Casting Spells (12 page)

 

LUKE

 

 

The Julia Roberts look-alike smiled at me as I approached.

The Catherine Zeta-Jones clone looked up and aimed a dazzling smile of her own in my direction.

And then there was Chloe.

She was slumped in a folding chair, her long frame folded in on itself like origami gone bad. The redhead kicked her under the table, and she muttered something I probably didn’t want to hear and turned in my direction.

Let’s just say I’d received warmer welcomes from suspects in a lineup.

“Door’s locked,” I said, nodding to her two friends.

“Well, that was stupid,” she said.

I grinned as the redhead kicked her again.

“You didn’t lock the door?”

“Why would I lock it?” she countered. “You only went to the hardware store.”

I had the feeling we were on the verge of an Abbott & Costello “Who’s on First” riff.

“So do you want to open it for me or just toss me the key.”

“Why go in there at all until it’s cleaned up? You’ll need a gas mask.”

“I want to take some measurements.”

“Planning to hang curtains, are you?”

Her friends laughed and she seemed pleased, which pissed me off.

“Montpelier is sending down some furniture.”

“Nice to know our tax dollars are being put to good use.” She swung toward her red-haired friend. “Kick me one more time, Meany, and so help me ...”

The redhead stood up and extended her hand to me. “Janice Meany. I own the hair salon across the street.”

“Luke MacKenzie.” I glanced toward Chloe then back again. “You probably already know my name.”

We shook hands.

No sparks.

The brunette was named Lynette Pendragon. She and her husband owned and operated the community theater I’d noticed on my drive through town.

No sparks there either.

And there had been no sparks with Paul at the hardware store or with Martha the mail carrier. The only sparks had been with Chloe, giant sparks that made me think of the Fourth of July. My palm still burned from them.

Chloe unfolded herself from her chair and plucked the key from the corkboard for the second time that day. She tossed it to me and I pocketed it.

“I cleared a spot for you in the storage room,” she said. “You can set up whenever you want to.”

“Do you have a fax machine I can use?”

She pointed toward a setup in the corner.

“And a high-speed connection.”

“The connection is wireless but not all that fast. I’ll give you the password.”

“One more thing,” I said as I turned to leave. “I’ll need a list of everyone who was here the night Suzanne Marsden died.”

“I was giving a workshop that evening so some of them were out-of-towners.”

“Addresses, phone numbers, e-mails?”

“No problem.”

“Are the locals available for questioning?”

She gestured over her shoulder. “The locals are sitting right there.”

Janice and Lynette winked and waved at me.

“I have an opening tomorrow between eleven and twelve,” Janice said. “I can talk and give you a haircut at the same time.”

Lynette whipped out a planner bulging with inserts, Post-its, and index cards that sprayed across the table when she opened it. “Before nine in the morning or after ten at night,” she said, “except on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays between now and New Year’s Day.”

“They’re staging
A Christmas Carol
at the playhouse,” Janice explained.

“My fifteenth year as Mrs. Fezziwig,” Lynette said with obvious pride. “We open Saturday night. I’ll leave a pair of tickets for you at the box office. You can bring your wife or significant other.”

I thanked her and sidestepped the veiled marital status question.

“What’s the problem?” I asked Chloe, who was glaring in the general direction of her dark-haired friend. “She’s being friendly, not offering me a bribe.”

“You’re a cop. I thought you weren’t supposed to accept freebies.”

“Until that paperwork you mentioned comes through, I’m just a random tourist.”

“If you’re just a random tourist, why should I give you the names and addresses of my customers?”

We locked eyes. “You must be one hell of a chess player.”

“I play Scrabble.”

“Listen, I—”

“I shouldn’t have—”

We laughed and some of the tension in the shop evaporated.

“You first,” I said.

“We got off to a bad start,” she said. “How about we declare a truce and start over again.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

We shook for the second time that day, and just like the first time, silver-white sparks leaped into the air between us.

“Next time we’d better ground ourselves first,” I said, my right palm crackling from the static electricity.

Chloe laughed but her two friends didn’t.

Something had changed in the room. It was as if the molecules had rearranged themselves into a pattern that was almost but not quite like the one that had come before and the three of them knew how and why.

9

CHLOE

 

The holiday gift-giving workshop started at three o’clock, the same time Luke MacKenzie chose to move his stuff into the store room. We had a large crowd that included six knitting friends from upstate New York, an architect and his life partner, a quartet of nurses from Vermont General, and Renate’s harpist daughter Bettina and her daughter Maeve.

Every time he walked by, their heads popped up like a whack-a-mole as they followed his progress from doorway to hallway.

“Ladies,” I said quietly, “no drooling on the yarn.”

“Who
is
that anyway?” Bettina whispered as she struggled with the Star Toe on a pair of Christmas socks.

“Our new police chief,” I said.

“Looks like Montpelier finally got it right.”

“We’ll see.”

“You don’t think he’s hot?” The usually composed Bettina sounded astonished.

“I’m trying not to think about him at all.” Every time I did, my right palm burned, a reminder of the explosion of sparks that occurred when we shook hands.

The New York knitters started speculating about his marital status while the architect and his partner wondered out loud about his sexual orientation. When the quartet of nurses started to muse about certain anatomical possibilities, I excused myself to brew another pot of coffee for the crowd.

That’s what I told them and it was partially true, but I also wanted to make sure the door to the store room was closed. I really didn’t want him to know there were knitters in the next room fantasizing about his package.

Everything seemed under control and I was about to head for the kitchen to start the pot of coffee I’d promised the paying customers when the overwhelming urge to see him came over me. I mean, it was like one of those irresistible forces you read about, a force so strong and powerful that there was nothing I could do but give in.

I knocked twice, softly, on the door and he opened it before I could change my mind and flee.

The deep green of his eyes startled me anew and it showed.

“I’m putting up a fresh pot of coffee and thought maybe you’d like some...I mean, I know you like coffee...you brought me a cup this morning...mine’s not as good as Fully Caffeinated but it’s not bad ... maybe you want something else ...” What was wrong with me? The words spilled from my mouth like overflow from a dam. “Sorry ... you’re busy ... I have to get back to the workshop ... anyway you know where the coffeepot is, right... just...”

One second I was backing away and the next I was propelled forward into his arms.

Was he surprised? He didn’t act like it. He acted like he had been expecting it—no, like he had been waiting for this moment.

My knees buckled but I didn’t fall because he held me close. Nobody had ever held me that way before. I could feel his very human heart beating beneath the rough fabric of his store-bought sweater. (I’m a knitter. I can’t help noticing things like that.)

Oh God, he smelled good. Even better than he did earlier that morning if it was possible. His body was hard and muscular and so warm. His warmth seemed to pour into my body, warming me from the inside out, filling the empty spaces.

Maybe this was Janice’s doing. Or Lynette’s. Maybe they had put a love potion in my coffee. I didn’t care. Whatever it was, it was spectacular. The feel of his hands along my rib cage. The smell of his skin. The warmth of his mouth as he brought it closer and closer to mine and—

“Chloe?” His voice seemed to rip through layers of warm, sweet mist. “What’s wrong?”

I was standing in the hallway by the storeroom.

He was leaning against the jamb, an expression of curiosity on his face.

We weren’t touching. We weren’t even close to touching.

“I—uh, I—” What was I doing there? I couldn’t remember.

“You knocked on the door,” he prodded. “Did you want something?”

The gears in my brain clicked back into place. “Coffee,” I said, grateful I didn’t have to tell him what I really wanted from him. “I’m putting up a new pot if you’re interested.”

“Great,” he said. “Thanks.” He leaned closer and met my eyes. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Just tired,” I said. “It’s been a long day.”

“It’s only four o’clock.”

“I was up most of the night with a ... household emergency.” Which was twice as much as I should have told him. “Give me five minutes and there will be coffee in the kitchen if you want it.”

Luke MacKenzie had been in Sugar Maple for less than twelve hours and I was already coming apart at the seams. Isadora was right. They all were. We had to get rid of him.

And the sooner, the better.

 

LUKE

 

Joe Randazzo from the County Clerk’s Office faxed me the signed paperwork, which I countersigned and faxed back to him.

It was official. I was now the temporary police chief (and the entire force) of Sugar Maple, Vermont. After more than two years of trying to escape Boston and start over somewhere else, Suzanne’s death had provided the way out. I liked to think she would have appreciated the irony even if I was having a tough time with it.

Chloe had provided me with the contact information for the knitters who had been in the shop the night Suzanne died and I started making calls.

“I can’t believe she’s dead,” the rocket scientist repeated for the third or fourth time. “She was the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen!”

The teacher from New Jersey said pretty much the same thing. “I can still see the way she looked when she was peeking in through the window. She was like a cross between a movie star and a supermodel!”

I left messages for the sisters from Pennsylvania.

There was no denying Suzanne had been one hell of a good-looking woman, but as smoking hot as she was, in Sugar Maple she blended into the crowd.

So far there had been no surprises. Influenced by too many margaritas and a bruised ego, Suzanne had made a bad decision and paid for it with her life. I had more questions to ask but I didn’t expect the answers to be any different. If the man who stood her up at the Inn had been a plumber and not a politician, I would have marked the case closed right now.

But the rules were different for politicians. Dan Sieverts and his group wanted to make sure the candidate’s name wouldn’t be dragged into the story. Montpelier wanted to make sure the lack of a police presence didn’t cloud the issue. Sugar Maple wanted it all to go away.

And I wanted to make sure an old friend got a fair shake.

Chloe was running some kind of knitting workshop up front so I decided to hang out in the storeroom and do a little web surfing. If she had anything to hide, she was doing it in plain sight because the storeroom where I had set up my laptop was packed floor to ceiling with file folders and banker’s boxes begging to be riffled.

I looked her up on Google instead.

There were one thousand seven hundred thirty-six references to Sticks & Strings in Sugar Maple and over two thousand for Chloe Hobbs. Her shop was a top link on websites and blogs from neighboring New Hampshire to Malaysia with all stops in between. Okay, so maybe it was like reading Sanskrit (apparently knitters had their own language), but I was able to translate enough to know Chloe’s shop was something special.

I flipped through screens of praise for the shop.