A Potion to Die For: A Magic Potion Mystery

by blake, heather

  Ainsley and I tiptoed closer to the shop, and I soon saw what had triggered the feeling. The back door was ajar.

  Ainsley stuck out her flip-flopped foot and pushed the door open wider. “Yoo-hoo!” she called out.

  My heart hammered as if I expected someone to actually reply. Thankfully, there wasn’t so much as a “boo” from Nelson’s ghost.

  After a moment of silence, she looked at me. “No one’s home. Come on.” She grabbed my arm and made to duck under the crime-scene tape.

  I grabbed her arm and pulled her back.

  “What?” she said, clearly exasperated, if her pout was any indication.

  “We should call Dylan.”

  A loud voice rumbled from behind us. “Good decision, Care Bear.”

  Chapter Seven

  If Dylan Jackson called me Care Bear one more time, I might have to throw something at his head.

  He stepped out from behind a small Dumpster.

  “Were you following us?” I asked.

  “Don’t flatter yourself. I saw you two hooligans standing at the end of the alley and suspected something might be up.”

  “So you did follow us,” Ainsley accused.

  He glanced at me, then at her, and apparently decided I was the lesser of two evils. Underneath all that boyish handsomeness, he was a smart man.

  “I watched to see what you were up to. And what exactly are y’all up to?” he said, narrowing his eyes on me.

  “How’s Coach Butts doing?” I asked. “Did you just come from there? Had he drunk whatever was in that bottle?” If it tasted as bad as it smelled, he was probably lucky to be alive.

  Certainly Dylan recognized my diversionary tactic, but he had to also know how much I wanted an update.

  “Coach is fine.” Dylan adjusted his ball cap, sliding it up, then back down on his head. “He didn’t drink anything. Claims the bottle was empty when he found it.”

  “Then what was wrong with him?” Ainsley asked.

  “It turns he hadn’t been poisoned at all. He has diabetes and hadn’t been watching his insulin level closely enough.”

  Ainsley frowned. “He could have died from diabetic shock.”

  “Could have,” Dylan said. “But he’s fine now. He’ll be released from the medical center later today.”

  All that was well and good, but . . . “Why was one of my potion bottles in his hand? Why did he claim he’d been poisoned by me? Why’d he ram his truck into my house?”

  Dylan said, “Apparently Coach had been hearing the rumors all morning about Nelson dying in your shop, so when he found one of Angelea’s potion bottles in her car while he was cleaning it out, he rightly associated the bottle with you, and when he started feeling poorly, he began believing you’d somehow poisoned him. You know how he feels about you and your potions, so it was easy for him to make that leap, especially with his being a bit delusional because his sugar levels were off.”

  I sincerely doubted Coach had been cleaning his wife’s car; there wasn’t an altruistic bone in his body. More than likely, he’d been snooping to see if she was cheating on him again, and found the bottle during his search. Angelea often hid her potion bottles in her car.

  “Plus,” Ainsley added, “he’s never liked you, especially after you almost got him fired that one time.”

  I huffed. “He should have been fired. Fact is, Coach wasn’t poisoned from one of my potions, and neither was Nelson. We have to stop these rumors before they put me out of business.”

  “Actually,” Dylan said, “we don’t know how Nelson died yet.”

  Dark clouds gathered on the horizon. “What do you mean, you don’t know? His head was cracked open like a ripe watermelon.”

  “Oh, great,” Ainsley said, sighing heavily. “I’m never going to be able to eat watermelon again.”

  “It wasn’t that cracked,” Dylan said. “The autopsy and toxicology will tell us more.”

  “How long’s that going to take?” Would I have a shred of a reputation left?

  “Not sure. Days. Weeks. Depends.”

  I bit my thumbnail. This wasn’t the news I wanted to hear. “I forgot to tell you earlier, but I don’t think that bottle belonged to Nelson, the one he had in his hand when he was found.”

  “How do you know?” he asked. “I thought you said you weren’t sure if he was a customer.”

  I explained about the color discrepancy with the bottle being violet and all, and, to his credit, he said he’d look into it. Probably to make up for doubting my witchy senses earlier.

  “Now that we’ve got that cleared up,” Dylan said, “are you two ready to tell me what y’all are doing here?”

  “Well . . . ,” Ainsley finally said, brushing a lock of hair off her forehead. “It’s like this. Carly’s witchy senses were acting up, so we came over to the shop to see why. And luckily we did, because this here door’s wide open. Look for yourself.”

  Dylan leaned around me and looked. He straightened, all business. “And you didn’t open it?”

  “It was like this when we got here,” Ainsley said. “Well, except for I might have pushed it open a little more with my toe.” She wiggled her piggies.

  Dylan shot me a look. “You didn’t open it?”

  “No, I don’t even have my keys. They’re in my purse, which is still in the shop.” A fact that I hadn’t thought too much about until right that moment.

  His eyes shifted to Ainsley, scrutinizing her.

  Hands on hips, she said, “Don’t be looking at me that way, Dylan Jackson. I don’t have my keys, either. I lost them a couple of days ago.”

  Now it was my turn to stare at her.

  She said, “What? I told you about that.”

  She had. I’d forgotten all about it.

  “When was this exactly?” Dylan asked.

  “Wednesday,” she said. “Why?”

  Then she looked at me, then at the door, then back at me and said, “Uh-uhn. No way.”

  “There was no forced entry,” Dylan said. “Where’d you lose your keys?”

  “That’s the crazy thing,” she said. “I don’t know. I’d walked to a couple places that afternoon. The pharmacy, the library, the bakery to order the boys’ birthday cake, over to Johnny Braxton’s place to drop off the payment for renting the party room at the Silo for the boys’ birthday, over to Emmylou’s Café to check the catering menu, and then to Carly’s house to pick up my paycheck so my check to Johnny wouldn’t bounce, and then I stayed and had a cup of tea with Carly, Mr. Dunwoody, and the Odd Ducks. Then I went home. The next morning, I went to drive to the grocery and my keys were gone from my purse. I backtracked to all those places I went to, but no one had seen them. I had to change my locks.” She glanced at me. “Not that we ever lock the doors at the house, but it made Carter feel better.”

  She and Carter lived in the hundred-year-old rectory on the church property. I’d never told her, but the old place gave me the heebies.

  Dylan’s eyes had glazed over during part of that rundown, but he snapped to when she finished up. “But you had the keys at some point that day for sure?”

  “My library card is on my keychain, and I checked out two books and three videos. You can’t be thinking someone stole my keys. That’s crazy. I’m always keeping an eye on my pocketbook.”

  “Where is it now?” Dylan asked.

  Ainsley had the grace to blush. “Sitting on Carly’s front steps.”

  I held back a smile, afraid she might give me a good shove if I started laughing.

  Dylan simply closed his eyes and mumbled something under his breath.

  “The door doesn’t look like someone busted in this time, either,” I finally said, examining the doorframe. “Someone definitely has a key, unless they’re a master lockpick.” There were two industrial dead bolts on the back door, my lame attempt at security.

  Dylan ducked under the crime-scene tape and said to us, “Stay here.”

  “Do we have to?” Ainsley asked me as h
e disappeared through the doorway. “I want to go in.”

  “You can go, but I won’t look good in prison stripes.”

  She frowned. “No, you wouldn’t.”

  I cracked a smile, Ainsley stayed put (she wouldn’t look good in prison stripes, either), and it wasn’t long before Dylan was back.

  “Nothing seems disturbed,” he said, pushing my pocketbook into my hands. He started to close the door behind him when Ainsley grabbed hold of it.

  “Wait!” she cried.

  “What?” he said.

  “I need a hangover potion.”

  He looked my way.

  I said, “On account that Francie Debbs is going to be drinking a whole box of wine tonight.”

  Tipping his head, he still looked confused.

  “On account,” I continued, “that she’s been keeping the Clingons all day for Ainsley and will be in need of some liquor to recover after they go home. Which means she’ll probably have a big headache tomorrow.”

  “Ah,” he said. He held open the door for me. “Be quick and don’t touch anything but the potion stuff.”

  “I need a few minutes to make it up,” I said.

  He made a shooing motion with his hands. “Hurry with you, then, and take a look around to see if anything’s missing or out of place I didn’t notice.”

  I swallowed hard as I ducked under the tape and quickly made my way down the back hallway. Immediately, I was overcome with the comforting, familiar scents of the herbs I used in my potions. It felt like a hug from my grandmother, and all my muscles relaxed in response.

  Pulling in a deep breath, I forged ahead. I could do this. No problem.

  I kept my gaze averted from the break room and bustled toward the shop. I nabbed an empty magenta bottle from the shelf and gathered ingredients from bins and baskets. All around me I noticed that my inventory had been rummaged through, and a few potion bottles even lay broken on the floor, but nothing seemed to be missing.

  I carried all my supplies with me into my workroom and closed the door behind me.

  The space was small, filled mostly with a built-in cabinet my granddaddy had made just about fifty years ago, a short counter, and a small sink. There was a pass-through cut into the wall between here and the front of the shop so I could chat with customers and keep an eye on them while I made their potions.

  The opening was purposefully high, so people could see only my head and shoulders and not my hands. I quickly propped up the drop-leg table work surface. Behind it, a series of cubbies and drawers filled the wall to the ceiling.

  I could tell the sheriff’s office had been in here, as all the visible drawers had been searched. For a moment, I worried that one of them might have found my secret compartment, but I drew in a deep breath and tried to keep calm. My granddaddy had been a master carpenter, and I doubted many of the sheriff’s deputies—other than Dylan—were smart enough to even suspect there were secret spaces in this cabinet, let alone ten of them, most of them empty.

  Rushing, I removed two decorative spindles and pulled three drawers out of place. Behind those, I removed a hidden box—a decoy filled with two hundred dollars—and set it aside. I pushed a corner on the bottom of the cube and a foot-long panel lifted. I pulled that out and reached my hand inside. From the right side, I pulled on a box and lifted it out of the hole.

  As with every other time I’ve done this, I held my breath as I lifted the top off the carved wooden box. Inside, nestled in a bed of cushioned velvet, lay the grimoire, a small leather-bound journal filled with homeopathic recipes.

  Picking up the worn leather book, I held it between my hands and could practically feel folk magic pulsing between my palms. I reached into the hidey-hole and nudged the box from the left side and carefully lifted it out.

  Two entwined lilies had been carved into its top—an image identical to the one on Delia’s and my lockets. I lifted the lid off the box and gazed at the stunning engraved sterling silver bottle swaddled in luxurious velvet.

  Slightly tarnished, the bottle stood about six inches tall and had the diameter of a half-dollar. More a flask than a potion bottle, this container held exactly a year’s worth of Leilara drops. Tears, really.

  Leila’s and Abraham’s tears.

  As I grated wild carrot, I thought about my great-great-grandparents. Of how Leila had fallen in love with Abraham and followed him from New Orleans up to northern Alabama, and, in the hope that her love was strong enough to change his sinister ways, turned her back on her family, who warned against marrying the voodoo practitioner.

  Of how every day was a struggle for her to keep her energy pure, because she could feel his darkness. She had no charmed locket like Delia and I had; she simply had a heart full of love and good intentions.

  I thought of how they’d married and had a daughter who’d inherited her mama’s way of feeling other people’s emotions and her talent for folk-magic remedies.

  And of how one June day, while picnicking along the Darling River, when Abraham was bitten by a poisonous water snake, Leila felt his pain, his anguish. She tried to save him by sucking the venom from his wound.

  Of how they both died, wrapped in each other’s arms.

  And of how every year on that day—and only that day—an extraordinary double lily blooms in the spot where they died and cried magical tears.

  Engraved vines and lily leaves decorated the outside of the bottle. I pulled the stopper from the Leilara and carefully inserted a dropper and extracted two teardrops, depositing them into the hangover potion. Steamlike white tendrils rose from the liquid and swirled into a spiral before dissipating. Tomorrow, Francie Debbs wouldn’t have so much as a twinge of a headache.

  A few minutes later, after I’d cleaned up a bit, a knock came on the door just as I had finished putting the Leilara back into its hiding space. Since I didn’t need it for the love potions, because my customers had abandoned me, I’d leave it here. I liked knowing it was safe and sound.

  “Carly? You going to be all day?”

  I grabbed the potion bottle and opened the door.

  Dylan’s face peered inside the workroom, and he looked around suspiciously.

  “I’m done,” I said, holding up the bottle.

  He gave a sharp nod and walked ahead of me toward the back door. I couldn’t help myself from admiring his backside. I wasn’t proud of that fact, but, hey, some things were impossible to ignore.

  Ainsley, standing at the back door, strained to see any goings-on. I held up the bottle, and she grinned ear to ear. “Lordy be!”

  The bottle slipped from my grasp, and using moves I didn’t know I had, I made a grab for the falling bottle and was able to get my hand under the glass just in time. I wasn’t able to catch it—only break its fall. It hit my palm and rolled off—into the break room.

  Ainsley let out a cry and came rushing toward me. “It’s not busted, is it?”

  Dylan threw his hands in the air at her intrusion into his crime scene.

  I simply stared in horror as the bottle rolled over the spot on the floor where Nelson Winston had been lying dead as a doornail a few hours earlier.

  A large smear of blood had colored my off-white tiles a rusty brown. I immediately felt queasy, but Ainsley had no qualms as she rushed past me, stepped over the bloodstain, and snatched up the potion bottle.

  “Out!” Dylan ordered her, pointing down the hallway.

  Without a fight, she slunk away, the potion bottle clutched to her chest. “I’ll wait for you outside, Carly.”

  I felt glued to the ground. Stuck there, staring at all that blood. I felt a hand on my elbow.

  Dylan said, “Come on, Carly. Let’s go.” He tugged, and I slowly rose to my feet, a bit wobbly.

  “I’ll have to scrub for days. That stain’s never going to come out of the grout.” I grew queasier just thinking about it.

  “No you won’t, Cinderella. Someone’s coming in later today to clean up. A professional crew. Stain magicians.”
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  “Really?” I asked.

  “Really.”

  I was beyond grateful, because I couldn’t imagine taking a scrub brush to that floor.

  Looking around, I said, “Why did someone break in but not take anything? Nothing is missing.”

  He leaned against the wall. “I don’t know. Yet. But I’ll figure it out.”

  As I walked into the alley, leaving my shop behind, I really, really wanted to believe him.

  But I had the uneasy feeling that Nelson’s murderer was going to great lengths to keep that from happening.

  Chapter Eight

  Ainsley and I sat in Déjà Brew, the only coffee shop located in the Ring, sipping iced coffee.

  “What now?” Ainsley asked, dragging her straw through the mocha liquid, swirling the ice into a mini tornado.

  Condensation dripped from my cup onto my shorts, leaving a dark shadow on the white fabric. “We have to find out who Nelson was dating. You never heard anything about him dating, did you?”

  “Not a peep, and I’m surprised. I tend to hear all the gossip either through church events or at Dr. O’Leary’s office. That place is nothing but a hen house—you should hear all the squawking.”

  Colley O’Leary was the only ob-gyn within Hitching Post’s town limits, and Ainsley worked for her a few days a week.

  I set my cup on a paper napkin to absorb the drips sliding down the side of the glass tumbler. “But no squawking about Nelson?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing about a girl. Only some buzz about Coach Butts’s case.”

  “What kind of buzz?”

  “That that Nelson was going to get Coach off, free and clear.”

  Dylan had said the same earlier. Tearing an edge off the soggy napkin, I rolled the paper between two fingers. “Win because Coach isn’t guilty? Or because Nelson is such a good lawyer he’d get him off?”

  “Not guilty. Coach has been claiming all along that someone forged his name on those checks, and talk is that Nelson could prove it true by getting some fancy handwriting analysis done. He’s been waiting on the report that was due any day now.” She shrugged. “It may have already come in.”