Wisteria Witches Mysteries Box Set 3

by Angela Pepper

  What made him tick? I didn’t know what the medical examiner meant, but I definitely got a sense of it from the way his gloved fingers twitched excitedly. I’d seen that same finger-twitch before. It happened at the library, when shipments of new releases arrived, and the librarians crowded around for the unboxing, fingers twitching in anticipation. To a coroner, cutting into a body must have been its own form of unboxing.

  Lund continued talking, squinting as he stared past the shade of the tree, into the sunny distance. “The dead share their secrets, if you know where to look.” Another finger-twitch. “But look who I’m talking to.” He focused on me again, looking upward. “Being a witch, you must know all about the secrets of the dead.”

  I shrugged. My instincts told me to divert the topic away from myself. “Dr. Bob sure didn’t help your organization’s reputation as,” I made air quotes, “the good guys, did he?”

  Lund scowled. “What’s that supposed to mean?” He stepped closer to me so the big tree’s leaves shaded the blazing afternoon sun from his eyes.

  “Never mind,” I said. “I’m sure there are a lot of great people working at the department.”

  “A lot of great people, yes.”

  I decided right then to cast another fishing line. Information was hard to come by, and my new friend could be a helpful resource.

  “Great people such as Dr. Ankh?” I asked.

  His expression froze again. His wide mouth barely moved as he asked, “You know Dr. Ankh?”

  Did I know the necromancer who’d brought my mother back from death? Not very well, but I had shared a hot tub with her briefly.

  He pressed on. “How do you know about Dr. Ankh?”

  “She’s the one who showed me the DWM’s fancy little projection box,” I said lightly. “The same kind that Ishmael has in his apartment, by his television.”

  Lund’s posture relaxed as he exhaled. “Yes. Bentley pointed that out to me. As you might have guessed by now, Greyson shouldn’t have had the box in his residence.”

  “They’re not supposed to leave DWM premises.”

  Lund looked left and right. “Yes, well, some people believe the rules don’t apply to them.”

  “Such as Dr. Ankh?”

  He pressed his thick lips together in silence. I wasn’t going to get any more dirt on my mother’s savior.

  I asked, “Why do you suppose Ishmael Greyson had the device in his apartment?”

  He shrugged. “It might have been something as simple as watching unreleased movies. We have a subdivision that monitors mainstream media for potential security leaks. In fact...” He trailed off into a croaking sound. “No. I shouldn’t say.”

  “Ishmael Greyson worked for that department,” I guessed.

  Lund blinked up at me and then admitted, “He did. He was only a junior agent, so he filled in across a few departments. He reviewed media when he wasn’t needed in legal.” Lund narrowed his eyes as he gazed up at me. “You’re easy to talk to, Ms. Riddle. Is this a spell?” He withdrew a pen from an inner pocket and prepared to give it a click. It was a MPCG, a multi-pulse click generator. The agents used it as a defense against witch magic.

  I held my hands out innocently. “Just my natural charm, I swear. You can click your pen if you’d like.”

  He slowly put the pen away, unclicked. They had a limited number of charges. “I trust you,” he said. “For now.”

  “What about Greyson? Do you think he was up to something at the department that got him killed?”

  “He was clearly up to something. My final report is pending, but I believe we can rule out suicide.” He chuckled darkly.

  “And what do you have for motive so far? Any suspects?”

  “I’ll leave that part to you and Bentley. My specialty is the body.” More finger-twitching. “Finding out its secrets.”

  Curiosity got the better of me, and I had to ask the question burning on my mind. “Dr. Lund, if I may be so bold, are you talking about finding magic? Can it be found inside the body?”

  His eyes twinkled, catching the dappled sunlight beneath the tree. “There are signs, if you know where to look.”

  “I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that testing a body for supernatural powers is a bit... invasive?”

  Another bullfrog smile. “You could say that.”

  “Does this testing of yours involve chopping off the head?”

  He let out a staccato bark of laughter. “No, no, no,” he said. “Whoever did that to Ishmael Greyson wasn’t looking for anything.” He swiveled his head and looked around nervously. “However, I suppose it’s possible they were about to look for something within the body, but then you scared them off.”

  “Me? Are you suggesting the killer was still inside the apartment when I came by?” I didn’t ask the question that followed in my mind. Had the killer seen me? My skin prickled all over.

  “The killer might have still been around,” Lund said casually. “I’d put the time of death at 5:00 am. The body’s temperature had barely dropped when we arrived.” He stared at me, unblinking. “How was it you came to be on the victim’s stairwell shortly before dawn?”

  “His ghost paid me a visit at my house,” I said. “I thought you knew all about me.”

  “If it’s all the same, I’d like to hear your version.”

  “Okay,” I said, and then I repeated the whole story. Judging by Lund’s lack of reaction, he didn’t hear anything that surprised him. As I stepped back through the sequence of events, I remembered something I hadn’t mentioned to Bentley. How could I have forgotten?

  “There was a car that pulled out in a hurry,” I said.

  He showed interest in that fact. “That could be something.”

  Just then, Bentley emerged from the apartment, came down the stairs, and joined us under the tree.

  “Tell him about the car,” Lund said to me, nodding to Bentley, so I did. As for the license plate, I hadn’t caught the letters, but I was certain of the last four digits. “It was 2319.”

  Bentley asked, “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely. It’s my favorite four-digit number.”

  The two sweaty-haired men in bunny suits exchanged a look.

  Lund said, “I’ll bite. You have a favorite four-digit number? Is it your bank card password?”

  “No,” I lied, making a mental note to change my password. “Here. It makes more sense if I show you. Paper? My purse is in Bentley’s car.” Lund produced a notebook and pen, and gave it to me. I wrote 2319 in block letters. I flipped the paper over and held it up to the dappled light. “See how 2319 in reverse looks like it says PIES?”

  Bentley’s mouth opened with surprise.

  “Neat-o!” Lund exclaimed, peering closer at the paper. “Once you see it, you can’t un-see it. PIES.”

  “But more importantly, that’s enough to narrow it down and get a suspect from the plate, right?”

  Lund shrugged. “Like I said before, I’m happy to brainstorm, but I’m no detective. I’ll be busy digging through the victim’s entrails.” He gave me what started as a wink but turned into a blink, his eyelids out of sync with each other in a way that seemed amphibian. “For my coroner’s report,” he added dryly. “Not for my personal enjoyment.”

  Maybe just a little personal enjoyment, I thought. The man was passionate about his career.

  Bentley took the paper from me. “We’ll call this in to the station from the car,” he said, shifting his body to indicate we should be leaving now.

  “You don’t need my help for that,” I said. “I’ll get my purse, then I should probably walk across the street and return to my house.”

  Bentley raised an eyebrow. “Is that what you want to do?”

  “It’s what I should do. Ishmael might already be there in ghost form, sitting on my couch. If he’s not there, I could always find something to do in the house while I wait around for him.” I stuck out my tongue. “Like housekeeping, or laundry.”

  The det
ective narrowed his steely gray eyes. “You don’t strike me as someone who waits around for anything.”

  He was right. I hated the idea of doing laundry while waiting for a ghost. Particularly the part about doing laundry. Laundry was no picnic. I’d recently learned several spells for stain-removal and button-strengthening. But instead of making laundry a breeze, it had only increased the level of attention involved in doing that particular chore.

  “Waiting around sucks, but isn’t patience a big part of investigation?” I asked.

  “Patience, but not waiting around,” Bentley said.

  I sighed. “If you want my company so bad, you could ask. Zara, would you please drive around with me on your day off? I’ll treat you to lunch!”

  His eyebrows rose. “Lunch is the furthest thing from my mind.”

  “Then I guess I’d better come with you, to make sure you eat something and keep up your strength.” I grabbed the paper from his hands. “Let’s get this number called in and find out who was in that car. If I hadn’t jumped out of the way in time, they might have made it a double homicide. That means we’re dealing with a potential serial killer.”

  “We might be,” Bentley said, unzipping the white bunny suit. I’d been joking, but he sounded serious, which made me nervous.

  “We might be?” I shot a panicked look at Lund. “Are there other headless bodies popping up around town? Don’t hold out on me, Lund. I don’t appreciate being kept in the dark.”

  Lund said evenly, “This is the first headless body I’ve seen in a great number of years.”

  “But not the first one ever,” I said.

  Lund dismissed my line of questioning with a head shake. “This case is unrelated to anything local or recent. Most decapitations occur during vehicle or industrial accidents. When the victims meet with foul play, there’s typically a sawing pattern on the bones.” He mimed using a hacksaw to saw through material. “Ishmael’s head wasn’t sawed off. It was sliced.” He made a smooth, swift slicing motion with one hand.

  “The attacker must have been powerful,” Bentley said.

  “And the blade must have been extremely sharp,” Lund said. “It went through the tissue and bone in one smooth motion.”

  “Like a guillotine,” Bentley said.

  “That narrows it down,” I said. “There can’t be many people in town who own a guillotine. We’ll check the guillotine registry, find all the local guillotine owners, and question them about their whereabouts last night.”

  They both nodded as though taking my suggestion seriously. For a long moment, nobody gathered under the shade of the tree spoke. Before long, I wondered if perhaps there was a local guillotine registry after all.

  At last, Dr. Jerry Lund broke the silence. “Guillotines work with gravity, slicing vertically. We’re looking for a weapon that cuts horizontally. Greyson was alive when he sat down on his sofa for the last time.”

  “You mean a sword?” Bentley asked.

  “Or a scythe,” I said.

  They both looked at me.

  “A scythe,” Bentley muttered. “A scythe?”

  “Now, there’s a thought,” Lund said. “A scythe can be swung with speed, though I’m not sure about the angle. Even with the victim sitting, his neck was still four feet above the floor.” His nostrils flared and spit flew from the corners of his wide mouth as he grew more animated. “I’ll have to do some tests on a meat dummy.” He rubbed his hands together. “This is so much better than a standard mauling or gunshot wound.”

  “Great,” I said. “If the scythe theory pans out, you’ve ID’d the killer.”

  They both gave me a puzzled look.

  “I’ll give you a hint,” I said. “He carries a scythe and wears a black, hooded cloak.”

  They continued staring at me.

  “The Grim Reaper,” I said, holding out one hand to let them know I was joking. Whatever happened to gallows humor at the crime scene? These guys were not on the same page as me.

  Lund tipped his head to the side. “The who?”

  I grinned. “Don’t pretend you don’t know him. The Grim Reaper. Death personified. History’s most notorious serial killer. Sooner or later, he comes for every single one of us.”

  Lund chuckled darkly at my joke, as I’d suspected he would, once he finally understood it.

  “Because the Grim Reaper carries a scythe,” Lund said, nodding.

  Bentley groaned and clapped his hand to his forehead, which was sweaty and thus made a satisfying slap.

  Chapter 9

  My comment about the Grim Reaper had been a joke, but as we drove away from Beacon Street, I wondered if there was something to the idea.

  Were we looking for a robed skeleton carrying a scythe? Scythes weren’t used much in modern times, but they were as ordinary as toasters back in the Middle Ages, when Europe was largely an agrarian society. I imagined the idea of a man carrying a scythe had probably come first, and then the name. The Grim Reaper. But he wasn’t the only personification of death.

  Around the world, humans had been creative in their depictions of an entity who reaped souls. The Greeks used an image of twins, shown side by side, one being Sleep and the other Death. The twins were young men, named Hypnos and Thanatos respectively. Was our chief suspect in the Greyson case a twin named Thanatos? Possibly. But he wouldn’t be carrying a scythe. In ancient Hellenic societies, Thanatos was painted with either a sword or an upside-down, extinguished torch. The torch wouldn’t do much to detach a person from their head, but the sword might.

  I pictured a hooded man standing behind Ishmael Greyson as the young DWM junior agent watched unreleased movies obliviously. The assailant swung a two-handed sword, slicing Greyson at the juncture of his scrawny neck. Blood flew from the sword as it arced, painting a dark-red streak on the apartment’s white wall. One bony hand released the hilt of the heavy sword and swept back the dark hood, revealing a glowing skull with hollow eye sockets.

  A voice came from the car’s speakers, jarring me out of the disturbing vision.

  “That narrows it down,” came the voice, which sounded young and female. “All the way down to, yup, a single vehicle registration.”

  Bentley replied warmly, “Thanks, Persephone. I knew you’d be able to track this one down.”

  My ears buzzed. Did I have Greek mythology on the brain, or was Bentley talking to someone named Persephone? As in, the daughter of Zeus, queen of the underworld?

  There was the sound of typing over the speakers, then she reported back, “I’ve sent the name and address of the car’s owner to your phone.”

  “Don’t keep me in suspense. I’m driving right now, on my way to notify the next of kin. What’s the name of our speeding driver?”

  “Maisy Nix,” said the voice on speakerphone. “That’s Maisy, like Daisy, and Nix is spelled N-I-X.”

  Bentley took in a sharp inhale. The woman on the other end of the phone call wouldn’t have heard him gasp, but I did.

  “Repeat that,” Bentley ordered gruffly, sounding less warm and more like the stone-cold commander of a fleet of starships.

  “Yes, sir. The vehicle matching your description and partial license plate number, 2319, belongs to a local business owner, Maisy Nix. She runs Dreamland Coffee. There are two locations. She might be at one of the locations right now.”

  “Yes,” he said dryly. “I know who that is and where she works. Thank you, Persephone.”

  The call ended, and the car’s speakers reverted back to playing music from the radio.

  “Maisy Nix,” I said. “I believe I know her.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me.” His tone was dripping with accusation.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  He stared straight ahead through the windshield. “Maisy’s name has turned up in a few reports. She was on my radar for suspicious activities before the incident at Castle Wyvern. She was one of the leads I was chasing down before I found out... well, everything.” He frowned and chewed
his lower lip. “I haven’t given her much thought since then.”

  “I don’t know her that well,” I said. “I’ve only spoken to her a couple of times at Dreamland. They do make the best coffee in town, possibly the whole world.”

  He glanced over at me. “She doesn’t live in your neighborhood.”

  “You know where she lives?”

  “Like I said, I was looking into her, due to her connection to suspicious cases.”

  “You think she’s a shifter, or a gorgon, or a witch?”

  “I think she’s... something.”

  “Do you think she’s a Grim Reaper?”

  He chewed his lip a bit. “How about Lady Death? Isn’t that a thing? Something to do with dice?”

  “You’re thinking of Lady Luck.”

  “Either way, she does make an impression.”

  “She is tall,” I said, which was an understatement. Maisy Nix was statuesque, beautiful, and commanding, like an actress who might play Wonder Woman.

  “Tall women are strong.”

  “I guess she might be strong enough to do some damage with a scythe or a sword.” I quickly shook my head. I’d liked Maisy. I didn’t want her to be a Grim Reaper or a Lady Death. “But there must be some other reason she was on my street this morning.”

  “Why? Why must there be another reason?”

  “Because she’s a nice woman. She was always friendly to me. Not like someone who goes around chopping off heads.”

  “When I met you the first time, you seemed like a nice woman, too.”

  I made an offended sound. “You’re so rude sometimes, Teddy B.”

  “Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it back.” He clicked on the turn signal. “Let’s see if she’s at the coffee shop now.”

  “Now?” My pulse quickened, but not from fear. I was excited. Things were really moving along with this case. At this rate, I could have the bug-eyed ghost of Ishmael Greyson on his merry way before dinner time.

  Bentley took a few turns, and soon we were driving through the alley behind the downtown location of Dreamland Coffee. Jackpot. The same car I’d seen that morning, with the 2319 license plate, was sitting in one of the staff parking spots.