Page 39 of Crazy Spooky Love

“So how did the dinner party go?” I’m in my mother’s kitchen playing innocent devil’s advocate, if indeed there can be such a thing.

Sunlight streams through the open window in front of her by the stove, highlighting her sleek silver hair as if she’s an angel, which she categorically is not.

What kind of mother invites her daughter’s ex-boyfriend to dinner and doesn’t think to mention it in advance?

She’s meddling, and I’m going to call her onit.

“The paella was an unmitigated success,” she says, placing a big plate of bacon and eggs on the table in front of me. “How was your date?”

I consider how to respond. I lied to you about having a date to get out of your dinner party.

I’m fairly sure that would go down like a rancid oyster.

I had an unplanned, thoroughly unexpected, filthy-hot date with Fletcher Gunn.

And that one would have me wearing my breakfast. “He didn’t turn up,” I say, eventually.

“What?” Oh, she looks furious, but thankfully she’s furious with my imaginary boyfriend rather than me so I’ll take that as a win.

I shrug regretfully as I pick up my knife and fork. “I watched the movie anyway. It was okay.” I’m going straight to hell.

“But you should have come home,” she cries, waving the spatula at me. “You know perfectly well that I could have made room at the table.”

I burn to ask, “Where at the table? Next to Leo?” but I just chew on my bacon and try to make a “shucks, why didn’t I think of that” face.

“Yeah, I should have. Did you have a fun evening?”

She frowns. “Well, yes. A funny thing happened, actually…” She pauses and twists her mouth, the way she does when she’s thinking how to phrase something. “We had a surprise visitor arrive just before we sat down to eat.”

“You did?” I round my eyes and stop chewing, like a Disney princess about to be given vital news.

“Leo called by again.”

“Leo? Leo Dark?” I ask nonchalantly.

She nods. “He came hoping to see you, but he stayed for dinner anyway.”

“So you hadn’t invited him to the dinner party, he just happened to come at the exact moment that you were serving up paella?

” I don’t know whether to believe her or not.

She sounds convincing, and she looks convincing; but then, I am sitting here lying through my teeth, so what’s to say she isn’t too?

“You know I had an empty seat. He filled it. It was no trouble, but Melody, I really think you should talk to him.”

I frown and then huff a bit. “Wasn’t it only a few days ago that he was still in your bad book for the way he treated me?”

She looks torn and sits down opposite me at the table. “Well, yes, of course, he was. He still is,” she stresses. “It’s just that he’s taken on such a lot of responsibility, you know with the TV, and those girls as well.”

My ears prick up. “The twins?”

She nods. “Did you know that he pays all of their costs to be here—their rent, their food, everything?”

I mull on this for a second. “Yes, because they’re the founding members of his fan club?”

She nods. “He told me they switched their affections to him after Finbar Honeyman took out a restraining order against them. Tricky situation, from what I can gather.”

“Hold up a second.” I frown, thoroughly confused. Finbar Honeyman does a similar job to ours somewhere up near the Scottish border—I’ve come across him occasionally at conventions and events and he’s even more egotistical than Leo, if that’s possible.

“Nikki and Vikki were Honeybunnies before they were Darklings?” I think that might be one of the most bizarre sentences I’ve ever uttered but stay with me.

Leo and Finbar Honeyman are self-styled rivals, both on X and in life, so I’m fascinated to hear that the twins switched allegiances from one to the other. Oh, hang on…

“Finbar Honeyman took out a restraining order?”

Mum leans in toward me as if she’s sharing a top-secret bit of intel.

“Apparently, they got a bit too obsessive over Finbar, terrorized anyone who dared to say anything negative about him. Menacing threats on social media, abusive messages, that kind of thing. The police ended up involved and banned them from ever going near Finbar again. And so they switched their attentions to Leo.”

“Okay,” I say slowly, thinking back to the incident in the cellar at Brimsdale Road. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so quick to give them a second chance. “And now he’s paying for them to live here as his personal assistants?”

“Between you and me, Melody, I don’t think he had any choice. By the time all of this came to light they were already here and in charge of his…Darlings, is it?”

“Darklings.”

“They turned up on his doorstep with their suitcases and presented themselves as his dream team. He didn’t know a thing about the whole Finbar debacle until they’d got their high heels firmly under his table.”

I don’t tell Mum that they’ve been on my doorstep in tears too, but I’m starting to build up an idea of how those girls work and I’m seeing them in a whole new, sinister light.

It sounds very much to me as if Leo has wound up with a couple of crackpot obsessive fans who he doesn’t quite know how to get rid of.

I expect he’s caught between being wildly flattered by their attention and worried they’ll go all Kathy Bates on him and start smashing his ankles with a sledgehammer if he cuts them off.

“Melody, sweetheart.” My mother sweeps her long silver hair over one shoulder as she studies me, serious-eyed. “I hate to say this, but I think Leo came here last night to warn you to watch your back.”

“Jesus sodding Christ!” Marina is hopping mad when I relay this in our Monday morning meeting around the coffee table. “Watch your back? Did you tell your mum that they’ve already had their first go at stabbing you in it?”

I shake my head. “Mum thinks it would be best if we work with Leo to sort out the Brimsdale Road case.”

“What, and let him grab all the glory on live TV just to keep the Chucky dolls off your back? What about the next case, and the case after that?”

Glenda Jackson is perched neatly on the armchair, and I shake my head so she doesn’t record that particular comment in the meetings book.

“She’s just worried for me. You know how she gets.”

“Well, she doesn’t need to be. You’ve got me.” Marina won’t stand for intimidation unless she’s the one doingit.

“And me,” Artie says sitting beside me on the little sofa with his mouth full of one of Nonna Malone’s cucidati cookies.

I look at the tin and wonder how likely it is that I can hide the rest of the iced, fig-filled biscuits, and then I watch in horror as Lestat’s head looms up over the edge of the table and face-plants into the tin.

“No!” I shout, lunging for him, but it’s too late. He’s got icing in the folds of his furry face and drool all over Nonna’s wonderful creations. I can take his snoring and his early-morning wake-up calls, but he’s just pressed the wrong button and tipped me over the edge.

“I’m taking him back,” I growl. “Put it in the minutes, Glenda! Lestat is going back to the rehoming center on account of the fact that he is ruining my goddamn life!”

The dog pauses and looks up at me thoughtfully when I shout and then chows back down again.

Everyone stares at me, and Glenda makes no move to record Lestat’s predicament in the minutes.

I don’t think she’s taking me seriously.

I go to speak, but then something terrible happens.

My eyes fill with big fat tears that burst free and tumble down my cheeks.

It catches me totally unawares; like a sudden nosebleed you have no control over.

“Oh no.” Marina shoots up in an instant to grab a tissue from the desk and then puts her arm around my shoulders. “This is about more than Lestat eating Nonna’s cucidati, surely? Because if that’s all it is, she’ll bake you some more.”

I blink to clear my vision, feeling like a fool.

“I’m okay, really I am.” My voice comes out in sniffly gulps.

“It’s not just the biscuits, it’s lots of things.

It’s how horrible and sad Agnes Scarborough’s diary is, and how I hadn’t counted on gaining freaky enemy twins when I started the agency, and how I’m not exactly sure how to resolve the case, and how I nearly had mind-blowing sex with Fletcher Gunn on Saturday night, and now Lestat has eaten all of Nonna’s biscuits and they were my new favorites. ”

All three of them stare at me open-mouthed.

“Don’t put any of that in the minutes, Glenda,” Marina says.

“Especially the bit about Fletcher Gunn,” I say, wishing I’d kept that particular woe to myself. “And for God’s sake, don’t tell Mum or Gran. You know how much they hate him.”

Poor Glenda. She is quite caught between the Bittersweet businesses now that she works for both of them.

“Oh, I won’t,” she assures me. “But in my experience, Melody, mind-blowing sex is not something to be passed up lightly. Fletcher Gunn is a terribly handsome man.”

I look at her goggle-eyed; it was the last advice I expected her to give. Artie is practically humming the national anthem with embarrassment. His head looks like a boiled beetroot.

“I think I’m going to take Lestat for a walk up and down the alley,” he says, lifting the protesting pug away from the biscuit tin and heading for the door.

Glenda pulls open her desk drawer and pushes a Fry’s Turkish Delight across to me.

It’s a special moment; for as many years as she’s worked for Blithe she’s kept an emergency Turkish Delight on hand, but I’ve very rarely seen one eaten.

I don’t know all that much about Glenda’s marriage, but I can draw my own conclusions from the fact that my missed opportunity for mind-blowing sex is considered an emergency-chocolate situation.

After lunch, Marina, Artie, and I pile into Babs and speed off in the general direction of Brimsdale Road.

“Grab my Magic 8 Ball, Artie,” I say, and he punches the glove box like a pro.