a good little girl—keeping your nose out of your brother's business, not asking questions, burning that letter strictly on his say-so—then why are you here? Why aren't you back in your own place, sitting tight like he told you?"
There were tears starting up in her eyes again. "Because he's not the one who wrote that letter."
"Not his handwriting?"
"Nothing that amateurish. But I could tell. Someone dictated every word he wrote; it didn't sound like him at all. That was when I decided to get help. That was when I came to you. Will you help me? Please?"
I wrinkled my nose. Her story smelled worse than Fisherman's Wharf, up Frisco way. This dame was spinning a yarn with more loose ends than Rapunzel's marcel wave and expecting me to buy it. She had brass, but all the nerve in the world can't make up for being stupid. Trying to play me for a fool is real stupid.
She'd done that once before, in the Old Country, her and her rotten little brother. I didn't see so good back then—try to find a decent eye doc in the sticks—but so what? There's not much worth looking at in the heart of the Black Forest. You seen one squirrel, you seen 'em all. That was how those brats managed to give me the runaround. Every time I told the punk to stick his finger through the bars of the cage where I had him locked away to fatten up, he'd stick out a chicken bone. The gristle should've tipped me off. Too soon old, too late smart, like they say.
As for her, I had hopes: She was a sweet little thing and I was lonely. If they ever made a movie of my life, the screenwriters'd have to call me an old maid or a career gal or just not the marrying kind because the truth would bring the Hays Office down on their necks faster than a well-oiled guillotine. And before you get all hot under the collar, thinking she was just a kid and I was some kind of monster, let me clue you in on something not everyone knows: She and her brother were no babes in the woods, no matter how they twisted the story later. They might've looked like kids, small and scrawny on account of growing up at the Hard Knocks Hotel, but they were both safely past the age of consent when they came nibble-nibbling at my door. And believe me, she let on like she would consent any day, if I didn't pull a Betty Crocker on her. So that's why he was in the cage but she had the run of the place. Oh yeah, she played innocent-but-willing-to-learn, and she played it good.
That's why I believed her when she said she didn't know how to tell if the oven was hot enough. That's why I stuck my head in first, to show her how it's done. My head was full of stardust, dreams of her and me in that kitschy little woodland cottage, me with my feet up on the pile of kiddie bones, her by the oven, baking gingerbread, everything strictly Ladies' Home Journal.
Next thing I knew, my face was full of live coals. She'd shoved me into the oven, locked the door, freed her brother, and beat it.
I'd be a pretty poor witch if I didn't keep an escape spell on the tip of my tongue at all times. But she didn't know that. By the time I got myself out of the oven and under the pump, drenched but extinguished, those two were long gone. Them and my life's savings in gold.
Like I said, we had a past.
That's why I didn't have any second thoughts about nailing her with the same toad spell I used on the cat. It was sweet: One minute she was standing there trying to work the bunco, the next she was squatting on the floor, brown and lumpy as a bowl of boardinghouse oatmeal.
I picked her up easy and dropped her on the desk, then poured myself another drink. This time I got out some cookies to go with all that milk. One chopper left in my head and wouldn't you know it's a sweet tooth? In between sips and swallows, I told her the score:
"Next time you want to work the old shell game, sister, make sure you've got a real chump on the line. That, or get your story straight. First you act all surprised