5 Beewitched (13 page)

“Iris was the one who drank the love potion. She’s the one who almost died.”

Eleven

I puzzled over the story Grams had told me until
Hunter finally came home. I’d just about pinned him down for our “talk” when we became distracted by the approaching storm, which slammed into town with such fury that the lights flickered and the electricity went out. So we stood together at a window watching bolts of lightning illuminate the sky like fireworks and listening to rain beat the ground, turning to hail at one point. Not much use having a serious conversation with all that going on.

I couldn’t help thinking of the campers, wondering if they were safe and dry inside their tents. If Lucinda’s work as an attorney ever fell through, she should apply for a position as weather woman on a local network television station. She was way more accurate than the current weather guy, who hadn’t warned us about any of this.

The worst of the storm eventually moved on but left my neighborhood without power and with a steady chilly rain falling.

What else to do in weather like this but to go to bed early, right? Hunter was fully on board with this plan, which I thought was a good indicator of exciting things to come my way.

Only he fell asleep immediately.

That hadn’t been
my
plan.

Ben had followed us upstairs, and he, too, snorted in his sleep from his bed on the floor. Not even the canine was going to keep me company.

Darn! Now what?

I got up and went into the kitchen where I called my sister Holly from my cell phone. I had to tell someone the story of the visiting witches, including my brief foray into the world of bare-naked rituals. I so love having a sister to share confidences with. We’ve had our problems, but I couldn’t image life without her.

During my tale of derring-do, Holly made all the appropriate responses—gasps, chuckles,
oh no
s, and
oh my God
s when I got to the part about the witches chasing us out of the water, another gasp about the spotlight and Johnny Jay stepping onto the stage.

Holly really ratcheted up her dramatic responses when I got to the part about how one of them died, which she’d heard about at the store, but I had some pretty exciting filler to add.

“What does Hunter say about all this?” she asked when I finally wound down.

“I’d tell him everything if I ever had the chance. Either he’s off investigating and not answering my calls or he’s sound asleep from exhaustion. It’s been like living alone lately.”

“Welcome to my world,” Holly said. With hubby Max on the road all the time, my sister was almost like a widow, a business widow, if there is such a thing. Then she added, “You two should tie the knot. Why haven’t you? Doesn’t he want to?”

“It’s both of us,” I told her. “I’m afraid to tie any more noose knots. Once was once too many, so this time I have to be absolutely sure.”

“You
are
sure.”

“Just agreeing to live with him was traumatic.” And it had been. I almost drove myself crazy going back and forth, one day thinking it was the best idea ever, the next deciding absolutely not.

“But you made the right decision. You seem so much happier since he moved in.”

Which was true. Hunter is a fine man, and yes, I
had
made the right decision to have him move in. But one day at a time, I tell myself. The two of us need a little more time.

“So what’s going on with Patti?” Holly asked, changing the subject, which was a relief because I was starting to think I might still have residual issues from disastrous marriage number one.

It was then that I thought I heard movement on the stairs. Was Hunter up? But then Ben walked in and greeted me with a knee lick. “She’s still avoiding me,” I said, letting Ben outside. “Hasn’t even been in the store, hasn’t stopped at the house. In fact, now that I think about it, she hasn’t been slinking around in the shadows spying, either. Or at least, not that I’ve been aware of. Maybe she’s gotten better at it.”

“That’s not like her not to sneak around.”

“I know, right? But get this, it turns out she’s deathly afraid of the witches and witchcraft. She’s the one who called Johnny Jay about the ritual. It’s obvious she really believes in all that stuff.” I walked over to a window and peered through the dark. “I see a light on in her lookout tower,” I told my sister. “Probably plotting against the new neighbor.”

Patti has a room in her upstairs set up with all kinds of surveillance equipment. When she isn’t snooping on the neighbors, she surfs the Internet for bits and pieces of our private lives to put together haphazardly and then present as facts through the gossip mill. Patti isn’t the town darling, that’s for sure. By now, she would know about the murder, so it was only a matter of time before she resurfaced, once more back in my life.

“I’ll have to make peace with her,” I said. “And find out how much she knows about the witches and the murder.”

Right after we hung up, I heard a masculine throat clearing coming from the vicinity of the stairs. Hunter walked out into the light, and judging by the expression on his face, he’d heard some of my conversation with my sister. But how much?

“So . . .” he began. Any sentence that begins with “so” has the potential for trouble. “What a surprise. You’re getting involved in this case, which is exactly where you don’t belong.” I gave him a cheesy grin. I would have edited the conversation if I’d known he was listening. What a sneak!

“I could point out that I’ve helped solve a few cases along the way.” He couldn’t deny it. I’d been in the right place (or wrong place, depending upon the point of view) at the right time on more than one occasion.

“And you can’t even blame Patti Dwyre this time like you usually do,” he said. “Even
she
knows when to stay out of the way.”

“That remains to be seen,” I shot back. “Besides, I thought you’d be proud of me. I can spy for you, find out where all the witches were when Rosina was murdered.”

Hunter had his arms crossed. Not a good sign. “That’s my job,” he said. “I’ve interviewed each of them.”

“And what did they say?”

“I have nothing more to divulge. You and I aren’t partners . . .” He saw my face darken. Or maybe it was the dagger eyes I was giving him, those little slits that mean I’m getting ticked off. “In a professional sense, I meant.” He took my hand. “Look, I just don’t want to see you hurt. A murderer is still on the loose.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“If you need incentive, I can go into graphic, gory details about what a knife like that does to a body.”

I tried not to gulp. “You’re starting to sound like Johnny Jay.” That reminded me. “The coven had a knife during their ritual. Lucinda was waving it around in the air, calling on who-knows-what. Was it her knife? She did it, didn’t she?”

“You don’t give up, do you?” Hunter sighed, deep and heavy. Good, I was winning. I could tell by that sigh. He went on, “Jackson has the body and the knife, which had been left at the crime scene. The women acknowledge that the knife belongs to them, but they also claim it went missing at some point during the night.” Jackson Davis was the local medical examiner. He and I go way back, and we’ve helped each other out in the past. Or rather, he’s helped me.

“The knife
did
vanish,” I said, going into a brief overview of my involvement. “Lucinda had it one minute, but it was nowhere in sight when they all went swimming. And it’s not like they could’ve been hiding it anywhere.”

“Promise me you’ll stay away from that whole bunch from now on.”

“I’d feel safer,” I said, avoiding making any promises, “if you’d answer my phone calls. You know I don’t call to chitchat when you’re working.”

“You want me to keep my phone on?”

“Yes!”

“So . . .”—here we went again with the so—“. . . Ben and I are on surveillance. Let’s just pretend for a moment we have a violent suspect involved. Maybe he’s armed, but I’m not sure. We’re about to make an arrest. And just then, my phone rings. Now he’s alerted to our presence, and the danger has intensified for me and Ben as well.”

“Then put it on vibrate.”

“I sometimes hear yours when it vibrates. I wouldn’t risk it.”

Visions of my man and our best canine friend in serious danger did it. “Since you put it that way, I guess I can learn to live with being ignored. But what about Johnny Jay? You have to get rid of him. And what happened with Aurora?”

“He questioned both of you without passing it by me first. I made sure she was released.”

“And Johnny’s out, right?”

Hunter really knows how to shut me up when he wants to. And right now, he wanted to. I was relieved that he hadn’t brought up the first part of my conversation with Holly. Hunter wasn’t a dodger; he liked to face things head-on, so if he’d heard the part about how agreeing to let him live with me was so traumatic, he would have brought it up. I’d have to be much more careful in the future.

We never did get back to the subject of the chief and covens.

Twelve

Friday morning arrived cool, crisp, and sunny. Hunter
was still sleeping, and I left him that way, quietly tiptoeing out of the bedroom. I was relieved to discover that the rash I’d suffered because of the pine tree had faded and stopped itching. While I was making coffee, Stanley Peck called my cell phone with an offer. “How about I open up this morning, take your place today, and give you a much-needed break from responsibility?”

Bless the ground that man walked on. “Yes, thank you, you are an absolute peach,” I told him, signing off with an improved outlook. It was going to be a great day.

I went outside to check on my honeybees, who were lounging, too, inside their hives, waiting for the day to warm up enough to launch in search of what might be their last quest for nectar before cold weather grounded them until spring.

Looking up at Patti’s window from my hives, I caught a flash of motion. Even with a murder and these weird visitors in town, life had been much less stressful without her around creating fireworks. Then I felt guilty for thinking that, because the woman didn’t have any other friends and considered me her best friend. As annoying as she could be at times, I couldn’t wish her away forever. Not that that was an option for the future anyway. From past experience, I knew that eventually Patti would show up out of the blue and go back to sticking to me like duct tape.

Dy came over as I finished checking the hives and finding them healthy and in good working order.

“Hey,” I greeted her, moving toward the door. “Come on inside. I have a hot cup of coffee with your name on it.”

Once we were settled at the kitchen table with steaming cups in front of us, I asked, “How well did you know Rosina?”

“Pretty well. She was one of the original members. Lucinda, Rosina, me, we’re the only three left from the original group. Or rather were before Rosina died. Now it’s only Lucinda and me. Most of the original thirteen left in the past year.”

“Why the high turnover?” I asked.

Dy considered before answering. “When we originally formed the coven, we all agreed to certain terms, especially that it was unethical to manipulate others with our magic. That was a hard-and-fast rule. Our intention toward others is what colors us one way or the other.”

“As in black or white.”

Dy nodded, and I noticed that she had tensed up along the way, a scowl etched on her face. She seemed edgy, nervous, not at all the same cheerful woman I’d met two days ago. “Exactly. And Lucinda has been moving into decidedly gray areas, going places with her craft that concern me.”

“In what way?”

“It’s hard to describe to someone from the outside, but sometimes there’s a fine line between a curse and a charm.”

I held my tongue (for once). I could see her point—both were intended to manipulate others, or at least to control circumstances and outcomes. Who got to decide where that fine line was? “How did Rosina feel about the new direction?” I asked.

“She had concerns and voiced them in private, among the three of us. I felt caught in the middle. But eventually Rosina usually gave in and went along with whatever Lucinda decided. I and most of the others couldn’t agree. One of the reasons I moved out here was to make a clean break. Apparently, I didn’t go far enough away.”