She quickly stood and pulled her dress down, modestly covering her legs. She hadn’t even shaved in two weeks. There was no telling what they’d seen. Embarrassed, she searched for her sock and boot, both of which had gotten pushed under the settee.
The older of the two women, a striking brunette in dark brown pants and a red wool coat with a rhinestone Christmas tree pin on the lapel, laughed. “Honey, we’ve all been there.”
The younger, a pretty little redhead in a beautiful cream-colored coat and brown riding boots that appeared not to be hurting her feet, nodded. “For me? Every day. The first thing I do when I get home is kick my shoes off and stick them in a paraffin bath.”
“Yeah, well, at least you wait until you get home,” Liza grumbled.
She wondered if it would be worth it to make the ladies forget what they’d seen but ultimately decided against it. She had to pick her battles. And it wasn’t like she had warts on her toes or anything.
“So is there anything I can help you ladies with today?” she asked instead.
The older one had already started wandering around the store section, picking up bottles and boxes and studying the backs before placing them neatly back on the shelves. There was something familiar about her, but Liza couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
“You make your own soaps and lotions?” she called out to Liza over her shoulder.
“Well, I do, but I didn’t make those. They’re still homemade, though. I order them from a lady up in Massachusetts. I hope to have some of my own in here soon,” Liza said.
And she fully intended on making her own soon. Very soon. She was just so tired. Every night she just wanted to go home and pass out on the couch. Maybe eat some ice cream or something else that she could consume right out of the carton.
“I like these candles,” the younger one said as she picked up a cinnamon holder and gave it a sniff. “I make my own candles. Not to sell or anything, just to put around the house. I like crafting.”
“She’s not giving herself enough credit. Her candles are beautiful. She buys antique teacups and other interesting containers from flea markets and yard sales and uses them as her containers,” the other woman called. She’d moved on to Liza’s facial products–her lip balms, mascaras, and makeup removers.
“I’m Liza, by the way.” Now that she had her shoes on, she could join the women who were now wandering around her business, taking in everything they could. “I’d offer to shake your hand but, well, you just saw it on my feet so…”
“I’m Mare,” the younger one said. “And that’s my mother, Whinny.”
Liza could now see the resemblance between Colt and his sister. Her hair was redder than his, and her skin not as dark from working out in the sun, but they both had the same lively eyes, strong jawlines, and full lips.
“You’re Colt’s family,” Liza replied, feeling even more embarrassed by her own appearance. “It’s nice to meet you. He’s been very helpful to me since I came to town.”
“That’s my brother,” Mare agreed. “He’ll help just about anyone.”
Liza’s heart sank a bit at that. It wasn’t like she was interested in him, but it somehow made her feel less special, and that didn’t feel nice.
Whinny strode over to where Liza stood by the counter and studied her. She must have noticed and recognized the look on Liza’s face because she sent her daughter a withering glance. Placing a light hand on Liza’s arm, she said, “We’ve heard a lot about you. Frankly, I am glad to see that your lipstick bleeds and that you can’t wear those ridiculous shoes without getting blisters like the rest of us. I was beginning to think you were a saint.”
Liza, a little tickled that they’d “heard a lot about” her, and grateful for the other woman’s words, smiled with foolish delight. “Well, the cream does make them disappear very quickly. So that helps.”
“She’s good, Mom,” Mare shouted from the treatment room. “She’s even trying to make a sale!”
“I wanted to thank you for the dinner invitation. I look forward to it. I’ve been eating out almost every day or getting microwavable stuff,” Liza admitted. “You know, it’s very hard to grocery shop for one person. It feels so wasteful. I made myself a pot of macaroni and cheese the other night and after two bowls threw most of it out. Well, I actually fed it to a dog that’s taken up with me. I don’t know where he came from. Or if he is really a he.”
Whinny nodded, a touch of sadness in her eyes. “I know you what mean. My husband passed away and with all my kids out of the house I rarely cook the way I used to. It’s not only wasteful but a little sad sitting at a big table all alone.”
Liza, thinking the same thing about eating at her grandparents’ table, agreed. Something passed between the two women then and Liza understood that she’d made a friend, though she wasn’t sure quite how. It had been a long time since she’d had a female friend other than her sister.
“So, do you have any potions or anything for sale?” Mare asked as she all but skipped back over, appearing satisfied that she’d scrutinized everything on Liza’s shelves.
Liza, taken aback, was at a loss. “Potions?”
“You know, love spells, getting younger, stuff like that,” Mare prodded, giving Liza a little nudge.
Whinny rolled her eyes and swatted her daughter with her little Kate Spade purse. “Forgive my daughter. She watches a lot of television and has seen The Craft one too many times. Mare, please.”
“People say you’re really good at the massages and stuff,” Mare said with a sulk. “And then what you dud to Cotton. I just kind of hoped that maybe you had some fun things to, I don’t know, bring in the men or something.”
“I think you do just fine bringing in the men, dear,” her mother muttered.
“I don’t know what you think about Cotton but I didn’t–“
“But people said that you yelled at him in the store and…” Mare’s voice dropped off when she caught her mother’s strong glare.
“I saw him outside one night. He was lurking,” Liza explained, feeling faintly embarrassed. “And then my store was trashed. The detective laughed it off.”
“Yeah, cuz they’re cousins,” Mare spat.
“Well, that part is true enough,” Whinny agreed.
“But I didn’t do anything to him. I honestly don’t know what happened,” Liza continued.
“But can’t you do a spell and see and…”Again, Mare let her words end without finishing her thoughts.
“So did everyone know that my grandmother…”
Mare nodded. “Oh yeah. But she wasn’t, like, freaky or anything. She was always real classy about what she did. I hoped, you know, that since you’re young you might…”
Mare stopped and had the decency to look humiliated.
“It’s okay,” Liza assured her. “I try to help when I can but I’m afraid I’m probably not as exciting as you might think. Most of what I do are small things. Little things to help people, to heal them.”
Mare and Whinny exchanged glances then that Liza couldn’t quite interpret. Sometimes, the magic between a mother and a daughter was too much for even a seasoned witch to cut through.
But then Whinny laughed, a merry sound that broke the ice, and tugged on her daughter’s hair. “Why don’t you get to know her before you start asking her for love charms?”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Mare apologized.
The women chatted with Liza for several more minutes and then excused themselves, citing the need to get home before it got too dark.
“We’ll see you in a few days,” Mare said. In her hand she carried a mint green bag full of various creams, guilt purchases for being rude but Liza didn’t mind. She did, after all, have bills to pay.
She’d take what she could get.
When the door closed behind them, Liza leaned back against her counter and laughed. Her last date with anyone other than her ex-husband had been fourteen years ago.
Still, she watched a lot of mo
vies and was fully aware of what had just happened: she’d just been checked out by a man’s family.
***
“I’d advise you to get yourself an attorney, ma’am.”
That’s what Detective Kroner had told her over the phone, minutes after she opened her business the next morning.
Cotton Hashagen’s cause of death was ruled “undetermined.” They couldn’t figure out how he died, Kroner and apparently half the justice department in Kudzu Valley just knew Liza had something to do with it.
Cotton Hashagen had been discovered in the woods, one shoe off, glasses gone, and neither found anywhere near him. He’d died from internal bleeding but had no significant marks on his body other than a bruise on his head that didn’t look large enough to cause such an issue.
“Probably runned into a door or somethin’,” an officer said while he poked around Liza’s business. “Cotton drunk a lot. He could a done it that way.”
Detective Kroner had not been pleased with that little slip of information.
And Liza Jane Higginbotham was being blamed for it. Whatever it was.
An attorney. How was she supposed to find one of those, or pay for one? She had budgeted just enough money to get her through the toughest times of the year. A criminal defense attorney, if it came to that, could cost a fortune. And she had no alibi. Nothing.
Of course, the only “evidence” they had was the fact that she’d accused him of breaking into her business and had then yelled at him in public.
And that she was a witch.
She knew she hadn’t killed Cotton.
(Okay, she was almost certain she hadn’t killed him.)
But how could she prove it?
“And you tried looking into it?” Bryar asked her for the millionth time.
Liza, pacing up and down the stairs at work, trying to get the blood pumping before she let loose and did something stupid, like make that Detective Kroner fly through the air and wrap himself around the town’s only caution light, sighed. “Yes! Twice now. I can’t see a darn thing, other than that it looks like I might be responsible. I see blood on my hands, that’s it. But I didn’t mean to! I swear I didn’t.”
“Yeah, I believe you,” Bryar said. “Want me to try?”
“Yes, I do,” Liza said. “Can you look, please? Maybe I’m blocked but you’re not. Maybe I’m too close to it, you know? You know I don’t do revenge spells on people. You know I don’t go that far. Those things scare the crap out of me.”
“Yeah, well, you should do them…” Bryar griped as an image of Mode flashed before both their eyes.
“Everything you send out comes back to you,” Liza recited something Nana Bud had always told them.
But she was also on her sister’s side. It did feel like Mode was getting off easy. He got the house she’d loved, the pretty little rock and roll opera wife, the few friends they had together, the money…Liza wasn’t even asking for alimony.
“What about that woman with the Pizza Hut? Aren’t you afraid you’ll get back whatever you helped her do?” Bryar teased her.
Liza chuckled. “Not exactly. She didn’t, er, walk away with what she thought she was leaving with.”
“Yeah? You screw with her a little?” Liza could hear the excitement in Bryar’s voice.
Liza snorted. She had screwed with Lola Ellen Pearson a little and didn’t even feel guilty about it. “The spell I gave her cleaned up any issues they might have seriously been having in the kitchen, just in case, and then wiped the whole episode from her memory. Now, when she thinks of eating her rehearsal dinner there, she’ll only remember the good parts.”
“There are ‘good parts’ to having your wedding rehearsal dinner at the Pizza Hut?” Bryar sniffed.
“Yeah,” Liza said, dropping down to her settee and kicking off her shoes. She didn’t care if anyone walked in or not. “She told me she’d won eleven stuffed animals from the claw machine and her fiancé had played Alan Jackson for her three times on the jukebox. Said before the vomiting and diarrhea hit her; it was the best night of her life.”
***
Liza blasted Christmas music all the way home, tunes from a station that played nothing but holiday tunes from country music singers. She sang along with the standards and hummed with the originals from people she didn’t know, like Clint Black and Randy Travis.
“I can’t believe you don’t know who Randy Travis is,” Colt had admonished her when he’d given her the ride home. “You know Eric Church but not Randy Travis?”
“I’m a new convert,” she explained, a little defensive. “Okay, I admit it, it was a revenge thing. My mother hates country, says it reminds her of here. And then I was trying to find something that was completely different from the yuppie stuff my husband likes. You know, just to irritate him. He manages this pop opera group and even though I like them well enough I wanted something of my own. And then I found out I liked this. Joke was kind of on me.”
“Joke’s on you, all right. You’re in need of a real country education lady,” he’d drawled.
She was kind of hoping he’d give it to her. Someday. Maybe soon. She sure was thinking of him a lot lately.
In fact, on one lonely night when she hadn’t been able to sleep she’d even thought of doing a little charm, just something to turn his eye to her.
But that would’ve been wrong. If it had worked, and it would have worked because she was good at what she did, then one day it would’ve backfired. He would’ve felt beholden to her and not known why and ended up resenting her.
Nope. She was going to get her divorce, wait a respectable amount of time, and then do it the old fashioned way…
With little dresses, cute shoes, a new haircut, and shaved legs.
Since it was already dark and the temperature said it was below freezing, Liza was surprised to see Jessie, her neighbor, walking along the side of the narrow country road.
She’d have never stopped and picked someone up where she used to live but it was different here and she knew Jessie. Sort of. Once someone had seen you move things around the room without touching them, you kind of developed a special bond.
“Hey!” Liza shouted above her Christmas music, slowing down beside the woman who was bundled in a puffer coat and long scarf. “You need a ride?”
Jessie hesitated at first but the lure of the heat coming from the window must have changed her mind because seconds later she hopped in and thanked Liza gratefully. “I was just up the road, visiting my mama,” Jessie explained as Liza turned the volume down. Some Garth Brooks Christmas song about a bird and a girl named Maria.
“Everything okay?” Liza asked, although it was clear that everything was not okay.
Jessie grew quiet and gazed out the window. The sadness stemming from her was almost tangible and Liza felt it as keenly as if it were her own. She had a bit of her sister’s sense of strong empathy herself. Liza decided not to press the issue hard, but tried to find a way to bring it up so as she passed her own driveway and headed towards Jessie’s farm she said lightly, “I’ve had a rough week myself. I was accused of murdering a dude.”
“Yeah, I heard about yours,” Jessie admitted with a small smile. “Did you do it?”
“I don’t think so,” Liza laughed. “But that’s going to be hard to explain.”
Jessie shook her head. “I’m real sorry about that. Anything I can do?”
“I don’t think so. I’ll be okay.”
And then Jessie began to talk. “It’s my husband. The factory laid him off, right here at Christmas too. I don’t know what we’ll do. We got three kids and hadn’t done no shopping yet. I could work, but we can’t afford no daycare. He can get a job up in Lexington but the gas it would take to get there and back ever day would about be as much as he got paid.”
“Geeze, I’m sorry Jessie,” Liza replied, and she was. She knew that Jessie’s husband worked hard and that they took care of her disabled parents and their three kids on top of that. Sometimes life
just wasn’t fair.
“I went down to the food bank today. They can give us stuff for Christmas dinner. But it’s just so embarrassing, you know? And I filled out the Food Stamps forms? My husband’s about to die he’s so humiliated. We’ll figure something out, but it’s just stressful.”
“Geeze,” Liza replied. “I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t want to lay all my problems on you or nothin’,” Jessie said, shaking her head in frustration. “It just feels like if it’s not one thing it’s another. You know what I mean?”
“I know what you mean.”
“We just try so hard. He works like a dog anyway and the kids ain’t had new clothes in forever. I don’t shop for myself, we don’t go on no big vacations or nothing. It just don’t seem fair,” Jessie spat. “Just not fair.”
Liza dropped the other young woman off at a small farm house encircled by towering pine trees. At the sight of their mother climbing out of Liza’s truck, the three little faces that peered out from windows bordered with white flashing Christmas lights were nearly as bright as the bulbs.
Chapter Fifteen
ALTHOUGH SHE was in the treatment room, changing sheets on the bed; Liza knew it was Colt walking through the doors as soon as she heard the jingling of the bells.
After the week she’d had, Liza was happy to see a friendly face.
“Be out in a second!” she called, giving the corners one last tug. Her new sheets would be in within the next few days, but so far nobody had complained about the Walmart quality sets she had on her table.
“How’s it goin?” he asked as she walked out into the main room. With his boots caked with mud and sap all over his brown coat, he kept a respectful distance and stayed on her “Welcome” doormat, not wanting to track in anything.
She did love a man with manners.
“Well, let’s see,” Liza began. “My business was trashed, the police laughed off my story, and then the guy I accused of trashing it wound up dead the day after I yelled at him in front of half the town at a BP station. So my week has been better. How about yours?”
A Broom With a View Page 14