by Morgana Best
He fixed me with a steely gaze. “Let me help you with that.” His hand reached for the handle of my suitcase, but I flinched away.
“No, it’s fine.”
“I insist.” With one fluid movement, he seized the suitcase from me.
I was horrified, but there was nothing I could do. I watched in dismay as Scorpius took a few steps forward. He stopped walking and turned around to me. “What do you have in here? Rocks? Hand weights? Dumbbells?”
“Just my make-up, actually,” I said in a forced nonchalant tone. “My flat iron and my hair straightener. Plus my facial steaming machine.” I tried to think of any other items of make-up that would be heavy, and then I had the horrible thought that a hair straightener and a flat iron were the same thing, but as he had hardly any hair, I didn’t think he’d know that. I tried to think of other heavy items involved in skincare. “And my microdermabrasion machine,” I said. “Sea air is very drying and the sun is so harsh. I need to take care of my skin.”
His expression remained impassive, but to my relief, he continued down to Mugwort Manor. I suppose he could hardly insist on searching the contents of my suitcase, but I wondered if he suspected I had a big stash of Witches’ Brew in there.
When we reached the back door of the manor, I thanked him, but he just stood there. I figured he was expecting to be invited in. As I hesitated, Aunt Maude opened the door. She looked shocked to see him, but recovered quickly. “Mr Everyman,” she said. “Is there something I can do for you?”
“Mr Everyman carried my suitcase here for me,” I said.
“How kind of you,” Aunt Maude said. “Would you like to come in for a cup of coffee?”
I suppose she considered that would be the less suspicious thing to do. To my relief, the aunts were all in the kitchen and had clearly overheard the exchange. Scorpius dragged my suitcase into the kitchen and left it there. Aunt Agnes at once towed it out of the room and then returned. “What would you like to drink, Mr Everyman? A nice cup of tea? Coffee? Wine?”
“Wine sounds nice,” he said in a monotone. His voice was cold, almost an echo, an echo of years of malevolence. I shook my head to dispel the fanciful notion.
Aunt Agnes opened the fridge door wide and looked inside. It was quite clever of her to give him the chance to see the contents of the fridge. She produced a bottle of wine. “We have Moscato. Or if you prefer red?” Before he could answer, she looked at Maude. “Do we have any red?”
Maude opened a cupboard door, and she, too, left it open, affording Scorpius a good view of the contents of the cupboard. “We do have a bottle of Shiraz.”
“Yes, please.” His manner was clipped.
Aunt Maude poured him a glass of Shiraz. Maude and Dorothy also had some Shiraz, while Agnes and I polished off the last of the Moscato.
No one spoke for a time, and I wondered what would happen next. “Have you been running this Bed and Breakfast long?” he asked the aunts.
Aunt Agnes answered. “Yes, but Valkyrie has come from Sydney to manage the place for us. She’s been a big help, fixing the website, and redecorating the cottages.”
He turned his attention to me. I felt as if all the energy was being sucked out of me. “When did you arrive at Lighthouse Bay?”
“Fairly recently,” I said.
“It’s always hard, isn’t it, moving to a new town, making new friends,” he said, not taking his eyes off me. “Have you made any friends since you moved here?”
I figured he already knew about my friendship with Linda and was wondering if I would lie. “I’m starting to know some of the locals, and I’ve made friends with one of the boarders. Well, she isn’t a boarder anymore, but we became friends after her husband died.”
He looked around the table. I thought the aunts did well not to squirm. For all intents and purposes, they did look like three rather eccentric elderly ladies, their knitting needles clicking away. “Yes, I read about that in the papers,” he said. “Unpleasant business. It must’ve been hard for you all that it happened here.”
The aunts all nodded solemnly.
“Linda Williams,” he continued. “Her husband, Paul, was murdered here in one of the cottages.”
“That’s right,” Aunt Agnes said. “But don’t worry; it wasn’t in the cottage you’re staying in now.”
Maude nodded. “And he was a most unpleasant man. He was sexist, and he was rude to Linda, embarrassing her in public. I don’t think the world suffered any great loss by his passing.”
Dorothy made the sign of the cross again, drawing a glare from Aunt Agnes.
Scorpius Everyman did not respond. He was silent for a moment. My heart was beating out of my chest, so loud that I wondered if he could hear it. “Is Mrs Williams still staying in the cottage?”
“No,” I said. “She’s moved to town.”
Scorpius Everyman feigned surprise. “She is going to stay in Lighthouse Bay after what happened to her husband?”
I shrugged. “She said she can’t bear to go back to their old house, given what’s happened. She’s putting it up for sale.” I figured he probably knew this already, and was testing me to see if I would lie.
“And you have another guest, Lucas O’Callaghan,” he said. “He tells me he’s been staying here for some time.”
Aunt Agnes made a noncommittal noise. “What a nice man. Of course we all knew his uncle, Henry Ichor. Some of us knew him quite well.” She shot a look at Dorothy, who blushed. “Henry was quite a well-known man in town.”
I very much doubted that Lucas had spoken to Scorpius, and knew that he was fishing for information. I wondered if he would ask any more questions about Lucas, but mercifully he didn’t.
“I expect Mrs Williams has friends in Lighthouse Bay, and that’s why she’s staying here,” Scorpius said.
I bit my lip. Did he think a rogue Shifter wolf pack was responsible for all the murders that had happened along the coast recently, and that Linda was involved? That could be the only possible reason for his remark. “I don’t think she knows anyone else in town,” I said. “She and her husband used to come here every year, so I suppose they know the locals, but I don’t think she has any friends here.”
“That’s right,” Aunt Agnes said. “If she did have any friends in town, then they weren’t good enough friends to come and comfort her after her husband died. We were the only ones who comforted her, weren’t we?” She turned to the other aunts.
Aunt Maude looked up from her knitting. “Quite so. It was awfully mean of her friends not to visit her and support her.”
“I didn’t say she had any friends,” Aunt Agnes snapped. “I said if she did have any friends, then they would have visited her, but she didn’t have any friends. Why can’t you two listen to what I say?”
Aunt Dorothy put her knitting down on the table rather too forcefully. “Why do you always say ‘you two’? It was Maude who said that, not me. Of course I know that Linda Williams didn’t have any friends. I really don’t like getting the blame for everything Maude does.”
Maude looked indignant, and she too, stopped knitting. “What do you mean? I didn’t do anything wrong. Agnes is always picking on me.” The aunts went into one of their usual rounds of bickering, but this time, I knew they were doing it to throw Scorpius off the track. They were doing rather a marvellous acting job.
He stood up abruptly. “Well, thank you for your hospitality, ladies, but I will take my leave. You have a good day.”
I showed him to the door, and after it had closed behind him, I lent back on it with great relief. That was a close call. Aunt Dorothy peeked around the curtain for a while. “He’s back at his cottage now.”
We all breathed a collective sigh of relief.
“Do you think he was suspicious about your suitcase?” Aunt Agnes said. “It’s so heavy.”
“He did say it was heavy, but I said I had a lot of heavy skin care products in there, like a microdermabrasion machine and things like that.”
; “I don’t even know what that is,” Aunt Maude said.
“I’m sure he doesn’t either,” I said. “He pretty much snatched the suitcase from me and I had no choice but to let him take it.”
“I don’t think he’s suspicious of us at this stage,” Aunt Agnes said slowly. “However, I do suspect he is suspicious of Linda.”
“That’s what I think,” I said.
The aunts didn’t speak, but I could see they were worried, too.
Chapter 9
“We need to talk about this, but we need some Witches’ Brew first,” Aunt Maude said.
“What if he comes back?” Dorothy wrung her hands.
Aunt Agnes stood up. “Valkyrie, lock the door just to be on the safe side. I’ll go and fetch some Witches’ Brew. And Valkyrie, while you’re at it, draw the curtains so he can’t look in.”
Agnes returned with a bottle and poured us all a goblet of the special potion. “He obviously suspects that Joseph Maxwell’s death was a Shifter attack,” she said before she sat down.
I shook my head. “Linda was certain it wasn’t a Shifter attack, though.”
Aunt Agnes nodded. “And that makes me wonder why Scorpius Everyman seems to be suspicious of her.”
“He obviously knows something, because he arrived the very same day as the man’s death,” I said. “Surely he can’t suspect that Linda was one of the wolf pack that did it.”
“But Linda said a pack didn’t do it,” Aunt Dorothy said.
Aunt Agnes sighed. “Dorothy, sometimes I wonder about you. Valkyrie didn’t mean a pack did it. Valkyrie meant that Scorpius Everyman thinks a pack did it. Is that clear?”
Dorothy looked perplexed. “No.”
Agnes rolled her eyes. “I agree with Valkyrie. I don’t like that man, and I don’t know why.”
“Maybe because he’s a cold-blooded killer?” I said sarcastically.
“But Lucas O’Callaghan is a Cleaner, too, and you don’t find him distasteful,” Aunt Agnes said snarkily.
I frowned. “Anyway, I’m sure there’s a lot we don’t know about the man, but one thing we do know is that he seems to think Shifter wolves were responsible for Joseph Maxwell’s death, and he seems to be interested in Linda.”
“We need to protect Linda,” Aunt Maude said firmly.
I agreed, and surprisingly, so did Agnes. She had never been a big supporter of Linda’s, and it had been Aunt Maude and Aunt Dorothy who had wanted Linda to stay at the manor. “I wish she’d come back and stay here,” I said, “but she said she wants to make a fresh start as soon as possible.”
Agnes nodded. “I can understand why, with her husband being murdered here. And Valkyrie, I know she’s a friend of yours, but it will be safer for us if she isn’t staying here, since she has already drawn the attention of Scorpius Everyman.”
“But we have to help her, Aunt Agnes,” I pleaded. Aunt Dorothy and Aunt Maude agreed with me.
“I do agree,” Aunt Agnes said. “But what can we do to help her? Linda says Shifters weren’t responsible for that man’s death, so that means it would have to be a mundane perpetrator.”
“What about Harry Friar, who’s staying right here in one of the cottages?” I said. “He told me himself that his grandfather left the victim everything in the will. You know they were cousins, right?”
All the aunts nodded. I pushed on. “Yes, he was worried the police would suspect him because now he’ll inherit everything.”
“Will he inherit much?” Aunt Agnes asked me.
I shrugged. “Maybe that’s something we need to look into. I mean, he was staying here, and his cousin was murdered not far from here. Now he stands to inherit everything. Maybe he’d heard about the murders south of here—I mean, who hasn’t?—and maybe he thought he’d do a copycat killing to throw the scent off himself.”
“But don’t the police first suspect the spouse in cases of murder?” Aunt Agnes said. “And didn’t you say Harry Friar told you that the victim had just been through a very nasty divorce? There’s a motive right there.”
Aunt Dorothy stopped knitting and rattled in a drawer of the nearby kitchen dresser, eventually producing a notepad and pen. “I’ll make a list,” she announced. “Harry Friar, and the ex-wife. Who else is there?”
“The antique dealer in town,” I said.
“Which one?” Aunt Agnes asked me.
“Harry Friar just mentioned a woman antique dealer, so how many are there? I mean, I don’t know how many antique shops there are in town.”
“Only one owned by a woman,” Aunt Agnes said. “Write that down, Dorothy,” she said in a commanding tone.
Dorothy held up the notepad to her. “I already have.”
“So they are our only suspects to date,” I said. “Harry Friar, the antique dealer, and the ex-wife.”
“Yes, but they all seem rather too obvious,” Aunt Maude said.
I nodded. “Which is precisely why it’s a copycat killing, most likely.”
Aunt Agnes agreed with me. “It’s actually a very good idea on the murderer’s behalf, to make it look like it was the serial killer. If we can’t think of anyone else, then it is likely one of those three. We’ll have to look into it more closely.”
“What if all three of them were in it together?” Maude said.
Aunt Agnes snorted rudely. “What a ridiculous idea,” she said with derision.
“It happened in Murder on the Orient Express. They were all in it together.” Aunt Maude slammed her knitting down and folded her arms over her chest.
I tried to change the subject. “Surely the police suspect those three, given they are all such obvious suspects.”
Aunt Agnes shook her head. “The Task Force is here. Remember that the Task Force is investigating all those murders down south, and this was a similar murder, so I’m sure they won’t think it’s an unrelated killing. Plus Scorpius Everyman doesn’t think it’s an unrelated killing, either.”
Something occurred to me. “Won’t the Cleaners be in trouble?”
“What do you mean?” the aunts asked me in unison.
“I mean, the Cleaners are supposed to stop any evidence of the existence of vampires or Shifters coming to human attention, particularly to police attention or the attention of any authorities. These murders down south are all over the media, and the Cleaners haven’t managed to stop it.”
Aunt Dorothy tapped her pen on her chin. “I suppose it would be one thing to cover up one murder, but there have been several. And wasn’t Lucas involved in some way?”
I pulled a face. “I assumed so. He didn’t tell me explicitly. He was quite upset that Scorpius Everyman was here, though. That man really gives me the creeps.”
The aunts all murmured agreement. “Is Scorpius Everyman, um, a really ancient vampire or something?” I asked them. “There’s something kind of weird about him.”
“Yes, we have been discussing that,” Aunt Agnes said. “I think he is ancient, but what you’re picking up is that he’s powerful.”
“Isn’t Lucas powerful, too?” I asked them.
Aunt Agnes shook her head. “I don’t mean that. I’m sure Lucas is powerful, in his own way, but there’s something overriding about Scorpius Everyman. He oozes power.”
I nodded. “He certainly has a presence about him, but it’s not a nice one. He really creeps me out.”
“You keep saying that, dear,” Aunt Agnes said, her voice holding clear reprimand.
I shrugged. “Do you think I should tell Linda that she should leave town?”
Aunt Agnes shook her head. “That’s the worst thing she could do. He could easily take that as a sign of guilt, and hunt her down. I agree with you that he is a very dangerous man. I think that’s what you’re sensing about him, Valkyrie, that he’s dangerous. Lucas has boundaries and integrity, but I don’t think Scorpius would let anything stand in his way.” She slapped her hand over her mouth. “Oh no! It’s a complete disaster. How could I have forgotten?”
“What on earth are you going on about, Agnes?” Maude asked, unable to hide her irritation.
“It’s the boarders’ weekly dinner tonight.”
I gasped. “You don’t mean…?”
Aunt Agnes nodded slowly. “Yes. I’m afraid so. We have a dinner to prepare for tonight, and our guests will be Lucas O’Callaghan, Harry Friar, Sam Innis, and Scorpius Everyman.”
Chapter 10
I felt like a small mouse going to dinner with a cat, a giant, very hungry cat. I just knew it was going to be an unmitigated disaster. I was sure my eyes would keep going to Lucas, and Scorpius would, of course, notice. Then again, Lucas had that magnetic attraction thing going on for non-vampire women, so Scorpius would expect me to stare at him.
How was I going to play this? I had discussed it with the aunts earlier, but we hadn’t come to any conclusions. Since non-vampire women were always drawn to Lucas, if I showed that I resisted, then Scorpius would suspect I was a vampire. I had no way to ask Lucas’s advice over the matter. By the time I was setting the table, I had still not come up with a plan.
The weekly boarders’ dinner was always held in the formal dining room, a room overcrowded with antiques. That, coupled with the presence of Scorpius Everyman, would no doubt give the dinner the air of an old black-and-white horror movie. It didn’t help that the aunts were already playing the soundtrack from the film, The Wicker Man—and I don’t mean the remake. Still, that was the least of my worries.
Aunt Agnes had spoken words of encouragement non-stop the whole time while preparing the dinner, and with half an hour to go, had given all of us a speech. She was just like a general exhorting the troops, or so I imagined. Aunt Agnes told us all to remain calm and to act as natural as possible. She had also said it was a good opportunity to try to get Harry Friar to implicate himself in the presence of two Cleaners, given that he was one of our main suspects. Even if he said something that we didn’t pick up on, Lucas or Scorpius might. She said it was a good opportunity to put Scorpius on the trail of Harry rather than Linda, if he was the murderer, that is.