A Charming Corpse: :A Cozy Paranormal Mystery

by Tonya Kappes

  “He came to the shop and went straight to the charm. No hesitation.” Bella owned Bella’s Baubles, the local jewelry store. It was a perfect cover up for her ability as an astrologer spiritualist.

  “He’s got to stop stealing charms.” I wanted to scold him since it took the feelings off of me and put them on him, but it wasn’t working.

  “Is that really what you mean? Or do you mean that you don’t want to tap into your gift and figure out what this means?” Bella smiled, her cheeks balled and exposed the gap between her two front teeth. Her five foot two inch petite frame might’ve been small, but she was larger than life and very wise.

  “I got a strange message a few minutes ago from Madame Torres.” I normally never told anyone when my crazy crystal ball had a reading for me. “She said danger was lurking.”

  Bella reached up and cupped my hand with the Fatima charm. The warmth of the union, caused me to suck in a deep breath. A sense of calm swept over me. Bella unclasped the charm bracelet off of my wrist.

  “You stop by and get this from me later tonight.” She always put the charms on my bracelet that Mr. Prince Charming had given me. This would be the twelfth charm and none of them have come with just a warning and not a life-changing event.

  “I’m having Eloise and Adeline over for a cookout tonight to celebrate the coming of the spring solstice after the smudging ceremony if you’d like to join us and bring the bracelet.” It was the least I could do for all she’s done for me.

  “I’d be honored.” She bowed her head. “I think I’m going to slip out the back door. This isn’t for me.” She pointed to the shop where Gabby had started giving the information about the products she was selling.

  “Traitor,” I called after Mr. Prince Charming when he darted out the door with Bella.

  I rubbed my naked wrist and said a little spell of protection, “Protect all who dwell here too. Protect this place where we reside. Protect with light that is true.”

  Chapter Four

  “Of course, you want to feel better,” Gabby said and looked around the room at all the eager faces. “Are you sad? Do you harbor ill feelings? Are you stressed?”

  Her words were met with heads bobbing yes, nudging the people next to them, and few a who even yelled yes.

  “Then look no further.” Gabby grabbed one of the clear bottles, out of hundreds that were sitting on the table next to her. They all had the same bottle, same form, but different colored labels made them stand apart from the rest.

  “Your bottles are prettier,” Petunia leaned over and whispered in my ear.

  I didn’t want to be rude and talk to Petunia while Gabby was giving her presentation on her fake product, so I kept in my rant about how my bottles actually have magic and they pick their owner.

  It was true. When someone came in with an ailment, I knew what they really needed and would let them pick out what they thought they needed. Then I’d run my fingers down my bottle collection. That’s when the magic truly happened. All of my bottles were ornamental, and glowed with delight when their owner would come into the shop. A few swirls around my cauldron, a little touch of magical herbs, and I’d bottle their very own personal potion to sell to them.

  Of course, they had no idea that I was actually curing what they had. They only knew they instantly felt better after using it and continued to be repeat customers. Until….Gabby.

  I looked around and saw a few faces from customers who’d traveled far and wide to get their bottles refilled. There was no way I was going to be able to jump up and scream that Gabby’s product was a fraud, so I was going to have to wait and see if the customer realized it didn’t work and come back to A Charming Cure.

  “You!” Gabby pointed at me. “What is hurting you?”

  “Me?” I pointed to myself and looked around.

  “Yes. You.” She smiled and nodded. “What would you like to bring more into your life?”

  “Calm.” It was the first word that set my intuition in motion. I wanted calm in the community that I feared was on the cusp of a wave that was going to wash over our small village.

  “Perfect.” She reached over and grabbed a clear bottle with a yellow label. “Come here,” she waved me to the front of the room.

  There was a hush that came over my friends. Gabby clearly had no idea the spiritual community she was in.

  “Why don’t you pick someone else?” Izzy encouraged Gabby. “June is already. . .”

  “No, I’d love to try it.” I brushed Izzy off. “I’ll never know until I try.”

  “I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Izzy said in a hushed voice when I made my way to the front of the room.

  “I think it’s a perfect idea.” I smiled and patted her on the back. “This is fun,” I assured her.

  “For who?” Izzy cocked a brow and pushed back a strand of her curly blonde hair.

  “Isn’t this the cutest crochet pouch?” She asked. “You can put your roll-on bottle in it and hook it to your purse.” She looked around. “I’m not sure where she is, but your very own, Leah and I had a business deal and she’s made these. You really need to buy one along with your roll-on oil. Now, you’ll need to rub this on your temples, inside of the wrist, and roll it down the back of the neck.” Gabby watched as I took the small bottle and did what she said.

  “I smell Sage, Lavender, Bergamot, Roman Chamomile, Cedarwood, Ylang Ylang, Geranium, Fennel, Carrot Seed, Palmarosa, and Vitex.” I did what she said and handed the bottle back to her. “While these are a wonderful combination, how exactly will they calm my nerves? Does this seep into the skin? Get into my soul?”

  “And we need a coffee.” Faith Mortimer walked over to me and grabbed me by the elbow, rushing me out the front door.

  “Why did you do that?” I asked and lifted my chin to feel the warmth of the sun on my face.

  “Because you and I both know that she just throws herbs together. Remember how Darla started?” She reminded me that Darla had made a good living doing exactly what Gabby was doing and she wasn’t a spiritualist either.

  “Then she needs to go to the flea market in Locust Grove,” I suggested. “Besides, why did you take me off the subscription list of the paper this morning?”

  “She took an ad out in the paper copy and Leah had asked me to put it in the spiritual edition.” Faith and I darted across the street. We really couldn’t talk with the sidewalks and street full of people.

  Faith and I had come a long way with our relationship since we’d met in Intuition School during my brief stint at Hidden Hall, A Spiritual University. She and I didn’t see eye-to-eye at first, but we are the greatest of friends now, along with her sister Raven.

  I pushed open the large wooden pink door that lead into the charming confectionary. Raven was behind the counter facing the ovens. She had her long black hair knotted down her back in a fishtail braid and pink Wicked Good Bakery apron tied around her neck and waist. She was taking out some sweet treats to cool.

  “I didn’t want to hurt your feelings and didn’t want you to think we were all trying to promote her business, but I have to be fair with the other shop owners. Leah did pay to put it in there.” Faith’s mouth dipped into a frown.

  We stepped into the bakery. Jars of candy lined the lime green walls and made a wonderful array of colors that would make anyone want to purchase the sweets. Raven had placed cake stands on each table in the middle of the shop with most amazing assortment of cupcakes and scones, not to mention a few June’s Gems. She let people come in and pick out what they wanted.

  Some might think the treats sitting out in the open would get stale, but they didn’t realize there was magic in each one and that little bit of love kept them warm and fresh.

  “Next time, let me decide what is good and not good for me. I pay for the paper to be air delivered and I want it every morning.” I wasn’t going to let her get off that easy.

  The Whispering Falls Gazette was delivered through the breeze of the morning wind to
all the spiritualists in the village who subscribed to it. It was no different than waking up to a physical newspaper delivered to your mailbox, only it was read in Faith’s voice and through the breeze.

  It was the best practice not to have any sort of magical or spiritual paper copies as we lived amongst the mortals. It wasn’t until the new neighborhood opened up that the paper was printed for their benefit. Mainly it consisted of sales from the shops. Anything we had to discuss was done during the weekly smudging ceremony with the village President and council members.

  “I was just taking your order out of the oven.” Raven smiled, looking down at her creation. “Lemon Yogurt Cake.”

  The sound of it made my mouth water. I peeked over the counter at the loaf pans filled with the tan and buttery cakes.

  “I’ve just got to drizzle some deliciousness over the top and put it in a box so you can take it.” She took a glass pitcher filled with icing and carefully held it over one of the pans and let the white sugary mix zig-zag down over the cake.

  “I want to skip the food and just go straight to the dessert,” I said. “Are you sure you didn’t see anything in the dough besides the intuition?” I asked about how she’d brought me some June’s Gems this morning on a whim.

  “I. . .um. . .” She sat the glass pitcher down and looked up at me. “I had an image of the Fatima hand with the eye.”

  “The exact charm Mr. Prince Charming brought me.” I gnawed on the information. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “All the rules we have around here now, you just never know who’s listening.” She looked up into the open air. Then she busied herself with taking my Lemon Yogurt Cake out of the pan and placing it into one of the Wicked Good Bakery boxes.

  She was right. The Order of Elders were always floating around from village to village, making sure we were following the spiritualist rules so the mortals wouldn’t find out about us or even the evil spiritualist out there.

  “From now on, why don’t the two of you leave it up to me to decide what’s best for me.” My eyes slid down the counter at the June’s Gems. “I’ll have one of those too.”

  “Please tell me you have time for a cup of coffee,” Raven’s eyes light up. “We need some girl time.”

  “Maybe one cup.” I shrugged and followed the black and white checkered floor that led the way to a room filled with Victorian style dining furniture where customers could go and sit down while they enjoyed a dessert and cup of tea or coffee. Raven and Gerald had a consignment system between their two shops. She provided him with desserts he didn’t make and in turn he provided her with his specialty teas.

  I sat down in one of the velvet chairs that rested in front of a wooden coffee table and looked around. My insides were feeling much better. I let out a long sigh of happiness when Raven and Faith walked in with a tray of coffee mugs and plates of June’s Gems.

  There truly wasn’t anything like having girlfriends. Right now, I was thinking I was going to need them more than ever with the gut feelings of uneasiness inside me.

  Chapter Five

  Instead of heading back down to A Charming Cure, I walked back across the street and straight into Crazy Crafty Chick Shop. I wasn’t sure why I was being called to go back there, but I did. Maybe it was the combination smells of Roman Chamomile, Cedarwood, Ylang Ylang from the Lifestyle calm Gabby had me roll all over my temples and neck, but I’d like to think it was my intuition that told me to go back.

  I’d learned my lesson when I didn’t listen to my intuition one time and never made that mistake again. It was getting closer to six p.m., which wasn’t only quitting time for the shops in Whispering Falls, but it was also the ending time for Gabby’s party.

  “You’re back.” Gabby’s face brightened when she saw me walk in. “I have to apologize. I didn’t know that you owned A Charming Cure. Darling shop. But I just sell this out of my house. I’m trying to pay off college debt and get into a house of my own.”

  “You don’t need to apologize.” I suddenly felt awful for having my jealous feelings for her. “There’s plenty of customers to go around.”

  “I’m so glad you said that.” Her head tilted back and forth. Her face relaxed and a sense of calm swept over her. “Honestly, I had to beg Leah to have me. We met at another party in Locust Grove. She said that she lived in Whispering Falls and it’s been so mysterious here that I continued to badger her until she said yes.”

  “Here.” I had to make peace and why not with one of the extra June’s Gems Raven had sent home with me along with my Lemon Yogurt Cake. “These will make you feel better.”

  She peeked inside of the bag before she reached in. She took a bite.

  “Mmmm.” A satisfied sigh oozed out of her as well as her inner demons.

  While she enjoyed the treat, I soaked in her pain. There was a sense of loss, loneliness and money floating around her aura. This was the time when I’d suggest a cure for the customer; only Gabby wasn’t one of my customers. I was hers.

  “I think I’ll take a bottle of each.” I pointed knowing that Oscar was going to kill me for spending all this money when he didn’t make a whole lot as sheriff and the shop wasn’t bringing in much money lately.

  “Really?” she asked with dipped brows.

  The shift in her aura turned green as her heart melted away some stress, but not all. It’d take me a few times to be with her or even put a few cures in her own bottles for her to try.

  “Have you tried your own homeopathic oils?” I questioned.

  I couldn’t bring myself to say cures because these were no more than a few herbs and oils thrown together. I wasn’t saying that peppermint didn’t help calm the nerves, it most certainly did. But that was just the layer to many layers of issues that if not attended too would still be there.

  “Yes.” She pulled out a couple of bottles from underneath her display table. She showed them to me. One was full, the other almost gone. Both of them had her name written in black marker. “I love them. Since I bring them with me, I put my name on them because I don’t want to send anyone home with used bottles.”

  She unscrewed the top of the one almost gone and rolled it on the insides of her wrist before she tossed it in the trashcan behind her.

  “Makes me calm.” Her mouth twisted wryly. “I don’t have anyone but me to rely on. And this is just a side hustle to get me out of some debt while I’ve got a lot of resumes out there. But truly, I’ve made six-figures in the last month doing a little home party here and there, so I’m not sure if I’ll take a job if offered.”

  “Well, you’re doing great. One day, you just might have a shop like mine. You know…,” I tapped my temples as I tried to wrap my head around the number she just told me she’d made. “Darla. . .um . . .my mother, she did this like you. Is there still a flea market in Locust Grove?”

  “I think so,” she said and began to put all of my purchases into a used Piggly Wiggly plastic grocery bag.

  “Why don’t you rent a space there and sell these?” I asked. “Darla did it and that’s how we lived.”

  “Your mom?” She asked, and I nodded. “Why do you call her Darla and not mom?”

  My lips broke into a wide-open smile and I rolled my eyes, finding myself shaking my head from the truly fond memory.

  “Darla was very interesting. She didn’t like to be called mom. She always made sure everyone knew she was my mother, but she liked to be called by her name. It was her thing.” There was a good feeling inside of me that let me carry on Darla’s passion and actually help people.

  “That’s a wonderful idea.” She grabbed a pad of paper and wrote something down. “Do you have any other tips?”

  “Maybe you should do some sort of incentive for people with businesses to put these in their shop instead of begging people, like you did Leah,” I said then whispered, though you don’t need the sales with the money you made, under my breath.

  I found myself feeling sorry for her. In fact, I saw a little bit of mys
elf in Gabby or maybe it was a piece of Darla. Either way, she was harmless. A few pointers wouldn’t hurt and if I could get her out of Whispering Falls, maybe business would pick up.

  Then I opened my big mouth, “My friend owns the Piggly Wiggly. I can’t promise anything, but I’m having supper with her tonight. What if I give her your business card? She likes to showcase local business.”

  Gabby squealed and rushed over, throwing her arms around me, giving me a big hug.

  “Thank you!” She continued to bounce on the balls of her feet while clapping her hands in delight. “Here.” She darted back over to her display and handed me a couple of her business cards.

  “I’m not promising anything.” I had to make sure she understood.

  “Don’t worry. Anything helps. I’m all out of the Breathe, so I’ll have to drop it off tomorrow or the next day.” She handed me the bag full of the plain bottles that hurt my soul. “That’ll be five hundred dollars.”

  With my hands full of the fake oils and my treats from Wicked Good, I trekked up the hill to my house.

  I lived behind A Charming Cure. It had a wonderful hillside view of Whispering Falls and all the quaint shops. The sun was starting to stay out longer and the last rays of the day dripped over the village. The problem with the days being longer was that we had to wait until the full moon for the smudge ceremony. There was just enough time to host my dinner party between now and the time for the ceremony.

  There was a magical layer that hung over all of the shops’ awnings and lit up all the ornamental gates in the most amazing rainbow. A clap of thunder and hint of danger shocked me out of my trance. My bag warmed against my leg. I gripped the bag of oils and dessert so I wouldn’t drop it. My intuition was in full force. Something was brewing and it wasn’t good.

  A big wave of black started from Glorybee Pet Store and rolled over the shops, stopping shy of Crazy Crafty Chick. My eyes blinked a few times. On the last blink, the magical layer had returned to the village.