magic potion 03 - ghost of a potion
Page 12
“Chocolate truffle cupcakes,” she said, her voice raspy from a former two-pack-a-day smoking habit. Her bottle-blond hair was pulled back into a wobbly bun, and today she wore a flirty ruffled apron, its fabric printed with bright red lips that matched her own lip color.
“No wonder it smells like heaven. If I eat those, I’ll die from happiness.”
She filled a cardboard coffee cup, added a bit of cream and a touch of sugar, then set the lid loosely on top of the cup and pushed it over to me. “So you want me to box some up for you when they’re done cooling?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I tightened the top on the cup—Jessa never seemed to get it just right—and took a seat on a turquoise-colored padded stool at the counter. “If I’ve got to die, those are the perfect way to go.”
Country music floated from speakers mounted at the ceiling, not too soft and not too loud. Customer laughter and chatter filled the shop and also filled me with a sense of normalcy, which had been hard to come by in the past twenty-four hours.
“Speaking of dyin’ . . .” Propping her elbows on the counter, she leaned toward me, her heavily lined eyelids blinking innocently. Clumps of mascara teetered on long fake lashes.
“You heard about Haywood.” I took a sip of the coffee and wished I’d blown on it first as it seared the back of my throat.
“Sugar, who hasn’t? The news is all over town. Whenever I first heard, I couldn’t believe it. I’d just seen him yesterday with Hyacinth picking up some last-minute doodads for the ball.”
I copied her movements by setting my elbows on the countertop and leaning in. I cut straight to the chase. “Between the two of us, what do you know about Hyacinth’s drinking habits? I saw her this morning at the Silly Goose and she’d already been drinking, and I just saw her at the Delphinium’s bar, too. It looked like she had been there for a while.”
Surreptitiously, Jessa looked around and dropped her voice. “Shoo, girl, I’m surprised her blood isn’t ninety proof. When I was a drinking woman, that there Hyacinth could drink me under the table, and you know I could hold my liquor like no one’s business.”
Jessa had quit smoking and drinking after an unfortunate incident involving her heart two years ago: It had up and quit on her during a walk to work. If it hadn’t been for Odell’s quick thinking, she’d have died right outside this shop’s front door.
“You think she has a problem?” I whispered.
“Can’t rightly say. Lots of folks drink, social and all. Some more than others.”
“Is she one of those ‘some’?”
“If I was a betting woman, I’d say yes.”
“You are a betting woman.” Her love of scratch-off lotto tickets was well-known around here.
She laughed, a raucous, raspy, contagious sound that make me laugh too. “That’s right, I am.”
I didn’t know whether Hyacinth’s excessive drinking had anything to do with what had happened to Haywood. It was just one of the many pieces of the puzzle I was trying to figure out.
“Give me a sec and I’ll check those cupcakes.” She ducked into the kitchen.
Spinning on my stool, I glanced out the front windows. Virgil and Jenny Jane were standing outside the door, peeking inside. I gave them a little wave hello.
“The cupcakes need another couple of minutes. Who’re you waving to?” Jessa asked as she came back, squinting.
“I thought I saw someone I knew,” I lied quickly. But as I was about to spin back around, I did see Dr. Gabriel, Idella, and Hyacinth stroll by, Doc visibly drooping under the weight of shopping bags.
Idella had clearly made him pay at the local women’s boutiques for his earlier sniping.
As he trudged behind Idella and Hyacinth, I realized that the Kirbys must have been who Hyacinth had called for a ride home from the bar, and I was glad she was in capable hands.
Seeing Doc reminded me about Louella, the she-devil dog. “I don’t suppose you’re in the market for adopting a dog?”
“What dog? Did you find a stray?”
“It’s Virgil Keane’s old dog.”
“Louella?” Jessa tipped her head back and laughed again. Laughed so hard tears leaked from her eyes and black rivulets streamed down her face.
I didn’t think it was funny at all. “You could have just said no.”
Which made her laugh harder.
Heads turned and customers smiled at Jessa’s amusement.
“She’s been in Dr. Gabriel’s kennel since Virgil passed last May,” I said once she quieted enough for me to be heard. “In a moment of weakness I agreed to adopt her, but I can’t keep her. The cats would kick me out of the house.”
“Have mercy on your soul,” she gasped, using the pads of her fingertips to wipe beneath her eyes. “That dog ain’t right in the head.”
I was glad Virgil was outside and hadn’t heard that diss.
A couple in the shop stood up to leave, and Jessa called out, “Y’all have a good day! And congratulations again.”
Newlyweds. The town was full of them, so in love, making MoonPie eyes at each other.
They reminded me of Dylan, and I tried not to think too hard about his emotional state right now. I said to Jessa, “I don’t suppose you know where Mayor Ramelle is today?”
“Probably the same place she is every Sunday,” Jessa answered, tapping long nails on the counter.
“Where’s that?”
“Not sure, but Odell’s brother Otis flies her somewhere every Sunday afternoon in her pretty little plane, and back again long after nightfall. You could set a clock by it.”
Otis Yadkin was a former military pilot who now worked out of a hangar on the outskirts of Rock Creek, the next town over. I’d heard rumors all my life of his numerous airborne exploits, most of which were illegal and became more bawdy and exaggerated with each telling.
I was pretty sure they weren’t just rumors.
However, in between those exploits, he was an upstanding private pilot for some of the wealthier clientele in and around Darling County.
Knowing the dual sides of his personality, I had to wonder which hat he was wearing when he was ferrying Mayor Ramelle. Legal or illegal?
“I don’t suppose you can find out where he takes her, can you?” I asked.
She cocked her head and narrowed an eye. “What’s it to you, sugar?”
“What’s it to me as in why do I want to know? Or what’s it to me as in what do you get out of telling me?”
Laughing again, she wagged a finger at me. “Originally, I was thinking the first one, but now I’m intrigued. I choose door number two.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “You find out that info for me, and I’ll share the biggest bit of gossip you’ll hear all day. All week. All month. Maybe all year.”
Her eyes went wide. There wasn’t a more powerful currency to her than a big fat juicy bit of gossip.
“Give me two minutes.” She spun and went into the kitchen.
Again, I turned and looked out the front window. Idella, Dr. Gabriel, and Hyacinth were gone, but I did see Mr. Butterbaugh walk past, his sights set on my shop, which was diagonally across the Ring.
Last night at the ball I had the feeling that he had taken quite a liking to Eulalie. Sooner rather than later, I was going to have to talk with him and let him and his weak constitution down easy. It would be much easier on all of us if he didn’t start mooning after her.
Sipping my coffee, I waited for Jessa to return. Voices drifted from the kitchen, but I couldn’t make out any words. A few minutes later, she came tearing toward me, carrying a pink pastry box tied with a string.
She dropped the box on the counter and rubbed her hands together. “I got Odell to call up Otis.”
“There’s a phone on the plane?”
“Cell phone for work. I declare he’s the only one in this town that has one, not that it works around here, but it picks up a signal in Rock Creek.” Her cheeks plumped as she smiled. “And on the tarmac in Montgomery
.”
“Montgomery? Wait—is that where Mayor Ramelle is?”
“Sure as I’m standing here. You did not hear this from me, y’hear? Otis signed some sort of confidentiality contract with the mayor, and she’s a good paying client. I don’t want no trouble for him.”
“I won’t tell. Pinkie swear.”
Dropping her voice low, she said, “He flies her there every Sunday and sometimes during the week when she has a free day. A private car sent by the casino picks her up at the landing strip and brings her back hours later.”
There were only a couple of casinos in Alabama, all of which were in the southern part of the state, a good three-hour drive away, but only a half hour by plane. If you wanted to gamble up here, the options were limited to lottery tickets, the dog track, and local bingo parlors.
Hold up now.
Hadn’t Ainsley mentioned that Barbara Jean had played bingo every week at the church with Jenny Jane? “Casinos don’t tend to send private cars for casual players,” I said, thinking out loud.
“No ma’am,” Jessa said. “High rollers only. The big bucks.”
“How big?” I asked.
“It’s not unheard-of to have a budget of one hundred thousand dollars to wager.”
Good Lord. “Per year?”
“Per day.”
I about fell off my seat.
A customer came inside, and Jessa stepped aside to ring up the take-out order.
Mayor Ramelle, a high roller? I knew she and Doug had money, but that much money to play weekly?
Did the Harpies know about this? Was it possible she was wagering Harpies money? After all, she was their treasurer. How closely did they check their books? And what about the town? She had access to all the town’s resources as well.
Yet . . . she still played bingo. The largest pot at bingo was fifty bucks on a good night.
Which told me that maybe it wasn’t so much the money the mayor cared about. It was the competition. The winning. She was a gambler. Maybe even an addict, I suspected, jumping headlong to that conclusion despite lacking proof just yet, other than my instincts.
No wonder Doug hadn’t wanted to tell me where she’d gone.
Hoo boy.
Talk about a hornet’s nest.
Jessa bade her customer a good day, came back to me with eager eyes, and said, “Your turn.”
“Looks like Haywood Dodd was the mysterious heir to the Ezekiel mansion.”
She faux swooned, pressing her hand to her heart. “If that don’t beat all. Is that why someone whumped him upside the head with a candlestick?”
“Don’t know quite yet. Lots of questions to figure out still.”
“Well, I’d say you paid up but good, Carly, plus some. Them there cupcakes are on the house.”
My job here was done. I’d learned some about Mayor Ramelle, and Jessa would surely share the news of the Ezekiel mansion to anyone and everyone. The sooner that word got around the better.
The thing about hornets’ nests was that once the hornets were flushed out of it, you could set about getting rid of the thing altogether.
• • •
No sooner had I stepped out of the coffee shop did Wendell Butterbaugh practically run smack into me.
“Miss Carly! You’re a sight for these eyes. I was hopin’ to see you. Augustus is a mighty fine man, but he ain’t got your magic touch.” He held up one of my shop’s bags. “I think he sold me a dud.”
My daddy could dole out potions laced with Leilara tears the same as I could, but it was true that he didn’t have my kind of magic. He wasn’t an empath, so he couldn’t diagnose ailments the way I could.
That shouldn’t have affected Mr. Butterbaugh, though. His was a placebo potion, made only to ease his mind about his various psychosomatic symptoms.
“I drank it right up.” A breeze ruffled his graying hair, and he tamped it back into place. “It didn’t work a lick. My stomach still hurts, and I been getting chest pains every time I hear a bump in the night. Last night was a doozy, let me tell you.” He blotted his sweaty forehead with a handkerchief pulled from his back pocket. His voice rose as he exclaimed, “Bumps here, bumps there, bumps everywhere!”
I put a hand on his arm to calm him down. “Do you think someone was in the house?”
“Hand on heart, I went looking. Even down to the basement where most of the noise was coming from. That place gives me the willies. I didn’t see nothing or no one.” His eyes widened and he wiped his forehead again and also his upper lip. “Do you think it’s possible the place is haunted?”
It was entirely possible. “I don’t know what to make of it. Especially not after what you told me last night about the other things going on.” Specifically the grave being dug up. That was just plain strange.
“I’m not sure I can take much more of it. I might have to give my notice to them Harpies. Find a new job. Who’s going to hire an old man like me?”
“You’re not old,” I said. He was sixty-eight and still had plenty of life left. “There are lots of people around town who’d hire you in a second.”
They would, too. Though Mr. Butterbaugh was a bit eccentric, he was a hard worker and deeply loyal to his employers. He’d worked for Rupert Ezekiel for close to forty years and had done the best with what he had been given where the house was concerned. There hadn’t been money enough to fix it up right until the Harpies had come along.
Rolling his eyes, he said, “I feel old. My stomach . . . my heart. Your daddy said you were taking a day off, but I’d be right grateful if you’d make me up one of your special potions.”
I studied him. He did look a tad bit pale, and it wasn’t all that warm outside, so I wasn’t sure why he was sweating the way he was. I decided to read his energy and was more than a little surprised to find that he was in fact hurting. The anxiety running through his veins hadn’t given him an ulcer as he thought, but it had irritated his stomach lining enough to cause discomfort. But it was his heart that bothered me. It was off rhythm, skipping beats.
“I’d be happy to,” I said, feeling a twinge of guilt that I’d written off his symptoms, “but you’d do best to make an appointment with your doctor to get that ticker looked at proper.”
I wasn’t sure what was going on with his heart, whether it was stress causing something to misfire or if, as happened often with aging, the heart had simply started to give out. Although I could cure many things, I couldn’t cure terminal ailments. If his heart was failing due to age, no amount of my potions would fix it. Modern medicine and surgery might be able to, however.
“Already have a visit with Doc Hamilton scheduled for tomorrow,” he said.
We headed for Potions, Jenny Jane and Virgil following us at a good distance. “Then you’ll be good as new in no time.”
When he was, I’d ask him if he was interested in adopting a dog.
“Not if things keep going bump,” he said emphatically.
He was truly spooked by that house. “You said the noise was in the basement?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Is there anything valuable down there?” I asked.
“Not especially. It ain’t very big at all, and it’s plumb stuffed with building supplies.”
I stopped walking, looked at him. When I’d been at Haywood’s house earlier I’d seen the blueprints for the Ezekiel mansion. I’d taken special note of the basement—because it had been so large. It was unusual around these parts to have a basement at all, never mind a large one, thanks to the rocky soil. “It’s small?”
Eyes filled with puzzlement, he nodded. “Tiny. It was used only as a storm and wine cellar by Mr. Rupert.”
There had to be hidden rooms down there somewhere. “I don’t suppose you know if Haywood Dodd spent much time down there?”
“Now that you say so, I often saw him coming and going a fair bit. Never did say why he spent so much time down there. I assumed it was structural stuff.”
Maybe. Maybe not.
Aha, Mr. Butterbaugh had been the witness who’d come forward. “You heard an argument?”
“They were fighting all quietlike, but I was right around the corner waiting for Ms. Eulalie to finish up in the powder room. Miz Idella was there, too, but she was standing quietly off to the side looking like she’d rather be anywhere else in the whole world.”
“What were they fighting about?”
“Something about that pretty woman Miz Patricia had been yellin’ at earlier. She accused Mr. Haywood of sending a bunch of letters.”
Another mention of a letter. No, letters. Plural.
“Did he say anything in response to that?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. I heard someone coming and skedaddled before I was caught eavesdropping.”
If only Haywood would show up again, I could ask him about the letters, but he was still off doing his own thing.
Mr. Butterbaugh said, “To me it seemed like a whole lot of angry over nothing.”
It did. But under the fuss of Avery’s supposed party crashing, there was something bigger going on. Much bigger. I had to find out what. “Would you mind if I take a look at that basement, Mr. Butterbaugh?”
He cracked a smile. “Are you one of those ghost hunters, Miss Carly?”
I glanced over my shoulder at my spectral friends. “Something like that.”
Shrugging, he said, “I can’t see it doing no harm. When do you want to take a look?”
“How about just after I fix that potion for you? Do you have time?”
“Miss Carly, I have all the time in the world for you and your magic potions.”
Chapter Thirteen
By the time Mr. Butterbaugh and I made it to the Ezekiel mansion, the clouds had departed and I was grateful for my sunglasses as bright sunshine warmed the day.
Wet leaves plastered the sidewalk as we walked the lane toward the mansion, and I couldn’t help but admire the house in the light of day. Under the rays of the sun, it didn’t look creepy at all but rather warm and welcoming, as if wanting to tell its history to those happening by.