“I guess not,” Mom said, exhaling heavily. “What about Thistle? I noticed she didn’t make it down to breakfast this morning. Is she okay?”
“We ran into Marcus when we were leaving the guesthouse,” Landon said, his good mood evaporating. “He said she had a headache, so he gave her some aspirin and sent her back to bed. She’ll be okay.”
“I understand her being upset, but it’s not exactly as if this is the first body you guys have stumbled over,” Twila interjected. “Why is she so worked up over this one? It’s not like she was fond of Fay.”
“No, but Fay’s body was fresh,” I said. “The other bodies we found together were … older. It’s hard to explain. I think in Thistle’s mind she’s wondering if we could’ve done something. For all we know, Fay was killed in the bathroom while we were inside the center. Thistle probably thinks we could’ve saved her.”
Landon’s expression was thoughtful. “Why aren’t you upset about that?” he asked. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful you’re not morose and stuck in your head, but you’re usually the first one to drive yourself crazy with what-if scenarios. Why aren’t you worked up about this?”
That was a good question. Unfortunately, it was something I wasn’t sure how to answer. “I don’t know,” I said finally. “I’ve become accustomed to death. It’s awful to say, but I don’t feel it as keenly as I used to.”
Landon slipped his hand under my hair and rubbed the back of my neck. “Thistle is strong, but she hasn’t seen the same things Bay has been forced to grapple with. Bay has seen bodies since she was a kid. She’s been at crime scenes. You get numb to those things.”
“Well, that makes me a little sad,” Mom said.
“Thistle will be okay,” I offered. “She’ll be back to her sarcastic self in a few days.”
“I’m not sad for Thistle,” Mom clarified. “I’m sad for you.”
Her admission caused my heart to roll. “Why? I’m fine.”
“I don’t think we protected you from this stuff enough when you were a child,” Mom explained. “You could see ghosts, and we used you as a crutch sometimes because you were the only one capable of solving certain problems. That wasn’t fair. I’m sorry about that.”
“Mom, it’s fine,” I said, waving off her concerns. “I grew up to be a well-adjusted adult.”
“With an attraction to men with poor table manners,” Mom said, although she sent Landon a small wink to let him know she was joking. “We still should’ve done better by you. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you, but it’s completely unnecessary.”
We lapsed into comfortable silence until Annie barreled into the room, her hair askew and her eyes bright. “Hi!”
“Hi,” I said, smiling. “Where have you been?”
“Mom gave me doughnuts for breakfast in town because she had to pick up a few things at the store,” Annie answered, climbing onto Landon’s lap without invitation and grabbing a slice of bacon from his plate. “Mom said you guys had big things to talk about this morning and I wasn’t to get in the way.”
“That’s my bacon,” Landon said, feigning irritation. “Did I say you could eat my bacon?”
“I’m sure you’ve already had a whole pig,” Annie said, unruffled. “Aunt Tillie says you’re a … glutton. I’m not sure what that is, though.”
I snorted. “He is a glutton.”
“Just for that, you can’t have my bacon,” Landon said, grabbing the plate and holding it away from Annie. Up until a few weeks ago Annie feared Landon because Aunt Tillie kept forgetting her little digs fell on impressionable ears. To my utter surprise and delight, when called on her behavior Aunt Tillie not only fixed the problem but also managed to put Annie at ease. I was thankful.
“Marcus would give me some bacon,” Annie said, enjoying the game as she reached for the plate. Landon easily kept it out of her reach.
“Marcus is a softie,” Landon said. “I’m not a softie.”
“Aunt Tillie says you’re a big marshmallow where Bay is concerned,” Annie said. “She says Bay has you wrapped around her finger.”
“Aunt Tillie needs to keep her mouth shut,” Landon grumbled.
“Where is Aunt Tillie? She said we could work in her garden today.” Annie scanned the room, disappointed when she came up Tillie-less. The inn was vacant after the guests checked out after the weekend and wouldn’t be full again until later in the week.
“In the garden or greenhouse?” Landon asked, suspicious. Aunt Tillie had been known to let Annie into her pot field, although she tells her it’s oregano. What? That’s somewhat more responsible.
“Greenhouse,” Annie said. “Aunt Tillie says it’s too hot to be in the garden and she can make it cold with her fingers in the greenhouse.”
I stilled. Was Aunt Tillie performing magic in front of Annie? Sure, the girl was young, so no one would believe her should she slip in front of the wrong person, but that was incredibly stupid if true. “How does she make it cool?” I asked.
“She has fans and stuff,” Annie said, unbothered. She batted her big eyes at Landon. “Can I please have more bacon?”
Despite his comments to the contrary, Landon was a big softie, too. He handed the plate to Annie. “I wouldn’t share bacon with anyone but you.”
“What about me?” I asked, irked to be competition with a child.
“Okay, you, too,” Landon said. “No one else, though. Everyone else is banned from my magical bacon land.”
Annie giggled. “I want to be queen of bacon land.”
“I’m queen,” I said, poking her side. “You can be the princess.”
“Screw being the princess,” Annie said, grabbing two slices of bacon and hopping off Landon’s lap. “I want to be the magical wizard who runs the land.” She laughed maniacally as she took off in the direction of the kitchen, delighting in Landon’s patented scowl.
“She’s spent far too much time with Aunt Tillie,” Landon said.
“Welcome to my world,” Mom said. “You’ll get used to it eventually. It will become … normal.”
“And strangely enough, I’m fine with that,” Landon said, shifting his eyes to me. “Do you want to have lunch with me if I can clear my schedule, bacon queen?”
I nodded. “Text me when you know what’s going on.”
“Speaking of that, I have to get going,” Landon said, glancing at the wall clock. “I’m guessing Noah will be an angry mess, and I want to get the autopsy results from Chief Terry before he shows up.”
“Good luck,” I said. “I’ll text you if I get anything from Edith.”
“Text me regardless,” Landon said, giving me a quick kiss. “In fact, if you want to throw in the occasional dirty text, I’ll be more than happy to read it.”
“Out!” Mom pointed at the door. “I’m on cuteness overload.”
Landon saluted. “You can be the executioner in bacon land,” he said. “I think you’d enjoy it. I hear the outfit is to die for.”
Mom didn’t want to smile, but couldn’t help herself. “Don’t make me behead you.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I FOUND Edith watching morning talk shows on the television in the small cafeteria at The Whistler. Brian’s car wasn’t in the parking lot, which meant we had the building to ourselves. I was relieved and thankful.
“Have you seen this?” Edith asked. “They say that you can drink a glass of wine a day and not be considered an alcoholic. I never heard of such a thing.”
“We drink a jug of wine a day at The Overlook and we don’t care if anyone thinks we’re alcoholics,” I replied, sitting in one of the chairs at the design desk. I decided to get right to the point. “What do you know about Margaret Little’s relationship with Aunt Tillie?”
Edith widened her eyes, surprised. “Um … wow. I wasn’t expecting that.”
“We’ve had a lot going on and I don’t have a lot of time to mess around,” I said. “I need answers, and you always have good ones.” It neve
r hurts to praise the person you’re trying to get information from, especially when it’s a ghost who has limited contact with others.
“Thank you for that,” Edith said, smiling. “I know you’re just goosing my ego, though.”
There was no point in denying it. “Something is going on and I want to know what,” I said. “I tracked down Victor Donahue, by the way.”
Edith brightened. “How is he? Is he still handsome?”
Because Edith’s appearance hadn’t changed since her death she often forgot how aging worked. “He’s in a home in Bellaire,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “He seemed … confused. He briefly thought Clove was Aunt Tillie and mentioned Patty wouldn’t want us to know her secrets, but then he kind of lost his train of thought.”
“Huh,” Edith mused, wrinkling her nose. “I never really thought about it, but Clove really does resemble Tillie. That poor girl.”
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. “Victor wasn’t much help. That means I need your help.” I told her about the previous day, including Fay’s death. I left out Viola’s colorful part in the story, because I knew it would offend Edith and I didn’t want to risk her going off on a tangent. When I was done, Edith was dumbfounded.
“Fay is dead?”
“Someone stabbed her,” I said, nodding. “I don’t have all of the details yet. I’m supposed to have lunch with Landon and get them then. It had to be someone else at the senior center, though. Anyone else would’ve been noticed.”
“Like you?” Edith challenged.
“We weren’t there for more than a few minutes,” I replied, tamping down my irritation. Blowing up at Edith would get me nowhere. “I know there’s some … hidden secret … from Aunt Tillie’s past that ties in with Patty and Mrs. Little. I have a feeling you know, too.”
Edith blew out a frustrated sigh. For a second – and I have no idea why I thought so – I was sure she was giving herself time to organize her response. “I don’t think it’s a secret,” she said. “At least not in the way you think it’s a secret.”
“Then what is it?”
“Walkerville has always been small,” Edith said, her eyes distant as she glanced out the window that looked over the town square. “It was even smaller when we were younger. Most of the buildings you see today weren’t here.”
“Okay.” I had no idea where she was going, but decided to let her reach the destination on her own, however meandering the trip.
“We had only thirty people in our graduating class. Did you know that?”
I shook my head.
“Small towns are great in some respects,” Edith said. “They’re bad in others. You never really get a chance to choose your friends in a small town. There aren’t a lot of choices. You have to settle for what’s available.”
“I get that,” I said. “It was kind of the same when we went to school, too.”
“You had your cousins, though, and you genuinely liked them,” Edith pointed out. “You didn’t have to be friends with the other kids because you had options.”
“And I’m guessing you didn’t,” I surmised. “Are you saying you were friends with Mrs. Little because you had no other choice?”
“Yes,” Edith said, nodding. “I never liked Margaret. She was kind of the queen bee, though, so I had no other options when it came to choosing friends. Well, there was Tillie, but no one wanted to be friends with her.”
I pressed my lips together to stave off a nasty retort. I was pretty sure Aunt Tillie didn’t want to be friends with Edith either.
“There were always rumors about your family,” Edith said. “People said you were really witches and there were a lot of whispers about Tillie being able to perform magic. I didn’t believe them back then. After dying … and meeting you … I now understand.
“Margaret always hated Tillie because the boys seemed somehow drawn to her,” she continued. “She was convinced she used magic to do it. She was also convinced Tillie and Ginger used magic to make the teachers like them and get good grades. She wouldn’t shut up about it.”
That sounded typical. “Love and emotional manipulation spells don’t work,” I said. “They always backfire. You can’t change who a person is or what their heart desires.”
“Well, like I said, I didn’t believe any of it back then so I kind of listened to Margaret with half an ear and a lot of skepticism,” Edith said. “At a certain point – I guess we were about sixteen or so – she decided to befriend Tillie because she wanted her to perform magic for us.”
Uh-oh. “I’m sure that didn’t go over well.”
Edith shook her ghostly head. “Tillie was on to Margaret the second she approached her, and no matter how much Margaret threatened or begged, Tillie refused to cast spells,” she said. “Margaret was convinced Tillie could keep us all young forever … and get us any man we wanted. It was utterly ridiculous. We were naïve and stupid, and we went along with it.
“Things got out of hand at some point, and Tillie threatened to curse Margaret with eternal unhappiness if she didn’t leave her alone,” she continued. “Margaret wouldn’t let it go, and started a campaign against Tillie. She tried to get her kicked out of school and shunned in social circles.”
Huh. In a weird way that made sense. Aunt Tillie was never one to visit town unless she absolutely had to. It was as if she ceded the town to Mrs. Little and took the rest of the countryside as her domain. Still, I was missing something. “That sounds like normal stuff for teenagers,” I pointed out. “How did Patty get involved? She was older than you guys.”
“It was Victor,” Edith said. “I wasn’t privy to their actual conversation, but when a relationship didn’t work out between Patty and Victor things kind of … came to a head. Margaret got involved and claimed Tillie cast a spell. Patty went after Tillie, and they had a physical fight.”
“This all sounds very high school.”
“We were in high school,” Edith reminded me. “Feelings got hurt. Horrible things were said. In the end, Victor didn’t get anyone, and Tillie walked away with Calvin and was happy. No one appreciated that because they were convinced that meant Tillie really was a witch and was controlling people with her powers.”
“That’s still no reason to kill someone,” I pointed out. “How did Fay play into this?”
“She was close with Margaret,” Edith answered. “Everyone followed Margaret, and Tillie was left in the cold. She seemed fine with that, though. She didn’t care what other people thought. I always admired that about her. That was the only thing I admired about her, mind you.”
“So you’re basically saying Mrs. Little has been bitter for years because of high school shenanigans?” There had to be more to the story.
“I’m saying that’s where it started,” Edith clarified. “Throughout the years, Margaret married a man she didn’t love, lost a man she did love to Tillie’s friend and blamed her for it, and has been generally unhappy. Things have continued to snowball, and Margaret thinks Tillie is to blame, or at least she used to. She never stopped complaining about Tillie.”
That made more sense, but I still wasn’t convinced. “I think we’re missing something.”
“I think we are, too,” Edith said. “Unfortunately, that’s the only insight I have to offer you.”
Twenty-Four
“You’re here early.”
Landon shuffled through the front door of Hypnotic a half hour before I expected him, his arms laden with takeout bags. “I love you, too.”
I rolled my eyes. “I just meant we weren’t expecting you for another thirty minutes,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m always happy to see you.”
“I will puke if you two don’t stop it with the cutesy banter,” Thistle warned, leaning back in her chair and closing her eyes as she rested a cold compress on her forehead. “I have a headache, and I can’t take cuteness.”
“She means she has a hangover, and she’s crabby,” Clove corrected. “I like the cuteness.
”
“Thank you, Clove,” Landon said, handing one of the bags to me and leaning over to drop a kiss on my lips. “Clove is nicer to me than you are, Bay. What do you think about that?”
“I think she didn’t have to watch you romance a candle last night,” I replied, digging into the bag. “Ooh. Thai! I love Thai food.”
“That’s why I got it,” Landon said, settling next to me. “Thank you for the candle by the way, Thistle. I love it.”
“I have more in the storeroom, so don’t skimp on burning it,” Thistle said, her energy level lagging. “I’m glad you’re happy with it.”
“I am happy with it,” Landon confirmed. “I did not, however, romance it. Bay is exaggerating.”
“You named it Lucille,” I countered.
“It looks like a Lucille,” Landon said, unperturbed. “She smells like a Lucille, too.”
“You’re sick. You know that, right?”
Landon shrugged. “You’re stuck with me, so you’d better get used to it,” he said, grabbing one of the entrees. “I got everyone’s favorite, and extra spring rolls because they make Bay happy.”
“You’re such a good provider,” I said, wrinkling my nose as I rested my cheek against his shoulder.
“Stop! No more cuteness!” Thistle’s mood was dour. There was no way around it.
“Fine, we’re done being cute,” I said, grabbing my pad woon sen and happily flipping open the lid. “Do you want to hear about my conversation with Edith first, or relate your morning with Noah?”
“I’ll go first,” Landon replied. “Noah is in a mood. It kind of resembles Thistle’s mood. I find that ironic.”
“I don’t need the sarcasm either,” Thistle said. She didn’t touch her lunch, continuing to rest with the damp face cloth on her forehead.
“Chief Terry got the autopsy results,” Landon said. “Fay was stabbed once. It was quick and efficient. She died within seconds. Even if you’d been there when it happened you couldn’t have saved her.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better,” Thistle grumbled. “We might have been able to save her if we were in the bathroom when she was attacked.”
Charms & Witchdemeanors (Wicked Witches of the Midwest Book 8) Page 22