A Murder in Hope's Crossing

by Brooke Shelby

  The first day was a huge success, although understandably quiet until word of mouth got out in the neighboring towns that Corey’s Herbs and Simples was open again. Maggie was pleasantly surprised at the great response from new friends and affiliates who left their contact details in case Maggie wanted to network with their businesses.

  By the third day, she had made an impressive amount of pocket change, as she liked to call it. For the first time, Maggie felt as if she was doing something right.

  “If this continues, I will be able to buy you caviar, Bramble,” she smiled as she unlocked the door in the morning. The ornate wooden carvings of the beautiful double doors that bore a quaint little copper bell stayed open by means of crystal rock fragments carved into gargoyles about the size of a shoebox each.

  “You mean you have not added caviar to your Saturday list yet?” he gasped. “Shame on you!”

  Bramble enjoyed Maggie more now that she knew who she was, even though her knowledge was still dreadfully limited. Make no mistake, he loved it when she got feisty and did not allow anyone to walk over her, but now that she was more at home in the esoteric environment that she belonged to, Maggie seemed somehow happier. More vibrant.

  The shelves of the shop were stacked with an array of essential oils of varied sizes in vials of glass and cork. Along the edges of the shelving and carpentry, faux ivy strands were draped to give the shop a lovely look of old-world charm. From the northern-wall window, the view of the small parking lot next to the property stretched to the next business run by an elderly couple that Maggie elected not to introduce herself to. By now, she refrained from even trying to communicate with anyone in town.

  In fact, she figured that anyone who did not wish her harm would come to her. Anyone who wanted to speak to her or get to know her could take the liberty of approaching her. She liked her new confidence, although she refused to admit that it had something to do with the recent revelation about her heritage and family.

  By afternoon, the clouds had gathered over Hope’s Crossing and the wind disturbed her shop doors just a little. The chiming of the doorbell under the sweep of the mild breeze gave Maggie a good idea.

  “You know what, Bramble?” she smiled dreamily. “I think this place needs some wind chimes as well. Always loved them, you know? Some of them make you relax if the wind is just the right speed.”

  “Great,” he replied lazily from where he had curled up on her chair, “more noise to keep me awake.”

  “You sleep too much anyway,” she replied.

  “I am nocturnal, I’ll have you know. I need my sleep in the day,” he retorted from the shelter of the thick cushion.

  “Ah! That is why you sleep on my bedcovers … at night, right?” she teased.

  Suddenly Bramble hissed at the door. It was an inadvertent action spurred by his feline nature, but Maggie did not know this. She frowned at his strange mood swing, but before she could ask, she heard a kind voice from the doorway.

  “Hello there! Are you open?”

  “Yes, we are,” Maggie smiled before she even turned.

  In the door, she saw the figure of a woman of medium height. As the woman approached with hips wobbling from the impact of thick legs on the floor, Maggie cocked her head. She had not seen this one before, had she? Was she local? Behind her, in the car outside, sat a tall skinny man with disheveled hair, but the imposing woman quickly distracted Maggie with her overbearing and loud voice.

  “Anything specific you need help with?” Maggie asked as she tried to hide her fascination with the overweight woman’s enormous round glasses.

  “I don’t know,” she replied, running her hand through her wavy dark hair as she surveyed the products on the shelves. “I certainly can’t say.”

  She slowly walked through the shop, ignoring eye contact with Maggie as she took in the décor. To her left, Maggie had some beautiful wreaths and ornaments that hung from the edges of the shelf, courtesy of Clara’s old stock. In apparent wonderment, the woman ambled to the other side of Maggie’s establishment. She carelessly flicked one of the ornaments, forcing it into a pendulum dangerously close to falling to the ground and smashing.

  “Please be careful with those,” Maggie requested as politely as she could.

  “This was here when Clara had this store,” she mentioned.

  “You knew Clara?” Maggie smiled. “She was my aunt.”

  “Yes,” the woman said evenly. “I know. Just thought I would come and pay my respects and all.”

  “And you are?” Maggie prompted.

  “Oh!” the woman exclaimed. “How rude of me. I am Bettina Reece. You are Margaret, right?”

  “Maggie,” Clara’s niece smiled, but something about Bettina made her uncomfortable. “Call me Maggie.”

  “I prefer Margaret. Maggie is so …” she hesitated as she handled more products with no small amount of recklessness, “juvenile. After all, you don’t look young enough to be a Maggie, Margaret.”

  “I’m sorry, are you interested in buying anything?” Maggie snapped with a side smirk. She passed a quick glance to her cat. His tail was twitching and she did not have to be a seasoned witch to know what that meant. Cats flicked their tails when they were peeved, even aggressive, and Maggie felt quite the same as her familiar did.

  “Oh God, no,” Bettina scoffed and laughed spitefully. “I would never buy any of this snake-oil rubbish you peddle, just like Clara.”

  “Then you best leave, I suppose,” Maggie shrugged, trying not to resort to insults. “If you want to pay respects to Clara, she is buried in the Hallows Cemetery.”

  “I know where she is,” Bettina interrupted. “Right where she belongs. Just when I thought this town had suffered enough under the likes of Clara Corey, a new infestation starts.”

  “Yeah, I think it is best you get out of my store,” Maggie said with a tinge of threat in her voice. “Besides, being a local, I am sure you know where the pharmacy is? I peddle herbal products, not miracle weight-loss pills, Betty.”

  Bettina gasped loudly at the remark, her hand on her chest and her eyes on fire at Maggie.

  “Bettina!” she corrected the mocking of the latest Corey, but Maggie’s cool blue eyes stared her down like pools of spiteful ice as she stood with her arms crossed over her chest.

  “You look more like a Betty,” she taunted the unpleasant patron.

  Shrieking in fury and exasperation, Maggie’s conservative rival stormed out of the store, babbling about witches and payback.

  “Now that was juvenile, Maggie,” Bramble reprimanded her, but when she looked at him, he burst out laughing. “It was superb! Highly entertaining, if anything!”

  “I thought so too,” she laughed, but inside her chest, her heart was still hammering from the rage of her temper. She followed the mean old cow with her eyes as she fell into the passenger seat of the car in the small adjoining parking lot.

  “Ugh, birds of a feather,” she remarked as she watched the two exchange words, but then the argument grew heated and Maggie perked up to see what was ensuing. Suddenly, the freakish-looking driver started the car and, with screeching tires, the car pulled away. It bolted through the exit of the parking lot without stopping or slowing down.

  “Oh crap!” Maggie shrieked. “He is going to ram into the oncoming traffic!”

  Barely missing the oncoming two cars, the car Bettina got into sped away, leaving black smudges on the tarmac and at least four vehicles static as they braked for the mad driver.

  “Oroville, her son-in-law,” Bramble scoffed to inform Maggie. “Those two deserve each other.”

  “I still kinda feel sorrier for him than her,” Maggie said. “What a bitch.”

  16

  After the incident with the foul woman in her shop, Maggie had lost her appetite. She wanted to ignore the whole thing, especially since she’d impressed Bramble with her mean-girl skills, but she could not help but feel angry and miserable. What she did not know about familiars was that they wer
e attuned to their witches and he already knew.

  “What do you want for breakfast, my dear Bramble?” she asked him while she unwrapped a granola bar.

  “Steak and gravy,” he grinned.

  “You have to be kidding me,” she said. “Really? You want heavy foods this early in the morning?”

  “They are tributes, Maggie, not food. Don’t see it as breakfast, lunch, and dinner. See it as an offering of sorts,” he instructed while he licked his lips. Maggie did not know if cats had expressions like people did, but she could see that Bramble was not kidding.

  “Tributes?” she asked. “That is why you are so particular about your diet.”

  Maggie smiled as Bramble leaped up on the fridge top and looked down. “I have an aura to maintain, you know. And the better my health, the more use I am to you, my little witch,” he purred.

  “Now that is a valid reason to cook you a steak dinne—breakfast,” she chuckled. Maggie loved that her cat called her his witch. It was endearing. A little scary, but endearing nonetheless.

  After she had prepared Bramble’s beloved steak dish, she thought to drop by the post office to collect some samples of wallpaper she had asked for by online order. Maggie promised Bramble that she would be back within the hour and he was happy to keel over, tummy-up, for a nap. She skipped over the steps of the porch and raced over the wet grass of the lawn to get to her car at the side of the road, but what she saw made her furious in an instant.

  “No. Way. No f—” she pursed her lips as her eyes narrowed in rage. “When is this going to end already? Has everyone in this town lost their minds?” Maggie did not care who heard her. She was fed up. Her car tires had all been slashed and her windows smashed. On the hood, five huge letters were scratched: W-I-T-C-H.

  Livid and exhausted by the repeated outrageousness of the town locals, she threw down her handbag and cussed like a sailor. Maggie did not cry, funny enough. Usually anger provoked her tears, but this time it was blind rage that reached beyond tears. When she looked up, she caught sight of four youths who had been watching from behind a fence wall.

  “What’s wrong?” a teenage girl asked Maggie from across the street. She was with two other girls to her left. Maggie was too angry to answer. Besides, it was obvious what was wrong. She simply shrugged and shook her head.

  “Look at what they did to my car,” she moaned.

  One of the other girls turned her face to the girl on her left and they cackled about Maggie’s misfortune. The girl who’d addressed Maggie shoved them and hushed her friends. They leered at Maggie, standing still to take a picture of Maggie and her car.

  “Hey, piss off!” Maggie hollered, getting to her feet.

  “Or what?” one of the girls shouted. “You’re going to put a spell on me?”

  “You are the one who should piss off,” another girl shouted. “Reverend Mason will not let witch scum infect our town, so you better think twice!”

  Maggie wanted to throttle the little wench and dump her body in a cauldron, but she knew that this would only prove their point for them, but she was not going to let them talk to her like that and just walk away. She pretended to invoke something by pointing at the last girl and muttering something in Latin that she heard in a movie. It worked. Immediately, the three girls ran away screaming as they turned the corner into the main road.

  She wanted to laugh, but she couldn’t. Her heart was throbbing furiously and her temper was so wild that she felt dizzy. Quickly, Maggie picked up her purse and rummaged around for the sheriff’s number.

  “I can’t believe how that preacher gets away with this, Carl!” she wailed when the sheriff answered her call.

  “Wait, what is going on?” he asked. “I am a bit tied up right now, Maggie.”

  “I don’t care if you are in bed with a celebrity right now, Sheriff Walden!” Maggie snapped. “My car has been vandalized by that animal’s acolytes and you are tied up? You are the goddamn sheriff and I am a victim of harassment!”

  “Listen, Maggie, calm down. What happened to your car?” he asked as professionally as he could. He was sorry he had asked. The attractive, but temperamental Corey girl went off on the damage to the car, how she was being accosted by mere high school children, and how she would not be belittled. In her torrent of cusswords, he heard about Reverend Mason being behind it and the unacceptable ineptitude of his police department. “Wait, wait, whoa!” he finally interrupted her. “I will come to get your statement as soon as I can, Maggie, but I am inundated with missing persons and domestic violence cases right now.”

  “Of course,” she replied, “how silly of me to expect the police to do anything about this conspiracy at play.”

  He lowered the volume of his voice, she guessed to keep company from hearing. “I am so sorry, Maggie. Really. I promise I will be there to help you as soon as I conclude this case I am dealing with here. These people I am with just reported their little boy missing and they are understandably unsettled. Please accept my apologies for not being able to get to you immediately. Give me an hour, tops.”

  Maggie had to concede that her troubles, hefty as they were, were hardly more urgent than a missing child. She had no children, but she imagined that the stress parents endured in such a case had to be monumental.

  “All right, Carl,” she finally sighed. “I will wait for you.”

  “Thank you so much for understanding, Maggie. See you soon,” he said and hung up.

  She had to wait for the sheriff before she could explode again, but every time Maggie looked at her damaged car, she reverted back to a fire-breathing dragon with very ill thoughts. It was not like her to think malicious thoughts with very deliberate intent, but she had been forced into thinking murderous things—things of vengeance.

  Eventually, the rage turned to defeat. Maggie began to cry as she went back inside the house, leaving her vandalized vehicle in a state of worthlessness until she could find a reputable towing company who did not have a problem with doing business with witches. Her tears felt warm on her face. She almost enjoyed it, but her heart was broken and palpitated erratically, just like her fickle desire to remain in Hope’s Crossing.

  “I am done with this place! This time I am selling everything and leaving! I don’t deserve this crap!” she mumbled with a growl that sounded a lot like Bramble before he hissed at someone. He briskly bounded to reach her, catching up to her hastening heel as she made for the kitchen.

  “What happened? Why are you so upset?” he asked.

  She swung round, her eyes bloodshot. “Why do you think? Take a wild guess, Bramble,” she sniffed through clenched words. She realized that she was barking at an innocent friend and she picked him up to pet him. “I’m sorry. I am just so upset.”

  “Tell me,” he requested from the unkempt tresses of her neck.

  She told him about the car, the message, the schoolgirls, and their inadvertent reference to Reverend Mason. Maggie could not hold back the tears as she started sobbing outright. Bramble nuzzled her neck, but he honestly did not know what to do or say. Clara had never been this fragile, or maybe she had just grown a shell after decades of discrimination. Maggie was all too human for him to influence with a light bit of advice. Perhaps it was her recent history that still left her vulnerable to insult. Maybe the treachery of her ex-husband and best friend had left her wounded and she was still not able to heal.

  “I have made up my mind,” she moaned. “The shop and the property should fetch a good price as long as I advertise outside this cursed town. Otherwise even that will be hindered by that … that bald nun who calls himself a man of God!”

  “Um, no,” Bramble protested. “There is no way you can just surrender like this, Maggie Corey! Not you!”

  It was a horrid idea that he would not tolerate, not after all the years he had carefully guarded and aided the most powerful witch in New England. There was no way he was going to let her bloodline dwindle to nothingness on his watch. Besides, Maggie was destined for gre
at things if she could stay together for long enough, even if she was the last one to believe it.

  “I am so tired, Bramble. Look, all this magic stuff and promises of excitement in this new world of cauldrons and potions is great, but it is not worth it if every single day is just a new minefield,” she explained.

  “Nobody understands that better than I do, my dear,” he started. “Do you think your aunt Clara did not falter? There were many times that I thought she was going to leave—just up and go—but she never did. She held on, because she knew that this town belonged to the Coreys, not the adversary. Clara fought right to the end, Maggie. I suggest you read through all her books so that you can appreciate the stock of your family.”

  “Right now, I just don’t care anymore,” she shrugged, blowing he nose.

  “That is okay too. That is part of the tides of the sea. Sometimes it is low tide. It happens. Just stop. Relax. Just read her volumes and see for yourself how deep the roots of the Corey family lie under the soil of this town. Do it, if only to remember who the hell you are, Maggie.”

  “I do know who I am,” she contested, but he would have none of it.

  “Really? Because if you did, you would never even think of leaving this patch of land in the hands of the dragon in the cassock!” he chastised her gently. “Study your family history. It will help you understand how you can never concede to those who threaten you and your heritage. Look what they did to Clara! Are you just going to leave Hope’s Crossing and let that appalling and obvious hostility towards your own aunt casually fade away under the dust?”

  He was right, Maggie knew. The least she could do was stay long enough to solve Clara’s murder and have the guilty party pay for it. It was time for her to stop feeling sorry for herself and what had been done to her and start looking into the rotten core of this town’s clandestine influence—the devil in the pulpit.