Be Careful What You Witch For (A Family Fortune Mystery) (9 page)

“I don’t know, Rose,” Vi said. “He really liked being the big fish in a small pond. If he had to give that up, what would he have done?”

Glances shot around the table. We had all seen how contentious things could get here in Crystal Haven over issues like who was the best psychic, who did the best séances, etc. What seemed small to one person could be the whole world to another.

“I wouldn’t put it past Rafe,” Vi said. “I never . . .” she stopped when she noticed Diana’s quivering lip. “I never saw eye to eye with Rafe Godwin.” She took up her knitting again with intense interest.

“Let’s start by looking into Diana’s parents’ accident,” I said. “Tom, do you think you could go to Bailey Harbor and get the police report? Would they release it to you?”

Tom nodded. “I have a friend working there. I should be able to get a copy.”

“We’ll start with that,” I said. “And we should try to find out more about Lucan and Morgan and what kind of disagreements they had with Rafe. I’m not sure why this coven is so valuable to everyone.”

Tuffy jumped up on Seth’s lap and pushed his face into Seth’s neck. “Tuffy needs his walk,” Seth said. Baxter stood up, alert at the word “walk.”

“We should get home,” Mom said to Vi and Dad.

“Clyde, I’ve got all the smoke alarms connected to your alarm company now,” Dad said.

“Thanks, Dad.”

Mom patted him on the back. “Parents never stop trying to protect their kids.”

“Diana, stay here tonight. You don’t want to be alone at home, do you?” I said.

“She can stay with me,” Alex said. “You’ve got Seth here, and Josh and I have room.” He slung an arm over Diana’s shoulder. “Come on, we’ll go to your house and get your stuff and then I’ll go with you to meet the lawyer.”

Alex steered Diana outside after the rest of the group.

As soon as the door closed, Tuffy jumped up with bright eyes and a wagging tail.

“What does he want?” I said to Seth.

“He thinks it’s time for a walk and his afternoon treat.”

“He gets an afternoon treat?”

“Of course. Baxter probably wants in on that as well.”

We snagged their leashes off the hook and headed out into the cold, gray dusk. I wasn’t used to the time change and resented the darkness encroaching so early in the day. I pulled my jacket closer and worried about what tomorrow would bring. As we walked along I thought about all the people who had apparently been at odds with Rafe. It surprised me since I had only heard Diana’s view of him. It was just another example of how people put on different faces for their various roles.

Seth’s phone buzzed and he checked the text. His phone was much more active than it had been over the summer. His face looked pink and I wasn’t sure if it was from the cold or whatever he read on the tiny screen.

“Faith wants me to go to a movie with her,” he said.

I smiled. “Oh? Okay. Do you . . . go to movies when you’re home?” I wasn’t sure what Grace’s rules were. This had never come up over the summer.

“Yup, we have movies in New York City and I sometimes go see them.”

I narrowed my eyes and probably looked like Vi. “You know what I mean.”

“Yes, I’m allowed to go out.” He sighed dramatically. “I have to be home by nine thirty on weeknights and eleven on the weekends.”

“Okay. Do you need a ride?”

He looked at his phone. “She says her mom will drop us off at the mall.”

“That’s fine. I can pick you up if you want.”

He shook his head. “No, Skye will pick us up.”

He punched in a message and his phone buzzed again. “Oh. They’re on their way; we’d better head back to the house.”

*   *   *

A black Tahoe
sat in the driveway. We hurried down the street to meet it. Faith must have been pretty sure that Seth would say yes.

A thin, pretty woman climbed out of the driver’s seat. Her hair was pulled up into a loose bun, and bangs covered her forehead. She wore a black skirt with tall boots and a cream-colored leather blazer. In her forties, she had the whole forty-is-the-new-thirty thing perfected. She held her hand out to me as we approached.

“Hello, I’m Bea Paxton. You must be Seth’s aunt.” When she smiled I could see where Skye got her beauty. “I think we might have met briefly the other night. That poor man, what a tragedy . . .”

I nodded and shook her hand.

“Sorry for the short notice. Faith just came up with this idea as we were heading back to Grand Rapids. You don’t mind if I drop them off? I have a meeting tonight. . . .”

Since Seth routinely took a subway alone and had managed to get all the way to Michigan from New York, I wasn’t worried about his ability to navigate the mall.

“No, that’s fine. Thanks for taking him,” I said.

“It’s no problem. Skye will drop him back home by nine thirty. It’s a school night so I don’t like Faith to be out past then. I looked up the movie and I think it will be appropriate.” She looked to see if the teens were listening, which they weren’t. They were busy listening to each other’s music on their phones. She lowered her voice. “No violence or . . . sex.”

“Well, thank you.”

She raised her voice and said, “Okay, kids, let’s go.”

Seth waved good-bye to me and the dogs and climbed into the backseat.

“I guess it’s just you and me, guys,” I said to the dogs.

Tuffy whined, and Baxter let out a quiet groan as we watched the SUV pull into the street.

15

The next day, Tuesday, I took Seth to my mom’s with the dogs. Vi had decided that she and I should start interviewing anyone who had been at the ceremony on Halloween night. I had mostly agreed in order to keep an eye on her. Since the nurse who had performed CPR was closest to Rafe at his death, we decided to start with him. I wondered if he had any opinions about the failure of the EpiPen.

Daron Pagan was a Wiccan, but not part of Rafe’s coven. He lived in the area and was a solitary practitioner, like Diana. They knew each other because Daron frequented her store, and they occasionally exchanged e-mail about news occurring in the Wiccan community. Diana had called to ask him to meet with us, and he’d agreed, saying he had a lunch break at eleven thirty. Diana was going to spend the morning meeting with Rupert again. I had offered to join her, but she insisted I talk to Daron.

“Let’s hit the road,” Vi said as soon as Seth and I walked in the door.

“Maybe Clyde wants some coffee before you go.” Mom had followed Vi into the front hall.

“She’s fine, aren’t you, Clyde? We’re not driving to Canada. We’ll be back in a couple of hours.” Vi pushed me out the door and pulled it closed behind us.

She took my hand and hurried me toward the Jeep.

“What’s the rush, Vi?” I asked. I pried my hand from her grip.

“I had to get out of there before your father started on his home-repair list.” She cast a glance at the house. “Now that Seth is here to help, he wants to fix everything in
our
house and he’s working on the list for
your
house. You might want to put a stop to that.” She said this with the tone of someone anticipating a train wreck.

I smiled. My dad was not the greatest Mr. Fixit but he was harmless. He’d certainly never caused any problems that I could remember.

“If Seth and Dad want to clean out some gutters and fix the leaky toilet, I’m all for it.”

“I have a bad feeling about it. You just remember that I told you so.” Vi wagged a finger under my nose and bustled past me to climb into the passenger seat of my Jeep. She buckled herself in and sat, waiting.

Feeling my own sense of foreboding for completely different reasons, I climbed into the Jeep and steered it north out of town.

Daron worked at an urgent care clinic between Crystal Haven and Grand Rapids. I had visited the place myself after my car accident over the summer. I didn’t recall meeting him at the time, but he claimed to remember me.

As we got closer to the health center, Vi began discussing strategy.

“Mac has probably already interrogated this guy, so we won’t be able to spring any surprises on him,” she said.

I nodded, and kept my eyes glued to the road.

“Are you the good cop or the bad cop? We need to get our story straight,” she said.

“I don’t think we need a story, Vi. He already knows us, and we’re not cops.”

She
tsk
ed. “How did you ever catch criminals in Ann Arbor with this kind of unimaginative thinking?”

I suppressed a smile and shrugged.

“He has no reason to tell us anything. For all we know he’s the murderer and he’ll lie to us to get us off the track,” Vi said.

I hadn’t considered this, but didn’t think he was a suspect. “He didn’t look like he was trying to kill Rafe. He worked really hard doing the CPR. Did you see him afterward? He was devastated.”

Violet tapped her fingers on her lips. “Yeah, he did seem to be trying to help. Still you can’t be too careful. Treat every witness like a suspect, isn’t that what they say?”

I shook my head. “No one says that.”

She huffed. “So your plan is to just go in there and ask him if he knows anything and shake his hand when he says he has nothing to offer?”

“What would you like to do?” I turned and looked her in the eye. Sometimes it’s easier to go along for the ride than to fight it out with Vi.

“I say we tell him there’s a suspect in custody—that will relax him if he’s hiding anything. Then we get him to describe everything he saw that night.” She nodded to herself.

“Okay.”

She swiveled her head in my direction. “Really?”

“Yup, we’ll do it your way. But I don’t think either one of us needs to be the bad guy.”

“Okay, but if it seems like things are getting out of hand, don’t be surprised if I start pushing him pretty hard.”

“Got it.”

I parked the Jeep and exited with some trepidation about Vi. At least she didn’t carry a weapon or handcuffs. The urgent care center was in a new building set back from the road. Everything about it was shiny. Inside, the waiting room chairs gleamed in bright colors, TVs flickered from the ceiling in two corners of the waiting room, and a young boy played with a bead-and-wire game that fascinated anyone who came within a few feet. He coughed, making a deep wet sound. Vi grabbed my elbow to pull me as far as we could get from the boy.

“Stay away from the little ones. They have the strongest germs,” she said.

We approached the front desk and a pretty young woman smiled at us over her computer monitor.

“Can I help you?”

“We’re here to see Daron Pagan,” I said. “Is he available?”

She nodded. “He told me to expect you. Let me call back there and see if he’s free.”

She mumbled into the phone and smiled brightly as she hung up. “He’ll be right out.” The monitor stole her attention and Vi and I took seats near the door to the exam rooms.

A few moments later, Daron poked his head through the door and scanned the room. He spotted us and waved.

“Ms. Fortune?” He put his hand out to shake.

I nodded and introduced Vi.

“Sorry, I know we met the other night, but it’s all become something of a blur.” He showed us through the door.

Daron was young. I hadn’t realized that in the darkness of the woods. He must have recently graduated from nursing school. No wonder the failed CPR had hit him so hard. His blond hair was cut short and his warm brown eyes were filled with concern. He gestured toward some plastic molded chairs in the small staff break room. We took a seat at a round table with sticky spots.

“Diana said you wanted to ask about Rafe Godwin?” he began, robbing Vi of the chance to accuse him of anything.

I sat back in my chair to avoid touching the table. “You may have heard the rumors that it wasn’t an accident. Diana and Rafe were close family friends, and she wants to find out whatever she can about his death.”

“She probably saw everything I did.” He spread his hands out in a helpless gesture. “I don’t know what I can do to help. I already told the police everything I know.”

Vi sighed loudly, and jabbed me in the ribs. I shot a glance in her direction.

“Did you see anyone near the food, or talking to Rafe?” I asked. “Was there anything about the allergic reaction that seemed strange to you?”

He lifted a shoulder and reminded me of Seth. “I already mentioned this to the police, but I did think it was strange that there was no click when Diana administered the EpiPen. Those things are spring-loaded to give the dose into the muscle. I saw her pull out the pen and swing it toward his leg, but there was no click.”

“Do you think there was something wrong with it?” I asked.

Vi had found a wet wipe and scrubbed at the table.

“I don’t know.” He watched Vi, and pointed to a trash can when she finished her cleaning. “It’s something I only thought about after the fact. At the time I was more concerned about why the epinephrine didn’t seem to be working and running the resuscitation procedure through my mind. I had never performed CPR out in the field like that. In fact, I had never done a code all on my own before.” He stared into space for a moment and then met my gaze. “I feel terrible about what happened. I wish I had been able to do more.”

“I didn’t hear a click, either,” Vi said. She rested her elbows on the now spotless table. “I
knew
something was wrong.”

“You weren’t anywhere near Rafe. How would you have heard a click?” I turned to her, realizing I was now interrogating my own partner.

“He said there should have been a click.” She waved her hand toward Daron. “It sounds like it should have been pretty loud. Spring-loading makes a loud click. I didn’t hear a click.” She crossed her arms and nodded at Daron.

He smiled at her but it disappeared when he looked back at me. “I think the paramedics took the EpiPen with them when they left. Maybe they kept it with his things when they brought him to the hospital.”

I nodded, thinking that Mac and Charla had probably already covered that base. Plus, I had no authority to inspect the EpiPen. I’d be lucky if Mac never heard of my interview with Daron.

“Anything else strike you about that night?”

Vi coughed.

He shook his head. “No, it was a pretty classic allergic reaction. It was a really rapid response but it’s not unheard of. It’s why they often tell you to bring two EpiPens just in case one malfunctions.”

Vi shuffled her feet.

I turned to her. “Do you have something you’d like to ask?”

She nodded and took a deep breath. “Do you have any pets?”

Daron’s eyes grew wide and he glanced at me.

“No, ma’am. No pets.”

“You don’t like animals?”

Daron shifted in his seat. “I like animals. I had a dog growing up. I live in an apartment now, so it’s not allowed.”

The pretty receptionist poked her head in the door. “Daron, they need you in exam room three.”

He nodded to her and stood. “I hope that helps. I can’t think of anything else right now.” He stole a quizzical glance at Vi and skirted around her to the door. “Tell Diana I’ll come by and see her soon.”

We watched him leave and then I turned to my germophobe aunt.

Before I could speak, she said, “That went great! We make a good team. We should do more of this. We could go into business.” She started ticking things off on her fingers. “We could help find things, locate lost animals, or solve burglaries. I’ve been studying up on how to tail someone without getting caught.”

Hoping to distract her from this conversational direction, I said, “Why did you ask about pets?”

“I thought I could get corroboration from a dog or a cat. But we’ll just have to take his word for it that he tried his best to help Rafe.”