Her happiness was at stake.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Nick was waiting on the porch swing when Missy and I returned to As You Wish.
“I’m glad you came back in time. I only have a few minutes,” he said, standing up.
I unclipped Missy’s leash, but she didn’t dash into the yard. Instead, she sat, looking at Nick intently. “What’s wrong?”
The back door was locked and I figured Ve was out visiting Mrs. P, or perhaps prepping for Sunday’s dance. Nick and Missy followed me inside.
He said, “I think the entire medical examiner’s office needs the memory cleanse.”
In the midst of taking off my coat, I stopped, pivoted, and looked at him. “You’re serious?”
“I got a call a few minutes ago from one of the ME’s assistants. They’re freaking out over there.”
“Why?”
“Sometime while waiting his turn for autopsy in the morgue’s cooler, Kyle’s body changed from a healthy-looking, albeit dead, guy to a thin, gaunt dead guy. He suddenly had multiple injection sites, and his muscles were visibly atrophied. The office had never seen anything like it.”
My jaw dropped. I quickly did calculations in my head. Seventy-two hours. “He’d used a Mirage Spell before he died.”
“It’s the only thing I can think of.”
I started shaking my head. “But no . . . he had that one injection site visible. Plus that burn on his leg. The Mirage Spell would have covered that.”
“I have no explanation for that,” he said. “This magic is way beyond my scope. As of this morning, he looked like someone who’d been terminally ill.”
Body weak, spirit fly,
With death near,
Hold no fear,
Fly, fly to say good-bye.
“The assistant who called gave me a heads-up that the pathologist performing the autopsy quickly discovered why Kyle looked the way he did.”
“Why?” I barely dared ask as I hung my coat on the peg.
“Widespread brain cancer.”
Cancer. My pulse pounded in my ears. “Do we know the cause of death yet?”
“Not yet.” Nick glanced at his watch. “Pathologist was finishing up and said he’d send the report immediately. I’ll make you a copy.”
“Will you send a copy to Cherise, too? As a Curecrafter, she might have insight I don’t.”
He nodded and pulled me into a hug. “I need to get back to the station. I’ll call.”
“I’m waiting on the Elder. If I see her, I’ll ask about the memory cleanse for the medical examiner’s office.”
He gave me a kiss and strode out the door. I sighed and looked at Missy. “I guess I should get reading Melina’s diary again.” I needed to “look within” and find out what kind of spell Kyle had used to cover his illness.
But as I dried off Missy’s paws, I couldn’t help but shake the feeling that I already knew the answer.
* * *
Hours later, I gave up on the diary and headed over to the Pixie Cottage to visit Mrs. P. I hadn’t found anything that would explain Kyle’s appearance except for the Mirage Spell. There had to be something I was missing.
When I tapped softly on Mrs. P’s door, Cherise opened it and motioned me inside the room. Mrs. P was sound asleep.
“What’re you doing here?” I asked.
“Just keeping an eye on her. She collapsed last night while playing checkers with Pepe.”
“Why isn’t she at the hospital?”
“She’s stubborn, that’s why,” Cherise whispered. “She’d rather stay in her home.”
“I don’t blame her.” A lump had wedged in my throat.
“Me, either.”
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
Cherise reached over and squeezed my hand. “She didn’t want you to know. She knew you wouldn’t leave her side.”
I wouldn’t have. “She looks peaceful,” I said as I sat next to Cherise on the settee.
“She is. She’s not suffering.”
I tried not to notice the medical bag at her feet. Even though she could heal using her Craft powers, she still carried around normal medical instruments. A stethoscope, a blood pressure cuff, thermometer, and other first aid paraphernalia. “Thank you for staying with her.”
“She’s an amazing woman.”
She was.
Cherise said, “Tea?”
A tray sat on a large square coffee table that held a teapot and an assortment of miniature treats that I recognized as coming from the Gingerbread Shack.
I nodded.
“Nick e-mailed me an interesting report on Kyle.”
My eyebrows went up. “Really?” I hadn’t checked my e-mail before heading over here and wished I had. Undoubtedly, Kyle’s autopsy report was in.
Cherise tsked as she poured steaming water into a mug. “Kyle truly suffered these past couple of years.”
My first thought was Good, which made me feel slightly guilty. I took hold of the mug Cherise passed to me and voiced my second thought instead. “Past couple of years?”
Cherise drew her feet beneath her. She munched on a tiny lemon tartlet, and said, “His type of cancer undoubtedly began as a small tumor and grew into the monster it became. Even with treatment he had very little chance of survival beyond two to three years. Without treatment . . . he was lucky to have made it this long.”
Lucky. My stomach churned.
“Do we know he had no treatment?” I asked. “Is the cancer what killed him? Or the morphine?”
“Nick only sent me the postmortem exam notes. The toxicology will probably come in later, as the results come in, so the cause of death is still pending.” Cherise’s eyes flashed with mischief. “I hope you don’t mind, but I took it upon myself to make a few phone calls after I read the report. There are only a few specialists in this area who would treat such an advanced tumor.”
Mind? She saved me from having to ask her to do it.
“I finally found one who treated a patient named Chadwick,” she said, “and worked my magic to wheedle information from him.”
“Magic? Literally or figuratively?” I asked, smiling.
She sipped her tea and grinned. “A little of both.”
“Never underestimate the power of womanly wiles?” I surmised.
“Especially mine.” Cherise waggled her eyebrows.
I swear she was as bad as Ve. Two peas in a pod.
“This particular oncologist had been treating the patient for eighteen months, after he was diagnosed by an emergency room physician with a stage four tumor that had originated in the frontal lobe and spread. It was inoperable but other treatments were offered, radiation and the like, but the prognosis was grim.” Cherise topped off her mug. “The patient refused all treatment but accepted terminally ill palliative care, which basically means that he’d accept medication to make his remaining time more comfortable.”
My mind reeled from all the information.
“It’s a terrible fate he suffered, to be sure,” Cherise added.
I held my mug tightly. “Karma, some would say. For what he did to Starla.”
“Ah, but Darcy, I don’t believe Kyle was responsible for his actions toward her.”
“Why would you say that?”
“I believe it was the tumor.” She dropped her feet to the floor and leaned forward, her eyes earnest as she studied me. “The tumor’s location in his brain definitely would have produced personality changes. Confusion, lethargy, rage among other things. Cancer was literally destroying his brain. Looking back it’s clear to me that Kyle’s early symptoms presented not long after he and Starla married. He had absolutely no control over the things he said or did. Worse, he probably had no idea why he was behaving that way and possibly had no memory of it, either. The tumor could have affected that as well. It also explains the change in his paintings. He was probably seeing things very differently from what his brush was producing.”
Her words sank in
. I covered my mouth to hold in a cry as tears stung my eyes. Nausea rolled through my stomach. I recalled part of the conversation I’d had with Starla a couple of days ago.
He’d just get so worked up about something. Trivial things, too—the cap left off the toothpaste or it being too cold in the house—and suddenly one of the traits I loved about him most—his fiery passion—I didn’t like so much. My gut instinct said that something was wrong. Inside here. She tapped her head.
Her gut instinct had been right. Dear Lord.
“What bothers me, as a healer,” Cherise said, “is that he sought no treatment early on. He had to be experiencing terrible headaches. Dizzy spells. I see this a lot with younger men especially, who go into denial that there’s anything wrong with them.”
I bit my lip. “Could . . . could he have been cured if he’d come to you back then?”
“Possibly. It’s hard to say. As you know, I cannot alter the course of a terminal or chronic illness, but that early on? I probably could have saved his life.”
Ramifications of that statement exploded in my head, making me close my eyes against the sudden pain.
Kyle had never meant to hurt Starla. If only he’d seen Cherise, or any healer, then he would have been diagnosed, treated, possibly saved. Starla would still be living her fairy tale with her prince charming. Perhaps not as she originally planned, but still. In sickness and in health. Till death do us part. They would have been together. Fighting together to save him.
Instead he’d been cast as a villain, misunderstood. Arrested.
Liam’s voice echoed in my head: You’re a good friend to Starla and that’s admirable, but you don’t understand the situation.
I hadn’t understood the situation. At all. “Foul is fair,” I said, opening my eyes. “Kyle wasn’t foul at all. He was ill. If not for that tumor, he would have still been the man Starla fell in love with.”
Cherise leaned back. “Exactly.”
“This changes everything.”
She nodded.
My mind raced. “His family had to know. Why didn’t they say anything?”
“I’m not sure, but they certainly were aware. The patient the oncologist treated wasn’t named Kyle.” Her eyebrow lifted. “His name was Liam.” She used air quotes around the name. “And he was always accompanied to every appointment by his brother Will.”
I rubbed the skin between my eyebrows to ease my headache as I put the pieces together. “Kyle used Liam’s identity to get treatment.”
“Yes,” Cherise said. “It makes sense, I suppose, with Kyle being a fugitive. He couldn’t very well get help on his own without the police finding out. And he looked enough like his brother to pass for him.”
I glanced at Mrs. P and recalled what she had just said to me earlier: Lately I’ve come to look upon situations through a very different set of eyes. Understanding versus vengeance. Rebuilding rather than destruction. Sometimes there is an interesting shade of gray between black and white.
Cherise had just told me where I could locate the hard evidence to prove that the Chadwicks had harbored a fugitive—at that oncologist’s office. But in light of Cherise’s revelations about the cancer I didn’t know what to do with the information. It really did change everything. If ever there was a shade of gray, this was it.
“Starla’s going to be devastated,” I said, my chest tightening just thinking about it.
“Yes, I imagine so. It’s probably best if you let me tell her, in case I need to use my healing on her. Long term, I have a very close friend who’s a therapist. I’ll make sure Starla gives her a call.”
Tears stung my eyes. “It could have all been so different.”
So very different.
Liam Chadwick had been right: The truth hurt.
Chapter Thirty
Later that afternoon, I was back at As You Wish, my mind whirling with information. I’d left Cherise and Evan upstairs with Starla after sitting with her through the initial explanation of Kyle’s illness. We’d simply let her feel what she was feeling. There had been tears. Many tears. But also anger and frustration and confusion. Before I finally came downstairs, there had been talk of another sleeping spell.
Despite the freakishness of being mostly dead, I gave a hearty stamp of approval on that. It was infinitely better than letting her thoughts run rampant and being unable to silence the voice in her head reminding her of the hell she’d lived through the past two years and how it could have been so different.
I’d just settled onto the sofa with a mug of coffee, the diary, and my reading glasses when I heard a rooster crowing at the back door.
Archie.
Missy followed me as I opened the door to Archie, who flew inside in a blurry colorful haze. He settled on the kitchen countertop and shuddered. “I’ve been flying here, there, everywhere this morning. I’m freezing my feathers off, I tell you.”
“Sounds like you need a tropical vacation, too.”
He closed his eyes and hmmmed. “If only.”
“Did you get in touch with the Elder?”
“Indeed,” Archie said. “She will see you now.”
I perked up. “Really?”
Clearing his throat, he said, “‘Really, really.’”
I bit my cheek and absently said, “Shrek.”
“Drat. I’m leaving. Can you get the door?”
I obliged, and as he flew off I heard him mumble something about molting.
I glanced at Missy. “He really is a strange bird.”
She barked.
Dashing around the house, I quickly prepped for my trek through the woods. Boots, scarf, gloves, cloak, fortitude.
Instead of bothering anyone, I left a note on the counter and left to see the Elder.
I hoped she’d have the answer that cracked this case wide open.
* * *
For the second time in a week, I made my way through the Enchanted Woods to the Elder’s meadow. This time when I arrived, it was alive with the colors and warmth of spring. Wildflowers of every hue dotted the landscape and the mushroom-shaped tree had perked up, its silver-green leaves glistening in the sunshine.
A tree-trunk stool appeared in the clearing, and I made my way over to it and sat down.
“Good afternoon, Darcy,” the Elder said.
“Is it?” I asked. “I don’t think so.”
“Ah, I see you’re still in the midst of your birthday-week discontent.”
Tears gathered in my eyes.
“Darcy?”
“Actually, my current discontent has nothing to do with my birthday. It’s this case. I need your help.”
“Do you?” she said in such a way that I began to doubt myself.
“I do. I can’t quite put the pieces together.”
“I heard you’re handling everything quite well on your own.”
I had a feeling I knew the feathered friend who’d been relaying the information. “I suspect that Kyle’s body was moved from his tree house to Starla’s by using the Special Delivery Spell.”
“Interesting.”
I explained about the video. “I’m hoping that a Crafter using magic to move a murder victim’s body is an infraction of Craft Law.”
“It would be, yes,” she said.
“So then you know who used the spell?”
There was a long stretch of silence before she said, “There’s been no infraction of the Special Delivery Spell.”
“How is that possible?” I asked. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. Unless he transported himself to Starla’s town house . . .”
“Crafters cannot use that spell to teleport themselves, Darcy. Only objects.”
Damn. So he hadn’t moved himself. Maybe the Special Delivery Spell was a wild-goose chase. “There was a warning about the spell, but Melina’s journal didn’t say what it was. Does it have to do with burns? From the incandescence?”
“Good deduction, Darcy. Yes, burns are a side effect of the spell, which is why it’s
not commonly used. A burn results where the transfer object comes in contact with the skin.”
“He had a burn on his leg . . . which also leads me to the Mirage Spell he cast over himself.” I told her about the medical examiner’s office. “Nick said it really freaked them out.”
She laughed and the noise shook me to my core. I’d heard the melodic sound before. It was so . . . familiar, but I couldn’t place it for the life of me. I wished she’d keep on laughing until my brain put it together. “I’ll bet.”
“Do we need to memory cleanse the lot of them?”
“I’ll handle it,” she said.
I’m not sure I wanted to know how.
“Anyway,” I went on, “when Kyle was found, he had two visible wounds: an injection site and the burn. Why weren’t they covered by the mirage?”
“If he was under the Mirage Spell, the only way those wounds would have been visible is if they were inflicted after the Mirage Spell had already been cast. He would have had to cast a new spell to cover those specific wounds.”
After. I guessed that made sense. Whoever killed him might not have known about the Mirage Spell.
“Or,” the Elder continued.
“What?” I asked.
“If the wounds were inflicted after he had already died.”
Chapter Thirty-one
Late the next morning, the sun was trying to peek out from behind a layer of thin clouds as Starla and I sat in the car staring at the front entrance of a funeral home that was located a couple of miles outside the village, in Salem proper.
She’d come to me early this morning with the request to come here.
“There’s something I need to do, and I don’t want to go alone. I was hoping you’d come with me. I’d like to get there before his service, which is at noon. I don’t really want to see anyone else. I just want some alone time with him. To”—her voice cracked—“say good-bye.”
Which was why my car was currently the only vehicle in the lot besides the hearse that was parked in the carport next to the building. I adjusted the temperature down a notch as the car idled and surreptitiously looked at Starla. We’d been sitting here five minutes now and she hadn’t said a word and hadn’t made a move to go inside the building.
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