Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
First, rehearse your song by rote,
To each word a warbling note;
Hand in hand, with fairy grace,
Will we sing, and bless this place.
~ William Shakespeare, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”
“NO, NO, NO.” I KEENED.
Tianna lay on her back, her right arm by her side. She was clutching a porcelain bell in her left hand. A gingerbread cookie with one bite out of it lay by her head. Her lips were cherry-pink but not from lipstick.
I bent down and clasped her wrist.
“Is she dead?” Brady asked.
I couldn’t feel a pulse. A sob caught in my throat. “Yes.” I leaned forward and sniffed the cookie. “It smells like bitter almonds. I . . . I think she’s been poisoned.” Which would explain the color of her mouth.
Brady used his cell phone to call the police and recited details. “Yes, on the patio. Yes, we’ll be here.” He pocketed his phone and slung an arm around me. “You know her?”
“She came in earlier. She was the second one who said there was a treasure on the property.” I filled him in about her ancestors being the original owners of the property upon which the courtyard had been built. “She left right after Ferguson Moss did.”
“He is bad news,” Fiona said.
Brady glanced to his right. Had he heard her? Had he felt her fluttering? “Who’s Ferguson Moss?”
“Herbologist and city complainer.” I choked back a sob. “Who did this to her?”
“Whoever took the treasure,” Brady said.
“There is no treasure,” I countered. “That’s a myth.”
“Are you sure? She was digging for something.” He motioned to Tianna’s hands.
She’d dug with her fingernails. Why hadn’t she used one of the shop’s trowels? How obsessed was she? I noticed the dazzling diamond ring was still on her finger. She hadn’t been robbed.
“Why would she eat the cookie?” Brady asked. “Did she know her killer?”
“The cookie!” I exclaimed. Idris had brought in gingerbread cookies. I’d eaten one. I raced to the sales counter in the main showroom. The cookies were gone, the empty box tossed in the garbage.
I texted Joss:
Who ate the gingerbread cookies?
Joss responded:
I gave them out with each sale. Customers loved them.
Me:
Did anyone get sick?
Joss:
No. Why????
Me:
I’ll explain later.
I ended the thread and said to Brady, “One of Idris’s cookies wasn’t the culprit. Phew.”
“I think the killer put a hex on Tianna to control her,” Fiona whispered.
I shook my head. “I agree with Brady. I think it was someone she knew and trusted.”
Fiona jammed her fists on her slim hips. “Or someone who forced her to eat a bite.” She mimed shoving an imaginary cookie in her mouth and gagging.
I shuddered. “Tianna said she didn’t bake. Her olfactory senses were nil. She wouldn’t have known the cookie contained cyanide.”
“How did she sneak into the shop?” Brady asked.
“Maybe the killer arrived first and didn’t lock the front door,” I replied. “Tianna found that person digging. They fought.”
“That might explain the dirt beneath her fingernails, but I don’t think they tussled,” he said. “Everything on the patio seems as it should. The wrought iron tables and chairs are in place. Nothing has tipped over.”
“You’re right.” I studied the rest of the area. The gnome-adorned fountain was burbling. The new iron fairy statues I’d set out were where I’d placed them.
“And her face is untouched,” Brady said. “No bloody lip. No bruising.”
Fiona said, “Courtney, there’s glitter on Tianna’s cheeks.”
I bent to inspect. “You’re right.”
“Shara,” Fiona said.
I said over my shoulder to Brady, “Fiona noticed something sparkly on Tianna’s face.”
“Why is that significant?” he asked.
“Because Shara Popple, who makes many of the fairy doors and toadstools we sell, was the first to tell me about the treasure, and she is always dusted with glitter. Her special touch for her art is sprinkling them with phosphorescent sparkles so they’ll glow in the dark.”
“You think she did this?”
I glimpsed Tianna again, and tears welled in my eyes. “No. She couldn’t have. Shara is a scaredy cat. She jumps at the slightest provocation. However, when she came in last night, convinced an ogre or evil fairy was chasing her—”
“There are no such things as evil fairies,” Fiona stated.
“Last night?” Brady said. “You were closed.”
“Yes, but we were setting out holiday items, and she saw the lights on and begged to come in.”
So had Idris Gentry, I recalled, but she worked at one of the courtyard shops, so her appearance made sense.
Brady squinted. “Wouldn’t Shara have needed a key to enter tonight?” he asked.
“Maybe she knew how to pick a lock. It’s not a complex double bolt.”
“Is it possible she saw you set the alarm when you left?”
“No, but she might have seen me disarm it before I let her in.”
“Could they have been working in tandem?”
I gawked at him, processing the question.
“Tianna said she didn’t know Shara. She could’ve been lying.
” I glanced through the French doors at the main showroom as a memory formed.
“Shara touched one of the porcelain bells last night. She might have transferred glitter to it. If Tianna picked it up when she stole in and touched her own cheek, that could explain why there are remnants on her face.”
The chime over the front door jingled.
Seconds later, Officer Redcliff Reddick, a lanky redhead in his thirties, nicknamed Red by Meaghan who was dating him, strode down the ramp to the patio.
Two younger officers followed him. Reddick was a good six inches taller than most of the officers in the department.
He didn’t tower over Brady, but he did over me.
“You guys, secure the perimeter.” He sounded congested.
His nose was chafed and red. “Courtney, sheesh. Another one, huh?”
I’d come across way too many dead bodies in my life.
“Brady, hey,” Reddick said as an afterthought.
“You sound sick,” I said. “Where’s Detective Summers?” Dylan Summers and I had crossed paths too often. I respected him, and he respected me, but he was never keen on me providing my two cents about a crime scene.
“On vacay. I’m in charge.” He cleared his throat, pulled a tissue from a pocket, and blew his nose. Then he crumpled the tissue and tucked it back where he’d found it. “One of you, fill me in.”
As he donned latex gloves and bent to inspect Tianna, I gave him her name and brief history.
“A spiritualist?” He eyed me over his shoulder.
“A medium,” Brady explained. “Meaning she holds seances.”
Reddick lifted a piece of the crumbled cookie and sniffed. “Bitter almonds.”
“Cyanide, right?” I murmured.
He rose and pulled a notebook and pen from his pocket. “How’d she get in?”
“We’re not sure who entered first.” I explained the multiple theories Brady and I had devised. “Shara Popple caught sight of me using the code and employed it without triggering the alarm. Tianna followed. Or vice versa and they were working together.”
“And the cookie?” he asked.
“Shara gave it to her as a friendly gesture.”
“Not so friendly.” Reddick clicked his tongue.
Fiona soared above Tianna, pausing over her face. “Mention the glitter.”
I did.
Reddick blew his nose again, pocketed the tissue, and then took a few photos, including a closeup of Tianna’s cheeks. “Why rob the shop? It’s not like you have a lot of cash on hand. Was the register emptied?”
“This wasn’t a robbery,” I said. “Actually, I’m not sure of that. We tallied up receipts and deposited it all in the safe in the office at end of day, but I haven’t checked to see if it’s still there.”
“On it!” Fiona whizzed away and returned in a flash. “The safe is secure.”
I relayed the news to Reddick. He didn’t pooh pooh the idea of a fairy.
Like Brady, he had yet to see one, but he wasn’t averse to the notion.
“Officer, you’d better take a look at this.
” I strode to the baker’s rack and pointed behind it.
“I think the killer dug this hole.” I explained how both Shara and Tianna believed there was a treasure beneath Open Your Imagination.
Then I spotted something else. Tianna’s high-end knapsack, tucked behind fairy houses on the leftmost rack.
“Reddick.” I pointed. “It’s the victim’s. Do you think she hid it there?”
“Or the killer did,” Brady suggested.
“So she wouldn’t be seen leaving with it,” I added.
“Or he wouldn’t,” Reddick revised. He bent down and reached for it, but his hands were too big to wedge into the space.
“Let me remove those houses.” I repositioned them on higher shelves and nabbed Tianna’s knapsack by the strap. “Okay to pull it out?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to open it?”
“I am.”
“May I peek inside?”
“To see what?” His mouth quirked up on one side.
“I’m not sure.”
“Take a gander.”
He unfastened the clasp, folded back the flap, and spread the mouth of the purse. Within was a black wallet, a cell phone in a flashy gold case, and a multicolored makeup bag. Tucked into a pocket was a folded piece of parchment paper with ragged edges.
“Interesting.” Reddick withdrew the paper and unfurled it. “It’s a map.”
“Of what?” I asked.
“Of this courtyard.” He displayed it to us. “X marks the spot.”
Indeed, there was a calligraphy-style X where the rightmost baker’s rack had stood.
Brady whistled.
“Tianna said her great-grandmother spoke to her in her dreams,” I said. “Did she advise her from the world beyond to make this map? Or did Tianna find this map in family mementoes?”
Something niggled the edges of my brain. The hole. The mess. “Horace!” I blurted. “His fingertips were dirty.”
“Horace Elias?” Reddick asked.
“Yes,” I said. “He was in the courtyard as Brady and I were passing through after dinner. He acted edgy, like we’d caught him breaking into his own place. What if he was worried we’d figure out he’d sneaked into Open Your Imagination?”
“To search for the treasure,” Brady said.
“How would he know about it?” Reddick asked.
I explained how Horace overheard us talking at the restaurant, following which he gave us some fanciful story about the bird of a cuckoo clock informing him. “He believes if he doesn’t see the treasure, time could stop ticking.”
Reddick rolled his eyes.
I said, “He might’ve been smart enough to leave Tianna’s purse behind, knowing he could run into someone when he fled.”
“And the treasure?” Reddick asked.
“Hmm. Maybe he hid it. Possibly in one of the courtyard’s planters.”
“What about the cookie?” Brady asked. “Why would he have brought one along?”
“He’s a Boy Scout,” Reddick quipped. “Be prepared.”
I gawked at him.
“Sorry,” he murmured. “Detective Summers always tells me humor is unappreciated at a crime scene, but sometimes I can’t help myself.”