Witch Way to Hallows' Bay: A Brimstone Bay Mystery (Brimstone Bay Mysteries Book 2)

by N. M. Howell

  Officer Trenton crossed his arms. “And how exactly is this motive?”

  “Trey wanted to close up shop,” Jordan said. “He had planned to sell most of the restaurants and settle down here in Brimstone Bay.”

  “Only Grace had other plans,” I said. “She didn’t want to slow the business down, but didn’t have much of a say in the plans for the restaurants while Trey was alive. She had no intention of settling down here.”

  “And where’s this interview?” the Officer asked.

  “It was just on TV,” I said. “We watched it on the news less than half an hour ago.”

  “I’ll go make some calls,” Sheriff Reese said. He went to the back room to try and track down a copy of the interview and left the rest of us together in the front office.

  “Does this mean Mrs. Pots doesn’t have to go to state prison?” I asked.

  Trenton shook his head. “While the motive certainly seems plausible, I don’t know if it’s enough to let Nancy Pots off the hook. We have a first-hand witness as well as her confession that she gave the poisoned food item to the victim.”

  I rolled my eyes. “She didn’t know it was poisoned. I don’t understand how that’s enough to put her in jail.”

  “Unintentional murder is still murder,” he said. “It’s called manslaughter.”

  “It’s not unintentional murder,” I snapped at him. “Mrs. Pots is a victim who was in the wrong place at the wrong time after Grace planted the poison cookie. Trey was murdered, and Mrs. Pots just got caught in the crossfire.”

  I sat down in one of the chairs along the back wall and placed my head in my hands. We had to find a way to convince everyone that Grace was the real suspect.

  Well, first we had to confirm Grace was the killer, and then we would have to convince everyone about it.

  Sheriff Reese came back into the room. “We’ve got the interview on the computer. Everyone come into the board room, please.”

  We all crowded in to the back office around the Sheriff’s laptop to watch the interview.

  The interview began with a background story on Trey’s restaurant business, and it lightly touched on Grace’s restaurant as well. I hadn’t realized her restaurant was doing so poorly.

  The news feature made the merger out to be a romantic love story. Prince Charming swoops in with his successful restaurant business, then the damsel falls in love with him and he saves her business by merging both restaurants together. “A love story sweeter than pie,” they were calling it. I felt sick to my stomach as I realized that it was likely the only reason Grace married Trey was to gain access to his successful dessert restaurant business.

  I couldn’t believe I considered that girl a friend.

  “I don’t see how any of this implicates Grace Wong,” Officer Trenton finally said as the interview came to an end.

  “You will once you hear the back story,” I said.

  Jordan moved to stand in front of the room and started telling the story from the beginning.

  “Trey and I partnered up to open a small Desserti spin-off restaurant here in town after we found the old cafe for sale,” he began. “We were old friends back in Boston, and I knew Trey since we were kids. He had been getting overwhelmed by having so many restaurants, and he talked a lot about wanting to slow his business down quite a bit. He had plans to sell most of the restaurants, apart from the New York City one, and, of course, the new one we were starting together here in Brimstone Bay.”

  The room was quiet and everyone listened intently to Jordan as he spoke.

  “Trey and Grace only met last year. They hit it off instantly and were engaged in only a few short months. They married in Vegas a few months ago, and Grace merged her restaurant with Trey’s chain not long after.” Jordan paused and rubbed his eyes. He looked like he was on the verge of tears, and I went to stand next to him and took his hand in mine. He smiled down at me before continuing his story.

  “Trey was a really quiet guy, so I was surprised when they decided to marry in Vegas. It was out of character for him, but Grace really had a way of pulling him out of his shell. She was really good for his self-confidence.”

  Jordan pulled his hand from mine and began pacing the room.

  “Trey wanted to settle down here. Start a family, and all that. As far as I understood, he even had buyers lined up for both the Seattle and Boston restaurants.”

  “Do you have any proof of this?” Jordan’s officer friend Josh asked.

  Jordan shrugged. “I’m sure there is. You could try contacting the restaurant managers, maybe.”

  “Were Mr. And Mrs. Wong co-owners of the restaurant chain?” Officer Trenton asked. “Do they have equal say in the business?”

  “Again, I’m not sure.”

  “How about instead of interrogating Jordan, you bring Grace in for questioning? How’s that for an idea?” I was growing impatient and was eager to get to the bottom of this. The sooner we got Grace’s confession, the sooner Mrs. Pots could go home.

  “Where is Mrs. Pots?” I asked.

  “She’s in the back room… secured,” Sheriff Reese said. “Which reminds me, I should go check on her.”

  I raised my eyebrow at him as he walked towards the door. His emphasis on the word secured made me curious as to what he meant.

  The Sheriff bent down toward me as he walked by and whispered in my ear. “She locked herself in the bathroom.”

  I suppressed a laugh and made it out to be a cough when I noticed all the officers in the room looking at me.

  “So what are we going to do?” I asked. “Do you have enough to get Grace?”

  Officer Trenton shook his head. “She hasn’t done anything wrong. Unless she confesses, we don’t have enough to justify accusing her of anything.”

  I gaped at him. “Okay, but surely you have enough to at least bring her in for questioning?”

  He nodded. “Yes, we’ll want to question Mrs. Wong.”

  “We’ll have to be careful with that one,” Jordan said. “She’s clever. If she knows that we suspect her of murdering her husband, there’s no way she will cooperate.”

  “I agree,” I said. “We’ll have to find a way to catch her in a lie. If you bring her in on suspicion of the crime, she’ll find a way out of it. I know that girl.”

  “You keep saying ‘we’ as if you two have anything to do with this investigation,” Officer Trenton said. “We appreciate you bringing the interview to our attention, but from here on out, I will be running this investigation. Understand?”

  “Of course,” Jordan said.

  I sighed and very reluctantly agreed. “Sure, fine.”

  We would have to be clever with how we handled this and would have to come up with a plan to get Grace to admit she was the one responsible for the murder.

  There was, of course, the chance that maybe we were wrong and Grace was simply taking advantage of the unfortunate situation with this whole expansion thing.

  I pushed that thought from my mind for now. Either way, we would have to bring her in and get her to talk.

  “Why don’t we get Jordan to invite her back to the shop to talk business?” I asked, the idea just popping into my head. I turned to Jordan who seemed intent on what I was saying.

  “Offer to buy out her half of the restaurant,” I continued. “We both know she has absolutely no interest in the Brimstone Bay location. I’m sure she’ll be thrilled to come in and get rid of it. Use that as an excuse to get her to talk.”

  “Yeah, that could definitely work,” Jordan said. “Only problem is, I don’t have the finances to do that.”

  I shrugged. “She doesn’t need to know that just yet. All we need to do is bring her in to talk.”

  “It’s worth a shot,” Officer Trenton said. “If that doesn’t work, we can just call her in officially for questioning. She’ll have to at least show up, or else she’ll be breaking the law.”

  “Perfect,” I said. “Could we set up a wire in the restaurant?” I look
ed up to Officer Trenton hopefully.

  “Better yet, why don’t you all just wait in the kitchen or the back room? I can lock the door and pretend there’s electrical work being done in there or something,” Jordan suggested.

  “My work office is just upstairs from the restaurant,” I added. “We could wait up there, as well, if we needed more space.” There were five of the new officers, plus the Sheriff, myself, and I’m sure the Mayor wouldn’t want to miss this either.

  Officer Trenton nodded. “That will work well. We will tape everything, so we have it on record. But we should be close by in the event that she confesses to the crime.”

  Jordan brought out his phone and pulled Grace’s number up.

  “Put it on speaker so we can hear,” I suggested.

  We all quieted as his phone began to ring.

  “Jordan!” Grace’s voice boomed through the speaker phone. “Just the man I wanted to talk to.”

  “Hey, Grace, how are you doing?” Jordan asked.

  “Oh, you know, keeping myself distracted. It’s the only thing I really can do to keep myself from breaking down.”

  “I understand completely,” Jordan feigned sympathy. “Hey, look, I want to talk to you about the restaurant.”

  “Oh, perfect. I’ve been wanting to talk to you about the same. Are you free to meet in half an hour?”

  Jordan looked to me with a confused expression, and I shrugged my shoulders.

  “Are you in town?” he asked.

  “Sure am. Just got up here from New York. Been hiding away at my sister’s place the past few days to get away from everything.”

  I rolled my eyes. Well, that was at least one lie we had caught her in.

  “Half an hour sounds good,” Jordan answered. “See you at the restaurant in thirty.”

  Jordan hung up the phone and turned to me. “So, it seems she’s no longer in Italy.”

  “Guess the interview was pre-recorded,” I said. “Must have filmed yesterday or something. I know for a fact that she wasn’t at her sister’s last night.”

  I explained to the officers that the girls and I had driven down to New York City yesterday and stayed with Grace’s sister, Emily, who had told us that Grace was away at a counselling camp.

  Officer Trenton nodded thoughtfully. “Well, that doesn’t bode well for Grace.”

  He then turned to his other officers and instructed them to head out to the restaurant to set up the recording device. “We’ll need you there, too,” he said to Jordan.

  Jordan nodded. “Sure. I’ll meet you guys there in a minute.”

  “I’ll come, too,” I said. “I should probably go check the office to make sure JoAnn’s not still there feeling sorry for herself.”

  Sheriff Reese reached out and grabbed my shoulder as I turned to follow Jordan out the door.

  “What were you doing in New York?” I couldn’t read his expression, but I treaded carefully.

  I sighed. “We traced the spell that killed Trey to a place in the city.”

  Sheriff Reese stared incredulously at me. “And you didn’t mention this before, why?”

  “Other things came up,” I said. He crossed his arms and gave me as stern a look.

  “Did you find the source?” he asked.

  I nodded. “We found the guy who sold the spell. Said the person who bought it was a woman, and talked a lot about baking.”

  Sheriff Reese’s mouth hung open. “River, that’s absolutely something you needed to come to me with. That is crucial information.”

  I shrugged. “Well, you’re not in charge of the investigation anymore, so what does it matter?”

  The Sheriff looked as if his head was going to explode. “Do you know what this means? That suggests Mrs. Pots was the one to buy the spell.”

  “Or Grace,” I said. “It won’t matter once we get a confession from Grace, anyway.”

  Sheriff Reese inhaled a deep breath and slowly exhaled, steadying himself. “Is there anything else you failed to mention?”

  I thought for a moment, then decided there was no sense hiding anything further from him.

  “Yeah, Zack Brendon visited the building before we arrived.”

  “The journalist at the Brimstone Press?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Yeah, he threatened the guy inside before we got there. Said he’d kill him if he talked. I don’t really know what that was about.”

  “Is Zack involved in some way?”

  “My guess is he found out we were going down there and wanted to beat us to it. Anything for a story, you know?”

  The sheriff nodded slowly. “That guy does give me a bad taste in my mouth. This is certainly worth looking into more, though.”

  I smiled. “Absolutely. I’d initiate a full investigation into him if I were you. You never know what other motives he may have had for visiting the dealer.”

  I was ninety-nine percent sure that Zack was just being Zack, and wanted desperately to get the full story before I did. But the thought of him being under investigation made me quite happy.

  “Do you know the name of the guy who sold the spell? That’s a criminal offense, River. He should be in jail, especially given the outcome.”

  I shook my head. “He made us promise to leave the cops out of it before he gave us any information. Besides, he got the spell from a friend of his. He was just the middle man, or so he says.”

  Sheriff Reese nodded. “Alright, but I would like to look into this further. If you give me his name, I won’t arrest him unless we find anything else against him. I do want to look more into where he got that spell, though. Magic like that is insanely illegal, and selling that stuff could land you a lifetime in jail.”

  “Sure. Steve Jameson. Runs a laundromat in Chinatown.”

  “Thanks, River.”

  Jordan honked the car from outside, and I waved backward to Sheriff Reese as I ran out the door.

  “See you there,” I called back to him.

  15

  Jordan let the officers into the restaurant through the back door to avoid any attention on the street. Less than two minutes later, Sheriff Reese arrived with Mayor Scott. It was a full house, to say the least.

  The officers got busy installing the recording device in the restaurant downstairs, and I went up to the office to see if JoAnn was still there.

  Unfortunately for her, she was, and she was balling her eyes out something fierce.

  “What happened?” I asked as I ran over to her. I kneeled in front of her and took her by the hands.

  JoAnn sniffed and took a steadying breath. “It’s Zack.”

  I sighed. “What about Zack?”

  I pretty much knew the answer before she said it. His chauvinistic attitude, the way he treats women, the way he talks down to everyone who he thinks is below him… take your pick.

  “He’s sleeping with Grace.”

  I blinked. Well, that’s a new one.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. I pulled my hands back and stood up. “Zack and Grace Wong?”

  JoAnn nodded and wiped the tears from her eyes. “I saw them through the restaurant window as I was walking by this morning. They were definitely not being discreet about it. I’m not sure they realized some of the newspapers covering the front window had peeled away. Apart from a large suitcase on the floor in front of them hiding their legs, they were going at it for all to see.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. “And you’re sure you saw… what you think you saw?”

  JoAnn crossed her arms, and her eyebrows went up. “Yes, River, I know what I saw. Hard to mistake what two naked bodies on the floor are doing.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to rid my head of the visuals. “Thanks for that, now that’s all I can see.”

  “How do you think I feel?” JoAnn asked. She stood up and began pacing the room. “I can’t believe him.”

  “Did they see you?”

  “They saw me, all right.” A mischievous grin grew on JoAnn’s face.
“They nearly jumped ten feet in the air when I began banging my fists against the window.”

  My eyes went wide. “How did they react?”

  “Grace didn’t seem fazed,” JoAnn said. “But Zack looked embarrassed. Came up to the office barely clothed to try and explain.”

  “What did you say?”

  She shrugged. “I told him his services were no longer required. By me, or by the Brimstone Press.”

  I smiled and was cheering loudly in my head. “Way to go, JoAnn. Serves him right for being such a hurtful ass.”

  “Yeah.” JoAnn’s eyes filled with tears again as she sat down at her desk and looked up at me. “I’m sorry you had to witness this.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t be sorry. Zack’s the one that should be sorry. I can’t believe he was having an affair with Grace…”

  I paused, then gasped as I began piecing everything together. “That’s why Zack was in New York.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Never mind. JoAnn, I have to go. If you see the slimy bastard, could you tell him I’m looking for him?”

  She nodded and smiled through her tears. “He really is a slimy bastard.”

  “Always was, always will be,” I said. “I hope you feel better. Sorry, you have to go through all of this.”

  I waved goodbye to JoAnn and raced down the stairs to the restaurant. I thought I probably shouldn’t use the front door in case Grace was nearby, so I ran around the back of the building and joined everyone in the back room slash kitchen area of what once was the cafe.

  “Zack’s involved,” I said through heavy breathing.

  “What now?” Officer Trenton turned to look at me with a heavy expression on his face. “Who’s involved?”

  I rested my back against the wall and tried to regain my breath. I was so out of shape; I really needed to get back into running.

  “What did he do?” Jordan was staring at me, eagerly waiting for me to continue.

  “I’ll give you the Sparknotes version,” I said to Officer Trenton. “Zack Brendon is a journalist who I work with at the paper. Yesterday morning, my housemates and I drove down to New York City to check the address we traced the spell to that killed Trey.”