I nodded.
“He thinks Ophelia had to have killed Mr. Primrose because the book was from her shop, the darts were found in front of her shop, where she and Mr. Primrose just so happened to have had a big public fight.” His voice dropped. His eyes dipped down with concern. “See, that is where he isn’t seeing the broader picture.”
“You have to admit his logic is good.” When Colton presented the facts, they did point right at Ophelia.
“Now you aren’t looking at the broader picture.” He tapped his finger on the counter. “Ophelia is not a Dark-Sider. She’s a Good-Sider witch. She has no use for the darts.”
“And she wouldn’t have been able to get her hands on some poison.” My eyes flew up and out the window as I thought about all the impossibilities of Ophelia killing Alexelrod. “She couldn’t have just turned him into a frog.”
Frog? Animals? Did Colton hit on something? I bit my lip trying to concentrate on him but my head played pictures of the stray animals. Ophelia and the strays were the only two new things in Whispering Falls and they showed up about the same time. And I couldn’t help but feel that there was some sort of connection to the two, but what?
“Right, but…” he shook his head, “there is more. There is a dart missing from the book and I’m afraid the killer is going to strike again.”
“Missing? You said that the book had two darts and that was exactly what was found at the scene.” I recalled seeing the book high above Gandolf’s head when he had confronted Ophelia and seeing the two darts were missing, but not a third.
“Right. Two darts. One of the darts didn’t fit in the space the book provided. We only found one of the darts to have a poison tip and it wasn’t the dart that came from the book, which means that someone had different darts with a more powerful punch to do the job and frame Ophelia. Someone who knew exactly what they were doing.”
“You are telling me that someone is framing Ophelia Biblio, and they are still out there?” I tried to keep control as the fear of a killer on the loose knotted in my stomach.
Slowly he nodded his head up and down. The words eerily dripped from his lips, “That is exactly what I’m telling you.”
“Did you question Faith Mortimer?” That was a valid question. Not that I was accusing her, but it did seem fair to ask in case she saw someone running from the scene of the crime. “I’m no detective or anything, but did she see anyone other than Alexelrod?”
“Gandolf is in charge of the investigation since I’m in training, but he said that he questioned everyone at the scene and everyone came up clean.”
What Colton was telling me didn’t send my gut into radar, but what Colton didn’t tell me did give me some questions. My intuition told me that something about the whole investigation was missing. But what?
Did they ask Faith the right questions? It wouldn’t hurt to pay her a visit and get her to do a cover story on Ever After Books. That way, I’d be able to ask her some things without her being suspicious.
The cure I had started for Oscar would be fine in the cauldron over night. The concoction was just a simple power booster for an existing spiritualist. I had yet to add the memory portion of the cure. It was getting late, and I didn’t want Gerald to leave the shop before I spoke to him.
Chapter Eighteen
After countless times of telling Colton I was fine and that I would be fine going home alone even this late at night, he finally left reluctantly. If it had been Oscar not wanting to leave me, then it would have been a different story, and I might have played the defenseless shop owner with the big bad killer on the loose. There was nothing telling me that someone was out to get me.
I was going to make sure that Gerald answered my tea-reading questions.
I gathered all my stuff, including a light sweater because the air had a chill to it along with Madame Torres. With A Charming Cure locked up tight and Mr. Prince Charming at my side, we headed down Main Street to The Gathering Grove.
Rowl! Mr. Prince Charming reared up on his hind-legs and batted into the air before he darted off in the opposite direction of the teashop.
“Chicken,” I murmured. There was nothing there to make him run off, or so I thought. “Some fairy god-cat you are!” I hollered after him.
A cloud drifted in front of the moon, leaving Whispering Falls in complete darkness, except for the small light at The Gathering Grove.
“Keep your eye on the light,” I whispered, fending off any fear creeping up in my soul, and threw my sweater around my shoulders to warm the chill bumps, pinching the collar up around my neck. I had a sneaky suspicion that I was not alone. It wasn’t my intuition that gave me the hint, but the twigs cracking under some heavy footsteps.
My legs worked overtime without me even telling them to do so as I rushed down the sidewalk, but they turned to jell-o when a flashlight made a spotlight on my face and a hand reached out squeezing my shoulder.
I froze.
“What are you doing out here?” Officer Gandolf’s voice boomed out into the night.
“Thank goodness.” I put my hand to my heart to steady the beating and slow my breathing. “You scared me to pieces.”
“You should be at home where it’s safe.” He didn’t leave any room to argue. He took his hand off my shoulder.
“I was cleaning up my shop and thought I’d grab a cup of sleepy time tea from Gerald before heading home.” I was a bit relieved that Gandolf and Colton were taking this murder seriously.
“Hurry up. We don’t need another member of the community dead.” He didn’t need to remind me.
“But…” I wanted to ask him a few questions about Faith, but my gut told me to go and not do it tonight. I also wanted to know why they were looking for a killer if he was so sure Ophelia Biblio had done it.
“But what?” His voice was strong, steady, and loud.
“Nothing. I’m going now.” I pointed toward the teashop and practically ran to The Gathering Grove.
I found the door locked when I turned the handle. Apparently, Gerald was just as freaked out as I was about the strange happenings in Whispering Falls, because we never locked our doors if we were in our stores. I jiggled the handle to try again with no luck.
Knock, knock, knock. Gerald emerged from the storage room in the back of the shop with a handful of to-go coffee mugs piled up in his arms. He nodded when he saw me and came over after he placed the cups behind the counter.
“It’s late.” He opened the door. “What are you doing here?”
He didn’t step aside or even try to hold the door open for me to come in.
“Can I come in?”
“I’m a little busy.” He looked behind him as though he was expecting someone to walk out of the storage closest any minute. “Can it wait until tomorrow?”
I looked up and down Main Street before I pulled my sweater back up around my ears to block out the chill. I made sure I didn’t see Gandolf. “Actually I really wanted to talk to you about the tea leaf reading. I think something was in it and you didn’t want to tell me.”
“You might as well come on in.” There was resignation in his voice. He stepped aside. When I walked in, he popped his head outside and looked both ways before he quickly shut and locked the door behind me. “There were some things that I didn’t want to say in front of Faith or Alexelrod. It had to do with the leaves lying past the handle.”
Gerald went behind the counter and pulled out the cup that Alexelrod had drank from. The leaves were still plastered all over the inside.
“I don’t see anything in that mess.” I shrugged when he tilted the cup toward me. Faith Mortimer made me jump when she walked out from the storage area since I didn’t know anyone else was there.
At first, I thought maybe Gerald was cheating on Petunia with Faith, but Faith quickly cleared that up.
“June!” There were tears dripping down her face. “Are you here to help?”
“Help?” I was more confused than ever.
“
I haven’t told her anything yet. We were trying to get it cleared up without involving you since you are the Village President,” Gerald said. He set the cup on the counter and pulled up two chairs, one for me and one for Faith. “Have a seat.”
While we sat down, Gerald went back over to the storefront windows, pulled down the blinds and closed them.
“What is going on?” There was a sick feeling twirling around my stomach. Either they were going to tell me something bad, or they were going to tell me something and as the president, I would have to turn that information over to Gandolf.
“The cup says that I’m involved with Alexelrod’s murder.” There was a worried look in Faith’s deep-set blue eyes. She ran her fingers through her long blond hair. “I swear I didn’t do anything. I stood on the outskirts of the meeting waiting for Alexelrod to show up. I needed to get a good scoop for fear of…” Her voice drifted off before she started to sob uncontrollably.
Gerald wrapped his arms around her like a loving father, stroking her hair, telling her it was going to be okay.
My mind tried to stay focused on my gut feelings and less on the facts Faith was telling me. Nothing was coming to me.
“Did Gandolf ask you about it?” I asked. If I recalled correctly, Colton had said that she was cleared from questioning.
“He asked me a few things.”
“Did he arrest you?” That was the most important question.
“No.” She shook her head.
“Then why are you worried?” Not that blowing off the tealeaves was a good idea, but sometimes spiritualists get things wrong. Sometimes the recipient could change the outcome of their lives by doing something different from what they had originally planned.
“The leaves say I am involved in the murder.” She pointed to the cup and pulled away like it was a snake about to bite her.
There was no calming her down.
“Gerald?” I needed to hear it straight from the expert.
He paced back and forth with his hands clasped behind his back. Ahem, he cleared his throat. “The leaves I used were carefully chosen to figure out Alexelrod’s state of mind.” I continued to watch Gerald as he seemed to go to a faraway place. He almost made me dizzy watching him walk the same pattern back and forth. With his head held high, he never once blinked or looked at us. He just stared straight ahead with each foot stepping directly in front of the other. “He was of sound mind when he was protesting. The protest had nothing to do with Ophelia Biblio. The protest had everything to do with a book that was there. The leaves said the book in question was no longer at Ever After Books. Though it did not tell of Alexelrod’s death, it did tell of Faith Mortimer being involved in the scene.”
He continued to ramble on, ignoring what was going on around us. Faith was sobbing, I wanted to ask some questions, but he wasn’t mentally present. He was doing a reading, which brought most spiritualists outside of the physical world. I knew nothing about it, but have witnessed it by watching the various spiritualists in Whispering Falls. It was like they were in a trance of some sort. Again…I only wished I had those kinds of gifts.
“See?” Faith blew her nose in a Gathering Grove napkin.
“It doesn’t prove anything unless you are guilty.”
Faith’s head shot up. “You think I killed him don’t you!”
“What would be your reason for killing him?”
“To get more ratings for the paper. People do many things when they are desperate.” Gerald snapped out of his trace.
“What did you say?” There was a sudden urge for me to hear exactly what he had said.
“I’m not desperate!” Faith jumped up from the chair she was sitting in.
“What are you talking about?” Gerald reached out for the counter and held on. He was a little wobbly on his feet, so I offered him the chair Faith had been sitting in. The last thing I needed to have to do was take care of Faith and Gerald.
“You insinuated that she might have killed Alexelrod because she was desperate to get some subscribers to boost sales due to the downturn in the economy.” The words did make a lot of sense.
It was a lot to think about. If Faith’s job were in jeopardy because of budget cuts, following a murder investigation would get a lot more subscribers, which would turn the cuts away from the paper. As it stood now, the paper was the first thing to go.
“I did?” Gerald drew back. “I had no idea what all I said. It takes everything out of me nowadays to do a leaf-reading. I read what the spirit tells me.”
His vacant eyes glanced over at Faith. That was all she needed to hear before she bolted out of the door.
“It looks like this investigation has only begun.” Gerald twirled the edges of his mustache. “The reading also showed a new officer is in town.”
“Colton?”
“You know him?” Gerald questioned me.
“Not really.” Only that he was muscular, hot, and hunky I thought. But I wasn’t looking. “He stopped by the shop tonight to see if I was okay.”
“What do we really know about him? Did you hire him? Did Gandolf?” Gerald threw a lot of questions at me that I couldn’t answer. I had only assumed Izzy had taken part in the hiring since she was part of Oscar being fired.
I wasn’t about to tell Gerald that Colton was doing his own investigating. Nor did I say anything about the darts.
“About the reading.” I wanted to get back to more of the concrete stuff that we knew about. “The book you referred to, was it the one with the darts?”
“Oddly enough, no. The dart book wasn’t even in his tea-reading.” He tapped the back of his neck, right under the ear lobe, about where the dart hit Alexelrod. “There was a skull and crossbones over top of Faith’s name, which doesn’t fare well for her.”
My throat tightened. Even though Faith wasn’t named a suspect, the odds weren’t looking good. She had motive with the looming cuts to the paper and she was clearly upset, which could mean that she knew they were close to figuring out she did do it.
“I’m afraid the leaves say we have a murderer on the loose.” Gerald had that same faraway look in his eye as he had earlier. “And it will shake our village.”
“How?” I asked.
“I’m not sure.” His eyes glazed over yet again. His next words shook me to my core. “The animals in town are up to no good. I tried to tell my sweet Petunia, but she doesn’t want to believe it.”
“Do the animals have something to do with the killer?” My conversation with Colton about Ophelia being a good witch rushed into my thoughts like a raging hurricane. If Gerald said that the killer and the animals are tied, I was going to have to go to Gandolf with the information that Colton was hiding.
“I don’t know,” Gandolf whispered. He shook his head. His expression turned to stone.
After I had made it home safely, I checked and re-checked the locks on my cottage door. For the first time, I could honestly say that I was scared. A dart could come flying out from anywhere at any time and we’d never know who’d sent it flying.
I tried to keep calm and think about other things like Oscar, but Gerald’s last words spooked me to my core.
Chapter Nineteen
I barely slept at all and woke up early. There was no sense in delaying the day and putting off talking to Gandolf any longer. There were questions I had and had a right to know.
The sun peeked through the cracks of the window blinds, which meant that I could walk down the hill in daylight, which was much different than walking in the dark with a killer on the loose. Without further delay, I pulled my scared self out from underneath the blankets and sat on the edge of the bed.
“This dart thing didn’t bother you,” I said to Mr. Prince Charming who was curled at the end of the bed. “And don’t think I didn’t know what you were up to last night either with Officer Colton.”
“It looks like I don’t have to renew your profile on Make-Me-A-Match.” Madame Torres appeared in the crystal ball. She wore an emera
ld green turban with a yellow stone in the middle, and eye shadow to match.
“What does that mean?” I asked firmly. I knew what it meant, but I wasn’t going to give her the pleasure of admitting to knowing. When I went into the bathroom to get ready, I could hear her rattling off Colton’s stats like we were at a baseball game.
“Colton Lance, tall, blonde, handsome, muscular, from a spiritualist family. He loves family and hanging out. Colton has had one serious girlfriend who cheated on him two years ago. Since then, he has thrown himself into his job.” She barely took a breath. “Did I mention how hunky he is? And single?”
“You did.” I swabbed some lip-gloss on my lips and put the tube in my jeans pocket. “Did I mention that I’m having dinner with Oscar tonight?”
“Did you notice that Oscar doesn’t even know the real you?”
“Oscar knows perfectly well who I am.” Deep down I knew she was right, but that was all about to change. “With my new ideas for a cure, we will be back to normal in no time.”
“Have you ever thought that you aren’t supposed to make a cure for him?”
“Why would you say that?”
“Because you have not had this much trouble with a potion since you burned down your shed in your previous life.” Madame Torres reminded me of my last mortal days in Locust Grove.
“I’m not having problems with a cure.” Admitting to being stuck was not something I was willing to do. That seemed along the lines of failure and I wasn’t about to give up on Oscar. “I’ve got one part down, now I’m going to do the next one.”
There were two things that were going to help me. One was Aunt Helena and the other had to be written in the book I smuggled out of the bushes of Ever After Books.
I went to the kitchen to get the book out of my bag and realized I had put it behind the counter at A Charming Cure.
Just then, there was a knock at the door. I rushed over to see who it was.
“June, the inevitable has happened.” Faith was bent over, panting, out of breath. Her pale skin was almost haunting. “They might as well put me in jail. I have nothing to live for anymore.”
A Charming Spell (Magical Cures Mystery Series) Page 9
