The Witching Hour

by Sara Bourgeois

  “You can go back and clean up the bakery now,” he said. “Regina’s body is gone.”

  “Thank you,” I said, but he’d already hung up the phone. That was rude, but I tried to see it from his point of view. Maybe he just needed some time to realize he was being a jerk. Perhaps he’d apologize for doubting me later. I hoped so. I couldn’t stand the thought of losing him. Well, I couldn’t stand the thought of losing my friend Joe. This new nothing-but-business version of Joe concerned me.

  “We can go clean the store now,” I said. “Regina’s body is gone.”

  “Let me get my things,” she said with a twinkle of enthusiasm in her eye. My mother hated germs and messes, but I could still tell that the prospect of a big job got her a bit excited. She did love to clean.

  Mom gathered her strongest cleaning products from her closet and gently tucked them into two buckets. Not only were they the strongest cleaning products you could legally buy, but I suspected that she boosted them magically. I put my magic in cupcakes and she put hers into cleaning supplies.

  While she did that, I gathered her brooms, mops, rags, and sponges. I’d have to carry those. I wasn’t looking forward to lugging most of that stuff in the heat.

  “Mom, can’t we just use the stuff you have stored at the bakery?”

  She eyed me through narrowed lids. “Do you really think that cleaning up after a dead body with regular cleaning supplies is acceptable?”

  “If I say yes, are you going to disown me?”

  She scoffed.

  “I mean, we have bleach at the shop. What do you need that bleach won’t handle?” I asked.

  “This is why it’s a good thing you have me,” she said and picked up the buckets. “Let’s do this thing.”

  The walk back to the bakery was miserable. I had to wrangle all of the cleaning stuff that didn’t fit in her two buckets. The sun was much higher in the sky, and I wondered when Mother Nature would bless us with some sustained autumn weather. If I thought that it felt like an armpit outside a couple of hours before, now it felt like being shoved right up a sweaty… Never mind.

  “Don’t even think about it,” my mother said all of a sudden.

  “What?”

  “You were about to think about doing a weather spell.”

  “I was?”

  “You were.”

  “I don’t know about that, but even if I was, what’s the harm?”

  “It’s only two more blocks,” she said.

  “I feel like I’m melting.”

  “Whatever you do comes back to you times three.”

  “I know that, Mom.”

  “So, if you cool the weather down today, in three months we’ll have snow up to our eyeballs.”

  “You’re being dramatic,” I said.

  “Am I?”

  “Fine, but can we stop for an iced coffee on the way?”

  “Zoe Magnolia, there was a dead body in your bakery. We most certainly cannot stop for an iced coffee. You’ve got tea and soda in your cooler at the shop. You can wait five more minutes.”

  “I’ve got milk in the cooler too. I’m surprised you didn’t suggest I have some nice healthy low-fat milk, maaaahhhm.” I dragged the last word out to ensure she picked up on the fact that she was being a smother.

  “I wouldn’t recommend that in this heat, dear,” she said without missing a beat.

  I turned and stuck my tongue out at her, but she wasn’t looking. It was probably better that way.

  Fortunately, the complaining had the opposite effect of what you’d expect. We arrived at the bakery in a much shorter time than I’d expected. If I didn’t know any better, I’d suspect that mom had done a little time magic to reduce the stretch she had to listen to me complain.

  I was relieved when we walked into the bakery. Thankfully, most of the smell was gone with Regina’s remains. I’d heard that the stench of death could creep into things and you’d never get it out, but they’d taken the body before that happened. That was one positive. It was probably the only positive other than I had a master cleaner with me to get the bakery back into tip-top shape.

  The negative was that the place was wrecked. It was far worse than when I’d gone into a panic over losing my book. The deputy had turned the place upside down looking for evidence.

  Joe hadn’t used nearly as much black fingerprint powder when investigating the burglary as they’d used for the murder scene. In some places it looked more like the deputy had thrown handfuls of it at the wall rather than dusted for prints.

  There were wet spots everywhere, and I could only assume it was where they’d used luminol looking for blood traces. Did that stuff stain? I had no idea.

  All of the drawers were open. Most of them had at the very least been rifled through and were a mess. Others had been turned over and dumped out completely. My nice, orderly pantry was ransacked. Nothing was in the right place anymore. I wasn’t a clean freak like my mother, but when I was baking, I wanted to know where my ingredients were. I was going to have to reorganize everything.

  “Oh, my god, that smell,” my mother said as she dropped her buckets of favorite cleaning supplies. “This is going to be rough.”

  “It was much worse earlier,” I offered.

  “I can’t even, Zoe. I just can’t.”

  “We can do this, mom,” I said and then she shrieked.

  I about jumped out of my skin thinking there was another dead body that I’d missed, and then I heard the clicking of tiny nails scampering across the counter. Ginger had decided to make an appearance just as my mother was getting herself worked up into a froth about the mess in the bakery.

  As if the black fingerprint powder everywhere and the overturned drawers in the kitchen weren’t enough. Ginger would throw my mother into a conniption fit, and my little familiar knew it.

  “Oh my goddess, Zoe,” she whisper-yelled. “I thought you weren’t going to let that rat in your store anymore.”

  “Ginger is a guinea pig, mom. And you said I shouldn’t let her in here. I never agreed.”

  “She’s a rodent, Zoe. She carries who knows how many diseases. And she’s on the counter. She’s going to give your customers the plague.”

  “No, she’s not mom. She doesn’t have any diseases and she’s my familiar.”

  Ginger, of course, was amused by the exchange. She pranced around the counter and then wiggled her little fuzzy butt at my mom before plopping down on the counter. As my mother’s breathing quickened with anxiety, Ginger rolled around and kicked her legs in the air.

  My familiar stopped rolling around and hung her head off the counter so she could look at my mother upside down. “Regina is the only disease that ever walked into this store, Willow,” Ginger said to mom before resuming her rolling and kicking. “She was the worst person in town. You’re lucky she’s dead.”

  “Ginger,” I chided. “You shouldn’t talk about her like that.”

  “What? Don’t pretend like you’re sad for her. She doesn’t deserve it.”

  “I’m not sad for her,” I corrected. “But I’d never wish anyone dead. That’s just asking for bad karma.”

  “That lady is the one who had a lot of bad karma,” Ginger said.

  “She was a charlatan psychic who tricked people into giving her their life savings. This town has so many retired folks. I can’t even imagine how many people she hurt. It’s a repugnant scheme. The town is better off without her, but that doesn’t mean I wished her dead.”

  “Everyone is going to assume you killed her with magic,” my mom called from the kitchen where she’d wandered off to clean and get away from Ginger.

  “I can’t afford that kind of reputation right now. The Mabon Festival is just a few weeks away. I need the money I make at that festival,” I said. “I’ve got to find a way to prove that I had nothing to do with her death. I need my Cookbook of Shadows back too. I hate that it’s out there.”

  “Let Sheriff Joe handle things, Zoe.” my mom said as she walk
ed from the kitchen out to the dining area to retrieve something from her supplies. “Have they even confirmed that she was murdered? Perhaps she just dropped dead. I’m sure stranger things have happened.”

  “I wish that were true,” I said. “But I doubt it. My intuition says she was murdered. One way or another, someone out there killed her, and if I want to clear my reputation before Mabon and the Autumn Festival, I’m going to have to find them.”

  Chapter Five

  It took a few hours for my mom to be satisfied that the stench of death was gone from my shop. She scrubbed the place from top to bottom and then did it all over again. I helped as much as I could, but for the most part, that meant staying out of the way.

  The work would have been physically exhausting if we were mere mortals, but the witch thing helped considerably. My mother could use a little magic power to make the mops and sponges dance a cleanly dance instead of old-fashioned elbow grease.

  It’s one of the reasons I had to stay out of the way. Her work was like conducting a symphony, and when she got into the groove, not much could pull her attention away. Stepping into the fray would have meant possibly taking a broom to the backside or a wet sponge to the face.

  I kept myself busy reorganizing the pantry. If I were to be honest, it needed it. There were some things in there that had been expired for a while. A box of petrified raisins shoved to the back of the bottom shelf was particularly embarrassing and probably would have raised the alarm with the health inspector. They were in a sealed container and no danger to the rest of the food, but that didn’t make them any less cringeworthy. Until that moment, I had no idea that raisins could turn into rocks. You learn something new every day.

  When my mom was done with the kitchen and had moved out to the dining area to tackle the fingerprint powder, luminol splotches, and scent o’ death, I spent my time putting my kitchen drawers back together. You’d think it would have been a perfect job for Ginger to help me with, but all she did was nap… right on the edge of the counter by the door to the kitchen… so my mom caught a glimpse of her every time she walked by…

  Once the place was spotless, I locked the bakery up and went home. Mom went back to her place to continue to fight the good fight against spores. There wasn’t any rain yet, but the sky had grown hazy and I could swear I heard a rumble of thunder somewhere off in the distance.

  I wanted to know if Joe had any updates on what happened to Regina. I had hoped that he’d say she hadn’t been murdered and I’d have been off the hook. And, if she had been murdered, I wanted to know how.

  Before I called, I decided to make some tea and heat up a couple of country biscuits I had in the breadbox on the counter. Tea and biscuits with butter and honey sounded like a good way to relax after the day I’d had. And goddess knew I could use a little relaxing.

  Once my tea had steeped and my biscuits were buttered, I settled into my favorite chair. Seconds later, Ginger was on the table next to my plate staring at it covetously. She did that little guinea pig thing where her nose twitched. It was supposed to be adorable, but I wasn’t falling for it.

  “Ginger,” I warned.

  “What?” she turned to me and asked innocently.

  “You’re thinking of stealing my snack.”

  “I’m not,” she said. “And I’m offended.”

  “Would you like some of the biscuit?” I asked.

  “I mean, I am a bit puckish,” Ginger said. “But I’d prefer an apple or perhaps a tasty carrot.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “That would be a much better choice for you than bread.”

  “Would probably be a better choice for you too.” I could have sworn I heard her mumble.

  “What’s that?”

  “Oh, nothing. I was just wondering if we have carrots. I’d prefer that to an apple.”

  I got up and fetched a carrot from the vegetable drawer in the kitchen. When I turned around, it almost appeared that I’d barely missed catching Ginger in the act of snatching a bit of biscuit, but I ignored it.

  “Here you go,” I said and put the carrot down on the table.

  Ginger began to immediately gnaw on it happily. I ate my biscuits and drank my tea almost as happily. It had been a bad couple of days, but a good biscuit and cup of tea could make just about anything better.

  When I was done, I pulled my phone out of my purse. I dialed Joe and wondered if he’d answer while he was still working.

  He picked up after a couple of rings. “Hello, Zoe.”

  “Hi, Joe.”

  “Are you calling because you have information on the case for me?” he asked.

  “No. I mean, I wish I did. I was actually hoping you had an update for me.”

  “It’s going to take a few days for the toxicology screen, but the medical examiner did find something in their investigation. I’m actually glad you called because I wanted to ask you about it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, the medical examiner thinks that Regina might have been poisoned.” There was a hint of insinuation in his voice.

  “Why does he think that?” I wondered if Joe thought I’d fed her a poisoned cupcake.

  “Her lips showed signs of dark brown staining,” Joe said and took a deep breath. “Regina also had inflamed mucous membranes and the coroner said it was as if she’d been burned from the inside out.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “Do you know any spells for burning someone from the inside out?”

  So, they thought I’d used magic to kill her instead of just poisoning her the old-fashioned way. That figured.

  “I don’t,” I said. “Joe, you know me better than that.”

  I swear I heard him sigh. “I have to investigate this case objectively, Zoe. I can’t let my personal feelings get in the way of my work. I hope you understand that,” he said very clinically, but I got it. “Do you know if a spell like that exists at all?”

  “I don’t know of one personally, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. I’ll have to consult my grimoire and see what it will reveal to me.”

  “I would appreciate that,” Joe said.

  “Can I ask you something? Why do you assume her death was magic related? Why couldn’t it have just been regular poison?”

  “I live in a town full of witches. I can’t discount that Regina’s death could have been related to magic.”

  I didn’t say anything, but it made me sad that Joe was so paranoid about witches and magic. Like he said, he lived in a town full of witches. You’d have thought he would be a little more open-minded about the whole thing.

  It was unfortunate that Joe had such a suspicious opinion of witches. I’d considered dating him on many occasions. I was fairly certain that he’d had the same considerations about me, but he couldn’t get past his apprehension around witches.

  When Joe lightened up, he was really attractive. Physically, he was always quite appealing with his broad shoulders and piercing green eyes. Joe’s hair was thick, wavy, and it had a hint of auburn when the sun hit it just right. I’d often thought of how nice it would be to run my hands through his locks, but he’d probably never let me do that. He’d assume I was trying to cast a spell on him or something. Not that I hadn’t considered a love spell before, but I didn’t want to find a husband that way. If Joe would ever love me, I wanted it to happen on its own.

  So despite our mutual attraction, I doubted it would ever work between us. “Best friends” was the best we could be. I hated the way my heart ached a little every time I had to admit that to myself.

  “Zoe? Are you still there?”

  “Oh, sorry. I was just lost in thought,” I said. “Do you have any idea what kind of poison might have been used?”

  “We won’t know that until we get the tox screen back,” he said “And if it was magical in nature, the tox screen isn’t going to help.”

  The word “tox” tripped something in my mind. I knew someone in town who had a great deal of exp
erience with toxic things. Or at least I thought I did. I’d heard quite a few rumors over the years the Esmeralda Bodeswell, who happened to be Regina’s protégé and assistant at The Seeing Eye, had a poisoner’s garden in her back yard.

  It was nothing more than rumors to me as I had never seen it myself, but I’d heard about it enough times that it had to be true. I wondered if I should mention it to Joe.

  On one hand, it was a solid lead in the case considering he believed that Regina had been poisoned. On the other, there was still the possibility that it was just a persistent and popular rumor. If it turned out to be nothing more than a story, would it make me look more guilty? I didn’t want Joe to think I was making up leads to take the spotlight off myself, and I didn’t want to send Joe on a wild goose chase. But I also knew that I would feel horrible if I withheld the information. What if Esmeralda had done it, and I said nothing?

  “Zoe?” Joe asked quietly. It was the first time all day that I heard even a hint of tenderness in his voice.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I got lost in thought and I wasn’t sure if I should bring up something.”

  “What is it?” The slight edge returned to his voice.

  “Regina’s assistant, Esmeralda Bodeswell, possibly has a poisoner’s garden in her back yard.”

  “A poisoner’s garden?”

  “Yeah, people usually grow things like belladonna nightshade, henbane, and mandrake.”

  “You’ve seen this garden?”

  “Well, no. She keeps her backyard gate locked tight. I’ve heard plenty of rumors, though. Children who’ve climbed her fence have seen it and few people have been there at just the right time when she opened her gate for one reason or another. I heard that one of those kids got sick just from climbing the fence and standing too close to the plants.”

  “Those are just rumors, Zoe.” Any good humor had drained from his voice.

  “But, it could be true. It’s awfully convenient that Regina was probably poisoned and someone so close to her is growing poison plants.”