One Potion in the Grave: A Magic Potion Mystery (2 page)

“It surely wasn’t easy, Carly, and I’m still in my residency down in Birmingham, but I did it.”

She spoke softly, the pride in her voice coming across loud and clear, though I wasn’t the least bit surprised to hear it. Even though hers hadn’t been an easy upbringing, she’d always retained a sense of pride. Almost too much sometimes, not always wanting to accept help when offered. Fiercely independent, she was always determined to get things done—her way. I figured it to be a defense mechanism, an ability to have some semblance of control in an out-of-control environment.

I squeezed her hand. “Good on you.”

Taking another peek at her watch, she said, “I have to get going. I have an appointment. Can we meet up later to continue catching up? I want to hear what you’ve been up to. Anyone special in your life?”

“It’s complicated,” I said.

She lifted both eyebrows. “
That
sounds like a story. Let’s get coffee later, okay?”

“Are you back in town to see Jamie Lynn?” I asked, referring to Katie Sue’s baby sister. She’d been just ten years old when Katie Sue left. “I heard she’s bad sick.”

Pain flitted across her eyes and she paled.

“You didn’t know?” I asked, cursing the foot I just stuck in my big mouth.

She shook her head.

I should have realized as much. It never ceased to
amaze me how money could tear a family apart. Lyla, the eldest Perrywinkle sister, had married straight out of high school and never looked back, leaving Katie Sue and Jamie Lynn to mind their granddaddy when his heart began to fail. Mostly the task fell on a teenaged Katie Sue since Jamie Lynn was so young, and she never once complained about it, though it sopped up what was left of her already pathetic childhood. After the man died, the whole town was shocked to learn that the old coot had been buying stocks and stashing away money all his years. In his will he left all his worldly goods solely to his full-time caretaker—his granddaughter Katie Sue, who at that time had just turned twenty. She inherited almost two million dollars.

No one was more stunned than Katie Sue’s own kin, who crawled from the woodwork without a lick of shame, their palms out. When met with a firm refusal—Katie Sue proclaimed the only other person who deserved a share of the inheritance was Jamie Lynn—her mama and stepdaddy made horrible threats, but it was Lyla who dealt the most painful blow. She filed for custody of Jamie Lynn. The court agreed that the older, married, and more settled sister deserved custody. Katie Sue tried to fight the matter in court again and again, but lost every time.

Eventually, she gave up trying. A heartbroken Katie Sue set up a trust fund for Jamie Lynn to access when she turned twenty-one, and did the only other thing she could think of. She took her share of the money and ran, leaving town and never looking back.

No one in town blamed her. Not even a little.

Katie Sue’s voice cracked as she said, “What’s wrong with her?”

“No one knows. It’s a bit of a mystery illness from what I hear.”

“Why hasn’t she come to see you? At least for a diagnosis?”

By tapping into Jamie Lynn’s energy, I should be able to pinpoint what was wrong. But that didn’t necessarily mean I could fix it. There were some limitations to my magic. “My guess is Lyla. She keeps a tight rein on Jamie Lynn,” I answered. Katie Sue’s older sister didn’t care for me much, knowing how close Katie Sue and I had once been, but she tolerated me just fine when I bought herbs from her massive gardens. Business was business, after all. Plus, she didn’t care much for anyone so I didn’t take her bad attitude too personal.

“But Jamie Lynn’s almost twenty-one and able to make her own choices.”

I bit my nail. “It’s not so easy to break some ties. Especially when it comes to family.”

“Don’t I know it.” Anger tightened the corners of her mouth. “I’ll try to sneak in a visit with Jamie Lynn while I’m here. Do you think you can get her a message without Lyla catching wind of it?”

“What kind of question is that, Katie Sue? Of course I can.”

“Kathryn,” she corrected with a smile.

“That’ll take some getting used to.”

“Try, Carly. I worked too hard to make Katie Sue disappear for her to be popping up now.” She sighed. “It doesn’t help that this town brings back a whole host of
bad memories I’d rather forget. Fortunately, my stay is only until Saturday; then I can return to Shady Hollow and go back to forgetting this place even exists.”

I raised an eyebrow at the mention of Shady Hollow. A suburb of Birmingham, it was the wealthiest city in the state. Things sure had changed for her—her determination had paid off big time.

Reaching into her bag, she moved aside a small manila envelope that had a coffee stain on the edge and pulled out a notepad and scribbled a quick letter. She folded the note in half, then in half again. Absently, she stared at it for a second before saying, “When I first left, I set up a PO Box and wrote letters to Jamie Lynn every week for years. They all came back unopened.” Giving her head a shake, she handed the note to me. “I asked her to meet me tonight at six thirty in my hotel room, so the sooner you can get that to her the better.”

“Where are you staying?”

She smiled, and I realized she’d had her teeth corrected, too. They were now perfectly straight, perfectly white, and perfectly perfect. Which described all of her, not just her teeth. It was a little unsettling.

“At the Crazy Loon. I’m fairly sure your aunt Hazel recognized me but couldn’t put a name to my face.”

All three of my aunts, Marjie, Eulalie, and Hazel Fowl (my mama’s sisters), collectively known as the Odd Ducks, owned aptly named inns in town. All four Fowl sisters were matrimonial cynics and weren’t too keen on ever gettin’ married, which was kind of ironic, considering where they lived. My daddy, a hopeless romantic, was still counting on my mama to come around, but so far
she hadn’t changed her mind. She was as happy as the day was long to stay engaged forever.

“I’m surprised you got a room,” I said. “Everything’s booked up.”

“Friends in high places,” Katie Sue said in a strange tone.

I took the note. “Well, don’t you worry none. I’ll see Jamie Lynn gets this.” I only hoped that she hadn’t been so brainwashed by Lyla that she refused to see Katie Sue.

“Thank you, Carly. You and your family are the only things that make this town the least bit bearable for me.”

“Quit it now. You know we’re always here for you.”

She gave me another hug, we set a time to meet for coffee at my house, and she headed for the door.

“Wait! Katie—Kathryn?”

She turned. “Hmm?”

“If not for Jamie Lynn, why
did
you come back to town?” Now that I knew who she was, I couldn’t help but wonder—and worry—about the dangerous energy she carried.

Something dark flashed in her eyes, and a wry smile creased her lips. “I’ll tell you all about it later, Carly, but for now I’ll say this.” She put on her sunglasses and pulled open the door. “As a doctor I may have taken an oath to do no harm, but as a country girl who’s done had it up to here with that family and their lies, I’m fixin’ to give the Calhouns a taste of their own bitter medicine.”

Chapter Two

“W
hat do you know about the Calhoun family?” I asked my best friend, Ainsley Debbs, later that afternoon as she ran a feather duster over the potion bottles. She worked here a couple of days a week, partly as a favor to me and partly to escape her kids, who were known around town as the Clingons. She also held a part-time job at the local ob-gyn’s office as a registered nurse.

Ainsley had already dispatched Francie Debbs, her mother-in-law, to deliver the note Katie Sue had written to Jamie Lynn Perrywinkle. Since Francie and Lyla were in the same gardening group it wasn’t the least bit suspicious for Francie to pay a call on the sisters (and slip the note to Jamie Lynn). Francie was more than happy to help, especially when Ainsley promised her a box of wine and a hangover potion in return for the favor.

She knew exactly how to motivate her mama-in-law.

“You still worrying about Katie Sue?” Ainsley asked.

“I can’t help it.” My skin tingled just thinking about it. The danger surrounding Katie Sue was very real. I had a
bad feeling. A mighty bad feeling. No one crossed the Calhoun family without retribution. Everyone in Alabama knew that.

“Did you call Dylan about it?”

Dylan Jackson. As a sergeant with the Darling County sheriff’s office, he needed to be notified that there was danger in the air, and as my twice-former fiancé, he knew to take my witchy warnings seriously. “Not yet.”

“You should.”

“I know.”

A smile quirked the corner of her lips. “What’re you waiting for?”

I narrowed my eyes at her, and she laughed.

She knew why. Dylan and I were, as I told Katie Sue, complicated. We were in a strange place, the two of us. Friendly—really friendly—but not quite dating. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go down that road with him again. My brain said
no
(real quietlike), but my heart was yelling
oh
hell yes
(and that sucker was loud).

“Third time’s the charm,” Ainsley said, stepping over Poly.

“Isn’t doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result considered the definition of insanity?”

She blinked at me. “Says who?”

I shrugged. “Probably some wise person who’d been burned by a relationship one too many times.”

Like I had. Almost literally in my case.

“Sometimes, sugar,” she drawled, “it’s fun when things get a little hot, if you know what I mean.”

I tipped my head. Right about now, a little heat sounded good. Really good. It had been downright
glacial in my bedroom for a good long while. “Fine,” I said, reaching for the phone. “I’ll call. But only out of concern for Katie Sue.”

Ainsley laughed again, not buying my excuse for a moment. She knew me too well.

We’d been best friends just shy of forever. Her mama claimed I was a bad influence on her baby girl, but Ainsley and I both knew she masterminded most of our crazy schemes. She’d stuck by me through thick and thin, including my two broken engagements to Dylan Jackson, my arrest (it was a misunderstanding, I swear), and of course when I was suspected of murder. I loved her like a sister and wasn’t sure what I’d do without her.

Many years back she fell hard for a man who didn’t seem to know she existed, so she hatched one of her famous plans to catch his attention. Carter Debbs didn’t know what hit him—literally—when Ainsley ran him over with her car.

It hadn’t been an accident.

After that Ainsley became a somewhat reformed wild child, the change coming about because she decided she needed to clean up her act to be the wife of a preacher man. They’d been married almost eight years now and had three kids. Twin four-year-old boys, Toby and Tuck, and three-year-old hellion Olive (who I thought should have been named “Karma” because she was so much like her mama).

Dylan didn’t answer either of his phones, at his house or his office, so I left a message at both, asking him to call me back. Part of Hitching Post’s quaintness was that it was cell-phone free—there wasn’t coverage within town
limits—so getting hold of someone right away was quite the challenge.

“So what do you know about the Calhouns?” I asked Ainsley again, revisiting my original question.

Wrinkling up her nose, her violet eyes sparkled. A lovely yellow sundress accentuated her generous curves. “I know about as much as you do,” she said with a shrug. Her light brown hair had been recently cut into a choppy layered bob that swung as she worked. The hairdo exemplified everything about Ainsley. Refined but a touch untamed. “They’re like the peaches in my backyard. Pretty on the outside, rotten to the core on the inside.”

“Wait a sec.” I studied her. “You didn’t use those peaches in the cobbler you brought in yesterday, did you?”

Mischief twinkled in her eyes. “Why? You been feeling puny?”

This was why she was a
somewhat
reformed wild child. Every once in a while the crazy popped right out of her, like a jack-in-the-box.

Shaking my head, I nudged Roly off my mouse pad and fired up my desktop computer. She yawned and stretched and gave me a suspicious look while twitching her long whiskers. To reassure her all was well, I ran a hand down her fluffy spine, and she curled into a ball once again.

I wasn’t sure what I could discover about the Calhouns online that I didn’t already know, but I aimed to find out.

“One thing I’ve been wondering on,” Ainsley said, pointing the feather duster at me, “is why Landry and Gabi’s wedding was moved here to Hitching Post. It was
supposed to be at a fancy estate down near Mobile, wasn’t it?”

Everyone round here had taken to calling the soon-to-be newlyweds by their given names. The whole Calhoun family, in fact. Warren, Louisa, Cassandra, and Landry. As though we all knew them personally. Thick as thieves. Tighter than ticks. The Calhoun family better watch out, or they might have to set a few more—like a few hundred—plates at the family’s Thanksgiving meal. The town had adopted the lot of them—whether they knew it or not.

“And wasn’t it supposed to be a thousand guests?”

“The Calhouns told my mama that the bride and groom wanted something smaller, quainter, and that Gabi fell in love with the look of Mama’s chapel. The guest list was cut to a measly three hundred.”

“Ain’t no way your mama’s chapel will fit more than two hundred,” Ainsley said. “And that’s only if they’re as skinny as fence pickets.”

My mama would have found a way to squeeze them all in, but she didn’t have to. “The ceremony’s being held outside, around the gazebo.”

“In this heat? Are they crazy?”

“Very possibly. Because it’s a sunset wedding and with the rental of outdoor air conditioners, it probably won’t be the heat that gets to the guests; it’ll be the mosquitoes.”

“Blessed be.” Ainsley laughed and shook her head. “Well, if anyone can pull it off, it’s your mama.”

It was true. There was no stopping Veronica “Rona” Fowl when she had her mind set on something.

Ainsley’s nose wrinkled again. “Why do you think Katie Sue’s dander is up with the Calhouns?”

“I honestly don’t know.” It was hard to even speculate. I didn’t really know Katie Sue anymore, and what I knew of the Calhouns made me worry about her well-being.

“What she said about giving them a taste of their own bitter medicine makes me think they did her wrong in some way,” Ainsley said.

Poly hopped onto the counter and waved his tail under my nose. I rubbed his ears and scooted him out of the way of the computer screen. “Could be they did.”

“But how does she even know them? She’s Katie Sue Perrywinkle from itty bitty Hitching Post, Alabama, and they’re”—her forehead scrunched as she searched for the right word—“famous.”

“Well, she’s not Katie Sue anymore, remember. She’s Kathryn Perry, MD, and she has loads of money. Maybe she’s a political supporter.”

“Even still.” Ainsley dragged the feather duster across a shelf. “Do you think the bitter medicine she talked about is literal? That it’s actually a hex? Maybe she’s been to see Delia.”

Delia Bell Barrows. My cousin and former nemesis. We’d managed to stick a bandage on our broken relationship, but underneath old wounds ran deep. Because we practiced very different types of magic, I couldn’t fully trust her. And wasn’t sure I ever could. But that being said, we’d recently reunited and were trying to get to know each other as friends rather than rivals.

Though we both called ourselves witches, the term wasn’t quite accurate but was used for lack of a better one.
People around these parts didn’t care a whit what we were labeled as long as our magic worked when they needed it.

Our family tree had been split down its middle by mine and Delia’s births. One side opting to use white magic for good (my side). The other choosing to practice black magic (her side).

Fundamentally our beliefs were night and day. Healer versus hexer. Good versus evil.

Delia sold hexes at her shop Till Hex Do Us Part, located across the Ring, the town center, and it was just the place for Katie Sue to scare up a bottle of revenge or a pox on the Calhoun family. “Maybe so, though the old Katie Sue would never touch a hex in a million years. She was all about healing.”

“But you said she changed.”

I couldn’t argue that. Maybe her transformation ran deeper than hair color and speech patterns. I called up my favorite search engine and typed in the Calhoun name. Loads of information filled the screen.

“Find anything interesting?” Ainsley asked after a minute.

“Not really.” Warren and Louisa had been college sweethearts, though rumors swirled of Warren’s various affairs throughout the years. Seemed to me Louisa turned a blind eye to his dalliances, whereas if he were my husband, I’d be poking his eyes out with my handy-dandy pitchfork, my favorite weapon of choice.

The couple had two children. At age twenty-nine, Landry, the groom-to-be, was the youngest child and a classic ne’er-do-well. Three years ago, during one of Warren’s reelection campaigns, several gossip magazines reported that Landry had been caught cheating during his
final year of law school and that Warren bought him out of trouble. The family denied everything, but Landry never graduated and Warren’s poll numbers tanked until not long after when tragedy struck the family. That’s when Landry’s older sister, Cassandra, had been hit by a car while crossing the street near her daddy’s Washington, D.C. office, where she worked as an aide. She survived, but a broken back left her paralyzed from the waist down. The doctors were hopeful at first that she’d walk again, but it wasn’t to be, and she was still bound to a wheelchair. Heartbreak for the family, but the sympathy vote bumped Warren’s numbers through the roof.

I was about to click off the search engine, when a location caught my eye.

Shady Hollow.

It was where Katie Sue mentioned she lived—but it seemed the town was also home to the Calhoun family. On a whim, I typed in her new name along with “Calhoun” and was surprised to see her pictured at several Calhoun fund-raisers over the past couple of years, often framed in the same shot as Warren himself.

“Looks like Katie Sue
is
one of Warren’s campaign donors.” I showed Ainsley the photos.

“Or she’s one of his mistresses,” she said, her eyebrows raised and wiggling. “It wouldn’t surprise me none with Warren’s reputation.”

It was a theory I couldn’t dismiss even though I wanted to. Warren was known for chasing after young, beautiful, accomplished women.

“And if she recently found out he has himself another woman on the side . . .
Shoo-ee
. She might have gotten a hex from Delia to make his willie fall off or something.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “I didn’t need that image in my head.”

But the more I thought about Katie Sue and Warren being together and her strange warning about bitter medicine, the more worried I became.
Mercy.
How’d I get mixed up in this mess? “I’m calling Delia. If she’d sold Katie Sue a revenge potion, a warning to the Calhouns might be in order.”

“I don’t know,” Ainsley said. “I think it’s high time Warren’s willie shriveled up. If I were his wife, I’d be buying that hex myself. Cheat on me, will he? I don’t think so.”