by Bailey Cates
Steve did, though. I carried the phone into my bedroom. Settling in amongst the pillows piled up against the iron filigree headboard, I scrolled through the contact list on my phone until I found Steve’s number.
Never mind that I already knew it by heart.
“Tell daddy dearest to call off his dogs,” I said when he answered.
A pause, and then, “Katie?” As if he didn’t have caller ID. “What are you talking about?”
I looked down at the alarm clock on the nightstand. It was almost eight thirty. “Please tell your father and his Dragoh friends to leave me alone.”
“What happened?”
I had to give him credit: He didn’t waste time defending them. Once again I related the tale of not one but eight pumpkins mysteriously falling from a wide balustrade just as I was running underneath it. As I spoke I became painfully aware of how incredibly silly it sounded. I could just imagine what Declan would have to say if I were to try and explain it to him. By the time I was done I was on my feet beside the bed, feeling like an idiot. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but it happened.”
“Oh, I believe you, Katie. Settle down and let me think about this for a minute.”
Pacing barefoot on the wooden floorboards, I managed to hold my tongue.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” he said after a few moments. “Let me talk to someone.”
“Great. That’s what got me in trouble in the first place.”
“Not my father. Someone else.”
“Who?”
“Will you please just trust me?”
“Because that’s worked out so well for me so far.” But as I said the words, I knew Steve would never have intentionally put me into harm’s way.
“Then why did you call?” His words were flat.
“I thought you could help. I thought maybe you would help. If it weren’t for you, that group of druids wouldn’t be after me.” Well, heck. That sounded silly, too.
“Okay, listen,” Steve said. “For one thing, I don’t know that they are ‘after you.’”
“Who else could it be? Your father obviously saw me as defying him.”
“Maybe. Or maybe the group as a whole created a magical barrier against anyone who found out about them. In case you haven’t realized, they are very secretive, and always have been. There are long-standing wards to repel anyone who gets too close. You could have run into that. Or they may have cast another spell specifically for anything—or anyone—who was curious about Lawrence Eastmore, since he was discovered this morning.” He hesitated. “Or…”
“Or what?”
“It could be something else altogether.”
I snorted. “Pretty coincidental if that’s the case.”
“Not if it’s something about why Eastmore was killed in the first place.”
I stopped short, and Mungo looked up from where he lay dozing on the bedspread. “You know why he was killed?”
“No.” There was real regret in his voice. “But I know someone who might have an idea. I’ll talk to him, see if I can find anything out. In the meantime, keep your head down.”
“Right.”
“Um, Katie?”
“Yeah?”
“How did you know to get out of the way?”
“Instinct, I guess.” I wasn’t ready to tell him my dead grandmother might have warned me from beyond the grave.
He was silent for a long time, and I wondered what he was thinking. Then he said, “Promise me you’ll call if anything else happens.”
“Okay.”
“Anything at all. Even if you’re just feeling nervous. Day or night.” The concern in his tone made me kind of nervous. But it also made me feel kind of warm and fuzzy.
“I mean it about keeping your head down. I don’t want anything to happen to you, Katie-girl.”
“Me, either.”
I hung up. As irritated as I was with him, it was surprising how much better I felt after hearing his voice.
I brushed my teeth and settled back into bed to read while my hair finished drying. The waning gibbous moon rose outside my window, bright with encouragement. I sent an intention out to the universe that as the light faded so too would any danger to me or to the spellbook club.
As long as I stayed out of the Dragohs’ business, that shouldn’t be a problem, I thought as I finally drifted off to sleep.
No problem at all.
An hour later I awoke with a start.
* * *
For most of my life I’d suffered from a sleeping disorder. Some people might call it simple insomnia. In fact, some people had—doctors and sleep experts and the like. But it didn’t feel like regular insomnia. For one thing, even though I slept only one hour a night, and sometimes not even that, I wasn’t very often tired. The reason I’d taken up running in the first place was to burn off energy. Energy I shouldn’t have had in the first place.
Once I’d begun practicing magic, the manic need for running had evaporated and my sleep disorder had become a thing of the past. Well, mostly. I still had the occasional sleepless night, and I still averaged only about five hours of sleep each twenty-four hours. As a baker, that left me with plenty of time to have a real life on top of crazy early hours at work and long days. Plus, since magic had taken the edge off, I felt calm and peaceful instead of anxious and jittery.
Looking down at Mungo, I said, “Maybe I can get back to sleep in a little while. Right?”
Yip.
It wasn’t to be, though. I spent the rest of the night on the Internet researching druids. At four a.m. I dressed in my usual work uniform of skirt, T-shirt, and sensible shoes, and headed out to the backyard to snip a few stems of fragrant basil and parsley. Back inside, I loaded Mungo into my bag, grabbed my to-go cup of coffee, and locked the front door behind me. The basil was for focus as I drove as well as general protection, and the parsley was for protection and a little practical deodorization after the previous day’s mishap. The herbs went into the Bug’s vase, Mungo went into the passenger seat, and the coffee went into me as I drove downtown to the Honeybee.
Mungo was a good listener, so along the way I related what I’d managed to dig up during the night hours. Given all the hush-hush that seemed to surround the Dragoh Society, it wasn’t surprising that I didn’t find any information—or even reference—to it. Not in Savannah or anywhere else. I did find out a little more about Dr. Lawrence Eastmore. Sure enough, he was a professor of art history and aesthetics at the Savannah College of Art and Design, and the few comments from students were quite positive. Apart from his teaching position, he was also a member of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America and the Georgia Antiquarian Booksellers Association. There was no reference to spellbooks or to his having a particular interest in the occult.
After digging for a while I’d discovered an obituary from eleven years before for a man named Samson Eastmore. He was survived by his son, Lawrence, who was about the right age to be the man I’d found, and a grandson named Greer Eastmore. No mention of Lawrence’s wife, though he apparently had a sister, Penelope, and a mother named Esther. A bit later I found Esther’s obituary, too. She’d died within a year of her husband. Unlike his son, it sounded like Samson Eastmore had died of natural causes.
“I know Quinn wants me to stay out of things,” I said to my familiar as I steered around Oglethorpe Square. “But now it’s getting personal.”
He made a sound in the back of his throat.
“Let’s hope he knows all this plus a whole lot more. Right?”
The dog curled into the bottom of the tote and went to sleep. I couldn’t blame him. He’d stayed up with me most of the night and was probably exhausted.
I was uncharacteristically tired as well, but did my best to shake it off. Even though the Honeybee was open only until one o’clock on Sundays, as soon as we closed the bakery the spellbook club was meeting at Lucy and Ben’s town house. Today Cookie and I would hold the fort at the bakery, while Lucy pre
pped for our meeting and Ben indulged in his weekly round at the Crosswinds Golf Club, where he had a standing eight a.m. tee time.
Inside the bakery I left Mungo sleeping on his chair in the office and got to work. First the sourdough loaves that had been rising all night went into hot ovens. We sold a lot of sourdough bread for family Sunday suppers, so I usually made extra. The brioche dough was also no-knead, rich with eggs and butter and honey, so that went into molds for a quick rise before following the sourdough into the ovens.
Then I mixed up a batch of cinnamon raisin biscotti, which customers had taken to dipping into the warm apple cider we offered in the fall. As I sprinkled in the cinnamon, I added a short incantation encouraging good luck, prosperity, and general healing. I had just finished when Cookie came in the door from the alley. The morning paper was tucked under one arm.
She was usually a little fuzzy that early in the morning and only mumbled a quick greeting before heading out to the espresso counter. Seconds later she was back, a steaming mug of drip coffee in hand.
“You rock, Katie. Thank you for making coffee before I got here.”
“I know it’s a challenge to work this early.” For most people, at least. “Hungry?”
“Actually, I am. I skipped supper last night.”
“So did I.” Plus stayed up all night, not to mention my evening run, complete with the adrenaline rush of dodging flying pumpkins. “I have the perfect solution.”
After popping the loaf of spicy biscotti into the oven for its first baking, I got to work on my version of pain perdu. I liked to think of it as the love child of savory French toast and bruschetta. First I soaked slices of brioche left over from the day before in a mixture of eggs and milk with a tiny bit of Mo Hotta Mo Betta hot sauce mixed in. Then I fried the slices in butter until browned and finished them in the oven as I sliced tomatoes and grated Parmesan. Finally, I topped the pain perdu with paper-thin Parma ham, the sliced tomatoes, fresh basil, and the cheese. A quick run under the broiler and breakfast was served.
“Mmmph…good.” Cookie registered her appreciation around a mouthful. Even though she more resembled a colt—long legs, thin build, delicate bones—she ate like a bull. I had to admit, it was better than having someone merely pick at food I’d served. I remembered her mentioning once in an offhand manner that there had been some very lean times during her childhood in Haiti, and I was glad to see her enjoy the pain so much.
Mungo nibbled at his plate with more subdued approval.
I took another bite and reached for the Savannah Morning News that Cookie had picked up on her way to work. There was nothing about the dead man on the front page, but when I flipped it open I found something on page four: a brief story in which Declan and I were described as “a local man and woman” who discovered “an as yet to be identified man” deceased in Johnson Square.
Darn it. I was half surprised that Quinn hadn’t figured out who the dead guy was yet—but only half, since Lucy and Mimsey had planted the seeds of doubt the day before. Maybe the Dragohs really were throwing some magical monkey wrenches into my detective friend’s investigation. The other thing that confirmed the possibility was the image accompanying the news article. It was a line drawing, not a photo—thank goodness—but it wasn’t a very good likeness. Could this be more of the Dragohs’ “magical barrier” that Steve had referred to last night? Because if I’d known Lawrence Eastmore as a living, breathing human being I might not have recognized him from the picture. I wondered if any of his friends or coworkers would.
Wait a minute…
“Cookie, do you recognize this man?” I turned the paper around so she could look at the picture right side up.
She cocked her head to the side. “This is who you found?”
“That’s him. Sort of, at least. Does he look like anyone you knew when you worked at SCAD?” When I’d first met Cookie she’d worked at the Savannah College of Art and Design, then moved on to manage an apartment building before stepping in to help us at the Honeybee.
She squinted. Pressed her lips together. “Maybe.”
“A professor, perhaps?”
“Hmm.”
“Art history? Aesthetics?”
Her face cleared. “Of course. That’s Dr. Eastmore.”
Chapter 11
Bingo.
I smiled. “I could kiss you.”
Her eyes widened in surprise. “I don’t—”
“Now I can let Quinn know who the dead man is, and Steve can’t accuse me of betraying him.” I took a triumphant bite and let the salty ham play over my tongue.
“I’m confused.”
“I’ll explain later. Right now I need to make a phone call.”
Shoving my plate aside, I hurried into the office and retrieved my cell phone. Peter Quinn’s direct line at the police precinct was still in my contact list. I dialed it, expecting to get his voice mail at six a.m. However, the man himself picked up on the third ring.
“Hello, Quinn. How are you this fine morning?” Being able to get this information off my chest had lightened my mood considerably. “In kind of early, aren’t you?”
“My caller ID says this is Katie Lightfoot. Could that possibly be true? Because why would my friendly neighborhood baker be calling me on my official line only one day after I see her in the vicinity of a homicide case?”
“Funny man. Do you or do you not want to know who we found yesterday?”
“Are you telling me you know?”
I abandoned the question game. “Yes! His name is Lawrence Eastmore.” I practically crowed.
“I know.”
“But—”
“How do you know?”
There was no reason to be disappointed, yet I was a little. “Cookie recognized the drawing in the paper.”
“Cookie who works there?”
“Of course. But she used to work in the registration office at SCAD. She met Dr. Eastmore then.”
“Ah. That makes sense.” There was a little too much relief in his tone. “It turns out she’s not the only one who recognized the picture. The main desk got an anonymous call to the same effect about an hour ago.”
“Just one other call?”
“Yes. Most people are still asleep.” His tone was wry.
“We’re up.” I sounded smug.
“Bakers and policemen don’t exactly keep normal hours. I have a murder to solve.”
“At least you know whose now. And, Quinn? This is me saying, ‘I told you so.’”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Something muffled his voice, and he seemed to be talking to someone else. His words became less garbled. “I’ll be right there.” He spoke into the phone again. “Katie? I need to go now. But I do appreciate the call. Really. We’ll take it from here.”
“Okeydokey.” If he’d hurry up and solve the murder maybe the Dragohs would leave me alone. “Stop by if you’re in the neighborhood. The special today is cranberry coconut cookies.” They were Quinn’s favorite.
“Sounds great.” He was obviously distracted. “But I doubt I’ll have time for a Honeybee run today.”
* * *
“I just love those little cat faces! Where on earth did you find them?” Mrs. Standish, one of our regulars, put her fists on her ample hips and peered at the decorations surrounding the front entrance.
“Lucy and Bianca made them,” I said as I filled a box with a dozen assorted muffins. The kitties were cute, based on jack-o’-lantern carving patterns and fastened to the doorframe. The ladies had used yellow felt painted with orange and white stripes so they looked like tabby cats. Actually, they looked like Lucy’s familiar, Honeybee, who had inspired the name for our bakery. I loved Honeybee, but she made me sneeze and sniffle like crazy. Thankfully, unlike Mungo, she preferred to stay home.
“We’re going for a little scarier,” Croft Barrow said from where he sat at a table near the display case. Croft owned the bookstore next door. He and Annette Lander, who had the knitting shop on th
e other side of the bakery, were planning Halloween parties, too. “You know, spooky music, gross stuff in jars. We even have a cauldron to fill with dry ice on Halloween night.”
I smiled. “Us, too.” I didn’t mention that it was a real working cauldron that had seen its share of brewing.
Behind me, Cookie snorted.
“You girls make Halloween too cute,” Croft went on. “Annette’s decorations are all made of wool, for heaven’s sake. Halloween is supposed to scare the pants off you.”
“Well, let’s hope that doesn’t happen,” Mrs. Standish said in a dry tone and handed me a bill. I grinned and counted out her change.
“We won’t set any records for scariness,” I said. “But it’ll be a fun and safe place for kids to come and hang out on Halloween.”
I’d always loved Halloween, and was glad to be among so many other people who felt the same way. My parents weren’t much for the holiday. They let me dress up and go around to a few houses, but always seemed nervous. Now I suspected it was because on Halloween—or Samhain—the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead was supposed to be thinnest. Given Mama’s tendency to overprotect me, she’d probably been afraid of something dire happening.
They never let me wear that witch costume I’d always wanted, either. This year I’d been determined to finally dress up as a real badass: black pointy hat, hooked nose with a big wart, broom and all. Until, of course, Lucy had admonished me for being so willing to perpetuate stereotypes that gave our kind a bad name.
Sigh. Sometimes you just couldn’t win. Now I had no idea what to wear. Maybe gear up as a ghost, since Mimsey had told me that in the old times villagers would dress as spirits on Samhain in order to guide the dead to the edge of town at the end of the night.
Traditional, but a wee bit boring.
Croft left a little before noon, holding the door open for three uniformed firemen to enter as he exited. Declan came in last, flashing a grin as soon as he saw me.
“Thought I’d bring in some new customers,” he said. “Neither of these guys has been in the famous Honeybee Bakery before.”
