by Bobbi Holmes
“What?” Davina and Bridget asked at the same time.
“According to the cop, someone named Beau Stewart claims Donovan is a witch,” Aileana said.
“The woman who gave me the ruby. Her name is Kathy Stewart. Beau Stewart must be her father.”
“That’s all interesting, but you know, the man making the claim could be a mental case,” Davina pointed out.
“I might agree with you if the spell hadn’t worked,” Bridget reminded her. “If I hadn’t cast that spell, and that woman walked in and claimed she knew a blood witch, I would not give her stories of the witch making people fly much credence. We all know it takes special powers to make something fly. But I used the spell to bring a ruby and a blood witch to us. It brought the ruby, and I have to believe Heather Donovan really is a blood witch.”
“We still have to learn all we can about her so we don’t make any mistakes. Now we know what she looks like. And I also learned she works for the one sitting next to her. While she’s at work, I think we plant a camera in her house and learn as much about her as we can before we make our move,” Aileana suggested.
Twelve
Hunny the brindle pit bull sat in the passenger seat, looking out the car window, her tongue sloppily hanging from her mouth in a happy pant. Next to her, in the driver’s seat, Chris Johnson, aka Chris Glandon, turned down the alleyway and drove past the rear of Marlow House and then passed Pearl Huckabee’s before stopping. Leaving the engine running, he parked behind Heather’s house and rolled down the passenger window, letting Hunny stick her snout out to drink up some fresh air. Several moments later, he saw Heather walking toward the car, her calico cat, Bella, scooped up in one arm, while her purse hung from the opposing shoulder.
Today Heather wore her ebony-colored hair pulled up on the top of her head, in a haphazard knot. She wore her high-heeled black boots with leggings, and a bulky lightweight pullover sweater, its hemline falling mid-thigh.
“Morning,” Heather called out as she approached the car.
“In the back seat, Hunny,” Chris called out. The next moment the pit bull jumped in the back seat while Heather opened the passenger car door and got in. She tossed the cat in the back with the dog.
Hunny, over eight times larger than Bella, cowered in one corner, looking uneasily at the cat, while the petite feline pranced back and forth, taking her time deciding exactly where she wanted to sit.
“Behave yourself, Bella,” Heather called out as she shut the car door behind her. “Thanks again for picking me up. They promise my car will be ready this afternoon.”
“No problem,” Chris said, pulling away from her back drive.
They hadn’t gone far down the alleyway when they spied a young redhead walking in their direction. She smiled at them when they drove by.
“I haven’t seen her before,” Chris noted.
“And I would expect you to notice all the hot young ladies in the neighborhood,” Heather teased.
“Does she live around here?” Chris asked, glancing briefly in the rearview mirror. The redhead was no longer walking, but standing in the same place, watching Chris’s car drive away.
“Probably a summer visitor. I don’t recognize her,” Heather said with a shrug.
They turned down another street and a few moments later stopped at the corner. While waiting for the car in the opposing traffic to pass, they both looked to their right at the well-worn two-story house in desperate need of care. Two women—both redheads—stood by a van parked in the driveway, looking as if they were preparing to leave.
“Oh, my gawd,” Heather said with a laugh. “The invasion of the redheads.”
“That was weird,” Chris said, now steering his car across the intersection. “Triplets?”
“The one we saw walking in the alley looked just like those two. Even their dresses were similar, just different colors. You think I should tell Lily her people are looking for her?” Heather joked.
Bridget stood with Davina by the car, holding her cellphone to her ear as she watched the vehicle carrying Heather Donovan drive away.
“They just went by,” Bridget said into the phone, talking to Aileana, who was on the other side of the call.
The previous evening, while having dinner at Pearl Cove, they had asked their server who the woman with the black hair was, saying she looked familiar, and they were trying to place her.
The server told them the woman was Heather Donovan, and she worked for the Glandon Foundation, as did the man sitting next to her, who was Heather’s boss. Bridget thought it useful how people in a small town seemed to know so much about their neighbors and regular customers. Some were even willing to share that information.
According to the server, Heather was single, lived alone, had no dogs, just a cat, was into essential oils, liked to jog, and had a peculiar reputation for finding corpses on the beach. Hearing that, Bridget suspected Heather was not what one would call a good witch. That meant they needed to take special care in the handling of her vanquishing.
When the Parker sisters had returned home the previous night from Pearl Cove, they went online to learn as much as they could about the Glandon Foundation and where its offices were located. They learned Heather Donovan would likely pass their house when going to work the next morning. And she did.
That morning, Bridget had driven Aileana partway to Heather’s house, dropping her off at the entrance to the alleyway so she could walk in to avoid being seen. Since Heather’s garage door had been closed, Aileana had assumed that was where Heather parked her car and expected the opening of a garage door to serve as a warning Heather was leaving for the morning, giving her time to hide in a nearby bush. She hadn’t expected Chris Johnson to come driving down the alley to pick up Heather. While they had both gotten a good look at her, she didn’t feel that reason enough to cancel the plan. Anyway, when this was all over, Chris Johnson wouldn’t remember that Heather Donovan ever existed.
After ending the call with Bridget, Aileana shoved the cellphone in her hoodie’s pocket and pulled the hood up to cover her bright red hair. If someone saw her entering Donovan’s house, she didn’t want them to mention her hair color, which could help in identifying her, especially since Heather and Chris had looked right at her when driving off minutes earlier.
Everything she needed was in her backpack. Of the three sisters, she was the techie one, the one who already owned an assortment of computer gadgets and cameras, and the one best suited to install cameras. She had just entered the back of Heather’s property when she heard a door opening and closing at the house to the north. Aileana peeked through two bushes into the neighbor’s yard and spied an older woman picking up something from a patio table and then returning to the house. She heard the door open and close again. Confident the woman had gone inside, Aileana continued up to Heather’s back door.
The cameras Aileana planned to install required Wi-Fi for them to transfer the data to her computer at home. She came up with a plan A and a plan B to deal with providing Wi-Fi. If Donovan had Wi-Fi and had written the password somewhere easy to find, perhaps on the router or on a piece of paper in her desk, then she would use Donovan’s own Wi-Fi. That was plan A. But, if she couldn’t find the password, she would go to plan B, which required she leave her cellphone hidden outside as a hotspot for the cameras.
It didn’t take Aileana long to discover plan A would work, and there was no reason to leave her cellphone behind. Heather had conveniently written her password on her router. Just in case someone found the cameras before they eliminated Donovan, Aileana took extra effort not to leave fingerprints behind.
Focused on reading the incoming emails, Heather didn’t immediately notice the snowflakes falling from the ceiling, landing on her desk and disappearing. When she finally noticed, she glanced up, watched the snowflakes for a moment and said, “Good morning, Eva. But it doesn’t snow in August.”
A moment later the spirit appeared, and all traces of snow vanished. Although sh
e bore an uncanny likeness to Charles Dana Gibson’s famous Gibson Girl, she was in truth the ghost of silent screen star Eva Thorndike.
“What are you doing here?” Eva asked once she fully materialized, now standing by Heather’s desk.
“I do work here. This is my office, you know,” Heather said dryly.
“It’s just that I didn’t see your car out front,” Eva explained as she took a seat on a nearby chair.
Heather swiveled around in her desk chair and faced Eva. “My car is in the shop. Chris gave me a lift today.”
Eva glanced around. “Where is he?”
“I heard him go into the bathroom a minute ago. You’ll probably find him there.”
“It seems people don’t appreciate when I show up in the bathroom with them. I think I’ll wait here.”
Heather chuckled. “Yeah. Probably a good idea.”
Heather turned to her desk and then thought of something she wanted to ask Eva, so she turned back to the ghost. “I have a question. I was going to ask Walt about it, but you might know.”
“Know what?” Eva asked.
“It’s about a house I pass every day going to work. It’s a cool-looking old house. I’m sure they built it before you died. It’s been boarded up since I moved to Frederickport, but some people moved in about a month or so ago, and I saw them this morning. At least I assume they live there. I was curious about the history of that place and wonder if you might know anything about it.” Heather then gave Eva the location of the house she and Chris had seen the two redheads at earlier that morning.
“Yes, of course! That is dear Wallace’s place.” Eva smiled.
“Dear Wallace?” Heather asked.
“He was a friend of mine, came from family money.”
“Like you?” Heather smirked.
Eva shrugged. “It wasn’t my fault Mommy and Daddy were so rich.”
“I would’ve liked to have had that problem,” Heather grumbled under her breath.
“But like me, Wallace had his own dreams,” Eva said.
“Was he an actor too?” Heather asked.
“Wallace? Oh, no. He was a playwright. I’m afraid not a very good one, but he did so try. His enthusiasm was inspiring, yet also distracting.”
“How so?” Heather asked.
Eva pondered the question a moment as the tip of her right index finger momentarily tapped the side of her chin. Finally, she said, “He was very…tactile.”
Heather frowned. “Tactical?”
“No, no. Tactile. In that he connected to the sensory. But I suppose tactical might also apply. He did carefully plan.”
Heather frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“For example, one of his plays was about a struggling artist. So Wallace spent one summer painting—immersing himself into the life of an artist. He bought an easel, oil paints, brushes, and even started wearing a beret. Those objects, just holding them, touching them, fed his creativity. It also distracted him from actually writing.”
“That sounds more like something an actor would do, not a writer.”
“Perhaps.” Eva shrugged.
“Was he a good painter?” Heather asked.
“Dreadful. Almost as bad as the plays he wrote. But he was a darling, and he kept trying.”
“Did he ever achieve success as a playwright?” Heather asked.
“No. But I do believe he enjoyed his life, something you can’t say about everyone. He would come up with a new idea for a play, set himself on an adventure, and then try writing about it. I honestly believe the plays were just a front. It gave him an excuse to try new things, walk in someone else’s shoes.”
“What happened to him?” Heather asked.
“I would look in on him occasionally after I died. Of course, he couldn’t see or hear me. He continued to explore and write until the very end. He was working on a play about witches when he had a heart attack and died. I saw him one last time before he moved over to the other side.”
“What happened to his play on witches?” Heather asked.
Eva shrugged. “Like all his other plays, nothing.”
“Did he have a family? Who inherited his house?” Heather asked.
“He didn’t have a wife or children. He wasn’t particularly interested in women or children. I imagine the house went to some relative. I recall people living there after he moved on. But a number of years ago, someone boarded up the windows. I’m glad to hear the house is being used again.”
“It needs a lot of work.” Heather said. “I can’t believe the people living there now are renting it. Who would rent a house in that condition? And if it recently sold, I never saw a for sale sign on the house. But I suppose that means nothing.”
“I should pop over there sometime and check out the new occupants. Maybe they are distant relatives of dear Wallace.”
“Let me know what you find out,” Heather said.
“Or you could just stop over there and introduce yourself,” Eva suggested.
“Why would I do that?” Heather frowned.
“It is considered good form to welcome new neighbors,” Eva said.
“They aren’t my neighbors,” Heather said.
“They are fellow Frederickport neighbors,” Eva insisted.
Heather shrugged and swiveled her chair back to face the desk. “I don’t think so.”
Thirteen
Chris dropped Heather and Bella off at the auto repair shop before five p.m. on Friday so she could get her car. After picking up the vehicle, Heather headed straight for home. She was no longer dating the guy she had been seeing for the last few months, so she didn’t have any plans for Friday night. But she knew what she was having for dinner, and she had been thinking of it since Bella had pilfered her tuna fish sandwich when Heather had left it unsupervised while going to the bathroom to wash her hands before lunch.
Friday dinner plans included leftovers from Pearl Cove. Heather had gotten into the habit of requesting a to-go carton when dining at restaurants serving large amounts of food. That way she could put half of the dinner in the carton to save for the next day. Pearl Cove served generous portions, and this way she didn’t leave the restaurant feeling stuffed.
“You are not getting my dinner too,” Heather told Bella as she used one foot to nudge the cat from the refrigerator. The cat meowed and began weaving around Heather’s ankles.
Ignoring the animal, Heather opened the refrigerator door and retrieved the container of leftovers. She had ordered the seafood platter the night before. That meant dinner tonight was rice pilaf, half a portion of salmon, and three shrimp prawns—one fried in tempura and the other two scampi. The only item she would warm in the microwave was the rice. Heather didn’t mind cold fish. Bella would love cold fish. But she wasn’t getting any tonight, Heather told herself as she prepared her plate and warmed the rice.
Before taking her dinner to the living room to eat in front of the television, Heather gave Bella a can of cat food. Offended by the offering, Bella put her nose up and wandered off to the hallway.
“Is she home yet?” Davina asked Aileana, who sat in front of the computer in the den.
“Yes. But if this doesn’t get more interesting, I’m going to record it and watch it later on high speed.”
“But won’t that make it difficult to hear what is being said?” Davina asked, taking a seat next to her sister at the desk. She looked over Aileana’s shoulder at the computer monitor.
“I don’t have sound hooked up.”
“Why not?” Davina asked.
“Because the cameras’ microphones don’t work,” Aileana said.
“Couldn’t you get some with mics that work?”
“You guys wanted me to set the cameras up this morning. I doubt I could find what we need in Frederickport. I used what I already had,” Aileana said impatiently.
“What is she doing?” Bridget asked when walking into the room the next moment.
Aileana glanced up at her sister and
said, “She just got home. She’s now sitting in the living room, eating dinner. This is boring.”
Heather heard a knock, and then someone called out, “You-hooo!”
With a smile, Heather looked up from her food and said, “It’s okay, Marie, you can show yourself.”
The next moment Marie appeared in the living room. “I am trying to do better and not just barge in. You’re not getting any younger. I might give you a heart attack one of these days if I just pop in suddenly.”
Heather frowned at Marie. “Thank you…I think?”
“What’s for dinner?” Marie asked, sneaking a peek at Heather’s now empty plate before taking a seat on one of the nearby chairs.
“Leftovers from Pearl Cove. It was tasty.” Heather set the empty plate on the coffee table and leaned back. “So what’s up?”
Bella, who wandered in the living room after hearing Marie, jumped up on the coffee table and started sniffing the empty plate, looking for any tasty crumbs she might salvage. Heather ignored Bella, instead paying attention to Marie.
“I wanted to tell you I stopped into that new store over by Adam’s office.”
“The gourmet candy store?” Heather asked.
“No. Pagan Oils and More.”
“I was thinking of checking that place out. Anything interesting?” Heather asked.
“They have a wide selection of those oils you like.”
“Hmmm. Gee, maybe I really am a witch.” Heather chuckled.
“Why do you say that?”
“I swear by essential oils, and you’re telling me a witch store is selling them,” Heather teased. “I have to admit they sometimes act like magic. I like frankincense. I think that’s my favorite.”
“Ahh, one gift the wise men brought Jesus,” Marie noted. “What exactly do you do with it? I have to admit, I never really paid much attention to what frankincense was.”