Hex Marks the Spot

by Madelyn Alt

  “And isn’t this armoire just gorgeous?” she enthused. Amazingly, most of the audience seemed to be hanging on her every word. “The quality in this piece is unparalleled, I’m telling you. You simply don’t get solid wood like this nowadays at just any old furniture store. You’re lucky if you get a thin veneer of real wood pasted over a piece of particle board, even though you’re paying the same for the pleasure. This, ladies and gentlemen, is one hundred percent solid oak, from stem to stern. And this hand carving and painting is truly unique, all by the artist, Eli Yoder—”

  “Excuse me, ma’am.”

  Jetta paused in mid-rave. “Did somebody—?” She held up her hand as a staying measure. “I’m sorry, there will be a question-and-answer session at the end of the reveal.”

  “Ma’am, it is not a question.” Like everyone around me, I searched until I located the source of the voice as Eli came into view. When had Eli joined the crowd? Flushing from the sudden attention, he removed his hat and stood turning the brim round and round in his hands. “What you said just now is not the case. The carving, the painting…it is not mine.”

  Momentarily flustered, Jetta frowned. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

  “I am Eli Yoder, ma’am, but I did not do the carving. I built the cabinet, but the carving, the painting, it was not done by my hands. It was Lucas Metzger that did the artistry. Luc, you out there?” Eli held a hand up to shade his eyes and squinted into the crowd.

  The curious crowd moved as one to follow his lead. I found myself turning with them to look for the Amish man I’d seen earlier only from behind.

  “Ja, there he is. Knew I’d find you here. Luc, raise up your hand.”

  There he was. Leaning up against a post like an…Amish James Dean.

  Good golly, Miss Molly. Handsomer than a man sporting a jawline-only beard had any right to be, he was broad in the shoulder, narrow at the hip, and fully hubba-hubba. Funny, I’d never seen an Amish man who made me take a second look—I’d never been able to get past the trappings. Shame on me. Was this what I’d been missing? I blinked, certain I was just imagining things, but the angelic vision remained, all golden hair, twinkling eyes, and ruddy, sensual lips.

  A man of few words, Luc Metzger gave the crowd a stoic nod, then lowered his hat over his brow and crossed his arms again. Knotted muscles bulged beneath the rolled-up sleeves of his collar-free shirt.

  “Lord Jesus,” came a hushed female voice from somewhere behind us.

  The rest of the predominantly female crowd simply hummed with approval.

  This man made suspenders and utilitarian garb look good. And I wasn’t the only female to notice. If one more woman in the crowd sucked in her stomach, I was afraid the entire area might implode.

  Even Jetta straightened her shoulders as, with a practiced eye, she measured the length and breadth of him.

  “Well, then,” she said at last. “Stony Mill, I give you the exquisitely talented team of Yoder and Metzger, whose beautifully crafted cabinet has been selected to receive our Opening Day Award of Excellence.” She paused a moment to allow for applause. Liss and I clapped loudest of all, which brought a flush of embarrassment to Eli’s weathered cheeks. “I encourage all interested parties to dig deep into their wallets. This year all profits will go to the newly formed Isabella Harding Foundation. As you might recall, Mrs. Harding’s life was sadly cut short last autumn, and her family has donated generously to be sure that the causes near and dear to the late Mrs. Harding’s heart do not suffer from her loss.”

  I glanced surreptitiously over at Liss, wondering what was going through her mind. Did it bother her to hear Jetta pseudoeulogize her sister, even in such a perfunctory manner? If it did, she wasn’t showing it. Typical British stiff-upper-lip reserve.

  “Finally, the committee would like to thank all participants in this year’s competition,” Jetta droned on. “Without you, none of this would be possible. And now, I’ll let you all browse this year’s selections until we’re ready to start the bidding.”

  Liss immediately headed toward the podium to get a better look at the goodies being offered. Being rather short of cash, I remained behind, choosing instead to take part in one of my favorite pastimes: people watching.

  Liss would have me believe that it was all part and parcel of being an intuitive/sensitive in general, and an empath in particular. Whatever the reason, it was an indulgence I catered to regularly. For instance, the pair of older ladies sporting head-to-toe pastel outfits and practical shoes. The one in pink was an Enchantments regular and a member of my mother’s favorite church group, St. Catherine’s Ladies Auxiliary—perhaps I’d say hello. I wandered closer under the guise of buying a raspberry lemonade from the nearest stand. As I did so, a scrap of their conversation floated over to me.

  “Never quite seen anything like that cabinet,” the woman in periwinkle was saying.

  “Never mind the cabinet,” Pink Lady, a.k.a. Mrs. Mansfield, murmured. “Did you get a load of that Luc character?”

  “I did. That’s a good-looking young man. Too bad he’s Amish.”

  “I know. No fraternizing with the regulars. A shame, I say. It’s been an awful long time since I’ve done a little fraternizing myself, if you get my meaning.”

  “Grace!” Periwinkle hissed. “You could be his mother! And almost his grandmother.”

  “Doesn’t mean I’m too old to appreciate the form of a fine man. Besides, I don’t consider myself old. I’m just experienced. Big difference. And some men like a little experience on their women, you know. That’s what I need to find me. A man of discerning tastes.”

  “A man too vain to wear his glasses might work.”

  “Hmmph. I think you could use a little fraternizing, Frannie. You’re getting a little pinched in the kisser.”

  On second thought, I mused, hiding a grin behind a giant lemonade, maybe I’d say hello later.

  Liss was running her fingertips over the cabinet’s joints and hinges, so I moseyed over to see what other things had been offered up for auction. There was a nice watercolor of the County Courthouse by Miranda Goldson; a wrought iron arbor from Owen Thorsley, blacksmith to the Amish community and iron artisan in disguise; a garden bench made by one of the Gordon sisters, Janet or Ruth, with their trademark trompe l’oeil treatment; a huge grapevine wreath with autumn leaves; blown glass and charm jewelry in all sorts of lovely colors by someone who operated under a business name of Phantom Dreamer (I made a mental note to show these to Liss—at last, something with Enchantments potential!); a gargantuan birdhouse built to look like an old-time prairie church complete with steeple and stained glass window; and so much more.

  My browsing for the moment complete, I was about to beat a retreat to less crowded confines when I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  “Got spooks?”

  Chapter 2

  I spun around with a smile on my face. “Marcus! What are you doing here?”

  Marcus Quinn and I had become close friends over the last eight months. A member of the N.I.G.H.T.S. and Liss’s magical partner (and possibly more?), Marcus was a bit of an anomaly in my eyes. With his penchant for black leather and his dark, shoulder-length hair, sometimes pulled back, sometimes not, he looked every inch a threat to a good girl’s equilibrium. But the moment he removed his shades to reveal sparkling blue eyes above a saucy grin, the world started to spin for a whole ’nother reason, drat him. He was fun, he was smart, and he liked to give as good as he got when it came to male-female banter. I liked that in a man.

  “I wanted to scope out the scene. See what I was turned down for,” he answered, slinging his arm companionably around my shoulders and giving me a friendly squeeze.

  I peered up at him. At six foot two, he was a good eight inches taller than me. “Turned down? You mean, for the craft bazaar?”

  “Mmhmm. Turned down flat.”

  It was hard to believe—from the long list of contributors, the committee didn’t seem to be too discriminating—and
yet I knew Marcus well enough to trust that he was telling me the truth. “Soooo…what kind of, er,craft were you planning to present?”

  His eyes twinkled—he knew what I was getting at. “Knives, darlin’.”

  “Knives. You mean, like kitchen knives or—”

  “No, I mean like knives I made. It’s what I do, Maggie. What I like to do, I mean, hobby-wise. I’m a knife artisan. Didn’t you know?”

  Honestly? No, I didn’t. I racked my brain, trying to remember some lost bit of information that I’d misfiled in a dark corner somewhere, but I couldn’t seem to dredge it up. “You know, I don’t think I ever did know what you did. Outside of your fiddling with the band, of course.”

  That little piece of info I’d discovered just by chance around Christmas. Marcus, it seemed to me, enjoyed maintaining a web of the mysterious around himself at all times. Whether it was intentional or not, I wasn’t quite sure. Maybe it was his military intelligence background—never be too forthcoming.

  “Yeah, well, it’s not my music they had a problem with. They denied my app because someone on the committee thought that by selling knives, they were opening themselves up to all sorts of legal liabilities. The L word is none too popular these days, if you know what I mean.”

  Well, geez, if Owen Thorsley could sell iron fireplace pokers and other sharp instruments of potential torture, I didn’t see why knives should present a problem. “What kind of knives are they?” I asked with an eye toward politeness.

  “All kinds. Mostly high-end outdoor and tactical knives that I market worldwide on my website and through Internet usegroups and forums. I haven’t quite mastered pocket knives with any great success. They’re a little tricky. Fixed-blade knives are more my area of expertise. I have some right here, if you’d like to see—”

  Uh-oh. I recognized the double-bladed (heh) edge of passion in a man’s voice as well as the next woman. Usually in reference to sports, sporting equipment, tools, technology, or anything that went vroom vroom …and yet always there was room for just one more obsession.

  I started to panic as he began rooting around in a messenger-style bag he had strapped across his chest.

  “This one—Damascus steel with a convex edge. The handle is rosewood, nice and simple—and what a beauty of a wood. Tooled pins holding the lot of it together, brass and leather spacers. See?”

  “Gee, those are nice, Marcus. You made them yourself, did you?”

  “From the carving of the handle to the forging of the blade itself. You see, there’s more to knifemaking than you might expect. It’s an art form that goes way back. I’ve always liked the idea of doing things the way they’ve been done for millennia, before automation and machines. The Army is what got me interested in them in the first place. Every soldier has to have his idea of the perfect knife; it’s a question of survival. What makes the perfect knife, now, that’s where the discussion comes in. Anyway, I took classes with some of the acknowledged masters of our time, found I had a knack for it, and a few years and an honorable discharge later, here we are.”

  So. This must be the way a man feels when a woman starts discussing the problems she’s having with her hair.

  “Ah,” I said. Retreat. Retreat was the only answer. I started to back away, s-l-o-w-l-y.

  Knives. It must be a learned obsession. Who’da thunk they could hold such a fascination?

  He was still blathering on about various sharpening methods as he followed me. We met up with Liss outside the pavilion office.

  Her face lit up the moment she saw him. “Marcus! What a surprise, darling. I didn’t know you were going to be here this morning.”

  “Neither did I.”

  “How nice—synchronicity.”

  Marcus laughed. “Hardly. I just wanted to see what I was being turned away from.”

  “You mean…?”

  “Yeah. I was going to donate Big Ben for the auction, but they turned me down.”

  Liss gave me a secret look. “Has Marcus introduced you to his knives yet?”

  “Just today.”

  “Ah. I should have warned you.”

  “Funny. Very funny.” Marcus made a wry face. “I’m being serious, you know.”

  “Oh? Did they say why they turned you down, ducks?”

  “The usual nonsense about liability and community ethics. You know the drill: We can’t have you selling these to the local youth, we’ll all be murdered in our beds. ” All of a sudden he looked stricken. “I’m sorry, Liss. That was a thoughtless thing to say. I wasn’t thinking about Isabella.”

  If Liss had taken offense at the slip, she wasn’t showing it. “Never mind that. Besides, she wasn’t killed in her bed, was she? I really think you should appeal that decision, Marcus. It’s too late for the opening day celebration, obviously, but there’s no reason you should be discriminated against in the future.”

  He shrugged. “I’m thinking it’s not worth it. It doesn’t look like I’d have many clients lurking about. Most of my sales come through the Internet anyway. Direct to consumer marketing. No big deal.”

  Prejudice was always a big deal, but maybe preserving one’s dignity was equally important. No one wanted to admit to being downtrodden. Especially when the one in question happened to be male and macho to the max.

  “I don’t care one iota that you didn’t realize teaming up made a difference.” The anger in the female voice that rose sharply from inside the building we were standing next to was unmistakable. It was also unmistakably Jetta’s.

  Without a moment’s qualm, Marcus, Liss, and I shushed each other and strained to hear through the screen door.

  “You made me look like a fool, and I have to tell you, Mr. Yoder, I find that unforgivable. You’re lucky I didn’t decide to snatch the award out of your hands on the spot. As it is, I’m not sure the misrepresentation of your status is not actionable.”

  “Jetta—” Jeremy Harding’s voice, a softer warning.

  “Fine, maybe not actionable, but at the very least it’s seriously unethical,” she fumed. I could hear her high heels clattering none too gently against the wooden floorboards as she paced. “Just what were you thinking when you decided not to come clean about your project being a team effort?”

  “I did not mean to mislead anybody.” That was Eli, calmly trying to explain. “The paper, it did not give much space for names—”

  “Excuses. You could have said somethingbefore I started singing your praises.”

  “Jet, let it go,” Jeremy urged. “None of this is important right now. We need to get the show on the road.”

  “The show will be a circus if we allow things like this to happen, and I have no desire to be the clown who falls off the bike.”

  “You won’t be. Let’s just get back out there.”

  “All right. Fine. But this is not over. Not by a long shot.”

  The three of us managed to break apart and leap away from the doorway just as Jetta shoved her way through and burst back into the sunshine. She froze as she flew past us, turned to glance back, then stiffened in recognition. Her fury at being overheard showed as two splotches of high color that burned beneath her angular cheekbones…then she recovered herself, turned sharply on her heel, and stalked toward the microphone. I’m not sure what she was muttering under her breath along the way, but without a doubt it wasn’t pretty.

  Jeremy followed quickly on her heels, passing Marcus and me with scarcely a glance. He did take note of Liss, though. His face went still for a moment, and then he changed direction and scurried away like a scared little bug being chased by a cat’s paw.

  Left to his own designs was Eli. He stopped when he saw us and gave a shrug. “That wentgut, ja?” Shaking his head, he moved off in the opposite direction, away from the pavilion and the pending auction.

  Liss cleared her throat and smoothed her hand down her shirtfront. “Well, I suppose I’ve dallied long enough. I’ll be off to the auction, then. I have an armoire to win.”

  I w
asn’t sure I could watch more of Jetta and Jeremy behaving like lord and lady of the proceedings. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll go pick up something from the bake tables I saw being set up,” I told her. “My grandpa has a real sweet tooth, and I saw some oatmeal raisin cookies that have his name written all over them.”

  “Have fun, then.” She patted me on the shoulder. “While you’re at it, perhaps you wouldn’t mind picking up a loaf of that Amish sourdough bread for me. Oh, and maybe a loaf of cranberry cinnamon swirl as well?”

  “Done!” I said, relieved to be off the hook for the Jeremy and Jetta show. “What about you, Marcus?”

  “Hmm. Do you think they have sugar cookies alongside those oatmeal raisin cookies? I’m a sucker for a good sugar cookie.”

  “There’s only one way to find out.”

  He gave Liss a quick kiss on the cheek. “Knock ’em dead, Liss. We’ll check back shortly.”

  Away from the crowded pavilion, the day seemed lighter, brighter, and a lot less frenzied. Marcus and I wandered in silence a moment, soaking in the burble of lighthearted people energy. A number of tables had been set up along the main path while we were scoping out the pavilion’s goodies. Church groups, mostly, along with tables full of Girl Scout cookies and a sign encouraging all to “Support Troop 84!” I picked up a box of Thin Mint cookies for myself (so good frozen!) and two boxes of Shortbread cookies for my dad because I knew they were his favorites, and made a promise to stop by the old homestead to drop them off for him later that day, along with Grandpa’s.

  Down the way, Marcus had stopped by a long table covered, unlike all the others, by full-sized quilts in cheerful colors and patterns, and loaded with basket upon basket of loaves of bread in all different shapes and sizes, trays of cookies, bags of homemade egg noodles, and more. Behind them was a booth from which the most wonderful smells emerged, manned by three no-nonsense Amish women garbed in utilitarian cotton dresses that reached to just above their sturdy shoes. I edged closer, trying to identify the food smells. Chicken, for one. Possibly stewed with egg noodles and sage. Bundles of the savory herbs hung from the rafters of the booth, easily identified by the silvery green of its dried leaves. Yes, there was the sign: Stewed Chicken and Noodles, $2.50 Per Cup. Those not counting their carbs too closely could add a scoop of garlic mashed potatoes for an extra fifty cents.