Probable Paws (Mystic Notch Cozy Mystery Series Book 5) (12 page)

P
andora greeted
me at the bookstore with a stilted meow. I tried to appease her with some catnip before getting to work on cataloging more books. I entered a stack of books in my inventory system, printed off labels for them, and proceeded to put them away in their various sections. The mindless job left me room to think about Josie.

What had she been lying about? Her story about rushing out to the pharmacy didn’t sit well. Could she have been the one that killed Adelaide? There was one way to rule her out…if I knew Adelaide’s time of death and the pharmacy had a record of the transaction, then that would prove she was not in the house when Adelaide died.

Gus would never tell me the time of death, but I knew someone who would—her deputy Jimmy. Jimmy owed me. I got my phone from the front desk and punched in his number.

“What do you want this time, Willa?” Jimmy answered the phone, apparently on to me.

“Hey, I don’t always call because I want something.”
Did I?

“Well, it has been a while,” Jimmy said. “How’s Pandora? Scooter is getting along at my place just fine.”

Scooter was a little feral tuxedo cat Jimmy had adopted. I gazed out the window as he launched into a monologue about the cat and what was going on in his life. I mechanically grunted out various appropriate noises as I waited for an opening to ask about Adelaide’s time of death.

Across the street, I saw the flaming-red locks of Felicity Bates. She had her white long-haired cat on a leash. Odd, because I thought Felicity hated cats. I watched as the cat wound itself around her ankles, rubbing its cheek against her red stilettos. Pandora was watching too, the hairs on her back standing on end.

Felicity was arguing with someone. No surprise there. I adjusted my angle and craned my neck to see who it was. That
was
a surprise—it was Marion and Evie. Marion was seated in her wheelchair, waving her fist in Felicity’s face. Evie, who stood behind the chair, was bent toward Marion, apparently soothing her. I wondered what that was about. Maybe Marion was having it out with Felicity over trying to buy the Hamilton family treasures.

“So how’s things going with you?” Jimmy’s voice in my ear brought my thoughts back to the reason for my call.

“Just great. Book sales are up. Pandora is in rare form. You know my grandmother was a good friend of Adelaide Hamilton’s, don’t you?”

“Yeah.” Jimmy drew out the end of the word, his voice wary.

“Well, I’m trying to do something for my grandma. Something she asked for in her will.”

“And that has something to do with Adelaide?”

“Yes, and it would be really helpful to know her time of death.”

“Huh? Why the heck would you need to know that?”

“Umm … well, I can’t really say, but if you could tell me, I’d owe you one.”

Silence. I checked my phone to make sure we were still connected.

Finally I heard a loud sigh, and Jimmy said, “Well, I suppose it won’t hurt to tell you that. It’s not like we’re keeping it a secret. Adelaide died between six and seven a.m.”

I glanced over at the pharmacy across the street, double-checking the hours on the sign on the door. Icy fingers danced up my spine.

If what Jimmy had just said was true, then Adelaide was already dead when Josie claimed to have looked in on her.

* * *

N
ow things were getting confusing
. Had Josie killed Adelaide for the spell book? Or had she just failed to notice that her mother was dead when she looked in on her? She did seem kind of out of it, but I had assumed her state was due to her grief over her mother’s death. I didn’t know what Josie was like before that, though.

Josie had mentioned that a noise in the hall had woken her. Evie’s room was down the hall. Evie had been seen out in the fields, worshipping the moon. Someone like that might be after a spell book.

The motive for Adelaide’s murder might not have been the spell book at all. But what? Money? I doubted I could find out what was in the will, but if the motive had been greed, then Lisa was at the top of my suspect list. But why wouldn’t she just wait it out instead of risk going to jail for murder? Adelaide didn’t have many more years, and it appeared as if Lisa lived a cushy lifestyle as it is. The only reason would be if Adelaide was going to change her will and cut Lisa out somehow, or if Lisa wanted out of the marriage and that would mean she would inherit nothing.

As I closed up the shop that night, I circled back to my earlier thought about Josie killing Adelaide for the spell book. If Josie was after the book, the only reason she’d have to kill Adelaide would be because Adelaide was protecting it—keeping her from it—somehow. If Adelaide had given up the location, Josie would have it by now, but if her clues were as cryptic as the ones she’d given me, Josie would still be looking.
If
in fact she’d been the killer
and
the book was the reason.

I had a gut feeling that
Betty’s Recipes
had not yet been found, and if Josie was searching, then maybe my best bet was to follow her.

Adelaide didn’t pop in to persuade me otherwise, so I went home for dinner then put on my all-black outfit and headed out. Pandora would not take no for an answer, and I soon found myself skulking across the field toward the Hamilton estate with her leading the way as if she knew exactly where she was going.

We hunkered down in an area of tall grass. The grass was trampled as if someone had been there before, scoping out the house. Or maybe it was wild animals. I looked around nervously—there were a variety of animals out here. Coyote, bobcats, deer, black bears. I hoped this wasn’t one of their favorite spots.

Pandora focused her golden-green eyes on the Hamilton house, her whiskers twitching in the humid night air. Yellow light glowed in the windows. I could see people moving around, and once in a while a word or two drifted across the field, muted by the sounds of frogs peeping. Pandora stood, her tail sticking straight in the air—the kink at the end pointing toward the mansion—seconds before an obscure door at the side of the house opened and Josie stepped out.

She wore a long, thin sweater over a tank top and jeans. I watched as she hurried to a white rose bush that trailed up a white lattice archway. She inspected a few of the flowers then took a pair of scissors from her pocket and cut one off.

Pandora was way ahead of me, already trotting to the edge of the field by the time Josie turned and disappeared behind the back of the house. Where was she going? I rose from my crouched position and jogged in that direction, sticking to the field, away from the manicured lawns of the house.

Josie was on the other side of the mansion now, walking toward the woods. How odd. The behavior seemed like something I would expect from Evie. My gaze drifted past Josie to the woods, and I remembered what I’d seen there the other day. The Hamilton family cemetery. Was Josie paying respects to one of her ancestors? Not Adelaide, though. Family cemeteries on private land hadn’t been used for burial in over fifty years. But maybe her grandmother or another ancestor … like Daisy Hamilton. It was likely Daisy was buried the cemetery or her remains were in the mausoleum. Adelaide had mentioned the book was “with Daisy” or something like that. If it was in there, I had to get to that mausoleum and stop Josie from finding it!

As if reading my thoughts, Pandora was already trotting across the yard toward the woods. I followed, sticking to the shadows and unlit parts of the yard.

The mausoleum was a gray cement building with no windows and a wrought-iron door. I peered into the door, my eyes barely able to see the figure of Josie inside, standing over a cement vault. She dropped the rose on top, patted the edge, and turned toward the door. I jerked back by instinct, flattening myself against the outside. Josie didn’t see me. She exited and headed toward the house without a backward glance. Did she have the book? It didn’t look like it—her hands were empty.

She hadn’t been in there long enough to search for anything, so what had she been doing?

A ball of fear tightened in my stomach as I eyed the dark opening. I had to go in and check things out for myself. Hopefully I wouldn’t be swarmed by ghosts who all wanted something from me.

The inside of the mausoleum was cloaked in the damp smell of wet earth and decaying leaves. The air was stagnant, and Pandora let out a little “Mew”, her whiskers twitching violently.

The only light came from the moonbeams spilling in from the open iron door and a lone flickering candle that cast eerie shadows on the walls. There were three casket-sized tombs, the edges of their concrete tops decorated with scrolled designs. The far wall had several niches with names engraved on stones. Cremation ashes?

I crossed to the tomb where Josie had been standing. On top lay two white roses. Two? Josie had only brought one. And why? The inscription on the top yielded a clue. The ancestor inside—Rose Chester Hamilton—had died on this very day one hundred years ago. Did Josie bring it as a remembrance to a long-dead ancestor she’d never known?

Dang! This whole thing probably had nothing to do with the spell book…

“
Meow!
” Pandora scratched at the vault on the other end as if she were trying to tell me something. Crazy? Not any more than everything else that was happening. I bent down to look at the area she was pawing, the name causing a jolt of adrenaline—Daisy Edgars-Hamilton.

Had Adelaide hidden the book inside Daisy’s vault? Weren’t these things sealed?

I pushed on the top just in case. The scratchy sound of concrete grating against concrete answered the question as to whether or not they were sealed. I pushed harder, not sure that I actually wanted to look inside but knowing that I had to. Now would be a great time for Adelaide to pop up and give me some guidance.

“What are you doing?”

My heart leaped into my throat. I whirled around to see Striker standing in the doorway.

“Please tell me you haven’t turned to grave robbing.”

“Very funny. Come help me push. I need to see what’s inside here.”

“Inside? Probably a dead person. What are you looking for?”

Good question. I couldn’t tell him about the spell book, but I didn’t want to lie outright, so I fudged it. “I saw Josie come out here and thought maybe she was hiding evidence.”

“In there?” Striker frowned at the vault. “And how did you see Josie? Are you spying on her?”

“How did you see me? Are you spying on me?”

“I had a funny feeling you would do something stupid tonight. Turns out I was right.” Striker sounded frustrated—I assumed with me—but he stepped closer and pushed on the cover.

The top slid a couple of inches. Striker pulled out his flashlight and aimed it inside. I took a deep breath and looked in, expecting to see the top of an old casket. Apparently they didn’t use caskets one hundred years ago in the mausoleum, because inside were the remnants of a tattered dress, ivory-white bones, a skull looking up at me in a silent scream. No book.

“So much for hiding it with favorite relatives,” Striker muttered.

“Huh?” Had he said something? I was still reeling from looking at the decayed corpse and didn’t quite catch what it was.

“I don’t see any evidence in there, do you?” he said.

“Oh. No,” I said. “Maybe we should check the other—”

Voices outside cut off my words. “Shhh.” I grabbed Striker and pulled him into the shadows. The voices grew closer.

“Are you following me?” a young woman hissed.

“No. What are you doing out here with that flower, anyway?” A young man.

“Leaving a white rose for my great-great-grandmother. It’s her death day, and it’s a family tradition. Not that you need to know about family traditions, because if I have my way about it, you won’t be hanging around my sister for very long.”

That explained the white roses and what Josie was doing out here. It also explained Evie’s nighttime trip, but what was Brian doing out here? Looking for the book, or maybe making sure Evie didn’t get her hands on it?

Brian laughed. “Well, luckily you don’t have any say in who Julie dates. You don’t have her under your spell anymore, Evie.”

“We’ll see about that. I’m not going to stand by and let you …”

“
Hiss!
” Pandora stood at the door, her back arched, hairs on end.

“Hey!” A white rose fell to the ground just outside the doorway.

“
Meow!
” Pandora let out a loud wail.

“What are you doing in here, Kitty?” Evie swooped down, trying to grab Pandora, who jumped out of the way, hissing and spitting. “Come here, Kitt—”

She glanced up, stopping mid-sentence, her eyes narrowed as she scanned the interior of the mausoleum. I shrank back against the wall, but it was no use. She homed in on Striker and me, her forehead creasing as she picked up the fallen rose and stood. “Just what are
you
doing in here? Aren’t you the people who were accusing my mom yesterday?”

“We weren’t accusing, just asking,” Striker said.

Evie stuck her hands on her hips. “I don’t think I like you poking into Hamilton family business.”