Missy bared her teeth, and I scooped her up before she could take a nip out of Harriette’s bony ankle.
Harriette screamed money. Tall, lithe, gaunt cheeks, long nose, pointed chin. Razor-sharp blue eyes, crisp white hair pulled back into a fancy hairdo. Diamonds dripped from her earlobes and neck. A long black gown hugged her thin frame, and its cuffs and hem were edged in white feathers. A diamond-crusted belt cinched her tiny waist. Sparkling silver peep-toed heels showed off crimson toenails, completing the outrageous outfit.
An enormous yellow diamond glittered on her ring finger, and for the millionth time since learning she was engaged, I wondered about her supposed fiancé.
Louis.
Harriette never revealed his surname, so unless he was of the Cher or Prince mind-set, she was probably keeping it mum on purpose. Which made me instantly suspicious—it was no secret that my bet at Spellbound was definitely in favor of the man being make-believe.
As far as anyone knew, Louis wasn’t from the village, and Harriette revealed frustratingly little about the relationship.
My cell phone buzzed.
“Excuse me,” I said, stepping aside to check the message. I shifted Missy to the crook of my left arm and opened my phone. The display revealed: Michael left an hour and a half ago.
The message was from Evan, responding to the text I had sent him a few minutes ago. I frowned. Where was Michael Healey, the bakery’s deliveryman, then? The Gingerbread Shack was just across the square—it shouldn’t have taken him but five minutes to drop off the cake.
I texted back (not easy when holding an irritated Schnoodle): No sign of him. Or the cake.
“The Wickeds have packed their five-dollar bills, Velma,” Harriette said loudly, eyebrows high, “so I hope the stripper is outstanding. Young, hot, sexy.” She wiggled her hips.
Ve shot me an “I told you so” look.
Which had me extremely worried, and I wondered what constituted “young” to an eighty-year-old. Because it was true I’d hired a stripper, but according to his bio, he was pushing seventy. I suddenly had the feeling the joke wouldn’t go over as well as I hoped. If I didn’t fix this soon, I was sure to see Harriette’s fangs tonight.
I bit my lip and shuddered at the thought.
“Is your fiancé young, Harriette?” Ve asked oh-so casually.
I had to give it to my aunt—she had no qualms about prying into other people’s affairs.
Harriette pursed fire-engine red lips. “Louis is a bit younger than I am, it’s true.”
“How much so?” Ve pressed.
My phone buzzed. EVAN: I can see van in lot.
ME: How? Superhuman vision?
EVAN: Binoculars.
I didn’t even want to know why Evan had binoculars at the bakery.
“Enough to make me feel young again,” Harriette said with a long, drawn-out sigh. She glanced around, and her snake eyes narrowed on the empty spot on the dessert table reserved for the cake. “Has the cake not yet arrived?”
I smelled venom in the air and said quickly, “I’m going to go check on it. I’ll be right back.”
Stepping out would also give me time to walk Missy and figure out how to get a replacement stripper here as quickly as possible.
I pushed my way through the pubgoers and out onto the sidewalk. I clipped on Missy’s leash, set her down, and looked around. The village looked nothing short of incredible. The Harvest Festival was in full swing. A huge bonfire lit one end of the green, and a Ferris wheel anchored the other. In between were booths and carnival rides and even a mock haunted house—all attractions to lure in tourists. But underneath it all, below the surface, something crackled in the air. Magic.
It made me smile. This time of year was special to Crafters. Halloween, which was next weekend, was our biggest holiday celebration.
The square was packed with tourists and villagers alike. The moon, a waxing crescent, hung high in the sky; the night was mild, the fall foliage glorious, and I wished I could enjoy it fully.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t grant my own wishes (one of the Wishcraft Laws), which meant I had to find a young, hot, sexy stripper ASAP.
I nibbled a fingernail and thought about the “entertainment” Web site that had been recommended to me by Evan. I didn’t remember seeing a phone number, but as it was the only local place to hire strippers, once I was done out here, I would borrow Ve’s smartphone (I still had an older model flip phone) to access the site and see if I could reach someone in charge to change my order.
Missy and I dodged a gaggle of window-shoppers as we made our way toward the public parking lot adjacent to the pub. Along the walk, I couldn’t help thinking about single dad Nick Sawyer, and how young (okay, he was thirty-five, but still), hot and sexy he was. Alas, he wasn’t a stripper (I could dream), but the village’s police chief. We’d been dating since the end of summer.
I turned the corner, and sure enough, the Gingerbread Shack’s delivery van was parked at the back of the lot, near the path leading to the Enchanted Trail, a paved walkway that looped behind the square.
As I trotted toward it, I listened as the calliope of the Ghoulousel (a ghost-themed carousel) piped a happy, perky tune to the backdrop of all the other sounds. Bells, whistles. Murmured voices. Squeals from small children. Laughter.
I was enjoying the ambiance until Missy suddenly stopped short.
“What?” I asked her, looking around for anyone hiding in the shadows along the pub’s stone exterior.
She growled.
Not a warning growl, but something primal. Almost fearful.
Goose bumps rose on my arms. I picked her up. “You’re freaking me out, Missy.”
It didn’t help that she was trembling.
The calliope suddenly sounded ominous as I doubled my pace and made it across the parking lot to the van in record time. Cupping my eyes, I peered into the delivery van’s window. On the driver’s seat were a cell phone and sunglasses. An empty lemon-lime sports drink sat in the cup holder, and a fast-food bag rested on the passenger seat. There was no sign of Michael.
Try as I might—I couldn’t see into the back of the van.
The wind kicked up, rustling leaves and bringing a chill to the air. Pinpricks of fear poked my spine as I walked around the van to the rear doors, and Missy started growling again. I held her more tightly and told myself I was being silly, that Michael was just fine, the cake was fine, that everything was fine, fine, fine.
But . . . lately, the village hadn’t been so idyllic. There had been murders here—cases that I’d helped solve.
Maybe that was why I was being so paranoid. I had murder on my mind—never a good thing when creeping around in the dark.
Michael probably just went over to the festival—it was hard to resist its lure. There were caramel apples over there, after all. Lots of them. They certainly tempted me.
In fact, after the stripper arrived, I planned to cut out of Harriette’s party early to meet Nick for a late date that involved one of those apples. We planned to ride the silly rides and play the outrageously priced games until the festival closed up shop for the night.
Swallowing hard, I wrapped my hand around the cold door handle and pulled. Hinges creaked eerily, and I jumped out of the way as if I expected the bogeyman to leap out.
Fortunately, for my sanity, he didn’t.
Inside the back of the van, Harriette’s cake sat proudly, looking beautiful with its black-and-white motif.
There was still no sign of Michael.
My ponytail slashed against my face from a sudden gust of wind. I tucked my hair into the collar of my turtleneck as I tried to figure out how to carry the cake into the pub myself. Missy continued to shake, and I startled when I heard voices on the Enchanted Trail. Old-fashioned gaslights and white twinkle lights strung in the trees illuminated the shortcut path that led from the parking lot to the paved trail as a couple emerged, holding hands and snuggling against each other.
I relaxe
d a little, trying not to let my anxiety get the better of me, but as the couple passed by, Missy growled and wriggled. I set her down, and she took off toward the trampled dirt path, stretching her leash to its limits.
She beelined for something lying in the brush. Something that suddenly brought back those pinpricks.
A shoe.
A large sneaker.
So out of place that it made me nervous.
Glancing around, I walked slowly toward it. Wind whistled through the trees, echoing eerily above my head. “W-what did you find, Missy?”
Missy half growled, half cried.
My heart beat so hard I could feel it in my throat.
Fine, fine, fine, I sang in my head.
The shoe lay on the edge of the path, upside down in the long grass. I held up my cell phone, using its glow as a flashlight as I looked around the shrubby area.
Missy pulled me deeper into the tall brush, her nose to the ground. Suddenly, she let out a loud yap and started whimpering.
My hand shook as I aimed my cell phone her way. The wind stopped, and the night was deafeningly quiet as the light fell upon my worst nightmare.
A bloody sock-covered foot stuck out from beneath a mound of branches.
Chapter Two
You would think death would put a damper on a party.
Not so when Harriette was the guest of honor.
She refused to let a little thing like murder get in her way of a good time. And woe to anyone who tried to stop her.
Like Ve. Like her daughter Lydia. Like the police.
There would be no postponement. The party would go on.
Without me, fortunately, since I didn’t want to be around when the stripper showed up. I never did cancel my original order. He was going to have to do.
I leaned against the pub’s stone wall, watching several police officers cordon off the parking lot and trailhead. I shifted uncomfortably—ever since I found Michael Healey’s body, I’d felt strange. As if there were added weight to my shoulders. Almost as if someone were leaning on me.
Of course there was no added weight and no one was leaning on me, so I adjusted my denim jacket and rolled my shoulders a few times to try and ease the tension. It helped a bit.
A large crowd had gathered along with several emergency vehicles. Crime-scene techs combed the delivery van. They were carefully placing Michael’s belongings into clear plastic bags.
Missy sat at my feet. Evan Sullivan stood next to me, his blue eyes watery. His twin sister, Starla, stood on my other side. The two had become best friends to me over the past few months. We had a lot in common—mostly our Wishcrafting abilities, though technically they were Cross-Crafters (witches who’d inherited two sets of abilities, one from each parent). Crossers (as I’d recently nicknamed them) almost always favored one trait over the other. Though Evan and Starla were both half Wishcrafter and half Bakecrafter, Starla could grant wishes like no one’s business (but couldn’t bake her way out of an Easy Bake Oven), and Evan was the opposite.
Starla and I were both divorcées, and all three of us were all currently single (though they were both single and still looking for Mr. Right whereas I hoped I had found mine), had a fondness for our dogs (Evan lovingly called Starla’s bichon frise “the Beast”), and we all had a low tolerance level for jogging—but we did it anyway.
“This is just horrible,” Starla said. Blond and perpetually perky, she looked decidedly gloomy as she slumped against the wall. Tears pooled in her eyes. It broke my heart.
Truth be told, I wasn’t used to having friends, never mind best friends. Growing up, I’d been too busy raising Harper to hang out with kids my own age. My father may have tried to push me to go out once or twice, but I’d never had a good time, and Harper had driven him crazy with her endless rounds of tedious questions (Why do people get hiccups? Why are yawns contagious? How come fish don’t die when a pond freezes? Can animals commit suicide?). Dad stopped trying after that. Which was pretty much the story of his life after my mother died. In my heart, I knew I’d lost my father that day as well. He drank too much and kept to himself. He’d never stopped grieving her death, even at the expense of his own daughters. I hoped now, ten months after he’d passed, that he was finally at peace.
Since moving to the Enchanted Village, both Harper and I had more friends than we could count. It was a curious feeling to say the least, but one I was grateful for. I took hold of Starla’s hand, and she clasped mine tightly in return.
I tried to hold in my own grief at Michael’s passing so I could stay strong for my friends. I hadn’t known him nearly as well as they did, but Michael and I had become friends over the past four months with my frequent visits to the bakery.
I swallowed hard, easily picturing his wide, warm smile, his twinkly blue eyes, and long surfer-type blond hair—and thinking about how I’d never see those things again. Letting out a breath, I blinked to keep tears in check. He had an air of maturity about him that belied his true age. When I first met him, I thought he was in his late twenties, but really he was barely twenty-one. Too young to die.
Evan’s voice cracked as he said, “Who could have done this?”
Hunched over, Starla drew imaginary circles on the sidewalk with the toe of her knee-high leather boot. “Was it a robbery gone wrong?” she asked me, her eyes dull and cloudy.
“I don’t know.” After I’d discovered Michael’s body, I scooped up Missy and ran for the hills before I passed out at the sight of the blood. I didn’t do well with blood. I’d called the police as soon as I reached the relative safety (there were lots of handsy men getting their drink on tonight) of the pub. It hadn’t taken the police long to arrive. “It’s possible, I guess.”
There were a lot of people in the village tonight. Crime happened—it was a sad fact of life. But a robbery gone wrong? I wasn’t sure. It seemed so random. “Did Michael carry any cash on him from the shop?” I asked Evan.
“No.” He raked his fingers through his perfectly styled hair, raising ginger-blond tufts. “Bakery goods are paid for in advance of delivery. He might have had some tip money. Not much, though.”
Maybe someone didn’t know that, however.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Starla said. “Michael was an Illumicrafter. Everyone loves Illumicrafters.”
“Michael was a Crafter?” I hadn’t known. Illumicrafters were witches who had the ability to provide light. They glowed—their personalities and sometimes literally. They were people-persons. Friendly, outgoing, charming.
“He kept it to himself, mostly,” Evan said. “Though he didn’t say so, I felt he resented his Craft a bit because it didn’t provide a career like some other Crafts. Unless he wanted to be a human Gloworm at a carnival, he was kind of out of luck. He was always mentioning how fortunate I was to have the bakery.”
Wishcrafting wasn’t the easiest Craft to turn into a career, either, but my aunt Ve had made it work by opening As You Wish. However, I couldn’t even begin to imagine what Michael could do as an Illumicrafter—except perhaps a job as a politician since Illumis were so well liked.
And he had been liked.
His murder had to have been random. Otherwise Starla was right—it just didn’t make sense.
Like something out of a TV crime show, portable spotlights lit the whole area. I could see Police Chief Nick Sawyer moving around, talking with techs and with his officers. His eyes squinted in concentration, and I wondered if he’d found any clues yet. Any leads as to who would do such a thing and why.
“Poor Amy,” Evan said, staring dully into the lights. “I wonder if she knows yet.”
Amy. Michael’s younger sister. A Sally Field look-alike (from her Gidget years), she was a cute little thing with bright inquisitive green eyes. She was one of Harper’s favorite customers at Spellbound, where Amy often studied. A sophomore at Tufts, she was hoping to become a veterinarian.
The siblings’ father walked out when they were little, never to be seen again,
and their mom died about two years ago. Michael had been working a couple of jobs to take care of Amy ever since.
Which was a lot to shoulder for a young man—and explained why he seemed so mature.
“Do they have any other siblings?” I asked. “Or family we can call?”
Evan stuck his hands into the pockets of dark-wash jeans. “It was just the two of them.”
Just like Harper and me before Aunt Ve came into our lives. I tried to imagine what life would be like if something horrible happened to Harper, and the thought alone made me so sad that tears welled.
I shook my head, thanking my lucky stars that Harper was just fine. I was fine. Ve was fine. We were all fine, fine, fine.
Missy shifted, moving closer to my legs. My throat had tightened, and I wondered what the protocol was for notifying next of kin. If I were in Amy’s shoes, I wouldn’t want to see my brother lying in the bushes. I wouldn’t want that to be my last memory of him. I hoped Nick kept her away and would go instead to the apartment above the bakery that Evan rented to Michael and Amy. Evan had cut the rent a bit so they could afford it. Most likely, he’d cut the rent a lot, not a bit. He had a soft heart.
The mother hen in me immediately started worrying about this girl I barely knew. What would she do now? Where would she go? How would she even be able to afford the pittance of rent Evan charged? What about school? Colleges were crazy expensive.
The strange weight had returned to my shoulders, and I felt myself deflate from the stress of it all. I couldn’t believe there’d been another murder in the village. And certainly not one of someone so young.
A police officer, Glinda Hansel, worked at pushing back the crowd. We had a history, Glinda and I. An interesting one, as I once thought her mother a baby-booming-bimbo homewrecker, and Glinda once thought she had a chance with my boyfriend.
I still thought her mother a bimbo, and she still thought she had a chance with Nick.
We kept our interactions civil, and except for the whole she-wants-my-boyfriend thing, I kind of liked her. She was sweet and funny. (I hated to admit that.)
However, I didn’t believe the feeling was mutual. She kept glancing my way, probably hoping I’d disappear magically.
The Good, the Bad, and the Witchy: A Wishcraft Mystery Page 2