A Witch Before Dying: A Wishcraft Mystery (6 page)

It was something. I could tell by her tone. I could also tell by the purse of her lips that she wasn’t going to say more about that subject, so I forged ahead. “Why did Patrice leave the Stove alone the night she went missing?”

Yvonne tucked a strand of blond hair behind her ear and fussed with her glasses as she said, “Patrice and Andreus had a big fight at dinner. I think she was finally realizing that he was only after the Anicula. She accused him of stealing it.”

Andreus went on my suspect list, too. I felt a little smug—I was getting pretty good at this investigating thing. “Stealing it? It was missing?”

“That’s what Patrice wanted us to believe.”

“But was it true?”

“I don’t know. I always suspected she accused him because she wanted him to think she didn’t have it anymore. It was a challenge. Was he with her because he liked her? Or was he using her?”

Stolen. Was it possible?

“Did she use the Anicula a lot?” I wondered aloud.

A passing cloud threw shadows across Yvonne’s face. Her eyebrows dipped, her mouth tightened. “No. Patrice used the Anicula only sparingly. On her own terms.”

Her voice was tight with anger, and I studied her carefully. There was something really important in the statement she’d made, but I didn’t know what it was. I could only feel it. Feel her anger. Feel her hurt. I shifted, uncomfortable with the weight of her emotion.

“I didn’t hear the whole of their argument,” Yvonne said. “They took it outside. Next thing I knew, Andreus came back in to pay the bill and said that Patrice had gone home.”

It was less than a five-minute walk from here to the Stove, so I felt safe in assuming that she’d made it home before something happened to her.

“Do you think Andreus had anything to do with it?” I gestured across the street.

“Honestly, I don’t know. It’s possible, I guess. He’d do just about anything to get his hand on the Anicula.” She sighed. “This is just horrible.”

“Yvonne!” someone shouted. A burly bear of a man barreled through the crowd and jogged up the sidewalk. “I came as soon as I heard the news.”

He was out of breath and starting to wheeze. Everywhere I looked on him there was hair. A wild mane on his head, a grizzly beard, tufts sticking out of the neck and cuffs of his button-down shirt. I could only imagine what his legs looked like and was somewhat grateful he was wearing pants and not shorts. He pulled Yvonne into an engulfing hug.

“It was horrible, Roger.” She was stiff in his arms, clearly uncomfortable, and soon wriggled her way out of his furry grasp.

Roger Merrick. Yvonne’s husband and Connor’s father. I could see where Connor inherited his size. Roger
was a big, big man. His eyes, a grayish green, shifted to me. Caution and wariness hardened his gaze, giving me a sudden case of the heebies.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“This is Darcy Merriweather, Roger. She’s Ve Devany’s niece. Elodie hired As You Wish to clean out Patrice’s house.” She explained how we’d found the body.

Roger snarled. His eyeteeth were long and pointed. I gathered up Missy, who had been busy sniffing the man’s leg, and wished Nick would hurry up and take my statement so I could get out of here.

“This is all his fault,” Roger growled.

His? His whose? Andreus Woodshall’s?

“For Pete’s sake,” Yvonne said, hands on hips. “Not this again.”

“You know it’s true,” he insisted.

She leveled him with a hard stare. “No, I don’t.”

“You’re not being sensible.” Beefy arms folded across his chest.

I almost laughed. Yvonne, not sensible? I’d known her for only a couple of hours, yet I knew there was no one
more
sensible.

“And you’re holding on to inappropriate jealousy,” she snapped.

Zing!
Her words hit their mark as Roger huffed, his spine stiffening in anger. His hair bristled. All of it. “Nonsense. Whatever happened to Patrice is his fault, plain and simple.”

I was desperately trying to follow along. There was a whole history here I was missing. My curiosity was killing me, and I had to know who they were referring to. “Whose fault?” I asked, sharpening my mental pencil, ready to add another suspect to my list.

Roger turned hard eyes on me and blinked as though he’d forgotten who I was.

“Whose fault?” I repeated softly.

Red-faced, he growled again. “Jonathan Wilkens, of course.”

“Jonathan Wilkens, culinary wizard from the Sorcerer’s Stove?” I asked, thinking of the tasting I had just come from. Roger had to be mistaken.

He lifted a stern wooly eyebrow. “No, I mean Jonathan Wilkens, Patrice’s killer.”

“S
ome witches have all the luck!” Harper cried when she opened the door to let me and Missy in.

The news of Patrice’s murder had obviously reached her. “I wouldn’t call the death of a woman lucky.” I brushed past her gleaming, eager eyes. Missy bounded in behind me.

It was good to be here, away from Ve’s germs (she had been sleeping when I stopped home) and away from the bad juju on Incantation Circle.

Roger’s remarks were still ringing in my head. Jonathan Wilkens a killer? I just couldn’t believe it.

As soon as he’d said so, Yvonne had taken him to task for accusing the chef with no proof. All Roger would say in his defense was, “You know his actions killed her even if he wasn’t the one behind her physical death.”

I’d tried my best to wheedle more information out of them, but they had clammed up. Not long after, Nick had sent an officer over to take my statement and release me. I’d never been happier.

Now, at the bottom of Harper’s stairwell, I listened for the click of the security door—the one that led into the alley behind the bookshop—before climbing the narrow, nondescript steps up to the open door of her new apartment. I was learning that one couldn’t be too careful, even in an enchanted little village.

Maybe
especially
in an enchanted little village.

Upstairs, Starla Sullivan and Mimi Sawyer, Nick’s daughter, were hard at work painting a wall a vibrant blue. I smiled. Harper had always been good at delegating.

Missy immediately made a dash for Mimi. Mimi dripped paint into the dog’s fur as she bent down to allow her chin to be licked to death, but neither seemed to notice. The mutual affection was obvious.

It wasn’t hard to see why. Both were completely lovable. Twelve-year-old Mimi had become like another little sister to me. (One that wasn’t nearly as annoying as my own.)

Starla, as always, looked like a thirty-year-old version of a perky cheerleader. High blond ponytail. Bright blue eyes. Open, friendly, somewhat naive face. Only a huge paint splotch on the front of her pink T-shirt detracted from her flawlessness.

Harper pushed a paintbrush into my hands. She was seven years younger than me, but I was more a mom to her than an older sister. I’d practically raised her on my own since our mom died shortly after Harper was born prematurely, both events the result of a tragic car accident. Our father, unfortunately, had sunk into a deep depression after the loss and never quite pulled himself out of it. He’d passed away last year.

I thought I’d done a fairly decent job of bringing Harper up right, but then again, I was prone to overlooking her mischievous streak, her penchant for finding trouble, and her ability to stick her nose into other people’s business.

The judgment of “fairly decent” was obviously a matter of opinion.

“Way to be a downer, Ms. Serious-Pants,” Harper said. “We’ve been waiting for the details of the crime scene. Start at the beginning. Don’t leave anything out.”

There was that phrase again. Crime scene. I kicked off my shoes and looked from face to face. Starla and Mimi were as excited as Harper. Ghouls, the lot of them.

I wasn’t sure what to say or where to start. In the past, I would have glossed over the whole situation. Tried to downplay the fact that someone had stuffed a woman into a suitcase and left her to die (as if that were possible to downplay!). But now…Harper’s enthusiasm for criminal investigations had definitely worn off on me as I started to tell them what had happened.

The painting party was forgotten as the three sank onto the sheet-covered sofa. Eyes widened—especially at the part with the hand sticking out of the suitcase.

Starla shook her head, interrupting. “Poor Elodie. That girl has been through so much in the past two years. First her mom goes missing; then she had to cancel her big wedding; now you’re saying she’s broke and has to sell her mom’s house…. And”—she let out a whooshing breath—“Patrice was inside the house all along?”

I kept an eye on Mimi, who was curled in the corner of the couch, cuddling with Missy. Were some of these details too much for her? She didn’t appear to be bothered. In fact, she looked like a younger version of Harper—intent on absorbing every little detail.

I was sitting on the floor—Harper didn’t have many furnishings yet. “Wait a sec. Elodie canceled her wedding? I’m confused. Aren’t she and Connor engaged?”

Starla waved a paint roller as she talked. “They’ve been engaged forever, since college. They were supposed to have this big fairy-tale wedding about two years ago. Elodie had hired me to do the photographs, and she gushed and gushed about how lavish the wedding was going to be. Huge guest list, the best of the best. Then it all kind of fell apart. She had a big fight with her mom. The dress shop ordered the wrong gown. Her venue closed. The caterer quit. The deejay went to jail. A few
months later, Elodie and Patrice made up and Elodie managed to set another date, but then Patrice went missing.”

“Elodie had a fight with Patrice?” I asked. “About what?”

Starla shrugged. “I’m not sure. She never said. But it was a doozy—they didn’t talk for months.”

“I can’t imagine being that mad at my mom,” Mimi said. She, I noticed, had put away her paintbrush and now held her mother’s diary. She’d been carrying it around with her everywhere lately. The cover was made of white leather, weathered with age. Mimi’s mother had died a couple of years ago, and it was through her diary that Mimi started learning about her Craft. The book was chock-full of Craft tidbits, which was both dangerous and incredibly resourceful.

Dangerous because if the book fell into the wrong hands, the spells within could be used with nefarious intent. Resourceful because Melina had been an accomplished Crafter before she forfeited her powers to marry Nick, a mortal. I hadn’t read the diary, but from what Mimi had shared with me, the book was practically a how-to on practicing the Craft.

“Unfortunately, it happens,” Starla said, sounding like she was talking from experience. “For a while Elodie kept hoping her mother would show up one day with a crazy story of where she’d been. But the days turned into weeks, into months. The big wedding was coming up and a decision had to be made. Elodie ended up canceling it, and as far as I know, it hasn’t been rescheduled.”

It sounded as if a big chunk of Elodie’s life had been on hold since her mother went missing. I couldn’t imagine living that way. Always wondering. Never knowing. It had to have been terrible.

And now…now her mother was never coming back. She would never be at her daughter’s wedding.

It was something Harper, Mimi, and I could relate to.

When I married my ex-husband, Troy, my mother’s absence had been keenly felt at my wedding, an ache that didn’t quite go away the whole day long. I tried to put myself in Elodie’s shoes as she planned her own wedding, not knowing where her mother was. I’d have postponed, too. Indefinitely.

Unfortunately, my marriage had fallen apart. Now I was thirty years old, divorced, and living with my aunt. But—and this was a big one—I’d never been happier. I loved living in the Enchanted Village. I adored Aunt Ve. And the villagers and my new friends.

I stood up and headed for the paint can. Mimi said, “How’s Aunt Ve today? Any better?”

A thread of happiness wove through me. Ve insisted that Mimi call her “Aunt Ve.” I liked how much a part of my family Nick’s daughter had become. “She didn’t look much better when I stopped in at home before coming here.”

“Wasn’t Cherise supposed to stop by today?” Harper asked.

“I thought so. I didn’t hear otherwise. Maybe she didn’t make it over?”

“I saw her going inside,” Mimi said, “when I was visiting Archie.”

Archie was our neighbor, the Elder’s majordomo, a former London theater actor, and…a macaw. He was a familiar—a Crafter spirit residing inside an animal’s form. He was also funny, conceited, and a whiz at movie trivia.

“Does it take a while for Cherise’s spell to work?” Starla asked.

“I’m not sure. I guess time will tell. I’ll check on Ve again when I get home.”

“Well,” Starla said airily, “I have some news. I met someone new.”

“Who?” Long, dark curls pulled back in a ponytail bounced as Mimi jumped up. “Is he cute?”

“The cutest.” Starla smiled. “He’s a vendor with the Roving Stones. I met him on the village green today, and he asked me out to dinner. I counter offered with meeting for coffee tomorrow morning. I mean, dinner is too personal for a first date, isn’t it?”

“Definitely a second or third date,” Harper agreed.

“Why?” Mimi asked, soaking in the conversation.

“Coffee,” Harper explained, “will give you enough time to figure out if you want to see him again. Kind of a quickie date. Dinner is a commitment. Dressing up. Lots of talking. It should be reserved for when you already like the person enough to want to get to know them better.”

Mimi nodded as if she were taking mental notes. I wasn’t sure taking them from Harper was the wisest, but I was staying out of this conversation. No need to go there tonight.

But the mention of the Roving Stones reminded me of Patrice’s boyfriend, who also was a vendor with the show. “Starla, do you know Andreus Woodshall, by any chance?”

She shuddered dramatically, making a squished-up face.

Laughing, I said, “I take that as a yes?”

“How do
you
know him?” Starla asked, her blue eyes concerned.

Harper interrupted. “Him who? Who is he?”

Mimi dipped her roller in the paint tray. “I think he’s kind of nice.”