by Sharon Pape
* * *
I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow and didn’t wake until morning sunshine streamed through my bedroom windows. I got out of bed with a more optimistic view of life. As much as I would have liked to place Duggan under citizen’s arrest, read him his rights, and question him in a soundproof room beneath a naked light bulb, it was a pipe dream that wasn’t going to happen. If I wanted to solve the case, I needed to be more proactive in my investigation. Since I hadn’t yet pursued the lead I’d gotten from Ronnie, lunchtime seemed like a fine time to check that off my list. I was able to get an appointment with Dr. Silver to check out a molar that was hurting. I was a little troubled by how good I was at lying.
I used the morning to properly store the plant cuttings Tilly and Merlin had brought me, order new jars to replace the ones that had shattered on the storeroom floor and whip up some of the concoctions that had been in those jars. I was mixing a new batch of my grandmother’s poultice for chest colds, when Tilly burst through the adjoining door from her shop. In my surprise, I lost my grip on the glass bowl, fumbling it like a novice juggler, before I managed to keep it from hitting the floor. Even if I had dropped it, I couldn’t have been angry with her, because she was happier than I’d seen her in ages. Her eyes twinkled and her smile pumped up her cheeks, making her look like a middle-aged cherub in a muumuu.
“I’m fixed,” she trilled, executing a neat pirouette of joy before losing her balance and wobbling like a top about to crash. Merlin, who’d followed her in, didn’t waste a moment. With his new wand and an experienced flick of the wrist, he planted Tilly firmly back on both feet, a little winded, but otherwise unscathed.
“Well done,” I said with more enthusiasm than the feat probably merited. But my aunt was still upright, and I now had good reason to believe that Merlin could right our other magick-related woes.” The sorcerer inclined his head graciously, every bit the entertainer acknowledging his due.
I turned to Tilly, who was still beaming. “How did you know for sure your ability was restored?” I imagined her going outside and summoning up the future of the first person who crossed her path.
“Easy,” she said, “during my down time I felt like I was wearing blinders, the kind they put on horses so they can only see straight ahead. But as soon as Merlin the Magnificent cast his spell, the blinders vanished.”
Merlin’s chest pumped up with greater pride from her accolade. Then he turned to me and must have seen the concern that lingered in my expression. “Although Tilly assured me she didn’t need a test to tell her she was once again whole, I insisted on one. Mayhap it will also bring you peace of mind. I asked her if I would live to see my home and time again.”
“And I told him I could clearly see him back there. In fact, I was able to describe his home as if it were right here in front of me.”
I was underwhelmed. Neither of them seemed disturbed by the fact that there was no way to verify if Tilly had accurately seen the wizard’s future or a random image she’d plucked from his mind. I had no doubt it was what Merlin wanted to hear, but we might never know if she was in fact correct. I debated whether or not to bring up this glaring problem, but in the end I said nothing. They had the right to believe whatever they wished to believe. As my grandmother had never tired of telling me, “In this family, we are not in the business of subverting hopes or beliefs. We practice white magick, or no magick at all.” By the gravity with which she’d weighted those words, I always had the feeling that she had taken such a misstep herself and that it had cost her dearly.
“What a fabulous day,” Tilly went on. “I’m off to put a sign in my shop window saying that I will reopen at three this afternoon. Spread the word. Between now and then, if you need me, I’ll be baking.” Merlin’s face lit up with a child’s delight. “And I’m to be her taster,” he declared, in no apparent rush to seek a way back to that home of his.
* * *
I parked my car in the lot that Dr. Brian Silver had shared with Jim Harkens. It still felt weird to be there now that Jim wasn’t. His half of the building was dark, as if the structure itself was in mourning. Before leaving the car, I pulled down the sun visor and tried out a few expressions of pain in the mirror. They all looked phony. It was a good thing I didn’t want to pursue a career in acting. I decided that grim and stoic would better serve my purpose. I locked the car and headed into the building. As I reached Silver’s door, a woman and two whiney children were exiting. Inside, three other patients nearly filled the small waiting room. They were reading or playing with their phones, but they all looked up when I came in, probably hoping for some better distraction. I presented myself at the desk and received a set of forms to fill out. When I asked if the dentist was running late, the receptionist cocked an eyebrow at me and said pointedly that there’d been a couple of emergencies they’d had to squeeze in. Point taken. Although I wasn’t an established patient of Silver’s, they’d extended me that courtesy too. I murmured “thank you” and found myself a seat.
An hour later, Silver’s dental assistant opened the door to the inner sanctum and called my name. As she led me down the hallway, she introduced herself as Patty. Judging by the pounds she carried around her midriff and hips and the gray roots that anchored her blonde hair, I put her at about fifty. She ushered me into one of the rooms off the hallway where an ergonomic dental chair was the centerpiece. Before sitting down on it, I did a quick survey of the room. All the equipment appeared to be state of the art. But what did I know? Patty’s stomach gurgled as she clipped a dental bib around my neck. “Sorry,” she said with a laugh, “serves me right for skipping breakfast.” I felt bad about being the cause of her delayed lunch hour, but not too bad. I needed information if I had any hope of clearing Elise’s name.
Patty sat down at the computer station that was on the right side of the small room. She clicked through several screens, then started asking me questions: What was the reason for my visit? Which tooth? When did it start to bother me? Did it hurt all the time or just when I ate or drank? Did it react to heat or cold? She was about to launch another question when Dr. Silver walked in. I’d never seen the man before, but since I knew he’d tried to steal Ronnie away from Jim, I’d imagined him to be unctuous and glib, a man accustomed to getting his way regardless of whom he steps on in the process. I was pleasantly surprised to find that he was an affable, down-to-earth guy with a balding pate and an early paunch lapping at his belt. Although he might have been as hungry as his assistant, he introduced himself and spent a couple of minutes chatting with me about mundane things like the weather, my shop, his cat. It was easy to relax around him. I found myself thinking I should switch to him for my dental care—unless of course he turned out to be the killer. That thought quickly knocked me back on track.
“It must feel strange in the building now that Harkens is gone,” I said, using Jim’s last name to minimize my ties to his family.
“It is a little creepy,” Patty replied, a frisson causing her shoulders to twitch. “I mean I feel sorry for his family and all, but it’s scary as hell that he was murdered right here. I wish they’d hurry up and find the killer already.”
“Everyone’s been paranoid since that day,” Silver said. “I’ve been walking Patty and the rest of my staff to their cars when they leave at night.” He pulled a pair of latex gloves from the dispenser on the wall.
“Ah, but who walks you to your car?” I asked wryly.
Silver smiled and shrugged. “I’m a fatalist. I don’t worry about what might happen. I take sensible precautions and I try to be mindful of my surroundings. But in the end, whatever’s going to happen is going to happen regardless of whether I worry about it or not.”
“I wish I could learn to be like that,” I said, thinking that the one person who didn’t need to be concerned about a killer at large was the killer himself. But I was having a hard time picturing the dentist with a gun in his hand. “Did you hear the gunshot from your office?” I asked.
<
br /> “I heard it,” Patty said, “but I thought it was a car backfiring. In this town, gunshots are the last thing anyone thinks of. Though I guess that’s not true anymore.”
I looked up at Silver, eyebrows arched to make it clear I was waiting for his response. “I wasn’t here,” he said. “I’d left early to take care of some banking.” He didn’t sound like he was lying, but I barely knew the man. Even a lie detector analyst depended on establishing a baseline before testing a subject. Unfortunately I had no way to check out his alibi. If I was lucky enough to hit on the right bank, the bank officials would never release information on a client’s comings and goings, except to the police. It occurred to me that Duggan might not know about the feud between the two men. Wasn’t it my responsibility as a concerned citizen to make sure he had all the pertinent details regarding the case? If he did know, and I played my cards right, I might be able to find out if Silver’s alibi had stood up. Until then, I was adding the dentist’s name to my list of suspects.
While I was following my thoughts, the dentist had decided to get on with the business of my molar. Patty briefed him on my problem as he pulled on the gloves with the snap of latex. Now came the tricky part, trying to keep him from actually doing any work on me. I didn’t know anyone who liked having a dentist poke around in their mouths and I was far from an exception. I sure hoped Elise appreciated what I was risking for her.
Silver gave my teeth a quick look-see, then took two x-rays of my lower left jaw where the painful molar was supposed to be. The results popped up on the computer screen, and he studied them for a minute, Patty on her tiptoes peering over his shoulder. When he turned back to me, his brow was lowered in a frown that was probably puzzlement, but made him appear sinister. Maybe trying to investigate a potential murder suspect with so many instruments of torture close at hand wasn’t the brightest idea I’d ever had.
“I don’t see any problem in that area of your mouth,” he said, his tone as pleasant as ever. “Would you describe the pain to me.”
“Well, it’s sharp. Sometimes it hurts when I eat cold stuff, but other times it doesn’t.”
He nodded as though he’d come to a conclusion. “It does sound like the tooth is somewhat sensitive, but there doesn’t seem to be anything fixable at this point. You can try one of the toothpastes for sensitivity issues; they do a pretty good job. This type of problem sometimes vanishes on its own, but if it gets worse or more constant, give us a call and we’ll bring you right back in.”
“Thank you,” I said, relieved that he didn’t suggest a root canal or something equally awful. “I’m embarrassed to have taken up your time with this.” Too bad I couldn’t blush on demand. Silver assured me things like this happened all the time. Better safe than sorry and so forth. After he left the room, Patty unclipped my bib and brought the chair upright.
I swung my legs onto the floor. “I’m sure Dr. Silver isn’t going to miss dealing with Harkens anymore,” I said.
“You mean the dustup over Ronnie?” She rolled her eyes.
I smiled. “I heard it was getting to be like the Hatfields and the McCoys around here.”
“Harkens was a real jerk about the whole thing,” she said dismissively. “Silver made Ronnie an offer, she declined. No big deal. Harkens acted like he’d been stabbed in the back.”
“Just business, nothing personal,” I summed up, as though I sided with team Silver.
“Exactly,” she said, one foot already out of the room. “Give us a call if that tooth acts up again.”
By the time I paid my bill and jumped into my car, I’d been gone for over two hours. Not that I expected anyone to have missed me. Tilly would still be baking; Merlin was probably in a sugar coma, and Sashkatu had always believed that the lull between breakfast and dinner was best spent asleep. So when I pulled to the curb in front of my shop, I was shocked to find a man about my age sitting on the sidewalk beneath my I’LL-BE-BACK sign that was off by an hour.
Chapter 16
“I’m so sorry I’m late,” I said, fumbling through the keys on my chain and then dropping them. “I had sort of a dental emergency, and the dentist was running late. He’s not my regular dentist, but he squeezed me in, so I couldn’t just up and leave.” I realized I was babbling to a perfect stranger. I shut my mouth before I embarrassed myself any further.
“Dental emergencies rank right up there with cardiac emergencies in my book,” the man said, wincing for effect. He scooped up the keys as he stood and held them out to me.
“Thanks for understanding. And for waiting.” Up close, I found myself thinking he might actually be the perfect stranger. He had to be six feet tall, with hazel eyes and dark hair that the breeze kept tugging onto his forehead. Even his clothes passed muster—a navy polo over tan chinos, Topsiders on sockless feet. I did something I’d never done before—I checked his ring finger. Seriously?! I chided myself. But in spite of the reprimand, I was dismayingly glad to see that his finger was bare. “I’m Kailyn Wilde,” I said, holding out my hand. I had the odd feeling that I’d met him before, but I had no idea when or where.
“Travis Anderson.” He took my hand and squeezed it tightly for a moment instead of shaking it. I studied his face, but didn’t see any spark of recognition there. Maybe I knew him as the man of my dreams. Good lord, I sounded like a girl in a bad romance novel. Thank goodness Tilly wasn’t there to read my thoughts.
Once I got the door open and disarmed the security system, I invited him in. An invisible cloud of sugar, cinnamon, and butter was wafting through the shop, courtesy of my aunt’s baking frenzy. She must have left the connecting door ajar, which she often did to encourage my customers to pay her a visit too. Not that I minded, but I hadn’t eaten lunch, and the smells were making my mouth water.
Sashkatu wasn’t on his usual perch at the window, but I had a pretty good idea where to find him. The only thing that trumped sleep in his book was food. I excused myself to check next door. At the rear of the shop, I poked my head into Tea and Empathy and found him in a sunny corner, nibbling on a piece of scone. He didn’t bother to look up. I could hear Tilly and Merlin talking in the kitchen. Satisfied that all was right, I went back to attend to my customer.
Travis was sniffing the air appreciatively. “Exactly what is it you sell in here?”
“The heavenly aroma you’re enjoying is from my aunt’s shop next door.”
“I didn’t notice a bakeshop.”
“It really isn’t one. She’s a psychic who also serves a mean English Tea.”
“Does she sell the baked goods separately?”
“Sorry, it’s a package deal.”
He shrugged. “Too bad.” I must have looked curious, because he went on to explain that he didn’t believe in psychics.
I’d heard that from plenty of people over the years, most of them men. “But you do believe in magick?” I couldn’t help asking.
He produced a lopsided grin that added to his appeal. “I enjoy the occasional magic show, purely as entertainment of course.” My perfect stranger was starting to tarnish before my eyes.
“Then what brings you to my door?”
“To be honest, my mother.” At least he had the decency to look embarrassed.
“Your mother believes in magick?” I asked, enjoying his discomfort probably more than I should have.
He shook his head and laughed. “You don’t make it easy for your customers, do you? Will I be required to sign an affidavit stating that I’m a believer before you’ll sell me anything?”
“Lucky for you, around here money talks.”
“In that case, would you point me in the direction of the shampoo and conditioner for thinning hair?” Clearly not a problem he had.
“Second aisle on your left, bottom shelf. If she colors her hair, you should get the purple bottles.” He returned to the counter with two bottles of each. “How did your mother hear about Abracadabra?” I asked, ringing up the purchase.
“One of her friends w
as here last summer. According to my mother, the woman’s hair doubled in volume after a few months. This stuff’s legal, right?”
“To the best of my knowledge, and no one has suffered any unwanted side effects from the products over the past few millennia.”
