Scent of a Killer: An Ella Sweeting Aromatherapy Magic Cozy Mystery (Ella Sweeting: Witch Aromatherapist Cozies Book 1)

by Lisbeth Reade

  The Aunts were in the library when I came down. I felt like death. Must have looked that way, too. But Aunt Sarah put a coffee in my hands, and Auntie Joe was passing around a plate of tea cakes, and Aunt Hazel sat me down in a fluffy blue armchair by the fireplace. It was too hot to be on in May, but it was still a rather comforting thing to sit near.

  “We’re trying to figure out how the killer got my blade,” Aunt Hazel filled me in.

  “Ok, good,” I said, as the caffeine hit my blood stream and woke up those stagnant brain cells. “What did you figure out?”

  “I had it when we were in London,” Aunt Hazel said. “I remember because we had to check the bags to get our ceremonial knives and ingredients through security. The athame was in the bag I checked.”

  “Did you have it when we landed in New York?” Auntie Joe asked.

  “I told you this already,” Hazel huffed. “I had it. I checked for all our important things at the hotel in Rochester.”

  “And after that?” I asked.

  “Well, that’s when it gets a bit hazy. We rode in quite a few cabs to get to you. I had it on the first trip. But I’m not too sure after that. I think I gave the carry bag with the knives to Sarah.” Hazel pointed to a table where two more knives sat. “We have Joe’s and Sarah’s.”

  “I was sure you gave it to me to hold,” Sarah said. “I was almost positive it was in my purse. So that narrows it down to the coffee shop we stopped in on the way here, the cab we took to both places, and the restaurant we ate in the night before the murder.”

  “Okay, well let’s have Aunt Hazel call the cab company,” I said. “This isn’t nearly enough coffee for me, so let’s take a ride out to the coffee shop. Was it in town? If it’s far maybe we should just call them too?”

  “Oh no,” Sarah said. “It’s in town. It’s the one with the candy floss in the windows and the mosaic out front. Lovely little place, and such great coffee. We should go.”

  “Yes,” Auntie Joe said. “I want more of that spicy Chai they had, and oh, maybe a few scones.”

  “It’s settled,” Aunt Hazel said. “I will stay here to make some calls and keep the cats company, as long as you promise to bring me back something.”

  We assured her we would and walked out into the foyer. Mother was on the phone.

  “That’s all right Maureen, I understand. Both our tempers were flaring,” Mother was saying. “Of course we will be at the wake. No, no, of course not… I understand. Well yes, of course I will be cooperating. Why? Yes, oh, all right. Goodbye.”

  “Oh, there you are Ella,” Mother said, giving me a hug. Her makeup was perfect, but under it all I could see she was pale. “The wake for Vanessa is tomorrow. Maureen is expecting us to attend.”

  My heart fluttered. The wake would be the perfect time to dig a little deeper. “Great,” I told her. “Well not great, but you know what I mean. I liked Vanessa.”

  “I know, dear,” Mother said.

  “Girard,” I called. He appeared, looking quite rested. I was suddenly jealous of his full night of sleep. “Can you have the car brought around?”

  “Where are you going, dear?”

  “Coffee Cakes & Tea Dreams,” I answered.

  “Bring back some of those scones, will you?” I beamed, glad that she wasn’t curious.

  The ride to the coffee shop was uneventful, well, except for Auntie Joe accidentally making her purse glow when she sneezed. “Oops, too many ‘things’ in there I guess.”

  Aunt Sarah stared at her pointedly until Joe stopped giggling. I beamed. They were awesome. At least the murder wasn’t really getting in the way of me getting to know my aunts.

  When we pulled up into the parking lot, Aunt Sarah clapped her hands. “This is it, I’m sure of it. Good work, Ella. Come on, girls! Let’s find out if anyone saw the knife here.”

  “And get scones,” Auntie Joe said with conviction.

  The smell of fresh brewed coffee and baked goods set my mouth to watering. I almost didn’t notice Leanne sitting in the window seat. She was alone. I waved the aunts on and sat down across from her.

  “How are you, Leanne?”

  She blinked at me, her face cold. “Oh, how do you think I am? I’m probably out of a job.”

  “Why wouldn’t the family keep you on?” I asked.

  “Vanessa died while I was in the house alone, why do you think?”

  “Do they think you did it?”

  Did I think she did it? She’d had an affair with George. She might have had a kid with him. But then, why hadn’t she been fired? I would not have kept on a woman who was sleeping with me husband, not without a reason. I added Leanne to my list of people I needed to learn more about.

  She tore at her croissant but didn’t answer my question. “I’ve said too much. I need to think of my son. I need a reference. If they see me talking to anyone about them, no one in this town will hire me.”

  “How would they even know?”

  “Go away Ms. Sweeting, please,” Leanne said.

  Oh, no. I wouldn’t get anywhere this way. If I wanted to solve this mystery, I had to be brave and bold.

  “Fine,” I said boldly. “If you let me back into the house.”

  “What? No, of course not, why would you want to go back there?”

  “I just want to see it again,” I hedged. “Let me in or I will loudly announce that I also think Vanessa was a kleptomaniac.”

  “She was a what? No,” Leanne stood up, eyes flashing. “I’m tired of rich people bullying me,” she hissed. She tossed the croissant down and left the shop, the bells ringing loudly.

  “Wait,” I called. Oh, I pushed too hard! Dang. I hadn’t meant to insult her. Though if she was the murderer, I suppose it wasn’t a bad thing.

  Aunt Sarah appeared at my elbow.

  “I sure handled that well.”

  “Maybe we need to teach you how to persuade someone, not threaten,” she said with a frown.

  “I know,” I sighed. “I’ll apologize to her later. I was just excited. I need to get back into that bedroom. Something’s digging at me. It was rude, wasn’t it? What about the you-know-what?”

  “Dead end, I’m afraid,” Sarah answered. “No one turned it in. No one picked it up. None of the regular employees saw it lying around. But they all think we’re cool.”

  I laughed. “Let’s at least get some coffee. Then we’ll go over to the restaurant.”

  An hour later we were back home and none the wiser. No one at the restaurant had seen anything. “I was sure that was going to be it. I dropped my bag in there, remember,” Aunt Sarah said.

  “There’s no telling if it was in the bag at that point,” Hazel told her. “The cabs were just as disappointing. We’ll just have to hope the true killer shows their hand before they arrest one of us.”

  On cue, the doorbell rang. We jumped. Girard answered the door while we huddled in the library. When he arrived, he was accompanied by Detective Garza, wearing a light beige suit and gold hoops, with her shoulder-length hair hanging loose in friendly brown waves. Her mouth, however, formed a determined frown.

  “Good, you’re all here,” she said smiling tightly. “I have a few follow-up questions.”

  “Can I get you some tea?”

  “Coffee would be better,” she said.

  I nodded and waved to Girard.

  She turned towards him, adding, “Black, two sugars if you wouldn’t mind.”

  Girard nodded and vanished.

  “So. We ran everyone’s rap sheets.”

  My aunts all looked elsewhere.

  I crossed my arms and stared at them.

  Detective Garza sat down in my blue armchair. “Anything you ladies want to tell me?”

  “I was a peaceful protestor,” Aunt Sarah ventured. “In the late sixties I fell in with the right crowd and we fought against oppression.”

  “Oh I know, you also conked three police officers over the head with flower pots,” Garza added.

  “
They were only little flower pots,” Aunt Sarah said with a straight face. “I’ve been an upstanding citizen since then.”

  “No you haven’t,” Garza said tapping the sheets. “Not only do you have a rap sheet a mile long, Interpol also has a rap sheet on you. In the 1980’s you slapped a German official, in the 1990s you started a bar fight and then just last month you freed fourteen monkeys from a medical facility in Denver, Colorado.”

  Aunt Sarah put her hand on her hip. “Detective Garza, I do not believe any of those ‘crimes’ would lead you to believe I am a murderer. I might have an over-developed sense of justice, perhaps, but that is all.”

  Garza made a noncommittal sound and turned to Auntie Joe. “Your rap sheet is smaller, though just as colorful.”

  “I’m a colorful person,” Auntie Joe said.

  “Several protests, a nudist rights rally, and you’ve been arrested for cursing someone?” Detective Garza raised a well-manicured eyebrow. “Really? Witchcraft?”

  “Silly, really. Come on, would you believe that? And the nudist rally was in the seventies, we were all naked then,” Auntie Joe said.

  “But one of you had the longest rap sheet I have ever seen and not all of them are petty crimes. You want to explain yourself Hazel Smyth?”

  “Not especially,” Aunt Hazel said. She sat stiffly, eyeing the detective. “Since when is finding a body a crime, detective?”

  “When it isn’t the first time, Mrs. Smyth,” Garza shot back. “You were the one to find your husband’s body too, weren’t you?”

  “He had a heart attack,” Hazel said, stricken.

  The aunts moved closer to put their hands on her shoulders. I took her hand and glared at Garza. “He was much older than I,” Hazel managed.

  “I’m going to need to fingerprint you,” Detective Garza said.

  “Who, Aunt Hazel?” I stood up, angry.

  “All of you.”

  I crossed my arms. “I’ll have our lawyer deal with that. Let me walk you out.”

  The detective didn’t argue. I lead her outside. She stopped and leaned against one of the columns on our porch.

  “Your aunts are quite the bastions of womanhood. Most of their crimes were civil disobedience and justice-minded.”

  “Does that mean you don’t think they’re murders?”

  “Oh no,” Detective Garza said. “Being justice-minded doesn’t eliminate them. A lot of people take things too far. And you can never rule out passion.”

  “But my aunts just got here,” I protested. “They didn’t even know Vanessa, much less have reasons to kill her.”

  “You sure about that? Listen Ms. Sweeting, I am going to get to the bottom of this. If one of your aunts did this they’re going down for it. If you did it, you are going down for it.”

  “You think I’m a suspect?”

  “Everyone is a suspect until alibis and evidence clear them,” Detective Garza said. “Heck, if I didn’t know where I was that night I would consider myself a suspect. Advise your aunts to get fingerprinted. That should clear them if they weren’t involved.”

  She walked down to her car. I stood on the porch even after she was gone. After a while Rory’s mail truck, came down the street, picking up speed a bit as it approached our house. I beamed and started to walk towards the curb, but stopped when and he hopped out and I saw the stormy expression on his face.

  “What the blazes were you thinking?”

  “What?” My heart cringed.

  “Leanne told me how you threatened her. What possessed you?” He jammed his hands into his pockets, probably to keep from shaking me. I felt a twinge of guilt, but he wasn’t going to see it.

  “I need to search that room,” I said. “I saw an opportunity and I went for it.”

  “Yeah, well it was stupid. Because I went to her to ask for the same thing and since you had to act like a spoiled rich girl she said no.” He glared.

  Well I glared right back, pride prickling. “Is that what you think of me? I’m just a spoiled rich girl?”

  “Shoe fits,” Rory growled. “She would have let us in. All you had to do was ask nicely. But no, it’s all demands from Miss Sweeting. I dated her, remember? We had a connection that I could have used to get us in. But not now. Now she’s angry.”

  “Darn it,” I said biting my lip. “I’ll talk to her.”

  “No,” he told me. “I will. You’ll only set her off again. Here’s your mail by the way.” He shoved a few letters into my hands and left. I called after him, but he ignored me.

  Chapter Six

  I walked back inside, flipping through the mail. It was just some thank you notes from my clients and a few letters and bills for Mother, which I dropped into the mail bin on the vestibule table. Girard would look through them for her and get rid of anything Mother didn’t need to see. That’s why I normally got the mail. I liked to see everything, the good, the bad and the credit card bill. Mother preferred bills to be out of sight and paid automatically.

  My aunts were whispering fiercely when I returned.

  I sat down and faced them. “I need to get into Vanessa’s bedroom. I need to smell that cologne again and I need to see if the police missed anything.”

  “What are we going to do about that nosy detective?” Aunt Hazel asked.

  “First thing we’re going to do is not sound like murderers in a kids’ cartoon,” I said with a laugh. “Next I will go to the police station and get my fingerprints on file. I never touched the knife. Maybe while I’m there I can learn something.”

  Aunt Sarah nodded and sighed. “Who do you think it is?”

  “I don’t know yet. Something is bothering me about the cologne.” I bit my finger, trying to make the thoughts come to the surface faster. “It smelled the same in the room as the box Rory dropped… That leads me to believe its George’s regular cologne.”

  “Or Max’s,” Auntie Joe added.

  “Well, I know who it’s not. It’s not any of you and it is not Mother or Father. And it’s not me. That leaves George, Max, Leanne, and Maureen on my suspect list,” I said with a sigh. “But of course, it could have been a stranger who broke in for her jewels. Or someone else whose jewelry she nicked who was high and tired of it. We really don’t know enough yet.”

  The Aunts murmured in agreement.

  I pulled the card out of my wallet with the detective’s number on it. “Well, the only way I am going to learn anything is by having a good nose around Vanessa’s room and that’s not going to happen until Rory can calm Leanne down. What are you guys going to do about your fingerprints?”

  “We’re going to get the lawyer to stall,” Aunt Sarah said. “If not, we’ll have to see if there’s a spell to change them, I suppose.”

  “Is that likely,” I asked, feeling hopeful, not to mention excited at the thought of more magic. Interesting magic, too.

  “I don’t know,” Aunt Sarah said. “It’s not something I’ve ever had to look into. Changing oneself is a serious thing.” She hugged herself. “I hate that they brought up your husband, Hazel.”

  “So do I,” Hazel admitted. “Ralph was a wonderful man but he was not magical, so he just had his natural life. Oh, how I miss his silly cakes!”

  The aunts hugged, and I joined.

  When I arrived at the police station. Maureen was there. I approached her gingerly.

  “Oh relax, I won’t gnaw your arm off,” she said hugging herself.

  I smiled. “I’m sorry about Vanessa.”

  “Aren’t we all,” Maureen said. “She didn’t have an actual will, you know. Imagine being her age and having her husband and not protecting yourself from him.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “You’re thinking of that insane prenup Father signed,” Maureen told me. She was normally pale, but now she was practically colorless. Her eyes were black holes burnt into her head. She fluttered her hands around when she talked. “If he divorced her he got nothing. If he left her for another woman she got everything i
ncluding the clothes off his back. Why he ever signed such a stupid thing…”

  “He must have been so in love with her,” I offered.

  Maureen laughed raucously. “My father is in love every other weekend. I bet your parents would do anything for you,” she said, staring at me with a lot of heat. “You have no idea what it’s like.”

  “You have Max,” I countered. “I would have given anything for a brother.”

  “I do have Max,” she agreed.

  Before I could ask her about Max the door opened and Maureen was called away. I sat there for another fifteen minutes before I was called inside. I walked, in expecting to see something scary but it was just Ruby with an inkpad and a sheet of paper.

  “Hi Ruby,” I said with a laugh. “I didn’t expect you.”

  “I know, normally I’m at the counter, but Bobby was taking care of Miss Stewart and I thought, why not handle it, Ruby girl? You went to the police academy too. Anyway, I knew you wouldn’t mind if it was a friendly face,” Ruby winked.

  “You’re right,” I said, hugging my elbow. “Does the detective think it’s me?”

  “No,” Ruby, said then blinked. “I’m not supposed to tell you that, but no one thinks you did it. Give me your hand.”

  “Who do you think did do it?” I asked, holding my hand out. Ruby actually grabbed my hand, pushed it into the ink in a rolling motion and transferred my hand to the paper to make a nice, clean imprint. It was interesting.

  “The family has a lot of motives,” Ruby said noncommittally. “The maid also has a lot of motives. They don’t think it’s your mother, either, if that helps.”

  “What about my aunts?”

  She let go of my hand and handed me a wet napkin to get the ink off. “I don’t know and if I did…”

  “You couldn’t tell me. Would you have to kill me?” I raised my eyebrows.

  “Maybe,” she giggled. “Listen, Garza is the best. She’ll find the killer. I just hope it isn’t Max. Hey, if it isn’t Max, would you mind whipping me up one of your potions?”