Bewitched, Bothered, and Biscotti: A Magical Bakery Mystery (29 page)

He frowned. “That’s pretty rotten. The Honeybee is too busy to have someone flake
out on you like that.”

“She told us she was Wiccan,” I said, trying out our newfound honesty. How would Declan
react to talk of magic sans alcohol and moonlight to soften the whole idea?

Unfortunately, he had such a good poker face I couldn’t tell what he thought. “Did
that influence you?” he asked, the words measured.

“Probably,” I admitted. “But not as much as her fake portfolio of fancy cakes. She
counted on my checking only one reference, too, if any.”

“Hmm.”

“There’s more, though. See, the guy who lied for her? Who said he owned the Halcyon
Bakery? It was Greer Eastmore. The guy I wanted you to go with me to talk to yesterday.”

Declan looked over at me so fast I thought he’d pull
a muscle. I hadn’t wanted to spoil last night, so I’d kind of conveniently forgotten
to fill him in on the events of the previous afternoon.

“Keep your eyes on the road. Yes. The son of the man we found. And Declan? Um, he’s
dead now, too.”

This time Declan didn’t mess around. He pulled to the side of the road and threw the
truck into park. “Dead, how?” His voice held foreboding.

“Well, I’m not sure. There weren’t any wounds that I could see. He was simply…no longer
alive. Maybe a heart attack, or something else. But there was something that reminded
me of what happened to me the night before. The, er, attack I mentioned.”

He was staring at me. “Something reminded you—you saw him?”

“Oh. Yeah. After you ran out of my house, Steve offered to go with me.”

“I did not run out.”

I let that pass. “We were the ones who found him.”

“Katie! What the heck is going on with you?”

“Well, that whole witch thing might have something to do with it. Lucy seems to think
I’m some kind of catalyst. I don’t know for sure how that works, but stuff seems to…happen
around me sometimes.”

He grimaced. “I’ll say.”

“Anyway, Nel was connected to Greer, and I’m afraid she might have had something to
do with Lawrence Eastmore as well.”

“Like she was involved in his death?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. But there’s some connection. And she lied. A lot. And I
don’t know why. So, I’m going to ask her.”

“Shouldn’t you call the police?”

“And tell them what? That we didn’t properly vet our new employee, and that she happened
to know the dead son of a dead man you and I found in Johnson Square?”

We looked at each other for a long moment. Then he sighed and pulled back into the
street.

The Sandstrom house was on Waters Avenue, on the edge of the Baldwin Park neighborhood.
It was all chunky lines, painted in varying shades of dull mushroom and surrounded
by a sprawling lawn. We parked smack-dab in front of the overblown portico, and I
hopped out of the truck with Mungo and marched to the door. I rang the doorbell, then
knocked, then rang the doorbell again.

Declan joined me. “If she’s in there she might not answer—”

“Oh, no,” I interrupted.

He looked puzzled.

“You don’t smell that?”

My familiar’s head popped up from my tote bag.

Yip!

Declan glanced down at Mungo and sniffed. Shook his head.

Darn it. “Something’s burning.”

The effect of saying the word
burning
to a fireman hadn’t occurred to me. Declan pushed past me and
pounded on the door. Hard. The sound reverberated through the wall. Anyone inside
would have to hear it.

He sniffed again. “Now I smell it, too.”

“You do?” I asked, surprised. Though I had to admit this wasn’t the same nostril-curling
stench as burning hair.

His elbow crashed through the glass beside the door. I watched with wide eyes as he
reached inside and unlocked the front door. “Stay here,” he said.

“Like heck.” I followed right behind him. The smell was stronger, but I didn’t see
any smoke. The atmosphere in the house gave me the creeps. The memory of the ice-cold
finger running down my back outside Lawrence Eastmore’s potting shed flickered through
my mind. There was something like that here.

Yes, Nel looked like she belonged in Mayberry, but under the surface you wouldn’t
find fried chicken and apple pie. There was something cold and dark—and scary.

“Hello?” Declan called. “
Hello?!
Anyone home?” His baritone echoed through the rooms. There was no response.

It was a big house. We checked room after room on the first floor, jogging from one
to the next. A fuzz of dust covered brocade and dark wood furniture, knickknacks,
and tabletops. It rose into the air from the carpet in the family room and den, and
we left hazy footprints on the wooden floors of the hallway and the dining room. A
grand piano dominated the expansive living room, its shiny dark surface grayed with
dirt. In contrast, the kitchen counters were sticky with old food stains and the sink
was piled with dirty dishes. Some
had started to mold, and a whole new smell mingled with the smoky odor that had first
caught my attention.

I gagged and followed Declan to the glassed-in sunroom that opened off the kitchen.
He ducked his head inside quickly before retracing his steps to the main entryway.
I went inside the enclosure, stunned by the graveyard of dead plants. A banana tree,
enormous trailing vines that had taken years to grow so large, three tiny bonsai trees
perched around a dry fountain, and pot after pot of ornamentals, all shriveled and
dry. My throat worked. All that life, gone.

Mungo whined.

Rapid footsteps sounded on the wooden treads of the sweeping staircase, and I hurried
back out to the entryway in time so see the bottoms of Declan’s shoes as he turned
the corner at the top of the landing.

“Hello!” he called again.

I ran up the stairs, Mungo bobbing beside me. Declan was opening doors off the hallway,
one after another.

“Deck—”

He opened the last door, glanced inside, and hurried past me back to the stairs.

I spun to follow him. Nel obviously wasn’t home. Maybe didn’t even live here. Except…that
kitchen. Despite the mold, some of the food on the dishes had looked relatively fresh.

Good goddess, I’d let that woman in my kitchen. Yuck.

Mungo made a conversation noise, and I paused at the top of the stairs. His eyes cut
to the interior door nearest us.

I peered into the last room Deck had opened up.
“Oh. Dear.” Mungo’s snort echoed my sentiments exactly. Slowly, I ventured into the
room. It was the master bedroom. An elaborate altar stretched along the back wall,
eight feet long at least. A plain black cloth covered the top. After a couple of slow
steps, I scurried over to see what was on it.

A brass goblet, a fancy wrapped athame, a heavy silver pentacle, and a red pillar
candle clustered in the middle. Pretty typical Wiccan altar fare. The sculptures that
took up the rest of the space were a bit out of the ordinary, though. I recognized
Venus, Artemis, and Daph-ne. Various three-dimensional dryads and naiads reached toward
me, and beyond me to the bed. A simple stylized woman made of dark wood with an opening
in the middle looked like an African fertility statue.

In fact, all of the statues represented women—powerful ones. I could sense the female
energy just by standing there.

The dowdy woman who looked like Opie’s great-aunt was quite the fervent goddess worshipper.
I wondered how that had played with her father. If he even knew.

I looked around the rest of the room. The open closet showcased a lot of denim, and
what I thought of as hippie shoes lay in mismatched piles on the floor. The bedclothes
were pulled up to the pillows but the bed wasn’t really made. Dirty clothes spilled
out of the hamper. Papers were scattered across the dresser top.

No, not papers, I saw upon closer examination. Brochures.

Brochures for Savannah cemeteries.

And tucked between them, an empty envelope with a return address in Greece.

“Katie!”

I grabbed the pile and pushed it in beside Mungo. He panted up at me.

I turned and went back downstairs. “Where are you?” I called.

“In the den.”

Following the sound of his voice, I found Declan standing with his hands on his hips
in front of a smoking fireplace. He looked up. “Whatever she tried to burn in here
didn’t ignite very well.”

I stooped and peered at the contents. It looked like Nel had tried to burn three or
four books, and there were other indefinable papers curled black and ashy. Nudging
at the pages with the fireplace poker revealed a title on one of the books that gave
me pause.
The 33 Curses.
But then I saw something that made me catch my breath.

“It’s okay,” Declan said, putting his arm around my shoulders. “I’ll have to call
the department and report this, though.”

I tore my gaze away from my half-burned hairbrush lying crookedly across the grate
as a chill snaked up my spine. “You have to report a fire in a fireplace?”

“An unattended fire…and I broke in, if you recall. I have to report it so we can officially
contact the owner and secure the home.”

“Good luck,” I muttered, looking at my watch. “I’m sorry I got you into this.”

He grinned and gave me another squeeze, then reached into his pocket. “No worries,
lassie. Here—take my truck. I know you’re pressed for time. I’ll get a ride back.”

I took the keys and kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks.”

As I left I heard him talking on the phone.

*  *  *

I tried to call Andersen Lane, but he didn’t answer. I dialed Steve next, breaking
all my own rules about not talking on the phone while driving.

“Nel was behind the attack the other night, either alone or with Greer’s help,” I
said as soon as he answered. “I need to talk to your father.”

“Oh, I don’t—”

“She had my hairbrush.”

A couple of beats while he digested that and then he recited a number. I repeated
it back a couple of times to make sure I had it right, then said good-bye. At a red
light, I punched it into my cell phone and waited while the line rang on the other
end.

When Heinrich answered, he didn’t sound all that happy to hear from me.

I couldn’t help that, though. I explained that the spellbook club knew all about the
Dragohs, and that we’d been trying to find Lawrence Eastmore’s killer in order to
prevent him from casting the Spell of Necretius.

“Do you think my son hasn’t already told me all that?”

“Oh.” Actually, on the one hand I was surprised, but on the other it seemed that this
horrible situation had managed to bring Steve and his father closer together. It was
hard to argue that that was a bad thing. “Well, there’s more,” I said, and I told
him about all of Nel’s lies, about the altar in her bedroom, about the envelope with
Greer’s name on it, and about how she’d accessed my hair in order to psychically attack
me.

“I think she killed Dr. Eastmore, Heinrich. She knew about the Spell of Necretius,
and she killed him for it.”

“Impossible,” he scoffed.

“Not once you remove the assumption that none of the Dragohs’ wives or daughters know
about the society. Whoever bashed your friend over the head with a clay pot didn’t
hit him hard enough to kill him. Not to be sexist myself, but most women really aren’t
as strong as men. If you or any other of the Dragohs—even Andersen—swung a pot at
someone’s head, it’s hard to imagine him getting back up.” He was silent.

“I think she stole the spell and killed your friend. Possibly killed his son, too.”

“How would she even know about the Spell of Necretius?”

“Maybe her father told her.” I pulled into an empty spot a block down from the Honeybee
and turned the truck’s engine off.

“That’s…” His voice trailed off. A long silence ensued on the other end of the phone
line. “She was his only child. It’s possible he told her about us.”

“You think Judge Sandstrom wanted his daughter to take over his position since he
didn’t have a son?” I asked.

“Oh, I simply can’t imagine that,” Heinrich said. “It’s never been done. Never. And
even if he hoped to go against centuries of tradition, he would have told us. He’d
have to, in order to get the rest of the members to agree. Not that we’d ever accept
such a thing.”

I wanted to reach through the phone line and shake some sense into this chauvinist
druid. Instead, I took a deep breath in order to focus on the matter at hand. “What
if he didn’t get a chance to tell the rest of you?”

“Lars had a heart condition. Had it for years. His death wasn’t exactly out of the
blue. He had plenty of chances to bring it up with us.” I heard a door close and
imagined Heinrich going outside to talk in private. “No, I’m sure he didn’t plan for
Nel to join our ranks, but he loved her very much. And I know there were occasions
when they cast spells together. I could possibly imagine Lars telling his daughter
about us, just so she’d know who to go to if she got into trouble. So she’d know why
her cousin is suddenly moving to Savannah. But that would still be unprecedented.”
He was speaking slowly now, thoughtfully.

“Then she might have known about the spell to summon…the Spell of Necretius. All the
society members know of it, right?” I asked.

“…Yes, that’s true. But even if Lars told Nel about us, why on earth would he tell
her about the spell? Even if she was capable of completing such a spell—and she’s
simply not that powerful—why would her father endanger her with that knowledge in
the first place? The Spell of Necretius is the last thing I’d want a loved one to
know about.”

He had a good point.

“If she’s not the killer, then it’s one of you. I’m going to ask you this once: Would
Brandon or Victor or Andersen have murdered Dr. Eastmore?” It was a risk, asking him
that, because if I was completely wrong about Nel, then Heinrich could lie to me and
I wouldn’t know. After what I’d learned about Nel and what I’d seen at her house,
though, I knew I wasn’t wrong.