A Cauldron of Witch Tricks

by Constance Barker

  “But you’re still thinking that one possible, or maybe impossible, MO was that someone magicked themselves in and out of that room,” Nann said.

  Keith cast his eyes away. “In this town, you always have to consider the impossible MOs.”

  THE FALL HAD BEEN UNSEASONABLY warm. An ice cream stand that had recently reopened decided to stay open as long as possible. Nann was down. She’d eat ice cream in a blizzard. After work, she sat at a picnic table in the parking lot with Tink and Zinnia, discussing the locked room murder. The sky already darkened. Autumn was diminishing into winter, despite the warm temperatures.

  “Who do we know that could do it?” Nann said in between licks of a chocolate vanilla swirl.

  “Well, if there were an alligator-sized hole, Zinnia could do it,” Tink said. She gestured at the short blonde with one of her ice cream cones. Tink, who lived on sugar, was engaged in two-fisted eating.

  Zinnia shook her head. “There’d have to be some nakedness involved. Forget it.” To become an alligator, Zinnia would have to strip. People clothes did not fit on eight-foot gators. Beyond that, Zinnia was touchy about being seen naked.

  “The cops didn’t report any naked women or stray alligators in the area,” Nann said. “Cops are paid observers. They would’ve noticed. Could you have gotten into the panic room, Tink?”

  “Oh, sure. I’m a shop goblin. Locks are simple machines. But even though I’d prefer to keep my Fae origins private, I wouldn’t kill someone for telling on me. Could you get in a locked room, Nann?”

  Nann shrugged. “I could figure out a way. I’d be much better at getting away unseen. That would be the easy part for me.”

  “That would be tough for me. Six feet tall, pointy ears, I tend to get noticed.”

  Zinnia toasted Tink with her cone. “Probably not as much as a giant alligator, or a naked woman.”

  “Can’t argue that.”

  “Could BJ the swamp wizard magic himself in and out of a locked room?” Zinnia asked.

  “I don’t know. I have to visit him again, anyway. I’ll ask. What motive he would have for murder I can’t say. Brock Junior isn’t particularly rational.”

  Zinnia wrinkled her nose. “You’re going back to the swamp?”

  Nann was down to the cone. She bit into it. “I have to. I saw Audra Simmons’ charm. From my recent visits around town, a bunch of people must have them. He’s the only one I know who does charms and potions around here.”

  “Hey, speaking of BJ the swamp witch, are there other members of the Galère d’Merlinite around?” Tink asked Zinnia. “BJ’s the son of a paper mill board member, and they were all sorcerers.”

  “I didn’t even know they were sorcerers, until they started killing each other with voodoo dolls,” Zinnia said. “Besides, when we got the mill up and running, I didn’t work much with the board of directors. It was mostly bankers and investors, people outside the mill. I didn’t know them very well.”

  “Well, that settles it. The obvious suspects are me and Nann,” Tink said. “Me to get the door open, Nann to help us get away unseen.”

  “Not unseen,” Nann corrected. “Unnoticed.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “You really think you could, uh, Tink your way into a panic room?” Nann asked.

  Tink finished one of her cones and made a see saw of her hand. “Maybe. If it was something like a simple sliding bolt, probably not. If there was a locking mechanism, no problem.”

  “Man, I’d really like to put that to the test,” Nann said. “I’m really curious about the whole locked room thing. I know I could solve it.”

  “Well, tonight would be the night,” Zinnia said.

  Nann and Tink eyed her, brows raised.

  “It’s the official handing out of the trophies for the AMN golf thingie. Audra Simmons won’t be home.”

  “You know this how?” Tink asked.

  Zinnia cast her eyes down. “Branden. He golfs.”

  Tink sympathetically patted her shoulder. “I’m sure he has positive qualities, too.”

  “Well, then, tonight’s the night, then.” Nann finished her cone and dropped her napkin in a garbage can.

  “What are you talking about?” Zinnia narrowed her eyes.

  Chapter 13

  “I can’t believe I got talked into this again,” Zinnia whispered.

  Nann, Tink and Zinnia sat in Tink’s truck outside the Simmons’ house.

  “Why are you whispering?” Tink said.

  Zinnia’s mouth formed a thin line for a moment. “Because we’re sneaking around, planning a B&E on a crime scene.”

  “We have to,” Nann said.

  Zinnia made a face. “Have to?”

  “Any Prete is a suspect here. I can’t even buy a newspaper without someone giving me the cold shoulder. We have to solve this to clear our names.”

  “You and Tink could do this without me,” Zinnia said. “I’m just a third wheel.”

  “Don’t think that way, Zinn,” Tink said. “You never know when you might need an alligator.”

  Zinnia’s face angled up in pride. “I do have super alligator hearing. There’s no one in the house.”

  Nann rolled her eyes.

  “Great. Keep your ears open. Let’s hit it. Nann?”

  Nann pulled the candles from her conjure bag. It would take more energy to keep all of them under the unnoticed spell, but she’d recently had some practice. In a few moments, they exited the truck and headed up the drive.

  Zinnia kept looking over her shoulder. “Are you sure no one can notice us?”

  Nann was relatively sure. “Positive,” she said.

  “Hopefully, they have a dog door. Remember how Zinnia changed into an alligator to get us into Barb Buford’s place?” Tink said.

  “Well, dog door might mean dog,” Nann said.

  “Oh yeah,” Tink pursed her lips.

  “I’m not getting naked out here, spell or not,” Zinnia said. Which was fine. There was no dog door.

  “Okay, how do we get in?” Nann asked.

  “No burglar alarm,” Tink said

  “How do you know?” Zinnia asked.

  “I have super-Fae sense of smell. Burglar alarms smell like ozone and desperation.” The shop goblin said.

  Nann reached out and turned the doorknob. The door swung wide. “Huh. Not even locked.”

  “Hang on, Nann, that was a joke!” Tink said. The three of them froze. No alarm sounded.

  Blake Simmons seemed like the kind of guy who relied on his imposing size, and sneaky blackmail plots, for security. He wouldn’t be a guy who would install an alarm. Nann figured he was way too macho.

  Inside, the house was a showplace. Like, a retail showplace. Each room was decorated with antiques of different periods. Nann felt like she was walking in a dusty time machine.

  “Where’s the panic room?” Zinnia looked around at normal-looking rooms.

  Nann shrugged. “Must be in the basement.”

  A few moments later, they found their way downstairs. Cell phones came out, with the flashlight apps on. They came to a slab of a door set into a steel frame. A strand of yellow police tape hung in front of it. Part of the steel had been peeled back revealing damaged wood beneath. This was how the cops got in. No key necessary. “Looks imposing,” Tink said.

  “Yeah, but it can only be locked from the inside,” Nann said. “It’s a panic room.”

  “I don’t get the point. It’s only secure if you’re in the room?” Tink said.

  “Maybe, if you blackmail a lot of people, you need a safe place if you blackmail the wrong person,” Nann said. “Which could’ve happened, in this case.”

  Tink nodded. “Makes sense, if you put it that way. Although it didn’t work.”

  It certainly hadn’t for Blake Simmons.

  “Well, let’s take a look. Maybe I can solve this thing.” Nann reached out.

  “Wait! Don’t leave your prints!” Zinnia said.

  “They’re done
with the crime scene already,” Nann said.

  Zinnia bugged her eyes out. “If the cops can’t figure it out, they might dust for prints again. Then you’ll be in the soup.”

  Grumbling, Nann pulled the sleeve of her sweater over her hand. “Satisfied?”

  “Fibers,” Zinnia shrugged.

  Nann shoved the door. It didn’t budge. She braced her feet and gave a sharp push. The door flung open. In the beams of their flashlights, a monster loomed. Nann saw huge fangs, huge claws, beady, flashing eyes, a big mound of fur. Zinnia made a strangled noise and vanished.

  THE ALLIGATOR DEPARTED the cellar with remarkable speed, despite its legs being tangled up in panties, a bra, the leg of a pair of jeans snugged around the tail, and a blouse over its eyes. In seconds, it was halfway up the stairs.

  It took Nann a moment to recover. She played her cell phone light over the terrifying figure. It didn’t move. Of course.

  “Zinn, come back.”

  Near the door, the alligator halted its scrabbling escape. It looked at Nann and Tink over its shoulder.

  “It isn’t real,” Tink said. “Well, it’s real—”

  Once again the gator took off, heading for safety.

  “It’s a stuffed bear, Zinnia. Taxidermy,” Nann said. “It’s safe.”

  Zinnia the alligator returned. Once she reached the basement floor, she looked between Tink and Nann.

  “Oh, right. The naked thing,” Tink said.

  Nann poked her light into the dark room. “We’ll go in. You can join us after you get yourself back together.”

  Could alligators look grateful? Nann thought the huge reptile, even though it was her friend, was much scarier than any stuffed bear. She stepped into the panic room, Tink on her heels.

  The place was a jumble, strange shapes hulking in the dark. Shadows danced as the lights played across the scene. Nann nearly jumped out of her skin when the overheads blazed to life. She whirled to see Tink at the light switch.

  Tink took in Nann’s expression. “What? It’s stupid to look around in the dark.”

  Light made the place look even creepier. A menagerie of mounted African animal heads adorned all the walls. Glass cases held swords, muskets, rifles, handguns, assault weapons, knives, and other weapons. Suits of armor stood in the corners, medieval European, Japanese, Roman, a modern suit of body armor. The most ornate gothic armor stood behind the half-acre of mahogany desk. It was this suit that had once held the murder weapon.

  “This is the definition of toxic masculinity,” Tink said.

  Nann noticed that the mounted head of a gazelle (or something similar) seemed crooked. She moved to investigate. The head itself swung outward from the mounted plaque. The plaque hid a small safe. She looked around. It seemed that all the trophy heads were hiding secret stashes. “Well, even if this room was only secure if you were inside, it sure looks like Blake’s secrets were safe.”

  Zinnia ducked into the room, tugging her clothes into place, eyes on the mounted bear. It stood up in attack mode, claws and fang at the ready. The base it stood on, a very authentic representation of a rocky stream bank, also held a secret drawer. It swung out, wedge shaped. “Nothing in here. The cops probably cleaned the whole place out.”

  “Oh, man, even the pool table,” Tink said. “I’ve always wanted to know what these looked like inside.”

  The top of the table had been removed, and leaned against a wall. They could see inside, between the ball rails, where file boxes had been hidden.

  “Man-oh-Man-i-schewitz,” Tink said. She stood by one of the gun cabinets, swinging it away from the wall to reveal hidden shelves behind. “This guy must’ve had hundreds of files on people. What a creep.”

  “I guess one or two must’ve been open when the cops came,” Nann said.

  “No wonder it’s taking so much time to find a suspect.” Zinnia, finally sidling around the mounted grizzly, found a wall safe hiding behind a hanging electric guitar.

  Tink moved to the door. She whistled as she examined the lock. It had a big wheel that turned, like the ones on submarine doors. “Pretty impressive. I could’ve gotten past it easy, though.”

  “Any ideas about how someone got in and out of here?” Zinnia asked Nann. “Hopefully without magic, so we can clear our names.”

  “I’m still a little stunned by the décor. And all the sneaky hiding places.”

  “So we busted in here for nothing?” Zinnia folded her arms.

  “Not necessarily.” Nann took out her cell phone and took some pictures. “I’m gonna have to think about it for a while. But I will definitely figure it out.”

  “Can we get out of here?” Zinnia said. “I nearly peed my pants once. Oh, and panic-shifted into an alligator.”

  Nann nodded. “I’ve seen enough. Let’s go.”

  Chapter 14

  “I don’t want it to be magic, but I can’t see another way.” Nann chopped up a pile of veggies. She needed to get her familiar on a better diet.

  “Didn’t you say you were good at locked room mysteries?” Pokey sat on the kitchen floor.

  Nann swiped the vegetable cubes from the chopping block into his bowl. “I thought so until I saw the room. The entry door was solid as a vault. It even had a turn-y thing to lock it.”

  Pokey dug in, yet his voice still issued from the radio. This always unnerved Nann a little. “So, who do you like for it?”

  “Well, we had that visiting author, Nick. He seemed to pull off some kinda teleportation deal.”

  “Motive?”

  Nann threw her hands up. “None. He lives in Pennsylvania. We probably won’t see him again. Unless he writes another history of the area. Seems unlikely.”

  “Could you have magicked the door open?” Pokey continued to pig out.

  “Now that I’ve seen it, yeah, I could figure out a way. Tink could do it easy. She’s got that machine magic. So my options are teleportation, which is rare, mechanical magic, and simple psychokinesis.” Nann sighed. “I don’t know that many Pretes or practitioners around here. There might be someone lurking in the background who could do one or all of those things, and have it in for Blake Simmons.”

  “So either too many suspects, or no suspects,” Pokey finished eating. He sat on his haunches. “You think BJ the swamp wizard could do any of that?”

  Nann considered it. “No. If he teleported, he’d certainly get lost. Moving objects with a ceremony takes a lot of concentration. BJ doesn’t have that. And machines? Well, he does have an ancient computer, and a solar array for power. He’s not completely technologically backward. But that doesn’t equate to mechanical magic.”

  “Plus, what would his motive be?” Pokey said.

  “BJ is crazy, so it could be anything or nothing.”

  But speaking of crazy, Nann suddenly came up with an excuse to visit the swamp witch again. As she headed out, she called Zinnia to ask if she could open the shop and keep an eye on it. Nann didn’t hold any hope for too many customers early Friday morning.

  On a hunch, she drove to downtown Port Argent, parking near the Simmons’ antique store. Next to it was a Your Corner Drug pharmacy. BJ had mentioned that Blake always called the cops on him when he came to town. Since picking up meds would be one of the few reasons he would walk all that way, and the pharmacy was right next door...

  No one stood in line. Nann walked up to the counter. “I’m doing a friend a favor. I need to pick up his meds.”

  A woman in scrubs gave her the eye. “Aren’t you a murder suspect or something?”

  Was she? “No. Not anymore.”

  “Last name?”

  “Miller. Brock, Junior.”

  The woman typed at a computer and went back to a wall of bins. Returning with a bag, she beeped it on the register. “Date of birth?”

  Nann shook her head. “No idea.”

  “Address?”

  “Chokeberry Swamp.”

  “Phone number?”

  Did BJ carry a cell phone? She hadn
’t noticed any pockets in his shagreen poncho. “No phone.”

  “Okay, the law says I can’t give these to you unless you provide certain information.” The clerk in scrubs shrugged. “Sorry.”

  “Hang on a second.” Nann cast around, spotting the pharmacist. “Let me talk to the manager.”

  The pharmacist was an Asian woman, on the tall side. Nann explained the situation.

  “Kelly is right. We can’t just hand these orders out to anyone.” The pharmacist made a sympathetic face.

  “Do you know BJ Miller?” Nann asked. “He wears an orange hat, tall rubber boots, and a deer hide poncho.”

  The woman looked at the name on the bag. “Oh...”

  “The thing is, he has to walk seven hours to get here. Since he lives in a swamp, there isn’t a lot of hygiene going on. Plus, it’s been a pretty hot Indian summer. Maybe you’d rather bend the rules than having an unwashed, overheated swamp resident traipsing around the store. I’m sure once he’s walked here, he’d like to rest for a while. And, if that doesn’t jog your memory, his poncho is about thigh high.” Nann made a cutting gesture just below her own knees.

  The pharmacist’s features formed circles. “He wears no underpants.”

  Nann pointed her index finger. “Bingo.”

  Five minutes later, she was swamp-bound, ninety days’ worth of psych meds in a little white bag. She stopped at a fast food drive in. The line was long. Parents were feeding their kids a balanced breakfast on their way to school. She ordered breakfast sandwiches and coffee. At the pay window, a tattooed teenage girl with three nose rings and big grommet earrings eyed her. “Hey, don’t I know you? Didn’t you murder somebody?”

  “No, but I was a prime suspect for a while.”

  The girl nodded and handed over her order. “That’s so cool.”

  For whatever reason, maybe because everyone was so nasty to her in town lately, Nann felt obligated to elevate herself in this teenager’s eyes. “I’m also a practicing Druid, I have a pet pig, and own my own business.”