Witches' Charms: Paranormal Cozy Mystery Series (Vampires and Wine Book 3)

by Morgana Best

  I sat down on a wooden pew and he sat next to me. I slid away from him on the seat a little. “Thank you for agreeing to speak with me,” he said in a cold monotone.

  I nodded, and mumbled something. I tried to calm my breathing.

  “How well do you know Linda Williams?”

  “I only met her recently,” I said. “When I came to Lighthouse Bay to help my aunts run the business at Mugwort Manor, Linda and her husband, Paul, were already boarding here.”

  He interrupted me. “And you had never met her before?”

  I shook my head.

  “And when did you become aware that they were both Shifter wolves?”

  I gasped. “I only found out after Paul died,” I told him.

  “And how do you feel about Shifter wolves?” he asked me.

  I was puzzled by his question, and said so. “I don’t really know what you mean. Linda is the only one I know. I only knew Paul for a short time before he died. I really don’t know anything about Shifter wolves.”

  Scorpius leant closer to me. “Let me tell you this, Miss Jasper. We vampires are a noble race, but Shifters are animals. Don’t ever forget that.”

  “I like animals,” I said in a squeaky voice, considering myself brave to say anything at all.

  His expression did not change. “Now is not a time for humour,” he said. “When did you last hear from your parents?”

  That shocked me. “My parents?” I asked in horror. “Do you know what happened to them?”

  “When did you last hear from your parents?” he asked again.

  “Just before they went missing five years ago, of course,” I said. “My aunts and I haven’t heard anything since, and the police haven’t found out any information. Do you know something?”

  “I have no idea of the whereabouts of your parents,” he said coldly. “Let me just suggest you don’t follow in their footsteps.”

  “Look, I really don’t understand what you’re getting at,” I said, fear giving way to exasperation.

  “And how do your aunts feel about Mrs Williams?”

  I felt I should answer carefully. “They’re very polite, and they don’t say anything around me, but I’m sure Aunt Agnes doesn’t approve of her.” That, at least, was the truth.

  He stared at me long and hard, and I felt he was trying to discern whether or not I was lying. Finally, he sat back, seemingly satisfied. “Good.”

  “Linda didn’t kill Joseph Maxwell,” I told him. “I am one hundred percent sure of that.”

  I felt, rather than saw, his anger. “Shifter wolves killed that man, Miss Jasper, make no mistake. Any vampires who side with Shifter wolves in any way will suffer the same consequences.”

  He stood abruptly, and marched from the chapel to the other room, no doubt to question Linda.

  Scorpius and Linda entered the chapel just as I was on my way out. I was dismayed to see that Linda’s face was white and drawn. “I’ll wait for you here, Linda,” I said loudly. “Then we’ll go to lunch.” I shot a pointed look at the police, who were still gathered in the corner.

  As soon as they were out of sight, I walked over to the table and selected a caramel Tim Tam. Lucas approached me, so I dropped it on my plate, uneaten.

  “What did he say?” he asked urgently.

  “It was all about Linda,” I told him. “He asked me how long I’ve known her, that sort of thing, and when I found out she was a Shifter. You know, he seems awfully racist.”

  “What do you mean?” Lucas stepped closer to me. I could smell his soap, cedarwood, and lime.

  I forced myself to focus. “Okay, that’s probably not the right word, but he was very derogatory about Shifters. He said they were animals.”

  Lucas’s jaw dropped.

  “What is it?” I asked him.

  “I don’t trust him.”

  I shrugged. “Yes, you said that before. I think he’s a very nasty man.”

  Lucas shook his head. “Pepper, can you go back to the manor now?”

  “Linda is expecting me to wait for her,” I said.

  Lucas shook his head again. “I’d rather you go back to the manor, and not see Linda again until this is all over.”

  “But she’s expecting me,” I protested.

  “Can’t you text her?”

  Now I was really getting worried. “Lucas, what aren’t you telling me?”

  He looked at the chapel door. “Later.” He walked back over to the far wall and looked at his phone. Within seconds, Linda and Scorpius Everyman emerged from the chapel. Linda was pale and shaken.

  She headed straight for me. “Coffee?”

  Linda didn’t speak again until we were sitting at a coffee shop by the water. “Are you all right?” I asked with concern.

  “Not really.” She shook herself. “I just felt he really hated me. He feels, oh, I don’t know, evil!”

  I agreed. “He was focused on you. He asked me when I first found out you were a Shifter, and how long I’ve known you, that sort of thing.”

  “He gave me the third degree: when I became a Shifter, when I met Paul, how many Shifters I knew, were there any Shifters in Lighthouse Bay, and had I ever turned anyone.”

  I gasped. “But turning someone is illegal! Surely he’d know you wouldn’t admit that, even if you had.”

  “Look at my hands—I’m still shaking.” Linda held out her hands. She was indeed trembling. “Pepper, I’m really scared he’s going to try to pin this murder on me.”

  I didn’t like to say, but I was thinking exactly the same thing.

  Chapter 17

  “Let’s do something about it,” I said.

  “Like what?”

  “Well, we know it wasn’t you, so let’s question Marianne Compton.” The waitress came to take our orders, but I said we had changed our minds. “Come on Linda, let’s go.”

  I had just started the engine in Aunt Maude’s car, and was about to pull out into the traffic, when Linda stopped me. “Let’s drive past Joseph Maxwell’s house first.”

  “Why?” I asked her.

  “Let’s just see how expensive it really is. And remember, we have to find out from Marianne how he could afford this house.”

  “But all those houses in that street are worth over a million bucks,” I protested.

  Linda shook her head. “It might be in bad state of repair. Who knows? I just think we should go there.”

  I shrugged. “Sure.” The house was only ten minutes or so out of our way. I took a left off the main road and drove along the road to the lighthouse. “What street was it again? Linda?”

  She was staring at her phone. “Take the next right, then the next left and then start to slow down.”

  I did as I was told. I took the next right, a road I knew well as it led down to the long beach. The views from up there were spectacular, mile after mile of sandy beach stretching out before us. The houses must have had amazing ocean views. I turned left and then slowed down. “Which house is it?” The houses in that street were all old. I supposed they were the first houses built when the area was settled by Europeans. Some had been renovated in a spectacular manner, others, not so much. “It’s this one here,” Linda said.

  This house had been renovated. It was spectacular, to say the least. An expensive driveway was lined with mature Bangalow palm trees. The garden was extensively landscaped with every manner of tropical plant. The house, tastefully rendered in pale grey, rose majestically over the less impressively renovated houses that flanked it.

  “I’m sure Ozfoneandnet doesn’t pay employees anything like that amount of money,” I said. “This house must be worth an arm and a leg.”

  “Even more important that we ask Marianne if Joseph inherited money.—before his grandfather’s passing, I mean.”

  “Could you look up Marianne’s address online?” I asked Linda. “Oh, come to think of it, she said she had to go to the will reading with Harry straight after the funeral. She might not be home by now, or perhaps she w
ent out somewhere afterwards and didn’t go home.”

  “No matter. If she’s not there, we can always go back later.”

  I drove away and followed Linda’s directions to the other side of town, to Marianne’s house. It was far less grand than the mansion in which she had lived with Joseph, but since the property settlement had granted her half the proceeds of her marital home, I had no doubt she would soon be living in rather luxurious accommodations.

  The house was tiny, and brick, and afforded no views whatsoever, unless you counted the view of a nearby neighbour, whose house was so close that Marianne could have reached out her arm and touched it. “There’s no car here,” I said to Linda.

  “Let’s just go and knock anyway,” she said.

  I humoured her, although I thought it a pointless exercise. Luckily, I had taken Linda’s suggestion, because Marianne drove up just as we were turning away from her door.

  She got out of her car, clutching a folder and her purse, and looking rather surprised to see us. “Hello. What are you two doing here?”

  Linda and I exchanged glances. In all our hurry, we hadn’t even thought of a plan.

  “I was wondering if we could talk with you,” I said. “About your ex-husband, Joseph, I mean. I was the one who found his body, and we think the police might suspect me.”

  “I’m sure I can’t be of any help to you,” Marianne said, although her manner was friendly. “Still, I’ll do what I can to help. Please come inside. I’ve just come from the lawyer’s office, and I need a strong cup of coffee.”

  The house was just as small inside as it was outside. It was quite narrow. I almost felt as if I could stretch out my hands and touch either side of the house.

  “I can’t wait to get out of this dump,” Marianne said. She flung a manila folder onto the table and then switched on the electric kettle. “Tea or coffee? I have carrot cake, too.”

  Both Linda and I opted for tea. “Your house on the road to the lighthouse is beautiful,” Linda said.

  Marianne’s face lit up. “Yes, and can you imagine that obnoxious man kept me out of it all this time? He was a nasty piece of work.”

  I decided to come straight to the point. “Did Joseph inherit a lot of money?”

  Marianne was halfway through cutting slices of carrot cake. She stopped, her knife in the air. “Inherited? What do you mean? From his grandfather?”

  I feigned embarrassment. “Oh, pardon me for saying anything. It’s just, you know, with him working for Ozfoneandnet and owning a such a house in that prime location, I figured his parents must have left it to him.”

  Marianne made a rude sound in the back of her throat and continued cutting up the cake. “Ill-gotten gains, I’m afraid,” she said after an interval. “I dobbed him into the tax office and I called the police, but no one ever did anything.”

  “Was he a drug dealer?” Linda asked in shock.

  For some reason, Marianne thought that was hysterically funny. When she recovered, she placed a piece of carrot cake in front of me, laughed some more, and then placed a piece of carrot cake in front of Linda. “No, I’m pretty sure he was a blackmailer. He was a hacker, you know?”

  “Hacker?” I echoed.

  Marianne was momentarily distracted. “I’ve forgotten. Did you say tea or coffee?”

  We both repeated that we would like tea, so she poured boiling water into a teapot and placed it on the table, before sitting opposite us. “Yes, a hacker. You know, he exploited security holes.” She looked off into the distance, which in her tiny house, wasn’t far away. “If he had been a drug dealer, then the police would have nabbed him, but I suppose it’s harder to catch a hacker.”

  “Let me get this straight,” I said. “Are you saying that your husband…”

  Marianne interrupted me. “Ex-husband,” she said vehemently.

  “Sorry. Are you saying that your ex-husband blackmailed people, and that he hacked into their computers, from a distance, I presume?”

  “Yes, of course.” Marianne raised her eyebrows at me as if I was some kind of an idiot. “Of course it was remote. And he was just in the right line of work to be able to do it.”

  I thought it through. “Did you tell the police? I mean, I know you said you’d been to them before, but did you tell them this after he was murdered? It sounds like an obvious motive for murder.”

  Marianne nodded. “Of course I did, but they said there was no evidence. After he died, I looked in his safe—I still have my keys to the house—but there was nothing in there. I mean, don’t all blackmailers keep little black books or something like that?” Linda and I nodded. “Of course, he didn’t know I knew the combination to his safe, but it was his birth date, the silly fool.” She made a snort of disgust. “I just think the police aren’t trying hard enough. It’s obvious that he was murdered by someone he was blackmailing.” She laughed. “On second thoughts, he could have been murdered by anyone who knew him. Actually, this folder might hold the answer. Joseph’s lawyer asked him to give it to me if anything were to happen to him.”

  Marianne ripped open the envelope gleefully, depositing the contents on the table. Out spilled old sepia photos. My spirits fell—I was hoping it was something to do with Joseph’s blackmailing exploits.

  “They must be his ancestors,” Linda said, disappointment evident in her voice.

  Marianne snatched up the cover letter. “That fool lawyer! This isn’t for me. Look at the cover letter.” She shoved the letter first under my nose and then under Linda’s. “It’s addressed to a Mr Greene. The lawyer’s office got it mixed up.” She sighed long and hard. “I really don’t feel like going back out today. I’ve been through enough—I just wanted to lie on the sofa and watch TV and have a little nap.”

  “Linda and I have a few things to do in town today,” I said. “We can take this back to the lawyer for you, and bring your documents back.”

  Marianne looked doubtful, so I added, “It’s no trouble at all. In fact, if you’re asleep and don’t answer at the first knock, I can slip it under the door.”

  Marianne’s face lit up. “Would you mind? That would be fantastic. I’ll just call that fool lawyer now and tell him.”

  I felt sorry for the receptionist on the other end of the line, because Marianne told her in no uncertain terms what she thought of the mix up. Linda and I gobbled our cakes in double quick time and then headed out the door as fast as we could. When we were safely out of earshot in Aunt Maude’s car, I said, “Can you believe that! I just can’t believe our luck.”

  Linda laughed. “I was terrified she would change her mind. I’ve never eaten cake so fast in all my life. I’m sure I’ll get terrible indigestion.”

  “What do you think is in that envelope?” I asked her. “What if it’s to do with his blackmailing?”

  Linda was silent for a moment. After hesitating, she said, “If he was blackmailing people, then he had to have evidence on them. You know, like records of them embezzling, that sort of thing.”

  “Or photographs of them having affairs,” I added.

  It was easier to get the envelope than I thought. The bored receptionist barely glanced at us, and merely asked us to sign for the envelope. We handed Mr Greene’s envelope back to her, took the other envelope, a far thicker envelope, and beat a hasty retreat.

  “Let’s go back to my motel room,” Linda said. “We can steam it open there, and then stick it back down.”

  “I’ll just do a detour and buy some glue,” I said.

  “Good idea.”

  Within minutes, Linda and I were in her motel room, holding the envelope over a boiling electric kettle. The edges steamed open quickly, but the spot in the middle took a bit of effort. Finally, the flap was open. Linda pushed a book and a newspaper off the coffee table. “Quick, Pepper, put it here.”

  I tipped out the contents of the envelope, and held my breath.

  “It looks like he was blackmailing people after all!” Linda said excitedly. “Look at this,
Pepper!

  I wasn’t mathematically inclined, and I really couldn’t make head or tail of the spreadsheet, but even to my novice eyes it seemed to be records of embezzlement, after all. And sure enough, there were photographs of people in compromising positions.

  “Can you imagine people email these photos to each other!” Linda said.

  “No doubt they didn’t realise they were going to be hacked,” I said.

  “Yes, but married people, sending these sorts of email!” Linda said. “That would put them at risk of discovery by their partners.”

  “And by hackers and blackmailers,” I added. “Linda, the chances are good that one of these people in here is the murderer. When we go through it, we’ll glue it back up and give it to Marianne. I’m certain she will hand this over to the police. That will help the police solve the murder, and then Scorpius Everyman will realise that you weren’t involved.”

  Linda shook her head. “I don’t understand, Pepper, something is just not right. If Joseph Maxwell was murdered by someone he was blackmailing, then why did the killer make it look like those other murders down south?”

  “Copycat killing, of course,” I said, “so people would think the serial killer did it.”

  “But that’s just it. Even if Scorpius finds out that I didn’t kill Joseph Maxwell, he still thinks Shifters did those murders down south. He’s really got a huge problem with Shifters.”

  “Yes, that’s obvious,” I said. “Well, let’s look through all these documents before we take the folder back to Marianne. We still have a bit of time.”

  I was raising my eyebrows at the email correspondence when Linda let out a shriek. I dropped the papers in fright and looked at her. “What is it?”

  “Look!” Her hands were trembling. She handed me a sheet of paper.

  On it were photographs, taken one after the other, and represented by small squares on the same piece of paper. The first ones were all of damaged copper wire in what I assumed was an Ozfoneandnet pit, but then… I gasped. “I can’t believe it,” I said, when I was finally able to speak.