Beat Around the Broom Read online

  It wasn’t like I could whip some up myself, after all.

  A few minutes later, I was holding a plain double shot of espresso in a tiny mug and watching Bella guide more of the little beans out to the sounds of an Argentinian mix soundtrack. Elisa and I kept quiet so as not to interrupt her, but Elisa mouthed silently to me, “How is it?”

  I gave her as big a thumbs-up as I could manage and smiled. I had to admit, I usually didn’t like plain espresso on its own - it tasted like burnt tree bark to me. But this didn’t have that bite to it I usually hated about espresso, so I counted it as a win. Elisa gave me two big thumbs-up back and waved me off, releasing me. I downed the rest of the espresso quickly and gave Bella an encouraging wave before sweeping out the door with my little napkin full of notes in hand.

  Caffeinated and informed, I was ready to get stuff done!

  Chapter 6

  My hands were almost shaking from the caffeine high by the time I was halfway to the Jordan Orin’s office downtown. I cut through a public park on the way, watching ripples of air brush the green grass under me as I weaved through a few trees that were just starting to blossom again, and I breathed in the springtime pollen.

  Then, I sneezed. That’s what I got, I supposed.

  In the late morning on a weekday, the park wasn’t exactly a bustling hub of activity, which was nice to see every now and then. It would get busy around lunchtime, since even the businesspeople downtown liked to take quick walks in the brisk air to get a break from whatever cluttered office space they lived in most of the day. That also meant that I’d be coming to Jordan Orin’s office at the prime time for him and his workers to be hangry, which could be good or bad for me. If all went well, he’d be in such a hurry to get me out of his hair and get to lunch that he’d answer my questions in a hurry and not try to jerk me around.

  Of course, if that was his reaction to finding out his ex-business partner was dead, I might want to hold him back and interrogate him a little further. But I couldn’t get ahead of myself already, it wasn’t even lunchtime yet.

  My stomach growled to let me know what it thought of that fact. As I passed a young couple on a picnic blanket munching on what looked like cheese and some of those overpriced gourmet crackers and cured meats - I may have flown a little closer than I should have to get a look at the spread - I silently promised my stomach I’d get to lunch, eventually. Probably. Lunch would happen at some indeterminate point in the future, hopefully sooner rather than later. That was about the best I could do right now. I needed to figure out a spell that could put my body in crime-solving mode so I just didn’t have to eat or sleep for a few days.

  Wow, this caffeine was getting to me. That was entirely my fault for doing what I was pretty sure was four shots total of strong espresso on an empty stomach. This was also pretty fun, though. I was thinking faster than ever. I’d have this crime solved in no time! Right? Sure!

  Okay, so I was absolutely jittering head to toe as the caffeine did its magic on me.

  I came out the other side of the park and hopped off my broom to walk the short distance the rest of the way to the address on my napkin.

  The office building was small, like just about everything else downtown. We weren’t exactly the kind of place that had high-rise office buildings with dozens of stories. Our tallest building was barely six floors. This one was much humbler, sharing the left side of an office building. The name of the office was printed in beautiful bronze letters on a plaque above the door:

  Cover to Cover Animated Books

  A book publishing company! It dawned on me that I hadn’t asked Elisa what kind of business Jordan ran. But it did make me wonder what exactly his expertise was, if he was previously involved with a magical furniture store. He must have just been a man of many talents, I decided. I pushed the door open and stepped inside.

  I’d never been inside a book publishing house before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Probably something along the lines of a chaotic single room full of paper and empty book covers and a huge printing press taking up much of the space, including a guy in an ink-stained apron barking orders at overworked English majors.

  This was not that.

  Immediately in front of me was a spacious reception desk with a granite surface and dark brown wood legs and cabinet space. A woman with curly black hair was sitting behind it, and she flashed me a brief smile while leaning into her phone and continuing the conversation she was having.

  “Yes, we’d like the bouquet sent to Room 205 at the hospital, the patient’s name is Florence Klein. That’s K-L-E-I-N. Name? This will be from Jordan Orin, you might have him in your record books from the last time we had some flowers ordered for that new bookstore opening down on 7th Street. Yes, great, if you could put that on our card on file…”

  It sounded like Jordan’s assistant was sending flowers to Florence in the hospital, which meant that Jordan knew about Arnold’s death and was already doing something about it. Unfortunately, that didn’t necessarily make him look either more or less guilty. Sure, it could be a thoughtful gesture to someone he used to be close with and a sign of his personal grieving. But it could just as easily be a way to cover up his tracks and throw suspicion off himself.

  Sometimes I thought this side-job of mine was making me too suspicious of a person, but then again, I had yet to be proven too wrong, in the grand scheme of things.

  While the receptionist finished her call, I couldn’t help but admire the rest of the office space in front of me. Past the half-wall behind the reception desk was a spacious wooden floor covered in a handful of round tables and chairs. In the middle of the room was a very modern-looking fireplace that ran floor to ceiling with an opening in the center of it for a softly crackling magical fire, surrounded by a few cozy-looking armchairs and a leather couch, with a coffee table sandwiched between them. I had to admit, I was jealous. This place almost made me wish I had a reason to have an office for anything.

  But then I remembered that I could technically do my job in pajamas if I was feeling really lazy, so I dispelled the thought.

  “Sorry about that,” the receptionist said with a soft sigh. “Welcome to Cover to Cover, can I help you?” As she spoke, I heard a door opening and closing further back in the office, and footsteps headed our way.

  “Hi, I’m Artemis Mani,” I said, “I’m actually here for the same reason you were just on the phone. Is Jordan around?”

  The receptionist furrowed her brow. “You’re here to order flowers for Mrs. Klein?”

  “No, I meant-”

  “Good morning, Ms. Mani,” came a man’s voice as who I presumed must have been Jordan Orin stepped around the half-wall, giving me a tight smile and glancing between the two of us. Jordan was a man pushing fifty, just a little older than Arnold had been, but he showed his age a little more. His short, curly hair was all iron-gray, and he wore round, wire-frame glasses that didn’t hide the crow’s feet in his eyes. He was clean-shaven, but he had a vaguely stressed, distracted look on his face, and the sleeves of his plaid button-down were rolled up at the elbow. The dad vibes I was getting from him were almost overwhelming. I felt the urge to ask him how to fix my bathroom sink and grill up some burgers on the porch.

  “Hi, you must be Jordan,” I said, extending my hand to shake with a bright smile. He gave a curt nod and shook it firmly.

  “That I am, but I don’t think we’ve met. I know who you are, though, and after this week, I might just have to take a little time off at the B&B,” he chuckled, and I gave him a polite laugh back.

  “Well, I know I don’t have an appointment, but I was hoping you had a few minutes to talk.”

  “Uh,” he hesitated, glancing at a clock on the wall. He had an anxious energy about him, but not an impolite one. I could tell he was going to be hard to pin down. “Sure, I think I can spare a few, it’s not like we’re going to get this project we’re working on wrapped up before lunch. I know myself better than that,” he chuckled. “Please
, have a seat. Are you familiar with our work?”

  I followed him to the large, comfy armchairs, which I was hoping for, and I took a seat on one and nearly sank into it.

  “I’m afraid I don’t,” I admitted, “just that you’re a publishing company in town. I hate to admit it, but I usually don’t notice the publisher when I pick up a book, but I’m sure I’ve read some of yours before,” I added quickly with a nervous smile. Jordan just chuckled as he crossed the room to a bookshelf that proudly displayed a very tidy collection. He pulled a few off and carried them over to the coffee table, setting them down in front of me.

  “Trust me, you’d know if you had one of our books,” he said. “We aren’t exactly a traditional publisher, and we’re still working our way into a pretty small market. It’s hard to compete with e-books, and indie authors are chipping away at brick-and-mortar publishers, so instead of beating our heads against walls, I decided to bring something new to the table. What’s your favorite genre?”

  I felt like a deer in the headlights. I hated those kinds of questions. It was like asking what my favorite food was - how could I possibly choose? Okay, that wasn’t the actual reason I was hesitating. And my favorite food was obviously pizza. I was just desperately trying to figure out how not to tell this perfect stranger that my favorite genre was romance.

  “Um, I like travel books,” I half lied. They were nice to thumb through when I was looking for inspiration for new recipes. But apparently, that was a perfect answer for Jordan, who smiled broadly and pulled out one of the books from the stack he had taken down.

  He opened it in front of me to a random page, and I nearly jumped back when instead of opening up to words on a page, it opened to a set of magical inscriptions that glowed bright blue and started to spark. Golden light sprayed up like sprinklers from the pages, and my eyes widened as I realized an image was taking form in front of my eyes.

  What materialized in front of my eyes was the scene of a stocky woman walking backward as if facing a camera, smiling and gesturing to the scenery behind her. The more I stared at the image, the sharper everything seemed to become. After a few moments, I felt like I was standing there in front of her as everything else behind her took shape. She was in a vibrant green valley, with a lazy river trailing behind her to her left, and the river seemed to run onward between two mountains. Heavy mist rolled off snow-capped mountains, and a ragged-looking medieval tower stood proudly above the woods at their feet.

  “Built in the thirteenth century Llywellyn the Great, Dolbadarn Castle behind me is one of the oldest Welsh-built castles in the country, but Wales isn’t the sort of place with hefty access fees and tour guides. Just next door to the sleepy hiker’s paradise of Llanberis, Dolbadarn is just as likely to be visited by local teenagers out for a drink as tourists like me who stick out like a sore thumb. The forlorn, almost haunted aura the castle gives off has enchanted painters for centuries, and-”

  Jordan closed the book again, and the image vanished, leaving me almost disoriented. I blinked, smiling, and my eyes focused on Jordan’s proud expression.

  “And there you have it,” he said. “I got the idea from simple pop-up book. I thought, if we’ve been doing this for years for kids, why not for adults, too? It’s a little technical to explain the odds and ends of how the text-to-image magic works, but in practice, it’s a hologram.”

  “That’s amazing!” I gushed, grinning like a kid in a candy store. “Do they all work like that?”

  “Well, I take some liberties when I think it’s appropriate,” he said, obviously proud. “Here, let’s take a look at Hamlet.”

  He took out the thick book of Shakespeare and started thumbing through the pages until he found the one he wanted, smiling and setting it down on the table again. Instead of a full scene getting painted in front of me, I was suddenly looking at two tiny young men springing up on the page. Both of them were holding fencing swords, and then, the names Hamlet and Laertes popped up above their heads in a soft, subtle font as they got into position. After them, a whole crowd of little people materialized in a circle around them, all of them helpfully labelled as other characters from the play. I watched the two men duel fiercely in front of me, dodging each other’s strikes and clanging metal against metal before my eyes.

  “Are these for sale already?” I asked as I watched miniature Horatio intervene in the duel before Jordan closed that book as well. I was thanking my lucky spells feverishly that I hadn’t let him know I liked romance, but I couldn’t help wonder what that would look like.

  “That they are,” Jordan said happily.

  “So, this is what you’ve been doing since you and Arnold parted ways?” I asked, deciding to rip the bandaid off the sensitive question before my mind had time to let me get too chummy with this possible suspect in a murder case. Jordan’s smile faded almost immediately, and he took a deep breath.

  “Well, here I was hoping a little demonstration would distract you from that, but I should have known better, coming from you,” he chuckled sadly. “So, you heard about Arnold’s and my history, did you?”

  “I know you used to be business partners, and parting ways was a little difficult for you two,” I said, being as delicate as I could as I sat forward and crossed my legs.

  “We parted on amicable terms, or as much as we could have hoped for,” Jordan said, leaning back in his chair and resting his hands on the arms. “It was definitely for the best. I’ve been sitting on this idea for a publishing business for years, and he was always very set in his ways with the magical furniture thing. Which was fine and all, I can’t say he wasn’t driven, but as time went on, I realized we were just very different people. We wanted the furniture business to go in very different directions, so when it was clear that Arnold was just going to dig his heels in deeper and get things his way while I was over here sitting on a perfectly good publishing business model, I was content to move on.”

  “Different directions?” I asked, cocking my head to the side, and Jordan shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He glanced at the clock again in that nonverbal I-would-really-rather-not-be-talking-about-this way, but when I didn’t budge, he rubbed the back of his neck.

  “Like I said, Arnie and I are – were - very different people. He wanted to get a lot more aggressive with our sales, taking some risks I felt we couldn’t afford and didn’t need to. I’ve always been a ‘slow and steady wins the race’ kind of person. This publishing house is probably the biggest risk I’ve ever taken, and it represents years of research. Arnold was the kind of man who’d stake all or nothing on a single hand, if you get what I mean.”

  “I think I do,” I said, nodding. “Was that what ended up ending the partnership?”

  “I wouldn’t deny it, I suppose,” he said, frowning. “But I don’t like to think of it that way.”

  “I hear you,” I said sympathetically. “I can relate to butting heads with someone over business choices.” I had war flashbacks to trying to get the B&B renovated while my mom hovered over my shoulder every five seconds.

  “We separated six months ago,” he said. “Formally, anyway. I think we were both mentally checked out long before then. Arnold bought my shares of the company and took over the furniture business we started together, and I used that money to come here and get the ball rolling on this business. That’s not to say I’ve done all this from the ground up in six months, I wish I were that impressive. Publishing is all about connections, so I’ve had plenty of time to start working on that.”

  “Have you been in touch with Arnold much since then?”

  Jordan snorted a laugh.

  “Are you kidding? I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead, but I was dead to him long before he was actually dead to me.”

  I raised my eyebrows at the power behind the statement. There was clearly some worse blood between the two men not far under the surface. I thought for a moment, then nodded.

  “I think I understand. Thanks for your time, Mr. Orin.”
/>   “Please, just Jordan,” he said as we stood up and shook hands again. “And here, please, take one of these off my hands - do you care much for cook books?”

  I opened my mouth to politely decline, then hesitated and bit my lip, remembering how my magical cooking escapades had been going today.

  “You know, I think I’ll take you up on that. Thank you.”

  Chapter 7

  I walked out of Jordan’s downtown office feeling more confused than before. Normally, when someone was killed, it was easy enough to think of them as a good person, a victim who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Most of the information I could glean from investigating the case and interviewing the people involved usually supported that hypothesis. And I mean, it was difficult to reconcile the idea that the person who was victimized, who was the tragedy at the center of the whole unfolding mystery was somehow not a wonderful person. After all, we’re all conditioned not to speak ill of the dead. When a crime is committed, there’s a certain narrative that often ends up being applied. The victim was the good guy, the perp is the bad guy, and the victim did nothing to invite or cause their death or assault or whatever the crime was. That was the easy equation, the basic formula that tended to make the most sense to people. Including me. I had to admit that I was used to thinking of it that way. It was simple enough to accept that it was just the way it was back when Moonlight Cove was just a quiet, crime-less safe haven tucked away from the rest of the dangerous, violent world.

  But now, with every new piece of information that came my way, I was beginning to have to entertain the idea that maybe this time our victim was a little more complicated than I had previously assumed. Of course, that wasn’t to say that he deserved what happened to him. I couldn’t fathom the idea of Arnold Klein ever having done something so terrible and heinous as to deserve the cruel, fatal punishment he received early that morning. But he certainly seemed to be a complex man, with much more going on behind the scenes than I had first assumed.