A Vision in Velvet: A Witchcraft Mystery (5 page)

True. As much as Oscar liked me, he
adored
food.

“Speaking of food, something smells delicious.” The aromas of rosemary, oregano, marjoram, and thyme wafted through the apartment, filling the air with the delectable scents of herb-encrusted roasting chicken.

“It’ll be ready in half an hour. Join us for dinner?”

“Twist my arm,” said Sailor as we headed toward the kitchen.

I had been deliberating on something since shortly after finding poor Sebastian. I had tried playing by the rules, but it hadn’t gotten me very far. Given how often I seemed to land in the middle of homicide investigations, I was beginning to realize I should get comfortable playing by what Graciela used to call “witches’
rules.” We weren’t out to hurt anybody, but sometimes we needed to color outside the lines. And it was all much easier with an accomplice.

“Super. And after dinner . . . I need a favor.”

“Uh-oh. Why do I think this favor doesn’t have anything to do with us rolling around in bed?”

I felt my cheeks burn. According to folklore, witches
can’t blush. So either I wasn’t one hundred percent witch, or the folklore was wrong, which was often the case. History and customs were easily muddled over time, given the very human tendency for exaggeration and misinterpretation.

“Let me pour you a drink.”

“Now I’m really worried,” he said, but he followed me into the kitchen and leaned against the tile counter while I poured a shot of amber tequila into a handblown shot glass.

“A man was found dead this afternoon . . .” I said, as I began to butter and flour the cake pans.

“You killed him?”

I gasped.
“What?”

“You need help disposing of the body?” offered Oscar from his cubby over the refrigerator.

“My
stars
, why would you say something like that? What is
with
you two?”

Sailor shrugged. “I’m just saying, if you did kill somebody, you probably had cause. A demon of some sort?”

“No,”
I said. I glanced at Oscar, who was looking at me with interest but mimicking Sailor’s shrug. These two seemed to have faith that if I had done such a thing, it was justified. Or else they just didn’t care that much. Then again, Sailor and Oscar adhered to a different sort of moral code from a lot of folks. Perhaps that’s why they hung around the likes of me. It was enough to make a witch worry.

“If it’s not a dead body . . . does this have to do with the cape?” asked Oscar.

“Oscar, I thought we agreed we weren’t going to mention that to people,” I reminded him.

“Sailor’s not people.”

“Sailor’s curious,” Sailor said. “What cape?”

“Um . . . yes. So, earlier today I purchased an old trunk full of clothes from an antiques dealer named Sebastian
Crowley. And later in the day he was found dead under an oak tree in Golden Gate Park.”

“I don’t get why you bought worthless clothes from the likes of that guy,” grumped Oscar, “stuff he prob’ly stole anyway, and then you don’t like my present.”

“Why do I have the feeling I missed something?” Sailor said.

“I do appreciate your present, I just can’t use it,” I said to Oscar, then turned to Sailor. “Oscar gave me a present today. A collection of designer clothing labels.”

“That sounds . . . imaginative. Why labels?”

“Mistress can sew them into the clothes and ratchet up her prices! It’s genius!” Oscar said.

“It’s fraud,” I insisted.

Sailor nodded thoughtfully. “Not a bad idea.”

“What?”
I said. “Are you saying you endorse an act of fraud?”

He grinned, as if to say “gotcha,” and Oscar cackled.

I glared at the two of them. “As I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted, a man died in Golden Gate Park today, not long after I bought a trunk from him.”

“I hope we get to the good part soon,” Sailor said in a dry tone that reminded me of how sardonic he’d been when I first met him . . . and how it used to put me off. No longer.

Oscar nodded in agreement.

“Y’all are awful—you know that?” I said. “A man
died
today. Think about his poor family.”

“Didn’t have no family,” said Oscar.

“What? How do you know?”

“Sebastian Crowley, right? Didn’t have family. No great loss to the world, just sayin’.”

“You knew him?”

Oscar smiled, which always looked like a grimace. “You’re kiddin’ me, right?”

“Crowley was the go-to guy for a certain kind of
antique, if you catch my drift,” Sailor explained. “His business practices were . . . shady, to be kind. Why’d you buy a trunk from him? That’s inviting trouble. Is it still here? Have you cast an extra protection spell?”

“The police took it this afternoon, in case it could tell them anything related to the murder.” I stared back and forth between Sailor and my familiar. “So you’re saying Sebastian was a practitioner of some kind? Why don’t I know about this? I’ll bet
Aidan
knows about this.”

Aidan Rhodes was the local witchy godfather of sorts, a powerful practitioner who knew everyone and everything magical in the Bay Area. He had also been Oscar’s master until gifting the critter to me. Aidan and I had worked together in the past, but I trusted him about as far as I could throw him. Aidan always had something up his enchanted sleeve. Still, to be fair, he had probably saved my life on more than one occasion.

“You’re on a, whaddayacallit? A need-to-know basis. Like in the top-secret military. Like James Bond.
Dun de de DUN de de duh . . .
”
Oscar started humming the theme from the James Bond franchise, and I feared an 007 marathon was in my immediate future.

My familiar had been catching up on popular culture lately, giving me the distinct impression I wasn’t keeping him busy enough. When he wasn’t hanging out in Aunt Cora’s Closet, trying to spy on women in the changing room or being petted by the customers and cradled by Bronwyn, he spent a lot of time watching DVDs or reading mysteries and eating bonbons at home. Not that he complained; it was a tough job, Oscar was fond of saying, but
somebody
had to do it. Still . . . as my mother used to say: “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.”

Of course, in my case she had meant it quite literally.

“Anyway, maybe Sebastian Crowley wasn’t a great guy, but murder is wrong, no matter who the victim is,” I
said. “Besides, among other things, it means there’s a murderer out on the streets running loose.”

“You know what I’m really not enjoying about this conversation?” said Sailor. “Other than the obvious, which I’ve already mentioned. What I’m not enjoying is that your next observation will be that
you
, somehow, are the one who will have to track down this murderer.”

“There’s more,” I said.

“Imagine my shock,” Sailor said. “The cape, I presume.”

“The cape,” Oscar echoed.

“The cape was in the trunk. When I put it on . . . It’s hard to explain, but it was as though I had been transported to another time and place. Not a particularly welcoming time and place.”

“Where is this cape?” Sailor asked. “Let me see if I can sense anything from it.”

I brought the basket to Sailor, took off the black silk cloth, and set it before him.

He pressed his lips together, his eyes half-closed, in an expression of displeasure I knew only too well. Since we’d gotten together, I saw it less frequently—in fact, he even laughed from time to time. But now I saw the old Sailor, the supremely dissatisfied, scornful man for whom I had fallen head over heels.

Sailor said nothing, but took the gold velvet garment out of the basket and held it to his chest. His eyelids fluttered closed and he breathed deeply, then stood stock-still. Oscar and I watched and waited in silence.

Finally, he let the cloak fall into the basket and shook his head.

“Nothing?” I asked.

“No. But that’s not unusual for me with textiles. And . . . as you know, lately things just haven’t been the same.”

When I first met Sailor, he was a powerful psychic. Unhappy, grumpy as all get-out, but extremely sensitive to vibrations and even able to communicate to the world beyond the veil. But ever since he’d had a falling-out with Aidan, his old “boss,” things had changed. He was still intuitive, but something was blocking his psychic abilities. Either that, or Aidan’s patronage had given Sailor an extra boost that evaporated when they split. It was unclear what was going on, but it was plain to see that Sailor was frustrated—even embarrassed—by it. After years of not wanting his psychic abilities, he had realized they were an important part of him.

Sailor and Oscar shared a look; then Sailor let out a loud breath.

“Okay, you see a vision of something nasty when you put on this cape. So maybe it once belonged to someone in a violent or threatening situation. That could leave an energy trace—perhaps enough of a mark that someone like you can feel it. Big deal. You often get sensations from clothing, don’t you? I mean, that’s the whole thing with Aunt Cora’s Closet.”

“Yes, but this is different. It isn’t just sensations or vibrations; when I put the cloak on, I felt transported somewhere, somewhere from the past. So finding Sebastian Crowley dead at the base of an oak tree right afterward, well, that seems like quite a coincidence. Maybe someone was after this cloak? And on top of everything else, the police seemed suspicious of Conrad.”

“Conrad? He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“That’s what
I
said. But he was the first on the scene, with blood on his hands. And he told the police that he always slept there, and . . . I haven’t seen him the rest of the afternoon. I’m afraid they’ve been interviewing him.”

Our eyes caught and held for a moment.

“So let me guess,” said Sailor with an exasperated sigh.
“Now you want to track down the source of this cape and try to figure out its connection with the oak tree.”

“And here I thought you couldn’t read my mind,” I said, trying my best to be coquettish.

Sailor poured himself another shot of tequila and raised it in salute to Oscar. “One thing I can say for your mistress, Oscar. She’s as mad as a hatter.”

“Ain’t she just?” said my familiar, pride in his voice.

“One of these days you’re going to have to explain how I go from looking for a drink and a kiss at your place, to breaking into an antiques store,” Sailor whispered as he used a slim bit of metal to defeat the ancient lock on Sebastian Crowley’s shop. “Especially one that’s still a crime scene.”

“Well, for one thing, you were looking for more than a kiss. I can tell you that much.”

He grunted softly and tilted his head closer to the locking mechanism, as though he was listening for something. Latex gloves covered his long, graceful fingers.

The narrow alley at Balance and Gold Streets was illuminated only by the milky glow of a streetlamp. After a warm day, thick fog had settled like a blanket over the city, giving the air a damp, heavy feel. A dripping sound overhead echoed in the silence, and though I knew it was my imagination, I could have sworn the old brick buildings on either side were leaning in toward us.

“This might not be the best time for this discussion,” Sailor continued, “but I’m worried about the direction our relationship is taking. Seems to me I find myself
helping you commit felonies—especially of the breaking-and-entering variety—more often than I’d like.”

“Hey, I cooked you dinner. Doesn’t that count for something? And I’m a witch, not a spirit. I can’t walk through walls. So when it comes to breaking in, I have to rely on entirely normal, everyday methods. . . .”

“Like talking your boyfriend into helping you.”

“Right.” I felt a little thrill run through me at his use of that word. “Um . . . You’re my boyfriend?”

“I certainly hope so. Otherwise I’d be hard-pressed to explain what I’m doing here.”

I leaned down and gave him a quick kiss on his forehead, feeling like a lady rewarding her knight.

“Trying to distract me?”

I laughed softly. “I really do appreciate this, Sailor. If not for you, it would just be me and my Hand of Glory here in the alley in the middle of the night. Even
I
would find that scenario a little creepy.”

“At some point we should talk about how you run around town with no thought to your own safety. You—”

He stopped speaking as the locking mechanism clicked, and he pushed the door open. With a triumphant bow, he gestured that I should go on in.

The shop was musty and crowded, just as it had been when I was here earlier in the day. But now there were signs of a struggle: shards of glass and ceramics littered the floor, a grandfather clock had been knocked on its side, and a stained-glass lampshade was split into several colorful pieces. The register sat open, empty of any paper money. It had all the markings of a simple robbery gone bad . . . except for the fact that Crowley had been killed under an oak tree clear across town in Golden Gate Park.

“What are we looking for?” Sailor asked in a low voice. He remained near the front of the store, keeping an eye out for passersby through the plate-glass display window.

“Anything, really . . . Something that might give us a clue as to what’s going on. Also, I want to see if I can unearth the name and address of whoever sold him that trunk. Sebastian mentioned it was a woman—”

“That narrows it down.”

I ignored him. “She was the niece of an old man and sold him a number of other items from the man’s estate. You and Oscar mentioned that Sebastian kept careful records.”

“Records of who owed what, mostly.” Sailor raised his eyebrows and cast a glance around the disorganized store. “This guy mostly laundered money for criminals. I’m not sure he ever actually
sold
anything.”

“He sold something to me.”

“Other than a worthless trunk full of worthless clothes and one possibly disastrous cape to you. Ever occur to you that this was no accident of retail?”

I bit my lip as I riffled, as carefully as I could, through the papers atop Sebastian’s crowded desk. It was such a mess I couldn’t imagine my search would disturb much of anything. There were stacks of unpaid bills and articles ripped out of newspapers, receipts, catalogs, and advertising circulars. Nothing that seemed significant. In the drawers were old index cards, a mélange of dried-up pens and stubby pencils, and a half-empty plastic bottle of Old Crow bourbon.

Frustrated, I sat back in the desk chair and blew out a loud breath. Where would someone like Sebastian have kept a telltale ledger? Probably not here at his desk, which would be the first place a person would look. His shop was such a jumble, it could be anywhere.

Like most antiques stores, Sebastian’s was jammed with bureaus, standing lamps, old oil paintings and baroque frames, and hundreds of decorative tchotchkes. There was a sculpture of the goddess Diana, a couple of marble pillars topped with busts, and a pair of stone
wings that looked like they had fallen off a statue. Any of a hundred drawers could be hiding a ledger, unless . . . On the other side of the shop, I noticed several leather-bound books atop a walnut rolltop desk sitting up against the side wall.

Could the ledger be hiding in plain sight?

I crossed the shop and took the books down one by one: a volume of poems by Robert Louis Stevenson,
L’Étranger
in the original French by Albert Camus, Dickens’s
A Tale of Two Cities,
and a few other novels I wasn’t familiar with. And among them, one unmarked leather-bound ledger, full of long columns, like an old-fashioned accountant’s book.

Full of handwritten names and dollar figures and a series of symbols I didn’t recognize.

Sailor was looking over my shoulder, his face angry. “Worse than I thought. I knew this guy was bad news, but this . . . ?”

“What is it, exactly?”

“It’s a score book. He was keeping track of magical folk, what they owed. Not only in dollars, if you know what I mean.”

“For whom?”

“Can’t say for sure. But if I were a betting man, my money would be on your buddy Aidan.”

My heart sank. I was never sure what to think of Aidan. Part of me was grateful to him for what he’d done for me—and my father—but I knew he used his magic to manipulate others and gain power. That was not only ethically questionable; it was dangerous in a man as magically powerful as he.

“So you think the trunk was part of a payment of some sort?”

“Maybe.”

“Then why sell it to me for sixty bucks?”

“You paid
sixty bucks
for an old trunk full of
worthless clothes? Remind me to show you some andirons I’ve been hauling around.”

I smiled. “Carlos said the same thing.”

“First Aidan, now Carlos. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: You have terrible taste in men.”

“Don’t I, though?”

“Do I have to tell you what I think about you palling around with a homicide inspector?”

“If you’d give him a chance, I think you’d see he’s a really good guy.”

“
He’s
the one who won’t give
me
a chance,” said Sailor. “And one of these days—mark my words—he’s going to catch you at something. Whether he likes you or not, you know as well as I do that he won’t hold off on applying the law just for you.”

“Anyway, going back to what we were talking about . . . I bought the trunk because I felt something powerful within it. Vibrations that ran through me as soon as the lid opened.”

“The cloak?”

I nodded. “Also . . . I don’t know, I sort of felt bad for Sebastian. He didn’t seem like he did much business here.”

Sailor let out a bark of a laugh. “You are something else; you know that? Let’s get out of here. Take the book, and we’ll look through it more carefully at your place.”

“I think this latest sale, from Bartholomew Woolsey, might be the man we’re looking for,” I said as my index finger lay on the top line. “See; it indicates he bought a trunk for twenty dollars, right here.”

“Okay.”

“Let’s go find Mr. Woolsey.”

“No.”

“What do you mean,
no
? You’re my partner in crime, remember?”

“Yes, ‘partner.’ I know that only too well.” He checked
his watch. “But it’s after eleven. If this mystery man is some kind of magical predator, you’ll need to go in prepared. If he’s just some schmuck who found himself with a trunk of worthless old clothes and a magical cape that he didn’t recognize, then you’ll wake him up and scare the hell out of him.”

“Then what do you suggest?”

“Crowley told you the old man—”

“Woolsey.”

“Okay, Woolsey, presuming you’re correct about the records. Crowley told you Woolsey needed money, right? Contact him tomorrow morning. Pretend you’re in the market for junk, and say you heard he’s got stuff for sale. Act like a pushy vintage dealer. You know,” he said with a shrug. “Just be yourself.”

“Not a bad idea.”

“Thank you. You know what else isn’t a bad idea? Bed.”

* * *

I meant to study the ledger when I got back home, but Sailor distracted me. I woke early and started to pore over it with my morning coffee, but then Sailor woke up and distracted me some more.

Hell’s bells,
having a sexy man in her bed wreaks havoc on a witch’s concentration.

But as soon as the hour was decent, I called the phone number listed beside Bartholomew Woolsey’s name. Among other things, I wanted to talk to him before the police did. If this had anything to do with Sebastian’s death, I would have to share the information with the police.

A young woman answered, then passed the phone to her uncle. Bartholomew Woolsey sounded elderly and genial but a bit vague, and I sure didn’t pick up on any kind of “magical predator” vibe, as Sailor had put it. Still, my powers of perception are compromised over phone lines.

I could hear the young woman coaching her uncle to
say “yes” to my offer to buy some clothes. They bickered. Finally, she took the phone back.

“I’m Bart’s niece, Hannah,” she said. I wondered whether this was the “sweet young thing” Sebastian was sure had taken advantage of him. “Yes, definitely you should come by. Bart’s got a whole closetful of old clothes you could look through. How about eleven o’clock?”

“That’s perfect, thanks.”

At nine thirty I went downstairs and prepared to open Aunt Cora’s Closet as I always do: by sprinkling saltwater widdershins, or counterclockwise, then smudging with a sage bundle doesil, or clockwise. I said an extra chant of cleansing, just in case the trunk—or the cape—had left behind any trace of bad juju. Then I lit a white candle on the glass counter by the register, flipped the sign to
OPEN
, and was pleased to see that Conrad was already sitting on the curb outside the store.

I asked him to wait, then ran upstairs to make a fried egg sandwich, wrapped it in a paper towel, poured a glass of orange juice, and joined him on the curb while he ate.

“How are you doing?” I asked.

“Dude,” he answered.

“Did the police, um . . . did they keep you overnight?”

He nodded and dug into the sandwich.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “But they released you, so they must be satisfied?”

He shrugged, then spoke with his mouth full. “Didn’t sleep at all last night. Can’t even sleep at the tree anymore; cops have it cordoned off. Wouldn’t want to anyway, after . . . I can’t believe what happened to that poor dude.”

I nodded.
Dude
.

“Conrad, did the police say anything about you being a suspect?”

He shrugged and continued eating. I feared if I
wanted more information, I was going to have to get it from the source: Inspector Romero.

Bronwyn arrived just before ten, accompanied by her friend Duke, a retired fisherman. I was glad to see him; not only did he make Bronwyn glow more than I’d ever seen her—and she’d been happy
before
—but I’d also noticed that having a man in the store, especially one of a certain age, seemed to encourage other males to enter what was more typically seen to be the haven of young women. Besides . . . given what had happened, the more people around, the better.

At ten thirty I told Bronwyn I was headed out for an appointment, which she took in stride. I was spending less time than ever at the shop, which didn’t make me particularly happy, though I did enjoy the search. The hunt for really cool clothes never stopped. If it wasn’t estate sales and auctions, it was garage sales and thrift stores, or soliciting older folks in their homes and helping them to clean out their attics, basements, and closets.

I hoped today’s visit with Bartholomew Woolsey was as simple as my typical visit to an elderly man with a closet full of old clothes. Probably, he had no idea he had been in possession of a cape with such . . . interesting vibrations.

Probably.

In case I was wrong, I prepared several amulets and packed up the ingredients for protection spells. I carried a jar of brew in my satchel with which I could hastily draw a magical circle, if needed. Just in case Bartholomew Woolsey was
not
just a hapless guy unaware of the contents of his historic trunk.

Maya came along to help with the clothes; she had a way with seniors, and made a point of collecting their stories and writing down their oral histories. I tried to talk Sailor out of accompanying us, but there was no way he was going to stay behind. I decided that on the off
chance that Woolsey really was bad news, it would be helpful to have Sailor along so I was sure I wasn’t putting Maya in danger.

Woolsey’s address was an apartment in a surprisingly graceful historic building on Broadway in Pacific Heights. A doorman let us in, called ahead, then ushered us into the elevator and pushed the button for the fourth floor.

As we
wooshed
up, Maya looked at me, eyebrows raised. “I thought you said he was desperate for cash.”

“That’s what I was told. Who knows? Maybe he’s . . .” I shrugged. “Maybe he owns his apartment but can’t make the condo fees?”

The hallway to Woolsey’s apartment featured crown molding, muted taupe carpet, and what appeared to be original, handblown amber sconces. It smelled like scented candles and cleanliness. It was hard to believe anyone who lived here was selling off possessions for cash.

A woman about my age answered our knock on the door. She was attractive, tall and strong-looking, wearing athletic clothes: orange Lycra shorts and a bright blue stretch tank. Could this be the woman Sebastian had referred to as a “pretty little thing”?