All's Fairy in Love and Murder

by K. M. Waller

  Aunt Mossandra looked past me at our eavesdroppers. “I’ll take Olivia back to Emory’s house, Callan. She can regale us with tales of the latest mystery she’s reading.”

  Olivia wedged between us and we dropped hands. “Haven’t you heard? John Bleaker’s been murdered in his home. We have our very own real-life mystery in town.” She nodded toward me. “Juniper has information about it, but Officer Quick wouldn’t take her seriously.”

  “That’s Officer Foster to you!” The officer’s shout carried from somewhere in the back of the police station. “And we deal in facts in this police station. Not psychic feelings.”

  Callan and Mossandra took in my new outfit with varying degrees of concern. Pip clung to the front of me and swished his bushy tail with two swift jerks.

  Aunt Mossandra’s brows knitted together. “That’s awful about John. Who would do such a thing?”

  “What does Officer Foster mean, ‘psychic feelings’?” Callan asked.

  Aunt Mossandra tilted her head back and let out a rancorous and absolutely fake laugh. “You really are too much, dear. Did you tell the police you were psychic?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Hey dispatch, the phone is ringing.” Officer Foster’s voice boomed from the back again. “Leave the actual police work to the police.”

  Callan tossed a glare in the other man’s direction. “I’ve got to get back to work. Thanks for giving Olivia a ride, Mrs. M. I’ll take her bike with me after my shift.” He turned to me and lowered his voice. “If you truly have information that would help the case, you should come back tomorrow when the police chief is here. Chief Rayburn is with the sheriff and county detective now, but he’ll take whatever you have to say under consideration.”

  I nodded and noted that he acted less dismissive of me than before.

  “Come along, my dear.” Aunt Mossandra cupped my elbow and steered me toward the door. “I’m sure once you’ve had some rest, you’ll rethink getting involved in this mess.”

  Olivia yawned, her mouth bobbing up and down on our way out the door.

  The three of us stopped in front of a parked monstrosity. Aunt Mossandra’s brownish-tan colored car could be considered a boat in terms of modern vehicles. On the hood, the paint had faded away in some areas and there were rust-rimmed holes on the driver’s side door. I’d never seen anything quite so ugly. And I’d seen trolls.

  She caught my hesitance. “Don’t you just love it, my dear? It’s a 1972 Ford Galaxie.” She reached through the window and opened the rear passenger door with the inside handle. “I have some things for my flower shop in the front seat, so you’ll have to sit in the back with Olivia.”

  My second car ride. I’d seen cars of all shapes and sizes through the courtyard fountain, and during fairy training we’d been taught to avoid them like the plague. More than one poor fairy godparent in our long history had met their demise thanks to the front grill of a car.

  I slid across the seat, careful not to add more damage to the already ripped vinyl interior. The front seat held hand-painted flowerpots stacked neatly together and seatbelted in with the lap belt. Pip jumped off my coveralls and situated on the shelf-like area beneath the rear window.

  Olivia scooted in beside me, the excitement and lack of sleep wearing her down. She pushed her glasses up and rubbed her eyes. “Our very first murder mystery in Lilac Cove.” She lifted the book in her hands. “Exactly like in my books.”

  “Not exactly, sweets.” My aunt dropped into the driver’s seat and tilted the rearview mirror to give us both a stern look. “Someone in our community has lost his life, and we should always treat that with respect.”

  Aunt Mossandra brought the car to life and the engine roared like a beast.

  “We should help the police,” Olivia countered, lowering her voice so only I could hear.

  “How do we do that?” All I wanted was to help find justice for John.

  She passed me the collection of Sherlock Holmes stories. “Study this and meet me at my house tomorrow afternoon. I have school, but I’ll be done by four.” She flipped open the front cover. “Here’s my address.”

  “I appreciate the book.” I didn’t want to break it to her that getting a child involved in a murder investigation was not an option I’d consider.

  We drove down the street where John Bleaker had lived a full boring life only hours before. Aunt Mossandra parked in front of a house across the street. The woman from earlier who’d told Dad about John’s death walked out onto her front porch and waved.

  Instead of waiting for the door to be opened, Olivia crawled out the window. “Thanks for the ride.”

  “Make sure to apologize to Emory for sneaking out,” my aunt reminded her.

  I couldn’t pull my gaze away from John’s now darkened house. The police tape remained, but the circus of vehicles and lights had cleared out. Pip low crawled toward my head and nuzzled my cheek.

  “I live behind my flower shop on the square in the middle of town. You’re going to love it.”

  I flipped through the pages of Olivia’s book as we drove toward the heart of Lilac Cove. Officer Foster had called me a psychic, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Yet, I couldn’t tell anyone the actual truth, and in order to share my information, I needed a cover story. Posing as a psychic might work.

  But first, one baffling mystery at a time. I wanted some answers from my aunt.

  She must have sensed my gaze focused on the back of her head. “What’s going through your mind, my dear?” Aunt Mossandra guided her boat of a car into a parking spot in front of Fairyland Flowers. It groaned when she put it in park and cut the engine. She twisted to face me and rested her hands over the edges of the front bench seats.

  “Have you been here in Lilac Cove the entire time? This close to the kingdom? Why didn’t you come home or to visit?” My questions came out in a rush of garbled words.

  “Let’s have a cup of tea inside, and I’ll do my best to explain.”

  Pip grabbed on to my shoulder and I pulled the book tight against my chest. My feet still slid around in the ridiculously big boots, so I kicked them off before following her through the door. The strong scent of perfumed roses tickled my nose. An overhead florescent light fixture in the far corner gave off enough light so that I could see the outlines of potted palms and ferns.

  Aunt Mossandra led me through a path of containers. Upon closer inspection, I could see that they’d been made into fairy gardens. Through a sturdy door that separated the flower shop from the next room, I realized we’d come into an open one-room apartment. Painted pictures of fairies and a few of Aunt Mossandra dressed like a fairy adorned the walls.

  “Do you even try to hide the fact that you’re a fairy?” I stood in front of a picture of my aunt and several other women, all wearing bright pink fairy wings.

  “The best way to fit in is to stand out,” she said on a light chuckle. “The weirder I act, the more the humans accept me as one of them.” She bustled around her kitchenette, adding water to two teacups and putting them in the microwave.

  “Why are you here?” I sat at a half table with two matching folding chairs.

  She held up a finger, silently asking me to wait a minute. After the microwave let out a ding, she removed both cups and added a tea bag. “I hope chamomile is okay. At first, I thought it would help calm your nerves but after seeing you, I’m amazed at how well you’re integrating into the human world.” She placed a saucer and cup in front of me. “It took me weeks to get inside a car. And already you’ve been inside two.”

  Before she sat down, Aunt Mossandra pulled a ream of crackers from a cabinet. She opened them and sat them on the table. “There you are, Mr. Squeakers.”

  “He prefers Pip, Aunt Mossandra,” I corrected her.

  Pip jumped off my shoulder and pulled a cracker from the sleeve. He broke off chunks and crammed them into his mouth.

  “I’d love it if you called me Mossy. Many of the folks in tow
n prefer Mrs. M, but that’s too formal, and you’ll get very tired of saying Aunt Mossandra every time you want my attention.”

  “Okay, Mossy.” I took a sip from the tea. “Let’s start from the beginning. How did you end up in Lilac Cove and owning a flower shop?”

  “I met a man.” She smiled down at her tea. “It almost always starts with a man.”

  Chapter Seven

  “You’re no longer a true fairy godparent because you wanted to date the chief of police?”

  “Well, it didn’t start with Greg. He’s my chosen significant other for this year.”

  Hello. And what? “You choose a different man each year?”

  “I like to try them out.” She lifted her foot and rotated her ankle. “Like different pairs of shoes.”

  I buried my face in my hands. “You’re saying my grandparents banished you because…”

  She poked at my hands so I’d look at her. “I like human men, my dear. And I refused to marry the fairy I’d been betrothed to since birth. In fact, I refuse to get married at all. What’s the point?”

  I sipped my tea. “Huh.”

  She sat back, her eyes a shade darker than mine yet full of life and mischief. Nothing in her tone or body language suggested she regretted the choice she’d made.

  “What does my dear brother tell everyone?” she asked.

  The teacup rattled the saucer when I put it down. “That you wanted to be a part of the human world and he couldn’t have you going back and forth.”

  She waved a hand in the air. “That’s not too far from the truth. I was forced to choose. I don’t think fairies should have to.”

  “Don’t you miss home?”

  “I’ve made a home here. I have a successful business and friends that are as close as family. I’m happy.” She leaned forward. “We’ve talked enough about me. Why are you here? Does it have something to do with John and an errand?”

  “Dad doesn’t let me godparent like everyone else. So I borrowed Iris’s fairy errand—she’s my best friend—and I got distracted with all the wonderful things I’ve only seen through the fountain.” Pip finished his crackers and settled near my hands. “Because I didn’t give John Bleaker his sprinkle of fairy dust, he didn’t get the luck he needed for his interview this morning. And someone killed him.”

  Mossy stared across the room and tapped her fingers against her lips. Finally, she shrugged. “I don’t know how John being murdered adds up to you not providing luck for an interview.”

  “I don’t know yet, but deep in my gut, I know it’s my fault. I wanted to give the police all the information I have, but Dad said we had to leave things as they are. What if his killer is never brought to justice because of all my interference?”

  “You made it inside his house?”

  “Yes. He woke up and saw me with my wings.”

  “Juniper.”

  “I know. The first rule of fairy godparents is if you get caught, hide your wings and wait for the king.” We’d sung the words as a nursery rhyme many times as children.

  “What did you see that you think will help the police?”

  “I don’t know. Yet. But there has to be something that I saw that can be useful.” I played with the teacup handle. “Dad has given me five days to fix this mistake.”

  “I bet his highness said you wouldn’t make it an hour.”

  Our chuckles mingled. “Something close to that.”

  “There’s no way to share your information without having to have a plausible explanation for why you know the things you know.”

  “I thought about that. The other officer mentioned something about me being a psychic. I can use that as a cover to explain what I know.”

  “A psychic?”

  “Maybe I can pretend to be one that talks to animals? Pip told me a lot about John before Dad removed our ability to communicate.”

  Mossy eyed the snoozing squirrel. “Did he now?”

  A round of knocks came from the back door near the kitchenette. Mossy glanced at her watch. “I wonder who that could be? It’s not even five a.m. yet.”

  She opened the door to find an older gentleman who wore the same police uniform as Officer Foster. I placed the age difference between the two men to be about thirty years, but I’d swear they were related.

  “Mossy,” he said and glanced past resting his gaze on me. “Hello, miss. Quick told me that you’d come to visit your aunt.”

  The man moved into the apartment, and the third person made the apartment less homey and more cramped. Mossy gestured to him. “Juniper, this is Chief Greg Rayburn.”

  He held out his hand, and I stood to give it a quick shake.

  “Who is Quick again?” I asked.

  “Sorry. I meant Officer Foster. He’s my nephew. I’ve always called him by his nickname.”

  “Did you come to talk to Juniper?” Mossy asked.

  “Actually, I’m here for you. The county detective would like to ask you some questions about John.”

  “What does Mossy know about John Bleaker?” I asked.

  “That’s between the detective and Mossy for now. I’m sorry for the inconvenience.” He nodded toward the door, the discomfort showing in the redness on his face. “I told him I’d swing around and pick you up.”

  “Wait,” I started when he turned his back to open the door again. Callan said the police chief is the one I should talk to. Now was as good a time as any. Before I could ask him, Mossy rushed to me and pulled me into an uncomfortable hug with my arms pinned at my side.

  “Keep what you know to yourself for now,” she whispered against my ear. She picked up her purse from a side table beside the bed. “Get some rest, my dear. I’ll be back in no time and we can plan out the rest of your visit.”

  Unease filled me as they left me standing next to the table. Why did the county detective think Mossy had information about John Bleaker? Why wouldn’t she want me to share what I know? Pip pulled me out of my thoughts as he scratched the back of his head with his hind paw. He immediately fell back asleep. Did squirrels always sleep this much? I smoothed the fur on the top of his head with one finger.

  I glanced around the room, my first instinct to snoop. The snooping is what started this mess. Mossy had a bed big enough for one person and a flower-patterned love seat against the far wall. Unlike John’s house, she didn’t have a large television on the wall or a laptop on the coffee table. Since I couldn’t imagine sleeping, I grabbed Olivia’s book and curled my legs under me on the sofa.

  After the first two stories, I found Olivia’s assessment about Sherlock Holmes being the greatest detective to be true. He used his powers of intense observation to detect clues that others thought were insignificant. Well, I could do that. I flipped the page to the next story.

  Two hours and one Sherlock Holmes immersion later, and my eyelids grew heavier than I’d ever remembered them feeling.

  I swore I closed them for only a few seconds, but when I opened them again, the sunlight shone bright through the one window in the room. Why hadn’t Chief Rayburn returned with Mossy? Or had he and she was in the flower shop? I tilted my head to listen for sounds coming from the front area. “Mossy?” I called out.

  No response. Maybe she couldn’t hear me from back here.

  I stretched and found Pip had curled into my lap. At some point I’d placed the book on the floor in front of us. He jumped down, bumping the book and the front flap opened to Olivia’s name and address scribbled in the front. I toyed with the edges of the blanket. I didn’t know anyone else in Lilac Cove and she seemed to know more than a fourteen-year-old should. If I couldn’t find Mossy, then maybe I could find my way to her house.

  First, I had to change out of the coveralls. Behind a sliding screen I found a clawfoot bathtub, a toilet, a hanging rack full of clothes, and a rectangle bin filled to the brim with shoes. All sorts of shoes. I tried not to focus on how my aunt had compared men to switching pairs.

  Mossy and I were similar in build
and shoe size, so I helped myself to a blue dress with a matching sweater. In the bin, I found a pair of dark blue sneakers with a star on the side and Converse written on the tongue. They appeared to be decent walking shoes that would also inspire confidence, so I slipped into them.

  Near the bed, she had hooks with several bags hanging from them. I put my one dose of fairy dust in the side pocket. Best to keep it close. I opened the main zipper and held the bag wide for Pip. “I can’t have you riding on my clothes all day. The humans give us funny looks.”

  He chittered and jumped inside, turning around a few times before popping his head back out.

  I made my way to the front flower shop and, as I’d feared, the lights were still off and the sign on the front door still turned to closed. A woman pressed her face against the front glass.

  I unlatched the deadbolt and the woman stepped inside. “Hello.”

  She clasped her hands in front of her and gave me a stiff smile. “I heard our Mossy had a visitor. I’m Gladys.”

  “My name is Juniper. Mossy is my aunt.” I reached out my hand the same as Chief Rayburn had done earlier when we’d exchanged greetings. “How did you know I was here?”

  Gladys squeezed my hand and didn’t let go. “Emory called me first thing this morning. Olivia couldn’t stop singing your praises after you and Mossy dropped her off in the wee hours. I volunteered to come check you out in person.”

  Pip squeaked and chittered and Gladys finally let go of my hand. “Is that John Bleaker’s pet squirrel? How did you get him?”

  “I found him outside after my dad dropped me off.” The lie rolled off my tongue with such ease that I surprised myself.

  Gladys raised her pencil-drawn eyebrow. She glanced around the flower shop, picking a few buds from their stems. “Interesting.”

  “My aunt isn’t here.”

  “Oh, I know dear. She’s still at the sheriff’s office with that detective. But don’t worry, none of us believe that she killed poor John.” She straightened her sweater. “Wouldn’t you already know that, since you have psychic abilities?”