“Good job,” Tina said with an approving nod. “That wasn’t too shabby at all.”
“Thanks,” I said with a grin. “I still only know a handful of spells.”
“Don’t apologize for it,” Tina replied. “No one should be expecting you to know more at this point. Yes, there’s going to be a learning period where you’re going to be catching up, and you’re going to be far behind everyone else in your family, but you’re also decades behind in terms of the time you’ve spent doing it. No one would expect you to be at an expert level right now. At least, nobody should be expecting you to be. Take your time to learn your skills properly without worrying about catching up. You’re running your own race, and everyone started before you. You might not beat them to the finish line, but you’ll get there eventually, and that’s the most important thing – that you get there. You just have to do it, you don’t have to do it on someone else’s schedule.”
“Ok,” I said, feeling my confidence growing with every one of Tina’s words. She was right. I had to focus on learning at my own speed, and to stop trying to take shortcuts and to try to catch up to Kaillie. I was going to get there. It might just take a bit longer than I was hoping for. “Let me try another one. This one I’m not completely sure about; I only learned it the other day.”
“Go for it,” Tina encouraged.
“Oh the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful. Saturn you’re the god that makes things grow, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.”
I waved my hand around while Tina burst out laughing. A light dusting of snow began falling into the living room, seemingly from nowhere. I lifted my face to the ceiling, letting the light snowflakes fall and land on it.
“That spell is hilarious,” Tina said.
“Well, I hope you know one to make the snow stop,” I replied. “Because while I can make it snow, I cannot stop it from snowing, and so in a few minutes it’s going to look like January in here instead of early May.”
“That’s not a problem,” Tina replied, waving her wand around and muttering a spell herself. A moment later the snow disappeared, and Tina cast another quick spell to make the flakes that had landed dry up like they had never existed.
A moment later the front door opened, and the other four piled in.
“Ooh, wine,” Ellie said, making a beeline for the kitchen.
“Don’t be rude, Ellie,” Tina chastised. “You’re a guest, you have to ask if you can have some.”
I laughed. “Help yourself,” I said. “Glasses are in the second cupboard from the right.”
Ellie pulled out her wand and muttered a spell, and a minute later four wine glasses flew down from the cupboard, landing in a perfect row on the kitchen counter, and she poured out one for everybody.
“So did you guys find out anything good?” Ellie asked.
“We have some potentially juicy information,” I replied. “We were also interrupted by an intruder, though.”
“Were you really?” Sara asked as she grabbed a glass from the counter and sat next to Tina on the couch. “Who was it?”
“We’re not sure,” I replied with a shrug. “He was maybe in his late forties, with greying brown hair, wearing a polo shirt.”
“Oh, that sounds like Andrew,” Ellie said. “He seemed pretty shaken up by the time Leanne and I finished interviewing him. That’s a guy with something to hide.”
“No wonder,” Kaillie replied. “I should never have let the two of you go together. I bet Leanne steamrolled him completely.”
“That sounds like Ellie, too. Alright, spill, what did you two do to him?” Sara asked.
“We didn’t do anything,” Ellie replied, crossing her arms. “We just asked him about Karen. It’s not like we beat him to a pulp or hexed his face to turn into a pineapple or anything like that.”
“Alright, well then why don’t you tell us what you did ask him, and we can maybe figure out why he decided to make a beeline for Karen’s house after speaking with you two,” I said.
“Honestly, I have no idea why he did that,” Leanne said. “We went to his place. I’ve known him for years, since he runs the rec center here. Basically everyone who grew up in Enchanted Enclave as a kid knows Andrew. So we knocked on his door. He was surprised to see us, but he invited us in.”
“We jumped straight in when we got into the house, and we told him he had been seen arguing with Karen just a few days before she was stabbed. We told him that he had better tell us what they were arguing about before someone else found out about the argument and decided to tell Chief Jones,” Ellie said. “He wasn’t happy about that at all. He wanted to know who I was, and who had seen him arguing with Karen, but we refused to tell him. We said that we knew he was a good guy and would give him the benefit of the doubt if he told us what the argument was about.”
“Then, he completely blew up on us,” Leanne continued. “He told us that there was no argument, that whoever had told us that was lying. He insisted that he and Karen were on good terms, and that there was nothing between them that would have meant a fight. He was so mad I was sure he was going to start throwing things, but in the end he just shouted at us to leave. We did, but I do think the man protests too much.”
“Agreed,” Ellie said. “On our way out we did see a car in the driveway, a silver Prius. We had a look at the seats inside, but there wasn’t any blood or anything that might have indicated Karen was stabbed there.”
“We should have thought to watch the house and follow him. Instead we went to the hospital to see if Karen had come back to town yet. We found out from one of the nurses that I went to school with that she should be coming back tomorrow morning, along with Kyle and the boys.”
“That makes sense, they weren’t at their house, and there was no car there to indicate they were on the island,” I said. “I guess we’ll have to sneak a look at Kyle’s car tomorrow when he gets back.”
“That’s very interesting that Andrew went straight to Karen’s house and stole her computer, though,” Leanne said thoughtfully. “I wonder what he was after.”
“He was definitely looking for something,” Tina said. “He rummaged through all of her stuff. It sounds like he had a cursory glance at the living room, and then went straight for the bedroom. He went through the papers there really quickly, then grabbed the laptop and ran off.”
“There were just credit card bills, bank statements, that sort of thing in the other papers that he left,” I added. “So yeah, I don’t know what he was looking for, but he must have guessed it was on the laptop.”
“I’m surprised the cops haven’t come by and taken it away, actually,” Kaillie said thoughtfully. “You would think that with Karen having been stabbed they would have already gone through the house and taken anything that might be important.”
“I bet that’s Chief Jones’ incompetence,” Leanne replied. “It sounds like just the sort of thing he would do.”
“Anyway,” I interrupted, “before Andrew came and interrupted us, Tina and I did find something interesting on the laptop.”
“Oh?” Sara asked.
“Karen had an appointment with a lawyer here on Enchanted Enclave scheduled for the day after she was stabbed. Jean McKinney.”
Leanne’s eyes widened. “She’s a divorce lawyer.”
“Is that it?” I asked. “The website seemed to indicate she did a few other things as well.”
“The firm, as a whole, deals with other things. There are, I think, three lawyers that work there. With a place this small, you don’t exactly need more than that. They run the gambit from personal injury to getting people’s speeding tickets reduced to criminal activity, if needed. But Jean McKinney herself almost only does divorce and family law cases.”
“So you’d say it’s a pretty good bet that she was going to see about getting a divorce?” I asked, and Leanne nodded.
“Yeah, Leanne is right,” Kaillie confirmed. “Divorce and custody situations are what Jean does.
She’s basically the go-to in the entire San Juan Islands for anyone who’s looking to get a divorce.”
“Well, we were right,” I said to Tina. “That certainly gives Kyle one heck of a motive if he wanted to get rid of his wife.”
“What about Gary Vanderchuck?” I asked Kaillie and Sara. “Did you guys see him?”
“We did,” Kaillie replied. “Gary takes his workouts very seriously. He was drinking a protein shake and beef jerky when he walked in, which is ridiculous since he wasn’t even doing weights. He just finished eating then jumped right onto the treadmill. He wasn’t pleased to see us. Sara and I each took one of the treadmills next to him. Of course, I’m pretty sure he thought Sara was a complete weirdo when she started ordering the machine around, telling it what speed to run at.”
Tina snickered. “Now she knows how I felt my first time at a paranormal gym!”
“Wait, your treadmills are different?” I asked, then shook my head. “No, not now. You were saying?”
“Well, I finally figured out that you have to push buttons to make the treadmill work,” Sara said. “It was so quaint, I’ve never seen anything like it. And there’s no immersion capabilities either, so I think it would be quite boring to run on those for an hour or so.”
“It definitely is,” Leanne confirmed.
“Anyway, Gary initially seemed pretty pleased to have us running next to him, and was happy to strike up a conversation, until we asked him about Karen,” Kaillie said. “Then he tried to shut it down pretty quickly.”
“Kaillie mentioned the fact that it was well known he was in the middle of a big argument with Karen,” Sara said. “He tried to deny it at first, and then we told him we had that information from multiple sources, and it was like he just gave up, you know? He turned off his treadmill and said he wasn’t going to talk about it there.”
“So we went out into one of the studios that wasn’t being used,” Kaillie continued. “He asked us why we wanted to know about Karen, and I told him the truth. I said Leanne was the one that hit her, and that the very least she could do for Karen was to find the person who tried to kill her, and that Sara and I were helping her to do that.”
“Gary looked at us for a while, as if he was trying to tell if Kaillie was lying to him, and eventually I guess he decided she was telling the truth, because he started talking. He told us that yes, it was true that he and Karen had disagreed about the way under-performing students should be treated, and that their discussions had gotten heated, but he said that overall, we had it all wrong,” Sara said.
“Oh?” I asked.
“He said that he actually loved the fact that Karen had so much passion and determination, and that he wished there were more teachers out there like her,” Sara continued. “He said that even though they disagreed on this particular topic, the fact that she fought for her students and fought for what she believed in was the most important thing to him, and he hoped more than anything that she was going to be ok.”
“Did you believe him?” I asked, and Kaillie nodded.
“I mean, I did, initially. But of course, I wasn’t just going to take his word for it. So we asked him where he was the night Karen was stabbed. It turns out Gary wasn’t even on the island. He was on the mainland in Seattle for some sort of school administrator’s conference. He told us if we didn’t believe him we could ask his wife; she was at home the whole time and he wasn’t.”
“Oh,” I replied. “Well, that eliminates him as a suspect, I guess.”
“I think so,” Sara replied. “Plus, we asked him what he was driving, and on our way back out, we looked at the inside of his car, just in case. A green Corolla. Sure enough, there was no sign of blood or anything to indicate that Karen was stabbed in it.”
“We need to get a look at Kyle’s car,” I said.
“We do,” Leanne confirmed.
“Well, we’ll leave you to it, as we do need to get back to Western Woods and we have a bit of a trip ahead of us,” Tina said, standing up. “I hope you don’t feel as though we intruded here.”
“No, not at all,” I replied warmly. “Thank you for coming. You have no idea how much your advice and wisdom has helped me. I’m really grateful that you were willing to take the time to come here.”
“Not a problem,” Ellie replied. “We don’t come to the human world enough. It’s fun here, in a quaint way. I bet this would make a great holiday destination, one where we can relax and just leave our wands at home.”
“Yeah, that sounds nice,” Sara said, nodding. “Although I don’t like the treadmills here.”
“Don’t worry, neither do I,” I replied with a laugh.
“Let us know what happens with the investigation,” Ellie said.
“Will it work if we call you?” I asked, and Sara nodded.
“It certainly should. Let’s swap numbers and we can stay in touch.”
“Good idea,” Tina said, and the six of us spent a few minutes making sure we all had each other’s’ numbers.
“If you meet anyone important, you could suggest to them that our family doesn’t deserve its exile anymore,” Kaillie said. “We’d really appreciate it.”
“The odds are low – Western Woods isn’t really an important town and we don’t get many visitors from high up, but if we get the chance, we’ll do it,” Tina promised. “Hopefully we’ll get to see you in the paranormal world sometime.”
“I hope so,” Kaillie replied earnestly.
“In the meantime, thanks again for coming,” I said. “You have no idea how much your words have helped me.”
“I’m just glad I was able to help,” Tina replied. “You keep doing what you’re doing. Keep being yourself.”
I nodded and gave Tina a hug. “Take care of yourself.”
“You too.”
A few minutes later the Western Woods witches left, leaving the three of us in the living room on our own once more.
Chapter 14
“I’m really not sure this is going to work,” I said the next day as I got dressed in the fanciest clothes I owned – a blouse and a pair of slacks that I had bought for my job as a receptionist.
“Don’t worry, it’ll be fine,” Leanne said. “We need to confirm that Karen was going to see Jean McKinney about a divorce, and there’s no other way to do it except to go into the office.”
“Yeah, but why do I have to be the one to pretend that I have a long-lost husband who no one can find?”
“Because literally everyone in town knows Kaillie and me. No one knows you, though.”
“Yeah, but won’t everyone find out about this if that’s what I tell the lawyer?”
“That’s what client confidentiality is for,” Leanne replied. “Your lawyer isn’t allowed to tell anybody anything you’ve told them, so no, your secret will be safe.”
“It’s not a secret, it’s a lie.”
“Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.”
“You know, the more time I spend with you, the more I’m starting to understand why Kaillie has the reputation of being the good one in the family.”
“Yeah, that’s probably fair enough. Now come on, let’s do this.”
Leanne and I walked into the office on the ground floor of one of the commercial buildings on Main Street. It was plainly decorated, basically exactly what I would have expected from a small, generalist law firm. The walls were beige, the furniture simple and obviously inexpensive. When we walked in, a receptionist with curly brown hair who looked to be in her early forties looked up at us.
“Hello, do you have an appointment?” she asked.
“Yes, my cousin here made one this morning,” Leanne replied. “She needs to see Jean for an initial consult. Eliza Emory.”
“Of course,” the receptionist said, all business. “Please have a seat, and we’ll call Mrs. Emory up shortly.”
Eliza and I sat down in the waiting area, joining a man who held a manila folder full of documents close to his chest, as if he were worried that if he rel
eased his grip on the files at all they’d vanish into thin air.
I probably looked just as nervous as the man was. I wasn’t a good liar. Actually, scratch that. I was a terrible liar. I didn’t like misleading people, but Leanne was right. We needed to get as much information as we could. It could really prove that Kyle had the perfect motive to try and kill his wife, especially given as her appointment was the day after she was stabbed.
The receptionist called the man in after about three or four minutes, and then five minutes after that, she called my name.
I stood up, Leanne flashed me a confident smile and gave me a thumbs up, and motioned for me to get in there.
I followed the receptionist through a short hallway, and she led me into a decently-sized office occupied by a woman in her fifties, with her grey hair tied back into a bun, her glasses reflecting the screen of the computer she stared at. As soon as she heard me enter, Jean McKinnie looked up and gave me a warm smile.
“Hello, you must be Eliza.”
“That’s me,” I said quietly.
“I’m Jean. Please, have a seat.”
I did as she asked, carefully sinking into the comfortable chair across from her desk.
“So,” Jean started, wasting no time. “What can I do for you today?”
“Well,” I started, stammering slightly. “See, I’m new in town. I come from San Francisco. And the thing is, when I lived there, I was married. I left him, but we’re not divorced.”
“And you’d like to take care of the paperwork?” Jean asked. I nodded. “Well, that’s not a problem at all. I’ve been doing divorces for years. What kind of assets do you have?”
“Ummm… nothing, really.”
“No house? Either separate or between you?”
“No.”
“What about kids?”
“Definitely not!”
That earned a smile from Jean. “Good. That will make things easier. Were either one of you cheating on the other?”
“Errmmm… no,” I finally managed to stammer. Boy, I was really not good at this whole lying thing. Then, I interrupted, since I needed to get the conversation to Karen. “My friend Karen referred me here, you know. She was supposed to have an appointment here the other day.”
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