Ramona Torres was a big woman, at least two hundred pounds, and she was beautiful. Skin the color of creamy chocolate. Dark lush hair that sparkled in the candlelight and reached halfway down her back. Dark, mysterious eyes that made you want to disappear inside them. She was dressed in a flowing black robe etched with gold border that did nothing to hide her glorious cleavage. I noticed Frank staring and hoped I was being more discreet.
Before either of us could begin to explain our late night appearance at her home, she surprised us a third time. “I’ve been expecting you.”
That woke us up. I felt Frank shift on the sofa next to me. “And why is that, Mrs. Torre?” he asked.
“You’ve come to tell me that my ex-husband is dead, have you not?”
I nodded. “Unfortunately, yes, we have.”
“There is nothing unfortunate about it. The man was a pig.”
She smiled when she said this, and I felt the temperature in the room drop. Icy fingers caressed the back of my neck. I shivered. Jesus, this witch business was getting to me.
I glanced at Frank, sensing he was feeling the same thing. He sat up on the sofa and leaned forward. “Do you think we could turn on some lights in here, Mrs. Torre?”
“Why not?” She clapped her hands, twice, and an overhead chandelier blinked on, chasing away the shadows in the corners of the room.
“That’s better,” Frank said, looking around. “Thank you.”
I glanced around the room and felt myself relax a little. Mrs. Torre’s living room looked exactly like a hundred other living rooms I had sat in before on the job. Shelves lined with books and knick-knacks and framed photographs. A widescreen television attached to the wall above a fancy gas fireplace. A piano in the corner by the window. Big potted plants everywhere.
“So you and Mr. Torre were obviously not on good terms?” Frank asked.
Mrs. Torre laughed. “You could say that. I despised the man.”
“If you don’t mind me asking,” I said. “When and why did you get divorced?”
“I filed for divorce ten months ago. About ten years too late.” She crossed her legs, and I noticed that she was wearing sandals. Her toenails were painted bright red. “As for why…like I said, Harry was a pig. He lied to me. He cheated on me. He abused me.”
“Did you ever report him for abuse, Mrs. Torre?” Frank asked.
“I did not. He never raised a hand to me, detective. The only scars he left were inside my soul.”
“But you were happy for a time?” I asked. “In the earlier years of the marriage?”
“Harry was a con man, detective. He made me believe in a marriage, in a life, that wasn’t real. It never existed. It took me awhile to figure that out, but still I remained with him. No, I was never really happy. At best, I guess you could say I was…grateful.”
“Grateful?” Frank asked, and I could hear him scribbling in his notebook.
“That’s right.” Mrs. Torre thought for a moment. “I was always different, detective. I never really fit in anywhere or with anyone. Even when I was young, growing up back in Mexico, because of my family, people often whispered about me. Many were even afraid of me.”
“What about your family?” Frank asked before I could.
She uncrossed her legs. “We were very poor when I was a young girl, but my mother was a very powerful woman. Known many villages away as a healer, among other things. There were always stories about my mother and her sisters. As long as I could remember.”
“What kind of stories?” I asked, clearly captivated with the beautiful woman sitting across from me. She met my gaze with a direct stare of her own, and the room suddenly felt too bright and too warm. I felt drowsy, almost as if I had been drugged, and I struggled to remember if Mrs. Torre had offered us something to drink upon our arrival.
I glanced at Frank and he was staring back at me, and I could tell he was experiencing the same sensation.
“…and of course there were those villagers who accused my mother and her sisters of being Brujas Negras…”
I looked back at Mrs. Torre and she was smiling at me again, a tired, sad smile, and then I wasn’t looking at her at all…I was no longer in her living room…I was somehow…
…inside a dusty village in a jungle clearing made up of grass and mud huts and there were chickens running wild and ancient women washing clothes in a filthy creek and a dirty little girl with dark, sweaty skin and wide, beautiful eyes holding the hand of an equally beautiful older woman, standing amidst a crowd of others in front of what looked like a stone altar at the jungle’s edge and there was an old man bound to the altar with heavy ropes and the man was naked and bleeding and sobbing, his toothless mouth gasping for air, and there was another beautiful woman towering above him, arms outstretched to the sky, both hands clutching a roughly carved stone dagger dripping with blood and plunging it downward…
“…so, yes, you could say I was grateful, detective. Grateful to be accepted by someone from your world. Someone who appeared to be kind and successful and…normal. It was all I ever wanted when I was a little girl growing up in the jungle. It was my fairy tale.” Her voice grew harsh. “But it all turned out to be a lie.”
I blinked and I was back in Mrs. Torre’s candlelit living room. I no longer felt sleepy or drugged. On the contrary, I felt wide awake and alert. I glanced up at the ceiling, looking for the chandelier, but couldn’t make it out in the flickering darkness. I listened as Frank’s scribbling reached a frenzied pace, and then it abruptly stopped and the room was silent.
After a moment, Mrs. Torre spoke again: “Aren’t either of you going to ask if I killed my ex-husband, detectives?”
I felt a single, icy finger trace a path across my neck and down between my shoulder blades, and then it was gone.
Frank got to his feet first, and I was right behind him. I wasn’t scared exactly, but I wanted out of that room, out of that house, and far away from that beautiful, mysterious woman.
“Mrs. Torre,” Frank said, his voice much softer than I was accustomed to hearing. “Even if you admitted it, I’m pretty damn sure we could never prove it. Not in any crime lab and not in any court of law…”
****
“You think she’s a witch?”
“No such thing,” I said, merging back onto the interstate. We had been inside Ramona Torre’s house for just over a half-hour, but the entire visit was a blur. Exhaustion was the culprit; too many cases, too many late nights.
“Something was off about her. You see what she was wearing?”
“She was…different, that’s for sure.”
“You liked her, didn’t you?”
I looked at Frank. “You were the one staring at her boobs.”
“Kinda hard not to,” he said. “Be honest, Ben. What did you think of her?”
I thought about it for a moment before I answered. “I think she’s a very beautiful, very sad, very lonely woman.”
An SUV suddenly blasted past us in the fast lane, blaring its horn, startling both of us. The driver was laughing and wearing a rubber skeleton mask and his passenger was wearing a Donald Trump mask, complete with fuzzy orange hair. The Donald leaned out the window and flipped us the bird before disappearing down the highway.
“Dumbass kids,” I said. “Lucky I don’t hit the lights and pull ’em over.”
Frank grunted and stared out the car window at the dark countryside. “God, I hate Halloween.”
A NIGHTMARE
ON ELM LANE
My father and I started digging the day after school ended.
I had just finished the seventh grade at Edgewood Middle School and was looking forward to a summer of fishing, bike riding, and playing Magic the Gathering with my friends. If I was lucky I might even run into Katy McCammon at the creek or the swimming pool and finally summon the courage to ask her out to
the movies and to get ice cream. Charlie Mitchell had bet me twenty bucks on the last day of school that it wouldn’t happen. I was determined to prove his fat ass wrong, even if it meant crashing and burning with Katy. After all, I would have the entire summer to get over it.
My father had just finished his millionth year of teaching upper-level science at the high school and evidently had other plans for the first week of my summer vacation.
****
“I’m homeee,” I announced and flung my baseball hat on the foyer table.
“Don’t let the door—”
The screen door slammed shut behind me.
“—slam!” my dad finished from the next room.
I walked into the family room, flashed a sheepish grin at my mother, who was reading a magazine on the sofa, and shrugged at my father, who was kicked back in his recliner watching the Orioles on television. “Sorry…I forgot.”
“You forget one more time, you’re gonna be sorry,” he said, a hint of a smile betraying the tough-man attitude. My dad was a lot of things—a terrible singer in the shower, a horrible driver, often embarrassing in public, an ace Scrabble player—but tough wasn’t one of them. My mom always called him a Disney Dad.
I plopped down on the sofa and started taking off my shoes. “Who’s winning?”
“Don’t ask,” my dad grumbled.
I laughed and made a face at my mom. She rolled her eyes. My dad was also a lifelong Orioles fan with, how shall I say this, unusual views regarding baseball managerial strategy. He believed in three-run home runs, double steals, and two out bunts. Sometimes all in the same inning.
“My God, what’d you boys do tonight,” my mom asked, wrinkling her nose. “You stink.”
“Played whiffle ball at Jimmy’s,” I shrugged. “Then went down to the park.”
“You boys catch any fireflies?”
“Yeah, Mom. We all ran around and chased fireflies and stuffed them in an empty jar. Then we played hide-and-go-seek and tag and did a sing-along. What are we, five years old?”
She swatted me on the shoulder. “Don’t be a smart aleck.”
I grabbed my arm and pretended to swoon.
She laughed. “Go put your shoes on the back porch and take a shower. You’re making my eyes water.”
I jumped to my feet and gave her a salute—“Yes, ma’am, Janet, ma’am.”—and headed for the kitchen and back door.
My father’s voice behind me: “Don’t call your mother by her first name.”
I opened the back door. “Sorry, Henry, won’t happen again.”
I heard the squawk of the recliner as my father released the leg rest and got to his feet in the next room. I hurriedly tossed my shoes on the porch, slammed the door, and took off for the back stairs…
…just as my father, all five foot eight and hundred-fifty pounds of him, scrambled into the kitchen, nearly slipping in his socks on the linoleum floor and landing on his ass. “I’ll teach you not to backtalk your parents!”
I bounded up the stairs, giggling, and locked myself in the bathroom.
“You’re lucky today’s the last day of school, you little communist!” my father bellowed from downstairs.
****
I tossed the wet towel on the floor next to my dirty clothes and climbed into bed. The sheets felt cool on my bare legs. I used the remote to click on the ten-inch television on my dresser and found the Orioles game. They were losing 8-3 in the bottom of the seventh. It was going to be another long season.
My dad stepped into the doorway. “Hey, I know tomorrow’s your first full day of summer vacation, but I need your help for a few hours.”
“Help with what?” I asked, dreading the answer.
“I have a little project for us. Won’t take long.”
“Oh, boy,” I said, remembering the last little project. My dad had come home one afternoon with blueprints for a fancy tree house. We’d spent almost two weeks sawing boards and nailing them into place in the old weeping willow tree in the back yard. When we were finally finished, it looked more like a rickety tree-stand for hunting deer than it did any kind of a tree house, and it had cost my dad over three hundred and fifty bucks in materials.
My father laughed. “Now you sound just like your mother. Get some sleep, Kev. I’ll see you in the morning.”
****
I rubbed sleep from my eyes and walked across the patio to the picnic table tucked in the far corner. There were two shovels and a pick-ax leaning against the table, and a couple pairs of work gloves and a sheet of what looked like complicated directions sitting atop the table.
“Not more blueprints,” I grumbled.
“They’re instructions, smartie pants,” my father said from behind me. “How do you expect to do a job correctly if you don’t have instructions to follow?”
I resisted the urge to look over at the weeping willow tree.
“You get enough to eat?”
“Yeah,” I grumbled.
He picked up the instructions and work gloves. “Grab those tools and follow me.”
I cradled the shovels and pick-ax in my arms and followed him into the back yard. He walked past the back-stop I used for pitching practice, past the two-tier bird bath my mom loved so much, underneath the drooping branches of the weeping willow tree, and stopped just short of the vegetable garden that lined our back fence.
“You can put them down here.”
I dropped the tools onto the grass. “Okay, now can you tell me? What’s the big surprise?”
My father smiled, spread his arms wide, and turned in a slow circle. “This is where our brand new goldfish pond is going.”
“Goldfish pond?” I wasn’t sure I had heard him correctly.
“That’s right,” he said, pointing. “Twelve by six foot pond there, complete with miniature waterfall. Rock garden there. Couple of nice benches there and there. It’ll be a thing of beauty when we’re done.”
This sounded like a lot of work. “Mom know about this?”
“’Course, she does. Whose idea do you think it was?”
I knew better, but wasn’t about to say so. “How long is this gonna take?”
He tossed me a pair of work gloves, started pulling his on. “Don’t worry, Kev. I only need your help with digging the hole and laying down the liner. I can handle the rest.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. Not to be a jerk about it, but I was thirteen years old and it was summer vacation. I had a lot of important stuff to do.
“We’ve got two days to get that done. After that, the pump and circulation kit will be here, couple days after that, the live plants and fish.” My dad was grinning like a kid in a candy shop. He got a little nutty about things like this, but I sure loved him.
I slipped on the work gloves and picked up a shovel. “Well, what’re we waiting for? Let’s get digging.”
He slapped me on the back. “That’s the spirit.”
****
A couple hours later, Mom brought out glasses of lemonade, and my father and I sat in the shade of the weeping willow and took a much-needed break. We were dripping with sweat, and despite the gloves, we both had blisters on our hands.
“Not bad,” my father said, taking a long drink and eyeing our progress.
The kidney-shaped outline of the pond was complete. Chunks of sod and dirt were piled off to the side on sheets of clear plastic. Later, when we were finished digging for the day, we would take turns filling up the wheelbarrow and humping loads to the driveway where we would shovel the dirt into the back of my father’s pick-up. I wasn’t looking forward to that part of the job.
“How deep do we have to go?” I asked.
“Thirty-six inches from end to end.”
I looked at the hole. It was maybe six inches deep in most places.
“Take a few more minute
s,” my father said, putting on his gloves. “Finish your lemonade.”
I watched him pick up a shovel and start digging. I sat there in the shade and drank my lemonade and thought about Charlie and Jimmy and the rest of my friends. They were probably down at Hanson Creek right now fishing. Or playing ball at the park. Or betting quarters on the shooting games at the arcade. Or…
My father slung another shovelful of dirt over his shoulder, grunting with the effort. I finished my lemonade and hurried to his side. I figured I had plenty of time for fun and games later on.
****
“You poor boys,” my mother said, watching us struggle to grip our forks at dinner.
She had made my father’s favorite, beef stroganoff, and even though we’d worked up quite an appetite, the blisters on our hands made eating a slow process.
“I told you we’re fine, honey,” my father said. “Few blisters never hurt anyone.”
I stuffed another bite into my mouth and nodded agreement. I felt strangely happy and proud of myself. I felt content.
“Well, maybe you should take a break tomorrow and—”
“No way,” I said, my mouth still full. “We need to finish digging, so we’re ready for the pump on Thursday.”
My father beamed. “That’s right.”
We finished our stroganoff and wolfed down two slices of chocolate cake each for dessert, then we all moved to the den to watch the start of the Orioles game. I was in bed and snoring by nine-thirty. It was my last peaceful night’s sleep.
****
We were up and digging by eight the next morning, energized by a big breakfast and a good night’s rest. Dad brought out a radio, and we listened to callers complaining about the Orioles’ lack of pitching, hitting, and coaching for the better part of an hour before switching over to an oldies rock station. We were making decent progress on the hole. I figured we’d be moving dirt right up until dark tonight, but we would definitely finish. We were determined.
By late-morning, my father was working his way in from one side of the hole while I attacked the other side. The plan was to meet in the middle, and then use the tape measure to see how much deeper we needed to go. The work was methodical and mindless, but oddly satisfying.
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