Witches and Wine

by Samantha Silver

  Karen placed her hand on my arm, and smiled up at Ken. "We get it. And actually, we better be on our way, too. Lots of stuff to do at uh, home. Right, Taylor?"

  I quickly nodded, taking the hint. "Yup. Lots of stuff."

  The seriousness in Ken's expression melted away again and was replaced once more by that dazzling smile. "Okay. Well, it was nice catching up, Karen. And it was very nice meeting you, Taylor," he replied, beaming at me.

  “You too,” I managed to stammer out as Karen practically dragged me away.

  Slipping out of my boots, I stretched my arms out overhead and yawned. I had to give props to the real detectives out there, doing their jobs. I was exhausted, and we weren’t even real detectives.

  "So, Ken seems like a pretty cool guy."

  Karen practically spit out the glass of red wine she'd just poured for herself.

  "Oh my god, Taylor, could you be any more obvious?"

  I shrugged. "What?"

  "What?" she mimicked in an annoying falsetto that most definitely did not sound a thing like me, and shook her head. "You have a crush on Mr. Esquire, himself. Look at you!"

  I couldn't keep the grin off my face. "Well, he is pretty cute. Except for that whole Corinne Leeman being his mother-thing. Gah. I can only imagine what those Sunday dinners must be like."

  Karen pulled a face. "I’ve been to a couple. They’re pretty much exactly as you might imagine. Although, at least with me, I didn’t have to worry about Corinne trying to set me up with Ken every ten minutes."

  I raised a brow at her. “Really? How come? I figured she would’ve been hounding you more than anyone else, as the girl next door and all.”

  There was a wicked grin that flashed across Karen’s face, and she innocently shrugged back. “I’m not really the woman she pictured for her son, I guess. I think Corinne Leeman thinks my mother and I are a little too eccentric for her taste.”

  “Ha! If that’s not the pot calling the kettle black. Why do you think that, anyway?”

  “Because she literally said it to one of the other moms while my mom and I were picking up my graduation cap and gown, back in high school. It’s totally fine though—it gives us a reason not to hang around her for very long on any given occasion.”

  For a moment, I tried to imagine what it must have been like, growing up knowing just how different you were from everyone else. All my life I thought I was different simply because I had been adopted, but that was nothing compared to finding out I was an actual witch. And I imagined growing up with magical powers I had to hide was slightly more difficult than knowing that I wasn’t genetically related to my parents. I pointed to the bottle of wine and she grabbed a second glass for me.

  "Do you think we're any closer to finding out who the real killer is?" I asked, changing subjects.

  Karen poured the glass slowly before sliding it over my way. "Honestly? I don't know. I'd like to think so."

  We were both quiet for a minute, caught in our own circles of thought.

  "Do you think we should go for round two at my dad's office? It didn't seem to be an issue at the police station," Karen suddenly asked, shaking me from my daydreaming.

  I finally swiped the half-full glass from her and took a sip, reveling in the bold flavor. Barbara really knew her wine, it appeared. This was Napa Valley after all; I supposed everyone here knew their wine.

  "I'm not opposed to it."

  There was definitely a grin on her face this time. "Then it's settled. We'll wait for everything to quiet down tonight, and then be on our way." Karen held her glass aloft in the air, and stood up straight. "To forming a bond through breaking and entering by ways of magic and sheer dumb luck."

  With the image of Ken's handsome smile and his troubled expression in my mind's eye, I clinked the glass of red wine against hers, adding, "Here, here. And who knows? Maybe we'll find out what's really going on at that law firm while we're at it."

  Chapter 12

  "You know, I don't think I'm ever going to get used to not being able to see my own hands," I mumbled to Karen as we crept up to the side entrance of the law firm. Karen let out a grunt of frustration in reply.

  "Ugh! This stupid door has an alarm set on it. The minute we try and open it, it'll go off. Think, Karen, think," she continued, talking to herself, the sound of her footsteps telling me she was pacing back and forth in front of me. "I don't know how we're going to get in."

  I chewed on my bottom lip, wondering how any other witch would get themselves out of this kind of situation. "What about that book? The one with all the spells in it? Surely there has to be a spell to turn off muggle alarms in there somewhere."

  Just because this wasn’t Harry Potter didn’t mean I couldn’t use the terms. Besides, what was the use of being a witch if I couldn’t pretend to be Hermione?

  "Yeah, I’m sure I know a spell for this," Karen replied, "Hold on. Let me think."

  Karen mumbled to herself for a minute, trying to remember the spell, before she spoke again. “Ok, I’m pretty sure I remember it. Recludoroa in silentio custodia."

  The door shuddered just like my chest did at the words “pretty sure”, but there was a loud click, and Karen pushed it open slowly. I could imagine her face scrunched up just waiting for the alarm to sound, but apparently her spell had worked. I walked in behind her, and we both paused to let our eyes adjust to the dimness inside the building. There weren’t any alarms rupturing our eardrums, so at least there was that.

  The door shut a little too loudly for my taste, and I jumped, Karen shushing me from a few feet away.

  "Sorry!" I mumbled, a feeling of anxiousness settling in as I took in the dark building. To say it was creepy was a bit of an understatement.

  "This way," Karen whispered, and I followed the sound of her voice down an offshoot hallway that I hadn't noticed before, until we were back in the main hall I'd seen the last time we were inside.

  "Looks like Eliza didn't lock up after all," Karen said as we made our way to her father’s office, the door creaking open as soon as Karen touched it. I half-expected something to pop out and scare the bejeezus out of us.

  The chair pulled itself out from under Henry's desk, and I could just make out where the cushion was pushed down from Karen sitting on it. His laptop screen flickered to life, casting the whole room in an eerie shade of blue. Karen muttered something at the computer and the password screen disappeared, revealing the desktop. Man, being a witch certainly had its advantages.

  "I hope no one can see that," I whispered, realizing there was a decent-sized window behind me. Even with the blinds shut, I didn’t trust that the light from the laptop wouldn’t alert any onlookers to the fact that there was someone in the dead man’s office.

  "Hopefully he kept his case files on his computer," Karen said aloud as the mouse darted around, seemingly on its own, the cursor opening up little folder icons left and right. "Bingo."

  She double-clicked on one labelled ‘January – June.’ Dozens of individual files blossomed open on the screen, labelled by month and then alphabetically by last name. She clicked to view ‘January - Anderson.’

  The file was a scanned copy log of bank statements with highlighted transactions that made absolutely no sense to me. "What's all that about?"

  Karen slowly scrolled through page after page of the file. "I don't really know. But this is a big file."

  Sure enough, when she reached the middle of the scanned copy there were copies of emails pasted into the document from a Theodore Anderson to Henry.

  "Dear Henry,

  Was the last of the Wilbert accounts emptied? I just need confirmation from you before I start filling out this asset report sheet from the judge. As always, thanks for your discretion and your expertise in the matter.

  Sincerely,

  T. Anderson."

  Karen’s voice was low but curious. “Emptying accounts? You’d think Henry was an accountant, not an attorney, the way this guy carries on.”

  Below th
e last email chain was a scanned copy of a Swiss bank statement, translated in English, showing that Mr. Theodore Anderson had a brand-new account opened in his name with an opening balance transfer $1.9 million dollars.

  “That is a lot of money,” I whispered.

  The chair squeaked as Karen sat back. "It really is. But then again, this is Napa Valley. There are people here who are absolutely loaded, and I know if I was going to open a bank account in Switzerland with almost 2 million bucks I’d probably want to run that past a lawyer."

  She opened the next few files, two of them from February and one from March, all three of them set up nearly identically to the first document: bank statements from a client, emails from the client mentioning transfers, assets, and accounts, and the same Swedish bank statements with all brand-spanking-new accounts open in each client's name.

  "I cannot believe this," Karen finally said, the chair groaning as she sounded like she was standing up. The first drawer of the file cabinet that Eliza had been fiddling with the last time we were in the office flew open, and hanging files were pushed back until one floated up, its contents being rifled through.

  “What is it?” I asked. “I don’t understand any of this. Why are there so many Swiss bank accounts being opened for Henry’s clients?”

  "What a scumbag!" Karen hissed, tossing the file to the desk where I could just make out the label: 'Anderson, Theodore.' "These were his clients! He was helping these sorry excuses for men move their assets to a Swiss bank where no one can reach while they were going through their divorce proceedings! This Theo guy? He had almost two million dollars in hiding that he was stopping his wife and kids from gaining access to, can you believe it!?"

  I flipped the folder open and glanced at the docket report for the case of Theo Anderson versus his wife. "Wow. This is utterly despicable."

  Karen held up another file, this one much thinner. "It's a list of addresses that correspond with bank accounts opened under that Swiss bank we saw. Unbelievable! Taylor, one of these is, or was, rather, my father's address."

  I connected her line of thinking, tilting my head to look back down at the laptop screen. "You think that he was also hiding money? He might have been; it seems like he had no issue doing it for anyone else."

  The keyboard clacked away as Karen typed something in the computer’s search feature. A whole row of documents hidden behind an innocuous dummy file aptly titled, ‘Family’, popped into existence on the screen. The cursor hovered over the first file as she paused. “These are dated from twenty years ago until just last year,” she quietly announced.

  I stood behind her, my curiosity definitely getting the better of me. The first file was a similar scanned in bank statement, this one looking much older than the more recent ones we saw in his client’s files. Same Swiss bank, with Henry’s name stamped across it.

  Karen sighed, and opened up the last file—another bank statement from last year, but same thing as all the others. This one had an ongoing deposit set up for every quarter. One hundred thousand dollars, every three months like clockwork.

  "So, he’s been running this scheme since before they got divorced,” Karen muttered. Pulling up another older file, she scanned her finger down the transaction history until she found what she was looking for. Just over two million deposited into the account all at once.

  I couldn’t see Karen, but I could feel the anger rolling off of her in waves. Even the air around her seemed heated.

  “But that means, ugh, what a bastard! Just wait until I tell Mom. She's going to go through the roof when she finds out," Karen screeched. She slammed the laptop shut and shoved one of the two folders back into the top drawer.

  "I bet she won't be that surprised. You should have heard the way she reacted when Corinne told us at the supermarket..."

  But Karen’s footsteps were already leading out of the office, and I had to once again hurry to follow after her. I heard her mutter something under her breath, but I was too busy trying to duck past the creepy museum of old man portraits to hear what she said.

  "You don't understand, Taylor. My mom had to go through this whole ordeal when they got divorced. I just looked it up and sure enough, it looks like he took it upon himself to ease any complications on his end and send most of his money overseas, knowing that the judge was going through his income records. I always wondered why the child support mom got was so low. It never made any sense because I knew he was making bank at the law firm. This just... I can't even right now," she finished, before we were out the side door again.

  Chapter 13

  An odd sort of routine slowly started developing for me in Rosemary Creek—one that I never in my wildest dreams could have imagined following.

  I’d wake up in a strange room to the sound of a would-be stranger cooking breakfast for us. Get ready for the day, then discuss the murder of said would-be stranger’s estranged father some more. Try and connect the dots for the hour before we’d leave to run her mother's business, which I knew nothing about.

  It was a strange routine, but it was better than nothing. And it was a heck of a lot better than forcing myself to schlepp over to Little Richie's Car Emporium in the morning.

  The bell over the shop's door chimed as Karen unlocked the back door. It was the first bad weather I'd seen in Rosemary Creek—the sky was a blustery overcast with the wind coming down from the mountains around us whipping at my hair, and I was more than a little relieved to step out of the chilly air and into the warmth of Creekside Trinkets. We stuck our purses and jackets in the office and walked up to the front of the shop.

  "This feels so weird," Karen told me as she pulled out the cash register tray and prepared the till for the morning. "Instead of working at the shelter, I'm here again. Without Mom, no less. Everything feels so, I dunno."

  "Topsy-turvy?" I suggested, handing her a new roll of receipt paper from under the counter.

  Karen nodded, feeding the end of the paper tape into the printer. "Something like that, yeah. I think I'll feel much better once she's out of that stupid jail cell and back home again."

  "Well, you're in luck, my dear, because here I am!" Barbara’s voice announced a second before she came through the front door, wearing a deep burgundy dress with pockets, sensible shoes, and a big smile on her face. "Did you miss me?"

  "Mom!" Karen cried, running around the counter and straight into Barbara's open arms. "They let you out!"

  "Yes, they did. I finally had enough of all the bumbling about in the station, and no one seemed to be voluntarily admitting anything about the case anymore, so I figured my time there was over. Chief Benson wasn't very happy, but he let me out, all the same when my lawyer came in yelling about habeus corpus." Barbara met my gaze over top of Karen's head. "And how are you faring here, dear? I feel like I've all but abandoned you. I’m afraid you’re not getting quite the experience in learning to be a witch that I’d hoped for."

  I waved her off. "No need to worry about me. Karen's been a big help, actually."

  "I'm very glad to hear that. I was hoping we hadn't driven you away with all this nonsense going on. "

  "Mom, what did they say when they let you go?" Karen asked. "They didn't just say see you later, surely?"

  Barbara let go of her and pushed a strand of Karen's brown hair behind her ear. "Well, before I convinced them to let me out, there was some discussion about the lack of evidence in Henry's case. They were looking for an object, a set of golf clubs, I believe, which they certainly weren’t going to find at my place, I can’t stand the sport. So they couldn't find anything connecting me to the murder. I hate to say it, but Chief Benson seemed very odd during my stay in the station. I felt in a way that he didn’t want me there, but the man put up a wall so high that even I couldn't easily penetrate it. Not without my book, anyway."

  "You mean the spell-book?" I asked, always interested any time it was mentioned.

  "Precisely. I suppose I'll eventually find out what was troubling him, when his g
uard is down and he least expects it. But that's neither here or there," she replied as she slipped behind the front counter and ran her hand along the edge of the display glass. "I came here to give you girls a break. I know you've both been so helpful in keeping this place open for me while I've been, well, preoccupied. And I know you're probably just itching to get back to all your furry friends at the shelter," she added, winking at Karen. "So, thank you both for that, dears. Go home and relax, if you'd like, while the dust from this whole investigation settles. The funeral will no doubt be some time in the next few days, so I think it's best to lay low for now."

  Even though I knew there was no way Karen was going to go home and just relax even if Barbara was out of jail, I smiled at Barbara and nodded, all the same. "It would be nice to relax."

  "It also wouldn't hurt for you to look over the spell-book, either," Barbara told me, giving me a knowing look.

  "Homework!" Karen laughed. "So much for chilling out, huh, Taylor?"

  Shaking my head, I grinned back at her. "Oh, there will definitely be a glass of wine involved. Homework or not."

  "I'm truly glad to see the two of you getting on so well." Barbara flipped a couple of switches along the back wall, lighting up the rest of the shop.

  "Let us know if you need any help, okay?" Karen called out over her shoulder as we headed to the office to grab our things.

  As soon as we both buckled up inside the hatchback—me looking longingly at Barbara's much roomier and comfier car—Karen turned the radio off. "I think we should keep investigating."

  "I figured. And yeah, me too," I agreed. "We've already put so much time into it, anyway. I don't think I'll be able to sleep at night if we just leave it here."

  She reached back behind her seat and fished something out from under it: a plain manila folder that looked familiar.

  "Luckily for us, I know the next step to take. Look here," she explained, pulling out the list of all of Henry's client's addresses and information. "I grabbed this last night from his office. I have to wonder just what kind of reputation my father had with his client's ex-wives. Even if they didn't know about the stunt he was pulling, helping their husbands stow away their cash, they probably weren't very fond of him.”