“With magick of course, silly girl.” He was in the front passenger seat, having called shotgun as we emerged from town hall. It was anyone’s guess where he’d learned that expression. I was having a hard time keeping my anger in check. Any minute steam might pour from my ears and eyeballs. “You promised not to use magick unless one of us okayed it.”
“I was merely following the instructions on the form,” he replied blithely. “If they are incorrect, the person who wrote them should be reprimanded.” He turned his head to address my aunt. “Tilly, dear lady, might you still have one of the blank forms?”
I heard my aunt rummaging in the depths of the oversized tote she called a purse. “Aha,” she exclaimed, “there it is.” She held up a small plastic bag containing a partially flattened jelly donut with the jelly oozing out. “I couldn’t find this for the life of me yesterday.”
“I’ll take half,” Merlin said, although she hadn’t asked for volunteers.
I parked in front of my shop. “Aunt Tilly, do you have a copy of the form?” I hadn’t paid particular attention to the instructions on the one Tompkins showed me.
“Yes, yes,” she said, dividing the donut in half. She handed Merlin the larger piece. Then she dove back into her purse and came up with a folded sheet of paper that she handed to me:
Petition to Run For the New Camel Town Board.
Interested parties must present the signatures of at least one hundred legal residents of the town and file said petition with the town clerk before the first of December, 2018.
“You can see for yourself that there is no mention of how one should obtain the signatures,” Merlin said. “Was I expected to ring every doorbell in this town and ask if the people living therein were legal residents? What do you think the result of such an effort was likely to have been?”
He had me there. The instructions were not specific about how to obtain the signatures. Merlin knew only a handful of people, primarily the shopkeepers. More likely than not, everyone else would have slammed their doors in his face, if they even bothered to open them in the first place. But there were important points he’d chosen to ignore.
“First of all,” I said, “it is assumed that anyone applying for the position is aware that forgery is illegal. Secondly, it is also assumed that applicants know they have to be legal residents of this town.”
The wizard was absorbed in plucking bits of jelly out of his beard and licking it off his fingers. “Mayhap they are too quick to assume such things.”
“Trust me, Merlin, you do not want to give any branch of the government cause to look into your background or ask for your ID. It would mean a quick trip to a prison cell or, in your case, a hospital for the insane.”
“Then I will find another way to restore the town’s original and proper name,” he said clearly undaunted. We’d reached a temporary impasse and I had a business to reopen. Tilly and he climbed out of the car and headed into Tea and Empathy. I unlocked Abracadabra, Merlin’s avowed mission weighing heavily on my mind.
Chapter 10
After a quick sandwich of turkey, cranberry sauce, and coleslaw from the mini-mart, I sat down at the computer, ready to begin our investigation into Ryan’s death in earnest. I knew Travis wasn’t going to rest easy until we found his brother’s killer.
I accessed the coroner’s report for the first name on the list. The public part of the report provided only the basics. Martin Frank of Watkins Glen was forty-six at the time of his death on March tenth, 2011. His death was attributed to multiple stab wounds to his torso. To get a broader sense of who he was, I tried looking him up on Facebook, but there were a lot of people with that name. In any case, the odds were his account had been deleted years ago. Since his death was ruled a homicide, I also checked back issues of the local newspaper for articles about his untimely end. Authorities believed he was the victim of a botched burglary. The murder weapon was never recovered and the killer was scrupulous about cleaning up after himself, because no DNA was ever found. Martin was survived by his wife, Nina, and their two sons. There was a family photo of them all dressed up and smiling. Anything else we learned about him would have to come from interviewing members of his family.
The next name was Calista Gonzalez of Hassettville. She was listed as deceased on February twenty-eighth, 2012, at the age of seventy. Cause of death was a cerebral hemorrhage, most likely the result of a fall. I found her account on Facebook where her brother, Max, had posted a goodbye to her. There were a few other acknowledgements of her passing, but nothing that provided more useful information about her.
According to the coroner, Axel Stubbs of Burdett was twenty-four when he died July third, 2014, from a drug overdose. A dozen people had posted on his Facebook page, many of the comments along the lines of It’s about time and Axel who? His obituary in the local paper said that he was survived by his father and two sets of grandparents.
I only had two names to go, but as much as I wanted to continue, the words were swimming on the page and I was sure I fell asleep for a few seconds with my eyes open. I’d heard it was possible, but it was unnerving enough to send me upstairs.
When I walked into my room, the cats were already fast asleep and covering a good portion of the bed. Even my pillow had been usurped. I didn’t want to disturb them and set off a game of musical cats, so I lay across the width of the bed, curving my body around and between them and using an afghan blanket Bronwen had made in her one attempt at crocheting.
Travis called the next morning as I was stepping out of the shower. I asked him to hold on while I wrapped myself in my terry cloth robe. Morgana had added a neat little spell to it that allowed me to warm it to any temperature I desired. Almost everything in the house tied me to one family member or another. It was like living inside a hug.
“What’s going on there?” he inquired when I got back on the line. “Is someone there with you?” Before I could answer, he barreled on with wry indignation. “I knew it. I’ve been gone one day and you’ve already replaced me with another man.”
“Men are way too much trouble for me to start breaking in a new one,” I said. “The truth is you got me straight from the shower and I needed my robe, before I froze to death.”
“Oh, then I guess you’re forgiven.”
“How’s it going in Albany?”
“Turns out corruption and kickbacks aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Have you made any progress on Ryan’s notes?”
I updated him, adding that I’d check out the last two names later in the day. A busload of tourists was scheduled to descend on New Camel at ten and I wanted to make sure every bottle and jar was sparkling clean. Travis wished me a profitable day and said he’d check back later.
Bus tours at this time of year were far less frequent than in the spring and summer. When the temperature dropped and snow, sleet, and ice came to town, day-trippers were replaced by skiers, for whom après-ski took second place and shopping came in a distant third. All the shopkeepers were looking forward to an uptick in business from this busload of tourists. We were bent on making their experience one that would lead to return visits and favorable word of mouth.
Tilly was already deep into her baking by the time Sashkatu and I arrived at Abracadabra. She had a full slate of customers for the hours of the tour, thanks to the company’s revamped website that urged people to make reservations in advance for the town’s restaurants, as well as her readings. By ten o’clock, I was high on the sugary aromas wafting into my shop from hers. It felt like I was gaining weight by simply inhaling the air.
My first customer of the day was a young mother with a toddler boy and a girl who looked about seven. The mother seemed to be entranced with the shop from the moment she walked in. The little girl was clearly on watch-your-brother duty. She was glued to his side, taking