One Potion in the Grave: A Magic Potion Mystery (10 page)

“Lands sakes,” Louisa went on. “You think I was the one getting married for all you care about this wedding.”

I noticed her words slurring a little and had the feeling she’d indulged in an afternoon tipple. Or two.

“Come, come,” Louisa said. “Get a move on, you two.”

“Nice to meet you, Carly,” Landry said. He grabbed hold of Cassandra’s wheelchair handles and started up the walkway.

“Wait,” she said. “Turn me around.”

He did and winked at me. “See what I mean about bossy? I’m double-teamed.”

“Shush,” Cassandra said. “You wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “Now that I have options . . .”

“Landry! Cassandra! Now!” Louisa said, one octave shy of shrill.

She’d definitely been drinking if she was behaving this way. Usually Southern mamas threatened by dropping voices not raising them.

Cassandra twisted and said, “One moment, Mother.” She turned back to me and said, “I just wanted to say thanks for saving me from the algae, Carly. I truly appreciate it.”

“No problem. Thanks for the vocabulary lesson.”

Smiling, she said, “Anytime.”

“Vocabulary lesson?” I heard Landry ask as they disappeared around the back of the chapel.

I thought about the upcoming wedding and how it seemed to be causing nothing but stress and strife. Then, of course, there was Delia’s dream to worry about.

As I headed to set up those chairs, I couldn’t help but wonder if this wedding was going to happen at all.

Chapter Ten

“T
his here row’s a little crooked.”

I wiped sweat from my eyes with blistered hands and found Dylan sitting in one of the chairs I’d just unfolded. “I think your eyes might be a little crooked.”

I’d been out here in the sun for hours now, and I was ten chairs away from being finished with this horrendous task. The last thing I wanted to hear was that one of the rows was crooked. I just wanted to be done, go home to take a cold shower, and have a heart-to-heart with Katie Sue to find out what was going on with her. I never did find her after her game of peek-a-boo behind the chapel. I hoped she’d gone back to my house to lie low for a while.

Laughing, he said, “I brought you a milk shake. Chocolate.” He held it aloft and wiggled it.

I lunged toward him, grabbed the shake, and planted myself next to him. It felt good to sit down. “I take back every bad thing I’ve ever said about you.”

“You’ve said bad things? I’m shocked. Just shocked.”

I talked around the straw. “A time or two.”

Or twenty. Out of anger. Of sadness. But as I looked at him now, I realized that all those old feelings had just about disappeared. My heart was healing.
I
was healing. The time we’d spent together lately had helped. I was getting to know him again. Seeing him through new eyes. And lord help me, I liked what I saw. Which made me wonder what would become of us this time around. Could we be “just friends”? Were we destined for another trip down the aisle? Or would we split for good?

I held up the drink. “Thanks for this.”

His dark eyebrows dipped into a concerned V. “What happened to your hands?”

Icy bits of chocolate slid down my throat, making me hate the past three hours a little less. “Two hundred and ninety chairs is what happened.”

Taking hold of one of my hands, he inspected my blistered palm. “No gloves?”

“In this heat?”

“Better than blisters.”

“Says you. A little marigold cream mixed with some Leilara and I’ll be good as new in no time.”

He hadn’t let go of my hand. I tried pulling it away, but he held tight.

“What?” he asked with a twinkle in his eye. “Don’t you like holding hands with me?”

Truth was I liked it. A lot. Blisters and all. This line we were walking between being friends and dating was quickly disappearing. “I’m sweaty and dirty and blistery. This is no time for hand-holding.”

“Says you,” he said, throwing my words back at me. “I like you this way. All mussed up.” He gently kissed my palm. “But I don’t like when you’re hurt.”

His kiss sent a sizzling sensation straight to the pit of my stomach.

“Better?” he asked.

I held the paper milk shake cup to my cheek, hoping the cold would freeze me from the inside out. “A little,” I admitted.

“There’s more where that came from.”

“Milk shakes?” I asked innocently.

“As many as you want, Care Bear,” he said, playing along, making me want him more than I already did.

Good Lord Almighty,
I had zero willpower. I sucked so hard on my straw I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if I swallowed my tonsils.

Fortunately for me and my lack of discipline, Dylan let go of my hand, stood up, and grabbed a chair from the rolling rack. He went about setting it in line with the others.

“I didn’t just come bearing milk shakes,” he said, “but a bit of bad news, too.”

“Nothing happened to Gabi, did it?” Last I’d seen of her, she’d headed off to supper with the Calhouns, the love potion tucked tidily into her purse.

“Not that I know of, but Carly, Earl Pendergrass was attacked today.”

I went cold—and it had nothing to do with the shake. “What happened?”

“Someone jumped him at the tail end of his mail route. Knocked him upside the head, stole his bag.”

“Is he okay?”

“Doc Hamilton diagnosed a concussion and gave him nine stitches to the back of his head where he hit the sidewalk.”

Suddenly, my shake was sitting like lead in my stomach. “The Calhouns are behind this. They’re after the envelope Katie Sue mailed.” I’d already told him about the “ammunition” Katie Sue said she had and how she’d resorted to some form of extortion—which Dylan could do nothing about as a lawman unless the Calhouns reported it.

“Louisa had been hell-bent on getting her hands on that envelope earlier. I bet she had Warren send one of his lug nuts after it.”

He set another chair in the row. “That’s what I figured, too, but there’s just no way to prove it. No one saw anything. Wait. Lug nuts?”

“The private security thugs? But they’d probably just vouch for each other.”

“Lug nuts,” he repeated, chuckling under his breath.

“It fits.”

“Suppose so,” he said, setting another chair. “Worst of all for Earl, the attack was for nothing.”

“Why’s that?”

“Earl had already dropped off the mail he collected from his morning route at the post office.”

I wondered if Katie Sue sent the package to her home address—and suddenly worried that her local mail carrier would be attacked, too. Hopefully, she wasn’t that naïve, and had sent the package to a neutral party.

Dylan grabbed another chair—he was much faster at this than I was. “You’ll never guess who Earl called to drive him home from Doc’s.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Your aunt Hazel. I think he’s sweet on her. Last I saw, she was fussin’ over him and he was smilin’ ear to
ear. Him getting conked on the head might be the best thing that happened to him all year.”

“Hush,” I said, but I couldn’t help but smile, too. Maybe Hazel’s affections could be swayed from the very young John Richard Baldwin to the very age-appropriate Earl . . .
Hmm
.

“Well, me-oh-my! Looks like my Carly girl got her delegating skills from her mama!” My mama, Veronica “Rona” Fowl, fanned her face with her hand as she toddled in three-inch heels over to where I sat. “You did good, baby girl. Real good.”

“You’re going to make me blush, Miz Rona,” Dylan said.

My mama’s hair color of choice this week was a nice sedate fire engine red. Little plumes of hair stuck up like flames all over her head. The pixie cut suited her spritely personality, but I could blink and she’d have extensions—she was forever changing her mind about styles.

She wore a zebra-printed wraparound dress that clung to her full-figured body, and even with her heels she barely came up to my chin.

“Did y’all hear about Earl Pendergrass?” she asked as she sat next to me. Her eyes, complete with false lashes, widened when she spotted my shake.

“It’s gone,” I said, mourning the empty cup.

“Damn shame,” she said.

“About Earl or the shake?” I asked with a smile.

“Don’t go puttin’ me on the spot like that, Carly.” She leaned in and whispered, “The shake. Earl’s going to be just fine.”

I laughed and rested against her. She was all kinds of
crazy, but I loved her more than words could say. “I did bring you a torte from Dèjá Brew. It’s in your office.”

She patted my leg. “I forgive you about not sharing your shake with me. Dylan, sugar, you’re hired. I have a whole trailer full of flowers arriving tomorrow morning to cover that there gazebo, and well, someone actually needs to cover the gazebo with the flowers.”

“Sorry, Miz Rona. I’m full up with jobs.” He grabbed another chair. “Between the sheriff’s department and Carly working me to the bone at her house . . . I will, however, put this rack back in the shed before I have to leave for my night shift.”

We watched him walk away, rolling the chair rack toward the back of the property.

“To the bone . . .” Mama nudged me. “You’re a chip off the old block.”

“He looks good with no shirt on, too. An added perk.”

Mama laughed. “Well, I’ll just have to get your daddy to do the flowers. I’ll let him keep his shirt on, though. You know how easily he burns.”

Thank goodness for small favors. “Isn’t he working tomorrow?” My father was director of the Hitching Post library.

“He
was
,” Mama said, her eyes sparkling. “But this wedding takes precedence. Have mercy on my soul, it’s going to be the death of me.”

The reminder of death had me thinking again of Delia’s dream about Gabi . . . and if it involved Katie Sue somehow. “Mama, have you seen Katie Sue Perrywinkle around here this afternoon?”

“Shut your mouth, Katie Sue’s back in town? No, I haven’t seen h—” She bolted upright and faced me
head-on. “Wait a blessed second. I met a friend of the Calhouns today—Kathryn Perry—and couldn’t help but think I knew her somehow. We chatted about her shoes and how much I wanted to snatch them off her feet and keep them for myself. Was that . . . ?”

I smiled. “That was Katie Sue.”

“No!”

“Yes. She changed her name—and she’s a full-fledged doctor now.” I gave her a partial rundown on Katie Sue’s reappearance, the break-in and how she was staying with me now, and how Lyla had threatened me to mind my own business.

“Well, I’ll be.” She shook her head. “She has great taste in shoes. Those gold sandals would make a right good birthday present.” She batted her eyelashes at me.

Subtle was also not a word in the Fowl family vernacular.

“Noted,” I said, laughing. “What time did you see her?”

“Round about four or five. I haven’t seen her since. What’s she doing mixed up with the Calhouns?”

“Nothing good,” I said. I didn’t mention how I suspected Katie Sue and Warren had something doing on the side.

“She ain’t planning on sabotaging this wedding somehow, is she? Because I won’t have none of that.”

Katie Sue was due to meet with Jamie Lynn any minute now, so it was high time I moseyed home to see what I could overhear. Standing, I stretched, feeling each and every kink in my neck and shoulders. I needed to find Dylan and tell him that I was leaving. “I don’t know what she has planned, Mama. But I aim to find out.”

Chapter Eleven

T
he last time I’d seen Jamie Lynn Perrywinkle was a brief run-in at the local movie theater nearly a year ago. Back then, she’d been a vivacious nineteen-year-old out with friends. She’d looked healthy and happy and ready to take on the world.

It was a far cry from what I saw now as I found Jamie Lynn sitting in a wicker chair on my front porch. Thin brittle-looking brown hair had been scraped back into a mousy ponytail, and dark circles colored the pale skin beneath her eyes. Her simple T-shirt and jean shorts hung loosely. With hollow cheeks, bones jutting, and a sickly complexion it appeared as though the whole world had crashed down on her.

“Hey, Jamie Lynn,” I said as I started up the steps and pushed open the screened door.

“Miss Hazel sent me over. I hope it was okay to wait out here until Katie Sue gets back,” she said. Perspiration dotted her hairline and two forearm crutches rested at her sides.

I sat in the chair next to hers, still unable to believe the changes in her appearance. “More than okay.” My brow furrowed. “Where’d Katie Sue get off to?”

I glanced across the street, toward the Loon. There was no sign of the Calhouns, and I wondered if they were still at dinner, and if Gabi had slipped Landry the potion.

“This was taped to your front door.” Jamie Lynn handed over a note.

JL, had to run out. V. important. Will be back by 6:45. xo

I wanted to crumple the paper and toss it in the gutter. Jamie Lynn should have taken precedence over everything, no matter how
important
. It seemed to me that Katie Sue had her priorities all kinds of mixed up.

A lightning bug flashed as it fluttered near the newly planted rose bushes in front of the porch. I handed the note back to Jamie Lynn. “I’m sure she’ll be here soon.” It was only a little past that now. “She really wanted to see you.”

A bit of hope flashed in her tired eyes. “Really?”

I nodded. “She’s missed you.”

Jamie Lynn’s lower lip trembled. “I couldn’t hardly tell.”

I wasn’t sure if she meant because Katie Sue ditched her to run an errand or if it had been the years and years she hadn’t seen her sister. Either option fit, I supposed.

I could have told her about all the letters Katie Sue had written and Lyla sent back unopened, but I didn’t really want to make trouble. Surely Katie Sue would tell her all about them. “It seems that way, doesn’t it?”

She nodded.

“But not everything is always as it seems.”

“I s’pose not.”

One thing that was exactly as it seemed was her health. I tapped the arm strap of the crutch closest to me. “How long have you been using these?”

Lifting slim shoulders in a slight shrug, she said, “A couple months now. My legs—they don’t work so well.” Her laugh, a sweet tinkly sound, reminded me that she used to be an effervescent teenager. “Nothing on me seems to work so well anymore. The doctors don’t quite know what’s wrong yet, but they’re working on it.” She slid me a shy look.

“Do you want me to read your energy?” I asked, knowing I was going to do it anyway, with or without her permission.

“My family wouldn’t like it much. They don’t believe in your kind of magic.”

“Who’s they?” I asked. “Lyla?”

“And my mama and Cletus. They call you a devil child.” She bit her lip. “No offense.”

I smiled. “None taken.” I’d been called worse—sometimes if people didn’t understand something, they believed it best to file it under “evil” and leave it there. As long as they let me be, I let them be. “It doesn’t surprise me much, but I thought Lyla of all people would understand the healing elements of nature.”

“She’s stubborn.”

An understatement if I ever heard one. “So, you’re spending time with your mama and Cletus?”

“About once a week. Don’t tell Lyla, okay? She doesn’t
know and would flip her lid if she did. She banned me from seeing them a long time ago. But, you know, they’re family?”

Her last sentence ended in a questioning lilt, as if asking my approval. I slid my locket back and forth along its chain. Even though I was an only child, I had family aplenty, so I couldn’t understand what it was like for her to have had only Lyla to lean on for a good part of her life. But I could definitely understand why Lyla had cut Jamie Lynn out of her mother’s life—to protect her.

“Sometimes DNA doesn’t a family make,” I said softly.

She bit her lip. “But, my mama’s . . . my mama. And it might be silly, but I still have dreams about all of us back together, being a big happy family.”

I wasn’t the least bit surprised she felt that way about her mama. It was a bond that was near impossible to break, even when it should have been long shattered, the pieces buried.

“Obviously I believe in second chances,” she added. “Or I wouldn’t be here.”

I figured Dinah Perrywinkle Cobb had to be on her eleventh or twelfth chance by now, but bit my tongue. People
could
change. I just hoped with all my might that Dinah had. For Jamie Lynn’s sake.

She rocked slowly. “I want to hear what Katie Sue has to say for herself. It’s probably stupid of me, opening myself up to her again. But . . . family’s family.” She drew in a deep breath.

I wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince. Me or herself.

“Well,” I said, “while we’re waiting, how do you feel about getting a reading?”

She glanced at me. “When I was little, Katie Sue would be cooking up supper and telling me all kinds of stories about your grandma Adelaide, and about how plants and herbs could heal people. And I’d beg her to tell me again and again about the story of Leila Bell and Abraham and how their kin inherited their magic, and I’d just sit there in awe, soaking it all in.”

The legend of my great-great-grandparents Leila Bell and Abraham was well known around town, and could easily be recited by any local. It was a tale of love and loss. Of right and wrong. And the dangers of following your heart instead of your head.

After their tragic deaths, most of my ancestors abandoned practicing magic all together, but there was no abandoning the magic that remained within us—and the magic the two left behind. The Leilara drops, the magical lily nectar that made my potions so powerful.

My great-great-grandparents had certainly left their mark on this tiny town.

And on their descendants.

Jamie Lynn said, “Mama and Lyla say that story about your grandparents is all made-up foolishness, just a way to make your shop more interesting to folks. They say there is no such thing as magic. But Katie Sue . . . She always believed. She said she didn’t necessarily understand it, but she knew it was real.”

Shades of pink and orange blurred the blue sky, the first hint of sunset. “What do you believe?”

She twisted her fingers, and looked me in the eye. “Carly, I don’t know what I believe, but at this point all I
have left is hope. And I hope with every breath I take that magic is real . . . and that you can fix me.”

I felt for this young woman. I could see the pain in her eyes, hear it in her voice. Not just physical pain, either. As we sat here, I was reminded of gym class in high school, playing tug of war. A thick line drawn in the sand, two teams, and a heavy rope that bit into tender skin. In the middle of that rope was tied a red flag. That flag would jerk left, right, left, with every pull as the teams battled each other.

Jamie Lynn was that flag. And she was being pulled apart by the family she knew . . . and the sister who’d left her.

“I could try to see what’s wrong,” I said. “Then we could go from there.”

“Okay.” She nodded, her brows furrowed.

Though she said she had only hope left, I could see by the look on her face that she was trying hard not to get her hopes too high. I took a deep breath, let down my guard, and was immediately overwhelmed with pain.

Pain everywhere. My head. My stomach. My legs. Lord have mercy, my legs. They were dull and heavy, yet tingling and burning. And something was wrong with my heart—it beat irregularly.

My pulse thrummed as I searched and searched for a source. Cancer. A genetic deformity. Any kind of abnormality. And finally realized my nervous system was under attack.

I grabbed hold of my locket, took a few deep breaths, and finally said, “Have you seen a neurologist?”

“Not yet,” she said. “Just a general internist, a cardiologist, and a gastroenterologist. Why?”

“Something’s attacking your nervous system.”

Her eyes widened. “Like what?”

“I don’t know. It’s not multiple sclerosis—I’d have known that. Or Parkinson’s or ALS.” I gave my head a shake as my legs went back to feeling like normal. “It’s something I’ve never seen before.”

Her hands shook. “Can you cure it?”

“I don’t know, Jamie Lynn,” I said softly, honestly. “We can work on the symptoms first, until you see a medical doctor. Then once we know for sure what it is, we can go from there.”

She slumped, looking crestfallen. “I suppose it’s a start.”

I felt horribly that I couldn’t give her tried-and-true answers. But I didn’t have them. I had no idea what was causing the trouble in her body—and that bothered me. It was an unusual situation.

“Where do we start?” she asked. “Can you fix my legs?”

Mine ached with phantom pain. I needed a potion that would protect her nerve fibers from further attack. “I think I have something, but I need to look in my recipe book, which is back at the shop. We can go now . . .” I glanced at her legs. “I can drive.” My Jeep was in the garage. I rarely used it, but there was no way I’d ask Jamie Lynn to walk to my shop.

“Okay,” she said, giving her head a firm shake. “Let’s do it.”

“I’ll just grab my keys . . .” I stood up and wobbled a bit—my legs still not fully recovered from reading her energy. She was fitting her arms into her crutches. “Jamie Lynn, how come you’re not using a wheelchair?” She had
to be in agony, making her way around with only the crutches.

“It’s not that bad,” she said softly.

Only I knew it was. Before I could debate the issue with her, the sound of a ringing phone carried easily through my single-paned windows.

Hope filled Jamie Lynn’s eyes. “Maybe that’s Katie Sue?”

I shoved my key into my front door lock, mourning the days I could leave the house open, threw aside the door, and dashed for the phone, past Roly and Poly who fled as I blew by.

I grabbed up the phone on the fourth ring, and said a breathy, “Hello!”

The voice on the other end of the line was high and thready, on the verge of panic. “Carly Bell, is that Katie Sue Perrywinkle there with you?”

“Mama?” My stomach immediately started churning. My mama was often dramatic, but rarely was she the type to raise alarm without merit.

“Is she there?” Mama asked, more insistent.

“No, I haven’t seen her in a few hours. Why? What’s wrong?” Because something was.

“I . . . I’m not sure. It’s just that I found her shoes, you know the gold ones I’d been admiring so? But she’s nowhere to be found.”

“Her shoes? Where?”

“In the wedding gazebo . . .” Her breath hitched. “We need to find her.”

I glanced toward the porch. Jamie Lynn stood in the doorway, her eyes transformed from hopeful to cautious. “Why? What aren’t you telling me?”

“There’s . . .” Mama’s voice dropped, as though she didn’t want anyone to hear what she was about to say. “There’s some blood on the shoes. And on the gazebo. There’s . . . blood droplets everywhere.”

I sucked in a breath. “Call Dylan. I’ll be right over.”