The girl nodded with bewilderment.
“Have we met before?” The man seemed to have recognized her too.
Josie shook her head.
“My name is Detective Parson, from the Santa Monica Police Department,” the man opened his jacket and pulled out a badge briefly, too fast for the girl to identify whether he was or not a real detective. “I have a few questions about your friend, Ms. Wildfeuer. Can I come in?”
“About Heather?” Josie looked inside, asking an empty room for permission. “Is she all right? I haven’t seen her in a long time.”
“I’m afraid that she’s not, Miss García. We found a body that we identified as hers at Woodlawn…Memorial…Cemetery.”
He had been interrupted by an abrupt noise coming from above, as if a heavy object had been dropped then dragged across the floor. He looked up in wonder.
“What?” Josie cried. “Are you sure it is hers?”
“It took us a while to identify the body, but now we’re positive it is hers,” Parson continued, still intrigued by the noise of scampering feet upstairs. “It wasn’t complete. It was missing the head and the lower limbs.”
Josie let Detective Parson in. She had to sit down. She wrapped her arms around herself. It felt as if all this time she had already known that Heather had been murdered.
“Apparently,” Parson said, “you were the last person to see Ms. Wildfeuer alive, almost a month ago, on the night of August 15. Her son told us she came to see you. Is that correct?”
Josie nodded.
“Where did you go that night?”
“We went out for a ride,” Josie stuttered.
“Where?” Parson kept his eyes on the ceiling.
“Where? I don’t remember,” Josie squealed, feeling a knot inside her throat choking her. “I need some water,” she panted, offering Parson the glass she had been holding. “I’m sorry—this is affecting me too much. Heather was my best friend.”
The detective took the glass and filled it with tap water from the kitchen.
“Thanks,” Josie drank.
“You don’t remember what you two did that night?”
“I think we went to a bar,” Josie mumbled.
Parson sat next to her. “Which one?”
“The one on—what’s its name?” Josie brushed off a tear, looking away. “I don’t remember its name.”
She was trembling.
“Try,” Detective Parson insisted.
Josie took another gulp. Should she tell the officer what they had done? Breaking into a cemetery must certainly be a crime. Then she remembered that she had seen Heather driving the next day: “I cannot be the last person who saw her alive,” she said swiftly. “I saw her driving the next day. Two friends saw her too, on Dell Avenue.”
“You saw her driving?”
“I saw her car. I’m sure it was hers, a red Fairlane. I thought she might have come looking for me. Someone was riding with her.”
“Someone?” Detective Parson repeated. “Do you know who?”
Josie shook her head. Suddenly, Parson stood up. Josie turned behind and saw the two crones in the hallway, all dolled up, ready for mass and their Sunday stroll, wearing the same scarves they had worn the morning of the car ride in Heather’s Fairlane.
“Who is this man and what is he doing inside our house?” Victoria asked.
President Buer hadn’t helped them with their makeup this time. The difference was arresting.
Parson introduced himself to the sisters and briefly explained the reason for his visit.
“It was you,” Josie said, recognizing the scarves. “You two rode with Heather that morning.” She turned to Detective Parson. “It was Miss Rosa whom I saw in the back seat of her car.”
“We asked her to take us to church,” Victoria explained.
“But it wasn’t Heather,” Rosa corrected her sister. “It was our youngest sister. She’s the one that drove us around that morning.”
“Your sister?” Detective Parson asked, intrigued.
“Pay no attention, Detective,” Josie replied, reaching to the kitchen for a tissue. “They’re old. Their sister can’t drive.”
“It was her,” Rosa insisted.
“How could your sister be driving Heather’s car?” Josie blew her nose. “Heather wouldn’t lend the keys to no one.”
“I don’t remember it was our sister,” Victoria said to Rosa.
“It was her,” Rosa insisted.
“Nonsense,” Josie blew her nose again. “It could have only been Heather. I saw her. And then I saw her car parked on Main Street,” she said to Detective Parson. “That was a couple days after the night we went out.”
“They found her car on Main Street,” Detective Parson said.
“She took us to a pharmacy,” Victoria said. “But then we had to leave.”
“That ungrateful chimp dwarf just left us there…”
“Please, Miss Rivera,” Josie interrupted. “Stop that nonsense. It wasn’t your sister. You’re just making this more difficult. She confuses things, Detective.”
“I know what I’m talking about,” Rosa argued. “We got into the car, and it was Heather’s car, but it wasn’t Heather who drove us—”
“But I think she was…” Victoria interrupted.
“Anyway,” Rosa pulled her body up in her wheelchair to stretch her back, “that Heather was a complete tramp. Just like this one.”
“Miss Rivera!” Josie exclaimed.
“We always knew that she wouldn’t end up well,” the hag continued. “The cards kept telling us that—right, Victoria?” Rosa looked up to her sister. “You don’t need to have the call to know she was a nutcase. She jumped from bed to bed like a flea from dog to dog, following whoever gave her a wert whirl whistle. She didn’t even know who the father of her child was.”
“She did know,” Josie replied. “They were married.”
“Do you know where her husband is?” Detective Parson asked.
Josie hesitated before answering. “He’s serving time.”
“We know who killed Heather. It wasn’t him,” continued Rosa. “It was that boyfriend of hers, the one that left her for the older woman.”
“Will?” Josie asked.
“Yes. That old woman he left Heather for, she helped him kill her. They killed her and they cut her in pieces because they were sick of her. I would be sick of her too. We saw it in the tea leaves, didn’t we, Victoria?”
“You did not!” Josie cried.
“Of course we did. The tea leaves never lie.”
Detective Parson exchanged a look with Josie. Her lips were puckered, as if restraining herself from saying something hurtful.
“Misses—Rivera?” Detective Parson began. The two crones bobbed their heads, confirming their name. “Could you tell me what happened that day, the day you rode in Ms. Wildfeuer’s car?”
“Like we said, we asked her to take us to church,” Victoria responded.
“We’re very devout women,” Rosa added.
“What time was it?”
“Around eight,” Victoria said.
“No, it was mid morning,” her sister intervened.
“It must have been around one,” Josie corrected.
“What happened then?”
“We asked her to stop first at a pharmacy,” Rosa continued. “We stepped in and then she left. She said she had an appointment with…her boyfriend. Well, it must have been Heather, after all, because our sister doesn’t have a boyfriend. And she doesn’t know how to drive. I just don’t remember seeing Heather that day… She lived in fantasyland, that tramp! That man she was obsessed with wasn’t good. Not good at all. We kept telling her to stay away from him, but she wouldn’t listen.”
“Everyone told her,” lamented Josie.
The two women started laughing.
Josie flinched. How could they be so callous?
“Did you know this man?” Detective Parson insisted.
“Nope. Except for the name and the circumstances,” Rosa explained.
“We never leave this house,” her sister continued. “Except on Sunday, to go to mass. And rarely, to go to the bingo parlor. She never takes us anywhere—” Victoria pointed to the little woman, who had just entered the living room through the kitchen.
The eternal knit of depression on her face had grown bigger than usual. She had lost her apron, and the lower part of her dress was soaking wet. She jolted when the detective turned his eyes to her.
“—that’s why we were so excited to ride in someone else’s car,” Victoria finished her sentence.
“Heather was awfully generous and I can imagine that she sometimes drove them around,” Josie explained to the detective. “She was one of their best clients, for sure. I’m glad she never knew what they really thought about her.”
“Best clients?” Detective Parson asked. He turned back to Rosa and Victoria, unimpressed by the appearance of their youngest sister. The little woman slipped behind her sisters into the bathroom.
“We’re psychics,” Rosa explained proudly.
“Bah,” Victoria intervened. “Some psychics we are. We should have foreseen that Heather would leave us there to rot. I had to push Rosa’s chair all the way back home. She left us to go see that boyfriend of hers.”
“Who left her for an older woman,” Rosa intervened.
The little woman scurried back outside, carrying a bucket and a large rag.
“Old like us,” Victoria chuckled. “Perhaps older.”
“But she’s rich—” Rosa laughed with her.
“—and we’re poor and decrepit.”
“Do you know the name of this man?” Parson asked.
The two sisters ignored the question.
Detective Parson repeated himself.
“What man?” Rosa asked, turning her head to her sister for help. But Victoria had stopped paying attention. She stared blankly at a stain of mold in the ceiling.
“His name is William Sorenson,” Josie breathed out. “You lost them,” she added, referring to the two sisters. “They don’t stay lucid for long. I immediately thought of Will, the moment you mentioned that Heather had been murdered. He is not a good man, Detective, I have to agree. He’s a gangster. I have no doubt that he’s capable of committing murder.”
“What makes you say so?”
“He attacked my boyfriend a few weeks ago.”
“You have a boyfriend?” Detective Parson smirked.
Josie blushed. “Ex-boyfriend,” she corrected herself, with a shy smile. “Will almost killed him. He’s a brutal, ruthless man. Heather was in love with him, but he didn’t love her back. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has something to do with her death.”
The little woman entered the house again, this time to grab fresh linens from the sisters’ bedroom. She left just as swiftly.
“Well, that’s a possibility, Miss García,” Detective Parson responded. “You shouldn’t have kept this to yourself. What did he do to that boyfriend of yours?”
Josie told the detective about the night that Russell got beaten.
“Well, if your suspicions are true, this case will be easier to solve than it seems,” Parson concluded.
He looked at the two elder sisters, but couldn’t come up with any more questions. He looked then at the third one, frozen in a painful hunch against the wall. She looked so insignificant, so incapable of committing a murder, that Parson couldn’t think of any questions for her either.
“They say that the solution to all problems is always the most obvious.” He put his notebook inside his pocket. “I’ll go find this Mr. Sorenson. You wouldn’t know where he lives, would you?”
“No.” Josie responded. “But I know that he frequents the Blue Wind. It’s a bar on the boardwalk.”
“I know where it is,” Parson said with a side smile.
“It’s a dive.”
“Not a place for a girl like you,” he shook his head. “I’ve been there before. Full of wrongdoers and perverts. Just the perfect place to find a criminal. But don’t worry about me, Miss García,” he winked to the girl. “I’ll be careful.”
Josie tittered politely.
“I think this will be all—Ladies,” he bobbed his head to the two sisters.
Neither one acknowledged the detective. Parson shook hands with Josie and then left.
Josie looked at the hour. Ten minutes after twelve. Her friends would be there any second.
“You’re running late,” she said to the sisters.
“We can’t leave now,” Victoria responded. “It’s too late. If you get to the church after the mass begins, the Father reprimands you.”
“And I no longer feel like going to church,” Rosa said, “It’s going to be a hot day.”
“It will cool down!” Josie exclaimed
“I’m tired too,” Rosa said.
“It’s been too many emotions for a day,” Victoria continued. “I think we should stay home and take a nap.”
“But it’s Sunday!” Josie exclaimed. “Today is the only day you leave the house!”
“We’re tired.”
“But they’re waiting for you. You need to go. It’s not too late!”
“Who’s waiting for us?” Rosa asked. “Nobody. We’re old. Nobody is waiting for us but the devil!”
“He can wait another week,” Victoria added.
“Your sister is waiting for you,” insisted Josie. “It’s her day off, too. She doesn’t want to miss church. She told me.”
“All right, we’ll go to church,” Rosa consented. “But I’m too tired for the stroll. Let’s take a taxi. I need a nap.”
Josie sighed with relief.
“I’ll call a cab for you.” She walked to the kitchen and grabbed the telephone. “But you have to promise me that after church, you’ll go to the bingo parlor. And then to the beach,” she started dialing. “You’re not too old. You should have fun, like I do. It’s such a beautiful day outside.”
“We don’t want to go to the beach.”
“Nonsense,” Josie covered the receiver. “Your poor sister has been waiting all morning to take you out to the beach, she told me. She—where did she go?—She loves to feel the sand in her toes—Hello…?”
The little lady had gotten a new apron and was back upstairs, trying to finish cleaning the mess she had made before the girl went back to her bedroom.
It had not been her intention to kill Lina. It was an accident. She didn’t know that the girl was inside the room. She had been so busy cleaning and getting her sisters ready for church that she hadn’t noticed the moment that Josie had let Lina in. And her original plan hadn’t been to kill Josie that morning, either. She thought she would get to do it that evening, after the girl had gone to bed, but President Buer reminded her that Josie may or may not have plans to sleep at the house that night. “She’s so promiscuous,” he had said. “This may be your last chance before the next new moon. If you hurry up, by dinner time you could be dancing on your toes, like a fairy.”
She climbed the staircase on tiptoe, as if each step was made out of crystal. She waited for a minute outside Josie’s door, the same time it took Detective Parson to introduce himself to Josie. Then she pushed the door ajar. She saw Lina from behind, sitting on the bed, still wearing Josie’s black wig, and took her for the girl. Being old, she knew it was a matter of acting fast, of giving the girl absolutely no chance to defend herself. She grasped the mattock with both hands and kicked the door open. She saw Lina looking at her through the mirror. Her fe
ral, expressionless face. The green eyes, the thin lips, the ears that Josie pitied. She realized she had made a mistake—again!—but it was too late. She was already inside, holding a garden tool over her head, and if she didn’t hit first, the girl would scream for help. So she hit her right on the skull, splitting poor Lina’s head in two. Her body fell to the floor and the little woman scurried to wrap it inside the bed linens before the blood stained the wood panels. Those were the noises that Detective Parson had heard during his conversation with Josie.
Who was this girl? the little witch wondered, having not recognized Lina. She felt a knot form in her throat and tears rolling down her cheeks. She didn’t enjoy killing.
She dragged Lina’s body into the bathroom and left it to bleed inside the tub. She wiped up as much blood as she could with her apron and Josie’s bedding. She washed her hands and arms, then went down to get new sheets and cleaning implements.
That’s when we saw her rushing through the living room to her sisters’ bathroom.
She was now back upstairs, making the bed, when she heard Josie coming up. She stepped out of the room and closed the door behind her.
“Your sisters just left,” Josie called, halfway up. “They’re taking a taxi on Ocean Avenue. You need to go join them.”
“Yoo-hoo!” They heard a voice calling.
Bob Chatterton had just driven into the alley, with Richard in the passenger seat.
Josie sprinted downstairs.
“They’re not all gone yet,” she leaned against the car window.
“But it’s after twelve already,” Richard replied.
“You need to come back later—”
Somebody knocked at the front door.
“Josie,” she heard George call. “We’re here.”
The girl hastened to the front through the side garden.
Noelia, Russell, Eva, John, and his wife, Cora, were there, too.
“You can’t come in,” Josie said, standing in front of the door.
Russell was clean shaven. And his hair was combed to the side again, like a little school boy.
“Why not?” George asked. “Are you okay?”
“No,” Josie whimpered. “I’m not okay. I’ll tell you later. Please wait outside. Step away from the entrance—just for a little bit.”
Love, or the Witches of Windward Circle Page 32