Original Secrets

by Shawn McGuire

  “Mm-hmm,” Effie agreed.

  “And you felt that Flavia was somehow involved with this?” I asked.

  “We know she was,” Cybil said.

  “Priscilla and Flavia were in cahoots,” Effie stated.

  “And how were they going to separate Rae and Gabe?” I asked. “Were they holding something over Gabe’s head?” I look to Cybil. “Was he the father?”

  Cybil glared, not happy with my accusation of her son. “He most certainly was not.”

  The conviction in her voice made me believe her.

  “Like we told you,” Cybil continued, “Gabe and Rae were crazy about each other. They intended to get married after college. Gabe planned to become a chemical engineer. Rae wanted to be a nurse.”

  “Where are they now?” I asked. “I’ve never met either of them.”

  “After Priscilla died,” Effie began then paused, drifting away for a second. “Her death was too much for them to deal with. They left the village. Rae got a job at a diner to support them while Gabe attended classes and worked on that degree. Those two kids worked so hard to support themselves and the—”

  “The stress of everything was too much for them,” Cybil quickly added. “They split up.”

  They were hiding something. What made Priscilla’s death so hard on the two of them that they had to leave the village? None of the other Pack members, except my dad, left. I’d probably be getting different stories if I spoke with these two separately, but seeing one play off the other was equally telling.

  “Back to Priscilla’s death,” I said. “Do you know what happened that night?”

  Cybil shook her head. “All we know, is that there was a gathering at the Meditation Circle where Flavia insisted that Gabe needed to be with Priscilla.”

  That was more or less what Gran wrote.

  “What happened at the Meditation Circle that night?” I asked.

  “Rae told me,” Effie began, “that there was an argument which led to a scuffle and the next thing they knew, Priscilla was on the ground.”

  “Okay,” I murmured, mostly to myself, “she was either tripped or pushed.”

  Or someone hit her in the head. Like someone had hit Gran. Had Flavia killed Priscilla nearly forty years ago in the same manner that she killed my grandmother five months ago? No, that didn’t add up. Why would Flavia act as Priscilla’s defender and then kill her?

  “Tripped or pushed,” Cybil agreed. “We don’t know for sure, we weren’t there. We know that Flavia was the ringleader. The kids weren’t sure if orchestrating the fight was her goal all along or if that happened as things progressed.”

  “Because everyone else got there late,” I mumbled and wrote in my notebook. “Was there an investigation?”

  They shook their heads.

  “There was no law enforcement in the village at that time,” Effie explained. “Immediately after that incident, the council voted in Kent Brighton, Karl’s father, as sheriff.”

  “Kent agreed to hold the office for a short time,” Cybil said, “but he didn’t want it permanently. Karl was twenty years old and looking for a career. The next week, he started taking criminal justice classes and then entered the police academy. Immediately upon graduating, we voted him in as sheriff.”

  Just like Reed, Karl hadn’t had any on-the-job experience either. No wonder the rules around here were so flexible.

  “Let me get this straight.” I scooted to the edge of the loveseat. “You’re telling me that an investigation into Priscilla’s death was never done. You just buried her body and moved on?”

  “We had a ceremony for her,” Cybil offered like that made it better.

  “Poor Velma.” Effie wiped her eyes and looked at Cybil. “Remember how her hands shook as she marked her?”

  “Marked her?” I asked.

  Cybil answered with a solemn nod and started reminiscing about Priscilla’s ceremony and others held over the years.

  “So,” I said, trying to get them back on track, “there was no investigation. You knew nothing more than what Dillon, Rae, and Gabe told you?”

  “Lucy spoke with the other kids,” Effie said. “Since this is her property, she made all the rules. She looked at the council more as her advisors than a governing body.”

  “What did she decide?” I asked.

  “She called all the villagers together at the pentacle garden,” Cybil recalled. “She told us that after speaking with all the kids involved, she determined that Flavia was responsible for Priscilla’s death.”

  “That’s what she said?” I almost fell off the loveseat. This could explain so much. “Were those her exact words?”

  “Her exact words.” Effie confirmed. “She said that she couldn’t state conclusively how Priscilla fell, meaning she couldn’t prove who shoved the girl, but everyone agreed that—”

  “Everyone agreed,” Cybil interrupted, again, “that Priscilla would not have died if it weren’t for Flavia.”

  My brain was now vibrating with questions. Did Flavia shove Priscilla and cause her to fall? If she had been responsible, why wouldn’t any of the other kids say so? Did she have control of some kind over them? Did she give them a concoction of some kind that made them compliant? Now I was reaching, but she could have persuaded someone else to push Priscilla.

  Images of The Pack circling that poor girl, taunting and humiliating her, flashed in front of my eyes. Had it been a single blow or strike to the head that had killed her? Or had mob mentality taken over and they all took part in a beating once she fell, making it impossible to determine who had delivered the kill shot? That wasn’t likely, but it sickened me to think of what human beings could do to each other when given the right motivation. There was no investigation, so there was no autopsy. That meant there was no way to determine conclusively how Priscilla died. All I could do was go off forty-year-old memories and journal entries.

  The equally big bombshell was that Gran had decided Flavia was responsible for the death and told the entire village. She basically sentenced Flavia to a life of public humiliation. I can’t imagine a worse punishment for Flavia. That sure sounded to me like a possible motive for wanting my grandmother dead.

  “Thank you both,” I said as I stood from the loveseat. “This was helpful.”

  “And what,” Cybil inquired, “do you intend to do with this information?”

  “Gran was murdered,” I stated. “I’m sure you both know that. I don’t know that I’ll be able to prove exactly what happened to Priscilla, but I’ll put together the best investigation I can. As for what happened to Gran, I have a strong feeling the two deaths are intertwined.”

  Effie stood and took my hand. “Jayne—”

  I pulled away. “Don’t tell me to ignore this. And you don’t have to tell me to be careful. There might be a murderer in the village; I’ll be careful.”

  As Meeka and I left Effie’s wagon and headed out of The Triangle, we crossed paths with Lily Grace.

  “Hey there, Sheriff. Are you here for that reading?”

  I looked around at the crowd, uneasy with the public thinking that law enforcement relied on extrasensory perception to solve crimes. I was about to say no, then remembered the black stuff on the lady in the water. Just because I couldn’t explain it or believe in it, I couldn’t deny the accuracy of Lily Grace’s visions.

  She led me to a secluded grove tucked behind the wagons and tents. There, she had a temporary setup of colorful scarves tied together and tossed over ropes suspended between trees. Right now, because of the rain, a heavy-duty tarp was suspended over the whole thing. If she decided she was staying in the village, instead of going away to veterinary school, they’d reward her with a wagon of her own.

  She sat on a cushion on one side of a short round table, and I sat across from her. After a minute of breathing deeply with her eyes closed, Lily Grace placed her hands on the table with her palms up. I placed mine on top of them, palms to palms.

  After a few seconds, she
started humming softly and the upper half of her body began to sway side-to-side. Regardless of what she was seeing, her expression remained neutral. I did my best to help with this vision by thinking of nothing but Gran and trying to send those thoughts straight to Lily Grace. After a few seconds, I swear I felt energy pulsing between our hands. After a few more seconds, Lily Grace’s swaying started to slow. Finally, she opened her eyes and, as though in a trance, stared blankly at me.

  “What do you see?” I asked softly.

  “I see a doll.”

  “A doll? What kind of a doll?”

  “A porcelain baby doll. The old-fashioned kind with those dead-looking eyes that open and close.” Then she blinked a few times, like she was waking up. “What did I say?”

  Chapter 21

  Honestly, I had hoped for a lot more from Lily Grace’s reading. The face of the killer, for example, would have been awesome. The gender would narrow the options. Hair color could even be helpful. But a baby doll? What was that supposed to tell me?

  Meeka whined at me from the back of the Cherokee.

  “I know, the visions don’t always make sense at first.” Hopefully she had given me something valuable, and I simply needed to be patient and wait for the answer to come.

  As for Cybil and Effie’s statements, I couldn’t believe no one reported Priscilla’s death. Even though they lived in the middle of nowhere, it had been 1979, not 1779. There were laws. They couldn’t just bury a body and walk away. An autopsy, obviously, would’ve been best, but even a partial report from an amateur investigation would give me something to go on. Gran reiterated statements in her journals, but nothing else. She must have seen the body. If she would have mentioned any sort of identifying marks on it, I might be able to—

  “Marks on the body!”

  In the rearview mirror I saw Meeka stand and look at me, her head tilted to the side.

  “Effie said Velma’s hands shook as she ‘marked’ Priscilla.”

  The same mark left over Yasmine’s and Gran’s hearts? The mark that Flavia could instantly identify because she was familiar with the Theban alphabet?

  Events were filtered through the person who experienced them, so I needed to talk to everyone who was present that night and gather all the pieces for my puzzle that I could. So far, I’d gotten statements from three people—six if I factored in that Dad, Rae, and Gabe had all told their mothers about what happened. The main thing they all seemed to agree on was that Flavia was at least partially responsible for the death.

  Meeka let out a sharp bark from the back of the Cherokee. We were still in the parking lot near the Fortune Tellers’ Triangle. I’d gotten lost in thought and hadn’t even started the car.

  “Let’s go have a chat with Flavia.”

  This time, Meeka whined pitifully and laid down in her crate.

  “I understand how you feel. Being around her isn’t at the top of my favorites list either. Everyone seems to think that Flavia was responsible for Priscilla’s death, though. And now I’ve got a motive for why she would want to kill Gran, too.”

  ~~~

  Violet had once described Flavia’s house as “creepy as hell.” A perfect descriptor in my opinion. The narrow three-story tall Gothic-looking cottage was stained entirely black-brown. Surely, it was the house kids in the village would label “The Witch House.” Then again, in Whispering Pines that didn’t mean much.

  Flavia stiffened when she opened her front door and found me standing there. “What do you want?”

  I tapped the shiny gold star on my shirt. “This is official business.”

  “Is Martin all right?” She looked panicked. “Did something happen to him?”

  Her maternal concern made me pause for a beat. I softened my tone to respond. “Deputy Reed is fine.”

  Her whole body slumped slightly with relief, and I turned my cop-self back on.

  “Something did happen to a girl named Priscilla about forty years ago.” I had to bite back the smile playing at my mouth when the color drained from her face. An impressive occurrence in someone so naturally pasty. “May I come in, or should we talk about this on your front porch?”

  Her hands fluttered at her throat and she frowned down at Meeka. Flavia wasn’t a fan of dogs. Still, she took a step back and to the side and held the door open for us. I’d been inside Flavia’s home once before, to question her about the death of Yasmine Long. I remembered thinking then that the minimally furnished house looked like it had been cleaned with steel wool and a power washer. It still did.

  Flavia led me to the Quaker-style dining room table, big enough for only four people, if they didn’t mind being crowded, and indicated a chair for me to sit in. The one she chose would have left me with my back to the door, something I avoided whenever possible. I chose the chair that put me with my back to the wall instead, and Meeka lay at my feet. Flavia stood there for a moment, perplexed, as she now had to decide if she wanted to sit across from me or in the chair she clearly favored which would put her next to me.

  She chose the chair across from me, sat, and cleared her throat. “What is it you think you know about Priscilla?”

  “I know that the two of you were good friends.” Start out slow, build a rapport, hit her with the big stuff.

  A smile turned her mouth; a sight I wasn’t used to. “We were best friends. My family and I had been here for maybe six months when Prissy and her mother moved here. I was so grateful.”

  I’d never heard her speak so fondly of anything or anyone else. Except maybe her son.

  “Why grateful?” I asked.

  Just that fast, her features hardened. “Because Reeva stole the other girls. We hadn’t even been here twenty-four hours, and she had snatched Briar away from Dillon. Then Rae and Laurel joined her little group as well. I was left alone; the only other kids being Horace and Gabe.”

  Or was she welcome but didn’t want to put forth the effort to fit in? Kids didn’t always accept new kids right away, and Reeva was the more approachable of the two.

  “I have a hard time believing that none of the other girls already here would be friends with you, Flavia.” Had she been shy as a kid? She managed to split The Pack in two, so she clearly found her voice along the way. Why? What led to the shift in self-confidence? “What did you do all by yourself? Read? Wander the woods? Did you have television up here at that point?”

  Flavia cringed at my mention of television. “Mostly I read and practiced my witchcraft. Like trying on dresses, I experimented with the different types, searching for the best fit.”

  Considering Flavia only wore shapeless, tent-like frocks that fell to mid-shin, that wasn’t the best analogy for her to use.

  “Morgan tells me you’re an eclectic witch.”

  She pushed her shoulders back and sat taller. “I am. The medicinal element of plants intrigued me, so I considered becoming a green witch. The preparation of food was enjoyable, so I also delved into kitchen witchcraft.” Her lips pinched together in a pucker. “Reeva has unbeatable skills as a kitchen witch, though, so that wasn’t a wise choice.”

  “Because it was important for you to be able to beat her?”

  She ignored the question, shifted in her chair, and placed her folded hands on the table. “I eventually decided that picking and choosing what I excelled at from the different practices was the wisest choice.”

  “Morgan says that being an eclectic witch can sometimes mean utilizing dark magic.”

  Flavia made a sour face.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Perhaps I should say, sometimes means casting spells of negative intent.”

  “Because one person sees things differently from another, that doesn’t mean those things are negative.” She swiped non-existent dust from the table. “I admit to casting a spell or two to take some focus off my attention-addicted sister, but I lived in this house, too. Wasn’t I deserving of a little praise for my accomplishments?”

  As Flavia clamped her mouth shut, I flashed to an afte
rnoon during my sophomore year in high school. I’d just come home from a good day at school to find Mom gushing over her younger daughter.

  “Rosalyn was awarded first chair in the violin section today,” Mom had explained. “I can’t remember the last time I heard you practice the cello, Jayne. Do you even try?”

  “No, because I hate the cello.” Quickly, before the lecture about money spent on lessons started, I blurted, “I got a 99 on my math test. Highest score in the class.”

  I could see the smile she gave me as clearly as if she was standing in front of me right now. The visual equivalent of a pat on the head. I cleared my throat, clearing away the memory. Beneath the table, Meeka sensed my upset and shifted to lay on my feet.

  With empathy, I told Flavia, “It must’ve been hard to not be allowed to be yourself.”

  “It was all right for me to have different interests,” she corrected. “Not only was that encouraged, multiple activities were required. That way I could stop one if Reeva took an interest in it and move on with another.” Her mouth pursed in a tight pucker for a moment. “Goddess forbid I be better at something than Reeva.”

  That seemed extreme. Was that really the way her childhood had been, or was that the way Flavia chose to remember it?

  “Speaking of casting spells,” I said, backing the conversation up a little, “I understand you cast a love spell to make Gabe break up with Rae and get together with Priscilla.”

  I had no idea if she’d done that. The accusation would likely lead to the truth, though.

  A dark shadow crossed her face. “Priscilla and her son needed a man to take care of them.”

  “Needed a man to take care of them?” I cringed internally, probably externally, too, as every feminist cell in my body protested. I was totally in favor of relationships but couldn’t stomach comments like that. “Prissy wasn’t capable of taking care of herself?”

  Flavia shot me a momentary glare, then shook her head, a crisp little movement that said I had no idea what I was talking about. “Being a single mother is the hardest thing in the world. I’m the first to admit that I was fortunate to have inherited money from my parents. There was also the generous life insurance payout from Horace’s death. Still, money can’t relieve the burden of being a child’s only parent. Raising Martin on my own, without a father figure to assist, is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”