Read Online A Vision in Velvet: A Witchcraft Mystery by Juliet Blackwell - Free Book Online

relationship is taking. Seems to me I find myselfhelping you commit felonies—especially of the breaking-and-entering variety—more often than I’d like.”
    “Hey, I cooked you dinner. Doesn’t that count for something? And I’m a witch, not a spirit. I can’t walk through walls. So when it comes to breaking in, I have to rely on entirely normal, everyday methods. . . .”
    “Like talking your boyfriend into helping you.”
    “Right.” I felt a little thrill run through me at his use of that word. “Um . . . You’re my boyfriend?”
    “I certainly hope so. Otherwise I’d be hard-pressed to explain what I’m doing here.”
    I leaned down and gave him a quick kiss on his forehead, feeling like a lady rewarding her knight.
    “Trying to distract me?”
    I laughed softly. “I really do appreciate this, Sailor. If not for you, it would just be me and my Hand of Glory here in the alley in the middle of the night. Even
I
would find that scenario a little creepy.”
    “At some point we should talk about how you run around town with no thought to your own safety. You—”
    He stopped speaking as the locking mechanism clicked, and he pushed the door open. With a triumphant bow, he gestured that I should go on in.
    The shop was musty and crowded, just as it had been when I was here earlier in the day. But now there were signs of a struggle: shards of glass and ceramics littered the floor, a grandfather clock had been knocked on its side, and a stained-glass lampshade was split into several colorful pieces. The register sat open, empty of any paper money. It had all the markings of a simple robbery gone bad . . . except for the fact that Crowley had been killed under an oak tree clear across town in Golden Gate Park.
    “What are we looking for?” Sailor asked in a low voice. He remained near the front of the store, keeping an eye out for passersby through the plate-glass display window.
    “Anything, really . . . Something that might give us a clue as to what’s going on. Also, I want to see if I can unearth the name and address of whoever sold him that trunk. Sebastian mentioned it was a woman—”
    “That narrows it down.”
    I ignored him. “She was the niece of an old man and sold him a number of other items from the man’s estate. You and Oscar mentioned that Sebastian kept careful records.”
    “Records of who owed what, mostly.” Sailor raised his eyebrows and cast a glance around the disorganized store. “This guy mostly laundered money for criminals. I’m not sure he ever actually
sold
anything.”
    “He sold something to me.”
    “Other than a worthless trunk full of worthless clothes and one possibly disastrous cape to you. Ever occur to you that this was no accident of retail?”
    I bit my lip as I riffled, as carefully as I could, through the papers atop Sebastian’s crowded desk. It was such a mess I couldn’t imagine my search would disturb much of anything. There were stacks of unpaid bills and articles ripped out of newspapers, receipts, catalogs, and advertising circulars. Nothing that seemed significant. In the drawers were old index cards, a mélange of dried-up pens and stubby pencils, and a half-empty plastic bottle of Old Crow bourbon.
    Frustrated, I sat back in the desk chair and blew out a loud breath. Where would someone like Sebastian have kept a telltale ledger? Probably not here at his desk, which would be the first place a person would look. His shop was such a jumble, it could be anywhere.
    Like most antiques stores, Sebastian’s was jammed with bureaus, standing lamps, old oil paintings and baroque frames, and hundreds of decorative tchotchkes. There was a sculpture of the goddess Diana, a couple of marble pillars topped with busts, and a pair of stonewings that looked like they had fallen off a statue. Any of a hundred drawers could be hiding a ledger, unless . . . On the other side of the shop, I noticed several leather-bound books atop a walnut rolltop