The Witch's Beauty_A Cozy Witch Mystery)

by Iris Kincaid

  “Arabella Crowe. I thought I had put an end to her. But you see what this means, don’t you?”

  “I don’t see anything very clearly at three o’clock in the morning. Why don’t you give me a hint?”

  “She was my most troublesome rival. If I had ever let my guard down . . . If my powers had been weakened by just the smallest degree, she would have gotten the best of me.”

  “Instead, it was she whose powers were weakened. And it was you who was able to strike the final blow.”

  “I hardly had a choice in the matter. Kill or be killed.”

  “I don’t suppose you ever heard of ‘Live and let live.’”

  “That requires a treaty that Arabella would never have signed. No, the quarrel between our families was an ancient one, and her one thought was to extinguish me. But I was the conqueror. And I was finally free of her. Or so I thought.”

  “And what do you think now?”

  “I was killed by a practitioner of the dark arts, and as I seek my vengeance from the grave, perhaps she did as well. It could very well have been her vengeance that was behind my demise. She would have needed earthly assistance, I think. From the one person I couldn’t lay a hand on— Maximilian Crowe. The Protected One.

  “That is only speculation. And I have seen no evidence to support it. He does not seem to be in touch with the departed.”

  “It cannot be ruled out. And his attachment now, to Lorna Sinclair, who carries my body in her . . . I suppose you will chalk that up to coincidence. But I think it bears a closer look.”

  There was no arguing with Lilith. And if Delphine was going to be honest with herself, what she was proposing could not yet be ruled out. Arabella Crowe was not one to rest quietly in her grave.

  *****

  Lorna had known that the day would come when she would have to own up to her witch side to Max. Even though a witch had killed his mother, she always hoped that he would see that it was completely unrelated to her and who she was. There are good witches. There was Delphine, and there was Gillian Swann, whom she barely knew, but whose goodness was self-evident.

  But now she could no longer say that she had nothing to do with the witch who’d killed his mother. Lilith Hazelwood was a part of her, and a growing part. She remembered touching the young teenager’s acne-riddled face. Lilith’s powers were getting stronger in her. How was Max going to react to this? Was it going to ruin everything? It wasn’t a secret that could be kept even another day.

  She knew exactly what time he would be leaving school every day and waited anxiously by his car.

  “Well, this is a very pleasant surprise,” Max boomed. Then he noticed her worried expression. “Something wrong?”

  “I have something to tell you. Something very important. And I know you’ll be shocked. I just hope that you won’t . . . hate me.”

  “I absolutely will not hate you. Wait a minute. Is there another guy? Because I have to admit, I absolutely would hate that. Even if I could never hate you.”

  “You saw the picture of my scars and burns. It wasn’t a miracle plastic surgery that healed me, that changed my face, that made me beautiful. It was being the organ donor recipient of Lilith Hazelwood. A witch. The witch who killed your mother.”

  Lorna never took her eyes off Max’s face. His whole body tensed at the mention of Lilith’s name.

  “Lilith Hazelwood’s body was put inside you?”

  “Yes. And her body was so filled with power that it took away my burns and gave me back my youth. I am forty-two years old, by the way, and it made me beautiful, much more beautiful than I ever would have been, even if the accident had never happened. It also left me with . . . some of her powers. I’m able to do some . . . unusual things, and I think that’s going to continue to grow.”

  Max started pacing back and forth in front of her, quite agitated, almost unable and definitely unwilling to process what he was hearing. He stopped right in front of her. “You’re a witch! And the woman who murdered my mother is now a part of you. I don’t even know what to do with that. How am I going to be able to look at you and not think of that witch? That cold-blooded murderer who took my mother from me?”

  “Because I’m not her. You know what I am. You know better than anyone who I am. I wasn’t presented with a choice, by the way. I had no idea what was being put in me. But even if I had, do you think I could’ve turned it down? What do her sins have to do with my life?

  “I suppose you would say that if a person needed a heart or lungs, or a kidney, and the donor was a terrible serial killer, that the dying person should refuse the organ because of the sin of the donor. That is not so far from what happened to me. Lilith Hazelwood did kill your mother and others, and so she was a serial murderer.

  “But her body helped to give me my life back, and I can’t regret that, and I don’t deserve to be blamed for it. You remember the photo I showed you. I could have worn that face for eighty years and then died lonely and miserable in my grave. Would that have been better?”

  Lorna was pretty worked up. She had hoped that Max would be more understanding, but no such luck. She had to storm away before he could see her tears. What a miserable way for things to end.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  It was just as well that Lorna was in a downbeat mood on the occasion of Stella Kirby’s memorial service. Her sadness had little to do with the dearly departed, but if fit in well with the somber and sorrowful tone of the day.

  It was marvelously well-attended. A room full of over two hundred people had come from all over the New England area to pay their respects. An empty closed coffin at the front of the room, surrounded with enlarged photos of the deceased, helped to bring back the immediacy of Stella’s departure.

  There was almost no family represented besides Daisy Kirby. The relatives who lived at some distance had been informed that they were excluded from Stella’s will and consequently decided that they couldn’t spare the time or the cost of airfare to say their goodbyes.

  So, almost all who were in attendance were her rabid fans, the entirety of her book club, a few business associates, including her lawyer, publisher, accountant, and techie, Shane. Lorna and Finn Cochran were there, with their own agenda—to mingle and find a murderer.

  Even Stella’s enemies and detractors showed up—Elliott Guest, Celeste Piper, and Ivy Morgan—seeking a cathartic closure, perhaps?

  It was a tediously long service. So many fans wanted to take their moment at the microphone to express appreciation to Stella for the enjoyment she had brought their lives. It was a useful opportunity to peruse the crowd. Who was in agreement? Who was bored? Who was grieving? Who was restless? And who was rolling their eyes?

  It was quite a large crowd to sift through. Fortunately, the most useful lead was one that they didn’t even have to hunt down. He came right up to them after the ceremony—Stella’s publisher.

  “Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Stella’s publisher, Lawrence Wilcox. Am I to understand that you are the police officer in charge of her murder investigation and that you have her computer in your possession?”

  “That’s right. Officer Finn Cochran at your service. And this is Lorna Sinclair. Also, on the investigation. What’s this about her computer?”

  “It’s just that, and I hate to discuss business under these tragic circumstances . . .”

  “We didn’t know her. Go right ahead,” Finn said.

  “She was just two weeks away from her deadline for handing in her second book – the highly anticipated sequel to Lobster Bay, After Hours. The sequel that we gave her a half-million dollars’ advance for. As you can imagine, that is not an investment that we want to forfeit. Even if she wasn’t finished . . . even if the final chapter has to be completed by a ghostwriter, that book is worth a very great deal to a publishing house. It belongs to us. We paid for it. And so, I need your assistance in retrieving the manuscript, as well as any notes or outlines associated with it.”

  “That’s quit
e an investment. Sounds like you’re counting on the book to be a big hit.”

  “Oh, there’s a good possibility it would be even more popular than the first. At least, that would be my best guess. She said that it was full of scorching hot revelations that top anything that was in her first novel.”

  “Did she do the same thing?” Lorna inquired. “Did she talk about people who really live in Oyster Cove and use their initials so that people can guess who they are?”

  “That is undoubtedly the strongest appeal of her books,” Mr. Wilcox confirmed.

  “Scorching, huh?” Finn and Lorna exchanged a glance. “Sounds like we have some reading to do.”

  *****

  It was actually a relief, having something to occupy her mind. Stella’s new manuscript would keep Lorna busy all evening, and away from disturbing thoughts of Max and how everything between them was probably over.

  Finn had given her orders to text him as soon as she ran across anything that could be remotely significant, and he would do the same. Although it had been a while since Lorna had read Stella’s first book, she remembered it as being moderately well-written and vaguely entertaining. But this one was just plain confusing. The central scandal appeared to have something to do with the dentist, a storytelling dentist who was continually engaged in acts of treason. His initials were TM.

  It was the most disjointed, irrational piece of dreck that any publishing company could ever have shelled out half a million dollars for. What could Stella have been thinking?

  Lorna’s phone buzzed with the text that read, “You’re the bookworm. You tell me.”

  She texted back, “It’s absolute nonsense. Maybe not absolute. It feels like a puzzle that was put together the wrong way.”

  “Like a weird cut-and-paste, as if they took out the right words and substituted ridiculous ones.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Why would Stella do that?” Finn asked.

  “She wouldn’t.”

  Finn’s response was a full two minutes of silence before he responded, “Meet me at the station in half an hour.”

  *****

  The police station was minimally staffed, it being so late at night. The few officers there watched with great fascination as Finn ushered Lorna into his office. Finn waved a warning finger at them. “Business,” he said emphatically.

  He retrieved Stella’s computer and flash drive from the evidence room, as well as surveillance footage from their small conference room gathering.

  “There might’ve been a few opportunities for people to get access to Stella’s computer before she died. But afterward . . . couldn’t have been anyone except Shane.”

  He and Margo watched the footage of Shane as he accessed Stella’s computer, with everyone chatting and buzzing around him. He put the flash drive in immediately and afterward, shoved it into his pocket, which Finn had called him on. Shane had surrendered it so readily that it seemed unlikely that he was up to no good. But it was hard to be sure.

  “Can you zoom in?” Lorna asked. “It’s really hard to see what he’s doing.”

  “That’s as good as it gets. These rooms are wired for sound more than great video. We need some serious enhancement if we want to know what was going on here. That means petitioning for funds, sending it out for data retrieval . . .”

  “You know something? I just met someone who has really excellent vision. Extraordinary vision. She might be able to help us out.”

  “Now that you mention it,” Finn said, “I also know someone who’s got pretty unbelievable vision. I think I’ll give her a call.”

  “Her vision couldn’t possibly be as good as the woman’s I’m thinking of,” Lorna protested.

  “There’s no way that your person has better vision than my person.”

  Of course, they were both referring to Gillian Swann, the possessor of Lilith Hazelwood’s eyes, that Lorna had met at Café Au Lait. Finn shook his head in disbelief when Lorna handed him Gillian’s card. Then he shrugged and made the call.

  “Gillian. This is Finn Cochran over at the police station. No, yeah, yeah, we’re still on for dinner next week. But right now, I need you to bring your eyes down to the station. I’ve got a job for them. Okay. See you in ten.”

  Lorna was amazed. “Do you know all the witches in Oyster Cove?”

  Finn smirked. “I get around.”

  Very shortly afterward, Gillian arrived and was delighted to see Lorna again. The feeling was mutual. But this was no time for a social reunion. Finn directed Gillian to look at the footage of Shane’s activities while he was working on Stella’s computer.

  “Okay. He’s waiting for it to boot up. And he’s looking around to see if anyone is watching. And then he slips in the flash drive. He’s opening up her manuscript from the desktop. And he’s doing a find and replace for the word novelist. He says to replace it with dentist. And there are two hundred and seven successful replacements. He also does a find and replace on the word plagiarism, and substitutes it with treason. That’s odd. Forty-nine successful replacements. And then he does the same with the initials EG. They get replaced with TM. And then he saves it to her desktop and he saves to the flash drive. That’s weird. He messed up her novel, didn’t he?”

  *****

  Gillian, having done her good deed of the day, was free to go home after she secured a promise from Lorna to meet the following week for coffee.

  “Do we give Shane a call?” Lorna asked.

  “At this stage of the investigation, you never want to announce yourself. He’s got a new tech-support job at the computer center. Evening shift. He’ll be out in an hour and half. C’mon. Let’s get some fresh air.”

  They drove over to the Promenade and got out to stroll along the storefront.

  “Hey, when you and Gillian get together next week for coffee, tell Gillian to give my girl Margo a call to join you. I think she’d really like that.”

  “That would be wonderful. I can’t wait to meet her.”

  “Well, she’s already heard about you. Bette made sure of that. So, I already explained that the two you are going to have quite a bit in common, and she was pretty stoked.”

  As they passed the window of an upscale restaurant, the sight of Elliot Guest and Celeste Piper sitting in a window seat and pouring out a glass of champagne stopped them in their tracks. Seriously? On the same day of Stella’s memorial?

  Inside, the happy pair were clinking their glasses together in a toast, when Finn and Lorna appeared at the side of their table.

  “Champagne. Sweet. What are we celebrating?” Finn inquired.

  They weren’t at all happy about the interruption.

  “We were . . . uh . . . well, um—” Elliot stammered.

  “I was just welcoming Elliot back into the book club,” Celeste said unapologetically. “He was one of the original members, the most brilliant literary voice in our community, and it will be a pleasure to have him back. And it will be a wonderful evolution for the club to return to its roots—its artistic roots.”

  “Now that Stella is gone?” Finn asked.

  “I know it may seem heartless. But a new situation has arisen and we have to make the best of it.”

  “Well, don’t let us interrupt your . . . making the best of it. You two have a good night.”

  *****

  Shane was already immersed in a video game and enjoying the night breeze as he strolled through the computer center parking lot. But he came to a nervous halt when he saw Finn and Lorna leaning up against his car.

  “Shane Whittle. This is going to be a very pivotal night in your young life. What you say tonight could land you in jail for obstruction of a murder investigation. Or it might earn you some leniency. So play it smart and answer all of my questions. Think you can do that?”

  Shane nodded wordlessly.

  “How much did Elliot Guest pay you to doctor up Stella Kirby’s manuscript?”

  “Two thousand dollars. I know, maybe it wasn’t right. But
what she was doing wasn’t right either. Talking about real people and embarrassing them and getting them into trouble. And she just laughed at all of them. Even her sister. Even her own sister. She was a pretty terrible person. So no, I didn’t feel bad about changing the book. She was just trying to ruin Mr. Guest’s life. Bad enough that she did that when she was alive. Why not put an end to it, now that she’s dead?”

  “What does this mean?” Lorna demanded. “That Elliot Guest plagiarized all of his books?”

  “No. Just the first one. He wrote the second book by himself. But the first one . . . I guess he found it in an attic somewhere, written by one of his dead uncles. So, he sent it in, and he got an agent, and he got published. And he got famous. But he wrote the second book himself. I’m not saying what he did was right. I just hated working for someone who was just so hateful, and I was tired of being part of it all.”

  “Any evidence left of that original manuscript, with Elliott Guest’s initials in it and all the original words?” Finn asked.

  “I destroyed it all.”

  “Then, my friend, I hope you’re prepared to testify to this in a court of law. Otherwise . . .”

  “Yeah. Of course, I will. But I don’t want to go to jail. You’re not going to put me in jail, are you?”

  “Up to you. Now get going,” Finn ordered.

  Shane leaped into his car and sped off.

  “I’m feeling very sociable tonight,” Finn said. “You ready for one last visit?”

  *****

  Elliot Guest’s house was of a modest size, befitting a modestly paid community college instructor. But the interior was quite a bit more grandiose, more like a British gentlemen’s club, as befitting someone with Elliot Guest’s cultural pretentiousness.

  “Mr. Guest. You did not write your first book, Fair Weather Friend, and Stella Kirby was about to blow the lid off your deception. Oh, you’re looking a little pale. Perhaps you should have a seat.”

  “I . . . I–I’m not sure what has given you this misunderstanding. Of course, I wrote Fair Weather Friend. What makes you think otherwise?”