Gallery Guy spoke up before Mary could respond. “She left. She is a coward—”
Mary interrupted him, “Dad! Don’t say that.”
Gallery Guy continued, “I’m sorry to be cruel, but what she did is inexcusable. She walked out on us.” He folded his arms across his chest. Clearly he wasn’t interested in talking about the woman who’d left them behind. Emily tended to agree with him. What kind of mother did that?
She did, however, totally get leaving Gallery Guy. He set off every single one of her creepy vibes.
Mary wasn’t interested in her stepdad’s opinion about her mother. “Look. She left. It sucks. But since then something could have happened to her. She didn’t even say goodbye to us. She could be in trouble. Maybe that’s why I’m getting the dreams. Maybe she needs us. Maybe she’s sorry.”
Ingrid looked at the glare on Gallery Guy's face and spoke before they became even more mired in family drama. “When did she leave?”
“It was years ago.” Mary’s voice was small and timid, very unlike her typical mood. “I was younger and…things were different then. We were happy…”
Oh man, Emily thought. There was so much baggage here. What did you say to that? She needed to curbstomp someone right away. This was too uncomfortable.
“Wait,” Ingrid interjected, “did you say apple trees and the sound of waves?”
Mary nodded, “Yeah. There was a really old red barn too. I don’t know if I’m remembering something that I saw? Or maybe just picking up some sort of psychic something or other…I know that sounds crazy. You guys are witches right?”
“Hardly,” Gallery Guy said, but Mary ignored him.
“I need these images or dreams or whatever to go away. It’s messing with my whole life. I can’t think. I can’t sleep. I’m going to flunk out of school.”
Emily and Ingrid exchanged a glance and Ingrid nodded at Emily before turning her attention to Mary.
“Look. Let’s be honest here. We like you, Mary dove. Despite your dad. Who is, I think we can all agree, super creepy.”
Gallery Guy uncrossed his arms only to recross them over his chest.
“And,” Ingrid continued, unfazed, “I think you know we’re not super hot at this whole witch thing.”
“Exactly,” Gallery Guy said, nodding sharply.
“But,” Ingrid didn’t even glance his way. “I think I’ve been to that place you’re describing. It sounds like this orchard that I picnicked at once. Why don’t we go out there and see if it triggers a memory or something?”
“What about Paris? Prague? Is this orchard on the way to the boat? I really need to get out of town, Ingrid.” Emily was only joking. Sort of. She wanted to help Mary, mostly because they couldn’t train her to run their store for them while they galavanted across Europe if Mary was being plagued by dreams of her absent mother. Also, the kid had stood up to her dad for them. That was kind of sweet. And she came to them for help which was so naive it was adorable.
And they liked her.
So they would help Mary, even if it meant Gallery Guy hung around for now. But in the end, Mary needed to resolve her baggage, Gallery Guy needed to go, dickhead needed to be exorcised, because Ingrid had shoes to buy and Emily had European men to flirt with.
Ingrid gave Emily a pretend dirty look and led the way out of the bookshop. This had better resolve Mary’s issues. Emily had a passport waiting for a Parisian stamp. A Prague stamp. And somewhere else that started with a P.
“All right. Let’s go.”
CHAPTER 2
Buried Truths
The wind whipped through the trees with a crisp, cold clarity. It was the kind of clarity that made them wonder what had they been thinking? Ingrid would have kicked things out of her way, but that would mess up her sandals and her pedicure. But in her head, she was kicking herself right in the butt. She and Em were supposed to be packing for Prague and possibly Paris. But they were trooping through the woods—well not the woods. They weren’t stupid enough to go back into the woods.
Not after finding two bodies in the great creepy outdoors.
But through an orchard.
Which felt like woods.
Especially because these trees were pretty deserted and looked mostly dead. Mary mentioned blossoms, but there was nothing on these trees right now except naked, clawy, branches. And they had Gallery Guy with them and he always upped the creepy vibe. Just because they’d started to actually like his daughter Mary, didn’t mean they had to be nice to him did it?
No.
And yet here they were.
Sure, it was supposed to help his daughter, Mary, but by all the holy doves, this just felt…wrong. Ingrid looked back. Emily was right behind her, followed by Mary and him. Probably the foreboding was because they were being nice to him after he’d been such a jerk when Emily had been under suspicion of killing her husband.
“Memories?” Ingrid asked Emily, referring to the last two times they’d been in the woods. They hated the woods.
“Shut up. I will hurt you.”
“All the dead doves,” Ingrid shivered. It was supposed to have just been a dramatic tease of a shiver for Emily, but then Ingrid remembered tripping over the dead body.
Two times.
In the woods, two times, she’d tripped over dead and rotting corpses and ended up face to dead face.
“That’s enough of that devil talk,” Gallery Guy said.
“Oh please, Dad,” Mary said. She flicked her black and purple hair over her shoulder to scowl at her dad. He frowned back, but his hand grabbed her protectively when she tripped.
Ingrid reflexively glanced down to search for a dead body, but it was just a tree root. Thank all the gods.
“Please, what?” He snapped.
“Please, Dad. Give them a break. Give me a break. They hired me because I can see dead people. If they’re devily. I’m devily.”
“That…please…I…”
“Dad,” Mary said. The sarcasm was gone from her voice. “I can’t help it.”
“I know.” He had let go of her arm, and she didn’t step forward for a hug, but if they were a normal father and daughter, that would have been a hug moment. Even with all the fatherliness, he just creeped Ingrid out. Like spiders in her bathtub or vermin on her patio.
“Well,” Emily said, probably reading Ingrid’s expression and trying to keep her from saying something awful in front of Mary.
“So,” Ingrid replied looking for anything to say but all the things on the tip of her tongue.
“Why do you know this place, Ingrid?” Emily pushed lightly at Ingrid’s back until she started moving.
They weren’t really in the woods, she told herself again. They were in an apple orchard after the apples had all been picked and the leaves crowded the ground with a rainbow of autumn colors. It was a large orchard on the bluff over the ocean, and it was people-less.
It hadn’t felt so wrong last time.
As they came out of the trees and into a clearing, Ingrid stopped to look at the decrepit and long since retired red barn, a few more tree leaves had turned lovely shades of orange and red, and she tried to be soothed by the sound of waves from below. Except her memories of here weren’t the soothing sort. The overlook, with its green slopes and orchards, contrasted drastically with the storm gray skies and seas below.
Ingrid glanced around again, remembering her last trip there. And she heard the bit of the sigh in her voice when she attempted and failed, to say lightly, “He who shall not be named took me here once.”
It was possible they’d gotten too snuggly under the trees. And it was possible that the memories made her blood heat even as they made her sad. She missed Gabe, but she still wasn’t sure she was ready for what he seemed to need from her.
She felt like he needed her to be other than she was, even though he’d never asked that of her. And she felt like she’d never be what he wanted. She would have, in a second, fouled his last two murder investigations rather
than let herself or Emily go to jail.
Surely that was a deal breaker for him?
Surely it was just a matter of time before he realized what she and Em were like and kicked Ingrid to the curb?
Ingrid had absolutely buried a body with her best friend while drunk. Red flag for a sheriff right? She drank too much coffee and wine and spent far too little time doing anything constructive.
Which was how she wanted things after the way her last marriage had torn her to pieces.
“If you are referring to Sheriff Hotpants,” Emily said, without sympathy, “he comes around every day and gives you puppy eyes. I don’t see why you won’t talk about him. Or just stop holding him off. I saw you text him. You’re approaching playing games with him.”
Ingrid stopped, turned, and smacked the back of Emily’s head. Who, without pause, reached forward and slapped the back of Ingrid’s head almost on reflex, catching the long swathe of Ingrid’s ponytail.
“Wench dove,” Ingrid said.
“Cow,” Emily replied as Ingrid's hair blew into both of their faces.
“Your hair looks like an afro and not the cute kind,” Ingrid said, sniffing and stepping away.
“Your butt looks big in those pants,” Emily replied, eyes slitting as they stared at each other.
“Shut up,” Ingrid replied, glancing around them. Man. Memories. Memories to leave her awake tonight and lonely. And to make her worry about the size of her butt.
“Woman up.” Emily stepped forward to take another glance around, but she spoke with an utter lack of empathy when she said, “Gabe isn’t Harrison. Your moping is driving me crazy. But woman up after Paris. I still need culture. Also, dare I say that this is picturesque? I could totally see having some private moments here with some handsome fellow. P.S. Gabe loves you. You love Gabe.”
“Shut up,” Ingrid said again.
“Yes,” Gallery Guy inserted as he caught his daughter’s smirking gaze lingering on the two friends. “You two need to keep your sex talk toned down while my baby is around. She shouldn’t be spending so much time with you. Mary, they are hiring at Papa Pandolfi’s Pastries. You like coffee.” Gallery Guy tugged his step-daughter to the far side of him as if putting himself between her and the friends would save her from their influence.
Mary didn’t react, just said calmly, “Dad, the entire world knows that Ingrid makes the best coffee. Also, and I mean this seriously, they don’t even notice when I’m late.”
“You’ve been late?” Emily asked. She looked at Ingrid and they had the silent argument over who should keep track of those things. It ended in a dual shrug. “Also, speaking of P.S.’s, P.S. Gallery Guy. Your daughter Mary’s sex life leaves mine a cold and dark graveyard of wasted nothing.”
“We need a real manager,” Ingrid said, quickly as Gallery Guy sputtered. “Who has a strict understanding that I’m not going to do anything I don’t want to.”
“That she’d have to do all the work and we’d just hang out,” Emily added.
“Would it be a she, though?” Mary pretended to not notice her father’s frustrated glance. “I mean…surely any tall, dark, and handsome man could do that job. Maybe just graduated from college and here on the island to find himself and … do art or music or something?”
“Mary you have not graduated high school. You need to go to college yourself. And try new things. Perhaps travel.”
“Dad,” Mary sighed, rolling her eyes.
The teenagerness of it made Ingrid wince. It made her feel old that she noticed. Besides, it wasn’t, Ingrid knew, that Mary didn’t want to do those things. The reality was that she did. But she worried about leaving her Dad behind, and she couldn’t look beyond the fight her grandparents were giving her stepdad for custody of her. Despite there only being one final year until she was 18.
“Oh,” Mary looked beyond them. It was as if she saw something different. Her eyes widened, and she paled. Which was quite a feat seeing she had a goth kid’s paleness. “Oh.”
She gasped, and turned.
“Is this where you were dreaming of,” Ingrid asked watching Mary as if this were a good scene in a soap opera. “I mean…it has everything you said, but it doesn’t seem sinister to me. Sure I got chills but that was the tree thing. I don’t like trees when they’re all bunched up anymore. This is more romantic and sultry.”
“No one wants to hear of your shenanigans up here, hooker,” Emily interrupted. She stretched her neck and her wild mass of curls were practically tangling in front of Ingrid’s eyes.
“You’re going to super ‘fro,” she said, but her gaze was caught again by Mary, who was walking towards — not the cliff but the old barn.
“Mary, love,” her Dad said following close behind.
Mary’s breath was coming in quick, weak, spurts. As if she were seeing something so horrible she could hardly comprehend what was happening. Ingrid felt like she should probably do something.
“Mary?” Emily stepped towards the girl, grabbing her arm. “Mary?”
“Help her,” Gallery Guy ordered, looking at Ingrid and Emily as if they weren’t totally and completely incapable of anything useful. Their usefulness skills were so rusty they’d fallen to pieces.
“Um,” Ingrid replied helplessly. “I just knew where this place was.”
“Don’t make me beat you back into this moment,” Emily threatened, shaking Mary’s arm. Mary jerked away and rushed forward. At first, it was more of a stumble but turned into a headlong sprint as she rushed towards something only she could see.
“Mary, dove,” Ingrid called weakly. Holy doves, she was super lame, she realized as she watched their little sidekick enact some sort of weirdness and Ingrid had zero idea of what to do.
Gallery Guy sprinted after, calling Mary’s name. But despite his athletic build—he could never quite catch the kid. There was something so odd in his not being able to catch her, Ingrid stopped to watch—as if something supernatural was at play, holding him back while Mary raced forward.
Ingrid shivered for real this time. Down into her bones, she felt a chill so deep and abiding, she felt as if she had moved into a walk-in freezer.
“Do you feel that,” Ingrid whispered to Emily.
Emily nodded wordlessly, grabbing Ingrid’s arm and holding her back this time. There was protectiveness in the gesture, but really Ingrid didn’t have to look to know Emily was as freaked out as Ingrid and neither had any intention of taking one step closer.
The drama unfolded before them. Mary stopped. Finally. Not in the barn but to the side of it. Her face jerked back and forth as she watched something where—for everyone else—there was nothing. Nothing but the brown ground and weeds cropping up near the side of the building.
She gasped and then shook her head frantically, tears rolling down her cheeks.
“Mama,” she cried. It was no longer the voice of a snarky teenager, but the voice of a child. A little one, horrified and pleading for her Mama. “Mama please.”
The girl fell to her knees and her father dropped down next to her. In an act of infinite love for which Ingrid had been sure Gallery Guy was not capable, he folded his stepdaughter in his arms, tucking her head close to his chest, and let her cry while he pet her hair.
“This is bad,” Ingrid said. The romance of the spot was gone. Everything was gone but the horror that she had not seen. But she believed regardless. She pulled her phone out of her back pocket and pressed speed dial for Gabe.
“Ingrid?”
The warm, slightly happy voice of Gabe took away some of the chill. If he had been here, she’d have been tempted to throw herself into his arms.
Despite everything.
“I think we found another body,” she said.
There was a long silence. She could almost hear the cursing he was not letting fly at her.
“Where?” Such a controlled, careful tone.
“Remember the orchard with our moonlight picnic.”
“Oh geez, Ingrid,
” Emily muttered. “I’m getting too good of a picture of what happened here.”
“Don’t touch it.”
“Oh, I don’t know where it is. I’m just sure it is here.”
There was a second long silence.
Perhaps if they had been back together, he would have pointed out how very bad she was at magic. That her skill set did not extend to sensing deaths or finding bodies. Perhaps he might have laughed sarcastically. But he had been controlling his frustration with her for some time, so instead he said, “I’m coming.
Ingrid slid her phone back into her pocket and shot a glance at her best dove.
“Well great,” Emily said. The mass of curls had been further destroyed by hands that had thrust into her hair as she’d watched Mary’s drama unfold. “I’m feeling inexplicably bad for her. It makes me want to punch something.”
Emily nodded at Mary and then nudged her foot into Ingrid’s. With a head jerk, the two of them backed away from the grieving father and daughter.
“I wouldn’t have expected him to be such a—fatherly guy,” Ingrid said. As soon as she had ended the call she’d started thinking…what had she just done? It wasn’t as if they’d found a body. Instead, they’d found their new goth shop girl having some sort of weird emotional meltdown and calling for her missing mother.
That didn’t mean murder.
Obviously.
Right?
What it meant was that Ingrid was crazy for having called Gabe, and he’d probably be pissed at her again.
Damn it.
She wanted to shriek at herself and also knew… in that deeper secret part of herself, that she hadn’t been wrong. She didn’t have spidey senses, but every once in a while she had a badass witch sense. And that witch sense was screaming at her right now. Something had happened back there.
Something unseen.
But real.
She couldn’t explain what she knew, but she was utterly certain that if Gabe looked carefully, he’d find the body of poor Mary’s mother. The thought of it made Ingrid want to cry with Gallery Guy and Mary.
They had assumed they had been abandoned. Right now, they were probably readjusting their feelings and anger to realize that they had assumed wrong and their loved one had been left to rot. They had left their wife and mother murdered and unfound. They had believed that the person they loved would actually abandon them.
Bewitched Murder (Inept Witches 3) Page 2