Panicked, I grabbed the slice of pie off the counter, waved to Priscilla, and hurried out the shop. I was almost halfway back to my place when I realized I hadn't paid. No matter—I'd get it to her tomorrow. Assuming the murderer didn't prevent me from doing that by... well, that didn't bear thinking about.
I was rushing as fast as I could without breaking into a full-out sprint. With Kiwi presumably now found out, how long would it be before our prey fled the scene?
The plan had been for Kiwi to keep watch on the shop as long as it took, and then with a simple peck of his beak press the speed-dial button to call my cell phone if and when someone broke in. We hadn't expected them to be so brazen as to break in right away; I'd imagined I'd be spending half the night holed up in my apartment, unable to sleep, while I started at every creaking floorboard or nocturnal noise.
But no, our murderer was cockier than that—or perhaps just overly eager to get rid of the evidence—and had let themselves in almost as soon as I'd gone!
The shop looked fine as I approached from a distance. The lights were still off inside, and the door seemed to be closed. But as I got closer, I began to hear noises.
In the final few yards, the volume seemed to turn up several increments and I could hear the angry screeches of Kiwi along with curses and human screeches from the intruder.
When I got there, I dropped the bag holding the pie onto the ground. I pulled my phone out as fast as I could and quickly pressed the send button on a text message I had typed out earlier. Then, after a deep, deep breath, I grabbed the door handle with both hands and pushed it open.
Automatically my right hand reached out and I flicked up the light switch by the front door.
There, right in front of me, with a parrot on top of her head, was our murderer.
Chapter 22
I sucked in another deep breath and watched as Kiwi launched himself off of Suzan Clark’s head with a snatch of her hair in his talons. The reporter let out a screech and wildly swung a purple and pink flower-motif parasol at Kiwi, who was now flying big swooping rings around her.
“Suzan Clark!?” I exclaimed.
She glanced my way while still simultaneously swinging the parasol around in ineffectual defensive arcs. The look on her face was so furious it looked like she’d been chewing wasps
“Help! Get this rabid animal away from me!”
“Actually, birds can’t get rabies,” I said to her as I closed the door behind me. “Only mammals.”
“Ow!”
Kiwi had slipped under her protective umbrella and given her a tidy nip on the ear.
“Kiwi, take a rest. I’ll handle this.”
With a loud, angry caw, he landed on the bookshelf, talons gripping the edge, beady eyes staring down at Suzan ready to launch himself at her again if she should even think about making a move.
“Now, what are you doing in my shop?” I raised my eyebrows at her and gave her a very stern look. Like I was a teacher telling off a particularly naughty pupil. That may not be the best look when confronting a murderer, but it was the best I had. I supposed if I’d trained to be a police officer, they would have taught me how to do a really fierce, intimidating look to make murderers shake in their black leather boots, but us bridal shop owners don’t get quite the same education.
“I’m sorry! I was trying to get the scoop!”
Did she really think she was going to get away with it?
“What do you mean?”
Still holding the parasol above her head, Suzan sat down in one of the armchairs along the wall as if we were going to have a nice cup of herbal tea and a friendly chat.
“Well?” I prompted her again.
“I heard a rumor that you had some tapes of the murder? I wanted to see them first. I wanted to be the first to break the story. Can you imagine what it would mean for my career?” She leaned forward in the chair, her eyes sparkling at the thought of winning a Pulitzer or whatever it was she was pretending to imagine.
“You came in here to look at the security tapes to break a story? Before even the police had seen them?”
She nodded slowly. “Sorry about that. I couldn’t even find the cameras or the control box.”
I laughed at her and shook my head. “Do you know why that is?”
“Why?”
“Because there aren’t any cameras. And no tapes.”
“But... but I heard—”
“You heard a rumor that we started to catch you.”
“We?” Her head was tilted at me.
“Me and... my team.” I glanced up at Kiwi with a sly look.
“Your team?”
I nodded again. “Oh, yes. Do you think one little bridal store owner would be foolish enough to take on a vicious, cold-blooded murderer all on her own?”
When I said it like that, I realized that perhaps I was being a little foolish. If the murderer had turned out to be someone bigger and stronger than me, I could have gotten in real trouble laying a trap like this. What if it had been Carrie’s fiancé? Or Brittany’s?
“Murderer?” Her face was ashen and I thought I could detect a quivering in her hands, which were now tightly clasped in front of her. “Why do you say that?”
Didn’t even deny it!
“Don’t you know?” I asked her in surprise.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“How about this: the only key unaccounted for is the one which I gave to Zola Cates. Zola Cates gave it to Carrie. And when Carrie was murdered, by you, you took it.”
Suzan opened and closed her mouth, making stammering and stuttering sounds that never materialized into full-blown words. For a person who made her living talking, she wasn’t expressing herself very well at the moment.
“Well? What have you got to say for yourself?”
Suzan slowly rose to her feet, her mouth hanging open like she’d forgotten how to close it. Her body was shaking.
“Look!” she said, pointing to the opposite wall of the shop.
Gullible girl that I am, I glanced.
There was nothing out of the ordinary.
It was just a ruse, though not a very effective one. While I was looking, she made a run for it, dashing forward toward the front door.
SQUAWK!
Kiwi flew off the bookcase and careened into the back of Suzan’s head with an audible thump. She raised her hands to grab her head and was rewarded with a pair of scratches on the back of her hand, courtesy of Ki’s talons.
The pair of them both screeched, and I wasn’t sure which one was worse.
I stepped to the door and blocked her from exiting that way, pulling the bolt across for good measure. That would slow her down if she got close again.
“Why are you doing this to me!?” whined Suzan. She was now standing with her back against the wall to protect herself from dive-bombing parrots.
“Because you murdered Carrie! And nearly ruined my business! And Zola’s career!”
“She ruined her own career by copying Carrie’s designs,” she announced.
“Well? Come on then. Tell us why you did it.”
Suzan bent her knees and then slowly slid down the wall until she was sitting on the floor with her knees bunched up in front of her. She wrapped her arms around her legs and began to sob.
“I was there, that night.”
“Yep. That’s how you got the key.”
“When I arrived, I saw Carrie and Patricia. The shop was a bit of a mess, but they were talking and smiling to each other. It was the craziest thing, since I knew they hated each other. Patricia had been mean to her since we were in high school.”
“High school?” I asked.
“Yes. Carrie, Brittany, and I went to high school together. It seems so long ago now. I wish we could go back...”
“A bit late for that,” I said with a snort. “Carrie won’t be going anywhere ever again.”
Suzan nodded her head slowly.
With my hands on my hips, I stoo
d over Suzan. She didn’t make another move to run away; she just looked up at me.
“So why were you here that night?”
“I was supposed to be meeting Carrie. You know, we used to be friends freshman year of high school, but, well, then we weren’t.”
“What happened?”
“She... well, it’s embarrassing, but she stopped being friends with me because of Brittany. Brittany always had to be top dog—number one—and she didn’t allow her friends to be close to anyone outside of her own little clique. So she told Carrie to dump me, and…” Suzan shrugged her shoulders. “She did. She stopped being friends with me because Brittany told her to. It really affected me. I was devastated.”
For half a second, I felt sorry for Suzan—high school Suzan, not now-Suzan—but then I remembered finding Carrie’s body just a couple of feet from where I was standing. Her cold, lifeless body in the dress she dreamed of and a designer veil wrapped deadly-tight around her neck.
“So that’s why you killed her?”
“No! Of course not!” Her eyes were wide and it was clear she was telling the truth. “That was years ago. Ancient history. No. What happened was, Carrie contacted me, about three or four weeks ago.”
I walked over to the counter and hopped up, sitting on top. If Suzan moved to stand up, I could hop back down before she could get to her feet, so there’d be no danger of her escaping before I could get to the door.
“What did she want?”
“She used to design dresses. She would draw these intricate designs in a sketchbook she used to keep. She was really quite good.”
“Yep. We know all about that.” I kicked at the wall of the counter with my heels impatiently.
“I thought that was just something she did in high school. But she called me up, seemingly out of the blue, a few weeks back, and do you know what she told me?”
“What?”
“She said that Zola Cates—the famous designer—had plagiarized her designs. Copied them. And what’s more, she could prove it. Although she’d thrown her big sketchbook away years ago, her mother had kept all her little ones, all her initial designs. She had evidence that the dresses Zola had shown at her last show were all copied from her. She was going to offer me an exclusive story.”
“Why would she do that? You hadn’t been friends in years and years.”
Suzan shrugged. “Plenty of reasons. First, she told me she felt guilty about dumping me all those years ago in school. Recently she’d started to regain her confidence and take control of her life. It was her fiancé’s influence, I think. You probably heard about it—she deliberately booked her wedding on the same day as Brittany’s to show she wasn’t under her thumb anymore. She even tried to beat her to venues, caterers, florists... all of it.”
With a nod, I showed her that I got it. This was mostly information we had already, but Suzan was providing a wholly new context for it, and I hadn’t known about the connection between Suzan and Carrie before now.
“She felt bad about our school days. At least that’s what she told me. But she was also angry that this Zola had taken the book of designs she’d thrown away years ago and then made and shown the dresses at a fashion show and in magazines. She felt cheated. So she wanted to punish Zola. Even though they’d only met once, briefly, years ago she felt betrayed by her, and the best way to get back at her would be to expose her and ruin her career.”
“Which is where you came in...”
Suzan nodded. “I guess the stuff about feeling guilty over dropping me in high school was a cover story for my ego. What she really wanted was to use my presence in the media to blow the Zola Cates plagiarism story wide open, and maybe even get herself some recognition. She was actually going to finally go to design school, and even planned to start a career in the industry, you know.”
Suzan sounded wistful, almost sad, talking about Carrie’s plans and the hope she had for the future.
“So we had a plan. We were going to set up a secret camera in your shop, and then, on the day of the sample sale, she was going to confront Zola right here in the shop. Then I was going to come storming in, camera already rolling, to really catch all the action and hopefully chase her down the street for an action shot.”
“Reality TV!” screeched Kiwi excitedly.
Suzan looked up, puzzled.
I shook my head. “Ignore him. He’s been saying that for days and days. It’s just a new phrase he learned. He doesn’t understand anything.” I glared up at Kiwi. He knew he wasn’t supposed to do that. He glared back at me, insulted.
“Anyway, that was the plan. But when I arrived, there had been a fight and she was talking to Patricia Bledsoe. I hid in the shadows outside until Patricia had gone, and then finally I came inside. The shop was a complete mess. They’d been fighting like cats.”
“And?”
“Something had happened to Carrie. She was very strange when I came in. We had such a wonderful, wonderful plan. Exposing Zola would have made both of our careers. But she went crazy!”
“She attacked you!?” I was leaning forward now. This was the juicy part.
She shook her head. “No! She started talking crap about how it was all in the past, and we should just forget about it. That it was better to let bygones be bygones and move on with our lives. She was smiling and giggling like a moron.”
I frowned. Something clicked in my head and the pieces fell into place. Carrie and Patricia had been affected by the bath bombs, and so instead of wanting to ruin Zola’s life, she wanted to forgive her!
“You were sneezing that day, weren’t you?”
Suzan flicked her eyes up at me in surprise. “Yes. My allergies have been a nightmare lately.” She shook her head as if to clear away what I’d just said and get back on topic. “Anyway, as I was saying, she started spouting all this weird ‘be nice to everyone,’ ‘forget about being mistreated’ crap. She and Patricia had even hugged before the old battleax left! Do you think she had a stroke or something? I don’t know. I can’t explain it. She was out of her mind.”
“I’m pretty sure she didn’t have a stroke.”
“I was furious. Beyond furious. She was ruining everything—my career, my life.”
“Oh?”
“I’d told my boss I was going to get an exclusive. I kept it all very hush hush, but I told him to expect big things from me. I talked it up for days beforehand. I got special treatment at work because everyone knew I was working on a big story—and it was big. This could have let me go national! So long local news, hello war zones and terrorists and presidential campaigns!”
“A big break,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“Exactly! And then Carrie wanted to take it all away from me. Steal it from me. After we’d planned and agreed to everything. She just switched and said she wanted to forget it all and wish Zola success!”
“I’m sure you were very upset.”
“You’re darned right I was upset. I’d never been angrier in my life! I just grabbed the nearest thing at hand—I snatched a veil off of a mannequin, and at first, I threw it at her! And do you know what she did?”
“What?”
“She smiled at me, and then put it on her stupid head! And started giggling!” Suzan was panting in between her shouted statements now, and there sweat was beading on her forehead. Just the memory of that night was winding her up. I couldn’t imagine what she had been like on the night itself. I suppressed a shudder.
“And then...”
“I yanked the veil down off of her stupid face, and then it was hanging by her neck. And. Well. One thing led to another...”
With a wince, I imagined what had happened. Suzan had wrapped that veil around Carrie’s neck and...
“You killed her.”
Suzan glared at me. “She killed herself by being so stupid.”
“That’s... not how that works,” I said with a frown and shake of my head. “Do you want to know why she was acting like that?”
�
�Why?” Her voice was sad and bitter, the anger abating now that Carrie was dead again in the retelling. There may even have been a touch of regret in her tone, though it may have been regret for being caught rather than for the deed itself.
“Patricia and Carrie were affected by some magically enhanced bath bombs which made them both calm and friendly. It’s probably what stopped them from killing each other before you even got there. But because of your allergies, your respiratory system was all blocked up. You didn’t inhale any of the smashed bath bombs. That, and a lot of the dust had probably settled by the time you arrived—at least compared to when they were being smashed open and stomped on.”
“Your bath bombs. So... you’re saying it’s your fault?” said Suzan, looking up at me wide-eyed.
Kiwi shrieked in outrage. I just shook my head at her. It seemed no one ever wanted to take responsibility for their own actions; they all had to blame someone else. It was kind of the opposite of my problem—I was always blaming myself for things that weren’t my fault.
The front door of the shop shook as someone tried to open it. I looked over just as it rattled again. I hopped off the counter and went over to unbolt it.
“Jack!” I said, grabbing him by the arm and hustling him inside. “It wasn’t Zola. It was her,” I said with a jab of my finger in Suzan’s direction.
She had put her head down on top of her knees now.
“Murder!” screeched Kiwi.
“Murderer,” I corrected helpfully.
“Murderess?” offered Jack.
“That’s it.”
Jack nodded at me, then stepped over so he stood above Suzan.
“Excuse me? Ma’am? I think you better come with me...”
After he’d read her his rights and secured her wrists in his silver handcuffs, he turned to me.
“And I’m going to need to speak to you, too, Aria,” he said with a frown.
Kiwi cackled happily to himself as I went to follow Jack to the police station.
Chapter 23
It wasn’t exactly what I’d dreamed of, in either the positive or negative sense. A few weeks earlier, I’d hoped the sample sale would lead to stardom and astronomical success—well, as close to that as a bridal store can get. But then when all the unpleasantness had unfolded, my happy dreams had turned to nightmares and instead I’d begun to think I was on the fast track to ruin and disaster.
Wedding Bells And Magic Spells Box Set Page 35