by Nic Saint
“What’s wrong?!” Stien cried.
“Did you see the witch?” I asked.
“You guys! If Gran created this store, and made it work, why can’t she do the same for our careers? I mean—she could turn me into the next Katy Perry or Ariana Grande if she put her mind to it, right?” She faced me. “And she could buy you a bakery and make it the most popular bakery in Haymill if she wanted to. And you, Stien.”
“What about me?” asked Stien, chewing her lower lip.
“She could set you up as the next Attorney General!”
“The next Matlock or Perry Mason would be just fine,” said Stien.
“Or that!”
I thought about Strel’s words for a moment. “You know—I don’t know if you’re not right, Strel,” I finally said.
Strel frowned. “I know I’m right.”
“That’s what I said.”
“No, you said you don’t know if I’m not right.”
“It’s the same thing!” I gestured at her. “You’re right! If Gran can make this flower shop bloom, she can do the same for the things we really want. You guys! Floret & Bloom isn’t our dream—it’s Gran’s!”
“I don’t know if you’re not right,” said Stien with a slight grin.
“No, she’s right,” said Strel.
“That’s what I said,” said Stien, her smile spreading.
Strel slapped her lightly on the arm. “We’re both right! Let’s ditch this store and go after our own dreams instead.”
We were so fired up that we momentarily forgot one small detail. “First we need Gran to become her old self again,” I said. “She can’t help us if she’s on the verge of collapse every time Tisha sends her army of snakes into the house.”
We all stared across the street, where customer after customer walked into Pretty Petals, all of them blithely ignoring the fine flower shop across the street.
Suddenly, Strel took out her phone and dialed a number. While Stien and I shared curious looks, she said, “Oh, hi, Pierre. I want to order a wiretap. Yes, on Tisha Lockyer. I want to know who she’s talking to.” Her smile disappeared and she turned to Stien. “What is probable cause?”
“Tell him we have probable cause. Tisha is sending snakes into Gran’s garden.”
“She’s sending snakes into our garden, Pierre. There’s your probable cause.” She frowned. “Not good enough? What are you talking about? You saw the snakes yourself. These are mean, vicious creatures we’re talking about. And we had another attack this morning. How do we know Tisha is behind it?” She shrugged. “Call it a women’s intuition.”
Stien was shaking her head, and so was I.
“Women’s intuition is not good enough? Well, it was good enough for Adam, Pierre,” she said, jutting out her chin, “so it should be good enough for the NYPD! Who is Adam?” She flapped her free arm. “Adam and Eve, Pierre. Eve felt she should take a bite of that apple and so she did. And she was right. If she hadn’t bitten that apple, we would still be in loincloth, with no place to put our smartphones, and looking like a bunch of total losers!”
She gave us a look of exasperation, shaking her head as if indicating, ‘Men!’
“So what if they got thrown out of the Garden of Eden? I’m sure the place wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, Pierre. I’ll bet they didn’t even have Wi-Fi. Now are you going to get us that wiretap or not? We need to know what Tisha is up to and we need to know it now! Before she sends more snakes. Ironic? What’s ironic about that? Oh. Right. The snakes in Gran’s Garden of Eden. Ha ha, Pierre. You’re so funny. No, I didn’t mean it. I was being ironic!” And she promptly disconnected, emitting a groan. “Men! Fools! The lot of them!”
“Let me guess. He’s not going to get you a wiretap on Tisha’s phone?” I asked.
“Nope. Says we don’t have probable cause—whatever that is. You know? Who needs a wiretap? We’ll just ask Gran to grant us a spell, and find out what we need to know the witchy way.”
Somehow I doubted whether Gran would grant us another spell, though. And I was just about to give Strel the bad news when Stien cried, “Look, you guys! Who is she?”
Chapter 30
We all looked intently in the direction indicated. All I could see was a little old lady stepping out of the store, looking very pleased with herself. She had white cotton candy hair, a friendly face wreathed in wrinkly smiles, and was dressed like the Queen of England, in one of Her Royal Majesty’s trademark brightly colored coats—this one a striking mauve that had me blink a few times to adjust my eyes.
“What about her?” Strel asked.
“Doesn’t she look awfully familiar?” asked Stien.
“She looks like Helen Hayes dressed like the Queen of England,” I said. I thought I’d seen her before, though, but had no idea where. Maybe she was one of our customers who’d gone over to the dark side and was now shopping at Pretty Petals instead of us?
“She looks like the cat that ate the canary,” Stien added.
“Probably because she just bought a nice bouquet of flowers and is very pleased with herself?” Strel suggested.
“Well, then where are the flowers?” asked Stien pointedly.
She was right. As far as I could see, she was clutching a purse and nothing else.
“Maybe she’s a friend of Tisha’s,” said Strel. “Or maybe even Tisha’s mother.”
“Just snap a picture, Stien,” I said. “We’ll ask Gran if she knows who she is.”
Stien snapped not one but a thousand pictures, with the same determination that would hopefully one day see her standing in front of a jury and get them to return a not guilty verdict on one of her clients.
The little old lady tripped off along the street with remarkable alacrity, but not before darting a brief glance across the street at us. She didn’t look particularly menacing or threatening, and it was hard to imagine she would be the evil witch we were looking for.
I dismissed her from my mind the moment she disappeared out of sight, and went back to musing on the strange happenings of that morning and the day before.
Because of the sudden dearth of customers, we had plenty of time on our hands to keep an eye on Pretty Petals, but we saw no persons of interest enter the shop across the street. Our first customer arrived at eleven, and she wasn’t even a real customer at all.
“Hey, Renée,” I said when Renée Reive came bursting into the store, looking slightly out of breath, no doubt having more stories and more juicy morsels of gossip to spill.
She was carrying a copy of the New York Post under one arm, and a copy of the New York Daily News under the other. “Girls—you are not going to believe this.” She paused. “Unless you’ve read the Post and the Daily News. In that case you are going to believe this.”
“We haven’t read either,” said Stien, her eyes glued to Pretty Petals, her phone at the ready to snap more pictures of witchy suspects.
“I read Page Six,” said Strel, who’d grown bored with the surveillance operation and had resorted to surfing on her phone, ensconced on the sofa, feet tucked under her bum.
“What’s the big news?” I asked, rubbing my eyes. Surveillance is a tough business—except for Stien, who seemed to be a natural at the art of watching other people.
Renée threw the newspapers on the coffee table and we gathered around—all of us besides Stien, who was not going to let Tisha’s shop out of her sight even for one second.
The headlines were pretty screaming, as usual, and the pictures lurid to a degree. “They think the Slasher has at least three more victims, which would put the total at six,” said Renée, eager to give us the news. “The Post thinks he’s a war veteran—weary after having spent years fighting insurgents in some war-torn foreign lands and now applying his very particular skill set to the streets of Brooklyn. And the Daily News thinks he’s… a she!”
She gave us a triumphant look and we stared at her, not comprehending.
“The Slasher is a woman! Which makes se
nse, right? She was probably on the receiving end of this terrible abuse and is now on a rampage to make the bastards pay!”
“A woman vet,” said Strel as she perused the newspapers. She dropped them back on the coffee table. “All the more reason to leave this sordid business to the police to sort out.” She held up her hands. “I’m happy we’re out of it, honey. More than happy.”
“Oh, no, you’re not,” said Renée. She took out her own phone, surfed to the website of the Daily News and held it up for us to see. The article featured a grainy picture of me having a waffle and a cup of hot cocoa with Skip. “You’re very much involved.”
I frowned at the picture. “How the heck…” These guys were quick.
Renée gave me a penetrating look. “Did you or did you not share a beverage and a piece of pastry with the nephew of one of the Slasher victims, Edelie Flummox? Don’t lie!”
I shrugged. “Sure I did. And it was delicious. Up to Brown’s usual standards.” I remembered the reporters at Brown’s. Of course they would snap our picture. “So what? Skip is our friend. And he’s a part of the neighborhood watch as of yesterday.”
“They’re implying that you might be the Slasher,” said Renée.
I blinked. “Come again?”
“Or at least one of you. Or all three of you. Which would explain how the Slasher has managed to tally up such a high kill count. And why the Slasher would keep mentioning the watch. According to the Daily News you’ve grown frustrated with the way the justice and police system works in this town, and have decided to take the law into your own hands.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Stien from the window. “We’re not killers. We’re flower girls.”
“Well, not according to the pundits,” said Renée, leaning back, satisfied to have delivered this bombshell revelation in person. Mission accomplished. She then eyed me excitedly. “You can tell me, Edie. I’m a friend of the family. Are you the Slasher?”
“Of course not! How can you even ask me such a ridiculous question?!”
Renée pursed her lips. “I mean—I would understand, you know. It is frustrating to run a neighborhood watch and not be able to dole out true justice when you see fit.”
“Renée,” I said emphatically, “we are not this Slasher person. He’s simply trying to get us involved in his nasty business—and irresponsible reporters are helping him set us up.”
“Whoever the Slasher is, he’s really got it in for us, doesn’t he?” said Strel.
“He—or she?” asked Renée, darting pointed looks at the three of us.
Oh, goodie. Now even Renée was suspecting us of foul play. The world had gone mad.
Chapter 31
“You know? Helmut told me that his father served a nice long stretch in a Belgian prison,” Strel said, after Renée had left. “This was before he died in the prison hospital.”
“What was he in for?” I asked absentmindedly. I was reading through the articles on the Slasher on my phone. Renée was right. The media seemed to think the watch was closely implicated.
“Apparently his dad mistreated his mom, and when Helmut was fifteen things came to a head. They had a huge row and a neighbor called the police. His mom was pretty banged up when the cops arrived, and they arrested his dad on domestic abuse charges.”
I glanced up. “So? You’re saying Helmut might be the Slasher?”
“Duh,” said Strel. “I mean—he doesn’t look like a slasher. But he could be the one. He clearly has a history that would inspire this kind of… slashery behavior.”
I nodded, then remembered something Prince Fonzie had told me. “Did you know that in Khameit women are not allowed to drive a car? Or even leave the house without a male in the family signing some form of permission slip?”
Strel laughed. “You just made that up.”
“I did not. Women are not allowed to do business, go to public places without being accompanied by a man, drive a car, or even go to a concert, a movie or a sports game. And they have to cover themselves up whenever they leave the house. It’s crazy.”
“That is crazy,” Strel admitted.
“Fonzie says he wants to do away with these antiquated laws. He says that once he’s king he wants to modernize the country and give women equal rights.” I shrugged. “He seems to feel pretty strongly about this.”
“I thought Fonzie wanted to become an American?” Stien asked.
“I doubt that very much,” I said. “He seems to be pretty fond of his country.”
Strel’s eyes widened with excitement. “Fonzie could be the Slasher. He seems awfully quick with those knives. And he loves vigilante justice and the neighborhood watch.”
“You guys—Jerome told me the other day that as a kid his father used to beat him with his belt. In fact he beat all of Jerome’s brothers and sisters. And his mother. Apparently he was one of those abusive drunks that likes to take his frustrations out on his family.”
I shook my head. “Poor Jerome. I wish guys like his dad would be jailed for life.”
Strel had picked up one of the newspapers and was studying it with uncharacteristic fervor. “When did this Slasher business start? I mean—when did it really begin?”
“Um…” I thought back to Renée’s words. “Two weeks? Something like that?”
“And when did Jerome, Helmut and Fonzie arrive at Casa Cassie?”
I shared a meaningful look with my sister, and even Stien turned away from her vigil.
“Two weeks,” I said.
Strel smiled a triumphant smile and threw down the paper. “I rest my case.”
“You think one of our guests is the Slasher?” asked Stien. “For real?”
“For real,” Strel said. “Just think about it. Before they arrived, Haymill was a peaceful neighborhood. Now? We’re a hotbed of crime—a vigilante killer murdering men left and right.” She tapped the papers. “They think we did it—but we know we didn’t. So that only leaves Jerome, Helmut and Fonzie. I’ll bet one of them is the Slasher—or maybe even all three of them working in cahoots!”
“I don’t know, Strel,” I said. “Somehow it seems unlikely. I mean, there are plenty of hotels and B&Bs and Airbnbs where plenty of new guests are coming and going all the time. Why couldn’t one of them be the Slasher? Why does it have to be one of our guests?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Stien pointed out. “Admit it, you guys. For some strange reason we seem to attract the criminal element.”
“That was one time,” I said, remembering the killer we’d harbored—and caught.
“Safflower House is not a regular Airbnb, Edie,” said Strel. “We are witches and we will attract weirdos. Killers and murderers,” she clarified, making her meaning clear.
“I think killers and murderers amount to the same thing,” Stien said.
“Whatever.”
I rubbed my eyes. The notion that we were harboring three killers under our roof seemed outrageous. Then again, the timing didn’t lie, and neither did these men’s pasts. Could it be that they’d banded together, and were eradicating abusive men at an astounding pace? But why try and frame the watch in the process? We hadn’t done anything wrong.
“You guys?” said Stien, staring down at her phone with a worried frown. “I sent the picture of that little old lady to Gran.”
I sat up a little straighter. “And?”
She looked up. “She’s not responding. And when I try calling her—no response either. Not on her cell and not on the landline.”
Chapter 32
We arrived at the house in record time. No point in keeping open the store since all of our customers seemed to have deserted us and flocked to Pretty Petals.
We slammed inside and the first thing I saw was Gran, collapsed on the parlor floor. She was holding her phone in her hand and was lying next to the sofa and a toppled piecrust table, pictures of me, Strel and Stien scattered across the floor.
“Gran!” I cried, and immediately sank down next to her.
I felt for a pulse and to my extreme elation found one. I looked up at the others. “She’s alive—but her pulse is weak.”
Stien was already calling an ambulance, while Strel had rushed to the kitchen and soon returned with a restorative potion Gran kept in one of the kitchen cabinets. She’d often used it on us when we were little. It was an all-purpose herbal remedy that, at least according to Gran, could return the dead to life.
Strel knelt down next to me, and rubbed some of it under Gran’s nose. To our relief, she opened her eyes.
When she saw us, she gave us a watery smile. “Oh, girls. I’m so happy you’re here. I must have suffered a spell of dizziness.”
“You’re going to the hospital this time, Gran,” I announced.
To my surprise, she didn’t protest, but nodded, placing a hand on my cheek. “Watch out for Lashanda,” she whispered. “Protect the book. Protect the house. Watch your backs.”
And then, before I could respond, her eyelids fluttered, then closed, and her head dropped to the side. She was out again.
I stared up at my sisters. “Did you hear that?”
“I didn’t hear a thing,” said Stien.
“Me neither. What did she say?”
“Watch out for Lashanda. Protect the book. Protect the house. Watch your backs.”
Strel clasped a hand to her mouth while Stien uttered a stifled sob.
I glanced at the phone in Gran’s hand and took it, then swiped it to life. A picture appeared and I held it up for the others. It was a picture of the old lady outside Tisha’s shop.
“That’s the picture I sent Gran,” said Stien. “The one she didn’t respond to.”
“She didn’t respond because she collapsed the moment she laid eyes on it,” I said.
“Could this—” Strel swallowed, gesturing at the phone. “Could this be Lashanda?”
We all stared at the picture, and I clasped Gran’s hand in mine, willing her to pull through. I was feeling utterly helpless, and now wished we had our witchy powers. I had no idea what spell we would have used, but we would have been able to do something.