by Tonya Kappes
“Automatically gives her more shares and control of the business.” Raven’s jaw dropped, she held the tiny cup in front of her face. “Why would she halt production? If she’s the new CEO wouldn’t she want to make the business last?”
“Good question.” My mind began to turn a million miles a minute trying to come up with every excuse in the book on why Jenny would want the company to die. “Burt seemed happy about the lotion idea at Christmas, but when I was there yesterday for my first day, he tried to pull a fast one on me and use cheap plastic bottles.”
I took the time to explain to Raven exactly why my bottles were important and why I had gone there last night to put a little magical touch on them.
“I just couldn’t let them go out like that in good faith.” There was one thing I had to do. Go see Jenny Rossen. “Thanks for the coffee. I have to go.”
“You aren’t going to do something stupid are you?” There was doubt in her question because she knew I was going to do something that Oscar would not approve of.
“You don’t want to know,” I assured her and took another sip of my coffee.
“I don’t want to add to your stress, but I had a couple of visitors today.” Raven gazed at me with a half smile. “Helena and Eloise.”
“Ugh!” My jaw clamped tight and I could feel the tension creeping up in my veins.
“They wanted to make sure I was available during our All Hallows Eve festivities for a catering job for a wedding.” Her smile went wry.
“I guess I don’t have to tell you how much this displeases me.” I tapped the edge of the cup thinking how I just didn’t need this right now.
“They want me to make cupcakes with your initials on them. I couldn’t help but watch as they left.” She bit the corner of her lip as though she were trying to keep her mouth shut.
“Go on. You can’t stop now.” At this point I feared there was no stopping the two aunts.
“They went into The Gathering Grove. They were in there for a while.” Raven got up and walked behind the counter. She grabbed a couple of June’s Gems, put them on a plate and brought them back, setting them between us. She sat down and took one of the chocolaty tasty treats and sunk her teeth into it. I followed suit. She mumbled with a mouthful, “Gerald came over to get the last of his muffin order and I asked him about it.”
“And?” I encouraged her.
“They paid him in full to do the catering for a wedding reception on All Hallows Eve.” The pain in her eyes matched the pain in my heart.
“Did you know that Oscar and I were an arranged marriage from the get go?” I knew she didn’t know, but it was how it came out.
“No way!” Her eyes practically popped out of her head.
“We didn’t know this when we fell in love.” Then it hit me. “O-M-G,” I gasped. “Do you think they put a spell on us to fall in love?”
“No.” Raven brushed it off, but I could tell she was thinking about it, not fully convinced of her answer. “Do you?”
“We grew up across the street from each other so the village could keep an eye on us and we didn’t fall in love until we moved to Whispering Falls after we found out we were spiritualists.” An uneasy feeling churned deep inside of me. “When I found out I was a Good-Sider, I fainted. When I came to, everyone was around me, including Oscar. They had told him about our heritage while I was out. I clearly remember Izzy giving me something to drink.” I dug in my memory to try to recall what it was.
“By law a spiritualist cannot do magic on another.” Raven made a good point.
“But,” I snapped my fingers, “if I didn’t know I was a spiritualist at the time, then the law didn’t pertain to me. And.” Memories of the day Oscar and I found out about who we really were flooded my mind. “We also went to The Gathering Grove where I clearly remember Gerald giving us tea.”
“Oh June.” Raven stood up and picked up our cups. She spoke with her back to me and put the dishes away behind the counter. “Oscar loves you and you love him. I can see it in his eyes.”
“But is it real? Or is it a spell?” I questioned the validity of what I’d thought was authentic love between us. “I wouldn’t put it past the two aunts to make sure we were destined to be together.”
“They seemed pretty sure you were going to tie the knot on All Hallows Eve.” Raven shrugged and plopped a big ball of dough on top of the stainless steel counter. She fisted her hands and plunged them in the dough, kneading it, throwing flour on it, and kneading it some more. She flipped it, patted it and rolled it into a ball before she started the process all over again.
“This is just one more thing to add to my growing list.” There was no time to waste. I had to go to the shop and make sure everything was ready for tomorrow and customers. Even though my business outside of Whispering Falls seemed to be crumbling, I still had to focus on A Charming Cure. “Tell Faith thanks for taking care of the shop today.”
“She loves it.” Raven waved me off as I went out the door.
The moon was so full and shone over top of Whispering Falls like a spot light. All the shops were closed and the carriage lights glowed. A few of the teenagers, disguised as fireflies, darted in and out of the nighttime shadows as if they were playing catch. When I first came to live at Whispering Falls, I had gotten myself into a little pickle and the fireflies really helped me out by letting Petunia know something was wrong. At the time I had no idea people who had passed on sometimes came back as animals and very surprised to find out fireflies were teenagers whose lives had been cut short way too early.
It did make sense. Most teens I knew stayed up late and slept most of the day, so being a firefly was probably a good animal for them to come back as.
I looked at Mr. Prince Charming darting across the street in front of me. My eyes narrowed. Could he be? Was he alive as human before? It was a question I had never asked. I took him for what I was told he was. My fairy-god cat.
I opened the gate, ran my fingers along the wisteria vine around the trellis, getting a big sense of my mother. I shook it off because there was no time to get sentimental. I had to figure out why my product line was axed before I got a visit from Mary Ellen.
Meow. Mr. Prince Charming danced at the door wanting in.
“You aren’t someone I know, are you?” I asked him while jabbing my key in the door. I laughed to myself when he started to lick himself. “I guess that’s my answer.”
The inside of the shop was dark and I flipped on the light.
“Oh my God!” My lips thinned with anger. My nostrils flared with fury as I looked around and noticed every single table had been overturned and every bottle had been broken, smashed into pieces.
“June! What happened?” Constance Karima, owner of Two Sisters and A Funeral, appeared at the door. Patience Karima, her sister, stood behind her. Both grey-haired women scurried inside to get a good look.
“What happened?” Patience, who had a habit of repeating her sister, stood behind Constance attached to her pet ostrich.
The sisters looked up at me with wonder in their sparkly green eyes.
The ostrich pecked away at the remaining liquid and lotions on the floor.
“Move that bird!” I screamed and pointed to the door. “Run over and get Oscar or Colton!”
Patience attempted to climb on the back of her bird. After a couple of times trying to get her leg lifted, Constance stomped over.
“Here.” Constance grounded herself like a tree and interlocked her fingers together, giving Patience a foot saddle to help her up. Only Patience laid belly first on the bird and Constance swatted its feathery butt. Patience screamed the entire way down the road and across the street with her legs dangling behind her.
“Oh, June. Someone is after you.” The tone in Constance’s voice made me flinch. “Maybe you’ll be my next customer.”
“Don’t count on it,” I grumbled under my breath.
Chapter Fifteen
“And you didn’t see anyone or anythi
ng funny?” Oscar asked Raven, Chandra and Arabella as they stood in a circle inside A Charming Cure.
They were the only shop owners still in their shops after closing. They all shook their heads.
“I was so busy creating and bringing wilted flowers back to life that I wasn’t paying attention to anything but the colorful world of my own.” Arabella glanced around the room. “June, I will help replace all the special ingredients you can get from my flowers and special petals.” Her generosity spread.
“And I’ll pluck some drowsy daisy to get you started.” Chandra knew the magical flower loved so much by Darla was in most of Darla’s homeopathic cures in the Magical Cures Book where she journaled and left so many secret potions in there for me.
“That is so nice of you, Chandra.” Oscar put his police notebook back in his pocket. He rubbed his hand down my back. “I’m sure June appreciates it.”
“Oh,” his touch brought me out of my thoughts, “yes, I do appreciate any help.”
I rushed behind the counter where I kept the Magical Cures Book.
“June?” Oscar hurried behind me.
“The book.” I couldn’t help but feel like someone wanted something. I moved the extra cauldron from underneath the counter and the book was safely tucked away. I held it close to my chest and rocked back and forth. “Whoever broke in here doesn’t know about the book. They wanted something else and when they didn’t find it,” my voice trailed off.
“What?” Oscar asked. “June?”
“It has to be related to Head To Toe Works. Someone really doesn’t want my lotion to hit the shelves of the store.” I bit the edge of my lip, trying to think about what they could possibly want.
I glanced around the shop.
“Think about it.” I pointed to the shelf of empty potion bottles behind me. “The bottles weren’t broken because there wasn’t anything in there. All the ingredient bottles and bottles that contained something have been busted.”
“I think you are right.” Raven’s eyes drew down. “Tonight, after you left, a picture of a graveyard continued to pop up in the dough. I never even thought it could be about what was going on in Locust Grove with the murder of Burt because it wasn’t here in Whispering Falls. Plus I was figuring it wasn’t about you. I thought if I was going to have a vision in the dough about you, it was going to be about the wedding or All Hallows Eve.”
“Our wedding?” Oscar’s face contorted. “All Hallows Eve?”
“Long story.” I touched his arm. “I’ll tell you later.” I turned back to Raven. “Anything other than a graveyard?” I curled my hands back around the book and held it tight.
Raven’s eyes dropped down and focused on the book. She gulped. She licked her lips and looked up at me with concern.
“That book.” Her finger lifted and pointed to the Magical Cures Book. “It was in my dough.”
We all stood in silence. They didn’t know what it meant but I did. I had to go to my mother’s grave. There had to be something with the graveyard and the book. I was going to have to pay a visit to my mom.
“We can get this all cleaned up in no time.” I wasn’t sure when I would make the time to see Darla, I just knew the shop took priority.
“June, we need to get fingerprints and go over the crime scene.” Oscar tried to stop me from flipping the switch on my cauldron. “You can close one day to get things in order. You don’t have to do this tonight.”
“Yes I do!” The anger flew out of me. “You don’t understand! This is what I have worked for all of my life! This!” I twirled around the room. “This is my life. It’s all I know. You are my life. Or at least I thought you were until I found out that we are arranged by our families to be married.”
“We are what?” He froze into blankness.
“June,” Raven called my name, but it didn’t stop me.
“Yeah. Do we really love each other? Or are we merely a spell for our families to carry on our heritage?” Tears stung my eyes. I blinked. The salt water dripped down my cheeks.
“I think you are a little stressed.” Chandra picked up the broom. “I’ll sweep up and you can go rest.”
“I’m fine,” I said flatly. There was a hurt look in Oscar’s eyes. He looked as though he were trying to wrap his head around what I was suggesting.
“Spell or not, I love you.” Oscar watched as I touched the different bottles behind me.
“Eye of newt, pond spleen, moonstone, star thistle.” As I said the name and touched the bottle, it filled with the ingredient. “Snake oil, witch’s wart, bat wing, fingernails, toenails, lacewing, wolf’s bane, stardust, tiger whiskers.”
And the list went on. Within a few minutes, I had restocked my ingredient shelf except for one. The wisteria vine oil. It was not extracted from a witch’s hand but a mortal hand. According to the Magical Cures Book, Darla had spent a better part of her time in Whispering Falls extracting the potent oil for the village to use. It was the main ingredient in my stress free lotion.
“Wisteria vine oil.” The words almost burnt my lips as they rolled off my tongue.
“What?” Oscar asked. The hurt of my words had deepened.
“They came in and stole the wisteria vine oil. It had to be someone at the factory who really didn’t want me to make any more stress free lotion for Head To Toe Works.”
“Are you sure?” Oscar looked around at the broken bottles behind the counter.
“I’m positive. Somehow they figured out the ingredient and since it’s so hard to extract from the vine, they knew I was the maker and came in here to steal what I had.” It was a definite reason to break into my shop. “Everyone,” I hollered throughout the shop to get their attention. “I want to thank you for coming to my side tonight to help me, but I think I’m going to call it a night and do what Oscar asks. Shut down tomorrow and try to get some new homeopathic base cures together so I can open in a couple of days.”
“You let me know if you need any more drowsy daisy.” Chandra patted my back. “I have plenty.”
“And I’ll keep you in June’s Gems to help out with the stress. Faith is also available after her morning pastry drop off at the Piggly Wiggly.” Raven wiggled her fingers at us before she left.
“I have plenty of leftover floral herbs and seeds I will gather and bring to you in the morning.” Arabella reached out and squeezed my hand. “Remember, Oscar adores you no matter what.”
I thanked them all from the front steps of A Charming Cure and waved them off into the dark night.
Chapter Sixteen
“Now we can get down to business.” I locked the door and pulled the shop shades down real tight so no moonlight or even the smallest firefly could see in.
“Somehow the murder and the break-in have to be tied.” Oscar got his notebook out and made a diagram on a piece of paper with Burt’s name at the top. “Who are the people you have met so far?”
“Obviously there is Tiffany.” I watched as Oscar wrote down her name. “But I honestly don’t think it was her.”
“It’s usually the spouse and that is who Sonny is looking at very closely.” Oscar’s brow lifted as he talked about the murder investigation Locust Grove Sheriff Sonny Butcher was conducting.
There was something so sexy when he flicked on his internal cop guy attitude. Surely those feelings weren’t created by a spell.
“Madame Torres showed me something was happening in the factory before I had even gone there that night. It was a fight between Burt and someone dressed almost exactly like Tiffany. I had Madame Torres play the scene over and over.” I grabbed my bag off the chair behind the counter where I had put it when I came in and I dug Madame Torres out of the bottom.
“Madame Torres, please show me the video of Burt and the woman arguing.” I tapped the coal black globe.
“You have got to be kidding me,” sarcasm dripped from deep within the globe. Her face appeared with a white film over it. Her lips were still blood red. “How do you expect me to perform at my
best if you insist on keeping me up at all hours of the night?” She yawned.
“Garage sale.” It was the magical two words to keep her quiet and do what I had asked.
Oscar bent down and watched as the scene of Burt grasping the bottle and fighting with the woman played out.
“See there,” I pointed to the woman’s hand, “she had nails and Tiffany is allergic to nail polish.”
“She told you this?” he asked.
“Yes.” I nodded. “I did see Burt grab her by the face in a forceful way the other day and she apologized to me saying how he worked for her in the factory before they were married. They met at Mac’s one night and Burt was out of work. That’s when she hired him. Once he started working there he continued to come to her with more efficient ways to run the company. Recently they were having some financial difficulty. They asked his mother, Jenny Rossen, for some financial assistance. This was all during their Christmas visit.”
I stopped until I saw Oscar was caught up on writing everything I was saying down.
“Go on,” he encouraged me.
“Tiffany gave Burt twenty-six percent of the company and Jenny twenty-five percent of the company leaving her with forty-nine percent for majority. Over the past few weeks, Burt had changed his will making his mother the beneficiary of his holdings, giving her the majority in the company, making her CEO.”
“And if she and Tiffany didn’t get along like at Christmas time, she would have reason to want to not move forward with Gentle June’s if she could get her hands on the lotion’s ingredients.” Oscar was using his sleuthing skills and looked ever so handsome doing it.
“That is something I hadn’t thought of.” My intuition told me he was on to something. “But the joke is really on them because the magic is really in the bottle.”
“Of course they don’t know that.” Oscar’s lips turned up. His eyes sparkled, sending tingly chills all over my body. “But who killed Burt?”
“I don’t know.” I closed my eyes and thought long and hard about what my next step needed to be. “Maybe the two aren’t tied. After Burt was killed and Jenny knew my product was going to save the line, she came here and broke in, destroying everything. Only I’m not sure how she would know that wisteria vine oil was in the lotion. If she could squeeze Tiffany out and make the product herself, she sees it as a win/win.”