by Tegan Maher
The information on the page was interesting and ranged from everything to people who skipped on their tabs to corporations looking to tear down historic landmarks to build condos. A quick search of Loretta's name took me to a post that was a few months old and started by some woman named Serena Blackwell. According to the post, Loretta had come into her restaurant and dumped a bowl of soup in her own lap, then tried to sue her for negligence. The court had thrown it out.
A couple other people had responded with similar stories. One was farm owner, and Loreta had refused to sign his waiver before going for a horseback ride, then made a huge scene when he stood his ground. I had a waiver similar to his that everybody had to sign before they were allowed on a horse, so I knew what he was talking about. People sometimes took offense, but then I'd clarify by asking if they'd sue me if they fell off and broke their arm. The answer was inevitably no, and I'd follow it up with, "Okay, then what if you broke your neck?" That got me a signature pretty quick, and I'd never had an issue. This guy thought she protested a bit too much.
My mind drifted back to the incident at Coralee's, and I couldn't help but wonder if she'd been trying to get Coralee to swing on her. It would be about the only way she'd be able to get her hands on the place considering Coralee owned it lock, stock, and barrel, and didn't really have any kind of a product that would be worth much when it came to a lawsuit. What would she sue her for—a bad bob?
But if Coralee'd punched her in the mouth, that would have been a horse of a different color altogether. And that would explain the dirty look Loretta'd fired at me when I held Coalee back.
Finally, my eyes became so heavy I couldn't hold them open anymore, so I closed my laptop and snuggled deep into my covers.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I SLEPT LIKE CRAP THAT night and woke up feeling out of sorts. My dreams had been a strange mix; I'd lost my business to a lawsuit when some woman tripped and fell through a seashell coffee table I had at Reimagined, then some kid was at the ranch with a friend and kept sliding out of the saddle and hitting his head no matter how many times I boosted him back on.
I woke up at two to go to the bathroom, and when I fell back to sleep, my dreams shifted from troubling to terrifying. Some woman—a witch—attacked Shelby on her first day at college, then time backed up, and the same woman was lurking around the farm. I'd catch glimpses of her out of the corner of my eye, but whenever I'd turn to face her, she'd be gone. The whole thing was laced with an air of danger and helplessness—a combination that pissed me off because I was one who faced everything head on, and had no respect for anybody who waited for me to turn my back. The woman's face seemed familiar, but as with most dreams, I couldn't place it.
By four-thirty, I'd given up the idea of getting any rest, and climbed out of my bed. It had turned cold overnight, and I kicked the furnace up a little as I shuffled past it on my way to the kitchen. I'd forgotten to ask Rae if she needed more pastries the night before but figured since I was up, I might as well make a couple batches of the staples—blueberry and mixed berry muffins, blueberry, strawberry, and apple turnovers, and cinnamon rolls.
I rolled the dough for the cinnamon rolls first, since they'd need to proof for forty-five minutes or so. I had a fancy kneading attachment for my mixer, but feeling the dough beneath my hands, getting into the rhythm of fold, press, turn, fold, press, turn ... that was almost zen to me and was about the only thing that calmed me when my worries ran deep. My magic began to flow into the dough and it warmed, feeling almost alive under my hands. When it was ready, I rolled it out and brushed it with melted butter then sprinkled sugar and cinnamon over it. Once it was rolled and cut into slices, I slid them onto a baking sheet and set them in a warm shelf over the stove to rise.
It had only been twenty minutes, but I was already feeling better. My coffee was kicking in, and I started to think about the dreams objectively. They were easily explained—I'd been researching lawsuits, and I was worried about Shelby going off to school. I didn't need a shrink to tell me that, but I couldn't shake off the worry about the woman. I felt like I should have recognized her, but now that I was awake, all I could remember of her appearance was blonde hair, a flowing white dress, and brown eyes that felt like they bored into my soul, and not in a good way. It was creepy.
Still, the baking soothed me, and soon the remnants of the dreams had passed. It was Shelby's morning to feed, so when I pulled the rolls out of the oven, I started boxing up the muffins I'd had cooling on my baker's rack. I made myself a third cup of coffee and sat down at the table with my laptop. I figured I'd catch up on social media and maybe watch some cute animal videos on Reddit while I waited for the rolls to finish cooling enough to ice them. You can never go wrong watching a guinea pig fail on his wheel or seeing a dog ride a skateboard.
Facebook just made me shake my head—it seemed to be a day for politics and personal drama as usual. It only took five minutes of scrolling through that dumpster fire to make me crave crazy cat antics, so I switched over. I felt much better instantly, and by the time the rolls were cooled, iced and boxed, I was a little tired but in a much better frame of mind. I'm sure I'd crash as soon as the caffeine wore off, so for good measure, I poured my coffee into my to-go cup for the ride to town.
Rae and Levana hadn't unlocked the doors yet, so rather than use a little magic to open it for myself, I gave the door a couple taps with my toe, balancing the boxes with my chin as I did so. Rae peeked out from behind the blinds and whooshed the door open. As always, the overhead lights were still off, and the glow from the cooler gleamed off the black faux-marble counter. Levana sat at the end with a cup of coffee and a half-eaten muffin in front of her.
Rae pulled a couple boxes off the top for me. "What are you doing up so early? You're like, the opposite of a morning person."
"I know," I replied, "but I slept like crap and decided to get up and do some baking to settle my mind."
"Bad dreams?" Levana asked as she flicked a wrist to open the pastry case for me.
"Yeah, but they were weird and jumbled," I said. "I think it's just a combination of everything—Coralee, Shelby leaving for school, the trouble Camille's dealing with ... I'm on overload and it's bleeding over into my dreams."
"I know about Coralee and Shelby," she replied, "but what's going on with Camille?"
"Somebody's been stealing Grimoires in the Atlanta area. At first, it was just stealing, but now a couple uber-powerful witches have been killed protecting theirs. One of them, at least, was a woman who fought with Addy, Beth, and my mom back when the local council was being organized, and the spells in their books are crazy dangerous in the wrong hands."
Rae went on to tell her about the fight that had damaged Beth's powers and blocked Shelby's until she'd hit her head the previous summer.
She pressed her lips together. "That's not good," she said, stating the obvious, "especially if the witch—or witches—doing it are powerful enough and skilled enough to pull off the spells. Do you have any specifics?"
I shook my head. "Not much. But I know one of them is a binding spell, and some of the others are defensive spells Camille says can be used to do some serious damage if they're used offensively."
"Yes," she said, her forehead creased. "A witch bent on doing harm can twist almost any spell into something dangerous, especially powerful defensive spells. Wards can be used to cloak illegal activity or even kill somebody who's trying to locate the item or person it's hiding. Spells meant to bind the powers of dangerous witches work equally as well on the powers of good witches trying to stop evil."
"Have you heard from her?" Rae asked, handing me a muffin. While we'd been talking, she'd made me a cup of loca mocha, her best energy blend, and I smiled when she handed it to me. She knew me well.
"I haven't, but she just left yesterday," I said, climbing onto a stool beside Levana and pulling the paper off my muffin. "You remember how it was last time she was gone. We wouldn't hear from her for days at a time. I'll giv
e it a minute before I get worried. I figure she's probably settling in and getting a lay of the land. Besides, we have enough to worry about with Coralee."
"Speaking of," Rae said, "have you found any other suspects or reasons why somebody may have killed Loretta?"
"Actually, yes," I replied after I'd chased a but of muffin with my coffee. I told them about my finding from the night before, and silence reigned for a few minutes while we thought about it.
"But you said she makes a lot of money selling houses," Levana said, "so what's the importance of the lawsuits? What's her motivation if it's not lack of funds?"
Rae shrugged. "Some people just can't get enough money," she said.
"Perhaps," Lavana said, though she didn't look convinced. "But there are other options, too. Power, thrill-seeking, greed, revenge, straight-up meanness. It doesn't have to be about the money, necessarily, and this woman strikes me as a person who would have been motivated by any of those. Were I to postulate, I'd say there was more than just money behind her actions."
She had a point—Loretta was making a ton of money for doing practically nothing. Why would she go to such an effort to make the same thing she would off a few nice house sales. I could, however, see her doing it for one of the other reasons. If I had to pick, I'd say it was a combination of power, meanness, and revenge. From what I'd seen at the salon, she was big on all three.
"Or what if Loretta wasn't making as much money as it appears? Maybe she owed the wrong people money," Rae said.
"No," I replied around a mouthful of muffin. "Hunter tracked down their financials. She was sittin' pretty where money was concerned, and I'm sure he would have mentioned big withdrawals if there were any. I'm with Levana. I think she got more than just money out of the lawsuits, and maybe if we figure that out, we'll find our killer. Or at least somebody to shine the light on other than Coralee."
And as far as I was concerned, that was all that mattered.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I FINISHED BREAKFAST with the girls and decided to head to Reimagined rather than go back home. I was afraid that once I was there, I'd go back to sleep, and I had too much to do to lie around all day. We'd made arrangements to go out for a girl's night, and I shot a group text off to the rest of the group on my way.
When I pushed the door open, I was a little surprised when Erol didn't dive bomb me right off the bat. I called out to him, and he swept through the wall, a look of relief on his face.
"Holy moly, Noelle. You scared the daylights out of me. I thought you were the murderer."
I tilted my head at him while I tried to follow his convoluted logic. "First, why would the murderer use the key in the front door, assuming they were coming for me, and second, why should you be scared? It's not like they can hurt you."
"Well," he said, crossing his arms and scowling at me, "the odds of it being the murderer are higher than the odds of it being you at this time of day. And why wouldn't I be scared? Maybe they're a witch and were coming to banish me or something because they're afraid I saw their face."
I cocked a brow at him. "Banish you? Really? I don't even know if that's actually a thing. I mean, I suppose it could be, but you're making some pretty outlandish assumptions there. And besides, I can come in early. It's not unprecedented."
He gave me his best snarky, be serious face, and I couldn't help myself—I smiled at the absurdity of the conversation. "Okay, so maybe the odds were about equal. You're right. I'm not exactly known as an early riser."
"You're barely a morning riser," he replied, snorting.
My work hours had been a point of contention between us when I'd first opened the place, but he'd come to realize this leopard wasn't gonna change her spots. I worked enough to pay the bills and put money back too, without being there nine to five, Monday through Friday, or Saturday, or every day. I wasn't going to hire somebody, and I wasn't going to make set hours. I had a crazy life and didn't want to tie myself to a place. Besides, the vast majority of my sales came from my website, anyway.
I made a face at him. "You are correct. I'm unapologetically NOT a morning person and believe there's something fundamentally wrong with anybody who hits the floor with rainbows flying out their butt before it's even daylight. It's not normal."
"Rae's a morning person," he pointed out.
"She is," I agreed, "and she's a weirdo. Nobody else in our family is like that."
"Maybe not, but surely you're not implying that makes the rest of you normal."
"Oh hell no," I replied, shoving my purse under the counter and reaching for the crackers. Neither Norm nor Sammie appeared, so I figured they were probably still sleeping. "But she has a few more bats in the belfry than the rest of us do."
"Keep tellin' yourself that," he said. "I wouldn't say it out loud, though, because nobody will believe you."
He followed me through the batwing doors into my work area.
"On a serious note, though, have you learned anything that may help out with Coralee?"
"I just might have," I said, and told him what we'd found. "Hunter's gonna ask Peggy Sue to do some digging and find out if she's filed more lawsuits than those," I finished. "I'm willing to bet there are more."
He was quiet for a minute. "That's one of a small business owner's biggest nightmares," he said. "With the way juries award outrageous amounts of money to people too stupid to be drinking hot beverages or walking unattended in a hardware store to begin with, it's terrifying. Most policies cover up to a million dollars per occurrence, so anything over a million bucks comes out of the owner's or LLC's pocket. Our oft-empty pockets."
I had to agree because that's all I had. It's what the insurance company suggested, so it's what I bought. I was re-thinking that, though. Even though I'd set up an LLC so I wouldn't be personally responsible if something did happen, something like that would be catastrophic for my business.
We chitchatted for a while while I worked on an oak dining set I'd picked up at an estate auction a couple weeks before. It was been filthy and banged up, and the cushions were rotted off the chairs, but underneath all the decay was a gorgeous, hand-made set waiting to shine again. I didn't typically buy pieces just to restore them, but this set had called to me as soon as I'd seen it shoved in the back of the auction hall.
I spent two hours just cleaning the grunge off it and removing the attached seats, and once it was ready for sanding, I stood back and studied it, one hand across my chest, my elbow resting on it and chin in hand. "What do you think?" I asked Erol. "Elegant cream seats, or a cheery blue gingham?"
"Hmm," he said, hovering beside me and staring at the chairs. "Why don't you do one of each just to give the buyer a visual, and leave the rest uncovered until you have a buyer? That way, they can have whatever color or pattern they want, and you open the sale up to a wider audience."
"Not bad," I told him. "You're getting good at this!"
He sniffed. "I've always had an eye for style. It's just now being put to professional use."
That was true. He was always trying to get me to dress a little snappier, but I just wasn't a pencil-skirt-and-cashmere kinda girl.
I set to work sanding the remnants of sticky old varnish off, and before I knew it, another hour had passed. My stomach rumbled, and I wiped my brow with my forearm. I was just about to call Hunter when my phone chimed with his notification tone. He wanted to grab some lunch and asked to meet at the Cheshire Cat, a working man's sports bar right across the street from me. I agreed.
"I'm going for lunch at the Cat," I called to Erol, who'd gone back to watching TV. "You all set on the channel til I get back?"
He nodded and waved me off without taking his eyes off the drama unfolding on the big screen in front of him.
That was gratitude for you.
A pulled my coat on but decided to skip the beanie and gloves. The sun was shining and the temperature was above the temperature of a well digger's ankles, so the coat would be enough. Once outside, I pulled the door shut b
ehind me and locked it before hurrying across the street to the pub.
Once inside, it took my eyes a few seconds to adjust to the darkness. When they did, Sully—the owner and a great guy—was standing behind the bar washing up some glasses. His face split into a wide grin when he saw me, and I grinned back.
"Sully!" I said. "What's up?"
He shook his head and dried his hands on a bar towel. "Not much, kiddo. Same old, same old. What about you?"
"Same," I said, then looked around to see who else was there. Three tables were occupied, but I didn't recognize anybody.
"You havin' tea or a beer?" he asked.
"Hunter's on his way," I responded, "so since he's on the clock, I'll be nice and have a tea with him. You can go ahead and throw in an order for our regular burgers, too. Though at this point, he'd probably much prefer to drink his lunch."
His face turned somber. "Oh yeah, how's that going?"
"Nobody's flung themselves on the courthouse steps and confessed," I said, shrugging, "but we did find some dirt that may have added a couple suspects to the pool."
He gave me a sharky grin and leaned his on the bar, bracing himself with his elbow. "Care to share?"
I laughed. "I'd love to, but I don't know if it would get me in hot water with the main man."
Sully snorted. "Now I've seen it all. Noelle Flynn, worried about what her honey's gonna say."
"Yeah," I said, brows raised as I peeled the paper off my straw and stuck it in the tea he'd sat in front of me. "You know as well as I do, nobody's the boss of me. But we've settled into a rhythm with these types of things, and I prefer to keep the peace. I don't want to make him choose between doin' his job and having a sounding board when things get tough. He does things right, and I gotta respect that even if I don't like that I don't always know everything." I winked at him. "Besides, that's what I got you and Coralee for. Now spill—what have you heard?"