The Witching on the Wall: A Cozy Mystery (The Witchy Women of Coven Grove Book 1) (6 page)

When Chloe was gone, Avery leaned in and whispered loud enough that anyone outside the door probably could have heard him anyway. “Oh my God Chloe Minds totally killed Martha!”

“
What?” Bailey said. “No, don’t be… that’s ridiculous. Why on earth would Chloe have killed Martha?”

“
Well I don’t know, Bee, but you can’t tell me that wasn’t suspicious as heck!” He glanced over his shoulder like she might come back any minute. “She wanted to know what you smelled? Why would she ask for a detail like that unless she had some idea of what happened? Maybe she was trying to see if you remembered some key piece of evidence or something; the thing that would implicate her. We should totally follow her, see if she’s up to anything suspicious.”

“
He does have a point,” Piper mused. Suspecting Chloe of murder hadn’t kept her from enjoying a peanut-butter cupcake, though. She licked frosting off her lower lip.

“
You two… it just can’t possibly be Chloe.”

“
Are you sure you aren’t just biased?” Avery asked. He tapped the list. “You had a good point. We have to be objective about this.”

Bailey struggled to ignore the whispers. They were receding again, but slowly. Honestly, she wasn’t sure she could even be rational right now. But she took Avery’s point and tried to set aside any feelings she had about anyone. It took some convincing, but ultimately she was able to admit to herself that the whole visit had been unusual.

“
Alright,” she said finally. “If I’m being entirely objective… then, yes. It was odd. Good grief, I don’t know if I could deal with that…” But she penned Chloe’s name at the bottom of the list, right under her own, and circled it. “The bakery isn’t far. Maybe she walked. If we go quickly, we should be able to keep an eye on her.”

The three of them scampered out of the chairs—well, Avery helped Piper up, anyway, but he scampered for the both of them—and the trio peeked out the door before they went out into town, hot on the trail of their first real suspect in the murder of Martha Tells.

Bailey sighed to herself as they attempted the pursuit. This is all going end very badly, she thought through the growing storm of voices in her head. I just know it.

Chapter 8

They did manage to keep an eye on Chloe. She had walked to the Library, of course—there was no reason to drive such a short distance—but rather than rub her hands with obviously sinister glee or duck into any non-existent dark alleys or some secret lair like Bailey thought her friends possibly expected, she merely walked back to Grovey Goodies and, presumably, went back to work. She did have a job, after all.

Avery wasn’t convinced. He rubbed his bare chin as though there should have been a goatee there for him to scratch ponderously. “What if all three of them were in on it?” He wondered out loud.

“
That’s a leap,” Piper sighed. Between their first uneventful tailing, the midday heat, and her unborn child, her energy had pretty much waned at this point. Still, she was trying to maintain some enthusiasm. “I could bring the minivan, and we could stake her out.”

Bailey groaned, and shook her head. “She knows what your minivan looks like, Piper.”

“
Well we could borrow her mother-in-law’s car,” Avery suggested brightly. You’d think he was planning a surprise party instead of a stake out of a beloved neighbor. “She never drives it, right?”

“
I am absolutely not asking Gavin’s mother for her car, Ave.” That line of inquiry was neatly nipped in the bud. Avery put his hands up in surrender in the face of Piper’s instantly darkened mood. He made a mental note...don't poke a pregnant gal when she's hot, tired and cranky.

“
Maybe we should just call it quits for now,” Bailey said. “Chloe’s going to be there until they close like she always is. What’s the point of hanging around outside the bakery when she can’t leave.”

“
Why couldn’t she leave?” Avery asked. “She came to the library.”

“
And I’ll admit that was suspicious,” Bailey agreed. “But she’s not going to be running around town making herself look more like a suspect, now is she?”

He shrugged, tilted his head to think about it and then sighed, slumping a little. “You’re probably right. So what next, then?”

Bailey looked from Piper to Avery and back. They were both looking at her for an answer. “How am I supposed to know? We keep our eyes peeled, I guess.”

“
They make this look a lot more interesting on Law and Order,” Piper commented.

“
And CSI,” Avery added. “We need forensic evidence or something to throw science at until we get an answer.”

Bailey was sure he was mostly joking, but she couldn’t bring herself to laugh. That whispering was getting worse and worse the longer she was out of the library. She very much wanted to go back.

But, the truth of the matter was that Chloe had been acting suspiciously. As much as it pained her to imagine that the woman might have done something so awful… how much did she really know about Chloe Minds? Almost nothing. The same went for Aria and Frances. Those three women were well known in the community in general—they donated to bakes sales, had shown up for city council meetings, and were known to have an open door policy all around for anyone who needed an ear to pull.

But in all that, Bailey couldn’t honestly say she knew who any of them really were. They didn’t seem to have family in town, none of them were married, and come to think of it, Bailey wasn’t even sure where they lived.

As involved as the women of the Grovey Goodies bakery were with Coven Grove… they might as well have been strangers. There was something so odd about that. Who knew what other secrets they might be hiding?

“
You two should go home,” Bailey said finally. “Piper, you need to get off your feet. And Avery… you’re probably better off researching Martha’s past, anyway. Plus I think you’re going to burn up in this sun. Would hate to see that snow white skin of yours get a little color.” She winked at him.

Avery feigned scandal, and checked his pale arms for signs of any such thing. He shrugged, and squinted at the afternoon light. “Well… you make a strong argument for being back indoors,” he said. “I’ll see what I can find on Martha. Maybe talk to that Gloria woman she came here with.”

“
Just be careful,” Piper said. “Gloria’s a suspect, don’t forget.”

“
Well she can’t just go on a murder spree and nobody notice,” Avery argued. “Plus, you both know I have a special way with the ladies.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively, and Piper and Bailey both giggled at him.

“
Sure you wouldn’t be better off interviewing Trevor?” Bailey suggested.

Avery pressed his hand to his chest, wounded. “That man is too handsome to kill anybody. I won’t believe it. Still… good point. I might talk to both of them...they probably picked up different things.”

“
Well, Bailey’s right about me getting off my feet,” Piper said. “You two call me if you find anything out. My feet are killing me. I might drop back by the library though. Gavin’s mother is a mean old hag to me, but she never gets tired of Riley at least. I intend to enjoy my break.” She glanced at her belly. “Such as it is, anyway.”

Bailey made an effort not to glance at Avery. The bitterness in Piper’s voice wasn’t new, but it was getting worse and worse over time. She didn’t like them to pry, though, so they didn’t. For now.

“
I’ll see you both later then,” Bailey said. They traded hugs and kisses on cheeks and Avery walked with Piper back toward the library, their first amateur sleuthing attempt sorely unsuccessful.

“…
locked my keys in my car…”

“…
could be cheatin’ on me with that floozy Candice…”

“…
if Thomas would even notice if I…”

“…
so pretty I could just…”

Bailey pressed her hands to her head and tried to focus on her breathing. It was all so loud. Why was it happening? She wished her Dad were with her. Suddenly she wanted to tell him everything that was on her mind, all of her worries. He claimed not to know anything about her mother, but maybe he at least knew how they could check hospital records, maybe find some instance of a crazy lady having a psychotic break.

That would make sense, wouldn’t it? That her mother had gone off the deep end, and Bailey had been given up because she wasn’t fit to take care of an infant? Coven Grove didn’t have a psychiatric facility like an asylum, but there was one further inland—Lakeview Heights, maybe an hour and a half east. What if all this time her mother had been there? Crazy ran in families, after all, sometimes.

The worst of it, though, was a much darker kind of fear. A secret, nagging worry in the back of her mind that had been festering since just a few hours after she found Martha, when the crowds had gathered.

What if… what if she’d been right to put herself on the suspect list? What if she really was losing her mind, and had blacked out and…

She shook her head, and squeezed her eyes tight against the sudden welling of tears that burned her eyes. It couldn’t be. She couldn’t have done something like that, surely, no matter what was going on inside her brain.

Bailey realized she was standing on the sidewalk, still, about to start bawling her eyes out. She rubbed them, and looked around her. She wanted to be alone.

Despite the terrible thing that had happened there, she found herself walking back toward the Caves. Underneath the dread she felt at going back there, though, was that same familiar tug; the promise of solitude, and calm, and a little bit of peace. Plus, the last time she’d started hearing the voices and gone there, they’d quieted a little bit.

Just now, she needed that, desperately.

It was a long walk, but it helped to calm Bailey down so she didn’t mind. She checked the Tour office when she got there, but it was still locked, no sign of Poppy. That was worrying, but with everything else going on, and Bailey’s world started to feel like it was coming apart at the seams—inside and out—and she couldn’t muster up the will to ruminate on it.

The police tape was gone from the entrance of the caves. Martha had been removed, of course, and taken to the coroner’s office. They’d had to call in an out-of-towner. Coven Grove no longer had a resident coroner because death around here was categorically natural in some way, and very rarely unexpected.

She wandered cautiously into the entrance to the caves, but dared not walk much further than the first one. The voices had grown distant the closer she got to them, and when she was deep into the first wide cavern they finally quieted all together. Blessed relief.

Bailey lowered herself to the cool cave floor, and leaned back against one of the unadorned walls not roped off with the fancy red velvet ropes that only looked like actual velvet—they were cheap, like everything else Poppy bothered to put any money into. She leaned her head back against the stone, and listened to the distant crash of waves funneling up through the caves at high tide.

She might have drifted off. She wasn’t entirely sure, but when she opened her eyes seemingly a moment later, the light at the entrance of the Caves was much dimmer, almost dark. She must have dozed off, then, it looked like it might be getting on into the evening.

Though she didn’t really feel like she’d napped at all, Bailey stood and brushed the back of her jeans off and decided she should probably head home. Ryan would be worried about her, especially now. She was a little surprised he hadn’t already come looking for her.

When she got outside the Caves and looked up at the sky, she realized that it wasn’t merely getting late in the evening—the clear blue sky from the afternoon had clouded over with a surprise bank of thick, roiling clouds that looked darkly gray with the promise of a surprise deluge. The weather on the coast was finicky like that but… she’d recalled that the next week was due to be pretty clear. And come to think of it, she hadn’t noticed the clouds rolling in from the ocean. Normally you could see them miles off, unobstructed by the flat, featureless Pacific.

The wind picked up quickly as Bailey began the trek back up to town, and when it bit at her face she turned a little to keep it from her eyes, her hand held up as her hair whipped around her head.

That’s when she saw someone, out next to the great oak that had managed, somehow, to stay firmly attached to the earth above the steep, short cliffs down to the beach, an ancient sentinel to watch over the Seven Caves that wound through the rocky coastlines’ interior. She squinted. Was that Frances? What was Frances doing out here in this weather?

She was doing something… odd. She had her arms up, and then she swayed them in the air one way, and then the other, and then dropped them. Then, like a conductor calling the orchestra to raise their instruments and play, she lifted her hands again. At that precise moment, coincidentally, the wind gusted again, and howled through the cliffs and whistled though the Seven Caves like a ghostly chorus.

That sound… Bailey knew it well. You could hear it throughout Coven Grove when it stormed, and she’d often opened her window at home and leaned out to listen to it. Then, as now, it sounded like a call to her, personally. That was silly, she knew, as she had since she’d begun the process of growing up and letting go of her childish notions. But now, more than ever, she felt it call to her, deep down in some place she almost felt like she recognized. A place she had forgotten about when she grew up.

As she watched, Frances threw something over the cliffs, and Bailey’s heart leapt. The murder weapon, perhaps? It was the first thought that sprang to mind, but instantly vanished as she saw that it seemed to be handfuls of something light enough to rise up on the wind and fly off into the sky over the ocean.

Frances left the tree, and walked along the cliffs toward the Caves; but not to the front entrance. Bailey crouched, and scuttled off the path to watch from behind a thin bush—it didn’t seem like much in the way of a hiding spot, but Frances wasn’t looking her direction anyway—and then Bailey saw that Frances wasn’t alone.

Chloe and Aria were with her.

Bailey’s stomach turned, and her heart twisted. Avery had been right. The three of them… they all had something to do with Martha’s murder. But what were they doing here now? Cleaning up the evidence, Bailey supposed.

The three women turned together, clutching their coats against the wind, and headed down the cliffs. As soon as they were out of sight, driven by some sudden burst of courage and anger, Bailey dashed out from behind her bush and down the path. She pressed against the outer rock of the Caves’ entrance, and peeked around the corner. When the coast seemed clear, she padded along the rocky outcrop, picking her way carefully to avoid dislodging any stones and making a clatter. Soon she was positioned over the three women who were holding hands in front of…

Bailey blinked. It was like an optical illusion. She’d seen this patch of rock before. She knew the whole area by heart. Except… she could swear that was another cave entrance. It wouldn’t quite stay still for her, somehow—it slipped one way and the other, or her eyes did, and instead she had to focus on the three women; in this way, she could sort of see the gap in the rock face in her peripheral vision.

What were they doing?

Almost the moment she wondered, Chloe raised her head, eyebrows creased with concern until they slackened when she looked straight at Bailey, shock and dismay on her face. The two other women looked up at her next, and their mouths opened, but the wind was too loud to make out what they were saying.