Chapter 16

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."

Gen nodded. "That's right."

"And I believe that the poison would have to be put into Walter's soup right before he ate it," Sherlock offered, pointing down to the floor where the spilled soup was still lying. "You see, the poison not only has a stronger smell the longer it's in a food, meaning that Walter would have detected that something was wrong, but it also gives the ingredients a strange color."

Gen noticed that the minestrone soup had a strange tinge of green now, that it didn't have before.

Sherlock continued to pace. "That means that JoAnne wouldn't have put the poison into the soup because it couldn't be done too far in advance."

"And I was over here on the far side of the room," JoAnne stated.

King Rudolf nodded. "But Summer and Shannon were over here beside where the soup was sitting, waiting for Walter to ingest it."

"What?!" Summer exclaimed. "I was over here because I was helping Walter to hold the measuring tape so he could fit the bars for the windows. I didn't poison him."

"You were helping Walter to take measurements, both of you with your backs to the counter with the cash register and the food," Sherlock stated, his hands pinned behind his back as he kept his head down and strode back and forth. "Which gave Shannon, the chance to withdraw the eclipse dust from his mailbag and put it in Walter's soup when no one was paying attention."

"You can't be serious?" Shannon argued at once, pointing to his fallen mail bag still sitting on the floor with its contents strewn on the carpet.

"We are as serious as a heart attack," King Rudolf stated. "That was induced by an illegal street drug."

"If I had the drug in my bag, then wouldn't I be more concerned that a cat was going through it," Shannon challenged.

"You would," Sherlock said, toggling his head back and forth. "Which a moment ago, made me think. Then I realized that the envelope that you had the drugs in would be empty now, but Fran was still sniffing, which was why she was after the bag."

"This is ridiculous!" Shannon boomed, spinning around. "Why would I murder Walter? How would that even be possible for me to do?"

Sherlock held up one finger. "You murdered the bookshop owner because you were in love with JoAnne, who didn't return your affection, and you believed that to be because she had feelings for Walter. Get the man out of the picture and the unhappy school teacher would suddenly fall for you."

"I've never heard anything more crazy in all my life." Shannon looked around at the others, pleading for them to come to his defense. They all remained frozen, watching the scene play out and looking to the great detective for the next explanation.

Sherlock held up two fingers. "You had the opportunity to poison Walter's soup when his and Summer's backs were to you, when they were facing the window. You would have slipped in front of the counter, with your own back blocking what you were doing from view from JoAnne. The others, Gen, Boon and Bernard were in between the rows of books, making it so they couldn't see what you were doing."

"You have no proof of any of this nonsense that you're spouting!" Shannon complained, throwing his fists into the air.

"And lastly, the means…" King Rudolf bent over, picking up one of the letters that had fallen out of the postman's bag. "The address on this and all the other mail in your bag has addresses for Venice Beach, which is miles from here, meaning this isn't even your assigned delivery route."

"Well-Well-Well, I can explain," Shannon stuttered.

"That's quite alright," Sherlock cut in. "I think we can deduce that your route changed, but you managed to get the mail for this bookshop every day, swinging by during lunch, when you knew that JoAnne would be here, feeding Walter. You'd grown an unhealthy attraction to her during the years of delivering to Spellbound Pages Bookshop and didn't want to let her go, even when your route changed. So you continued to make an out-of-the-way trip here, all so that you could see her."

King Rudolf shook his head, clicking his tongue. "How very disappointing for you when you'd take your lunch breaks under the guise of delivering mail here, coming all this way, only to see JoAnne doting on Walter. That had to be very frustrating for you. So very maddening that it drove you to murder the man standing between you and the woman you loved."

JoAnne sucked in an audible gasp. "Shannon! Is this true?"

"Of course not," the postman replied, giving her a pleading look. "You have to believe me."

"That's what a liar says," Rudolf stated, holding up the letter he'd picked up. "And your own delivery route would offer you ample opportunities to find the illegal street drug, eclipse dust, which is quite rampant in Venice Beach. There the residents have a lot of money and like dangerous drugs."

Everyone stared at Shannon in shock. JoAnne was the first to move, striding over to Shannon and looking at him directly. He hesitated before meeting her eyes.

"Tell me the truth," she began in a shaky voice. "Did you murder Walter?"

The postman glanced behind at the fallen body. He studied the old man for a long moment then returned his gaze to JoAnne. "He was miserable and I couldn't figure out why you preferred him over me. I just figured that if he was out of the way, you'd finally see me—see that we had a future and get over this romance you'd invented with Walter."

"Invented?" JoAnne yelled as everyone else gasped from the near confession. "We were friends. I liked him because he was an honest man."

"He was an old man," Shannon stated coldly, his eye narrowing. "I put him out of his misery. I heard about the drug because many terminally ill patients were using it to go quickly, stopping their pain. What I did for Walter was kind. He was depressed and rotten to all of you and you know it." He swung around to face Summer. "He yelled at you all the time and wouldn't let you buy the shop even though you could actually run it better than him." Shannon then turned to Boon. "All he did was shoot your ideas down and complain about how you stressed him out." Finally he returned his gaze to JoAnne. "And you were so kind to him, feeding him lunch every day and he rejected you when you told him how you felt. Then you did the same to me. I was tired of Walter ruining all our lives."

"What about me?" Bernard asked, floating over.

"Oh, you're just a miserable ghost who needs to move on," Shannon fired, his face screwed up with tension.

"Not if he doesn't want to," Summer defended the ghost, stepping forward. "Bernard and Fran can stay here as long as they like. It is their shop after all."

"I think it's actually you, Mr. Postman, who will be leaving Spellbound Pages Bookshop," King Rudolf stated, glancing sideways at the great detective. "Do you want to escort him to the police station for booking or shall I?"

"I'll do it," Sherlock said, striding over, pulling a pair of handcuffs from his pocket. "You stay until the coroner arrives for the body and to give a full statement of the investigation. The sooner that we can get all this cleaned up, the sooner that these good people can move on with their lives."

Gen looked at the faces around the bookshop. Everyone was wearing different expressions of stress and shock. But Sherlock was right, they needed time to process and grieve and once they did that, they could turn the page and start a new chapter.