5 Beewitched (17 page)

“Speaking of dresses,” Mom said, “I think it would be fun to dress up in our wedding outfits every year on the anniversary of our marriage, don’t you, girls?”

“And every year I’ll take the pictures,” Grams offered, adding momentum to this terrible idea. Holly looked the color of . . . well . . . puce. We shared eye contact agony.

Okay, if donating the things wasn’t an option, they would just have to have a fatal accident. A bottle of wine spilled, or a vicious dog snatching it out of my hands and ripping it to shreds. Or maybe it would be the victim of a robbery. Such a fine gown that a thief had run off with it. I had many more ideas where those came from if worst came to worst.

“I think I
will
have another piece of apple crisp,” I told Grams. Not fitting into the dress suddenly sounded like another brilliant plan and the most fun of the bunch.

Grams beamed, scooped a generous helping onto my plate, and passed the cream.

My visit with Iris popped into my head as I made short work of apple crisp number two.

“I ran into Iris Whelan today,” I told my family, nonchalantly, as though she’d popped into the store and we’d had a little chat. “She said to say hi, Mom.”

“Was anybody hurt when you ran into her?” Grams asked. At my grandmother’s advancing age and with the limited driving ability I’d witnessed from her, this wasn’t an unusual assumption on her part.

“That whack job?” Mom sputtered. “What did you talk about?”

“Who is Iris Whelan?” Holly wanted to know.

“Mom’s old chum,” I replied to Holly. And to Grams, “The other kind of ran into. Not ran over, ran into as in while out and about. Anyway, I ran into her.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Mom said suspiciously, sniffing like a pig after a truffle. “Where exactly did this conversation take place?”

I can’t pull anything over on the woman, even something as small as this. “Actually,” I said, not wanting Mabel to find out I went over her head on this one, “I paid her a visit.”

“Mabel and I were looking forward to going over with you,” Grams said, disappointed.

“A real whack job,” Mom repeated.

“Whack job, Mom? That’s a little extreme.” Although I’d been thinking something along the same lines myself.

Mom’s lips curled in distaste. “All those pithy little sayings. If I had to hear one more of them, I’d go crazy myself. She isn’t still doing it, is she?”

“Yup,” I said. “But you should be more tolerant. You know, as they say, you can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar.”

“Don’t annoy me, Story.”

I did an internal pleased-as-punch high five for getting Mom’s goat (is that one of those Iris sayings?), although let’s face it, Mom is pretty easy to annoy.

Suddenly, I realized that we hadn’t even mentioned the demise of a former local resident who had gone to school with my mother, one who was related to a family who went far back to the early days of Moraine. And that wasn’t like us. So I said, “It’s terrible what happened at Al’s farm. Mom, you were friends with Claudene and Iris, right?”

“Yes, briefly, until I realized that they both had issues.”

Like she didn’t?

“They fought over your mother,” Grams explained. “Both of them wanted her for themselves because she was always so gay.”

Holly shot me an amused look at the unintentional implication. Mom and Grams were always saying things that could be taken the wrong way. In fact, our mother still called flip-flops thongs. That always gets a reaction. And Grams didn’t seem to realize that the definition of
gay
has changed over the years.

“Your grandmother means that they competed for my attention,” Mom told us. “They didn’t like each other much, but both of them wanted to be my best friend. I was always in the middle.”

This was too weird. My mother was popular? Gay? As in happy and fun to be around?

“They broke the rule of three,” Grams added. “Three girls together just can’t get along.”

“That’s exactly what Iris said,” I said.

“Why not?” Holly scrunched her eyebrows.

Grams answered, “They just can’t. Four is okay, so is two, but three is the kiss of death.”

Mom piped up, “Finally, I’d had enough of both of them. The final straw was when Claudene started experimenting with magic. You just didn’t do that back then.”

I was pretty sure witchcraft and magic went farther back than Mom’s generation, but I knew what she meant. While I helped Grams clean up, I thought about the threesome. If Iris and Rosina hadn’t liked each other, had the tainted love potion been more than an accident? Had Rosina done it on purpose? We’d never know since the concocter was dead and gone. Though why had the two women kept in touch all these years if that were true?

“Claudene had a boyfriend,” I said after rinsing and stacking our dishes in the sink. “According to Iris, anyway.”

Mom laughed. “Maybe she finally figured out how to brew up a decent love potion.”

“What love potion?” asked Holly, which meant we had to share the whole bad poison story again, since she was the only one at the table who hadn’t heard it yet.

As I was getting ready to leave, I pulled Holly aside for a minute. “You’re a good dancer,” I said. “Want to join us for a dance around a fire? Aurora can’t make it and I thought of you.”

“Sounds like fun,” she said.

“I’ll pick up your . . . uh . . . costume from Aurora.”

“We’ll be wearing costumes? Trick-or-treating early?”

“Something like that.”

Holly wouldn’t normally have been my first choice as a sidekick. She’s way too citified and wimpy. Although she’s risen to some occasions, like whenever someone tries to shoplift from the store. Then the woman is like a Tasmanian devil on steroids, taking the thief down in seconds flat. And literally flattening the foolish person. But put her out in nature with crickets singing and frogs croaking, and Holly is afraid of her own shadow.

But my usual partner in crime had disowned me, and based on Patti’s irrational fear of all things witchy, she wouldn’t help out even if we were on good terms.

I’d given the invitation some thought, because I wasn’t about to put Holly in harm’s way. It was one thing to walk into an explosive situation and risk my own neck, but I couldn’t do that to my sister. That’s why I decided that the risk to us was minimal. All we had to worry about was tripping on the long capes and falling into the fire. And that wasn’t going to happen.

I’d reasoned this out like a real investigator.

If the killer was in their midst, she would be more worried about Lucinda actually conjuring up a spirit who might really be able to point a finger in her direction. Holly and I would be perfectly safe to observe the whole coven for suspicious behavior and possibly learn something useful about the witches. To be extra cautious, though (just in case I was wrong), we wouldn’t wander off from the group.

Originally I thought Hunter could spot us, but that was before the condition that I stay away from the witches in exchange for information. Hunter could never, ever find out about this. That would be very bad for our relationship. I didn’t think Lucinda would tell the investigator on the case about her plan for this evening. Definitely not. She wouldn’t want cops busting in and ruining the ritual. Maybe someday when he and I were old and gray, I’d fess up. Or after the bad guy (or woman) was behind bars. If he found out before that, I was in such trouble. Which reminded me.

“Don’t mention any of this around Hunter,” I told Holly. “He’s been acting weird lately.”

After giving her the when and where details (my house, five o’clock) and heading out, I realized that I’d have to tell her more about what she’d be walking (or rather dancing) into on our way over to the farm. But I’d wait until after it was too late for her to have second thoughts. Because if thirteen bodies didn’t show up, we’d have to postpone the big event for another time, and I didn’t have an overabundance of extra patience in this matter.

And with the hooded cape as a disguise, the witches wouldn’t even be able to tell that Aurora was really Holly. Unless we did the naked thing again. I hadn’t thought that particular part through very well, which wasn’t anything new, but things had a way of turning out.

As Iris would say, “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Seventeen

I made a few phone calls on the way back to town.

Patti didn’t answer, par for the course. She had caller ID and was snubbing me, I was sure of it. No answer. And no voice message option, either. She must be really ticked off. At this point, I wanted to make sure she was okay. Having her and her subterfuge out of my personal life had real advantages, but I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about how badly our last conversation ended until we reestablished a relationship of some sort.

What if Patti ended up moving away because of Dy? Not the most troubling idea in the world. That certainly had possibilities. I might actually get a normal neighbor for a change. Next I speed-dialed Jackson Davis, the ME. As the coroner, Jackson oversees all the autopsies in Waukesha County, which is spread over at least six hundred square miles with a population that has to be approaching half a mil. Good thing he has staff members to assist him, or he wouldn’t have time for little old me.

“Hey, Story,” Jackson said. “Let me guess why you’re calling—Claudene Mason.”

“You know me so well.” I couldn’t help grinning.

“And you know me just as well. Which means you have to know I can’t tell you anything other than what’s been released to the media.”

“I’m on Hunter’s team now,” I told him. “And so are you. We are one big, happy family. So pass me the ball.”

He chuckled. “I’m going to hog that ball. Sorry.”

“Oh, come on, Jackson,” I said, hearing myself give a Patti-style whine. “Do we have to go through this every time I call you?”

“I guess so.”

I let the silence drag out after that. Unfortunately, so did he. I broke it first. “Call Hunter,” I suggested. “He’ll vouch for me.”

“He might, but he doesn’t have the final word on who gets inside information. I wouldn’t be the professional that I am if I disregarded procedure. Sorry again.”

Geez, he was being an uptight you-know-what. Maybe I should have invited him out for a drink first. Jackson was usually much more cooperative with a little of Stu’s booze in his veins.

“Okay, I give up,” I said with a big frustrated sigh. “But can you tell me anything about the pentacle she was wearing around her neck?”

There was a long pause on the other end.

Then Jackson said, “What pentacle?”

• • •

I had to pull over to the side of the road, that’s how
excited I was. Hunter actually answered his phone for a change. I skipped our usual small-talk opening that mostly deals with what we should do to each other’s body parts and went right to the main topic. I practically shouted in my excitement, “Rosina, I mean Claudene, whatever, wore a pentacle necklace to protect herself from harm. Was it on her body?”

“No,” was all Hunter said after a short pause. That one word was like gold.

“Then it’s missing! This is so important. I can’t believe I’m the one who found out it was missing. Maybe if you had included me from the very beginning, we’d be way ahead of . . .”

“Calm down,” my man interrupted. “And start from the very beginning.”

So I took a minute to catch my breath and then told him about meeting Rosina for the first time, and her cool necklace. “Then a few minutes ago I called Jackson and we got to talking and the piece of jewelry came up and he said, what pendant, which really threw me for a loop.”

“How can you be absolutely sure she was wearing it at the time of her death?”

“Well, I can’t, but she had it on both times I was around, and if she thought it would protect her, wouldn’t she wear it to go out in the dark by herself?”

“So there’s a possibility it’s missing. That’s interesting.”

“Jackson wants me to try to draw it and make a copy for you, too.”

“That should be worth watching,” Hunter said, knowing that I can’t draw a semi-straight line let alone something as complex as a piece of jewelry. “Where are you?”

“Where are you?” I asked back, prying to find out if he’d finished at the farm.

“Around,” he said vaguely. “Why don’t we meet and have a drawing session.”

“I’m on my way to . . . um . . . Stanley Peck’s to um . . . er . . . compare beekeeping notes.” See how one little deceitful act like dancing with witches can turn into a full-blown cover-up? If I’d been more prepared, I would have told him something closer to the truth, like that my family was working on wedding plans.

The day was getting away from me. In a couple of hours it would be time to meet Holly at my house. I still had to get a cape for my sister from Aurora and work up a plan. Not to mention taking the time to give Holly all the details and then successfully handling the fallout from her. “This is more important,” Hunter said. “Be at Stu’s in ten minutes.” And he hung up.

Reluctantly, I drove back to Moraine, pulling to the curb in front of Stu’s Bar and Grill.