I shook my head and made my way to one of the other women standing in the romance section.
“Can I help you find anything?” I asked with a smile.
“Yes, is this the book you were reading at the book club last night when that woman died?”
The smile died on my lips. “It is, yes. Pride and Prejudice.”
“I’d like to buy this one please. I assume the copy that woman had isn’t for sale.”
“No, it isn’t,” I said firmly. “I can meet you at the counter at the back if that’s all you’d like.”
Sure enough, I sold the copy of the book, and then found myself hounded by customer after customer, all looking for perverse information about the death.
“If you’d like I can try to haunt them all,” Aunt Francine’s ghost said at one point, making an appearance. “Although I haven’t tried haunting yet, I’d probably be pretty good at it.”
I shot the ghost a smile, though I couldn’t reply with so many people in the room. I knew she was kidding, but I was half-tempted to take her up on that offer. So many people were treating this murder like it was some sort of TV show plot, or something. It was ridiculous.
Eventually, a young man of about thirty made his way toward me behind the counter. His dark brown hair was crew cut in style, and his dark eyes were filled with sadness. The way he was dressed, in a dusty white shirt and jeans, I knew he must have worked in construction.
“Hi,” he said. “Are you Alice?”
“I am,” I replied. “How can I help you?”
“I’m Kyle Dupplin,” he replied. “Vanessa, the girl who died here last night, was my fiancée.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said to him, my heart going out to the man. “She seemed like a nice woman.”
“Oh, she was,” he nodded enthusiastically. “Vanessa was the light of my life. I was just crushed when the police came to see me last night and told me what happened. I was just wondering if you could tell me about, you know, her last moments.”
“Of course,” I said to him. “Why don’t you come have a seat on this couch in the corner, it’s a little bit more private.”
I motioned to a small loveseat at the back of the shop and he sat down on it, while I grabbed the bean-bag chair and dragged it over, much to Muffin’s dislike, as he was currently in the middle of a nap on the chair.
“If it helps, she didn’t suffer,” I told him. “It all happened very quickly.”
“Thank you,” Kyle said softly, looking at his hands. “Was she having fun?”
“She was, I think,” I replied. “Vanessa didn’t really seem to be the kind of person who was really into books, and I got the impression that her friend Polly kind of dragged her to the book club, but to her credit, Vanessa really got into it. She was willing and able to answer any question that was asked.”
“That sounds like her,” Kyle said. “Vanessa could be a little bit overwhelming to some people. You’re right though, she wasn’t a big fan of books. She much preferred movies. She’d seen the Pride and Prejudice movie a few times. She wasn’t going to go to the book club, but I wanted to watch the F1 race on TV, so she decided that she’d leave me to it and go out with Polly. If only I hadn’t wanted to watch the car racing,” he added wistfully.
“There’s nothing you could have done,” I told him. “Someone wanted her dead, and they would have found a way, even if she’d stayed home last night.”
“I know, but I still can’t help thinking about it. I can’t believe Polly went to work today. I made it fifteen minutes into my shift before breaking down and leaving. I came here because I didn’t know where else to go. I don’t want to be at home, everything there reminds me of Ness.”
I nodded. “I can understand that. So Polly and Vanessa were close?”
“Oh, absolutely. They’ve been inseparable since elementary school. Best friends forever, those two.”
He choked back what I could only assume was a sob. “She was supposed to be the maid of honor at our wedding.”
“Listen,” I said to Kyle. “I know this is hard, but can you think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt Vanessa?”
Kyle shook his head. “No. I mean, I know she rubbed some people the wrong way, but nothing like that.”
“She wasn’t having any issues with anyone?”
“Well, there was an issue she had with a woman who worked on the mountain.”
“Oh?”
“It was silly though, nothing that would get Ness murdered. She had an issue with one of the employees and complained about them to a higher-up. I’m afraid I don’t know the details. But that was it. Everyone loved Ness, really. And no one gets murdered over a simple complaint.”
“Of course not,” I said, making a mental note to see exactly what that complaint had been. I mean, it wasn’t like I had a ton of other leads to follow up on right now. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you. Sorry for coming here and bothering you.”
“Not at all,” I said.
“I have to get back home. I have to take care of Lewis, my dog.”
“Of course,” I nodded. “Take care of yourself.”
With a sad smile, Kyle left the bookshop, and my heart ached as I watched him walk away slowly. He moved like a man carrying the weight of the whole world on his shoulders.
Just as he was leaving, however, a flash of pastel purple moved in front of him, and Cat came into the bookshop. My eyebrows rose; Cat never had time to leave the cupcake shop during the day.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“No one is coming to eat cupcakes,” she complained. “I mean, the tourists are there. They haven’t heard about what’s happened. But none of my locals have come by today. I saw Maryanne Baker taking her morning tea in the Sapphire Village Tea Salon down the street. She saw me through the window and looked guilty as sin.”
“Oh Cat, I’m sorry,” I said.
“Hey, on the bright side, I have lots of time to help you figure out that someone else poisoned that cupcake or the coffee or whatever and that people aren’t going to die if they come back and eat at my place.”
“I’m glad. Kyle Dupplin, Vanessa’s fiancé, was just here a few minutes ago, you would have passed him as he went out. I asked him if anyone had anything against Vanessa, but he said no. He did say that she complained about someone who worked for the mountain but didn’t know the details. He doubted it had anything to do with her death, but I figured we might as well check it out, since we don’t really have any other leads.”
“People complain about the mountain all the time,” Cat agreed. “They just end up being given gift cards to appease them or whatever. I agree with Kyle, it was probably nothing, but we should check it out anyway.”
“I’m closing up for lunch in about half an hour, if you can wait we can go then?”
“Sounds good,” Cat said. “I told Maddie to text me if by some miracle we get busy enough that she needs me.”
With that, Cat grabbed a book off the shelf and settled herself down on one of the chairs, getting ready to kill some time before we went out together.
Chapter 5
The crowd of people that had come to see the scene of the murder had dissipated by noon–the real dedicated people had been there right at the start of the day–and at about ten past twelve I put the “back in an hour” sign on the door and closed up as Cat and I headed out.
It was a gorgeous day, with the sun shining high in the sky and not a cloud to be seen.
“No chance of the Others coming around today,” I said to Cat, and she nodded solemnly.
“I really wish we would get rid of them once and for all,” she said. “I don’t like having them around here.”
“Me neither,” I replied. “We have to figure out how to destroy them all. Do you think it’s like video games, where if we destroy the big boss, then we win?”
Cat shook her head. “I doubt it. I think we have to kill them all. I think if we kill the boss it will only make
the other ones angry.”
“I think the next time they’re going to send more than one of them after us,” I said quietly.
“I agree,” Cat said. “They’re definitely angry. We’ve killed a few of them by now, which had never happened before. They had always won, eventually.”
My own mother had been killed by the Others. She had sent me away to live with her best friend, who was non-magical, and immediately took me to Miami, where she never told me about my powers.
“Well, it’s going to have to end soon,” I said. “We need to combine our powers and defeat them, once and for all.”
“I’m going to try and convince Peaches to join us. Even though her magic has… unintended consequences a lot of the time, she’s still got powerful magic.”
“And who knows, she might accidentally manage to do something super cool with light that will help destroy them.”
“It’s going to take a lot of convincing, though. She left Sapphire Village to avoid getting trapped by them, after all.”
“I vote we go down there and try and convince her later,” I offered. “We really do need some powerful magic behind us if we’re going to do this.”
Cat nodded just as we found our way to Guest Services, in front of the main gondola that currently had about a five-minute lineup of tourists waiting to go up the mountain. Once at the top, visitors could eat in the lodge, just enjoy the views, savor some delicious ice cream from the stand that was always up there, or go for either short or long hikes, with the longest one being six miles. There were tons of options, and I kept forgetting to make time to go up there myself. The views were truly spectacular.
We made our way into guest services and up to the counter. All of a sudden, I began to feel a bit of anxiety. How on Earth were we going to find out what we were after? There was no way anyone was going to know what happened. How did we even explain what we were after?
Luckily for me, Cat had absolutely no such qualms. She strode straight up to the woman whose name badge said her name was Beth, and she was originally from Auckland, New Zealand, and flashed her a smile.
“Hi, I was wondering if you could direct us to someone who knew about a complaint made by someone I know, Vanessa–ummm, I guess I don’t really know her last name. But I know it was a recent complaint.”
The girl’s face clouded over. “Vanessa Rimes?”
“That might be it. Brunette, medium height?”
“That’s her,” the girl nodded. “She was the one who was murdered last night, right?”
“Yes,” Cat replied, her tone turning appropriately somber.
“Well good, she deserved it,” the girl replied, causing my eyes to widen somewhat. Wasn’t there some sort of saying about not speaking ill of the dead?
“She absolutely did,” Cat agreed without missing a step. “I heard about what happened when she came to complain, but I was hoping you could tell me the whole story.”
The girl nodded and leaned in close to us, conspiratorially, so we wouldn’t be overheard. “I’m not really supposed to talk about it, but frankly, I don’t care about this job at all. Especially after what happened to Iris.”
Iris? As in, the Iris who worked for the mountain until recently and had also been at the book club?
“Of course,” Cat said. “I don’t blame you a bit.”
“I was working here when Vanessa came in, three weeks ago,” Beth said. “I was at the counter right next to her. It was a slow day, so I didn’t have any customers. She stormed in, went straight to Jessica at the counter next to mine, complaining about her experience in the bike park.”
“Ok, that can’t be too rare, though, can it?” Cat asked.
Beth gave her a small smile. “You have no idea. But she was beyond mad. Absolutely foaming at the mouth. She said that one of the mountain workers had run into her on one of the downhill trails, that she had fallen off her bike because of it, and that she had to go to the clinic to get checked out, and had needed stitches.”
“Yikes.”
“Yeah. So I mean, sure, I felt bad for her. After all, it sucks when someone runs into you on a bike, and it can be dangerous. I thought maybe she was being a little bit more angry than I would have been, but we’re not all the same, you know?”
“Sure,” Cat nodded. “I definitely agree with that.”
“So Jessica apologized, and gave her some coupons for free food at the top the next day, and promised that she would make sure that the bike park employees would be told about the incident and made to be more careful. But that wasn’t nearly enough for Vanessa. She demanded to speak with a supervisor. Jessica told her that was fine, and she was taken into one of the offices at the back. We kind of figured that would be the last we heard about it.”
“But it wasn’t, was it?”
“Nope,” Beth said, shaking her head. “We heard yelling from behind the supervisor’s closed door. That was when we heard the name–Iris. Since it’s not exactly a common name we figured she meant Iris Woods, who has worked for the mountain for years, apparently. She works as ski patrol in the winter and bike patrol in the summer, and she’s just wonderful. Everyone loves her. She’s also an incredible skier and downhill biker, so I knew there was no way she would have just rammed straight into someone. That was when I started to doubt the story.”
“So what happened?” I asked. I had to admit, I was now fixated on Beth and this story.
“They fired Iris. Apparently, Vanessa threw up a huge stink, and even got her lawyer involved, and they decided it was easiest to just fire Iris than do anything else. It was insane. She came in here that day, bawling her eyes out. She was such a hard worker. I couldn’t believe that woman had actually gone so far as to get her fired.”
“Wow,” Cat said, shaking her head.
“And you know the worst part? Iris didn’t even do it. One of our regulars, when they heard Iris had been fired, came in and told us he had seen the whole incident. Vanessa had been biking out of control on a trail, and biked straight into Iris, who didn’t have the time to get out of the way. Vanessa had been the uphill biker, it was up to her to get out of the way. He went and told management his story, but they stuck to their guns, because of the legal threats from Vanessa.”
“That’s so unfair!” I exclaimed. “Poor Iris.”
“I know. I was so sad for her. She’s such a great person, and then someone goes and threatens to sue and the job she did so well is just gone.”
“Did you know Vanessa was murdered?”
Beth nodded. “That’s what I was told this morning, anyway. Don’t know if it’s true or not. But the fact is, Vanessa deserved it. I know you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but it’s the truth. And frankly, I’m not surprised. Someone like that had to have made a bunch of enemies along the line.”
I had to agree. It appeared there were probably a few other people who had something against Vanessa. Now we just had to find out who.
Not to mention, we also had to have another chat with Iris.
Chapter 6
“Do you think Polly would know?” Cat asked as we walked back to the bookshop after our chat with Beth.
“Maybe. I asked her last night if anyone would want to hurt Cat, but she insisted no. Then again, she was in so much shock, it’s possible that in the cold light of day she might have a different answer.”
“Did her fiancé really not think that getting someone fired was a major problem?” Cat asked.
“I don’t think he knew the whole story. He sounded like a reasonable guy, and the way he put it he thought Vanessa had just gone in to complain about something. She probably didn’t tell him that she got a woman fired from her job.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure that’s something I’d go around advertising either,” Cat mumbled in reply.
“We should at least tell Chase what we’ve found out. I know he’ll probably find out about it himself, but we could save him some time.”
“Good plan. I’m going to head
back to the cupcake shop and help Maddie out; hopefully we’ll have gotten at least a few more customers. Should we meet when you’re done for the day?”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “See if you can find out where Polly lives. By the time I close the bookshop school will have been out for a few hours, so I doubt she’ll still be there.”
“Will do,” Cat nodded. “See you later.”
I gave her a quick wave as I headed down the street and back to the bookshop, where I spent the afternoon both warding off more creepers who wanted to see where Vanessa had died, and also helping a few legitimate customers find great new reads for themselves, or, in two cases, for family members with upcoming birthdays.
The whole time I couldn’t help but think about Iris. Vanessa had really done a number on her, resulting in Iris losing her job. Was that enough to kill someone over? I supposed it was possible, especially since from what Beth had been saying Iris had been very good at her job, which meant she probably had a lot of pride in it.
The thing that I found most interesting, however, was that Vanessa didn’t seem to recognize Iris at all at the book club. Now that I thought about it, Iris hadn’t been exactly friendly to Vanessa that night at the book club, but Vanessa straight-up ignored Iris completely.
Could that have sent her over the edge? Not even being recognized by the person who had cost her the job she was so good at? Maybe Iris had simply brought the cyanide as a just-in-case sort of thing, and then when Vanessa didn’t react to her presence, decided once and for all to kill her.
Regardless, Iris was definitely our number one suspect at the moment.
When Cat came back, just after I closed up the coffee shop at 5 o’clock, she waved around a small post-it note.
“I found out where Polly lives,” she told me. “We can go and talk to her.”
“Cool. Chase is going to be busy with the investigation tonight, so I’ll call him later and tell him what we found out about Iris. Do you fancy going to Pickles’ Pizza tonight for dinner?”
“Only if Michelle is working there,” Cat said with a grin. “No, I’m joking. I’m literally always up for Pickles’ for dinner. Who could ever say no to pizza?”
Pride and Premeditation Page 3
