Mystical Murder: A Whiskers and Witches Cozy Mystery, Book 1 (Whiskers and Witches Cozy Mysteries)

by Patti Benning

  “Oh, Tess, I’m so sorry,” she said. “I can be so clumsy.”

  “It’s fine,” Tess said quickly. “They’re just cheap glasses, not part of a matching set or anything. It happens.”

  She rose to grab a roll of paper towel, frowning. She must have been mistaken, but she almost thought she remembered her aunt saying “Oops,” before her elbow even touched the glass.

  Breakfast tasted just as good as it smelled. Weirdness aside, Tess couldn’t deny that her aunt was a phenomenal cook. It was surprising, considering that Tess’s mother could probably manage to burn water if she tried hard enough.

  She left for work shortly after they finished eating. Loretta promised to handle the dishes and wouldn’t take no for an answer. She felt a bit bad leaving her aunt with all that work, but didn’t have the time to stay and try to help. It was a Friday, which meant the dental office would be busier than usual. Saturdays were the worst, but Fridays were a close second.

  She arrived about fifteen minutes before the office opened for the day. Deidre greeted her cheerfully, but was too busy preparing the room for the first client to stop and chat. It wasn’t until their lunch break that Tess and her friend were able to exchange more than a few words.

  “Man, I’ve been wanting to hear about this all morning,” Deidre said as she claimed the rolling chair next to Tess and laid her salad out on the desk. “Did your aunt end up showing up? What’s she like? Did you find out what she’s doing here in Elk Hill?”

  “Yes, she got there just after ten last night. She’s sort of like I remembered, but just a bit weirder. I’m pretty sure she spilled a glass of orange juice on purpose this morning, but I have no idea why she’d do that. And no, I never got a real answer about why she’s here.”

  “Odd,” her friend said. “You don’t think she’s like… dangerous, do you?”

  “I don’t get that feeling,” Tess said. “She’s pretty nice. She made a great breakfast this morning. I feel like I should make a big dinner or something. But I don’t know what she likes.”

  “I’m sure whatever you make, she’ll love,” Deidre said. “You’re a natural cook.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. I mean, I’m better at it than my mom, but I’ve never really made anything out of my comfort zone. Heck, I hadn’t even made my own meatballs until that last Meals on the Move delivery.”

  “So you don’t have a lot of experience.” Her friend shrugged. “That’s easy to fix; just cook more. Then invite Jackie and me over to be your taste testers.”

  Tess laughed, “We should have a potluck sometime. We can plan something when it warms up a bit. Right now, I just need to figure out something easy and foolproof to cook for tonight.”

  When Tess got home, an hour after work got out, with her arms full of groceries, she was pleasantly surprised to find a spic-and-span kitchen waiting for her. The dishes were spotless and were neatly stacked in the shelves, not waiting in the drying rack where she usually left them. The counters had been scoured, the floor swept and mopped, and even the stove looked like it had been cleaned.

  “Wow,” she said. “I’m impressed. This must have taken you a while.”

  “It didn’t take long at all,” her aunt said with a smile. “Can I help you put away the groceries?”

  “Most of what I bought I’m going to use for dinner, so it can stay out for now,” Tess said. “Shoot, I left the eggs in the car.”

  She put the bags down and went back outside. Her aunt followed her out to the front porch, where she leaned casually against the railing and looked down the street.

  “How was your day?” she asked as Tess shut the car door.

  “Fine,” Tess said. “Nothing special. How was yours?”

  “Oh, it was quite nice. Elk Hill really is a beautiful little town.”

  Loretta spoke as if she had spent the day sightseeing. Tess had no idea how she would have managed to do such a thing without a car, and in the dead of winter no less.

  “Can you get the door?” she asked. “I forgot a case of soda, too.”

  “Of course.” Loretta reached for the handle, jiggled it, then frowned. “I think it’s locked. Do you have your keys?”

  “No, they’re inside. Sometimes it sticks. Here, let me try.”

  Tess set the groceries down on the porch and reached for the knob. She could tell right away that it was locked, and not just sticking.

  “Dang it.” She patted her pockets in the off chance that she had put her keys inside one of them instead of on the counter, but no such luck. There was a spare key in a fake stone near the walkway, but it would be miserable digging through the snow with her bare hands. She chewed her lip for a second, but knew that she didn’t have any other choices.

  By the time she found the right stone, her hands were freezing. She shared a triumphant grin with her aunt, which faded from her face when she opened the fake stone only to find it empty. Had someone taken the key? The thought was chilling. More likely, she had just forgotten to put it back the last time she had used it.

  “I don’t know what else to do,” she said as she trudged back up to the porch. “I keep everything locked. We’re going to have to either break a window or call a locksmith.”

  “Are you sure you can’t think of anything else?” the older woman said. “Do you want to try it again? Maybe it’s just sticking, like you said.”

  Tess put her hand on the knob and turned it half-heartedly. It didn’t budge. She sighed. Her cellphone was inside too, which meant that she would have to ask one of her neighbors if she could use their phone to make the call. It was going to be embarrassing.

  “I’m going to go see how long a locksmith would take,” she told her aunt. “I’ll be right back.” Her next-door neighbor was a stay-at-home mom who borrowed eggs from her sometimes, so she was sure asking to use their phone wouldn’t be much of an issue.

  As she turned to begin the trudge across the yard, she heard her aunt say something under her breath. Tess turned in time to see the door to the house swing open.

  “It must have just been sticking,” Loretta said in response to Tess’s silent gape. She bent down and picked up the case of soda. “Come on, I’ll bring this in. You get the eggs.”

  Chapter Six

  * * *

  Tess spent the next hour making bacon-Alfredo chicken over veggie noodles. The only part of the meal that wasn’t completely homemade was the loaf of French bread. She was taking Deidre’s words to heart. She shouldn’t be afraid to try new recipes just because she didn’t have a ton of experience in the kitchen. As long as she followed the directions and didn’t try anything too crazy, the food would probably at least be edible.

  Dinner with her aunt was a quiet affair. The chicken had turned out perfectly, but after one quick compliment, the other woman fell silent. Tess tried to tempt her into conversation by asking questions about her life traveling around Europe with her husband, and what it had been like growing up with Tess’s mother and grandparents, but only got a few distracted answers. She didn’t know what was wrong, and still felt puzzled over the episode with the door. She had been so sure it was locked. She knew that door, she could tell when it was sticking. But she couldn’t imagine what else could have happened. Maybe she should get it looked at—or just change the locks, that might be safest since her spare key was missing.

  “That was wonderful, Tessie, thank you,” her aunt said when they were done. “I’ll help you clear up, then I should be on my way.”

  “Wait, you mean you’re leaving?” Tess said.

  “I think I’d better,” she said, almost sounding regretful.

  “You can stay longer if you’d like. Really, it’s no trouble.”

  “No, no, I don’t think there’s any reason for that.” Her aunt gave her a sweet smile and patted her hand. “It was nice to get a chance to see you. You’ve grown up into a wonderful woman with a normal life. You keep doing what makes you happy.”

  “Are you going to visit Mom?”<
br />
  “Yes, I will. She and I have some things to talk about.”

  Puzzled, Tess began doing the dishes. She glanced over her shoulder partway through scrubbing a plate to see her aunt leaning against the kitchen doorway, watching her closely. Tess jumped. She had thought Loretta was in her room, packing.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” her aunt said, sounding disappointed. “I’ll start getting ready to go.”

  “Come on, enough is enough,” Tess snapped, beginning to get angry. “The entire time you’ve been here, you’ve been giving me weird looks and acting strangely. Is there something you’re not telling me? Are you in some sort of trouble? Is the family in trouble? Just tell me what’s going on, Aunt Loretta.”

  “Nothing is going on, dear. This is just a family visit.”

  Frustrated, Tess thrust her hands back into the sink full of soapy water. The kitchen door slammed shut at the same moment. She spun around, certain that her aunt had slammed it, but the woman was standing next to it looking shocked.

  “On second thought,” she said. “Maybe I will take you up on that offer to stay longer, after all.”

  Tess tossed and turned all that night. After what had happened today, she wasn’t sure she was glad that her aunt was staying longer. Her gut told her that her aunt had been the one who had slammed the door, though the woman had explained it away by blaming it on a draft. Whatever the truth was, there was definitely something weird going on. Tess felt feverish and chilled at the same time, and wondered if she was getting sick. That would be just great, she thought dryly. Trapped in the house with my weird aunt, sick with the flu.

  She wished the older woman would just be straight with her. She was beyond fed up with all of this mysterious stuff. All she wanted was to spend some quality time with a family member that she hardly ever saw, and then get on with her peaceful life. If Aunt Loretta spelled troubled, well, she didn’t want any of it.

  Thanks to her restless night, Tess was still exhausted when her sounds of nature clock woke her up the next morning to the crashing of waves.

  “Oh, shut up,” she mumbled, her face pressed into her pillow.

  The alarm fell silent.

  Tess raised her head and peered at it. Was the thing broken? It seemed fine. The numbers on the screen glowed, showing her the time. Maybe it shut off automatically after a few minutes. She would have to check the settings later. With a yawn, she lowered her head to the pillow and fell back into a doze.

  She walked into work ten minutes late. It wasn’t the end of the world—she had almost never been late in all her years working at the clinic—but it was another bad part of an already unpleasant morning. The second time she’d woken up, she had only twenty minutes until she had to be at her job. She thought she had done pretty well, considering, but she knew there was no excuse for being late other than bad judgment on her part.

  Wishing she could wind back time just a few minutes, Tess took her seat at the desk. She had just logged in when Vanessa came out from the back.

  “Hey, Tess,” she said. “Who do we have coming in today?”

  “Riley Junior has the first appointment, at nine-thirty” she said, pulling up the schedule. “He’s in for a filling. That should be fun.”

  “Deidre will talk him through it,” Vanessa said confidently. “I’m glad she’s working today. Ann is a bright girl, but she doesn’t have the temperament to deal with kids.”

  She doesn’t really have the temperament to deal with adults, either, Tess thought, but she didn’t put voice to it. Instead, she said, “Sorry I’m late. I overslept.” She knew her boss would see the time that she clocked in on the daily log, so there was no point in keeping it secret. She figured it would be best to come clean and apologize first thing.

  “Late?” the dentist turned to look at the clock. “We don’t open for another two minutes. You’re golden, girl.”

  Tess stared at the clock. She had looked at it when she came in, and it had definitely read ten minutes after nine. Now the minute hand was hovering just before the twelve. She glanced at the computer clock. Same thing. Two minutes to nine. What in the world was going on? Was she going crazy? She sure hoped not. She wasn’t sure if her insurance would cover that.

  After getting the first appointment signed in, Tess fiddled around with the computer and eventually ended up turning it off and then back on. When she logged in again, she saw that the time now matched what was on her phone. The clock was still dragging behind—she would have to drag a chair over later and fix it. She couldn’t figure out what could have caused both of the clocks in the office to lag behind. The wall clock could always be put down to a low battery, and she supposed the computer could have just glitched, but the idea of both of those things happening at exactly the same time with exactly the same time difference was just too much of a coincidence. The slamming door the night before, the alarm this morning, and now this… something strange was definitely going on.

  Chapter Seven

  * * *

  The rest of the work day passed without incident, other than when Riley Junior tried to make an escape after Vanessa stepped out of the room for a second. Luckily his mother intercepted him before he could reach the exit, and she kept a close eye on him for the rest of the appointment.

  It had been an average, hectic Saturday, and she was glad it was done with. The office was only open Tuesday through Saturday, so that meant she had two free days stretching out ahead of her and no commitments besides playing hostess for her aunt and doing another Meals on the Move delivery on Monday evening.

  She wasn’t surprised to find the kitchen once again spotless when she got back. It seemed that her aunt really had a way with housework, a skill that Tess was sorely lacking. A propensity for procrastination and a dislike of getting dirty meant that she tended to put most chores off for longer than she should.

  “Hi, I’m home,” she said cheerily after putting down her purse on the kitchen counter. She paused to listen, but didn’t hear her aunt anywhere. Had she ended up leaving after all?

  “Aunt Loretta?” she called, raising her voice slightly.

  “I’m in the living room.”

  Tess smiled at the response. She didn’t know why, but she was glad that the woman was still around. Her vague answers might be infuriating at times, but she knew she would regret not taking the time to reconnect with this part of her family, if she didn’t make an effort while Loretta was still there.

  She walked into the living room to find her aunt sitting on the easy chair with a book in her hand. On the end table next to her was a glass of water. As Tess met her eyes, the older woman raised a hand and pushed the water glass off the table.

  Even though she was too far away to have a hope of reaching it, Tess reached out reflexively. Instead of falling to the floor, the glass zipped into her hand, barely spilling a single drop. She was so surprised that she dropped it anyway! She gazed, stunned, at the glass on the floor, then looked across the room to the end table where it had been sitting only moments before.

  “What… what just happened?”

  “Sit down, Tess. I think it’s time I do some explaining.”

  Tess tried to take in everything her aunt had told her, but felt like she was failing miserably. Her brain kept trying to find logical explanations for everything odd that had happened to her over the past couple of days, but the water glass was the last straw. She just couldn’t make excuses anymore.

  “I’m a witch?” she said, trying out the word for the first time. Up until now, witches had been storybook characters: cackling crones who flew around on brooms. It was hard to imagine the word applying to her.

  “Yes.” Her aunt hadn’t stopped beaming since she had made the glass fly to her hand. “I knew it… it just took a little bit longer to show than usual. You must be a late bloomer, that’s all. And to think I almost left without seeing this… well, you would have been all on your own, my dear, and that wouldn’t have been g
ood for anyone.”

  “I don’t understand,” Tess said. “If magic is real, why don’t people know about it? How come no one told me sooner? Why is everything just happening now?”

  “Slow down,” Loretta said, holding up her hand. “One question at a time. Magic is real. People don’t know about it because they don’t want to. What’s the first ‘odd’ thing that you noticed? The door? And was your first thought ‘Oh, it must be magic,’ or ‘Oh, there must be a reasonable explanation’?”

  “Well, the second, but I don’t see how anyone could ignore something like a glass flying across the room.”

  “If it’s something that is seen out of the corner of an eye, or even something they see clearly but no one else did, people tend to explain away even obvious magic,” Aunt Loretta said. “Like this.”

  She snapped her fingers and a flute of Champagne appeared in her hand. Tess gasped. She was itching to try something like that herself. She felt like a kid on Christmas morning. Everything seemed new and exciting and full of potential. She didn’t know what would happen next, and that was a good thing.