by Kelly Ethan
Xandie closed her still-open mouth. “What did Agatha say when you told her you were searching Marjorie Penne’s place?”
“She told them they’d better get protection, and she apologized for dropping them on their heads as babies.” Melody slunk up, chewed nails hidden behind her back.
“Like I told our dispatcher…” Caleb Braun frowned at his sister. “We have a credible witness statement that puts the artifacts in the Penne hoard, which sets up motive for Archibald Penne’s murder.”
“Oh. My. God.” Lila threw up her hands. “She’s his grandmother. Do you think her capable of killing family?”
Riley backed his brother. “Anyone’s capable of murder. Just takes a second to snap. We have to follow every lead we find.” He grabbed Caleb and pulled him away. Melody gave a wave to the girls and trotted behind her brothers.
“Zachy bear’s gonna lose it with those two. I feel sorry for them. The Penne family holds grudges like nobody’s dragon.” Lila shook her head in shock.
“That isn’t news to me.” Priss shoved her blond curly hair into a bouncy cheerleader ponytail.
Es jogged back toward the girls, the rest of the clan absent from view. “Xandie. Grandmother wants you and your family to come up to the compound. She needs witnesses. And she wants to remind you of your obligations to the library and Point Muse.”
Lila grab Xandie and Priss and towed them toward the car park where Elspeth stood waiting. “We’re coming. I wouldn’t miss this for a hundred butter puffs.”
Xandie bit her lip. Was Ronald Penne right? Was Marjorie involved in the gallery fraud and the missing artifacts? And what had happened to the police finding the missing Iris Malone?
Finding Iris Malone was easy. Her crispy fried body sat in the center of the Penne hoard, the art dealer’s hand stuck to a missing artifact—the wish stone from the gift shop.
“It didn’t help Iris,” Xandie muttered in an aside to Lila.
“This town has gone murder happy since you arrived.” Lila extended a foot and shoved a priceless gold plate out of the way. “I need to upgrade my serving-wear at the café. This gold stuff would look smashing against my food.”
“Shouldn’t we focus on the fact there’s another dead body in front of us?”
“Come on, Xandie. It’s a frame up. Marjorie Penne would never murder anyone herself. She’d have just ordered a hit.” Lila choked on her spit when Marjorie Penne strode over to Xandie.
“Alexandra, you need to find out who did this. Who desecrated my hoard? Do this and the Penne dragon clan owes you a favor.” Marjorie swept a hand around the room. “And that’s worth more than the gold in this room.”
Xandie swallowed. “I’m not sure the police agree. The department will be as thorough as possible—”
Marjorie cut Xandie’s words off with the slice of her hand. “We both know the boys are inexperienced. I’ve contacted the paranormal investigative group and I’m trying to get in contact with Zachary Braun, but there’re no guarantees he will be home before another person dies. You need to find the killer and clear my name.”
Marjorie’s stress was obvious to Xandie. The dragon’s smooth silver bob was in disarray. Hair stuck up every which way. Twin red spots on both cheeks burned along with the fire flickering in her eyes.
“And the great Marjorie Penne would never stoop so low as to hurt another person? Never cause pain or harm?” Priss hissed at her grandmother, anger in every line of her stiffened body.
Marjorie quirked an eyebrow at the stranger in her hoard room. “And you are? I don’t believe I’ve ever encountered you before today.”
“My name is Priscilla Makepeace, and it’s your choice we don’t know each other. You made your bed, now it’s time you laid on it. Prison colors and all.” Priss stormed out of the room, unable to hide her fury.
“Interesting friend you have there. I’d be more careful in the future who you depend on. She’s a loose cannon.” Marjorie weaved through the hoard like a graceful dancer until she joined her daughters and lawyer, Ronald Penne not in attendance this afternoon.
“Priss and Marjorie walk the same way when they’re angry.” Lila stared quizzically at Xandie. “What’s the plan now your main suspect is crispy?”
“Avoid Priss and Marjorie and stay alive.”
Considering her track record for stumbling across dead bodies and killers, her chances were low on every count.
Eleven
“Xandie, some old weirdo on the phone for you,” Holly yelled over the top of Lila’s lunch crowd.
Old weirdo? That could describe most of the over-sixty population of the town. Xandie took the phone from her cousin. “Xandie Meyers.”
“You want the file or not, librarian?”
The troll investigator. She’d recognize that harsh smoker’s voice anywhere. “It’s paid for, I guess. It can’t hurt.” Hopefully.
“You want me to drop it into your cousin’s bakery?”
“Ah, no.” Lila was the only Harrow aware of Sera’s investigation. Xandie didn’t want to upset the rest of the family. Especially Elspeth. Who knew where the radioactive hex fallout would land if her grandmother found out? And Theo wasn’t having anything to do with the troll fiasco as he called it. “How about the small park next to Elysian Fields Funeral Home? It’s more private.”
“The dead center of town. I like your thinking, sweetheart. Thirty minutes. Time is money, so don’t be late.”
Xandie listened to the dial tone as the troll hung up on her again. Not one for small talk or social niceties. Then again, he was a troll.
“Everything okay?” Holly popped up next to Xandie.
“Yeah, just a library thing. I have to head out. Will you be okay with Lila’s customers until she comes back?”
“Sure. I work here whenever Lila needs help, plus she brought in a fill-in baker while she was at her dentist appointment.” Holly ignored the customer waiting impatiently at the cash register. “She’s dentist phobic, so they always give her something to calm down. She’s a hoot afterward.”
“Excuse me? I want to order now,” the customer interrupted.
“In a minute,” Holly trilled.
“This is unprofessional,” the customer huffed.
Holly rolled her eyes and whispered to Xandie, “I caught Lila sneezing in a complaining customer’s lunch once. Goddess knows how she stays in business.” Holly pasted a fake smile on her face and turned to the woman at the counter. “Sorry. Important bakery business. How can I help you?”
Xandie turned away from the spluttering customer and slipped out the back of Lila’s bakery.
Harrows were trouble magnets, but they were never boring.
Xandie adjusted her position on the rough wood seat. The Point Muse council had opened up a small parcel of land next to the Elysian Fields Funeral Home. Landscapers had turned the plot into a tranquil picturesque garden for any family needing time after a loved one’s funeral. Most days it was a peaceful place to meet a cranky old troll gumshoe. Holly’s bosses, twin sibling necromancers, had laid the walking dead residents of Point Muse to rest after the dragon funeral.
“Geez, you want to meet at a funeral home? You witches have a death wish.” The troll dropped onto the bench opposite Xandie with a long-suffering sigh. The seat groaned under his weight. “I heard about the zombie dragon incident. Nasty business.”
She’d never met a troll in person. Barefoot, the private detective would have towered over an average sized man. He had muscled shoulders and tree-trunk-sized limbs. Hair was gray and coarse and close cropped in a military-style cut and his face was rugged, with large lines grooved into the skin around his mouth and eyes. She’d hazard a guess her gumshoe was a habitual frowner.
“I’m a librarian, not a witch. The death thing’s my cousin, the banshee. This was the quietest private place I could think of.”
The troll dropped the file he held with an ominous splat on the wooden table between them and smirked. “People are just
dying to come here.”
Xandie groaned. “Haven’t heard that one. Is this my file?” She tapped the folder in front of her.
The investigator used a tobacco-stained finger to push the thick file over. “Here you go, sweetheart. The nitty gritty in print.”
Bile rose in Xandie’s throat, forcing her to take a quick swallow. She placed a trembling hand on top of it. “That’s a thick file for a simple disappearance.”
“Ain’t no simple.” He puffed his chest out. “Trollish Investigations is a full-service agency. In that file is a background check on all Meyers and Harrow family members.” He lowered his voice. “That grandmother of yours, Elspeth. She’s a scary one. Large parts of her life are blanked out; don’t exist on paper, digital or magical. Her information’s so redacted, it’s just black paper.”
“Elspeth’s always been a tad shady in regard to her background,” Xandie offered with a genuine smile. Her grandmother was mayhem incarnate, but she always had the Harrows’ or Meyers’ backs when necessary. As long as her grandmother had her bedazzled hipflask, the octogenarian was raring to go. “And the rest of the file?”
“Financial checks on both families, credit checks. Witch web and vehicle checks. Property and social media searches.” The troll shook his head. “Witchface, witchmention and ask-a-witch had nothing on your mom, but a bucket load on the rest of the Harrows.” He shuddered, causing the table and bench seat to shake. “Your cousins’ and aunts’ photos should be illegal.”
“Any other dark pasts I should know?”
“The Harrows have a few spotty arrests for protesting and sit-ins. A few for illicit substances and disturbing the peace. Just your normal run-of-the-mill witch family in Point Muse. But your mom’s the interesting one.”
Xandie drew her hand away from the folder, afraid to touch it in case the contents leaped out and bit her. “What’s interesting about Miranda Harrow?”
“You could read it yourself.”
“Or you could just give me the highlights and I’ll read it in peace later?” Rip off the band-aid, troll. “My mom?” Xandie prodded the investigator back on track.
“I spoke to old neighbors of your mother. Both here and in Andrews, where she settled with your father.”
“And?” Xandie didn’t know whether the churning in her stomach was from the suspense or the knowledge she was about to get more than she bargained for on her mother.
“Everyone loved her. Not a bad thing said. Except…” He trailed off and shuffled on his seat, looking everywhere but at Xandie.
“Spit it out.”
“When your father left for work, your mother dropped you off at the neighbors and picked you up just before he came home.”
Xandie shook her head. “I don’t remember that.”
“The neighbor did. Full human and chatty. She made great cookies.” The troll licked his lips at the memory.
“What was my mom doing while I was at the babysitters?”
“That’s the thing. There’s no record anywhere of Miranda Harrow having a job during that time. No employment, banking or tax records. Nada. Zip. And that’s suspicious.”
“How?”
“There had to be a digital or paper footprint. Did she have a coffee meet-up? Paid with credit? Did she meet someone for lunch and use her bankcard? There’s no record of credit or bankcard usages during those blank times. Even human security cameras got nothing. I have a great tech witch who can hack, and she can find footage even from twenty years ago. But there’s only a big blank. In my business, that ain’t normal.”
Her mother, even a mystery before she disappeared. “You have nothing on her?”
He scratched the side of his nose. “I wouldn’t say that. Look, you gotta know. A twenty-year-old mystery is tough. Records were paper, not digital yet. And in magical departments, it’s even worse. Supes are paranoid about security and more suspicious than humans. Getting answers is hard work. I went to an old contact of mine. He works in various projects for higher-ups.”
“Higher-ups where?”
“Government, chickie. The human kind though, not supernatural. My contact did some digging and turned up your mom’s name on deep classified files.”
“Has to be the wrong person. Mom never worked for the government.” Mom had had no real powers, compared to those of her Harrow family, but she’d still grown up in a supernatural clan. Why would she have worked with humans?
“Your mom was a digger, as far as I can tell. She had a nose for crime, the super freaky woo-woo kind. Shadowy inner circle government types would call her in to consult. But my friend had to dig deep to even find that. The guy won’t take my calls now.” He grimaced.
“Are you saying my mother, Miranda Harrow, was a spy?”
“I’m saying she’s murky like her mother. She wasn’t all peaches and cream.”
Xandie’s heart fluttered, skipped a beat, then pounded in her chest. “The knight confessed to chasing her off the cliff. What connection does he have to her death?”
The troll sighed and then looked Xandie straight in the face. “That’s why I wanted you to read the file. So I didn’t have to see you face to face.” He took a deep breath. “I don’t think your mother is dead.”
Xandie reared back, his face tunneled in for a moment, hazed over with black fog. She shook her head. No way. Her mother was dead. Otherwise why leave her only child? “No. The knight confessed to chasing her off a cliff. Miranda Harrow is dead.”
“The knight chased her off a cliff and she fell, banged herself up good. But someone saw her fall. I got a real witness, one that swears your mother was alive after she fell.”
“A witness?” Xandie screeched the last word, then took a shuddering breath in and let it go with a shrill whoosh. “Why didn’t Point Muse police find the witness? What about the human coast guard? Surely they would have found someone who saw my mother’s death?”
“Nah, my witness is a merrow. A mermaid. They’re secretive. No way she’d go near human police or coast guard. She told me she saw your mom fall, hit the water hard. The rocks banged her up so bad, the Mer assumed she was dead until your mom moved. The witness grabbed your mom and tried to return her to Wrecked Cove under the cliff Miranda Harrow fell off, but the tides wouldn’t let her.”
Xandie inched forward on the edge of her seat. “What happened?”
“The fish dropped your mom off two towns over at their fishing port and never thought a thing about the incident until I came asking.”
“My mom was only a few towns away?” All this time, her mother had only been a short distance away?
“The thing with Merrows is they’re flighty, with a short attention span. They have no sense of land or human map references. Her two towns over were a hundred miles away near Macon, up the coast.”
“Mac… what?” She’d never heard of the town.
“Macon. Small town. Human with a few psychics. It’s the eastern most point of the United States.”
“Mom’s alive?” Xandie’s hands shook and she slipped them under her jean-clad thighs.
“Twenty years ago, she was. I checked the hospital records, but they had a fire just after your mother arrived and it destroyed the paper records.”
“Convenient,” Xandie mumbled to herself.
“It’s not surprising in a small coastal town. It’s the timing of the fire that concerns me. I had a look-see and talked to the residents. Most had no clue, but I found an old nurse from the hospital who remembered her. She said around that time, some fishermen found a Jane Doe near the harbor. The woman matches your mom’s description.”
“Why didn’t my mother come home?” Xandie burst out, unable to hold her words back.
“Because of the head wound. The Jane Doe had no memory of her life before the fishermen found her. All the nurse could tell me is that a week after the cops made enquiries, black-suited government types swept in and took her away. The hospital was never told her why the agents grabbed Jane Doe.” The troll
patted Xandie on the shoulder. “I’m sorry, chickie. The trail stops there.”
“The government people my mom may or may not have worked for picked her up but didn’t bring her back.” Xandie leaned over the table, gritting her teeth and glaring at the investigator.
“Whoa there, librarian. Cover those pearly whites. I can keep looking. But even if they are humans, those shadowy government types cover their tracks.”
Xandie closed her eyes then forced them open again. Her mother’s whereabouts had waited twenty years, it could wait a little longer. The priority was Priss and a dead dragon. Even if Xandie didn’t want it to be. She was the librarian and tough enough to focus on other things. “Keep an ear to the ground in case something bubbles up from your digging, but I have other bodies to deal with right now.”
The troll slapped his hand on the picnic table. “Zombie dragons, got it. I’ll call you if I get any information. Then we can discuss my finder fee.”
She groaned; the library had paid one invoice; the next one was on her. She’d speak to Lila. Everyone in town passed through her bakery. Her cousin probably knew the witness and could set up a meeting.
“Check you later, library girl.” The troll lumbered off, whistling a discordant tune.
She realized something. “Hey, you never told me your name?” Xandie yelled after him.
He turned back and bowed to Xandie. “Herman Trollish, at your service.”
“Your last name is Trollish and you’re a troll?”
“My mother was a traditionalist.” Herman waved and stomped off.
“Interesting mother, Herman.” She traced a pattern on the wood of the table.
Then again, what did she know about mothers?
Twelve
Xandie navigated the stairs to her beach and the small dock. She was there to meet with a woman named Coral Greenwater, who just happened to be the merrow witness to her mother’s fall off the cliff. There was no doubt the mermaid had saved Miranda Harrow’s life by plucking her from the ocean depths. The only catch was, by depositing her a hundred miles up the coast, no one had realized her mother had survived the fall. Coral had never breathed a word about it, preferring to stay off land-dweller radar.