by Iris Kincaid
“Yeah, and there’s a fifty-fifty chance that he’s going to wind up the owner of this place,” Lucinda responded.
“How can you even think about selling this house, our father’s house, to that man?” Beryl said. Actually, she didn’t want the house to be sold to anyone. It was alarming that a buyer should step into the picture so soon. Especially one so unpleasant.
“This is precisely why there is a rule of thumb in the real estate business, which is that buyers and sellers should never meet. It becomes too emotional and too filled with prejudices and biases. People think they have to like the person who’s going to buy their property, who’s going to live in their precious family home.
“Well, after you sell it, it’s no longer your precious family home. And it’s unfair to the buyer that they should have to satisfy your arbitrary demands of likability. If they’ve got the cash, they should be able to buy. Can you imagine what the housing market would be like otherwise? Put yourself in the buyer’s shoes and just imagine having to pass popularity tests with the seller before you can buy the property.
“Now this guy is wrong for us, not because he’s got a big ego or because he’s got a bad business idea, but because his offer’s too low. And it’s going to stay low as long as he thinks that we have no other options. I don’t know if we’re going to have other options. I sure hope so.
“I just don’t want to turn out to be passing up this bird in the hand and then have the two in the bush never show up. I just hope that the café is a gamble that pays off.”
“I’m glad that he didn’t plan on living here,” Muriel said. “He would definitely get on my last nerve.”
“As you have gotten on mine,” Gwynifer reminded her. “If you'll excuse us, Muriel and I have a great deal to discuss.”
With the full dramatic disgust of a teenager, Muriel stomped out of the house with Gwynifer close behind.
“I'm going to turn in early,” Lucinda said wearily.
“It's only seven o’clock,” Mosh pointed out.
It was the end of their first full day as witches—eventful, alarming, exhilarating, and exhausting. Turning in early sounded like a pretty good idea. For once, the Shimmer sisters were all on the same page.
But while an early night, it was not meant to be a peaceful one. Of course, Beryl had her same old tiresome drowning dream. But something much more substantial was to disturb her sleep. A loud boom. What was that? A gun? An explosion?
She had to find out, and she wasn’t the only one.
“What was it?” Mosh said groggily.
“The sound of property values dropping, no doubt,” Lucinda fussed.
“It sounded like a cannon. Let’s have a look,” Beryl said.
They went out to the front porch. Against the dark horizon, flames could be seen and the screaming of fire sirens could be heard.
“Oh, how awful,” Mosh said.
“Yeah, but their fire department is on top of it. There’s nothing else we can do,” Lucinda said. “I’m sure we’ll hear more about it in the morning. Let’s just hope that no one got hurt.”
They could hope as much as they wanted to, but the flames were huge, and Beryl couldn’t shake the certainty that someone had most definitely gotten hurt.
*****
Early the next morning seemed like a good opportunity to check out the town’s breakfast eateries and get the 411 on what the fire had been about.
They couldn't have avoided the news if they wanted to. It was all that anyone was talking about, especially since a woman had died in the blaze. To their great surprise, they actually recognized the name of the victim—Harriet Jolly.
“Isn't that Muriel's teacher? The one who wanted to expel her?” Mosh whispered.
“Yeah,” Lucinda confirmed. “That's a pretty crazy coincidence.”
Across the large town commons, they saw a big crowd of people gathered around something that was draped across a fence. They couldn't quite make it out and drew closer to take a look.
It was a large white cardboard sign that read, A painful death and a slow one. As promised.
Of course, the Shimmer sisters recognized the words of Muriel Wilding immediately. The crowd gathered around the sign also seemed to be aware of the origin of this particular threat.
“It was that witch. That teenager. My son is in her class and she said it to Harriet Jolly yesterday, just after Ms. Jolly kicked her out of class. And now she’s dead.”
“We're not safe living in the same town with these people.”
Thankfully, the faces of the Shimmer girls were not yet familiar to the locals. They were able to back away and make it to Lucinda’s car without arousing much attention.
“You don't think . . . you don't suppose . . . ? This is pretty disturbing,” Mosh fussed. “I mean, I like Muriel a lot. I don't think she could have done this.”
“We have to tell her,” Beryl said. “Her and Gwynifer. Everyone thinks that she did it. This is awful.”
“Let's hope she didn't,” Lucinda said. “Even so, this is not a great time to be a witch in this town. Or to be a neighbor of Muriel and Gwynifer’s.”
“How could you say such a thing?” Beryl scolded.
“We have a business to create, and soon, we'll have a property to sell. Scandal next door is not good for business. Just keepin’ it real.”
Behind them, Beryl became aware that they were being followed by a police car. “Police. Following us.”
“No, we're not doing anything wrong,” said Lucinda. Just a coincidence.”
“I believe in witches and ghosts now. I no longer believe in coincidences,” Beryl said, watching the police car pass them and settle in front of Gwynifer’s house.
CHAPTER SEVEN
They all exited their cars at the same time. Beryl saw that Emerson was hard at work and had essentially torn down the old porch and was laying down a new foundation for a wrap-around deck. He paused at his work and looked on with curiosity as the police officer approached the young women. A Latino man in his mid-forties, he bore an uncanny resemblance to Javier Bardem.
“You must be Oberon Shimmer’s daughters. Boy, I never thought I’d live to see this day, and I sure wish your father had. I've only been in this town for five years, but he and I got to know one another pretty well. We both wanted to see good things happen for this town. I’m Sheriff Giles Ortega.”
Gwynifer was now standing with folded arms on her front porch, glaring over at the sheriff.
He sighed. “I've got to have a few words with your neighbor.”
“About the sign? About that teacher dying in her house last night?” Beryl asked. “I hope you don't think Muriel or Gwynifer had anything to do with that. They're really good people. They’ve been great to us.”
“Is that right? Well, if Ms. Couch is a friend of yours, maybe you should come over with me and help keep things friendly. She's not really all that fond of me, which is a shame. But I don't want it to interfere with the investigation.”
“Investigation?” Lucinda repeated, alarmed.
“Why don't we go over and have a chat?” the sheriff suggested.
He was absolutely right. Beryl could tell from the look on Gwynifer’s face that she knew exactly why the sheriff was there.
“You have come to accuse. Yet again.”
“I'm really sorry to meet again under such similar circumstances as our last encounter,” the sheriff apologized.
“The last time, you arrested a friend of mine, innocent of any crime other than being a witch, and now she languishes in prison. And you have come to make another false accusation.”
“I understand your pain about your friend, but the evidence against her was overwhelming. I sure wish that Oberon had still been alive during that whole thing. I don't think the conclusion would have been different, but you would have felt better if he had been here to make sure that no one was being railroaded. I know you would have trusted his word. He and I were both concerned about the Earthborn
being blamed for everything under the sun.”
Gwynifer cocked her head. She had rarely heard her own kind referred to by their preferred name by a Mole. Emerson had left his work and joined the group on Gwynifer’s porch.
“Everything okay?” Emerson asked warily.
“That depends,” Gwynifer sad. “What is today's accusation?”
“I really need to bring Muriel Wilding into the police station for questioning. But as Oberon once said, and I tend to agree, that when the public sees a witch being brought into the police station, the rumors start flying and everyone assumes they've gotta be guilty of something.
“So, because of these special circumstances, I'm willing to have a talk with both of you away from the station. But I do have to have this talk. Your friends can sit in, in lieu of an attorney. I just don't want anything happening behind closed doors.”
Gwynifer examined the sheriff skeptically and then glanced at Emerson, who nodded. She opened up her front door and gestured them all in.
Gwynifer’s living room was as conventionally tidy and pretty as Oberon’s was eccentrically jumbled. Muriel was sprawled in an overstuffed armchair opposite a television set that was tuned to the local news coverage of Harriet Jolly's death and the damning sign that the Shimmer sisters had just seen in town.
With a wave of her hand, Gwynifer flicked the television set off.
Muriel grimaced. “Seriously! The sheriff? Unreal. You know who must have put that sign up. There were over twenty kids in that class who heard me say that to Ms. Jolly. As soon as they found out about her from that explosion, they must have put the sign up. They knew it would get me in trouble.”
“You are the one who got yourself in trouble for uttering such a foolish thing,” Gwynifer said sharply.
“Muriel, where did you go after you left Harriet Jolly’s classroom yesterday?” Sheriff Ortega asked gently.
“I came home. And then I went over to their place next door, ’cause I knew that Gwynifer was there.”
“And then what happened?”
“I told her that Ms. Jolly was ready to expel me for getting perfect scores on my tests, and so Gwynifer . . . Gwynifer . . .” Muriel suddenly realized that she was about to get her guardian in trouble.
“I went to the school to have a word with Harriet Jolly about punishing young witches for being witches,” Gwynifer said defiantly. “And when I was told that she had already left school for the day, I went to her home to have a word with her. But I suspect you already knew that.”
The sheriff nodded. “You found her?”
“I did. She was in something of a hurry, on her way to a city council meeting.” Gwynifer turned to the Shimmer girls. “Marvel Canyon City Council is essentially an organization created to protect the innocent locals from the Big Bad Witches.”
“I wish I could say you were wrong. But there are a few members of the council very hostile to your kind, and Harriet Jolly was one of them. But you did exchange a few words, yes?”
“We did, though I knew it was pointless. She was as hardened against me as she was against Muriel. We had a thoroughly futile shouting match, and then I went back over to the Shimmers’ home.”
The sheriff hesitated, clearly reluctant to make the next inquiry. “Can you tell me where you were last night between ten P.M. and midnight?”
“Unreal,” Muriel groaned.” “Unreal. You can't possibly think Muriel had anything to do with that.”
“I have to ask.”
“It's a pointless question because I can tell you that I was at home with Muriel. Which is the truth. But that’s the same thing that a guilty murderer would say, isn’t it? And I could provide proof that I never returned to Harriet Jolly’s home. And I would still be suspected because people know or think they know that I wouldn't have to be physically present to have been the guilty party.”
“There have to be other suspects, Sheriff,” Emerson interjected. “Harriet Jolly was—I'm just gonna say it—not a popular woman. She had kind of a mean streak, for sure, and she rubbed a ton of people the wrong way.”
“I'll take any names you can think of and look into it,” the sheriff promised.
Emerson sighed. “I can't accuse anyone in good conscience.”
“All right, forget about who might kill her. Let's just say we’re composing a list of people didn't like her. That’s all.”
“Well, you know about that incident with her neighbors and their dog.”
“I sure do. They were actually going to be my next stop. Who else?”
“There's Peter from the city council. They had a crazy-fierce rivalry over who was going to win the annual pie competition during the Founder’s Day Fair. Harriet had dumped a few spoonfuls of salt in Peter’s pie mixture, and those two were at each other’s throats ever since.”
“So, she cheated. Did she win the pie contest that year?”
“No. I did,” Emerson said, trying to suppress a triumphant grin.
Their handyman! Had won a pie contest!
“I think you’re referring to Perter Cousins. He and Ms. Jolly served alongside one another on the city council for quite a few years now. I’ll definitely want to have a word with him.”
“Also, wasn’t she behind getting one of the teachers at her school fired? That’s just off the top of my head. But you know how she was. There’s going to be more.”
The sheriff looked around the group thoughtfully. “Oberon Shimmer and I always thought that it was important to keep him in the loop on any investigation that might affect the Earthborn. Now he's gone, and I'm hoping that one of you might be able to step in. It would be a real help to me, and it would help reassure your friends that the investigation was being conducted properly and without bias.
Gwynifer mulled this over.
“Beryl.”
“Yes?”
“It wasn't a question. It was a decision.”
“The Lost One,” Sheriff Ortega marveled. He did indeed have some familiarity with the Shimmer family. “Are you free right now to check out Ms. Jolly's neighbors?”
Beryl’s mouth just hung open.
“She is,” Gwynifer answered.
*****
This was Beryl’s the first time in a police squad car, a prospect that had truly preoccupied her when she was living out of her car. She had often envisioned being hauled away as a vagrant and standing trial in some courtroom for the crime of failing to make anything of her life. At least today, she was sitting in the front seat.
“We’re going to visit Cassie and Matthew Gomes,” Sheriff Ortega said. “They share a backyard fence with Harriet Jolly, and they had a bickering feud going on for quite some time, concerning the Gomeses’ dog, Buford, now deceased. They suspected that Harriet Jolly had something to do with the dog’s demise.”
“She killed their dog?” Beryl asked.
“She hated the dog. That’s true enough. Apparently, The Gomeses left the dog in the backyard pretty much all day long, and all night long, and it barked up a storm most nights. She took them to court and they were ordered to keep their dog inside overnight, but apparently, they didn’t always do that. And one morning, they woke up and her dog was dead.”
An autopsy turned out to be cost-prohibitive, but they suspected poison. So did I. It would have been pretty easy for her to just slip some poisoned meat over the fence one night and climb back into her own bed. But there was absolutely no hard evidence to point to. Harriet Jolly denied it. Threats were made.”
“What kind of threats?” Beryl wondered.
“I believe they said they wouldn’t rest until Harriet Jolly got a taste of her own medicine. She had a restraining order slapped on them so that they couldn’t come within twenty feet of her. That’s a pretty short distance, but they are neighbors, so it was unreasonable to require more distance. Oh, there’s Ms. Jolly’s house. As you can see, there’s not much left of it.”
That was an understatement. It was just a huge pile of charred ashes and rubble, surr
ounded by a thick police crime scene tape.
“We’ve got a CSI from Orlando arriving in about an hour. Hopefully, that will give us some direction to go in,” the sheriff said, but he didn’t sound all that hopeful.
The fire scene had attracted a handful of spectators, and Beryl’s head whirled around as she thought she saw a familiar face. Wasn’t that Mister Godfrey, the estate lawyer Gwynifer had sent packing? Yes, it was. Looks like he was Harriet Jolly’s estate lawyer as well. But shouldn’t he be at the hospital or morgue or office somewhere?
Just around the corner, they arrived at the Gomeses’ house. Cassie Gomes met them at the door and ushered them in. Her husband, Matthew, was waiting for them in the living room, clearly annoyed.
“I hope you aren’t expecting any crocodile tears from us, Sheriff. She’s dead, and she got exactly what was coming to her,” Matthew Gomes said. “Who’s this?”
“Beryl Shimmer. She’s giving me a hand with this investigation,” the sheriff explained. Beryl, this is Cassie and Matthew Gomes. I believe they have lived next to Harriet Jolly for over ten years.”
“Worst neighbor in this entire town, and we had to find a house next to her,” Matthew grumbled.
“As I recall,” the sheriff said, “the court ordered you to keep your dog inside your house for the entire evening. But it died overnight in your yard, when it should have been in the house.”
“We were just really tired that night,” Cassie explained. “I thought he’d let the dog in. He thought I had let the dog in. It was just a stupid mistake. We never would’ve been so careless if we thought it was going to be Buford’s last night.”
“What was the nature of interactions with Harriet Jolly after your dog died?”
“She was as mean and horrible as can be. When we were in the backyard at the same time that she was in her backyard, she would say out loud, ‘What a gloriously peaceful day it is. No more noisy barking.’ And she would laugh. And she would start loudly humming that song, The Sound of Silence. She would never stop needling us. Never. It wasn’t enough that she killed our dog. She couldn’t stop taunting us about it.”