by Hannah Reed
“That’s exactly what Iris said,” I said.
“Why not?” Holly scrunched her eyebrows.
Grams answered, “They just can’t. Four is okay, so is two, but three is the kiss of death.”
Mom piped up, “Finally, I’d had enough of both of them. The final straw was when Claudene started experimenting with magic. You just didn’t do that back then.”
I was pretty sure witchcraft and magic went farther back than Mom’s generation, but I knew what she meant. While I helped Grams clean up, I thought about the threesome. If Iris and Rosina hadn’t liked each other, had the tainted love potion been more than an accident? Had Rosina done it on purpose? We’d never know since the concocter was dead and gone. Though why had the two women kept in touch all these years if that were true?
“Claudene had a boyfriend,” I said after rinsing and stacking our dishes in the sink. “According to Iris, anyway.”
Mom laughed. “Maybe she finally figured out how to brew up a decent love potion.”
“What love potion?” asked Holly, which meant we had to share the whole bad poison story again, since she was the only one at the table who hadn’t heard it yet.
As I was getting ready to leave, I pulled Holly aside for a minute. “You’re a good dancer,” I said. “Want to join us for a dance around a fire? Aurora can’t make it and I thought of you.”
“Sounds like fun,” she said.
“I’ll pick up your . . . uh . . . costume from Aurora.”
“We’ll be wearing costumes? Trick-or-treating early?”
“Something like that.”
Holly wouldn’t normally have been my first choice as a sidekick. She’s way too citified and wimpy. Although she’s risen to some occasions, like whenever someone tries to shoplift from the store. Then the woman is like a Tasmanian devil on steroids, taking the thief down in seconds flat. And literally flattening the foolish person. But put her out in nature with crickets singing and frogs croaking, and Holly is afraid of her own shadow.
But my usual partner in crime had disowned me, and based on Patti’s irrational fear of all things witchy, she wouldn’t help out even if we were on good terms.
I’d given the invitation some thought, because I wasn’t about to put Holly in harm’s way. It was one thing to walk into an explosive situation and risk my own neck, but I couldn’t do that to my sister. That’s why I decided that the risk to us was minimal. All we had to worry about was tripping on the long capes and falling into the fire. And that wasn’t going to happen.
I’d reasoned this out like a real investigator.
If the killer was in their midst, she would be more worried about Lucinda actually conjuring up a spirit who might really be able to point a finger in her direction. Holly and I would be perfectly safe to observe the whole coven for suspicious behavior and possibly learn something useful about the witches. To be extra cautious, though (just in case I was wrong), we wouldn’t wander off from the group.
Originally I thought Hunter could spot us, but that was before the condition that I stay away from the witches in exchange for information. Hunter could never, ever find out about this. That would be very bad for our relationship. I didn’t think Lucinda would tell the investigator on the case about her plan for this evening. Definitely not. She wouldn’t want cops busting in and ruining the ritual. Maybe someday when he and I were old and gray, I’d fess up. Or after the bad guy (or woman) was behind bars. If he found out before that, I was in such trouble. Which reminded me.
“Don’t mention any of this around Hunter,” I told Holly. “He’s been acting weird lately.”
After giving her the when and where details (my house, five o’clock) and heading out, I realized that I’d have to tell her more about what she’d be walking (or rather dancing) into on our way over to the farm. But I’d wait until after it was too late for her to have second thoughts. Because if thirteen bodies didn’t show up, we’d have to postpone the big event for another time, and I didn’t have an overabundance of extra patience in this matter.
And with the hooded cape as a disguise, the witches wouldn’t even be able to tell that Aurora was really Holly. Unless we did the naked thing again. I hadn’t thought that particular part through very well, which wasn’t anything new, but things had a way of turning out.
As Iris would say, “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Seventeen
I made a few phone calls on the way back to town.
Patti didn’t answer, par for the course. She had caller ID and was snubbing me, I was sure of it. No answer. And no voice message option, either. She must be really ticked off. At this point, I wanted to make sure she was okay. Having her and her subterfuge out of my personal life had real advantages, but I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about how badly our last conversation ended until we reestablished a relationship of some sort.
What if Patti ended up moving away because of Dy? Not the most troubling idea in the world. That certainly had possibilities. I might actually get a normal neighbor for a change. Next I speed-dialed Jackson Davis, the ME. As the coroner, Jackson oversees all the autopsies in Waukesha County, which is spread over at least six hundred square miles with a population that has to be approaching half a mil. Good thing he has staff members to assist him, or he wouldn’t have time for little old me.
“Hey, Story,” Jackson said. “Let me guess why you’re calling—Claudene Mason.”
“You know me so well.” I couldn’t help grinning.
“And you know me just as well. Which means you have to know I can’t tell you anything other than what’s been released to the media.”
“I’m on Hunter’s team now,” I told him. “And so are you. We are one big, happy family. So pass me the ball.”
He chuckled. “I’m going to hog that ball. Sorry.”
“Oh, come on, Jackson,” I said, hearing myself give a Patti-style whine. “Do we have to go through this every time I call you?”
“I guess so.”
I let the silence drag out after that. Unfortunately, so did he. I broke it first. “Call Hunter,” I suggested. “He’ll vouch for me.”
“He might, but he doesn’t have the final word on who gets inside information. I wouldn’t be the professional that I am if I disregarded procedure. Sorry again.”
Geez, he was being an uptight you-know-what. Maybe I should have invited him out for a drink first. Jackson was usually much more cooperative with a little of Stu’s booze in his veins.
“Okay, I give up,” I said with a big frustrated sigh. “But can you tell me anything about the pentacle she was wearing around her neck?”
There was a long pause on the other end.
Then Jackson said, “What pentacle?”
• • •
I had to pull over to the side of the road, that’s how excited I was. Hunter actually answered his phone for a change. I skipped our usual small-talk opening that mostly deals with what we should do to each other’s body parts and went right to the main topic. I practically shouted in my excitement, “Rosina, I mean Claudene, whatever, wore a pentacle necklace to protect herself from harm. Was it on her body?”
“No,” was all Hunter said after a short pause. That one word was like gold.
“Then it’s missing! This is so important. I can’t believe I’m the one who found out it was missing. Maybe if you had included me from the very beginning, we’d be way ahead of . . .”
“Calm down,” my man interrupted. “And start from the very beginning.”
So I took a minute to catch my breath and then told him about meeting Rosina for the first time, and her cool necklace. “Then a few minutes ago I called Jackson and we got to talking and the piece of jewelry came up and he said, what pendant, which really threw me for a loop.”
“How can you be absolutely sure she was wearing it at th
e time of her death?”
“Well, I can’t, but she had it on both times I was around, and if she thought it would protect her, wouldn’t she wear it to go out in the dark by herself?”
“So there’s a possibility it’s missing. That’s interesting.”
“Jackson wants me to try to draw it and make a copy for you, too.”
“That should be worth watching,” Hunter said, knowing that I can’t draw a semi-straight line let alone something as complex as a piece of jewelry. “Where are you?”
“Where are you?” I asked back, prying to find out if he’d finished at the farm.
“Around,” he said vaguely. “Why don’t we meet and have a drawing session.”
“I’m on my way to . . . um . . . Stanley Peck’s to um . . . er . . . compare beekeeping notes.” See how one little deceitful act like dancing with witches can turn into a full-blown cover-up? If I’d been more prepared, I would have told him something closer to the truth, like that my family was working on wedding plans.
The day was getting away from me. In a couple of hours it would be time to meet Holly at my house. I still had to get a cape for my sister from Aurora and work up a plan. Not to mention taking the time to give Holly all the details and then successfully handling the fallout from her. “This is more important,” Hunter said. “Be at Stu’s in ten minutes.” And he hung up.
Reluctantly, I drove back to Moraine, pulling to the curb in front of Stu’s Bar and Grill.
We arrived at the same time. Hunter and I drew together and kissed beside his passenger door, then I opened it so Ben could give me several warm, wet kisses, too, while I scratched his ears.
“You have to stay here, big guy,” I told him, although Ben most likely already knew that. He’s one smart canine. Ben has a special license, since technically he’s a cop, too, but Hunter leaves him outside as a courtesy when he eats inside Stu’s Bar and Grill, though the K-9 is always welcome in the back of my store.
And I’m here to say that Ben is much cleaner and better behaved than some of the drinkers I’ve encountered at the popular bar.
Stu’s Bar and Grill was almost empty at this time of day, “sandwiched” between the lunch crowd and the late-afternoon drinking bunch that always bellies up around four o’clock and doesn’t leave until they’re thrown out at closing time.
Stu will be a real catch if anyone ever nails him down permanently. He’s had an on-again, off-again relationship with his high school sweetheart that has been seeing more offs than ons, and some woman should swoop in and pluck him out of his sexy little pond once and for all.
If Hunter didn’t exist (which would have been tragic), that woman might even have been me.
As we took a table near the window, several of the construction workers repairing the bridge walked in and headed for the bar.
Lori Spandle was right on their heels.
When she spotted me, we locked glares. Then she turned tail and hustled off down Main Street. What was that all about?
I noticed that the same guy she’d been hanging on when Lucinda and I drove over the bridge was one of those at the bar. And his eyes had followed her cheating backside out the building until she disappeared from sight.
“I think Lori Spandle is making time with that guy over there.” I did a directional eye thing and Hunter followed my sight line, then he glanced back. And shrugged. Guys! They don’t make a big deal of that sort of thing unless it’s happening to them personally. Then it’s a whole ’nother story.
I glanced out the window.
Oh no, was that Johnny Jay’s squad car pulling up? What had I done now?
The chief walked in. First Lori, now Johnny, and all before we’d even placed our order. If this kept up I’d be too nauseous to eat.
“Same as usual?” Hunter asked me, and I nodded. “A diet coke, a lemonade, and chicken wings,” he called to Stu. His eyes narrowed as Johnny Jay approached us.
“Are you absolutely sure you and your team checked every inch of the corn maze?” Hunter began as Johnny Jay sat down without an invitation.
The chief said, “Of course we did, Wallace.”
“Because I ASS-umed”—special emphasis on the first three letters—“you had done so. My team came in after yours and did a cursory sweep based on your supposedly more thorough search. And for the record, you had no right to barge in on our crime scene like that.”
“I smell a setup,” Johnny said. “You needing a scapegoat, Wallace? What’s happened?”
“Potentially, new evidence. But it might be nothing.”
One of the things I’ve noticed by hanging around with cops is how carefully they choose their words. And most of them begin with a P:
potential
probable
possibly
positive (I.D.)
presumed
process
produce (as in produce an alibi)
procedure (I really hate that one)
“I presume you searched the witches and their tents,” I said to both of them, using lingo they’d recognize.
“Are you trying to interrogate me, Fischer?” That from Johnny, of course.
“Settle down, Jay,” Hunter said. “Don’t go all defensive on us.”
“What would I have to be defensive over?”
“Maybe a poor excuse for a search.”
“You better watch it, Wallace. Besides, what does it matter? We have the murder weapon.”
That was just like Johnny to make a bunch of lazy assumptions. These two were going to go at it again if something wasn’t done to stop it.
Stu delivered our drinks and wings. “Take it outside,” he said. “Or I’ll call nine-one-one. I don’t care if both of you are cops. I won’t have my bar busted up.”
Then he winked at me. See? What a heartthrob! I reassured him, “Nothing to worry about, Stu.”
He sort of rolled his eyeballs and went back behind the bar.
Hunter said to me, “With the assistance of the local police department”—I could hear the sneer—“the grounds were searched. That included Claudene’s tent and belongings. And no, the item in question wasn’t located.”
“What item in question?” the chief asked, slow on the uptake. Hunter had already mentioned new evidence. How many clues did the guy need?
Instead of answering, Hunter countered with, “Why are you sitting at my table?”
Johnny’s self-importance was palpable. “I just came from the library. Seems like someone has been stealing books from the romance section. You know, all those pornographic, explicit novels, total trash, but the library director filed a complaint, so I’m investigating.”
“And that involves me how?” Hunter sure was doing a good job of handling the chief. I didn’t even have to help out with my usual sass.
Johnny stood up and towered. “It doesn’t involve you in the least,” he said. “I just thought I’d spend a few friendly minutes shooting the breeze while I waited for the town chairman. We’re going to set up a sting operation over at the library. Cameras and all.”
Just then, Lori Spandle’s husband, Grant Spandle, our town chairman, came in. He and Johnny moved off into another corner out of earshot, which was just as well. I’d have loved to be a fly on the wall, though. “It’s probably just some kid,” Hunter said. “And look at them, acting like it’s some big crime.”
After we ate the wings and wiped the stickies away with those little wet napkins, Hunter produced a sketch pad, a pencil, and a big eraser, and I went to work. We almost ran out of paper (and eraser) before I got it close to right. Which would have happened sooner if I hadn’t been in such a hurry to get it done so I could get myself out of there. It doesn’t pay to rush, that’s for sure.
Eventually, I handed over the final copy. “The crystal in the middle is blue,” I added. “We
really need some colored pencils, too.”
Hunter turned the paper sideways. “That’s a crystal?”
“A blue one.”
“A blue crystal and a five-pointed star within a circle.”
I nodded. “She said she wore it for protection.”
“The big question is, who was she afraid of?”
It was my turn to shrug. “Evil spirits?”
“Or evil humans?”
“She’d have done better with a whistle around her neck,” I said.
After creating my masterpiece, I told Hunter about my conversation with one of Rosina’s classmates. “Iris mentioned a man Claudene had been involved with by the name of Buddy Marciniak.”
“Do you want to follow up on it?”
I grinned. “You bet I do.”
If Hunter ever left his job, we could open a private investigation business. We would call it Fischer and Wallace.
Eighteen
Next, Hunter dropped what could have been a real bombshell, except I saw it coming. “I’m going to have to restrict access to the corn maze,” he said. “I’m calling my team back in for another search of the entire property. Thanks to you.”
I can’t read Hunter when he snaps into professional mode, so I wasn’t sure whether he was actually grateful or meant that in a sarcastic way, like thanks for totally complicating this case.
He saw my confusion. “Thanks. I really mean that.”
“It’s the right decision,” I said, wanting to support him all the way.
“It’ll take me an hour or so to assemble the team,” Hunter said, checking the time. “And I need to get on the phone for that warrant. Until now I didn’t have enough to conduct a thorough search—the weapon was left at the scene, nothing in her tent appeared out of place, her purse was there with enough money inside that robbery wasn’t a motive. Now we have a pentacle to find. Good work, Fischer. You might be detective material after all.”
I really liked that, a compliment for a change, but had more pressing issues on my mind. “Al’s going to be upset.”