I ignored the comment about Lilly. “Maybe the person she met with earlier that night gave her something and then wanted it back. Could that be why they killed her?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“You have no idea who she met with?”
“Nah. I didn’t butt into my mother’s personal life.” Corinne shrugged. “Wouldn’t surprise me if she had some young lover.”
Hmm … Franny had mentioned a lover at the tiki bar, and she’d named Tommy in particular. Tommy had been acting strange about this whole thing. Even that first day when Lilly had been arrested he’d said something vague, leading me to believe he knew more than he was letting on. He had conveniently forgotten to mention he was going to the tiki bar to ask Bonnie about Amelia, and then he’d bribed Iona with pie to find out about the strip mall.
I’d been working on the assumption that Tommy was trying to clear Lilly’s name just as I was. I thought he’d been vague as a cover for her. But what if it was the other way around? What if Lilly knew about Tommy’s extracurricular activities, and she was covering for him? She’d said he meant the world to her. Would she go as far as taking a murder rap for him?
“Well, I’m sure the police will figure it out.” Corinne shrugged and then pushed the doors open with her behind. “I need to get back to the resort. I’ve got a spa treatment in an hour. Good to see you again.”
I stared after her as she left, thinking she was handling her mother’s death awfully well. As if reading my thoughts, the clerk who had rung up Corinne came up beside me and shook her head. “So sad. She’s drowning her sorrow in shopping.”
“Really?” I asked. “People do that?”
“Yep. We see it a lot in here. These rich folk try to buy happiness all the time. Get divorced? Buy a new wardrobe. Get sued? Buy all the shoes and handbags you can. Never works, but it keeps us in business, so I can’t complain.” She picked a gorgeous Angora cardigan from a pile of clothing in her arms and placed it on the rack, fluffing out its wispy fur so it displayed perfectly. “That girl even got quite upset when some of the items didn’t fit.” She indicated the pile of clothes in her arms. “Guess you have to get upset at someone, and it might as well be me.”
I plucked some wind chimes from the display and brought them to the register.
“Everything is so overpriced in here. It’s no wonder people are upset.” Crap! Where had those words come from? Oh no. Don’t tell me I still had spell stink on me from that truth spell I’d given Iona. Burying the lapis in the earth hadn’t helped. I’d have to do something more drastic. There was only one way to get it off. I had to make a disenchantment.
As an earth witch, I tended to gravitate toward spells that used elements of the earth, and the only disenchantments I knew how to make involved mud from the healing mud baths at the spa. We weren’t allowed to actually take mud from there, but I had a plan as to how to get around that. And I definitely needed to do it because I couldn’t risk blurting out the truth at inopportune moments if I wanted to clear Lilly and uncover the identity of the real killer—even if that person was Lilly’s nephew, Tommy.
Sixteen
As I returned to my shop, wind chimes in hand, I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of trouble Clover and Penuche had gotten into in my absence. But when I unlocked the shop and stepped inside, it looked just as it had when I’d left. It was quiet, although I heard murmuring coming from the greenhouse. I peeked around the corner to see Clover and Penuche huddled together.
“What’s going on?” I asked, craning my neck to get a better look at them through the plants. They were in the back corner, but I couldn’t quite make out what was going on.
“Er … just an experiment,” Penuche said.
A little more toward the tail, Clover directed.
What the heck? I put the wind chimes down and headed into the greenhouse. They were standing around a pile of dirt, but thankfully it hadn’t come from a smashed pot. Apparently Penuche had gotten into one of the bigger plants and dug the dirt out onto the floor. I appreciated the fact that he wasn’t destroying my pots or my plants but wasn’t too keen on piles of dirt on the floor.
Clover had a streak of dirt down her white stripe and Penuche was raking his claws through it.
Clover turned to me. What do you think? Does it look like tire tracks?
So that’s what they were doing. Clover was using Penuche’s penchant for spewing dirt to further her roadkill scheme.
“Clover Meadows, if you go out with tire tracks on your back to pretend you’ve been run over so you can get more food from unsuspecting tourists I will never give you bacon treats again.”
Clover whipped her head around, her eyes wide. You wouldn’t!
“I would. This roadkill con has gone too far. You could really get hurt with this. What if someone actually ran you over thinking you were already dead? Now clean up this mess and stop digging in my plants. When you’re done, come up front. I have a job for you.”
I spun around and stomped back to the shop. I didn’t know which was worse, Clover and Penuche in cahoots with each other or their constant bickering.
Ten minutes later, after I’d fashioned the wind chimes exactly as I’d wanted for the gnome trap, they appeared in front of me looking apologetic. I wasn’t fooled by their angelic faces, though. I suspected that I’d only put a temporary stop to their shenanigans.
“How are things going with Lilly?” Penuche’s question was tinged with worry, and my heart twisted for him.
“Fine.” I pressed my lips together to keep from blurting out the truth. Even though the stink of the truth spell seemed to be wearing off, there were still times when I could feel the actual truth bubbling up inside me. And the truth about Lilly was that things weren’t fine at all. In fact, things weren’t looking good for her. I didn’t want Penuche to know that, though.
“Fine? That sounds ambiguous,” Penuche said.
“Okay, well there might be a little snag, but I’m going to the mud pits right now, and I might be able to find out something about that strip mall. Amelia Pendleton was opposed to it, and I can’t help but think it might have had something to do with her death.” Except now I wasn’t really quite sure about that either. If Frank Pendleton wouldn’t benefit financially from his wife’s death, then how would it help him build a strip mall? Was it possible Corinne was involved? “That’s why I need Clover’s help.”
Ready, willing, and able, Clover said.
Sure, she was eager to help me now that I threatened to withhold bacon treats. I might as well take advantage of that while I could.
“Where are we going?” Penuche asked.
“Not we. Me and Clover. I need you to stay here and hold down the fort.”
Penuche looked disappointed, but he nodded and trotted over to one of the cat beds while I scooped Clover up, closed the shop, and headed out to the scooter.
When we got to the mud baths, I took Clover out of the basket and set her down in the shrubbery, making sure no one saw us. “Now you know what to do. Give me ten minutes, okay?”
Aye-aye, captain.
I didn’t have a pass for the mud baths, but luckily, Dylan Potter was at the desk. Dylan was a twenty-something-year-old who’d grown up on the island and had become weirdly attracted to me and my witch sisters. He was just a pimply-faced kid, but we used his attraction to our benefit at times. I felt bad about that, but a girl had to take every advantage she could, and Dylan seemed to enjoy the attention.
“Zola, what can I do for you?” He squeaked when I stepped up to the desk.
“I need to get into the mud baths.” I hitched my purse up on my shoulder, the vial I’d stuck inside to collect the mud clanking against something.
“Okay, just let me see your pass.”
“Well, that’s the thing. I don’t actually have a pass.” The smell of warm earth and sulfur wafted over his shoulder, and I glanced in to see a sea of heads poking from the bubbling dark mud. Spa workers waltzed aroun
d in tropical shirts, carrying trays crowded with colorful drinks, while the ever-present annoying calypso music blared in the background.
Dylan’s forehead creased. “You know I can’t let anyone in without a pass.”
“I’m not actually going into the mud pits. I only want to look at the landscaping and make sure the flowers don’t need refreshing.” I lied. I’d actually been here two days earlier and knew darn well the flowers didn’t need refreshing.
Dylan’s frown deepened. “Augie Taylor didn’t mention anything about that. Let me give him a call.”
“No!” I grabbed his arm to prevent him from picking up the in-house phone. The last thing I needed was the head of security coming down. “There’s no need to bother Augie. He’s very busy.” I leaned over the counter toward him and did my best impression of someone batting her eyelashes. “I’d consider it a big personal favor if you let me in … you know, one with benefits.”
“Benefits?” His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as the word squeaked out past it.
Maybe I shouldn’t have used the word benefits. I could only imagine what Dylan was envisioning. “I mean, like, we could go paddle boarding, you know, like you’ve been asking me to.” It was true. Dylan had been bugging me to go paddle boarding for about a year now, and I’d always managed to come up with some kind of an excuse.
“Oh …Well, I don’t know. I could lose my job and …”
Darn. Why hadn’t I just used a glamour spell to make myself look like the massage therapist, Margo, or one of the other spa workers so I could walk right past him? But it was too late now. I hated to do this, but desperate times called for desperate measures. “I’ll wear my white bikini.”
Dylan’s eyes practically popped out of his head. His cheeks flamed. “Well, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to let you in to just look at the flowers.”
“Great! Thanks!” I grabbed my chance before he could change his mind and rushed past the desk into the mud bath area.
I made my way around the perimeter, staying on the mosaic tile walkway near the building. The area was decorated with tall ferns and grasses to create privacy in the individual baths. One large mud bath sat in the center, surrounded by several smaller private baths. I scanned them for someone I might be able to strike up a conversation with. I wanted an excuse to be close to the mud so I could quickly dip my vial in when Clover created the distraction.
“Zola! Are you here for a massage? I don’t think I have you booked.” Margo had come up behind me. I often came for the hot stone massage, which worked wonders for sore muscles, especially during planting season when I spent eight hours a day hauling heavy plants and digging.
“Not today, Margo. How’s business?”
“Busy as ever.”
If anyone would know about the strip mall, I figured Margo would. I stepped closer and lowered my voice. “I heard a rumor, and I wonder if you might know anything about it.”
“You mean the one about Skye and what really caused the stink near her office?”
“What? No not that one.”
“Oh, the one about her hanging all over a certain someone at karaoke last week?”
“No, not that either. This one was about a strip mall being built right here over the mud baths.”
“Nah. That’s not true. Well, maybe at one point there was some gossip about them building something here, but that idea’s been killed.”
My attention wavered to the nearest pit, where two women were arguing. Apparently one of them kept touching the other, and neither was happy about it. Soon the disagreement spread to other tourists, and people began climbing out of the pits to take their arguments to dry land.
I bit back a laugh at the absurd scene playing out. See, the funny thing about the mud here on the island is that, while it’s extremely healthy and therapeutic for the skin, it also turns people bright orange. So, if I squinted, it looked like a sea of angry citrus fruit having it out in front of me. More than likely what had been touching all of them was the creature that lived deep within the mud, but I could hardly tell them that. The thing was harmless, but nonmagical folk wouldn’t understand.
I returned my attention to Margo. “So the idea was quashed then? Why?”
“No funding,” she said. “I guess it was supposed to be funded by some old geezer who was here two nights ago for the Moonlight Mud Bath Special. Came with some young girlfriend on his arm. They were quite … randy … in the mud baths, I hear.” Margo crossed her arms and made a face. “That guy was a creeper. Anyway, I think it was the guy whose wife died in the chocolate fountain, and he decided not to pursue funding after that. Bad memories probably.”
More like no money for funding. I took a step back out of the path of one of the original arguing women who was now storming off toward the ladies changing area. “Was his name Pendleton?” I wanted to be sure it really was Frank Pendleton.
“Yeah. I gave him a massage one time, and he was quite demanding,” Margo said. “You ask me, the wife is better off not having to deal with him, though it would be sweet justice if he were the one who drowned in the fountain and not her.”
So Frank Pendleton was here the night Amelia had been killed. Did he kill her after his mud bath with his young floozy? “What time does the midnight mud bath run?”
“Midnight to four a.m.”
“Was Pendleton here the whole time?”
“Yeah. I heard they had a hard time getting him to leave. He and his girl were so … involved.” Margo shook her head. “Disgusting, if you ask me. He was here with his wife and carrying on like that.”
“Yeah.” I was barely paying attention to what Margo was saying now. Skye had said that Amelia had died about four hours before I found her, which would put her death around two a.m. If Frank Pendleton had been at the mud baths from midnight until past four, there was no way he could have killed his wife.
I saw Clover waddling around the side of the building. She glanced in my direction. Now?
I’d learned everything I could about the strip mall. Time to get some mud. I glanced pointedly at Clover and nodded.
Clover padded to the large mud bath, spun around, and lifted her tail.
“Skunk! There’s a skunk loose in the mud pits!”
In a split second, the place erupted in chaos. Dozens of mud-bathers scrambled out of the pits, reaching for robes or running straight into the building. Margo raced for the door, bumbling into Augie Taylor, the head of security, who was on his way out.
I shrank back into the shadows and dug the vial from my purse as Augie made a beeline for Clover, who was happily weaving through the pathways between mud pits, acting as though this was some kind of grand adventure.
No one was paying attention to the mud, so I crouched to fill the vial from the pit beside me before anyone noticed what I was doing. Stealing mud from the pits could result in a hefty fine and permanent banning from the area. As I often needed this mud for spells, that wouldn’t be good for me at all.
Luckily, all the guests were too busy racing for the changing rooms, and security was too busy chasing Clover to pay attention to me.
The mud securely in my purse, I headed to the scooter to wait for Clover. I had no doubt she’d deftly evade security. She was a master at weaving and dodging and could scurry through small openings. She had a small hole where she could sneak under the fence, and no one would be the wiser. The hotel staff would think she was a wild skunk that just wandered in.
Now that I had the mud, I’d be able to get the spell stink off me, but my happiness at that was tempered by the fact that one of my suspects in the Pendleton case had been cleared. I’d already been having doubts about Frank Pendleton, but now I knew for sure he couldn’t have killed his wife.
Clover raced out from the side of the building, huffing and puffing from exertion, and I scooped her up and put her in the basket of the scooter, secured my helmet, and pulled away before anyone could question me.
Just as I was pulling out of the park
ing lot, a flash of white caught my eye. I glanced over just in time to see an arm with a white purse attached slipping down the alley between the buildings.
Huh. I would’ve sworn that looked like a Fendi bag. What were the odds there were two white Fendi bags on the island? But what would Franny be doing here? Maybe she was coming for a massage.
I rode off, feeling a bit dejected. I’d been so sure that Frank Pendleton had offed his wife, but now there was no way it could’ve been him.
While I headed back to my shop, I tried to think up another viable suspect. Corinne inherited the money and seemed jealous of her mother’s relationship with Franny. Franny seemed a little weird herself. She’d inherited the purses and shoes, and it was Franny who seemed to think that Amelia had taken a young lover and that Tommy Martinelli was the prime candidate. I had a hard time believing that and not just because of my crush. Tommy was young, smart, ambitious, and devoted to his career and his elderly aunt. It didn’t make sense for him to have an ill-advised fling with Amelia Pendleton, no matter how well-preserved she might be. After all, to my knowledge, he’d never taken up with one of the tourists before, so why would he start now? Besides, Tommy was hot. He could have any woman he wanted. Why would he choose a married woman past her prime?
Now that Mr. Pendleton was off the suspect list, I’d need to find another way to get Lilly out of jail. As I parked outside my shop, I thought perhaps I should change tactics. Maybe, instead of looking for the real killer, I should focus on proving that Lilly couldn’t have committed the murder.
But how?
Seventeen
I didn’t have much time to contemplate how to prove Lilly’s innocence, because just as I turned onto Elm Street, a large silver gazing ball rolled across the pavement in front of my scooter, causing me to swerve and almost dump into a nearby ditch.
Spell on Earth (An Elemental Witches of Eternal Springs Cozy Mystery Book 2) Page 10