by Nan Sampson
“Thanks. Again.” She’d hoped coming here would give her peace of mind, but instead, now she was more fearful than ever. “Maybe I should simply stop any of this, cut myself off entirely.”
“No!” Harmony shook her head vehemently. “No, dear. The only way to grow strong enough to deal with this is by learning how to control your abilities, how to shield yourself, how to call and banish spirits at your will. You must practice.”
That sounded like a recipe for disaster to Ellie. “Fine, but next time I try anything, I’m doing it here. With you or Dusty by my side.”
Harmony surprised her by saying, “Yes. That is a wise course of action. Call me tomorrow and we’ll set something up.”
She let herself be ushered back out into the shop, where Dusty was just finishing up her call.
Dusty looked from one to the other, noting the change in mood and demeanor. “Mom?”
“Everything’s fine. We just have some work to do, Ellie and I.”
Dusty didn’t look happy but she let it drop. “Before you go, Ellie, I have a message for you, from AJ.”
AJ Virdon was the father of Dusty’s daughter, Rayne, although Ellie was pretty sure the two had never been married. “Really?” She’d never even met the man.
“Do you ice skate?”
Ellie shook her head. “Not since grade school when my mother thought it would be a good idea for me to take lessons.”
“AJ says not to go ice skating. He sees… something about you and skating, sliding on ice.”
He sees? Spirits were one thing, she’d seen them all her life. Woo-woo stuff like psychic visions stretched her belief system a little bit. Not that she didn’t think it couldn’t happen, but most of the so-called psychics she’d met were little better than charlatans who played off their customers’ gullibility and relied on their own ability to read people and make generic suggestions. “Okay. Well, um, tell him thanks, and I’ll make sure not to hit the local ice rink anytime soon.”
Dusty walked with her to the door. “AJ’s not usually wrong, Ellie. Please be careful.”
She gave the woman a smile. “I will, thanks. Take care of your mom, something in the cards really upset her.”
“I could see that. See you at the Shop Talk meeting?”
Shop Talk was the local business owners’ monthly get together. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
Harmony called to her from the back of the shop, where she was pulling various stones and crystals from her bins. “Call me tomorrow, Ellie. We need to set up a time for your practice.”
Ellie smiled and nodded. If it were anyone else, that would have been for show, but she respected Harmony too much to lie to her. “I will.”
She waved and slipped out the door, heard Dusty lock it behind her and flip the Open sign to Closed. Feeling more unsettled now than before she’d come, she climbed into her van and headed home, hoping Charlie would be there to provide a suitable distraction. She grinned – perhaps he had his uses afterall.
The next morning was unseasonably warm. Little rivers of water ran across sidewalks, the gutters were full and water dripped incessantly from the rapidly melting icicles that hung from the fire escape in the alley behind the shop. Every time she went out to the van, little drops of water plunked down on her head, and made puddles in the slush.
Ordinarily, the snow melt would have been a happy thing, implying that spring truly was on its way. But ‘Weatherman Bob’ had predicted a sudden drop in temperatures later that night, as a cold front swept down from the Canadian Rockies, which meant that all the lovely standing water would ice over, making driving treacherous.
To make it worse, Charlie had headed down to Chicago in the small hours of the morning to do ‘something’ and he planned to drive back tonight after rush hour had cleared. She found herself worrying over his safety, despite his claims of being an expert driver.
The media circus was starting to wane as well, which meant that while it freed up her tables for the locals, the two or three days of record sales were now over.
She’d just gotten back from having lunch with Per when Arabella Kemp came in. She looked a little bit frantic, although lately most of Ellie’s friends had that look.
“Hey, Bella. What can I get you?”
“Nothing right now. But have you seen Ms. Roesch today?”
“The Odious Margaret? No, why, should I have? What nefarious thing is she up to now?”
‘Nothing. That’s the problem. Karl Howard is beside himself. They were supposed to meet last night for dinner at his place and she never showed up.”
“Maybe she just got tied up swindling – I mean handling one of her real estate deals. Doesn’t she go into Madison a lot?”
“Karl says she would have called.”
Ellie still couldn’t get too worked up. She didn’t see Margaret Roesch as being overly concerned with anyone’s feelings but her own. “I’m sure she’ll turn up. Unfortunately. Has the esteemed Mr. Howard filed a missing persons complaint?” She imagined some state trooper pulling Roesch’s car over on the highway in response to an APB on the woman’s white Mercedes coupe.
“He can’t. She hasn’t been missing long enough, according to Bill. But Ellie, I haven’t seen her either. Not since the night of Josh’s dinner. Well,” she corrected herself, “She left those clothes out in the hall that night. Chloe had to pick up nearly half a dozen filthy towels in her room the next day. But she was gone from her room before breakfast the next day – Chloe said she didn’t see her in the dining room. So no one’s seen hide nor hair of her since the night of the dinner.”
Ellie shrugged. “Even so, Bella, she’s a grown woman. I still say she went back to Madison for a couple of days. Maybe she’s finally tired of Karl and his oh-so-attractive comb-over, and is avoiding him. Who knows? Don’t let Karl get you in a tizzy about it. Lady knows, you’ve got enough to worry about.”
She took a breath, and some of the agitation seemed to flow out of her. “I suppose your right. It’s not like she’s some young thing who can’t take care of herself.” She glanced up at the menu board. “Maybe I will get a latte… I don’t usually, but today I could go for something indulgent.”
“How about a shot of hazelnut in that? Or better yet, we still have some syrup from fall – I could make you a pumpkin spice.”
“Ooh, that’s sounds perfect.” She pulled out her wallet, but Ellie waved her off.
“This one’s on me. I owe you for the room and board the other night.”
“Pshaw. That was just being neighborly.”
“So is this.” She prepared the drink then sat back down on her stool. “How’s it going at The Birches? I would have thought Sierra and Matt would have packed it up and headed home by now, since they missed the Symposium.”
Bella shook her head, made a face. “Bill won’t let them. Says they’re material witnesses or some such and has asked them to stay until he’s satisfied with his investigation.”
It was encouraging news. “I thought he was convinced it was Josh. They filed charges, for Pete’s sake.”
“Bill is a sharp cookie, Ellie, you know that. Being a former homicide cop from your neck of the woods, he’d have to be.”
“I’ll grant you, he’s not Andy Griffith.” Although really, from what she’d seen of Chicago PD’s homicide squad after her friend Lacey’s death, plus the incompetence of suburban cops after her own parents’ murders, she didn’t have the highest opinion of the IQ of the average policeman.
Bella grinned. “Nor Barney Fife either. He may even make Agent DiNozzo look like a fumbling bumpkin. I don’t believe for a minute he thinks Josh committed this crime.”
“Then why arrest him? That seems cruel. Not to mention potentially opening him up for a liable suit down the road.”
Shrugging, Bella spent a moment savoring her drink. “All I’m saying is, don’t underestimate him. Mmm, this is just what I needed. Thanks, Ellie. You’re a life saver.” She reshouldered her purse. “And if you
see the Odious One, please, call me…and call Karl. I’m sick to death of him stalking me.”
She promised that she would, then sat down on her stool again.
Marg poked her head through the doorway to the inner sanctum. The glorious smell of oatmeal raisin cookies wafted out, making Ellie’s mouth water. She was going to gain twenty pounds before summer arrived at this rate.
“Thought I heard Bella.”
“You did. I’m also sure you heard every word that she said.”
Marg grinned. “Actually, I had the TV on. Besides, sometimes Bella and I need a little break from each other.”
“She was here looking for the Odious Margaret. Apparently she left town and didn’t tell anyone where she was going. Karl Howard is beside himself with worry. He even tried to file a missing persons report with the police.”
“Hah! Poor old geezer – here he thinks he’s found someone who loves him without his toupee and off she runs. No wonder he’s frantic.”
“Karl Howard doesn’t own a toupee!”
“Oh, but he does. You probably haven’t seen it on him – I think we all teased him into retiring it before you moved here. but he does indeed have one. It’s horrible. Looks like some strange animal. You expect it to sprout legs and walk off his head.”
Ellie laughed. “I love it! We’ve got to get him to wear it. I have to see this!”
Marg glanced at her watch. “Two more minutes,” she said, more to herself. “So where do you think Ms. Roesch is?”
“Probably Saskatchewan, if she saw Karl in his toupee!”
Marg giggled. “No, but seriously.”
Ellie gave a shrug. “I don’t know. Probably Madison. Maybe she went to make arrangements to sell her house. Bella told me the other day… was it Bella? I think so… that she’d bought the Mueller property and was looking to move here.”
“Lord help us. Be nice if someone whacked her over the head with a shovel.”
“The way things have been going around here lately, we couldn’t get that lucky.”
Pushing a strand of hair from her face with the back of her plastic gloved hand, Marg rolled her eyes by way of reply then headed back into the kitchen to take the cookies out of the oven.
Ellie, having no customers to serve, and nothing better to do, pulled her book out from under the counter and settled in for a nice read.
The afternoon picked up a little, but by four, the streets outside were both a slushy mess, and utterly devoid of traffic, vehicular or otherwise. Ellie sent Marg home, packed up a gift basket she’d promised to donate to Laura Lincoln’s Author Night, then closed up shop.
Ordinarily, she’d have dropped the basket off at The Book Nook, which was down the street a bit, but she knew Laura had closed up early that day to take her pet guinea pig, Alvin, to the vet, so Ellie had made arrangements to drop the basket off at her house.
Laura lived on the opposite side of Horizon, which, in the type of city Ellie was from, might have taken a half an hour or more to get across. The suburbs of Chicago, where she’d been born and raised, meandered all over, and one frequently crossed city lines without even knowing it. One of the things really loved about Horizon was that you could get to the other side of town in a matter of minutes and when you reached the end of town, that was it. No other town to merge into without warning, no wasteland of uniform housing tracts or industrial parks. The end of town was the end of town. Nothing but miles of farm land as far as the eye could see, rolling and undulating across the green Wisconsin landscape.
Laura lived in a small yellow farm house two miles outside the city limit that she claimed to be restoring, but which, more often than not, barely had running water and electricity. The book store took up so much of her time that most of her projects remained in a state of perpetual incompleteness – which sort of described the rest of her life, including several sometimes on, sometimes off relationships.
The outside of the farm house was about the only thing Laura had completed, having replaced the siding and roofing the year she’d moved in. It was a cheerful yellow, with white trim and a lovely green roof, and the railed front porch, with its happy white wicker furniture was to die for.
Ellie parked on the gravel driveway and slopped through the slushy, muddy mess to the front porch, wishing that Laura had seen fit to put in the sidewalk she’d been promising for ages. At the front door, she removed her mud-packed boots and let herself in with a knock and a holler.
Laura came out of the kitchen in a ratty blue bathrobe, and holding a tissue to her nose.
“Laura! What’s the matter?”
“Alvin. He’s gone, Ellie.” Whereupon she burst into tears.
Ellie did what she could to comfort her friend, but in the end, after an hour of telling Alvin tales, Laura told Ellie she could go, that she needed time to be alone. Feeling like a terrible friend, Ellie left, unable to do much to assuage her friend’s grief, and frankly not quite understanding how someone could get so attached to a guinea pig.
It was twilight when she left, and she drove carefully, wondering when the roads would start to ice over. Her route home took her past the old Mueller place and she paused at the start of the long drive, curious about the property that Margaret Roesch planned to make her own.
Although it was getting dark, she couldn’t resist getting a closer look at the house Patti Mough had said was a falling down heap. She turned into the drive and rumbled down the washboard gravel drive for almost a quarter mile before reaching the farm house and the surrounding outbuildings.
The place had clearly been a working farm at some point. There was an enormous red barn, the roof of which had completely fallen in on its bluff stone foundation, as well as a couple of smaller, more modern sheds, which might once have stored tractors or other such implements.
The house itself was at least a third larger than Laura’s place, but was in much worse condition. The roof sagged, the porch looked positively dangerous, although at one time it would have been a dream, spanning the whole front of the house and wrapping around the side, where a turret resided.
The clapboard siding was probably original, and had been painted the traditional white, although now it was a mottled gray, where the paint had peeled away. Two windows on the second floor had been broken out and were now boarded up, giving the place a creepy, vaguely sinister feel. Or maybe it was just the time of day and her mood.
She got out of the van, and stood in the growing darkness, trying to picture Alphie Mueller here, growing up with her fire and brimstone preacher father and her flighty and apparently promiscuous sister, Nettie. She grounded and centered and tried to let the veil of years slip away, reaching out to the heart of the place, to the memories that resided in the house and the land itself.
A nauseating sensation gripped her. She would have sworn she felt hands on her body, touching her in intimate places. Even as she pushed the hands away, found herself overwhelmed by a feeling of helplessness that she found nearly impossible to shake.
A shriek shocked her back to reality.
She found herself on her knees, in the snow, several hundred yards away from where she’d been, in front of an old, wooden shed around the side of the house. Shuddering from the place memory, she physically shook herself, then did a quick cleansing exercise to separate herself from the residual energies of the past.
Well, she couldn’t prove it in a court of law, but she was pretty sure now she knew what had happened between the good man of God, John Mueller and at least one of his daughters.
She glanced around, still thinking she could hear the echoes of the shriek. Somehow that hadn’t seemed as though it had come from the same memory, and she wondered if possibly she had actually heard it.
The place was quiet now though, so quiet she could hear the dripping of snow melt from the house eaves, plopping down onto the mounds of slushy snow.
In the silence came the sudden revving of an engine.
She ran back around to the front of the hous
e and saw in the dimness the shape of a large vehicle speeding up the gravel drive to the main road, swerving around her van as it went, and narrowly missing it.
Ellie started to run towards it, then realizing she’d never get close enough to either catch it or see it clearly, she gave up.
What had someone been doing out here? Had it been Margaret Roesch and if so, why would she have peeled out like that?
She took a couple of cleansing breaths then went and grabbed a flashlight from her car. If Margaret had been here, Ellie wanted to know why.
Her hunt took her to the back of the house, where the snow had drifted into a natural depression in the land. Her flashlight bobbing across the mottled brown and white landscape, Ellie followed a set of large footprints through the deeper, drifted snow. There were more than one set, crossing over one another, expanded in size from the melt, but still clearly larger than an average woman’s shoe.
The footprints ended in a muddy, slushy area several hundred yards behind the house. The tall, yellow gold stalks of grass stuck up out of snow that had been deliberately piled atop something long and narrow, like a raised flower bed. She panned her flashlight around, looking for what had attracted someone to come all the way back here.
In the middle distance, the land sloped away, and she could see the shores of Horizon’s recreation lake, Lake Hodek. Somewhere to the north, along its shore, was Marg’s apartment complex, on the outskirts of the town proper. A faint glow of light reflected off the ice-covered expanse of the lake, and patches of fog drifted along the grass and sedge lined shore.
A flutter of movement caught her attention and she shone the beam of the flashlight at a line of firebushes a few yards away. Something pale was flapping against the lower branches of one of the bushes.
She went over and retrieved the item, which turned out to be two separate things. The first was a soft brown cashmere scarf that she’d last seen around the neck of Margaret Roesch. The second thing, which seemed to be caught up in the folds of the wrinkled scarf, was a number of papers, folded up into a square. She unfolded them with shaking hands, and found herself looking at what appeared to be medical records for one John Mueller. Something about a surgery and some blood test results. The only thing she could really take away was that Mueller’s blood type was a rare one, AB negative.