Good Witch Hunting

by Dakota Cassidy

  I gave him a sympathetic smile and stepped out onto our whitewashed front porch, hooking my arm through his as we meandered down our wide stairs and into the sun. “That’s because you crawl into the doghouse and fall asleep when you’re drunk on too much homemade apple whiskey. Major already told you, Stewie is afraid of you, Cappie. That’s his doghouse and his favorite place to take his morning nap when it’s warm out during the summer. When you creep inside his house and cover yourself with his blanket, Stewie gets territorial and makes a fuss.”

  Cappie snorted as we walked the path around to the back of the house where my koi pond was located. “Dang near took my leg off last time I did that. Mean old cuss.”

  I chuckled, inhaling the warmth of the sunshine. It was nice to have some sun after a long, rainy winter. Our feet clicked on the slate pavers, but as we rounded the corner, Cappie stiffened, stopping dead in his tracks. I pulled him along with me, encouraging him to move closer to the koi pond.

  More than likely something had blown into the koi pond, or maybe the plaster statue of David my mother insisted on having as lawn art had toppled over into the water. She’d gotten it at a flea market in Oregon somewhere, brought it home and planted it right where she could see it while she sunbathed in the summer with a glass of iced tea and her favorite erotic novel. Leave it to my seventy-year-old mother to adorn our backyard with a replica of a naked guy.

  Either way, I couldn’t tell what it was without my glasses. Right now, all I saw was a big blob of something, but I was pretty sure Cappie, whose eyesight couldn’t be any better than mine, mistook whatever it was for a sleeping lady, because that’s what Cappie does—blows everything out of proportion.

  Yet, Cappie clung to my arm, his fingers digging into my biceps.

  I patted his hand to reassure him as we drew closer, passing a cluster of hedges and ornamental grass, my slippers soaking up the dew of the early morning. I squinted as the bright sun shone on the water of my beloved pond, sparkling and clear.

  We’d turned the backyard into a nice little oasis with a small brick patio, white wicker furniture with cushions in bright teal and stripes of orange, a barbecue, and a small fire pit. To the left of that, flush with spring daffodils, tulips and more ornamental grass, sat my favorite spot in the entire backyard—my koi pond.

  I loved my pond, and the newest addition to it, a white koi fish Coco and I had laughingly named Koi George. It brought me peace to watch the fish swim, slicing and arcing through the water, sleek and quick.

  But you know what I didn’t love?

  The woman sprawled out half draped over my koi pond.

  How strange.

  I pushed a trembling Cappie behind me as he whispered, “See? Told ya. She’s sleepin’ right there with your fish. Bet she had some of that new brand of vodka Shrimpie was talkin’ about the other day. He said it packs a wallop. Came all the way from Russia.”

  She’d definitely had something… Whether it was vodka from Russia remained to be seen.

  Her head was tilted back on the rocks surrounding the pond as though she’d used them as her pillow, but I couldn’t see her face well enough to identify her, only her chin and the creamy expanse of her throat.

  The ends of her gleaming red hair, darkened by the water, swished in the gentle swell of the pond, making her locks fan out behind her. The rest of her body sprawled out on the grass in front of the pond, her legs relaxed, her arms at her side. In fact, she looked so peaceful, I half expected her to snore.

  For someone who’d probably tied one on at Shrimp Cocktails, our local bar and the closest watering hole to our house, she sure was dressed nice. Most of us locals were pretty casual for the most part. But she wore a cute black leather shrug jacket with silver studs around the sleeves over a form-fitting black dress with matching ankle boots. Boots I knew shoe-loving Coco would envy.

  “Do you know who she is, Cap?”

  He squinted his eyes and shook his head. “Can’t tell for sure. Looks a little familiar, but I can’t see from this far away. Didn’t want to wake her in case she wakes up fightin’, ya know? Can’t ever tell what a hangover’ll do to some.”

  Still, I turned to Cappie and smiled to reassure him everything was fine. “I’ll take it from here, Cap. It’s okay. She probably just drank too much. Though, how she stumbled all the way here from Shrimpie’s without getting run over or, at the very least, getting some dirt on her clothes and the heels of her shoes, is a miracle.

  It was darn dark around here at night and the road to and from town was especially treacherous—not to mention a good fifteen-minute walk, and only if you undertook such in a brisk manner.

  But Cappie gripped my arm and pointed over my shoulder. “What’s that next to her?”

  Turning back around, I squinted and moved even closer to see what he meant. “Looks like a cup,” I muttered—and that’s when I stiffened.

  “Lemon?” Cappie’s voice was shaky. “What’s wrong?”

  I squeezed his hand to shush him as I stared hard at the woman’s chest and leaned forward, taking all of her in with an intense, thorough gaze.

  Sure enough, there was no rise and fall to indicate she was breathing. I might not be able to see details from a distance, but I can surely see the big picture.

  My stomach tightened and my limbs began to feel like butter. In that moment, I forgot Cappie and everything else as I fell to my knees and reached for her wrist to see if she had a pulse.

  Of course, my sudden movement frightened Cappie, who hopped backward and slipped, falling on the wet grass. “Lemon, what’s goin’ on?” he squealed, frazzling my already tenuous nerves as he crab-walked backward on the heels of his hands and feet.

  “Cappie, shush!” I almost yelped in alarm as I grabbed her wrist again and pressed my fingers into her cold flesh to be sure my initial assessment was right. Dread swept over me when I was unable to locate a pulse. Dread and sorrow.

  “Lemon?” Cappie called again, only this time his voice filled the air with panic.

  Fighting the swell of dizziness, I forced myself to remain calm. “Cappie, you need to listen to me, please. Stay calm and go to the store right now. Tell Leon to call 9-1-1. Do it now.”

  “She’s dead, ain’t she, Lemon?” he whispered, obvious fear in his tone. “She’s dead!”

  Chapter 2

  “Cappie, calm down. Please,” I begged, backing away from the body of the woman. I’d contaminated the last crime scene I’d been involved with. I wasn’t going to do that again.

  But Cappie was already running toward the store in a blur of motion and sound. “Leeeon!”

  Taking a deep breath, I rubbed my arms even though it was anything but cold out. I felt quite suddenly very alone as I stared down at this woman I didn’t recognize as a fellow Figger.

  That’s not to say she’s not from Fig, though. Coco accuses me of spending too much time at home with Jessica Fletcher and Unsolved Mysteries reruns. So it could be she was from Fig and I was just unaware because I don’t go out enough to please my BFF—or it could be I just can’t see her without my glasses.

  That said, I squinted at her face again and still couldn’t place her. I should have brought my glasses with me. But no way I was going to get any closer. Now that I knew there was nothing I could do for her, I kept my distance. Yet, that didn’t keep me from feeling like a million eyes were watching me from the surrounding woods.

  Which was foolish. What kind of killer stuck around to see who’d find their victim? For that matter, what kind of killer had a million eyes?

  I chuckled to myself before I sobered. Someone was dead in my beloved koi pond. Quite frankly, that stunk for the victim and her family. Still, I kept my guard up as I peered around the perimeter of our yard, looking for any obvious clues other than the cup.

  That cup was odd indeed. It was rather Gothic and fancy, with some scrollwork on the face of it and a long, tarnished gold stem. It almost looked like something right out of a Dracula movie. I leaned
forward as far as I could without falling to get a better look, but I still couldn’t make out details without my glasses.

  “Lemon!” Leon called, his footsteps pounding the grass between the store and the backyard. “Lemon! Are you okay? Answer me!”

  “I’m fine!” I hollered back, pulling my bathrobe tighter to my chest.

  When he skidded to a halt, he had his phone to his ear, his hazel eyes wide. “Yep, that’s right,” he huffed and nodded his dark head, jamming a hand into the pocket of his jeans before stopping right in front of the body in my koi pond. “She’s behind the Smoke and Petrol. In the backyard.”

  Cappie came barreling after him, almost knocking Leon’s slender frame over as he banged right into him. His agitated state said a call to his daughter Noreen might be in order, but I didn’t have time to give that more thought before he was pointing a finger at the body of the woman as his head poked out from behind Leon’s shoulder.

  “Look at her neck!” he squawked. “Do ya see? Do ya see it?”

  Leon put a protective hand back behind him to hold Cappie at bay, but whatever he’d seen had set him off. “Mr. Waylan, take a deep breath. It’s gonna be okay. The police will be here any second and they’ll take care of it all.” Then he looked to me. “You okay, Lemon?”

  But Cappie danced away instead, his clogs kicking up dirt, his greasy ponytail bouncing. “Look at her neck! Are the two of ya blind? Don’t ya see that, boy?”

  The sound of sirens cut off Cappie’s rant as doors slammed and more footsteps sounded. Justice Carver, old high school friend and current officer with the Fig Harbor Police, burst around the corner of the house.

  Justice stopped just short of Leon, who was trying unsuccessfully to calm Cappie down. His sharp jaw pulsed as he drew in a deep breath, reaching out a hand to grip my arm. “You all right, Lemon?”

  Nodding, I glanced up at his handsome face and patted his hand. His skin was ruddy and his cheeks were a blotchy red from running. “I’m fine. She,” I pointed to the woman who looked so peaceful in death, “is not. She’s dead. I checked her pulse and I promise you, Justice, when I realized she was dead, I cleared right out so we wouldn’t have any issues with contamination.”

  One of the other officers whistled as he approached the scene. “Holy crow! That’s Abby Hoffer! What the heck happened?”

  Hold up. I knew that name. Why did I know that name? I squeezed my temples as though that would help me to remember.

  “You mean the lady who has that store with all the herbs and potions to heal what ails you naturally?” Justice asked on a frown.

  Officer Able bounced his chestnut-brown head, tucking his hands inside the pockets of his trousers. “Yep, that’s the one. She’s got all sorts of stuff to help whatever you’ve got wrong. She’s into homeopathy. Belinda just got some crazy herb from her the other day to help her sleep.”

  Belinda was Officer Able’s wife, and a really nice lady who’d been two years ahead of us in high school. She was a teacher at Fig Harbor elementary nowadays.

  “She wouldn’t need something to help her sleep if you weren’t sawing a whole forest of logs every night,” Justice teased before he straightened and pulled out his pad and pen. “Okay, so we have an ID on the victim. To tell you the truth, I didn’t even recognize her all dressed up like that.”

  Tucking my hair behind my ears, I nodded my agreement. “Me either. She’s always wearing those flowy caftans and her hair’s usually tied up on top of her head. But then, I’m getting blinder by the day without my glasses.”

  Darn. I liked Abby. She’d helped with a poultice made of some herbal concoction for my mother, when she’d had an allergic reaction to a weed she’d run into while gardening that just wouldn’t go away.

  “So, tell me what you know, Lemon,” Justice prodded, peering down at me, the sun behind his back making his head glow as though the heavens were shining down on him.

  Which is probably exactly how my mother would describe him, if she still wasn’t angry with him over his last murder investigation.

  “All I know is, Cappie rang my doorbell at seven this morning. I know because I looked at the clock just before I came downstairs to answer the door. He said someone had fallen asleep in the koi pond. I came to see what he was talking about, and this is what I found.”

  Justice pressed his lips into a thin line. “What was Cappie doing out here? It’s a little farther than he usually goes, isn’t it?”

  Was that suspicion I heard in his tone? About Cappie? Cappie’s a little out there, but he’d never hurt anyone.

  “Hunting down cans for recycling is what he said. You know Cappie, he’s always complaining about the mess the tourists leave. Plus, Ed from the county office sometimes gives him twenty bucks to do cleanup along the road and in the woods. It keeps him busy and out of trouble. You’re not thinking… I mean, you don’t think Cappie would hurt someone, do you?”

  The idea made me pause for only a moment. They had thought my seventy-year-old mother might be involved with Myron’s death. It wasn’t a stretch to think they’d consider Cappie a suspect. And then I nixed the idea. That was too implausible even for Justice.

  Justice looked me square in the eye, almost making me squirm with his intense gaze. “Not necessarily, but I have to check all angles or I’d be a crummy cop, wouldn’t I?”

  “Lemon!” I heard Mom yell from somewhere off in the distance behind me. “Lemon! What in creation’s goin’ on?” She came to a halt right beside me, her tracksuit in a neon orange as bright as the day, and gasped as she peered down at Abby Hoffer’s body before she clucked her tongue. “Please say this isn’t happening again. Not again, Lemon. Not again!”

  I winced. I hated to see her afraid, and I knew she was. There wasn’t much May Layne was afraid of, but she’d had the wind knocked out of her sails after Myron’s death.

  “She’s dead, isn’t she?” Mom asked, sorrow in her voice. “Such a dang shame. How awful for her family.” She shook her electric-blue dyed head and clucked her tongue again in remorse.

  I tucked Mom’s hand under my arm and nodded, lacing my fingers with hers. “She is, and it is definitely awful.”

  “But how?” She twisted the hem of her tracksuit jacket as she shook her head.

  “I don’t know just yet. Cappie rang the doorbell and long story short, I came out here to find her in the koi pond.”

  “What in all of blazes is happening in Fig these days?”

  I wondered that, too. This was the second murder in a matter of months. Our usually crime-free town had seen a lot of death lately. “Maybe Leon should take you back to the house, Mom. Where were you anyway? Isn’t it a little early for hot yoga?”

  She grabbed my arm, her blue eyes bright with fear. “I was power walking, Lemon. I’ve been doing it every other morning since the weather broke. Aren’t you always nagging me about keeping my blood pressure down? That’s what I was doin’.”

  Astounded, my eyes widened. “You were actually doing something the doctor told you to do? Should I duck? Should I clear a path for the Four Horsemen?” I teased, hoping to move her away from the view of Abby’s body.

  “Which begs the question, did you see anything suspicious around this morning, Mrs. Layne? Strange cars? Strange behavior from anyone?” Justice interrupted, his pen poised at the pad.

  She swatted him on the arm and gave him a narrow-eyed gaze. “Sure, I saw the bad guy as he was pulling out in his getaway car right after we had coffee and donuts, then we made a date to meet tonight for dinner and a movie. You want me to tell him you’re lookin’ for him?” she quipped with sarcasm.

  Justice’s eyes went soft and pleading. “C’mon, Mrs. Layne. Don’t be like that. Let’s be friends again. Please?”

  Mom planted her hands on her hips and wrinkled her nose. “There’s all sorts of strange behavior here, pal. It’s tourist season. You know that. Or are you forgetting the guy who stayed at the inn in town who rode his bike to the beach in the buff every
day like Fig was some nudist colony? Gravy sakes, don’t you think if I saw something important, I’d tell you, Justice Carver? We’re not going to do this again, are we? How long do you want to stay on my ‘There’ll be no free lunch for you, buddy’ list, anyway?”

  Mom, of course, meant the time when Justice thought she might have had something to do with her ex-boyfriend’s death. He hadn’t had a free brisket sandwich since he’d helped the chief arrest her.

  And I guess, in all fairness, Justice never really thought she’d had anything to do with the murder, but more he thought she might know something about a detail of Myron’s life that would lead to his killer.

  He’d just gone about it in a way that had rubbed Mom all wrong. In my mother’s mind, Figgers are Figgers through and through—we stick together, we stay loyal to one another, and we sure don’t accuse each other of murder. She didn’t want to hear about extenuating circumstances when she’d known most of the force since they were in diapers, Justice included.

  I patted my mother’s shoulder. She’d really been giving Justice what for. It was time to let it go. “Aw, give him a break, Mom. It’s been three months now.”

  Justice grinned at her, that grin that held all the world’s charm in the mere upward tilt of his lips. The one he hoped to use to finagle his way back into her good graces.

  “Are you still angry at me, Mama May? I told you, I was just doing my job.”

  She shook a finger at him, but if you knew Mom, really knew her, it was playful. “I’m still something with you, mister. And no. I didn’t see anything this morning. Nothing suspicious, nothing out of the ordinary. I was too busy puttin’ one foot in front of the other and tracking it on my Fitbit.” She held up her wrist for verification.

  I was so proud of her for finally listening to her doctor and paying heed to his warning about heart attacks and strokes—which she’s at higher risk for because she’s got high blood pressure. There’s not much I need in this world, but my mom’s definitely one of those things I do need.