Dewitched (Witchless In Seattle Mysteries Book 3) by Dakota Cassidy

didn’t even know him. I knew Tito better than I did this man my mother married.”
    My first thought about that statement was how crazy it sounded. Bart had been married to my mother for quite some time now, and I didn’t know a single thing about him.
    “Regardless, it’s still jarring. Come away now, Dove. The police are on their way and your mother will need you when she awakens.”
    I nodded, numb from the scene sprawled out before me. “Do me a favor, Win?”
    “Anything.”
    “See if you can locate Hugh. I haven’t seen him all night, since I left him in the parlor. You don’t think…”
    “Don’t jump to conclusions, we don’t know anything at this point,” Win said.
    “You know what we do know?”
    “I’m afraid to ask, but I’m going to face that fear. Is it the tingle?”
    Nodding, I winced. I didn’t have to say another word for Win to understand. Whenever foul play was involved, I always got a tingle up my spine.
    It didn’t necessarily have to equate to murder, though the last two times I’d been right on the money. Sometimes it could be an event as simple as someone shoplifting or lying. It was once a much stronger tingle, when I was still a witch, but it never failed me, and I was getting it now about Bart.
    “I’ll attempt to locate The Huge Granite posthaste then.”
    Carlito and Liza were the next to get to me, pulling me from the entry of the parlor and toward the kitchen.
    Sirens sounded and lights flashed outside the big picture window as members of the Ebenezer Falls Police Department rushed in, along with the two detectives I jokingly called Simone and Sipowicz, their serious faces in place.
    “You all right, Stevie?” Liza, asked, her wide eyes filled with concern.
    Carlito handed me a water bottle, his handsome face grim. “I’m sorry you had to see that, Miss Cartwright.”
    As Carlito and Liza brought me back into focus, I heard my mother calling for me in that sweetly pleading tone.
    “Where’s my baby girl?”
    Inhaling, I smiled at Carlito’s and Liza’s sympathetic gazes. This certainly wasn’t the first dead body I’d seen. I could do this. “I’m fine. Promise. I’d better go see if she’s okay.” I patted Liza on the arm, only vaguely noticing how beautiful she looked tonight in her emerald-green slip dress.
    “I’m here, Mom,” I called, stepping back out onto the porch, where she sat while the doctor hovered over her frail form.
    Pretty as a picture, she sat on the bench swing that Win, Belfry, Whiskey and I sat on every night while chatting about the day’s events, her hair mussed beautifully around her flushed cheeks.
    Pushing my way through the throng of people, I sat down beside her. “What happened, Mom?”
    Her full lower lip, the one she used for the trademark Cartwright pout I just couldn’t perfect, trembled. “I don’t know. I went to see where Bart was. I…I couldn’t find him anywhere and then…” She began to openly sob, tears streaming down her face and falling to her gold lamé lap.
    I did what I’ve always done when my mother’s upset. I wrapped an arm around her shoulder and squeezed her trembling form close. She always looked so helpless, so frail when she wept, that all my defenses fell away. “I’m so sorry, Mom. I don’t know what to say. Tell me what I can do to help.”
    “Miss Cartwright?”
    Both our heads shot upward (I didn’t know if my mother had changed her name this last marriage or not), and I encountered one half of my favorite pair of detectives. Simone and Sipowicz—or Simone, to be precise, better known to Ebenezer Fall-ers as Ward Montgomery. He was good cop to his partner’s bad cop. If anyone was going to question my mother, better him than his partner the yeller.
    I’d had an encounter with these two, where one smiled at me while the other pounded his fists against the desk like he was Fred Flintstone.
    Under the porch lights, Detective Montgomery’s hard face didn’t give anything away,