by Ami Diane
Or maybe Beatrice had confronted him about his stalking. But why not just call the police? With a restraining order against him, he would’ve been in a lot of trouble for trespassing on her property.
On the other hand, Stacy had a motive, and there were still the heel prints at the crime scene which supported her being there.
The music rolled in, and she pushed aside all thoughts of real-life death for the blissful escape of a mafia murder and incognito witnesses.
Chapter Seventeen
LIBBY ROLLED OVER and found it difficult. Pain radiated up her neck. She peeled her eyes open and discovered she had fallen asleep while watching the movie. Daylight poured through the windows, signaling the beginnings of a Monday morning.
She sat up to stretch the crick in her neck only to find her hands slip along a porcelain surface. Her eyes widened.
The couch had been replaced by a clawfoot bathtub, presumably the one in the upstairs bathroom.
A knock came at the door, and she breathed out a curse. Just what she needed right now, pre-coffee.
Stumbling out of the tub, she moved into the foyer, moving as stiffly as Marge. Without bothering to see who it was, she swung open the door and squinted.
“Deputy Jackson?” He wore a faded hoodie and ripped jeans. Either the sheriff’s office had gotten extremely lax with their uniform requirements or the deputy had the day off.
“Hey, neighbor,” he greeted her, rather too enthusiastically, she thought, for it being morning.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah, fine.” His eyes flitted down her slept-in, disheveled appearance before snapping back up again. “Sorry to wake you.”
“What makes you think I was sleeping?”
“Because your hair doesn’t normally look like that.”
She smoothed out the wayward nest that had accumulated at the side of her head. “I’m trying a new look. It’s a throwback to the 80s.”
“Right,” he said, drawing the word out like taffy. “Anyway, I was wondering if I could borrow a hammer. I can’t seem to find mine.”
His hand brushed the back of his neck as if this admission pained him. Libby could think of far more embarrassing confessions, like still stuffing chips in a peanut butter and jelly sandwich despite being over thirty.
“Maybe? To be honest, I haven’t even begun to tackle sorting through the garage, so I really can’t say what’s in there.”
In fact, she hadn’t cracked open the interior door to the attached garage because shortly after moving in, it had disappeared. It had reappeared recently, but she hadn’t had time yet to explore what lay on the other side. Perhaps that was where the TV had come from.
“Do you want to come in?” She surreptitiously swept her hand towards the foyer. “We can hunt for a hammer after I put a pot of coffee on.”
She gritted her teeth, having realized her mistake too late. If there were any unexpected, random items in the garage, say a pile of rusty cauldrons, she would have a hard time explaining it away.
“Of course, I can just search for it and bring it to—”
He stepped inside.
“Or now. Now works too.” She swallowed and turned in the direction of the kitchen, making sure to take the route through the living room so as to avoid the clawfoot bathtub.
Halfway across the room, she registered the absence of his footfalls behind her. He remained fixed in the foyer, head craning into the sitting room.
“You know you have a bathtub in your family room, right?”
“Yep.”
He paused, staring at it. “Right, then. Carry on.”
Once in the kitchen, she asked, “So, what do you need a hammer for?” Water sloshed into the reservoir as she filled the coffee maker.
“I’m patching up my roof. I’ve got a good-sized leak above my living room. Happened during the winter, so I put a tarp over it. Now that the weather’s finally nice, I thought I’d get around to fixing it.”
“I take it you have the day off?”
He nodded. The coffee pot started to bubble and hiss.
“Who’s looking into Bea’s death then?” She didn’t mean for it to sound like he was shirking his duties. The man certainly deserved a day off.
“The whole sheriff’s office is involved.” He leaned against the counter, his cool blue eyes on her every move in a rather unnerving way. “Don’t worry. We’ll find whoever did this to her.”
Turning her back, she dug out flavored creamer from the fridge then two mugs, grateful that the house hadn’t relocated those items at least. “Any new developments?”
“Ms. Slade, are you asking me about an ongoing investigation?” One side of his mouth ticked up. “I’ll tell you this. We believe we’ve ascertained what knife the killer used.”
“Really?” Her hand froze amid pouring cream, then she offered the container to him.
He was slow to respond as he sloshed a generous helping into his cup. “The ME said death came from a fatal stab wound to the neck. But it was the particulates found in the wound that are of interest.”
Libby’s mind raced. What sort of particulates would be abnormal? If Beatrice had been preparing ingredients, the killer could’ve grabbed the knife in the attack.
“Was it garlic?”
He shook his head. “None of the blades from her house match the wound.”
And they hadn’t come across any while cleaning the crime scene of any incriminating potion-making evidence.
“Are you going to tell me what you found or am I going to have to keep guessing? Fair warning, I have no immediate plans, so we can do this all day.”
“I’ve already said too much.” He watched the creamer swirl in his cup a moment before continuing. “There’s another reason I wanted to stop by.”
Her stomach twisted, and the only word she managed to let out was a mangled, “Oh?”
“We got a harassment complaint about you and Marge.”
Her chest deflated as she let out a shaky breath. So, Bruce had filed a complaint about them. The stupid salesman couldn’t take a practical joke.
“From Brent Stevens.”
“Oh, that.”
“He said—wait, ‘that’? Is there another complaint I should be expecting concerning you two? You two haven’t been harassing Bruce again, have you?”
“Hm? Nope.”
He blinked a few times, shook his head, then continued. “Anyway, Brent said you two were poking your noses around his place, asking personal questions, insinuating he killed Bea. Is that really why you and Marge were at the RV resort yesterday?”
She shrugged. “Maybe we were scoping it out for some friends who are coming to visit.”
“I thought you were there to sell cookies?”
“Yes, that’s right. That’s the reason we were there.”
He let out a long-suffering sigh and placed his mug on the counter. “I’m looking into Brent. I need to be able to do my job without worrying about you two getting in the middle of things.”
“Fair enough.” She said no more, being careful not to promise to stay out of the case.
As they ambled down the hallway, she fired off a quick text to Marge about the unnamed particulates found in Beatrice’s fatal wound. Fellow potionist Millie worked in the sheriff’s office and might be able to find out what, specifically, was discovered.
She hesitated before the interior door that led into the garage, her hand resting on the cool knob. She prayed there weren’t any surprises on the other side, no steps to a dungeon or stash of potions. Just average, everyday garage clutter.
Worn hinges groaned as she opened it, and musty air rushed into the house. She stepped onto the concrete. The room smelled of dust and years. To her left, faint light bled from beneath the wide, automatic door that led outside, filling the space with a feeble light.
It revealed no more than dark shapes, leaving her imagination to run amok until her eyes adjusted. The shapes were no more than innocuous-looking boxes and
odds and ends.
An awkward moment followed where she bumped into the deputy while searching for the light switch. It felt like running into a wall, if that wall was made of soft cotton and smelled like the ocean.
All too soon, there was a click and the room flooded with light.
“Found it—” He gazed past her, an array of emotions flickering across his face.
She spun to the interior of the room, sucking in a breath. Amongst a mountain of boxes was a mechanical bull. The air hissed out of her lungs in relief as she’d expected to see something far worse.
“I hadn’t taken Arlene for the cowgirl type,” he joked. He ran his hand along the side of the robotic beast.
“Hey, I firmly believe there’s a cowboy or cowgirl in all of us.”
“Do you now?”
She didn’t.
Boxes lined the walls, most of them unlabeled, in stacks as high as the ceiling before they spilled over into the middle. A quick count yielded at least three bicycles strewn between tackle boxes, fishing rods, and crab pots. At least she’d located the source of the smell—most likely.
This was going to take a lot of work to clean up, all in the hopes that she could one day actually park her car inside. It filled her with a touch of anxiety to think about rifling through another person’s belongings, especially when that other person had been a master potionist.
Who knew what was hidden inside those boxes? She’d have to enlist the help of a certain apothecary and Arlene’s best friend.
“Found a toolbox,” Deputy Jackson called from behind a mountain of boxes and dust. She’d nearly forgotten the reason they were there.
Metal scraped against concrete as he pushed it across the floor. After rooting around inside, he pulled out a hammer, holding it aloft, victorious.
“Good to know that’s there.”
Their endeavor successful, she walked him to the front door. He hesitated in the foyer.
“If you knew anything that would help the case, you’d tell me, right?”
“Of course.” The lie felt sharp on her tongue, like a blade.
“Any ideas why someone would want to kill a sweet, old lady?”
To steal a potion book or to rid Oyster Bay of one more “witch.”
Libby shook her head. “I can’t think of a single reason.” Now, the words turned acidic on her tongue.
She swallowed as he opened the door, letting daylight rush in.
The moment the door clicked home and his footsteps faded, Libby whipped out her phone and dialed Marge’s cell. The line went straight to voicemail which she took to mean either her friend’s phone had died—which was very probable—or she was using it to talk to Millie.
She poured herself a second cup of coffee and paced over the linoleum in her kitchen. On her third pass by the window above the sink, she spotted the shrubbery outside shivering.
A previous owner at one time had thought it a good idea to plant Hairy manzanita (Arctostaphylos columbiana), presumably as a windbreak, along the western edge of the house. It worked, but it also obstructed her view of the ocean. The plants were wild, overgrown, and in desperate need of a trimming.
It struck her that the manzanita in the backyard was still as a statue. A rare moment of an almost nonexistent breeze on the coast, yet the shrubbery out the kitchen window quaked. Not only that, but given the sturdiness of the plant, the movement had to be the result of something substantial.
Frowning, she swept outside to investigate, forgoing a jacket. Goose pimples covered her arms by the time she reached the spot beneath her kitchen window.
A form rummaged in the brush followed by the visible shaking of leaves in an outward line away from her as if something or someone were running away.
“Hello?” she called out.
No one answered.
In this section on her property, the scraggly, wind-frozen brush was nearly as tall as her. She’d been meaning to trim it down to match the height in the backyard but hadn’t gotten around to it.
The idea of stomping through the tall undergrowth in search of the intruder, be it human or animal, didn’t appeal to her.
Back inside, she sipped her warm coffee while staring out the window. The next time Jasper went out, she’d ask him to surveil the property to see if there were any large critters roaming about. Of course, that would mean she’d have to drink Pet Whisperer to hear what he had to say.
So… maybe it wasn’t worth looking into. Most likely it had been a beachgoer straying off the public access path.
She tried Marge’s phone again and, this time, got through.
The potionist’s voice blared out as if she was shouting. Exactly as if she was shouting.
“Marge?”
“Hello? Red, is that you?”
“Holy eardrums. Talk at a normal volume, woman.”
“This better?” The apothecary’s voice went from earsplitting to a few notches below migraine-inducing.
“Yes. Did you get my text?” When Marge said she had, Libby followed up with, “And?”
Marge paused. “And I called Millie. She said she was just about to call me. She overheard two deputies talking in the office, said the ME had found fish scales in the knife wound in Bea’s neck.”
“Fish scales?” The silence that followed blended with the hum of Libby’s thoughts. “That means murder weapon had, what, been used to gut a fish?”
“Something like that is my guess.”
“So, we’re looking for a chef?”
“Or a fisherman.” The weight of Marge’s words hung over the phone line.
“Do you think any of the AWC actually fish to support their cover story?”
“Some, but whether or not it’s for their cover or just because they enjoy the activity, I don’t know. Keep in mind, this is a fishing town.”
With her phone still pressed against her ear, Libby moved to put the creamer back in the fridge and found Orchid perched on top of the appliance, batting at a bag of treats.
“We need to know if Brent did any real fishing.”
“Hm…” Marge lapsed into silence while Libby placed a treat on the floor to coax the Norwegian Forest cat down from her perch. It worked like a manipulative charm.
“We do, but I don’t know, Red. Those shoe prints we found aren’t sitting right with me.”
“Maybe they’re Brent’s. Who knows? But I agree. It doesn’t feel right. I just want to either confirm him as a suspect or rule him out once and for all.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“I got a few thoughts tumbling around, but let’s think on it. In the meantime, I’ll let you get back to work.”
“Actually,” Marge began, a smile in her voice, “I was planning on taking a long lunch break here in an hour.”
“Good for you,” Libby said hesitantly, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“You up to sailing again? I’m itching to take Bluebirds Fly out for another spin, and the weather’s perfect.”
For the life of her, Libby couldn’t think of a single excuse besides I don’t want to die.
She sighed into the phone. “Why not? I hear drowning’s a peaceful way to go.”
Chapter Eighteen
LIBBY FELT THE sandwich she had eaten earlier roll around in her stomach and threaten to make a reappearance. She leaped to the dock, legs shaking, and kissed the wood.
“Don’t be so dramatic,” Marge said behind her. “It wasn’t that bad.”
“You hit a buoy.”
“Bumped into it.”
“Semantics. How do you sail directly into a mostly stationary object?”
The apothecary had the wisdom to not respond, probably because there was no good answer.
Libby teetered on her feet before Marge snaked an arm around her and guided her to the car. Getting her land legs back after a cruise with Marge proved to be a challenge. Ages passed before the ground stopped rolling beneath her. At least Libby had driven them to the marina, thereby reduci
ng further risk of injury—and motion sickness.
Driving down the main street that followed the coastline, Libby kept her voice casual as she asked, “Hey, how long did you say that Defying Gravity potion’s supposed to last?”
“Decay time’s about two weeks. Why?”
“No reason.”
Earlier at home, she could’ve sworn a pair of yoga pants danced about in the same load of clean laundry as the formerly potion-stained shirt. She had either been seeing things or there had been a mouse in the folds of cloth. Neither made her feel any better. “And the potion doesn’t wash out?”
Marge frowned. “It’s supposed to.”
“Oh. Random, totally unrelated question, but do you believe in ghosts?” She spared a glance sideways to see her friend shaking her head.
“I believe in science and medicine. Scientifically, it’s been proven there are other dimensions. Do I believe that maybe sometimes the line between our dimensions blur? Perhaps. Maybe that’s what others call ghosts, but in the strictest sense of the word, no. I don’t believe in them.”
“Oh,” Libby said for a second time as she pulled her car up in front of Thanks A Latte.
Marge pointed past the dusty windshield. “My shop’s up that way.”
“I know.” Libby winked. “But I want a latte. Besides, the walk will do you good. You’re welcome.”
She closed the door on her friend’s protests. That’s what the woman got for trying to do donuts in a sailboat using that stupid potion of hers.
By the time she reached the front door to the coffee shop, Marge was grunting behind her after slamming the passenger-side door shut. She elbowed past Libby, saying, “The least you can do is buy me a mocha.”
Inside, the heavenly aroma of ground coffee beans filled every square inch of space, and rows of pastries beckoned to Libby from behind a display case, calories be damned. After she ordered two large mochas and two old-fashioned donuts, she wandered in search of a table where they could await their drink orders to be called.
Marge gestured to a spot across the room. “Look who it is.”
Libby followed the not-so-subtle point of Marge’s arthritic finger. Alone at a table, Marty pored over notes while sipping from a mug.