Merlot and Murder Read online

  I blinked, trying to discern what on earth just happened. Slowly, I stood up and dusted off the powdery pink substance from my hair. Honestly? Creekside Trinkets looked like it had just been attacked by an angry Pepto Bismol monster, or maybe even a vengeful pink snowball—except without the tasty cream inside.

  I groaned as I looked around the place. All I wanted to do was find an uninhabited hole to hide away in forever, but as luck would have it, the front door was pushed open and I was no longer alone.

  Chapter 7

  My skin prickled with shame as I helped Barbara perform the last of the scourging spells to clean up my huge mess. The bright pink, sparkling mess pulled away from the walls and items it was coating and spiraled back into the air, swirling around Barbara and I until she directed it into a tiny vial that she immediately corked.

  It took a bit of doing, but I refused to let her help with fixing the display shelf of our magical bath and body products, choosing instead to fix everything myself the old-fashioned way. I knew if Karen were here, she'd probably try and cheer me up by mentioning how much better I'd gotten at cleaning, at least. But the truth was, none of this being-a-witch stuff had been easy for me.

  "I don't want you think that I am trying to treat you like a child, Taylor. I felt your immense power that day in the alley, when I saw you save that woman's life. It was clear as crystal that you were one of us, even if you were a bit rough around the edges. And I don't want to come across as if I'm giving you a sort of lecture. You are a grown woman, and you are allowed to make mistakes." Barbara placed her thin, colorful scarf on a nearby empty coat rack. "But I do want to advise you patience. I can sense all of that unnecessary inner turmoil going on inside of your mind, if you remember," she added, tapping her gray temple.

  I didn't think it was possible for my skin to turn a darker shade of pink. My powers, as supposedly helpful as they could be, always had a way of turning things into complete crap the moment I was left unsupervised. So, of course I felt like a child. Like a child who wasn't sure whether she'd ever be a good witch.

  Barbara sighed, her usually flawless outer self reminding me that she was not perfect with fine lines appearing around her blue eyes. "Why don't you tell me how you feel about all of this? I may be able to read your emotions, but it's quite different to reading your actual thoughts."

  Shifting my weight to one side, I leaned up against the glass counter, not caring that I'd have to turn around and wipe it clean again. "I should have this together more than I do. I look at you and Karen, and the two of you are total naturals when it comes to using your magic. But for me? It comes and goes. One minute, I think I've got it down, and everything seems super easy. The next, I feel like I'm having to relearn my multiplication tables again or something." I dropped my head into my arms and let out the most pathetic whine I could manage. "Why is this so hard? When will I finally get these things under control?" A lump grew in my throat, and I swallowed back the tears that were threatening to make an appearance.

  There was a softness to Barbara’s voice that soothed me as she tapped my shoulder gently. "Taylor, there is no need for you to get so upset with yourself, dear."

  I reluctantly looked up at her just over my arms. "Someone needs to be."

  "Stop being so hard on yourself. I mean it. Magic is not the sort of thing that can be taught or learned overnight. And the reason why Karen and I have our magic under our control is because we've been practicing our whole lives. As with almost anything else, it's much simpler to learn when you're a child. It's a big help to know that you're a witch since birth—and not having known until recently is an obvious obstacle for you. But it’s not your biggest obstacle."

  Barbara emptied one of the copper display bowls full of keychains onto the counter and pushed them off to the side, leaving the bowl smack dab in front of my face. "Is this bowl empty or full?"

  I frowned. "Is this one of those weird trick questions?"

  "Answer me. Empty or full?"

  "Well, you just dumped all of the keychains out, so, empty?" Honestly, I had no clue where she was going with this, but I had a funny feeling she was going to do one of those sage advice setups where I was supposed to learn an important lesson, or something.

  "No, it's not. Watch." She held her hand out over the bowl, whispering, "Ostendoroa."

  The bowl shivered under the invisible demand of her words, and inside a shimmering gas expanded outward from the middle until the entire bowl was full of it. It was beautiful in its own way.

  "Feel it. Put your hand in there and feel the magic," she said, taking my hand and holding it over the bowl.

  The shimmery gas was cool to the touch as I slowly stuck my hand in it, concentrating on the sensation. "But you just pushed your magic into the bowl, right?" I said, pulling my hand back.

  "Hardly. This is what I'm talking about, Taylor. You say you understand how and why magic works, but I'm not sure you do. Magic is in everything around us—the energy is already there. All you need to do is to give power to that energy, to bend it toward your will. As a witch, this is completely possible, but the only way you can do that is to believe that you can. You have to have the confidence that what you are directing this energy to do will work. Otherwise, the energy you're calling out for will mistake what you want," she explained, gesturing to the remaining pink stain on the tips of my fingers I'd yet to clean. "Or it will flicker out and abandon you, much like your own confidence."

  As she said this, the gaseous energy in the bowl dissipated into thin air.

  "I know you want to hurry up and be an exceptionally learnt witch. It's hard not to want that when you're first starting out. However, your patience will be the thing that cracks the code, so to speak. If you give yourself the patience you deserve during the beginning, you'll become that much stronger in your use magic when you become more advanced. Let's try something together, all right?" She slipped behind the counter until we were side by side. "You're going to not fill the bowl with magic but reveal the magic that's already inside of it."

  "How? I don't know," I said, hesitating as she shifted the bowl between us.

  "Simple. Remember the spell I just used? To reveal one's true nature. I asked the bowl to reveal the magical energy inside of it. Put your hand over the bowl and concentrate on what you just saw before. Then, Ostendoroa," she said.

  I tried to concentrate, focusing my energy on the bowl and making the energy show up inside of it, but it felt silly. This was child's play in comparison to what Karen and Barbara could do. And instead of a pretty, shimmery gas, all I got was jack with a side of squat. Nothing happened, to no one's surprise.

  Barbara did her best to hide the disappointment I knew had to be in there somewhere. "All right. Then we'll try to ease you into it. I will help you by giving you some of my own magic. Together now, all right? Make sure you concentrate!"

  We both spoke the word, and just like when she'd done it, a shimmery gas filled up the copper bowl. I wasn't exactly surprised since she was helping me and all, though.

  "See? Let's try it again. First, we let our concentration of the spell go." As I imagined the gas evaporating, it did. But still, I knew she was helping.

  Again and again, we practiced together filling up the bowl with the magical energy surrounding us, then letting it disappear. Each time her smile became wider and wider, until Barbara finally clapped her hands together, laughing.

  "What?"

  But she was shaking her head, still chuckling. "Taylor. This is what I was talking about! Look at how well you've done!"

  Maybe she was just really tired and feeling a little loopy. Sometimes that happened to me during a full shift. "Uh, that wasn't exactly impressive. I mean, you're basically giving me training wheels."

  "Actually," she began, looking out the front window for a moment, "That was all you. I did nothing to help."

  "You did nothing?" I repeated. What she was saying was not computing. "But you did. The magic showed up in the bowl." Yep, Barbar
a definitely needed some extra sleep tonight.

  "No, Taylor, I didn't. I just let you think I did because I knew that you would have enough confidence in my spell work to be successful! Don't you see? If you had that kind of self-confidence when it comes to your own magic all the time, then you wouldn't need to think anyone else was helping you. It would be enough to make your spells work."

  My eyes widened. "So, I did that? On my own?" I asked, pointing to the now empty again bowl. "Whoa." I had to give props to Barbara for being such a tricky thing. "I can't believe I actually did that. I mean, I've had spells work in the past, but I almost feel like they were pure coincidences, you know?"

  She nodded, her blue eyes warm. "It can feel like that sometimes, but I assure you that there are no coincidences. Not in magic."

  It took some more practicing, and I still didn't quite get the soap mixtures to fit the molds the way Barbara did, but I chalked that up to my clumsiness and not my magical capabilities. With a few different regulars stopping in throughout the rest of the day, before I knew it, it was already time to close down for the night.

  I watched with a pretty big grin on my face as the broom I always used to sweep the floor was now swishing this way and that across the floor on its own. "Huh. Not bad," I said. In no time flat, the floor was clean and I was done with my closing duties.

  The back door to the shop opened, letting out the alarm's usual chirp, and Karen's head peeked into the main shop. "Hey, hey."

  "Hey," I said, putting the broom inside our tiny storage closet and grabbing my bag. "What's up?" It wasn't totally unusual for Karen to show up after she got home from a shift at Gilly Mills Animal Sanctuary, but I knew she had to be tired after working a double shift to fill in for someone else.

  However, her eyes were practically lit up as she pulled me out the back door. "So my friend, Mia, who works at this bar in Palace Hills came to look at adopting one our senior dogs today."

  "Aw, that's great!" We always considered it a good day when one of the older animals at Gilly Mills were going home with good people. "Which one?"

  "Harold, actually. Which is definitely awesome," she said, holding up her hand to stop me from asking another question. "But that's not what I came here to tell you about. Mia and I were catching up, and I told her about what happened at the winery. Lo and behold, she was pretty shocked, because she had actually heard about the murder, but she recognized Nick Stowe. Mia was telling me all about how he'd come into the bar a couple of times during their lunch hour with another woman."

  "Okay, so he and Alicia took lunches together. So what?"

  Karen shook her head excitedly. "No, not Alicia."

  That caught my attention. "Whoa," I whispered.

  "Yeah. She told me it wasn't his wife, because she'd been to the Singing Bird plenty of times to pick up their monthly inventory of wine from the place herself. She'd met Alicia Stowe several times, and that's not who she saw with Nick. In fact," Karen gestured to her car to offer me a ride, "she said that she'd seen the woman at the winery before, but only once, a while back. Their office manager, apparently, signing paperwork while Alicia was out sick one day."

  I slapped my hand down on top of her old blue hatchback. "Janice! You think that she and Nick Stowe were having an affair?"

  Karen shrugged. "I don't one hundred percent know for sure. Mia didn't really have much time to chat after that."

  Holy crap. Had Nick Stowe really had been having an affair? I paused, remembering I needed to duck back inside and let Barbara know I was catching a ride home with Karen.

  Once I came back out, I slipped into the passenger's seat with a suggestion on my mind. "Maybe we should go grab some dinner from this place."

  Chapter 8

  The rosy-colored sun had barely dipped behind the hills to the west of us when Karen attempted to parallel park outside the Brews Brothers Bar & Grill, before eventually giving up and eventually parking the car in a nearby lot. Out front, the doorman half-sat on a tall barstool, giving dirty looks to the group of young guys who were hanging around. A bright neon sign hung above him, blinking the 'Bar & Grill' portion of the name.

  "Is this the place?" I asked Karen over the top of her car. "Brews Brothers?"

  She grinned. "I thought it was pretty funny, myself. I'm going to text Mia to let her know we're here."

  The doorman stood up as we approached, his broad arms crossed firmly over his chest to reveal massive muscles. What did he think we were going to do? Give him fake IDs? Did we really look that young?

  "IDs, please, ladies."

  We both slid our driver’s licenses out of our bags, handing them over to him. He scanned them then looked at us, giving a chin nod as he moved aside and let us in.

  "I didn't realize you had to be twenty-one to actually get inside the place," I mumbled to Karen, despite the loud noise of drunken laughter and speakers blasting old R&B.

  "They're not all like this in Palace Hills; I guess they just think it's easier than having the bartender checking everything. Hey, look. There's Mia."

  I didn't know how Karen managed to see her friend over the tops of the crowded bar patron's heads, but a few moments later, a petite brunette with ridiculously unfair curls pushed her way through to meet us. She had the look of someone who'd just gotten off of work and would much rather be anywhere else but there.

  "Hey girl. Do you want to go out to the back deck? It's a little less crowded out there and I'm so done with these personas locas," the woman said, pulling her thick curls into a top bun. "Oh, hi! I'm Mia," she added, seeing me standing awkwardly next to Karen.

  I smiled back at her. "I'm Taylor. Nice to meet you, Mia."

  "You were saying something about the back deck?" Karen said, having to repeat herself a couple of times over the group of women behind us cackling like well, witches.

  Mia led us through the narrow crowd of people standing at the bar and sitting at the small round tables across from it, the thick smell of beer and sweat hanging heavy over us. Maybe it wasn't so bad during the fall and winter, but even with several fans going at the same time, all they managed to do was shift the stale warm air around a bit.

  There wasn't a breeze outside, but there was shade, and it made a heck of a difference once we were on the back deck. Mia scoped out an open table for us at the very end, hidden behind a larger group of people.

  I picked up a plastic menu, suddenly starving for something salty and totally not healthy. "Any suggestions?" I asked. Karen was always talking about how the bar had some of the best nachos she'd ever eaten.

  "The spinach dip is one of my faves, and the pretzel bites, too. There isn't much of a selection. I've been trying to get them to switch up the menu a little for ages," Mia said, covering her wide yawn with her hand. "Sorry. It's been a long shift."

  Even though I knew I was supposed to be saving money, my stomach growled as two servers came out and placed several different plates of food on the table beside us. "Mmm, I do like spinach dip."

  "I'm just going to get a drink," Karen announced, slipping her menu back into its slot in the middle of the table.

  Once one of Mia's co-workers came to take our orders – I ended up settling on nachos - Karen wasted no time diving into the reason we were there in the first place. "Mia was telling me earlier about how Nick Stowe was a pretty regular customer here."

  Mia looked between the two of us, possibly unsure whether she should say anything with me there or not, and nodded. "He'd come in here like twice a week. Almost always on Fridays."

  "And he wasn't alone, was he?" Karen said.

  A tinge of deep red sprung across Mia's olive-colored skin as she bit her lip. "Not really, no. He'd usually come with a woman. She looked like she might be around the same age, with bleach-blonde hair. One of those tanning bed-obsessed kind of women. I know it wasn’t his wife, because I've actually met her before. We have a vendor contract with Singing Bird where they supply us our white wine stock. I was sent out to pick up some stock
there one day, and when I first met Alicia, I swear I nearly dropped one of the bottles I was checking out. I had seen the other two together before, so I didn't know he was actually married. During the daytime, when Vick isn't bouncing outside, we have to check IDs in here, so I knew they didn't have the same last name. I always just figured they were a couple."

  I raised a brow. "How come?"

  Mia leaned in like she was about to spill something major. "Well, they didn't exactly seem platonic, you know? He'd put his hand over hers, and they'd sit really close sometimes. They talked about work, but they also talked about other things, things that I know I would not be so chatty about with my boss."

  Karen let out a low whistle and sat back in her chair. "Wow. So he was definitely having an affair. "

  We let the conversation go as pure gossip, but in the back of my mind, I knew we were probably thinking the same thing. Affairs were a really good motive for murder. By the time we paid for our food and said goodbye to Mia, it was pitch black outside.

  "Holy crap, Taylor," Karen said as we hopped back into her car. "Do you think Alicia knew about the affair?"

  It was hard to say. Alicia had seemed so upset at finding her husband's body. "Would you react that way to finding out your cheating husband is dead?"

  "Pfft, who knows? I don't have the intention of ever marrying anyone to find out. But that doesn't mean she wouldn't. She could just be a really convincing actress."

  I rolled my eyes at her dramatics. Karen was always convinced someone was lying about something. It made her a good skeptic, though. "I'm not saying she didn't do it, I'm just saying we don't know."

  Without batting an eye, Karen pulled out of the parking space and threw the gearshift into drive. "Then maybe we should do something to figure it out. What do you say we go do a little snooping around?"

  Groaning, I rolled my window down without getting much relief from the humid night air. "Why do I feel like I'm going to regret saying yes?"