Work Like a Charm

by Cate Martin

  "Linda Olson," I said.

  "Never heard of her," Cora sniffed.

  "Are you sure?" I asked.

  "It's a rather common name, so take that as you will," she said, adjusting her shawl around her again.

  "Can you explain to us why you are a beneficiary in the will of Mr. William Brown when you are no relation to him?" I asked.

  "I will not hear that name spoken, not in my house," Cora said, and real anger flared in her eyes for the briefest of moments.

  Then she was slumping back in her chair, pressing the back of her hand to her forehead in the world's most contrived gesture. "I am terribly sorry I can't be of any help to you. If you wish, I'd be happy to try to contact this Linda Olson for you. Spirits, when they are approached with love and friendship, are often eager to help, even with solving their own murders. I've assisted the police in similar manners back in New York City; I can provide you with references if you like. But you really will have to make an appointment for a more appropriate time. If you'll excuse me, I've found this all very draining and must retire. Good day."

  She kept that hand over her eyes as she brushed past Sophie and Brianna then her own daughter before rushing up the stairs. We heard a door close somewhere out of sight.

  "Did that help?" I asked, slumping with my chin on my hand and looking at the light reflecting off of the surface of the crystal ball.

  "Not really," Sophie sighed. "But if this was an example of her magic, she doesn't have any. I didn't sense a thing."

  "Nor I," Brianna said. "But I didn't like it. What was she talking about?"

  "Nonsense," Sophie said, but compared to her usual confidence level, she only seemed to be at about eighty percent.

  "But she could be talking about Miss Zenobia, and we do have a calling, although how she could know…"

  "It's all nonsense," Sophie said again.

  "I know it's not real magic," Brianna said. "It's not even particularly good cold reading. But she seemed to know things she shouldn't. Didn't she?"

  I shrugged.

  "She knew we were from the charm school," Sophie decided. "She knows the school's reputation. She winged it from there."

  "I'm to show you out now," the girl said from the doorway. Sophie and I got to our feet, but Brianna remained where she was, staring hard at the floor.

  "You are Cora's daughter?" Brianna asked, just catching the girl's nod with a darting glance. "What's your name?"

  "Margery," the girl said guardedly.

  "Margery," Brianna said, "do you think your mother can do what she says she does?"

  "You mean the palm reading and crystal ball thing or the spirit conjuring?"

  "All of it," Brianna said and bit her lip as if steeling her resolve before looking up at the girl, right into her eyes.

  "It's all fake," Margery said. "And I can prove it."

  Chapter 15

  We followed Margery back out to the foyer. She put a finger to her lips and motioned for us to wait as she crept halfway up the stairs, head tipped almost comically as she listened for any sounds coming from above. Then she tiptoed back down to us, leading the way down the narrower part of the hallway to the patch of sunlight. The light was coming from a small window over the sink of a kitchen almost as tiny as the one I had grown up with in the one-room apartment back in Iowa.

  "She's fast asleep," she told us once we were all inside the cramped space. "She's had her afternoon drop of gin. She'll be out until sundown."

  Somehow, I think that probably involved more than a drop. I was pretty sure that even at ten Margery knew that as well, but some things weren't said out loud.

  Margery reached past Sophie to push at a door that resisted being opened. Sophie put a hand on it and gave it a hard shove, and it swung free. Margery stumbled but then caught herself, fumbling against the wall until she found the switch for the light.

  The room beyond had probably been designed to serve as a dining room. There was an open doorway across from us that led into the front room opposite the parlor. There was some sunlight coming in, but it was mostly blocked. As Sophie and then Brianna squeezed past the door, I followed behind and saw that against every wall from the floor to nearly the level of the ceiling was row after row of what appeared to be library card catalogs. The window was a few inches taller than the cabinet in front of it, grudgingly letting in the barest beam of light diffused through the tree that grew on that side of the house. The entire dining room and front room, nothing but card catalogs with extra loose papers out on tables that filled the middle of the rooms.

  "She gets letters and things," Margery said, picking up some of the loose paper from the piles on the table to show us. "Other times it's just rumors from servants that work in the houses, and she writes them down. Every fact on a card. Every card organized into one of those drawers."

  Brianna circled the table to peek into the room beyond. The look on her face was simultaneously horrified at the invasion of privacy but also deeply impressed by the structure.

  "This must cost a pretty penny," I said, as Margery was looking at us and waiting for one of us to say something.

  "I reckon it does," Margery said. "I've seen her pay people, at any rate. But not as much as she makes. Especially folks that lost someone in the war. Sons or brothers or husbands. She can be really convincing. They're generous when they're grateful. And some of them come back a lot. One woman comes every month to talk with her son again."

  "How sad," I said, and Margery nodded, but there was a fierceness in her eyes. "It makes you angry?" I guessed.

  "It's wrong," she said. "My own father was hurt in the war, although he didn't die until later. I never got to met him. I miss not knowing him, but he's gone."

  "She's never tried to communicate with him for you?" Brianna asked.

  "No," Margery said, her voice thick with angry tears.

  "Do you wish she would? She must miss him too," I said.

  "She doesn't," Margery said, blinking furiously to keep from crying. "She hated him. She never loved him. He was just… rich. He was supposed to marry her, but he came back from France with a different wife."

  "I'm sorry you never got to meet him," I said, and pulled her into a tight hug. I don't think she got hugged much. She stiffened in my arms as if she wasn't sure what to do. Then she just melted against me. Still not crying, but I think some of the anger had dissipated.

  "I don't see anything here about Miss Zenobia or the school," Brianna said. It looked to me like she was opening drawers at random, but I was sure she wasn't. While I had been talking to Margery, she had mastered Cora Fox's intricate filing system just by glancing at it.

  "Wild guesses, then," Sophie said, picking up a letter at random from the table and looking at it before setting it aside. "She doesn't know anything about us."

  "What about Mrs. Olson?" I asked.

  "Who's Mrs. Olson?" Margery asked, her voice muffled against my sweater.

  "Someone who died," I said. "We're trying to figure out who killed her and why."

  "And you think my mother knows?" Margery asked, pulling away to look up at me.

  "Well, she seems to know a lot," I said.

  "Did she tell you she helped solve murders before? Because I'm pretty sure that's not true either," Margery said.

  Brianna was trying to catch my eye. She pantomimed something I didn't get at all until she took her wand out and waggled it at me. Then I nodded and pulled Margery back into the kitchen with me.

  "Let's get you a cocoa or something," I said, looking around the mostly bare kitchen. The top shelf had a nice array of gin bottles. They looked legit. Illegal. Imported. Expensive.

  "No cocoa, but tea," Margery said, then moved past me to get the kettle herself. My plan to comfort her with food was thwarted, but she appeared to find comfort in being useful. That was something.

  Sophie stepped into the doorway and leaned one hip against it, ostensibly watching Margery and me but in actuality blocking whatever Brianna was doi
ng from view.

  "No sugar, but we have a little milk?" Margery said as she set cups on a tray.

  "Black is fine," I said, picking up one of the teacups. "These are really lovely."

  "Mother uses them for work sometimes," Margery said as she spooned tea into the matching pot.

  "She reads tea leaves," I guessed, and Margery nodded. I turned the little cup around in my hands, holding it just by my fingertips. It seemed a shame to use such a delicate piece of art as a vehicle for a beverage. I didn't know how to tell bone china from the regular kind, but when I held it up to the light from the window, I could see my fingers through it. The elegant shape of it was flawless. And I couldn't even imagine the steady hand it would take to paint the little white and blue flowers on it, dotted all around by green leaves. The brush couldn't have had more than a couple of bristles, the lines were so fine.

  I was still admiring the cup against the light when a sudden boom of noise made me jump. For an agonizingly endless moment, I was all too aware that I was no longer holding the cup. It had slipped from my startled fingers. It was going to fall. And I was going to have to watch it tumble to the floor and smash to a million pieces all in super slo-mo while my fumbling hands hovered paralyzed before my face.

  Then I saw a swoop of red out of the corner of my eye, Sophie dropping low over one foot then swooping an arm out and up with balletic grace.

  But she didn't catch the cup. The wind she was creating swept it up and held it off the ground until her hand reached beneath it.

  There was a soft sound as the china touched her outstretched palm, and then my world went back into normal time. Sophie straightened, giving me a relieved look out of the corner of her eye as she reached past me to set the cup back on the tray.

  "What was that?" Margery asked. But not with concern or alarm, not about the loud crash that had come from the dining room. No, her voice was full of wonder, and she was looking at Sophie.

  "I'm pretty fast," Sophie said. "I'm a trained dancer."

  Margery narrowed her eyes, looking from Sophie to me and back again. I knew in my bones that she had seen everything that had just happened, wind and all. She knew more was going on than a trained ballerina catching a cup with her ninja-fast reflexes. She just wasn't sure how to call us out.

  But any second now, she was going to find the words.

  "Heads up!" Brianna called, and Sophie pressed up tight against my back as Brianna came charging out of the dining room.

  In pursuit of a very familiar silver light.

  "I thought you were looking for info on Mrs. Olson!" I cried as Brianna followed the light out into the hall. Sophie and I scrambled to run after her.

  Margery was hot on our heels. "What was that thing!" she demanded.

  None of us was being particularly careful about not waking Cora Fox. But she didn’t seem to be waking. Yep, definitely more than a drop of gin had been had.

  "Maybe she has a stash of secrets in her bedroom," Sophie said to me as we sprinted up the stairs. Brianna was nowhere in sight, but it wasn't that big of a house. The upstairs was a single short hallway with three doors, only one of which was open.

  "What are you doing?" Margery hissed at us. "You can't go in there! That's my room!"

  But we did. Brianna was sprawled half under the little bed. She had flipped the edge of a rag rug out of her way, leaving a circle of cleaner floorboards exposed in the center of the dusty floor.

  "No!" Margery said, still in a furious whisper. "Get out of my room!"

  I looked around, but there was no sign of the silver light. I dropped to a knee to look under the bed just as Brianna started squirming back out from under it. Her hair caught on the springs, and she had to stop with a little cry of pain, shoving a box into my hands so she could use both hands to get her hair free.

  "That's mine!" Margery said, lunging for the box.

  "We're not taking anything from you," I said, although in truth I had no idea what we were actually doing. "What spell did you do?" I asked Brianna. "I thought you were going to summon information on Mrs. Olson or something."

  "I did. There wasn't any," Brianna said, then gave another hiss of pain. Sophie knelt down behind her to help gently tug the strands of red hair out of the springs. "So I did the locator spell from before."

  "And it led you here?" I asked. Then I lifted the lid off the box. Margery lunged forward to try to stop me but froze in place as the lid revealed the ball of silvery light hovering inside the box. It flared brightly then faded away.

  "What was that?" Margery asked, once more in a whisper.

  I started to reach inside the box, thought better of it, then pulled the sleeve of my sweater down over my hand to use it as a makeshift evidence glove.

  Then I lifted out the largest of the items inside the box. Nearly a foot long, sharp and sturdy, and most definitely stained with something that looked like blood.

  A hat pin.

  Chapter 16

  Margery dropped to her knees on the wadded mass of the rag rug and gave a sad little moan.

  "Margery," I said. "What do you know about this?"

  "You can't take it. It's mine!" she said, and she was no longer trying to keep her voice low. "That's all I have from my father. The only thing! You can't take it from me."

  "Margery," I said, holding it up in the light from the window. It definitely wasn't rust staining the shaft. The red had dried to brown but had yet to start flaking away. "What have you done?"

  "Done?" Margery asked, wiping at her cheeks without quite noticing that she was crying.

  "Our friend Mrs. Linda Olson was murdered by an object just this size," I said. "Look, this is clearly blood."

  "It isn't!" Margery insisted, but she didn't sound sure. She edged closer to me to get a better look.

  "Was it like this the last time you saw it?" I asked.

  "No," Margery said, and sniffled hard. "I take good care of it. It's all I have from my real family."

  "Does your mother know you have it?" Sophie asked.

  "No," Margery said.

  "But you never met your father's family. How did you come to have this without her knowing?" Sophie asked, gently probing.

  "She knew once," Margery said. "I found it when I was little in a chest in the attic. Back in New York. I kept it forever and ever, but one day she found it in my room, and she got really mad. She threw it away, but that day after she went to bed I went out to the bin and got it back out. I've been careful since then. She doesn't know I still have it."

  "How do you know it's from your father's family?" I asked.

  "Look," Margery said and pointed to the head of the pin. I spared a moment to be impressed she had grasped that none of us were touching the thing with our bare hands, then turned the needle around to examine the head of it.

  It was far too small of a canvas for such an elaborate portrait, but there on the porcelain knob that covered the top of the pin was a painting that, with a bit of squinting, I could just make out as being a family crest.

  Sophie sucked in a breath, and I realized it was one I recognized. It was carved into the woodwork in the hall of Mrs. Olson's house. The family crest of the Brown family.

  "Margery, what's your father's name?" I asked.

  "Brown," Margery said. "William Brown II. I was supposed to be William Brown III, but I ended up being a girl."

  I didn't want to think how many things would have ended up differently if she had been a William instead of a Margery. It would just be angry-making and not helpful.

  "Margery," I said. "Someone used this to murder our friend. She was… related to William Brown, Senior."

  "I didn't do it," Margery said.

  "No, I don't see how you could," I said. "You two never knew each other. But someone who knew about this hat pin knew her."

  "But no one knows," Margery said.

  "Not even any friends from school or anything?"

  She slumped a bit closer to the floor even as Sophie got the last of B
rianna's hair free and she was finally able to sit up and look at the pin in my hand. "I don't go to school since we moved here," Margery said miserably.

  "No friends?" I asked, my heart breaking a little.

  "A few. But I never bring anyone here," Margery said, barely more than a whisper. I could scarcely blame her for that.

  "Margery, I want you to close your eyes," Brianna said, moving to kneel in front of the girl so that they were facing each other. Margery sat up a little straighter, then dutifully closed her eyes. "Breathe deeply like this. In and out. In and out." She did, and I found myself taking the same deep breaths. "Good. Now, don't answer right away, but I want you to think back over the last few days. Start with today, then go back to yesterday, and then the day before that, and the day before that. Just imagine all of the events of the day from when you woke up until when you went to sleep. See every person who came upstairs or any moment when you were out of the house long enough for someone to come upstairs. Don't answer right away, just let your mind go through all the days, one after another. Did anyone have an opportunity to take this from your safe place then return it later without you noticing?"

  Margery kept breathing, in and out, over and over.

  "I'm always here," Margery said in a sleepy voice. We have a girl that comes in to clean on Mondays, and she brings the shopping. Mother doesn't want me to wander. Not here. It isn't like New York, she says."

  "I would think it's safer," Sophie whispered but fell silent when Brianna opened one eye to glare at her.

  Then Margery gasped.

  "What is it, Margery?" Brianna asked calmly.

  "Ten… no, eleven days ago, I went to a party," she said. "I didn't stay long. I didn't really know anyone, it was strange. I only went because my mother wanted me to."

  "She wanted you to go out?" Brianna asked.

  "Wanted? Kind of. She didn't insist, but I could tell that she really wanted me to go. I had lots of friends back in New York. I don't really have any friends here. But it was weird. It was the daughter of one of her clients, and all the girls at the party knew that's why I was invited."