A Potion to Die For: A Magic Potion Mystery by Heather Blake Page B

clutched to her chest. “I’ll wait for you outside, Carly.”
    I felt glued to the ground. Stuck there, staring at all that blood. I felt a hand on my elbow.
    Dylan said, “Come on, Carly. Let’s go.” He tugged, and I slowly rose to my feet, a bit wobbly.
    “I’ll have to scrub for days. That stain’s never going to come out of the grout.” I grew queasier just thinking about it.
    “No you won’t, Cinderella. Someone’s coming in later today to clean up. A professional crew. Stain magicians.”
    “Really?” I asked.
    “Really.”
    I was beyond grateful, because I couldn’t imagine taking a scrub brush to that floor.
    Looking around, I said, “Why did someone break in but not take anything? Nothing is missing.”
    He leaned against the wall. “I don’t know. Yet. But I’ll figure it out.”
    As I walked into the alley, leaving my shop behind, I really, really wanted to believe him.
    But I had the uneasy feeling that Nelson’s murderer was going to great lengths to keep that from happening.

Chapter Eight
    A insley and I sat in Déjà Brew, the only coffee shop located in the Ring, sipping iced coffee.
    “What now?” Ainsley asked, dragging her straw through the mocha liquid, swirling the ice into a mini tornado.
    Condensation dripped from my cup onto my shorts, leaving a dark shadow on the white fabric. “We have to find out who Nelson was dating. You never heard anything about him dating, did you?”
    “Not a peep, and I’m surprised. I tend to hear all the gossip either through church events or at Dr. O’Leary’s office. That place is nothing but a hen house—you should hear all the squawking.”
    Colley O’Leary was the only ob-gyn within Hitching Post’s town limits, and Ainsley worked for her a few days a week.
    I set my cup on a paper napkin to absorb the drips sliding down the side of the glass tumbler. “But no squawking about Nelson?”
    She shook her head. “Nothing about a girl. Only some buzz about Coach Butts’s case.”
    “What kind of buzz?”
    “That that Nelson was going to get Coach off, free and clear.”
    Dylan had said the same earlier. Tearing an edge off the soggy napkin, I rolled the paper between two fingers. “Win because Coach isn’t guilty? Or because Nelson is such a good lawyer he’d get him off?”
    “Not guilty. Coach has been claiming all along that someone forged his name on those checks, and talk is that Nelson could prove it true by getting some fancy handwriting analysis done. He’s been waiting on the report that was due any day now.” She shrugged. “It may have already come in.”
    A handwriting analysis . . . that would answer a lot of questions. I wondered if Dylan had found one in the search of Nelson’s office.
    Ainsley took a sip of her coffee, then said, “Everyone’s speculating that Coach is so dang angry and picking fights all the time now because he’s innocent and feels like he’s getting railroaded. I have to admit, if I were falsely accused, I might be picking fights, too.”
    “He has been getting into a fair share of trouble lately, hasn’t he?”
    “Fighting with everyone under the sun, including Angelea, Bernice, and Nelson, so I hear told.”
    Angelea and Bernice I could understand—it was easy to snap at family. “Why Nelson?”
    “Word is Coach wasn’t happy with how slowly Nelson was working to clear his name. He was getting mighty impatient.”
    “How’d Nelson handle Coach’s outburst?” This could take the case in a whole new direction. . . .
    “Cool as could be. Calmed Coach right down. Like I said, Nelson believed he’d clear Coach’s name for good when that handwriting analysis came in.”
    The scent of blueberry scones wafted through the shop as I tapped my fingers on the tabletop. “Okay, for conversation’s sake, let’s say Coach is innocent.” It was hard for me to even say those words. “If Coach didn’t take the money, then where is it? Twenty thousand dollars doesn’t just vanish.”