by Bailey Cates
Oh, for crying in a bucket.
I changed the subject. “Did Quinn come by?”
She looked amused. “He did. Picked up the origami—and a slab of sour cream coffee cake for the road.”
“Was he angry that Wren and Mimsey weren’t here?”
“More like relieved that he didn’t have to field any more questions from you, I think.”
I gave her a look.
She grinned. “He said he wanted to check for fingerprints on Wren’s door anyway. Said he was going to pick up a lab tech and head over there.”
“Speaking of the Carmichael Clan, have you heard anything from them?”
Lucy nodded. “Mimsey called. Jaida and Bianca helped to set personal wards on Wren. Detective Quinn got there when we were on the phone, and they had just finished setting a protective perimeter around her whole apartment building.”
“Wow. Sounds like overkill.”
“Can you really overprotect someone?” she asked.
“Yeah. I guess you’re right.” I touched the metal circle Steve had given me, tucked under my T-shirt on the chain around my neck. Lucy, who had one as well, noticed and smiled.
“I had a brief visit from one of my other guardians,” I said. “I stopped by the riverfront on my way back. Nonna came to me in the echo chamber in Rousakis Plaza.”
Lucy’s eyebrows arched. “Mama?” She knew about my previous encounters with her mother—my grandmother.
“Yep.”
“What did she say?” she breathed.
“She told me that as long as I kept my intentions good, I’d be okay. And that I have whom I need in my life.”
Lucy’s laugh held genuine delight. “Well, I could have told you that. It is so wonderful that you have this connection with her.”
I knew my sweet aunt would have loved her mother to visit her from beyond, but it would never even occur to her to be jealous or envious.
“Hellloooo!” A woman’s voice, deep and fruity, called back to us from the front of the bakery. In a way, it reminded me of Julia Child.
Craning my head around the refrigerator, I confirmed that it was one of our favorite customers. “Mrs. Standish—how are you?”
Tall and plain-faced, she wore a flowing leopard print tunic over black slacks and a hat adorned with an enormous sunflower on the side that shouldn’t have worked with the animal print but oddly did. As I approached, the scent of her expensive perfume reached my nose.
“I’m very well, thank you. I’m having a little get-together this evening and just knew I had to have some goodies from the Honeybee for my guests.”
“By all means,” Lucy exclaimed, and hurried to grab a bakery box.
“You’ll need at least two of those,” Mrs. Standish said. “I’d like three of everything you have left in the case. Oh! And throw in two dozen of those delightful cake pops.” She pointed to the bite-sized cakes impaled on sticks like frosted lollipops arranged in a large stone jar. “The kiddies will love those.”
I grinned. “Good choice.”
Mrs. Standish leaned one meaty hand on the counter. “Please tell me you’ll be putting your peach pecan mini-pies back on the menu soon.”
Lucy and I exchanged glances. “We were planning on offering strawberry rhubarb mini-pies soon.”
“I’m sure they’ll be delicious. Just remember that peaches and pecans are always in favor around here. I must say, though, I recently heard about your lovely berry shortcakes with the honey whipped cream made up fresh for each order. I simply must stop by and indulge in one soon.”
I waved at the bakery boxes Lucy was filling. “You’re one of our best customers, Mrs. Standish. Stop in for a shortcake whenever you’d like—on the house.”
Her face lit up, belying her murmured protest.
“I insist. We really appreciate your loyalty,” I said.
“Well . . . I might be able to make room for one right now. If it’s not too much trouble.”
I laughed. “We’ll have it out in a jiffy.”
Chapter 10
At one o’clock I turned the sign in the window to CLOSED and was about to lock the door when Uncle Ben came in. I finished with the door and closed the blinds as Lucy greeted him with a warm embrace.
“Stop that,” she said with a giggle. “It tickles.”
“I thought you liked my beard.” A smile crinkled the corners of his eyes behind his rimless glasses. He let her go and asked, “What would a nice witch like you recommend to a customer who wants to improve his golf game?”
“Oh, Ben,” she said.
“Specifically putting.”
Lucy went behind the display case and snagged a chunk of sour cream coffee cake thick with chopped dates and speckled with poppy seeds. She handed it to him. “Try this.”
His eyes widened. “Really?”
“You’ll like it, but it’s not going to do anything for your putting—though it might relax you. Poppy seeds are sometimes a cure for insomnia. However, if you really were a customer, I’d recommend more time on the practice greens.”
Looking rueful, he took the offered plate to a table and sat down. I poured the last cup of coffee out of the drip pot and joined him. It was bitter as sin, but I wasn’t about to make a fresh pot right before leaving for the day. Lucy took the empty pot into the kitchen, and I heard the sound of water running.
My uncle spoke around a bite of cake. “Now, tell me about what’s going on with that nonprofit you volunteer with. Lucy told me all about how you found that poor woman dead and that Peter Quinn is on the case. Do you know if he’s made any progress?”
Uncle Ben had been Savannah’s fire chief until his recent retirement inspired him to start the bakery with Lucy and me. He’d known Detective Quinn for years, but I was the one who’d had more contact with the police in the last year. Each time my uncle had been very resistant to my being involved in anything remotely dangerous.
“You sound remarkably calm about the fact that I stumbled onto another dead body,” I said.
He glanced toward the kitchen as the dishwasher started up. “Your aunt can be very persuasive.”
I laughed. “I bet.” Ben was putty in my gentle aunt’s hands. “I did talk to Quinn this morning. It sounds like they’re focusing on Autumn’s boyfriend and ex-husband. They’re probably on the right track, too. I had a little visit with Steve Dawes this morning.”
Ben frowned, and I knew he was thinking of Declan.
Lucy hurried over to join us at the table. “You never told me what he said.”
“I didn’t have a chance to tell you before Mrs. Standish came in. I was hoping Steve would be able to tell me more about the golf-course-development deal, but he wasn’t very forthcoming. However, I did learn Autumn’s ex-husband has a decent motive for murder.”
“Oh, dear,” she said. “What’s that?”
“Life insurance policy. Money he needed because he wanted to invest in the golf course, too.”
“What? Even while Autumn was trying to save the swamp?” Lucy’s eyes widened in outrage.
“Well, they were exes,” I said. “So it stands to reason they’d have some differing opinions on certain things. Apparently that was one of them.”
Ben pushed his empty plate aside. “What’s all this about a golf course?”
I outlined the details.
“In Fagen Swamp?” he said. “Well, that is interesting. It would be wonderful to have another world-class golf course in the area—”
I rolled my eyes.
“But that swamp’s an odd place,” he continued. “Spooky. Though I suppose it wouldn’t be once you cut down all the cypress trees and drained away the water. I wonder if they’d relocate the animals?”
“I doubt it,” I said. “I take it you’ve been there?”
“Oh, gosh,” he said. “A long
time ago, when I was a teenager. Trespassing, of course. Old man Fagen was a tough sort, though. Downright mean. It was a good thing we didn’t get caught.”
“You don’t seem like the kind of guy who would do something like that.”
“We all did,” he said. “Kind of a rite of passage around here then.”
I squinted at him. “Really? I guess boys will be boys. How many times did you trespass for fun?”
He shrugged. “A dozen or so.”
“Really?” I asked in surprise.
“It was a . . . compelling place. I don’t know how else to put it.”
Interesting.
Before we all left, I remembered to load up a bag of Honeybee goodies for my neighbors. At the rate they weren’t selling and the rate I was giving them away, we’d be out of business in no time.
• • •
On my way home, I stopped by Georgia Wild to see whether the police had released the crime scene yet. On Sunday afternoon, parking was open, and I pulled to the curb only a few spaces away from where I’d parked the night before.
Egad. Hard to believe it had been less than twenty-four hours.
Yellow crime scene tape crisscrossed the door, and I almost pulled back into the street. The blinds were open, though, and I saw someone moving around inside. If it was Detective Quinn, at least I could find out whether they already knew about Autumn’s ex, Skip Thorsen.
“I think you should stay in the car,” I said to Mungo as I unbuckled his seat belt. “In fact, they probably won’t even let me inside.”
He climbed out of the tote bag and stood with his paws on the dash of the Bug, watching me as I walked up to the door. When I was closer, I could see that the tape had been removed from the opening. I knocked and called, “Hello?”
A uniformed officer opened the door. He was tall, with closely shorn red hair and a hooked nose. “I’m afraid this business is closed, ma’am.”
“Oh, Katie!” Wren appeared behind him. “Please, can’t you let her in? This is Katie Lightfoot. She volunteers here and can help me sort through some of these files so we can all leave more quickly.”
The promise of saving time seemed to convince him. He stepped back and I walked inside. Wren hugged me, and I could feel how frantic she was.
“Tell me what to do,” I said.
“The police think they’re done here, but they aren’t quite ready to release the crime scene. So they gave me permission to retrieve some files and paperwork so we can at least try to keep working. Officer Feherty here has the unfortunate job of babysitting as I try to organize what to take.”
I smiled at Feherty, and he smiled back. “There are worse duties,” he said.
Hanging my jacket on the corner of a desk chair, I looked around. One of the narcissus bulbs Wren had forced in the interior window boxes was finally blooming, the tiny white flower unfurling in sweet scented glory to cover the faint burnt coffee smell that still lingered. The sunlight from outside illuminated the worn carpet and used furniture in a way the soft glow of the floor lamp never could. It also highlighted the sheen of black powder across most of the flat surfaces, both vertical and horizontal: fingerprint dust.
Keeping my hands clasped behind my back, I slowly walked around the perimeter. A few rectangular spots showed where a print had been lifted as evidence. The crime scene techs had even dusted the surfaces of photo printouts that lay scattered on the file cabinet near the printer.
One in particular caught my eye. Even through the dusty sheen I could see it was the satellite photo of Fagen Swamp that Wren had printed off the Internet. I leaned nearer, taking in the features of the place recorded from space. I could see a road winding through an open area before trees hid it. Near the middle of the swamp they thinned again to reveal a bridge that led to a clearing and a small building. It was hard to see more because the powder fractured into an odd starburst pattern that obscured any detail. There were no visible fingerprints, though.
Glancing up, I saw Feherty watching me. Fingerprints or no fingerprints, if I wanted to see more of the swamp, I’d better print out another copy myself.
“It’s going to take forever to clean all this up,” Wren said.
Returning to where she stood sorting through files, I asked what she wanted me to do.
“The new mailing list Autumn bought to target potential donors is right here. I’ve already printed the labels. Would you mind addressing the solicitation packets?”
“Sure,” I said. “I can do all that at home.”
“Thank you, Katie. I know it’s grunt work, but it does have to be done. I just want to do whatever I can to keep G.W. going. It’s what Autumn would have wanted.”
“Of course, sweetie.” I gave her a quick hug and started gathering what I’d need: brochures and hard-copy information about Georgia Wild, premetered envelopes, and the sheets of mailing labels Wren had printed out.
“You’ll need more brochures. There are some in . . . in Autumn’s office.”
We both looked at Officer Feherty. “Can we remove something from in there?” I asked.
“Show me,” he said.
I followed him down the hallway. In the open doorway, I paused. The desk where Autumn had been lying was empty, the contents that had been tossed to the floor still heaped in piles around it. Even in the friendly daylight, Autumn’s pale face and pretty polished toenails came flooding back. The weird energy I’d felt from the origami bat lingered much like the coffee smell still did out front, but there wasn’t any sweet narcissus energy to cover it in here. Suddenly woozy, I grabbed the door frame.
“You okay?” Feherty asked.
I took a shaky breath. “Not really.” I pointed to a cabinet by the window. “I think the extra mailers are in there.”
He opened the cabinet and found an open box. “These?”
I nodded, and he grabbed the box. Together we returned to where Wren was finishing up with her files. Feherty flipped through the contents of the two boxes we were removing.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“I don’t think so.” Wren sounded worried. “At least not for now. When do you think we’ll be able to get back in here to work?”
“Should be soon.”
“Well, okay. Thanks for, um, supervising,” she said.
The policeman looked amused. “Sure. You take care, now.”
Their eyes met. Oh, my. There was a very strong attraction between those two.
Interesting.
Back in the car I arranged the boxes in the hatchback and buckled Mungo into the passenger seat. Wren and Officer Feherty were still talking on the front sidewalk.
“Right in the middle of all this darkness, I do believe there might be a romance in the making,” I said, buckling my own seat belt.
Yip! Mungo agreed.
Chapter 11
Margie was unloading the kids from her Subaru wagon when I pulled into my driveway. As soon as I set my familiar on the ground, he veered toward them. The towheaded twins ran to meet him, Julia squealing with delight. I grinned at Margie and grabbed the bakery bag out of the car.
“Brought you a little something,” I said. “Healthwise . . . I mean carrot muffins and apple fritters.”
“You are a gem! We’ve been at the park all afternoon and I’m famished.” She hefted Baby Bart onto her hip and walked toward me. “Want to come in for a cup of tea? These hooligans can play with Mungo while we have a catch-up.”
I glanced back at the box of mailers from Georgia Wild. They could wait. “Sure. I’d love to.”
The inside of the Coopersmiths’ house was messy but clean. Navigating around the blanket-and-chair fort still standing in the living room, I followed Margie into her kitchen. She put tea bags into cups, filled them with water, and popped them into the microwave while I rustled up plates.
“
These don’t have a ton of sugar in them, so they shouldn’t make the kids hyper,” I said, pointing at the muffins.
“Oh, good.” Her apple cheeks were pink from an afternoon in the sun. “God knows they’re hyper enough as it is.”
Steaming cups in hand, we moved into the living room. Margie cleared a space on the sofa, and we both sat down. Bart used a chair seat to pull himself upright and practiced standing for a while. His blue eyes were riveted on the action inside the blanket fort. Through a gap I saw his siblings building a Lego masterpiece. The bottom of the blanket moved as Mungo’s black nose worked under it. He peeked out at me, all adorable and sweet.
Or at least I thought so until I realized he was boring holes in my apple fritter with his eyes.
“You’ve already had enough,” I said. “I happen to know Lucy slipped you three whole slices of bacon at the Honeybee before we left.”
A low whine rose in his throat.
I shook my head. “If you keep being such a chowhound, you’re going to weigh twenty-five pounds. And I’m not carrying around twenty-five pounds in that darn tote bag.”
He sighed and wiggled backward into the fort.
“I swear, sometimes I think that dog actually understands you,” Margie said, licking crumbs off her lips.
“Only when he wants to.” My tone was wry.
“Ha. I know exactly what you mean.”
“The JJs?”
“Redding.”
I laughed.
“Oh, heck. I’m probably just as bad. That’s what happens when you get married. You settle into each other, I guess. Stop listening to every little thing because so many words have already been said.” She took a sip of tea. “You’re not at that point with your handsome firefighter, of course. You’re still in that goofy stage where you can’t tear your eyes off each other. Or your hands, I bet.”
I snorted. “Oh, I don’t know that we’ve ever really been that bad. Our relationship is more . . . down-to-earth.” I’d been going to say practical, but that sounded boring.
Margie frowned. “But you love him, right?”
“Of course.” Not that I’d come right out and said it.
