“Fine by me,” Artemus said, rising to his feet shakily. “It will be interesting to sleep in an actual bed tonight.”
I waited until he had reached the door to say what I wanted to next. “Oh, there’s just one more thing. Tell your sister that I need to see both of you at the Mason tomorrow around closing time.”
He frowned. “Why?”
“Just trust me,” I said with a reassuring smile. “It’s important. David will be there too.”
My lab partner was far too tired to argue. “Alright…I’ll call Raquel in the morning. Good night, Hattie.”
I gave him a good night back and waited until I heard his steps had receded into the distance. Then I followed the ghostly music I'd been hearing all night while we worked.
I traced it to a cherrywood box under the counter, where I had safely stored Grandma Chimera's wand. The notes were ethereal and angelic. Like Enya, only heavy on the heavenly inflections. I opened the box, and the music stopped abruptly. One of the runes in the stem of the wand was glowing. I noticed that it was the healing ward. It had been unlocked. I knew in my heart that we had the cure for the Strands psychosis.
Well, Hattie, as reluctant as you are. You've done some seriously effective witchery this evening. I turned my head in alarm. Was that Grandma Chimera or me?
Shaking my head, I picked up the phone and called David. While waiting for him to answer, I felt a kind of expansion flood my core. The magic is winning.
Chapter Twenty
At around ten minutes before closing time, Eclipse and I strolled through the front door of the Mason library.
“So nice to be using the official entrance this time,” he muttered.
“I hear ya," I responded, and we both had a little chuckle at the memory of last night's shenanigans. I caught sight of David, Artemus, and Raquel by the library counter. Reg was still busy sorting through the books he'd recovered from the scroll.
David was frowning slightly. “Okay, Hattie, we’re all here. Now what?”
“Reg, can we use the back office to talk?” I asked the harried library assistant.
“Huh?” he said as he looked up from his tower of books.
Seeing who all was with me, he grew alarmed and asked, “Wha-wha-what’s going on, Chief Trew?”
“I'm hoping to know the answer to that soon, myself,” David said, giving me a sidelong glance.
“Well, Bertha’s cleaning the office right now but, well, yes, seeing as I'm temporarily in charge, please, go right ahead. Bertha won't mind.”
“Thank you, Reg,”
Bertha was steam-cleaning the drapes as we walked into the office. She seemed very surprised to see us all. “What are you doing here?”
“Reg said it was okay,” David said, holding up a hand.
“Bah, that boy would say okay to any pretty face who asked him nicely enough…and you’ve got two with you, Mr. Policeman.”
“Well, it wasn’t THIS pretty face’s idea to be here,” Raquel said, pointing to herself. “Dazzle us, Ms. Sherlock Holmes."
Artemus stayed quiet and gave me a curious look as he leaned against the wall. David just stood in the center of the room and waited.
“Alright, we all know that Druida was killed in her beloved Romani section,” I began. “Bertha had just finished cleaning the crime scene as it happens.”
Bertha muttered something in her particular dialect that I couldn’t catch. It didn’t sound complimentary.
“There was no sign of a break-in,” I continued. “That tells me that the murderer either had keys or hid in the library until after closing time.”
“You know, David and I were examining the area again while we were waiting for you,” Berry interjected. “Looked like the back door lock had been tampered with.”
“But that tampering happened well after the murder,” David countered. “My men have their faults, but they know how to spot a picked lock. Near as I can tell, I would say that particular break-in happened within the last day or so.”
That was David’s subtle way of telling me that he knew I’d been here, and that he was trying to take the heat away from me. Eclipse looked down at his feet and broke out in one of his nervous purrs.
“Well, while you were poking around, did either of you think to look at Druida’s desk?” I asked.
“This is not my first day on the job, Hat,” David said, just shy of being offended. “We looked it over on the day of the murder and again while we were waiting. Both times, all we found were some old letters to Druida’s sister in Talisman. None of it seemed relevant to the investigation.”
“Really?” I asked, a sheer bolt of excitement shooting through my chest at the thought of what I was about to reveal. “Want to check it again to be sure?”
Berry shook her head and flipped her hair as she walked over to the desk. Apparently, our détente at the café was over already. She was more than a little surprised to find the desk drawer locked tight.
“This wasn’t like this before,” she said with concern.
David stuck his head out to call for Reg. The very frazzled boy came in the room as quickly as he could.
“Do you have the key to this desk?” David asked Reg.
Reg looked confused. “Why would you need a key? Ms. Stone…she always kept it unlocked.”
“Well, it’s not unlocked now,” Raquel snapped.
“And you didn’t do anything to—“
“No, I swear, Chief Trew! I've never looked through Ms. Stone's personal things in my life!"
“Let me get that,” I said to Raquel, focusing my will for the Undoing spell. I muttered the incantation, and the lock made a snapping sound as the mechanism was released.
Berry’s eyes widened as she felt the magical resonance of the spell. Maybe that’d be trouble later, but right then, I couldn’t worry about it. My hand looked for the packet of letters that should have been there. But the drawer was empty. The letters were gone.
“There should be some letters in there,” Reg said. “Not that I ever looked at them, I swear. I just used to see Ms. Stone reading them from time to time. We all did. Isn’t that right, Bertha?” He nodded in the cleaner's direction.
Bertha looked annoyed. “Ja, Reginald. But what does it matter now?”
“It matters because the letters are no longer there,” David said. “At a minimum, that’s interfering with a police investigation and possible evidence tampering.”
“Did the writing in the letters look anything like this?” I asked, holding up my magical copying notepad to David and Berry.
“I knew it!” Berry said, grabbing my hand. “You took them, didn’t you, you little—“
“Raquel,” Artemus said, grabbing his sister’s arm. Eclipse weighed in on my being manhandled with a hiss-spit-fit at the woman.
Doing my best to keep cool, I asked, “Reg, could you get the mop handle from the maintenance closet and bring it back here?”
I felt the buzz of electricity surge through my veins once more. Be fully present, keep a cool head, and you won't need words to convince others. I instinctively touched my heart, where Grammy Chimera's words echoed.
Reg narrowed his eyes in confusion and looked at David for support. David, looking just as mystified, nodded at the young man. Once Reg was out of the room Berry leaned close to me and hissed, “Maybe you didn’t grab the letters but the fact that you copied them down—“
“Raquel...you're not understanding,” Artemus countered, pushing against his sister’s arm. “Hattie's using an Authoria charm. The writing in her pages has been copied directly from some documentation that is, right now, at this instant, in this room."
Bertha's steam cleaning machine was making it hard to hear, but I could see by Berry's face that she had finally been clued in.
Raquel let go of my arm. “Okay. So the letters are still in this room. But, where?”
She strode past Bertha to the desk once more, peering underneath the tabletop to see if there were any secret h
iding places. I grinned inside. I know it's not nice, but it felt great to see Berry so clueless.
“You won't find them there,” I said moving toward her. "But, you will find them HERE."
I turned to Bertha Crabtree, and seizing an end of her headscarf, I whipped the fabric from her head. The stack of letters tumbled to the floor before us.
Bertha was surprisingly spritely for someone of her years. In less than a second, she had clubbed me with her steam tool and bolted for the door. But David was ready for her and had her in an armlock before she reached the halfway point. Berry, still in a state of disbelief, finally ran to David with some cuffs, and in a few seconds, the Mason's cleaner was apprehended fully.
Reg returned to the room, mop in hand, his face dropping as soon as he saw the scene.
“What's going o—“
A blank veil tumbled over the young man's face.
"Thanks, 'Clipsy." I blew an air kiss to my faithful guardian. “Artemus, grab the mop.”
I held my head where the device had hit me. A little bruising, maybe, but nothing terrible.
I gave Reg a gentle shove out the door.
"You need to finish up your filing, Reg," I whispered suggestively. Reg walked, as if in a trance, toward the central desk. I heard his confused mutterings as he retreated.
Artemus turned to me. "How on earth did she lift this thing? It weighs a ton!" he exclaimed, looking with obvious suspicion at Bertha.
“Try hitting the floor with it.” I gave him a wide berth and allowed enough room for the spectators to see what was happening.
Artemus only gave the end of the mop handle a half-hearted tap on the floor. A crater the size of roughly a melon appeared in the solid concrete. I grabbed Bertha's headscarf from the floor where it landed previously, and felt an Illusia spell break instantly. The pattern on the scarf changed dramatically into a pattern I'd seen before.
Handing David the scarf, I said, “This was the scarf that Druida was wearing the day she died. She wasn't wearing it when she was found, but she had certainly started out the day with it.”
David nodded thoughtfully, scratching his chin.
I turned to the rest of the room. "Everyone, meet Fifnik Besnick, mother of Strands kingpin, Milosh Besnick, and Druida’s true murderer.”
Muffled obscenities spewed from the cleaner's mouth. I guessed it was in her native Romani tongue. I could see the questions building in everyone as they processed the chain of events. Berry was the first to break the silence.
“I don't get it. So, okay, we know Druida was responsible for putting Milosh away all those years ago. So, why wait all this time to get revenge? I mean the woman's been working here with Ms. Stone for years."
“I’d say that this part of the story is freakish chance,” I explained. “When Milosh was sentenced, Fifnik faced condemnation and scorn from her community. She fled her mountain village in the Carpathians, took on a new identity and came to Glessie knowing nothing of Druida's presence here. Don't forget, Druida was in witness protection, so she wasn't flaunting her true identity, by any means."
I paused to make sure everyone was getting it. "So, Bertha here gets a job at the Mason, and over time, she begins to suspect Druida's true identity. She'd witnessed Druida's reading of the letters from her sister, Daeina. She'd noticed the librarian's wardrobe choices becoming increasingly outlandish, and her ear was familiar with Ms. Stone's accent."
Eclipse backed me up. “All true,” he said, bobbing his fuzzy head up and down.
"Milosh was up for parole last week, in case you don't remember. His parole was denied."
I slapped the desk for emphasis. I was enjoying this. A little too much, maybe.
"Fifnik here was denied the chance to care for her only son and that made her spitting mad."
I paused, for effect this time. I searched my brain in an attempt to pull out a Miss Marple quote. But, I couldn't think of any. Surely I must know on--
"Hat?" David prompted me out of my self-inflating fantasy.
"Oh, sorry, yeah, so ..." I paced away from the desk, in what I hoped was a wise and thoughtful looking fashion.
"Bertha still wasn't 100% sure that Druida was Luludja though. So she broke into Druida's flat and found the communications between Ms. Stone and the Witness Protection Program. She had her proof. So, swapping out her mop handle with an old relic she brought from the Carpathians, Bertha stowed the weapon in here." I nodded to Artemus, who raised the mop so all could see.
"The Tchernobog Club," I stated simply. Absolutely loving the gasps and wide-eyed wonder I was getting with each passing revelation.
Come back to Earth, Hattie. Grandma Chimera urged. I sighed inwardly. She was right; I was trying too hard to be the center of attention. I needed to get real.
"Fifnik didn't attend the latest parole hearing. But she DID attend the original trial. And one seriously talented artist confirmed her attendance." I showed the room the court artist's rendition of Bertha some fifteen years earlier. She looked a lot more youthful, but her features were unmistakable.
“So, when she finally knew her son would be spending the rest of his life in prison, the Tchernobog Club came out to play,” I said. “How are we doing, Bertha?”
I put a hand on the old woman's shoulder. I knew she was a murderer, but she was also equally a mother, who only wanted to look after her child. Bertha repeated the same insult she’d screamed before.
“I’d say pretty good,” Berry said with a genuine smile in my direction.
“Milosh was all I had,” Bertha snapped. “He was MY BOY! And, I was proud of him for making something of himself, whatever your laws have to say about it.”
“Well, eventually, they said that he had to go to prison,” David's deadpan response came. “Did you really never go searching for the woman who put him there in all these years?”
Bertha's gravelly laugh only emphasized her contempt. “I’ve known about those letters in her desk for the last five years. But there was always the hope that Milosh would be freed on parole, so I thought there might be a chance that I wouldn't have to kill the witch.”
“But parole was denied,” Artemus pointed out. “So you finally decided to do something about it.”
“Ja,” Bertha affirmed. “I waited until Druida had locked up for the night and then I took mein rache.”
“If only you weren’t a trophy taker,” I said, nodding to the scarf. “Or if you hadn’t ripped Druida’s scarf off her neck so forcefully that it snagged one of her earrings from her ear."
I cleared my voice and continued, feeling genuine empathy for the broken woman before me. "You thought that pocketing the earring would at least dispose of that one piece of evidence. And you kept the scarf, assigning it a new pattern. But what you didn't realize is that the earring you tore from Druida's ear also caught on the fabric of the scarf. Which is the tiny scrap of evidence I found under the shelf in the Romani section? You remember?"
I looked into Bertha's eyes with genuine concern. "Last night when you were cleaning the blood from the floor. That's why I was there. Gathering evidence." I dropped my hand finally from her shoulder.
"Bertha," I said gently. "So, you see, there was no need for you to hide those letters. The evidence is all here. You murdered Druida Stone."
Chapter Twenty-One
Druida Stone was buried two days later in Stillstone Cemetery. According to local gossip, there were two mourners at her graveside: her long-lost sister Daeina and our very own Portia Fearwyn. The funeral itself was an incredibly lavish one for just two attendees. Some as yet known benefactor had picked up the tab. Even taking Druida’s undisclosed past into consideration, this funereal arrangement remained as much a mystery as Druida’s fascination with hideous wardrobe choices had been.
Fifnik Besnick aka Bertha Crabtree was convicted of first-degree murder of Druida Stone. While she never pled guilty, she also did nothing in her defense to deny it. Bertha died of natural causes just two days before her sentenci
ng.
Marty Fog wasn’t nearly as lucky as Bertha. True, he managed to beat the aiding and abetting charges in court, but the damage had already been done. All the lurid details that came out in the trial forced a swift reelection. The disgraced Mayor was removed from office in favor of one Sincerity Jones, whose no-nonsense, no-drama approach earned her respect, if not love, from the citizens of Gless Inlet. The last anyone heard of Fog, he was eking out a marginal existence on Nanker, and overusing some of the same illegal substances he had helped to import.
Bradford was eventually released from the hospital and vanished from Glessie just as mysteriously as he had arrived years earlier. Before taking his unofficial leave, he made arrangements to turn the Scroll of Thoth’s ownership over to the long-suffering Reg. He was kind enough to leave enough money for a few months’ operating costs. Reg proved to be a shrewd businessman and built an impressive collection of volumes on the ancient arts that the Awakened came far and wide to buy.
Following weeks of exhaustive testing, the Strands cure that Artemus and I had created was certified as safe for human consumption. My first two visits, with the authorized formula in hand, were to Orville Nugget and his father, Aurel. The rest of the formula was administered by volunteers from all over the Isles, as far north as Bonemark Isle. Aurel Nugget helped with producing the concoction, to allow for its widespread administration. Our Isles were finally free from the curse of the Strands.
The success of the cure earned me a citation of public service from our new Mayor, Sincerity Jones. I didn't really want all the attention when it came down to it. But, boy, was I grateful to the spike in sales the Angel received as a result.
With Mayor Fog gone, the Sugar Dunes Runway proposal lost some steam. Sincerity Jones was sure to fight it, but with serious financial backing from Gideon Shields, governor for Cathedral Isle, I was pretty sure she'd have a fight on her hands. After Bertha's death and Marty Fog's deposition, Shields had still yet to visit Gless Inlet. But I did see his Amazonian assistant, Mari Falk, around the town, no doubt priming audiences and warming a seat for her employer.
The Witch of Bohemia: A Paranormal Cozy Mystery (Hattie Jenkins & The Infiniti Chronicles Book 3) Page 20