Witch Way to Murder

by Shirley Damsgaard

  I tiptoed up the two remaining stairs, so afraid I’d put my weight on the wrong spot. My fingers felt cold and numb, and the gloves made it hard to find the key in my pocket. Every second while I struggled to fish the key out, I expected hands to grab me from behind and spin me around.

  While my shaking hands grappled to fit the key in the lock, I expected to hear an angry voice yelling, “What in the hell are you doing?” My nerves were taut, and the hair on the back of my neck prickled as if someone were watching. Finally, the blasted key went in the lock. I swung the door wide and hurled myself into the room.

  After shutting and locking the door, I stood there, my hand on the doorknob, my forehead resting against the closed door. My breath came in short bursts, and my heart drummed a rapid beat. All the while the clock was ticking. Rick would be back soon. I had to do this—now.

  I turned and surveyed the room. In the fading light, it was hard to see. Soon it would be pitch-dark, another reason to hurry.

  Rick’s room seemed to be orderly, no tripping hazards that might cause a loud crash to be heard in the front parlor. Where to start? If I were Rick Davis, where would I hide something? He was so confident, it would be in plain sight, and he would never expect anyone to search his room.

  From what I could see, the room was large, but the shadows were growing. The bed faced a fireplace across the room. Two wing chairs with a table between sat near the window. To the left of the door I leaned against was another door, which I presumed to be a closet. A large gentleman’s dresser with a mirror was to my right. Okay, let’s try the closet.

  Rick’s suitcases were stacked neatly on its floor. It would be a good place to hide something. I took them out one at a time and opened them. Nothing—nothing in the pockets—nothing in the sides. It would have been nice if Abby could have given me a hint what to look for. What about his clothes? His shirts hung in a straight row. I caught the subtle scent of the cologne he wore while I rummaged through them. Another bust, I only found two candy wrappers and a toothpick. Must’ve been at Joe’s recently.

  The light continued to fade; I had to get out of there. My pulse jumped. The dresser was my next choice. Jeez, I’d be pawing through his underwear. I wondered if he wore boxers or briefs. The thought made an insane giggle catch in my throat. I’m rummaging around his room and thinking about his underwear. Get a grip, Jensen.

  The question was answered when I opened the first drawer—definitely a boxer kind of a guy. I removed one pair at a time and laid them carefully on top of one another. I would stack them in reverse order when I put them back. And then there it was, at the bottom of the drawer.

  I pulled the pristine Ziploc bag out of the drawer. Holding it carefully with two fingers, I opened the bag and sniffed the contents. The smell of decay burned the inside of my nose and sent me staggering back. Quickly resealing it, I turned the bag over in my hands while I studied its contents.

  The bag held one of the town’s less brilliant marketing strategies—a matchbook, its edges curled and stained. But the printing was still legible. The council had printed several thousand of these, and all the merchants were told to push them. Unfortunately, the demand for the matchbooks was less than anticipated and a few thousand were left over. They were recalled and would be used again next year. Luckily for the town treasury, the council had been smart enough not to print the date, just the words: Korn Karnival.

  Seventeen

  This was it—Rick had removed these from the dead man’s pocket. This was the reason he had been asking Ned all the questions about the Korn Karnival and wanted to see pictures. Did these matches somehow connect the dead man to the vandalism at the newspaper? Should I tell Darci about them? If I did, would she want to break into the newspaper office? Somehow, the Korn Karnival was tied in to all of this, but how?

  First things first, time was almost up. I needed to get out before Rick came back. Placing the bag on the dresser, I put the boxers in reverse order back in the drawer. When I picked up the last pair, I heard the sound—creak.

  Oh God, what now? Rick would walk in the door any second and I’d be standing there with a pair of his boxers in my hand and the Ziploc bag lying on the dresser. How guilty would that look? I shoved the boxers in the drawer and quickly shut it. But I forgot the Ziploc bag—it was still lying on top of the dresser.

  Muffled steps were coming down the hallway. I had to hide. But what about the bag? Should I waste precious seconds burying it under the boxers? When a key rattled in the lock, I panicked. Snatching the bag and cramming it in my pocket, I ran for the closet. Trite, but isn’t that what all good burglars did, hide in closets? I prayed, when I shut the door, that Rick wasn’t the type to immediately hang up his coat. If he were, it would be all over for me. I saw the light come on from the crack underneath the door and heard footsteps cross the room.

  My palms were clammy in the rubber gloves, so I peeled them off and wiped my palms on my jeans. The nervous perspiration wasn’t limited to my palms. My shirt grew wet under my arms and I could smell my own fear. Thoughts of Rick’s possible involvement with the dead man bounced through my head. What if he was involved in the man’s murder? What if he opened the door and saw me? Would mine be the next body on the riverbank? The sound of my own heart pounded in my ears in the silence of the closet.

  Where in the hell was Darci? Some watchdog. Didn’t she know Rick was back, or was she too busy with Georgia to notice? If I survived this—if Rick wasn’t a murderer, if I didn’t die from a heart attack brought on by fear—I was going to kill Darci for getting me in this predicament. Maybe not kill, but there are things worse than dying.

  A knock at the door to the room made me jump. I grabbed the stacked suitcases before they toppled. Footsteps again crossed the room to the door.

  “Darci, I didn’t know you were here,” Rick said.

  “I stopped by to pick up some of Georgia’s pickles. I saw your car outside and thought I’d come up and say hi.”

  More footsteps crossed the room. The next sound I heard sounded like bedsprings squeaking. Oh no, please don’t let Darci’s newest plan be to seduce Rick so I could sneak out. A faint noise signaled the door shutting.

  “Haven’t seen you around the library lately. What’ve you been up to?”

  “Oh, you know, this and that. How’s Ophelia doing? I haven’t seen her since we found the body. I wanted to call her, but you know how she is. Figured she’d tell me to go away and leave her alone.”

  “Yeah, she hates people making a fuss. She’s had problems at the library. All the little old ladies keep trying to question her. Bill and Ned have been there, too.”

  Shut up, Darci, you’re giving him way too much information. I pressed my ear against the door.

  “Really, both Bill and Ned? I know Bill planned to talk to her again, but what did Ned want?”

  Darci giggled. “I don’t know. They were in her office for a long time. I’ve always suspected Ned has the hots for her.”

  “Yeah? Does she have the hots for him?”

  “How would I know? Ophelia keeps to herself. Never tells anyone anything. I keep telling her if she would try a little harder, Ned would ask her out.”

  “Try harder?”

  “Yeah, fix herself up more, instead of running around in jeans and those silly T-shirts with the sayings on them. She could wear a little makeup once in a while. If she did, she’d be really pretty. And she should try flirting a little.”

  “I don’t know; I think she looks great the way she is, and I don’t think Ophelia knows how to flirt,” Rick said. “Not to change the subject, but what’s everybody in town saying about the dead man?”

  “Everyone wants to hear all the gruesome details, of course. Lots of speculation about who he is—or who he was, I should say. Some people are locking their doors now, but most think the murder doesn’t have anything to do with Summerset. Just some stranger murdered by some stranger.”

  “No connection to the anhydrous thefts?” />
  “No, why would they be connected? Is that what you think?”

  “I don’t have an opinion; I’m just an outside observer.”

  I smiled in the dark. Right. A very curious outside observer.

  “I did have a reason for coming up here, Rick, other than just to say hi.”

  Oh Lord, here it comes, the seduction. I could see Darci in my head, sitting on the bed, batting her eyelashes while she glanced up shyly at Rick. Maybe patting the bed next to her. Rick watching with this predatory male look on his face.

  “When I went to the basement with Georgia, to get the pickles, I thought I heard something, maybe a mouse. You know how these old houses are. Georgia didn’t want me to ask you, afraid it would be bad for business, mice and all. But would you go down and look? I’d do it myself, but mice give me the willies. I know I’d simply faint if I saw one.”

  Good job, Darci. I was so proud of her, appealing to his ego to get him out of the room and in the basement.

  “Sure, no problem.”

  The bed squeaked loudly and a pair of footsteps crossed the room. I heard the door open and close. Seconds later the stair creaked. How long would it take them to reach the basement? Hopefully, Georgia would go with them. It was too dark in the closet to see my watch, so I started to count—one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi. When I reached thirty Mississippi, I slowly opened the door. The room was dark, but with enough light to see that I was alone. I bolted out of the closet and out the door into the hallway, remembering to shut the door behind me. I managed to avoid the third step while I hurried down the stairs. I was almost there, around the landing and out the back door. The voices of Georgia, Rick, and Darci floated up from the basement when I reached the back door. I heard Darci giggle again. Even in my panic to leave, I had to admire her. No one played the fluttery female better than she did.

  The distance to the car seemed farther than I remembered, but finally I made it and was soon safely hunched over on the passenger side of Darci’s car. For the first time in over an hour, my heart returned to its normal rate and I could breathe again. Ten minutes later Darci joined me. We didn’t speak till we were a block away from Georgia’s and I was sitting, normally, in the seat beside her. Darci glanced at me.

  “What’d you do with the gloves?”

  “Damn.” I closed my eyes and groaned. “There in the bottom of Rick’s closet. Think he’ll find them?”

  “I don’t know. What do you think? Does he miss much?”

  I didn’t appreciate the sarcasm.

  “Forget about the gloves,” Darci said. “Even if he finds them, no way could he know it was you. We’ll deal with it, if it comes up.”

  The tension in my arms and shoulders seemed to leak away, and in its place came shaking, mild at first, but building. My teeth began to chatter. It was so noisy, even Darci could hear it. She glanced at me.

  “Gosh, you must be suffering from some kind of shock. I need to get you home and get something in your stomach,” Darci said, and drove faster.

  Lady and Queenie met us at the door and followed me into the living room. By now the shaking had increased to the point where I had trouble walking. Darci covered me with my afghan lying on the couch and started a fire. I was so cold, and couldn’t seem to get warm. Queenie curled up on my lap, but even her small warm body did nothing to dispel the chill.

  Darci came back a few minutes later carrying a steaming bowl and a cup, also steaming.

  “Drink this, then eat the soup. It’ll warm you up,” she said, handing me the cup and placing the bowl in front of me on the coffee table.

  One whiff of the liquid in the cup was all I needed to smell the whiskey.

  “Oh no. I’m not drinking this. Drinking two nights in a row is more than I can handle.”

  Darci stood over me. “Drink it.”

  I sipped the hot liquid and felt the heat all the way to my stomach. The shaking eased. I set the cup down and started on the soup. Darci sat in the wing chair across from me, watching me while I ate. Each of us seemed preoccupied and unwilling to start the conversation.

  The fire cast warm shadows around the room, and the smell of wood smoke drifted faintly in the air. The cat was still curled in my lap, and Lady lay down in her familiar spot in front of the fire. A cozy scene to talk about murder.

  “Okay, did you find anything?” Darci asked when I finished my soup.

  “Yeah, these.” I handed her the Ziploc bag from my pocket.

  “This is one of the matchbooks from the Korn Karnival this year. Are you sure this is what he took from the dead guy?”

  “Well, if you doubt me, open the bag and take a sniff. I did. Paper absorbs odors, you know.”

  “Umm, no thanks,” she said, holding the bag away from her. “I believe you. What was the dead guy doing with these?”

  “One of two things—either he picked these up somewhere, or he was in Summerset during the Korn Karnival. If it’s the latter, it could mean he knows someone who lives here—”

  “And that someone might be the one who killed him.”

  “Exactly. Rick thinks so, too.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Ned told me Rick was at the paper asking all kinds of questions about the Korn Karnival. These matches would explain his sudden interest. He also wanted to know if a lot of strangers were in town this year and if Ned had any pictures. But of course, he doesn’t, most of them were burned when the office was vandalized.”

  “It wasn’t kids after all?”

  I shrugged. “That’s my guess.”

  “The killer. Maybe Ned had a picture linking him with the dead man, but how do we find out?” Darci tapped her chin, thinking. “I know, Agnes McPhearson,” she said suddenly.

  “Agnes McPhearson?” I looked at Darci in surprise. “What would she have to do with this?”

  “She’s always taking pictures, fancies herself quite the photographer. All we have to do is get all the pictures she took this year. Maybe we can spot the dead guy and who he was with.”

  I hated to disappoint Darci, but we had one slight problem. “We don’t know what the dead man looked like.”

  “Why not? You saw him.”

  “The medical examiner said he’d been there for almost a week. Do you know what animals do to exposed parts of a dead body? I don’t want to gross you out, but from what I could see, there wasn’t much left of the guy’s face.”

  Darci paled. “I never thought about it. I really don’t want to think about it, either. Yuck.”

  “Yeah, well try seeing it firsthand. Even if we did know what he looked like, the chances of Agnes catching him on film are a long shot.”

  “Are you going to tell Ned about this?”

  “No. All we have right now are assumptions. But what if we’re right? We don’t know who the players are, and if we tell anyone about this, the wrong person might find out before we have any proof.”

  “That would be bad.”

  “Yes. That would be very bad. Whoever it is isn’t fooling around here. Whatever it is they’re trying to hide, it’s important enough for them to kill to keep it secret.”

  “And we have no idea who it is. It could even be Ned.” Darci shook her head. “We need to think this over, come up with another plan.”

  “Another plan’s right, but not one like tonight. No way am I ever doing that again.”

  “Okay, but let me think this over.” Darci looked at the clock. “I’d better go. We’ve talked enough about murder for one night, and you still look pale. Go to bed; we’ll put our heads together tomorrow.”

  Darci stood, grabbed her coat, and slipped it on.

  “Shoot, where did I put those car keys?” she said, groping in her pockets. “I could’ve sworn they were in my coat.”

  “They’re in the kitchen on the counter, next to the plant you brought me.” I rubbed my eyes while weariness crawled through my body.

  Darci’s eyes widened. “How did you know that?”
>
  “Know what?”

  “That my keys are in the kitchen. You came straight in here; you haven’t been in the kitchen.”

  I felt the blood creep into my face.

  Eighteen

  I walked slowly toward the library. I knew Darci would be waiting for me, but I had no idea what to expect from her. Her reaction to the news that I was clairvoyant surprised me. “Wow, cool,” was not the normal reaction. People either wanted their palm read or thought you were a freak.

  A week ago I wouldn’t have cared, but our growing friendship was important to me. I hadn’t wanted a friend since Brian, but things had somehow changed for me.

  The first person I saw inside was Benny. He balanced precariously on a ladder, changing a fluorescent tube. He frowned when he examined the end.

  “Hi, Benny.”

  Startled, he grabbed at the shaky ladder. “Hi, Miss Ophelia. Just changing the light.”

  “I see that. How are things going?”

  “Oh, okay I guess. Me and Jake went to a sale last weekend, but Jake said the auctioneer was trying to rob everybody. So we didn’t buy nothing. Too bad, too, had my eye on the sweetest little four wheeler. Woulda been perfect for getting around the farm and doing chores.” Benny shook his head sadly. “Ed Johnson bought it.”

  “That is too bad. Maybe you’ll find another one you like better.”

  “I don’t think so, Miss Ophelia, this was—” Benny stopped and began to fiddle with the end of the tube. I looked over my shoulder to see Adam Hoffman headed straight for me. The aroma of his cologne preceded him by a good five feet.

  “Ophelia, Benny, good morning,” Adam said, smiling sanctimoniously.

  “’Mornin’,” Benny mumbled from his perch on the ladder. “’Scuse me, Miss Ophelia, Mr. Hoffman, this tube ain’t working. Gotta get me another one.”

  Benny climbed down and lumbered off.

  I turned to Adam. He was dressed in his banker suit, polished and buffed till he shone—not a single hair out of place. His face still wore his patented smile, and the cloying smell of his cologne made me a little nauseous. I stepped away, putting distance between us.