After they’d left, Lucy topped off our mugs of tea and settled back into her seat. I moved to the chair Bianca and Colette had vacated, and we turned our attention back to Teddy.
“So this new spirit you encountered had just died,” I prompted.
“Not just died, Katie. As I started to tell you on the way over here, she was murdered. It had to have been near the Marshall House.”
My gentle aunt let out a small sigh. I could sense her automatic compassion for the unknown victim from where I sat.
Jaida’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know she was murdered?” She sounded for all the world as if we were in court.
“She told me.”
“Oh, dear.” Lucy looked over at me, then back at Teddy. “I think you’d better tell us everything.”
Teddy frowned. “Well, okay, but it’s pretty strange.”
“I have no doubt,” I muttered.
Jaida’s lips twitched. “Go ahead.”
“At the Marshall House, I was telling you about the Civil War soldiers who’ve been tethered to the building for centuries, right?”
We all nodded.
“They’re really there, you know. One in particular always comes out when I take a tour there. He has a bit of a sense of humor and likes to play tricks.”
“The skinny lady’s hat!” Lucy said, remembering the woman who had lost her hat in front of us.
Teddy nodded. “He’s never done any harm, and it’s good for the tour, so I’ve never asked him to stop. He’d just flipped her hat to the ground, and his next move was probably going to be to touch someone’s cheek or arm—it’s a weird feeling for most people.”
I shivered. “I bet it is.”
“He never got the chance, though. All of a sudden, this spirit comes racing across the porch area, straight for us.” She snagged my gaze. “Straight for you, really. But you didn’t know she was there, even when she stopped next to you. However, when she saw me looking at her, she realized she could give me a message for you.”
“A message,” I repeated.
“She wants you to find her killer.”
I closed my eyes. “Yes, you mentioned that.” I opened them. “Wait. This is someone who knows me? Knew me.” I shook my head. “Whatever.” My stomach clenched as a parade of women I knew who could be unexpectedly dead flickered across my mental movie screen.
Teddy shrugged. “I don’t know. She didn’t give a name. They don’t exactly talk, you see. It’s more like a feeling I get from them. A sudden knowledge of whatever they want to communicate comes into my mind. It’s wordless. That’s how I usually communicate with them, too, with a kind of singular, narrow thought. Though I can just talk to them and that seems to work, too.”
All very interesting, but right now I needed to know who was dead. “So how am I supposed to find the killer if I don’t even know who they’ve killed? Can you tell me what she looks like?”
Teddy wrinkled her nose in a kind of apologetic wince. “I know it’s a woman. Not young. Not old, but she seems to have very light hair. Angry. Really, really angry. She has a pale aura. Almost white. Maybe that’s just her hair, though.” Her eyes widened. “Oh! She held something out to me. It was fabric of some kind. It was kind of a pale teal, but swirly.” She sighed. “It’s hard to explain.”
But I was thinking about how blue and green created a kind of teal color, blue and green dragonflies intertwined on a piece of silk fabric. Leigh Markes’ beautiful silk scarf, covered with images of my totem.
Svelte, assertive, artistic Leigh Markes with the pure white hair.
“I’m afraid I might I know who it is,” I said.
Lucy nodded. Of course. She’d seen the dragonflies on the scarf, too.
Jaida frowned. “Who?”
“A customer at the Honeybee. Leigh Markes. She owns the Markes Gallery.”
“She was in the bakery this afternoon with her book club,” Lucy all but whispered.
“She has white hair, always reminds me of Emmylou Harris,” I said. “Or did, if it was her spirit who approached Teddy.” My lips pressed together. “She was wearing a silk scarf covered with dragonflies. Lucy and I both noticed.”
The skin around Jaida’s eyes tightened. “You don’t say.” She knew about my totem, too.
Lucy and I nodded.
Teddy was watching us with wide eyes. “A scarf! Yes, that’s what she was holding. I . . . I think someone strangled her with it.”
I blanched. “Did she tell you that?”
She shook her head. “Not really. But the way she held it . . .” she sighed. “I suppose I sound callous, but most of the souls I see didn’t exactly die in their sleep. Many—not all—died tragically. Some violently. That’s why they haven’t moved on.”
We paused to take that in. Then I shook myself. “Hang on. If someone killed Leigh Markes, then there’s a body, right? I mean, the police surely must know about it.”
Jaida stood. “Of course. I’ll call—”
I held up my hand, cutting her off. “I’ll call Quinn. If there’s been a homicide, he’ll know.”
Jaida nodded and sat back down. Teddy looked from her to me.
“I’ve worked with Detective Peter Quinn on some other cases,” I explained.
“No wonder the new spirit wanted me to ask you to find who killed her. You’ve done it before.”
I scowled and pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. After selecting Quinn’s personal cell number from my contact list, I waited. He didn’t answer. Glancing at my watch, I saw it was already after nine thirty. Oops. Over the course of several homicide investigations that I’d been dragged into, I’d become used to being able to call the detective at all hours.
Maybe not the best thing to get used to.
With a grimace, I hung up.
Seconds later, he called me back. “Katie Lightfoot,” he drawled when I answered. “Tell me I don’t have to leave my rare evening at home because you went and found a dead body.”
I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not. Really, it could have gone either way.
“Very funny,” I said, hedging my bet. “However . . .” I trailed off, suddenly unsure how to put it.
“However, what?” His tone was flat.
“I was just, you know, wondering . . .”
“Wondering what?” Now an edge of warning had crept into his voice.
“If maybe someone else found a dead body?”
He sighed. Strains of classical music played in the silence that followed, and then I heard a woman ask him if he wanted more wine.
Rare evening at home.
“Quinn, I’m interrupting. I’m so sorry.”
Jaida and Lucy exchanged rueful looks.
On the phone, another sigh. “I didn’t have to call you back. As a matter of fact, I wish I hadn’t. But I did. So what’s this about a dead body?”
“Oh, Peter!” his wife said in the background. “Not tonight.”
“Never mind,” I said in a small voice.
“Tell me.”
“It’s just that I understand there might have been a murder somewhere around the Marshall House. A . . . well, a woman.”
“And when do you understand this murder occurred?”
“Tonight?” I offered.
“And what, exactly, gave you that understanding?”
“Um.” I couldn’t tell him about Teddy. He knew I was a witch, but only because he’d seen me do some things that couldn’t be explained any other way. He still had a pretty hard time believing in anything related to the paranormal. Expecting him to believe Teddy really could see dead people was a nonstarter. Plus, her ability wasn’t mine to reveal.
“A premonition,” I said. “You know how I am, with my magical connections and all the woo-woo stuff.”
Teddy’s eyes widened with a combination of confusion and alarm.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” he said. “Please. A premonition? I have neither the time nor the inclination to have this conversation with you. As the lead homicide detective in the precinct that the Marshall House is in, I’d know if there had been any kind of suspicious death, even on my day off. Which this is. And there weren’t any deaths at all, never mind suspicious ones. Good night, Katie.” He hung up, but not before I heard him mutter, “Sorry, darlin’ ” to his wife.
I dropped my cell phone in my lap and rubbed my hands over my face. “Yikes. That wasn’t good.” When I looked up, the others were staring at me. “There hasn’t been any murder reported in this precinct tonight, and now Quinn thinks I’m crazy.”
“Well,” Jaida said in a matter-of-fact tone. “He already thought you were a little crazy. Nothing to be done about that now. All we can do is wait and see what happens tomorrow.”
“Oh, no.” Teddy sounded weary. “Isn’t there anything we can do tonight? The spirit is still so angry.”
“She’s here?” I asked, looking around the dark bakery with consternation.
“No, but she’s near,” Teddy whispered. “I can feel her. And I don’t think she’s going to leave me alone until you find her killer.”
Lucy stood up and put her hand on Teddy’s shoulder. “Don’t you worry. Katie will find out what happened, and we’ll do everything we can to help her.”
I opened my mouth to protest but closed it when my aunt shot me a look.
Jaida rose. “But there’s really not much we can do tonight. Come on, Teddy. You can come back to our place for the night. Things will look brighter in the morning.”
The young woman looked relieved at Jaida’s invitation. “I guess you’re right. Katie, I’m really sorry to drag you into this whole thing.”
“Nonsense,” I said. “Leigh Markes dragged me into this.”
Or rather, her killer did.