Witch of a Neighbor (Witch Reborn Book 6)

by Belinda White

  I tapped the file in my lap. Maybe that made a little more sense than I thought. “What if it wasn’t about the money at all? I mean, if it was, then I’m right, and Morgan was a terrible burglar. But what if it was all about the risk and excitement?”

  He glanced over at me. “You think maybe she was a kleptomaniac?”

  I lifted a shoulder. “It’s the only way any of this makes sense to me.” I paused. “Unless she was hiring herself out to obtain specific items. But even then, why limit herself? It’s not like the items she took were ones that weren’t going to be noticed. So why not help herself to other things too?”

  Orville took a deep breath. “A kleptomaniac. I think you might have something there.”

  I gave him a sly look. “When do you think Patty will be done at Patience’s house?”

  He grinned at me. “You want an invitation for when she visits Morgan’s house, don’t you?”

  “Don’t you?’

  “Well, now that you’ve mentioned it, I rather think I do at that.”

  Chapter 10

  I know what I’d said to Orville about being okay with leaving Baby Pearl alone with Patience. Well, alone and with the accompaniment of a bunch of law enforcement personnel. But truthfully, it was wearing on my nerves a tiny bit.

  My man knew me. He didn’t even have to ask where to next. The car was already on the way home.

  After a second’s hesitation, he pulled into the farmhouse drive. Once he parked, he looked over at me. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll stay here while you go and collect Pearl. I have a couple of things I want to check out.”

  I waited for him to come and open my car door. That’s a thing with Orville. A gentleman to the very end, my man. Then I gave him a brief hug.

  “I might be awhile. That okay?”

  “Take all the time you need.” He hesitated. “I know you’re upset about the whole property getting sold out from under you thing, but Patience could really use a friend right now, you know.”

  I nodded. Lucky for her, she had two. Baby Pearl and I both. But then, that would be a bit difficult to explain to Orville, now wouldn’t it?

  The walk wasn’t a long one. As I got closer, I realized just how much work Patience had cut out for her. Funny, but I’d seen the place pretty much every day of my life over the past few decades, and yet it took today for me to notice how run-down the house had gotten.

  Not just the house, either. There were a lot of weeding and landscaping issues to be taken care of, too.

  The more I thought about it, the more a good old-fashioned witch’s work party sounded like a very good idea. It had been a while since we’d called one of them. They were good at bringing the local witches together for a good cause.

  This looked like a very good cause to me. Something told me that Patience didn’t have the money to burn to hire all the work she’d need done out to local handymen. And one person could only do so much. Hardworking though that person may be.

  She and Baby Pearl were both sitting outside on her front porch when I walked up. They both smiled at me as I walked up the drive.

  “How’d your errands go?” Patience asked.

  Which, of course, immediately caused me a small twinge of guilt. I totally should have brought the woman back some food. She wasn’t likely to have anything stocked up food-wise yet, was she?

  “Well enough.” I hesitated. I hated pointing it out when I missed doing something I should have done. “Sorry, I didn’t think to bring you lunch.”

  She smiled at me. “I’m glad you didn’t. The sheriff sent into town for food for us all. Baby Pearl had a container of fruit-flavored yogurt.”

  I raised an eyebrow at Baby Pearl, who wouldn’t quite meet my eyes. Funny, that. The child refused to eat yogurt of any kind for me. And believe me, I’d tried.

  “You’ll have to tell me the brand of that yogurt.”

  Patience nodded. “Happy to.” Then she took a deep breath. “Guess you’ll be going home now, then?”

  No. She didn’t say it in a ‘wish I could rid of these two’ way, either. Patience didn’t want us to go.

  I looked at her for a minute. “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On if there’s enough room on that swing for another heinie.”

  Patience gathered Baby Pearl up onto her lap and patted the seat beside her. “Plenty of room to spare.”

  I sat.

  For a minute or two, neither of us said anything. It wasn’t an awkward silence, either. Just three people sharing a porch swing on a gorgeous spring day.

  Finally, though, Patience turned to me. “I grew up here, you know.”

  Wait, what?

  She chuckled when she saw my look. “That was well before you bought the farmhouse. I’ve often wondered if this place isn’t why the sight is so strong with me. Living right here amongst the magic all those formative years.”

  I tilted my head at her. “Living amongst the magic? I think I need a little more explanation to explain that.”

  I mean, she couldn’t have been talking about us Ravenswinds. Not even my Mom. We had lived clean on the other side of town.

  Patience just looked at me. “Please tell me you are kidding.”

  All I could do was blink at her. “Kidding about what?”

  Then she was blinking at me. We stayed like that for a long minute. “You honestly don’t know about the ley lines?”

  I frowned at her. “Ley lines? Aren’t those things just fiction?”

  She laughed. “Oh, Opal. And here I thought that was why you wanted this place. Why I felt so guilty about taking it, too. But then, I rather thought I had a bit of a right to it, as the ley line in question runs through your property as well. I honestly thought you were trying to, well, hog the magic as it were.”

  I turned to face her more fully. “Let me get this straight. First, ley lines are real and magical? And second, there’s one that runs through both of these properties?”

  Patience nodded. “That’s right.” She leaned back in the swing and closed her eyes. “Can’t you feel it? All that wonderful, calming magic?”

  I copied her pose for a minute. There was definitely something to her words. But then, I’d always just thought that was the feeling of being home. Come to think of it, that’s how Sapphire and I had chosen that farmhouse all those years ago, too. It had just felt like home. Right from the start.

  Had we been feeling the magical ley line instead? Not that it made much difference, but still. It could quite possibly explain a few things.

  Amie and Ruby had been born in that house. Maybe it wasn’t such a coincidence that we Ravenswinds were so bloody powerful after all.

  Although Mom had never lived here, and she had power to spare, too. At least there was that. I felt better once I’d realized that. Weird, but true.

  My mind wandered back to her original statement. “You think the sight is so strong with you because you were raised here?”

  She nodded, her eyes still closed. “It’s a good possibility. My parents moved when I was fifteen. It was a very hard time for me. I missed this place. And the magic. I always felt like a piece of me had been left behind.”

  Patience went quiet for a long time. I let the silence grow as I digested her words. If I was forced to move from the farmhouse, I’d likely feel the same way. Now I knew it would be because of more than a house. More than memories, too, although I was sure they’d play a part in it.

  “The Sight isn’t something that is easy, Opal. This place, with its abundance of magical calming power, helped me as I grew into it.” She hesitated. “I’ve wondered if things might have ended differently for Trixie had she been allowed to grow up here.”

  I swallowed. I hadn’t thought about that.

  Finally, she opened her eyes and looked over at me. “I knew you wanted this place, Opal. I knew you had a deal with old man Cecil, too. It is my hope that you can forgive me for buying it out from under you. But, I have to admit tha
t I would do it all again. In a heartbeat. I need this place, Opal. With every fiber of my being, I need it.”

  I nodded slowly. “I think I’m starting to see that.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  I just looked at her, and she laughed. “I know. I hate it when people ask me that too. So, I’ll just ask, okay? If you didn’t know about the ley lines, why did you want this place so badly? I thought you all were happy living together in the farmhouse?”

  I smiled at her. “We are. That big house needs a big family.” I thought for a long minute. Her question was a good one, and it deserved a good and honest answer.

  “Mom left Sapphire and I a pretty good inheritance. I’ve never really had the need to touch it. Always been pretty self-sufficient. So I started wondering what I really wanted in life. Turns out, I had most everything already.”

  It was harder to put this into words than it should be. How do you tell someone about a feeling?

  “So, I guess when I ruled out getting anything new, I started looking at what I already had that I might want more of. I love my hilltop. In fact, love probably isn’t a strong enough word for how I feel about it. The thing is, my property line cuts right through the middle of it. Once I realized that, it was pretty easy to see what I wanted to spend that inheritance on.”

  Patience nodded, shifting Baby Pearl on her lap. “There’s a good reason you love that hilltop so much, Opal.”

  “Those ley lines you were talking about?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what are ley lines, anyway?”

  She thought for a minute. At least I wasn’t the only one trying to come up with words today.

  “The closest I can come to explain them is if you think about Mother Earth as a being herself. To my mind, the ley lines that crisscross the surface of the world are Mother Earth’s primary arteries.”

  “Only instead of blood traveling through them, it’s magic?”

  She smiled at me. “Exactly.”

  There was a moment of silence. Finally, she took a deep breath. “So, the suspense is killing me, Opal. Do I have one of your famous Karma spells in my future?”

  I chuckled. “Even if you did, I don’t think it would do you any ill. Not if what you are saying is true.” She just looked at me. “And no, I’m not saying I doubt you. If anyone would know about ley lines, it would be a Seer, now wouldn’t it?”

  “So you think my Karma is good? Even though I knew I was cutting you out of the deal?”

  “I would have wished you’d come to me first and explained things, but I can understand why you didn’t. For a couple of reasons. One, you didn’t want to risk losing the place. I totally get that, by the way. But also, if you had come to me, and Kelly Wilson had gotten wind of it, she might not have been willing to sell to you, either.”

  “Are you saying we’re good?” There was a lot of hope in her voice as she stroked Baby Pearl’s hair. I thought that Patience just might be a very lonely woman.

  “More than good.” We swung back and forth a few more times. “In fact, at the moment, I’d be hard-pressed to think of anyone else I’d rather have as a neighbor. This could be nice.”

  That earned me a winning smile. “It very well could at that.”

  We might have talked for a bit longer, but I smelled something mighty suspicious coming from the area of Baby Pearl’s diaper. Time to go home for a change.

  Besides, there were still things to do and places to go today.

  I wanted this murder business all wrapped up in a neat little bow for my new neighbor. Kind of a nice housewarming gift, I thought.

  Chapter 11

  Orville wanted to wait until Patty was free from Patience’s house to go any further.

  That wasn’t really the normal routine for us. I mean, yes, with Orville being a retired sheriff, he was a real stickler for keeping the local law up to date. But that didn’t mean we just waited around for them like puppies waiting for table scraps.

  And yes. I also knew that this time the local law happened to be a friend. A member of Team Destiny, too. Knowing that helped a little, but to be honest? It still rankled just sitting on our hands when we could have been doing something.

  When we got home, Orville took Baby Pearl out into the backyard. He had bought a couple of tomato plants for the two of them to try their hand at gardening. According to him, it was important to instill things like that at a very young age.

  For the record, I agreed. Sapphire and I had done the same with Amie and Ruby. Only it hadn’t been tomato plants we’d been growing. A witch’s garden didn’t have much call for tomatoes. Although, I’ll admit they were tasty little things.

  It took me watching the two of them out the kitchen window to finally get it. Maybe we weren’t being puppies waiting for table scraps after all. Maybe Orville was being more of a mother dog protecting her young.

  Now that I thought about it, taking Baby Pearl with us and possibly putting her into the sight of a killer wasn’t all that great of an idea. The whole waiting on Patty thing was most likely to not make me feel bad for having agreed to take Baby Pearl for the day.

  That would be just like the man.

  Unfortunately, if that was the issue, then it really wasn’t solved. Because no sooner had the two aspiring gardeners put those plants into the ground than Patty showed up on our doorstep.

  The new sheriff did a double-take when she saw Orville step into the house from the back door. Yeah. He didn’t exactly look like his normal pristine self. That’ll happen when you try to garden with a child not three years old yet.

  That didn’t mean he didn’t snap into immediate lawman mode when he saw her, though.

  “You guys find anything?” he asked.

  “Nothing worth noting.” Patty glanced at me. “The previous owner’s daughter sure as heck didn’t do Patience any favors. The woman is going to have to sort through a lot of junk in the next few weeks.”

  “Maybe she’ll get a lucky Karmic break, and Kelly will have missed something valuable,” I said. A person could hope, right? And I was pretty sure that Karma was going to be taking a bite of Kelly sooner rather than later. I was pretty sure because I was planning to help that happen. All I needed was a hair. Shouldn’t be too hard to get a hold of.

  I probably should have kept my mouth shut on that one, though, because all my words did for me was to focus Patty’s laser-beam eyes onto mine.

  “Speaking of Karmic breaks...,” she started. “I don’t suppose you have anything you’d like to tell me before I get too far into the investigation?”

  I glanced over at Orville, who gave me a shrug. “Might as well be upfront about it, if you’re asking me.”

  Patty’s eyes narrowed. “Upfront about what?”

  What could I do? I told her the truth. All of it. The deal with Cecil, the visit to Morgan’s office, the hair, all of it.

  “But in the end, you didn’t do the spell?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “There wasn’t any need to. By that time the insurance company had already hired us to build a case against the woman, so I really didn’t think I needed Karma’s help this time.” I hesitated. “To be honest, it felt kind of good doing the job myself for once.”

  When her eyebrows shot upward, I knew I hadn’t chosen my words very well. “As in building a case against her, Patty. I didn’t kill the woman!”

  She chuckled. “I thought getting a confession out of Opal Ravenswind would be a lot harder to do than that. For what it’s worth, I believe you. But I still need you to come down to the station and fill out a statement about your interaction with the woman. Apparently, Freddy Black has already been running his mouth about it. Better safe than sorry.”

  “Not to mention it’s just good police work,” Orville said, turning from the sink and drying off his now clean arms. “A lot of good police work turns out to be in the paperwork. As much as we hate to admit it.”

  Patty grimaced. “Don’t remind me. I have a ton of it to
sort through on my desk already. I hate to think how much more this case will add to that. How come you left out that part of things when you were describing the job to me? I seem to recall you making it sound a lot more appealing than sitting at a desk all day shuffling papers.”

  He grinned at her. “I think we both know the answer to that one, don’t we? I wanted you to take the job. Trevor wanted out, and the town needed someone capable in that position. Wind’s Crossing needed you.”

  “Yeah, well, the verdict’s still out as to whether or not I need this job. Probations work two ways, you know.”

  Orville frowned. “You hate it that much?”

  She lifted a shoulder. “Hate is a pretty strong word. Let’s just say it’s taking some getting used to. It’s a whole different world from my last job.”

  Well, yeah, it would be. Working for regular, everyday humans would be a far cry from working for the elite witches' counsel.

  Not necessarily easier or better, mind you. Just a very far cry from the same. Totally different skill set when you came right down to it.

  IN THE END, WE DIDN’T go with Patty to check out Morgan’s apartment. There simply wasn’t any need to.

  Patty was good at the job. If there was something to be found there, she’d find it. And, with the good working relationship we had with her, she’d tell us about it too.

  It was kind of nice having an in with the sheriff. Made things a whole heck of a lot easier on a private investigator, I can tell you that much.

  By that time, it was almost closing time for the shop, so we dropped Baby Pearl back off with her mom. I didn't feel too bad about it, either, as my adopted daughter Nancy was working part-time at the shop after school. Partly as a shop helper, but mostly as a babysitter for Kimberly’s two children. Baby Pearl and her older brother, Mason.

  It was an arrangement that seemed to work well. It would most likely work out even better in a few weeks when school let out for their summer break.

  Having a built-in babysitter for a few months was a nice thing. Especially when the babysitter was more than happy to help... and earn a little spending money too.