Candy Canes & Corpses

by Abby L. Vandiver

  Then. . .

  Chapter Six

  June Heal

  “I told you to keep an eye on her.” Oscar wasn’t being very nice.

  Both of us watched Roxy Bloom, asleep on our orange sofa. Mr. Prince Charming was sitting on her chest. Her little dog, Pepper, was curled up by the fire, not really worried about her.

  “Why did you put a spell on her to faint?” He asked with a sour tone.

  “What else was I going to do? She was watching the smudging ceremony. It was all I could think to do.” I stared down at her. “It’s like she’s immune to any other spells. I gave her a love potion to make her stay deeply in love with her husband during their stay here and keep her occupied. That didn’t work.”

  I threw my hands up in the air and walked over to the kitchen sink to look out the window where Petunia was finishing the smudge ceremony.

  “I gave her a Mr. Sandman potion along with an extra dose of sleep in those cookies Amethyst left for them.” A glow deep in my bag lit up the kitchen. I walked over to the chair to pull out Madame Torres. “For good measure, I put a snow spell around their tree suite and now her husband won’t be able to get here. She’s stuck here. How am I going to explain that?”

  “You can’t keep making her faint.” Oscar told me something I already knew. “I wish I could help, but I’ve got a murder to solve.”

  There was a text from Amethyst. I’d asked her to check on Patrick and Sassy on her way back from the smudge ceremony. She sent a photo of Patrick face down, drooling on his side of the bed with his dog next to him.

  “You don’t think it was Camille?” I asked, having told him about the potion I’d made for her and the heartbreak that reverberated through me. I knew she was going to be heartbroken, but was it from his death? I gripped my phone tightly.

  “In the heat of passion, anything is possible if she was as angry with him as you said.” Oscar ran his hand through his black hair. His blue eyes made my heart melt. They always have. “What do we do with her? Take her back?”

  “We can’t do that.” I held up my phone, the screen facing him. I walked over. “Apparently, Patrick had all of the cookies and tea, which will make him sleep for nine hours. And I put the Sandman dust on his pillow.”

  “That means they’re going to be out for twelve hours?” Oscar’s jaw dropped, and he shook his head.

  “At least, which means that she can’t go back there until they are awake or she’s going to think something is wrong with them.” I sure was in a spiritualist’s pickle. “I wish this were like those TV shows where we can reverse the potions we created.”

  “Don’t tell me anything else. Blah, blah, blah.” He put his hands over his ears.

  “The Elders?” I asked with anticipation.

  He nodded.

  “Great,” I grumbled and looked at Roxy Bloom. “The Elders will have a field day with this one. They’ve been trying to get something on me for years.”

  “This time, June, you’re involved a mortal. A nosy, but innocent mortal.” Oscar must’ve lost his mind because he was the one who told me to keep her busy.

  “You told me. . .” I went to remind him but pinched my lips. No matter how much I argued, it wasn’t going to stop The Elders from coming. “Have you heard from them?”

  “Right now they have their hands full with one of the Villages out west, but I anticipate they’ll get wind of this before too long.” He looked between me and Roxy. “I hate to leave you, but I have to work through the night and right now I need to see the body at Two Sisters.”

  “I’ll let you know when she wakes up.” I hit the button on the coffeemaker. It was going to be a long night and a long next day.

  I sat down in the chair across from the couch Roxy was laying on to wait for the coffee to brew.

  “What am I going to do with you for twelve hours?” I asked the sleeping southern beauty.

  Rowl, rowl. Mr. Prince Charming hit Roxy on the nose.

  “You’re right.” I stood up and walked over to them. “She has slept enough. I can’t have The Elders showing up here.” I watched as Mr. Prince Charming batted her nose again as though he were playing with it.

  “Stop,” Roxy groaned to life when she opened her eyes and found Mr. Prince Charming on her chest. “Where am I?”

  “You are in my cottage.” I grabbed my ornery cat and put him on the ground.

  He moseyed over to Pepper and curled up next to the cute dog in front of the fireplace.

  “I’m afraid you were outside and passed out from the cold. It’s a blizzard out there and I’m sure your husband is snowed in.” I walked back to the kitchen to get us some coffee because I didn’t want to look her in the eyes. I wasn’t so sure she didn’t have some sort of mortal intuition. “You’re going to have to hang out with me for a while.” I picked up the coffee pot and turned around. “Coffee?”

  “That’d be great.” Roxy sat up on the couch. “Look at those two. They are so cute.” She pointed to Mr. Prince Charming and Pepper.

  “I’ve never seen a dog not try to chase him.” I filled her mug, and then reached for the memory loss potion I had my cabinet. With my back turned from her, I unscrewed the top and held the bottle over the hot brew.

  Before I could get a dash out of the bottle, Madame Torres lit up, grabbing my attention. I screwed the lid back on the bottle and focused on Madame Torres.

  “I own a coffeehouse and I work with the local SPCA. Well, it’s not really the SPCA, but our local version,” Roxy’s voice was like white noise to me while I focused on the waving globe with brown liquid with a little foamy top.

  Madame Torres was telling me something about Roxy. Her red lips took up all the space in the globe, leaving no room for anything else. Her finger lifted to the middle of her lips as though she were telling me a secret was about to be told.

  “I guess Pepper just has that amazing soul,” Roxy continued to talk.

  Words swirled around Madame Torres’s globe in no particular order. I put the memory potion down and waved my hand over my crystal ball. The words fell into a sentence.

  I bind you from the left. I bind you from the right. I bind with you day and night until the fight unfolds.

  I read Madame Torres’s words and knew she was stopping me from giving Roxy Bloom the memory loss potion.

  Rowl! Rowl! Mr. Prince Charming scurried across the room, jumped on the counter, and knocked the memory loss potion bottle into the sink, shattering it.

  “Oh, no! Pepper, did you do something to Mr. Prince Charming?” Roxy pushed herself up off the couch and walked over to Pepper.

  “No,” I assured her. “He’s probably hungry. He gets a little irritable sometimes.” I slid my gaze over to him and winked. “Let me give you this and then I’ll clean up the spill in my sink.”

  I lifted my hand in the air as I looked out into the dark night and waved away the black, letting reappear.

  When I reached for Roxy’s coffee cup, Mr. Prince Charming batted my bracelet, making me more aware than ever that I was going to have to use Roxy Bloom in solving the murder of Michael, but I was going to have to protect her too.

  “Thank you.” Roxy met me in the kitchen.

  “Sit down.” I pulled a chair from the table. “I’m sorry about this crazy weather on your honeymoon.”

  “I love it. Patrick, on the other hand, he’s not a huge fan of the snow. His company does snow removal among other things, so it’s work to him.” She lifted the mug to her lips and smiled. “You know, coffee is my thing.”

  “You said you owned a coffeehouse. Have you always owned it?” It was time to get to know Roxy Bloom and figure out what she was all about.

  “I was actually a lawyer, which reminds me.” She bit the edge of her lip. “Camille, Michael’s fiancée, she asked me to look into some things for her and I need to get to Locust Grove to do that.” She took her phone out. “It’s already 8 a.m.?”

  She glanced out the window with a confused look on her face
. The sun beams flooded through the window, giving off a warm pink glow.

  “Yes. I didn’t want to wake you. You were sound asleep.” It was sometimes good to have a few powers as the Chosen One. I moved across the kitchen with my cup of coffee and sat across from her.

  It was also a curse to the have that title. I had a few extra gifts here and there, but homeopathic cures were my true spiritual gift.

  “I do feel refreshed.” She picked up the phone. “I guess I should call Patrick and check on him.”

  “You don’t have to do that.” I reached over and pushed her hand down. “Amethyst already checked on them since they are all snowed in,” I lied. “She said he’s sound asleep.”

  There was a look of relief on Roxy’s face and a shift in her posture.

  “Then I won’t feel bad going to see Camille.” She took another drink of her coffee.

  “Going to see her?” I asked, glancing over the rim of my cup.

  “Yes. She said that Officer Park asked her questions that made her feel like he thinks that she killed him. I’m not sure why he’d think that.” Roxy gestured between us. “You and I both saw how crazy she was over him.”

  Yeah, crazy enough to kill him, I thought.

  “Listen, I think you should know that I’m married to Oscar Park.” This was something I had to tell her. “I’m not sure if you should be looking into this.”

  Say, my mind had a light bulb moment. What if I just told her that she needed to stop snooping and let him do his job. That would solve everything.

  Think again. . .

  “Then it’s more important than ever that you take me to Locust Grove and see for yourself that she didn’t do it.” She took another drink of her coffee and very confidently said, “Camille didn’t do it. I know these things and I already told her I’d represent her which means he can’t even begin to question her again unless I’m present.”

  Was Roxy Bloom beating me at my own game? A half smile crossed my face.

  It appeared she had.

  Chapter Seven

  Roxy Bloom

  “I thought we were snowed in?” I questioned everything June Heal was telling me while we cleared off her old car. It was one of those car and truck combos.

  I clearly remember the commercials from when I was a little girl between the man and a woman along with a car salesman. It’s a truck. It’s a car. It’s a truck. It’s a car. Wait, you’re both right. It’s an El Camino.

  If this old green thing was going to get us out of Whispering Falls in the snowstorm, surely Patrick could just walk out of the tree suite. But again, I kept my mouth shut.

  There was somethings about Whispering Falls that didn’t add up.

  I’d yet to ask her about that little freaky smoke thing they were doing last night. And the odd behavior of her cat. Maybe it was one of those feral cats that had been born through some inbreeding, In any case, I was going to play my lawyer hand and just observe. See how this all played out.

  “Since Whispering Falls is in a holler, we are lower than the rest of the state,” June said as she pointed to the mountains surrounding the town. She unlocked the passenger door and opened it up for me.

  Pepper jumped in the car and sat in the middle like he knew exactly where we were going. Mr. Prince Charming jumped in, perching himself on the dashboard. I got in behind them.

  “He likes to feel the heater.” June put the key in the ignition and the old car started right up. She rubbed her hand over the dashboard in front of her. “The old Green Machine has never let me down.” She gave it a loving pat before she threw the gear shift into DRIVE.

  I wasn’t sure if she was trying to convince me that Whispering Falls was as normal as every other town in Kentucky because she continued to compare different things like the economy, shops, crops, and the buildings. Or maybe she was trying to distract me so I didn’t notice how the snow completely melted away as soon as the tires of the car drove over the white fluffy mounds. Then again, maybe she had great snow tires.

  “How about some music,” she suggested. “You go ahead and find a station. They are playing Christmas music too.”

  I turned the knob on the radio.

  “I recognize this guy,” I said and turned up the radio. “This is a crazy segment this station has called Second Date Update.”

  “What’s that?” she asked as we zoomed down the hill from her cottage and past all the shops.

  “People go on first dates and if one of them doesn’t get a call back for a second date, they can call into this show and the DJ will call the date for them asking why they didn’t call them back or go on a second date.” It sounded really awful as I said it, but I was still intrigued by it.

  “This sounds awfully delicious.” June cackled, making her like her even more. “Turn it up.”

  We laughed and talked to the radio as if we were on the call.

  “Do you have this in Honey Springs?’ June asked and slowed down the El Camino when we crossed into Locust Grove’s city limits.

  There was no snow on the ground. It was like the other day when Patrick and I had driven into Whispering Falls. Another odd thing that I was sure June would somehow be able to explain if I asked, so I kept my mouth shut.

  “No, we don’t. Patrick and I heard it on our way into Whispering Falls.” I was looking out the window when she stopped in front of a small white clapboard house with a tiny porch on the front.

  Mr. Prince Charming sat and stared at the house too.

  “That was my house when I was growing up.” June pointed across me at the house. “It’s where Mr. Prince Charming showed up on my tenth birthday.”

  “Wow, he doesn’t look that old.” I had noticed he was very young looking and acting.

  “Mmmhhhh,” June sucked in a deep breath. “We have good air here.”

  Another weird observation. I tucked that in the back of my head.

  “Anyways,” I started to tell her about the second date update Patrick and I had heard when she drove off toward Locust Grove, following the directions to Camille’s I’d put in my phone. “This guy named Mike went out with his buddies for a bachelor event or something. He went home with this girl. . .” I searched the back of my mind for her name. I clapped my hands together in delight. “Debbie! Debbie was her name. Mike woke up at Debbie’s.” I turned in the seat and looked at June.

  The knuckles on her hands were turning white as she gripped the wheel.

  “He said that he had no recollection of what had happened between them, when they obviously had slept together.” I reached over and ran my hand down Pepper’s back. “He said he was engaged, and he had no interest in seeing Debbie again.”

  Mr. Prince Charming used his great cat skills to run across the dashboard. He teetered on the edge and smacked June’s charm bracelet. Another weird thing I’d seen him do a couple of times over the last twenty-four hours.

  “Do you think it’s the same Mike?” June asked in a calm and low voice. The wink she gave Mr. Prince Charming didn’t go unnoticed. “Michael?”

  My jaw dropped.

  “Well, I guess we can check it out since I am going to help Camille.” There was a theory to my amateur sleuthing that went right along with my ethical lawyer side. No matter how small the coincidence, always check it out. “We can go to the station and see this Bob and Brenda. The DJ’s,” I said when June looked at me, confused.

  “They aren’t going to just hand us the information.” She made a good point.

  “No, but there has to be some sort of consent agreement on Debbie’s part in order for them to put her on the air.” I knew this from my lawyer days. “He gave consent on air, which I imagine they tape and it’s binding.”

  “They do have an app for the radio station.” June used one hand to drive and pushed one hand inside of that big bag she always had draped across her body. She pulled out a glass globe. “Siri,” she spoke to the globe that wasn’t like any Siri I had ever seen. “Play the WLOC recording of the Bob and
Brenda’s Morning Second Date Update with a person by the name of Mike.”

  The globe showed some sort of funky wave and sparks before it played the recording.

  “What is that?” I had to ask. Another odd thing.

  “It’s the new Siri. Like the Hey Google, and the Amazon one.” She played it off. “It’s new. We are going to start selling them in the new year.”

  The new voice-activated device replayed the exact Second Date Update that Patrick and I had heard between Debbie and Mike.

  “It sounds exactly like the Michael who came into the shop,” June confirmed. “We are going to WLOC. I think you’re on to something.”

  I grabbed the handle on the door when June whipped the car around. Before I could blink, or at least if felt like that, we were in the parking lot of the radio station.

  “You can distract them while I look around.” June felt pretty confident she could find it.

  “I’ve kinda done this before. I think I best look around.” I didn’t want to sound too confident, but she had no idea how good I was at this solving murders thing.

  “I think it’s best you distract them. You’re a better talker than I am. I bet you can make things up on the fly.” She was definitely good at reading me. “You two stay here,” she told our pets while she took the Siri and put it back in her bag.

  The station was pretty small. They had a reception area in front of a glass wall. Behind the glass were the on-air personalities that had to be Bob and Brenda. Both of them had headsets on.

  Bob had short black hair. He wore a striped sweater vest over top a blue collared shirt. He carried a little more weight than he probably should, but I instantly liked him since he had coffee in his hand.

  Brenda was heavy set with long, light brown hair that fell right below her bosom. She had on a pair of yoga pants and a long gray sweater that hung to her thighs.

  “Can I help you?” the young woman behind the receptionist desk asked.