Be Careful What You Witch For (A Family Fortune Mystery) (21 page)

35

Diana and I were making tea in the kitchen when the front door opened. Expecting to hear Seth’s voice, I froze when Vi’s “I knew it!” floated into the room. Diana and I exchanged a glance, and I took a deep breath. We heard the dogs jumping and the stomping of multiple feet in the front room.

“Clyde? Where are you?” Seth called.

“I’m here,” I said and walked into the living room clutching my tea for support.

“We came over as soon as we heard!” Mom said.

Dad had his arm slung over Dylan’s shoulder and a big grin plastered on his face.

“Jillian called your mother to tell her that Dylan was out of jail,” Vi said. Jillian, Tom’s mother and my mother’s best friend, was the main source of gossip in town. Vi turned her frown in my direction. “We had to hear it from the grapevine, like everyone else. Why didn’t you call us?”

I held up a hand. “I just found out myself. Diana came by to tell me.”

Mom looked me over and
tsk
ed. “You look awful, Clyde. Did you get any sleep?”

I nodded. “About an hour,” I said.

“There’s no time for sleeping,” Vi said. “We need to celebrate. Call Alex and tell him we’re on our way.”

I took a moment to welcome Dylan home with a quick hug while Vi pushed everyone out the door.

If it hadn’t been cold and misty, we could have walked. As it was, we piled into various cars and caravanned downtown. Alex met us at the door of the restaurant. We were lucky that it was in between lunch and dinner, so the place was deserted.

Alex clapped Dylan on the shoulder and waved us toward the back, where he had pulled two tables together.

“Dylan, it’s great to see you,” Alex said.

“We’ve been so worried about you, dear,” Mom said.

Dylan ducked his head and smiled. “It wasn’t so bad. The Crystal Haven jail is pretty nice.”

“Weren’t you worried?” Seth asked.

“Nah. I knew they’d figure out sooner or later that I didn’t do it.”

Vi clapped her hands imperiously and gestured at us to sit. “We need to put our heads together and figure this out. Lucan has been attacked—any one of us could be next!”

I was surprised at Lucan’s rise from number one murder suspect to “one of us.”

“I really don’t think we’re in danger, Vi,” I said.

“How do you know? Lucan probably thought he was safe, too, until someone drove over him—twice!”

“I just mean that we don’t know anything, and we aren’t involved with Rafe or his death.”

“I have a very bad feeling about this,” Vi said. “We need to figure it out before someone else gets hurt.”

“What do you suggest?” I said.

“We should look at all the clues again, and maybe make a case map like they do on TV. Do you have one of those whiteboards?”

“No, I didn’t bring my whiteboard.”

“That’s okay. We can use this paper.” Vi pointed to the paper covering the table. She tossed a new pack of markers and some sticky notes on the table.

“Been shopping, Vi?” I said. She ignored me.

“Okay, everyone pick a color and a topic.”

The table erupted in sound, as Seth and my mother fought for the blue marker. Dylan told Diana he knew more about the evidence, and that she was clearly not equipped to write about Lucan. Alex picked up on that and began quizzing Diana and acting huffy that she hadn’t told him about Lucan.

“There’s nothing to tell,” Diana said. “We worked together on the festival and then for Rafe’s memorial. . . .” She trailed off and blushed as the table fell silent.

Dylan came to the rescue. “Let’s list our suspects and clues,” he said.

Just then the door swung open and Tom walked in. I had texted him on the way to the restaurant.

He came over and gave Dylan one of those rough guy-hugs, but his eyes were red and he scrubbed them with his sleeve.

“What’s all this?” Tom asked, looking over Diana’s shoulder at the markers and notes.

“We’re doing a case map like they do on TV,” Vi said. “It’s good you’re here. You can fill in the blanks for us.”

Tom squeezed between Vi and Dylan and grabbed a marker. “I’ll do what I can, but I’ve been out of the loop.”

After a few minutes of noise, Vi tapped her water glass with her spoon. “We need to be more organized than this. Let’s start with clues. We can do those in blue. Seth, you write them down.”

Everyone shouted things at the same time, as if it were a game show.

Seth glowered at the table. “Slow down. I’m not a computer.”

Our list was longer than I had thought. I wasn’t sure we’d make any sense of it. Seth wrote:

broken EpiPen

peanut oil

Morgan lying about being at the ceremony

Morgan rummaging in Rafe’s trash

lost charm

Rafe fighting with Morgan, Lucan, and Dylan

Lucan’s SUV accident

Baxter’s orange

Seth chuckled at the last one. I started to cross it out with my purple pen.

“I think people use oranges to practice giving an EpiPen injection,” Dad said. Seth and I both stared at Dad.

“What’s that, dear?” Mom said.

“It was part of a training course I attended a long time ago,” Dad said. He seemed surprised to have everyone’s attention. “They gave us EpiPens and oranges and we practiced giving an injection just in case we ever had to do it. It also drains the medicine out into the orange.” Dad’s life as a dentist always took me by surprise. He never talked about it. He was always so focused on his police scanner and staying away from Vi, that I often forgot he had some medical training.

“So, if the killer was at the ceremony, they could have drained the pen right there,” Seth said and made a note on the list.

“The killer drained the medicine into the orange, threw it into the bushes where Baxter later found it, and then snapped off the needle?” Diana said.

“It seems like a lot to do with no one seeing them,” Alex said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It was dark away from the fire. People milled about all over the clearing. It wouldn’t take more than a few seconds to drain the medicine and snap off the needle. Then he or she could just slip it back in its case and return it to Rafe’s robe pocket.”

“Yeah, we didn’t put those robes on until after we ate,” Vi said. “Rafe’s had a fancy gold edge around the hood. I was looking at it and he came and took it from me.”

“You messed around with the robes?” I asked.

“I didn’t ‘mess’ with them,” she said. “I was just looking. His was right on top and I saw the gold edging.”

“Did you see anyone else near them?” Tom asked.

Vi stared into the distance and then shook her head. “I can’t remember. There was so much going on, I didn’t pay attention.” Her shoulders slumped.

I debated with myself about whether to reveal what Neila had told me about Rafe being her son and decided to keep it to myself. I didn’t want to distract the crowd and my mother with the story of visiting Neila.

We continued to discuss the clues and suspects. Morgan Lavelle was at the top of the list and just as Vi began a discussion of Morgan’s clothing choices, the woman herself walked in the door. She wasn’t dressed for work today, but had her black leather and scary makeup back on. Two women who had to be mother and daughter followed in her wake. I remembered seeing Morgan with them at the closing ceremony.

Diana leaned toward me and said, “That’s Bronwyn and Ember. I thought they went back to Traverse City.”

Morgan cast a dark look in our direction and led her minions to a table across the room. The presence of our number one suspect had cast an uncomfortable silence over the table. Fortunately, the waitress returned with our order and we covered the notes with plates and focused on our food and celebrating Dylan’s release.

“How’s Lucan?” Mom asked Diana while passing the bread basket down the table.

“He’s much better but will need to stay in the hospital for another couple of days,” she said.

“I heard he was pretty beat-up from the accident,” Tom said. He continued to fork noodles into his mouth.

The table had gone silent in the vicinity of Mom and Vi.

Vi cleared her throat. “Didn’t you see Lucan at the accident, Tom?”

Tom looked up and noticed for the first time that all eyes were on him. He scanned the table, searching for the source of trouble.

He shook his head. “No, I haven’t seen him since the reception for Rafe.”

“Is that so?” Vi said. She turned her narrowed eyes in my direction at the opposite end of the table.

“Weren’t you out with Clyde the night she found him?”

Tom blushed and stammered. “N-no. I heard about Lucan from . . . work the next day.”

Mom crossed her arms and stared at me.

Seth took a deep breath but I put my hand on his arm to stop him from wading into this situation.

“I was with Mac that night,” I said.

“I knew it!” said Vi. She had one finger in the air. “I knew something was up with you two.” She leveled the finger in my direction.

“Finally,” Alex whispered next to me.

“Oh, Clyde. This is good news,” Mom said. “The cards always said you were meant for each other.”

Tom turned in his seat to glance toward me down the table. “You and Mac . . . are together?”

I nodded.

“Well, where is he? Why isn’t he here helping us?” Vi said. She turned to Mom and said, “We’ll have to invite Lucille over for dinner.”

I sighed and Seth patted me on the shoulder.

*   *   *

In the restroom,
grateful for a few minutes away from the mayhem in the dining room, I let the water run and washed my hands slowly. I didn’t look up when the door opened and someone else came in the room.

I caught a streak of black out of the corner of my eye and then felt someone standing very close behind me.

“I don’t know what your problem is, but you can just back off,” she said.

I looked up to meet her eyes in the mirror.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Morgan.”

“You went snooping around in the woods and found a charm. The police are trying to link it to me.”

I held her gaze and didn’t respond. But her presence so close behind me had my heart pounding in fear.

“I didn’t kill Rafe,” she said. “I . . . wouldn’t hurt him.”

“Then you have nothing to worry about.” I tried to step around her, but she blocked me.

“I think I have you and your gang of amateur detectives to worry about. You’re all running in circles trying to find someone to blame for this. I think the police need to look at the people Rafe had threatened, and it wasn’t me.”

“I don’t have any control over what the police are doing.”

She gave me a flat stare in the mirror.

“Who was Rafe threatening?” I asked.

“For one thing, your friend’s brother was right. Rafe did kill their parents.”

“What? How do you know about that?”

Her slow smile showed she was enjoying this. She took a step back and I turned to look at her.

“At least he
thought
he killed them.” Morgan shrugged. “He never got over it. He cast a spell and the next day their car crashed.” She stepped up to the mirror to trowel on more lipstick.

“Rafe thought a spell killed the Wards?”

She nodded and blotted her lips on a paper towel.

“He liked to test out the spells that were in his mother’s grimoire. He was convinced that that one really worked.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said.

She shrugged. “I didn’t say
I
believed it.”

“Why did you lie about being at the ceremony?”

Her face went blank. “Who says I lied?”

“You just did. You said the police linked that charm to you.”

“No, I said they were trying to. If that’s their only proof, I have no worries.”

I held my hands out. “Then why are you in here threatening me?”

She blinked. “I’m not threatening you. I’m trying to help you. Rafe made some enemies along the way. He ran his coven like a dictatorship. I’m not the only person he exiled. Ember and Bronwyn moved all the way to Traverse City to get away from him. They look all sweet and earth-mother-y, but looks can be deceiving.”

Diana had said they were above all the drama in Grand Rapids. So, why were they here today with Morgan? And why was she throwing them under the bus?

Morgan continued, “And he was always fighting with that church group. They’ve been at each other for years.”

“The gang that showed up at his memorial?”

Morgan nodded. “He and Bea Paxton go way back, and none of it is friendly.”

The door swung open at that moment and Morgan turned on her heel and brushed past the woman, who flattened herself against the wall and stared as Morgan stalked back out to the restaurant.

I nodded at the woman, who scurried into a stall. Morgan had given me a few things to think about. It was true that I had been looking at the case mostly in view of how to prove Dylan’s innocence. We’d been focused on finding other people who could have had opportunity, but I didn’t know enough about Rafe to know who he might have ticked off.

I went back out to the dining area wondering whether it would be best to let the police do their job. But pulling my family off the scent might prove to be more than I could handle.