The Witch's Beauty (A Cozy Witch Mystery) Read online

“Do they . . . are they on some kind of special team?” Lorna inquired.

  Max seemed annoyed that he had been trapped into another encounter with her. “There are all kinds of regional championships for jumping. They’re already very good, as you can see. I believe they came in second last year in a very important event. So, there’s a lot of hard work to do if they want to come in first this year.”

  Did he have a daughter here? Or a niece? And why wouldn’t he smile at her? His grimace did relax for the briefest of moments as he reached over to rub Bella’s head. Then he uttered a terse goodbye, and with a long, quick stride, disappeared into the park. Lorna cupped Bella in the palm of both hands and looked her in the eye.

  “What have you got that I don’t? Huh? Would he like me better if I was a little furrier?”

  It Bella couldn’t answer her questions, maybe she knew someone who could.

  *****

  Delphine took one look at the poor little diseased kitten and let out a hearty laugh.

  “I send you out to get a familiar, and this is what you come up with? Aren’t you full of surprises?”

  But like Lexi, Delphine’s callous words were accompanied by a cuddle and a tummy rub, further confirmation for Lorna that her new advisor could be trusted.

  “There’s something I’m hoping that you can help me with. It’s not important. It’s not all that important. Except, it’s a little bit important. It’s actually really bugging me.”

  “Could it, by chance, have anything to do with a man?”

  There was no reason to hold back now. “Okay, so most men think that I’m pretty now. And so many of them keep asking me out. I actually have three dates lined up for next week, which is freaking me out a little. But for most of the men, I have to say no because there’s only so many days in a week. And also because so few of them truly . . .”

  “Yeah, the guys who really do it for you can be kind of rare. But sooner or later, you’re going to run into one who is beyond special.”

  “That’s exactly what I wanted to talk to you about. I think I might have already run into him. I’d sure like to get to know him better. And for him to get to know me, but he’s not at all interested. I mean, not at all. I was hoping you could shed some light on that. This is the most ridiculous thing that has ever come out of my mouth, but . . . how could he not be attracted to me!”

  Delphine chuckled. Beauty was always accompanied by a very healthy ego. And in the case of this extreme beauty, it was a valid question.

  “If he is already deeply in love, or married, those things would certainly blunt your influence over a man. Which is as it should be. But those exceptions aside, there shouldn’t be a single bachelor in this town who is immune to your charms. Well, perhaps one. But as long as the name of this man isn’t Maximilian Crowe, there’s not likely to be a problem.”

  The dismayed look on Lorna’s face told Delphine all she needed to know.

  “Oh, dear. What are the odds? How can you manage to become fixated on the one man in Oyster Cove you can’t have?”

  “Why? Why can’t I have him?”

  Delphine sighed. “Because he is The Protected One. A powerful spell was placed on him at a very early age by his mother. She was a formidable practitioner of the dark arts and she had many enemies. She feared for him—not that he would be killed. His innocence would have shielded him from such a fate. But he could have been cursed, maimed, controlled, or used as an instrument to punish his mother.

  “Eventually, she was killed by another witch. But before she died, she cast a protective spell over him that for all time would render him impervious to all magical influences. He cannot be manipulated. Cannot be compelled. His thoughts cannot be read. For the witches of Oyster Cove, he is untouchable. The Protected One.”

  The son of a witch! Lorna hadn’t seen that coming.

  “Does he . . . does this make him a witch?”

  Delphine shook her head. “His powers are latent. He won’t be accidentally blooming any roses. It would take a great deal of formal study for him to tap into any abilities. And that is not going to happen. He wants nothing to do with witches.”

  “But his mother was a witch.”

  “He does not know it. But he does know that his mother was killed by a witch. He hates witches. And your beauty will not be enough to dissuade him. You must look elsewhere for your happiness, dear. Maximilian Crowe is a losing prospect.”

  *****

  With this disappointing news about Max, it was no wonder that Lorna should wake up with the beginning of a minor headache. Actually, it was so much more than a headache. She was feeling warm, and her head felt heavy and difficult to move.

  As she reached up to check her temperature, she could only laugh at her own internal drama. Yes, her head wouldn’t be nearly so warm if there weren’t a cat sleeping on it. And she had gone to the trouble of buying a sweet little kitty bed. When Bella objected to the bed being on the floor next to her, Lorna had moved it to the adjoining pillow area on her queen-sized bed.

  But this was one needy kitty. Leaving her at home all day while Lorna was at work wasn’t even a remote possibility. Thankfully, she had sold her supervisor and coworkers on the idea of an office kitty. Bella would never be inside the main library, only in the large back administrative office. Melody had very helpfully pulled up several research articles that confirmed that pets at the office made for a happier and more productive environment for all concerned. Who could argue with science?

  Lorna bought an additional scratching post for the office to make sure that Bella wasn’t going to make a pest of herself. On the contrary, she received a big welcome. Everyone loved to stop by their cubicle for a little bundle of exuberance in the afternoon. And for her own part, Bella was in heaven. Soft fabric cubicle walls to scale, file cabinets, counters, nooks and crannies to hide in, and new friends galore. Her looks were recovering only slowly, but no one could tell Bella that she wasn’t the queen of the office.

  There were various library duties that were in rotation. One of them was to go around as the library was closing up, gather all the books that customers had left scattered all over the tables and desks, and to re-shelve as many of them as possible.

  On occasion, they also had to wake up a few sleepyheads. The library was open until nine PM, and sometimes, people would gently nod off. The announcement of closing over the loudspeaker was enough to jar most of them into wakefulness. But now and again, they needed some one-on-one assistance.

  Lorna had this evening’s duty of sweeping through the library and reminding everyone that it was time to go home. She had never done it before because it just involved too much contact with the public and too much painful self-consciousness about her face. So, her supervisor and the other librarians had never asked her to do it. But tonight, it seemed like a fine idea.

  Stella Kirby appeared to have succumbed to the late hour. She was an older woman, after all, almost seventy, from all appearances. Lorna hoped that she wouldn’t be embarrassed to have to be woken up.

  “Ms. Kirby. Ms. Kirby. The library is closing in five minutes.”

  Ms. Kirby did not move. She was going to require a little pat on the shoulder. But there was no response to the little pat. Lorna was going to have to shake her awake. Unfortunately, this caused Stella’s cold, lifeless body to fall to the floor. Her face was frozen in a hideous expression and her tongue hung out of her mouth, blackened and swollen to a grotesque size.

  Lorna’s screams brought every librarian in the building and every remaining customer to gather in a horrified crowd around the dead woman. None of them were doctors. None of them were forensic specialists. But you didn’t have to be a rocket scientist—this woman had been poisoned.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The library was closed until further notice. Inside, the employees were gathered in a frightened huddle. They had been informed not to go to their offices, not to log into their employee accounts, and not to touch anything, but to simply wait the
ir turn for the police to take their statements, a process which was taking place in the soundproof, glass-enclosed study room, right along the main wall on the second floor. It was disturbingly close to the table where Stella had met her end.

  The body was long gone. The forensic team had been busy all night long. They had carefully removed every item on Stella’s table, including several library books and newspapers, as well as her purse and personal items. The “table of death” was still cordoned off with crime scene tape.

  Their initial findings quickly isolated the problem to the pages of a book. The poison was on the pages of a book that Stella had thumbed through, licking and turning pages, as was her habit. The book was Fair Weather Friend, the breakthrough debut novel by Elliot Guest, Oyster Cove’s other star author.

  Lorna was still a bit shaken up. And some of her coworkers were truly freaking out. Poisoned book! How could that have happened? Were there more poisoned books? Were they all in danger? This was going to terrify the customers. Maybe everyone would stop coming to the library.

  An attractive, dark, curly-haired officer appeared to be in charge of the investigation—Officer Finn Cochran.

  “Okay, listen up. We’re going to take you one by one into this . . . what is it, a study room? Soundproof, very nice. I will be going to ask you a lot of questions. We need your cooperation, because this library will not open until we’ve had a statement from everyone. There is a murderer out there, and all of Oyster Cove will be able to rest a lot easier after they are caught. So, please let us know anything you think might have some relevance to this investigation.”

  None of the library employees had really liked Stella. She was egotistical, insensitive, and generally annoying. But no one on staff hated her like Miles Weston. A thin, intense, man in his mid-thirties, who would never be caught without hand sanitizer, he had expressed revulsion for her finger-licking-page-turning habit on dozens of occasions.

  “Do you know how many germs there are in human saliva? She could be making people sick. Just the thought of it makes me ill. Someone should stop her. Someone should do something about this.”

  Perhaps that was why so many of his colleagues were glancing surreptitiously at him this morning. Miles felt the weight of their suspicion, and his indignation quickly gave way to genuine concern. Of course, all of his colleagues were going to tell the police how much he hated Stella. All the times that he had railed against her and said that someone should do something about her . . . This could look bad. Guilty bad.

  Lorna was one of the last people interviewed by Finn Cochran. He was momentarily taken aback by her beauty. She sure didn’t look like any librarian he had ever seen. But he was far more interested in her knowledge and her truthfulness.

  “Fair Weather Friend. Are you familiar with this book?”

  “Every librarian here has read Elliot Guest’s first book. And his second as well. He’s a big celebrity author for our little town.”

  “If you had to guess, would you say that this book was randomly chosen by the killer, or were they trying to make a point? What sort of relationship did Stella Kirby have with Elliot Guest?”

  “Not a very good one, I’m afraid. They didn’t like one another. They both belonged to the same book club at one time, and they had very sharply contrasting personalities, I heard. Their books are so different, and they couldn’t really appreciate one another.

  “So, Mr. Guest eventually left the book club. He was still a frequent library patron, although I believe she tries to—tried to—get under his skin by reminding him how much she was getting for her next book advance. I gather it was a lot more than he was getting for his.”

  “It sounds like this Elliot Guest is someone I would very much like to have a conversation with,” Finn noted.

  “I . . . I hope you don’t think that I’m trying to imply that Mr. Guest could possibly have had anything to do with this.”

  “It’s a little too soon to assume anything. So, they were not exactly friends. Any reason she’d be reading his book? It came out quite a few years ago. Why was she reading it right at this moment?”

  “That is very odd. I don’t think either wanted to give the other the satisfaction of reading the other person’s book.”

  “Who kept tabs on her reading list? Who would know what she was working on, what she’d be up to?”

  “She did have an assistant, but I don’t know his name.”

  “Apparently, the book was not checked out. What does that tell you?”

  “Well, we probably have a dozen copies of this book, because it was written by a local author. But it looks as if this particular copy hadn’t left the library. At least, not recently.”

  “That’s right. That in all likelihood, the poisoning took place here. Who had opportunity? They say that she sat at the same table every day, right in the middle of this big room. No one would’ve had the opportunity to do it so openly.

  “So, it had to be someone who knew she was going to use that book—this very particular copy—and did it while they were in the aisles and no one was looking. Or, it happened before or after the library was open, which seems to point to one of the employees. What do you know about Miles Weston? I’m getting the impression that he was not a Stella Kirby fan.”

  Oh, no. Miles may have had a few . . . issues. But he was a very sweet, goodhearted guy. “Miles is a germaphobe. I guess you already heard that. He’s in therapy for it and he’s gotten so much better. He used to want to wear plastic gloves all the time, but our patrons found that a little strange, and the supervisor asked him to stop.

  “She was also the one who talked him into therapy. And at the end of the night, the stray books have to be gathered and put back on the shelves. Books full of, you know, fingerprints and germs. That used to be something he hated to do. But then that became a therapy assignment too, and now he’s the one who does it most of the time—to help him overcome his aversions.”

  “Miles Weston is the one who goes around and takes the books that people have been using and puts them away,” Finn said pointedly.

  No, no, no. Lorna had not meant to make Miles sound guiltier. “Of course, he’s not the only one who does it. We all take turns.”

  Through the glass walls of the study room, Lorna could see other librarians furtively looking at Myles, who looked miserably aware that his colleagues were having their doubts about him. The distress of the staff was palpable. Their peaceful haven had been taken from them. For many of them, this library was their true home. And they had become a family to Lorna, they really had. She had to help them get their home back, one way or the other. This murder had to be solved. And the police were definitely on the wrong track.

  “Officer Cochran, have you ever read a book called The Name of The Rose?”

  “Never heard of it. Why?”

  “Because in it, someone was killed exactly the way Stella Kirby was killed. They licked and fingered their way through poisoned pages. It’s a classic, by Umberto Eco. I think there’s a possibility that the killer might be familiar with the story.”

  “That’s interesting. You think we’re going to be able to find someone who took that book out of the library recently? And then got inspired? Got some crazy ideas?”

  “I think you’re going to find thirty-six people who read it recently. It was a book club selection, the same book club that Stella Kirby was in. They informed me about all their selections so that I could gather as many copies from the interlibrary loan system as possible in advance. A lot of people were on tight budgets and needed to get their books from the library. So, everyone in the club has read The Name of The Rose.”

  “Thirty-six people. That’s a whole lot of people.”

  “The leader of club is Celeste Piper. I can get her contact info for you, if you’d like.”

  “I would like very much. Ms. Sinclair, I can see you’re going to be an extremely useful resource. I’m going to ask your supervisor if I could borrow you for a few days. I need a l
ittle insider insight into this library community. Introduce me to this book club, keep me informed about all of Stella Kirby’s frenemies, give me access to any library computer records we may be needing, and come up with stuff that I never would have thought of in a million years. Name of the Rose. Very nice. What do you say?”

  “I don’t know if my supervisor would let me.”

  “If I bargain with her and tell her that the library can open up as soon as this afternoon, in exchange for your assistance, I have a feeling she’ll say yes. What do you say?”

  The sooner this murder was solved, the sooner Myles was off the hook and the sooner peace was restored to the Oyster Cove Public Library.

  “Yes. Of course, I’ll help.”

  To everyone’s great relief, the library was opened by two PM. Normalcy was somewhat restored, but word had gotten around the town, and not a lot of library patrons were prepared to venture in.

  As soon as the police left, Miles couldn’t wait to scrub down the “death table” with some strong bleach. No one had a great interest in handling books. The chatty sociable back office became deadly quiet.

  Lorna’s heart went out to her colleagues. She certainly didn’t want to tell them on such a sad and morbid day that she had a date that night. A rather important date, simply for being the first date of her life.

  *****

  They met at Verona, a well-established Italian restaurant right across from Barcelona. Liam, the astrology-loving stock trader, assured her that it was one of the best places in town. Though she was a bit jittery over what they would talk about, it was nice to know they’d be able to fall back on a common interest in the stock market. It might even turn out to be a real bonus for her to talk to someone with professional expertise in the subject.

  But it was also important to connect on a few other levels as well.

  “Do you like to go to any of the art festivals?” Lorna asked.

  “No, that artsy-fartsy stuff really isn’t for me,” he said, making a face.

  “Do you like the beach sports—boating, sailing, fishing?”