Witches in Wonderland

by J. D. Winters

  So I was ready for anything once Shane came back to question me in the kitchen. For all I knew, maybe he was going to name me as the prime suspect in this situation. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d been questioned that way by the authorities.

  He came in looking troubled and for a long moment, he just gazed at me. I gazed back. I was going to be careful not to volunteer anything. That was always the chink in my armor—trying to over-explain and ending up giving away too much information, information that just confused the issue and made me look guilty even though I wasn’t. So I waited, practicing patience for a change.

  “Here you are, Haley,” he said at last, “involved in another murder situation. Again.” He shook his head. “Why are you here? What got you over here so early in the morning?”

  I wanted to make a face at him but I felt it would be better to maintain a mature attitude. After all, he could take me to jail if he wanted to. So I took a deep breath and lifted my chin, attempting to show confidence.

  “I can’t help it, Mister Deputy Sheriff, Sir. It might have slipped your mind, but this is the house I grew up in. It’s basically my house, in spirit if not in deed. If there’s a murder in it, I’m involved. I have no control over that.”

  He stared at me sideways. I stared back. Then I noticed the corners of his mouth beginning to quirk, just a little bit.

  Okay then. I could risk a bit of a flirty smile. Right?

  “Shane…,” I started, moving toward him.

  “Haley…,” he said at the same time, turning toward me. Then his eyes softened and he reached out and touched my cheek. “Hey, I’m sorry if I sounded angry,” he told me quickly. “I didn’t mean to. I know this is hard on you. And I know this is your house. Even if you can’t remember ever living here.”

  “Well, there is that.”

  We were grinning at each other by now. He was going to kiss me and I was ready for it. My heart was thudding in my chest and I was finding it a little hard to breathe. He started to lean forward and I raised my face to his…and the kitchen door swung open and Deputy Tommy Decker came bumbling in.

  “Oh, hey, Deputy McAllister, I’ve been looking for you.” He had a delayed reaction as he realized he’d interrupted an intimate moment. “Hey you two,” he said with a frown. “We’ve got a murder here. No time for recreational stuff.”

  Shane didn’t say a word, but he turned back and took me in his arms and kissed me as though I was the most delicious thing he’d ever kissed. I kissed him too, letting his sweet, silky touch wash over me. As he pulled back, he was still smiling at me. Especially with his eyes. Those little crinkles around the edges and that warm light shining for only me knocked me out.

  “What you need at a murder scene,” he said in a low, rumbling voice, “is some life affirming action.” He glanced up at Tommy. “Take that as a lesson, Deputy Decker. And you’re welcome.”

  Tommy was scowling. He didn’t seem to have much of a sense of humor this morning. Maybe it was just too early for him.

  But Shane shifted gears quickly. He was back in professional mode in no time at all.

  “So I assume you’ve questioned the neighbors?” he said to his partner. “Anyone have any useful information?”

  “No. Most people were asleep.”

  “Then you wake them up. Information has a tiny shelf life. People forget what they saw if you don’t get to them quickly enough.”

  Tommy’s shoulders sagged. “Okay. I’ll go back and try again.”

  “How about the man who lives down the block and is always walking his dog?” I said. “Bernie something? I saw him out in front shortly after I got here.”

  Tommie pulled out a notebook and scanned it. “Don’t have him on the list.”

  Shane raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like you should.”

  Tommy sighed. “Okay. I’ll go look for him.” He threw me a wounded look, as though he’d thought we were friends and now he wasn’t so sure. I smiled and he gave me a tiny smile back.

  “You,” Shane said, pointing at me, “stay right here. I’ll be back.”

  He’d barely left through the swinging doors, when Derek came in from the other side. He looked pale, shaken, and badly hung over, with blood-shot eyes and a tremor to his hands. I assumed he’d just seen the body.

  Shaking his head, he leaned on the counter. “What the hell?” he said, not talking to anyone in particular. “What is going on?”

  “You didn’t hear or see anything during the night?” I said.

  He looked over at me as though he was surprised I was there.

  “No. When I came back from your place, I found Mario and we grabbed some booze and started up a card game with a couple of the crew up in our room on the second floor. The others sort of drifted away as we got drunker and drunker. And….” He shrugged. “That’s it. That’s all I know.”

  “You didn’t leave that room once you started playing until this morning?”

  He nodded, looking at me blearily. “Right. I didn’t go anywhere. At first we were yelling back and forth with Kenny. We kept offering to come out and help him, but he was mainly insulting our abilities to do that, so we never did. He was on some kind of loner kick. He thought he could do it all on his own. I don’t know, I guess he was feeling resentful about something but I don’t know what. And then we were making jokes about him. Not anything he could hear, but we were drinking and you know how it is.” He looked like he was about to break down and cry. “We laughed at him. Oh God, how could we do that?”

  He swore angrily and his head sank again and I was afraid he was going to throw up, but he got back under control.

  “Anyway, he was filming and we called back and forth and then he was quiet and we didn’t hear him anymore. I figured he’d either gotten all the content he wanted for the night, or he’d gone out. I…I never saw him again until just now. On the floor…” His voice broke and he turned away.

  Mario peeked in through the swinging doors. “Hey Derek, that Sheriff’s Deputy wants to talk to us.”

  Derek straightened painfully. “Okay. I’m coming.” He threw me a scared look and ducked his head as he turned to go.

  I couldn’t think of anything comforting to say, and I kept remembering those words of Derek’s from the night before.

  Maybe I’ll go back and make plans for murder.

  But he’d seemed completely stunned to find murder had been done. Was he really? After all, hadn’t he claimed to be an experienced actor?

  I shook my head. I didn’t like thinking that way.

  I was getting restless. I didn’t feel like I could go upstairs and hunt for Aunt Tina with all this commotion going on. So what was I doing here? I didn’t know anything.

  I was looking hopefully at the door to the outside when Clarissa fluttered in. She was wearing a long morning dress with ruffles everywhere and the fabric moved like a flock of butterflies, creating a sort of enchantment of its own. Silk scarves, collected together by a fragile-looking glass shawl cuff in the form of a ruby-red peacock, vied with gold chains that seemed to hang everywhere. Her hair was loose, but her makeup was in place and she looked like a fairy queen. In fact, for someone who had supposedly sustained injuries, she looked good. I would have said she looked younger and fresher than she’d looked the night before.

  “You,” she said accusingly, pointing right at me with her incredibly long and slender index finger. “You’re the granddaughter, aren’t you?”

  Somehow I was pretty sure she had me pegged and I nodded, biting my lip.

  Her eyes narrowed but her tone softened as she came closer. In any other context I would have said she was almost seductive.

  “Tell me about Gran Ana,” she said smoothly, grasping my arm with her long-fingered hand, covered with gold and diamonds that dazzled my gaze. “Tell me what she does around here. Who does she trust? Besides you, of course. Who has her ear? Who means the most to her?”

  I found myself stammering out answers to those questions, almost a
s though I couldn’t help myself. Almost as though she’d put me under a spell.

  “Uh, she makes sure things are going well in town, I think. And she’s been promoting the new branding of the tourist areas.”

  She smiled. “When she has a problem, to whom does she turn?”

  “Uh…I don’t know. The Deputy Sheriffs, maybe. Her butler, Oliver. Rennie. Me.”

  “Ah…”

  I had the feeling she was about to launch a whole new series of questions, but luckily Shane came back into the kitchen. He glanced at her hand on my arm and frowned. She dropped it quickly and gave him a scathing glare, then directed all her attention to him. “You do understand what happened here, don’t you?” she said sharply. “You do know why he was killed?”

  Shane shrugged. “No. But I’m sure you’re about to tell me.”

  She gave him a look of mock outrage. “The ghosts. Of course it was the ghosts. They’re angry. They don’t like their turf invaded and they don’t like feeling as though they’re being mocked.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And that’s just it. They can’t be allowed to do things like this. They’ve got to be taught a lesson.”

  It was strange the way her ability to get me to pour my heart out to her faded quickly. At this point, her attitude really rubbed me the wrong way. “Oh?” I said. “And who is going to teach them? You?”

  She tossed back her beautiful ebony hair. “If I have to, I will.” And she gave me a significant look, full of wicked intent and pure magic, then turned away.

  My heart was suddenly beating like a crazy wild thing in my chest. I got the message that look conveyed and it stunned me. Suddenly I knew that Clarissa wasn’t what I’d thought she was. She wasn’t a normal human. She was supernatural too, and she knew how to wield power—things way beyond simple spells--something I was still trying to learn.

  Shane went after her, trying to talk to her, but she was angry or being manipulative—I wasn’t sure which. Maybe both. And he wasn’t getting very far.

  I wasn’t sure what this new turn of events meant in the mix of it all and I was suffocating. Clarissa scared the heck out of me. I had to get out of there, so I walked down a passageway and opened the back door as silently as I could, slipping out into the space behind the house, an area overgrown with untamed bushes and climbing weeds that led to a small patio.

  There was a flash of movement behind the camellia bushes that framed the setting. Someone was in there, starting away. Without thinking, I leaped down from the back porch and in two strides of propelled motion, I had the intruder cornered against an old shed.

  Not the wisest thing to do in an area where there had just been a murder, was it? But luckily, the person I trapped was someone I knew, and she looked as shocked to see me as I was to see her.

  “Mandy,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

  She looked at me with her huge green eyes and stuttered. “Oh…uh…hi Haley. I was looking for you.”

  “Were you?”

  Then why didn’t you come to the front door?

  Those were the words that came first to mind, but she looked so rattled already, I didn’t want to start challenging her. “Why?”

  She blinked at me. “I…uh…I heard you get a phone call and leave in the dark and I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “I’m fine.”

  She took a breath and seemed to settle her nerves all at once. “Good. But there’s been a murder here, huh?” She looked past me toward the back door. “Can you tell me who it was?”

  “The unfortunate victim? It was Kenny Sands.”

  She seemed to swallow, then asked in a rough voice, “Not Derek?”

  I shook my head. “Not Derek. Why? Do you know him?”

  She bit her lower lip and nodded.

  “I just saw him a few minutes ago, but from what I heard, he was sleeping off a night of too much stimulation when it all went down.”

  The back door opened and I turned to see Shane coming out on the porch.

  “I’m glad you’re still here, Haley. I’ve got a few more questions I need to ask you before you go.”

  “Oh, okay. I’ll come right in.”

  I turned back but Mandy was gone. I mean, really gone. I looked around the yard, and then the street, but there wasn’t a sign of her. Funny. Unless, of course, she had ways of disappearing. I had a feeling that was it.

  Chapter 9

  “Did you see that girl I was talking to outside?” I asked Shane when I went in with him.

  “What girl?” he said, but he was involved in his work and his list of questions and not really focused on me, except as a witness, so I wasn’t really sure if he’d seen her or not. So I still didn’t know.

  The paramedics were taking the body out to the ambulance. I watched, feeling chilled again. I hadn’t liked Kenny very much, but I wouldn’t have wished this on him. Or on anyone, really. Death was so final.

  Then I caught sight of myself in the hall mirror and my words came back at me, sounding sarcastic. Death was so final, except when someone found a way around it. For a quick flash, I wondered why it was taking me so long to do any investigating on what exactly had happened to me and why. Then I smothered that thought and followed Shane into the living room, ready for his questions. He couldn’t ask me anything that would scare me more than finding out certain truths about myself. Someday I was going to have to face that.

  Shane grilled me for about an hour. I really didn’t have an hour’s worth of things to say, so that sort of petered out, leaving me annoyed and him grim and impatient. It was sometimes a little scary how he could turn on a dime from warm, romantic, sexy Shane into cold, analytical, suspicious Shane. Which one was the real guy? Hard to be sure.

  Finally he stopped and stared at me, hard. “So what’s your theory?” he asked. “Why did someone kill Kenny?”

  I tried to run through possible motives, but how could I possibly know? “Was anything missing?” I asked him. “Was anything stolen?”

  “Not that we can ascertain at this time,” he said.

  “Then I guess we’re back to who hated him or who had projects he might be undermining or whose wife was he messing around with.”

  Shane nodded. “Anyone could tell this ain’t your first rodeo,” he said, trying to hide the humor in his soul by avoiding eye contact for the moment. “So far, none of those things seem to be involved. But it has to be something. We’ll get it in the end.”

  I appreciated the compliment, but I was definitely feeling antsy. I wanted this to be over. It didn’t help that about half way through our interview, the neighbor with the dog seemed to be parked outside with his dog yipping in a high, annoying voice, over and over. Never ending. I thought we would all go mad with it and when Shane let me go, I slipped outside into the bushes and aimed a simple, short-term spell that dog’s way. All of a sudden he was yodeling.

  I hadn’t really expected it to work that well. I started to giggle. He sounded so funny and looked so surprised at himself.

  Quicker than you would have thought he could move, Shane was there, glaring through the bushes at me.

  “Did you think I was just kidding about not using your magic?” he said, his temple throbbing.

  “Oh.” I gasped. “I….uh…”

  “There’s a reason for it Haley. It could hurt somebody. Mainly, you.”

  “Okay, okay. I won’t do it again.” The dog had stopped yodeling and but man was still taking him home as quickly as he could. I had to silently thank him for that. “Sorry,” I said to Shane. “It’s just, I was going crazy with that animal howling like that.”

  He stared at me for a long moment, then turned on his heel and left the area. I went back into the house feeling a bit sheepish.

  Rennie returned with the Ghost Keeper in tow and I felt a measure of relief to have someone who understood these beings here to help. Clarissa was still storming around, demanding that the ghosts pay for what they’d done. Rosy Granada was a nice contrast to all t
hat drama. She was cool and confident, her large brown eyes wide behind thick glasses, her pretty face half obscured by all her fly-away hair the color of roasted straw.

  “Let me make a quick inventory of what we’ve got here,” she said, holding up her clipboard with papers attached. “Then we’ll know what we need to do.”

  “This is pretty much all your fault, you know,” Clarissa hissed at her. “You’re the Ghost Keeper. You should have been here managing the ghosts. Maybe Kenny wouldn’t have had to die…”

  Her voice choked up and she turned away.

  I looked at Rosy, expecting some remorse…or something. But she looked cool, calm and collected.

  “Rennie let me have the night off,” she said firmly. “I had things to do.”

  Clarissa made a rude exclamation and raced off, leaving me alone with the woman, which was okay and actually just the chance I needed. I wanted to know more about how all this worked.

  “Can you tell if any ghosts are missing?” I asked her.

  She nodded. “Of course. That’s what I do.”

  “But isn’t there some sort of seal keeping them here?”

  She hesitated, looking a little wary. “Well, yes, but seals can break. Seals can lose power and begin to fade. Seals can melt. All sorts of things can happen.”

  “Is it dangerous? Working with them I mean.”

  Her wariness fell away. She looked almost eager to give me the background of this system and I had the feeling not many people wanted to hear about it. She seemed happy to find someone who was interested.

  “Not at all, if you know what you’re doing. They are quite happy to cooperate once you gain their trust. What we’re doing here is a unique project. It’s Rennie’s baby.”

  “Yes, I knew that.”