Know who it was?
Francie Levigne!
Chapter 16
“You nosy meddler!” Francie screamed, her rage rife and thick as she took a swing at me with—guess what?
An ax. Yes, I was being hunted down like a small woodland creature by a woman more than twice my age. And she was coming for me, guns…er, axes blazing.
Man, for a woman of her maturity, she sure was in good shape. I wondered if she ate a lot of Wheaties, because she swung the ax up in the air, winging it around her head before rushing toward me with impressive precision.
I screamed and held up my hands, envisioning my brains splattered all over Inkerbelle’s. “Stop, Francie! Stop!” I cried out.
“It’s okay, Mom! I’ve got her!” someone else said from behind me, grabbing me around the neck and pulling me backward toward the big picture window until I thought my throat would burst open from the pressure.
Mom…? Oh, come on. Seriously? Pricilla was in on this, too?
As I struggled to tear her arm from around my neck, I dug my fingers into the flesh of her forearm, but she had a heck of a grip. Squeezing harder, she forced my chin upward.
“Pricilla, why are you doing this?” I rasped, lifting my chin to ease the strain. “What’s going on?” I pleaded, and she only gripped tighter, her heavy breathing whispering through my ears.
Then she laughed, ugly and rich with hatred. Why is it that perfectly normal people turn into rabid lunatics when trying to kill someone? And why does it always involve maniacal laughter and heavy breathing?
“Why couldn’t you just stay out of it? Why did you have to come back here?” she asked, her words angry.
“Stephania, easy does it. Don’t rile. Remember what I’ve taught you. I beg of you,” Win demanded in his calm, take-charge voice
“Come back here?” I blurted without thinking about Win’s words of caution. “That was you who rammed me into the wall?”
Shoving me forward until I twirled around, Pricilla and I came face to face with each other for the first time while her mother flanked my back. I saw her eyes clearly now via the streetlight outside the picture window, and they were glazed and angry.
“Yes, that was me, you nosy Nellie! I came here looking for something because of that idiot Hank. Do you know he laughed at us when he found out Abe left everything to him? He laughed harder when he told me I’d never be able to open my own store because he had all of Abe’s money. He hated me as much as I hated him, the big bully! He taunted me my entire childhood, and he just kept right on taunting! He knew how much I needed to get out of that stupid cafeteria at the high school where I barely make enough to pay my bills—while he rides around in a sports car and uses money that was never meant to be his!”
I can’t say why or even how, but the bit about someone wearing a hairnet seeing Coop arguing with Hank hit me like a freight train, making me forget all about the reasons Pricilla had come back to the store. After all, don’t most cafeteria workers wear hairnets?
“It was you who called in and left that anonymous tip to the police about Coop, wasn’t it? You wear a hairnet at the school cafeteria, don’t you?” I asked, backing up carefully so as not to get too much closer to Francie, still trying to figure out how I was going to get out of the middle of this sandwich of doom.
She nodded her head, tears streaming down her face, her body visibly trembling beneath her pink sweatshirt. “Yes, it was me!” Then she shrugged. “Besides, she was easy to blame, as violent as she is. She shouldn’t be wandering the streets anyway. I did Ebenezer Falls a favor!”
Win’s voice hit my ear with a calm, rational, yet urgent approach. “Look for a weapon, Stephania. Keep her talking while you look for anything to stop them. Play dumb if you have to. It’s two against one. You must think!”
“But how could you?” I asked, my voice raw and hoarse. “How could you frame an innocent woman? How will you live with yourself?” Gosh, that sounded stupid.
If she could live with murdering her own brother, she could live with framing someone for his death.
However, at least I’d succeeded in keeping her talking…and what she said next made me want to vomit.
Pricilla’s voice hit me like a ton of bricks, right in the gut. Her eyes were suddenly dry, and as calm as the day is long, she said, “Someone had to go down for it, right? It might as well be a violent piece of work like that one.”
A chill, so foreboding, so cold, flitted its way along my spine as some of the pieces began to fall into place in my brain, and despite Win’s warning, I had to keep them talking until I could find a weapon. Any weapon.
Gulping, I licked my lips. “How could you be so cruel, Pricilla?” I asked, hoping to goad her into talking just a little longer so I could find a way out of this.
“Like they say, only the strong survive,” she offered simply, her eyes, even in the dark store, now utterly vacant—devoid of any emotion.
“Stall, Stephania…” Win warned again.
“But to let someone as nice as Coop go to prison—possibly be executed for a crime she didn’t commit? How do you sleep at night?” I whispered, fighting the tremble in my throat.
Pricilla lifted her chin and looked directly at me. Now her eyes glittered in the dark. “I’ll sleep just fine knowing we didn’t end up in prison for Hank’s murder.”
My eyes scoured her thin face as my heart crashed in my chest. Hearing her say those words, hearing them out loud, made them that much more horrifying.
“Then answer me this. Why would you murder your own brother, Pricilla? Why?” I asked, my legs shaking, making it hard to stand my ground.
“She wasn’t alone, you know! I helped her—because Hank was a horrible, horrible man!” Francie hissed from behind me, her voice seething with hatred and frustration. “He was going to take everything Abe said he was leaving to me after he found out about Hank’s dirty real estate dealings. But Abe never had the chance to change his will before he had a heart attack—and left me with that heartless swine in charge of my purse strings!”
My eyes scanned the room as I fought to find something to say. What did you say to a mother who’d killed her son? What, I ask you?
“So you helped Pricilla kill Hank?” I squeaked, trying to keep my eyes on Pricilla but listen to Francie’s answer. “You killed your own son?”
The horror of it seeped into my bones, deep and driving. I mean, I had my troubles with my flighty, irresponsible mother, but she’d never tried to kill me, and even though Trixie’s text left me suspicious of Hank’s origins, Francie had raised him, for heaven’s sake! That made Hank hers.
Francie scoffed with a snort, her breathing becoming rapid. “Hank wasn’t my son!” she screamed, as though their lack of biology excused the fact that she helped murder him.
My eyes popped open wide. Gone was the grainy feel to them from lack of sleep, and in its place was my own revulsion as I confirmed the last piece of the puzzle.
Hank was mine, too.
Holy kittens and puppies, Luanne really was Hank’s mother. My suspicions about Trixie’s text were right.
“Stephania, I know you’ve already figured this out in that razor-sharp mind of yours, but you need to stall! Ask who Hank was to Francie and take note of the tape gun to your right on the small table by the stack of boxes. If you distract, you can make it, and then you come out swinging, understood?”
I nodded numbly, still too shocked to absorb what I was hearing. But I cleared my throat as the two bore down on me with menace.
“Wait!” I shouted. “Who was Hank to you, Francie, if not your son?”
“He was my nephew!” She howled the answer as though it brought her agonizing pain. “But I raised him like my own, just like I promised John I’d do when he begged me to take him back, after he’d slept with my lying, cheating sister, Luanne! After he got her pregnant! And after everything I did for her, keeping her from prying eyes so no one would know she was having a baby out of wedlock, wait
ing on her hand and foot. Do you know what she did then? After she had the baby, after we moved her to Ebenezer Falls with us for a fresh start? She stole our money and never looked back! Ran off to Beverly Hills and found herself someone else to deceive!”
Eyeing the tape gun, I kept my voice steady, despite my inner turmoil. Honest, I sometimes wonder how a killer doesn’t hear my heart pounding up a storm for all the crashing it does in my chest.
As I processed what Francie said, as I let the idea that she’d catered to her sister in order to keep her marriage intact, that she’d lived with a woman who’d slept with her husband, was forced to see them together every day, I asked, “But murder, Francie? How did you murder Hank?”
But Pricilla noted how irritable Francie was becoming, and said as much. “Mom, we have to do something with her, and we have to do it now!”
“Waaait!” I cried, moving toward the wall to my right in a nervous hop, keeping one eye on the tape gun. “At least tell me this before you whack my head off! How did you kill him?”
Now Francie cackled, as though she’d pulled off the great escape all on her own. “We poisoned him with Visine! So we wouldn’t have to hear him bragging anymore about how he was going to raise rents and make another million,” she spat. “Do you know what it was like to make nice with him after my Abe died? Knowing what he was doing? Abe was a good man! He was good to his renters. That money was supposed to be ours, once Abe found out Hank was a lying cheat, just like his mother!”
“It’s true,” Pricilla declared with equal pride in her voice, the tremble almost totally gone as she appeared to gain courage. “I found it on the Internet. Visine has a compound called tetrahydrozoline, and it constricts your blood vessels. Hank had trouble with his heart and his circulation. The doctor told him to lay off all those hot dogs and chicken and waffles at the food truck. But like always, Hank didn’t listen, which worked in our favor. Over a long period of time, and with a lot of it, Visine can kill you.”
Ah, the infamous tetra had nothing to do with medication, per se. Good to know for future reference. If I made it out of this alive, that is.
“Stall, Stephania! You must stall. Stall and inch. Talk and inch your way to that table!”
Heart in my throat, I said the first thing that came to mind. The first question I’d ask, were I allowed to interrogate them in an official capacity.
“What did you put the Visine in?” I asked with fake curiosity. And I inched in tiny baby steps toward the table.
Pricilla snorted, derision dripping from her next words. “Hank was always mooching a free meal, because who else would want to eat with that cheapskate? At least three or four times a week, he was at one of our houses, knife and fork in hand, all while we pretended there were no hard feelings that he’d stolen everything from us. Everything!”
“You put it in his food?” I squeaked, taking more tiny steps, praying I wouldn’t trip over my clumsy feet.
“Nope,” Pricilla said with a shake of her bleached-blonde head—and then she looked me dead in the eye, her words sly. “We put it in his drink. Boy, did Hank love good bourbon, which we made sure we had plenty to offer. Once he was good and buzzed with his first glass, we poured him another with a little something extra added, didn’t we, Mom?”
Francie’s breathing grew shallow, the smell of sweat filling the room, even though it was freezing, and I wasn’t sure if it was mine or theirs. “That’s exactly what we did. It sure took a long time, but it finally paid off!”
I kept hoping against hope that someone would walk by that big picture window, framing Pricilla in such an eerie light, but it just wasn’t happening. There was nothing but swirling snow out there.
And the more I hoped someone would walk by, the edgier Pricilla and Francie became. I heard it in there breathing, felt it in their body language, in the soft tap of their feet, rocking back and forth.
As I stood between them, both of them ready to pounce me, I eyed the tape gun one last time.
“And now that you know everything, Miss Cartwright, you really do have to go,” Pricilla said, her voice filled with deadly determination.
“You can just call me Stevie,” I assured as calmly as possible, even though my stomach was now in my throat. “Why be so formal when we’re at this stage of the game? It’s all fun and games until someone gets killed, right?”
And that was that. Francie Levigne snapped. “Shut! Up!” Francie screeched, the whiz of the ax sounding behind me, tearing through my ears.
And that was my cue to make a break for it. The second the words were out of Francie’s mouth was the second I made a dive for the tape gun, grabbing it up with a decent amount of precision, if I do say so myself.
“Well executed, Dove!”
As chaos ensued, and both women came charging at me, I crashed over the top of the small table, breaking it into little pieces and slamming to the floor. The wind was knocked out of me, but I somehow managed to get to my haunches and lurch to the side before Pricilla made a grab for me, luckily missing.
Thwack, thwack, thwack. The sound of the ax slicing the air made my knees turn to mush, making me zigzag and back up until I was almost pressed against the picture window. As Pricilla came at me full steam, catching me in the gut, I gave her a jab to the ribs I don’t think she’ll get over too soon, due to the fact that it made her cry out in pain and crumble to the floor.
And that was when Francie steamrolled me, enraged like a crazed bull.
It happened so quickly, I had no time to prepare, so when she crashed into me, knocking me backward, she knocked me right out the glass window, landing on top of me with all of her weight. I hit the snow-covered sidewalk like a ton of bricks, glass shards splintering and falling all around us.
And then I heard Win yell, ragged and raw, “Coop! Coop, help! Stevie needs you! Go, Whiskey, go get Coop!”
Which I thought was really strange, but I had no time to dwell upon it because while Pricilla was semi-neutralized, Francie was straddling me, and when she took her next swing, she only missed the top of my head by a hair before I grabbed the handle of the ax.
I managed to keep a firm grip—briefly. But in my panicked state, I lost my hold on the ax, and as the snow battered my face, that’s when Francie took the opportunity to raise the ax high in the air.
Her face distorted with rage, her eyes demonic and wild, her hair plastered to her skull by the wet snow, scared me almost like nothing else. I knew I had one chance and once chance only to catch that ax before it cracked my head open.
In that split-second before she lowered the blade of steel, with the hard, cold sidewalk at my back, and after several unsuccessful attempts to shake her off me by bucking my hips, I said a small prayer I’d see another day.
And miracle of miracles, I heard Coop shout at the top of her lungs, “Do not hurt Stevie Cartwright!” A half second before she knocked Francie to the ground by throwing herself right at her.
Francie landed with an ugly thump, her head cracking against the unforgiving concrete curb. From the corner of my eye, I saw the glint of steel when Coop dragged that sword of hers from her belt loop and readied it for the kill.
For the second time in as many days, every last one of us, earthbound or otherwise, yelled, “Coop, noooo!”
I launched myself up off the ground, snow lashing at me in cold splotches, and hobbled to this strange, beautiful, totally innocent creature and grabbed her by the shoulder. “Coop, no! I’m okay. Look. See?”
And then Trixie was running toward us and police sirens were blaring, filling the air. “Coop! Put the sword away!” she ordered, her feet crunching against the ice on the ground.
The sword clattered to the earth with the clank of heavy metal and solid ice connecting, as Coop threw her most prized possession away from her.
In that moment, just when I thought everything was safe, Pricilla rose like a Phoenix from the ashes with a feral howl, flying out of the broken window like a cannonball, aimed right at Coo
p. She roared her anguish as she barreled toward her, scooping the sword up and aiming directly for the top of Coop’s head.
And then there was “I’m a lover, not a fighter” Trixie, her eyes filled with horror—who, in a split second, made a choice.
Anyone who witnessed the look of determination in her eye would know it was a choice she made out of love for her friend, and therefore she didn’t consider it a choice at all.
That choice was to protect Coop by using her body as a human shield.
Her scream rang in my ears, so piercing and so loud my teeth chattered. Trixie’s a heck of a lot braver than she thinks. A heck of a lot braver than maybe I even thought, as gentle a soul as she appears.
She hurled herself into the path of that sword, hands stretched outward, reaching for Pricilla’s neck, mouth open wide. “Cooop! Look out!” Trixie bellowed, the echo of her words ringing through the street.
There, but for the grace of whomever rules this universe, Pricilla slipped on the snow and lost her grip on the handle…and it fell to the snow, never touching Trixie.
However, Trixie also fell into the snow, after crashing right into Coop, who let out a grunt and knocked me over as she fell on top of Francie Levigne, who grunted, too.
And that’s how the police found us—in one big people pile with Whiskey barking happily, running in circles around us in the freshly fallen snow.
I groaned when I rolled to my side, the crunch of glass leaving me nicked and in some places cut, my head throbbing out an incessant drumbeat, my limbs frozen and achy.
Officer Nelson looked down at me with concern in his eyes as he held out a hand to help me off the ground. He looked around at the mess, the crushed boxes inside the store, the litter strewn from one end to the other, the endless shards of glass from the window on the street.
I moaned, looking up at him, splotchy snowflakes falling as I took his hand and let him haul me upward. His face wasn’t nearly as hard and unyielding as it had been the other night.
“Miss Cartwright?”
“Officer Crabby Patty? How can I help you today?” I managed to get out on a cough while someone threw a heavy blanket around my shoulders.
Good Witch Hunting Page 18