Arden Greyson and I talked our way through three cups of tea each. We talked about libraries, then the educational system, then everything that was right and wrong with generations not our own, and then we finally moved on to politics, both national and local.
Arden had some interesting theories about Mayor Paula Paladini. He believed she was part of some Illuminati-like secret organization. I found this both scandalous and hilarious. He thanked me for humoring his eccentricities, and we moved on to a discussion of home renovations, and what type of landscaping gave the biggest boost to a home’s resale value.
Doodles eventually wore herself out sniffing for wyverns. She rested on the kitchen floor at her master’s feet, perking up when he slipped her the occasional ladyfinger cookie from the plate on the table.
When Zoey wandered into the kitchen, smacking her lips and eyeballing the remaining ladyfingers, it was nearly five o’clock. Arden Greyson and I had been talking for hours, and not about the recent tragedy. Since his mention of Ishmael appearing as a ghost in the house, the topic hadn’t come back around to the homicide.
Zoey poured herself a big glass of water and joined us at the kitchen island. She reached for the tackle box Arden had brought with him and lightly ran her fingers over the rusty buckles.
“You can go ahead and open that,” Arden said good-naturedly. “Do you have an interest in fishing lures, young lady?”
She flipped up the buckles and opened the lid with a rusty creak. “Some of the girls at school use these kind of feathers for earrings,” she said.
“They sure do.” He chuckled. “There was a time, not long ago, when you couldn’t get the feathers because the teenagers kept buying out the stock.”
I asked, “Did you catch anything this morning? You were out fishing, right?”
“Didn’t even get a nibble,” he said.
“That’s too bad.”
Zoey lifted the top tray out of the tackle box and peered into the darkness. “Ooh,” she exclaimed. “What’s that?”
He followed her gaze and his face lit up. “That,” he said proudly, “is a karambit.”
“A karambit,” Zoey repeated. She reached in and pulled out the knife. It had a carved bone handle and a long curved blade, like the letter C. Unlike the metal of the fishing tackle box, the blade on the unusual knife was fresh and new. It gleamed under the kitchen light, appearing almost white.
“It’s so light, and the grip is perfect for my hand,” Zoey said. She used the blade to swish the air in front of her in a very un-Zoey-like motion.
Something in the air shifted, as though agitated by the slashing of the sharp blade. My skin prickled, and my senses sharpened.
I silently noted that the curved blade was the perfect shape to wrap around a human’s neck. In fact, if applied with enough force, it might be used for decapitation. Were we looking at the murder weapon? Had Arden walked it right into my house, under my nose?
I met Zoey’s gaze and sent her a look. Be careful. She acknowledged my unspoken warning with the smallest of blinks—a gesture that would likely go unnoticed by the owner of the knife who was sitting with us.
“What’s it for?” Zoey asked brightly, still swishing the knife.
“Oh, this and that,” Arden said casually. “I understand they use them in the Philippines for farming. You could use it to rake roots and gather threshing.”
“Neat,” Zoey said. “It’s like a sickle.”
“I found it in the trash,” he said.
Zoey and I exchanged a look.
“When?” I asked. Had it been that morning?
“A few weeks back,” he said casually, not picking up on the tension in my voice. “I don’t know why my nephew was throwing out a perfectly good knife. Funny thing is, it’s so sharp that it cut its way out of the bag, almost like it didn’t want to be thrown out.”
Zoey and I exchanged another look. The knife had its own intentions?
Arden went on. “I figured I might put it to use gutting fish, but I haven’t had the chance yet.”
He continued talking about fishing in the local waters, and how things went with the various seasons. His voice blurred in the background.
Arden Greyson claimed he hadn’t used the knife, but what if someone else had? What if it was the weapon that had been used on Ishmael? There had to be a reason it was now inside my house. Ghosts had their ways of affecting the living. It was possible Ishmael had used his ghostly hands to influence his great-uncle into walking across the street and dropping the murder weapon practically at my feet.
Zoey continued to play with the knife, switching it from one hand to the other. Better it’s in her hands than his, I thought.
Arden met my eyes and gave me a questioning look. “The young one is comfortable with a blade,” he remarked.
I chuckled and said, “My daughter, the weapons expert.”
Arden said to her, “Careful. It’s awfully sharp.”
How would he know if was sharp if he hadn’t used it yet?
She carefully returned it to the tackle box. “That was fun,” she said.
I put my hands on my hips and playfully said, “Really? That was fun? Who are you and what have you done to my daughter?” I smiled as I explained to Arden, “My daughter is normally afraid of knives, or so she claims whenever you ask her to chop vegetables.”
“Kids outgrow their childish fears eventually,” he said sagely.
“So they do.”
I kept smiling, and at the same time, I cast a mild camouflage spell over his fishing tackle box. The spell was, from what I could gather, designed to keep unexpected guests from noticing messes. My aunt had taught me how to cast it over piles of unfolded laundry and a whole variety of things that I just happened to have examples of in my house. It didn’t make things invisible, but it did cause them to blend with their environment to avoid detection by visitors. If my hastily cast spell worked, Arden might forget his tackle box on my counter.
I got up from my chair and glanced around theatrically.
“Speaking of chopping vegetables, we should probably get dinner started,” I said.
Arden squinted at the window. “Is it that time already?”
Zoey chimed in, “Time flies when you’re having fun.” She shot me a wide-eyed, now-what look.
I said to Arden, who was still gazing at the window, “Mr. Greyson, would you like to stay for dinner?” Please say no.
He immediately got to his feet. “No,” he said softly. “I’ve already taken up more than my fair share of your hospitality.” His dog jumped up and smelled Arden’s outstretched fingers for cookies. Arden turned, swept his gaze through the area where his tackle box sat under the camouflage spell, pressed his lips together briefly, then proceeded toward the door. The spell had worked.
Zoey trailed along behind us as I walked Arden and Doodles to the front door. Zoey caught my eye, nodded toward the kitchen, and raised an eyebrow. I gave her a quick eye flash to let her know that getting the tackle box was part of my plan. All the better for me to get the karambit tested as evidence.
Arden walked out the front door and paused on the porch. “Ms. Riddle,” he said slowly.
In unison, Zoey and I chirped, “Yes?”
He glanced back over his shoulder just long enough to say, “If you do happen to make one of those casseroles with the potato chips on top, I wouldn’t say no to such a thing.”
I pointed a finger at him. “Your wish is my command.”
Doodles trotted down the stairs and led Arden Greyson away.
Chapter 18
As soon as Arden was gone, Zoey followed me into the kitchen where we both took another look at the knife.
She asked, “How can something so pretty be used to murder?” She took it by the handle again and swished it through the air.
“I’d tell you not to touch it, but I guess you already got your DNA all over it when Arden was here.”
“Not my DNA,” she corrected. “But it probably is coated with my
epithelial cells, which might contain my DNA.”
“My daughter, the weapons expert and also the crime scene investigator.”
She made an excited sound. “Can you test for DNA with magic?”
“I believe that’s a job for science. However, I can do this.” I cast a threat detection spell over both the karambit and the tackle box. This time, the spell didn’t splash back in my face like used toothpaste, but it didn’t reveal anything helpful, either.
Zoey balanced the knife on one finger. “What type of metal is this? It feels a lot lighter than it looks.”
“Maybe it’s hollow.” I got an idea and snapped my fingers. “Hold that thought! Your great-aunt gave me something before she went on vacation.” I grabbed my purse and pulled out a tube of ordinary-looking lipstick. I removed the lid with a flourish, revealing a ravishing shade of red lipstick.
“Ooh,” Zoey said. “I like that color.”
“Me, too.” I applied the lipstick to my lips, and blotted it with a kitchen napkin.
Zoey gave me a skeptical look. “How does red lipstick help you analyze metal content? Does it make you able to taste it?”
“Good guess, but this is actually just regular lipstick. What we want is under here.”
I put the cap back on the tube, turned it over, and unscrewed the bottom. Inside was a compartment that held an odorless white powder. I gestured for Zoey to set the curved knife on the counter. She did so, and I sprinkled both the blade and the handle with a small amount of the powder.
I didn’t need to cast a spell. This was a magical compound, so the spell was already baked in, so to speak. There was a slight ozone spell as the powder analyzed the composition.
The spell did its magic, then returned the results as words spoken softly in my head. One karambit. Handle composition: Sixty percent hydroxyapatite with collagen fibers. Common name: Bone. Origin: Unknown.
“Bone,” I said to Zoey. “The handle is carved bone, but I don’t know what animal it’s from.”
“What about the blade?”
I focused my eyes on the gleaming blade and waited. The spell played on-hold music inside my head. Soft jazz. I had just started tapping my foot in time with the music when the words returned. Blade composition: Unknown. Origin: Insufficient data.
“The spell doesn’t know,” I reported to Zoey. “Either that or I’m not using the powder right. What a waste.” I frowned at the tiny amount remaining in the hidden compartment. My aunt had given me the powder as a reward for learning a tricky bit of magic—peeling the shell off an uncooked egg while keeping it levitating and intact. I had actually enjoyed the task, though I pretended it was excruciating because I could tell it pleased Aunt Zinnia to torture me a little. I had planned to use the powder to find out exactly what kind of raw fish the local sushi place was using in its suspiciously inexpensive sashimi, but now a third of the powder was gone.
“It wasn’t a total waste,” Zoey said in her usual cheerful way, the way she always sounded right before pointing out the bright side of any situation.
“You’re just trying to cheer me up.”
She studied my face carefully before saying, “That lipstick suits you. I bet Detective Bentley will notice how pretty you look when he comes to pick up the knife for more testing.”
I snorted. “He doesn’t see me that way.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. He just doesn’t. Besides, he was dating your grandmother.”
“I think they were more like friends. They weren’t in love, according to her.”
“Ew.” I made a face. “Either way, I’m not interested in dating that va—” I still couldn’t say the word, thanks to her magic, but I did have a new substitution that she would hate. “I’m not interested in that upgraded zombie’s used-up leftovers. She probably drained out whatever sense of humor he had along with half his blood.”
“Gigi doesn’t drink from humans.”
“So she claims.”
“She wouldn’t lie to her family.”
I pulled my head back. “Are you serious? For one third of your young life, she did nothing but lie to the family. She let us think she was dead. For five long years.”
Zoey couldn’t argue with that. Her grandmother—my mother—had made the choice at a young age to curse away her own witchcraft. Later in life, she’d suffered an illness that could only be cured by her dying and then being brought back to life. Well, sort of back to life. I called her an upgraded zombie. She was a creature of the grave, thinner and more beautiful than ever, with her sleek, black hair. A person couldn’t blame a man like Bentley for being attracted to the woman, no matter what she was. Riddle women did have their charms, even after death.
I used my magic to grab my phone and put in a call to Bentley.
Zoey listened to my side of the conversation, watching me like I was must-see TV.
* * *
Twenty minutes later, my doorbell rang again. This time it was Bentley. He wasted no time in getting to the knife.
He stood staring at it on the kitchen island’s counter for a long time. The detective scowled at the karambit so hard, I could have sworn I saw a brand-new vertical wrinkle form on his forehead.
“You shouldn’t have stolen this,” he said gruffly.
“I didn’t steal it,” I said heavily. “Arden Greyson wandered over here of his own free will. I made him some tea, and he was so dazzled by my skills as a conversationalist that he left his whole tackle box behind by accident.”
Bentley attempted to bag the knife in an evidence bag, but the curved edge was so sharp it snagged the plastic, sliced through, and fell out. I caught the falling karambit with my magic so it didn’t scratch the floor.
Bentley stared at me with round eyes. He’d been caught off guard by my levitation.
“You get used to it,” I said. “By which I mean seeing household objects defy the laws of physics. Did I ever tell you the first time I used levitation, it was to catch a falling glass, right over there by that sink?”
He scratched his head. “Is that so?”
The knife wavered in the air between us.
Bentley looked down at his feet. “I don’t know if a guy can ever get used to witchcraft, but thanks. You saved my shoes.” He swished his mouth from side to side. “And possibly a toe.”
I held both hands to my chest and pretended to swoon. “He finds me handy! Oh, be still my beating heart.”
Bentley retrieved a new plastic evidence bag, gingerly wrapped it around the floating karambit, then carefully held it by the handle so it couldn’t escape again.
“You certainly are handy,” he said gruffly without looking at me. “It was cunning of you to entertain Mr. Greyson and gain his trust.”
“Cunning? I was being neighborly.”
“How about stealing the man’s tackle box? Was that neighborly?”
“I can’t think of anything more neighborly than protecting the neighborhood from a killer.”
The detective nodded. “Very well, then. I can’t say I would have thought of the same thing, even if I had your powers. It may not have been cunning, but it was clever.”
I swooned again. “He finds me clever!”
Bentley looked around the kitchen. “Who are you talking to?”
I shrugged. Didn’t everyone have an imaginary audience who followed them around to laugh at their crazy antics? Other than those folks, Bentley and I were alone in the kitchen. My daughter had returned to her bedroom after answering the door.
He shook his head. “I swear, whenever I’m around you, I feel like I’m on some hidden-camera TV show. You’re always saying the strangest things. What’s that all about?”
“It’s called having a personality.”
“Oh,” he said flatly. “Is that what it is? I suppose I wouldn’t know. I’m only a detective. When I’m not working on a homicide case or eating donuts, I park myself in a dark closet, like a robot.”
I stared at him for a moment.
I hadn’t given much thought to Bentley’s personal life until now. I tried to picture him doing regular things. Picking up milk and bread at the store. Taking his car in for an oil change. Frolicking on the beach with a kite on a windy day. Nope. Couldn’t picture any of those things, and yet, I could easily imagine him parked in a dark closet like a robot.
“Stop it,” he said. “Stop imagining me standing in a dark closet.”
I let out a burst of laughter. “Bentley! You can read minds! You have supernatural powers after all.”
“It’s not mind reading,” he said. “Well, not exactly. It’s called theory of mind. I observe a person’s facial expressions and body language, then use my empathy to imagine what I’d be thinking if I was that person.”
“Is that so? What am I thinking right now?”
He rubbed his chin and studied me thoughtfully. “You’re trying to think of something that would embarrass me.”
I flashed my eyes and looked him over. “Such as...?” I licked my lips suggestively.
He sighed. “Stop undressing me with your eyes.”
“I was doing no such thing,” I said indignantly. Technically, I’d only been pretending to undress him with my eyes. For a laugh. I didn’t want to picture his tanned skin extending below his shirt collar across a taut, muscular chest. Or the narrow line of dark hair that might run below his belly button. Or the way his muscular thighs might look sticking out from the bottom of cotton boxers. How was I so certain he wore boxers? And why was I picturing them as gray with black stripes?
“Zara,” he said.
My throat felt thick. “What?” I’d gotten trapped in my imagination and was finding it difficult to extract myself.
He sniffed the air. “Did you eat dinner already?”
I was glad for the topic change. “Yes. I ate with Zoey. We had nuked leftovers.”
He gave the air another sniff.
I waited for him to make a comment about my lack of cooking skills, but he didn’t say anything.
His stomach broke the silence with a growl.
I suddenly caught his subtle hint. I jumped toward the refrigerator with a speed that startled Bentley into take a step backward, bumping into one of the kitchen island’s chairs, making it scrape on the floor.
Wisteria Witches Mysteries Box Set 3 Page 45
