Bat Out of Spell

by Amanda M. Lee

  “I thought I’d try to solve the problem of world peace,” Zola replied dryly, rolling her eyes as she gestured toward what looked to be a glass of passion fruit tea over ice. “It’s going splendidly.”

  I didn’t bother to hide my sour attitude. “Well, at least you have goals for the day.” I exhaled heavily as I took the chair next to her and wrinkled my forehead when I realized she was thumbing through a plant catalog. “What’s new for the upcoming season? I think you’d look fabulous in lavender.”

  “Your wit always manages to brighten my day. Have I ever told you that?”

  “No.” I dug in my pocket for cash and handed it to the barista when she delivered my drink, waiting for her to leave before continuing. “Something tells me that you’re not really a big fan of my wit.”

  “What was your first clue?”

  “I think the scowl when you saw it was me walking through the door was a giveaway.”

  “Well, at least I have that going for me.” Zola’s tone was cool as she sipped her tea and flipped through the catalog. “Is there a reason you’re here bugging me rather than working in the middle of the day?”

  “Is there a reason you’re being such a soggy tampon?”

  “Ugh.” Zola made a disgusted sound in the back of her throat. She was much more prim and proper than the rest of our group. Oh, yeah, right. She’s a St. Joan of Arc survivor, too. That makes her a witch, the same as Kenna and me. While my talents rested in the air and Kenna’s burned hot with fire, Zola was an earth witch. She wasn’t as flashy with her magic, something she never tired of reminding us about. “Must you be so crude?”

  I shrugged, unbothered by her tone. “I believe it’s genetic. I didn’t have a choice in the matter.”

  “You had a choice.” Zola ran her tongue over her teeth as she took a moment to give me a long once-over. “Why are you all sweaty?”

  “Maybe I’m hot and bothered for you.”

  “Or maybe you’re up to something.” Zola knew me too well. Sometimes I could feel her eyes tearing through me, as if searching for answers that she could magically rip from my soul. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling. She knew that, of course, and used it to her advantage. “You are up to something. Where were you this morning?”

  She’s also the “mom” of the group. It has something to do with being in touch with her earthy roots. It’s beyond annoying. “Why do you care?”

  “You’re acting odd – even odder than usual, which is a terrifying thought – and I want to know what to expect when trouble catches up with you.” Zola was matter-of-fact. “Where were you this morning? Wait, I already know. You were at the resort. They had the dedication of the new building this morning. They were teasing it on the radio station.”

  Of course they were. Eternal Springs was so small that the island’s main source of entertainment – a radio station that was stuck in the eighties – covered every lame event that happened at the resort. It was grating.

  “I was there.”

  Zola narrowed her eyes. “Why are you here then? Those things usually go for two or three hours.”

  “This one never really went at all.” I saw no reason to lie. “I tripped over a dead body and that derailed the whole thing.”

  Zola finally showed real interest in the conversation as her eyes lit with keen intrigue. “You tripped over a body? How?”

  “Well, you know how I’m always so graceful and watch where I’m going? I was doing that this morning when I decided to cut across the lawn because I wanted to make sure I was in my seat before anyone started speaking.”

  “That’s because Kenna was there and you didn’t want her to singe your tail.”

  She wasn’t wrong. “Are you going to listen to the story or keep interrupting?”

  “Fine. I’m listening.”

  “Anyway, I was cutting across the lawn when I tripped,” I explained. “I didn’t realize there was a body under me until I was already sprawled on top of her.”

  “That’s a lovely visual.”

  “Someone bashed her head in with a rock,” I added.

  Zola shifted in her chair, mirth turning to worry. “She was murdered?”

  “That’s my take on the situation. Buddy feels differently.”

  “Buddy? What does Buddy have to do with anything?” Zola’s expression reflected what everyone in town felt when Buddy’s name came up. The guy was a pimple on the butt of humanity. No one liked him. I even had my doubts that his wife liked him.

  “He was called out when we found the body,” I replied. “He left the investigation in Abigail and Augie’s hands, which means they’re going to do five minutes of work and declare it an accident. I know better.”

  Zola didn’t look convinced as she sipped from her straw. “And how do you know better?”

  “She was in a weird spot to trip and fall on a rock.” I’d been picturing the scene for the better part of an hour and I already had a hunch. “It was flat. The rock was one of those ornate ones they use to line the flowerbeds to make them look cutesy or whatever you call rock accents near bushes.”

  Zola snorted. “Your landscaping knowledge truly is a wonder.” She chewed her bottom lip as she turned to look at the front door when the overhead bell jangled. I could see who was entering – and I had no interest in Carol Kennedy and her screaming twins of terror – so I took advantage of Zola’s momentary distraction to yank the straw from her drink, lick it and then shove it back in place. “Ugh. I hate the Kennedy twins. I swear they’re going to grow up to be sociopathic serial killers.”

  She wasn’t the only one who had considered that possibility. “They’re three. They won’t be committing murders for at least a decade. I want to focus on this murder.” I pulled the sheets of paper Dylan supplied from my bag and smoothed them. “It seems the dead woman was on vacation with her daughter and three other women when the attack happened.”

  “Alleged attack,” Zola corrected. “You don’t know that she was really attacked.”

  “I have a feeling.”

  “Last month you had a feeling that someone was watching you from the woods outside your house,” Zola pointed out. “You said you thought it was a vampire.”

  Of course she’d bring that up. “It could’ve been a vampire.”

  “Sure. Stranger things have happened in Eternal Springs. But it wasn’t a vampire, was it?”

  “No.” I made a face. “It was that horrible hairless cat that runs around judging me.”

  “I believe his name is Tut. He’s a sphinx.”

  “I think his name is Satan and he wants to drive me insane.” The hairless cat was one of a posse that wandered Eternal Springs doing whatever they wanted. The former familiars of our witchy sisters refused to move on when the school burned down. They wouldn’t leave and now they were breeding like … well, like cats in heat. The business folk didn’t really mind them – they made for great stories to share with tourists and kept the vermin population in check – but I minded them. They were monstrous little busybodies and know-it-alls. Especially Tut the Terrible. He liked to agitate me most. It was almost as if he knew that a hairless cat was the stuff of my nightmares.

  “His name is Tut and he only bothers you because you allow him to.” Zola was pragmatic as she grabbed one of the sheets of paper from my stack. “What is this?”

  “I sweet talked Dylan into printing the dead woman’s file. Apparently she was a regular. They had a bunch of notes jotted down about her because she was difficult.”

  “So I see.” Zola didn’t bother to hide her surprise as she read. “It says here she was on vacation with her husband’s mistress. That can’t be normal.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “You said she was with her daughter and three other women. You failed to mention that one of those women was openly known to be her husband’s … um … friend.”

  “Ugh. You’re such a prude.” I snatched back the sheet of paper. “That’s one of the other reasons I think it
had to be murder. I mean, you just don’t go on vacation with your husband’s harlot and play nice. I’m sure words were exchanged and things got out of hand.”

  “So you think it was the mistress.”

  I shrugged. “Who else?”

  “Well, I hate to encourage you because everyone knows you’ve got an out-of-control imagination, but I’ve seen the woman in that photo before … and recently.” Zola looked a little too smug for comfort. “I bet you didn’t know that.”

  I was in no mood for games. “You saw this woman in town recently?”

  Zola nodded. “She was with someone we all know and … well, love certainly isn’t the word … but we all know him.”

  Oh, well, now things were getting interesting. “Who?”

  Zola lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Guess.”

  I freaking hate games. “Just tell me!”

  “Guess.”

  “Tell me or I’ll send Swoops over to poop in your plants,” I threatened.

  Zola’s previously smug smile tipped down into a pronounced frown. “You need to stop telling him to do that. He’s ruining my fuchsias.”

  I feigned innocence. “I thought I read somewhere that bat droppings are good for plant growth.”

  “He drops enough to choke the life out of the plants and you know it. What are you feeding him, by the way? I don’t think his dietary needs are being met.”

  “He eats anything and everything. He’s on the hunt for corned beef hash today, so if you have any in your house hide it. He’s not above breaking and entering.”

  “Ugh. Who would eat corned beef hash? It looks like somebody already ate it. No wonder my fuchsias are dying.”

  Zola is supposed to be the easygoing one of our group, but she often lapses into bouts of whining that make me want to deafen myself with Q-tips … or at least gag her with a chloroform-soaked rag. What? She wouldn’t die from it. Sometimes she simply makes me want to take a nap.

  “Listen, as entertaining as I find this conversation, I really need to focus on Blair Whitney,” I prodded, turning back to business. “Who did you see her with?”

  “Oh, right.” Zola shook her head, perhaps dislodging thoughts of Swoops and his magical powers of fertilization. “She was with Buddy.”

  I stiffened, the words taking me by surprise. “Buddy? Our Buddy?”

  “Do you know anyone else who would willingly coin his own nickname and then insist everyone in town use it?”

  “That can’t be right.” I shook my head as the possibility washed over me. “Buddy was there. I told you he was there. He saw Blair Whitney’s body. He didn’t act as if he knew her.”

  “Huh.” Zola tapped her bottom lip, thoughtful. “Are you sure he saw her? I mean … maybe he didn’t look very closely. Not everyone wants to get up close and personal with a dead woman.”

  “I guess that’s possible.” I shook my head. “I swear he looked at her. I think he knew who she was. Do you know what ties they had to each other?”

  “I don’t. I only know they were seen having lunch together at the diner. A few people were gossiping because poor Mitzi was nowhere to be found while Buddy and this woman spent a very long meal together. The word being bandied about regarding their interaction was ‘intimate.’”

  And things simply got more intriguing the more I learned. “Thanks.” I was distracted when I got to my feet and shoved the records back in my bag. “You’ve been a great help.”

  “I aim to please.” Zola beamed as she lifted the straw from her drink and sucked from the bottom end, clearly enjoying her position as gossip queen of the world.

  “I licked your straw when you weren’t looking,” I added. What? It’s only fair to share things like that.

  “Ugh!” Zola tossed the straw down on the table. “Why do you do that?”

  Ah, a question for the ages. “I’ll talk to you later. I have some things to check out.”

  Five

  I could have tracked down Buddy and asked him directly, but that wasn’t really my style. I was sneakier than that. Besides, Buddy was a pain in the keister, but he was smart enough to evade me. His wife was a different story.

  I didn’t know much about Mitzi Montgomery and what I did know didn’t make me like her. In fact, most everything I knew about the woman steered me toward strong dislike. Despite that, I felt sorry for her.

  She was a gossipy girl who’d hung with her clique in high school, never breaking out and trying to get to know anyone else. That went for my witchy sisters and me as much as anybody else. When we were suddenly thrust into public school after attending what everyone assumed was a convent the welcome wasn’t exactly warm.

  Of course, the other students were mildly frightened of us because of our “close personal relationship with God” – that was something Zola thought up to use as a weapon should we be attacked by catty teenagers – so the students weren’t exactly mean because they didn’t want to get on God’s bad side (you know, just in case). But they weren’t what I would call welcoming either.

  Mitzi ran with a different crew back then. Buddy was almost twenty years older and didn’t deign to hang with the youngsters. They didn’t hook up until two years after graduation, and by then some of the shine had left Mitzi. She was no longer queen of the high school, whatever she thought would happen to propel her to queen of the world status suddenly forgotten.

  Mitzi and Buddy’s initial dating raised plenty of eyebrows and sparked untold whispering and speculation. What would someone like Mitzi want with someone like Buddy? In truth, Buddy wasn’t all bad. He was a braggart of the worst degree, turning every conversation to himself rather than listening to others. He lost interest in any conversation that didn’t revolve around him. He delegated authority with a cool hand, making his Eternal Springs underlings do all the heavy lifting when a situation couldn’t be turned to garner publicity for Buddy himself. That’s when he lost interest, you see. The moment he realized he couldn’t gain attention or talk about himself, he wanted to move on to something else.

  That’s why his hookup with Mitzi didn’t go unnoticed. She believed the world revolved around her in high school, so it seemed they wouldn’t be a good fit. They surprised everyone when they not only survived dating but opted to marry. They’d been going strong for a decade, although they hadn’t added any little Montgomery babies to their happy home. I harbored a strong suspicion that Mitzi became fixated on knitting so she could channel her aggression into something other than strangling Buddy when he began talking about himself.

  Mitzi became something of a tight-lipped loner since the marriage, spending all her time being Buddy’s wife rather than her own person. Everything she did was for him … or about him … or because of him. She was no longer a force unto her own. She was the person who dedicated herself to making Buddy’s life easier.

  There was one little spot where Mitzi continued to shine, and that was her thrice-weekly radio show. As I mentioned before, the radio station is one of the few sources of entertainment in Eternal Springs since internet is spotty, which makes streaming services a waste of money (and network television is all kinds of terrible now). That means we have a lot of talk radio and craft shows to get people through the day. One of those craft shows is “Knitter’s Circle with Mitzi Montgomery.” It’s so boring people often add an extra word after “circle” – you can figure it out if you have a filthy mind – and there’s talk that the show should be bottled and sold as a cure for insomnia.

  People are mean. What can I say? Fine. I started the insomnia cure joke. It’s totally true, though.

  I let myself into the HEX 66.6 building without knocking or waiting for someone to grant me entrance, instead muttering a small spell that caused the lock to tumble and door to spring open. There were only two cameras watching the perimeter and they were both located in Evian Brooks’ office. In addition to being the owner of the radio station, she was the fourth witch in our little cursed square. She’s the water witch …
and she’s just as much of a pain as the other two. In fact, I’m the only one who is a true delight. The others are stereotypical … well, witches.

  Evian didn’t seem surprised to see me when I popped into her office. I threw open the door and made my presence known with a flourish – actually, I let loose a bit of my air magic and allowed it to blow back Evian’s hair (something I knew she absolutely hated) – and then strolled to one of the uncomfortable chairs on the other side of her desk and sank into it.

  “You always did love a good entrance,” Evian complained, smoothing her brown hair.

  “I missed my calling,” I agreed, making a big show of studying my stubby fingernails. “I should’ve been an actress. Instead I got stuck here … seemingly forever.”

  “And whose fault is that?”

  I dragged my eyes to her face. “If you say mine, things are going to go from soap opera dramatic to WWE dramatic.”

  Evian rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Why are you even here? You rarely stop by for a visit in the middle of the week. Heck, you don’t on weekends either. I think I can count on one hand the number of times you’ve been inside this building for something other than a mandated story.”

  “I’ve visited plenty of times.” Most of them when Evian wasn’t expecting me, so she didn’t know. “As for why I’m here today, I need to talk with the talent as soon as she’s done inducing everyone to afternoon naps.”

  It took Evian a moment to grasp what I was saying. “You want to talk to Mitzi.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “But … why?”

  “Maybe I’m looking to widen my circle of friends. Have you ever considered that?”

  “Not even a little.”

  Yeah, I should’ve come up with a convincing lie before visiting. That would’ve been the smart thing to do. “I need to talk to her about Buddy.”

  Evian made a face. “Why would anyone want to talk about Buddy? He does it enough for all of us.”

  “Yes, but he was seen having lunch yesterday with a woman who turned up dead and I want to figure out how he knew her and why he was chatting her up.”