Wild Secrets (A Wilder Witch Mystery Book 3)

by Jade Wolfe

  The door chimed just as the ambulance pulled up in front of the entrance. I looked up to see Dante come in, pausing to hold the door for a couple of paramedics with a stretcher.

  “What happened?” Dante asked, coming to pull me to my feet so that they could take care of Bill.

  “I’m not sure.” I went quiet for a moment as my brain connected some dots without my input. Then it hit me. “Wait,” I said.

  Jogging to the counter, I stepped behind it. It was waist-high, and underneath were rough wooden shelves that held, apparently, every scrap of paper that Bill had ever scribbled on - random phone numbers, prices jotted in lines, names, dates...I scanned the shelves, one by one, but didn’t see any books, especially not the one I was here to buy. I stood up and looked across the store at Dante. “I think Bill got robbed.”

  His eyebrow came up. “Who in the world would rob him? Everybody likes old Bill.”

  I shook my head. “Everybody who knows him, likes him. Sure. But there are people in town right now who don’t know him.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “He pointed this way, toward the spot where he set aside a book for me. He said book, and then he said redhead. I didn’t know what he meant at first, but now that I’ve thought about it, I think Bess came in and took it.”

  I repeated my story from the day before, adding more detail now that it was relevant. “It was the book they were fighting over that’s missing.”

  “It could have been any redhead...” Dante started, but I shook my head.

  “If it was someone he knew, he would have used their name.”

  Dante thought about that, staring out the front windows, where the paramedics were loading Bill into the back of the ambulance. One of them came jogging back inside. “He’s worried about the store,” he said.

  Dante nodded. “Tell him I’ll make sure everything gets locked up tight, and then I’ll be down to take his statement.”

  The paramedic pulled a set of keys from his pocket, handed them to Dante, nodded his thanks and left.

  “I’m sure it was Bess,” I said again.

  “If it was, you know that makes her our number one murder suspect, too.”

  I nodded. “Yep. If she was mean enough to hurt one old man, I doubt she would hesitate to hurt another one.” I thought about that. What I said was true, but murder? That was a whole different ball game than just whacking somebody in the head.

  Unless she hadn’t meant to murder Jasper. Maybe she just got mad and hit him in the head, but then the whole situation went south. Maybe she was stronger than she thought and he ended up having a heart attack.

  That, I could believe.

  “So are you going to go get her?” I asked.

  Dante shook his head. “I’ll get a couple of guys down here to check for the book and take fingerprints. Then I’ll get Bill’s official statement, show him a picture of Bess and see if it matches.”

  “Then you’ll go get her?” I asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. If I can.”

  “Can I come?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? And why have you been acting so weird about me getting involved in this?”

  He sighed. “Two reasons, actually. Bridges ordered me to keep you away from police business.”

  “He’s just jealous that I catch more murderers than he does.” I put my hands on my hips.

  Dante chuckled. “Probably.”

  “What’s the other reason?”

  “You’re dad gave me the same orders. I’m more afraid of your dad than Bridges.”

  I laughed at that and followed Dante to the door so that he could lock up. “We’ll keep this locked until the guys can come in and do their thing,” Dante said. “I’ll take the keys to the station.”

  “Good to know,” I agreed. “I’ll tell Bill, if he asks.”

  Dante paused and narrowed his eyes at me. “What does that mean? What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to see Bill, silly. I’m a good neighbor.”

  “He’ll probably be asleep. They’ll give him pain meds.”

  I grinned. “I’ll just sit quietly in his room and see who else drops by, then.”

  Chapter Six

  As it turned out, I hadn’t been exactly honest with Dante. I didn’t mean to lie, but halfway to the hospital I got the unmistakable urge to go home and use the runes to give me some clues. I was still getting used to them, but they had turned out to be perfectly reliable for giving us information that sent us looking in the right direction.

  Of course, like Dante always complained, “It would be easier if they just spelled out the name of the killer.”

  I agreed with him, but that wasn’t the way these things worked.

  I was still mad about being ordered away from police business. The biggest problem was that Ben Bridges had every right to do it.

  Even though I had solved two murders, which was two more than him.

  When I got home, Dad was nowhere to be seen, which was good. Whenever he caught me working with the runes it made him a little nervous. He never said anything, but I could see the concern in his eyes. Even though he had known about our witchy bloodline long before I did, he didn’t like it.

  My mother and Aunt Sage didn’t seem to be around either. I went straight to the pantry and grabbed the heavy tea canister from the bottom shelf.

  It was heavy because that was where I stored my runes, a gift from Aunt Sage. The runes were carved in smooth red jasper stone and they were completely mine. Whenever anyone else even touched them, including Dante or my father, I felt queasy and had to ask them to stop.

  The canister was cold in my hand, so I brought it to the island in the kitchen and set it down.

  With the runes, I’d be helping without getting anywhere near the suspects or the scene of the crime. Ben couldn’t get mad, and Dante wouldn’t get in trouble. It was genius, if I did say so myself.

  It was still amazing to me that someone could be murdered with a dictionary, or that someone even had the imagination to try it. I imagined the crime scene as Dante explained it - Dwayne about to come through the big wooden doors, Pete Shoemaker right behind him, and Jasper himself standing at the folding table, straightening his stacks of books. Or maybe he was sitting down, signing them in advance for the reading.

  I thought about that. No - it looked to me like he’d fallen backwards and landed face up, so he had to have been standing when it happened. Otherwise, his body would have been tangled in a chair.

  Did one of the women sneak in and hit him with the big book? It was hard to imagine that happening. Bess didn’t look strong enough to even lift it, while Lavinia was too contained. She didn’t look like she would stoop to such a crass way of killing someone. I thought she would have been more likely to slowly poison his food or something.

  That left Dwayne - who had no reason at all to kill his main attraction - and this Pete Shoemaker, who I had yet to officially meet. Or possibly a hit man, if Bess was guessing correctly about Lavinia.

  But both women seemed to actually love Jasper, or at least care for him. Lavinia had wanted them to spend more time together, while Bess thought he was leaving his wife for her. Those were both reasons to not kill him, unless one woman found out the truth about the other.

  And what was the truth? Which version was real? Was Jasper going to leave Lavinia or did he plan to stay married and keep stringing Bess along? Who knew what, and when? The answers to those questions would give us a much clearer view of this whole mess.

  Dante, I meant. The answers would give Dante a clearer view.

  Another question was, how did William Clayburke fit into all of this? Or did he? Was it just a coincidence that he invited Jasper here and then Jasper ended up dead?

  While I sat on a stool at the island bar and thought about all of this, my fingers were playing with the runes that lay inside the leather pouch. Now they started to tingle, and I brought my attention back to the question.


  Who killed Jasper Davenport?

  I opened the pouch and pulled out the first rune, not looking at it but concentrating on my mental picture of the crime scene. Carefully placing it in front of me, I pulled out the second and then the third, treating each of them just as carefully and making sure I put them in order. Then I closed the pouch and took a deep breath.

  “What are you doing?”

  I screamed and fell halfway out of my chair. Dante came into the room, shrugging off his jacket and staring at the runes in front of me. “Nothing?” I said hopefully.

  He shot me a look. “Uh-huh. Deciding what to have for supper tonight?”

  “Very funny. I was trying to help.”

  “Good.”

  I stared at him. “Good? I thought you wanted me to stay out of it.”

  “Ben wants you to stay out of this. And your Dad.” He looked from the runes to me. “He doesn’t know you’re doing this, does he?”

  “Nope. Have you talked to Bess yet?”

  He made a face. “Not really. Both of them have issues, if you ask me. Lavinia keeps yelling for her lawyer and Bess just keeps calling Lavinia names, like she thinks they’re still in the fourth grade. What do the runes say?”

  One of the reasons I liked Dante was his ability to take the oddness of my family and my life in stride. He accepted that I came from a witchy background much more easily than I did, and he was supportive while I tried to figure this whole magic thing out. He said it made us a great team - I thought it just made us both crazy.

  He glanced at the runes, and then went to the dining room for the large grimoires that lived in the lower buffet drawer. Since we were both still new at this magic business, we used Aunt Sage’s notes a lot, and Dante was patient in deciphering her scrawly handwriting.

  He carried the heavy, leather-bound books back into the kitchen and said, “Put the runes back and make a cup of tea.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “I hate that stuff. It makes me feel funny.”

  “Good. That way you can hang around here and keep out of harm’s way.”

  I stuck my tongue out at him, and he grinned. I laughed and went to heat the teapot on the stove. It was pretty good, even with the slight bitterness it left in my mouth. I had no idea what was in it, because Aunt Sage didn’t label her canisters by ingredients. She labeled them by ailments, and I’d discovered this one - with the runes inside - when I first came home to Wilder and needed something to help my insomnia. More than once I had wondered what would have happened if I hadn’t had insomnia that night. Would the runes have gone unnoticed and unused until I needed the tea? Or would Sage have found a way to get my attention? Without them, we might never have known she was murdered, much less who did it.

  When the cup of tea was steaming hot I carried it back to the table.

  Dante was sitting now and flipping through the big grimoires. He scooted the big, ancient book my way and pointed to a particular picture. “Have you ever seen this thing?”

  I leaned and looked. It was a hand drawn picture of an ornate dagger. You couldn’t tell from the page, but it was made of silver and embedded with amethyst stones. “Yep. It’s one of the tools in the bag I take to Whats-His-Face’s grave every month.”

  “Huh. What do you use it for?”

  “Nothing. It’s just there.”

  He squinted at the scribbled words under the picture. “I can barely make out any of this.”

  “We can try to figure it out later. Let’s get these runes read.” I scooped up the stones and put them back in the pouch. Usually I chose the same ones, with or without the tea, but I liked to start completely over when I was doing a real reading. Just in case - I didn’t want to influence some part of the process accidentally.

  The leather pouch sat on the butcher block, patiently waiting for me. I took a sip of tea and stared back at it as warm tingles skittered along my skin.

  “You ready?” Dante asked, waving a hand in front of my face. I nodded and swatted his hand away. Right now concentration was key, if I was going to read the runes correctly.

  “You don’t need that, you know.”

  I jumped and a little bit of tea sloshed over the rim of the cup and onto my hand. “For crying out loud, Sage!” I snapped.

  “Why are you so jumpy?” she asked, grinning at me.

  “Why do you think scaring me is so funny?” I shot back, licking a droplet of tea from my thumb. “It’s rude.”

  “Ladies?” Dante cut in. We both looked at him. At least I think Sage was looking at him. She was a little more faded today. I had already deduced that she got that way when she’d been out causing trouble in town. Maybe she was giving the family nemesis - Pastor Reese - a nervous afternoon.

  “First of all,” Dante continued, “Sage, is Jasper Davenport in the.... Uh, web thing?”

  “Who?” she asked.

  “Jasper Davenport. He’s an author, and somebody murdered him,” Dante explained.

  “Well, I don’t know. If he is, he’s being quiet about it. Thank the stars.”

  He looked disappointed. “OK, never mind. Second, what do you mean, Clover doesn’t need the tea?”

  “I don’t,” I answered as the truth dawned on me, all at once. I looked at Sage. “It’s a mind game, isn’t it?”

  Whenever I cast runes without the tea - like a few minutes ago - and then used the tea to cast them again, they always matched up. The difference was that when I drank the tea, I didn’t sit around for hours second-guessing myself. The tea made it feel real in my head. “The tea is just a trick, isn’t it? To give me confidence?”

  “A catalyst,” Aunt Sage sniffed. “But yes, it’s the same idea.”

  I drummed my fingernails on the island’s top, thinking. “When I cast them again, with the tea, they’ll be the same, won’t they? They always are.”

  Understanding dawned in Dante’s eyes. “Good. Maybe you won’t feel so weird when we do this.”

  He scooted the pouch toward me across the island. I did as before, closing my eyes and concentrating hard on just the crime scene. Then I pulled three runes, knowing before I even opened my eyes that they were the same as before. I placed them in order and then looked at Dante.

  His head was bent over the heavy book. I gave him a minute to compare the notes with the runes themselves. After a few minutes he shook his head. “I can’t figure it out. I mean, I see the comparisons, but there are so many interpretations that I just don’t understand which one to use.”

  “That’s because Clover is the rune witch here, not you.” Aunt Sage tried to nudge him with an elbow, but he didn’t actually feel it. She frowned.

  I set my tea down without drinking any more of it. I hadn’t had enough to influence my interpretations yet, I didn’t think. Usually it took a half cup of the stuff before my interpretive skills kicked in. Instead I stared at the runes and notes, too, but it wasn’t clicking like before. I felt as lost as Dante looked. I might be able to choose the runes properly, but I still had to figure out what they meant. “I feel the same way, Sage. The meanings aren’t falling into place like they normally do, and my mind just feels muddy. Is there another way for me to interpret, without using the tea?” I asked, wishing that I knew more about what made this whole witch thing work.

  “Yes. Go get my jewelry box.”

  I’d seen the box she was talking about on the dresser in her room, but I hadn’t felt right going through it. I knew it needed to be done...sometime. I just wanted to wait. Now I was glad I had. I carried the tall box with glass inlays in from her room and set it on the table.

  “Third drawer down,” Sage said. Get the necklace and put it on.”

  I opened the door she indicated, but the jewelry in there was a mess. Several broaches, a couple of rings, and at least three chains were all tangled together at the bottom. “Sage,” I said, looking at it, “This will take us weeks to sort out.”

  She wandered closer to Dante. “Page eight hundred and four,” she told him.

&n
bsp; He flipped to that page and then nodded. “I thought I remembered reading something about that,” he said.

  “What?” I leaned over to see.

  “A spell to lay things straight,” Sage said. “It works on anything tangled and messy.”

  “Good to know.” I read the spell.

  “Why? You can’t use it well enough,” Sage snapped. “Only Dante.”

  I stared at her, my hands on my hips. “What do you mean? I’m the witch.”

  “So? Your gifts lie with the runes, but Dante has talents as well.” She looked pointedly at Dante. “At least I think he does. We’re about to find out.”

  He stared back at her, astonished.

  I gaped at both of them, not sure what was happening. To him she said, “You need to check your family tree.”

  It took a moment to find my voice. “Dante is a witch?” I asked.

  “Well, he has the right blood.” She shrugged, as much as a ghost can shrug, anyway. “I think he’s an intangible.

  “A what?” he asked.

  She looked irritated that I asked. “You know how you need to have props to do magic? Like the rune stones? Or the tea, or the bayberries?”

  I nodded.

  “Your mother was like that, too. But if I’m reading Dante right, I think he doesn’t need those things. I think he can work using only his intent.”

  “Why didn’t you mention this before?” he asked her.

  “Why would I? As far as I knew, you were just some loser who liked hanging around my girl here. I waited until we knew you better.” She still looked annoyed at our questions, like it was the most natural thing in the world to tell someone they were a witch. “Now is as good a time as any. Are you going to say the incantation or not?”

  “OK, then.” Dante still looked as confused and stunned as I felt. He put both hands flat in front of him on the bar. “What, exactly, do I do here?”

  “You have to use your intent,” she explained. “Picture the jewelry the way you want it. Use your force to make the words real.”

  “Use...my force?”

  She grimaced. “It’s like giving the words you say a mental push in the right direction.”