The Sweets of Doom

by Wendy Meadows

  When Zack releases the meatballs into his plate, sauce smears across his eyelids. He chokes with laughter wiping it off. Cheryl sniffs back tears. “Don’t encourage them.”

  Their father hugs his ribs and doubles over with laughter. “Please stop. It hurts too much.”

  I can’t stop laughing either. In a few seconds, the whole oppressive atmosphere of the murder case evaporates. I admire the shining faces around my table. We can all heal from the dread and tension straining this town to the breaking point. All it takes is a little laughter and a little kindness toward our fellow man.

  After much laughter and talk, dinner breaks up. Zack takes the kids upstairs, and their excited voices drift down the stairs for a long time before they fall silent. I finish putting the dishes in the sink and join Cheryl and Oscar in the living room. “Zack will take care of the kids.”

  “They love him,” Cheryl replies. “Thank you again, Margaret. We really needed this.”

  “Don’t mention it. Hopefully, once we put Jose Santiago’s killer behind bars, all this magic stuff will blow over and West End will go back to being the sleepy little hamlet by the sea.”

  “Have you had any luck?” she asks. “Do you have any leads on the killer?”

  I shrug. “A lot of loose ends, more like. I wouldn’t want to reveal anything except what you already told me. I don’t believe the killer was really from West End at all. No one in town had any really strong connection to him.”

  “I just can’t believe a town this small could support so many murderers,” she remarks. “I always thought West End was safe. We’ve had three violent murders one right after the other, and now this.”

  “It does seem odd, but you have to remember that only Roger Callahan was really from West End. Alan Harris was from out of town, and if you’re right about Jose’s murderer, they’ll be from out of town, too. I still have faith in West End, and I’ve gotten more threats since I moved here than in all the rest of my life combined.”

  “Yeah, but you’ve been all mixed up in these murder investigations,” Cheryl points out. “I don’t mean to criticize you investigating murders, Margaret, but no one would have threatened you if you weren’t involved.”

  I cock my head to look at her. “But like you said, no one would have threatened you, either, if you hadn’t painted yourselves as a coven. Surely you and your friends could have gotten together to complain about your husbands and your kids without pretending to be witches.”

  She sighs. “You’re right. Maybe we should rethink our whole branding concept.”

  I have to laugh. “Maybe.”

  “I’ll bring it up at the next meeting, but I don’t know if the others will go for it. Some of them really like the mystique of calling ourselves a coven. They won’t want to give that up. Besides, there are a select few who really are into magic.”

  “Well, see what they say.”

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” she goes on. “If we decide to stay in West End, I won’t continue as leader if they don’t rebrand. I won’t run the risk of this happening again. Some of those women are my closest friends, but all that witch stuff is too risky for me. If they want to get together and talk and share a few laughs, I’m all for it. I won’t be the Grand High Vizier anymore. Someone else can take on that mantle.”

  “I don’t blame you.” I get to my feet. “I’m going to hit the sack. Feel free to stay up as long as you want. Zack is working at the candy store tomorrow, so he’ll be up early making breakfast. What time do your kids usually get up?”

  “They’re usually up early, too,” Cheryl replies. “I take them to school at eight-thirty, and then we both go to work.”

  “I sleep in on my day off,” I tell her, “so if I don’t see you in the morning, I’ll catch up with you tomorrow evening.”

  “Good night, Margaret,” Cheryl calls after me. “Thank you again.”

  13

  True to my word, I wake up to a completely silent house. Sunshine streams through my bedroom window, and I listen to the glorious sound of absolutely nothing. The wind whispers in the leaves outside. Other than that, I can hear my own breathing and nothing else.

  I lie in bed until well past ten-thirty before I drag my sorry backside downstairs to fuel up with coffee. By noon, I start to feel human and ready to face the world.

  While I sip my coffee in the sunshine, I pull out my phone and check the map. I still have Fire Ridge Summer Camp entered in the search bar. I move the map around and study the route between the camp and West End.

  No matter which way I turn this murder case, I still can’t get Tana Ness-Scott out of my mind. Of all our suspects, she gave the flimsiest alibi to explain why she supposedly couldn’t have left camp to sneak into town and kill Jose. I can’t think of one good reason to believe her.

  First of all, she’s a woman. She had extensive contact with the victim by virtue of being his son’s teacher. She even made an appointment to see him outside of school time, ostensibly to discuss Michael’s education, but that could have been a lie.

  The school is closed for the summer, so they didn’t meet there. Jose was a hard-working family man, so I don’t really see him driving up to the camp to meet her. That left one option. She must have come down from the camp to meet with him instead. He worked in Peterborough, but she would never have agreed to meet there. It was too far from the camp.

  That left West End. Where else would they have gone besides his house? It made logical sense. They made the appointment for the day before Jose’s death, but that means nothing. I can just hear the phone or text conversation now.

  Hi Jose. I just found out I have to work Wednesday and I won’t have my day off until Thursday. Could we please postpone our meeting until then? I really appreciate it, and I hope this change doesn’t inconvenience you too much.

  No problem at all, Tana. No, wait. That isn’t right. Jose wouldn’t want to encourage her to think of him outside a professional context. Revision: No problem at all, Miss Ness-Scott. I’ll see you Thursday.

  He didn’t change the date on his calendar. Why should he when he could just remember it?

  So she came to his house with blueberry muffins, flowers, and another card to add to his growing collection of cards professing her love. He probably started out trying to be polite and guiding the conversation toward the subject of why Michael wouldn’t be going to art school. He even ate one of the muffins to show his goodwill.

  She didn’t keep to the subject, though. She insisted on pushing herself on him. She kept harping on how much she loved him and wanted more. He got mad, or at least frustrated, and threw the flowers and the cards in the trash.

  Somewhere in there, the poison started to act. Maybe he got delirious and lightheaded. He couldn’t breathe. His vision started to blur. He struggled to pull himself together, but he wound up collapsing instead.

  Tana watched with cold detachment. She tried everything to make him love her. She tried her spells, but nothing would thaw his frozen heart. If he wouldn’t love her, she would have to show him. She wouldn’t be taken for a ride by anyone.

  When he fell over dead, she went to work. She created that fake ritual scene, dressed him in the robe, and positioned his body against the chair. She made sure every detail matched the model exactly. Then she wiped out every trace of her presence and left.

  Of all the suspects and all the various clues involved in this case, only Tana matches. She’s got motive, method, and opportunity. If I’m right, the camp will have a record that she had the day of Jose’s death off from work. I only need one more piece of the puzzle. I have to prove she really could have left the camp and made it to West End in the time allotted, possibly on foot, since she claimed her car is in Peterborough.

  I put my coffee cup in the sink and put on my sturdy hiking boots. I start the stopwatch on my phone, slip it into my pocket, and set off. I track through town to the highway leading east. I follow it a mile before I break off to follow a stream rushing down fro
m the mountains.

  I keep checking the satellite feed on my phone. I pick up a forgotten hiking trail winding up the mountain to the very pinnacle. From there, I can survey the whole valley beyond. Peterborough is nestled some distance away.

  I plunge into the forest and wind up at the fence bordering the Fire Ridge Summer Camp. I climb over a stile and make my way to the main camp area. I find Tana at the horse rink as before.

  She cocks an eyebrow at me. “What are you doing back here?”

  “I came to see you.” I give her a bright smile.

  “What do you want?”

  “I just wanted to ask you some questions about Michael Santiago,” I tell her. “You really took a shine to him, didn’t you?”

  “He’s very talented. That’s all.”

  “Still,” I remark, “he must have been really talented for you to make an appointment to meet his father outside of school time to try to convince him to send Michael to art school. I bet you don’t take that kind of effort with your other students.”

  “I would take that kind of effort with any student that showed as much promise as Michael did.” She inclines her head to level me with a piercing glare. “What exactly are you trying to imply?”

  I scan the camp. “Do you have internet coverage up here? I don’t see any cell towers.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” she snaps.

  “I was just wondering. If you wanted to research something—say a book or some subject that interested you—you wouldn’t be able to do it here. You would be completely cut off from the world. In a way, I suppose that’s a good thing. It gives you a chance to disconnect from the world and recharge your batteries.”

  She bends over the knot she’s tying and mumbles under her breath. “No, we don’t have internet up here.”

  I nod. “Then you would have had to do all your research beforehand, wouldn’t you? Is this your first time working at this camp, Tana?”

  She flashes me another withering scowl. “Yes, it is.”

  The puzzle pieces start to fall into place. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Would you stop if I said no?”

  I laugh, even though I don’t see anything funny about this situation. “Probably not. Here’s my question. Do you have any hobbies? Do you have any interests outside of teaching? I thought you might be really into art if you took such a personal concern in Michael’s development, but I just wanted to ask you. How do you spend your free time? What really gets you going? What do you research on the internet—maybe obscure books, or exotic Southeast Asian plants?”

  Her head whips around, and a flash of recognition flickers in her eyes. The next minute, she buries it under a stoic veneer of indifference and even disdain. “I don’t have any hobbies.”

  “None at all?” I raise my eyebrows. “I find that hard to believe. I don’t know anybody who doesn’t have at least one interest outside their career. It works to counteract the boredom and routine of working the same job year after year. Take me. I run a candy store, but in my free time, I like to investigate crimes. I didn’t intend to. It just kind of happened by accident. That’s why I keep poking around in Jose Santiago’s murder case.”

  She doesn’t look at me again, but the damage is already done. I hit a sore point mentioning obscure books and exotic Asian plants. I don’t have to come right out and accuse her point-blank of practicing witchcraft. I understand her and she understands me with perfect clarity.

  She researched Friar Paulino’s Recipes and Herbarium and found out Horace Bentley had a copy at his bookstore. She must have applied to work as a counselor at Fire Ridge Summer Camp so she could get close enough to West End to steal the book and plant her love charms at Jose’s house. Then she made a pretext to get herself invited there so she could poison him.

  I wait, but she doesn’t say anything more. She makes a point of ignoring my presence. The more time I spend in her company, the more convinced I become that she’s the killer. All I have to do is catch her in the act of leaving the camp and making it back to West End. I already proved a person on foot could do that in a few hours.

  I don’t say goodbye to her. One of the horse-riding campers gets into difficulties when his horse kicked another in the ring. A skirmish breaks out between the two horses. The kids on board scream in fright and Tana hops the fence to intervene.

  In the confusion, I drift backward, one step at a time, to the fence. I slip off into the trees, but I don’t leave. I lurk in the foliage and watch from afar. What am I doing up here? Don’t I have enough to pin the murder on her by now?

  For some reason, I keep hovering in the shadows, watching Tana work with the kids. The few times I can make out what she said, she sounds kind and encouraging. Maybe she really is a good teacher. Maybe she just let this magic obsession of hers go to her head.

  Maybe she got it into her head that Jose didn’t have the right to turn her down because of her magic. Maybe she pinned all her hopes on the potion from the book and she just couldn’t accept when it didn’t work. Stranger things have been known to happen.

  The sun goes down a lot earlier on the mountain than in town. Then again, maybe it only seems that way because the trees block the light. Tana and the kids put their horses in the barn. I skirt the camp to watch them go into the cafeteria for dinner. When they come out, they go to their cabins one after another.

  Tana goes into the counselors’ cabin. Darkness falls and the air turns cold. I forgot to bring a jacket. Dang. Double triple dang. I rub my arms and pace around to keep warm, but I don’t want to make too much noise in case I give my position away.

  If Tana is going to make a move, she’ll do it now. If she has that book, she’ll try to destroy it, now that I revealed I know she has it. She’ll slip out of the camp and lead me right to it.

  After a while, I get tired and hunker down. I draw my knees up to my chest and curl into a ball to wait. I kick myself for not leaving Zack a note. He might worry when I don’t come home, but I didn’t know then that I would be spending the night on the mountain. I just made the decision on the spur of the moment when Tana gave me that knowing look. I am about to text him but then stop myself. He’s been getting too bossy lately, trying to control everything I do and everywhere I go. If I text him he’ll text back and not leave me alone until I agree to come home right away. It won’t hurt to let him stew for a bit.

  That, of course, means Zack will have to entertain the Whitfields alone—not that I don’t think he can handle it. He’ll be fine with them. He can explain to them that I’m in the throes of a midlife crisis where I do all kinds of wild and crazy stuff without warning.

  A crash in the woods startles me out of my wits. I launch to my feet to tear down the mountain going a hundred miles an hour…and stop. A fluffy brown rabbit breaks cover under the scrub and bolts a dozen yards away. It halts to look back at me. Its ears twitch. Its whiskers bristle. Its little ribs flutter, panting for every tortured breath.

  I sink back into my hiding place. I can’t go jumping at phantoms now, or I’ll be a basket case in a matter of minutes. I’m not much different from that rabbit, ready to make a dash for it at the slightest noise.

  Just then, I hear a soft thump coming from the camp. I peek out of my hiding place to see a shadowy figure emerge from the counselors’ cabin. My heart leaps into my throat. It’s Tana.

  She surveys the woods on both sides. Silence envelops the mountains. Nothing moves. Nothing breathes, not even me.

  Then she sets off into the trees. She walks straight to the path and starts down it on a beeline for West End.

  14

  I drop my phone in my haste to get it out of my pocket. Thank the stars the screen blinks on. Otherwise, I would never find it in the dark. I have to fight to keep my emotions under control, and I have to make sure I keep enough distance behind Tana to stop her from realizing I’m following her.

  I send a panicked text to David. Tana Ness-Scott is leaving Fire Ridge Camp r
ight now. She’s on her way to West End. She stole a rare book of love potions from Horace Bentley’s store and tried to use one on Jose. I have the pouches of herbs she stashed in his mattress and in his T-shirt drawer. They match a spell from the book. I can prove she could have walked from camp to town in a few hours. She had an appointment to meet Jose, and his house is the most logical meeting place. I hope you get this. I think she’s on her way to destroy the book to hide the evidence. I’ll try to text you when I get closer to town.

  The screen brightness ruins my night vision. I have to turn the phone off and blink several times before I can see where I’m going. I have no way to tell if he gets the text or not. I’m flying completely blind without a net.

  In my haste to keep Tana in sight, I hurry up almost right behind her. I freak out when I see how close I actually get to her. I stagger back to put a safe distance between us when I see her veer sideways off the trail.

  When I get to the spot, I realize she’s taken a side path into the bushes. I tiptoe down it with my blood pounding in my ears. At the end, I come to a tiny cabin tucked into the trees.

  A light switches on inside. Tana passes the window. This must be her hideaway. Of course she would have stashed her plant and her book and all her Jose-trapping paraphernalia in one location easily accessible to the planned murder site.

  I retrieve my phone, but I still can’t tell whether David received my text. I tap out another one, along with a link to Google maps of the cabin’s location. Tana is in a cabin in the woods right outside West End. It’s less than a mile from Jose’s house. She must be keeping the book and the plant here. Please let me know if you received this. I don’t know what I should do if she tries to destroy the book.

  I put my phone away and look around me in petrified horror. Is this what being a private investigator is all about—hiding in the woods and freaking out? I really don’t have a clue how to deal with this situation. I’m in way over my head. So this is what David tried to warn me about all these months, and I didn’t listen.