Because of the loose paneling I’d seen this morning when I found Raina, I had to assume that she had interrupted a burglary. However, that’s all I knew, and I had a couple of big glaring questions about the case.
Was the burglar a mortal treasure hunter who finally got the chance to break in?
Or a Crafter, like Andreus, who was after unlimited powers?
Even more concerning . . .
Had the burglar found the diamonds?
I had no way of knowing.
The office phone rang as I stuck another file in the cabinet drawer. I’d been letting calls go to voice mail since coming inside, but decided I couldn’t keep putting off the inevitable.
Especially since it was the same person calling over and over again, both the office line and my cell.
Hurrying across the room, I grabbed the handset before it rang again. “As You Wish, this is Darcy. What is the wish you wish today?” I asked out of pure habit.
“I wish you’d stop finding dead bodies without me.”
Smiling, I closed a folder and reached for another. “Hi, Harper.”
My sister knew quite well I couldn’t grant her wish—one of the Wishcraft laws was that we couldn’t grant one another’s wishes. Right now I was incredibly grateful for such guidelines. What Harper didn’t know would allow her to sleep tonight.
“Don’t you ‘hi’ me, Darcy. For the love! What does this make? Five bodies?”
Ah, trust Harper to keep a correct tally. “Don’t remind me.”
“Where have you been? I’ve been calling for the past hour.”
Smiling, I wondered when we’d switched roles. She now sounded like she was mothering me. “Dealing with the fallout of finding Raina.”
Excitement colored her words as she said, “Tell me everything.”
I was actually surprised she wasn’t here, standing before me with her big brown elfish eyes. She knew I had trouble saying no to her when she gave me her “pitiful” look. It was much easier denying her on the phone. “No.”
“Don’t make me come over there. I’ll close the shop if I have to.”
Ah. That’s why she wasn’t already here—she must be the only one manning the bookshop today. She had a couple of part-time employees, but it wasn’t unusual for her to work alone, especially during weekdays when the tourist trade was slower than on weekends. She couldn’t yet afford to hire full-time help.
She went on. “I’ll close it right up. I might not be able to pay my electric bill next month, mind you. . . .”
“Okay,” I said, calling her bluff.
She huffed. “Darcy.”
I smiled as I set a stack of folders atop the filing cabinet and went about finding their appropriate alphabetical slot inside the drawer.
“Oh, come on,” she said quickly. “You have to give me something. I heard the Elder gave you the case to investigate. Does that mean the Craft is involved? What do you know so far?”
It never ceased to amaze me how fast news traveled in this village. “Who told you?”
“Archie. I saw him in the alley when I took out the trash.”
He had a big beak, that bird.
Wait. “In the alley?” Archie was most definitely not the kind of bird to hang out in an alleyway. Last I heard, he’d been snooping at the Tavistock house. “Why was he there?”
“He was perched on the fence behind the building, spying on Magickal Realty,” she said.
I couldn’t help but wonder what the cocky bird had overheard. The real estate office was a couple of doors down from Harper’s place, and Raina and Kent lived in the second-floor apartment above their business.
Had Archie followed Kent back to the office? If so, Kent hadn’t spent much time with Nick at all. Interesting. “Archie told me Raina and Kent had a big fight outside Spellbound a week or so ago. Did you happen to overhear it?” I reached for a file and accidentally knocked the stack off the cabinet. Two of the folders fell behind the cabinet while the others sent papers flying over the office floor.
No good deed.
As I crouched down, I glanced upward at Tilda. I swear she looked amused.
Harper said, “I’m surprised you couldn’t hear it at As You Wish. They were really going at it.”
Sighing, I set about cleaning up. “What were they fighting about?”
“I’ll tell you if you tell me about this morning, Darcy,” she said. “How did Raina die?”
I recalled stepping in the puddle of Raina’s blood and goose bumps rose on my skin again. Fighting a feeling of wooziness, I set aside files and pumped hand sanitizer from a container on the desk into my palm and rubbed it over my foot. At this point I was beginning to think it would never feel clean again. “I’m not sure,” I said truthfully. Harper didn’t need to know the gory details. She tended to focus intensely on them. For days. So I gave her as little information as possible. “She had a head wound. Now, about that fight . . .”
Seemingly appeased for the moment, she said, “Kent was angry because Raina turned down an offer to be the exclusive listing agent for the new neighborhood should it get approved. Kent felt as her husband and partner that he should have been consulted first. He ranted. He raved. He said this could have been a life changer for them. She silenced him by saying that he’d made plenty of decisions lately without her, and it was her business and her word was final. Then she walked off.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah,” Harper said. “I felt like they were arguing about much more than the development.”
He’d made decisions without her . . . What kind?
“Did you know the agency was Raina’s alone?” I asked. Although Raina had definitely been the driving force behind the agency, I always thought it was owned by both of them.
“Not until that fight. Makes you wonder what will happen to it now, doesn’t it?”
It did. With Raina out of the way, Kent was free to take on any real estate projects he wanted. Maybe he could make a go of the company on his own, after all. Especially if he could get that contract for the new neighborhood. “Did the developer already contract with another real estate agent?”
“Not yet, but Noelle Quinlan’s been gloating all over town for the past week that she’s the top choice for the job if the neighborhood gets approved. Haven’t you noticed?”
“No,” I said, smiling.
Noelle Quinlan—who’d always lurked in the shadows of Raina and Magickal Realty. With Raina’s death Noelle had just become the top agent in the village . . . and that put her on my suspect list.
Because the more I thought about it, the more I realized that maybe, just maybe, Raina’s killer had used the diamonds for a cover-up. . . .
Her killer could have been pretending to burgle, but in reality was lying in wait for Raina to show up.
It was rather brilliant.
Because once police caught wind of the possibility of diamonds being in the house, they would focus on treasure hunters and the like, and not someone a little closer to the situation. Like Noelle. Or Kent.
If that theory was true, then I was looking for someone who knew about a connection between Raina and Andreus—because I didn’t think it was a coincidence that she had an amulet in her hand when I’d found her or that there had been a letter A written in blood on the wall.
It was entirely possible someone was framing Andreus.
Someone who knew that Andreus’s father had stolen the diamonds in the first place.
Which, according to Ve and Cherise, was most of the village, mortals and Crafters alike. I had no idea how to narrow it down.
Or, I realized with a silent groan, Andreus had set that scene in the closet, hoping the police believed he was being framed and wouldn’t consider him a suspect.
He was absolutely sneaky enough to do such a thing.
An
d just like that, I was back at square one. Well, almost. I felt I could at least rule out random treasure hunters as the killer because of that charm in Raina’s hand. A stranger wouldn’t know Andreus from Adam. The killer had to be someone who knew Raina well.
“You need to get out more,” Harper said.
“I get out plenty.”
Harper harrumphed, then expertly returned to the topic of how Raina had died. “I heard there was blood,” she said. “Lots of it.”
Ugh. I didn’t need the reminder. I tried to reach the files that fell behind the cabinet, but the opening was too narrow. And the wooden cabinet was much too heavy to move. The folders were going to have to wait until I could outsource some muscle. “Archie tell you that, too?”
“No. Finn Reardon told me. I ran into him as he was walking by the shop.”
“Ran into him? Or forcefully grabbed him?”
“I don’t think he’ll press charges,” Harper said, and I could hear the smile in her voice.
“How’s Calliope doing?” I asked. “Did he say?”
“Resting. She’s pretty shaken,” Harper said. “Finn was on his way to the Sorcerer’s Stove to pick up some soup for her.”
The restaurant had reopened recently under new management, and the village couldn’t have been happier to have it back.
“I don’t know about her,” Harper said after a pause.
“Who?”
“Calliope. Aren’t you paying attention?”
I frowned at the phone.
“Now, if I’d been with you,” Harper said, not waiting for me to answer, “I can assure you that I wouldn’t have been upchucking.”
True. Harper would have been taking pictures and notes. “Cut Calliope some slack,” I said. “It was traumatic.”
“For Raina.”
“You’re being harsh.”
“I think it was a bit of an exaggerated response, don’t you?” Harper asked. “Maybe one produced to make her seem like she was shocked by the scene.”
“The scene was shocking.”
“You didn’t get sick or even faint. It couldn’t have been that bad.”
“It was that bad. I think I’m building up a tolerance to death and blood,” I said.
“I’m not sure whether that’s a good or bad thing.”
“Me neither.”
I finished tucking the remaining folders into the filing cabinet and looked around. The office space had been a source of contention between Ve and me over the past year. She liked organized chaos. I just liked organized.
I’d clean.
She’d muss.
I’d computerized our billing system.
She still used a ledger.
It was maddening.
However, over the past few weeks, the office was slowly giving way to my methods. I’d gloat, but the only reason Ve hadn’t wreaked havoc on my organizing was because she hadn’t been around. It was only a matter of time before the space returned to her special kind of anarchy.
Or was it?
If she won the election how much time would she be able to devote to the company? It was a thought that I didn’t want to think about too much. If she closed the business, I’d be out of a job. A paying job, at least. I still had the snoop business to keep me busy.
“But still,” Harper said, undeterred. “I mean, Calliope used to work with Sylar and Dorothy as an assistant at Sylar’s optical shop. She has to have a high queasy tolerance.”
Harper made a good point, not that I’d admit it. “What are you getting at, Harper?”
She let out a loud huff. “Maybe you should talk to the Elder? Get her to hire me as the Craft snoop? Because if you can’t figure out what I’m getting at, then you might be in the wrong line of work.”
“You’re cranky. When was the last time you ate? You know how you get when your blood sugar drops.”
“Darcy!”
I laughed. “What possible motive would Calliope have for murdering Raina?”
“Again, isn’t this your job?”
“So you have nothing,” I challenged, finding this conversation ridiculous.
“Okay, let’s see . . .” She trailed off.
Missy lifted a sleepy eyebrow as I tapped my foot, waiting.
“All right, all right,” Harper finally said. “Maybe she wants Raina’s job. How about that?”
“I doubt it. She’s been sending résumés to museums all over the city. It’s only a matter of time before she’s hired as an archivist.”
“Fine. Well, maybe she’s having an affair with Kent. How about that?”
“Ew.”
“I know, right? Don’t think about it too hard.”
“Calliope’s newly engaged to Finn,” I said, trying to shake the image of canoodling Kent and Calliope from my head. “Remember?”
“Well,” Harper huffed, “maybe she’s just plain old mentally unstable.”
Smiling, I teased, “I’m not sure she’s the one who’s mentally unstable.”
“What are you getting at?” Harper asked, full of faux outrage.
“If the straitjacket fits . . .”
“You’re lucky a customer just came in. I’ll talk to you later. You still owe me details.” She hung up.
I glanced at Missy. “She’s certifiable.”
Missy yawned.
But . . . maybe Harper had a point about Calliope. I shouldn’t rule anyone out quite yet. Pulling my bottom lip into my mouth, I eyed Calliope’s phone. Before I could overthink it, I grabbed it and swiped the screen, bringing it to life.
A password box popped up.
I groaned. Served me right for trying to violate her privacy like that.
But . . . I was able to see she had text messages waiting for her from Kent. Eight of them, in fact. And five missed calls from him, too. I imagined they came in after he heard what happened to Raina.
I quickly finished cleaning up the desk, and decided I’d put off the inevitable long enough. It was time to get this investigation going. First, I’d look for Starla to see if she had any additional information about Raina’s state of mind lately. Then I needed to drop off Calliope’s phone and binder. Then go see Pepe. And then . . . well, it would be time to face my demons.
I had to find Andreus.
Chapter Five
I left Missy at home as I headed out to search the green for Starla. I didn’t know how long I’d be gone, and it wasn’t fair to the little dog to drag her all about the village for hours on end, though she’d probably argue that if she could. She loved being out and about—obviously, since she escaped every chance she got.
A large crowd still watched the goings-on at the Tavistock house as village police officers scoured the yard. Joining the rubbernecking, I stood on my tiptoes to try to catch a glimpse of Nick, but he was nowhere to be seen.
I was itching to talk with him. To find out what he’d learned so far—if anything. Technically, he could get in big trouble if his mortal coworkers discovered he was sharing information with me, but we were careful. And the lone Crafter who’d rat us out—Glinda Hansel—had been neutralized by the Elder when she appointed me Craft snoop.
As always when I thought about Glinda, my initial anger slowly dissipated into pity. I felt for her and her unhappy misguided life, though she certainly didn’t deserve my sympathy. And wouldn’t want it, for that matter.
Pressing on, I skirted the crowd, searching for Starla. Unfortunately, if she was still here, she was so in the thick of things that I couldn’t see her. Or she’d already gone off to the newspaper office. Or she’d called it a morning and was meeting Vince for an afternoon driving lesson.
Heaven help us all.
Shading my eyes, I gave one last futile look around and finally decided to move on.
Plan B.
; I’d postpone seeing Starla and head to the Gingerbread Shack, the bakery owned by Starla’s twin brother, Evan. It was a win-win decision. Since he had accompanied Starla during her house-hunt he would have spent as much time with Raina as she had.
Plus, if I was going to track down Andreus, fortification in the form of chocolate and coffee could only help.
I threw one last look around for Starla to no avail, then turned to be on my way, when I bumped into someone.
“Sorr— Eeee!” I stumbled backward.
Strong hands settled on my shoulders, steadying me. “My deepest apologies if I startled you, Ms. Merriweather.”
Andreus Woodshall’s face was cast in shadows by the canopy of leaves above his head. His dark eyes had sunk deep into their sockets, and the bones of his face pushed against his skin, giving him a skeletal appearance. His lips twisted into an evil smirk, and his fingers felt like bony knives on my arms.
Suddenly thoughts of death and evil flooded my brain, and I tried to get a grip on myself.
“I—” Nope. When he looked like this, he was absolutely terrifying, and I couldn’t seem to form a coherent thought.
“Ms. Merriweather? Are you unwell?”
I wondered—but didn’t know for certain—if he was aware of the way he changed between the dark and light. I suspected he did—and used it to his advantage.
Steeling my nerves, I quickly spun around, tugging him out of the shadows and into the sunshine.
In an instant, his features morphed into a pleasing countenance. He went from being the Crypt Keeper to a handsome Clark Gable.
Have mercy, as my aunt Ve would say.
“I’m—” I cleared my throat. “I’m fine. You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that.”
“Was I sneaking?” A corner of his lips lifted in amusement. “I wasn’t aware.” He motioned to Mrs. P’s bench. “Care to sit down a moment?”
What I really wanted was to run far, far away from him, but hightailing it out of here wasn’t really an action befitting the Craft snoop. I had planned to track him down anyway, so why not just get it over with now? Right here. Where there were lots of witnesses.
Some Like It Witchy Page 5