Page 22 of The Lost Empress

SOUP, SUSPICION, AND SECRETS

Spellbound Pages Bookshop, Downtown Los Angeles, California, United States

“The cat did it!” King Rudolf bellowed after taking another drink of wine.

Summer backed away from the feline who was standing closest to her. “Fran murdered Walter?”

“Oh, no,” King Rudolf replied. “The cat cracked the case.”

Bernard floated over next to Fran and leaned over, scratching her fondly behind the ears. “Because she knows it was the soup that was poisoned, which is what killed Walter.”

“Which was made by JoAnne, the unhappy school teacher,” Sherlock Holmes stated, looking intently at the woman with curly hair and the only one to be crying about Walter’s death.

“You!” the king of the fae accused, pointing at JoAnne. “You murdered the old man!”

“Me?” JoAnne pointed at herself. “You think I killed Walter! I loved him. I took care of him.”

“And love is the reason that most murder,” Sherlock stated. “You were very unsatisfied with your profession as a school teacher, weren’t you?”

“Well, yes, but that was no secret.” JoAnne nearly started crying again.

“But when you confessed your feelings to Walter,” Rudolf began, waving the half-drunk bottle around in the air in front of him, “and he turned you down, then you had nothing left to live for. You were a miserable teacher, without love and with no future.”

“No!” JoAnne yelled, her face red. “I was saving up to open my own restaurant. I tried my new recipes on Walter, making him lunch every single day.”

“Which the real murderer knew you did,” Sherlock Holmes said in a low voice.

“Did you say, ‘the real murderer’?” Bernard asked, arching a curious eyebrow at the detective.

“That I did,” Sherlock replied.

“Which was you!” Rudolf pointed another accusatory finger, this time at the ghost.

Bernard threw back his head, laughing. “If you think that, then you’re the worst detective team in the world.”

“It’s part of our dynamic,” Sherlock imparted dryly. “And we know it wasn’t you because as you pointed out, you can’t leave the shop to get the drug that killed Walter.”

“That’s right,” Bernard said, nodding along.

“And killing Walter would do you no good because Summer would just take over the shop,” Sherlock continued.

“So it was you!” King Rudolf stated, throwing his pointer at the hippie.

“M-M-Me?” Summer stammered. “No, I believe in karma. I want this shop and I didn’t much care for that crotchety old man, but I wouldn’t kill him. It would come back and haunt me.”

Bernard laughed again, throwing back his head, really enjoying this more than he should. “Very funny. I guess you can call me karma because I love making your life hell.”

Summer narrowed her eyes at the ghost. “And yet, you do all my work, so who’s the fool?”

“I like shelving books and know where they actually go,” Bernard fired back.

Sherlock held up his hands, pausing the pair’s bickering. “It wasn’t Summer who murdered Walter. People kill for love, for greed and out of passion. One of you was more passionate about things than any other.”

All gazes darted to Boon. The hipster stumbled back, his eyes wide. “Me! Because I’m passionate, you think I’d kill Walter? That makes no sense.”

“Or does it make tons of sense?” King Rudolf questioned, a sly grin on his face.

“When I say passion,” Sherlock began, starting to pace in front of the group of suspects, “I mean matters of the heart. And while Mr. Boon is very passionate about certain things, his is not the type of emotion that would cause him to murder. Also, he neither had the means nor the opportunity.” Sherlock held out a hand to Gen. “You told me when we arrived that Boon was helping you to locate a book when the murder happened.”

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