The Innocent Dead: A Witch Cozy Mystery (The Maid, Mother, and Crone Paranormal Mystery Series Book 1)

by Jill Nojack

  “Was Twink all right when you talked to her?” Cassie was saying. “She wasn’t hurt, was she? She looked okay when she headed for the apartment.”

  And Gillian was saying, “A sweater? What kind of sweater?”

  Cassie was looking at Gillian. “Look, I don’t think they’ll even talk to her. No, seriously, there’s no reason to. I’ll fill you in later. Not tonight, though. I’ve got stuff to do. And Daria? We have to talk about that other thing, too. Whether or not to tell her . . .”

  She looked over to Gillian who was saying, “Put Denton on alert is all. But don’t let him get in our way. You know he won’t want to know how we managed to pull Lou Frank out of hiding.”

  Cassie mouthed, “Robert?” when Gillian noticed her looking, and Gillian mouthed back, “Yes.”

  Cassie nodded and returned to her call. “Yep, she’s got nothing to worry about. The mayor already knows what’s going on. The cops won’t come around. I promise.”

  “I love you, too,” Gillian said. “Be safe. You never know if he’s crazy enough to go after someone else while he’s on the run.”

  They said goodbye to their callers and turned to each other. Gillian’s face was drained of color. “She’ll kill him, you know, if we don’t talk her out of it. Your husband isn’t that man’s biggest threat anymore. Who else could have been in that statue in an argyle sweater but William Stanford?”

  20

  Cassie sat on the edge of her own bed for the first time since she’d discovered that her beautiful painting was enchanted. And the secret in the statue? It made her feel sick. As for the plan—well, too many things could go wrong. Too many people she cared about could get hurt.

  She stood up and went to the fireplace, where she set the once-admired and now despised watercolor back up and pretended to lose herself in its beauty.

  Tom walked in right on cue. Cassie turned to him. She thought about the big, comfortable bed right behind her. She’d kept the picture at an angle that gave her a clear view of it when she wrapped herself up at night for bedtime reading. If Lou Frank could see them, he’d have had a clear view when she and Tom did something other than read. And she never got much reading done. Or any.

  Ugh. Lou Frank could have been peeping at them the whole time. She tried to stay in character, but she couldn’t completely suppress her shudder.

  When Tom sauntered up to sweep her long hair aside so he could plant a kiss on the back of her neck, the gesture felt wrong, cold. His heart wasn’t in it.

  “Come to bed,” he said.

  “In a minute, I . . . this painting is so amazing. I can never get enough of it.”

  Tom threw out an arm and knocked a carefully chosen set of objects off onto the ground, where they landed with a series of thuds.

  She pulled back from him toward the fireplace. “What’s wrong with you? Why are you acting like this?”

  “I’m sick of you and your boyfriend Lou. Sick of it! You need to choose. Is it him or is it me?

  It sounded so contrived, she thought. Who would fall for it?

  But she knew Lou would. He’d fall for it because he thought the world of himself and very little of others.

  She continued along in the script the group had put together. “Lou? You think I could ever care about that arrogant old man? You have to be kidding!”

  “Every day when you come home from the gallery, it’s ‘Lou’s paintings are so amazing,’ and ‘Lou and I had a picnic,’ and ‘Lou got Dash the nicest gift.’ Like I wouldn’t notice he’s all you talk about.”

  “Don’t be stupid. He repulses me! He’s so gross. That thing he does with his horrible old-guy hair all the time, always flipping it back like he’s some sexy young stud. It’s hard not to laugh.”

  “Then tell me what’s been going on between you two!”

  “That picture,” she said, pointing. “Do you know what that will be worth when he dies? I mean, he’s well known now, but when he kicks off—and it can’t be long because he’s, like, ancient—that will pay for the new nursery. I could care less about Lou ‘The Loser’ Frank. In fact, if the Giles murderer got him, that would really help us out. But I can probably string him along long enough to get a couple more paintings out of him, don’t you think?”

  “No! I forbid it!”

  Cassie was glad she had her back to the painting because she couldn’t manage to completely hide her smirk. Tom couldn’t hide his either. As his mouth started to bouy up at the corners, he turned to the table to knock a few more things over. The suggestion that Tom could forbid any of the women in his immediate circle from doing exactly as they pleased would normally have set them both howling.

  She took a deep breath and got herself back under control. It wasn’t easy.

  “You forbid me, do you? You forbid me? Just because Lou isn’t my type doesn’t mean that someone else isn’t. I’m out of here. I’m spending the night at Gillian’s.”

  Tom pulled the keys to the vintage station wagon Cassie had inherited from her grandmother out of his pocket and jingled them as he said, “You think so? You won’t get very far without these.”

  “I’ve walked there before. I’ll walk there now. It’ll be beautiful along the lake in the moonlight.” She stormed out of the bedroom, grabbing her coat off the chair by the door.

  Tom leaned out of the bedroom door and called after her, “Fine. I hope you two have lots of fun.”

  Then he pulled his head back and went to the bookcase where they had planted a bottle of brandy and tipped it up into the snifter that sat next to it. Cassie spied on him from outside the room, waiting. She’d tiptoed back after she’d stomped as hard as she could down the hall.

  Tom lifted the snifter to his mouth and drained it. The brandy bottle yielded a few drops, nothing more. Just like they’d planned. He threw it into the fireplace, shouting, “Blast it! I need a real drink.”

  He stalked to the door and took his wife’s hand as soon as he was out of the picture’s visual range. She tiptoed beside him as she matched his footfalls, traveling downstairs and toward the back door.

  Before they exited, Tom shed his clothes and hung them up on hooks in the mudroom. Cassie put on a particularly unfashionable and bulky collar beneath her jacket and pulled the jacket’s hood up over her head to disguise it.

  Tom looked cold, but Cassie knew he wouldn’t be covered in gooseflesh once he was dressed in Kit’s warm fur coat.

  He closed his eyes, calming himself in preparation. His lips moved slightly as he mouthed his shift words to himself and shrunk away before her eyes, folding and warping, winter-pale skin sprouting fur blacker than the moonlit night they would soon be entering. But no matter how well-lit the night was, there were things within it that were steeped in darkness.

  21

  William slipped through the wall like it was made of mist.

  He stood in front of the huge steel door where the words “Unknown—found in statue” had been written on a square of paper and slipped into the nameplate. This is who he was now: Mr. Unknown. He wasn’t sure he wanted to see what was behind the door, but if his body was there, maybe it would help him remember what had happened.

  He stuck his head through the door. Below him, a skull looked back. His face was level with the corpse’s empty eye sockets. Being a ghost had a least one advantage—he didn’t have to depend on rods and cones and light for sight. It was pitch black in here, but the head bone on the metal slab was crystal clear to him.

  He looked down at what the skeleton was wearing. Tan slacks, a filthy white dress shirt buttoned to the collar, and what would have once been an excellent argyle sweater vest. No mistaking that.

  He looked and looked, taking in the empty eye wells that had once loved to look at the world, the bony fingers that had once held the hand of his beloved, but it didn’t help him remember anything. It didn’t even make him sad. He couldn’t feel attachment to the thing. There was nothing for him here; might as well leave.

  But something hel
d him back. No. He had to know. He felt sure that the killer stalking Giles in the modern day was the same one who had stalked it fifty years ago. He had to try to open up his own memories so that no one else would be harmed, especially Natalie. William filled his ghostly lungs with a deep, ghostly breath and slipped his ghostly body inside the bones, wrapping himself around them, pretending to be flesh. The only thing he saw from his ghostly eyes was the stainless steel ceiling of the drawer. No memories. He closed them and sighed again. Nothing.

  He was ready to give up and go looking for Natalie when his consciousness jolted like an electric shock. His eyes flew open as a bright blue haze lit the chamber. His first instinct was to rip away from the bones, but he was stuck in place, trapped in a mass of emotion that only something living could feel.

  Terror. It was terror.

  The side of his head felt wet and the pain there engulfed him. He lay face down in the dirt, but he had the sense that he knew this place, knew it well. He turned his head and peered around, his gaze alighting on something white in the gloom that rested on wooden supports. The place smelled of tar and algae.

  He was in the shed where his family kept the rowboat during the winter. They’d brought it in from the lake because it had been leaking, and he’d been working on it for several days to make it seaworthy again. Yesterday, he’d added another layer of fresh tar to a couple of areas that needed waterproofing. He didn’t want to risk Natalie getting wet when he took her out rowing.

  On the water, with no one to tell them no, they could talk about anything. About their plans for a life together. About their dreams.

  But today, he’d come to the shed with a canvas bag of supplies he’d picked up at the hardware store and found the door already open. When he set the bag down at his side and pushed the opening wider to let the daylight in, someone turned to him abruptly, a length of rope cut from the loose coil hanging on the wall in his hand, a pen knife in the other.

  “What are you doing in here?” William asked. And then he understood. “You? You can’t be . . . you couldn’t have . . .”

  The intruder squinted as he moved into the light, and the angry red rash of acne on his cheeks nearly glowed. He slashed out toward William with the knife and William stepped back, stumbling over the bag he’d set down earlier.

  That stumble was all the intruder needed; he charged forward and slammed into William’s chest with one shoulder. William’s head knocked hard against the rough support as he fell. He blinked, his head swimming, his eyes focusing on the blurry shape of the boat at the other side of the shed. Funny, he’d never seen it from this angle before.

  Blows rained down as his attacker sobbed.

  It was probably the shovel, but it could have been the spade. It really didn’t matter—the outcome was the same. The memory, the pain, and the terror faded as William felt himself re-enter the present, feeling the old set of bones sizzle with dancing blue sparks. He looked down at his remarkably opaque body.

  It had to be a trick of the light.

  He tried to pull himself out of his earthly remains, but he was stuck. And how could he gasp so raggedly without lungs? He panicked. He needed out of that drawer. And as soon as he thought of it, he was outside again. He looked down quickly. Still no light showing through him. And what was that odd sensation? Could it really be the pressure of the floor against the bottom of his feet?

  Something unusual had happened to him when he’d wrapped himself around his bones. He decided to get another look at them, but he bumped his head when he leaned in toward the drawer to go through it.

  That couldn’t be right. A ghost can’t bump his head.

  He tried again, and this time, maybe because he knew what to expect, he was able to push through easily, but what he saw inside couldn’t be right either.

  There were no bones in the drawer anymore.

  ***

  It was silent all around. Dead silent except for the sound of footsteps along the shore. Every so often, Cassie’s heel sunk into a muddy patch and made a sucking sound as it released. And then there was her own breathing, coming in loud gasps. She fought it down—she’d need to stay under control if this was going to work. But her skin prickled, and it wasn’t from the chilly night air.

  She’d been walking for over an hour already, and although that meant she was nearly at the path that led to Robert’s place though the woods, everyone had been sure Lou would show up at the lakefront because that’s where all of the previous bodies had been.

  Although she knew he was there, Kit was silent as a crypt. Tom kept him behind her near the tree line as they walked. Probably so he wouldn’t go night blind from her flashlight. She had no doubt that he was vigilant. Although she knew she could take care of herself, she was glad he was with her.

  An owl hooted and she tensed. Slowly, she exhaled. She shook her head, smiling at how silly she had been . . . until a voice sounded in front of her. “I’m so disappointed in you, Cassie.”

  She nearly jumped out of her skin.

  Her hand went to the uncomfortable plastic collar around her neck. Her heart beat more slowly.

  The speaker stepped forward, his face hidden in the darkness. Cassie allowed herself a small smile; the shock of stark white hair curling out beneath the black hoodie was unmistakable. He carried a big leather bag over his shoulder, his hand tight on the strap.

  He pushed back his hood, and his pale face shone in the gloom. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” His expression changed swiftly, covering the full spectrum from concern to contempt. “Or maybe I did. Maybe you deserve to be scared. You’re a stupid, selfish woman to be walking alone at night with a killer on the loose, unless you want to meet the same fate as that middle-aged siren who died out here. I can’t believe your husband would risk your safety like this.” He stepped toward her.

  She stepped back, hearing the unmistakable sound of flesh slapping against the muddy shore as Tom’s body flashed through its transformation somewhere behind her. “Oh yeah? Like he would. We know you spy on people through your paintings. Your secret’s not a secret anymore. And everybody knows about the body in the statue too!” Her voice rose nearly to a scream. She hoped it alerted the watchers in the boat. She hoped Tom stepped out of the shadows soon.

  “Where’s your rope, Lou? Is it in the bag? What word have you written down to stick on my corpse?”

  He took a step toward her, then stopped abruptly, his face wadded up like a fist. “You think I killed those people? I haven’t killed anyone. I just wanted to show you how disappointed I am that the friendship you offered me was false. I believed you were an art lover, a true connoisseur. But now I know you’re just like all the rest—you want the money, the fame, and you’ll use your pretty face and shapely body to get it. You could have at least slept with me like the others!”

  Tom slipped up silently behind Cassie and placed a hand on her back. It gave her strength. She knew he’d be in pain for a while longer—the shift always hurt. But they had time. Lou wasn’t threatening her yet.

  Lou’s eyes shifted from hers to Tom’s. “It’s cold comfort that your husband wasn’t in on the con.” And then his expression decayed into confusion. “And why is he naked?”

  “None of your business.” Cassie’s eyes flashed. “This isn’t about us. We know you came here to kill me. You were tuning in with that picture of yours, so I gave you something your ego couldn’t tolerate, just like Caroline and Sean did. So where’s the rope? Is it in the bag?”

  “There’s no rope in the bag.” He looked down at it, his forehead scrunching as he pushed back his cascade of curls. “I’m telling you, I know it looks bad, the body in the statue, but I didn’t kill anyone.”

  “Toss the bag over here,” Tom said. “We’ll see what’s in it and what’s not.”

  Lou took the bag off his shoulder. Cassie could tell he didn’t want to let it go. Of course he wouldn’t. He was about to be revealed for the killer he was. Except he wasn’t acting much li
ke a killer. He tossed the bag toward Tom without an argument; no, he wasn’t acting like a killer much at all.

  When Tom dumped its contents out on the muddy ground, Lou winced.

  When she pointed the flashlight toward the spill, the only items revealed were an expensive-looking wallet and a small watercolor in a mat. It was a chillingly good likeness of Cassie, but her features wore an expression Cassie hoped she could never wear—pure malice. She stretched a rope between her hands, the perspective making the rope appear huge, as if it was coming out of the picture to strangle the viewer.

  “Why did you paint this?” Tom asked as he looked up. His expression in the gloom was losing its angry edge. Now, he just looked puzzled.

  “Are you completely concrete? Have you no artistic sense at all?” The artist threw up his hands and released an exaggerated, exasperated rush of air. “It’s a metaphor. I planned to confront her and show her what she looked like to me now as she strangles the friendship I offered. It’s a rough sketch for a bigger work, but I bet she wouldn’t want that one hanging in that ridiculous little man’s gallery. Are you telling me you can’t understand my horror when your wife said she hoped I’d be murdered?”

  Cassie’s brow pulled down in the darkness and her hand moved to tug at her lip. This wasn’t turning out like she’d expected. The sound of a boat scraping across the shore and footsteps moving quickly toward them signaled the arrival of the rest of their crew. The sound of hushed female voices rapid-fired back and forth as they came closer.

  Her friends in their black robes stepped up beside her to join the lynching party, except she was no longer sure that’s what it should be. Gillian opened her bag and handed Tom a neatly folded stack of clothes.

  “He doesn’t have a rope,” Cassie said to the assembled witches. “Just a painting of me that’s not very flattering. He says he’s not the killer, and it sure looks like he wasn’t here to hurt me. I don’t know what to believe now.”