The Gambler Grimoire: An Urban Fantasy Mystery (Wicklow College of Arcane Arts Book 1)

by BR Kingsolver

  “Oh, yeah. He thought she should automatically defer to him on everything because he had a PhD. And, you know, she was a woman. But she really did know more about growing plants than he did.”

  “Who is Mrs. Donnelly?” I asked.

  “Helen? She was the greenhouse and garden manager. We all worked for her, and she reported to Dr. Kavanaugh. She fought with him like cats and dogs.” A sly grin passed across Emma’s face. “I think they might have been lovers, not recently, but long ago. You know how you get that vibe from people sometimes? His death hit her hard, and when the college posted the opening to fill his position, she turned in her resignation. Rumor is that she bought an old nursery on the north side of town, and she was going to start a business with Agnes.”

  Chapter 13

  Kelly stopped by with a bottle of wine after she got off work.

  “Where do you get the booze?” I asked. “Surely you don’t take it to work with you.”

  She chuckled. “You can buy it from the bartender in the Faculty Club. The selection’s limited, and it costs a little more than from a liquor store in town, but everybody does it. Some professors order wine by the case.”

  I grabbed a couple of wine glasses from the kitchen, along with a corkscrew, and we sat down in front of the fireplace.

  “Is everyone still panicking about Joshua Tupper?” I asked. “In my classes today, getting the students’ attention was a real chore.”

  “Oh, yeah. I stopped by and saw Katy on my way over here, and she said the calls from parents and the press have been non-stop all day.”

  “I’m sure. They send Billy and Susie here and expect we’ll protect them from all of life’s possible misfortunes. And if we don’t protect them from themselves, we’re terrible people.”

  “I guess that’s natural. I expect to feel safe here. Until Brett was killed, I always did.”

  I nodded. “I was pretty shaky when I got home last night. I went around and checked all the windows and doors, then renewed the wards. But once I got in bed and my mind sort of relaxed, I realized that Kavanaugh, Agnes, and probably our young Mr. Tupper, all knew whoever killed them, and weren’t afraid.”

  Kelly poured the wine and held up her glass. After I clinked mine against it, she said, “Katy told me Kagan said that Joshua’s wallet and keys were missing. When they went to his room, it looked as though it had been searched and his laptop is missing.”

  Shaking my head, I said, “In every case, it looks like the killer wanted something.”

  “Have you taken a look at the books in that box we found at Brett’s?”

  “Nope, haven’t even opened the safe. Did you talk to your mom?”

  “Yeah, I did. She says there is a notation in Uncle Harold’s ledger book about a GG that he purchased for five thousand pounds. Other than that, nothing. They haven’t found anything she can tie to those initials, and it doesn’t appear that he sold it. Or maybe he paid money to someone with the initials GG.”

  “When did he buy it?”

  “About a year ago.”

  “So, just before the letters started between him and Kavanaugh.”

  Kelly nodded.

  “A lot of money,” I said, and Kelly nodded again. “Want to take a look? I’m curious what’s under those two books on top.”

  “Sure.”

  We took the garden entrance to my laboratory, locked the door behind us, and I opened the alchemy safe. Kavanaugh’s box sat there, as malevolent or harmless as ever, depending on how one looked at it. I took it out and set it on a workbench.

  “Should we draw a circle?” I asked.

  “I don’t think that will be necessary,” Kelly said. “I don’t plan on opening that one book, let alone reading it aloud.”

  “Agreed.”

  I drew on a pair of surgical gloves and lifted out the book Hamilton had identified as Kavanaugh’s grimoire. I set it on the bench and opened it. On the third page a list of names started with a date in 1432. Three pages later, the last name on the list was Brett Kavanaugh, August 8, 1978.

  “And no one seems to know anything about his family,” I said. I paged through the book. The early entries were in Gaelic, then some in archaic English were sprinkled in with entries in Gaelic, then around the beginning of the seventeenth century, everything was written in Latin.

  I reached into the box and pulled out the book that had been under the grimoire. “Recognize this one?”

  “Looks like a copy of one of Da Vinci’s notebooks,” Kelly said. She took it and leafed through it. “Maybe a couple of hundred years old, but not worth a lot. The British Museum has digitized all the ones they can get their hands on. One of the originals sold for thirty million a few years ago, but I doubt this would bring more than a couple of thousand. However, it is interesting that this is the one dealing with poisons.”

  I took it back from her and sifted through it. “Nothing a good alchemist or apothecary wouldn’t know already. The techniques are severely dated.”

  “What’s under the nasty book?” Kelly asked.

  Setting the two books we had already looked at aside, I slid the Maleficium Spiritus into the box’s empty space. I looked at the book that had been hidden, and laughed.

  “I know this is a copy—a mass production copy—although why Kavanaugh would even want it, let alone put it somewhere safe, is a mystery.”

  Kelly leaned over to look at it. “The Alchemist’s Handbook?”

  “Yes, written by a charlatan in the twentieth century. I’ve assigned it to my grad students in Sausalito for a history of alchemy class, but it has very little practical use. I don’t even think the author was a witch.”

  Kelly sighed. “Maybe, but Brett thought enough of these to hide them behind some pretty good spells. The Maleficium and his grimoire I can understand, but why the others? If he was a collector, he surely would know their value.”

  “And the book we’re looking for, GG, isn’t here. If anyone was going to commit murder for a book, the Maleficium would be it.”

  “Yeah, and it would even show you how to do it.”

  I snorted. “Four murders, and only one of them might remotely be tied to witchcraft.”

  Kelly shook her head. “Someone tried to kill Agnes with witchcraft.”

  “And didn’t get the job done. Agnes might have been stronger than her attacker. I wonder if Kagan checked with hospitals and doctors to see if anyone sought treatment that day.”

  My lecture classes were scheduled for Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I scheduled my tutorials on Mondays and Wednesdays in the late afternoon. A dozen of students coming into my home felt rather invasive, so I made sure everything I cared about was put away, and the door to my bedroom was closed.

  The Wednesday group were apothecary students, fourth year and graduates, including Emma and Ophelia. I fixed tea and set out two plates of cookies.

  In addition to the two girls who worked in the greenhouse, the students included two more girls and two boys. All the students but one were graduates, working on advanced degrees in Apothecary Arts. One girl was a fourth-year student, due to graduate before Christmas and already accepted to a graduate program.

  “I’m not sure how your other professors run their tutorials,” I said when everyone had found a place to sit and had their tea and snacks. “What I prefer to do is let you decide what we discuss. Each week, one of you will propose a topic you’re interested in. Consider nothing out of bounds, but please keep it in the realm of apothecary. Now, for this week, does anyone have a question that has been driving you crazy?”

  The students glanced around at each other, all of them showing some uneasiness. Finally, one of the young men spoke.

  “I read somewhere that necromancy is a form of alchemy. Is that true?”

  I fought to suppress a smile. “Yes, and you’re all aware that necromantic spells are completely off limits here at Wicklow, right?”

  After everyone enthusiastically agreed that necromancy was against the rules,
I continued.

  “Okay. This comes under the heading of just because you know how to do something doesn’t mean you should do it. And in this particular case, I can tell you that it’s something you don’t want to do. Yes, I can cast a spell that will animate your dead rabbit or old Uncle Jake. And then what do you do with them? They’ll do what you tell them to, but only as long as you’re physically there directing them. Your zombie has no brain. You can’t program them like a computer and turn them loose to do your bidding. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Emma leaned closer. “What about a golem?”

  “You know this is more a topic for an alchemy course than an apothecary course, right? But for today, we’ll stray a little off topic. Golems are part of the Kabbalah’s study of alchemy. And I’ll let an expert in that field address it. I have studied how they’re made, and they are different from what is normally considered necromancy. A golem is like a puppet, and they can be animated and directed at a distance. Now, I know that several hundred years ago a coven in Germany conducted experiments that involved summoning demons and using them to reanimate corpses. A couple of those witches were burned at the stake by Church authorities, and the rest were beheaded by other witches. Not exactly a happy ending.”

  It took some time, but I was able to steer the conversation around to questions concerning the Apothecary Arts. When the session was over, I ushered everyone out the door and stood with my back against it, relieved that once again I had survived a close encounter with a group of brilliant students. Deciding that a celebration was in order, I set to figuring out what I should do with the rest of my evening.

  Chapter 14

  My first decision was that I didn’t want to cook, so I grabbed my purse and headed toward the Faculty Club. The closeness of the restaurant made it very tempting. As I locked my door, I heard a noise behind me and turned to see David Hamilton coming out of the door leading to his apartment.

  “Going out someplace?” he asked as he strolled toward me.

  “Dinner.” I motioned in the direction of the faculty dining room. “I don’t feel like cooking.”

  He chuckled. “Considering my cooking skills, the chef at the club is always far preferable, and the costs aren’t much more. Mind some company?”

  “Not at all. I don’t know about you,” I said, “but I think a lot of the women on this campus feel far more afraid than they did a week ago.”

  “I think a lot fewer instructors invite pretty coeds to their rooms than they did before Brett was killed,” Hamilton responded. He chuckled at the look I shot him.

  “Oh, not me. I don’t invite students to my rooms. I’m a bit too private for that. I hold my tutorials at the library.” He winked. “Fewer fireplace pokers.”

  We walked through the campus and past the place where we had found Joshua Tupper two nights before. In the faculty dining room, we were shown to a table by the window overlooking the quad.

  “Have you always been a bachelor?”

  He grinned. “That’s a novel way of asking the question. Yes, as a matter of fact. Never been married or owned a house. Some might say that I graduated but never grew up.”

  “But you do own a car?”

  “Yes, but I don’t drive it very much.”

  “Let me guess. Dr. Kavanaugh drove a Jaguar, Dr. Ricard drives a Porsche, but I’d say you were more for a BMW or Mercedes.”

  “A Toyota SUV. It’s more practical, especially during Pennsylvania winters, and I like to camp and fish. You don’t have a car, do you?”

  I shook my head. “In San Francisco, renting a parking place usually cost more than a car payment. I learned to make do with a bicycle. I’ve ordered one, but it will be two or three weeks before it arrives.”

  “With all those hills?”

  I shook my head. “Cycling is good for you, but I tried to avoid the hilly part of town. I was in Oakland, near Berkeley. I took BART and the bus to Sausalito when I taught there.”

  The waiter came and took our orders. I noted that David ordered the special, as did Ricard the night I dined with him.

  “So, you eat here often?” I asked.

  “About half my meals. It also cuts down on all that grocery shopping.”

  I could certainly agree on that.

  “I noticed that there seems to be some distance between you and Dr. Ricard,” I said.

  “In a small community, old differences don’t always heal,” Hamilton said. “There’s a group of us who all came here around the same time. Brett, Anton, and me, along with Jerome and Edmund. We’re about the same age, and we all started teaching here within a few years of each other.”

  “Jerome and Edmund?”

  “Jerome Carver and Edmund Phillips. Jerome is the only one who has married. Once, we were all very close. Time and different interests, and we sort of drifted apart.”

  “I heard a rumor that several of you were in love with the same woman.”

  Hamilton rolled his eyes. “I heard that rumor, also.”

  When he showed no interest in following that line of conversation, I dropped it. If I wanted to find out more, Katy always seemed ready to gossip.

  On the way back to our apartments, we saw Lia and a tall young man walk out of the breezeway between the faculty apartments, turn right, and go into the west building of Howard Quad.

  “That’s a residential building, right?” I asked.

  “Graduate student dorm,” David said. “That building across the way, also. And the one behind us is for single junior faculty and post-docs.”

  “So, that building they went into is right next to my building, and right next to Brett Kavanaugh’s apartment.”

  “Yes, that’s right, why?”

  “Just trying to orient myself. I’m new, remember?”

  He chuckled. “Oh, I noticed.”

  “Wondering if any of the students heard anything the night he was killed.”

  “You’re assuming any of them were home studying instead of drinking in the pub.”

  “Right. Silly me. You know, I love to cook, but it’s a pain to cook for one person. Would a bottle of wine be too much to exchange for a home-cooked meal occasionally?”

  He cocked his head a bit to the side and gave me a silly grin. “I think that’s a brilliant idea. Let me know when.”

  Kelly offered to take me to the grocery store on Saturday. While looking for a parking place, we drove by Back to Basics, and I noticed the front door was open. Curious, we walked by the shop.

  Inside, we saw the furniture had been put back in place, the goods spilled across the floor had been picked up, and a woman with light-brown hair, in blue jeans and a t-shirt, was in the process of sweeping the floor. No trace of the blood pool remained.

  I stuck my head through the doorway and said, “Hi.”

  “Hello,” the woman responded. “We aren’t open as yet, but I hope to have a grand re-opening next week.”

  “We’ll try to stop by,” I said. “Did you buy the shop?”

  “Oh, no, it belonged to my sister. Did you know Agnes?”

  “We work at the college. Actually, we’re the ones who found her. I’m Savanna Robinson and this is Kelly Grace. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  The woman walked over and extended her hand.

  “Iris Bishop. It was such a shock. The police don’t seem to have a clue.”

  “It’s their standard mode of operation,” Kelly said. “Luckily, there isn’t much crime here, because they aren’t very good at solving the ones that do occur.”

  “So, you’re going to operate the shop?” I asked.

  “Yes, I think so. Agnes had an agreement with a woman who operates a greenhouse here, and they planned on expanding the offerings. I met with her yesterday, and it seems like a great opportunity. I really didn’t have anything holding me in Salem, so it’s a chance to try something new.”

  “Are you an herbalist?”

  Iris smiled. “Botanist, herbalist, apothecary. I guess you kn
ow Helen Donnelly. She said that she also taught at the college.”

  “I know her,” Kelly said. “Savanna just started this term.”

  Iris turned and looked around the shop. “I have a lot of work to do in a week. I’m going to display the herbs and botanicals differently, as well as doing bulk sales. We won’t have a full inventory at first, but as soon as production at the nursery ramps up, I hope to supply all the witches in the area with fresh ingredients.”

  “And all the cooks, I hope,” Kelly said with a smile.

  “Oh, definitely. And the grocery stores. I have a meeting with the manager of the one over there on Monday.”

  As we resumed our trek to the store, I said, “David told me that this is a small place, and everyone is sort of intertwined.”

  “That’s the truth.”

  “But, you know, other than Katy, I haven’t talked to anyone who really liked Brett Kavanaugh. Even she didn’t seem to approve of his relations with women.”

  “And you know something?” Kelly said. “He really didn’t give a damn. Pompous, arrogant, condescending son of a…”

  “Yes, those are the words almost everyone uses to describe him.”

  Chapter 15

  I answered a knock on my door to find Lieutenant Kagan standing there.

  “Oh. It’s you,” I said. “How can I help the police today?”

  “I’m sorry. I take it you expected someone else. I’d like to talk to you about one of your employees.”

  “A friend called from Pittsburgh and is coming here. I’m afraid you’re misinformed, though. I don’t have any employees. Perhaps you mean one of my students?”

  “Perhaps. May I come in?”

  I stood aside and allowed him to enter, then closed the door, and locked it.

  “May I get you something to drink? Some tea or lemonade?” I asked.

  “No, thank you. This is just a courtesy call. Are you aware that one of your students, Ophelia Harkness, was involved with Joshua Tupper, the young man who was killed in Scholars’ Quad?” Rather than sit down, he stood, nervously shifting his weight from one foot to the other, and staring at a small notebook in his hand.