That Olde White Magick

by Sharon Pape

  The last of the wild animals were heading away, probably wondering why they’d come here in the first place. After closing and locking the front door, Tilly fell back against it, looking weak with relief. After a few seconds, she straightened up. “Let’s go see if that pie is cool enough to slice!”

  I glanced at my watch. It seemed like I’d been away from my shop for the entire day, but in reality it had been less than two hours. I made an executive decision. There was time for a quick piece of pie before I headed back to work. Tilly deemed the pie ready to eat, even though it was still venting steam and didn’t hold together properly when she put the knife into it. None of us cared about the aesthetics. I think we would have sucked it up through a straw if we had to.

  The day’s events had made two things crystal clear to me: life was unpredictable enough without the added stress and craziness Merlin brought to it, and it was up to me to figure out a way to send him home, whether or not he wanted to go.

  * * * *

  I wasn’t back at work for long when Paul Curtis stopped in. I almost didn’t recognize him out of uniform. He looked younger, like the boy next door, in jeans, a polo, and sneakers.

  “Hey, I just wanted to see how well you weathered Duggan. He can be tough when he’s stressed, and right now there’s a lot of pressure on him to catch Amanda’s killer, not that I’m trying to defend the guy, you know, though it probably sounds that way.” He was rambling like an awkward teenager.

  “Thanks for checking on me,” I said, “but as you can see, I’m none the worse for my talk with Duggan. He did try to bite my head off, but I guess it was just too hard.”

  Curtis laughed. “Listen, I was wondering if you’d like to go to lunch sometime. With me, I mean.”

  I wasn’t surprised by his invitation. It had been a long time coming. But I hadn’t worked out how to respond. I couldn’t cite my relationship with Travis as a means of letting him down gently because I didn’t know if Travis and I still had a relationship. Then there was the more central issue—sure Curtis was nice enough, but I wasn’t particularly attracted to him. I hadn’t even worked out what I should call him. Until then I’d thought of him as Officer Curtis, but in his civvies, talking about a potential date, it had to be Paul.

  “Here’s the thing, Paul,” I said, trying out his name, “I’m just coming out of a relationship, and I’d hate to ruin our chances by starting over when my head and heart aren’t in the right place. May I have a rain check?”

  He looked disappointed but not crushed. “Yeah, sure, whenever you’re ready, just give me a call.” He took one of my business cards from the counter, asked for a pen, and wrote his number on the back for me. He asked if my aunt had recovered from the shock of finding Amanda. I asked how he liked working with Duggan, and we shared a couple of laughs at the detective’s expense. I felt like we’d left things between us at a good place.

  A steady parade of customers kept me from dwelling too long on my love life or my lack of one. Toward the end of the day, Nancy Clemens walked in. She and Clifford, her husband of sixty years, were the “mom and pop” owners of The Soda Jerk. The diminutive couple had moved to New Camel and opened the café/soda fountain more than thirty years ago. As a kid, I remember always seeing Nancy behind the counter, making her extravagant ice cream concoctions. Clifford preferred socializing with the customers but was quick to roll up his sleeves if they were short-handed. It had become a rite of passage for teenagers in New Camel to wait tables there. The summer I did my stint, I walked my feet off and still managed to gain seven pounds.

  “Hi, Mrs. Clemens,” I said, coming around the counter to give her a hug. I didn’t see her or her husband much anymore. Their son and daughter-in-law had taken over the day-to-day operation of the café around the time they’d turned eighty.

  “How many times have I told you to call me Nancy?” she scolded me, her blue eyes twinkling with good humor. “Mrs. Clemens was fine when you were a kid, but you’re an adult yourself now.”

  “Okay, Nancy,” I said, “but my grandmother would have had a meltdown if I’d done that when she was alive.” For all I knew, she was having one at that very moment.

  “Bronwen was a fine woman but a little behind the times. Informality is the order of the day. I firmly believe that if you don’t adjust, you go the way of the dinosaurs.”

  “What brings you in today?” I asked.

  “Goodness,” she said with a chuckle, “I almost forgot. Clifford has a cold and all the cough medicines he’s tried upset his stomach. So I said to myself, Nancy, you need to take yourself over to Abracadabra, and Kailyn will know what to give him.”

  “Colt’s Foot should do it,” I said. “Have a seat here while I grab it for you.”

  “You’ve put in a chair. What a grand idea.”

  It took me a full five minutes to locate the right jar. Whenever Merlin helped around the shop, I had trouble locating things. I finally found the Colt’s Foot on the shelf with jars of Bearberry and Lion’s Mane. He must have decided to group together all the herbs with animal names.

  “Sorry that took so long,” I said, putting the jar down on the counter. “I have a new helper who gets creative when he restocks the shelves.” Nancy started to push herself up from the chair. “No hurry, sit a while longer” I told her. “I’ll ring this up whenever you’re ready.”

  “Thank you. It does feel good to get off my feet. Don’t get me wrong, Cliff is a wonderful man, but when he’s not feeling well, he keeps me hopping.”

  “Hopefully this will do the trick. It acts like an expectorant and a cough suppressant. Just make a tea with it.”

  . “It’s not actually made from a horse’s hoof, is it?” she asked hesitantly.

  “No, not at all. It got the name from the shape of its leaf. Someone thought it looked like a colt’s foot, I guess.”

  “That’s a relief. Tell me, has there been anything more about Amanda’s tragic death?”

  “Not that I know of, but everyone I speak to seems to have their own theory on the killer’s identity.”

  “Interesting,” Nancy said. “I believe I know pretty much everyone in this town, but I can’t imagine any one of them doing such a terrible thing. Of course Clifford says I’m the same naive kid I was when we met.”

  “Does he have a suspect in mind?”

  “Well, to be honest, he’s never much liked our mayor.”

  “Do you know why?” I’d never heard anyone speak badly of Lester. He was a bit smarmy for my taste, a typical glad-hander who had sailed into the mayor’s position because no one else wanted the job. To his credit, during seven years in office, he’d held onto the good will of the majority of the electorate.

  “Cliff is sure he’s on the take.”

  “Does he have evidence?” I asked.

  Nancy giggled. “He claims he has a sixth sense, but I’ve known the man for over sixty years, and I’ve never once seen it in action.” She glanced at her watch and sighed. “As lovely as it is to sit and chat, I need to be getting back to him.”

  I rang up her purchase and put it in one of our reusable mini totes. “Let me know if the Colt’s Foot does the trick,” I said, handing it to her, “and give your husband my best wishes for a speedy recovery.”

  After she left, I sat in the chair she’d vacated. I had to get busy interviewing possible suspects. We had to find the killer before tourists chose another quaint town to visit, one that didn’t have murder victims cropping up on a regular basis. First thing in the morning, I would go over to Winterland. The manager of a ski resort shouldn’t be too busy to see me on a hot day in August.

  Chapter 8

  I made an appointment to see Eric Ingersoll over my lunch hour. I don’t know why I still called it a lunch hour when most days I downed a PB and J between customers. I drove into the ski resort expecting a ghost town at that time of year. Instead, I foun
d a whirlwind of activity. Construction vehicles and electrical and plumbing trucks and vans from virtually every aspect of interior design were chaotically parked wherever there was space. The resort was apparently in the last stages of a major renovation. Ginger, Ingersoll’s secretary, hadn’t mentioned a thing about it. She told me to use the resort’s main entrance, to make the second right, and that the one-story administration building would be on my left.

  Driving in, I could see that the walkways were covered with dirt, the roads hidden beneath a thick coat of mud from the heavy vehicles that must have been parading through there for months. Although Ginger’s directions proved accurate, I would have appreciated a heads-up about the conditions I would face. Boots or sneakers would have been much more appropriate than the delicate strappy sandals I was wearing. I squeezed my SUV in this nook. between two trucks, hoping they would notice it was there and not demolish it.

  When I opened the car door and looked down, I knew my sandals were not going to fare well. A spell might help mitigate the damage, but I needed one that relied only on words because I didn’t generally keep candles, herbs, and other magickal elements in my purse or glove compartment. I settled on a clothing protection spell. Although it was meant to protect the person wearing the clothes, I figured I could tweak it to shield my shoes. I’d never tried to ad lib with a spell before, but I had nothing to lose. I ran through the spell in my head until it sounded more or less the way I remembered it. Then it was just a matter of changing a few words to make them fit the situation. When I was ready, I closed the windows. No need to serenade any workmen walking by.

  “A spell of safety here I cast

  A word of might to hold me fast.

  A shield before me and beneath,

  All around protection seek.

  To these sandals no harm come,

  Dirt and mire keep them from.

  I repeated the spell three times, committing my will and energy to help it succeed. I stepped from the car and carefully weighed each step before I took it. I made my way around the worst of the muck, but just before I reached the curb, I miscalculated, and my left foot sank ankle deep into a thick puddle that sucked at my foot like a living creature trying to drag me under. Balancing on my right foot, I pulled the other one out. To my delight, the mud slid off the sandal as though it were covered in Teflon-coated fabric. It was as pristine as the day I bought it. I don’t know if I was more thrilled about the state of my sandal or the fact that the hastily reworded spell had actually done its job.

  I made it the rest of the way to the building without further mishap. When I walked into the lobby, I found Ginger at her desk. She was about my age with ginger-colored hair that made me wonder if she was born that way or felt constrained to dye her hair to match her name. She looked up when she heard me come in, a smile already in place.

  “Good afternoon, how may I help you?” she asked.

  “I’m Kailyn Wilde. I have an appointment to see Mr. Ingersoll.”

  Her smile widened into a grin, and she pointed at me. It took me a second to realize she was actually pointing past me. I turned and came face-to-face with a man who looked way too Hollywood to be the manager of a ski resort in nowhere New York. He was tall and blond, with aviator sunglasses that hid his eyes and a T-shirt that celebrated his biceps. He whipped off the glasses and gave me a smile that could have caused snow blindness. If Ken dolls were your thing, he was a great specimen, but like Ken, he was too waxy perfect for me.

  I held out my hand. “Kailyn Wilde.”

  He took it and held it for a beat too long for my comfort. I didn’t try to draw it free, though, because he was more apt to let down his guard with someone he liked. “Nice to meet you, Ms. Wilde, I’m Eric Ingersoll. Come join me in my office and we’ll talk.”

  As we walked, he kept up the patter, apologizing for being late, which he wasn’t, because he had to troubleshoot a problem with the “reno.”

  “I think I’ve seen you around town...wait...give me a sec.” He snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it. You’re the girl from the magick shop.”

  “I don’t recall seeing you there,” I said.

  “I never came in. Saw you through the window. The one with the cat. Is he your familiar?” he asked with a wink. We had stopped at an open door with the name Dwayne Davies stenciled on it.

  “As a matter of fact, he is,” I replied as if it was a perfectly normal question he might have asked anyone. Ingersoll studied me, probably trying to decide if I was serious or just teasing him back. He gave up after a few seconds and led the way into Dwayne Davies’s office, flipping the switch for the overhead lighting panels. The room was large and awash in paper. There were piles of it everywhere: on the desk, on the floor, and on the two chairs in front of the desk. He relocated the paper from one chair to the floor and invited me to have a seat. He dropped onto the chair behind the desk, making it squeak in protest.

  “Now what can I do for you?”

  “I’m planning a family reunion for next summer, and I’ve been checking out venues in the area.”

  Ingersoll was busy rooting around in the papers on the desk with no apparent regard for the dozens of pages he was pushing over the edge and onto the floor. He unearthed a yellow legal pad with a flourish and found a pen in the top drawer. “Okay, how many people do you need to accommodate?”

  Great. I hadn’t thought of that. Way to go, Nancy Drew. “Between twenty and forty.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “That’s a lot of ‘between.’”

  “I have a big family, and they’re hard to pin down. I guess I just need to know if you can accommodate up to forty.”

  “Forty? That won’t be a problem.” He dropped the pad and pen back onto the desk. He must have decided I didn’t have enough of my ducks in a row for him to bother taking down specifics.

  “I guess what I really need is a schedule of room prices, meal options, and a rundown of your summer activities,” I said. At least that sounded more organized.

  He opened one desk drawer and then another. In the third one he found what he was after. He leaned across the desk to hand me a brochure and a breakdown of their package deals with a price list. “Our summer rates are a considerable savings over the winter ones,” he said. “Take a look through the material. If you have any questions give me a call. Word of advice—we get a lot of family groups in the summer, so if you’re interested in having your reunion here, get everyone to agree on a couple of different dates in case one isn’t available.”

  “Thanks, I will.” I was trying to figure out how to shift the conversation away from reunions to Amanda’s murder without being too obvious and before he ran off to tackle another reno crisis. “So, is Dwayne Davies your alter ego?” I asked lightly, grabbing the only arrow in my quiver.

  Ingersoll gave a hoot. “Hardly. Dwayne the Dweeb was the manager until he left work one day about a month ago and never came back. No heads-up, no take this job and shove it. Fletch was a raving lunatic when he found out; he’s lost a couple of other people recently.”

  “You mean Hugh Fletcher?” From what little I’d heard about the billionaire, I wasn’t surprised that he had trouble keeping people on his payroll.

  “Yeah, he owns this place. He asked me to cover things here until he can hire another manager. It’s not exactly my dream job, but I don’t have much going on this time of year, and he made it worth my while.”

  That explained Ingersoll’s lack of proprietorship about the position, the office, and its contents. “So when you’re not wearing the manager’s hat, what do you do around here?” I asked.

  He leaned back in the chair, making it groan. “Actually, I’m in charge of the entire ski operation. I hire the instructors and make all the critical decisions about safety conditions on the slopes. I decide when to shut things down and when to open them” He was clearly taken with the power he held—a big egocentri
c fish in a piddling pond.

  “Then you’re not a ski instructor?”

  “I teach advanced classes, from time to time.” He sat up straight again. “Why, you a skier?”

  “I’ve never been on skis.”

  “I can fix that.”

  I finally had my opening. “I guess skiing can’t be any more dangerous than living in New Camel these days.”

  “You’re talking about that lady who was murdered?”

  “There are a lot of ways to die, but I didn’t think that going to a town meeting was one of them. Maybe that kind of thing happens in big cities, but not here, not in this town.”

  “Everything changes,” he said with a philosophical shrug. “Probably has to do with that Waverly hotel business.”

  “I know, but come on. Who commits murder over a zoning issue?” I pretended to be appalled by the idea, which wasn’t a stretch. “I don’t want that hotel here, but it would never occur to me to kill someone to stop it.”

  “You dig deeper, and you’ll find the real reason she was killed comes down to money or sex,” Ingersoll said. He sounded like he knew from experience.

  “How do you feel about another hotel in the area?”

  “Me, I don’t much care how it’s resolved. As long as there are people who want to ski and old Mother Nature keeps the snow coming, I’m good. Now Fletch, he’s another story. He doesn’t like competition. It’s bad for the bottom line.”

  Did Ingersoll realize he was saying his boss had a motive for killing Amanda? Or did he do it as a ploy meant to deflect suspicion from himself? I wondered if his job description included getting rid of obstacles in his boss’s way. “Were you at the meeting that night?” I asked. “It was so awful. Everyone was in shock.”

  He grinned. “Can you really see me at a town board meeting? No way. I was having dinner with my girlfriend over in the Glen.”

  “Someplace you’d recommend?”