Maggie Dove's Detective Agency

by Susan Breen

  “That’s amazing,” Passion’s mother said. “And at your age.”

  “It’s a growing field for women,” Maggie said.

  “Ah.”

  They had a small coffeemaker that served as a hot water maker and she began to brew some tea. Their mugs were pink and emblazoned with their logo. Trust issues? Call us.

  “We’ve never been to New York before,” Douglas said. “Always wanted to see it. But now that I have, I don’t like it.”

  “No,” Maggie said. “I wouldn’t think so.”

  “It was such a big house,” Lila said. “Stern Manor. I always hoped she’d have a chance to live in a place like that. She used to have a dollhouse that looked just like it. Douglas made it.”

  “She was a good girl,” her father said. “That Luke told us he loved her very much.”

  Lila leaned forward and said in a loud whisper, “We don’t refer to him as Lucifer. We don’t use that name even in jest.” Douglas nodded approvingly.

  “I always knew he’d leave that woman for her,” Lila said. “Passion worried that he was insincere, but I told her, you hang on. No man can turn away from you. I told her that,” Lila said, picking up her teacup and then setting it down because her hands shook so much.

  “If it’s a comfort, she was very happy last time I saw her,” Maggie said.

  “Was she?”

  “Yes,” Maggie said, remembering how she’d glowed. She tried to think of everything Passion said. “She was very beautiful.”

  “She was a happy baby,” her father said. “That Luke told us they were going to get married.”

  Maggie thought it was kind of Lucifer to tell them that, whether he’d actually planned to marry her or not. He’d certainly looked brokenhearted.

  “I always knew she’d have a big life,” her mother said. “That’s why I gave her that name. I knew with a name like that she’d draw attention. I wanted her to travel and meet amazing people, and she surpassed all my expectations.”

  “She was like that,” her father said. “Always surpassing.”

  “She’s got three sisters, but they’re not doing anything much. None of them are like her. She was our shooting star.”

  “Icarus,” he said. “I’m an English teacher. Mythology.”

  “Accidental death, they’re ruling it. She didn’t have any drugs in her system,” Lila said. “She was pure. They figure she tripped in the dark. Looked like she didn’t have a flashlight and the house was pitch dark and it was unfamiliar to her. But she was pure.”

  “I’m glad,” Maggie said. What a relief it must be for this girl’s poor parents. “By any chance, do you know if your daughter sleepwalked?”

  “No, she didn’t do anything like that,” Douglas said. “She was a good girl.”

  “They said you get really bad lightning here, and that might have startled her,” Lila said.

  “She was always afraid of lightning,” her father said. “Even when she was a little girl. Didn’t like it. She’d come into our bed and stay with us.”

  “She had on a silk gown,” her mother said. She sighed. “She would have loved to be Luke’s wife. She would have been such a good wife to him. Not like that other one. That witchcraft and voodoo and all the other stuff she was into.”

  “Passion didn’t like that Domino. She didn’t like her friends either. All those witches.” Passion’s father shook his head. “She wouldn’t go to any of those coven meetings. She was a good Christian girl.”

  “That Trudi,” Lila said, “trying to tell her that there were different kinds of witches and different covens she could go to.”

  “Trudi?” Maggie asked.

  “That was her name, right?”

  Trudi. From the candy store. The woman she’d been chatting with just the other day, the woman who knew her weakness for Snickers bars? That woman was a witch?

  Of course, it made sense. She should have seen it. She knew Trudi went to school with Domino. She must know Grant Winfrey too. If she was part of Domino’s circle, if she was her friend, then it made sense, but Maggie felt staggered. She wanted to rush to Trudi’s shop, but she couldn’t leave these people just yet. She had to force herself to stay present. Still, her mind was racing.

  “She was having an argument with that first wife, and she kept trying to pull Passion into it, but Passion wouldn’t get involved.”

  “She was strong-minded,” her father said. “She didn’t go with the flow.”

  Just then his phone buzzed. He looked down at it, and his face paled. He put his hand on his wife’s arm. “She’s ready for us,” he said.

  They both staggered to their feet. “We’ve got to get back to the police station,” he said.

  “Of course.”

  Maggie looked into Lila’s face and saw her own face reflected back at her. “I’ve been there,” she said. “It’s very hard.”

  “Yes,” she said, and they both headed through the door. Maggie paused for a bit. She said a prayer for them. She tried to right herself, and then set out to the candy store to talk to Trudi.

  Chapter 37

  Maggie found Trudi in the midst of unloading a candy shipment. She had boxes and boxes of candy all around her. She jumped, startled, when Maggie burst in, but then she smiled at her. The same smile Maggie’d seen for years. Only now she looked different to Maggie. Sinister. Had she always had that mole on her chin? Trudi, a witch.

  “Trudi,” she started to say, but then stopped. What could she say?

  But Trudi seemed to know immediately what Maggie had discovered. Something tensed in her. Her gentle face tightened, her eyes hardened. She looked toward the door, then back at Maggie. The very air around her felt charged. Maggie thought of how she’d felt during the lightning storm the other night and this sensation was similar. She felt frightened.

  “I’ve just spoken to Passion’s parents. They’ve come to get her body. They told me you asked Passion to join a coven.”

  “That’s true,” Trudi said. She eyed Maggie warily. Grant Winfrey had looked at her in the same way, as though worried Maggie might physically attack. As though scared of her.

  “So your friendship with Domino goes deeper than a shared interest in candy?”

  “Yes,” Trudi conceded reluctantly.

  “Trudi, I want to understand. I consider you a friend, or I have. Two people are now dead, and I keep hearing they died accidentally, but everywhere I turn, I run into witches. Domino threated to put Racine under a spell, and for all I know, she did. And now I hear you wanted Passion to join a coven. I want to understand what’s going on.”

  “Your kind is always looking to blame witches for everything. You accuse us of Satanism. You say we are in league with the devil.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  Trudi scowled at her. Maggie felt her anger. For a basically non-confrontational person, she was provoking a lot of anger lately, she thought.

  Trudi ran her hand through her white hair. Her bracelet jingled softly. It was a sound that had always brought Maggie comfort, that she associated with chocolate and friendship. Trudi walked over to the door and put up the Closed sign. Then she beckoned for Maggie to follow her into the back office. They walked through a room filled with shelves of candies and stacks of bottled water and cans of soda. Beyond that was another door. Trudi took off her bracelet, and Maggie saw that one of the charms was a key. She used it to open the door, and beckoned for Maggie to follow her inside.

  There, Maggie found herself in a small, windowless room no larger than a closet. Against one wall was an altar. It was actually a tree stump that had been carved with drawings, and then had legs attached. On top was a candle, an incense burner, two dishes and two naked figures. The man figure had his arms crossed in front of him and wore a horned hat. The woman figure had long, flowing hair and her arms were placed not to hide her nakedness, but to show it off.

  “These are my gods,” Trudi said. “This is who I worship. I cannot tell you their names. Those are for on
ly those who belong to know. But I can tell you that they represent nothing evil. Wicca is a celebration of nature. We believe in taking care of the environment. We try to attune ourselves with the natural rhythm of life forces marked by the phases of the moon. We value intelligence. We value sex as pleasure. And we mean no harm to anyone. In fact, one of our principles is opposition to oppression.”

  “That may be what you believe, Trudi, but did Domino believe the same thing?”

  “You have no idea what your kind has done to us. You’ve persecuted us. You’ve tortured us for generations. You wiped out our children. You burned them alongside us. The devil is a Christian invention,” she said. “There’s no mention of him before the New Testament.”

  “Trudi, you know as well as I do that there’s evil in the world, and that it’s not a Christian invention. I’m willing to concede that you don’t want to harm anyone, but what about Domino? What did she intend to do? Is it possible she put a spell on Racine?”

  Trudi looked at the altar. She smiled at the goddess. Maggie noticed a calendar in the corner with the phases of the moon on it.

  “You must promise not to speak of this to anyone else. Do you know what would happen if this news got out, Maggie? People are scared of witches. They would burn me out. My family has been here for generations, and it wouldn’t matter. I’d be closed within a week. There was a store only one town south, it was a pagan bookstore, and when people found out who ran it, it had to close.”

  Maggie knew the truth of what Trudi said. “Trudi, I don’t wish to cause you harm. I won’t tell anybody, but I have to know. Do you think it’s possible that Domino could have put Racine under a spell?”

  “We don’t use spells for evil purposes. We use them only for healing.”

  “But do evil spells exist that someone else could use?” Maggie pressed. “Someone less ethical?”

  Trudi shook her head. She kept looking toward the door.

  “Is it possible Domino put Racine under a spell to get her money?”

  “Domino was always drawn toward the darker part of witchcraft. She was attracted by the power of it. She liked hostile magic. It was all a game to her. I told her that when you attempt to draw on those dark forces, you are the one who is opened up to harm. You bring the destructive force into yourself. You’re letting loose more violence in the world, and the world doesn’t need that, and you are impacting your soul. I tried to explain to her that in the end it would not be Racine who she hurt, but herself. She felt she was becoming more powerful, but she was really dissipating her power. It was all seeping out of her.”

  “Then why did she do it?”

  “She wanted things. She wanted control. She didn’t understand the beauty of our way. I believe, in the end, that when Domino went over that balcony, she was pushed by the destructive forces she’d unleashed on her sister.

  “I believe,” Trudi continued, “that Domino wound up killing herself.”

  “Bad karma, you mean?”

  “Yes, this is what we believe, that whatever energy you put out into the world, whether good or bad, will return to you three times. Not exactly, of course. If you kick a cat, your leg won’t break in a later life. But some deep hurt will occur. People suffer because of past wrongs.”

  “So are you suggesting that I lost my daughter because I did something bad in a previous life?” Maggie asked, feeling her chest tighten.

  “Doesn’t that explanation make more sense than to think it was random?”

  “No,” Maggie cried out. “It makes it even worse. People are already inclined to villainize those who are ill or suffering. Now, if you have to believe that it really is your fault, how much more terrible would that be?”

  She paused. This was not a place for a religious argument. She had to stop personalizing everything. If she was going to be successful as a private detective, she had to figure out how to distance herself, how to get past her own emotions. Wasn’t this something she was learning—that it was time to start thinking about the whole world and not just herself?

  “Trudi, I hear what you’re saying—or I’m trying to—but what about Grant Winfrey? His name keeps coming up and I can’t talk to him. Every time I try, he looks terrified.”

  “Of course he looks terrified,” she said. “What do you suppose would happen to him if people found out he was a witch? He would lose his practice. He would lose everything.”

  “I won’t mention his name,” Maggie said. “Do you think you could vouch for me?”

  “I can’t,” Trudi said. “I can’t expose anyone else to that risk. I know you, Maggie, but I understand his fear.”

  Maggie didn’t want to push Trudi too hard. She looked scared enough. But she’d noticed on Trudi’s wall calendar that the date of the full moon was circled. She suspected there was a coven meeting that night, and it would be in the woods. It was worth a try. Maybe if she tried meeting Grant Winfrey in a situation in which he felt comfortable, he would be more likely to talk to her.

  But first she needed to see Racine and see if she could persuade her to hire them again.

  Chapter 38

  That conversation did not go well.

  Racine wouldn’t even open the door. She spoke to Maggie through a window, and just kept shaking her head.

  “No,” she said. “No more.”

  “Racine, you wanted to find out what happened to your sister and I feel like I’m making progress. I don’t think you should stop right now.”

  “You want more money,” Racine said.

  “No,” Maggie said. “You’ve been more than generous. I just want you to know that there are still avenues to pursue and I plan to look into them.”

  “But the case is over. Domino’s dead. Passion’s dead. There’s nothing to investigate. There’s nothing to do.”

  “I think there is more to learn. I think there may have been more to Domino’s death than even the police realized. I’m not positive. I can’t make promises, but you hired me to get you information and I think there’s more to get. I just wanted to let you know that I’m eager to keep working on this.”

  “No,” she said. “It’s enough. I should never have started investigating this in the first place.”

  “Has someone threatened you?” Maggie asked.

  Racine shivered. “No,” she said. “I want to go back to the life I was living. I want to take care of my mother. We keep to ourselves. What do I care whether people think I’m a murderer or not? I just want to take care of my mother.”

  “Do you feel like you’re in danger?” Maggie asked.

  She found herself looking around, just as Racine was doing. The house itself seemed like it was going to collapse onto her.

  “No, no, no,” Racine said, and she slammed down the window.

  “I feel like I’ve let her down,” Maggie said when she got back to the office.

  “You did nothing of the kind,” Agnes said. “She wouldn’t have paid you if she felt disappointed. You’re our top money earner, Maggie.”

  “Only because the same person kept hiring and firing us.”

  “Baby steps,” Helen said.

  “We have other business to take care of,” Agnes said. “I’m working on persuading Hal Carter to hire us to watch his wife. That would be a big one.”

  “I don’t want to follow around Gretchen Carter,” Maggie snapped. “Racine is in trouble. Something is going on with that woman and she needs our help.”

  “She doesn’t want our help.”

  “She says that,” Maggie said. “But I’m not convinced it’s true. I think she desperately needs our help.”

  Agnes looked at her. She had a turban wrapped around her head. Maggie’s mother used to wear something similar on days between going to the hairdresser, but she hadn’t seen one in years, which reminded her of Iphigenia. She really would have to stop by.

  “I’m not sure it’s legal to work for someone who doesn’t want you to work for them.”

  “Then I’ll hire m
yself to investigate what happened.”

  “Investigate what?” Agnes said. “What else do you want to find?”

  “I can’t stop until I speak to Grant Winfrey. I think he’s going to be at a coven meeting. Let me go to that at least and see if I can talk to him.”

  “This is a complete waste of time,” Agnes snapped. “We’re here to provide a service, which we’ve done. Now leave it alone.”

  “I’m not going to leave it alone until I’m sure it’s done.”

  She looked into Agnes’s eyes. How to explain to her that she felt a sense of responsibility? That the whole reason Racine hired her was because she felt Maggie had a special understanding of evil? While Maggie didn’t think that was true, she did think some deeper form of transaction had taken place between them. Racine trusted her, and when people trusted you, you owed them something special, didn’t you?

  “You know, Agnes, you’re always telling me that we need to have a gimmick for our agency. We need to have a niche. Well, what if our niche is that we genuinely care about our clients? That we truly want to do the right thing by them? I think we have a higher ethical standard,” Maggie said. “I think that’s what makes our detective agency different. You talked about appealing to the women’s audience, but I think our appeal should be greater than that. We do more than provide a service. We provide help. Something is wrong with Racine,” Maggie went on. “I don’t know what it is. I don’t know if she’s a killer or if someone’s trying to kill her. I don’t know if there are witches after her. All I do know is that I am not going to turn my back on someone on trouble, and I don’t care if Racine fires me ten more times.”

  Agnes looked stunned into silence for the first time since Maggie knew her. Never had Maggie before noticed that one of Agnes’s teeth turned in a little bit, but never before had Maggie seen Agnes stand so still. She thought of Lot’s wife for an instant, and then pushed the thought away.

  “Agnes, just let me go to this coven meeting. Let me see what’s going on, and then I promise you I’ll drop it.”