by Hannah Reed
“Tell us!” Everybody wanted to know, all excited because I was joining their side, and (even better) I had a plan. Lori was the only one who looked ticked off that I was interfering.
So here it was. “The secret to rid the town of them once and for all is with great big displays of ignorance and intolerance.”
Aurora’s puzzlement turned into pleasure. She was the only one who got my sarcasm right away, followed by Carrie Ann.
The rest stared at me, and for a split second I thought at least a few of them understood what I was trying to tell them. Then Lori waved my comment aside. “Ignore her. She’s been seen with them. She’s as brainwashed as Al. Let’s go out to the farm and run the whole lot of them out of town the good old-fashioned way.”
I tried one more tactic. “The corn maze opens in less than an hour. You can’t interfere with Al’s business. You’ll destroy it.”
But nobody heard me. They made a unified rush for the door just as Stanley opened it. They almost trampled him.
“What the hay?” Stanley said, after he’d dodged the stampede.
“They’re all going out to confront the witches,” Carrie Ann told him. “Things are going to get ugly.”
“Lori Spandle is a danger to this town,” he said. “Should we call Grant? See if he can talk sense into her?”
“Her husband can’t control her,” I told him.
Aurora looked absolutely shell-shocked. “I’ve never seen them like this,” she muttered.
While helplessly watching the mob head out to do damage, my animosity toward the coven vanished. I still believed that one of them might be responsible for Rosina’s death, but I couldn’t hate and fear all of them just because of one bad apple in the apple orchard, just because their beliefs were different than mine, or my family’s, or the entire town’s for that matter.
I’ve seen examples of this collective mentality my whole life, both in Moraine and in Milwaukee when I lived there during college. Population size doesn’t matter. Unfortunately intolerance and bigotry know no boundaries between nations, races, genders, or the size of a community. So the concept of small-town mentality is all rubbish in my book. Sometimes I think the whole world has come unhinged.
With a clearer understanding of my own need for improvement (even if the others didn’t get it), I called my man. He actually picked up.
“Hey, sweet thing,” he said, all cheery and upbeat.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have time for sweet talk. Worse, I was about to destroy his good mood. “A lynch mob led by Lori Spandle is on the way out to the farm,” I told him. “And I’m afraid for the campers. Lori has fired up at least twenty of the locals, maybe more.” I’d seen a few gawkers outside the door when Lori made her exit. She’d enlist them, too. “Call out the guards.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “The women out there have been cleared to leave today, but I doubt they’re gone yet. Thanks for the tip.”
And he was off. Good. If it came to a verbal argument between Lori and Lucinda, the witch would chew up Lori and spit her out. But if it turned physical, Lori had plenty of backup.
“I’m going out to the farm,” I told Carrie Ann.
“I’m going with you,” Stanley said.
Stanley is a good man to have around in times of trouble. He doesn’t tolerate fools.
Carrie Ann looked around the almost empty store. “I can handle things here by myself,” she said. “Apparently most of Moraine is out on this witch hunt. Get going.”
I glanced at Aurora. “You might want to send one of your special telegraphs to the witches,” I told her. “Tell them to get out of town now.”
Just then, my sister sashayed in. “I’m getting a manicure and my hair done for the wedding. Want me to ask for an appointment for you, too?”
I brushed past her. “Whatever,” I called back to Ms. Oblivious. Like I cared about my nails and hair at the moment. Sometimes, I’m convinced I was adopted into the Fischer family.
On second thought . . . I made a perfect one-eighty and grabbed my sister by the arm. “Hurry,” I said. “We need your help.”
“Wha . . .”
But Stanley and I had her flanked, with a grip under each arm, practically dragging her along. Holly was about to get a taste of reality.
We hustled to my truck, stuffed Holly between us, and shot out of the parking lot and up Main Street. We had to wait a few seconds at the bridge, which was still under construction, still down to one lane. Those ticking seconds felt like forever. In between ticks, Holly had a bunch of questions, which I answered in bullet points for both her and Stanley’s benefit.
Al Mason was in the process of being booked for the murder of his sister.
Lori Spandle was stirring up a hornet’s nest (not to be confused with my gentle honeybees’ hive).
She had a mob on their way out to the farm to run the witches out of town, or worse.
We needed to offer backup assistance to the guests.
But only until the cops arrived.
Traffic from the opposite direction passed by, and we were off again.
“Slow down,” Stanley advised. “We want to get there all in one piece.”
Adrenaline was steering the truck, not me. “But Lori has a head start,” I argued. “And we’re ahead of Hunter, not behind, so we’re the rescue team.” I had visions of a mass riot going on in the apple orchard. “Do you have a concealed weapon on you, Stanley? We might need it.”
Holly squealed. “OMG! Let me out. Pull over right here. I’ll walk back.”
“Where’s your sense of adventure?” I asked her. “It’s about time you had some fun.”
“Fun? Lori’s instigating a mob into violent action, and Stanley needs a gun. You call this fun?”
“Much more interesting than having your nails done,” I said with a wee bit of sarcasm.
“Manicures are loads of fun. Let me out.”
“We need you.” Holly certainly played the need card often enough. Now it was my turn. “You have special skills, ones we need. I need you.”
“If you’re talking about wrestling, I only use it if I absolutely have to.” Did I detect a certain tone of pride? “To fight on the side of good, to vanquish evil.”
Oh brother, weren’t we full of ourselves today? Although her voice had that recognizable Fischer humor in it.
“You’re the best,” I laid it on thick. “Trust me, you don’t have to get actively involved unless you want to. You can watch from the sidelines. But there’s strength in numbers.”
“How many of them are there?” she wanted to know. She was hooked.
“Believe me,” I said, throwing my future credibility into the toilet and flushing it down without a moment’s hesitation. “We’re one on one.”
“When you’re packing,” Stanley said. “The odds are in your favor. We’ll end this peacefully.”
Holly relaxed about the time we turned into the driveway leading to the farm. “Well, okay then,” she agreed. “This doesn’t sound so bad after all. But no shooting, Stanley.”
I tried to veer off toward the orchard, but cars were scattered haphazardly across the path.
A moment later she said, “There sure are a lot of cars out here.” Then, “OMG!” She added a few choice swear words to the mix, which indicated a significant spike in her level of apprehension.
Holly tends to exaggerate big-time. Everything in her world is ultra, supersized drama.
So most of the time her reaction to any given event can be discounted for what it is—Holly overreacting.
Except this time, there was really only one word for the situation: chaos!
Twenty-five
The first tip-off that something was very wrong?
Al’s potbellied pig ran straight for the front of my truck. I slammed on the brakes, threw the gea
rs in park, and bolted out the door. Ms. Piggy usually is totally laid-back and greets visitors with a sweet little curly Q tail wag. Right now she looked plenty upset. I’ve never in my life seen a pig run that fast. At first I thought she was going to bowl right through me, but at the last second she dodged around my waving arms and kept on going toward the road.
“Who let the animals out?” I yelled, not expecting an answer and not getting one.
Right behind Ms. Piggy came a flock of turkeys, moving faster than Olympic runners, their scrawny, pea-brained heads bobbing like crazy. They were shouting something extremely important back and forth in their own language. Several of them took to the air over the truck, beating their wings and actually clearing the treetops. A pygmy goat ran across our path, heading in a totally different direction than the pig and turkeys.
The peacock named Pretty, dragging his tail instead of displaying it, zigzagged along without any obvious plan, all the while making a chilling noise that sounded suspiciously like a woman’s scream—Holly’s, to be exact.
“What the hay?” Stanley said for the second time in less than thirty minutes, but with a little more dramatic flair this time.
He stood at my side, just as dazed as me.
Holly did her usual shtick when it comes to wildlife (which means both domestic and wild animals as far as she’s concerned)—she slunk down and cowered inside the truck.
I tried to drag her out. She kicked and screamed. “I’m telling Mom,” she claimed, voicing her standard threat. Which she’s never, ever actually made good on, so it had no effect on me whatsoever.
Stanley had to help me. Once we had her standing outside, I used my fob to lock the truck’s doors so she wouldn’t sneak back in.
Greg ran up, breathing hard.
“Most of them went that way. Toward town,” I told him.
“Now what am I going to do?” Greg said. “Not only this, but there’s a lynch mob in the orchard.”
“Business as usual,” I said. “Try to make catching the animals a game with prizes for the families. In the meantime call the store and have Carrie Ann organize a search party. We’ll take care of the mob.”
Stanley and I raced over to what was left of the campsite, with Holly dragging along at a distance. Gone were the tents and all other signs of habitation. All that was left were the smoldering remnants of a fire.
No sign of the van, either. Maybe Aurora had gotten through via telepathic radio, or Lucinda had zeroed in on Lori on her own, or . . . whatever. The how didn’t matter. Thankfully, the witches were gone.
Lori and her followers, however, still milled around, their ticking bomb defused for lack of a target.
“Who let the animals out?” I demanded. “Lori, you’re responsible for this, aren’t you?”
She ignored my accusation and said, “Where did your wand-carrying friends go, Fischer?”
“Watch how you talk to my sister,” Holly said, with a whole lot of intimidation in her tone. She might be a whimpering mess when it comes to creatures on four legs or with feathers instead of flesh, or my busy buzzing bees, but she isn’t one bit afraid of confrontations with her own kind. She joined right in, coming nose to nose with Lori. “You have some explaining to do,” Holly said.
“I don’t owe you two Fischer tramps a thing,” said the biggest slut in town.
“Okay,” Stanley interceded, sensing a fight on the way, “we’ll sort this out when the cops get here.”
I really wish he hadn’t clued them in.
“Thanks for the tip, Stanley,” Lori said. Then to her gang, “Our problem left town just in the nick of time. They got lucky. Let’s get out of here.”
I narrowed my eyes at Stanley. His met mine and appealed to me for forgiveness. My dream of watching Hunter cuff Lori went up in flames.
Behind Lori’s backstabbing rear end something in motion caught my attention. There came Dusty, Al’s miniature donkey, running at full speed right toward us. He would have missed Lori altogether if I hadn’t given her a tiny push sideways.
It was a direct hit.
Since Dusty is only about three feet tall, his head connected with Lori’s butt. What a glorious sight to behold!
Lori flew forward into Holly, who was standing next to me. Holly went into ready mode, an instinct from her wrestling days. The most that happened was that my sister had to take a few steps back to maintain her equilibrium. The look on her face said it all. Game on.
“Clothesline her!” I suggested.
This wasn’t going to be a fair fight. There was nothing tough about Lori Spandle. She’s all smoke and mirrors. While Holly was taking down Lori, the rest of us stood around watching the instigator try to fight back. The smartest move to use with my sister in a situation like this is to call out something submissive, like ‘surrender.’ But Lori wouldn’t. She’s too dense.
“Don’t even think of ending this,” I said to Stanley.
Stanley grinned, catching my meaning. “And give up a ringside seat? No way.”
Once Holly got Lori on the ground, it was all over but the singing. Holly straddled the loser, one arm holding her down, the other arm raised in a victory salute.
“Amazing,” Stanley said, “and I didn’t even have to pull the trigger.”
Right after that, we were surrounded by Hunter’s team of pros. Unlike Johnny Jay and his need to announce himself to the world with lots of bells and whistles, the C.I.T. operates covertly. Nobody realized they were there until they were.
“Holly, let Lori up,” I whispered. My sister realized we had company and hopped off.
Lori got to her feet, unsteady and discombobulated, which made me snort with glee. Her hair stuck out like she’d been electrocuted, she wore most of her mascara under her eyes, and her face was twisted with rage. Downright scary. Nothing attractive about the woman now.
“I’m pressing assault charges!” she screamed at my sister, then addressed the people who had been following her, who were now backing away. “You saw what she did, right? Tell them what happened.”
Lori’s gang had had enough. It was one thing to bully strange, out-of-town women from the safety of the pack. It was another to get involved with the Waukesha police. They collectively stepped away, creating distance between them and their one-time leader, while Lori glared at them. She whipped around to Stanley. “You’re a witness.”
“I just got here,” he said. “I didn’t see a thing.”
She directed her anger at me. “What a coincidence that Hunter Wallace just happened by. What a little snitch you are.”
While I’ve never considered myself a tattletale, there was a bit of truth to her accusation this time. Only since this was more like an intervention, I felt guilt free.
Hunter whispered in my ear, “I thought we had agreed that you’d stay away from this camp.”
“I agreed to stay away from the witches,” I whispered back, keeping one eye on Lori, giving her a wide grin. “Do you see any of them here? No, you don’t.”
“I’m going to wipe that stupid smirk off your face,” Lori said, getting even hotter, assuming Hunter and I were talking about her. “You and your sister are going down.”
Which was sort of funny considering who had just been down.
“That’s enough out of you for one day,” Hunter said to Lori.
“I’m taking this to the town chairman,” she threatened. As though her husband Grant had any influence over anybody other than Johnny Jay, and the chief didn’t count. Out of his jurisdiction again.
“Grant will take care of you two,” she warned.
“Your husband’s too busy hanging out in the porno section of the library,” I couldn’t help saying.
One of her former followers snickered and said, “I saw him there yesterday. What, Lori? Can’t you keep him satisfied at home?”
That got
everybody cackling.
Which reminded me of the witches.
And Al’s request for help.
Tomorrow I’d make a road trip.
It was time to pay a visit to my old stomping grounds on the east side of Milwaukee.
Twenty-six
Stanley and I were standing in the parking lot behind the store. Holly had hopped into her Jag and peeled out, recovered from her recent rabble-rousing (frankly looking rejuvenated if you asked me) but late for another planning meeting with Mom and Tom.
“What’s the story with Claudene Mason and Iris Whelan?” I asked Stanley. “I hear Iris had the hots for you back in high school.”
Stanley actually blushed. “I suspected as much.”
I gave him a come-clean look.
“Okay, you got me there. She did have a crush on me.”
“Something about a certain potion . . .”
“Well, it didn’t work, now did it? Instead, Iris got really sick and almost died. She was a cute little number, but that was a long time ago. Claudene came up with one concoction after another, but most of us were smart enough not to sample her experiments. Those two girls sure learned their lesson the hard way.”
I wasn’t so sure Rosina had learned hers. Tomorrow I’d follow up on Greg’s tip, find out if the dead woman had really been involved in an inquest. If there was some sort of hearing, and she’d testified, I’d bet the store it had something to do with mixing and matching.
“You know, Iris is single,” I couldn’t help pointing out. “Just like you.”
“Playing matchmaker, are you?”
I laughed. Iris and Stanley were both odd ducks. I had a feeling that now, as adults, they’d hit it off famously. “She doesn’t come into town much,” I said. “But next time she does, I’ll let you know.”
“Why don’t I open for you in the morning again?” Stanley offered, changing the subject to one we’d both appreciate. “With my bees bedded down for the winter, my days are long.”
“You’re the best!”