I also kept telling myself if Cappie were anywhere, he’d be on the outskirts of the action, shouting from the rooftops his theory about vampires, and there was really no need for me to throw myself into the throng of mourners. And as I peered at the group of people, I didn’t see him.
Still, I reminded myself—or was that talked myself into the idea—he could be tucked behind someone taller. Right?
Right. And what kind of person would I be if I let him scare off all the tourists? Tourists were our bread and butter. We needed tourists who weren’t afraid to come to the store for fear of vampires biting them to death.
So I parked across the street and hopped out, pulling the picture of the man with the chalice from Abby’s website out of the pocket of my jeans and drifting across the street.
Some people clenched candles, pacing up and down the sidewalk as they held vigil, others rested under the green candy-striped awning, their faces sad beneath the cheerful hanging pots of geraniums and fuchsia.
As I observed, I’ll say this, it was an interesting crowd gathered in honor of Abby. Two men of interest in particular, wearing dark sunglasses, velvety black jackets buttoned up to mid-chest with the sleeves turned upward to reveal purple satin, and black trousers, the material against their alabaster skin almost startling.
Their slicked blue-black hair, definitely a color unnatural to either of them, if their eyebrows were any indication, caught the sunlight in gleaming ribbons of shine.
On a day like today, where we were pushing almost seventy-eight, I had to question their sanity. It was too hot for all that velvet and long pants. Yet, they held small votive candles in glass containers, looking as gloomy as their clothing. My guess was they were mourners who’d joined Abby for her weekly meetings—maybe meetings about vampires.
In fact, they chatted quite amicably in hushed tones with the rest of the folks who wore less outlandish clothing.
I stepped onto the curb and tried to get an ear in on what they were saying without looking too obvious as I peered closer in the hopes of seeing Cappie.
“Lemon! Oh Lemon, dear, I heard. How awful for you!” a melodically sweet voice called.
Someone latched onto my upper arm as I spun around and found myself face to face with Carissa Stanton, her round gray eyes bright—and curious.
I fought an outwardly audible sigh. Here’s the thing about Carissa. She’s a super nice lady, contributes to all the bake sales, volunteers for all sorts of Fig events. She’s the first person to show up with a delicious casserole if someone in your family dies or is injured…but she’s a busybody. Like, the busiest. Loves to gossip like no other.
She’d grown worse since her husband Elton passed and she’d retired as a cashier from our local supermarket. It left her with a lot of time on her hands—too much, if you listened to my mother.
And her curious eyes were penetrating mine as though I knew the secret to eternal youth and the specific longitude and latitude of unicorns.
“How do you feel, dear?” she asked with what I knew was genuine concern.
Mrs. Stanton truly did care. In fact, she had an incredibly good heart. She just couldn’t keep her nose out of even the smallest bit of gossip. Poor Winton Jones found out his wife Patty was having a baby boy before she could share the happy news with him. All because Mrs. Stanton happened to “overhear” Patty tell one of the nurses she worked with at Mrs. Stanton’s podiatrist when she caught her looking at boys’ names online.
There was a list as long as my arm of Mrs. Stanton’s gossiping infractions, but that’s just an example of how quickly word can spread like wildfire with her at the helm.
I patted her soft, pudgy hand and smiled at her equally pudgy face, swallowed up by her over-blushed cheeks. “If you mean about this morning, I’m fine, Mrs. Stanton. Really. Of course, I’m sad and so sorry for Abby’s friends and family. It was definitely a shock, but I’m okay. Thanks for asking.”
Letting go of my arm, she twisted one of the buttons on her billowy rose-colored blouse. “I just feel so awful for you. I mean, to find someone,” she leaned in closer to me, her heavy perfume wafting to my nose, “dead in your own backyard,” she whispered. “Well, I can’t think of anything more dreadful.”
She must’ve forgotten finding someone dead in your convenience store bathroom was equally dreadful.
Wrapping an arm around her, I gave her a squeeze and nodded, hoping to divert her. “Are you here because you knew Abby?”
She looked startled, as though the question was preposterous. She was likely here because she’d known Abby, but she was also here to latch onto a juicy bit of gossip—which meant, and I’d lay bets on this, she’d talked to Cappie and he’d told her about his vampire theory.
But then she smiled sadly, the waddle of loose skin under her chin bobbing as she swallowed. “She was so young. So pretty and so young. She helped me with my arthritis from time to time. She was such a lovely woman. Too lovely to be murdered and just left like that. Who do you think would do such a thing?”
I grimaced, my brow furrowing. “I sure don’t know, Mrs. Stanton, but I’m hoping the police catch him and lock him up for good.”
Rocking back on her feet, she fiddled with the tie on her plaid culottes. “Do you suspect it was a man?”
Ugh. I could kick myself. Shut up, Layne!
I shook my head as quickly as I could. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply it was a man or a woman. Statistics tell us men are more likely to commit murder is all. It was a poor assumption on my part.”
She squinted up at me, blocking the sun from her eyes, her tightly rolled gray hair ruffling in the breeze. “But the rumors are true, aren’t they? You did find her in your backyard, didn’t you?”
I winced as everyone turned to look at me, forcing me to keep my answers succinct and simple. “I did,” I replied in a low tone. “But I don’t really know anything else.”
“Is it true what Cappie said about the bite marks on her neck?” she squawked, taking a step back from me as a crowd began to move closer.
As I looked out at the group of people, their interest piqued, I didn’t see the man I’d seen in the picture anywhere, which meant I needed to leave and go home, where all good business minding is done—or start asking questions.
Just small ones, mind you. Nothing too intense because I wasn’t getting involved…
So, instead I smiled at her, appeasing her curiosity with a well-known fact. “Oh, Mrs. Stanton. Surely you know I can’t talk about an ongoing investigation? You wouldn’t want to get me into trouble, would you?”
Now she looked horrified as she tucked her purse handle in the crook of her arm and shook her head. “Of course not!”
I held a finger to my lips. “Then I’m afraid mum’s the word for now. Thanks for being so understanding,” I said, squeezing her round shoulder and smiling once more before I pushed my way through the small batch of people.
That was when I heard someone tearfully cry, “I can’t believe we were just at Josiah’s funeral last night and now we’re going to have to plan Abby’s. What’s happening to us?”
The voice had come from up ahead, closer to the front window of Abby’s store—a woman’s voice, to be precise, soft and husky. I followed the sound of tears until I came upon a group of four people huddled together—a couple of them I’d seen around town, but the other two were unfamiliar.
One man wrapped his arm around the petite woman who’d begun to cry, his pale face clearly pained by her words. “Don’t cry, Thea. Please don’t. Abby would hate that, and you know it. She may no longer be here in the physical world with us, but her energy is still strong. I can feel it.”
“Aw, cut the crap, Al. There is no energy. There is no residual light. I don’t feel a damn thing but Abby’s been murdered,” a lean man with salt-and-pepper hair scoffed. He almost sounded fed up, as though the talk of energies and such was a bunch of mumbo jumbo.
“How can you say that, Ivan?” the woman name
d Thea admonished, her blue eyes rimmed with red from crying. She clenched her fists, raising them in frustration and pressing them against her razor-sharp cheekbones. “After all Abby taught us about the worlds beyond this one? And you don’t even know what happened to her! Stop using words like murder!”
The thin man named Ivan jammed his hands into his navy trousers, his square jaw screwed up in anger. “If you’re going to intentionally die, do you do it in a fish pond, Thea? Um, no. It’s clear someone killed her after we all left that stupid release of energy ritual for Josiah. She was murdered—and you all know it.”
My ears perked up. The release of energy ritual—was that some sort of homeopathic send-off into the great beyond? I’d never heard of anything like it, but then, I’d never heard of zombie hunters before this past winter either.
I leaned in a bit closer, and as is par for the course with me and my tendency to eavesdrop before I even realize I’m doing it, I leaned too far and stumbled right into the one man of the group who hadn’t said a word so far.
“Oh! I’m so sorry!” I yelped as he righted me, gripping my forearm with more strength than I would have given him credit for.
“No worries,” he responded with cool ease, his classic features not quite as riddled with sorrow as those of the others, and he took a step back.
“Were you close to Abby?” I asked, peering up at him.
Of the entire group, he was dressed the most stylishly. A smart suit in charcoal gray and a light gray shirt beneath gave way to highly polished dark shoes and even a pair of cufflinks. This was a man who cared about his appearance a great deal.
When he smiled, he flashed his teeth, white and perfect, a backdrop for his tanned skin. In fact, he was the only one of the group who didn’t look like he never went out in the sun.
His almond-shaped eyes glimmered for a moment. “She was a friend of a very dear friend. Though, we did attend college together. We just didn’t move in the same…uh, circles.”
His reply was smooth and easy, but sort of tight and stiff, too, if that’s possible. So I stuck my hand out and said, “I’m Lemon Layne. I’m so sorry for your loss—even if Abby was just a friend of a friend.”
He looked back down at me, nodding sharply, leaving me to admire his chestnut hair, so perfectly shaved just above his ears with a longer thatch on top.
Enveloping my hand in his cool palm for just a flash of a second, he once more gave me a polite answer, but didn’t divulge his name. “Thank you.”
“Did you attend the meetings Abby held at her store?”
“Did you?” he shot back with a half-smile.
I bit the inside of my cheek and tucked my hair behind my ears. I’m not sure why, but he made me quite nervous. Maybe it was the regal way he held his head or his fancy suit, but he had this imposing air about him, even in his friend-of-a-friend grief.
I was trying really hard to lead into my question about the guy on the website, but I was doing a pretty crappy job of it.
“No, I didn’t, but I saw them online. She discussed all sorts of things. The topics seemed very interesting…”
He all but snorted, his sharp eyes full of fire. “If you find the paranormal and all this hokey afterlife energy nonsense, with shiny crystals and unpronounceable herbs interesting, then I suppose that’s a good enough word.”
“I take it you’re not a believer?”
Now he did snort. “No. I thought it was a ridiculous waste of time and, pardon my pun, energy. But it was Abby’s thing, and it made her happy. That’s all that really matters in life, right? That you leave it happy.”
Now I was getting the bitter vibe, and I couldn’t figure why. If he was just a friend of a friend, why the sarcastic slant to his tone about Abby’s metaphysical/paranormal beliefs?
But I figured he probably wouldn’t be as upset as the others if I asked him who the man holding the chalice was. He clearly didn’t believe in this energy stuff, and if Abby was just a friend of a friend, maybe he wasn’t as invested emotionally. I decided to go for it.
“Mind if I ask a quick question?”
“Of course.”
I unfolded the printed picture of the man and held it up. “Do you know who this is?”
And that’s when he crumpled, right before my very eyes.
His elegant shoulders slumped beneath his sharp suit and his almond-shaped eyes welled with tears, dotting his thick lashes. “That was my Josiah!” he wailed, pulling a wad of tissues from his jacket pocket and pressing them to his nose. “I still can’t believe he’s gone!”
Chapter 5
Ugh.
Leave it to me to make a man cry without even trying. I reached out to console him, feeling about as bad as bad gets, but Thea called out to him.
“Rupert? What happened?” the woman named Thea asked, rushing toward us, her face a mask of concern as she wrapped a supportive arm around Rupert’s waist.
I raised my hand and gave her a sheepish look of apology. “My fault, I think. I didn’t mean to upset him. I just showed him this picture. I had no idea he’d get so upset. I’m so sorry.”
She grabbed the picture from my hand and shot me an instant look of sympathetic understanding. “That’s Josiah. Rupert’s husband. He only passed into the light a week ago. We just went to his funeral last night.”
Now I wanted to crumple right there on the sidewalk alongside Rupert in total humiliation. “I’m incredibly sorry, Rupert. I didn’t know. I was just wondering…”
I didn’t finish. I mean, how do you tell someone who’s grieving you’re snooping around and sticking your big size nines in where they don’t belong?
But Thea handed Rupert off to someone else in the group and smiled once more in sympathy. “How could you have known? It’s just that it’s still so fresh. First Josiah, now Abby…” As her voice drifted off, her eyes began to well up once more.
I held out my hand. “I’m Lemon Layne, by the way. I own the convenience store just outside of town. The Smoke and Petrol.”
Thea nodded her head. “The brisket place, right? I love that stuff, but it doesn’t love my hips,” she joked, running a hand over her trim waistline. Taking my hand, she gripped it confidently. “Thea Valentine. The man who’s so upset is Rupert George, and the two holding him up are Albert Miller and Ivan Peters.”
“A pleasure. So Josiah and Abby were close?”
Thea neatened the bangs of her platinum pixie cut away from her face, readjusting the bobby pin holding them in place, and nodded, using her index finger to dab at her eyes to avoid smudging her heavy eyeliner. “They were. We all were. We’ve all known each other since college—over twenty years now. Myself, Josiah Kent, Albert, Abby, Ivan, and Fran Little—who’s stuck somewhere in the Boise airport right now and missed Josiah’s funeral—we all went to school together. Well, with the exception of Rupert. He met Josiah long after we were on the scene, at an alumni reunion, but he did attend the same college we did.”
“I got the impression he didn’t approve of Josiah’s beliefs?”
She rolled her wide blue eyes at me, but her face held sorrow. “No. He felt like it took up too much of Josiah’s time and focus. He called it an obsession, actually.”
“Just because he was part of a group?”
“Oh, we’re not just a group. We’re a way of life!” she exclaimed with such passion, I felt a little like we were headed for the Kool-Aid stand next. “We believe in the afterlife and eternal energy, reiki healing. We’re bonded forever.”
There was that word again. Energy. And a new one. Reiki. Well, maybe not so new. I’d heard the word, but I wasn’t exact on the science of it all. It had something to do with your hands and…something.
So I had to ask, and I hoped I was doing it without gaping. “Eternal energy?”
“Yes!” she said with so much enthusiasm, her eyes shone. “We believe when your physical body leaves this world, your energy remains—like bits of your soul floating around for all eternity.”
She cocked her head at me as though I’d spoken in a foreign language. “So the person’s energy can go into the light, of course. And we were Josiah’s closest friends. Naturally, we couldn’t leave him disconnected from the afterlife, could we? How could we call ourselves friends if we did that? We sent him off with safe passage just last night.”
I hoped my mouth hadn’t fallen open while I was trying really hard to keep my mind open, but sometimes the two fall in sync.
However, if sending someone’s energy off into the light is what helps you grieve and get through the death of a friend, you wouldn’t hear me say a word.
I smiled at Thea and hoped to not sound awkward. “That sounds lovely. Almost like a tribute of sorts. What happens at the energy release ritual?”
Leaning back against the brick façade of the building, she smiled faintly. “Oh, we all go to a special place in the woods where Abby found a lot of the plants she used in her creams and such, and we pass around some wine and read some uplifting words.”
“The woods?” I asked, my alarm bells sounding off like cannons in my head. The woods surrounded my house—meaning, there was a strong possibility Abby was killed shortly after the energy ritual. But what had driven her to our backyard?
“Yeah. Josiah loved it out there. He’d go with Abby to find plants quite often before he became too sick. We even hoped she’d be able to find something to help him…” Thea shook her head. “But that never came to pass.”
I pointed to the chalice in the picture of Josiah. “What’s that? It looks like a relic of some kind.”
Thea flapped a finely boned hand at me and chuckled. “No. It’s not a relic. It’s just something we’ve had since our college days—one of the few remnants from our early days in the group. We mostly drank wine from it.”
Play That Funky Music White Koi (A Lemon Layne Mystery Book 2) Page 5