Wicked Witches of the Midwest Mystery Box Set

by Amanda M. Lee

  “Thistle is right,” I said quickly. “We should definitely wait until we have more time to really dig into the issue.”

  Whether she understood what we were doing or not, Clove vehemently shook her head. “I want to decide now. I’ve been giving it some thought, and I think the only fair way to make the decision is to have a competition.”

  I furrowed my brow. “Like a game of horse on the basketball court?”

  “Like a trivia game in which you guys can compete over who knows me best.”

  That sounded absolutely tragic. “Um ... .”

  “Maybe we could just draw straws,” Thistle suggested. “That might be easier.”

  And less time-consuming, I silently added. Knowing Clove, she would create the world’s longest trivia game so Thistle and I would have no choice but to compete for days over a job neither of us wanted.

  “Drawing straws is boring,” Clove argued. “I think the trivia game is better. That way, whichever of you wins, we can arrange the lineup for the other weddings.”

  “What other weddings?” I blurted out before I could grasp what she was getting at.

  “Your wedding to Landon and Thistle’s wedding to Marcus. We all know they’ll happen eventually, so we have to get a rotation going.”

  “A rotation?”

  “You know ... if you’re my maid of honor that means I’ll be Thistle’s matron of honor and she’ll be your maid of honor. Or we’ll switch it around if it goes the other way.”

  “Oh, well, that makes sense ... I guess.”

  “That way no one will be left out,” Clove added.

  The look Thistle shot me said she was more than willing to be left out. I recognized Clove would melt down if Thistle suggested anything of the sort, so I lobbed a quelling glare in her direction and shook my head in warning.

  “I guess we can do the trivia thing,” I said. “It’ll have to wait a few days. You guys have inventory and I need to go through these files. We have to find a murderer before we can focus on the wedding.”

  “Okay.” Clove brightened considerably. “I’ll come up with questions and we can have the competition the second this case is solved. How does that sound?”

  Like the worst thing ever. I forced a smile for her benefit all the same. “Sounds great.”

  I LOST MYSELF IN HOPPER’S files while Thistle and Clove finished up their inventory. Before I realized what was happening, they’d joined me on the furniture in the middle of the store and started delving into client backgrounds.

  “This whole thing is sick,” Thistle said after an hour of reading one file. “This guy kept copious notes about what his clients were doing with each other and intermingled it with the things he was talking the women into doing with him. It was ... freaky.”

  I’d come to the same conclusion. “He wrote everything down,” I agreed. “He was obviously getting off on convincing these women to have sex with him, but he was treating it as something of a clinical trial.

  “I mean, in this one, the husband was complaining that the wife was frigid,” I continued. “This is Sarah and Buck Bishop, by the way, so you can now picture her withholding sex from him the same way I’m forced to.”

  “Hey, I’ve seen Buck shirtless at the lake in the summer,” Thistle drawled. “I would withhold sex from him, too. He looks like a mid-sized bear. If that’s not an advertisement for back waxing, I don’t know what is.”

  “Yes, well, Sarah lost interest in sex after their third kid and Buck was threatening to get a girlfriend if she didn’t get with the program.”

  “That was nice of him,” Clove countered sarcastically. “She birthed three babies for him – probably big, hairy babies – and he threatened to get a girlfriend.”

  “A girlfriend he would have to pick up at a fuzzy convention,” Thistle muttered.

  “Dr. Lovelorn gave them some exercises to do at home — they were intimacy exercises that involved sitting across from each other and talking about their feelings — while he held separate sessions with Sarah,” I explained. “During those sessions, he suggested that she absolutely needed to get over her aversion to sex if she hoped to save her marriage ... and the only way to do that was to have sex with him.”

  “Oh, that is just low.” Thistle made a face. “Sarah Bishop is fairly religious, if I remember correctly. He must’ve had to push hard to get her to agree.”

  “He did.” I read further. “It says it took him three months to convince her. After they did it, he gathered a list of her reactions to his various attempts at stimulating her and came up with the conclusion that she was frigid but willing to allow a man to do what he wanted to get it over with. He deemed that an acceptable outcome.”

  “Oh, if this guy wasn’t already dead I would kill him myself,” Thistle complained. “That is disgusting.”

  “It’s definitely disgusting,” I agreed. “The thing is, I’m not sure that Buck ever found out what was happening. As the file progresses, Sarah starts having sex with Buck again, and he thinks the therapy is working. He clearly has no idea how Hopper fanned the flames of Sarah’s fire.”

  “I so want to punch him,” Clove groused. “I have Maxine’s file and it’s even worse. He’s making fun of her in here because he knows she’s falling in love with him and he doesn’t care about her other than the sex. He thinks it might make a good paper to follow the progress of Maxine’s obsession with him after the fact. He mentions this isn’t the first time a woman has fallen in love with him, and he always finds it amusing.”

  “What a turd.” Thistle furrowed her brow as she flipped the file she was holding to the table and focused on the one beneath it. “I think we took this file by mistake.”

  “Why do you say that?” I asked, leaning closer to see what she was looking at.

  “Because the file tag with the identity is missing and there’s only one sheet of paper inside. It was kind of stuck to the other file, and there’s nothing in here about Hopper having sex with ... whoever this is. I’m assuming it’s a woman, but there’s nothing in here to indicate that.”

  “What is in there?” Curiosity got the better of me and I shifted closer to Thistle’s chair. “What’s the paper say?”

  “It’s a copy of a diagnosis from what looks to be a medical book.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Just that. It’s a basic breakdown of a medical condition.”

  “What medical condition? I mean … what kind of person?”

  “A psychopath.”

  My heart skipped a beat. “A psychopath?”

  “That’s what it says.”

  “And there’s nothing else in the file?”

  Thistle shook her head. “The file looks worn, as if it was looked at quite often. But it’s empty.”

  “I wonder how that happened,” Clove said. “Maybe the contents fell out.”

  “Or maybe someone removed the rest of the file,” I suggested, my mind busy. “Like perhaps the person who killed Dr. Hopper.”

  “That’s a little freaky.”

  It was indeed.

  Fourteen

  I Googled “psychopath” and looked at the results.

  “A person who exhibits abnormal or violent social behavior,” Thistle read over my shoulder. “Well, at least we know how to describe Aunt Tillie now.”

  I shot her a look. “This is serious.”

  “I know it’s serious, Bay. We have a dead body. We don’t have a name to go with the file, though. What do you want me to do?”

  “I think we should go back to Esther’s house. She’s been watching Hopper for a long time. She’ll be able to tell us who’s been in and out of that house.”

  “Sure, but we’re looking for one person and Hopper had a bunch of clients. We’ll need a list to check Esther’s memory against. I’m guessing she can’t remember everyone who visited.”

  I wasn’t so sure. “She denies being a busybody, but she knows who has been in that house. It can’t hurt to question her.”

/>   “And I suppose you want us to go with you when you question her?” Thistle clearly wasn’t thrilled with the prospect. “Okay, but if that woman makes me drink tea I’m going to dump it over your head.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  ESTHER LOOKED ANYTHING but happy when she found us standing on her front porch.

  “Oh, geez! What do you three want?”

  “It’s lovely to see you, too,” Clove crooned. She was better with people than Thistle and me, especially when it came to digging for information. “We wanted to check on you after all the excitement the other day. With your neighbor being murdered and all, you’re probably afraid.”

  Esther scorched her with a withering look. “Why would someone want to kill me?”

  “Perhaps they’ve met you,” Thistle suggested.

  “You’ve got a mouth on you.” Esther looked Thistle up and down, distaste evident. “You may not look like Tillie, but you’ve certainly got her attitude.”

  “On any other day I would take that as an insult,” Thistle said. “But we’re trying to track down a murderer and we need to go through you to do it, so I’ll let it slide.”

  “Yup. That’s definitely something Tillie would say.” Esther left the door open and turned on her heel. “Come on. If you’re going to ruin my afternoon with questions we might as well have some tea to get through it.”

  Thistle’s gaze was heated when it snagged with mine. “You’d better start running now.”

  “You’ll survive. There are worse things in life than tea.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like those little stale cookies that are often served with tea.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Esther had four mugs on the kitchen table by the time we caught up with her. She was fast for her age. In addition to the tea, there was a package of cookies resting on the center of the table. They looked to be shortbread ... and well past their “good by” date.

  “You were saying?” Thistle drawled.

  I forced her disdain out of my head and plastered a smile on my face as I sat. “So, Esther, how well did you know Dr. Hopper?”

  “I already told you. I hardly ever talked to him. He would make a big show of waving when he saw me out in the yard ... or with my binoculars ... but it’s not as if we hung out.”

  “What binoculars?” Thistle asked.

  “The ones I keep by the window so I could do my part to keep the neighborhood safe,” Esther replied. “I’m the founding president of the Hemlock Cove Neighborhood Watch.”

  “How many other people are members?” Clove queried.

  “Enough that we keep the town safe.”

  “Your neighbor was just murdered,” Thistle pointed out. “That doesn’t seem very safe.”

  “Just like Tillie,” Esther muttered.

  “Stop saying that.”

  Clearly agitated, the concerned neighbor turned her full attention to me. “You still haven’t told me what you want. I don’t have all day.”

  “What else are you going to do?” Thistle challenged. “Do you have a hot date tonight?”

  “I could have a hot date.”

  “Do you?”

  “I’m done talking to you.” She held up her hand to quiet Thistle. “I can’t tell you how annoyed I am by the sound of your voice. Tillie taught you well, I’ll give her that. But she didn’t do you any favors in the popularity department.”

  Thistle focused on me. “Was that supposed to be an insult?”

  I was rapidly getting annoyed with the direction of the conversation. “We’ve found out some rather disturbing things about Dr. Hopper’s practice,” I started. “We were hoping you might be able to fill in some holes for us.”

  “You mean about him sleeping with all those women?”

  I couldn’t swallow my surprise. “You know about that?”

  “You’d have to be blind not to notice.”

  “But ... why didn’t you mention this when I was here yesterday?” I worked hard to bank my fury. “We had to find out through other means. You could’ve saved us some time.”

  “It’s not my job to do your job.”

  “There’s a killer on the loose.”

  “And whoever did it had motive to kill that kinky creep next door,” Esther pointed out. “I’m not kinky. There’s no reason to kill me.”

  “I notice you’ve refrained from denying you’re a creep,” Thistle noted.

  “Do you want me to thump you?” Esther threatened.

  I tapped the table to break up the bickering and get Esther’s attention back on me. “I’m not trying to be a pain ... .”

  “Then you’re failing miserably.”

  I bit the inside of my cheek and glanced away from Clove and Thistle, who looked as if they were about to break out in riotous guffaws.

  “I’m not trying to be a pain,” I repeated. “This is important information. These couples visited Dr. Hopper because they were trying to save their marriages. He took advantage of his position and manipulated those women into doing his bidding. That’s a motive for murder if I ever heard one.”

  “Manipulated?” Esther arched a drawn-on eyebrow. “He didn’t force himself on those women. He might have smooth-talked them — he looks the type, all handsome and full of himself — but they had a choice and they opted to implode their own marriages.”

  “Except he was running everything as a science experiment,” Thistle interjected. “He was trying to see what he could get away with ... and it seems he got away with a lot. The women who agreed to his terms were convinced he was helping save their marriages. That’s pretty oily if you ask me.”

  “Oh, he was a total snake oil salesman,” Esther agreed. “I could tell the minute he moved in that he was a jerk of the perverted variety. That doesn’t mean he’s entirely to blame for what happened. Those women agreed to his terms and encouraged him.”

  “I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on that point,” I said. “It doesn’t really matter. We’re trying to track down a murderer, not change the course of thinking for an entire generation.”

  “Fair enough.” Esther rested her wrinkled hands on the table and met my gaze head on. “What is it you want from me?”

  “We need to know who went in and out of that house.”

  “That’s a lot of couples. I’m not sure I can remember them all.”

  “Then focus on the couples who visited recently,” Clove suggested. “Whoever did this probably found out about Dr. Hopper’s hidden ways within the past few weeks. Can you think of anyone who might have wanted him dead?”

  “I think any of those men would’ve wanted him dead if they heard about what their wives were doing.”

  “Okay, let’s take it from there,” I said. “What couples have you seen visiting the past three weeks or so?”

  “What business is it of yours? I’ve already told you I’m not a busybody. I can’t possibly keep up on all the comings and goings in that house.”

  “Yes, but ... there has to be someone.”

  “You’re not the police,” Esther reminded me. “You don’t have jurisdiction to be asking these questions.”

  “Yes, but I own The Whistler. I’m asking these questions because I plan to write an article.” That sounded totally reasonable. “The public has a right to know what was going on under their noses.”

  “That sounded a little Big Brother,” Thistle chided.

  “I heard it the second I said it,” I admitted. “Move on.”

  “I don’t want to talk to the press,” Esther argued. “I’m not a fan of fake news ... or whatever it is you’re trying to do here. By the way, I don’t buy your story that you’re simply doing this because you own the newspaper. Something else is going on.”

  I wanted to throttle her. She obviously disliked Aunt Tillie a great deal, but they shared some of the same mannerisms. “I don’t understand how you can just ignore the fact that a murderer is running free. You said you’re part of the Neighborhood Watch.
Don’t you want to make sure that the killer is caught?”

  “Sure.”

  “So?”

  “The police solve crimes. Not you.”

  “But ... .”

  “Bay, you’re not going to get anywhere with her,” Thistle interjected, catching me off guard. “She’s set in her ways ... just like Aunt Tillie. You have to treat her how you would Aunt Tillie.”

  “You want me to lock her out of the house and withhold food?”

  Thistle snickered. “No, you have to talk to her on a level she understands.” She flexed her fingers, as if gearing up. “What’s your price, old lady? Do you want wine? Money? What will it take to loosen those lips of yours? You’re not fooling anybody with that ‘I’m not a busybody’ shtick. You were obviously up in everybody’s business, and we need to know who has been visiting that house.”

  Instead of reacting with anger or outrage, Esther merely snickered. “You’re kind of funny.”

  “I can be mean, too.”

  “Oh, I have no doubt about that. I can’t tell you what you want to hear. I don’t feel right spreading people’s private business around. If the police come by asking questions, that’s a different story. You guys aren’t the police.”

  “Oh, well, great.”

  WE TRIED TO GET ESTHER to talk for another thirty minutes. The conversation went nowhere — and the cookies were as gross as they looked — so we excused ourselves once we tired of banging our heads against Esther’s impenetrable brick wall.

  “If you change your mind, give me a call.” I handed her a business card as we walked to the front door. “I really do think you’re making the wrong decision here. The faster we find the killer, the better.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” Esther opened the door, revealing two familiar figures on the front porch.

  Chief Terry, his hand raised as if he was about to knock, looked furious. When I risked a glance behind him and caught sight of Landon’s sheepish smile my heart gave an uneasy jolt.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, innocence on full display. “Are you here for the tea and cookies? They’re divine.”