Part of me wanted to stay for that, but if I delayed too much longer, I’d miss my chance to talk to the brewers. I fired off a quick text to Gideon to let him know I was on my way, then rushed to get ready.
All the while, I couldn’t quit thinking about what we’d found. Elwood called our results interesting, but I called them a magical smoking gun.
The one out-of-town application hadn’t been tampered with, and neither had Roy’s. But every other local competitor had been hexed, one way or another, and all by the same hex maker.Malcolm’s submission hadn’t even been presented to the judges. And it looked like Tessa had only won third because someone had to, and her flat ale was apparently less offensive to the judges than Ivan’s sour lager.
There was only one conclusion: Roy had used hexes to eliminate all the competitors he’d known about.
All we needed to do now was find the proof.
Chapter Ten
Everyone Was Acting Suspicious
Gideon
I caught Roy first, which wasn’t difficult because Roy was the winner, which made him a very popular guy. People were orbiting him. I waited until the orbit thinned, then stepped in.
“Congratulations again,” I said.
He turned, and the smile that came up was genuine in the way his earlier ones hadn’t been. Whatever complicated thing was running under the surface, he actually liked me. That was useful. “Gideon. Good to see you. How’s my ale selling?”
“Really well, Roy. I’ll need another keg soon.” I accepted his handshake. He had the grip of a man who’d spent forty years lifting things. “Your red came out beautifully. The malt balance was exactly right.”
He looked both pleased and surprised. “You tried it?”
“I try everything that I serve in my pub,” I said easily. “Occupational habit. I’ve been meaning to ask, did anythingstrike you as unusual over the past few days? Leading up to the judging?”
I looked over his shoulder at the wall to see Eugene creeping along the baseboard’s shadow, magnifying glass at the ready.
He blinked. “Unusual how?”
“Anything with your entry. Storage, transport. Anyone handling your growler who shouldn’t have.”
The calculation that moved behind his eyes was brief but real. He covered it smoothly. “No, nothing like that. Why?”
“We had a small issue with one of the other entries,” I said. Vague. True enough. “I’m just making sure no one else was affected.”
“Which entry?”
“I’d rather not say until I know more.” I watched him. “Is there anything you want to tell me, Roy?”
Something shifted in his face—not guilt exactly, but the weight of a decision being made in real time.
“No,” he said. “Nothing comes to mind.”
He held my gaze when he said it, which meant he was either telling the truth or he’d had a lot of practice. Too bad I didn’t have Az here to tell me.
“All right.” I stepped back. “Enjoy the rest of the festival.”
Tessa was easier. She had none of Roy’s layers, or if she did, she hid them somewhere I couldn’t immediately access. She answered my questions with the same directness she’d shown on the panel. No, there hadn’t been anything unusual other than the judges saying her brew was flat, but she was a novice, so she figured she’d done something to cause that. She’d transported the growler herself and hadn’t let it out of her sight until the drop-off.
She paused at the end, though. “Is everything all right? With the festival, I mean.”
“Everything is fine,” I said. “Just being thorough.”
She looked at me for a moment with the assessing gaze of a woman who was used to checking whether things were true before committing to them. Then she nodded, apparently satisfied.
Sandy found me on the way out of the room.
