Wisteria Witches Mysteries Box Set 3

by Angela Pepper

  I picked up on her distaste easily. “You don’t approve of that,” I said.

  “I’m a vegetarian,” she said.

  “But your brother liked hunting,” I said. “Big game.”

  Under his breath, Bentley said, “The most dangerous game.”

  Carrot looked at Bentley and I looked at her. Judging by the confusion on the tattoo artist’s face, she didn’t understand what he’d meant by his comment. But I knew.

  “The Most Dangerous Game” was a famous short story by Richard Connell. It was first published in 1924, and became the basis for a number of film and television adaptations. In the tale, a big-game hunter in search of a jaguar in the Amazon finds himself on an isolated island in the Caribbean, where there’s a role reversal. He becomes the one being hunted for sport. Not by a big cat, but by another man who’s grown bored of hunting animals and moved on to man, the most dangerous game. Hence the title.

  Somewhere in the quiet studio, a phone began ringing noisily. Carrot jumped to her feet, excused herself, and ran to answer it.

  Once Bentley and I were alone, I said to him, “If Ishmael Greyson was hunted for sport, it wasn’t very sporting of the hunter to nab him on the sofa of his apartment.”

  “No,” Bentley said slowly. “The real sport would be an intellectual one.”

  “You think?”

  “Getting away with the perfect crime.” He flicked his gaze around the small office. The walls were a muted brown, unlike the bold red and black of the main showroom. The walls were decorated with more of the same vintage prints, including a few illustrations of jungle cats. “The victim had a print of a jaguar on his wall,” he said.

  “He did,” I said. “And Carrot has a tattoo of a big cat on her breastbone. A cougar, I believe.”

  Bentley gave me a perplexed look. “This must be why they don’t tell new detectives about all the magic in this town. Once you open your mind to the peculiar, it’s hard to think inside the box again. Look at me. I’m planning to look up a novel from the 1920s as part of my research for this case. I might be losing my mind.”

  “It was a short story,” I said. “Not a novel. ‘The Most Dangerous Game’ was a short story.”

  He shook his head. “You can take the librarian out of the library...”

  Carrot returned to the office looking even more pale. She waved her cell phone apologetically. “I’m going to turn this off for the rest of the day. The rumor mill is churning. People have seen all the police cars at Uncle Arden’s house.” She gasped and held her fingers to her lips. “Does my great-uncle know?”

  “He’s been informed,” Bentley said. He tapped the notepad again. “For my records, where did you say you were last night?”

  She pointed at the ceiling. “I was here, up in the apartment.”

  “When did you leave? Have you left the building this morning?”

  “Yes. At about ten o’clock this morning, when I drove to the discount warehouse to buy paper towels.” She pursed her lips. “You go through a lot of paper towels in the tattoo business.”

  “Were you alone last night?”

  Her cheeks flushed pink. “My boyfriend was here. He stays over sometimes.” She patted her cheeks with her hands. “He says I’ve been a source of comfort for him, ever since his father passed away recently. He won’t talk about it, but I get the feeling something bad happened.”

  “Violence?” Bentley asked. “Did his father live in town?”

  “No. Overseas. I never met him, unfortunately.” She patted her cheeks again. “It’s such a shame. I hear he was a great man. My boyfriend idolized his father.”

  Bentley tapped the paper again. Every time he tapped, Carrot’s posture relaxed and her focus returned. The tapping was not unlike a hypnotic suggestion.

  “And your boyfriend’s name is?”

  “Sefu Adebayo,” she said, and then spelled it.

  Bentley kept his gaze down on his pad and asked casually but carefully, “How did your brother feel about you dating Sefu?”

  She shrugged. “He was happy for me. They got along well enough when both of them were helping me paint and decorate this place.”

  “Did the two of them ever socialize without you being present?”

  “I don’t think so. Why? Sefu didn’t have anything to do with what happened to Ishmael. He’s the most gentle person you’d ever meet.”

  “And Sefu was here at the house with you the entire night?” Another tap on his notepad.

  Her cheeks flushed a deeper pink. “Of course he was. Is this what you call profiling? Are you suspicious of him because he’s black?”

  “I didn’t know he was black.”

  She crossed her tattooed arms. “It shouldn’t matter that he’s black. He told me he’s had problems with cops all his life, since coming to this country. I didn’t want to believe it, but now I see it.”

  “He’s new to this country?” Bentley looked at Carrot steadily. She didn’t answer. He flicked his gaze down to the notepad. “Adebayo. Is that an African name?”

  “Yes. He’s an American citizen. African American.” Carrot reached for a paper takeout coffee cup on her desk, took a gulp, grimaced, and then spat into a garbage can next to the desk. “Sorry,” she sputtered. “That was yesterday’s coffee.”

  I jumped up, went to her side, and patted her back as she spat the sour remnants into the wastebasket. The container was full of takeout cups with names written on the side in black felt pen. Half of the cups had the name CARROT written on them in bold block letters, and the other half had a variety of names. I reached in and fished out a few of the cups she hadn’t spat on.

  “Are these cups from customers?” I asked. The name FISHTAIL caught my eye. “There’s one here for Fishtail. That’s an odd name. Fishtail.” I shrugged. “But I suppose this is a tattoo studio. You probably get some unique people in here.”

  “That was Ishmael’s coffee cup,” Carrot said sadly. “The woman at the coffee shop never got his name right. Look.” She fished out more paper cups and showed us the names. There were cups for GMAIL, ISHTAR, SCHLOMO, and a dozen other variations or misinterpretations of Ishmael.

  “Cute,” I said. “I guess it was a running gag?”

  Carrot shook her head. “Ishmael hated it. He only kept going there because they make the best coffee in town.”

  I looked over at Bentley. He had his poker face on, but it hadn’t escaped his notice that the coffee cups were all from Dreamland Coffee.

  I swallowed down a lump of excitement and asked, “Was it the owner who always misspelled your brother’s name? A woman named Maisy Nix?”

  Carrot said, “I don’t know. He would stop by there after work and bring me a coffee. I mostly work evenings these days.” Her eyes glistened with a fresh batch of tears. “Since I opened the studio, my brother and I were closer than ever, closer than we were as kids.”

  I picked at the cup from her desk, the one she’d referred to as yesterday’s cup. I took a sniff and gave it a swirl. I didn’t have my daughter’s keen shifter-sense of smell, but I could tell the difference between day-old and multi-day-old coffee. Half a lifetime of surviving on leftover takeout food had honed certain skills.

  “This is yesterday’s coffee,” I said, as much to Bentley as to Carrot. “Does that mean Ishmael went to Dreamland Coffee yesterday?”

  Carrot nodded. “Around six o’clock,” she said. Her forehead wrinkled. “Now that I think about it, he was really steamed up last night. Whatever they wrote on his cup made him so mad that he threw it out and had them make him a fresh latte.”

  I heard Bentley’s chair squeak as he leaned forward. “And what was it they wrote on your brother’s cup yesterday?”

  “He didn’t say. When he got here, the cup he had was blank.” She dug through the wastebasket and pulled out a cup with no name.

  Bentley whipped a plastic evidence bag from his pocket with a flourish. “I’ll take that,” he said, popping the cup into the bag with practice
d ease.

  Carrot stared at him in horror. “You think he was poisoned? Before they killed him?”

  “It would explain why there was no sign of a struggle,” he said.

  She continued to stare at him with her mouth open. She snapped it shut and swallowed audibly. “When can I see him?”

  “Soon,” he said. “Someone from my office will be in touch.” He glanced at me and gave me a look that seemed to say, as soon as they fasten the guy’s head back on.

  I raised my eyebrow to say, assuming he doesn’t come back to life when the head reattaches.

  He frowned back, as if to say, I don’t know what you’re suggesting, Zara, but I don’t like it.

  Bentley asked Carrot to review a few more details, and then we prepared to leave.

  Bentley handed her an assortment of cards from his pocket. There were cards for a grief counselor, a crime scene cleaner, and a funeral home. Then he handed her some small brochures. The transaction reminded me of the basket of local business advertisements and coupons I’d received in my mailbox shortly after I’d moved to Wisteria. It was like a welcome wagon package, except instead of welcome to your new home, it meant welcome to Bereavement, population one.

  Chapter 12

  We hadn’t been in the car for very long before Bentley said, “I really wasn’t profiling the boyfriend in the way she thought I was.”

  “I believe you.”

  “We were talking about big game hunting, and safaris, and Adebayo is an African surname, I believe. Let’s see.” He used voice commands on his in-car computer to do a search on the name.

  A robotic voice served up the answer. “Adebayo is a Yoruba name. Yoruba names are used by the Yoruba people and Yoruba language-speaking individuals in Benin, Togo, and Nigeria.”

  Bentley turned to me and whispered, “These voice-activated internet searches are eerily good these days.”

  I whispered back, “Why are you whispering?”

  “Because I don’t want her to know I’m giving her a compliment.”

  “Why not? You should try buttering her up. Women love compliments.”

  He gave me a serious look. “Zara, it’s a computer.”

  “Then why are you whispering?”

  He waved a hand at me, pressed the button on the display again, and asked the computer, “What does the first name Sefu mean? S-E-F-U.”

  The robotic female voice replied, “Sefu is a Swahili name for boys. It means sword.”

  “Sword!” I exclaimed, bouncing up and down in my seat. “You heard that, right? Your robot voice has just solved the case for us.” I patted the dashboard. “Thank you, robot voice. I shall dub thee Lady Sherlock.”

  Bentley narrowed his eyes and shot me a look. “How much of the tattoo parlor’s candy did you consume, anyway?”

  “Not that much.”

  “Zara, stick out your tongue.”

  I did, blowing a little air so it made a funny sound.

  “Your tongue is completely red,” he said.

  “That’s the color of tongues, silly.”

  “You know what I meant.”

  I flipped down the sun visor and checked my tongue in the tiny mirror. It was stained by the dye in red candy. “My tongue has been worse colors,” I said nonchalantly. I flipped the visor up again with a chunky snap. “More importantly, we have a very solid lead on a suspect. This Sefu guy.”

  “Ms. Greyson claims her boyfriend was with her all night. He has an alibi.”

  “They might have done it together.”

  “What’s the motivation?”

  “I don’t know yet, but come on. The guy’s first name means sword.”

  “Ah, yes. I forgot that important new section of the criminal code where we prosecute people for crimes based on their names.”

  I settled back in the passenger seat and crossed my arms. “Maybe I did eat too much candy.” I shook my head. “Wow. Talk about a phrase nobody ever expected to hear coming from my lips. What a strange day this has been.”

  We drove for a while in silence.

  “I take pride in not being prejudiced,” Bentley said. Apparently, he hadn’t let go of his hurt feelings over being accused of racial profiling.

  “I already said I believe you.”

  “Most of us in law enforcement are just trying to do our jobs. It’s a few bad apples who ruin it for everyone. Well, more than a few, but even so, I’m not one of them.”

  I held both hands up. “You’re preaching to the choir.” I thumbed my chest. “If you’re talking about getting lumped in with bad apples, look over here at the genuine witch sitting in your car. The genuine practitioner of witcher-i-doo.”

  “Witcher-i-doo? Don’t you mean voodoo?”

  “It’s something I picked up from Vincent Wick.” I gasped. “Speaking of that particular devil, did they tell you all about Wick when you got your new level of clearance?”

  He gave me a cagey look. “In what sense?”

  “In the sense that he’s got hidden cameras all over town, and he spies on people from his underground lair by the dump. He’s a wizard of sorts. A tech wizard. No magic abilities, as far as I know. What did you hear?”

  “I’ve heard that Wick is an independent contractor who occasionally assists in investigations, which is why his,” he steadied the steering wheel with his elbow so he could make air quotes, “underground lair continues to operate. His role is similar to that of a criminal informant.”

  “Is Wick a criminal? He’s creepy as all get-out, but that doesn’t make him a criminal, does it?”

  “Several of his intelligence gathering methods are in contradiction with modern privacy laws.”

  “But he’s friends with my aunt, so he can’t be that bad. And he helped me out when a family member of mine was hurt.”

  Bentley whipped his head to look at me. “Zoey was hurt? What happened?”

  “Not Zoey. It was my dad. He was...” I waved a hand. “Long story.” I looked out the window. “Where are we going again?”

  “The coffee shop.”

  “Already? I thought you wanted to get more information before you interrogated Maisy Nix about her driving habits.”

  “I do, and I will, but we have something already to talk to her about.” He patted his pocket, where he’d tucked away the evidence bag containing the blank coffee cup. “We can ask her what she wrote on the first cup that got him so irate.”

  “Under what pretext? Maybe you should tell me more of your plan so I don’t mess it up.”

  “Just follow my lead.” He shot me a serious look. “And don’t let on that Ishmael’s dead.”

  “I won’t say a peep. Not even if I see his ghost standing there with his own head tucked under his armpit.”

  * * *

  We parked in front of Dreamland Coffee and both looked up at the sign.

  The coffee shop had a logo featuring a cuddly woodland creature—probably a chipmunk but possibly a marmot—wearing a striped sleeping cap and resting comfortably on a cloud. When I’d first moved to Wisteria, I’d mistaken Dreamland for a mattress shop based on the logo. Over the past few months, and no small number of mint mochas, the name and logo no longer seemed odd. And was it really that strange? The logo for Starbucks is a terrifying sea monster. Er, make that a sultry mermaid.

  The interior of Dreamland could have had an austere, bare-bones feel, thanks to its tall gray walls of bare cinder blocks, gritty concrete floor, and exposed metal rafters. The light fixtures were the style used in warehouses a hundred years ago. But it didn’t feel bare-bones at all. The tables were generously wide and made of honey-hued solid oak. The chairs and couches were all plush, upholstered in sunset shades of red, orange, and gold. Tall, arched windows flooded the space with sunshine, and were softened by curtain panels of gold crushed velvet, held back with the sort of chunky tasseled tiebacks my aunt might have used for a belt.

  Maisy Nix was standing at the front counter.

  “That’s her,” I whispered to
Bentley. I could see by the set of his jaw that he already knew that. I wondered what sort of criminal cases she’d been associated with that had roused the suspicion of the detective.

  Maisy Nix was equal parts tall and gorgeous, like an Amazonian warrior in a comic book. She stood over six feet tall, and though I couldn’t see her feet behind the counter, I could tell by the length of her slender neck and her long arms that none of the height was coming from high heels. She had medium-brown skin, eyes the color of black coffee, and shoulder-length ebony hair, glossy and straight. Her face was angular, with a strong jaw that didn’t detract from her beauty. The sharp planes of her face were balanced by a small nose and pretty lips that were ever so slightly too large on the top.

  Under her orange Dreamland Coffee apron, she wore a white blouse tucked into gray trousers. The blouse wasn’t the polyester-cotton blend of a uniform, but a silk blend with round mother-of-pearl buttons. The apron itself looked freshly ironed and spotless.

  She covered her mouth, yawning as we approached. “Sorry about that,” she said sleepily. She had a light Hispanic accent. “I had a late night,” she explained.

  A late night? A late night of... murder?

  She smiled at me. “The usual for you? Mint mocha?”

  “Perfect,” I said, even though my cravings for that particular beverage had been fading since my possession by a mint-mocha-loving ghost. I would have preferred an iced tea given the weather, but we were there to get information. I couldn’t stray from my usual behavior and tip her off.

  She looked pointedly at Bentley and stifled a second yawn. “And for you, Detective?” She said the word Detective with a teasing tone I recognized. It was the same playful tone I’d used myself on Bentley, all those times I’d bumped into him around town. He’d had it coming, the way he was always insinuating that I was up to something nefarious. Such as witchcraft. Was that also Maisy’s secret? My aunt always sidestepped questions about a local coven, but she’d never gone so far as to tell me we were the only witches in town.