The Witch's Bones

by Iris Kincaid

  Another doctor had stopped in the hallway behind Martine and was listening to her rant, perturbed. She gestured to Dr. Svenson that she needed a word with him. He excused himself from Martine and said he would return right away.

  “Is she your patient, Dr. Svenson?”

  “Yes, she is one of my transplant patients. Received new bone marrow very recently. It went extremely well.”

  “Perhaps from a physical standpoint. Obviously, she needs a psychiatric evaluation. Those are very extreme delusions that she is having. I hope you are planning on making a referral.”

  Of course, one is obligated to make those kinds of referrals if one’s patient is actually having psychological problems. It would be a dereliction of his responsibility for the patient’s well-being to do otherwise. And now that this other doctor was aware of Martine’s claims of future foreknowledge, it placed them all in a bind.

  “I recommend Dr. York. She’s had a lot of experience with that kind of patient. But you really need to schedule a meeting right away. A patient like that could do a lot of harm to herself if those delusions are allowed to continue.”

  “Right away. Of course. I’ll take care of that right now,” Dr. Svenson assured her.

  He returned to Martine, very apologetic. “She heard you talking about being able to see the future. So, here is what’s going to happen. You’re going to accept some psychiatric therapy. Of course, I know you’re not crazy. But now we have to go through the motions. Talk to the psychiatrist. They’re going to want to know about your past, about your childhood, about your anxieties.

  “But you know what? Even if you aren’t crazy, which you are not, those are healthy things to talk about for everyone, I think. But you must attend the sessions or that doctor is going to get me in a whole lot of trouble. Will you do it?”

  “Geez! This week is just getting worse and worse.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. You’re in excellent health. You have a new friend here. And he will not be the only one, I think. I see a very bright future for you. You see, I can predict the future a little bit too.”

  Great. Martine had gone from being the most private and solitary of individuals to one who was going to be forced to bare her soul to an insufferable head shrink. Just great.

  *****

  A quick stop at the pet supply store for several cans of gourmet feline sustenance, and Martine was on her way back home via a shortcut through the park. The cat could not have been happier. He was particularly fascinated by the squirrel population, and inevitably, he decided to follow one up one of the tallest trees in the park.

  He was no match for the squirrel, who got up about six or seven stories high and had no worries about being perched at the very top of the tree. The cat found three stories to be plenty high. In fact, maybe a little too high. He looked down anxiously at Martine and started meowing loudly.

  “What on earth do you expect me to do? You’ve already been rescued one time today. I don’t believe that you’re trying to tell me that you don’t know how to get down. Cats are supposed to know these things.”

  Just more insistent meowing. Martine sighed. What was wrong with him? The tree had pretty deep grooves in the trunk. It looked ideal for climbing. In fact, it looked like a very good alternative for the wall climbing class that she had signed up for. She was ever looking for a challenge to put her newly-revived legs to the test. Why not?

  It took a full five minutes for Martine to reach the cat, who seemed greatly relieved by her presence. But Martine quickly developed empathy for his dilemma. The trip up had seemed relatively straightforward. The trip down . . . she was not so anxious to attempt.

  While she was eyeing the distance between herself and the ground, who should appear at the bottom of the tree but her new friend, Morgan.

  “I thought that was you. Although I asked myself, what would Martine be doing climbing up that tree. Oh, and now I see that you have a buddy up there.”

  “It’s all his fault. He couldn’t get back down. What kind of cat can’t get back down? So, I had to come up here to help, and now, I sort of see what the problem is. Look at the mess you’ve gotten me into, Mr. Lucky.”

  “Mr. Lucky, eh? With a name like that, I’m guessing that he’s going be getting down sooner rather than later. You, I’m not so sure about.”

  “Well, I got up here, didn’t I? I just have to put my feet in the same places to get back down.”

  “And Mr. Lucky?”

  “He’ll see me doing it and realize how easy it is. I’m sure he’ll follow right after.”

  “I think maybe I should call the fire department.”

  “They don’t actually get cats out of trees, do they?”

  “I have no idea. I was going to tell them that you needed to be rescued from the tree.”

  That was such a mortifying thought that it prodded Martine into action. She draped the leery cat over her shoulder and began the excruciatingly slow descent.

  “I’ll be right down here to break your fall,” Morgan yelled up.

  Fortunately, she didn’t have to take him up on his offer. In about as much time as it had taken to get up, Martine and company were able to safely reach the ground.

  “Very impressive,” Morgan said. Just like everything else about you.

  “I happen to have very good balance.”

  “And no fear of heights. Unlike Mr. Lucky here.”

  Mr. Lucky had found both a name and a protector. He clung tightly to Martine, doing his best to ingratiate himself into an invite home. A few light drops of rain made them all look upward.

  “I guess I should get him inside.”

  “Yeah, which way are you headed? What a coincidence. I was headed in that direction myself.”

  It was so obvious that he would have said the same thing no matter what direction she was walking in. But it was handy to have him carry the pet store bags. And having an admirer was something she could get used to.

  *****

  “Oh, so you have a studio.”

  “No, it’s a one-bedroom.”

  Morgan looked at the large queen-size bed in the middle of the living room. “Of course. Bed in the living room. Thinking outside the box. I may have to think about getting a bed for my TV office. We can work some pretty strange hours. Have you ever seen a real TV station?”

  “No.”

  “Well, after you see where I work, you still won’t have seen a real station. It may, in fact, be the smallest, least impressive station you will ever lay eyes on. But we get the news out. Even if it’s completely wrong.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Our weather guy—zero percent chance of rain today. I guess that’s code for bring your umbrella.”

  Having spent so much time indoors recently, Martine had long ago stopped caring about the weather conditions.

  “Hey, whose wheelchair is that? Did you break your leg or something?”

  “Yeah, something like that.” Martine didn’t want to talk about her hermit life of the past few years or her sickly childhood.

  “Say, I have something wild and crazy to suggest. No, not an orgy. Even though there’s a bed in the middle of your living room. No, not a porn shoot. Even though there’s a bed in the middle of your living room. No, my family has been clamoring to meet you, and they want you to come over for dinner. Yeah, I know it’s too soon, especially to meet a family as frighteningly pushy as mine is. Crew was particularly insistent. He thinks that you’re sweet on him. Is he wrong?”

  “Your family! Mother, father, sister, everybody?”

  “I knew you’d be thrilled. I also know that I spend way too much of my day thinking about you. Which might turn out to be a complete waste of time if you are utterly repulsed by my family. Best to just get it out of the way, don’t you think?”

  “How much time do you spend thinking about me?”

  Morgan stood in front of her, and gently holding her by the arms, he went for another double-cheek kiss, ending with a soft k
iss on her lips. Followed by a rather encouraging smile on her part. Followed by a much longer, much more intense kiss.

  It was a kiss with a great resemblance to the one that she’d fantasized about earlier. But even that vivid fantasy paled in comparison to what was flashing before her eyes right now. Morgan was naked! And what a fine backside he had. He turned around, and . . . oh, still naked. He was also carrying a small tray of food in her direction—tiny little turkey burgers, sweet potato fries, and strawberry tarts. She became vaguely aware of a slight rocking sensation beneath her. They were on a boat. His boat. And in the aftermath of what was probably a very enjoyable lovemaking session, apparently, they both got extremely hungry.

  The first fantasy scene of the kiss had only been interpreted as her overheated imagination. But now, the shocking realization was dawning on Martine that this was not fantasy. It was foresight. It was going to happen.

  “So, what do you think? Saturday night at the Beaumonts’? I’ll tell them to be on their best behavior.”

  Knowing what she now did about the future direction of their relationship, it seemed pretty rude not to be willing to meet his family.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Although Martine’s enthusiastic long walks had taken her to many parts of Oyster Cove, the ritzy neighborhood that Jeremy Todd had asked to meet her in was new to her. But the address was vaguely familiar. And even before Jeremy arrived, Martine figured out that she was standing in front of Theodore Kingston’s home.

  “What are we doing here?” she asked Jeremy as soon as he approached.

  “The police are treating this as a suicide case. After all, there was a suicide note. And he was shot by his own gun. No reason to think that it was a homicide.”

  “Yeah, no reason to think it was a homicide.”

  “Except that I think it was a homicide. And there’s probably only one cop I could talk into investigating it - Finn Cochran. But he’s in Hawaii right now on his honeymoon, and good for him. So right now, I’ve got to come up with some real evidence on my own.”

  “Why don’t you think it was suicide?”

  “Theodore Kingston had only been my client for about a year, but I had a pretty good feel for him. He was in good health for his age. He was in great financial shape. He was a bit cranky, a bit self-satisfied, overbearing, kind of irritating, and he had a very healthy ego. He was the most important man in this town, according to him. Nothing about him adds up to suicide.”

  “I think that when most people commit suicide, everyone around them is pretty shocked. I think it’s normal for people to miss the signs—or so I hear.”

  “He was a perfectionist. Especially on spelling and grammar. But his suicide note had two spelling errors and six grammatical errors. I don’t think he could possibly have written it.”

  “Maybe he was just distraught. Do you really think that someone might have killed him? I mean, what reason could they possibly have had to . . . to . . . well, I guess he did have quite a few enemies.”

  “See? I knew that you knew something. You said that you knew I was his attorney because you had to keep an eye on him. I need to know why you were keeping an eye on him. I need to know everything. I mean, I wasn’t close to him, and he wasn’t the salt of the earth. But if he was murdered, then he deserves justice. I guess, as his attorney, I feel I owe him that much. So, what can you tell me?”

  “He was cranky, all right. He wrote terrible online reviews of businesses, mostly restaurants, on sites like Yelp. And he really hurt those businesses. They had a nickname for him—The Destroyer. A couple of them came to me about uncovering his identity, which I couldn’t do. Mostly because I was a little worried about what they would do to him. One guy, in particular, was very angry. You know, potentially violent. I just didn’t want be responsible for anything that might happen.

  “So, I told him I just couldn’t do it. That it was outside my technical expertise. Which it wasn’t, but that seemed to be the easiest way to go. And one woman, I did help to erase her bad reviews from him. He can really put these places out of business, which was just inexcusable. But yeah, he had plenty of people who were mad at him. The question is, did they ever find out that Theodore Kingston was The Destroyer, and how did they find out, and which one of them took action?”

  “Can you give me names? Contact info?”

  “Sure. I’ll send you a list as soon as I get home. Right now, I have to speak to a psychiatrist—oh, did Dr. Svenson fill you in on this? Someone overheard me about seeing the future. And now, I have to see a psychiatrist. Because I might be crazy. I don’t even know how I’m going to convince her that I’m not crazy. How about I have these really unusual abilities that were transferred to me because of organ transplant from this really awesome witch? Perhaps that will help convince her that I’m not crazy.”

  Jeremy flinched. “Good luck.”

  *****

  The psychiatrist’s name was Dr. Emily York, and she was not one for mincing words.

  “You believe that you can see the future?”

  “Of course not,” Martine responded, trying to sound innocent. “That’s insane. No one can see the future. We can speculate, of course. And hope. And dream. And predict. But no one can actually see the future. That’s crazy.”

  “Martine. This therapy is pointless without complete honesty. I have it on good authority from another physician that you claimed very earnestly that you were able to see the future. Is that what you said?”

  Busted. “I probably did say something to that effect.”

  “Good. That is a good starting point. The future fills many people with anxiety and uncertainty. Which is natural, because the future is defined by uncertainty. I think our work together must begin with understanding why that uncertainty is unbearable to you. Why don’t we start with your background, your childhood?”

  That was easy enough. Martine could rattle off the details of her childhood illness, her parents’ death, her Uncle Pierre’s guardianship, his eventual illness, and her relocation to her grandmother’s. The part of the story that raised Dr. York’s eyebrows was when Martine explained that she had lived on her own for one year after her grandmother died.

  “How could such a thing have happened? That was real negligence on the part of Social Services.”

  “I wanted to be alone. I didn’t want to be put in a foster family. I’m a lot better off on my own. Other people just complicate life. And you have to worry about them. And they worry about you.”

  “And they abandon you. Like your parents abandoned you. And your uncle, in sending you away, abandoned you. And your grandmother abandoned you. And now, you don’t really trust people. And you don’t trust the future. You don’t know what disappointment lies ahead. And so, you try to assert some control, perhaps, by ‘knowing’ exactly what the future holds for you.”

  “I don’t know if I really think about everyone necessarily abandoning me. They couldn’t help it. None of them could.”

  “Under the circumstances, it is only natural that you try to create certainty for yourself. Now tell me this. These futures that you see—are they good outcomes or bad outcomes?”

  It was taking too much effort to come up with a plausible lie that wasn’t going to be believed anyway. Martine sighed. “They’re all bad things. People dying. Cats dying. Oh, wait. No, they’re not all bad. There are some good visions as well.”

  “But mostly bad things is what I’m hearing. Now, I can see from your medical records that you were in a wheelchair for almost three years before your bone marrow transplant. And you have only been able to walk very recently. That is a huge change in your life. How does it feel to be out of that chair? How have your friends responded?”

  “I don’t have any friends. I didn’t ever leave the apartment. Not for about two years. I could work from home. I could have food delivered. And I didn’t want to be the sad, pathetic girl in the wheelchair. So, I stayed home. And I didn’t have any friends. Although, I may have picked up a fe
w recently.”

  “Tell me about them, your new friends.”

  “Well, there’s Dr. Svenson. I know that’s not actually a friend, but he’s someone I can talk to. And his assistant, Ruby—she took me to find some new clothes. She’s really nice. And Jeremy Todd. He’s actually a client, but we get along okay. There’s Mr. Lucky—okay, not so much a friend as a cat. And then there’s . . . this guy. Morgan.”

  “Ah-hah, a guy! This should be very illuminating. Tell me all about him.”

  Martine didn’t know whether the psychiatrist was just being nosy or if this was actually therapeutic. But she had to admit, she was actually relieved to have an excuse to talk about him.

  “He wants me to meet his family. And there’s a ton of them. Brother, sisters, parents, niece, nephews, grandmother. He and I haven’t even been on our third date! At least, not really. Depends on what counts as a date.”

  Dr. York shook her head. “Oh, no. That’s too early in a relationship to complicate with immediate relatives. I can’t advise it.”

  “Maybe you can write me a note to get me out of it?”

  “I don’t think a note from your psychiatrist will help to reassure anyone. It sounds like the commitment has been made. But I’m going to want to see you immediately afterward for a debriefing.”

  “Any advice?”

  “Good luck.”

  Who did everyone thing she was, Mr. Lucky?

  *****

  Shortly after Martine had emailed Jeremy with all the potential clients who had made inquiries about The Destroyer, she got a call from him.

  “I’m going to go over to speak to his nephew, Brady Kingston, and then I need to talk to these people you listed, people who might have been angry that Mr. Kingston wrote reviews damaging to their businesses. I was hoping that you might be able to come along.”