Turning, I found my aunt and uncle shrugging off their jackets. Honeybee sat in her carrier on the floor at Lucy’s feet.
“Who were you talking to?” Ben asked.
“Detective Quinn,” I answered.
They both paused and gave me questioning looks.
I nodded. “Quinn just confirmed it. Leigh Markes was found dead in her car, strangled with her own scarf.”
My aunt closed her eyes, and Ben wrapped his arm around her shoulders.
“He says they determined the time of death to be a couple of hours after I called him last night.”
Lucy’s eyes opened. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know.” I looked at my watch. It was just coming up seven o’clock. “I’ll start calling the spellbook club in an hour or so.”
“I’ll do it.” Lucy picked up Honeybee and carried her to the reading area, where she exited her carrier and leaped to the windowsill to watch the activity starting up on Broughton Street. “I’ve already spoken with Mimsey.”
If we’d been a formal coven, Mimsey Carmichael would have been our high priestess. As it was, she was our de facto leader due to her considerable experience in the Craft, her gentle wisdom, and the simple fact that we all loved her to pieces.
Before she came back to the kitchen, my aunt hung the reserved sign by the reading area, ensuring a modicum of privacy when the other witches arrived.
Our part-time employee, Iris Grant, showed up as Lucy was rolling out the pale, sugary dough for moon and stars cookies. Nineteen and studying at the Savannah College of Art and Design, she had come to work at the bakery after I met her while investigating a murder on a movie set in the historic district. She had brown eyes, multiple piercings, an elaborate fairy tattoo on her upper arm, a talent for both baking and magic that was perfect for our work at the Honeybee, and a sweet disposition. Since just the day before, she’d dyed her ever-changing hair, currently cut in a short bob, bright orange around her face and black with orange streaks in the back.
“Nice,” Lucy said with an approving nod at her hair.
“Very Halloween-y,” I said with a grin.
“Samhain,” Iris corrected me, her face serious. “I’ve been paying attention.”
“Are things going okay, sweetie?” Lucy’s eyes traveled over our employee’s young face. Sure enough, once I looked past the brightly colored hair, Iris’s eyes appeared red-rimmed and swollen.
Iris began to nod, but suddenly tears welled up.
“Oh, honey.” Lucy hurried over and gave her a big hug.
Iris let out a little sob as the tears spilled over.
“That’s it. Tell us what’s wrong,” my aunt demanded.
But Iris pulled away, vehemently shaking her head. “No. I can’t. I’ll just lose it, and I have work to do. I’m not going to think about it for a while. Oh, that jerk!” The tears threatened again, but she quickly wiped them away and strode back to the office. I heard her greet Mungo in a shaky voice, then blow her nose. When she returned, she calmly asked me what I’d like her to do.
After a moment’s hesitation, I suggested she could start making pastry for pumpkin hand pies. As she gathered ingredients, Lucy gave me a look. I nodded and went over to the counter, where a pan of cookies were cooling. One of Iris’ recipes, they were on the menu as that day’s special and were studded with delicate petals of roses, lavender, and violets—all triggered with a spell to activate their ability to promote love and comfort heartbreak. From our brief exchange, my guess was that Iris was having trouble with her recent boyfriend. I didn’t know how bad it was, but the cookies might help. I picked one up and took it over to her.
“Care to try the daily special?” I asked.
She took with it with a grateful moue. “Thanks,” she whispered. “Maybe this will do the trick.”
Things were settling down as they generally did midmorning. I was restocking the pastry case, and Lucy was patrolling the tables for crumbs and spills before the lunch wave hit. Ben was on the phone with the farm that supplied our eggs, and Iris was shifting fragrant molasses cookies from a baking sheet to a rack to cool.
When the door opened, I looked up and felt a smile bloom on my face. “Mrs. Standish! How are you today?”
“Oh, I’m fine, fine, fine. Why, what have you heard?” She waggled her painted eyebrows and they disappeared into the zebra-print turban snugged on her head. A few iron gray curls escaped artfully around the edge. The loose belt on her orange caftan matched the turban, giving her a safari-meets-jack-o’-lantern vibe. Her dark orange lipstick matched the caftan.
Edna Standish had been one of our very first customers and was now one of our most loyal. Her enthusiastic love of the Honeybee pastries had spread to her wide-reaching social network and had been influential to the bakery’s quick success in the community. Almost every day she stopped by with her companion, Skipper Dean. They had met shortly after Lucy and I had boosted the possibility of love for a very lonely widow Standish with a special vanilla-laced treat. Today, however, she was alone.
“I’ve only heard good things about you, dear.” I laughed. “Where’s Dean?”
“The Skipper is at a meeting of the Savannah Arts Association. I was supposed to go, but those things can be so terribly boring, you know. They’re discussing something about graffiti along the riverfront and whether it’s vandalism or art.”
Ben had finished with his telephone conversation and came to stand beside me. “Edna, how long have you been involved with SAA?”
“Oh, heavens.” She waved a manicured hand that glittered with rings. “Years and years. My husband, bless his departed soul, was a great patron of the arts. He just loved helping up-and-coming talent, you know. Quite the expert. I’m afraid I don’t really know much about art, though.”
“But you know what you like?” Ben’s eyes flashed humor as he smiled.
She laughed. “Indeed. I’ve continued my involvement with the organization as a tribute to Harry. Skipper Dean, on the other hand, has a particular interest in something called ‘outsider art.’ To me, it looks like something a kindergartener came up with, but what do I know?”
“Are you familiar with the Markes Gallery?” Ben’s demeanor was so deliberately casual I thought she’d peg to it, but she didn’t seem to.
“Well, I know Leigh Markes from other organizations I’m involved with—she’s always been a contributor to my animal welfare fundraisers. And of course, I’ve been in her gallery. Bought a lovely painting for the guesthouse from her.” Now she squinted at him. “Why do you ask, Ben?”
I started to break in with a rundown of the freshest additions to the pastry case, but Ben answered easily, “Her book club met here, and we chatted a bit.”
Mrs. Standish continued to regard him for a long moment, then turned that razor-sharp attention to me. I smiled and kept my mouth shut. She had an instinct for gossip that was almost otherworldly.
Lucy bustled by with the cloth she’d been using to wipe down the tables. No doubt she’d heard every word. “Edna! How lovely to see you. It’s a warm one out there, isn’t it? Perhaps you’d like a glass of sweet tea? Today’s is mint. It goes especially well with the double chocolate chip cookies.”
Mrs. Standish’s face lit up. “Oh, yes. Please. And I’ll take a half dozen of those decadent cookies. They’re the ones with the weensy little marshmallows in them? Excellent. The Skipper loves those. And I’ll take a small loaf of sourdough today. It will be a nice accompaniment to our rack of lamb luncheon. Now, don’t look so surprised, Katie. We generally eat a very light supper.”
I hadn’t realized my expression had been so transparent. Embarrassed, I set to putting her order into a bakery bag decorated with our logo of a certain orange cat.
Mimsey Carmichael came in the door as Mrs. Standish was leaving. Old friends, they greeted each other and took the time to exchange pleasantries. The door closed behind Mrs. Standish, and Mimsey made her way to the counter where we stood, her stride and posture full of purpose.
“Where is everyone?”
“You’re the first to arrive,” Lucy said. “Shall I bring you a cup of tea?”
Mimsey gave a ladylike snort. “Heavens, no. But I’ll take a double espresso and a sage scone, if you’re offering.”
Laughing, Ben hurried to make her caffeine supplement, and Lucy put a scone on a plate for our friend.
Shorter even than my aunt, who was several inches shorter than my five feet eight, Mimsey referred to herself as comfortably padded. A witch who specialized in color and flower magic, she owned a florist shop a few blocks away from the Honeybee called Vase Value. The oldest of our group, she’d officially become an octogenarian since I’d met her two and half years before, but looked at least ten, if not fifteen, years younger than that. Though I’d once wondered if she employed a glamour to augment her looks, I’d come to realize they were simply a result of how she cheerfully and enthusiastically embraced every single day. She tended to dress in magically strategic colors, and today she wore a tunic swirled with yellow and orange over white slacks. An orange bow perched on the side of her white pageboy as if by . . . magic.
Probably a hidden hair clip, though.
The color combo made me think of a piece of Halloween candy corn, but I knew the yellow was for focus and creativity—both good for solving problems—and the orange for success and justice. The white would be for clarity.
I’d learned a lot from Mimsey. And we were going to need all the help we could get if we were really going to find out who had killed Leigh Markes.
Armed with her scone and napkin, she wove her way through the tables toward the reading area, calling over her shoulder, “I brought a couple books for your library. I’ll just find a place for them and wait for the others in here.”
Jaida and Bianca came in together as Ben took Mimsey her espresso. They made their selections—a chocolate croissant for Bianca and a pumpkin spice muffin for Jaida—and joined Mimsey. By the time Lucy and I left Ben and Iris in charge of customers and went into the reading area, Bianca had her laptop open on the coffee table. It turned out Cookie Rios, the youngest member of the spellbook club, was able to attend our impromptu meeting virtually—along with her new baby, Isabella. Lucy and I sat down and added our cooing and exclamations over the beautiful little girl. Amid the hubbub over her sweet little self, Isabella’s eyes drifted closed, and she slept.
“Whew,” Cookie said, her voice hushed as she centered the camera on her own face. “It’s amazing how she just up and checks out with no warning. Of course, pretty much everything she does is amazing.” She grinned, and the mothers around the table grinned back in understanding camaraderie.
“Even the middle-of-the-night feedings?” Bianca asked.
“Even those,” Cookie said. “Though having my mother around has helped so much. And Oscar does his part.” She looked down at the baby in her arms. “He loves his little girl, oh, yes, he does.” Her words held the slight lilt of her early childhood in Haiti.
I smiled. Cookie had changed a great deal since we’d met. In the beginning she had been known to go through boyfriends every three months or so, as well as jobs, skittering from man to man and everything from being a waitress to managing a shoe store. She’d even worked at the Honeybee for a little while. Then she’d come back from a trip to Europe with a husband and settled into a career in real estate as if she’d been born to it.
She had moved to the US with her mother and brother when she was nine, after her father, a voodoo priest in Port-au-Prince, had been killed. A witch who had always been more comfortable than the rest of us dabbling in what I thought of as “gray” magic, she’d recently reconnected with her voodoo past and was deepening her connection to those roots.
Right now, though, she was all about little Isabella. She looked happy but tired, with no makeup on her light brown skin, dark circles around her eyes, and her dark tresses clamped back in a messy ponytail.
“Let me just take care of something, and we’ll get started,” Mimsey said.
She rose and went to where a thick, braided tieback held a floor-to-ceiling curtain against the wall. She unhooked it and drew the curtain across on the rod Ben had installed above, essentially closing off the reading area from the rest of the bakery. Then she murmured under her breath and made a few hand gestures. Bianca rose and moved to stand beside her, repeating the gestures with her.
When they sat back down, I asked, “Privacy spell?”
Mimsey nodded. “Silencing spell. People will be able to hear voices, but not what we’re saying.”
Just when I think I’ve learned so much, I realize I have so much more to learn.
Tamping down the resentment that rose whenever I thought about how my parents hadn’t told me about my magical gifts—in an attempt to protect me, but still—I made a note to ask the others about that spell later.
“So everyone is up to speed on what happened last night?” I asked.
Everyone nodded, even Cookie. The spellbook club had a very efficient internal grapevine.
“Okay. What do we know about Leigh Markes?” I didn’t have any kind of a plan and hoped someone would know something that we could grab on to, a thread to pull and see what unraveled, as Declan had said.
Bianca looked around at the others. “Well, I was acquainted with Leigh from her gallery.”
That didn’t surprise me. Bianca, though nouveau riche, had made her way into Savannah’s old-school society scene as well as the arts community.
She continued. “But I hadn’t seen her for a while. She hadn’t been running things there for over a year. She returned a few weeks ago. While she was gone, her assistant had full control of the place.”
“Leigh was taking time off?” I asked.
Bianca nodded. “Her father was ill. She moved him into her house and took care of him.” She made a sympathetic noise. “He recently passed away.”
“I knew James Markes,” Mimsey said. “Leigh, too, in passing. But James was my generation, part of my crowd growing up. We even dated for a bit in our early twenties.”
“My condolences, dear,” Lucy said.
Mimsey waved a hand. “Death is but a journey to the next plane. James was a card, though. Funny as all get-out. Loved a practical joke, teased his poor wife to distraction. They were very much in love. Over fifty years they were married. She passed six or seven years ago.”
“Leigh has a sister,” I said.
“Oh, yes. Calista. Bit of a flibbertigibbet. Leigh was the artist, but she was also a hard-core businesswoman. Calista missed out on both talents. I heard there were issues between her and James in his later years.”
I made a mental note. Calista and Leigh hadn’t exactly parted on friendly terms, and that had been only hours before Leigh had been killed.
“Um?” A voice from the corner near where the curtain had been drawn made me jump. We all turned to find Iris standing just inside the curtain, looking pained. “I’m sorry. I know this is an important meeting and private and all, but Ben told me Ms. Markes died suddenly. I just wanted to say . . .” She trailed off.
“Say what?” Jaida’s tone was kind.
“I knew Ms. Markes. Well, sort of. I’m friends with her daughter, Zoe Stokes. We were in the same year of high school. She’s away at college now. She’s cool. Her mom was cool, too.” She looked down at the floor, and my heart went out to her. Then she looked back up and squared her shoulders. “Her dad isn’t so great, though. Kind of a”—she searched for a word—“jerk.” I had a feeling that wasn’t the first word that came to her mind. “He and Ms. Markes divorced about four years ago. I guess it was messy. He was pretty mean when they split up.”
The spellbook club members exchanged glances.
“Yes,” Mimsey said. “I’m afraid Iris is right about Walker Stokes. James did not approve of his marriage to Leigh, not at all. I don’t know details other than Walker’s reputation as a ladies’ man—and a cad.”