The Deadly Jellybean Affair

by Carrie Marsh

  You seem all too excited to do this.

  “Why shouldn’t I be?” Mary smoothed the cat’s fur. “It’s been so long I feel like I’m getting to stretch my legs after a long car ride or eating a meal after a fast. Plus, I’m not doing this just to mess around like Harry Potter or something. I’m trying to find out what happened to Summer Moran.” She looked Alabaster in the face. “Whatever happens to me is still better than how things turned out for her.”

  At this moment. If the Outlaws catch you sniffing around again, you might be as bad off as Summer or worse.

  “You’re right.” In her heart, she agreed with the furry feline. “Let’s find out where Regina is and then consider a protection spell of some kind.”

  We may not have the energy remaining for that but I’ll see what I can do.

  The locator spell consisted of inhaling the smoke from three burned bay leaves, while submersing oneself in water. Three white candles had to be lit and placed on the floor near the water while the incantation was read.

  Roughly translated, the words asked for the surrounding dimensions to fold and expand, to dissolve and solidify in front of the one making the request and rearrange themselves in the pattern that would reveal where the desired subject was. In this case, it would show exactly where Regina was.

  As Alabaster had stated, the only drawback was that Mary wouldn’t be the only one seeing. Regina would see Mary, too. If Mary wanted to remain hidden, she would have to incorporate a darker method that would leave residual paranormal tracks that could morph into something toxic. She preferred to keep it fair and on the up and up.

  “We’re getting closer,” Mary mumbled. Alabaster sat at her head on the edge of the tub, his paws resting on her naked shoulder, the only part of him in the water. His eyes were staring straight at what he saw with Mary. Like layers and layers of tracing paper being pulled back one at a time as others were added beneath the surface. With trembling whiskers, like he was watching a bird just out of reach, Alabaster helped maneuver through the various dimensions until Mary saw what she was looking for.

  The vision that was unfolding showed a desolate street. Thankfully, Mary knew that street. Blain’s Farm and Fleet was on that street as well as Haweswood Cemetery and a twenty-four-hour A&O convenience store.

  “That’s got to be it,” Mary mumbled.

  Had anyone stumbled into Mary’s home and saw her submerged up to her chin, naked in the tub with candles on the floor, holding a tiny bowl of burnt bay leaves under her nose and her cat on her shoulder, they would have thought they’d stumbled into a David Lynch film or that Mary was having some kind of psychotic episode. They’d never guess in a million years that she was folding time and space right in front of her very eyes.

  Lined up like a leaning fence with wheels were over a dozen motorcycles in front of what looked like nothing more than a couple of shanties attached with plywood and scraps of tin. The florescent lights in the small windows advertised the establishment was OPEN, served Miller Lite, and the door was just a hollow-core fiberboard with a plain knob and two unlocked padlock loops attached to it.

  The weather-worn words over the top of the door read Billy’s Bar. It was located on the outskirts of Morhollow in a no-mans-land of unincorporated Morhollow just on the edge of the neighboring town of Point Pleasance.

  It wasn’t in the middle of nowhere but it was left alone for the most part by local authorities. A sort of gentlemen’s agreement had been reached that if the Outlaws kept the ruckus to a minimum, the police would turn a blind eye to the small amounts of drugs that exchanged hands, and as long as the strippers were of legal age, they wouldn’t press the issue of if they were prostitutes or not.

  “Where is she?” Mary’s voice was quiet like she was hiding and didn’t want to be discovered. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

  It started with a rumble off in the distance but soon enough turned into the ear-popping throb of a Harley-Davidson motor pulling into the gravel parking lot.

  The driver was a big fellow in a white t-shirt and leather vest. His passenger was Regina. Before he eased his bike in at the end of the line, Regina hopped off.

  She was wearing tight blue jeans and clunky biker boots with a black halter top and a black leather vest. She kept squinting her eyes. For the most part, she just appeared to be drunk but both Mary and Alabaster knew she was catching flashing glimpses of both of them. As long as Alabaster kept his paws on Mary, he helped to buffer the energy needed to gaze through several dimensions at once. But he was also part of the picture she was seeing pop in her head.

  “What do you say?” Mary whispered. “I think this is enough. If I leave right away, I’ll probably catch her there.”

  Alabaster blinked.

  “What do you see?”

  I don’t know. But you might want to look at her companions. Anyone look familiar? Anyone who might want to ask why you are showing up in the same place a second time as Regina the biker? It wouldn’t be just you who gets in trouble but her too. It wouldn’t be good to have her suffer the same fate as Summer.

  “You’re right.” Mary quickly scanned the inside of the bar and studied the foggy, wavy faces as they passed by her third eye. “If I hurry, Alabaster. If I hurry, no one will recognize me.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  ACCESSORIES MAKE THE OUTFIT

  ACCESSORIES MAKE THE OUTFIT

  Mary dressed in record time, throwing on a pair of jeans that were too tight around the middle and a black cotton blouse that managed to hide a world of sins. She certainly didn’t want to look completely out of place but the fact she would be pulling up in a car was enough of a tip off that she wasn’t a regular customer.

  Still, Mary thought of Summer and her family, who were obviously in pain over the whole situation. Not to mention a certain Hillary Hulka, whose behavior was odd if nothing else.

  “Okay, Mary. This is it,” she cheered herself as she neared Billy’s Bar. “You better not use the same excuse that you just got turned around and need to find your way. What are you doing here? Someone is going to ask you. You better come up with something believable.”

  Her mind had drawn a blank and her tongue had gone dry as she pulled her car into the parking lot. There were several big men as bulging and intimidating as the motorcycles they rode on. The women weren’t much different. Mary couldn’t be sure but she thought that when she slammed her door shut and approached the open entrance that the music inside stopped, the conversations stopped, the crickets stopped and all eyes were on her.

  With as much courage as she could muster, tightly slinging her canvas purse strap over her shoulder, she walked into the bar as if she’d been there a million times.

  Pretending to look for someone, she stretched her neck and casually glanced around the place. Finally, her eyes fell on what had to be an out of work linebacker with a bald head protruding from a t-shirt that read Kill them all and let God sort them out.

  “Ma’am.” He pulled a cigarette from behind his ear and tucked it between his lips. Before she could see what he was doing, a zippo lighter ignited a flame and he lit the end of the cigarette.

  “I guess you want to see I.D.?” Mary joked.

  “No. I don’t.”

  “Then I guess you were just about to say welcome to Billy’s Bar. Well, thanks. I’ll just have a seat at the bar.” She turned, still clutching her purse but controlling each step to make sure no one noticed her knees shaking.

  The bouncer chuckled and went back to chatting with the other equally large men at the table next to the door.

  “What can I get you?” The bartender was a woman with the words Black Widow tattooed across the top of her chest with a spider web that spread further below the scoop of her low-cut t-shirt. Her hair was red and shaggy with natural curls.

  “I’ll just have a Co… Miller Lite.”

  Mary didn’t want to drink but she didn’t want to draw any attention to herself either. Ordering a non-alcoholic be
verage in this place was like shooting up a flare for someone to notice her and send her packing before she had time to talk to Regina.

  The jukebox pounded out a song Mary had never heard before. A steel guitar whined as a man sang about likin’ his women a little on the trashy side. It was actually a cute song, and Mary found her foot tapping as she scanned the crowd behind her in the mirror across from her behind the bar.

  Looking casually to the right, she noticed the bartender and the bald-headed bouncer having a conversation, looking in her direction. It wouldn’t be long now before they approached her and in no unspecific terms asked her to vacate the premises.

  “It’s you,” called a female voice from her left. “I’ve seen you before.”

  Mary turned and let out a sigh of relief when she saw Regina. But it quickly turned to panic when Regina’s demeanor changed.

  “Are you following me?” She leaned in close. “Running into you at the park was one thing. I believed your little old lady act. But showing up here. A person like you? That doesn’t make any sense unless you’re up to something.”

  “You’re right,” Mary said, taking a quick swig of her beer. “I am up to something. And I need to talk to you.”

  “Why? Got a wire on? Look, lady. I don’t know what your game is but all I’ve got to do is wave my hand and a couple of my friends here will make sure that no one ever finds even a hair of your head.”

  “Regina, you could be in real danger. I’m not a cop. I don’t have a wire on. I own a bead shop in the middle of Morhollow. I’m a widow.” She stopped short of mentioning her son was the police captain of said town. “I just want to ask you about that necklace.” Mary directed her eyes to it and then looked Regina in the face. She could have been a pretty girl but a rough lifestyle leaves its mark. Her eyes were a little on the puffy side and she had a cute figure but a beer gut was definitely developing. Her makeup was heavy and looked okay in the smoky, dim light of this bar or any bar. But take her in the sunlight and she’d look more like a young girl playing dress up instead of a grown woman. “Just ask yourself. Would I be in this place looking for you if it wasn’t serious?”

  “I don’t know.” Regina looked Mary up and down. “Maybe. What’s in it for you?” She waved at the blonde bartender who brought over a bottle of Coors and set it in front of Regina without a word.

  “Nothing. But I’ll buy you that beer and another round if you’ll just talk to me. When you drink the last drop, our conversation is over. That’s what’s in it for you.”

  Regina took the beer bottle in her hand, tilted it back and finished half of it in almost one gulp. Setting the bottle back down, she put her hand on her hip and let out a burp.

  “You better start talking, lady, the meter’s running.”

  As quickly as she could, Mary explained to Regina how she had seen that necklace two other places. One was around the neck of a girl now deceased and the other on the wife of a jewelry salesman in a ritzier part of town.

  “If it won’t get you in any trouble, could you tell me a little more about where you got the necklace?”

  “Is that all?”

  “It would be very helpful.” Mary let her guard down and had almost completely forgotten about the type of people she was around. The majority of them, if not all of them, had some kind of police record. They traveled around from state to state without a permanent home, with a strange sense of family more dysfunctional that anything else and a unified disdain for any kind of authority.

  “Look, I’m not like you.”

  Really? Do tell. Mary kept her expression stoic.

  “I’ve got a couple guys in town who I meet and see on occasion. They give me things. I don’t ask them.”

  Mary nodded, believing she understood Regina’s meaning that she was a “working girl.”

  “Your boyfriend doesn’t mind?”

  “Boyfriend?” Regina nearly spit out her beer. “Honey, this ain’t high school. I’m not going steady with no one. I belong to the motorcycle club because I choose to. Every once in a while. an opportunity comes along that’s too good to turn down. Getting with a guy outside the club who has money was one of those. And he gave me this.” Regina affectionately touched the necklace that looked so very different around her neck than it did around Hillary Hulka’s.

  “Was one of those men Bruce McGovern?”

  It was as if Mary had just passed the loudest most offensive gas ever known to man. Regina squinted her eyes and tilted her head to the left.

  “It isn’t very smart of you to bring up Bruce’s name. Not around here.” She took her beer and downed the last bit. “Our conversation is over.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  RUNNING LATE

  RUNNING LATE

  I’m so glad you made it home. Alabaster sat on the kitchen counter, waiting patiently for his late dinner. Mary scraped the tuna and cod cat food out of a can and onto a tiny saucer and placed it in front of her companion then stroked his head all the way down to his tail.

  So, was it worth it? he asked, daintily picking at his food.

  “Well, Regina is a hooker. She got the necklace from a john with money. I don’t think it was Bruce McGovern. But for whatever reason, the Outlaws don’t like him anymore. If they ever did.” Mary sighed and kicked off her shoes. “My head is pounding. I can’t tell if it is from the half a beer I managed to choke down or from the locator spell or just plain frustration.”

  “I thought you might be a little out of it so I left you a present in your bedroom.” Alabaster sat up and licked over the right side of his nose, then the left and then the right again before lowering his head down to nibble at more of his dinner.

  Mary knew what a gift from Alabaster was. Sure enough, a small mouse the size of a key fob was positioned directly in front of her slippers.

  Usually, Mary would pick the carcass up with several wads of toilet paper and send it off to a watery grave but this time she had a different notion.

  “I may need this in the future.” Her mind pulled a memory from way deep down in the recesses of all those wrinkles and crevices of a spell she had done with her mother as a child. It required one deceased mouse.

  “What was that for?” Mary saw the vision. She and her mother were sitting outside. It was warm and sunny. Spring had come and…

  “To help the flowers grow!” Mary shouted and snapped her fingers. Her mother taught her a spell that was simple but a little on the ghoulish side.

  It required the dead mouse, of course, tree sap from an oak, a few scrapings of moss and a biodegradable container. Mary’s mother had used an eggshell.

  They stuffed the eggshell with the ingredients, planted it in the ground near a rose bush that refused to produce anything but thorns, watered it with rain water and waited.

  Within three weeks, that thorny briar filled out into a lush bush pregnant with yellow roses. It bloomed the entire summer and came back year after year. Some of those roses were picked for her wedding.

  What an odd memory to suddenly have. Mary wiped a tear from her eye. Taking the dead animal into the kitchen, she thanked Alabaster with a saucer of milk and placed his gift in an empty mason jar. “Thank you, Alabaster. We may need this.” She held up the tissue-covered vermin on display in the jar and shook it a little. Tucking in deep in the back of the cabinet below her sink would be as safe a place as any.

  “Now, I think it’s time we rest.” Mary yawned and pushed her hair back from her forehead. “I’m feeling everything starting to rush at me all at once.”

  Between the re-awakening of her occult interests, the murder, and a whole stable of suspects, Mary couldn’t be sure if her fatigue was the result of too much sleuthing or the universal forces telling her to cool her heels. Perhaps it was a combination of both.

  The pounding on her front door woke her and Alabaster out of a dead sleep. As with all mothers whose sons are part of law enforcement, the first thought that came to mind was of Andrew. She jumped out of her bed and
staggered like a drunk to the front door. Yanking it open, she clutched her heart as she first saw the utility belt and gun. But quickly she focused and clenched her teeth.

  “Oh, it’s you.” She huffed and swayed a little on her feet as she looked at her son. “What are you doing here?”

  “Are you kidding?” Andrew stepped into the house, shaking his head. “I’m checking on you. Grace is beside herself because you didn’t open the store this morning. She said she called a couple times and got no answer.”

  Is that Andrew? Alabaster called from the bedroom. Mary heard his paws hit the floor and, with a giddy pep in his step, he padded his way to the foyer and instantly began to circle Andrew’s legs, leaving behind hair with every swipe.

  “What? What time is it?” Mary asked, shuffling to the kitchen.

  Andrew stooped down and scooped up the cat in his strong arms. “It’s a little after ten o’clock. Alabaster, what is wrong with my mom?”

  Where do I start? Alabaster replied but only Mary heard him. The feline slipped one paw underneath Andrew’s armpit and placed the other on his chest like he was a baby and let his favorite human stroke his fur and rub his belly.

  “I just had a rough night,” Mary replied as she filled up the coffee pot with water and grounds.

  “A rough night?” Andrew looked at the cat whose eyes were little green slits. “She’s out drinking again, isn’t she?” he teased. “She’s out and roaming the streets with bad influences like Dawn Williamson and coming home at all hours.”

  “Oh, Dawn Williamson. You’re crazy.” She eased into her stool behind her counter and scratched her head while yawning. “That woman wants nothing to do with the likes of me.”

  “Really, Mom. It isn’t like you to not show up for work. Not after everything you went through to get the place started.” Andrew looked worried.