I almost hugged her when we rose. All that was left of the anger, pain, and humiliation Rick and she had caused me when my marriage imploded, was pity, and something akin to worry about her. I really had moved on. “Would you mind telling me where you’re staying?”
She gave me the address of her friends.
“It’s best if you don’t go out, or you might be pestered by people who’ve got nothing better to do,” I said. I didn’t think she was in danger, at least if I took the absence of the witchfire in connection with the idea as proof, but keeping a low profile was in her best interest.
She was almost out of the door, when I remembered to take everything a suspect said with a grain of salt. I concentrated on my witchy intuition to ask myself if she truly was innocent.
I didn’t much like the answer. My instinct told me that Candice hadn’t killed Tim. It also told me that she was hiding a secret from me, something to do with the case. Despite begging me for help.
Chapter 9
Mrs. Miniver and Mr. Chips ran in circles around us when we left the café. “Let’s take them for a walk,” Ange suggested. “There’s a bit of green space around the corner. It’ll do us good to clear our heads too.”
I agreed. The sense of unease about Candice’s honesty, or lack thereof, could be just as well be my gut reaction to the whole set-up. I was the ex-wife of her future husband, for goodness’ sake, of course there would be things she didn’t especially want to disclose to me.
The green space turned out to be a fenced area, labeled as a dog park. Mrs. Miniver and Mr. Chips tugged at their leashes to get to it. I was so busy watching them cross the road, that I almost overlooked a familiar person leaving a commercial building that divided its first floor between a therapist and a henna studio.
Ange recognized her before I did. “Linda incoming.”
I groaned. Linda Chiltern had been a thorn in my side ever since high school. Although she was two years above me, she’d done her best to fling barbs and insults at me. Only the fact that she was neitherclever enough nor well-liked enough to get others to join her in a merry round of Bex-bashing had saved me. That, and my coven.
Linda had quieted down to a certain extent, but she was still rich, spoilt, and craving attention. That’s what made it noteworthy that she pulled her cream wide-brimmed hat deeper, to cover more of her face, and ducked into the next available store which sold vinyl records.
“Weird,” Ange said.
“But in a good way, because it spares us her conversation.”
While the labradoodles played tug-of-war with a knotted rope, Ange and I rested on a bench and discussed our conversation with Candice.
We’d both come to the same conclusions. If there was anything to be done on our side, we had to look closely at the victim. That meant starting at the beginning, back in Willowmere. And there was no better place to do that than theBlue Moon Innwhere gossip flowed as freely as tap beer, if you knew how to turn it on.
When we returned, Ange and I parted ways until after dinner. She’d see if her husband as the first doctor at the scene could add anything of importance, and I needed to have a heart-to-heart with my familiar. If Cosmo had recovered from the shock of Aunt Violet’s duplicity.
Ms. Vine was still busy in the library as I let myself in. Her spectacles had slipped down her nose a little, and a stack of novels took up the space next to the coffee machine. She flicked through another book.
“Hello?” I called out.
She dropped the book. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you.”
I picked up the book for her. Its dust jacket needed cleaning. “I hope you weren’t too busy.”
“I enjoyed it.” She hesitated. “I took the liberty to hunt for more reading material for the care home.”
“Every steamy romance novel in our catalogue is already atSerenity Springs, or can be reserved,” I said, slightly taken aback. I’d become used to the fact that bare-chested cowboys, bodice rippers, and secret baby tropes were in high demand among the seniors. Good on them, though.
“A few of my quiz ladies have mentioned that they’ve run out of new books.”
“What did they expect? Most of the stock is from my aunt’s private collection or has been donated over the years. And I’ll stick to reinvesting most of the subscription fees in books for the children. Surely that’s common knowledge in town.”
“It is. That’s why I was taking the liberty to check in one of the secret rooms.”
I’d thought of “skipping a heartbeat” as a cliché. Now I felt it as a painful contraction in my chest.
“You see, your aunt showed me the spare key for the stock room with the unopened boxes for just such an occasion.”
My heart returned to its regular service. The secret lair continued to be secret. Also, I’d added strong protective spells a while ago, and it took witchy powers to be able to see the door, let alone open it.
She tapped the stack. “These are all books that haven’t been catalogued yet. None of them counts as immoral literature, but they should send the pulse aflutter among the care home residents.”
