The lighter than a feather charm?” Izzy raised the basket she had resting on her forearms. “This hamper is a little heavy, and I’m afraid my fingers have gone numb.”
Over the past few months, I had gotten quite good at avoiding these scenarios. I always had a sense of when to leave a room, or to gather an excuse, or to steer solutions to problems in nonmagical directions, but today I hadn’t even seen it coming.
Izzy asking me to perform the spell wouldn’t have been a big deal in her mind. While I had lost the ability to see or talk to ghosts, the rest of my magic had remained intact, and the lighter than a feather charm was a simple spell, just a little dance of the fingers, followed by a snap. It made any load instantly lighter. Again, it was a very easy spell. I could do it without thinking.
But I wasn’t going to.
“Let me take that for you.” I grabbed the basket before Izzy had a chance to protest. “I should have offered from the start. Even without the weight, it’s unwieldy.”
I could feel my aunt looking at me, but I refused to meet her eye. If I did, I might tell her everything, and I was so not ready for that.
“All right, darling. If you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind at all,” I said brightly. “Besides, we’re almost there.”
Izzy and I fell into silence once again, but this time it was much more uncomfortable. I was grateful when I heard the recorded piano music coming from the open windows of the dance hall just ahead.
“That’s it! One, two, three, four. Feel the music! Let it fill your souls!”
Izzy and I stepped inside to see Roxie pounding the floor with her staff as girls in tutus and boys in shorts and white T-shirts, no older than the age of four, struggled to stay on beat.
The red wood dance hall had once been the stables for the historic inn next door. The floors had been leveled and refinished, and large windows had been put in to run the length of the building. To top it all off, literally, the peaked roof had a weather vane, but instead of a rooster or horse, a ballerina twirled prettily in the wind.
Despite the wide-open space of the hall, Roxie’s larger-than-life presence managed to fill every square inch. The walls were lined with glamorous black-and-white photos of her from her professional dancing days, but it was hard to focus on any of them when Roxie was in the room, given she was usually dressed in brightly colored flowing skirts and sparkling Nehru-style jackets. And it wasn’t just the loudness of her style that demanded attention, it was her personality. Her booming laugh could bring any space to life.
“Shoot,” Izzy whispered, lifting one side of the basket I was holding. “I just realized I forgot to bring the squares.”
“What squares?”
“The black currant walnut squares.”
I frowned. “The black currant walnut squares that make people—” I made a small gesture with my hand that was supposed to mimic a yapping mouth.
She nodded.
And here I had thought Izzy had been baking frantically into the wee hours of the morning because she was upset. It turned out my aunt had been far more calculating.
Izzy’s black currant walnut squares were sticky and delicious, and when she baked them just right, they also had the remarkable ability to encourage even the most laconic of samplers into prattling on. It was exactly the type of spell Izzy excelled at. While it did certainly have an effect on people’s moods, when used with the right intentions, it stayed firmly in the realm of white magic, even if the taste was wickedly good.
“Somehow I don’t think we’ll need them with Roxie,” I said with a smile. “Here, let’s get out of the way. They’re finishing up.”
“Wonderful work, children! Simply marvelous! I will see you all next week. And remember, if no one’s told you lately”—Roxie paused, letting the silence fill the room—“you’re all stars!”
Izzy and I exchanged smiles. That had been Roxie’s tagline for as long as anyone could remember.
As parents and children milled about trying to find one another, Izzy and I made our way over to Roxie, who was speaking to a tiny girl with big round glasses. “We’re all done, Millie. You were a goddess in a tutu today.”
“Thank you, Miss Roxie.”
“You run along and be sure to tell your mother you’re my favorite.”
“I thought I was your favorite, Miss Roxie,” a little boy shouted as he raced circles around the hall.
“You are, Grayson,” Roxie answered with a big laugh. “You’re all my favorites. Now off you go. Get some sunshine. Jump in the leaves. Bite into a ripe apple. Enjoy life!” She then added in a quieter voice, “As long as you don’t do it here. Miss Roxie needs a little break before the next class.”
“Morning, Roxie,” Izzy said. “Sorry to drop in on you like this.”
“Nonsense! I was going to pop by the B&B myself to check in on you all after the other night. And Brynn, it’s so good to see you here. It feels like just yesterday you were in a tutu prancing gracefully around these floors.”
“Hmm, I can confirm the tutu, but I’m pretty sure you have confused me with someone else if you remember my dancing as graceful.”
Yes, that’s right, my aunts had enrolled me in ballet way back in my youth. It didn’t last long though. Sally Myerson, a snotty sixth grader, said I danced like a water buffalo, and while I did not know what a water buffalo was or whether or not it could dance, I took it as an insult and chanted a two left feet spell every time she took center stage. It didn’t take long for Izzy to catch on, and that was the end of that.
“So how are you two really?” Roxie asked, drawing us close. “I haven’t seen Beatty this worried in a long time.”
“Beatty’s worried?” Izzy and I said at the same time.
Roxie grimaced. “I’ve done it again. And so fast. This has to be a record for me. He asked me not to say anything to anyone.” She pounded the floor with her staff. “Forget I said anything.”
“Oh no you don’t,” Izzy said, sounding quite stern. “It’s one thing for that brother of yours to leave us hanging, but you’re not going to get away that easily.”
“Izzy,” Roxie said, a smile spreading across her face. “I’m not used to seeing you like this. So forceful. I like it. Okay, well, now that you’ve dragged it out of me, Beatty is not at all happy with the direction things seem to be taking over at the station. He didn’t say it outright, but my guess is the police believe Constance’s death wasn’t an accident.”
Izzy and I exchanged glances.
“I thought you two would be more shocked.” She raised an eyebrow. “Not that I’m surprised. You Warren women always seem to be ahead of the game.”
“No, no,” I said a touch too abruptly. “We’re not. It’s just that Beatty was acting strangely when he left our place the other day, and—”
“—he’s been avoiding our calls ever since,” Izzy finished.
Roxie didn’t look any less suspicious, but she seemed willing to let it drop. “He probably didn’t want to upset you, but the way rumors swirl in this town, everybody will be worried soon enough.”
“Did he say who the police think might have done it?” I stumbled in my phrasing. I couldn’t bring myself to use any words like murdered or killed just yet.
“He didn’t have to. If the police have any sense, they won’t look any farther than Constance’s siblings.”
I was hoping the conversation might turn in this direction. “Beatty mentioned they had a falling out. Something to do with their father’s will?”
“I’ll say it had something to do with their father’s will,” Roxie said, planting a fist on her hip. “The old goat left everything to Constance. Cut the other three right out. Didn’t give it a second thought. Granted, Constance did pay her dues, but still.”
I nodded. So that was the issue Beatty had been dancing around.
“We heard she took care of her father in the end,” Izzy said.
“She did. And gave up quite a bit to do it. Did you know we used to do community theatre together back in the day? Constance had the voice of an angel. She always got the lead in all the musicals. We talked about going to Vegas together, but I knew she’d never do it. All the family obligations,” Roxie said, waving a ringed hand in the air. “And she had a boyfriend at the time she didn’t want to leave. Not everyone has what it takes to really make it, you know?”
I couldn’t say if I knew or not. I was too busy trying to reconcile the Constance Graves who had stayed at Ivywood Hollow with the girl Roxie was describing. There was always more to people than met the eye.
“I had no idea,” Izzy said. “But then again, every time I wanted to go see one of the town’s productions, Nora would poo-poo the idea. She believes there’s an entire circle of hell devoted to those involved in the production of musical theatre.”
“Hmm, that does sound like Nora,” Roxie said dryly. “But Constance really was quite good. She knew how to put emotion into a song. I guess that’s a natural consequence of having led such a hard life.”
“You mean with the death of her mother?”
“She practically raised her siblings. Can you imagine trying to raise three young children when you’re still a child yourself? That father of theirs was useless. And what thanks did she get for it?” she asked as though the answer were plain. A second later her face dropped. “Well, I suppose she did get the entire estate. But still, her father should have known it would tear those four apart.”
“So why did he do it? Was it just because Constance took care of him?”
“Oh, people have been speculating for years, but no one knows for sure.”
Izzy shook her head. “That’s a terrible thing for a family to go through, but it was all so long ago. Surely her siblings have made some sort of peace with it all by now.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure,” Roxie said with a cat-that-caught-the-canary smile. “From what I’ve heard the siblings, Rip Jr. especially, have been at Constance all these years to share the estate. Rip always felt it was his birthright to live in the family home. Not that it’s much to look at these days. He lives over at McGivern’s apple orchard now. His in-laws’ place. Lovely spot, but he’s always coveted Graves House. He claims he wants to keep it in the family, but rumor has it, his kids don’t speak to him anymore. Now, the younger brother, John, he always wanted the hobby farm.”
“There’s a hobby farm?” I asked.
“There is. You would have seen it if you’ve ever gone along the Blackstone River behind the house. Beautiful bit of land, but the animals are all gone now. John would have loved to have kept it going, he always liked animals more than people, but Constance kept that from him too. Then there’s the youngest, Mary. I don’t think she wanted anything. She was the peacemaker in the family, much good it did.”
I frowned. “I’m surprised they didn’t sue when it all first happened.”
“I’m sure Rip thought about it, but Beatty did all the paperwork, so you can be sure he didn’t cut any corners. Either way, it’s really not Rippert Sr.’s will that we should be focusing on,” Roxie said with a wink.
I shot her a sideways look. “What do you mean?”
She tapped the floor a couple of times with her staff. She was clearly building up to something and was enjoying taking her time getting there. “It looks as though the estate might be up for grabs again, doesn’t it?”
“Are you implying one of the siblings waited all these years to do away with Constance, so he or she could finally get ahold of the estate?”
Roxie’s face fell.
Clearly, I had taken the fun out of the story.
“The real question, though, is which one of the siblings?” Roxie said, recovering quickly. “That family has been torn apart for decades. If I had to guess, Constance never had any intention of leaving any one of them anything, and yet . . .”
“And yet?”
Roxie leaned back and smiled.
“Roxie,” Izzy warned.
“You’re such a tiger today.” The dance instructor made a claw with her fingers and gave my aunt a slight growl. “I love it. But where was I going? Oh right. Beatty did tell you about Constance’s father changing his will before his death, right?”
“He did,” I said, “without intending to.”
Roxie smiled. “Right, well, let’s just say Rippert Sr. wasn’t the only one.”