by Bailey Cates
Ben, still in slacks and a polo shirt, sat in the overstuffed reading chair with another section of the News. He looked up when he saw me in the doorway. “What’s up?”
Lucy put down the paper, peering at me over the tops of her reading glasses and smiling. But her smile faded and her eyes grew wide as she listened to what I’d found out about our new employee. Ben’s jaw set and his eyes narrowed as he heard the catalog of Nel’s deceit.
When I finished, Lucy took off her glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose. “She lied about everything? Her experience, those beautiful cakes? How could we not know?”
Honeybee rose and stretched, then rubbed her head against Lucy’s arm. My aunt distractedly stroked her familiar, who purred encouragement.
“She’s a very good liar,” I said.
Lucy looked up at me. “And I wanted to believe her. I convinced Ben, too.”
He stood and walked over to the bed. “Don’t even try to take on the blame for this, Luce. I liked her, too.”
“Sometimes I think I’m intentionally naive,” she insisted.
He pushed a stray strand of hair from her forehead. “No, my darling wife. You have managed to retain the ability to look for the best in people. Do you know how rare that is?”
“He’s right,” I said. “Rare and valuable. Don’t ever get cynical on us, Aunt Lucy.”
A tentative smile tugged at her lips. “I’ll do my best. Sometimes it’s hard to stay optimistic, though.”
I looked at Ben and nodded. “That’s why we need you to stay just the way you are.”
* * *
Questions had swirled through my mind as I’d fallen asleep the night before. They were still there to greet me when I awoke, and stayed with me as I rushed around the Honeybee kitchen trying to get the regular day’s baking out of the way so we could get cracking on the food for the Halloween party that night. Why had Nel wanted to work at the Honeybee so badly? Other than being childhood friends, what was Nel’s recent connection with Greer Eastmore? Dead men tell no tales, but I was sure as heck going to get the answers out of Nel.
I realized I was gripping the edge of the counter, staring into space with my jaw clenched. I deliberately loosened it, did a few shoulder rolls, and began gathering ingredients for miniature ginger pecan Bundt cakes.
The woman we’d hired was really Nel Sandstrom—Steve knew her. But who the heck was the real Nel Sandstrom? She’d seemed so nice, and had totally fooled Cookie, Lucy, Ben…and me.
The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. And the angrier I got, the more things I wanted to say to her. I glanced at the clock. Almost six. She’d be coming in the door any minute.
Except she never did. By the time we opened at seven it was pretty obvious that Nel wasn’t going to show up for work. I tried the number she’d provided on her application and was immediately shunted over to voice mail. At least it was her voice inviting me to leave a message.
“Hi, Nel. It’s Katie. It’s after seven, and we were wondering where you are. Give me a call, okay?” It was difficult to keep my tone light.
Then I called the Halcyon Bakery—the real one—using the number I’d found on their Web site. Sure enough, David Talbot himself answered with a charming Irish lilt. He’d never heard of Nel Sandstrom. He wished me luck and we hung up.
“I’m calling Cookie,” Lucy said from the office doorway.
“Good,” I said. “In a few hours maybe you could call the other ladies, too,” I said. “They were going to help with the last-minute decorations, anyway. Maybe they could come a little early?”
She pointed her finger at me. “Good idea.”
The morning rush kept us busy for the next hour. Cookie showed up then, and responded to the news about Nel with more puzzlement than anger. When things slowed down a little, I left her and Lucy out front and got back to work in the kitchen. As my hands sifted and mixed, my mind went back to work on Nel.
Why on earth would anyone lie so she could work at a bakery? It had to be related to the murders somehow. But what did we have that she wanted?
She’d filled out the job application the very same day Declan and I found Lawrence Eastmore in Johnson Square. Now I wondered about that timing. The next night she’d been at Brandon Sikes’ art opening and convinced Cookie that she would make a great Honeybee employee. Then she’d shown up the day after that and charmed Ben and Lucy before I got back from the fund-raiser. The topper had been when she told us she was a practicing Wiccan—but who knew if that was even true? She’d known we were witches, though. Then Greer, posing as David Talbot, had given her a glowing recommendation.
I paused in kneading blueberries into a mound of scone dough, mulling over what I knew. So Nel had been working with Greer. I’d heard that murderers sometimes tried to involve themselves in the investigation, and in this case the real center of that investigation was definitely at the Honeybee, not the police precinct. Greer wasn’t even supposed to be in town when his father died, and he couldn’t fake bakery experience like Nel could. But if they were working together…how? Greer had been in Europe for years. I thought of the Parthenon wallpaper on his laptop. Nel’s application had listed addresses and employment in Athens, Georgia.
However, it had already been established that Nel was a liar.
Steve had mentioned Nel living in Athens. So had Andersen. They could have meant Athens, Greece.
Go, Bulldogs.
No, that had been Carolyn Powers, talking about her husband.
But Nel had definitely led us to believe she’d been in Athens, Georgia, before moving back to Savannah. My bet was she’d been living in Athens, Greece, all along. And in some kind of contact with Greer Eastmore.
I remembered the click on the office phone when Andersen Lane had called to ask me to find The 33 Curses. Had Nel listened in? The more I thought about it, the more it made a creepy kind of sense. Between that phone call and the next day I had been attacked. By Greer, as I’d first thought?
Or…could it have been Nel who had invaded my mind? She’d looked a bit tired when I saw her at the bakery the next day, but nothing like I’d expect if she’d worked that kind of magic against me.
I shook my head and reached for the butter. I needed more information about our absent employee, and I needed it soon.
* * *
Declan came in around noon with Scott and Randy. This time they were all out of uniform, though with all the logo T-shirts those guys wore there was no question that they were firefighters all the time, on duty or not.
“Coming to the party tonight?” I asked.
“You bet,” Declan said.
“How would you feel about helping me a little sooner than that? I feel kind of bad, asking after the whole, well, you know…”
Amusement played across his face. “You don’t have to feel bad. I thought I made that clear last night.”
Scott and Randy exchanged knowing looks.
“Thanks,” I said. “In twenty minutes? Half an hour?”
Declan nodded and took a bite of molasses oatmeal cookie.
Fifteen minutes later, Mimsey came in decked from head to toe in black in a skirt-and-tunic combination. Along with the black hose and black shoes, she might have looked downright witchy. The black satin bow in her hair kind of ruined that effect, though. But I knew she’d picked the color not only because it was Halloween, but because black was a deeply elemental color, representing the earth itself, and powerful in protection.
“Is everyone ready for tonight?” she crowed, her eyes shining.
Customers turned toward her, smiling and nodding. Ben waved from the reading area, where he was adding another loop of candy corn garland to the Halloween tree. I greeted her from behind the espresso machine, and Lucy hurried out of the kitchen. “Thanks for coming early,” she said. “We’re nearly ready, but Katie has to leave for a little while.”
Mimsey shot a look at me.
“Lucy will explain,” I said. No need to air anythin
g about a Honeybee employee in public.
“Jaida was looking for a parking space. She’ll be here in a few minutes,” Mimsey said, emanating curiosity as she bustled into the kitchen and donned a royal blue apron covered with ruffles.
“Perfect.” I raised my eyebrows at Declan across the room.
He nodded and pushed back from the table. “Duty calls, guys.”
“Duty.” Randy snorted around another maple cardamom scone. “Right.”
I wrinkled my nose at him and took off my apron. In the office, Mungo happily jumped into my tote, and I smuggled him out to the sidewalk. Declan looked surprised to see that my dog had been in the bakery, but no way was I going to confront Nel without my little wolf. Maybe she was just a rotten liar, but evidence pointed to her being something worse.
Outside, I headed for my Bug, but Declan put his hand on my shoulder. “We’re going someplace?”
“To Nel Sandstrom’s.”
“Really? Well, what do you say I drive?”
It was true that he always looked a bit uncomfortable folded into the seat of my little car. “Okay, sure.”
We crossed Broughton Street to where he’d parked his big king cab pickup. He opened the door and lifted me in with one hand on my elbow. As we pulled into traffic, I told him about discovering Nel’s lies the night before and that I wanted to talk to her.
He frowned. “That’s pretty rotten. The Honeybee is too busy to have someone flake out on you like that.”
“She told us she was Wiccan,” I said, trying out our newfound honesty. How would Declan react to talk of magic sans alcohol and moonlight to soften the whole idea?
Unfortunately, he had such a good poker face I couldn’t tell what he thought. “Did that influence you?” he asked, the words measured.
“Probably,” I admitted. “But not as much as her fake portfolio of fancy cakes. She counted on my checking only one reference, too, if any.”
“Hmm.”
“There’s more, though. See, the guy who lied for her? Who said he owned the Halcyon Bakery? It was Greer Eastmore. The guy I wanted you to go with me to talk to yesterday.”
Declan looked over at me so fast I thought he’d pull a muscle. I hadn’t wanted to spoil last night, so I’d kind of conveniently forgotten to fill him in on the events of the previous afternoon.
“Keep your eyes on the road. Yes. The son of the man we found. And Declan? Um, he’s dead now, too.”
This time Declan didn’t mess around. He pulled to the side of the road and threw the truck into park. “Dead, how?” His voice held foreboding.
“Well, I’m not sure. There weren’t any wounds that I could see. He was simply…no longer alive. Maybe a heart attack, or something else. But there was something that reminded me of what happened to me the night before. The, er, attack I mentioned.”
He was staring at me. “Something reminded you—you saw him?”
“Oh. Yeah. After you ran out of my house, Steve offered to go with me.”
“I did not run out.”
I let that pass. “We were the ones who found him.”
“Katie! What the heck is going on with you?”
“Well, that whole witch thing might have something to do with it. Lucy seems to think I’m some kind of catalyst. I don’t know for sure how that works, but stuff seems to…happen around me sometimes.”
He grimaced. “I’ll say.”
“Anyway, Nel was connected to Greer, and I’m afraid she might have had something to do with Lawrence Eastmore as well.”
“Like she was involved in his death?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. But there’s some connection. And she lied. A lot. And I don’t know why. So, I’m going to ask her.”
“Shouldn’t you call the police?”
“And tell them what? That we didn’t properly vet our new employee, and that she happened to know the dead son of a dead man you and I found in Johnson Square?”
We looked at each other for a long moment. Then he sighed and pulled back into the street.
Chapter 28
The Sandstrom house was on Waters Avenue, on the edge of the Baldwin Park neighborhood. It was all chunky lines, painted in varying shades of dull mushroom and surrounded by a sprawling lawn. We parked smack-dab in front of the overblown portico, and I hopped out of the truck with Mungo and marched to the door. I rang the doorbell, then knocked, then rang the doorbell again.
Declan joined me. “If she’s in there she might not answer—”
“Oh, no,” I interrupted.
He looked puzzled.
“You don’t smell that?”
My familiar’s head popped up from my tote bag.
Yip!
Declan glanced down at Mungo and sniffed. Shook his head.
Darn it. “Something’s burning.”
The effect of saying the word burning to a fireman hadn’t occurred to me. Declan pushed past me and pounded on the door. Hard. The sound reverberated through the wall. Anyone inside would have to hear it.
He sniffed again. “Now I smell it, too.”
“You do?” I asked, surprised. Though I had to admit this wasn’t the same nostril-curling stench as burning hair.
His elbow crashed through the glass beside the door. I watched with wide eyes as he reached inside and unlocked the front door. “Stay here,” he said.
“Like heck.” I followed right behind him. The smell was stronger, but I didn’t see any smoke. The atmosphere in the house gave me the creeps. The memory of the ice-cold finger running down my back outside Lawrence Eastmore’s potting shed flickered through my mind. There was something like that here.
Yes, Nel looked like she belonged in Mayberry, but under the surface you wouldn’t find fried chicken and apple pie. There was something cold and dark—and scary.
“Hello?” Declan called. “Hello?! Anyone home?” His baritone echoed through the rooms. There was no response.
It was a big house. We checked room after room on the first floor, jogging from one to the next. A fuzz of dust covered brocade and dark wood furniture, knickknacks, and tabletops. It rose into the air from the carpet in the family room and den, and we left hazy footprints on the wooden floors of the hallway and the dining room. A grand piano dominated the expansive living room, its shiny dark surface grayed with dirt. In contrast, the kitchen counters were sticky with old food stains and the sink was piled with dirty dishes. Some had started to mold, and a whole new smell mingled with the smoky odor that had first caught my attention.
I gagged and followed Declan to the glassed-in sunroom that opened off the kitchen. He ducked his head inside quickly before retracing his steps to the main entryway. I went inside the enclosure, stunned by the graveyard of dead plants. A banana tree, enormous trailing vines that had taken years to grow so large, three tiny bonsai trees perched around a dry fountain, and pot after pot of ornamentals, all shriveled and dry. My throat worked. All that life, gone.
Mungo whined.
Rapid footsteps sounded on the wooden treads of the sweeping staircase, and I hurried back out to the entryway in time so see the bottoms of Declan’s shoes as he turned the corner at the top of the landing.
“Hello!” he called again.
I ran up the stairs, Mungo bobbing beside me. Declan was opening doors off the hallway, one after another.
“Deck—”
He opened the last door, glanced inside, and hurried past me back to the stairs.
I spun to follow him. Nel obviously wasn’t home. Maybe didn’t even live here. Except…that kitchen. Despite the mold, some of the food on the dishes had looked relatively fresh.
Good goddess, I’d let that woman in my kitchen. Yuck.
Mungo made a conversation noise, and I paused at the top of the stairs. His eyes cut to the interior door nearest us.
I peered into the last room Deck had opened up. “Oh. Dear.” Mungo’s snort echoed my sentiments exactly. Slowly, I ventured into the room. It was the master bedroom. An elab
orate altar stretched along the back wall, eight feet long at least. A plain black cloth covered the top. After a couple of slow steps, I scurried over to see what was on it.
A brass goblet, a fancy wrapped athame, a heavy silver pentacle, and a red pillar candle clustered in the middle. Pretty typical Wiccan altar fare. The sculptures that took up the rest of the space were a bit out of the ordinary, though. I recognized Venus, Artemis, and Daph-ne. Various three-dimensional dryads and naiads reached toward me, and beyond me to the bed. A simple stylized woman made of dark wood with an opening in the middle looked like an African fertility statue.
In fact, all of the statues represented women—powerful ones. I could sense the female energy just by standing there.
The dowdy woman who looked like Opie’s great-aunt was quite the fervent goddess worshipper. I wondered how that had played with her father. If he even knew.
I looked around the rest of the room. The open closet showcased a lot of denim, and what I thought of as hippie shoes lay in mismatched piles on the floor. The bedclothes were pulled up to the pillows but the bed wasn’t really made. Dirty clothes spilled out of the hamper. Papers were scattered across the dresser top.
No, not papers, I saw upon closer examination. Brochures.
Brochures for Savannah cemeteries.
And tucked between them, an empty envelope with a return address in Greece.
“Katie!”
I grabbed the pile and pushed it in beside Mungo. He panted up at me.
I turned and went back downstairs. “Where are you?” I called.
“In the den.”
Following the sound of his voice, I found Declan standing with his hands on his hips in front of a smoking fireplace. He looked up. “Whatever she tried to burn in here didn’t ignite very well.”
I stooped and peered at the contents. It looked like Nel had tried to burn three or four books, and there were other indefinable papers curled black and ashy. Nudging at the pages with the fireplace poker revealed a title on one of the books that gave me pause. The 33 Curses. But then I saw something that made me catch my breath.
