A Sprinkling of Murder

by Daryl Wood Gerber

  “I did not kill Mick Watkins,” Gregory exclaimed. “I would never kill a dog’s owner. That would bring grief to the dog. That would be against everything I am. Everything I stand for.” His voice trembled with emotion.

  “I heard you were driving to and from San Jose to see a client on the night Mick was killed.”

  Sonja edged closer, allying herself with me. “That means there are hours unaccounted for.”

  Gregory moaned.

  “There’s another pesky rumor,” I went on. “Someone saw you driving in Mick’s neighborhood on the night of the murder.”

  “That’s not true. I don’t even know where he lives . . . lived. I—” Gregory sucked in air. Shep mewled, sensing his distress. Gregory took a deep breath. “If you must know, in addition to seeing clients, I met with the head judge of the next regional competition. In San Jose. The lineup for the competition was full, so I . . . so I...” Gregory’s cheeks burned red. “I convinced the man to give me a spot. For Shep.”

  “Convinced?” Sonja raised an eyebrow.

  “I bribed him. Paid him off. Money talks. I’m not proud of it,” Gregory mumbled, “but that’s where I was. I took the judge for drinks. We talked well past midnight. He won’t confirm it, of course, because that would compromise his reputation, but it’s true.”

  “The police might get him to confess,” I said. “That could help your case.”

  “If you were drinking, you should have a bar receipt,” Sonja said.

  I smiled at her. “Good thought. Do you?”

  Gregory’s eyes lit up. “Sonja, you’re brilliant. I can pull up a list of credit card transactions online.” He thrust a thankful hand at her, hoping to shake with her.

  Sonja didn’t. She said, “Bring the dog back the instant training is over,” and marched inside Wizard of Paws. The screen door went clack, and then the front door slammed. Hard. Fortunately, the etched glass didn’t shatter.

  Gregory lowered his arm, clearly crestfallen.

  “Sonja will tell Emily,” I said.

  “And Emily will never trust me again.” He lifted his chin, his eyes moist. “I had to do it. I had to train Shep.”

  “Why?”

  “A year ago, after I lost the last competition, I realized I needed to work with big dogs to win. I’m simply not a little dog guy anymore, which is why—”

  “Your mojo left you.”

  He sighed. “My heart has to be in the training. I’m sure you understand, having changed careers and opened your shop.”

  “Don’t you own two bichon frises?”

  He nodded. “They’re great companions, but they’re not what I enjoy training. Shep is smart. Easygoing. Unspoiled. Little dogs can be... prima donnas. Emily has made sure that Shep—” He glanced over his shoulder and back at me. “Speaking of Emily, do you know where she is? I’ve been trying to reach her for the last hour so we could meet up for coffee after the training session, but she’s not answering her cell phone.”

  Fiona flitted to me. “Courtney, something is off. I feel it here.” She thumped her stomach.

  A frisson of worry slinked up my neck. “Gregory, did you ask Sonja?”

  “No, and I doubt she’d tell me anything now.”

  I stepped inside Wizard of Paws. Gregory, Shep, and Fiona followed. The noise inside was raucous. The aroma of shampoo and wet dog hair hung in the air. No one was at the front desk. Via the see-through window, I spied Sonja in the room beyond, blow-drying a white Pekinese that was perched on a table and tethered to a pole.

  “Sonja,” I yelled and waved.

  She switched off the hair dryer. “Doesn’t Shep want to go on his walk?”

  “Shep’s fine. Have you seen Emily?”

  “About an hour ago, but it’s weird because she said that she was going home to freshen up and then coming back in a half hour. She wanted to review the books. Have you tried calling her?”

  “I have,” Gregory said. “And I’ve texted her. She’s not responding.”

  “Something is wrong.” Fiona flapped fitfully. “Terribly, terribly wrong.”

  Chapter 21

  The difference between fairies and you is that your wings are hidden

  in your heart.

  —Anonymous

  I asked Sonja for Emily’s home address. She did me one better. She gave us a house key. Mick always kept a spare at the shop in case of emergencies.

  Leaving Shep with Sonja, Gregory and I sprinted to the Watkins’s house. As much as Fiona wanted to stay with the dog, she felt it was more important that she accompany me. She said her sleuthing senses were on high alert.

  The Watkins’s home, located on 6th Avenue near Carpenter, was a cream-colored, one-story house featuring fieldstone facing and an adobe-tiled roof. A sign by the path dubbed the house Copper-by-the-Sea.

  I arrived at the door first. It was slightly ajar. I glanced at Gregory. “Maybe she forgot to close it all the way.” I knocked. “Emily?” No one answered. I rang the doorbell. No response.

  Fiona said, “We have to go in.”

  I pushed the door open. It creaked. “Emily? Are you here? It’s Courtney and Gregory.” I stopped in the foyer and scanned the rooms on either side.

  Gregory followed, inches behind me. “Emily?”

  The kitchen on the left was done in a Tuscan style. The living room to the right held a small sofa, two easy chairs, and a huge dog pillow for Shep. The dark oak bookshelves were packed with books and small-scale statues. No sign of Emily.

  Striding deeper into the house, I said, “Emily, we’ve been worried about you.” I didn’t hear water running. She wasn’t taking a shower.

  Someone moaned. Ahead. I dashed down the hall and veered into the bedroom on the right. Emily, dressed in a tawny bathrobe, was lying facedown on the floor. Her hair was wet and straggly. She moved her head and blinked at the sight of us. “Where am I?”

  Gregory rushed to help her. “In your house. In your bedroom.”

  Emily let out a tiny ooh and touched the back of her head.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked.

  “Someone... hit... me. ”

  I spotted a neutral-toned Himalayan salt lamp lying on the floor beyond her. “Gregory, be careful. I think she was struck with that. She might have a concussion.” I called 911 using my cell phone, supplied the pertinent information, and ended the call.

  “How long until they get here?” Gregory asked.

  “Who knows? Soon, I hope.”

  With his help, Emily sat up. Her eyes were glassy. “What time is it?”

  “Nearly five,” I said.

  Emily palpated the back of her head again.

  Tenderly, Gregory rested his hand on her shoulder and inspected her wound. “Who would want to hurt you?”

  “I have no idea. Maybe whoever murdered Mick?”

  Unless she was the one to have killed him, I thought, though I doubted she’d have slammed herself on the back of the head to bolster her claim of innocence.

  “Or a robber,” she said.

  “Has anything been stolen?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  The honey-colored comforter on the bed was rumpled. Items of clothing, probably pieces Emily had planned to try on, were strewn on top. Stacks of books stood on each of the oak nightstands. Many of the drawers on the matching bureau hung open. The door to the closet was ajar, as was the door to the bathroom. Through the opening, I noticed a towel on the floor.

  Emily glanced around. Slowly.

  “I’ve been calling you,” Gregory said. “I wanted to meet you for coffee. You didn’t answer.”

  “Take photos,” Fiona said.

  I didn’t. The police would do that. Instead, I crouched to Emily’s eye level. “This morning, after you said good-bye to Mr. Youngman outside Wizard of Paws, I felt as though you wanted to tell me something.”

  “No.” She shook her head and winced, as if the movement caused great pain.

  “You said Mick told you s
omething that you shouldn’t do. Remember?”

  She blinked rapidly. Then the blinking abated, and her cheeks turned crimson. “That night, the night Mick died, he said... he said I shouldn’t be worried about the affair. It meant nothing to him. I was so dumb to believe him.”

  “No one would ever think you were dumb,” Gregory said as he tucked a strand of wet hair behind her ear.

  For a moment, I wondered whether, before picking up Shep, Gregory had come here and knocked out Emily. Did he think he could win possession of the dog if Emily were dead? I nudged the notion from my mind. He genuinely seemed to like Emily.

  “Go on,” I prompted.

  “I told Mick I didn’t believe him. I said I needed time to think. So I went to the Equestrian Inn, like I said, but after a pre-dinner ride, I came home. I needed to talk to Mick. I wanted to work things out. I loved him. But he wasn’t here.” She drew in a sharp breath. “At first I was jealous, thinking he was with Petra, but then I saw the note he’d left about going to your place to meet fairies.”

  “Why did he want to meet fairies?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe he hoped, if he saw one, they’d help him tap into his creativity.” She studied Gregory as if trying to figure out why he was there. “You wanted to take me to coffee?”

  He smiled. “Yes.”

  “Keep going, Emily,” I said. “You came home. Then what?”

  “I saw the note, so I went to your shop. I thought if fairies were real, maybe they could help me, too. Help us. Rekindle our love.”

  Fiona flitted to Emily’s shoulder and sat. “That explains the straw on the patio floor. She tracked it in from her trail ride.”

  I nodded. Exactly as we’d suggested to Detective Summers.

  Oblivious to Fiona’s presence, Emily said, “When I got there, the front door was open.” Tears leaked from her eyes. She dabbed them with her fingertips. “I tiptoed in and—” She shot a hand out. “Mick was there. On the patio. By the fountain. Dead.”

  “Did you touch him?” I asked.

  “No!” She pressed her knuckles to her mouth and stifled a sob. “It was so awful. He looked so pale.”

  “Why didn’t you call the police?”

  “I panicked. I realized my DNA would be there. They’d think I killed him.”

  I thought of the photos I’d taken of Mick and the surrounding area. “The business cards. Did you move them? Did you place Petra’s at the top to implicate her?”

  “I... I...” Emily swallowed hard. “My heart started pounding in my throat. I ran home.”

  “How did you hurt your hand?”

  She glanced at her arm. “I didn’t. I came up with the idiotic idea of bandaging it because I thought if I were injured, the police wouldn’t think I’d killed him. My brother did something like that back in high school, to get out of taking a test.” She reached across her body and gripped her shoulder, nearly catching Fiona with the sudden move.

  Fiona flew to me. “Whew! That was close.”

  Maybe Emily was on the verge of sensing my sweet fairy’s presence. Vulnerability could open the gateway.

  “Who do you think broke into my house?” Emily asked, her voice as reedy as a frightened child’s.

  “It depends on what they wanted,” I said. “Do you remember anything before you were struck? Did you hear anything?”

  “The ice cream truck.”

  “The what?” Gregory asked.

  “There’s an ice cream truck that drives through the neighborhood twice a week. All the kids love it.”

  “Did you hear anything else?” I asked. “Did you smell anything unusual?”

  “Vanilla.”

  “Vanilla ice cream?”

  She shook her head.

  “Vanilla, like the scent they spray on groomed dogs at your shop?” Gregory asked.

  “It could have been.”

  The scent of vanilla would rule Gregory out as the perpetrator. He smelled like musk and dogs.

  “Your house smells like vanilla, too,” I said. “You use those air freshener plug-ins. Maybe that was your first memory upon awakening after being hit.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Do you feel up to a search to see if anything is missing?” I asked.

  “Okay.”

  “If we figure out what is gone, we might determine who was here,” I added.

  “Can you stand, Emily?” Gregory asked.

  “I think so.”

  He helped her to her feet. She didn’t falter.

  When she took in the room, she gasped. “I didn’t pull out those drawers. Who put all these clothes on my bed?”

  If she had suffered a concussion, she could have blocked out her movements prior to the injury, although she had recalled the details of our prior conversation.

  With Gregory’s arm as support, Emily roamed her bedroom. She found her jewelry box tucked at the back of her lingerie drawer. Everything was there, she said, even her grandmother’s heirloom broach. She inspected her closet. The floor safe looked intact. Her passport and extra cash for a rainy day were inside. She scoured the cabinets in her bathroom. No drugs were missing. She added that she didn’t use many—a sleeping pill on occasion and a low-dose aspirin for recurring headaches. Mick, she confided, hadn’t used any medicine. Ever.

  I orbited the house, noting a few expensive pieces of art. Almost everyone in Carmel invested in something. “Any artwork missing?” I asked in the living room. There weren’t any discolorations on the walls as if a frame had been removed.

  “No,” Emily said, trailing me, Gregory close at her heels. She traced her finger along the bronze statues and spines of books that lined the bookshelves. “Everything seems to be here. Mick liked to invest in first editions, like Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, The Hound of the Baskervilles, and The Hobbit. I see them all.”

  She slogged back to the bedroom and turned in a circle. I followed her gaze. She paused, looking at the bed. “The books on my nightstand are in order.”

  “You organize your books?” I asked.

  “Yes. I like to read books by season—books set at Christmas during Christmas and books set in summer during the summer. It’s spring right now, so that’s a spring-themed book on top.”

  Fiona soared to the books on Emily’s side of the bed and perused the titles. “Mostly romances,” she advised me.

  “Are Mick’s books in order, too?” I asked.

  Emily took a closer look. “He didn’t sort them like I did, although he was finicky about his first editions.” She removed the topmost and set it on the bed. Then the next and the next. The fourth book flopped open. Three-by-five cards tumbled out.

  Fiona flew above the book and its contents. “The Artist’s Way,” she said reading the title off one of the pages. “What’s that?”

  I asked Emily the same question.

  “It’s like a diary. The author encourages her readers to write daily. The program is a twelve-week journey to help her students discover a link between their creative selves and their spiritual selves. Writing their thoughts down gives them a benchmark for how far they’ve come.” Emily shook her head. “I gave the book to Mick a year ago. I told you he wanted to be a writer. That’s what the notecards are for. Were for.” She bit back a sob. “They were the beginning of his outline for his thriller.”

  “Courtney,” Fiona said, “read this.”

  I joined Fiona at the bedside and studied the cards. In the mix was Petra Pauli’s business card. “It appears Mick was writing about a wealthy man harboring a secret,” I said to Emily.

  “I know.” She nodded. “I’ve read the notes. Mick didn’t know I took a peek.” That meant she’d seen Petra’s business card. How sad. One more knife to the heart. “His notes and musings were supposed to be private, but he had secrets, and I was afraid...” She chewed her lower lip. “I did something bad. I’m ashamed to admit it, but seeing his notes... and Petra’s card... inspired me.”

  “How?” I asked
.

  “I wrote her anonymous letters saying I knew she had a terrible secret and telling her I’d reveal it to everyone if she didn’t leave town.”

  “You lied?”

  “I wanted to scare her away from my husband. It didn’t work, of course, but I was desperate.”

  Gregory said, “Could Petra have been the one to knock you out?”

  “I doubt she would have known I was the one who wrote to her. I disguised my handwriting and posted the letters from another town. Besides, she obviously didn’t believe me. She didn’t hightail it out of Carmel.” Emily moaned. “I need to sit down.”

  Gregory wrapped his arm around her.

  A siren wailed outside. The sound of footsteps pounding the cobblestoned path echoed into the house.

  As the EMTs swept into the room and sped to Emily’s aid, I eyed the three-by-five cards. Logan Langford was a wealthy man. His family had built a legacy. Did he or one of his relatives have a secret that could ruin that legacy? I knew a lot about the Langfords, but not everything. What if Mick had discovered something dire and told Logan what he’d learned? Killing Mick would have put that problem to rest, in Logan’s mind, unless Mick, in his dying breath, had admitted to Logan that he’d kept notes.

  I flashed on Logan meeting with the younger man in the BMW. Had Logan hired him to search for and destroy any evidence about the secret? I imagined the scenario: the young man showing up at the Watkins’s house. Finding the door unlocked. Coming upon Emily fresh out of the shower. Panicking, he grabbed the first heavy thing he saw, the Himalayan salt lamp, and knocked her out. Then he searched the house. The drawers. The closets. Not realizing that The Artist’s Way held notecards outlining Mick’s book, the young man didn’t consider leafing through it.

  “Well, well,” Detective Summers said, striding in with Officer Rodriguez moments after the EMTs. “Look who we have here.” Both looked very official and judgmental.

  “Emily wasn’t responding to phone calls or texts,” I said quickly. “Gregory—Mr. Darvell”—I thrust a hand in his direction—“was worried. Sonja, the assistant at Wizard of Paws, gave us a key. We didn’t need it. When we arrived, the door was open.”