Stirring the Plot Read online

  “Her what?”

  “Her psychic channels. They’re blocked because of all the anger she’s feeling. She has to solve the crime if she wants to get her powers back.”

  “Her powers.” My father huffed.

  Rhett said, “Cary, why not let Jenna tell us everything.”

  “Sure. Fine. Keep talking.”

  I ignored his dismissive tone and quickly summarized yesterday’s events: Aunt Vera and her friends finding Pearl dead, Cinnamon’s investigation, and my aunt’s meltdown after closing the shop. “Between you and me, I get the feeling Aunt Vera thinks Pearl might contact her from the beyond.”

  My father pushed his coffee and the muffin aside. I could see the muscle that held his jaw in place ticking. If only I could crawl inside his mind and see what he really wanted to say. What came out of his mouth was, “Jenna, I want you to put this worry from your mind. Your aunt will realize how inane this plan of attack is in a few hours, and she’ll cease and desist.”

  “Dad, I’ve never seen her so flummoxed.” I described the state of my aunt’s hair and the strained timbre of her voice. “It doesn’t help that I had that nightmare.”

  “About?” Rhett said.

  I felt my cheeks warm a second time. Not from anger, from embarrassment. I didn’t want him to think I was nuts. Even so, I recapped the dream as speedily as I could. Glinda, the monkeys, the castle, the gigantic bucket of hot water. When I was done, I mentally vowed for a second time: No more fudge at night. Ever.

  “Hot water spells trouble,” Rhett said.

  “Precisely.” I wanted to hug him for being so supportive. “Don’t you see, Dad? I have to help Aunt Vera get clear.”

  “Jenna, no.” My father spanked the table.

  Sound in the café stopped. Dead. People stared at us.

  More heat shot up my neck and into my cheeks. For all I knew, I had red blotches all over me. That was what happened when I couldn’t contain my emotions. Not pretty. I diverted my gaze from the onlookers to my cuticles. If only I had eyes in the sides of my head so I could see if they had stopped staring.

  My father, ignorant of the onlookers’ rapt attention, continued his tirade. “I tolerated when you got involved after Desiree died.” Desiree, my college roommate and popular celebrity chef, had been strangled and buried beneath the sand. “I kept quiet when you investigated after that Mumford woman died.” The owner of Mum’s the Word Diner, a competitor in the Grill Fest a month ago, was murdered in the alley right outside our café. “But this has got to end. You are not a crusader.”

  “I’m not the one investigating. Aunt Vera is.”

  “You just said you needed to help her get clear, did you not?”

  I hated that he had such a keen memory.

  “You’ll get involved,” he went on. “You can’t help yourself. You’re so . . . so—”

  “I’m her niece,” I snapped, then bit my lip. Don’t blow your top. Don’t, don’t, don’t cycled like a mantra through my mind. After a long moment, I said, “Family means everything to me.”

  “Your aunt should not get involved. I’ll tell her so.”

  I guffawed. Truly. A big walloping laugh erupted from my belly. “Yeah, Dad, like you can tell her anything. She’s as bullheaded as you are.”

  “I am not—” My father chuffed like a tiger. He glowered at Rhett. “Care to chime in?”

  Rhett’s mouth quirked up on one side. “And miss the fun?” He wagged his head. “Not on a bet.” He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “Don’t mind me. I’d pay handsomely for a ringside seat to this debate.”

  Silence fell between my father and me. Well, actually, throughout the café. I could hear the old clock behind the counter ticking. Swell.

  After a minute, my father mirrored Rhett’s folded-arm pose, and he smiled. I thought I’d melt in my chair. Was his beef with me defused? I glanced at Rhett and had to curb the urge to throw my arms around him and plant a full-blown kiss of thanks on his lips. Not here. Not now. Later, maybe.

  Then, out of nowhere, the worry I had suffered earlier resurfaced. I put words to my concern. “About Pearl’s death . . . What if . . .” I placed both hands, palms down, on the table. “What if by moving back to Crystal Cove, I have opened the floodgates to bad karma?”

  “Huh?” my father muttered.

  “Dad, what if it’s my fault?”

  His eyes widened. He knew I was serious. “Sweetheart, evil exists everywhere. Our small town is not exempt.” Working for the FBI, he knew better than most about evil. I didn’t know the entirety of what role he had played during his stint there, but I was sure he had seen horrible things.

  “But murder with this kind of frequency?” I argued. “I came back, and wham, someone died followed by someone else and, now, Dr. Thornton.”

  Rhett leaned forward and ran a finger along my forearm. “Jenna, maybe it’s your fate to have returned so you could help the families.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe, because of your own trauma, you have a gift to help them deal with theirs.”

  “I’m not a counselor.”

  “I’m not saying you are. But perhaps you know or suspect the truth before the police do.”

  “Are you saying I have some kind of magical power?”

  He nodded. “Crystal Cove, like much of the coast of California, bears mystical properties. Perhaps you pick up on the supernatural, like your aunt.”

  “Don’t encourage her,” my father muttered and pulled the plate holding the muffin toward him. He peeled off the muffin’s wrapper, cut the muffin in half, and picked up one section. He pushed the remainder toward me. “Eat.”

  I took a bite. The flavor was rich with bits of banana. I followed with a sip of coffee.

  “But it’s true, Cary,” Rhett said. “Crystal Cove is special, and you know it.”

  “So what if it is?” my father replied.

  I nearly choked on the coffee. “Dad, did you just imply that it’s true?”

  “No, I said—”

  “You do not believe in ESP,” I cut in. “You think tarot cards are bunk. In fact, you think everything Aunt Vera says about the future is baloney.”

  He shot a finger at me. “I would never admit this to my sister, and you’d better keep your pretty mouth shut”—a faint smile graced his lips; a twinkle sparkled in his eyes—“but there are times I’ve had a sense of something metaphysical going on here.”

  “No way.”

  “I have, too,” Rhett said.

  I gazed between the two men in my life, not shocked that they were agreeing, but stunned that they would admit this . . . belief . . . to me.

  “Mind you, I’m rational,” my father said.

  “Understatement of the century,” I quipped.

  “I always look for the reasonable explanation.”

  “As do I,” Rhett said.

  “Me, too,” I added. “I’m extremely levelheaded.” I might be an artist, but I also see things in black and white. It’s the curse of a Gemini. Right brain, left brain, yada yada. “But there are times—”

  A hand gripped me from behind. I spun in my chair, expecting to see someone I knew. I shrieked when I found myself staring into the eyes of a giant Casper the Friendly Ghost. I recoiled and slid my chair backward. Into Rhett. He steadied me by placing his hands on my hips. I felt another flush of heat course through me, not due to contact with him, although that was a given, but because he was laughing louder than anybody else in the café.

  Yes, they were all laughing. Let’s hear it for Jenna the Spectacle.

  “Can it,” I muttered.

  “So much for being levelheaded,” he gibed.

  I wrenched from his grip and glowered at the ghost. “You have a lot of nerve scaring me like that. Who are you?”

  “Min
e to know,” the ghost said, but I recognized the voice. It was the toy shop owner, a semi-infantile thirty-something with cherub cheeks.

  I shook a finger. “You could have given me a—” I sucked in air as I flashed on Pearl, fooling around at the faire the day before, pretending to have a heart attack. Had her performance given the murderer the idea to poison her?

  Chapter 8

  MY MIDMORNING BREAK with my father and Rhett did nothing to quell my worry. I returned to the shop, still wondering what to do about my aunt. As I arrived at Fisherman’s Village, I spotted Pepper Pritchett riding up on her bicycle. Wearing a long black sweater and black scarf that caught the wind, she looked for all intents and purposes like the nasty woman who hated Toto in The Wizard of Oz. She parked her bicycle, an old relic like the one I had inherited from my mother, complete with the basket and bell, in the stand outside Beaders of Paradise. Her shop would have been a darling place to browse, if not for its acerbic owner. Pepper was a wizard at beading and teaching beading; she lacked something in the personality department. She swooped off the bicycle, cinched the belt of her sweater, and gazed over her shoulder at me. If looks could kill. What had I done this time? Pepper didn’t like my family for a variety of age-old reasons. I was doing my best to win her over, but it was hard being nice to someone so downright nasty.

  I waved and smiled while flashing on last night’s nightmare. In the dream, I was Glinda. Did I, as Rhett intimated at breakfast, have powers that I hadn’t yet realized? Could I utter a chant, albeit a fake chant, that would change Pepper’s demeanor? It was worth a shot.

  Be nice, be nice, be nice, I whispered while clicking my heels—okay, I was trying to double-channel Glinda and Dorothy, and okay, flip-flops were definitely not as effective as ruby slippers—but I swear Pepper smiled at me. Next on my to-do list was making that amulet that Bailey had suggested with the Be Nice potion. Maybe I could conjure up some homemade candy to sweeten the deal. What was Pepper’s favorite? Did she even eat candy, or did her diet consist solely of lemons and limes?

  I snickered under my breath and headed toward The Cookbook Nook. Before entering the shop, I caught sight of another bicyclist. Cinnamon Pritchett, dressed in her brown uniform with her broad-brimmed hat hanging by a chin strap over her shoulders, hopped off her state-of-the-art mountain bike, removed her helmet, looped it over the handlebars, and slotted her bike next to her mother’s. However, instead of entering her mother’s shop, she marched toward the Nook Café.

  Desperate for an update, I rushed toward her. “Cinnamon, wait up.” If she had solved the mystery of Pearl’s murder, my aunt could give up her quest and move forward with her life. I caught up to Cinnamon near the entrance to the café. The aroma of freshly baked biscuits wafted out the door. How I adored Katie’s biscuits. Lots of butter. Maybe a drizzle of honey. My stomach grumbled. Half of a banana muffin was not going to suffice until lunch.

  Cinnamon and I exchanged pleasantries. Yes, the day was gorgeous and the weather crisp. But then I got right to the point. I knew how much Cinnamon appreciated directness.

  “How’s the investigation going?” I asked.

  “It’s moving along.”

  “Did you arrest Trisha Thornton?”

  “I’ve released her.”

  “She’s not guilty? I could have sworn she was lying. Does she have an alibi?”

  Cinnamon cocked her head.

  “C’mon,” I said. “Dr. Thornton—Pearl—was my therapist.”

  “Why do you go to a therapist?”

  “I’ll give you a dozen reasons, starting with my husband’s suicide and financial duplicity.”

  “I’m sorry. That was thoughtless of me.”

  “Lots of people see therapists. It’s almost chic to go. Why, I’ll bet some cops, er, policemen, see shrinks.” I winked. “But back to Trisha. Her alibi seemed weak.”

  “It turns out it was stronger than imagined. She went to her boyfriend’s place, and then she went to UC Santa Cruz. She was at school, from ten P.M. until one A.M., conducting a laboratory experiment on rats looking for the effects of diabetes.”

  “She can do that?”

  “She’s a chemist.”

  “Why wouldn’t she have told you where she was at the start?”

  “She was alone at the lab. No witnesses.” Cinnamon drew in a breath and exhaled. “To make things worse, she’s on probation. Revealing her indiscretion—”

  “You mean trespassing.”

  “Revealing her whereabouts could get her expelled for good.”

  I shifted feet. “I heard she was taking a year off between college and grad school.”

  “Nope. She started graduate school, but she’s on probation for cheating on a test.”

  “So she’s a cheater.”

  Cinnamon gave me a wry look.

  I ignored it. “Can you tell me what the time of death was?”

  “The coroner figures between ten and midnight.”

  At the exact time Trisha claimed to be at the lab. How convenient.

  “Does Trisha inherit her mother’s estate?” I asked.

  “She does.”

  “Including her father’s rock collection?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wow! That has to be worth millions upon millions. Isn’t that a huge motive for murder?”

  “It would be, except the lawyer for the estate assures me Trisha will have to rely on a modest allowance until she’s thirty-five. She won’t be able to touch the bulk of the estate because of a stipulation in the trust. That’s years away.”

  “If you rule her out, who else is there?” I asked. “Emma Wright? According to Trisha, Emma was the last to see Pearl alive. Did you track her down?”

  “That’s why I’m here. I went looking for her but couldn’t find her.”

  “She’s missing?”

  “Not exactly. I got in touch with her husband, Edward. He was frantic. He hadn’t seen or heard from her since Tuesday night.”

  “Not since the murder?”

  “Right. He called everyone he knew. No one had seen her. But then I got a tip. Emma is here dining in the café.”

  “Here? Who told you?”

  Cinnamon raised an eyebrow. As if, her gaze said. I wasn’t dense. I could figure it out. Her mother, Pepper, must have caught sight of Emma and contacted Cinnamon, hence the two riding into Fisherman’s Village on bicycles at the same time. Cinnamon pressed past me.

  “Wait,” I said. “You don’t want to question her in public, do you? I mean, wouldn’t someplace like my office be a better choice?” Okay, it wasn’t much of an office. It shared space with the stockroom. A desk, chair, file cabinet, and computer. What more did we need? “It’s cramped, but it serves its purpose.”

  “Good idea.”

  I’m not typically an eavesdropper, but after showing Cinnamon and Emma to the stockroom—Emma came willingly, though she looked nervous—I hovered halfway between the sales counter and the archway leading to the stockroom.

  Bailey sneaked up and said, “What’re you doing?”

  I hushed her and motioned for her to tend to customers. Three were perusing the Halloween section.

  “Bossy,” she muttered.

  “Curious.” I waved her away and craned an ear toward the stockroom. Luckily, Cinnamon wasn’t whispering. Neither was Emma. She sobbed when she heard that Pearl was dead. She sobbed harder when she was informed that someone had seen her having a private conversation with the doctor.

  After calming Emma down, Cinnamon said, “Where have you been since you left the doctor’s house?”

  “At ten P.M., I returned to work and discovered a pet missing from its confine. Mrs. Hammerstead’s Havanese. The dog’s a sneaky little thing. He can open any cage. I didn’t want to tell my boss. I might lose my job. I spent two hours looking for him. When I found him, aroun
d midnight, I took him back to the clinic.”

  “And then you went home?”

  “No. My husband hates when I disturb his sleep, so”—Emma hesitated—“I walked.”

  “Why?”

  “I needed time to—” She slurped back something that sounded like tears.

  “Time to what?”

  “Think.”

  “About?”

  “Something.” Emma’s voice dropped to a whisper.

  I inched closer. Why was she being so evasive?

  “Where did you walk?”

  “Anywhere. Everywhere. The beach. The road. I browsed shop windows.”

  “All night?”

  “Yes.”

  We had a few homeless people in Crystal Cove. The weather was moderate, which made it an ideal place to tuck in for the night. But Emma had a house. And a husband. What had stirred her so much that she walked all night? Had she killed Pearl? Was she trying to fashion an alibi?

  “You didn’t go home in the morning,” Cinnamon said.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I . . .” Emma clicked her tongue. “I drove up to see my mother in Santa Cruz.”

  “Your husband said he called her. She hadn’t seen you.”

  “She was lying. She knew I . . . I needed time.” More slurping.

  “Here’s a tissue.” I heard Cinnamon pull a Kleenex from a box. Emma blew her nose. “Let’s go back to your last minutes at Dr. Thornton’s home. Did you and the doctor argue?”

  “What? No.” Emma sniffed. “Look, she was alive when I left.”

  “I have something to show you. Do you recognize this?”

  Emma gasped. I ached to peek through the break in the drapes and see what Cinnamon was holding, but I held back.

  “Is this your wedding ring?” Cinnamon asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “There’s an inscription and the date of your wedding inside. Care to revise your statement?”

  Emma started crying again. “Yes, it’s mine. Where did you find it?”

  “I think you know,” Cinnamon said, revealing nothing, leaving me hanging. “We wondered why Dr. Thornton was sprawled across the fire pit. That prompted me to do a search of the ashes. My people found your ring.”