Page 15 of Worse Than Wicked
“I told you that,” I snap.
“You did kill that one guy,” he points out. “And then Mabel stopped fucking around, and guys stopped dying.”
“Exactly,” Mabel says. “Obviously, if she was going to get you, she would have.”
“Who the fuck is ‘she’?” I demand, resisting the urge to grab her again.
“I don’t know,” she says. “The police think it’s a woman. You don’t call a male a black widow. That would be a widower. Besides, men don’t kill with poison.”
Duke and I stare at her for a long minute.
“What the fuck?” he asks at last, pushing away from her and standing. “It is you, isn’t it?”
“Stop accusing me,” she protests. “I told you the truth. You can choose to trust me or not. I’m not answering again.”
“It’s that Ingrid bitch, isn’t it?” I demand. “That’s why you’re so familiar with her.”
“I’m familiar with her because we worked together a couple summers,” she says.
“She has an hourglass tattoo on her thigh,” I point out.
“Like a black widow,” Duke says, nodding.
“I think she was part of that motorcycle gang,” Mabel says, pushing up from where she sat against the wall at last. “They all have hourglass tattoos.”
“Did she tell you that?”
“No,” she says. “She’d just freak out and hide whenever they came into the shop. I think she left the gang or something, maybe ratted them out. Pretty sure she’d just gotten out of prison two summers ago when we both started there. We trained together.”
“You never hung out outside of work?” I ask.
She shrugs. “We went to the bakery a few times. She liked looking at my pictures of Seeley, and she thought it was funny that I’d get tea instead of coffee. She said I was an old soul. No one ever called me that before.”
“You liked her,” I say. “You never asked what she did on the off-season? You didn’t want to visit her at Christmas?”
“Not really,” she says, slumping onto the edge of the bed. “I mean, I do like her. She’s…”
She trails off, touching her neck and wincing.
“What?” I press.
“She kept to herself,” she says, wrapping her hands around her knees. “She didn’t ask about my past, so I didn’t ask about hers. I don’t care if she did time, or what it was for, or what she did when I wasn’t around. She was nice to me, and she didn’t make me feel like a freak. She’s my friend.”
“She’s a ghost.”
Mabel’s eyes widen, and her voice comes out faint. “She’s dead? Did you…?”
I shake my head. “She was always a ghost. She died a hundred years ago.”
They both stare, dumbfounded.
Finally Duke speaks. “I don’t think they had pink hair dye a hundred years ago.”
“Not an actual ghost, you idiot,” I say. “Lay off the Alice. It’s frying your brain.”
“You made it for me.”
“Wemade it,” I remind him, not letting him downplay his contribution. “So we could double-team girls in high school. Not so you could spend your whole life high.”
