The Witching on the Wall: A Cozy Mystery (The Witchy Women of Coven Grove Book 1) Read online

  “True that,” Avery muttered as he started running a finger down the labels on the spines of Bailey’s neatly organized stack. He pushed his spectacles up with one finger, brow already creasing with concentration on the task.

  Bailey rounded the desk, exchanged hugs, and then rushed toward the door.

  She stopped halfway there, and made the rest of the trip walking slowly backward. “Oh, also, tell Dad about the ATC folks being here early. He wanted to put together a piece for the paper about the visit.”

  “Will do,” Avery assured her, not looking up. He might have sounded distracted, but Avery never forgot anything. If there was one person in his town more organized and reliable than Bailey, it was Avery.

  In her rush to leave, Bailey nearly plowed right into her elderly father. She stopped just shy, startled. “Oh! Hey, Dad!”

  “Where you headed, Red?” Ryan Robinson asked, as he accepted Bailey’s hug.

  She pulled back, and grimaced. “The tour office. Avery took my stacks, but the ATC people got here early. Now Poppy’s about to lose her mind.”

  “Oh,” her father said archly, “well it must be Wednesday, then. Or Thursday. Or any day of the week. Wasn’t she gone to someplace tropical and far away?”

  “St. Maarten,” Bailey confirmed. “She came back last week. If she’d listened to me then, the rescheduling wouldn’t have mattered, but… you know how she is.”

  “Mm,” he grunted. “Well, that’s good to know. You’ll see if you can get me in to see Martha and Trevor?”

  Not that he needed the help. Trevor had been one of her father’s proteges when he was still working full time for the paper, but had outgrown his shorts, according to Ryan, and skyrocketed to anchor status on the local news station on the strength of his looks and presence.

  Expanding to host Martha’s documentary about the Caves was an unexpected turn for him, and Ryan was eager to find out; though, it would never occur to him to write what he called a ‘character assassination piece’. He was hoping that Trevor and Martha both were simply taking an interest in the home town again after years away.

  “I’ll let them know, Dad.” She smiled, and pecked him on the cheek. He didn’t seem as excited about it as he would have, though.

  She didn’t need to ask if everything was okay. It wasn’t. Ryan was Bailey’s adoptive father. She’d always known, somehow, that she was adopted, but they hadn’t actually told her until she was ten. Then, Ryan’s wife Wendy, Bailey’s adopted mother, was with them. She’d made the whole affair a story of a family made whole, instead of a little girl given up. If not for her, there was no telling how Bailey would have taken the news.

  More than a mother, Wendy Robinson had been a pillar of Coven Grove, a midwife who, over the course of almost forty years, had helped about half the people of Coven Grove come into the world. When she’d passed two years ago, a hole had opened up in Bailey’s heart that was still very raw.

  Whatever her pain was like having lost a mother, it probably paled compared to how Ryan felt. He’d become a different person since then. He still had moments where he was his old self, but they were fewer and fewer, and Bailey worried about his health. What she’d do if she lost him, she didn’t know. He was an anchor, a constant in her life, always full of worldly wisdom and kind words and fatherly love.

  He loved Bailey fiercely; they’d gotten much closer since Wendy passed.

  “Well,” Bailey said, instead of dragging up their mutual pain again, “get those writing muscles warmed up. I’ll let you know how it all goes today.”

  “Let’s hope that Irish luck of yours holds up, Red,” he said. “Be sure and tell Poppy I said hello as well.”

  Bailey let out a rueful chuckle. Ryan and Poppy had had a bit of a row last year when she’d been working Bailey nearly to death for next to nothing. She’d gotten a small raise shortly after, though it wasn’t much. Now, Poppy got a special scowl every time she heard Bailey’s father mentioned, and Ryan never failed to let it be known how he felt about her in public.

  “I’ll do that, Dad,” she giggled. They hugged again, and Bailey left him, already almost twenty minutes late—based on Poppy’s ridiculous expectation of ‘right now’. It was going to be a positively delightful afternoon.

  Chapter 2

  Poppy Winters was typically as cool as her apt name implied. That was, unless she was talking to a paying visitor. Then, she was all smiles and warmth; a warm hearth fire for Coven Grove’s tourists to gather around. The sort that played on a TV screen, but with all the appropriate decoration, at least.

  Bailey, of course, wasn’t a paying visitor. So as she sat across from Poppy in her office, Poppy’s ornate but sparsely decorated desk between them. Bailey tried not to take her boss’s shortness personally. There was no point, after all—it wasn’t likely to change in the future.

  “Glad you finally decided to show up,” Poppy complained, digging through her purse for something. “I’m drowning here, you have no idea the kind of stress I’m under to keep this place afloat. Martha Tells is a nightmare of a human being, it’s no wonder she hasn’t had a paying gig in five years. She has no idea how to act professional.”

  Bailey kept her commentary to herself. “Well, I’m sure once she’s gotten used to us she’ll relax a little bit. So, how can I help? Point me in a direction and I’ll take some of this off your plate.”

  “That would be nice for a change,” Poppy grumbled. She produced a lipstick from her bag, opened it, sneered at the color and then chucked it into the waste basket. “I swear to God, someone is walking off with my lipstick.” She glanced at Bailey as though it might be her. Bailey wasn’t in the habit of wearing any make up, much less anything from Poppy’s gaudy collection of eye-biting color palette.

  In fairness, Bailey was still coming into the full measure of her maturity. At twenty, she didn’t have to try very hard to look pretty; and she didn’t. It seemed like a waste of time. Poppy, on the other hand, showed every one of her forty-five years, probably because she spent so many of them being angry about things. Mostly, Bailey felt bad for her. Not because she wasn’t aging with as much grace as some of the other women Bailey knew, like her friend Chloe from the bakery, with her beautiful, mother-earth charm and infectious joy; but because it seemed like it must be difficult to live life so stressed out all the time. Poppy was incredibly fortunate, from Bailey’s point of view. She just wished the older woman could see it.

  Thinking of Chloe now made Bailey’s stomach grumble in complaint. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast. It didn’t look like there was a meal in the very near future, either.

  “I need you to go out to the caves and make sure everything is setup for the shoot tomorrow,” Poppy said matter-of-factly. “All the equipment was supposed to have been delivered, and the tech crew says they're on it but they’re a bunch of monkeys and I don’t want them doing any damage to the wall paintings. Make sure they aren’t crossing the ropes or leaving their trash around. They’ll probably need help getting the right angles for the shots, just tell them what to do. And do it with a little spine, for goodness sake, not that cheery, chipper thing you pull with the tourists.”

  Bailey was making an honest checklist in her head. “Got it,” she said.

  “You might want to write some of that down, Bailey dear,” Poppy muttered. “It’s just the start.”

  For no other reason than to try and make Poppy comfortable, Bailey took a sticky note from the tall stack of them that Poppy never used, and a sleek silver and black pen from a canister of them that only Bailey ever used. None the less, Poppy seemed to note this and rolled her eyes.

  Bailey noted down the first few of Poppy’s expectations in her own shorthand, and then waited for the rest.

  Poppy never really did much, but she somehow always managed to make it look like she was busy. She typed away on her computer, her face a mask of concentration over her standard-issue scowl while Bailey waited patiently with a polite smile on her lips.

/>   “Check in with Martha, but for the love of all things holy don’t be a sycophantic fan,” Poppy finally said. “The last thing we want her to think is that we’re too excited to have her here. We’re not. ATC is doing her a favor.

  “Do suck up to Trevor, though; he’s a big deal, and a local that made headlines when he took up the anchor job at CBC. He’ll make more doing this, and he’s promised to mention my company so make sure he has good things to say.” She drummed her freshly manicured nails on the desk, glanced down at them, and then looked at one of them up close and made a disgusted face. “And book me a manicure at Delilah’s. Not with Cindy. What I wouldn't give for a decent manicure. This place is such a backwoods grunge-hole.”

  Bailey wanted to say that this ‘grunge-hole’ was the only reason Poppy was able to spend so much time on beaches and in casinos gambling away the money her father had left her when he left her this business. How Poppy had turned out like she did was anyone’s guess. Bailey hadn’t known Mr. Winters very long but he was a soft-spoken, intelligent, clever old man who loved the history of Coven Grove and the Seven Caves. He was wise, and always ready with a subtle joke or an anecdote about the Caves or some bit of Coven Grove’s storied past. He was part of the reason that Bailey loved the Caves so much, though she’d always had a strange attraction to them, from the time she was small.

  “I’ll take care of all of that, Poppy,” Bailey said, careful not to be too cheerful. “And, I promise to contain myself around Martha, somehow.”

  Poppy narrowed her eyes. “Don’t get smart with me. Get going. Time is wasting, and it is literally money. While the documentary is shooting, we’re not taking any tours and what ATC is paying me is barely more than what we’d make.”

  “Well, hopefully the documentary will bring in more tourism later on, when it comes out, right?” Bailey suggested. “It’s an investment.”

  “And now she gives business advice,” Poppy sighed to the computer. “So many talents for a girl with only a high school education.”

  With a sigh that was hopefully too quiet for Poppy to hear, Bailey stood from her chair and tucked the list of her boss’s demands into her jean pocket, where it would stay until she threw it away that evening.

  “I’ll let you know how things are going,” she said to Poppy, who had thoroughly lost interest in the conversation and was busy with some inscrutable task on her computer. It wasn’t the books, or very likely work related at all. Bailey did all of that.

  She didn’t bother to say good-bye. Instead she slipped quietly out, and made her way to the back of the building. There was a path there that led down to the Caves. She could have biked, but a walk sounded nice and while Poppy was worried that the tech crew would ruin the site, Bailey rather thought that since ATC produced scores of historic documentaries it was more likely they knew how to navigate an important archaeological artifact without destroying it.

  The way there was green with the final push of Spring’s up-welling of vitality, wildflowers and trees alike bright with life and color and the penetrating hopefulness of the oncoming summer. The din of honey bees busy at their work of making honey that would soon be collected and sold in the town’s weekly marketplace mingled with the distant sound of waves crashing against the cliffs that housed the Seven Caves of Coven Grove.

  She slowed, and let all of this wash over her, cleansing her of Poppy’s negative energy. Maybe it was silly, but she always felt like being around Poppy left a kind of stain on her; a stickiness of the sort she’d immediately have washed off if it were on her hands and could be removed with soap and water. What her boss left her with though was something different. It was a lingering, scratchy presence in her mind that had to be washed off with something else. A change of mood, maybe.

  Coven Grove’s beauty did that for her, and she could almost feel Spring rising up from the earth and coursing through her with its gentle, green, vibrant energy. A rising tide that swelled around Bailey’s spirits and left them shiny and clean and renewed, no trace of Poppy’s sand-paper energy left behind.

  Bailey paused, absently, and glanced back toward town.

  About that same moment, her phone rang. She resumed her walk as she answered with a grin. “Hey, Pipes! What’s up?”

  Piper Spencer’s strained voice came over the phone, weighty with whatever fresh new disaster her twelve month-old was engaging in now that he could toddle around of his own free will. “Riley, baby, don’t pull on that. Don’t—oh, hang on, Bails…” There was quiet scuffling in the background, and then Piper’s gentle but put-upon voice as she extracted Riley from something, or something from Riley, one or the other. When she came back, Riley’s giggling was audible, probably from where he was perched up on Piper’s hip. “Minor explosion of poo,” Piper sighed. “Just another day in the fabulous world of motherhood. Telling you, Bails, you don’t know what you’re missing.”

  Bailey giggled, but didn’t comment. She knew exactly what she was missing. Piper had had her baby just a year after they’d graduated high school together; that just a year after she’d married her husband Gavin, who she’d been sweet on since they were in sixth grade. Bailey still remembered the first note that Gavin had written his crush those nine years ago, with it’s little check boxes for ‘yes’ and ‘no’. “Do you like me?” it had read, with a little PS at the bottom, “Just so you know, I like you.” As though that hadn’t been obvious by his writing the note in the first place.

  Gavin was still, to this day, largely oblivious, and it frustrated Piper to no end, though she’d never say it. Gavin provided for them, but sometimes seemed to think that was the extent of what Piper needed from him. Worse than that, he tended to let his mother have a strong say in how the house was run, and how their baby boy was raised. It drove Piper to no end of madness having to deal with the domineering mother-in-law on an almost daily basis, but she bore it with strained grace.

  Bailey knew all this, and sympathized, and wished she could fix it for them but… Piper only ever said things were fine as they were. She didn’t want the help, at least not yet, so Bailey let it rest and kept her nose out of her friend’s business.“I was thinking I might take Riley out a bit later,” Piper said. “Maybe to the square? Let him run around in the playground, have some coffee and high calorie anything-with-sugar-on-it? Thought maybe he’d like to see Aunty Bails.”

  Bailey stopped, bit her lip, and quickly calculated the likely amount of time she was about to commit to the documentary crew. It didn’t look promising.

  “Oh, Pipes, I wish I could but… I’ve got this thing with the ATC people today, and of course Poppy’s basically put it all on me and… I’m sorry, Pipes.”

  “Are they here already?” Pipes asked. She sounded hurt. “I thought they were coming Friday.”

  “They were,” Bailey agreed. “They came early. I don’t know why, but I guess Poppy was surprised, too, and you know how she gets when things go awry. Maybe later you two could come down and meet Martha, and Trevor?”

  “That’s okay, Bails,” Piper said, distractedly as she probably changed Riley’s diaper. It was confirmed a moment later when she made a gasping sound of disgust. “I don’t know how he makes it all… I swear his diapers weigh as much as he does, it doesn’t seem physically possible. Well, alright love.” She grunted, Riley giggled, and finally Piper sighed. “I got my hands full. Call me later? We should hang out soon, me, you, and Avery. I need some girl time, badly.”

  “We will, Pipes, I promise.” Bailey waited, wondered if Piper would want to talk a bit more, maybe give her a hint as to what was going on.

  But she just made a smooching sound into the receiver. “Love you, Bails, if you see Avery first tell him I said so, too.”

  “Love you, too, Pipes. Talk later.”

  Piper hung up, and Bailey stuffed her phone back in her pocket. There wasn’t much farther to go now, and as she came around the bend she saw the scene below—crewmen crawling over the First Cave like ants, placing lights, and
getting readings off of boxes, and pointing and scuttling hither and thither carrying equipment. From here, she couldn’t hear them over the crashing waves that echoed through the caves and up into the town, so it all took place in pantomime.

  Among the other worker-ants was an obvious Queen Aunt. Even from here she could pick Martha Tells out from the crowd. For one, she was the only one in an elaborate dress; red-carpet ready to accept her award for a documentary that hadn’t even started shooting yet. Or, maybe that was just how she always dressed. Another woman, shorter, with thick, black-rimmed glasses that were visible from a distance stood next to her with a clipboard, busily scribbling on it.

  That made the man next to Martha, dressed in a gray suit, with a shock of red where his tie stood out against a white shirt, Trevor Sullivan himself, handsome even at a distance. As Bailey completed her journey, she decided that maybe the age difference wasn’t that big a deal. After all, he looked much younger; and he was far more handsome in person than on television.

  “Hi there!” She waved to them as she entered the site.

  Trevor saw her, raised his eyebrows, and then gave a friendly wave; he didn’t know who she was.

  Martha did, apparently, though. “Good Lord,” She wailed. “At last someone’s finally here! I thought you’d all forgotten about me. Find me a clean chair in all this mess, please, and a bottle of water, we’re late!”

  As Bailey did these things without question, her spirits faltered just a little bit. Somehow, she’d expected this would be an easy process; fun, even.

  The more she got to know Martha, and her assistant Gloria—the short blond woman with the glasses—however, the more she realized what was not going to be the case at all.

  Chapter 3

  Martha Tells languished in the warm spring heat as though she were baking in a desert. Bailey had gotten her a bottle of water—a task which seemed more suited to her assistant, but Bailey was determined to make a good impression—and Martha had looked at it, made a long-suffering face and merely shrugged. “I suppose it will do.” Gloria informed Bailey snidely that Martha preferred Ogo; some kind of obscure ‘oxygen water’ that Bailey had never heard of and was pretty sure they wouldn’t find in Coven Grove.