“I’m sorry,” I offered earnestly this time. “It was just a really long night.”
“What? Was your Aunt Tillie sacrificing a goat or something?” Edith asked blithely.
Aunt Tillie was one of the few people still alive in Hemlock Cove who had known Edith during her life. To say they didn’t like each other would be an understatement. Edith thought Aunt Tillie was the devil and Aunt Tillie thought Edith had been out to seduce her late husband. Both scenarios were built on germs of truth, I figured. Since Edith had discovered she could leave the newspaper offices, she had periodically dropped in at The Overlook to haunt Aunt Tillie – who could also see ghosts. That was probably one of the reasons Aunt Tillie’s fingers were constantly quirking with curses these days.
“No. It was just a really long dinner.”
“I was thinking,” Edith said. “Wouldn’t Myron be a ghost? He died a violent death, after all.”
“That doesn’t always mean you become a ghost,” I supplied.
“Still, there has to be a way to find him, right?”
“We’re going to try and call him to us tonight,” I admitted.
“How?” William asked nervously.
“We’re going to host a séance,” I said.
“Like a bunch of witches holding hands around a crystal ball?” Edith asked. She looked freaked out by the concept.
“No, more like a bunch of witches holding hands in a field.”
“And then you’re going to dance naked?” William looked excited by the prospect, despite himself.
“Yeah, thanks for telling Brian about that, by the way.”
William had the good sense to look sheepish. “I had always heard about it, but I had never actually seen it.”
“Who did you hear it from?”
“Everyone in town knows,” William shrugged. “Most people think you’re out there sacrificing animals.”
“You wanted to see it?” The thought made me cringe internally.
“You probably don’t realize this, but your mother and your aunts are fine forms of the female body.”
“They’re in their fifties.”
“To a ninety year old, that’s pretty good,” William smiled.
Edith looked scandalized. I didn’t blame her.
“Aunt Tillie does it, too,” I reminded him.
“Your Aunt Tillie used to be quite the looker, too,” William explained. “I always thought that your Uncle Calvin was a lucky man to have married her.”
Lucky? Henpecked was more like it, at least from what I had heard. I had never met Uncle Calvin. He had died before I was born.
“Do they really run around naked?” Edith was clearly horrified by the mental picture playing in her mind.
“The four of them do,” I admitted. Really, whom was she going to tell? “Clove, Thistle and I do not.” There weren’t kegs big enough to convince us that was a good idea.
“Why not?” William looked disappointed.
“It’s not our thing.”
“Well, at least the three of you are using some common sense,” Edith sniffed.
“It’s a family tradition,” William protested. “They should learn to respect their elders.”
I was feeling a little creeped out by lecherous William’s fascination with family nudity at this point.
“So, do either of you know why Myron joined the Army so late in life?” As transitions go, it wasn’t my best, but I couldn’t talk about dancing naked with my family much longer without my head imploding.
“He had a restaurant that he bought with the money he got from his momma’s inheritance when he got back from college,” William said. “He was a good boy, but he didn’t know anything about running a restaurant.”
“So, when he lost the restaurant he decided to join the Army?”
“Pretty much.”
“And he just did one tour?”
“Yeah,” William said. “When he came back he wasn’t the same boy.”
“Was that because of all that stuff he stole from Iraq?” Edith asked.
If Edith and William breathed, I would have felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room. “What stuff did he steal from Iraq?” This was a new piece of information in the puzzle.
“That was just a rumor,” William said hurriedly. “There was nothing true about it.”
“Everyone in town said that he stole stuff and buried it in Hemlock Cove,” Edith argued. She never was good at picking up on verbal cues, but this was ridiculous. William was obviously incensed that she had told me.
“What kind of artifacts?” I asked the question of Edith, but watched William for his reaction.
“I think it was money,” Edith said. “That’s what everyone said.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’m a ghost,” Edith said simply. “People say things in front of me that they wouldn’t say in front of anyone else.”
“But who said it in front of you?”
Edith must have realized, finally, what she had said because she shot an uncertain look in William’s direction. “I don’t remember,” she lied.
“William, what is Edith talking about?” I turned to him expectantly.
“How should I know?” William looked like he was struggling to refrain from verbally lambasting Edith.
“Well, Edith didn’t leave this newspaper for decades,” I pointed out. “I didn’t know anything about any stolen money from Iraq. That pretty much leaves you?”
William avoided my gaze. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You look like you have an idea what I’m talking about,” I prodded.
“Well, I don’t. You need to stay out of other people’s business.” With those words, William faded away, but not before I could see the anger that was firmly planted on his transparent face.
I turned to Edith. “Was William involved with something he shouldn’t have been? Don’t you even think about disappearing, Edith!”
Edith ignored me and followed William’s lead.
When I was alone in my office, I couldn’t help but think that maybe William’s death and Myron’s murder had more in common than I initially thought. That meant this case was suddenly a lot bigger. Crap.
Eighteen
After William and Edith’s suspicious exits, I was even more confused than before. If Myron had stolen money during Desert Storm, why had he been homeless? Why bury it? And how did William know about it? The biggest question of all, though: Where was the money now?
I tried to push those immediate thoughts out of my mind and called Chief Terry in an effort to focus on the practical instead of the amorphous.
“What’s up?” He answered the phone tiredly.
“What did you find out from the autopsy?”
“He was stabbed.”
Cop humor is only funny to cops. True story.
“Was he only stabbed once?”
“Yeah,” Chief Terry blew out a sigh. “We’re trying to see if we can get prints off the knife, but it was covered in blood so the techs aren’t overly hopeful.”
I considered telling Chief Terry what Edith had let slip, but since I didn’t have any way of explaining how that little tidbit had fallen into my lap, I decided to keep it to myself for the time being.
“What about tracking down the knife itself?”
“You can buy it at any Wal-Mart. That’s not going to help us.”
“So, what do you do next?”
“We investigate,” Chief Terry said simply.
Since there was nothing else for us to talk about, I started to say goodbye. I was surprised when Chief Terry interrupted me. “So, I heard Landon went to family dinner last night?” There was a certain tone of mischief in his voice.
“How did you hear that?”
“He told me.”
“What did he tell you?” I asked suspiciously.
“He said you were all acting batshit crazy. His words, not mine.”
“We were act
ing normal,” I replied. Sadly, it was true.
“He said something weird was going on with Aunt Tillie.”
Something weird is always going on with Aunt Tillie. Chief Terry knew that as well as anyone. “She was just in a bad mood,” I lied.
“So she doesn’t think she’s allergic to oxygen?”
Oh, that. “Yeah. I think she’s just looking for attention,” I said truthfully.
“You didn’t tell her that, did you?”
“No. She’s the least of my worries right now. Getting her all wound up could be detrimental to everyone, though. We don’t need the distraction.”
“Still, it took a lot of guts for Landon to sit through a family dinner with the Winchester women,” Chief Terry said pointedly.
“What? Now you like him?”
“No, I don’t like him. You just have to admire a man that has dinner with you and doesn’t run away from Aunt Tillie screaming.”
I pondered Chief Terry’s words for hidden meaning, and then a thought occurred to me. “Landon’s right there, isn’t he?”
“No,” Chief Terry said. I could tell he was lying.
“Tell Landon that a brave man doesn’t ask another man to do his dirty work.” I hung up the phone disgustedly. Men.
I left The Whistler with the intention of going to Hypnotic and telling Thistle and Clove what I had found out. Instead, though, I took a brief detour into Mrs. Little’s store. At the age of eighty-three, Mrs. Little knew a lot about Hemlock Cove – and the denizens of the quiet little hamlet.
Mrs. Little seemed surprised when she looked up from her reading chair by the fire and saw me standing in her small store. “What are you doing here?”
“I have a question,” I admitted. Mrs. Little can smell a lie like a fart in a sleeping bag. I figured out, a long time ago, it’s better to just play things straight with Mrs. Little.
“What question?”
“How well did you know Myron?”
Mrs. Little looked surprised. “As well as anyone, I guess,” she said finally.
“Were you surprised when he joined the Army at such a late age?”
Mrs. Little considered the question seriously. “Yeah, we all were. He didn’t have anything left here, though. I guess it made sense for him.”
“And when he came back, what did you think?”
“At first, I thought he was just a little lost,” Mrs. Little said. “I didn’t think much of it. I figured he’d seen a lot during the war.”
“And after?”
“He didn’t start drinking all at once,” Mrs. Little said. “It was a gradual thing. By the time the town realized what was going on, it was too late.”
The way she had said the words made me realize Mrs. Little thought I was blaming her – or the town as a whole – for what had happened to Myron. Suddenly, the hundreds of pewter unicorns adorning the shelves seemed to be glaring at me. “I’m not blaming you,” I said hurriedly. “I’m just trying to understand how he went from hometown hero to town drunk?”
“If you could understand that, we would all be better off,” Mrs. Little said honestly. She had a point.
I wasn’t sure how to ask the next question, so I decided to ask around it instead. “Were there any rumors about Myron when he returned from the war?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know,” I hedged. “About things he’d done over there. Anything he would have brought back?”
“You’re asking about the money?” Mrs. Little said knowingly.
“I may have heard someone mention him bringing artifacts back from the war,” I admitted.
“I heard it was a big bag of gold,” Mrs. Little supplied.
“Gold?”
“That’s what everyone said,” Mrs. Little replied. “I didn’t believe it, though.”
“Why not?”
“If he had gold, why would he be homeless?”
I shrugged. “Maybe he felt guilty about stealing it?”
“Maybe,” Mrs. Little said, pursing her thin lips. “Still, I don’t believe it. He was a drunk. He would have told someone when he was inebriated one night.”
That was another very good point. Of course, he could have told William, and that could be what he was hiding. I didn’t say that to Mrs. Little, though. Instead, I thanked her for her time and headed towards Hypnotic. I wasn’t ready for the chaos I walked in on.
“What are you going to do?” Clove’s high-pitched wail could have wakened the dead – which wasn’t a good idea when you were in close proximity to me.
“What’s wrong?” I asked in alarm, scanning the store for signs of locusts – or Aunt Tillie.
Clove looked relieved when she saw me. “It’s horrible,” she admitted.
“What’s horrible?”
“I don’t know how she did it, but she did it.”
Clove wasn’t making any sense. That happened on a regular basis, but the horror on her face was enough to send a chill through my body.
“Who did what?”
“Aunt Tillie,” Clove whispered. I think she thought if she said the name too loud the ceiling would cave in or something. Hey, it wasn’t out of the question.
“What did she do now?” I looked Clove up and down. She looked the same as usual. A quick shot of fear coursed through me and I glanced at my own reflection in the mirror on the wall. Thankfully, my mustache hadn’t grown back. Whatever Aunt Tillie had done – it was only to Thistle. I couldn’t help but feel relieved.
“She cursed Thistle,” Clove said.
“I’m going to kill her!” Thistle was behind the curtain that led to the storage room in the back of the shop. I hadn’t seen her yet – and I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
“What did she do now?” I thought about walking behind the curtain, but I figured I would just let the most recent catastrophe come to me for a change. There was no sense in seeking it out.
“What do you think she did?” Thistle challenged from behind the curtain.
I thought about it. Really, with Aunt Tillie, it could be anything. “She didn’t give you a wart on the end of your nose, did she?” Aunt Tillie wasn’t into repeating curses, but she had pulled the wart gag out a number of times over the years. When she had cursed Clove with one a few years back, she’d enhanced the curse to include three coarse hairs and a curious green hue.
“No. Worse.”
“She didn’t make hair grow from your ears, did she?”
I saw Clove shudder. That one had plagued her for an entire month.
“No. Worse.”
A memory surfaced, one I had tried to bury for eight years. “It doesn’t burn when you pee, does it?”
I heard the curtain to the storeroom squeak as Thistle yanked it open angrily. “No. Worse.”
“Oh, holy God,” I said when I saw her face. “Are those . . . are those chicken pox?”
Please be chicken pox. If they weren’t, I had no idea what plague Aunt Tillie had set upon Thistle that would make her whole face break out in such a manner.
“I’ve already had the chicken pox,” Thistle gritted out. “We all had them at the same time, remember?”
How could I forget? Our mothers had duct-taped oven gloves on our hands to keep us from scratching our faces. It was a horrific two weeks.
Clove stepped closer to Thistle – but not close enough to touch her, I noticed. I didn’t blame her. It could be catchy. “I think it looks like hives,” she said finally.
“I don’t care what it is,” Thistle said. “That old lady better start running now!”
As frightening as Aunt Tillie was, Thistle was more terrifying right now. I don’t know whom I would pick in a fair fight. My choices were a twenty-three year old with age and rage on her side, or an eighty-year-old woman with evil on her side. It was going to be a tough call.
Welcome to the Winchester Witches War of 2013. May the Goddess have mercy on all our souls.
Nineteen
Getting Thistle home without anyone i
n town – especially Marcus – seeing her proved to be more problematic than initially thought. At first, we had ushered her out the backdoor and piled her into the backseat of her car for the drive home. When the car wouldn’t start, though, things got more complicated.
“Aunt Tillie strikes again,” Thistle seethed.
“How can she break a car?” Clove looked dubious.
“It’s Aunt Tillie,” I pointed out.
“Good point.”
I left Thistle and Clove in the alley behind the store and ran to the newspaper parking lot to get my car. Unfortunately, I ran into Marcus during my mad dash to secure a vehicle that actually worked – hopefully.
“Hey Bay,” he greeted me amiably.
“Marcus,” I said nervously.
“Do you know where Thistle is? I tried calling her, but she’s not answering her cell phone.”
“Um, did you check the store?”
“Of course,” Marcus was watching me curiously. He could tell I was freaked out – and out of breath from the sprint to The Whistler. Thistle had warned me, in no uncertain terms, that I wasn’t supposed to dillydally. I don’t know if it was the pox on her face, but I was more scared of her than usual.
“It’s locked up,” Marcus said.
“Did you try the inn?”
“Why would she go to the inn in the middle of the day? No one is sick, are they?”
Define sick. “I don’t know where she is,” I lied.
Marcus looked momentarily lost. I felt sorry for him – and considered telling him Thistle was fine, for the most part – but the mere thought of Thistle’s fury steadied me. This was her business, I reminded myself.
“If I see her, I’ll tell her you’re looking for her,” I said.
Marcus said his goodbyes and walked dejectedly back towards the stables, kicking a few errant rocks as he went. He had it bad for Thistle, I realized. I had no idea how she was going to explain her face to him, though. An allergic reaction? I’d used that excuse several times over the course of my life thanks to Aunt Tillie.
After loading Clove and Thistle in the car – with the latter crouching down in the backseat so no one could see her – I told my cousins what I had found out about Myron.
“No way,” Thistle said from the backseat. All I could see in the rearview mirror was a flash of purple hair from time to time.
Every Witch Way But Wicked (A Wicked Witches of the Midwest Mystery) Page 10