Witching The Night Away: A Cozy Mystery (The Witchy Women of Coven Grove Book 3) by Constance Barker Page B

it’ll convince the county to update the department.”
    “I’ll be sure to mention it,” Bailey said.
    There was a body on the table, covered with a blue sheet but still very obviously a body. Professor Turner.
    Bailey had been the one to find Martha Tells in the caves. It had made her sick to see it. Before that, the only time she’d seen anyone’s body after death was when she saw Wendy at the funeral service. She’d seemed peaceful, though it had been, at the time, acutely obvious that Wendy was no longer there.
    Seeing Martha had been different. She hadn’t died peacefully, and there had been something about it that Bailey hadn’t really known how to put into words until just this moment.
    Wendy had died of natural causes. Early, true. She’d been only sixty-four and there had been so much life still ahead of her. But she had lived a full life, raised a daughter that she loved, married a man that was her best friend despite some of their ongoing problems. She’d seen thousands upon thousands of babies brought into the world and her life was full of joy. When she’d died, she’d left.
    When the coroner pulled back the sheet to show Professor Turner’s pallid face and the cleaned but obvious wound in his neck—it was no more than a tear in his skin, now and hardly looked fatal at all, though it was the artery underneath that had been the problem—Bailey realized something. As with Martha, Professor Turner—Owen—didn’t seem gone. It was a subtle, distant, abstract sort of presence, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that perhaps because of the lack of a peaceful passage he had somehow missed the bus. Or, he couldn’t quite leave it all behind as long as his death wasn’t truly resolved.
    “Are you alright, Miss?” Dr. Lansing asked, peering over his spectacles at her with some concern. “Is this your first time?”
    “No,” Bailey said. That, at least, was true. Tentatively, she tried to read Owen’s mind. She got nothing, of course. Maybe it was just a feeling; not an actual sensation of his presence. “No, it isn’t my first time. But its horrible regardless, isn’t it?”
    Dr. Lansing shrugged as if to say, “you get used to it”, and pointed at the small tear in Owen’s neck. “This was the fatal wound. Split the artery. He would have been dead very quickly. The murder weapon is in evidence, of course, but it was a fountain pen. I suppose the pen might actually be mightier than the sword.”
    Bailey didn’t find it funny. “Did Professor Turner have a sword?” She asked coolly.
    Dr. Lansing cleared his throat. “There are contusions along the left collar bone,” he said, “and a contusion on the posterior cranial tissues. He fell backwards”—he tapped the back of his own head—“hit the ground. He saw… uh, whoever did it. They fought a little before hand, we think, although it was brief. Are you… going to write any of this down?”
    She nearly blushed, but pulled her phone out of her pocket and waved it at him. “I’m recording. It’s two thousand sixteen; I don’t carry around a notepad.”
    “Ah, of course,” Dr. Lansing said.
    It did remind her of something.
    “Are Professor Turner’s effects available, or are they in evidence already?” She asked.
    “They’ve been checked in already,” the coroner said apologetically. “There wasn’t much there, but of course we’re testing it for any blood or hair that might match… someone.”
    Bailey sighed. “I understand you all have to investigate,” she said quietly. “You don’t have to tip toe around it, Dr. Lansing. Do you remember what was on him when he was found?”
    “Oh, sure,” Dr. Lansing said. “I have the carbon copy of the inventory.”
    “May I see it?” She asked.
    “I can’t see what use it would be for a story,” he said suspiciously.
    She thought quickly. What would Ryan have written about it? He always focused on people in his stories, who they were, what motivated them, what