Murder and the Secret Spring Page 2

  She sighed. “Right. Probably.”

  “Boring.”

  She turned on me with a grin. “Oh yeah? You just wait until you meet Carlo.”

  “Italian, right? Is he incredibly handsome?”

  She seemed to be considering that one. “Not really. But he’s a bundle of dynamic energy. And his cooking?” She kissed her fingertips. “You’ll be impressed.”

  “I can certainly tell that he’s impressed you.”

  “Enough!” she said dramatically. “Get ready to go. We’ll drive up, okay? Wear something sexy so the men will all swoon and give up all their secrets to you.”

  Really? That didn’t sound like me at all. Bebe was getting carried away with this stuff. After all, she was the pretty one. At least that was the way I saw it. “Why me?”

  “Why not? I’m ineligible. Everyone knows I’m dating Captain Stone.”

  I rolled my eyes. I guess they weren’t supposed to know that I was dating Detective McKnight myself. And yet, when the last date we had was about three weeks ago, maybe that wasn’t so surprising.

  Regardless, the more I thought about this “task”, the more my stomach growled and the more the image of wonderful Italian food drifted through my mind’s eye.

  “Sign me up,” I said. “It sounds like fun.”

  Fun is in the eye of the beholder, I guess. And everyone’s opinion of what is fun and what isn’t is pretty individual. So I’m not sure I would call the way our evening went as fun—but it was interesting. And it led to actions I wouldn’t have dreamed of.

  But first, I had a few hours to kill before dinnertime, so I ran out to put up some “Missing” posters I’d made for Sami.

  “Sleek black cat missing since Wednesday,” it said, right under a large picture. “Last seen near Miyaki Farms. Please call this number if you’ve seen him. Reward.” And my cell number came last.

  I put one up on the bulletin board at the grocery store, then at the barber shop. I took the chance to stop by City Hall to turn in some plans I had due—mostly ideas for a Sunday car show with a local beer and restaurant tasting on the side. Our little town had never had one before and I thought it would be just the thing to rally some community spirit—something we seemed to be lacking lately.

  My supervisor was in and he was not enthused.

  “We need something really big,” he mused, sitting back in his chair with his feet on his desk. “Something like…” His eyes narrowed and he stared off into space. “Something like auctioning off a castle.”

  That made me laugh. “Vlad, where are you going to get…?”

  “Don’t call me that.” He looked genuinely cross with me, and that gave me pause. We usually could kid around a lot now that we’d gotten to know each other pretty well. I’d called him Vlad the Impaler for ages, and I’d never realized he didn’t like it.

  I shrugged. “Okay, Vance.”

  “Better.” He gave me a lopsided grin, looking almost embarrassed that he’d reacted that strongly. “Hey, leave those plans on my desk. I’ll look them over and tell you what I think.”

  I nodded. “Great.” I dropped the folder in front of him and swung toward the door. Looking back, I smiled. “Sorry about that Vlad thing,” I said, and then I was out the door heading for Mad for Mocha, the coffee bar Jill ran just a block or so away. I still had one last poster to put up.

  My cell phone buzzed and I slipped it out of my pocket and looked at the screen, expecting it to be Bebe or Jill. Or maybe even Roy McKnight, the North Destiny Bay Police Detective I’d been dating off and on for the last few months. But it wasn’t any of them. The screen said one word—Hawaii.

  Hawaii? Was this some kind of joke? I suddenly got the picture of an old fashioned telephone operator saying in that operator voice, “Hold on please, Hawaii calling.”

  That made me giggle. But I still didn’t get it. Hawaii?

  I decided to try my luck and pick up the call. I clicked in.

  “Hello?” I said.

  No one spoke. There was a sound, sort of like static, but as I listened more closely, I realized what it really was. Waves. The ocean. My heart began to thump in my chest.

  Then music began in the background, not too far away. A male voice, a high sweet tenor, singing an ancient Hawaiian song about loss, loneliness and regret. It was the sort of song that grabbed you by the soul and began to squeeze. The man’s voice touched an emotional response and reminded me of the sort of sound Bluegrass goes for—I think they call it “high lonesome”.

  And still, no one had said a word to me. I clicked off and put the phone away, but I was trembling a little now. It didn’t make any sense. First Aunty Jane’s spells, now this. What the heck was going on?

  Chapter 3

  I felt much better once I’d stepped into Jill’s coffee bar. The lights were bright, the music was soothing, and happy laughter filled the room. Jill sent me a welcoming wave from behind the counter and I sighed with relief. Okay, now this was a place that I belonged in. I waved back at another person who called to me from across the floor and continued toward the counter, expecting to feel better and better as I came closer to Jill and her crew, people I knew so well.

  But then I began to realize that something strange was happening. Only a few steps short of the counter, I stopped and turned. There was an odd feeling in the air, a sort of shivering. The lights seemed to dim for just a few seconds, then come back brighter than ever. And I saw something at the back of the room, in the very last booth. A woman was choking.

  I stared for a moment. Yes, the woman was choking, turning a sickly grey-blue, and no one was paying any attention to it. I tried to shout out a warning, but no one could hear me. Every face I looked into, flashing back and forth, was laughing and looking toward the front of the store. I was the only one who saw. She was choking! Someone had to do something!

  But…but not me. Right? I didn’t tend to rush into situations and take over control. Saving someone’s life—that was taking control in a way I wasn’t used to at all. I couldn’t do that. Could I?

  I felt a strange vibration filling my body and suddenly I was clutching that talisman, that carved netsuke that Aunty Jane had placed around my neck. A sense of urgency came with it and I knew what I had to do. That woman had to be saved from choking.

  It felt almost as though I flew to her. I determined to go, and then I was there. I was absolutely sure she had something lodged in her throat, and noticing the large bell-shaped gumdrops scattered on her tabletop, I was pretty sure I knew what it was. Luckily, she was a small lady, about forty, and when I grabbed her up into my arms, I easily turned her so that I could lock my hands under her breast-bone and give her the Heimlich Maneuver. I braced myself and pulled up, hard.

  Nothing happened. Her head was beginning to loll to the side. She wasn’t breathing. She was going to die.

  No! I’d seen too many people die lately. I refused to have that happen again. No!

  Some instinct made me reach for my netsuke again, put it to my mouth and breath on it, then quickly set myself one more time, filled with grim determination. I pulled her up into my arms again, yanked up even harder and then did it again, getting desperate. This was supposed to work. I’d taken classes in college. I knew what to do. Why wasn’t it working?

  And then, it did.

  Something flew out of her mouth and she gasped for air. The blue color began to fade. And everyone finally noticed what was going on. I sank back and closed my eyes, giving a prayer of total gratitude and feeling totally spent.

  The next half hour went by in a blur. For once, I’d saved someone! It was such a relief. For the last year, every dead body in town seemed to come my way, but always too late to prevent the worst from happening. And inevitably, I would have to face Captain Stone or Detective McKnight. Both of them had begun to regard me with some suspicion, wondering why the recently deceased seem to stack up at my door.

  But now I’d saved someone! I was elated. I could hardly wait for the c
ops to arrive. I was going to show them! Hah!

  The police came screeching up with the usual bells and whistles and lights and sirens—only they weren’t the men I was waiting for. In fact, I’d never seen these guys before. I went up to the officer who seemed to be in command and asked him when Captain Stone would be arriving.

  He looked at me strangely. “He’s in San Francisco right now,” he said. “He and Detective McKnight went up for the conference yesterday. As far as I know, they ought to be coming back tonight. Maybe if you call the station in the morning….”

  Yeah. Too late. My moment of glory would be stale by then.

  Everybody in the coffee bar patted me on the back and told me how wonderful I was, but it wasn’t the same. We cleaned up the choker—her name turned out to be Rosy Sasser-- and put her into a paramedic van to take a short trip to the emergency room, just in case there were lingering after-effects. She waved goodbye and blew me a kiss. That was nice. But not as nice as it would have been if the right cops had been there. Bad luck, huh?

  But what did luck have to do with it? And how much of what I’d done was a result of my new ivory cat that hung around my neck? I held it clenched in my hand and it seemed to glow there. Was it magic? Real magic? The thought gave me shivers and I dropped it and tuned back into real life.

  “Okay if I put up this poster of Sami?” I asked Jill.

  “Sure,” she said. “I know you’ll find him now. You’ve built up some nice karma. You deserve to be paid back in full.”

  Oh well, I suppose we all have our own thoughts about our own style of magic. For some reason, that made me think about my phone call from Hawaii. I wanted to tell Jill about it and get her take, but she was busy with customers and I turned away to put up the poster.

  “I saw a black cat just like that down on Camden Street,” a small elderly woman said as she passed me using her walker.

  “You did?” I whirled and looked at her hopefully. “When was that?”

  “Oh…” She thought for a moment. “Last Wednesday I think. Yes, it was last Wednesday, because I was on my way to my quilting class. You should go down there and try Camden Street.”

  Hope died. Last Wednesday, Sami was still stalking the yard at Bebe’s place. “Thank you,” I said anyway, smiling as I held the door for her.

  “Did you put your cell phone number on it?” Jill asked me from across the room. “Do you think that’s a good idea? You’ll have scammers calling you for sure.”

  I hesitated, wondering if she had a point. Maybe that was why I’d had that weird call. I’d already put up posters with my number on it all over town. Oh well, too late now.

  I finished putting up the poster and told Jill about dinner at the Italian Kitchen—she was definitely up for that. She now had a new assistant manager named Carla Whiteacre, a great person who could easily take over for hours at a time, so Jill was able to take a little more time off now and then.

  I said goodbye and made my way out the door, blushing as everyone inside the Mocha stood and cheered as I left. What a bunch of wonderful people!

  Suddenly tired and dying for a shower, I headed for home. Time to start anticipating a great Italian dinner.

  A few hours later, the three of us piled into Bebe’s car and drove up the hill to the restaurant. I scanned the vineyards as we passed the vines. I couldn’t help but search for Sami everywhere I went, even though I knew it wasn’t much use. He would probably come home when he was good and ready. Or, if he couldn’t for some reason…but I didn’t want to think about that.

  We pulled off the road and found an empty space in the crowded parking lot, got out and began to trudge toward the restaurant. It was the first time I’d really taken a look at the place since Bebe’s friend Caroline had moved out of the beautiful mansion it had been, following the murders of her husband and step-son, over a year ago when I’d first arrived in North Destiny Bay and moved in with my aunt. There had been plenty of renovations since then and the transformation was breath taking.

  What had once been a modern winery, and the headquarters of a large vineyard, was now a sleek Italian chalet restaurant fronting a courtyard compound flanked by neat, red roofed cottages and lined with beautiful long trellises heavy with flowering vines. From where we’d parked, you could hear the water flowing.

  But you could also hear it from the huge fountain that had been constructed right at the entrance to the restaurant as well. I started in that direction, but Bebe caught me by the elbow and tugged me toward the hilltop garden with it’s adorable bungalows.

  “Hey, let’s go over there and take a look,” she said in a loud stage whisper. “We’re supposed to be scoping out the origin of this water situation, after all.”

  There was a stone path leading up to the courtyard, but a large sign warned, “Employees only”. I pointed toward it and read it out loud.

  “Employees only. I think that means not us.”

  She gave me a baleful look. “And since when did you start following orders from anonymous authority figures?” she asked.

  She had a point.

  Jill chimed in with an off-key rendition of “He’s a Rebel”, giving me a significant look.

  I laughed and said, “Lead on, McDuff.” I was as ready as they were to go exploring.

  “And anyway, I don’t think they can see us from the restaurant,” Bebe said. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  We went.

  I’d like to say we leapt from step to step, light as feathers and lithe as gazelles, but that would be a fantasy. Actually, we clumped along like a small army of rather graceless women sneaking around, going places we weren’t supposed to be going to and hardly managing to be very subtle about it. But that was us.

  We climbed up through the bougainvillea and came to a stop in front of the waterfall, where water trickled and poured and gushed down across jagged rocks. And we stood there with our mouths hanging open.

  “Wow.”

  We were stunned.

  “Just wow.”

  There was gorgeous cool water spilling out of each pillar along the trellis, all joining to help make a beautiful, magical manmade stream. It ran down the middle of the courtyard, gurgling over cleverly-placed moss-covered rocks, creating lovely pools that gave the whole area the look and feel of an enchanted garden.

  Italian songs were playing softly from loudspeakers along the way. And set back a bit all around the courtyard were those seven or eight little cottages, looking like a scene set for Snow White and the seven dwarves.

  I shook my head, marveling. “You almost expect to see fairies creeping down to swim in the little pools of water,” I said with a sigh.

  Bebe nodded. “Fairies, or better yet, Pan with his flute and some wood nymphs to dance for him.”

  “And maybe a unicorn or two,” Jill added with a yearning look in her eyes.

  We sighed in unison. It was unbelievably lovely.

  “Shall we keep going and search for the source of the water?” Bebe whispered.

  Jill giggled. “Why not? We already sound like a troop of mini-giants on the move. Who could possibly notice?”

  “Mini-giants, huh?” I rolled that one around in my head and was about to comment on her choice of terms, when we heard something and all froze as one.

  Voices. Argument. People coming our way.

  Bebe grabbed my arm and Jill’s sweater and pulled us both behind a handy guava bush. We knocked together like bowling pins and almost landed on the ground, but the people coming through were too angry with each other to notice us. One was vaguely handsome but somewhat stocky and dressed in white, including a chef’s hat. The other was a gorgeous, statuesque brunette in a form-fitting dress and 4 inch heels.

  “I’m warning you for the last time, Marguerite,” said the chef with a slight Italian accent, “stay out of my kitchen.”

  “And I’m warning you, Carlo. I’ll go into that kitchen any damn time I please.”

  The chef had fire coming out of his eyes. �
�I’ll speak to Nigel about this.”

  “You speak all you want to.” She gave him a bored look. “You yammer like a parrot anyway. I’ve got Nigel wrapped around my little finger and you know it. He’ll do whatever I want him to do. So watch out.”

  She whirled and started toward the restaurant. The chef—who seemed to be Carlo Bianchi himself, grimaced in fury. “Stop right there, Marguerite! We’ve got to settle this now!”

  The target of his yelling didn’t seem inclined to pause and discuss it. “Bite me,” she cried back over her shoulder as she walked off.

  He growled and leapt, reaching out to grab the long, thick braid that was hanging down her back, yanking her to a stop. She cried out in anger, swinging toward him with her fist cocked, trying to get him with a roundhouse to the head. He ducked and she only grazed him.

  “Fight! Fight!” Jill was whispering, but she looked just as petrified by the scene we were witnessing as Bebe and I were.

  None of us knew what to do. We hadn’t had much experience with bar room brawls—especially not out in such a beautiful garden. Should we jump out and try to save the lovely lady from a cook going wild? Actually, she looked like she could handle herself just fine and she towered over him. I was beginning to worry about what was going to happen to the cook.

  Before we could make a move, the two of them seemed to get hold of themselves. They stood there glaring at each other like a pair of sumo wrestlers, but there were no more attempts at anything physical. The three of us could breathe again.

  “I didn’t know dinner would come with a show,” Jill whispered as the two of them went up the steps to the restaurant, still arguing.

  Before I had a chance to respond, another voice broke through from just behind us.

  “Can I help you ladies?” it said. “Are you lost?”

  We gasped. It was not our finest hour. As if on cue, we threw our hands up in the air and shrieked, each trying to turn in a different direction. I almost fell over and Jill actually did, going right down on her bottom.