A Witch Before Dying: A Wishcraft Mystery

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A Witch Before Dying: A Wishcraft Mystery Page 5

by Heather Blake


  Maybe especially in an enchanted little village.

  Upstairs, Starla Sullivan and Mimi Sawyer, Nick’s daughter, were hard at work painting a wall a vibrant blue. I smiled. Harper had always been good at delegating.

  Missy immediately made a dash for Mimi. Mimi dripped paint into the dog’s fur as she bent down to allow her chin to be licked to death, but neither seemed to notice. The mutual affection was obvious.

  It wasn’t hard to see why. Both were completely lovable. Twelve-year-old Mimi had become like another little sister to me. (One that wasn’t nearly as annoying as my own.)

  Starla, as always, looked like a thirty-year-old version of a perky cheerleader. High blond ponytail. Bright blue eyes. Open, friendly, somewhat naive face. Only a huge paint splotch on the front of her pink T-shirt detracted from her flawlessness.

  Harper pushed a paintbrush into my hands. She was seven years younger than me, but I was more a mom to her than an older sister. I’d practically raised her on my own since our mom died shortly after Harper was born prematurely, both events the result of a tragic car accident. Our father, unfortunately, had sunk into a deep depression after the loss and never quite pulled himself out of it. He’d passed away last year.

  I thought I’d done a fairly decent job of bringing Harper up right, but then again, I was prone to overlooking her mischievous streak, her penchant for finding trouble, and her ability to stick her nose into other people’s business.

  The judgment of “fairly decent” was obviously a matter of opinion.

  “Way to be a downer, Ms. Serious-Pants,” Harper said. “We’ve been waiting for the details of the crime scene. Start at the beginning. Don’t leave anything out.”

  There was that phrase again. Crime scene. I kicked off my shoes and looked from face to face. Starla and Mimi were as excited as Harper. Ghouls, the lot of them.

  I wasn’t sure what to say or where to start. In the past, I would have glossed over the whole situation. Tried to downplay the fact that someone had stuffed a woman into a suitcase and left her to die (as if that were possible to downplay!). But now…Harper’s enthusiasm for criminal investigations had definitely worn off on me as I started to tell them what had happened.

  The painting party was forgotten as the three sank onto the sheet-covered sofa. Eyes widened—especially at the part with the hand sticking out of the suitcase.

  Starla shook her head, interrupting. “Poor Elodie. That girl has been through so much in the past two years. First her mom goes missing; then she had to cancel her big wedding; now you’re saying she’s broke and has to sell her mom’s house…. And”—she let out a whooshing breath—“Patrice was inside the house all along?”

  I kept an eye on Mimi, who was curled in the corner of the couch, cuddling with Missy. Were some of these details too much for her? She didn’t appear to be bothered. In fact, she looked like a younger version of Harper—intent on absorbing every little detail.

  I was sitting on the floor—Harper didn’t have many furnishings yet. “Wait a sec. Elodie canceled her wedding? I’m confused. Aren’t she and Connor engaged?”

  Starla waved a paint roller as she talked. “They’ve been engaged forever, since college. They were supposed to have this big fairy-tale wedding about two years ago. Elodie had hired me to do the photographs, and she gushed and gushed about how lavish the wedding was going to be. Huge guest list, the best of the best. Then it all kind of fell apart. She had a big fight with her mom. The dress shop ordered the wrong gown. Her venue closed. The caterer quit. The deejay went to jail. A few months later, Elodie and Patrice made up and Elodie managed to set another date, but then Patrice went missing.”

  “Elodie had a fight with Patrice?” I asked. “About what?”

  Starla shrugged. “I’m not sure. She never said. But it was a doozy—they didn’t talk for months.”

  “I can’t imagine being that mad at my mom,” Mimi said. She, I noticed, had put away her paintbrush and now held her mother’s diary. She’d been carrying it around with her everywhere lately. The cover was made of white leather, weathered with age. Mimi’s mother had died a couple of years ago, and it was through her diary that Mimi started learning about her Craft. The book was chock-full of Craft tidbits, which was both dangerous and incredibly resourceful.

  Dangerous because if the book fell into the wrong hands, the spells within could be used with nefarious intent. Resourceful because Melina had been an accomplished Crafter before she forfeited her powers to marry Nick, a mortal. I hadn’t read the diary, but from what Mimi had shared with me, the book was practically a how-to on practicing the Craft.

  “Unfortunately, it happens,” Starla said, sounding like she was talking from experience. “For a while Elodie kept hoping her mother would show up one day with a crazy story of where she’d been. But the days turned into weeks, into months. The big wedding was coming up and a decision had to be made. Elodie ended up canceling it, and as far as I know, it hasn’t been rescheduled.”

  It sounded as if a big chunk of Elodie’s life had been on hold since her mother went missing. I couldn’t imagine living that way. Always wondering. Never knowing. It had to have been terrible.

  And now…now her mother was never coming back. She would never be at her daughter’s wedding.

  It was something Harper, Mimi, and I could relate to.

  When I married my ex-husband, Troy, my mother’s absence had been keenly felt at my wedding, an ache that didn’t quite go away the whole day long. I tried to put myself in Elodie’s shoes as she planned her own wedding, not knowing where her mother was. I’d have postponed, too. Indefinitely.

  Unfortunately, my marriage had fallen apart. Now I was thirty years old, divorced, and living with my aunt. But—and this was a big one—I’d never been happier. I loved living in the Enchanted Village. I adored Aunt Ve. And the villagers and my new friends.

  I stood up and headed for the paint can. Mimi said, “How’s Aunt Ve today? Any better?”

  A thread of happiness wove through me. Ve insisted that Mimi call her “Aunt Ve.” I liked how much a part of my family Nick’s daughter had become. “She didn’t look much better when I stopped in at home before coming here.”

  “Wasn’t Cherise supposed to stop by today?” Harper asked.

  “I thought so. I didn’t hear otherwise. Maybe she didn’t make it over?”

  “I saw her going inside,” Mimi said, “when I was visiting Archie.”

  Archie was our neighbor, the Elder’s majordomo, a former London theater actor, and…a macaw. He was a familiar—a Crafter spirit residing inside an animal’s form. He was also funny, conceited, and a whiz at movie trivia.

  “Does it take a while for Cherise’s spell to work?” Starla asked.

  “I’m not sure. I guess time will tell. I’ll check on Ve again when I get home.”

  “Well,” Starla said airily, “I have some news. I met someone new.”

  “Who?” Long, dark curls pulled back in a ponytail bounced as Mimi jumped up. “Is he cute?”

  “The cutest.” Starla smiled. “He’s a vendor with the Roving Stones. I met him on the village green today, and he asked me out to dinner. I counter offered with meeting for coffee tomorrow morning. I mean, dinner is too personal for a first date, isn’t it?”

  “Definitely a second or third date,” Harper agreed.

  “Why?” Mimi asked, soaking in the conversation.

  “Coffee,” Harper explained, “will give you enough time to figure out if you want to see him again. Kind of a quickie date. Dinner is a commitment. Dressing up. Lots of talking. It should be reserved for when you already like the person enough to want to get to know them better.”

  Mimi nodded as if she were taking mental notes. I wasn’t sure taking them from Harper was the wisest, but I was staying out of this conversation. No need to go there tonight.

  But the mention of the Roving Stones reminded me of Patrice’s boyfriend, who also was a vendor with the show. “Starla
, do you know Andreus Woodshall, by any chance?”

  She shuddered dramatically, making a squished-up face.

  Laughing, I said, “I take that as a yes?”

  “How do you know him?” Starla asked, her blue eyes concerned.

  Harper interrupted. “Him who? Who is he?”

  Mimi dipped her roller in the paint tray. “I think he’s kind of nice.”

  We stared at her.

  “What?” she asked, shrugging. “He is. He lets me touch all the geodes and answers all my questions.”

  Of which I was sure there were many.

  “Who?” Harper demanded.

  “Andreus Woodshall,” Starla said patiently. “He’s the director of the Roving Stones. A Charmcrafter. He’s…Well, have you seen Dracula? The one with Bela Lugosi?”

  Who hadn’t? We all nodded.

  “He kind of looks like that. Except his teeth aren’t as pointy, and in the wrong light he’s scarier looking.” She rolled a rectangle of blue onto the wall.

  Scarier looking than Dracula? Was she kidding?

  “But,” Starla said, picking a stray piece of her blond hair from the roller, “in the right light he’s kind of handsome. It’s very disconcerting, one minute him looking like Dracula, the next looking all suave and debonair.”

  “Dracula? Really?” Harper asked, clearly intrigued. “Is he a vampire?”

  “Nooooo.” Starla continued to bathe the wall in blue. So far, only one wall was completed. I had a feeling it was going to be a long night if we kept painting at this rate.

  “You don’t have to sound like it’s a crazy thought,” Harper said. “After all, we’re witches.”

  “She has a point,” Mimi said pragmatically. “But Mr. Woodshall goes out in the daylight. That rules him out as a vampire.”

  I couldn’t believe we were having this conversation. Six months ago I was out of work and living in Ohio. When my dad died last year, not only did I lose my father, but my job as well, as I had worked for him at his dentist’s office since I was eighteen. Then Aunt Ve paid Harper and me a visit, and I’d gone from unemployed office manager to having a job at As You Wish. Oh yeah, and I was a witch.

  And now I was a witch seriously considering whether there was a vampire in the neighborhood. I almost wanted to laugh at the absurdity as I dipped my paintbrush into the blue and went to work along the baseboard, explaining why I’d asked about Andreus in the first place. “Yvonne Merrick calls him Mr. Macabre. He was Patrice’s date the night she went missing.”

  “No,” Starla gasped.

  I nodded. “Yep. Yvonne and Roger had a double date with Patrice and Andreus.” I filled them in on the fight and Roger’s claim that Jonathan Wilkens had something to do with Patrice’s death. I left out the part where he accused him of killing her. I also held back on explaining about the Anicula until I could find out more about it.

  “Roger’s crazy,” Starla said. “Jonathan? No way.”

  “Did he even know Patrice?” Because I’d only moved to the village recently, I didn’t know a lot of its history.

  “They dated for a while, but I don’t recall that it was anything serious. Jonathan was a bit of a playboy before he met Zoey.”

  It was an interesting fact I stored away. Jonathan and Patrice, dating. Was that why Roger hated the man? Was that what Yvonne meant by “inappropriate jealousy”?

  I was debating how I was going to get the answers to these questions and had just settled on asking Pepe, a mouse familiar who lived and worked at Bewitching Boutique, when Harper’s buzzer rang. Someone was downstairs in the alley.

  “I’ll get it!” Mimi said.

  “Make sure you check and see who it is first!” I called after her, fighting the urge to go after her and make sure she did. I was a nurturer at heart—I couldn’t help myself. I glanced at Harper. She was grown now and needed me more as a sister than a mother figure, so I was trying to break my mother-hen habit and not transfer those feelings onto Mimi. It was turning out to be a harder task than I thought.

  I was more than a little surprised when Nick Sawyer came into the apartment. His eyes brightened just a bit when he spotted me. My stomach went gushy.

  Harper nudged me with her toe. I swore I heard her murmur, “Some witches have all the luck,” before she said, “Hi, Nick! Come to get Mimi already?”

  He was still wearing his Enchanted Village security uniform. I had to admit I liked it. Khaki pants, a tight knit shirt that hugged all the right muscles. I could get used to looking at those muscles every day.

  Missy growled a little. For whatever reason, she was displeased with him. It would pass soon—of that I had no doubt. She adored Nick.

  “Early-morning swimming lessons,” he said. “If Mimi stays up too late she’ll be impossible to wake up.”

  “It’s true,” Mimi said with no trace of self-consciousness.

  Pretty soon Mimi would be back in school full-time, and I realized with a pang that I would miss having her around so much.

  “Get much done?” he asked, taking in the space.

  “More gossiping than painting,” Starla said. “Patrice’s murder is quite a shock.”

  “Any leads?” Harper asked him hopefully.

  “Not yet,” he said. His brown eyes lingered on me. I felt a blush rising.

  The radio clipped to his belt crackled and someone said, “Nick? You there?” To us, Nick said, “We haven’t worked out codes yet.” He pressed a button. “Yes?”

  The excited voice said, “Suspect spotted on Gossamer Court moving west toward the woods.”

  “I’m on my way,” Nick answered. To us, he said, “Is it possible that Mimi stay a little longer?”

  “Sure,” Harper said. “What’s going on? What suspect? The murder suspect?”

  Nick smiled at her rapid-fire questions and shook his head. Looking resigned, he said, “You’ll find out soon enough, I suppose.” He took a deep breath. “There have been a couple of reports of a Peeping Tom over the last two days and one possible burglary.”

  “Possible?” I said, suddenly very alert. “Wouldn’t they know for sure?”

  “It appears as though the house was entered but nothing was taken.”

  “Just like at Patrice’s house last night?” I asked.

  He shifted his weight, lightened his tone. “Probably a couple of teenagers playing pranks.”

  His suddenly relaxed attitude was contradicted by the serious look in his eye. Clearly he didn’t believe what he was saying. He was trying not to worry us.

  Which worried me quite a bit.

  Just how many big bad wolves were on the loose in this idyllic little village?

  Chapter Six

  Keeping an eye out for anyone lurking in the shadows, Missy and I made our way home later that night. Harper’s place was almost directly across from As You Wish; they were separated from each other by the village green. It was a short five-minute walk, but for some reason tonight it felt as though it were taking longer than usual.

  Missy led the way as old-fashioned gas-style streetlamps and lanterns hanging from the trees lit the pathways, spilling plenty of light to guide our way. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t think twice about my safety, but tonight I had Peeping Toms and murderers on my mind. It was close to ten o’clock, and I was glad Missy was with me—she was no bigger than a bit, but she had a keen sense of hearing. She’d know if someone was sneaking up behind me and warn me. At least that’s what I told myself so I wouldn’t break into hives.

  Then I remembered how she’d let Yvonne Merrick eavesdrop from behind the tree without making a peep.

  Suddenly, I was itchy.

  It didn’t help that the green was occupied by a dozen Roving Stones tents, all closed up for the night. Loose tent flaps slapped against their poles, echoing ominously in the dark.

  With visions of fangs coming at me from out of nowhere, I kicked up my pace, my gaze on my destination. As You Wish was well lit, the windows filled with a soothing yellow glow. Ve’
s bedroom light was on, and I hoped she was awake. I was eager to find out exactly what had happened with Cherise Goodwin.

  The tent flaps continued to thwap ominously, a car horn honked across the square, and I swore I could hear someone walking behind me. But every time I turned, no one was there. Missy was beginning to get agitated, too, growling low in her throat. Goose bumps rose on my arms. To be on the safe side, I scooped up the dog and broke into a jog.

  Actually, it was a dead run, and I hoped no one saw me. For one, I wasn’t a graceful sprinter, elbows and legs flying out in every direction. For another, it would be hard to explain how paranoid I was being. Starla’s talk of Dracula on top of a killer and a Peeping Tom on the loose had truly spooked me. All I wanted was to get home as fast as I could. Tucked into bed with the covers over my head sounded even better.

  As You Wish was a glorious Victorian, a complete charmer with its fancy trimmings, sloping rooflines, and magical-looking turret. In the daylight, its fanciful paint job really stood out as something special. With its purples, whites, and blues, the house often had tourists using it as a backdrop for vacation photos.

  I’d just crossed the street and was sprinting for the gate leading to the house’s back door when the shadowy figure of a man came stumbling off the Enchanted Trail, hurdled over the back fence behind the house, got caught on a picket, and ended up falling through the shrubs. He lay sprawled, unmoving, five feet in front of me.

  Missy barked and wriggled until I couldn’t hold on to her anymore. I set her down and she immediately ran to the prone form. I followed and dropped down on the ground. “Evan!” I cried.

  Evan Sullivan, Starla’s twin brother, groaned and rolled over. A huge red knot was forming on his head. “Darcy?”

  I heard flapping and was relieved when Archie came in for a landing. In addition to being a scarlet macaw, he was one of the village’s familiars. By day, he entertained the tourists passing by his cage in the yard. By night, he was the Elder’s right-hand man. Bird. Whatever. Technically, he’d been dead for over a hundred years, but his spirit lived on in the macaw form—which was an appropriate choice considering how much he enjoyed hearing himself talk. Once upon a time, he was a London theater actor, and his favorite game to play with me was Name That Movie Quote. We’d spent many hours passing time trying to stump each other.

 

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