Playing With Magic

Chapter Ten

Ten

A little turn of phrase about winding up six feet under isn’t a big deal under normal circumstances. There was no doubt that the context of the email I’d received from Deacon screamed frustration. But given what had happened today and Deacon’s very weird appearance and disappearance the previous day at the signing, there was an extra element of foreboding to the words.

I pulled Detective Martin’s card out of my purse and forwarded the email to the address on the front. This was precisely the sort of thing she wanted from me. I knew better than to think she was asking me to go out of my way to find clues, but this one was right in my lap and seemed like a useful piece of information, even if it wasn’t exactly a confession.

I waited a few minutes to see if she would reply before powering down the computer. I sat in the office staring at the wall calendar and the big red Sharpie letters announcing today as HIKE DAY in the Sunday box.

Tomorrow was the Fourth of July, and murder or no murder, the town was going to be swamped with tourists. I figured if I was already at the store, I might as well get a head start on tomorrow’s baking and prep some sourdough loaves and an extra batch or two of our signature shortbread.

In summer there wasn’t usually a huge demand for baked goods—not the same way people were buying iced tea like it was going out of style—but given everything Imogen and Amy had told me about the previous Independence Day festivities, tomorrow would just be the first day of a very busy week and everything that wasn’t bolted down would be flying off the shelves.

It didn’t leave me much time to poke around the investigation, but maybe that was for the best. Still, there was a lingering sense of blame on my shoulders that I couldn’t shake. Sebastian had been in Raven Creek because of me. Had trouble followed him here, or was this all just bad luck? Had I put him in the sights of a murderer without meaning to?

I felt responsible in a way that had nothing to do with guilt and everything to do with a deep-seated need to find justice for this man. I’d picked his hotel, I’d brought him here, and no matter who had killed him, I had to do everything I could to see that that person was found.

With those heavy thoughts on my mind, I tossed an apron over my hiking ensemble—perhaps not the most ideal outfit to bake in—and cracked open the jar of sourdough starter on my counter. I was immediately greeted by a familiar fruity-yeasty aroma that made me think of little backcountry kitchens in France or old medieval bakeries—if such a thing existed. Sourdough starter smelled at once alive and ancient, an incredibly powerful fragrance.

I didn’t want to go too outrageous with my flavor choices for the next day, because I wanted the lunch specials to be accessible for most people to enjoy. While I’d received plenty of compliments about Friday’s olive loaf, it hadn’t been my favorite and had me wanting a return to less divisive mix-ins.

For my savory loaf I opted to make a modern classic: everything bagel. We made our own everything bagel mix, and despite how popular certain store brands were, we did go through a lot of it—I used it to make crackers and biscuits with the sourdough discard—and it was insanely easy to make at home for significantly less money.

The choice for my sweet loaf for the next day was a little more interesting and outside the box, but I thought it sounded like just the thing for a hot summer day, especially with the forecast calling for clear skies tomorrow. I was going to make a lemon and white chocolate sourdough. Topped with fresh ricotta, honey, and some blueberries, it was sure to be a sellout.

Because of the time it took for the dough to rise, I would only do the initial prep today and either come back in the evening or add my mix-ins in the morning, but I wanted to take advantage of the time I had now.

I mixed the sourdough starter with water, flour, and salt and combined it until a dough had formed. I repeated this process until I had fairly depleted my sourdough starter and had eight loaves waiting on the counter to rise. Later I would stretch and fold each dough like delicious Play-Doh to help the gluten form, and that would be when the mix-ins were added.

I didn’t need to make more everything seasoning—I had a huge glass jar of it on the counter—but I did want to pre-zest my lemons. They might lose a little of that initial zing sitting out overnight, but if I did it now, I could add the sliced remaining lemons to the batches of tea in the fridge to boost their flavor.

Because of how much tea we had been making over the summer, I had ordered bulk quantities of lemons from Lansing’s. I grabbed a half dozen from the shelf on the countertop and pulled out my rasp. A standard cheese grater wouldn’t be suitable for the task, and while I preferred a grater that took off long strips of lemon skin when I was doing my own cooking, the bread needed something a bit more nuanced. The rasp would give a nice, fine grate to the lemon peel.

By the time I was done zesting the lemons, the kitchen had a beautiful lemon-sugar aroma hanging in the air, my hands were sticky with pith, and I had a big sandwich bag loaded with zest for tomorrow. I popped that in the freezer, then sliced up the remaining lemons, dropping them in the big jugs in the fridge.

It was almost noon by the time I was done with the prep, hours’ worth of work I simply wouldn’t have been able to squeeze in the next day, so in a terrible way I was grateful for the extra time I’d been given in the morning.

The universe must have heard me thinking inappropriate things, because once I’d washed my hands and dusted off the thin coat of flour that covered me head to toe, I stepped out into the bookstore just in time to see Dierdre Miller press her face up against the glass.

While I briefly considered diving back into the kitchen to hide from her, it was obvious I was too late. She waved enthusiastically when she spotted me and actually declared, “Yoo-hoo!”

When I paused just a moment too long, considering my options, I saw her brow furrow and she tapped harder, declaring, “Phoebe Winchester, I see you in there.”

Well, now not only did she know I was here, so did the entirety of Main Street. So much for enjoying a little private time to catch up on work.

I walked over to the front door, opening it just a crack. “Good afternoon, Dierdre, I hope you’re doing well. Did you see the sign on the door?” I tapped the Closed for Special Offsite Event sign we had put up to avoid situations just like this one.

“Oh, I don’t want to buy anything,” she drawled, really overemphasizing her disdain at the very idea of her being a customer.

In fairness to Dierdre, the last time she’d been in and tried something, I had accidentally bewitched her, so I didn’t take offense to her reticence over coming inside.

“Then why are you here?” I tried my darndest to keep the acid out of my tone, but it was just so hard for me to be nice to her. Dierdre had never done anything to make me feel welcome in town; in fact, she had gone quite out of her way on my arrival to convince me to leave.

She had been polite to me in the past just long enough to help secure the rental of a shop down the block for her nephew, and after I’d agreed to that, she had stayed mostly out of my way.

“I was hoping you and I might have a quick sit-down chat, just us gals.” A false twinkle in her eye and her best real-estate-agent smile made me realize why she might actually be very good at her job and how some people in town might be convinced to like her.

Dierdre was in her midfifties and five feet tall on a good day. She wore considerably too much makeup, and her hair was dyed a bright, unnatural red. But as in the case of poisonous South American dart frogs, the color made her easy to avoid from a distance. She wasn’t an unattractive person physically, but the way she carried herself and behaved made me wonder why she wasn’t the one who had the town rumor mill abuzz with witchy rumors.

Right now she was staring at me with a focus that set all the hairs on my arm at attention and a false cheer that made me think she might be luring me off to my own demise.

“What is it you wanted to chat about?”

She let the veneer of sweetness drop, showing me her vicious annoyance in one quick flash before the fakeness was back and she swatted at my arm playfully—though just a bit too hard. “Come on, now, Phoebe, you make it sound like I’m up to something. Can’t a gal just want to catch up with the niece of her old best friend?”

This was a manipulative ploy, bringing Eudora into things. I knew perfectly well Dierdre and my aunt hadn’t been besties. In fact, my aunt had given me posthumous warnings to be on my guard around the pint-sized whirlwind. Still, this approach made me curious. Dierdre must really want something if she was being this aggressively nice.

I had no more vacant shop space to rent her, so it had to be something else, and my Spidey-senses were telling me it probably had something to do with the shady lawyer who had been getting Leo all riled up on Friday night.

“We can go next door if you want.” I wouldn’t mind having some extra scrutiny on the situation with Amy no doubt listening in on our conversation.

Dierdre seemed to recognize what I was angling for, because she shook her head vigorously. “Let’s go to the Buzzy Bean.”

I was so completely addicted to the flavor and convenience of the Sugarplum, I often forgot our town actually had three coffee shops. That might seem excessive on the surface, but we were a very caffeine-obsessed town, and during the peak tourist months it kept things from getting too overwhelmed at any one location.

I had passed by the Buzzy Bean many times—it was just a few doors down from Honey’s new-age shop—but I had to confess I’d only seen the third shop, Theo’s, once or twice as I passed it on my way out of town. It was definitely located to catch driving tourists on their way back to Seattle.

Since the store was closed for the day, I didn’t have that excuse to put Dierdre off with, and while I would have preferred to continue poking around my emails from Deacon to see if there might be other clues or perhaps knock on Rich’s door to see what insights he might have, I knew it was better to get this chat out of the way now; otherwise I’d just be haunted by a petite redheaded ghost everywhere I went for the rest of the week.

“Okay, sure, let me grab my bag.”

We walked the short two blocks to Buzzy Bean in relative silence, which was a treat. Town gossip worked fast, but evidently not fast enough for Dierdre to know about the murder just yet, because she hadn’t mentioned anything about it. This was surprising, given how the ambulance in front of the B and B and the cancellation of the big hike were groundwork for some very basic math. I gave it until the end of the day before everyone was talking about Sebastian’s murder.

It was a lovely change of pace to be outside on such a beautiful afternoon, despite my present company. The sky was blue, and there were faint puffy white clouds overhead but nothing that hinted at foul weather. The weeks of rain had done all the flowerpots outside a world of good, and the charming, European-inspired street decor was gorgeously offset by overflowing baskets of orange and pink flowers.

A few fat bumblebees and at least one very brazen hummingbird zipped past us, making sure to stop at each basket in turn to sample the wares.

The Buzzy Bean was an adorable little shop that was about as different from Sugarplum Fairy as a place could be and still sell coffee. Sugarplum Fairy was, after all, a bakery first and foremost, while Buzzy Bean was all about the coffee.

It leaned hard into a Pacific Northwest theme, with exposed wood everywhere inside and framed art of redwood trees and verdant mountain landscapes. There were also closeup paintings of glossy coffee beans, and beneath those were large glass cylinders filled with identical life-sized beans.

The whole shop had the immediately soothing fragrance of fresh-ground coffee, which was one of the world’s greatest smells. Suddenly it didn’t matter who I was here with; what mattered was the daily special: a honey lavender oat milk latte. It was called The Bee’s Knees, and it reminded me I hadn’t had an ounce of caffeine since leaving my house bright and early that morning.

Dierdre very graciously offered to pay, and once we collected our drinks, we took them to a booth that looked like it had been carved out of the base of an enormous tree. It was surprisingly comfortable and gave the illusion of being hugged by nature.

I might need to start coming here more often when I visited Honey.

“I want to broach something of a sensitive topic with you,” Dierdre began, her false charm suddenly switched to game-face mode. I was so surprised that she’d gotten right down to business that I almost choked swallowing my first white-hot sip of coffee.

“How sensitive are we talking here, Dierdre?”

She pushed aside the small black coffee she had ordered and put both palms down on the polished wood table. “Let’s cut to the chase, shall we, Phoebe? I know that you are a very wealthy woman.”

I was glad I wasn’t still drinking at the moment, because if I had, I would have choked a second time. I had accepted that Dierdre knew about my holdings in town. It was impossible for someone as snoopy as her, who also had access to real estate details, to not know that Mountain View Property Management was technically me. No one else in town had figured it out, and I was shocked she hadn’t blabbed about it by now, but there seemed to be an understanding within the town council that keeping quiet about where all the generous donations they received were coming from was the best way to keep those donations coming.

If people in this town knew I was a millionaire, things would get awkward very quickly.

I was about to reply when I noticed Dierdre’s coffee shift a half inch away from her without her touching it.

Oh no.

Perhaps it was just my imagination, or maybe she had jostled it in a way I hadn’t noticed. I tamped down the wave of unease washing over me and tried to focus on what she was saying.

“I’m really not, though. I mean, if you’re going to ask me for something that requires a lot of flexible money on hand, I’m going to have to politely decline.” What was she up to?

The cup moved again.

No no no, not now, not now. Get it together, Phoebe .

I tried to take a few calming breaths and focus on Dierdre, but the funny thing about anxiety is, it doesn’t care about bad timing.

When I’d split up with my ex-husband, Blaine, and realized that every part of my life was in complete shambles, I’d started to get frequent anxiety attacks. Just out of the blue I would start to worry about the most random things. What would the guy at our favorite takeout place think when I stopped calling every Friday to get wonton soup and fried rice? Would he think we didn’t like it anymore? Did I still need to give Blaine’s coworker’s wife that cocktail recipe she had asked for?

These random thoughts would send me spiraling for hours, and no matter how often I tried to tell myself that everything was okay and none of these things actually mattered in the grand scheme of life, I just couldn’t calm down.

Now it seemed that, confronted with an uncomfortable conversation with Dierdre, I was very capable of dredging up a dozen different doom-and-gloom scenarios, and unlike my previous fits of nerves, this time around I had to contend with magical side effects.

I tried to remember what I was supposed to be talking about, but it was hard when my attention was locked on her coffee cup.

“I’m not asking you to invest in anything,” she chuckled. “I’m actually bringing you an opportunity to make a great deal more money than you already have.”

This took my full focus from the cup to the woman in front of me. My eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What are you talking about?”

Recalling my discussion with Leo a couple of days earlier, I had a strong suspicion I knew exactly where this was headed. A knot of worry pitted in my stomach.

The coffee cup moved an inch closer to her. She seemed perfectly oblivious to it.

Over at the barista counter, a whole stack of paper cups fell over. The girl behind the counter let out a gasp of surprise, and the older man who had taken our money started to scold her about being more careful.

I had to get out of here.

“I know you’re relatively new here and don’t have many attachments. I thought this might give you a great opportunity to help find a way to make some money and maybe return to a life in the big city. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“I think that sounds terrible, honestly.” I was too distracted right now to pretend at politeness. I needed her to get to the point so I could leave before anything more disastrous happened.

“Oh.”

“Dierdre, what are you hinting at?” I urged. Her coffee cup was vibrating, like it was trying to decide which direction to move next. If I tried to grab it, would that make things worse?

“I have been given an opportunity to help a new developer who wants to create a tourism oasis here in Raven Creek. And they’re being very generous with their offers, Phoebe. Evidently, they’ve tried several times to contact Mountain View but have been told every time the properties are not for sale.”

I wasn’t surprised that the team at Mountain View hadn’t bothered to tell me this. They knew how important this setup had been to my aunt, and I’d told them to keep it business as usual, which likely included them automatically declining sale offers.

I only got involved if someone—like Dierdre’s nephew—wanted to rent one of my spaces, in which case I approved or declined the agreement.

“I don’t know why you think coming to me directly is going to change the answer.”

“Because I thought if I could explain to you their goals, you might see that this is a really wonderful opportunity.”

I recalled, vividly, the way Leo had turned bright red and balled his fists up as if he were on the cusp of committing real violence. For my gentle giant of a friend to react that way, I knew I wanted no part in what these people were selling.

“My answer is no.”

“You haven’t even heard what I have to say,” she protested. The vibrating coffee cup stopped stock-still, and for one moment I thought I had accidentally stopped time. Since my ability to toy with probability usually responded to immediate danger, it would have been strange for it to kick in then, but Dierdre’s lips were still moving; it was just the coffee that had stopped.

I knew what was about to happen.

I knew it without a doubt in my heart, the way sometimes you go to pick up a phone before it rings because the certainty that someone else will be on the other end of the line is just so strong.

There was nothing I could do to stop this.

The coffee shot off the table like a caffeinated bullet, spilling right into her lap with such force that she was splashed from chin to dress hem with black brew. Thankfully, it had been sitting open long enough it wasn’t scalding hot anymore, but she clambered to her feet, letting out a yelp of surprise.

“Oh my goodness, that’s so unlucky. You should always put a lid on those.” I darted across the café and grabbed a handful of napkins, handing them to her awkwardly. I was fortunate, because her ire immediately turned toward the barista and she had no notion that I was the one to blame.

“You need to fix that table—wobbly, useless thing just made me spill my whole drink.”

The barista, still flustered from the incident with the coffee cups, stammered, trying to come up with the right thing to say. “I-I’m s-so sorry. Do y-you want a new d-drink?” The girl looked like she was on the edge of an absolute crying jag, and I silently crammed forty dollars into the tip jar at the front, feeling abysmal that I couldn’t help shield her from the blame.

“Accidents happen,” I offered. “Right, Dierdre?”

She was busily mopping up the front of her red dress, which was now probably ruined. I felt bad about that too. I didn’t often feel guilt about things said or done regarding Dierdre Miller, but today was the exception.

My magic was on the fritz, and I needed help immediately before someone else noticed.