by Angie Cabot
I rolled out of bed, and winced when I rose because my right heel always hurt in the mornings. After a few steps, the pain faded. I wore gray sweat pants and a blue sweat shirt. As I crossed the hardwood floor, my socks slid, and I caught myself on the dresser.
The door to my room stood slightly ajar, which explained the cat. But I could have sworn I’d closed the door before I went to sleep.
Nico hopped off the bed and padded after me as I stepped into the hallway. The carpeting there made it easier to walk. No slippage. Sandra and Morgan staggered out of their rooms ahead of me. I wanted to pop into the restroom across the hall, but everyone seemed to be in a hurry, so we filed down the stairs.
Carl and Diana came down the other staircase as their rooms were in the other wing of the mansion. Zen staggered down behind them, rubbing sleep from her eyes.
Sandra wore a long-sleeved T-shirt, long johns, and bunny slippers with ears that flopped as she walked.
Nico batted at the ears.
Sandra nearly tripped over her, but caught herself on the banister.
“Watch it, cat.”
Nico pounced on one of the bunny slippers.
“You want it? You can have it,” Sandra said, and took off one of the slippers. She leaned back, and tossed it down the hall toward Aunt Liz’s room.
Nico watched the slipper land, then attacked the slipper Sandra still wore. After all, why chase a slipper when another perfectly good slipper was right there in front of her? Especially one that still has a foot in it.
Sandra sighed, yanked off that slipper and sent it sailing down the hallway, too.
Nico looked up at her. Then the cat nipped her foot and raced down the stairs.
Sandra cussed, which amused me because her voice was so soft, and the word so harsh.
“Such language,” Morgan said.
“The cat bit me.”
“She nipped you,” I said. “Didn’t even break the skin. Think of it as a warning.”
“A warning that she doesn’t want to chase slippers?”
Diana Raven gasped.
“Oh my,” Zen said.
“Oh no,” Carl said.
The rest of us hurried down the stairs. Balthazar and the others stood in the kitchen, and Aunt Liz lay dead on the floor with the athame stuck in her heart.
“Aunt Liz!”
I raced over to her. It didn’t feel real. And it bothered me that it didn’t affect me on a deeper level. Maybe I was in shock or denial, but it was like looking at a stranger. How could I be so cold? Was I that detached from my emotions? She was my aunt.
“Careful,” Balthazar said. “This is a crime scene. Someone murdered her.”
“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Carl said.
“Show some respect,” Diana said.
“We should call the police,” Morgan said.
“No cell signal up here,” Balthazar said. “Is there a landline?”
“I’ll check,” Morgan said, and went on a quest.
I knelt beside Aunt Liz, and thought about the last thing I’d said to her, and my stomach dropped. Emotions rose inside, but then slid away when I thought about how Manny had said to watch out for her, and it hit me.
“She predicted her own murder,” I said.
“Are we really sure it’s murder?” Sandra asked.
“I can’t see her stabbing herself,” Diana said.
“Where are Emma and Jenn?” Balthazar asked.
“Servants rooms are in the basement,” I said. I sounded detached even to myself. She was my aunt. She deserved some tears at the very least.
“Any idea when she died?” Zen asked.
“Do I look like a forensics expert to you?” Balthazar asked.
“Based on the rigor mortis and the Scandinavian design on the floor being smudged with silt from the Nile, I’d say she died twenty years ago and just learned about it now,” Carl said.
Everyone looked at him.
“Sorry,” he said. “It sounded funnier in my head.”
“Elizabeth died,” Zen said.
“People die every day.”
She glared at him.
He looked uncomfortable. “I’ll help Morgan look for a phone.”
He slunk away.
“My feet are cold,” Sandra said.
I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to feel. I hadn’t been close to Aunt Liz since I was a little girl, but I should be more upset. Sure, she was practically a stranger to me, but she was family. Looking at her lying on the floor in front of the refrigerator, all I could think about was how she’d said nobody liked her as we made the drive from Cassandra Springs. I needed to cover her up. Give her some dignity. I didn’t want to leave her here, but I didn’t have a choice.
She certainly didn’t have any fans here, but who would hate her enough to kill her? I mean, sure, she was mean, and sure, the people here were worried she might have me fire them, but as motive for murder it seemed far-fetched. There were other jobs. Why was I slipping into Little Ms. Practical when I should be crying?
Morgan and Carl came back. “No landline,” Morgan said.
“This place sucks,” Carl said. “There isn’t even a television set. How am I going to watch the game tomorrow?”
“The Broncos are the least of our worries,” Diana said.
He looked at her like she’d said sugar wasn’t sweet.
“We woke up Emma and Jenn,” Morgan said. “They’ll be here in a minute.”
“We’re here now,” Emma said, joining the group. She saw Aunt Liz. Her hand flew to her mouth and she backed up.
Jenn glanced in, and looked away. She comforted Emma. “Are you all right?” she asked.
Nobody asked if I was all right.
They all stood there, not knowing what to do, while I knelt beside the body of my aunt.
“So there’s no phone here at all?” I asked.
Jenn returned to the kitchen. “Hasn’t been a phone here in five years. We have to drive down to the main road to get cell signal.”
“One of us should go make that call,” Balthazar said.
“Not so fast,” I said, and pushed myself to my feet.
“What?” he asked.
“Someone here killed my Aunt Liz. If the murderer goes to the main road, he or she might just drive away.”
“No one here would have killed her,” Sandra said.
“Exhibit A,” I said, gesturing toward my aunt.
“Well, I didn’t do it.”
Everyone started talking at once denying that they’d done it.
“Maybe two of us can drive down to the main road to call the police,” I said.
“No one’s going anywhere today,” Jenn said. “Emma and I were going to drive home last night, but the roads were too bad. My Nissan couldn’t get from the servant’s parking to the drive. Snowdrifts are too high.”
“What time was that?” I asked.
“Around eleven, why?”
“Because if Aunt Liz was dead then, you’d have seen her.”
“She was awake then. She told us to spend the night here. She sat at the dining room table writing in a notebook.”
“She was always writing in that journal,” Zen said.
Emma shrugged. “I wouldn’t know about that. Anyway, we talked to her for a few minutes, then went to bed.”
“And you didn’t hear anything?”
“Emma plays podcasts to go to sleep, so all we heard was Joe Rogan talking to somebody about Area 51 for two and a half hours.”
“So you had internet?”
Jenn shook her head. “No. Emma downloaded the podcast to her iPad before we came up. We hoped to be able to go home, but brought stuff for the weekend just in case.”
“Balthazar, you have the Jeep, right?”
“Yeah.”
“It has four wheel drive. Maybe we can get down the drive.”
“Worth a shot,” he said. People started to move.
I looked at the bone-handled
athame.
“Everyone stay right here,” I said.
“Why?” Zen asked.
“I don’t want to be near the body,” Sandra said.
“Aunt Liz was killed by one of the knives she gave us last night,” I said. Before we go anywhere for anything, we need to see whose knife that is.”
“They were all the same,” Diana said.
“Yes, but one of us won’t have a knife right now.”
“And whoever doesn’t have a knife is the killer,” Carl said.
“Not necessarily,” Diana said. “The killer could have taken someone else’s athame.”
“That strains credulity,” Carl said.
“It’s a place to start,” I said. “Everyone will stay right here. I will go with each of you, one or two at a time, to your rooms to see if your knife is there.”
“Ours are in the Jeep,” Balthazar said. “We took them out there last night.”
“So we’ll go check the Jeep.”
“How do we know you didn’t do it?” Morgan asked. “I mean, no offense, but you two weren’t getting along so well, and from what she said about you last week…”
“What did she say?”
“I wasn’t supposed to hear it. She was talking to Crazy Clara.”
“Clara isn’t crazy,” I said.
“She thinks she has a ghost lover,” Balthazar said. “That’s pretty cray-cray in my book.”
“She’s … eccentric.”
“Whatever,” Morgan said. “Elizabeth told Clara that you were a worthless failure. Couldn’t keep your husband or your job, so they had to take you in. She didn’t want to, of course, but Clara insisted.”
The words were like an athame to my own heart, but I’d heard worse from my ex-husband, and I didn’t give Morgan the satisfaction of any kind of reaction.
“I already knew that,” I lied. “She told me all that herself day before yesterday.”
“I’d call that motive. And your room is right next to hers, so you could have followed her downstairs. I’m not saying you did it, but if we’re suspects, you are too. That’s all.”
“Jenn didn’t get a knife,” I said. “She can go along.”
“Unless she took one of the Raven’s athames from their Jeep,” Carl said.
“There are nine of us,” Zen said. “Is it safe to assume only one person is guilty?”
“It might have taken two people to do it,” Morgan said. “One to hold her, one to stab her.”
“I don’t think Kathy would kill her aunt,” Zen said. “How about this? I’ll go with her to her room to make sure her athame is still there, and Jenn or Emma can come with us. Everyone else will wait here until we get back.”
“So you can sneak into my room and take my blade?” Morgan asked.
“Fine,” Zen said. “You and Sandra can join us. Everyone else will wait here.”
“Good enough for me,” Balthazar said. “Everyone raise your hand if you’re cool with that.” He raised his hand.
Everyone else raised their hands, too.
So our party, consisting of Jenn, Sandra, Morgan, Zen, and myself, went up the north staircase, going room to room to verify our gift athames were still there.
Nico was at the far end of the hall chewing on the rabbit slippers.
“Oh,” Sandra said, “the cat didn’t want them when I threw them, but changed its mind later. Wonderful.”
“Nico is a she,” I said.
Nico looked over at us and meowed, then went back to gnawing on the slippers.
Morgan opened the door to her room, and we went inside. The athame case sat on her dresser. She opened it, and turned the box so we could see the bone-handled blade.
“See?” she said. “Not me.”
We went to Sandra’s room, which was directly across from the restroom. She had her athame in her suitcase. She showed it to us.
“I’m innocent,” she said.
We went to my room, and I pointed to the nightstand. “It’s right— uh…”
The case was gone.
My heart skipped a beat.
I knew I hadn’t done it, but where was the athame?
“I left it right there,” I said. “I remember putting it there.”
I rushed to the nightstand, and stopped when Jenn laughed and pointed under the bed.
“Is that it?” she asked.
I knelt, and pulled the case out from under the bed. I opened it, revealing the athame.
“The cat was in your room last night,” Morgan said. “Right? I mean, she came out with you.”
“Yes,” I said. “Nico slipped in last night while I was sleeping.”
“It’s like that meme going around Facebook,” she said.
“What meme?”
“You know, the one that says we know the world isn’t flat because if it were, cats would have knocked everything off by now.”
Chapter Six
“All the athames are accounted for in our wing,” I said as we returned to the group in the dining room.
I tried not to look at Aunt Liz’s body in the kitchen. I didn’t want the reminder.
“Next group,” Balthazar said. “I want to clear myself and Diana now. Grab your coats so we can go to the Jeep.”
“No,” I said. “We’ll do that last.”
“But—”
“My aunt is dead,” I said. “So it’s my choice.”
He sighed.
“Carl, Zen, let’s go.”
“Do you want me to go with you, or stay here?” Jenn asked.
“You can stay here.”
Zen was sitting at the table. She rhythmically tapped the top, then got up. “Let’s get this over with,” she said. “Then I want a cigarette.”
“Whatever,” I said.
We climbed the steps to the other wing of rooms. The bedrooms were on one side, with a bathroom opposite. Balthazar and Diana had the master bedroom at the end, but we didn’t need to check there because their knives were in their Jeep.
Instead, we slipped into Carl’s room. He hadn’t made the bed, and the room felt drafty.
“I put it in the top drawer of the dresser,” he said, pointing.
“It’s cold in here,” I said.
“I like it cold,” he said.
“Did you have the window open?”
He nodded. “I couldn’t find the thermostat to turn down the heat, and since I’m not paying the bill, I just cracked the window a bit while I slept.”
“It’s closed now,” I said.
“I got cold. The athame is in the top left drawer.”
I went to the dresser, and opened the drawer. It was filled with socks and underwear.
“Boxer briefs,” I said. “Splitting the difference.”
He shrugged.
“But I don’t see the box or the blade.”
“Should be right on top,” he said, walking over.
“Nope.”
He yanked open the other drawers. Folded jeans, shirts, and sweat pants. No athame.
“But it was here,” he said.
“It’s not now.”
“Hey,” he said. “I didn’t kill your aunt. If I had, the empty case would be here. Right?”
“Unless you discarded it.”
“Why would I do that?”
“You tell me.”
“I didn’t do that, so I can’t.”
Zen leaned against the doorjamb. “You were my first choice for the murderer,” she said.
“Why me?” he asked.
“Because you’re a nerd who wants to be a jock.”
He blinked. “What does that even mean? And how would that apply with Elizabeth? Have you been sneaking some of Morgan’s herbs again?”
“I never touch that stuff,” Zen said.
“You do seem like a nerd who wishes he was a jock,” I said. “Superman references. Driving a pretentious sports car with vanity plates. Wearing Nike shirts and shoes when it’s clear you don’t work out.”
H
e sucked in his gut. “Hey,” he said. “I haven’t had time. And winter is setting in, so it’s cold.”
“You are currently in the top spot for being the murderer,” Zen said.
“You could be the killer,” he said. “You hated Elizabeth.”
“Everyone hated Elizabeth,” Zen said. “But I’m not a killer. My athame is on my nightstand.”
“That was where I put mine, too,” I said. “Well, on my nightstand.”
“Thank you for clarifying. We don’t want to start any scandalous rumors.” She winked at me, then moved back to the hall and into her room.
Carl and I followed her.
“My case is gone,” she said.
“Did Nico visit you last night?” I asked. “She knocked mine to the floor.”
“I’m allergic to cat fur, so no.”
We searched her room, but found no athame.
“See?” Carl said. “You could be the killer, too.”
“Too?” she asked.
“Instead.”
“But I would never kill anyone.”
“I don’t know about that,” Carl said. “The week you tried to quit smoking still haunts us all.”
“That was different. And in a sense, that should exonerate me because I didn’t kill anyone then, so my self-control is spectacular.”
“Hard to argue with that logic,” Carl said. “But your athame is gone. You had motive and opportunity.”
“No more than you.”
“Let’s go back downstairs,” I said.
“Shouldn’t we check the master bedroom?” Carl asked.
“The Ravens said they put their blades in the Jeep last night.”
“They could be lying.”
“Why would they lie about that?”
“I don’t know, because maybe they’re murderers? We should check their room anyway.”
“We are here,” Zen said. “Won’t take but a moment.”
I shrugged. “Fine. We can check. We should also check the bathroom.”
I pushed the door open, and there was nothing special in the bathroom. Still, better to check it than ignore it.
The door to the master bedroom was closed, so I opened it and we stepped inside.
Our breaths fogged the air and I rubbed my arms trying to stop the chill. A window stood wide open, and snow blew into a once-empty suitcase. Now it was filling up with white flakes.
“Should I close the window?” Carl asked.
I kept rubbing my arms, trying to warm them. “Please.”
