by Nancy Warren
He looked so sad that I found myself reassuring him. “How could you have known? How could anyone have known that she’d be attacked in her own shop like that?”
“It’s unthinkable.”
“There must’ve been a reason. There wouldn’t be enough in the till that robbery could be the motive. I’m certain she didn’t have any enemies.” I glanced at him under my lashes and decided to test the only theory I had. “Are we sure that Sylvia’s telling the truth?”
He looked to me sharply. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know much about vampires but I’m going to take a guess that fresh blood that you suck out of a dying victim is sweeter than anything you’re getting from a blood bank. I’m wondering whether Sylvia was overcome with hunger, and after she killed my grandmother made up that story to protect herself.”
He shook his head. “The doctor did examine your grandmother’s body. She had definitely been stabbed and there was a contusion on her head consistent with having hit it on the radiator when she fell.”
“It makes no sense.”
“Your grandmother’s right about one thing. Since we don’t know why she was killed, how do we know that you’re not in danger? There’s nothing holding you here, Lucy. If you want to head back to America no one would be surprised. At least you’d be safe.”
What kind of person did he think I was? I put the glass down so it clicked on the coffee table. “There is no way I’m going back home until I have some answers. Someone all but murdered my grandmother and I intend to find out who.”
I’d been wondering whether I would stay and run the knitting shop or go back home and try and figure out what I wanted to do with my life. At least, now, I had an immediate goal. I was going to reopen Cardinal Woolsey’s and I was going to keep my eyes and ears open, ask around the neighborhood, do whatever I could to find out who wanted my grandmother dead.
I WOKE the next morning filled with determination. No one attacked Gran and got away with it. Not on my watch. I found an old notebook with pictures of flowers on the front cover and opened it to a clean page. I decided to make yet another list.
What did I know? If I believed Sylvia and the other vampires, and I wasn’t at all sure that I did, then Gran had been stabbed nearly to death. Sylvia, the vampire with a heart of gold, had turned her in order to save her. And Sylvia had seen someone in shiny black boots running away from the crime. It wasn’t much to go on.
I wrote down the questions that sprang immediately to my mind. Obvious ones first.
One: Who would want to kill my grandmother and why?
Actually, that was really the main question that I had. All the other ones led to its answer.
I tapped my pen against the page and began to think. Sylvia didn’t remember much, but if her timing was right, and it had been about eight o’clock in the evening when she had interrupted the attack on my grandmother, then the shop would have been closed, and the door locked. In spite of the fact that vampires seemed to come and go with complete disregard for locked doors, most people were less agile. I was going to assume that the murderer was human —otherwise, why would there be stab wounds?
The dense fog of confusion that had surrounded me since I had discovered at one and the same time that my grandmother was a vampire and that she believed I was a witch began to dissipate now that I had something concrete to do.
I put the whole witch thing aside. Surely, if I were a witch, there would have been some clues in the last twenty-seven years. The only odd thing about me was that I came late to things. That and the vivid dreams. But lots of people had vivid dreams and didn’t turn out to be witches.
Perhaps I could test myself. I looked on the Internet but all the spells I found seemed to involve burying things in the back garden, saying some rhyming words and hey presto, in a month or so your hair would be thicker, that skin condition might have cleared up, or that guy you’d been crushing on might notice you. Of course, I reasoned, people who posted spells online probably weren’t real witches, and all of those things could be coincidence. I wanted something I could do now and see results.
I glanced around and focused on the botanical prints Gran had hung in the dining room. There was an apple, a pomegranate, and a leek. The prints were old and hand-colored. I’d always thought three fruits in a row would look better than two fruits and a vegetable. Seemed a harmless way to test my powers. I came up with a simple rhyme, something like what I’d seen online.
In that frame there shouldn’t be a leek
A blushing pear is what I seek
As I decree
So let it be
I walked into the dining room and said the words, staring at the leek as I did, with its bulbous bottom and trailing root. Not that I’d expected a flash of fire and abracadabra the picture would change, but I admit I was a bit let down when nothing at all happened.
Not that my hopes had been high, but it seemed I wasn’t a witch after all.
I could move on.
I walked back to the living room and resumed my seat. After retrieving my notebook, I settled back to think, but couldn’t get comfortable. Something was digging into my back. I shifted the cushions and finally stood and pulled the faded chintz cushion off the couch. Behind it was a roll of paper, quite old, and a bit frayed at the edges. I unrolled it and there was a botanical print of a single pear, hanging from a bit of branch, with a few leaves above it. There were a couple of brown spots, exactly like a real pear’s skin, and where the sun had shone on it, the artist had colored it a reddish, terra cotta color. A blushing pear is what I seek.
But if I’d magically caused the pear print to appear, why hadn’t it appeared in front of me as I’d intended? No doubt Gran had bought this print intending to have it framed to add to her collection and this was one of those very coincidences that make gullible people believe in magic.
I laid the rolled print on the dining table. I’d ask Gran if she’d purchased it, though, with her bad memory lately there was no guarantee she’d remember.
Back to the late night visit. Either the perpetrator of this crime had a key to the door, or my grandmother had felt comfortable enough to open the door to them long after the shop was closed. I added another question to my list. Who had keys to the shop door?
Then I added another item to my to do list. Change locks. I’d intended to do it yesterday, but with all the drama hadn’t got around to it.
There is a wonderful saying about not putting off until tomorrow what you can do today. And, something about a possible murderer having a key to the shop downstairs was enough to get me pulling out my mobile. I fetched my laptop and did a search of locksmiths in the area. I made four phone calls before I could find a locksmith who could come that very day. We made an arrangement for two that afternoon and I felt marginally better. I had something on my to do list that I could cross out.
I couldn’t stop the picture forming in my head of my beloved grandmother fighting for her life and some evil person taking it from her. I was determined, as I had never been determined before, to get justice for Gran. I felt suddenly like Scarlet O’Hara standing in the ruins of Tara with her fist raised in the air crying, “As God is my witness, I’ll never go hungry again.”
Well, as God was my witness, I would avenge Gran’s murder.
As the surge of righteous anger filled me, I became aware of another sensation, like electric impulses going up my arm and through my fingertips. I looked down and gasped. Flashes of white and blue light danced across the ends of my fingertips. There was no way I could blame this light show on static electricity.
“No,” I whispered. It couldn’t be possible, could it? Was Gran right and I’d just found out, at the ripe old age of twenty-seven years old, that I was a witch?
I took a deep breath and rubbed my hands together and that stopped the light, but not the thoughts racing through my head. Okay, I had to focus. Being a witch was crazy and terrifying and life altering, but right now I had to solve my
grandmother’s murder. I couldn’t afford to be bewitched by my own abilities.
I looked at my hands, now perfectly ordinary, with fingers that could use a manicure but otherwise appeared unremarkable. What if that light-zapping thing happened when I was out somewhere in public? I pictured myself reaching out to accept a block of cheese from the cheese mongers and suddenly blue and white light jumping out of my fingertips. There’d been more than a few witches burned at the stake in Oxford. Even if they didn’t roast my kind anymore, like marshmallows over a campfire, I did not relish the thought of anyone knowing about this strange and very unwelcome quirk.
Why couldn’t my newfound powers tell me whether the murderer had been known to my grandmother? That would be a lot more helpful than firestarters for fingers and pear prints that arrived unframed. Gran was so kindhearted, could she have opened the door to someone pretending to be in need? Was a serial killer on the loose?
Instead of adding that question to the list, I went online. There was no news story about an out-of-control knife-wielding murderer on the prowl. That didn’t mean there wasn’t one. However, I’ve always heard that the vast majority of murders are committed by people known to the victim. I thought I’d start there.
But who would kill the proprietor of a knitting shop? I knew all about the frustration of wool that insisted on tangling up in itself instead of knitting properly, and patterns clearly devised by the minions of hell to confuse a person. I may have once or twice stabbed a ball of wool, quite savagely, with a pair of knitting needles, but killing the knitting shop owner seemed a little extreme. Still, I’d keep my eyes on the customers and see if there was anyone who seemed dangerous.
Could there be enemies from her past that I didn’t know about? I realized how little I actually knew about my grandmother. I would have to learn what I could about her background and see if that’s where the mystery lay.
And then there was Violet Weeks, my supposed cousin and Gran’s niece. I wondered if that were true, or a fib devised by Dr. Weaver and his vampire chums to get my gran quietly buried, and fast. I should have demanded more answers of Dr. Weaver. I was not a very good sleuth.
At least I’d decided to open the knitting shop the next day. It would give me something to do other than brood, and I would get to know some of her patrons.
The living ones.
CHAPTER 11
I had no idea whether I’d have any customers in Cardinal Woolsey’s on Friday when we reopened. Still, I had to make a start. I’d spent yesterday updating the website and the shop’s social media pages and having the locks changed.
I messaged Rafe, reminding him about the reopening, and asked him to pass the information on to the rest of the undead knitters, with a special request that someone keep an eye on Gran so she didn’t inadvertently wander into the shop halfway through the day.
Until she became more used to her new role as a creature of the night, her insomnia could be a real problem. He promised that they’d post shifts to keep an eye on Gran and wished me luck on my first day.
I put on a plain black skirt over leggings and short boots that I thought might be reasonably comfortable for standing most of the day. On top I wore a simple white T-shirt and added the silver chain and cross by way of jewelry. Of course I believed the vampires living beneath me got their meals from a blood bank, but until they became accustomed to a warm-blooded person upstairs, I thought I’d play it safe.
I’d put the vampire repelling items into a basket that was tucked away in a corner of the back room.
My hair is long and naturally curly, which is much more annoying than people with straight hair have any idea of, and it wasn’t behaving. I looked at my fingers. Should I attempt a good hair spell? Then I thought of the electricity that seemed to burst out of my fingertips randomly and pictured myself with hair sticking straight out in all directions, like Nyx when she had a fright. I left my hair loose and, what some people might call messy, and I prefer to call quirky. I put on a little mascara and some lip gloss and called it a day.
I was about to head down to the shop when Nyx meowed piteously. I’d thought she was out, but it seemed she was stuck somewhere. Sure enough, I found her shut inside Gran’s bedroom. She must have gone in and then the door closed behind her. “What are you doing in here?” I asked her. She gave me a look that basically said, “When are you going to realize I don’t talk?”
“I’m lonely and nervous. Give me a break.”
I swear she shook her head at me. She was sitting on top of Gran’s wooden jewelry box. It had been a treasure box to me when I was a kid. The lid lifted up and all the coiled costume jewelry necklaces and sparkly earrings had seemed like pirate’s booty. Nyx jumped down as I approached and walked out the door. I was about to follow her, but then I looked at the jewelry box and thought how much I’d like to wear something today that was Gran’s, for good luck. When I raised the lid, a scent emerged that reminded me of all the times Gran and I had played dress-up. Her ruby ring was sitting in a velvet lined tray. The ring was quite plain. A round, dark red stone set in gold filigree. She’d always worn it. I slipped it on my own finger and found it fit perfectly and was comforting. I’d carry a part of her with me into her shop.
Somehow, wearing that ring, I felt more prepared as I headed downstairs, Nyx at my side.
I opened the door leading into the shop and as I entered my foot bumped into a cloth shopping bag. I knew it hadn’t been there last night when I’d locked up behind the locksmith.
Curious, I picked up the bag. When I’d turned all the lights on, I looked inside to find a blue hand-knit cardigan with an exquisite pattern of flowers and butterflies knitted into the front. As I took the sweater out of the bag I saw the note. It read, “Good luck on your first day. Love from all of us in the knitting club.”
It was only two days ago that Clara had offered to knit me a sweater and now it was done. As I slipped my arms into the sleeves I began to think my first day running Cardinal Woolsey’s was getting off to a good start.
Nyx walked around the perimeter poking her nose into baskets and sniffing corners, presumably on the hunt for mice. I was heartily glad she didn’t find any and, instead, wandered to the window display, jumped up and stepped into the basket of assorted wools I’d arranged yesterday. She turned her body around a few times, pawed at the balls of wool until she was satisfied and then curled herself up and closed her eyes.
I couldn’t decide whether to toss her out or let her sleep, when I heard the door rattle. It was a couple of minutes before nine. I opened the door and Rosemary stood there looking as though it was a great imposition to have to come to work. She’d always dressed for comfort rather than style and today was no different. She wore a flowered smock over a pair of brown stretch pants and white trainers. She was probably around sixty, with permed red hair and high color in her cheeks, as though she suffered from elevated blood pressure.
Deciding to start out on a good footing with my one and only employee, I gave her a warm smile and wished her a good morning.
She blinked and mumbled, “Morning.”
“You’re probably wondering why your key wouldn’t work, but I had the locks changed yesterday. Not knowing how many people might have Gran’s key made me nervous.”
Rosemary hefted her bulk into the shop and her mouth turned down. “She made me give my key back.”
“I beg your pardon?” Surely, I hadn’t heard her correctly.
“My key. After the break-in, your grandmother suddenly got worried and asked for my key back. As if Randolph would have anything to do with it.” She looked at me belligerently, as though I might argue with her.
I was completely confused. This was the first I’d heard of a break-in. “Randolph? Who’s Randolph?”
Her glare intensified. “He’s my son, and he’s a good boy. Ever since he came out of the nick, he’s been as good as gold.”
“Your son was in prison?” No wonder Gran had taken back her key. I didn’t wan
t to ask the next question but I knew I had to. “What was he in for?”
“Just a bit of petty thieving. But since he came out he’s been ever so good. He’s kept that job down at the charity shop, and he sees his parole officer regular like.”
“I see.” I’d planned to give Rosemary one of the new sets of keys, but now I decided to hold onto them. I’d let my assistant in myself in the morning and make sure I locked up at night after she’d left. “When was the break-in?”
“I told you my Randy had nothing to do with it.” I thought she might hit me with the large canvas bag she held gripped in her hands.
“I’m sure he didn’t, but I don’t know anything about this break-in. When did it happen? Was anything taken?”
She seemed slightly mollified that I hadn’t accused her son and relaxed her grip on the bag. “Couple of months ago, it was. The lock had been forced.”
“Did Gran report it to the police?” I was surprised Ian Chisholm hadn’t mentioned it.
Rosemary shook her head. “Nothing was taken, see? Your gran didn’t see the point in reporting a broken door, ‘cause that’s all it was.” She glanced around the shop and not with affection. “Well, stands to reason. Who’d break down a door to take a bunch of wool? There’s not enough left in the till at night to bother with.”
“Had they tried to open the till?”
“Don’t think so. Your gran reckoned they was drunk or heard somebody coming and ran off.” She put her bag in the cupboard under the cash register and sighed. “I was so sorry about your poor old grandma.” Something about the way she said the words set my teeth on edge. She sounded smarmy and insincere. My hand felt hot suddenly and when I glanced down I saw that Gran’s ruby ring was glowing, so slightly only I could see it, but it was glowing all the same. Between fingers that sparked electric storms and a ring that glowed all on its own I was beginning to feel like a freak.
