Bewitched, Bothered, and Biscotti: A Magical Bakery Mystery (24 page)

A booming
bwa-ha-ha
right by my ear made me jump. I turned to find a full-sized skeleton leering down
at me, its eyes flashing green. Apparently it had some kind of movement sensor that
prompted it to sound off.

“Sorry! Let’s just turn this guy off until the party tomorrow night, okay? The kids
will love him.”

I nodded. “That’s a bit too realistic, though!” I pointed to the big hairy spider,
a foot in diameter, which now hugged the wall by the bookshelf. A wide smile split
Ben’s face. Maybe Croft had been right: Men like Halloween to be a little spookier.

A scarecrow in prison stripes crowded next to my uncle behind the register, but he
didn’t seem to mind. A withered hand lay across the jars of biscotti on top of the
display case.

“It certainly does look…festive,” I said.

Lucy came out of the kitchen then. Her forehead cleared when she saw me. “I thought
I heard your voice. How are you feeling?”

“Better.”

“Really?”

I nodded. “Still have that little errand I mentioned to you yesterday. Steve’s going
with me. Then I’ll come back.”

If I’d expected her to so much as give me a suggestive look at the mention of Steve,
I’d been wrong. My aunt obviously wasn’t worried about my love life right now. But
she was still worried about me.

Nel hovered nearby.

“I’ll tell you about everything later, okay?”

Lucy inclined her head. “I’ll look forward to that. See you in a few hours, then?”

“If not before.”

Outside, I asked Steve, “You sure you didn’t tell her anything about the attack?”

“Nope. But she’s an intuitive lady, and she loves you very much. She knows something
went on. And I don’t mean between us.”

I let that drop, still unwilling to talk about what had happened between us.

Or almost happened.

 * * *

Lawrence Eastmore’s house was relatively small, but obviously old. Gray bricks made
more than a century earlier from the unique mud on the Hermitage Plantation accented
the windows. Those bricks were associated very specifically with the area but had
become quite rare and expensive. Iron filigree swooped through the railing that enclosed
the small second-story balcony overlooking the street. The top of the railing boasted
wickedly sharp spikes. Elaborate gargoyles with large ears and leering expressions
peered down from the corner downspouts, and the front door had been painted deep red.

It was the kind of architecture you’d find all over Savannah—and elsewhere in the
South, save for the unique gray brick—but I could see how it might strike Detective
Franklin Taite, self-appointed hunter of witches and their ilk, as sinister.

In fact, standing in front of the place and knowing that its owner had been murdered
made
me
think it looked a little sinister. Too bad, though, because if Greer Eastmore had
been the one who’d invaded my head the night before, I had a bone to pick with him.

“Stay in the car?” I asked Mungo, rolling the window down all the way.

He blinked his acquiescence.

With Steve on my heels, I marched up and whacked the big lion paw knocker against
the brass plate. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other as we waited. After
about a minute, Steve reached around me and tried the knocker again, this time with
a little testosterone behind it.

Nothing.

Scanning the area revealed no doorbell. It was the knocker or nothing.

“He’s not here,” Steve said. “Let’s go.”

But now that we were here, on Lawrence Eastmore’s actual property, I didn’t want to
go. Not just yet. A cool breeze brushed my cheek, caressing it with elemental fingers.
It made me think of the spirit who had recently inhabited the physical shell Declan
and I had found Saturday morning.

Only one day until Samhain. The day when the veil between the dead and the living
was the thinnest. I wondered how far away Lawrence Eastmore’s spirit really was at
that moment. I managed to stop myself before actually looking around to see if it
was nearby.

Because that was just silly. Right?

“Let’s go around to the back, see if maybe Greer is there.” I pulled at Steve’s arm.

He pulled back. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why? He wouldn’t be able to hear the knocker from back there.”

“Didn’t you tell me that Larry was struck in back of his house?”

“In the potting shed, Taite said.”

“You’re curious, aren’t you? You want to see where. Katie, that’s pretty macabre.”

“No, that’s not it at all. You really think I want to look at a murder scene? That’s
so icky.” I tipped my head to one side. “It’ll be cleaned up by now, don’t you think?
Come on.”

“I hope so, for your sake,” Steve muttered as he followed me around the corner of
the house.

Dr. Eastmore’s backyard was anything but spacious. The eight-by-eight potting shed
took up most of the far left corner of the garden. A tin roof covered the structure,
which had slatted walls open to the rest of the yard. Wisteria had twined muscular
branches through the slats, creating a charming organic enclosure. The yellow police
tape draped around it looked almost festive.

A tall, spiky hedge accented the back fence and created even more of a barrier between
the yard and the alleyway that ran behind. One of the trees teetered in a five-gallon
pot near the gap in the hedge where it was obviously meant to go. I went over and
found a large hole in the ground.

Lawrence Eastmore had been wearing old gardening clothes, and my bet was that the
dirt Declan and I had seen on them was from digging this very hole.

I took another look at the plant. Shiny, waxy leaves ended in spiked scallops. It
wasn’t the typical Christmas holly, but it was holly nonetheless.

I felt rather than heard Steve at my side. “Savannah holly,” I said, without looking
at him. Like Lawrence Eastmore’s tattoo. “Do you have one?”

“A holly tree?”

“No. A holly tattoo.”

He was silent. Then, “No. Not yet.”

Good.

“There are six of these trees,” I said, looking around. “Is that significant?”

“Probably.”

The rest of the yard was nicely landscaped, but not in any particularly creative way.
There were few flowers, only a few of the herbs used in all sorts of spell work—lavender,
sage, rosemary, rue—and no vegetables at all. Eastmore had not been a hedgewitch;
he’d been a druid. There was no real reason for him to have a potting shed if he wasn’t
much of a gardener.

But the birdbath was also a sundial—and, upon further inspection, a moondial. The
space we stood in had a magical feel to it. I approached the potting shed, and the
feeling grew stronger.

My footsteps quickened.

“Wait.” Steve strode ahead of me and stopped, blocking the entrance. “There’s nothing
here,” he said. “Nothing to see.”

“Then there’s no harm in my looking.”

“Katie.”

Gently, I elbowed him aside.

“Fine,” he said. “Don’t believe me.” He stalked back toward the house.

I put his crankiness down to nerves. Heck, I felt pretty jittery, too. But Samhain
was only a day away, and the idea that someone might summon that awful spirit or entity
or whatever it was gave me the creeps more than ever. Before, Lawrence Eastmore’s
death had been disturbingly real, and I’d felt a compelling need to see his killer
brought to justice after finding his body in Johnson Square. It had been the psychic
attack,
however, that made me truly realize the magical consequences should we fail to find
Dr. Eastmore’s murderer.

A feeling like tiny mouse claws ran across my neck.

The police barrier banned actual entrance, but it looked like Steve was right about
the innocuous potting shed. Inside, a waist-high bench ran along the back wall. An
assortment of garden tools was tucked into a vivid green pot, and larger tools hung
on the wall. Then I noticed that not all of the tools were those a typical gardener
would possess. The wicked blades of two scythes curved next to a hoe. A bundle of
peacock feathers sprouted from another pot in a festive bouquet. Pot, or cauldron?
A long staff, taller than a typical walking stick, was propped in a shadowy corner.
Pressing slightly against the yellow tape, I leaned in to take a closer look. The
gnarled surface was carved with runes and symbols I didn’t recognize at all. A long
strip of leather studded with glass beads wound around the top.

This was more than a potting shed. It was Lawrence Eastmore’s equivalent of my gazebo:
a sacred circle for spell casting, ritual, and ceremony, outside, like the druids
of old would have done.

No doubt this shed would have put a hunter of magic like Detective Taite on high alert.
He’d said Dr. Eastmore had been struck with a large pot. Not a scythe? Maybe the killer
hadn’t seen them. Or maybe the pot came easier to hand. Not very well thought out,
then. I looked at the ground, but there was no trace of the murder weapon. The police
would have taken it away, of course. But before I turned away I spied a semicircle
of smooth stones embedded in the walls. My bet was that there had been more that formed
a full circle. The police must have taken some of those, too.

The air inside the potting shed felt tainted, dark shreds of violence hanging invisible
in the atmosphere. The place needed some serious cleansing, and I didn’t mean the
soap-and-water kind.

Tentatively, I reached out with my mind, as if dipping my toe into unknown waters,
to see if I could recognize the flavor of the evil that remained within the wisteria-covered
walls. I got a brief impression of cold, something beyond mere ice. I flinched away,
then steeled myself to try again.

“Greer? Hello?”

I looked over my shoulder to see Steve leaning inside the back door of the house.
“What are you doing?” I hissed.

He turned his face toward me, but his eyes were still trained inside the house. “Tried
the door. It’s unlocked. Don’t you think he’d lock it if he went out?”

“How would I know?” I looked back into the potting shed. It would make sense to lock
the door if his father’s collection remained inside the house—unless Greer was really
home. Had he ignored our knocking? Did he know who I was? My resolve shattered, and
I whirled around. “We should go.”

But Steve was gone.

The door gaped open. From my vantage I could see the corner of some white wainscoting,
a rug inside the entry, and a pair of rubber boots. With reluctant steps, I walked
across the grass until I reached the small cement step.

“Steve?”

Another step took me close enough to touch the doorframe.

“Greer?”

The smell of burning hair curled through the air, making my eyes water.

“Steve!” I yelled.

Pushing the door open all the way, I ran inside, hands out in front of me as my pupils
struggled to adjust to the dark interior. Frantic, I passed through the small mudroom
and ran down a hallway. My pounding footsteps echoed against the wooden planks. On
the right, a cheerful modern kitchen beckoned, but when I paused and stuck my head
in, no one was there. A dark wooden door on the left opened when I twisted the knob,
revealing a richly furnished den.

Also empty.

Continuing down the hallway brought me to a bathroom appointed in brass and marble.
A part of my brain noticed, of all things, a bidet. Opposite, a stairway rose to the
second floor. It was narrower than most. Old. Beyond, a large living room sprawled,
facing the street outside. I got the impression of thick Oriental rugs, gilded frames,
and the aged patina of bulky antique furniture, but when it was obvious that no one
was in the room, I turned back.

The acrid smell increased at the bottom of the stairs.

Muttering to the archangels under my breath, and throwing in a plea to my Nonna as
well, I started up to the next level.

“Stay down there,” Steve called when I was halfway up the stairs. He appeared at the
top.

“You’re okay?” The words squeaked out of my tight throat.

“I’m fine.”

I sank to the step, my usually strong running muscles suddenly turning to jelly. “Thank
goodness.”

“Yeah, well, I think we’d better call the police.”

“Why?” I pulled myself up by the banister, glad to see that my legs could hold my
weight after all, and started up the stairs again.

“Just turn around and go back downstairs. I’ll be there in a minute.”

I stopped, hands on hips, and looked up at him with eyes still burning from that horrible
smell.

The creases in his forehead deepened. “Why are you crying?”

“I’m not crying. Can’t you smell that?” But I could tell he was oblivious.

“What?”

I sighed. “Burning hair.”

Slowly, he shook his head. He hadn’t been able to smell it the night before, either.
My stomach roiled at the thought that whatever—whoever—had attacked me had been in
this house.

Or was still in this house.

Sudden anger swept through me. So Greer Eastmore had killed his father and come after
me. The thought made my scalp positively tingle with fury.

I went up a few more steps until I reached the one right below where Steve stood.
“Is Greer here now?” I whispered. He might not have answered the door when he saw
who it was. Or he could be sleeping off the aftereffects of last night’s hostilities.

He reached out and brushed a strand of hair from my face. “I don’t think you have
to worry about Greer anymore.”

My apprehension deepened. I gripped the railing. “Why not?”

“I’m sorry, Katie. He’s dead.”

I felt my eyes go wide.
“Dead?”
Slowly, I sat down on the top step. After a few moments, Steve sat beside me and
put his arm around my shoulders.

“Is it bad?” I asked.

“I didn’t see any signs of violence, if that’s what you mean. Maybe he had a heart
attack or an aneurysm.” Steve bent forward to see my face. “But it wasn’t a heart
attack, was it?”