Free Gone With the Witch by Heather Blake Page A

bite.
    Missy was giving me the cold shoulder, preferring to stay outside rather than in, which was fine with me as long as she remained in the yard. So far so good. The last time I’d checked, the furry little Houdini had been napping on the back step.
    Aunt Ve’s Himalayan, Tilda, regarded us all with thinly veiled derision from her perch at the end of the mantel. She was, as usual, content to watch us from afar.
    â€œA fast-acting poison,” Harper elaborated, simultaneously nodding while wiping her kewpie-doll lips with the back of her hand. “Someone probably slipped something into her coffee. My guess is sodium cyanide or potassium cyanide.” She shrugged. “
Something
cyanide.A capsule of it would have easily dissolved in the liquid. Bing, bang, boom . . . no one would be the wiser until she collapsed.”
    Long spiral curls of dark brown hair cascaded over Mimi’s shoulders as she leaned back against a pillow she’d pulled down from the love seat. “Wow. Poison. Unbelievable.”
    â€œThe red tint to Natasha’s face is a dead giveaway that it was cyanide.” Wincing, Harper added, “Bad choice of words, considering.”
    Natasha was dead. The paramedics who’d arrived at the Wisp hadn’t even bothered to transport her to the hospital. Instead they’d called the medical examiner’s office, who as far as I knew were still at the function hall.
    Along with Nick, who as chief of police was heading the investigation into Natasha’s untimely death.
    Aunt Ve was dealing with the press. For the sake of the village’s reputation, she as village council chairwoman was trying her best to downplay the incident.
    Which was incredibly hard to do, seeing as how a
woman was dead
.
    A PR catastrophe,
Ivy had warned. Her words were proving portentous.
    I wanted to argue with what Harper was saying about the cyanide, truly I did. It was such a preposterous notion that someone could be poisoned in the middle of a large crowded event.
    And not just poisoned.
    That someone could be
murdered
.
    Because, after all, if someone had slipped Natasha cyanide, surely the intent was to kill her.
    The more I thought about it, however, the more Harper’s theory seemed entirely plausible.
    What else could it have been but murder? Natasha had seemed perfectly healthy earlier in the day,especially when she’d been catting around with Baz Lucas. She was young. Active. Her sudden death was highly unusual, to say the least.
    I didn’t know much about cyanide at all, but I didn’t doubt Harper’s knowledge of the poison. She was a forensics nut and had a steel-trap mind. If she suspected cyanide, I had every reason to suspect it, too.
    â€œLet’s say you’re right,” I said to Harper as I drew my feet up onto the sofa and tucked them beneath me. “Cyanide isn’t exactly a street drug, so how would someone even get hold of something like that?”
    Distant hammering punctuated my sentence. The construction crews were working overtime at my new house to get the roof done before the next rainfall. As late-afternoon sunshine filtered through the gauzy curtains of Ve’s family room, it gave the room a golden glow. The space felt like Ve. Warm and inviting. Soft and cozy. Fanciful and full of color and life. One could get swallowed by the overstuffed sofa, dizzy from the swirling patterns in the area rug, and lost for days reading all the books crammed onto built-in shelves.
    â€œOnline, of course,” Harper said.
    Well, of course.
    â€œYou can get anything online,” she added, reaching for another chip. “From bootleg laundry detergent to tiny turtles, and everything in between. Including poison. The black market is a profitable one.”
    â€œTiny turtles?” Mimi echoed, her chocolate brown eyes narrowed with skepticism. “Really?”
    â€œIf their shell is less than four inches, they’re banned