Witches and Wine

by Samantha Silver

  I waited until I fully understood the words and joined in with her, chanting the strange words over and over. A peculiar sensation started buzzing up through my fingers and hands and into my arms, so I shut my eyes to concentrate more, trying my best to hold onto Karen's hands even though everything in me told me to let go.

  It was like a strange electric wire was holding us in place together, and as Karen's voice faded off, I wasn't sure what to do. Was I supposed to keep going?

  "Okay, Taylor." Karen's voice sounded clear as a bell all of the sudden, startling me so much that I ended up dropping her hands and nearly jumping out of my own skin. But when I opened my eyes, all I could do was frown.

  "Where are you?" I asked, turning to look behind me. Karen had completely disappeared on me. "I just heard you."

  A laugh came from way too close to me for it to be real, and something pushed at me, causing me to stumble backward into the office door-frame. "It's just me, girl. I told you it would be interesting to watch," she giggled. I couldn't see her, but somehow I pictured the smug smirk on Karen's face anyway.

  "Wait… invisibility! That's what that spell was!" I guessed, my eyes wide. "Holy crap, that's way better than your mom’s tide pod spell! This is insane, I seriously cannot even see you."

  "Yeah? Well, how about looking behind you, in the mirror there."

  Confused, I flipped on the light to the small bathroom behind us and let out a pitiful screech.

  "Shh!" Karen laughed, bumping into me as she passed to the right of me. "See what I mean? Or I guess you don't."

  While I expected to see my own reflection, I instead found myself staring at nothing. There was no proof Karen and I were here, except for the sounds we were making. I turned this way and that, as if a side profile would all of a sudden make me appear in the mirror. I was in complete awe; the mirror definitely hid the fact that my jaw had been on the floor since the moment I’d turned on the lights. "How? I mean, that's not my power, right? Barbara told me it was healing."

  "Right. That's why we needed the spell, so I could share my power with you. Temporarily, anyway. There are regular invisibility spells, of course, but my special witch power is the ability to make myself invisible. According to the book, it'll last an hour, so we better hightail it to the police station if we want this to be worth it. C'mon," she said, fumbling as she flipped the light off to the bathroom and tried to find my hand to tug me along after her.

  The night air was just starting to cool, and for a second I wished I'd thought to bring my jacket along with us as goosebumps crept up my arms.

  The sidewalk was thankfully pretty empty, and we gave the few people we did encounter a wide enough berth that they were definitely none the wiser when it came to our presence. The police station somehow looked more ominous at nighttime as it rose up in front of us.

  "What's the plan? Just hope no one notices the door opening by itself?" I whispered to Karen, thinking she was definitely on my left.

  "Shh! Look!" she said, her voice coming from my right. Whoops.

  Inside the building was Mrs. Maberly, walking toward the front doors from the inside with her jacket on and purse in tow, looking like she was getting ready to leave for the night. Without seeing her, I already knew Karen was running up to the steps to wait for Mrs. Maberly to come out, and I followed behind her just as fast, accidently bumping into Karen when I reached the top landing of wide steps. "Sorry!" I whispered.

  Mrs. Maberly paused to say something to someone inside, her nasally laugh loud enough to hear clearly outside.

  Karen groaned. "C'mon, c'mon!"

  Finally, Mrs. Maberly slowly pushed open the door, the corner of her skirt getting caught on the bottom of the door handle just long enough for the both of us to skootch on past her. Her eyes widened and I inhaled sharply as I thought I might have breezed a little too close to her, but she shook her head like she was scolding herself for being silly and unhooked her skirt, letting the door quietly close behind us.

  "That was a bit too close for comfort," I mumbled.

  "No kidding. All right, first things first. We need to let my mom know we're here."

  I nodded instinctively even though I knew perfectly well she couldn't see me. "Yeah, okay. Let's go."

  We both tiptoed around the lobby area and back to where the holding cells that we visited earlier were. Barbara wasn't paying any attention, too preoccupied with the magazine in her lap to notice anything had changed, but she wasn't the only one in the room, either.

  Sweeping the floor was a younger looking police officer, or maybe not even an officer just yet, based on his badge-less uniform. Karen and I hurried up and huddled to a far corner quietly as possible as the young man, mouthing along to the words playing from his phone through his headphones, continued sweeping further away from us.

  I felt like I’d been holding my breath forever by the time the guy was finished sweeping the dirt pile up into the trash can, and I even felt Karen let out a breath of relief as he finally walked out of the room. It felt like an hour had passed, when in reality it was more like five minutes.

  "Mom!" Karen hissed. "Mom!"

  Barbara didn't look up from her magazine, but tapped her foot on the floor. "I thought I felt someone else's presence in here. What are you doing here? I already told you I have everything under control."

  "I know, but we wanted to come see if we could get any more information about the case," Karen whispered, closer to her mother's holding cell.

  This time Barbara looked up, frowning. "We? Oh goodness, please tell me you did not drag Taylor in here with you."

  "Guilty," I whispered, looking around to see if anyone else was nearby. "Sorry, Barbara, but Karen's right. This whole thing seems weird."

  She let out a long sigh and closed her magazine, having given up. "Chief Benson is already gone for the night, but you may hear something from the other officers. They've been rather chatty today, considering."

  "Considering what?" I asked.

  "Considering nothing interesting ever happens in Rosemary Creek, much less murder," Karen answered for her mother. "It's probably the first murder case most of them have ever worked. We better head back there, then, before anyone else leaves."

  Barbara stood up, unsure of where to look, but sticking her elegant hand through the bars anyway, squeezing what must have been Karen's hand. "Please be careful, girls."

  I skirted around the edge of the wall first, waiting for Karen's presence next to me before slowly walking into the open office area behind the front desk.

  There were still a few cops milling around, one of them leaning casually on the edge of a desk, while the other two stood in front of him, both of them with their arms folded across their chests.

  Just as Karen had suspected, the murder case was on their minds.

  "Yeah, Benson just gave me the file earlier this afternoon. Looks like Mortran was knocked out cold. Around eight that morning is what the coroner's report said," the taller officer told the other two. "Single blow to the head, no less. Whoever did it was packing one hell of a backswing, I tell you what."

  The one leaning on the desk piped up. "So, it was for sure a golf club, then? You thinking a driver? Or maybe a nine-iron?"

  The taller man shrugged and loosened his tie. "They said it was blunt force trauma to the left temple by an 'object similar to a golf club.' We don't know much past that. At least about the murder itself, although Benson has some other potential suspects in mind. Just between us, I don't think he ever had a chance of pinning this on Barbara Dunham and I didn't really see the point in him trying."

  "The man is stubborn as a mule, that's why. Precisely because we told him it was pointless, probably," the shorter man with the deep voice chuckled, shaking his head as he swept his hat off of it. "I did hear that Benson is looking into investigating the rest of the partners at James & Sons, though. Lawyers: can't live with them, can't live with them, am I right?" A general murmur of agreement with this last comment passed thro
ugh the men. "My bet is we'll be letting her out tomorrow. Not much to keep her in here on, other than having the unfortunate luck of being Henry Mortran's first wife."

  All three of them laughed at this as the man on the desk slid off the edge. "Well, fellas, I better get over to the radio. Heath, you got night patrol tonight, right?"

  The taller one, Heath I supposed, groaned and they all chuckled again before starting to move away from the corner they ‘d been chatting in.

  The moment I realized they were headed our way, I panicked nearly tripping on the desk in my frantic attempt to get away, before I made my way to the front of the lobby area where I could just make out Karen's erratic breathing.

  "We’d better get out of here," she hissed, not bothering to wait for anyone else to drop by before she shoved one of the double doors open and ran down the front steps, me following desperately behind her.

  Chapter 11

  I was learning just how much chillier the mornings were downstairs in our part of the house as I sat at the table with my knees drawn up against my chest, carefully sipping my coffee. My bare feet were definitely not fans of the cool tile flooring.

  Karen was picking at her omelet, spaced out.

  "Hey, I probably should've asked you last night, but are you, you know, all right? After hearing about, well," I continued awkwardly, cutting myself off. I didn’t want to finish the last part. Henry Mortran might have been a terrible person all-around, but he was still Karen's father, and to hear about him getting done in by golf club to the head, of all things, didn't seem like the kind of thing a daughter wanted to hear.

  She sighed. "Yeah. I mean, I guess so. It's stupid, right?"

  I dropped my feet to the floor, despite how cold it was, and leaned forward. "No way. Stupid to be upset about your father's murder? Hardly."

  "I just wish I could put the rest of it together. I should have tried to somehow make a copy of the case file."

  I snorted, accidentally spraying little droplets of coffee everywhere. "How would you have managed that?” I asked, wiping at my chin. “Even being invisible has its limits. With the cops right there on top of everything, there was no way we'd have been able to get access to the file, much less have it mysteriously float away and place itself on the photocopier without them knowing about it."

  Nodding along, Karen still seemed deep in her own thoughts. "I guess. Maybe the next step is to go through my dad's address book and pick out all the people who may or may not play golf," she said half-heartedly, pushing her plate away.

  "Or," I began, my words rushing out faster than I could think them, "we could go back and try to find out more information about a certain whackadoo college professor. We both agreed that there was something off about him, right? Why don't we work on that lead while we're still figuring out how to go through the rest of the list? At the very least, we know where to find him."

  Karen's eyes seemed to light up. "You're absolutely right, Taylor! Why sit around here and stew in our questions when we could just start asking more?"

  "Out for the day?" I repeated, looking over at Karen. It was like watching a balloon deflate right in front of my eyes. "Do you know when he'll be back?"

  The girl in front of us scratched something across a composition book, sighing to herself without looking back up. "Not today."

  I took a deep breath, struggling to think of what to do next. This was supposed to be our next stop for answers, but without the actual suspect, that was going to be difficult. With this girl playing gatekeeper in front of the Economics department office, there was no getting to Phil Cosgrove’s desk like we had hoped. I looked down at the young student teacher's assistant and pasted on the most polite smile that I could muster.

  "Listen, I get it, ah, Rhiannon," I said, catching her name from the front of the black and white notebook. "You're just trying to get your credit here, without having to babysit anyone. I'm sure being Mr. Cosgrove's T.A. isn't the easiest job, either."

  She glanced up at me. "I'm listening."

  "Phil Cosgrove is a complicated man, believe it or not, with a complicated past. We're trying to figure out just how complicated it is," I told her, trying to go for intrigue. The girl looked positively bored out of her mind, and maybe if we just talked a good game I’d be able to ply some information out of her.

  "Oh jeez, you’re terrible at this," Karen muttered and nudged me over, fishing something out of her purse in a hurry. She produced a crumpled twenty-dollar bill and slapped it down on the desk in front of Rhiannon. "You keep track of the professor's schedule, right? Do you have some way of knowing where he was, say, three days ago?"

  An easy smile spread across Rhiannon's face. "Hmm, three days ago, huh? I think I might just have what you're looking for." She pulled up a calendar schedule on her desktop screen, blocks of it highlighted in different colors. I saw the dates scroll by until she hovered over the morning it all happened. "Right. Looks like Mr. Cosgrove had some kind of meeting or something, until his afternoon class."

  Karen leaned over to get a better look, and I was momentarily thankful that I wasn't as short as she was, always having to look closer to see anything.

  "What time does that say? From seven thirty until noon?"

  The girl nodded, her black bob bouncing around her face. "Mm-hmm."

  "Do you know what kind of meeting it was?" I asked. “Or with who?”

  "Usually he makes a note of it here, but no, I don't see anything. Kinda weird. Oh! I do remember him leaving that day, because I had just come in to help him grade his essay papers from the week before and he had to leave pretty quickly. Ugh, and he asked me to do them all on my own, too, like I get paid for this, or something. I was late for a breakfast date as it was."

  Karen and I exchanged a look. "Did he seem like he was in a hurry?" she asked her.

  Rhiannon nodded, smacking a bright pink piece of bubblegum between her teeth. "Yeah, actually, he was. He seemed pretty ticked off, too. Don't know why. I think something to do with his ex-wife maybe. Sometimes I hear him mumbling to himself about her. It's pretty pathetic, actually. I’ve heard some of the messages they’ve left for each other since I started working for the department. I don’t know which one hated the other one more - her or him. Anyway, when he came back later that afternoon he looked a little weird. I thought maybe he had gone out with some of the other teachers but nope, he came back by himself."

  "Right. Thanks, Rhiannon," Karen said with a grim look on her face.

  "Pleasure doing business with you," the girl smirked, sliding the twenty into her jeans pocket.

  I waited until we were back outside the Citizens Building, before turning to Karen. "Well. Now we really know where he was that morning," I said, folding my arms across my chest. "At that mystery meeting. And he doesn't seem to have an alibi."

  She nodded, shifting her purse back over her shoulder. "Exactly. I should've known Phil Cosgrove was lying."

  "Phil Cosgrove was lying about what?"

  I jumped about a foot, not expecting to hear a voice so close to me, but when I looked over I was stunned into a weird, goofy silence. A tall man decked out in a nice navy-blue suit, with sandy blonde hair cropped close, and a ridiculously well-defined jaw was standing a mere five feet away staring right at us.

  "Sorry, didn't mean to startle you." The smile even showed off a cute dimple in his chin. Ugh. I was always a sucker for men with dimples.

  "It's okay, Ken. What are you doing here, anyway? Aren't you way past your community college years?" Karen laughed, totally at ease. Obviously, the two of them knew each other.

  "I was about to ask you the same thing," he teased, before turning his attention to me. "Hello. I don't think I've seen you around before."

  Something inside me screeched at the part of me that had suddenly went mute. "Er, um, I'm Taylor."

  "My new room-mate," Karen flawlessly added. "She just moved in with me."

  "Oh, okay, yeah. I remember my mom telling me you were looking for one. Hi
, Taylor," he said to me, flashing a smile in my direction. "I'm Ken. Karen and I grew up on the same street."

  "Corinne's son. He was a couple of grades ahead of me in school," Karen explained.

  Ken winced as soon as Karen mentioned his mother. "Oh no, so you've already met her, huh? Sorry in advance for anything she might have said on my behalf. She has a tendency to do that, trying to talk me up to every pretty woman she meets," he added apologetically.

  A blush crept unwillingly up my face. "Um, yeah. I did, but it’s no problem. She seems nice," I lied, trying to completely disregard the fact that he just referred to me as a pretty woman. Great, I was regressing to the mental level of an eighth grader with a crush thanks to a silly compliment.

  "What are you doing here, though, Ken?" Karen got back down to business. "Do you know Phil Cosgrove, by any chance?"

  It was evident by the way Ken’s face immediately dropped all signs of humor that he did indeed know him. "He was a client of the firm's. Which I'm assuming you both already knew, since you're here trying to question him."

  "We weren't questioning him, really," I began, immediately wanting to backtrack as his eyes turned to me. "I mean, he's not even here right now."

  Ken arched a brow at me. "Oh yeah? I was hoping to speak with him, but I guess I'll have to wait for some other time."

  "Why are you here, Ken? Seriously." Karen asked again.

  "Let's just say I have my own vested interest in the situation," Ken replied, staring straight ahead. "Your father was my boss. What happened to him affects all of us at the firm. Especially with the way things have been going lately."

  I leaned forward, intrigued. "The way things have been going? Is something happening to James & Sons?"

  Ken clammed right up. "What? Oh, uh, no. I simply meant that something like this has far-reaching ripples of effect. And it's always good to understand where each stone was dropped. That's all."