Merlot and Murder_A Paranormal Cozy Mystery

by Samantha Silver

  I packed up the soap ingredients and shoved them back into the supply closet before retrieving what I needed to make the more complicated bath bombs. With my spell book to help guide me, I walked out to behind the shop and dropped the heavy container up against the backdoor to keep it propped open. With the sun already baking Napa Valley, I knew I had to hurry up or else I would end up baking, too.

  An hour and plenty of sweat and a few tears later, I slumped against one of the plastic crates outside, staring down at the last of the dozen bath bombs I’d managed to mix and enchant properly. Even with my heavy breathing and the sweat rolling down my back, I smiled.

  Maybe I was finally getting a handle on this whole being-a-witch thing.

  Chapter 18

  “Wake up, it’s your day off today.”

  I slowly opened one eye and blearily gazed up at Karen who was already dressed for the day. My alarm clock had been shoved off my dresser at some point in the morning, though I didn’t recall doing it, and I groaned as I sat up. “Normally a day off means people get extra sleep.”

  Karen pursed her lips at me and yanked the warm covers back until goosebumps pricked all up and down my bare legs. “Not today. Come on. We’ve got a murder case to solve, remember?”

  I yawned and pretended to salute her before flopping back down on the pillow. “Aye-aye, captain.”

  After a much-needed shower and some fresh, clean clothes, I hopped up onto one of the barstools at the kitchen counter. “So, where are we going, exactly?”

  Karen screwed the lid to her homemade ice coffee on tight, tossing me a cold water bottle. “To see a man about a dog. Or a wizard about a possible murderer. You know, the usual.”

  “Who is this guy, anyway? And how does Barbara know him?” I asked once we were halfway down the road. “Does he live around here?”

  “So many questions. He is Benjamin Freeman, a wizard who lives about forty minutes from here. He and my mom used to be friends with his wife, Magda, before she died a couple decades ago. Magda was the head of the local coven. And Benjamin pretty much went into full hermit mode after that. Mom’s one of the only people he’ll see.”

  “If that’s true, then how are we going to talk to him?”

  “Because, like I said, he owes me a favor. I procured some relatively foul ingredients for him a few different times since he couldn’t quite get to them in his state. And no, you don’t need to worry about what they were. No one and nothing was hurt in the process, and that’s all you need to know,” Karen said, cutting me off before I had the chance to ask.

  We drove up Highway 59 for what felt like forever, before winding up and over the hills that led us down into flatter land. We blew past an old, weathered sign that read “Moon’s Hollow – 5 miles.”

  The road narrowed until it was only one lane in both directions, enclosed by a thick layer of trees on either side. The treetops overhead seemed to bend toward each other, giving the feeling of driving through a lush, green tunnel. Every so often we came across an old rusted mailbox set at the foot of a long driveway. I looked over at Karen, raising a brow.

  “Are we almost there? This place kind of creeps me out.”

  She snorted. “This is nothing. You should see where some of the other members of the local coven live. I swear, my mom is the only halfway normal one of the bunch. Oh, here we are. Number 670.”

  A dark red mailbox with the number 670 spray-painted haphazardly on the side of it came into view up ahead and Karen slowed down, turning down the gravel road overrun by weeds. I kept further opinions to myself, hoping that this Benjamin guy couldn’t read thoughts.

  A worn-down white bungalow at the end of the long driveway appeared, with an equally worn-looking El Camino parked not in the driveway but in the grass directly in front of the house. All around it were overgrown patches of weeds poking through what could have been an herb garden at one point. All along the porch were a variety of wind chimes in different sizes, hanging in an eerie silence. I shivered as the car slowed to a stop.

  “I take it back. This is the creepy part right here,” I mumbled. But Karen just rolled her eyes and motioned for me to hop out and follow her.

  We walked up the rickety steps to the battered screen door, a large slice in the middle of the screen. This was definitely the moment in a horror movie when you’re screaming at the dumb people on the screen to get the heck out of there before the psycho comes after them.

  Karen rapped on the door and stood back, clearly amused by how creeped out I was.

  The floor inside the house creaked, and the door swung open to reveal a much older, hunched-over man wearing thick coke-bottle glasses standing in the doorway. If I had to guess just by looking at him, he was approximately ninety years old, give or take a few decades.

  “Huh? Barbara’s not here with you?” he croaked, as if his voice box hadn’t been used in years.

  “No, Benjamin. It’s just me and my friend, Taylor, here. I came for the information you promised me over the phone,” Karen explained slowly.

  Benjamin let out a disgruntled noise before shuffling out the door to stand in front of us. Clearly, he wasn’t a fan of anyone going inside his house. From the odd stench wafting through after him from inside, that suited me just fine. Besides, it was easier to run away from the crazy person when you were already outside.

  “Let’s make this quick. I have a program to watch,” he grumbled before adjusting his thick glasses and peering up at us. “Your suspect here has over forty thousand dollars in credit card debt alone, in addition to a personal line of credit with the bank, with a balance of another twelve thousand dollars.”

  Karen and I were like mirror images of each other—both of us had to snap our mouths shut.

  “Fifty-two thousand dollars in debt? Geez, no wonder the guy wanted to kill his brother,” she said, letting out a low whistle. But Benjamin shook his head.

  “According to the bank’s records, Kevin Stowe was meeting with a senior loan officer the same morning that Nick Stowe was found murdered. After what you told me earlier, Karen, I dug a little deeper and found out that he couldn’t have been the killer. He was at the bank for over two hours, working to consolidate all of his debt. This was an hour prior to the body being found, and the bank is roughly half an hour away.”

  “So, he didn’t have time to kill Nick and then jump into his truck to meet with the loan officer,” I finished, chewing my bottom lip. “So it wasn’t Kevin. He couldn’t have done it.”

  He thrust a thick manila envelope into Karen’s hands, frowning. “This is all the evidence you’d need to back up what I’ve just told you. There you go. You have what you want.”

  I didn’t really like his brusque temperament, but it didn’t seem to bother her.

  “Thank you, Benjamin. It’s a pleasure doing business with you, as always.”

  He gave us both a stiff nod and turned away, letting the split screen door slam shut. I jumped back, frowning, but didn’t dare say a word until we were well out of earshot and back on the road.

  “He’s a peculiar one, isn’t he?”

  “Something like that,” Karen replied with a shrug. “But at least now we know we can cross one person off our list. And if you ask me, out of everyone who’s left, Janice is the most likely killer.”

  I flipped the metal tab of the manila folder open and pulled out all of the documents, thumbing through them. There were print-outs of notes from Kevin’s bank account file, input by the loan officer about their meeting. “Could be. I still don’t think Alicia did it, and you don’t think Tom would hurt a fly. Maybe Janice was angry at Nick ignoring her?”

  The creepy visage of trees flew past us until we were back on the flatter, more open expanse of road. “It looked like she was getting too close for his taste in those Facebook messages. Like he was pulling away from her. Maybe you’re right. Maybe Janice was pissed at Nick for not leaving Alicia like she claims he told her he would.”

  I watched the clouds drift la
zily overhead. “If there’s one thing I’ve come to realize from all this, it’s that love makes you do some really weird crap.”

  Chapter 19

  “I could go for some pancakes. What about you?”

  Karen threw the car into park outside of Stephanie’s Café before stretching her arms out and rubbing her shoulders. “I know one thing. I could never be a truck driver for a living—my shoulders are killing me.” She peeked her head over the roof of her car to answer my question. “And yes, I would love pancakes, if Stephanie didn’t insist on cooking them with eggs.”

  I couldn’t imagine living in a world without eggs, but I understood where Karen was coming from, especially as an animal lover. “So, a fruit salad for you, then?”

  We pushed our way past the door and into the café, where Stephanie was already standing behind her bar, wiping down the counter.

  I was just about to grab our usual spot in the back when someone’s bleach-blonde hair caught my attention at the bar. Janice Winchester was sitting all the way at the end of the bar, her hair piled up high on her head, with a bottle of beer between her lips. I didn’t have to check my phone to know it was super early to be day-drinking.

  “Psst,” I hissed at Karen, quickly pulling her to sit down closer toward the middle of the restaurant. “Look who’s here!”

  She looked over her shoulder but I swatted at her. “Don’t be so obvious.” I casually glanced behind Karen and watched Stephanie take the empty beer bottle from Janice, reluctantly handing her a new one. “I can’t believe she’s here. Man, she looks pretty messed up.”

  “Oh wow,” Karen said, ignoring my request to keep a low profile as she turned almost all the way around. “She doesn’t look too hot.”

  There were very clear mascara tracks running down her face, and it looked like she hadn’t brushed her hair in days. Even her clothes had a crumpled, wrinkled appearance to them. Janice Winchester was most definitely not taking Nick’s death easily.

  “Morning, girls.” Stephanie startled us out of our reverie as she came around to us, whipping out her little notepad. “You ready for some brunch?”

  I’d nearly forgotten about my growling stomach. “Yes, yes we are. I’ll take the pancake combo with sausage on the side, please. Oh, and a coffee.”

  “And I’ll have the fruit salad with a large iced coffee, please,” Karen chimed in.

  Even from where we were sitting, Janice’s crying was pretty noticeable. A couple of sobs broke out, and Stephanie threw her a wary look before shaking her head. “Poor thing has been a mess ever since I opened up this morning. She’s already had a few drinks as it is.”

  “Must be having a rough morning,” I said, not really wanting to let on that we knew exactly what was going on with her.

  “Something like that,” Stephanie said with a sad smile. “I’ll go ahead and put your orders in for you. Shouldn’t be too long this morning. Most of the place emptied out for breakfast a little while ago and the lunch rush shouldn’t be for another hour or so.”

  Karen and I thanked her and sat back, staring at one another.

  I fidgeted with the napkins in the metal holder. “Do you think she’d tell us anything useful if she’s already half-drunk?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe? Why? Do you think we should go talk to her?”

  “It’s worth a shot. The worst that could happen is that she tells us to leave her alone, and we’re back at square one.” Karen nodded, and the two of us made our way over to her.

  “We couldn’t help but notice that you’re over here all alone. You’re Janice from the Singing Bird Winery, right?” I asked.

  She sniffled, not bothering to wipe at her nose. “Yeah, why?”

  I slid onto the stool next to her. “I’m Taylor and this is Karen. We were on the wine tour the morning they found your boss, Nick Stowe.”

  At the mention of his name, Janice’s bottom lip quivered. I felt terrible just for bringing it back up, but I knew we had to talk to her.

  “You were there that morning? Well, I’m sorry you had to deal with all of that. I wish none of us had to deal with all of that.” She took another swig from the bottle.

  “Janice, did you know him very well? We heard that the police think he was murdered and we just couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to do that to such a nice guy,” Karen said, sitting down on the stool on the other side of her.

  A dark red blush crept across Janice’s face. “I knew him well enough to agree with you. No one had any reason to hurt him. His family loved him, his friends loved him, his, um, employees loved him. He didn’t have any enemies that I’m aware of. He might have had a firm hand when it came to haggling prices on behalf of the winery, but that’s all.”

  She shook her head, though there was a sad smile on her face. “He was a good man. Such a good man, and a good boss, too. He took such good care of his family.” Janice hiccupped and sighed, a faraway look taking over the smile. “He was by Alicia’s side when she gave birth to Amanda after her ex left her and poor Kirsten to fend for themselves. Alicia fell hard for Nick, and he felt terrible about the situation she was in, so he decided to stick around and be the father the girls needed. He deserved to have his own family of course, but he uh, didn’t get to because of his own mistakes.” Janice dropped her gaze to the beer bottle in her hand. “He had a lot of dreams. Nick, you see, he was an idea man. He had these big plans for the winery that he never got around to.”

  Janice spun the coaster around in a lazy circle, nursing her beer. “It doesn’t matter now, though. It doesn’t matter that we have all these plans, all these dreams. They could all be gone just like that,” she said, making a sloppy attempt at snapping her fingers.

  Behind us, Stephanie set our plates of food on our table.

  “I’m sorry about your loss,” I finally said, not sure if we’d be able to get much else from her. And to be honest, I kind of wanted to dig into my pancakes.

  As if right on cue, the door to the café burst open and in came Lillian, Janice’s friend from the memorial service. She spotted Janice speaking with us almost immediately and stormed over with a disappointed expression. “There you are,” she said with a sigh.

  If she thought Janice was supposed to respond she was mistaken, as Janice sat on the stool, staring straight ahead as if she hadn’t heard a word.

  “Darling, I don’t want to make a scene by pulling you out of this place like a child. So please, pay your tab and come with me. I can make sure you get back to your apartment and have a nice rest, all right? Just come with me,” Lillian implored her, tucking her bag under her arm to help hoist Janice from the stool.

  Janice let out a miserable sob before throwing down a twenty dollar bill, and letting Lillian guide her away from the bar. “Keep the change,” she slurred at Stephanie on her way out.

  All of it happened so fast that I was surprised my head wasn’t actually spinning on my shoulders. “Well. That was uh, interesting.”

  “Interesting, indeed. Did you hear the part about Nick wanting his own family but having made ‘mistakes in the past?’ How much are you willing to bet she was the mistake in the past?” Karen whispered as Stephanie went to retrieve our drinks as we sat down. “This woman is a hot mess.”

  “Hot mess or not, do you think she did it, though? She could just be feeling super guilty for killing him, right?” I replied.

  “She could be, sure. And we don’t exactly have any better leads, so hot mess will have to do for now.”

  Stephanie placed my coffee and Karen’s ice coffee down on the table in front of us and handed us our silverware. “What hot mess? Not the food?”

  “No, no, nothing like that,” I quickly said, cutting into my pancake and trying not to drool. “We were just talking about the woman that just left.”

  Stephanie nodded. “Oh, right. Gotcha. Yeah, I haven’t really seen her in here very much before. She told me she works at that winery where the owner was killed over in Palace Hills. His wife Alicia
was pretty much a regular here during the week. I saw her pretty often. Even her daughter. What was her name? Kristen? Kirsten? She was starting to come in pretty often, too. I just feel so bad for their family. Alicia hasn’t been in here since last week. Her daughter was just in here this morning with her boyfriend, but they didn’t stay long. I got so slammed, and can you believe that Evelyn Durst? She had the nerve to come barging into my business, demanding that I cater her grandson’s birthday party since she let me borrow her printer last week! The nerve of that woman, I swear.” Stephanie shook her head. “Anyway, I didn’t really know the Stowes all that well, but Alicia spoke highly of Nick. She was always going on about how proud she was of him.”

  I looked over at Karen. “Oh yeah? They were pretty happy then, right?”

  “I think so. Alicia told me they were going through some sort of bump in the road, as she called it, a few months ago. She’d come by and kind sit and stare into her coffee for a while, instead of being her usual self.”

  Karen stabbed her fork into a piece of cantaloupe, her eyebrows raised. “She must be really torn up. Have you seen her since Nick was found?”

  Stephanie shook her head. “No. And goodness me, let me leave you two ladies alone so you can eat your food before Taylor’s pancakes and sausage get cold. Sorry about chatting your ears off.”

  I was glad to be left to my food. But I couldn’t help wondering why something was nagging the back of my brain.

  Chapter 20

  With a stomach full of way too many pancakes, I practically waddled outside after Karen. She, of course, was perfectly fine after eating her fruit salad.

  "Do I need to get you a stretcher?" she laughed as I hunched over against the car door. "Or a barf bag?"

  "Shut up. I'm fine. I just need a minute."

  We got into the car, and I grunted with effort as I buckled my seatbelt.