Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Fifteen

The pawnshop on Kitrey, which was creatively named ‘Kitrey Street Pawn', was about what I'd expected a pawnshop to be, at least from television and movies.

That was to say, it was wildly out of place for cutesy, touristy Haven Hollow.

The shop appeared old, a little grimy, and it had steel shutters that could be rolled down over the front window, which, frankly, was a bit of overkill, in my opinion. I mean, there didn't appear to be anything in there that looked like it was worth the effort to steal. I was pretty sure Jenny's shoes were the greatest thing the store had seen in the last decade, at least. Maybe its entire career.

Even the awning was old and sagging, a tattered green and blue striped pattern that managed to be garish and faded at the same time. It looked like the whole building had been surgically removed from some bad neighbourhood in a big city and dropped awkwardly between a bakery and a bookstore, squatting like a toad on a lacey white tablecloth.

Poppy's Potionswas closer to Kitrey Pawn than wherever Taliyah was located when I called her, so I was already out of my Escalade and striding towards the front door when Taliyah pulled up.

As soon as she parked and stepped out of the cruiser, I flashed her a smug smile—the frown she gave me in response was pretty impressive.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded as soon as we were within hearing distance of one another.

"Look, you chose to get me involved."

"You've gotten involved as much as I needed you to get involved."

I gave her a raised brow expression. "I'm not about to get left behind now, when this case is finally getting good."

These days, Taliyah's anger actually put a chill in the air, and I could feel the threat of frost nipping at my skin as she stalked closer.

"Do you understand what it means to interfere with a police investigation?"

I pursed my lips, tapping my finger to my chin like I was thinking hard. "Is that what I'm doing?"

"That's exactly what you're doing."

I cocked my head to the side. "Because I feel like I'm walking into a business that's open to the public and last I checked, it was my legal right to do so."

"Wanda." Taliyah didn't growl, but the sound she made was a close cousin.

"After seeing those fabulous shoes Jenny found here, of course, I wanted to see what I could find. So… here I am." I grinned and tossed my hair over my shoulder as I turned towards the door to the pawnshop. Even the fluorescent open sign had seen better days. When Taliyah made no motion to follow me, I turned back to face her.

"Of course, you're always welcome to stay out here in the cold, Chief Morgan. I'm happy to go inside and putz around on my own."

She caught the door before it had a chance to close more than an inch behind me, and I just barely managed to stifle the laugh that probably would have gotten me arrested.

The inside of the pawnshop was…

Well.

Back in the day when we'd been sharing the duplex, I'd once walked in on a fight between Darla and Libby. It hadn't been a physical fight, not quite, anyway, but it looked like it might have been headed in that direction. And as interesting as it would have been to see an ex-ghost and a zombie duking it out, I'd been too annoyed to appreciate it.

Apparently, Darla had been watching a television show that had deeply upset Libby—not that deeply upsetting Libby was a difficult thing to do. No—any program displaying any amount of skin or drinking of liquor was just enough to make the once nineteen-fifties housewife's stockings roll up and down in judgemental outrage. I'd half expected some risqué reality show, or a male swimsuit competition, knowing Darla's taste. But it hadn't been anything like that.

No, the show that had so upset Libby, that had offended her homemaker heart, had been a show about hoarders. And not just people who happened to buy lots of stuff and then never parted with it. These were entire houses that were stacked top to bottom with stuff—new stuff, old stuff, used stuff, broken stuff, garbage, and random things the owners couldn't bear to part with. Some of the houses had tunnels and valleys carved into the heaps and heaps of crap—so the hoarder could weave between the piles of stuff.

Watching this, Libby had been nearly moved to tears, and I didn't want to see a zombie cry, mostly because I had no idea if her tear ducts still functioned. So, I'd asked Darla to put on something a little more family friendly—something that wouldn't have Libby purging all our worldly belongings the second we stepped out of the house, pre-emptively.

The pawnshop reminded me a lot of that show.

There were shelves and shelves of the most random stuff I'd ever seen, piled almost to the roof of the store. Board games and small appliances, ski equipment, a pogo stick, what I was pretty sure was a scuba tank, and a moped propped up on a kick stand. One shelf had a full sized taxidermized raccoon that scared the heck out of me when I walked past it, its creepy glass eyes staring at nothing. There were old and scary dolls all over the place, antiques, a few pieces of furniture crowding the room—you name it, and it was probably here.

I had to turn sideways and shimmy through a narrow gap between a globe that turned out to be a cleverly concealed dry bar when I bumped it, and a bean bag chair that looked like a pudgy alligator. The whole place felt cramped and claustrophobic, and even though there wasn't any sign of bugs or vermin, I still didn't want any of the stuff touching me. I almost wished I hadn't left the house wearing my favorite gray cashmere sweater. The fibers were terrible for picking up smells, and there was a musty, mildew scent in the shop that had me wrinkling my nose in distaste. If I needed to have my sweater dry cleaned, I wondered if I could bill the Haven Hollow Police department.

A quick glance at Taliyah's tight jaw and narrowed eyes made me think that maybe that wasn't an angle I should push. At least not anytime soon.

"Jesus," Taliyah groaned as she took stock of the various things that were bearing down on us from every possible angle.

"My sentiments exactly."

I'd just managed to ease my way past a shelf that was sagging with dozens and dozens of books, when I heard a shout from the back of the store, and Taliyah shoved past me, leaving me to hurry along in her wake.

When I finally managed to wedge myself out of the overcrowded labyrinth of precariously leaning shelves, it was to see Taliyah effortlessly striding over to the glass counter to break up a fight between two old men.

Well. Old was relative. They were both probably younger than I was, but humans didn't tend to age as well as witches, so old they were. They were both slightly stooped over, skinny, wrinkled, dressed in jeans, one in a sweatshirt and one in a plaid flannel. Other than the fact that the one behind the counter was bald, while the other man who was facing and shaking a finger at him had what little hair he had remaining pulled back into a ponytail, I was having trouble telling them apart.

"You're a blackguard, Hughes," ponytail shouted, straining to lean around Taliyah without touching her. "Don't think I don't know what you're about! I won't stand for it, you hear? I won't!"

Baldy scowled, suddenly seeming a lot braver with Taliyah in between him and the other guy.

"I'm not doing anything wrong," he blustered. "It's not my fault you don't know your business. Go on, get out of here. I don't want to see you in here again, you old fool."

"Okay, that's enough," Taliyah said, stepping firmly between them. Her words were so cold, I half expected them to leave a rime of frost on the glass counters. "What's going on here?"

Ponytail made a sound in his throat, and for a horrifyingly fascinating second, I thought he was actually going to spit on the floor, but he seemed to think better of it.

"Ask him," he barked instead, flinging his hand towards Baldy. "See if he can even tell the truth anymore. I'm through here."

Ponytail then spun on his heel and stalked towards me, his dark eyes still snapping with fury.

For a second, I thought about standing my ground. I didn't like making way for people, especially rude ones, but the idea that my sweater might brush up against something gross on one of those shelves had me slipping quickly out of the way. As soon as I sidestepped him, I glanced down to make sure I wasn't standing near anything I didn't want to be. These were my favorite leather boots, after all, even if walking three blocks in them might have killed me.

As Ponytail stalked past me, I noticed his pant cuffs were wet. Maybe that was what he was so upset about? I mean—there's nothing like having wet shoes, wet socks and wet pants to put you into quite the tude. And the wetness on his pantlegs reached high enough that he must have accidentally walked through a fairly large puddle or something.

Taliyah waited until we heard the shop door screech open and slam closed before she turned towards the man behind the counter and slipped her ever present notebook out of her pocket.

"Can I ask what that disagreement was all about?"

Baldy sputtered, rubbing his hands over the spot where his hair was the thinnest. "Who knows? The idiot gets upset over everything. I can't even tell what sets him off most of the time."

I'd never heard a hum sound so disbelieving before, but Taliyah managed it. She made a note, but I had no idea what that note could have been. Maybe it was just a doodle, so she looked like she was writing something down.

"And are you the owner of this store?"

Baldy's eyes narrowed and he looked Taliyah over suspiciously. "Why? You a cop?"

Taliyah actually stopped writing and blinked up at him.

I couldn't hold back a laugh. Was this guy for real? Taliyah had her badge prominently displayed on her belt, and her holster was visible under her suit jacket. Not to mention the fact that she was dressed in her cop uniform. How she didn't laugh in his face was anyone's guess.

But no, she was in her professional ice queen zone, and instead of saying something sarcastic like I would have, she only nodded and said, "Yes. I'm Police Chief Morgan of Haven Hollow. Are you the owner of this store?"

Baldy went pale, and sweat beaded on his scalp, though he tried badly to hide it. His smile was a little too wide, a little too cheerful, and I wondered just how many of the things in his display case had come to him by maybe less than legal ways.

"Well, I sure am, Chief Morgan."

"Your name?"

"Frank Hughes. I've owned this store for twenty years now."

If Taliyah was suspicious of his overly informative babbling, she didn't show it. Just made another note. "And you have no idea why that gentleman had an issue with you?"

Frank scoffed. "Beddow? I really can't say. He's always popping off about something. No idea what got his undies in a twist this time. Nothing important, that much I know."

Taliyah nodded, tapping her pen against the pad of paper. "So, you know him?"

"Unfortunately." Frank's smile faded in the face of Taliyah's patient silence, and he swallowed hard. "He owns the antique joint across the street. He's been going off at me for years now, the old goat."

I thought they were both old goats, but figured I'd keep that to myself.

Taliyah launched into a series of questions that hopefully would weasel something useful out of Frank, without tipping him off that we were on to him. Well, if he was the one putting curses on stuff and selling that cursed stuff to his clientele, anyway. I didn't think it was him, though. Frank felt about as magical as a sack of turnips, but without getting closer, I couldn't tell for sure.

Unfortunately, this part of investigating was actually really boring. Listening to Taliyah asking her questions, and listening to Frank awkwardly limbo around the point, trying to give nothing away, wasn't interesting at all.

Especially when there were all kinds of sparkly things behind the glass of the counter. There were pieces of jewelry, a few watches, even some more expensive pieces, like a camera and a portable DVD player. I drifted down along the counter, half listening to the conversation, before a pair of silver earrings caught my eye. But, on closer inspection, they weren't really anything special, so I moved on.

A flash of unexpected movement had me looking up, worried that there was someone else in the store that I hadn't noticed earlier. But no, it was just my own reflection in the large mirror that was hanging on the wall behind the counter. The mirror was okay, the frame a little too chunky with some unnecessary curlicues that must have attracted dust like a magnet. I did take the opportunity to double check my hair and make sure my eyeliner was still on point. And both looked great.

The biggest thing I noted so far was that nothing in the store was magical. Granted, I didn't really want to go around touching too many things, but I didn't catch even a whiff of that nasty, greasy feeling of spite that tended to cling to the cursed items we'd been dealing with lately. Which meant that either all of the cursed items had already sold, which seemed improbable, or the curses weren't as random as we'd thought. Maybe they were meant for the people who had bought the items.

Or the worst option? We had the wrong store. Maybe umbrella lady had gotten her pawnshop wrong. And maybe the shoes Jenny had purchased here were just a one-off? Maybe they'd come from another store originally? I didn't think so, though. Something told me we were in the right place. We were just missing something—a big piece of the puzzle. And whatever piece that was, I could almost taste it on the tip of my tongue.

Like I was so close to figuring it all out.