Gone With the Witch (6 page)

Missy had exceptional instincts.

“Aggressive temperament,” Dorothy said,
tsk
ing as she marked something on her clipboard.

It required all I had in me not to snap that it took one to know one.

Dorothy brought out the worst in me.

I smiled tightly and tried my best to ignore her.

“Come, now, Dorothy,” Godfrey said, sliding an arm
around her shoulders. “I believe a short break is in order. I know I'm in need of a cocktail.”

“A great idea, Godfrey,” she agreed. “One of your few.”

“Don't make me close your tab at the shop, honey.”

Her eyes flared with panic. “My apologies.” Patting her pale blond bob, she gave me a finger wave and allowed Godfrey to lead her toward the staircase. Her stilettos clacked with each step she took.

I caught sight of Nick, Mimi, and Higgins headed this way to meet up for our lunch date, and I couldn't help sighing a little. Just looking at them did my heart good.

Nick threw me a smile as they stopped to let a couple with three young boys admire Higgins.

Perhaps Nick and Mimi could help track down Ve before we had lunch together. . . .

With her blue eyes shining, Reggie stepped up to me and said, “Don't mind Dorothy, my dear. We all know Missy has a sweet temperament. Dorothy's just . . .” She seemed to be searching for a word and finally said, “Dorothy's just Dorothy.” She slipped her hand in her pocket. A second later, a treat appeared between her fingertips. Missy happily gobbled it up, and with a pat to Missy's head, Reggie was gone, hurrying along to catch up to the rest of the group.

Letting out a long sigh, I set Missy back into her pen. It was a good thing this performance had been only a ruse for the other contestants or Missy would undoubtedly have the lowest scores here, thanks to Dorothy's and Ivy's contempt for me.

I glanced again at Natasha, expecting to find her delighted with the scene she'd just witnessed. Instead her Cheshire Cat smile had vanished. A deep flush reddened the skin on her face and she had one hand pressed to her chest. The other hand was trying to set the coffee cup on the table. It slipped out of her hand and hit the floor, sending liquid streaming under her display table.

Her frightened gaze rose to meet mine, and she opened her mouth, but no words came out.

“Are you okay?” I asked, rushing over to her. “Natasha?”

Her eyes fluttered closed, and she crumpled to the floor, her white gown billowing around her like a cloud. Her body began jerking—it looked like a seizure. Dropping to my knees, I yelled for help and turned Natasha's face toward me, trying to keep it steady.

Her body stilled, but her skin was quickly turning an unhealthy shade of bright red.

Next thing I knew, Nick was at my side. “What happened?”

“I don't know,” I said. “A minute ago she was fine. . . .”

He checked her pulse, then immediately started CPR. “She's not breathing.”

A crowd edged in around us. A worried Baz. A stony Vivienne. Glinda, Mimi. Reggie and Ivy had returned—probably to see what the hubbub was about.

As Nick worked, it seemed to me that the room around us went deathly quiet, watching, waiting.

I scooted back, out of his way, and joined the crowd. I slid a look at Ivy Teasdale.

The color had drained from her already fair skinned face, and she had one hand clapped over her mouth as if holding in a scream.

This was exactly what she'd been trying to avoid. Another “accident.”

With one twist.

The prime suspect in those incidents had just become a potential victim.

“S
he was poisoned.”

After her bold statement, Harper stuck a tortilla chip into a bowl of salsa, loaded it up, and quickly stuffed it into her mouth before even a molecule could drip from its edges onto the coffee table.

How Harper could eat at a time like this was beyond me. Even though it had been hours since Natasha collapsed at my feet, my stomach remained twisted in knots.

Painful, painful knots.

We'd stuck around at the Wisp until the police cleared everyone from the building. It had been a chaotic exodus as dogs barked, cats hissed, and Cookie, a year-old Nigerian dwarf goat, broke loose from her leash and bounded off across the village green. She was still missing.

Ve had been found, but there hadn't been time to ask her about the photographs, and though still important, the situation paled when compared to Natasha's death.
I just hoped my aunt had some insight on the whole photo situation, or I was going to have to trek into the woods to ask the Elder. I wasn't sure I'd actually receive an answer from her, but I could at least try. She was a big believer in letting me figure out Craft quirks myself.

Harper had dropped Pie off at home, and then helped Mimi and me transport our menagerie to As You Wish. We were awaiting word from Nick, but so far we hadn't heard a peep and were filling the time with speculation on what had happened to Natasha.

Staring at my sister in awe, Mimi held a chip suspended midair between the salsa bowl and where she sat on the floor next to the coffee table in Aunt Ve's family room. “You really think so? Poison?”

Higgins rested on the floor next to her, his head on his paws. His dark woebegone eyes held a silent plea that the chip would miraculously fall from Mimi's hand straight into his mouth. Enormous drool droplets hung like elastic stalactites from his lower jaw as he licked his lips in anticipation. He let out a crestfallen sigh when Mimi ate the chip in one bite.

Missy was giving me the cold shoulder, preferring to stay outside rather than in, which was fine with me as long as she remained in the yard. So far so good. The last time I'd checked, the furry little Houdini had been napping on the back step.

Aunt Ve's Himalayan, Tilda, regarded us all with thinly veiled derision from her perch at the end of the mantel. She was, as usual, content to watch us from afar.

“A fast-acting poison,” Harper elaborated, simultaneously nodding while wiping her kewpie-doll lips with the back of her hand. “Someone probably slipped something into her coffee. My guess is sodium cyanide or potassium cyanide.” She shrugged. “
Something
cyanide.
A capsule of it would have easily dissolved in the liquid. Bing, bang, boom . . . no one would be the wiser until she collapsed.”

Long spiral curls of dark brown hair cascaded over Mimi's shoulders as she leaned back against a pillow she'd pulled down from the love seat. “Wow. Poison. Unbelievable.”

“The red tint to Natasha's face is a dead giveaway that it was cyanide.” Wincing, Harper added, “Bad choice of words, considering.”

Natasha was dead. The paramedics who'd arrived at the Wisp hadn't even bothered to transport her to the hospital. Instead they'd called the medical examiner's office, who as far as I knew were still at the function hall.

Along with Nick, who as chief of police was heading the investigation into Natasha's untimely death.

Aunt Ve was dealing with the press. For the sake of the village's reputation, she as village council chairwoman was trying her best to downplay the incident.

Which was incredibly hard to do, seeing as how a
woman was dead
.

A PR catastrophe,
Ivy had warned. Her words were proving portentous.

I wanted to argue with what Harper was saying about the cyanide, truly I did. It was such a preposterous notion that someone could be poisoned in the middle of a large crowded event.

And not just poisoned.

That someone could be
murdered
.

Because, after all, if someone had slipped Natasha cyanide, surely the intent was to kill her.

The more I thought about it, however, the more Harper's theory seemed entirely plausible.

What else could it have been but murder? Natasha had seemed perfectly healthy earlier in the day,
especially when she'd been catting around with Baz Lucas. She was young. Active. Her sudden death was highly unusual, to say the least.

I didn't know much about cyanide at all, but I didn't doubt Harper's knowledge of the poison. She was a forensics nut and had a steel-trap mind. If she suspected cyanide, I had every reason to suspect it, too.

“Let's say you're right,” I said to Harper as I drew my feet up onto the sofa and tucked them beneath me. “Cyanide isn't exactly a street drug, so how would someone even get hold of something like that?”

Distant hammering punctuated my sentence. The construction crews were working overtime at my new house to get the roof done before the next rainfall. As late-afternoon sunshine filtered through the gauzy curtains of Ve's family room, it gave the room a golden glow. The space felt like Ve. Warm and inviting. Soft and cozy. Fanciful and full of color and life. One could get swallowed by the overstuffed sofa, dizzy from the swirling patterns in the area rug, and lost for days reading all the books crammed onto built-in shelves.

“Online, of course,” Harper said.

Well, of course.

“You can get anything online,” she added, reaching for another chip. “From bootleg laundry detergent to tiny turtles, and everything in between. Including poison. The black market is a profitable one.”

“Tiny turtles?” Mimi echoed, her chocolate brown eyes narrowed with skepticism. “Really?”

“If their shell is less than four inches, they're banned by the FDA because of salmonella risks.” Sunbeams set Harper's face aglow as she talked. “But that doesn't stop people from selling them.”

I was again impressed with Harper's steel-trap mind. Tiny turtles. Who knew?

“Did Natasha have any enemies?” Mimi asked, turning her full attention on me.

It was times like these that I had to remind myself that Mimi was just thirteen years old. Barely a teenager. Sometimes she seemed much older and wiser than her years.

At her question, I immediately thought of Vivienne Lucas.

If I had just learned my husband had been carrying on with Natasha, I'd be mad enough to kill her. And him. But the timing was off. Glinda had confirmed to me that she told Vivienne of what we had seen in the hallway between Baz and Natasha only moments before the woman collapsed. I found it highly unlikely that Vivienne had been carrying around cyanide with her for just-in-case scenarios.

No. If Natasha had been poisoned, someone had planned it. Meticulously.

But who?

And why?

Just thinking about someone gliding around the showroom floor with poison in their pocket gave me the willies. It was so . . . menacing.

Evil.

“I'm not sure,” I finally said.

Mimi shoved a spiral of hair over her shoulder, but the curl immediately sprang loose again. “Does she have family here?”

“Not that I know of,” I said, pressing a throw pillow against my aching stomach. “But I didn't know her very well at all.”

“Me neither,” Harper chimed in. “Mrs. P and Pepe might know more about her.”

“We have no business asking them about her,” I said.

Mrs. P, whose real name was Eugenia Pennywhistle,
and Pepe were two of my favorites in the villages. It didn't matter a bit that they were mouse familiars—I counted them as dear friends. They were the closest the village had to town historians, which Harper knew perfectly well.

“Please?” she begged, grinning like a kid at Christmas.

She was seriously in the wrong line of work. I knew she loved the bookshop, but she ate, slept, breathed criminal justice and all its offshoots, especially forensics.

As much as I wanted to know what had happened to Natasha, too, I dashed Harper's hopes.

“No. Natasha was a mortal, so we have no business snooping around. Let Nick handle it.”

If she had been a witch, as a Craft investigator I would have been obligated to check her background. It was my job to look into any criminal activities that might involve our heritage. Elder's orders. But as a mortal, I had no jurisdiction.

“Party pooper,” Harper said. Then after another moment, she nodded to a fluffy black lump glued to my left side and added, “What are you going to do with her?”

Her.

I looked down.

Titania stared up at me, her amber eyes unblinking.

Earlier, I'd really had no other option than to take her home with me. The Wisp had been evacuated, and I couldn't very well leave her there.

Without her headdress and heavy jeweled collar, both of which I had removed the moment we walked through the back door, she was cuddlier than ever. I scratched her head. “I don't know. Wait until someone claims her, I guess. A distant relative, maybe. A neighbor?”

“I think she claimed you,” Harper pointed out matter-of-factly.

“She does seem to like you,” Mimi agreed.

It did, in fact, seem that way. Titania hadn't left my side since we left the Wisp.

If she was going to stay here for a bit, I'd need to get some supplies as soon as possible. Food, a new (lightweight) collar, a kitty litter box. The basic necessities, since I didn't think Tilda would take too kindly to sharing. I planned a visit to the Furry Toadstool as soon as it opened tomorrow morning to pick up what I needed.

I was making a mental shopping list when the sound of a rooster crowing echoed through the room, coming from the vicinity of the back door.

I knew that noise. It was Archie's version of a doorbell.

Before anyone could stand up, his muffled voice came through the door. “Darcy? Are you in there? Shake a leg! It's not safe out here for a bird like me!”

“I
'll get him,” Mimi said, jumping up.

“Not safe?” I looked at Harper. “What do you think he means by that?”

“I don't know, but he's definitely safer out there than in here with Higgins and Tilda,” Harper said, making a good point.

Both animals tended to view Archie as a snack.

A moment later, Mimi was back. Archie flew behind her, dropping feathers as he floated along.

“I'm molting. Molting!” he exclaimed as he landed on the edge of the coffee table and began pacing.

Higgins surged to his feet. In his eyes, Archie was similar to one big chicken nugget.

“Not the drool,” Archie cried in his most ardent voice as he stared at the enormous dog. “Anything but the drool. Shoo! Shoo!” He flapped his wings at Higgins.

Drool puddled on the table.

Harper snatched the chips out of the line of fire, snapped her fingers, and gave Higgins a stern “
Pzzzt
. Down.”

Obediently, he sat, his thick eyebrows twitching as he glanced between Harper and his potential dinner.

“Down,” she said, dragging the word out. “All the way.”

He plopped to the floor, sulking.

She was magic where he was concerned, a true dog whisperer.

As Tilda watched Archie from the mantel, he went back to pacing the table, his beady eyes frenzied, his colorful wings quivering. “Can this day get any worse? I ask you. Can it? No, no, it cannot,” he said in his deep voice, answering his own question.

“What happened?” I asked. “Why do you feel unsafe?”

Archie was well-known for his theatrics, but I'd never seen him this agitated before. He was frantic.

“What happened, you ask?” He pivoted when he reached the far end of the table. “What happened, you ask? I'll—”

Harper jabbed a finger in his direction. “If you don't stop repeating yourself like that, I'm going to feed you to the dog.”

He puffed out his colorful chest. His words oozing with pomposity, he said, “You would not dare.”

She leaned in, her nose to his beak. “Bet me.”

To prevent a fight, I said to Archie, “What's with the molting?”

He cleared his throat. “‘Listen, this is embarrassing for me,'” he said in a stage whisper
.
“‘This is hard to talk about.'”

Harper and Mimi groaned in unison. Neither enjoyed Archie's and my long-standing game of trying to stump each other with movie quotes. We, however, found it endlessly entertaining.

“The 40-Year-Old Virgin,”
I said, ignoring the peanut gallery. “Now spill.”

“First,” he said, pacing again, “I had to endure the exceeding humiliation of the Extravaganza. It wasn't enough for people passing by to touch me at every turn, to try to
pluck my feathers
,” he stated emphatically while spreading his wings, which had bald spots, “but for some reason my normally effusive audience dwindled to a dribble this year. A dribble, I te—”

Harper coughed a warning.

Archie stomped a claw. “I'll tell you the reason! It's Lady Catherine's fault. An unoriginal canine pout usurping my soliloquies and a cappella melodies? It's an affront of the highest order. I'm outraged! Incensed! Aggrieved!”

Titania seemed entranced by Archie. She kept a steady watch on him, her gaze following his every move. Her interest didn't seem to be in a snack food kind of way, but simply out of curiosity. I rubbed her chin and wondered what she thought of being here with us, instead of home with Natasha where she belonged.

“Sounds to me your feathers are ruffled because you're jealous,” Harper said, humor etching her tone.

“Jealous!” Archie huffed indignantly. “I beg to differ. I'm merely . . .” He trailed off.

“Jealous?” Mimi supplied, giggling.

He ignored them and said, “Never any of you mind that overhyped glowering pooch, Lady Catherine. She is but a bottom feeder in my pool of distress.”

“For the love,” Harper murmured.

Archie's gaze flitted between us as he waited patiently for someone—anyone—to ask for clarification of his dismay.

“Go on,” I finally said, playing his game. Otherwise, I feared he'd pace the coffee table all day long.

Archie went back to pacing, and I braced myself for his forthcoming explanation. I expected to hear some
sort of frivolous quibble like an insult to his plumage or some such. He'd been distraught by much less in the past.

Clearing his throat, he said, “During the anarchy of the Wisp's evacuation, someone knocked Terry down. In the ensuing confusion, a sack was thrown over my head, and the marauder scurried off with me.” His voice rose to a fever pitch. “I was stolen!”

Sitting straight, Mimi said, “Is Terry okay?”

“
He's
fine,” Archie assured her. “I, however, am beside myself. If not for my quick thinking, who knows where I'd be now?”

“On the back of a milk carton, no doubt,” Harper quipped.

Archie threw her a withering look. He could give Lady Catherine a run for her money. “Hardy-har-har.”

“What did you do?” Mimi asked. “How'd you get away?”

Archie lit up. “I mimicked a police siren. The thief dropped the bag and skedaddled quicker than you can say ‘do not pass go.'”

“And you don't have any idea who it was?” I asked.

“Not a clue. Some ne'er-do-well who probably visited with me at the Extravaganza and was impressed with my charming personality.” He preened. “The coward was long gone by the time I made my way out of the sack. Terry is currently at the police station filing a report.”

I imagined that report wouldn't garner much attention in light of Natasha's death.

Archie said, “Now, as much as I'd love to linger and share every last detail of my escapade, I must bid you all adieu. To the woods, I go. It is imperative I inform the Elder of this disturbing episode.”

It was just like Archie to drop a bombshell and take off.

“Tell her we say hi,” Harper said, not meaning a word of it.

Harper wanted little to do with the Elder . . . or Wishcraft. Even though we'd been here a year, she hadn't quite accepted her role as a witch.

Mimi blanched. “Just Harper and Darcy say hi. Leave me out of it. She scares me.”

Truthfully, she used to terrify me, too. But now . . .

Now I was more curious about her than fearful. Mostly. “Just Harper,” I said.

Archie shook his head and mumbled under his breath. Mimi saw him out, and then dropped a handful of bright red feathers on the table when she returned. I picked one up.

A potential murder. An attempted birdnapping.

It had been a really strange day.

The front bell rang, and we all looked in that direction.

“I'll get this one,” I said, standing and stretching. Usually, only clients used the front door—friends used the back door. “I can't imagine who it is; I'm not expecting anyone.”

Harper stuck another chip into the salsa. “It's probably the runaway goat. She heard the news that Titania is staying here and wants some chin scratching, too. You know how fast gossip spreads through this village.”

Laughing, I said, “At this point, it wouldn't surprise me.”

As I walked away, Titania shadowed me, keeping close to my heels. When I was halfway down the hallway, I heard Mimi say to Harper, “Hey, Harper, is it wrong that I now kind of want a tiny turtle?”

“Yes,” I heard Harper say. “Yes, it is.”

I was still smiling as I pulled open the door. At the sight of my visitor, however, my humor faded. Unfortunately, it wasn't the goat.

“I need your help, Darcy.”