Playing with magic, p.10
Playing with Magic, page 10
The memory of my childhood with those two was laced with bittersweet regret. We had been thick as thieves when we were younger, but with hormones and the pressures of being cool—not to mention the rough home life that Rich had been trying to avoid—we drifted apart, the way childhood friends often do. Soon I thought I was too cool to spend summers in a small town with my aunt when there was so much to do with my friends in Chicago. I regretted that too, even though my summers had been fun. Now that Eudora was gone, I wished I had spent more time learning from her.
I wished I’d known then I was a witch and spent all those summer absorbing her knowledge instead of having to do it all as an adult now.
Rich leaned over the kitchen counter, following my gaze. “What a bunch of goobers.”
“Some of them still are.” I turned and looked at him. “Where on earth did you find that?”
“Oh, your aunt gave them to me and Leo a few years ago. Thought we might like to have them. Mine was tucked in a book for a while; I found it while I was cleaning some stuff up and figured it deserved to be hung up.”
“It’s great.”
“Yeah, well, you’re great.” And while he might have meant the collective you of both me and Leo, I somehow suspected his compliment was much more direct. I blushed.
Suddenly feeling more scrutiny than I’d expected, I returned to my stool at the counter and opened the box of hand pies. Rich grabbed us two plates, and we split the pies in half so we each got to try the different flavors. The scents of crumbly sausage and tart goat cheese wafted into the air. Amy’s pastry was flaky and buttery, everything you could want in a perfect breakfast delight. She swore to me these were easy to make, but I still felt intimidated by the process. Why learn when you can just buy them from an expert?
For a few minutes Rich and I sat in a companionable silence, something I liked that we were able to do. No one felt the awkward need to say anything just for the sake of avoiding too much quiet. As he bit into the goat cheese hand pie, he let out a noise of obvious delight, and I smiled to myself for a job well done in making our breakfast choices.
Once we had finished eating, Rich put the plates in his dishwasher and grabbed one of the extra stools so he could sit across from me.
“So, let me guess, you’ve been meddling around in an investigation that has nothing to do with you again? Are you a suspect?” He propped his chin on his folded hands and grinned at me.
“One, rude. Two, how dare you? And three, what do you take me for?”
“So that’s a yes, then.”
“In fairness, I am not a suspect, and I was asked to help.”
He gave me a dubious look that said volumes. “Sure.”
“I was. Detective Martin asked if I could keep an ear open and share anything that might be useful.”
“And so you decided to come share your useful information with me and not the person who asked you for it?”
“I’m never bringing you pastry again.”
“We both know that’s not true. I’ve ensnared you with my devilish charms; you’ll never be free of me now. But seriously, you must have had a reason for wanting to tell me this first and not Patsy. I know she can be intimidating, but that’s definitely not what it is.” Rich’s teasing tone had become a bit more serious and he raised an eyebrow at me, as if challenging me to be honest with him.
“Since you asked, I think my reasoning is that I’ve been under police scrutiny for a crime before, and I don’t want to start throwing people under the bus for something if they’re already processing through their grief, you know? If Melody isn’t up to something nefarious, then I don’t think it’s fair of me to tell the detectives she is.”
“I have no idea who Melody is, so why don’t you walk me through this from the start so I have all the information I need, and then I will tell you what I think.”
I explained the book signing and all my interactions with Sebastian’s team. I walked through everything I’d seen at the B and B and my unexpected visit from Deacon, and I ended with a play-by-play of the argument I’d heard by the river only a couple hours earlier.
When I was done, Rich sat quietly for a minute. He took a long sip from his coffee while he processed everything.
“That is a lot to consider,” he declared finally.
“It’s a bit weird, right?” I had left out the weirdest part of all, which had been Honey reading the runes and telling me that Sebastian wasn’t the right victim. Rich might know I was a witch, but adding elements of the mystical to a murder investigation felt like a bit too much to load onto him.
I hadn’t forgotten, though, and I was going to have to circle back with Honey soon to see if I could find more explanation. My little magical snafu with the candles had derailed any other kind of conversation yesterday.
“If I’m thinking like a cop,” Rich said, “then Deacon is still the most obvious suspect. Everything you told me points to him being the logical one. Troubled breakup or unrequited love, a loss of his longtime job—that’s enough to set anyone off to act foolishly. He was here, you said he talked to the victim the night of the murder. If there’s sand and there’s salt water, you’ve probably got yourself a beach.”
“But then where does the whole thing with Melody fit in? We can’t overlook that. I got the vibe from Deacon that his guilt might have just been because he wasn’t able to protect Sebastian, not because he killed him. Now maybe I’m reading something into it that wasn’t there, but I also don’t want to jump to conclusions.” I shrugged helplessly, then picked up a nearby napkin, wringing it in my fingers just to give my hands something to do.
“You didn’t overhear enough of that conversation to make it sound like a confession. I agree it’s certainly weird and very suspect, but if you brought that to a DA, they’d laugh you out of their office before prosecuting.”
“That’s you looking at it like a cop. What about a PI?”
Rich grinned at me. “If you want me to look at it like a PI, you and I are going to need to go on a field trip.”
Sixteen
With a promise that Rich would come to my place that evening to pick me up for our stakeout date, I headed back down to the Earl’s Study to get my morning duties completed.
I was amazed that in the short time I’d been upstairs with Rich, the street was already bustling with activity. The tourists were obvious at first sight, their cameras out to capture the idyllic charm of our little European-inspired town, where you might find an English-inspired bookshop next to a Parisian-inspired bakery.
There were food trucks parked at the end of Main in front of Lansing Grocery, and the queue for various treats was already running up the block. I thought nine in the morning was a bit early for grilled cheese or nachos, but it was Independence Day, after all, and if there was any day you should be allowed to eat and drink whatever you want, it was July Fourth.
In a few hours Main Street would close completely to vehicle traffic, but right now cars were still able to come and go. There was a junky-looking sedan parked in front of Amy’s shop that drew my attention almost immediately. It wasn’t uncommon to see cars in rough shape in Raven Creek. Like most Pacific Northwest towns, we were no strangers to a nomadic population of new-age-philosophy and van-life folks who tended to smell like patchouli and know where all the best truck-stop showers were.
This looked different, though. It was an early-2000s Toyota with a bumper so rusty it was probably hanging on by magic more powerful than anything I could muster. But most importantly, it didn’t look like it belonged to a modern wayfarer.
Something about it prickled my interest, and I stopped to take a closer look. The back seat had a suitcase in it that was partially opened, with clothes spilling out, and a hanger dangling in front of one of the rear windows had a suit jacket on it.
In the front seat were a sea of fast-food wrappers, and . . . was that a law textbook?
The phonebook-sized tome was half covered in Burger King bags, but it was pretty apparent what I was looking at.
A yellow legal pad was sitting on the front seat, and with one quick glance I could see familiar names in messy scrawl on it. Lansing Grocery was emphatically crossed off. Under the pad was a familiar-looking flyer for Sebastian’s book-signing event.
“Can I help you?” came a voice that was pure malice. It was so unfriendly I actually gave an involuntary shudder before turning around.
The lawyer—I couldn’t recall ever learning his name—was standing barely a foot away from me with a nasty expression twisting his otherwise bland features into something more memorable.
“Just checking,” I said quickly. “The street is going to be cleared soon for the festivities; I wanted to make sure no one was planning to leave this long-term.” It wasn’t a great lie, but it was close enough to the truth that he seemed satisfied.
“I was just leaving. Do you own the block or something?” This was obviously said to be dismissive, but I had to choke back a laugh.
“Or something.”
The lawyer continued to stare at me as he rounded the car and got in the driver’s side. He was just so unnerving; I could see why he’d managed to rub Leo the wrong way immediately. There was just something instantly loathsome about the guy.
As soon as he drove off, I ducked into the Sugarplum Fairy, only to find Amy loudly banging baking trays in the back.
“Amy?”
She came out a moment later, her cheeks flushed red and what looked like a hint of tears clinging to her eyelashes.
“Whoa, are you okay?” I asked, making a beeline for the counter.
“Is he gone?” Her voice was strained.
“The lawyer? Yeah, he just drove off in possibly the ugliest car I’ve ever seen. What did he want?”
“Oh, he must have gotten it in his head that I might be an easy target for his little scheme of buying up property around town. When he found out that I rented, he was pretty quick to suggest that if his buyers had their way, my shop would be one of the first that got the boot. I know I shouldn’t have let him bother me; I know my landlord isn’t going to just sell to some corporation with deep pockets. If they were like that, they’d have done it years ago. But it just ruffled my feathers so much I couldn’t help but give him a little bit of an earful.”
She tossed a business card on the floor, and I picked it up so she wouldn’t need to deal with collecting it later. The name on the very simple card said Andrew Bachman and gave contact information but no company name.
I also knew perfectly well that her landlord wouldn’t sell to Andrew, because I was her landlord. But she didn’t know that.
The bell over the door chimed, and the massive form of Leo hulked into the shop. He smiled when he saw us, but if I wasn’t looking I might not have noticed that the smile brightened considerably more when it landed on Amy than on me.
And almost as quickly it faltered when he saw her face.
“What happened?”
Amy offered him a smile that was almost convincing and waved a hand in the air, as if dismissing his concerns would be so easy. “It’s nothing. Just that lawyer.”
Leo had a thick beard, making it hard to tell when he blushed, but I had no problem whatsoever seeing how red his face got at the mention of the lawyer.
“Where is he?” Leo snarled.
For my soft-spoken friend to get so angry, the resentment of his previous encounter with Andrew must still be fresh on his mind.
“Don’t you go doing anything rash, Leo Lansing. I’m a big girl, and I already gave him what for, okay?” She gave him a look, and I . . . was she . . . flirting? There was certainly something about their shared expressions that caught me off guard.
Amy was a little older than Leo but by no means old, and neither of them had anyone in their lives at the moment. For a while I’d thought Leo might be harboring a bit of a crush on me, and it was hard not to have a soft spot for the gentle giant. But Rich had stolen my heart, even if our courtship was moving at a snail’s pace.
Leo and Amy . . .
Or maybe I was just misunderstanding.
“If he comes back here, call me,” Leo insisted.
“He won’t come back,” Amy said. “Now that he knows I don’t own the place, he can’t bully me. Let me go get your order.”
She returned a moment later with a big sheet cake box and lifted the lid. Inside, the cake was decorated in a Fourth of July theme with red strawberries and deep-violet blueberries and a finely piped Thanks for Your Work message.
“’S for my staff,” Leo explained. “Didn’t want the bakery to have to make their own thank-you cake.” He flushed, embarrassed by his own thoughtfulness, and picked up the cake as if it weighed nothing.
I grabbed the door for him, though I was sure he could have managed. “I’ll check in with you later, okay?” I said to Amy. “And if you need anything, I’m right next door.”
“I know. Get out of here.” She seemed to have already recouped, and I suspected it was in no small part due to Leo’s appearance. I returned to the Earl’s Study, but I was still put off by the unsettling encounter with the lawyer. I tried to refocus myself but found that every time I was out in the store, I let my gaze drift to Main Street, expecting to see the return of the shoddy-looking car.
My brother, Sam, was a lawyer, so I shot him a quick text while I worked.
Can you look up another lawyer for me?
I wasn’t expecting an immediate reply—Sam frequently took days to respond to texts—but at least I’d put it out there. Maybe he could tell me if Andrew really was who he claimed to be. Something about him rankled me, and apparently everyone else in town.
Trying to boost my spirits, I set about getting everything ready for the day. Taking inspiration from the holiday, I put the usual loaves and cookies in to bake and set about prepping the day’s themed iced teas. I had made the three usual bases the day before—white, black, and green—and I was planning to turn them into red-white-and-blue-inspired teas.
I took fresh berries from the freezer, where I’d placed them two nights earlier. They’d help chill the drinks more quickly when frozen. I pulled the already chilled teas out of the fridge and immediately started to prep new batches that would steep and chill while we served these.
If we continued to sell iced tea at the rate we were this summer, I was going to need to explore different options for storing and serving it next year. As it was, we were barely keeping up with demand, which was a great problem to have but still a problem.
With the big glass jugs on the counter, I started to sort out my ingredients for each tea. The white was going to be the most obvious base for my white tea, and while I was disappointed I couldn’t actually make a clear tea to amp up the theme, I figured people would get it.
Into the white tea base, I added a homemade pineapple syrup and diced up young coconut. Almost immediately the kitchen was a piña colada–scented dream, with the two mingling scents transporting me to another country where I could dip my toes in the ocean and lounge around in the sun. I knew instantly this would be a hit.
The green tea base would be the perfect complement for our red tea, which also used a homemade syrup, this one made from dried hibiscus flowers. The rich scarlet color was eye catching, and the syrup was flavored with brown sugar, ginger, and cinnamon, giving it a unique taste that was almost autumnal, but the brightness of the floral still kept it summer appropriate.
I was obsessed with the hibiscus syrup. At home I liked to mix it with some club soda and enjoy it out on my deck. To the pitcher I also added a full container of fresh raspberries.
The last tea was the blue, which used a bergamot-forward black tea with lavender in it, accompanied by a lemon simple syrup. The final touch was fresh frozen blueberries in the jug. The end product would be a lemony delight with the sweetness from the berries keeping it from getting overly tart.
With my patriotic collection of teas ready to go, it was time to swap the baking out from the oven. The scent of fresh loaves of sourdough made my stomach rumble, even though I’d eaten a delicious breakfast with Rich. There was just something powerful about the alluring fragrance of fresh-baked bread. I knew if I was at home I would have ripped into the loaf with my bare hands before it even had the opportunity to cool.
Instead, I set the loaves aside to sit before lunch and put two trays of shortbread in. Even the uncooked dough smelled good—sugary, buttery, a little hint of sweetness from the dried strawberries.
Everything just smelled like summer in the kitchen, from the mason jar filled with fresh mint cuttings from pots on my front porch to the sunny rounds of lemon cut and waiting to go into drinks. It was nice to be so focused on the tasks in front of me. At no point did my anxiety creep in, and the only kitchen disasters were the ones my own clumsiness was responsible for.
I was just bringing the tea jugs out to the front counter when the back door of the shop opened and closed. I tensed for a moment, trying to recall if I had locked it and wondering if the person who was about to come down the hall would be friend or foe. In a sort of panic state, I held on to the heavy glass dispenser. I wasn’t sure if my intent was to throw it at the person as a weapon, but the much more logical solution would have been to put it down so I could defend myself.
Daphne appeared, her blonde curls piled up on her head in a messy bun and a sequined Old Glory shirt paired with her denim cutoffs. “Oh gosh, Phoebe, do you need help with that?”
