by Sharon Pape
I gave her rouged cheek a kiss. “What’s up, Aunt Tilly?”
“Mayor Tompkins is threatening to have Merlin arrested.”
“For what?” Maybe this was a good time for hand-wringing.
“Election fraud, forgery—”
“Wait, is this about his bid to run for the town board?”
“Yes, that’s how I understood it.”
“Where is Merlin now?”
“In my shop watching TV, but Tompkins told me to come back to discuss the matter at three o’clock.”
“I’ll go with you,” I said, which immediately calmed her. Too bad it didn’t ease my mind. If Merlin was arrested, the whole issue of his status in New Camel and the country would come under scrutiny. He might even be deported, if they could figure out where he belonged. The truth was he didn’t belong anywhere in the present. When the news outlets picked up the scent of this problem, things would go from bad to worse. Merlin would become national news. From there it was a short hop, skip, and jump to international notoriety, courtesy of social media. The man who came from nowhere. Whenever things went haywire with modern technology, Bronwen would bemoan the loss of the “olden days.” I used to tease her about being old-fashioned, but I was starting to realize there was something to be said for a simpler, Little-House-on-the-Prairie life.
At ten to three, we all piled into my car for the short journey to New Camel’s town hall. The building occupied an old white clapboard house with forest green shutters and a weather vane that straddled the sharply pitched roof. The second floor was off limits, deemed unsafe as far back as I could remember. In any case, the main floor was adequate for the town’s purposes. The mayor’s office was in a small room off the public area. There was no mayoral residence. Tompkins lived in the house where he’d grown up, although now with his wife and children instead of his parents.
We walked into his office at precisely three o’clock. He had three chairs waiting for us. Either he’d guessed that I would accompany my aunt and Merlin, or three was the room’s normal complement. Tilly had talked Merlin into wearing his best jeans and a sweater. She’d lassoed his unruly hair with a rubber band. He could have passed for an eccentric artist, a mad scientist, or a hippy leftover from the seventies.
Once we were all seated, Tompkins reached across his desk to hand me a form that was several pages long. The heading at the top of the first page read “Petition to Run for the New Camel Town Board.” Signatures filled all the lines below it. I flipped to the next page and the next. There were a lot of signatures. I looked more closely at the names that were both printed and signed. I recognized most of them as belonging to local residents. So far so good. My first clue that all was not as it should be, came with the signature of Jim Harkens who’d been dead for the last few months. Another problem popped up a moment later when I found Tompkins’s signature. Oh Merlin, weren’t there any laws back in your time? Or were you exempt from them because of your status and close relationship with the king?
Tompkins was glaring at me when I looked up from the papers. “Do you understand why I asked your aunt to come back to discuss this matter more fully?” His expression dared me to shrug it off.
“I apologize, Mayor Tompkins. What can I say? As you’re aware, Merlin is a bit different and often doesn’t understand the right and wrong of such things. My aunt and I promise to be more vigilant about keeping him out of trouble. We’d be so very grateful if you could find it in your heart not to turn this over to the police.” Boy, did I hate begging him. I wanted to go home and wash my mouth out with soap.
“There is a remarkable aspect to your cousin’s disregard for the law,” Tompkins said, breezing over my plea. “He forged my signature so perfectly not even I can tell the difference. I checked a lot of the other signatures against documents in our files that were signed by those individuals. Merlin forged them all with uncanny accuracy. How do you explain this ability?”
I went with the first thing that came to me, though it was far from a perfect analogy. “Rain Man.”
Tompkins frowned. “Excuse me?”
“The Tom Cruise, Dustin Hoffman movie from the late eighties?”
“Are you trying to tell me your cousin is an autistic savant?”
“How else could he do such a thing?” I said, hoping it didn’t occur to the mayor that Merlin couldn’t have memorized all the signatures, because he’d never seen most of them before.
“In-ter-est-ing.” He drew the word out as though dissecting the possibility. “That would explain a lot,” he concluded.
“You know what?” Tilly piped up. “I would love to bake a pie or cake for you. Name your favorite. Why don’t we make it a different one every week for a month? Six months? You deserve it for your trouble.”
Tompkins sighed. “You don’t want to be bribing me, Matilda.” He looked at me, shaking his head. “Kailyn, please take your family home before they break every law we have in New Camel.”
“Are you going to bring this to the attention of the police?” I had to know if there was a knife hanging over our heads.
“Not this time. Just go—with my sympathies.”
* * * *
“How did you forge all those signatures?” I demanded of the wizard once we were in my car and headed back to our shops.
“With magick of course, silly girl.” He was in the front passenger seat, having called shotgun as we emerged from town hall. It was anyone’s guess where he’d learned that expression. I was having a hard time keeping my anger in check. Any minute steam might pour from my ears and eyeballs. “You promised not to use magick unless one of us okayed it.”
“I was merely following the instructions on the form,” he replied blithely. “If they are incorrect, the person who wrote them should be reprimanded.” He turned his head to address my aunt. “Tilly, dear lady, might you still have one of the blank forms?”
I heard my aunt rummaging in the depths of the oversized tote she called a purse. “Aha,” she exclaimed, “there it is.” She held up a small plastic bag containing a partially flattened jelly donut with the jelly oozing out. “I couldn’t find this for the life of me yesterday.”
“I’ll take half,” Merlin said, although she hadn’t asked for volunteers.
I parked in front of my shop. “Aunt Tilly, do you have a copy of the form?” I hadn’t paid particular attention to the instructions on the one Tompkins showed me.
“Yes, yes,” she said, dividing the donut in half. She handed Merlin the larger piece. Then she dove back into her purse and came up with a folded sheet of paper that she handed to me:
Petition to Run For the New Camel Town Board.
Interested parties must present the signatures of at least one hundred legal residents of the town and file said petition with the town clerk before the first of December, 2018.
“You can see for yourself that there is no mention of how one should obtain the signatures,” Merlin said. “Was I expected to ring every doorbell in this town and ask if the people living therein were legal residents? What do you think the result of such an effort was likely to have been?”
He had me there. The instructions were not specific about how to obtain the signatures. Merlin knew only a handful of people, primarily the shopkeepers. More likely than not, everyone else would have slammed their doors in his face, if they even bothered to open them in the first place. But there were important points he’d chosen to ignore.
“First of all,” I said, “it is assumed that anyone applying for the position is aware that forgery is illegal. Secondly, it is also assumed that applicants know they have to be legal residents of this town.”
The wizard was absorbed in plucking bits of jelly out of his beard and licking it off his fingers. “Mayhap they are too quick to assume such things.”
“Trust me, Merlin, you do not want to give any branch of the government ca
use to look into your background or ask for your ID. It would mean a quick trip to a prison cell or, in your case, a hospital for the insane.”
“Then I will find another way to restore the town’s original and proper name,” he said clearly undaunted. We’d reached a temporary impasse and I had a business to reopen. Tilly and he climbed out of the car and headed into Tea and Empathy. I unlocked Abracadabra, Merlin’s avowed mission weighing heavily on my mind.
Chapter 10
After a quick sandwich of turkey, cranberry sauce, and coleslaw from the mini-mart, I sat down at the computer, ready to begin our investigation into Ryan’s death in earnest. I knew Travis wasn’t going to rest easy until we found his brother’s killer.
I accessed the coroner’s report for the first name on the list. The public part of the report provided only the basics. Martin Frank of Watkins Glen was forty-six at the time of his death on March tenth, 2011. His death was attributed to multiple stab wounds to his torso. To get a broader sense of who he was, I tried looking him up on Facebook, but there were a lot of people with that name. In any case, the odds were his account had been deleted years ago. Since his death was ruled a homicide, I also checked back issues of the local newspaper for articles about his untimely end. Authorities believed he was the victim of a botched burglary. The murder weapon was never recovered and the killer was scrupulous about cleaning up after himself, because no DNA was ever found. Martin was survived by his wife, Nina, and their two sons. There was a family photo of them all dressed up and smiling. Anything else we learned about him would have to come from interviewing members of his family.
The next name was Calista Gonzalez of Hassettville. She was listed as deceased on February twenty-eighth, 2012, at the age of seventy. Cause of death was a cerebral hemorrhage, most likely the result of a fall. I found her account on Facebook where her brother, Max, had posted a goodbye to her. There were a few other acknowledgements of her passing, but nothing that provided more useful information about her.
According to the coroner, Axel Stubbs of Burdett was twenty-four when he died July third, 2014, from a drug overdose. A dozen people had posted on his Facebook page, many of the comments along the lines of It’s about time and Axel who? His obituary in the local paper said that he was survived by his father and two sets of grandparents.
I only had two names to go, but as much as I wanted to continue, the words were swimming on the page and I was sure I fell asleep for a few seconds with my eyes open. I’d heard it was possible, but it was unnerving enough to send me upstairs.
When I walked into my room, the cats were already fast asleep and covering a good portion of the bed. Even my pillow had been usurped. I didn’t want to disturb them and set off a game of musical cats, so I lay across the width of the bed, curving my body around and between them and using an afghan blanket Bronwen had made in her one attempt at crocheting.
Travis called the next morning as I was stepping out of the shower. I asked him to hold on while I wrapped myself in my terry cloth robe. Morgana had added a neat little spell to it that allowed me to warm it to any temperature I desired. Almost everything in the house tied me to one family member or another. It was like living inside a hug.
“What’s going on there?” he inquired when I got back on the line. “Is someone there with you?” Before I could answer, he barreled on with wry indignation. “I knew it. I’ve been gone one day and you’ve already replaced me with another man.”
“Men are way too much trouble for me to start breaking in a new one,” I said. “The truth is you got me straight from the shower and I needed my robe, before I froze to death.”
“Oh, then I guess you’re forgiven.”
“How’s it going in Albany?”
“Turns out corruption and kickbacks aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Have you made any progress on Ryan’s notes?”
I updated him, adding that I’d check out the last two names later in the day. A busload of tourists was scheduled to descend on New Camel at ten and I wanted to make sure every bottle and jar was sparkling clean. Travis wished me a profitable day and said he’d check back later.
Bus tours at this time of year were far less frequent than in the spring and summer. When the temperature dropped and snow, sleet, and ice came to town, day-trippers were replaced by skiers, for whom après-ski took second place and shopping came in a distant third. All the shopkeepers were looking forward to an uptick in business from this busload of tourists. We were bent on making their experience one that would lead to return visits and favorable word of mouth.
Tilly was already deep into her baking by the time Sashkatu and I arrived at Abracadabra. She had a full slate of customers for the hours of the tour, thanks to the company’s revamped website that urged people to make reservations in advance for the town’s restaurants, as well as her readings. By ten o’clock, I was high on the sugary aromas wafting into my shop from hers. It felt like I was gaining weight by simply inhaling the air.
My first customer of the day was a young mother with a toddler boy and a girl who looked about seven. The mother seemed to be entranced with the shop from the moment she walked in. The little girl was clearly on watch-your-brother duty. She was glued to his side, taking his hands away whenever he tried to reach for something. Why wasn’t he strapped safely into a stroller? I wondered. Or home with a babysitter? I felt sorry for the girl, who was too young to bear the sole responsibility for her whirlwind of a brother. The mother never even turned around to see what was going on with her children, although her daughter kept saying, “no no, Joey, no touch.”
The mother came up to the counter to pick up a shopping basket, then went back to browsing as if she were on her own for the day and the kids belonged to someone else. I was about to tell her I was concerned about the safety of her children, when words became inadequate. The girl had paused for a moment to look at a display of amulets. That was all it took for the toddler to start scaling one of the wooden shelving units, knocking glass jars off to shatter on the floor. If he fell, he could be slashed by the shards of glass below him. If that wasn’t worrisome enough, the whole unit started wobbling, on the verge of throwing him to the ground and toppling onto him. Before I knew what I was doing, I was whisking the boy off the shelf. After I’d carried him out of harm’s way, I reached out with my mind to pull the whole unit upright again. I struggled against gravity, my powers failing. Defeated, I watched the unit wobble and then... stand straight up again? I was bewildered, until I saw Merlin duck out of sight at the back of my shop.
“What is all the commotion?” the mother demanded, finally dragging herself out of the aisle to see what was going on.
When I thought about the incident later, I realized that the only way I could have reached the toddler in time was by teleportation. That would help explain why the girl looked awestruck. And why she told her mother that the shop lady had to fly so fast to save her brother that she became invisible. Maybe all my practicing was finally starting to pay off. Teleportation was still leaving me drained, but not unconscious like my first successful attempt.
“Shop ladies can’t fly, Bella,” her mother said sharply. “You’ve been watching too many cartoons.” She took the toddler from my arms without so much as a thank you, grabbed her daughter’s hand, and stormed out of my shop with one parting remark. “This store is dangerous for children. You’re lucky they didn’t get hurt.”
“I’d say we both are,” I replied tightly. I couldn’t help myself. Sometimes the customer isn’t even close to being right.
I took a minute to poke my head into Tilly’s shop and thank Merlin for his strategic help. My aunt was involved in a reading, but Merlin was sitting in the kitchen area where the clients couldn’t see him. I waited for him to look up from his new iPad and motioned for him to join me.
“Thank you,” I whispered when he met me in the hallway.
“You are most welcome,
mistress. I felt your energy surge, then plummet, hence I came to see if my help was required.” Under the circumstances, I couldn’t bring myself to blast him for using magick without our permission. After all, he had kept the shelving unit from crashing and possibly taking down the next one and the one after that like a line of dominoes. Had that happened, the kids’ mother could have been badly injured.
I closed the shop as soon as the bus pulled out of town. There had been no time for lunch, so I was tired and hungry. Thankfully the trouble with the first customer was the only speed bump of the day. Everyone else who came into the shop was friendly and well-mannered. They bought beauty products for themselves and others on their Christmas lists, as well as healing teas, crystals, and amulets. It was going to be a very magickal holiday for dozens of people.
Since it was early for the cats’ dinners, I walked down the block for a slice of mushroom pizza. Travis had introduced me to what he called “real pizza” when we were in Brooklyn investigating our last case, but when you’re as hungry as I was, New Camel pizza hit the spot. I stopped back at the shop for Sashkatu, who ignored my cajoling to come down from his window sill. The steady stream of people in and out of the shop had apparently disturbed his daytime napping cycle and he was busy catching up. Words held no sway with him when he’d made up his mind about something, but since he was quite portable, I picked him up and carried him home to the accompaniment of his outraged yowls. I figured that some salmon in his dinner kibble would make up for any real or imagined indignities he’d suffered and restore me into his good graces.
Chapter 11