Loni looked down at her ankle. She leaned down and felt it with her hand. “I turned my ankle in a hole on the way here,” she admitted quietly.
“You walked all the way back here? Why didn’t you fly?” asked Phyllis.
“My broomstick—I think it’s still stuck in the tree.”
“This is ridiculous. Why are we sitting around talking to her? She’s clueless. Completely clueless,” snapped Gwyn. She was at her breaking point. There was a serial killer on the loose in Aspen Falls, killing old witches, and now her mother was out there. Alone! She needed to find her mother before she lost it completely.
Char turned to Gwyn. “Gwyn. You need to take a deep breath too. We’re going to need Loni to help us find where she crashed. Okay? Relax for a minute. We’re going to find Hazel. But first I need to help Loni. Just give me a minute or two. Alright? Then we’ll all go out looking for your mom.”
Gwyn closed her eyes and inhaled a deep breath. Her shoulders were tense and as she slowly exhaled she tried to release the tension the best she could. With her eyes closed, she could hear Char tending to Loni.
“Where’s it hurt exactly, Loni?” she asked.
Gwyn parted her lashes and stared down at Loni hatefully as she showed Char where her pain was. She could scream at the nutjob of a woman. What had Gwyn been thinking to have let her precious mother ride on the back of a broomstick with the craziest woman in Aspen Falls? She hadn’t been thinking! She’d been too consumed with learning to “loosen up” and having more fun. Well, no more! Safety was going to resume its number-one spot in her life!
“Are we ready yet?” demanded Gwyn.
Char looked up from the ground. “Give me just a minute. Her ankle’s pretty badly swollen.” Then she looked at Phyllis. “Phil, hand me my purse. I think I have some amethyst in there.”
Phyllis handed Char the purse she’d brought with her, and Char dug through it to find an amethyst crystal. She held it between her hands with her eyes closed and then held the crystal over Loni’s ankle.
Ancient moon and starlit night,
Heal this witch’s limb just right.
Soothe her pain with nature’s powers,
By the magic witching hour.
Gwyn could see an energy swirling around Loni’s ankle. Char’s powers of healing were working. She could see it in Loni’s face.
Relief washed over Loni’s face like a wave across the sand, smoothing the lines of pain. “It’s already feeling better.”
“It doesn’t take long,” said Char. “Let me help you to your feet, and we’ll see if putting weight on it changes things.”
With a boost from Char, Loni got to her feet. She took a few crooked steps as she looked down at her leg. “The pain is still there a little bit, but it’s definitely improved.”
Char smiled at her and patted her on the back. “It takes a few minutes for the pain to go away completely, but it’ll be healed before midnight, I guarantee it.”
“Good. Can we go now?” demanded Gwyn.
Loni looked down at her hands as she approached Gwyn. “I’m sorry, Gwynnie, I really am…”
Gwyn held a palm up to Loni’s face. “Don’t. I don’t want to hear it, Hodges. You can explain once we’ve found her. Come on, let’s go.”
Loni’s feet seemed to be bolted to the floor. “Gwyn, I—I can’t…”
Phyllis’s eyes widened as she stared at Loni. “What do you mean you can’t? You lost the woman’s mother! Of course you can!”
Loni looked fretfully at the door. “They’re out there,” she whispered. “I can’t leave.”
“Who’s out there?” asked Char, looking at the door curiously.
Loni looked almost uncomfortable enough not to say what she was thinking. “The FBI. They found me when I fell off my broomstick. I—I lost my hat, and I lost my veil, and I didn’t have my glasses on. It was a really close call.”
Gwyn’s eyes narrowed as she peered at Loni. “Are. You. SERIOUS?!” Gwyn hollered. “There was no one following you, Loni. You’re nuts. Flat-out nuts. And if you won’t come help me find my mother, so help me, Loni, I’m never speaking to you again,” she hollered down at the small woman while poking a finger into her chest.
Char got between them. “Okay, okay. That’s enough. Let’s not say things we can’t walk back once Hazel is found safe and sound.”
“We don’t know Mom’s going to be found safe and sound, do we?”
Char sighed and then tugged on Gwyn’s arm. “Come on, Phil. Help me get Gwyn to the car. We’ll go hunting for Hazel without Loni. Loni, you stay here. If Hazel comes back, call us.”
Gwyn fought to leave. “We’re not leaving with her? She’s the only one that knows where to look for her!”
“We’ll find her, Gwyn. There are places we can look without Loni’s help.”
Gwyn looked over Char’s puffy white head as she and Phyllis dragged her to the car. “I’m coming after you, Hodges. You can hide all you want, but I know where you live!”
34
“I can’t believe you just let Loni stay back at the house,” complained Gwyn as Char backed the car out of the parking lot of the Aspen Falls Medical Center. “We’ve checked the hospital. Mom’s not there. We’ve checked The Village, no Mom. I think it’s time to go get Yolanda Hodges and force her to help us figure out where she last saw Mom. She could be lying somewhere bleeding to death right now!”
Phyllis stuck her head forward between the two seats. “Haze is a tough old bird. She’s not bleeding to death.”
“You don’t know that!” snapped Gwyn. “Or the serial killer could have her by now!”
“Unlikely,” said Phyllis. “Haze would put up too much of a fuss.”
Gwyn’s eyebrows set into a straight line. “Turn the car around, Char. We need to get Loni. She’s the only one of us who knows where to look.”
“She doesn’t remember, Gwyn. The woman was flustered. It was dark. She twisted her ankle. She lost her glasses. And she thought the FBI was coming down on her. There’s no way she’ll have any clue which tree in Aspen Falls she crashed into,” said Char. “Cut her a break. I think she’s got a bolt loose in the attic.”
“I don’t care if all the bolts in her attic are loose. She holds the key to finding Mom.” Gwyn crossed her arms across her chest staunchly. They’d been driving around the city streets for the last half hour in the general vicinity of where they’d been flying earlier, and there was no sign of her mother.
Phyllis sighed. “I hate to say this, girls, but I think maybe it’s time to go to the police station. Maybe they can get a couple of cruisers out looking for her.”
Gwyn nodded and looked at Char. “I agree. I don’t care if it hasn’t been twenty-four hours. An elderly citizen of Aspen Falls is in danger. Shouldn’t they do something to help?”
Char turned at the next block and laid on the gas. “Fine by me.”
Minutes later, they’d parked the car and were standing in front of Officer Peterman, the police station’s night shift desk clerk. He was a young, gangly fellow with long arms and a mop of blond hair.
“Officer Peterman.” Gwyn read his name tag as she approached him. “We’re looking for a missing woman. My mother. She—she took a tumble and now she’s missing. Is there any way we can get a police officer to help us find her?”
Officer Peterman spoke into the microphone on the plexiglass. “What’s your mother’s name?”
“Hazel. Hazel Mae Prescott,” said Gwyn. “Do I need to fill out a missing person’s report first? Or can you just have a cruiser go out looking for her?”
“I’ll have you talk to one of our officers.” He reached over and pressed a button, sounding a buzzer. “Come on back.” He stood up and led the women through the maze of offices, finally stopping in front of a conference room, where he gestured for them to enter. “You can wait here. I’ll have someone brought in to talk to you,” he said before shutting the door and disappearing.
Gwyn paced the floo
r while Phyllis and Char took seats at the table. “I literally cannot believe this is happening right now.” Her stomach felt scrambled and nauseous, and her mind raced.
“Calm down, Gwyn, we’ll find her,” said Char, dropping her face into her cupped hands.
“You don’t know that! You really don’t,” said Gwyn. She was tired of people telling her to calm down. It wasn’t their mother that was missing! How dare they tell her to calm down!
The door opened a second later, and a short bulldog of a man wearing a police uniform and carrying a clipboard stepped in. He had a short buzz cut of brown hair, and shoulders that settled next to his earlobes. “Good evening, ladies. I’m Officer Gerard. I hear you’re looking for your mother?” His eyes scanned the room as he tried to assess which person he should be speaking to.
“Yes, Officer.” Gwyn stepped forward, nodding as she walked towards him. “I’m looking for my mother. Her name is Hazel Mae Prescott. She’s about this tall,” said Gwyn, holding a hand up to her chin. “Well, maybe more like this tall.” She lowered her hand to the top of her shoulders.
Officer Gerard lifted one overgrown brow as he looked up from his clipboard. “Hazel, you say?”
Char nodded. “Yes, Officer. Little old lady with a cane.”
Officer Gerard stopped writing and looked at the women curiously. “What was she wearing?”
“Well, she was wearing a white cardigan over a floral shirt and a greenish skirt. But we put a black robe on her when we went out,” said Phyllis. Then she sighed uncomfortably. “And her face was smeared with shoe polish.”
He peered at Gwyn curiously. “You took your mother out late at night and dressed her in black and smeared her face with shoe polish?”
With one hand covering the unease in her stomach, Gwyn lifted her other hand to her forehead. How stupid do I sound right now? What was I thinking? she berated herself.
Phyllis pushed Gwyn out of the way. “It’s a long story, Officer. Mostly we were concerned about Margaret Sutton’s killer being on the loose. How’s that investigation going, anyway?” Phyllis didn’t wait for an answer. “So can you help us find Hazel or can’t you?”
He gave the women a half-smile and then peered around Phyllis to speak to Gwyn. “Well, I’ll be honest with you. I do have a woman in custody fitting that description.”
Gwyn’s heart leapt in her chest. “You found my mother?”
Phyllis pulled back her head. “You have her in custody? As in arrested?” she asked incredulously.
He held a hand up in front of the ladies. “Well now, one thing at a time. I said I have a woman in custody fitting that description. Unfortunately, she didn’t have any ID on her, and the name she gave us was not Hazel Prescott.”
“Well, what did she say her name was?” asked Char.
“Gwyndolin Prescott,” said Officer Gerard with a half-smile.
Gwyn sucked in her breath. “I’m Gwyndolin Prescott,” she said with a hand to her chest. “My mother got arrested, and she used my name?!”
He nodded. “Apparently.”
At that moment, Gwyn didn’t even care. “Is she alright? Physically, I mean?”
He smiled and put a hand on Gwyn’s shoulder. “Yes, your mother seems to be fine. She’s got a bit of a mouth on her, but physically she’s okay.”
Gwyn let out an audible sigh and relaxed her shoulders. “Oh, thank God.”
Char cocked one eyebrow up. “So what did she get arrested for?”
Officer Gerard rearranged the papers on his clipboard almost as if he were stalling. Finally, he sighed. “Grand theft auto.”
“What?!” demanded Gwyn. “My mother is being charged with grand theft auto? You’ve got to be kidding me! She’s an old woman!”
“An old woman who was trying to steal a car,” he pointed out. “Now, she hasn’t been officially charged, yet. We were trying to find out a little more about her and see if we couldn’t establish who she belonged to.”
Gwyn lifted her brows and pointed at herself emphatically. “Me! She belongs to me!”
He nodded. “I see that now.”
“What happened?” asked Phyllis.
He leaned his round bottom against the door frame and crossed his right foot over his ankle. “My partner and I were cruising tonight near the intersection of Donovan and Pine street when we heard a car alarm going off. We responded to the alarm and discovered your mother trying to hot-wire the car. Apparently, she crossed some wires and set the car alarm off instead.”
All three women looked at each other with slack jaws. Gwyn’s mouth went dry.
Char cast a curious glance towards Gwyn. “Hazel can hot-wire a car?”
Phyllis shook her head. “Apparently she can’t! That was her first mistake!”
Gwyn couldn’t wrap her head around what the officer was telling her. “My mother was trying to hot-wire a car? I—I didn’t even know she knew how to do that! This can’t seriously be happening right now.”
“Can we see her?” asked Char.
He nodded. “Absolutely. Right this way.”
He led them through a series of hallways until they came to a windowed holding cell. “We were trying to get information out of her when you showed up, but that woman is tighter than a clamshell with lockjaw.”
Gwyn rushed to the window. Behind it, Hazel lay faceup on a hard wooden bench with the black gown she’d worn tucked behind her head for a pillow.
Gwyn knocked on the glass. “Mom!” she hollered. “Mom, it’s Gwynnie. Can you hear me? Are you alright?”
Hazel’s limbs flinched before she opened her eyes. Her head lifted as she looked at the window with narrowed eyes. “Gwynnie?” She lifted her glasses from her chest and put them on. That was when she saw Officer Gerard staring at her through the window too. She glanced back at her daughter. “I mean, Hazel. Hazel! My sweet daughter Hazel! You’ve found me, your dear old mother, Gwyndolin.”
Gwyn rolled her eyes. “Mom, he knows you’re Hazel, and I’m Gwyn. Why did you give them my name?”
Hazel lifted her brows as her mouth formed the outline of an O. “I panicked. They asked for my name and your name just sort of popped out of my mouth.”
“Mom, they arrested you for grand theft auto. What in the world? Why were you trying to steal a car?”
“I was tired,” she complained. “I’d just fallen out of a tree. I wanted to go home and go to bed. I was just going to borrow it and have you return it first thing in the morning! I didn’t think anyone would miss it for the evening.”
“You don’t even have a license, Mom. You’re not supposed to be driving. You can’t see at night.”
“Which is exactly why I needed the car. Was I supposed to walk all the way home half-blind?” Hazel grabbed her cane and pulled herself to her feet. She ambled towards the glass. “There aren’t exactly cabs on every street corner in Aspen Falls, you know.”
“Oh, Mom,” said Gwyn. She was so happy to see her mother in one piece that she didn’t care about the theft charges, or the hot-wired car, or about the fact that her mother had used Gwyn’s name instead of her own.
Hazel touched the palm of one wrinkled hand to the glass. “Gwynnie, can you take me home? I can hardly keep myself upright; I’m so tired.”
Gwyn turned to look at the officer. “Officer Gerard, isn’t there something we can do about this? My mother didn’t know what she was doing. She’s off her medication. It was late at night. She was injured. Can’t we just make this all disappear?”
The officer leaned back and ran a hand across the back of his tree stump of a neck. “She’s off her medication?”
Gwyn nodded. “Yes, and we’ve had a really long day too. There’s no way she’s in her right mind. Couldn’t we just let this go? I can pay for any damages done to the car.”
He looked down at the papers on his clipboard, lost in thought. It took him a while, but finally, he nodded. “Alright. I think maybe we can let this incident go. Of course, if it happens again…”
“Oh, great,” said Hazel with a flip of her hand. “I think I’m probably better off taking my chances with Officer Fun Squasher here.”
Gwyn let out a nervous giggle as Officer Gerard removed his keys from his belt. “I’ll get her released. You go back out to the front desk. Officer Peterman will have the paperwork to sign her out.”
Gwyn nodded. “I’ll be right back, Mom,” she hollered through the glass. “Girls, will you please stay with her and Officer Gerard while I go get her checked out?”
Char nodded. “Absolutely. You just take care of things, Gwyn. We’ve got this.”
Officer Gerard took Gwyn out to the hallway and pointed her back in the right direction just as Detective Whitman rounded the corner from another hallway.
“Whitman, would you take Ms. Prescott back out to Peterman? I’ve got to finish up something in here.”
Detective Whitman looked down at Gwyn. “Ms. Prescott! What are you doing here at the station this late at night?”
“Oh, Detective Whitman, it’s nice to see you again. Oh, umm…” Gwyn looked back at the door that Officer Gerard closed behind her. “My mother sort of got into some trouble.”
He looked at the closed door, and then his eyes widened as the pieces clicked in his brain. “Gerard’s elderly woman is your elderly woman?”
Gwyn shifted uncomfortably and nodded. “I’m afraid so.”
He chuckled and held a hand out in front of him as if to say after you. “I’m sorry. He mentioned the name to me, but it didn’t click until just now. Maybe if I’d seen your mother, I would have recognized her, but I’ve been holed up in my office all night working the Maggie Sutton case. But it looks like we got it all worked out. Gerard knew she had to belong to someone.”
Gwyn held a hand to her wildly pounding heart as she walked. “I’m just thankful we found her before the serial killer did!”
That Old Witch!: The Coffee Coven's Cozy Capers: Book 1 Page 26