Beguiled Read online

  He turned to us, his grin the very definition of mischief. “Sorry.”

  I laughed softly. “No, you’re not.”

  The shrug he offered held no regrets. He handed me a file.

  “What’s this?”

  “My investigation thus far.”

  Annette bounced up to get a look. “Into Ruthie’s case?”

  He nodded, his mischievous expression fading.

  I opened the file and laid it on the island. It held his notes and little else. “This isn’t a lot to go on.”

  He scrubbed his stubble with one hand in frustration. “Because I don’t have a lot.”

  Gigi scooted in for a closer look, too, as the chief wrapped an arm around her. “Houston, it’s not your fault. You can’t possibly blame yourself.”

  “If anyone’s to blame, it’s me,” Roane said, coming in from the back door. Fully clothed. And very wet. He smelled like pine and earth and rain. “I should’ve figured it out sooner.”

  “Nonsense. The only person to blame is the person who did it.”

  He lifted a shoulder, unconvinced, and nodded toward Gigi’s guest. “Hi, Serinda.”

  “Mr. Wildes,” she said, an appreciative slant to her mouth. It seemed everyone had a bit of a crush on the man.

  I’d hoped for a different state of dress—or undress—when he came back from his commune with nature, but the fact that his wet shirt clung to every muscle he had sent my pulse into overdrive.

  I filled my lungs and refocused on the issue at hand. “It had to be someone who knew Gigi well enough to be familiar with her habits. They had to know she ate that particular soup regularly.”

  “Maybe.” He ran a hand through his wet hair, then shook it out, and I tried not to drool.

  “Anything?” the chief asked him.

  “Nothing.” After hopping onto the counter, he lifted a booted foot into the sink to rinse off a thick layer of mud.

  “Roane,” Gigi said, appalled.

  “Sorry, Ruthie.” He started to get down. “I’ll rinse off outside.”

  “What? No. Don’t you dare.” When he questioned her with a perfectly arched brow, she explained. “I don’t care about the mud, sweetheart. I care about the fact that you’ve been out in this all night.” She hurried to the laundry room and came back with a towel, which she wrapped around his shoulders. Then she rubbed those shoulders. The wide ones covered in muscles that flowed and ebbed with each movement.

  Annette sighed aloud.

  When the chief cleared his throat rather loudly, Gigi blushed and gestured me over. “Maybe you should do this part.”

  I stepped closer and took the towel to dry his hair. I squeezed a few of the shoulder-length locks, then found a dry corner and patted his face with it. He watched me from underneath lashes spiked and dark with wetness.

  “Nothing?” I asked him.

  “No one has entered or exited this house via the front or back doors besides us. And your dads, but I hardly think they put nitroglycerin in the flour canister.”

  “But it obviously rained last night,” I said to him, gesturing toward his wet T-shirt and kilt. “Maybe it washed the scent away.”

  He shook his head. “I figured that out long before the rain.”

  “Then what were you doing all night?”

  “Why? Were you worried about me, Ms. Dayne?”

  It was the way he said my name that caused a ripple of desire to reverberate out from my core and lace along my skin. In my flustered state, I dropped the towel, and I gave him a half-hearted “oops” as I bent to retrieve it.

  “Let me help you with that,” Annette said, rushing over to help me with that.

  We both picked it up and shamelessly tried for a peek under the kilt, since he had one foot in the sink and the other hanging over the edge of the counter. We rose slowly from the ground to give ourselves more time, but it was too dark. The goods were hidden by the shady physics of electromagnetic radiation and the visible spectrum of light disbursement. Damned shadows.

  “So, nothing else of note?” the chief asked, and I could hear the humor in his voice.

  “No.” Roane finished with the first boot and tugged the towel out of our death grips to pat it dry. “Nothing directly connected to the explosion.” He put his other foot in the sink and rinsed it off, too.

  We immediately saw another opportunity but had nothing else to drop. Our gazes darted around the room, panic setting in. We only had so much time, but everything was either breakable or priceless, as Gigi had a few heirlooms here and there.

  Annette pointed to the canister—the canister filled with nitroglycerin.

  I gaped at her.

  She winced, remembering the deadly substance inside, and offered me a sheepish grimace.

  Before we could come up with a better plan, he finished and hopped off the counter, only in a very manly way, each movement somehow filled with sexual innuendo. Either that or I was projecting again.

  “Wait,” I said, when his words sank in. “Not directly connected to the explosion? So, then indirectly connected?”

  He worked his jaw in thought as he strolled to the laundry room and tossed the towel into a basket. “I don’t know. I’m still looking into it.”

  “Keep me in the loop,” the chief said.

  Roane nodded. “Back to Ruthie, what’s the plan? How are we going to figure out who’s doing this?”

  Annette grabbed her notebook and found a list she’d made about all of the oddities of the case. “With everything that we know, it would have to be another witch, right?”

  “Not necessarily,” the chief said. “Had you been sick all day?”

  “Not just that day. I’d been sick for a while. I didn’t make the connection until… well, until that day. When I tasted the belladonna. But the more I think about it… it would take a pretty big dose to actually kill me, one that would be difficult to conceal. However, if I’d been receiving small doses for some time, it wouldn’t take as much to kill me.”

  “And, of course, the mushrooms would’ve given it that extra kick,” I said. “Serinda, no one was closer to her than the coven. Can you think of anyone who would’ve wanted to do her harm?”

  “No.” She crossed her arms in thought. “I can’t imagine…”

  “I should have picked up on the scent,” Roane said. “Especially if it’d been going on for a while. I don’t understand how I didn’t.”

  “That’s just it.” I rubbed my temple. “How could someone—anyone—get past both you and Percy? It makes no sense.”

  “Unless…” Gigi looked up at the ceiling, aka her ex, and glared. “Unless it was Percy all along. He’s been so bitter since that whole burning-him-alive thing.”

  Sometime in the sixties, Percy had gotten into dark magic the way addicts get into heroin. He couldn’t stop and had begged Gigi to kill him. To put him out of his misery so he could do no more harm. She’d had to recruit her entire coven to perform the task. They’d burned him alive with a magical fire. But he’d never seemed bitter to me in the entire several days that I’d known him.

  “Maybe you’ll find something when you talk to the coven, Sarru.”

  “Defiance.”

  “You need to ask them what they’re searching for. Compel them to open up.”

  “Wait, can I do that?”

  “From what I understand,” she said, giving Gigi a sideways glance, “you almost did last night.”

  “I’m sorry, Gigi.”

  “It’s okay. I had no idea you could do that. I only told Serinda because it could work in our favor.”

  “Exactly,” Serinda said. “Anyone who’s just committed murder is going to be searching for something, right? They’re going to want something. That’s your in. Once you get in, you can get a read.”

  I decided to broach the subject again. “I hate to state the obvious, Gigi, but you’re searching for something.” When she didn’t discourage me, I continued. “You’re searching for your killer.”
r />   “Yes,” she said, sinking into a chair and folding her hands in her lap.

  The chief sat beside her. “Are you telling me Daffodil could see who killed you simply by looking?”

  She lifted a shoulder. “It’s possible.”

  “Then what’s the hold-up, Ruthie? Let her inside.”

  “Because that’s not my most sought-after desire, and there are simply some things my granddaughter does not need to know.”

  He sat back, astonished. “Ruthie Goode.”

  “Georgiana Bishop,” I corrected. “And it’s not a for-sure thing, Chief. Even if she let me in, it might not work. I’m still very new to this, and most people are searching for something known. A lost ring or a lost loved one. Something they once had. Gigi has no idea who did this, so it may not work either way.”

  He bit down, unconvinced, but he dropped it. I had a feeling Gigi would hear more on the subject later. She lifted her cup and took a sip of what had to be very cold coffee.

  Then it hit me. The truth. The answer to everything. “It’s Mr. Shoemaker! Why didn’t I see it before?”

  Gigi choked, her delicate cough so unlike my chainsaw imitation earlier. When she regained her composure, she dabbed a napkin at the corners of her mouth and insisted, “Mr. Shoemaker did not kill me.”

  “Okay, but who’s to say he didn’t try to blow us up?” I shook a fist in the direction of his house.

  “Mr. Shoemaker did not try to blow us up.”

  She was not listening. “Gigi, he hates me.”

  Annette pointed and nodded. “He really does.”

  “He does not hate you, Defiance.”

  “The seventeen petitions he’s filed with the city would argue otherwise.”

  “He’s filed two petitions, and that does not mean he hates you.”

  “Seventeen. Two. Either way, he wants my head on a platter.”

  “He does not want your head on a platter.”

  I glared at his house. Metaphorically. It helped. “Thank the ghost of Marie Antionette beheadings are illegal.”

  Serinda’s phone dinged. “Okay, it’s all set. The coven will be here this afternoon, if that’s good for you, Sarru.”

  “Defiance. And that’s perfect.”

  “Oh!” Annette said, squirming in her chair. “I have a list of questions for the interviews.”

  I walked over, read a couple, then asked, “Annette, what does nail care have to do with my grandmother’s murder?”

  “They have amazing nails,” she said, her defenses rising. “I just want to know who does them.” She glanced at the oven. “And you need to call your dads. Tell them what happened. They’ll never forgive you for not calling them immediately as it is.”

  She had a point. The fact that she was changing the subject didn’t negate that.

  I picked up my phone just as someone knocked on the front door.

  “Parris and Harris,” Roane said, heading toward the stairs that led to his apartment.

  I understood. They were a lot, and I’d only known them a few days. I watched him descend the stairs, the view mouthwatering, then looked at Gigi. “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “Let’s introduce you.”

  “Now?” she asked, a flash of panic in her eyes.

  “No time like the present,” Serinda said.

  Annette nodded. “That is how the saying goes. You can do it, Gigi,” she said, trying the title out. “We’re right here to back you up.”

  Gigi tucked a lock of black hair behind her ear. “All right, then.”

  Two things rushed over my skin at that moment—excitement and dread. What if it didn’t work? What if they recognized her? What would Gigi do then? Hide in the basement for the rest of her life?

  No. It would work. It had to.

  I led the way to the front door. The fact that not one, not two, but four people were there to greet the Hamptons might have been overkill, but desperate times.

  The minute I opened the door, Ink darted inside, followed by the adorable little blond.

  Both Parris and Harris looked startled, but I couldn’t tell if it was due to the cat or the kid. Parris had seen the light from my spell earlier. There were only a couple of explanations for that and, looking at her over-processed ’do and far too many dives under the scalpel, I was leaning toward a mental illness of some kind. But the odds of her being able to see the departed were still slim.

  I beamed at them. “Hey, guys.”

  Harris spoke first. “Hi, Defiance. And… everyone.” The rain was wreaking havoc on his short muddy curls.

  Parris followed up with a hesitant, “We just wanted to check on you after what happened. Is everyone okay?”

  “Please come in out of the cold.” I opened the door wider. “We’re fine, but there’s someone I want you to meet.”

  “Oh?” They stepped inside.

  I closed the door, then took Gigi’s hand. “Georgiana, this is Parris and Harris Hampton. Our neighbors. On either side. It’s a long story.”

  “It’s nice to meet you,” she said, holding out a hand.

  They both stood blinking at her before Harris came to his senses. “Georgiana?” he asked, taking her hand.

  “Bishop,” she added with a nod. “Ruthie was my twin sister.”

  “Twin sister?” Parris said far too loudly. Her voice echoed off the walls. She cleared her throat and started over. “I’m sorry, did you say twin sister?”

  “Yes,” Serinda said, a challenge in her voice. The muscles on her face were drawn, and I got the distinct impression she didn’t think much of the woman. “From Nantucket.”

  Parris snapped out of her stupor and took Gigi’s hand. “Of course. The resemblance is uncanny. It’s just, Ruthie never spoke about you.”

  “Yes, well, we grew apart.” Very apart. “We weren’t close for many years. Not until the end.”

  “I’m glad you two reunited.” She held Gigi’s hand in both of hers. “Ruthie was such an inspiration.”

  Gigi graced the woman with her best congenial smile and took back her hand. “In what way?”

  “Well,” she said, struggling for an answer, “in an inspirational way. The whole town loved her. Will you be living here, then? With Defiance?”

  “Oh, goodness, no. Percy belongs to Defiance. Ruthie wanted her to have it. I’m just staying here until I find my own place.”

  I glanced at her in surprise. “Georgiana, you can stay here for as long as you want.”

  “Thank you, dear, but I think I should get my own place.”

  “Will you be keeping him, then?” Parris asked me. “Percival?”

  Gigi was serious. I could tell. Would she really move out of her home?

  “You are staying, right?” Parris asked. “I know you were entertaining the idea of returning to Arizona.”

  I refocused on her. “Yes, I’m staying for now.”

  “Oh, good,” she said, seeming relieved. “More girls’ nights.”

  “Exactly.”

  “We won’t keep you,” Harris said, backing toward the door. “It was very nice to meet you, Georgiana. Nice seeing you, girls. Chief.” He gave a quick wave before heading out.

  Parris couldn’t seem to tear her gaze off Gigi and probably would’ve stood there gawking all day if Harris hadn’t pulled her out the door.

  “Bye, guys,” she said, stumbling behind him. “Girls’ night soon?”

  “Absolutely,” Annette said, closing the door. Once it clicked shut, she turned back to us, her turquoise glasses glistening in the low light. “Do you think they bought it?”

  Serinda tapped an index finger over her lips in thought. “I wouldn’t bet my life on it, but yeah. I think they bought it.” She looked at Gigi askance.

  Gigi, in turn, looked up at the chief. “You’re more adept at these things with all of your training in interrogation. Did they buy it?”

  “It’s hard to say. Their nonverbals were all over the place.”

  Annette r
olled her eyes. “I hate it when people can’t keep their nonverbals in check.”

  Seven

  You know you drink too much coffee if:

  You run twenty miles on the treadmill

  before you realize it’s not plugged in.

  —Meme

  Serinda gave me access to the coven’s private group pages before leaving, so I went upstairs to get to know the members a little better. To prepare for our meeting. And mostly to check out the more volatile members. There was one in every group. Sometimes more.

  I propped up my pillows, sat on my bed, and opened my laptop, checking out the main group page first and fighting the urge to go to the attic. Why had I woken up there?

  I recognized several members, having just met them a couple days prior. Thankfully, I would now be able to put names to the faces. Or at least try my best. The luncheon was all a blur at this point.

  I read through about a year’s worth of posts. It was an active group, much like my other support group: My Ex is an Ass Anonymous. Most of the posts were about the daily life of a witch. Meditations and recipes and spells. Of the three male witches in the group, only one was super active online, a twenty-something named Theo. I remembered meeting him at the luncheon, so he was a member of the inner circle.

  The Cove was for the thirteen members of the inner circle only, which was odd because counting me, there were sixteen people in the group. Maybe there were alternates? Admins?

  After going back about a year and getting to know many of the more active members, I focused more on Gigi. Her posts were as elegant as she was. Even when she had to write something a little more admonishing, she did it with style. Gentle yet assertive. That was Gigi, all right.

  Hearing footsteps, I looked up to see Roane headed my way. I straightened and waited, but he only nodded a greeting, propped up the other two pillows against the headboard, and sat on the bed next to me. He crossed his ankles, opened his laptop too, and went to work. Like we did this every day. Like we were a real couple just living our lives, apart but never far away from each other. It was comfortable with him. As much as I wanted to reach over and cuddle, just sitting there made me feel warm and safe and content.