Wardens of Wisteria (Wisteria Witches Mysteries - Daybreak Book 1) Read online

  Bentley came out of his daze. He picked up where he’d left off, saying, “You will be on the Greyson case, as my partner.”

  “Your partner?”

  Now I understood what he’d meant about us working together for a change. He’d been trying to get me on board. Funny how it had come across as an insult. Was I oversensitive, or was he just bad at asking for help?

  I clarified. “Are you asking me to play detective with you, Bentley?”

  He winced again.

  “I mean be a detective,” I said quickly. “Not play detective. I’ll take it seriously. I promise.” I touched my collarbone. “Zara tries to be a good detective!”

  His expression remained doubtful. “I’ll believe that when I see it.” He gestured toward the exit. “We’ll head over to the crime scene now, where you can do some of your ghost business.”

  “Let me say goodbye to my daughter first. I can’t just ditch her here. What kind of mother do you take me for?”

  Gruffly, he said, “I’ll be waiting in my car.” He ducked his head as he glanced up at the atrium’s high ceiling. “This place gives me the creeps.”

  I patted him lightly on the shoulder. “Yes, dear. Let’s leave the scary museum with the bright lights and the priceless emeralds, and go visit the bloody crime scene of a recent decapitation. That’ll be much less creepy.”

  He shrugged off my hand and headed for the exit.

  Chapter 6

  On Beacon Street, crime scene vehicles were taking up all of the street parking in front of the Greyson residence.

  Bentley rolled past slowly and parked the car at the end of the block.

  He turned off the engine but didn’t move to step out right away. I could hear him breathing. With the air conditioning off, the car immediately started heating up under the bright sun.

  “We have a mixed crew working the investigation,” he said in a neutral tone. “A few of them are in the know, like us, but the majority of the technicians haven’t been made aware of any supernatural elements. Zara, what I’m trying to say is I’d prefer that you keep a low profile in there.”

  “A low profile? Darn. There goes my plan to make a grand entrance.”

  He didn’t ask me to elaborate, but I did anyway.

  “I was planning to fly in on a broomstick, shooting blue fireballs from my hands.”

  He kept staring straight ahead out of the window.

  I followed his gaze. There was nothing of note on the street, other than rubberneckers trying to get a glimpse of what was happening behind the crime scene tape.

  After a moment, he spoke in a soft voice. “I remember driving in that old car with you.”

  “The old car?” My car was old, but he hadn’t been inside it, so he must have been talking about our car chase at Castle Wyvern.

  Bentley rubbed his forehead with one tanned hand. “Zara, I don’t know which of my memories are real.” He sounded exhausted, beaten.

  “But you do remember driving in the convertible Cadillac?”

  “Was it a Cadillac?” He massaged one eyebrow and then the other. “Who’s Lucille?”

  “The car!” I exclaimed. “The Cadillac was named Lucille. We borrowed it from my buddy, Nash.”

  “Yes.” His voice didn’t sound so beaten now. “We were chasing someone.”

  “A genie,” I said, my mouth tasting sour. “There was a nasty ol’ genie who took someone hostage. He kidnapped a woman with black hair.”

  “A woman with black hair? I remember her now.” Bentley dropped his hand to his lap. “She was someone we both knew.”

  “That’s right.” The woman with the black hair was my mother. He’d been involved with her, but her mind-wipe glamour was still in effect.

  He turned to me slowly and then startled, as though he hadn’t expected to find me in the passenger seat.

  “Your clothes,” he said, blinking rapidly.

  I reached down and smoothed the slim pencil skirt of my suit. Bentley had noticed I wasn’t in my usual colorful attire. Earlier that morning, I’d consulted my closet with an outfit-picking spell, as I usually did. My closet had suggested the conservative gray suit that I only wore for job interviews. The wool was lightweight, but I’d still found it an odd choice for such a warm summer day. I’d taken my closet’s advice anyway, since my closet knew best. Now I understood why. Bentley and I were both in conservative gray suits. We were a team.

  “You look nice,” he said. “Not like a clown.”

  “You sure know how to give a compliment.”

  “It’s a good suit. You should dress like this more.”

  “You’re only saying that because I look like your twin.”

  “Like my twin, but prettier.”

  “Well, obviously.” I waved away his compliment.

  He cleared his throat and looked down at my legs. “You look so pretty.”

  I snapped my fingers in front of his face. “Hey, mister. My eyes are up here.”

  He stared at me, his eyes glazed. Was his dazed look caused by trying to access his glamoured memories? The stress of the morning’s homicide? Or the sight of my pale calves below my pencil skirt? Probably all three.

  I didn’t know what to do about him complimenting me. Bentley had looked at my legs before, and even said the odd flirtatious thing, but I hadn’t thought much of it. We had a playful routine of teasing each other. Whenever he bumped into me around town, he would suggest I was up to criminal activities. Then I would get back at him by ordering all the rainbow sprinkle donuts at his favorite bakery so he couldn’t get one. That was our thing. This new thing, with him giving me genuine compliments, was new. New and weird. But not bad.

  I snapped my fingers again. “Are you okay?”

  “Excuse me,” he said gruffly, turning toward the driver’s side window. “My mind must have drifted on me.”

  “No kidding. It was caused by your eyes drifting down to my legs.”

  He cleared his throat. “I did see your legs.”

  “Bentley, if we’re going to be a crime-solving duo, you shouldn’t ogle my legs like that.”

  He snorted. “Looking and ogling are very different.”

  “How so?”

  The corner of his mouth twitched up. “Ogling is strictly against Wisteria Police Department policy.”

  “Good to know. I’ll try not to be so ogle-able.”

  He didn’t move to get out of the car yet, even though it was heating up in more ways than one.

  “You were saying it’s a mixed crew in there,” I said, turning and looking toward down the street toward the garage apartment. “How are you going to explain to the non-magical folks about me being there?”

  “I have a plan. I’ll tell them you’re a behavioral consultant with a specialty in deviant behavior.”

  “That’s not far from the truth,” I said seriously. “I can always tell when a patron in the library is trying to hide food or use the computers to find weird porn. Fun fact: A lot of people who do one of those things, do both of those things. What’s that all about?”

  He nodded. “It’s true. People who violate one boundary violate more than one.”

  I reached for the door handle but didn’t open it yet. Once I opened the door, I’d be on the case. Partnering with Bentley in an official capacity was going to change everything. Was I ready? Judging by his hesitation, even Bentley wasn’t ready.

  “You might know the victim’s sister,” Bentley said. “Her name is Carrot Greyson.”

  I didn’t know the woman. “Did you say Carrot?”

  “Yes. There are a lot of odd names in the Greyson family, not just Ishmael. You must have heard about his sister, Carrot. She worked with your aunt at City Hall until quite recently.”

  My jaw dropped. Aunt Zinnia worked at City Hall? She’d been so secretive about her work that I’d assumed she didn’t have a job at all. Zoey and I had a theory she used her short-range psychic powers to make money as a day trader on her computer.

 
I closed my jaw and said, “Aunt Zinnia never mentioned anyone by that name.” I looked down and traced a circle on my wool skirt. “Remind me, what’s my aunt’s job at City Hall?”

  “She’s the head of the Wisteria Permits Department Division of Special Buildings. She took over in February, shortly after the second death in the department.”

  “Right,” I said with fake casualness. “The second death.” I had a million new questions to ask my aunt.

  I looked over to see Bentley staring at me, a bemused expression on his face. “You didn’t know,” he said. “All that business at the Permits Department happened before you moved here, and you didn’t know.”

  I snorted. “You’re new here, too. You don’t know everything.”

  “But I have access to the redacted reports now. I know what happened to my predecessor, Fung.” He crossed his arms and leaned back. “And you don’t know.” He looked as pleased as I’d ever seen the man.

  I tilted my nose up in the air. “I’m sure if my aunt had wanted me to know, she’d have told me. It’s probably for my own protection she didn’t mention it.”

  “Sure,” he said flatly. “You can ask me about the case later, if you really want to know.”

  “Thanks.” I did want to know about Zinnia’s past, but I wanted to hear it from her, not Bentley’s version. Not the watered-down, doctored version. Even if he did have access to more detailed reports now, there was a slim chance even they told the whole story.

  Bentley unfastened his seatbelt. “We should probably get into that crime scene before we melt in this car.”

  “Ready when you are.”

  He nodded, and we opened our car doors in unison.

  Partners.

  Chapter 7

  The apartment over the garage contained about what you’d expect for a bachelor of twenty-six. That is, other than the headless body, which was being zipped up in a coroner’s bag by three people in white suits when we walked in.

  The furniture was all black leather, dark wood, chrome, and glass. The tiny kitchen’s counter held up a stack of empty pizza boxes. The inexpensive bookshelves held very little reading material besides magazines about tattoos, hunting wild game, and weapons. The plain white walls were decorated with three tribal-patterned woven blankets and a framed illustration of a jaguar. The walls were also marked by two bright-red streaks of blood spatter.

  Bentley gestured to the red streaks. “As you can see by the spray pattern on the wall, the victim was decapitated here.”

  “Here,” I repeated, my dry mouth making smacking sounds. “Right across the street from my house.”

  He continued in a business-like tone, as though I truly was the criminal behavior expert he’d introduced me as. “The spray pattern isn’t arterial. That means it didn’t spurt from the body, but was caused by the movement of the weapon slicing through the air.”

  “Hmm,” I said knowingly.

  The detective shuffled past a worker in a white suit and got behind the sofa, which sat squarely in the middle of the room. “The killer must have stood here, behind the sofa, and sliced off the victim’s head like this.” Bentley swept his hand over where the body’s neck had been, then flung his hand into the air triumphantly. “And that’s when the blood ran off the weapon and onto the walls.”

  I’d seen enough blood spatter analysis on crime shows to understand what he was demonstrating.

  “Did the killer fling their arm out twice?” I asked. “There are two distinctive blood streaks on the walls.”

  “Good eye. And what does that tell you? The double streaks?”

  I gave it some thought before answering. “Two weapons, maybe? Or even two killers?”

  “Perhaps. Or we might be looking for a killer with an artistic side. Someone who appreciates symmetry.”

  “Like an artist?”

  He mimed scooping blood with his non-dominant hand and then flinging it onto the wall. “A painter.”

  I made a disgusted noise.

  The three other white-clad people inside the small space barely glanced our way. Like myself and Bentley, they wore the so-called “bunny suits” that reduced contamination of the crime scene. The suits were white overalls with hoods, made of a non-woven material that would not be my top choice for clothing on such a sweltering day.

  I tucked my chin down to catch a trickle of face sweat on the inside of my suit.

  Bentley watched this with an amused expression. “You can always step outside for a moment if you don’t feel well.”

  “If you can take it, I can, too. Riddle women are tougher than we look.”

  He raised one straight eyebrow. His facial expressions were more exaggerated, more comical when viewed through the oval opening of the white suit.

  “Riddle women are tough.” He frowned thoughtfully. “Yes. My predecessor, Detective Fung, mentioned that fact in a number of his secret reports.”

  “Where is this Fung person now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You probably need a higher level of clearance to get that report.” I felt a slight chill despite the sweltering tropical environment inside my Tyvek bunny suit. “Maybe it’s for the best you don’t find out what happened to the man who had your job before you.”

  “There’s a rumor he’s enjoying a much-needed vacation somewhere beautiful.”

  “Right.” I crossed my white-suited arms and tapped my green-gloved fingers on my bicep. “And every kid’s old dog goes away to live on a farm.”

  “We all believe the lies we need to get through the long, dark nights,” he said vaguely.

  I murmured noncommittally and looked around the crime scene. The shock of the blood—both the sight and the smell—was wearing off. I was able to pick up more visual details now that I was past the initial horror. An unplugged black electrical cord caught my eye.

  I pointed at the cord. “That big television is unplugged now,” I said. “Did someone connected with the investigation unplug it?”

  Bentley looked over the cord and the television. “I wouldn’t think so. Why do you ask?”

  I was mindful of the people working a few feet away from us and edited my speech. “The person who called in the initial report said the television was on. They saw it flickering when they looked in the window.”

  “Ah.” He nodded. “Someone might have bumped the cord with their foot.”

  Given the location of the outlet, that didn’t seem likely. I walked over to the media stand and leaned down to look at the second thing that had caught my eye. It was a metallic box, no bigger than a coffee mug. I waved for Bentley to come join me.

  He trotted over. In a whisper, he asked, “Do you see him? The ghost? Is he here now?”

  “No sign of the ghost, but I think I found a clue.” I gingerly picked up the cube with my gloved hand. “They use these high-tech projection boxes at the DWM,” I said at a quiet volume. “The units are not supposed to leave the premises.”

  “Are you sure that’s a high-tech item? It looks like one of those useless decorator things real estate agents put in show homes, right next to the bowl of acorns.”

  “Look closer.” I tilted it so he could see the tiny lens. “It projects images, like a regular projector, except it’s super-tiny, and with no detectable power source.”

  He leaned back, nodding appreciatively. “If it does what you say, it’s quite the gadget.”

  I turned from the black TV screen to the blood-soaked couch. Thankfully, the black leather showed the blood only as a sheen. “Since the TV appeared to be on to our witness, Ishmael Greyson must have been using the box to watch something, maybe even projected onto the screen of his unplugged television.”

  The muscles on Bentley’s face twitched with excitement. “We need to find out what he was watching,” Bentley said.

  “Are you sure about that, Detective? Whatever he was watching might be irrelevant.” I set the cube back exactly where I’d found it, the spot marked perfectly by a dust-free squar
e patch. “Judging by the lack of dust under the box, it’s been here in the apartment for a while. And the killer did leave the projection unit behind.”

  “True.” His face drooped. “So, it would appear this little gadget is not a clue, after all.” He let out an impatient huff, as though I’d intentionally gotten him excited over nothing. “Are you getting anything at all from the ghost? That is what I brought you here for.”

  I put one hand on my hip. “Is that all I am to you? A ghost magnet? You said you wanted a partner.”

  “I said we should work together instead of separately.”

  “Well, I’m trying to be cooperative.”

  “Then do your job,” he said curtly. “You talk to the ghosts. I’ll do the detective work.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t figure out what my mother sees in you.”

  “Who?” His pupils dilated wildly.

  “Never mind.” I turned away and scanned the crime scene. “Be quiet and don’t aggravate me while I look for the ghost.”

  He huffed again, but didn’t speak.

  After a moment, I reported my lack of results. “I don’t see any sign of Ishmael’s scrawny ghost, but I’m sure he’ll be back eventually. With my other ghosts, they always stuck around until I figured out what happened, or got them justice.”

  “That’s reassuring news.”

  “Easy for you to say. You don’t have to get possessed by a ghost.”

  He sniffed. “That’s not true. Detectives have their ghosts, too, Zara. A case like this has a way of taking over your life until it’s closed.”

  Now it was my turn to huff indignantly. “That’s not the same thing. It’s your job to solve crimes. It’s not your personal curse that comes as a bonus with your powers.”

  He guffawed. “Don’t dismiss me like that just because I don’t have any of your type of powers.”

  “Oh?” I stepped closer and looked him in the eyes. “What makes you think you don’t have any powers, Detective?”

  He was temporarily speechless. Got him!

  “The town could have brought in any ol’ detective,” I said. “There’s got to be a reason that the powerful entities that secretly run this town picked you, Mr. Theodore Dean Bentley.”