“I don’t know,” Bluebell said. “I’m just getting more and more confused.”
Oliver rustled through more files. “There’s a file on Barry, the husband. Says he’s been arrested three times before. Twice for assault, once for breaking and entering into a bar after hours. Colorful chap.”
“All of those were years ago,” Bluebell pointed out. “Before Barry met Rebecca. As you can see, he’s kept himself clean after that.”
“Lucky he had a family business to fall back on,” Oliver said, reading the file. “Pretty rich too, his property in total is estimated to be worth two million dollars.”
Again, Bluebell had that pinprick of doubt as Martine’s face swum in front of her. Martine had said she was saving up because she wanted to own her own restaurant. But Barry could easily have lent her the money. Was Martine resentful? Had she created a complex plan just to get rid of him? Martine didn’t really strike Bluebell as the murdering type, but perhaps behind that awkward facade, her true face was hidden.
Or was Bluebell imagining it? Was the truth something she hadn’t quite grasped yet? Like a jigsaw puzzle, obscured until the right piece clicked into place.
“What are you reading now?” Oliver asked her.
“There’s a file on the mayor and his wife,” Bluebell said, opening it. As she did, a postcard fell out, slowly drifting to the ground.
“What’s that?” Oliver looked interested, and picked it up. Then he frowned. “I don’t understand. It’s just a red triangle?”
“A postcard,” Bluebell said. “Rebecca got one every week. Barry said—”
She paused, as did Oliver. From downstairs, she could swear she heard a sharp scream. For just a minute, she and Oliver looked at each other, then as one, they raced to the jail cells.
“Who’s there?” Bluebell shouted, but Oliver clapped a hand over her head.
“You can’t draw attention to yourself!” he said. “We’ll be in big trouble if we’re caught!”
There was a sound of bars clanking, as they ran towards the cell. As they were moving down the stairs, Bluebell knew something was very wrong. Deputy Daniels appeared to be fast asleep at his desk, head thrown back. But the door to Barry’s cell was half open, ominously so.
“It’s Barry! He’s trying to kill himself!” Bluebell exclaimed.
Barry lay on his bunk bed unconscious, hands splayed out. There were cuts on his wrist, bleeding profusely.
“I don’t think this is a suicide attempt,” Oliver said grimly. “This is an attempted murder.”
“We have to save him!” Bluebell exclaimed, rushing over and tending to his wounds.
“Put pressure on the wounds,” Oliver said. “We have a good chance still.”
“Who could have done this?” Bluebell asked, “And why?”
“Hey!” Oliver’s head straightened up suddenly as the lights in the jail all dimmed and then switched off. A figure cloaked in black seemed to appear at their door and then slam it shut.
“He’s locking us in,” Oliver cried, grabbing the bars. “Stop! Come back!” He yelled as the figure ran away.
“Come on, Barry.” Bluebell barely cared about the mysterious figure. Barry’s life was hanging by a thread. She had to stop the bleeding. The front of her shirt was coated in blood, but she kept the pressure strong on his arms. “Oliver, if you know any medical magic, now’s a good time to use it!”
“What kind of deputy is that? He’s still asleep, with all this ruckus,” Oliver grumbled. But he came over beside Bluebell, and with a few uttered spells, quenched the bleeding. Bluebell let out a sigh of relief.
“Did that just happen?” she asked. “It was all so fast!”
“We’re lucky the deputy didn’t wake up,” Oliver said grimly. “There’s still a chance I might escape without being noticed. But something’s very wrong here. Our friend, the cloaked one, has got the better of us this time. He’s bound to be more successful next time.”
“We foiled him, though,” Bluebell said quietly. “Look at this, Oliver. It all makes sense now.”
Barry was still unconscious, but peeking out from under his pillow was a small square of paper. Oliver eased it out, and read aloud, “I did it. I can’t bear to lie anymore. I killed Rebecca. I killed Greg too. I’m so sorry. They were lovers and I couldn’t bear it. But I don’t want to live anymore without her.”
Oliver gave a whistle. “So… it was Barry? He did kill her? I don’t understand.”
“Of course, it wasn’t Barry,” Bluebell said. “He’s being framed. The murderer… it should have been obvious to me all along who the murderer was. It didn’t really click into place until I saw that last postcard.”
“Wait, then who is the murderer?”
“Oliver, is there anyway we can blast ourselves out of this jail cell? Any way at all? Rebecca’s life depends on it. We have to do it now.”
Oliver gave her a charming smile. “There isn’t a lock on earth that can hold me back,” he said. “Stand aside and watch me do my magic. Literally.”
“Hurry, will you?” Bluebell asked. Then, as an aside, “Barry’s going to be fine, right?”
“He needs to be seen by a doctor, but it’s all right if he isn’t immediately tended to,” Oliver said. “He’ll survive.”
“Great. Then we need to go find Rebecca as soon as possible!”
“Well we can’t just wave a wand and find her, can we?”
“Actually, we can,” Bluebell said. “Our attacker left a trail of energy behind. We can trace it.”
“Right!” Oliver said excitedly. “I forgot these humans don’t clean up their energy traces. Yes, we can trace it.”
“Not that we really need to, I know perfectly well who we’re looking for,” Bluebell said. “But before anything else, we need to wake Deputy Daniels.”
“That’s one lazy deputy,” Oliver said. “Still asleep.”
“He’s been drugged, Oliver.” Bluebell sighed. “Isn’t that obvious? Barry’s been drugged too. The murderer’s played us all like a puppet master. But now, it’s our time to get him.”
*****
Chapter 12
Revelations
“Please don’t do this,” Rebecca said, in a weak voice. “Whoever you are, please let me go.”
“Quiet, love.” The figure in the hood leaned down over her, and injected something into her vein. For a moment, Rebecca struggled. Then she went limp. The man wiped the sweat off his forehead, and lifted her up on his shoulder. Gently, he dragged her out of his house, and placed her in the backseat of his car.
“Freeze!” a voice cried, as a spotlight flooded down on him. Deputy Daniels, now wide awake, appeared with a gun cocked in his hands.
With a muttered curse, the killer jumped into his car, and tried to start it. To his frustration, however, it simply wouldn’t start. From behind the bushes, where she had hidden with the Deputy, Bluebell smiled. Stalling cars was a small magic, but quite useful.
“It’s over, KD,” Deputy Daniels said. “We know it’s you. Come on out with your hands raised.”
“No!” KD shouted “If I can’t have her… no one else—”
With uncanny aim, Oliver shot a spell at KD, hitting him right between the eyes. Deputy Daniels blinked, confused. All he saw was KD seemingly slipping and hitting his head on the steering wheel.
“Well, if that’s not the weirdest…”
“I think you can handle it from here,” Oliver said, nodding to Bluebell. “Right?”
“Right,” Bluebell said.
“Time to make Deputy Daniels forget I was ever here,” Oliver said, weaving another spell.
A few dazzling seconds later, Deputy Daniels was still blinking, his gun now back in its holster.
“What happened?” he asked Bluebell. “That drug must still be playing games with my mind, it’s like I’ve lost a few of my memories.”
“Er… you knocked KD out as he tried to escape,” Bluebell said. “Better handcuff him, don’t you
think? He’s still knocked out, but he might come to any minute.”
“Right.” Deputy Daniels opened the door, dragged KD out with little sympathy, and handcuffed him. “What happened, exactly?”
“I happened to come by the station just as KD drugged you and Barry,” Bluebell said. “He’s the one behind all of this. He’s obsessively in love with Rebecca, I think. He’s the one who sent her all those postcards. I think he killed Greg when he found out it was KD sending the postcards. Then he kidnapped Rebecca.”
“But the postcards were nonsense,” Deputy Daniels said, confused. “I saw them all myself. Just varying shapes of red on white.”
“There’s nine of them in all,” Bluebell said. “That’s what I realized just before KD attacked you guys. Nine postcards with one intention. You’re supposed to arrange them like this.” She took a stick and drew a 3x3 grid on the ground. Then she started shading the part that each post-card had in red.
Deputy Daniels whistled. “I see now. Put together like a jigsaw, they’ll form…”
“A red heart.” Bluebell nodded. “Art. That’s what Rebecca taught KD all those years ago. I found the final postcard in KD’s files. At first, since it was in Sandra’s files, I thought it belonged to her, then I realized that I’d found the ninth and last postcard. But Rebecca had only received eight! So how did KD come by number nine? It clicked together for me. KD was the one sending the postcards, and just like that, I understood why. It was a message to Rebecca. A message declaring his love.”
“So he was nuts.” The Deputy shook his head. “He was nuts! But why now? After all these years, why did he choose now to… to prove this to her?”
“I can answer that,” Rebecca said with a groan. She sat up slowly in the backseat.
“You all right?” Bluebell rushed by her side, and helped her up.
“I’m fine,” Rebecca groaned. “He kept me so drugged that I couldn’t tell up from down. But I’m better now.”
“Why did he do this?” Deputy Daniels asked.
“He was always in love with me,” Rebecca said. “He’d actually proposed to me when he was 16, but I thought he was a silly schoolboy. I tried to let him down gently, back then. I thought his life was hard enough. So I told him that maybe in ten years, I’d consider it, but for now he should focus on his career.” She gave a hollow laugh. “I didn’t know he’d take me so seriously. He literally waited ten years, and then expected that I’d drop my entire life to be with him. He was truly mad.”
“But… the postcards? Kidnapping you? Killing Greg? It doesn’t make sense.”
“He told me Greg found him when he was planting the seventh postcard a week back,” Rebecca said. “KD, in a fit of panic, hit him over the head, and dragged him to the museum’s cellar. He tied him up down there.”
“Wow,” Deputy Daniels said. “Then what?”
“Then, KD hatched a plan to kidnap me and to pin it all on Barry,” Rebecca said. “He was planning to kill Greg, plant a woman’s body in the cellar, and burn the museum down, then incriminate Barry. He even stole Barry’s knife a week ago to incriminate him.”
“So Barry really did lose that knife as he claimed.” Deputy Daniels whistled. “Then what? How could he possibly hope to get away with this?”
“It was horrible,” Rebecca said. “Apparently, when I built the cellar in the museum it gave KD an idea. He has a secret cellar built in his own house. That’s where he was keeping me. He planned to keep me there forever! It seems stupid and improbable—”
“But I’ve heard of others who’ve kept secret prisoners for decades.” Deputy Daniels nodded. “Not so foolish after all. Yes, just recently, I heard of a case where a man in Austria, well, never mind.”
“So that was KD’s whole plan?” Bluebell asked. “If I understand it right, he planned to kill Greg in the museum’s cellar, plant a different woman’s body there, burn it all down, and have Barry incriminated. Then, once everyone thought you were dead, no one would suspect that you were hidden in KD’s own cellar.”
Tears sprang to Rebecca’s eyes, and her shoulders began to shake a little. “It was horrible,” she cried. “I couldn’t bear it. Not even a demon could think of a more cruel punishment. I would have spent all my time down there praying Barry wasn’t rotting in prison somewhere.”
“But what went wrong?” Bluebell asked. “Why didn’t KD burn down the museum?”
“I went to report Greg missing,” Rebecca said. “But before I could go to the police station, I met KD on the road. He offered me a lift, and I accepted. But in his car I found the ninth postcard. I guessed it was him behind everything. He knocked me out- that’s all I know.”
“Right.” Bluebell nodded. “So the wound on Greg’s head was from when KD first knocked him out. After he kidnapped you, Rebecca, KD realized he’d run out of time. He had to act fast. So he went back to the museum. Martine saw him go in, in his black poncho. KD stabbed Greg. There were no other signs of struggle because Greg was too drugged to respond. KD then dumped the poncho, your glasses and the knife in the woods, where he knew we’d find them. Once Barry was in jail, KD waited for everyone to go home before giving Deputy Daniels and Barry drugged coffee. After that, he wrote a false confession letter and put it under Barry’s pillow. He was about to kill Barry too. Unfortunately for him, we heard him. Barry woke up somehow, I don’t know how.”
“It’s because he used to do drugs,” Rebecca said. “As a recovered addict, he needs far higher than normal dosages to be knocked unconscious. KD’s coffee worked on the Deputy, but not on Barry. Oh please, take me to him. I have to make sure my husband is all right.”
“He’ll be fine,” Bluebell said. “Especially once you’re by his side. As for KD, I think he’s going to spend a long time in jail.”
“A monster,” Deputy Daniels said, looking disgusted. “He’s a monster, not a man. To think I was friends with him.” Picking him up, Deputy Daniels hauled KD away to the police cruiser that was parked out of sight.
“Monsters have a way of hiding their true nature, until they’re caught.” Bluebell sighed. “I’m just sorry he had a chance to cause so much destruction before we found him out.”
“Just be glad you did find him out, Bluebell.” Rebecca placed a hand on Bluebell’s shoulders. “Thanks to you, I’m going to be reunited with my husband. Don’t forget that, it is purely thanks to you.”
Bluebell couldn’t quite meet Rebecca’s eyes. She looked away. Rebecca forced her to look back up. “You have a gift, Bluebell,” she said. “Use it wisely. The prophecy says you’re going to attract death, but it’s up to you to keep spreading the light of truth.”
Bluebell nodded. But what comfort was that light in the engulfing darkness?
*****
Epilogue
Inside Jamie’s diner, the light was golden and warm. Bluebell couldn’t help but smile as she gazed out. The first frost was already on the window panes, and she was sure that snowfall couldn’t be far behind.
Barry wore long sleeves, less for the cold and more to hide the bandages wrapped around his wrists. Colby slept contentedly under his stool, while Jamie leaned on the counter exchanging the latest gossip with him.
Rebecca had her arms around Barry’s neck, and every once in awhile, when no one was looking, she’d give him a kiss on the cheek. Barry too, tenderly held on to her, as if he were afraid of losing her once more. Seeing them together like this made Bluebell feel warm inside.
“Heard you’re leaving soon,” Martine said.
“Yep.” Bluebell nodded. “My friend is meeting me here. Giving me a ride back home.”
“I never got a chance to thank you for saving Barry,” Martine said. “I mean, if something had happened to Rebecca…” She faltered, and colored, then mumbled her last few words. “I just am really thankful.”
“I don’t deserve that.” Bluebell shrugged. She meant it, too. Luck, as much as anything else, had placed her in the right place at the right time. Sure, she’d
pieced it together once she saw that ninth postcard, but if Oliver hadn’t appeared when he had, she might never have gone to the station. Then it might have been too late. She shivered a little, and put the thought out of her mind.
“So what’s next for you?” Martine asked. “It’s a pity you won’t stay here in town. The museum could have used a good assistant. We’ll all miss you.”
“Well, I seem to have found myself a different job,” Bluebell said. “So I had to quit the museum.” Inside her pocket, her hand fiddled with the badge Oliver had given her. She was still, technically, a deputy of the Magical Law and Order Department. She wasn’t very clear what that meant, but she had a feeling that she’d enjoy the job. For now, all she needed to do was rest here in the golden light of the diner, and ignore the darkness out there. It would strike again, sooner or later, but this time, she’d be ready for it.
The End
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Murder At The Museum: A Witch Cozy Mystery (A Bluebell Knopps Witch Cozy Mystery Book 4) Page 6