Tangled Souls by Jana Oliver Page A

don’t see that much of her; she’s persona non grata in the family.” He grinned. “She told Old Lady Pearce to shove it. It was a hell of a scene. Best Thanksgiving I’ve ever had.”
    Gavenia cracked a smile. “I can imagine.”
    “Em’s out of the will; her independence cost her everything.”
    Gavenia puzzled over the framed obituary. Why would Janet keep such a thing, especially in such a prominent place?
    Wishful thinking? Bart offered.
    She gave him a subtle nod in agreement. Perhaps Emily’s price for freedom was nothing compared to what her sister Janet was paying.
    * * *
     
    O’Fallon disliked stakeouts. You sat in your car; your butt got sore and your shoulders stiff while you waited for your quarry to do something interesting. Most of the time they never did. Except on one notable occasion when he and Avery were caught in the middle of an impromptu gang war, their car windows disintegrating in a blizzard of lead. His current situation was just the opposite; Gavenia Kingsgrave departed the Alliford residence about half an hour after she’d arrived, her clothes tidy and her hair in pristine condition.
    “No quickie,” O’Fallon observed. Somehow that pleased him, though he wasn’t exactly sure why.
    As he followed her on her daily rounds, she committed no untoward acts other than failing to come to a complete stop. Nothing sinister at all, unless you counted the fact that she was currently inside a New Age shop.
    “Low on eye of newt, no doubt,” O’Fallon snorted.
    He eagerly embraced his bias against all things New Age, and for that he blamed Shirley, his second wife. A seemingly sensible Catholic when they’d married, she’d hared off into the supernatural shortly after the honeymoon. Their small apartment became home to three stray cats—reincarnated souls, she called them—countless crystals, and enough incense to put the Vatican to shame. Seamus had rebelled, pulling feathers out of his tail in frustration until he resembled a bedraggled gray football.
    O’Fallon took the hint; if Seamus wasn’t happy, neither was he. He filed divorce papers at the six-month anniversary. Not quite a Hollywood record, but it left a scar nonetheless. The last he’d heard, Shirley was living with her lover—another New Age woman—in Portland. That was the ultimate blow to his male ego. O’Fallon had chosen his girlfriends with more care from that moment forward.
    He sighed and poured more coffee from his thermos. Mrs. Pearce’s fixation on the witch puzzled him. Why was she so sure that Ms. Kingsgrave was some sort of threat? So far she seemed pretty harmless.
    “Everybody’s got an agenda,” he grumbled, clients included.
    Parked down the street from the shop, he shifted his eyes from the entrance to the rearview mirror. It wasn’t the best of neighborhoods, and it paid to be vigilant. He’d already fobbed a dollar into the dirt-smeared palm of an itinerant who’d cleaned his windshield. He suspected more dollars would part from his wallet in the near future; the nearby homeless shelter attracted a steady stream of patrons. One waved his hands in the air as if signaling the mother ship. Another waited while his scruffy dog urinated on a nearby fire hydrant, and then he followed suit.
    O’Fallon chuckled. “It’s pretty bad when a dog’s got better aim that you do, buddy.”
    His cell phone rang. “O’Fallon. Yeah, hold on a sec.” He wrestled his notebook and pen out of his jacket on the seat beside him, then hastily scribbled notes as he cradled the phone to his ear. When his neck protested the unnatural position, he switched sides, nodding as the litany continued. One of the upsides of being a former cop was that his sources were always on the mark.
    “Got it. Thanks, that helps,” he said, smiling.
    The female voice on the other end reminded him that the transaction would cost him dinner and a movie.
    “I’m good for it. Just not a chick flick like the last time, okay?” A laugh