Hm. Could that have been the motive for her murder? Maybe it had nothing to do with magic, keys, or portal. “But you were at her house the day she was killed, so you must not have disliked her that much. Unless you went to argue with her.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Did your sister put you up to this?”
I snorted. “Hardly. Gus tries to keep me as far from any investigation as possible.” Why did people think that Gus would enlist my aid to interview suspects? It was actually the opposite. I was the last person she would listen to when it came to detective work.
“Well, I was there to argue, but I can prove I didn’t have anything to do with Mary’s death because someone saw me leaving before Mary was killed.”
“Who?”
“Sarah Delaney. She’ll remember seeing me, too, because I gave her a piece of my mind.”
“You did? Why?” My brain was whirling. Finally, a link between Sarah and Mary! If Danielle was telling the truth, then that might mean that Sarah was at Mary’s right before the time that she died. Maybe even during the time she died. But if that was true, why did Danielle lie about her alibi?
Danielle fisted her hands on her hips. “Because you shop owners are the same. You don’t play fair. Someone puts their name in for an old book, and you give it to someone else. Sarah is no better than you.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re not the only one in town with old books. Sarah has them in her antique store too.” Danielle waved at the volume on the counter. “Much older than this thing. Anyway, apparently Mary was desperate for old recipes. She had just paid for a lot of ads to go to her blog, and she needed new recipes. We sort of got into it down at Sarah’s the other day, fighting over an old recipe book I found in the back of her shop.”
“Okay… so why did Sarah go to Mary’s?”
“Don’t you see? Mary had probably made a deal with her, and Sarah was delivering a book. Didn’t even bother to offer it to me!”
The wheels in my brain started turning. I’d seen Sarah disappearing down the alley beside my shop the day the key had disappeared. Had the key been in the box after I’d seen Sarah that day? What if she had somehow broken in magically and taken the key? I couldn’t remember if I checked the box afterward, but Pandora had been in the store. Surely, she would have noticed Sarah coming in? Could Sarah have put some sort of a sleep spell on the cat?
And of course, it would be just like Sarah to be mixed up in an evil plot to open a portal. She dressed like a witch, thought like a witch, and even smelled like a witch.
“Are you sure Sarah was delivering a book to Mary?”
“Why else would she be sneaking around Mary’s house? Plus, she ducked behind a forsythia bush as soon as she saw me. That right there proves she was up to something and didn’t want me to know. Don’t worry, I gave her a piece of my mind. It was stressful, and that’s why I messed up the timing and told your sister I was at the spa.”
“Really?” It was hard to believe she would forget arguing with Sarah and tell Gus she was at the spa.
“Yes. It wasn’t totally my fault. Gus only asked where I had been around three p.m. My massage appointment was at three, but I had to take the four p.m. slot because arguing with Sarah made me late. But when Gus asked me where I was, I got all flustered and looked in my calendar and saw the massage appointment. I forgot that I had actually been late to it. It’s all straightened out with Gus now. I mean, I would hardly be stupid enough to lie about an alibi that could so easily be verified to be false.”
“Of course you wouldn’t.” Could the explanation for the lie really be that simple? Gus could be intimidating, and Danielle wouldn’t be the first person to get flustered under her intense questioning.
“So anyway, thanks for calling me, but I don’t really want this book. I’m looking for something older,” Danielle said.
“Oh okay, well, I’ll keep you in mind.”
Danielle left, and I stood at the counter to gather my thoughts. Sarah and Felicity had fought at the Cut & Curl. Sarah had been seen near my shop.
Felicity had the receipt proving that she was in my store at the time of death, but I still didn’t trust her. Could she fake her haggard appearance with a spell?
Her hair had lost its sheen, she was hunched over, her fingernails were ragged…
Wait! Fingernails!
I glanced up at the box that had held the key. The key had been missing when we had opened it, but it hadn’t exactly been empty. There had been a piece of plastic in there that I assumed had been there the whole time, but what if it hadn’t?
I rushed to the trash barrel, thankful that I hadn’t emptied it yet. I pulled out the little moon-shaped piece of plastic. It wasn’t a piece of plastic. It was a fingernail tip. A black fingernail. And who did I know that had black fingernails?
Sarah Delaney.
Chapter Nineteen
I dropped the fingernail in disgust, then scooped it into a baggie with a piece of paper and washed my hands. I locked up the shop and rushed off to Sarah’s store. I didn’t really have a plan. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but by poking around in the store and asking some questions like I had when I was a reporter, I was sure that something would shake loose.
The day had flown by, and it was late afternoon.
Sarah’s shop was a couple of blocks away. A group of familiar cats was hanging around in the alley beside the shop. One of them was Pandora.
“You can communicate with them?” I asked hopefully.
“No. But sometimes you don’t need words.” Pandora still sounded down in the dumps but maybe a little more hopeful.
I remembered a few other times I thought I saw a cat that resembled Pandora near Sarah’s. I had always thought she had a doppelgänger, but now I wasn’t so sure.
“Was that you I’ve seen here a few other times?” I asked.
“Me? No.” Pandora avoided eye contact. “Don’t we have more important matters to discuss? What brings you here?”
I told her about the visit from Danielle and the fingernail I’d found in the wastebasket.
“That wasn’t a piece of plastic in the box, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t in there before I put the key in.”
“A fingernail? Yuck!”
“Tell me about it.” I wiped my hands on my jeans. “What are you doing here? Is something going on?”
“As far as I can tell, the Mystic Notch cats are surveilling Sarah. They’ve been going around town performing surveillance on our various suspects. That’s common in an investigation. Cats can tell a lot of things that people can’t, you know.”
“No doubt.” I looked over the gaggle of cats. To anyone not in the know, they looked like regular cats hanging around in the alley, but I recognized some of them from my many trips to Elspeth’s. These were no regular cats. “So, the cats suspect Sarah too? I must be on to something.”
“Not so fast,” Pandora said. “Look at them.”
All the cats were staring up at me and shaking their head as if saying no.
“The person who took the key has to be Sarah. Felicity has an alibi, and Danielle was seen leaving Mary’s before she was killed. Who else do we have?”
“Don’t forget, the person who killed Mary is a crafty witch. And a good liar. They might be lying to you and also be using magic to fake certain things.”
Of course, she was right. Which meant that Felicity could have been faking her ailment. I wouldn’t put it past her. But Sarah could be lying too. Striker hadn’t mentioned her as one of the suspects. Did the police even know she’d been to Mary’s? Surely Danielle had mentioned it.
“I still think it’s important to check out Sarah. She might know something even if she isn’t the person.” I still thought Sarah really was the person but wanted to appease Pandora.
I opened the door to the shop and looked back at my cat. “You coming?”
Pandora glanced at the other cats who were still shaking their heads. She shrugged and fol
lowed me into the store.
The antique store was crammed full of old furniture and smelled like lemon Pledge. Shelves full of items lined the middle of the store. They were loaded with various kinds of glassware, silver teapot sets, and other antique items. Sarah had increased the inventory since I’d last been in there, and it was so crowded you could barely see if anyone else was in there.
As soon as we entered, Sarah’s little Yorkie came rushing out of nowhere, dancing around on the faded blue-and-red oriental rug and yipping at Pandora.
“Oh no! I can understand its little noises more clearly now.” Pandora turned to the small dog, arched her back, and hissed. “Shut up.”
“Yipe!” The dog tucked its tail between its legs and ran behind a three-foot-tall Ming vase.
“Oh, I guess it can understand me too,” Pandora said.
Sarah came rushing out from somewhere in the bowels of the store. “Skeezits! What happened?” She rushed toward the dog, stopping short when she saw me. “Oh, Willa. What are you doing here in the middle of the day? Shouldn’t you be tending to your shop?”
“I’m not the only one that leaves my shop in the middle of the day, Sarah. Didn’t I see you running away from my shop the other morning?”
Sarah glanced down at Skeezits, who was panting up at her. She scooped him up and planted a kiss on top of his head. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I think you do. You were after the key, weren’t you?” I decided to just go for it. There was no point in beating around the bush.
“I wasn’t after any key. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do, and I think you’re up to something. That’s why you fought with Felicity about spices in the Cut & Curl the other day. That fight wasn’t about spices. It was about the cookbook and where the key was hidden, wasn’t it?”
Sarah looked genuinely surprised. “The key was hidden in a cookbook? How interesting. But you’re wrong about the argument. We actually were arguing about spices. You see, we had made the same toad-spiced pumpkin bread for the witches’ bake-off.”
Toad spiced? Witches’ bake-off? I made a disgusted face.
“Yeah, it’s a thing. Anyway, there was a question about whose dish was best. I say the savory spices made mine the better one. She thinks her sweet one was better.”
“There’s a witches’ bake-off?”
“Yeah. Second Sunday in August, midnight, in the clearing behind the bowling alley. I’m surprised you didn’t know about it. I saw your ghosts, Robert and Franklin, there.”
“How did you know I had ghosts? I didn’t think they actually ever left the shop.” As far as I knew, Pandora and I were the only ones that they talked to. Pepper knew about them because I had told her, but I hardly thought she would be telling Sarah.
“They usually don’t, but they are allowed to manifest at certain witch gatherings. Other than that, it’s just your shop and the ghostly realm. Not many people know, but I happen to be able to communicate with ghosts. Robert and Franklin are just delightful, and they were quite keen to have some dishes named after them.”
“Yeah, I’d heard that.” Why was Sarah going off on a tangent like this? Was she trying to distract me? “But I don’t think you’re telling the truth. I think you were in my shop, and that’s how you met them.”
She frowned. “No. I’ve never been in there. Would love an invite though.”
“Really? Then how do you explain this?” I pulled the plastic bag with the black fingernail tip out of my pocket.
She peered at it then made a face. “Is that my fingernail?”
“I found it in the box where the key was kept. You must have lost it when you stole the key. How did you get in without Pandora noticing?”
Sarah put Skeezits gently on the floor and held up her fingers—short nails. “Wrong again. I had to have Margie at the Cut & Curl cut my nails short because of that argument with Felicity Bates. I was in the middle of a manicure, and my beautiful nails got ruined!”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “A likely story.”
“It’s true.” Sarah turned her hands around to look at her nails, her expression full of regret. “I loved my long nails. These things take forever to grow. You are right about one thing, though. I was at your shop that morning. But I wasn’t stealing anything. I didn’t go in. That would be rude. I’d heard about the key but had no idea it was in an old cookbook. I was putting a charm on your lock so someone else wouldn’t be able to open it with magic and steal the key. Guess that didn’t work so good.”
Back when I was a journalist, I’d had an uncanny ability to tell when people were lying. Maybe my instincts were off, but I got the feeling Sarah was telling the truth. I glanced over at Pandora to get her take on it, but she was no longer sitting at my feet.
“Willa, I think you should check this out.” Pandora’s voice came from a few aisles over.
“I’m kind of busy.” Was Pandora shopping? We needed to focus on finding out what Sarah was up to and figure out if she was telling the truth, not browse the store for trinkets.
“It’s really important and has to do with the magical key.”
Oh! Why hadn’t she said that in the first place? I proceeded into the store toward the direction of her voice.
Pandora was standing on her hind legs, her front paws on a shelf, looking at a box.
The box was about the size of a bread box. It had a gorgeous tiger maple veneer with ivory inlay and a gold strip around the edge.
“Robert’s Frost’s box,” I said.
Pandora looked up at me. “I think the cats might have been right. If this is Robert’s box and Sarah has the key, why wouldn’t she have opened it?”
Sarah came around the corner, Skeezits close on her heels.
“What is it?” she asked.
Pandora looked up at her “As if you didn’t know!”
She looked curiously at Pandora. “Is your cat trying to say something to me?”
Skeezits pawed at Sarah. “Yip yip yip.”
She turned to Pandora. “As if I didn’t know what?”
Apparently Skeezits had translated Pandora’s words. If we let the animals in on this conversation, things were going to get complicated.
“We think it’s the portal that the key goes to.”
“The portal?” Sarah picked the box up carefully. “I could never get this box unlocked no matter how many skeleton keys I tried. I should’ve known there was something special about it.”
“Yip yip yip.” The little dog’s yipping was getting on my nerves. At least Pandora’s meows weren’t as loud.
Sarah’s gaze jerked to Pandora. “Your cat needs to get it open to reverse a potion gone wrong.”
“How did you know that?”
“Skeezits. He knows everything that’s going on. He’s very intuitive. He saw that the cats and Pandora could no longer communicate, and I happen to know that getting a whiff of the initial air from a portal opening is the only thing that will fix a backfired potion.”
“Well, supposedly Pandora’s not the only one that needs that. Felicity Bates claims that she needs it too. Are you in cahoots with her?”
Sarah laughed. “Cahoots? Who says that anymore? No, I’m not working with her if that’s what you’re asking, and I don’t have the key.” She looked at me seriously. “Willa, this is very serious. If the wrong person opens this, I hate to think what will happen to Mystic Notch.”
“Yes, I’ve heard.” I wasn’t sure if I could trust Sarah, but if she had the key and the box, she would have opened it already.
“But what does this have to do with Robert Frost?” Sarah asked.
I told her the story of how Robert Frost had kept his poems in the box.
“So, he’s a buffer,” Sarah said after hearing how his sister and friend had bad luck when they opened the box, but not Robert. “I’ve heard that there are certain magical people who can open a portal without ramifications. Robert must be one of them.�
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“That was when he was alive, but we don’t know if his ghost has the same ability,” I pointed out.
Sarah looked at me intently. “Maybe he does, or maybe he doesn’t, but either way we can use this box to flush out the person who has the key. It’s critical that we find that person and get the key before they use it.”
That sounded very heroic, but I wasn’t really sure I wanted part of it. Then again, I didn’t want Mystic Notch to become overrun with demons and evil intentions.
“How?” I squeaked out.
She held the box out to me. “You take this box back to your shop. Let everyone see you carrying it. The person that has the key might recognize it and could come to your shop hoping to open it.”
“Why don’t you just keep it here and put it in your display window or something?” I asked. Seemed like Sarah would be better equipped to deal with the key-holder, whatever that entailed.
Sarah shook her head, her expression serious. “We need to have it in your shop because that’s where Robert is. If he truly is a buffer and the key-holder gets the box open, his presence will help mitigate any disastrous effects.”
“Really?” I was skeptical.
“Sure. You said so yourself. When his sister and friend opened it, bad things happened but not evil-demon bad. So even if someone else opens it and he’s around, it could be the thing that saves Mystic Notch.”
“But we’re not even sure that will work the same now that he’s a ghost.” But if it did work, that could be the thing that allowed Pandora to get a first whiff without harm coming to the town.
“What other choice do we have?” Sarah shoved the box toward me, her eyes pleading. “Please take it. I’ll keep watch and be ready to help if anything happens.”
“I think we have to do it,” Pandora said.
I looked down at my cat. She was depending on me. I took the box from Sarah, and Pandora and I went back to my shop to wait.
Chapter Twenty
Claw And Order (Mystic Notch Cozy Mystery Series Book 8) Page 10
