There was more to it, too. In her heart of hearts, Millie wanted Elvis and Princess Di to be alive. And Vivien Leigh. And Clark Gable. There was a whole host of dead celebrities Millie would gladly spend time with. The leading men and women of the 1940s and ’50s, the glamour queens and chivalrous gentlemen. Millie could have easily lived in the era of Sunset Boulevard.
I couldn’t disagree. More often than not, her fantasies held tremendous appeal.
“I’ll speak to the sisters.” Why not pass on a request for an interview? It was no skin off my teeth.
“Better do it fast.” Esmeralda put in her order for biscuits and gravy. She wasn’t going to continue to fit into her little black dress if she ate like a field hand.
“Why? What’s the rush?” I held out my coffee cup for a refill when Millie came over.
“Esmeralda, did you really see the ghost of Elvis?” Millie asked.
“I did. He was as handsome as he was in one of his movies.” Esmeralda grinned at Millie.
I wasn’t certain, but I had a suspicion that Millie’s question referred to some of Esmeralda’s so-called journalism. “Did you write a story about the moon dance?” I hadn’t had a chance to check the International Report.
“The moon dance and Trevor’s murder,” Millie said. “The photo of him is perfectly ghoulish. And that dance. Those women were as naked as the day God made them, prancing around in their front yard.” Millie was delightfully shocked and eating it with a spoon.
“Where’s the story?” I had a really bad feeling.
Millie went behind the counter and got a copy of the International Report. She handed it to me with a flourish. BENEFACTOR OF WITCHES MURDERED—THEY DANCED WHILE ZINNIA BURNED. In the front page photo that covered the whole top half of the tabloid, the Harrington sisters danced around their fiery cauldron. They did indeed look completely naked. Below the fold was a photograph of Trevor’s body, his face a rictus of either pain or horror. The photo cutline read: DID TREVOR MUSGROVE MEET THE DARK LORD IN THE LAST MOMENTS OF HIS LIFE? POISON OR TERROR?
I put the paper down and stared across the table at Esmeralda, who ate her biscuits with tremendous satisfaction. “None of this is true! Cece would never print something like this.”
“My audience loves this shit. They don’t care if it’s true or not. They just love the titillation. Witches. That alone is guaranteed to boost my readership straight through the roof. Throw in nudity and poison. No one wants to read about good witches.”
“You’re highly unethical.” Right, like that was a real punch to her gut. I didn’t think ethics were at the top of her priority list.
“And very, very wealthy.” Esmeralda grinned. “If you can get me an interview, I’ll give you two grand. I want to get inside that manor.”
“No, thanks. Keep your money. If the sisters want to talk to you, that’s their business.” I had a few standards. It hurt to walk away from two grand, but not even my inner prostitute could make me take the deal.
As I left the café, I was aware of several tables of diners gawking at copies of Esmeralda’s story. Their whispering sounded like angry bees. If Kitten and Esmeralda kept whacking the hive with a stick, soon people were going to get stung.
9
Even though I was exhausted, I drove back to Musgrove Manor with the tabloid on the seat beside me. I felt an obligation to warn the sisters that trouble was bubbling. Esmeralda—no doubt at Kitten’s behest—was whipping the town into a frenzy. Mobs were dangerous. Even the normally placid Zinnia mob.
February sunlight in the Mississippi Delta has the tone of a lemon wash—pale, gauzy, and more white than yellow. The sun’s rays touched the dew-soaked fields with the possibility of fairy magic. In the distance, faint blue stained the sky. Once the Delta had been dense hardwood forests that stretched across the entire state. Most of the trees had been removed to allow the vast acreage to be planted with a crop grown in the alluvial backwash from the Mississippi and the blood of slaves and convict labor. Cotton. The cash crop that had once ruled the South’s economy and created a society of the fabulously wealthy and the tragically poor.
Cotton was still planted in vast tracts, but corn and soybeans were also important money crops now. The land was fallow in February, but soon the combines would crawl over the fields, doing the work that had once been done by hundreds of slaves, tenant farmers, convict laborers, and the wives and children of the poor. The human labor force had toiled on, ignoring the brutal summer sun, mosquitoes that carried diseases, snakes, and predators, both two and four-legged. Man had tamed the landscape, but at a very high price.
Back before my time but still within the memory of plenty of folks, Musgrove Dairy had been the only source of “store bought” milk. For many decades, from the late 1800s until the supermarket chains had come to the area in the 1940s offering national brands, Musgrove milk was delivered fresh daily by mule-drawn wagons and then trucks. Most country people kept their own cows, but as Zinnia grew and developed, the demand for milk delivery within the city limits increased.
Musgrove Dairy had premium milk, butter, and cheese. Musgrove cows had roamed the rich pastures, lining up twice a day to head to the milking shed. It was a routine you could set your clock by.
Now all of that was gone, and Trevor, too.
The death of my parents had been the end of my age of innocence. I’d been raised in such security and safety that I’d never believed tragedy could touch me. How wrong I’d been. So much of that time had slipped away. Atticus Finch lawyers like my father had passed, too. There’d been a time when lawyers were idolized as living embodiments of justice. People would go to my father’s office for help with their problems, and later when he was a judge, they respected his decisions because they believed he was impartial and a wise man.
Now it seemed that corruption touched every aspect of government. Even the schools were manipulated for personal gain.
Looking over the fields, which were deepening in color as the sun rose and the angled rays of light changed, I understood Tinkie’s desire to believe in magic and witches and an answer to her dreams that was fair and just. She’d been cheated of the ability to have a child. That was a fact. Modern medicine couldn’t change that. But perhaps a spell could. It broke my heart how desperately she wanted this, and how unlikely it was that her prayers would be answered.
I didn’t wish any hard luck on the Harringtons, but it came to me again that Tinkie’s future might be brighter if the Harringtons left Sunflower County. When this pregnancy failed to materialize, I feared they’d suck her into another potion or spell or enchantment. They could keep breaking her heart over and over again.
The manor glowed in the pale light, and for the first time I saw the true beauty of the architecture. Limestone blocks, like a Celtic castle, glinted with dew. The slate roof reminded me of Europe in times long past, when the great manor houses of the landed gentry were the hearts of their communities. Few builders used slate now.
The house was solid and had been built to weather the generations. The gargoyles on the third-floor balconies, which I’d failed to notice earlier, were adornments I could have done without. I knew their purpose was to divert rainwater away from the wall, but still … why not a bird or a faithful dog? Why grotesques? They looked evil.
I parked and got out of the car. The cats were back in their normal perches, and I made a mental note to push hard for the Trap-Neuter-Return program that would neuter them and begin the process of creating a healthy and stable cat colony. They looked well fed and disease free, but rampant breeding would sicken them and make it impossible to give them good care.
The front door opened and Hope came out carrying a wire kindness trap. Charity and Faith were right behind her, each hauling a trap and cans of cat food. “We have to control the cat population and get them vaccinated,” Hope said. “Trevor grew up with the belief that the cats didn’t need care—they had rats in the barns and plenty of woods to hunt. We’ve been feeding them, and
now that he’s gone, we’ll get them started in a good veterinary program.”
Check that off my list. “Good plan.” I followed them to the barn, where they expertly set up the traps and baited them. The cats would enter to eat, the trapdoors would shut, and the cats could be safely transported to the vet for a checkup, vaccinations, and neutering. Then they would be released back at the dairy to live out their lives.
“Are you here about Tinkie or Esmeralda?” Hope asked when the traps were baited.
“Both.”
“We saw the story Esmeralda wrote. Ridiculous. Why would we harm Trevor? He was generous and kind to us.”
“Was he selling the property to Bob Fontana?”
Charity frowned. “Well, no. We had a deal. Right?” She looked at her sisters.
“We had a solid deal,” Hope said. “Trevor supported us. He’d never go back on his word. He didn’t want the land turned into a subdivision. He didn’t have cows, but he loved this land and didn’t want it paved over. We promised to keep it natural, in keeping with the philosophy of our school. He had plenty of money and he loathed Bob Fontana.”
“Kitten was one of Trevor’s models.” Faith’s satisfied expression was rather feline.
“Kitten Fontana?” She was pretty enough, but not in a way that I thought of as a painter’s model. At least not a painter of Trevor’s talent. She was more Jersey Shore than Italian villa, but this explained how she had known that Trevor wasn’t in his third-floor abode. She’d used the back stairs like the other models.
“Sure enough. She was part of the religious icon series. St. Agnes of Bohemia, I believe, was the woman she portrayed. Born of royal blood and betrothed to a future king, she devoted herself to a life of prayers and healing. Trevor was deeply into the whole saints and sinners thing, though his take on a nude saint stirred controversy.” Faith was amused by the whole concept. “Fits Kitten to a T, don’t you think? Come back to the manor and let’s make some coffee.”
It was possible some of Kitten’s objections to the Harringtons came from jealousy. If she’d had a romantic interest in Trevor … maybe she viewed the witches as rivals. I followed the sisters back to the manor house and into the front parlor where we took seats around what looked like an unusual five-sided game table. The legs and surface held strange and intricate carvings.
“We do our spell work here,” Faith explained while Charity brewed coffee. “These are markings of Celtic runes. They’re charmed. Just like us.”
It was going to be hard work to break through to these witches. “Why don’t you three lie low for a few days?” I handed the tabloid to Hope. “You’re being accused of murder by a newspaper, if not the sheriff. It would be smart to let things calm down if you’re serious about opening a school here. Folks might put up with witches, but I doubt they’ll send their children to murderers.” I thought of the dead man in Louisiana. “And it isn’t the first time rumors like that have been attached to you.”
“What do you mean?” Charity asked with a huffy attitude.
“Ted LaRue.” I said the name.
Hope’s eyes widened but it was the only reaction, until she spoke. “I didn’t hurt Ted. We dated on and off, but we were friends.” She paused a moment, gathering her thoughts. “He taught me a lot about the geological aspects of Louisiana, and how draining oil was causing coastal erosion and sinkage and the decimation of the coastline. He said it was the death of the incubator zone for crustaceans and other seafood. He came to believe that global warming was the biggest danger the world faced. For an ornery old coot, he was a wonderful man.”
“He was an oil wildcatter. He made his fortune drilling for oil.”
“And he realized the error of his ways,” Hope said. “He was planning to build a solar panel factory in Breaux Bridge to give jobs to the local people. He truly wanted to undo some of the damage he’d done. But then he drowned.”
“Drowned? Are you certain there was no foul play?”
Hope looked confused. “We were told he fell into the water and struck his head and drowned.”
Interesting. “Who inherited?”
“I got a small inheritance. Ted was a huge supporter of our school and the method of teaching we employed. Had he not died, he would have been an investor in our school here,” Hope said. “The lion’s share of his estate went to his ex-wife and daughter.”
Those facts were easy enough to check, and I intended to do so. Time to move on. “Did Trevor have any enemies?”
“Other than a passel of women whom he painted, screwed, and then rejected?” Faith asked. “And maybe a dozen local husbands who wanted to string him up and castrate him?”
She had a point. Trevor had a long list of people who wished him bodily harm. As my aunt Loulane would say, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” Add to that list the cuckolded husbands of those women and it was a violent mix.
“Tell me more about how LaRue died. There are suspicious elements.” I wasn’t leaving until I had some questions answered. “I’ve been hired by Kitten to get the goods on you to run you out of town.” I raised a hand to quell their objections. “If it isn’t me, it’ll be someone else. You’re in her crosshairs. So spill the beans. I’ll find out one way or another and it would be best to hear your version.”
Hope signaled to her sisters with her eyes. They stayed quiet and let her talk. “Ted smoked cigarettes. And he drank hard. He lived hard.” Hope actually looked a little sad. “We tried to steer him to a healthier life. Charity and me both. And then Faith when she came to town. He was bullheaded. He wouldn’t give up a single vice, and it cost him his life. I think he had a heart attack and fell in the bayou and drowned.”
“Heart attack?” That was convenient, but there had been fluid in his lungs. I wished the coroner had been more thorough—water or fluid. It made a huge difference.
“He had a few dizzy spells, some arrhythmia. Weakness. Pain on his left side. I tried to get him to a doctor, but he refused.” A single tear slipped down Hope’s cheek.
“The coroner’s report noted that he was possibly poisoned.”
“Really?” They spoke in unison, and if they were acting surprised, they were good actresses.
“Really. And this is going to come back to haunt you.”
“We didn’t do anything.” Faith was angry. “I’m tired of being accused of every crime in the book just because I follow a different religious practice. We don’t harm anyone or anything. We don’t even eat meat!”
Other than the fact they were leading my partner along, I actually had no beef with the sisters. I liked them. They had great Goth fashion taste and they were trapping the feral cats to make their lives better. It was a big plus in their favor in my book.
“Okay, if you’re innocent about LaRue, what about the St. Pe marriage and the accusation that you, Hope, put a spell on the husband.”
“If I’d put a spell on Kenny, it would be to grow a pair. That was the most henpecked man I’ve ever seen. Lurleen ran over him and he was such a milquetoast he just begged her to dig her stilettos in harder.”
“Yet you were having an affair with him.” I put it out there.
“Don’t be a jackass. I wouldn’t touch that blob of testosterone-deprived gristle with a ten-foot pole.”
“And yet you were named as a codefendant in his divorce?”
“Without any evidence to the fact. That was Lurleen’s weird fantasy. She needed someone to blame because she rolled over Kenny so many times he didn’t have a vertebra left. He enjoyed talking with me because I didn’t belittle him every five seconds.”
“So it was all a false accusation?”
“Have you seen the photographs of us flying on broomsticks? Another picture of us raising Elvis from the dead and dancing nude? You were here. Were we naked?”
She made her point. People who were slightly different, especially in a small town, were often targeted with malicious rumors. But being on the right side of the truth was no guarantee that
trouble would be kept at bay. I knew that for a fact. My thoughts took me to the sense of something very dark in the woods.
“Have you noticed anything unusual in the woods around the manor?”
“Other than Corey Fontana and his sicko mother? They were out there yesterday evening with binoculars spying on us. Like we wouldn’t be aware they were there.”
She raised two big issues. “They were truly spying on you?”
“Yes.”
“What time?”
“Late afternoon.”
“And you knew they were there and didn’t call the sheriff?”
Faith rolled her eyes. “Right. Every time some local yokel wants to poke around, we should call the sheriff.” She smiled. “Maybe that big handsome lawman should just move in here, to protect us you know.”
I ignored her bait. “How did you know they were in the woods?”
Hope stood and went to a window where a strange collection of sticks, ribbon, and wires had been rigged together to make a dangling ornament. In the center was a pentacle. “It’s made from rowan wood,” Hope explained. “Blessed by a high priestess. Yesterday, we placed these in the trees around the manor. Now we’re protected. The parts here are apple wood, from our own trees. When someone trespasses, we sense it.”
It was an interesting bundle of twigs, copper wires, and red ribbon, but I didn’t see how it could have magical properties. “How does it work?”
Hope was clearly aware of my skepticism. “You only need to know that it does work. When someone comes close to us, we know. In fact, there’s someone coming now. Not far away.” She touched the gewgaw and returned it to hang in the window.
I was not so easily distracted. “Is there something in the woods that you’re afraid of?”
“Afraid?” Charity pondered the word. “Not afraid. Aware of, yes. Cautious of, yes. But it’s shown no propensity to harm us. Others may not be so fortunate.”
“Is it something you … conjured up?”
She shook her head. “We don’t do dark. We’ve told you that.”
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