A Potion to Die For: A Magic Potion Mystery (22 page)

“I
f you’re here about my mama . . . ,” I started saying.

“I’m not.”

“Or to confess that you’re the one trying to buy my aunt Marjie’s inn, I already know.”

His eyebrows rose a bit at that.

“I saw you talking to John Richard Baldwin yesterday, and Angelea Butts also confirmed that you’re the one who recommended Nelson to that law firm in Birmingham. You weren’t happy when he quit that job, and that’s why you two were fighting the other day.”

He closed the door behind him. “You’ve been busy sticking your nose where it don’t belong. And it shows, by the looks of you.”

I gingerly touched the bandage on my forehead. “You don’t know the half of it.”

“I’ve heard most of it. Coach Butts in jail. Angelea near to dying.”

I didn’t want to go through it all again. “Why are you here? What’s this about you needing help?”

I allowed myself to read Johnny’s energy, because if he was here to cause trouble, I wasn’t in the mood. I let my defenses down and felt only neutral energy coming from him. Nothing bad; nothing good. Though his heart . . . I eyed his big barrel chest.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked, stepping up to the counter, his boots clicking on the floor.

“Have you been having chest pains? Maybe it feels like indigestion?”

His hand went to his sternum. “No.”

I rolled my eyes at his obvious lie. “Your arteries are clogged. You need to see a doctor. Sooner rather than later.” My potions wouldn’t be able to clear that much of a blockage.

“How do you know that?”

Sassily, I said, “I’m a witch, remember? Now, why’re you here? I know it’s not for medical advice.”

He studied me, but not in the way he had the other night at the river walk, with a threat in his eyes. This time he looked at me more like I was a bug under a magnifying glass.

I truly didn’t appreciate it, either.

I stood firm. “Mr. Braxton? Why are you here?”

He snapped to. “I’ve been thinking about what you said the other day.”

“What did I say?” Dang if I could remember.

“About me finding a woman. It’s time.”

My mouth dropped open, and I snapped it closed. “You’re serious?”

“As a heart attack.”

“Interesting choice of words, considering your arteries . . .”

“You’re not very subtle, Miss Carly.”

“No one ever said I was, Mr. Braxton.”

Looking around the shop, he said, “I’m in the market for one of your love potions.”

I nearly laughed. “Maybe my matchmaking services might come in handy first.”

“No need. I already have my sights set on the perfect woman.”

I wasn’t sure if I was happy for him or scared for her. “Who?”

He shook his head. “Not telling.”

Probably so I couldn’t warn her. “My love potions have contingencies,” I said, explaining about the Backbone Effect.

“Sounds fishy to me that you can’t guarantee the results. What kind of establishment are you running here?”

I set my jaw. “Do you want the potion or not?”

He wavered for only a second. “I’ll take it.”

I grabbed a red potion bottle from the wall and set to making the magical formula. Johnny watched me like a hawk through the pass-through.

“What are you doing in there?” he asked.

“Working.”

I thought I saw his lip twitch. Or maybe it was a hallucination from bumping my head too hard last night.

I quickly wrapped the bottle, set the room back to rights, and set the boxed potion on the counter. “A little goes a long way. The directions are on the tag.”

Handing over his credit card, he said, “I’ll let you know how it goes.”

As I ran the card through the machine, I thought I detected a derisive undertone to his comment. But when I glanced at him, there was no facial expression or look in his eye to substantiate what I thought I’d heard.

“Sign here,” I said, sliding the paper over to him.

Chuckling, he said, “With prices like that, I think I’m in the wrong business.”

I slid the potion box into a bag and forced a smile. I probably looked a little like the Big Bad Wolf when he first met Little Red Riding Hood. “Have yourself a good day, Mr. Braxton. You might want to consider walking really slowly home. Keeping your pulse low.”

His hand went again to his sternum, and he frowned at me before turning around and striding out the door like a bull on a charge to prove some sort of point.

He can’t say I didn’t warn him.

• • •

I turned the Closed sign to Open, seeing as how no one was paying a lick of attention to it anyway, and set to cleaning up the broken glass at the end of the hallway.

From the supply closet I grabbed a broom (not my fancy new one), a dustpan, and a paper sack. I kept my gaze averted from the break room while I swept up shards of glass. I’d start the major renovation in there as soon as possible.

My mind was abuzz as I worked, flitting between Johnny Braxton and his mystery woman and everything else that had gone on in the past few days. As I bent to swish the pile of glass into the metal dustpan, I couldn’t help but peek inside the break room.

It took no effort at all to conjure the image of Nelson on the floor in there, and though the floor had been scrubbed clean I could easily picture the pool of blood and exactly where it had been.

The glass made a beautiful tinkling noise as I dropped it into the sack. I sat on my haunches, staring into the little room and reflecting on why Coach had put him in there, reflecting on how he’d lost his mind. He probably had a good shot at an insanity defense, which kind of terrified me, thinking he might one day be let out, free to come after me again.

Standing, I shoved the broom into the tightest corners and dragged it backward. The cracks in the old wooden floorboards were being stubborn about releasing the tiny shards of glass. I set the broom aside and pulled the vacuum from the supply closet, attached the soft brush, and took great pleasure in hearing the bits of glass being sucked through the tube.

I was just about done when I spotted something glistening in the crack between the wooden floor and the baseboard. I ran the vacuum hose over it several times, but the object wouldn’t budge.

Bending down for a closer look, I saw it wasn’t a piece of glass at all. It was something shinier. Sterling or white gold or platinum. I shut down the vacuum and went in search of something long enough to poke the object out of its spot.

I snatched two pens from the cup next to the cash register and went to work on the shiny trinket. Poking this way and that, I tried to pry it out, but it was having none of it.

Sitting back, I tried to imagine what it was. Maybe something my grandma Adelaide had lost decades ago?

Excitement flowed through me at the prospect, almost making me forget about my troubles over the past couple of days. I had to free the bauble.

Inspiration struck while I stared in the supply closet. There was an old chisel in there, left over from who knew when. I grabbed that and the hammer. If the shiny bit wouldn’t come out with the baseboard on . . . I’d just take the baseboard off.

I stuck the chisel into the crack between the baseboard and the wall, wedged it just so, and banged it with my hammer.

I eyed the result. Not so good. I’d lifted the hammer to bang it again when I heard the front door of the shop open.

“Carly?”

I glanced over my shoulder. “Hey, Dudley.”

He came down the hallway and knelt next to me. “What’re you doing?”

“A rescue attempt of an unknown shiny object.” At his blank look, I clarified. “Something’s stuck in the crack down there, and I want to get it out. Did you need something?”

“A healing potion.”

I leaned back. His face was pale, his eyes troubled. I tapped into his energy and my stomach ached something fierce. “The doctor’s treatment not working on your ulcer?”

“Not yet at least.”

I nodded. “Give me a sec to get this thing out, and I’ll make something for you. You’ll be feeling better in no time.”

“I, uh . . .” His cheeks flamed. “I’m sorry, Carly. For what I said the other day. I didn’t mean any harm. I let the gossip go to my head.”

“I should say sorry, too. For a day or so there I thought you might have had an affair with Angelea Butts. I’m sorry I misjudged your character.”

“It’s okay. I’m sure I looked guilty as sin. It’s been difficult keeping the news of Nelson’s and her relationship a secret.”

“You knew?” I asked.

He nodded. “From the beginning. They’d both talk to me about it but swore me to secrecy.”

“Did you know Angelea was the true embezzler?”

“No. If I’d known, I would have spoken up. Coach, well, he’s not perfect by any means, as you well know, but he didn’t deserve the hell he’s been put through by being arrested, then finding out his wife wanted a divorce and had taken up with his lawyer. . . .”

Coach was a big jerk, but Dudley had a point. A lot of Coach’s troubles had been brought on by someone else. Angelea. It didn’t excuse his reactions, by any means, but it did make them slightly more understandable.

Not that I was going to forgive him anytime soon . . .

“Do you need some help?” Dudley asked, motioning to the bauble.

“Sure.” I wedged the chisel behind the baseboard, shoving it down as far as it would go with the hammer. Then I leaned back, using the chisel as a lever.

Dudley grabbed the baseboard and pulled. A loud cracking noise filled the air and the board popped loose, sending him backward.

He laughed as he sat up and dusted himself off. I zeroed in on the shiny bit, which popped right out of the crevice with a little encouragement from the end of a pen.

I pulled it out and set it in the palm of my hand. It was a ring. A wedding band.

“That looks like . . . ,” Dudley began, then fell silent.

I checked the inscription.

4-ever & 4-always

It didn’t just look like Emmylou’s wedding ring. It
was
her ring.

But what was it doing in my shop?

W
e were still sitting and staring at the platinum orb when the front door opened.

“Yoo-hoo!” Emmylou yelled. “What’re y’all doing back there?”

I glanced at Dudley. His face wore no expression at all.

Mine, I was sure, looked confused as all get-out. She’d lost the ring on Friday afternoon . . . or had she? I thought back long and hard to Friday morning, when I ran into her outside Mr. Dunwoody’s house. Closing my eyes, I tried to recall if she’d been wearing her ring when she tucked her hair behind her ear.

She hadn’t been. Her finger had been bare.

Which meant she had already lost her ring
before
her picnic later that day with Dudley.

She’d staged the whole scene of her ring flying off, probably using that tin ring I’d found on the picnic green as a decoy.

I could think of only one reason why she’d want Dudley to think she’d lost her ring that day and not before. . . .

Because she’d lost the ring in my shop. When she left Nelson’s body in here.

Puzzle pieces tumbled into my head, fitting neatly in place. It hadn’t been Coach at all. . . . It had been Emmylou.
Emmylou!

Swallowing hard, I stood up and wobbled a little, knocked off-balance by my thoughts. “Just cleaning up the mess Coach made yesterday. Dudley was kind enough to lend a hand.”

Emmylou sashayed into the shop. “I couldn’t believe the news when I heard it this morning. Is Angelea going to be okay?” Her voice dropped. “The baby?”

The ring grew warm in my palm as I squeezed it tightly. Dudley followed behind me and stepped up next to Emmylou, a dazed look in his eyes. My guess was he had come to the same conclusion I had.

“Nelson’s baby, you mean,” I said, watching her closely.

Her eyes flew open wide. “Nelson’s?” she squeaked.

“Whose did you think it was?” I asked.

Sharply plucked eyebrows drew downward. “I-I’m not sure. I heard Coach couldn’t have children, but I thought it some sort of miracle. . . .”

“You didn’t know Angelea was having an affair with Nelson for months now? Dudley knew. He’s been keeping their secret.”

Emmylou’s gaze flashed to her husband. Her face had gone as pale as his. “Of course I didn’t know.”

“No,” I said, “because you thought Angelea and
Dudley
were having an affair, didn’t you?”

I was slowly putting more pieces together. Emmylou had been worried about Dudley not loving her because of his performance problems and automatically jumped to the conclusion that he was having an affair. She had snapped, just as Coach had. Except she was smarter and more calculating.

Emmylou straightened. “What’s all this about?”

I set the ring on the counter, where it spun in small circles before coming to a stop. “We found your ring while we were cleaning up the glass.”

Her head snapped between Dudley and me.

I went on the offensive, hoping that if I talked fast enough, I could encourage her to make a confession. “You poisoned the potion I gave Angelea, but you didn’t count on her suspecting she was pregnant and not drinking it. She left it at Nelson’s, and when he couldn’t sleep, he drank it. And when he was sick and dying, he called your house for help. You answered that call, didn’t you, Emmylou? It wasn’t a hang-up at all, was it?”

As if in a trance, she nodded. “He said he’d had some of Angelea’s potion. . . .”

“You didn’t think to question
why
he had Angelea’s potion?”

She shook her head. “I wasn’t thinking clearly. Nelson was in such pain.”

Dudley gripped the counter.

I prodded. “So you went over there?”

“Dudley was asleep. I snuck out to . . .”

Oh, dear Lord. “To put him out of his misery?”

She nodded. “I had to. I’m not cruel, you know.”

I wanted to laugh at the absurdity of that statement but managed to keep my cool.

“I knew he couldn’t survive the poison,” she said. “I managed to get him into my truck and . . .”

“You hit him on the head with a baseball bat,” I supplied. No wonder her van had been so clean. And I bet she hadn’t been looking for her contact lens the afternoon Ainsley and I saw her on all fours. She’d been looking for her ring. It also explained why she’d snuck back into my shop after the police had been here: She was still looking. Clearly, she didn’t know for certain where she had lost it.

“I didn’t want him to suffer,” Emmylou explained.

My temper was rising. “Why did you put him in my shop? How’d you get
into
my shop? Where did that potion bottle in his hand come from?”

“Ainsley’s keys. I stole them from her purse when she came in to check the menu for her boys’ party.”

“Wait a sec. That was before Nelson died. . . .”

“You’re not very bright, are you, Carly?”

I’d been called many things, but stupid was never one of them.

“Emmylou,” Dudley said.

She shot him a look. “Shut up, Dudley. I planned all along to put the body in your shop, Carly. Although I thought it would be Angelea’s body. I’d seen her in here, getting her potion, and I couldn’t abide the sight of her anymore. She had to go, and I knew just the way to do it. A way that would get at the both of you. I’ve been watching her as much as possible, just waiting for her to take the potion. . . .”

So Angelea hadn’t been paranoid about someone watching her. I was surprised that Emmylou had never caught Angelea with Nelson. If only she had . . . maybe this whole situation would have been avoided.

If only.

“Emmy,” Dudley said again, reaching out to her.

“Shut! Up!” she snapped, shaking off his hand.

Her gaze narrowed on me, and I’d never noticed the hint of crazy in her eyes before.
Why haven’t my witchy senses picked up on that?
I wondered.

“I had that violet potion bottle a while now,” Emmylou said, “and I didn’t plan on using it, but in my rush to get Nelson out of his house, I forgot to take the poisoned potion with me. I didn’t dare go back for it—I wanted to minimize my presence in his house because of forensics and all. I’d been careful handling the poisoned potion, so I knew my prints weren’t on it, and by using the bottle I had at home I still got my message about you across.”

She sounded proud. Smug. My temper was rising. I wanted to cry out that the potion hadn’t been poisoned—it was simply poison in the bottle. She’d left it behind at Nelson’s, and Angelea, in a rushed attempt to cover her tracks at his house, had unwittingly put the murder weapon in the car, where her husband later found it . . . and ironically accused me of using it to poison him. It was quite the tangled web.

“If I hadn’t been so flustered by it all,” Emmylou said, “I would have put some strychnine in the potion bottle Nelson was found with.” She shook her head as though chastising herself. “It was a crazy night. I wasn’t thinking straight.” Her eyes glazed a little as she added, “I had trouble getting Nelson in here—I ended up having to use my dolly from the truck to get him inside, and it was near impossible not to drip any blood, too. I had to wrap dish towels around his head, and he kind of looked like a mummy and that freaked me out a little. And then I realized I lost my ring somewhere, but I didn’t know where. . . .” She gave her head a little shake, as though trying to break the creepy trance she’d been in.

Dudley and I stared at her in horror. No, she definitely was not thinking straight.

I pressed for more information. “What message was it that you wanted to send to me, Emmylou? What did I ever do to you?” I asked.

Sharply, she said, “This whole mess with Dudley is
your
fault.”

Oh, hell, no,
as Delia would say. “Mine? How so?”

“Your stupid potions. They don’t work. You only say they do.”

“They do when they’re used properly,” I said. “And why keep coming back for them if you don’t think they work?”

“To keep up the charade. It might have looked suspicious if I suddenly stopped coming by. None of the potions you gave me worked.” She stamped her foot. “Especially not your love potion! Dudley was supposed to love and honor me always.”

“But I did, Emmy,” Dudley said softly.

Her eyes narrowed, then widened. She shook her head. “No . . . You cheated. You got her pregnant!”

“I didn’t,” he insisted.

She’d woven a story in her head that she could no longer keep straight. It was obvious she couldn’t grasp that she’d been wrong about the cheating. Because if she was wrong, all her actions had no reasoning behind them.

“So, what?” I asked. “You left a dying Nelson in your food truck and went home to get an empty potion bottle? Just for a little misguided revenge? That’s plain sick.”

“Don’t you judge me, Carly Hartwell!” Her eyes blazed with fury.

“Oh,” I said snidely, “I’m judging. You’re touched in the head.” I banged my hand on the counter like a judge’s gavel. “Guilty! And you cut Angelea’s brake line, didn’t you?” I accused.

Color flooded her cheeks. “How dare she chase after my husband? And then she gets pregnant with Dudley’s baby, too? Oh, hell, no. That should have been
my
baby! I couldn’t allow it. The poisoned potion didn’t work out the way I’d planned, but I thought for sure the cut brake line would.” She jabbed a finger at me. “I should have known you’d mess that up for me somehow!”

“It is Nelson’s baby,” Dudley said loudly.

But she wasn’t listening. There was a distant look in her eyes as tears fell down her face. “My baby!”

She’d attempted to kill Angelea and her unborn child and instead unwittingly killed Nelson. All because of some psychotic attachment to Dudley.

I’d heard enough. I picked up the phone.

“What are you doing?” Emmylou cried.

“Calling the police.”

“No, no, no!” She looked around and her gaze landed on the countertop. She snatched the vial pendant Delia had given me and ripped out the stopper. “Put the phone down. I don’t know what’s in here, but I know it’s bad. I saw the way you reacted when Delia gave it to you. Put the phone down!”

I put it down as she waved the vial back and forth.

“C’mon, Dudley, we’re leaving.”

Dudley shook his head.

“Come on!” she shouted.

“No, Emmylou.”

He’d picked a fine time to stand up to her. “Maybe you should go,” I prodded him.

He looked at me like I’d grown two heads. He didn’t realize that this wasn’t going to end well unless he left with her. Then I could call the police.

I eyed the stapler, but Emmylou was pacing, and I didn’t have good aim.

Outside the window, I saw John Richard Baldwin walk by. He glanced in, saw me, and waved.

I didn’t know how to react. I didn’t want him coming in, so I gave a friendly wave as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on in here.

Unfortunately, he took my wave as an invitation and pushed open the door.

Emmylou raged at him. “Get out! Get out! Get out!”

He stood frozen, just like he’d been in Aunt Marjie’s yard.

When he didn’t move Emmylou doused him with the hex, and he started screaming. “My eyes! My eyes!”

Dudley lunged for his wife, and she threw the hex on him as well. He dropped to his knees. “I can’t see! I’m blind!”

She immediately fell next to him, telling him she was sorry. I quickly picked up the phone and dialed 9-1-1, leaving the phone off the hook so the dispatcher could trace the call.

John Richard stumbled over both of them, and they all ended up in a pig pile on the floor. I quickly grabbed the broom Delia had given me and pressed the handle into Emmylou’s back.

“Don’t move or I’ll shoot!” I yelled.

Everyone froze. John Richard’s whimpering filled the air. I reached down and grabbed the vial pendant from Emmylou’s fist and let out a breath. It was empty.

Emmylou cried, “Dudley? Dudley? Where are you?” And I realized she must have gotten some of the hex on herself as well.

“I’m here,” he said dully.

“Don’t leave me,” she cried. “Don’t ever leave me.”