“As if I care what you want,” Jessie replied acidly, waggling the newspaper in front of my grandmother’s nose. “Read it and weep, Franklin!” Franklin was the false last name my grandmother had taken.
“What is this garbage?” My grandmother didn’t take the newspaper.
I joined them and took the newspaper from Jessie Belle-Blue. It was a copy of the local paper, The Gossip Rag. Not a good thing, since the editor of the paper hated my grandmother.
The headline jumped out at me.
The Curse of the Murder Inn Strikes Again!
“Uh oh,” I murmured.
“Uh oh is right.” Jessie’s smile was insufferable. She fluffed her short, dark hair and cast an imperious gaze around the room. “You know, it’s only a matter of time until you lose all your business, Georgina. Every last bit of it.”
“Only in your fantasies, Belle-Blue. The people who stay at the Gossip Inn know better than to read trash like that.” Gamma flicked the newspaper.
“You realize that it’s only a matter of time until your inn shuts down. How many murders has it been now? Two? Three? I’ve lost count.” Jessie puffed out her chest. “I’m sure it makes your guests uncomfortable, but they don’t need to fear. I’ve opened my own inn. The Stop ‘n Go is just down the road from here and is brand new. We’re offering discounts to the first five people who book with us.”
“Out!” Gamma took a step forward, her voice cold as ice. I’d seen that cold look before, and if Jessie didn’t get out of here soon, my grandmother would force her.
“Georgina,” I murmured, trying to calm her down.
“Get out before I throw you out, you vile, treacherous woman!”
Jessie Belle-Blue let out a witchy cackle before sweeping toward the exit. “Enjoy your last few days of business, Georgina.” She called that over her shoulder, waving fingers at us. “Oh, and you can keep that copy of the paper. I’ve got plenty more. I might even frame a copy.”
6
Later that morning…
Time at the Gossip Inn was usually spent cleaning, preparing for meals, checking in on the kittens in the kitten foster center, and gossiping about the latest news with Lauren and my grandmother. Today was no different, except for an increase in rage at Jessie Belle-Blue, and my grandmother’s decision to retire to her room to calm down.
I’d never seen her this worked up before. Jessie was my grandmother’s Kryptonite, and that was saying something since Gamma had faced off against war criminals in her time.
I lingered on the front porch, Cocoa Puff seated next to me on the porch swing, my fingers in his chocolate brown fur, and my gaze running wild over the landscape.
Who had killed Jordan?
Where was my ex-husband?
And how much longer would it be until he appeared? If the case wasn’t solved soon, we wouldn’t have the NSIB’s full protection.
I checked my watch and sighed. “Time for me to get back to work,” I said to Cocoa.
He offered me a cute meow in response. Trust Cocoa to make me feel better. He was a ride or die type of cat.
I left him to sun himself on the porch and headed into the kitchen. Lauren was already poring over her recipe book, prepping for the lunch service.
“There you are, Charlie,” she said, turning to me, her eyes wide.
“What’s wrong?”
“You haven’t heard the news?” Lauren asked, licking her lips.
“What, about the headlines in the newspaper? I wouldn’t worry about those. Georgina’s pretty good at smoothing over PR disasters.”
“No, not that.” Lauren was breathless. “Mindy Rorke, at the doctor’s practice, called me. She heard from Genie Baker, the receptionist at the medical examiner’s office, that Jordan’s body has been…” Her bottom lip trembled, like she couldn’t complete the sentence.
“What? What is it? What happened to his body?”
“It’s been stolen!”
“What?” I blinked repeatedly. “What? How? Why?”
“Genie said she doesn’t know, but that Detective Crowley was there this morning, and he had a huge argument with Dr. Briggs. She said she heard them screaming through the closed office door.”
“That’s… that’s crazy. How does that even happen?” Stolen by whom? And how could somebody have pulled that off? It wasn’t like you could just walk into the office, pull open one of those horrible silver morgue tray things and heft a body over your shoulder. The logistics had me stumped.
“I don’t know.” Lauren rubbed her arms. “It’s almost like he—what if he’s a—a zombie or something?”
“Come on, that’s just ridiculous.”
“You never know. Maybe he didn’t die of like… hanging. Maybe he died of a disease. Or he got infected with a disease in the kitten foster center, and he wanted to solve the problem before he became the undead. You know, by—” She cut off, apparently too horrified by the prospect to continue.
“That’s a plot to a movie, Lauren. Let’s try to stick to reality.”
“But what if it is reality? I mean, stranger things have happened.”
“I doubt that.”
“The inn was haunted not so long ago,” Lauren replied sagely. Or in an attempt to be sage. Her red eyebrows had risen nearly to her hairline.
“No, it wasn’t. That was Jordan, remember?”
“Exactly! He’s been the undead all along. Oh my heavens, what if the zombie virus is in the kitten foster center? What if—?”
I walked over to her, took her by the arm, and sat her down at the kitchen table. “How much sleep did you get last night?”
The chef grimaced. “Not much,” she admitted, then continued in a mutter, “maybe the zombie thing is a little farfetched.”
“A little?” I fixed a pot of coffee. “Like I said, let’s stick to reality. Corpses don’t get up and walk out of morgues. Someone took the body. Most likely, it was the killer, or an associate of the killer. It would take at least two people to pull off something like that.”
“Yeah.”
Lauren accepted the cup of coffee from me once it had been brewed. “Sorry I overreacted.”
“You’ve got an active imagination. That’s not a bad thing.” I patted her on
