Murder Most Witchy (Wendy Lightower Mystery) (10 page)

“One day after school, I was out there, reading or something, I don't remember. My older brother followed me. He was one of the reasons I knew that something about me was different. He taunted me, endlessly. I suppose that's what brothers do.”

He let out a long ragged breath.
Then he placed both his hands flat on the table, as though bracing himself for the next part of his story.

“He started picking on me, as usual. I don't know what was different that day. I don't know why I finally snapped. He just wouldn't stop.”

Ian looked at her then, his eyes wide and imploring. Wendy felt his pain like a stab in the gut, saw his need for her understanding. On an impulse, she grabbed his hand. He gripped her tightly, like a lifeline, and it seemed to give him the strength to finish.

“I finally screamed at him to stop, called him names. He laughed and pushed me down. When I was on the ground, I couldn't think of anything except how much I hated him in that moment. I felt the tingling in my fingers, and all I could think of was the anger. All I did was push at the air. I didn't even touch him.”

“What happened to him?” she whispered.

“The energy hit him square in the chest. He was in the hospital for weeks. No one could understand what had caused it. The doctors decided he had been struck by lightning. Phantom lightning from a cloudless, blue sky,” he let out a ragged noise, half laugh and half sob.

“We never spoke about it. Don never really spoke to me at all after that.”

Ian looked down to see their hands intertwined. With an embarrassed cough, he pulled his hand away and tried to smooth down his wild hair.

“I don't know why I told you all that. You don't need my life story.”

Wendy stood and refilled his coffee cup. “It seems like it was long overdue for you to tell that story to someone. Might as well be me.”

Ian stared into the steaming, swirling liquid. “Is it really possible to control it?”

Wendy thought back to her reaction in the library, when she had thought the killer was about to fall on her next. The blue sparks had emerged as pure instinct, a visceral reaction to the fear she'd felt in that moment.

“Yes,” she smiled. “Absolutely.”

She saw a look of relief cross his face, and she tamped down a brief stab of guilt by telling herself that she hadn't exactly lied to him. She could control it, most of the time. Then she saw him physically gather himself together and shake off the memory. His face cleared, and their moment passed.

“Well, let's see what we can do about these reporters. We have work to do.” Ian pulled his leather bag up onto his lap and sorted through the various items, clearly looking for one in particular. “Aha! Here it is.”

Wendy cocked an eyebrow at him. “A pinwheel?”

Ian handled the green and blue striped toy with great care. “Not just a pinwheel. A charmed pinwheel,” he corrected.

Ian walked to the cottage's entrance, and before Wendy could stop him, he threw open the front door.

There was only a second of flashes and shouting. Then Ian held up the toy and gave the pinwheel a quick, hard spin. The clamor of the press died in an instant. The faces of reporters and photographers alike took on a blank, staring look.

“There's no story here,” Ian's voice was clam and low, “and you're all feeling very hungry. Why don't you go get something to eat?”

They all started blinking and looking around as though they were surprised at where they found themselves.

“I'm starving,” one young
redheaded woman said out loud.

“Me too,” a large, bald man with a camera agreed.

They left en masse, all chattering about where they were going to eat.

Ian strolled back to where Wendy waited, a smug grin on his face. “Gerry is a genius,” he said as he packed away the pinwheel.

“Some kind of confusion spell?” Wendy asked. “That's big magic to affect all those people.” Despite everything she knew about Gerry, she was impressed.

Ian patted the leather bag lovingly. “That's why he charmed the objects, so we don't have to exhaust ourselves performing the spells every time. Like I said, genius.”

Wendy had to admit that it was rather clever. Magic was exhausting, emotionally and physically, especially the kind of big magic that could affect an entire group of people. With his pack of tools, Gerry had only to expend the energy once when he charmed the objects, and then he had ready to use magic whenever he needed it.

“What else do you have in your bag of tricks?” she asked.

Ian smiled, a slow smile that revealed that charming dimple in stages. “Let me show you.”

Six

The library was closing by the time that Wendy and Ian drove up.

"On Mondays we're only open a half day," she explained. "If we wait a few minutes, people should start leaving." She parked in front of the building in a spot with a good view of the front door. Wendy saw Carrie leave, followed by Magda. Last to exit was Derek. Luckily, everyone seemed to be leaving at closing time that day.

“It's empty,” Wendy started getting out of the car. “Let's go.”

She couldn't help but cast surreptitious glances from side to side like she was approaching some clandestine meeting. It was ridiculous for her to feel strange. She had entered the library after hours a thousand times before, spending most of her waking hours there, in fact. Still, her heart beat faster as she reached the door, and she let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding when they were finally off the main street.

Ian set his tool bag on the ground and rifled through it, finally pulling out a small silver key.

“Charmed skeleton key,” he explained, his voice barely above a whisper. “Actually opens any door. Takes care of alarms, too.”

The absurdity of it all burst upon her, and Wendy laughed. “Not necessary. I work here, remember? I'll go in first. You can follow when I know it's empty.” With that she pulled out her keys and unlocked the front door. Force of habit took her to the alarm pad, which was blinking and requesting an access code. She entered it, and the pad went dark. Wendy didn't return immediately to the entrance where Ian was waiting for her. Instead, she wandered slowly towards the museum side of the building.

She looked around the exhibit, realizing that it was the first time she had had a chance to look around since before Benny's death. The night of the party, she had been in the foyer and had only ventured into museum when she had stumbled on Nathan Braun in the dark with the mystery woman.

Alone in the building, she took her time, wandering slowly from the entrance and taking in everything. She wasn't sure why, but she wanted to see all that this room contained. She started by the door, which was dotted by photographs and a few small brass plates, marking the contributions of benevolent individuals to the museum.

There was a set of photographs in the middle of the wall that made her stop and stare. It featured a group of men and women in pristine business attire, ranging from middle aged to elderly, and wearing the same smug, condescending smile. The caption on the photo read,
North Harbor Museum and Historical Library Board of Trustees
.

Staring out from back row center, his teeth fully exposed in a cheesy politician's grin was Nathan Braun. Stunned, Wendy checked the date on the photograph. 2007, the year before she was hired as head librarian. She had not known that Nathan Braun ever served on the Board of Trustees for her library. Wendy remembered the party, and the sound of Nathan Braun's voice, syrupy and disturbing, echoing out of the dark. She shuddered and moved on.

The rest of the wall was lined with pictures of the board in the following years. The photograph for the 2010 board also made her stop and take a closer look. Richard Blakely, otherwise known as Archer, smiled rakishly from the far right. Unlike the picture with Nathan Braun, this one listed the names of those pictured underneath. Beside Richard Blakely's name it read, Temporary Member. She had known that from time to time, board members took leaves of absence or extended vacations and were replaced by temporary members.

Resolutely, Wendy turned away from the board photographs and began moving through the rest of the exhibit. Benny had been found nearly in the center of the new exhibit, and Wendy looked through the items on display as well as checking the ground and walls. The police, she was certain, would have found any forensics. She was looking for those clues that only someone with her unique insight into the building would tell her.

At first, she saw nothing out of place; everything looked as perfectly arranged as Derek had demanded. The exhibit was arranged chronologically, from the inception of the town through the next hundred years. She passed though the colonial period first, viewing artifacts that dated back to 1680, many of which had been restored by Wendy personally. She passed by family portraits of the town's founders, including one of Derek's great-great-somebody. She rolled her eyes as she remembered the pompous way he had put the swarthy, obese man's portrait front and center in the glass case.

“Been here since the beginning,” he said, pointing to the portrait like it was proof of something.

Wendy didn't mention that her family had been in North Harbor for just as long. Their history was slightly less illustrious. The next section of the exhibit documented North Harbor's foray into witch trails, induced by the mass hysteria from Salem at around the same time. The North Harbor trials, though less widespread or well known, still resulted in the deaths of eight individuals accused of witchcraft in 1693. One of the last taken to trial had been a serving girl named Belinda. By the time she was dragged before the court, the blood lust and righteous fervor had slackened, and she had been found not guilty. Luckily for Wendy, the girl had lived to marry Robert Lightower and bear many, many sons.

A few other victims were portrayed, in unflatteringly devilish detail in what amounted to advertisements for their executions. Beneath the documents, the plaque read, like most of items in the exhibit, “On Loan from the Fry Family Collection.”

Wendy continued down the line of cases, moving from the 17
th
century into the 18
th
. Here the featured items were bayonets and muskets, pieces of military uniforms, and journal pages from men and women in the years leading up the Revolutionary War. Most of these cases had the same small plaque demarcating the items as property of Douglas Fry. Wendy walked the exhibit from one end to the other, and even backtracked her steps to be thorough. The cases were all intact, the displays looked exactly as she remembered them. Nothing remained to mark the place where Benny had died.

Pulling herself together and pasting a smile on her face, Wendy strode quickly back to the door and opened it for Ian. “All clear,” she announced with a salute.

Ian sauntered in behind her, his bag slung over his shoulder. “That was easy.”

“There's no reason that I shouldn't be here,” she told herself as much as him.

“Let's get to it, then. Show me where you found him.”

Wendy led Ian into the museum and pointed to a spot at the far wall. Yesterday, there had been crime scene tape, little orange flags, and a mass of police and forensic techs. Today, it was just an empty space. “He was lying there.”

With the mystical Geiger counter held out before him, Ian approached the crime scene slowly. The device in his hand was quiet, but as he moved closer, it started to make a clicking sound. Slow and intermittent at first, the clicking reached a volume and frequency so high that it sounded like a single long blast of sound.

As Ian backed away, the clicking receded along with him. “There was magic done here. No doubt about it now.”

“Well, we've confirmed what I already knew. Now what?” Wendy was feeling a bit jumpy being back in that room. From Ian's machine, she knew that there were some residual traces of magic still in the air, and she wondered if that was somehow affecting her.

“The best place to start is always with the victim. We need to find out more about Benjamin Jacobi. What do you know about him?”

Wendy shook her head. “Nothing really. I didn't really know him at all.”

“Was anyone here friendly with him?”

Again, she shook her head. “He worked nights. Wait,” she said suddenly, “the personnel files.”

“You have a file on Benny?”

Wendy led Ian down a hallway into her office. “We should have something. An application with an address at the very least. It might give us a place to start. I could also call Detective Milton.”

Wendy opened a gray metal filing cabinet near the door and finger walked through a drawer full of manila file folders. Despite the limited number of employees at the library, the drawer was full of files from employees dating back long before Wendy's tenure. Flipping through the names, which were only moderately alphabetized, she saw Carrie's file and Magda's before finally spotting Benny's name erroneously filed in the “N” section. She pulled out a disappointingly slender file.

“No,” Ian replied, answering her earlier question, “it's best to do as much on our own as we can. We don't want to ask Milton for favors until we really need them.”

“One of Gerry's rules?” she asked.

“Yes,” he admitted, “and some common sense. The police may work with us, but that doesn't mean we are always on the same side.”

Wendy wasn't sure she wanted to know what he meant by that.

“Look at this.” Ian stabbed the top paper with his forefinger. “Not just an address, but a next of kin.”

“Won't Milton and Horn have talked to her already?” Wendy asked.

Without blinking an eye, Ian tore off the top sheet from the file and stuck it back into his bag before replacing the rest of the file in the cabinet. “Yes. Still she might tell us something she didn't tell the police. I may not have been doing this all that long, but in my experience, people aren't always that eager to talk to the cops. Besides, it can't hurt.”

“True,” Wendy said. She followed Ian out of the room. It was starting to feel like that was her role as far as this investigation was concerned – following. At least she would be able to tell Gerry that she had been right all along. She just wasn't cut out for investigating.

They moved through the building towards the exit. “Hold on,” Wendy said as they reached the door. “I have to set the alarm.”

Wendy walked over to the keypad, her finger poised over the first button of the security code.

“Ian,” her voice was urgent, “the alarm.”

“What about it?” He sounded distracted.

Wendy couldn't believe she'd forgotten. “When I found Benny,” she began, her words coming out short and breathless, “it was early. Very early. I didn't think anyone was here. I unlocked the door, but the alarm was off.”

Ian squinted at her as he tried to follow her thought. “Right. Because Benny was still inside.”

“That's just it,” she said, her impatience beginning to show, “Benny never left, which means he couldn't have left and forgotten to reset the alarm. That's what I thought happened. But he was still here. It should have been on.”

Comprehension dawned in Ian's eyes. “You mean that when Benny worked overnight, he had the alarm on.”

Wendy was nodding. “I always set it after I left, and he was already in the building. Usually I'm here when he comes off his shift. If not, he has to enter the code in order to leave without the alarm going off.”

“Maybe he was trying to leave when the killer broke in and killed him? That's why the alarm didn't go off when he came in the building.”

Wendy shook her head. “My vision showed me that Benny was still cleaning when he died. He was in the middle of his shift. He didn't turn off the alarm.”

Ian looked at the little white number pad with the dark screen. “So who did?”

Their eyes met, and they both knew the answer.

“Could the killer have one of those keys?” Wendy asked. “Like Gerry's. The one that you said turned off alarms.”

Ian looked skeptical. “In my experience, Gerry's tools are pretty unique, but I guess it's possible.”

“I can't believe I didn't think of this sooner,” she berated herself. “If the killer used the keypad, the police could have taken prints or something. Now this thing has probably been touched by half a dozen hands since then.”

Her frustration was all centered inward. Wendy pressed the tips of her fingers to her temples. “I guess I'm not the crackpot investigator my uncle thinks I am.”

When he reached for her, Wendy allowed Ian to enfold one of her hands inside his. “You're doing much better than you think,” he smiled at her.

Her answering smile was wobbly. “That dimple really is deadly.” She hadn't meant to say the words out loud.

Ian winked at her. “I know.”

Wendy cleared her throat and extracted her hand. “So what do we do?”

“This is definitely more in the police line than mine. Call Milton.”

Wendy had her phone out of her purse, and she was dialing when Ian covered the screen with his hand.

“Who has a code to the alarm?”

“Employees, maintenance staff, a few vendors, the board of trustees. It's a longer list than you might think.”

Wendy froze as an image and a memory collided in her mind. It was far-fetched, certainly, but considering her disappointing lack of any kind of theory, perhaps not too outside the realm of possibility.

Ian noted her hesitation and saw the crinkle between her eyes that signaled a deep train of thought. “What is it?” he asked. “What are you thinking?”

Wendy organized her thoughts, attempting to form them into coherent words. “The board of trustees,” she began,
and then stopped. Already she wasn't succeeding all that well at coherency.

“What about them?” Ian prompted.

“I was thinking about the list of people who have the alarm code,” she started again. “The board turns over pretty frequently. I think it's a position that people of power like to use to show their civic commitment.” She hadn't meant to, but she knew she sounded a little bitter. The board had not been very helpful in the past when it came to doing anything of real value for the library or the museum. In her experience, they only showed up when there was a photo op involved.