A Brushstroke with Death

Book 1: Owl & Crescent Mystery

by Bethany Blake

Genres: Cozy Mystery

Synopsis

Bethany Blake, author of the nationally bestselling Lucky Paws Petsitting Mysteries, launches a charming new spinoff mystery series featuring an artist and art teacher with a magical gift for solving murders.



Near the creek that runs behind her Pennsylvania house, Willow Bellamy has converted an old barn into an art school—though the place does still have some animal inhabitants, including Rembrandt, the owl who lives up in the rafters. And while it's important for any artist to have a vision, Willow can sometimes see things others can't, just like her mother and grandmother before her. Not that she would exactly call herself a witch . . .



When some local merchants gather in the studio for a painting party, they focus their attention on a still life with flowers and an assortment of garden tools, including antique pruning shears that disappear—at the same time despised restaurant owner Evangeline Fletcher is murdered. Willow must use all her gifts to find the killer, although it means teaming up with a handsome, mysterious detective whom Willow fears she may have accidentally conjured from a canvas. This investigation is sure to be a hoot . . .

Release date: October 27, 2020

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 322

Sample

“Oh, goodness!” my friend Astrid Applebee cried, chasing her floppy straw hat down the stepping-stone path that led from my cottage to my studio, the Owl & Crescent Art Barn. The batlike wings of Astrid’s unusual poncho flapped as she scooped up the hat, jamming it onto her head and flattening her unruly, dark brown curls. Turning back to me and the third member of our small sorority, Pepper Armbruster, Astrid frowned. “Time to batten down the hatches!”

“It’s definitely going to be a wild night,” I agreed, hurrying after her and daring a wary peek at the darkening sky. Then I looked down at the path again, being careful not to trip, because I was carrying a basket that held freshly cut flowers, a ceramic rabbit, a flowerpot—and three sharp old garden tools, all props I’d use to create a still-life scene that guests to my upcoming wine-and-painting social could re-create in oils.

Joining Astrid at the studio door, I fumbled with the knob, while the wind, which was rising ahead of a storm, jangled the chimes that hung in my apple trees and rattled the shutters on my cottage. The rooster weathervane atop the pink wooden playhouse where my rescue pig, Mortimer, lived was spinning in wild circles. Finally managing to open the door, I gestured for Astrid to dash inside. “It feels like a tornado’s coming!”

“Oh, there’s a tornado headed our way,” Pepper noted dryly, strolling right past me, too. She appeared calm, cool, and collected in a pair of white jeans and a sleeveless black top, and the gusts weren’t even riffling her perfect, blond bob—probably because she was quietly using her skills as an elemental, a witch tuned in to nature’s forces and cycles.

I stepped back, making room for her to pull a red wagon stocked with wine from her family’s vineyard, Twin Vines, and food from her inn, the Crooked Chimneys, through the door, which I closed behind us all, shutting out the gale.

“We should all brace for a flesh-and-blood cyclone,” Pepper added, dragging the wagon toward a mustard-yellow, antique dry sink, where I usually served snacks during parties. “Or should I say, a category six human hurricane?”

“I thought hurricanes only went up to five,” Astrid noted, shaking out her poncho, which featured elaborate zodiac-inspired designs. I suspected the garment came from the clearance rack at her quirky shop, Astrid’s Astral Emporium, located in a narrow purple storefront on the bustling Main Street of our eclectic, artsy hometown of Zephyr Hollow, Pennsylvania.

Without waiting for instruction, because my friends often helped with my gatherings, Astrid grabbed a matchbox from a shelf near the door and began to light the many candles I kept tucked around the barn. The power at my property had been unpredictable lately—handyman George Van Buskirk was somewhere working on the problem at that very moment—and as the studio shook from floor to rafters, I thought the nonelectric light might come in handy.

“Can a storm really be worse than five?” Astrid asked again, striking a match and lighting a sage-scented candle I’d placed on a windowsill. She shook out her hand, extinguishing the flame. “And who is this terrible person who’s about to blow us away?”

As if on cue, the wind howled angrily, and a petite gray cat with a white crescent-shaped mark on her chest—one of the inspirations for my studio’s name—yowled in protest and jumped up onto the long farmhouse table where I planned to create the still life.

I smiled at the sleepy feline, who didn’t like her naps to be interrupted, even by forces of nature. “It’s time you woke up for a few minutes, Luna,” I reminded her, setting the basket on the table. “You’ve probably been sleeping all day.”

Luna flicked her tail and blinked her yellow eyes, seeming to ask why that might be a bad thing.

Over by the dry sink, where she was arranging a tempting display of treats, Pepper grinned wickedly and waggled her fingers, which were heavy with silver rings. “You know I could probably calm this tempest so poor Luna can get her beauty rest.”

“Please, no messing with the weather,” I begged, smoothing my white spaghetti-strap blouse back into place. “Put those fingers away!”

Pepper laughed and waved off my concerns. “Oh, I can’t really banish a storm.”

I wasn’t so sure about that. Of me, Astrid, and Pepper—the sole members of the world’s least organized coven—Pepper was by far the most powerful witch. Female members of her family could trace their interest in magic and divination back to the Mayflower’s arrival, and I suspected the Armbrusters’ ancestral fortune was tied to the women’s special abilities more than to the men’s business acumen.

Meanwhile, most of what I, Willow Bellamy, knew about witchcraft came from a tattered family journal that contained a mishmash of recipes for everything from healing herbal teas to less-than-mystical Jell-O salads; handwritten “spells” with margin notes explaining when they had—and often hadn’t—worked; and descriptions of rituals that seemed to enjoy roughly the same success rate as the spells, all collected by the last four or five generations of aspiring Bellamy witches.

My grandmother, Anna—quite the brewer of powerful, sometimes misfiring, teas herself—had given me the Bellamy Book of Spells, Lore & Miscellany when, at age eighteen, I happened to rest a hand on a painting and found myself accidentally sucked into the artist’s soul, making me, apparently, a witch of the arts-and-crafts variety, just like Pepper was an elemental.

I could vividly recall how Grandma Anna, who’d also handed down the genes for my thick, black hair and unusual green eyes, had pulled me aside and said, “Your mother hates what she calls ‘hocus pocus.’ But, given that you obviously have gifts, I’d take a gander at the stuff in these pages before you get yourself killed”.a world

I’d taken that advice and come to embrace a world that my mother, Mayor Celeste Bellamy Dinsmore Crockett Bellamy—who had a winding history of divorce and remarriage—did consider suspect.

In spite of lacking maternal support, I still had a stronger background than Astrid, who came from a family of determinedly mundane accountants, and who learned most of what she knew about her chosen path—astrological—from questionable Internet sites. However, what Astrid lacked in knowledge and experience, she made up for with clothing and jewelry.

Every so often, Pepper and I had to tactfully let her know that she looked a bit too much like a cartoon version of Merlin. In fact, we’d secretly taken away Astrid’s purple velvet pointed hat, the ashes of which would forever rest at the bottom of my backyard fire pit, surrounded by a cozy circle of Adirondack chairs that overlooked a bubbling stream called Peddler’s Creek.

To quote a questionably wise axiom my Great Aunt Edith had added to the Book of Miscellany, “It’s not a crime if it’s a favor”.

“Is anyone going to tell me who the hurricane is?” Astrid repeated, while I began to unpack the basket.

Glancing over, I saw that she was eating one of the watermelon-and-feta skewers Pepper had just arranged on a white platter. Pepper had also supplied bruschetta, topped with basil and heirloom tomatoes from my garden, and a pasta salad with grilled vegetables. I’d baked plum tarts finished with a drizzle of honey, the fruit and nectar gathered from my own trees and beehives. I was probably a borderline garden witch, if there was such a thing as borderline witchcraft.

As thunder rumbled in the distance, Astrid reached for a tart. “Should I be worried about more than getting struck by lightning on the way home?”

“I would never let you get struck, Astrid,” Pepper promised, uncorking a bottle of wine. I had no idea if she was joking. I didn’t see a twinkle in her blue eyes as she poured three tumblers full of the award-winning Pinot Grigio that was adding to the Armbruster fortune. Joining me at the table, Pepper slid a glass toward me, then gave Luna a quick scratch behind the ears. Luna tipped her head, practically grinning. “Unfortunately, I can’t protect you from Evangeline Fletcher’s lightning-sharp tongue tonight,” Pepper added. “She is a force beyond my control!”

At the sound of my cantankerous next-door neighbor’s name, Luna yowled and ran off. Astrid was also clearly stunned. Her brown eyes grew wide, and she thumped her chest, like she was choking. “No!” she cried, when she could finally speak. Her worried gaze darted between me and Pepper. “She’s not really coming here, is she?”

Before I could respond, I heard a loud rustle of feathers above us, and I looked up to the exposed beams to discover that the Owl & Crescent’s other namesake—a majestic, suitably wise barn owl named Rembrandt—also seemed displeased to learn that our surly neighbor planned to join the gathering, which was sponsored by the Zephyr Hollow Small Business Alliance.

Narrowing his dark, intelligent eyes, Remi rattled his wings again, letting us all know that he’d be keeping an eye on the woman who’d once called a wildlife officer to trap the “pet” I was “illegally keeping” at my place of business.

Given that Rembrandt had lived in the barn before I’d renovated it, and came and went as he pleased, the accusation had, of course, been ridiculous. Just like Evangeline’s claim that the pig who lived in a pink playhouse, complete with flower boxes, was “livestock,” and therefore also suitable for seizure and relocation.

Evangeline had even called the authorities on Luna, insisting that my feline companion was feral because she sometimes napped on top of my potting shed.

And then there were the shadier rumors she’d spread about me . . .

“I can’t believe Ms. Fletcher has the nerve to show up here,” Astrid said, interrupting my thoughts and puffing her poncho indignantly. “I know she’s responsible for that crazy tale about ‘blood ceremonies’ being held at the Owl & Crescent!”

Pepper shook her head. “Such a shame that you had to spill red paint all over yourself, Willow. If only it had been blue!”

Astrid’s cheeks were pink with outrage on my behalf. “And such a shame that Evangeline was, as always, spying when you went to the cottage to clean up, because that rumor cost you business for a good six months. I swear, Evangeline Fletcher wants to get rid of all your poor animals and force you to move, too!”

While Astrid was speaking, the door had opened, ushering in a gust of wind and Mr. Van Buskirk. “Don’t mean to eavesdrop, ladies, but Astrid’s right,” he said, stomping his work boots on the rug just inside the door. He set down a box of tools. “But I suppose you knew that already, Willow.”

Of course, I was well aware that Evangeline wanted to buy my house and paint the pink, yellow, and aqua Victorian cottage some dull shade, like brown. She also hated Mortimer’s playhouse and wanted to raze the barn, too. My small colony of bees were another source of aggravation, although they mainly just buzzed around my own gardens—which, if Evangeline ever did succeed in wresting my home away from me, would probably be replaced with the uniform, short grass that surrounded her much larger home, known locally as “Fletcher Mansion.”

“Well, I’ll never sell,” I told everyone, as I continued arranging my scene, adding a rustic trowel, a hand rake, and an ancient, but wickedly sharp, pair of pruners. Then I looked up at Rembrandt. “No one’s going to throw a net over you again,” I promised him, turning to Luna. “And no one’s sending you to the pound, either, or—heaven forbid—turning poor Mortimer into pork.”

Glancing out one of the barn’s windows, I saw that the black-and-white pig in question had ventured out of his house, which was like a miniature version of my cottage. He trotted around his enclosure, his snout raised as he watched the weather vane spin in the wind. I made a mental note to bring him inside the barn if the storm got too bad.

“I’d keep an eye on that piggy,” Mr. Van Buskirk said, looking out the window, too. “Poor little guy is in Evangeline’s sights. Who knows what she might do.”

I rested one hand on my chest. “You don’t think she’d really harm him . . . ?”

“I don’t know, Willow,” Astrid fretted. “She is unpredictable.”

“Yes,” Pepper agreed, giving Mr. Van Buskirk a sympathetic look. “I’m so sorry she let you go, after so many years!”

Of course, everyone in Zephyr Hollow knew that Evangeline had recently fired Mr. Van Buskirk, after decades of loyal service to the Fletcher family. Having known him since my childhood, I was trying to find odd jobs for him—which wasn’t difficult, given my home’s age. Everything needed tweaks, from my roof to the fence around Mortimer’s enclosure.

Pepper had mentioned offering Mr. Van Buskirk some work at the Crooked Chimneys, too, but she didn’t have a spot for a full-time employee. I didn’t think she had any extra rooms at the inn, either, but she asked, “How long can you stay in the caretaker’s cottage? I’d like to help, if you need a temporary place.”

“Thanks, Pepper, but I don’t have to move off the property for another week.” Mr. Van Buskirk was around my grandmother’s age, and vital and kindly, like her. But he sounded more gruff than usual, and his blue eyes, set in a weathered face, hardened when he spoke about being tossed out of the charming outbuilding, just across the creek, that he’d occupied for as long as I could remember. “And I think I have a place to go, if things go as planned,” he added.

I was going to ask where he intended to move, but he changed the subject, addressing me again. “I don’t know if I’ve found the real problem with the power, Willow. We’ll see how things go during the storm. In the meantime, I noticed some boards are loose on the bridge. I’ll nail ’em down before the wind tears one away. Just as a favor.”

The wooden footbridge that connected my property to the Fletchers’ was technically my responsibility. “I’ll pay you—”

“No,” he interrupted me, bending to pick up the battered, metal tool box. “It won’t take long.”

“Well, thanks,” I told him.

He tipped his worn bucket hat to us as he exited the barn. “Good night, ladies!”

“Poor Mr. Van Buskirk,” Astrid said, when he was gone. “I still think you should tell Evangeline she’s not welcome here.”

Part of me wished I could do that, but I didn’t want to start discriminating against customers who had been invited by outside organizations. “We need to remember that, as a member of the Small Business Alliance, Evangeline has every right to join this gathering,” I reminded everyone. “She does own one of Zephyr Hollow’s most successful restaurants.”

Pepper rolled her eyes. “I swear, she gets half her business by leaving fake reviews—both good ones for the Silver Spoon and bad ones for every other place in town—all over the Internet. The Crooked Chimneys has received several one-star ratings in the last few months.”

Astrid frowned. “Everybody knows your inn is the best, not to mention most romantic, restaurant around, and that there are lots of other good spots in Zephyr Hollow, too.”

“Locals might know that,” Pepper pointed out. “But tourists go by what they read online. And, I swear, lately somebody has been planting nasty reviews everywhere. Linh Tran, from Typhoon, has noticed it, too. Her business is way down at the height of the tourist season. She only has twelve reservations for the night of the Gallery Walk.”

I’d been adjusting the garden tools one last time, but I paused, surprised by that news.

“That is worrisome,” I agreed as the barn creaked loudly, shaken again by the wind. The ten paintings I’d created for Zephyr Hollow’s most popular summer event rattled against the wall, and for a moment, I thought one of them was about to crash to the floor.

The watercolor, depicting a tall, dark-haired man walking a boxerlike dog down Main Street, had its own energy and always seemed restless to me. Thankfully, the piece, which I planned to price at three hundred dollars, stayed put and wouldn’t need an expensive new frame before its sale. At least, I hoped the scene would find a buyer during the Gallery Walk. I counted on selling all my works, which would be displayed at a shop called the Well-Dressed Wall, to boost my income, and I knew local restaurant owners factored the weekend’s profits into their yearly budgets, too.

“You and Typhoon should be overbooked by now,” I added, growing more concerned for the owner, who was a friend. “Linh should be turning people away.”

Pepper smiled, but wryly. “I hear the Silver Spoon, which is averaging five stars on every review site, is packing them in.”

Astrid wandered over to the sideboard, where she helped herself to another tart. “Well, at least you don’t have to worry, Pepper,” she noted, taking a bite and talking through the crumbs. “I’m sure the Crooked Chimneys is booked solid, right?”

“Our dinner reservations are down a bit, but, yes, our rooms are filled for the weekend of the walk and gala,” Pepper said, referencing a party she always threw in conjunction with the community-wide art show. Ever the hostess, even at my establishment, she rose and moved about the studio, plugging in fairy lights that were strung along the shiplap walls and draped from the rafters. The soft glow, like fireflies, made the always festive space, which was cluttered with painted antique furniture, vintage Turkish rugs, and knickknacks I collected at the Penny For Your Stuff flea market, even more cozy. As Pepper passed by the wall that held my Gallery Walk paintings, she paused, studying the watercolor of the dark-haired man and his dog. Then she turned to me. “Who is that guy?”

I shrugged. “Someone from my imagination.”

Pepper grinned. “Do you have a spell in your ‘book of miscellany’ to bring him to life? You do have some power with art.”

“First of all, you can barely see his face,” I pointed out, although I also thought there was something undeniably attractive about the man. Then I glanced at the painting and felt a prickle in the pit of my stomach. “And I’m honestly not sure if summoning him from that canvas would be a good idea.”

My words sounded more ominous than I’d intended, against the backdrop of thunder that again rumbled in the distance. The light in the barn dimmed, too, as clouds rolled closer, and I wondered, briefly, if Pepper had anticipated the darkness, or if her decision to plug in the lights had been coincidental. Then, still feeling uneasy, I stepped back from the table and pulled a folded piece of paper from the back pocket of my jeans.

“I hope my guests don’t cancel tonight,” I added, consulting a handwritten list of people who had RSVP’d positively. “This gathering isn’t big to begin with. It would be a shame if the weather kept people away.”

Pepper and Astrid didn’t reply. Astrid was rearranging the snacks, to fill the gaps she’d created, and Pepper began to set canvases, brushes, and tubes of oil paint on the table.

“Thanks for all your help,” I told my friends, as I scanned the roster of about twenty local business owners. I knew everyone, at least to some degree, but a few names and notes I’d made popped out at me.

“Do either of you know anything about Benedict Blodgett and his little film school?” I inquired. “Because I’m not even sure where that’s located.”

“Umm, Willow?”

Astrid answered my questions with a question, and I looked up to see that she and Pepper were both watching me with something like concern. “What?” I asked warily. I folded the paper and shoved it back into my pocket. “What’s wrong? And spit it out, please. Because people are going to arrive any minute now.”

“Speaking of that,” Pepper said, sharing a funny, almost guilty, look with Astrid. “There’s something we’ve been meaning to tell you.”

“Yes,” Astrid agreed nervously. Her cheeks flushed, and in spite of my reminder about the need to speak quickly, she took a moment to clear her throat before failing to get to the point. “We do have possible news.”

Luna crept closer, seeming curious, too, while I looked between my friends. To my surprise, Pepper, who was normally very straightforward, averted her gaze. “Seriously,” I said. “Someone please spill, ASAP.”

“We’ve . . . we’ve both heard another rumor,” Astrid stammered. “One that I tried to confirm, using a tracking spell from a website that I now fear might have been less than reliable, along with a plastic ‘crystal ball’ made by the HappyTime toy company.”

I made a rolling motion with my hand, urging her to get to the point.

“It seems that someone’s coming back to town, maybe as early as this evening, appropriately in conjunction with the storm,” Pepper finally chimed in. “Someone who might make Evangeline even more disagreeable than usual—”

I was dying to learn who the heck they were talking about, but our conversation was interrupted, first by Rembrandt, who swooped down from the rafters to make a quick, warning circle around the barn, and next by a loud, insistent, staccato rap on the door.

For better or for worse, at least one of my guests had arrived.

“Oh, Willow, these paintings are lovely,” Myrna Crickle said, resting one hand, laden with chunky, glittering rings, onto her equally sparkly sweater as she studied the watercolors I’d sell in her gallery the weekend of the walk and gala. Myrna’s black top was covered with multicolored crystals that twinkled like her blue eyes, which were magnified by the lenses of oversized, round, black plastic eyeglasses. She had to be at least seventy, and her hair was snow white, but she dressed with admirable abandon and had the energy of someone half her age.

In fact, although the party was just getting under way, Myrna had already completed her painting, an abstract spattering of bright colors that barely suggested the scene I’d set up. Maybe that’s why she’d finished early, too.

Regardless, she was the first to abandon her easel and wander around my studio, followed closely by Luna, who liked baubles. “These will all sell quickly, I’m sure,” she added, stepping closer to the piece that had caught Pepper’s eye, too. “I predict this moody one, in particular, will go fast.”

“Funny you should say that,” I said, studying the image, too. I’d painted the man with his collar turned up against an imagined chilly, wet wind, so his face was partially concealed, but he had a strangely compelling energy. The dog, muscular with a white spot on its forehead, looked worshipfully, or worriedly, up at its human. “I’ve felt like that painting has been ready to go, even before it was framed.”

Myrna smiled at me. “I always believe that each work of art has its own sort of life force, too.”

For a split second, I debated telling her just how much “life” I could sometimes. . .