Wedding Bells And Magic Spells Box Set

by A. R. Winters

  “Oh? Where are you holding the wedding?” I asked. As the owner of a bridal store, I have to keep up to date with all of the best wedding venues, and I had no doubt that Patricia Bledsoe and her daughter were after the ‘very best’ location, whatever they thought that to be.

  “We were going to hold it at Secret Cove,” she said. Secret Cove was a small private beach attached to a boutique hotel, which was popular with a certain kind of bride. “But we are hoping that the Finca del Castro is going to become available.”

  “They’re both fine locations,” I said, being intimately familiar with both venues.

  “Not to speak ill of the dead, but that... girl... is the reason we had to change venues in the first place,” said Patricia.

  “Oh?”

  Patricia leaned toward me in a conspiratorial manner. “That little cow heard we were going to book the winery, so she snuck in and got it first! It wasn’t just that either. She deliberately chose the same day to hold her wedding. I mean, it’s a shame what happened to her and all, but in some ways I think she kind of des—”

  “Mother!” said Brittany, gripping her arm hard enough to interrupt her speech. “She was my friend We may have fallen out, and I admit I may have had a few choice words to say about her the last six months or so, but still, she is dead now. Let’s give it a rest.”

  “Luckily she is giving it a rest,” said Patricia with a wicked little laugh.

  Brittany gave me an embarrassed look and stared back down at the rails of dresses, her cheeks now crimson.

  “I’ll leave you to it for a bit. If you come to any decisions, let me know, and I’ll make a note of it. I’ll keep a dress aside for you if... I mean, when the sale starts.”

  “Yes, I assumed you would,” said Patricia.

  “Thank you so much,” said her daughter.

  I took myself behind the counter and into the stockroom, and with barely an audible flutter Kiwi followed me, swooping over the heads of the unnoticing shoppers.

  “What do you think?” I asked him when the door was closed.

  He gave a non-committal caw.

  “They said Zola’s dress designs were the same as Carrie’s! That gives her a motive!”

  Kiwi ruffled his wings and shook his head. “But like she said, dresses all look the same.”

  “That is not what she said, and no they don’t!”

  He shrugged his wings. “Close enough.”

  I muttered. Without having seen Carrie’s designs, it was impossible to know. Were they just similar in the same way that almost any two wedding dresses can be? Or had Zola somehow copied Carrie’s dresses?

  “Zola did say she used to come here on vacation. Maybe she met Carrie then,” I suggested.

  “Maybe. Or maybe all dresses look the same. What about Patricia?”

  I nodded. “She seems to have hated Carrie! And we saw them fighting outside the shop the other day. And it turns out they’d been competing for the wedding venue as well. Now that she’s dead, Brittany can take the venue.”

  “Maybe Zola and Patricia both killed her,” said Kiwi with a cackle.

  “It’s not funny!”

  Kiwi gave a wordless screech of dismissal.

  “I want to talk to Jack about this. See if I can get him to give me anything.”

  “I’m sure he wants to give you something,” said Kiwi with another cackle.

  “Shut it, you!”

  “HELLO! We’ve made a list!” said Patricia from the shop.

  “Just a moment!” I yelled.

  “I said I’d put aside one dress, not one rail,” I muttered to myself, as I headed out to meet them. With any luck, all my scheming would come to some use, and help get Zola off the hook.

  Chapter 12

  Before going to meet Jack for our round of mini golf, I made the mistake of asking Kiwi how I looked.

  “Big,” he answered.

  “BIG!?”

  He shrugged his wings. “Everyone’s big compared to me.”

  His tone gave me the impression he blamed the rest of the world for not being the same size as him.

  I glared at the bird. “Nothing else to contribute?”

  He looked at me again. “You look like a cowgirl,” he said. Better than like a cow, I supposed.

  “How’s that?”

  “You’re wearing jeans. Like a cowboy.”

  “What are you, a hundred years old? Everyone wears jeans these days, Kiwi.”

  “I don’t,” he said with another shrug.

  “Argh!” I yelled and threw a bag of cheese puffs at his head. I’d intended to reward him with them after he said something nice, but he hadn’t, so I tried to punish him with them instead.

  He let out a happy cackle when he dodged his head out of the way and snatched the bag with his beak.

  “Thank you,” he said with an almost-smirk. It would have been a definite-smirk if his face worked like that, I knew.

  “You’re very welcome,” I said with a menacing glare. “I’m off. Wish me luck.”

  “Go get ‘em, pardner,” said Kiwi in his best Wild West drawl.

  He watched entirely too much television, I decided, and we’d have to work on cutting it down.

  I waved my hand at him as I left him to what would no doubt be a marathon of reality television shows and old police procedurals.

  Twenty minutes later I’d parked the car in the gravel lot adjoining Pete’s Putt Putt Golf Course, Sequoia Bay’s premiere mini-golf complex. It was also the only one, but that didn’t stop their marketing department from boasting about it.

  It was with a nervous walk that I crunched my way across the gravel to the entrance, where from over a hundred yards away I could see Jack waiting for me. And this time it was, definitively, a date. At least I thought so.

  “Good afternoon, Aria!” he said when he saw me approaching. This was awkward as I was still about fifty yards away from him and my voice isn’t that loud.

  “Hi!” I yelled as I continued to approach, my steps now twice as fast as normal.

  “How are you?” his voice boomed across the lot toward me. Didn’t he know you were supposed to wait until we were closer to start the greetings? Apparently, they didn’t cover that in the police academy.

  Not wanting to make myself hoarse with shouting, I stuck out my thumb in a positive gesture, but then had to whip it down again when a passing car began to slow, the driver clearly thinking I was looking for a ride.

  I was panting by the time I reached him and I was greeted with my next dilemma. Do I go in for a hug and kiss on the cheek, or a handshake? Or perhaps we could just fall in step next to each other as we walked in.

  Jack solved this issue by extending his arm, and then grasping me on the shoulder at just the same time I raised my hand to shake his. He squeezed my shoulder with a laugh and then grabbed my now-retreating hand and gave it a firm shake.

  “Great to see you,” I said, while urging my cheeks to lose their crimson color.

  “You, too. I’ve booked a round for us, and our clubs are just over there,” he said, pointing at the side-wall of the wooden shed that served as the ticket office where two mini-golf clubs were leaning.

  “Great. How much do I owe you?”

  “This one’s on me,” he said. “You get the next one.”

  I grinned at him. Next one, huh? Sounds like this might become something regular, I mused. Maybe I’d even become his... well, no need to rush into things, Aria.

  “Here’s your scorecard and a mini-pencil to go with our mini golf. Let’s head on out and see what you’re made of.”

  With another laugh I followed him, grabbing my club along the way and vowing to myself to put on at least a credible performance. Or at least not embarrass myself any more than I already had.

  “How’s the shop?” he asked.

  I paused to look at him and the sun caught his eyes. They seemed to glow emerald when the sun's rays hit them. He was really quite dashing, when he wasn’t being too much
of a stickler for the rules.

  “You know. Closed,” I said with a little shake of my head and a wry smile. “And with Zola locked up, I doubt it’ll be opening again any time soon.”

  He gave me a quizzical look. “She’s not locked up. We just wanted a word with her.”

  “Oh? She’s not a suspect anymore?” I asked, the ghost of a grin forming on my lips, ready to launch.

  “I. Err. You know, I don’t like to talk about work. I mean, not that I don’t like to, I’m not allowed. We’re not supposed to,” he said, sounding embarrassed. “It’s against the rules,” he said to further clarify.

  I nodded. Typical. Of Jack, anyway. Ever the rule-follower, he was a perfect Boy Scout of a man. It was admirable, in theory, but I wished he’d make an exception for me. Maybe he would, if we ever got serious, if we got ma—

  “But we did ask her to stay in town, for the time being. What with the girl being found in Zola’s dress, just before Zola’s first sale, it seemed necessary while the investigation is ongoing. I mean, we would have told you to stay in town too, if you didn’t already live here. You’re not planning on any trips, are you?”

  I laughed and shook my head. “Running your own business makes it hard to take trips. Especially when that business is struggling.”

  “Well, with Zola stuck here, perhaps she’ll hold the sale after all. That’ll help business, right?”

  “Yep, that would be great,” I said. “Hopefully I’ll be able to needle her into holding the sale since she’s going to be here anyway.”

  “Right. Ladies first,” said Jack, placing a ball onto the tee for me.

  I peered ahead. The first hole involved avoiding a concrete triangle and then running the ball through a window-like tunnel behind between the blades of a slowly twirling windmill and into the hole just beyond. I figured I could bounce the ball off the left-hand wall, and bank it straight through for a hole in one.

  I linked my fingers together around the top of the club’s handle.

  “Hold on” said Jack, stepping behind me. “Hold it like this.” He separated my fingers and adjusted my grip on the club. “Doesn’t that feel better?”

  His back pressed against mine and his strong arms were wrapped around my upper arms, his hands atop mine.

  “Oh yes, that does feel nice.”

  “Nice?” he said quizzically.

  “I mean the grip, it seems much nicer. I mean, better than what I had before.” My cheeks were flushed as I finished speaking. It had felt nice though, having his arms wrapped around me.

  “Okay, have a swing!” he said, releasing my hands and stepping away from me to the side of the course so he could observe.

  I stared at the hole, calculated the angles, drew my club back, and then gave it a firm, but not rough, tap hitting the ball dead-on.

  “Very good!” said Jack as the ball began to roll across the astroturf.

  I stared at it excitedly as the ball bounced exactly where I wanted it to. Heading toward the windmill, it looked like it was going to collide with one of the blades. I couldn’t have that. With a little flick of my fingers and some words mumbled under my breath, I halted the windmill blade in its tracks, allowing the ball to roll on merrily through the window in the windmill and then, plop, it dropped into the hole.

  “My word!” said Jack. “A hole in one! It was like magic!”

  “Yay!” I said, jumping in the air and clapping my hands together, forgetting about the club, which tumbled onto the astroturf. “I couldn’t have done it without you!”

  Jack dropped his own ball onto the tee, and lined up exactly like I had, seemingly trying to recreate my shot. It really was the most logical way to approach the hole so it didn’t seem like he was copying.

  “Here goes...” he said, bending his knees slightly before swinging the club and tapping the ball with more vigor than I had.

  “Wow!” I said as the ball hit exactly where mine had, zoomed through the tunnel, and then with a little bounce went right over the hole, before resting by the back wall. “Just a bit too hard.”

  Jack was frowning at the hole, as if it had somehow cheated him. I giggled softly.

  “Sorry?” he said, having thought I said something.

  “Eh? No. I didn’t say anything. Bad luck! It was a really good shot,” I said with a smile.

  Jack walked around the windmill and with a quick, gentle, tap knocked the ball into the hole.

  “You know the window?” I asked, suddenly.

  “Eh? Window?” he said, peering back at the hole in the windmill.

  “I mean at my shop. It was open, the day that Carrie... was there.”

  “Right,” he said, adding nothing more.

  “The killer didn’t come in through there, did they?”

  “Why do you say that?” His tone was mild but there was tension underlying it; I can sense these things better than most people.

  “Well, there was dirt on the outside of the windowsill that hadn’t been disturbed.”

  He raised his eyebrows and gave me a smile. “Very good, Aria. You’re not thinking of becoming a detective, are you?”

  I shook my head with a laugh. “No. Actually, also my mother heard your police officers talking about it. She filled us in.”

  “Your mother shouldn’t be listening to things like that.”

  “My mother doesn’t do much of anything apart from things she’s not supposed to do,” I said with a grin.

  “Why did you ask?” he said, his voice sounding a little deeper and a touch more authoritative. Uh-oh. Did I just scare away Date-Jack and summon Police-Jack?

  “Hitting that ball through that little window in the windmill made me think of it. The thing is, that morning, before the police arrived, Zola was in that dressing room. I think maybe she might have opened the window,” I said, biting my lip.

  Jack leaned down toward me, eyebrows raised and a serious look on his face. “Are you saying she might have done that to make us think Carrie came through the window?”

  “Maybe. It’s just something I thought of,” I said while shuffling uncomfortably.

  “Did you remember anything else?”

  I nodded with a sigh. I didn’t want to admit this, but... “Yes...”

  “What is it?”

  “The thing is, Zola had a key to the shop. I gave it to her the day before. Could she have given the key to Carrie? Maybe that’s how she got in?” I suggested.

  “Goodness, Aria, this could be important,” said Jack, who was now beginning to pace up and down.

  “Excuse me!” came a high-pitched voice.

  We both turned to see a pair of middle-aged ladies staring at us. “Are you finished with this hole?”

  We snatched up our balls and started to walk to the next one.

  “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but we didn’t find any key with Carrie,” said Jack. “If she had the key, then whoever killed her took it away with them.”

  “Right...”

  “I’m sorry, Aria. But Zola didn’t mention anything about having the key or using it when we interviewed her before. That’s a glaring omission on her part, and quite frankly, it looks pretty bad, don’t you think?”

  “Ye-es, it does look bad.”

  It was so unfair! It looked like Zola was back under serious suspicion, and with good reason.

  “I’m afraid this can’t wait. I’ve really got to go. I’ve got to talk to Zola again and ask her about this key. We need to find out if she, you know… used it the night of the murder.”

  “So no more putt putt.”

  “I’m afraid I’m going to need a raincheck on this one,” he said. “Come on, I’ll walk you to your car.”

  I shook my head. “No. You go ahead. I’ll try and get your money’s worth,” I said with a forlorn smile. “Get some practice in before we pick it back up again.”

  “You’re going to stay and play on your own?” He was giving me a curious look, one that almost seemed pleased.

&n
bsp; I shrugged my shoulders.

  Jack nodded his head. “Interesting. I like that. It takes confidence to do something like that. Have a good round. Hope you win!”

  “Yeah, I hope I do too.”

  I watched as Jack walked away to the parking lot, dropping his club off at the ticket box on the way. Just before exiting the course he turned to look over his shoulder. He waved his hands in the air at me and I waved back with a smile.

  And that was how I ruined my date with Jack Bowers and brought a whole heap of suspicion crashing back down on Zola’s head.

  But it wasn’t just me laying blame on Zola that day, not by a long shot.

  Chapter 13

  It’s hard to work on a charm and perform the minor magic that’s needed to make them effective when you’re being distracted by death-like screams, crazed shouting, and the antics of insane people.

  And home was supposed to be a restful place.

  The cause of the noise was, thank goodness, the television. I put down the small piece of whittled oak that I had been working and went to investigate.

  Kiwi was sitting on the couch with a bowl of cheese puffs, his eyes riveted to the screen.

  “What in magic’s name are you watching?” I asked with a frown after the latest maniacal screech of an obviously deranged woman had been cut off.

  “Dress Me for a Date!” he said happily.

  “Dress Me for a Date? What’s that?” I asked, sitting down next to him and abandoning my charm for the moment.

  “It’s a reality show where they help women get dressed for their date. Look at her lipstick!” he said with a cackle, pointing his wing at the screen: a woman with green lipstick looked like she was about to start screaming in feigned outrage at something.

  “But you’re not interested in things like that!”

  He cocked his head at me. “Am too.”

  “I asked you how I looked for my date earlier and you were worse than useless!”

  He spun his little head to look at me, running his eyes up and down as if examining me for the first time. Then he shrugged his wings.