“Stating the obvious, huh?” I teased.
He stared at me, clearly not amused.
I cringed. “Sorry. I know you’re having a tough twenty-four hours. I’m so sorry about Crissy.”
“I’m not. But it’s about to get tougher.” He cast a glance back at the body. “That’s her boyfriend.”
*
Sergeant Amelia Dieke graduated with me, two years behind Cole. She was a no-nonsense woman with a blonde pixie cut and shrewd eyes, like Tinkerbell with a gun. Mel showed up, took stock of the situation, and sent me and Cole packing to the station after confiscating my shoes.
I followed Cole silently through the woods, my toes freezing with every step. We passed my mama’s house on the lake with its warm, glowing windows. My own little cottage behind it was dark, and Skadi probably wondered where I’d gotten lost.
Cole’s unmarked police cruiser sat behind my daddy’s old rusted-out Ford pickup in Mama’s driveway. The horn beeped as he unlocked the police car, and I reached for the passenger side handle to get in but paused, my intuition tickling my ears. Mama was coming.
“Daiya?” Cole looked over the car at me curiously.
“One minute.” I held up a finger and trudged up the front sidewalk.
My mama’s house was near two hundred years old with three floors and a widow’s walk up top. The weathered white shingles had turned gray over the years, and more green shutters were crooked than not, but I loved the old place. It had been in the Pettigrew family for generations.
Mama opened the front door before I got to the steps. “Daiya Jean, what on earth is going on?”
My mama was a gorgeous woman. She had Irish red hair — speckled gray — in a messy braid hanging to her curvy behind, and a face-full of ginger freckles. Her layered black dress hung to her ankles above bare feet and a jingling ankle bracelet made of sleigh bells. She held out a pair of gleaming white Keds sneakers.
I accepted them gratefully, standing on one leg like a flamingo to put them on. “It’s fine, Mama. I found a body in the woods, is all.”
Mama gasped, her ring-bedazzled hand fluttering to her heart. “How on earth is that fine, girl?”
“Della? What’s wrong?” My aunt Delphine appeared over Mama’s shoulder. Two dragon-shaped combs held her chocolate brown hair away from her round face. She tiptoed to see over Mama’s shoulder. “Daiya Jean. You look as if you’ve seen a ghost!”
“A dead body,” Mama corrected. “She’s seen a dead body.”
“Oh, dear. I’ve seen a couple of those in my day. Oh, Della, do you remember that boy in the summer of, what was it, ’87?”
Mama nodded thoughtfully. “I do. Drowned in the lake, washed right up on our doorstep.”
“Such a shame. Only ten years old,” Delphine addressed this last to me with a low cluck.
“Mama, Aunt Delphine, I need to go with Cole to the station to give my statement. I just came up here to tell you I’m fine. Mama, can you go feed Skadi so she isn’t quite so mad at me when I get home?”
“Of course, dear. Run along and behave yourself.” She winked.
“Mama, it’s not a date. It’s official police business.”
“Sounds kinky,” Delphine said sweetly.
I huffed and walked back to the car. Cole already had the engine running. I slipped into the passenger seat and buckled my seatbelt as he put the car into gear.
As we turned out of my mama’s driveway, I said, “You’re awful quiet.”
“Thinking.”
I glanced over to study his profile. Sometimes, I was good at reading people. Call it gut instincts, or an innate understanding of social cues. But right now, I couldn’t tell what Cole was thinking or feeling, what with his jaw all set and his eyes hooded like he held back secrets.
“What did you mean when you said it was gonna get tougher?”
Cole looked at me in the passing headlights of another car. “Crissy’s boyfriend turned up dead in the woods after everyone in my damn neighborhood saw me punch him last night.”
“Is that why Mel sent you away even though you outrank her?”
“Rank has nothing to do with it when it’s personal.”
“Surely, nobody would think you killed him.”
Cole clenched the steering wheel, his knuckles turning white. “Anybody is capable of anything, Daiya. Human nature.”
I could understand his point, even if I didn’t quite agree with him. I liked to see the good in people before I assumed the bad.
My heart fluttered like a bird inside me as I reached across the console, littered with food receipts, handwritten notes in Cole’s chicken scratch, and a half-eaten bag of Lay’s BBQ chips, and squeezed his arm. “It’s going to be okay.”
Cole grimaced and avoided my eye. “No, it’s not.”
*
Before I knew it, I’d given my statement to one of the beat officers at the station, and me and my Keds headed through flurrying snow back down Central Avenue. Cole had shut himself up tight in his office, visible through the cracked, yellowing blinds that tried in vain to close out the world. I hadn’t wanted to bother him; he had enough on his mind without me begging for a ride home.
I ruminated on the fact I’d seen a dead body. Not just dead — murdered. I had a healthy respect for life and death. Most witches did, being exposed to powers most didn’t fully understand. But death in Tates Creek was never so violent or malicious. The gravity of the situation hung on my shoulders and slowed my steps. Did I think it meant a serial murderer on the loose? No. I couldn’t help but think whoever murdered that man murdered him specifically.
I paused outside The Witch’s Brew and smiled, comforted by the normalcy beyond the foggy windows. Lucy danced about the café wiping down tables as she chatted with the smattering of customers. Her bright, genuine smile was what I loved most about having her on my team. I pushed open the heavy wooden door, and the wind chimes sang my arrival.
“Welcome to The Witch’s — Daiya!” Lucy looked up mid-greeting and smiled. “What are you doing here? You left two hours ago!”
“I got waylaid. Long story.” She’d find out soon enough, and I wasn’t ready to talk about it again. I waved at a couple of regulars and circled the counter to pick up the phone to call my sister for a ride home. The trail was sure to be shut down for the investigation, and walking a huge circle around the town and down the highway did not sound like fun. Especially as the snow fell heavier.
Devin’s shift didn’t end till ten, so I sent a bedraggled, sleepy-eyed Lucy home and closed up shop. I had just enough time to do all the cleaning and get the count done for the night before Devin honked her horn in front of the shop.
I cut the lights and locked the door behind me, joining Devin in Grandmama’s ancient pink Cadillac.
“Cole has been suspended without pay pending the investigation,” my sister greeted me.
I gaped at her. “No! You’re joking.”
“Not joking. He’s the prime suspect. I mean, he knew that before they even suspended him.” Devin threw the car into park, and the thing shuddered as if it were too much work to move its wheels.
Devin looked a lot like me with her heart-shaped face, thick lips, and even thicker eyebrows, but she’d gotten Grandmama’s creamy complexion and dark chocolate hair — like Aunt Delphine — whereas I’d gotten a softer, blonder shade of Mama’s red and her freckles. Right now, my sister’s chocolate hair perched in a bun at the apex of her head and the faux-fur lining of her coat cradled her face, making her look like a delicate ballerina.
Totally superficial. She was loud, crazy, and as foul-mouthed as a woman could be. It drove our mama batty, which gave no end to Grandmama’s pleasure.
“I can’t even believe that,” I said. “There’s no way he killed that man. Not Cole. What do they know about the boyfriend?”
“Not much. He was a real estate agent from Atlanta. Crissy’s mama said she met him in Louisville at a conference last year, and apparently t
hey’ve been meeting ever since.”
My heart broke for Cole. “Goodness. That means it was going on for some time.”
“Unfortunately. And the Loot is taking it hard. I never understood what he saw in that dumb bitch, personally.”
I laughed. “I wouldn’t put it quite so eloquently, but I agree. What does Crissy have to say about all of this?”
“Nothing, right now. Nobody can find her.”
I swiveled in my seat to stare at Devin. “Why aren’t they pinning the blame on her? She killed him and ran, right?”
“He was killed by blunt force trauma. Over and over,” my sister said pointedly. “She weighs as much as a bag of sticks, so there’s no way she did it.”
“But the bullet hole — ”
“Obviously, we don’t have the autopsy back yet, but the Coroner is pretty certain the bullet was an afterthought. Dude was already dead. Beat like a slab of beef on a butcher’s block.”
I gazed out the window, watching the snow fall heavy, a vortex of white as we sped down the lake highway towards home. “So where is Crissy?”
Chapter Three
I said goodbye to Devin at the car. She lived in the lake house, a tiny log cabin by our family’s boatless, weather-beaten dock, while Mama, Grandmama, and Aunt Delphine lived in the main house, a clutch of bickering old hens who probably shouldn’t go so unsupervised.
My Daiya-sized cottage sat behind Mama’s house, closer to the woods but still with a gorgeous view of the lake. When Daddy was alive, him and Mama raised us girls in the main house while Delphine and Grandmama lived in the cottage. But Mama got lonely after he died. All she wanted was her own mama and her sister, so I took over the cottage and Devin moved down to the lake house to spread her wings.
Skadi waited for me on the other side of the door with her angry face on. My twenty-pound white-and-black Maine Coon hated when her schedule got switched up. Miss Priss turned her nose up when Mama came in to feed her, I’m sure.
“It isn’t my fault someone killed a guy in the woods,” I told her.
She flicked her tail and walked away. Clearly, I wasn’t worth the effort.
I set a fire in the fireplace — an act that earned me immediate feline forgiveness — then I poured a glass of wine and opened my laptop on the couch.
Devin had given me Crissy’s boyfriend’s name: Lars Kendrick. I ran a Google search on him, which rewarded me with an out-of-date real estate website and several newspaper articles out of Atlanta: LOCAL REALTOR FACING CHARGES IN DOGFIGHTING RING; DOGFIGHTING REALTOR LOSES LICENSE TO SELL; and DOGFIGHT REAL ESTATE AGENT DECLARED MISTRIAL.
I opened the first article, horrified.
November 1 — Local real estate agent Lars Kendrick was arrested on charges of illegal dogfighting in downtown Atlanta yesterday. Sources say Kendrick utilized empty listings from his agency to arrange and conduct dogfights for a six month period in 2015. Any attempts to reach Kendrick’s agency for comment have been denied. Kendrick will face arraignment this Friday.
The next article confirmed he lost his real estate license in mid-November. His case went to court in early December, but was declared a mistrial. Prosecutors planned on pursuing another course of action. Kendrick’s boss at the listing agency remained silent and unhelpful for either Lars or the media.
“Can’t mete out justice now. He’s dead,” I murmured.
Skadi sleepily rowred at me from her cat bed in front of the fire.
I couldn’t believe Crissy dated this guy. The very public trial couldn’t have been a secret from her, unless she lived in some kind of fantasy world. Why on earth would she want to date someone who organized dogfights?
I didn’t know much about crime in general. Tates Creek, despite the tourism, remained a safe place to live. Our height of crime consisted of pickpockets, the occasional burglary, and teenagers getting drunk on the lake. So my exposure to heavy crime was limited before tonight, when I saw my first murder scene.
I knew dogfighting was illegal. I knew the people involved often placed bets on the fights, like in horse racing, and goodness knows things could go south in gambling.
So, with my limited knowledge, I also knew Lars Kendrick could have died for his little hobby.
*
Next morning, The Witch’s Brew bustled with holiday energy. Half the town was out and about, picking up gifts and Brewlattes. I loved this time of year, with the promise of family and good food hanging in the air and frost on the windowpanes. The storm had dusted six inches around town, making Tates Creek look festive.
Around ten a.m., the hectic pace settled. I smiled as I handed out a mocha Brewlatte, then looked up as another customer tinkled past the door chime. Even in a Wildcats ball cap and aviator sunglasses that reflected the entire café, I recognized Cole Nolte.
“Hey, Daiya,” he said at the register, his voice pitched low. “Can I get an Americano?”
“Of course. Have a seat. I’ll bring it over when it’s done.”
Cole pulled his wallet out of his blue jean pocket, but I waved him away.
“On the house. Be right up.”
I ground the beans and tamped them in the portafilter, then set a cup beneath the gasket. I watched the overflowing café as I repeated movements I’d done thousands of times. Even Cole noticed the way people stared and whispered, though he tried to pretend he didn’t by swiping through his phone and studiously ignoring everyone around him.
I knew in my heart of hearts, Cole didn’t kill Lars Kendrick. I couldn’t deny that people weren’t always what they seemed, but my gut told me Cole didn’t do it, and I trusted my gut more than my brain.
As his four shots poured heady, amber liquid, I encircled the cup with my hands and chanted, Voice be bold, truth be told.
Cole liked heavy cream and a tablespoon of sugar in his coffee. I’d made it for him more times than I could count. I grabbed today’s special — a cherry tart — and his finished drink, and joined him at a table in the corner.
“How you feelin’ today?” I asked, sitting his treat and drink in front of him before I took the chair across the small, round table.
“Like shit.” Cole took a drink of his Americano and groaned, finally removing his sunglasses. His mahogany eyes sparkled in the crisp winter sunlight filtering through the windows.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
He drank a long slug of coffee and stared down into the cup. “Nobody knows where Crissy is. Not even her mother.”
“Do you think something happened to her?”
“No.” He took a deep breath, his shoulders heaving. “Jesus, I don’t know. The last anybody saw of her, she was with him. And now he’s dead.”
Cole looked up and caught my gaze, sending flutters through my stomach. I couldn’t recall a time he’d looked so serious and oh, so sexy. That ball cap made his jaw seem sharper, stronger. Or it could have been his frustration.
“Do you think I did it?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Did you kill Lars Kendrick?” I asked. He’d had enough to drink for my truth spell to kick in.
Cole sat back and ran a hand back over his closely shaven head. “No, of course not. I’m not going to pretend I don’t hate the guy. I would have been happy to hear he got hit by a train or eaten by coyotes. But I didn’t kill him. I like my job a lot more than I hate him.”
I let out an imperceptible breath. He didn’t do it.
“I believe you,” I assured him. “Where do you think she is?”
His thick brows drew together. “I don’t know. But I’m worried about her.”
I found that sweet, considering she’d been sharing her body with another man for a year. Cole really was a good guy.
“Are the police looking for her?” I asked, realizing he was the police, and he was suspended, so the question probably hurt.
He nodded. “Kendrick was found in the woods. They’re searching for her. Just in case.”
“Do you think she killed him?”
/> Cole chuckled bitterly. “I’ve thought that. And to tell you the truth, I’d rather she be a murderer than … ”
He didn’t finish his thought, but I knew what he meant. Crissy being a murderer was a preferable outcome to her being dead.
“I don’t know what you put in your coffee, Daiya, but it always makes me feel better.” Cole smiled, the first real smile I’d seen on his face since Lars Kendrick was found murdered.
I winked. “Just a little magic.”
*
Later that afternoon, Lucy came in to relieve me, followed closely by her high-heeled mother. Lucy, in her blue jeans, off-the-shoulder snowflake sweatshirt, and Chuck Taylor sneakers, was a far cry from Geena’s skirt suit and hose. Both women had ebony hair and natural tanned skin, but Geena wore her graying hair in a no-nonsense bun, while Lucy’s waves hung wild and free.
Geena slapped a ten dollar bill on the counter. “Give me the usual, Die. And listen up — Crissy Nolte is dead.”
Lucy froze in the act of putting on her Witch’s Brew apron, and I paused, my hand hovering over Geena’s money.
Jasmine sat at the counter, a spoon of my squash soup halfway to her red-lined lips. We exchanged glances, and I picked up the ten dollar bill.
“Was she in the woods, too?” I asked, ringing up Geena’s drink.
“Sure was. They found her buried.”
“So the killer just left the boyfriend in plain sight but buried Crissy?” Jasmine shook her head and returned to her soup. “People are crazy.”
“Sociopaths are crazy,” Lucy corrected, tying her apron around her slim waist. “You’re assuming, however, that all murderers are sociopaths.”
“Are they not?”
Lucy, Jasmine, and Geena fell into a good-natured conversation about the qualities of sociopaths while I made Geena’s Brewlatte.
Monday night, Crissy had tapped into The Witch’s Brew in sky-high red stilettos and a black miniskirt, a designer briefcase hanging from one shoulder.
“A large Brewlatte, Daiya. Extra cinnamon.” She pronounced my name “Day-a,” knowing full well it irritated the fire out of me. “Oh, and let’s do a crescent roll. I’m celebrating.”
I rang the items up and ignored her dig for me to ask what she was celebrating. “Card reader is ready when you are,” I told her, moving to the Marzocco.
Crissy swiped her card. “I’m celebrating because I just sold the old Johnston farmstead.”