by Bailey Cates
Accident or not, Gibson—or one of the Wiggins heirs—might have been looking for the very tchotchke he’d pawned off on Rori.
The music box.
I leaned over to Rori. “Did you put it in the freezer?”
“Yes. Thank goodness no one saw me. I’d have a hard time explaining.”
Everyone was moving toward the house, and we let the conversation drop. Eliza ran lightly up the steps to open the front door for her baggage-toting family, then stopped dead. She turned and glared at Rori.
“Not only did you not lock the door as I asked, you actually left it unlatched. What were you thinking?”
“I did not!” Rori protested and hurried up to join her.
Eliza shook her head and made a show of pushing the door open with her fingertip.
“But I locked it!” Rori said. “I distinctly remember, because I was annoyed that you felt you had to tell me to do it in the first place.”
Her sister only raised her eyebrows and pointed to the evidence.
“Now girls,” Aggie said. She climbed the steps and stopped between them. “Let’s get inside.”
Eliza made a noise of exasperation, pushed the door all the way open, then went inside. Her mother followed, and the newcomers crowded behind her.
However, Rori hung back, her forehead creased. We exchanged worried glances.
“Something’s wrong,” she said.
A red-and-black dragonfly chose that moment to buzz leisurely by.
Declan came up behind us just as Lauren shouted a surprised expletive from the entryway. He ran past us and up the steps. Rori and I were close on his heels.
Chapter 20
The foyer was packed with luggage and people. Joel and Evan stood on the stairs, while the others stood in a semicircle around the hall table. It took me a moment to realize the problem. Then I saw that the mirror over the table was broken.
Not just broken. Smashed. Even the stained-glass dragonflies were in pieces on the floor and scattered on the top of the table. The gardenia lay on its side, dirt spilling from the cracked pot.
“Careful,” Aggie warned. “There’s a lot of sharp glass there.”
Lauren skirted around and headed toward the living room.
“Wait,” Declan called. “It’s not safe. Come back outside, and we’ll call the police.”
Aggie’s lips pressed together as she assessed the situation.
Eliza trailed after Lauren into the living room, followed by John.
“No, don’t go in there,” Declan ordered. “Whoever did this could still be in the house.”
I closed my eyes and sent out all my witchy senses. There was power in the house, a signature that hadn’t been here before. It was familiar, like a face you almost recognize but can’t quite place. But I did place it—it was the same as the spell remnants I’d felt in Tucker’s motel room. Like then, it felt like a vestige, left behind like a whiff of exotic perfume. Whoever had been here was gone.
Ignoring her brother’s admonitions, Camille patted her mother on the arm then went with the others. The sounds of voices reached us from different parts of the first floor.
“You guys!” Declan shouted. “Come on.” He looked at me. “Why don’t my sisters ever listen to me?”
I offered a sympathetic shrug, my mind racing.
The music box!
Aggie was still rooted to the spot in front of the broken mirror, but she had her phone out and was dialing. “Shh,” she said to her son as she put the phone to her ear. “I’m calling 911.”
Evan came down the stairs with a wry grin. “Not to worry, Deck. A pack of McCarthys like this would scare anyone off.”
“Here’s how they got in,” Eliza said from the other room. “Broken window. Rori, you were right. I’m sorry.”
“And they left by the front door. Still, better safe than sorry. Stay there,” Declan said to Joel, who nodded, his eyes wide with excitement. My fiancé hurried after his family. Rori slid past me, then Joel, and ran up the stairs.
I sprinted after her.
She wrenched open the door to her room and gasped. Looking over her shoulder, I could see why. The room was trashed.
Clothes spilled out of open drawers, the contents of the closet lay on the floor, shoes were scattered across the room. The bed had been stripped and the mattress was half off. In the en suite bathroom, more drawers hung open, and bottles lay on their sides.
“Why?” she wailed. Then, “Oh, no!” Rori ran in and picked up a gauzy floral dress from the floor. “It’s ruined!” She turned back to me with tears running down her cheeks and held it out so I could see the rip along the bodice. “I was going to wear it to the wedding.”
“Oh, honey,” I said, stepping into the room.
Declan’s hand closed on my arm, and he pulled me toward the door. “Huh-uh, darlin’. We need to leave things so the police can see them. Rori, come out to the hallway.”
She ignored him, standing in the middle of the room and turning in a circle.
“Rori,” I said. “Come on out here.”
She looked up and nodded.
Behind me, Declan sighed. “I’m going to check the other rooms.”
When Rori joined me in the hallway, I whispered, “The freezer.”
She looked puzzled for a moment, then her face cleared. “The music box? You think that’s why someone broke in?”
I gave her a look that said, Duh.
Anger suffused her features. “Really? Someone did all this damage for that?”
“Your room looks an awful lot like Tucker’s motel room did, don’t you think?”
The blood drained from her face, and she glanced back into her room. “Oh. God. Yeah, it does.”
“They didn’t find the music box then because Tucker didn’t have it. Somehow, they must have found out you had it.” I sighed.
Her chin came up. “Well, too bad for them.”
I grinned. “Let’s go get it.”
We looked at each other, then rushed to the top of the stairs and clattered down them. Sure enough, the music box was still behind a pack of waffles in the freezer. She grabbed it. I nodded toward the parlor that opened off the foyer.
For whatever reason, the intruder had either missed the parlor altogether or decided not to trash it. Eliza rounded the corner as we started inside. I waved her toward us. She tipped her head and started to say something. I shook my head and held my finger to my lips.
“Hurry,” I urged. I wanted to take a closer look at the music box and could only hope no one would walk in on us, as it might be difficult to explain what we were up to.
Partly because I didn’t know what we were up to. I kept coming back to the suspects I’d been thinking about earlier and wondering if there really might be something about a cheap ceramic knickknack that someone would kill for.
The sisters slipped into the parlor. Mungo came in, too, and I closed the door behind us.
“What’s going on?” Eliza asked.
“Rori, can I see the music box?” I nodded toward it and said to Eliza, “The gift Tucker gave Rori might be the reason he was killed.”
She made a noise of derision, but I was pretty sure it was directed at Tucker rather than us.
Rori handed it to me. “It doesn’t even work now.”
“It sounded pretty pathetic to start with,” I said.
Turning the music box over, I peered at the maker’s mark again. Then I tried to turn the bottom as I’d seen Tucker and Hudson Prater do, but it seemed to be jammed. I banged it gently against the heel of my hand and tried again. Nothing. I tried harder. A lot harder. I banged it on the table and heard it crack.
Suddenly, the bottom twisted off in my hand in two pieces. Rori gasped, and I opened my mouth to apologize. Then I clamped it shut as I saw the piece of paper wedged into the bottom of
the birdhouse. The corner had been chewed up by the music mechanism, but I was able to carefully extract it with two fingers.
The sisters crowded close as I turned it over.
“Oh. My. God.” Rori’s voice was barely a whisper. “No wonder it was worth a lot of money.”
And I remembered what Effie Glass had told Mimsey and me at Belford’s.
Oh, and his latest whopper? He said he’d won the lottery. The lottery. Told me if I came back to him, we’d run away to live on some beach someplace. Just another movie script. Can you believe it?
Well, I believed it now.
Because there was no reason for a Georgia Jumbo Bucks lottery ticket to be hidden in the bottom of a cheap ceramic music box unless it was a winner.
“I wonder how much it’s worth?” Rori asked eagerly.
Frowning, I said, “This is what the elderly Mr. Wiggins left his children. No wonder they wanted this ‘worthless’ little tchotchke so badly.”
Always the practical one, Eliza had her phone out. She leaned closer to see the numbers on the ticket and entered them into the search engine. I heard her breath catch, and she stilled.
She looked up at us. “Two point eight million dollars. That’s how much. It was an early jackpot, but someone won the whole thing and never claimed it. There’s only a week left to cash it in before it expires.”
We stared at each other.
Finally, I rubbed my eyes. “I need to tell Detective Quinn about this.”
“But . . . are you absolutely positive we can’t keep any of it? A finder’s fee or something?” Rori asked in a pleading tone.
“Aurora!” Eliza said.
“I know, I know,” she grumbled.
The Wigginses hadn’t known when the ticket expired. That’s why she thought finding the music box now might be too late.
The sound of car doors slamming came from the street. I peeked out the curtain to see two patrol cars stopped out front and police officers coming up the steps.
Quickly, I pulled my phone out and called Quinn.
“Katie, darn it—”
“The house Declan’s family rented for the week has been broken into. Whoever did it trashed the place looking for something, just like Tucker’s room at the Spotlight.”
“Wait, what?”
Voices sounded outside the door.
“Check your scanner or whatever. The police have already arrived. It’s a burglary, only I bet they’ll find nothing was taken.”
Now voices sounded in the background on Detective Quinn’s end of the call. I heard the sound of his hand covering his phone mic, then he came back. “I’m on my way. Are you okay?”
“No one was here,” I said. “But Quinn? Now I’m pretty sure I know why Tucker was killed.”
“Why?” he demanded.
“Two point eight million dollars.”
* * *
* * *
Detective Quinn took possession of the lottery ticket. The police went through the house, though they didn’t process it like I’d seen them do a murder scene. The vacation rental company—not the one Tucker had worked for, it turned out—was called, and one of their representatives came to assess the damage and arrange for someone to come fix the window that same day.
The McCarthys were moved to another house in Midtown, not as grand but big enough for everyone. Aggie and Eliza packed up their belongings, while Rori rescued what she could from her room with Camille’s help.
“Don’t worry,” I heard Camille say. “I have the perfect dress for you to wear to the wedding. I couldn’t make up my mind, so I brought two. And we’ll go on a shopping spree tomorrow, okay?”
Rori’s smile was a little watery, but she handled the situation pretty well.
It was nearly four. Back downstairs, I called the bakery to update my aunt and uncle and see if one of them could pick my parents up from the airport.
“Oh, no worries,” Ben said. “They’ve rented a car, and they’re going to drive straight to our town house. That will give them time to freshen up before we all go to Churchill’s tonight. Don’t worry about a thing. You do what you have to do there, and we’ll see you tonight.”
Declan was going to help his family get settled in their new digs, while I headed to the apartment to get ready for the big family dinner. I was about to leave when Quinn came down the stairs.
“Katie, can I talk to you a moment?”
I sighed. “This isn’t my fault.”
His forehead wrinkled. “Who said it was?”
No one had, of course. I felt defensive nonetheless, mostly because I couldn’t shake the feeling that all the questions I’d been asking had somehow alerted Tucker’s killer that Rori had the music box.
“Let’s go in here.” He opened the door to the parlor, which had been getting so much traffic.
“Do you believe me now?” I asked when he’d closed the door most of the way. “You surely can’t think that Rori or Eliza wrecked this place.”
“No. No, I don’t. In fact, I’ve been thinking. If that music box is the cause for all this—”
I broke in. “You mean the lottery ticket.”
“Right, but not many people know about that. Did you tell everyone here about it?”
I shook my head. “Rori might have, though.”
“I believe I caught her in time. Her older sister, too. See, if we can keep the fact that the lottery ticket has been discovered quiet, maybe we can smoke the killer out with the promise of that charming little music box. Or killers. They both may have done it.”
“Zane Wiggins and his sister,” I said.
“They had the most motive.”
“Jake Gibson might have known about the lottery ticket, too. And then there’s Effie Glass. And you know what? She was having a tête-à-tête with Dayleen from the Spotlight when I left the Honeybee this afternoon. Have you looked into them?”
“I’ve looked into everyone. Including, by the way, Carolyn Becker, who found it very amusing that you quizzed her first.”
One half of my mouth turned up. “Yeah. Sorry about that. Anyway, what is this smoke-the-killer-out plan you have in mind?”
“You said Hudson Prater was the antique dealer you went to, right?”
I nodded.
“I’m going to ask him to put the word out to his various connections, including the Gibsons and Wigginses, that he has the music box. Then we see who turns up to get it.”
“But the music box is broken.”
“It’s also evidence. He should be able to bluff with something similar if he needs to.”
“Can’t you just continue your investigation until you can build a case against the murderer?” I asked. Funny, because normally I’d be thrilled with the idea of setting a trap. However, what Quinn suggested seemed risky. I didn’t have a good feeling about it at all, not after seeing the violent vandalism in Tucker’s motel room and Rori’s bedroom.
“That’s exactly what I’m going to do,” he said. “But that lottery ticket expires in a week. That ticking clock might be the impetus to push the killer into revealing themselves.”
“And closing your case. Tell me, though—why on the good green earth would Mr. Prater agree to such a thing?”
Quinn smiled, and it wasn’t entirely pleasant. “Because Hudson Prater is a fence, Katie. That’s probably why he was a friend of Tucker’s. And he’s also a confidential informant, which is what has kept him out of jail until now. Don’t worry. He’ll do it.”
Chapter 21
Back at the apartment, I stuffed the jewelry box that had been in my tote bag the whole afternoon behind a stack of frozen vegetables in our freezer. Heck, it had worked for the music box. Then I showered and put on a flowing green jumpsuit that managed to be dressy and casual at the same time, just like Churchill’s. My mother texted that they’d
arrived from Las Vegas on time and settled in at Lucy and Ben’s. As I fluffed my hair, which I’d allowed to grow out a bit longer for the wedding, and applied blush and lipstick, I considered how my parents and Declan’s family would like one another.
Dad was easygoing and pretty much got along with everyone. So no worries there. Mama could be a little obstreperous, however. Now that I’d spent some time with Declan’s sisters—and not under the best circumstances, either—I thought they’d handle her just fine. She’d like them, too. And she’d love Aggie. The two of them could commiserate over their offspring. Then there was Eliza. She and my mother would get on like houses on fire, I realized. Perhaps that was why Eliza had pushed my buttons when I’d first met her.
Declan got home from helping his family relocate.
“How are they doing?” I asked when he came out of the bedroom, looking handsome as sin in jeans and a light blue button-down shirt.
“One thing I can say about my family is that they’re resilient. The whole situation with Rori and Tucker has everyone chatting, of course. Lauren thinks you should find Tucker’s killer and collect the reward.”
My eyes widened. “Why would she say such a thing?”
“Hmm. Well, I might, just might, have mentioned to the sisters that you’ve solved a few crimes in the last few years.”
“Great. How about that reward?”
“Yeah. I explained there wasn’t one. Lauren probably didn’t hear me, though. She was already talking about something else.”
I laughed. “Let’s go.”
Mungo whined.
“You want me to turn the television on?” I asked.
He jumped up on the couch and lay down, facing the blank screen.
Rolling his eyes, Declan grabbed the remote and turned the channel to the soap network. Mungo grinned up at him and settled in to catch up on his favorite show.
“You have the weirdest dog,” my fiancé muttered as we left.
“Weird as in awesome,” I said with a smile.
* * *
* * *
On the way over, I brought up the idea of casting a spell to augment our attempts at lucid dreaming.
