Probable Paws (Mystic Notch Cozy Mystery Series Book 5) (13 page)

“I’m the sheriff. It’s my job to poke.”

Evie turned to Willa. “And what’s your excuse?”

“My gram was friends with your gram.” I shrugged, hoping that would be enough of an excuse.

Evie’s face softened. “She was?”

I nodded.

Evie walked slowly to the vault and laid the rose on top. In the dark light with the lone candle flickering, her pale skin and dark hair made her look eerily like some sort of vampire or witch. I moved closer to Striker.

“My mom didn’t kill my gram. There’s more to this than meets the eye. Forces at work you two wouldn’t understand.” Evie turned toward the door. “Where is that cat?”

Where
was
the cat? I looked around the small room, but she was nowhere to be seen. I reminded myself not to worry—Pandora could take care of herself.

Striker wasn’t worried either. He’d reverted to sheriff mode. “Did you see anyone near your grandmother’s room the morning she died?”

“No, I was asleep. I heard Aunt Marion’s wheelchair, and then I heard her screaming.”

“Was anyone acting odd, or did you see anything unusual?” Striker asked.

Evie snorted. “The whole family acts odd, but if you ask me, Julie’s boyfriend, Brian, is up to something.” Evie jerked her head toward the door, and I realized Brian wasn’t out there. He must have taken off when Evie came in.

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

Evie’s face turned rueful. “I can tell he doesn’t really like Julie. He’s after something, but I can’t convince her of that. That’s okay. I have other ways to show everyone what he’s really made of.”

“Do you have any proof that he’s up to something?” Striker asked.

“No, just a feeling,” Evie said. “You still didn’t explain what you are doing in my family mausoleum.”

I expected Striker to say something official, but when he didn’t, I came up with the first thing I could think of. “Chasing after my cat. She ran in here.”

Evie made a face. “What was your cat doing in my yard?”

“Umm… she got away.”

“Right.” Evie looked at me skeptically. “I’m not sure what you are up to, but you better tread carefully.” She turned to Striker. “And unless you have a warrant, I think you need to get off the property.”

She stood back and pointed to the door. I didn’t mind leaving. I’d already seen what I came to see. Striker and I exchanged a shrug then headed out. As we walked across the field back to our cars, Pandora darted out of nowhere and fell into step beside us.

I had mixed feelings about our visit. I hadn’t found the book, but I’d learned something more about the Hamilton family. Evie suspected Brian was up to something, but she had ulterior motives, which made me wonder…was he really up to something, or was she just telling us that to use him as a scapegoat to cover up her own involvement?

S
triker’s police
car was parked behind my Jeep on the dirt road. I was hoping to escape without him asking any more questions, so I quick-stepped it to the Jeep and hauled open the driver’s door. Pandora prevented me from hopping in right away by scooting in herself, and by then Striker had caught up. He put his hand on my arm and held me back.

“Not so fast.” He pulled me gently from the door and shut it. “What were you really doing in there?”

“I told you. I followed Josie in there and thought she might be hiding evidence.”

“Really? Then how come you were trying to pry open the vault on one side when Josie had clearly been at the other vault with the white roses on it?”

“I was going to pry all of them open. I didn’t know which one she would have stashed the evidence in.”

A white mist appeared to the left of Striker, and I had to struggle not to sigh and roll my eyes. It figured that Adelaide would show up now. Luckily Striker appeared to be deep in thought, his gaze looking off at something behind me.

“Honestly, Willa, I heard you were good at this sort of thing, but you couldn’t prove that to me. You haven’t found the book yet,” Adelaide said.

I waved my hand for her to go away, but instead of Adelaide disappearing, my gesture caught Striker’s attention. “What are you doing?”

“Mosquito.”

To my amazement, Striker’s eyes drifted to follow something over my shoulder, almost as if he actually saw a mosquito.

“It’s not in the mausoleum. How the hell would I put a book in there, anyway?” Adelaide rolled her eyes. “Do you think I could open one of those vaults?”

This was frustrating. I really wanted to talk to Adelaide and see if she could give me something more specific about the spell book, but I had to get rid of Striker first. He looked as if he was frustrated too. Probably at me. Maybe if I turned the tide and started interrogating
him,
he’d get mad and drive away, and I could talk to Adelaide in peace.

“What were
you
doing in the mausoleum, and don’t give me that lame excuse that you were following me around.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “I bet you think there’s evidence in there, don’t you?”

“Evidence? Yes, there could be.” I was surprised he admitted that, but I wasn’t sure he even realized what he’d said. He seemed distracted. Looking directly past me, he gritted his teeth and said, “But I didn’t find anything.”

“Of course you didn’t find anything. The book isn’t in there.” Adelaide shook her head at Striker then turned back to me. “I don’t know why you picked this young man. He seems to be quite daft.”

Striker wasn’t going anywhere. I had to think of another way to communicate with Adelaide. Maybe I could word things in such a way that she would know what I was talking about and wouldn’t sound totally weird to Striker.

“If you could tell me exactly where it was, we could have this solved pretty quickly,” I said, raising my brows at Adelaide.

“I told you. It’s with Daisy.” She tapped her index finger on her lips. “Now if I could only remember where I put that painting.”

“It’s in the library!” I blurted out.

“There’s evidence in the library?” Striker asked.

“No. Did I say that? Well, there might be something in there.” Shoot, I was really screwing up.

“Not
that
painting,” Adelaide said. “The one in her blue satin gown...” Adelaide’s voice trailed off, and she looked off in the distance, past Striker’s shoulder. “Oh, Willa, please help me. I feel my Louis is slipping away.”

“ …if I knew where.” Striker was saying. I hadn’t been paying attention to him, but I assumed he said he’d get the evidence if he knew where it was.

“Yeah, if only we knew where the evidence was, this mess would all be over and we could go back to normal,” I agreed.

Striker frowned, his eyes tracking something that moved from his left to behind me. The mosquito? He shook his head. What was wrong with him?

“Louis is getting even closer. I can feel him near. You have to hurry, Willa!” Adelaide sounded desperate. If only she knew how badly I wanted to find that stupid book and have this all over with.

Striker grabbed my shoulders and moved me to the side with my back up against the Jeep. “This is ruining our relationship.”

“You’re telling me.” I glared at Adelaide.

“Maybe when this is all over, we can finally be alone to pick up where we left off.” Striker stepped closer. His left palm on the roof of my Jeep, his right cupping my chin, his thumb tracing my cheek. “Or maybe we could start now.”

He leaned in, brushing his lips against mine. My eyes fluttered closed then flew open as I felt the cold, clammy mist of a ghost. Was Adelaide watching us? Creepy. She stood just behind Striker, a smile across her lips, and she gave a curt nod and then disappeared.

At least she had the decency to leave us to our private moment. Unfortunately, Adelaide had been as vague as usual. But I had gotten one concrete clue. Now I knew she’d hidden the book in a painting of Daisy. Not the one in the library, but another one. All I had to do was locate it. The logical place for a painting of a Hamilton family ancestor was inside the Hamilton mansion. I just hoped I hadn’t already worn out my welcome.

* * *

P
andora thumped
her tail on the front seat of the car as she watched Willa and Striker trying to ignore the ghosts of Adelaide and Louis swirling around them. She would have found the way they were trying to ignore their respective persistent ghosts amusing if she weren’t in such a hurry to get back to Willa’s so she could sneak over to Elspeth’s barn and tell the cats of this new development.

While she waited, she mulled over the new clue. She now knew where the book was. Inside the painting of Daisy Hamilton in the blue dress. But where was the painting? It wasn’t in the Hamilton house, nor was it buried in the yard in front of the cottage. She was sure of this because if the book were there, the cats’ combined efforts the other night would have revealed its location.

She cast a tentative glance toward the cemetery. The mausoleum was empty now, but she had felt something evil there earlier, and now she had a pretty good idea who was trying to obtain the spell book. If Striker and Willa would just hurry up, she could bring this information to the cats and find out if one of them had any new information that would help them figure out where the book was.

She turned her attention back to the humans, scrunching down and using her telepathic skills to will them into breaking up their little tête-à-tête and leaving.

Louis was trying to communicate the same thing to Striker that Adelaide had just told Willa. The spell book could be in a painting. He didn’t have the details of whose painting, but he knew Adelaide had hidden things in special compartments attached to the wooden stretchers in the back before. Too bad Louis had no idea where the painting was either. And it tugged at Pandora’s heart that the two ghosts, Adelaide and Louis, could sense each other but were on different planes and could not connect, even though they were standing right next to each other!

By the way Willa and Striker were now mashing their lips together, Pandora could see they were having no trouble connecting. She was glad to see them together, but there were much more important things going on, so she amped up her telepathy in order for them to get a move on. She knew from past experience the two of them could keep up the lip mashing for quite some time, and there was no time for that now. Both Pandora and Willa had important work to do.

T
he last time
I’d gone to the Hamilton mansion, I’d been lucky enough to slip in along with Striker, so I hadn’t used up my I-lost-something-here excuse. The excuse had seemed like a great idea at the time, but now that I was standing in front of the big oak door, waiting for someone to answer, I wasn’t so sure. Maybe I should’ve taken Pandora’s advice, as she seemed hell-bent on stopping me from coming to the Hamiltons’, doing everything from coughing up a hairball to puncturing a hole in my shirt with her razor-sharp claws. But before I could turn and run, the door opened.

John, the butler, stood in the threshold, blocking my entrance. “You again.”

I didn’t let his sour attitude faze me. “Good morning. I seem to have lost something here on one of my previous visits. Do you think I could come in and look? I’m pretty sure it slipped off my wrist when I was sitting on the sofa. It’s a bracelet that my grandmother gave me.”

His brow wrinkled with skepticism. “Perhaps if you describe it, I will go look in the sofa for you.”

“No, I’d really rather—”

“Who is it, John?” Josie’s voice rang out from the hallway. John stepped back so she could see me, and her eyes widened.

“Oh dear. You better let her in.” Josie nibbled her bottom lip as if my presence made her nervous. What was that about?

John pushed the door wide and jerked his head toward the hallway in an apparent invitation for me to enter, which I did quickly before Josie changed her mind.

“I lost my bracelet in the drawing room when I was here the other day,” I explained to Josie, although she appeared to be more than willing to let me in anyway.

Josie frowned, and her gaze slid to John. “Right. Of course. Follow me.”

I followed her down the hall slowly, my eyes flicking to each painting, my stomach sinking lower and lower as I realized none of them were of Daisy in the blue gown.

We came to the door of the sitting room, and I had no choice but to go in. Josie was already in there, waiting anxiously.

I headed over to the off-white linen sofa. “Sorry to intrude, but the bracelet was my grandmother’s. The catch is loose, so it probably slipped off and fell behind the cushions…” I heard a scraping and clicking sound and turned around to see that Josie had pulled the pocket door shut, closing the room off from the hallway.

“I know why you’re really here.” She stared at me with dark, accusing eyes.

Nerves fluttered in my belly. Josie could be a killer, and by the way she was looking at me, she seemed to think I’d come for a reason other than to retrieve my bracelet. Had Evie told her about our run-in at the mausoleum? If she really did kill Adelaide for the spell book and thought I had discovered something, I could be in big trouble. Was that why Pandora seemed so intent on keeping me from coming here? I’d thought she was just mad that I wasn’t bringing her. My gaze flicked nervously to the closed door. She could do anything, and no one would know.

“No, really, I was just looking for my—”

“Cut the crap.” She walked toward me. “I know your boyfriend sent you.”

“My boyfriend?”

“Yeah, that hunky sheriff. He sent you to get more information out of me, didn’t he? He thinks a woman would seem more sympathetic. I know how you people work. You think I killed my own mother, don’t you?”

I probably should have tried to persuade her that we thought no such thing. Probably should have lulled her into believing I was no threat and then bolted out of there, but my big mouth got me into trouble, and I blurted out: “Well, your story is a little suspicious, especially since we’ve verified with the ME that your mother was already dead at the time that you
say
you checked on her.”

I was braced for her to attack me somehow, but to my surprise, Josie dissolved into tears and collapsed onto the nearest chair. “I know you think I did it, but I didn’t. I swear.”

I sat down on the sofa. Obviously there was more to Adelaide’s death. I had to find out what Josie knew. “Okay. Why don’t you tell me what happened, then.”

She plucked a tissue out of a silver box on the table and dabbed at her red-rimmed eyes. “I didn’t lie about what happened that morning. Well, not about
everything
. Most of it was the truth.”

“Which part wasn’t the truth?”

Josie sighed and looked down at the floor, her cheeks turning pink. “The part about her being alive.”

“You knew she was dead when you looked in on her?”

“Yes, but I swear I thought she’d died in her sleep.” Josie blew her nose loudly into the tissue.

“But why wouldn’t you have said something? Why would you leave and go to the pharmacy and then lie about being in the library?”

She glanced back at the door as if making sure it was still closed and no one could hear us. “I knew once the pharmacy found out she was dead, her prescriptions would no longer be able to be filled.”

“So you rushed out to the pharmacy to refill it before anyone found out. Why would you need to refill it, though, if she was dead?”

Josie hung her head in shame. “I’m not proud of this. I’ve been taking Mom’s pills for quite some time. I was shocked when I found my mom, but I knew I couldn’t help her. She was already gone.” Her eyes took on a desperate, wild look. “I need those pills to get through the day. But you see this proves I had no motive to kill my mother. Quite the opposite, in fact. Her death has put me in a bad place because I can’t get the prescription pills anymore.”

I blew out a breath and sat back in the chair. That explained how she always seemed doped up or nervous. Either she was telling the truth, or she was a great actress. But if she was telling the truth, that meant she didn’t kill Adelaide for the book. And if she didn’t kill Adelaide, then who did?

Josie sobbed loudly into the tissue. “You do believe me? Don’t you?”

I leaned forward and touched her arm. I did believe her. And not only that, since she seemed to be in a confessing mood, I figured it was a good time to earn her trust with sympathy so I could ask more questions. “I believe you, Josie.”

Her shoulders relaxed. “Thank you. And you’ll tell your boyfriend that it wasn’t me? He won’t arrest me, will he?”

“I’ll make sure he doesn’t arrest you,” I assured her as if I had any control of what Striker would do. “Do you have any idea who would have wanted your mother dead?”

She shook her head and dabbed at her eyes with a fresh tissue. “I honestly thought she died in her sleep. But if someone really did kill her, then my money would be on that bitch Lisa.”

“Lisa? Why?”

“To get her hands on my mother’s money, of course.”

“But why risk killing an old woman? It seems like Lisa has plenty of money. She wears nice clothes and has expensive jewelry. Seems like it wouldn’t be worth the risk of getting caught, especially since she probably wouldn’t have had to wait too long for your mother to die naturally.”

Josie shrugged. “She’s greedy. Wasn’t satisfied with what she had. Always wanted more and more and more.”

“Did you notice anything unusual about your mother that morning? Anything in her room that was out of place?”

“I’m not sure. It was such a shock. I did love my mother. Didn’t want her to die. And she was lying there so still. I crept over to her to see if she was breathing. She wasn’t. Her pillows were askew, and I adjusted them.” She sucked in a breath and looked at me with wide eyes. “You don’t think I ruined the evidence, do you? It’s just that Mother always liked to have matching pillowcases, and one didn’t match. So I put it on the bottom.”

“I’m sure you didn’t ruin anything.” I didn’t mention the part about how the pillow was likely askew because Adelaide was suffocated with it. “The police didn’t process her room as a crime scene anyway because they didn’t have probable cause until after the blood work came back.”

“Oh, good.”

I’d already asked about the recipe book on my first visit, and no one had admitted to knowing about it, so I decided to take a different route in my questioning. “Did your mom ever mention something important that she might have hidden away?”

“Important? Like diamonds or precious gems or silver? There was a silver tray that she—”

“Not like that. More like something she treasured but might not have a lot of monetary value.”

“No, she just mentioned she didn’t want Lisa stealing everything, so she was storing some of it in the cottage.”

“The one that Max is using now?”

Josie nodded.

I gnawed on my bottom lip. I’d been in the cottage, and there were no family heirlooms. But would Adelaide have put the painting with the book in it there for safekeeping? Or would she have hidden it in plain sight?

“I noticed you have a lot of ancestral paintings in the hallway here. They’re quite nice and probably worth a lot. Do you have a lot of them in the home?”

Josie snorted. “Those horrible old things? I should say not. Mother wouldn’t let us take them down from the hall or the library, but we managed to get rid of the others, thankfully.”

My heart lurched. Get
rid
of them? I hoped that after all this, she wasn’t about to tell me they’d thrown the painting of Daisy in the blue gown in the dump or something. Surely Adelaide wouldn’t have let that happen, unless the living Adelaide had dementia … or they did it without telling her.

“Do you remember one of your ancestor Daisy in a blue dress?”

Josie thought for a minute. “Now that you mention it, I do. Mother liked that one especially, but it was at the top of the stairs and so gaudy. We took it down with the others after she … umm … passed.”

“What happened to them? You didn’t throw them out, did you?” I asked.

“Oh, no. We couldn’t bring ourselves to do that. Someone in the family said they would find a home for them.”

My blood chilled as I remembered Lisa saying she was selling things off to Felicity Bates. Felicity might already have the spell book in her possession, and that would be bad. Very bad.

“Who was it? Lisa?”

Josie made a face. “No, we wouldn’t trust anything to her. It wasn’t Lisa. It was Max.”