Magickal Mystery Lore Read online

  “I’m happy to oblige,” I said. “Let me know if you need any help finding what you want.”

  “Thanks, but I know this shop like the back of my hand.” She slipped one of our wicker shopping baskets over her arm and disappeared down the first aisle still talking. “I never thought about it before, but that’s a weird expression.” Her words carried back to me loud and clear. There wasn’t a lot of Excuse me? or What was that? when you were dealing with Lenore. I’d seen people turn off their hearing aids when they saw her coming.

  She returned to the counter ten minutes later with her basket filled to the brim.

  “You have enough here to last you an entire year,” I said, ringing up her order.

  “Trust me, I’ll be back in six months, the latest,” she said with a booming laugh that woke Sashkatu, despite the fact that he was growing deaf. He opened his eyes, homed in on the source of the disturbance, and yowled at her. “Sorry, sorry. I forgot how much he hates idle chatter.” In all the years she’d been coming to my shop, she’d never figured out that it wasn’t the chatter he minded, but the decibel of it.

  After Lenore left, a steady stream of customers kept me busy until closing time. I was about to lock up when Lolly flew in the door, breathing hard, her face blanched a scary shade of white. “Kailyn, please,” she said, her voice shaking badly, “would you—I mean, I need you—to please come with me.”

  “Of course. What happened? Are you okay?” Ignoring my questions, she grabbed my hand and pulled me out the door. By the time we crossed the street to her shop, she was bent over, gasping for air. She gave herself twenty seconds before leading me into her shop with its lingering scent of chocolate, and then out again through the backdoor to the small yard of weeds and dirt where she kept her garbage cans. A bag of garbage lay beside the cans. And a woman was sprawled face down in the space that remained, with one of Lolly’s fudge knives protruding from the left side of her back.

  Chapter 2

  I brought Lolly inside, because standing out there staring at Ava wasn’t doing either of them any good. Lolly was shaking and swaying back and forth. She needed to sit down before she fell over. She was as white as Ava, her hands probably as cold, though I had no desire to test that theory. In any case, it would have compromised the crime scene. I brought her into the workroom and opened one of the folding chairs she kept there for resting between batches of candy. I offered her water, but she refused it. In times of deep distress, I’ve never craved water, or any beverage, not even Tilly’s calming tea. I don’t know who decided it was the thing to give a person in a traumatic situation.

  A moment later, she sat up straight and clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh—good heavens. Kailyn, my brain must be scrambled. I have to call my family!” She started to push herself up with the arm rests. I could see the flimsy chair collapsing under the pressure and dumping her onto the floor. That was the last thing she needed.

  “Stay there, please stay there. I’ll get you the phone.” She had a landline in the candy room. I’d seen it on previous, and much more pleasant, visits. I found it perched beside the sink and brought her the handset. She spent a minute dithering over which of her children to call and decided on Bonnie. I remembered Lolly describing her as the most level-headed of her children. Bonnie’s exclamation of surprise and horror was loud enough for me to hear. Some news comes as a shock no matter how level-headed you were. Murder was definitely on that list. The victim’s body in your mother’s yard made it a top five contender.

  “Okay,” Lolly said, handing back the phone and breathing a little easier. “She’ll get in touch with everyone else. She’s my own little take charge, you-can-count-on-me Paul Revere. Always has been.”

  Paul Curtis made it to Lolly’s in less than five minutes, well ahead of Detective Duggan. He’d been the officer on duty at the New Camel substation when I called 911. I led him past the display cases in the front of her shop and into the workroom. Before going out to the yard, Paul stopped and laid a reassuring hand on Lolly’s shoulder. It probably didn’t fit police protocol to show compassion for a potential suspect, and I was pretty sure he wouldn’t have done it in front of Duggan.

  When the forensic team arrived, Paul showed them to the crime scene and left them to their work. He asked Lolly if she was doing all right or if she felt the need to call her doctor. Paul had known her all his life, same as me, and it had to be difficult to think of her as a murder suspect.

  “No thank you,” Lolly murmured. “I’ll be okay. It’s just the shock of it.”

  Paul looked at me and shook his head as if to say poor Lolly. I nodded in agreement. Since it wouldn’t be appropriate to make small talk under the circumstances, we tried not to look at each other. Paul wandered into the front of the shop, peered outside, then circled back to the workroom, clearly at odds over what to do until the detective showed up.

  He must have done five laps before coming to a stop and asking Lolly if he could use the second folding chair. She didn’t seem to have heard him, so I gave him the go-ahead. He set it up a few feet from her and sat down. “I don’t have an exact ETA on detective Duggan,” he said looking from me to Lolly and back again, “but I’m going to start the interview.” He seemed to be waiting for our reactions. Lolly was off in another world. I shrugged. It sounded like a good idea as long as Duggan didn’t start the interview over when he showed up. I had a strong suspicion he might, unless he’d mellowed a lot since the last time we butted heads, back in November.

  “Lolly?” No reaction. “Lolly?” Paul raised his voice. She came out of her trance, looking around like someone who’s been fast asleep and isn’t quite sure where she is. “I’d like you to take me through the hour or so before you discovered Ava Duncan’s body in your yard.”

  “Oh, okay,” she said, sitting up straighter in the chair. “I had a booth at the fair like always. I left there—let’s see—must have been around four thirty. I packed up the leftover candy and other supplies and drove back here.”

  Paul was jotting down notes on a little pad as she spoke. “Would you say you got back here five forty-five or so?”

  “That sounds right. I put everything away, tied up the garbage from the morning and took it out to the cans in the back. That’s when I almost stumbled over Ava’s body.” Tears sprang up in her eyes. “Such a terrible thing.”

  “About five o’clock?” he prompted.

  She nodded, wiping away the tears with the back of her hand.

  “What did you do immediately after you found her?”

  “I dropped the bag on the ground and I ran over to Kailyn’s shop.”

  “Why didn’t you call nine-one-one?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Get Kailyn is what popped into my head.”

  “When she ran into my shop, she was scared out of her mind,” I said.

  Paul cleared his throat. “I have to ask you not to intervene on her behalf. It taints her answers. By rights I should have asked you to stay in the other room.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll go wait there.” The last thing I wanted was to make things worse for Lolly. I was looking out the front window when Detective Duggan finally arrived. He had to elbow his way through the growing crowd just to reach the front door of Lolly’s shop. From what I could see, it was a crowd composed mostly of her extended family. With few exceptions, they all still lived in and around New Camel and were as closely knit as a family could be without being conjoined at the hip. Her four children were there with their spouses and their kids—Lolly’s sixteen beloved grandchildren. There was also a contingent of Lolly’s siblings, their spouses and kids with more family members joining the throng as the alert went out by phone, text and Facebook messaging.

  Although Paul had immediately cordoned off the property with yellow police tape, it hadn’t held up to the antics of the younger cousins who treated the unexpected reunion as a dandy place to play th
eir own version of cops and bad guys. The parents, who were usually on top of their offsprings’ behavior, were too distraught over Lolly’s situation to keep after them, and the kids knew it.

  Duggan marched into the shop with a grim expression hardened on his face like cement. He whipped past me and headed into the rear of the shop, muttering, “Figures you’d be involved.” If the comment was intended to make me scurry away, he still didn’t have a clue about me. I followed in his wake and watched him stride out the back door, letting it slam closed behind him. He didn’t say a word to Lolly or Paul, who was already on his feet. It was hard to know if Duggan was angry at the world for dumping another murder in his lap, or angry with the circumstances that had prevented him from getting there sooner. It was likely a combination of the two topped off by the bonus of finding me at the scene.

  I went to stand beside Lolly. From there I could see Duggan and the two-man forensic team sidling past each other as if they were at a square dance and the caller had yelled do-si-do. Ava was sprawled across most of the tiny yard, but she wasn’t up to moving out of anyone’s way. Duggan studied her, making a circuit of her body as best he could. He conferred briefly with the other men before taking a shortcut to the door by stepping over her. There had to be a superstition about doing that, but it didn’t come to mind. Although we Wildes didn’t believe in superstitions, we may have been responsible for starting a few of them over the years.

  To Duggan’s credit, he must have assessed Lolly’s condition well enough to realize that hauling her down to the police station could be the tipping point, making an emergency room visit necessary. He told Paul to take me into the front of the shop. I’d been through this enough to know that he wanted to question us separately to see if our stories matched. I didn’t know if Paul would admit to letting me stay in the room earlier. If he were smart, he wouldn’t.

  When Paul showed Duggan his notes from that brief interview, the detective didn’t brush them aside. He read them, nodded and said, “Thanks, I’ll take it from here.” There’d clearly been a shift in their relationship during the months they’d been off my radar. You go Paul, I cheered silently. I just wished Duggan would lose the drill sergeant persona and treat Lolly with the deference due to someone who’d reached her golden years as a model citizen, with the exception of one speeding ticket when she was rushing to the hospital to meet her first grandchild.

  There wasn’t much distance from the front door to the back door of Lolly’s shop. Even though the retail space was separated from the workroom by a wall, that wall had an open archway on one end connecting the rooms and making it easier for Lolly to carry the candy trays back and forth. Given these inadequacies, Duggan lowered his voice to a raspy whisper. I was still able to make out some of what he was saying to Lolly, until Paul started talking to me.

  “Six good months—I thought maybe all the killing around here had finally stopped, and then your call came in. Hey—sorry—that didn’t come out right,” he said, stumbling over his words. “I… I didn’t mean to suggest it was your fault or anything.” He was still awkward talking to me. I felt bad, but I had no idea what I could do about it. Maybe if he had a girlfriend, he’d get over his crush on me. It wasn’t as if we’d ever had a relationship—except maybe in his mind.

  “No problem—I didn’t think that,” I said, partly to relieve his mind and partly to make him stop talking so I could hear what was going on in the workroom.

  Paul went over to the window and peered outside. “That’s quite a crowd out there.” He seemed determined to keep up the chatter. I went behind the counter and plucked a milk chocolate turtle and a chewy caramel from the trays. He seemed delighted to accept them. With any luck they would keep his mouth busy for a little while and let me hear what was happening in the other room.

  “Was there any trouble between you and Ava?” Duggan was asking. Lolly must have shaken her head, because he went on to another question. “There are two ways into your yard. Through a padlocked gate, which wasn’t tampered with, and through your shop, but your security system wasn’t tripped. Can you explain how the body wound up back there?”

  “No,” Lolly replied, her voice as thin and breathless as a little girl’s. I should have told her to insist on having an attorney present. A lot of help I was.

  “That’s good stuff,” Paul said, licking chocolate off his finger. “But I ought to pay for it.” He reached into his pocket, found five dollars, and set it on the counter. “Would you let Lolly know that’s from me?” I promised I would. A few more minutes elapsed before Duggan called me back there. He already had Lolly’s answers; it didn’t matter if she sat in on my interview. Paul went with me and leaned against the marble island where the candy magic happened.

  With Lolly still seated, there was only one empty chair. Duggan told me to sit down. It would have been nice to think that he was being gracious, but I knew better. He wanted the high ground, the position of power. He asked me the same things I’d overheard him ask Lolly. No, I didn’t know of any problem between Lolly and the deceased. I didn’t know about Ava’s death until Lolly told me. I didn’t hide evidence or change the location or position of the body. Yes, I called 911 before I called anyone else.

  “Why do you think Lorelei ran to you before calling the police?” he asked. For a moment, I had trouble connecting Lolly with her given name. Like most people in town, I’d never known her as anything but Lolly.

  “I don’t know for sure, but I guess when she found Ava it was such a shock that she kind of blanked. I was just across the street, so she ran to me for help.”

  “Why didn’t she go to Tilly?”

  I explained that my aunt was closed for the day, but that I’d opened my shop for a couple of hours. Duggan questioned me for several more minutes about my ties to Lolly, how much I knew about her life apart from her work, which wasn’t much beyond her family’s activities, and how well I knew Ava. The answer to that one was barely. She’d visited my shop a few times. Duggan closed his notepad and tucked it back in his shirt pocket. It was now or never if I wanted to ask him the question that had been nagging at me since he walked in the door. “Should Lolly be retaining a lawyer?”

  “It wouldn’t be a bad idea,” he said flat out, no probably, no maybe, to soften the blow.

  Lolly recoiled in her chair as if his words had a physical impact on her. Although I’d asked the question, I wasn’t prepared for such a blunt answer either. What had I expected him to say? No, of course not. We all know Lolly couldn’t possibly have harmed anyone. We’ll get it straightened out in no time. “What happens next?”

  “Given her extensive family ties here, her age, and her health, I’m not taking her into custody at this time.” He turned to address Lolly directly. “Don’t leave town, or I will find you and throw you in jail so fast it will make your head spin.”

  I went to Lolly and took her hand. “She’s not going anywhere, Detective. There’s no need for threats. She’s not some hoodlum.” I knew I’d overstepped my bounds about a second too late. Paul winced in anticipation of the detective’s wrath.

  Duggan squinted at me with one eye as if he were taking aim with a weapon. “You looking to warm up that cell for her, Ms. Wilde? You’re lucky I understand that you’re just trying to protect your friend. Oh—one more thing,” he added on his way out of the workroom. “I’ll be conducting a search of your house, Lorelei. So your house and this shop are off limits until further notice.”

  Paul raised his hand to us in what looked like a half-hearted wave, but was probably just meant to be discreet and escape Duggan’s attention. I helped Lolly out of her chair and walked her to the front of the shop. I gave her the five dollars Paul had left for her, which seemed ridiculously petty when words like murder and prison were being bandied about, but I’d made a promise.

  When we walked outside, a murmur of relief rose from Lolly’s family. She grabbed my hand. “Kailyn—I
need to talk to you.”

  “Of course,” I said, completely clueless. “First you should try to rest, eat something. Let your family take care of you for a change. I’m on the case. We’ll talk soon.”

  “No,” she whispered urgently, “you don’t understand. I lied to the detective.” If she’d told me she was from another planet I wouldn’t have been more surprised than I was at that moment.

  Unable to wait any longer, one of Lolly’s youngest grandchildren broke away from her mother and ran up to her. She wrapped her pudgy little arms around Lolly’s knees and hugged her with all her might. I nodded to Lolly and she nodded back with a smile as she bent down to her granddaughter.

  Chapter 3

  After feeding Sashkatu and his brethren, I called my aunt Tilly. She’d be hurt if she learned about the body in Lolly’s yard through the grapevine before she heard it from me. She listened without interruption, accompanying my words with a counterpoint of heartfelt oh mys and oh dears. “You know what this means,” she said. “I was right again.”

  “Your last premonition was months ago, on Thanksgiving, but nothing came of it.” I couldn’t let her get hysterical again about being labeled the Angel of Death. “There have to be some parameters. A death that happens within days of your prediction may be a valid concern. One that occurs months later shouldn’t be.” I spoke with all the authority I could muster.

  “You’re quite certain of that?” she asked warily.

  “As sure as I can be.”

  “All right then,” Tilly said, “I must bake Lolly something appropriate and visit her at the first opportunity. Muffins and scones, I should think—comfort food.”