A Cauldron of Hot Coffee: Enchanted Enclave Mysteries Books 1-3

by Samantha Silver

  “Ross thinks he was killed elsewhere and the body moved,” I said. “But his only reasoning for that is the lack of blood.”

  “I don’t think so,” Leanne said. “Vampires don’t tend to move bodies unless they’re trying to hide them. My bet is whoever killed Barry did it at the construction site.”

  “Ok, so there should be some evidence. Or at least there should have been some evidence there. We don’t know what the cops took,” I replied.

  “Right. I’m guessing you can’t get Ross to spill the beans on that?”

  I shook my head. “Not a chance. I don’t want him to know we’re investigating.”

  “You realize all good relationships are based on trust, right?” Leanne said with a grin.

  “Yeah, well, I can’t exactly go around letting him know I’m a witch and that our family are the only ones who knows the killer is a vampire who sucked the blood from Barry Blackburn’s body. Telling your new boyfriend you’re a witch with supernatural powers is probably a good way to get him running away as fast as he possibly can.”

  “That’s a fair point,” Leanne conceded. “Ok, so anything we find is going to have to be through subterfuge.”

  “As long as we’re not breaking any laws to do it,” Kaillie said. “I can’t believe what Aunt Lucy did at the bank. I saw Mom at lunch, and she was livid. She said it ruined her whole day that she had planned with Uncle Bob and that they were going to have to reschedule since she was trying to find Lucy to yell at her.”

  “I think Aunt Lucy knows,” I said. “She came by the coffee shop and tried to get us to steer Aunt Debbie in the wrong direction.”

  “Either way, I think we’re going to be safest having dinner at home tonight,” Leanne said.

  “Agreed.” I nodded as we turned the corner and found ourselves looking at the construction site once more. However, to my surprise – though I probably should have seen it coming in hindsight – there was a police officer stationed in front of the yellow tape cordoning off the crime scene, which bobbed slowly up and down in the breeze. He was looking at his phone, thankfully, and hadn’t spotted us.

  “Hide,” I muttered, and the three of us quickly darted into the nearby trees, ducking behind some low ferns to get out of sight before our presence was noticed.

  “Is that Bob, Dorothy’s husband?” Kaillie asked, squinting towards the officer.

  “I think it might be,” I said. “What are we going to do? Just cast an invisibility spell?”

  “We should try and get him to actually go away,” Kaillie mused. “I’d rather have the freedom to look around.”

  “I have a plan,” Leanne said. “But I need your help. Come on, we have to go deeper into the bushes.”

  We reached a clearing, and Leanne handed me her phone. As soon as I took it, she grabbed her pants and started pulling down the back of them.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, shielding my eyes.

  “Oh don’t be a baby. It’s just a butt crack,” Leanne replied. “Come on, take a picture. But it has to look like boobs.”

  “Seriously?” I asked. “Whose boobs are they supposed to be?”

  “Dorothy’s.”

  “Your butt doesn’t look a thing like Dorothy’s cleavage.”

  “Fine, take the picture a little out of focus, then.”

  “I can’t believe I’m related to the two of you,” Kaillie said, her hands on her face, peering through her fingers.

  “We’re just doing what we have to,” Leanne said.

  “Press your cheeks closer together,” I said, and when Leanne did so, I took the photo. It was just blurry enough that if I squinted and didn’t think about the fact that I knew it was a butt, it could probably just barely pass as cleavage.

  “Thanks,” Leanne said.

  “What are you doing with the picture?”

  “Sending it to Aunt Lucy. I need her to send it to Bob from Dorothy’s phone.”

  “I can’t believe that’s your plan,” Kaillie said.

  “Hey, you would have complained if we’d used magic to make him fall asleep or if we’d done something illegal.”

  “I mean yeah, but this involved nudity.”

  “You’re such a prude. You can’t keep adding things to the list of stuff we’re not allowed to do. Besides, aren’t you the one who wants to find the killer? Now come on, let’s see if Aunt Lucy comes through for us.”

  The three of us made our way back to the edge of the forest where it met the road, peering out from behind a large fir tree to where Bob was still standing guard. He was leaning on one hip, staring aimlessly out at the road, seemingly bored out of his skull. I couldn’t exactly blame him; standing here on the outskirts of town watching out in case some idiots wanted to come in and check out the crime scene didn’t exactly seem like the world’s most exciting job.

  A moment later there was a bing from his phone and he pulled it out, glancing at the screen.

  “Haha, he’s looking at your butt,” I teased Leanne as Bob stared at the picture. Judging from the motion of his hands, he zoomed in on the photo a few times, laughed to himself, and then looked around. Deciding he could play hooky from work for a little while, he started running back down the street towards us. Nothing was going to stop him from getting to his wife for a little mid-workday nookie.

  Once he passed us and turned the corner, the three of us ran back onto the road and ducked under the yellow tape into the crime scene.

  “I told you that was going to work,” Leanne gloated, a smug look on her face.

  “Ok, you can brag about it later. Right now we have to find whatever evidence we can,” Kaillie said. “I’ll take the bulldozer where the body was found.”

  “I’ll look on the ground to the right of it. You take the left,” I said to Leanne, who nodded, and the three of us got to work.

  Kaillie and I immediately went to the bulldozer, but whereas she started looking at the wheels, I went to the right side of it and started looking at the ground. I was careful, peering at every little thing to make sure it wasn’t something important that I had missed, and started walking in a half-circle, heading further and further out from the bulldozer every few minutes.

  Most of the stuff on the ground was everything one would expect to find at a construction site – dirt, rocks, sticks, that sort of thing. Especially a site where there hadn’t actually been any construction yet. It still looked exactly the same as the other day when we had been here during the protests.

  “We probably only have about half an hour or so until Bob gets back, so be quick,” Kaillie called out after about five minutes. She was right; we had to make sure we weren’t caught out here.

  “Find anything yet?” Leanne asked, and we both replied in the negative.

  Nothing in this dirt looked like it had anything to do with the murder. Maybe the police station had everything. Who could know?

  “Hey, come have a look at this,” Kaillie’s muffled voice called out. She was underneath the bulldozer, having scootched underneath the chassis on her stomach, and was now coming back out completely covered in dirt. “I found this stuck between two pieces of metal under there.”

  She held up a tiny scrap of paper that fluttered in the breeze.

  “What is it?” Leanne asked, making her way over and squinting at it.

  “It looks like it came from a receipt,” I said.

  “Yeah, and the way it’s torn, it’s like someone grabbed at it in a panic and just ripped it away. My guess is it was in the killer’s pocket or something, and Barry ripped it in panic when he was bitten. It must have fallen into the cracks, and the police missed it,” Kaillie said. She stood up, and the three of us looked carefully at the piece of paper.

  Sure enough, it looked like a receipt, and I was pretty sure it was from the hardware store.

  Bath

  Flo

  That was all that was visible on the tiny scrap of receipt.

  “Those are the sort of things you get from the hard
ware store, right?” I asked, and the others nodded.

  “Yeah,” Kaillie said. “Stuff from the bathroom section? Maybe whoever it was had some plumbing issues.”

  “Or maybe something from the bathroom and also some flooring,” Leanne offered up. “Let’s go ask Don if he’s served anybody who fits that description recently.”

  Chapter 16

  The little scrap of paper was the only evidence we found, but given as the police would have taken away anything obvious, I supposed I should have been thankful we even had that much. The three of us went to the hardware store where sure enough Don, the owner, was manning the counter by the front door.

  I still felt a little bit bad for the time when I had accidentally caused an avalanche of boxes to fall on Don, but to be fair, I had been trying to find a murderer.

  “Hello, ladies,” he said with a friendly smile when we walked in. “Is there anything I can help you find today?”

  “One of your customers, actually,” Leanne replied. “Has anyone been in recently looking to buy plumbing equipment or maybe a mix of plumbing and flooring?”

  An amused smile flittered on Don’s lips. “Isn’t there such thing as hardware store owner-customer confidentiality?”

  “I’m pretty sure there isn’t,” Leanne replied cheerily.

  “Well, in that case, I don’t mind telling you that doesn’t ring a bell. Joseph Gallagher was in here about three months back when a pipe burst in his kitchen, but the last few weeks all I’ve had is people buying barbeques, paint, camping gear, and other summer stuff. Haven’t sold any flooring since the spring, since I have to order it in special.”

  Well, that was disappointing. We had already discussed that we didn’t want to show Don the slip of paper. Kaillie had actually put it back when we were done in case the police decided to do a second sweep for more evidence. We were looking for a killer, but we also weren’t going to hide evidence from the police. Of course, we also weren’t going to go around advertising the fact that we’d found something they’d missed, either.

  “You three aren’t looking into who killed Barry, are you?” Don asked, and I immediately put the most innocent expression I could on my face.

  “Who, us? No, of course not. What gives you that idea?” I asked.

  “Well, the three of you are gaining a bit of a reputation in town, you know,” Don said with a gentle chuckle. “Although I laugh, it’s quite the sad situation.”

  “You would have known Barry well, right?” Leanne asked.

  “Oh yes,” Don replied. “He started developing property here about twenty years ago, right around when I took over this place from my father. That said, he would almost always get his stuff from the mainland where it was cheaper and have it brought over by truck, which annoyed me a little bit. If you’re going to make money off the property here, at least make a bit of an effort to support the local economy while you’re doing it. Home Hardware in Seattle didn’t need his business, but I certainly wouldn’t have minded. Gave him a good deal the few times he did come in for stuff, but it certainly didn’t get me any loyalty. That said, he wasn’t a bad guy. He was just a guy trying to make as much money as he could. I think the town is worse off for him being gone.”

  “Really?” I asked. “You were in favor of the resort project?”

  Don shook his head. “Nah, not that one. I thought he stretched things a bit with that idea. But his other projects that fit the community a lot better were good. My daughter lives in one of the ones he built a couple of years ago with Peter Toole.”

  “The Blue Lagoon complex?” I asked, and Don nodded.

  “That’s the one. I helped her buy the place in pre-construction. She’s really happy with it. Say what you want about Peter and Barry, but they did make sure what they built was quality. Can’t say that about a lot of developers these days. So yeah, I had my issues with Barry, and I had my issues with his project, but overall I think he did more good than harm, and it’s a shame he’s dead.”

  “Do you have any idea who might have killed him?” Kaillie asked, and Don shook his head.

  “Nope, sorry. I know a few people had it in for Barry, but I really can’t believe even Sean Ingraham was so mad about the project that he’d have killed him. But then, I like to think the best of people.”

  “Alright, thanks, Don,” Leanne said. “We’ll let you get back to it.”

  “I hope you find whoever did it,” Don said. “There’s a killer out here on the island, and that always makes me uncomfortable.”

  “Us too,” Kaillie answered with a wave as we headed back out the door, the old-fashioned bell above ringing to announce our departure.

  “Well, that was useless,” Leanne moaned as we made our way back down the street. “I was really hoping Don could have told us exactly who that receipt belonged to.”

  “Look on the bright side: at least he didn’t say it was Barry’s,” I replied. “Then it would have been even more useless.”

  “You have to be a special kind of mean in a small town like this to not support your local business,” Kaillie said. “That surprised me. I thought Barry would have ordered from Don all the time. I know he’s a bit more expensive than the mainland, but he’s just a small business owner, not Home Depot.”

  “True. But I don’t think Don killed Barry over that.”

  “No, me neither,” Kaillie said. “I can’t believe Don didn’t know who that receipt belonged to.”

  “And there’s no one else that works in his store, right?” I asked. “No one else who could have helped out the killer and run it through the register?”

  “No,” Leanne said, shaking her head. “Don’s daughter helps him out here and there when he’s super busy, but she’s always done administrative work. She’s a bookkeeper. I’ve never seen her on the floor, ever.”

  I frowned and asked Kaillie to see the scrap of receipt again. I didn’t like the fact that Don didn’t know who had bought the stuff from him. Was Don’s memory not as sharp as it used to be? Was the information in the computer and he’d simply forgotten about it? Seeing as Don’s cash register was one of those old-style ones with only the bare minimum of information available, I didn’t think there would be a record of the purchase in it. He certainly didn’t have a modern setup with real-time inventory control.

  Or was there a more sinister reason? Did Don know who had bought the stuff and was covering for them? But why would he want to cover for a killer?

  I felt like even though we had found a piece of evidence, it had raised more questions than it had answered.

  After stopping off at the grocery store to grab a roast chicken for dinner, when the three of us finally got back home, I found Cleo walking up and down the driveway. She’d been out all day, and I was relieved to see her safe and sound after her latest day of ruling over the island’s animals.

  “Good, you’re finally here. Where were you?” Cleo asked. “Come over here.”

  “I’m coming. It’s not even your dinner time yet,” I said, but when I saw where Cleo was leading me, I gasped. “Is that a squirrel? Did you kill it? I told you not to hurt the wildlife.”

  I rushed over to the front door where a little squirrel – it was tiny; there was no way it was fully grown – was lying motionless on the stoop. His hair was so short it was practically shaved off in parts. His little stomach was pink and hairless, and his paws weren’t covered in hair at all, and one of his front paws was sitting at kind of an awkward angle. He was absolutely adorable, but he looked like he was in trouble.

  “Of course I didn’t kill it. I brought him here because you need to help him. His leg is broken.”

  As soon as I picked it up, the squirrel’s head perked up and he looked at me with his big black eyes. I heaved a sigh of relief. Cleo was right. The squirrel was alive but unable to move his front left paw.

  “Ok,” I said as Kaillie and Leanne came to the door. “We’re all going to go inside, and I’m going to make a nest for this little guy. Wh
ere did he come from?”

  “The forest,” Cleo said. “He was with his mother. She said he fell out of the tree and landed awkwardly on his leg.”

  “What do you need?” Leanne asked.

  “Do you have any extra shoe boxes and maybe some old socks or something?” I asked.

  “I have a shoebox; I just bought new runners a few days ago and haven’t recycled the box in case I want to return them,” Kaillie said. “Hold on.”

  Two minutes later I carefully placed the little squirrel into the bottom of a shoebox. We had put a tea towel on the bottom of it and a little bit of water in the lid of a Tupperware container.

  “You can go ahead and sleep little guy,” I told him. “We’re going to figure out what we need to do to fix your leg.”

  Cleo meowed at the squirrel, and a moment later he curled himself up and began to rest.

  “He’s pretty cute, isn’t he?” Leanne asked, looking down at him.

  “Yeah,” I replied. “Now, how are we going to fix him? Is there a wildlife sanctuary or anything on the island?”

  “No,” Kaillie replied. “There are some on the mainland. It’s probably too late to call them, but you could try in the morning. I don’t know if they would take a squirrel, though. They might just give you instructions on how to care for him.”

  “I want Rudy to stay on the island, if possible,” Cleo said, and I raised an eyebrow at her.

  “You named him?”

  “No, obviously his mother did that,” Cleo replied, carefully licking one of her paws.

  “Ok,” I said. “I’ll see what the internet says to do. It might save us a phone call.”

  “You are going to be able to save him, right?” Cleo asked. “I told his mother you would do whatever you could.”

  “We’ll do our best,” I replied. “Don’t worry. How did you come across him, anyway?”

  “I was patrolling the forests, as every good leader has to know every inch of her kingdom, when I heard the cries of the mother. I went over and she was initially very scared. She thought I was going to kill her baby, and she begged me not to, but I told her I was the ruler of this island and I was going to save her baby. She asked how. I said I knew a witch on the island who could fix him. She was desperate, and she let me bring him here. I told her I would come back tomorrow and give her an update.”