by Emery Belle
“It’s an outrage, that’s what it is!” said the taller of the vampires, stomping his foot and crossing his arms over his fanny pack. “I don’t know why you witches and wizards think you can run this island; it’s our home, too, you know.” He looked to his buddy for support, and the other vampire nodded fervently, his camera swinging around his neck.
“I understand your concerns, I do,” Meryl said in a gentle, placating tone. “But I’m afraid that I have no authority to make those decisions; I merely use the broomsticks to give tours of the island. You might consider taking the issue up with the Department of Flying Vehicles.”
“The DFV is nothing but red tape and imbeciles,” the second vampire muttered, flashing his fangs to show his displeasure. Then he motioned to his friend. “Come on, Merv, let’s get out of here. It’s my turn at the morgue tonight, and I’m already feeling a little peaky.”
The first vampire reluctantly followed his friend, and Meryl watched them walk away, shaking her head in amusement before gathering the broomsticks into a tidy pile with a wave of her wand. Seeing my chance, I sidled up to her, removing my glove so I could give her hand a proper shake. “Meryl? My name is Wren Winters, and I—”
“I know who you are.” Meryl’s face clouded over. “I’m pretty sure the whole island knows who Wren Winters is by now. The witch who goes around solving murders.” I noticed that her lips were pressed into a disapproving line. “But if you’re here about Auggie, you’re wasting your time. The right man is already in prison, and with any luck, he’ll stay there for the rest of his life.”
“But how can you be so sure he’s the right man?” I pressed. “If there was someone else who could have killed Auggie, wouldn’t you want to know. I know I wou—”
“No.” Meryl’s eyes lit on mine. “You know what I want, Wren?” She took a step closer to me, her breath billowing softly in the chilly air. “I want to put this entire thing behind me. I want to put Auggie behind me, once and for all.”
I frowned, taken aback, and shared a look with Sebastian, who was standing beside me, arms crossed as he listened intently. Why was she so eager to put Auggie behind her? He’d only been dead for a few days; heck, he hadn’t even been buried yet. Meryl was a far cry from the grieving fiancée I’d been picturing.
“I’m sure it must have been terribly painful to lose your fiancé in such a brutal way,” I said, trying another tactic. “I can understand completely why you’d want to pick up the pieces and move on with your life.” After a respectable amount of time, I wanted to add, but held my tongue.
“I moved on with my life weeks ago.” Meryl’s voice had taken on a new edge. “And Auggie wasn’t my fiancé—I broke up with him after that stupid stunt he pulled and told him I never wanted to see him again. As far as I’m concerned, this is payback for what he did to my Ollie.”
“Ollie?” I racked my brain, trying to remember the story Gerald had told me about the proposal gone awry. “Is that your beaver familiar?”
Meryl balled her hands into fists so tight they were trembling, and her whole body went rigid with rage. “Was. Ollie was my familiar. My beautiful, sweet boy. He didn’t deserve what happened to him, all because of Auggie’s ego. He knew I wanted a low-key proposal—something sweet, something just between the two of us. Does a beaver skywriting a proposal over the ocean sound low-key to you? No, he just wanted to show off, have a fun story he could tell at parties. If he wanted to involve Ollie, there were a thousand better ideas he could have come up with. Instead, he hires some half-baked inventor with no actual inventions to his name to send my Ollie up into the sky. What did he think was going to happen?”
She bowed her head, and her shoulders began shaking as tears slid down her cheeks and dribbled onto the ground at our feet. “It all happened so fast I wasn’t even able to pull out my wand to try and save him. And do you know something? Auggie wouldn’t even pay for him to have a proper burial. Kept insisting it was the inventor’s fault, said he was going to sue him for all he was worth for selling him a faulty product.”
She gave a loud sniff and fished a tissue from the pocket of her cape. “As if I give a unicorn’s arse about that gnome’s money when Auggie was the one stupid enough to hire him without doing the proper research. All I want is my Ollie back, and that’ll never happen.” She honked her nose into the tissue, and I felt a swoop of nausea in my stomach at the thought of poor Ollie. If Pierre had met the same fate, I would have been just as heartsick.
“I’m terribly sorry for your loss,” I said, blinking back tears of my own. When I got back to my dorm room, I was going to stuff Pierre’s belly with as many sausages as I could get my hands on. “But I have to ask you”—I reined in my emotions and put my investigator’s cap back on—“where were you on the night of Auggie’s murder?”
Meryl stared at me, long and hard and hostile. “I have no idea,” she finally gritted out. “Do you keep track of where you are every second of every day? And like I told you, it doesn’t matter. The right man is already in prison.” She turned away from me, her profile severe, her tone saturated with cold finality. “Case closed.”
Chapter 9
Auggie’s funeral was held the next morning at a small garden near the butcher shop he owned. The bright, beautiful day was a stark contrast to the wails of grief emanating from the first row of folding chairs, where the leopard shifter’s mother was rocking back and forth, inconsolable, as her son’s body, in leopard form, was carried into the garden by equally grief-stricken pallbearers. He was laid on a bed of grass in a mahogany casket, his sleek coat and powerful body magnificent even in death.
I watched the scene from the very back corner of the garden alongside Garnet, who’d tagged along to help me scope out any suspicious-looking characters in the crowd. “What about that woman over there?” she hissed, pointing to a stooped-over witch who was standing behind the casket, arms folded serenely. “She looks like she could be capable of murder.”
“That’s the minister,” I said with a snort of laughter, and Garnet’s face fell. She shot me a dirty look, then continued surveying the garden, her mouth set in a determined line. The funeral was packed with every type of creature big and small, most weeping softly into tissues or offering condolences to Auggie’s family. As I looked around at the mourners, I was struck by just how beloved the leopard shifter must have been.
“What about him?” Garnet nudged me hard and jabbed her finger in the direction of a brownie hovering at the edge of the crowd, darting nervous glances all around him and every so often throwing an air punch at an imaginary foe. “He looks like a weirdo.”
“He is.” I kept my eyes locked on Pete, Auggie’s roommate, as he made his way to the food table. I watched as he stuck his finger into a bowl of pudding, sniffed it, and dabbed at the pudding with his tongue before gagging and wiping it off on the back of his pants. Then he repeated the process three more times before wandering away, muttering to himself and repeatedly checking over his shoulder to see if he was being followed. I remembered the housekeeping staff warning me that Pete was the paranoid type, but why? What had happened in the brownie’s past to reduce him to such a fearful creature? I made a mental note to broach the subject when I interviewed him, which would hopefully be soon.
And speaking of suspects… I swept my eyes over the garden once more. There she was, in the back, arms crossed over her chest in a defensive position. Despite her fury at him over Ollie’s untimely demise, Meryl, Auggie’s ex-girlfriend, had decided to make an appearance at his funeral. And she appeared to be arguing with someone—a skinny, beak-nosed man who was gesturing wildly at the sky before turning and stomping off, leaving Meryl staring after him before she stormed away in the opposite direction.
“I wonder what that was all about,” Garnet breathed. As the man slid into a seat in the front row beside Auggie’s mother, Garnet gasped. “I think that’s Auggie’s brother! What if he and Meryl were having an affair?”
Her voice was rising
with excitement, and she had a gleam in her eyes to match. “Think about it, Wren,” she said. “The two of them are meeting each other in secret, Auggie finds out and goes ballistic, and they off him so they can be together…” She sighed dreamily. “It’s just like something out of a romance novel, isn’t it?”
I stared at her. “What kind of books are you reading, anyway?” Then I turned back to the man, who was now gazing at Auggie’s casket, his shoulders stiff. “I’m not saying that didn’t happen, but when I talked to Meryl, I didn’t get the sense that she and Auggie were having any major relationship problems before he accidentally killed her beaver. I think that was the nail in the coffin… so to speak.”
“Yeah.” Garnet nodded fervently. “I guess that would be pretty hard to recover from. Still…” She craned her neck for a better view of the man and then nudged me forward. “I think you should go talk to him. Get the scoop.”
I shook my head. “While he’s crying over his brother’s casket? That’s too much, Garnet, even for me. This might be a murder investigation, but I do have limits on what I’ll do to get information.”
“If you can confront a flock of manticores, you can have a nice, friendly conversation with that man,” Garnet said, referring to my recent ill-advised trip to the manticores’ lair at the far end of the island. Then she pushed me again, harder this time, and I stumbled forward. “Now go!”
Shooting her a dirty look over my shoulder, I approached the front row of seats, then stood off to the side, watching the man trying to comfort Auggie’s mother. When he draped a thin arm over her shoulder, she leaned away from him and said something under her breath that he clearly didn’t like, for he yanked his arm back and slumped down in his seat.
With a sullen expression, he watched the mourners approaching Auggie’s coffin, and when Meryl strode past, head held high and determined not to look at him, he narrowed his eyes and kept them trained on her as she bent down and brushed her lips over Auggie’s furry head. Then he whispered something to his mother, who scowled at him and snapped back, in a voice that carried all the way to me, “I told you, Tanner, I won’t hear anything of the sort! She’s a wonderful girl.”
The man’s face turned beet-red as Meryl whipped around, her eyes boring into him. She took a step toward him, opening her mouth hotly, but was shooed away by one of the pallbearers before she could make any kind of scene. She stormed away, glowering at him as she marched across the garden, almost bowling Garnet over on her way out.
Taking advantage of the mourners’ momentary distraction, I approached Tanner, who was now standing at the food table, glaring at a plate of finger sandwiches as though they’d personally affronted him. “I’m sorry about your brother,” I said, grabbing a plate and joining him at the table. I’d been too nervous to eat breakfast that morning, and was suddenly famished.
Tanner kept his eyes glued to the platters of food as I piled my plate with roast beef, potatoes, and a chocolate cake baked into the shape of a leopard. Someone, I noticed, had already sawed off the leopard’s head, so I helped myself to a chunk of the tail.
Just as I was taking a bite of cake, a werewolf accidentally knocked into me in his haste to get to the bowl of steak tartare, sending frosting all over my face. “Here, let me,” Tanner said, whisking a napkin off the table and dabbing at my cheek while the werewolf apologized profusely. “My brother’s friends are mostly of the wild animal variety. Occupational hazard of being a leopard shifter, I suppose.”
He watched the werewolf gorging himself on the raw ground meat with an expression of distaste while I blotted off the rest of the frosting. When I was finished, I studied Tanner out of the corner of my eye—judging by the life-size photograph of Auggie in his human form propped up beside the casket, I could tell that Auggie had inherited most of the family good looks. Whereas Auggie was dark-haired, dark-eyed, and muscular, with a killer smile and perfect teeth, his brother had a weak chin, a skinny build, and thinning hair. His eyes were his best feature—they were large, full of expression, and a stunning amber color ringed in gold.
When he turned and caught me sizing him up against Auggie’s portrait, he let out a small, mirthless laugh. “Yes, you wouldn’t be the first to wonder if we were really related.” He leaned in and lowered his voice. “I’ll let you in on a little secret. We were.”
My cheeks reddened. “Oh, that’s not what I was—”
“Save it; it’s not like I haven’t heard it before.” Tanner’s voice was clipped but not altogether unfriendly—instead, he sounded rather resigned. Then he eyed me up and down. “Who are you, anyway? I don’t recall ever seeing you around Auggie… although he had so many friends and girlfriends over the years it was sometimes hard to keep up.” His face hardened, so quick that I thought I was mistaken, before he gave me an easy smile.
“I’m Wren Winters,” I said, and then paused, waiting to see if he recognized my name, inwardly cringing as I did so. Based on how others had reacted to me during the course of this investigation so far, it seemed I was losing my anonymity faster than Pierre could devour a bucket of meatballs… so much for trying to work undercover.
But Tanner merely continued to look politely puzzled, so I added, “I didn’t know Auggie, not personally, but I’m looking into the circumstances surrounding his death.”
At that, Tanner grabbed my arm and hauled me away from the food table, ignoring my protests as my piece of cake slid off the plate and overturned on the grass, where it was immediately devoured by a nightswallow who had been watching me eagerly from a nearby branch. He dragged me across the garden and away from the mourners, not stopping until we’d reached a trellis overgrown with wild roses.
I could see Garnet trying to make her way over to me, looking frantic, but I held up my hand to stop her. My instincts were telling me that Tanner had something important to say, and he’d be a lot less likely to spill the beans with an audience.
When we were hidden from view behind the trellis, Tanner looked both ways before leaning in close and whispering, “He didn’t do it. Kellen’s got the wrong guy.”
My heart stalled. “How do you know?” I whispered back. So far, no one besides me and the housekeeping staff at the hospital seemed to think that Gerald was innocent, and if the island gossip mill could be believed, Kellen was so confident in his guilt that he put in a request with the High Court to speed up Gerald’s trial.
Well not if I had anything to do with it. The only problem was that I wasn’t any closer to finding Auggie’s killer now than when I started my investigation. But this… this seemed promising.
“I just know.” Tanner craned his neck to see over the trellis, but we were still alone.
I opened my mouth, eager to ask about a million more questions, but just then, a few of the pallbearers wandered past, barely visible through the rose bushes. Though they didn’t pay us any attention, or even seem to detect our presence, Tanner winced and shook his head. When they were out of earshot, he said, “This isn’t a good place to talk. Too many ears.”
He thought for a moment, pursing his lips. “Why don’t you meet me tonight at the Frolicking Frog? I’ll answer any questions you have, and give you a few theories of my own.”
He produced a pen from his pocket, then turned my palm over and scrawled an address across it in ink. “I’ll be there at seven-thirty, along with the usual crowd. It’ll be so loud in there that we’ll have plenty of opportunity to speak without being overheard.”
“I’ll be there,” I said, closing my fist over the address.
He gave me a swift nod before slipping back into the garden and taking a seat beside his mother, who had only just noticed his absence. I waited a few moments before following, picking a thorn off my sleeve as I wound my way through the crowd toward Garnet. She was looking anxious as she scanned the garden for me, arms crossed tightly over her chest as she gnawed on her lip.
She dropped her hands to her sides and sighed with relief when she saw me approaching. As we wal
ked together out of the garden, the pallbearers struck up an impromptu version of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” their voices lifting up into the heavens, where hopefully, somewhere, Auggie could hear them.
The Frolicking Frog turned out to be a Western-style saloon, complete with a wooden wraparound bar, mechanical riding bull, and decorative wagon wheels dangling from chains on the ceiling. The crowd was a boisterous, cheerful sort, many of them laughing and chatting over drinks or while enjoying games of darts or horseshoes, and a few of them gave me a friendly wave as I looked around.
I spotted Tanner in the corner, leaning over a pool table and aiming his cue at the eight ball, which spiraled into the pocket with perfect precision. “You owe me!” he crowed to his opponent, who dug a couple of silver coins from his pocket and flung them at Tanner good-naturedly. As I approached them, I couldn’t help noticing how relaxed Tanner looked in this setting; everything about him was different, from his confident posture to his face, which looked almost handsome in the flattering low lighting.
When he spotted me, he tossed the pool cue onto the table and waved me over. “Wren! Glad you could make it. What’ll you have?” He tapped his tankard of ale. When I indicated I would have the same, he weaved his way over to the bar and, while waiting for my drink, flirted with the pink-haired bartender, who batted her eyelashes at him and giggled at everything he said.
“Here you go,” he said a few minutes later, passing me the ale but keeping one eye on the bartender. When she saw him watching her, she blew him a kiss before turning her attention back to the other patrons.
“She sure is something, that Sally,” he said, more to himself than me, as he led me to a table at the back of the saloon. We settled into the comfortable red leather seats, and as I pulled out my notebook and pen, Tanner took a long sip of his drink.
“This seems like a great place,” I said, looking around. “Why haven’t I heard of it before?”
