by Iris Kincaid
Beryl gulped. “Second-class citizenship? Absolutely not.”
Morfydd gave Beryl a head-to-toe examination. “We shall speak further.”
“Sure. Look forward to it.”
Morfydd made her departure and Beryl sighed with relief. Boy, that woman was draining. And scary. And dangerous . . . even though she might have had a few legitimate points.
After listening to Claudia Reyes ranting about witches at the city council and hearing about Harriet Jolly’s unfairness against the student witches, it could be that Morfydd was right about the second-class citizen thing.
But Beryl was not there in Marvel Canyon for war. Hadn't her father decided to have children to avoid that tragedy?
*****
The café could not have gotten off to a better start, thanks to the unforeseen support of Florida's follicly challenged. It was everything that Beryl could have hoped for. And she finally had to admit to herself the hope that the success of the cafe would help sway her sisters in the direction of staying.
Mosh seemed to be quite engaged in the process of conducting a free-trade-friendly café, rivaling the finest international coffees that she had enjoyed during her travels. She also took an interest in the decoration of the café, the back deck, and the basement room.
Lucinda finally had a property where she could implement her own rehab ideas without wrestling with reluctant sellers. After working for large real estate, it was kind of a kick for her to be both owner and manager.
Maybe this was what might help persuade them to stay. To envision a real home for themselves in Marvel Canyon. Maybe convince them to stay for the two-year period, and who knows? Maybe at the end of two years, even after they had gotten their inheritance, maybe the town would feel like a home to them. Stranger things had happened.
“Look at these receipts,” crowed Beryl. “We never thought we’d do this well the first week, did we?”
“It was all you and that bald tea,” Mosh said.
“I have a co-worker in Los Angeles who could really use some of that tea,” Lucinda said. “Perhaps we could send him a pack.”
“I'm afraid that's not how it works,” Beryl said. “As Gwynifer explained it to me, it's not just the herbs. It's how they combine with my mind, my intentions. My particular talents. Just like the violin was silent with me and Mosh but it worked when you played it. The tea won’t do anything unless it’s coming from my hands.”
“I guess that means that the cafe is going to work best if Beryl stays to oversee the drinks, but that's what you wanted anyway, isn’t it? You did want to stay here there? Even after there's a new owner?” Mosh asked.
“Yes, of course, because the new owner is going to want to keep the café going and want to hire Beryl to run things for them and provide the tea that everyone loves so much. You could probably find yourself a great apartment in town. Or better, you could probably get a really good house for cheap and then work here,” Lucinda suggested.
Beryl’s heart sank. They were both still intent on leaving. “I guess I could, but I think the powers will leave me once you two are gone.”
“Okay, but even if that's true,” Lucinda said, “The cafe's popularity will have built up a huge momentum, and then it will just be a regular old successful café. Which this town desperately needed. We just needed to get past their nervousness about dealing with a witch business. And actually, after Mosh and I leave, they'll have less to worry about. It's all good.”
From Beryl’s standpoint, it was all bad. Her special abilities were starting to mean something to her. Oh, hair is not a very important thing, but she'd made so many people so happy. It was nice to make a difference in anyone's life. And there were so many unanswered questions and research that needed to be done about all the knowledge that Oberon had left for her.
And what about the murder? She wasn’t willing to let go of the hope that she could help to uncover the real culprit before frustrated townspeople concluded that Muriel or Gwynifer were involved.
Time was running out. Lucinda was steadily chatting with her L.A. attorney friends to figure out how she could subvert the will. And she was a very smart and determined young woman. Beryl had no doubt that she'd find a way.
If there was no time to do anything else to make use of her new abilities, Beryl wanted nothing better than to act in her father’s place to protect the Earthborn from being punished for this murder.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Something had been nagging at Beryl for a few days. Why was Claudia Reyes from the city council so insistent that Harriet Jolly had been a witch? She had spoken with such certainty. And she and Harriet had apparently gone from being witch-hating allies to a pretty high level of estrangement.
Beryl had a lot of questions she wanted to ask Claudia. But this was someone who wouldn’t even set foot into their café because they were the daughters of Oberon Shimmer. She would never speak to Beryl or give her any honest answers. Beryl was going to have to find someone who wasn’t going to raise this woman’s alarm bells. Someone she trusted. Perhaps someone she trusted because they also hated Harriet. Someone who owed Beryl a favor.
Peter Pie was the perfect candidate. She had seen him around town here and there with his hair brushing against his shoulders, despite the fact that he went into the barber for a daily trim. He probably could have just stopped taking the tea, and the hair growth would have stopped. But he got such a kick out of it that he became a daily customer at the café.
“Mr. Cousins. You remember what Claudia Reyes said about watching Harriet Jolly perform some kind of magic?” Beryl asked.
“That was just bizarre,” Peter responded. “Harriet was no more of a witch than I am. She hated witches. Claudia thinking that she was just trying to fool us and infiltrate the council was insane.”
“But I do need to know exactly what she was talking about. She said that she witnessed Harriet engaging in magic. I really need to hear precisely what kind of magic she saw. But she’ll never talk to me—you know she won’t. I was hoping you could talk to her for me and I’ll be close by. Close enough to hear. Do you think you might be able to do that for me?”
“After what you’ve done for me, I would give you my firstborn. Seriously. He’s 38, single, and quite a catch.”
“That’s very generous. Why don’t we start with Claudia Reyes?”
“It wasn’t a difficult thing to set up. Peter made some pretense of discussing a new proposal that he wanted to present to the council, but since he treasured her opinion, he wanted her advice on it before he presented it to the group. Claudia was flattered enough to take the meeting.
Peter managed to talk her into meeting at the library. He wanted to show her how depleted the nonfiction sections were and needed her to see the sad situation with her own eyes. In truth, the aisles provided a very useful way for Beryl to stand on the other side of a bookshelf and hear everything she needed without being seen.
“Claudia, there’s something that has been bothering me. You said that Harriet Jolly was a witch and that you’d seen her do some magic. If that’s true, if that really happened, obviously, it could happen again. That’s something we need to be on our guard against.”
“Of course,” Claudia said, nodding vigorously. “We can never let it happen again. It is far easier to prevent than it is to address after the fact.”
“But I need to know what to be on the lookout for. What exactly did you see Harriet do that made you think she might be a witch?”
“They can move things without touching them.”
“That’s true. A lot of people have witnessed that. Although I haven’t myself.”
“I saw her in the parking lot at the grocery store, walking with a full cart toward her car. I suppose she must have gotten lazy or careless. The trunk of the car opened by itself, which isn’t that strange.”
“Yeah, mine can do that too,” Peter said.
“But as Harriet stood there, every single bag of groceries lifted itself right
out of her cart and put itself into the car, just floating through the air. One by one. All of them. And when she was finally done, she pointed toward the cart trolley, and the grocery cart just rolled itself away and stacked itself neatly away, about fifty feet away from her.
“Then she just climbed into her car and drove home. She didn’t see me. She never knew that I found out about her, and I didn’t want her to know. Who knows what she might have done to shut me up.”
“Well, I gotta hand it to you. That would have freaked me out. But after you saw that, were you just gonna let her sit on the council and never say anything, never do anything about it?”
Beryl could have hugged Peter Pie for asking the right question. What exactly did Claudia Reyes do about it?
“Course not. I was just biding my time. Waiting for the right opportunity. And now fate has provided that opportunity, and we are all safe from any immediate danger. Now, I need to go pick up my kids. But . . . I don’t mean to be rude, but Peter, how did you get all that hair?”
There was just the briefest pause. “Implants.”
Claudia Reyes nodded. “That’s modern technology for you. It looks good. Very nice. Okay, I’ll see you Thursday at our next meeting.”
When she was safely gone, Beryl joined Peter Pie.
“Was she lying?” Beryl asked. “She sure didn’t sound as if she were lying.”
“No. She wasn’t lying. Could Harriet Jolly have been . . . no. Could she?”
“I didn’t know her,” Beryl said. “From everything I’ve heard, she hated witches as much as Claudia Reyes did. Right now, it’s a little more important what Claudia believed. She thought that Harriet Jolly was a danger and she was waiting for the right opportunity. The right opportunity to do what?”
Beryl had never lost sight of the fact that the person she had enlisted for help had sat on the other side of Harriet Jolly at her final city council meeting. That he had held a long-standing feud with the deceased. And that his proximity to Harriet’s purse on her last day, like Claudia Reyes’s, would have provided the best of opportunities to kill her.
*****
It was 5:30 P.M. Beryl had told her sisters that she would grab dinner in town after her rendezvous with Peter Pie. She was ravenous but still didn’t know what she was in the mood for. And she still didn’t have a good fix on exactly what was available in town. But it only took about five minutes walking down the main street before her nose made the decision for her.
She was standing in front of an Irish pub, and the dinner special was fried scallops and a side of fries. No need to look any further. Inside was a classic Irish pub with endless dark-polished wood, a dartboard, and a corkboard dedicated to posting the names and photos of the weekly trivia winners in triumphant poses.
There were also a few faces familiar to Beryl enjoying an early happy hour. There was estate attorney Mr. Godfrey sitting alone in a plush red leather booth, engrossed in the stacks of paper in front of him and oblivious to Beryl’s scrutiny.
There were also Lori Struthers and Henry Colgate, clinking together bottles of beer in a giddy toast. They were laughing and so engrossed in their celebrations that they didn’t even notice as Beryl drew near. There was a legal document on the table that Beryl quickly took in—it was a contract of employment from the high school.
“You got your job back?” Beryl asked.
The teachers were both startled. Lori Struthers replied, “Yes, he did. And he never should’ve been fired in the first place.”
“Then lucky that there was a vacancy,” Beryl responded.
Henry Colgate shrugged guiltily. “Well, uh . . . every cloud has its silver lining.”
“So this must be what they call an Irish wake.” Beryl raised her eyebrows.
Lori Struthers bristled. “Well, we certainly aren’t celebrating Harriet Jolly’s life. We’ll leave that to whoever it was unfortunate enough to be close to her.”
“I hadn’t realized that you two were such good friends,” Beryl said, noting their discomfort. “You should probably expect another visit from the sheriff, who was told that Lori Struthers was alone the night that Harriet Jolly was killed, and Henry Colgate gave a statement to the effect that you two were together that night.”
Lori turned with irritation to Henry. “Why did you say I was with you?”
“Because I tried to call you that night and you didn’t pick up. You always pick up. I thought, just maybe, that you were . . . out that night,” Henry said uneasily.
“Out doing what? Out killing Harriet Jolly? You thought I was out killing Harriet Jolly?” Lori shrieked.
“Well, I know how much you hated her, for my sake,” Henry Colgate said. “I just thought that maybe you if you needed an alibi . . .”
“But you don’t lie to the police! You . . . you lunkhead.”
“Me? You’re the lunkhead, you lame brain.”
“Half-wit.”
“Imbecile.”
“Moron.”
Beryl had a strong flashback to her days with her foster family. The sibling dynamic was unmistakable.
“Why didn’t you tell Sheriff Ortega that you are brother and sister?”
Their mouths dropped open. Busted.
“Because . . . because I lied on my job application,” Henry said. “And my sister was already working there. And I knew if I ever got discovered, which turns out I did, that I never wanted her to be in hot water because of me.”
“Little tip,” Beryl said, turning to leave. “If you want to avoid hot water, stop lying to the sheriff.”
Beryl settled down in the far corner of the bar and put in an order which came out very quickly. The mouthwatering smell was heavenly. Scallops had always been one of her favorites. But they were so expensive in San Francisco that they had been a rare treat.
As she savored her meal, she was treated to the sight of Whiskey Hodge, sitting at the bar and downing one beer after another. Beryl stopped counting after five beers. How could one person hold so much liquid of any kind? She couldn’t even begin to drink five bottles of water in one sitting.
Finally, Whiskey may not have had her fill, but the bartender had. He cut her off. Beryl wasn’t close enough to hear the specifics, but she could tell that Whiskey was fussing at him. She pulled out her own flask, and the bartender pointed her toward the door. But Whiskey looked pretty determined.
The door opened and a young man walked in, tense and angry, and went straight in Whiskey’s direction. He exchanged a few words with her, helped her off her stool, and was holding her by the elbow and leading her to the exit. Beryl guessed that it was her son and this was not the first time he’d helped her out of a bar.
Maybe this scene would play out for the rest of her life. Clearly, Whiskey’s love of alcohol was not going to subside anytime soon. Beryl never had a lot of enthusiasm for alcohol. She found the taste of beer rather unappealing, which actually gave her kind of an interesting idea. Could it possibly work?
Beryl tossed her payment on the table and made a swift exit, bumping right into billionaire Austin Sinclair. Hmm. The pub was not a terribly fancy place for a man who was used to the finer things in life. Then again, most of Marvel Canyon’s best restaurants had already closed up. The sight of Beryl startled Austin, but he quickly regained his composure.
“Ms. Shimmer, how nice to see you again.”
“Yeah, thanks. Sorry, but I have to run. Try the scallops.”
He didn’t seem offended at her rushing away and in fact, seemed rather relieved. A quick glance back into the pub revealed Mr. Godfrey looking in their direction. Apparently, those two had a previously scheduled encounter.
Beryl ran after Whiskey and her son. They hadn’t gotten far.
“Hey, Ms. Hodge. I don’t know if you remember me. I’m Beryl Shimmer. We just opened up Canyon Café.”
“Oh, yeah. Just call me Whiskey. Everybody calls me Whiskey.”
“Except for those unfortunate enough to call you Mom,” her son growled.
Whiskey made a face and gestured at her son. “This one won’t even let me drink in my own house.”
“That’s because it’s actually my house, and no, you can’t,” her son said adamantly.
“Whiskey, I see that the bartender wasn’t being very hospitable. Why don’t you come over to our place? The café closed at 4:30. You can enjoy your drink there in peace and quiet.”
“Well, that’s a mighty fine thing. I think I’ll take you up on that.”
“What do you think you’re doing?” Her son bristled.
Beryl got very close to him and whispered in his ear, “I’m going to try to help her out. No guarantees, but I’m going to try. Can you trust me?”
He gave Beryl a long, hard look and then finally sighed. “All right. Should I come too?”
“No, we just need to have a little social hour by ourselves. We’ll call you when she’s ready to go home. Okay?”
He nodded silently. “See you later, Mom.”
Beryl drove Whiskey back to the café and settled her down in a cozy corner while she dashed into the kitchen to get her something special.
Beryl quickly flipped through the stash of herbs and grabbed the one that she never thought she’d ever have reason to use. But this was as good a time as any. “To spoil and ruin for all time.”
As she brewed, she wished with her whole heart that Whiskey could give up alcohol for good. That she could find it repugnant. Foul. Disgusting. The tea glowed promisingly.
She returned to the main room where Whiskey was almost nodding off. Beryl pried the flask out of Whiskey’s hands and put it into a mug. “I’m going to add something to this that’s really going to give it a kick,” she assured the woman. “It’s gonna be like nothing you’ve ever tasted in your life.”
Whiskey licked her lips with anticipation and downed the beverage eagerly. “Whoa, that is good, that is very, very tasty. What’s the name of that?”
“Umm, it’s kind of an old family secret.” And it sure isn’t supposed to be tasty! Why isn’t this working?
Whiskey continued to chug down the drink until she stopped with a grimace. “There’s something wrong with this. It’s not as good at the bottom as it was at the top. In fact, it’s pretty sour. Geez. That was a waste of good alcohol. It’s awful.”