Spell Found (Blackmoore Sisters Cozy Mysteries Book 7)

by Leighann Dobbs

  Morgan put the car in gear and they drove the ten minutes to Danvers. The grounds looked much different than they had the day before. Today, the museum was open and there were cars parked in the lot and people milling about.

  Jolene noticed, with amusement, that many of the museum employees were dressed in colonial garb. She amped up her gifts as the sisters walked toward the house, hoping she would notice a shift in energy. If the crystal ball was inside, maybe it would be emitting some sort of telltale energy vibe.

  Jolene had already peeked in the window when they were there the previous day, so the utilitarian furnishings and colonial ambience were no surprise. The house was decorated with plain furniture, unadorned walls and wide pine floors. It smelled of old wood and wood oil and long ago fires. A large brick fireplace, similar to the one in the sketch caught her eye. It was a giant hearth complete with large cooking pots hanging on a metal bar, but it wasn’t exacting the same. For one thing, the fireplace in Sam Gooding’s sketch had stairs near it. This one didn't.

  Morgan had her phone out and was doing a similar comparison. “I don’t think this matches.”

  “No, it doesn’t. Are you getting any kind of vibe?” Jolene asked.

  Morgan shook her head. “You?”

  “Nope.”

  The girls made a quick tour of the rest of the house, including watching a woman sew a quilt while another put the finishing touches on an apple pie. The smell of sugar, cinnamon and apples made Jolene’s stomach rumble.

  “I guess apple pie smelled just as good back in the 1600s as it does today,” Celeste commented as they made their way out the front door.

  “Which reminds me, I’m hungry,” Jolene said.

  “Me, too,” Fiona and Morgan said at the same time, then laughed and tapped knuckles. “Jinx.”

  “I vote we go find some place to have lunch and decide what to do next,” Celeste suggested.

  “Just a minute.” Fiona pulled the alexandrite stone out of her pocket and aimed it back toward the Rebecca Nurse house. It didn’t light up. The girls looked at each other in disappointment.

  “I guess this was a false lead,” Morgan said. “Maybe the sketch isn’t even what Sarah’s ghost was talking about, Celeste.”

  Celeste glanced over to the tree where she’d talked to the ghost the previous afternoon. “I don’t know. I wish she’d come and tell us, but I don’t see anything. Probably she wouldn’t manifest with all these people around. Maybe we should come back after it closes.”

  “And risk the ire of Detective Unfriendly?” Fiona joked.

  Morgan laughed. “Hopefully he’s not following us twenty-four seven … though I do have to admit, I keep getting a sneaking suspicion we’re being watched.” Her eyes drifted over to a wooded area.

  Jolene looked in that direction. Something caught her eye. “It looks like there's an old family cemetery back there. Maybe your ghost is hanging out there, Celeste?”

  A family with two small children was just coming back from the graveyard. No one else was there, which afforded them a perfect opportunity to go talk to a ghost.

  “Can’t hurt to try.” Celeste headed in that direction, followed by her sisters.

  The small graveyard was in a grove of pine trees, which were home to several twittering birds and a chipmunk that rustled through the leaves and pine needles, stuffing his cheeks with pine nuts.

  The perimeter of the cemetery was marked by tall granite posts. A monument to Rebecca Nurse sat smack dab in the middle. Everyone looked at Celeste, who shook her head. No ghost was present.

  Fiona took the alexandrite keystone out and aimed it around the graveyard. When she hit the southeasterly quadrant, it blinked orange and yellow. “Something is over there.”

  She held it out in her palm like a compass and they walked in that direction, stopping over an old slate gravestone. The stone was engraved with a weeping willow and an epitaph in script that was impossible to read due to the abundance of moss and lichen on the face of the heavily worn stone.

  But one thing was easy to read—the name: Dorcas Gooding.

  “Gooding! A relative of Sam's?” Celeste asked.

  Fiona aimed the alexandrite at the gravestone and the gemstone glowed hot orange. When she aimed it in a different direction, the glow dimmed. “I bet she is.”

  “And I bet this is a clue,” Jolene added.

  “Why would she be buried in the Nurse family graveyard?” Morgan took out her phone and started scrolling through the pictures of the material from the museum. She stopped at one and used her pinched fingers to make the screen bigger. “They were related. Dorcas Gooding was married to a relative of Rebecca Nurse.”

  “That’s it! That’s the clue,” Celeste said.

  “It’s good to know the alexandrite works at ferreting out the clues,” Fiona added.

  “Just like the note said, it will show us the path.” Morgan’s voice was soft.

  Jolene looked from the text on Morgan’s screen to the glowing gemstone. “That’s great, but it still doesn’t tell us where Sam hid the crystal ball. If the clue was the epitaph, it's unreadable now.”

  13

  After lunch, they drove back to the hotel, passing the restaurant Jolene had eaten at with Mateo the previous night. As Jolene’s gaze lingered on the table where they’d sat, she felt hollow, empty. After the kiss had been interrupted, Jolene had made the excuse that she needed to get to bed early. Mateo had delivered her safely to the hotel then gone away.

  Where was he now? She hadn’t heard from him. Was she expecting to? What was she expecting?

  As they turned onto the street of their hotel, she noticed the same fluffy black cat that had been present the night before hanging around the corner of the building. Could it be the same cat from Amity Jones' house?

  “I hope Belladonna doesn’t see that cat hanging around outside the hotel. She’ll be jealous,” Fiona said.

  “Or make friends with it,” Morgan joked.

  “Let’s hope we don’t have to bring it home with us.” Celeste narrowed her eyes at it as they got out of the car. “Is that the same cat we saw in the woods next to Amity’s house?”

  Jolene looked back at the cat. The one in the woods had glowing, golden eyes. She couldn’t see the eyes on this cat. It had turned its back on them and was trotting away down the alley.

  Fiona said, “That’s funny. Come to think of it, there was one in the mystical shop, The Eye of Newt, where we bought the alexandrite stone.”

  “Pfft.” Morgan waved her hand in the air. “There are plenty of black cats around. It’s not like they’re rare.”

  “Speaking of cats, we forgot to get something for Belladonna from the restaurant.” Jolene grimaced.

  “Shoot. She’ll just have to eat her cat food,” Celeste said.

  “Oh, boy. She’s not gonna like that. She’ll have it in for us,” Fiona laughed.

  Morgan opened the door to their suite to find Belladonna sitting on the windowsill, her gaze fixed on something below.

  “What’s out there?” Morgan picked up Belladonna and cuddled her while looking out the window. The black cat was below looking up. “You see the other kitty. No, you can’t go out and play with the kitty.”

  “Merow!” Belladonna wiggled out of Morgan’s arms, twisted in the air and made a perfect landing on all four legs, then she swished her tail and padded over to the kitchenette.

  “I guess she told you,” Fiona said.

  “I told you she’d be mad that we didn’t bring her a treat.” Jolene fished in the cabinet for one of the cans of cat food they’d brought with them. She picked out turkey and gravy—Belladonna’s favorite.

  “So, what do we do now?” Celeste asked as Jolene dumped the smelly food into Belladonna's dish.

  “I guess more research needs to be done,” Morgan said. “I’ll call Luke and see if he’s heard anything new.”

  “Good idea.” Celeste grabbed her purse from the couch and rummaged inside it. “I’ll
call Cal. Maybe I can have him do some research on Gooding. He might know something about the Salem witch trials or the people involved.”

  Cal Reid had been a close family friend for many years and more recently he'd become Celeste’s boyfriend. He ran an antique and pawnshop in Maine and was an expert in antiquities. The sisters often called upon his expertise to help in their adventures.

  “That’s a good idea. I’ll call Jake and make sure he’s not missing your assistance.” Fiona winked at Jolene.

  Fiona’s boyfriend, Jake Cooper, a former Noquitt cop, had recently opened his own private detective agency. Jolene worked with him using her computer skills to help on their cases, but with Jolene in Salem Jake was having to fend for himself.

  Jolene secretly hoped that he did miss her assistance, thus proving how invaluable she was to the business. She’d had to fight to move up from ‘assistant’ status to field work. She wanted Jake to realize she was good enough to be a full P.I. partner.

  Jolene did a mental eye roll while her sisters got on their phones, their eyes bright and sparkly as they whispered to their boyfriends. She pulled out the closest thing she had to a boyfriend—her computer—and pushed away annoying thoughts of Mateo.

  “You guys carry on with your conversations, don’t mind me. I’ll just research this Sam guy a little bit more.” As Jolene tapped away on the keys, she reviewed the museum papers in her mind. Looking for ideas or some kind of clue as to where Sam Gooding might have hidden the crystal ball.

  Belladonna finished her meal and hopped up onto the desk, skidding on the papers that had accumulated there.

  “Did you like your supper?” Jolene scratched her behind the ears.

  “Merow.” Belladonna batted at the pile and a few pieces of paper fell on the floor.

  “Hey, now. I know we made a mess but that’s no reason to throw things around.” Jolene bent down and picked up the papers then piled them on top of the desk, straightening the piles into neat stacks.

  “Merowww!!” Belladonna batted more papers off.

  “Maybe that means she didn’t like her supper,” Fiona, who had just ended her call, suggested. “Jake says he has a new job for you when we get back.”

  “He can’t run the place without me, can he?” Jolene teased.

  Fiona laughed. “Well, he didn’t say as much but we can always read between the lines.”

  “Meowww.” Belladonna slid around the desk, pushing off some of the smaller papers then sat smack dab in the middle of the 1692 reproduction map of Salem Village.

  “Yep, she’s mad,” Morgan said.

  “Did Luke have any new news?” Jolene asked.

  “He verified what Mateo said about Bly having someone with paranormal gifts looking for the relic, which is the crystal ball.” Morgan shrugged. “But that’s not anything we didn’t expect. He didn’t have any new information, so it looks like we have to work with what we’ve got.

  Celeste came in from her room, clicking her phone shut. “Cal said the witch thing wasn’t his expertise and he doesn’t know anyone. So he wasn’t much help, either.”

  “Mew.”

  “Looks like Belladonna agrees.” Jolene gently pushed the cat off the desk.

  “Meroooow!” Belladonna jumped back up.

  Jolene rolled her eyes and craned her neck to look around Belladonna at Morgan, Fiona and Celeste. “So, all we know is Sarah Easty’s ghost said that Sam Gooding had the crystal ball in 1692 and he was supposed to hide it. I actually think Sam might have been a paranormal because I got a strange vibe when we were looking through the papers at the Ephemera Museum.”

  Morgan said, “Amity Jones must’ve been onto something because she was asking about crystals and she was at the Rebecca Nurse house.”

  “That's according to Opal, but we don’t know if she's friend or foe at this point. She could have been just telling us that about Amity to throw us off track,” Fiona suggested.

  “Mew.” Belladonna flopped down on the map and rolled over on her back.

  Celeste scratched Belladonna's belly. “We also know that Sam was related to Rebecca Nurse through marriage.”

  Fiona took out the alexandrite gemstone. “We also have this that will somehow show us the next clue, except we need to get close enough to that clue so the keystone can pick up its energy and point it out to us.”

  “I’m pretty sure the scrying ball is not at the Rebecca Nurse house,” Morgan said. “Even though we have found a few clues there so far, my intuition tells me that is not where it is.”

  “Merup!” Belladonna leapt up from the table, pushing all the papers off including the map which floated down to the floor.

  Jolene bent down to pick it up and then it hit her. “Wait a minute. It makes sense that Sam didn’t hide the scrying ball at the Rebecca Nurse house because they were already accusing witches when they realized the ball needed to be protected. Rebecca was already accused, but Sam wasn’t accused of being a warlock.”

  “That’s right. I didn’t think of that,” Morgan said. “They wouldn’t want the crystal ball at the house of someone being accused of witchcraft.”

  Jolene put the map back on the desk. “So, if he didn’t hide it at her house, he might have hidden it at his.” She tapped her index finger on the map. “And now, all we have to do is figure exactly out where his house was.”

  14

  The next morning, Jolene awoke early, made some coffee and double-checked all their information. They’d worked well into the night, amidst much meowing and paper-throwing by Belladonna, going through all the pictures they'd taken of the museum's paperwork.

  They finally got a lead on Sam Gooding's address and discovered it was only a few blocks from the hotel, very near to the Ephemera Museum, at Number Two West Great River Road. Jolene had tried to double check the address by hacking into the town's database and accessing the town records, but they didn’t go back that far.

  “Meow.” Belladonna paced by the door expectantly.

  “No, you can’t go.”

  The cat slitted her eyes, slicing an angry glare in Jolene’s direction.

  “It’s for your own good.”

  “Merow!” Belladonna spun around, presented her backside to Jolene, flicked her tail and stalked off.

  “What was that all about?” Fiona emerged from her room, looking refreshed in a gray t-shirt and cropped leg jeans, her long hair tied back in a ponytail.

  “She wanted to come with us.”

  Morgan appeared at her door similarly dressed, but with a black t-shirt. “It’s bad enough we let her roam free when we aren’t here. The hotel manager is going to catch on. I’ve already noticed him giving us the hairy eyeball.”

  Jolene stretched in her chair. “Hopefully, we won’t be here much longer. We don't have much for breakfast.”

  “I have my stuff. I’m starving.” Celeste appeared in the doorway, stifling a yawn. She helped herself to her health food, leaving the coffee for her sisters.

  Fiona said, “We can get some breakfast when we're out. She winked at Jolene. “If you’re lucky, I’ll even buy you that ice cream I owe you for dessert.”

  Celeste glanced out the window while eating her cottage cheese. “It’s a beautiful day today. We should walk. We’ve been eating out a lot we need to walk off the calories."

  Jolene added hopefully, "Especially if ice cream is in our future.”

  “Mew.” Belladonna trotted over to the door.

  “Not you, Belladonna.” Morgan’s words received an angry slit-eyed glare from the cat.

  Soon after Fiona asked, “Are you all ready?” She walked over to the door and grabbed the knob. Belladonna pushed in between her legs so she could run out. “Oh, no, not you. We’ll bring you back an ice cream.”

  “She’s not going to let us leave.” Celeste pulled a bag of cat treats from the kitchen drawer and crinkled it noisily. “We can distract her with these.”

  Belladonna’s attention flicked between the door and the treats.<
br />
  Celeste took three treats out while Fiona, Jolene and Morgan lined up by the door at the ready.

  “Ready?” Celeste held the treats up and looked to Fiona.

  Fiona nodded.

  Celeste threw the treats toward the window.

  Belladonna whipped her head around, taking off after the treats at high speed, a flash of white across the floor, then she leapt up and caught one treat in mid-air.

  At the same time, Fiona ripped the door open and the girls bolted out of the room.

  Belladonna jerked her attention over to the door just as Celeste, who was last in line, slipped out. The cat spun on a dime and ran for the door, but she wasn’t fast enough. Celeste pulled the door shut just as Belladonna leaped for it.

  Jolene grimaced as she heard the frustrated yowling behind the door. “We better bring her back something extra special for that.”

  “You can say that again,” Morgan said as Belladonna’s muffled cries of anger followed them down the hallway.

  Jolene was glad they had decided to walk because it was a perfect June day. The temperature was already in the mid-seventies, cool enough for walking but pleasant enough not to need a jacket. Dots of sun beamed through the thick leaves of the trees overhead and danced on the sidewalk. Seagulls cried in the distance.

  “So what’s going on with you and Mateo, anyway? Morgan asked.

  The question was out of the blue, but Jolene wasn’t surprised. She’d been expecting a barrage of questions from her sisters after she’d gone to dinner with him the other night.

  “Nothing, really.” It was pretty much the truth.

  “What do you mean nothing?” Fiona asked. “It doesn’t seem like nothing to me.”

  Jolene shrugged. “I don’t really know what’s going on. Honestly, I haven’t thought about it much. I’ve been focused on finding the crystal ball. You know, saving the world from evil and all. I think that’s a little bit more important than thinking about my non-relationship with the mysterious Mateo.”

  “Well, you can still—”