That Olde White Magick. Sharon Pape
stepped inside. It was easy to see that a single man lived there, a single man with no interest in interior décor. He led me into a shabby living room dominated by a large flat screen TV on one wall. Facing it was an old recliner, the plaid fabric worn away on the armrests and the cushion back where he rested his head. Rusty had his priorities.
“Have yourself a seat,” he said, nodding in the direction of a sofa that was catty-corner to the chair. “Mind if I call you Kailyn? It’s how I knew you as a kid.”
“Kailyn is fine,” I said, perching on the edge of the sofa. It didn’t look as distressed as the chair, but I had no desire to lean back and be enveloped in its oversized cushions.
“You can call me Rusty,” he said, dropping into the recliner.
“Okay, Rusty. When you called you said you had information about Amanda.”
He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and lowered his voice as if he suspected his house was bugged. “Yup, that’s right. I was cleanin’ up last night when I overheard Beverly talkin’ to some folks. I wasn’t eavesdroppin’, mind you. That woman was never taught to use her inside voice.”
I couldn’t help smiling. “What did she say?”
“That she knew for a fact Amanda was all for granting the Waverly’s rezoning request. She believed the hotel would bring in more tourists and lower everyone’s taxes.”
Since the information came from Beverly, I made a mental note to check it out. She had a reputation for embellishing on the truth. If she knew part of a story, she didn’t see anything wrong with filling in the missing pieces, using her own brand of logic. “Was there anything else?”
“Yup, I’ll bet you dollars to donuts Hugh Fletcher hired the killer.”
“Fletcher?” The name was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it.
“He owns Winterland, the ski resort outside of town,” Rusty explained.
“I thought the owner was Eric Ingersoll.”
“Ingersoll is the manager. Fletcher spends most of his time in Manhattan. The resort is just one of his businesses. He’s what you call an entrepreneur.”
“So you’re a skier?” I asked. “Is that how you know all this?”
“Nope, never seen the point in paying to ride to the top of a hill in order to slide down it. I just keep my ears open.”
“But why would Fletcher want to kill Amanda?” I asked.
“Easy. If the town grants Waverly’s rezonin’ request, there’ll be competition for his hotel. As things stand now, the only other hotel is almost an hour away. Winterland’s been pullin’ in a fortune, chargin’ sky-high prices for rooms.” Rusty leaned back in the chair with his arms crossed over his chest and a grim but triumphant expression on his face. “There you have it.”
I didn’t want to reject his theory out of hand, but it made no sense for Fletcher to risk killing off a board member while negotiations were still ongoing. Besides, he had no guarantee that Amanda’s replacement would be against the deal. I pointed this out to Rusty, trying my best to let him down gently
“I get what you’re sayin’, but I have this here feelin’ in my gut about it.”
“I think we’re going to need some evidence before we can take that feeling to the police. Can I ask you something, Rusty?”
“Shoot.”
“Why did you call me and not someone else? We hardly know each other.”
“I know all I need to know about you. You’re the one who caught Jim Harkens’s killer.”
“That’s not entirely true. I poked around in the right places until he came after me.”
“And that’s when you nabbed him.” Rusty was clearly not willing to let go of his over-inflated opinion of me.
“Yes, I guess you could say that.” Although there were some scary moments when it could have gone very differently. “I’d rather if you didn’t repeat that to anyone else,” I added.
“You got it. But just so you know, it’s been all over town since the day it went down.” Great. I was sure Duggan enjoyed hearing that little refrain over and over again. “I appreciate the information,” I said, rising from the couch. “Thank you.”
* * * *
I stopped home long enough to take Sashkatu with me to the shop. He’d accompanied Morgana every day until her passing and did not take kindly to being left behind with the five new interlopers. I found out the hard way. The first day I left him at home, the six of them must have had quite a tussle because when I got back that evening, the house was topsy-turvy. Anything not nailed down was on the floor. The curtains in the living room were half off their rods, and someone had peed in my split-leaf philodendron.
When the culprits slinked from their hidey-holes for dinner, they were all missing tufts of fur. I could only assume that Sashkatu had vented his foul mood on his brethren, and they didn’t take it lying down. That was the first and last time I left him home for an entire day. Besides, walking across the street to the back of my shop was the most exercise he got anymore. That and using his custom-built steps to ascend to perches he could no longer reach on his own.
We walked into the shop, and I turned off the alarm. In spite of his arthritis, Sashki made it up the steps to his down cushion in the front window before I could turn on the computer. Although it was more than an hour before opening, I had to pay bills, order more of the complimentary tote bags, and check my inventory for other items that might be running low.
The computer had made all of those chores so much easier. It was still a sore point with Morgana and Bronwen, though. When I’d tried to show them how it worked, their white energy clouds had contracted into angry red fists, and they’d zipped off with a crackle and a snap.
I should have known better. They never liked being proved wrong, another thing that hadn’t changed after they shuffled off their mortal coils. I still didn’t have a good handle on where they resided now, and it seemed they weren’t permitted to tell me. Left to imagine my own theory, I thought of it as a transitional plane, a death-lite, until they were willing to relinquish their ties to this world and continue on their journey.
I was logging off the computer when two elderly women toddled into the shop, arms linked as if they were holding each other up. “Good Morning, ladies,” I said, standing. “Welcome to Abracadabra. What can I do for you today?”
At first I didn’t think they heard me because they didn’t speak or look at me. They appeared transfixed by the merchandise arrayed before them. I was on the verge of welcoming them again when the taller of the women turned to me.
“Hello, dearie,” she said. “Please excuse us, but we’ve never set foot in a magick shop before.”
I came around the counter to them. “In that case, I’m twice as pleased that Abracadabra is your first. I’m Kailyn.”
They unlinked arms to introduce themselves and shake my hand. “I’m Flora,” said the taller one, “and this is my sister, Daisy.”
Daisy bobbed her head. “Our mother, rest her soul, loved flowers. She would have named all her children for them, but the boys posed a bit of a problem.” They smiled simultaneously.
“I imagine they would. Is there anything specific you’re looking for today?”
“We need a memory spell,” Daisy said. “We’ve been spending so much time searching for things we could have written the great American novel.”
“Well maybe not the great one,” Flora put in with a chuckle.
“I have just the thing.” I wanted to offer them a seat, but I had just the one chair. My desk chair was too large to fit in the space beside