The Midsummer Murders

by Jill Nojack

  Natalie waved her off and flipped her phone open just as it stopped ringing. She punched redial as soon as she saw who’d called.

  “Yes, hello. This is Natalie Taylor. Did you just call me?”

  “Yes, Ms. Taylor. Cheryl Dean. I’m so glad you called back. I was just leaving a message before I headed out for the weekend. I wanted to let you know that we’ll be extending Marcus’s visits with his mother starting next week. She’s shown excellent progress toward her goals.”

  Natalie tried not to feel like someone had punched her in the solar plexus. This is what she wanted, after all. What the boy wanted. What was best for everyone. The reason she’d nudged things along magically with the elixir that helped Marcus’s mother fight her demons.

  “Ms. Taylor?”

  “Yes, fine. It’s noisy here. I’ll have the boy call you for the details. He’s in the middle of preparations for our annual Midsummer Festival. He’s become quite the respected member of the community.”

  “I know he has. He talks of everyone there so fondly. It’s a shame he may return to Boston in the middle of the school year—things really are moving fast—but family over community, it’s what’s best. His mother is so close to showing us she can provide a stable home for him.”

  “Yes. Of course. As it should be.” Natalie didn’t mean to snap, but she snapped all the same. “Is there anything else?”

  “No, you have a nice—”

  But Natalie didn’t hear the rest of it as she pivoted to grasp the door handle with her phone already flipped shut and stowed. As she exited, she heard Twink complaining, “Why does she get out of working?” and Cassie adding, “Sure, we can get it all done by ourselves. Thanks for offering to help.”

  Out on the sidewalk, Natalie scanned the crowd for Robert. The man wasn’t spry. Where had he gotten to?

  With all of the places in town he owned, he had to have at least one with an apartment in move-in condition suitable for a single parent and her son. If not, he’d know who did. Arrangements had to be put in place soon. The housing authority would take too long. It was time for someone pushy to push it forward, and she was just the woman for the job.

  21

  Natalie shaded her eyes against the midday sun and scanned the sidewalk-sale tables beneath the shop awnings and the temporary stalls that dotted the street. The gazebo was decked out in bright colors, ready for bands and speakers. The stalls and shop fronts dripped with bunting in a kaleidoscope of colors. She would have preferred a sedate showing of black, gray, and perhaps some dark purple. Downtown looked like a bag of party favors had thrown up on it.

  She traveled the street from end to end twice, but Robert was nowhere to be found.

  She gave up and turned back toward the shop, where Cinnamon Brown was setting up her table. Cinnamon would normally put in a few hours at her tarot cards from the shop storeroom on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, but she’d be giving readings all day at a cut rate both days of the festival. “Give me a helping hand, Nat?” Cinnamon asked in a low, melodic voice with a Jamaican lilt, holding out one end of the bright, Romany-inspired tablecloth she used to cover the old card table with its pitted top.

  Natalie grasped the cloth and helped to lay it out smooth. The two women worked together silently to place it just so with the corners hanging in equal, graceful folds. They stepped back, each with a look of accomplishment on their face.

  “Let me read your cards today,” Cinnamon suggested, smiling, setting down the silk scarf in which she bound her deck of cards with a loose knot. “The shop didn’t have to let me have this space for free. Let me pay you back a little with my services.”

  “Hmmmm.” Natalie considered the suggestion, feeling her brow furrow as she mulled it over. But at her age, how much future did she have left to read?

  “Or the runes? You know my castings only bring the truth.”

  “Yes, I do know that. Unlike some of the charlatans around here, myself included, when I and my crystal ball used to set up for the festivals.” The thumb and fingers on her right hand rubbed together forcefully as she focused on pushing back the anxiety that tried to force its way in when she thought of the future. There were so many things to consider. “Yes, why not?”

  Cinnamon rushed to her side of the table with a folding chair, placing it across from her own seat. She barely concealed her surprise, but there was pleasure in her face as well. Hoping to give me bad news, Natalie thought, before she slapped down the negativity and sat.

  Cinnamon took her own seat, untied the bundle of cards, and placed them in a neat squared-off pile in front of Natalie, saying, “Have you had your cards read before? Have you a chosen significator?”

  “I have not.”

  “Natalie-girl, you must fear the future awfully if you have never had your cards read in a town where glimpsing the future can be so easily achieved. Although I am the best of them, many of the readers who’ve lived in this town have had a gift near as strong as mine.”

  “Yes, well...I’m not sure what good it will do me so late in life, but I’m trying to be better about going with the flow. It’s not like I’m getting any younger.”

  “None ‘a us gettin’ younger, that’s fact. Let me choose the card that represents you; I’ll find just the right one.” She fanned the cards out right-side up along the table. Bright, hand-drawn figures and objects filled their multi-color faces. Cinnamon ran her finger along the bottom edge of the array, pausing at one, then another, but moving on each time. Then her questing finger raised and set down on top of a card. On it, a robed woman with a serious expression sat on a plain chair between two pillars, a rolled up scroll on her lap. “Yes, this is it. The High Priestess.”

  “There’s a shocker.” Natalie rolled her eyes and humphed.

  “Not for your role in this community. If Gillian, who I have seen will be High Priestess someday, were to sit in front of me then as you do now, I would not choose this card for her. No, the symbolism runs much deeper.”

  “What does it symbolize then?”

  “That there is something hidden with you always, some mystery you will reveal, but only to those you feel are worthy. And no matter what rages around you, you are master of it, the small motions that move the greater plan. You do not leave things to chance. Have I chosen your significator well?”

  Natalie nodded, not ungraciously. “I believe you have.” She flung her hand out in a backhand wave. “Now go on, I haven’t all day to dilly-dally. I’m surprised Cassie hasn’t caught sight of me and dragged me in by now.”

  Cinnamon gathered the cards back into a deck with a smooth gesture after plucking out the High Priestess and laying it face up on the table. She gave the cards to Natalie and asked her to shuffle them until she felt that they were right while focusing on her question, if she had a particular one in mind.

  Natalie gave them a half-hearted shuffle, then set the deck down to the side of the significator. Cinnamon picked them up and laid out five cards in the shape of a cross around it, then four to the right side, all face up. Finally, she placed a card face down across the central one and set the rest of the deck aside.

  As the woman’s dark eyes moved across the arrangement, her head nodded, then stopped and registered surprise, then more surprise. Her carefully shaped brows pulled in, almost meeting in the middle.

  “This reading is unexpected,” she said, finally.

  “Don’t play at being a showman with me, Ms. Brown. I know you have the gift. I do not need to be convinced. Just tell me what they say.”

  “In the past, there is great loss and sadness. But it is distant now. Here, you see? Just now passing away—she pointed to a card with the image of a hand reaching from the clouds to offer a gold cup—something has been offered. A new beginning, a loving proposal. This card is true for you; you have been offered a marriage. It is this card here, Justice,” Cinnamon pointed to the card on the other side of the cross, “that tells me it is so. There is a contract involved. One you will accep
t.” Cinnamon looked up at Natalie, waiting for a response, but she got none.

  Cinnamon shrugged and continued. “But these cards, the influences, tell me that you are back and forth, thrown about by your indecision, despite the happiness it offers you. There will be a storm come before happiness arrives, a storm inside and out. A cloud to hide for a while the joy, both which are brought by the ace of wands; it is a difficult card. When the cloud comes, it will obscure the sun waiting on the other side. Do not lose hope.”

  Natalie humphed. “All very vague. I’d thought you were more talented than this.”

  Cinnamon humphed right back. “And when the child arrives to your new marriage, try to be accepting.”

  “Child? Nattering nursery gnomes! A child, indeed.”

  “Your partnership will grow to three. Unless you plan for an open marriage, a child waits in your future. But it is not the boy, Marcus. He already is family. This is someone who will truly and legally be yours, not just a foster child who belongs to another. The cards know it, but don’t ask me to explain. It is here, this card, the three of cups.”

  “Ridiculous! Weddings and motherhood at my age? I suggest you adjust your script when facing more mature customers.” Natalie rose, her tone conveying her annoyance. “And to think I once believed you were the real thing.”

  Cinnamon sat up straighter, her warm brown skin glowing as it flushed with indignation, the melodious tones of her Jamaican accent thickening to the rhythm of her youth as she said, “If you doan believe, then you g’wan and ignore it.” She worked to regain her composure and the narrower rhythms of her speech. “Never matter, the future will come to you even when your mind is closed.”

  Natalie turned with a humph. She’d had enough silliness for one day, although she would not argue with the woman. Marriage. Well...it had been proposed, as the reading said. But that it would happen? Unlikely, and yet—was it so far fetched? She’d given neither a yes nor a no. She’d considered both. Her spirits lifted despite her doubt.

  But motherhood? That was a bridge too far. Marcus’s mother was soon to retrieve him back to her own home, according to his social worker. And she was glad of it; the boy deserved a proper mother. She was doing everything she could do to make it happen. When Marcus was gone, there would be no more children in her home.

  Not that she hadn’t once longed for a child of her own, one with William’s sunny temperament and not a hint of death magic to take it away.

  She told herself she’d have slammed the door to the shop on her way in if it hadn’t had a hydraulic door control. Still, an unexpected smile played on her lips when an image of William’s loving face on the day he had asked her to marry him crowded into her head as the shop door drifted closed behind her.

  ***

  “It’s certainly a pretty thing, isn’t it?” Gillian said admiringly as she lifted the ruby comb out of its box and turned it this way and that to watch the lights dance across the face of the gems. “No wonder she had to have it. And I can feel that the spell is intact?”

  “Yes,” Natalie replied. “She’s also getting her own familiar as a bonus. I’ll be supervising that situation. But I expect both of you to keep an eye out when I’m not around.”

  “Nat,” Cassie objected, “she’s so young...do you really think she can handle it? I mean, she told me she’d decided she wanted the comb with the bird. And I made out like there was no way you would you let her have a familiar yet. I told her you had said so , just like you wanted me to, but...”

  “If she can’t or won’t interact with the familiar in a positive way, I’ll suppress the spell. It would be simple enough to do, and I can snuff it long before the town turns into a remake of The Birds.

  “I trust her,” Gillian said. “She’s young, and she’s headstrong, and she’s experimented with some things that she shouldn’t have done without supervision, but which of us can honestly say we didn’t make similar mistakes when we were young?”

  “Exactly!” Natalie’s chin bobbed up and down to punctuate. “There’s no manual that comes with being a witch, and the girl was cut off from her grandmother, who was the logical person to help her along given how the magic skipped her mother’s generation. And with that self-righteous, witch-hunting Barton woman for an aunt! She just needs guidance.”

  Cassie said, “So...ummm...does no one else feel uncomfortable with the idea that Natalie is being ummm...nice? To Twink? About completely hiding something she did with magic even though she knew she shouldn’t?”

  “What’s your point?” Natalie glared.

  “Just sayin’...hey, maybe skinwalkers really are taking over the local residents?” Cassie stared at Natalie, nervous, looking like she was seeing something different there than she’d seen only moments ago. “I mean, after reading up on them, I’m—”

  “Gyrating gastric gramophones! Do you seriously...”

  Cassie burst into a musical, high-pitched laugh, and Gillian’s merry contralto joined her.

  “Lighten up, Nat. It was a joke. But really...you’ve been super nice lately. I mean...I like it. It’s just...it’s like you...”

  “I think what you’re trying to ask, dear, is—” Gillian cut in, —“has there been a change in the status of our little trio?”

  “I haven’t time for riddles,” Natalie said, looking puzzled. “What change in status?”

  “She means, well, have you and William been ummmm...gettin’ busy’?” Cassie asked.

  “We’ve been busy, obviously, we’re investigating a crime! And we’re both as involved with the festival as the two of you have been. I don’t see your point.”

  Cassie and Gillian turned to each other, smirking, “Yeah, that’s not really the kind of gettin’ busy—” but her sentence ended as the shop door tinkled.

  Gillian’s eyes widened slightly when she saw who entered, and she quickly disappeared the box below the counter in a swift, smooth motion. Natalie turned to see Twink heading toward them. She greeted her with, “How was lunch, dear?”

  Cassie took a cloth and started polishing the brass cash register, which was already sparkling. “About time we all got back to work.”

  “Just a minute,” Natalie said, turning to Cassie. “I’m not done with you. Go on, explain yourself. What was so funny just now? What did you mean when you asked if William and I were getting busy?”

  Cassie exploded in laughter as Twink squealed, “Oh gross!” and rushed down the hallway behind the counter. “I’ll be in the kitchen washing my ears out with soap.”

  It was hard to hear Gillian over Cassie’s giggles. “Oh, nothing, really, Nat. But with how calm and happy you seem, we just wondered if our Triple Goddess would need a new virgin?”

  ***

  The shop had never been so busy, at least not since Twink started working there. With three employees—Cassie had gone to the gallery again once the festival started—and the constant flood of customers wandering in off the streets with gigantic greasy elephant ears, kettle corn, and slurping on their drinks, the place was constantly packed. Her job was to make a circuit through the shelves asking people if they needed any help and to clean up the inevitable spills while Gillian manned the counter.

  Natalie staked out the exit all day, at the ready for shoplifters, who’d find their hidden treasures missing when they went to empty their bags or pockets. She’d traveled down the aisles many times, taking items out of the vintage red handbag that hung on her arm and placing them back where they’d started. Twink didn’t think Natalie would help her out to create a similar transportation spell for her own much more stylish bag, though. Everyone knew she hadn’t created the spell originally to be helpful.

  “Twink, are you daydreaming again? Go get the mop,” Natalie barked. “Wouldn’t you know, right at closing time, someone’s spilled something back by the herb bins.”

  Twink sighed, but hurried to the storeroom on high-heeled feet that ached from standing for hours straight to get the mop and bucket from the storeroom
. Cat ran ahead, stopping every so often to jump at her legs now that he’d come down from the counter where he’d slept all day to avoid the army of stomping feet. She was so tired she’d trip on him and end up killing both of them if he didn’t knock it off.

  She managed to get all the way to the kitchen to fill the bucket, and after she attached the short piece of hose to the faucet at the sink, she gave him a quick spritz. That sent him scampering back down the hall fast enough.

  She heard Natalie and Gillian’s muffled voices rushing the last of the customers out with, “Thanks for coming! Visit us again! Hope you find something you like next time!” and other happy, salesy things. Then Natalie’s, “Gillian, rein in this cat! I swear, some day...”

  Where did those two get so much energy? She was so wiped out she almost didn’t want to see Marcus that night. Almost. But after the show, there was that special birthday gift he’d hinted at. She was never too tired for presents.

  It better be a good one. Because she could be upstairs in her room fast asleep instead of unwrapping something lame like a movie gift certificate or a cheap necklace that irritated her skin when she wore it.

  She checked herself. She must really be wrecked if she wasn’t looking forward to tonight. Marcus was not that kind of boyfriend. She’d love what he got her. He put so much thought into everything. He was not an impulse kind of guy.

  With the bucket now a quarter full, she unscrewed the hose and put it back under the counter, then wheeled the bucket along the hall with the mop sitting in the wringer on top. But why was the shop dark?

  She found out as she flipped on the light and a bunch of people shouted, “Surprise!”

  Gillian was holding out a cupcake with gigantic lit candles on top that proclaimed “16”, and they all had wrapped presents in their hands, except for Natalie, who held a small, plain, white box. It figured Natalie wouldn’t bother to make it even a little special.