“But you got him the candy he wanted from Prue’s shop.”
“Oh. yes, that was part of the deal of him staying here. I left it in the pantry. I’m sorry I forgot to tell you about it.”
“You know that poison in that candy is what might have killed him?”
“Really? That’s unfortunate,” she said, and it seemed like her surprise was genuine. “I wouldn’t be shocked if one of his employees slipped into his room and put a little something extra on them.”
“How would one of his employees have gotten into his room?”
“Did his wife come with him?”
“No, she stayed home.”
It took me a second, but I finally picked up on what she was saying.
“He was never very good at being faithful. Maybe one of the younger ones had stars in her eyes thinking that Jack would leave wife number three and make her wife number four.”
“You’re saying you think one of the women he was cheating on his wife with killed him? Someone on the retreat?”
“I wouldn’t doubt one of them would want to, but I’ve already said too much. I’m sorry that I was in such a state when I arrived. Thank you for the tea and the chat.”
As Lucy was leaving, an old pickup truck pulled into the parking lot. The faded red body had a bit of rust around one of the wheel wells and a little more along the bottom of the passenger side door. There was a sliver of a crack in the back window, but the bed was full of yard tools all packed neatly in rows. Connor, Jessica’s brother, got out and walked toward the doors. My stomach dropped like it was weighted down by a boulder.
I hoped that Connor wasn’t coming to tell me that something terrible had happened to Jessica. When he came inside, Connor’s face was a little gray and he had bags under his red-rimmed eyes. You could tell he’d been under a great deal of stress and had probably been crying a great deal.
“Connor, is Jessica okay?” I blurted out.
“She’s doing much better,” Connor said. You could hear the relief in his voice. He was tired, but the tears must have been happy ones. “She’ll be getting out soon. Maybe even tomorrow. My wife and our parents are with her now.”
“Oh, that’s good news.”
“That’s actually not why I’m here.”
“Oh?”
“I was hoping that maybe you had some work for me to do. I could clean rooms since Jessica isn’t around, or if you need any work done outside. I brought stuff with me. I’ve got my toolbox in the cab too if you need anything fixed. I’m pretty handy.”
“Well, the guest rooms are done, but the floors in the common areas could be swept and mopped. And then outside needs mowing and the flowerbeds need weeding.”
“Sure thing. I can do all of that.”
“Thank you, Connor. Come see me when you’re done, and I’ll pay you for the day.”
Chapter Eight
All the guests staying at the inn were checked in by four in the afternoon, so I headed over to the courthouse to visit with Remy for a while until he got off work. I had plans for us for the evening, and I needed to make sure he was willing to go along with them. I figured he would be, but it was always nice to ask before roping your fiancé into your crime-solving monkeyshines.
“Hey baby,” he said when I got off the elevator. “What brings you in?”
“Well, Meri and I are pretty much done for the day at the inn, and I wanted to come see you.”
“I was going to come over to your place after work,” he said with a smile. “I thought you might let me cook you dinner.”
“I know, but…”
“What is it?” he chuckled.
“You’re reading me again.”
“I am, but why don’t you just tell me what it is we’re getting into this evening?”
“I need to get to the bottom of who killed Jack Maynard.”
“I didn’t see that coming,” he teased. “You know, you should have just applied to be sheriff.”
“I don’t have any law enforcement experience,” I said. “Besides, some of my techniques are a little outside of the law. But that’s totally your fault. You’re the one who convinced me it was okay for witches to do things differently.”
“So, what techniques outside of the law are we doing tonight?”
“Breaking and entering,” I said and smiled my best please do what I want smile.
“Where?”
“You’re really okay with this?”
“I’m down for whatever you want, sweetheart. Plus, I have to be there to protect you, and you’re the one who just said that it’s my fault you’re willing to bend human morality a tad.”
“No, you don’t,” I said and stuck my tongue out at him. “I can handle myself.”
“I know, but I also know that if I don’t go with you, you’ll just do it yourself.”
“That’s true, but I wouldn’t be alone. I’ve got Meri, and he has to do what I say.”
“So do I, babe. So do I,” Remy said. “Anyway, where are we breaking and entering tonight?”
“Okay, so Mrs. Maynard checked into the bed and breakfast today. Into the room Jack was in and everything. It’s so very weird, but that’s beside the point. The point is that she isn’t home.”
“So, you want to go into the city and break into the Maynard’s house while she’s out.”
“Yes! First of all, she is weird and kinda hated him. Maybe if she did it, there is evidence there. Oh, or there could be something in his things? I just don’t know. The possibilities are endless.”
“What about food? We should probably have dinner before we commit burglary.”
“We can get something along the way, but I’ll totally let you cook for me another night. I promise.”
Remy was ready to go around five, so we left the archives and headed straight out of town. Once we hit the interstate exits for the city, there were lots of places to eat.
We chose the burrito place that had the best queso sauce. The beef nachos with queso were a heavenly experience, and it seemed that Remy thoroughly enjoyed his extra spicy chicken burrito.
The Maynards’ house was on the other side of the city from where we stopped to eat, and the sun was just starting to set as we pulled into their neighborhood. At first, I was worried about someone seeing our car parked on the street or in the driveway, but they had a massive circular driveway that went all the way around the back of the house. We were able to pull in and hide the car in the back.
Remy used a magic touch to unlock the back door and disarm their security system while Meri used his power to obscure the security cameras. I had to wonder how many unsolved burglaries out there were caused by rogue witches who used their powers to rob humans blind. It was shockingly easy. Not that we were going to steal, but there had to be witches out there who had less wholesome intentions.
Once we were inside, I took in the massive expanse of white marble and gold-plated everything. It looked like something out of an ‘80s movie, and yet you could tell that one fixture cost more than most people would make in a lifetime. The fact that Mrs. Maynard had breathlessly described the garish temple to excess as her “sanctuary” made her seem even more strange.
“Oh, gawd,” Meri said when I set him down on the sleek white floor. “This is tacky.”
“I agree with the cat,” Remy said.
“It just goes to show that money can’t buy taste or class,” Meri supposed.
“You guys are mean,” I said. “It’s not that bad.” They both just stared at me without blinking. “Okay, it’s pretty bad.”
“This is the ugliest house that I’ve ever been in, and I lived in a hovel in the Middle Ages,” Meri said. I had to wonder if that was true or just Meri telling Meri stories.
We walked through the back entryway and into the kitchen. It was more white marble, but there were massive commercial appliances. Top of the line stuff that I imagined you’d only find in the finest five-star restaurants. All of it still had some of the packing pla
stic on it. Not one of the appliances from the stove to the dishwasher had been used.
“I guess she had these delivered today?” I said.
Sure enough, there were delivery receipts sitting on the counter. She’d bought everything that morning and paid an arm and a leg to have it delivered within a couple of hours of purchase.
“Well, that’s one way to grieve,” Remy said.
“Or celebrate,” I added.
“I’m going to see if I can find an office,” I said. “Surely Jack’s got some secrets in there. From what I understand about him, he had plenty.”
Jack’s home office was on the first floor of the north wing of the house. The room was bigger than my entire downstairs and was more like an office and man cave in one. He had a huge mahogany desk, of course, but there was also a big screen television with leather sectional and a pool table. Beyond the pool table were French doors that opened onto a terrace with an outdoor kitchen and an inground pool.
I went to the desk, and I didn’t even have to open the drawers. I found the thing that might have been what Mrs. and Mr. Maynard had argued about.
Sitting in the middle of the desk was an ultrasound photo. Underneath that was a letter from one of the women with whom Jack had been having an affair. She was younger by a great deal. In her twenties, and apparently in love with the much older Jack. She wanted to keep the baby and get married.
The letter stated that she would not get rid of the baby as he had asked and begged him to marry her. But that didn’t make any sense, Mrs. Maynard had said that it was all hers now. How could that be if there was at least one child?
There was more underneath the ultrasound photo and letter. It was the results of a DNA test that showed that Jack was not the father of the child. That’s when I noticed the dates of the ultrasound and the letter. They were a couple of years old.
It didn’t add up, but Mrs. Maynard, having gotten fed up with Jack’s dalliances, could have come into his office and gone through his things. Had she found the evidence of his baby scare? Could that have pushed her over the edge? Knowing that for years she’d put up with him, and she could lose half or more of the estate if he did manage to get someone pregnant.
Had Mrs. Maynard put an end to Jack’s philandering before he could get another woman pregnant for real? That certainly would have been a motive for murder, and she seemed to be celebrating her new inheritance without missing a beat.
I was about to power up his computer and see what I could find when an unseen entity picked up one of the pool balls and lobbed it at me.
“Hey,” I said. “Don’t…”
Another one flew at me, but it smashed into the desk. Next came a pool cue. The ghost, I assumed it was a ghost, threw it at me like a spear. I dodged it and scrambled out of the desk chair. I should have used some sort of magic to protect myself, but I panicked and ran instead.
I was able to dodge most of the projectiles the entity was lobbing at me, but one of the pool balls hit its mark. It thudded against my temple with a sickening crack, and bright white stars exploded behind my eyes.
Remy and Meri burst through the door just in time to keep me from getting pegged with the big screen television the ghost had lifted from its stand and aimed right at me. Meri dispelled the ghost as I fell into Remy.
He wrapped his arms around me and basically half carried and half dragged me out of the room. As we were going down the stairs, he whispered a healing spell into my ear.
The pain subsided some, but the edges of my vision began to go black. By the time he was stuffing me into the car, I was nearly out. The last thing I heard before I lost consciousness entirely was Meri.
“She’s not going to like the hair.”
Chapter Nine
I woke up with a start and found myself at home on my sofa. “What’s wrong with my hair?” My hands flew up to my head, but everything felt all right.
Remy and Meri were both sitting in chairs across from me watching. Relief washed over Remy’s face when I bolted up and ran my hands through my hair again.
“I was about to call Amelda,” he said. “That freaking ghost cracked your skull. We were getting really worried. I thought we healed you, but you were asleep for longer than I expected.”
“My skull’s okay?” I asked.
“It seems like we healed you just fine,” Remy answered.
“But your hair is…” Meri trailed off.
I got off the sofa and went into the bathroom to see what he was talking about. It surprised me that I wasn’t the least bit dizzy and my head didn’t hurt at all. Remy had done a good job if the ghost had actually cracked my skull. Which I believed it had. I felt it happen and saw those terrifying white lights behind my eyes.
“Oh, no,” I said when I finally saw myself in the mirror. “You have got to be kidding me. This is a bad joke, right?” Sadly, my gratitude at being alive was a little too short-lived.
“It won’t stay that way forever,” Remy offered. “And even if it did, you’re still beautiful.”
“It is kind of cool,” Meri agreed.
“I cannot get married with gray hair,” I said. “I’m thirty…. Something. I cannot have a full head of gray hair. I look like a grandma.”
“No, you don’t.” Remy joined me at the bathroom door. “It’s silver anyway. It’s very becoming on you, and you survived a massive head injury. The silver hair is like a badge of honor.”
“She also survived being a zombie,” Meri said. “Come to think of it, Brighton, you might want to ration out the harrowing life experiences a little more.”
“You think this is because I’ve been through so much?” I asked, but it was more of a rhetorical question. They had no idea why the magic affected my hair the way it did. Only the universe knew the specifics of that. “That stupid ghost made my hair gray.”
“It’s not like you look old or anything,” Meri said. “Not really.”
“Do I look old?” I asked Remy. “Be honest.”
“Not at all, sweetie. I told you, it’s silver not gray. It’s kinda cool.”
Somewhat convinced that the hair thing would be fine, it would change again when the magic saw fit, I retreated to the kitchen for coffee. Remy and Meri trailed behind me, and I automatically got a can of tuna from the pantry for Meri.
“Did you guys find anything in the house before you had to come rescue me?” I asked as I dumped the smelly fish onto a plate.
“Nothing useful,” Remy said. “We looked for Mrs. Maynard’s office, but I don’t think she has one. In the time that we had to look, we didn’t find anything incriminating. At least, not that we could see. There may have been more new purchases in the house, but we didn’t find more receipts lying around. What did you find?”
“Evidence that in the recent past, a woman tried to extort Jack by saying she was pregnant with his baby.”
“Really?” Remy asked.
“Yeah, but there was a DNA test showing that the baby wasn’t actually his,” I said. “So, I thought that maybe Mrs. Maynard found it and got mad? I don’t know. I wasn’t able to get much more into it before I got attacked.”
“Do you remember the woman’s name?”
“Isabella Gibson,” I said. “Do you think she had something to do with this? The baby extortion incident happened a couple of years ago.”
“It could lead to something anyway. He could have given her money before he knew the results of the DNA test and sued her,” Remy said.
“That would give her motive,” I said. “She wasn’t working for him or at the retreat, but I guess she could have been stalking him.”
“Or maybe he was still stringing her along and invited her since his wife didn’t show.”
“At the same time he was suing her?” I couldn’t believe that, but I guess I could. People were far messier and complicated than most of us were willing to admit.
Chapter Ten
I was waiting for Mrs. Maynard to come downstairs for breakfast the next da
y because I had to find a way to stealthily work what I’d found out into a conversation with her. I was dying to know if she knew about the pregnancy scare, and I hoped she’d reveal more information. What I needed was incriminating information that Gunner couldn’t ignore.
But I had to get it without revealing that I’d been in her house. She came downstairs and entered the breakfast room before I’d entirely figured out what I was going to say. So, instead of having it all planned out, I figured I’d be a friendly host and hope something came to me.
She piled her plate high with fried chicken, sausage, and bacon before sticking two biscuits on top of the meat mountain. “Lovely spread,” Mrs. Maynard said when she caught me looking at her. “I always tried to watch my figure for Jack. Thought that if I did, I might one day turn his eye again.” She snort laughed and made her way to a table close to the buffet. “Another thing I don’t have to worry about anymore.”
“I’m glad you’re enjoying it,” I said with a smile. “I hope the room was okay.”
“I’m actually not sure what I was thinking coming to stay in that room. I guess I’d hoped it would bring me some closure,” she said. “I wish I had been there when he died.”
I waited for a moment for her to correct herself. Had she meant she should have been there for him when he died? Because based on her exact words and the slightly sinister tone of her voice, it sounded like she meant she’d wanted to be there to watch him die.
“That sounds horrible, but life with him wasn’t easy. If you could ask his first two wives, I’m sure they’d say the same thing. Along with all of the women who he ruined without marrying him.”
“Did you guys ever have any kids?” It was the only way that I could think of to bring up children without sounding like I knew more than I was supposed to know.
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