“Takes one to know one.”
Speaking of friends, I glanced up the stairs. “Where’s Freesia?”
Natalie set the wheel knockoffs back in the shoebox. “She went to Nevada.”
“What?” I frowned at her. “I thought you were going to spend Christmas watching Bogart movies and pigging out on pie together.”
“Her dad hasn’t been feeling well lately. When she heard about the snowstorm, she decided to head out before she got stuck here and help her mom take care of him.”
“So you’re coming with Doc and me.” It wasn’t a question.
“Nah. I’ll just stay here and keep fixing up the place.” She held up the hammer. “And now I have a new tool to help me.”
“No, you won’t.” I stood, pointing up the stairs. “Go pack a couple of nights’ worth of clothes.”
She clasped her hands between her knees. “Vi, this Christmas is about Doc spending time with you and your family.”
“I know. You’re part of my family, fruitcake. Besides, Doc will insist we come get you when he hears you’re going to be alone, and we don’t have a lot of time with this storm moving in, so go get your shit and let’s haul ass.”
“But …” She hesitated.
I reached down and pulled her up by the elbow. “The kids and my parents will love having you there, too.”
“I don’t—”
“And I’ll need your help terrorizing the Wicked Witch of the West.” Natalie had long ago made it her mission in life to fuck with Susan’s mental well-being every chance she could as payback for the tramp’s many crimes against my heart. “You don’t want to miss this special holiday opportunity, do you?”
She cocked one eyebrow. “So Susan is definitely going to be there?” At my nod, she smiled banana-wide. Her eyes sparkled with mischief, her blues long gone. “Well, then let’s go have us some rootin’-tootin’ Christmas fun.”
Chapter Four
“Do you remember that Christmas when Santa brought you one of those kid ovens and you made your brother and me itsy-bitsy amoeba-shaped buttons to eat?” Natalie asked as she loaded her duffel bag into the back seat of my SUV.
“Yeah, I was like nine and those were supposed to be miniature chocolate chip cookies, thank you very much.” I slid behind the steering wheel, blinking the snowflakes from my eyelashes.
That might have been the last time I tried my hand at baking. Like rocket science and quantum physics, cooking was one of those highly technical skills that eluded me. It was a major accomplishment most days when I could make a bowl of cereal without somehow burning it.
She climbed inside and closed the passenger door. “Whatever happened to that oven? Addy would probably get a kick out of making tiny cookies and cakes for us tomorrow. Is it in your parents’ attic?”
“No.” I started the vehicle, using the wipers to clear the almost half-inch of snow built up off the windshield. “Susan played with it when I was spending the night with you a few weeks later and Dad had to trash it afterward.” That oven had gone the way of many of my toys thanks to Susan.
“Why? Did she break it like everything else of yours?”
“She baked a dead mouse in it that she found flattened under a board in the garage.” The little shit had sworn she didn’t realize that baking the mummified critter would ruin my oven, but the smirk on her face when the garbage truck came the next day proved otherwise in my nine-year-old opinion.
“Eww! What’s wrong with that girl?”
That was the question Natalie and I had both asked too many times to count over the years about the Bitch from Hell when it came to her crimes against nature and me. Especially me.
I held my hands over the vents in the dash, warming my fingers. “Well, Dr. Freud, I’d sum it up as Susan is bad to the bone.”
Natalie grunted. “She’s so mean she’d steal the nickels off a dead man’s eyes.”
I chuckled and threw out one of Harvey’s lines. “Sure as a bear has hair.”
My cell phone rang from inside my purse, making me cringe. What now, Mother? I fished it out, breathing a sigh of relief at the sight of Doc’s name.
I answered with, “If you’re calling to spur me along, cowboy, I’m about five minutes away from swinging by your spread and making room for you next to me in my wagon.”
“I’m glad to hear it, but you need to stop at work first.”
“Why?” I frowned out the window. The snow was coming down so hard now that it was covering the windshield within seconds. The urge to hit the road had my chest growing tight.
“Cornelius just called me.”
Cornelius Curion was a paranormal investigator who currently lived above Calamity Jane Realty’s office. While he called himself a ghost whisperer, he was really more of an ectoplasmic magnet, drawing wispy followers out of the woodwork. Doc and I shared custody of the eccentric Pied Piper of ghosts, meaning that while Cornelius slept in my building, many of his expensive paranormal gadgets and monitors were set up next door in Doc’s office for reasons I didn’t want to think about at the moment.
“Why did he call?” I asked. “Does he need your help with something down in Nevada?”
Cornelius had gone to Las Vegas where his super-duper rich family lived. He’d mentioned something about driving out to the desert to visit an old friend in a ghost town called Gold-something. Goldtown? No, Goldwash, that was it. Maybe he had a ghost question for Doc, whose first-hand expertise on the spectral world far overshadowed anyone else I knew.
“He’s not in Nevada,” Doc answered.
“He’s not?”
“No. He’s currently one floor above your office.”
What? “I thought he went home for the holidays.”
“He mentioned a problem with his flight.”
“Is that why he called you?”
“No. The spare key I gave him for my office has disappeared. Can you swing by his place on your way here and give him your key for
