Page 82 of The Witch’s Orchard

“Like soap and meth.”

“Exactly. That’s the thing. They drove a pretty new truck and they have a recent-model TV in here. A new laptop. Not brand-new but all within the last couple years or so. I found a bank statement. All their deposits were made in cash.”

“Sounds like typical drug dealer behavior to me.”

“The thing is, County Fire pulled both bodies out last night and they’ve been going through the wreckage today. Far as they can tell, neither of them were armed.”

“Huh,” I say.

“Yeah. Like I said, I’ve only been here about thirty minutes but, still. When’s the last time you met a drug dealer who didn’t pack heat?”

“Huh,” I say again. “Maybe they were just getting started, didn’t want to risk racking up more charges in case things went wrong.”

“Maybe.”

I let him rush off to the great goat escape and check my phone for the time. Right on cue, my belly grumbles. I start up Honey and we roll around to the other side of Main Street and park in front of Shiloh’s Sweet Treats. I follow my nose inside.

I look past the small crowd to the door behind the counter. The girl in the apron gives me a nod of recognition and I walk into the back. Pushing my way into the kitchen, I find Shiloh in a cloud of sugar-scented air, stacks of cakes and lavender cake boxes on the counters and tablesaround her. She hugs me as a matter of course and then ushers me to her big stainless-steel counter and pours me a glass of milk. Before I can even thank her, she pushes a plate of pumpkin streusel in front of me.

“I—”

“Just eat,” she says. “You look famished, Annie. You’re pushing yourself too hard.”

“Me? What about you?” I gesture toward the huge tower of cake boxes beside her.

She throws back her head and lets out a long, loud groan.

“They’re all for the Fall Festival’s cakewalk. My mom talked me into it. Heaven help me, I don’t know why I agreed to it in the first place. Even under normal circumstances it would be tough to get all these done around our regular business, but with Molly being found and…”

She sighs.

“I heard Greg Andrews is back,” she says. “Has he spoken to you?”

“Yeah. Max’s dad is a real prize. He wants me to quit the investigation.”

“Wow,” she says. “He never wanted Max to hire a PI. He and Janice tried it once, when Max was little, and they didn’t find a single thing. I think he feels like PIs are some kind of con. No offense.”

“None taken.”

“You’re not going to quit, are you?” she asks.

“No,” I say. “I’m going to do what I said I would.”

“Then, eat. You’ve got to keep up your energy.”

I sigh and dig in. And we stay that way for a few minutes, Shiloh bustling around the kitchen while I take long drinks of milk and eat progressively bigger bites of streusel. Eventually, I get around to the real reason for my visit. I want to hear the witch story, from her this time.

“The witch story?” Shiloh asks from behind several boxes of cakes.

“Yeah,” I say. “The Witch of Quartz Creek, right? The one with the daughters?”

“Yeah,” she says, writing “White Chocolate Raspberry” on a label and sticking it on the outside of a box. “Only, the way I heard it, they weren’therdaughters.”

I’m too busy letting the pumpkin and cinnamon tastes roll around on my tongue to make real words so I say, “Hmmm?”

“No,” Shiloh says. She opens another box and writes “German Chocolate” on the label, sticks it to the thin pink cardboard. “No. You know my family settled here eight generations ago?”

“Mmm?”