The Artist's Alchemy Read online

  “I couldn’t stay in bed,” I said. “This whole thing about Robert has me super spooked.”

  “You and me both,” Penny said with a yawn. She didn’t look all that spooked. Then again, as a PI, she’d dealt with plenty of murders.

  “Who do you think did it?” Penny asked.

  “That’s what I can’t stop thinking about,” I told her. “And I keep coming back to his spell on the roof. It looked like he was in the middle of it when he was pushed.”

  “So the murder is connected to his spellcrafting,” Penny said. She led the way toward her kitchen, and I followed.

  “Seems like it,” I said. “It could be, at least, and it’s one of the only leads I have, so I figure it’s a pretty good place to start.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me,” Penny said. “So what kind of spell was he working on?” We reached her giant gourmet kitchen and she walked around the granite-topped counter toward the stove. Her familiar, Turkey, was perched on one of the barstools that surrounded the counter in all of his orange, white, and black feline glory. A newspaper was spread out before him, and he had a pair of reading glasses perched on his little pink nose. I smelled coffee brewing. Penny filled a tea kettle with water and put it on the stove.

  “That’s what I want to find out,” I said.

  Penny had her back to me and was rummaging through a stack of tea boxes on a high shelf. “You want chai tea, I’m guessing?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I said. Then I continued. “Robert was part of this group called the Order of Anti Art. I did some scrying and found out that it’s a top secret group. I remembered how you said that Turkey’s been into reading about secret magical knowledge lately, and I thought—”

  “Meow!”

  I looked over at Turkey and saw that his tail was twitching. He was looking pointedly at Penny, and she had her head tilted to the side, as if she was listening to him. I knew right away that they were communicating telepathically.

  After a moment, Penny spoke. “It’s a possibility, but if we’re going to do research, I really need to have a cup of coffee first,” she said as she reached for a mug from one of the cabinets.

  She pulled out a big blue one with a cartoon cat on it, and then turned to me. “Turkey was just saying that he knows of a book in the library that might help you. He wants to show us. I think I’m going to need coffee for this...”

  I was pretty excited about a cup of tea, too. It was still before seven, after all. Penny and I chatted a little bit about the events of the evening before while she fixed my tea and slurped down some of her own coffee. Once we both had a second round of beverages in hand, Turkey led the way to the library.

  When Penny first moved into the mansion, we used to get lost all the time. I remember sleeping over one night, and I tried to find the bathroom but ended up in the broom closet. Since then, we’ve started to know our way around. But to be honest, I was happy that Turkey was leading the way and not me, seeing as I wasn’t really sure which door would open up to the basement stairs.

  We descended the wide stone staircase, passed through the wine cellar, and then reached a locked door. Penny whispered a spell under her breath, and the door opened to reveal a room that had walls lined with books. A long mahogany table was positioned in the middle of the room, as well as some stuffed maroon and white striped armchairs. Turkey trotted across the plush plum-colored carpeting, and then leapt up onto a ladder that was positioned next to one of the shelves.

  The ladder was on wheels, and as soon as he landed on it, it started to roll. When it stopped, he leapt off of the rung he was balanced on and landed on the very edge of the shelf. He used a paw to shimmy a book out from its position flush with the others.

  Penny walked up to him and pulled the book out the rest of the way. As she brought it over to the table she said, “He says this one is about magical packs, cults, covens, tribes, and orders. He says he’s pretty sure there’s a section all about the Order of Anti Art, but he didn’t read it.”

  “Turkey, thank you!” I said, as I walked up to him. I scooped him up off of the shelf and stroked his fur as I walked over to the table to join Penny. He started squirming and wiggling as we approached the table, and then he jumped out of my arms.

  “He says he doesn't feel like cuddling, thank you very much,” Penny informed me, without looking up from the book. “I think he’s too excited about what we might find here in these pages.”

  Turkey did seem rather excited. He pounced on the book and began flipping pages with his paw.

  I took a sip of my tea. It was perfectly steeped; I could taste the warm ginger and cardamom of the chai tea blend that Penny had used, plus a nice hint of vanilla from the soy milk she’d added. It was still pleasantly hot, and it felt nice to hold the mug in my hands.

  When Turkey stopped flipping pages, Penny and I joined Turkey in leaning over the open book.

  There were only a few words on the page; the rest of the yellowed paper was surprisingly blank. The words looked like a chapter heading. “The Order of Anti Art (OAA),” it said in large, curling font.

  “This is it!” I said. “This is the group that Robert was a part of! But where’s the rest of the text?”

  Penny looked to Turkey for a moment, and then spoke aloud. “Turkey says that a few of the chapters in this book are blank. He thinks the section about the OAA is probably top secret, and whoever wrote this book protected the information with magic.”

  “What kind of magic?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Penny said. “And neither does Turkey, though he’s not saying that in so many words.”

  “Meow!” Turkey said loudly. He batted at Penny’s arm.

  “Okay, okay!” Penny said. “Turkey says he has some ideas about what kind of magic might be protecting the text, but he doesn’t know for certain. If you ask me, that’s pretty much just the same as not knowing in general, but whatever.”

  She slurped her coffee, and then set her mug down. “Maybe we can do a spell to hack into it,” Penny said. “You know, like people hack into computers.”

  “Do you know any enchanted book hacking spells?” I asked.

  She shook her head. We were both silent for a moment. Then Penny raised a finger up into the air. “I know!” she said. “Maybe it’s written in some kind of ink that only shows up when smoke wafts over it... or maybe it glows in the dark!”

  She was getting excited, I could tell. “Oh! Maybe if I spill a few drops of coffee on it to sort of get it wet, something will show up!” she said. She held her cup over the book and started to tip it.

  “Meow!” Turkey held up his paw. He was glaring at Penny through the clear lenses for his little glasses.

  “Fine,” Penny said. “I won’t.” She looked at me. “Turkey says that this is a very rare book and that I shouldn’t pour my coffee onto it.”

  “I agree,” I said. I was still standing. I lifted my right leg and positioned my right foot against my left knee so that I was in the yoga “tree pose.” Sometimes doing a little bit of balancing or stretching helps me to think.

  I wanted so badly to see what kind of classified information was in the book, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to make it appear. I did, however, have the instinctive feeling that trying to bombard the pages with smoke or liquid wouldn’t work.

  Penny jumped out of her seat and went over to the light switch. She flicked it off, and the room turned dark. “Anything?” she asked.

  The pages were still blank. “Nope,” I said.

  She flipped the lights back on. “Hrmph.” She flounced back over to the table. “This isn’t working. I hate it when a case comes to a roadblock like this.”

  As she said the word “hate,” I saw a very faint scattering of gray lines flit across the yellowed page. It almost looked like dirt being scattered by a breeze. The faint gray lines disappeared as soon as Penny was done talking.

  “Hm... say that again,” I requested.

  “Say what
?” she asked. “That I hate it when cases—”

  I held up a hand. It had happened again—right when she said ‘hate.’

  “Penny!” I exclaimed. “When you said ‘hate,’ the text started to appear!”

  “Really? I didn’t see it.”

  “That’s because you weren’t looking,” I said. “I swear I saw it, but it was very faint.” I narrowed my eyes and stared at the page. After a beat, I said, “I think your emotion was doing something, energetically, to the book. You were expressing anger.”

  I decided to try something. “I hate it when I burn my tofu in the morning,” I said.

  Again, text rippled across the page.

  Penny smiled. “I hate waiting in line at the bank!” she said.

  “I hate it when people are rude!” I said, louder. The text on the page became more defined.

  “Me too!” Penny shouted.

  “I hate mean people!” I yelled. “I want everyone to be nice!”

  “I hate murderers!” Penny called out.

  “They’re totally the worst!” I shouted after her.

  The text, which had been fading in and out as it became more and more clear and defined, stabilized with my last statement. “That worked; we got it!” I said with excitement as I leaned over the book to get a closer look.

  I started scanning the first paragraph. The wording was old-fashioned, and hard to understand, with phrases like “henceforth, it will be known that ...” and “on the morrow,” which made it difficult to read. Basically, the first very long paragraph seemed to be a history of the group. I picked up that the order was formed during the renaissance period, about 1500.

  The second paragraph was just as dense. It was hard for me to concentrate on the words I was reading, given the fact that in between slurps of her coffee, Penny was muttering things like, “What the heck?” and “I don’t get it.”

  I finished reading the first page, and then looked up. “Okay, so basically the OAA has been around for a long time, and it’s their mission to spread order and logic throughout the magical universe, and act out against art.”

  “I guess so,” Penny said. She flopped down into one of the high-backed chairs next to the table. “I don’t really see how this is helpful,” she said. “What does it have to do with Robert’s death again?”

  “He was up on the roof casting a spell,” I said. “I wonder if they have information about spells in here...” I reached out and flipped the page.

  Three pages later, I found a section about spells. I scanned it until I spotted a circular drawing of a snake, which matched the silver markings I’d seen up on the roof. I pulled up my photos, and sure enough, the spell in the book matched the spell I’d seen on the roof.

  I had to squint to read the ridiculously small text right under the illustration in the book.

  “Sabotage Spell: This exact layout of symbols is to be drawn when one wants to cast a powerful SABOTAGE spell. The snake, eating his own tail, represents the OAA’s power to create order from chaos. All falls within our domain. If we decree it, it shall be so. Draw this symbol in full, and then state your intention to ruin, flatten, scorch, and otherwise bring under rule any and all artistic pursuits in the vicinity. It is only through this destruction that we may restore order. And so it is.”

  “Yikes,” Penny said after I finished reading the words out loud.

  “Yeah, ‘yikes’ is right,” I said in a heavy tone. I did not like what I’d just read. “This seems like really dark magic. Dangerous stuff. But when I was up on the roof, I saw that his painting of a snake wasn’t finished. Someone stopped him before he painted the snake’s tail. That’s what he reported to me, too, when I had the chat with him in ghost form. He said he was pushed before he had a chance to complete his spellwork. Seems like someone didn’t want him to finish this Sabotage Spell.”

  “Who?” Penny asked.

  “Meow!” Turkey said.

  I waited while he transmitted some thoughts to Penny.

  Penny nodded, and then spoke aloud. “Turkey says that if Robert was trying to destroy the weekend with a curse, then whoever pushed him was trying to save the weekend from said destruction. That’s how he said it, too, with the ‘if-then’ setup. He’s into using fancy language like that lately and then giving me lectures about logic. I blame Harvard.”

  “Trying to save the weekend workshop...” I said thoughtfully. I sipped my tea, and then said, “Who would want to make sure that the weekend wasn’t ruined?”

  “Asti, for one,” Penny said. “Being a guest speaker at a workshop that bonks could be bad for her reputation. Plus, all her artwork could have been destroyed. The spell said something about ‘flatten’ and ‘scorch’ all the art in the vicinity. That doesn’t sound good.”

  “Good point,” I said. I thought of Asti’s masterpieces. They were certainly worth protecting. “Asti’s definitely still suspect number one. But she seemed so relaxed when I informed her of Robert’s death, which makes me think maybe she’s not our girl. We have to consider other angles. Who else might have had motive?”

  Then I thought of something that answered my own question. “Uh oh...” I said aloud.

  “What?” Penny asked.

  “I just thought of two beings with motive to push Robert off of the roof.”

  I felt guilty about voicing my suspicions aloud. I really liked the two beings I was about to cast suspicion on. “I hate to say this,” I said, “but whoever pushed Robert off of the roof was trying to protect the Greene Center for Magical Living. So it must have been someone who really, really wants the center to succeed.”

  “Oh my goodness!” Penny exclaimed. She flailed about, and some of her coffee sloshed out of her mug. She didn’t even seem to notice. “Marley Greene—did you kill Robert just to save your own center? That's absolutely crazy!”

  “No!” I said. “Not me!”

  Penny sighed. “Oh, wow, that’s a relief,” she said. “I thought for a minute there that I was going to have to get a new best friend.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I may have become more responsible and invested in my work lately, but I didn’t become a murderer. I’m talking about two other beings that love the center just as much as I do: Margie and Geoff.”

  “Geeze—you think Margie or Geoff would do something like that?” she said. “They both seem so nice.”

  “They do,” I said. I sipped my tea again, and pictured Margie’s kind, grandmotherly face. “It’s really nice having a fairy godmother, too. But she does things that I didn’t ask her to do. What if she feels it’s her responsibility to protect me and my center, no matter what?”

  “Then she wouldn’t like the fact that someone was trying to curse the place,” Penny said. “Hmm... I guess it is possible.”

  “It’d be no problem for her to sneak up on him, too,” I said, imagining the scenario. “Her wings are very quiet, and there would be no footsteps if she was flying. She knows her way around the center, so she’d have no problem finding the stairwell up to the roof if she wanted to go that way. And she’s surprisingly strong, too. Robert was a skinny guy; I’m sure she could topple him over the ledge with a shove, especially if he didn’t have time to brace himself.”

  “Poor guy,” Penny said, shaking her head. I had the impression that she might be imagining Robert sailing over the edge of the roof, just as I was.

  I went on. “Plus, I saw marks in the stairwell, but they were just blotches. If she was flying, those could have been fallen water drops from her body or her wings. And I didn't see her in the lobby at 5:15 when Robert fell, or anytime afterward.”

  “So she’s got motive, means, and opportunity,” Penny said. “We’d better add her to the list of suspects.”

  I nodded. “And Geoff, too. The last time I saw him or Margie was right before I left the spa to help Asti set up her paintings, and that was around 3:30. I didn’t see him anytime after Robert’s death, either. And he’s just as dedicated to the center. It’s th
e only home he’s ever known. He would be devastated if anything bad happened to it, or to me. He calls me his Master Creator sometimes.”

  “Kinda creepy,” Penny said, scrunching her lips to the side.

  “Yeah, it’s a little disconcerting,” I said. “I don’t want to be anyone’s master creator. I was just there when he emerged from the mud.” I pictured Geoff lumbering across the roof and giving Robert a push. He might think his efforts were heroic, because he was saving the center.

  “Who knows what kind of moral code Golem monsters live by, anyways,” I said.

  “But Robert would have heard Geoff coming,” Penny said. “He’s not exactly light on his feet.”

  “It was loud, with the wind rushing through the trees, the thunder, and the driving rain,” I said. “I think there’s a chance Geoff could have pulled it off. Maybe he can even tip toe. Who knows?”

  “What about prints?” Penny said. “He would have left his muddy prints all over the place. I’ve seen his messy tracks before.”

  “But the rain could have washed them away,” I said. “And he could have cleaned up behind him as he traveled down the staircase. He has access to a bunch of cleaning supplies.”

  “I think you’re giving that mud monster way too much credit,” Penny said. “I’ve never seen him clean up after himself. Have you?”

  “No,” I admitted. “But I still want to keep him on the list. He’s a suspect.”

  I closed the book in front of us. We’d learned what we needed to from it. I walked it back over to the shelf and slipped it into the gap from which it had come.

  “This is not good,” I said to Penny. “Running a business is new to me... I knew that I’d make mistakes. Do you think that I hired a killer?”

  “No, no,” Penny said. For a minute, I felt reassured. Then she laid a hand on my shoulder and said, “But you could have hired one of them before they decided to become a killer. They started working for you and then decided to add ‘murder’ to their list of skills.”

  “Great,” I said glumly.

  “Cheer up,” Penny said, as she led the way out of the library. “At least we’re getting somewhere with the case. Now we have a list of three possible suspects.”