by Fiona Grace
Just then, the sound of Lacey’s phone ringing broke her from her thoughts.
“That’ll be my mom,” she said.
She was actually excited to speak to her mother about wedding plans. Now that the case was over, she was ready to throw herself into the planning. Besides, if she could get Superintendent Turner’s approval, she could do anything.
But when she checked her phone screen, it wasn’t Shirley’s name flashing at her, nor an American area code. It was a Spanish one. And the name?
Xavier Santino.
At the sight of her former antiques contact, Lacey’s stomach immediately began to churn. Why was he calling? Did he have news about her father?
It had been months since Xavier had kick-started her search for her father. Before he told her of the meeting the two had shared in New York City many years prior, Lacey hadn’t even known whether her father was still alive. Xavier had helped her find clues and follow the crumbs right up until the point she cooled things off with him when she realized he was showing more interest in her than the mystery of her missing father.
If he was calling now, surely that meant he’d discovered something about her father.
As his name blinked at her on the screen, she deliberated over answering the call. She’d managed perfectly well without Xavier’s help over the last couple of months—tracing Jonty Sawyer, and her father’s property in Rye, and the subsequent address she’d sent her wedding invitation to—so it wasn’t like she needed him anymore. But what if Xavier had found out something important about her father? Something earth-shattering? Something like his death?
From his basket, Chester barked, giving his customary reminder that she hadn’t yet answered her phone.
Lacey’s thumb hovered over the red button. She was about to reject the call when curiosity got the better of her. She just couldn’t help herself. She pressed the green button.
The call connected with a crackle.
“Lacey?” came Xavier’s soothing Spanish voice in her ear. “I have news.”
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
Lacey gripped her phone tightly in her hand, feeling tense all over. “I have news” wasn’t exactly her favorite conversation starter. In her experience, such a statement usually ended in the announcement of a death or divorce.
“What news do you have?” she said into the receiver. “Is it about my father?”
“Actually, no,” Xavier replied. “I am calling about my own family.”
It took a moment for Lacey to recalibrate. She’d so been anticipating bad news that it took a moment to adjust, and for the anxiety to ebb from her body.
“Oh?” she asked, curiously. “What about them?”
“I thought you may be interested to know that the collection of maritime pieces I was trying to reunite has been completed,” Xavier announced. “I found the last piece of my great-grandfather’s antiques last week.”
“Oh, Xavier!” Lacey exclaimed. “What fantastic news!”
Xavier had been trying to reunite his family’s lost heirlooms for years.
“Thank you. There is a maritime museum in Verona interested in displaying it,” he continued.
“That’s wonderful,” Lacey replied. “I’m just—I’m thrilled for you.” Then she paused. “But why are you calling me about it?”
“I just… I wanted you to know,” Xavier replied. “I wanted to hear your voice.”
Lacey hesitated.
“Xavier, you know I’m engaged,” she said.
“Yes—yes, of course.” He faltered. “And congratulations. I suppose we have good news all around.”
His tone had changed, Lacey noted. He sounded more stilted.
“Well, anyway,” he continued, changing course, “I hope you can take my story and know it is possible to piece things together. I wanted my story to help you resume your search for your father.”
“I did resume it,” Lacey confessed. “And I think I’m really close to finding him. I have an address. I’m planning on going to see him, once I’ve attended to some business here.”
“That’s, well, that’s great,” Xavier said, though it was clear to Lacey her admission of having continued the search without him had hurt his feelings.
“A happy ending,” he continued, sounding anything but. “Happy enough, at least. I suppose all that’s left to say is ciao.”
“I suppose so. Goodbye, Xavier.”
The dial tone sounded before she’d even got out the last syllable.
Lacey twisted her lips and sighed. She felt bad for having shoved Xavier aside, but it was the right thing to do in order to be respectful to Tom. She was soon to be married. Tom had to be her priority.
She resumed stacking the dishwasher. But as she did, something Xavier had said during their call kept playing on her mind. He’d mentioned a museum in Verona, which had put her mind to the Macabre Museum Alaric owned in London.
He’d once owned it with Eldritch before the two fell out, according to Madeleine. Indeed, Eldritch had confirmed enough during her interrogation of him. The two had parted ways, that much was indisputable, but Eldritch’s take on it was they had a friendly, rather than competitive, rivalry. It occurred to Lacey now that she hadn’t actually researched it for herself. She’d just relied on word of mouth. When she’d done that before with Ash the mixologist, the information had turned out to be incorrect.
With a sudden niggling need to tie up all the loose ends, Lacey abandoned the dishwasher loading and opened her laptop.
She went online and typed Macabre Museum into the search bar. She quickly found Alaric’s website. Its landing page was now taken over by a tribute to him—a large PR photo of him in his long black cape holding a candle, a nicely written obituary in floaty gothic handwriting, and a large public announcement message saying the museum would remain closed until further notice. In a column at the side of the page, Lacey noticed several links to other businesses under the heading of FRIENDS. The first on the list, right at the top, in prime position, was a link to a business called Von Raven’s.
“Friends, huh?” Lacey wondered aloud, as she clicked the link that was quite obviously for Eldritch’s business.
A new page filled her screen. The background was black, and decorated with oil drawings of ravens. Can You Escape Von Raven’s Lair? the title read.
Lacey frowned as she began to scan the webpage. She quickly realized Von Raven’s was not a museum at all. Eldritch’s business was, in fact, some kind of a spooky-themed panic room, a sort of immersive haunted house experience. Quite different from the rival museum she’d been led to believe he’d split from Alaric to open.
“But in that case, they’re not really in competition,” Lacey mused aloud. “They run completely different ventures.”
Madeleine must have misunderstood the nature of the two men’s rivalry. Maybe the bad blood between them had nothing to do with their respective businesses being in competition, but simply because of how they’d parted ways in the first place.
But as her eyes scanned the matching column at the side of Eldritch’s page, also entitled FRIENDS, where the first link, in prime position, was for the Macabre Museum, Lacey’s frown grew even deeper. It was just like how she and Suzy supported one another, by displaying posters and flyers in their own businesses. This was the digital equivalent of that.
“It certainly doesn’t look like there was bad blood between them,” she murmured.
In fact, the information on the websites seemed to corroborate more with Eldritch’s story than Madeleine’s.
Had he and Alaric really had a friendly rivalry after all? And what about his claim he didn’t steal the grimoire, because he didn’t want to display it, and that he’d only been trying to inflate the price to mess with Alaric? An immersive panic room business didn’t need expensive antique props. The grimoire would be of no real use to him at all.
Lacey sat back against the chair, her mind turning over as she tried to process the disjointed pieces of evide
nce. A horrible feeling began to churn inside of her. Was it possible she’d made a mistake accusing Eldritch? If he had no need for the grimoire, and no prior vendetta against Alaric, then the MO she’d attributed to him fell apart.
And yet everything pointed so neatly to him. He’d even admitted he’d gone to the island the night of Alaric’s death, to “scare” him into believing the curse of the grimoire. But was it at all possible that Eldritch was telling the truth? That he’d only embellished his alibi because he knew how guilty he looked?
Suddenly her absolutely firm belief began to falter. And whenever Lacey realized there was a chance, even a slim one, that the case wasn’t cracked, she felt compelled to see it to the end.
Which led to the all-important question. If Eldritch wasn’t the killer, then who was?
Lacey began to search through her mind, trying to pinpoint where exactly in the investigation she’d become fixated on Eldritch.
“After the telephone call with Madeleine,” she said. “She told me they were rivals. That was the moment I changed course.” She looked again at the word FRIENDS on the website. “Madeleine must’ve misunderstood.” Then she swallowed hard. “Or lied…”
An uneasy discomfort swept through Lacey and her stomach dropped. She didn’t want to even entertain the thought, but had the sweet, polite young goth girl deliberately misled her? Had she diverted her attention from the real culprit by sending her on a wild goose chase?
Her hands began to shake as she went to her history tab and clicked on Madeleine’s article on the grimoire. There at the bottom of the article, in neat, calligraphy-style writing, was her signature: Madeleine Jourdemayne.
“Wait…” Lacey said aloud, sitting up straight as a thought hit her. “Jourdemayne. Jourdemayne. That reminds me of something.”
She grabbed her notebook and wrote it down. She stared at the word, then circled the first syllable.
“Jour,” she said. “It’s French. It means day, like bonjour, good day.”
The cogs of her mind began whirring in overdrive. She was close to something, but she couldn’t quite put it together.
“Main is hand,” Lacey continued. “And de. De means of. Day of hand.”
She went onto a surname tracking website and typed in Jourdemayne. She got a hit and pulled up the page.
Likely from Old French jour de main meaning day of hand, or “day laborer.”
“Day laborer!” Lacey exclaimed, almost falling out of her chair. “That’s where I heard it before. Day laborer! Just like the Ouvrière family who wrote the grimoire. The Ouvrières and the Jourdemaynes … are the same family!”
She gasped for breath, suddenly going into overdrive. She continued reading, impatient with how slowly her eyes were moving, her heart racing rapidly.
Purported to have been brought to England from France by persecuted ouvrières (day workers) who were frequently scapegoated as witches. Later famously associated with Margery Jourdemayne, burned at the stake for witchcraft in Smithfield, 1441, and ancestor Violet Jourdemayne, hanged by public gallows for witchcraft, in Ippledean, 1684.
Lacey stood so quickly her chair tipped backward. The author of the grimoire, who wrote the book in Old French, was an Ouvrière, a poor laborer accused of witchcraft. Her ancestors had fled France for England because of the persecution, changing from Ouvrière to the Anglicized version Jourdemayne in the process, only to be persecuted here as well. Madeleine was a Jourdemayne, related to both Violet Jourdemayne and the author of the grimoire!
Madeleine had come to the auction for the grimoire all along…
Lacey ran through the facts in her mind. Madeleine had been checked into Carol’s B&B, rather than the Lodge with the rest of the goth group. So Lacey hadn’t corroborated her alibi, nor even considered the fact she wasn’t on the surveillance footage at the Lodge. In fact, Lacey had been so won over by the young girl, she hadn’t even suspected her in the first place.
But Madeleine had lied. She had tried to deflect Lacey’s attention away from her at every step of the way, first by pretending to be at the auction by accident, then by acting shy and polite, and finally by pointing the finger of blame at other people. There was only one reason for that. To find a scapegoat. To turn the attention away from the real killer. Herself…
Suddenly, Lacey heard Finnbar’s voice repeating in her mind. “There’s this whole legend about how the thirteenth daughter of the thirteenth daughter is a witch, and can invoke Violet’s power by sacrificing a charlatan on La Toussaint.”
Lacey’s heart flew into her throat. Adrenaline pounded through her. Madeleine Jourdemayne thought she was a witch, the thirteenth daughter. Alaric was her sacrifice! She was the killer!
Lacey had sent the wrong guy to jail. While all the police’s resources were taken up by Eldritch, there’d be no one on the tail of the real killer. Madeleine was still out there, on the loose.
Then Lacey gasped as a sudden horrible thought struck her. Gina had said at dinner that the purple-haired goth girl was stopping by that night.
Her dear, cursed friend was in serious danger.
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
Lacey didn’t even stop to put on her rain mac. She wrenched open the back stable door and raced into the dark, cold evening, desperate with worry that her dear friend was in danger.
She must’ve woken Chester in her haste, because he suddenly appeared beside her legs, keeping pace with an expression of confusion as she pounded across the dewy grass to Gina’s house. She’d done all of that work at the hotel, just to distract the cops, endanger her friend, and anger Suzy. She had been tricked, and so had the whole town. She had to make things right.
She reached Gina’s back door and hammered her fist on it incessantly. “Gina! Gina, are you there?”
There was no answer. Lacey stepped back and peered up at the windows of Gina’s cottage. The lights were on, beaming yellow glow across the lawn. She was definitely home. Then why wasn’t she answering?
“Gina!” Lacey cried again, her panic mounting. She pounded her fists harder against the wooden door. “It’s Lacey! Open up! Please!”
“Lacey?” came a voice from behind her.
Lacey’s heart jumped into her mouth, and she swirled on the spot to come face to face with Gina, dressed in her pajamas and wellington boots, holding a watering can.
Relief flooded through Lacey. Of course. Gina was a strong proponent of “lunar gardening” and always watered her plants beneath the moonlight.
Lacey let out a tense sigh and grasped her friend, pulling her into an embrace. “Thank goodness you’re okay.”
“Of course I’m okay,” the older woman said, sounding bemused as she patted Lacey’s back. “Whatever is the matter with you?”
Lacey let her go. “Is Madeleine here?” she asked. Her breath was still labored from the panic and the sprint across the lawns.
“She already left,” Gina said. Her eyebrows inched closer to her hairline as she stared at Lacey standing barely dressed on her back stoop. She set down the watering can and unlatched the back door. “Come in out of the cold and tell me what’s going on. Was there a problem with Madeleine’s payment for the ram’s skull or something? I know I made a mistake with the payment for the grimoire, but I’m absolutely certain I didn’t fudge anything else.”
Lacey didn’t follow her inside the bright, warm kitchen, staying instead on the doorstep.
“Did she tell you where she was going?” she asked.
“Home,” Gina replied, looking confused that Lacey was refusing to budge. “At least I presume so. I believe her exact words were, ‘I’m heading back to where I belong.’ To be honest, she was in a bit of a state. The poor girl was crying her eyes out. I didn’t realize I’d had such an impact on her—”
“She thinks she’s the thirteenth daughter,” Lacey blurted. “From the legend Finnbar told us about. I did some more research after you left, and it all came together. I’m really sorry to tell you this, Gina, but I think Madele
ine is the killer.” She shook her head. “Not think. I know. I know she is the killer.”
Gina’s features turned from perplexed to horrified offense. “What on earth are you talking about? Madeleine isn’t capable of such a thing! Eldritch is the killer. That’s why he’s sitting in a jail cell right now. The case is solved. Why are you trying to meddle in it again and accuse a sweet innocent girl?”
Lacey shook her head with exasperation. “Because I was wrong. It turns out that Violet Jourdemayne is a descendant of the author of the grimoire, the French Ouvriere family Finnbar told us about. Madeleine must’ve come here on some kind of pilgrimage to get her ancestors’ grimoire back. She believes she’s the thirteenth daughter of the thirteenth daughter! And since Alaric didn’t actually believe in witchcraft, that made him the charlatan from the legend. The one who needed to be sacrificed.”
Gina raised her eyebrows. “I think you’ve drunk a bit too much wine tonight, missy. Finnbar was telling us the plot of a bad seventies horror movie. Madeleine wouldn’t sacrifice anyone!”
“Then why was she crying when she said goodbye earlier?” Lacey challenged.
“Because she’s leaving,” Gina replied, testily.
“Right. She’s leaving for good. She’s ‘heading back to where she belongs,’” Lacey said, using air quotes to emphasize Madeleine’s own words, and twisting her lips with consternation as she tried to work out what precisely that meant. “She must think she can cross over to some other realm or something…”
Panic began rising in her chest again. But Gina clearly didn’t want to believe it. She shook her head resolutely.
“I didn’t think you even believed in witchcraft and curses and the spiritual,” she said.
