Read Online Witch at Heart: A Jinx Hamilton Witch Mystery Book 1 (The Jinx Hamilton Mysteries) by Juliette Harper - Free Book Online Page A

accepting the crust and taking it to his room.
    “So what’s Rodney's story?” Tori asked, biting into a slice. “Did Fiona get him at a pet store or something?”
    Wiping his chin with a napkin, Chase said, “No. It was the darnedest thing. Somebody left Rodney on the front step in his cage one morning. Festus found him when I opened up and Fiona came out to see what was going on. She insisted on keeping Rodney for his own safety.”
    “Did Festus try to turn him into a snack?” I asked.
    “Actually, no,” Chase said. “If anything it looked like the two of them were having a conversation through the bars of the cage, but I wasn’t willing to risk it.” Then, as if the idea had just occurred to him, he added, “Uh, how many cats do you have?”
    “Four,” I said, “and trust me, this will be a segregated household.”
    Chase looked relieved. “Good,” he said. “Rodney will grow on you fast. I swear he’s going to talk one of these days.”
    “Why did Fiona put the cage behind those liniment cans?” Tori asked.
    “Huh,” Chase said thoughtfully. “I actually don’t know the answer to that question. Fiona always had her own way of doing things.”
    Okay, that was an opening if I ever heard one.
    “She did, didn’t she?” I said, preparing to steer the conversation in a new direction. “I’ve been finding all kinds of things I didn’t know she was interested in, including true crime.”
    “True crime?” Chase asked, frowning. “What do you mean?”
    Knowing we’d be eating lunch in the storeroom, I had strategically placed the manila folder of clippings on the worktable. I leaned over and snagged it and put it in front of Chase. “We found this file of newspaper articles this morning,” I said. “Fiona must have been interested in this unsolved murder.”
    Chase opened the folder and shook his head sadly. “Ah, Jane Doe,” he said. “Everyone in town knows about her. I wasn’t here when it happened, but Fiona told me about it. Every year on the anniversary people go out and put flowers on the grave. In fact, that’s coming up in just a couple of weeks.”
    “Why was Fiona so interested?” I asked.
    “You don’t know?” Chase said. “The girl came in the store about a week before her body was discovered.”
    “No way,” Tori said. “What happened?”
    “Not much, according to Fiona,” Chase said, extracting another slice of pizza from his box. “The girl came in dressed for hiking. She had stopped at George and Irma’s to get some food for the trail. When she walked by here, she saw a quartz necklace in the window and came in to ask how much it was. Fiona asked her how much she had to spare and the girl said five dollars. Fiona said she was in luck because that was how much the necklace cost. The girl bought it and wore it out of the store.”
    That was Fiona. Softest heart in the whole world.
    “And Aunt Fiona didn’t get her name?” I asked.
    “No,” Chase said, “and that was the part that haunted Fiona so much. There were a lot of tourists in here that day and Fiona was too busy to visit with the girl like she normally would have. I think Fiona blamed herself. She always said if she’d just gotten the poor kid’s first name, maybe the police could have gotten better leads. And she was upset about the necklace.”
    “What about the necklace?” Tori asked.
    “It wasn’t on the body or in the backpack,” Chase said. “Fiona always worried that someone on the trail thought it was valuable and killed the girl trying to take the necklace. It was just a piece of plain quartz. Nothing special. The body was found by a little creek up near Weber’s Gap. For some reason, Fiona was convinced the necklace wound up in the water. She went up there several times trying to find it.”
    Huh. That didn’t make sense. “Why would she do that if it wasn’t valuable?”
    “Beats me,” Chase said. “Fiona said if she could find the necklace, she’d know what happened.