What the police told Barbara was that her husband had been found at sunrise at the Witch’s Throne, dead from a gunshot wound to the head. Martin Fisher heard the shot early that morning and, when he went to investigate, found Poste dead, an empty vodka bottle by his side.
At the time, the police put it down as another tragedy, another suicide of one of the mill’s former employees.
Until the box of notebooks was found.
Barbara had left it on the bed when she and her children had fled their home. The books of disturbing images were found by the police and, considering Portico’s history of demonic ceremonies and witchcraft, had been taken in to be examined.
This is where the Donnevilles came in. Police contacted a professor of religious studies at the University of Oregon who happened to know Charles Donneville professionally. Charles Donneville examined the Poste’s notebooks and, together with the professor, translated what they believed to be a sacrificial ceremony in which Michael Poste had given himself to Satan to be a servant in the afterlife. The images were of other sacrifices, the details of the ceremonies, performed throughout history.
Also included in the box were dozens of photographs Michael Poste had taken of himself. In costume, in the woods, and one in which he was seated on the Witch’s Throne. The date at the bottom of the photograph: August 5, 1980, three days before Michael Poste shot himself.
After Poste’s death, tourism related to the supernatural and the occult increased in the town of Portico. Though the Donnevilles had been well known among occultists since the mid-70s, this book was Charles’s first bestseller, and the one that gave him and his wife Beverly mainstream fame.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN | OCTOBER 28
The alarm on my phone wakes me. Time to take the girls to school. Time to keep up normalcy. Except when I sit up, I’m not in my bed at home. I’m in the blue room at the Apple Inn in Portico, Oregon.
Rita is asleep beside me.
I lie back down and gaze at the white ceiling, freshly painted. George and I had the violet room last time. Its ceiling had a long water stain the shape of Florida.
I think of Lydia and Juliet. I miss them and I’m also glad to be away. I need a break from acting for them. I am exhausted by it. I think of maybe staying in this room all day, but I couldn’t bear the smell of it. I couldn’t bear the sound of other people coming and going all day, the possibility that, at any moment, someone might knock on my door and want to speak to me.
I want to be alone. I want Mitch and Rita to leave. I want Portico to disappear. I want to stay here and breath the cold fall air through the window Mitch left open and stare at this bright white ceiling for as long as I wish, no one waiting for me, no one checking on me, no one needing anything from me. Until I’m ready to be myself again.
But, then again, I need coffee.
I sit up quietly so as not to wake Rita—or Mitch, who is asleep on the couch by the window. They hadn’t returned until almost 3 a.m. I was still awake, clutching my phone, thinking I would never sleep again. But with Rita tucked in next to me and Mitch snoring on the sofa, I finally dozed off.
I rinse off quickly in the shower, soak my hair, then towel off and pull on the same yoga pants I wore yesterday with a different sweatshirt of George’s.
Downstairs is silent and coffee-scented. The sky is overcast, the rooms dark, and the lamps are on. The only way I know it’s morning is by that smell of coffee. I pour myself a mug from the sideboard in the breakfast room and sit back in a cushy armchair by the fire crackling in the stone hearth.
“Good morning.”
I jump. Coffee sloshes out of my mug and onto my yoga pants.
“Oh, dear. I’m so sorry.”
It’s Mrs. Lowry, the owner. She hadn’t been behind the desk when we checked in yesterday, and I had hoped she was perhaps on vacation. The last time I saw her was the morning they found George. She was wearing her pink robe and knocking on my door to tell me a police officer was asking for me.
She’s carrying a plate of enormous, crumbly-topped muffins speckled with something dark. Blueberries? Chocolate chips?
“It’s okay, Mrs. Lowry. Hello. I mean, good morning.”
“I heard someone up, and I thought I’d better bring these in.”
She stands there holding the tray, wearing that pitying half-smile to which I’ve grown accustom over the past five months. I’m readying the speech—Yes, it’s been hard, but I’m fine. I have my daughters to think about—but a knock sounds at the front door and she’s already setting the tray on the sideboard, hurrying away.
“Now who in the world….”
She disappears around the corner into the front hall that runs between the breakfast room and front parlor. I hear her heels clicking on the wood floor, then the gentle squeak of the hinges on the heavy oak front door.
“Yes?”
A young man’s voice carries from the entry: Jeremy Fisher.
“Hi, um…do you…I mean, is Thea Drake here? I’m looking for Thea Drake. I know her. I’m not a weird stalker or anything. I know it’s early, but it’s important…”
“Well, actually…”
“I’m here,” I say, stepping into the hall.
Jeremy is wearing the same clothes as yesterday, and he looks rumpled, as if he slept in his car. With both hands, he grips a large manila envelope.
“Mrs. Drake. Could I talk to you? It’s important.”
“Of course.”
Mrs. Lowry leaves, busy with her morning routine, and I motion for Jeremy to follow me into the breakfast room.
“Do you want coffee?”
“Yeah, yeah...that’d be great.”
I pour some for him, and we sit in the armchairs by the fire.
“Mrs. Drake, thank you so much for not being weirded out. I really need to talk to you.”
“You can call me Thea, you know.”
“Awesome. Look,” he says, taking a gulp from his mug and leaning forward. “I drove all night, and I’m fairly wigging out here. I’ve got something for you. Something George never found.”
He holds up the envelope.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Take a look.”
He offers it to me. The envelope is creased, like he’s been gripping it for hours. I open the little metal doohickey and slide from the envelope a thin stack of photocopied papers.
“I got to thinking when you left, see…” He swigs his coffee, puts the mug on the table between us and taps the stack of papers. “That day, before he got to arguing with my uncle, George talked to me out in the yard. I’d told him I was a fan, and he…he was nicest guy. You know that.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“So, we got to talking about all the strange deaths blamed on the Throne, and he told me about trying to find the police officer that worked in Portico back in the day for, like, thirty years. I mean, the guy was the police here when most of these people died. But he moved away and then died about ten years ago.”
“I remember.”
Roger McMillan. That was the police officer’s name. Portico had enough civic money for one full-time policeman and two part-timers. Mostly they patrolled the highway and stopped speeders. But McMillan was the full-time officer from 1962 to 1992. He investigated the deaths of both Margaret St. Ives and Michael Poste. George lamented at length about how he wished it were possible to talk with the dead so he could ask Officer McMillan about the two cases.
The two cases had remained open for much longer than any other suicides. And even though Officer McMillan had retired in 1992 after thirty years, he left Portico completely and was never heard from again. George had tracked him down to Montana, of all places. Roger McMillan lived in a log cabin on a remote piece of land he owned. But he died in 2002, and left no family. He had never married, and any siblings or other relatives, if he’d even had any, never came forward after he left. He’d left his estate, the cabin, the land, and his savings to the American Cancer Association.
Jer
emy nods at the envelope. “George never knew about that.”
“What is it?”
“Roger McMillian’s book. All of it. I photocopied the whole thing.”
Jeremy’s knees are both bouncing. He’s obviously had plenty of coffee before he arrived at the Apple.
“How did you get this?” I ask.
“I drove to Montana.”
“What?”
He’s nodding quickly. Even his eyebrows are jumping. “Yesterday, after you left. I got to thinking. I thought and thought if there was anything I could do to help, you know. Anything I could remember. And so, I sat there thinking about that day and about what George and I talked about, and he kept talking about that cop, how he wished to God he could have talked to him. Because that cop was suspicious. That cop didn’t think they were suicides.”
It was a theory George had shared with me, too. McMillan had kept the cases open. He had gone on a trip to California, to where Thacky disappeared. He had talked to Dr. St. Ives twenty years after the death of his wife. McMillan been the one to find Barbara Poste and her children. He’d interviewed her repeatedly.”
Jeremy runs both hands through his hair, leaving it sticking out at all angles. He looks like a skinny, glassy-eyed Einstein.
“I remembered George said the cop lived near this little town called Troy, so I Google-mapped it, and turns out it’s on the western border of Montana, only a twelve-hour drive from here, but I made it in ten ‘cause I drove in the middle of the night with no traffic, plus I sped, and I peed in a cup.”
He’s beaming with pride as he tells me this. He picks up his mug and shoots the rest of the coffee.
“Where’s your uncle?”
“He went with. Slept most of the way. I dropped him at home with the physical therapist and came right here.”
“How did you know we were staying here?”
“It’s the only place to stay in town. I took a chance, drove by, and saw your rental car outside.” I didn’t have time to read the whole thing, but the lady I got it from, she told me what’s in it.” His knees are jumping higher. “She told me, and I skimmed through it, and she’s right. She’s fucking right!”
“Okay…okay....” I pat my hands in the air, signaling for him to take it down a notch. “Okay, back up. What lady?”
“George emailed her! But she didn’t get back to him until after...after he died.”
“So how did you…”
“He told me about her. That day. And I remembered her fucking name! It’s Marsha Dumbush. Dumbush!”
He leaps from the chair and begins to pace in front of the fire.
“I Googled her, because how many Dumbushes can there be? And I found her fucking phone number and I called her!” He leans back, pumping his fists in the air.
“That’s...that’s great. So, who is she?”
“Marsha Dumbush knew McMillan. When he moved to Montana, they were friends. And George knew about her because she was listed in the cop’s will.
“I emailed her because I thought, okay, George never got to talk to her and she might know something. Sure enough, she tells me she emailed him but it was after he died...”
He’s pacing again, throwing his arms around. He’s wearing me out just following him with my eyes.
“…so, I’m telling her about you and she’s heard about the Donnevilles and what they’re doing and get this...the cop left her a bunch of stuff in his will. Not money, but like some of his books and stuff, and she tells me that he wrote a whole book about how he was a small-town cop.”
I put the envelope on my table so I can stand and take Jeremy by both hands. I’m afraid he might crash through the picture window or launch himself over the sofa into the china cabinet.
“You need to calm down. You’re starting to worry me.’
“Sorry, sorry, I took a couple pills, plus coffee all night, I was so...so fucking excited to find the guy! This Dumbush was so nice, I mean I could tell she was this old hippy lady because she didn’t bat an eye when I pulled up at eleven o’clock last night and she had me in for coffee and gave me these pills to keep me up on the way home. Said her ex-husband was a trucker and used them on the road and they’re still friends and he stops in sometimes on his way—”
“That is great, Jeremy. That is so great. So…what are you telling me is in this envelope?”
“His book! That cop knew there was no such thing as a witch’s curse. All those strange deaths…he didn’t think they were accidents or suicides. And he wrote a whole book about it! About how fucked up he thought this town was and how he thought there was a goddamn murderer on the loose!”
Jeremy refuses to go home. He refuses to stop drinking coffee. He paces the breakfast room while I sit in the armchair and read Roger McMillan’s memoir. It’s a one hundred-thirty-eight-page typewritten manuscript, and it takes me a little over two hours.
Rita appears when I’m on page seventy-two. She’s dressed and ready to go, despite having slept maybe four hours at most. Her bag is on her shoulder, keys in hand. She marches into the breakfast room straight to the coffee.
“Ready?” she asks me. “Mitch is on his way down.”
“It’s still raining.”
“What is that?” she says, seeing the papers in my hands.
Mitch enters then, wet hair, smelling of soap. “Sorry,” he says, “I’m ready to—oh, hey there.”
Jeremy, who has widened his pacing track into the front hall, freezes at the door.
Rita scowls. “What the hell is he doing here?”
“He found something.” I hold up the manuscript.
They both watch Jeremy as he circles us, and I explain about Roger McMillan and what Jeremy has brought me.
“George knew about this police officer, but he moved away and then died years before we ever came to Portico. George was never able to talk to him. Jeremy found this book he was writing about his time here in Portico. About the deaths.”
“Fine, Thea. Take it with you. We need to go.”
I stand up. “This is important. This cop didn’t think the deaths were accidents or suicides. He thought they were murders. He thought they were connected.”
“Did he know Beverly Donneville? Did he have any information on her?”
“No, he left Portico over twenty years ago.”
She makes a big show with her keys, jangling them. “Stay here and read if you want. I’ll let you know what we find out.”
“Wait,” says Mitch.
But she’s holding her hand up to him. “No.”
“Please. I’m already halfway through. Give me another hour.”
Mitch slides an arm around her waist, leans in, speaks low. “Come on, Ace, let her have an hour. What’s one more hour?”
I wait, hopeful. Mitch brought out the “Ace” endearment, and that always worked in the old days.
Rita, still scowling, pulls away from him but doesn’t leave. She throws her keys and bag on the side table and fills up Mrs. Lowry’s most enormous mug with coffee. Mitch pats me on the shoulder.
I ask Mrs. Lowry for a pen and paper, wishing I had brought my journal with me. Then I settle back into the armchair and resume reading.
Jeremy continues to circle, passing by sometimes with a muffin or another mug of coffee. Mrs. Lowry brings my paper and pen, along with the newspapers, the Portico Times, as well as the Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. Mitch and Rita sit at a table with them.
Other guests flow through the breakfast room, chatting, drinking coffee. Mrs. Lowry and her employees rush about filling the coffee urns, bringing more cups, more trays of muffins, scones, jam.
Gradually the crowd thins as guests leave for their day’s activities at the festival. Once again, I can hear the crackle of the fire, the slurp of Mitch drinking his coffee. Jeremy’s quick footsteps on the pine floors. The rustle of Rita’s newspaper and her occasional heavy sigh.
When I put the manuscript down, every person in the room looks up in expectation: Mit
ch and Rita, Jeremy, even Mrs. Lowry still hovering about in the pretense of dusting.
“Well?” asks Rita.
“It’s…fascinating.”
Teeth clenched, jaw tight, she asks with barely contained fury. “Can you be more specific?”
“Roger McMillian wanted to write crime novels, humorous ones, based on the cases he saw as small-town law enforcer. Drunken antics, jealous boyfriends, bored teenagers, petty theft. His lifelong dream was to retire and move to a remote cabin in the woods to write funny novels based on those experiences.
“That’s what you spent all morning reading?” asks Rita. “A funny crime novel?”
“The opposite. The first few pages are basically an apology for what he’s written. He moved to his cabin as planned and started writing the novel, but details of the unexplained deaths in Portico kept coming out in his writing. The deaths that happened during his time there.”
Mitch leans back, crosses his arms. “When was he a police officer there?”
“He started in 1962. Two years before Margaret St. Ives was found dead at the Witch’s Throne. That was when the secret witchcraft practice came out, but even besides that, McMillan remembered a lot about that case that disturbed him.”
“Like what?”
“Like the cuts on Margaret’s wrists. George discovered this detail, too. He mentioned it to me. The cuts were horizontal. Her left vein had been cut first, even though she was left-handed and most likely would have used her prominent hand to cut the vein in her right wrist first.”
“Strange, I guess.”
“Plus, Margaret was missing all that day before she died, which was unusual for her. She led multiple community clubs and programs. She always had a full calendar, but that day no one saw her anywhere.”
I pick up my journal and read from my notes.
“McMillan also interviewed Margaret’s daughter who said her mother sounded strange when she called home from the bus station. She had thought it was only because she’d surprised her mother, caught her off guard. But then Margaret never arrived to pick her daughter up at the station.
“What suicidal person tells her kid she’ll pick her up, then goes and kills herself?” asks Jeremy.
The Witch's Throne (Thea Drake Mystery Book 1) (Thea Drake Mysteries) Page 15