“What did you see?”
“Do you recollect your purchases?”
“That’s a weird question. Are you doubting my memory?”
“Sorry, that came out wrong. Let me ask Trey Stone first.”
We had no privacy left anyway. The chair yoga ladies were already waiting outside the door.
While Ange took her students through seated cow, camel, and tree poses, I composed a message for the detective.
Everything I thought to have figured out – well, most of everything – hinged on his answer.
It came through while Ange guided her ladies through a final bit of meditation. Calm and peacefulness spread over me too.
The second her students were gone, I locked the library door and hung up a sign, “Back in 5.”
“You look like, well, not like the cat that got the cream, because the poor things then tend to get diarrhea, but something close. And not the Mona Lisa, because she’s a little creepy.”
I interrupted Ange before she meandered so far in her musings that she needed a map to get back on track. “I have a photo.”
“Of the body?”
“Of the letter opener. It’s been cleaned so there’s nothing gory to see.” I showed it to her. “You might have seen this in Cannon Hill.”
She scanned the letter opener, with its distinct handle. Then she described the shape in the air. “It was on display between a cocktail shaker and a silver-plated teapot when I got the napkin ring.”
“That’s what I thought. Therefore Candice couldn’t have taken it when she looked at it earlier.”
“That’s not proof that she didn’t come back later to steal it,” Ange pointed out.
“That’s true, but it’s another point in her favor.”
“I thought it’s already clear that she didn’t do it?”
“To us it is. But the police insist on more evidence than ‘I’m a witch, and the spells showed me that the suspect is innocent’.”
I received another message from the detective. “This is the important part,” I told Ange. “There were several sets of fingerprints on the letter opener, not only Candice’s. And a few were smudged, as if someone wearing gloves had touched it last.”
“Couldn’t they argue that someone also had been Candice?”
“How likely is it that you steal a letter opener and leave your fingerprints on it before you put on gloves to stab your victim with it?”
“Do you know who the killer is?”
“I do and I don’t.”
Loud knocks on the window reminded me that the avid readers of Willowmere desired to be let inside.
“I’ll explain tonight,” I promised.
“My place or theBlue Moon?”
“The latter. It’s not fair to expect Harper and Reina to neglect their business again.”
With any luck, Sam had completed his part by then. I was certain that proper science took time. I was equally certain that he’d do his best to speed the analysis up.
It would be nice to have a solution ready to try out on my coven before I approached the detective. So far, he’d been willing to play ball. I didn’t want to squander his goodwill by sending him on a wild goose chase that could damage his standing with his superiors.
