Charms and Chocolate Chips: A Magical Bakery Mystery (10 page)

“Oh, no, Katie. What did you do?”

“I’m sure there were lots of things, but a big one was when I was in the fourth grade. The kids were teasing me about being an Indian princess.”

“Well, you are, in a way.”

Yes and no. Daddy was descended from a long line of Shawnee medicine men, and somehow his Indian heritage had come to the attention of my classmates. I remembered that my best friend back then, Monty Nye, had thought it was cool when he found out. He’d probably told the others.

“The teasing started to turn kind of ugly,” I continued. “It scared me, and I told them to leave me alone.”

“So?”

“I
told
them,” I said, infusing the word with my Voice.

“Oh,” she breathed. “Oh, no.”

“Those kids obeyed, too. None of them were ever my friends after that. They totally ignored me, all the way through high school.”

“I had no idea. I’m so sorry.”

I shook my head, even though she couldn’t see me. “No, no. I’m not asking for you to be sorry. Not now. It’s all in the past, and I’ve forgiven both you and Daddy for not telling me who—or what—I was. But now I know. And now I have other people around me who understand and accept me. I’m not an outsider anymore, Mama. Not here.” I closed my eyes. “So could you try to forgive yourself, if that’s really the problem between us? Please?”

There was a long moment of silence; then she said, “Yes. I’ll try.”

“Okay, then.”

“Katie?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you, too.”

Smiling, I opened my eyes to find Mungo watching me. “Good night,” she said. “And Happy Imbolc, honey, even if it is a day late.”

•   •   •

Before heading off to bed, I texted Declan since he hadn’t called to say good night. When he didn’t respond right away, I knew he was probably out on a call. Pushing away the pang of worry that always struck when I realized my firefighter boyfriend could be in a dangerous situation—right
then
, not just in theory, I went into the kitchen and started up the laptop. Searching for
Evanston Rickers
netted me a profile on the University of Oregon Web site. A picture of him standing in the front of a lecture hall showed a man in his late forties to early fifties with dark hair and a short beard. He was a tenured professor of zoology with a special interest in the study of snakes and other reptiles. Currently he was listed as being on sabbatical.

So he was a visitor to Georgia, not a native of the area. That made me think he had less of a vested interest in the swamp than I had come to assume.

While I was at it, I did a search for Logan Seward. He had a Web site of his own. It was simple, lauding his legal credentials and community involvement without being terribly specific about either one. There was no mention of any association with the Dawes Corporation or Heinrich Dawes in particular. His contact information gave a phone number and e-mail address but no physical address.

The studio portrait of him, however, told me enough. He was the man who had been coming up when I was going down the back stairwell to Steve’s office.

Curiouser and curiouser.

My phone buzzed then, alerting me to a text. It was from Declan:
Car wreck, everyone okay. Can’t call but thinking of you.

Breathing a sigh of relief, I texted back.
Thinking of you, too. Be safe. See you tomorrow.

The phone vibrated again as I was drifting off, one hand resting on Mungo’s back.

Count on it, darlin’.

Bianca swept into the Honeybee right at nine the next morning, her cashmere skirt coat swirling around tall leather boots. Cookie followed on her heels. She’d replaced her usual form-fitting garb with a bulky sweater worn over skinny jeans. Her blue-streaked hair was piled into a clip at the nape of her neck. Bright-eyed and pink-cheeked, they greeted Lucy and Ben before Bianca called to where I was removing warm shortcakes to a cooling rack. “Are you ready, Katie?”

“Will be in two shakes,” I said, untying my green gingham apron and hanging it on the wall with the rest of our collection. Hurrying into the office, I fluffed up my short hair and changed out my neon green sneakers for hiking boots. I’d donned jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt that morning in anticipation of our swamp visit, and I now grabbed my jacket and bag before joining my friends who were still standing by the front door.

Mungo had acquiesced when I’d asked him to stay home today, settling onto the small settee in front of the television where he was no doubt watching soap operas with the occasional break to nibble on the selection of egg salad, macaroni and cheese, and leftover chili that I’d arranged for his dining pleasure.

God. That dog.

It turned out I could have brought him along. Puck poked his smooth head out of Bianca’s coat as soon as we hit the street, black nose twitching at the air.

“Hi, little guy,” I said to him, then to Bianca, “Do you know how to get there?”

“Her GPS will,” Cookie said.

Of course she’d have GPS in her Jaguar, but I didn’t really care for the implied
duh
in Cookie’s tone. Bianca looked at her with a puzzled expression as she pushed the keyless entry button on her keychain. Once I’d climbed into the back of the cherry red sports car, though, I couldn’t have cared less. Just sitting on that heated leather seat made me feel like royalty.

I settled back and fastened my seat belt as we headed toward Tybee Island on Bay Street. The road changed names twice before becoming the Island Expressway.

“Any luck with the online dating?” I asked.

Bianca sighed. “There was one guy I really liked. Nice-looking, decent job, a couple of years older than me. But Cookie said no.”

“You could tell from his profile that he’s looking for someone with money. You must be very careful about that, Bianca.”

“Any news on your job interview?”

“I’ll find out in a couple of days.”

“What was it again?”

“Data entry,” Cookie said, staring straight ahead.

“Where?”

“Candler Hospital.”

“Good benefits, huh?”

“I guess.”

The conversation was starting to feel like wading through molasses, so I let it drop. On the other side of Wilmington Island, the pleasant voice giving driving directions from the dashboard instructed Bianca to turn right onto a narrow paved road that curved through grassy marshland. As the road narrowed, the cattails grew taller and more frequent along with swathes of giant cutgrass. The number of trees increased. I recognized black gum and cypress.

“Oh, look!” I pointed to an alligator sunning itself a mere fifty feet from the road. It blinked at me slowly, and its craggy mouth seemed to smile. The thing seemed inordinately large.

“I bet they’re all over this place,” Cookie said. “I wonder how many animals live here.”

That gave me pause. Not only how many different species, which was what Wren was always talking about, but how many actual animals? Actual lives that would likely be lost if the golf course development went through. There I sat, encased in luxury and peering out the window at a big flock of ring-necked ducks on a small pond, geese paddling among them. Red cardinals flashed colorful plumage among the branches, and other waterfowl waded or swam or flew.

Bianca pointed to a foot-long fawn-colored bird with a long curved beak and speckled breast. “That’s a brown thrasher.”

“Pretty enough,” I said.

She caught my eye in the rearview mirror. “It’s the state bird of Georgia.”

“Oh. My bad. This is a birder’s paradise,” I said. Then, “Uh-oh.”

The
NO TRESPASSING
sign looked freshly painted.

Bianca drove right by it. “Wren said she’d been out here to talk with this Rickers guy, right? I think we can take our chances.”

“Yeah,” I said. “From what I saw online, he seems geeky rather than someone who would take after us with a shotgun.”

Cookie made a sign in the air.

Bianca’s eyes cut sideways, then returned to the ever-narrowing strip ahead.

“What was that?” I asked.

“A little extra protection.” Her words were clipped.

“I don’t know much about magical gestures yet.”

“I didn’t recognize that one,” Bianca said.

“It’s one of my little voodoo things,” Cookie said. She didn’t quite keep the sarcasm out of her voice.

The pavement ended, and Bianca slowed the Jag to a crawl on the dirt road. We rounded a curve to find a covered wooden bridge. It led to a small island surrounded by a natural moat. A log cabin sat in the middle, smoke curling out of the chimney like something out of
Little House in the Big Woods
. An old Chevy pickup was parked along one side. Planks rattled below as we crossed the bridge and came to a stop in the circular open space in front of it.

The nice GPS lady spoke. “You have reached your destination.”

We got out, and the smell of the swamp hit me hard. Cookie wrinkled her nose, and I realized I might be alone in my appreciation of the strong earthy scent rich with the musk of compost. To a gardener like me, it signaled fecundity, possibility, and the circle of life. Around us birds called and hooted. Everywhere you turned, bald cypress trees reached muscular, prehensile roots down into the water to steady their dark trunks. The arching canopy above, barren of green this time of year but draped heavily with the Spanish moss ubiquitous to the area, shattered the sky into small blue shards that seemed very far away indeed. The humid air thrummed with life energy.

“Do you feel that?” I asked the other two. They nodded.

The door to the cabin opened, and a man stood framed in the doorway. I recognized Evanston Rickers from his online photo.

“Can I help you?” His voice was a deep basso profundo.

Tall and angular, he wore jeans and a plaid flannel shirt, but that was where any resemblance to a lumberjack ended. His solid black wavy hair had grown out and now fell just below his ears. Gray threaded his Van Dyck goatee, and high cheekbones set off dark, almost royal blue eyes. Long fingers gripped the doorjamb.

I stepped forward. “Dr. Rickers?”

“Indeed I am. And who, if I may ask, are you?”

“This is Bianca Devereaux and this is Cookie Rios.” I indicated my companions.

“Ladies.” He nodded to Cookie and then turned his attention to Bianca. Their eyes met for a long moment, and then his attention flicked down to the ring finger on her left hand. When he looked away, she looked like she’d been hit with a stun gun.

Uh-oh. Perhaps her time spent on Savannah Singles had been a waste, but our trip to the swamp may have already been worth the drive.

Cookie saw it, too, and pressed her lips together as she tipped her head to the right and considered our new acquaintance.

“I’m Katie Lightfoot.” I stuck out my hand.

He squinted at me. “And?”

“I believe you know Wren Knowles. We’re also associated with the Georgia Wild environmental organization.” I left out that my association was entirely unpaid and my companions were involved only because they knew me. “We’re following up on the maroon bat sighting here in Fagen Swamp.”

“Where’s Wren?”

“She’s busy with other work,” I said, fudging.

One side of his mouth turned up in a half smile. “I thought the bats were a dead issue.”

I couldn’t quite keep the surprise out of my voice. “Did Wren tell you that?”

“No. The attorney for the investment group that’s planning to destroy this place. According to him the deal is going through.”

“But you saw the bats,” I said.

Rickers crossed the twenty feet of dirt between us. “Oh, yes. Three times I saw them, but I can’t prove it.”

“Of course you took pictures,” Bianca said.

Rickers nodded. “I managed a few. Wren said they weren’t good enough. They were either too blurry or looked like red bats. See, besides the deeper coloration, maroon bats have an extra bend in their third metatarsal. What you might think of as their third finger. I wanted to enhance the photos, but she said they could be called fake then.”

I spoke. “May I ask how you know so much about maroon bats? I mean, I’d never heard of them, and they’ve supposedly been extinct for at least ten years.”

He smiled. “I’m a zoologist.”

“But your specialty is snakes,” I said.

His eyes narrowed, though the smile remained. “Indeed. But I’m still quite knowledgeable about other species. I have to be.”

“I’m sure that’s true,” Bianca said. By now she was twisting a lock of her hair like a high school girl. Puck’s head popped out of her pocket, but Rickers didn’t seem to notice.

His mouth widened in a slow, appreciative smile. “Thank you, Ms. Devereaux.”

A splash to my right made me turn just in time to see a long slithery tail slip underwater. Too small for an alligator, and too long.

Speaking of snakes.

I was fine with spiders and salamanders, appreciated frogs and toads, mice, and even rats. But I hated snakes with a thoroughly unreasonable but primal passion, and I was in the middle of a swamp that was probably chock-full of them.

“Cottonmouth,” Evanston Rickers said. “Fagen Swamp has a lot of them, as well as brown water snakes, rainbow snakes, mud snakes—”

I raised my palm to him. “And birds.” Nice, feathery, pretty birds.

“Of course. That’s a white ibis.” He gestured toward a white bird on a log two hundred feet away. Its long pink beak curved halfway down its body, and you couldn’t tell where the face started—the eyes looked like they were set right into that pink beak. It stood on one leg, the other tucked underneath.

Rickers pointed up. “And there’s an osprey nest—plenty of those. Oh, and those are the neighborhood turkey vultures. They usually like more open habitat, but that pair seems content to keep me company on my little island here.”

Dark eyes blinked down from two remarkably ugly, featherless red faces.

“Can you show us where you saw the bats?” I asked. What the heck—it couldn’t hurt.

He blinked, hesitating, then said, “Don’t see why not. Follow me.” He took off for the bridge.

I trotted over the wooden planks and caught up with him, the other two behind me. “You rent the cabin?” I asked.

“For now. I’d offer to buy it if I thought it would do any good. But I can’t afford to purchase the whole swamp, and that’s what needs to happen in order to save it.” Passion leaked around every syllable. So despite being an outsider, he obviously felt genuine concern. “This is a unique and precious place,” he went on. “Autumn is trying desperately to find a buyer who will keep it in its natural form.”

“Another buyer,” I said. “Of course. That way Fagen will be rid of land he doesn’t want, and the swamp won’t turn into a golf course.”

I heard whispers behind us and looked back to see Cookie and Bianca with their heads together.

“Ms. Boles is doing a good job, but she has encountered a great deal of resistance from the investors who want to destroy this land,” Rickers said. “Still, she’s stubborn and smart. I’m glad she’s spearheading the conservation effort.”

The realization set in slowly: He didn’t know Autumn was dead.

“Um, Dr. Rickers? I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.”

He slowed, leading us single file down a narrow path through the grasses and cattails gone to seed. The trees on either side grew closer and taller. I scanned the ground for anything that looked reptilian.

“What now?” he asked over his shoulder.

I decided it would be best to simply state the truth. “Autumn Boles was killed in the Georgia Wild offices two days ago.”

He stopped so suddenly I almost ran into him. Bianca did run into my back before catching herself. Pivoting to face us, Rickers said, “You’re kidding me.”

The look on my face must have been answer enough.

“Killed how?”

“She was strangled.”

A speculative expression settled across his handsome features. “Is that why you’re out here? Because you think one of the potential buyers came after her?”

The raw accusation surprised me. Of course, he didn’t seem to know Autumn was on the verge of giving up the fight for Fagen Swamp, which would effectively remove any motive from the investment group.

Except—if he didn’t know she was turning her attention elsewhere, it was possible that at least some of the investors didn’t know, either. Steve hadn’t been worried about the existence of maroon bats nixing the real estate deal, probably because his father wasn’t worried. However, someone in that group could still have had a motive to remove the founder of Georgia Wild from the equation. After all, there was that mysterious folded bat—times two.

I couldn’t tell Rickers about the origami. Detective Quinn would have a fit if I went around broadcasting details of his murder case, and with good cause. Plus, I didn’t know this guy from Adam.

I settled on saying, “We’re here to find out more about the extinct species of bats.”

He let out a long, slow breath and turned his focus to the wooded marsh around us. “So are
you
going to do something about the sale of this land?”

“I don’t know,” was my honest response. “We will if we can.” As unlikely as that seemed.

Cookie crowded up beside me. “Are you worried about having to leave this place if it’s sold?”

He shrugged. “I’m going to have to leave anyway, when my sabbatical is up in another six months. This isn’t personal.”

Perhaps that was why he’d seemed surprised but not terribly upset upon learning Autumn had been murdered.

He turned and continued on. We exchanged glances and followed in silence. A minute later the path opened into a clearing. The cypress trees were taller here, some reaching over a hundred feet over our heads. It seemed excessively warm for February, and I wondered if the swamp created its own microclimate. There was definitely some kind of energy at work here, but I couldn’t tell whether it was natural.