At that point, Kat could’ve knocked me over with one little kick of his hooves. Everyone else standing in that crazy overgrown lawn seemed to be as stable as me. I certainly didn’t see that one coming.
“No, Laura!” Andy struggled to pull his arms loose from the cuffs, but only succeeded in curving his gangly torso around her in an awkward hug. “Don’t say anything else. Don’t give them anything to use against you.”
“I don’t care.” Laura wiped at the tears under her eyes. “This guilt is eating me up inside. I have to tell them.”
Ian pushed Andy back to his knees and pulled Laura away. They walked toward me. “Are you telling me you put the poison in his breakfast?”
Laura sniffed. “Yeah. I did it the night before and laid them out for his breakfast, so that I wouldn’t have to be here when it happened. All I wanted was to make him a little sick so that I could spend the day with Andy. I didn’t mean to kill him.”
I stuffed my hand in my jean pocket and found a small chunk of eraser. It was left over from last week’s hike around the lake when I’d taken my sketching pad and decided to try my hand at nature drawings. I kneaded the eraser, finding a bit of comfort in the squishy little ball of rubber. Everything was unraveling so quickly. Raven had been right about Laura and Andy. They couldn’t be together with Mr. White around. But that was a majorly efficient way to get some vacation time.
“So did you get the ricin from Andy?” I asked Laura, stepping in. That part just didn’t make sense. How would someone like Laura get her hands on that lethal poison? I wasn’t quite convinced of Andy’s innocence in all of this. “Did he encourage you to put it on the roses?”
“Ricin?” Laura’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that?”
“The poison that killed Allen White,” Ian added, giving me a warning glance.
“No…I didn’t…” she shook her head and looked at me questioningly. “I didn’t use ricin. I put kiwi fruit in his breakfast. He’s deadly allergic to it. I thought he’d just have to go to the hospital.”
A sigh of relief flowed from my chest. Laura wasn’t the murderer after all.
Ian dropped his hand from the handcuffs and sighed as well. “You didn’t kill him, Ms. Blight. Allen died from a deadly serious poison called ricin. I doubt he even ate the Danishes you left him. They were probably taken into evidence by my team.”
“You mean…?” The tears immediately dried up on her cheeks. “I didn’t kill him?”
He shook his head solemnly from side to side. “No. We’ve arrested your boyfriend on that suspicion.”
“Andy?” She looked at him kneeling on the ground, awareness coloring her face in splotches of pink. “He killed Mr. White?”
“Never!” Andy spat at Ian.
One of the officers who had been searching the shed came over at that point. Blythe and Raven had just finished telling their side of the story to the flustered officer, no doubt omitting a few witchy points of the story. All of them joined us next to the squad car.
“We found a bomb-making apparatus and several homemade sticks of dynamite,” the officer said in a hushed voice. “I think we’d better call in the bomb squad from Omaha.”
“Bombs?” Laura shrieked. She stomped her feet in the grass. “What? Were you going to blow up Mr. White’s house with me inside it?”
Andy shook his mane of unkempt hair. “No, it wasn’t for Mr. White. I told you, I didn’t kill him. Those were going to make a statement.”
I exchanged glances with Blythe and Raven. Andy sure wasn’t going to give up easily.
“What kind of statement?” Laura’s voice was shrill enough now that I’m pretty sure half the neighborhood could hear. People were starting to notice the commotion and gather on the sidewalk. “The kind that gets me killed?”
“No, baby.” He scrambled forward on his knees. “I’d never hurt you. I just wanted to get the attention of the wasteful people in Uriville.” Turning to us, he shook his head. “We have everything we could ever want in this place, but everyone takes it for granted. There are people out there dying for a sip of water. Snobs like Allen White were wasting precious resources, without a thought of the damage they do to this Earth. I was going to get their attention and blow up the water tower. It was going to be epic.”
At that point, Andy became lost in his own thoughts, a faint smile stretching across his lips. Ian must’ve heard enough, because he grabbed his arm and pulled him to the cruiser, stuffing him inside. Tapping on the side of the car, Ian waved the officer inside of it to move on, and Andy disappeared around the nearest street corner.
Blowing up a water tower wasn’t exactly a recipe for murder. Still, with Angie Pine out of the picture, Andy Jenkings was the best suspect. He hated Mr. White; that much was more than clear. And if he could string up a homemade bomb, he could certainly create a poisonous substance to sprinkle on Mr. White’s precious garden.
“I don’t care what he says,” Blythe whispered to the two of us. “I think that man killed Mr. White.”
“He did,” I said firmly. “He’s guilty and soon Grammy Jo will be free. It’s all over now.”
Chapter 17
The three of us rounded the corner to my shop with donuts and coffee in hand, just in time for the park's opening. It was turning out to be a lovely and clear summer’s day, so the park might be busy for once. My cousins had followed me all the way from Andy Jenkings’ home. I think they were still a little shell-shocked from the incident.
"Well, I guess that's it." Raven kicked at the doorframe, leaving a small groove in the wood. "Case over. I'm sure Grammy Jo will be out by dinner."
I nodded and stuffed the rest of the donut in my mouth. Crime fighting made me ravenous. "That's what Ian said. What a relief."
And it was a relief. No more worrying about Momma Tula jumping off the deep end. Grammy Jo would make it all better, just like she did for all of the women in her family. She was the glue that kept us together. I couldn't picture life without her.
"Personally, I'm done with getting assaulted," Blythe added, tapping her bubblegum pink nails on my dirty workspace. They stuck in a drying glob of paint and she pulled quickly away. "I'm too delicate to do this kind of work. My first official date with Drew is tonight. He's making me dinner. Thank the heavens that Andy Jenkings didn't scar this beautiful face."
"You're too delicate for any kind of work that gets your hands dirty," Raven replied in a snarky tone, pulling Blythe out the door. "Try working at the hardware shop for one day. That'll chase the delicate right out of your bones."
Blythe pulled her wrist free, but still followed Raven with her coffee cup clutched in her hand. "Never! Do you want to kill me? Do you want to cause me early wrinkles?"
"Goodbye?" I waved at them, but they were already out of sight, their fading argument drifting on the breeze toward me. It was a small relief to know that catching a murderer wasn't going to change my quirky cousins all that much.
Turning toward my easel, I took a deep cleansing breath and pulled out a fresh canvas. Excitement charged through my veins. This was a new day and a new start. It could be anything. And I was choosing greatness.
All I had to do was allow the magic to flow.
Unfortunately, I didn't get the chance to do much of my own painting that day. Due to the lovely weather and the weekend, the park overflowed with people from all walks of life. I painted bouncing little kids, young couples with googly eyes, and even a creepy older man who kept asking me if I was single.
In all, it was a good day and it passed faster than usual. Butch grinned from ear to ear as he surveyed the crowd and passed by my shop a few times. A full park meant a happy manager. I couldn’t ask for more.
By the time closing came around, magic was humming under my skin, begging to be released on the blank canvas I’d pushed to the side. As much as I wanted to run home and hug Grammy, I couldn't leave until the magic was released. Like an itch, it needed to be scratched.
"You okay with a little ov
ertime, Kat?"
The pink piglet was nibbling at my ankle. He'd managed to find his way to the shop this morning while I was in the middle of drawing a caricature for a little boy with giant blue eyes. Kat loved the kids. He got a few head scratches and kept them sitting still for me.
"I have the feeling this won't take long. I just need a little release."
My fingers were drawn to several brown tones, combining them into the richest of colors. My paint brush dipped into the thick liquid, drawing up a large droplet. It soaked into the natural hairs of the brush I'd cut from my very own head to add a little magical oomph to my paintings. All the supernatural beings at the Witch Academy of the Arts did it. A trick of the trade.
Sweeping my hand across the canvas, paint began to leap from my brush into nondiscriminate lines that flowed this way and that. I poured myself into every little detail, mixing and adding colors like a madwoman, never pausing to get the whole effect.
That was my process. Let the magic flow until it was through, my body simply the vessel. It was the effect I'd been going for on my thesis project, which was still collecting dust in the corner of my shop. For the first time in a long time, I felt alive again, as if just waking up from a year-long nap.
All the rage and fright from the last few days faded from my body, loosening the muscles in my shoulders and neck. This was how I'd felt only two years ago, before Momma Tula's crisis pulled me from my schooling. Before we moved back to Uriville and before Mr. White was murdered. When life was simple.
I hadn’t realized it, then. The everyday drama of friends and schoolwork had seemed all-encompassing. The biggest stress I had to deal with was my end of the term exam. It’s funny, looking back now, at what I thought were going to be the most pivotal years of my life. Life went on, whether we liked it or not, the mistakes of yesterday fading away like scars on the skin. I could be an artist anywhere – even if I hadn’t finished school. The magic was never going to stop calling to me. I was never going to stop painting.
Finally, when it felt like my hand was going to fall off my wrist, the magic ebbed. The remainder flowed from my body, leaving behind a cold and empty shell. I rushed to grab a spare sweatshirt from my cabinet and huddled into the soft cotton blend. With warmth returning to my veins, a beautiful exhaustion camped out in my bones. If there had been a bed in my store, I would've curled up on it for the next twenty-four hours.
"Are you ready for the grand reveal?" I asked Kat, averting my eyes to the ground. It was so much more exciting this way. "This one's going to be good, I just know it."
Kat grunted and shook his head up and down. I patted him on his naked little head and grinned. Sometimes, I swear, that pig could understand what I was saying.
"Okay, in three...two...one..."
I looked up from the ground and nearly lost my footing, clipping Kat with the heel of my flats. He squealed and ran for the other side of the room. Still, I didn't think to apologize for my klutziness. The painting had captured my entire attention and was sending fear right back into my chest.
Roses bloomed in the background of the picture, the exact color and size of the roses that had been left in Mr. White's garden. From their stems, sprouted long wicked thorns sharp enough to slice into bare skin.
In the bottom left of the canvas, a hand reached out. It was large and callused, with blood flowing between the fingers and off the edge. The owner of the hand was clearly pictured to the right of it, his eyes hardened into a glare. Short brown hair combined with a muscular square jaw left the perfect likeness of Mr. White's killer.
"That's him," I whispered, my hand over my mouth. "He's the killer."
Drew Warring's painted eyes seemed to follow me across the room. I felt the wall against my back and realized I’d managed to corner myself.
The magic had been pulsing in my body all day to tell us that we'd made a mistake. A huge mistake. Andy Jenkings might've been dangerous, but he wasn't the killer – Drew was. I just didn't know why. He was new to town. Why would he kill someone as harmless as Allen White?
"It doesn't make sense," I said to Kat. He'd already forgiven me for nearly stepping on him and was attempting to scratch his back on my pant legs. "Drew's new to town. He has no connections. Mr. White means nothing to him. He doesn't have a motive."
If it weren't for Blythe and her flirting, I wouldn't even know who he was. He would've been just another face in the crowd at the Jazz Club.
"Oh my stars…Blythe!" I jumped and Kat went scrambling again. "She's on a date with him. She's on a date with a murderer!"
Of all the people to date, Blythe had to pick a murderer. It figured. Her taste in men was less than satisfactory. I looked at my phone. Six p.m. If they were having dinner together, she was probably already at his place. Blythe was punctual about mealtimes. That wasn't good.
"Come on, Blythe, pick up..." I listened to the phone ring as her number dialed.
Straight to voicemail. She probably had it turned off. Leave it to Blythe to be considerate for her date.
"Let's go," I told Kat as I scooped him up. Blasting through my door and not pausing to lock it up, I ran at breakneck speed. Something was telling me to hurry. No time to waste. Not if I wanted to save my cousin.
Chapter 18
Kat and I weren’t ten steps into the abandoned courtyard of the amusement park, when I ran headfirst into something solid. My body crumpled to the ground and little white flashes of light danced above my eyes. Kat plopped on my belly, shoving all the air out of my lungs, and then hopped off with an excited snort. In the ultimate display of feminine grace, I swore loudly and gripped my head.
“I was hoping to run into you,” a voice said above me with a deep chuckle. “But I wasn’t literally wanting to run into you.”
Squinting to dull the pain, I looked up into Ian’s face and swore again. “I don’t remember you being part tree trunk, Officer Larson. Remind me to get the name of your trainer.”
He offered a hand and pulled me up, the hint of a proud grin flashing in his eyes. Oh, yay. I’d just boosted up his male ego another notch. That had totally been my goal tonight.
Wait… What had been my goal? The blow seemed to have knocked it out of my head. I was relieved to see Ian, but I just couldn’t remember why…
“My guy has me doing low reps, high weights,” Ian said, flexing his muscular right arm. “I’ve really made some gains this year. He’s amazing. If you really want to work with him, I could give you his…”
I pursed my lips and crossed my arms, which stopped him cold.
“You aren’t really interested in my trainer’s name, are you?”
With a smile and shake of my head, I laughed. “Do I look like a girl who goes to the gym?”
His gaze swept down my body and back up, before locking back on mine. We both looked away, momentarily embarrassed.
“I wouldn’t say that…” he replied.
I bounced from foot to foot, the heat building in my ears. “I think I’ll stick to hiking,” I told him.
Ian had never struck me as a gym rat, but now it made sense. The gangly young teen I’d known in my childhood had transformed into a man with broad shoulders, a trim torso, and muscular arms. It was probably a necessity for being an officer. You couldn’t keep up with the criminals if you sat around all day. And as much as I hated to admit it, muscles looked good on Ian Larson.
“We spent all day interrogating Andy Jenkings,” Ian started, oblivious to my momentary awkwardness. “He admits to creating the bomb and wanting to set it off in town. But he won’t sing about the murder.”
I abandoned my thought process and focused on him. He had abandoned the uniform and thrown on khaki pants and a light blue button down shirt that matched his eyes. They were frustratingly distracting. “But what about the evidence? The bag of ricin? He tried to hide it from us the day we talked to Laura.”
He shook his head and sucked in his cheeks. “It wasn’t poison. The bag was full of fertilizer. He was using
it to create his homemade dynamite. It’s a pretty common ingredient in these sorts of explosives.”
So, Andy was just a protestor with violent inclinations? But, not a murderer.
“And Grammy Jo?” I asked. It killed me to think she was still rotting away in some jail cell. Grammy was tough, but she didn’t deserve that.
“Out on bond,” Ian replied quickly. His mouth pressed into a thin line and he watched me, as if afraid I’d blow like one of Andy’s dynamite sticks. “All we have is circumstantial evidence that she might’ve accidentally poisoned him. Judge Nowak didn’t want to hold her.”
That made sense. Judge Nowak was one of Grammy Jo’s repeat customers. A bum hip from the Vietnam War that kept him up at night. Just one potion was enough to give him a pain free week. As a result, he looked the other way while Grammy Jo conducted her slightly illegal business out of her home.
I pushed out a lungful of air and felt my shoulders drop. “She’s already home?”
“Yeah, Blythe picked her up this afternoon in her little Beetle. But, she’s not allowed to leave town until the investigation is over. I reminded her that…”
Ian went over a list of bond requirements as my brain flickered. Something was sitting on the tip of my tongue. Something important. I’d been on a mission just a few seconds ago. Ian had interrupted it. It had something to do with…
“Blythe!” I yelled, interrupting Ian mid speech.
He looked slightly put out. “Yes…she’s your cousin.”
“She’s on a date. With him.”
He cocked his head to the side and raised one eyebrow. “Exactly how hard did you hit your head?”
It was all rushing back to me. The painting. The blood. The roses. And Drew Warring’s furious face. The magic had flowed through me to warn us about Drew. We were running out of time.
“Drew Warring is the murderer.” I grabbed his arm. “He killed Allen White. And now, he’s on a date with Blythe. We have to save her.”
Thorn to Die Page 10
