“Come on, Vanessa. It’s no big deal.” I wiped the chocolate shake from my shirt as Patagonia licked up what was pooling at our feet. It was chocolate, but underneath that was a musty, musky smell in the milk. It flipped my stomach, and I knew it couldn’t be normal cow’s milk. It was from some creature that crawled on the ground.
“It is a big deal,” Martha whined. “It’s Bethenny’s favorite, and now you’ve ruined it.”
She blinked hard, and fear shot through her, strong and fast, before she sighed and admitted, “It’s mouse milk. Do you know how many mice I had to milk to get enough for a shake? It’s very expensive.”
I gulped hard, not wanting to barf on her shoe.
“Now I’ve got to get something else to show respect.” The anger ratcheted up again. “And it’s all your fault.” She turned and stormed off, hopefully to rinse off the milk before she was attacked by a herd of cats.
“What got into her?” Vanessa shook her head.
“You were a bit snippy. How is it that you could be so polite to Bethenny then turn around and be so rude to Martha?”
“That was just a show with Bethenny. I know how to play the game, but what’s the point in lying all the time? Who cares what Martha thinks?”
“Is that so, young lady?”
I turned around to discover Granner glaring at Vanessa. She managed to stare her down despite being barely up to Vanessa’s shoulder. “We have a family reputation to uphold. Now what have you girls been up to this week? Skulking about. You’ve barely helped me at all, and you have the smell of weird magic on you.”
“Can you really smell magic?” I interjected.
“Not as well as I once could. I worked for the investigators from time to time. But you don’t really smell it. It’s a lot like smells, warm vanilla or cool peppermint, but not so much an aroma as a…”
“Aura?”
“Do you have the gift too?” She searched my eyes. “Wait. You’re just distracting me. What are you two up to?”
Vanessa looked to see that no one was around. “We are investigating Michael’s murder.”
“I thought Vin was doing that for the marshal.”
“The marshal called off the investigation because the widow says it was a suicide.”
“Oh, poppycock. I think you have the murderer right there. How are you going to catch her?”
“We… don’t know.” Vanessa looked to me.
“She wasn’t here when the murder happened, so she must have an accomplice. Maybe we could spy on her. Or maybe just ask more questions when we go back. She requested more of your salty cheesy balls.” I shrugged.
“What did I tell you? Why don’t you just plant a listening device when you go back?”
I exchanged looks with Vanessa. “I don’t know how to make one. Granner?”
“Of course I do. I’ve done my share of spying. I think I have everything up in my bedroom. Come on, girls, I’ll show you how to do it.”
“We really should stay and investigate more.”
“Or you could get the right tool for the job. Come with me, and we can make something within the hour to catch whoever squashed Michael and his stupid green cowboy boots.”
Vanessa shook her head. “Red cowboy boots. He always wore red ones.” She turned to me. “Granner gets confused sometimes, but Michael was known for his red cowboy boots. It was his signature look.”
“I was the one that saw his flattened body, and he was wearing green cowboy boots. And don’t imply that I’m daft in the head.” Her voice started to climb with each word. “Michael was wearing green cowboy boots.”
People were turning to stare. Martha glared as she poured another milkshake. Then she stood up, digging into her shelves before pulling out some additional ingredients to mix into the shake before turning to look at us again.
Granner set her jaw. “Why is that fool girl glaring at me? I’m the one that chewed you two out.”
I grabbed Granner’s arm and lowered my voice so only she and Vanessa could hear. “I think a listening device is a great idea. Let’s go right now.”
***
Even rushing the magic as fast as possible, almost two hours had passed by the time the work was done. We used two seashells as microphone and speaker for the spell.
We used Granner’s spell to set it up, an unusual-to-me mix of chanting, potions, and even runes—small chips engraved with symbols, like squares of preassembled magic. She was pleased with how interested I was in the process, though Vanessa mumbled that it was old-fashioned.
We worked together and combined our magic to fashion the listening device much more quickly than it could have been done alone.
The convention hall was in chaos when we returned. Virtually every booth was being torn down and packed up despite the show not closing for another few hours. Since magic had been banned, everyone had to do everything by hand, and no one seemed very happy.
“Here is another package of cheesy balls. Just drop the seashell inside the basket, the one I marked with a black dot. That’s the microphone side of the pair. I’ll hold on to the speaker side, and we’ll nail the perp in no time.”
Granner really enjoyed being part of the investigation and had been liberally sprinkling in hardboiled detective lingo.
“You ready, Ella?” Vanessa adjusted the basket. “Will this work hidden at the bottom of the basket? Hello? Hello?” she yelled into the basket.
“It should work. It’s magic, not one of those newfangled electronic devices that’s always failing.” She shook the silent shell in her hand for a moment. “Oh, the magical ban. Of course it won’t work in here. Why don’t I go wait in the family bathroom down the hall, past the other restrooms? Knock three times, and I’ll let you in. It’ll be our code.”
“Great idea, Granner.” Vanessa shared a smile with me as we headed toward the room Bethenny was in, dodging around piles of packed boxes and casino attendants rolling equipment around on dollies.
When we got to the door, I knocked briskly. There was only quiet, so I knocked again. I pressed my ear to the door in case I hadn’t heard her reply over the general activity in the convention hall. People were yelling orders and hollering to be heard over a forklift engine revving somewhere in the room.
“Maybe she left.”
Our murderer could be getting away as we spoke. “I’m going in.” I turned the handle. “Hello, Bethenny, are you in—” I had to stifle a scream when I spotted Bethenny on the floor.
Her pale face was no longer straw colored but rather tinged blue. Her eyes were open and staring at the ceiling. In one hand was a bag of cheesy balls, the orange powder on her fingers. I grabbed her wrist to check for a pulse, but the second I touched her, I knew she had gone to a better place.
I pushed past Vanessa, who was peering over my shoulder, and just avoided tripping over Patagonia as I got to the door, screaming, “Bethenny’s been hurt! Someone help!”
I had to repeat my plea a few times before people understood, and then a stampede of people pushed past me and Vanessa into the room. A woman declared that she was a nurse and took charge.
There was general pandemonium as people shouted, pushed up sleeves, and threw off jackets. Incantations and spells were soon being thrown around.
I edged next to Vanessa by the door. They couldn’t save her. I could feel that she was empty inside. No emotion, no life. I hadn’t realized I had this ability until now, but it made sense. I could read emotions or their absence. Even when I couldn’t read someone’s emotions, I could feel them there, roaring behind a wall but out of reach.
Bethenny, though, was an empty vessel. She had shuffled off her mortal coil. Vanessa grabbed my arm and pulled me through the door. I could even feel it, the death in the room. The dusty old sensation from funeral parlors. It tickled at memories that I couldn’t identify beyond recognizing I had felt it before.
“We’ll get security,” Vanessa shouted was she left the room, turning sideways to let people in past h
er and the basket of cheesy balls.
Auntie Ann was approaching the door, and Vanessa grabbed her. “Don’t move. We’re going to get Granner from the family bathroom down the hall, and we’ll be right back.” Then Vanessa ran to a side door of the convention hall.
I fell into step next to her. “Do you think she was double-crossed or not involved with the murder to begin with? Wait. Where are we going?”
Vanessa pushed a door open and ran into the hallway. “Don’t you get it? Whoever did it was trying to frame us. She choked to death on Granner’s cheesy balls. That’s no accident. We need to talk to Granner.” She broke into a run.
Maybe that was what I had sensed in the room—the leftover magic from the tampered-with cheese balls. Piecing it together, I realized that the sensation was like what I had picked up from the magic on Granner’s spell bag, the one that had triggered our near-death queso experience.
I followed Vanessa at a run, Patagonia at my side. The aura had been similar but not exactly the same, maybe because the magic was different. Like how peach champagne and peach pie smelled the same but not. Except the magic I had smelled was musty, old, and dusty.
Vanessa approached the door and pounded on it. “Granner!” Grabbing the door, she realized it was unlocked and threw it open.
Inside was empty except for Granner’s purse in a corner, its contents spilled across the floor and under a chair. My stomach fell.
Vanessa had tears welling up in her eyes. She grabbed the purse off the floor and tried to scoop the contents back into it. “We have to find Mom. She can find Granner. She told me she put a tracer spell on her since she sometimes wanders off.”
I noticed something on the carpet a couple dozen feet farther down the hallway: a cheesy ball. “Vanessa, I think Granner left us a clue.”
“What? Where?”
I pointed down the hallway. “She Hansel-and-Gretel-ed us. Left a trail of cheesy balls.”
I ran to the orange ball on the floor and quickly spotted another at the end of the hallway where the path split.
Patagonia ran alongside as we followed hallways right and left and through a door and up a stairwell. She seemed to know we were following the cheesy balls, often making turns before I had even spotted the next one.
Eventually we reached a stopping point, out of breath without a cheesy ball in sight. I caught the whiff of an aura, an unpleasant tinge of mustiness. I closed my eyes and moved toward it, feeling along the wall until I felt a handle under my hand. Opening my eyes, I was shocked to see a blank, smooth wall where I could feel a handle.
Turning the knob and rushing in, I braced myself for whatever Vanessa, Patagonia, and I would encounter.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Vanessa was right on my heels as Patagonia pressed to my side and we entered. The door slammed shut behind us, disappearing. It was a trick I needed to learn, or better yet, I needed to learn how to make a door reappear. This was the second time I had faced a murderer.
We moved slowly. Granner had her back to us as she faced Martha. The room was thick with magic. Granner’s magic was like warm vanilla in a familiar house, while Martha’s musty scent had grown so distasteful that it caught in the back of my throat and seemed to sour the air.
Martha surely saw us, but she never broke eye contact with Granner. Though I couldn’t see anything, I could feel their battle raging.
It was a conference room with rows of tables and chairs. At the front were a lectern and projector. Granner and Martha were at either end of the row of chairs, facing off against each other.
“Girls, I’ve got this under control. Why don’t you just run along.”
“Move, and I’ll kill you all!” Martha screamed, the tendons in her neck bulging.
“You’re trying to do that already, you idiot. Go on. I’ll take care of her.” But Granner shook slightly, her face pale. “I’ve been fighting baddies for over a hundred years, and I have a lot of tricks up my sleeve.”
I crouched, hands out, knees bent, ready to help but unsure. The battle they were waging was invisible. “What can we do?”
Vanessa shook her head, her eyes wide and darting between Granner and Martha.
Martha was the one that had crushed Michael under the world’s largest cheese wedge, tried to kill us with a vat of queso, and killed Bethenny. But why?
“Martha, how about if you just let us go and we won’t tell anyone?” It was a terrible opener, but I had to try.
She growled at me, sweat starting to bead on her forehead.
I caught Vanessa’s eye and jerked my head toward Granner. I could slide over to Martha and use an old-school technique to distract her, like a chair to the head. Vanessa could cover Granner.
“They have already ruled Michael’s death a suicide, and they will just assume Bethenny choked to death. She was greedy, barely chewing the cheesy balls before she swallowed. And we will forget about you trying to drown us in cheese—”
“It was supposed to be her! She knew I said his boots were green.” Martha spat out between clenched teeth. “And now she has the ashtray I stole from Bethenny’s house. Granner was going to turn me in.”
Granner pulled herself up straighter. “The guilty give themselves away. They assume everyone can see… the blood on… their hands.” She was losing steam, gasping for air between words.
“We won’t tell.” I edged closer.
“It’s too late. You have to die, even if it takes me with you. I can’t let it out that I killed Bethenny. Her family is merciless. You found the ashtray. She would have killed me when you gave it to her. When Michael was in Estonia, I would time my dragon-spit-buying trips so I could see him. We even met up in her house. That’s when I grabbed the ashtray. She knew Michael was having an affair and would have pieced it together that I was the one who took the ashtray from her house.”
That was her connection to Michael—an affair, not blackmail. She had been the only one of the supposed blackmail victims who had said that she paid in money rather than product, probably because she didn’t realize what the real blackmail victims were paying. She had been talking to Granner about the boots, and unlike Vanessa, she had agreed with Granner on the color of his boots. I took a stab at it.
“The cowboy boots?”
“He always wore red ones. It was his signature look, but when he got a new job, I bought his new green ones. He was going to start a new life with me. I slipped and told Granner that he was wearing green boots, and I heard her repeating it.”
Granner was shaking but put on a tough act. “I saw them myself when they moved the cheese. Same boots he always wore, just a different color.”
Martha’s eyes were overflowing with tears. “I didn’t want to kill him. I gave him a chance to make amends. He said he was coming to my room to see me and make things right. But I knew he wouldn’t, and I set a trap. If he had come to me, he would have been safe. But he went to get back the ashtray I had taken. I had stolen it for collateral. He knew I had something from Bethenny’s home. I could have shown that to Bethenny at any time, and she would have killed him for having an affair. She might have killed me too, but it would have been worth it.”
She had gotten so emotional retelling the story that her nose was running, and she instinctively rubbed the mucus away. In that moment, I leaped at her and hit her hard in the chest, both of us thudding to the ground. Pain shot through my body, particularly in the shoulder that absorbed most of the impact.
The tables and chairs around us dragged across the carpeting as I wrestled with her. She had said she was good with big animals, and not only had she set up the world’s largest wedge of cheese to fall on Michael, but she had rigged a spell to throw us across the room into the vat of queso. She had a special affinity for moving heavy things and was using that to throw objects around the room.
I hadn’t thought much beyond the initial attack. Around us, flames burst up, probably the result of my adrenaline, and a magically thrust chair flew by, crashing and breaki
ng a window which probably was unbreakable under normal circumstances. The glass rained down on us as I punched her in the face.
I hadn’t been in very many fights, but I knew how to inflict some damage. /but my left arm was weak from some injury I had sustained, and she slipped from my grasp. She crawled backward to her feet, and a table crashed into me, knocking me into the wall.
I had lost sight of Vanessa and Granner but hoped they would step in or help soon when something hard hit me in the head, causing me to see stars and fall. My arms and legs weren’t working, and my ears rang.
Moments later, someone was grabbed me, not in an attack but in an embrace. For a split second, I fought, but then I realized that it was Vin. His spicy smell and his aura of magic cuddled up next to me. His emotions were raging, fear and tenderness mixed with a growing sense of relief and sadness.
He murmured in my ear, stroking my hair as he pulled me into his embrace. “Can you hear me, Ella? Can you speak? Please be okay.”
My fingers grabbed the fabric of his shirt. It took a few tries, but I finally answered. “Vin? Where’s Martha? She’s the killer.”
“Don’t worry about her.” He reached down and grabbed my hand from his shirt and held it. His fingers shook slightly as he ran them over each of mine. When his other hand caressed my face, it came away bloody.
“Vin, I’m really sorry about—”
“I can’t, Ella. I can’t talk about it. When I saw that table hit you, I just… I had to see that you were okay, but I don’t want to talk about things.” He turned around and shouted, “Mom, come take care of Ella! I’ll get the marshal.” He turned back to me and leaned down to press a kiss to my lips. “Goodbye, Ella.”
Auntie Annie swept me into her arms, carefully inspecting every cut and pressing all over to check for broken bones. “Do you think you can walk? I want to get you out of here. Vanessa and Granner will talk to the marshal.” She pulled me to my feet, and we waddled out.
I staggered and reeled with each step, my weight resting heavily on her. “How… did you… find us?”
She opened the door and dragged me down the hallway. “After Vanessa ran out, I grabbed Vin and went to find you guys. When I went into the bathroom, I could hear Granner’s voice from the seashell hidden under the chair. She was obviously fighting with someone, and I used the tracking spell to find her and you guys. Vin was pretty upset.”
Which Mage Moved the Cheese? Page 14