Son of a Witch: A Witch Squad Cozy Mystery #2

by M. Z. Andrews

  “I’m so sorry my grandmother did this to you,” I told him, choking back the lump in my throat. I didn’t want to hate my granny, but after Reign’s story, it was hard not to be upset with her.

  “What our grandmother did to Linda and you and me was in no way your fault, so you have nothing to apologize for. Someday, she and I will have to come to terms with what happened as a result of her actions, but we’ll save that for another day.”

  I nodded and blotted my tears with the sleeves of Holly’s sweater as Reign stood up. “I know you’re not much of a hugger, but can I hug you?”

  I managed a shy smile as I stood up and Reign wrapped his strong arms around my shoulders. For the first time, I felt like he was my brother. I hugged him around the middle tightly and felt him kiss the top of my forehead. I’d always imagined having a brother and that’s exactly what he’d do, kiss my forehead just like that. The thought made me smile and I hugged Reign tighter. It suddenly felt good to have a big brother.

  “I’m glad you told me everything,” I said as we finally parted.

  He gave me a megawatt smile. “I’m glad too. I was scared to tell you and I haven’t told Linda any of this. I didn’t want her to feel bad in any way that all of that happened. It wasn’t her fault and I certainly don’t blame her, but I could see how she might have some bad feelings about it.”

  “Yeah, Mom won’t like it. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to talk to her for a couple of days now. For awhile there, I was talking to her a couple of times a day, but then she just disappeared. I tried calling the house phone too and nothing.”

  “Linda’s missing?” he asked nervously.

  “I don’t know if she’s missing, she just doesn’t answer the phone at the house and I haven’t been able to communicate with her. Which is so weird, especially now, you’d think she’d be super worried about you with the murder investigation going on and all.”

  Reign’s face showed panic. “Should we call the Dubbsburg police and have them go check the house?”

  I shook my head. “We’ll give her another day, if she doesn’t show up by tomorrow we’ll do that, ok?”

  He nodded. “Mercy, I have some other things to tell you that are really important. It involves Linda.”

  I shook my head and held up a flattened palm. “Reign, we just had a good talk. Good talk.” I clapped my hands in a staccato. “Let’s not go throwing a bunch of other hidden family secrets into this right now. I can’t handle it right now. There’s just too much going on and I’m exhausted. Plus Hugh’s waiting for me in the car. We’re going to go have ice cream. You want to come?”

  “I don’t think Hugh wants me to tag along,” he said with a little chuckle. “I can tell he doesn’t care for me.”

  “Exactly why the two of you should get to know each other better!” I insisted. “Come on, let’s go.”

  ***

  With our ice cream cones in hand, Hugh, Reign and I left the Dairy Diva ice cream parlor. It was a beautiful evening and I was feeling buoyant for the first time in a long time. Hugh and Reign were both on their best behavior and pretending to like each other, even if just for me.

  “Hey, do you guys mind if I go across the street to Jimmy’s? I should check on Harper. I haven’t talked to her since her falling out with Elena yesterday,” I said.

  “I’ll go with you,” said Hugh.

  “Me too,” agreed Reign.

  “Oh, no, silly boys, I’ll be fine, it will just be a minute!” I said and ran across the street. I threw open the door to Jimmy’s and was surprised to find the bar completely empty with the door unlocked. “Jimmy?” I called.

  When no one answered, I dashed upstairs and found Harper sitting in the closet of Reign’s old room. “Harper! There you are. Is everything ok?”

  Harper nodded sadly. “Mercy, why am I still here? I’m tired of being a ghost. Every little noise scares me.”

  I knelt down in front of her. “Spirits usually stick around until their Earthly issues have been resolved. Your issue is resolved, maybe you need to go say goodbye to your parents or something,” I suggested. “I can take you to them.”

  Harper shook her head. “I’ve been giving this a lot of thought. I don’t think Vaughn would do this to me. I’m shocked that my sister was cheating on me with Vaughn, but I don’t feel like either of them would have killed me. Vaughn loved me, despite everything.”

  “Who else would have done this to you, though? I’ve talked to my brother and I really don’t think he did this. If it wasn’t Vaughn and it wasn’t Reign, who else would it be?”

  “Mercy!” I heard hollered from the first floor. “Mercy, where are you?”

  I shot to the door and looked over the railing. “Up here, I told you two to wait for me outside. Jimmy doesn’t want you in here, Reign,” I hollered downstairs.

  “Mercy, is there anyone up there?” Hugh asked nervously.

  “Harper’s up here. I haven’t seen anyone else, why?”

  “Stay up there,” Hugh instructed.

  I ran back to talk to Harper. “Something’s going on downstairs, Harper. I have to go. I’ll talk to you more about this in a little bit, ok?”

  She nodded. I took off down the stairs, “What’s going on?”

  “I told you to stay up there,” Hugh said.

  “Why? Where’s Reign?” I asked.

  “We’ve got a problem,” I heard Reign say from behind the bar.

  “Why are you behind the bar? Jimmy’s not going to like that,” I told him.

  “Jimmy’s not going to care,” Reign assured me.

  “Yeah, he is. He doesn’t want his bar associated with you, at least until your cleared anyway,” I told him. “That’s why I asked you two to wait outside. I didn’t want there to be a scene. Where’s Jimmy?” I asked, finally looking around.

  “Darlin’, something’s happened to Jimmy,” said Hugh.

  “Something’s happened? I don’t understand, what do you mean?” I asked as I walked over to the bar and crawled up on a barstool. I leaned over the counter where Reign was standing looking at the ground. There, sprawled out behind the counter was Jimmy.

  “Oh, my gosh!” I screamed. “Is he?”

  Reign nodded. “Yeah, I just checked for a pulse. He’s dead.”

  { Chapter Seventeen}

  “So Detective Whitman thinks it was another poisoning?” Alba asked while we picked at our breakfast the next morning.

  “Yeah, he said there was no sign of trauma, he’s fairly confident it was another poisoning,” I told the girls with another yawn. The night before had been a long evening and I was exhausted. Finding Jimmy Spencer’s body had been quite a shock to my already fatigued system.

  “Who do they think did it?” Jax asked.

  I shrugged as I took a long sip of my double caramel macchiato. “I assume it was Harper’s killer.”

  “Where were Vaughn and Elena when the murder happened?” Holly asked.

  “In police custody,” I said sadly. The whole night had been a blur, but the one thing we couldn’t get over was the fact that Vaughn and Elena had both been in custody when Jimmy was killed.

  “Well, then they probably didn’t kill Harper either,” rationalized Jax. “Where was Reign?”

  “With me,” I told them. “And he was with both of you all day. I really don’t think it was Reign. He and I had a long talk last night and he really opened up to me. My opinion of him has really turned around.”

  “So what do we know about Jimmy Spencer?” Alba asked, throwing her fork down on her nearly empty plate.

  “Very little. He’s from Aspen Falls originally. He owns the tavern. That’s all I know.”

  “Have you looked him up online?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “No, I was thinking we could do that after breakfast.”

  “Well, then what are we waiting for, let’s go do some digging,” said Alba, standing up with her tray.

  Five minutes later the five of us were back in
my dorm room scouring the internet for any information on Jimmy Spencer that we could find.

  “Says here he’s owned Jimmy’s Bed and Brew since 2001. It was his father’s tavern before that,” I said. “It’s on his website.”

  “Oh, look, click on that Aspen Falls Observer page,” Alba said, pointing at the computer screen.

  I clicked the link and an Aspen Falls Daily Record Arrests page opened up. “Look, Jimmy Spencer, 35, Aspen Falls, PA was arrested Tuesday for theft by insufficient funds check/second degree.”

  “What’s the date on that?” Alba asked.

  “Mmm,” I scrolled to the top of the page. “This is from August.”

  “That’s interesting. Keep looking,” Alba instructed.

  I flipped back over to my Google search results and found another page. “Oh my gosh, guys, look at this!” I hollered and pointed at another link.

  Jax, Sweets, and Holly sucked in their breath as they saw what I was seeing. “What’s it say?” Alba asked.

  “Jimmy’s bar is in foreclosure!” I told her, tapping the screen.

  “He needed money,” Alba said knowingly.

  “I wonder if Detective Whitman knows?” I asked the girls.

  “We’ve got to tell him!” Jax admonished.

  “Yeah, he needs to know,” Alba agreed. “What if he owed money to someone and that’s who killed him! Maybe that same person killed Harper too!”

  “I’ll call him,” I said and stood up, pulling out my cell phone from my back pocket. Alba slid into my spot and began scrolling through the links while I paced around the room waiting for Detective Whitman to answer.

  Jax and Holly jumped up to sit on Jax’s desk while Sweets sat on the bed.

  “Detective Whitman,” said his deep voice on the other end of the phone.

  “Detective! This is Mercy Habernackle,” I said excitedly.

  “Mercy, do you have new information for me?” he asked.

  “The girls and I have been doing some digging and we just found out that Jimmy Spencer’s bar was in foreclosure.”

  “I just found that out myself,” Detective Whitman said. “Anything else?”

  I looked at the girls sheepishly. “No, I just thought that sounded like an important part of the puzzle. What if he owed money to someone else and they are the ones who killed him?”

  “It’s possible,” Detective Whitman said. “Listen, call me if you get any psychic information. I’ve got to go, lots going on at the station right now.”

  “Ok, bye,” I said and hung up the phone. I looked at the girls. “He already knew about Jimmy’s financial problems. That was embarrassing.”

  Jax leaned backwards on her desk. Her hand bumped an object on her desk, sending a glass rolling to the floor. Holly shot forward and caught it with one hand. “Nice reflexes, Cosmo,” Alba muttered with a little laugh.

  With the glass still clutched in her hand, Holly’s body stiffened and she crumpled to the floor. “Hurry, get her,” I hollered. No one was fast enough and she landed with a thud on the floor.

  “Holly!” Jax screamed as she leapt off the desk to her friend’s side. “Holly! Is she breathing?”

  I held a hand over her mouth and discovered she was breathing. “Yeah, I think she’s in a trance.”

  “What did she touch?” Alba asked.

  We looked down at her hand to see the object that had rolled off of Jax’s desk. It was the shot glass that Jax had stolen from Jimmy’s bar the day after Harper’s murder. “It’s a shot glass. It was Jimmy’s.”

  “Don’t touch it! Let her have a vision. Maybe she’ll see something important,” Alba ordered.

  Crouched down around her, we allowed Holly to have her vision. Her breathing became shallow as her mind moved through whatever scene it was watching. Finally, her eyes shot open, as if she’d just come out of a terrible nightmare. “Ahh!” she hollered.

  “Holly, are you alright?” Sweets asked her.

  “Let’s get her up,” Alba instructed.

  Her hands and arms trembled as we lifted her from the floor and sat her down on the desk chair. “You ok Holly?” I asked her.

  “My head,” she cried and reached back to hold the base of her skull.

  “You hit it on the way down. Thankfully we’ve got this nice carpet that broke your fall a bit,” Jax said and shot me a haughty grin.

  “Shaky,” she managed to utter.

  Sweets rose a hand up. “I got this. Her blood sugar is low. Happens to me all the time. Jax, you have any more orange juice in your fridge?” Without waiting for a reply, Sweets rummaged through our mini fridge. “Ah-ha! Found one! Here Holly, drink this.”

  Holly took several long gulps of the juice until it was gone. We all trained our eyes on her until she began to move in her seat. “I feel a little better.”

  “Take some deep breaths,” Jax instructed her. “Inhale….exhale.”

  “This isn’t yoga class, Shorty,” Alba barked.

  “It’ll help relax her! She needs to relax.”

  “I’m ok, I’m doing better,” Holly said shaking her head.

  “What did you see?” Sweets asked her excitedly.

  “You’re never in a million years going to guess,” said Holly.

  “You saw who poisoned Harper?” Alba asked flatly.

  Holly’s bottom lip pouted out. “Boo. That was no fun.”

  Jax clapped her hands excitedly. “You saw who poisoned Harper? Awesome!”

  Holly glared at Alba. “But you’ll never in a million years guess who did it!” Holly clapped at her exciting secret.

  “Jimmy Spencer,” Alba guessed.

  Holly spun around in her seat and threw her arms on her hips angrily. “Alba! You’re no fun at all!”

  Alba shrugged. “I get that from time to time.”

  I stared at Holly, stunned. “Are you telling us that Jimmy Spencer poisoned Harper Bradshaw?! Wait, what?! How in the world did you guess?” I asked Alba.

  Alba gave a little smile. “I dabble in mind reading in case you forgot.”

  “Ugh,” Holly groaned.

  “I’m shocked. I cannot believe Jimmy killed Harper!”

  “I know, I couldn’t believe it either,” Holly said. “But I saw him pour the poison into her drink.”

  “Why would Jimmy Spencer want to kill Harper Bradshaw? That doesn’t make any sense!” Sweets asked.

  I shoved my glasses further back up onto my nose. “I have no idea. It doesn’t make any sense. And now he’s been poisoned. None of this makes any sense.”

  “Maybe he couldn’t live with the guilt so he poisoned himself,” Jax suggested with a shrug.

  Alba shook her head. “I doubt it. That guy didn’t seem to be the guilty conscience kind of person.”

  “I agree. The only way Jimmy would have killed himself was if it was unintentional,” I said. “Maybe he accidentally drank the poison that he gave Harper.”

  “Seriously? There’s no way he did that, he was a bartender, he wasn’t stupid,” Alba disagreed.

  “So now what? Jimmy killed Harper. What do we do with that information?” Holly asked.

  “Well, I think we’ve got to go down to the station and let Detective Whitman know what we’ve discovered.”

  Suddenly my cell phone rang. I looked at it curiously. It wasn’t a phone number that I recognized. “Hello?”

  “Mercy?” said a timid voice on the other end of the phone.

  “Yes? Who is this?”

  “It’s Elena. Elena Bradshaw.”

  ***

  The Witch Squad rushed down to Jimmy’s where Elena, Reign, and Detective Whitman were already parked outside waiting for us when we got there. We needed to tell them all what we had discovered and I had a few questions I wanted to ask Elena and Harper.

  With Chesney slung over one shoulder, I looked at Detective Whitman. “I know it’s a crime scene, but can we go inside?”

  “Yes, I’ve got the keys, come on,” he said and led the group inside.
He flicked the light switch by the front door and illuminated the empty bar.

  “What’s this meeting about Mercy?” Reign asked.

  “Should we sit down?” Detective Whitman asked.

  “This won’t take long,” I assured him.

  “We know who killed Harper,” Alba revealed to him.

  Detective Whitman’s face seemed unimpressed as did Elena’s. “You thought you knew it was Vaughn and Elena earlier. What happened to that theory?”

  Elena held up her hands to plead her innocence. “It wasn’t me, honest!”

  “We know that it wasn’t you now,” I said with a pang of regret. Perhaps we’d jumped on the Vaughn and Elena train a little too quickly.

  “Good!” she admonished.

  “I’m dying to hear who you think killed Harper Bradshaw this time,” Detective Whitman said with a huff.

  “I’m dying to know who you think killed Harper Bradshaw too!” said a familiar voice from the doorway.

  I spun around in my seat and leapt off the chair I was perched on. “Mom!” I exclaimed as I lunged at her. My arms encircled her waist as I wrapped her in a huge bear hug.

  “Mercy!” she said with a laugh. “Wow, I guess you missed me then?”

  “Mom! Of course I missed you. And I’ve been worried about you. Sneaks wasn’t talking to me anymore and I tried calling the house and you didn’t answer!”

  My mother sighed. I took a good look at her face. She was almost like a carbon copy of me, but her hair was peppered with white strands and she had a few new wrinkles around her temples. “Mercy, when you told me that your brother was in trouble, I jumped in that old rickety car of yours and hopped on over here as fast as I could. Of course wouldn’t you know about an hour outside of Akron the alternator went out on the darn thing and do you think I could find a parts store close by? Of course not!” she took a deep breath and looked around the room.

  “Are we having a party?” she asked casually as she took in each face one by one. Finally her eyes settled on Reign. “Oh! Reign! My son!”

  “Hi Linda,” he said with a wide smile. “I’m sorry all this happened and you had to come all the way out to Pennsylvania. That’s a really long drive!”