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“No. It was either wiped clean, or the person using it was wearing gloves.”
Which told me the murder had probably been a calculated one. You don’t pause to put on gloves if you’re killing someone in the heat of the moment. I supposed if it had been a crime of passion, the murderer might have stopped afterward to wipe down the knife, but if it had been sticking out of her back, doing so would have presented its own problems.
Before I could say anything, Calvin pulled out a new-looking black iPhone encased in a baggie from a big manila envelope sitting on his desk. “I’d also like you to tell me about this.”
“About what?” I asked. “That’s not my phone.”
“No, it belongs to Tansy McCall, Lilith’s assistant.” He removed the phone from the baggie, entered a code, and then turned it toward me.
I blinked at the screen, realizing that I was looking at the footage she’d taken the day before, when she’d accompanied Lilith on her little visit to my shop. The expression on my face as I confronted the Instagram witch made it look as though I’d just drunk curdled milk.
Well, I already knew I would’ve made a horrible poker player.
“It looks like you weren’t a very big fan of Lilith Black,” Calvin said, his tone now almost dry.
“No, I wasn’t,” I replied. “But disliking someone intensely isn’t a great motive for murder. Otherwise, you police would have a lot more killings to investigate, wouldn’t you?”
“Maybe,” he allowed.
“I didn’t like her coming into my store when I knew her only reason for doing so was to stir the pot,” I continued. “Especially since by then I also knew she was a huge fake.”
That comment seemed to get to Calvin; he straightened in his chair even as he stopped the video and set the phone back down. “Excuse me?”
“She was a fake,” I repeated. “She didn’t know anything about real magic or the craft. It was all a show she put on to get followers on Instagram and YouTube.”
“And you know this how?” Calvin asked. “Do real witches have a way of sniffing out fakes or something?”
Should I be flattered by the off-hand way he’d called me a “real witch”?
Probably not.
“No,” I said. “Her assistant Boden told me.”
One of Calvin’s eyebrows lifted ever so slightly. “Why would he do that?”
About all I could do was shrug. “I don’t know. I think he likes me…or at least, he likes me more than he liked Lilith.” I knotted my fingers in my lap and added, “Maybe he’s the one you should be talking to. Or Tansy.”
“I have spoken with both of them. They both have iron-clad alibis.”
Well, crud. Whereas I’d been out in the forest, communing with nature. Maybe I could track down that owl I’d heard the evening before, have him come in and give a deposition that he’d seen me sleeping in the clearing all night.
And actually, I’d thrown out that comment about Lilith’s assistants because it seemed much more logical to me that someone close to Lilith had to be the murderer. I actually kind of liked Boden, too, but that didn’t mean I thought he was innocent.
Except he apparently had an alibi…as did Tansy.
“Well, it wasn’t me,” I said briskly. “Maybe you should be questioning the people who attended her ritual last night. The murderer could be some kook who thought they’d gain extra power by killing a witch on Midsummer Eve.”
Calvin looked a little taken aback by my suggestion. “Is that actually a thing?”
“No,” I said. “At least, not among any of the witches and warlocks I’ve known. Even Lucien Dumond wasn’t the type to be into human sacrifice. All I’m saying is that it isn’t outside the bounds of possibility.”
He was silent for a moment. “We are questioning the attendees,” he told me. “But there were nearly two hundred of them, so that’s going to take time. It made more sense to talk to you, since you had a more obvious motive.”
Two hundred people. Well, now I knew for sure where the people who’d picked up the tickets for my little ritual had gone…not that I hadn’t already suspected it.
Calvin looked tired. Not so surprising; he’d probably been up since dawn…or even before that, but still, a rush of pity went through me. I wished things were different between us, because I would have reached out and taken him in my arms, held him close so I could give him some reassurance that he’d get this figured out.
Obviously, I wasn’t in any position to do such a thing.
