Broom and Board
Page 9
I called the dispatcher and told her that I thought we had everyone out. She said she’d get the fire department to us as soon as possible.
Everything in me wanted to use magic to put out the flames, but I couldn’t. There were at least three non-witches near me. It was hard to resist. I told myself we could alter the humans’ memories to save the inn. It would be like the witches did for the zombie outbreak, but I knew in my heart it wasn’t the same.
The fire trucks roared up a few minutes later, but it would be too late by the time they got the flames out. Remy’s car pulled up on the street right after the fire trucks.
He and Annika jumped out of the car and came running over to where I stood. “Can we do anything?” I whispered in Remy’s ear.
Remy shook his head no and took my hand. Annika took the other one and we stood there as The Coventry Inn burned.
Chapter Sixteen
When the flames were out and the fire marshal had finished his inspection, Gunner came over to talk to us.
It was then that I noticed some police tape cordoning off an area near the back of the building. The coroner’s van drove past us and the fire trucks to the back of the lot.
“What happened? Was it a guest? I thought they were all out,” I panicked.
“It wasn’t a guest,” he said. “We wouldn’t even know who it was without dental records except that she set her purse down on the sidewalk to douse the outside of the building in gas.”
After that, we went home. It was a couple of days later before Gunner came to see me. He laid out everything they’d found. I hadn’t expected him to do it, but seeing as I’d survived the fire, he thought I should know.
“Finding Lucy dead with the gas can practically in her hand was enough for us to get a warrant for her house and car,” he said.
In her car, they’d found a bunch of insurance paperwork for the inn. She and her husband had increased the policy exponentially when the renovations were done.
Her house is where they found the poison. She’d never let it go that Jack had left her and moved on with his life. After decades, she’d built an elaborate trap to get revenge. Well, that and to cash in on a multi-million dollar insurance policy.
It had been her plan all along. She’d only offered to pay me so much to work at the inn because she never planned on me being there past one month. She’d intended to kill him and torch the place all along. It was her plan when she showed up on my porch in search of someone trustworthy who didn’t have a job.
Or perhaps, she thought I’d die in the fire too. It would have been a triple play for her. Jack would have been dead, she would have been unbelievably rich, and she’d have gotten vengeance for her sister.
Lucy hadn’t counted on me being a witch and Coventry being a different kind of small town. Still, it wasn’t enough to save Jack. It had been enough to save everyone else.
I was still a little sad, though. Not because of Jack. It was a tragedy when anyone died, but I didn’t know him. What made me sad was that I’d really liked working at the inn. For the first time in my adult life, I felt like I had found a place where I could make a career.
“That and Jessica is out of a job now,” I said to Remy over dinner.
I’d given her most of what Lucy had paid me as a way to help her get by until she found something else. I hoped it had helped, but it didn’t even come close to the plans I’d had.
“You know, sweetie, there is a way,” he said with a smile.
“What? What do you mean?”
“Well, you want a haunted bed and breakfast, and darling, you live in a giant haunted house,” Remy said and speared a bite of steak with his fork.
“You mean turn Hangman’s House into a Bed and Breakfast?”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” he said.
“I couldn’t do that. Right?” I said, but ideas were already flooding my imagination.
“Why not?” he asked with that knowing smile that I loved.
“Why not indeed.”
Thank you for reading! Grab the next installment of the Wicked Witches of Coventry here:
Broom and Gloom
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© Sara Bourgeois 2019
This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons alive or dead is a coincidence.