Magnolia Wild Vanishes (A Charmed Cat Mystery, Book 1) Read online

  I don’t know why that gave me a burst of satisfaction. Maybe I was remembering Nick’s sleek Jaguar and how I first thought his car spoke of a man with great taste and pride in his possessions. Of course, that was my opinion before I found out that I was one of his possessions, and that I had actually developed a dislike for men in expensive cars.

  The next thing on my agenda was to make certain the door between the bathroom and my bedroom was locked. I might have to share a bathroom with a perfect stranger, but I had no intention of sharing my bedroom or anything in it, living or inanimate.

  The water was still running in the bathroom and I was tempted to explore the bedroom on the other side. Was it like mine, ornate with period furniture, or was it more suitable to a man? Stark lines and simple furniture? Something done up in black leather and leopard print?

  Stop it, I told myself. Feeling virtuous and disciplined, I pranced toward the living room. Unfortunately, I got a glance of myself in the triple mirror over my antique dressing table. I looked like Annie Oakley. A very disheveled Annie Oakley.

  I ran a brush through my tangled hair, but I refused to put on lipstick for Josh Holt. Besides, how could we possibly do anything to top the first worst impression in the history of the world?

  Chapter 6

  In Which Complications Develop

  What was taking him so long in the bath? I wore a path in the rugs with my pacing then actually bent down and tried to pull the nap up with my fingers so I could destroy all evidence of my impatience.

  “Now that’s a sight worth waiting for.”

  Oh, help. I’m caught red-handed. Or up-ended. Which is far more accurate.

  “I thought I dropped a bullet.” I made another rake of the nap just to prove my point, then made a hasty retreat to a fat, overstuffed chair that looked big enough to hide a woman who’d rather be anywhere than in the apartment in the dead of night with a stranger who made blue jeans and a white shirt with rolled sleeves look sexier than being naked.

  His chuckle had not a hint of irony. I guess that’s why I forgave him on the spot.

  “Naturally. A woman who carries as many weapons as you must drop bullets instead of handkerchiefs. Why do you carry so many guns, anyhow?”

  “Daddy owned a gun shop.” A bald-faced lie. “I grew up knowing about guns and how to use them.” A perfect truth. Daddy loved sports of all kinds, including skeet shooting, and I was the tag-along daughter who couldn’t get enough of smoking steel and hints of danger mixed with the heady victory of learning to hit the target every time.

  “Where?”

  “California.” Another lie, but if it kept Nick and the Mafia off my trail, not to mention the news media, I’d become the world’s most accomplished con artist, a woman nobody could pin to any locale or profession.

  “And what does a Californian with all those guns do for a living.”

  “Currently unemployed.” The truth. “I came out here hoping my aunts would help me find a job.” No use lying about that relationship. Besides, since I’m not accomplished in that dark art, I was running out of lies to tell. “What about you? How did you end up here in my aunts’ apartment?”

  “Short story. A long time ago they rescued me then made sure the curiosity that led to a life of juvenile delinquency was turned in a better direction. I’m a PI.”

  Good grief. Am I living under a curse? First I escape Nick only to run right into murder, and now I’m living under the same roof with a man who has the skills to dig up every detail of my life and hand it over to whoever pays the highest price.

  Not only that, but if I don’t tip off the aunts, I might as well pack my bags and head back to Jersey to face the music.

  “I would say it’s nice meeting you, Josh Holt, but under the circumstances I think it’s best to say you stay out of my way and I’ll stay out of yours. Agreed?”

  “Only if you don’t keep showing up in my bath wearing that outfit.”

  That outfit just happens to be a blue silk camisole that shows everything underneath and a pair of boxer sleep shorts with bold printing across the back. Danger: Girl with a Gun.

  Hindsight is 50/50 so I didn’t waste any time wondering why I hadn’t put on clothes instead of sleuthing around at the window. Instead I pulled the tattered shreds of my dignity about me and stalked off. But I didn’t delude myself into thinking that I’d won the first skirmish with him, let alone the whole battle. Something about the devilish twinkle in his eye made me wonder just how long it would take for Josh Holt to blow my cover wide open.

  I went into my bedroom and gave the door a decisive slam, but I had no intention of sleeping. Instead I got dressed then tiptoed down the stairs, made hot tea and stationed myself in a pink chintz chaise lounge while I waited for Aunt Grace to wake up.

  Finally she poked her head around the door of her bedroom. Her white silk sleeping cap was askew and she’d forgotten to put on her glasses, giving her the effect of a large marshmallow head floating free of its body, something I might encounter if I were Alice, falling through the looking glass.

  “Thank goodness you’re awake.” I refilled my teacup and grabbed another for her. “We have to talk. Somewhere we won’t be overheard. Josh Holt is here.”

  “I know, dear. Houdini told me. Come inside, and don’t worry about privacy. No man has set foot in my bedroom in forty years.”

  I trooped in behind her, bringing hot tea and a truncated story that emphasized my lies to Josh and left out all his body parts, naked and otherwise.

  “How clever of you! Peal will be so proud! Hold on, dear, I’ve got to call her.” Aunt Grace’s phone conversation consisted of two sentences. “We’ve got a situation here. Josh is back and he’s seen Maggie.”

  Aunt Peal’s end of the conversation was equally brief, because in record time, Aunt Grace ended the call and told me, “We’ve got to get you a fake ID.”

  “Good grief. Won’t it be complicated? And a bit dangerous?” I pictured skulking down a back alley, only moments ahead of the New Orleans police, handing over a wad of money to a seedy looking man with avarice in his heart and betrayal on his mind. He’d turn me in before the ink was ever dry on my fake ID.

  Even the cat thought it was a bad idea. He leaped off the windowsill and dug his claws into the lace edging on Aunt Grace’s gown. And the sounds he made were other-worldly.

  “I couldn’t agree more, Houdini.”

  “What did he say?” I eyed the cat with suspicion.

  “He says you have a lot to learn, dear, but he meant it in the nicest of ways.” The way Houdini arched his back and spat at me, I doubted his motives and Aunt Grace’s ability to interpret them. “Come with me, dear.”

  “Where to?”

  “You’ll see.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that, and I liked it even less when Aunt Grace led me back into the hall and popped open a secret panel that led into a dark tunnel. Just before I developed claustrophobia and a permanent crook in my neck from bending my tall self into a cramped space, the tunnel opened into a cave-like room with brick walls and very little furniture—a desk with all sorts of mysterious looking equipment on it, several hard-back chairs, and a bamboo room divider painted with pink flamingoes.

  “What is this place?”

  “It’s the place where you’re going to become Jo Jo Marsh.”

  I didn’t even ask how that was possible. The minute we stepped around the divider I saw the beauty shop set up, complete with old fashioned hooded hair dryer.

  Aunt Grace grabbed a pink hair cutting cape and a pair of lethal looking scissors. “Don’t worry about a thing, dear. One of my many professions was hair stylist.”

  I didn’t even want to know what her other professions might be. I just sat in the chair and watched my mane of tangled dark curls hit the floor. The new me stared back, a face that was all cheekbones and enormous green eyes, cropped hair that Aunt Grace arranged it spikes all over my head with a mousse that smelled like lemon verbena. Next she
selected a pair of John Lennon style glasses from her secret stash behind the flamingo wall, and even I had a hard time seeing Maggie Wild behind the disguise.

  “Knock, knock.” Aunt Pearl rounded the divider and her mouth flew open when she saw me. “You’ve outdone yourself, Grace.”

  “Houdini thinks so.” I‘d like to know how Aunt Grace figures that. I haven’t heard the cat say one meow. “Do you like it, dear?”

  “Yes, I do. Thanks, Aunt Grace.” I hugged her and it was like sinking into talcum powder and love. “Transformation is the easy part. The hard part will be getting a fake ID.”

  Both the aunts laughed then Grace said, “Pearl does that.”

  I tried not to show my shock, but as I proved upstairs with Josh, I’m a lousy actress. My aunts went into peals of laughter again.

  “I only make fake IDs for good people, Maggie.”

  “But why? And how did you learn?”

  “That’s a long story for another time.”

  “Oh, hog wash, Pearl.” Aunt Grace turned to me. “The Red Cross work we did during the conflict at the Gulf of Sidra was a cover for our other activities.”

  “You were spies?”

  “Did I say anything about spying, dear?” Aunt Grace put her arm around my shoulder and led me to a chair on the other side of the room divider. “Smile.”

  Part of that mysterious equipment turned out to be a camera that in short order spit out a driver’s license that showed an entirely different woman from the one who fled New Jersey and a Mafia fiancé named Nick Coselli. I had been in New Orleans less than twenty-four hours and already I’d transformed myself from Maggie Wild, Olympic champion, to Jo Jo Marsh, unemployed. Not bad, even if Houdini was eyeing me as if I had sneaked into the Charmed Cat and cast a wicked spell on its owners.

  Chapter 7

  In which Houdini fingers a killer

  I hadn’t seen Pearl and Grace this excited since Grace passed herself off as Mae West—many years after the movie star was already dead. But that’s Grace for you, so charming and seemingly innocent nobody would believe she’s one of the most complex women I’ve ever met. And believe, me, I’ve met a few—two-legged as well as four. My feline de jour is a Siamese named Patty Cake, and let me tell you, that cat knows more ways to get into trouble than Pearl and Grace did when they were spying for the U.S. Government.

  But back to the situation at hand--Pearl carried the murder weapon upstairs to see if Josh could lift any prints, and now she’s trying to run the show downstairs where the three women are holed up with a little bit of tea and a whole lot of bad ideas.

  “I hid the gun in the garbage can behind that heifer, Ann Leveau’s house.” Pearl’s smile of satisfaction had a definite feline quality to it.

  “Why would you do that, Pearl? Lolly took Charles away from her forty years ago! Surely Ann hasn’t held a grudge that long.”

  “Who do you think told Lolly the love potion I sold her was weak and out of date? Ann Leveau!”

  I could tell them more about the love potion than they could ever guess. I was in the magnolia tree outside Lolly’s bedroom window when she tried to use to the potion to lure her straying husband back to her bed. Picture this—Charles shirtless, with his pot belly hanging over the top of his Fruit of the Looms and his socks rolled down around his hairy ankles, trying to keep a straight face when Lolly trotted out of the bathroom with seduction on her mind. She reeked of Love Potion Hot Mama, but she’d ignored the rest of Pearl’s instructions about how to dress. Instead of high-heeled mules and black lace that woman was decked out in a granny gown that covered her neck to ankle, a green satin cap over her brand new beauty shop do so it wouldn’t get wrecked in all her amorous endeavors, two pounds of cold cream on her face and green fuzzy socks to keep her feet warm. And it was a hundred and ten in the shade.

  Charles nearly died on the spot—from choking on his own laughter.

  “Char- lie!” she sang out. “I have a surprise for you.”

  “Good lord, Lolly. What now?”

  “Just you wait and see, Charlie, my hot tamale.” Lolly whipped up her gown and there was Christmas, all decked out with a red ribbon. Charles fainted, cracked his head on the bed post and ended up in ER. It took six stitches to patch him up.

  He didn’t get rid of his headache till his mistress, Susie Trumpet, of dubious Hollywood fame, showed him the joys of a bedroom that never has to depend on Love Potion Hot Mama. No offense to Pearl and Grace and the Charmed Cat. They’ve helped more people than I can count, and I’m a genius cat.

  “My bet is on Susie Trumpet,” Grace said. “Their affair has been going on ever since she arrived in New Orleans, and she’s serious about Charlie.”

  “Who’d be serious about that self-important little hot air balloon, especially serious enough to kill!”

  “A ‘B’ movie actress looking for somebody to bankroll her comeback in Hollywood. That’s who, Pearl.”

  “I still think that heifer Ann is a better suspect than Susie.”

  That girl, the one who used to be Maggie, looked like she was gaining all kinds of new respect for Pearl and Grace. She was beginning to grow on me. If she kept on behaving herself, I might have to start calling her by her new name. Jo Jo. It had a nice ring.

  “Neither one of them knows me,” the girl said. “Maybe I could do a little sleuthing, see what I can find out.”

  “If they’re killers, they’re dangerous, dear.” That was Grace for you. Always a caretaker and a worrier.

  “If anybody knows how to defend herself, it’s me.”

  “Maggie’s right, Grace. Still, you have a point. We can’t let her do this by herself. One of us has got to with her.”

  “In disguise?”

  “Not this time. These two suspects know us well enough to see through a disguise. We’ve got to come up with a cover story.”

  Pearl lapsed into deep thought, which just goes to show that age is no respecter of grand and interesting women. Ten years ago—even two years ago—both Pearl and Grace would have already created a cover for that girl.

  “I know. I’ll just take a camera and present myself as a photo/journalist working on a magazine story.”

  “That will appeal to her vanity,” Pearl said. “So, here’s the overall plan. We’ve taken a motherly interest in you, and so we gave you a job working part time at the Charmed Cat until you can catch the attention of the big, slick magazines and make it without moonlighting.”

  Grace clapped her hands. “How clever of you! That will allow Maggie to openly spend time with us so she won’t have to be in hiding.”

  “But I’ve already told Josh Holt I’m your niece.”

  Grace and Pearl both had a good laugh, while that girl tried to figure out what was so funny. If she wanted to fool a failed movie star, she’d better start keeping a lid on her thoughts. I could read her as well as I do the comic strip in the Sunday morning newspaper.

  “Don’t worry, dear,” Grace finally told her. “Josh Holt keeps more secrets than the FBI and CIA all put together. I’ll just put a little bug in his ear.”

  Their plans might have made a great deal of sense if you hadn’t been sitting on the back fence when the murder occurred, as I was.

  I jumped off my perch in the windowsill and marched my handsome feline self into the store where colored glass bottles sparkled from dark walnut shelves behind the counter. Two stuffed chairs of yellow and pink chintz were tucked in a corner beside a coffee table covered with magazines, and next to that stood the old rosewood upright that Pearl can play as well as the best jazz pianist on Bourbon Street.

  I jumped onto the keyboard and proceeded to march myself up and down, kitten on the keys, musical reference absolutely intended. I’m a cat of many talents, and knowing my music and my musicians is one of them.

  “Houdini!” Pearl called. “Stop that racket.”

  I sent Grace a telepathic message and waited for her response, but I guess the walls between got in the way. Either
that, or she’s losing her touch. Hearing no reply from my human interpreter, I stomped one last time on the keys and then lay down in the sun pouring through the display window.

  The store would be open in ten minutes. I might as well catch a cat nap before the crowd gets here.

  Chapter 8

  In which a disguise saves the day

  With Aunt Grace at my side, I stepped onto the streets of New Orleans in my new identity as Jo Jo Marsh, aspiring photo/journalist in search of a story. What I was searching for were signs that Nick Coselli had gotten wind of my whereabouts and sent his goons to make me vanish.

  “We’ll walk,” Aunt Grace said. “Susie’s apartment is not far.”

  Ordinarily that would be music to my ears. I always walk when I can. But a walk would expose me to everybody on the streets plus all those people lurking in shops and restaurants and bars along the way or hiding behind curtains in their apartments, peering down on the French Quarter in search of somebody else’s business.

  “Head high,” Aunt Grace said. “Walk like you own the streets.”

  “Do my nerves show?”

  “Just a little, dear. You need not worry about being recognized, or ambushed, either, for that matter. The last time somebody tried that on the Delaney sisters, Pearl spilled blood. And it wasn’t ours.”

  I saw the way Pearl shoots, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. “How’d she do that?”

  “Knife. She’s an expert with a blade.” She gave me a sweet old lady smile as if she’d just revealed that Pearl is an expert with caramel icing. “Oh, look, we’re here.”

  Susie’s apartment was typical of the French Quarter, old brick building with wrought iron balconies filled with pots of exotic blooming tropicals. The doorman who let us in was so reserved he appeared stern. The same could be said of the woman sitting behind a reception desk. Her lips turned downward when Aunt Grace told her we’d come to see Susie Trumpet.