spies and spells 01 - spies and spells (17 page)

Money? Did he mean someone was being paid off? I just found it strange Tawny didn’t have a clue if someone was smuggling drugs through Mystic Couture. She seemed to have her pulse on all the transactions going on with her business.

I slipped into the mansion to see if I could talk to Tawny. I had no clue what I was looking for, but maybe she could give me a little tip on how the Mystic Girl thing works. I had to at least get a good sense before I even called Drea about it. I could wave my hand and twitch my nose all I wanted to, but it wasn’t going to help me learn how to play the part of the Mystic Girl.

The buttercream walls played throughout the mansion. The only room that didn’t have marble flooring was the gathering room off the back porch. There was hardwood floors and cathedral ceilings with floor to ceiling windows and a large stone fireplace on the far end. I found my way back to the front of the house and crept up the stairs counting on Tawny to be up there checking on Tessa. Once up at the top, I took a quick look around. Several doors lined the right and the left. I picked the right, opening and peeking in every door, stopping at the one where the moaning was coming from.

“Tawny? Tessa?” I called into the bedroom. The four-poster bed had a fancy pink, lacy canopy on it. It was definitely a little girl’s room, which could only be Tessa’s since she was Tawny’s only daughter. There was a dollhouse that stood as tall as me and furnished with what looked to be very expensive replicas of the furniture in the mansion. A velvet pink chaise was in the corner of the room, near the window, loaded down with dolls and stuffed animals. Arranged in a perfect way. Not thrown on like normal kids.

“Help,” the audible gasp came from the open door near the bed.

“Tessa?” I asked again, wondering if it was the bathroom and she was on the toilet.

What was wrong with me? I screwed up the innocent cat spell and now this? I didn’t mean for Tessa to have a stomach blowout.

The room was the bathroom and had beautiful gold accents. There was a large bathtub that could fit at least ten people and a glass shower with those fancy showerheads that didn’t leave a bit of soap on any part of your body.

“Please.” The voice came from the door in the bathroom.

“Tessa, it’s me. Maggie Park,” I called my name before entering what was a walk-in closet that was the size of my bedroom. “Tessa?”

I ran over to the “red section” of the organized closet where there was a pair of legs sticking out. Only the legs weren’t those of Tessa. It was Tawny.

I parted the clothes and bent down next to her. There was blood seeping from her head. Her beautiful blond bob was tinted orange.

“Tawny, what happened?” I questioned, my heart pumping.

“Red,” she gasped for air. “Red.” Blood rushed from her nose and she coughed out blood.

“Red?” I asked. “Hold on.” I lifted my hand in the air. I wasn’t sure if I could save her, but I knew I could get more time for her to get out the information I needed about
red
.

“No.” She tried to spit the blood out. “Red.” Her head rolled to the side. Her eyes open and fearful as though they were telling me about the evil I felt hanging in the air.

“Maggie!” Mick appeared out of nowhere. “What in the hell is going on?” His eyes drew on my raised hand and down to the floor. “Tawny!” He grabbed his phone, pushing me out of the way. He rambled on to someone on the other line, but my mind was too busy racing to even listen to him.

Tawny Fawn was dead.

Chapter Seventeen

“Are you sure you are okay?” Mick leaned up against Vinnie, facing Belgravia Court as I stood on the sidewalk.

He had followed me home from Tawny Fawn’s after the police had come to take over the scene. SKUL didn’t want us to break our covers so they sent us home.

No, I wasn’t okay. The image of Tawny’s lifeless body that’d been so full of life a few minutes before I had found her was now burned on my brain.

“I did a lot of mental digesting trying to forget about the informant at the warehouse and seeing him shot, but this.” The lump in my throat wasn’t going anywhere. It was stuck. I couldn’t swallow the image of Tawny’s dead body like I had the informant. “Tawny was an innocent woman. She didn’t deserve to die.” My eyes filled to the rim with tears. I brought my hand to my mouth. “Do you think someone knew about us? They knew she was helping us?”

Mick pushed off of Vinnie, stepping up on the sidewalk next to me. Vinnie beeped. Mick looked back at him.

“Security alarm sensitive,” I lied to explain why Vinnie let out a beep of disapproval of Mick getting close to me.

“I don’t know much about vintage cars, but yours is very sensitive. Is it street legal?” Mick kicked Vinnie’s front tire.

Vinnie went nuts. His horn beeped and tooted, the lights strobe off and on. Then his hood flew up in the air.

“I, um. . .” I rushed over and jabbed my keys in the door.

“What in the hell is wrong with your car?” Mick peered in the door after I jumped in.

“I have to shut the door to get the alarm off.” I pushed him back and slammed the door. “Dammit, Vinnie.” I scolded my snarky familiar.

“I’m not happy with him getting so close to you. Your life’s journey doesn’t include a relationship. It is the SKUL case. You were meant to help on the investigation of the case, not Agent Jasper’s heart.” Vinnie’s dashboard trickled up and down with bright red lights.

A tap on the window caused me to look. Mick’s face was squished up against the windows with his hands shielding his eyes so he could get a look inside.

“Plus he looked like he was going to hug on you. That is not acceptable.” Vinnie’s anger heated the seat under me. “I’m your familiar. Let me do my job.” The lights went out. Vinnie shut down. It was his way of telling me he was not going to discuss this situation any further.

He was right. Mick and I were only working on the investigation together. He was just a piece of my life’s journey. After this case, I would put Mick behind me and my family’s secret would be kept.

“Your mechanic isn’t very good.” Mick’s brow cocked, his teeth glowed in the dark. “That car has some issues.”

“No, it’s fine,” I assured him, rubbing my hands up and down my arms. Though the air was humid, I was chilled to the bone.

“What is going on out here?” Mrs. Hubbard called out from the top step of her front porch. She had on a housecoat, her hair curled tight all over her head in pink cushy curlers and King tucked under her arm.

“My car alarm went off, Mrs. Hubbard. It’s okay now,” I answered her.

“I’ve got my eye on you!” she screamed jutting her finger in the air. “All of you! I’m not sure which one of you tore up my flowers, but I know it was one of the Parks! I told the council too!” She screamed louder, “Next time I’m calling the cops!”

“Cops?” Mick’s eyes slid toward me.

“Nothing.” I sucked in a deep breath. With the night I had, I didn’t have time to figure out what happened to Mrs. Hubbard’s fake flowers. That was the last thing I needed to investigate. “She’s all in a tizzy about her flowers. They are fake as in plastic.” The sound of it made me smile and giggle. “It sounds silly, but she believes she can win the Hidden Treasure Garden Tour blue ribbon with them.”

“Hidden what?” His brows furrowed.

“I forget you don’t live here.” I reached out and touched him. The sparks that had happened between our fingers, happened when I touched him.

He slightly jerked.

I continued without giving any acknowledgement of the electricity, “Historic Old Louisville council has a garden tour and gives awards to the best landscape and things like that. My mom has got a green thumb and Mrs. Hubbard does not. She thinks she’s going to win with her plastic flowers.”

My head shot to the right when I saw a flash zip by me.

“What?” Mick looked over my shoulder. “What are you looking at?”

Riule.
My eyes were sharp and assessing as they zeroed in on my mom’s familiar darting around the courtyard. What was he doing out of the house?

One of Mrs. Hubbard’s red plastic bouquets swayed. Riule emerged with the bouquet in his mouth.

“Red,” I blinked at Mick, feeling lightheaded. I stumbled back and he caught me before I fell to the ground.

“Red?” Mick searched my face for a plausible answer to me blurting out a color. His eyes probed my very soul. His lips so close to me gave me a knot in my stomach.

“Yes. Red!” I pushed my way out of his grip and snapped my finger. “The informant whispered red when I bent down to look at him in the warehouse and Tawny.” It was as though a light bulb had gone off in my head, but it was Riule. He was the one who helped me remember. “Tawny whispered ‘red’ to me too.”

“As in the color?” Mick questioned.

I nodded.

“Red.” He ground out the word between his gritted teeth. “Red.”

“Red.” I confirmed.

“Are you sure you are okay?” he asked again. When I assured him I was, he said, “I’m going back to the office. I’ll be in touch with you tomorrow. I’m going to see what I can figure out with red.”

“Bye.” I sighed, watching as he zoomed off in his car. He didn’t bother giving a proper goodbye. I turned back around and called, “Riule. Riule.”

Rowl, rowl
. The cat was sitting on the front porch of our house, waiting for me to let him in.

Chapter Eighteen

I was beginning to see a pattern when I was with Mick, a no sleeping pattern. There was no sleeping after a night with him and SKUL. I had tossed and turned all night trying to forget the look on the informant’s face and on Tawny’s. Though two different people, the look was the same, their voices desperate as they whispered
red
.

Instead of fighting sleep, I pored over the files hoping something would come to me but nothing did.

Meow, meow
. Riule snuck into the room. His tail dancing in the air, the red plastic flowers lying at his paws. He lifted his right leg, licking his paw before rubbing it over his ear a few times before he rested on his hind legs, cleaning his under carriage.

“You are a naughty cat.” I pointed a finger toward him. When did it become my responsibility to look after someone else’s familiar? Hell, I had a hard time keeping my own in line. “You better go put those back.”

He didn’t listen. He ran out. I got up and picked the flowers off the floor. With a snap of my finger, I was dressed and ready for work. There was no sense in trying to rest when Auntie Meme and Lilith were already at The Brew getting ready for the morning crowd. I was no use at home or at SKUL. At least at The Brew I could keep myself busy by working. 

Vinnie didn’t have two words to say on the way over to the diner. He drove me over, dropped me off, and away he went. I wasn’t in any mood to stroke his ego, so I let him be. He’d come around. Especially if I got myself into a pickle.

“Look what the cat dragged in.” Lilith planted her hands on her hips. “Why are you here so early?”

“I couldn’t sleep.” I grabbed the apron off the hook and stuck my clutch under the counter. I grabbed the stack of clean saucers off the shelf and walked down the counter setting one down in front of every stool.

“Mr. hottie keep you up all night?” Lilith was really trying to get to the bottom of my relationship with Mick.

“No.” I glared at her and made my way over to the cups, hooking one on each of my fingers. “I went to a meeting. I told y’all but you were too busy watching TV and grinding Mom’s herbs.”

I shoved past her and put a cup on each saucer. Lilith flipped on the small television that hung on the wall behind the counter. The regulars loved to listen to the morning news and discuss the weather over their cups of coffee and biscuits and gravy.

The banner across the bottom of the screen read
Breaking Headlines
.

“Did you see that?” Lilith asked, pointing to the screen. 

“Yeah, you didn’t fill the sugar container for the counter customers,” I noted, trying to ignore her. Auntie Meme had put me on counter duty all week long from the looks of the schedule.

I pulled the condiment caddy from underneath the counter and started making my way down the row.

“No, not the condiments.” Lilith pointed to the TV. “That.”

I stopped and looked at the TV, turning up the volume. The reporter was standing in front of the Fawn mansion in front of the yellow police tape that was draped all over the place, stating all the details of the investigation.

There was a podium in the front of the steps of the massive home with a bunch of microphones taped together on top. The camera zoomed in on Tessa, Bo and another gentleman walking out of the front door and down the steps. The man stood behind the piles of microphones with Tessa and Bo standing next to him.

Tessa’s eyes were bloodshot with black circles under them. She nuzzled her head in Bo’s shoulder as he tried to comfort the sobs coming from her body. I couldn’t help but think Tawny was in the ever after complaining about the black Mystic Couture mascara dripping down Tessa’s face since it was supposed to be waterproof. Definitely not tear proof.

“I’m the lawyer for the family, Steve Combs.” The man spelled his name so the reporters had it right. The sounds of camera clicks went off in the distance like little gunshots. “Tessa and Bo are devastated about the passing of her mother, the legendary makeup mogul, Tawny Fawn. Mystic Couture will carry on her vision and to beautify the world one woman at a time.”

“Is it true Mrs. Fawn was murdered?” one reporter shouted out in the live broadcast.

“There is nothing to confirm that at this time.” The lawyer didn’t even flinch at his lie. I wondered why the police would keep something like this secret? Why wouldn’t they be out there combing the area for more clues as to who killed her?

“Is it true Mystic Couture’s numbers have been falling over the past few years with other big names in makeup coming to the scene? And would she take her life over it?” another reporter asked.

“It’s absurd to think a woman as polished and classy as Tawny Fawn would take her own life. Mystic Couture is doing better than it ever has. The reports are false. Mrs. Fawn took great pride in caring for her employees.” The lawyer spoke loud and clear.