Page 12 of Crazy Spooky Love
“Reach into the glove box, will you?” I nod across the dash towardit.
Marina presses the button on the hatch and nothing happens. “It’s stuck.” She presses it repeatedly like an impatient child then huffs when it gets jammed in. “Babs says no.”
I stretch across and bat her fingers away. “I think you’ll find Babs just needs a firm hand.” I give the glove box the one-inch punch and the door pops open. “See?” Reaching inside, I pull out my Magic 8 Ball.
“Seriously? This is how we’re going to make our decisions?” Marina is more than well acquainted with my reliance on my Magic 8; I’m surprised she’s surprised. “You know that most of my big life decisions have been made with this ball. Why change now?”
“Umm, because it makes you look like a thirteen-year-old girl rather than a tax-paying adult?”
I think back to the purple hair and dodgy goth makeup that featured heavily in my early teens. “I was fabulous back then and you damn well know it, Malone.” Shaking the ball, I glance up sharply. “I have to pay tax?”
“I don’t actually have a clue.” Marina shrugs. “Write it on the ‘jobs for Glenda Jackson’ Post-it.”
“The list got too big for a Post-it. It’s now six sheets of A4.”
We both peer at the little window on the Magic 8 as the froth of bubbles slowly clears.
“How many times do I have to tell you not to shake it?”
“Habit.” I say, sighing. I know the martini rule applies to the Magic 8 Ball; it’s supposed to be stirred rather than shaken because it foams up like a washing machine otherwise, but I like the heightened anticipation of waiting for the bubbles to burst before it reveals the answer. I genuinely love this thing. The only way they could improve on it is if it boomed out the answer in a deep, mysterious voice like my own personal genie. Or maybe not. If I’m going to use it to make actual grown-up business decisions, which it seems scarily like I am, then better that it does it in silence so I can at least pretend the ideas are mine.
“Outlook good.” I pass Marina the Magic 8 Ball. “The ball says yes. Shove it back in the glove box.”
She glances at the dashboard and then delivers a swift kick with her high heel, laughing when the hatch pops open immediately and heat starts belting out of the side vents. “You’re right. Our Babs likes it rough.”
I shake my head at her. “You should have more respect for your elders. You pretty much just karate-kicked a pensioner.”
Marina slams the glove box shut. “Only after you gave her the death punch.”
“Come on. We’ve assaulted an old woman and consulted the Magic 8 gods. It’s time we got to work.”
I jump out of Babs and slide the door closed with an ill-advised flourish, given that she’s held together by rust, hand-applied layers of paint, and sheer luck.
“Let’s take a casual walk past first, get the lie of the land,” I say, as Marina joins me on the leafy pavement and links her arm through mine.
“You should have a coat on.” She rubs my forearm briskly.
“It’s almost May, I’m making a point,” I say, huddling closer to her and her fake fur as we attempt a nonchalant stroll. Camera guyhas thankfully hauled his equipment and his backside into his truck, so we amble as if we’re just two friends out for a walk in the admittedly chilly late-spring sunshine. “Right, so we know this one’s Leo’s.” I incline my head toward the flashy sedan with blacked-out windows and a vanity license plate, darking1, that marks him out as egotistical.
“I’d never have guessed if you hadn’t said.” Marina rolls her eyes at his personal number plate. “Am I allowed to drag my nails down his paintwork?”
“Does that say undercover to you?”
She sighs and pats my hand. “He’s on my kill list.”
“I know,” I soothe. “I’m working on forgiving him though, so you should try to too.”
She snarls. “I hold a grudge.”
“Of course you do.”
I shuffle us sideways on the pavement to remove her from temptation. “This probably belongs to that Scarborough guy, the owner of the house?” We sidle past an expensive-looking white Mercedes with an equally knob-worthy license plate parked halfway across the pavement at a jaunty angle. “He parks in a way that says he has an overblown sense of entitlement.”
Marina peers in his window and wrinkles her nose in disgust. “And he smokes like a chimney then chews gum to mask the smell.”
She’s really getting into this Cluedo-style sleuthing; I make a mental note to ensure she doesn’t buy a beige mac or a newspaper to cut eyeholes out of. “If we’re as good at analyzing the dead as we are the living, we’re going to be millionaires.” We drag our feet as we reach the boundaries of Scarborough House, masked by old rosebushes and a heavily laden blossom tree.
“Ssh.” Marina flattens herself violently against the fence. “I can hear voices.”
