Fat chance. I’d eat tofu if Chase McGregor handed it to me.
We all conferred over the menu and Chase wrote down what we wanted. When Tori asked why he didn’t just phone the order in, Chase explained that the owner was running a one-man show and didn’t have time to be taking phone orders.
As we watched Chase cross the courthouse square with long, loping strides, like a man on a mission -- which he kinda was, because, hey, pizza -- Tori let out a low whistle. “That boy is fine,” she said appreciatively. “I’m with Fiona. He can knock on my pipes anytime.”
“He is cute, isn’t he?” I ventured shyly.
“Cute does not do justice to that,” Tori said, grinning. “And he likes you.”
“You think?” I asked doubtfully.
“I think,” she said firmly.
“We’ll see.”
Inside I was turning cartwheels.
As promised, Chase returned with three medium pizzas, and a small sack of double fudge brownies. “I don’t know how it happened,” he explained innocently. “They just jumped into my hand.”
“Thank God you caught them before they hurt someone,” I said solemnly. “That’s the trouble with chocolate. It’s so aggressive.”
Since there was a table and chairs in the storeroom, we went in there to eat. To my surprise, Chase called out, “Hey Rodney,” as he put the boxes down on the table.
The resident rat immediately stuck his head out between the liniment cans and wiggled his whiskers in greeting.
“You know about Rodney?” I asked, opening one of the pizza boxes and almost swooning at the heavenly aroma that came wafting out of its cardboard confines.
“Sure I do,” Chase said, breaking off the crust from a piece of his pizza and offering it to the rat. “We’re old buddies.”
My eyes must have been playing tricks on me because I could have sworn Rodney high fived the tip of Chase’s index finger before accepting the crust and taking it to his room.
“So what’s Rodney's story?” Tori asked, biting into a slice. “Did Fiona get him at a pet store or something?”
Wiping his chin with a napkin, Chase said, “No. It was the darnedest thing. Somebody left Rodney on the front step in his cage one morning. Festus found him when I opened up and Fiona came out to see what was going on. She insisted on keeping Rodney for his own safety.”
“Did Festus try to turn him into a snack?” I asked.
“Actually, no,” Chase said. “If anything it looked like the two of them were having a conversation through the bars of the cage, but I wasn’t willing to risk it.” Then, as if the idea had just occurred to him, he added, “Uh, how many cats do you have?”
“Four,” I said, “and trust me, this will be a segregated household.”
Chase looked relieved. “Good,” he said. “Rodney will grow on you fast. I swear he’s going to talk one of these days.”
“Why did Fiona put the cage behind those liniment cans?” Tori asked.
“Huh,” Chase said thoughtfully. “I actually don’t know the answer to that question. Fiona always had her own way of doing things.”
Okay, that was an opening if I ever heard one.
“She did, didn’t she?” I said, preparing to steer the conversation in a new direction. “I’ve been finding all kinds of things I didn’t know she was interested in, including true crime.”
“True crime?” Chase asked, frowning. “What do you mean?”
Knowing we’d be eating lunch in the storeroom, I had strategically placed the manila folder of clippings on the worktable. I leaned over and snagged it and put it in front of Chase. “We found this file of newspaper articles this morning,” I said. “Fiona must have been interested in this unsolved murder.”
Chase opened the folder and shook his head sadly. “Ah, Jane Doe,” he said. “Everyone in town knows about her. I wasn’t here when it happened, but Fiona told me about it. Every year on the anniversary people go out and put flowers on the grave. In fact, that’s coming up in just a couple of weeks.”
“Why was Fiona so interested?” I asked.
“You don’t know?” Chase said. “The girl came in the store about a week before her body was discovered.”
“No way,” Tori said. “What happened?”
“Not much, according to Fiona,” Chase said, extracting another slice of pizza from his box. “The girl came in dressed for hiking. She had stopped at George and Irma’s to get some food for the trail. When she walked by here, she saw a quartz necklace in the window and came in to ask how much it was. Fiona asked her how much she had to spare and the girl said five dollars. Fiona said she was in luck because that was how much the necklace cost. The girl bought it and wore it out of the store.”
That was Fiona. Softest heart in the whole world.
“And Aunt Fiona didn’t get her name?” I asked.
“No,” Chase said, “and that was the part that haunted Fiona so much. There were a lot of tourists in here that day and Fiona was too busy to visit with the girl like she normally would have. I think Fiona blamed herself. She always said if she’d just gotten the poor kid’s first name, maybe the police could have gotten better leads. And she was upset about the necklace.”
“What about the necklace?” Tori asked.
“It wasn’t on the body or in the backpack,” Chase said. “Fiona always worried that someone on the trail thought it was valuable and killed the girl trying to take the necklace. It was just a piece of plain quartz. Nothing special. The body was found by a little creek up near Weber’s Gap. For some reason, Fiona was convinced the necklace wound up in the water. She went up there several times trying to find it.”
Huh. That didn’t make sense. “Why would she do that if it wasn’t valuable?”
“Beats me,” Chase said. “Fiona said if she could find the necklace, she’d know what happened. It didn’t make any sense to me, but again, it was Fiona. She always came at things her own way.” He wiped his fingers again and reached for the brown sack, “Anybody else think it’s brownie time?”
10
Chase helped us all afternoon, and I have to confess, those fudge brownies all disappeared. By the time he excused himself for the evening and went back to his own place, we really had managed to instill a kind of order in the store. In addition to my own tiny vegan soap discovery, I’d learned from Chase that the whole region was full of interesting artisans making everything from musical instruments to furniture.
How I had managed to pretty much ignore this fact my whole life I do not know, but thanks to him, I had a long list of potential new inventory. The day left me more enthused about being a shopkeeper and less worried about being a witch.
As soon as we were sure we were alone, Tori and I discussed the information Chase shared with us about Aunt Fiona and her real interest in Jane’s case. “So what do you think the deal was about the necklace?” Tori asked. “Is there some mojo associated with quartz?”
“You’re asking me?” I said. “I barely have my junior mojo membership card. Other than that story I told you about Aunt Fiona giving that widow a rose quartz necklace, I know nothing about the stuff.”
We were still downstairs, so Tori cleared her throat and said, “Uh, Myrtle? Would it be okay if I asked you a question?”
The store answered with a happy little three-note trill we took as a yes.
“Okay, thanks,” Tori said. “Uh, is there more quartz in the store?”
That same spotlight out of nowhere instantly highlighted one shelf in the little jewelry counter near the front window. We both leaned down to look and saw a pair of earrings, a necklace, and a ring all set with clear stones. Unfortunately, none of them obligingly stepped up to explain why we should think of them as anything but . . . rocks.
Since we’d worked up an appetite again, we thanked Myrtle for showing us the quartz and went upstairs to consult the Internet while chowing down on mac n’ cheese. Until that night, my previous experience with “paranormal research” amounted to wat
ching Charmed and owning the DVD of Practical Magic. I was shocked to discover just how many websites are out there and how many of them are, dare I say, a little . . . disturbing.
Before we started reading about all the beliefs associated with crystals I hadn’t really thought about expanding my stock in that direction, but that attitude changed fast. Crystals are seriously popular, and pure quartz is the great grandma of them all, literally the universal crystal. Not only is quartz found pretty much everywhere, but it’s also more or less multi-purpose in the positive protection category.
We found plenty of references to rose quartz as well. Aunt Fiona gave it to the grieving woman because the stone is supposed to heal broken hearts. That night, my thoughts ran along the lines of, “Hey, if people want to buy rocks, I’m more than happy to sell them rocks.”
These days I don’t mock the rocks, but we’ll get to that.
What immediately caught our attention in relation to Jane and her post-mortem amnesia was the idea that quartz is kinda the writable DVD media of the crystal world, especially when it’s found in proximity to running water.
“You think that’s it?” Toris asked. “That Aunt Fiona figured the necklace recorded what happened to Jane?”
“Maybe,” I said. “That’s assuming Fiona knew how to hit the play button on the rock. Which I would ask her, if she’d freaking answer my calls.”
That last comment came out plenty annoyed and makes it sound like I was picking up my cell phone and speed dialing my dead aunt. Mainly I was looking up at the ceiling and begging her to come floating in.
When Tori and I had come upstairs, I had once again attempted to get Fiona to join the party. The effort did nothing but cause the cats to stare at me like I’d lost what little intelligence they ever thought I had in the first place. (Which, for you non-cat people, is precious little on a good day.)
“Aw, come on, lay off Aunt Fiona,” Tori said, uncorking a fresh bottle of red wine. “She obviously trusts you to figure this all out, including what happened to Janie. Why don’t we go up to the hiking trail in the morning and see if we can find anything?”
Like I didn’t see that one coming.
“Tori, Jane was killed 20 years ago,” I said, pointing out what should have been obvious to my overly enthusiastic BFF. “The cops have been all over that trail hundreds of times. Anything they were going to find, they found years ago. What do you think we’re going to see that they didn’t?”
“I don’t know,” Tori said, handing me a full wine glass. “But don’t we kind of owe it to Jane to see where she was found? It just seems kind of . . . respectful given her current situation. And besides, you don’t really know everything you can do yet. Maybe you will see something Fiona didn’t. Not all witches are alike, right?”
Truthfully, I had no idea if that was true or not, but the notion did make sense.
We finished the evening playing a cutthroat game of Settlers of Catan, and turned in around midnight. The next morning, the smell of frying bacon awakened me. I walked into the kitchen to discover that Tori was fixing her to-die-for western omelettes.
“Hey,” I said, “where’d all this come from?”
“Irma and George are open on Sunday mornings,” she said. “I woke up early and slipped down to the corner. Coffee?”
“Lord, yes,” I said, taking the cup she held out. “And thanks. This is great. It’s a bribe to get me to go up to the trail, isn’t it?”
Uh, yeah. I saw right through the whole BFF breakfast thing the minute I smelled the bacon.
Tori laughed. “Okay, fine. Busted. Did it work?”
I sighed. “Yeah, okay, fine. We’ll take a field trip.”
Since Tori didn’t have to leave until late afternoon, we took our time and enjoyed our food. Props to my girl. Her skills with eggs and shredded cheese are awesome. By the time we’d both dressed and I’d cleaned up the kitchen, which was only fair, it was about 11 o’clock when we set out for Weber’s Gap.
As hiking trails go, this one was definitely a bunny slope. Tori and I strolled leisurely up the gentle grade enjoying the bright sunshine and the crisp, clean air. We weren’t exactly sure where Jane’s body was found, but when we rounded a bend in the trail and came on a simple, rough-hewn stone with the inscription, “Here an unknown soul was lost,” we knew we’d reached the spot.
“Wow,” Tori said, “maybe nobody knows Janie’s real name, but she’s sure hasn’t been forgotten.”
I leaned down to get a closer look at the marker, and that’s when I tripped on an exposed root and fell forward toward the stone. Putting out my hand to break my fall, everything around me turned into a confused, swirling mass of color. When my vision cleared, I was standing in a vast, empty space and something black and shiny was coming straight toward me. Pain shot through my left temple, and then I heard Tori’s voice calling to me.
Blinking and reaching for my head, I realized I was sitting on the ground with Tori crouched beside me. “Jinksy,” she asked in a worried voice, “are you okay? What the heck just happened?”
“Yeah,” I said slowly, still getting my bearings. “I’m okay.”
“Did you have a dizzy spell or something?” Tori asked. “God, I hope that ham I put in the omelettes wasn’t bad. I wasn’t trying to poison us.”
“You didn’t poison us,” I assured her. “I think I just had a vision of where Janie was killed, and it wasn’t here.”
“Get out!” Tori said excitedly. “A vision? What did you see? Where was she killed? Tell me everything!”
“I’m not sure exactly where it was. There was a lot of empty space around me and this . . . thing . . . coming at my head,” I answered, rubbing my forehead. “I actually felt it hit me, and then everything went black. It looked familiar. I should know what it was, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.”
From behind us a voice said, “It was a tri-pod, wasn’t it?”
Tori and I both swiveled around.
“Who said that?” Tori asked, swinging her head from side to side.
“She did,” I answered.
“She who?” Tori asked, perplexed.
“Left shoulder,” I directed.
Tori shifted and looked again. “Aw crud,” she said. “Jane wasn’t the only one.”
The ghost of a young girl was standing just at the edge of the forest. “Who is Jane?” she asked, frowning.
“Someone we know who is like you,” I said. “What’s your name, honey?”
The girl looked like she was about to cry. “I don’t know,” she said forlornly. “Every time I try to ask someone, they either don’t seem to hear me or they run away like I scared them or something.” She faltered for a second and then blurted out, “Am I dead?”
Trust me. This talking-to-dead-people thing is not all it’s cracked up to be. Dead or not, they have feelings and it is not fun to tell them what they don’t want to hear.
“Yes,” I said gently. “You are.”
The girl began to cry softly, “Do you think someone has told my mother?”
“I honestly don’t know,” I said. “Do you have any idea how long you’ve been here?”
The girl shook her head.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” I asked.
She made a face, “That awful new Coca Cola had just come out. I drank a can and it tasted so bad I thought I would throw up.”
Tori took out her phone and started typing. After a couple of minutes she looked up and said, “1985.”
Ten years before Jane was killed. Not good. Not good at all.
11
“We have to report this,” Tori said in a low voice as we both watched the nameless girl wander around the clearing.
“And say what?” I asked. “Yes, Officer? I’d like to report a 30-year-old haunting up by Weber’s Gap.”
Tori made a face. “Very funny,” she said. “There could be more dead girls up here. What if this guy is a serial killer and this is his dumping ground?”
<
br /> She said that like discovering such a gruesome truth would be a good thing. Personally, I was in favor of getting the heck out of there before any more ghosts showed up. Of course, I was far too responsible to do that, but I wanted to -- I really, really wanted to.
I sighed and gave in. “Do you have a bright idea about how to go about this?” I asked.
“It’s really not going to be all that hard, “Tori said confidently. “You hear about this kind of thing happening all the time. People just go out for a walk in the woods and stumble on a body, or a skeleton.”
“Note to self,” I muttered. “Stay out of the woods. That’s all well and good, Tori, but we didn’t find her body so what exactly do we report?”
“That’s the part of the plan she has to help us with,” Tori said, nodding toward the girl.
“Help us how?”
“We have to ask her.”
I had a sneaking suspicion Tori was being intentionally obtuse because she knew I wasn’t going to like what was coming next.
“Ask her what?” I said suspiciously.
“To show us what’s . . . left . . . of herself.”
Oh. Ouch. I was pretty confident not even Miss Manners had an etiquette rule to cover that conversation.
“And just how do you suggest we broach the subject of her mortal remains?” I hissed. “Not five minutes ago she was asking us for confirmation that she’s actually dead.”
“Exactly,” Tori said. “Confirmation. She knew, she just didn’t want to know.”
Which, when you think about it, was a perfectly reasonable reaction.
When I didn’t say anything, Tori went on. “We just ask her, or rather, you just ask her,” she said, hastily correcting herself. “You’re the official witch after all.”
And there it was, under the wheels of the bus I went.
“Okay, fine,” I shot back. “But you totally owe me.”
As we approached her, the young girl turned toward us. “I want to see my mom,” she said. “I need to know she’s okay about all this.”
A request that in no way was making my job easier. But it did give me an opening to wade in as delicately as I could manage.
Witch at Heart: A Jinx Hamilton Witch Mystery Book 1 (The Jinx Hamilton Mysteries) Page 6