by Amy Boyles
“Thanks,” I mumbled. I stared at the peaceful face of the sleeping dragon. He was so cute. You would never think he could scorch your skin black.
We reached the house a few minutes later. I snatched my phone from my purse.
“It rang while you were gone,” Amelia said.
A knot of butterflies whipped up a storm in my gut. “Great.”
I went upstairs to my room, where I set the dragon on the floor. I glanced at my phone and saw that I’d missed one phone call from Axel. I immediately dialed his number but got his voicemail.
I sank onto the bed. “Awesome. I was going to have a real date with this guy—not walking around a festival and not on a covert dinner mission, but an actual date where there’s no drama, but I blew it.”
Mattie jumped from the window seat. “It’ll be okay, sugar. Promise.”
I rubbed behind her ears as I let the night’s events sink into my muscles. “Can you think of anything my mom would’ve wanted to tell me? Something secret and private? Something she couldn’t say to anyone else?”
Mattie yawned and stretched her legs. “Naw, there’s nothin’ I can think of that your momma wouldn’t have said aloud to someone.”
“Hmm.”
“You don’t believe me.”
I shook my head from side to side. “It’s not that I don’t believe you. It’s more that Mysterio said she’d given him a message and he’d written it down.”
The cat blinked. “Well, where is it?”
“That’s what I don’t know. The police have his van, so it’s not like I can search it. Unless…”
Mattie poked me in the leg. “Unless what?”
I sat up. “Unless Mysterio accidentally left something at the inn.”
I shot off the bed and padded to Cordelia’s room. I knocked softly.
“Come in.”
She thumbed off her phone when I entered. A huge grin had spread across her face, and she was practically glowing.
I leaned against the doorjamb. “Your new boyfriend?”
Cordelia rolled her eyes. “I’m not saying anything that might incriminate me.”
I chuckled. “Probably a good thing since you live under Betty’s roof. All you’ve got to do is think the wrong thing and you’re guilty of something.”
Cordelia winked. “Sounds about right.”
Several days ago my cousin had been dressed up for what looked like a date. She vehemently refused to admit that’s what she was doing, and though I suspected, I still had no idea who she’d gone out with. Cordelia wasn’t talking and I wasn’t about to push her on the subject because basically, it wasn’t my business.
“I need a favor,” I said.
She tossed her phone on the comforter and stretched out her legs. “What favor would that be?”
I eased forward and shut the door softly behind me. “Do you think anyone’s cleaned Mysterio’s room yet?”
Cordelia inspected a strand of her hair before tucking it behind one ear. “Doubt it. That won’t be done until the morning. Why?”
“Because I need to get in there.”
Our gazes locked. “Um. Why?”
I cracked the knuckles on my right hand nervously. I’d never asked my cousin for a favor like this. I didn’t want to get her into trouble and I also didn’t want to put any kind of strain on our relationship, but I had to.
“Because I think he might’ve left behind my mother’s message. When I asked him about it earlier, you know before he died, he started to say he’d written it down.” I crossed my fingers. “I’m hoping he left a notebook or a pad or something in that room.”
Cordelia nibbled her bottom lip.
I threaded my fingers together as if in prayer. “Please. I have to know what she wanted to tell me. I know y’all think he was a charlatan, and he might’ve been. But that image of my mother—” I shook my head and swallowed the tears threatening to stream from my eyes, “—that figure of her looked real. And if she had something she needed to tell me? I have to know what that is. I just have to.”
A wall of pressure built up in my chest. I felt like I was going to burst—like a geyser of pain-laden tears would gush from me.
Cordelia rose and wrapped me in her arms. “It’s okay. I can get you into his room.”
Hope blossomed in my chest. “You can?”
She smiled warmly. “I can. Just don’t cry on me.”
I laughed. “I’ll do my best.”
Cordelia slung her purse over one shoulder and said, “Grab your stuff. There won’t be much staff at the inn right now. Let’s go see if Mysterio left anything behind.”
We rode our skillets to the inn and left them at what could be considered a bike rack, except it was for cast iron riding skillets.
I leaned mine on its pan end and tied it to the steel frame. “That’s nifty.”
Cordelia tugged a rope around the handle of hers. “Comes in handy.”
I followed her inside. Behind the desk was a sour-looking, twenty-something young woman. The sides of her head were shaved and she’d styled her thick red hair into what looked like a tidal wave that appeared to be about to crash over the left side of her head. I stared at her hair, wondering what sort of product she’d used to get it to shape that way.
“If you take a picture it’ll last longer,” she snapped.
I grimaced, embarrassed that I’d been caught. “Sorry. But your hair is so cool. I was trying to figure out how you’d done that.”
She gave me a hard look and said, “Magic,” as if I was too stupid to live.
I cleared my throat and stared at the floor. “Sure. I should’ve known.” Well, it looked like I was properly chastened for being an idiot.
Cordelia stepped behind the counter. “Bree, this is my cousin Pepper.”
Bree snorted. “Oh right. The newbie witch. I should’ve known.”
Cordelia reached across Bree. “Isn’t there a new sheet we’re supposed to follow for ordering supplies?”
Bree thumbed toward a closet. “I put it in back.”
“Can you grab it for me? I need to put something down.”
Bree rolled her eyes, but she opened the door and proceeded to grab what Cordelia asked. I watched as Cordelia snatched a room key from the wall and tucked it into her pants. Bree returned and Cordelia gave her a big smile.
“Thanks so much,” she said, scribbling something on the paper. “Pepper, I’ll show you around the place before we leave.”
I followed Cordelia around the corner. She took a side staircase up one floor to a hall with several doors. She pushed the key into a lock and winced as the hinges creaked.
“Bree has great hearing,” she whispered. We entered and Cordelia quietly closed the door behind us. “One time she actually heard an employee stealing bath supplies from the closet. Heard the woman tucking them into her purse and then confronted her when the cleaning lady was in the parking lot. Bree got her fired.”
“She was stealing,” I said.
“The woman was in her seventies and on a fixed income,” Cordelia said. “Maybe she needed some extra soap.”
“Maybe she was selling it on the black market.”
Cordelia smirked. “Not likely.” She fisted her hands to her hips. “So this was Mysterio’s room.”
My gaze swept over the floral print chair tucked into one corner, the desk nestled beside a small window and the bed with a simple floral quilt thrown atop.
“Not a lot here,” I said, already disappointed.
Cordelia opened the dresser drawers. “I was afraid of that, but you never know.”
I moved to the desk. Sitting on the shiny surface sat an ashtray with a snubbed out cigar inside.
“Did Mysterio smoke?”
Cordelia didn’t look up. “No clue. But this is a non-smoking room.”
The desk drawers slid open with ease. Except for one Bible, they were all empty. I crossed to the chair, but there was nothing in the seat and nothing on the floor. I moved to
the bathroom, but other than a mound of wet towels, I didn’t see anything there, either.
“What’s this?” Cordelia said.
I found her standing over the bed with one of the inn’s notepads in her hand. “You found something?”
She turned around. “Look at it.”
My cousin displayed a pad with the inn’s letterhead. It had been ripped at the bottom, but a few words remained at the top.
Tell her that though we are separated—
The rest had been cut off. My hopes faded until I realized that the bottom of the next page had writing indentions on it. The words had been pressed in as if Mysterio were angry when he wrote. I ran my fingers over the impression.
I flipped up the page. The words at the top of the page didn’t press into the next one, but the words at the bottom were dented.
Meaning, the top message hadn’t been written hard enough for me to figure out what it was by looking at the page underneath it.
I didn’t know if the words at the bottom were connected to those at the top—the ones that appeared to be written about me, but since the page had been ripped off, it made me think that whatever had been written was incredibly important.
Maybe worth killing for.
Was I jumping to conclusions?
Possibly. But sometimes jumping to conclusions kept you alive, or so I liked to think.
“What do you think?” Cordelia said.
“It looks like Mysterio wrote a message below that was important. Think we can do a rubbing or some magic and figure out what it says?”
She licked her lips. “Yeah. But let’s get to the house. If I’m discovered in this room, I’ll be fired.”
I crinkled my nose. “Why?”
Cordelia snapped off a light. “Because unless we need to be in a room, we’re not supposed to be. Plus, this guy was murdered and the police haven’t checked in here yet. That alone could get me fired. Come on.”
I tucked the notepad into my purse and headed for the door. I reached out to grab the knob and watched as it turned from the other side.
The door creaked open as my heart thundered in my chest.
Crap.
Looked like Cordelia and I were dead meat.
SEVEN
The door opened. I shrank like a school kid about to be sent to the principal’s office.
“What are y’all doing here?”
The husky voice took me by surprise, but when I looked into Axel’s ocean blue eyes, I was relieved. “Thank God,” I said. “I thought we were in trouble.”
He shifted his weight. “The police are about to be here, so you might be in trouble if you don’t scat.”
I flashed him a huge grin. “Thanks.”
Cordelia slinked past me. “I need to return this key.”
“I didn’t hear that,” Axel said.
“Then you didn’t see this either,” she said as she locked the door.
“Sure didn’t.”
Cordelia touched my arm. “See you at the house.”
“Okay.”
She walked off. I pulled my hair over one shoulder and twisted it. “I’m sorry about our dinner date. See, I came to talk to Mysterio, but he was murdered by his own cape.”
“I heard already. I tried calling you.”
My gaze dropped to the floor. “I tried calling you back. I figured you found somebody else to take out.”
He chuckled. The corners of his eyes crinkled. “Not a chance. Come on. Let’s get off this floor before the police arrive.”
“I’m surprised they hadn’t checked his room already.”
Axel raked his fingers through his hair. “I think they’ve been busy with other things.”
I frowned. “What other things?”
He smirked. “Police stuff.”
“Very cryptic.”
“I’m a cryptic kind of guy…You hungry?”
I thought about it for a moment. “Yeah. I could use some food.”
“I know a great little place not far from here.”
I grabbed my skillet and we strolled downtown toward what looked like a hot dog stand with picnic tables sprinkled around it.
We found an empty table under a magnolia tree. The humid night air was thick with the sounds of frogs croaking and crickets chirping. What appeared to be a glowing moth flitted around my head. I brushed the insect away.
“Darlin’ if you don’t want me taking your order, you can go eat somewhere else.”
I blinked. “What was that?”
Axel motioned toward the moth. “That’s Pixie, the pixie. She’s the waitress and owner of the pop-up food stand.”
“Whoa. What?”
Axel chuckled. “They come by every once in a while. Serve the best barbecue pulled pork sandwiches around. Trust me on this.”
Pixie flitted to me. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I had no idea that you were a pixie. And alive. And breathing. And flying. Sorry. I talk a lot when I get nervous.”
Pixie fluttered up beside us. “Don’t apologize. I’ll be taking your order, is all. What’ll it be?”
I dipped my head toward Axel. “Order for me. Whatever you want. I’ll eat it up.”
Axel’s grin spread wide. He drummed his fingers on the table and said, “We’ll have two sandwiches with baked beans, corn fritters and blackberry cobbler for dessert.”
My eyes widened. “Wow. That sounds awesome.”
“It is,” Pixie said, buzzing around us. “It’ll be coming right up.”
The pixie left and I sank my head onto the table. “I’m so embarrassed. This whole magical being thing is taking some getting used to.”
He squeezed my arm. A jolt of heat snaked up my flesh. “You’ll get used to it. It’ll take some time.” Our gazes locked. My stomach coiled from nerves. “So what were you looking for in Mysterio’s room?”
I shot him a coy smile. “Who says I was looking for anything?”
“I do.”
“Right. Okay. I didn’t have a chance to tell you, but last night Mysterio brought forth an image of my mother.”
Axel’s eyes narrowed. “She was one of the figures who appeared?”
I braided my hair over one shoulder. “Yeah. But that’s not all. He also told me that she had a message for me. But it was private, one he could only tell me later.”
“Where? In his hotel room?”
“I take it from your tone you think he was full of crap.”
Axel’s shoulders sank. “You said yourself the guy was with a different woman every five minutes.”
“I don’t think I said that exactly.”
“Close enough. To answer your question—yes, I think Mysterio wanted to get you alone.”
I propped my elbows on the table and sank my chin onto one palm. “So what about the image of my mother? How do you explain that?”
Axel took my free hand in his. He turned it over as if learning the lines and creases. “I don’t. I can’t explain how Mysterio performs his show. Does he use some sort of magical projector with images already pre-recorded? He does perform in small towns. The populations of which are well known to anyone in city hall, for instance. He could have a contact and they could tell him about the residents, give him what information he needs. Then all Mysterio has to do is some research, figure out who his target’s deceased loved ones are, and make some magic happen.”
I quirked a brow. “Have you done this before? You seem knowledgeable.”
He chuckled. “No, but scam artists are scam artists. Some do meticulous research on their marks.”
“You’re saying Mysterio picked me for some reason and then created the image and the story that my mother had more to tell me?”
Axel’s finger lit a trail of fire down my arm. “I’m saying it’s one possibility.”
A tray of food arrived with Pixie the pixie holding it up with her hands. She looked like a tiny superhero carrying the world on her shoulders.
“Let me help you with that,” Axel said. He took
the tray and dished out our food.
The smoky scent of hickory wafted up from the sandwiches. “That smells like heaven,” I said.
“It is,” she said. “Heaven between a bun and in a cobbler. Y’all enjoy. Holler if you need anything.”
We dug into our sandwiches. Sweet juicy barbecue sauce left a wonderful vinegar tang on my tongue. I chewed and swallowed, stopping myself from gorging on the meal.
“Oh wait,” I said. I dropped the sandwich, cleaned my fingers and pulled the notepad from my purse. “We found this in Mysterio’s room.”
Axel closed his eyes. “A room the police haven’t gone through yet.”
“You snooze. You lose.” I sniffed it. “And boy, does it smell like cigar smoke.”
A crease formed between Axel’s brows. “Cigar?”
“Yep.” I slid it over to him. “Look at that.”
“It appears to be a message.”
I jammed my finger on top. “To me. That message is to me.”
“And you know this how?”
I lifted my nose and said, “I feel it in my bones.”
“You’re too young to have arthritis.”
“That’s not true. Some people get arthritis when they’re young.”
Axel shot me a dark look. “I know you don’t have it. So you’re too young.”
“Stop making fun of me. Seriously. This note is about whatever my mother wanted me to know and it’s been ripped off. Why?”
Axel sighed. He took the paper and studied it. “There are impressions on the bottom half.”
I was so excited I nearly bit my lip to bleeding. “Yes. I know. That’s the clue we need.”
“The clue to what?”
I scooped baked beans into my mouth and chewed for a moment. Wonderful brown sugar and bacon hit my tongue. Wow. Seriously. I could eat this food every day of the week. “That’s the clue we need to figure out the original message.”
His lips curved into a sly smile. “And just what exactly are you thinking?”
I cleared my throat. “I don’t know. Either Mysterio wrote something super important on the bottom half and ripped it off. Or…”
“Yes, Detective Dunn? Don’t leave me in suspense,” he said.
I scowled. The delicious smile on his lips made my hormones sing. “Or Mysterio wrote something important and someone stole it, taking my half of the message with it. We uncover what the message is and maybe I can find out what it was my mother wanted me to know.”
