The front of Tony's cozy bungalow led to an open floor plan that joined the kitchen to the living room. A tile counter wrapped around the kitchen, separating it from the living room. The vaulted ceiling met with a set of French doors that opened out onto the lush back garden. A hallway off the living room led to the rest of the house. Copious occult artifacts decorated the walls and bookshelves.
Mahogany gazed around the home. "This is your house"?
"It's my family's home. My father's side. My uncle passed away about a year ago, and I asked to be the caretaker." Tony walked to the kitchen. "Can I get you anything?"
Mahogany moved to a bookshelf near the front door and picked up a carved owl statue. The small figure, filled with magic, vibrated in her hand. How had she not been called to this house when Tony's uncle had died? Tony was a human, after all, and magical objects were supposed to be collected by the Guild after Folk crossed to the other side.
Tony reemerged from the kitchen with a bowl of chips and a glass container of guacamole. He motioned to the owl statue in Mahogany's hand. "That's Oleander. My uncle's familiar."
Mahogany turned the statue over in her hands. "I don't understand. How do you know about all of this? You're human. Aren't you?"
"I am, but I was raised in a semi-magical family. Mostly seers. My great-grandmother on my father's side traveled with a circus doing tarot readings." Tony headed into the living room and set the chips and guac on the coffee table.
"Bob, here kitty, kitty," Evelina sing-songed. She took a bag of treats from her purse and shook them. A large tabby cat trotted out from wherever he'd been napping and mowed loudly.
Evelina shook a few of the treats into her palm and offered them to Bob. The cat sniffed them for a long minute before daintily gobbling them up.
"I was born in San Francisco, and my uncle lived here. When he died, none of the other cousins wanted to relocate, so I offered," Tony said.
"So you know Evelina's a Fae, and I have a ghost?" Mahogany said, placing Oleander back on the bookshelf.
"Well, I didn't know for sure about her being a Fae, but thanks for solving that mystery." Tony's easy smile lifted his cheeks into the almond-shaped hazel eyes. "Wait, you have a ghost? That's so cool!" His eyes lit up.
"A cute, nerdy ghost," added Evelina with a wink only she could pull off. She stood and brushed her palms on her leggings, removing flecks of cat spit and treats.
Mahogany wished having a personal ghost was cool. "Who also happens to be one of the murder victims." She glared at the section of the wall Guy had disappeared through into what Mahogany guessed was a bedroom. "But I wouldn't call him cute or cool unless you like being followed around by someone who has no concept of privacy."
Realization donned on Tony's face. "So he's your insider tip. That's how you knew so much about the crime."
"Your father's side?" Evelina said, flopping onto the couch and helping herself to chips.
"My family helped settle Pandemonium. Then my great-great-grandfather fell in love with a human, and the family disowned him." Tony flopped onto the couch, scooped up a handful of chips, and started munching.
Mahogany was pleased that Tony had placed several feet between himself and Evelina. "It must be nice knowing so much about your family," Mahogany said. She wandered over to the mantel, which overflowed with framed family photos.
"It has its twists and turns. To know my ancestors hated their kid enough, they disowned him for loving someone. So that stinks. But it's not uncommon with magical Folk, or humans for that matter. The circumstances are just different. They don't want to see their family powers diminished." Tony shrugged. "At least I get to live in an incredible house, filled with magical objects, in a stunning and unbelievable town, and meet fantastic people." He smiled at Evelina and Mahogany, his gaze lingering on Mahogany long enough that heat flooded her cheeks.
Mahogany cleared her throat. "Should we look at the letter we swiped from Thad's room?" She pulled the envelope from her bag and tore it open.
Tony and Evelina gathered around to have a look.
"It's blank," Tony said.
Sighing, Mahogany dropped the blank page and envelope onto the coffee table and grabbed a chip. Her stomach rumbled. The small amount of blooming onion from Tipsy O'Lush's wasn't enough to satiate her hunger. She dipped the chip into the guac.
"This is delicious. Did you make it?" Mahogany asked, grabbing another chip and loading it with more guacamole.
"Special California recipe. I used to work in a taqueria. I have many food secrets up my sleeve," Tony said. He proceeded to one of the many bookshelves and browsed the titles. "My uncle might have some books on magically coded messages. I'll research and see what I can come up with."
"Perfect," Evelina said and clapped her hand. "Now, let's make a murder wall!"
"I have just the thing." Tony disappeared down the hall off the living room and returned, pushing a large, old-fashioned blackboard on wheels.
"I love this. Where did you get it?" Evelina ran an admiring hand over the smooth flat black surface. "This is real slate."
"It was my uncle's. He used to teach at Pandemonium Prep. When they upgraded the classrooms with whiteboards, he asked to bring a few antiques home."
"Do you have chalk?" Evelina inquired, a silly grin lifting her cheeks.
"Sure do. What color doth the lady wish?" Tony grabbed a cardboard box off the shallow wooden shelf on the blackboard. An assortment of neon-colored chalk glowed at them.
"Oh," Mahogany said despite herself. "Pretty."
"Impulse buy," Tony said with a shrug. "I like shinies."
Mahogany chose a bright purple stick while Evelina grabbed the shocking orange.
"Where do we start?" Evelina said, tapping her lip with her index finger.
"With the victims," Mahogany said. In the center of the blackboard, she wrote Magic Mike's and Guy's names.
"Then the suspects," Tony said.
"Jeff Samuels," Evelina said, "and the wizard Thad, for sure."
Mahogany wrote Jeff and Thad's names on the board above Mike's and drew lines connecting them. Along the line connecting Jeff to Guy, she wrote 'jealousy.' For the line between Jeff and Mike, she wrote 'collateral damage.'
"What about Thad? We don't have a motive yet," Tony said.
Mahogany added two question marks to the lines connecting Mike and Guy to Thad.
"Oh, how about the freak heaters?" Evelina pulled the flier from her purse and handed it to Mahogany.
Mahogany took it and wrote on the board, 'End Halloween.' She then drew a line to the victims and added, 'freak haters,' beside it.
"Then there are all the strange clues like the photographs in Thad's room and the letters addressed to Mike and Neema," Mahogany said. She added a section for clues on the blackboard and wrote what they knew.
"There was the woman. You should add her too." Guy had floated back into the living room.
"What woman," Mahogany asked as Guy floated towards the kitchen and into the refrigerator.
"The woman who came over several times and argued with Mike. Something about the Guild and restoring her family's magic."
"And you didn't think to tell me this sooner?" Mahogany added the mysterious woman to the board. "Can you give me a description of the woman?"
"Nope. Never saw her, but I heard her yelling and threatening Mike." Guy paused. "Tony's got good taste in food. You should see what he has in here."
"Is she talking to the ghost?" Tony asked Evelina, his eyes wide.
"I think so," Evelina said, glancing around the room as of she might spy Guy's spectral form.
"There was some unseen woman who came to the brownstone and argued with Magic Mike before the murders." Mahogany stepped back and joined Tony and Evelina on the couch. They studied the board and munched chips with guacamole, pondering all they knew and didn't know.
"What's our next move?" Tony said.
"We need to go to this End Halloween gathering tomorrow." Evelina wagged a finger at the flier resting against the blackboard. Her bow-shaped mouth turned down at the corners.
"I'm in. I have the day off," Tony said.
"I'll try to get the last part of my shift covered," Evelina added.
Guy rematerialized through the refrigerator. "Mahogany, you are never going to guess what this guy is in the study."
Mahogany smiled. The sooner they solved this, the sooner she could get rid of her annoying ghost.
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A/N: It looks like a new suspect has just reared her head. Who is this mysterious woman? And what did she want with Mike? Was she mad enough to murder him over it?
This chapter is dedicated to @Zoe_Blessing, who is an amazing writer and a wonderful mentor. I know whoever she's guiding through the process of prepping for the Wattys is in the best of hands.
Her short story, Death on Vacation, is such a stinking cute read, I fell in love with it. I have asked it to marry me, but it won't return my calls. I'm sure it's just busy. Right? Anyway... on to the next chapter!