Some Enchanted Murder

by Linda S. Reilly

  Exactly what I was planning to do.

  “ ’Night,” I mumbled, burying my head in my pillow. The comforting weight of two furry forms curled around my feet.

  Then a multiringed hand squeezed my shoulder for the briefest of moments.

  All’s well that ends well, I thought.

  With that soothing notion, I drifted off to nowhere-land.

  My brain pounded like a thousand hammers. I tossed, turned, twisted, but the sound wouldn’t go away. It was like—

  Someone knocking on my front door.

  It couldn’t be Aunt Tressa. By now she should be sound asleep. And why would she come back, anyway?

  Was it the police, coming back to question me? Did they need another statement from me?

  My head felt like a water-filled balloon as I shrugged on a robe, shuffled into my slippers and lugged my aching body downstairs. “I’m coming,” I muttered to the insistent knocker.

  I trudged over to the front door and flicked on the outside light. Expecting the police, I jerked open the door without asking who was there.

  A ghostly pale woman wearing a full-length fur stood shivering on my front porch. Her eyes looked glazed. Her hair was the wild, frizzy mop I hadn’t seen since high school.

  Celeste.

  Oh, my God. Celeste.

  I pulled her inside and closed the door. Only a sudden fit of coughing and the fear of contaminating her with my flu germs stopped me from enveloping her in a hug.

  “Come in, Celeste. Sit down. Can I make you some tea?” I didn’t have the strength to fetch her so much as a glass of water, but her fixed expression had made me offer it without thinking.

  For several moments she stood near the door, stiff as a plank, both hands stuffed deep in the pockets of her luxurious fur coat.

  Fur coat …

  I’d seen that coat before. Where?

  “Blake’s at the police station.” Her voice was strange and low. “It’s over now. Everything’s ruined. My plans, my dreams, my future …”

  “Come in and sit down, Celeste. You need to get warm.” My heart was breaking for her, even more so because she was trying to remain stoic. In her place I’d be sobbing my brains out. I couldn’t begin to imagine what she was going through.

  Cinnie and Elliot had crept down the stairs, no doubt curious about my late-night visitor. Both cats stood about ten feet away, watching Celeste warily.

  “Can I get you something?” I asked her again.

  She looked at me, and for a moment it seemed she was staring straight through me. Feeling a sudden wave of dizziness, I hauled myself over to the sofa and plunked down on it. “Sorry, but I’ve picked up a nasty bug. I have to lie down for a minute.” I rubbed a hand over my throbbing eyes. When I slid my hand away from my face, my insides went from solid to liquid.

  “Celeste, what … are you doing?”

  She was standing over me, her beautifully manicured fingers curled around the handle of a silver gun. I knew instantly what it was.

  Albert Dwardene’s old six-shooter.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  From the journal of Frederic Dwardene, Friday, February 2, 1951 The deed is done, and I mean that literally. Today I transferred title to the mansion to my darling Lillian. The deed is recorded, but for now I will keep it a secret. Even Lillian’s mother mustn’t know. In her excitement she might reveal the surprise, and it must be saved for Valentine’s Day! Surely, when I present Lillian with this undeniable evidence of my devotion, she will see the wisdom in becoming my wife. And I will make her love me. I will!

  For a nanosecond, I thought I’d fallen down a deep, dark rabbit hole.

  I tried to ease backward, away from Celeste, but my sofa cushions would only give so far. Terror gave me an adrenaline rush, but even so I was trapped. Only twelve or so feet separated me from the barrel of her gun.

  “You’ve spoiled everything.” Her voice was a low hiss. “In a few more days, I was going to be out of this butthole of a town. Hazleton, New Hampshire, was going to be nothing but an ugly memory.”

  “Celeste, I know you’re distraught over Blake, but it doesn’t mean your life is over. You’ve got so much going for you. You’re successful, you’re super smart—”

  “Shut up. Suffice it to say, Miss Apple Polisher, that you’ve wrecked things for me for the last time.”

  Miss Apple Polisher?

  “That’s how I used to think of you in school. Always sucking up to the teachers. Disgustingly helpful and dependable.”

  “And boring.”

  “True, but everyone admired you.” She gave out a cold laugh. “Unlike me, Celeste the Mess. And don’t deny it—I know all the girls called me that.”

  “A few of them did,” I admitted. “But you turned out better than any of them. And you did it on your own, without help from anyone.”

  “You’re wrong, I did have help.” Her eyes softened, but only for a second—a momentary blip of normal in an otherwise unbalanced mind. “My gram helped because she loved me. She was the only one who ever did. She told me I could do anything I wanted, be anything I wanted to be. Every problem has a solution, she used to say. I simply had to find it.”

  “Don’t do this, Celeste. You had no control over the monstrous things Blake did. You can still go on, move forward with your life and your career. Put the gun down and we’ll talk about it.”

  She shook her frizzy blond head. “I gave you too much credit, Apple. You still don’t get it, do you? Blake didn’t kill Lou Marshall. I did.”

  No …

  “He left me no choice. He was cleaning the remnants out of the old desk when he found the deed. Lou was no dummy. He knew what it meant. He was online, looking at the Registry indices, when I went in to ask him about a vase someone wanted to buy. The look on his face said it all. Something was very wrong.”

  “Did he tell you what it was?”

  “Not until I prodded him. When he told me what he’d discovered, I offered him money to keep his mouth shut. His eyes lit up for a second or two, but then he shook his head and told me no, that he had to tell Sam about the deed.”

  I coughed again, my lungs on fire. “So you killed him?”

  “First I left the room to think. About a minute later I went in again. Lou’s back was to the door so he didn’t see me. He was on his cell, trying to reach your boss.”

  Sam, I think there’s been a terrible mistake …

  “I had to stop him. All my plans depended on the sale proceeds from the mansion. I grabbed one of those daggers from the wall display near the door. Before Lou could even turn around, I jammed it into the back of his neck. He didn’t make a sound—he just sank to the floor. I looked at his laptop to be sure he hadn’t e-mailed anyone, but he was still on the Registry website. There was another knife on the rack, a smaller one, so I used it to smash up the laptop. I wasn’t sure if the cops had a way to figure out what he was viewing before he died.”

  At the edge of my vision, I saw Elliot creep up quietly behind Celeste. I uttered a silent prayer that he wouldn’t do anything to provoke her.

  “Lou’s scarf was draped over the back of the desk chair,” she went on. “I grabbed it and swiped it over the knife handles, then I returned the smaller knife to the rack. Within seconds I was tiptoeing down the back staircase, the one that leads to the pantry. No one even saw me.”

  In a sudden, swift motion, Elliot leaped onto the arm of the sofa near my feet, barely a yard from where Celeste was standing. She jumped slightly and shot him a nasty look. Elliot sat there, unmoving, his golden gaze fastened on her face.

  “You took a huge risk,” I said. “Anyone could’ve walked in—”

  “I’m aware of that. I did what I had to do. For every problem there’s a solution, remember? Why Frederic deeded the house to Lillian I’ll never know, but that’s water over the dam now. What I want to know is how you missed the deed when you did the title search.” She grinned coldly at me.

  I knew why, but right now I
had bigger worries. Was her gun loaded? Didn’t a six-shooter hold six bullets?

  “That day, at the estate sale,” she said, “Lillian Bilodeau was coming downstairs as I was heading up to talk to Lou. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but she looked distracted, as if she’d seen a ghost. Afterward, I realized what had happened. Lou had obviously told her about the deed when she went up there to pay for that china cat.”

  Poor Lillian. No wonder she looked so dazed when she came downstairs that afternoon. She must’ve been stunned to discover she owned the Dwardene property.

  “I knew once she grasped what it meant, she’d have her hand out. Blake wouldn’t be able to sell without getting a release deed from her. She’d have wanted big bucks for that. Problem was, we needed every penny for the loft in Tribeca. And I wasn’t giving that up. Not for anyone.”

  “What you did to Lillian was terrible,” I rasped.

  She swallowed, and her eyes turned glassy with unshed tears. “I didn’t want to hurt her. She reminded me so much of my gram. Gram was a real beauty once. Before she got sick, she looked a lot like Lillian. She had those same stunning blue eyes. Age and smoking ruined her looks, but she was always beautiful to me.”

  “How did you get inside Lillian’s trailer?”

  Her six-shooter still trained on me, Celeste moved closer, sidling around my coffee table until she was standing at the foot of the sofa. “Late Saturday night I drove over there in Blake’s SUV. I’d dressed totally in black and covered my hair. I figured out which room she slept in and tapped on the window. I’d brought a rolled-up towel with me, and I held it against me like it was an animal. Once I’d woken her and gotten her attention, I cried pitifully, ‘Help me, my boyfriend’s going to kill my cat. You have to hide her for me!’ Believe me, you never saw an old lady move so fast. When she opened the door I was ready. I pulled out my duct tape. I slapped a piece over her mouth, grabbed her, and hoisted her over my shoulder. She weighed nothing. It was like carrying a doll.”

  Something tickled my brain. The same something I was trying to recall earlier.

  Once in a while I get these peddlers comin’ in here, wanting me to sell their healthy muffins …

  “You weren’t as clever as you think. You left a napkin from Darla’s Dine-o-Rama on the floor in Lillian’s trailer.”

  After a moment of surprise, her turquoise eyes hardened. “Josh was always yammering about how good Darla’s food was. He took Edgar there every Sunday for breakfast. It sounded like a kitschy place, so I decided to check it out. I thought it might be a good venue to sell my whole-grain cinnamon rolls.” She rolled her eyes. “The second I walked in I knew I’d made a mistake. The place was filthy. Darla looked like something out of a trashy sitcom. I told her I’d planned to offer her my healthy breakfast buns to sell, but that they were far too superior for that dive. Do you know she actually stuck her tongue out at me?”

  Go, Darla!

  “Before I left, I made a show of snatching a napkin off the counter so I wouldn’t have to touch the door handle.” She frowned. “I must’ve stuck that napkin in my coat pocket afterward. It was the same black coat I wore the night I took Lillian. The napkin probably fell when I pulled out the duct tape.”

  “That night, didn’t Blake wonder where you’d gone?”

  She gave me a feral smile. “Not after all the medication I put in his wine. I had a ton of prescription painkillers left from when my gram was dying. Anyone who says drugs lose their potency after a year has no idea what they’re talking about. Of course I upped the dosage a bit.”

  “Did you drug Lillian, too?”

  “Of course. I couldn’t take the chance she’d find her way out of that cabin. There was water in the bathroom, and I made sure she had food—my delicious whole-grain bread.”

  Except that Lillian was too drugged to get to the bathroom.

  And the cabin had no heat.

  “She nearly froze to death,” I snapped.

  Celeste looked thoughtful, as if she were actually sane. “I thought about lighting the wood stove, but I couldn’t risk someone seeing the smoke.” She laughed. “The old girl was sharper than I thought, though. She must have had her cell phone in her bathrobe pocket. I caught her trying to call you when I showed up Monday night to check on her. Luckily she was too drugged to make any sense. I quickly disposed of her phone so it couldn’t be traced.”

  “What were you going to do with her? Leave her there to die on her own?”

  For the first time, she looked nonplussed. “At first I thought I’d drive her somewhere in the middle of the night. Leave her someplace where someone would find her.” She shook her head. “It wouldn’t have worked. Once the drugs wore off, she’d have still remembered the deed. After Blake left for New York, I was going to … get rid of her. Somehow.”

  “I know why you didn’t kill her right away,” I taunted. “Lillian reminded you so much of your gram—killing her would’ve been like killing your grandmother, the only woman on earth who ever loved you, who ever cared about—”

  “Shut up!”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Elliot move—that undulating motion cats make when preparing to pounce. “Do you think your gram would be proud of you now, Celeste? Do you think she’d condone murder?”

  She leaned toward me, her face infused with rage, just as Elliot leaped onto the arm of her fur coat and hissed in her ear. Surprised, she flung her arm aside, sending Elliot sailing across the room. He landed among the jumble of holiday candles clustered atop my bookcase, knocking a large jar candle to the floor.

  “God, I hate cats,” she spat out.

  Poor Elliot cowered against the wall. He looked unharmed, but terrified. I wanted so badly to gather him in my arms and make sure he was all right, but I didn’t dare move. Celeste’s gun hand had remained remarkably steady. Any hope I had for escaping this nightmare was rapidly fading.

  “You’re contemptible,” I said. “But you’re not dumb, so you can’t seriously think you’re going to kill me, too, and get away with it.”

  She gave me a look that chilled me to the core. “Of course I don’t. The moment the police took Blake away, I knew it was over. Tonight I’m going to join my gram, but I’m not going alone. First you have to pay for ruining my life.”

  Everything inside me curdled. “Au contraire, Celeste. You won’t be joining your gram. Not where you’re going.”

  Her blue eyes flared. “You miserable—”

  The ringing of the phone jolted us both. My portable phone was on the coffee table, directly behind Celeste. “It’s Aunt Tressa,” I said, dread squeezing my gut. “The commotion must have woken her up.”

  She pointed the gun at my face. “Don’t even think of answering it.”

  The last thing I wanted was to endanger my aunt. But I knew if I didn’t answer, she’d panic, use her key, and come barging in. Celeste would kill us both.

  “Please,” I said. “I’ll get rid of her fast. If I don’t answer, she’ll only come storming in here. She has a key.”

  The phone rang again.

  Celeste smirked. “Not a problem. I have enough bullets for both of you.”

  “Celeste, listen,” I pleaded, “since you’re … planning to kill me anyway, it’ll be the last time I ever talk to her. Just let me get rid of her and she’ll go back to sleep.”

  I was appealing to a sociopath, but it was the only chance I had. For the first time, she looked uncertain. Wondering, no doubt, if she could pull off shooting both of us at the same time.

  She pushed the phone in front of me, then snapped her head toward Elliot. “Say one wrong word and I’ll use that furball for target practice. Got it? The other one, too. I’ve got six bullets— plenty for everyone.”

  That answered the bullet question.

  “I’m only going to let her know I’m okay. I promise.” I was as far from okay as I’ve ever been, but I had to stop Aunt Tressa from walking into a death trap.

  She gave a sha
rp nod and I picked up the phone. “Hello?” I yawned loudly. “No, no, it was nothing. I couldn’t sleep so I came downstairs for some tea. The cats followed me, and Elliot got rambunctious and starting knocking things off my bookcase.”

  Celeste was staring hard at me, her gun aimed between my eyes.

  “I will, don’t worry. Go back to sleep. And … Aunt Tress? Thanks again for coming to the hospital last night.” My voice shook. Tears smudged my vision. “You’re always there for me, and”—I swallowed—“I acted like such a jerk last night, making a scene over that song you were playing. You know, the one you blasted through my wall when your friend was visiting? I know it was loud, but I shouldn’t have been so nasty about it. It’s not like I never played loud music, right?” I managed a pathetic laugh. “Yeah, okay, I just wanted to apologize. Talk to you tomorrow. Later.”

  Slowly, I returned the phone to its cradle. The idea of never seeing Aunt Tressa again tore at me. Even worse was the thought of her finding my body.

  “Well, that was heartwarming.” Celeste laughed mirthlessly. “You really are a dreary soul, Apple. I suppose having your mother desert you at an early age didn’t help your confidence any, though you had me fooled for a long time. My own mother was a swine, but at least she didn’t fly the sty on me.”

  I glared at her, determined to keep her talking. Every second

  I stayed alive was precious.

  My bleary gaze landed on her fur coat.

  Fur coat. Of course—that’s what she’d picked up from storage at the dry cleaners. Something grazed my memory. “You were staring through my office window yesterday afternoon, weren’t you? Who were you looking at?”

  She gave me a wicked grin. “I was just having a little fun with Vicki. She caught me destroying the baby birds’ nest the day she came over to drop off some probate docs for Blake to sign. Stupid things had nested over the drain pipe—I had to get rid of them. Bad timing on my part, though—I’d forgotten Sam was sending Vicki over with those forms. She squealed like a rusty hinge when she saw what I was doing. I didn’t want her blabbing about it, so I explained to her, in some excruciating detail, what would happen to her precious parakeets if she told anyone.”