Family Secrets: A Whispering Pines Mystery

by Shawn McGuire

  “Good luck,” I said sincerely. “I have a quick question for you. Did you know that Yasmine and Martin Reed were cousins?”

  Her eyes went wide and then she laughed. “They weren’t cousins.”

  “Sure they were. Yasmine’s aunt told me earlier today that they were.”

  “Then she’s lying.”

  “Why do you think so?”

  “Yasmine told me Martin Reed was her brother.” Keko paused, analyzing her own statement, then shook her head. “Whoa. That would mean her aunt is really her mother.”

  Chapter 30

  Keko’s bombshell made my head spin. She was right, I absolutely believed her. Yasmine and Flavia were mother and daughter. It was the freckles. Those damn freckles. Then why did everyone think they were aunt and niece? I also believed that Flavia told me the truth about why she wouldn’t let Yasmine stay at the house. Her disgust for Yasmine’s ‘impurity’ was genuine. But what did impure mean? And was she disgusted enough to kill her own daughter?

  “O’Shea.”

  I spun, startled, to find Sheriff Brighton standing by the backdoor of the sheriff’s station. He did not look happy.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “My office. Now.”

  It was a cool day and the Cherokee was parked in the shade, but I still took a minute to lower all the windows for Meeka.

  “Stay,” I commanded. “I’ll be right back.”

  She lay down in her crate and rolled to her side. Meeting so many people had tired her out. She’d be asleep within a minute.

  Inside, Reed was at his desk as usual, but he didn’t say a word to me. Instead, he looked up and smirked, like he knew something I didn’t.

  “I’m glad to catch you,” I said, entering Sheriff Brighton’s office. “I’ve been wanting to ask if you had any leads on the break-in at my house yet.”

  He looked at me like I was dense, which told me he hadn’t done a thing. He paced his office and demanded, “What have I told you again and again?”

  “Sir?”

  “I hired you to patrol the village. Not stick your nose into the Yasmine Long investigation. In fact, I specifically ordered you to stay out of it.”

  Dressed down, I stared at my feet.

  “But what do I hear? You’ve been asking questions about her all around the damn village. Today you showed up at Flavia Reed’s house to harass her about the case.”

  “I didn’t harass her. She invited me in and freely answered my questions.”

  “You admit that you were there, interrogating her about a case you have no business even thinking about. Why, O’Shea? Why did you go there?”

  “I was exploring the village. You told me to wander around and get to know—”

  He held up a hand. “Stop. Why can’t you leave this alone?”

  Leave it alone? Why did he so desperately want me to? My instincts were screaming coverup.

  “Because a girl was murdered, Sheriff Brighton.”

  He stared at me, his chest heaving. In a tight, clipped voice he asked, “Did you also log into Martin’s email and order a toxicology report?”

  “I was reviewing the autopsy—”

  “Which is also none of your business!” He threw his hands in the air. “Damn it!”

  “I didn’t see anywhere that the test had been ordered. I didn’t know if you asked and he forgot, or if it never got ordered at all. I was just sending a reminder.”

  “Which is not your job.” His face pinched with pain as his hand went to his hip. He dropped into his desk chair. “If you had a concern of any kind regarding this investigation, you should have come to me.”

  “I’m sorry, Sheriff. It’s just with so much going on around here, I thought you may have forgotten to order it. I figured I’d help you out.” I was treading so close to insubordination I could taste it. Why couldn’t I stop myself? I couldn’t even stop defending my reasons for disobeying direct orders. “I was just following up and helping out. Since I work for the department—”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Sir?”

  “You seem to feel that rules don’t apply to you, O’Shea.” His voice was eerily calm now. “I should have suspected this wouldn’t work. When you told me the details that led up to your coworker shooting an unarmed civilian, I should have known hiring you was a bad idea. You felt you could handle the problem with your partner, didn’t you?”

  “I—”

  “You thought if you just talked to him long enough, if you kept browbeating him with your opinions, you’d be able to convince him to get help. Or did you think you were as qualified as the precinct shrink and would be able to help him yourself?”

  “No, sir, not at all.”

  “Whatever you thought, you broke protocol and a woman died.”

  I had to literally bite back a laugh. The sheriff of Whispering Pines was lecturing me on protocol? Regarding my past behavior, I couldn’t argue with him. In many ways, I had been the most by-the-book cop on our squad. But yes, I had a habit of going rogue. If there was a wrong in need of being righted, I had to dig in. That was my fatal flaw. The reason my entire life was such a mess.

  “Hand over your badge and belt, Ms. O’Shea. You can return your uniform shirts to me tomorrow.”

  He wouldn’t look at me. No, more like he couldn’t look at me.

  I placed my belt and badge on his desk. “I just wanted to help.”

  Now what would I do? I was so close to figuring out what had happened to Yasmine. And now I was more convinced than ever that Sheriff Brighton was covering something up. That he was protecting someone. If I was able to prove it, who should I tell?

  Chapter 31

  I cracked open a third beer and slumped into the lounge chair on the sundeck, feeling buzzed and sorry for myself. Once again, I’d ruined a good thing in my life. I’d been telling Tripp about the drama of my day—what I’d learned about Yasmine and the news that I’d been fired—when a small black Fiat appeared in the driveway, and Morgan got out. Thank god. I couldn’t seem to stop myself from yammering. In about two minutes, Tripp would reach full capacity on hearing about me and my woes, and he’d walk out of my life, too.

  “Be right there, Morgan,” I called and reminded Tripp that she was there to look at the graffiti. “Wanna come?”

  “Sure. How often do you get the chance to see a witch at work?”

  Meeka had already raced over to greet her, but Morgan was all business.

  “This day flew by,” she said. “If it was any indicator of what’s to come, this is going to be a very prosperous season. Thank the Goddess I’ve got Willow to help me.”

  “Keko tells me you might hire her,” I said.

  Morgan dismissed that thought with a crisp shake of her head and moved on to why she was here. “I’ve felt very uneasy about these symbols in your house.”

  “Let’s go take a look.” I led her to the great room, the room that had received the most ink.

  She stood with her hand covering her mouth, shocked by the sight.

  “What do they mean?” I asked, my beer-buzz wearing off as quickly as Morgan’s astonishment rose.

  “At the ritual last night, I gave you a very basic explanation of how sigils are made,” Morgan said. “Let me explain more. You write down a statement of intent that has powerful meaning for you.”

  “You used ‘I am queen of the world’ at the ritual,” I said. “What would you do with that?”

  She scribbled on a piece of paper. “First, we would disregard all of the vowels and any repeated letters. This would leave us with M, Q, N, F, T, H, W, R, L, and D. You then arrange those letters into an image. It’s okay to twist and turn, stretch and pull, and overlap them as necessary to make them fit together. When you’re done, you have an image and only you know the phrase behind it.

  “Then you cast the sigil. There are various ways to do this. One would be to take the paper you’ve drawn the sigil on and light it on fire, holding the paper until it will burn you if you ho
ld it any longer. Then, you do all you can to make the statement come true. In this case, you start taking steps to become queen of the world.”

  “Do you have any idea what any of these mean?” Tripp asked.

  “I don’t,” Morgan said, “and I can’t tell you who created them either. Many in our coven use sigils. Just the process of putting one together is a powerful exercise that helps you focus on your goal.”

  “I know who created these,” I said. “Flavia. She has it in for me. She’s got these same symbols on her robe. And she tried to burn me.”

  “I know your instincts are telling you something about her,” Morgan said. “I advise you to be wary. Don’t accuse unless you have proof.”

  She wandered around the house, looking at the different images, and focused on two in particular. One looked like an upside-down capital letter “Y,” except the main trunk extended so it was even with the shorter lines. It resembled an upside-down tree. Or maybe a pitchfork? The other looked like an “S” lying on its side, a dot at the center of each curve.

  “These two are bothering you,” I said. “Why?”

  “This one.” She set her hand next to the upside-down Y. “If it were turned the other way, it would mean life or beginning. Upside down, it means the opposite.”

  “So, death and end?” Tripp said.

  “Exactly.” Morgan touched the wall near the S-shaped symbol. “This means water.”

  Tripp glanced at me. “Those two symbols, drawn next to each other like they are here, are in almost every room. In some they’re large and painted on the walls. In others, they’re small and scratched onto furniture or the floor.”

  “I’m going to get the protection jars I made for you. They’re in my car.” Morgan left without another word.

  “Is it just me,” I asked, “or does she seem freaked out?”

  “Protection jars?” Tripp asked.

  I shrugged. “She insists they’ll protect me from the baddies.”

  “You don’t believe they’ll work?”

  I kept my eyes on the doors and lowered my voice so Morgan wouldn’t hear me. “I believe that she, and the other witches in Whispering Pines, believe in their magic. The right mindset can have a huge impact toward a positive outcome. Morgan’s herbs and oils, sure those have medicinal benefits, but that’s not witchcraft. It’s pharmacy.”

  “Even though your grandmother seems to have been a follower?”

  I considered that before answering. “What I saw at the ritual last night was a congregation honoring their god, or goddess in this case, just as faithfully as parishioners in any other church. This particular church just happens to be the forest, and their goddess is connected to the moon. Or is the moon. I’m not clear on that yet. I have no issues with my grandmother having been Wiccan.”

  Morgan stormed back into the house carrying two round bright green jars, about the size of tennis balls. Each held sharp objects—rusty razorblades, pins, pieces of barbed wire—and strands of red string. Something that looked like coarse salt was in there, too.

  “I made one for the boathouse as well, since that’s where you’re staying.” She handed me a paper cup. “I need your urine.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Consecrated wine also works, but it’s not as powerful.” She looked me in the eye. “I’m quite worried about you, Jayne. You have your ways of protecting, this is what I know to do.”

  Tripp gave me a little shrug. “Mindset.”

  Fine. After three beers, I had to go anyway.

  By the time I returned with the near-full cup, Morgan had spread an altar cloth on the kitchen bar and lit a black candle. She poured half of the contents of the cup into each jar and then stoppered them with a piece of cork. While chanting quietly, she let the wax from the candle drip over the stopper until it was completely covered. After the second jar was also sealed, she extinguished the candle and waited for the wax to harden. When it had, she stood on a chair from the dining room and placed one jar on the top shelf in the entryway coat closet.

  “The bright color will attract any negative energy that enters this home,” Morgan explained. “The sharp objects will deflect the energy and send it back to whomever is sending it to you. The salt purifies. The red string provides protection.” She looked over her shoulder at me. “The urine identifies this space as yours.”

  Whether it was Morgan’s belief or that her jars of herbs and flowers and amulets really did have power, I felt a little more at ease. Although knowing there was a jar of my own pee in the front closet was a little disturbing.

  “I’ll place the other jar somewhere in the boathouse,” Morgan stated. “I’m going to try and figure out what’s going on, Jayne. It will take a while. Weeks, maybe. I have to be careful with my approach. There are some very powerful members of the coven. Angering them could make things much worse for you.”

  “And you, I assume,” I said.

  Morgan dismissed the comment with a shake of her head. “This is my calling. I protect others with the intent of doing no harm to anyone involved. My karma is pure.”

  We were a lot alike, Morgan and me.

  “I hear what you’re saying,” I said, “and appreciate all that you’re doing for me. Sheriff Brighton hasn’t even tried, so if you can help me figure out who the vandal is—”

  “This isn’t just a case of vandalism,” Morgan interrupted. “I know you don’t believe it, but there is something darker going on here.”

  I hadn’t even known Morgan for a week yet, but I could tell she truly was worried about whatever was going on in Whispering Pines. We were a lot alike in that way, too.

  “You figure out who this dark witch is,” I said, “and I’ll make sure the law takes care of them.”

  Later that night, I tossed and turned and couldn’t fall asleep. Meeka whined at all the noise I was making, so I got up and went out on the deck. No sense both of us being awake.

  A little sliver of the moon hung among patchy clouds. I gazed at it and all I could think about was Yasmine. She and Reed were siblings. How long had they known that? Flavia didn’t want anything to do with her own daughter, that was obvious. Did Yasmine want a relationship with her brother regardless? If so, he didn’t seem receptive. Why else would he deny knowing her when I asked?

  The most frustrating question of all was why Sheriff Brighton refused to investigate Yasmine’s death. The only answer was that he was protecting someone. And if that was true, someone in the village was the killer. He wouldn’t be working this hard to protect a tourist. Until Yasmine got here a few weeks ago, it was likely only two people here even knew she existed. Flavia and Martin Reed.

  And then there were two. Which of them killed Yasmine?

  Chapter 32

  Having slept very little, I was crabby the next morning. Or maybe it was because I was unemployed again. How . . . why did I keep messing up the perfect opportunities in my life? According to my mom, it started when I changed my college major from pre-law to criminal justice. I never, not for one minute, saw myself as a lawyer or politician. That was Mom’s dream for me. But a blood splatter analyst? Sure. Until I found out how much science was required. Not my strongest subject. A crime scene investigator? You bet. FBI agent had also been high on my list; that required more rigorous training after college, though. I was already chomping at the bit to start my adult life. Instead, I applied to and was accepted by the Madison PD. Then the role of homicide detective caught my eye.

  Now, I had so completely messed up my career in law enforcement, I’d never get a job in the field again. Of course, according to the sheriff, I seemed to feel rules didn’t apply to me, so maybe I had no business being a cop anyway.

  I lay in bed, staring out the sliding doors at the lake. The patchy clouds from last night had merged into a full gray blanket, and it looked like rain would come soon. Since I had no job to go to, maybe I’d crack open those watercolors today. I also needed to start packing up Gran’s possessions. I was already in a
bad mood. Why not add depressed to the mix?

  Meeka whined and stood with her front paws on the bed next to me. She pushed at my hand with her nose, letting me know she wanted out.

  “Okay, girl.” I groaned as I rolled out of bed, wishing I could stay there all day. The black deputy shirts caught the corner of my eye as I crossed the apartment to let her out. I set them on the couch last night, folded and ready to go back to the sheriff. He was expecting me to return them today.

  First, I stuck a pod in the coffee maker and then went out onto the deck with my full mug. I had no idea what time it was, but the day was cool and damp, it probably wouldn’t warm up much. In fact, it looked like a storm might blow through. I closed my eyes, sipped my coffee, and listened to the sounds of boats and jet skis taking advantage of the lake before the rain came.

  A gust of wind whipped through, strong enough that I needed to plant my feet. Then another even stronger and I had to grab the deck rail. The rain would be falling before I knew it. Might as well take care of returning those shirts and then hole up in my apartment for the rest of the day.

  ~~~

  The village was packed with tourists. There was easily double the amount of yesterday’s lunchtime crowd, and many of them were crossing the highway that led around Whispering Pines rather than taking the bridge. The village needed to erect a fence. I made a mental note to suggest that as I crept along at five miles per hour, tapping my fingers on the steering wheel and ready to stomp on the brakes if anyone darted out in front of me.

  Reed’s van was the only vehicle in the station lot. I lowered the back windows halfway for Meeka, grabbed the shirts, and entered the station through the backdoor. Reed was at his desk, working on the computer and nibbling his trail mix.

  “You don’t work here no more,” he said. “You can come in the front door like everyone else. And you don’t get to use the parking lot no more either.”

  “Will do,” I answered. “Just returning my uniforms.”