The Witching Hour

by Anina Collins

  “Nice to know you naturally jumped to the conclusion that it would have to be me,” Derek mumbled.

  “Well, I’m sorry, but you do have a history with women, you know. And you do have dark hair.”

  “So does Alex. Did you jump to the conclusion that he must have been Amy Perkins’ secret boyfriend?”

  “No, but I had a good reason for that. Alex is with me.”

  Derek rolled his eyes. “You know, you’d be much better at this if you didn’t go into things blinded by personal prejudices. I know you like to think I’m the town gigolo, but you’re wrong.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I know. Now you’re a one-woman man. But just because you’re all settled down now doesn’t mean you were always that guy.”

  He sighed heavily and shuffled the papers in front of him. “I wouldn’t say all settled down quite yet.”

  Something in the way he said that told me possibly things weren’t all hearts and flowers with him and Solange, but that would have to wait for another time. At the moment, I had to figure out who this mystery man of Amy’s was.

  “I’m sorry I thought it was you, Derek. I need to go find Alex and see if he had a better theory.”

  I spun around, and as I began walking toward the door, he said, “I know my memory of her is her lying on the ground with a knife sticking out of her chest, but if I remember correctly, she had an innocent girl look to her. Not really my taste, but I bet it would be Craig’s.”

  Stopping dead, I looked back at him as all of Craig’s nervousness from the moment this case began played out in my mind. Had he been worried about us finding out about him dating Amy this whole time? Was that why he seemed to be such a mess instead of because it was his first big case?

  “Then again, I don’t think Craig would ever cheat on his wife, so that might be a dead end,” Derek said with a shrug.

  Just then, Alex came into the office and stopped as he bumped into me. “Derek, I think we have an issue.”

  Derek motioned toward the door. “If it’s about witches, I think this might be something we want to discuss in private.”

  Alex closed it and said, “No, it’s not about witches. I’d like to see the duty rosters from late December and January.”

  “Oh that. Poppy told me one of us was dating the victim. Since we know it wasn’t either of us now, who are we thinking about?”

  The two of us looked at one another, and I waited for Alex to say a name. Instead, he hedged and answered, “I’d prefer to wait until those duty rosters tell us who was on the schedule during those times. We know the officer went out to answer a call at the Third Eye Center sometime after the holidays.”

  Derek listened to Alex’s explanation and then nodded. “I think that means I need to take a look at the record of that call. Give me a few minutes. I’ll meet you in your office when I find out what I need to know.”

  Alex and I filed out of Derek’s office and silently headed down the hall to his. He closed the door behind us and said quietly as I sat down, “Why did you go to Derek instead of coming with me?”

  Sheepishly, I admitted my blunder. “I thought he might be the officer Amy was dating.”

  His eyebrows shot up into his forehead. “Really?”

  “I know. I know. It sounds stupid now, but I figured since she was a beautiful woman and Derek has been known to be a bit of a hound in town, he seemed like the logical choice. I guess in hindsight it wasn’t very logical at all. You don’t have to tell me about how bad it is that I jump to conclusions. Derek already chastised me about it. I got it.”

  “You just marched right into his office and accused him of knowing a victim he saw lying dead last night as if he wouldn’t have told anyone?”

  “Well, when you say it like that with that disbelief written all over your face, it makes it seem crazy.”

  Alex smiled and shook his head. “You’re lucky he likes you, Poppy. If any of us did that, he’d chew us out and then give us overnight duty until the end of time.”

  I knew what he said was the truth. Derek let me get away with things I doubted he’d let another human being do without lowering the boom on them. Knowing someone since childhood had its benefits. That I took advantage of that didn’t escape me.

  “He can’t give me overnight shifts. I’m not one of his cops,” I said with a chuckle. “The worst he can do is yell, but Derek doesn’t like doing that with me.”

  “The worst he can do is to forbid us from working together. I think you forget that, Poppy. One of these days he just might do that.”

  Alex was right. I knew it, but I sometimes forgot in my enthusiasm for the cases we worked on how much power Derek held over us and my working with the police.

  Eager to change the subject, I asked my partner what I’d been dying to know since he showed up in his chief’s office a few minutes before. “So where did you go when I went in to talk to Derek? Who do you think Amy’s boyfriend was?”

  The door opened before he could answer. “I think I’ll let the boss tell us who it is.”

  Derek closed the door behind him and sat down heavily in the seat next to me. “This isn’t good. Why wouldn’t he have spoken up and said he knew the victim?”

  He and Alex exchanged glances, making me realize I was the only one in the room who didn’t know who he was talking about. I waited for a few more seconds for someone to finally spill the beans before I asked, “Who?”

  “Stephen,” Derek said in a low voice barely above a whisper. “He was the cop who went out on that call to the new age place outside of town.”

  “Seriously? He dated Amy and he didn’t mention that to anyone after being one of the two officers called out to the scene of her murder?” I asked, shocked that my nemesis had stepped out of line in such an incredibly unethical fashion.

  It didn’t escape me that he had disliked having me around since the first time I met him, right after the holidays. Maybe he didn’t like having someone working on cases who spent half her time working for the newspaper. He may have thought I’d dig up his secret.

  But who would have cared if he was dating Amy Perkins? She was an upstanding citizen in town and had never been in trouble with the law. She was beautiful and charming. Or was it because she was a witch that he wanted to hide his relationship with her?

  My brain spun with thoughts about Stephen’s behavior since the case had begun. Looking across the desk at Alex, I said, “Maybe that’s why he wanted to make sure we were kept investigating anything but her personal life. While we spend our time talking to witches, going to tarot conventions, and heading to the Charming Bakery to talk to people and ask if Amy had any enemies, he made sure anyone who might be able to point him out as Amy’s ex was interviewed by him.”

  “Don’t jump to any conclusions, Poppy. We don’t know anything other than one of Amy’s friends claims she was dating an officer and Stephen seems to fit the description since he was the one who went out on the Third Eye Center call,” Alex said in his very measured voice.

  “It’s not jumping to conclusions. Why would Crystal Sendona lie about a thing like that? And if it’s him, that would explain why he left Craig behind when he went out to speak to Amy’s family and her boyfriend after making sure you and I got nowhere close to them. If her family knew they dated, he wouldn’t be able to keep that a secret with the two of us hanging around.”

  Derek sighed and let out an uncomfortable groan. “It does seem strange that he didn’t want Craig to go with him, especially since it’s his first major case and he’s supposed to be learning from Stephen.”

  “I just don’t think we should draw any conclusions before he explains himself,” Alex said, quickly becoming the only person in the room who didn’t think Stephen was up to something odd.

  “I’m going to have to talk to him about this. You said he was out talking to Amy’s family and her boyfriend? When does Craig expect him back?”

  Alex looked down at his watch. “I talked to him when we got here and he said he th
ought he’d be back before one. It’s about one o’clock now.”

  “Well, you two go see what you can find out at Amy’s workplace while I handle this matter,” Derek said seriously. “When you get through with that, we’ll know better how things are going to move on from here.”

  He stood up and silently walked out of the office, his shoulders slumped. Derek didn’t have much experience dealing with things like this. Very few people in Sunset Ridge did. The police department was the embodiment of a small town organization. Everyone knew everyone, or at least we all thought we knew everyone pretty well in town.

  Seemed we didn’t.

  Now he’d have to confront one of his own and Stephen, nonetheless. Of all the officers he had to deal with, he was the most antagonistic. Although I was the one who was usually on the receiving end of his rudeness, more than once he’d been difficult with his fellow officers and even the receptionist, and every time, Derek had deferred the problem to whoever had been disrespected.

  Alex rose from his chair and motioned for me to join him. “Let’s go. I don’t think having us here is going to be helpful to Derek.”

  He hurried out of the building so fast that I had to jog to catch up to him. I did just as he reached the car parked out front and grabbed his arm to stop him. Alex turned to look at me and pointed toward the other side of the car.

  “You’re practically running away. What’s going on here? Why do we have to leave so quickly? We did nothing wrong.”

  “Just get in the car, Poppy.”

  The concern in his eyes confused me. Why did we have to flee like guilty people?

  I did as he said to and barely got the door closed before he pulled away from the curb. He remained silent, not explaining anything about his strange behavior and making me wonder what had happened to him. Alex wasn’t the type of man to run away from a fight. He didn’t go looking for problems, but he didn’t shy away from dealing with issues when they came up either.

  Nothing about this felt right.

  Finally, when it became apparent he had no idea where Charming Cakes Bakery was located, I asked, “Do you plan to ask me how to get to Amy’s workplace since it seems you don’t plan to tell me what the hell all that was about?”

  Alex winced and glanced over at me. “Poppy, we needed to get out of there because as of the moment Derek found out Stephen may have had a relationship with the victim, I became the lead officer on the case. I didn’t want to run into Stephen and possibly get into a conversation about the case with him, so I got us out of there.”

  “I don’t understand. Derek will just take him off the case. So what? He’s probably going to give him a hard time, but if he was dating Amy at some point, he shouldn’t investigate her death when there’s another officer who can do it. Namely, you.”

  He turned the corner off Main Street and pulled the car into the first open spot on Foreman Street. Jamming the shifter into park, he turned in the driver’s seat to face me, his face more serious than I’d ever seen it.

  “You’re not seeing the bigger problem, Poppy. I haven’t had a chance to speak to the person who called in the crime. I only have his word that someone found her. What if that isn’t true? What if in addition to lying about even knowing the victim, he lied about that too? I have no idea if he and Craig were together all night before that call came in.”

  What Alex was saying didn’t sink in for a moment. What did he mean?

  Then it dawned on me. What he meant was perhaps Stephen had played a part in her death.

  “Oh, my God! Are you saying you think he may be a suspect?” I asked, stunned that I could even be saying that. I disliked Stephen, but I never thought he could murder someone.

  “I don’t know,” he said in that somber voice he used whenever something truly upset him. “I don’t know anything about this, but I thought it would be better to be careful. I have no idea what his relationship with Amy was. I don’t know why it ended or if it ended amicably. All I know is if he was dating her, they were keeping it a secret and he omitted telling anyone he knew her when he saw she was a murder victim last night.”

  “What’s going to happen, Alex? I don’t think Derek has ever had to deal with anything like this. I doubt if the Sunset Ridge police force has ever had this problem. I mean, sure, everyone knows everyone in town, so many times you guys are investigating crimes that involve people you know from seeing them on the street or in the grocery store, but that’s completely different than this. This isn’t the possibility that one of our neighbors ran a red light or got into a fight with the person next door. He may have been in a relationship with someone who was murdered, and even worse, he may have had something to do with it.”

  Alex touched my hand and squeezed it gently. “I don’t know, Poppy. For now, we just have to focus on our part of the investigation until we hear differently from Derek. We’ll go to this Charming Cakes place and do what we always do, even if all that happens is we find out Amy was a cake decorator everyone loved and she didn’t have an enemy at all at work.”

  “You know, I’ve never liked him ever since that first night I met him, but that was just because he was so rude to me. I never imagined anything like this could happen with him, though. I just hoped he’d stop being such a jerk to me so we could all exist in peace.”

  Alex squeezed my hand again and leaned over to kiss me softly on the cheek. “I know. Let’s get going and see what we can find out about Amy at her work. Who knows? Maybe some disgruntled cake decorator who’s always been jealous of her ability to make those icing flowers will confess and this entire case will be sewn up by the end of the day.”

  As he drove up Foreman Street, I gave him the directions to Charming Cakes Bakery and hoped we could wrap up this case today. I didn’t like Stephen, but I hated seeing Alex so worried about the Sunset Ridge police. More than just fellow officers, they were his family in many ways, and I knew the idea that one of them could be guilty of a crime like this had shaken him.

  Chapter Eleven

  We pulled up to the Charming Cakes Bakery building, and I saw Alex had clearly been expecting something else. Facing us was the vine-covered façade of what looked like an old and abandoned manufacturing plant, but the Charming bakery was actually more like a factory on one side and a storefront on the other. Whatever he had been prepared to see, Alex arched a curious eyebrow and then turned toward me.

  “So this is where they make the best cakes?” he asked in a tone of disbelief.

  “I know it looks like a run-down place, but give it a chance.”

  He shrugged and turned off the ignition. “I don’t have to like how it looks. I just figured I’d see a different kind of place when I drove up.”

  “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” I admonished him, sure he had already made up his mind not to ever try a Charming cake.

  Alex didn’t respond to my teasing and simply got out of the car. I pointed toward the storefront and said, “I think we should start with the finished product. That’s what Amy’s job was, so it seems logical.”

  As we walked toward the glass front doors of the bakery shop, he mumbled, “Nothing about this case seems logical.”

  To him, that would be true. Alex spent his time believing in a few principles of life, and one of those things was that the men and women he worked with on the police force did good things. They worked hard to make sure the citizens of Sunset Ridge were protected, whether that meant answering nightly phone calls from one of them who simply couldn’t abide by someone parking in front of her house, even if it was a perfectly legal thing to do, or solving the murder of one of their neighbors.

  But Stephen’s dishonesty had thrown that principle into chaos, and for Alex, nothing could be worse. The foundation of his life rested on being a cop, but now that foundation had been shaken by the revelation that one of their own had betrayed what they all believed in.

  I wanted to make him feel better, to make him see that Stephen’s behavior meant nothing compared t
o all the good he and every other officer did for our town every day. I just didn’t know how to, and so far, nothing I’d said had done much to help.

  He held the door open for me and we walked into the most delicious smelling place I’d ever been. If they sold coffee, I may have thought it was heaven right here on earth. The intoxicating scent of sugar and spices filled the air surrounding us, making me want to devour one of Charming Cake’s famous delicacies.

  I stood there inhaling deeply and closed my eyes to revel in the yumminess. I felt Alex push on my upper arm and heard him say, “You okay, Poppy?”

  Opening my eyes, I took another deep breath and nodded. “I just love the smell of this place.”

  “I can tell by the smile on your face. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this happy because of food.”

  Clearly, he didn’t understand the love of a woman for her baked goods. “Food? It’s not food. It’s more like the ambrosia the gods on Olympus ate. To call it food is to diminish its deliciousness.”

  My effusive love for the wondrous delights of Charming Cakes made him chuckle. “And to think I thought you loved that muffin.”

  A middle-aged woman wearing white pants and a t-shirt and a hairnet over her short blond bob came out through a door that led to the factory and stood behind the glass display cases filled with freshly made Charming treats. “Can I help you two?” she asked sweetly, likely already knowing the answer by the way I was eyeing up the cupcakes and eclairs in front of her.

  Since we were there on police business, I tried to stop myself from practically drooling and Alex answered her with a flash of his badge. “My name is Alex Montero and this is my partner Poppy McGuire. We’d like to speak to the owner.”

  “I’m sorry, but the owner isn’t here. There is a shift supervisor on, though. I can get him for you.”

  “That would be great. Thank you,” Alex said as he peered over at the door to the factory.