5 Beewitched (14 page)

I had a flash of insight regarding the conversation I’d overheard between Dy and Greg that night beside the fire. He’d encouraged her to be patient, said they would leave her alone soon enough, go back where they came from. Now it made sense.

There could only be one queen bee, and this coven had three who had been duking it out for the supreme position. With Rosina dead and Dy moving on, Lucinda would be the only one left to rule the workers. Sort of like a beehive and the reigning queen. There could be only one.

After Dy went home, I sat and pondered the situation. My impulsive, quick-to-judge side was suspicious of Lucinda, mainly because I hadn’t liked her from the moment I met her. There was something dark about her, and I didn’t mean dark arts, either. She had secrets. I was sure of it.

And what about my new neighbor? Dy was the one who had been trying to escape the coven, and she hadn’t been too happy about hosting a ritual, based on her conversation with Greg. But if she was the killer, wouldn’t she have stabbed the leader to death instead of the follower?

What about all the rest of the coven? I hadn’t even touched the tip of the iceberg as far as the others were concerned. And there were simply too many witches to watch with the two eyes I had, so narrowing my focus was a given. Anyway, instinct told me answers to Rosina’s murder were with the original members, not the newbies. Something from their past, perhaps. I needed to look into Claudene Mason’s personal history, and a good place to start would be with Mabel’s relative, Iris, the woman who had been her girlhood friend—or victim.

Before I could plot my day, Hunter came into the kitchen. He let Ben outside and sat down to the cup of coffee I’d poured for him. I proceeded to tell him about my recent conversation with Dy.

“Yeah, that’s almost word for word what she said in her statement.”

“Oh,” I said, a bit deflated.

Hunter studied me across the table. “I’ve been thinking,” he said, “about taking you on as a partner after all. You presented a solid case, and I should be utilizing your talents.”

My eyebrows shot up in stunned amazement, and if they could have morphed into question marks, they would have. “Partner? Really?”

He nodded. “Yes, but with conditions.” He laid it all out on the table (figuratively, of course). “You own your own den of deceit and dubious dealings,” he said, watching with an amused grin as my eyes rolled up in my head. “Lots of rumors fly around down at The Wild Clover. Most of them are outrageously inaccurate, but occasionally you get a good one that has some validity.”

Oh geez. Can we say patronizing? Hunter wanted me to just sit down there at the store and listen to the customers, maybe prod and poke them into relating a useful tidbit? Really?

Sure enough . . .

“Keep your ears open,” he went on, his tone ultra-professional and secretive, laying it on thick. “Ask questions about Claudene’s past. Absorb. You have a unique position, one I can’t fill as the detective on the case. Your customers trust you and might open up.”

I had a better idea. Hunter could sit at the store for the day while Ben and I would hunt down bad guys. “And what will you be doing during all this espionage on my part?”
How dumb does he think I am?

“My job, as usual.”

“So this is your partnership offer?” Can you believe the guy? “Tell me more. What’s the condition you mentioned that goes along with this amazing opportunity?”

“You stay away from the farm. No trespassing there, no dancing around flames, nothing.”

I couldn’t help myself, and I was miffed that he knew so much about my whereabouts on a constant basis. “You have got to be kidding! This is your deal?”

He actually looked surprised. “I’m making concessions here. Usually my requests are for you to keep the locals from going off on tangents. I’m condoning this one. Gossip away.”

Right before I saw nothing but red and started snorting fire, Hunter’s face relaxed and he grinned. He’d been kidding around, messing with me in that boyish way I had loved up until right this minute. He burst out laughing when he saw my expression change.

“That wasn’t funny!” I exclaimed, really annoyed that he’d gotten the best of me. “Be serious.”

“Okay, let’s start over,” Hunter said. “How about this—I’ll tell you everything I know, you keep me in your loop, and we’ll decide together how to proceed. How does that sound?”

Much, much better.

“Besides,” he said, “anybody who would strip down to nothing and wade into the thick of things to protect a friend like you did has to be really, really brave.”

He laughed out loud. “Or,” he added, “really, really reckless and foolhardy.”

Okay, then. I was going with “gutsy, bold, and courageous.”

Whatever, Hunter had invited me into the inner circle.

I was in.

Thirteen

“The emergency call was rerouted from Moraine to
Waukesha at approximately four o’clock in the morning,” Hunter told me. “One of the camping guests found the body right inside the entrance to the corn maze. She immediately recognized the deceased as one of her group and went screaming back to camp. Everyone was alerted. Lucinda took over, rousing Al and Greg Mason and contacting the police.”

“What was Tabitha doing up and about at that time of the night?” I asked.

“Wandering.” He gave me a puzzled look. “But I don’t recall mentioning her name just now.”

I kept going since Hunter hadn’t had a second cup of coffee and that was to my advantage. If I told him I’d been out at the farm asking questions, he would
not
be happy with me. “Johnny must’ve told me. If she was alone, then she doesn’t have an alibi.”

Hunter looked frustrated. “Not a single one of them has an alibi that I can accept at face value, not from the time they left our neighborhood until we responded to the emergency call. A few local residents don’t have alibis, either.”

“Aurora? It’s my fault she was even over at Dy’s. I suggested her. Aurora had never met any of them before that night.”

“As far as I’m concerned, Aurora isn’t one of our top suspects.”

“Oh, good.”

“In fact, it was your name as a potential suspect that came up on my radar, when the police chief asked me to identify several articles of clothing.”

I came close to snorting coffee onto the table.

Hunter gave me a hard stare. “Johnny Jay says you denied any involvement at all, didn’t even admit to being with the witches.”

“You know how he gets. All belligerent and accusatory. He would have locked me up.”

“But your clothes
were
right there.”

“Maybe I forgot them earlier. I do live next door. Johnny was just fishing as usual.”

Hunter’s eyes held a certain criticism I didn’t appreciate, but I let it pass. “Anyway,” he went on, “Dyanna Crane says that she stayed home and spent the rest of the night alone. Lucinda says she was alone in her own tent. All the others shared tents and vouched for one another, but none of their claims are exactly rock-solid alibis.” He shook his head. “Women!”

I gave him a glare. “What’s that supposed to mean? Are you saying women are big liars?”

“No more than men. But this bunch all claimed they were together every single minute—except then I asked them if they’d visited the restroom, and of course every one of them said yes.”

Oh, right, potty stops, that’s true. Females are prone to that, proven repeatedly by the long lines at public restrooms. Why is that?

“More than one of them might be involved,” I suggested.

“You never know.”

“I was home alone, too, but that’s only because you worked all night.”

“And I’m almost positive you didn’t kill the woman.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

I poured more coffee for both of us, feeling for once like I was actually part of a real investigation. Finally, I was getting the respect I deserve. At least from one law enforcement official. Johnny Jay didn’t count one way or the other.

“And the knife that was used?” I asked.

“Jackson established that the knife found at the scene was the murder weapon. We figured as much, but the ME has to scientifically confirm even the obvious. And yes, it’s the same knife that belonged to the coven.”

We sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes. But since Hunter was cooperating and sharing information so freely, I didn’t want to interrupt the flow by changing the topic, so I said, “The only positive in this whole mess is that Al gets to open the corn maze today right on schedule. But the poor man must be distraught.”

Hunter was grim. “If the murder weapon hadn’t been found with the body, he’d have a financial crisis to deal with as well as a dead sister. If it hadn’t been there, we would have had to go over every inch of the maze, and that would have taken significantly more time.”

“Didn’t you have to anyway?”

“Sure, but if we didn’t have a weapon we would have had to rip the entire thing apart. It wouldn’t have resembled a corn maze by the time we finished.”

“I wonder who she went to meet,” I said, thinking out loud.

“What makes you think she was meeting someone?”

“Lucinda mentioned it.”

“Speculation,” Hunter scoffed. “Unless the leader of that group has information she hasn’t shared with us.”

“It stands to reason, though, that Rosina went to meet someone, otherwise why would she have been away from the camp? I bet whoever killed her
summoned
her to the maze.”

I put finger quotes around the word
summoned
just for effect.

Hunter cocked his head to the right (a habit I think is cute) and appraised me. “Summoned? As in invoked? Don’t tell me you believe in all that stuff.”

“No, of course not,” I said, not sure whether I was being truthful. The jury was still out on my beliefs. “Dy said that most of the coven members are new, that there were some power issues going on between them.”

“Dyanna Crane is on my list of follow-ups for today. We talked yesterday, but I’m going to ask all of them to repeat their stories, starting with her.”

“I’d like to find out more about Rosina’s past.”

“That’s on my agenda today, too.”

“Well then that’s one thing you won’t have to do. I’ll take care of it.”

I felt a small flame of excitement at the thought of delving into the dead woman’s past. Genealogy has always intrigued me, so I know a little about digging for details on a person’s life. Before I opened the store and started the bee business, Grams and I had traced our family history way back to the colonial days. There was something magical (not the witchcraft kind) about searching through old documents—birth certificates, death notices, census logs—and hanging out in historical sections of libraries, not to even mention the wealth of information to be found online. Our own town librarians had been a huge help in our research.

Not that I’d have to go that far back with Rosina, but researching her recent past could be fascinating. And might even lead to the one clue that solved this case. Someone wanted her dead and that someone had a reason. What if it was buried in her past?

I told Hunter what Grams had told me about Rosina’s teenage antics, and how her family had shipped her out. “Grams said that my mother hung around with her and some others, including another girl named Iris.” I went on to tell Hunter about the love potion. “I’m going to see what Iris has to say.”

“Good idea.”

Music to my ears!

Hunter stood up, ready to conquer the world with Ben at his side.

“Any more information you want to share with me before I go off to solve this case?” I asked with a wide smile.

Hunter grinned. “Let’s see what we each come up with and meet later at Stu’s Bar and Grill. And for now, remember our deal. I did my part; you do yours by staying away from the farm and those witches. We still have a killer loose, and more than likely that person is at the farm.”

“Of course,” I responded, avoiding eye contact with him when I realized he still expected that to be part of the deal.

After that, I watched Hunter walk over to Dy’s house and knock on the door. She opened it and he disappeared inside.

I walked down to the store, where I’d left my truck . . . and took off for Country Delight Farm for one more go-around with the witches before immersing myself in the dead woman’s past.

Hunter, as should be apparent by now, is not the boss of me.

Fourteen