Poison and Pinot

by Samantha Silver

  Ken found us seats in the very back. I was pleased to see that the service was a sweet one, with many different people coming up to talk about Lisa and her contributions to Rosemary Creek. It ended with Kayla, her arm wrapped around a teenage girl with red puffy eyes, who absolutely had to be one of Lisa’s daughters. She looked exactly like a younger version of Lisa. They both read aloud, eliciting tears from many of the people seated.

  Once the service had ended, I barely had a moment to breathe before Karen had descended upon the two of us, her delicate eyebrow arched smugly.

  "I was looking for you.”

  I rolled my eyes, pulling her aside from the slew of people heading back into the main clubhouse room.

  "Yeah, you must have been looking hard. Listen, I need to talk to you for a minute. You'll never believe what we just saw before the service started."

  "Can I at least get something to eat first?" she whined, sticking out her bottom lip. "Mom told me the crab cakes were really, really good."

  I wanted to shake her and remind her that she could probably whip up a delicious crab cake on her own with magic, but thought better of it with Ken standing beside me.

  "Later. This is important."

  Reluctantly, Karen listened as I told her what we saw when we followed after Portia, and just as I expected, she was not pleased.

  "What on earth? I can't believe Portia would stoop that low. James Lim? That jerk?"

  I shrugged. "They seemed to be getting along just fine to me. What do you think, Ken?"

  "I think my stomach hasn't fully recovered. Though I might be willing to test it on those crab cakes." He looked over the tops of everyone's heads by the buffet, checking out the spread.

  "So, Portia is hooking up with Lisa's husband." Karen shook her head. "I just can't believe it. I mean, it feels wrong just saying it. Portia never liked him. Any time he came by to drop off things on behalf of Lisa, Portia would beg me to handle it. She was always complaining about him hitting on her, even though he’s like at least ten years older than her."

  Ken excused himself to go snag the three of us some food, and Karen and I found a more remote corner of the room away from all of the guests to discuss what we'd learned about the case so far.

  "You're not fooling anyone, by the way," Karen said once we had space cleared out for ourselves.

  "What are you talking about?"

  She put her hand on her hip, reminding me of a sassy twelve-year-old. "You and Ken, obviously."

  "You know Corinne. She dragged me over to him as if I were a sitting duck."

  “Right, and you just happened to pull him along on your little side venture. Are we really going to enlist his help in this one?" she asked, raising a brow at me.

  It was a good question. I hadn't thought that far ahead, to be honest. "It hardly matters now, don't you think? He's just as interested in the truth behind Lisa’s death as we are. And it doesn't hurt to have an extra pair of eyes and ears looking out for things. Especially someone who knows so much about legal matters."

  "You mean a pair of handsome blue eyes, right?" She was clearly enjoying teasing me.

  The soft music overhead changed to something a little livelier. Karen smiled.

  "She would have liked this; people dancing instead of everyone moping around.”

  While there was still a decently somber mood to the room, Karen was right about some women toward the middle dancing around. If I had to guess, they probably knew Lisa best and would agree with Karen.

  Settling back into my chair, I looked across the rest of the room. My first thought was that James Lim would be the obvious suspect in his wife’s murder, literally any lifetime movie I’d ever watched told me so. But looks could be deceiving, and that was something both Karen and I had learned before.

  “It just makes you wonder,” I began, crossing my legs. “If we aren’t in the very same room as the killer right now?

  “I’ve been wondering that myself,” Karen said softly.

  A pair of older women had just pulled up a couple of spare chairs not far from us, and both Karen and I closed our mouths, not wanting them to overhear anything that might slip about our secret investigation.

  The lady with the black floppy hat pulled out a compact of pressed powder from her purse, dabbing at her splotchy red cheeks.

  "You know, I have to say, I've always wondered what it was like inside this place. Rebecca was always telling me about how she absolutely loved their catering. I'm not exactly impressed."

  The other lady, wearing a severe bun on top of her head which matched the severe lines above her lip as she pursed them at the powder lady, scoffed at her.

  "I'd have to seriously question the palette of anyone who considered this seriously unimpressive array to be remotely edible."

  I arched a brow at Karen, especially since we were waiting for our own 'unimpressive' food to show up. Were these women serious?

  The first lady waved her hand around, tilting back her nearly empty wine glass to finish it off. "At least they do have some top-quality pinot grigio. Of course, anything Marcus LaRue produces is just wonderful, but I heard that this particular vintage recently won an international competition of some kind."

  "Oh, I'm sure. He was such a fan of Lisa, you know." There was a hint more scandal in the woman's tone than I’d expected.

  "Was he, now?" the other lady chuckled, her hunched shoulder moving up and down silently. "Bev, you really are too much."

  The two of them tittered on about whoever this Marcus LaRue was before circling back around to Lisa. Powder lady sighed in a way that let anyone around her know she was about to tell the saddest of tales. It reminded me a little too much of Corinne Leeman. It wouldn't have surprised me if the two were friends.

  "It really is terrible that this happened when it did. Poor Kayla is taking it much better than I would be, if I were missing out on so much."

  My ears perked back up.

  "What do you mean?" the other lady asked.

  "That wine glass business of theirs. Lisa was so excited at the last Lion's Club meeting, she could barely stand it. Kayla had made some connections with a few higher-ups. The two of them were meant to have an interview with QVC this week, in fact."

  The other lady gasped. "With QVC? Oh my stars, I love that channel!"

  Powder lady nodded grimly. "Well, who doesn't? They were supposed to meet with them, and if all went well, they were supposed to get a rather prominent time slot for their first pitch. A spot like that would make their little company worth millions if it did well enough."

  Karen's eyes narrowed at the back of the woman's head as she continued.

  "It's just such a shame that Lisa’s gone. I don't see how Kayla will be able to do much else without her."

  The two ladies clucked their tongues before deciding they better get going while the wine was still good, shuffling off back over to the buffet table they had admonished earlier.

  Neither Karen or I barely had a chance to get a word out before Ken had shown back up with his arms full of food. "Did I miss anything?"

  I was still pretty shocked. "I can't even imagine how frustrating that must be for Kayla," I said quietly. "Not only does she lose her best friend, but her surefire ticket to millions?" I shook my head. "I'd be curled up in the fetal position on a bed somewhere."

  "Yeah, no kidding," Karen replied, taking a plate from Ken's opened arms. "Thanks."

  After taking a minute to explain what we were talking about, I polished off one of the crab cakes on my plate, pretty satisfied with it regardless of what those old ladies had said before.

  "It seems like someone was jealous of Lisa and her business idea."

  "I don't suppose you're referring to her husband?" Ken said through a mouth of food. He fought a grin as both of us looked at him funny. "Sorry. I was starving."

  "Yes, actually, I was," I replied.

  "But what about him and Portia?"

  "What about them?" Karen piped up. "To me it so
unds like he had no interest in his marriage whatsoever, except maybe to make Lisa's life miserable like he claims his was. I don't know, that seems like a pretty good motive to me."

  "Does anyone know what James actually does for a living?" I asked out loud. "Ken?"

  He nodded, holding up a finger for us to let him finish his last bite. "Yes. Like I said, I've had a couple of clients who had some grievances against him. He owns a commercial real estate development company. And from what I’ve heard from people around town, the last couple of years it hasn’t been doing as well as it had in the past."

  I leaned forward. "Exactly. And if you ask me, he seems like the type that would get jealous of his wife's business or at least potential business doing much better than his."

  "So what are we thinking now? Not Portia? Or even Jeannette? Or maybe there's someone else we’re forgetting," Karen said.

  Sighing, I poked around at the food on my plate, my head too full of things to want to finish eating.

  "You know what I think? There are just way too many suspects."

  Chapter 15

  "I have a little surprise for you today," Barbara said to me in the soft tone she always used, though this time it was laced with a little bit of excitement.

  I stood up, pretending that I wasn't just leaning over the front counter, picking at my nails since we hadn't had a customer in the past couple of hours.

  Barbara set a large bowl of what looked like powdery pink chalk under my nose, smiling. "Today's the day!"

  With my mind busy worrying over Lisa Lim’s death, the last thing I was thinking about was anything work-related. It took me a moment to realize the mixture in front of me was actually what we used to make bath bombs in the souvenir shop.

  "Oh, right. I forgot we were doing that today."

  Completely unruffled, Barbara spread out her mixing tools, including a couple of wooden spoons, a large measuring cup, a few measuring spoons, and of course her spell book across the main counter.

  "I'm going to pretend that you are much more interested in this experience than you seem. Shall we begin?"

  I eyed the front door. It would be just our luck that someone would come strolling in, mid-spell. “Shouldn't we be doing this, you know, in the back?"

  Barbara waved me off. "I'll know if someone's coming, don't you worry about that. Besides, we haven't had a chance to practice much magic this week."

  I couldn't help but snort. "You mean other than me nearly burning down the place."

  As much as Barbara immediately forgave me, I wasn't about to be so easy on myself. "I still feel terrible about that." Not to mention, there was the whole debacle with my giant rat ears, which luckily, Karen had sworn she would never mention to Barbara. That had been embarrassing enough without her knowing.

  Barbara looked at me, her expression inscrutable, before patting the glass display counter. "Okay. If you want to play that game, then here we go. I grew up knowing I was a witch my entire life. No one had to wait until I was an adult to tell me, I always knew. It was passed down my mother's line from daughter to daughter, and even then — still knowing that I was a witch — I managed to create the biggest mess this one time. And it took me years and years, decades even, before I could finally forgive myself. Want to know what I did?" she asked me, leaning against the counter, folding her hands out in front of her.

  I chewed on my bottom lip, very much curious. "I'll bite. What did you do?" I still didn't think it could've been nearly as bad as what I had almost done in the shop. But the idea of hearing wise-and-elegant-in-every-way Barbara Durham messing anything up had definitely piqued my interest.

  She gave me a sly smile, nodding, "I thought so," smoothing her hand across the old wrinkled pages as she did. "When I first left my home on my own, I had these big dreams of becoming an actress. I wanted to be the next Natalie Wood. She was my favorite actress at the time. And I have to admit, I wasn't too bad. I landed a couple roles in some off-Broadway plays, and had I stuck around and worked my magic—" she wiggled her ringed fingers at me, smiling. "I might have gone on to be much more successful…"

  I was totally enraptured by this story now. "If only…?"

  "If only I hadn't accidentally blown up Studio F at MGM Studios. The director I was supposed to be working with wasn't a huge fan of mine after that one."

  My jaw dropped. "You blew up a film studio? What? How? I have so many questions," I stumbled, leaning forward even more. "How on earth did you manage to do that?"

  Barbara laughed. "I thought I would make the scene I was performing a little bit more believable. But the way my magic works, if I'm too emotional, things can go awry. Part of my mood manipulation powers, I've always figured. In the scene I was a young woman who had just come home to find out her husband was cheating on her — which looking back on it now was some very real foreshadowing — and I was supposed to throw a prop lamp across the set.

  “Except instead of just throwing it across the room, I somehow managed to turn it into one of the prop bombs we had in another part of the studio where they were filming a war movie, and thankfully we had just enough time to realize what had happened and flee the scene before the entire set blew up. No one was hurt, thank goodness, but the aftermath was hard enough for me to deal with. I had to do a lot of memory wiping, considering everybody had seen what I had done. My director luckily knew about my magic, but I was never able to work in Hollywood after that. So, I had to find other ways to use my talents."

  Barbara's voice was light, a little too casual.

  "Wow, I really had no idea."

  She sifted the bath bomb ingredients, trying to smile. "My point is, Taylor, that you are allowed to make mistakes. It's part of the process of learning how to control your powers. But you also must learn to forgive yourself. And on the bright side, the shop has never looked cleaner!"

  I shook my head but laughed along with her, feeling the tension between my shoulder blades slowly fade away. I had a feeling Barbara was using her powers to help ease me along the path to relaxation as well.

  "So, about these bath bombs," I said, watching as she molded the first one into a small sphere in her hand. "How do you infuse your magic into them? And is that something that I can do?"

  "It's quite simple for me, but there would be an added step for you, yes. But I was doing some research in some of my past spell books, and I found that —"

  "— past spell books? You mean you have more than one?" I interrupted, awed. As far as I knew, Karen only had one, and I had barely scratched the surface of filling mine up.

  "Yes, of course dear. All witches have multiple books. Once they’ve learned a good number of spells, that is. Anyhow, I managed to figure out a way to hone your healing capabilities and infuse them into objects such as these bath bombs. Would you like to try?"

  "Of course!"

  Together we worked in an assembly-line of sorts, with Barbara measuring out the proper ingredients and filling up the molds before handing them over to me for me to add tiny amounts of my magic into each bath bomb.

  "What you'll need to do is to close your eyes, ground yourself as I've taught you to do, and focus your intentions on your power. Feel it stirring inside of you, at the very core of you, and draw that up until your fingers are tingling with it, until it is buzzing under your very skin. Do you understand?"

  I nodded, trying to keep my focus on the magic I could feel pulsating through me.

  "Imagine that magic slowly being pulled out of you and into the bath bomb, as if there were tiny little hooks pulling at it and absorbing it into the bath bomb."

  And just like that, my magic whooshed out of me, my eyes flew open and I could see the powder swirling around the bath bomb, my magic pulling it in and encasing itself around the little pink sphere as it rose in my hand, popping back down into my palms the moment my focus had lessened. I gasped.

  "Did it work? Did I do it?"

  Barbara winked at me. "Only one way to find out."

  I followe
d her back to the small store bathroom and watched with amazement as Barbara filled up the sink with water and dropped the bath bomb into it, creating a swirl of pink. A slight sweet smell wafted towards my nostrils, and Barbara sighed, dipping her hand into the water.

  "Oh yes. My back pain is slowly going away. Very nice, Taylor. Very nice."

  I stepped back squealing to myself, "Oh my gosh! I did it! I can't believe I actually did it!"

  It was one thing to be able to learn and repeat spells from the spell books. But it was an entirely different thing to push my magic into something without needing anything but my concentration. I felt lighter than air.

  Barbara let the sink drain and laughed, pulling me in for a hug.

  "All you had to do was have faith in yourself, my dear. I always have. Now that we know you can do it, why don't you work on that in our next order? I need to have another ten done in the next couple of days. I'm already working on my own, so I think a nice supply of 30 will suffice this time. Let's see how fast these suckers go," she added with a wink."

  The front door bell chimed just as we were coming in from the back, and I quickly walked over to the counter to slip the spell book out of sight.

  "Welcome to Creekside Trinkets!" I called out to whoever had just come in as they edged around the display of sunglasses.

  They were a couple I didn't recognize. If I had to guess, they were out-of-towners coming by Rosemary Creek after doing a vineyard tour; we got a lot of those.

  The woman took off her floppy straw hat and smiled at me, clutching her matching straw purse to her chest as she walked over. "What a charming little store! My husband was just telling me about this town. I've never been here before."

  Barbara swept in, her usual charming self, welcoming the both of them to her shop. "Do be sure to check out one of our delicious restaurants. I highly recommend Mercutio's Italia. Their pasta is made fresh on site. Feel free to let either of us know if you have any questions."

  I finished putting away the bath bomb ingredients, deciding that I would work on more of my magic later, while Barbara went to the back.