The Midsummer Murders

by Jill Nojack

  The Midsummer Murders:

  A Paranormal Cozy Mystery

  Maid, Mother and Crone Paranormal Mystery Series: Book 3

  Jill Nojack

  IndieHeart Press

  Kent, Ohio

  Copyright © 2020 by Jill Nojack.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the author at jill@jillnojack.com.

  Cover designed by Lori Gundy of Cover Reveal.

  www.jillnojack.com

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, or institutions, is completely coincidental.

  1

  “Boil me in bile! Of course you can’t have a week’s advance on your salary. A witch needs to learn economy.” Natalie Taylor’s voice bounced off the walls of Cat’s Magical Shoppe as she glared across the counter at Twink Johnson, the shop’s trainee, who was the source of her current agitation. Natalie’s gray bangs didn’t quite cover the deep frown lines between her eyes as she flipped up the jeweler’s loupe on her old-fashioned, lenseless glasses and snapped, “You’ll thank me someday when the lean times hit and you’ve had the foresight to save for them.”

  It wasn’t that she disliked the girl. Natalie appreciated her intelligence and thought she made an excellent match for her foster grandson, Marcus, who was certainly taken with her. Twink could be a delight when what she wanted was right at hand.

  But the youngster had a way of demanding to be given everything the moment she decided she needed it. At those times, she squawked as loudly as the crows that had turned up suddenly outside the shop. Natalie had no patience for a ruckus from either source. The pigeons that had been displaced when the crows arrived were bad enough, but at least they’d been quiet.

  Natalie returned her attention to Twink, who hadn’t budged. She meant to shoo her away and get back to business; this wasn’t the first time Twink had asked for an advance when her paycheck had run out before her weekly wants were filled. Still, if there was something the girl needed to practice her craft....

  “What do you need the money for this time?”

  Twink looked back at her hopefully, her dark brown eyes wide and beguiling. “I went by Ling’s Thing’s this morning when I was window shopping. There’s almost nothing else to do in Giles when Marcus is at work, you know? So there was this girl in there I’d seen around school. She was working the counter, but she ran out and begged me to come in so she could have someone to talk to. There are hardly any other kids around here, that’s the truth. So I went in and looked around.”

  “The money’s for her? You’re paying for friends now?”

  Twink’s beguiling look shifted to annoyance. As she rolled her eyes, the ruby rhinestones on the old-fashioned comb that held her brown curls in a one-sided updo glittered with the movement.

  “No. Not. But there was some super-bad stuff in the shop. The clothes—they’re like old lady things, you know. Mom and grandma stuff. But there’s some nice costume jewelry, and there was this perfume bottle. Real pretty. If I have to live with all that old stuff that comes with my cousin Daria’s furnished apartment—” Twink scrunched her nose in what Natalie assumed was meant to be disgust, but on Twink it just showcased the beauty of her smooth mahogany skin and heart-shaped face, “—it might as well be cool old stuff. I figured I could fill it up with an up-to-date scent and it would look nice on the vanity. But it was way too much money. Then Mindy—that’s the girl at the shop—said she would give me her employee discount on it, which is twenty-five percent. So I have to get the cash before somebody else buys it or she changes her mind.”

  “If you need it that badly,” Natalie replied, holding out a selection of needles in their case, “choose your weapon.”

  “It’s my day off!” The girl’s high-pitched protest was nearly drowned out by a cacophony of cawing from the gallery of feathery onlookers on the sidewalk.

  “Well then, off with you. If you’re not willing to work for it, you don’t need it.” Natalie swiveled toward the front of the shop again, where the crows had now advanced on the closed door. The large bird leading the advance pecked at the window, its black eyes glinting. Cat, the shop’s namesake and resident bird watcher, who had been monitoring them with his front paws against the glass, skittered away under a shelf and turned back, hunkered down and ready to run, eyes fixed on the marauders.

  Natalie continued, “Well, go on if you’re going.”

  Twink turned to the door but didn’t move toward it.

  “Through those?” she squeaked as the birds moved in even closer at her approach. She looked back to Natalie.

  “’Pears so. Of course, there’s no reason to concern yourself—a murder of crows isn’t literally murderous. At least, most of the time.” Natalie grinned and offered her the needle case again.

  Twink engaged in another extravagant eye roll, then went to the door, staring down the leader of the feathery mob as she raised her hand to the knob. “Back off!” she shrilled.

  It surprised Natalie when the crows did exactly as they were told, taking flight as a group and soaring in circles above the street as the girl smiled smugly back at her, then walked out onto the sidewalk. It reminded Natalie of something. But she couldn’t place the memory. It was too distant.

  Her stomach rumbled, louder than the memory. The sage had to be dealt with. She snapped the round loupe down over one eye again and raised thread to needle, all other concerns overshadowed by her battle with the misbehaving filament.

  ***

  Bill Bailey hadn’t asked to be the town’s protector. When it came down to it, he hadn’t asked for much of anything that he’d gotten lately. He’d been dead for most of the last fifty years, when he had been known as William Sanford. But he took his new role as a genius loci—a djinn or genie, depending on which language you preferred—seriously. If he was going to be tied to any place to keep it safe, he was glad it was his hometown of Giles, Massachusetts. He was convinced that he and his beloved Natalie still had a chance together, despite the years he’d haunted her against her wishes. Knowing that she wouldn’t keep him at arms length forever, that she hadn’t completely refused to think about his proposal, there was little reason for him to ever want to leave Giles.

  But sometimes he wished he could cross the town’s boundaries just once in a while. Dematerializing, then rematerializing, in the downtown statue of Giles Corey whenever he stepped over the line was becoming difficult to manage. His boss, Chief Karl Denton of the Giles police force, had given him more duties lately. Like today, when the chief expected him to accompany him up to Boston for a conference on policing domestic violence.

  He couldn’t do it. The second they drove across the town boundary, he’d be back in the statue, waiting out the foot traffic until he could undo the latches that had been installed after his transformation so he could let himself out.

  None of his djinn powers worked inside the hammered metal construction. He was helpless until he could sneak out unseen. How could he possibly explain his sudden disappearance to the chief? He’d tried to get out of attending the conference several times, but Denton wasn’t having it.

  It went against his grain to tell a lie, especially when he was telling it to a stand-up guy like his chief. Which is why it had to be extra-convincing when h
e faked the heart attack. And it definitely had to be more realistic than that guy on the old TV reruns he’d been watching who called out for his dead wife while he waved his arms wildly. He wasn’t going for hilarious.

  Nuts! I had to think about it. Why did I think about it?

  He broke out in a grin as he pictured himself with one hand on his heart as he staggered, the other arm waving in the air for attention, calling, “It’s the big one! The big one! I’m coming, Elizabeth!”

  He didn’t get his expression under control until he had his hand on the door of the cruiser, which was cutting it closer than he would have liked. But maybe it just made it more realistic when he clutched his chest abruptly in the middle of Denton’s, “What’s so amusing, Bailey?”

  And it must have been realistic enough when he adjusted his glamoured appearance. He discolored his skin tone until it was pale and mottled, forced himself to sweat, then sat down abruptly on the asphalt, gasping, both hands on his chest, and said, “I feel like I’m being pressed to death.”

  The chief’s face was serious, all smiles forgotten, as he loaded William into the backseat of the cruiser. Then he ran back to the driver’s side, jumped in, flipped on the lights, and raced toward the county hospital just inside the far edge of town.

  It was going really well. William was particularly proud of how he’d worked in the reference to how old Giles Corey had died. That is, until he realized he hadn’t also made a plan for how he’d get the doctors to diagnose something minor and send him home.

  He had no idea what they’d find if they inspected his magically sustained body too closely.

  ***

  “Look, Twink—if Natalie already told you no, it’s no. No advance. I may own the shop, but I put Nat and Gillian in charge of it, and they can run it the way they want.” Cassie Sanders stepped carefully down from the footstool. She walked back from the picture she’d just hung on the wall of the Giles Gallery of the Arts to inspect it. Then she tapped an app on her phone and stepped back up on the stool with it, using it as a level to make sure the painting hung perfectly straight. Sometimes technology could be every bit as useful as magic.

  She could almost feel the heat as Twink steamed behind her. She was ready for it when the girl burst out with, “Every time I just about think you’re cool again, you go and prove you’re not. I don’t see why you take Natalie’s side so much. Mostly she just pokes her nose in everyone else’s business where it doesn’t belong.”

  Satisfied with the picture’s alignment, Cassie stepped down and turned again. Twink’s face was tight, unhappy. But there wasn’t anything Cassie could do about it. When her friends had agreed to run the shop so she could spend more of her time at the gallery, she’d agreed to let them make the staffing and stocking decisions. And they’d done a great job, too.

  “Twink—” Cassie started. But she was interrupted by a thud from the front of the building. She turned to see what caused it and was alarmed to see a huge, midnight-black bird slamming its body against the glass of the gallery’s big picture window with its wings spread wide, then backing off to go again, repeating the action rhythmically like it was determined to break through the glass. Behind it, a flock of its buddies swooped and circled. Still others sat on the municipal lamppost and wrought iron trash receptacles that flanked it. “Omigoddess, what the—”

  Twink had turned too, and said, “I know, right? There were a bunch of crows outside the magic shop, too. They scared the heck out of Cat.” Cassie felt like she had lucked out that the distraction stopped Twink from steaming as they watched the birds silently. Not that many years ago she’d been fifteen herself and yearned for everything she dreamed of to happen without all the waiting. It had been worth the wait, though. She thought of her husband Tom and the nursery the two of them spent their free time decorating. A smile crept across her face despite the action going on outside.

  Within a few minutes, the bird that had been beating itself against the window calmed down just like Twink had, then turned and took off for the sky. The rest of the crows followed, circling above the shop lazily.

  When they’d gone, Cassie said, “Well, that was freaky. And I’ll need to clean that glass before Dash sees the marks the bird left.” She headed for the counter, then stopped, saying, “Unless you want to earn a couple of bucks toward whatever it was you wanted to buy with that advance?”

  A sigh and a frustrated, “It’s my day off!” blew back over Twink’s shoulder as she stalked out the door, a dark curl escaping from the golden, ruby-jeweled comb that held the rest of the cascade in place. It bounced indignantly as she went.

  ***

  “Calm down, Robert.” Natalie was unruffled by the news he’d just given her about William’s hospitalization. “Have you forgotten he’s immortal? Although I wonder what he’s playing at if it made Denton rush him to the hospital with sirens blaring.”

  There was a popping sound and Natalie turned to find William walking into the hall behind her from the shop’s kitchenette, his typically pristine, crisply pressed blue uniform shirt open and disheveled, the look in his brown eyes urgent. He dragged along a portable heart monitor, its leads dangling from his bare chest.

  She continued into the phone, “Speak of the devil. William’s here, looking untidy but healthy. I’ll find out what he’s up to and fill you in soon. Get back to whatever it is mayors do all day.” She hung up.

  “You have to help!” William blurted. “I faked a heart attack and when Denton returns from Boston, he’s going to find out there was nothing to it. I need some symptoms for the exam that will make them send me home, but won’t make it look like I was faking—but not ones that will get them looking at me too closely. It was hard enough to convince Denton he should go on to the conference without me. I had to lure him close to get a hold on him and soothe him before he finally agreed.” William hung his head. “I hate lying and manipulating him. But if he gets back and finds out I was shamming, he’ll lose faith in me, if he doesn’t outright fire me. Anyway, the nurse hooked me up to this monitor, said everything looked fine, and that the doctor would be around in about fifteen minutes. I’ll be in it deep when he stops in to tell me there’s nothing wrong with me. I don’t know what to do—I guess this is just another fine mess I’ve gotten myself into.”

  “Of all the things you could fake—a heart attack? No one wants a cop with a dicey ticker on the force. You couldn’t just say you had the flu?” Natalie resisted the urge to act as Hardy to his Laurel and give him a smack with the nearest available hat. She had been a nurse until she’d retired when she was in her mid sixties; it was an easy save to give him. “I’ve got something that’ll fill the bill. Here are your symptoms...” she said, counting them out as she went by raising a finger for each one, “...racing heart, feeling weak, upset stomach, chest pain, tingling in your hands and feet. You were having trouble breathing, and you felt doomed, like you were sure you would die. Manipulate your blood pressure so that it’s a little elevated, but not a lot elevated, to match the fast heart rate. One eighty over ninety ought to do it. Your heart should beat about a hundred and forty beats per minute or so in a regular rhythm. Keep your eye on the monitor and slow it down if it goes much higher than that. And don’t overdo the sweat; it’s a bad look on you. When an EKG comes out fine, they’ll diagnose you with anxiety and send you home.”

  “Not too much sweat. Right.” A slight pop sounded as the air rushed in to fill the space his body vacated when he disappeared again.

  Unnerving. Every time. She’d be the one having a heart attack if he didn’t curtail that habit.

  ***

  When Marcus pulled his car into the parking area off the alley, Twink was sitting on the concrete steps in back of the big Victorian that housed both Cat’s Magical Shoppe and the apartment where she and her cousin lived. She tossed a final piece of bread to a large crow to force it to fly for it and capture it in the air. After her boyfriend opened the car door, she had her arms around him before h
e had time to close it.

  “Why is everyone so mean?” she complained, as she pulled him near. “You smell like fish. Nasty.”

  “I know. And vinegar. I’m gonna have to get all new clothes for school in the fall. That or never stand too close to anybody. The smell doesn’t come out anymore. My other job’s no better; I’m gonna need new shoes, too. ‘Cause they stink like the mayor’s pet pigs. I like working for him, and I like the pigs, but...”

  When she moved her hands off his shoulder, sliding them down his arms as she pushed away, her nose wrinkling in mock disgust, he captured them in his and held them gently as his face went serious. He asked, “So who’s being mean?”

  “Cassie and Natalie. But Natalie, mostly. I only wanted an advance to buy this cool perfume bottle I saw. It’s not like I won’t earn the money back.”

  “If you need money, I’ll loan you some. I can get some out of the bank if you want.”

  “No! Yours is for college. Don’t touch it. But maybe you can say something to her when you drive her home? I mean, she respects you.”

  “She respects you, too. You know she does. I’m sorry ‘bout the advance, but...well, if Gram said no, I’m not going to change her mind.” He grinned. “Bill says the last time anybody changed my Gramma Natalie’s mind was in 1962.”

  Really? Marcus picked Natalie over her? It’s not like she was even his real grandmother. The back of her neck went prickly and hot, even though she fought the anger. “Well, I’m tired of her. And if you don’t want to help, you can wait for her by yourself.”

  She walked away, and the crow, which had finished its bread and come closer to her as they’d talked, hopped after her.

  He sighed and shook his head, then hustled behind. “Come on, girl. Don’t be mad.”

  He grabbed for her hand, but she pulled it away and turned back to him, saying, “I get it—” The crow at her side took flight as her high-pitched voice pitched higher, “—you’re not on my side!”