When we pulled up to the front steps, Pluto was out of the car like a shot. I went across the porch and stopped at the claw marks on the door. I studied them for a long moment. It could be a prank. Or Gertrude. Or something that had followed me home from the Musgrove woods. I didn’t like any of the options.
8
I awoke from a sound sleep when I heard something downstairs in Dahlia House. A noise or sixth sense had awakened me, some self-preservation instinct that brought me rising from a dark slumber like air bubbles in the ocean’s trough.
The tread of a heavy boot moved along the polished wood floors of the front parlor, and I slipped from bed and hurried to the upstairs railing. The floorboards were bitterly cold, and when I gripped the banister and looked down, I saw only the broad shoulders and fair hair of my intruder. Instead of Malvik or some dark entity, it was Coleman Peters. He’d stopped by Dahlia House even though he’d told me he wouldn’t.
I hurried along the hallway and down the stairs, trying not to laugh out loud with pleasure. At long last, Coleman and I would have some private time.
He heard my approach and turned to me, his arms opening, his eyes serious and hungry. A moment later I was in his embrace. I’d known Coleman’s kisses in the past. In fact, I’d sustained myself on the memory of one long kiss on Harold Erkwell’s porch, but this time a kiss wouldn’t be enough.
His lips seared through me, hot and hungry like we were burning rocket fuel. His thumb grazed the skin beneath my jaw and I thought I would faint from the sensual rush of pleasure. I’d never been so alive, and so hungry for a man’s touch.
Coleman gathered me against him and every inch of my body pulsed. I’d waited such a long time for this. We’d waited. Now the deck was cleared and we could be together.
“Take me upstairs,” I whispered, my fingers digging into the muscles of his shoulders and upper arms. Coleman was a strong man in peak condition. Virile and sexy.
“Your wish is my command.” He swept me into his arms and the journey up the stairs to my bed—which Tinkie had so rudely interrupted several weeks before—was complete. When he put me down on my bed, even Sweetie Pie and Pluto vacated the room, giving us a little privacy.
“Tell me what you’d like,” he whispered, his lips tracing down my cleavage.
“I want you to make love to me. Now.” I pulled him down on top of me, feeling a deep satisfaction at his weight, the sense of rightness. This is what I’d wanted for weeks. Maybe for years. And now it was happening.
Coleman’s fingertips, slightly rough from his outdoor work, moved over my collarbones, pushing the nightgown down. Then, with a quick, expert movement, he brought it over my head and dropped it on the floor. A cool breeze teased my skin. When I looked up at him, I saw his love and desire. It was everything I’d ever wanted.
He lowered his head, his lips exploring. “Sarah Booth, I love you.”
I savored those words. “I love—”
A loud hammering came from downstairs. Coleman drew back. He stepped away from the bed and into the shadows in a corner of the room. “Wait!” But I knew he wouldn’t. I sat up, disoriented. The pounding downstairs continued.
And I was alone in my bedroom. Naked, except for the small silk bag Tinkie had placed around my neck. The charm.
The torrid passion I’d felt only seconds before had been dream induced. There was no Coleman in my bed. No Coleman in my room. I was alone in Dahlia House, under the influence of one helluva dream. I clutched the charm, which hung between my breasts. I’d never had such a visceral sex dream. Was the charm responsible? I didn’t have time to ponder the possibilities.
I grabbed my nightgown from the floor and threw it over my head as I hurried to the front door, where someone was about to destroy the beveled glass. “Hold your damn horses!” I yelled. “Who is it?”
I peeked out to see DeWayne pacing the front porch. I cracked the door. “What the heck?”
“Coleman sent me to get you. It’s urgent.”
“Has something happened to Tinkie?”
“No,” he said. “It’s Cece. She was attacked.”
“Where?”
“At Musgrove Manor. She went out to the crime scene.”
Damn. Damn. Damn. I’d called Cece to the scene of the protest and Trevor’s murder. When she didn’t show up, I’d forgotten all about her. She must have come out to the manor after I’d left. “Give me five minutes to dress.”
* * *
Instead of heading for Musgrove Manor, DeWayne drove me to the hospital, which succeeded in upsetting me more. I didn’t hit him with sixty questions, not because I didn’t have a bunch of questions to ask, but because he likely didn’t have any more answers than I did. We arrived at the ambulance entrance and I ran inside. A head-swaddled Cece sat with her boyfriend, Jaytee. Tinkie and Oscar rushed in only seconds behind me.
Cece gave us all a weak smile. “I’m not dying. I told Coleman not to call you.”
“What happened?” I knelt beside her, taking her free hand. “Who hurt you?”
“I don’t know.”
Coleman came out of the back room, where he’d no doubt been consulting with Doc. He wore a very strange expression, and when I rose to go back to talk to Doc, he blocked my path. “She’s going to be fine, except for a really bad headache,” Coleman said. “She took a pretty hard knock to the back of the skull, but, lucky for all involved, she’s got a head as hard as a brick.”
“And plenty of other physical attributes that make my groin sizzle.” Jaytee’s salty comment drew laughter from everyone, and the tension broke. We were all talking at once, crowding close to Cece and demanding details.
“I couldn’t get out to the manor right away because I was tied up at a secret school board meeting. With the controversy over the Wiccan school, suddenly some of the board members are trying to rework the county policies for school vouchers or tax credits or earned school credits or whatever folks are calling them now to hide the fact it’s taxpayer money diverted from public schools to private and religious schools.”
I wanted to know why she’d even gone if she’d known she was late, but I didn’t interrupt, and she filled in the blank without my asking the question.
“I wanted a photograph of that apple orchard. I remember it from when we’d take school tours to the dairy and Trevor’s father, who was running the place, would let us all milk a cow. Remember Bessie? She had a lot of patience for a bunch of nine-year-olds pulling on her teats. I remember the time he tried another cow, Suellen. She kicked Rooster Durant clean out of the barn. That boy did have cold, sweaty hands. No wonder Suellen launched him.”
Cece was sounding a little slaphappy. Doc must have given her a shot for pain. “How badly is she hurt?” I asked Coleman.
“Four stitches in the scalp. Whoever hit her used something with a sharp edge.”
“Like a shovel?”
He tilted his head and lifted a shoulder, noncommittal.
Doc arrived just in time to answer the question of the shovel in the affirmative and I took the opportunity to buttonhole Coleman. “Who struck Cece? Was it Malvik?”
“Malvik’s in a holding cell. It couldn’t have been him, but I’m going to find out who it was.”
I didn’t get a chance to press him harder because Cece was growing restless. “Can I go home? I don’t want to sit here any longer.”
Doc thought for a moment. “If Jaytee has to go to the club, you need to stay here. You shouldn’t be alone, and you shouldn’t fall asleep.”
“She can come home with me.” I’d love a chance to babysit my friend. She’d done it plenty of times for me.
“Yes, I’ll come, too.” Tinkie looped her arm through mine.
“Go back to the club and play.” Cece kissed Jaytee long and lovingly. “I’m fine.”
“Okay.” Jaytee checked his watch. “Call me if you need anything.”
We nodded in unison, looking like the bobblehead dogs on the dash of an old clunker car.
>
A moment later we piled into Oscar’s car and headed to Dahlia House. DeWayne offered to drop Oscar at Hilltop, and Coleman had a mission, which he was being mighty secretive about. He should know that such covert tactics only drove me to commit unreasonable actions to find out what was going on.
At Dahlia House I made some strong coffee and pulled slices of frozen red velvet cheesecake from the fridge. We needed sugar and caffeine if we were going to stay up the rest of the night. As it turned out, we didn’t need the food and beverage stimulation—but we ate it anyway. Cece had plenty to share that kept us wide awake. Her trip to Musgrove Manor had been more about the Harrington sisters than Trevor Musgrove’s body, but she was still very pleased at the fact that I’d photographed the crime scene extensively. She had her apple orchard pictures for the paper, and she had crime scene shots—with the body discreetly covered—from me. She sent the photos from my phone to the night editor as we talked.
“What did you find out that sent you to Musgrove Manor at midnight?” I asked.
“The Harringtons aren’t who they claim to be.”
“What do you mean?” Tinkie sounded a little defensive.
“Remember how they were going on and on about how they’re descendants of the Salem witch trial witches?”
“Yes.” My memory wasn’t that bad.
“Impossible. Every woman identified as a witch was executed, i.e. no descendants.”
Even I had to roll my eyes at that. “Some of them were older women. They could have had children before they were hanged.”
“Or burned. Or drowned,” Tinkie chimed in.
“I have a newspaper friend in Salem. She went to the land records. The women identified as witches were mostly elderly spinsters or widows. No descendants listed. And not a single one of the witches involved was a Harrington.”
That still didn’t prove the Harrington ancestors weren’t part of the Salem scene, but it wasn’t a point worth arguing. It was the first chink in the armor that I could use to help pull Tinkie from their spell. If they’d lie about something that happened four hundred years ago, what else might they lie about? Their ability to make a woman fertile, perhaps?
“What else did you find?” Tinkie asked. She was struggling to be open, and I put my arm around her and gave her a hug.
“Faith used to be a financial planner and stock broker.”
Now that was a shock. From broker to witch. It was an interesting career trajectory, but it could also explain how the Harringtons were flush with enough money to buy Musgrove Manor. “That’s a high-pressure job.”
“Yes, and it seems like Faith simply walked into work one day and quit.”
“I heard the Harringtons came into an inheritance of some type. I wonder if it could be the money Faith saved up while working as a broker.” Or perhaps a blackmail payment. Hope had been involved in the dissolution of the St. Pe marriage. What else might she have thrown into her black cauldron to cook up?
Cece put her coffee cup on the kitchen table and sat back in her chair. When she had our attention, she grinned. “There was a murder in Lafayette, right around the time the Harringtons moved here. An older man who made a fortune in the wildcat oil business. He was dating Hope, and he was found floating in a bayou. His death was ruled suspicious. Poison was suspected, but never proven.”
The air left Tinkie in a little poof, but she didn’t react otherwise. I hated all of this. Because of what it would cost Tinkie. “What kind of poison did they suspect?”
“It was never revealed. I weaseled some information out of the Lafayette Parish coroner. Ted LaRue is the dead man’s name. The autopsy revealed massive organ failure and his lungs had filled up with fluid. The corpse had a blue tinge. It wasn’t a pretty death.”
Trevor had looked vaguely blue, but I’d assumed it was the full moon effect. Sometimes the silvery light cast odd hues on things. “Did the coroner have any suspicions about the source of the poison?”
“You’re jumping the cart and the horse, Sarah Booth. The Louisiana coroner said he could never identify poison in the bloodstream, but he couldn’t rule the death as natural because of the unusual circumstances. But he did say if poison was the cause of death, it was likely from a tropical plant, something grown and compounded, not purchased. Since we’re subtropical, a lot of jungle plants can be grown here if they’re properly protected.” Cece was drilling me with her gaze. She knew about the witches’ herb garden. Not that the sisters had tried to keep it a secret. In fact, the herbs were key ingredients in their potions, spells, enchantments, bath salts, soaps, and cooking spices. I’d seen the well-tended garden and noticed nothing amiss. No skull-and-crossbones warning signs, at least.
“Did he say what plant might have been used?” I asked. It would be easy enough to photograph the herb garden if I knew what to look for.
“He couldn’t be specific. I got the sense that not a lot of effort went into searching for a killer. There was no solid proof. He said the sheriff investigated for a week or so, then the case got pushed down beneath other cases.”
“Did the coroner give a motive for possible murder?” I asked.
“That was a problem. Everyone got along with LaRue.” Cece was restless, which meant her brain was in overdrive. She stood and started to pace. I didn’t want her to be agitated. She’d just had a head injury.
“Sit down,” I said, pointing to a chair. “Seriously. Or I’ll take you back to Doc.”
She made a sour face and sat down. “There has to be a link to Trevor’s murder,” she said. “Doc won’t say it specifically, but I think he agrees.”
Now that was tying up two murders in a neat little bow—if either man was murdered. It was highly unlikely that Ted LaRue in Lafayette and Trevor Musgrove in Zinnia would both die of a rare poison. The only element in common between the two men was the sisters. Circumstantial, but highly incriminating.
Tinkie had been silent during the exchange, but she pushed back her chair and stood. “I don’t think the sisters would hurt anyone.”
I’d expected her to defend the Harringtons. “They aren’t accused of anything yet. In fact, we’re jumping to the conclusion that Trevor was murdered, and we don’t know anything solid about this LaRue fellow. Let Coleman investigate. You know he’ll do an honest job of it.”
“In the morning, I’ll find out all the details of the Harringtons’ finances.” Tinkie was defiant. “I’m sure what I discover will clear their names.”
“I hope you’re right.” And I sincerely did. My friend didn’t need another jab in her heart.
“They’re good people with special gifts.” Tinkie walked over to me and pulled the charm bag out of my sweater. “Did something happen last night?” she asked, almost as if she knew about my hot little dream.
“Coleman didn’t come over.”
“Didn’t he?” she asked, and dropped the charm so that it dangled on the silk cord against my chest.
* * *
By morning we were all exhausted and I was starving. I drove them both home and stopped by Millie’s Café for some homemade grub and a chat with Millie. If there was gossip afoot, she’d know all about it and fill me in.
While I was sipping coffee and waiting for a three-egg sweet pepper omelet, I read the local Zinnia Dispatch. Cece had a front-page story about Trevor’s murder, using the photos of the orchard and crime scene I’d given her. She even gave me a photo credit.
“Sarah Booth Delaney,” Esmeralda Grimes said as she dropped into a chair at my table. “I know who you are and all about you.”
I preferred to eat alone, but I didn’t say anything unpleasant. “Yes, Ms. Grimes, and I can say the same about you. Your reputation for … a vivid imagination precedes you.”
“I always get my story. I’m sure that’s what you’re talking about.” She grinned.
I had to admit, I appreciated her cheekiness. “Never let the facts get in the way of a good story. That’s what I was referring to.”
�
��Yes, my rivals are bitter little peahens, aren’t they? Nice story there by Ms. Falcon. She’s a friend, yes?”
“Yes.”
“I could get her a job with my paper. She’d make six times the salary she makes here and travel around the world.”
“Tell her, not me.”
“My, my, you are the sly fox, aren’t you?”
“Do you always ask a question at the end of a statement?”
She laughed out loud, a staccato burst that I found infectious. Now that I had a chance to study her, I saw she was a dark beauty, with a perfect olive complexion, sable hair that likely wouldn’t gray until her nineties, and full lips meant to wear the exact shade of tomato she’d chosen. I couldn’t help but join in her laugher. “What can I do for you, Esmeralda?”
“Get me an interview with the witches.”
“What?”
“They like your partner. I hear they’ve made a fertility potion for her. Not something that is their normal, run-of-the mill hex or charm. A real spell.”
How in the hell had she found out about Tinkie’s fertility problems? I knew better than to act like it was any big deal. “Why don’t you call them up and ask them for an interview?”
“They won’t return my calls. I’m tainted by Kitten Fontana.”
I could easily see how that might work. Kitten left her stink on everything she touched. “I’ll ask them. No promises.” Millie put my omelet in front of me. The café owner was drawn to Esmeralda like a fly to honey. Millie loved tabloid journalism. She thought the International Report was the best paper on the planet because it ran stories of Princess Di, alive and happy and living on Tahiti, lotto winners who discovered a cure for ALS, and alien abductions. She didn’t believe the stories to be true, but she loved the bizarre creativity of the authors. They captured her fancy and she often asked with great appreciation, “Where do they come up with this stuff?”
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