a connection.

Rubbing my burning eyes, I bumped over a railroad track. I turned right into a parking lot, my truck drifting to a halt beside a silo and a pickup nearly as old as mine. I might not be successful in my attempt to cure Jennifer Fall’s husband of his curse obsession, but I was also curious about why he’d quit the Christmas Cow committee.

After wandering the parking lot for five minutes, I spotted a sign for the Falls Yogurt factory office. I didn’t have an appointment, but Byron Falls was a small business owner, which probably made him a workaholic. I guessed he’d be here.

Opening the metal door, I walked inside.

A bulky man with gray hair stood behind a counter and thumbed through a stack of envelopes. An X of medical tape marked his temple. His jeans sagged around his hips, and his plaid shirt was worn. He glanced up. “Can I help you?”

“I’m Maddie Kosloski from the Paranormal Museum. I’m looking for Mr. Falls.”

“Mr. Falls was my father. I’m Byron.” He reached across the counter and gripped my hand. “If you’re looking for a donation, though, I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

“Oh.” I blinked, startled. He was the second person lately who’d assumed I’d wanted a donation. “No. It’s about the cowbells.”

His gray brows rose. “Cowbells?”

“The, er, cursed cowbells.”

He stared at me.

I shifted my weight. “At the museum?”

“I’m sorry, what are you talking about?”

Was he too embarrassed to admit he believed in curses? I blundered on. “Back in the ’80s, after the original Christmas Cow committee came into being, they received a set of cowbells hung in the shape of a Christmas tree from our sister city in Sweden.” Say that five times fast. “When everyone on the committee died within a year, an urban legend started that the bells were cursed.”

He snorted. “People aren’t that smart, are they?”

I tugged on the drawstrings of my museum hoodie. “Anyway. The bells eventually went into storage. Two months ago, I bought them for my museum.”

He thumbed through the mail, pulled out a white envelope. “And?” he asked, studying it.

I shoved my hands in the pockets of my jeans. “And now, because of the recent deaths of two other members of the Christmas Cow committee, some people are saying the curse has returned.”

He shook his head. “Like I said, not that smart. Someone got angry at Bill Eldrich and Tabitha Wilde and killed them. That’s no curse. That’s a maniac with a bow and arrow.”

“Yeah. That’s … what I think.” Hmm. I shifted tactics. “I heard you dropped off the Christmas Cow committee?”

Byron grunted, still pawing through the mail. “Too busy.”

“Is that the only reason?”

“It was too political.”

“Political?” I asked.

“No one was there to get things done—no one except that Fran woman, who by the way is terrifying.”

I smiled tightly. I couldn’t interrupt a potential witness to defend my mother’s honor. And he wasn’t entirely wrong. “Did anything odd happen at the meetings you attended?”

“Odd? No. Just a lot of blah, blah, blah, people talking to make themselves feel important. I’m too busy for that.”

“What were they talking about?”

“Who can remember?”

“You said it was too political,” I reminded him. “Do you remember any of the political discussions?”

“That Penny woman was threatening to run for town council.” Byron chuckled. “It really pissed Bill off.”

“Why?”

“Who knows?” He held an envelope to the light from the window, then dropped it on the counter. “Bill had a short fuse—that’s probably what got him killed.”

“Do you know who might have been upset with Bill and Tabitha?”

“Nope.”

So much for that line of inquiry. “Anyway, as you seem to already have figured out, there’s no curse.”

“And you’re going door-to-door telling people this?”

“Nooo.” I swallowed, feeling foolish. “I heard you’d been having some accidents and might have thought they were curse-related.”

He tore open a thick manila envelope. “Look, if you’re trying to drum up interest in your museum, I’ve got no problem with it. I know what it’s like being an entrepreneur. But you’re barking up the wrong tree. I don’t believe in ghosts or curses.”

“Right.” I shifted my weight. “Mind if I ask how you got that?” I pointed to the X of tape on his skull.

He picked at the bandage. “Fell off a ladder. It was getting wobbly. Should have replaced it sooner, but it broke on me when I was fixing a shelf on the stairs for my wife. Hit my head, and I’ve got no one to blame but myself.”

“So, not curse-related.”

He laughed. “The only curse is my wife’s obsession with filling our house with junk.” He sighed and dropped his hand. “It’s antique hats now. But if they make her happy, what am I going to do?”

“Did you hear we had a panic at the museum on Sunday?”

One corner of his mouth turned downward. “Saw it in the papers. Not too smart.”

I wasn’t sure if he meant the papers or the patrons or me, but it didn’t sound like Jennifer had mentioned to him that she was there. “We were lucky no one was hurt in the stampede,” I said. I lowered my head, studying him. Surely his wife would have said something about the madness? She’d been in the thick of the crowd.

“No one?” His brow wrinkled. “I heard a cop got hit by a car outside afterward. I guess you think that’s down to your curse too?”

“No, a person committed that crime. So no one you knew was at the museum that day?”

He returned to the mail. “No one I know’s got time for such foolishness.”

I edged toward the metal door. “Okay. Well, thanks for your time.”

He didn’t look up as I backed from the office. I let the door clang shut.

Weird. Byron Falls sure didn’t act like someone worried about curses. If he was lying, he was pretty good at it. Was the curse entirely in Jennifer’s head? I glanced over my shoulder at the closed metal door. She’d cared enough about the curse to come to the binding ritual at the museum, but she hadn’t told her husband she’d gone. Filing my questions away for future research, I drove off in my truck.

I reached the museum ten minutes before opening and parked in the alley. The blinds to Mason’s apartment upstairs were drawn. I stared up at the windows. Had Belle called?

Shaking myself, I unlocked the alley door to the tea room and went inside.

Adele looked up from behind the cream-colored counter and smoothed her chignon. Rows of burnished-nickel tea canisters lined the shelves behind her. Someone clattered in the kitchen, though the Fox and Fennel didn’t open until eleven.

“Good morning,” she said. “Want a cup of tea? On me?”

“No thanks.” I yawned, my eyelids heavy. “How’s it going with Dieter?”

My friend tugged down the front of her apron. “He’s not upset anymore.”

“I’m sorry I got you into hot water.”

“You didn’t. I should have told him I told you, and he was being sensitive.” She smiled fondly. “He really does take his clients’ privacy seriously.”

I braced my elbows on the counter and fantasized about stretching out on it. “He’s trustworthy.” In a weird, Dieter way.

She squeezed my shoulder. “You look tired. You’re not still worried about that TV interview, are you? No one watches that show.”

“No publicity is bad publicity, right?” Hoping it was true, I slouched to the book case and pressed the Museum spine. The secret door pivoted open.

“Maybe last night’s interview will calm people down about the curse,” she said.

“I thought nobody watched that show.” I reached for the bookcase to pull it shut behind me.

“Maddie, I heard about Mason.”

I turned, brow furrowed. “How did you hear about that?”

“Your aunt stopped by my parents’ house on her morning walk. I was there for breakfast.”

I rubbed my head. One of the drawbacks of living in my aunt’s garage apartment was that she knew every move I made, even if she pretended not to. I was surprised she hadn’t stopped by later to ask about the shouting, but she’d always been militant about giving me privacy. It was one of her better qualities. Being a huge gossip was one of her worst.

“Is it true Belle left with his son?” Adele walked from behind the counter and leaned one hip against it.

“It was true last night. I don’t know what the situation is this morning.”

She bit her bottom lip. “This isn’t your fault. How were you to know she was going to take the money and run?”

“I should have known,” I said, annoyed at myself. “There weren’t a lot of good reasons to keep the winnings secret from Mason.”

“But even if that were true, what could you have done? You and Mason broke up. You couldn’t get involved in his relationship with Belle.”

“That’s what I keep telling myself. But when we broke up, I’d hoped we’d stay friends. And I don’t think I acted like one.”

She jammed her fists onto her slim hips. “Everyone says they’ll stay friends but no one means it. Not right away, at least. And you two only broke up a couple months ago. Friends doesn’t happen for at least a year.”

“Right.” Forcing a smile, I walked into the museum and closed the bookcase behind me.

GD slunk from the Icelandic ogress’s cave and howled.

“Hold your horses.” I poured kibble into his bowl and refreshed his water from my thermos.

He turned his back on me and ate, crunching sounds echoing off the linoleum floor.

I flipped the Closed sign to Open and booted up the computer. But instead of burying myself in the Internet, I drew from beneath the counter the manila envelope Jason had given me after our lunch at the Book Cellar. He’d told me the case files were cleared for the public, but it still felt like I was doing something naughty. I flipped through the pages and examined the records for the death of Jennifer’s first husband, Sigfried.

There were actual photos in this one—well, photocopies of photos. I was glad they were in black and white, because looking at a naked dead man in a bathtub felt like a severe invasion of privacy. Fortunately the shower curtain had been pulled from its rings, covering any embarrassing bits.

The boom box was submerged in the water by Sigfried’s feet, the cord extending from the outlet by the sink. Trying not to look at the body, I studied the boom box and the cord.

Had the portable stereo been balanced on the sink or on the tub? If it had fallen from the sink, it could have bounced off the edge of the tub and slipped inside. But placing the boom box in either place seemed really dumb.

The sink was old-fashioned and free-standing. It didn’t sit inside a counter, and its edges were rounded. And it was a clawfoot tub without much of a ledge at all. The “foot” end was jammed against the wall, beneath the shower head, so something could have been balanced there. Still, if you were determined to listen to music in the bath, why not put the boom box on the toilet? Because it was on the opposite side of the sink and too far to reach if you wanted to change the station? I rubbed my face, too tired to make sense of it all.

The door opened, jingling the bell, and I straightened off the counter. “Welcome—”

Cora Gale floated inside, her thick burnt-orange shawl fluttering in the breeze from the slowly closing door. “Leo has a cold. He won’t be coming in today.”

She really had stepped into a mother-figure role with my employee. “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.

She waved off my concern. “It’s only a cold. He’ll be fine in a day or two. He wanted to come to work, but I told him you wouldn’t want him passing his germs off to you and your customers.” Reaching across the counter, she clasped my hand. “But how are you? I heard about the contretemps with your ex last night.”

My toes curled. “My aunt told you?”

“No, Mrs. Rosewood.”

Tingling swept my chest and neck. Mrs. Rosewood? Who the heck was Mrs. Rosewood? “Does the whole town know?”

“Not the whole town. What happened? Are you all right? I can’t understand why Mason blamed you for his girlfriend leaving.”

“He’s worried about his son. And I don’t think he blamed me. He came to me because we’re friends.”

“Hmm.” She ran her hands across her beaded necklaces. “I heard you called the police.”

“No, not the police. I mean, a friend who’s in the police. I thought he might have some advice.”

“And did he?”

“I don’t know. They talked outside. I didn’t want to get involved in something that personal.”

“I can’t say I blame you, dear.” She rolled her shoulders. “Now, I didn’t come here to gossip. Your mother is indisposed—”

“She’s not sick, is she?”

“Sorry, poor wording. One of our more elderly members, Mrs. Tyre, fell and broke her hip. Your mother’s at the hospital with her.”

“Oh no.”

“It happens when you get older. Not that you’ll have to worry about that for a good long time. At any rate, your mother asked if I could provide you with any further assistance in your little problem.”

“My problem?” Which one? There were so many.

“The curse?”

“Oh. Right.” I glanced at the open folder on the counter. “I was just reviewing the first deaths, from the ’80s.”

Cora tapped Sigfried’s photo and pursed her lips. “Terrible. I’ve never seen this photo before.” She turned it to face her and shook her head. “What a ridiculous way to go.”

“It does seem careless.”

“He wasn’t that way at all in his public life. Sigfried wouldn’t have made it to town councilman at such a young age, otherwise. He was meticulous. Disciplined. But I suppose many of us wear two faces—public and private. And he did marry Jennifer, so he must have had a wild streak.”

“Why do you say that?”

“She was gorgeous, vivacious, loved a good party and a good cocktail.” Cora raised a brow. “I won’t say all the men wanted her, but many did. Of course, Sigfried was going places, so it wasn’t such a surprise when the two married, even if he was a dull fish. We all expected her to turn her hostess skills toward taking her place in the community.”

“And she didn’t?”

“No. For a politician’s wife, she was remarkably disengaged from community events. Even today, when she’s married to a dairy man, she’s not involved in Ladies Aid.”

The horror! I tried not to roll my eyes and failed.

Cora smiled. “Which I suppose you think is good sense on her part.”

“Ladies Aid can get a little intense.”

The door opened and a middle-aged couple strolled inside. Cora edged from the counter and I sold them tickets.

“Where are the haunted bells?” the woman demanded.

Tensing, I pointed.

She giggled. “What a kick!”

The two moved off.

“It seems the TV interview last night hasn’t hurt business,” Cora said in a low voice.

“You saw that?”

“I don’t sleep much. One of the benefits of age. The closer we get to dying, the more opportunity we have to enjoy life.”

“You’re not that close to dying.”

“Closer than you are. At least I hope I am. I must say, I don’t like the aura I’m seeing around you.” She wafted her hand about my head and shoulders as if fluffing an invisible cloud.

“You see auras?” Repress, repress my inner skeptic. A group of twenty-somethings walked in and I sold more tickets.

“Of course I see auras,” Cora said after they’d moved into the Gallery. “Yours is usually a lovely, iridescent sparkle. But there are all sorts of cords attached to you—other people are imposing on your energy field. If you like, I know an energy worker who can help.”

“Maybe after the holidays,” I said.

“Considering everything that’s been happening, I’m surprised you’re not taking this more seriously.” Her lips crimped together. “I only hope after the holidays isn’t too late.”

So did I.