Murder Above the Fold

by ReGina Welling

  “What about the argument over the lease agreement with Perry Weatherall? Some people are insinuating the two of them were sworn enemies, and he didn’t corroborate your story about being at the office on the night of Marsha’s death.”

  Leanne’s mouth gaped open in surprise, “He most certainly was there; he walked in just as I was leaving for my appointment with the photographer.”

  “He seemed to think you might be mistaken—that you might not have been wearing your glasses,” Clara hedged.

  “Well, I don’t see what that has to do with anything! They pinch behind my ears and make red marks across my nose. I can see just fine without them.” Leanne’s tone was defensive, but her pink-tinged cheeks told another story. “I distinctly remember coming out the door and twisting my ankle on the stoop. I thought I was going to land on my face, but someone caught me. He reeked of Paco Rabanne, which I detest, and it’s part of why I tend to stay as far away from Perry Weatherall as humanly possible.”

  “I apologized for slamming him in the shins with my purse and asked him to replace the blown lightbulb, and he replied, ‘No problem,’ and handed the purse back to me.”

  “You’re absolutely positive it was Perry?”

  “I’m sure.” A measure of uncertainty undetectable by any human not trained in the art of lie detecting, but plain as day to witches of Balefire caliber crept into Leanne’s voice. “It had to be him.”

  “What can you tell us about the controversy surrounding the paper’s lease agreement?”

  “That? Old news.” Before Leanne had time to elaborate, the front door swung open and a three- or four-year-old with flying pigtails, a sunny smile, and her daddy’s eyes raced toward her mother. An older woman pushing a stroller that looked like it might have been born in a back room at NASA followed her.

  “I’m sorry, dear. I didn’t realize you had company. The baby just fell asleep.” The newcomer introduced herself as Leanne’s mother-in-law,. “I’ll just go put him down for you, shall I?”

  Without learning anything else of value, Mag and Clara said their goodbyes.

  A few minutes later, over the long-delayed cone of ice cream, Mag commented, “Doesn’t it strike you as odd the dead woman kept her life so private even her closest friends didn’t know who she was dating, yet half the town showed up for her funeral?”

  Clara wagged her finger at her sister. “Don’t you get started on one of your wild conspiracy theories, Margaret Balefire. This is a small town, and Marsha’s job put her in contact with many from the community. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Think what you like, but someone had a motive for killing Marsha, and we’re no closer to finding it than we were before. Unless…” Pivoting and thumping her cane on the ground, Mag muttered and stomped the three blocks back to Leanne’s house without telling Clara why.

  When Leanne opened the door, Mag asked one question, “Did you notice anything missing when you got to the office on the day after Marsha died?”

  “You mean like money? We never kept a lot of cash on the premises. Everyone pays with plastic these days.”

  “And everything looked just the same as you left it the night before?” Mag prodded. “Think hard, it’s important.”

  Leanne closed her eyes to bring back the mental image of the time before the Balefire sisters had broken the sad news.

  “There was something, now I’m thinking about it. But I didn’t think anything of it at the time.”

  Practically dancing in place, Mag prodded, “What was missing?”

  “The photographs of the clock tower. The digitally enhanced set. I just figured Marsha took them home with her as a keepsake. She was so excited about how much extra detail they were able to pull from the negatives.” A fresh mist of tears sheened Leanne’s eyes. “I assumed she wanted them as a memento once we’d sent everything to the printers.”

  “So the paper will come out as usual?”

  “Yes. A fitting tribute to her last day.”

  Clara needed no scrying crystal to see the gears turning in Mag’s head since she’d come to a similar conclusion, and that was why, halfway home, the sisters faced each other and spoke at once.

  “We have to get into Marsha’s house.”

  “Fancy a little breaking and entering?”

  Chapter Nine

  “What are you wearing? Combat boots?” The sound of Clara’s soles hitting the stairs grated on Mag’s nerves. “Have I taught you nothing?”

  “Don’t get your panties in a twist, I made silencing charms for each of us.” Mag accepted the pull tab from a can of soda when Clara handed it back over her shoulder.

  “Recycling again?” Wild unicorns couldn’t drag the admission out of Mag, but she envied Clara’s ability to enchant everyday objects. As talents went, it was a real time saver not to have to craft charms from metal, clay, wood, or stone before imbuing them with magic.

  “Waste not, want not. Rub your thumb over it three times to activate and give it two firm squeezes to end the spell.”

  “Single-use?”

  “Cleanse in running water after every third go and this baby will last forever. One of my better charms, don’t you think?”

  “Mmph.” Most days, Margaret would insist she had made peace with losing the best and last part of her youthful beauty to an unexpected encounter with a Raythe. A simple charm like the one she now held in her hand, a charm made with barely a whisper of effort, would have hidden her approach, given her the edge.

  As fresh now as though the forty years between that moment and this had never passed, Mag replayed the scene in her head. The raging desperation, the blood-pounding rush of fear when the Raythe’s power snaked around her neck, and she knew she would die alone on the windy crag.

  Ginger hair had curtained her face as she was yanked from her feet into thin air. Vanity. Pure vanity had kept her from shearing the length when shorter would have been more convenient. Vanity kept the Raythe’s gaze from connecting fully with hers, and vanity had saved her.

  It had been a close thing, though, as she felt her soul, the very essence of her magic, being siphoned. Sucked from her like water through a straw. And when an errant breeze whipped the curling mass into a proper shield, she saw it turn white even as the magic leaped inside her again.

  Maybe her faerie Godmother had been watching—Mag would never know—but she took what power welled up, molded it into a weapon, and burned that Raythe to ash, vowing never to count the cost.

  A vow she mostly kept.

  “It’s broad daylight. Won’t it be weird if people can see us but not hear us coming?”

  “Your enthusiasm is underwhelming.” In a fit of pique, Clara stomped across the porch without looking back, raised the hand holding the charm, and rubbed it with an exaggerated motion. Mag trudged through the icy silence left behind in Clara’s wake.

  Figuring there was a fifty-fifty chance anything she said would make it worse, Mag stayed quiet and let Clara march off the rare huff that was something of a role reversal between them.

  Clara had wanted to wait for nightfall to go on this fishing expedition, but Mag insisted daylight was better, easier to hide their presence without having to turn on lights. It was the last house on the street and hidden from view of its neighbors by a curve in the road. Approaching from the river walk rather than the road would be enough for them to remain unseen.

  “Feels like there ought to be crime scene tape over the door,” Mag said. Not that it would have caused so much as a twitch on either sister’s moral compass; they had right on their side. The lock surely didn’t slow them down. Drawing on the well of power burning in her core, she let the magic flow into the keyhole like smoke. A muted click sounded, and the door inched open.

  “We’re the only ones who know there even was a crime,” Clara reminded her. “Well, besides Marsha’s killer, anyway. Any idea what we’re looking for?”

  Mag thought for a moment. “The missing images, and failing that, something that
speaks to motive. Once we have the why, it shouldn’t be hard to find the who.”

  Justice drove Mag as it always had, the thrill of the hunt jittering in her gut, pushing the blood through her veins, and setting her senses tingling. Marsha might rest in peace while her killer walked free, but Mag would not.

  “And then what?” Clara asked.

  “He pays. Most crimes are committed for one of three reasons: love, money, or revenge. A woman in her position, it could be any one of them. We’ll start with the love angle since it doesn’t look like Marsha was rolling in the dough.” Mag cast a trained eye over the furniture, the contents of the shelves. Good pieces, she noted, serviceable but nothing valuable. And nothing seemed out of place.

  Marsha kept a ruthlessly organized office at work, but her home showed another side of the newspaper editor. Sunlight streamed through a collection of colored bottles lined up on the sills of six clerestory windows to create colored splashes on the polished oak floor.

  Built-in shelves spanned from floor to ceiling in the rest of the living space. Mag recognized the telltale signs of a would-be do-it-yourselfer: a few jagged edges and a couple of crooked angles only added to the lived-in, homey vibe she felt sure Marsha had purposely cultivated. Rows and stacks of books on topics ranging from the political climate of Saudi Arabia to the life and times of Abraham Lincoln were punctuated by tomes dedicated to the cultivation of various herbs and a number of field guides for the seasoned hiker.

  Marsha Hutchins had been a strong, well-rounded woman if Mag’s instincts were correct—and if she knew one thing to be true, it was that strong, well-rounded women usually had a few skeletons in their closet.

  The one adjacent to Marsha’s living room merely contained boxes of volumes not deemed worthy of shelf space. When Mag dusted off the cover of a trashy romance novel, her estimation of the dead woman rose a couple notches higher. We’ve all got our guilty pleasures, she thought, smiling a little while rummaging through the rest of the coat closet and coming up with nothing more than a niggling wish to have gotten to know the editor a little better before her life was snuffed out—and even more motivation to find her murderer.

  Letting her eyes drop closed, Mag cast her senses out in a widening circle. Her power crept over oak floors that begged for the touch of a sander and new coat of stain but came up with nothing sinister. What had she hoped to find, anyway? A flashing neon sign with the killer’s name on it?

  While Mag searched the kitchen, Clara made her way through the bedroom to the adjoining bath. If Marsha had a lover who came around on more than a casual basis, there should be some evidence—a razor, a toothbrush, something. A thorough search of the medicine cabinet and the stuffed-to-capacity drawers beneath the wash basin provided little information save for the fact that Marsha enjoyed the buy-four-get-one-free sales at Bath and Body Works, and preferred the smell of cucumber-melon above all others.

  Something drew her attention to a nearly hidden linen cabinet tucked behind the bathroom door. Whether it was a gentle waft of a more masculine, huskier scent or simply her Balefire instincts, Clara didn’t stop to wonder. She rarely questioned the hows and whys of being a witch, preferring to accept the gifts she’d been given without requiring a scientific qualification to explain them.

  If she’d been put on the spot regarding the topic, Clara would cite faith as one of her guiding principles, knowing without a doubt that her sister would stand on the opposite side of the fence. For Mag, magic was a puzzle to be solved—for Clara, it just was, and she was okay not having all the answers.

  Inside the cabinet—along with enough tubes of toothpaste to make Clara wonder if Marsha was preparing for a zombie apocalypse—sat a navy blue, woven basket that she recognized as the one thing unlike all the others. Shades of white and a soft, buttery yellow had been Marsha’s preference; this item was chosen for someone else—someone with more masculine tastes.

  “Maggie, I found something.” Clara beckoned her sister into the bedroom, then dumped the contents onto Marsha’s bed.

  “Well, she was definitely seeing someone, and it wasn’t just a fling. Men don’t tend to keep Rogaine at their girlfriend’s house unless they’re fairly comfortable,” Mag snickered.

  “And these are high-end shaving supplies—whoever he is, he’s got expensive taste.” Clara picked up an electric beard trimmer and pulled a few coarse hairs from the blade with the resigned look of a mother who’s gotten used to sticking her hands in all manner of disgusting substances. “And he’s got brown hair. Well, so do half the men on the planet. That’s not particularly helpful.”

  “Biology 101, Clarie. It’s a DNA sample—witch-style. All we need is a match. Here, collect as much as you can.” Mag whipped a corked glass bottle from the leather tool belt she habitually wore beneath the fashion debacle of the day and handed it to her sister.

  “Have fun with that. I’m definitely not It, if It involves plucking the hairs of strange men all over town.”

  Mag didn’t dignify that with a retort, opting instead to rifle through the nightstand drawers. Finding nothing more illuminating, the pair exited to the hallway, where a secretary desk positioned against the opposite wall caught their attention.

  Clara took two long strides, flung open the roll top, and began rummaging through the cubbies and compartments.

  “It’s mostly bills and receipts,” she said. “I sincerely hope Marsha didn’t keep her business records as disorganized as her personal ones, or whoever takes over as editor is going to have their work cut out for them.”

  Mag yanked on each of the lower drawers in turn before sighing and uttering a spell under her breath. At her command, the foot-thick pile of papers straightened itself into a neat ream and began self-sorting into piles. Anything deemed inconsequential went back into the drawers, leaving a modest stack for Mag and Clara to sift through.

  “No personal correspondence of any kind, though that doesn’t surprise me in this day and age. She probably did everything on her smart phone. Such an oxymoron, I mean really—” Mag’s mumbling abruptly silenced and a second later she waved a few sheets of paper in Clara’s face, “Look at this. Talk about a smoking gun.”

  Clara studied the documents and let out a low whistle, “Perry Weatherall is in a deep financial hole, and Marsha has the evidence. Looks like he’s liquidating his assets in a hurry.”

  “And taking some pretty steep losses.”

  “How can you tell?” Between the pair of them, Clara thought herself the more financially savvy. Mag could haggle a deal with the best of them, but when it came down to spreadsheets and charts, she let her sister do the heavy lifting.

  “I can do math, can’t I? And didn’t we just purchase property here? You and that real estate agent droned on for hours about this stuff.” She pointed to one of the entries. “Three-thousand square feet on Dewberry lane and he let it go for seventy-five percent of market value. Condition looks good, too. In today’s market, he could have upped the price by another ten grand and still caught the easy sale. It’s like he’s giving properties away.”

  “Well, I didn’t think you were listening.” In retrospect, Clara realized she should have known. Mag rarely missed anything.

  “This is a lot of ammunition,” Mag said, flipping through them again, paying closer attention to details. “Enough to expose Perry as a financial adviser who didn’t take his own advice. Do you think she was going to print something in the paper?”

  “Looks like Perry had an excellent motive for murder after all.”

  A wave of Mag’s hand sent the desk back into its former state of disarray.

  “Nobody here to see, so I'm taking the quick route home,” Mag gathered herself together and prepared to shift and skim through space.

  Clara checked her watch to see what the hurry was all about. “You just want to spy on the mailman.”

  “Maybe. I’ve got a box of vintage linens that should have been here yesterday. Pyewacket found them on the computer. A p
lace called Itty Bitty. No, that’s not it. Eensy? I can’t remember.”

  “You mean Etsy?”

  “That’s it.”

  “You know I could teach you to use the…” Before Clara could say computer, Mag was gone. “Never mind.” She said to the empty house and let herself out into the fine, warm mist that had begun to fall—the kind that sometimes falls on an otherwise sunny day and dries almost before it hits the ground. The kind that always made Clara’s feet want to dance.

  Her face turned up to catch the soft wash on her skin, little beads of moisture clinging and shining like diamonds in her hair, and she smiled in pure joy. Norm McCreery gazed at her in awe, as if she looked like a fairytale princess, when he ran into her on his way back to the town hall.

  “Clara.” He nodded and couldn’t help it when his gaze drifted down to take in the whole of her.

  “Mayor McCreery.” She nodded back and hoped he wouldn’t stop to chat.

  “A word if you don’t mind.” And there went hope, dashed to bits.

  She dipped her head. “Of course. What can I do for you?”

  The mayor fell into step beside her, shortening his stride to match hers and cementing her opinion of him as a gentleman.

  “I wanted to check in with you and make sure you’re all right. Finding that body must have been quite a shock to you and your mother.”

  Clara appreciated the gesture of concern, unnecessary though it was. “Death is always a shock, isn’t it? Even though it’s coming for all of us, eventually. Honestly, I’m glad we happened across poor Marsha when we did. Goddess knows how long she might have lain there, and I’d have hated for someone else to find her—like one of the children who play in those woods.”

  Norm McCreery cocked an eyebrow at Clara’s reference to the goddess, but didn’t comment.

  “Ah, so you’re an optimist then?” His sidelong smile bordered on flirtatious, and Clara quickly changed the subject.