The Innocent Dead: A Witch Cozy Mystery (The Maid, Mother, and Crone Paranormal Mystery Series Book 1)

by Jill Nojack

  Dash’s face split into a smile. “Well, you’re here now, and apologizing too. That’s certainly not the New York attitude.” Dash’s moustache seemed to perk up a little above his winsome smile.

  “No it’s not, my friend. I’ve brought you something I hope you and Jon will enjoy. But I fear you may never be able to forgive the terrible things I said, and I’m truly sorry. I didn’t mean any of it. I was captured by my anger, which had nothing to do with you.” He motioned to the package on the table. “Please accept it?”

  Dash looked at Cassie. She gave him a neutral look, but it wasn’t easy. It really was up to him if he wanted to give the guy the benefit of the doubt, but no matter what Dash decided about Lou, she was done with him.

  She couldn’t help but wince when Dash gave a little squee after opening the gift and finding a bottle of champagne. “Cristal! Oh, how marvelous. How . . . really, it’s not necessary, it’s . . .”

  She winced again when Lou put his hand on Dash’s shoulder. “You and Jon deserve only the best. That’s probably why you have each other.”

  Dash was eating it up. Then again, hadn’t she forgiven him the first time he’d been so awful? She couldn’t blame Dash. If Jon was right, he’d been nursing a secret crush-from-afar on the guy for years.

  Lou removed his hand from Dash’s shoulder and flipped his white cascade of curls back dramatically. Yep. Dash was a goner again. He smiled up at the man, then back at his expensive bottle of champagne.

  ***

  “Who?” Natalie groused into her landline when Denton called. “Are you telling me that you seriously believe that polite young man attacked me? And what motivation would he have?” There was a pause. “No, no I’m coming down there. Do you think there are two copycats, do you? No, I didn’t think so. That young man was nowhere near Giles when the Akers woman was murdered.”

  Natalie held the phone away from her ear and looked at it like it must be an idiot. Then she pulled it back to her mouth. “Of course I can prove it. Why else would I say it? I’m coming down there. And you treat that young man respectfully, or you’ll have me to answer to!” She slammed the phone down in its cradle.

  She gathered up her essentials: red purse, car keys, scarf. Maybe she should take the athame just in case the police chief needed some ritual convincing.

  Pah! Too risky. She would have to make him see sense with her personal charm alone, which, she acknowledged, was bad news for Marcus. If all he had standing between him and incarceration was her engaging personality, that young man was going straight to prison.

  16

  Natalie put her purse on the roof of the car and unlocked the door for the trip to the police station. As she did, she heard a faint sound, as if someone was calling her name from very far away. Just “Natalie” and really only “Natal…” She turned, but there was no one there.

  She collected her purse from the roof and was opening the car door when the voice sounded again. “Nuh . . .” was all she heard this time before it trailed off.

  Once more, she turned.

  This time, she picked up the barest whiff of ozone and a faint ghostly sheen that flickered in and out a few feet away. Nothing much recognizable there except that mouth. She knew those lips. She had never forgotten how they’d felt on hers. William!

  He wasn’t gone. For a moment, she thought her heart would explode as joy marauded forcefully through her body.

  Then, his eyes were there, his nose, and his terrible, horrible, beautiful sweater. His specter was gauzy and insubstantial, but it was unmistakably William.

  Soundlessly, he mouthed, “Follow me.” He turned toward the house and went around the side to the backyard where it backed up to Giles Woods. Moving swiftly, his form began to disperse even as he moved. She rushed after him as fast as her old knees allowed. They were about a mile into the woods, coming right up on the edge of the lake, when he stopped and turned back to her before the trees ended and the stony lakeshore began. He disappeared again, his sweet mouth going last like the Cheshire cat’s, except that William was not grinning.

  She picked her way through the brush toward where he’d stopped and nearly fell over the body. It was a man—that was easy enough to tell from his broad, tank-top clad shoulders and short hair.

  He was face down with a rope around his neck. She reached down to touch it. It was damp.

  It looked like Denton would be coming to her instead of the other way around.

  ***

  “Oh, of course, let me tell you the truth, shall I?” Natalie switched gears. “So, here’s what happened . . . I lured the handsome young handyman Sean into the woods for immoral purposes and then knocked him off after I’d had my wicked way with him.”

  She stared Denton down. He didn’t respond. An unexpected display of wisdom, Natalie thought.

  “Just for the giggles, obviously,” Natalie added. She had both hands planted firmly on her hips. “And don’t give me that Columbo-on-the-case look. If you spent your time productively instead of harassing helpless old women and high school boys, there wouldn’t be another body in the woods.”

  Denton’s hand twitched where it rested on his gun belt. “Ms. Taylor, I’m merely requesting that you account for your activities today so I can remove you from the suspect pool.”

  “Up at six. Coffee and the paper until seven. Brief shower followed by an hour working in the herb garden.” She pointed back toward her house. “The one I asked you all not to tramp through when I led you here? Largely ignored, I might add. And then you called to tell me you’d brought in that young man Marcus and wanted me to see if I could identify him as my attacker. Afterward, I took a walk to compose myself before I went to the station. When I found the dead man, I changed my plans.”

  “And what about last night?” He turned to where the coroner and an officer were working near the body. “What would you say on time, Doc?”

  “The presence of rigor says sometime between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. Probably more like 2 a.m. since it’s a cool night, assuming he was killed outside. Definitely less than twenty-four hours, in any case.”

  Denton turned back to Natalie until Dr. Don called, “But chief?” and continued, “This may be staged. I don’t know that he was killed outside. The body may have been moved from somewhere else. Either that, or someone turned him after he’d been dead for a while. The blood that settled into his back indicates he was lying face up after he died. He was turned to his stomach a few hours later.”

  Denton looked at Natalie. “You’re free to go, but don’t make any trips out of the country.”

  “Great grimacing gobstoppers! As if I’m going to become a globetrotter at my age. Are you going to let that boy Marcus go now?”

  “No. Not that it’s your business.”

  “And why not? He wouldn’t have done this any more than he would have attacked me. No motive at all. And he was your overnight guest last night, wasn’t he? On some trumped-up evidence. So you don’t have any cause to keep him. I’ll slip by the station and give him a ride home.”

  Denton glowered, his hand snaking out to grab her firmly by the elbow, his voice low but packed with promise. “You’ll stay away from him for now.” He held up a pair of black sunglasses. “I found these near the body. He may not be involved, but I have a feeling these are going to show up with our prisoner’s fingerprints all over them, and I don’t want whoever dropped them near the body to know we didn’t take the bait. So stop rocking the boat.”

  Natalie was silent for a moment. “Fine. I’m due at the shop, anyway.” She shook off his hand and began the trek back toward the house. It was easy enough to find her way along the trail of broken underbrush that now extended through her garden. She didn’t bother going around—there was no point. Most of the plot of tiny seedlings she’d planted last week were crushed beyond hope.

  She knew she shouldn’t be feeling good about anything right now, not with a new victim that had been set up to frame someone. And who was he framing? Marcus? H
er? Whoever this killer was, he was disorganized. Perhaps that would work in their favor. He was bound to make a critical mistake sooner or later.

  In any case, Marcus was most likely disqualified as a suspect since he couldn’t have left his sunglasses with the body, so she didn’t have to break her promise to him. She wouldn’t have liked doing that, but she would have liked it a lot less if that nice young man was charged for a crime he hadn’t committed.

  ***

  Natalie barreled through the front door of Cat’s Magical Shoppe and started talking before looking around to see who was there. She headed straight for Cassie and Gillian, who were working at the counter.

  “He’s struck again! This time he’s murdered that Sean, the handyman. And tried to—what is it they say in those detective shows—stitch me up for it. Dumped the body right behind my house.”

  A gasp came from the storage room. Cinnamon stood in the doorway, her deck of tarot cards dropping from a limp hand as her skin went gray and she looked like she might faint. Cassie hurried over to her.

  “Cin, I’m so sorry.” Cassie supported her while Gillian ducked around her into the storeroom and scooted a chair under her. As soon as she was sitting, she collapsed over her knees.

  Cassie rounded on Natalie. “How could you be so insensitive?”

  “I didn’t know she was here. How could I?”

  “It’s Thursday, Nat. We always have ‘Readings by Cinnamon Brown’ on Thursdays.” Cassie turned away from Natalie again. “You okay, Cin? Can I get you anything? Water? Or . . .”

  Cinnamon was sitting up straight now. She took her hand away from over her eyes to wave Cassie away weakly. “No. I just don’t . . . I don’t believe it. He was trying to get up under my skirt just yesterday. He was such a player; he couldn’t help himself. But a good friend. He was a friend . . .”

  Cassie and Gillian exchanged a glance, and Gillian hustled Natalie into the kitchenette.

  Natalie kept her mouth shut until the kitchenette door closed behind them. “I don’t see why you’re both so upset. Would you rather she heard it on the nightly news?”

  “Don’t act like that, Nat. You know why we’re upset. And you can stay in here until we get Cinnamon home because there is simply no way she should have to put on a bright face for the punters.”

  Natalie put on the kettle and sat down by herself, frowning. It wasn’t even the new murder she wanted to tell them about—it was William. William wasn’t gone. There could be a dozen murders today and it wouldn’t kill her mood. She wanted to be sorry she felt that way, but she couldn’t.

  She heard light footsteps coming down the hall. Cassie appeared in the doorway. “Gillian’s taken Cinnamon home. I’m going to give her the small storeroom as her permanent space, so you’ll have to use the back storeroom or the basement from now if you need to put anything aside for a customer to pick up.”

  “Fine, fine.” Natalie took a breath. “It was William who led me to the body.”

  “Wait a minute. You said he was gone. He’s not gone?”

  Natalie shook her head, and the beginning of a happy tear formed in her right eye before she blinked it back. “He’s barely there, but maybe he just needs time to regain his strength. What he did for me when I was attacked must have taken a lot out of him.”

  Cassie took her hand. “Nat, I really am happy that he’s okay. But, truthfully, I thought, well, maybe it was for the best. I mean, you were trying to build a ward to keep him away like a week ago.”

  “Yes, but things change. I don’t need to explain myself.”

  Cassie gave her a half-smile. “No, Nat, you don’t. But don’t gripe to me a month from now when the dead guy is irritating you because he wants to hang out with you all the time.” Cassie turned back to the door and exited into the hall, saying, “You might as well tell me the whole story while we work.”

  Nat started with the call from Denton about Marcus, going on to explain how William had led her to the body and how Denton had found Marcus’s sunglasses at the scene. It took a while because she had to talk in between waiting on customers and turning away who’d come for a reading. There were a lot of those. Cinnamon was popular.

  “I don’t know who the killer is trying to frame,” she said at last, “but he’s certainly botched it. With Marcus a guest of the Giles PD last night and Denton knowing that the only thing I could do in a serial manner is annoy him, it’s taken most of his suspects out of the running. Unless he’s holding out on me.”

  Cassie tried not to smile. “Maybe he doesn’t tell the local coven’s high priestess all the cop business. That’s a possibility.”

  Natalie snapped her a sharp glance from behind the counter and then looked down at her watch. “Don’t you have to run along to your gallery job?”

  “When Gillian gets back. I called Dash and told him I was running late and why, so he’ll just be glad to get the whole scoop—minus the ghostly part and the framing Marcus part, that is.” Cassie bent over and picked up the kitten that had been batting at her shoelaces every time she stopped moving. It purred happily as she ran her hand gently down its back.

  “By the way, I don’t think I told you this, did I? You know that Lou Frank, the artist?”

  “The one Tom doesn’t like?”

  “Tom has never even really met him. But yeah, he doesn’t like him. Anyway, first he seemed nice and then he was terrible to Dash, and then he apologized and fell all over himself to make it up to us. He did this amazing painting of me. And then, when Dash invited him to dinner, he was horrendous again. Poor Dash was devastated.”

  Natalie harrumphed. “Dash is easily devastated. He’ll get over it, dear.”

  “Yep, he already has,” Cassie replied, sounding discouraged. “And I’m not real happy about it. I’m beginning to think Lou Frank is a real psycho. Oh . . . he said he knew you when he was young. He lived here. I bet you knew all the psychos, right?”

  “Lou Frank? Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “He was at the council meeting. He’s the artist who did the bronze of Giles Corey. He sculpted it originally. Dash told me his name was something else when he lived here—Franconi. That’s right—Luigi Franconi.”

  “Was that who that was? Franconi? I’d quite forgotten he did the town’s statue.” Natalie’s mouth worked up a tight grin, then it stopped as she spat out, “Pah! It was a good day when he left town.”

  “Why?” Cassie asked.

  “He was a sponger. Never did an honest day’s work in his life. Too busy being an Artist with a capital A. He was always trying to get his hand into William’s pocket, and William was so kind that he let him more often than not. But when he tried to worm his way into Lettie’s heart with his poetry and paintings while he made fun of her lisp to everyone in town, William’s father put a stop to it. She was much older than he was; her father knew what the man was after. I think old Stanford paid him to leave. Lettie was heartbroken, and William disappeared around the same time. Lettie never recovered from the double loss. She was quite a strange old bird by the time she died, living in that house with only her memories to keep her company.”

  Cassie eyed Natalie with one eyebrow raised. “Strange old bird, huh?”

  “Believe me, dear, I’m a sweet, sweater-crocheting grandma compared to Lettie Stanford.”

  Cassie put Cat down in his basket on the counter, watching as he wrapped his tail around himself before he snuggled his head in just so and promptly fell asleep. As he did, Gillian bustled through the door, and Cassie put her finger to her lips. “Shhh . . . I’ve just gotten him down for a nap.”

  Gillian beamed at the sleeping kitten. “He’s such a dear.”

  Cassie walked into the hall and grabbed her thick blue cardigan off its hook. As she slipped it on, she said, “Nat’s been trying to convince me that she isn’t considered at all eccentric by Giles standards.”

  “As much as I hate to admit it, sweetheart, she isn’t even close. There are at least two or three residents who a
re much more eccentric than she is. And if you count the dotty ones, too, well . . . and, come to think of it, she doesn’t make it into the sheer-meanness hall of fame, either.”

  “That’s for sure: I’ve known Mama Ella Barton since I was a kid . . . but with recent events, let’s just say she doesn’t scare me anymore.”

  “Ella Barton is a pussy cat compared to some of the women I’ve been introduced to here and in Salem,” Gillian replied. “Now, Angelique Franconi, there was one mean old witch! When she died, her own son didn’t even come back for the funeral.”

  “Is her son Lou Frank? Natalie and I were just talking about him,” Cassie asked. “I mean, is that Lou’s mother?”

  Natalie bobbed her head. “Yes, that’s her. I still don’t understand what he’s doing here. He couldn’t get out of town fast enough after the Corey statue was installed and people started to notice his work. Like I said, I think William’s father paid him to get out of town.”

  “You’d think he would have mentioned that his mother recently died when I asked him about why he’d come back.”

  Natalie shrugged. “She didn’t. It was years and years ago, twenty at least. But the house has been a rental for that long, handled by what’s-her-name—that bleached blonde with the attitude—at Danders Realty over in Salem who handles all the Giles properties. After fifty years, I certainly wouldn’t have expected him to return. He wouldn’t have a reason to.”

  Cassie looked at Nat intently as she talked. “Nat,” she said slowly, “he lived here during the murders, right? And he’s Italian. With what we now know about the evidence from the first cases, do you think there’s a chance that he’s the killer?” Her eyebrows rose up her forehead abruptly, and she blurted, “Omigoddess . . . both of you need to be at my house tonight for dinner. I mean it. I just realized something that has never quite seemed right about that man.” She looked at the clock above the counter. “But I gotta go. I’m late for the gallery again.”

  As she grabbed her coat from the hall, Gillian stopped her. “I can’t sweetheart. We’re having Gerald Akers around for dinner tonight. Not a cancelable event. The poor man is in a state.”