5 Beewitched (4 page)

Me? I used to participate in track and still can haul if I have to and if I’m not wearing flip-flops, which I love. I have an awesome collection of footwear and I add to it frequently.

However, the similarities between us end there. I’ll describe the distinctions my favorite way, in bullet points:

• Holly lives in a McMansion on a lake.
  
• She drives a Jag.
  
• She is filthy rich after marrying Max the Money Machine.
  

While:

• I live in the old family home after our mother cut me a good deal.
  
• I drive an old pickup truck.
  
• I have to budget to make ends meet.
  

Not that the store and honey business aren’t doing well. They both are, but I put most of the profits back in, making everything better and better as time goes by.

There’s another difference between us, one I try to overlook, but the fact keeps smacking me right in the face. Mostly because my family members work, eat, and breathe the air of the same community, and some facts of life are just impossible to totally ignore. That in-my-face fact that is so true and hurts on a regular basis whether I try to stop it or not is this:

Holly is Mom’s favorite.

Always has been, always will be.

Hands down, she’s our mother’s pet.

That’s the main reason, besides the fact that she has too much time on her hands and lots of money to contribute, that she gets to act as wedding consultant for Mom and Tom’s wedding, which is coming up in two weeks. After five years of widowhood, Mom is tying the knot again. It’s been hard imagining anybody taking Dad’s place, even though I like Tom a lot. He makes Mom happy (therefore tolerable), and that’s all that should count. So I’m doing my best to adjust.

Right now, however, hearing my sister talk about selecting flowers brought back that old familiar twinge of jealousy. It reared its ugly head and roared inside me. But to be perfectly honest, Mom and I get along best at a distance. We don’t work well together. In fact, we’ve butted heads at the store so many times I’ve probably lost some of my more important brain cells. Putting our noggins together to come up with wedding ideas could result in one of us losing our head and saying or doing something non-retractable. Or possibly I’d just lose my mind completely and sit around babbling on the bench in front of what used to be my store before I was declared insane and the entire business I’d built from scratch was awarded to Mom.

My hope is that our Wild Clover conflicts are a thing of the past, though, now that Mom is going to be a Mrs. again and won’t have time to interfere in my business. Tom owns an antique store in town, and that should keep her plenty busy.

“She didn’t ask
me
to help,” I said, trying to keep the whine out of my voice, realizing after being around P. P. Patti how truly annoying that childish tone can get.

“You didn’t offer,” came the reply.

“She would have turned me down.”

Holly harrumphed before saying, “You didn’t even try.” Which was sort of the truth, but hey, there are just so many times a daughter will stick out her neck only to have it chopped off time after time. I might be slow on the initial uptake, but eventually I learn to avoid rejection.

I’d totally forgotten about Aurora until she called out to us, “I hope your family is going to order flowers from my garden center.”

“Of course,” I replied back, not sure at all what Mom’s plan was, but whatever it was really ought to include as many local businesses as possible. Then to Holly, “What kind of flowers were you thinking?”

“Cultivated and fresh ones,” my sister said, sliding her eyes to Aurora. I caught her meaning. Mom didn’t want purple cone flowers and native asters. She wanted tradition all the way, and that meant cut flowers stored in a cooler until the very last minute.

“Mine couldn’t be fresher,” the green-thumbed, green-sundressed gardener pointed out. “Still potted, in fact. Flowers don’t get any fresher than that.”

“True,” I had to agree.

“Well, since the fall colors are peaking,” Holly said to us, “I thought dahlias would be nice, bright yellows and burnt oranges, with ivory roses, and dried grasses.”

Holly and I both knew that Aurora’s garden carried native plants, so roses were definitely not doable for her. At least not the kind used in weddings. The dahlias I didn’t know about until Aurora piped up and confirmed she didn’t have them.

“But I can supply the dried grasses,” Aurora said, always the businesswoman.

Holly’s flower arrangement
did
sound beautiful.

Okay, maybe there was a logical, practical reason I wasn’t in charge of flowers. My idea of a bouquet is an eclectic bunch of blooming flowers cut from my garden—mums, hydrangeas, marigolds. Not that my arrangements aren’t pretty, they just aren’t as orderly and structured as my mother likes things to be.

“The bouquet sounds nice,” I muttered, but grudgingly, watching Holly take off. I hadn’t even had a chance to tell her about the new resident on my block. Oh well, I had another neighbor right here who would find it fascinating.

As I finished checking out Aurora’s groceries, I brought her up to speed. “Right this minute, a real, honest-to-gosh witch is moving in on our street,” I told her, watching her perk right up at the new information.

“I saw the moving truck,” she said, suddenly more animated than I’ve ever seen her before. “But how do you know she’s a witch?”

I knew this would be right up Aurora’s alley. That is, if we had an alley, which we don’t.

“Her name is Dy,” I said. “And I know because she has a wand and she’s waving it around, casting spells to keep out demons.”

“Really?”

“Don’t tell me you have witch tendencies of your own,” I said, opening up my eyes wide in pretend surprise, leading her along. I knew Aurora would jump right into any magic realm standing in her path.

“I believe in pretty much everything,” Aurora said, confirming my take on her. “And who really knows? If fairies and elves are real, why not witches?”

Okay then. If you believed in fairies and elves, witches would be a piece of cake.

“I have to go meet this person right this minute. Thank you, Story, you’ve made my day.” With eyes like saucers—the UFO kind—Aurora grabbed her bag and disappeared out the door, traveling at warp speed.

What a positive reaction compared to Patti’s dreadful one. Different strokes for different folks, as my tolerant grandmother would say.

I’d barely thought of Grams when the little woman herself bounced into my store as perky as ever. She had her point-and-shoot dangling from her wrist and a fresh spray of tiny blue autumn asters tucked into her gray bun. Grams loves taking photos just as much as she digs gardening.

“A white van filled with women just pulled up outside, so get ready for business,” she said, scooting behind the register and giving me a hug. “They’re all dressed in black mourning dresses.”

“Did somebody die?” I asked her. Grams has lived in this community her entire life and knows everything going on at any given moment, sometimes even before it happens. If anybody was dead, she’d know.

“Not that I’m aware of, sweetie.”

The door to the store opened, and in they came.

There were eleven of them (I actually counted as they filed past the register), all females as Grams had said, but only about half of them were really wearing black clothes. Grams shrugged when I pointed that out once they were out of earshot. “Those were the first ones I saw,” she said in a whisper. “I just assumed about the rest. What do you suppose is up?”

I had a pretty good idea why they were here and where they were heading, but The Wild Clover (like all of the shops on Main Street) has its share of passersby traveling the Rustic Road, tourists heading to Holy Hill, a national shrine that draws plenty of attention. Still, even with all our traffic, these women stood out.

We watched them from our vantage point behind the register as they walked through the store, picking out items and putting them in the baskets dangling from their arms. I don’t know about Grams, but personally I’ve never seen so many big rings and chunky pendants in one place, other than the time I’d mistakenly entered a Milwaukee head shop thinking it was a thrift store.

My bevy of new customers ranged in age from around thirtyish to mid-sixties, and not a pair of pants in the bunch, all free-flowing skirts, shawls, and lightweight caftans—half of them all black, the others every color of the rainbow.

Grams, being old enough to get away with anything, took pictures of them without anyone complaining or threatening to break her camera. I would have felt uncomfortable, but not Grams.

“You’re here to visit our newest resident, aren’t you?” I asked one of the women, who looked to be about my mother’s age, as she took in my honey display.

“Yes, we are,” she said, turning overly rouged cheeks toward me and looking a little surprised at my observation. “Our friend Dy Crane just moved here. Are you psychic?”

I laughed. “Don’t I wish. The truth is she’s my new neighbor. We met this morning while she moved in. Nice necklace,” I said, admiring the woman’s accessory—a five-pointed star in a circle with a blue crystal in the center.

“It’s a pentacle,” she told me, fingering the necklace. “It protects me.”

What was with the paranoia? First Dy has to cast spells around her house to keep out bad spirits, now a customer arrives with a protection necklace. Apparently the witch business is fraught with perceived peril.

“Rosina,” someone else called out to her, rather demandingly, I thought. Pentacle woman looked annoyed but turned and went over to the woman who’d called her away, and they picked through the garlic basket, bent over in hushed tones.

“Mabel has been using garlic to ward off witches and spirits,” Grams said to me, her voice a whisper in my ear as she referred to her best friend.

“Tell Mabel to stop bothering,” I suggested to my grandmother as Rosina chose a bulb of garlic and placed it in her basket. “Obviously garlic doesn’t work.”

Grams went over and asked the one called Rosina to pose holding her garlic and took a picture of her as proof for Mabel. I can’t believe how my grandmother can charm people. She even got the witch to smile for the camera.

Just then Stanley Peck came through the door. Stanley is a widower in his sixties, a good friend, who works at the store periodically when I’m in a bind, and he’s also an enthusiastic newbie beekeeper. Lately he’s been experimenting with a different type of hive, one that will be great for urban beekeepers, building it himself.

Ever since Stanley shot himself during an altercation with a temporary worker at his farm, he’s been limping. And packing heat. My friend has a thing about governmental interference in his right to bear arms, and he likes to stick it to ’em even if he has to hide his defiance in a shoulder holster. (Or wherever he hides it. I’m not exactly sure.)

Stanley wasn’t on the schedule to work since a run-in with my mother that caused him to quit before he up and shot her. And he’d been in yesterday to stock up on grocery supplies, so that left only one explanation for his timely appearance.

He was as much a busybody as the rest of the town.

Behind Stanley came a few other local customers, then a few more, making up a beeline just like my honeybees. This beeline, among other locals, also included Emily, Moraine’s library director, claiming she needed juice boxes for story time; Stu from the bar and grill, who had already picked up his morning paper but went ahead and bought a second one to keep up appearances; and Larry from Koon’s Custard Shop, which should be opening about now, but he was taking his time about it. DeeDee Becker, Lori Spandle’s klepto sister, decided this was a perfect opportunity to fill her gigantic tote with free products, which sent Stanley hot on her trail as she ducked down aisles. Even Joan Goodaller, Al Mason’s main squeeze, had held off opening the farm’s corn on the cob and caramel apple stand down the street in favor of mouthwatering gossip.

If I’d told the witch Rosina ahead of time that this was about to happen, that the store would be deluged with business during the brief time they were shopping, she would have been totally convinced of my psychic ability. I don’t really have any, but predicting what Moraine’s residents will do when a van of strange women pull up in front of the store is so . . . well . . . predictable.

They’re gonna hustle right over to the store to snoop.

Mid-afternoon isn’t usually very busy, as Holly had pointed out during her escape, so I was alone for the unexpected rush of business. But everyone was patient and friendly in line, and Stanley pitched in as my bagger. What a guy!

Grams hung around the whole time, gathering details and more photos to share with her card-playing senior citizen group.

I had to chuckle to myself, thinking about how once the regular customers figured out we had honest-to-goodness witches in town, one of whom had moved in right under their noses, we were going to have some lively debates going on. I just hoped for less of the Patti-type reactions from them and more of the Aurora kind, although there wasn’t really much hope of that.

Lori Spandle, nasty real estate agent and nemesis extraordinaire, came in, all round faced like a tomato and ripe for a fight. Before she whipped out her arsenal of verbal weaponry, she took in the action and said, “Well, my, my, what do we have here?”

The first to figure out the truth about the new customers? Really? Insensitive Lori? It wasn’t possible.

“Is a convention in town?” she said to the room in general, focusing in on Rosina, who happened to be closest to her. “Women in Black, right?”

Just as I suspected. Almost as dense as her cuckolded husband, the only person in town who didn’t know his wife was a big two-timing slut.

The witches looked from one to the other. I hoped one of them would feel offended and zap Lori with an irreversible hex. One that would make her hair fall out and her big boobs sag down to her knees.

“Want me to take out the
trash
?” Stanley said to me, using our code for throwing Lori out of the building if she looked like she was gunning for me. He was perfectly aware of our history.