A Maze of Murder

by Kate Krake

  Now it was Lila’s turn to look down at her shoes.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “While you were out, I made a few calls,” she said quietly. “Just fishing around for some information.”

  “Lila, this is dangerous stuff to even talk about.”

  “I know, but I had to find out if anyone else knew Kenny didn’t have a heart attack or a stroke or whatever. I had to see if anyone else might even know about a spell like that.”

  “And?” I said, desperately interested despite every bit of good sense in my body warning me to get far, far away from this and go back to my quiet little shop, reading books, and screwing up little spells.

  “Phil and Molly Yarrow have been in Alaska for the last four months, doing some research on bees or something. So I guess that puts them in the clear.”

  It did. A death curse could be delivered at a distance, and there were a few days of waiting until it was ready to strike, but four months from Alaska was too long and too far.

  “So, I guess you have been working after all,” I said. “Just not exactly what I pay you to do.”

  “This detective game is pretty fun, don’t you think?” Lila said.

  “For one, we’re not detectives. And for two and three, I’m not sure we can call it a game. I don’t know about fun either,” I said. “Did you talk to anyone else?”

  “Adela was her usual ‘I don’t want to get involved in this’ self.”

  “Suspiciously?”

  Lila shook her head. “It’s just the Naarin way. She calls it ‘active noninterference in human affairs.’”

  I raised my eyebrows, having no idea what that could mean and making a note to do some research into these Naarin demons. “Anyone else?”

  “That’s all I found out,” she said. “Except now this vet is suspect.”

  Stupid as it was, we were involved in this now—there was no denying it. I might not have wanted to invite black magic back into my world, but it had pushed its way in all on its own as soon as that body had turned up, shattering the sanctuary of my new life, and now Lila’s sleuthing had broken it apart all the more. If I was going to put my life back together, I had to get the darkness out first, and the only way to do that was to find whoever was responsible. And then what? I would figure that part out as I went along.

  “By the way, I also called Samir on the shop phone,” Lila said. “I hope you don’t mind. I just felt like talking to him, and my phone was out of charge. Don’t worry, I didn’t mention the murder.”

  Lila often talked about her older brother, a hotshot lawyer from Loreton. They seemed to be quite close and she clearly idolized him.

  “Is Samir a fairy too?” I asked.

  “He’s got the blood, obviously. From our maternal grandmother. But he says he’s never had any powers. I personally think he’s just not trying hard enough. I swear he still thinks all fairies have wings and little daisy crowns, and we all sit around sipping flower nectar out of acorn cups.” She sniggered as she spoke, but I did sense frustration in the girl underneath the admiration she held for her brother.

  “What about you?” Lila continued. “Do any of your family share the gifts?”

  I wiped the duster slowly across the top of a stack of books I’d already cleaned. “I don’t really have a family,” I said. “But speaking of nectar, there’s a bottle of merlot in the back if it’s not too early for you. I don’t have any acorn cups, though. I assume that’s okay?”

  We clinked our tumblers together in a melancholy toast and drank. As I sipped on the full-bodied red, the tension slipped from my shoulders. I closed my eyes and relished the fleeting moment of wine-induced calm. I’m not ordinarily much of a drinker, especially so early in the day, but these were hardly ordinary times.

  While I like to keep to myself and am usually tongue-tied when it comes to small talk with strangers, I had to admit, it was nice to have someone to talk with about my formerly secret supernatural side. Maybe it was the wine, but I wanted to ask Lila everything.

  “So,” I began, not sure exactly how to start phrasing the thousands of questions I had, or even if asking them would be somehow rude. “How do you see, I mean hear… with Hemlock’s thoughts?”

  “Can I read minds?” Lila filled in. I nodded, taking another sip. “Kind of. I see shapes from people’s minds. I can’t hear the thoughts. I just understand them. But Hemlock was really different. He pushed his voice into my head, and I heard it like I hear my own thoughts. It was a bit of a shock the first time it happened.”

  I wasn’t surprised; butting into someone’s head sounded exactly like something Hemlock would do.

  “Maybe you could come with me tomorrow and do your thing with O’Farrell?”

  Lila nodded. “Sure, I can try if you want. Though it usually only works well if I’m knitting,” she said.

  “Knitting?”

  “Yeah, knitting does something to my mind, like it opens up the channels, so it’s easier for me to read people. I’m not sure how to explain it. If I’m not knitting, it’s hazy and easily muddled, unless someone consciously opens their mind to me. It’s getting easier lately, though, so maybe I’m getting better at it.”

  A disturbing thought occurred. Lila knitted a lot. “All that time you’re knitting here, you’re reading my thoughts?”

  She laughed. “Not exactly. Though I have, I confess, accidentally seen a bit of you from time to time, but that’s when it kind of just slips out. Don’t worry, I haven’t read anything really personal or embarrassing. I’m not a snoop.”

  I suddenly felt very exposed.

  “I do like to knit too. I need something to do with my hands all day long,” Lila said.

  “There’s always work,” I said. “Like dusting, or filing, or packing up the mail orders. Or maybe you could make something to sell in the shop, like hats or something.”

  “I can only knit in straight lines,” she said. That explained why she only ever made scarves and afghans.

  The shop bell chimed and our conversation stopped short. Neville Norton marched straight up to the counter.

  “Good afternoon, Belinda,” he said. “Lila.” He nodded in the fairy’s direction, looking at our wineglasses with scorn and God’s own judgment. “I’m assuming by this party you pair are having you might have, once again, forgotten you have somewhere to be?”

  I absolutely had not forgotten where I was supposed to be. I clapped my hand to my forehead, feigning a memory lapse. “Of course, Neville. It completely slipped my mind.”

  “I thought so,” he said. His smile was good-natured, but I could still sense the annoyance in the old man. The Blackthorn Springs Hedge Maze committee meeting had met six times so far, and I had been able to weasel out of each of them.

  “That’s why I’m here,” he said with a false smile. “Your personal escort so you have no excuse not to join us.”

  If this murder hadn’t distracted me so much, I would’ve probably had ten excuses by now. Still, I didn’t really want to upset anyone, and on some level, I did want to belong to the community, even if, on the other, usually much louder level, I wanted to stay home alone and not talk to anyone. That was generally for the best anyway; I’d long since learned that my place in the natural order was on the outside. But I’d committed to the maze, and I guessed I had to go through with it. Even if that meant being personally escorted to the meeting by Neville Norton.

  “We’ll have to finish this a little later,” I told Lila. I drained the last of my wine in two gulps. There was no way I was going through this without some liquid fortification. “Mr. Norton, I’ll meet you out front, if you like. I’ll get my coat.”

  “You’re not going to slip out some secret back door and disappear on me now, are you, Belinda?”

  I chuckled politely, making a mental note to check if installing a secret back door in the shop was in any way feasible.

  “Are you okay with closing up for me again, Lila?”

  She nodded. I
leaned in close to whisper, “Maybe keep checking up on anyone supernatural and what they’ve been up to lately.” Even though Neville had moved outside, well out of earshot, taking on a new job as a pair of secret sleuths seemed like something we should whisper about.

  7

  The Blackthorn Springs Tourist Board Hedge Maze Committee met weekly in the Annex, a small white-clad building beside the town hall at the top of Main Street. The hall was run down and practically in ruins, but even in its disarray, it was stately and grand, while the little squat building stood out like a bucktooth, as if it didn’t belong there. It was exactly how I felt about myself as I ascended the rickety steps to my sentence. Neville walked too close behind, as if he was making sure I didn’t escape.

  The committee members were already gathered around a long wooden table, ready to start.

  “Guess who’s finally decided to join us today,” Neville beamed. There was a murmur of polite laughter and mumbled hellos as I took my seat behind a laminated card with my name on it. This was more official than I had expected it to be, and I felt guilt and embarrassment that I had been absent from every meeting when I would have been so conspicuously missed.

  I recognized some of my fellow committee members. Tom Jenkins stared at a pen in front of him as if he was trying to bore a hole in it with his eyes, turning it over and over in his hands. Hattie Winthrop, Mayor Frederick Winthrop’s wife, sat beside him, her hands neatly folded on the table. Abbi Flannagan’s chair was empty.

  Next to Abbi’s vacant place sat a woman I didn’t know. I guessed she would have been approaching seventy. Her face was deeply lined, her hands coarse and rough, a line of black dirt under each fingernail. She wore blue overalls, and a grey cotton hat was crumpled on the table in front of her. Edie Jacques, her name tag read. This must have the old lady who owned Jacques Nursery on Alba Road leading up into the woods. Edie had apparently organized the boxwoods for the maze and had overseen the planting of the shrubs months before. Her weathered face was set with worry, her eyes darting up and down to Neville, to Hattie and then back to her grizzled hands.

  “What a terrible, terrible business in our town yesterday,” Neville said, addressing the committee from his chair at the head of the table. “Let’s all take a moment to remember poor Mr. Langdel and mark his passing.”

  “Do they know any further details?” Tom asked.

  “Heart attack, they’re saying,” Neville said.

  “I heard it was a stroke,” Hattie said.

  “I heard that too,” a woman spoke up. Her name was Camille Arden. I remembered Lila mentioning this was the woman who apparently had a crush on Conri O’Farrell. I wondered if Camille had ever witnessed the temper I had seen in him. Did she know anything about his involvement with supernaturals? I looked her up and down. She was ordinary-looking, her strawberry-blond hair tied back into a tight bun. She certainly didn’t look like a witch, but then again, I had never thought I looked like a witch either.

  “Do the police investigate if they say natural causes?” Tom asked.

  “I spoke with the sheriff this morning,” Neville said. “There doesn’t seem to be any further investigation happening.”

  Was the sheriff even allowed to give those details out to the public? Neville spoke with an air of importance at having this privileged information, so I guessed they weren’t.

  “But as far as this concerns our business,” Neville added, “it doesn’t. The grand opening of the maze will go ahead as scheduled. We’ll have to fill Kenny’s spot and find someone else to provide coffee and other refreshments for the event.”

  “Don’t care for coffee myself,” Hattie interjected. “It’s bad for the soul, if you ask me.”

  No one did.

  “And anything made by that lout?” Hattie continued. “I wouldn’t put it past my lips if you paid me. The one time I did go in there, it was for the Heritage Foundation meeting. We thought we’d treat ourselves to a nice dessert as we did our business. Well, that man was so rude, it nearly curled my hair. We ended up walking out without finishing. And the scones were a day old. Can you believe that? Stale, hard as bricks they were. Of course, I complained, and I won’t repeat the words that loathsome man said to me; they’re not fit for polite society. I wanted Frederick to shut down that place for good.” She added with a smug sneer, “I guess I got my wish.”

  Another person with little love for Kenny Langdel. Anyone in town could be a suspect if I went by the number of people Kenny had insulted, even just in this last month.

  “Thank you, Hattie, but let’s turn our conversation to business if we could,” Neville interjected. “Mr. Langdel’s passing is unfortunate and inconvenient for our catering, but we’ll find a solution.”

  “Even dead he’s rude,” Hattie said.

  Neville looked at Tom. “Mr. Jenkins, is this something you might be interested in helping us with? I don’t want to impose, you’ve done so much for us already, but we really do need food services for the visitors, and we would like to stick with using a local business. You can use the equipment we had arranged for Kenny, so there’d be no cost to you, apart from any signage you might want to use for promotion during the event.”

  “I would be honored,” Tom said. “Though I do feel awkward profiting off such a grisly situation.”

  “Take what you can from Langdel while you can get it,” Hattie said.

  Was Hattie’s attitude simply the toxic gall of a spoiled old biddy, or was there a killer’s voice lurking in her callousness?

  “Excellent, that solves that problem. What a relief.” Neville ticked a note off on his clipboard. “Now, Hattie, you were going to Conri O’Farrell about an enclosure for the children to come and pet lambs, chickens, or the like. How did that turn out?”

  Hattie puffed up like a furious rooster. “And speaking of boorish men,” she said, “I don’t care if that man is a vet—it’s not like a vet is a real doctor anyway. He was so rude to me, I hung up on him. And now that secretary of his—what a bitter soul she is—won’t put any of my calls through to him. Can you imagine?”

  I suppressed a smirk. Who wasn’t on Mrs. Winthrop’s wrong side? Though from what I’d seen of Conri O’Farrell, it didn’t surprise me in the least.

  “Oh yes, he’s a piece of work,” Tom added. “I don’t think I’ve heard one good thing about him since he moved into town.”

  I watched Camille closely for any sign of a reaction. She didn’t move, not even a sideways glance. Maybe it was the world’s greatest poker face, or maybe she really didn’t have an opinion about the vet one way or the other. Either way, going by Hattie and Tom, it seemed Conri O’Farrell was as hated as Kenny had been. Though that didn’t automatically give him murderous intent, did it? And what connection could the vet have had with Kenny? Killers needed motives, didn’t they? Why would a vet kill a barista? Maybe Kenny was mistreating an animal. Though I had lived next door to him for months and hadn’t seen hide nor hair of a pet in his house. Maybe it was something else—something more personal.

  “Ms. Drake?”

  “Huh?” I had been so busy sizing up my growing list of potential suspects that I was caught completely off guard. “Sorry, what did you say?”

  “I just asked if you had given any more thought to your inclusion to the event?”

  “Um… yes?” I said.

  “Excellent. Can we hear your ideas? They will have to be approved by the committee, after all, and we’re running out of time with every passing second.”

  “Er… I…” I fumbled for something to say. When I had agreed to be on the committee, Neville had asked me to put together something fun, a kid’s games station with a maze theme. I had given it precisely two minutes thought before trying to think of how I could get out of it. Wasn’t coming to this silly meeting enough?

  “Well, I’m working on a little something,” I said, wondering how good Neville was at seeing through a liar. “But I can’t tell you anything at this stage. I have to survey the
maze first, you know, just to make sure it all works out thematically.” It sounded plausible enough, and it would give me a few extra days to figure something out.

  “That sounds marvelous,” Neville said. “I’ll take you there myself this afternoon, and we can chat about your ideas on the way.”

  Marvelous indeed.

  * * *

  Blackthorn Springs’ new hedge maze and tourist park had been constructed on the road out of town on a former pasture that had been donated to the council by the late John Norton, Neville’s older brother. Neville told me all about it on the way out to the site. It was a short drive in terms physical distance, but the longest ten minutes I had ever spent in a car.

  The afternoon had worn into what promised to be a cold night, and I could think of nothing better than going home to snuggle up with Hemlock and a good book and the rest of the merlot. The sudden remembrance that Hemlock wouldn’t be there brought a fresh pang of misery and a sting of hot tears. I blinked them away and tried to listen to Neville talk about how great this attraction was going to be for the town and how it would bring even more tourists come summer.

  “And that’s good for everyone too, you know. Even you. I can’t imagine you sell a lot of books from day to day.”

  “I do okay,” I said. I wasn’t about to start discussing the details of my dwindling earnings with Neville Norton and then hear Hattie Winthrop and the rest of the town talking about them next week.

  “Not a lot of retail doing well anywhere these days with all that internet shopping stuff.”

  “I have an online store too.”

  “Yes, but that’s not real business, now is it?”

  It brings in real money, I thought, but I didn’t feel like debating the merits of the digital economy with someone who probably still thought of the internet as one of those newfangled things that would see its end, and the world could go back to normal like it was in the good old days.

  We pulled into the newly built driveway, fresh gravel crunching under the tires of Neville’s silver sedan. The parking lot was built on top of the rise, the field with the maze below it. The mayor’s enormous white house sat on the opposite hill like a specter. A blustering wind nearly lifted my skirt.