A Witch Before Dying

by Amanda M. Lee

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because she’s evil.”

  “Oh, well, good,” Chief Terry muttered. “You’ve clearly been spending time with Aunt Tillie. That sounds like something she’d say. You’ll end up just like her if you’re not careful.”

  I jerked my eyes to Chief Terry’s face. “That’s the meanest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  “Yeah, that’s not going to work on me.” Chief Terry was unruffled. “You said you saw Adele Twigg’s ghost in the cemetery – I can’t believe I said that out loud. Did she say anything?”

  “She was ticked off when I told her she was dead. Then she said she wanted to go home, told me I was a bad witch and then said she was going to find her family. She’s not down here right now as far as I can tell, but I’m sure she’ll be back. She’s kind of mean.”

  “You spent eighteen years living with Aunt Tillie,” Landon pointed out. “She’s definitely meaner than Adele Twigg ever dreamed of being. I’m sure you’ll survive.”

  “Good point.” I was back to staring at the woods. The workers had yet to return. “I’ll be right back.” I got to my feet.

  Landon followed suit. “Where do you think you’re going? If you’re going to make a scene with Scarlet, turn your cute little butt around and sit.”

  “I have no intention of talking to Scarlet right now,” I said. “Talking to her gives her power, and I have no intention of doing that.”

  “Yup. She’s turning into Tillie.” Chief Terry graced Landon with a sympathetic look. “Your life is about to take a sudden swerve. Run while you can. Save yourself.”

  Landon scowled. “Don’t encourage this madness. You’re making her think it’s okay when you feed into her delusion.”

  “I’m not delusional,” I shot back. “I’m right. You’ll see I’m right eventually, and when you do I’m going to make you do a little dance when you apologize.”

  “Oh, well, I’m looking forward to that,” Landon said dryly. “If you’re not going after Scarlet, where are you going?”

  “Two of the workers went into the woods,” I replied. “I want to see what they’re doing.”

  Whatever Landon expected me to say, it wasn’t that. He recovered quickly. “Okay, I’ll go with you.”

  “Don’t do anything dirty in the woods,” Chief Terry called out. “I’ll arrest you for indecent exposure.”

  “It’s too cold to do anything indecent in the woods,” I said. “That’s what spring is for.”

  “You make me feel old, Bay.”

  “You’re young in spirit.”

  Landon and I set a brisk pace as we headed toward the trees. The fact that the two workers hadn’t yet returned made me suspicious.

  “Was it two men? Two women?”

  “A man and a woman,” I replied.

  “Maybe they’re doing something dirty,” Landon suggested.

  “You told me they’re all related,” I reminded him. “If they’re doing something dirty, well, then there might be some old laws on the books that you can use to hold them.”

  Landon made a face as we stepped into the trees. “That’s really gross, Bay.”

  “Don’t tell me you weren’t thinking it.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “Then you’re slow on the uptake.”

  I truly didn’t expect to find family members making out in the woods. I enjoyed seeing Landon’s twisted expression due to his obvious discomfort with the subject matter. What I found when I turned to my right, though, was straight out of a V.C. Andrews book. You know, the ones about siblings going at it in the attic? Yeah, that’s pretty much what we came upon when we moved closer to a large pine.

  “Oh, my … gross!”

  “That’s putting it mildly,” Landon grumbled. “I’m going to have nightmares about this. I blame you, Bay.”

  “No one made you come.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s too late now. I just … I can’t look.”

  He wasn’t the only one.

  Seventeen

  “I’m blind!”

  I slapped my hand over my eyes.

  “What are you doing out here?” The man – although he didn’t look a day over twenty-one – hopped to his feet, his cheeks flaming. “Are you spying on us?”

  “Not intentionally,” Landon replied. “We just wanted to see what you were doing.”

  “That means you were spying on us,” the man barked, his face mottled with embarrassment.

  “I guess, from your perspective, that’s true,” Landon conceded. “We certainly didn’t expect to find you doing this, Greg. That’s right, isn’t it? You’re Greg Twigg.”

  “I am.” The man smoothed the front of his shirt, doing his best to act self-righteous even though we’d just found him making out with his sister … or cousin … or even a second-cousin was kind of gross. “You’re the FBI agent who questioned us about Mama’s death, right?”

  “Mama?” The word was out of my mouth before I could think better of uttering it. What kind of grown man calls his mother “mama?” Apparently the type who makes out with a relative.

  “Yes, she was my mama,” Greg snapped, his glare landing on me. “Who are you?”

  “Never mind that,” Landon answered for me. “She’s … a consultant with the FBI.”

  That was a gross exaggeration.

  “What are you doing out here with your … sister?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking the obvious question.

  “I’m not his sister.” The woman, who looked to be even younger than the man, scrambled to her feet. “I’m his cousin.”

  “That doesn’t make it better,” I pointed out.

  “We weren’t doing anything,” she protested. “I dropped a contact lens and he was helping me look.”

  “In your mouth?”

  “Bay, let’s not take this to a disgusting place,” Landon ordered. “I’ll ask the questions. Did you drop the contact lens in your mouth?”

  I held back a snicker, but just barely.

  “Oh, man.” Greg ran his hand through his blond hair, frustrated. “We’re going to get in so much trouble for this, Tess. I told you it was a bad idea. You just couldn’t stop yourself.”

  “Oh, don’t blame this on me,” Tess shot back, her green eyes flashing as she pulled a twig from her brown hair. “You’re the one who kept grabbing my butt in the tent. You started it.”

  “I kind of want to grab something myself,” Landon said. “I believe it’s called a barf bag.”

  “You’d better get two,” I muttered.

  “Okay, I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not as bad as it seems,” Greg said. “Tess isn’t really my cousin. Not by birth, at least.”

  “That doesn’t make it much better in my book,” I said. “You’re basically owning up to pseudo incest rather than regular incest. If you’re raised with someone, spend your whole life looking at them as a cousin, you should not be sneaking off into the woods as adults to get a little over-the-clothes action when you think no one is looking. Blood or no blood, it’s still gross.”

  “Wow, and I thought this town was full of witches,” Tess drawled. “It seems like it’s full of puritans instead.”

  “Don’t make things worse, Tess,” Greg snapped. “They don’t understand. If I was in their position, I’m not sure I would either.”

  “Oh, please,” Tess scoffed. “He might refer to her as his consultant, but he’s clearly sleeping with her. Look at the way he positions himself in front of her. They’re more than FBI agent and consultant.”

  “Yes, but she’s not my cousin,” Landon pointed out.

  “He’s not really my cousin either,” Tess explained. “It’s all an act.”

  “I don’t think you can pretend to make out,” I argued. “Once tongues get involved, you’re really doing it.”

  “Not that.” The look Tess shot me was full of pure loathing. “I mean we’re not really cousins. We weren’t raised together. We didn’t play together as child
ren. We didn’t meet each other until six months ago.”

  Huh. I wasn’t sure what to make of that. “So you were raised apart? That still doesn’t make it okay to smooch your cousin.”

  “Oh, geez. Are you slow or something?” Tess’s voice whipped past fury, banked at irate, and slammed into me with the force of a thousand daggers. “We’re not cousins! We weren’t raised in the same family. We’re actors.”

  Huh. That was … different.

  “Wait, so you’re saying that you’re not really Twiggs?” Landon asked.

  “Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner!” Tess barked. I thought I was sarcastic, but she made me look like an amateur. “I’d give you a prize for figuring it out, but it took you far too long.”

  “Well, it’s not exactly easy. You didn’t volunteer this information when I interviewed you guys at The Dragonfly,” Landon pointed out. “You acted like family during interviews.”

  “That’s because Arthur told us we had to,” Greg supplied. “We thought we should tell you the truth, but the Twigg Troupe – and no, we’re not okay with the name – has a reputation to uphold. That’s what he told us.”

  I scratched an itch on the side of my nose. “And Arthur is the husband, right?” Landon gave me a brief rundown of the family tree the day before, but it was so large and scattered I didn’t retain much of it.

  “Yeah.” Landon rubbed his chin. “Were they really married?”

  “Yes.” Greg said. “They were married, but the rest of it is utter crap.”

  “None of you guys are their kids?”

  “My understanding is that they couldn’t have kids,” Tess supplied, her tone easier now that the truth was out and we didn’t think she was playing some sort of weird incest game in the woods behind the library. “The way they explained it to us when we auditioned – well, at least the way they explained it to me anyway – was that they always wanted a bushel of kids so they could travel the country putting on shows.”

  “Renaissance shows?” I asked.

  “They never said,” Tess replied. “They just said shows. I always assumed it was renaissance stuff, because they’re really into it. They like the horses and pageantry. Arthur loves playing with swords.”

  “Is that a euphemism for something?” I asked.

  “Like what?” Tess’s face was blank.

  “Never mind.”

  Landon slid me a smirk before continuing. “I need you guys to run this down for me. We assumed that you were all related. Now you’re telling me you’re not. How does it work?”

  “Well, it’s pretty simple,” Greg replied. “The Twiggs started with a group of about ten people, I think. I wasn’t around then, so you’ll have to ask Arthur about it.”

  “Don’t worry,” Landon intoned. “I will.”

  “By the time we got involved, they’d been doing it about seven or eight years,” Greg said. “They had a lot of turnover, so you could almost always find a spot.”

  “And they held auditions?”

  Tess nodded. “In Orlando, the third Thursday of every month. They keep their home base in Orlando. They usually travel the first two weeks of the month and then head home for the last two weeks.”

  “Okay, but I still don’t understand,” Landon pressed. “How did you hear about them?”

  “There aren’t that many traveling renaissance festivals,” Greg supplied. “If you want to make a living doing this – and there are a lot of people who do – then you have to get in with one of the better troupes. I wouldn’t say the Twigg Troupe is the best, but it’s easily top five.”

  “Out of how many?” I asked. This whole renaissance fair lifestyle was baffling.

  “I would say there are about fifteen big troupes and another ten or twenty smaller troupes,” Greg answered.

  “Huh.”

  “Does it make you want to put on a corset?” Landon asked. “If so, I’m more than willing to take you to the renaissance fair.”

  I shot him a dirty look. “Does it make you want to play with a sword? Wait … that came out way dirtier than I imagined.”

  “I think it came out just dirty enough.” Landon patted my shoulder. “So what happens when you guys get a show?”

  “We travel around with the equipment and tent,” Tess explained. “It’s a lot of driving, but it’s not too bad. When we get to areas that are warm, we often camp. When we’re in colder climates like here, we get hotel rooms. Arthur and Adele are pretty cheap when they want to be.”

  “So you go to a town and you all have to pretend to be related,” Landon prodded. “I’m not sure why they needed the subterfuge.”

  “You’ll have to ask Arthur about that, because the rest of us don’t understand either. But we were told to mind our own business,” Tess said. “When you sign a contract, it’s generally for about six months. They can fire us, but we can’t quit while we’re under contract.”

  “That doesn’t exactly seem fair,” I noted.

  “Arthur and Adele never cared about fair. That’s not the way they roll.”

  “How do they roll?” Landon asked, his interest piqued. “Do they mistreat you guys?”

  “I guess it would depend on how you define ‘mistreat,’” Greg replied. “It doesn’t matter now. We’re contractually obligated to do this job. That Mrs. Little woman made it quite clear that if we tried to leave she would sue Arthur. He wasn’t happy, but he agreed to do the job, and since we can’t get out of our contracts we’re forced to perform, even though no one wants to do it.”

  “Were you close with Adele?” I asked Tess.

  Tess snorted, catching me off guard. “No one was close to Adele,” she said. “She didn’t want anyone to be close to her. She made this big speech when I auditioned, going on and on about how she always wanted kids and would treat me like I was really part of her family.

  “Then, the first day on the job, she can’t remember my name and she wouldn’t stop yelling at me when I asked questions,” she continued. “She belittled me, called me stupid and then threatened to force me to cut my hair if I didn’t stop flipping it over my shoulder.”

  “Why would she possibly care about that?” I asked.

  “She said that when a woman flips her hair over her shoulder it’s a sign that she’s a tramp,” Tess answered. “She said that none of the Twiggs are tramps, and if I did something that made people think I was a tramp she would fire me and make sure I never got another job in a renaissance troupe.”

  “Which explains why you guys were sneaking off to kiss in the woods,” Landon surmised, exchanging a quick glance with me. “I’m not sure what to make of this.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you make of it,” Tess said. “We’re all going to lose our jobs anyway. Adele was the one who did all the hiring, and Arthur is a total mess now that she’s dead. The only thing he’s said to us since he found out is that we have to do the job and that we’ll talk about everything else when we get back to Florida. He didn’t sound very hopeful.”

  “He’s going through a trauma,” Landon offered. “You might not have liked Adele, but she was his wife. He loved her.”

  “They fought all of the time,” Greg countered. “I’m not sure he really did love her. He spent most of his time trying to get away from her.”

  “That’s not how he described their relationship to me,” Landon said.

  “Yeah, but he also pretends I’m his son and Tess is his niece even though that’s not true,” Greg pointed out.

  “Yeah. I’m starting to see that.” Landon heaved out a sigh. “Now that the truth is out, I don’t suppose you want to change your story about who might’ve wanted to harm Adele, do you?”

  “Sure,” Tess said without hesitation. “Everyone who ever met that woman wanted to do her harm. She was the least liked woman in the troupe. Heck, she might’ve been the least liked woman on the planet.”

  “No, Mrs. Little still has her beat there,” I muttered.

  Landon slid me a sidelong look, ru
nning his tongue over his teeth as he debated his next move. “Okay, you guys are free to go. Don’t tell anyone that you’ve told me the truth. If I find out you lied, I’ll come looking for you again, and it won’t be pretty.”

  “Does that mean you won’t tell Arthur you caught us?” Greg asked hopefully.

  “Now that I know you’re not really related, I don’t care what you’re doing,” Landon replied. “Just … keep it to yourselves.”

  “And if you’re going to make out, don’t draw so much attention to yourselves when heading into the woods,” I added.

  “Good tip,” Tess said dryly, rolling her eyes as she turned to leave with Greg. She gave him a firm cuff as they headed out. “You just can’t control your hormones, can you?”

  “What can I say?” Greg said dryly. “I love being talked down to. It turns me on.”

  “I’ll turn you on.”

  I chewed my bottom lip as I watched them go, waiting until I was sure they were gone before speaking again. “What do you think?”

  “I think that Greg and his cousin Tess just gave us some very interesting information,” Landon replied. “Instead of Adele being some sort of wonderful saint, which is how Arthur painted her, she was actually the opposite.”

  “Which means a lot of people had motive to kill her,” I noted.

  “Yeah, and all those people were traveling with her,” Landon said. “I’m guessing that renaissance troupes have easy access to witch books.”

  “I don’t think they’re technically called ‘witch books,’ but I get what you mean,” I said. “They sell a lot of souvenirs and stuff. I’m betting at least one of those books deals with witchcraft in olden times, which would explain where they found the symbols and Theban alphabet.”

  “It would also explain why she was strangled,” Landon said. “Strangling is an intimate crime. Only someone who knew Adele well would want to do that to her.”

  “Do you ever want to strangle me?”

  “Rarely. Aunt Tillie is another story.”

  “Ah, I get what you’re saying. It’s not ‘intimate’ like you and I are intimate. It’s ‘intimate’ in that whoever did it probably knew Adele well.”