Page 16 of Crazy Spooky Love

Gran offers me a glass of champagne as I head back inside the shop and flip the open sign over to Closed .

I almost refuse it, but then, why the hell not?

I haven’t even raised a glass to celebrate the opening of the agency, and after yet another bizarro meeting with Leo and his creepy twins I really could do with a drink.

“He still carries a torch for you,” my mother says darkly, arranging the flowers Leo gave her in a glass jug.

“What, even after he ate my heart and spat it out again?” I seethe. “Not cool, Mother, not cool at all.”

“He probably regrets it now,” Gran says, distracted as she holds the champagne bottle at arm’s length to read the label. “Supermarket’s own brand,” she mutters. “And him a big shot off the telly too.”

“I’d hardly call having a fifteen-minute spot on morning television being a big shot.” I wrinkle my nose at the decidedly tart, too-warm fizz.

“Not like a two-hour Saturday morning phone-in on the radio for the last three years and a People’s Favorite Award,” my mother sniffs.

It’s difficult to tell, but I think she’s feeling a smidge of professional jealousy.

Not that she needs to; she could wipe the floor with Leo Dark if she wanted to—and with me, for that matter.

Her skills are finely honed and powerful; our gift is something that only increases with age.

How else do you think my gran has managed to keep my grandpa Duke around, despite the fact that he died during a night of overzealous sex almost twenty years ago?

She had to call the emergency services to come and lift his stiff corpse off her, and from that day to this, his ghost has been tethered to their bedroom and is as randy as a sailor on leave.

Theirs is a love story that refuses to end, and by all accounts, a sex life that refuses to end too.

“Not even close,” I agree, on my mother’s side just as she is always on mine, even if she does show it by making barbed comments to my ex-boyfriend that make me look like a lovesick fool.

She places the jug of flowers on the shelf behind the polished counter that runs along the back of the shop and looks at me over her shoulder. “Will you stay away from the house on Friday as he asked?”

I consider my options. “Probably. Antagonizing him won’t help me solve the case, and it was never part of my business plan to ruin Leo.”

“You have a business plan?”

“Don’t sound so surprised,” I say, crossing my fingers behind my back and hoping she doesn’t ask to see it, because it’s in my head rather than my shiny new filing cabinet.

“Look at us, three generations of Bittersweet businesswomen.” Gran refills her own glass and pauses with the bottle midair. “More fizzy cat piss, darling?”

I put my hand over my still half-full flute and grimace at her accurate description. “I’ll pass.”

My mother pulls a similarly disgusted face and refuses too.

“Fletcher Gunn is poking around the Brimsdale Road case,” I say, nibbling my deep-gray-polished thumbnail. Why did I even mention him? I know exactly how my mother is going to react, and she doesn’t disappointme.

“Gah! What is that boy’s problem?” Changing her mind about the champagne, she knocks the contents of her glass back in one gulp and reaches for the bottle.

Boy isn’t a word that comes to my mind when I think of our least favorite reporter.

He’s got a couple of years on me and has satisfyingly broad shoulders that say “lean on me, I’m dependable.

” Who knew shoulders could lie? His most certainly do.

I wouldn’t depend on him to save my life if I was clinging by my fingertips to a cliff edge; in fact, I wouldn’t put it past him to stamp on my poor, scrambling hands.

Like that big, bad lion in The Lion King whose name I can’t think of, the one with startlingly green eyes.

Fletcher Gunn has startlingly green eyes too.

Right, so I think it’s more than time I went back down to my own end of the building; standing around here drinking lukewarm cat piss is sending my mind toward paths I’d rather not stray down.

As I head for the door, my mother calls me back.

“You forgot this.” She presses Leo’s tissue-wrapped gift into my palm.

Fletcher Gunn and Leo Dark have more in common than they probably realize, despite the fact that they hate each other’s guts. They’re both alpha males, they’re both sexy and they know it, and for different reasons, they’re both intent on hampering my ability to make a success of the agency.

I close my fingers over the little bundle and take off down the hallway, too far away to respond to my grandmother’s next words.

“Where exactly is Brimsdale Road, Silvana?”

“Nonna made cannoli to mark our first successful week in business,” Marina says as she breezes into the office on Friday morning.

“Why don’t you put them in the fridge?” I gesticulate grandly toward the under-counter model in the corner.

“It’s working, then? I thought it might have exploded in a fit of righteousness when you plugged it in.”

“Like a dream,” I say, grinning. We snagged the fridge going cheap on eBay from a local church doing a kitchen refit.

We rolled up onto the church car park yesterday to collect it, earning ourselves sour looks and pursed lips from the good people at the committee meeting as we shoved it willfully into the back of the loudly protesting Babs.

I imagine it must have been rather like watching a bovine birth in reverse.

Throw in the fact that our sign now proudly and loudly announces we’re ghost busters and I think it’s safe to say they were glad to see us backfire our way off their car park.

I can still picture them, all lined up across the tarmac with their arms folded over their chests like a human chain of holy bouncers.

“I reckon they thought we were Satanists.” Marina slides the tin of cannoli into the otherwise empty fridge and then reaches for the milk carton Artie left out five minutes ago and puts that in too.

“That’d be why the woman in the flowery apron whispered, ‘Save yourself’ to me, then.” Artie sips his tea and winces at his burnt lip.

“Cheeky mare. It’s too late for you, Artie my boy, you’ve joined the dark side,” Marina laughs, flicking the kettle on. “You’re one of our gang now.”

He flushes, a gang member for no doubt the first time in his life.

Marina makes coffee and flops into the chair behind our smaller second desk. “So what’s the plan for today, boss?”

I open the green, slowly thickening case file and click the end of my pen.

“I thought we’d have a meeting to go over everything we know about Scarborough House so far, then take a cannoli break to watch Leo’s TV spot for research purposes. If he’s found out anything he won’t be able to stop himself from crowing about it to the nation.”

“It’s on in two minutes.” Marina flicks the volume up on the TV and we all listen to the presenter extol the virtues of cosmetic dentistry.

I bare my teeth at my reflection on my black computer screen and try to decide if a new set of gnashers would enhance my hit rate with the opposite sex.

I don’t think so, frankly. My teeth are perfectly decent, it’s my “other skills and attributes” box that tends to make for awkward reading on online dating applications.

“I see dead people” tends to weird folks out, and the fact that I now have to list “proprietor of a ghost-hunting agency” in the occupation box is definitely going to attract the wrong sort of guys.

“Grab the cannoli, Artie?”

He comes back with the tin and lifts the lid, then stares into it in surprise.

“I thought cannelloni had meat in it?”

Marina flicks her eyes toward me as if she’s considering murder.

“Forgive him, he’s young and knows no better,” I whisper, placing my hand over my heart as I make the case for his survival.

“He’s lucky he’s got you in his corner, lady.” Her growl-whisper drips with menace.

“Leo Dark’s segment is on,” Artie says, carefully carrying hot coffee for us, and tea for himself in the “I Love My Python” mug he’s brought from home.

The handle is a snake that winds around the cup and rears up over the edge, nearly poking him in the eye whenever he takes a drink.

He must really love his python to risk retinal perforation every time he fancies a cuppa.

We all swivel to look at the TV from our respective perches; me behind my desk, Marina at the one she’ll share with Glenda Jackson starting Monday, and Artie from the wingback chair I was snoozing in when his father visited me.

The day might come when I share the details of that meeting with Artie, but not until such a time as he really needs to hearit.

“Jesus, will you look at him,” Marina sneers as Scarborough House enters the shot and Leo practically swashbuckles onto the screen. “What sort of man wears knee-high boots?”

“TV wardrobe?” I suggest, trying to make sense of his jodhpur-style attire in the context of a man who is clearly not riding his horse.

“Tan French wouldn’t approve,” Artie says, then stuffs his mouth full of one of Nonna’s cannoli.

I want to question him on his knowledge of Tan French, but there’s a cannoli with my name on it in front of me and I’m distracted.

I don’t know how Nonna makes these things, but they are right up there on my food-heaven list. Most of the entries on it would be made by Nonna, to be honest, and cannoli are definitely in the top three.

“She dipped them in chocolate just for you,” Marina says, watching me as I close my eyes and bite intoit.

“Can I come and live with you?” I mumble, blissed-out on the crispy, cinnamon-infused shell and creamy, sweet filling. There’s a hint of orange in there somewhere, and the chocolate tips it over from delicious to histrionic.

“You practically do, remember?”