“I thought we’d start with Feif.”
She hopped off her stool. “I’m ready when you are.”
I finished my cupcake, took one last long sip of coffee, waved to Evan, and headed for the door with Glinda.
Once we were out on the sidewalk, she stopped and faced me.
“What is it?” I asked. “Are you having second thoughts about teaming up?”
“No, it’s not that. It just seems a little strange that we’re working together to clear Dorothy’s name, especially since neither of us like her very much. There are a lot of witches in this village who’d love to see her rot in jail. I have to admit I’m conflicted as well. She’s not a nice person, Darcy—at all—but I don’t want her to be railroaded for a crime she may not have committed.”
I didn’t bring up Archie’s glee last night—or the fact that I wouldn’t mind seeing Dorothy behind bars, either. Some things a witch knew best to keep to herself.
And I definitely did not point out the fact that Glinda had qualified Dorothy’s involvement.
… for a crime she may not have committed.
Her use of may not told me that, despite Andreus’s assurances about Divinitea’s spell, Glinda wasn’t wholly convinced of her mother’s innocence.
Instead, I nudged Glinda forward toward the crosswalk. “I’m not thinking of our work as exonerating Dorothy. We’re working to find Leyna’s killer. That’s where our focus should be.”
Wherever it might lead us.
Glinda looked my way. “I like that much better.”
“It helped me sleep last night.”
The light turned, and as we started across the street, I spotted Sylar Dewitt coming our way—he was looking down at his phone. When he looked up and spotted us, he froze for a moment before spinning around and rushing off in the other direction.
“That’s weird, right?” I asked.
Glinda watched him fast-walk away. “Very weird. It almost looks as though he’s running away from us, doesn’t it?”
It did.
“Why, though?” she added. “Guilty conscience?”
I wasn’t sure. But because of his squirrely departure, I added Sylar to my suspect list.
Chapter Ten
“What is this about?” Feif Highbridge asked, forty dollars and almost an hour later.
Glinda and I had stood in line, not-so-patiently waiting our turn with the psychic. He charged twenty dollars per ten-minute reading, and even though we’d tried to tell his handler we weren’t there for a reading, there was no getting around each of us paying the fee.
We’d already wasted several of our twenty minutes with Feif trying to explain why we were there.
He was playing dumb.
If Harper were here, she would have shredded him on the spot.
During the time we’d spent in line, we learned from those among us that Feif’s method of reading people’s energy came from touching the pulse point on their wrist. That news had come as a relief to me. As long as I kept my hands to myself, my secrets would be safe.
“We’re investigators hired to look into the death of Leyna Noble,” Glinda said again.
Remarkably patiently, I thought. In fact, she gave off the vibe that she didn’t care what he said or did. Her limbs were loose, her shoulders relaxed, her face blank. Meanwhile, my shoulders were so tight they ached, my fists were clenched, and the headache pulsing behind my left eye was starting to sound just like Higgins’s tail hitting the dryer. My eye twitched, and I was clenching my teeth.
Feif was scraping my last nerve raw.
Glinda had already showed him her credentials. While I technically had a PI license too, I wasn’t comfortable using it, since I’d kinda sorta obtained it magically. Glinda had obtained hers the old-fashioned way. The legal way.
For this interview and any others that involved mortals, however, I was acting as Glinda’s apprentice. It gave us the cover we needed to ask questions without coming off as busybodies. After talking with Feif, we planned to find Stef Millet to see if she knew when Dorothy had left the Stove the day before.
Feif’s dark wavy hair was slicked back, and his high forehead wrinkled as though he didn’t understand a word she was saying. “Private investigator?”
I tried not to sigh at his arrogance. “What was your relationship with Leyna?”
“Did I have a relationship with Leyna?” he asked.
Glinda turned to me. She lifted her eyebrows and said dramatically, “Maybe we should just let Nick handle this. Can you give him a call? I’m sure Feif, here, wouldn’t mind spending the rest of the day at the police station.”
“I agree,” I said, knowing she was trying to force his hand. “Feif’s fans might be disappointed—and his bank account as well by the looks of the line of fans outside—”
“Clients. Not fans,” he interrupted.
“Clients,” I said, fumbling for my phone in my tote bag. “But you might be right, Glinda. A long afternoon in an interrogation room might loosen Feif’s tongue a bit. Do you have a lawyer?” I asked him. “You might want to give them a call, because we know you were in Divinitea when the fire broke out—which was after you were thrown out by Amanda Goodwin.”
“I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explanation for the discrepancy,” Glinda said to me, as though we were alone in the tent.
Just two friends chitchatting.
“Oh, surely,” I said. “Nick will sort it out.”
“Nick?” Feif asked, not so much as blinking.
Cool as a cucumber, this one.
“Nick Sawyer,” Glinda said. “The village’s chief of police. He was with the state police for years before that. Wasn’t he in the military, too?”
“Yes. And he’s also my fiancé.” I smiled and flashed my diamond ring. “We’re getting married next weekend.”
“My felicitations,” Feif said dryly.
I pulled out my phone, and he held up a hand.
He said, “I don’t think that’s necessary.”
Glinda leaned forward, narrowed her eyes, and sharpened her voice as she said, “What was your relationship to Leyna?”
His eyes flared at her sudden personality shift, before he went back to being too cool for school. “Business,” he said breezily. “We’d had great success when she was with the festival, and I was encouraging her to come back. She was stringing me along, playing me for a fool.”
“How so?” I asked.
“For one, we were supposed to meet up on Friday at the local coffee shop to discuss details of her return to the festival, but she stood me up.”
I stiffened at the mention of the coffee shop. “What time were you supposed to meet with Leyna for coffee?”
“Eleven,” he said easily. “I brought the paperwork for her return to the festival. I should have known she wouldn’t show.”
“Being that you’re a psychic?” Glinda asked with a smile.
He mocked her smile. “Being that she liked to play mind games.”
He was a good liar. If I didn’t know the truth, I would’ve believed him about being stood up. But I’d been there, inside the Witch’s Brew, with Leyna. She’d been waiting for someone.
Feif had been the one who stood her up.
Why was he lying? I was debating calling him out on it when he said, “For another, she called, apologizing for missing the coffee meeting. She asked me to meet her at Divinitea on Saturday to sign the contracts.”
“You thought she was jerking you around, but you still went to the Saturday meeting?” Glinda asked.
“I place business before my ego. Her talent was remarkable—the festival wasn’t the same without her.” He blinked, his eyes softening. “I know I won’t be the same without her.”
I tried not to gag at the line he’d fed us. I didn’t believe for a second that he cared for Leyna in any capacity, other than dollar signs. I decided to hold back on calling him out for lying about the Witch’s Brew. If he was supposed to be meeting with Leyna b
ut had stood her up, where had he been during that time? It had to be somewhere important if he was crafting such an elaborate lie. I didn’t want to tip his hand too soon.
“We know you two argued on Saturday,” Glinda said. “Was it about the contracts?”
“It was,” he said. “She reneged on our deal at the last minute and had me thrown out like common trash.”
The comparison fit, I thought. “But you went back in.”
He acceded with a nod of his head. “I thought if I could just get her to listen to me … really listen … I went around to the back door and into the kitchen. I was hiding in an alcove, waiting to sneak down the hallway and into the office again when the alarms went off. I evacuated. The end.”
Glinda rolled her eyes. “Can anyone verify that story?”
“It’s not a story,” he said. “It’s the truth. And I don’t know. I didn’t see anybody, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t see me. No, wait. Someone did see me. She was coming back from the bathroom. I don’t know who she is, though. Blonde hair, blue eyes. Pretty. She smiled at me. I smiled back.”
Starla? I wondered. But no, she would have mentioned seeing him. The sooner I could get that guest list Amanda was putting together, the better. Because if what he was saying was true—and that was a big if—then he had a solid alibi.
I rather doubted he was telling the truth. About any of this.
His forehead furrowed. “Isn’t there already a suspect in custody?”
“New evidence exonerates that suspect,” I said, bending the truth. “Which means there’s still a killer out there.”
Glinda said, “Do you know of any enemies Leyna may have had? Someone who could have done this to her?”
“Have you spoken to Carolyn Honeycutt?” he asked, leaning forward.
“No,” I said. “Who’s she?”
“She’s Leyna’s stalker. Oh, I’m sorry. Carolyn prefers the term groupie.” He used air quotes.
Suddenly I didn’t like air quotes very much anymore.
He went on. “She has followed Leyna from town to town for years now. Leyna tried to distance herself, but the more she withdrew, the more determined Carolyn became.” He tapped his temple. “She’s not right in the head.”
“Is she here, in the village?” Glinda asked.
He nodded. “I’ve seen her several times. Most notably in front of Divinitea yesterday as the place burned.”
Immediately, I thought of the redheaded woman. “By chance, does she have red hair?”
“Yes, she does. Red hair and sociopathic tendencies. Be careful when you’re dealing with her. She’s unpredictable.”
“Do you know where we can find her?” I asked.
“Unfortunately, yes. She’s staying in the same B and B as me, the Pixie Cottage. Now. If you two don’t mind, I have fans waiting.”
I stood up. “Don’t you mean clients?”
Anger infused his handsome features, turning them into something ugly. “Good day, ladies.”
As we walked outside, Glinda said, “I don’t like him.”
I blinked against the bright sunshine. “That’s because he’s a lying liar who lies.” As we walked toward Stef Millet’s condo, I told Glinda about the incident at the Witch’s Brew and how Feif had been the one to stand up Leyna.
“But,” Glinda said, “is he lying about everything? Is Carolyn Honeycutt really a crazed stalker?”
“Only one way to find out. Are you up for a trip to the Pixie Cottage after we talk to Stef?”
She nodded. “Definitely.”
* * *
The air was filled with the sounds of summertime as we walked across the village, headed to Stef’s. A lawn mower hard at work, children laughing, birds chirping. Two young girls rode past us on bicycles, talking loudly about the Midsummer Ball this weekend—an event that was always planned around the solstice.
“I keep thinking about Sylar and how he ran away from us this morning. Have you had much contact with him since he and Dorothy separated?” I asked Glinda.
I’d texted Starla about the redheaded woman and had given her an abbreviated version of what Feif told us. She texted back that she was still planning to ask around. I had the feeling she was hanging around the festival to accidentally bump into Feif.
I also texted Harper and Mimi, giving them an extremely condensed version of the morning’s events. I’d be able to tell them more later on, during our Sunday supper.
“Not much contact,” Glinda said. “I’ve seen Sylar a few times while grocery shopping—and he always stopped to chat. Most recently, he called me to come get Dorothy out of the tree. He was nice. Cordial. I don’t know why he’s had a sudden about-face.”
A literal about-face.
She looked my way. “Maybe it’s you he’s scared of.”
I laughed. “I know, I’m so terrifying. So he’s been cordial with you, but how’s he been with Dorothy?”
“It’s been an ugly split,” she said. “Sylar pretty much blindsided Dorothy with those divorce papers.”
“I would think she’d be happy to be free. She’s wanted to be rid of him for a while now.”
“On her terms,” Glinda said. “Not his. He made her look like a fool, so she’s been on a quest to bring him down. She’s hitting him hard where he hurts most—in his wallet. She kicked him out of his own house and withdrew all but a few hundred dollars from their joint account.”
So much for my theory that she might want him back. She just wanted to make the split as painful for him as possible. “The house is only in his name?”
Glinda nodded. “He never got around to adding Dorothy to the deed.”
Which made me wonder if he had seen the writing on the wall all along.
She said, “I’m not sure how Dorothy’s getting away with keeping him out the house, but she is.”
“He’s probably afraid of her. I can’t say I blame him.”
“Me either.”
I said, “I want to feel badly for him, but he had to know what he was getting into when he married Dorothy.”
“Love is blind,” she said. “And in Sylar’s case, deaf and dumb as well.”
“Something opened his eyes, though, since he filed for divorce. What?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. All the papers said was ‘irreconcilable differences.’ ”
I’ll say. “Do you think he’s capable of killing someone just to frame Dorothy?”
“I don’t know,” she said after taking a long moment to think about it. “I certainly don’t want to think so.”
Neither did I. Sylar could be a pompous blowhard, sure, but I’d never considered him evil.
We turned the corner onto Stef’s street, and I tried to put thoughts of Sylar out of my mind for now.
Stef lived in a two-story condo on a picturesque, tree-lined cobblestone lane not too far from the village center. The row of colorful condos had been designed in a Victorian style that always reminded me of San Francisco’s painted ladies. Stef’s place was painted a cheerful coral pink and had purple flowers spilling out of twin window boxes. The garage door was closed and no lights were on as we climbed the steps.
I surreptitiously peeked in the window by the front door as Glinda knocked. I didn’t see the flicker of a TV or spot anyone moving around. Everything was neat and tidy, from the pillows on the sofa to the gold photo frames on the table. All of which seemed to hold pictures of Stef and her husband, Adam, who’d passed away some time ago after a battle with leukemia. She didn’t speak of him often, but when she did, I could hear only the immense love she had for him. Not too long ago, she’d been dating Vince casually and had told me she wasn’t interested in anything long-term. Soon after, they’d gone their separate ways and Vince had started dating someone else. Yet he and Stef had been together at Divinitea. Were they back on?
My phone chimed, and I pulled it out of my tote as Glinda knocked again.
“It’s a text from Nick,” I said. “Dorothy’s refusing
to answer questions without a lawyer present.”
“That’s not surprising,” Glinda said. “She has to know that hairpin makes her look guilty, not to mention the threat she made on Leyna’s life, and of course, the vandalism …” She frowned. “If she was framed, she made it easy for someone, didn’t she?”
If. There she was again, qualifying. “I’m not sure she could have made it easier. Maybe if she’d actually been caught holding the match.”
My phone chimed again. “Nick says they’re waiting for an attorney to show up.”
“Court appointed?”
I texted Nick the question and waited. “No. Personal, he says.”
“Where did she find a lawyer?” Glinda asked.
“Good question.” I texted it to Nick and waited. “He says it’s somebody Vince found.”
“Vince,” Glinda said on a sigh. “I really need to talk to him.”
“Me too.” I had questions for him about his presence at Divinitea yesterday.
Glinda nodded at my phone. “Is Vince at the police station?”
My fingers flew over the keys. “Nick says no.” I glanced at her. “Since Stef doesn’t seem to be home, maybe we have time to stop by Vince’s place before going to the Pixie Cottage to question Carolyn Honeycutt?”
“We can make the time,” she said as we headed down the steps.
As we walked back toward the village square, I couldn’t help thinking that perhaps we might find Stef at Vince’s place as well.
Chapter Eleven
“What?” Vince said through the intercom system connected to the buzzer in the alleyway.
“Good morning to you, too,” Glinda said. “I’m here with Darcy. We have a few questions.”
Morning. It was hard to believe it wasn’t yet noon. “Lots of questions,” I amended.
His voice crackled. “I can barely contain my joy.”
The buzzer sounded, the door made a clicking noise, and Glinda pulled it open. “He gets his charm from Dorothy.”
“Clearly.”
We went up the steps, and I was overcome with memories of another murder case that had taken me up this staircase a long time ago. A case that had involved Vince. A lot had changed between Vince and me since then. And a lot had stayed the same.
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