A Charming Crime (19 page)

I sat on the
couch and opened up the journal.

“I don’t like
the feeling of always being watched. No matter where I go or what I do, they
always tell Otto. I have no friends. Only Eloise, and even she if off limits.”

Turn over, turn
over.
The hands curled around the neck.
No!
I searched the scene for any more
clues like Oscar had asked me to do, but it was difficult to stop from trying
to see who the victim was.
Focus, June. Focus.
I didn’t care about the
victim as much as I wanted a new clue to who this killer was.

My heart sank to
my stomach as the hands peeled away. The sun trickled into the depths of the
water and focused on the space between the thumb and the forefinger.
What is
that?
The sun got brighter.
A mole? Man hands?

Quickly
I jumped out of bed.

“Let’s go for a
walk.” I motioned for the cat. It was time to visit Eloise. She helped Darla,
surely she’d be up for helping me. I grabbed the dolls. For some reason, my
intuition told me to take them.

Chapter
Nineteen

Eloise said it
was in the clearing beyond the wood.

Mr. Prince
Charming was all over going for a walk. He trotted ahead of me leading me
straight toward the big rock as if he knew exactly where we were going.

The smudging
bundles were still lying next to the big rock, which I found very odd. If
Gerald was accusing me of trying to murder him, I would have thought Oscar
would have come up here to get the bundle of the remaining cedar.

I set the dolls
on the rock and gathered the bundles into a pile next to the rock. In the back
of my mind, I couldn’t help but think that this was definitely negligence on
Oscar’s part. This only added to my suspicions that Oscar was somehow involved.

I glanced at the
dolls. The rock illuminated around them. I grabbed them and pulled away when
the heat coming off them was steaming up the air. I picked up the bundle closest
to me and took the dolls off the rock. Immediately the rock went back to being
a rock and the bundle smoked.

I fanned it to
put it out, only it created more smoke.

Hiss, hiss
. Mr. Prince
Charming ran in the opposite direction.

“What? I’m
trying!” I yelled after him, throwing the bundle on the ground and stomping it
out with my shoe. “I hope that wasn’t the cedar one.” I looked at the charred
remains. The last thing I needed was for Gerald to have another reaction. “What
was that?”

Something in the
opposite direction of where the cat had run moved behind a tree.

“Is somebody
there?” I yelled in the direction, but nothing moved or came forward. I
shrugged it off to something else that didn’t make sense in Whispering Falls,
and grabbed the dolls.

Mewl, mewl.
The cat sat on
the edge of the woods dragging his tail along the grass.

“Fine. I’ll
follow you.” I looked at the pile of smudging bundles to make sure nothing else
as going to catch fire, and made a mental note to grab them on my way back.

The further we
walked, the foggier it got, and the more I realized that Mr. Prince Charming
had no clue where to go and my instincts weren’t giving me any hunches.

Just when I was
about to turn around, something caught my eye.

Wow.
Between a
couple of trees, there was a platform built high off the ground and on the
platform was a two-story house. The wooden stairs led up to a cozy wrap-around
porch. I tried to see if there were any lights on, which I should’ve seen
through the fog, but it didn’t appear that anyone was there.

This had to be Eloise’s
house. No wonder Darla loved it here. But why would she live all the way out
here?

I walked around
the side. Lanterns hung from the tree dotted the fog and shone enough for me to
see the gravel pathway. It was hard to concentrate on where it led with all the
beautiful flowers that were planted on both sides. I ran my hand along the
vibrant purple, green, red, orange, and yellow flowers. Wisteria vines provided
a canopy leading to a clearing. It reminded me of the beautiful vine that
covered the overhang of the front of A Dose of Darla.

I blinked. I
blinked harder. My heart raced as though it was going to leap right out of my
chest. Rows and rows of herbs were neatly planted and proportioned perfectly.
All I could see was Mr. Prince Charming’s tail waving above the rows as he
darted in and out of the herbs.

Each row had a
painted wood sign with the names of the herbs that followed in line. Herbs I
had never heard of. I walked in front of each row, touching each herb sign.

“Rose petals,
moonflower, mandrake root, seaweed, shrinking violet, dream dust, fairy dust,
magic peanut, lucky clover, steal rose,” I whispered. “Spooky shroom?”

What in the
world where all of these used for?

“I wondered how
long it was going to take you to find me.” Eloise popped up. Her short red hair
glistened from the ray of sunshine peeking through the fog. “I’m just picking
some Wolfsbane. It snaps off the vine much better with the fog.” She held the
orange furry plant in the air.

Wolfsbane?
I wasn’t going
to question it.

She stood up and
with her arms straight out and her head tilted back, she inhaled deeply and
slowly exhaled. “I love foggy mornings. Well?” She cocked her head to the side
with a question in her eyes.

“Well what?” I
wasn’t sure if I was supposed to apologize for trespassing or Mr. Prince
Charming batting at the little creatures flying in the air. I scolded him,
“Stop it!”

“Are you ready
to eat?” She gestured toward the opposite end of the garden to a gazebo with
twinkling lights twisted around the wooden spindles. In the center was a table
covered in a yellow cloth, and a place setting for two.

I guess she had
been expecting me.

“How did you
know I was coming?” Tension crept in my shoulders. I reached back and kneaded
it before I walked toward the gazebo.

Eloise glanced
over her shoulder and laughed. There was a spark in her eye. She threw the
Wolfsbane into a simmering pot and stirred it before she came to join me.

“Let’s say that
I can see into the future,” She folded her hands in front of her. “Most of the
time. Plus I figured you had a lot of questions and eventually my name was
going to come up.”

I sat on the
rickety chair and carefully scooted myself up to the table. There were so many
different options to choose from, I didn’t know what to eat first. The
assortment of scones, fruits, quiches, and a Ding Dong.

“These are my
favorite.” I picked up the Ding Dong and peeled back the foil wrapper.

“Your mom told
me.” She ate one too. “Your mom visited me one time after she moved and told me
that you had discovered artificial foods like Ding Dongs.” She leaned forward
and whispered, “Your mother loved them too.” A smile crossed her face. She knew
she had just told me a big secret. “I’m sure you have a lot of questions.”

She was right. I
did. And there was no beating around the bush.

“Exactly how did
you meet my mom?” I looked around the scones and picked out a blueberry one with
a lot of powdered sugar on top.

“Darla was an
unusual one. She had agreed to live in the village when she married Otto. He
wanted to serve the place where he grew up. Only she wasn’t a spiritualist,
which was good because that meant she could open her own shop.” Eloise
rearranged the droopy flowers in the center of the table. They sprang to life
from her touch. She brushed her hands together. “Her homeopathic store wasn’t
doing well, and I had just been banned from the village. It was a win situation
for both of us.”

“What do you
mean?” I reached out to touch a flower sitting on the table. Eloise took it
before I touched it and put it in the vase with the other vibrant flowers.

“Darla loved
homeopathic medicine. People come here to seek true remedies that make them
feel better. That is what Whispering Falls provides for all those visitors.
They leave feeling great.” She picked up the pink tea server and poured some in
each cup. “Darla was straight homeopathic with no little extra . . .um. . .feel
good.”

“Feel good?”
Darla told many of her customers at the flea market that it took a few weeks
for the homeopathic cure to take effect.

“My potions are
instant. That is what needed to be sold in A Dose of Darla so we made a pact.
She could use my potions to help in her remedies in exchange to visit me. The
only person who knew about it was Izzy. She knew Darla’s cures had gotten a
little extra added in and knew Darla didn’t do it on her own.”

“And in the end,
you two became best friends?” It made a lot of sense. “The recipe book that she
used is yours?”

“It is. When
your father was murdered, she had to leave the village for her safety. She had
you to raise so I gave her my book.” She looked out into her garden. “I haven’t
had any friends since I was banned.”

“Murdered?” I
recalled Patience calling my dad’s death a crime, but not murder. “I thought he
was killed through a crime gone bad.”

“Here, have a
few berries.” She shoved the bowl in my face.

“According to
some of the spiritualists. . .”

She wasn’t going
to answer that, so I filed it in the back of my head and continued with my
questions she might answer. “Why were you banned?”

Her eyes stared
at me. I tried not to give a reaction. “I’m from a village out west that allows
inter-spiritual relationships. Very common. They found out that I was mixed and
told me I couldn’t live there so I created my own little world here.” Her hands
swept in front of her.

“So you aren’t a
full-spiritualist?” This whole other world was something I only thought lived
in children’s stories.

“I’m a Fairiwick.”
She held her hands together and blew across them. Golden sprinkles filled the
air and floated down, covering the ground as daisies. “I’m part fairy, part
spiritualist. My mother was a fairy, my father was a homeopathic potion maker.”

“I. . .” I
struggled to understand what she was saying.

“Really my dad
was part Warlock part potion maker, but in my village we all were sorta like. .
.” she hesitated and then walked over to the cauldron. Slowly she mixed the
bubbling mixture with the paddle. Green smoke hovered over the golden pot. She
continued, “A mix of things. And that is something Whispering Falls doesn’t
allow.”

“That isn’t
right.” Once I got my name cleared, I was going to go in front of the council
and ask them about this.

“It might not be
right. But is anything?” She put her hand in the air. A little mound of dust
formed on her hand. She tossed it in the cauldron. Her cloak swished as she
made her way back to her seat. “How did you figure out you have your dad’s
talent?”

Talent?
I wasn’t sure
what she was talking about. I didn’t know my dad’s talent, just that he was
part of this village.

“I had never
questioned what he had done. I just assumed he was a cop all his life. My best
friend, Oscar Park, told me about Whispering Falls. And Izzy found me.” I knew
not to listen to Oscar. I shook my head. “I should’ve stayed in Locust Grove.”

Her chair went
crashing to the floor when she stood up. “Did you say Oscar Park?”

I nodded. “Yes,
he’s the new police officer of Whispering Falls.”

Nervously she
walked down the gazebo steps. She turned around when she reached the bottom
one. “It was good chatting with you. We must do it again.” She glided on the
gravel path toward her house.

“Wait!” I ran
behind her trying to catch up. There were so many more questions I needed
answered. When I reached the bottom steps of her porch, I took the dolls out of
my waist band. I held one in each hand and held them high above my head. “What
are these?”

Slowly she
turned around and her eyes darted back and forth between my hands. She darted
down the steps just as a clap of thunder echoed throughout the woods and into
the crystal clear blue sky.

I fell to the
ground and laid in fetal position. “Please don’t kill me,” I begged.

Damn!
I’ve got to
stop listening to my intuition or I wouldn’t be begging for my life.

“Where did you
get these?” She snapped them out of my hands. “Whose voodoo dolls are these?”
Her shadow towered over me.

“You aren’t
going to kill me are you?” I looked up.

“No, get up.”
She held the dolls in one hand and stuck out the other. I took it and she
helped me up. “I haven’t seen voodoo dolls in a long time. Especially ones that
have pins stuck in them and are personalized.”

She pointed to
the yarned thread on the back of the one doll that looked like a woman. It was
a makeshift “D.”