Murder, Magic, and Moggies

by Pearl Goodfellow

  I took a breath and said, “In between all the hair flips and just short-of-insulting remarks, Berry said something in front of the whole station that sticks: because I happen to be a suspect this time means I can’t rely on David for help on this one.”

  “So?!” Millie bellowed, getting back in my face. “You’re going to do what you usually do anyway: run down leads, look for clues and all the other stuff that David’s entire police force didn’t manage to pull off the last couple of cases.”

  “Now that’s unfair, Millie,” I said, feeling a little braver as I wagged my finger at her. “You know how much territory they have to cover over the six islands they have jurisdiction over? And how little a budget they get to work with?”

  “Not exactly,” Millie said.

  Then, pulling out a folded piece of paper with the aplomb of a stage magician, she added, “But this is a message from someone who does know.”

  She handed me the note. I felt my heart in my throat as I unfolded it. Seeing the handwriting almost made me burst into tears of relief. I’d recognize David’s script anywhere. The note itself was straight to the point:

  “H—

  Be ready for Hector Muerte at 11:30. Prepare a cauliflower dish as payment.

  --D

  P.S. Burn after reading.”

  “When did this get here?” I asked Millie, looking up from the paper.

  “I saw it just now when I was in the back,” Millie said, motioning toward the back kitchen with her head. ‘It must have been slipped under the door. I recognized CPI Trew Love’s handwriting too, which is why I thought I’d read you the riot act to make you wake up a little.”

  Remembering the instruction, I tossed the paper into the fire. No sooner had the flames touched it when the whole sheet vanished in a puff of smoke. The formerly sleeping Carbon’s head bolted upright at whooshing sound it made. “Whoa! That’s something I haven’t seen in a long time,” my pyro cat announced.

  “What was it?” I asked. “Some sort of disintegration enchantment?”

  “Ha…not hardly,” Carbon said as he lowered his head back to the floor. “That was flash paper, a little something they came up with on the Mainland. But that stuff’s been falling out of favor since the final quarter of the last century. The last time I saw flash paper used was during the Warlock Wars.”

  “When did you see—“

  Carbon’s renewed snores cut off my line of questioning.

  “Did you read the note, Millie?” I asked.

  “Of course she did,” Onyx cut in. “Curiosity isn’t just for cats, you know.”

  “Oh, be quiet, you,” Millie said with a waved hand. “But if you must know, Hattie, yes, I did read the note.”

  “Then you know I’ve only got a few hours to come up with a cauliflower dish,” I said. “Not that I’m that great of a cook in the first place…and where would I get all the ingredients this late?”

  Millie waved me to the back and steered me towards the table back there. A full box of cooking ingredients with cauliflower on top was sitting on it.

  “Came with the note,” Millie explained.

  “Well, that’s one part of the problem out of the way,” I said, running my hand through my hair.

  “Why don’t you go de-stress at Celestial Cakes while I take care of Mr. Muerte’s meal?” Millie suggested, putting a sisterly hand on my shoulder. “Assuming, of course, I’m not fired.”

  “Still remember Grandma’s cauliflower casserole recipe?” I asked.

  “The one you never could get right?”

  “Careful…”

  “Joke…of course I still know it.”

  “Then, no, you’re not fired, yes, I am going to Celestial Cakes and no, Infiniti, I don’t need anyone to keep me company right now.”

  I heard a collective kitty groan at the last part of that sentence. Well, some snoring too, of course.

  Not that the morning had been exactly quiet at Celestial Cakes, but the evening trade was twice as busy. The wait staff buzzing around, made the interior seem that much more hectic. The fact that I couldn’t seem to find a seat anywhere; not even at the counter, was beginning to re-ignite the stress I’d felt earlier.

  Then I caught a sight of something that immediately calmed me. It wasn’t for more than a split-second, but I caught a glimpse of Gabrielle at her craft. Her expression, in contrast to the chaos of the cafe, was almost entirely Zen in its serenity. She folded dough, unhurriedly as moving bodies darted to and fro past her. If Gabrielle could manage this state-of-calm in this chaotic environment, I could indeed manage to calm down until I found a seat. As it happened, one of the patrons just happened to vacate a counter seat, which I promptly jumped on as fast as a stressed out lightning bolt. So much for calm, girl.

  “I realize that Gabrielle’s baking is good,” a familiar voice came to me from my right. “But that was the movement of someone who is starving.”

  Artemus Caves looked at me with a smile, but I could see the sadness behind it. He’d probably been hoping for the same peace and quiet I had. I saw his walking stick on the other side of him, leaning against the counter.

  “Artemus,” I said, turning towards him wearily. “Two helpings of Gabrielle’s treats in one day?”

  “My sister—foster sister, I should say—came into town, rather unexpectedly,” Artemus explained. “I’m going by to see her in a bit. But, she’d heard of this place and wanted me to bring her one of Gabrielle’s pastries.”

  “Makes sense to me,” I finished with a smile.

  He took a quick glance at the kitchen, looking fondly at Gabrielle as she worked. “While you’re here, I haven’t had much of a chance to go over the Strands information you gave me because, you know, current events. I was just wondering if you happened to have anything new you could add.”

  I asked this of him under the assumption that he knew of my plight. One thing I was pretty sure of was that the whole of Glessie knew about the turn of events, such was the gossip mill of this small Isle.

  “Regrettably, no,” Artemus said with a sigh. “All the information I gave you goes back to the days in which my Celtic ancestors encountered the stuff, and I have no history after that.”

  “Wait,” I said, holding up my hand. “Since when would Celts have—“

  “The late period of the Western Roman Empire,” Artemus explained. “A good many of my ancestors were working for the Romans as mercenaries or even outright legionnaires. Like any pack of soldiers far from home looking to relieve the boredom in between fighting, they found the Strands and took some home with them. Anything to make them forget the horrors they’d seen, right?”

  I nodded slowly, knowing that inhaling this thread-like drug must have been helpful to their mental duress at the time.

  “So your ancestors were basically some of the first Strands addicts?” I asked in confusion. I’d never seen a record of this in all my reading but I guess the Strands made their way across many empires throughout millennia.

  “I imagine that some of them became hooked, surely,” Artemus said taking no offense at me labeling his distant family as addicts. “But per some tribal lore I was able to track down, there were a few druids who realized the visionary potential to look into The Otherworld through the Strands and, so, adopted them accordingly.”

  Artemus suddenly slumped against the counter and sighed heavily. “It really is a shame that the only way Strands are known now is as a recreational substance, much like magic mushrooms and hashish before it. Too many people think that looking directly at the faces of the Gods is a fun time…until it isn’t, of course. Hence the flood of tripped-out casualties we have flooding our Isles right now.”

  I could feel my heart touched by Artemus’ speech. Given the circumstances of his life right now, he could have been angry and bitter about his experiences. But instead, he chose, first and foremost, to think of his fellow citizens, his community. I wasn’t the only one who felt so protective over our beloved island, then.r />
  “I guess it’s no surprise that you’re a man of some pretty extensive knowledge, given that you’re a writer,” I said attempting to bring some relief to his silent suffering.

  Artemus tossed me a crooked smile that actually made my heart flutter a little. “The two are, I’m sorry to say, not necessarily mutually inclusive, Ms. Jenkins.”

  I took a breath and tried again. “I guess what I’m saying is…how did a smart guy like you wind up like this?”

  “The race is not to the swift,” Artemus said, his eyes looking at some remote place in space and time. “Nor the battle to the strong; neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill, but time and chance doth happen to them all.”

  I frowned a little. “Is that the Bible?”

  Artemus nodded. “Ecclesiastes, Chapter 9, Verse 11…chalk up my encyclopedic knowledge of the text to a misspent semester at seminary school.”

  “So you were talking about yourself when you speak about ‘time and chance’?”

  Artemus nodded again, more emphatically this time. “Only, in my case, time and chance came in the form of Druida Stone, who, I’m sure you know, is—was—Glessie’s resident literary critic for the most influential newspaper of the Coven Isles.”

  “You’re talking about your first book, the one that Druida slammed?” I asked, my mind shifting gears from the contrast of trying to remain calm to getting increasingly excited by finding out more info on the Strands epidemic.

  “For a while, things with the book were good,” Artemus said. “It was the result of three years of painstaking research, many sleepless nights and enough reams of paper to deforest all of Nanker Isle. I didn’t have much in the way of financial support; my foster sister sent me a pittance from her better-paying job to keep me afloat with my food and bills. She was the only one to really believe in me. When the book took off, it looked like her belief in me was justified.”

  “When, all of a sudden…” I prodded, leaning against the counter a little.

  “Druida took the verbal equivalent of a snarled tooth ratchet to my work,” Artemus said. “None of what she wrote was even close to the truth, of course. But since when has truth ever rated a fair hearing? I’d stupidly blown through far too much of my advance from the publisher and with the sales on my wretched book crashing back to Earth, it didn’t take that long for me to lose the rest of my money to basic needs.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, patting Artemus’ hand in a gesture of futile comfort.

  Artemus took my hand and gave it an affectionate squeeze. “Not your fault…nothing to apologize for. I honestly, truly wish Druida had a tenth of your decency, though. I know that you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but I’m not about to absolve her of her sins just because someone did something to permanently shut her up.”

  “Careful,” I said, leaning in close so that nobody could hear. “That was the kind of talk that got me landed on the suspect list for her murder in the first place…despite the fact that CPI Trew is one of my oldest friends.”

  Artemus sighed again as he hung his head. “You’re right, of course…and I cannot begin to tell you how sorry I am that you wound up as such.”

  I gave him a smile, but my head was wondering about his previous remark. His grudge with Druida was real and understandable. Could he be her killer?

  “I do wonder, though,” Artemus said, tilting his head to the right. “The fact that Druida was found dead in her beloved Romani section of the library. Could that have been a message to someone else?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I said with a shrug. “But let’s talk about something else more pleasant, like our friend Gabrielle back there.”

  “What about Gabby?” Artemus asked, looking right at me.

  I had to laugh a little. “I thought Millie was the only one who called her that.”

  “Oh no, she’s made it quite plain to me that calling her Gabby is just fine,” Artemus said. “You won’t believe how we first met, incidentally.”

  “Well, we’re in a bakery-café,” I said with a shrug. “I guess that you came in for a delectable pastry, and—“

  “Wrong, wrong and wrong again,” Artemus said with a triumphant grin. “I was actually answering her advertisement for the upstairs apartment, which had come up for rent.”

  I didn’t mention that I actually had something to do with that.

  “She was…” Artemus started to say.

  Then, clearing his throat, he tried again with, “I don’t think I’m insulting Gabby in the slightest when I say that she is not poured out of the standard supermodel mold. And yet…there is this light around her and such a beautiful soul behind her eyes that I just felt myself…drawn in.”

  “So why are you living out on the coast when you could have her as your landlady?” I asked, suspecting the answer.

  “The unfortunate bane of my existence: money,” Artemus explained. “The rental rates for apartments downtown just isn’t tenable for me right now. Gabby didn’t dismiss me, however, the way most landlords would be wont to do. She insisted I come into the bakery and she wouldn’t let me leave until I had a full meal in my belly. In fact, she extended the invite as open-ended, and she advised me that there would always be a croissant waiting for me, should I return.”

  That sounded like Gabrielle, all right. In the short time she had been in business, she had worked with the local homeless, become a regular with the neighborhood watch association and held free seminars on how to make dishes from relatively cheap ingredients. The very fact that Celestial Cakes was standing room only right now was a testimony to the community goodwill she had built up.

  “Before now, I never would have believed such a woman could be alive on this earth,” Artemus said, returning his fond gaze to Gabrielle.

  “Actually, she wasn’t born. She was made.” The words flew out of my mouth before I could stop them. What was my problem??

  Artemus’ face went blank as his eyes went wide in shock. Well, I couldn’t stop there -- I had to try and make this right, and quickly. Who the heck did I think I was betraying my good friend’s trust like this? I realized it was the stress I was under that prompted me to act so out of turn.

  “Up until recently, she was a golem,” I explained. “She’d been made by Rabbi Goldsmith a little over forty years ago. Then she gave herself her True Name and turned into just an ordinary human like you and me.” The Coles notes version, but it would have to suffice.

  Artemus’ mouth tried to work, but it couldn’t seem to do more than gape. I could see from his eyes that various pieces of things he’d noticed about her (including, I suspected, the persistent dinginess of her skin and her rather odd mannerisms that could be misinterpreted as high functioning autism) were beginning to slide into place.

  Realizing the gravity of my actions, I added, “Please, don’t think of her any differently than—“

  “How can I not?” Artemus asked in amazement.

  Great work, Hattie. Just great.

  Artemus must have read my own expression because he quickly added, “No, no, it’s not like that, Ms. Jenkins. Far from it, in fact. I always knew she was perfect. Now I know why.”

  I was beginning to feel reassured when I saw another familiar look cloud his features: doubt.

  “What’s the problem?” I asked.

  “Like I said, she was made perfect,” he said. “I am…I am anything BUT perfect. What would she ever see in a mere mortal like me, someone who can’t even take care of himself?”

  I rubbed my temples a little. I sometimes wondered if men could ever wrap their heads around the fact that women really could see beyond a high paying job and nice dwellings.

  “The only way you’re going to know her true feelings, Mr. Caves, is to ask her yourself,” I said.

  Artemus gave me a look like I’d suggested he swim from Glessie to Nanker.

  “I mean it,” I said, using what Millie liked to call my “big siste
r tone.” “ And so will she when she answers your question. She doesn’t play any of the usual games, mostly because she never understood them.”

  I had an unpleasant flash to Berry at that point. I shut the thought down before it could get to the part where I obsessed about what she and David were doing this very moment.

  “Never understood what, Hattie?” Gabrielle asked as she walked up to the counter, startling us both.

  Artemus shot me a look that all but begged me not to say anything. That was all right by me. I had given him all the information and encouragement I had.

  “Just that there are some things about how we humans talk and, uh, that we don’t always necessarily act according to the words we utter,” I said, doing my best to cover for Artemus. “You know, sometimes we say one thing and act in a way that doesn’t match up to what we say—“

  Brigid, I sound like such an idiot when I babble. I was relieved when Gabrielle cut me off with, “This is true. There are many subtle human interactions, despite my years, that I still do not understand.”

  As she put a couple of teacups on the counter, she gave Artemus a look and added, “I have really been looking for someone to teach me about these mysterious arts.”

  And to think that I had given my favorite baker too little credit for being subtle. Artemus licked his lips and gave her a nervous smile but couldn’t bring himself to say anything.

  “So, Hattie,” Gabrielle asked as she poured my tea. “What brings you back to my establishment…and so late to boot?”

  I filled her and Artemus in on Bradford’s apparent abduction from his shop and how I had once again been dragged to the station for questioning. I left out any mention of Berry’s presence, but I doubt that I fooled Gabrielle that much.

  “As silly as this may sound from a man in my position,” Artemus said, drumming his fingers in thought. “I’ll see what I can do to find Bradford. I don’t have much going on right now, so it’s the least I can do. It’ll keep me occupied, and I do love research. Plus, my sister, she used to work in government circles in Talisman. She might be able to pick up some leads if I ask.”