To Catch a Witch

by Heather Blake

  Mine weren’t, however. Ben had been summoned to see the Elder. He was going to have to answer her questions or face dire consequences.

  “Yoo-hoo! Doll!” Mrs. P clapped her little hands.

  I blinked. “What? Sorry. I was lost in thought there for a moment.”

  “I’ll say,” she said.

  I rubbed my tired eyes. “Where were we? Quinn’s phone call, right?”

  “Oui. It was Ben who phoned her,” Pepe answered. “He claimed he was worried about her. When she continued to cry, he asked her if she wanted him to come over.”

  “What did Quinn say?”

  “She didn’t answer him,” Mrs. P said. “She just kept saying ‘they’re going to find out’ until she fell asleep.”

  I was having trouble wrapping my head around all this. “How bizarre. Find out what?”

  Mrs. P shrugged tiny shoulders.

  “Ben showed up at Ve’s not long after,” Pepe reported.

  “What time was this?” I asked.

  Pepe said, “Around about midnight, give or take a few minutes.”

  So it hadn’t been Ben who’d attacked me. It was good to cross one suspect off that particular list.

  Mrs. P added, “Ve assured him Quinn was just fine and sent him on his way.”

  Part of me hoped she slammed the door in his face.

  “I tried to break into Quinn’s phone,” Mrs. P said, “while she slept, but the cursed thing was locked. Newfangled technology.” She blew a raspberry.

  “And Joe and Madison’s house? Did you learn anything there?” I asked.

  “Alas,” Pepe said, “by the time we arrived, Madison and Aine were asleep. Joe was awake and watching race footage of himself.”

  “Yawn,” Mrs. P added.

  “What time was that?” I asked.

  “Around one o’clock,” she said.

  “Could you tell if he’d been home all night?” I asked as casually as I could manage.

  Pepe’s ear twitched as he studied me. “Non.”

  Mrs. P held out her tiny hands, palms up. “Sorry, doll.”

  “No, no! Don’t be sorry. You were a big help. You’ve given me some new leads.”

  Not that I had much time to explore them. Ben and Joe were leaving the village tomorrow to go to the race in New Zealand. Before they left, I needed to figure out what was going on with Quinn and Ben, and find out if Joe had an alibi for last night’s attack on me.

  I had a lot of work to get done.

  And time was running out.

  * * *

  My first stop of the day was to question Quinn again. Try to find out what she’d been hiding, especially where Ben was concerned.

  Finding out, much to my dismay, wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped. Mostly because she was nowhere to be found.

  When I went to Ve’s, she’d told me Quinn had just left to run a few errands, but hadn’t specified where she was off to. Her bags were packed and in the mudroom. When Ve had taken the liberty to snoop through them, she found a plane ticket to New Zealand with Quinn’s name on it.

  Was she supposed to have gone on the trip with the Balefire team? For work?

  It was possible. Probable, even.

  But why had she kept the ticket if she had quit? Was it possible she was still planning to be on that plane?

  I called her cell phone but it went to voicemail.

  I checked Abby’s house, thinking perhaps Quinn had returned there to finish packing. While there were fresh footprints in the snow, no one had answered the door and Quinn’s car was gone. When I cupped my eyes and pressed my face to the living room glass, the living room looked much the same as it had the last time I’d been there.

  Boxes on the floor. The wig on the table.

  But no. Something seemed different. I scanned the room but couldn’t place what was bothering me.

  Eventually I gave up and pressed on. I stopped by Balefire, but it was closed and dark. By the time I made it around the village, it was time to meet with Glinda for the cake testing.

  I texted Ve and asked her to call me when Quinn returned.

  I had a pit in my stomach where Quinn was concerned, and I didn’t like it one bit.

  Not even the sweet aromas of the Gingerbread Shack calmed the feeling.

  Evan lit up when he saw me come in and said, “I heard about Harper and Marcus!”

  I had told Starla what I knew this morning, so I wasn’t the least bit surprised that Evan had already heard the news. I had no doubt it would be known throughout the village by dinner time.

  “Wedding bells for Harper, too?” he asked.

  “I don’t know yet. I haven’t had a chance to talk to her. She’s sleeping about twenty hours a day lately.”

  “Must be nice,” he dryly.

  “While I don’t want to be as sick as she was, I could do with a full night’s sleep. Is Glinda here yet?”

  “In the back, looking through wedding cake books. Uh-oh,” he added. “Wicked witch at two o’clock.”

  I glanced over my shoulder. Dorothy was walking by with her husband, Sylar, and had spotted me. She glared. I glared back.

  Evan shuddered. “What’s wrong with her? She’s been more evil than usual lately.”

  “Everything?” I said, glad Glinda couldn’t be seen from her spot in the kitchen.

  “Well, it’s a good thing Glinda’s keeping this wedding quiet then. Come on back.”

  Glinda lit up when she saw me. “I just came from the hospital. Looks like Vince might be released today.”

  “So soon?” Evan asked.

  “It’s like magic. Imagine that,” Glinda said. “Thanks for getting Dennis Goodwin involved, Darcy. I don’t like thinking what could have happened otherwise.”

  I owed Dennis for many things and didn’t know how I would ever repay him. “I don’t like thinking about it, either. If Vince hadn’t been so stubborn…”

  “He’s already joking about the lectures he’s going to get from you.”

  “Your specialty, Darcy,” Evan said, pulling up two stools. “I’ve been on the receiving end a time or two myself.”

  “You bake, I nag. We all have our strengths. It works.”

  The bell on the door jangled and Evan said, “I’m going to leave you two to look through these books to get a feel for design style for a couple of minutes while I cover the front. I have someone coming in to work the front at eleven-thirty, so I’m shorthanded until then.”

  My phone buzzed with a text message from Harper. I glanced at Glinda. “Do you mind if I read this? It’s from Harper.”

  “Go ahead.” She tapped the book. “I have plenty to keep me occupied. Who knew there were so many cake designs?”

  “Not me. Give me a layer of devil’s food cake and I’m good to go.” I leaned in close to her and whispered, “Don’t tell Evan I said so.”

  I unlocked my phone and opened the message screen.

  HARPER: Can you please bring me a couple of devil’s food cupcakes when you leave the bakery?

  Finally, her appetite was returning. Thank goodness.

  ME: Sure.

  HARPER: I’d also like one or two macarons. Three. Three macarons.

  ME: Okay.

  HARPER: And one of those little tiramisu bars.

  I sent her an angry emoji.

  HARPER: I love you.

  HARPER: But really. The tiramisu.

  ME: See you soon.

  I was shaking my head yet smiling as I tucked my phone back into my pocket. “Sorry about that.”

  “No problem. How’s Harper doing?”

  “Much better.” I pulled a cake book over and cracked it open. I listened to hear if Evan was still with his customer, and he was still taking the order. “I wanted to say thanks for not telling Dorothy about Harper’s pregnancy.”

  Glinda flipped a page. “She won’t ever hear it from me.”

  I swiveled to look at her. “I heard about her plans for the Eldership.”

  She faced me. �
�I figured you would as soon as you talked to the Elder, what with Harper’s pregnancy.”

  We sat looking at each other for a long moment. The silence stretched. I coughed. “I mentioned to Vince yesterday that he was going to have to choose a side eventually. Good or evil.”

  “I imagine that went over well. You might have noticed he doesn’t like being told what to do.”

  “He pretty much kicked me out of Lotions and Potions.”

  She laughed. “And yet you still saved his life last night.”

  “Because I know what side I’m on.”

  She waited a beat, then said, “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “Are you going to ask me what side I’m on? After all, I’m Dorothy’s daughter. The person she wants to take the place of your mother as Elder.”

  I searched her gaze. In it, I saw all the changes she made in the past year. The acts of kindness. Turning the other cheek. The apologies. The amends she tried to make. I saw the hardness in her eyes shift to softness. The selfishness to openness. I recalled her horror at learning of Harper’s baby and understood it was because she knew how her mother would react. And how she had told me that she didn’t want kids of her own, so she wouldn’t be a mom like hers. And I recalled the gift she had given me when I moved into my house. That beautiful besom to make sure my home was protected from evil. “No.”

  “No?”

  “No, I’m not going to ask you. I know the answer.”

  Glinda blinked rapidly and tapped a page in the book. Smiling, she said, “What do you think? Two tiers or three?”

  “How many people?”

  “About twenty.”

  “Two is more than enough, then.”

  “You’re forgetting that you and Mimi will be there.”

  “You’re right. Definitely three.”

  She glanced at me. “My mother believes I’m pretending to be your friend and am using you to help her. I want her to keep believing that, do you understand?”

  “I understand.” She was trying to protect me, and it made my heart swell.

  “Okay. I just wanted to make sure.”

  I smiled. “You’re very thorough. It’s one of your strengths.”

  “Better than nagging,” she said, poking me with an elbow.

  I heard a bell jingle, then a moment later Evan was back with us. He started setting out dessert plates. A dozen plates easily, each topped with two thin slices of cake. Then he grabbed a small platter that held a selection of cream puffs and set them before us as well. “Glinda, if you’re thinking traditional, two tiers is more than enough—”

  Glinda and I started laughing.

  He set his hands on his hips. “What did I miss?”

  “Nothing, nothing,” I said. “Go on.”

  With a pout, he handed us forks and gave us a spiel about tiers, complementing flavors, fondant versus buttercream, and added, “If you rather nontraditional, you can do individual wedding cakes, pies, cupcake tiers, cake pops, a macaron tower, a croquembouche. The sky’s the limit.”

  “A croakemwhat?” Glinda asked.

  “Do not,” he warned, “let Pepe hear you pronounce it that way. A croquembouche,” he said with a flourish. He slid the plate of cream puffs towards us and then flipped through the cake book. “Here, look. It’s a beautiful tower of cream puffs held together by a web of thin caramel strands.”

  The sugar work alone was whimsical and ethereal. It was a stunning cake, but not what I wanted for my wedding.

  But this wasn’t my wedding.

  Glinda tipped her head side to side. “Maybe. I do like chocolate cream puffs.”

  “Do you? I can give you a deal. I have about a hundred of them in my freezer. Abby Stillwell had ordered a croquembouche, chocolate cream puffs with hazelnut cream as her wedding cake, and I have a ton of them frozen. They’ll go to waste before I ever use them.”

  “You practice?” Glinda asked.

  “There’s magic,” he said, “then there’s foolishness. Of course I practice.”

  “Wait, wait.” I held up a hand as his words sank in. “Back up. You said Abby ordered a cream puff tower? Chocolate cream puffs with hazelnut cream? Did she also want dark chocolate icing?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “Isn’t it strange that chocolate cream puffs with hazelnut cream and dark chocolate drizzle are Quinn’s favorite dessert?” She’d told me so herself a few days ago.

  His shoulder lifted in a halfshrug. “I just thought Quinn had turned her on to them. They were roommates. It makes sense.”

  My mind whirled with this new information, and I tapped the picture of the cream puff tower.

  “What is it?” Glinda asked.

  It was all starting to make sense in a strange sort of way. I’d been so blind to what was going on, when it had been in front of my face the whole time. “I don’t think the cake was for Abby’s wedding.”

  Evan said, “What do you mean, not for Abby’s wedding? She’s the one who ordered it.”

  “Yes, but not for her. I think it was Quinn’s cake. And oh my gosh. The wedding dress!”

  I suddenly realized it’s what had been missing from Abby’s living room when I peeked in earlier. Quinn must have stopped by to pick it up this morning.

  “What about the wedding dress?” Glinda asked. “Godfrey made it for Abby.”

  “I bet if we ask Godfrey, he’ll tell us Quinn was there when Abby picked out the dress. Don’t you see? Quinn and Abby were the same size. They shared clothes all the time.”

  “Okay, even if all that is true, who is Quinn supposedly marrying?” Glinda asked.

  “Ben Bryant.” The way he’d watched from the window of Balefire last night made perfect sense now. He’d been concerned for Quinn. The phone call, too. Asking to come over. And how Quinn said he was the only nice Bryant …

  “But wasn’t he Abby’s boyfriend?” Evan asked. “I’m so confused.”

  “Me, too,” Glinda added.

  “I don’t think he was ever her boyfriend.” I looked at Glinda. “Don’t you see? It’s just like you and me and what we’re doing here, but taken to the next level. I think Ben has been Quinn’s boyfriend all along. Ben was using Abby to cover-up his relationship with Quinn.”

  “But why?” Glinda asked. “Why wouldn’t Ben just openly date Quinn? Why go through all the trouble of pretending to date Abby? And why would Abby go along with it?”

  “Ben’s family doesn’t like Quinn. She’s mortal. Or at least they thought so. It’s like how your mom doesn’t like Liam … that’s how Ben’s family is with Quinn.”

  “Wow,” she said. “Then yeah, I can see why they’d hide it. But again, why would Abby go along with it?”

  “I’m not sure. I know Quinn called her selfless. Maybe she felt bad for them, having to sneak around behind everyone’s backs?”

  Sneak. Around.

  “The wig!” I said. “That makes sense now, too.”

  Quinn, with her blonde hair would be easily recognizable going in and out of Ben’s apartment. But with a dark wig that resembled Abby’s hair, and being the same size, she could pass as Abby from a distance. Just enough to fool anybody who might see her. Like Joe or Madison or Lucinda. She’d probably borrowed Abby’s backpack, too, which was why the wig hair was on it in the first place.

  “What wig?” Glinda asked.

  Evan rapped on the tabletop. “Wait a sec, Quinn’s not mortal?”

  I explained as quickly and best as I could. Then said, “I need to call Nick. He can confirm all this easily by looking at the wedding license. If they were supposed to be married today, then the license is already public record.”

  “But Darcy,” Evan said, “does any of this explain why Abby was killed?”

  They’re going to find out.

  I bet Quinn had been talking about the wedding. Her wedding. And was scared to death one of the Bryants was going to stop it from happening.

  “I don’t know. I need to find Quinn
and Ben. It’s time for them to tell me everything they know.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “The wedding license was applied for on Thursday and picked up yesterday morning,” Nick said over the phone.

  In Massachusetts there was a mandatory three-day waiting period when applying for a wedding license, and I knew from past clients that it had to be picked up in person by both parties. “Who was on the license?”

  I was jogging across the green, toward home. “Just like you thought. Ben and Quinn.”

  I hadn’t heard from Ve, which meant Quinn hadn’t returned from her errands. Had one of her tasks this morning been to elope? “Are they married yet?”

  “Not yet. They had an appointment scheduled with the justice of the peace at the courthouse at eleven. They didn’t show.”

  “But Quinn picked up the dress at her house.”

  “Maybe they decided to go out of state.”

  Maybe. Massachusetts bordered a few states that didn’t require a waiting period, like Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Vermont. They could apply for a new license and be married right away.

  “But Quinn has suitcases sitting in Ve’s mudroom. Why would she leave them there?”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Darcy. But I can tell you this. Ben and Quinn weren’t the only ones secretly dating. So were Duncan and Abby. From what we found in his apartment, they’d been back together for quite a while now. They just cosigned a lease on warehouse space in Wakefield.”

  I’m tired of waiting.

  It’s what Duncan had said to Abby the night before the race when Stef heard them arguing. He must have known he only had to wait a few more days, but I could understand why his patience had run thin. His life with the woman he loved had been put on hold until Quinn married Ben.

  “And I just had a call from Joe Bryant’s lawyer,” Nick said.

  “Did he confess about the noose?”

  “No, but an interesting preliminary report came in from the lab about the rope. The red lint we found on the rope is consistent with fleece, and also, there were several long blonde hairs found in the rope fibers as well.”

  Long blonde hairs … “Madison?”

  “Most likely. I’ll deal with her as soon as I can.”

  I was trying to wrap my head around the fact that it was likely Madison who’d left the noose for me to find. No wonder she thought it preposterous I’d practically accused Joe of the crime—she’d known he hadn’t been involved with the incident.