Witch You Well Read online

  Tyler Gates nodded. "I'll verify your alibi with Ruby, of course." The sheriff nodded. "Don't even think about leaving town. I'll be watching you." He pointed two fingers at his eyes, then Pearl's.

  "Go ahead." Pearl brushed my hand off her shoulder and stormed off towards the Inn.

  At least our new sheriff had a sense of humor. Aunt Pearl wouldn't leave town; she just wished everybody else would. At any rate, the sheriff's words had their intended effect. Pearl inched back across the garden towards the house in an exaggerated arthritic gait. I glanced back at the gazebo. "Is the uh, body gone yet?"

  "The coroner took him away an hour ago." Tyler shone his light into the gazebo.

  I felt his eyes on me as I turned to the gazebo. With the body now gone, the only evidence of the terrible deed were bloodstains on the wooden floor. I gasped as I saw Aunt Pearl's wand propped up by the entrance, bagged as evidence. Had she known it was still in the gazebo when she tried to set it on fire? There was something she wasn't telling me, and I didn't like it one bit.

  CHAPTER 11

  It was after nine p.m. and darkness had fallen by the time I returned to the Inn. The last few hours had been a flurry of activity between the murder investigation, keeping tabs on Aunt Pearl, and ensuring things stayed on track with our hotel guests.

  I hadn't talked to Mom for a while and was anxious to see how she was making out. I found her in the kitchen washing dishes. She always washed dishes by hand even though we had a commercial grade dishwasher. Heck, as a witch, she could even use a spell to wash them and complete her "to-do" list in a split second. But the perfectionist in her insisted on doing things the hard way. By the time she checked and rechecked her spells, it was just as quick to do things the manual, mortal way. Mom and I were exactly the same in that respect. We were insecure about our natural talents. Magic seemed an unfair advantage sometimes.

  "Oh Cen, I can't believe we've got a murder on our hands." Her eyes were bloodshot and swollen, like she'd been crying. Her clothes were disheveled and her apron was on sideways, completely out of character from her normally immaculate appearance. "What are the odds of this happening on our grand opening?"

  "Pretty good, if you think about it. The perfect time to hit tourism is before it even gets off the ground."

  "I can't imagine anyone in town going to that extreme. Who would kill to stop progress?" Mom brushed her hands on her apron. "That note scares me."

  I recounted my suspicions about the note writer and the curious spelling of unraveled. "Aunt Pearl doesn't use British spelling. Whoever wrote the note obviously wanted it to sound like it came from her, though."

  "Don't be ridiculous, Cen. Pearl would never harm anyone. How could you even suggest that?"

  "I think that’s probably how things appear to the sheriff. A lot of the evidence seems to point to Aunt Pearl, and the sheriff has to investigate all leads. I know she didn't do it, but there's definitely something she isn't telling us." I grabbed a dishtowel and tackled the dishes in the drying rack. "She always carries her wand. Why didn't she take it from the gazebo? I've never known her to leave it anywhere unattended. She could have grabbed it before the sheriff arrived, but she didn't."

  Mom shrugged. "She either forgot, or didn't want to disrupt the crime scene."

  "Since when does she not want to disrupt things? According to her, it wasn't part of the crime scene. She said she dropped it when she fell on top of me."

  Mom frowned but didn't say anything.

  "Did she have her wand when you two walked over to the gazebo?"

  "I don't remember. I was so preoccupied with getting things ready for the Inn's grand opening that I didn't notice." Mom dropped the pot she was washing. It fell into the sink with a metallic clang.

  I felt a twinge of guilt that I hadn't been at the Inn to help.

  "There's been so much to do here, it's overwhelming. Pearl was gone all morning, so I had to do everything myself."

  Now I was the one in shock. "Wait a sec—Aunt Pearl told the sheriff she was here with you until eleven and said you would vouch for her."

  Mom sighed and raised a hand to her forehead. "I'm not going to lie for her. She went out early this morning, and I didn't see her again until the afternoon. What has she got us into?"

  "I don't know, but unless she tells us where and what she's been doing, we can't help her. I'm pretty sure Sheriff Gates thinks she's guilty of something." I hated to think of Aunt Pearl being wrongly accused. For a reason I couldn't quite explain, I also wanted to make a good impression on Tyler Gates. "Whatever she's hiding can't be as bad as murder."

  "She's pretty stubborn, Cen." Mom shook her head. "The world could come crashing down around her and she would still keep her secrets. She creates a lot of trouble for herself that way."

  "Well, if she wants her wand back, she'll have to explain things. The sheriff has collected it as evidence. He thinks it’s her cane though."

  Mom's mouth dropped open. "Pearl's an actual suspect?"

  "He didn't say that exactly, but her dislike of tourism gives her a motive, and that note sounds like her to a tee. Add in her wand at the crime scene and she's a natural suspect. I'm sure the sheriff sees that."

  "But we were at the gazebo too," Mom protested. "Why aren't we suspects?"

  "I've got an alibi. I was working all day until three p.m. The investigators can probably estimate a time of death by the condition of the body." I shuddered as I recalled falling onto Plant's corpse.

  "And I was in town most of the morning, getting last minute things for dinner. Lots of people saw me. I even ran into the sheriff," Mom said.

  "You see? Aunt Pearl lied because she has no alibi." A lie or a lie of omission?

  "Maybe she got her times mixed up?" Mom's expression indicated her disbelief even as she uttered the words.

  "We both know that's impossible. She's way too sharp for that."

  "True." Mom nodded. "But she probably thinks her whereabouts are none of the sheriff's business. She gets kind of ornery when people keep tabs on her."

  "That's fine most of the time, but not now when there's a murder. Everything points to her, except for one thing," I said. "The killer knew his victim."

  "Oh?" Mom plunged her hands into the soapy water. "The sheriff tell you that?"

  I shook my head. "Attacking a victim's face implies a personal relationship. Whether it's bludgeoning them to death or covering their face after the fact. Sebastien Plant knew his killer. As far as I know, he's never met Aunt Pearl." The television show Forensic Files had taught me to look for clues hiding in plain sight, and Plant's head and facial injuries spoke volumes.

  "You watch too many crime shows, Cen."

  "Maybe, but it's the only lead we have right now. It's an important clue. Whoever did this has to be caught."

  Mom pulled her hands out of the dishpan and threw them up in the air, splashing sudsy water everywhere. "Pearl is a lot of things, but she's not a killer. But I agree she's hiding something. I just don't think I'll be able to pry her secrets out of her. She won't talk."

  "She has to," I said. "Unless she comes clean and explains everything, she could get charged with murder." Aunt Pearl wasn't one to stay silent about much of anything. A simple explanation would clear her as a suspect, yet she wouldn’t provide one.

  Her silence also spelled the death knell for the entire town since tourists wouldn’t visit as long as a killer walked among us. But Westwick Corners had eked out an existence for well over a hundred years. Come hell or high water, it would last another century if I had anything to do with it.

  CHAPTER 12

  Whatever Aunt Pearl did or didn't admit to, it didn't explain the blood on her wand. Someone had either stolen her wand and used it, or she had used it herself. I visualized the wand in my mind. The blood on the tip was already dry. It had been a hot day but the gazebo was shady. The blood would have taken fifteen minutes or longer to dry.

  I shuddered as I remembered the stiffness of Plant's bo
dy as I fell on top of him. I was certain he was dead a lot longer than fifteen minutes. More like hours earlier.

  "Aunt Pearl's wand has no value to anyone else. Why would anyone steal it in the first place?"

  "It has value to another witch." Mom placed the last of the plates in the drying rack and drained the water from the sink.

  That hadn't occurred to me. "But only Pearl can unlock her wand." Modern wands were hi-tech and Pearl's was especially so. It required a combination of her fingerprint and a password. Even magic used biometrics nowadays.

  "A witch doesn't have to unlock it and use it," Mom said. "She just has to keep the wand away from Pearl. Pearl becomes powerless, unable to cast magic spells without her wand."

  "Why would someone want to stop her magic?" I flashed back to Aunt Pearl’s flaming stick at the gazebo. She had conjured that up, so she still wasn’t being truthful. There was still something she wasn’t telling us, and that wasn’t good.

  "I have no idea, but I can't imagine why anyone other than a witch would steal and sabotage her wand." Mom wiped her brow. "Whoever did this wants to make Pearl a scapegoat, but who?"

  "Someone who wants to get away with murder. Aunt Pearl goes to jail and the murderer gets off scot-free." My list of Pearl-haters included half the town, but I didn't dare voice my fears. Mom was blind to both her sister's faults and her long list of enemies. Most were town locals though, ordinary mortals without special powers. None were cold-blooded killers.

  "The killer puts away two people." Mom frowned. "I still think it's another witch, though."

  "We're the only witches in town," I said. "Maybe we should make a list of who might want to hurt Aunt Pearl."

  "Hazel and Pearl are fighting," Mom said.

  "You don't think—"

  "No, even Witch Hazel wouldn't go that far." Mom untied her apron and tossed it on the counter. "But if the killer is another witch, Pearl is in big trouble. She'll never be able to explain everything and clear her name."

  Of course.

  Witches could easily alter clues, even forensic evidence. Aunt Pearl wasn't the only one who needed help. Sheriff Gates did too. If he expected his stint in Westwick Corners to be a slack post in a sleepy little town, he was in for a supernatural surprise. I had no choice but to at least investigate the Witch Hazel angle that our sheriff was unaware of. "Can we somehow find out about Hazel's whereabouts?"

  Hazel Black was Pearl's best friend until their major falling out a year ago. Aside from being an accomplished witch, she was also the president of Witches International Community Craft Association or WICCA, the worldwide governing body for witches.

  I couldn't fathom Hazel going as far as to kill an innocent man and pin it on Aunt Pearl. On the other hand, Hazel had cursed my brother Alan and turned him into a Border collie. I never saw that one coming either.

  Mom's brows knitted together. "I suppose we could ask Amber."

  Aunt Amber was WICCA's vice-president and saw Hazel all the time. If she vouched for Hazel's whereabouts, we could quickly eliminate her as a suspect. Aunt Pearl wouldn't want her sister Amber involved, but we didn't have much choice. "What if she tells Hazel? She might wonder why we're asking."

  "At this point, I think we have to." Mom dried her hands and snapped her fingers.

  A holographic image slowly solidified in front of us. Aunt Amber smoothed her ginger hair and tucked a lock behind her ear. She looked as gorgeous and polished as ever, but distracted, like we had interrupted her.

  "This better be good. You caught me right in the middle of a spell." Amber, like Hazel, lived in London, England. Westwick Corners simply couldn't contain her.

  "Sorry. It's kind of important," Mom said.

  "It's barely after six a.m. here, Ruby. You know I'm not a morning person. This better be good."

  It was still Friday night here, but London was nine hours ahead. The sheriff's timeline would be confirmed by the coroner, but the murder had likely occurred sometime between noon and three p.m., when we had discovered the body. That was between nine p.m. and midnight London time.

  "I'm afraid it's not good at all." I quickly recapped the day's events, the murder, and the incriminating evidence that pointed to Pearl. "Pearl and Hazel are still feuding. Maybe Hazel set her up and planted her wand at the crime scene?"

  As a witch, Hazel could travel here and back to London in less than an hour. In the absence of other leads, it was up to us to rule out any supernatural suspects. They would never come to light in Sheriff Gates' investigation.

  "I wouldn't put revenge past Witch Hazel," Aunt Amber said. "But I can't see her killing an innocent stranger to frame Pearl."

  "We aren't blaming Hazel, but we can't rule her out either," I said. "Do you know where she was last night?"

  Aunt Amber shrugged and held up her palms. "Sleeping like everyone else, I assume, Cen. I haven't seen her since she left work on Friday, and I won't see her again until Monday morning at the office. I don’t keep tabs on her outside of work."

  "Anyone other than Penny who can account for her whereabouts?" Penny Black was Hazel's daughter. Penny was also Alan's ex-girlfriend and the reason behind Hazel’s Border collie curse. Hazel Black lived alone. Pearl was—or at least had been—Hazel’s only close friend.

  "Have you tried her boyfriend?" Aunt Amber brought a magenta-hued nail to her lips adorned in a matching shade. "He'll probably have an idea."

  "Witch Hazel has a boyfriend?" I couldn't imagine anyone wanting to hook up with Hazel. Aside from her domineering personality, she was all business. In addition to her role as WICCA president, she was a shrewd entrepreneur.

  "Surprised me too. They've been seeing each other for a couple of months. I'm trying to remember his name. Seb somebody?"

  "Sebastien Plant?"

  Mom's mouth dropped open and she looked as if she was about to keel over.

  "That’s the name. You know him?" Aunt Amber's image wavered. "I've got to go—my herbs are burning!"

  "Wait!" But it was too late. Aunt Amber was gone.

  I turned to Mom. "Sebastien Plant's killer left a note with British spelling. Hazel is British. Do you think she did it?"

  Mom shook her head emphatically. "Neither Hazel nor Pearl are capable of anything like this, Cen. We'd better talk to both of them right away."

  Sebastien Plant's bloodied face flashed in my mind. Both Hazel and Tonya knew him intimately, but only Hazel was British.

  While Hazel and Pearl weren't speaking to each other, they had been best friends for decades. Was it possible that Pearl was covering for her friend?

  CHAPTER 13

  Aunt Amber's information didn't shed any new light on things other than the bombshell about Hazel's affair with Sebastien Plant. Nor did it solve our immediate problem.

  Pearl was AWOL again. I had to track her down because there was no telling what she might do to get her wand back. Mom was already close to a nervous breakdown and Pearl could easily push her over the edge.

  "You've got to keep tabs on her, Cen. I can't leave the Inn, and I'm worried that she's about to do something crazy. We've all got so much invested in the Inn's success. Pearl can ruin things in an instant."

  This time Mom wasn't overreacting. "I'll find her." I headed out the front doors and across the driveway to The Witching Post. The last person I wanted to see right now was Brayden, but he was probably too busy bartending to notice me anyway.

  I would check the bar for Aunt Pearl and then make a quick exit. As I pulled open the front door, I almost collided with a buxom blonde in a shimmering gold lamé evening gown. Her vintage gown seemed out of place yet strangely familiar.

  I only saw the back of her low cut dress, but I recognized Aunt Pearl's talisman bracelet as it jangled when she brushed past me. Carolyn Conroe, Aunt Pearl's Marilyn Monroe alter ego, headed straight for the bar.

  My heart sank. The hours were ticking away, yet I couldn't talk to Aunt Pearl about Sebastien Plant and Hazel until she changed back to her normal for
m. That could take a while, depending on how much trouble she got herself into.

  "Where can I get a cocktail in this joint?" Carolyn's voice rose above the din and suddenly all conversation ceased.

  Brayden gave her a dismissive wave. "Can you wait? Happy Hour starts in fifteen minutes."

  Brayden never got the concept behind Happy Hour. Instead of enticing customers early in the evening, he basically gave whoever waited long enough a half-price discount. All the locals took advantage of his weird timing and never bothered to show up until later on.

  The only upside to Brayden's strange promotion was that Carolyn didn't yet have a drink in her hand. He also knew of Aunt Pearl's alter ego, though he believed that Carolyn Conroe stemmed from a personality disorder and too much makeup. Aunt Pearl’s magic was that good. Unfortunately her outcomes were never good, so I just hoped Brayden had enough sense to water down her drinks. A drunk Carolyn was much, much worse than a sober Pearl. There was no telling what she might do.

  Carolyn threw her head back in a throaty laugh. "I'll be back for you, lover."

  Brayden's face flushed. Pearl had just embarrassed him as a form of revenge.

  Everyone stared in our direction just as a gust of wind from who knew where blew Carolyn's skirt hem upwards. A mischievous grin spread across her face. She slowly patted down her skirt, but not before giving a peep show to just about every red-blooded male in Westwick Corners.

  A crowd gathered around Carolyn. She clearly enjoyed every second of her time in the spotlight.

  I ignored the wolf whistles and scanned the bar. The bar stools were full, with guests interspersed among the locals. I noted with satisfaction that almost all the guests were present. As long as they remained in the bar, they wouldn't notice the yellow crime scene tape that still surrounded the gazebo.

  I spotted Tonya Plant alone at a corner table. She was almost as well-known as Sebastien. They made such an odd couple though. Tonya was in her early thirties, at least twenty years younger than Sebastien. She seemed tiny compared to her morbidly obese husband and even smaller in person. She wore her fine blonde hair in a pixie cut and dressed like a royal in a couture dress with tiny embroidered rosettes. She tapped a kitten heel absent-mindedly as she nursed a glass of red wine. She stared open-mouthed at Carolyn’s antics.