“I’m just trying to understand your change of heart. Yesterday, when I could use you and it was super important not to make a scene, you ran out on me saying ‘no, no, no, no.’ Loud enough so that another guest came out of their room to see what was going on, in case a lady was in trouble, and found us staring over the dead body.”
“Oh,” I said, suddenly quite incapable of looking Max in the eye. “Did they scream?”
“They screamed bloody murder. Literally, the man said, ‘Bloody murder!’ and charged back into his hotel room, called the cops on Julio and me, we had a hell of a time keeping Frisco from just tossing us in the back of his car, just for the hell of it. If it’d been that gorilla they have, the one who likes you so much with the mustache…”
“Quincey,” I said with a groan.
“Yeah, Quincey probably would have just beaten us to a pulp on the spot, decided he’d caught his man and you’d be bailing me out instead of baking me some apology cookies?” he said, turning his eyes up at me like he’d borrowed them from a nearby sad puppy.
“Cookies are for closers. And for people who bring me all kinds of information so that I can help people out.”
“And who are you helping out, and why does that preclude cookies? I hear you guys make the best.”
Ugh, I couldn’t say. Max knew about Sibyl’s checkered past. Heck, for the longest time he knew more than I did about it. He probably knew a lot about Grand-Mere, too, and the accident that took our parent’s lives and all other sorts of things that he shouldn’t have been so nosy about.
Except that nosiness had come in handy, as he and I had gotten together and solved a few unfortunate events. And those unfortunate events seemed to be happening faster, meaner, and were as far as I was concerned centered entirely around one pair of no-good ladies who owned a rival store and were always up to no good.
“I don’t make cookies. I think Lucy does, I’ll talk to her. Now, murder murder murder.”
“Sounds good. How do you want to start?” Max said.
“I want to figure out how much we can pin on the Jiggs. And then I want to pin it on them. Hopefully using actual pins. Voodoo dolls are a legitimate kind of magic, you know.”
“And if the objects of your creepy obsession and rivalry have absolutely nothing to do with this?”
“Well… they just have to. It is decided.” I folded my arms in a good, strong deciding pose.
“Mm-hmm. Look, sidekick, while I’ve been dodging the cops, I’ve also put in some good research about the poor unfortunate who… why are you looking at me like that?”
I was frozen like a statue, struck mute by the insult.
“Sidekick?” I said.
“Huh? Yeah, well, one of us is reluctant and tries to shirk her duties, while the other is stalwart and true. Hero,” he said, pointing at himself, then he pointed at me. “Sidekick.”
“With otherworldly powers,” I said, sneering a little.
“Oh, so you’re going to come out and talk about them, finally? They’re not going to be a big secret? Can I do a full feature on your witchcraft? How about a video for the website? Do some magic on camera.”
That wiped the sneer completely from my face. The only response I could muster was a rather weak little mutter, and a shake of my head about how awful my so-called ‘friends’ could be.
“Spoken like a sidekick. Now, the guy’s real name—”
“Wilhelm Spengler,” I said.
“Right. How did you know?”
I pursed my lips, that old dilemma of whose secrets I could tell rearing up on me again. I didn’t want to let him know how directly Sibyl was involved with all of this… but I knew that if I withheld something now, and it became important later, it would hurt the investigation, our friendship, everything.
“Sibyl told me. When we had Mr. Handsome locked up in here because she believed he brought a demon to kill the man, who was her old mentor.”
“Okay, and you were holding this back, why?”
“Because of reasons.”
“Good enough. Tell me all about Mr. Handsome. Did you kiss him?”
“No,” I said, and laughed because I certainly had not thought about Hank and his lips or… anything. Not at all. So ridiculous.
“Mm-hmm. So you randomly bump into this guy, right? At the scene of the crime.”
“He was coming in, not going out.” I poured myself a new cup of tea, trying to look like I was just stating facts and not defending some guy just because he was… well, Mr. Handsome.
“Right, and then you get attacked by some… did you say demon?” Max asked, his brow all twisty and knitted up like someone were back there behind his forehead pulling strings.
“I guess it was a demon. I’m not a girl with a lot of demon experience.”
Max nodded, his expression taking on a look I’d seen many times before. Whenever he had direct contact with my magic, after an initial enthusiasm it was like a rationality fever took over his brain, telling him all kinds of reasons that what he saw could not have actually happened. It happened less and less lately, but mentioning demons put that expression right back on his face.
“Have you done much reading on hallucinations and mass hypnosis?” he said.
I sighed. “I’m not going to justify or explain things to you, Max. They are how they are, and even if we don’t like them… that’s just how it is.”
“Hmm,” he said, then he shook his head, dismissing his thoughts. “Kicky, open up the notebook. Write down the names as I tell them to you.”
After a second’s bristling at being told what to do, I did what he said. If you have a murder investigation, you need to keep two things in mind at all times (I know this because I’ve done a couple. And read a lot of books about it.) First, you need all the facts. Second, you need all the people. Who was where and what they could have done.
“Now, we don’t know much about this guy, or I don’t. Did Sibyl give you a full dossier and backstory on Wilhelm?”
“She knew him in the past. That’s all I know.”
“Okay, so, like I said, write down the names. The Jiggs,” he said, with a lack of emphasis that made me know this was just a bone thrown at me.
“Look, this Wilhelm guy was involved with magical stuff, and they’re doing bad magical things these days.”
“Hmm,” Max said, unimpressed. “Next, Sibyl Tanner.”
“What?” I practically screeched.
“She knew him. We have to assume she saw him.”
“No, we don’t. She said she didn’t.” I put my little foot down. It didn’t make much of a sound because it was, in fact, quite a little foot.
“We know what she said. We don’t know what she did. So, put her down. We’ll have to clear her.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Murder’s a dirty business,” he said, so seriously and portentously that I nearly choked laughing at him. He waited for me to finish making noise before he said, “Next name, Mr. Handsome.”
I glared, the pen in my hand starting to vibrate with my annoyance.
“Now you’re just saying things to get my goat.”
“I did not know you had a goat. I have no interest in your goat. I have an interest in figuring out why all these people were there and what relationship they had with the victim. These are exactly who the police are going to be looking at.”
But Sibyl wasn’t there! I wanted to shriek in frustration, but I kept a lid on it. I had to eat a little crow because I’d left Max high and dry last night. If we could get through his crackpot notions fast enough, then we could get to finding who was really responsible. Which had to be the Jiggs sisters.
“Okay that’s three names, but only two real possibilities,” Max said, needling at me for no good reason. “Anyone else?”
“We’re assuming this was death by pizza, right?” I said.
Max nodded. “Frisco promised to let me know what they found out on that score, but that’ll take a while. A toxicology
screening, particularly when they don’t know just what they’re looking for, doesn’t happen overnight. But if the pizza-loving German fella had a coronary or something apparently natural, I’ll know about it by the end of today.”
“Okay, but what if the delivery boy had something to do with it?” I saw him heading out of the hotel… and practically bumping into that guy dressed all weird in black. “And the weirdo.”
“So, two random people you just happened to see walking out of the hotel, and they’re on your list of suspects even though they have no connection—”
“But they are connected, I told you. One of them delivered the pizza that killed the man. The other was in this shop when Wilhelm was all sweaty and unhappy, then he stormed out almost as soon as Wilhelm left. Said something, too… about, I dunno. The night…”
I looked up from the table, trying to remember and gather my thoughts. What had he said? My gaze moved from the space where he had been sitting to the door he’d run out from… and landed right on the mug of the man I was talking about. I shrieked and pointed. He had been staring in through the glass windows that were half covered with cute paintings I’d hired a local guy to paint, of tea cups and cozies with a border of leaves from plants that all had hidden magical properties.
Seeing the dyed black hair, those staring dark eyes in a painted-pale face was like seeing a vision of something dark, from the corner of your dreams. He looked me in the eye, and smirked, then whirled around and ran.
I got to my feet and slapped into the front door… which I’d forgotten I’d kept locked. I didn’t quite slam face first into it and knock myself back on my tuffet (two days in a row, poor tuffet), but only because I was holding onto the door latch at the time. I yanked on it, and cranked it up and down, staring after the space the man had left. Why wasn’t the door opening? Did he have his own kind of magic or…
“Sidekick,” Max said, standing up from the table. He raised his hand, pinched his fingers together, and made a twisting gesture. Two or three times.
“What? What? What is that?” I screeched. My voice was getting ragged from my screeching.
“Door’s locked,” he said.
“Oh,” I said, then took his gesture as my own, applied it to the lock, and finally got the door open.
I charged out to the street. Looking left and right, I saw the normal daily traffic, maybe a bit lighter than normal this morning, but nothing spectacular or suspect. Just groups of people, mainly women, looking in shop windows, walking with each other. Half of them had to-go cups from expensive nationwide coffee chains in their hands. We’re a small town, so we can only support two of those corporate monstrosities.
No sign of the black-haired weirdo. It was like he’d disappeared.
“If that guy has some kind of magic,” I said, turning around and heading back into the shop, where Max hadn’t moved from his spot… “Then I give up. The Jiggs I know about. The Warlock, Mr. Handsome, fine. But black-haired weirdos looking in my shop and disappearing? Enough is enough.”
“Hmm,” Max said, not nearly as stressed out and worried about this weirdness as he should have been. He was becoming a problem.
“Hmm what?”
“Hmm, he looked familiar. I think I saw him the other day when I was covering the new openings at the strip mall over on Greenwood. The fitness center, right between Lang’s Tasties and The Sugar Shack. So people who work out can go right to breaking their diet when at their weakest points. There was a ribbon, the mayor gave a speech.”
“That’s life in our bustling metropolis. Now, you saw that guy?”
Max shrugged. “There was a little crowd, and that pale guy with dyed hair… but I don’t think it was that guy. They were dressed the same, sure, but the guy I saw was about 200 pounds heavier. Had a bag of cookies with him he was slurping down, too, just eating one after the other. I was so bored with the speech I just stared at this guy, eating.”
“Max?”
“Yeah?” he said, giving me a look with eyes that seemed very far away. He was probably still imagining the display, a man eating cookies. Max needs a vacation.
“Our investigation?” I was on the verge of foot-tapping.
“Hmm? Okay, write down weirdo. I guess write down delivery boy. Where did the pizza come from?”
“I haven’t got a clue.”
“Then you need to work on your skills of observation if you’re going to make it in this game, sidekick. That was a Tony Brother’s pizza. From across the street. There are menus for all the restaurants right across the hotel in every room. Cheap delivery, quick service. Now, since he got the pizza from there…”
“If anybody in the restaurant overheard the delivery, they could have poisoned the pizza there.”
“Exactly,” Max said, folding his arms as if he had just won some war of wits.
“Except… have you ever overheard an order for a pizza in a restaurant? What, are we supposed to believe that somebody who happened to want this Wilhelm character dead, somebody who hadn’t been in town for about a decade, as far as we know, just happened to be in the restaurant, just happened to overhear the order, just happened to know what false name he was going to use and just happened to be ready to poison it when it got delivered, even thought the amount of time the pizza was not under somebody’s direct supervision would have been at most seconds? I’ve eaten at Tony Brother’s. Pizza goes direct to box direct to delivery boy. It’s a good system. Good pizza, too. I hope this doesn’t hurt their business.”
“Focus, girl,” Max said, a bit of a sour look coming onto his face. I guess he didn’t expect his sidekick to kick his elaborate pizza poison theory right to the side so quickly. “Anyway, Wilhelm had been in the hotel for four days, and had had pizza delivered every night. Julio told me. It wouldn’t have to be a coincidence.”
“Or it might have been a total coincidence,” I said, voicing despair.
“So, what other lead do we have? A charcoaly-demon who threw wind at you?” he said, making a face I didn’t appreciate.
I just shrugged.
“Hmm. If only we knew more about this guy,” Max said.
“Right.”
“He used to live here in Lafay, when he was Sibyl’s mentor. If only we knew something about his time then.”
“Exactly.”
“If only we had the address of a house that he still owned, and kept up despite not having lived here for eight years. A house right in the center of the residential part of town.”
“Sure, that would be…” Then I smacked him, just for the big old grin on his face.
Chapter 12
Max was sometimes a stinker. I told him so.
“Max, sometimes, you’re a stinker.”
“Hmm?” Max said, adjusting the enormous lens on his camera. The camera itself was rather small and slim, but with the lens attached it looked like a weapon from out of a science fiction movie. “No, I take a bath at least twice a week. Even washed my clothes last month. I reject your assessment.”
“I mean, silly pants… oh, you’re not kidding. Pew. I can see what you’ve eaten for the last week on that shirt, Max. Ugh… What I mean is that if you knew Wilhelm Spengler owned a darn house in the middle of town, you could’ve just told me that. Not tried to, I dunno, goof around with the information and make me feel all confused and worried and stupid.”
I looked out the window where he was staring with his lens at the house. It was, all told, about as normal a house as one could get in this town. Two stories, painted white and yellow, with a well-kept lawn and clean windows. The only thing that might make it stand out is that it looked like absolutely nobody lived there. There was no welcome mat, no decorations on the window and the walk. The closest thing to an individual feature was a particularly large oak on the front lawn. It stood tall, taller than the house with its branches reaching all around, though I noted they were very cleanly and professionally trimmed, so there wasn’t a chance of much more than a spare leaf flying down on t
he neighbor’s property.
It was right in the middle of Decatur Street, which I don’t think I’d ever driven down but which sounded familiar to me for some reason. Maybe I have a friend who lived on the edge of Decatur in High school, I don’t know. A maybe taller than normal fence surrounded most of the property, cutting it off from its neighbors.
The point is that he had this information, this important information, and he was happier with me squirming than him sharing it. It made me sour again on this whole investigating thing. It was bad enough, looking into murders and nastiness. To have to do it while you don’t have the trust of your team?
“I should be baking scones right now,” I said.
“Eh? What? Scones?”
“For the wedding. For Trish Tarkington, this is going to be a big thing. It’s less than a week away now, and I have a million things I could be doing that are not sitting in a car and watching an empty house with a supposed partner who doesn’t share information.”
“First, I’m not your partner. I’m the intrepid newspaperman, you are the oddball—”
“If you say the word sidekick one more time, I’m going to sidekick you out of this car.”
“Threats of violence from somebody literally half my weight and wearing a cute little pink sweater aren’t that effective.”
He was right. I was tiny compared to him, and my pink sweater was particularly cute this morning. I ran a store, after all. People expected things of you.
“Then I’ll get Sibyl to kick you.”
“That… is actually threatening. I’ll get a restraining order put out on your whole clan. Now be quiet, we’re investigating.”
I supposed this was the job, such as it was - sitting around, waiting for things to happen. Observing. Except I wasn’t some ding-dang newspaperman or cop or anything but a witch on a schedule. A tight schedule.
Never Date A Warlock (Sister Witchcraft Book 4) Page 9
