Chapter 13
Englebert is on the edge of the counter, where Hannah is currently cutting an apple into thin slices for Lily, who has recently announced that she will only eat apples if they are ‘swords.’ Emma is on the floor with Addie, the two of them bent over Addie’s composition book from the goblet analysis.
Gabe dropped Addie off an hour ago before heading back to lead a funeral — Arthur Dean, the beekeeper. The open-mic portion went ahead over his objections.
Annabel is in the carriage house, prepping for Addie’s lesson after the girls have their snack. Addie keeps craning toward the back door every few minutes, checking whether it’s time yet.
“A croak tonic,” Englebert says, after I’ve laid it out. He’s sitting very tall and very still. “In Prudence’s cup.”
“In Pru’s cup, but not present in Damien.”
Englebert’s tail makes a single pass across the ledge. “So. A croak tonic takes Lady Macbeth’s voice. The understudy goes on. The understudy who has been rehearsing both roles for six weeks and has told everyone, including the press, that she is ready.”
“That’s the theory.”
“It is not a theory. It is a motive, attached to a method, aimed at a specific victim, in service of a specific outcome. The only thing it lacks is proof, and proof is a luxury we can surely acquire.” He looks at me. “Where is Prudence?”
“She has a meeting.”
“After that?”
“She’s busy tonight.”
“Busy with what? We have rehearsal.”
“She’ll be at rehearsal. She’s busy after.”
Englebert pauses for a moment, then apparently decides Pru’s schedule is not the most pressing issue at hand.
“The croak tonic is crime one. Crime two is Damien. What do we know about crime two that we did not know this morning?”
“Not much. Annabel says the layering of residue she can sense in Damien is still too dense to separate. She needs the original sources. His bottles, whatever he’s been taking.”
“Which are at the Carter house,” he says. “With Skye.”
“Englebert…”
“I’m not accusing the girl, but—”
“Annabel said it could be self-inflicted.”
“It could,” he concedes. “But Skye did appear the day after his collapse to collect all his bottles. She’d have no reason to sweep them away unless she knew, or suspected, that what was in them was more than vitamins.”
Hannah sets down the knife. “Or unless someone told her to be scared.”
We both look at her.
“Tiffany,” Hannah says. “At the party. You told us what she said, Mari. She was winding Skye up about Damien and Vivian and Pru. If Tiffany spent weeks getting into Skye’s head, it’s not a stretch that Skye might panic after he collapsed and grab everything she could.
Maybe she’s not guilty. Maybe she’s just afraid. ”
“That’s a lot of credit to give Tiffany,” I say.
“Tiffany has been running complex social campaigns in this town since the eighth grade. She got Jenny Calloway voted off the prom committee with a rumor that she had a third eye —like an actual one — under her bangs, remember? The woman is not an amateur.”
“No, Hannah, I don’t remember who got voted off the prom committee, and I can’t believe you do.”
“I was on the prom committee, Mari. Some wounds don’t heal.”
Lily arrives at the table with an apple sword in each hand.
“I’m dying,” she announces, and collapses atop a stool.
“Not on the stool, Lil. People sit there.”
“Dead people don’t care where they are.” She lies there, apple swords crossed over her chest, one eye open to check that her audience is paying attention.
“She saw another video,” Emma says from the floor, without looking up.
“This one had a FLIP,” Lily says, abandoning death to sit up. “The guy did a flip and THEN he died. Can I do a flip off the stage tonight?”
“No.”
“A small flip?”
“A small flip is still a flip. No flips.”
“Ms. Pelham did a flip off the stage.”
“Ms. Pelham tripped, and we’re lucky she wasn’t hurt.”
“It looked like a flip.”
“Ms. Pelham is one misstep away from a nursing home. She absolutely did not do a flip.”
Lily accepts this defeat and returns to her apple swords.
“Annabel says croak tonics taste like old pennies,” Addie offers. “She taught me. They share a base with heart philters, except heart philters are sweet on top of the pennies and croak tonics are bitter. If Pru had tasted it, she would’ve known.”
“Pru might not have drunk it at all,” I say.
“That’s lucky.”
“We have too many threads and too few hands, Marigold,” Englebert says.
“I know.”
“You need to talk to Tiffany.”
“I know.”
“Not at rehearsal,” Hannah says. “You need to go to the salon.”
I look at her.
“Get your hair done,” she says. “Book an appointment. She said it herself, right? People tell their hairdresser things they don’t tell their lawyer. Maybe it goes both ways. Get in her chair and let her tell you things.”
“I’m not going to Tiffany’s salon.”
“Why not?”
“Because the last time I was in Tiffany’s salon I was sixteen and her mother told me my hair was ‘a lot’ and then gave me bangs that made me look like a sheepdog for six months.”
“That was twenty years ago.”
“I have a long memory.”
“At least you didn’t have a third eye hidden under there.”
“I’m not—”
“Mari.” Hannah leans against the counter. “The salon is where Tiffany holds court. It’s where she talks. You’re a journalist. You’ve sat in worse places to get a source talking.”
“She’ll know what I’m doing.”
“She’ll think she knows what you’re doing, and she’ll talk anyway, because she can’t resist an audience. She’ll think she’s playing you. Let her.”
“Aunt Mari, when was the last time you got your hair done?” Emma says, looking up from the floor again. “That’s not relevant.”
“It looks relevant,” Emma says, and goes back to her notebook.
“She’s not wrong,” Hannah says.
I look at Englebert, hoping for an ally. He studies my hair for a long moment.
“I have no opinion on the matter,” he says.
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll book the appointment.”
“Tomorrow,” Hannah says. “Tiffany has information we need. If she dosed Pru’s cup, she’ll be thinking about it. If she didn’t do it, she’ll tell you who she thinks did, because she always has a theory about everything and she’s surely been dying to share it.”
The back door opens and Annabel leans in.
“Addie? You ready?”
Adelaide is off the floor and across the kitchen before the screen door has finished swinging. She grabs her composition book, tucks it under her arm, and stops at the threshold.
“Ms. Annabel? Can we do the smell test again? I want to practice some more.”
“After we finish the juniper tincture. You promised me you’d strain it today.”
“I’ll strain it fast.”
“You’ll strain it correctly,” Annabel says, holding the door, and Addie ducks under her arm.
Emma watches them go then makes a note on her clipboard.
“She keeps track,” Hannah says, following my eyes.
“Of Addie’s lessons?”
“Of everything Addie learns. She says somebody has to document it.”
Lily, from the bench, raises one apple sword.
“Can I go too?”
“You’re not in the lesson, Lil.”
“I could be in the lesson. I could learn potions. I could learn DEATH potions.”
“Nobody is learning death potions.”
“Annabel knows death potions. She told me.”
“Annabel absolutely did not tell you she knows death potions.”
“She said some plants can kill you if you eat them.”
“That’s not quite the same thing. That’s… botany.”
“Botany sounds made up,” Lily says. “Botany is just death potions.”
I pick up my phone and pull up the website for Tiffany’s salon. The booking page has an opening tomorrow at eleven.
I book it. A cut and color. I’ve never dyed my hair, but it buys me an extra hour in the chair.
Hannah looks over my shoulder at the confirmation screen. “See? That wasn’t so hard.”
“If she gives me bangs, I’m holding you personally responsible.”
“If she gives you bangs, I’ll buy you a hat,” Hannah says, and starts collecting apple peels.
* * *
After Addie’s lesson comes mine. I’m on the porch with a tea light while Annabel stands a few feet away. She said she’d supervise, but not hover.
“Whenever you’re ready,” she says, to the hydrangeas.
Englebert is on the railing as usual. He’s brought Maude, or rather, Maude has come, separately, at his own pace.
“Attempt seventeen,” Englebert announces.
“Sixteen.”
“Seventeen. You made an attempt last night when you believed yourself unobserved. The fruit bowl relocated. I saw it with my own eyes.”
I set the candle on the patio table, bare, no saucer, and I hold my intention like a match and offer it to the wick.
The candle shoots forward, toppling off the table and coming to rest against my shoe. It didn’t light, but for the first time in seventeen attempts, the object that moved was the one I was aiming at.
“Ha,” Annabel says, from the flowerbed, as she trims a withered bulb. “There you go.”
“It fell over.”
“It fell over because you hit it.”
“It still didn’t do what I wanted to,” I say.
“You’re getting closer,” Annabel says. “Magic can be chaotic.”
“And if there’s one thing to be known about you, Marigold,” says Englebert, rising to his feet. “It is that you are able to survive — dare I say thrive — in chaos.”
* * *
Rehearsal runs long, because Englebert decides at nine-fifteen that the porter needs a note. The porter is Ms. Pelham’s nephew Dale, who has eleven lines and has been avoiding anyone’s attention for six weeks.
“Three baskets,” Hannah tells the bartender when we finally make it to the Hearth & Stone.
“What’s in a basket?” I ask.
“Fried pickles, fried mushrooms, fried mozzarella sticks, who knows. Whatever they have on hand gets put in the deep fryer.”
We take the booth by the jukebox, which was a mistake. There are two men at the bar in a slow arms race about it. So far tonight we’ve heard “Islands in the Stream” three times.
“Where’s your cousin?” Gabe asks.
“Meeting a person.”
“A person? That’s vague.”
“That’s what I said.” I take a pickle out of my basket, which is a mistake, as it’s hovering around the temperature of molten lava. “She’s meeting a person, in an undisclosed location. She was smiling at her phone at lunch.”
“Is Pru seeing someone?” Hannah asks, leaning in. “Who is it?”
“I have no idea.”
“You have to have a guess.”
“I can’t let myself have a guess, because if I do, it’ll turn into a theory, and if it becomes a theory I’ll investigate it, and then Pru will stop telling me things for the rest of her life.”
“That’s very disciplined,” Gabe says.
“I am very disciplined.”
“You told me you went through a stranger’s medicine cabinet last week.”
“I was investigating. It’s my job.”
Hannah gets us through the first round talking about the Community Center’s electrical panel, which she describes as ‘a war crime’ and the second round on her mother, who has the girls tonight and who has been serving the same four dinners since 1994.
Emma has requested the menu rotation in writing. Emma requests most things in writing.
“She made me sign a chore contract,” Hannah says.
“Evidently she’s been spending too much time with Pru,” I say.
“It’s wild,” Hannah says. “It’s like, an actual contract. There’s a section for disputes.”
“Who arbitrates?”
“Lily, which was Emma’s idea, because Lily can be bought with a popsicle.”
Around eleven, Hannah checks her phone and stands up. She’s got a foundation pour at seven in the morning.
“Besides,” she says. “I’ve overstayed my welcome. I can tell when I’m the third person at a table for two.”
I roll my eyes.
The bar thins out after that. The jukebox men reach a treaty.
“Can I ask you something that isn’t about a play or a poisoning?” Gabe says, finishing up his second beer.
“Please.”
“How long are you staying? In Duskboro, I mean?”
“People keep asking me that. I don’t know.”
“And you keep saying that, but it’s a non-answer. It’s the same non-answer you gave in June.”
“It was true. It still is.”
“And yet,” Gabe says.
“You’ve been spending too much time with Englebert.”
Gabe laughs. The bartender starts stacking chairs.
“I’ll walk you to your car,” Gabe says.
“My car is right across the street.”
“Then I’ll walk you across the street,” he says, and he does.