Home for a Spell

by Madelyn Alt

  Tom listened with his usual stoic expression beneath the mirrored aviators. “Sorry. I’m afraid that will be impossible.”

  “But—”

  “Need I remind you, sir, this site is now an active investigation. A violent crime was perpetrated on these premises. I’m afraid our investigation takes precedence.”

  “Officer Fielding, that hard drive is integral to the running of this business—”

  “And I’m sure that a day or two to process things won’t strain your business proceedings unduly,” Tom finished for him.

  “But—”

  “As soon as we are able to release the area, we will. You’ll be the first to know, I assure you.”

  Harding knew he was at the mercy of the law, and he was experienced enough to realize he had no choice in the matter. Being at the mercy of anyone or anything didn’t seem to be a state of being he was remotely comfortable with. He hemmed and hawed and shifted his weight from foot to foot as he considered arguing his case, but eventually his shoulders relaxed and he acceded. “Could you at least ask your men to look for the missing hard drive?” he asked, almost a whine by now. “Not to belabor a point, but I just discovered from this man Quinn that it’s possible it was missed by the perpetrators in their war of mass destruction, and if so . . . well, I’m sure you can understand that I’m eager to get my hands on it. Can you at least have them alert me if they are able to locate the hard drive?”

  Tom shook his head. “I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t make any promises. If the drive shows up, I’m afraid it will have to be taken in as evidence.”

  “What?!” Harding exploded. “Oh, hell no. I am willing to cooperate for the sake of decency, but this I will fight you on, pure and simple.”

  “Sir . . .” It was a warning, pure and simple. Marcus and I looked at each other, eyebrows raised, wondering whether we should get out of the way.

  “This is business I’m talking about. How am I supposed to conduct business if I can’t obtain my own files?” Harding persisted stubbornly. “You want to tell me that?”

  “Sir, I don’t mean to belabor a point, but a man was killed here last night on your business property. Need I remind you, he was one of your own employees? Decency doesn’t begin to cover what is required here. A little compassion wouldn’t be out of line. If there is any chance that there is information on the hard drive that can assist us in our investigation, any chance at all, our team will find it. Then and only then will access to the files be granted to you. Now, instead of wasting my time, I suggest you use your aggravation and impatience for a good cause and give the full measure of your assistance over to our investigative team to solve this crime quickly, hm?” Turning his back on Harding, who was still sputtering, he faced me. “Maggie, you two can go for now. If I need anything more from you, I’ll let you know. I will need you to give a complete signed statement up at the PD, but you can do that later today or tomorrow.”

  I nodded to let him know that I understood. “Tom . . . I hope you find who did this, fast. I know you might not believe me, but it honestly was just a coincidence that I was here today. Nothing spooky, I promise.”

  He looked at me, but he didn’t say anything. At least I didn’t feel the outright animosity from him at that moment. Maybe that was another sign that he was softening.

  “Ready?” Marcus asked me as Tom walked away. I nodded, more than ready to put some distance between us and Harding and all the negative energy that was sparking like firebombs around him.

  Chapter 9

  I was silent as we slowly made our way back to Marcus’s old pickup truck, Marcus matching his long-legged gait to my slower progress. Out in the parking lot, we saw a city news crew rush Chief Boggs as he exited his police SUV. He must have come by way of Annie’s, stopping in for his usual morning treat, if the paper bag in his hand was any indication. The thought made me smile. Mostly because of how easily it could be true. Annie’s plate-sized apple and blueberry fritters were well known for being his sweet-spot downfall. I couldn’t help wondering what he was telling the reporter. He hadn’t even stepped one foot onto the crime scene as yet.

  The ride to Enchantments was more than quiet. Marcus and I both fell into a silence born of the strangeness of the moment and the uncertainty of the immediate future. Because all of my plans that had seemed so straightforward yesterday were now all for nothing. How did that always happen? There had to be a lesson in there somewhere. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to plan. Maybe I was supposed to learn to go with the flow. Have faith, ask for help, and let things unfold. Maybe.

  Or maybe I was just trying to talk myself into it, since I had no other choice.

  Could be. I wouldn’t put it past me. I’m sure my Guides would even agree.

  By the time we got to the store, Marcus had shaken off his silence. He took my hand and squeezed it. “You okay, Maggie?”

  “Yeah. I’m all right.” I mustered a smile for him. “Despite appearances otherwise, all will be well.”

  “And all will be well, and all manner of things shall be well,” he said, finishing off my quote for me. He wagged my hand reassuringly back and forth. “It will. You know that, right?”

  I told him I did as I kissed him good-bye for the day. But I wasn’t sure how it would be made right. I was in a funk as I made my way over the threshold into the store I loved so well, feeling as though I’d just lost my best friend. Which was ridiculous. All I had lost was my sense of forward motion, of purpose tied to solution. Which meant I was back to stage one. Nowhere viable to live without taking advantage of Marcus’s far-reaching good graces and willingness to self-sacrifice, or taking myself home to face my mother’s I-told-you-so. Neither of which were particularly acceptable to me. I knew the apartment was lost to me, and obviously it wasn’t as good a deal as it had initially seemed—yes, that was an understatement—but gosh, just having a solution had felt so good.

  And of course, flawed a character as he might be, Locke had lost far more than I had today.

  I buried all of that and put on my freshest, brightest face. “Sorry, I’m a little bit late,” I called out to Liss, who I could hear rattling around somewhere within. I checked the time on my cell phone as I dropped my things on the counter and was surprised to find I was only a minute or two behind the official store opening hours. So much had happened in such a short amount of time that it actually felt much later than it was. I was worried it was nearing eleven. That sort of made Miss Cooper, English teacher, sound a little time paranoid, but I supposed what she said about admin watching their every move was probably true. These were strange and difficult times.

  “Is that you, ducks?” Liss called, her voice sounding muffled.

  “Yes, it’s me,” I called back. “I have some terrible news . . .”

  “Could you come here and tell me about it, dear? I’m afraid I’m a little tied up at the moment . . .”

  I followed the sound of her voice around the stacks to a display area back in the corner that usually held a selection of handmade vintage lace as well as knitwear handcrafted from the wool of sheep raised the organic way by a community of ecowitches in the Scottish Highlands. I wondered sometimes where Liss found all of her more global witchy ties. Her access to the finest artisanry in the witching community seemed positively unlimited. It was probably a moot point. These were the days of info at the fingertip. The Internet had made the world a very small place indeed.

  Liss was evidently in the mood for some rearranging of space. I came around the far ceiling-high shelves to find her up on a stepladder, a drill in hand, stretching toward a point on the wall that was beyond her reach. “Liss! What on earth are you doing? Do you have a death wish that I was previously not made aware of?”

  “Shh,” she said, laughing at herself. “Don’t fuss. Just hold the ladder, please.”

  “Shouldn’t we have someone else do that?” I asked her. “Someone taller, perhaps?”

  “I would, darling, but Marcus is, generally speaking, my
resident handyman, and he isn’t here at present. Could you be a love and hand me that bag of cup hooks there?”

  “Sure, but don’t lean out that way again. You’re freaking me out.” I put one crutch down and handed her the bag. “What exactly are we doing?”

  “Just wanting to hang some pretty swags of twinkle lights over here. I’m thinking on my feet this morning. I was thinking I might make this little corner into a serenity nook for our customers to read or meditate in. Something comfortable and cushioned that they can sink down into and lose themselves in for a few moments of sheer loveliness. What do you think?” she asked, gazing down at me over her gold-rimmed half-moon glasses.

  “Well,” I told her, “if our customers don’t like it, you can send me to the corner any time that you like. I think it sounds wonderful. A haven to escape to when their workday has been trying to beat them into submission is going to go over like the moon over water.”

  “I think it will, too. I do love giving our customers special moments. Now, what was it you were about to tell me, dear? Bad news, you said? Nothing too terrible, I hope.”

  I held up a cup hook to her. “There was another murder.”

  “Oh. Oh dear.”

  “Marcus and I found the body.”

  She paused with the drill and looked back at me. “Oh my goodness. What happened?”

  I told her how I had decided to take the apartment I’d looked at the day previously, and how that single snap decision had changed the course of my planned new reality. I told her how Marcus had taken me to the apartment complex this morning first thing so that I could sign the lease with all the special deals and discounts that had been promised to me, only to find the office in ruins and a dead man floating in the swimming pool. “Yeah,” I confirmed when she shook her head, scandalized. “Can you believe it?”

  “My. My, my, my. It never fails to amaze me, the myriad connections that the universe comes up with to create synchronicity in our lives. Not,” she said when she saw my face, “that that feels like a good thing when one is in the thick of it. Was it too awful, love?”

  “It wasn’t fun,” I admitted. “His face . . .” I shuddered. “That bloaty look. Like he’d gained forty pounds overnight. And the discoloration.” It wasn’t anything I wanted to see again.

  “Do they know anything yet? Who might have wanted to do such a terrible thing?”

  “I don’t think so. Not yet anyway.”

  “And it was most definitely . . . murder? Without question?”

  I nodded. When combined with the mess in the office, the coincidence factor was just too great. “It was. I know the police are approaching it as such.”

  “Ahh.” Matter-of-fact realization flickered behind her signature glasses. “So you saw Tom.”

  “Yes.”

  “And how did that go?”

  I shrugged. “He still hates me.”

  “Oh, my dear, I’m sure that’s not true. The line between love and hate is so very fine. It takes but a moment, a blip in time, to cross that line.”

  “Yes, well, I think he’s treading that line.” I made a face. “I would feel worse about breaking up with him if we hadn’t been having major personality differences beforehand. And he had been stepping out with his not-ex-wife even before, although I didn’t find that out until later of course.” He had. Annie Miller had mentioned an evening date between Tom and his not-quite-ex Julie and had reluctantly clued me in, though at the time she hadn’t known exactly what she was seeing . . . only that she had seen him out on an intimate evening with another female who wasn’t me. But that was weeks ago, and the past was the past. Or at least I wanted it to be. It didn’t mean anything to me now. It didn’t matter in the slightest. It didn’t burn me at all that his not-ex-wife was pretty and pixie thin and able to wear the kind of clothes that made her look feminine and elegant but would make me resemble the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Nope. Not me.

  Liss smiled her best Mona Lisa smile and turned back to her work. “Sometimes things happen because they are meant to happen, darling. Sometimes we have difficulty seeing beyond the day-to-day in our lives. We have trouble interpreting the signs.”

  I knew she was right. Our Guides were always working behind the scenes for us. Only they had the farsightedness to see beyond the traumas and dramas of our day-to-day to the future we were meant to have, and if we listened to that still, small voice within us, they would guide us to our futures with the kind of ease we often longed for but so rarely achieved.

  Poor Mr. Locke. Was he guilty of not paying attention to his own still, small voice within? Would his Guides have led him out of this particular danger if he’d but listened? Or was this particular end something that was inescapable, due to the path he’d set into motion with a sequence of choices made, options enacted?

  “The apartment wasn’t meant to be for you, darling. Obviously that is true. You made a quick decision based on the facts at hand, but your ability to think things through was muddied by the manager himself and his prodding. If it had been meant to be, everything would have gone off without a hitch, things falling into place like clockwork.”

  The only thing that had fallen into place like clockwork was the accelerating weirdness leading up to Locke’s death.

  “Tom wasn’t meant for you, either.”

  I gave her a sharp, surprised glance. “No, I know he wasn’t.” And it wasn’t that. It wasn’t.

  In my mind’s eye, I pictured that moment in the hospital, weeks ago, when Tom had walked in on me, with his ex-wife on his arm. The discomfort of the realization that he had gone back to the woman who had broken his heart. The pang of awkwardness—not jealousy, honestly not that—when my eyes met hers and I knew she knew who I was, too.

  No, it was much better that Tom found someone whose personal energies blended with his own, rather than clashing with it as mine sometimes did thanks to . . . differences . . . in personal philosophies. And better for me, for all the same reasons.

  “Good,” Liss said firmly. “Far too often we beat ourselves up for things that are simply part of our lesson plan. Now. Tell me more about what happened this morning.”

  “I will, if you come down off the ladder and let me make you a cup of tea.”

  “Aren’t you the little manipulator?” she said with a chuckle. “But I think you’re supposed to be putting your foot up as much as possible, aren’t you? How about if I make us both a cup of tea and you do just that?”

  “All right, fine. If you’re going to be that way about it,” I teased her right back. I hopped along behind her as she made her way back toward the front of the store and the coffee and tea bar that was my favorite home away from home. Annie’s café had sent over its usual delivery of plate-sized fritters— apple and blueberry cream cheese, yum—and a selection of beignettes and cream-filled crepes and scones. Ever virtuous, I turned away from the carb fest that was calling me home by reminding myself that I hadn’t exactly been able to work out of late to make up for it. Sigh.

  “Tell me. What’s your poison of choice this morning?”

  I turned my eyes ceilingward, thinking. “Hm. Something soothing and stress relieving.”

  “I know just the thing. A special blend. I think I’ll surprise you.”

  Liss was the specialist at the shop with regards to the metaphysical healing properties of the gourmet teas and coffees we offered. I knew all of the basics, but Liss’s area of expertise was in mixing teas to heal just the thing that ailed you at that very moment. A real gift. One of her many.

  Five minutes and she had a steaming teacup sitting in front of me, its aroma wafting up on tendrils of steam, fragrant and warm. She poured her own and sat down opposite me, lifting her cup to her lips. “Ah. That’s more like it.”

  “I’ll say,” I said, breathing it in.

  “This gentleman who was killed. What about it made it seem a certain murder? Isn’t it feasible that his drowning was accidental?”

  “Well, if it wasn’t fo
r the office being ransacked as well, I would say yes. Not ransacked. More like purposely and systematically plundered. The door to the office was ajar when Marcus and I got there. At the time we didn’t think anything about it. We just thought he must have been there waiting for me to arrive.”

  “Plundered. What exactly do you mean by ‘plundered’?”

  “Well,” I said, taking a sip of my tea and wincing as it burned my tongue, “the files had been pulled out and scattered all over the floor. And the computer—the brand new, revved-up, and tricked-out computer that Marcus just rebuilt for him—”

  “Marcus?”

  “I know, just another one of those weird connections that we were talking about, setting itself up while the rest of us weren’t paying attention. Anyway, the computer that Marcus just built for him was smashed to bits all over the floor. Completely demolished. All that gorgeous hardware, gone. A real crime.”

  “Hm.” Liss puckered over her teacup, pondering. “You said it seemed targeted. Why would anyone want to destroy the new computer? If their motive was burglary, they wouldn’t destroy something of value. If their motive was solely to kill the poor manager, then why stop to destroy the computer? It doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “Me, either. And I don’t know. But it definitely seemed that way to me.”

  “Interesting. Not to diminish the man’s death, of course.”

  Of course. “There were so many odd things that happened yesterday, too, while I was at the apartment complex. So many odd people. I think . . . I don’t know what I was thinking last night when I told the manager I’d take the apartment. It just . . . it sounded like such a good deal, and when he called to say that there was someone else interested in taking it, I guess I just lost all common sense. It was stupid, really. Like the guy who was trying to get his girlfriend out of the lease. He was upset because there wasn’t a termination clause that allowed for the tenant to terminate the lease with advance notice, it was all one-sided to benefit the apartment complex. The two of them nearly came to blows.”