I had to do whatever I could to clear my name and find the real killer.
Chapter 17
By the time we left the bank it was high time for lunch.
“Should we go to Otterly Delicious again?” I asked, earning a laugh from Leanne.
“Already an addict, are we? Well good, it means you’re well and truly a local here now.”
The three of us made our way to the diner. I settled on a BLT, fries and a lemonade today, and the three of us made our way toward the tables only to find Aunt Lucy already sitting at one of the booths at the far end.
“We heard you were at the bank this morning,” Kaillie said, slipping into the booth next to her while Leanne and I took the other side.
“I was,” Lucy replied. “We’re looking into Dianne. She’s one of the suspects in Leonard’s murder, after all.”
“You cannot mean you’re trying to solve this,” Kaillie said, her mouth dropping open.
“Why not?” Aunt Lucy said with a shrug. “This is the first interesting thing that’s happened in this town in years. Besides, our police chief couldn’t find his own butthole with both hands, so if someone else doesn’t get involved there isn’t a chance in the world that the killer’s going to be found.”
“So you obviously decided you were the perfect choice to play Batman and try and find the murderer yourself,” Leanne said, crossing her arms in front of her.
“Obviously, except I’m way hotter than Christian Bale,” Aunt Lucy said with an exaggerated wink.
Kaillie groaned. “This is why we have a bad reputation in town.”
“Why, because I go around doing my best to stop crimes? I can’t see how that’s a bad thing,” Aunt Lucy said.
“Because you’re supposed to be a respectable older woman in town, and instead you’re going around pretending to be a superhero.”
“I am a superhero,” Aunt Lucy said. “At least, to these humans who don’t understand that magic is real, I am. I’ve even got sidekicks. Even Batman only had Robin. I have three sidekicks.”
“As long as we don’t have to see you in Spandex,” Leanne teased.
“Oh, you never know,” Aunt Lucy replied. “Besides, I’m fairly certain I’m not the only person in town looking into the murder.” She looked directly at me as she said this, and I was fairly certain my heart stopped for a second. How on earth could she know?
Luckily, neither one of my cousins picked up on it. I didn’t want anyone else to know what I was doing. This was my problem, and my problem alone. I liked Leanne and Kaillie, I just wasn’t used to bringing other people into the fold. I was the sort of person who did things by themselves. Well, and with Dad. But he was gone now.
Trust just wasn’t something that came to me easily.
“Alright,” Leanne said, leaning in, her eyes gleaming. “Who did it then?”
“Well that’s the thing, I haven’t gotten quite that far yet,” Aunt Lucy said.
“Can’t you just cast a spell on someone?” I asked. “I mean, there has to be a spell that would force someone to tell you the truth, right?”
“Unfortunately, there’s no spell that works that way,” Aunt Lucy replied. “While it’s possible to cast truth-telling spells, even a person under the influence of magic won’t give away a secret so big it would cause them to get into major trouble; their subconscious won’t allow it.”
“Well, that certainly makes things harder than they needed to be,” I muttered.
“I agree,” Aunt Lucy said.
“I still can’t believe you’re doing this,” Kaillie muttered. “Seriously, one of us is trying to be good enough to get invited back into the paranormal world, and it feels like at every turn you’re undermining all of my efforts to show that we’re not a family of bad people.”
“What could possibly be better than solving a crime the local law enforcement doesn’t have a hope of figuring out themselves?” Aunt Lucy asked. “Besides, half the town already thinks Eliza did it, so it’s not like we’re a ringing endorsement of people who have done the right thing right now. If anything, the three of you should be joining me in trying to solve this. The sooner everyone knows who did it, the better.”
I slunk low in my seat as the waitress came over with our food. She looked at me carefully as she handed over my plate laden with a sandwich and fries, and I looked down at the ground, made all the more aware of my status as an outcast, as the new town resident who might have murdered someone.
I really hated this.
“So who do you think did it, then?” Leanne asked. “And where are the rest of the Floozies? I heard you were all together at the bank.”
“Your mother had a doctor’s appointment, and I think that place reeks like death,” Aunt Lucy replied. “Dorothy had to get home to start a pot roast, and Carmen had to go to work. So I decided to have a nice, peaceful lunch by myself. But to answer your question, I don’t know yet. But I’ll figure it out, don’t you worry about that. Now, Eliza, I heard through the grapevine that you’re learning a few simple spells.”
“That’s right,” I replied. “Aunt Debbie has shown me how to change the color of things, and how to make them bigger and smaller.”
“Good,” Aunt Lucy said. “Those are the boring basics. I’ll teach you real spells soon. When you girls are finished eating, I’m taking Eliza out for a bit of magic training.”
“It’s so unfair that I never get to learn magic,” Leanne muttered.
“Don’t teach her anything that the coven in the paranormal wouldn’t approve of,” Kaillie warned.
“Oh I wouldn’t dream of it,” Aunt Lucy replied with a mischievous smile. I had a sneaking suspicion that was exactly what I was about to be taught.
Eventually, the three of us finished eating, and Kaillie and Leanne went out to finish their errands, leaving Aunt Lucy and me sitting alone in the booth.
“Don’t think I don’t know you’ve also been looking into who killed Leonard.”
“Who, me?” I asked, trying to look as innocent as possible. Aunt Lucy waved a finger at me in reply.
“Don’t you ‘who, me?’ me, young lady,” she replied. “I know perfectly well what it is you’re doing, and why. You don’t want the whole town thinking you’re a murderer.”
“They already think that, I’m trying to prove that their opinions are wrong.”
“Good. So you should. I know you went to see Don this morning; what do you think of him?”
I bit my lip, trying to decide how to answer. A part of me was still hesitant to ask for help, even though Aunt Lucy had already figured out what I was doing. I just really, really wasn’t used to bringing other people into the fold when I did things. But at the same time, Aunt Lucy already figured out what I was doing. She obviously had no problem with it, and who knew? Maybe bouncing ideas off her could help me solve the crime after all.
“I think he’s the killer,” I finally replied in a low voice, glancing around to make sure no one at any of the nearby tables were able to listen in on the conversation. “I need proof, though. I was thinking of breaking into the store tonight and looking around. I’m hoping to find the ground wolfsbane he used to kill Leonard.”
“Good,” Aunt Lucy said. “You’re thinking he’s the killer because of his close relationship to Joe?”
“That’s right,” I said with a nod. “I have two different motives I’m working with, but they’re both linked to the sale of that property. After all, people have been killed for less. Either Don killed him on behalf of Joe directly, in which case he acted as a hitman, or Don killed him with the hopes that Joe would spend a bunch of money at the hardware store when he was building the condos.”
“I think you might be right,” Aunt Lucy said. “None of us can find a reason Dianne might have had to kill Leonard.”
“No, I can’t see why she would have done it, either. She seemed to have just genuinely been nice to him. I guess the fact that they both worked at the bank was a coincidence.”
“And
it’s the same with Jack Frost, the old math teacher,” Aunt Lucy said. “I can’t find any reason he would have had to be angry with Leonard.”
“As far as I know, those are the only people who had the opportunity to kill him,” I said with a shrug. “So it has to be Don.”
“Agreed,” Aunt Lucy said. “Now, all we need to do is prove it.”
“So you agree? We need to search through his shop? I’m not the biggest fan of the idea, but I don’t see how else we can do it.”
“That’s right,” Aunt Lucy said. “In fact, I think we need to take care of it right now. You never know how long it’s going to take for Don to get rid of the evidence.”
I balked. “But I’m suggesting breaking into his store. A store he’s going to be in. What on earth are you saying?”
Aunt Lucy winked. “You’re a witch, remember? We’re going to use some magic. I told the other girls I was going to teach you the things Debbie wouldn’t dare.”
This didn’t sound good. It certainly didn’t sound legal.
Chapter 18
Aunt Lucy and I left the diner and made our way back down toward the street.
“So, what’s the plan here?” I asked.
“I’m going to turn us both invisible,” Aunt Lucy said. “We’ll be able to sneak around the shop undetected, and look for the poison. But be careful: when you’re invisible, anything you move will look like it’s floating. Kaillie might be an overly-cautious ninny a lot of the time, but she is correct: the people in the paranormal world frown on it when we make our use of magic too obvious. That’s why they sent Kyran the elf over the other day; the whole thing with the broom made a little bit too much noise.”
“Wait, that was me they were upset about?” I asked. “I thought it was the whole thing with the donuts.”
Aunt Lucy waved away my suspicions. “Goodness, no. There were two humans who saw that, and they both passed out. I’m sure they wrote it off as a concussion or something. However, hundreds of people saw you riding that broom through the middle of the mall. That’s a little bit less conspicuous than the paranormal world is happy with.”
My heart sunk as I realized I was in trouble not only in the human world, but in the paranormal one, too.
“Don’t worry,” Aunt Lucy said, as though reading my thoughts. She couldn’t do that, could she? “I explained the whole situation to Kyran, and he told me he’d make sure the higher-ups in the coven understand that it was an accident, and that you didn’t realize what you were doing.”
“And you trust him?” I asked. “This elf?”
“Oh, implicitly,” Aunt Lucy replied. “Kyran is very strange for an elf, by all accounts, but he’s trustworthy.”
“Alright,” I said. “So I’m probably not in trouble in this magical world?”
“No, I don’t think you are,” Aunt Lucy said. “Now, are you going to keep doing your best impression of Kaillie, or are we going to find proof of a killer?”
I took a deep breath. Honestly, I wasn’t completely sure I was ready for this. “Using magic?”
“That’s right,” Aunt Lucy said, dragging me down the alley next to the store. “You’re going to have to get used to being around it, it might as well be now.”
She pulled out her wand and pointed it at me. “Oh, and don’t tell Debbie we did this. She’s not a big fan of using magic to get away with committing felonies.”
I gulped, hard. “Gee, I wonder why.” I wasn’t sure I was a big fan of it, either.
Still, this was the only way I could think of to find proof that Don had murdered Leonard, and clear my name for good.
I closed my eyes as Aunt Lucy began casting the spell. “Saturn, god of wealth, make this witch invisible so she can move with stealth.”
When I opened my eyes a second later, I gasped as I looked down at myself. I wasn’t there! I was literally just staring at concrete where my legs and torso had been a minute earlier.
I touched my face carefully, but I couldn’t see my hands. They had to still be there somewhere, obviously, since my face could feel something touching it, but I couldn’t see them.
“This is weird,” I said, and Aunt Lucy laughed. “It takes some getting used to. Don’t forget, you’ve lived on this planet for nearly a quarter decade and every single waking moment of that time you’ve been able to see your body. It’s going to take your brain a bit of time to adjust to the fact that you’re now invisible.
“No kidding,” I replied as I took a cautious step forward. I wasn’t entirely sure what was going to happen, but it was all normal. Well, apart from the whole part where I couldn’t see anything.
Aunt Lucy repeated the spell, this time pointing the wand at herself, and I gasped as she immediately disappeared.
“Alright, ready?” Aunt Lucy asked, and I nodded.
“Stay close to me, but don’t speak too loudly,” Aunt Lucy ordered. “We don’t want any of the regular humans to pick up on the fact that we’re here. That’s the sort of thing that will get us in trouble in the paranormal world.”
I nodded, before a split second later realizing that there was no way Aunt Lucy could see my reaction.
“Ok,” I said. “Let’s do this.”
The two of us made our way toward the front door, but I reached out and grabbed Aunt Lucy’s arm. At least, I really hoped that was her arm.
“Hang on,” I said. “He has that bell that goes off above the main door. If we open it and there’s no one there, he’s going to start asking questions.”
“Good thinking,” Aunt Lucy whispered. “Here comes Alfred. He checks the hardware store for new sales literally every day. We’ll sneak in just after him.”
I didn’t know who exactly Aunt Lucy was pointing at, but figured it was the older man making his way down the street with a bushy white beard and eyebrows that could have been used as a nest for small birds. He was dressed in paint-splattered overalls and made a beeline for the hardware store.
Sure enough, the man opened the front door, and Aunt Lucy and I slipped through immediately after him. I was sure no one would notice the fact that the door had stayed open for a tiny bit longer than it would have naturally.
As soon as I saw Don in front of the counter I took an involuntary breath in, but sure enough, he didn’t notice me or Aunt Lucy at all. He was busy talking to Albert, who had gone straight to the front counter and was busy asking something about a sale on wood stain, and how Home Depot was running a sale and willing to ship to the island, so why couldn’t Don?
Ok, this was a good sign. We hadn’t been spotted yet. My instinct was to get as far away from Don and the front counter as possible, so I slipped down one of the aisles and toward the back of the store. I figured there might be an office or something back there; somewhere Don might have hidden the poison he used to kill Leonard.
The problem was the aisles in this store were so narrow it was a struggle not to touch anything on the way down. They were barely more than shoulder width, and I had never realized until now just how much noise it must be possible to make in a hardware store. The first part of this aisle was filled with tiny little boxes packed with dozens of screws of various sizes and with differently-shaped heads. If I accidentally knocked one over, it wouldn’t be remotely subtle.
I turned myself sideways and slid carefully down the aisle, feeling a little bit like Pac-man. If I saw someone I was going to have to stop and go the other way, and if two people came at me in the same aisle from either direction, I was going to be caught.
Yes, this was basically a real-life version of Pac-man. I hadn’t been the adventurous kid as a child, and I didn’t handle stress very well. I had to stop and take a couple of deep breaths before I continued past a selection of spray paint kept on a gated shelf, and finally reached the back of the store.
To my immense relief, there was a door labeled ‘Employees Only’ against the back wall. That was exactly what I wanted and I stopped, my ears on high alert. From the front of the store, the soun
d of Don explaining to Albert that he didn’t price match and never had reached my ears, and I knew it was safe to go inside. I tried the door and was relieved to find it unlocked. Small towns had their advantages, I guess.
I didn’t waste a second and slid into the back part of the store and closed the door again behind me, reaching over until I found the light switch. A set of fluorescent lights slowly flickered to life overhead, and I found myself in the middle of a room that doubled as both an office and storage space.
Most of the room was packed with extra stock that wasn’t on display, with items stacked from floor to ceiling across almost every single inch of the space. There were a few shelves, but most of the items were boxes, piled on top of one another so precariously that it reminded me of the world’s biggest game of Jenga. Seriously, if someone made a wrong move in this place there was a good chance they were going to be crushed to death by an assortment of landline telephones, KitchenAid blenders, and Halloween decorations. Who on earth had their Halloween stuff ready to put out for sale in April? That was just ridiculous.
Even the “office” part of this room – which was really just a tiny desk in the corner – was piled high. All sorts of bills and other official-looking papers were stacked on top of the desk, one particularly large pile looming precariously close to the edge. Personal organization was obviously not Don Kilmer’s strong suit.
I looked around, trying to figure out where to start. After all, I had some poison to find.
Chapter 19
I started off by making my way toward the desk. It seemed like both the least dangerous place to start, and also a likely place for the ground wolfsbane to be kept.
What did ground wolfsbane even look like? It had to be a powder. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone, intending to do a Google image search to help me figure out what I was looking for, and sighed. Of course my phone was also invisible; it had been in my pocket when Aunt Lucy cast the spell. Great.
A Cauldron of Hot Coffee: Enchanted Enclave Mysteries Books 1-3 Page 10