Spells and Jinglebells

by ReGina Welling

  Poe sighed and sat down at her computer, but instead of going to the pet store’s website, she pulled up her favorite search engine and typed in her new neighbor’s name. Seneca may not have told her much about herself, but that didn’t mean that Poe wouldn’t know all about her by the end of the day.

  Chapter Two

  Mischa Henley pulled her minivan into a parking space at the Kensleigh Landing East Bank & Trust parking lot. It was only nine AM, but she was already on her third cup of coffee thanks to the stress of the school run and her other errands. With one child at the middle school and one at the elementary school, Mischa felt like she spent way too much time in her car every day anyway, but she couldn’t say no when her husband, Joe, had asked her to drop off a deposit at the bank.

  Joe worked in a lumber mill by day but dabbled in carpentry on the side. Specifically, he created artwork from unused bits of lumber and pieces of trees. He’d carved a garden gnome from a block of wood and sold it to an older gentleman who lived in the neighborhood. Mr. Gibbons had paid him with a handful of wrinkled ten dollar bills and a stack of rolled quarters. Mischa hefted the tote bag carrying the money and made her way into the bank, anxious to get rid of the cumbersome cash.

  Mischa smiled at the teller as she approached the counter, ready to make small talk while the young woman counted out all the coins in the deposit. She felt bad bringing in so much change, so Mischa had also brought the remainder of her apple muffins as a way to make up for the inconvenience.

  “I’ll just go and sit over there while you do the deposit,” Mischa suggested, leaving the teller with her muffins and money. As she turned to find a seat in the bank’s lobby, a tall blonde woman caught her attention.

  “Excuse me,” Mischa called out, interrupting the woman’s walk across the lobby. When she turned around to see who was calling out to her, the woman frowned.

  “Were you calling me?” the blonde woman asked.

  Mischa smiled widely, hoping that she looked friendly and not like a crazy person. “I think we’re neighbors,” Mischa said, offering her hand. “I’m Mischa Henley. I live two houses down from you, I think.”

  Seneca smiled back at Mischa, but it was a forced smile. “Yes, I think I saw you outside my neighbor’s house this morning,” she replied. “I met her, too.”

  “Oh?” Mischa asked, raising one eyebrow quizzically. “Poe introduced herself? That’s unusual for her. She’s normally a little reserved with new people.”

  “Actually, I introduced myself. I’m Seneca Wolfram. I couldn’t help but notice that there was a gathering outside this morning.” She didn’t say anything else, but Mischa knew what was implied.

  “Oh, yeah, that,” she said, widening her smile forcefully. “We totally hoped to catch you and ask if you wanted to stop by this evening at my place,” Mischa lied. “I was thinking that we could have some snacks and drinks, you know, get to know each other? Mine’s the tan and yellow two-story with the red mailbox.”

  Mischa never stopped smiling, hoping that Seneca would believe that she was being truthful. Mischa’s grandmother had always warned her about the dangers of gossiping and now here she stood, facing the consequences of a potentially angry new neighbor. All because she and her coven couldn’t keep their gossipy tongues from wagging right in front of Seneca’s house. Her jaw was beginning to ache from the effort of maintaining her smile.

  Seneca thought about the invitation for just a moment. “I’m sorry, Mischa, but I have plans this evening. I’m still unpacking everything and, honestly, I just want to relax after work. I haven’t slept properly in days and I’m afraid I wouldn’t be good company,” she added.

  Mischa nodded sympathetically. “Oh, I can totally understand how you feel. And I’m sure the police have been bothering you nonstop since what happened to Edith.”

  Seneca rolled her eyes. “Oh, god, don’t get me started.” She shook her head, then sighed. “I don’t want to talk ill of the woman because she obviously had mental issues,” Seneca began. “But I can’t but help feel I dodged a bullet with that woman.”

  Mischa’s eyes widened. “What do you mean?”

  Seneca glanced around the lobby of the bank nervously. “She assaulted me the first day I moved in.”

  “What? Edith hit you? What did you do?” Mischa’s eyes felt as wide as her smile. She forced both to relax.

  “I didn’t do anything to her,” Seneca assured her. “I only waved at her when I was going out to my car to get some of my things. The crazy old woman ran up and threw a shovelful of dog crap at my front door and then waved the shovel in my face like a lunatic.” Seneca took a deep breath, then continued. “She was rambling on about my dog pooping on her lawn, but I can assure you that Alistair does not go poop on other people’s properties.”

  “Alistair? Is that your dog’s name?” Mischa asked.

  Seneca nodded quickly. “He’s house trained to use those doggy pads while I’m at work and then he has his own outdoor area behind the house for other times. And I never let him go out front because I don’t want him near the road, so whoever’s dog left her that particularly disgusting gift, it wasn’t mine.”

  Mischa thought about this for a moment. She could definitely imagine Edith doing such a disgusting thing--the woman had been crazier than a loon--but was Seneca the type of person to tolerate such an action and not retaliate, even a little?

  “What did you do?” Mischa asked. “After she left, why didn’t you call someone?”

  Seneca laughed a stilted, manic chuckle. “Who was I supposed to call? I don’t know anyone here yet. And I’m not calling the cops on my neighbor five minutes after I’ve moved in. I felt helpless, and I cannot stand feeling helpless.” She shifted on her feet and pushed a strand of blonde hair behind one ear. “At least now I know I won’t be having anymore run ins with that woman.”

  Mischa struggled to find a response to Seneca’s icy demeanor. A woman had died. She may have been an awful woman who threw poop at people with a shovel, but she was dead and surely the appropriate response to her death shouldn’t be relief. Thankfully, a call from the teller sliced through the tension that had developed between Mischa and her new neighbor.

  “Mrs. Henley, here’s your receipt,” the teller chirped.

  Mischa crossed the lobby and took the receipt while the teller offered Seneca one of Mischa’s apple muffins.

  “You really need to try one of these, Seneca, they are delicious!”

  Seneca smiled politely. “Maybe some other time,” she replied. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Mischa, but I’m afraid I’ve lost my appetite after our little conversation.” She smiled, but it was a plastic one, something she probably learned in customer service training.

  “Some other time, then,” Mischa replied before hurrying back to her car with her deposit receipt.

  Chapter Three

  Eleanor “Ellie” Watkins stuck her head inside the walk-in freezer and did a quick count of the boxes of fries she had on the storage shelf. She did some mental calculations, then jotted a number down on her order form. The nagging thought that she really ought to train one her morning staff to do orders flitted through her mind, but she pushed it away. Ellie knew she couldn’t trust any of the employees to handle such an important job, not because they were incompetent, but because they were super-incompetent.

  She sighed as she passed the handful of workers she had in today. All but one were high school students who were less than thrilled that they’d been asked to work so close to their Christmas break. The one employee who wasn’t a pimply teenager was Berneice, a seventy-year-old with bunions who moved at a snail’s pace except when it was time to go home.

  She peered out into a fairly empty lobby, which wasn’t unusual. Eattaburger’s drive thru did exponentially more business than its interior, at least throughout the week. She could hear Sam, the drive through operator, talking to a customer. Ellie sighed as he repeated the order back but got half of it wrong. Sam was usually far
more interested in playing on his phone than he was in actually getting orders correct, but he was also one of the only kids who showed up consistently and didn’t complain when he had to work extra hours.

  A shriek of laughter told her that her daughter was goofing off again. Holly Watkins had begged her mother for a job at the fast food restaurant but she was hardly what Ellie would call a great employee.

  It wasn’t that Holly was lazy or disrespectful. Well, maybe she was disrespectful, but that’s because her manager was also her mother and no self-respecting teen could be seen showing respect to her parent all the time. Ellie told herself that Holly was just going through a phase, an awful one that would end soon and leave Ellie with only memories and a daughter who wanted to actually spend time with her mother instead of avoid her at all costs, even when they were working together.

  And Holly seemed to have terrible luck, which translated itself into an extreme clumsiness that only seemed to bother those around her. In the few months since she’d begun working at the Eattaburger, Holly had broken the doorknob to the ladies’ bathroom, spilled countless drinks, and burned several batches of fries. Ellie had moved her daughter to the salad station in the hopes that she’d be safer there, but Holly had still managed to cut herself and bleed all over someone’s chicken salad.

  Now Ellie handled the slicing herself and Holly merely assembled salads. Ellie hoped that her daughter would tire of working at the burger restaurant soon, but the way her daughter was laughing at that moment, it didn’t seem like an imminent possibility.

  “Excuse me,” a voice said, pulling Ellie’s attention back to the lobby. It came from a very angry looking blonde woman in a skirt suit. “Can I speak to a manager?”

  Ellie’s jaw clenched involuntarily. She forced her biggest smile and stepped up behind the counter. “I’m the manager. How can I help?”

  Ellie and the woman both registered a sense of recognition at the same time. It was Ellie who acknowledged it first.

  “You live on my street.” It was a simple statement, but it came out like an accusation. Ellie cringed. “Sorry, I just recognized you. What seems to be the problem Miss…”

  “Wolfram. You can call me Seneca. And the problem is that my order is all wrong. I ordered a chicken salad with a small side of fries and I got a plain salad with burned fries and something that looks like an uncooked hamburger in a box.” She slid a bag with the Eattaburger logo on it across the counter to Ellie. “I don’t think the person at the drive through understood me when I placed my order,” she suggested.

  Ellie peered inside the bag and groaned. “I’m so sorry, Seneca. Let me replace this for you on the house, you know, to welcome you to the neighborhood.” She disappeared into the back of the restaurant before Seneca could reply and replaced the incorrect order with the right one in under a minute.

  “Here you go. And I’ve thrown in an apple pie as well. Now, let me see how much that was so I can refund you the price of the meal.” She began pushing buttons on the cash register but Seneca stopped her.

  “Honestly, don’t worry about it. Thank you so much for handling this so efficiently. I was beginning to think I’d made a terrible mistake in moving here to Kensleigh Landing East. I’ve had nothing but friction from everyone on our street, well, except for that Mischa woman. Is she always so darned friendly?” she asked.

  Ellie nodded. “Uh-huh. And Poe really isn’t as bristly as she seems. Well, at least not all the time. Actually, our biggest pain in the rear bought the farm just after you moved in, so I think you’re safe,” she added with a grin. “Oh, I know I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but Edith wasn’t really that nice of a person. I’m sorry she was killed the way that she was, but still, I can’t say too many people will be wailing at her funeral.”

  Seneca looked confused. “Killed? I thought she just died, you know, of old age and acrimony.”

  Ellie leaned across the counter conspiratorially. “No, it looks like she was murdered. At least, that’s what I hear.” Truthfully, Ellie had heard nothing of the sort, but she wanted to see how the snooty blonde reacted to such a horrific proclamation.

  The reaction she got wasn’t quite what she expected. Seneca’s face turned two shades paler than a vanilla milkshake. She picked up her bag of food and thanked Ellie again, then mumbled something about being tired and wanting to put her feet up. Ellie watched the woman hurry from the restaurant, nearly knocking Berneice over in the process.

  “What was her problem?” Berneice asked, wiping the soda machine down for the twentieth time that day.

  Ellie shook her head. “I guess maybe I said something she didn’t want to hear,” Ellie replied. “Why don’t you go ahead and leave early tonight, Berneice? It’s slow and I can finish up by myself up here.”

  Berneice had already begun removing her apron when she hurried around the counter to clock out. “See you tomorrow, Ellie,” she cooed before walking out the door.

  Ellie glanced at her watch. Ten more minutes and her assistant manager should arrive and Ellie could go home for the evening. She could wait ten minutes to call Mischa and tell her that she’d be able to meet with her and Poe. She just didn’t know if she could wait until she saw them to tell Mischa about their new neighbor’s bizarre behavior at the restaurant.

  Chapter Four

  “I can’t believe you told her Edith had been murdered. I bet she freaked out.” Poe pulled her feet in more tightly beneath her on the worn out sofa. She shoved a cracker topped with sharp cheddar into her mouth and chewed noisily.

  Ellie swallowed her own mouthful of food and nodded enthusiastically. “Oh, yeah, she practically ran out of the place. I bet she’s over there now destroying the evidence now that she knows we’re on to her.” She was perched on the opposite end of the sofa.

  Between the women, Raven lounged, sprawled across the width of the sofa cushion. Ellie tossed him the occasional piece of cheddar and the odd chunk of cubed ham. Cheese, crackers, fruit, and wine was the usual Wednesday evening fare. Tonight there was also sausage balls leftover from a school function and provided by Mischa, who sat across from her friends in a large easy chair.

  “What evidence could she be destroying?” Mischa mused. “The police have already been around Edith’s house and looked around. I’m sure they must have been pretty thorough in their investigation.”

  “Yeah, but did they know that Edith and Seneca had their little run-in just before Edith died?” Ellie asked. “I still can’t believe that crazy old bat threw poop at Blondie.” She shook her head and chuckled. “She was completely bonkers, wasn’t she?”

  “And Seneca is totally hiding something,” Poe said, not for the first time that evening. “I spent all morning Googling her. There was nothing online about her at all, not even a Facebook profile.”

  “Maybe she’s just a really private person,” Mischa suggested.

  “Or maybe she’s in the witness protection program,” Ellie offered. “Or maybe she’s a spy.”

  “Or, maybe she’s a cold-blooded killer who pushed a little old woman down some icy stairs in broad daylight and who’s now getting away with it.” Poe tipped her wine glass back to her lips, forgetting it was empty. She frowned at the empty vessel. “I just don’t get what she stood to gain from it, though.”

  “Maybe Edith had something that Seneca wanted,” Ellie suggested. “I mean, have you seen the inside of her house? It’s full of all kinds of weird, expensive stuff.”

  “Like what?” Poe asked.

  “Like a huge flat screen TV, for starters,” Raven interjected. The cat glanced at the women’s surprised expressions. “What? So I went over there a few times. She may have hated dogs, but she loved cats. And she gave me kippers,” he sighed.

  “She had a lot of money, actually.” Mischa’s statement pulled everyone’s attention to her. “One of the moms in the PTA said that her husband had drawn up Edith’s will for her last year. She said that he told her that Edith was worth a fortune and was le
aving it all to the local cat shelters.”

  “How is that even possible?” Ellie asked. “I mean, we all saw how Edith lived. She never wore nice clothes, had an old clunker for a car, and she was always using a million coupons at the grocery store. Does that sound like a rich person to you?”

  “Actually, that’s probably why she had money,” Mischa pointed out. “If she never spent anything, she could have been saving it all up.”

  “Actually,” Poe said, glancing up from her iPhone, “it says here on the local news website that they’re auctioning off her stuff next week and there’s a really expensive painting listed. I’ll bet that’s what made up the bulk of her worth.” She powered down the device and dropped it onto the table at the end of the couch. “Don’t you just love technology?” she asked, a grin spreading across her face.

  “Did it say how much the painting was worth?” Mischa asked.

  “It said that they estimated it to be around a quarter of a million dollars,” Poe replied, refilling her wine glass. “It was some sort of weird painting of cats.”

  “Sounds about right,” grumbled Ellie. “I mean, no offense to you, Raven, but she was one truly eccentric cat lady who didn’t even own a cat. How weird can you get?”

  “Well,” he purred, “you could be a young, eccentric cat lady who casts a spell on her cats so she’ll have someone to talk to,” he replied, eyeing Poe through bright green eyes.

  “I can reverse that spell any time, chatterbox,” Poe replied, running a finger from the top of the cat’s head down his spine. He shivered and rolled over to allow her to stroke his tummy.

  “Does anybody else just really want to see this so-called quarter of a million dollar painting?” Ellie asked suddenly.