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I needed more information.
“Danny?” I said.
Nothing. Wherever he’d gone, it seemed pretty clear he was out of earshot.
Well, he wasn’t the only person whose brain I could pick on this topic. I’d been doing my best to keep her out of the loop, just because I hadn’t wanted Chief Lewis to figure out what I was doing, but now it seemed clear I needed to talk to the one person who had an encyclopedic knowledge of Globe and its people.
I reached under the counter and drew out my cell phone, then went to my contacts list. With any luck, she’d be in her office.
The phone rang a couple of times, then picked up. “Hello?”
“Hi, Josie,” I said. “I need to talk to you.”
13
School Daze
Josie staredat me blankly from behind the desk in her rose-hued office. “Why in the world would you think I’d know who had a secret crush on Danny Ortega?”
“Because — ”I broke off there, and lifted my shoulders. “Because you know everything about everyone in this town.”
This comment only made her purse her lips, although a sudden gleam came and went in her light blue eyes, as though she was secretly proud that I would think her capable of such a feat. “I know a lot of things,” she allowed, “but I certainly can’t claim to know what people are thinking, Selena. I have to say it’s a relief to know this wasn’t an outright murder. However, I honestly can’t think of anyone who might have been pining for Danny Ortega in secret. It wasn’t as though he made himself unavailable, if you know what I mean.”
I thought I did. After his divorce — and quite possibly before it, although I wasn’t sure I wanted to probe into his former marriage too deeply — Danny had dated a lot of different women. It seemed to me that anyone who’d wanted to be with him could have had a credible shot at being with him…if not for very long.
Unless the woman in question was shy, or already with someone else, or was someone who thought having a relationship with him might be inappropriate. Any of those scenarios seemed plausible enough to me, although I couldn’t guess which one was likelier than the others.
The potion-brewer could even be another of his students from the high school. Maybe this person had learned about his affair with Taylor Harrison, the senior girl he’d admitted to being intimate with. Possibly whoever had concocted the potion had realized he was open to a relationship with someone her age, and had wanted to bind him to her, for whatever reason. High school crushes could be insanely powerful, and mistakenly using foxglove instead of comfrey seemed like the sort of error a young girl without any experience in such things might make.
“Have any educated guesses?” I asked, knowing how desperate I sounded.
Josie tilted her head to one side. That day, she was wearing an orange sweater and autumn-toned scarf that clashed wildly with her bright red hair, but I still found the cheerful mishmash oddly reassuring. There was just something about Josie that made you feel as though she’d ferret out the solution to any problem, given enough time.
This go-round, though, she didn’t appear to be of much help. “Not really,” she said. “After all, there are enough single women in this town — or even barely legal students — that it could be any one of them. Not Jennifer Espinoza or Corinne Newbury or Susan Laughlin, of course, since it seems they’re in the clear, but even so, that leaves probably at least a hundred or so people who might be considered suspects.”
Sending me once again back to square one. I tried not to sigh, since I knew doing so wouldn’t be at all productive. “We could narrow it down from there, though, couldn’t we?” I said. “I mean, it’s not as though every single woman in Globe would have any reason to interact with Danny on a regular basis.”
“Maybe not,” Josie replied. “Still, he was very active in the community — he was on the board of the theater group, was a member of the Kiwanis Club, still did all the various sports booster activities even though he wasn’t a coach anymore. With everything put together, it means he was in contact with a lot of people.”
True. Even so, I knew in my heart that whoever would have been desperate enough to slip a love potion into his drink was someone he had to be around a good deal.
“Maybe,” I said slowly. “But not all those women were at your party, were they?”
“No,” Josie responded immediately. “And I can pore over the guest list again to see if anyone on there leaps out at me.” She paused there, a troubled expression passing over her face. “Also, who’s to say the culprit was even someone I invited? Everyone in town knew about the party, after all, and almost everyone who came was wearing a mask or some kind of face makeup. It would have been easy enough for someone to slip in while in costume and pretend they were invited. How would I have even known? I spent half the evening in the kitchen with that darn caterer.”
Right. I remembered the dust-up over the missing shrimp platter, and how Josie had been closeted in the kitchen with the caterer, supervising the food, during a big chunk of the party. It wasn’t too far-fetched to believe that almost anyone could have walked into the house as long as they looked as though they belonged there. Since I doubted anyone else was privy to Josie’s guest list, there would have been no reason for any of the rest of us partygoers to think there was anything strange about a particular person attending her Halloween bash.
My expression must have fallen, because Josie got up from her chair and came around the desk so she could give me a reassuring pat on the arm. “You’ll figure it out,” she said, her tone brisk.
“It’s been almost a week,” I replied.
Josie sent me a very direct look. “Yes, but it’s not as though Henry Lewis has made much progress, either, right?”
Well, that was true. Or if he had, he was keeping his cards pretty close to the vest. At that point, I didn’t even care if he discovered the culprit before I did. I just wanted to give Danny some closure — preferably before his burial services took place the day after tomorrow. It was never a good idea to be a guest at your own funeral.
Time to try going at this from a different angle. I’d promised Joyce that I wouldn’t say anything about the digitalis to anyone other than Calvin, so I’d have to tiptoe around the subject when asking my next question. “Do you know of anyone here in town who’s dabbling in witchcraft?”
That query made Josie open her eyes a little wider. “Your kind of witchcraft?”
