by Erin Johnson
“No!” Peyton looked aghast, and Daisy wagged her tail.
Truth.
“Any idea who tipped Madeline off about you?” I raised a brow.
Peyton pressed her lips together and looked off, thinking. “I have no idea. It was no secret to my downline that lots of sellers were leaving, and I confided to a few friends how I was feeling, but I doubt any of them would’ve gone to the press.” She shrugged. “Besides that, the only higher-up at Potent Potions that I spoke with was Pearl herself.”
I frowned. And I doubted a dead woman had alerted the press. Of course, she could have let Madeline know before her death, but why would she want to take down her own company?
Peter startled and pressed a finger to the communication device in his ear. “What?” His bloodshot eyes widened. “Okay.” He nodded. “We’re on it.”
He shot to his feet. “Thank you, Ms. Thornsbury, for your time.” He flashed his eyes at me and jerked his head toward the door.
“You’re leaving?” Peyton followed us, then stood in the doorway frowning after us.
I waved goodbye to her and jogged to keep up with Peter as he strode up the street toward the upper tiers. “What’s going on?”
He glanced back over his shoulder, and once out of hearing distance from Peyton, lowered his voice. “That was the station. I’d asked Russo to keep an eye on some of our suspects’ finances. We just got news that a massive life insurance policy was recently paid out on Pearl Litt.”
I gasped. “No way! To who?” Madeline was right—this situation just kept getting juicier.
A little bit of the twinkle was back in Peter’s eye as he raised a brow at me. “Her sister—Opal Whitaker.”
My jaw dropped. “Are you serious? Opal?”
Peter nodded as we hustled uphill, Daisy leading the way. “So Opal recently sold all her shares in the company….”
I nodded. “That’s right….”
“She was first on the body and insisted on no autopsy. She’s a potion master and admitted to likely having made the potion that killed Pearl.”
I scoffed. “It was Opal. She was sick and tired of being overshadowed by her talentless sister and not only killed her, earning a huge life insurance pay out in the process, but cashed out her shares before the company crashed.”
Peter and I whirled to face each other at the same moment.
“I bet she was the one who sent all those anonymous letters!”
I nodded my agreement. “It wasn’t enough to kill her sister. She also hinted that she thought Ralph had murdered Pearl—she framed him and took down the company as well by tipping off the protesters and Madeline L’Orange.” I pressed my lips together. “Wow. Someone had a grudge.”
Peter nodded. “On top of it, I had Russo look into the potion master Opal claimed she studied under.”
I smirked. “Claimed?”
He nodded. “She was kicked out of the program for selling illicit potions on the black market and never completed her training.”
“No!” I smacked his arm before remembering we weren’t really friends anymore. I let my hand hang at my side, suddenly self-conscious. Our footsteps clacked up the cobblestones, Daisy’s breath puffing in little clouds of mist as she bounded ahead.
I swallowed and racked my brain for something to say to break the awkward silence. “So I guess that means you’ll be releasing Ralph from custody?”
Peter sniffed. “Not after what Madeline told us. He may be innocent of murder, but it sounds like we should be asking him about fraud and a host of other crimes.”
I grinned. “We’re on our way to arrest Opal?”
Peter nodded.
I smirked. “Probably won’t look too good in front of whatever family she has staying with her.”
28
Sisters
Peter, Daisy, and I crowded together on Opal Whitaker’s stoop. Peter pounded on the door again.
“Police! Open up!”
I grinned, and he frowned. “What?”
I shrugged. “You just sound so—commanding.”
“I am a police officer.” He lifted his nose, and I smirked. Of course I knew he was, it’s just he was usually so mild mannered. I hadn’t seen the “open up! Police!” side of him before.
He drew his wand. That had been our third attempt, and it looked like it was about to get real. He extended his arm, ushering Daisy and I down the steps a few paces. “Stand back.” He leveled his wand at the red door and muttered a few words of a spell.
The door shuddered, then blew open, banged against the wall, and swung back and forth a few times. Peter stormed in, the tip of his wand glowing. “Opal Whitaker, you’re under arrest for—”
Daisy and I raced inside behind him, then stopped short and froze.
Opal Whitaker lay slumped in her clear glass chair, a trickle of foam oozing from the corner of her mouth, eyes wide and unseeing. Her arm hung limply at her side with a spilled glass of white wine right below her hand. I turned quickly away, and Daisy whined.
Smells like death.
I whined back at her, my stomach tight. No doy, Daisy. I was still not used to dead bodies.
Peter grunted a little and edged closer to her body. I sneaked a peek and found him pressing his fingers to the side of Opal’s pale, bluish throat. I quickly looked away.
“She’s gone. Poisoned, by the looks of it.”
I curled my lip. “Remind me to never buy a Potent Potion. Way too many poisonings for my liking.”
“I’m going to check the rest of the house.” Peter jogged upstairs, his footsteps sounding overhead.
Daisy sniffed around, her nose twitching.
I glanced behind me and found her nearing the body. I huffed. Ew, Daisy.
She huffed back. It’s my job, you baby.
I growled. You don’t have to enjoy it so much. I glanced over my shoulder and woofed. Does her body “reek of lies” like her sister’s did?
Daisy bared her teeth. No. Just death.
My stomach turned. Great.
Peter quickly rejoined us.
“Nothing?”
He shook his head. “I called in the murder to the station. I found sheets crumpled in the guest bedroom—she definitely had someone staying with her, but no one’s up there.”
I frowned. “Think her guest took her out?”
Peter looked around the room, brows pinched. He let out a little sigh, and his shoulders slumped.
“What?”
He stalked across the space into the kitchen and lifted two sacks emblazoned with an insurance company’s logo. “Well, the merkles from the life insurance payout appear to be gone.”
I raised a brow. “So maybe their whole family is as messed-up as Pearl and Opal and a crazy aunt saw the opportunity to make a cash grab, or something?”
“That’d be quite the coincidence.” Peter scratched at the scruff on the side of his cheek and paced. “Ralph’s in jail, Pearl’s dead, and now Opal, too. Who’d want them all dead?”
I shrugged. “Could’ve been anyone with a beef with the company.” I smirked. “Which is apparently half the island.”
Peter shook his head. “But who’d benefit most from Pearl’s death?”
I scoffed. “Aside from her sister, who clearly collected a hefty life insurance policy?”
Peter nodded and paced, agitated. “The money’s been taken. Who else would have known about the payout?”
I shrugged. “Maybe it was just a coincidence. Like I said, a corrupt family member saw an opportunity and seized it.”
Peter clicked his tongue. “I don’t know. I had a weird feeling about whoever was staying with Opal. It seemed like she didn’t want us to go upstairs.”
I frowned as I thought about it. I’d felt the same way. Who would Opal have wanted to keep us from seeing? Ralph jumped to mind, especially since the pig had told us he had a predilection for affairs (even if I’d been wrong about him having one with Avery Ann). But Ralph was in jail—he couldn’t h
ave been here the other night.
Daisy had sensed Opal was telling the truth when she said family was staying with her. Technically, Avery Ann would have been some kind of illegitimate niece to Opal, but I could see no reason for her to be hiding the girl. And as far as we knew, none of our other suspects were related to them. I bit my lip, lost deep in thought.
It seemed most likely that Pearl and Opal had a relative just as conniving and greedy as they were who’d seized the opportunity to kill Opal and steal the life insurance payout. But why had Opal seemed like she was hiding this family member from us? And what were the chances they had another family member as shady as the sisters themselves?
Icy dread crept in at the edges, my stomach seizing as a thought trickled in. I whirled on Peter. “You said, who’d benefit most from Pearl’s death?”
He startled. “Yeah…?”
My chest heaved as my thoughts raced. “That’s it!”
A light flashed in his eyes and he stepped closer. “You have it?”
I nodded. “I think so….”
29
Solved
“Talk it through with me. What if it was Pearl herself staying with Opal?”
Peter looked at me like I needed help. “Pearl’s dead, Jolene.”
I arched a brow, growing more confident as I thought it through. “What if she isn’t, though? What if she faked her own death.” Opal had been first on the body. “Her sister helped her.”
I snapped my fingers and turned to the bewildered German shepherd who was watching me, head cocked. “That’s why her body smelled of lies—she wasn’t really dead!”
Peter ran his tongue over his teeth, brow pinched. “How would she have faked that?”
I grinned as I thought back to the Potent Potions party at Heidi’s friend’s house. Sue had said that too much of one of the potions would make you sleep like the dead. “Opal might have been a hack potion maker, but she’d probably have known enough to concoct something that would send Pearl into a death-like sleep. That’s what Pearl drank that night on stage—she gave the vial to Ralph herself, he told us that. As soon as she collapsed, Opal jumped onstage and, in all the chaos, managed to switch the real vial for a mostly empty one containing poison.”
Peter nodded. “And that was the one our team found clasped in Pearl’s hand. And the poison on her lips?”
I shrugged. “Everyone panicked as soon as Pearl collapsed. Opal probably just smeared a bit of the poison on them while no one was looking.”
Peter’s expression darkened. “That way, we didn’t have to do an autopsy.”
I nodded. “And that’s why Opal was so protective of her sister’s body and so insistent we didn’t cut her open. Pearl was still alive.”
Peter shook his head. “With Ralph in jail, Opal was the one who checked her sister’s body out of the morgue for funeral preparations.” He glanced toward the stairs. “In reality, Pearl was staying here, recovering from the sleeping draught.”
I scoffed. “No wonder Opal didn’t want us going upstairs—we would’ve found Pearl, alive and well.”
Peter’s throat bobbed as he paced behind the chaise, and I tried hard not to look at Opal’s slumped body. “So Pearl faked her own death, with her sister’s help, for the life insurance payout. Why not just fake a boating accident or something more benign? Why fake a murder onstage at the annual summit?”
I leaned on the back of the sofa and drummed my fingers on the plush cushions. “Well… we arrested Ralph, right? Pearl gave him the vial to give to her, setting him up, and Opal hinted she thought he was guilty.”
Peter paused his pacing. “You think Pearl and Opal wanted to take Ralph down?”
I nodded. “Seems like it, right?” I thought of what the pig, Buttercup, had told me about Ralph putting her outside the hotel room when various women would come to visit him. “I’m 99 percent sure Ralph was being unfaithful—I even suspected Avery Ann of being his mistress. Turns out she’s the illegitimate daughter of an affair, but I’m not sure that’s a whole lot better.” I curled my lip. “I bet Pearl wanted to take Ralph down, and Opal agreed to help. They framed him for murder.”
Peter stopped dead. “The anonymous letters—I bet Pearl and Opal sent those, too. Opal sold her shares in the company, so when it went down, she wouldn’t lose all her money. They alerted the press, Madeline L’Orange, about the fraud, disgruntled employees, and bankruptcy filings and even got Carolyn Lopez and the other protestors together.”
I scoffed and straightened. “It wasn’t enough for Ralph to go down for murder—they wanted him to lose his company and fortune, too. Avery Ann said they hadn’t told Pearl about her real identity yet, but I’d bet you anything she found out on her own and wanted to spite Ralph. All while getting a huge payout from selling Opal’s shares and from the life insurance policy. They could disappear to start new lives over again somewhere else.”
Peter’s eyes darted to Opal’s dead body. “Why’s Opal dead, then?”
I bit my lip and tried not to look her way. “Maybe it was Pearl’s plan all along to kill her sister and take all the money for herself? Maybe, when she woke up, they fell into old habits and started bickering. Opal admitted that they often didn’t get along.” I shrugged. “Pearl’s the head of a pyramid scheme scamming poor, unsuspecting women out of their money and dreams, faked her own death, and framed her husband for murder. She’s demonstrated she’s capable of some murky stuff, but killing her own sister seems pretty low even for her.”
Peter strode into the kitchen and lifted the bottle of white wine on the counter. The outside sweated, and he rubbed his wet fingertips on the thighs of his uniform pants. “It’s still chilled. Pearl can’t have gone far.”
He pressed a fingertip to the magical device in his ear. “Hey, Edna. I want you to tell all units to be on the lookout for Pearl Litt. Mm-hmm. Yeah, me too. Turns out she’s alive and has likely killed her sister. She’s trying to get off the island, so be sure to send units to the airship station and the—”
I startled as I remembered something Ralph had told me. “She’s afraid of flying.” I waved at Peter to get his attention. “She won’t be at the airship station.”
He frowned. “Hold on, Edna—” He licked his lips. “If she’s not flying, then where would she go?”
I glanced out the front window. The sky was lightening to a pale gray, which meant it was nearly dawn, which meant the tide would soon be out. During the day, with the tide low, Bijou Mer became connected to the human mainland and accessible by foot. Only every evening, when the tide rose, did our mountain become an island and safe for the magical folk to be out and about in public.
Peter’s eyes widened as he apparently followed my train of thought. He touched the device in his ear. “Edna, send as many units as you can spare to the marsh. She’s going to be heading to the human side.”
He plucked the device from his ear and shoved it in his pocket. He jerked his chin toward the door. “Come on! We’re on one of the lowest levels of the island, we may be the closest ones to intercepting her.”
30
Making a Break for It
Peter, Daisy, and I raced down the mountain and along the slippery path that led to the ferry dock. The water level had just recently dropped enough to reveal the top of the submerged wall, and my boots slipped every few steps on the slick, mossy stones. Peter spelled the locked gate open, and our footsteps thudded along the wooden planks to the end of the dock.
A thick mist hung over the water, sticks and grasses barely poking out over the surface of the dropping sea. In the distance, a few faint lights twinkled among the shadows that made up the tiny human village on the shore. Peter muttered a spell, and the tip of his wand glowed blindingly bright. He shone the light out over the murky water as Daisy stood with her paws at the very edge of the dock, ears pricked, whining with eagerness.
Where is she? Where?
A few bubbles surfaced next to the dock, and she jerked her head toward
them, body tensed.
I narrowed my eyes and scanned the water where Peter’s light touched. Pearl had a head start on us—she might even have reached human lands by now. If so, it’d be hard to find her.
Peter wouldn’t have jurisdiction, and it took a lot of paperwork and special permits to even be allowed to set foot on human lands, much less use magic to track someone. No one I knew had ever been across the water. If Pearl made it, she’d probably get off totally free. And even though our merkles weren’t human currency, they were made of gold, so… she’d be rich, too.
I frowned down at the cloudy water. If she were smart, she’d use a spell to breathe under water and stay under the surface to be even less detectable. Then again, you’d have to be a pretty good swimmer to pull that off, and from what I’d seen of her on stage, she hadn’t looked the most athletic.
“There!”
Peter’s voice startled me out of my thoughts, and I looked up to find him pointing. I followed his gaze and searched the pool of light his wand cast, about halfway between us and the shadowy land on the other side.
Pearl’s terrified face whirled around to look back at us. I leaned forward, peering into the semidarkness and caught sight of her dragging a large brown sack behind her. She thrashed away from us, submerged to her chest in dark water.
A flash of red light burst from the end of Peter’s wand. It warmed my cheek, then zipped out across the water and exploded a few feet away from Pearl. Her eyes grew wide, then narrowed.
“Duck!” Peter threw an arm around my shoulders and pulled me to the ground. I dropped into a crouch beside him, my palms pressed against the wet, rough wood of the dock to keep from falling forward. An icy blue spell whizzed over my head.
I shot him a grateful look. It’d have hit me square in the chest if I’d still been standing.
Daisy barked. I’m going to bite you, you witch! She launched herself off the dock and crashed into the water, then chugged forward, ears back, swimming faster than I’d have guessed possible.