Chapter 30
Chapter thirty
Ireached for a piece of paper. "First, we have Hank, the landscape guy.
We haven't taken a close look at him yet because, honestly, I don't see how he would have been able to get close enough to my aunt, unless he used her garden to poke around?
Then there's Kyle. With Pamela out of the picture, he's the one who has the most to lose.
Him or his doting parents or his granddad.
Doc Hanson would have been ideally placed to poison his patients because he knew their medication and schedule. "
I thought a little harder. "Then there is Jimmy, who is the least likely to have been a suspect.
" I said this reluctantly. Jimmy had been as good as family when I was growing up. To consider him hurting my aunt was a huge stretch, yet I couldn’t afford to ignore the possibility that he was somehow involved.
"He's in his eighties," Cosmo said.
"Yeah, but what about his son? He's been trying to get his offspring into this house a couple of times now."
"Except what would he gain?"
"I don't know. That's the problem. We don't know the motive." I wrote down Jimmy and his son. "Then there is the girlfriend," I said.
Cosmo sat upright. "What girlfriend?"
"There was a small perfume bottle in Jake's house. He kept it in a special box, so I assume it meant something to him."
"It could have been old."
"No," I thought back. "It still had some scent clinging to it. Can't have been more than, I don't know, a week or two."
"Did you recognize the scent?"
"It seemed vaguely familiar," I said.
"Maybe one of your aunt's?"
I stared at him. "Why would he keep an empty perfume bottle of hers?"
"Because he liked her."
"I don't think so. Not the liking part, the perfume. I'm sure I've smelled it recently, but it was a bit too intense for my aunt. And Jake could have had another girlfriend."
"I would know. I swear to you, unless he made very sure not to have her around while Violet and I were awake, there was no other woman in his life."
"But it must mean something. There was also a military medal."
"I don't think Jake was in the military."
"Sentimental value?"
"Possibly."
"Then there's the mystery woman that he and Pamela spotted coming out of the Reiki practice,” I told Cosmo.
"Say that again."
I repeated my words.
"Your aunt had a Reiki session."
"Like most people, from what I’ve gathered," I said.
"Yes, except she only went there once, and she had a funny look on her face when she returned."
I groaned. “Did she say anything about him? Because I don’t see a connection to Brad, or to my recent progress with my energy block.
And even if he had it in for my aunt for some reason, Jake died first. And I don't think that a stranger would have been able to know where she kept her pills, what she took, and what to replace them with.”
"That is the important bit," Cosmo admitted. "Which brings us back to the usual suspects."
"It's all confusing."
"Yeah, but once you have sorted out the impossible from the improbable—" His whiskers twitched.
"I think that is not the correct quote from Sherlock Holmes, but I get the meaning," I said.
"The easiest thing would be to get them all here, so we can observe everyone together."
"Easy how? They're not exactly all loyal customers."
"Then you've got to go where you find them."
"Which is?" I asked.
"Your friends would know. They should know everything. You can ask Jimmy. Tell him you want him to bring his son, and he’ll jump at the opportunity."
"That is a possibility," I said. "It's far-fetched, but it might work."
"We're missing one name, aren't we?" he asked.
"Who?"
"Who's the one person best placed? Who knew exactly where the spare key was kept? Who knew her way around this place?"
I stared at him, dumbstruck. "Louisa? That's ridiculous." Or was it?
"You may be right," I said. "I'm convinced that she had something to do with all the rumors that reached the detective’s ears. But the question is, why, unless Jake had something in his will that stood to benefit her or someone close to her, and she only lately realized it."
My head began to pound. "I need a painkiller."
Cosmo started to purr. Louder and louder.
My temples stopped throbbing. Calm washed over me. This purr was the equivalent of a perfectly tempered bubble bath, or a crackling fire at Christmas time.
"How do you feel now?" Cosmo peered at me.
"Never been better. If there was a way to bottle this sort of relaxation, we'd be rolling in money within a week.
" Maybe it was good that the rules forbade us from taking advantage of certain powers.
Or I'd be really tempted. So many good things to do with money, so many bad things too.
Which brought me back to the case in question. "Did this also work on my aunt?"
Cosmo was taken aback.
"I didn't mean to hurt your feelings," I said. "I was only wondering, in that case, why she’d need Reiki."
"She didn't," Cosmo said.
“Curious and curiouser. That fellow certainly gets a lot of hype in town. What if she discovered something bad about him? He could have been a fraud, out to fleece the women. Or what if he's a fellow witch? And using spells to win patients?”
My mind whirled with possibilities.
"What about that mystery woman?" Cosmo asked.
“What indeed? She could have been his accomplice, or under his spell.” I scanned the list that we'd come up with.
Again, Louisa's name jumped out at me. She had been very coy when it came to talking about her private life.
Her way of calling Detective Stone her "acquaintance" in air quotes.
Maybe there was another man in her life as well.
"I think I need a Reiki session," I said. I went onto the website to book.
It said I needed an initial consult, and only after that could the master decide what form my therapy would take.
"Do it," Cosmo said.
"All right." I filled in all my information. The slot I'd booked was the last one for the whole week. Brad definitely was Mr. Popular.