“It wasn’t fun,” I admitted. “His face . . .” I shuddered. “That bloaty look. Like he’d gained forty pounds overnight. And the discoloration.” It wasn’t anything I wanted to see again.
“Do they know anything yet? Who might have wanted to do such a terrible thing?”
“I don’t think so. Not yet anyway.”
“And it was most definitely . . . murder? Without question?”
I nodded. When combined with the mess in the office, the coincidence factor was just too great. “It was. I know the police are approaching it as such.”
“Ahh.” Matter-of-fact realization flickered behind her signature glasses. “So you saw Tom.”
“Yes.”
“And how did that go?”
I shrugged. “He still hates me.”
“Oh, my dear, I’m sure that’s not true. The line between love and hate is so very fine. It takes but a moment, a blip in time, to cross that line.”
“Yes, well, I think he’s treading that line.” I made a face. “I would feel worse about breaking up with him if we hadn’t been having major personality differences beforehand. And he had been stepping out with his not-ex-wife even before, although I didn’t find that out until later of course.” He had. Annie Miller had mentioned an evening date between Tom and his not-quite-ex Julie and had reluctantly clued me in, though at the time she hadn’t known exactly what she was seeing . . . only that she had seen him out on an intimate evening with another female who wasn’t me. But that was weeks ago, and the past was the past. Or at least I wanted it to be. It didn’t mean anything to me now. It didn’t matter in the slightest. It didn’t burn me at all that his not-ex-wife was pretty and pixie thin and able to wear the kind of clothes that made her look feminine and elegant but would make me resemble the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Nope. Not me.
Liss smiled her best Mona Lisa smile and turned back to her work. “Sometimes things happen because they are meant to happen, darling. Sometimes we have difficulty seeing beyond the day-to-day in our lives. We have trouble interpreting the signs.”
I knew she was right. Our Guides were always working behind the scenes for us. Only they had the farsightedness to see beyond the traumas and dramas of our day-to-day to the future we were meant to have, and if we listened to that still, small voice within us, they would guide us to our futures with the kind of ease we often longed for but so rarely achieved.
Poor Mr. Locke. Was he guilty of not paying attention to his own still, small voice within? Would his Guides have led him out of this particular danger if he’d but listened? Or was this particular end something that was inescapable, due to the path he’d set into motion with a sequence of choices made, options enacted?
“The apartment wasn’t meant to be for you, darling. Obviously that is true. You made a quick decision based on the facts at hand, but your ability to think things through was muddied by the manager himself and his prodding. If it had been meant to be, everything would have gone off without a hitch, things falling into place like clockwork.”
The only thing that had fallen into place like clockwork was the accelerating weirdness leading up to Locke’s death.
“Tom wasn’t meant for you, either.”
I gave her a sharp, surprised glance. “No, I know he wasn’t.” And it wasn’t that. It wasn’t.
In my mind’s eye, I pictured that moment in the hospital, weeks ago, when Tom had walked in on me, with his ex-wife on his arm. The discomfort of the realization that he had gone back to the woman who had broken his heart. The pang of awkwardness—not jealousy, honestly not that—when my eyes met hers and I knew she knew who I was, too.
No, it was much better that Tom found someone whose personal energies blended with his own, rather than clashing with it as mine sometimes did thanks to . . . differences . . . in personal philosophies. And better for me, for all the same reasons.
“Good,” Liss said firmly. “Far too often we beat ourselves up for things that are simply part of our lesson plan. Now. Tell me more about what happened this morning.”
“I will, if you come down off the ladder and let me make you a cup of tea.”
“Aren’t you the little manipulator?” she said with a chuckle. “But I think you’re supposed to be putting your foot up as much as possible, aren’t you? How about if I make us both a cup of tea and you do just that?”
“All right, fine. If you’re going to be that way about it,” I teased her right back. I hopped along behind her as she made her way back toward the front of the store and the coffee and tea bar that was my favorite home away from home. Annie’s café had sent over its usual delivery of plate-sized fritters— apple and blueberry cream cheese, yum—and a selection of beignettes and cream-filled crepes and scones. Ever virtuous, I turned away from the carb fest that was calling me home by reminding myself that I hadn’t exactly been able to work out of late to make up for it. Sigh.
“Tell me. What’s your poison of choice this morning?”
I turned my eyes ceilingward, thinking. “Hm. Something soothing and stress relieving.”
“I know just the thing. A special blend. I think I’ll surprise you.”
Liss was the specialist at the shop with regards to the metaphysical healing properties of the gourmet teas and coffees we offered. I knew all of the basics, but Liss’s area of expertise was in mixing teas to heal just the thing that ailed you at that very moment. A real gift. One of her many.
Five minutes and she had a steaming teacup sitting in front of me, its aroma wafting up on tendrils of steam, fragrant and warm. She poured her own and sat down opposite me, lifting her cup to her lips. “Ah. That’s more like it.”
“I’ll say,” I said, breathing it in.
“This gentleman who was killed. What about it made it seem a certain murder? Isn’t it feasible that his drowning was accidental?”
“Well, if it wasn’t for the office being ransacked as well, I would say yes. Not ransacked. More like purposely and systematically plundered. The door to the office was ajar when Marcus and I got there. At the time we didn’t think anything about it. We just thought he must have been there waiting for me to arrive.”
“Plundered. What exactly do you mean by ‘plundered’?”
“Well,” I said, taking a sip of my tea and wincing as it burned my tongue, “the files had been pulled out and scattered all over the floor. And the computer—the brand new, revved-up, and tricked-out computer that Marcus just rebuilt for him—”
“Marcus?”
“I know, just another one of those weird connections that we were talking about, setting itself up while the rest of us weren’t paying attention. Anyway, the computer that Marcus just built for him was smashed to bits all over the floor. Completely demolished. All that gorgeous hardware, gone. A real crime.”
“Hm.” Liss puckered over her teacup, pondering. “You said it seemed targeted. Why would anyone want to destroy the new computer? If their motive was burglary, they wouldn’t destroy something of value. If their motive was solely to kill the poor manager, then why stop to destroy the computer? It doesn’t make sense to me.”
“Me, either. And I don’t know. But it definitely seemed that way to me.”
“Interesting. Not to diminish the man’s death, of course.”
Of course. “There were so many odd things that happened yesterday, too, while I was at the apartment complex. So many odd people. I think . . . I don’t know what I was thinking last night when I told the manager I’d take the apartment. It just . . . it sounded like such a good deal, and when he called to say that there was someone else interested in taking it, I guess I just lost all common sense. It was stupid, really. Like the guy who was trying to get his girlfriend out of the lease. He was upset because there wasn’t a termination clause that allowed for the tenant to terminate the lease with advance notice, it was all one-sided to benefit the apartment complex. The two of them nearly came to blows.”
“My goodness.”
“And then he turned out to be the boyfriend of Annie Miller’s niece. More synchronicities, I guess. And then!”
“Then? I’m on pins and needles.”
“Then, after Marcus’s Uncle Lou collared the guy and took him down the block to cool off, the manager and I went to take a look at the apartment itself, and we heard a noise from somewhere inside it. Or at least we thought we did. He walked from room to room around the apartment, and just as he went back to the bedroom, some girl nearly knocked me down as she burst out of the entry closet, where she’d been hiding.”
“Dear! Did you actually fall?”
I shook my head. “No, but she scared the bejeebers out of me! I dropped my crutch, and when I looked up again, she was gone.”
Liss frowned. “I’m not sure I like this. The apartment that you were looking at was actually broken into that day?”
“The manager said it was probably just teenage hijinks and that’s all. That it’s just a part of doing business these days. Not much that can be done about it. I’m surprised he didn’t set up security cameras to prevent such things, or at least catch the perpetrators.”
“Well, he’s right about there being risks to doing business, but we have had little vandalism here at the store. Or, we had until this morning.”
She had said it so matter-of-factly, so absolutely without drama, that I almost went on to the next part of my story. Instead, I caught myself on an up-breath and looked up at her. “What do you mean, we had a little vandalism here this morning?”
“Nothing to worry about, ducks. Someone left a gift for us on the doorstep, that’s all.”
“What . . .
sort
. . . of gift?” I asked her, frowning.
“Just a little paper parcel of excrement. Nothing to get excited about. I found it as I was unlocking the door.” She gave a delicate pause. “The fact that it was flaming caused a bit of an awkward moment. It would have been even more awkward, were I the type of person to put out flames with my heel, mind you. Thankfully I still had a full thermos of water in my car. I just doused it and got rid of it.” She took a sip from her teacup, pondering her effort. “It could have been worse. There were no broken windows or the like. Yes, it could have been much worse.”
As much as she didn’t like the sound of the apartment, I really,
really
didn’t like the sound of vandalism at the store, no matter how “minor” she thought it was. For one thing, vandalism here at the store inferred that someone out there thought badly enough of Liss (at least, I was assuming it was Liss
)
to go out of their way to do something to antagonize or intimidate her. And I was really afraid that a person who was willing to go that far might be unbalanced enough to take it a step further—to take it to a physical level. A level of harm. But who? Who could feel so strongly about Liss? She was such a wonderful person, so warm and kind and giving.
My bet was on someone from Reverend Baxter Martin’s church group, and I had a good idea why. Because Liss was a witch. And she’d been outed, not only through word of mouth but also in the Stony Mill Gazette. Ever since that fateful article appeared this past summer, Reverend Martin, a fundamentalist independent believer who liked to interpret the Holy Bible in his own very special way, had been actively—and singlehandedly—attempting to create a band of devotees to rise against what he had labeled “purveyors of darkness,” who in his mind were the source of all the sins of the town. At the top of his list of the wicked: Liss and anyone who associated with her store. And Martin had more ties to people of influence throughout the town than we’d like. He’d been making trouble for Liss at turn after turn, including with City Hall. Could it be that one of his followers was taking his role as religious activist a little too seriously?
Liss saw the concern in my eyes and rushed to reassure me. “Now, now. It really is nothing, Maggie. At least, it’s nothing I can’t handle.”
“Spells? You’re talking spells?” I couldn’t hold back the frown worrying my forehead. “Now, Liss . . . I know how seriously you take your magick”—after all, hadn’t I witnessed enough myself to know that it was real?—“but . . . shouldn’t we be talking about reporting it to the police and getting them involved?”
“Actually, dear . . . I already did. To tell you the truth, they didn’t seem too very excited about it, although they did take down the information. Perhaps your apartment manager fellow this morning took precedence. In the meantime, I will be doing a full protection ritual with the upcoming dark moon, and you know that I charge my wards daily. Don’t underestimate them.”
I wouldn’t—I’d both seen and felt the effects of them in action. But the wards only protected the property itself. The protection extended itself to the residents therein, but only while on the premises. That troubled me, too.
“You know,” Liss went on, fetching a cookie from the tray, “since your apartment expedition went bust in rather a spectacular fashion, you might consider performing a spell of your own if you’re still interested in finding a new place to live. Here, have a biscuit. Chocolate cherry chip.”
“Mm, my favorite.” Cherries from Michigan, what could be better? Um, how about adding them to chocolate chips and chocolate chunks in a cookie? “A spell? What kind of spell? You mean, like a Get Me a Cheap but Wonderful Apartment ASAP Spell?”
She chuckled. “I think your average Home Finding Spell would suffice. After all, a home is what everyone strives to find, don’t you agree? And if we don’t find one readymade to fit the bill, it’s what we strive to create.”
I would give her that. “Well, in that case, maybe I’ll think about that for this next go-round.”
“So you’re determined to continue with the apartment quest, then?”
“I have to keep looking,” I told her. “I have to find something.”
“Marcus?” Liss guessed.
I nodded. “Marcus. He’s putting off his classes because I’m there, and he feels like he has to be around to take care of me. Which is ridiculous! But you know Marcus.”