“Carbon!” I snapped. “I told you not to do that while the Phoenix Flare was still in the pot.”
“Well…I’m sorry,” Carbon said sheepishly. “I was cold.”
I shook my head as I marched over to the fireplace. The entire building could be burning down around our heads and Carbon would still be cold.
The stench and heat coming from the cauldron gave me pause. Phoenix Flare wasn’t exactly Mainland mustard gas but letting it burn wasn’t a good idea for anyone’s long-term health. But thanks to Carbon’s idiotic kicking up the heat, it was burning too hot for me to approach safely.
“Allow me,” the golem said, walking past me. She marched right up to the burning cauldron and put her hands over the flames. Several phrases in what sounded like Yiddish were spoken over the fire in a sing-song manner. Gradually, the flames went down, the golem’s hands keeping pace with the outer edge of the fire. Finally, they extinguished themselves and the pot was once again boiling at its normal intensity.
“That…was…amazing,” Millie said in astonishment as the golem stepped aside so I could check the pot.
“I was born in flame and dust,” the golem noted with a shrug. “Perhaps that is why I am so good with fire.”
I sighed as I looked at the mixture. While the golem had succeeded in keeping anything hazardous from happening to us, the impromptu explosion had utterly ruined the Phoenix Flare. I was going to have to start from scratch on this tomorrow, which would delay delivery by a day. Carbon made a point of going upstairs, probably to hide under the bed with Fraidy.
“We’re going to have to dump this out,” I said with a sigh, picking up the cauldron.
“Allow me,” the golem said again as she lent her arm strength to the task.
“Dumping ground’s just over here,” Millie told the golem, pointing her to a trap door right behind the counter.
A glow of mushrooms greeted us as Millie got the door for us. The glow dimmed a bit as we poured the tainted goo down the hole. The mushrooms would soak it up like miniature sponges and turn it back into harmless groundwater. I had to admit that this dump was a lot easier with the golem to help me out. When the last drop had hit bottom, Millie closed the trap door.
“Would you like me to clean—“ the golem started to ask.
“No, I’ll get this one myself,” I said, holding up a hand. “It’s going to take more than Green Man to make this old cauldron usable again.”
“And wouldn’t you know it, it’s a minute past closing time,” Millie said as she glanced at the clock.
While she busied herself locking the front door, I carried the cauldron to the back. As I sat it down, I noticed that the golem had followed me over.
I tried to keep my annoyance to a minimum as I asked, “Something else you wanted to ask me?”
“No, tell you,” the golem said. “You did not care for my former mistress, did you?”
“That’s the polite way to put it,” I allowed. “But, that sounded more like asking me a question than telling me something.”
“An observation,” the golem countered. “Few people did care for Nebula Dreddock, and none are sorry that she is dead.”
Feeling a little uncomfortable with the golem’s bluntness, I asked, “So what’s your point?”
“However much you detested Nebula Dreddock, you are still compelled to solve her murder. You have seen untimely death up close and you take it as a personal insult. If this murder was done by human hands, then the owner of those hands must pay.”
I pulled my head back but nodded. Onyx himself couldn’t have come to a better conclusion, and he had been around me longer than she had.
“How did you get to be so wise?” I asked, a bemused smile coming on my face on its own.
“Thirty-nine years of being among humans has taught me much,” the golem said.
Something about that number tickled my brain. I was still trying to place it when Millie came to the back to say goodnight.
Chapter Eight
The next couple of days were a little dull for me. I had spent half the night finishing the cleaning of the cauldron that the golem had started, so I was less than refreshed when I opened the shop the next morning. Even my delivery route barely kept me awake.
The next day, I felt a little better (going to sleep at a decent hour works wonders, I've discovered,) but there were no deliveries on the agenda. I wound up spending the whole day at the shop, catching up on the accounting books while the golem continued to do most of the scut work under Millie’s careful supervision.
Both days, I kept waiting for word from David on the case. Both days, I was disappointed. But, there was really nothing to be done. I had met most of the suspects by this point and passed on my information to David. Now I just had to let him sort through the findings until he needed me once more. I confess, I was hoping it would be soon. Still, the golem’s observation about why I had enthusiastically embraced being involved in this case stuck with me. I found myself getting restless, twitchy, wanting to take time to consider clues, as opposed to doing the things that would have kept me calm before all this started.
By closing time on the second day, I decided that I needed something to help calm my nerves enough to sleep. That’s when I consulted one of my favorite relaxing bath mixes from Grandma’s journals: a calming bath soak that consisted of 10 drops of lavender, 10 drops of bergamot and 8 drops of frankincense.
Each of them had a complimentary reason to be in the mix. Frankincense is great for helping still the mind, lavender works wonders as a physical and mental relaxant and bergamot was a citrusy, uplifting oil that helps calm people down. As a bonus, all three oils were great for skin care, especially frankincense when it comes to aging skin and wrinkles. I can still hear Grandma laughingly say that the Mainland could keep their Oil of O-whatever.
Of course, thoughts of anti-aging substances made me think of Wraithsgourd which in turn made me think of Nebula’s death. There was something about that which was still bugging me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I’m just glad it never got to the level of consciousness where I couldn’t sleep. But even as I was tumbling off to Dreamland, I realized that I was focused on this case more than I ever had any of the day-to-day things I had done around the shop in a while.
My restlessness came to an end early the next morning. The phone woke me up just a few minutes before seven. After taking a minute to curse whoever thought calling me at this hour was a good idea, I managed to pull the receiver off the hook to mumble a half-asleep “Hello?”
“Hattie, I know it’s early, and I’m sorry,” David said on the other end.
The sound of David’s voice instantly revived me. “Something else happen overnight?”
“We picked up Cressida Dreddock at four o’clock this morning,” David told me as I started getting out of bed, batting aside at least three of my cats in the process. “I thought you might want to sit in on the interrogation, see if there’s some angle we might be missing.”
“Sure,” I said with an eagerness that surprised me. “Let me just get on some clothes and get with Millie, and I’ll be right over.”
“No rush,” David assured me. “Cressida’s not going anywhere for a while.”
As I hung up, Onyx jumped back onto the bed with an expectant look.
“You know I’ve got to make that up, right?” I asked in annoyance.
“Of course,” Onyx said in his usual unperturbed fashion. “However, I wanted to get your attention.”
“Okay, you’ve got it. What?”
“I would very much like to join you for Cressida Dreddock’s questioning. I may be able to help her reveal certain facts that she might otherwise withhold.”
I pressed my tongue between my lips as I thought it over. Onyx was more than just an unlicensed therapist to me. He had an ability to tease out truth from people who were trying to keep it in. He would be the envy of any police officer investigating a suspect. People tended to tell their deepest, da
rkest secrets whenever he stayed in a room with said person for long enough.
“Be by the back door when it’s time to go,” I said.
Onyx gave a little nod and then jumped off the bed again. As I was making it, Fraidy asked from under the bed, “You sure that’s a smart idea? This woman is crazy.”
“Beyond any doubt,” Onyx acknowledged. “But the question remains if she is also a murderer, dear brother.”
“And you think the smartest way to find that out is to ask her to her face?!”
I shook my head as I finished tucking in the bedsheets. “Are you actually going to come out from under there, Fraidy, or have you decided to spend the rest of eternity hiding in cashmere and lambs wool?”
“I don’t want to be the next dead body. And, I was only borrowing the sweaters,” he added sheepishly.
“But, it’s only humans getting killed around here,” Onyx directed to his under-the-bed sibling. “Plus, it’s not as though we can die.”
“Why take the chance?”
Onyx sighed and shook his head in dismay. “At least come out for breakfast. Safety in numbers, right?”
“I…I guess,” Fraidy said while I went through my closet for something to wear.
My big coward of a cat was indeed around when I gave everyone their morning meal. But he was right back under the bed long before I went downstairs.
Looking at Cressida Dreddock through the interrogation room glass wasn’t easy. As you’d guess from being a twin, she had a spitting image resemblance to Nebula in a lot of respects: her lips, nose shape, overall build and bone structure. Her hair was the same blue-black shade of Mother Night hair dye . But, it was the same body I’d found in the Gorthland Spires with two or three decades added onto it. There were more liver spots and wrinkles on the skin, inadequately covered up by liberal applications of makeup. Her hair was thin to the point where I thought I could see her shockingly white scalp in a few places. Then there was the look in her eyes; milky confusion, and sparkling fear. Neither emotion had ever been on Nebula’s face in her entire life that I had ever noticed.
“Where did you find her?” I asked, turning to David.
“The Fingernail Moon, of all places,” David answered. “She ran straight in through the front door, begging Horace Mangler for forgiveness for all her wrongs.”
I made a face. “She thought he was a priest?”
“Who knows what’s going on in that damaged head of hers?” David said with resignation. “Doctors at Midnight Hill tell me that she’s prone to fugue states that tend to alternate between persecution scenarios and redemption narratives. Sometimes she even performs a bit of Sunny or Gloomy Magic to help her through what ever delusion she's suffering from.”
“Has she ever—“
“No, she’s never killed anybody,” David said, anticipating the question. “She’s too wrapped up in her own demons to ever do real harm to anyone but herself. But she did have something on her when we came to collect her: the missing scroll from Nebula’s.”
“You’re sure?” I asked.
David glowered at me through his glasses. “The writing is an exact match to that of the article in Portia Fearwyn’s scrapbook. The carbon dating Maude performed on this puts it about the right antiquity. So, yes, this is the missing scroll, Hattie.” He looked tired. I had a sudden urge to reach out and kiss him.
“That still doesn’t mean she killed her sister.” I offered, respectfully.
David then looked really annoyed. “Are you a consultant on this case or her lawyer?”
“I’m someone who wants to know the truth of what happened,” I snapped back. “Rushing to judgment is a very bad way to get there.”
David sighed as he turned away from me. Looking down at Onyx, he said, “I’m not comfortable having one of your cats along for this interrogation. Even if it is the head honcho.” The chief couldn’t resist a little rub of Onyx’s nose as he commented.
“While I can understand your concerns, CPI Trew,” Onyx said. “I can also assure you that I am here for purposes of finding the truth just as much as Hattie is.”
“And he’s good at getting it,” I added. “C’mon, David, we’re not getting any answers talking amongst ourselves.”
David nodded but still looked wary. “Something else…Cressida has a very shaky grasp on reality. I told her three times in the last three hours that her sister was dead. Each time, she went into a hysterical screaming fit, and putting her hands over her ears. She's in a definite state of denial, right now.”
“Shouldn’t she at least have one of her doctors present?” Onyx asked.
“They tell me they’re going to collect her, but we don’t know when. They figure as long as we have her in custody, there’s no rush.”
“And, that’s why you told me not to hurry,” I deduced, feeling a little incensed on Cressida’s behalf. Sure, she wasn’t a danger to the community at large anymore. But, that didn’t mean she didn’t need some TLC ASAP.
“Let’s just get this over with,” David said, adjusting his glasses in a way that told me he wanted to get this business concluded.
Cressida’s eyes lit up as she spotted me stepping into the room. A wide smile that I found unnerving in its intensity spread across her face as she said, “Chimera, it’s so good to…”
Then her smile turned to a frown as she cocked her head to the side. I could feel David tense up behind me.
“You’re not…Chimera Opal, are you?” she asked.
“No, I’m her granddaughter, Hattie Jenkins,” I said, instinctively sticking out my hand for her to shake. I saw David’s eyes go wide in the reflection cast by the one-way glass.
“Oh, it’s so good to meet you, dear,” Cressida said as she enthusiastically pumped my hand with both of hers. “Chimera was always so kind to me and Sister Nebula when we were growing up.”
Thankfully, she ended the handshake at the end of the sentence. My arm felt like it’d nearly been pulled out of its socket from her efforts. I wondered briefly if her meds somehow gave the side effect of super human strength.
“You know, it was your grandmother who actually taught us Ogham,” Cressida said, with a somewhat glazed expression. “Nebula wasn’t so sure about learning it. I mean, no one on the Mainland even uses it anymore so why learn a dead language, right? But, but, but, but…”
Each “but” seemed to dim her enthusiasm a little. Then taking a breath, Cressida finished with, “But, I sold her on it by saying that if we ever needed to pass a message between us that was just for us, Ogham would be a good choice.”
A frown tugged at the corner of her mouth. “I never forgot it. But I wonder if Nebula did.”
I glanced at David. He nodded at me.
“So, how did you know my grandmother?” I asked, taking a seat across from her. David stood in the corner while Onyx quietly laid down under the table itself.
Cressida licked her lips before saying, “We did a few odd jobs for her at the Angel Apothecary to earn some money.”
“Grandma Chimera raised me,” I said carefully. “I don’t remember either of you being around the shop.”
Another quick smile came on Cressida’s face. “I think this was before you came to live with her, dear. I have absolutely no doubt that I would have remembered a pretty little girl like you, no matter how bad my head gets.”
The smile dropped away, to be replaced by a confused grimace. Shaking her head, she continued with, “Your Grandma Chimera…she taught us all about herbs. Nebula did most of the asking, but I listened just as close as she did. We found out how Rosehips were a really good source of Vitamin C, and that you could harvest them from around the edges of the old pond, you know where the ice cream parlor now stands right at the end of main? We found out how basil tasted amazing on pasta, but also of it’s anti inflammatory and mood lifting properties. We learned so much. So much…so, so much…”
On a hunch that it was an important question, I asked, “Was there anything Nebula ev
er paid close attention to when Grandma was talking about the herbs?”
“Oh, yes,” Cressida said, backing up her head in the manner of a too-serious-for-her-own-good little girl. “When your grandma talked about stuff that would keep you from aging—like frankincense and Wraithsgourd—Nebula was glued to the spot. It was the only time that my sister’d be asking for more details on the stuff. And, the only time I remember her actually writing down what she learned”
“Why was that?” I asked, leaning in with interest.
Cressida’s head shook a little, and her breathing got a bit ragged. While it could have been just a natural tic, I had the suspicion that Onyx’s magic was doing its number on her. Finally, after a few seconds of this twitching, she said, “Somehow—and I don’t know how—Nebula came upon some photos of Rita Hayworth…before and after photos.”
“Before and after what?” David asked from his corner.
I impatiently held up my hand and glared at him. The last thing either of us needed was him interrupting her flow.
“The first one showed her on a bed, all red hair and lingerie with that coquettish smile on her face,” Cressida explained. “Something Stephen King wrote about another picture of her, what was it? Yeah…‘woman in heat.' That was this photo too.”
“And the other one?” I asked gently.
Cressida swallowed. “Not so nice…it was taken years after her silver screen days; when she was ... old and alone.”
She looked at me with a look of heartbreaking pity stamped across her ragged features. “She went mad, you know? ‘Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?’ mad, but worse…way, way worse. She didn’t have a sister to torment or much of anyone else. She had that husband, Orson Welles, for a while, but .... So…so, so, so she started hurting herself and finally…she died ugly, old, alone and scared. Even I remember how ghostly and empty her eyes looked in that second photo.”
Filthy Witch and Dead Famous: A Paranormal Cozy Mystery (Hattie Jenkins & The Infiniti Chronicles Book 1) Page 11
