Beignets and Broomsticks Read online

  He was kicking the door now, crazy with frustration and murderous intent.

  ‘Stop provoking him, Miller,’ hissed VV.

  ‘Why?’ I yelled. ‘He’s killed two people – what’s two more? Right, Lee? Tell me,’ I hollered. I wanted him mad, filled with blind rage. Maybe he’d do something stupid. Maybe even something as stupid as I had done by trapping myself and VV in a closet with no way out.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ I taunted. ‘To protect your precious church? I’ll bet that was it! Am I right?’

  Suddenly the door splintered and the sharp end of the fireplace poker pressed against my cheek.

  I squeezed against VV before he could spear me. I liked shish kebab as much as anybody, but not when it included the head of Maggie Miller.

  I’d had enough. Lee had viciously murdered two people and had nearly skewered me. ‘I am not going down without a fight,’ I vowed to VV.

  She planted her sharp claws in my shoulder. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Follow my lead,’ I whispered in her ear. ‘When this door opens, run like hell. Got it?’

  ‘Are you sure this is a good i—’

  I cut her off. ‘One.’ I squeezed my hands on the doorknob. ‘Two,’ I whispered. ‘Three!’ I twisted the knob and threw the door open as fast and hard as I possibly could.

  Lee was hit by the door and fell flat on his back.

  ‘Run, VV! Run!’

  No need to ask her a third time. The woman stuck her arms out and practically ran me over in an effort to get to the door. In the NFL, I was pretty sure that would have been an illegal hit.

  No matter. I was right behind her. VV turned left out the door and I followed. This was her family’s property, not mine. Surely, she knew what she was doing.

  We heard the slam of Lee’s steps coming closer as we skirted past a patio set.

  I paused long enough to grab an aluminum chair. I turned and heaved it at Lee. It clipped his leg and he yelped. I sprinted forward. Unfortunately, VV had stopped to see what I was doing.

  I slammed into VV and we both tumbled into the swimming pool. My head went under and I came up hacking and gasping for air. I started dog paddling.

  ‘Swim to the other side!’ I coughed. The water was frigid. Didn’t they heat this thing?

  Lee crouched, knife in hand, looking like he was trying to make up his mind whether to jump in after us or intercept us on the other side.

  From behind Lee, a dark blur shot from the courtyard onto the pool patio. It was Detective Highsmith. He snatched the upside-down chair I had thrown and swung it sharply across Lee’s back.

  Lee never made a sound.

  Well, until he hit the water face down, that is.

  Splash!

  ‘About time!’ I spat, my mouth foul with chlorinated water.

  Detective Highsmith sauntered over. He was looking rather nice in what was probably his best suit and tie. Dress shoes, too, I noticed – easy to do, seeing as his feet were almost level with my eyes.

  Highsmith leaned down. ‘I’d join you, ladies,’ he quipped, but I forgot to bring my bathing suit.’

  I was going to give him a piece of my mind, but the minute I opened my mouth it filled with pool water again – so I coughed instead.

  ‘Mark, get me out of here!’ commanded VV. Her fists pounded the surface of the water.

  ‘OK.’ Mark chuckled as he knelt at the edge of the pool and extended his hand. ‘I guess I’d better fish him out, too,’ he added with a glance at Lee as he floundered helplessly in the deep end.

  ‘Help!’ blubbered Lee. ‘Can’t swim! Can’t swim!’

  Personally, I didn’t much care if he sank.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The following day I stayed home, ate pizza and played with the cat. I mean, come on, I’d almost been sliced to death by a crazed killer!

  I deserved a day off.

  The day after that I was back at work at the café. OK, so I rolled in around noon. I got there. That’s the important thing.

  Aubrey and Kelly chided me for having missed the big espresso-maker exorcism. Mom, Donna, Andy and the kids had attended. Even Laura Duval had come to see the machine get cured of whatever devil’s spawn had possessed it.

  Mostly, I think they had come hoping to have some good-natured fun at my expense. Of course, the joke had been on them because at the same time the espresso machine was being rid of its demons, I was busy getting almost stabbed to death by Lee Lawsen – that was his last name, Lawsen, good to know. I was stabbed in the butt by a prickly pear cactus, stabbed in the chest by Veronica Vargas’ boobies, and I’d swallowed gallons of chlorinated, ice-cold pool water.

  All in the name of justice, so maybe it was worth it.

  Oh, and by the way, because Rob and Trish had performed the exorcism as a duo – not that I had asked them to – the session had cost me one-fifty. I was thinking of taking it out of next month’s rent.

  ‘It was a bit uncomfortable having the Gregorys here,’ Aubrey confessed when I finally came in for work. She had left them to work for me. ‘When they were doing the exorcism, I asked them why they didn’t do this for themselves.’

  ‘What was their answer?’

  ‘Trish said they tried it but “it didn’t work but who knows maybe this time,”’ replied Kelly.

  I didn’t like the sound of that.

  Nonetheless, I plugged in the machine for its inaugural brew. ‘Get ready, ladies.’ I rubbed my hands together. ‘This is going to be great.’

  I was in a fantastic mood. A customer had come in with a rolled-up copy of the Table Rock Reader under her arm and had asked me to sign it. Me! Maggie Miller!

  Brad had interviewed me for the paper and I was something of a minor celebrity. At least, I would be for the next day or two. Hopefully, it would lead to a few new customers, the same way this fancy espresso maker was bound to do.

  I explained in my interview how Lee had been a member of the Sacred Church of Witchkraft. Aubrey had told me Lee was a devote churchgoer. I just hadn’t realized that the church he was devoted to involved witchcraft. And that he was a senior member of the church.

  Lee had learned about Nancy’s latest interest in witchcraft from Nancy herself and told her proudly that he was a member of the church. On the pretense of striking up a friendship, she had tricked Lee, convincing him that she was simply interested in learning more about the church as part of the background of her book.

  What she was really doing was using him to gain access to the church and gather inside information to be used against them in her book.

  Lee had recently caught on to her true intentions. Growing suspicious, he had waited until Nancy was out of the apartment, snuck upstairs and read her work-in-progress. He knew then that he could not let her publish that book. Doing so would publicly humiliate the church and ruin its reputation.

  Lee had been desperate to protect the church at any cost, including murder. Nancy had returned to the apartment before he could destroy her work. Besides, he knew that destroying the document would never be enough. If he didn’t stop Nancy dead in her tracks, she would only doggedly restart.

  Nancy had first learned about the existence of the church from Herman, who had been squatting on church property for several months and had learned a thing or two about them. She had already heard rumors of ASK Financial Services attempting to buy up land in the region.

  Sensing a big story, Nancy had become intrigued and came to Table Rock to see for herself.

  Sadly, that story ended in her death and that of her brother.

  Not realizing that Lee was now plotting her death, Nancy had told Lee how she had mailed a copy of the book-in-progress to me for safekeeping. Brad and I conjectured that Nancy had mailed the flash drive to me rather than her brother, Herman, at his camp because he didn’t exactly have a mailbox or a safe place to store anything. Of course, poor Herman ended up dead, anyway.

  One way or the other, Lee had been determined to get the flash dr
ive back. Working across the street, it had been relatively easy for him to sneak into the café while all of us were busy out front, and that was exactly what he had done.

  Just as it had been easy for Lee to drug Nancy’s tea prior to strangling her. He’d claimed he didn’t want her to put up a fight.

  It was true that Rob had taken Nancy the tea. What he had forgotten to mention was that he had asked Lee to prepare that cup. Seizing the opportunity, Lee had slipped on a pair of food service gloves, doctored the tea and handed it off to Rob for delivery.

  Voila, no fingerprints!

  After giving the sleeping medication time to do its job, Lee went upstairs to finish Nancy off. He found VV’s scarf – the one she had left behind – and took it as a sign. He used it to strangle Nancy as she sat unresponsive at her desk.

  I got the shivers every time I thought about it.

  Herman had been poking around himself trying to discover who Nancy’s killer was and what had happened to her manuscript. That was why I had seen him in Karma Koffee the night of my ill-fated beginners’ yoga class.

  Herman had been questioning Lee, who had already been nervous about Herman because Nancy had told him previously that he was her brother. Having killed once, Lee apparently figured a second time couldn’t hurt.

  With cold-blooded planning, he had convinced Herman that the two of them should talk. Herman had agreed and Lee rode his scooter out to Herman’s camp with a bottle of tequila under his jacket, waited until Herman was good and drunk, and then slit his throat.

  Lee had intended to haul Herman’s body off to some remote area of the mountains. He figured nobody would notice or care if the crazy treasure hunter disappeared. Herman would be one more footnote in Arizona’s long and colorful history.

  But something spooked him. Lee said he saw a bright light coming from the sky, so he’d dragged the body behind the tent, intending to come back later to finish his grisly task before anyone discovered the body.

  Detective Highsmith figured that what Lee saw was the stolen hot-air balloon making a temporary landing. The missing balloon – somewhat the worse for wear – had been found nearly one hundred miles from town. There was no clue yet as to who had stolen it or why. ‘Probably a drunken joyrider,’ Highsmith had conjectured.

  Lee had also confessed to staging the break-in of Suryavayu’s office, making off with the ASK document and planting it in Herman’s campfire, hoping to further implicate ASK in the murders and remove suspicion from his church.

  The church officially denied knowing anything at all about Lee’s plans or actions. There was no way for the police to prove otherwise.

  From behind the counter at Karma Koffee, Lee had seen Nancy arguing with Alan Klopton in the street. Hoping to point the finger of suspicion at Klopton, Lee had waited for his chance. He sneaked into Klopton’s bungalow, hoping to plant Nancy’s flash drive there after having removed all references to the church. The contents of the drive had been ruined when Lee got knocked in the swimming pool.

  Lee had planned to phone the police anonymously afterwards to tell them where they could find the missing flash drive. But Klopton caught Lee in his room. The two fought and Klopton lost. He was a greedy, unscrupulous little man, but not a very strong one.

  Lee was on his way out the door when he saw me coming. He hid in the bedroom, then hoped to trick me into believing he had entered after me.

  Luckily, Alan Klopton lived. He, Gary Busby and Stephanie Headley weren’t looking too good but it did not appear that they would be facing any charges as long as they left Table Rock and never came back. That last part had been Mayor Vargas’ condition.

  VV’s daddy, the mayor, of course, had done nothing wrong and had been every bit as honorable as VV had claimed. ASK Financial Services was trying to buy up a lot of property, including the big piece of land the Sacred Church of Witchkraft sat on.

  According to the high priest, the church was not budging. He still insisted that the church had given Nancy six thousand dollars but no one knows what happened to the money – if there ever was any. Personally, I think the priest wrote out the checks then ripped them up just to confuse the situation.

  Job done.

  As for Nancy’s latest book, that project had died with her.

  The espresso maker hissed pleasantly. I added some ground coffee to the top thingy. I gripped the handle and crossed my fingers, hoping to remember the steps Laura had taught me. ‘Get ready, girls.’

  Veronica Vargas strode into the café like she owned the place. ‘Ms Miller!’ She sashayed to the counter, dressed in a navy-blue silk set and black heels, balancing a five-hundred-dollar leather purse on her left shoulder.

  ‘What is it, Veronica?’

  She planted her perfectly manicured hands on the counter. ‘I hear you have espresso?’

  I pinched my brows together. ‘That’s right.’

  VV set her purse on the counter, opened said purse, pulled out a wallet that looked like it was fashioned from ostrich or alligator or some other poor, hapless, possibly endangered creature, and slapped a gold-plated credit card on the counter.

  ‘I’ll take a double shot, one teaspoon of raw sugar, a dash of cinnamon and a hint, just a hint,’ VV squeezed her thumb and forefinger so close they nearly touched, ‘of allspice.’

  I frowned. I had a hint I’d like to give her.

  Aubrey interposed. ‘One café verde norté.’

  Huh? Did Aubrey just make that name up?

  ‘That will be six dollars,’ Aubrey said, cheerfully accepting VV’s card.

  Six dollars? I held my breath, waiting for VV to scream in outrage and stomp on Aubrey like a bug.

  But she didn’t. VV pushed the card toward Aubrey at the register. ‘To go.’

  Six bucks for a cup of coffee with a fancy name? There was no way I could turn that down.

  I was doomed.

  I turned past Aubrey and muttered as I crossed to the copper and brass espresso maker slash steampunk spaceship slash devil’s spawn behind us. ‘You were right, this machine is cursed.’

  I quickly grabbed a hot cup from the bowels of the machine, burning my fingers on its hellishly hot metal interior.

  The infernal instrument had conjured up Veronica Vargas and drawn the vixen into my once-pleasant little café.

  What would people think?

  What would become of me?

  What would become of Maggie’s Beignet Café once customers learned that VV Vargas was frequenting the place?

  ‘Cursed, I tell you!’ I muttered at the espresso machine as I brewed. ‘Cursed!’