[A Wicked Witches of the Midwest 10.0] Murder Most Witchy Read online

  “Yeah, but you can hide behind your job at The Whistler to do it,” Landon countered. “You can’t exactly do that now.”

  He was right. I knew he didn’t mean it to be insulting, but it hurt all the same. “Right.”

  Landon was instantly contrite. “I’m sorry, sweetie. I shouldn’t have said that.” His face twisted as he slipped his arm around my waist. “We’ll fix that, too. I promise you that. I just … we need to focus on Becky’s murder first. That’s our biggest priority.”

  “I know.” I did my best to appear brave because I knew he needed that from me. “It’s okay. If I never get my job back … well … it’s hardly the end of the world. I can always find something else to do.”

  “That’s not going to happen. You are getting your job back. I won’t allow you to suffer for something you didn’t do.” Landon was adamant.

  Thistle’s expression was hard to read. When I locked gazes with her I lifted a shoulder and held my hands palms up. “What?”

  “You’re so full of crap sometimes,” she replied, shaking her head. “What will you do if you don’t get your job back?”

  “I … .” I’d been wondering about that myself. I had no idea. “I’m sure I can find something,” I hedged. “Maybe I’ll open a store or something.”

  “Selling what?” Thistle’s voice wasn’t accusatory, but I still didn’t like her tone. “You only know how to do one thing. You’re not crafty. I guess you could do a fortuneteller shtick someplace because you can talk to ghosts, but it’s not as if you can control when and where they show up. I seriously want to know what you’ll do if you can’t get your job back.”

  “I … don’t know.” I moved to step away from the counter, my heart rate increasing, but Landon stilled me with a hand on my hip.

  “Leave her alone, Thistle,” he barked. “She’s been through enough, and I honestly cannot listen to you torture her … .”

  Instead of backing down, Thistle squared her shoulders. “I’m not trying to torture her,” she cut him off. “Believe it or not, I’m as angry about this situation as you are.”

  “I don’t believe that’s true,” Landon gritted out. “You’re not the cause of her unhappiness.”

  “Oh, geez.” Thistle rolled her eyes. “You two are a great match because you both have martyr tendencies. Has anyone ever told you that?”

  “You did just now,” Landon replied. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “You’re not responsible for this, Landon,” Thistle shot back. “You’re responsible for not calling when you should’ve called. Before this is all said and done, we’ll make you pay for that, by the way. Bay was a whiny mess, and we had to pick up the pieces.”

  “Duly noted.” A muscle worked in Landon’s jaw. “I created this mess, though. You can’t deny it.”

  “No, the bad guys created this mess,” Thistle clarified. “You didn’t attack Bay. You didn’t hurt Bay. Er, well, you didn’t hurt her physically. You know what I mean.”

  “I don’t think you’re making him feel better, Thistle,” I said dryly.

  “I know.” Thistle rubbed her hands over her cheeks in an effort to refocus. “Landon, you didn’t do this. Blaming yourself is counterproductive. We’re witches. We believe in karma. You can’t look back, so it’s time to look forward.”

  “She’s right.” I ran my hand through Landon’s silky hair, something occurring to me. “Wait a second … you won’t have to cut your hair now that you’re not going undercover again, are you?” I’d always found it odd that the federal government let him keep his hair that long when he wasn’t on a specific investigation, but I didn’t want to argue the point in case someone swooped in with a pair of scissors.

  Landon chuckled as Thistle rolled her eyes.

  “Is that really the thing to worry about right now?” Thistle complained.

  “You once told me that you would have to make Marcus wear a wig if he ever cut his hair,” I reminded her.

  Marcus, ever unflappable, merely smiled. “That’s good to know.”

  “I was joking.” Thistle said the words, but they weren’t very convincing.

  “And I happen to like Landon’s long hair and am not ready to see it go.” I petted him as if he were a dog, resisting the urge to scratch behind his ears. “It’s so pretty.”

  “The hair isn’t going anywhere,” Landon said. “I’m rather fond of it, too.”

  “I’m so relieved.”

  Landon poked my side. “I figure I will have to grow up and look my age eventually, but I’m not there yet. Besides, I think it makes me look terrifying.”

  “You’re still not as terrifying as Aunt Tillie,” Thistle argued.

  “No one is that terrifying.” Landon shifted on the stool. “I need to talk to Chief Terry to see what he has going. I’m not sure where else to look. I know you guys mentioned casting a locator spell to find Doug, but that worries me. How will we explain how we found him if we use magic?”

  “You’re worried that Noah will assume we’re working with him if we discover his location,” I mused.

  “Pretty much,” Landon agreed. “I don’t want to give him more fuel if we can help it. Even if we had access to the lab, this scrap of fabric is common. We wouldn’t be able to track it, which is why I didn’t share it with Noah. He’d think we’re desperate. But just because we can’t use this doesn’t mean we have nowhere to look.”

  “Where do we have to look next?” I asked, genuinely curious.

  “I believe you stole a book when we visited the Bayside Bed and Breakfast,” Landon reminded me. “It was in a police envelope. That must mean they gave it a special look for a reason. Perhaps we should do that, too.”

  “Oh.” I felt like a complete and total idiot. “I forgot all about that book. I was going to look the day we got back, but that was when I lost my job.”

  “Which is perfectly acceptable … and you’re getting your job back if I have to beat the living snot out of Brian Kelly,” Landon said. “I think you should start with that book. I’ll spend some time with Chief Terry so we can brainstorm. I think that’s our best bet for starting the day.”

  “I would like to help, but I have work,” Thistle said. “It’s Halloween week. The town is bustling.”

  “That’s fine.” Landon crackled his knuckles. “In fact, to make things easier, I think Bay should examine the book at your store. That will keep her downtown – and out of trouble – while I’m talking to Chief Terry. We can compare notes again after that.”

  “The book is still at The Overlook,” I reminded him. “I need to get it.”

  “Your mother put all of our stuff in my Explorer because she needed the room. Let’s grab some breakfast over there and get going.”

  “You just want bacon,” Thistle muttered.

  Landon shrugged, unbothered. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  Twenty-Five

  “What is that?”

  Thistle watched me open the police envelope and pull out a hardcover journal. The image on the front was of a fairy, and I had to swallow the uncouth urge to laugh because it reminded me of something a young girl rather than an adult would select.

  “It’s a diary,” I replied, flipping the book over to look at the back before opening it.

  “Get out of here.” Clove shuffled closer and looked over my shoulder as I sat on the couch in the middle of Hypnotic. “Huh.”

  “Yup.” I didn’t know quite what to say about the journal either. “It’s one of those journals you can buy at any bookstore … usually in the young adult section.”

  “Who keeps a diary as an adult?” Thistle asked, keeping one eye on the herbs she bagged while sparing regular glances for me. “Wasn’t Becky a bit old for a journal?”

  “I’ve never been the journal type, so I don’t know,” I said, flipping the book open. “Either way, this looks like a teenager’s journal. All that’s missing is a butterfly and little doodles that say ‘Mrs. Justin Ti
mberlake.’”

  Thistle made a derisive sound in the back of her throat. “You’re so old. No one thinks Justin Timberlake is hot now. They’re all about the beaver.”

  “I … don’t know what that means. Are you talking Leave it to Beaver?”

  “Now you’re even older in my head,” Thistle shot back. “You’ve been spending way too much time with Aunt Tillie. She loves that show.”

  “Actually she much prefers Bewitched, but I get your meaning.” I flipped a few entries in and scanned the writing. It was legible, but just barely.

  “Anything good?” Clove asked after a few minutes.

  “I’m not sure,” I replied. “It’s all … odd. She spends this entire entry talking about her sister and how much she hates the fact that their mother favors the sister and how everyone wishes she’d never been born so Rhonda could be the center of the Patterson world.”

  “If I had a diary I would totally complain about how much Aunt Tillie favors the two of you,” Thistle pointed out. “I don’t think that sounds unreasonable if it’s really happening.”

  “It’s not really happening in our case,” I pointed out.

  Thistle ignored me. “It’s unfair. I hate being on that old woman’s list.”

  “Yeah, but this is really juvenile,” I said. “Like right here she says that the sister bought the mother an ice cream sundae from Dairy Queen and Becky goes on a three-page rant about how Rhonda is trying to steal their mother’s affection and using ice cream to do it.”

  “Okay, that does seem like a gross freakout over nothing,” Thistle conceded. “You said you didn’t like her from the start. Perhaps she was mentally unbalanced.”

  “That’s always a possibility.” I flipped to another entry, secretly glad when shoppers forced Thistle and Clove to focus on their work so I could have a few private moments to peruse the diary. Before I realized what was happening, I’d finished the entire thing and closed it, resting it against my knees while I waited for the last customer to leave.

  “That was kind of an odd rush,” Clove said, wiping her hands on her jeans as she turned her attention to me. “Did you find anything else?”

  “I found a lot of something else’s but none of them make sense,” I admitted. “She spends most of her time complaining about the mother and sister and how they don’t get her … how they keep telling her to get a real job, but she doesn’t want a real job because selling meth is so much easier and she only has to work one day a week.”

  “Yes, well, values,” Thistle said dryly. “You might want to consider the source before you cast aspersions on her.”

  “I was hardly casting aspersions.”

  “That’s what it sounds like to me.”

  “Don’t make me force-feed you dirt,” I threatened, rolling my neck as I stared out the window. Landon had been inside the police station with Chief Terry for almost two hours now. I had to wonder what they were talking about. “I don’t know what to think. I also don’t understand why the police gave this journal back instead of taking it into evidence. She’s very brazen when talking about the operation.”

  “Did she mention anything about the Doug guy?” Thistle asked.

  “She did, but she wasn’t very fond of him either,” I replied. “She was clearly a very unhappy woman. Even though she went on these long boasts about the amount of money she was making and how little work she was putting in, it was easy to read through the lines. She was ridiculously jealous of the sister and thought that her mother favored Rhonda.”

  “And that upset her to the point where she was deranged?” Thistle asked, sitting next to me and snagging the journal. “That doesn’t make much sense. There are days my mother prefers Clove to me, and I totally get it.”

  I’d been around for many of those days, and Thistle was remembering it a bit differently than me. That was neither here nor there, though. “At least you didn’t lock yourself in a room and threaten to kill Clove in the bloodiest way imaginable when you were upset,” I said. “Becky had several very … um … vivid daydreams about how she wanted to kill Rhonda.”

  “Do you think the sister knew?”

  I had no idea. “We only saw the sister for a few minutes at the diner. Landon was going to question her, but thought better of it when we realized she had no idea her sister was dead.”

  “He didn’t want to be the bearer of bad news?” Clove asked.

  I shook my head. “He didn’t want us to get in trouble for inserting ourselves in the investigation. If Davis showed up while we were questioning her – or if she let slip who told her – Landon could lose his job.”

  “I’m not so sure he cares about that any longer,” Thistle noted, causing my stomach to roll.

  “He cares about his job,” I argued. “He takes a lot of pride in being a good agent and always getting to the bottom of a situation.”

  “I know he does, but he cares about you more, and he’s very disillusioned right now,” Thistle said. “Whether he wants to admit it or not, he might not have believed law enforcement was infallible but he always thought that people who took on the badge always wanted to do the right thing. His recent interaction with Davis and Agent Glenn has shown him exactly the opposite.”

  I wanted to argue, but I knew Thistle was correct. “He needs a win.”

  “Then we’ll get him a win.” Thistle was all business. “Other than proving that Becky What’s-her-face was crazy, does that journal give you any insight into what they were doing or where Doug would’ve fled once he realized the cops were on to him?”

  “That’s the other part of the situation that I don’t get,” I admitted. “I can see Doug being upset because Landon fooled him and ruined his operation. I can see him wanting payback. I can even see him figuring out the basics of my relationship with Landon and going after me in retaliation. What I can’t understand is how killing Becky and trying to frame me for her murder – a bad frame job at that – would possibly benefit him.”

  “It would’ve made more sense to kill you,” Thistle said, her voice low.

  “Don’t say that!” Clove was scandalized. “That’s not funny.”

  “I wasn’t trying to be funny,” Thistle countered. “The only reason Doug would do what he did is to keep Landon distracted. Anyone who knows Landon can easily figure out that Bay is the way to get to him. Kill her and you cripple him.”

  “I guess I can’t argue with that,” Clove sniffed.

  “Except if Doug killed me then Landon would only be off his game for a day or so before he swore bloody vengeance and went after him,” I pointed out. “Perhaps Doug figured out Landon was undercover before we ran into each other at the corn maze. Maybe he already knew about our relationship and figured the best way to get to Landon was to put me in danger.”

  Thistle nodded, things coming together in her head. “If you died, then Landon would have nothing to lose. As it stands, you almost died, and that makes Landon manic. He doesn’t want to be away from you. Landon won’t risk you, so Doug has room to maneuver … to do whatever it is he’s trying to do.”

  “That’s the real question, isn’t it?” I gestured toward the diary on Thistle’s lap. “That thing doesn’t tell us anything except for the fact that Becky was unstable. It doesn’t make a lot of sense for a guy moving as much product as Doug reportedly was to utilize a woman he knew was unbalanced.”

  “Unless there was something else in it for him,” Clove finished. “So what?”

  “I have no idea,” I replied. “I think we’ll need Chief Terry and Landon for that one. My only knowledge of drug trafficking comes from movies and television. I don’t think that Scarface guy is going to show himself and explain things anytime soon.”

  “You’re so old.” Thistle rolled her eyes dramatically.

  I ignored her, opening my mouth to say something derogatory. I didn’t get the chance, because I recognized a slim figure walking across Main Street … and she appeared to be headed in our direction. “Oh, crap!”
>
  “What?” Thistle turned her head and stared at the woman. “Who is that?”

  “Rhonda Patterson,” I answered, clutching my hands together. “I don’t suppose this could be a coincidence, right?”

  “I sincerely doubt it.” Thistle jumped to her feet, pressing the journal to her midriff. “We need to hide this. The sister might recognize it and know it was stolen.”

  That hadn’t even occurred to me. Thistle was so much better in a crisis. “Where?”

  “I … .”

  Rhonda was almost to the door and Thistle knew she was out of time. For lack of anything better, she tugged out the V-neck on Clove’s shirt and shoved the book inside. “Your boobs are huge. She won’t notice a thing.”

  Clove’s eyes widened. “Seriously? My boobs are square.”

  “Just don’t let her squeeze them,” Thistle ordered, hopping to her feet and edging Clove behind the couch with her hip.

  “Welcome to our store!”

  Rhonda was barely through the door before Clove greeted her with enough enthusiasm that I momentarily expected to find a Kardashian standing in front of a video camera. “I … okay.” She looked confused. “I’m looking for Bay Winchester.”

  She obviously hadn’t seen me yet, or at least paid attention to the woman sitting on the couch in the middle of the store. I hoped she had seen enough faces at the restaurant that she wouldn’t recognize mine. That wasn’t the case.

  “You!” Rhonda tilted her head to the side as she looked me up and down. “You came to the diner with that hot guy – the one with the long hair who wouldn’t stop falling all over himself to stick close to you. I remember, because I thought he was cute, the way he doted on you. You’re Bay Winchester.”

  That seemed like a dangerous question to answer, but I really wasn’t in a position to deny it. “I am.”

  “And you came to the restaurant the other day because … why?”

  “Um … well … .” There was no acceptable answer to that question.

  “You killed my sister.” Rhonda’s voice was firm. She wasn’t close to tears and her anger caused the accusation to burn in the center of my chest.