“Of course not, Cen. That was the easiest of the two things he asked me to do. It’s all taken care of.” She sat down across the table and stared at me. Her eyes gleamed with excitement. “Damn, I’m good.”
“How did your top-secret task work out?” I was dying to know what Tyler had asked her to do and hoped to trick her into revealing it.
“Sorry, Cen. That’s classified information. I’ve been sworn to secrecy.” She made a zipping motion across her lips.
“You can be sure that whatever Tyler tells you, he tells me too.”
Aunt Pearl snorted. “Oh, I’m sure he didn’t tell you, Cen. You would ruin everything.”
I looked toward the inner office to make sure Tyler wasn’t near and said, “I know what you did, Aunt Pearl. You stole Mom’s gate key to Lombard Wines.”
“I did not, Cendrine! I’m not a thief!”
“You took Antonio’s wine though. You can’t deny that you were selling it in plain sight at your roadside bar.”
She shrugged. “That wasn’t stealing. I repurposed it. It was for a good cause.”
“Removing the wine from Antonio’s truck without his permission makes you a thief, no matter how good your intentions were.” I was furious and curious all at the same time. “How did you get inside the Lombard Wines gate if you didn’t have a key?”
“Isn’t that obvious even to you, Cen?”
“Did you tell Tyler what you did?”
“Of course not, and don’t you dare tell him either. Witches don’t tell on other witches, Cendrine.”
Chapter 22
Tyler was in his office talking on the phone to the Shady Creek detectives. From what I could overhear, the detectives had pulled surveillance footage from several businesses along the route from the wine festival to Lombard Wines. There was more traffic than usual due to the wine festival, but most of that traffic had been headed to the wine festival, in the opposite direction from Lombard Wines.
The Shady Creek police had finished questioning Antonio and released him without charge, at least for now. Trina had already left on the hour-long drive to pick him up.
I sat in the precinct’s outer office; my coffee gone cold. I had researched everything I could online about the SecureTech lock, and everything seemed to indicate it couldn’t be hacked. Then again, instruction manuals didn’t assume the use of witchcraft. Aunt Pearl had already admitted to sneaking through the Lombard gate. Was it possible that she, or another witch for that matter, could cast a spell to override the biometric fingerprint scanner?
I needed to fully understand the SecureTech lock’s strengths and weaknesses, but I couldn’t do that without an actual lock. I couldn’t exactly play around with Antonio’s SecureTech lock and destroy evidence. I also didn’t have the instruction manual, and we were no closer to uncovering additional viable suspects. We were missing an important piece of the puzzle and running out of time.
I could buy another lock, but that would take time and money that we didn’t have. If this didn’t justify witchcraft, I didn’t know what did.
If I couldn’t buy a lock then I would have to conjure one up.
Technically I was committing a WICCA violation because I was getting a valuable item for free. I hated breaking rules!
On the other hand, I knew why Aunt Pearl always flaunted the rules. They were rigid, one-size-fits-all rules that didn’t always make sense. Right now, I had no other options.
I shut my eyes and pictured the lock in my mind as I whispered the spell:
One, two, three,
SecureTech make it be…
Poof!
A cardboard box with SecureTech lettering appeared before my eyes. A split-second later, it dropped onto the table with a loud thud.
“Cen, you okay out there?” Tyler called. “What was that noise?”
“Uh…nothing. I dropped a book.” I pulled the box toward me and waited until I was sure he wasn’t coming to investigate. Then I opened it and pulled out the instructions. I would set up the lock with my own fingerprint and then try various ways to bypass the biometric reader. At least that was the plan. Since I’m not a locksmith or even mechanically-inclined, I was basically winging it, hoping that step-by-step on-the-fly witchcraft would unlock the mystery, so to speak.
But first I had to read the instructions in their entirety. I couldn’t afford to make one mistake.
The combination lock was straightforward. The factory setting was 1-2-3-4-5. In order to change it, I had to insert the special lock reset tool that came with the lock, then punch in the code I wanted. I reset the code to 77711 and locked it. Then I removed the reset tool and entered the code. It unlocked.
It worked.
I set about starting the next step, my initial fingerprint scan. As I was about to begin, I had an epiphany. It was so obvious in retrospect, yet none of us had thought of it.
At this moment in time, I held a biometric lock with no biometric setting. What if Antonio’s lock had never been set up properly? He had mentioned that the green light wasn’t working. If that was the case then it widened the field of suspects. All the killer had to do was defeat the combination lock, not the fingerprint scanner.
My hands shook as I read the instructions. “Tyler, get out here! We have to go back to the winery.”
Chapter 23
I filled Tyler in on my findings as we raced to Lombard Wines. Antonio was warned not to return to his property until Tyler told him it was okay, so Trina had arranged for Antonio to stay with her. Still under the effects of Aunt Pearl’s spell, he seemed happy to comply.
“Did Antonio give you the lock combination?” I asked.
Tyler nodded. “I suppose we can test it while keeping the door open. I’d rather the technician conduct the experiment, but there really isn’t any downside risk. If we do something wrong, the tech can undo it later. We’ll record everything just in case.”
“If we can find out who did this—”
