Death of a Wicked Witch

by Lee Hollis

  “Conner wanted to go on a drive along the Park Loop Road and stop and take a few pictures of Thunder Hole, Bubble Rock, the Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse, the usual touristy stuff. You know how he fancies himself as some kind of talented photographer, although frankly, none of his photos would make the cut on a postcard, if you ask me...”

  “Gemma...” Hayley whispered calmly.

  Gemma grabbed her head with her hands. “I know, I’m getting off track! I always do that when I’m spiraling!”

  “Take a deep breath,” Hayley suggested.

  Gemma nodded and did as instructed, inhaling, holding it, and then releasing it. It seemed to do the trick and she managed to continue. “We ended up on top of Cadillac Mountain so we could watch the sunset, and while we were sitting on a rock, holding hands, he just stood up, kneeled down before me holding a ring box, and asked me to do him the honor of marrying him!”

  “Oh, dear...”

  “It was such a shock! I was speechless! I couldn’t say anything! Finally, he asked me if I would like to think about it, and I just nodded and had this weird smile on my face, which he took as me being happy. But I wasn’t! My face was completely frozen, like I had just had a stroke, or suffered from Bell’s palsy! I finally managed to get out that I suddenly had a headache, and so we walked back to the car and drove straight home. When we got here, I went straight to my room and had a nervous breakdown while he checked his emails down here. That’s when I tried calling you. Mother, what am I going to do? This was totally out of the blue! I mean, I had absolutely no hint he was going to do this!”

  “I know, and I am so sorry.”

  “What do you have to be sorry about?”

  Hayley paused. Her gut instinct had been right. She should have said something to Gemma earlier. She had just gotten so distracted by the events surrounding Trudy Lancaster’s untimely demise, frankly she had forgotten all about it.

  “Mom?”

  Now it was Hayley’s turn to take a deep breath.

  Gemma’s eyes narrowed. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

  “Yes, Gemma, I was going to warn you about this, but with everything that’s been going on these past few days—”

  “You knew?”

  Hayley slowly nodded. “Conner came to me and let me know what he was planning. He had already called your father in Iowa and asked his permission.”

  “He what? Dad knew too? How could you two not warn me about something like this?”

  “Conner wanted to surprise you. I-I wasn’t sure if I should obey his wishes or get involved—”

  “Of course you should have said something! Especially after what I told you about my conflicted feelings, and how I’ve been thinking of breaking it off!”

  “I see that now in hindsight, and again, I am so sorry.”

  “He’s going to be back any minute. How am I going to act like everything’s normal now?”

  “You can’t. You have to be honest with him. It’s best if you let him down sooner rather than later. He’s a good guy and doesn’t deserve to be strung along.”

  Hayley could see that Gemma’s thoughts were roiling through her brain as she considered all her options. Finally, she sighed and turned to her mother. “You’re right. I’ll sit him down tomorrow and we’ll have a real heart-to-heart. I just need some time to think about what I’m going to say.”

  Shortly thereafter, Conner returned with the cumin, eagerly expecting an authentic Bangladeshi beef curry. Luckily, Hayley had enough beef chuck in the freezer out in the garage that she could thaw in the microwave along with a fully stocked spice rack, including cinnamon sticks. So there was a good chance they could turn Gemma’s little white lie into an actual meal if given at least two and a half hours. So when Bruce arrived just a few minutes later, Hayley parked him and Conner in front of the television with a six-pack of beer, and had them watch a John Wick movie starring Keanu Reeves on Netflix, which bought her and Gemma the time they would need to prepare the promised dinner.

  The plan worked, and by nine they were dining on a tasteful beef curry as if they were at a little hideaway eatery on the Bay of Bengal amidst the lush greenery and twisty waterways in Southeast Asia instead of Hayley’s dining room with its peeling wallpaper.

  Later, when the two couples had retired to their rooms, Hayley came up behind Bruce, who was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, shirtless and flossing his teeth, and held up the box of nicotine patches.

  “Consider it an early birthday present,” she said with a sympathetic smile as she set it down in front of him on the counter and opened it.

  “Mine or yours?” he grumbled.

  “Mine, definitely mine,” she said, unwrapping the patch and gently applying it to his upper arm.

  “And if it doesn’t work?” Bruce asked.

  “We’ll just have to try something else.”

  Bruce turned to face Hayley. “Okay, I’ll do this for you, but what are you going to do for me?”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  He grinned lasciviously. “Let me toss around a few ideas.”

  And then he kissed her on the lips. She threw her arms around his neck and drew him closer to her. They stood in the bathroom smooching and caressing each other, before Bruce took her by the hand and guided her back into the bedroom. He lowered her down on the bed, a hand cupped behind her neck, and was about to climb on top of her when the police scanner—which Hayley had brought up to the bedroom and plugged in one day while she was cleaning, and had forgotten to take back down to its usual spot in the kitchen—crackled to life. They heard the scratchy voice of a police dispatcher. “Adam Twelve, we have a ten-ninety in progress.”

  Hayley pulled away from Bruce. “Ten-ninety, what’s that?”

  “Prowler.”

  “Resident at Sixty-four Hancock Street has reported a suspicious person loitering outside the home.”

  Hayley gasped. “Sixty-four Hancock Street? That’s the Garber house!”

  A voice that sounded like Chief Sergio himself responded, “On my way. Do you have a description of the person?”

  There was some crackling on the scanner before the dispatcher answered, “Uh, yes, Chief, we, uh, actually have a name...”

  More crackling.

  Sergio came on the scanner again. “Dispatch, you still there?”

  “Yes, Chief. According to the resident, the person outside her house is a woman by the name of Trudy Lancaster.”

  Hayley and Bruce exchanged dumbfounded looks.

  A little more crackling.

  “Dispatch, could you repeat that?”

  “Trudy Lancaster.”

  “Dispatch, Trudy Lancaster is dead.”

  “Yes, Chief, I know. The woman says it’s her ghost.”

  Island Food & Spirits

  BY

  HAYLEY POWELL

  You know by now that I love Halloween! My kids love Halloween, my brother, Randy, loves Halloween, my best friend, Mona, loves Halloween. However, my other best friend, Liddy, well, not so much. She is a dear and does try her best, but mostly she just tolerates it because she knows how much everyone else loves all the traditions of dressing up in costumes, trick-or-treating, and handing out all that delicious candy. I always told her not to worry because I had enough Halloween spirit for the both of us.

  When my son, Dustin, was in the fourth grade, I came down with a horrible flu the week before Halloween and was ordered by the doctor to be on strict bed rest to prevent it from turning into anything worse. Well, you can imagine how devastated I was, especially since my calendar was already booked volunteering as a chaperone for the annual Emerson Conners middle school Halloween parade. I had also signed up to provide cupcakes for the party afterward, not to mention I still had costumes to finish sewing and loads of candy to buy. To top it all off, as I was leaving the doctor’s office, Dustin called from school in a panic because he had forgotten to bring his bag lunch. For hot lunch they were serving the dreaded A
merican “chop suey,” which he detested, so you can imagine the meltdown he was having. “Mommy, you have to do something before I starve to death!”

  I called Randy, who was in Bangor buying supplies for his bar, Drinks Like A Fish, and Mona, who was out on her lobster boat with no cell service. I was in a real bind. As they say, desperate times require desperate measures. And I was certainly desperate so I called Liddy. I knew the only thing Liddy hated worse than Halloween was being around little kids with their sticky fingers and snotty noses. Now don’t get me wrong. Liddy loved my two cherubs who called her “Aunt Liddy,” but she had no time for anybody else’s. The idea of setting foot in a school full of them, with all those nasty germs in the air, well, it was just too much for her. But she knew it was an emergency, and she did have some free time in between showing houses to prospective buyers. And so lifesaver that she was, Liddy agreed to run over to my house, fetch Dustin’s lunch from the fridge, and deliver it to him personally at the school. Of course, her parting words before hanging up on me were, “I’m sure you hanging around all those germ-infested rug rats was what got you sick in the first place!”

  Click.

  Anyway, the crisis was mercifully averted. Dustin got his lunch in time, and I went straight home from the doctor’s office to bed. Later that evening, when I finally woke up, it was dark outside, and I heard laughter and chatter coming from downstairs. I put on my robe and made my way down to find Randy and his husband, Sergio, having volunteered dinner and bedtime duty, in the living room playing board games with Dustin and Gemma.

  Dustin was in the middle of mentioning to his uncles that Aunt Liddy was coming to his class tomorrow to fill in for me until I felt better.

  Everyone froze and you could hear a pin drop.

  “Liddy volunteered to be class mom? My Liddy?” I gasped as everyone turned to see me standing at the bottom of the staircase.

  Dustin nodded, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. “She’s going to fill in for the whole week!”

  I thought I must be hallucinating and crawled back up the stairs to bed. But sure enough, the next day, when Dustin came home from school and I was lying on the couch watching NCIS reruns with my honey Mark Harmon, a thermometer stuck in my mouth, Dustin suddenly announced that Liddy was going to replace me as chaperone in the Halloween parade and make the cupcakes I had promised to provide.

  “Are you sure?” I asked, checking the thermometer to make sure my fever hadn’t gotten worse.

  “Yup! She said she was going to have to buy them at the bakery because she isn’t talented in the kitchen like you, but she said if I promised not to say anything, she’d buy me a brand-new Spider-Man costume so you don’t have to worry about making me one!”

  “She said that?” I asked, incredulous.

  Dustin nodded. “And she’s going to wear a costume too in the parade!” he declared.

  This was just too much.

  Maybe this flu had actually put me in a coma and I had awakened in some kind of parallel universe.

  Well, the next day I was finally feeling a little better, and I knew I just had to get to the bottom of this. I called Liddy under the guise of thanking her, but slowly guided the conversation toward her distaste for children, and how odd it was that she was getting so involved with Dustin’s fourth-grade class.

  Liddy scoffed, explaining she was just trying to help me out as my best friend, and found it highly offensive that I would question her motives. I immediately dropped the subject, feeling sufficiently chastised.

  The following evening, the night before Halloween, I was feeling much better and eager to rejoin the world. Randy brought over his famous comfort food for all of us: gruyere, fig jam, and bacon grilled cheese sandwiches. With a healthy appetite back in full force, I devoured not one but two of them. Dustin was wiping a glob of cheese off his cheek when he casually mentioned that I shouldn’t worry about trick-or-treating because Liddy said she would be more than happy to handle it after the post-parade Halloween party.

  Enough was enough.

  If anyone was going to take her kids out trick-or-treating, it would be me! Something was up with Liddy and I was determined to find out what! The following day, I arranged with Randy and Sergio to meet in front of the Rite Aid drugstore where we would have a clear view of the parade, and see Liddy herding all the little kids from Dustin’s class.

  As the children dressed as ghosts, witches, wizards, and superheroes passed us by, we clapped and waved, and cheered on Gemma, who was marching in the middle school band playing her clarinet dressed as a zombie cheerleader.

  Randy spotted Mrs. Tripp, Dustin’s teacher, and pointed her out as she approached with her class, and as they began marching past us, we quickly spotted Liddy and the big mystery was finally solved.

  There was Dustin in his new Spider-Man costume and his best friend, Billy, who recently had moved to town with his family from Brunswick, as Iron Man. Right behind them was Billy’s handsome single dad, Eben, dressed as Batman, and next to him, hanging off his arm, was Catwoman played by none other than our very own Liddy Crawford!

  Everything came to light in that moment as we watched Liddy, in a slinky black leotard with feline ears on top of her head, staring adoringly up into Batman’s eyes. To be fair, Eben looked quite smitten himself. Leave it to Liddy to find the one and only available bachelor in Dustin’s class, decide he was the one for her, and change her whole life around in order to catch her man! You had to admire her sheer determination.

  A few weeks later, Liddy sadly parted ways with her Batman, something about Eben not being exciting enough for her taste, despite their strong chemistry. I reminded her it was only natural that Batman and Catwoman remain mortal enemies, though enemies with an uncontrollable animal attraction.

  Liddy came over later that day after her big breakup for one of her favorite fall cocktails, and I also made her Randy’s special comfort grilled cheese sandwich to boot in order to make her feel better!

  LIDDY’S FAVORITE FALL COCKTAIL: APPLE MARTINI

  INGREDIENTS

  1½ ounces vodka

  ¾ ounce fresh-squeezed lemon

  ¾ ounce apple liqueur

  ¼ ounce simple syrup

  Green apple slice for garnish (optional)

  Pour all your ingredients in a cocktail shaker filled with ice and shake.

  Strain into a chilled martini glass and garnish with apple slice if using.

  Sit back, relax, and enjoy!

  RANDY’S COMFORT GRILLED CHEESE

  INGREDIENTS

  4 slices crispy bacon

  2 slices sourdough bread (or bread of your choice)

  Fig jam

  3 ounces sliced gruyere cheese (more if you

  prefer cheesy goodness)

  1 tablespoon chopped green onion

  3 tablespoons butter

  Salt & pepper to taste

  Add 1 tablespoon butter to pan and heat to medium low.

  Butter one side of your sourdough bread, then spread fig jam on the other and place butter-side down in heated pan. Add the bacon and cheese. Feel free to add a bit more cheese if you desire, then sprinkle on the green onions. Butter one side of second slice of bread and place it on top of bread in pan butter-side up.

  When bread in pan is toasted golden brown carefully flip your sandwich over and toast other side until cheese is melted and bread is golden brown on that side. Remove from heat, place on plate, slice in two, and enjoy!

  Chapter 22

  “I saw her! She was there! Right outside my bedroom window!” Mary Garber wailed, her whole body shaking, as her husband, Mark, held her hand supportively, glancing nervously at Bruce, not quite sure what to do.

  “What was she doing at the time you saw her?” Bruce asked.

  “She just sort of stood there, staring at the house! Well, I screamed bloody murder, as you can imagine, and went to get Mark, but when we both came back to the window, she was already gone.”

  “Are you ab
solutely sure it was Trudy, honey?” Mark asked quietly, trying to get her to calm down.

  Mary nodded vigorously. “Yes, yes, I’m sure.” Then she turned on her husband and snapped, “What kind of question is that? I’m not crazy! I know what I saw!”

  Hayley and Bruce had jumped in Bruce’s car and raced over to the Garber house seconds after hearing the dispatcher on the police scanner. They had even beaten Chief Sergio and Officer Donnie to the scene, who showed up minutes later to investigate. Sergio and his officer were now combing the premises, trying to find any sign of a trespasser on the property, but so far, from what Hayley could tell by peeking out the living room window, they had yet to have any luck or unearth any clues.

  Bruce, a born skeptic, couldn’t resist remarking, “The thing is, Mary, Trudy Lancaster is, like one hundred percent without a doubt, dead. We all witnessed her burial.”

  “I am well aware of that fact, Bruce!” Mary cried.

  “So are you positive it wasn’t someone who just looked like Trudy?”

  “No, Bruce, it was her! I’d swear on my life!”

  Bruce tried one more time. “But that’s impossible—”

  “I know that! It had to be her ghost! Trudy has come back to haunt me because she blames me for hiring her to cater my Witches Ball and that’s why she died! If she hadn’t come here with her truck that night, she’d still be alive! It’s all my fault!”

  Mary broke down in tears and buried her face in Mark’s chest. He gave Hayley and Bruce a confused shrug as he patted his sobbing wife gently on the back.

  As Mary wailed and Mark comforted her, Hayley and Bruce were left awkwardly standing there until Hayley suggested to Bruce, “Why don’t we go outside and see if we can help Sergio search the area?”

  “Good idea,” Bruce said, jumping at the chance to get the hell out of the house.