Phantom Blend (A Paramour Bay Cozy Paranormal Mystery Book 12)

by Kennedy Layne

  Well, that does it. We’re leaving. This is clearly a setup. Don’t take another step closer to that case, Raven. Don’t even consi—

  I’m pretty sure the rhythmic thuds I heard were from Leo hitting his head against the side of the large archway in dismay of my choices. I had no other alternative but to get closer to the glass case so that I could see the third name listed in the column along with Bernard Williams and Paulie Russo.

  Well? Now that you’re standing there, you might as well tell me who it is. It’s too late to back out now.

  The name scrawled right below Paulie Russo was Harold Lykos.

  I was wrong, Raven. Back out slowly. We’re leaving, and by that, I mean we’re packing our bags and leaving town before the sun sets. We’re taking my soulmate with us, too. We’ll leave behind your mother and my archnemesis to deal with this situation. I wish them all the best.

  One, we weren’t going anywhere.

  Two, I’d never heard of a Harold Lykos.

  You’ve actually met his son, which is why we’re leaving town. Hey, do you have an extra suitcase that I can borrow? I have a hefty amount of premium organic catnip that we need to take with us.

  I’d met Harold Lykos’ son?

  I didn’t think so, but Leo seemed to be pretty adamant that the man’s family was dangerous enough that we should leave everything behind.

  Granted, Leo tended to dramatize the slightest hint of danger, so I took his advice with a grain of salt.

  Yeah, well, I’m about to dump that salt from the shaker overtop of your head. Let me spell this out for you—H. A. R. R. Y.

  Gertie began to explain about some of the more precious items that she’d displayed from past generations, giving me time to connect some dots that seemed to be missing.

  Leo had spelled out Harry, but the only Harry who I knew was our local librarian and who also happened to be…a werewolf!

  You’re on a roll, Raven. Now do you understand why we need to pedal paws out of town as fast as possible? Getting in between a werewolf and a druid is complete madness, and I’ll have you know that as hard as he’s tried, Skippy has yet to drive my insanity that far. I also believe there is a disclaimer in my contract—no druids and no werewolves.

  Chapter Twelve

  “This is the second time that you’ve been speechless in as many days,” I said warily, monitoring my mother’s reaction to the news about Harry’s father or grandfather staying at the inn at the same time that Bernard Williams had been there. Who knew how long werewolves lived? “I almost drove over to Harry’s house, but I think it might be better if I wait until tomorrow. He’ll be working at the library, and maybe it’s best to bring up the fact during broad daylight that one of his ancestors might have murdered a man in cold blood.”

  I’d like to go back to pedaling paws out of town. We still have time, and you should know that I already confiscated your suitcase in the best interest of saving my catnip stash.

  “Remember when I told you this afternoon that I knew of a place that I could research the monograms and insignias of Paramour Bay’s families?” my mother asked with unusual hesitancy.

  Don’t you dare say it, Regina.

  The fact that Leo used my mother’s first name instead of one of his usual monikers told me that she’d actually gone to the library. The same place of business that employed Harry. She lifted the teacup to her lips that were still covered in red lipstick, raising her wide, knowing green eyes in my direction.

  I was starting to believe that she had the red color tattooed on her lips.

  Lipstick? You’re focused on lipstick when we have a potential werewolf about to huff and puff and blow our house down? Where are your priorities, Raven? Oh, I feel a hairball coming up.

  “Oh, don’t go getting your tufts of fur in a twist,” my mother calmly said, completely opposite of her original demeanor. “Looking back upon my visit to the library, all I requested was to see some of the old family documents. I never said what I was looking for, and to my knowledge a werewolf can’t read minds. So, there will be no huffing, no puffing, and no blowing down of any houses.”

  I leaned my forearms down on my island in the kitchen, observing my mother closely. She’d gone from speechless about a werewolf’s family involvement to seeming rather confident in herself.

  It was obvious that she’d fit a piece into this whodunit puzzle.

  I personally think we should throw this current puzzle in the trash. I wouldn’t be opposed if your mother were to follow it into the dumpster, either.

  “What did I miss?” Heidi asked breathlessly after barreling through the front door. Her blonde curls were a bit tousled, and her clothes seemed to be a bit disarrayed. “That storm came out of nowhere, by the way. I’m lucky I made it inside before the torrential rain fell from those dark grey clouds. I need coffee.”

  I pointed at the coffee maker before glancing toward the window. I’d checked the weather report earlier before we set out the tables for the garage sale, and I hadn’t seen any call for rain. Then again, being on the bay tended to bring in storms rather unexpectedly and at the most inopportune times.

  “It seems a werewolf may have killed me, Heidi,” Bernard chimed in from his place on the mantel. “It’s looking more and more like my Mabel didn’t have a thing to do with my murder. Isn’t that great news? Once we can confirm that Harold Lykos was the one who…”

  Heidi smiled and nodded Bernard’s way as he continued to fill her in on the details. She’d gotten the gist of it with my text, but she was kind enough to let Bernard tell his own version.

  “What you missed that I didn’t cover in my text message was that Mom was at the library today,” I offered up, looking over my shoulder as Heidi paused mid-pour of her coffee. “She thinks that Harry doesn’t have a clue as to why she was looking at the old family documents from past generations.”

  “Have I ever been wrong?”

  Leo had been patting down the bags of catnip into the suitcase that was open near the dining room table when his head swung around at such an opening my mother had just given him. I didn’t want to spend the rest of the evening playing referee, so I quickly addressed my main concern.

  “Why would Agnus help me see the name Harold Lykos in that guestbook? I mean, it all had to be Agnus’ doing, right?” I asked loudly, wanting to garner everyone’s attention. “I’m serious. It doesn’t make sense. Either way, her mother helped a werewolf imprison a soul.”

  I can see where this conversation is heading, but I’m sending Ted over to the inn tomorrow morning to decline the dinner invitation. I’ve made my decision, Raven. As your mentor, it’s time I put my paw down on some of this reckless behavior of yours. I have a squirrelpocalypse to stop, and you’re hindering the preparation for my battle plans.

  “What is Leo carrying on about now?” Heidi asked, claiming a stool next to my mother. The two clinked their cups together in unison. “If you’re worried about Skippy and his friends, I’m sure they are hunkered down in that big oak tree behind the inn. You know, the one that borders that park and has the old treehouse in it. They are all most likely waiting out the thunderstorm.”

  “Gertie invited me to join her and Agnus for dinner tomorrow night,” I said, having covered only the basics in my message. “The way I see it, if Agnus somehow managed to open that particular guestbook to the same exact date in question as when Bernard stayed at the inn…well, she somehow planted the idea that Gertie should invite me to dinner. I accepted the invitation, and Leo is a bit upset that we’re going to be in the presence of a high-level druid.”

  Upset? A bit upset? We are talking about a prehistoric crypt keeper who—

  “Shove some of that catnip in your mouth, Leo,” my mother advised, setting her cup on the counter with a clank. “Accepting the dinner invitation was a wise choice, Raven. I’m thinking that Agnus didn’t want to have a confrontation with two witches, a hedge witch, and a familiar alone at her age. She wants a human go-between, which is
why she went to so much trouble to ensure that Gertie would be in attendance when said meeting happened. We are most likely going to receive our answers tomorrow night over dinner.”

  “The way I see it, Bernard somehow discovered that Harold Lykos was a werewolf, and Harold somehow got Helena to help in making sure that he never said a word to anyone,” Heidi surmised, before blowing carefully on her coffee. “But why all the hatred? I mean, one of them clearly held enough resentment against the man that they imprisoned his soul to a mirror for all eternity.”

  “I’d like to point out that I don’t recall knowing anything about werewolves, let alone druids,” Bernard pointed out, his misty frown practically pressed against the side of the mirror so that he could see us. “The only thing I can’t remember from back then is how I died and who killed me.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything if Harold still felt threatened in some way. Maybe something was said to give him a different perspective, and he accidentally killed you in desperation,” I countered, glancing over toward Leo when I noticed his silence. He was sitting back on his haunches in front of his suitcase filled with catnip. “That still doesn’t explain why the R from the female side of the Marigold family line was on the back of the hairbrush.”

  “I’ve actually come to find that the font used on the R was quite common back in those days,” my mother added to the conversation. “A script R could easily have stood for Ritchie, but there wasn’t anything about Helena and Agnus’ family tree. I mean, nothing.”

  “They didn’t want to leave behind a trace of their presence,” I conjectured, getting a nod of agreement from both Mom and Heidi. “So, we’re all in agreement that I should attend the dinner tomorrow night at the inn.”

  “Yes.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Why, yes!” Bernard exclaimed in agreement with the others, nodding his head vigorously. “Leo, old chap? What do you say? Shall we make it unanimous?”

  I hate to be the Debbie Downer at this picnic, but I’ve decided to be the holdout. What exactly are we needing to address with the prehistoric crypt keeper? We technically solved Bernard’s murder, we can set Bernard free of his prison with the strand of hair she so nicely handed over, and we can all live in harmonious ignorance of once another.

  “I feel as if I’ve been sent back to the sixties,” my mother muttered, hopping off the stool with determination. She put her hands on her hips the way she used to do when she lectured me as a child. “Leo, your vote doesn’t count in this instance. I agree that we’ve pretty much ruled out any Marigold involvement, Bernard was most likely murdered by a werewolf, and that we probably have the ability to send him into the afterlife. But most likely and probably doesn’t count in the grand scheme of things. Would you walk away if Skippy said he would most likely move to a different town to set up residence?”

  Heidi choked on her coffee at the question my mother posed to Leo.

  His whisker was now twitching a million miles per minute and his left eye was bulging in protest at the way she’d turned the conversation around to suit her purposes.

  Technically, they were our purposes.

  I didn’t realize it until just this moment that I needed reassurances that Agnus wouldn’t use her powers for anything but self-protection. She’d kept in the shadows for her entire life, and I didn’t see that changing, but I guess I wanted to know the reason.

  Maybe because the prehistoric crypt keeper’s mother would be wanted for murder? In case the lot of you forgot one of the most important lessons of witchcraft—you are not to utilize your magic to harm others. Other ranking druids would have frowned upon such behavior and cast her out or reported her to the Grand Druid. I’m beginning to think they had the right idea. Either way, we don’t need that kind of negative attention from beings that strong.

  “The day you manage to cast me out of this family is the day that I—’

  “Leo has a point,” I said, walking around the island and placing myself between them.

  I do?

  “He does?” my mother asked, crossing her arms in disagreement.

  And here I thought that I was sounding all smart by talking out of my—

  “If Helena did cast the spell on Bernard’s soul, which we all seem to be in agreement that she did, then it went against the governing rules of witchcraft,” I pointed out, finally a step closer as to why Agnus had remained in hiding all of her life. “Think about it. She hid her powers for a reason, and so well that not even Nan knew that she was so close to town.”

  While I’m on such a roll, Leo conjectured, what happens if all of you nincompoops bring to light such immoral and scandalous acts by the Ritchie family? You could potentially bring the Grand Druid’s Inquisition down on our heads instead of that saltshaker I threatened you with earlier…although that is still an option, too.

  Leo then took the time to lick his front paw leisurely as if it made him look smarter than the average bear, but he had made a good point that we couldn’t ignore. It was then that I thought about Ted and the task that he’d been given.

  “Has anyone heard from Ted?”

  Everyone exchanged curious glances, all of us realizing that the gentle giant had somehow evaded this scheduled meeting.

  Being late wasn’t in Ted’s nature.

  My stomach knotted at the thought that Agnus might be involved with his disappearance in some way.

  Now look at what you’ve gone and done. I now have to worry about that lump of wax, and I—

  “I might have forgotten to mention that Mr. Ted had a dinner date with his beloved tonight,” Bernard exclaimed with a hearty laugh. He’d been in good spirits—no pun intended—ever since we’d broken the news to him that his murderer might have been Harold Lykos. “He kept me company this afternoon, telling me all about what you plan to do when Mercury is in retrograde. May I just say that I think it’s delightful that he’ll have a companion to walk with side by side. In just a few days of meeting Mabel, I’d known that she was the one for me. It was too soon in our courtship to—”

  “Bernard, did Ted say when he was going to be here?” my mother asked, rubbing her temples in frustration.

  And you thought dealing with my memory loss issue was frustrating.

  “Oh, Ted isn’t joining us this evening.” Bernard’s chin titled slightly as he thought back to what he was supposed to relay to us. “He apparently spoke with Mr. Dolgiram today, and the wizard knew of nothing that could help us in our quest to prove Mabel’s innocence.”

  Don’t trust it, Raven. I’ve seen that cheating wizard try to lure that lump of wax over to the dark side at the poker table more than once. Those two could be in cahoots, and we wouldn’t even realize it until the rug was already pulled out from underneath your feet and my paws.

  “I’ll go talk to Ted,” I said with resignation, leaning my head back at the reminder that I still had to cast a spell using similar magic to the sort that we all frowned upon. His love for Justine, a mannequin that had come from Mindy’s boutique on the main thoroughfare of town, knew no bounds. “Either that, or one of us has to speak with Rye. He knew that Agnus was a druid, which means that her presence wasn’t as well hidden as she’d counted on. How did Rye know and why wouldn’t he have shared something that important with us?”

  “It almost certainly means that Aunt Rowena might still be in contact with Agnus,” my mother proposed with a deepening of the two lines in her brow. I subconsciously began to rub mine before catching myself. “I’ll go speak with Rye myself. I’ll swing by his place before heading home. Beetle is making me a homemade apple pie from the apples that Mrs. Dartsmith picked from her very own tree. He makes his own pastry crust from scratch.”

  I said it before, and I’ll say it again—every apple needs a worm.

  Leo quickly scurried around the suitcase when my mother took a step toward him, but I was still standing between the two of them. I arched my brow the way my mother had perfected, and she gave a little huff of irritatio
n before she grabbed her purse off the stool that she’d claimed earlier and headed toward the front door.

  “I wish you would stop instigating fights with her,” I muttered to Leo, walking back to the kitchen where Heidi still sat enjoying her cup of coffee. “It’s time to switch to wine.”

  Catnip time! I’m all for that, Raven.

  “Oh, I do miss a good brandy,” Bernard exclaimed, still floating in the mirror side to side as he joined us in the conversation. I never in a million years thought that having a phantom in a mirror would become part of my normal everyday life, but his presence no longer freaked me out. “Although, the last brandy I had before my lights went out tasted rather funny.”

  “You will get no argument from me, Raven,” Heidi said, resting her elbows on the counter until she and I both realized what Bernard had just revealed. She turned on her stool while I slowly spun around on my bare feet, the wine bottle in hand. “Bernard, what do you mean? Funny how?”

  Oy vey. I’m beginning to understand why my memory fritzes are so annoying.

  “Well, I told you that I recall standing by the fire and sipping my brandy.” Bernard appeared deep in thought as he attempted to remember his last moments. “There was almost a bitter taste to it. Then again, I might be transferring my bitterness in regard to my death to the last thing that touched my tongue.”

  Before asking him any more questions, I finished my task of opening the wine. I set the corkscrew on the counter and poured both Heidi and I two healthy glasses of red wine. I had a feeling we were going to need all the fortification we could get.

  “Bernard, do you think that you were poisoned?” I asked, having believed all this time that he’d been hit over the head or something. Well, until I realized that a werewolf was involved, and then my thoughts had turned rather dark. I had to suppress a shudder of revulsion at an angry and uncontrollable werewolf biting into Bernard. “Could someone have slipped something into your brandy?”