Charms and Chocolate Chips: A Magical Bakery Mystery (6 page)

Darn it.

“I’m not that worried,” Wren said. Of course everything about her belied that statement. Something in my expression must have conveyed my disbelief because she went on. “No, really. At least not about this.”

“Perhaps you should be,” I said in a quiet voice. “Whoever left this origami model knows where you live, and at the very least it has some connection to Georgia Wild.” I felt my shoulders slump. “Probably something to do with Autumn’s death, too.”

Wren’s swallow was audible.

Vindication warred with worry on Mimsey’s face.

“What do these things
mean
?” Wren asked in a tight voice. The bat spilled off her palm and landed beside me on the bistro table. Unlike the one Autumn had, it hadn’t been crumpled in a fist, and I wasn’t looking at it through a thick layer of plastic. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought the detailed folded sculpture rather adorable.

“I don’t know.” I felt helpless. “Mimsey, did you try to find out anything about it in your shew stone?” She was the only one of us who used a polished sphere of pink quartz crystal—literally a crystal ball—for purposes of divination.

“I haven’t been home yet,” she said. “But I can try when I get there.”

“Katie, the police have declared the G.W. office a crime scene and won’t let me back in,” Wren said. “I can’t work, I can’t pay the bills, and now some nutcase is leaving folded bats under my door. I don’t know what to do.”

Bianca reached into her purse. “Here. At least I can give you the money for the rent.” She extracted a checkbook and began to write. “You said that you’re expecting a grant to come through soon?”

“Two,” Wren said. “I can pay you back then.”

Waving the check in the air, Bianca said, “No, this is a donation. I added in another thousand, but you’re going to need more cash soon to keep things going. What about applying for a short-term loan at my bank? I’d be happy to vouch for you.”

Wren’s eyes welled. “Thank you. I’m willing to try anything. I’ll go to the bank tomorrow.”

“Sweetheart!” Mimsey was beside herself. “I know you’re committed to your work, but will you please focus on the matter at hand? You are in danger!” She turned to me. “And you have to help her. You simply have to, Katie. If you won’t do it because you know it’s the right thing and because you know you
can
, then do it for me. As a personal favor to me. Will you do that? I’m sure the other members of the spellbook club will help out here at the bakery if you need to leave during the day.”

All eyes lasered to me. Lucy’s gaze was particularly sympathetic but still unyielding.

“Of course we will,” Jaida said. “Cookie, too, I’m sure.”

I licked my lips. Mimsey was the senior witch in the spellbook club. If we had been the sort of group to have a high priestess, then she would have been ours. But, more important, she was
Mimsey
.

Stifling a groan, I said, “Okay. I can’t make any promises; you know that. But I’ll see what I can find out.”

She beamed. “Excellent! Now, how shall we start?”

I sighed. Sometimes destiny sucked, but if I was going do this, I would try to do it right.

We needed to know more about the maroon bats and the golf course land deal. My knowledge of both was pretty much limited to what Wren had told Detective Quinn and the unhelpful information I’d gleaned from my Internet search the night before. Unfortunately, Wren could talk about habitat and mating rituals and birth rates and food supplies, but she didn’t seem to know any more than I did about Autumn’s legal machinations.

Now that I was actually asking these questions, though, I was seized with a kind of anxious urgency. “What about the maroon bats, Wren? You said there was an actual sighting that you and Autumn had been basing all of your work in Fagen Swamp on, right? Was it one of the usual suspects?” Many reports of endangered species came from bird-watching clubs, especially the Savannah Avian Society.

“Not this time,” Wren said. “The sighting—actually two of them—came from a man who lives right there in the swamp. His name is Evanston Rickers.”

“He lives there? How can you be sure he’s not just some kook who wants to keep living in the swamp?”

She looked offended. “I went to see him, and he showed me where he’d seen the bats. He’s a zoologist with a focus on herpetology—snakes—and he contacted us out of genuine concern about the bats. He gave me pictures. Unfortunately, they weren’t definitive enough. Since then I’ve gone out several times to follow up.”

“But you didn’t find anything?” I asked. Pictures could be faked—but what would be the point?

Her reluctance was evident in the shake of her head. “It doesn’t mean they aren’t there. I’ve only had a couple of months to try to find them, and while maroon bats don’t migrate, they do hibernate in the winter. They’re also solitary creatures—not like gray bats that thrive in large colonies. Often you’ll only find one, or a mother and her pup. I expected to be able to locate them when it warms up.”

I wondered whether she’d added that wish to the ones we’d burnt in the Imbolc fire.

She licked her lips, looked around at everyone, and ducked her head. “Autumn said we couldn’t wait until spring, though. She said if we couldn’t find something to give to the EPA in the next month or so, she wanted to devote our time to the flatwoods salamander project.”

Wren had mentioned that to Detective Quinn. If Georgia Wild was going to give up on the maroon bats—and from the work I’d been doing with them, I’d assumed the project had been a rather minor one to start with—then the sale of the swampland would likely go through. In that case, why kill Autumn over it? Could she have discovered some new information that supported the existence of the bats?

After all, if the murderer hadn’t killed Autumn because of the maroon bats, then why had Autumn been clutching the origami version of one with that curious and distasteful signature? And why on earth would someone slip one under Wren’s door?

“Okay, here’s the deal,” I said to the ladies. “We need to tell Detective Quinn about this second origami bat. Maybe the lab can find fingerprints or figure out if the paper is the same as the other bat. I don’t know. It really would have been better to have the police come to Wren’s apartment when you discovered it.”

Mimsey looked chastened.

“Don’t worry. He’ll be happy to get it now,” I said, hurrying to assure her. “Wren, I know you and Autumn were close. Can you tell me a bit more about that boyfriend I may or may not have seen on the street outside Georgia Wild last night?”

Jaida raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really. You didn’t mention that.”

“I told Detective Quinn,” I said. “Wren?”

“Well, his name is Hunter Normandy.”

Bianca snorted, though she managed to make it sound delicate and feminine.

“Yeah, yeah. He has a fancy name,” I said. So did she, for that matter. “Sounds like a trust-fund baby. Ivy League or something. Though the two times I met him he was dressed in funky vintage stuff—mismatched plaids, Panama hat, stuff like that.”

Wren shook her head. “I don’t think he comes from money. He’s a nice enough guy, though I haven’t spent any real time around him. He works at a mortuary.”

“Doing what?” For all I knew, he could be their bookkeeper.

“I have no idea.”

“What else?” I prompted.

She shrugged. “Autumn didn’t talk about him that much. She seemed happy enough, and I know she liked spending time with him. Sometimes she’d compare him to her ex-husband, and Hunter always came out on top.”

“Nothing else?” Meaning:
No juicy secrets?
“After all, he was her boyfriend. And you guys spent a lot of time together.”

“Autumn didn’t talk about her personal life much. I mean, you have a boyfriend and I don’t know very much about him, either.”

Lucy directed a wry look my way.

“Okay. I get it,” I said. “She didn’t blather on about herself.” Hard to argue with that.

“At Georgia Wild she was all about the business of the nonprofit, and while we were really close at work, we didn’t socialize much outside of G.W.,” Wren said. “Frankly, we were so busy, we didn’t have much time to socialize at all.”

“What about her ex?”

Again with the shrug. “The divorce was final about five months ago, but he kept calling. She ended up blocking him from her phone.”

My ears perked up at that. Were we dealing with a possible stalker? “Was he threatening? Violent?”

“She didn’t say that, only that he wouldn’t leave her alone.” Wren looked frustrated.

I tried not to sigh. “Okay. So I’ll call Peter Quinn and tell him about the bat and see what’s going on. For all we know, they have a suspect in custody.”

Hey, a girl could hope, right?

The others looked about as convinced as I felt.

“In the meantime, Jaida and Bianca, would you two mind going with Mimsey and Wren to her apartment? Take juniper berries and basil and sage and anything else that will help with both a personal-protection spell and a home-protection spell.”

The four women rose as one. Jaida said, “I’ll stop by my house on the way and pick up a fresh Rider-Waite deck. The Hierophant card will add power to a protection spell.”

“Well, you’re the expert,” I said. “Lucy, are you okay taking care of things here? It’s slow enough that it shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Of course,” my aunt said. “What are you going to do?”

“Well, first I’ll call Quinn. Then it seems I need to go see a man about a golf course.”

•   •   •

In the Honeybee office I grabbed my cell phone and sank into the desk chair. Mungo stood up on his hind legs on the floor next to me until I picked him up and put him on my lap. He nudged my free hand with his wet nose until I scratched him behind the ear.

Detective Quinn answered on the first ring, skipping the niceties. “Why am I not surprised to see your name come up on my phone the day after a homicide?”

“So you’ve determined for sure that Autumn was murdered?”

“Hard to kill yourself by strangulation—at least in a way that would leave actual finger marks on your neck.”

I shuddered, remembering, then plowed on. “Finger
marks
. I don’t suppose there’s any way to get actual fingerprints from skin?”

“It is possible in some cases,” he said. “But no such luck in this one. Either the heavy moisturizer the victim used caused the killer’s fingers to slip or he wore gloves.”

Victim. Ugh. “Do you know the time of death?”

“Late afternoon between . . . Katie, do you have some kind of CSI complex? Or did you always dream of being a policewoman when you were a little girl?”

“What are you talking about? Of course not.”

“Then why are you calling and asking me all these questions? Because I have to tell you that kind of behavior would make most investigators very suspicious.”

“Good thing you’re not most investigators, isn’t it? I called because there’s some new evidence you should know about. At least I assume it has something to do with the murder.” And I’d asked all those other questions because . . . well, because I wanted to know what we were dealing with.

He sighed. “Really.”

“Remember that origami bat Autumn was clutching?”

“Yeah . . .”

“Wren found another one slipped under her door when she got home from Mimsey’s this morning.”

“Hang on. She was at Mimsey Carmichael’s?”

“You didn’t know? Mimsey is her grandmother. I would have thought you’d have verified Wren’s alibi by now.”

“Only for the afternoon.” His tone was elaborately patient. “Since the medical examiner’s office determined that’s when Boles was killed.”

“Oh. Well, Wren spent the night with her grandparents last night and arrived home this morning to find the folded bat. She brought it to the Honeybee.”

Quinn swore under his breath.

“I know, I know,” I said. “We put it in a plastic bag, and I can bring it by your office if you want.” Police headquarters was only a few blocks away.

“You’re at the bakery? I’ll come get it,” Quinn said. “Is Wren still there? I want to talk to her.”

“She was when I came back to the office to call you,” I replied, fudging a bit. If I sent him over to Wren’s apartment right now, he’d probably stumble into the ladies burning juniper berries and tarot cards and invoking protections.

“Tell her to stay there.”

“Okay,” I agreed, even though I knew she and the others had probably left already. “So, I take it you don’t have a suspect in mind already.”

“Katie . . .” Quinn’s voice held warning.

“Have you had a chance to talk to Heinrich Dawes yet?”

“He’s not at the top of my priority list. Been focusing on finding the boyfriend, Hunter Normandy.”

“Makes sense.” Even I knew the police usually looked at victims’ spouses or love interests in murder cases, and I
had
seen that Wrangler driving away the night before.

Wait a minute. “Finding him? You don’t know where he is?”

“Katie. This isn’t really your business.”

“What if he knows that I saw him? Could I be in danger?”

He hesitated. “I don’t think so. But yes, he does seem to have disappeared. Didn’t show up for work today, either.”

“Really. Do you know what he does at the mortuary?”

Quinn hesitated again, then answered, “He’s their primary embalmer.”

So much for the bookkeeper idea.

I looked at the clock on the wall, surprised to see it was only a few minutes after eleven. A lot had happened in one hour. “All righty then. I’ll let you get back to it. The origami bat will be right here, but we close at one.”

“Oh, I’ll be there within the hour.”

That should give Mimsey et al plenty of time to finish their spell casting by the time Quinn made it to Wren’s apartment. Not only had he said he wanted to talk with her, but it was likely that he’d want to take a look at the scene of the crime—if slipping a piece of origami under someone’s door could be considered a crime.

I said good-bye and hung up without mentioning that I didn’t plan on being at the Honeybee when he arrived. Lucy could hand him a plastic bag of evidence as easily as I could, and I wanted to take Steve up on his offer to help as soon as possible. Next I called Mimsey to let her know Quinn would probably be dropping by Wren’s apartment. They were just preparing to set up wards, but she assured me they’d pick up the pace.