Home for a Spell (17 page)

“I do, indeed. A closet gentleman. Possibly the last gentleman, Goddess love him.” She chuckled, polishing off her cookie and dusting the crumbs from her fingertips. “Have you talked to him about this? Your reasons for wanting a new place?”

“Yeah. I did.”

“And how did he take it?”

I paused, thinking about it. “Really well, I think. He was supportive of my reasons for it. It’s not
just
because of Marcus, of course. With Steff is leaving town, too, it just makes sense to me . . . I mean, it is a basement.”

“Well, then,” Liss said, pouring herself another cup. “I would like you to allow me to perform the spell for you on your behalf. To find you a special place.”

“A place I can afford.”

“A place of your heart.”

I nodded, touched by the sentiment. “A place of my heart.”

A spell for a home, so that I could go home for a spell.

Why not?

“Too bad this apartment didn’t work out, though,” I said with a sigh. “It really did seem perfect, and such a deal, too. I’m really worried I’m not going to be able to find something affordable, and the whole search will be a moot point because it’s just not going to happen.”

“I should definitely add in something about affordable.”

“And actually, the manager had offered a deal where I would receive three months’ free rent and not need a security deposit.” When she raised her eyebrows in surprise, I said, “I know!”

“Why on earth would an apartment complex need to be making offers such as that in this day and age, when apartments seem to be at a premium as more and more people lose their homes?” Liss asked. “Does that make any sense to you?”

“Well . . . not really,” I admitted. “But as the happy recipient of the offer, it was just too good to pass up. And when he said someone else was interested, I jumped on it. I couldn’t bear to lose it to someone else.” I sighed then. “And it was all for nothing.”

“If the apartment was so perfect, why don’t you go ahead with it after all? It’s not as though the poor man’s murder took place in the apartment you were touring. No harm, no foul. Perhaps you should take the apartment as you had originally planned.”

“I can’t. Mr. Harding said no way.” I had been trying to think of a way to broach the subject, but in the end, the only good way seemed to be the direct approach.

She looked at me strangely. “Mr. . . . Harding?”

I nodded. “Your former brother-in-law.”

“Why on earth would Jeremy have any say in the matter whatsoever?”

“Because he owns the apartment complex. Or Harding Enterprises does, which as I understand it is the same thing.”

“Yes, that’s the same thing. Jeremy is Harding Enterprises.” She shook her head, as though trying to make sense of it and coming up short. “I had no idea.”

“Yes, and he recognized me,” I told her. “The police called his office this morning, and he came to the crime scene as soon as he got the message. Once he discovered I was there to sign a lease, he told me in no uncertain terms that he would not allow it. No lease for me. It was totally because of my ties to you.”

“I’m so sorry, love.”

“Don’t be. This isn’t about you. It’s about him. He has some sort of personal vendetta against you.”

“Well . . . his whole family life crumbled last year, and he was never comfortable with me as his sister-in-law, so I can see how he might have an issue with me.”

“It’s ridiculous,” I told her.

“But so many matters of the heart don’t take logic and reason into account,” she replied matter-of-factly. “No one ever said love—whatever type of love—is rational. Even in the best of circumstances.”

That was the truth. Just like Marcus wasn’t thinking straight about the importance of him returning to classes as planned, all because of his loyalty to me.

“Harding is a piece of work, though,” I mused aloud. “After the initial shock when Tom told him there had been a death involving one of his employees, he almost seemed more concerned with the loss of the apartment complex’s computer than with the man himself. I’m not kidding. He really did.”

Liss chuckled, shaking her head. “That sounds like him.”

“He was terribly upset that the computer had been destroyed, upset that the manager had ordered a new computer without his knowledge. He even told Marcus he wouldn’t pay him . . . although that was a moot point since the manager had already paid him in cash. Funny, though, that he had done it without his boss’s knowledge. I wonder if he used business funds.”

Puzzled, Liss said, “I wonder why the manager would have bought a new computer without his boss’s knowledge. Usually any large purchase is run through the proper chain of command. Common business practice. If he hadn’t died, I have no doubt Jeremy would have had his head on the chopping block anyway, once he’d found out. In a nonliteral sense, of course.”

“I don’t know,” I said, shrugging and shaking my head. “Maybe he thought he needed it and was determined to get it any way he had to. You know, take action and ask for forgiveness later.”

“Hm, you might be right. Perhaps he had turned down a request previously.”

“Maybe Locke paid for it out of his own funds. That’s always a possibility, I suppose.” I traced my finger thoughtfully around the gold rim of my antique teacup with its delicate violets painted round. “Although, I do have to wonder why a business computer would have to be as souped up as Marcus said he made this one. Top speed, fair to bursting with memory on the new hard drive. As up-to-date as a piece of computer wizardry could be at this point in time. I mean, I just don’t see the reason for the manager of an apartment complex to need anything like that. And why was it smashed to bits? Of course it must mean something to whoever it was that had such bad feelings toward Locke to have taken his life.”

“They’re certain the two actions were tied together? The police, I mean.”

“What else could it be?” I asked her. “The coincidence of the timing is just too great. I just don’t see any way that possibility could even be spun. How would that even work? The question is, which came first, the chicken or the egg? The break-in or the drowning? And was that part of it accidental or preplanned or an afterthought?” I considered that for a moment. “Did Locke catch someone in the act? I’ve heard of burglaries gone bad—not around here, granted—but vandalism? Who would do that? Break into the office of an apartment complex to either steal or destroy
something
and end up killing someone to cover it up? That’s like using a ten-pound sledge hammer when a meat tenderizer will do the trick.”

“I see your point,” Liss said with a prosaic nod. “It would be rather much.”

“It’s a mystery, that’s for sure.”

“One probably best left to the police to sort through,” she gently reminded me.

I blushed. “Oh, I know. Don’t mind me. You know I just like to muddle these things through until I can wrap my mind around them. Call it a personal defect.” I giggled as a thought occurred to me. “My mother would call it being a concerned citizen. Of course, she would do anything to pretend she wasn’t just being nosy.”

“Your mother!” Liss slapped her palm over her forehead. “Good heavens. I nearly forgot.”

Uh-oh. “Let me guess. My mother called.”

“She did. She couldn’t reach you via your cell phone, so she called here.”

My purse was still back on the sales counter. I clumped over to it and pulled my cell phone out of its depths, clicking the button on the side that made the screen light up. As expected, I had new voice mails. Three, in fact. My mother would try up to three times consecutively before she would give up and call the next likely location. Never did she let her voice mail messages speak for her. That would take too much time, and my mother was an active kind of girl.

“Did she say what she had on her mind?” I asked Liss before I even bothered to play the messages. Sometimes with my mom it was better not to. Kept the blood pressure down.

“She said something about turning on WANE-TV. I was going to check it for you, but then I allowed myself to be sidetracked with my little redecorating project.”

Since we had no television at the store, the only thing to do was to check the local station on the Internet and hope they had updated their video alerts as usual. Liss reached under the skirted sales counter and pulled out the laptop for me while I situated myself on the comfortable stool, then she wandered away discreetly to give me my privacy. She needn’t have bothered. She had heard most every voice mail message my mother had left for me since I started working at Enchantments nearly a year ago. It’s not like I could have kept any secrets from her anyway, even if I had wanted to. Not with her uncanny ability to read my thoughts.

After loading the page, I clicked the arrow on the little video window on the station’s website and waited the few moments it took while it buffered. As it whirred away, my gaze wandered over to the recent headlines. One in particular caught my eye: “Tragedy strikes again in Stony Mill.” As usual, the local media were on the ball. It was a sore point with many a businessman who belonged to the local chamber of commerce. After all the work that had gone into branding the town the self-proclaimed Antiques Capital of the Midwest, instead of being recognized for their efforts with good press,
this
was what Stony Mill was fast becoming known for. Not exactly the angle they were looking for.

The video started playing, so I dragged myself back to the present.

It was your typical news update, seen a million times over around the United States on a daily basis. Only this news update had something the others didn’t.

It had a fairly distinct shot of both me and Marcus in the background as we were leaving the apartment complex. And thanks to my mother’s usual eagle eye, she had seen us.

Explanations would be required. And explanations would bring up questions. Such as, why was I looking for an apartment, and why didn’t she know about it, and furthermore, why was she always the last to know about anything that happened in my life? My mother liked to be included in everything in her children’s lives. My older brother Marshall had escaped being under her constant observation by moving to New York after college. My younger sister Melanie wasn’t any help—she often fed into Mom’s need for inclusion by involving her in even the minutest degrees of her life. As a result, Mom left her alone, which meant when Mel didn’t want her to know something, she had no trouble hiding it from her. With me, my mother seemed to have a knack for knowing just when to question me, and she was well aware that I was a terrible liar and would have no ability to keep things from her.

Leave it to my mother to have caught my innocent debut on the morning news.

“Oh boy. How am I going to explain this?”

“What’s that, ducks?” The words were muffled, called through teeth loosely clenched around a string of café lights.

“Mom saw the announcement of the murder on the morning news. Guess who was featured in the background as Chief Boggs was being interviewed.”

“Oh. Oh dear. You, I take it?”

“And Marcus. We were just leaving the apartment complex at the time.”

“Trouble?”

I shrugged. “The usual. She’s going to demand to know what’s going on.”

“If you don’t call, she’ll be calling here again shortly.”

“Don’t I know it.” Better to get it over with quickly. Like pulling off a bandage that is more sticky tape than anything else. One tooth-gritting rip and Bob’s your uncle until the next time.

Customer traffic had been nonexistent this morning, which was fairly typical for a Tuesday, so after a resigned sigh to relieve my tension, I dialed the number for home, the same number it had been throughout my life. I was hoping I’d get lucky, that she would have stepped out to one of her many ladies’ auxiliary meetings and I could tell her I did call her back, buying myself a little bit of time. But that would be a postponement at best, and it wasn’t happening this morning anyway—Mom picked up on the second ring.

“Margaret Mary-Catherine O’Neill, it is about time you called me back.”

“Hi, Mom, I love you, too. Are you having a nice day?”

“There is no need to sass me, Margaret. What on earth were you doing at that place this morning? And how do you get yourself into these situations?”

And there it was, as expected. The defining characteristic of my relationship with my mother. Some days, some months, things were better, but whenever anything went wrong, it always came back to this. “Well,” I said, doing my best to keep any hint of annoyance out of my voice because that only added to the tension that always simmered between us at some level, hidden or not, “in answer to your first question, I went to the apartment complex to sign a lease for an apartment, and in answer to your second question, how does anyone get themselves into any situation? They wander in. Innocently. You know. Things just happen.”

“To you, Margaret. Things seem to always happen to you.”

I sighed.

“I worry.”

“Mom, it’s an apartment building. How could I possibly have known the manager was going to run into trouble of this kind?”

“What were you doing looking for an apartment anyway? You already have an apartment—which you don’t even live in, I might point out—and a place to stay with this Marcus fellow of yours, even though you don’t need it because home would be a much better place for you while you’re recuperating.”