Sugar & Skeletons (Wicked Witches of Brookdale Book 3) by Sara Bourgeois

Author:Sara Bourgeois [Bourgeois, Sara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-11-15T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Back into my home, I put the carrots in the fridge and then was struck with inspiration... and a bit of paranoia.

Charlotte and Florence kind of freaked out that I was there, and that lingered with me as I got home.

Even though I wasn’t the accused this time, everyone was apparently aware that I was investigating this as a murder.

And if they were somehow involved, that would mean they’d want to keep tabs on me and what I was doing.

So I had to do things to prevent that.

“Salting the windows again?” Gumbo asked as he watched me go around.

“Just want to ensure I have privacy, Gumbo. You know how easy it is to look in on someone. Scrying into a cauldron is witchcraft 101.”

“And blocking it is witchcraft 102. Which usually makes it not worth the effort.”

“Not so much, Gumbo. You have to fear being watched to go forth with the effort. It works if whoever you’re trying to spy on is oblivious.”

He yawned at it.

Maybe it was just paranoia, but it didn’t take that much effort to spread salt around, even if it did mean I would have to go clean it up later.

There was something I wanted to examine though.

I still had those ransom-style notes we found at Vanessa’s. There was some handwriting on some of them, mixed in with newspaper and magazine cut-outs.

I also had the scribbles related to the last prescription that I had filled.

Gathering the bits and pieces I had, I laid them out in front of me. I brought out the signature on my most recent flu vaccine record and started to compare it to what little handwriting was there.

Definitely similarities I could see.

The signature on the vaccine card, of course, was written in chicken scratch. Barely legible but I could make out some eccentricities in the approach. I compared it to the notes that I was guessing were sent threateningly to Vanessa.

They’d tried to mask it. Maybe they wrote with their left hand when they were a righty or whatever, but it didn’t completely work. I still noticed the trends, the curve in the dual ‘t’s in Charlotte, and how it was similar to the blackmailer threatening Vanessa with ‘utter ruin.’

Little bits and pieces. I was hardly any sort of handwriting analyst, so I guessed I was simply going on my amateur gut instinct in this case.

“Thinking bad things about people, Fern?” Gumbo said as he looked down at the words too.

“It’s all circumstantial, but it’s really making me think I need to look deeper into Charlotte, and Florence too. They have plenty of motive, and plenty of means to do it.”

“Magic delivered by syringe?”

“Easily doable. Doesn’t fit people’s perception of witchcraft, but really, doesn’t that only make it more appealing to use? The mundane toxicology reports say that Vanessa’s death was an unknown cause.”

“Unknown cause for an apparently healthy young woman. Right. Not weird at all.” He licked his paw, showing his disdain for the thought with a lack of eye contact.

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