5 Beewitched (12 page)

Religion. Funny that Lucinda would group Wiccans in with traditional religions. I bet the head of the Lutheran church would beg to differ with her on that point.

I’d arrived just in time for a rush of customers. That was life in this business. Dead as a doornail one minute; flooded with customers the next. Lori Spandle chose that exact time (planned, I’m sure, for maximum effect) to make a grand entrance and start stirring the pot.

“One of my best friends is at the doctor’s office right now,” she said in a loud voice. “And she might have swine flu.” Her evil little face turned to the register, where I had begun checking out customers. “Has anybody been in Story’s backyard recently? I bet she’s raising swine back there.”

A few locals snickered at her attempt to ruffle my feathers. Seeing a showdown between the two of us was like having ringside seats at a wrestling match.

“Laugh all you want,” Lori said to them, “but I’m going to prove Story is to blame and that my friend got it right inside this very store because of poor hygiene practices.”

“That’s nonsense and you know it,” somebody said.

“Throw her out, Story,” came another. Advice I would have gladly followed, except my customers were doing a mighty fine job of defending me and my store.

“Lori has a friend?” I heard someone mutter. I wanted to answer that question with a big fat “no,” but I bit my lip.

This was going great.

They kept it up. “Spandle, are you trying to start something again?”

“Yah, what are you up to?”

How the woman makes a living selling properties in this town is truly remarkable, considering Johnny Jay would beat her in a popularity contest, and nobody in Moraine likes him one bit.

“Just remember,” I thought I’d better remind folks all the same, “nothing contagious ever started in my store, and it’s never going to, either. We take pride in cleanliness. Isn’t that right, everybody? Have you ever seen my store dirty?”

Everybody had to agree that they hadn’t.

Which reminded me that I’d better dust the choir loft before the seniors’ next card game up there. If anybody
was
going to find a fingertip of dust, it would be one of those women.

“Besides,” I blurted out. It just flew at her in spite of my effort to control myself. “The only pig in this town is inside my store.”

Lori’s face went even redder as she caught my implication. “You’ll pay for that remark!”

“You’ll pay for your products or get out of my store,” I replied.

After Lori stormed out and the rush of business slowed, I tried to call Aurora, but she didn’t answer her phone. Starving, since I’d missed lunch, I grabbed a yogurt from the cooler and wolfed it down while taking a break outside, where I was surprised to discover dark clouds moving in from the northwest, just like Lucinda had predicted. How had she called that one so right?

Stanley came in later and told us that Aurora had been called down to the police station to give a written statement. He said he’d been walking down Main Street when he saw the chief turn onto my block. “I thought he might be after you,” Stanley said to me, “but nope, he was being more sneaky than usual and was aiming for Aurora’s place. I hung around long enough to watch him pull out with her in the back of his squad car.”

“Why Aurora?” I wanted to know, but Stanley didn’t have any additional information. He did have some other good news for me though.

“Now that your mother is preoccupied and isn’t on the schedule, I’m willing to come back part-time,” he announced.

“Yes! Please! That would be wonderful.” Poor Stanley had endured more than his fair share of my mother’s verbal abuse and deserved the peaceful work environment I could now give him. That is, if we could just keep Lori out of the store.

“I’ve already cleared it with Carrie Ann,” he added.

Oh, right, I forgot about my manager. Old habits die hard, and I’ve done some impulsive decision making that Carrie Ann called me on later for not including her in the process. I’m trying to do better.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Stanley said.

Then I called home and woke Hunter. “Johnny Jay is out of control,” I told him after apologizing for disturbing his rest, only this was too important to ignore. “He hauled me down to the station and locked me up without benefit of even a phone call. I’d still be there if it weren’t for one of the witches being an attorney. Now Johnny has Aurora. Stanley said he saw the chief creep his car down Willow Street, probably so he wouldn’t wake you. Then he took off with Aurora in the back.”

Hunter offered up a few select swear words for the chief. I had some I-told-you-sos at the ready but kept them in reserve for our “talk” later. That’s what he gets for being nice to the jerk.

“And answer your phone if I call,” I instructed him before hanging up, having successfully sicced him on Johnny Jay.

Next Dy came into the store. She wore jeans and a long-sleeved tee just like I wore and looked perfectly normal like the rest of us. No witch garb or magic wands. “I’m so sorry about Rosina,” I said. “Were you there when it happened?”

Dy shook her head. “I went to bed as soon as they left. I’m so glad I wasn’t there since I would have freaked out.”

The twins had arrived to take over for what was left of the afternoon and into the evening. Usually on Thursdays, I’d spend the next hour or two catching up with paperwork, but I had other things on my mind. “Want me to show you around town?” I asked Dy, thinking it might take her mind off the death of one of her friends.

“Another time maybe,” she said. “It’s going to rain soon anyway.”

“Come on then. Let me make you some tea at my house.”

We walked the short distance back to Willow Street together. I saw that my man and his dog had taken off, probably after the chief. I couldn’t help thinking about how empty Willow Street seemed. Patti had been nowhere in sight since our standoff yesterday, and Aurora was at the police station being grilled. It was just me and the new neighbor.

Before putting the kettle on, we toured the beeyard. Most of my bees were sticking close to home today, either inside their hives or hanging around the last blooms on the fall flowers.

“Honeybees don’t make honey for us,” I explained. “We are robbers just like bears are. They make it for themselves to supply winter calories.”

Dy laughed. “Why am I surprised that bees eat honey?”

“You aren’t alone,” I said with a grin. “The general population is pretty ignorant when it comes to the life of bees. Beekeepers work hard to educate people. Come on, let’s get that tea I promised you.”

Hands wrapped around our teacups, hearing thunder rumble in the distance, we sat at my kitchen table.

“So how is Greg taking this?” I asked, just for the sake of having something to talk about.

“He’s devastated, as you would expect, but he’s also riddled with guilt.”

“Guilt?”

“His dad and aunt were estranged.”

I nodded. “Everybody in town knew that.”

“I first met Greg through Rosina. He and his aunt secretly kept in touch. When I moved to Moraine, he came up with a plan to reconcile his two closest family members.”

“Did Rosina agree to his plan?” I asked.

“She did. Welcomed the opportunity, in fact.”

I took a sip of my tea and thought about that. “I can’t believe Al went for it. He’s stubborn and pretty unyielding.”

“Greg didn’t tell him.” She smiled sadly. “Perhaps he thought once Rosina arrived at the farm, she could charm him.”

Her magic hadn’t helped. Instead, she was dead. No wonder Greg felt guilty. He’d brought her here, to her death.

“It isn’t his fault,” I said. “His intentions were good. The one to blame is the one who stabbed her to death.”

“In the meantime, he’s thrown himself into working on the corn maze,” Dy said with a sigh. “They’re scrambling to finish by tomorrow, but Greg says they found extra help for the corn stand. He claims they’re going to make it. I bet they work right through this approaching bad weather.”

“It’s really opening as planned then?”

“Greg says this is the time of year the farm makes most of its profits. The corn maze is a big part of that. He and Al argued that point with the authorities when they were considering closing it down. The police have cordoned off the section where Rosina died, but they will try to be through with that part of the investigation in time for the grand opening.”

“So you know where her body was found, too? I assumed that information was being withheld.”

“Greg told me.”

Of course, the farm belonged to his family, so he’d be one of the first to know. But he shouldn’t have gone blabbing it around. This could spread like wildfire if somebody didn’t contain it soon. “Please don’t tell anyone else about that. It could hurt Al’s business.”

“It’s a closely held secret.”

“But you just told me,” I replied with a major amount of frustration.

Dy gave me a mysterious Mona Lisa smile. “You’re one of us now,” she told me.

Not wanting to get in deeper than I already was with this group, I got firm. “I am not one of you. Not even close. I don’t believe in witchcraft or magic spells.” There!

“Relax,” Dy said, not looking offended in the least, so I suspected that my reaction was a common one. “I didn’t offer any more information than you already had from your conversation with Lucinda.”

“So you talked to her?”

She nodded. “A little while ago. On the phone. See, nothing magical about it.”

“Lucinda wants me to help with the ritual tomorrow,” I said. “You’ll be there, right?”

Dy looked pained and grudgingly said, “Of course. When Lucinda tells us to jump, we ask how high. How did she talk you into joining us?”

“I owe her a favor.” I told Dy about the lockup, and how Lucinda rescued me after Aurora alerted her. I finished with, “Aurora must have seen me get into the chief’s car,” convinced that was the most logical explanation.

Then we got into a discussion about witch names, and I found out that Dyanna was born Susan, that Tabitha was Karen, that Lucinda really is Lucy (which I already knew through Hunter), and all the other coven members’ names until my head started to spin.

“How am I ever going to remember all that?” I said.

“You don’t have to.” Dy took a sip of her tea. “Our witch names are all you really need.”

“Do you change them legally?” I asked since Hunter had mentioned that Claudene had officially changed hers.

“No, why would we bother? And besides, we use our given names all the time—at our jobs, filing taxes, mortgages. Only our close friends call us by our witch names, and as the first neighbor to welcome me to town, you certainly qualify.”

If the witches weren’t in the habit of legally changing their names, why had Claudene gone to all the trouble to officially change hers? And did it matter?

After Dy went home, I called Grams.

“I heard about that poor Mason woman’s death,” she said, which was a given considering my grandmother’s honored position in the community.

“Why was she called Crazy Claudene?” I asked after the usual pleasantries.

“That poor girl just wasn’t normal from the very beginning,” my sweet grandmother said. “She went to school with your mother, you know, so she came to our house a few times, but Claudene just wasn’t quite right.”

“So what does that mean?” I asked. “In the scheme of things are any of us actually ‘normal’? And who gets to decide? Normal in Moraine is way different than normal is in a big city, right?”

“Story, sweetie, Claudene talked to animals.”

I’ve done my share of that, too. Hasn’t everyone? “So?”

“So she listened to them, and they talked back. She had conversations with ghosts, too.”

“Ghosts?” I might have my doubts about witches, but I believed in ghosts. “She talked to ghosts?”

“I thought her interest in the paranormal was harmless at first. Until she talked the other girls, your mother included, into a séance using a Ouija board and scared those young people almost out of their minds. The other girls insisted she’d let evil spirits into the room, and the stories about that night got wilder and wilder. The other parents and I began keeping a closer eye on that Claudene.

“Then,” Grams continued, “things got really dicey, and she almost killed one of the girls after convincing her to drink a love potion to get the boy she had a big crush on. Claudene claimed it would make her irresistible. You know how young girls are about boys!”

Did I ever! That’s all we thought about. Boys.

Grams went on, “And there was a popular song at the time, about love and potions. I forget the title.”

“Love Potion No. 9.”

“That’s it. Claudene mixed up a brew of some sort for the girl. One of the ingredients was rhubarb. I’m sure she didn’t mean any harm when she added the leaves.”

“Rhubarb leaves are poisonous!” In this area of the countryside, we all pretty much know that. But had I known it when I was in high school? Probably not, because I was pining over one boy after the other and was way too busy for that kind of trivia.

“After that, none of the girls were allowed near her,” Grams continued her story, “and soon, the family decided she needed a fresh start and sent her to live with relatives in Milwaukee.”

So Claudene had had witch tendencies from an early age. Interesting. “I wonder if anyone from those days kept in touch with her,” I said out loud. “I think I’ll ask Mom a few questions.”

“You should talk to Mabel’s niece, Iris,” Grams said. Mabel was Grams’s best friend, but I didn’t want her to get involved; she’d start making phone calls, setting up a meeting, et cetera. Then every last detail, every question and answer, would hit the grapevine.

“I’ll just call Mom tomorrow,” I decided.

“Your mother is busy with her wedding plans and is a complete airhead right now. Tom, Tom, Tom, that’s all she can focus on!” Grams chuckled and I joined in, thinking of my pragmatic mother becoming a ditz. Stranger things have happened, but at the moment I couldn’t think of a single example.

“Besides,” Grams said, “don’t you want to hear it from the horse’s mouth?”

“The horse’s mouth?” I repeated.