Chapter 17
The show went on, but Arthur didn’t watch. So, she was a real witch. But that didn’t mean she was innocent of murder. She was hiding something—probably many things—and Arthur was determined to find out what.
“Shall we storm the stage?” Sal whispered.
“I’m not sure that’s wise,” Arthur hedged, thinking of the large muscles on the security guards.
He didn’t relish the prospect of being tackled by the likes of Chet Oakley.
It would probably hurt a great deal. Besides, Sal would find a way to tease him about it for the next century.
“A public accusation will only work if she feels cornered enough by our evidence to confess.”
“Accusation?” Sal sounded confused, even in a whisper. “I thought we could join in just to give her performance some actual pizzazz. She’s bombing out there by herself!”
She wasn’t, but Arthur didn’t bother pointing it out.
What the performance lacked in pizzazz, as Sal put it, it more than made up for with an eager audience.
Ambrosia could have gotten on that stage and read the phone book and her devotees would have cheered with nearly the same fervor, Arthur suspected.
She’d put in the work to become an idol to her followers.
They’d probably think she hung the moon no matter what she did.
“Come on,” Arthur said glumly. “We shouldn’t stay here. Security will catch on eventually.”
Coaxing Sal away from a stage was always a tricky undertaking, but Sal seemed content to continue his running critique of Ambrosia’s material on the go. Arthur retreated farther backstage to regroup. Perhaps they could still salvage this once she was done.
“The choreography was truly lacking. No body rolls? Absurd! And another thing—”
“Do you suppose she might have left some evidence lying around backstage?” Arthur mused, interrupting Sal’s tirade.
Sal scoffed. “I doubt she kept notes for such a lackluster performance. What would they say? She didn’t even bother with any spirit fingers!”
“No, I mean about her involvement with Wilhelmina and Lola.” Arthur scanned the area.
It was deserted. Everyone must have either had a job to do near the stage or circled around to watch the performance.
If they wanted to poke around, now was their chance.
“If she’s been up to more than defrauding her coven, there will be a trace of it somewhere. ”
“What are you two doing here?”
Arthur jumped in surprise, turning to see Chet Oakley approaching with an incinerating glare.
Arthur almost said they were just leaving, thankyouverymuch, but he stopped himself.
Chet was a high-ranking member of the coven.
He even had his own line of fitness-themed potions.
Perhaps Ambrosia confided in him, or he might have observed something Arthur hadn’t.
“We came to see you, actually,” Arthur lied. “We’ve sorted things out with Ambrosia—it was all just a misunderstanding.”
“Foolish of us to get carried away by the romance of the platinum pavilion,” Sal chimed in. “It’s the lavender in the air, you know? Arthur swoons for lavender!”
Arthur might have blushed if he could. Everything else was false, of course, but Sal was right about that. He did have a weakness for lavender. “Anyway, Ambrosia mentioned we could speak to you here while she performs.”
Chet furrowed his brow. “She didn’t say anything to me.”
“She hardly would’ve had time,” Sal said airily. “It happened right before the show. But she did invite us backstage. How else could we be here?”
For a fraught few seconds, Arthur worried Chet would see through their deception, but fortunately the thick-muscled man was equally thick of skull.
“Oh. Well, yeah, that makes sense.” Chet relaxed a bit. “What do you need to talk to me about?”
Arthur pulled out his notebook and got ready to record any new information. “We’re looking into a former coven member. We think she might have had something to do with Lola’s murder. Wilhelmina Young.”
Chet’s eyebrows shot up. “Wil? You think she killed Lola?” There was a tinge of incredulity to his tone. Maybe he thought she wasn’t capable. At the very least, he’d confirmed that he knew her well enough to call her by a nickname. That was something, indeed.
“It’s a possibility,” Arthur said. It was true, technically, though Arthur doubted it.
He couldn’t think of a reason Wilhelmina would’ve ignored her son’s attempts to contact her only to poison a random witch in the town she’d once abandoned.
Still, he wasn’t willing to dismiss the theory out of hand.
Sometimes the most outlandish conjecture was just the truth awaiting evidence.
He’d learned that from all his detective stories.
The clues never lined up until the end and even the most unexpected suspects could turn out to be the culprit by the final page.
“Do you have some information that might help determine her involvement?”
Chet shook his head. “That seems…unlikely. Wil left the coven last year. I can’t imagine she’d make an appearance here.”
Arthur jotted this information down, trying not to show on his face the rush of triumph that swept through him.
So Wilhelmina had been part of the coven.
Given the letter he’d received and the photo of Ambrosia with her, Arthur had suspected as much, but it was still good to be certain.
“What was the reason for her departure? Anything involving Lola?”
Chet was silent for a long moment. Too long, if Arthur was to judge.
“Creative differences,” Chet said finally. “Wil never really fit into the Celestine brand.”
“What do you mean by brand?” Sal asked.
“Oh, you know…” Chet trailed off.
“I actually don’t. That’s why I asked.”
Arthur sighed. This wasn’t exactly an important line of questioning, but he supposed it was nice that Sal was taking an interest.
“Let’s just say, she never had her own potion line.” Chet straightened his shoulders with an air of importance.
“I see.” So, Wilhelmina didn’t align with the particularly capitalist niche the Celestine Coven had carved out for itself. Or she simply couldn’t hack it. Either way, Arthur’s respect for her grew slightly. “Do you know where she is now?”
“Nah, no idea.” Chet looked at his shoes and cleared his throat. “When she bounced, she mentioned something about heading east.”
Chet Oakley was definitely lying. Arthur wrote that down and underlined it twice. Sal glanced down at the page and let out a little gasp, but Chet ignored him.
“You’re wasting your time looking into Wil,” Chet continued, more confidently this time. “There’s no way she’d hurt Lola. They were friends, and Wil’s a gentle soul.”
“Thank you very much for your time and information,” Arthur said. The sounds of a commotion broke out behind them as Ambrosia’s act came to a close, marking the end of their questioning. Arthur didn’t dare stick around any longer. “We’ll leave you to it.”
Before Chet could reply, Arthur hurried off, Sal right behind him. They didn’t speak until they were back in the public area of the festival.
“That was illuminating,” Arthur said, popping open the umbrella once more. Now that they were out in the open, the sun was punishingly hot.
“Was it?” Sal asked. “I stopped listening after the bit about branding. One can only bear witness to so many lies before one’s attention wanders. Give me the clef notes.”
Arthur didn’t bother to correct Sal about the name of the infamous summarizer. “Well, Chet definitely knows more than he’s letting on. I think he’s lying to cover for Ambrosia. She did something to Wilhelmina and is trying to hide it. Maybe Lola figured it out so she silenced her as well.”
“What now? Shall we perform a daring citizen’s arrest of them?” Sal produced a pair of handcuffs.
“Why do you have those?” Arthur asked, taken aback. He wouldn’t put it past Sal to nick them off a police officer, but he hadn’t seen any in the area.
“Why, Arthur! I never leave home without them.” He clicked the handcuffs together. “I bet we can take those witches, even during the day. Their magic can’t stop us.”
“Maybe their magic can’t, but their security guards can.” Arthur paused. “Actually, I suppose Nora hired the security, so it’s her we’d be inconveniencing if things got physical.”
Sal stuck out his tongue in an excellent impersonation of Rumble mleming. “All right, we’ll bide our time.”
“It’s for the best.” Arthur let out a sigh of relief as Sal returned the handcuffs to his pocket. “We still have to figure out what they’re hiding, anyway.”
“The proof is out there,” Sal said.
At first Arthur thought Sal was simply being supportive, but then his husband began humming the X-Files theme song.
Arthur sighed and turned his attention toward the stage, where hundreds of people were gathered.
Though Ambrosia’s show had come to an end, there was a merch tent nearby that appeared to have several coven witches with clipboards recruiting new members.
He spotted Hailey among them, speaking animatedly with…
“Hang on, is that Brody?” Sal asked, squinting against the sun.
It was, indeed, Brody. He wrote something on the clipboard Hailey held, and then she squealed in delight. Brody smiled, too. He hadn’t often looked this happy in recent weeks.
“I didn’t know they knew each other,” Sal continued, trying to pull Arthur in that direction. “Let’s go see what they’re so excited about.”
Arthur didn’t budge. “Brody made it clear he doesn’t want to talk to me. And I’m not sure they do know each other. At least not well.”
“Looks like he joined up,” Sal said, pointing as Hailey pressed what Arthur recognized as the Celestine Coven welcome package into Brody’s arms. There was a bundle of herbs, a booklet, a potion.
Arthur’s skin pebbled. What if the potion was poisoned? What if whoever had gotten to Lola and Wilhelmina was coming for Brody now, too?