by Tonya Kappes
The clash of thunder and strike of lightning hit the ocean in the distance. It lit up the villa. I steadied myself on the table next to the refrigerator and noticed Peter’s drawn treasure map.
Mewl! Mewl! Mr. Prince Charming darted out of the villa. It was my cue to get out of there.
For a moment I contemplated taking the map and seeing if there was any resemblance to the references in the book. But I knew if Peter lost it, he might not leave even with the potion. I took Madame Torres out of my bag.
“Madame Torres, remember this map.” I held onto the base of my crystal ball and rolled the glass over the hand-drawn map.
With no time to spare, I ran after Mr. Prince Charming. His tail was a light beacon in the dark that’d taken over the island from the tropical storm. One good thing about having a fairy-god cat was that he was able to use his keen sense to get us back to our villa using back paths before the storm had settled in on our side of the island.
The palm trees were leaning to the right with the wind thrashing through them. The thud of coconuts dropping on the ground was heard from all directions. The light was on in the villa and the storm walls had been pulled down.
“There you are!” Oscar called from the door. He held it open for us to run to safety. “Hurry before the ocean covers the bridge.”
The pounding rain had started and was almost a barrier for us to run through. There wasn’t a bit of blue in the sky. Angry black. The sea was angry. And the look on Oscar’s face didn’t seem too pleasant either.
“Now that I know that you are okay, we need to talk.” He shut the door behind me. Patience and Constance Karima were sitting in chairs in the villa. The rain pounded the roof and we had to speak at a higher volume than normal.
“Ladies.” I nodded.
“Your little,” Patience wiggled her finger in the air, “has worn off.” She referred to the agreeable spell I’d placed on Oscar last night. The one I’d done on accident.
“Shh.” Constance nudged her sister. They sat next to each other with their hands clasped between their knees.
“I was under the assumption they were here to keep you safe while I did what I needed to do to get this case solved.” He pointed to the two sisters. He curled his nose at Mr. Prince Charming. “He is too?”
The sisters nodded in agreement.
“Then I find out that you are in Mr. Victor’s office and you had a key? A key you stole from him?” Oscar had obviously forgotten that he’d given me permission to look. “After you asked him about going to the volcano.”
“He snitched on me?” I asked. I had to get the heat off of the sisters.
“He complained to the authorities that maybe we should be looking at you.” Oscar ran his hands through his hair. There was displeasure in his blue eyes.
“Me?” I scoffed. “Why on Earth would I want to kill Patrick when I didn’t know him?”
“I know, June. He’s just trying to take the heat off of Violet.” He sat on the edge of the bed. “I know the three of you and I know that you haven’t left well enough alone, so spill what you know.”
“You aren’t going to get mad?” Constance asked.
“Not mad?” Patience repeated.
“No.” Oscar’s voice held authority. He was a true man of his word and I trusted him.
“I’ll tell him.” I put my hand up for the sisters to stop. I walked between them. “Violet confirmed to me that she and Patrick did have a love affair.”
Constance gasped and put her hands over Patience’s ears.
“Stop it!” Patience smacked her hands away. “He was her first lover.”
Constance’s mouth dropped. “June Heal.” She wagged her finger at me. “You have been nothing but trouble for my sister.”
“Please,” I said sarcastically. “She knows way more than me.”
“Yes.” Patience confirmed. “Violet is in love with Patrick and he loved her. He told her so and I can’t be so sure that Gene isn’t their son.”
“What?” Constance, Oscar and I said it at the same time. Disbelief on our faces.
“Mmmhmmmm.” Patience nodded up and down. “When I was cleaning Gene’s villa, he was on one of the flippy phones. He kept calling the person on the other line Mom. So I got to thinking.”
“That’s dangerous,” Constance chirped.
“What?” I encouraged her and shushed Constance.
“I got to thinking that Violet was awfully upset over the death of a man that she’d not seen in ten years. Why hadn’t he been back?” Patience tapped her temple. “Then it occurred to me that Gene is a ten-year-old boy. And those pictures frames on the wall in the lodge that I’ve had to dust every single day. . .”
I smacked my hands together.
“But they did see each other.” I remembered Violet telling me about Patrick bringing Peter here right after their parents had died. “But he didn’t mention Juliette to her. And they made love.”
Patience giggled, and then turned red.
“That would explain why she’d be upset with his death.” I could only imagine in Violet’s mind that she and Patrick were a couple, even if the time apart was long.
Patience continued to smile. I had no time to visit the birds and the bees with her.
“There is a lull between the years though.” I said, recalling how Violet had grown up really fast between a couple of the photos. “Not only that, but she’d gained weight. Baby bump.” I made a circle in the front of my stomach. “Mr. Victor didn’t take any photo evidence of her being pregnant and. . .” I pulled Madame Torres out of my bag. “When I went into the office.”
“With the stolen key?” Oscar asked. I ignored him.
“When I went into the office, Madame Torres glowed with the word adoption. I bet Mr. Victor was going to adopt Gene or maybe Patrick’s parents were going to adopt Gene.”
“Either way.” Oscar stood up and paced. The thunder was closer and closer. The waves were knocking up against the villa. “Patrick didn’t know about Gene.”
“He didn’t.” All the clues were coming together. “When I talked to Violet, she said that her father had intercepted all the letters that she’d written to Patrick and Patrick had written to her.”
“When she saw Patrick come back to the island with Juliette, she went berserk and killed him.” Patience stood up alongside us.
“We’ve not been able to interview her because her father sent her to the mainland so she couldn’t be interviewed.” Oscar rubbed his hands together.
Madame Torres lit up like the Fourth of July. Her ball glowed with lightning bolts, red flowing lava dripped from the top of the globe and settled into a raging sea. I took a step closer and looked deep within the ball.
“What is it, June?” Constance asked and stood up, looking over my shoulder. “Tell us what it is you see.”
I opened my mouth when the vision came clear and I tried to speak, but nothing came out. I closed my mouth and swallowed. Hard.
“Violet.” I pointed to the globe. “She’s on the edge of the volcano.” My eyes slid up from the globe and deep into Oscar’s eyes. I uttered an inward gasp and let it come out of me. “She’s getting ready to push Juliette and Peter into the hot lava.”
Chapter Fifteen
Oscar did his best to get Officer Teabody on the phone. Unfortunately, the tropical storm had knocked out all the phone signals.
“Here is a map to the volcano.” I grabbed the myths and legends book that Ophelia had given me out of the bag and handed it to Oscar.
“Book!” Patience cried out. She reached over and grabbed a Ding Dong off the table. She waved it in the air. “I knew I was forgetting something.”
She peeled back the foil and I got a whiff. I was stressed so this called for a Ding Dong.
“I was supposed to give you the June’s Gems Raven sent you.” She chewed with her mouth full.
“She sent some Gems?” I asked knowing that she’d only send them if she saw something in the dough. “Wher
e are they?”
“She ate them.” Constance had sat back down and put her head in her hands. “We are in for it now. I’m going to lose my powers all because sister has gone against what the Order of Elders wanted.”
“I did no such thing.” Patience protested, “I have kept her safe and sound. In fact, I’ve helped her with this whole thing.”
The two sisters argued back and forth while Oscar and I tried to figure out our next move.
“I don’t like using you in this way. You are not a trained cop and this is a murder. Violet is obviously not going to stop at Patrick.” His words chilled me to the bone.
“You don’t have a choice unless you want Tweedledee and Tweedledum to go with you instead.” I nodded toward the sisters.
“I don’t like this but you’re right. There is no time for the storm to clear or even get help.” His icy blue eyes radiated fear. “You have got to stay behind me at all times.”
“I understand.” I agreed, knowing I was going to do whatever I needed to do to not only save Peter, but save Juliette.
“June, you didn’t miss anything. Raven switched up the June’s Gem and put some sort of red filling in it.” Patience’s nose snarled. She did a shimmy-shake. “Yuck. Oh and she said to read the book.”
“Red filling?” Oscar asked. “Do you know what that meant?”
“Lava and the book.” I rubbed my hand over the page Oscar and I were poring over. “Wait. Where is your wand?”
“We are . . .,” he started to talk.
“On our honeymoon,” I finished his sentence. “And if you think I believe you left your wand at home. . .”
“Alright.” He stopped me. He dug his wand out of his suitcase. He held it up in the air.
Constance Karima giggled and her face turned all shades of red. She fanned herself as though she were about to faint.
“She always loved a man with a wand.” Patience wiggled her brows.
“What on Earth was the Order of Elders thinking sending them here?” I turned back to him and tried to put the sisters in the back of my head. “You need to use your magic to summon the horse and carriage here. That is the only way for sure that we will get to the top of the volcano and not get lost.”
Without a word, Oscar walked out of the villa in the beating rain of the tropical storm and did whatever it was he needed to do.
The sisters were too wrapped up in giggling over Oscar and how hot they thought he was to even notice me gathering all the smudge materials along with the potion bottles and the Magical Cures Book from my suitcase, shoving them into my bag.
Oscar opened the door and stuck his head in. “Let’s go.”
I slipped out of the villa without the sisters seeing. Mr. Prince Charming jumped on the back of the horse, which didn’t flinch. We got into the carriage and I untied the plastic from around the poles and it made a clear canopy over us. I zipped up the door and then as soon as we were seated, the horse shot off in a flash.
The angry sky lit up all around us as the horse-drawn carriage climbed the trail leading to the volcano. Between the lightning bursts, I could see the red lava spit up in the air and a small trail of lava spew down the hill taking the palm trees and anything else as its victim.
Madame Torres was still not calm. Her insides churned with the angry sky and sea. Her liquid crashed so hard against her glass, I was afraid it was going to shatter. Images of the map and Peter continued to roll with the waves. She was telling me that I had to get to Peter as quick as we could.
Oscar and I sat in silence as we held on. He continued to look out of the plastic to see if we were getting any closer. The wheels of the carriage squeaked. The rush of the wind howled through the plastic and the rain pounded down like bullets from a semi-automatic.
Abruptly the horse stopped. I quickly unzipped the plastic and noticed we weren’t at the top. The lava had stopped the horse.
Mr. Prince Charming jumped down. His eyes met mine and he darted off in a direction. His tail pointing the way.
“No.” Oscar grabbed me as I was about to jump out. “You can’t go.”
I jerked away.
“If you think I’ve come this far to not help, you have another thing coming.” I could see the dark worry that stained his crystal blue eyes. “I’ll be fine.”
He let go. I swiped my hand over Madame Torres and she gave us a clear picture of Violet and Juliette still on the volcano. Peter was nowhere to be found. Blood-chilling anger iced my insides thinking Violet had done something to harm Peter.
“I’ll go east and you go west. We will meet in the middle on each side of Violet.” Oscar grabbed my neck and pulled me to him. His lips dug deep into mine. “I love you. Be safe.”
I jumped out and ran as fast as I could to find Mr. Prince Charming. He’d found a trail that led me straight up the volcano. It was a path that had already been seared from what looked like a lava flow from a long time ago. There were fresh shoeprints in the mud, which made me believe this was the path Violet, Peter and Juliette had taken to get to the top.
The rain beat into me along with the anger that only fueled me more. With every step closer to Violet I took, the images of her and Patrick kissing stirred in my head. His words haunted me. I love you. Then it was clear. Gene’s eyes were so recognizable to me and they were the exact shape of Patrick’s.
“Buried treasure.” Peter rocked back and forth on the side of the trail. I barely realized it was him. He had on a hoodie sweatshirt and the hood was pulled up over his head and the strings tightly tied under his chin. Mr. Prince Charming had curled up in Peter’s lap. Relief overcame me from seeing him alive that I almost wasn’t able to hold back the tears.
“Hi, Peter.” I bent down and spoke in a hushed whisper. I could hear some yelling coming from above but I couldn’t make out what they were saying due to Mother Nature’s angry turn. “You are going to be okay.”
“My daddy said the treasures are in there. Diamonds for life. Diamonds for life.” Peter repeated and stroked Mr. Prince Charming. There was a bottle of chocolate milk next to him and his calmness told me that the potion I had put in there had started to work.
“You stay here.” I patted Mr. Prince Charming and Peter.
I swear I saw Mr. Prince Charming nodding his head right along with Peter. I rubbed my wrist and felt my charms before I stood up. I needed all the courage and protection I could muster up to even take another step.
Chapter Sixteen
As much as I wanted to clear the air with a quick light of the sage stick and dampen down the lava flow, the beating rain wasn’t going to let me light it and keep it lit. Both the women were arguing and screaming at the other.
I took a step forward and the dried piece of lava rock caused me to slip, sending several more pieces down the side of the volcano with it. Violet turned. She glared at me with a burning, reproachful eye.
“June! Help me!” Juliette’s desperate plea echoed.
“Don’t you dare help her. She deserves what she gets.” Sudden anger lit Violet’s eyes. The darkness surrounded us. Red gas lifted from the volcano. The burning smell charred my nose hair.
“This is not the way to get even.” I kept my voice calm and tried to reason with Violet. “You have to come down and let the authorities handle this.”
“I will not sit back and let her enjoy her life after she took mine!” Violet screamed. She beat the palms of her hands on her thighs. The sky lit up with jagged bolts of lightning ending in a thunderous roar.
“He didn’t want you! What can’t you get through that head of yours?” Juliette screamed back. “He picked me! Me!”
“It’s not him that you wanted.” Violet’s teeth were gritted. Her eyes narrowed. “You only wanted the diamonds. He told me. He told me that he loved me!”
Juliette moved as the lightning took another swipe at the night sky. The edges of a knife writhed under her clothing. She pulled it out and closed her hand around the knife as if somehow she was going to com
plete the mission.
A slight twist of her lips, she said, “He never loved you or that child you claimed was his.”
“How did you know?” Violet couldn’t take her eyes off the knife and neither could I. “I just told him about Gene the other day.”
“Can we please go down to the lodge?” I gave one last attempt to be nice and play all mortal like.
“Shut up with your reasonable talk!” Juliette stabbed the air in front of her, blade down.
“And that’s when he told me that he was getting cold feet. That’s when I knew that everything I worked for over the past couple of years was going to come down to this.” She pointed the tip of the knife behind her and into the volcano. “Peter!” she called. With her free hand she grabbed a copy of Peter’s hand-drawn map out of her pocket. “Do you want to go get the treasure now?”
“You wouldn’t.” Violet gasped in horror. Confused, I looked between the two.
“What? You don’t understand?” Juliette taunted me in a whiny voice. “You see this little map holds the key to my wealth. Once Peter digs it up and hands me the diamond, he will accidentally, of course, fall into the active volcano, along with you two.” She waved the knife between us. “And the little map. Then I go back to living my life without the burden of a man that really never loved me or his homeless, parentless brother, who by the way was supposed to burn up along with his parents.”
“You killed them?” Violet shook. “You are the one who blew up their house?”
“How else was I going to shut Patrick’s father up from telling him who I really was?” She waved her finger across her neck. “First I slit their throats. Then I took the map before I turned on the gas stove. I set the perfect backdraft so when Patrick and I came home that night and opened the door, the house would explode.”
The thoughts of what happened entered my mind so quickly, it was hard to put them together. But the one thing I knew, I was wrong. Violet hadn’t killed Patrick, Juliette had, over some sort of diamond.