Right Witch Wrong Time

by K. M. Waller

  I’d met him through Paige after his six-month stint in rehab. She worked as a nurse at a local rehab center and after spending a few sessions with Seth working on his left leg, she’d known we would be kindred souls.

  I tossed him the newspaper clippings. “The second in command got promoted to top dog pretty quickly after the murder. I’d call her main suspect number one.”

  He took the school picture with the group of girls and tossed it on top. “Don’t discount a teen mob mentality. I’d go through the statements from the girls and see who doesn’t match up.”

  “I don’t see anything in here about a boyfriend.”

  “Doesn’t mean there wasn’t one,” he fired back. “See if any of the girls’ dads live in the town.”

  “Really? A dad and principal scenario.” Seth had two step-daughters from a first marriage that were in their early teens. Bright, well-adjusted girls that he still got to see every other weekend.

  “Convenience is a big factor in affairs. You call in a girl’s dad a few times because of the daughter’s behavior or meet at school functions and something clicks.”

  “I will assume you know that from a past case you worked on.” I kept my tone teasing. Seth would never be the one to cheat.

  “A guy can have his secrets too, you know,” he teased back as he cleared the food away from the table. “But seriously. The animal thing bothers me.”

  It bothered me too. Vampires and were-animals in the area weren’t above suspicion. However, my intuition told me the attack seemed personal somehow. That Sarah wasn’t a random victim. But witches rarely got stabby. They preferred more theatrical means of death like curses or explosions. “Usually when there are animal attacks, someone reports seeing something. Or hunters come from neighboring counties to scour the woods for bears. I see nothing like that here.”

  He straightened some papers he’d rifled through. “It’s not impossible that an animal came upon the body closely after the fact, and the second coroner simply didn’t note it properly. I’m not saying all small town crime solving teams do a bad job at investigating, but from the facts I’ve read so far, this one did.”

  He kissed me on the forehead and then leaned down for another quick one on the lips. “I have some early clients, and I assume you’ll be at this for a while, won’t you?”

  I nodded and picked up the picture of my mother with her schoolmates. “This one really, really has my interest piqued.”

  Chapter Three

  I spent the few hours reading statements from at least thirty possible witnesses, my mom’s included. Seth’s soft snores from the bedroom kept me company.

  So far I’d failed to make the strong paranormal connection other than with my mother being a witch. I didn’t even know for sure if the victim or the school were paranormal. I could only make assumptions until I traveled.

  Like Seth had suggested, I separated a few of the girl’s statements looking for the teen mob mentality, not because they didn’t match other accounts but because they matched each other’s—almost too perfectly.

  My mom’s laid at the top of that pile. The three girls I’d separated from the pack had made the statement they’d last seen Sarah leaving with a man in a dark blue truck. However, two teachers and another few girls had seen her in her office late that night. Each could be correct if she’d gone off and returned at some point past lights out. No one else mentioned a blue truck.

  I pulled the statement from the new headmistress and placed it on top too. From all outward appearances, the murder had the marks of a crime of passion, which meant the murderer had to be someone close to Sarah with a strong motive. I still named Rebecca as my number one suspect.

  There weren’t as many statements from the townspeople and that surprised me. Either the school worked hard to isolate itself from the town or there really had been shoddy police work.

  I’d have to work the town differently.

  Next, I dug through the pile to separate the one person at the school who’d be the least appreciated, like maintenance or janitors. They moved through the halls without being noticed yet usually noticed everything. When I found no one who matched that job description, I placed that on my mental list to look into further.

  I tugged on my lower lip. This case would be a strain on my mental murder book. Memorization became a lifeline in this line of work. I’d have to leave everything behind from the case file and pretty much this decade when I time traveled. I couldn’t even take handwritten shorthand case notes for the concern someone would find or decipher them, creating a time ripple or butterfly effect in my present.

  Years ago, after the Agency recruited me and I received my first assignment, Lily Rose and I came up with mnemonic devices to help me with important details. We’d picked it up from a documentary we’d watched on mind maps.

  The devil is in the detail, she’d repeated time after time. I knew she worried that I’d travel to the past and not make it back. As much as she wanted me to be a regular witch—whatever that meant—she also wanted me to be successful as an agent.

  We’d decided to set it up like a tree. I’d picked my favorite tree from the front yard of the Walsh family home. A large oak with tons of low-hanging branches to climb on.

  I pictured that tree with every new investigation. Every suspect and witness ended up on my mental tree with their very own branch and leaves that described their emotions and set up the clues.

  Having magic on my side helped a lot too. Unlike regular detectives who had to follow rules, I got to play dirty with locater spells and using my powers of empath.

  I flipped the picture back and forth. Still, the added strain of seeing my real mother face-to-face wriggled my gut with worry. Distractions during an investigation were never a good thing. And wanting to know everything about her in the seven days allotted to solve the crime would be the biggest distraction of all.

  I picked up the picture of her standing in front of the two-door Ford Pinto, wanting to commit every detail to memory. What were the chances I’d recognize the car in town? The car’s driver’s side front tire was missing the hubcap, exposing the black wheelbase. The brick building behind the car was a blur.

  Or maybe that was my eyes from staring too hard. I wiped them and sat back in the chair. The clock on the stove unit switched over to five after eleven. I needed to get my details memorized and get a move on before midnight. The best possible time to travel through the cosmos.

  I stood up and walked over to the sink, putting distance between me and the file. I glanced out the window into the brightly lit parking lot. The apartment management spared no expense on making it harder for car thieves to troll through during the night. A movement caught my attention and a black cat with one white paw moved into view. Lily Rose. She lifted the white paw. I waved back. Then she dashed off into the darkness.

  It was nice of her to stop by and check on me.

  She’d called the assignment a test. Maybe so.

  I tilted my head back and forth to release the tension. Mnemonic devices, here I come.

  I grabbed a pad and pen from a drawer and wrote down all the important names and facts of the case. Lily Rose believed the best mnemonic to be acronyms and to use them in sentences. Other than empathetic touch, I could consider memory my other super power.

  Suspects: New headmistress, mean teen mob, a secret boyfriend, were-animal. H.M.B.A.

  Questions for townies: boyfriend, animal attacks, gossip surrounding school. B.A.G.

  Relevant information: Discrepancies in coroners’ reports and witch ritual at the murder scene. D.W. Hm. I scribbled and worked the initials until I had something I liked. Head of M.B.A. is a Dish Water B.A.G. The head of M.B.A. is a dish water bag. Not my cleverest but memorable just the same.

  I glanced at the clock on the stove again. Almost the witching hour. I studied the map of the town as it had been in 1985. Not much to it. A perfect place to hide a school of witches.

  I gathered all the file informa
tion and stuffed it back in the delivery box. The clothes they’d sent were stuffed in a white leather backpack with an Adidas logo, along with the cassette tape player and mixed tapes. I put my fake driver’s license, a few hundred dollars, and the letter from the employment agency in the side pocket.

  With a final glance in the bedroom to make sure Seth still slept hard, I slung the backpack over my shoulder and locked myself inside the master bathroom.

  Along with the calf-length button-up dress in pink and white, there was a pair of faux glasses that swallowed half my face. Fun. I put the dress over my sports bra and slid into a pair of basic flats. My long straight hair did whatever it wanted to, so I never worried too much that it wouldn’t fit the style of the decade. I pulled down the ponytail and tucked the strands behind my ears. I had a plan for that, anyway.

  I twirled in front of the bathroom mirror. Definitely more schoolteacher than Madonna It Girl for this assignment.

  Beneath the bathroom cabinet, I removed my witching supplies which I kept tucked inside feminine hygiene product boxes. No chance of Seth snooping through those.

  I lit the four candles I kept on the side of the garden-style tub and placed each one in a north, south, east and west position on the floor. I sat in the middle.

  Long ago, I’d memorized the spell, but each time I traveled, I rewrote it on a piece of paper to burn in the middle of my circle. Every witch had a different and unique method for their spellcasting. Mine felt a little overly simple sometimes.

  I recited the spell:

  “Crimes are unpunished

  The world’s not right

  Cosmos guide me...

  into the time-travel light

  To the past I’ll travel

  Absent of any time ripple

  1985 is my time

  to solve this heinous crime”

  I put the edge of the paper against the north flame and set it on a little ceramic dish in front of me. The flame glowed a magical purple, and the smoke made the shape of an hourglass.

  Here we go. I shut my eyes tight and clutched the backpack to my chest. I knew from other time-traveling witches that each one experienced something different on their trip. For me, it turned into an emotional roller coaster of crying, laughing, raging out in anger, then a peacefulness that had me sighing with contentment.

  It all lasted less than twenty seconds.

  A few extra tears slipped from my eyes before I opened them to check my surroundings. The smell of cigarette smoke slapped me in face. I’d traveled to a toilet stall inside a bathroom that needed a thorough bleaching.

  I sat perched on the edge of a toilet seat, the backpack still clutched to my chest. Someone had written several names on the door and phone numbers. Apparently, you could call these people for a good time. Ugh, teenagers.

  Craning my neck to listen for others, I heard nothing. The bathroom appeared to be empty, but the pungent smell of smoke came from somewhere. I cracked opened the stall and peeked outside.

  In the corner sat a teen girl with close cropped natural black hair who lip-synced to a song playing on her cassette player, her eyes closed. A cigarette bobbed between her lips.

  I stepped out hoping she wouldn’t notice me, but the door hinges on the stall creaked and announced my presence to her.

  “Crap, lady.” The girl jumped to her feet and stubbed the cigarette out in the sink. “I didn’t hear you come in. You scared me.”

  “You didn’t notice me when I came in and I didn’t think I had to announce my urgency to pee.” I slung the backpack over my shoulder and washed my hands in the sink like I had every right to be there. I eyed her again, placing her age between thirteen and fourteen. “Aren’t you a little young to be smoking? Those things can kill you, you know.”

  “Don’t get mental. What are you? My mom?” She huffed and pushed past me, slinking through the exit and into the outside world of 1985.

  A small throbbing began at the back of my head. Great, already forming a headache from the smoke and teen angst floating in the air. I dried my hands slowly with a wad of paper towels. Please let the girls at the school be more pleasant.

  I pulled the door open a crack to take in the establishment where I’d landed. The map of the town had shown a main shopping center with a hair salon, grocery, a dollar store, pharmacy, and flower shop. From the teen smoker being in the bathroom, I’d already hypothesized that I was in either the grocery or the dollar store.

  A woman pushed a metal shopping cart by the door. The plastic emblem on the front said IGA Supermarkets. Lucky for me this particular grocery had a back door.

  I slipped out of the bathroom and walked with my head held high to the exit. On one of my first cold case missions, I’d skulked around trying to hide my face and thanks to my darker skin tone, the store I’d landed in thought I’d been trying to steal something. A hard lesson to learn but one I never forgot.

  Always act like you belong. Better yet, act like you own the place and everyone there works for you.

  A bagger came through the exit at the same time and nodded at me. “Morning, ma’am. Didn’t find what you needed?”

  I shrugged off his question and kept my expression on the haughtier side. “You don’t carry the item I’m looking for.”

  He didn’t have an answer for that and held the door as I passed through.

  The bright sunlight warmed my face, and I squinted. A nice pair of oversized sunglasses would’ve been a good addition to the clothes. I dug through the bag and pulled out a weird tinted clip-on thingy. Could this be? I took off my glasses and snapped it to the front. Oh yeah, I’m sexy now. One of the agency rules dictated that nothing and no one could come forward from the past, so at least I never worried about pictures of me looking like this making it back to my present.

  I walked around the side of the shopping center to the main street. The town looked exactly as it’d been detailed on the map. Shopping centers on each side of the center of town, one blinking yellow light in the middle, a post office at one end, and the two-room police station like an endcap.

  First things first, I needed a watch. Like most people, I used my cell phone as a lifeline in the 2ks, but in the mid-80s, Silicon Valley was still on the edge of producing portable electronics. I’d also need a toothbrush and toothpaste. My mouth tasted funny from the time-travel. The agency couldn’t risk me traveling with items that had updated packaging, so I had to buy almost everything new.

  On my way to the dollar store, I passed a bench with two older gentlemen smoking and grumbling about the hotter than usual weather. They nodded at me and I gave them a smile and a friendly wave. If they were still there later, I’d see if I could get any information out of them about the murder.

  I’d almost made it to the store when I did a double take at the car sitting in front of the hair salon. Excitement shot through me. The brown Ford Pinto. I checked the front driver’s side tire for the missing hubcap. Sure enough, this had to be the car.

  Through the plate-glass window of the salon, I could see eight stylist chairs and stations with women in different stages of haircuts and curls and dyes. Could one of them be the owner? Could my mom be in there?

  A toothbrush and my nasty breath could wait. I yanked open the door and scanned the room, pulling off the ugly glasses and ditching them in the trash can by the door. While I’d planned at some point to have my hair done before heading to the school to acquire townie gossip, I couldn’t quell the urge to find out who the car belonged to first.

  A woman about my age with a spiky banged mullet and at least ten pounds of electric blue mascara jumped up from where she sat on a stylist chair. “Come on in, hon. You got an appointment?”

  “No,” I pointed behind me but hesitated. How did I ask about the car without arousing suspicion? I’d have to work my way into it. “You take walk-ins?”

  “Lucky for you I’m free for the next hour.” She circled around me. “My name’s Penny. I could work magic with your limp hair.”


  Limp, huh? Penny gestured to the chair she’d vacated, and I sat down. The four seats were filled on the opposite side of the wall and the other women in the salon had quieted when I entered. They soon took up their conversations again. A blow dryer started up at the next booth over so it drowned out the majority of the voices. I’d have to focus my questions on the stylist running her long, thin fingers through my hair.

  “What’s your name, hon?”

  “Netty Walsh.” I let the lie roll off my tongue.

  “Oh, my. Such a pretty name. How do you feel about a perm, Netty?” she asked.

  “I’d prefer just a trim,” I answered.

  The excitement on her face dropped a notch, and she raised a penciled-in eyebrow.

  “Why don’t you add a few layers,” I offered to keep her in good spirits.

  “Now we’re talking.” She wrapped a black cape around my shoulders and secured it at my neck. “You got family from around here?”

  The blow dryer stopped and her question bounced off the walls. From the mirror, I could see a couple of the patrons glance in my direction.

  “My employment agency is sending me out to the girls’ boarding school to teach physical fitness.”

  One customer behind us burst into laughter and her stylist tapped her on the shoulder with a comb.

  Penny tightened the Velcro a little more. “Hon, did they tell you that’s a boarding school?”

  More like witches’ academy, but I couldn’t say that out loud. “Yes.”

  A younger stylist in the next station over snorted. She had bright blonde hair and kinky curls. I read her name off of her cosmetology license—Missy Everett.

  “It’s a reform school,” Missy said when she noticed me staring at her reflection in the mirror.

  “Reform school,” I repeated.

  “Where troubled teen girls go,” Penny said, an edge to her voice. “Juvenile delinquents.”