Crimes of Magic: The Witch's Artifact

  Chapter 16

  “Should I pack up the Translocation Spell kit?” I asked.

  “No, leave everything in the circle, except the piece of cabinet leg. Put that in your bathrobe pocket and see if you still have that piece of placemat that I cut off. We can use that to get us back to your apartment.”

  Sure enough, the piece of placemat was in my bathrobe pocket. I moved the three objects that activated the spell out of the straight line they were in. Then, I picked up the piece of cabinet leg from the pivot point and replaced it with the piece of placemat.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do, Professor. I want you to search Gregor’s pockets, but here’s the thing, I don’t want you leaving any fingerprints. Use your robe or whatever you have to use to get everything he has on his person and lay it all on the floor. We may have to put some of it back in his pockets, and we may want to keep some of it, so don’t touch anything with your bare fingers. I’m going to go up front and use the store phone to call Caite on her cell.”

  “Will do,” I said, and I started searching the body. Using the sleeves of my robe to cover my hands, I carefully extracted everything from all four of his pockets and placed all the items on the floor outside the circle. Then, I rolled Gregor around so I could examine his ninja outfit carefully. I checked all the seams, and I patted down the waistband, wrists and ankles. I didn’t find anything unusual about any part of his clothing. I removed his fez-like cap and examined it. I inspected the headband and lining and found nothing. As I replaced the cap, Rachel entered the room.

  “It’s well into the morning here in Portland, Professor. Caite is driving here in her car. She should be here shortly. Let’s see what you found.”

  Rachel knelt in front of the objects and used a pencil she had brought from the front room to move them around.

  “This notebook is interesting,” she said. She used the eraser end of the pencil to open the notebook and flipped through the pages.

  “This is all in Russian. Wait a second, the last page has numbers like a street address written on it.”

  “Is it ‘10210 Oak Street’?” I asked.

  “Those are the right numbers, but there are two Russian words after the numbers.”

  “That’s the fake address I gave to Gregor,” I said. “I told him that it was your address. He and Vlad were going to come back and kidnap you. Are there only two words after the numbers?”

  “Yes. That’s the last entry in the notebook.”

  “Good,” I said. “I didn’t tell Gregor we were in Portland, and it looks like he didn’t write down any city name.”

  “We’d better keep this notebook. The cops would have it translated, and who knows what it would say. You can put this in your pocket.

  “Here’s a deck of his symbol cards. We’ll definitely keep that,” Rachel said.

  “There must be something here that he could use as a homing beacon to get back to his house,” I said. “We definitely have to find it and destroy it so we can’t be followed.”

  There were two glass vials with powder in them; that wouldn’t be it. There was a brass key, a red velvet cloth, a few crystals, a small knife with a bone handle and obsidian blade in a leather sheath, a piece of chalk, some string, a small candle, a book of matches, a small mirror in a plastic case, and a short pencil.

  “I don’t see anything that could be a beacon,” I said.

  “Look through that notebook again,” Rachel said. “You can use your hands, because we’ll be taking it with us.”

  I pulled the notebook from my pocket and examined it. The back cover had a pocket on the inside. Something was protruding from the pocket, and I pulled it free and unfolded it.

  “It’s part of a photo of St. Basil’s cathedral,” I said. “It’s been torn off of the other half. This is the same photo we used when Gregor told me how to translocate back to his lair.”

  “Quick, take it into the bathroom and burn it,” Rachel said. “There are matches in the drawer of the altar cabinet.”

  I found the matches and went into the bathroom. Holding the torn photo over the sink, I burned it to ashes. For good measure, I washed the ashes down the drain.

  As I returned to the meeting room, Caite came in.

  “Oh my goddess!” Caite exclaimed. “Is that him? Beth’s killer? Is he dead?”

  “Yes and yes,” Rachel replied. “I’m sorry we couldn’t recover Beth’s wand, the artifact, but at least we got her murderer.”

  “How do you know you got the right guy?” Caite asked.

  “He admitted it,” Rachel said. “He was going to kill me and the Professor, too, but we got him first.”

  “You were almost killed?” Caite asked.

  Here is where I would normally have gone into my rant about a “near miss” versus an “almost fatal injury,” but the fact was that Rachel had been “almost killed” in an entirely different way. She had actually been totally killed, but in a slightly different reality, and she didn’t even know it.

  “As a great mind once said,” Rachel intoned, “A miss is as good as a mile.”

  “What?” Caite was perplexed.

  “Never mind,” Rachel said, “I didn’t get it either.”

  “Should we call the police?” Caite asked.

  “Not just yet,” Rachel explained. “The police definitely need to find him, because I’m pretty sure his fingerprints will be on Beth’s athame. That will prove you didn’t kill Beth. The question will be ‘Who is this guy and who killed him?’ We need to make sure the police don’t think you did it, or any of us for that matter. We can’t call the police right now, because I have gunpowder residue on my hand, and the Professor is in pajamas and a bathrobe. All that would be hard to explain. Did you bring the gloves, Caite?”

  “Yes, here they are,” Caite said handing a pair of blue gloves to Rachel.

  Rachel donned the gloves and walked over to the layout of the contents of Gregor’s pockets.

  “Which things should we keep, and which things should I put back into his pockets, Professor?”

  “Well, let’s see,” I replied. “I already have the notebook and symbol cards. I think we should keep the key, someday it may be useful, and it would just send the police on a wild goose chase. There’s nothing special about the velvet cloth, crystals, string, pencil, or candle, so we can put those back in his pockets. The book of matches is Russian, do we want the police to know he’s Russian?”

  “Good question,” Rachel said. “We don’t want the Portland police to talk to Seth, but that would be very unlikely. I think the Russian connection would steer the police even further away from Caite, so let’s put the matchbook back in his pocket, too.”

  “I guess the same goes for the mirror,” I said. “It’s probably Russian also, so we can put it back. Now what about this little knife? It has an obsidian blade and a bone handle, that’s not your run-of-the-mill pocketknife. What should we do with it?”

  “It could be used as a weapon,” Rachel said. “Let’s leave it on him. It’ll make him seem more dangerous—not much, but some,” Rachel said as she started putting the things back into Gregor’s pockets. After that, I dragged Gregor out of the circle and left him near the altar.

  “Here’s the plan,” Rachel told Caite. “Me and the Professor are going to translocate back to the house. We’ll change clothes and come back here. As soon as we leave, I want you to call 911. Tell them that you came to the store and found a man’s body in the meeting room. They’ll ask you if he is dead or alive, tell them you’re pretty sure he’s dead. Answer all their other questions, except don’t tell them about me calling you or about me and the Professor being here. Tell them you came here to get the store ready to reopen for business.”

  “OK, I can do that,” Caite said. “And you and the Professor are coming back?”

  “Yes. Right after you hang up with the police, call me on my cell. You’ll be able to tell
the police that you called us and asked us to come over. We’ll make sure the police get here before we arrive, OK?”

  “Yes, that’s fine. It’s a little scary though. I’m not a very good liar.”

  “You won’t have to lie. Just don’t mention me calling you from the store or us being here when you got here. Tell the truth about everything else. You don’t know how he got here; you don’t know who he is, and you don’t know if he had anything to do with the stolen artifact. I guess that part is a little lie, but you only know that because I told you. Are you going to be all right?”

  “Oh yes. This isn’t hard, and I know it has to be done so that everybody will know who killed Beth. I have to do it.”

  “OK then Caite. We’ll be back in a little while. Beam us up Professor.”

  I checked to make sure that I wasn’t leaving anything behind and stepped into the circle. Rachel joined me, and I made the final move of objects to complete the spell; and shimmer, flash, shimmer, we were back in my kitchen.

  “Home again, home again, jiggedy jig,” I said.

  Rachel rolled her eyes and headed for the door. “I’m going to wash my hands, change and answer Caite’s phone call down in my apartment. You stash away all the goodies and change. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  “OK,” I said as Rachel closed the door.

  I picked up all the objects from inside the circle, and rolled up the tarp. Next, I put all the things we had collected from Russia and from Gregor’s pockets into a bedroom drawer. I washed my hands and face and changed out of my lounging clothes into jeans, a polo shirt, and loafers. Before long, Rachel knocked and came in wearing jeans, a sweater, denim jacket and running shoes.

  “Ready Professor?”

  “Ready, ready,” I replied.

  “Let’s go then. I’m driving.”

  I grabbed my leather jacket, and we drove back to Moonstone.