by Esme Addison
A Spell for Trouble
AN ENCHANTED BAY MYSTERY
Esme Addison
To my parents, for always knowing I was meant to be a writer and providing a lifetime of unconditional love and support.
To my in-laws, for sharing their culture, history, heritage, and hospitality—dziękuję.
Rodzina nie jest czymś ważnym. Jest wszystkim.
The family is not important. It is everything.
—A Polish proverb
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank Chelsey and Matt, for taking a chance on a mystery based on mermaids.
I am grateful to Jenny, Melissa, Ashley and the rest of the Crooked Lane Books team for their support and assistance in publishing this story.
And I wish to thank Crystal and the BookSparks team for assisting me in finding the audience for this series.
Chapter One
The house at 136 Cypress Lane didn’t look like trouble—quite the opposite. The seafoam-green Queen Anne was well kept, with rows of purple tulips blooming beside the wraparound porch and daffodils leading up to the brick walk to the front door. Alex stepped out of the SUV and onto the sidewalk. Everything about this place was lovely. So why had her father insisted for years that she not set foot within miles of Bellamy Bay?
“Miss? Do you want me to get the dog?” The taxi driver gestured uncertainly at the large German shepherd grinning at Alex through the back window.
“Oh, sorry! I’ll get her.” Alex understood how fierce her dog appeared to others, even if Athena was a big baby, deep down. “Come on, girl. You need to stretch your legs.”
Once the dog was free from her harness, she leapt from the vehicle. Alex admired her black-and-brown fur as she sniffed the area, pausing at the base of the mailbox.
Dad. The feeling of guilt suddenly weighed her down. He would not have approved of this trip. “We’re not going,” he would tell her when the invitation came to visit for Christmas or Thanksgiving, his face darkening at the mere thought of seeing her aunt and cousins. Inevitably he’d produce an excuse for not heading down south and spending the holidays in Bellamy Bay. Still, the invitations came year after year, and so did his grumbling remarks. They don’t mean it. They’re just being polite. They’re not like us. Trust me, you don’t want to go there. Alex had the impression that, for some reason, he’d blamed her aunt for her mother’s death. But that tragedy was no one’s fault.
“Sorry, Dad,” she whispered. She was sure he’d meant well enough, but now that she was all alone in the world and unemployed to boot, Alex lacked the fortitude to decline an invitation to visit her only relatives, no matter how estranged. Besides, clean ocean air and a break from the mayhem of Manhattan were just what she needed.
She waited while the driver popped the trunk and hurried around to the back. “Do you need help with the bags?” he asked.
“I don’t want to trouble you.” She struggled to lift her largest suitcase, and it fell to the road with a thud.
“It’s no trouble,” he replied. They’d been riding together for about an hour east since he’d picked her up at the airport in the port city of Wilmington, North Carolina, and had become friendly. He quickly emptied the trunk, piling her small suitcase, duffel bag, and an old backpack neatly on the sidewalk. “I can help you to carry it—”
Alex held up a hand. “No, I insist. You have a long drive back, and I don’t want to take up any more of your time.”
He gave her a nod and a smile. “I appreciate that. You take care of yourself.”
“You too.”
Alex lifted the strap of her duffel bag and hefted it over one shoulder. She faced the Queen Anne. How long had it been since she’d seen her ciocia—her aunt—Lidia and her cousins Minka and Kamila? Not since her mother died, which made it … at least twenty years. What would she say to them? She tried to ignore the nervous twinges in her stomach, focusing instead on maneuvering the other pieces of luggage so that she could carry everything inside in one trip. She had one suitcase in each hand, a duffel on her back, and the backpack strapped to her front as she wobbled slowly up the walkway.
Without warning, the front door swung open and a voice boomed, “Well, look at you.”
“Ciocia Lidia.” Alex smiled.
How was it possible that Lidia had barely aged in over two decades? She was stunning. Her ivory skin was smooth and her long, blue-black hair sparkled with threads of silver. Alex paused as her aunt turned her bright-blue eyes toward her. She swallowed a lump that had suddenly appeared in her throat. “It’s so nice to see you,” Alex managed, her voice weakened by unexpected longing.
“Oh honey, you don’t know how many years I’ve waited for this. I just—look at you. Look at how gorgeous you are.” Lidia gripped Alex by both shoulders. “Minka! Kamila! You’ve got to come out here!” Lidia paused to sigh. “Oh, Aleksandra. If you don’t look just like your mother.”
A pleasant warmth crept over her skin. She’d loved her father dearly, but he’d nearly banned any talk of her mother after her death. It was nice to hear her mother mentioned in conversation and not feel like she was doing something wrong.
“Alex is here!” A bright, energetic voice rang out as a woman with a head of shoulder-length chocolate-brown curls came bursting out of the house. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I did,” Lidia laughed, and stepped aside so that her daughter could pull Alex into a bear hug.
“Do you remember me?” The young woman stepped back to give Alex a full view of her round face and pretty dark-blue eyes. She was wearing a pink sweater and blue jeans. “I’m Minka.”
“Of course I remember you,” Alex said with fondness. Twenty-four months younger than her own twenty-eight years, Minka had been the baby of the group. “Last time I was here, you told me your doll had a fever and you made me crush herbs for her with a mortar and pestle.”
Her younger cousin giggled, delighted. “I remember that. Do you still use herbal remedies?”
“What?” Alex snorted. “No, of course not. Unless Tylenol counts as herbal?”
“Bad move, mentioning Tylenol,” a tall, athletic woman with a caramel-blonde ponytail said, approaching with a grin. “Mom and Minka run an herbal apothecary downtown, a few blocks from here. Modern medicine is a curse word in their house.”
Alex recognized her instantly as Kamila, her cousin who was two years older than her and the former ringleader of the trio during her summers at the beach. She had the same swagger she’d always had, and she’d grown into a woman with girl-next-door beauty. Alex flushed, afraid she’d already offended her family. “I didn’t mean anything—”
Minka grinned at her sister. “Don’t start trouble, Kam. And don’t you listen to her,” she said to Alex. “She’s a hard-nosed cop.”
Kamila ignored her sister and leaned in to embrace Alex. She was wearing running shorts and a tank top covering an athletic bra, as if she’d come straight from the gym.
“I didn’t know you were a police officer,” Alex said.
“And last we heard, you were working in risk management,” Kamila replied. “Is that right?”
Alex nodded. “That’s correct.”
Grinning, Kamila cocked an eyebrow. “I’m sure there’s a joke in that somewhere.”
Alex smiled. “Go ahead, I’m not offended. People who strive for risk-averse lives are statistically healthier and have a higher life expectancy. There’s tons of studies to prove that.”
Her cousin laughed. “In my experience, life is more exciting when you take chances. Otherwise, what’s the point of living?”
Alex opened her mouth to tell her cousin that ever since her mother had died, she’d tried to live her life as cautiously as possible; how else cou
ld she avoid danger? But she changed her mind when she saw her cousin smiling down at her dog. Why ruin the mood with her prudent philosophy on life? She smiled as Kamila reached down to allow the German shepherd to smell her hand. “Is this your baby?”
“Yes. Her name is Athena. Dad raised her as a puppy. She was supposed to be a police dog.”
“Supposed to be?” Minka said, and dropped to her knees to invite the dog over, but Athena remained aloof.
“Sorry about that. She’s a little concerned that people keep hugging me,” Alex explained, and smoothed the ridge of fur that was standing behind Athena’s neck. “It’s all right, they’re family,” she assured her, and Athena lowered her ears and crept toward Minka. “She went through a year of Schutzhund training, but she was much too friendly to be a K-9.”
As if on cue, Athena rolled onto her back and allowed Minka and Kamila to scratch her belly. “Schutzhund is attack-dog training,” Kamila explained to Minka as Athena wriggled happily in the grass.
“Yeah, can you tell she’s a trained killer?” Alex chuckled. “But that’s only one component of Schutzhund, and the one Athena happened to fail at. Fortunately, she’s pretty good at listening to basic commands. And she’s just over two years old, so she’s pretty calm.” Alex watched the dog with fondness. She’d taken over her care after her father died, and Athena was her last link to him.
* * *
The house was lovingly decorated, cheery, bright, and clean. Alex admired the wide planks of the hardwood floors and the sea-glass-green vase of fresh-cut flowers decorating the entryway. Warm colors and antique nautical maps brightened the sunlit home. Lidia showed Alex to her bedroom on the second floor. “This was your room when you were a child,” she said. “Do you remember?”
Alex nodded slowly as she took in the soft-yellow walls and the canopied bed. The duvet cover was a buttercream yellow sprinkled with colorful blossoms. Silk butterflies swung from the ceiling, and fresh flowers in crystal vases perfumed the air. “I felt like a princess in here.”
Her aunt gazed at her thoughtfully. “Yes, this was your kingdom.”
Alex walked to the window and opened the curtains, gazing at the view. In the backyard, Lidia kept a vegetable-and-herb garden and had encircled a koi pond and a fountain with an explosion of vibrantly hued flowers. Some of Alex’s happiest childhood memories involved those gardens. Her family used to visit Bellamy Bay for weeks at a time, and she had passed many summer days watching the fish in the koi pond, or staring in wonder at the fountain. Fashioned from a silver metal tinged with blue was a life-size statue of a beautiful mermaid kneeling in a large shell filled with water. She held a small fish that trickled water out of its open mouth into the shell below.
The mermaid’s hair, a long tangled mass of waves, covered her bare chest, and her fish tail curved seductively around her.
Sometimes a dark-haired boy from the neighborhood had joined her, and they would run through the rows of flowers, imagining they were in a magical place. He’d even woven her a crown of violets. She missed those days long after her mother died and her father stopped bringing her to Bellamy Bay.
Lidia set a hand on Alex’s upper arm, pulling her out of her daydream. “Why don’t you settle in and we’ll make you some tea?”
“That sounds great.”
Alex waited for her aunt to leave the room before she flung herself backward on the bed. The room smelled like lavender and lemongrass. Her muscles loosened from the long car ride as she took a few good, deep breaths. The last month of her life hadn’t been spectacular, but Alex hadn’t had time to dwell on it. Now she had nothing more to do. She was here, in her aunt’s house, relaxing for the first time in ages, and it struck her that everything she’d worked for was gone. She’d never get promoted at her firm. All of her plans and all of those years of sacrifice and hard work—poof. She felt the heaviness of the loss.
Somewhere, a teakettle whistled.
Alex pulled herself up with a sigh. Distraction was the only answer. She changed into a pair of comfortable old jeans before heading downstairs.
Like the other spaces in the house, the kitchen was filled with sunlight and warmth. Lidia was on a step stool reaching for mugs on the high shelf of a narrow wooden cabinet while Minka lifted a steaming kettle off a stainless-steel gas stove. “Something smells good,” she said, before spotting a plate of kolaczki—Polish cream-cheese pastry—on the wooden top of the breakfast bar. “Oh my gosh, I haven’t had these in ages!”
The kolaczki were filled with fruit jelly, and the corners of the pastry were folded in the center so that they resembled angel wings. Kam was seated at the breakfast bar. She slid the plate toward Alex, who lifted a sugar-dusted cookie and took a bite. As the flavors of sweet apricot and creamy pastry melted on her tongue, she felt like a child again, sitting in this very kitchen, enjoying her mother’s cooking. “You used to bake kolaczki with Mom at Christmas,” she said as she settled contentedly into her seat.
“They’re your favorite, as I recall,” Lidia said. “Your mother had to hide them from you or else you’d eat the whole plate.” She set a filter over the top of a mug and poured the tea. “This is specially made for you, my dear. A blend of lavender, chamomile, ashwagandha, and honey.” She set the steaming mug in front of Alex. “This will get you feeling better in no time.”
“Feeling better?”
She hadn’t told her aunt anything about her trouble at work. Lidia had simply called her out of the blue one afternoon to invite her to spend some time with them at Bellamy Bay, and Alex had accepted. There had been little discussion except to share excitement about the reunion. How could she possibly know Alex’s entire life was broken?
“It’s written all over your face,” Lidia explained, as if reading Alex’s thoughts. She settled into the chair beside her niece and set a warm hand on her wrist. “Sweetheart, you’re a senior consultant at an international firm taking a vacation without an end date. Something must be wrong.”
Alex inhaled the faintly spicy scent of her tea and released a sigh. What was the point in hiding anymore? She was far away from everyone back in New York, and something about this place was so comforting that she longed to unburden her troubles. She wrapped her hands around the hot mug and eased her elbows onto the counter. “I sort of … quit.”
It had all happened so fast. The director who had been supervising Alex had taken another job, and someone new had come in from the office in Chicago. “Her name was Cornelia. She didn’t like me. I tried to make a great first impression. I stayed later than usual and came in earlier. I gave her my best work, but nothing I did was ever good enough for her. She rode me constantly, tried to embarrass me in front of others. It became toxic very quickly for me.”
Minka wrinkled her nose. “You poor thing.”
“Stuff like that happens at the police station,” Kamila added. “We have this new detective, some hot shot who thinks everything we do is wrong.” She rolled her eyes. “I get it.”
Alex nodded and took a sip of her tea. The ashwagandha was strong but pleasant, balanced by the soothing honey and chamomile. “Delicious, Ciocia. Thank you.”
Lidia scooted the plate of kolaczki closer. “You probably need another one.”
She did. This time, Alex selected strawberry. “It wasn’t what I’d expected,” she continued. “I mean, I’ve done well for my clients. I’m good at what I do. Well, I was good.” She shook her head. “I don’t know where to go from here or if I’m even going to stay in the same field. The point is, I thought Cornelia would be happy to work with me.” She picked at a few crumbs on the plate. “I thought I was on track to become the next risk management supervisor. Everyone said so, including my last boss. But during my review, Cornelia told me it was her recommendation that I remain a senior consultant.”
“That sucks,” Kam exclaimed.
Alex chuckled at the outburst. “Yeah, it does.” She took another sip of tea. “I was angry. It felt so unfair. I still don’t kn
ow what her problem was with me. But after the anger passed, I just felt tired. Burned out. I’d been working at least sixty hours a week for years, and I realized that while I was working, life was happening.”
Her chin trembled as she thought of her father and his illness. She’d visited him when she could, but he’d been receiving care for his bad heart in central Connecticut while she’d been working her tail off in New York City. When he died three months ago, she’d been nearly overcome with grief and regret. “I chose my career over being with my father,” she whispered. “I could have taken a leave, but I was really hoping for a promotion—”
She took a breath to stop the tears from spilling, but one slid down her cheek and landed in a pile of powdered sugar on her plate. She was human and therefore entitled to make mistakes; her father had taught her that. He’d been a police detective and then the chief of police before he died, and he’d understood bad choices and redemption. Deep down, she knew he would have forgiven her for not being at his side. But she was struggling to forgive herself. “So anyway, after the meeting with Cornelia, I spent a couple of days feeling bad. Then I quit. And you know, it felt good to walk out.” Biting her bottom lip, she glanced at her aunt. “And then you called, out of the blue, almost like you knew I needed to get away.”
Lidia wrapped her arm around Alex’s shoulders and pulled her closer. “Well, I’m glad you’re here now. We’re going to take good care of you.”
“It’s what we do best,” added Minka as she rounded the breakfast bar to join the hug.
Even Kam added her arms. “You’re safe here, Alex.”
She wasn’t used to being taken care of—whatever that meant. “I’m grateful to be here, but I don’t want to be a burden. I’m not going to lie around the house. What can I do to help out?”
“Why don’t you come to work with us?” Minka said as she untangled herself. “At Botanika.”