One Potion in the Grave: A Magic Potion Mystery, page 25
Fortunately, by that time the house had mostly cleared out. Only the Odd Ducks remained behind, and they sat quacking on the sheet-covered sofa as I came down the steps.
“I think I need to almost die,” Eulalie said. “You look wonderful! Fresh and rested.”
Smiling, I said, “I think that has to do more with the Leilara than almost dying.”
Eulalie leaned toward me. “Got any extra?”
“Not a drop to spare,” I said, flopping into an armchair.
“You sure, Carly Bell?” Hazel asked. “Because Eulalie here just learned some distressing news, and needs a little pick-me-up.”
“Oh?” I asked. “What kind of news?” I hadn’t heard anything, but I was a little out of the loop today.
“José Antonio is married with four kids.” She stuck out a tongue, raspberried, and folded her arms with a huff.
“It’s so rude of him,” Hazel declared. “He could have said something sooner.”
“Like on the way to hospital?” I teased.
“Exactly!” Eulalie cried. “He didn’t let on while I had him propped in my lap and my fingers in his hair, now did he? I swanee, he had the thickest hair. . . .”
Marjie sat silently, a content look on her face. I was truly going to miss her.
“So the hunt is back on for you, Carly Bell,” Eulalie stated. “I’m counting on you to find me a man. Make him a good one, will you? That cutie pie John Richard is back on the market, isn’t he?”
Hazel surged forward. “I thought he was a child!”
Eulalie said, “I could be a cougar. Rwwwar!”
Shuddering, I quickly put an end to that idea. “He says he’s going to be content in bachelorhood for a while.”
Hazel clucked. “I’ve gone and damaged the poor boy. I am a hard woman to get over. It might take him months. Years, even.”
“Maybe a decade,” Marjie egged on.
“This is what I’m sayin’,” Hazel said solemnly.
“Oh, please,” Eulalie said. She stood. “Carly, we’re headed out for some lunch. Would you care to join us?”
“Any other day and I’d say yes, but I think I’m just going to putter around here for a while and then head over to take care of Mr. Dunwoody’s yard.” I’d forgotten to do it yesterday, and I was afraid I might have doomed his plants. One hot summer day was enough to scorch them brown.
Eulalie kissed my cheek and said, “I’m mighty glad you didn’t die this morning.”
“Thanks, Aunt Eulalie.”
She waved and walked out the door. Marjie rolled her eyes and followed, barely hobbling at all.
Hazel kissed my cheek, too. “Run over to the Loon if you need anything. Dotsie’s tending the desk, and she’ll take good care of you.”
“Thanks, Aunt Hazel.”
As she headed for the door, she said, “We’re collecting casseroles to take over to Jamie Lynn and Lyla. We’d like to fill up their freezer so they don’t have to worry about cookin’ none in the next week or so.”
If the call had gone out for casseroles, the sisters wouldn’t need to cook for a month, at least. Hitching Post rallied around their own.
“I’ll make a sausage and egg casserole,” I said. “Give them something to heat up at breakfast.”
“Perfect.” She blew me a kiss and walked out.
I went to find my favorite comfort food—peanut butter—and grabbed a spoon to eat the peanut butter straight out of the jar.
Poly slunk into the room, once again proving his ability to sniff out peanut butter from great distances. I grabbed another spoon and dabbed it in the jar. I bent and put it on the floor for him, giving his ears a scratch as well.
Out the window, I glanced into Mr. Dunwoody’s yard and could practically hear the flowers begging for water. Slipping on my flip-flops, I headed over. He was due home tomorrow, and I hoped I could revive the poor little buds before he returned.
For the next hour, I dragged the hose around the yard, giving everything a good soaking—even myself.
Although I wasn’t much of a “yard” person, I actually enjoyed the time outside. I supposed almost dying tended to put that kind of thing in perspective.
I was trying really hard not to think about how close a call it had been this morning. Of that moment of panic . . .
Shaking my head to clear the thoughts, I wound the hose onto its hook and noticed I had a blister starting near my toe. Chafing from wet feet and the little plastic thingy rubbing in between my toes. And I’d gone and given my potion cream to Gabi.
“Shouldn’t you be resting?”
I looked up. Ainsley was giving me her best “mama” look. “I’m all rested out.” I limped over to her.
“What’s wrong with your foot?”
“Blister.”
“You’re just not meant to work outside, are you?”
“Apparently not.” I smiled. “What’re you doing here? You just left an hour ago.”
“Brought you a peach cobbler,” she said, holding up a dish.
I eyed her warily. “Not made from those rotten peaches in your yard, are they?”
Her eyes twinkled. “You’ll have to wait and see.”
“Why are you really here?”
Her lips pursed. “Just wanted to make sure.”
“What?”
“That you’re really okay.” Her eyes welled.
“Stop!” I said, already feeling mine filling.
She gave me a little bump with her arm. “Fine. Now that I’ve seen you, I’ll just put this in your kitchen and go. Don’t be staying outside too long. You’ll melt for sure.”
She speed walked toward my front porch.
“Ainsley?”
She faced me. “Hmm?”
“Thanks.”
She beamed and disappeared into the house.
I took some time to deadhead flowers, refill birdfeeders, and sweep the porch. It was hot, and I thought Ainsley might be right. I was melting. It was time to go in.
I gimped toward my front door and veered off to the mailbox before remembering it was Sunday, but then I suddenly realized that not only had I neglected to take care of Mr. Dunwoody’s plants yesterday, I’d also forgotten to get the mail from his box the past two days.
I trudged back toward his house, annoyed with the blister. I wanted to laugh at myself—after the pain I’d been in just that morning the blister should seem like nothing. A blip. But it was a bothersome little blip for sure. I kicked off my flip-flops and hotfooted it down the sidewalk, oohing and ouching as my feet touched the hot cement.
I jumped onto a patch of grass and stood there and laughed. I probably looked like an absolute crazy person, but I didn’t much care. And as I stood there, welcoming the laughter—my chest constricted at how much I had almost lost.
No, no. I wouldn’t go there. Couldn’t. It was over. Done with. I glanced down at my feet, at the blades of grass clinging to my skin and eyed that silly throbbing blister, its painful bubble seeming to be there to remind me that life wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t guaranteed. And that feeling pain was sometimes better than not feeling anything at all. Like when you were dead. Or paralyzed, like Cassandra Calhoun.
My head snapped up. Wait a sec.
I eyed the Loon. I’d been sitting in there yesterday and felt Cassandra being annoyed by her own blister. A blister on her heel.
A blister she shouldn’t have been able to feel at all.
My jaw dropped as I realized something that I missed. When I read paraplegics, my own limbs felt heavy. Dead weight. I hadn’t felt that from Cassandra.
It suddenly hit me why.
An immense sadness swept over me, and I want to shout “no” at the top of my lungs. Cassandra was the genuine Calhoun. The one that helped hungry children and fought for all the injustices of everyday people. She was the Calhoun who could make a difference in this world, make it a better place.
But she’d been keeping an enormous secret.
She wasn’t paralyzed.
That. That was the dirt Katie Sue had on the Calhoun family, I was suddenly so sure of it.
As I hotfooted it to Mr. Dunwoody’s mailbox, I recalled what Landry had said about how he’d met Katie Sue at the hospital after Cassandra’s accident.
I tried to recall all the information I knew of the accident, and all I kept coming back to was how Cassandra’s accident had salvaged Warren’s reelection campaign after it tanked with Landry’s scandal.
She had saved his election. The accident had surely been real, but how exaggerated had her injuries been? And how many people, beside Katie Sue, knew that Cassandra was faking her paralysis?
I’d bet my witchy senses that each and every Calhoun knew—it was why they’d been so protective of that envelope. They’d been trying to protect Cassie.
I had to call Dylan. Pulling open Mr. Dunwoody’s box while doing a two-step on the hot ground, I grabbed the pile of mail inside. I turned and sprinted back to my house, and was halfway there when I realized one of the large envelopes in the stack had a coffee stain on its edge.
I stopped and pulled it loose. My breath caught.
Sure enough, Katie Sue had sent the package to me, but she’d addressed it wrong, putting down Mr. Dunwoody’s address instead of mine. It was a mistake Earl would have caught right off, but José Antonio would have had no idea.
I ran up the steps and headed straight into the kitchen. I’d just grabbed the phone when my witchy senses sent a tingle up my spine.
It couldn’t be a coincidence to me finding that package.
This time, I listened to those senses. I quickly dialed 911, put the phone in the junk drawer, and closed it tight. After I stuck the coffee-stained envelope deep into the trash can, I went to grab my pitchfork, but I’d forgotten Dylan still had it as evidence. I heard the planks on the front porch creak, so I did the only thing a sane witch could do—I went out the back door. I stuck close to the house, keeping my head low. I carefully peeked in the living room window and saw Cassandra Calhoun limping around my living room.
Limping, because I was fairly sure that thigh pain I’d felt yesterday at the Loon had also come from her—and the forking Aunt Marjie had given her. Not quite in the patootie as she thought, but the upper thigh.
I hoped it was infected. Positively festering.
Like I told Warren, I had my moments.
She wore a pink bandanna to cover her hair and black spandex running clothes that sent my mind reeling. The black clothes. Running shoes . . .
Dinah and Cletus’s claims of innocence in Katie Sue’s death rang through my head. Had they been telling the truth for once in their lives?
Had it been Cassandra who dragged Katie Sue through those woods and threw her off the cliff? I recalled how she’d bragged about her upper arm strength, and I felt queasy. Why? Why had she done this? Even if Katie Sue was threatening to reveal that Cassandra wasn’t paralyzed, why not just claim she’d been miraculously cured?
Before making a dash for it, I peeked into the window one last time and saw Cassandra suddenly spin around. She aimed a gun at the front door.
The door Marjie had just hopped through.
“No, no,” I whispered. My heart thudded against my rib cage as fear sliced through me.
“Where is she?” Cassandra demanded.
“Where’s your wheelchair?”
“Where’s Carly?” Cassandra repeated, steadying the gun on the center of Marjie’s chest.
“No idea,” she said.
“She was just here.”
Marjie shrugged. “I wasn’t.”
“Call for her,” Cassandra said.
“No.”
“Call. For. Her,” Cassandra said, taking a step toward her, her hand shaking as she pointed the gun.
“No.”
“I will shoot you.”
“I don’t give a hoot.”
Cassandra shot. Marjie jerked backward as the bullet grazed her arm. “Call her!”
I went running. I couldn’t let her shoot Marjie again, and I knew Marjie was stubborn enough to keep quiet.
I dashed up the front steps. “I’m here!”
Blood oozed from Marjie’s arm, but she looked more pissed than hurt. Thank the Lord.
“Where’s the envelope?” Cassandra asked, tears streaming down her face.
“What’re you going to do, Cassandra? Kill us both?”
She sucked in a breath in an attempt to control the tears. “If I have to,” she said.
“Well, what’s two more at this point?” I asked, edging toward her. “It was you who killed Katie Sue, wasn’t it?”
Backhanding tears from her face, she hiccuped. “I loved Kathryn like a sister.” Pain crumpled her features. “How could she do that to me? It wasn’t my fault my parents wouldn’t let her marry Landry.”
I tried not to look at Marjie. I wanted to keep Cassie’s attention on me.
“I don’t know,” I said softly, trying to be sympathetic. It wasn’t easy with a gun pointed at me. “When did you find out that she was threatening to reveal your secret?” How long had she planned to kill the woman her brother loved?
Wiping more tears, she said, “I heard my parents arguing about it after the rehearsal at your mama’s chapel. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing—until then I had no idea that Kathryn had threatened them. My daddy wanted to give in to Kathryn’s demands, but Mama wouldn’t budge. She kept saying Kathryn would never go through with it, but I knew Kathryn. She was—”
“Stubborn?” I supplied.
Cassandra nodded. “I disguised myself and went to find her after that terrible dinner. I wanted to hear her side. I found her in the gazebo.” More tears spilled over. “She wouldn’t tell me where the envelope was. Said she was standing up to my family, and though she hated to hurt me, it had to be done. I was so angry. I slapped her. She fell and hit her head on the corner of one of the benches.” She winced. “Blood went everywhere. I panicked—I couldn’t let anyone see what had happened. I dragged her into the woods.” In a quick burst, she said, “I took off her jewelry to make it look like a robbery and . . .” She gave her head a shake.
“Tossed her off the cliff?” I supplied, hating that I felt any sympathy for her. In a heated moment, she’d lost control. And lost everything she’d worked so hard to accomplish for herself—even though her popularity had grown from a lie, there was no denying all the good she’d done through her charitable work.
However, it was a far sight less than what Katie Sue had lost.
And now . . . the cover-up continued as Cassandra dug a bigger hole for herself. It was a wicked web she’d woven.
She nodded. “I didn’t know what else to do to . . . hide . . . Kathryn.” Watery eyes searched my face, and she drew in another deep breath. “And then I had that jewelry, but as I made my way back to the inn, I saw Kathryn’s mama sitting in her truck—she was parked at the curb passed out behind the wheel—and her stepdaddy was paying me no mind as he walked back to the truck with two drinks from the coffee shop. Kathryn had told me all about her upbringing and how horrible her mama and stepdaddy had treated her. It didn’t take me but a second to decide to toss the jewelry into the backseat and keep on walking.”
“You wanted them to be arrested for the murder.”
Without a lick of remorse, she said, “Yes. I hated them on Kathryn’s behalf. They never were charged for the abuse they heaped on her. Maybe now they’d be punished for that.”
Her twisted reasoning made me queasy. The Cobbs might have abused Katie Sue, but they hadn’t killed her—as Cassandra had. “Do your parents know what you did?” I asked.
Her face registered her horror at the thought. “Heavens, no. Oh God. I don’t even want to think about that. I need that envelope. Please get it,” she asked so nicely it was hard to imagine that she had killed someone.
“I’m sorry. I just ran it down the street and dropped it in the mailbox,” I lied. “It’ll be a couple more days before it gets here again.”
She narrowed red-rimmed eyes. “You’re lying.”
“Why would I?”
Having no answer, she said, “I need that envelope. I’ve worked too hard to let it fall into the wrong hands. The election is in my sights. . . .”
“You earned that Senate seat,” I agreed, glancing around for some sort of weapon. “All your charity work. The tireless fund-raising. And let’s not forget your accident. Was that planned, Cassie? That you take a literal fall to save your father’s reelection?”
“It was worth it,” she said, her tears finally slowing. “I was promised his Senate seat in exchange. Think of all the good I can do as a Senator,” she said. “If I hadn’t had that accident, no one would even know my name. I’m not outgoing enough for public office. My disability is what made me famous.”
She would have been a wonderful Senator. That was the shame of it all.
Her eyes had turned a bit wild. “Get the package, Carly. I’ll give you ten seconds before I shoot the old lady again.”
“Old?” Marjie barked.
This really wasn’t the time.
“Ten.”
“Cassie, the police are going to figure out you killed Katie Sue. Your DNA is on the pitchfork. There’s no getting away with this. You went too far.”
“Nine.”
“How’d she know?” I asked, trying to keep her talking. “How’d Katie Sue know you weren’t paralyzed?”
Blinking, she said, “We hung out a lot. She noticed how toned my legs were. She promised to keep the secret as long as I helped her sway my parents in her favor. We became good friends.” She snuffled. “I didn’t want to hurt her. I really didn’t. Please believe me. I just had to . . . protect myself.”
“Put the gun down, Cassandra,” a voice from the kitchen said.
My heart lurched as Dylan came into the room, his handgun pointed at her.
