Playing With Magic

Chapter Twenty-Three

Twenty-Three

The dust from the street party had barely settled when news of the second murder began its rapid-fire spread through town. By the time I arrived at Sugarplum Fairy the next morning, Amy was stooped over a newspaper at the front counter.

“Can you believe this?” She shook her head to indicate that she did not believe it, whatever this was.

“Hmm?” I hadn’t had enough caffeine to participate in guessing games this morning. It had been a long night and I had barely managed to get four hours of sleep. I was going to be a very grump bear today.

Holding up the paper, I saw the headline Murder Times Two with a lede that read Sleepy Raven Creek struck by second homicide in a week. Is anywhere safe?

While the conjecture was a bit over-the-top for me, they had a point. If two murders could happen in less than five days in our little town, then it might be time to see if the sky was falling, because things were looking pretty grim.

“I mean, I didn’t like the guy, but I wanted him to leave town. I didn’t want him to die ,” Amy said, largely to herself.

I was especially unsettled by the death of Andrew, because I still couldn’t come up with a single way he was connected to Sebastian. Two connected murders in a small town was bad but explainable. Two unconnected murders in a small town was going to have people locking their doors at night.

“Oh yeah, I heard about that.” I was impressed the newspaper had managed to get an early edition out with the news. We had left the inn at around midnight, and the paper hit porches sometime between four and five.

Someone was burning the midnight oil at the local press office.

Since nothing usually happened in Raven Creek at night, I suspected the more likely case was that the editor of the paper had someone on the inside at the police department. Unless their lead reporter was the killer, which was unlikely but a more fun theory for me to latch on to than worrying about Leo being the new prime suspect.

I scanned the newspaper article upside down as best I could, not wanting Amy to feel I was overly interested. If she asked me questions, I knew I’d be unable to resist telling her the whole truth, and I didn’t need anyone other than Rich and Detective Martin knowing I’d been around the inn for both murders. I might start getting a reputation.

Well, I already had a reputation, but I didn’t need one as a weirdo who stalked crime scenes. Better to be thought of as that eccentric lady with the cat who might be a witch.

If it was good enough for Eudora, it was good enough for me.

I grabbed my boxes of pastries, leaving Amy to read up on all the latest information on the crimes. Thankfully, Andrew Bachman hadn’t been internet famous, so I didn’t think we’d have a big wave of customers in this morning looking for obscure law books. There was likely still going to be some trickle-down interest in Sebastian, but I also knew that word of a second slaying was going to scare quite a few visitors into leaving town earlier than they’d planned.

Sebastian had wanted to put Raven Creek on the map as the home ground of a rare bird species, and the lawyer had wanted to take advantage of our popularity to turn us into a booming tourist mecca for his clients. So far the only thing they had in common was that their deaths had managed to completely undermine what their goals in life had been for my sleepy little mountain town.

A cleaning crew was out in the streets with massive brooms, sweeping up confetti, discarded glow sticks, and more red plastic cups than I could count. The party had been a huge success, but it had certainly left behind one of the biggest messes I could ever recall seeing. Funny how people could come here and enjoy everything we had to offer but not care if they were leaving things behind worse than when they arrived.

I was glad my property money was going to help keep our streets clean.

I waved to the cleaners, only one of whom noticed—he doffed an imaginary cap in my direction. Back inside the store, I took a moment to appreciate past me and my staff for taking care to keep everything tidy even after the melee it had felt like in here yesterday.

There were plenty of empty spaces on the shelves, though, so I needed to focus on getting those taken care of. And since it was Tuesday, I also needed to get the new releases out on the shelves. I’d come in extra early to get as much of this done as I could before the store opened.

First things first. I put Amy’s pastries on display in the cooled pastry cabinet, then got my own baked goods in the oven. I started with the Earl Grey shortbread, knowing it was going to be in demand as soon as we opened. I also double-checked to make sure we had plenty of iced tea on hand and made a quick list of things I’d need to order to start keeping extra stock at Amy’s place.

Then I headed into the shop’s basement. While on paper, it was nice to have the extra storage, the basement under the Earl’s Study was not what I would call inviting. A narrow passage led to the extra-large storage room that had once been two separate storage spaces, as our shop had once been two individual buildings that were later merged into one. This was also where the shop’s bathroom was, and I had gone more than one day simply not using the bathroom and rushing home after just to avoid coming down here.

It was tidy enough, with aging yellow laminate flooring, some peeling back from floods in the past, and the walls were lined with unfortunate wood paneling that had probably been here since the seventies. It too showed signs of water damage at the bottom, but nothing was moldy or needed to be immediately replaced, so any kind of basement upgrades had been put on the way, way back burner.

A couple of months earlier I had been able to get an enormous collection of books from an estate sale, and we were still slowly adding them to the upstairs collection as needed. All the boxes were piled up on wooden pallets just in case the copious amounts of Washington rain caused anything to back up. The lot of books had cost me thousands of dollars, and while I had already recouped those costs in resale, I wasn’t about to risk losing the remaining stock to an act of God. No thank you.

Since the books were all a random mix—intentionally—I just grabbed the first box I could see and brought it to the bottom of the stairs. We’d gone through quite a bit of stock the last few days, and I expected we’d need about three boxes just to fill the holes in the used-books section. The only problem with our basement stock system was that none of the books down here were entered in our online database. This was by design, because we didn’t want any online orders to come in for a book that we had no idea how to find. But it also meant that every time we opened a new box of stock, we needed to catalog it all from scratch. That was going to take time. I was grateful that I had entered all our new-release stock into the system ahead of time.

After dragging the three hefty boxes upstairs, I piled them up next to the cash desk so I could work on them while we were open if need be. I swapped out one tray off cookies for another, then dragged the new-release stock out of the office and up to the new-release wall.

I left a few hot-selling titles where they were and moved anything that was a couple of weeks old to the front table—which had been completely picked over by rabid Sebastian Marlow fans. I made them look as neat as possible and added one of our frequently used signs that read New and Noteworthy .

For the new-release wall, we had thankfully cultivated an air of chaos that people were accustomed to. Alphabet? We didn’t need no stinking alphabet. At least not on this wall.

I unloaded the seven boxes of new-release stock in record time, thanks to my ability to take a slapdash approach. The wall could use a little tweaking later to make the style a bit more cohesive, but for now it was full, and anyone looking for a new book that had come out today wasn’t going to leave disappointed.

A few of the new releases were special orders, and I put those aside on the cash desk to have Imogen do the calls and emails later letting people know their books had arrived. I had just enough time to haul the cardboard boxes out to recycling before the store opened to customers.

With a big stack of cardboard in front of my face, I almost didn’t notice the thick manila envelope sitting on the back step of the shop. I’d driven in today—rain was in the forecast—so I knew it hadn’t been there when I came, and there were only a few darkened raindrops on it from a new wave of bad weather that was just starting.

Someone must have just put it there.

I glanced around me to see if there was anyone around, but there was no sign of whoever had delivered this. Cautiously I tossed the boxes in the recycle bin and collected the envelope before retreating into the store. My curiosity would need to wait, however, because I was two minutes late to open the front door and there was already someone outside, huddling in on themselves against the weather.

I dropped the envelope on the counter in the kitchen so it was out of the way and unlocked the door to let my poor, damp customer in.

To my immediate horror, I realized it was Dierdre.

For a moment I was so gobsmacked to see her darkening my doorway that my manners escaped me. It was only when she cleared her throat and peered around me into the store that I realized I was blocking her entrance and forcing her to stand outside in the rain.

I became suspicious that perhaps she had been the one to dump the envelope on my steps, but that didn’t make any sense; why would she come around the front right after sneaking something onto my path like that?

“Dierdre, this is a . . . surprise.”

Given what had happened during our last meeting, I was stunned she would want to be within a ten-block radius of me.

“Good morning. Nice to see to you as well, Phoebe.” She pushed down her hood and unwrapped a muted pastel scarf she had wrapped around her hair. It was pouring in earnest now, and the street cleaners had vanished. At least it looked like they’d gotten most of their work done before the weather chased them into hiding.

Dierdre took a few steps into the room and nodded toward the tea counter. “I don’t suppose it would be too much trouble for you to make me a cup of something?” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she looked as if she might reconsider them. I was shocked she was willing to take a drink from me, considering that the last time she’d sampled our wares she’d ended up under an honesty spell for several hours.

But she didn’t take the request back, and there was none of the usual vicious undercurrent to her words. It didn’t feel like she was here to pick a fight with me. I didn’t know what had changed in the last couple of days, but I certainly didn’t trust it.

“Yes, of course. What would you like?”

“Oh, I trust they’re all good. Surprise me.” She gave me an unusual look, as if the statement might be a dare, and I suspected she might be trying to catch me giving her magical tea again. While such an open invitation might have led me to pick something adventurous for anyone else, with Dierdre I decided to play it safe and picked a nice jasmine-peppermint blend. “Do you want milk? Sugar.”

For a moment her expression became pained, and it occurred to me that perhaps this being-nice-to-me thing was a bit of a struggle for her. Her smile came across tight and forced. “However you think it would taste best.”

“Honey, then,” I said.

“Sure.” She wandered over to one of the tables and pulled out a chair, the metal legs screaming against the tile floor. I winced. I poured the nearly boiling water over Dierdre’s tea and checked the time on my watch to let it steep only so long. I added the honey now so the heat would help it melt and evenly distribute the flavor.

“So, um . . . what brings you here?”

“Well, I had originally planned to come by to talk to you about the space for my nephew.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. After a bit of discussion about the housing opportunities locally, he has decided that he’d like to rent the apartment over the store.”

“Ah.” This wasn’t at all what I’d expected her to say. “You know you don’t need to ask me permission directly for that. I appreciate that you have, but the agency will take care of everything.”

“Of course, but I just thought, given some of our . . . history, it might be best to ask you in person first. Out of politeness.”

I almost snorted at that but managed to keep a straight face. If she was going to put in the effort to play nice, then so would I. And after what had happened during our last meeting, I still felt a bit guilty for what I’d accidentally done to her, so I swore to myself I’d be as civil as possible to her this morning.

“I don’t have any issues with your nephew renting the space above the shop. It’s actually a lot easier when you can rent the living space to someone operating the retail shop; it creates less friction between the store owner and the tenant. When I get the approval request from Mountain View, I’ll sign off on it, don’t worry.”

She nodded gratefully. “He’s a good boy, Dylan. I think you’ll like him. I hope everyone will like him.”

“Hmm,” was all I could manage to say. I thought a lot of that was going to depend on how much like his aunt he was.

“Anyway, that’s why I originally planned to come.”

A little spasm of pure panic hit me like a bullet, and I was glad she wasn’t looking right at me, because the moment she triggered my fight-or-flight, a whole stack of paper takeout cups started to float into the air. I grabbed them and put them back down on the counter.

“I’m sure anything else could wait until later, Dierdre. We just opened, and I do have an awful lot to do this morning.” Where was the beeping alarm from the oven or the tinkling bell of another customer arriving? Who was going to save me from this horrible train wreck that was about to happen?

Please stop, please stop, please stop.

I took a deep breath in through my nose and out through my mouth, hoping it would be enough to steady me. I just needed to keep myself in check long enough to get her out the door.

“I heard the terrible news about what happened to Mr. Bachman last night. Imagine it—what an absolute tragedy. Man was only here to help the town, and then that big brute at the grocery store would go and do something like that to him.”

I wheeled around, still holding the tower of paper cups in my hand. A few of them dropped from the bottom of the stack onto the floor with hollow tok, tok, tok noises.

“What did you say?”

“It’s all over town. Betty Overland said she was at the store last week and saw Leo Lansing pick the poor man up by his collar and toss him right out of the store.”

“That didn’t happen,” I said, almost breathless. Was that really what people were saying about Leo? And locals, no less. People like Betty Overland, whoever she was, should know better. They should know him better.

“Perhaps she exaggerated, but she’s not the only one who saw it. Plenty of people are talking, and they’re all saying that if someone in town killed Andrew Bachman, then the police should be looking at Leo.” She shrugged as if this implication was completely obvious.

I set the cups down on the counter and barely had a chance to catch a full canister of loose tea that had begun to float up into the air. The contents of a basket by the till that contained pins and stickers was empty, and I looked up in horror to see that the knickknacks and my entire mug of pens were all hovering halfway up to the ceiling.

This was terrible .

“Dierdre, you have known Leo Lansing his entire life. You of all people should be the one telling these busybodies to turn their attention elsewhere.” To distract her from looking into the foyer, I removed the tea bag from her cup and set the piping-hot tea down in front of her. She flinched, reminding me again what had happened the last time there was a hot drink between us, not to mention the last time she’d consumed something in my store.

I wondered if she was also focused on the word busybodies , something she had surely been called a time or two in the past. She took the drink and held it, for which I was grateful. I didn’t think my glitching magic could snatch items right out of someone’s hand.

Though I really didn’t want her to hang around long enough for me to find out.

“Just because I know Leo doesn’t mean people aren’t capable of hiding who they really are. If you think it’s so impossible for him to have killed someone, you tell me, Phoebe, did you think he was capable of threatening someone?”

I remained silent, because no response I gave was going to be a winner. I couldn’t deny that what I’d seen from Leo that day at the store had been shocking, but there was nothing on this planet that would convince me my sweet, caring friend was the kind of man who could kill someone. And certainly not over real estate.

Dierdre took my silence as an admission of some kind and lifted her chin triumphantly into the air. I wanted to remind her that once upon a time she had been under scrutiny for someone’s death and she hadn’t liked that feeling very much, but I opted to keep my mouth shut.

She tied her scarf around her head and took a lid for her tea from the counter, slapping a five-dollar bill on the table before she left. I wasn’t sure if she was so focused on her perceived win or if it was just that she was totally oblivious, but she batted a hanging pen and sticker out of her way as if they were annoying insects as she opened the front door.

Just when I thought she’d already had enough of the last word, she turned around and looked back at me.

“I don’t think you can assume that your friendship is enough to make someone innocent. You don’t have that kind of power.”

She slammed the door behind her, and once she was gone, every tiny floating piece of bric-a-brac immediately fell to the floor.