magical cures 07 - a charming fatality (12 page)

“We are what?” He froze into blankness.

“June,” Raven called my name, but it didn’t stop me.

“Yeah. Do we really love each other? Or are we merely a spell for our families to carry on our heritage?” Tears stung my eyes. I blinked. The salt water dripped down my cheeks.

“I think you are a little stressed.” Chandra picked up the broom. “I’ll sweep up and you can go rest.”

“I’m fine,” I said flatly. There was a hurt look in Oscar’s eyes. He looked as though he were trying to wrap his head around what I was suggesting.

“Spell or not, I love you.” Oscar watched as I touched the different bottles behind me.

“Eye of newt, pond spleen, moonstone, star thistle.” As I said the name and touched the bottle, it filled with the ingredient. “Snake oil, witch’s wart, bat wing, fingernails, toenails, lacewing, wolf’s bane, stardust, tiger whiskers.”

And the list went on. Within a few minutes, I had restocked my ingredient shelf except for one. The wisteria vine oil. It was not extracted from a witch’s hand but a mortal hand. According to the Magical Cures Book, Darla had spent a better part of her time in Whispering Falls extracting the potent oil for the village to use. It was the main ingredient in my stress free lotion.

“Wisteria vine oil.” The words almost burnt my lips as they rolled off my tongue.

“What?” Oscar asked. The hurt of my words had deepened.

“They came in and stole the wisteria vine oil. It had to be someone at the factory who really didn’t want me to make any more stress free lotion for Head To Toe Works.”

“Are you sure?” Oscar looked around at the broken bottles behind the counter.

“I’m positive. Somehow they figured out the ingredient and since it’s so hard to extract from the vine, they knew I was the maker and came in here to steal what I had.” It was a definite reason to break into my shop. “Everyone,” I hollered throughout the shop to get their attention. “I want to thank you for coming to my side tonight to help me, but I think I’m going to call it a night and do what Oscar asks. Shut down tomorrow and try to get some new homeopathic base cures together so I can open in a couple of days.”

“You let me know if you need any more drowsy daisy.” Chandra patted my back. “I have plenty.”

“And I’ll keep you in June’s Gems to help out with the stress. Faith is also available after her morning pastry drop off at the Piggly Wiggly.” Raven wiggled her fingers at us before she left.

“I have plenty of leftover floral herbs and seeds I will gather and bring to you in the morning.” Arabella reached out and squeezed my hand. “Remember, Oscar adores you no matter what.”

I thanked them all from the front steps of A Charming Cure and waved them off into the dark night.

Chapter Sixteen

“Now we can get down to business.” I locked the door and pulled the shop shades down real tight so no moonlight or even the smallest firefly could see in.

“Somehow the murder and the break-in have to be tied.” Oscar got his notebook out and made a diagram on a piece of paper with Burt’s name at the top. “Who are the people you have met so far?”

“Obviously there is Tiffany.” I watched as Oscar wrote down her name. “But I honestly don’t think it was her.”

“It’s usually the spouse and that is who Sonny is looking at very closely.” Oscar’s brow lifted as he talked about the murder investigation Locust Grove Sheriff Sonny Butcher was conducting.

There was something so sexy when he flicked on his internal cop guy attitude. Surely those feelings weren’t created by a spell.

“Madame Torres showed me something was happening in the factory before I had even gone there that night. It was a fight between Burt and someone dressed almost exactly like Tiffany. I had Madame Torres play the scene over and over.” I grabbed my bag off the chair behind the counter where I had put it when I came in and I dug Madame Torres out of the bottom.

“Madame Torres, please show me the video of Burt and the woman arguing.” I tapped the coal black globe.

“You have got to be kidding me,” sarcasm dripped from deep within the globe. Her face appeared with a white film over it. Her lips were still blood red. “How do you expect me to perform at my best if you insist on keeping me up at all hours of the night?” She yawned.

“Garage sale.” It was the magical two words to keep her quiet and do what I had asked.

Oscar bent down and watched as the scene of Burt grasping the bottle and fighting with the woman played out.

“See there,” I pointed to the woman’s hand, “she had nails and Tiffany is allergic to nail polish.”

“She told you this?” he asked.

“Yes.” I nodded. “I did see Burt grab her by the face in a forceful way the other day and she apologized to me saying how he worked for her in the factory before they were married. They met at Mac’s one night and Burt was out of work. That’s when she hired him. Once he started working there he continued to come to her with more efficient ways to run the company. Recently they were having some financial difficulty. They asked his mother, Jenny Rossen, for some financial assistance. This was all during their Christmas visit.”

I stopped until I saw Oscar was caught up on writing everything I was saying down.

“Go on,” he encouraged me.

“Tiffany gave Burt twenty-six percent of the company and Jenny twenty-five percent of the company leaving her with forty-nine percent for majority. Over the past few weeks, Burt had changed his will making his mother the beneficiary of his holdings, giving her the majority in the company, making her CEO.”

“And if she and Tiffany didn’t get along like at Christmas time, she would have reason to want to not move forward with Gentle June’s if she could get her hands on the lotion’s ingredients.” Oscar was using his sleuthing skills and looked ever so handsome doing it.

“That is something I hadn’t thought of.” My intuition told me he was on to something. “But the joke is really on them because the magic is really in the bottle.”

“Of course they don’t know that.” Oscar’s lips turned up. His eyes sparkled, sending tingly chills all over my body. “But who killed Burt?”

“I don’t know.” I closed my eyes and thought long and hard about what my next step needed to be. “Maybe the two aren’t tied. After Burt was killed and Jenny knew my product was going to save the line, she came here and broke in, destroying everything. Only I’m not sure how she would know that wisteria vine oil was in the lotion. If she could squeeze Tiffany out and make the product herself, she sees it as a win/win.”

Josh and Pearl popped into my head.

“There is Josh, the tattoo guy.” I pointed to Oscar’s notepad for him to write down Josh’s name and stirred the bubbling cauldron. “He and Burt had words about the packaging of my lotion when I noticed they were using those cheap bottles.”

“Really?” Oscar wrote on the pad under Josh’s name.

“Yeah. He said how packaging appealed to the customer.” I stirred the cauldron one more time before I put the ladle down and walked around the counter toward the door. Somehow I was going to have to get that wisteria vine oil. “I think he’s right. Did you see those cheap bottles?” I asked and opened the door.

Whispering Falls was so pretty at night. The stars dotted the sky, looking like twinkling lights. They shone down with the moon into the valley of the village, putting a silent glow around the town. It added to the magical community.

A sense of safety crept into my soul. I sucked in a deep breath of the fresh nighttime air. I felt safe, believing the person who broke into the shop was definitely not from Whispering Falls.

I reached out and grabbed a piece of the wisteria vine. I had seen Darla countless times run her fingers down the shoot, knocking the flowering off of it. After that I wasn’t sure what she did. Most of the time she shoo’ed me out of the shed so she could do her creating.

“That doesn’t really give Josh a reason to kill Burt.” Oscar said to me when I walked back in the shop and he tapped his little notebook with the tip of his pen.

“Burt embarrassed him after that asking if Josh was now the marketing manager.” I twirled the broken vine in the air trying to figure out exactly how I was to extract the oil.

I walked back around the counter to the cauldron, looked at the vine one more time and tugged my fingers down the shoot, knocking off all the flowering pieces. I threw the vine in the pot hoping something would come to me.

“And Pearl.” I picked up the ladle and blended the vine into the bubbling cauldron. “She and Burt had words because she told him how and where to package my lotion using my bottles.”

“Well, since you are not a suspect and Sonny is in charge, I think we just give him this information and let him figure it out.”  He walked behind the counter and looked in the pot. “Do me a favor and let’s just cut ties with Head To Toe Works.”

The mixture in my pot boiled and suddenly stopped, becoming chunky in an ochre color.

“Nasty.” Irritated, I flipped off the cauldron. “You know,” I threw the ladle on the counter, “there is no magic to what Darla did to the stem. Why can’t I do it?”

“You don’t need to do it.” Oscar’s voice was a little huskier. “We will tell Sonny about the break-in and when it’s solved, if it’s tied to Burt’s murder, we will figure it out. In the meantime, we will add more security to the shop and life will go back to the way it was before you met the Rossens.”

I grabbed the Magical Cures Book and flipped it open, turning the pages until I came to the page with the recipe I had used for the stress free lotion. If I didn’t say a word to Oscar, I wouldn’t lie to him because I knew I couldn’t let this go. There was evil in the air and it was up to me to figure out who had gotten their hands on my cure.

“June,” Oscar set the pen on the counter next to his notebook. “Can we talk for a minute?”

“About us?” My heart skipped a beat. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to ignore the elephant in the room. “I had a dream about my dad.”

“You did?” Oscar encircled me in his arms, one of his hands rested on the small of my back. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know.” A happy sigh escaped me. There was no way I was under some sort of spell put on me by the village or the Elders or our parents. I loved Oscar. I had always loved Oscar.

He ran his hand down my cheek. The mere touch of his hand sent a warming shiver throughout my body.

“Tell me about it,” he said with quiet emphasis.

“I thought it might be one of my dreams but I think it is just the stress of not having them here.” I nuzzled in his neck. His natural smell was better than any cologne and there was no way it could be bottled. Gently my lips kissed his neck a few times. “I’m sure it’s my subconscious playing with me because in my dream I was at the cemetery looking at their stones. My dad sat next to me.”

I looked up. His blue eyes studied my face.

“Your parents would be so proud of you.” Oscar’s lips came down warm and sweet on mine. He whispered, “As for any sort of marriage arrangement, even if there were such a contract, I’m happy they got it right.”

I smiled. He was right. If there were a contract, my parents and his parents knew we would be good together. They were right.

“And maybe you should go visit the cemetery. Talk to them like they are living.” He swooped me up in his arms. I wrapped my arms around his neck and he took me to the storage room where I had a small living space, including a couch.

Chapter Seventeen

I lay in the curve of Oscar’s body, listening to him slightly snore. Being with him confirmed even more how much I couldn’t wait to become Mrs. Oscar Park.

“June Park.” I grinned at the sound of it as my married name came out of my mouth. “June Park.”

I glanced out the storage room door and out into the shop. Regardless of what happened with Head To Toe Works, my life was good. But I still couldn’t shake why someone would want my recipe.

“KJ,” I gasped remembering just how I could get my hand on some wisteria vine oil.

Slowly I lifted Oscar’s arm from around me and rested it on his own hip. He shifted a bit and I waited to get up until I heard him snoring again, leaving him in the storage room.

Rowl
. Mr. Prince Charming lifted his head from the stool where he was curled up.

“You stay here.” I grabbed my cloak off the coat rack and threw it over my shoulders. “I’ll be right back.”

I let myself out the front door and swept down the steps. I walked up to the hill behind the shop to The Gathering Rock. It was a space just before the wooded area where Eloise lived. There was a large rock where the villagers gathered during celebrations and meetings. I also used it to get in touch with KJ, the son of Kenny.

Kenny was a Native American that helped supply me with the special herbs only he could get me from his native land. Unfortunately, Kenny was killed, but his son KJ had taken over for him. KJ always knew when I needed smudging grass or my regular ingredients. The bottles told him when they were getting low. When I needed something special, like wisteria vine oil, I would message him through the wind.

The wind whipped around me. The fireflies batted around the rock, darting in and out of the woods. The rustle of the trees told me it was time.

I breathed into the wind as soon as it passed through me, sending a signal out into the universe for KJ. Out of the corner of my eye, the images of a graceful deer leapt out of the woods. Long and dark, KJ appeared on the edge of The Gathering Rock with his arms crossed over his bare chest and a feather headdress atop his long black hair.

“KJ, I’m so glad to see you.” I rushed over and greeted him. “How is your family?”

“They are good.” He reached around his back and pulled his knapsack to the front of him. He reached in and pulled out a black clay vase with two spouts. “From my family.”

He held it out.

“It’s a Native American wedding vase we made for you.” As I held it in my hands, he pointed to the various parts. “The two drinking spouts are connected by a single handle. The two spouts symbolize the two individual lives, and the handle symbolizes the union of these two lives in marriage. You and Oscar.”