A Murder in Hope's Crossing

by Brooke Shelby

  On the floor of the closet, she found the shadow, shaking and disoriented.

  “Oh bless!” she wailed. “A kitty cat. Aw!”

  She had heard from the carpenter who fixed the shop cabinet that her aunt used to have a cat and pointed to the blanket on the shop counter with ‘Bramble’ embroidered on it, but Maggie thought that it had run away.

  “Are you Bramble?” she whined in pity for the poor traumatized cat. “Come here.”

  Maggie could see by the looks of the frazzled, shaking feline that he was not doing well. Clearly, he was dehydrated and starving, the inside of the closet door displaying his desperate attempts at escape, yet he stayed inside the closet. Only when she reached in and picked him up did he open his drooping eyes again. Maggie wrapped him up in a blanket and brought him with her to the kitchen where she prepared some warm milk and looked for something to feed him.

  “Strange,” she frowned as she rummaged through the cupboards for cat food, “there is nothing here but human food, my darling. No canned fish or pellets, nothing.”

  Behind her, the fridge mysteriously opened and she heard the black cat meowing at something inside. Maggie came over to see and chuckled.

  “That? You want casserole leftovers?” she smiled.

  Weakly, the cat meowed in response, and went to lie down on the blanket.

  5

  At East Slope Veterinary, things were quite hectic for a usually lazy Thursday. Only one veterinarian was on duty today, meaning that the veterinary technician had her hands full. There was an influx of pets after the previous night’s brief fireworks display in the town square. Many cats and dogs had taken to running when the clapping lit up the sky for the local festival, while others were a little shaken by the thunderous ruckus. Mostly children came in to have the veterinarian establish if their pets were okay, and it was darling, but really so unnecessary. At least, that was in the opinion of blundering twenty-four-year-old assistant Tracy Guilman.

  “Technician, ma’am,” she corrected the last lady who called her a nurse.

  “How is that different from an assistant or a nurse?” the kooky, plump lady asked in a shrill voice. Her question was sincere, but oh-so-hard on the ear.

  “Well,” Tracy hesitated, mostly because she had no good explanation to prove the lady wrong, “that is … not … so very different. The correct term is technician, that is all.”

  “So you’re an assistant,” the lady shrugged. “You prepare the animals, you check their vitals and background, right? Right? That is an assistant, no matter how you spell it, sweetie.”

  Tracy really did not have time to argue over semantics and besides, the woman was not entirely incorrect in her assumption, so Tracy elected to smile and accept the label.

  Assistant.

  How she hated the word. It made her sound like a secretary.

  An hour later, Tracy could finally sit down for a quick chicken wrap. The clinic was empty and the veterinarian was outside for a smoke break. Taking a nice deep breath, the African American veterinary technician took a brief moment of reprieve from the scratches and bites she had been dealt all day.

  “Excuse me, assistant?” she heard a woman say from the front desk.

  Tracy’s eyes bulged in frustration as she mumbled obscenities through her full mouth. When she got up, she spilled ketchup all over her scrubs. She wiped it off roughly with a water wipe. “Klutz!” she muttered, Swallowing big chunks of tasty food now un-chewed, she emptied her mouth enough to respond. “Be right there!”

  When she finally had her new latex gloves on to greet the customer and patient, she emerged from the examination room to find a pretty woman, older than herself, cradling a big black cat that looked quite neglected.

  “Hi,” Tracy smiled, “I am the technician here.” She forced the title for the new caller to understand. “What can we do for you today?”

  “My name is Maggie and I found this poor thing stuck in a closet in my new house,” Maggie explained, scrutinizing the ample bloodstains on the girl’s scrubs. “You see, he belonged to my late aunt who recently died.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear that,” Tracy immediately sympathized. “I’m Tracy.”

  “He seems to have been trapped in that confined space for a few days and I am awfully concerned, Tracy,” Maggie told the first friendly woman she had encountered for miles. Tracy seemed to be a bit off-kilter with social interaction, but Maggie liked awkward types.

  “And what is your name, handsome?” Tracy asked the cat as she slid a finger over his head and invited Maggie to bring him in the back.

  “His name is Bramble,” Maggie said proudly. “His paws are knackered from clawing at the cupboard door and I think he is malnourished or dehydrated …” She shrugged as Tracy took Bramble and placed him on the examination table. “I don’t know much about animals.”

  Tracy smiled. “No worries, Miss …”

  “Maggie Corey. You can call me Maggie, please,” she told Tracy.

  “All right, Maggie, let me have a look at Bramble,” she said. “He doesn’t look too worse for wear, but you are right. He is quite dehydrated. I’ll just check the regular things and make sure he is all right for your peace of mind, how’s that?”

  “Perfect,” Maggie smiled. “I just need to use your restroom quickly. It was a twenty- minute drive after five cups of tea!”

  Tracy chuckled. “I understand that all too well.”

  While Maggie was in the restroom, she thought of poor Bramble and his loss being bigger than hers. After all, he knew Aunt Clara so much better than she did, and if she was this distraught over Clara’s death, she could imagine how poor Bramble felt. She wondered if he even knew Clara was dead.

  A commotion erupted somewhere in the clinic, provoking Maggie’s curiosity. She promptly opened the door into the reception area, but the madness came from the examination room. When she rounded the door to the back, she found a sight that evoked two reactions from her—befuddlement and amusement.

  The technician had Bramble under one palm, and in her other hand, the glint of a rectal thermometer explained the disagreement between Tracy and Bramble. His low caterwaul was a warning at her third attempt, but Tracy had a system she employed to effectively diagnose the animals. Maggie wanted to help, but she could not stop chuckling from the doorway. The already clumsy technician with the awkward stain on her clothes was panting under the effort of positioning the very unwilling black cat in her care. Every time she aimed the end of the probe at the so-called bullseye, the cat would writhe and hiss.

  “He is really strong! Almost as strong as a human!” Tracy smiled stupidly through the sweat beads on her forehead and the dodging. “Very … strong cat.”

  One last time she swooped down with the thermometer, but Bramble was having none of it. With a rapid spinning of his hind legs, he took off and leaped from the table. To Maggie’s amazement, he hid behind her ankles, peering between her feet at the molester in the messy scrubs. How dare she?

  “Tracy! Can you answer my phone, please?” the vet called through the window. “I’m only halfway through this Marlboro and I will not surrender it.”

  Maggie giggled heartedly, enjoying her first bout of laughter in days. Tracy excused herself with an embarrassed smile, but as she passed Maggie, Bramble hissed loudly. It startled the technician and she jumped right into the door.

  “Oh my God, be careful!” Maggie cried as the poor girl fixed her hair as if nothing had happened and proceeded to the office.

  Maggie picked up her cat and stroked him. “Don’t you worry, Bramble. It is not just you. Contrary to what some people think, nobody likes that. I promise I will not let her …” she scoffed with laughter, “take your temperature.”

  “It’s your wife, doctor!” Maggie heard Tracy holler. “She says you must put out your cigarette and take the call!”

  Another crash ensued from the office, just before the veterinarian came in with a nod in greeting. When he passed Maggie, he just shook h
is head, as if he knew what was going on in his office. Maggie laughed as she heard him say, “Geez, Trace, do you need a GPS to walk?”

  “Sorry, doc,” she replied, and Maggie tried in vain to keep a straight face as the girl reentered the examination room. She looked at Maggie with a hopeless expression. In a low tone, she simply reported, “Fell over the phone cord.”

  Maggie could not help it. She burst out laughing, and surprisingly, Tracy cackled with her.

  “I feel so stupid,” she admitted.

  “Don’t, please,” Maggie laughed. “You are the first person that has made me laugh in a very long time and I love you for it!”

  “Then I am happy to be at your service,” Tracy grinned. She looked at Bramble and winked. “No worries, Big Guy. I’ll just tell Doc you don’t show any sign of fever.”

  The two women shared a good laugh and both realized that they had clicked better than most. Neither of them was particularly social and both had a great sense of humor. Before long, Tracy and Maggie had exchanged numbers for that day when they both felt inclined to leave the safety of their home lives.

  6

  The vet had given Bramble a mild sedative to help him recover from his initial panic and trauma. With the sunset Maggie was driving towards, the sky was painted in magnificent yellows and oranges that captivated her.

  “Look at that, Bramble,” she told the cat that was curled up on her passenger seat. “To think such an amazing view gets overlooked by most people, huh? They are so busy in their offices all day, as I used to slave in culinary school, that they miss out on the big picture, you know?”

  Bramble did nothing. His eyes were closed, but his ears twitched, so she knew he was still awake. Maggie was babbling away about her years in the cooking school and how she loved concocting delicious combinations of ingredients to create something magical. She used that exact word that suddenly made Bramble’s eyes open.

  “Oh, you are awake?” she cried happily, putting her hand on his thick, soft coat. “Don’t fret, Bramble. Once we get home you can sleep it off and feel good as new in the morning.”

  She turned on some music and enjoyed the diminishing light of day and only then did she realize just how exhausted she was from the day’s happenings and stress. Finding Bramble was the first good thing, though. A close second was her new friendship with Tracy at the animal clinic, so the trying day had yielded some delightful surprises after all.

  But little did Maggie know that the day had not yet run out of surprises. In her wake, she saw headlights approach. The car behind her was speeding dangerously, but Maggie kept her speed steady for another mile or so. At once, the trailing car’s high beams came on, practically blinding Maggie in her rearview mirror.

  “Moron!” she growled, lowering her head to keep the light out of her eyes. Her hands were clutching at the steering wheel, her fingers gripping it so tightly that her knuckles literally turned white, but the car behind her refused to let up.

  “Hey! What the hell are you trying to do? Freak!” she shouted as the driver started flashing his lights at her, illuminating her entire car with his sharp flashes. It was becoming dangerously distracting for Maggie, who did not even know the road well enough. She began to panic just a little. “Can you believe this guy, Bramble?”

  Bramble had sat up by now, but Maggie was too busy keeping the car on the road to notice. Not being able to see properly in the flashing lights and bothered by the relentless honking, Maggie’s car occasionally clipped the edge of the tarmac. The tailgater persisted until Maggie’s car began to swerve slightly before he decided to accelerate. From her rear left she watched the lights shifting from their position, erratically floating past the side of her car.

  “Yeah! Yeah, that’s right, idiot! Off you go!” she shouted as the car pulled up beside hers at top speed, but he did not pass. Instead, the obviously inebriated local had his passenger window down, screaming insults at Maggie. At first she thought it was just road rage, but then that all-too-familiar word reared its ugly head again and she realized that this was a personal attack.

  “Go back where you came from, bloody witch!” he shouted at her.

  “What?” Maggie barked with an angry scowl. “Are you out of your mind?”

  “Why don’t you hop on your broom and get the hell out of my town, bitch! You Corey filth!” he persisted in slurs as his car wavered dangerously close to hers.

  “He is trying to run me off the damn road!” she shrieked. Maggie was trying to hold her car steady, but with the sharp turns coming near the entrance of Hope’s Crossing, she was terrified of a collision. The cur in the car next to her, though, did not seem to invite any logic in his survival strategy. All he cared about was running Maggie off the road and hopefully ridding the town of her. That was what it felt like to her, anyway.

  “Go home, Corey!” he shouted, unknowingly making such a fool of himself by telling a Corey to leave Hope’s Crossing, the very town they’d founded. Then again, this was the mentality of the sheep-folk who followed Reverend Mason. These people did not think for themselves and they judged as harshly as their deceptive reverend did.

  “I am home, dimwit,” she sneered back, having reached the end of her tether with the abuse. Everyone’s abuse. “I live here! I am a Corey, do you hear me? I am here to stay!”

  At once, Bramble perked up from his seat and popped his head above the bottom of the window frame. The large black feline’s eyes flashed as he hissed at the man, a terrifying, loud hiss that sounded like a cobra’s attack. Bramble’s mouth stretched wide open in his hostile warning as he delivered a caterwaul that made Maggie’s blood run cold.

  Suddenly, the man lost control of his car. The vehicle careened violently over the lane, no matter how he tried to recover control.

  “Oh my God!” Maggie screamed as she watched the car’s headlights bob and jerk into the darkness at the side of the road. With a sudden dip, they stopped moving, and Maggie knew he must have driven into a ditch.

  In the rearview mirror, she watched the lights diminish into the distance and she breathed out a huge sigh of relief. Her body was shivering from the rush of adrenaline that had prepared her for the worst.

  “Calm down,” she repeated with a quiver in her voice. “Calm down. Relax.”

  Bramble sat back down, still looking rather under the weather. Maggie could not help but consider the things the man had said. She was, after all, an extremely observant and deductive person and putting things together was a strong suit she had always possessed. All this about witches was one thing, the ramblings of a superstitious and callous community. However, from what she had just seen the cat accomplish by some strange spell of panic on the other driver, drove another point home. Could there be something unusual about Bramble after all?

  7

  The town of Hope’s Crossing was quiet this evening, save for the few locals that sought some alcoholic relief and entertainment in the few establishments mostly frequented by tourists. After all, the town had become somewhat of a tourist destination, being so pretty, and apparently, friendly. Of course, the town council made it look that way, while it kept a keen eye on outsiders. As long as the latter brought money into the town’s infrastructure (and a bit on the side, of course), they were tolerated.

  It was not tourist season now, but there was still the odd transient or traveler seeking refuge from the long road. Tonight was one of those nights where the town seemed less threatening. People were dotting the park and some were window-shopping after a meal at the local restaurants. For once, Hope’s Crossing was almost pleasant.

  As Maggie drove up the main street, fresh from her harrowing ordeal, she was greeted with the gentle atmosphere she direly needed to recover from the recent offense on the mountainous road outside of town. Even the lanterns and the lights set up in the trees looked somehow lighter, as if there were fairies kindling it.

  “You feeling okay, my dear Bramble?” she asked the cat that was purring in the passenger seat. Unexp
ectedly, he looked up at her with his big green eyes and gave her a long, lazy meow that she found indescribably cute. Like a child, she babbled incoherently in an unintelligible language most people use when confronted with cute animals. Bramble could not help but relish her fingers running through his coat and how wonderful it felt when Maggie scratched the underside of his jaw. It was a sensation he sorely missed now that his beloved Clara was gone.

  “You want to get something to eat?” she smiled. “I might not be able to buy any fast food from the snobs here, but I can whip us up something divine. What do you say?”

  Again, she was ecstatic about the cat’s meow in response.

  “You are so adorable, Bramble! It is almost as if you understand me! I love it,” she went on, while all Bramble could think of was that promise of good food. “Let me just park off the road and we can see if there is anything nice to still our nerves and fill our bellies, all right?”

  Maggie parked her car and wrapped her cat up in her embrace. Kicking the door shut, she breathed in the fresh evening air, ignoring the usual glares from the occasional local who crossed the road. She had become sadly accustomed to it by now, but when she passed Corey’s Herbs and Simples on her way to the gate of the premises, she saw something that had her temper flaring again. On the sidewalk in front of the shop, a black mess stained the concrete. It looked like scorch marks in front of the shop and it infuriated her, but she was grateful that no damage had come to the shop this time.

  “Oh, for the love of …” she pursed her lips and walked briskly into the yard. When Maggie got to the house, she laid Bramble on the sofa and immediately punched in the sheriff’s number. Enough was enough.