The Witch's Throne (Thea Drake Mystery Book 1) (Thea Drake Mysteries)

by Stacey Anderson Laatsch

  Before I can stop it, an ache swells in my throat, and then warm tears fill my eyes. I try to wipe them away before they spill, but they fall down my cheeks. I stare at the floor and notice fresh vacuum tracks on the rug.

  Jeremy sees my tears and is jumping from the chair, handing me a box of tissue, concern in his eyes, before Rita is even aware of what’s happening.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, taking the tissues. “I’m just...I…”

  “It’s okay. I’ve had…I’ve lost people, too.”

  Rita stands. “Thea, we should go.”

  Jeremy puts his beer down. He takes my hand with both of his, pats the top of it. “It’ll be all right. You’ll figure it out.” His hands slows, stops, and rests heavy and warm on top of mine.

  I look in his tired eyes. “What do you think happened to George?”

  “Tripped in the dark and fell. Hit his head.”

  “Tripped and fell?” asked Rita. “You buy that story?”

  “Why? What do you think happened?”

  “We think someone wanted to get rid of him.”

  “Who?” Jeremy looks from Rita to me and back again. “Wait. Is that why you’re here? Asking me all these questions?” He drops my hand, glances at his uncle. “You don’t think…?”

  Jeremy frowns at his uncle, then turns back to me. “He was here that day.”

  “You saw George?” asks Rita.

  “Yeah. He wanted to talk to Uncle Martin, and I let him in.”

  “That day…you mean the day he died? And you’re just now mentioning this?”

  “I told the police. You...” he looks at me. “You didn’t you know he was here?”

  “No.”

  “He showed up about…noon, I guess? And I think he drank his lunch, man. He was angry, pushed his way in. He and the old man shouted back and forth. I was out in the yard, heard the whole thing. George tried to offer him a deal, cut him in on the book royalties if Martin dropped the trespassing charges, but my uncle told him to get out, told him he’d call the police again.

  “So, they fought?”

  “It was just an argument. My uncle is over ninety, I think. Not like he could hurt anyone.”

  “What else can you remember?” asks Rita. “Anything.”

  “He had this red notebook with him. He was reading from it, all the details of each death, saying how they could all be explained rationally.”

  My hand is still covered by Jeremy’s. I pull away. “My journal.”

  “What?”

  “The red notebook. That’s my journal. George had it with him that day?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I told the police all of this. What’s this all about?”

  Rita takes my elbow. “Come on, Thea. Let’s go.”

  I pull away from her. “What about his phone?”

  “His phone?” asks Jeremy.

  “Did he have his phone with him?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see it.”

  “Do you have his phone?”

  “What? No.”

  Rita squeezes my arm. “Why would he have his phone?”

  Jeremy sits up straight. “Hey, wait…”

  Rita and I both turn to him.

  “When I was at the Corner that night, Jake was telling me—that’s the night bartender, Jake—about George. I told him how he showed up at the cabin that day, how he’d seemed drunk, argued with Uncle Martin, and Jake said he’d been in the bar earlier arguing with Sosie. I remember…” he turns to me. “Jake said they were arguing about his phone. She had his phone. He wanted it back.”

  “Who is this Sosie person?” asks Rita.

  With massive effort, I push myself up from the couch and place my empty beer can on the counter.

  “She’s a witch.”

  When I came back up to the room after breakfast our second morning in Portico, George was sitting in the window seat, hair wild, wearing the same clothes as the night before.

  “Where have you been?”

  His eyes were bloodshot, jumping with excitement. “I did it.”

  “What?”

  “What do you think? I sat on the Throne. I got it on video.”

  He held up his phone. A stilled video frame showed him standing in front of the Throne. Below was the view count: over seven hundred thousand.

  “Oh my God.” I noticed a URL in the description. “PorticoWitch.com?”

  “That site with all the details about the deaths over the years. They linked to my video. Obviously, they think I’m going to be next.”

  “Jesus…”

  “This is it, Thea. This is how I catch them.” He paced the room, wringing his hands.

  I stared at his image on the phone.

  He stopped pacing. “This town of 800 people has had six strange, unexplained deaths in the past eight decades. They can’t all be accidents.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “This isn’t just fraud or extortion. This involves murder.” He began to pace again. “It’s like this town uses this bullshit curse as a scapegoat, a way to explain these horrible deaths.”

  “But Garrety? He died in a car accident.”

  “Randle Garrety made deliveries part-time. He drove, like, constantly. He knew every road from here to Medford, knew every bridge. Never had so much as a fender bender, and he runs off the road?”

  “Michael Poste? Margaret St. Ives? They were suicides.”

  “Did you know Margaret’s wrists were cut horizontally? And that she was left-handed? And that the left wrist was cut first? That was all in the autopsy report. The tendons in her left hand, her primary hand, were severed. She couldn’t have cut her right wrist.”

  “George—”

  “And Poste? His prints were on the gun, sure. It was his gun. But the other items found on him? The vodka bottle? The notebook? No prints. None. Not even his.”

  “That’s strange, I guess, but—”

  “You want to get away with murder? Come to the town that blames suspicious death on the supernatural.”

  “This isn’t…George, this isn’t what you do. If you really think all that is true, then leave it to the police.”

  “It’s been left to the police for eighty years. It will keep happening unless I stop it. I have to go. I have another interview.”

  “With who?”

  “Remember the girl who disappeared? Jane Simmons? Her sister agreed to talk with me.”

  “I can’t go now. The girls…”

  He shrugged on his jacket and held up his phone. “I’ll record it. You can listen to it later.”

  “Wait,” I said, pointing to his phone, “who filmed that video? Who was with you?”

  He waved away my question. “A fan. I promised I wouldn’t use her name.” He held out his hand, and I handed the phone back to him.

  “Her? That woman who works at the bar?”

  But he was out the door, and I could only watch him go.

  Rita remains silent as we leave Fisher’s cabin and collect Mitch from outside. Back in the car, we inch over the bridge, along the cars by the Throne, and past the cemetery. Finally, as we head back on the highway, Rita turns to face the back seat.

  “What was all that about George’s phone?”

  “It’s missing.”

  “Okay…”

  “He was found with it, but it’s not with his other stuff the police gave me.”

  Rita shrugs. “It must have been lost when you brought everything home from Oregon.”

  “No. Someone has been calling me from it.”

  I fall sideways as Mitch swerves the car over to the shoulder and brakes to an abrupt halt. He turns, too, and they both stare at me.

  “I think this woman Sosie knows something.”

  “Who?” asks Mitch.

  “The witch,” Rita answers.

  “Excuse me?”

  “She was helping him,” I explain. “I think she’s the one that snuck him onto the property. I think she filmed him sitting on the Throne.”
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  “And now she’s calling you from his phone?”

  Mitch shakes his head. “George had his phone with him when he was found. How could someone take it after? Are you sure it wasn’t just misplaced somewhere?”

  “Someone is calling me from his phone and hanging up when I answer. If it was someone who had found a lost phone, they would at least ask who I was.”

  “And you think it’s this woman?”

  “I don’t know. The person calling doesn’t speak. But someone has his phone, and I want to find out who.”

  “It could be Beverly!” Rita says, throwing her hands up.

  “Why would Beverly Donneville have George’s phone? How?”

  “How would this woman have it?”

  “I think she was with him that night,” I say. They both fall silent.

  “That night, George and I fought and he left. I think he was meeting her.”

  JOURNAL OF THEA DRAKE | MAY 30

  I talked to Officer Tims about the trespassing charge. Apparently, Martin Fisher is seeking damages, claiming you’re responsible for loss of income because the Donneville’s have paid for exclusive access to the site for filming. They won’t pay him if someone else has been on the site.

  That means Fisher wants you to pay for that lost income.

  So now your video is evidence of trespassing. You better hope this book is another best seller.

  1964 – Margaret St. Ives

  Had she been a man, or had it been a future decade, Margaret St. Ives most assuredly would have been mayor of Portico in the early 60s. She had been born and raised there, married to Dr. Herbert St. Ives, the town’s only physician, for nearly thirty years, and in 1964, approaching her late forties, found herself devoting all her time and effort to the town.

  Margaret was coming to the end of the role she’d known for her entire adult life. Her two daughters had left home successfully, the oldest starting medical school that fall, the youngest finishing her final year of college abroad. With her children grown, Margaret devoted herself entirely to the community organizations with which she had always been involved, including the Ladies Auxiliary, Portico Historical Museum, Kiwanis, and countless church committees. She was well-known, admired, and highly respected.

  In the final hours of December 31, the last day of 1964, Margaret St. Ives was found at the base of the Witch’s Throne, her veins open at the wrists, her blood caked on the white snow that had fallen earlier the night before.

  She had been missing since earlier that evening when her youngest daughter, studying theater in London for the semester, came home for a surprise New Year’s Eve visit. Telephoning from the bus station in Medford, Debra St. Ives was unable to reach her mother. Finally, she contacted her father at his office, and the two of them arrived home to discover an empty house.

  Friends were called—hours later, the police. As the hour approached midnight, Mrs. Rose Smith (curator of the Portico Historical Museum before Mrs. Vera White) arrived at the police station with her niece Audrey and instructed the officers to look for Margaret at the Witch’s Throne.

  After Margaret was indeed found there, the police questioned Mrs. Smith and her niece at length. Mrs. Smith was reserved and cryptic, only stating that “certain past events” and “secrets she did not have permission to divulge” led her to believe her friend Margaret would be found at the Throne.

  Her niece Audrey, however, was more forthcoming. During a tearful interview, she confessed to secret meetings of a group of women of which Margaret was a member, a group that studied and practiced rituals and spells of witchcraft, a group that included most of the women in Portico.

  Mrs. St. Ives death was ruled a suicide and neither Rose nor Audrey were questioned further.

  Rose Smith died in 1978. Audrey is now a retired teacher living in Florida. Despite the controversy, she continued to live in Portico until her aunt’s death, after which a small inheritance allowed Audrey to move.

  I easily located and contacted Audrey by email, and even though she admitted to being embarrassed by the witchcraft ceremonies in which she was involved back then, she answered my questions. Maybe retirement is boring for her?

  Anyway, she was thorough. You can tell she was a teacher. I printed the informative parts of her communication, collected it in one document, and attached it here for you.

  Excerpts from emails

  To: Thea Drake

  From: Audrey (Smith) Rosenthal

  I’ll relate what I can remember. I do admire the work you and your husband are doing. Whether one believes in the reality of witchcraft or not, the history of its practice is fascinating.

  Our group began as an historical society before I joined, way back in the fifties, I think Aunt Rose said. She was running the museum then, and she had the idea to conduct interviews with prominent townspeople for the archives. Maybe ask them for photos and newspaper clippings for the collection. One of the first people she contacted was Margaret St. Ives, and she did with everything, Mrs. St. Ives was already a volunteer at the museum, and threw herself into the new project wholeheartedly.

  Mrs. St. Ives told me many times the museum was her favorite of all the organizations of which she was a part. She loved collecting the histories of the town and people. She interviewed dozens of the town’s residents. She raised funds to archive the newspaper collection that was rotting away in crates in the basement of the Portico Times. She convinced the group to type hundreds of statements, interviews, and anecdotes collected over the years.

  By the time I joined in high school, what started as research into Portico’s founding and the Tenatree family had already evolved into discussion focused solely on Adeline Tenatree. Eventually, we gave up pretense of historical discussion. We studied, then practiced, witchcraft itself.

  More women became involved. By 1964, I was a junior in high school, and I remember every single one of my female teachers were part of the group. The dragonfly was our talisman. Dragonfly jewelry, lawn ornaments, embroidered into handkerchiefs, pinned into hairdos. When you saw a woman or a girl wearing a dragonfly…you knew. You didn’t say a word. You didn’t have to. You both just knew you had a secret.

  Meetings took place once a month at every new moon phase at the Witch’s Throne. The next meeting was scheduled for January 3, 1965, and was highly anticipated. We all hoped to resolve a conflict that had arisen.

  A large section of the group wanted to go public, the rest of us to remain secret. Margaret was a firm leader of the latter group. She fought any suggestion that the women publicly declare their activities or research. Mrs. Smith was the prominent voice of the former.

  Roger McMillan was our full-time police office. Back then, Portico could only afford one full-timer and a couple part-time deputies. All us girls had a bit of a crush on him back then. He was so nice, talking to me that night. I just told him everything. Every detail about the rift in the group, the secret meetings, some of the rituals like the totems and the animal sacrifices.

  But then my aunt decided to start talking, revealing all kinds of secrets of the group, things I’d never heard before. She said Margaret gave herself to be a servant of the Goddess of the Throne. By shedding her earthly manifestation, she could move on to fulfill her purpose, which she could never achieve in her earthly form.

  I’m embarrassed to admit that, at the time, I wanted to believe these stories. I loved being a part of that group. We had a ceremony at the beginning of each meeting to make ourselves visible only to the night world so that no one could see us at the Throne. It was a dance of flowing grand moves, arms waving, body swaying, then leaps in partners and then all together. I knew it so well. We moved as one synchronous spirit. I still perform it in my dreams.

  I understand now that Margaret St. Ives took her own life. She was a remarkable woman, valedictorian of her graduating class, leader of multiple community organizations. And yet her greatest achievements were recognized only through others, through being the wife of the town’s doctor,
the mother to two successful daughters. Instead of her own success as a modern woman, others recognized her daughters’ successes. Instead of her own intelligence, she was admired for marrying an intelligent man.

  Maybe she truly believed in all that ritual and ceremony, but I know for certain that Margaret must have been a deeply unhappy woman with limited outlets to process or express that unhappiness. I know, because we all were.

  There was one strange thing I remember that I could never explain. At the last meeting before Margaret’s death, we had discovered at the base of the Witch’s Throne a carving of our dragonfly symbol. There were also unexplained animal carcasses—a rabbit and a bird—not from our sacrificial ceremonies, and other crude drawings and symbols for which none of the women would admit they were responsible. The part of the group that wanted to go public suspected another coven had formed. Those who wanted to remain secret accused the others of holding their own ceremonies. Tensions were high in the group.

  Margaret, for all her involvement with the rituals and the history and the group, suspected that the symbols they found and the animal sacrifices were a hoax. She pointed out that they were not exactly done in our method, and she thought someone was purposely causing friction, trying to break-up the group.

  She even said she had a suspect. She thought she knew who was planting the fake symbols and rituals. But before she would reveal her suspicions, she wanted to question the person herself. I never heard any more about it. We didn’t talk much between meetings, none of us. I didn’t talk to her again before she died, so I never knew if she confronted the person or not.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN | OCTOBER 27

  Current day witchcraft in Portico no longer practices in one large coven. George tracked down several small groups, though it was no challenging task. Witchcraft is not a secret in Portico. In fact, it’s celebrated. Each coven is a visible presence, especially every October during the All Hallows’ Eve Festival.