A Vision in Velvet: A Witchcraft Mystery (3 page)

Sebastian Crowley had been shot.

“Duuuude,”
Conrad exhaled in a harsh whisper, looking up at me as I approached. His eyes looked wild with fear and shock; there was blood on his hands. “He’s right where I usually . . . I mean, this is the exact spot where I’ve been sleeping.”

“Conrad, what happ—”

Sebastian groaned. I rushed over to kneel beside him. He was still conscious, but just barely.

“
Sebastian
, what happened? Who did this?” I grabbed the scarf from around my neck, wadded it up, and held it against his chest to stanch the blood. Conrad shrugged off his T-shirt and handed it to me. The blood soaked through both quickly.

The antiques dealer gurgled, sounding like he was choking. I realized he was trying to speak and leaned in close.

“Witch.”

I reared back, shivering all the way to my core, as though someone had placed an ice-cold hand on the back of my neck.

“Sebastian, tell me,
who
? Who did this?”

He closed his eyes, no longer responsive.

“Conrad? What happened? Did you see anything?”

“I didn’t see a thing. I was like, walking toward the tree, and I totally thought the dude was just napping, until I saw the . . . uh . . . blood.”

I glanced up and saw a woman with a baby carriage staring at us. She clapped a hand over her mouth and rushed away. An elderly man averted his eyes and hastened off as well. But others approached, forming a loose half circle in front of us and gawking as if unsure how to help. Oddly enough, they did not cross the invisible barrier formed by the orange plastic cones, and for a moment I felt as though we were putting on some sort of macabre performance-art show.

“Call nine-one-one!” I called out to no one in particular.

“I left my phone at the office,” one man said, speaking with a slight accent I couldn’t quite place. He was a large man, with thinning sandy hair and goggle eyes that appeared even wider than normal with shock. He and the dark-haired man next to him wore lab coats, and official-looking lanyards hung around their necks.

“I don’t carry a phone,” I said. “Someone, anyone, a cell phone?”

“Take mine,” said Conrad, pulling the device from his pants pocket.

The man was homeless, but had a cell phone? I grabbed it and dialed.

“Did you see what happened?” I asked the goggle-eyed man as he came to kneel by Conrad, as though to lend moral support. I held the phone to my ear as the number rang; a recording told me to hold on the line.

“I didn’t see anything. . . . Kai and I were supposed to meet a colleague here to take a look at the tree. Nina’s the tree expert. . . . She should be here, unless . . .” He scanned the area, apparently looking for her.

“I’m Lily Ivory. I own a shop on Haight Street. You work nearby?”

“We’re scientists at the Cal Academy. That’s Kai . . . and oh, there’s Nina. Good; she’s okay.”

“Dude,” said Conrad. “That’s the tree lady.”

I glanced up to see a tall young woman had joined the other man in a lab coat. Though she appeared strong and broad-shouldered, all three were so pale I wondered if they ever left their laboratories.

“You still on hold?” asked Conrad. “Why don’t I go see if I can wave down a park ranger or something? I’ll go out to the main road.”

“Good idea. Thanks, Con,” I said. I felt Sebastian’s neck for a pulse, but though he was still laboring to breathe, I couldn’t find even a murmur of a beat.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” said the man.

I couldn’t blame him. A trickle of blood from Sebastian’s chest was pooling on the soil beneath him. I noticed the dirt had been churned up and recalled Conrad mentioning that animals liked to burrow near the ancient oak tree. Unless someone had been digging for something . . .

“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency? Hello?”

My voice was shaky as I gave the operator our location as best I could: a clearing north of John F. Kennedy Drive, down the path toward the horseshoe pits. Directions were tough in Golden Gate Park, which was full of meandering lanes and woods and fields. I told her someone would be out on the road to wave the emergency vehicles in. She told me to stay on the line; paramedics were on their way.

“Take a deep breath, hold it. Then let it out slowly, to the count of eight,” I suggested to the man kneeling beside Sebastian, trying to distract him while we waited. “What’s your name?”

“Lance. Lance Thornton.”

“And what’s the Cal Academy, exactly?”

“The California Academy of Sciences. It’s sort of . . . well, part natural history museum and part scientific research facility. It’s not far from here, right across from the DeYoung Art Museum.”

“I don’t know the area that well. I moved here a while ago, but I . . .” I trailed off as Sebastian’s labored breathing ceased with a final rattling gasp.

I felt another icy sensation flow over me, then lift, all at once, from my shoulders.

As I reached out to feel for a pulse in Sebastian’s neck, his head turned toward me . . . eyes open and staring.

The breath caught in my throat.

Since moving to San Francisco, I had encountered too much violent death. But I had never been present at the actual moment of transformation, had never knelt beside someone and heard their last breath, witnessed their passing from this dimension to the next.

I almost told the 911 operator not to bother with the paramedics, to send the coroner and homicide inspectors instead, then decided that it wasn’t my place. I did say the victim was named Sebastian Crowley, that he had been shot, and that he appeared to be deceased. She asked a few clarifying details about that last statement, then again told me to remain on the line until the police arrived.

“Poor Sebastian,” I whispered.

“You know him?” asked Lance.

“Just barely.”

Holding the phone to my ear, I focused once more on Sebastian’s now lifeless body. This time I noticed something sticking out of his jacket pocket. I leaned closer: It was a small rectangle of cheery purple paper stock
emblazoned with the slogan
Aunt Cora’s Closet—It’s Not Old. It’s Vintage!

My calling card.

* * *

“You wanna tell me why the victim had your business card in his pocket?” demanded Inspector Carlos Romero of the San Francisco Police Department.

The paramedics were the first to arrive; then the medical examiner had been called in, and the photographer and forensics team had begun working the crime scene. I was simultaneously relieved and chagrined when I saw which homicide inspector had been assigned to Sebastian’s murder. Carlos and I were on a first-name basis. Our visits were inevitably connected to death and mayhem—murder with a magical edge. Because there was more of that than one might expect in this beautiful City by the Bay.

The inspector was only a little taller than me, but the way he carried himself suggested he could inflict some serious damage were he so inclined. He wore his standard uniform of a thigh-length black leather jacket, starched white shirt, and khaki chinos and had already taken statements from Conrad and Lance Thornton, as well as from several other bystanders. No one, it seemed, had witnessed the shooting.

Carlos had saved me for last.

“Out with it now. And don’t hold anything back.”

“I met Sebastian Crowley—”

“The victim?”

My stomach churned. “Yes, the victim. I met him at his shop earlier in the day, and—”

“Time? Purpose of the meet?”

“Around ten this morning,” I said. “And the purpose of the ‘meet’ was to buy clothes.”

“Did you?”

“Yes, I bought a trunk of old clothes.”

“I’ll need to check it out.”

I nodded. It wouldn’t be the first time the SFPD had confiscated some of my inventory. “It’s at the shop.”

“Find anything out of the ordinary? A fortune in jewels and gold coins, anything like that? Motive for murder, maybe?”

“It’s not a pirate’s treasure. Just a bunch of old clothes, not worth anything, really. They’re falling apart, scarcely fit for the rag pile.”

“What about the trunk itself? Did you check the lining? Look for a false bottom?”

I shook my head. “The trunk’s kind of old and smelly, mainly of value to an antiquarian. You’re welcome to it.” I’d happily surrender the trunk—for all I cared, the SFPD forensics team could tear it apart looking for hidden treasure. But even though Carlos was a friend and even though I realized it might be evidence or provide a motive of some sort . . . I decided not to mention the strange velvet cloak quite yet. That cape and I had a date to get to know each other better, just as soon as possible.

After all, Carlos had his skills, but I had mine. And anything associated with that particular garment, I feared, was more in my realm of expertise than his.

“Would you like me to call and ask Bronwyn and Maya to set the trunk aside?”

“I’d appreciate that.”

He handed me his cell as a crime-scene tech walked up to ask a question. I quickly dialed Bronwyn.

“Aunt Cora’s Closet,” Bronwyn singsonged as she answered the phone. “It’s not old. It’s vintage!”

“Hi. It’s me. Listen, a police officer will be swinging by the shop before too long to pick up the old trunk. Let him have it.”

“Okay,” Bronwyn said slowly.

“I’ll explain later,” I said. “Another thing: There’s a
bundle of stinging nettles at the top of the stairs to my apartment. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“Yes, of course,” she said. “They keep your apartment locked down.”

“Take those and distribute them around the shop’s front and rear doors. And keep an eye out for anything, or anyone, unusual. Just be on guard.”

“What happened?”

“It’s probably nothing to do with us. But the man who sold me that trunk has been . . . killed.”

“Lily . . .”

“I’m with the police right now. It probably . . . probably has nothing to do with us,” I repeated. “I just want you to keep an eye out.”

“All right. Anything else?”

I glanced at Carlos, standing just a few feet away, and lowered my voice. “When the officers get there . . . don’t mention that other item I tried on earlier, okay?”

“Understood,” Bronwyn said. “Will you be back soon, do you think?”

“I hope so,” I said, and thanked her before hanging up. I walked over to the inspector and handed him his cell phone. “Carlos, what happened to Sebastian . . . it probably has nothing to do with that trunk, but—”

“Probably not. But I still need to look through it. Standard procedure.”

“Of course, that’s fine. What I was going to say is that if Sebastian was killed because of that trunk and someone tracked it to Aunt Cora’s Closet . . .”

“That crossed my mind as well. I’ll send a car by, have them keep an eye on the place. And you might want to do . . . whatever it is you do in these sorts of situations.”

I nodded.

“So let’s summarize,” Carlos said. “You meet the victim, Sebastian Crowley, at ten this morning at his antiques store in Jackson Square, where you buy a trunk of
worthless old clothes. You then return to your shop with the trunk and said worthless clothes, then decide to take a walk in Golden Gate Park, where you stumble across the antiques dealer’s body at the base of a tree.”

“Then I called the police.”

Carlos pressed his lips together for a long moment while he studied me.

“Why’d you buy the trunk if you thought it was”—he glanced at his notes—“‘kind of old and smelly’?”

“I’m not always a shrewd businesswoman.”

He raised one eyebrow.

I shrugged. “Crowley was going to throw it out, and I . . . I felt sorry for it.”

“What, are you saying this trunk
talks
to you? You communicate with furniture now?”

“Of course not.” The cape, on the other hand . . . maybe. “But Sebastian said it came across the prairie with the pioneers, and . . . I don’t know, I couldn’t bear to think of it sitting out on the curb waiting for garbage day. So I gave him sixty bucks for it. I thought maybe I’d find something inside, and Maya was going to see if a museum might want it. It’s a tax write-off.”

Carlos smiled. “Remind me to sell you the contents of the back of my closet sometime.”

“Now,
that
would be interesting.”

“And you came here to this tree, why? Because of the protestors?”

“Yes. My friend Conrad told me about trying to save the tree, so I thought I’d come take a look. It was that simple.”

“It’s hard to believe anything’s simple where you’re concerned, Lily. It’s awfully coincidental that both you and Sebastian Crowley would end up here after meeting earlier in the day, don’t you think?”

“Not in the cosmic sense. All sorts of strange things happen every day.”

Carlos looked cosmically unconvinced.

I tried again. “Maybe . . . I don’t know. Maybe Sebastian was a tree lover, and he heard about Ms. Quercus being condemned and came to take a look. Just like I did.”

“Ms. Who?”

“The tree. Conrad calls it Ms. Quercus.”

“May I ask why?”

“I think it has to do with the kind of tree it is—its Latin name, I guess?”

“I never would have pegged Conrad as an arborist. He know a lot of Latin?”

“I think he got it from a woman who came to assess the tree. Does it matter?”

“You know me. I’m a curious guy. So, tell me more about this Conrad fellow. I’ve seen him at your store. He tells me he’s been sleeping here under this tree lately. What’s his connection to the victim?”

“He doesn’t have one, at least not that I’m aware of.” There was a harsh glint in Carlos’s dark eyes. Realization dawned. “I’m sure he’s not involved in this, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“How are you so sure?”

“Because . . . because it’s
Conrad
.” I would no sooner accuse Conrad of shooting someone than I would myself.

“Unless I miss my guess, he lives on the street and he uses. Maybe he, or one of his friends, they get feeling jumpy, and they see a guy walking by, nicely dressed, demand his wallet, things get out of hand . . .”

“No,”
I said.

Carlos shrugged.

“Carlos, seriously:
no
. You should look at
me
as a suspect long before Conrad. He wouldn’t hurt a fly—literally. I’ve seen him carefully shoo insects out of the store to escape Maya’s wrath.”