Athena, a bit quieter, asked “Does it have to be either/or?”
“Are you saying they did it together?” The thought had definitely crossed Celestial’s mind, but the whole thing still felt off. Celestial didn’t think Tommy was the kind of person who would kill for money or power, but she had to admit to herself she didn’t know him or Elaina all that well. She decided it wouldn’t hurt to consider the possibility.
Chapter 25
Feeling more urgently than ever that she needed to get down to the bottom of this, Celestial decided that now was the time for action. “I’m going to Jardín Rico,” she told Athena. “I just can’t stay still any longer. We’ve been working too long off of these confusing clues, but we haven’t gotten the chance to actually hear what any of our suspects say when they’re questioned outright. If either Elaina or Tommy knows anything about this, I want to hear it from them right now. Or else I want to hear them lie to me, so I can start poking holes in their story.”
“All right,” Athena said. “Maybe you should let Nikoli know what you’re doing, though. Weren’t you planning to collaborate with him? And if something goes wrong, he should know where you are, at least.”
“You’re right,” Celestial agreed. She pulled out her phone and dialed Nikoli. It rang a few times, then went to voicemail. She told him where she was going and what she was planning to do.
Then, with Athena at her side, Celestial went to Jardín Rico.
“How dare you set foot in here,” Elaina said when Celestial breezed confidently into the kitchen. “Or don’t you remember last time? Friends of that murderer Jody Stillwell aren’t welcome in my restaurant.”
Celestial had hoped to confront Tommy and Elaina together. Unfortunately, it didn’t look like Tommy was here. There were a couple kitchen workers who looked up nervously at Celestial’s entrance and their boss’s reaction to it, but they were all unfamiliar to Celestial, and they all determinedly kept their distance.
“Is Tommy around?” Celestial asked, breezily as she could manage.
“He’s working the dinner shift,” Elaina answered, crossing her arms. “Now, did you hear me or didn’t you? I’m asking you to leave.”
“Don’t worry, I plan to,” Celestial said. “But first, I need you to tell me what I need to know.”
“And why would I do that?”
“Because, if you answer my questions to my satisfaction, you’ll win the opportunity to get me out of your hair forever.”
Elaina scowled. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that I’m here to eliminate you as a suspect in Tammy’s murder. You keep insisting you aren’t the one who did it--do you think you can prove it?”
The kitchen employees were starting to look a little too interested in this conversation, a fact that Elaina evidently noticed, because she tersely gestured for Celestial to follow her back to the manager’s office. It was a tidy workspace lit by small rectangular windows set high in the wall. It exhibited all of the order and none of the personality of Elaina’s home.
When they were safely alone, Elaina closed the door, and the clattering and rushing sounds of the kitchen faded. “Fine,” said Elaina, recrossing her arms. “What, exactly, do you suspect me of doing?”
“Someone swapped the parsnips Tommy was planning to serve that night out for water hemlock.”
Elaina arched an eyebrow. “Water hemlock?”
“It’s very poisonous,” said Celestial. “And it grows wild just outside of town. Anyone could have had access to it.”
Elaina rolled her eyes. “And it does look just like parsnips, to an untrained eye.” She huffed a sigh. “I suppose it doesn’t matter that this is the first I’m hearing of this water hemlock patch outside of town? No, of course it doesn’t. Well, could you at least tell me what window of time I was allegedly at Jody’s Diner, making this swap?”
Celestial told her the window of time the police had surmised.
“I was right here at the restaurant through that entire window of time. I am almost every night.”
“Is there anyone who can verify that?”
“All my staff would have seen me at one time or another, of course,” said Elaina. “But they were busy about their jobs, which means none of them could account for the fact that I was here the whole time. But wait, let’s see.” Elaina crossed the office and leaned over her desk, paged back through a hefty agenda book a few pages. “Ah. There. That entire window, I was having a meeting here in this office with one of our vendors.”
“Which vendor is this?”
“We get our plateware from him,” Elaina explained. “We’d been having difficulties with subpar products. Some of it was arriving already broken, others were breaking in the dishwasher. He’s not exactly a bottom-dollar guy, either, so we were having a serious discussion about the discrepancy between what I expected from the supply he brought us and that supply’s poor performance.”
Celestial could only imagine what a serious discussion with Elaina was like. Little wonder the two had been in here for hours.
“Any chance I can get his name and contact information?”
“Sure,” Elaina said, grabbing a notepad and jotting down a company name and number. “This specific guy’s name is Larry. I doubt it’s a conversation he’d forget.”
She ripped the page off the notepad and handed it to Celestial, who pocketed it.
“If this doesn’t check out, you’ll be hearing from me again,” Celestial said.
“It’ll check out,” Elaina said with confidence. “And when it does, I hope you have better sense than to ever come back to Jardín Rico again. Now go.”
Celestial agreed to go, but still Elaina insisted on seeing her all the way to the door. Even as Celestial walked down the street and away from Jardín Rico, Elaina lingered in the restaurant’s front doorway, as if to be sure that Celestial wasn’t about to double back for just one more question.
All the way home, Celestial felt frustrated. The whole interview was infuriating. She didn’t like Elaina one bit. Everything about the woman rubbed her the wrong way, and she certainly seemed brutal and ambitious enough to have done something drastic, and even recklessly dangerous or malicious, to sabotage her professional competition. But Celestial also got the very distinct feeling that Elaina had been being honest with her.
Chapter 26
Still, whatever were Celestial’s personal feelings about Elaina’s honesty, an alibi had to be checked up on, and quickly. Celestial didn’t want to give Elaina the opportunity to arrange with this vendor a faulty alibi. So, as she continued her walk home, she pulled out the number Elaina had given her and dialed it into her phone.
After a couple of rings, a gruff-sounding man picked up. “Wright Supply,” he answered, businesslike.
“Hi,” said Celestial. “I’m looking for Larry?”
“You got him.”
“Oh, great.” Putting on her most official-sounding voice, hoping he wouldn’t question her credentials, Celestial said, “I’m assisting in an investigation for the local police, and I was hoping you’d be able to help me follow up on a timeline that was given to us by a person of interest.”
“Uh, sure. Will I need my datebook?” The sound of shuffling papers came from the other side of the line.
“If you’ve got it handy, that would be a great help.” She told him the night in question and the specific time and asked whether he could verify where he was and who he was with.
Larry laughed wryly. “I don’t need my book for that one. I remember it right off the bat. I was at that ritzy place with all the fancy food, some kind of foreign name--you know that one?”
“Jardín Rico?” Celestial offered.
“That’s the one,” Larry agreed. “We just started supplying dinnerware there not a month ago, our best sets, too. But the lady who runs the joint was tearing me a new one. Evidently all the chefs there got butterfingers, they’ve been breaking the plates. What kind of plates don’t break if they’re
dropped? And she wants me to give her some kind of upgrade, or free replacements, or a guarantee. She wants guarantees, that’s not exactly the restaurant business’s thing, you know what I’m saying?”
Celestial’s stomach sank. It looked like Elaina’s alibi was checking out after all. She confirmed with Larry that Elaina was the person he was with--at first, he couldn’t remember her name, but he described her accurately, and when he found his datebook he verified that she was the one he had met with. Then, she verified the times he’d been with her. Evidently, the meeting had lasted almost two hours, going back and forth on their contract with Elaina trying to get Larry to budge. She’d even said something like ‘We’re not leaving this office until we get this figured out to my satisfaction’--and they hadn’t. As far as alibis went, it didn’t get much more decisive than that.
When Celestial had tried her best at poking holes in the alibi, to no avail, she thanked Larry and hung up.
Next, she pulled up Tommy’s phone number and dialed.
“Hello?” he answered, sounding slightly worse for wear.
“Tommy?” Celestial asked. “It’s Celestial.”
“Oh,” he said, not sounding heartened at this news.
“I just swung by Jardín Rico. I was hoping to talk with you and Elaina, but you weren’t there.”
“I doubt Elaina was thrilled to see you,” Tommy said.
“No,” Celestial admitted. “But I did manage to get something important from her. Her alibi for the night of Tammy’s murder. It checked out, Tommy. She’s not the one who switched out the parsnips for water hemlock. She’s not the person who killed Tammy.”
“I didn’t even realize you thought she might be.”
“Well, we were considering a number of angles when it came to suspects. Partially because the only other obvious suspects are Jody… and you.”
“I didn’t do it,” Tommy insisted, sounding suddenly pleading and desperate. “I know no one believes me, but I’d do anything to prove it, really I would. I was busy that night, and… and, all right, I was distracted and flustered that Tammy was there. But I tried my best to keep my focus on the work. I cooked the parsnips, then I left them on the counter for Jody to take to Tammy. That’s it, I promise, that’s all I know.”
Again, Celestial’s instincts were kicking in. This was less of a solid alibi than the one Elaina had just given her, but Celestial couldn’t help but feel that she believed Tommy. Somewhere, deep in whatever part of her body housed her intuition, she felt, strongly and distinctly, that he was telling her the truth.
But that left Jody as the only viable culprit. Celestial’s intuition rebelled against that notion, too.
If Jody and Tommy were the only two with opportunity, and neither of them did it… surely that didn’t make sense.
Not unless someone else, someone Celestial hadn’t yet considered, had been involved. But she’d been looking into this case for days, and so had Nikoli and the rest of the police department, not to mention half her friend group. While half the town might have had a reason to want Tammy dead, there was a limited number of characters whose names had actually come up in the investigation.
“And you didn’t see or hear anything? Anyone else coming in?”
“Like I said, I was distracted. I guess there were opportunities for just about anyone to come in, and I can’t guarantee that I would have noticed them.”
Celestial pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed deeply. Athena--who had been following her, silent, since they left the shop--gave her a sympathetic buzz.
“Fine, Tommy. Thanks for the help.”
“Good luck, Celestial. I do hope you figure it out, you know? I don’t like thinking that Jody might have done it, either.”
Celestial said good-bye and hung up the phone. She checked her messages, thinking she might have somehow missed a return call from Nikoli while she was calling Larry and Tommy. She hadn’t. He hadn’t even sent a text.
That was strange. Usually he returned calls pretty quickly--particularly when there was a murder investigation that Celestial was helping with.
She called him again. The phone rang several times, then went through to voicemail again.
She didn’t bother leaving a message this time. She hung up, feeling worried.
Chapter 27
By the time, Celestial had nearly made it back to the shop, so she hurried the rest of the way on foot, Athena buzzing busily behind. Jinxy, who had followed Celestial from her home to Herbal Heaven that morning, had evidently been waiting inside the shop for Celestial to return. He meowed happily and brushed eager figure-eights around Celestial’s legs as soon as she unlocked the door and let herself in.
“Athena,” said Celestial. “I want to talk all the evidence through. I feel like there’s something we’re missing.” She pulled up a seat behind the counter, and Jinxy jumped eagerly into her lap. “Jinxy, I suppose you can be part of this conversation, too.”
He purred, eyes half-closing in contentment.
Athena landed lightly on the stack of papers on the counter. “What do you know?” she asked.
“I know Elaina didn’t do it,” Celestial said ruefully. “I know I found a lighter with Elaina’s restaurant’s initials on it in Jody’s restaurant’s kitchen. I know someone--a woman, evidently, though they were disguised and couldn’t fully be recognized--was seen wearing protective gear and gathering water hemlock just outside of town.”
“Do you think the family who saw that woman might have been mistaken?” Athena prompted. “You think it might have been a man and not a woman?”
“I’m not sure,” Celestial said. “They were pretty clear that the person’s identity was obscured, but they also seemed pretty clear it was a woman they’d seen and not a man. That seems like an interesting distinction, and it makes me a little more inclined to believe that something about this figure--the size, the shape--seemed womanly. Besides, it would be odd for them to assume it was a woman if they didn’t have some kind of visual indicator.” She wished she’d thought to talk to the family directly instead of just overhearing their gossip. If she’d even just gotten their name and contact information that night at Jody’s she could have been following up now to verify what they’d seen.
“Okay,” Athena said patiently. “What else do you know?”
Celestial took a clarifying breath and continued. “I know the door from the kitchen at Jody’s out into the alley was unlocked. According to Tommy, it might as well have been unattended. And it sounds like the dish that went to Tammy was left more or less on its own from the time Tommy cooked it to the time Jody eventually came to bring it out to the table. Considering how busy and distracted they both were, that window might have been a minute and it might have been more like ten.”
Just then, as she talked it through, Celestial started to feel herself having a realization. It came to her slowly, but then she worked it over again in her mind. Athena must have noticed that epiphanic light coming into Celestial’s expression, because she didn’t prompt her with more questions, only waited and watched.
Finally, Celestial muttered, “The switch… I hadn’t really been thinking about when the switch happened. I guess I’d assumed it was as easy as adding uncooked water hemlock onto a pile of parsnips, and then Tommy not noticing and cooking them all up together. Which would have made sense if Elaina was the one responsible, and her motive wasn’t to kill anyone in particular, but just to discredit the restaurant. But… but Tommy seems to think the switch happened later. After the plate had been prepared. Which means whoever made the switch had to have cooked the plate themselves.”
A new theory was forming, one that Celestial could hardly bring herself to believe. But then, silently to herself, she went back through all the evidence she had--both hard evidence and timelines and even, potentially, a stab at a motive--and she realized that she knew who the murderer was.
She stood restlessly. Jinxy meowed his disapproval, but landed gracefully on the floor a
nd started washing his face. Meanwhile, Celestial dug for her phone in her pocket.
Her first call was to Nikoli, but she wasn’t even surprised this time when he didn’t pick up. Worried, yes, but not surprised. Again, she didn’t bother to leave a message.
Next, she called Tamara. “Is Dakota with you?” she said after a hasty greeting.
“What? Yeah, actually, we were just going to go to lunch. Why?”
“Hey, Celestial!” she heard Dakota shout.
“Great. I need the two of you to meet me, right away.”
Tamara’s voice was suddenly serious. “Of course we will. Is it about the case?”
“Yes,” said Celestial. “I think I’ve got it all figured out. I’ll explain it all to you in person.”
“We’ll be right there. You’re at the shop?”
“Yes, but that’s not where I want you to meet me.” She rattled off an address, one she’d copied down in her notes long ago not expecting she would need to use it. “Can you both get there quickly?”
“Quick as we can,” said Tamara. “See you there.” Then she hung up the phone.
Celestial tucked her phone back in her pocket, then turned to Athena. “Coming?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” said Athena, zipping into the air.
In a second, both had disappeared, leaving Jinxy behind to gape after where they had blinked out of existence. Then, with the kind of cognitive resilience known only to cats, he hopped up onto the chair Celestial had just vacated and curled into a comfortable ball. He had grown to like Celestial’s presence, frenetic as it was, and he was happy to have officially adopted her as his human.
Pacing outside the house, Celestial felt a surge of impatience at not knowing what was going on inside. She had a rising, gripping feeling that this entire case was coming to a head, and she was eager to rush forward and be done with it.
However, she knew better than to head on in without her backup. She trusted her friends and wanted them at her side to face whatever was waiting inside that house for her.
Brooms and Brains (A Hocus Pocus Cozy Witch Mystery Series Book 5) Page 9