Spirits and Sourdough, page 10
Suppressing a sigh, I turned off the engine and leaned over to give Mungo a kiss on top of his head and scratch behind his ears. He responded by wiggling closer and leaning his forehead against my shoulder. We sat that way for a few calm moments before getting out of the car.
As I was hauling my tote bag out of the back seat, I heard the sound of children’s voices from next door. I straightened and closed the door, turning toward them. Margie Coopersmith waved at me from her porch, and I saw her towheaded twins, Julia and Jonathan—known collectively as the JJs—playing a beanbag toss game on the far side of their front yard. Their little brother, Bart, helped by running back and forth to retrieve the beanbags for his siblings. Mungo nudged my leg and looked up at me. I nodded, and he took off to join the fun with a loud yip!
Margie came down the steps and hurried across the lawn to where I stood. “Got time for a quick glass of wine?” she asked by way of greeting. “I hardly ever see you these days.” She blew a stray strand of her white-blond hair off her forehead, looking hopeful.
“Oh, I wish.” I glanced over my shoulder at the carriage house.
“I take it Declan is on days off and waiting eagerly for his bride to come home.” It could have sounded sarcastic, but I knew it wasn’t. Margie was all about family.
“Something like that,” I said. “Mostly I’m just tired. If I drink a glass of your pink wine, I might not make it through supper.”
She squinted and looked me up and down. “You’re working too hard.”
I waved my hand. “Nah. Just one of those days.” I gestured over her shoulder to the kids playing. “Are you guys still coming to the Halloween party?”
“Of course! Redding will be out of town, surprise, surprise, but Evelyn will help me wrangle the kids.” Redding was Margie’s husband and a long-haul truck driver. He was often gone for days at a time, though he checked in via computer every evening and read to his children before bed. Evelyn was Margie’s mother-in-law, and they got along famously.
“Oh, Evelyn made Julia the cutest skeleton costume! Painted a black leotard with glow-in-the-dark paint. She’s so talented. Researched how the bones should look and it’s cute and creepy at the same time. Julia wanted to wear it to school this morning.” The JJs were six.
“Sounds adorable. Do they let them wear their costumes to school on Halloween?”
“Of course! Though I don’t think Jonathan will manage to wear his all day. He insisted he wanted to be a school bus.”
“A school bus,” I repeated.
“Uh-huh. It’s . . . cumbersome. Took me a while, but I figured out how to make it light enough that he could wear it with straps over his shoulders.”
“You made it?”
“Oh, sure. I can’t cook a lick, darlin’, as we both know, but I can make a Halloween costume with the best of them. Hot glue gun at the ready.” She pantomimed drawing a gun from her hip.
“What’s Bart going as?”
“A bumblebee.”
“Again?”
“Yep. We were going through the trunk looking for ideas, and he saw his wings from last year and wanted to wear it again. Lucky break for me.”
Some moms might have been disappointed at their child wearing the same costume two years in a row, but Margie just wanted her boy to be happy. I loved that about her.
“Well, I’d better go inside and see what my husband has been up to all day,” I said.
“He worked in the garage most of the afternoon, I can tell you that. And I don’t know what that man is cooking up for you, but I can smell it from here. I’ll think of you as we eat our mac and cheese and hotdogs for supper.” She rolled her eyes. “Kid food.”
Now that she mentioned it, there was a savory fragrance riding the evening air, and it did seem to be coming from our place.
I said goodbye, called for Mungo, and headed inside.
The full effect of Declan’s culinary efforts hit me like a cartoon anvil when we stepped inside. Even Mungo made a little noise in the back of his throat.
Mmmm. Onion, something smoky—sausage? Something else . . . aha! Filé powder!
Made from the crushed leaves of the sassafras tree, filé powder had a distinctive scent. Declan had made us one of his delectable firehouse recipes—gumbo.
I stashed my tote in the corner as my husband came out from the short hallway that led to the bedroom and bathroom. He was wrapping a thick piece of gauze around his hand.
Rushing to him, I demanded, “What happened?”
“Knife slipped in the kitchen. No big deal.” He kissed me.
“Since when does no big deal require enough gauze to wrap a mummy?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Will you relax? The cut is in an awkward place, that’s all. And yes, I would have done the exact same stupid thing with Connell around. It’s not like I was in a plastic bubble my whole life.”
I bit my lip, chagrined that he had read my mind so well. “Sorry.”
“No worries,” he said, trying to keep it light. But I could hear the irritation under the words. “Now come on. I’ve set the table, and the rice should be ready now.”
I let it drop and followed him into the kitchen. The table was set for two, and he’d added a vase of the rambling Cherokee roses that grew beside the house. I didn’t know how long this romance stuff was expected to last in a marriage, but I sure liked it.
Lifting the lid of the pot, I inhaled the fragrant steam. “What a treat!” Chicken, sausage, shrimp, crab, and okra swam in a combination of beef and chicken broth flavored with spices and aromatics and thickened with the classic filé powder.
I fished out a chunk of chicken from the gumbo, added a few pieces of okra—which my familiar loved—and placed the bowl on Mungo’s placemat on the floor. He started in on it at once.
“Rude,” I noted, but he ignored me.
Declan and I dished up and dug in.
* * *
* * *
After dinner, we both washed up, and I asked Declan if he would mind giving some of our leftovers to Margie. I knew she’d welcome the respite from kid food. He readily agreed and took the dish over himself. By the time he got back, I was already in my pjs and had a movie queued up in the loft. Two hours and a light comedy later, Declan was snoring in bed beside me while I perused the pile of spellbooks I’d gathered.
I was tired, but there was work to do.
Chapter 13
For months, I’d been kicking around some ideas for how to create the best spell to get Connell back. The spellbook club had agreed with the ones I’d run by them. Now I needed some particulars.
Particulars that didn’t rely on Teddy acting as a tether.
I refused to wait to find someone else who could exist on both planes at once. Who knew how long that would take? I’d thought about trying to find a medium who could do the job, but there were two problems with that. First off, how would I know if they were legit? The medium who had inadvertently brought Connell to the fore was out of the country again, working on a movie set, and since that had been an accident, I didn’t think she’d be able to help us anyway. Which brought up the second objection, which was that mediums invited spirits to visit them of their own free will. Connell didn’t need an invitation. He was happy to come back. No, he needed to be neatly caught in the net of a spell and brought back.
So. How to combine a spell for finding lost objects with one designed to pierce the veil? Would it be a spell within a cast circle, or something different?
A cast circle, I thought. That was what I knew so well, and what felt most natural. Spells and rituals were about intention in the end, intention augmented by harnessing the power of the elements and of nature. Best to focus on that. Besides, that was how the spellbook club was used to working, too, and I was going to need their help.
After a bit, I came across a list of herbs that helped reach the other side. I opened my grimoire, my personal book of spells that I’d added to ever since learning I was a witch. I thought of it as my recipe book, complete with notes, comments, and possible additions to the rituals I performed or wanted to try. I was keeping all my research on the spell I was developing there. I made a note to add cinnamon, allspice, frankincense, and myrrh into the mix.
Nothing else caught my attention. I closed the book and gently tapped the end of the pen against my teeth. Mungo grunted and rolled over, looking at me upside down from the end of the bed. Then he righted himself and trundled up to snuggle in next to my hip.
Mimsey had suggested using graveyard dirt in the spell, which made sense. It might seem gory, but she’d explained that it was traditionally used in any kind of spell involving transition. Not only that, but it was used in all sorts of Samhain spells as a matter of course, to connect with departed ancestors and friends.
I made another note.
Need to ask Jaida to bring the right tarot card . . .
Another note.
Lucy and I needed to bring our hedgewitchery into play, too. I grabbed another spellbook and found what I was looking for—Samhain ritual cakes made with pumpkin, ginger, and cinnamon.
What else? Maybe I could find a suggestion online. I slipped out of bed, lifted Mungo to the floor, and padded out of the bedroom to trade out the spellbooks for my laptop. Rather than risk disturbing Declan, I settled on the sofa, tucking my legs beneath me. Mungo jumped up to join me, for all the world looking as if he were checking out the websites I brought up.
After ten minutes, I’d found nothing of interest and closed the laptop. I opened my grimoire to my notes on Connell. Next to those, the page was blank. Soon I found myself doodling names.
Leigh Markes. Aldo Bracket. Walker Stokes. Zoe Stokes. Paisley Long. Calista Markes. Jo . . . something.
All suspects. Perhaps. Not Zoe. No, I was pretty sure Zoe Stokes hadn’t snuck home from college to kill her mother, though it wasn’t impossible. But what possible motive could she have?
I couldn’t even guess.
Aldo Bracket, though. Could he have killed Leigh because she didn’t want to give him a show in her gallery? Really? He’d been promised the show, had apparently talked Leigh’s assistant into it once, and was trying again now that Leigh was dead. How important was that show to him? He didn’t seem, well, artistic. From what Steve had told me, he was a spoiled rich kid, possibly with a chip on his shoulder, and stranger still, he hadn’t even seemed to connect with his art.
I wonder if I could act like I was interested in purchasing a piece and get him to talk to me more about it. Maybe he’d let something slip . . .
And then there was Paisley herself. She’d been running Leigh’s gallery for a long time while Leigh took care of her father. Then, boom! Suddenly Leigh was back in charge, and one of the first things she did was reverse a decision Paisley had made about Aldo’s show. Who knew what other decisions she’d questioned, what she might have said to Paisley. I hadn’t known Leigh well, but she was no-nonsense and blunt. That wouldn’t go over well with everyone.
I wondered if it had contributed to her divorce. But her ex must have understood from the beginning that he was marrying an assertive woman. She didn’t exactly hide who she was. And from what Iris had said, Walker Stokes was hardly blameless. I hoped Jaida would find something in the public records or through her lawyerly channels that would help to unmuddy the picture I had of him.
Calista Markes and her sister hadn’t been on the best of terms, but I had no way to know if that was their normal relationship. I was an only child, but I knew sisters often squabbled without meaning much by it. But as they’d left the Honeybee, Leigh had said something to her friend Jo about how difficult Calista had become since their father had died. Perhaps the rift between them had ended in violence.
For all I knew, Jo had been the last person to see Leigh that evening. I didn’t know her last name, but she’d looked vaguely familiar. Without much hope, I opened my laptop again and considered. Leigh and Jo had seemed comfortable with each other. Jo knew Calista, too, and had easily commented on their father’s death.
So probably a family friend. At least a good friend.
I input Leigh’s name and simply “Jo,” then clicked on Images. Sure enough, a picture of Leigh and Jo taken at a fundraiser came up. The caption said her last name was Sterling.
When I searched for Jo Sterling, I found a treasure trove of information.
I’d thought she looked like a professional athlete, and it turned out I was right. Or at least she had been. Jo Sterling was thirty-seven and had been prominent on the women’s golf tour until a few years ago. Then a television viewer had emailed the golf powers that be, sure she’d seen a rule infraction during a tournament Jo was playing in. It had resulted in a multiple-stroke penalty the next day and had cost Jo the win. Two weeks later, she’d torn her rotator cuff and shortly after that announced her retirement.
Now she and her husband owned a fitness center on the north side of town.
I closed the laptop, placed it on the coffee table, and picked up Mungo. I needed more information about Walker Stokes, Calista Markes, and Aldo Bracket, as well as Jo Sterling. But more than anything, I needed to get some sleep. Tomorrow was going to be a busy day.
* * *
* * *
The next morning, Iris and Lucy both came in early, and we got the regular baking done in short order. Then we started preparing what we could for the Halloween party. The candy corn cupcakes were already baked, wrapped, and frozen. I loved that when frozen cake thawed, it was not only easier to frost or ice, but even moister than it would have been without freezing. It was the same for Lucy’s “dirt” brownies. Now we made up sugar cookie dough for extra moon and star cookies, cut out the shapes, and froze those so we could bake them the morning of Halloween. By the time the midmorning rush hit the bakery, things were well in hand.
Lucy had brought her Dutch oven, an impressive black cast-iron beast that looked great perched on the coffee counter surrounded by garlands of autumn leaves and a few hairy spiders.
“Hey, Ben,” I said to my uncle as I arranged the last spider. He was lounging behind the counter with that morning’s paper. “Anything in there about Leigh’s murder?”
He made a wry face. “Plenty about her and her family, old-school, upstanding members of Savannah society that they were, but not much about the murder investigation. It’s officially ‘ongoing.’ ”
“Hm. I guess that doesn’t mean much. Detective Quinn isn’t going to give Steve any information that might endanger official inquiries.” He wouldn’t give me any, either, at least not intentionally. But it wasn’t time to give him a call yet. I still had more to find out on my own.
I tucked a spider leg behind a maple leaf and called it good. “You know the blonde who was here the other day with Leigh?”
Ben looked interested.
“I was poking around online last night and discovered she used to be a professional golfer.” Ben was a regular Sunday golfer and, to Lucy’s chagrin, often watched golf on television.
He snapped his fingers. “I thought I recognized her, but I didn’t know from where. What’s her name?”
“Jo Sterling.”
“Of course! Crazy what happened to her.”
“I saw the thing about a television viewer costing her a big win. That seemed pretty strange. How can that be legal? I mean, in the rules of golf or whatever.”
He shook his head. “Weird, huh. I think she tried to fight it, but it’s allowed. She retired soon after that. I wonder if that tournament is why.”
“She tore her rotator cuff,” I said.
He shrugged. “Either way, she’s out of the game now.”
My phone buzzed in my apron pocket. When I saw it was Jaida, I ducked into the kitchen to answer it.
“Hey.”
“Hey yourself,” she said. “I’ve been going through public records. I started with Leigh’s ex, since the police always look at the spouse or ex-spouse first.”
“Right. I’ve been wondering about him ever since Iris mentioned him.” I moved back to the office and closed the door. “Find anything?”
“A couple of things. First off, their divorce was final about two years ago. Two months later, he married again.”
I let out a low whistle. “That was fast.”
Mungo sat up on his club chair and cocked his head at me.
“Wasn’t it? Then again, we don’t know if Walker and Leigh had been separated for a while before the divorce—there were no separation papers filed, mind you, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t try a trial separation.”
“You’re right. Best not to jump to conclusions.”
“When they divorced, their daughter was eighteen and off to college, so there were no custody issues. However, nothing was mentioned about who was supposed to pay for her college. It wouldn’t be Walker, though, because he declared bankruptcy right after the divorce.”
“Ouch.” I sat down in the office chair. “Do you think Leigh took him for a lot of money?”
And would that be a motive for murder?
“It doesn’t look that way. On the other hand, he didn’t get much money from her, either, though he still retains part-ownership of the gallery. Hers was old family money, and her father made darn sure it was protected when she married Walker.”
“So he lost the benefit of that money when they split. Who filed for the divorce?” I asked.
“Leigh did,” Jaida said. “So that’s what I have so far. I checked to see if her father’s will has been probated yet, but it hasn’t. He only passed away last month, and it takes a while. He did, however, quit-claim the family home to Leigh’s sister, Calista Markes. It looks like he did that when he moved in with Leigh, presumably so she could care for him. Her address was on the papers he filed.”
