by Hannah Reed
“Helen said that, didn’t she? Your mother was the problem. Once she was out of the picture, Claudene and I became bosom buddies.”
The rule of three! There it was again. Or maybe the real reason was because Mom had always been a troublemaker. I’d never get the real story, because Mom’s version and Iris’s version weren’t going to come close to matching, and the only one who could break the deadlock was no longer able to tell her side of the story.
“Are you still living with that man?” Iris asked.
When I didn’t respond right away, she went on. “Men are a dime a dozen. Don’t sell yourself short.”
I’d forgotten about her opinion of the male species. “I thought you were considering looking up Stanley Peck.”
“They aren’t a dime a dozen at my age. But I’m not getting hooked up. I like an occasional conversation with one of them. They talk about interesting topics, not kids and cooking.”
When we hung up, I spotted the tail.
Twenty-eight
P. P. Patti doesn’t drive much, preferring to walk while she stalks, or if she has to expand her reach, she’ll bum rides from whomever she corners, which is usually me. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t have her own wheels. She does. A black (of course) Chevy that’s seen better days, probably dating back to the nineteen eighties.
Black cars all look pretty much alike to me. Unless they have other distinguishing features. And Patti’s does.
Her pre-owned Chevy came with lots of added antennas, and she hadn’t bothered to remove them. The previous owner must have been a ham radio fanatic. And a CB radio nut. And even had an antenna for a two-way radio.
That’s how I spotted her behind me.
There isn’t much highway traffic on Sunday morning, so I couldn’t just dodge from lane to lane weaving among other vehicles until I lost her. And I didn’t want to go much over the speed limit, since with my luck I’d be the one stopped, not her. Besides, I doubted that my truck could outpace her Chevy anyway. They both were on the slow side. And Patti is tenacious when she puts her mind to something.
What to do?
I ducked in between two fast-moving vehicles and got an angry horn blast as a reward. Looking in my rearview mirror, I didn’t see Patti’s pursuit car, but I did see a very red-faced driver and the middle finger he held up as a gift of gratitude for my existence.
I ducked back out and refused to look him in the eye as he passed, but I could feel his glare.
Now Patti was right behind me. I could see her sneaky beady little eyes over the steering wheel.
I did an exaggerated wave with my right hand.
She slowed to create distance.
At the last possible second I veered and took an exit. So did she, a sloppy maneuver but effective. I drove up the on-ramp and continued on, thinking and planning.
Now it was obvious. She knew I knew she was back there. We were playing a game of cat and mouse, and didn’t it just figure that I was the mouse.
I called her cell. This time she answered.
“Where are you?” she asked me first thing.
“Don’t play games. I can see you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Just to be on the safe side, I studied the other driver in the rearview mirror. That was most definitely Patti.
“Where are you going?” she wanted to know next.
“Keep following me and you’ll find out.”
“I’m not following you. What gave you such a silly idea?”
“Patti, I can see you, for cripes’ sake.” Cripes’ sake? That was my mom’s expression, not mine. I was becoming my mother!
When Patti didn’t respond, I hung up. Once Patti discovered that I was going to pay a visit to the witches, she’d disappear into thin air. No point trying to talk sense into her when show, not tell, was about to work much better.
I didn’t have much of a plan for the visit, only a thin outline. Online research revealed a witch/magic-type store on Brady, a busy bohemian street, running nine blocks long, framed on the east by Lake Michigan and on the west by the Milwaukee River.
I’d lived not far from here, when I lived in Milwaukee, and used to frequent Brady Street businesses on a regular basis. From the thrift shops and tattoo parlors to the best ethnic restaurants in the entire city, Brady Street draws as many young urbanites as it does aging hippies. It was sometimes known as Milwaukee’s version of Haight-Ashbury, and you can still see remnants of its counterculture past.
This particular business establishment, called Little Shop of Magic, opened at noon on Sundays and was owned by a Tabitha Moon. Since the witch who discovered Rosina’s body was also named Tabitha (why hadn’t I found out her last name?), I was hoping they were one and the same person. How many Tabithas could there be anyway?
I had to circle the area several times before a parking spot opened up, but when one did it was right in front of the shop. I’d lost Patti on one of the circles, but she wasn’t dumb. She’d figure out what I was up to.
With fifteen minutes to waste before the shop opened, I settled in to wait, studying the storefront. Black fringed awning, with “Little Shop of Magic” in large letters. An image of an eye stretched across the space directly below the name. Signage on every available inch of the window. Words like “Tarot,” “Palmistry,” “Spellcraft,” “Runes,” “Healing Arts,” “Divinations,” “Phone Readings Now Available.” More signs announced sachets, poppets, and mojo bags inside the shop, most of which was totally foreign to me.
A familiar woman moved along the sidewalk and blocked my view, then tried to open the door on the passenger side of my car. Locked. Ha! Anticipation is an important part of dealing with Patti.
I slid down the window, but only a little.
“What do you have to report?” I asked her.
“Let me in and I’ll tell you,” she said through the opening.
“You’re a dangerous woman, Patti. For all I know you have a rag full of chloroform waiting for me. I prefer to do our business by phone. And following me here is creepy, too, in case you don’t realize that.”
“We’re partners.” She tried the door again. “Open up.” And again. See how mulish she is? Other descriptions popped into my head.
Bullheaded
Hardheaded
Pigheaded
Patti is lots of different forms of “headed,” and none of them are compliments.
“Notice where I parked?” I tried to point out.
She turned around and got an eyeful before whipping around and saying, “Please tell me you aren’t going in there.”
“See, this is exactly the problem. You have an unhealthy, uncontrollable fear when it comes to witchcraft. And this whole case is about witchcraft. That’s why you’re supposed to be working the history angle and I’m working the street.”
“Fine!” she said, not fine at all, her lips pressed in a thin, unhappy line.
“So what have you got so far?” I expected her to blather on about the inquest and everything else that I already knew, so I started planning how, after her debriefing, I’d send her on some other wild goose chase to keep her out of my hair. “Let’s hear it,” I demanded.
Patti grinned with glee and surprised me by saying something totally unpredictable. “I found the victim’s apartment,” she informed me. “And I also convinced the next-door neighbor to let us in.”
Us?
“I thought I’d wait for you and we’d go together. I’m supposedly Rosina’s niece. You can be my BFF.”
Oh darn, this was just too good to pass up. And definitely not what I expected from Patti. But I should know better than to try to second-guess her. “What about the police?” Hunter would kill me if I crossed over any crime tape.
“According to the neighbor, the cops finished up days ago. There wasn�
�t a ‘do not enter’ sign on the door when I chatted with her.”
Geez, Hunter was thorough. Too bad he had to put so much stock in things like hidden evidence and fingerprints instead of flying by the seat of his pants with good old intuition like I was doing. “If the cops already searched,” I said, “we won’t find anything significant to the case.”
Patti shrugged. “We’ll never know unless we check it out.”
Which was true.
“Okay,” I said, “but I’m checking out this store first.”
Patti looked self-satisfied and almost smirky, as though she’d anticipated my response. Was I that predictable? I hated being predictable. She also seemed nervous now that she realized she was right in front of a witch’s shop.
“If you get into trouble in there,” she warned me, “don’t call me for help.”
I rolled up the window, pulled the keys out of the ignition, and sighed.
It appeared that P. P. Patti had sucked me into one of her schemes again.
This time I was going to practice extreme caution and uncommon common sense.
Yeah, right.
Famous last words.
Twenty-nine
Patti needed an excuse to avoid accompanying me into the magic shop, so she offered to go in search of lunch. I watched her slither down the street dressed all in black, down to her fatigue jacket and low-riding ball cap. She’d purchased the men’s jacket in a secondhand store last year. All those little pockets meant she had to have it. But since it was green and she only wore jet-black, she’d dyed it. Patti might have made a good soldier if the military could have trained her to follow orders. That wasn’t her strong suit.
I stepped through the doorway into the Little Shop of Magic. Tabitha with the pointy glasses greeted me by name. I almost missed her in the dazzling array of products—books, oils, candles, incense (which hung heavily in the air), tarot decks—it went on and on. And like the storefront window signage, stuff filled every spare inch of space.
“What are you doing in the big city?” she asked from behind a counter loaded with items for sale, sounding friendly enough. Glancing down in a front case, I spotted something called . . . dragon’s blood. Really? And a bunch of jewelry on top of the counter, including pentacles on chains, necklaces similar to Rosina’s.
“Just visiting old friends,” I lied. “You have an amazing store,” I went on. “Now that I’m here, I could use a potion for asthma.”
I watched to see if my mentioning asthma would draw a reaction, like about the inquest into the death of Rosina’s boyfriend.
But Tabitha didn’t bat an eye, leading me to think either she hadn’t been aware of it or she was a very skilled actress. I went with unaware. “Potions were Rosina’s specialty,” she said, wistfully, while consulting a book behind the counter. “You heard, didn’t you, that she was killed?” Tabitha’s voice was breaking up.
“And her brother is in custody,” I added.
“It’s so sad.”
“I agree, such a shock. You two must have been close.”
She looked up with tears in her eyes. “We got along really well. That’s why we were sharing a tent. I’d asked her if she wanted me to go along with her, but she didn’t want my company. If only I’d insisted.”
Tabitha broke down completely at that point.
“You can’t blame yourself,” I tried to reassure her.
I waited a few minutes while she pulled herself together. “So you have asthma?” she asked, after wiping her tears away with a tissue.
“Not me. A friend.” No way was I going to pretend that I had difficulty breathing.
She stopped paging and looked up. “I have to see your friend to help her. Does she live close by?”
I thought of Patti and how much fun it would be to drag her into the store to act out the role of asthmatic. “No,” I said reluctantly. “She doesn’t.”
“Next time, bring her with you. Sorry, I can’t be of any use without the person.” Then she perked up and said, “Why don’t I make up a little magic for you? Let’s see. How about a potion to make a wish come true?”
“That sounds like fun,” I said.
“This is on me. A gift. First we need a mojo bag.” She produced a small red flannel bag. “While I put it together, you think of a wish. But don’t tell me. Keep it to yourself.”
I had my secret wish pronto.
She put some beans in the bag. “Wishing beans,” she explained. “And a rabbit’s foot key chain—a fake one, just so you know, I’d never harm an animal—and a piece of parchment with a little of this and that added. There.” She handed me the bag from the other side of the counter. “Carry it with you, but keep it out of sight. And don’t let anyone else touch it.”
“Thanks.” I stuffed it into a pocket. “I’m sure you told the police everything you remembered from the night you discovered Rosina’s body, but have you thought of anything else since?”
Tabitha adjusted her pointy glasses. “I told what happened, but I never thought that her brother was the one who killed her, and I still don’t.”
“Why not? All the evidence points to him.”
“I was sharing a tent with her, remember? When she left that night, she was calm. If she had been meeting her brother, she would have been anxious, you know, really nervous. They hadn’t spoken in years, and she told me she was worried that he’d make her leave.”
“That’s a good observation on your part,” I said. “But not enough to get Al released, I’m afraid.”
“There’s more.” She leaned forward. “A group of us consulted the high priestess when we came home. Lucinda said not to bother since a suspect was in custody, but we needed the practice so we did it without her.” Tabitha tensed after that. “Please don’t tell Lucinda. I shouldn’t have told you. If she finds out . . .”
“Don’t worry about me,” I assured her quickly. “My lips are sealed. But weren’t you short of the proper circle?”
“Some of us got together with a few witches who come into my shop. Actually, we were testing that ritual. Most of us didn’t actually believe it worked.”
So witches could doubt their magic, too. “And what happened?”
Tabitha brightened. “I think it worked just fine. The high priestess spoke through the written word. In fact, she picked me as her conduit, and I wrote her answers down on paper. It was pretty incredible because I didn’t know I did it, but sure enough, it was my handwriting.”
“And?” I had a lot more doubts than Tabitha did. This should be good. “What did she say?”
“That Rosina’s killer wasn’t her brother. I’d written not brother.”
“Who was it then?”
“Unfortunately, the high priestess refused to tell us that.”
Doesn’t it just figure. An all-knowing being shows up and refuses to cooperate.
Back out on Brady Street with my mojo bag safely stowed away and my wish tucked back inside my short-term memory compartment, I took an incoming call from Hunter.
“What’s up?” he wanted to know.
“Not much.”
“Where are you?”
“Around.”
“You sure are a Chatty Cathy this morning.”
“I’m sort of busy right now.”
“Okay, that’s a good thing, right? Your store sure has been a success.”
Hunter thought I was working. And I wasn’t about to correct him. He’d burst a blood vessel if he knew I was hanging with Patti. And visiting with witches. And about to break and enter. Well, not exactly break and enter, but close enough. “Yes, The Wild Clover has been a huge success. Chalk it up to all the gossip. We serve you rumors with your groceries.”
“I like that. It would make a cool sound bite. Listen, let’s meet up later this afternoon for a nap.”
I did the
math—a quick peek at Rosina’s apartment and forty-five minutes back to Moraine. I could make it easily. “I like how you think,” I told him.
We disconnected. Patti came at me from across the street, paper bag in hand, ball cap pulled down tight so her features were indistinguishable, a sort of stealthy manner about her. If I were a beat cop, I might consider stopping her with a few questions about her intentions.
And this was Brady Street where you expected to see just about anything.
Looking right then left, she jaywalked to my side.
With trepidation, I unlocked the passenger side door.
Patti slid in.
Within a heartbeat, she had reinserted herself into my life.
Thirty
We drove over to Farwell Street, where Patti directed me to pull over next to a run-down, dirty white Victorian. Then we ate traditional Wisconsin Sunday fare: hot ham and rolls.
I shared what I had learned about Claudene’s legal situation, confirmed the inquest and how she had been cleared of any wrongdoing but had changed her name to Rosina to escape the stigma of those allegations.
“Who told you all this?” Patti asked, one cheek loaded up with ham.
“Mabel Whelan’s niece Iris.”
“Only heresy then!” Patti stated as though she were a litigation attorney.
“You mean hearsay.”
“Whatever. Iris doesn’t have any personal knowledge of the events you described. But don’t worry. I have actual facts to back up her story. My information came from documents I found online. So my info trumps yours.”
“Stop acting so cocky or you won’t hear what the owner of the magic shop had to say.”
Then I went on, wading through the details of the latest ritual.
“These witches didn’t intend to go bad,” Patti stated. “They might have started out innocent enough, but then the dark forces take control. That’s why it’s best to steer clear of them in the first place. Having one on the block is going to ruin property values and worse, jeopardize our healthy minds. I’m telling you, watch out.”