Murder & Macarons (A Stella Storm Cozy Witch Mystery Book 2)

by Amy Casey

  Head in her hands.

  Tears rolling down her cheeks.

  She looked up at me and right away, I knew the stories of her and Andy Carter were true.

  But this poor girl didn’t look guilty.

  She looked crushed.

  Chapter 11

  Dealing with sobbing people isn’t exactly my speciality.

  You’d think I’d be more of a people person in my profession, really. But the longer I lived, the more I realised that I didn’t actually particularly like people all that much. Nothing against them per se. I mean, I knew I could be a bit of a nightmare too. They were just… so problematic. So emotional.

  I preferred animals. Especially ones who could talk.

  And, oh. I liked nosying about what people were involved in. That was a different matter entirely.

  Chatty Charlie wasn’t so chatty right now. The curtains of her flat were closed. It was clammy and warm in here, like the heating was on a little too high. I could smell takeaway, and saw some old Chinese in the corner of the room, which had no doubt gone beyond its safe eating date by now. And as I saw all of this, I couldn’t help but sympathise with Charlie. Because as much of a shit as Andy Carter seemed to be, his death had clearly affected Charlie.

  Unless this was all just a cover-up. All just a ruse.

  I had to stay on my toes. I had to stay aware. Always.

  Charlie looked up at me without even asking what I was doing here. She looked so uncaring, so disinterested. I figured I should explain why I was here, but there was no explaining how I’d broken through the lock.

  I also had to be aware of Bob. He’d be waiting for that water to hit optimal temperature. Then he’d start getting suspicious.

  I had to make this quick.

  “What’re you doing here?” Charlie asked.

  Her voice was raspy. To be honest, I was surprised to hear her talk at all. She didn’t look in the mood for guests or any kind of communication. The polar opposite of Gina Carter. I wasn’t sure how to interpret it. I wasn’t sure what it meant at all.

  I looked down at the floor, bit my fingernails promptly and nervously. I realised I had to take a gamble. Some kind of gamble that might pay off, might not, but that I had to take all the same.

  I cleared my throat. Looked back up at Charlie. “I heard about… about you and Andy. And I just wondered… how you were.”

  I knew this could go several ways. Maybe there was nothing going on between Charlie and Andy at all, although I was doubting that with the way Charlie was so torn up right now. Or Charlie would be threatened by what I’d said, which would turn the spotlight on her again. Or she’d be open. Honest. And that’d make me wonder even more.

  What she said surprised me.

  “I figured you might’ve known.”

  I frowned. “You… you did?”

  “I’ve seen the looks you shoot across Witchy Delights. Always so tuned in to what’s going on. You know, I don’t mind you, but sometimes I think you should just mind your own business. Me and Andy, we were different. We were…”

  She started sobbing. And as awkward as I was with emotional people, it only seemed right that I should go over there and comfort her.

  I sat beside her. Noticed she smelled like she needed a shower, which made me edge back from her a little. If there was one thing I struggled with more than emotional people, it was germs.

  “I know,” I said, patting her gingerly on the back. “I… I always got the impression that there was something going on between you. Something good.”

  “It was so good,” Charlie said. “Like, I’ve been with guys before, but not like Andy.”

  I thought about him letching over the Witchy Delights staff and I wanted to vom. This poor girl.

  “I know he had a reputation.”

  You could say that.

  “Everyone knew he had a reputation.”

  Bingo, again.

  “But he… When we were together, things were different. They were special. I just feel so bad.”

  I let her cry some more. Although to be honest, it didn’t seem like this was going anywhere, and I was getting worried about a rather large man and his kettle just doors away.

  I was about to press Charlie for more information when she revealed her true chatty self in a rather helpful way.

  “You know, we were going to run away together.”

  I moved away slightly. Mouth dried a little. “You were what?”

  “We were going to move away. Just the two of us. Andy, he just… he just needed to get a few things in order. He didn’t want to leave Gina empty-handed. But at the same time, he owed money to people. Dangerous people.”

  I heard these words and suddenly things started to click into place. Andy owing money. Running away with Charlie. Could it be the people Andy owed money that finally caught up with him? Gina, a jealous move to take out the other woman in her husband’s life? Charlie’s parents, concerned for the welfare of their daughter? All of them were possibilities. The latter two were at the wedding.

  But what about these “dangerous people”?

  “The people Andy owed money to,” I said. “Do you know who they were?”

  Charlie shook her head and sniffed. “I don’t know. Andy never really talked to me about all that stuff. Wanted to keep me out of the spotlight, you know?”

  Keeping her out of the spotlight. That was one way of spinning it.

  But I nodded anyway because finally, I felt like I was getting somewhere. “And you’ve no idea who this could’ve been? Who might’ve done this to him?”

  Charlie covered her face with her hands. Sniffed. “These people he was dealing with. Now I… I don’t know who they were or what they were involved with. I just remember Andy saying that he was worried about what might happen. He was trying to get out of it. He was trying to escape his past. But it caught up with him.”

  I remembered the footprint I’d seen. The high heel print. I wasn’t sure whether to push Charlie, not now I was so close. But I figured I’d gamble anyway. “How about his wife?”

  Charlie looked up at me and frowned. “Gina? Gosh, no. I mean, those two were only husband and wife in name. Married young. Lived separate lives. She doesn’t like him, but she wouldn’t kill him. She wouldn’t want that on her conscience.”

  I was surprised by just how similar Charlie’s story was to Gina’s. It added up. Gina might’ve despised Andy, but not enough to be burdened with his murder. And that honesty, that lack of a slanging match between the two women… it made me wonder whether Charlie might be honest after all.

  “I’ll look into this group,” I said, realising my time was running out. “I’ll… I’ll keep an ear and eye out when I’m at work.”

  I took Charlie’s hand. It was clammy, hot.

  “We’ll find Andy’s killer. I promise.”

  She looked back at me. And for the first time since I’d got here, I saw something like a smile.

  Then I heard movement over my shoulder.

  I turned around. Saw the huge figure of Bob standing at Charlie’s door.

  He grinned a wide, toothless grin, cup of tea in hand.

  “Eighty-five-degree tea for one special lady?” he said.

  Chapter 12

  I mean, are you getting paranormal vibes or is it just some plain misbehaving normie, do you reckon?”

  I shot a glare at Annabelle who was beside me at the counter of Witchy Delights. “Paranormal vibes?” I said.

  Annabelle frowned. “What’s wrong with ‘paranormal vibes,’ Grandma?”

  “Everything’s wrong with ‘paranormal vibes.’”

  “It’s just a simple question, though. What do you reckon’s going on? And do you reckon it’s got ghostly elements to it?”

  I was aggrieved about Annabelle’s lack of understanding of the witchy vernacular. Of course I was. But then again, I had to cut her some slack. She didn’t understand it—and that was exactly the problem. Nobody else understood it. Sure, there
were witches out there apparently, ones like me, but I was the only one with these powers that I’d ever really known. I hadn’t known Mum had powers before she died. And Dad… well, I didn’t even understand what Dad’s powers were, unless it was the ability to watch cheesy girl band videos for hours on end in a way that remarkably wasn’t creepy. Besides, he chose not to use them, which was… well, difficult, to be honest.

  It was hard not to feel alone when you were a witch.

  Especially when you had the sense that you could solve a crime, if only you put all your efforts into it.

  “I’m not getting ‘paranormal vibes’,” I said, as I leaned on the counter. Witchy Delights was pretty empty. That usual late afternoon vibe… bloody hell, she’s got me saying it now. But anyway. That post-work, dinner-time slump. Just Bobby in with his laptop doing whatever the hell it was he did. And Miriam reading her paper in the corner. She always read it front to back, even though she claimed she hated sport. Sometimes I had to ask her to leave at closing, so absorbed in the paper as she was.

  But I was grateful for the silence right now. And ungrateful at the same time.

  Because silence meant more time to think.

  And all I could think about was the case.

  All I could do was circle backwards and forwards with the information I knew.

  “Gina Carter claims her marriage wasn’t important enough to her,” I said to Annabelle, mostly just vocalising my thoughts so I didn’t go nutty. “At least not enough to kill her husband. She has her suspicions about the ‘women’ she claims Andy has been seeing for years, his latest cuddle being Chatty Charlie. But Chatty Charlie seemed pretty cut up about all of this. Claims they were going to run away together. That Andy owed money to some dangerous people.”

  “And what do you think about all that?” Annabelle asked.

  “I still dunno, in all truth. Charlie seemed pretty genuine, but you never know what’s going on with people. She might’ve got jealous seeing Andy there with his wife. She might’ve lashed out at Andy. He might’ve told her they weren’t moving away. Or… or one of Andy’s other women might’ve seen him with Charlie and punished him for it. I just don’t know. I don’t have enough.”

  “And you’ve been telling the police everything you’ve learned, right?”

  I looked at Annabelle then down at the floor.

  Annabelle rolled her eyes. “Oh, Stella.”

  “I don’t really have anything anyway.”

  “It doesn’t sound like nothing to me.”

  “Besides. The police will just chastise me for getting involved. Probably why Steve had me down at the crime scene. So he could put me there in case they didn’t find another suspect.”

  “Wait,” Annabelle said. “Steve had you down at the crime scene?”

  I felt my cheeks blushing. “One, not in the way you’re implying, you idiot. I should fire you for that right now. And two, yes. He just wanted me to take a look. To scan the area.”

  “So he knows about you?”

  “No. Well, I don’t know. He knows something’s amiss about me.”

  “Don’t we all?”

  “Thin ice. But anyway. I didn’t find anything other than this footprint. This old footprint. Definitely a heel. If I could just identify that…”

  Annabelle shook her head. “I dunno. If I were you, the first thing I’d have done was figure out what kind of shoes Gina and Charlie wear.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. Women love talking about shoes, right?”

  “Right. I’m sure it’s the first thing on our minds when our husbands and lovers have been murdered.”

  Annabelle tilted her head to one side like she was weighing up the possibility.

  “The truth is, I can’t give up,” I said. “I can’t give up but at the same time I can’t keep going when I’ve nothing to go on.”

  “Can’t you just read their minds and be done with it?”

  “It’s not as simple as that,” I said.

  “It was simple for years before the Krissy Palmer case. Why should it be any harder now?”

  “Reading minds was never easy,” I said. “There are limits to what I can do. And besides. I’ve… I’ve not been feeling as strong lately. My powers, they’ve been weaker.”

  “Any reasons for that?”

  “According to my big book of delights… stress.”

  “Bingo. You’re a verified stress-head.”

  “Again. Don’t push it.”

  Annabelle smirked.

  “Then there’s something about a block that could’ve been put on my soft magic. Which kind of makes sense considering I was reckless with the hard magic a year ago. But I dunno. Even hard magic drains me right now.”

  “And that’s it? They’re the only two possibilities?”

  I thought about the other possibility. That third possibility. But that couldn’t be it. That couldn’t be the case.

  “There is another possibility,” I said.

  Right on cue, my phone rang. I looked at the screen. Dad. Someone approached the counter.

  “You serve Simon here some nice macarons, Annabelle. No, macarons, not macaroons. I’ll just be a sec.”

  I went into the back room and answered the call. “Hi, Dad. I’m just working at the—”

  “Do you know the function room above Sparling’s Restaurant?” he asked.

  I frowned. “Yeah. Yeah, I know where that is. Can this not wait—”

  “You’re going to be there tonight at nine p.m. You’re not going to stuff your face with that pizza rubbish you always eat beforehand because there’s going to be more than enough food.”

  “One thing. You eat rubbish yourself, so don’t judge my pizza love. Second, what the hell are you talking about?”

  There was a pause on the line.

  “Dad?”

  “Your family,” he said. “They’ve dropped by in town. And it’s about time you met them.”

  Chapter 13

  That third option I mentioned? The possible reasons why my magic has been suppressed? The reason that I couldn’t even entertain, because there’s no way it could physically be possible?

  We’ll get to that in a moment.

  But first, to the function room above Sparling’s Restaurant, where my dad claimed family was coming to meet us.

  The sun was setting. As I walked through the streets of Goosridge, I became aware that I should probably have dressed up for the occasion. It’s just family dinners weren’t something I’d ever had to contend with, mostly because of the simple fact that I didn’t have any family. Or at least, none nearby. I had an uncle over in Australia, another one in New Zealand, a few relatives in America. But I was an only child. No brothers, no sisters, a dead mum, and a dad with no real links to his family. Hell, he didn’t even like talking about his family, so I had no idea what was going on here.

  But the urgency of his call. The way he’d spoken with such assertiveness.

  Dad wasn’t losing his mind. He was serious when he said family were coming to visit.

  I just wished I understood who the hell this “family” was before I rushed into a dinner with them.

  And whether they possibly had something to do with my inability to properly hone my powers that seemed to have cursed me lately…

  I saw Sparling’s in the distance. And outside, I saw something unusual. A real old banger of a car. I’m talking a 1960s Mustang, and not in any kind of good shape either, which was a real contrast with the usual modern, well-polished cars outside the restaurant. I could see a door guy looking at it judgementally.

  Upstairs, in the function room above—which was weird anyway because why not just book a table for a family dinner in the restaurant like normal people do?—I could see a light was on. A sign of life.

  And then I saw movement. A silhouette, male, looking down onto the street.

  I looked up there and stopped. Because although I knew it was irrational, a part of me wondered whether this could po
ssibly be some kind of set-up. I knew, again, it was probably way off the mark, and just me being paranoid old me. Or young me. I’m a closet pensioner, remember? But anyway. I knew it was probably just me being me, but my involvement in the case and my unwavering commitment to investigating the murder of Andy Carter no matter what… I couldn’t help fearing that perhaps I’d drawn attention to myself from exactly the wrong sort of people. Perhaps the “dangerous people” who Chatty Charlie had warned me about had been alerted to my interest in solving this case, somehow, and they’d organised this.

  Which made my fear grow. Because my dad had called me. He’d called me rather abruptly. Which meant he could be in danger. They could have him hostage. Stupid. How had I not thought of this? How had I not considered this in the first place before rushing into the scene of the crime, so to speak?

  Then again, a composed approach to these matters was something I was still working on, that much I had to admit.

  I walked more cautiously across the street. I thought about going home, doing whatever I could to summon invisibility.

  But then something remarkable happened.

  I saw Dad step outside Sparling’s restaurant dressed in the most bizarre outfit and look right at me.

  I wasn’t sure how he knew I was coming. I could only assume that whoever was upstairs in that window had seen me and recognised me somehow. But at least by seeing my dad right here, outside the restaurant—getting a few dodgy looks, sure—I knew he wasn’t in danger.

  But those clothes…

  The blue and yellow shirt.

  The striped black and white trousers.

  Was this Dad’s idea of dressing up?

  Had he misinterpreted the idea of “fancy dress” entirely?

  And… wait a second. How had he even got here in the first place?

  I walked towards him, frowning, and he scanned me up and down.

  “You need to get changed. No way can you meet your family dressed like that.”

  I snorted. “Look who’s talking.”

  He glared at me like he didn’t understand. “What?”