A Sprinkling of Murder

by Daryl Wood Gerber

  “Were you worried? Did you think I’d abandoned you?”

  “I wasn’t sure. I don’t know everything there is to know about fairies.”

  “Tosh.” She flitted back and forth. “I won’t leave you. You’re mine, and I’m yours. Bonded for life. Soul mates.” She stopped midair and folded her arms, nodding. “That has a good ring to it, doesn’t it?”

  “For a mushy romantic card,” I joked.

  Pixie stirred and scampered to my side. On her hind legs she reached for Fiona. The fairy swooped in front of Pixie’s paws but didn’t let her nab her. She giggled.

  I held out a hand, inviting Fiona to light. She did. Pixie settled by my feet. “So, where were you?”

  “At the library. Sleuthing.”

  “Again with the sleuthing.”

  “I was pursuing righteousness.”

  “Courtney.” Miss Reade rushed through the doorway from the main showroom and hurried to me, pinning the tails of her aqua cashmere shawl to her chest so it wouldn’t fly away. “Hello, love.” She came to a stop and smoothed her skirt. Sotto voce, she said, “I’ve so enjoyed meeting Fiona and spending time with her. She is a breath of fresh air.”

  I gawped at Miss Reade. “You can see her?”

  “As I hinted the other day, I am a visionary like my grandmother and I possess a childlike spirit.” She beamed. “I particularly like Fiona’s acrobatics. She’s quite agile.”

  A flicker of something zoomed into view. Another fairy, larger and older than Fiona, drifted beside Miss Reade’s head, her sizeable adult wings holding her aloft with ease. “May I introduce myself?” she asked in a lusty timber. “I’m Merryweather Rose of Song.”

  Miss Reade said, “Courtney, this is my library fairy. She’s a guardian fairy and can be a bit of a rules follower.”

  “More of a rules enforcer,” Fiona tittered. “She’s my mentor.”

  “Rules create balance in the universe,” the elder fairy said with all seriousness. She faced me and smiled an infectious grin. “You’re just as Fiona described.” Like Fiona, she had iridescent gossamer hair that glimmered in the light. Unlike Fiona, her cheeks were plump, her loose-fitting dress was a regal crimson, and one set of her wings sported matching polka dots.

  Miss Reade said, “Readers need guidance. Cultivating the mind doesn’t happen of its own accord. The young are particularly susceptible. Merryweather inspires writers of all ages.”

  Fiona did a somersault in the air. Was she trying to get my attention?

  Merryweather tsked. “Did Fiona tell you I’m helping a local author do research for a new book?”

  “We haven’t gotten around to that, yet.” I smiled.

  “Eudora Cash,” Fiona exclaimed.

  I gazed at her. “Brady’s mother?”

  “Yes.” Fiona batted her wings impatiently. “Merryweather, may I tell her the rest? Please?”

  Merryweather nodded. “Go ahead.”

  “So I went to the library from Emily Watkins’s house because, well, after seeing The Artist’s Way and the cards that fell out of it, I had a feeling.”

  Customers were roving the patio. None appeared to notice our animated conversation. Meaghan and Joss were standing in the doorway, their backs to us. I presumed they were watching the security guys with an eagle eye even though the company was bonded.

  Fiona went on. “When you said Mick’s notes were about a wealthy guy having a secret, I knew who I needed to contact. Merryweather. Who better to dig up a hidden secret in Carmel? A guardian fairy is supersmart and very organized. At my suggestion, she and I started with Logan Langford because you mentioned his name.”

  Merryweather said, “His family has an extensive history in Carmel.”

  “But he’s not the killer,” I said. “I spoke with him. He was secretly in debt and worried about disgracing his family, but he had no reason to kill Mick. He’s found someone to bail him out.”

  “You mean his nephew,” Fiona said.

  “Yes, how did you—”

  “Many of his family are regulars at the library.” Merryweather gestured to Miss Reade. “Your turn.”

  Miss Reade said, “Do you realize that some writers use special tools to write a story?”

  “I’m sure they do. Outlines and such.”

  “Yes, well, I was chatting with Eudora—Dory; she comes in daily—and she mentioned that writers often write about someone they know, but”—Miss Reade held up a finger—“in order to disguise their inspiration, they change the sex of a character so the person will never guess whether he or she was the basis for it.”

  Fiona clapped. “What if the wealthy man was really a wealthy woman?”

  Merryweather’s eyes gleamed with delight. “And what if that woman had a sealed record from her teenage years?”

  Fiona giggled with glee. “We checked. She does.”

  I said, “Who?”

  “Wait for it,” Fiona cried.

  Miss Reade said, “We stumbled upon it because Eudora—Dory—is writing a story set thirty years ago. She’s been poring over historical documents at the library, in paper as well as using our online archives, in an effort to create a few characters for her book. As I said, Dory and I were chatting earlier, and she mentioned a particular local woman, close to Mick Watkins, who has a sealed record.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Petra Pauli.”

  I gasped. Had Mick tucked the business card into his workbook on purpose? As a clue? “Hold on.” I shook my head. “A sealed document doesn’t tell us much. Petra could have done something as benign as keying a high school rival’s car.”

  Fiona snapped her fingers. “Remember Emily telling us that she sent notes to Petra saying she knew her secret?”

  “If you’ll recall, Petra didn’t react,” I countered. “She didn’t leave town. It’s a nothing burger.”

  Joss and Meaghan joined our little circle.

  “What’s a nothing burger?” Joss asked.

  Meaghan said, “Is there a fairy here, Courtney? You and Miss Reade are doing a lot of listening.” She gazed toward the skylight.

  “Two,” I said.

  My pal blinked.

  I clasped her hand and held a finger to my lips. “Go on, Miss Reade.”

  The librarian lowered her voice. “What if Petra did something truly horrible?”

  I filled Meaghan and Joss in quickly about discovering Petra Pauli had a sealed record.

  “If she did something horrible and the truth came out,” Joss said, “it could ruin her political future.”

  “What if Mick knew the secret and threatened to expose it?” Fiona asked.

  Meaghan echoed Fiona’s question. Had she heard Fiona or intuited her?

  “People confess to things when in love,” Miss Reade said. “It happens all the time in novels.”

  “What if the letters Emily sent made Petra lash out at Mick?” I suggested.

  “Which letters?” Meaghan asked.

  I explained. “Emily didn’t know Petra’s secret, of course. She was vamping. She hoped the threat would scare Petra out of town.”

  “Does Petra have an alibi for the night of Mick’s murder?” Joss asked.

  “She claims she was at a political meeting that no one will corroborate because it was secret.”

  Fiona blew a raspberry.

  “I spoke with Oriana Gray, who knew of the meeting, but she didn’t attend.” I turned to Miss Reade. “Could I see the files Eudora Cash was researching?”

  “Of course.”

  “Eudora Cash?” Joss cried. “I love her books. Where is she? At the library? Right now?”

  “She’s gone home,” Miss Reade said.

  I asked Joss to watch the store and hurried off with Miss Reade, Fiona, and Merryweather. Meaghan, unable to see or hear either fairy but clearly intrigued, trailed us.

  On the way, I received a text message. From Gregory Darvell. Emily was being released from the hospital, which gave me pause. If she was bein
g released so soon, perhaps, as I’d wondered before, her assault had been staged and she hadn’t suffered a concussion.

  Get real, Courtney.

  Grasping that I had trust issues, I added seeing a therapist to my ways-to-improve-myself list.

  Chapter 24

  No child but must remember laying his head in the grass,

  staring into the infinitesimal forest and seeing it grow populous

  with fairy armies.

  —Robert Louis Stevenson, Essays in the Art of Writing

  Harrison Memorial Library was located at Ocean Avenue and Lincoln Street and open Tuesday to Friday in the afternoons. It was a great place for people of all ages. For kids, they had story time, craft time, baby and toddler time, and preschool yoga. They even offered a drawing class for tweens. Busy minds were happy minds.

  Though the library wasn’t huge, it had a terrific collection of books, including fiction and nonfiction as well as a variety of cookbooks, e-books, audiobooks, and movies. In addition, it featured the history of Carmel through photographs, letters, diaries, maps, and yearbooks as well as works of art. Because the library couldn’t house everything on site, it worked hard to provide links to television shows, movies, and magazines related to the area. Play Misty for Me, the Clint Eastwood thriller filmed in Carmel, was a popular search target.

  As Miss Reade had forewarned, Eudora Cash was not present. She had wrapped up her research and headed home. But the documents she’d been browsing were stacked on a cart, ready to be returned to the appropriate locations—books, reels of microfiche featuring newspaper articles, and yearbooks ranging from the 1980s to the 1990s. Eudora had inserted the library’s bookmarks into the books and yearbooks, and she had attached sticky notes with her notations on the microfiche reels.

  “Aw, Dory,” Miss Reade tsked. “Sometimes she’s like the absent-minded professor. She never remembers to remove her memos. We have to do it for her.”

  Meaghan read from the sticky notes: “Petra at debate event. Petra cheerleading at football game. Petra on student council. She sure was busy excelling.”

  “Like her father,” Miss Reade added. “The congressman was a go-getter. He died too young. Heart failure.”

  “So Petra became an overachiever to honor him,” I said, understanding better than most how a daughter tried to please a parent.

  “What does it take to open a sealed record if it hasn’t been expunged?” Meaghan asked.

  “A court order,” Miss Reade said.

  Merryweather and Fiona hovered above a yearbook. Their combined fluttering was creating a bit of a stir. With a shake of her wand, Merryweather doused the yearbook with fairy dust. The book opened.

  Meaghan eeked. “What the—”

  I placed a hand on her arm. “Be cool.”

  “The book opened of its own accord, and”—she wiggled a finger—“I see something glimmering.”

  “Merryweather,” Fiona cried. “Stop. Right there. Look.”

  Merryweather caused the pages to fall, landing on a picture of Petra in a cheerleading outfit. Her face was tear-stained, her mouth downturned.

  “What do you think happened?” Meaghan asked.

  “Maybe her team lost the game,” I said.

  “She looks like she’s mourning,” Fiona whispered.

  “Mourning?” I asked. “You can read that on her face?”

  “Notice her eyes.” Fiona flicked her fingers beside her own. “They’re vacant. The queen fairy told me that mourners often go away emotionally to a far place.”

  I must have looked the same when my mother died. I said, “Miss Reade, could we see correlating photographs and articles pertaining to this year, as well as obituaries?”

  It took her about ten minutes to amass printed pieces of material. Meaghan and I laid them out on a rectangular table, side by side.

  “Stop!” Fiona and I cried at the same time. “That one.” She fluttered above the article in question.

  “Is that a funeral?” Merryweather asked.

  The child of a neighbor of Congressman Pauli’s had died in a hit-and-run car crash.

  “Oh, my.” Miss Reade leaned in, scanning the article over our shoulders. “Look at the date.”

  “What about it?” I asked.

  “Congressman Pauli died the next day.”

  “The sealed record,” I said. “What if Petra drove the car that caused the crash?”

  Meaghan nodded.

  Had Petra’s father disposed of the car and suffered a fatal heart attack after trying to hide his daughter’s guilt? Was her mother able to seal Petra’s record due to her age? Did Petra fear that if this information came out now her career would be destroyed?

  “Courtney, look at this.” Meaghan tapped another photograph.

  I examined it and exhaled softly.

  Three teenagers, arm in arm, dressed in matching T-shirts and jeans. Petra with her sweeping curls. Isabella Acosta, zaftig and happy, a complete one-eighty from the gaunt, uptight woman she was now. And Emily Watkins, her horsey face prettier in youth.

  “And this.” Fiona alit on another photograph.

  All three girls. At the funeral. Clad in black and looking numb.

  Miss Reade whispered, “Did you ever see that movie I Know What You Did Last Summer?”

  “I did,” Meaghan said solemnly. “It was so scary and sad. Dear friends bound by a tragic past.”

  Petra, Isabella, and Emily weren’t friends now. This moment in time must have been the turning point.

  * * *

  Meaghan took notes, and I photographed the documents, after which I sent an email with attachments to Detective Summers, outlining what we’d learned. He probably wouldn’t appreciate my help, but I didn’t care. I was doing my citizenly duty.

  Promising to keep Meaghan in the loop, I hurried with Fiona to the shop. The security workmen were leaving Open Your Imagination as we arrived.

  “Courtney,” a woman called. Petra Pauli, dressed to the nines, her hair in an updo with a few tendrils, trotted out of Wizard of Paws with her collies in tow and hurried toward me. “Sonja told me about Emily. I can’t believe she’s in the hospital.”

  I eyed the dogs’ leashes and gulped. Hard. The other day, I’d noticed that they were slip-style, but it hadn’t registered that they were made of rope.

  Fiona must have sensed my discovery. “Ask her in for tea,” she suggested.

  My mouth went dry. I couldn’t find the words.

  “How horrible for her to be attacked in her home,” Petra went on, looking truly concerned. “What is this world coming to?”

  If I hadn’t mistrusted Petra and if I hadn’t seen her squabble with Emily at the council meeting, I’d have thought she was sincere. Boy, politicians could lie with ease.

  Fiona orbited Petra, sprinkling her with fairy dust. “As you very well know, I can’t make her tell the truth, but I can make her talk.”

  Petra blinked. A bit of dust caught her dogs. Zeus, the feisty one, looked up at Fiona and yipped.

  “Hush, you brute,” Petra said. “Courtney, how about a cup of tea? Let’s chat. You must be shaken, having found Emily.” She handed me the dogs’ leashes and hurried ahead of me into Open Your Imagination. “Coming?” she asked over her shoulder.

  I caught a whiff of her as she passed. “What is that scent you’re wearing?”

  “Thymes Vanilla Blanc. It’s made with Madagascar vanilla and amber wood. Don’t you love it? It’s so subtle.”

  Not subtle enough, I mused. Before passing out, Emily must have caught of whiff of Petra’s perfume.

  As we entered the shop, Joss screwed up her mouth. She wanted to ask me something, but I gave her a silent warning to wait a few minutes. I handed off the dogs to her and filled two Wedgwood Hibiscus cups with hot water. I grabbed the tea caddy and led Petra to the patio. We chose a table close to the ficus trees. Fiona perched on the rim of the tea caddy, sitting cross-legged, her elbows braced on her knees. Joss brought the dogs out and ord
ered them to sit. They did. She released their leases, said, “Call me if you need me, Courtney,” and returned inside.

  A few customers passed our table, carrying their purchases into the shop. After they left, the patio was empty, save for us. The dogs hunkered down on the slate floor and closed their eyes.

  As our tea steeped, Petra said, “Tell me what happened. How did you find Emily? How did you know to look at her house?”

  “Gregory was worried.”

  “Gregory Darvell?”

  I nodded. “He’d called her repeatedly. He’d hoped to meet her for coffee after a training session. She didn’t respond. Gregory and I hurried to her house. We found her on the floor. She’d been struck with a salt lamp.”

  Petra uttered a soft moan. “I think everyone has one of those nowadays. Supposedly they can clean the air in your home and help you sleep.” She removed her tea bag and set it on the saucer. “Sonja said Emily’s house had been torn apart.”

  “Not exactly torn apart, but definitely rummaged through. Whoever attacked her wanted to find something.”

  “And did they?” Petra added sugar to her tea and stirred with a spoon.

  “I’m not sure. When we searched for what might be missing, we discovered a workbook that Mick had been using to inspire him to write a thriller.”

  “Aw, how nice. Mick told me he was going to try.” Petra set her spoon on the china saucer. “He said he was keeping a diary with his notes. I told him I thought that was cute. Men don’t usually keep diaries. Did you find that, too?”

  “The workbook is a sort of diary.”

  “Really?” Petra blinked rapidly, a clear sign that she’d gone to the house to look for the diary. I’d bet she’d searched for the old-fashioned kind fitted with a lock and key.

  “Busted,” Fiona said sarcastically.

  I said, “Mick’s notes suggested he was writing a book about a wealthy man with a secret.”

  “How sad that he won’t get the chance to finish it,” Petra said.

  “Did you know that an author will often change the sex of a character so the person the writer is basing the character on won’t realize it’s them?”

  “Fascinating.”