An Artistic Homicide (Lainswich Witches Book 11)

by Raven Snow

  Willow and Peony both put their fingers on the planchette. Rowen joined them. The threat of being caught aside, figuring this thing out for Dayveed’s sake was important too. There was a murderer out there after all. They needed to pay for their crimes or, if it was even applicable, be caught before they killed again.

  “Dayveed,” Rowen said, beginning. “Dayveed, we only ever met once, but my name is Rowen. I’m here with my cousins, Willow and Peony. We want to speak with you. Are you there?” There wasn’t any movement. That wasn’t unusual at first.

  “We met, too,” said Peony. “I had some of my own art at the show. Remember? I don’t think you liked it very much.”

  The planchette began to move. Rowen felt a rush of relief. At least this trip hadn’t been entirely pointless. She watched as it moved to the ‘YES’ at the top of the board. “Good,” Rowen said with a sigh, fighting the urge to argue with a ghost about her cousin’s artistic skills. “You were murdered, Dayveed. Do you know who murdered you? Did you see them?”

  The planchette moved again. It went off of the ‘YES’ by an inch or two just to slide right back onto it.

  “You did?” Rowen tried not to get her hopes up, but that was becoming increasingly more difficult. “Do you know who it was?” The planchette didn’t move this time. It remained still. “Can you spell out the name?” Rowen asked, just in case he hadn’t quite understood the question.

  Gradually, the planchette began to move again. ‘NO.’

  “Is that because you don’t know the name?” asked Rowen. She watched as the planchette went back and forth between ‘YES’ and ‘NO,’ like the phrasing of the question had confused it. Finally, it settled on ‘NO.’ Rowen frowned. Of course the case couldn’t be this open and shut. "Was it a woman?” she asked.

  ‘NO,’ read the planchette.

  “Was it an artist?” Rowen wasn’t sure there were any male artists aside from him with art featured in the gallery. It still seemed worth asking. Rowen’s first guess was that he had made someone in the art industry angry. He had seemed like someone who could make a person so mad they would want to kill him.

  ‘NO,’ read the planchette, squashing that idea.

  “Is there anything you can tell us?” Rowen asked, desperate for something else. She needed some kind of starting point for her investigation. She had learned a few facts. They were all useful, but she would much rather have a physical description of the killer or something along those lines. “What was the color of his hair?”

  The planchette began to move down from the ‘YES’ and ‘NO,’ past the numbers and down to the letters. It was then that the alarm went off. All three women gave a start, sending the planchette tumbling. Peony hastily began to pack everything up. “I thought you turned off the alarm!” Willow snapped.

  “I did!” Someone else must be in here with them. “Come on. Back to the car.” Rowen took off running out the back. She didn’t make it far before a flash of light froze her in her tracks. Someone had just taken a picture. Another flash. It was Julia Martinez and what looked to be some sort of assistant, Rowen realized.

  Peony stopped beside Rowen, but Willow went right on running. She jumped the chain link fence between them and the empty lot where their car was parked without hesitating even a little. Man, she could really move in that skirt.

  “I had a hunch you might do something like this.” Julia had this smug sort of smile on her face. She looked down at the camera as if reviewing her pictures. “Granted, I’ve had a lot of hunches about your lot. One paying off was just a matter of time.”

  “We weren’t doing anything bad.” Rowen didn’t think that needed to be pointed out, but she did anyway. “We were just trying to contact Dayveed.”

  Julia gave a low whistle. “That will certainly sound interesting in an article.”

  “Don’t act like that,” Rowen snapped. “Don’t act like we’re a bunch of delusional delinquents. You know we can do that sort of thing and have in the past.”

  “The police are already on their way,” said Julia, ignoring Rowen’s words. “I had one of my guys go around front with the keys and turn the alarm back on to flush you out.”

  “We were just trying to help.” Peony sounded close to tears. Rowen looked at her cousin. She had been so happy earlier today. It hurt to see her like this. She really shouldn’t have asked her to come. This was going to reflect poorly on her, and it wasn’t fair. Rowen just hoped that they didn’t throw her art out of the show because of this… Of course, that was assuming that the art show even continued.

  “Do you want to call Willow and get her to come back here?” asked Julia. “I would just as soon not have her get lost out there in the dark. Tell her I’ve got enough pictures for the police to pick her up even if she does make it home. I figure she doesn’t want resisting arrest on her record on top of breaking and entering.”

  “Just entering,” said Rowen, pulling her phone from her pocket all the same. “We didn’t break anything.”

  ***

  It was Ben and another officer who came to pick up Rowen and her cousins. He wore a stony expression that Rowen recognized all too well. He was disappointed in them. He didn’t want to arrest them, but he couldn’t afford to show them favoritism either. As the Chief of Police and the boyfriend of Rose Greensmith, that would reflect very poorly on him. He looked down at the Ouija board. “Please tell me that you at least found out something useful.”

  “Dayveed said that his killer was a man and not an artist. We were pressing for more details when the alarm went off,” said Rowen, keeping her voice down. Julia and the two after hours assistants she had brought with her were still hanging around, working on their story. Julia even had her cell phone out, filming on that in lieu of calling to get a camera crew out here. That would probably take too long.

  “So, he didn’t know the name?” asked Ben.

  Rowen shook her head. “But I’m not sure he cared enough to learn many people’s names, so that doesn’t mean that the murderer wasn’t someone he had met before.”

  Ben nodded. “Get in the car,” he told them. “I’ve got to take you in.”

  “Do we have to stay there?” asked Peony, tearfully. “Can I call someone to come pick me up?”

  “You’ll get a phone call when you get down there,” Ben assured them, herding them toward his patrol car. “You’ll have to spend the night until they decide on bail.”

  Peony began to cry in earnest. Rowen hated that it had come to this. She shouldn’t have dragged Peony along. She shouldn’t have asked anyone in her family to help her with this.

  ***

  The drive down to police headquarters was an uneventful one. They only stopped once, after finding a very winded Willow walking down the side of the road. It took some coaxing, but Rowen managed to talk her down from running for it again. Everyone scooched over and she got into the back with her cousins. “I could have gotten away,” she complained.

  “They knew who you were,” Rowen pointed out, rolling her eyes. “If they had to hunt you down, you would be in a lot more trouble than we already are.”

  Once at the police station, they were taken to a holding cell. At the very least, they didn’t have to share it with anyone. Lainswich didn’t see a whole lot in the petty crime department.

  One by one, they were all escorted out to make a phone call. Willow called her boyfriend, Benji. Peony called Tina after Willow urged her not to call their mother. Rowen almost wanted to give up rights to her own call. She could only imagine what Eric was going to say. He was going to be so disappointed in her.

  When it finally came time, Rowen got up from the holding cell bench and followed the officer into the hallway, where the phone was located. She picked it up and dialed the number. “Hello?” Eric answered after several rings, sounding groggy.

  “Hey, Eric.”

  “Rowen?” Eric sounded confused. There was a stretch of silence then, like he was checking the surrounding area for her. “What’s
going on?”

  Rowen could picture her husband sitting up in bed. Their black lab Chester would still be sound asleep at his feet. The room itself would be dark and quiet and still. Geez, did she wish she was there instead of where she was. “I got arrested,” she said tripping on the words a bit. Still, it seemed that Eric had heard enough to make out what she was saying.

  “What do you mean you got arrested?” asked Eric. “Where are you?”

  “In a holding cell… Where they take arrested people.” Rowen took a deep breath. There was no sense in staving off telling him what she had done. “I went out with Peony and Willow. We were trying to contact Dayveed and went to the art gallery to do it. I didn’t mention it to you, because I knew you would have told me not to.”

  “Of course I would have told you not to!” Eric sounded like he was completely awake now. “Why did you go there to do it? Why didn’t you try contacting him from somewhere safer first?”

  That was a good question. Why hadn’t she? It had made perfect sense at the time. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I just… I got this feeling that he wouldn’t leave the gallery. I don’t think he’s going to any time soon. I think he’s stuck there.”

  “I can’t believe this. Have they set bail yet?” Eric sounded so angry. Part of Rowen hoped that they never set bail.

  “Not yet. I guess they’ll contact you when I can leave? I don’t know how any of this works, to be honest. I-” Rowen was cut off as the line went dead.

  “Come on. That’s enough,” said the officer standing over her, taking his finger off the button. “That’s long enough.” It was good to see they had fans in this place. The officer stared her down like she was going to open a portal to Hell and escape right in front of his eyes at any moment. He ushered her back to the holding cell her cousins were both moping in.

  ***

  Rowen could have sworn they were in there for hours. She pictured the sun coming up outside, them still stuck there. According to the clock outside of the holding cell, it hadn’t been nearly as long as she imagined it to be. It must have just felt tortuously slow because there wasn’t anything to comfortably talk about or look forward to. Willow tried to take a nap, but she couldn’t make herself comfortable on the benches. This resulted in a lot of huffing and sighing on her part as she went from bench to bench, like one might be more comfortable than another. Meanwhile, Peony just let out the occasional sob. It was really anything but pleasant.

  After what the clock said was two hours but what Rowen would have sworn was twelve, Ben came into view. “How are we doing ladies?” he asked with a world-weary sigh. That was fair enough, Rowen supposed. She wondered if things would have been easier for him had he never met the Greensmiths. At least he and Rose made a good couple; there was that. “You’re free to go,” he said, unlocking the cell door and sliding it open in one fluid motion.

  Rowen sat there dumbfounded for a few seconds. Her cousins did the same. “What?” Rowen asked, certain that she had heard incorrectly.

  “Mr. Hawthorne decided not to press charges.”

  Peony and Willow both headed for the cell door. Rowen stood but stayed rooted to the ground, still quite confused. “Why did he do that?” she asked. She had been certain that Julia was already working on a story about the Greensmiths breaking in. It felt like a given. She hated to look a gift horse in the mouth but it was hard not to in this instance.

  “I didn’t really ask why,” said Ben. He looked around as if to make sure that no one else was in earshot. “But, if I had to guess, I would say it was because it would bring his art show and recent efforts under more scrutiny.”

  “How?” asked Rowen, not quite following his logic.

  “Seraphina was, obviously, somewhat fond of the Greensmiths.” Ben said all of this like she should be able to guess it herself. “There’s her statue outside of Odds & Ends. She left your aunts money in the Will. Peony has a few works of art in the gallery. Lydia had an affair with Mr. Hawthorne and Seraphina got along very well with her years later. Those are just the connections that come to mind. The Greensmiths are inexorably linked whether any of you like it or not.”

  “I bet Julia doesn’t like it,” Willow said with a smirk.

  Rowen frowned at her cousin. This wasn’t exactly a situation worth gloating about yet. “I’m sorry Ben,” she said, turning back to him. “We really didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”

  Ben didn’t look like he actually believed all that. “You didn’t mean to get caught, you mean. Come on. Let’s get you your phones so you can call someone to pick you up. You can wait in my office until they get here.”

  ***

  Benji showed up first, followed closely by Tina. They both lived nearer to the station than Eric did. Either that or Eric was taking his own sweet time to punish her. Rowen watched as Willow and Benji hugged. “Did you find anything out?” he asked, sounding excited to hear what had happened.

  Similarly, Tina just looked excited to be there. “I’ve never had to bail anyone out of jail before,” she said.

  “You’re not bailing her out,” Ben corrected. “The charges were dropped. You’re just picking her up.”

  “I’ve never had to pick anyone up from jail before,” she amended, words that made Peony start to sniffle again. She was not taking this night well.

  “Do you want us to wait with you?” asked Willow when an awkward silence descended. Everyone had finished their small talk and stood impatiently near the door.

  “It’s fine,” Rowen assured them. She already felt guilty enough pulling them into this, she wasn’t going to have them wait around for her too.

  Eric showed up not long after they had gone. He greeted Ben with a tight-lipped smile and a wave. “How’s it going, man?”

  “I’ve had better nights,” said Ben. “Rose is going to kill me when she finds out I didn’t call her immediately during all of this.”

  Eric wished him luck with that and headed back out front without so much as looking at Rowen. That was definitely worse than expected. Rowen followed, chewing anxiously on her bottom lip. “I’m really sorry,” she said, which definitely didn’t seem like enough. “I knew you wouldn’t be okay with me going, but I really felt like I needed to.”

  “I got that much.” Eric walked ahead of her to the car. He got in on the driver’s side and waited for her to get in on the passenger’s.

  Rowen got into the car. “We found out some facts about the murder,” she offered, trying to put a positive spin on things.

  “That’s good,” said Eric, though it didn’t really sound like he meant it. He just kept his eyes straight ahead as he started the car and pulled out onto the road.

  “I know you’re mad at me. You have every right to be. I’m sorry. I can’t say that enough. I really am.” Rowen didn’t want them to have to go through that awkward period of him being mad at her. They would get past it eventually. She would really rather they just speed up the process. She wished he would go ahead and forgive her, as unlikely as that seemed.

  “All right,” Eric said, acknowledging her apology without saying anything else on the matter. He remained silent all the way home. The sun was peeking up over the treetops as they pulled into the driveway. Eric got out of the car and led the way inside. Rowen followed him. She wasn’t sure what she should do as she watched him climb the stairs. “I’m going back to bed,” said Eric.

  Rowen watched him go. She was pretty tired herself but wasn’t sure she was going to be totally welcome in bed. With a sigh, she took the blanket from the back of a chair and went to lay on the sofa instead. It was a comfortable enough place to sleep, but she couldn’t relax. Even if Mr. Hawthorne was going to keep what had transpired tonight out of the news, the Greensmiths were probably going to be under a lot of scrutiny very soon. Tonight, she had just gone and made things harder for herself by making Eric mad. She wanted to tell herself that the info she had gotten from Dayveed had been worth it. She had some clues to work with now. Wa
sn’t that a fair trade off? Something in Rowen’s gut told her that it wasn’t.

  Chapter Five

  Rowen wasn’t entirely sure what to do with herself the next day. Eric was still regarding her with stony silence. He would ask questions every now and again, like had she eaten breakfast or had she fed the dog yet. Aside from that, he basically just ignored her. Rowen knew she would just have to wait for him to be less angry, but she was impatient. All the same, his anger meant she probably shouldn’t accompany him to work today.

  The Lainswich Inquirer also felt out of the question. Rose would most certainly have found out what had happened through Ben. She wasn’t much looking forward to that. Rowen finally convinced herself to just go. She couldn’t avoid both places forever. She drove herself to the Lainswich Inquirer and parked out front. Peony and Willow’s vehicles were already there. Maybe they had caught the brunt of Rose’s disappointment already.

  “Rose asked me to tell you to go see her in the back if you came in,” said Margo, a very sly smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. In her short paisley sundress, she looked like a smug skeleton. Willow and Peony, meanwhile, sat at their designated work desks, heads determinedly down.

  None of this was an especially promising sign. Rowen steeled herself and headed to the back. She gave the office door a knock, announcing her presence just before she let herself in. Rose looked up from her computer screen, startled at first. She recovered quickly, her expression settling into a frown. “What the heck were you thinking?”

  Rowen went to Rose’s desk. She took a seat in one of the chairs in front of it. “If you already talked to Willow and Peony, you already know what I was thinking.”

  “It was a stupid plan,” Rose insisted. “If you had told me about it beforehand, I could have let you know it was a stupid plan.”

  “Maybe,” Rowen conceded when she should have said, ‘probably.’ “But we found out some useful information.”