Charm School: A Witches Three Cozy Mystery (The Witches Three Cozy Mysteries Book 1)

by Cate Martin

  We all turned at an outbreak of noise at the back door then Mr. Trevor was there, clutching a grocery bag close to his chest as a uniformed officer led him to Officer Fisher.

  "John Trevor," the uniformed officer told Fisher.

  "Ah," he said. "Let's talk in the other room, shall we?"

  Mr. Trevor gave a little nod. His skin was ashen and I was afraid he was about to faint. I stepped up to take the bag from his arms and he murmured a word of thanks. And yet his eyes looked down at me like he wasn't sure if we had ever met before.

  "Poor Mr. Trevor," Sophie said as I took butter and milk out of the bag and put them in the refrigerator. "He knew Cynthia longer than any of us. And Miss Zenobia as well. I certainly hope he had other family and friends?" She looked to Brianna and I, but neither of us knew anything.

  "Listen," Nick said, getting our attention. "You guys aren't suspects, but you might be needed for more questions later. I know you were only planning to be in town for the weekend, but you might have to hang around longer."

  "Fine with me," Sophie said. "I brought everything I own with me."

  Brianna bit her lip, and I could sense the torrent of words about her research and its crucial juncture that strained to explode out of her, but she held it all back and merely gave a nod.

  "I should get going," Nick said, glancing at his wrist on which he wore no watch.

  "The backyard is a crime scene," I said. "I'll walk you out the front."

  "Thanks," Nick said. I led the way through the butler's pantry so we would emerge in the hallway on the far side of the dining room where Officer Fisher was speaking to Mr. Trevor.

  "I've always wondered what it looked like in here," Nick said, taking peeks into the parlor and up the stairwell and examining every photo that lined the hallway.

  "Not a good time for the full tour, I'm afraid," I said. "Maybe later. Now that we'll be here longer."

  "Yeah," Nick said. We had reached the front door and I held it open for him but he hesitated to pass through it. "I have to see to my grandfather and his dog now, and then I'm off to work, but I'll check in later if that's all right? See how things are going. If it's no trouble."

  "No trouble at all," I said with all the smile I could muster. Having been a professional server for my entire working life, I should have been able to muster better.

  "I'm sorry about your friend," he said. "I know you didn't know her long, but sometimes with some people it just doesn't take long to form a bond. You know?"

  I managed a better smile that time. "Actually, I do know."

  He smiled back at me then left.

  The smile melted away from my face. What he had said was so true. I had known Cynthia such a short amount of time, and really only had two or three conversations with her. And yet, I felt she had understood me. She had seen me, who I really was, and had liked what she saw.

  I don't know what the future might have held. Maybe she would have been like a mentor to me. I could really use one.

  But that wasn't to be.

  When I returned to the kitchen Mr. Trevor was there as well, and Officer Fisher had gone.

  "Thanks for the help with the groceries," he said, and I could see he was still feeling numb. The other feelings were yet to come.

  "Don't mention it," I said. "I'm so sorry for your loss."

  "I have to tell her husband," he said, mostly to himself, but then he looked up at the three of us. "When you found her body, was she wearing her amulet?"

  "Amulet?" I asked. "Do you mean that silver locket?"

  "Yes, that," he said, and grasped my arm a little too firmly. "Did she have it?"

  "I didn't see it," I said.

  "She was laying face down," Brianna said.

  "So it might have been there?" Mr. Trevor asked, his eyes wild.

  I closed my eyes and brought the scene back to mind in every possible detail. I saw every wrinkle in her dress, every bit of mud-spattered on her shoes.

  The gentle curve of the hand that had been extended up towards the top of the stairs.

  "No," I said. "It wasn't there. I'm absolutely certain."

  Mr. Trevor passed a trembling hand over his face. "That complicates things," he said, but didn't explain further. He turned to head for the back stairs, but there was at least one thing I couldn't go a minute longer without knowing.

  "Mr. Trevor?" I asked, and he turned back to face us. "The reading of the will. Is that still happening tonight? Without Cynthia?"

  "Oh, yes," he said. "Yes, nothing can change the timing of that."

  Chapter 11

  After Mr. Trevor went upstairs, I turned back to see only Brianna still in the kitchen with me.

  "Where's Sophie?" I asked. "Did she go back out to that cellar?"

  I couldn't imagine why she'd want to do that. Cellars that lurked under houses, only accessible by a door that didn't connect to the house, had to be nasty, spider-filled nightmares. That was why they called them cellars and not basements.

  "I don't think so," Brianna said absentmindedly. "They asked us not to go into the backyard since it's a crime scene."

  "Did she go upstairs then?" I asked.

  "Don't know," Brianna said, her mind even further away from me. "I need to check some things…"

  She trailed off, getting up from the table and heading up the back stairs. I rinsed her mug and my own and set them on the rack then hurried to catch up with her.

  I could tell by her footsteps that she had stopped on the second floor and not the third, and sure enough I found her in the library roaming the stacks as if she knew exactly where everything was.

  "Did Miss Zenobia use the Dewey decimal system or something?" I asked.

  "No," Brianna said, pulling a book down from a middle shelf, then moving further down the row and getting up on tiptoe to fetch a larger tome from a higher shelf. "Well, I guess you could say 'or something.'"

  I looked around at the books, but so many of them were in languages I couldn't even sound out I had no clue how they were grouped. "I wish I could help you, but I don't think I can," I said.

  "Oh," Brianna said, stopping halfway to the large table in the middle of the library with an armful of books. She almost looked up at me, but her eyes veered away at the last moment. "I usually work alone."

  "Understood," I said, and backed out of the library.

  Whatever Sophie was up to, she clearly felt the same way about the alone part.

  Mr. Trevor was surely overwhelmed with tasks related to Cynthia's death. I had only known him a day, but I could tell he wasn't the type to contact the family and then step away from the rest of the work. And, not knowing anyone involved, there wasn't much I could do to help.

  I went back up to my room, now blissfully quiet in the light of midmorning, but even after that largely sleepless night I was far too keyed up to nap. So I slipped my phone in my pocket and went out for a walk.

  It was a gorgeous day, the sun bright and almost hot on my skin but the breeze cool enough to give me a chill when I walked through the shadows of the many large trees.

  We didn't have so many trees so close together where I lived. Most people had at least one tree somewhere in their yard, but here the trees were thick enough for their branches to thread together. If the street weren't so wide they would be making a green canopy, a living cave for the cars to pass through.

  I spent the whole day walking, walking down Summit Avenue until it ended in a park on the bank of the Mississippi. I strolled around the park for most of the afternoon before finally heading back to Miss Zenobia's Charm School for Exceptional Young Ladies.

  I walked, and I looked at the houses and college buildings and people sharing the sidewalk with me, but I didn't really have thoughts going through my head. Not like word-thoughts. I just had feelings, mostly sad ones. Some anxious ones too.

  When I got back to the house it was still dead quiet. I made myself a cheese sandwich and a mug of tea in the kitchen and ate it alone at the kitchen table. Then I
cleaned up what few dishes I had used and decided I could probably take a nap now if I wanted, after all that walking and sunshine.

  And yet I didn't find myself heading up the back stairs. Instead, not remembering taking any of the steps in between, I found myself back in the formal dining room, looking up at the hutch.

  The box wasn't there. It wasn't at the head of the table either. I felt a strange rush of feeling - more than annoyance, bordering on outright anger - at its absence, but as soon as I tried to examine that feeling, it was gone.

  I really needed that nap.

  I could hear gentle rustling as I passed the second floor. Brianna in the library, probably.

  I didn't even get my shoes off before I collapsed across the bed and fell into a deep sleep, undisturbed by party sounds or jazz music.

  When I woke the sun had nearly set, and I was hungry again. I tidied up my nap-head and went back down to the kitchen.

  And still no one was there. Yet the unmistakeable smell of chili filled the kitchen. When I switched on the light I saw a slow cooker sitting out on the counter, a stack of bowls beside it. A note invited me to eat as much as I liked, and informed me there was cheese and sour cream in the fridge and biscuits in the towel-covered basket.

  It felt weird, going about my business in this immense, silent house. And it was weird that it felt weird, since I had lived alone for years now. I ate alone, I curled up with a book in the silence of my little apartment, and I went to bed without saying goodnight to anybody. So this day shouldn't feel weird to me, and yet it did.

  It was the house. The house so big it ate up every sound. The tap and scrape of my spoon across the bowl was muted, like I was eating underwater.

  I wished I had one of those phones that had music on it. But perhaps that would be worse. The house would just consume the music.

  Like it seemed to have consumed the rest of the people in the house with me.

  After washing up my dishes I decided I didn't want to go back up to my room, so I went into the parlor. While the library was filled with immense tomes, works I doubted I could understand even if they were in English, the parlor had a smaller bookshelf that was filled with novels. They were decades old with faded covers and yellowed pages, but they were accessible. I found an Agatha Christie I had read only once before and curled up into a chair with it.

  Then, as if under a spell, I promptly fell back asleep. I woke with a start when Mr. Trevor softly touched my arm.

  "Miss Amanda," he said, and even in the darkness of the parlor I could see the grief etched on his skin. It gave my heart a little pang. "It's nearly time."

  "Time?" I repeated, sitting up in the chair and sending the book on my lap spilling to the floor.

  "Midnight," he said. "The others are already in Miss Zenobia's office."

  "Oh, right," I said. "You found Sophie?"

  "Yes," he said, giving me a puzzled look but not asking what I meant. I suppose, technically, I had never tried to find her. She might not actually have been hiding.

  I followed Mr. Trevor up to the second floor and through the open door to Miss Zenobia's office.

  A dim lamp glowed from the desktop, but the majority of the light came from the little fire crackling in the fireplace. Brianna and Sophie were already sitting in two of the three chairs that faced the desk, and they turned to look over the tall backs of the chairs as Mr. Trevor and I came into the room.

  "There she is," Sophie said.

  "Just in time," Brianna said.

  "Miss Amanda, go ahead and get settled," Mr. Trevor said. I sat down on the last chair then turned to look back at him and ask where he was going to sit. I thought perhaps on the other side of the desk, although it felt like only Cynthia should sit there and she was gone.

  But Mr. Trevor was leaving, pulling the door shut behind him.

  "Where are you going?" I asked.

  "I'm not permitted to stay," he said. "This is for your ears only."

  "But who…?" I started to ask.

  "No time," he said. "I'll be back when the time is over."

  I wanted to ask what that meant, but he was gone.

  And then I heard the unmistakable sound of the door being locked from the other side.

  "Why is he locking us in?" I asked, looking to the other two.

  "I'm sure it's fine," Brianna said, but she didn't sound sure.

  " But who is going to read this will if there's no one here but us?" I asked. Sophie shrugged, looking bored. I sat back in my chair to face the desk, searching the surface for some sign of paper or a computer tablet or anything.

  All that was there, besides the glowing lamp, was the dark wood box from the dining room.

  The grandfather clock sitting against the wall to my right began to chime. On the first stroke, Sophie sat forward and switched out the electric light.

  On the fourth stroke, a wind picked up. The tree outside the window scratched at the glass and the wind seemed to swirl down the chimney, squashing the happy flames down to darkly glowing embers.

  On the eighth stroke the clouds parted and the moon broke free, shining brightly through a gap in the tree branches to land directly on the wood of the box lid.

  On the last stroke of midnight, I blinked. And in that instant my eyes were closed the lid changed from opened to closed.

  And a woman now sat in the chair across from us, the moonlight dancing all over her in silvery light. Her hair was done up in a style centuries out of date, and there seemed to be far too much of it for a woman of her age. Thick and lustrous despite its iron-gray color.

  Her face was deeply lined, her nose sharp and prominent but more patrician than witch. It was a stern face, like that of a queen who had been ruling despite the open disapproval of the men on her court for decades and decades.

  Then she smiled, and looked at each of us in turn.

  "Greetings Sophie DuBois, Brianna Collins and Amanda Clarke," she said. "I am Zenobia Weekes."

  Chapter 12

  I didn't know how the other two reacted to this announcement. I couldn't take my eyes off of Zenobia Weeke's silver-lit form to look.

  "Sophie, I can see you share your mother's love of dance. There's such power in art, in beauty," Miss Zenobia said. Then her eyes moved from Sophie to Brianna. "Brianna. You've taken a different path from your mother's. A very different path. You're forging your own way. Impressive."

  Then her eyes were on me, and I fought the urge to flinch away. The moonlight made her look ghostly, and the light reflecting off her eyes danced like little flames. "Amanda," she said, her voice so deeply sonorous it made my bones throb. "What can I say to you?"

  She was silent for so long I was afraid she was waiting for me to say something, and I had no idea what it could be.

  But then she clapped her hands together as if breaking the spell that held us all in thrall. "Time is short," she said. "I have much to tell you, and there could never be time enough for it all, so I must beg you not to interrupt with questions. You will have questions, of course, you will, but Cynthia will be able to answer those after my time is done."

  "But Cynthia-" Brianna started to say.

  "No questions!" Miss Zenobia said, and I had no doubts in that moment that she had been a teacher. Even if we had been thirty rather than three, we would have all fallen silent at that tone and tucked away the erasers and paper wads we had been about to throw before she could see them.

  "I don't know how much you know, more's the pity," Miss Zenobia said. "So I will assume you know nothing. Your mothers were students of mine, classmates in fact. Very close friends. They were part of the last class I ever taught.

  "I had many students over the years, and I helped as many as I could achieve their goals, whether it was getting an education in a world that had no use for an educated woman or if it was merely marrying happily and well to raise children a bit more open-minded than their peers. But that was just subterfuge. It was how I managed to pursue my real goal in plain view but undetected.
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  "No, my real goal was to find the truly exceptional among my young ladies. The ones with very special skills. The ones I could take under my wing, to teach and to train, to mold them into the witches they were destined to be.

  "But I didn't do this out of any sense of philanthropy. I didn't do it because I felt a calling to teach. I did it because it was absolutely necessary to have others who could take over after I was gone.

  "I nearly failed. I know that. That last class… oh, time is so short I cannot tell you the whole story. But that last class nearly destroyed the work of my entire lifetime. It has taken decades and I still haven't repaired all the damage.

  "Which is where you three come in," she said, looking back up at us with those flaming eyes. "I dearly wanted to meet you before I died, but it simply wasn't possible. I've been so seldom here, on this plane of existence. And the years have flown by. I dearly hope your mothers gave you some training, some preparation. They certainly should have appreciated the need for it.

  "But I didn't live for better than two centuries relying on hope," she said with a wave of her hand. "Again, I must assume your mothers told you nothing. So now I've told you this much: you have a calling. You are all witches with a very specific task to be done. Witches like us have been tasked with such things throughout time. Guard this glade, keep this sword safe beneath a lake, protect this magic cauldron until the hero destined to take it arrives.

  "We are called to protect this place. When I first came here, this was a barren ridge far from the hubbub closer to the river. Three times my home was destroyed, and I was forced to rebuild. In my great-grandmother's time, this place would have been declared a sanctuary, walled off from the rest of the world, but we witches don't have that kind of power anymore. I can't hide what lurks here within the walls of a temple or nunnery. Instead, I have to disguise it as a home. I can barely contain it."

  She paused to pass a tired hand over her eyes, and I noticed the box still sitting on the desk before her. The lid that had blown open with the chiming of the clock was now poised in a position that was almost, but not quite, completely vertical. Even if the hinges were rusted enough to hold it at that angle, how had it gotten there?