Death Quixote (A Paranormal Cozy Mystery) (Magical Bookshop Mystery Book 4) Read online

  Three of the four walls of the shop were lined floor-to-ceiling with books, and normally on a slow day I’d take one off the shelf and read from one of the many comfortable seats I’d ordered and placed around the shop haphazardly. But today, I had other things to do.

  I took the list of credit card purchasers from the other night that Becky had given us and started going through names. I was immediately able to rule out about forty percent of the list; they were obviously women’s names. That left me with eighteen names of men who had paid by credit card.

  Using my iPad, I started looking up Facebook profiles for all the names. I recognized one of them: Frank Harding was one of the first people I’d met when I moved to Sapphire Village, and was now running for Mayor in the upcoming election. I scratched off his name; not only did he absolutely not seem to be the type to do that sort of thing, but Becky would have known who it was and told us directly. And he most definitely was not from Portland.

  A few of the men were pretty old, and most of them were Sapphire Village locals. Becky had said the man was from the city. Eventually, I narrowed it down to one man: Jayden Oliver, a community college student down in Portland. His Facebook profile picture showed him obviously drunk, in a bar, sticking his tongue out between two fingers that he held up in a ‘V’ position. He seemed like a really classy guy, I thought, rolling my eyes.

  I texted Cat that I’d found the guy, and as I scrolled through his public profile, I saw that he was already in Sapphire Village, doing some downhill mountain biking at the park here.

  This would save us a drive into the city! We arranged to meet during a lunch break to try and find him in the lift lines, and just as I finished texting Cat, Archibald, the shop’s resident ghost, floated into view.

  Archibald had been a poet who had died in his thirties in the 1800s, in this part of the world, after being exiled. He always blamed Lord Byron for all his woes, claiming that the great English poet had plagiarized Archibald himself and used his influence in the House of Lords to have Archibald unfairly banished from England.

  After refusing to read anything written after his death for hundreds of years, I finally convinced him to listen to Agatha Christie audiobooks–being a ghost he couldn’t turn the pages of actual books–and although he complained about it constantly, I had a sneaking suspicion he was also a fan of Harry Potter.

  The previous day, I’d introduced Archibald to The Lord of the Rings. Seeing as the audiobook for the first part of the trilogy alone was nineteen hours long, I figured it would take him quite a while to get through it.

  I hadn’t expected him to get so hooked.

  “Good morning,” he said as he floated around me in circles like an excited puppy begging for a walk. “I’m rather mad as hops today, do you have the sound machine ready so I can continue on my literary journey? Frodo and The Fellowship of the Ring have just left Rivendell and I’m rather impatient to know what happens next.”

  “Of course,” I replied. “But only if you tell me what ‘mad as hops’ means.”

  “Excited, obviously!” Archibald replied. “Ah, how sad it is that the best phrases in the English language have gone out of use over the years.”

  I smiled to myself as I set up the iPad in the back room of the store and left Archibald floating happily above it, so I wouldn’t have to answer weird questions from customers about why I left a random audiobook playing all day.

  Before I knew it, I’d helped two customers find books for a husband’s birthday and a mother’s birthday respectively, and it was time to head over to Cat’s Cupcakes and see if we couldn’t find Jayden Oliver.

  Cat’s Cupcakes fronted the main square of Sapphire Village, where the shops met the gondola that took people up the mountain. In the winter, it was for skiing, and in the summer, it was for sightseeing, but also for downhill mountain bikers to make their way down the winding trails, going off jumps, rocks and other features while doing so. The sort of thing that made even broom flying look normal.

  The gondola line was split into two; one side for bikers, one side for sightseers. As soon as Cat saw me at the front of her shop she waved and made her way out toward me from behind the counter.

  “Ready?” she asked as we made our way toward the gondola, and I nodded, handing her my phone where I’d pulled up Jayden Oliver’s profile. Cat scanned through the photos, grimacing.

  “This guy reminds me of Trevor, a guy I dated in college. And not in a good way.”

  I laughed. “At least when you’re in college, partying every night and posting Facebook pictures of your hand on a girl’s boobs is still somewhat socially acceptable. This guy’s thirty-one.”

  “His mother must be so proud,” Cat deadpanned, handing me back the phone. “Ok, let’s find the guy.”

  We took a seat on a low stone wall at the front of one of the buildings near the gondola, giving us a perfect view of the lineup. I had to admit, I was kind of worried we wouldn’t recognize him. After all, the downhill bikers all wore full face-covering helmets, goggles, and were covered in armour; if he didn’t take his helmet off, there’d be no way to recognize his face.

  “Give me your phone again, will you?” Cat asked, holding out a hand. She scrolled through the photos once more then showed me the screen. “There. We’re not looking for the guy anymore, we’re looking for this bike.”

  “Good thinking,” I said as I looked at the picture Cat showed me. Jayden was standing in front of his downhill bike, which was a very distinctive black, white and teal, with teal around the edge of the tires. I’d have been surprised if there were more than a couple bikes of that exact model on the hill right now.

  Cat and I sat in silence for about ten minutes while we watched biker after biker coming down the hill and then getting back in line for another run up. “Are you sore from yesterday?” I finally asked Cat after shifting to try and make myself feel a bit more comfortable. My back was absolutely killing me.

  “No, are you?” my cousin asked, her eyes shifting over to me.

  “Yeah,” I replied. “There are muscles I didn’t even know I had that hurt right now.”

  “Just from that collision?”

  “You say that like we didn’t both almost die.”

  “Neither one of us almost died. Well anyway, if it’s not better in a few days, I’ll take you down to see Sirona Scissorhands.”

  “Uh, that definitely doesn’t sound like someone I want to see about my sore muscles.”

  Cat laughed. “Don’t worry, Sirona is a healer. She’s the magical equivalent of what you’d call a physiotherapist up here in the human world. She’ll make you feel better.”

  “Well she should absolutely have picked a better last name if she wanted people to trust she’d make them better, and not worse.”

  “Hey, you never know when she’s going to have to cut off a limb.”

  “Yeah, that’s not making me feel better about going to see her. Hey! Look, that bike over there,” I said, pointing. There it was, the bike from the picture. It was covered in dirt from the trails, but it was unmistakably the same bike. Cat nodded.

  “That’s got to be him.” The two of us got up and made our way toward the bike. Luckily, it looked like the bike’s owner was getting ready to take a break, and as he walked his bike toward one of the racks to lock it up, he took off his helmet and we were able to confirm that it was, in fact, Jayden Oliver.

  “Jayden?” Cat called out when we were a couple of feet away. He turned and looked over at us. As soon as he saw that Cat was the one who had called out to him, he grinned.

  “Yeah? What can I do for two beautiful ladies like you?” he asked, leaning casually on his bike and sticking out his chest. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.

  “We need to ask you some questions, if you don’t mind,” Cat said. “Should we find somewhere quieter?”

  “Oh, things are never quiet around me,” Jayden replied.

  “On the other hand, I think maybe staying in public isn’
t a bad idea,” I muttered.

  “Ok, listen, we need to know what happened between you and Sapphire Sam the other day,” Cat said, and Jayden frowned.

  “The guy who totally stopped me from getting laid?”

  “Yeah, him,” Cat said in a flat voice. “Other people might say the guy who stopped you from taking advantage of a drunk woman.”

  “Nah, that’s bull. She totally wanted it.”

  “She couldn’t consent,” I argued.

  “She told me she wanted it.”

  “We were told she could barely walk.”

  “She could still f—”

  “Ok, that’s enough of that,” Cat interrupted. “Where were you yesterday afternoon?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Someone killed Sapphire Sam, and you had an argument with him a few days earlier.”

  For the first time, Jayden Olivier’s bravado seemed to falter. “What?”

  “You heard her,” I replied.

  “Ok, I didn’t kill the guy. I mean yeah, he messed up my night the other day, but I definitely didn’t kill him.”

  “So where were you?”

  “Here. I came up biking again.”

  “Can anyone confirm that?”

  “My pass can. I was doing laps until four, and then I went home.”

  “Can anyone confirm you went home?”

  “Uh, my mom can confirm that I was back home at five.”

  I laughed. “You still live with your mom?”

  “Hey, you’re the one who wants to know where I was, don’t make fun of me.”

  Of course this guy would be the type to live in his mom’s basement. “So what you’re saying is you don’t have an alibi.”

  “Look, I was here until four, and I was back in Portland by five. I wouldn’t have had time to kill anyone. Besides, whatever. I’d moved on. Lots of other beavers in the pond.”

  This guy was just class personified.

  “All right, Romeo,” Cat said. “Did you see Sapphire Sam at all yesterday?”

  “Yeah, dude was wearing his stupid cape while walking down the main part of town when I was leaving.”

  “So you saw him at four?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  That at least narrowed down our time of death a little bit further, if he was still alive at four in the afternoon.

  “What was he doing?” I asked, and Jayden shrugged.

  “I dunno. Looking around, looking through shop windows, generally being a creepy dude.”

  “Did you see anyone following him?” Cat asked.

  “No, but look, it’s not like I was paying him a lot of attention, ok? I was just finishing up my ride and I wanted to get home, I wasn’t paying attention to the village idiot who thinks he’s Batman.”

  “I can’t believe someone like him was murdered, and yet scum like you gets to keep breathing,” Cat said, shaking her head. “Go on, get out of here.”

  “Are you sure? I can show you that I’m not scum over dinner if you want,” Jayden offered Cat, and she looked like she was going to puke.

  “I’d turn you into a toad, but I feel like it wouldn’t be fair to the rest of their kind,” Cat replied. “Now get out of here before I puke at the thought of dating you.”

  “Frigid bitch,” Jayden muttered, getting the hint and leaving. I was glad we were, hopefully, never going to have to see him again.

  “Well, now we know Sapphire Sam was alive at four.”

  “And making his way through the main part of the village,” I said. “Maybe we should ask around, see if anyone else saw him any later.”

  “Sounds good,” Cat agreed. “But for now, I have to get back to the shop.”

  Chapter 5

  On the way back to the bookstore I felt my stomach growl and decided to stop by one of the local cafés that did a nice chicken Caesar wrap and grab one for lunch. The girl behind the counter smiled at me as I walked up.

  “Hey, you again,” she said. Maybe I ate here a bit too often. “Chicken Caesar?”

  “You know it,” I replied with a grin, pulling some cash from my pocket to pay for it.

  “Did you hear about Sapphire Sam?” she asked me as she rang my order up on the till.

  “I did. I heard he was hanging around the village yesterday around the time he was killed.”

  “Mmm, definitely,” the girl nodded. “I saw him walking past here oh I don’t know, had to be a little after five. We were just getting ready to close for the day.”

  “Was he doing anything weird?”

  The girl shrugged. “Not really. I mean, he was just slowly walking around. He kind of tripped on his cape at one point. I went out and asked him if he wanted anything to eat–after all, we had some stuff that we wouldn’t be able to sell again the next day–and he told me that no, he was too busy to eat today. So I put a couple of the sandwiches we would have had to throw out in the fridge anyway. I figured if he’d come by today I could give them to him. Then when I got into work today I heard the news.”

  “That’s too bad, it sounds like this was a good place for him.”

  “I think a lot of people did what they could to make sure he led a comfortable life. I hope the police find whoever did this. I mean, he could be a little bit annoying at times, but he was completely harmless.”

  “Chief Griffin will find whoever did it.”

  “Well, of course you’d think so,” the girl said with a sly smile, and I felt a blush crawl up my face. Apparently news of the couple of dates I’d had with Chase were making the rounds.

  “I have no idea what you mean,” I muttered. “I’ve got to run. See you later.”

  “Bye!” the girl replied as I made my way out of there and back to the bookstore.

  If nothing else, I had learned from that conversation that we could push the time of death back even further. The girl had seen Sapphire Sam in front of her shop just after five, which now narrowed his time of death down to a three-hour window. I wondered if I’d be able to charm the actual time out of Chase the next time I saw him, as well.

  The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. I texted Cat what I’d found out. Seeing as it was now Sunday, and the next day the bookshop was closed, we arranged that I would spend all of tomorrow going around the local businesses and seeing what I could find out about what Sapphire Sam was doing around there.

  Chase texted me around seven, apologizing because he was busy with the murder investigation and was going to have to cancel the date we had scheduled for the next day. I was ok with that; most of my body was feeling a lot less sore, but I still had some pain in my back that didn’t seem to want to go away.

  I really hoped I wasn’t going to have to see Sirona Scissorhands. No matter how much Cat reassured me she was a healer, that name was just absolutely not suited to someone who was supposed to do good.

  After feeding Muffin, and heating up some leftover lasagna for myself–which Muffin also begged for, since I apparently starved him–I decided to just load up Netflix and have a quiet night in.

  Still, I couldn’t concentrate on the episode of Orange is the New Black. I couldn’t help but wonder what Sapphire Sam had been up to the day he had died. Had he seen something when he was walking through the village that made him a target? Or had someone who had something against him followed him and decided to get rid of him once and for all?

  “Who do you think it was, Muffin?” I asked my cat, who yawned and settled himself comfortably in a little ball at the end of the couch in reply.

  I eventually went to bed, hoping that the following day would bring me some answers.

  I did sleep in a little bit the next day, but still woke up before ten. After getting up and making myself some bacon and eggs for breakfast, I headed down into the village to see what I could find out about Sapphire Sam’s movements on Saturday night.

  I figured the best place to start would be the shops near the café where I knew he was seen at five. The place next to them was a sporting
goods store; they sold skis in the winter but, right now, they were packed wall to wall with bike gear, and bikes.

  “Can I help you?” a man drawled as I entered the shop.

  “Yeah, were you working here on Saturday?” I asked.

  “Sure was,” the guy nodded.

  “Did you happen to see Sapphire Sam at all?”

  “Yeah, sure. He came by here, stopped in the shop for a bit, around maybe five thirty. Just before we closed.”

  “Oh? He came in here?”

  “Yeah. I mean, not to buy anything, obviously. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the guy on a bike. He wanted information about bike locks though.”

  “Bike locks?”

  “Yeah. He wanted to know about a specific lock. This one,” the guy said, handing me a lock made by SecurLock Inc. It was one of those locks where you line up four numbers to unlock it. I looked it over, but there was nothing special about it that I could see. But of course, I definitely wasn’t an expert.

  “Is there anything special about this lock?” I asked, and the guy shrugged.

  “Not really. It’s one of our more popular locks. It’s middle of the line in terms of price, and security. Probably a quarter of the bikes in town use this lock.”

  “And I’m guessing Sapphire Sam didn’t tell you why he wanted to look at it?”

  The guy grinned. “Nah. The guy wasn’t much into talking. It’s too bad he’s dead though, that was some sad news to come to work to this morning.”

  “Thanks,” I said, before leaving the shop, finding I had more questions than when I came in. Sapphire Sam was looking for information about bike locks?