Carol looked thoughtful as she considered the list in Beth's hands. "Well, there is one person among the list who stands out the most as a potential suspect."
"Really?" I asked, my curiosity piqued despite my exhaustion. "Who?"
"Deva's dad, Robert," Carol said, exchanging a glance with Beth. "He came into town around the time the problems started, asked Deva for money, she said no, and then everything went downhill."
"Robert..." I tried to recall any information I might have heard about him. I didn't KNOW much about Deva's father, which was odd considering I had been a bridesmaid at her wedding. "What else do we know about him?"
"She doesn't talk about him much," Beth said, her expression troubled. "The thing I do know is that he's a warlock who wasted his entire inheritance. He got the money when Deva was a teen, abandoned her and her mother, and went to travel the world."
"Sounds like a real stand-up guy," I said sarcastically.
"Right? Anyway, he's definitely someone worth checking out," Carol said. “A man with that personality might feel like Deva owes him, and he definitely has the ability to curse her.”
"Great." I sighed, rubbing my temples. "I might be karma incarnate, but sometimes even I need more than just my karmic powers."
Carol smiled. “Like maybe the ability to take away sore muscles, headaches, and destroy the occasional unknown curser?”
I laughed. “Yeah, something just like that.”
"Actually," Beth said with a sly grin. "I've been working on a spell that could help us figure out who's tied to a curse. It's not perfect, but it might work well enough for this situation."
"Really?" I asked, my spirits lifting slightly. "That could be just what we need."
"Maybe Deva's dad is worth looking into first though," Beth suggested as we strolled into Private Psych.
The scent of freshly bloomed flowers filled the air, a sharp contrast to the smoky remains of Deva's café that still lingered in my nostrils. No way I was still smelling it, but my imagination was a little wild sometimes. "Ugh," I groaned, rubbing my temples as I plopped down on the comfy couch. "I don't know about you two, but it feels like every person we look into is somehow worse than the last."
"Tell me about it." Carol said, flopping down onto one of the plush office chairs. "It's like a parade of terrible people out there."
"Maybe they should start a club or something," I said, drumming my fingers on the armrests of my chair. "The League ofExtraordinarily Awful Individuals. They could have meetings where they discuss their favorite ways to make everyone around them miserable."
“That would certainly make this investigation a lot easier,” Beth muttered. “But all we have is a list of suspects and a possible spell to narrow them down.”
Carol leaned forward eagerly and stared pointedly at Beth. "What kind of spell are we talking about? A finding spell? A tracking one? Something that involves naked dancing?"
I laughed, before I remembered that Ihadparticipated in some naked dancing spells.
"Basically, it's a curse detection spell," Beth said, pulling a tattered notebook from her bag and flipping through the pages. "I've been tinkering with it for a while before this, just in case it was needed, but I hadn’t had a chance to try it out. I think it might work well with a large group of suspects. If all goes well, we should be able to tell who's tied to the curse."
"Are you sure it's safe? I mean, we don't want to accidentally make things worse for Deva."
"Of course not," Beth assured me. "There's always a risk when dealing with magic, but I promise you, I've done my homework on this one. It should be relatively low risk. At most, I think it could just not work for us."
"What about the other suspects?" I asked, feeling like a detective in one of those old black-and-white movies. "We can't just focus on Deva's dad."
"Good point," Carol said, flipping through her notebook. "There was this customer, Katie Myers, who Deva banned from the restaurant. Then there's also Deva's old neighbor."
"Tell me more about them." I leaned forward, eager to take my mind off my own exhaustion by focusing on someone else's drama.
Beth didn’t answer, just went and got her laptop and got to work, her fingers flying on the keyboard. Carol, however, had that sparkle in her eyes, the one that only small town gossip could bring.
"Katie Myers is an older lady who would come into the café every day and complain about everything, her coffee was too hot, her scone wasn't fresh enough, that kind of thing," Carol said, making a face. "Deva finally had enough and told her she wasn't welcome anymore. As for the neighbor, his name's Nick, and he had some issues with a tree in Deva's yard. Nick wanted Deva to cut down the tree because he thought it was a danger to his property if it fell. She refused, and during the last storm, the tree got hit by lightning and destroyed his backyard."
"Yikes." I winced, imagining the carnage. "I guess Nick had a point, huh?"
"Maybe," Carol said. "It doesn't change the fact that he's been cursing Deva out everywhere they run into each other ever since."
"Sounds like we've got ourselves a couple of prime suspects." I rubbed my hands together dramatically. "So, what's our next move?"
