A Charmed Death

by Madelyn Alt

  Well, it was hard to picture the young girl sitting beside me as being bathed in anything other than an angelic sheen of light, but I knew she was probably right. Still . . .

  “I didn’t tell you this earlier,” I began slowly, “but the other day . . . Sunday—the day that everyone was out searching for Amanda before we knew anything had happened—I was covering my area and I ran into Tara, down by the river. She was practicing, alone—”

  “Practicing?” Evie said.

  “Casting,” I clarified, “and I don’t mean with a fishing pole. Anyway, I surprised her mid-spell, and . . . Evie, she said she was doing a binding, and if the power she raised was any indication, she meant business.”

  Evie frowned. “A binding? You mean . . .” Come on, Evie, don’t make me say it, I willed. After only a moment or two, her eyes grew large. “Oh. Oh.”

  “Yeah,” I said, grim.

  “You think maybe she was hexing Amanda,” she said slowly.

  Tara was Marcus’s cousin, for heaven’s sake. Just considering the notion that she had meant Amanda harm felt traitorous to Marcus and his family. I looked down at my hands, still and white on the wheel. “Yeah, maybe.”

  “Do you think . . .” She swallowed once, hard. “You don’t think she had anything to do with Amanda’s death, do you?”

  “I don’t want to think it. I just don’t know.”

  “But Amanda was already . . . gone . . . by Sunday.”

  “Who’s to say that particular binding was her first?” I looked at her, sick to my stomach. “Do you think the police—maybe Tom—should know?”

  She was quiet a moment. “Maybe there’s more to it than we know. I think we owe it to Marcus to try to find out before we say anything to anyone else. Don’t we?”

  Maybe she was right. I was too confused, too worried, to decide just now. Which left me staring out at the streets as I meandered restlessly through town and wondering what I should do with the rest of my evening. I did a drive-by of the apartment house, but the Jag was there. Just my luck. I could have used a bit of girl talk to remind me that the world hadn’t changed so much after all. A part of me felt like I was still back in that creepy old graveyard. Orbs. Magnetic fields. Spirit trails.

  Feh.

  But there had been something there, strong enough that even a newbie like me could feel it.

  So, when she’s feeling down and troubled and needs a steadying hand, but her best friend is, ahem, otherwise engaged, what’s a girl to do?

  My parents still lived in a onetime farmhouse on the edges of Stony Mill proper. Once, long ago, it was a working farm, but its acreage had been sold off over the years, piece by piece, until it became what it was now—the last bastion of old-time Indiana amid a sea of suburban sprawl. Well, as much suburban sprawl as can hit a town of six thousand-plus people. House after house bore the same color scheme, the same multilevel rooflines, the same recessed front doors flanked by pots that would have borne cheerful geraniums in the summertime but that now stood withered and gray in the December cold.

  The old homestead was as far from that strange notion of sophistication as was possible. It was big and white with a seamed tin roof that had lulled me to sleep through many a rainstorm, and a deep wraparound porch that felt cool even on the steamiest July afternoon. Rather than a tiny manicured lawn, it had a sprawling length of yard that often sported more than its share of crabgrass and clover, old-fashioned rose arbors, and a vegetable garden that at this time of year was nothing more than a square of earth scraped clean of flora and flotsam. At the back of the property stood the old carriage barn that now housed my father’s woodshop and a small efficiency apartment for my Grandpa Gordon, a rowdy old fart who managed to enjoy life despite the electric wheelchair the ravages of time had exiled him to. I could see a blue glow strobing through the windows of his ground-level apartment. Probably he’d fallen asleep in front of The Tonight Show again. I didn’t have the heart to wake him up. My mom, on the other hand, rarely slept. Long after everyone else would have drifted off, she could be found sipping coffee at the kitchen table over an old mystery novel, or relaxing with the Bible in the sitting room, rosary beads and crucifix in hand.

  Tonight I found her in the kitchen. With a décor last updated around the Brady Bunch era, right down to the Harvest Gold refrigerator, just being there was an exercise in nostalgia. I looked around, soaking in the feeling of the place. The stove had been cleared, the sink scoured, the floor swept so clean a field mouse would starve to death if left to its own resources. Typical Mom. At least she’d changed out of her clothes and had settled into her old pink chenille bathrobe and slippers. It was a little threadbare at the elbows, but it looked comfortable.

  It was surprisingly good to be home.

  “Hi, Mom,” I greeted her, closing the door behind me and slipping off my shoes so as not to track in the white limestone dust so prevalent around these parts. “You’re up late.”

  She glanced up from the pages of her book—Christie’s The Thirteen Problems, a collection of short stories. The front cover featured a listing of the stories, and my gaze snagged on the last: “Death by Drowning.” A fitting choice, given the circumstances our little town had found itself in of late.

  “Goodness. The prodigal daughter returns. You stay away too long, Margaret.” For a moment, I worried that she was in the mood for our usual friendly mother-daughter argument, but after a moment’s stare, she relented. “It’s good to see you. Want some coffee?”

  I was still hyped from the night’s activities, so I said, “No, thanks. I just thought I’d pop in to see how you and Dad and Grandpa are doing.”

  She carefully inserted a beaded bookmark into the paperback and set it down with military precision, the edges of the book parallel to the edges of the table. “We’re all doing just fine. Your dad’s gone to bed, of course. He’ll be sorry he missed you.” My dad rarely stayed up late. Sometimes I think he did it to gain some peace from my mother’s micromanaging. Speaking of, I told her I’d been to see Dr. Phillips.

  She grunted. “I had to cancel my appointment with him today. Grandpa Gordon forgot to remind me about an appointment he had with the urologist this afternoon. So, it appears I need to find a new doctor sooner than I’d hoped.”

  “Everything changes, I guess.”

  “Leaving to go into administration, of all things, he abandons his patients,” she fussed.

  “I guess maybe he just needed a change of scenery.”

  Mom was too beside herself to notice my inadvertent funny. “Well, I think it’s very selfish of him.” She sighed in resignation. “I mean, a woman gets used to—”

  “Getting naked in front of certain men?” I finished for her, unable to smother my grin this time.

  “Don’t get smart, Margaret. A woman gets used to certain things, that’s all.”

  “Well, buck up, Mom. Maybe Phillips will have another cancellation that you can claim.”

  “Have you talked to Melanie lately?” she asked, changing the subject to my perfect sister. “She and Greg were out here with the girls just last Sunday.”

  I shook my head as a faint nudge of guilt tapped me on the shoulder. “Well, no. I’ve been too busy with the store and things.” Not to mention I’d been a little preoccupied on Sunday, as had most of the rest of Stony Mill.

  “Greg has been offered a partnership with the firm. That little bit of news almost makes up for Dr. Phillips. Isn’t it wonderful?”

  “Mm. Wonderful. I’ll bet Mel is over the moon.” Actually, I was surprised my little sister hadn’t called me herself. That was just the kind of thing she loved to lord over me.

  Maybe she was growing up. Was it possible? Had five years of marriage mellowed my baby sister?

  “She’s so excited. Greg’s success is her success, you know. It reflects well on our whole family.”

  I was okay with Melanie’s good fortune until I caught the not very subtle inflection in my mother’s voice. Mom had a bad habit
of comparing me with Super Mel, the Junior League Wannabe. But I would do myself no favors by pointing that out to her. Tonight all I wanted was a few peaceful moments of mother-daughter connection, something to remind me that the strangeness I had felt around our town of late could not reach everywhere. My mother, I knew, would never change. As infuriating as she could be at times, sameness breeds comfort. At least I knew where I stood with her. No surprises.

  “How is Marshall?” I asked, deftly changing the subject. “He probably has loads of tales about life in the big city.”

  A frown pinched her brow and tightened the lines around her lips. “Your brother is nearly as hard to get ahold of as you are. Maybe even more so. At least I can go into town and hunt you down at the shop if you don’t answer your phone. But he’s all the way in New York City, and if he isn’t answering his phone, I can’t exactly force the issue. I might have to resort to phoning him at work if this keeps up.”

  “Maybe he’s been busy.”

  “Too busy to call his mother?”

  Ahem. I decided to change the subject yet again before she got started on what was, in her eyes, an unforgivable offense. Meet your number one offender. “So, Mom, you haven’t said—how is Mrs. Roberson holding up? Have you had a chance to speak with her?”

  Mom got up to freshen her coffee, her frown softening into thoughtfulness. “Poor Wendy. To lose a child . . . and in such a way. It’s unthinkable. Simply unthinkable.” She sat back down, but not before placing a plate of cookies on the table before me. Grandma Cora’s sugar cookies, my personal favorites. If they weren’t world famous, they ought to be. Ah, well, I didn’t get that brownie I’d hoped for, so why not indulge . . . “To think, poor Amanda had bought her a gift the very day she disappeared,” my mom continued. “Wendy found it on the dining room table that Saturday, but of course Amanda never came home that night. Oh! That reminds me. The gift apparently came from Enchantments, and I’m sure you’ll understand why Wendy cannot keep it. I told her you’d be happy to refund the money. Maybe you could go over there tomorrow and pick it up. The poor thing, she’s not doing very well. Not well at all.”

  Pick it up? Oh, God. It was small of me, but the thought of facing a grieving mother without someone else there to help me out if the poor woman broke down in front of me made me more than a little nervous. “Um, sure. I could do that.”

  “On the news tonight, they said that Amanda’s death had officially been ruled a homicide. Can you imagine? Your teenage daughter leaves for her part-time job and never returns home.” Mom paused to take a sip of her coffee, grimaced, then reached for the sugar bowl. “You probably think I’m being a maudlin old woman. Maybe I am. Maybe I am.”

  I shook my head. “No. I don’t think that. Where did Amanda work, Mom?”

  “Night desk at the old Lewiston Hotel. Poor Wendy! She’s feeling guilty over that, too. It was Wendy who insisted that Amanda needed a job to teach her about real life, real responsibilities. Sid, he never wanted it. She could do no wrong in his eyes. Forever his little princess.” She was silent a moment, then slowly said, “I guess she’ll be that now for sure.”

  “But . . . the job, the hotel, wasn’t the cause—”

  “Not the cause, no. But it’s difficult for a woman to be logical or even to think beyond the depths of her private nightmare when the child she has raised comes to such a horrifying end.”

  It made me ashamed to think I’d even stopped to consider my own discomfort. “I’ll go tomorrow. The clock must be a terrible reminder.”

  Mom nodded her approval. “Just keep in mind, she might seem a little . . . strange. The shock has been terrible. You’ll understand what I mean tomorrow. She’s verging on a breakdown, I’m afraid. Of course she’s being medicated. Poor Sid, right now he’s dealing with the loss of Amanda while trying to hold everything together for Wendy’s sake. I don’t envy him.”

  The refrigerator beckoned, so I grabbed a cold Diet Coke as I mulled over what Mom had told me. Something tugged at the fringes of my consciousness, something that had been unusual enough to take note of on that awful day. It reared its head now with a vengeance. “Mom, how much could a teenager working a night job make, do you think?” I asked her, leaning a hip against the kitchen counter as I popped the top on the can.

  “Not much more than minimum wage, I guess.” Her eyes, hazel like my own but lined with the cares of a woman nearing the end of middle age, narrowed the longer she looked at me. “Why?”

  “Well, I don’t know. It’s probably nothing . . .”

  “Margaret, stop beating around the bush.”

  It couldn’t hurt to put a voice to the thought, could it? It’s not like I was trying to spread rumors. Just to clear up a nagging uneasiness. “All right,” I said, feeling my way. “You know that I saw Amanda the morning that she disappeared at the store. I almost didn’t recognize her, and she certainly didn’t seem to recognize me. She came in with her friends to buy the clock. To get her ‘out of the doghouse,’ she’d said. With her mom, I’d assumed. But, Mom,” I said, looking up from my pop into eyes that seemed suddenly older, wearier, “she paid for it in cash like it was nothing. The clock was worth nearly five hundred dollars. But that’s not the only thing. Even after paying for the clock, the wad of money she was carrying in her purse was a thing to behold. She had at least several hundred left. I’m serious. Where does a teenage girl get her hands on that much money, and why would she just be carrying it around?”

  Mom looked troubled. “Not from Wendy, that’s for sure.”

  I nodded. That much, at least, made sense. “Mr. Roberson?”

  “Sid doted on Amanda, but he wasn’t a fool. No, I’m sure he wouldn’t have. What sane parent would? In this day and age, ready access to cash can only lead to trouble.”

  So, what did that leave? Baby-sitting? Please. I’d done my share of baby-sitting stints. They weren’t exactly high-end gigs. Enough to keep a teenage girl in all the glamour mags she could want and a ready supply of bubblegum-flavored lip gloss, but that was about it. Then again, Amanda and her friends didn’t look the type to like bubblegum. Young rural sophisticates poised for world domination. But how?

  Drugs? Could it be?

  I didn’t like the thought, given what had happened to Amanda, but times had changed since I was a teenager myself. Drugs had been available back then to anyone who really wanted them, but they were nowhere near as prevalent as today.

  I couldn’t think of any other way a girl from a good family could come by that much money, enough that she’d think nothing of carrying it around with her in her purse. Could she have been a dealer at the school? A distributor of sorts? I didn’t like to think it, but things like that, unfortunately, did happen these days. Could a girl of Amanda’s social stature be drawn into something like that? And was her dislike of Tara purely two personalities that clashed, or was there a deeper reason? What was Tara’s connection to all this?

  Chapter 12

  Technically it was none of my business, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The hows and the whys of Amanda’s disappearance. One of the hazards of living in a small town, I suppose. When you know or come into contact with so many people on a daily basis and have heard of so many more, one person’s death has the potential for a high impact, and Amanda’s had proven just that. There was a black cloud hanging over our town, and it was more than just a prevailing attitude. Worry, suspicion, and fear were like dragons circling overhead, waiting for just the right moment to lay siege upon the people of Stony Mill. And as in stories of long past, they were hard to banish once they’d sunk in their claws for the long haul. What this town needed most was for the police to find the real reason behind Amanda’s murder so that healing could begin. We needed to know. We needed to understand.

  Those were the thoughts running through my head as I took a few moments to stop by the Roberson house the next morning. Liss had surprised me by arriving at the store before me, ending her self-imposed hiatus. By the time I
arrived, the door was unlocked, the lights were blazing, and the warm and nutty scent of coffee permeated the shop. In the hour before the store officially opened, we had a heart-to-heart talk, the kind that I’d longed for weeks to have with her. Gosh, it was good to see her there! And better still to be able to talk to her, live and in person. There was something about Liss’s eyes that made me incapable of holding back. I found myself spilling out everything that had happened, every last disjointed thought. Liss listened attentively, murmuring responses that were, as usual, the perfect things to say. When at last the words had stopped gushing forth, she told me how grateful she was for my hard work, even more grateful for my friendship. Then she told me—ordered me—to take a well-deserved day off. At first I refused—Liss was newly back, I’d much prefer enjoying her company for the day—but in the end I gave in. There were some things that I needed to do, and I never seemed to have enough time to get to them. Of course I knew I’d probably end up back at the store when all was said and done, but I would humor Liss for the morning at least.

  First things first: I would pay my respects to the Robersons.

  I’d already cleared the return with Liss. “Of course,” she’d said, sympathy shining in her clear silver gray eyes. “The poor woman needs no reminder of what happened. These next months will be difficult enough for her.” She’d given me the cash from the till without a moment’s hesitation.

  My next move was an afterthought that suddenly seemed like a terrific idea. I dialed my mother’s number with gusto.

  “O’Neill residence.”

  “Good morning from your oldest and most loving and appreciative daughter,” I said.

  “Well. Good morning to you, too. A visit last night and a phone call this morning? I’m overcome. To what do I owe the honor?”

  “I have a favor to ask.”

  “Somehow, I knew you were going to say that. What did you need, Margaret?”

  “Your company. I don’t suppose you happen to be free for the next hour?” I told her I was following through with her plan to pay my respects to Mrs. Roberson and to pick up the clock, and for once Mom didn’t fuss. She even seemed to think my doubles approach was a good one. “Great. I’ll be over in ten minutes,” I told her, ringing off.