Free Dolled Up to Die by Lorena McCourtney

artistic the dolls are. Then he invites both of them to the restaurant for a complimentary dinner. I should have been suspicious right then, but it just never occurred to me that he’d . . .” Jo-Jo paused to swallow, and then in a self-righteous tone added,“Of course, once she put a spell on him, he really couldn’t help himself.”
    Donna leaned forward. “Did you say anything to the police about a spell?” She sounded anxious, and Cate could understand why. Talk about spells with the authorities might make Jo-Jo look a little strange herself. Like someone who’d blast away at evil spirits, Eddie included.
    “No. I didn’t think to mention it.” Jo-Jo’s eyes brightened. She glanced at the phone. “Maybe I should do that.”
    “No, don’t,” Cate said quickly. “Did either of the deputies, when you were questioned at the house or here, ask if you owned a gun?”
    Jo-Jo nodded. “Among a zillion other things they asked.”
    “What did you say?”
    “I said no, of course. I don’t own a gun.”
    “You didn’t tell them you used to own a gun?”
    “They didn’t ask that.”
    A certain innocent logic in that response. Or, an argumentative voice inside Cate’s head suggested, perhaps the clever dodge of someone not so innocent?
    “You said you got rid of the gun you had. What did you do with it? Just in case the question ever comes up.”
    Jo-Jo’s brow wrinkled. “Well, let’s see . . . Why? Does it matter?”
    “If the authorities find out you once owned a gun, they may be interested in knowing where it is now. You’re sure you don’t have it? Because if the authorities search your house and property and find it . . .” Cate left the consequences hanging.
    “They aren’t going to find a gun in my house,” Jo-Jo said. “I was going to sell it. But then I thought, what if it got into the hands of a criminal and he used it to do something terrible? So I took it to that bicycle bridge over the river, the bridge near the mall, and threw it into the deepest part ofthe current.” She looked at Cate with a mixture of anxiety and defiance. “Maybe I shouldn’t have done that?”
    Cate wasn’t certain what you were supposed to do with a gun you wanted to get rid of, but she was fairly certain tossing it in the river wasn’t the preferred method of disposal. She also wasn’t convinced that was what Jo-Jo had done with the gun. She waved away the question for now. “In this situation there may be a bigger problem.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “If the law enforcement people can’t find the gun that fired the bullet that killed Eddie, and if they find out you did own a gun, they may suspect you shot him with it. And then threw it in the river.”
    “But I didn’t do that. I threw the gun in the river months ago. And I didn’t kill Eddie.”
    “What time did you leave the house the day Eddie was killed?”
    “I don’t know, 2:00 or 2:30, I guess. Maybe 3:00. I didn’t get home until a few minutes before I called you. And I didn’t see or talk to anyone I knew. The deputies kept asking that. In about fourteen different ways.”
    Cate tried to conceal her frustration. As an alibi, this was about as solid as a mist of lavender-scented room spray. “So where did you go? What did you do? Did you buy anything? Use a credit card? Eat anywhere?”
    “Well, let’s see. I have a Visa card, but I can’t remember the last time I used it. I’ve never believed in buying things on credit.”
    Admirable, but not particularly helpful at this point.
    “I went to Walmart and looked at some rubber boots, because it gets sloppy out in Maude’s pen in the winter. But I decided maybe I could pick up a cheaper pair at Goodwill sometime. Then I went to the mall and looked at some fabricsfor an outfit for the doll I’m working on. His name’s Jerome, and he’ll be a gift from this woman to her granddaughter. Kind of the brother she doesn’t have. But I haven’t decided how to dress him