by Sharon Pape
Devon was polite but insistent that he was qualified to answer any questions I had. We sparred for a good few minutes, getting nowhere. “Okay, okay,” I said, finally. “I would like to know if Ms. Sharpe also spoke to Patrick Griffin while she was in New Camel.”
“I can check that for you,” Devon said. He was back on the line in a minute “I have Ms. Sharpe’s calendar up on my computer, and I see she was scheduled to make the presentation at the high school. Please hold for another moment.” When he returned, he told me that she filed her report on the presentation but made no mention of any additional stops in the town.
“Thank you, Devon. I appreciate your help. But maybe I can leave a message on her voice mail too? That way she can decide if she wants to get back to me.”
“If I helped you, I don’t see why you need to leave her a message,” he said with a surly edge to his words.
I’d been patient for long enough with Devon’s little power trip. Although I rarely used it, I knew a spell that could make a person agreeable. It only worked for seconds at a time. Making someone behave in a way that went against their nature or their will was one of those spells that Merlin considered gray magick. Subverting someone’s will for longer than that or for dark purposes crossed the dangerous line into black magick. It had been drummed into me at a young age that our family held no truck with the evil side of sorcery.
I murmured the words of the spell so softly that Devon could barely hear them.
“Listen to me
“And do as I bid thee
“As long as no harm
“To anyone be.”
When he asked me to repeat what I said, I asked him to connect me to Ms. Sharpe’s voice mail instead.
“No problem,” he said. “Have a good day.”
In my message, I said I had a question about her recent presentation in New Camel and would appreciate a call when she had a moment. I added my phone number and thanked her in advance. I’d done all I could.
The rest of the day flew by in a blur. The tour bus that was scheduled to arrive at ten was right on time. The one that arrived fifteen minutes later, was actually scheduled for the following week. There was a little dustup at the New Camel Tourism Bureau, which took care of scheduling tour groups, among other things. The bus company insisted that the scheduling office made the mistake. The scheduling coordinator, a lofty title for the single employee who ran the office, insisted the bus company was in error.
The passengers on the second bus had apparently become restless and decided to disembark while the problem was being ironed out. They milled around in the street outside the bureau, the more vocal venting their irritation loudly enough for everyone to hear. The passengers from the first bus were having trouble weaving their way through the crowd to reach the shops they wanted to visit. It took the mayor’s intervention to settle the ruffled feathers by saying both groups were welcome to be there.
Lolly and I heard the hubbub because the bureau was just two doors down from Abracadabra and her shop. We stepped outside at the same time to see what was going on. Tilly, who was busy baking, either didn’t hear the noise or wasn’t curious about it. And if Tilly was baking, Merlin was a rapt audience.
Two busloads of tourists proved to be an embarrassment of riches. As people trooped into my shop nonstop and the volume of noise escalated, Sashkatu jumped ship for the calmer shores of Tea and Empathy. I heard him caterwauling at the closed connecting door until Tilly or Merlin let him in. Thirty minutes later, I was wishing I could have followed him.
All the people trying to pass each other in the narrow aisles kept knocking jars off shelves. I spent so much time cleaning up broken glass and the contents of the jars that I couldn’t properly answer questions or ring up purchases in a timely fashion. Some would-be customers abandoned their full baskets and left in a huff. It was a no-win situation. If I ignored the mess, someone could slip on it, and then I’d be slapped with a lawsuit. They didn’t seem to understand that no one had told the merchants to expect such a crowd.
When I heard people grumbling that I should hire more help or my business would go belly up, I knew how the camel felt when that final straw landed on him. The grumblers were awfully lucky I didn’t dabble in black magick.
I’ve never been so happy to see buses heading out of town. I surveyed the mess around me. Too bad I couldn’t just wiggle my nose to put things right. There was still breakage to clean up and merchandise to reshelve, but I flopped into the customer chair, done in. That’s where Tilly found me an hour later. Compared to me, she looked fresh and perky.
“Good Lord,” she said, clearly shocked by the condition of my shop. “What happened?”
“Too much of a good thing,” I said. “You’re lucky you work by appointment now.”
“As soon as I saw the swarms of people, I locked my door and put a sign in the window that said No Available Appointments. I stationed Merlin at the door to let in the right folks at their assigned times. I had to pay him in baked goods, but it was worth every cookie and scone I had on hand, plus the promise of a tray of brownies in the future. He can drive a hard bargain.”
When I didn’t laugh or say anything, Tilly gave me an appraising look. “You are positively whipped, sweetheart. I’m a fool for not seeing that right off.” She clucked her tongue. “Instead, I go babbling on about how clever I am and what an easy day I had.”
“It’s okay,” I said.
“It most certainly is not. I’m going to roll up my sleeves and help you get this place back in shape.”
“But you don’t have sleeves,” I said, tired to the point of silliness.
It wasn’t all that funny, but maybe it was my solemn delivery that caused us both to start giggling like a couple of kids. Once we recovered, we set to work sweeping glass off the floors and reshelving the dozens of items that had been left wherever customers happened to be when they lost patience and walked out. Things were piled on display tables, in empty spaces on the wrong shelves, on the floor, and on the counter. I didn’t need a calculator to tell me I lost a lot of revenue to the chaos. Perhaps more important, I’d lost the goodwill of many potential customers.
I was putting the last jar of skin softener back where it belonged when Tilly called to me from the front of the shop. She didn’t sound happy. I hurried over to her, wondering what else this day had in store for me. I found her standing at the counter where one of the shopping baskets full of merchandise had been forsaken. She was holding a sheet of white paper and looking as grim as she’d sounded.
“What is that?” I asked.
She held the paper out to me. The message on it had been printed from a computer. There was no mistaking what it said: “If I can get in here, I can get in anywhere. You can’t hide from me.”
For my aunt’s sake, I did my best not to react, but it wasn’t easy. This message shook me more than the earlier one painted on my fence. It was less emotional but somehow more chilling. The wording was as well honed as the knife used to slit Amanda’s throat. And now the killer had been here, in my shop, maybe mere inches away from me.
“This is serious,” Tilly said. “How was he able to get inside? If the wards were working, they should have picked up on the darkness in him and kept him out.”
“With all the people coming and going today, there might have been too much confusion for the wards to work properly.” I had no other way to explain why the powerful spell of protection had failed me for the first time in my life.
“I know you were overwhelmed today, but humor me,” Tilly said. “Close your eyes and think back. Are you sure you didn’t catch a glimpse of a familiar face before you were distracted by something else?”
I had everything to gain and nothing to lose. I leaned back against the counter, closed my eyes, and tried to recall a familiar face among the shifting waves of strangers. It was no use. I looked at Tilly and sho
ok my head, sure that Nancy Drew would have spotted the killer.
Chapter 28
We were getting nowhere fast hunting down Amanda’s killer. Travis’s coverage of her death was reduced to snippets of local color designed to keep the story in the public mind until real news came along. The case was always in my thoughts, regardless of what else I was doing. It didn’t matter if I was busy with customers, the minutiae of running the business or the upkeep of a household that included six furries, it ran like a loop through my mind—motive and opportunity—over and over. I wanted to shout, “Will the real killer please stand up?”
Alan Boswell became a wealthy man when Amanda died before signing the divorce decree. All that money added up to a hell of a motive.
As for Rusty, unrequited love may have finally caused him to snap after Amanda’s last rejection.
Dwayne Davies had been worried about losing his job and angry because Fletcher had undervalued him. A bonus and recognition by the boss may have been enough incentive for Dwayne to do his dirty work for him.
The fact that Patrick Griffin had changed his position on the hotel troubled me, but it didn’t point to a motive for slashing Amanda’s throat, especially since they were on the same side of the issue at the time of her murder. He claimed his change of heart was due to his son’s efforts, plus a single conversation with the EPA representative, which still had to be verified.
In one of those strange coincidences that aren’t coincidental, Ms. Sharpe from the EPA called as I was thinking about her. I asked her to hold while I finished up with a customer.
“I got your message, Ms. Wilde,” she said when I picked up the phone again. “How may I help you?”
I thanked her for getting back to me. “I’m hoping you can answer a question that came up as part of an ongoing investigation in New Camel.” I was careful to avoid the words murder and killer. I didn’t want her to think I was trying to implicate her in the crime.
“Are you talking about the murder of that woman on the town board,” she asked, “or the John Doe they found in the marsh?”
“The town board murder,” I said, feeling foolish for thinking that like Superman’s glasses, clever wording could mask the obvious truth.
“I’ll try to answer your question,” she said after a brief hesitation.
I could hear the wariness in her tone and assured her that she had no cause for concern. “It has to do with a program you recently presented at the high school here,” I said to provide her with some context.
“Okay.”
“By the way,” I interrupted myself, “you really reached a lot of people that day, most important, the kids who were there.”
“Thank you for that,” she said, her voice warming. “We don’t usually find out how effective our programs are, though I understand there are surveys in the works.”
“I’d just like to know if you stopped by Christopher Griffin’s house to speak to his father after your presentation.”
“As a matter of fact, I did,” she said.
“Thank you. When I tried to reach you the other day, I spoke to Devon Crowley.”
“Ah yes, Devon,” she said, trying to swallow a groan but not quite succeeding. “He’s very—how shall I put it—take-charge. I imagine he told you there was nothing about a visit to the Griffins in my report.”
“He did.”
“The answer is simple. My reports don’t include what I do on my own time.”
I asked myself if I believed her and decided I did. I was more than happy to dismiss the irritating Devon.
“Chris came up to me at the end of the program,” she went on. “He was all fired up about the possibility of the marsh there being drained. He told me his dad’s vote could stop it from happening. Then he all but begged me to stop by the house to speak to him directly.”
“I was under the impression the Waverly Corporation acquired all the necessary permits,” I said.
“Yes, they did. I checked into it myself. But just because they were granted the permits doesn’t always mean it was the right call.”
Although she stopped short of any outright accusations, her meaning was clear. Decisions at the agency were not immune to influence by interests with deep pockets. It didn’t surprise me. It was the fodder of daily news reports—kickbacks, bribes, and influence peddling were part of doing business at all levels of the government.
I thanked her, hoping that if our conversation had been recorded “in an attempt to improve their service,” she didn’t get into trouble on my account.
* * * *
Later that day, Lolly escorted a young woman into my shop. When the door chimes jingled, I poked my head out of the aisle where I’d been restocking our best-selling depilatory cream. “Hi,” I said, walking to the counter to greet them.
The young woman looked about my age, but there was a hardness to her, as if life had knocked her around some. Her hair was a brassy blonde, and she had on enough makeup to throw off her balance on the spiky-heeled boots she was wearing.
“This is Tammy,” Lolly said without preamble. “Tammy, this is Kailyn. I would trust her with my life, which means you can too.”
Tammy’s expression said she was reserving judgment on that. She came up with an uncertain smile that quickly withered.
“I want you to tell Kailyn what you just told me,” Lolly coaxed her.
Tammy looked from her to me and back again. When she spoke, her voice was hard too. “I changed my mind. I don’t want to do this.” She turned away from us and toward the door as if she were about to run.
Lolly grabbed her forearm. “This is not just about your relationship with Alan. This is about keeping anyone else from being killed,” she said with what I’d dubbed her Iron Grandma expression. If any of her grandchildren misbehaved, that expression shut them down without the need of a single word. How such a sweet, rosy-cheeked face could morph into Iron Grandma ranked up there with the other great mysteries of the universe.
“I was wrong to tell you those things. I just wanted to badmouth him is all. Alan’s not capable of that kind of violence.”
“Don’t kid yourself,” Lolly said, “Everyone is capable of violence given the right circumstances.”
Tammy was clearly more resistant than most to Lolly’s alter ego, making me wonder if she’d known a lot more than a stern face in her childhood. Lolly must have arrived at the same conclusion. In the blink of an eye, she was a kindly grandma once more, purveyor of fine chocolates.
“Tammy, Tammy,” she clucked, “I know you have a good heart. I know you want to do the right thing here. What if Alan is the killer? What if he decides he doesn’t want you hanging around anymore?”
The possibility of her own demise seemed to reach Tammy. Her face gave away the battle being waged in her mind “All right,” she said finally. “I’ll tell her.”
Lolly lowered herself into the customer chair with a small groan. She rarely complained, but once, after a particularly busy week, she told me the hardest part of her job was spending most of the day on her feet.
I hopped onto the counter. Tammy could have joined me, but she elected to remain upright, teetering slightly on her heels. “It’s like this,” she began, “I met Alan a few years back. He’s old and not much to look at, but he treated me nice, made me feel special, you know?” I bobbed my head. “I’m no fool, though; I knew if his wife wiggled her pinky at him, he’d dump me and run back home, not because he loved her; it was just for the money. When she started really pushing for the divorce, he sort of came unglued. He was angry a lot of the time, especially if he drank too much. But he never hit me or nothing,” she was quick to add, which made me think maybe he had.
“I understand,” I said.
“Go on,” Lolly urged like the trainer in a boxer’s corner. “You’re doing fine.”
“Anyway, when Alan was i
n one of those moods, he paced around his apartment cursing and talking to himself but aloud. One night I heard him say he’d kill her. He’d kill her before he’d let her cheat him out of his rightful share.”
“He said those exact words: ‘I’ll kill her’?”
“That’s what I said. Are you calling me a liar?” She seemed genuinely insulted.
“Not at all, Tammy. But sometimes, in a stressful situation, a person’s memory isn’t completely reliable.”
“My memory is just fine, thank you.”
“I’m sorry if I gave you the impression I didn’t believe you.”
“Well, okay,” she said grudgingly.
“You need to tell Kailyn what you told Detective Duggan too,” Lolly reminded her.
“I said Alan was over at my place for dinner the night Amanda was killed.”
“Was he?” I asked.
“Yeah, he just got there a little late,” she said with a sudden interest in the floor. She clearly didn’t want to look me in the eye. It would have been a perfect opportunity for me to point out that she had lied to Duggan, but I took the high road and let it pass.
“How late was Alan?” I asked.
“Thirty, maybe forty minutes.” Her tone had lost some of its edge.
I wanted to believe it was because I’d won her respect by not calling her out on the lying issue.
“I was really angry because I’d made sloppy joes, one of his favorites.”
“What time did you expect him there?”