Wicked Witch Murder

by Leslie Meier

  Lucy had hoped the visit to Diana would set her mind at ease, but it only made her worry more. The self-proclaimed witch had returned from her stay in Arizona with increased confidence in her powers, and Lucy wondered what had brought about the change. Diana had mentioned a wise shaman who had taught her some tricks, but Lucy wasn’t convinced the shaman’s magic was up to the task. Two days in the county lockup weren’t likely to improve Ike Stoughton’s attitude, and she feared he would come out more determined than ever to get rid of Diana.

  When she got home, she tried to settle down with a magazine, taking advantage of the rare opportunity of having some time to herself, but she found herself unable to concentrate on the glossy photos of beautifully decorated homes, the happy smiling people, the well-groomed pets, the impossibly complicated recipes. Hopping to her feet, she grabbed the leash and before she even whistled, Libby was prancing at the door, ready for a walk.

  “It’s too nice a day to be stuck inside,” she said, and Libby agreed, enthusiastically wagging her tail.

  The woods were beautiful, almost surreal, as sunlight filtered through the lemon-yellow leaves of the maples. Fallen leaves carpeted the old logging trail that meandered behind their house, a kaleidoscope of vibrant red and yellow that rustled underfoot. Bunches of mushrooms sprouted here and there; Lucy always wished she could tell which ones were safe to eat. Clusters of Indian pipes dotted the ground, too, and enormous tree fungi grew on fallen trees. Lucy remembered how the kids used to collect them and draw pictures on them; if you scraped the flesh with a sharp point, your design would turn brown as the fungus dried. The dried fungi lasted forever, and Lucy bet she could find some of those childish artworks tucked away in the cabinets in the family room if she bothered to look.

  She was thinking of the fungi and all the other little projects she’d devised to entertain the kids on rainy summer days: little dolls made from pinecones, leaf collages embellished with macaroni and glitter, Popsicle-stick boxes trimmed with acorns, and always the endless bowls of popcorn and pans of fudge served up to fuel her little artists’ flagging inspiration. Those had been crazy years, but she had enjoyed them, and she was thinking about how much fun it would be to introduce Patrick to some of these crafty projects when he was older when her attention was caught by Libby’s sharp bark.

  Looking up from the path, she shuddered with the realization that she’d come once again to the clearing where Malebranche had died. Here, she noticed, the fiery colors of autumn were subdued, the few leaves that remained on the bare trees were drab brown, and the drooping black boughs of the fir trees seemed drawn from a Victorian mourning sampler. The only thing missing was a dull gray slate gravestone, with a skull’s head and a mournful text: As you are now so once was I or Prepare to meet thy maker.

  But then she realized no marker was needed—the charred and blackened tree trunk where Malebranche had been bound and burned was monument enough to the terrible deed that had taken place here. She reached out her hand and patted the tree in a gesture of tribute, but snatched her hand back when she felt something sharp prick her finger. Looking closer, she saw that some of the wire that had restrained Malebranche remained on the tree. It was flexible stuff about an eighth of an inch thick, the sort of wire that farmers used to fence in their cows, because it was cheap and easy to string along the fence posts.

  Twisting the wire, she found it bent easily, probably stressed by the heat of the fire, and she snapped a piece off. She didn’t know why, really, except that she felt it was some sort of tribute. Malebranche shouldn’t be forgotten, and this would be a reminder to keep the story alive until his killer—or killers—were found.

  She tucked the wire in her pocket and turned to leave when Libby barked again. A small owl suddenly flew over her head, startling her, and perched on the burned tree, where it sat, staring at her with golden eyes.

  “Oz?” she asked.

  The bird blinked.

  “I thought I recognized you,” she said playfully. “What are you doing here?”

  The bird didn’t answer, but suddenly took flight, swooping silently through the trees and inviting her to follow.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Even as she crashed through the underbrush, raising her arms in front of her face to fend off the branches that snapped in her face, Lucy didn’t understand why she felt compelled to follow the little owl. But follow she did, scrambling over fallen logs and weaving her way through the trees and undergrowth that blocked her path and hopping from stone to stone to cross the brook. Libby lagged behind her, following dutifully, although her dragging tail was an indication of her lack of enthusiasm. A nice sedate ramble in the woods was one thing, but she was a lazy Lab, and when the going got tough, she preferred her nice comfy doggy bed in the corner of the kitchen.

  When Lucy reached a particularly nasty thicket, Oz was waiting for her, perched on a low branch. Once he’d caught her eye, he took wing, leading her around the tangle of bull brier and brambles until Lucy caught sight of a clearing ahead. Seeing daylight, she stepped up her pace, but Libby seemed to hang back, as if reluctant to leave the cover of the woods. Lucy coaxed her along, keeping up an encouraging babble.

  “Come on, girl,” she repeated over and over. “Come along.”

  But when Lucy followed Oz and broke out of the woods into the clearing, she understood Libby’s reluctance. She had reached the Stoughton homestead, where Oz sat perched on top of a shed, as if to announce that this was the place they were seeking.

  Lucy looked around, taking in the view of the property from the back, instead of the front. She saw the kitchen ell on the back of the house, the clothesline on which a forgotten dish towel hung limply, the barn, a chicken coop with a wire enclosure in which a dozen balding biddies were pecking at the ground, a large herb and vegetable garden gone to weeds, the pumpkin patch filled with withered vines, and a tipsy shed. Once the very picture of rural industry and self-sufficiency, it now had a neglected air. It was also much closer to the crime scene than she had realized.

  She was trying to decide whether she should return home the way she had come or risk the much easier option of cutting through the Stoughton’s property to the road, when Oz suddenly alighted from his perch and flew a short distance to the chicken pen, where he settled on a fence post. The fence, Lucy realized, was made of two kinds of wire; the usual chicken netting was supported by sturdier wire strung along the posts.

  She reached in her pocket and felt the protective pouch. Plunging deeper, she found the piece of wire she’d snapped off the tree.

  The wire was common; she knew that. You could buy rolls of it at any feed store or hardware store. There was nothing special about, nothing at all. And as she crossed the yard toward the enclosure, carefully skirting the garden where the shriveled and exhausted tomato vines were still clinging to their rusty wire cages, she expected the fence wire was the same as the blackened piece she held in her hand. Of course it would be. So why did a shudder run through her body when she found it matched exactly?

  She looked at the owl for an answer, but he was gone. Libby gave a sharp bark and she looked up, just in time to see Thomas and Mather arriving in the pickup truck. Before she knew what she was doing, without giving it a thought, she instinctively turned on her heels and ran for the cover of the woods, calling Libby to follow. When she got about twenty feet inside the woods, she ducked behind a big balsam and looked back, and that’s when she realized her mistake. Thomas and Mather had spotted her and were running after her.

  She should have greeted them, made some excuse about just wanting to check that everything was okay while Ike was in jail. She could have convinced them she was simply being neighborly, but it was too late now. By running away, she’d as good as confessed she’d been up to no good. Snooping around where she had no business being. Her only option was to keep running, hoping that they’d give up the chase.

  She took flight, following the path she’d come, or what she thought was the way. Wh
ere was that darn owl when she needed him? Nowhere to be seen! She and Libby were on their own. She was running as fast as she could, and Libby was sticking by her side, panting heavily. As was Lucy, who was working up quite a sweat, even as the temperature began to fall and the early sunset approached. It was becoming dim in the woods, and she was increasingly uncertain of which way to go. Her heart began to pound, and she felt panicky as she heard the two boys crashing through the woods behind her, yelling and swearing.

  This was crazy; it was stupid. They were her neighbors. Surely she could simply stop and explain, say how they’d startled her and she’d reacted stupidly, but some deep instinct told her to keep running. And as she ran, her muscles burning and her chest feeling tighter and tighter, she wondered if she was replaying the same pursuit that had ended Malebranche’s life. Was this what happened to him? Had the Stoughtons chased him through the woods and captured him? Had they caught him and dragged him kicking and screaming to the clearing where they bound him to the tree with wire and burned him alive? Had this all happened before?

  Lucy’s energy was flagging, and she glanced over her shoulder, finding her pursuers were gaining on her. Their faces red with exertion and anger, they looked just like their father. She had to keep going; she couldn’t let them catch her. She snapped her head around and ran straight into a low-hanging branch.

  The pain was instantaneous and the impact of the blow made her dizzy. She fell to her knees, clutching her head, and tried to reorient herself, tried to focus around the black spots that were dancing in front of her eyes, trying to stay conscious and get back on her feet but unable to summon the strength. Behind her, from some distance, Libby was barking. Thomas and Mather were unstoppable, crashing through the undergrowth, leaping over logs with ease, trampling the undergrowth with their size 13 work boots, snapping boughs out of their way with hands the size of baseball mitts.

  She placed her hands on the ground and tried to push herself up, but the effort made her so dizzy that she collapsed again, helpless to defend herself. She was losing consciousness. The black spots were growing larger and becoming darker, and her eyes were closing when she heard a huge roar that shook the ground and rattled the trees to their very roots.

  Her eyes popped open and she saw an enormous black bear, the biggest she had ever seen, rearing on its hind legs smack between her and the Stoughtons. The two youths stopped in their tracks, awestruck, as the bear batted its paws and bared its teeth, growling ferociously. They knew what to do—they threw up their arms to make themselves look bigger and backed away, aware that running would be a fatal mistake.

  Lucy would have done the same if she could, but she was battling to maintain consciousness, fighting like a swimmer against a rip tide that was pulling her farther and farther from shore. She felt herself slipping, yielding to the tug of darkness, then snapping awake, startled at the bright sunlight that was falling all around her. Libby was only a few feet away, nosing at the ground, now vacant, where the bear had roared to life and made its stand.

  She had no idea how long she’d been unconscious, but she knew she needed to get out of the woods and back home fast. Concentrating hard and trying to ignore the tremendous pounding in her head, she sat up slowly and looked around. Libby was sitting in front of her, tongue lolling, as if waiting for the word to get moving. Lucy managed to get to her knees, then grabbed a nearby tree trunk and used it to pull herself upright. Once on her feet, she hung on to the tree, waiting for her dizziness to subside. When she finally felt a bit steadier on her feet, she began making her way slowly through the woods in what she hoped was the right direction. Spotting a hefty branch that was caught in some brambles, she yanked it out and began using it as a walking staff and soon found herself on the old logging road.

  As she struggled homeward, she tried to make sense of what had happened, hardly believing any of it had actually taken place. Had she really gone into the woods following an owl that for some reason led her to the Stoughton homestead? And when Stoughton’s enraged sons pursued her, had she magically been saved by a gigantic black bear that disappeared as quickly as it had appeared? It was insane; it was almost as if she’d been under the influence of a magical spell. Was that what happened? Had Rebecca or Diana or some other witch conjured up the whole thing? And if so, had it really happened, or had it all been a dream?

  She was walking along more easily now that she was out of the woods, and she felt her strength returning. The headache was less severe, too, and Libby was trotting ahead of her, following scents that Lucy couldn’t smell. Maybe it was the same thing, she thought; maybe she’d encountered a reality she simply wasn’t equipped to understand. And maybe, she realized, it didn’t matter. Because whether it was her subconscious sending her a message or one of the witches sending a bear to rescue her, she had certainly gotten the idea that Ike Stoughton and his boys were trouble.

  There was certainly something seriously amiss in that household; that was obvious from Miriam’s death and Abby’s sickness. They reminded her of Victorian women who clung to illness as a way of escaping the domination of their husbands and fathers. But even if Ike Stoughton was a tyrant at home, that didn’t mean he would actually commit murder.

  Although, she admitted to herself, it certainly indicated a moral compass that was somewhat askew. And the more she thought about it, the more likely it seemed, given the fact that he had an interest in Compass Construction. Maybe all his fussing about witchcraft was simply a front; maybe he really had been after Malebranche’s property all along. Maybe it was all about the land—he was a surveyor, after all, and everybody knew he was an expert at untangling confused property titles.

  Libby was running ahead now, barking to announce their arrival home. Sara and Zoe had just been dropped off and were walking up the driveway, and Libby was prancing around them, wagging her tail. Lucy greeted them in a more sedate manner, with a big smile.

  “You look kinda pale, Mom,” said Sara. “Are you okay?”

  “I took the dog for a walk in the woods and bumped my head on a tree branch—stupid of me.”

  Sara gave her a funny look, but Zoe was full of concern. “You should put some ice on it,” she said.

  “I think I will,” said Lucy, who was planning to have the girls make supper. “What’s the homework situation?”

  Assured it was under control, Lucy got the girls started on breading some chicken breasts while she took a couple of pain killers and slapped a bag of frozen peas on the egg-sized bump that had formed on her noggin. Retreating to the family room, she reclined on the sofa and reached for the phone and called Detective Horowitz yet again.

  “What is it this time?” he grumbled.

  “I just wondered how closely you questioned Ike Stoughton about the Malebranche murder, that’s all.”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “It’s just that I happened to discover his homestead is very close to the murder scene.”

  Horowitz sighed. “We do have topographical maps, you know.”

  “Hmm,” said Lucy. “What about the wire? He uses it on his homestead. Did you send it to the crime lab for a match?”

  “No. Wire’s wire—of course it would match.”

  “I know, but I heard somewhere that you can match the cuts—you know, tiny scratches and nicks on a cutter can be matched….”

  “Don’t tell me you watch CSI?”

  “Sometimes,” she admitted. “But what about it? Did you check for a match?”

  “Nope. I had no reason to.”

  “Are you kidding me? This guy had motive, means, and opportunity. He stands to benefit financially from Malebranche’s death. His house is next door to the crime scene and—”

  Horowitz interrupted. “Even if the cuts matched, it wouldn’t mean anything.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we don’t have a time of death, and we can’t establish who had custody of the wire snips at that time. To start with, there are three men on the homestead
, and they don’t lock the shed.”

  “Oh,” said Lucy, crestfallen. “I didn’t think of that.”

  “Leave this alone,” advised Horowitz. “It’s evil and nasty, and you don’t want to get involved.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” said Lucy, knowing that was exactly why she had to find out who had killed Malebranche. If only she could be sure that bear would continue to protect her.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  After sleeping on it, Lucy woke Thursday morning with the conviction that the bear had been sent by Rebecca, who had been alerted to her perilous situation by Oz, the owl. She knew full well that this was utterly ridiculous, that people, even people who considered themselves witches, couldn’t create bears out of thin air, and they couldn’t talk to owls either. But even though she thought of herself as an extremely rational and practical woman, she could not shake the belief that Rebecca sent the bear, or what appeared to be a bear. She wasn’t convinced that a bear had actually been in the woods; it might have been some sort of supernatural force that had taken the form of a bear. That seemed the likeliest explanation, because she assumed that bears were pretty smelly creatures, but this one hadn’t left the faintest hint of a stink. And furthermore, it had disappeared awfully quickly, which was also unbearlike behavior. A real bear would have shuffled off on all fours, taking its time, accompanied by a couple of buzzing flies that had been drawn by its rank scent. But this one had simply vanished as soon as Thomas and Mather took tail and ran away.

  But even though Lucy was convinced she had figured out the explanation for the bear’s sudden appearance, and disappearance, she wasn’t about to share it with anyone. Nobody would believe it, for one thing. Bill would be terrified, convinced his wife was losing her mind, and the kids would probably feel the same way. Her friends wouldn’t believe it, either, except for Pam, who had great faith in supernatural forces and organic foods. Sue would scoff and tell her she had an over-active imagination, and Rachel would dust off some theory she’d learned in college as a psych major. So even though it was Thursday and she’d be having breakfast with the girls, she had no intention of sharing this particular episode with them.