Chapter 13 #2
Their slice of idyllic domesticity was quiet when they returned.
All the guests at the Dead & Breakfast were either asleep or still out and about—even Other Arthur Miller had not yet returned.
That suited Original Arthur just fine, because he had a lot of detective work to do, and it was best done without being disturbed by requests for towels.
Usually Arthur relished the opportunity for a late-night chat with their patrons, but he didn’t think he had it in him tonight.
In the kitchen, Arthur headed straight for the mail basket.
“Oh, you’re really going to sniff it.” Sal sounded delighted. “Why, my delectable smarty-pants?”
“Ted said it smelled like sage.” His hunch might turn out to be silly.
Lots of things contained sage. It was a perfectly good plant with many uses, both culinary and medicinal, but the hand sanitizer had a striking scent, sage mixed with other things in a particular ratio Arthur could never hope to guess but could recognize now that he had his own hands to compare with.
Arthur pulled the letter from the basket of mail. He set the paper on the counter and leaned down to inhale deeply. Then he gasped, which was hard to do because he hadn’t exhaled yet (one does tend to forget how to work one’s lungs after decades of not needing to breathe).
“What is it?” Sal asked, hovering behind him.
“They smell the same. Unless there’s a popular kitchen-herb-scented cologne out there, whoever wrote this letter did so just after using Celestine Coven hand sanitizer.”
“Can it really be?” Sal gasped, clutching his tie. “The very same?”
“You have no idea what that means, do you?” Arthur straightened up, turning to face his husband.
“I don’t, no. But I wasn’t going to let you have all the fun.”
“If the writer of the letter used a Celestine Coven–branded product, it very likely means they’re part of the coven itself.”
“Why?” Sal blinked. “Isn’t their entire business selling their potions and things to other people?”
“If they were a normal business, yes. But they aren’t.
” Arthur had read articles about this sort of thing—not that it was new.
The practice had begun around his time as a mortal human, and he remembered with disdain the rise of the California Vitamin Company as well as the California Perfume Company.
Perhaps there was something wrong with California back then, not that it was pertinent to the case.
“Come on, don’t you see it? The tiered power structure?
The little catalogs?” He held up the flyer he’d been given the first day of the festival.
“The Celestine Coven is obviously an MLM.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Sal frowned.
“It’s predatory, yes—”
“Arthur! How can you be so bigoted? We’re mlm!”
“In what way—”
“Men loving men!”
“MLM stands for multilevel marketing, Sal. A pyramid scheme. It’s a business structure, and a shady one at that.
They profit by recruiting other people to sell the products, because no one in their communities actually wants them.
They make their money by preying on their own salespeople, promising better perks with level advancement.
But the reality is that most of them will never make it past the first or second levels, and the only people making any money are at the top. ”
“Sounds like good ol’ capitalism to me.”
“Or a cult.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I said.”
Semantics aside, Arthur could understand where Sal was coming from. An MLM was a symptom of the greater sickness at the heart of America (and so many other countries, too).
“Wealth! A plague on all our houses,” Sal continued, adopting a Shakespearean affect to his voice. “Or…it would be if people could afford to buy them.”
Arthur didn’t understand the connection, but he knew questioning it would only end with him on the other side of one of Sal’s long-winded rants that included as much fact as fiction.
Instead, he said, “Well, the point is, Other Arthur might have been onto something. Most MLMs are fraudulent businesses in one way or another.”
“This is too confusing.” Sal furrowed his brow. “Maybe we should start pronouncing it differently. Lowercase m-l-m can be mlem—oh no.” His face fell.
“What is it?” Arthur asked.
“I’ve made myself sad. Rumble used to mlem all the time. Sticking out her cute little tongue. She was such an ally.”
Arthur’s thoughts stuttered to a halt at that. “What?”
“She must’ve been mleming so often to show us she supported mlm.”
With a sigh, Arthur rubbed his eyes. Remembering Rumble and her absence came with a surprising stab of pain sharper than her claws.
He’d never expected to harbor so much affection for the creature, and he hated not knowing if she’d ever want to return.
With effort, he pushed away the discomfort.
There were more important matters to think about now.
“The point I was trying to make,” Arthur said, “is that anyone using Celestine Coven hand sanitizer was most likely part of the coven. That means the organization the letter writer refers to could be the coven itself. I should have known.”
“How could you have known?”
Arthur sighed, feeling the great part a fool. “Dr. Young mentioned his wife had been witchy, remember?”
“Yes, but there’s no way you could’ve known she’d be a coven witch, let alone with the same coven visiting Trident Falls!” Sal grinned. “What an unbelievable coincidence!”
“I don’t think it is a coincidence, Sal. Between this note and Lola’s journal, I think it’s fair to say the Celestine Coven is involved with both our cases. I just haven’t figured out how.”
“Yes, well. It’s a shame we got kicked out of all their events.”
“It is.” Arthur deflated. “That’s going to make investigating them far more difficult.”
Arthur had spent the last two months wondering why a woman who’d sent regular letters to her son had stopped near the start of the year.
Until then, she’d given every sign that she wanted to be part of Brody’s life, even if he never wrote back.
At the beginning of his investigation, Brody had given Arthur all the letters to read carefully, in case they contained a clue about her location.
None had narrowed things down any further than her PO box, but she’d mentioned several times that she was open to whatever visitation arrangement Brody wanted, if he ever wanted to see her again.
Now that he did want and need her in his life, she was gone. Perhaps that hadn’t been by choice. Lola Lataurelle had written Wilhelmina’s name as her dying action. Whoever killed her might have done the same to Wilhelmina.
The alternative theory, that the murderer had been Wilhelmina herself, was possible, too. Arthur would have to proceed with that in mind, as much as he didn’t want it to be true. Brody deserved to have one parent who wasn’t a killer. Of course, the universe rarely cared what someone deserved.
Either way, Wilhelmina’s conspicuous absence was connected to the Celestine Coven and Lola’s murder. Solving one case would more than likely help solve the other.
“Tomorrow,” Arthur said to Sal, “we should reach out to Brody with this update. The boy ought to know, even if it comes with the possibility that Wilhelmina might not be alive.”
Sal patted his shoulder reassuringly. “It could turn out all right in the end. Anything’s possible.”
Giving Sal a smile, Arthur didn’t voice his thoughts. Whatever had happened to Wilhelmina had already happened, possibly months ago. All they could do now was try to put the pieces together.