He hugged her.
“Let’s go to bed.”
The next morning, Luci decided to take care of Charles Stewart’s room herself. Not that she planned to snoop through his belongings, but maybe she’d see something that would tell her a little more about the guy.
Boy, a ghost sure would have been helpful right now. Not that Miss Gracie liked sticking her head in people’s suitcases, but she could be persuaded if the cause was good. Or bad. After all, she’d almost stuck her head in the ground looking for a body back when Mickey wasn’t sure he wanted to kiss Luci or kill her. And she’d actually passed through the body in the chimney. After that, everything was pretty much uphill.
Luci grabbed a stack of clean bedding and her master key and headed upstairs. She knocked on the door, waited a minute, then let herself into the room. The curtains were still drawn, so Luci flipped on the overhead lights, then went and pulled them back. She threw open the windows, too.
Even after all this time, she could sometimes smell Miss Weena’s heavy perfume in the air. She leaned her elbows on the sill, looking down on the garden. It looked pretty good, considering they just had a guy who came by once a week. During her aunts’ time, Boudreaux, Louise’s husband, had taken care of the garden. Good thing he died before it came out about Louise icing Miss Gracie, or he’d have gotten even more incoherent.
Saffron must have opened the kitchen windows, too. Luci heard Gracie’s high-pitched voice mingling with Saffron’s deeper one.
It was a bit chilly, though. Luci was glad. Last year they hadn’t had a winter or a spring. Just a never-ending summer.
Luci straightened and turned to face the bed.
It was a shock to find it still occupied.
Charles Stewart—with the neat hole back between his eyes. He was fully dressed, but seemed to have removed the sweater. Of course, this time he wasn’t in a freezer, so maybe he didn’t need the—sweater.
And maybe she was losing it.
Luci stared at him for what felt like a long time. He didn’t move.
Not that she expected him to—exactly.
She turned and left, carefully locking the door behind her. Down in her office, she had her hand on the phone, but instead of calling Mickey, she grabbed her cell phone, and went back upstairs again. She opened the door.
The body was gone.
Again.
Mickey came straight home and found Luci standing in front of the door to the Miss Weena suite, her arms crossed, a militant expression on her face. Without speaking, she handed him the master key and stepped aside.
Mickey pulled his weapon, unlocked the door and went in. The bedding was thrown back on the empty bed. The curtains moved from the breeze passing through, bringing the fresh smell of spring to edge out the heavy smell of Miss Weena’s perfume that still clung to the room.
He approached the closet and pulled the door open. Empty. The bathroom was equally devoid of occupants, dead or alive. He did a sweep, checking anything that might remotely be used to hide a body.
And found nothing.
He leaned out both windows.
There was a trellis beneath one that someone could have used to get in, but how could anyone get a body out that way and so quickly?
He turned to look at Luci. “I can get some crime scene people here, see if they turn up anything.”
Luci hesitated, and during that pause, he heard someone coming up the stairs. He wasn’t surprised when Charles Stewart came into view.
He didn’t like the look it put in Luci’s eyes.
Mickey decided he had to tell Captain Pryce about Luci’s “dead man walking” guest. If Pryce found out about it from anyone else, his ass would be grass.
Not that his ass wouldn’t be grass anyway. It would just be more grass.
Anything went wrong with Luci, Captain assumed it was Mickey’s fault. It was pretty much a lose-lose situation. The Captain hadn’t liked him much before he married Luci. Not even doing his part in producing the nearly perfect Gracie had helped.
Mickey suspected the Captain liked to pretend it was an immaculate conception. Whatever helped him get through the day.
When he finished talking, the Captain looked as annoyed as Mickey had expected him to look.
“She’s not crazy.”
“No, sir.”
“Then what the hell is going on?”
Mickey wished he knew. “Maybe someone is trying to gaslight her?”
“Why would anyone want to do that? It’s not like she solved any major crimes in Butt Had.”
“And Artie is still in jail.” Artie was probably the only perp with a real grudge against Luci, but he’d gotten a long sentence for all the bodies he’d left lying around. Fern and Donald Smith, the hit couple Artie had hired, had gone the way of Luci’s aunts— though probably down, rather than up.
“Can we get a crime scene team in there while this Stewart is out of the room?”
“If you’ll approve it, I can set it up.” Stewart was scheduled for a cemetery tour later in the afternoon. He’d be out for a while, should be long enough for Mickey to get the room swept. Since he was the homeowner, he was also going to have them sweep the whole house, top to bottom. There had to be something they weren’t seeing. Luci wasn’t crazy. He knew it. Pryce knew it. Luci was the only one who didn’t know it. That had to change.
Two long hours later, the head investigator shook her head and stripped off her gloves. They hadn’t even found a spot of blood to analyze.
“I do have some prints to run, but the place is very— clean.”
Mickey had noticed that about Saffron, too. Only her hair was untidy. But their Gracie was not getting her hair done that way. Never going to happen.
“Thanks—and thanks for keeping a low profile.” He’d had Luci move her 4x4 out of the garage, so they could park the CSI van
