Any Witch Way You Can (10 page)

“What else is new?”

Aunt Tillie glared at me. “No one needs you here little miss know-it-all. You can just go back to work. I don’t know why they called you.”

Neither did I. Aunt Tillie listened to me about as much as she did the doctor – which is to say she didn’t listen to me at all.

“She’s crazy,” Emily shrieked.

“I’ll show you crazy,” Aunt Tillie promised, escaping from Marnie’s clutches again and launching herself on top of the dining room table. She only made it about halfway. I guess – no matter how she liked to spin it – you can only jump so far when you get to be a certain age.

“What is going on?” I asked the question again.

“Your Aunt Tillie is just out of sorts.”

“She’s always out of sorts. What set her off this time?”

“Set me off? I’m not a bomb.” Aunt Tillie looked indignant.

“You’re more dangerous than a bomb,” I told Aunt Tillie. “A bomb can’t be irrational – or vindictive.”

Aunt Tillie extended her index finger at me threateningly. “Do not get involved in this, girl,” she warned. “You won’t like it if I have to curse you.”

I paused for a second. She had a point.

Mom saw my hesitation. “I may not curse you, but I will nag you until you want to be cursed if you don’t help us,” she threatened.

Mom was scary in her own way. “What do you want me to do?”

“Calm her down!” How could she be mad at me about this situation? I still didn’t know what was going on.

“Tell me what happened.”

Marnie had moved to my side to pause and get her breath. She looked tired. Chasing an 85-year-old woman can do that to you. “She thinks that Emily stole her necklace.”

“What necklace?”

“That mini-urn one. The one where she keeps your Uncle Calvin’s ashes.”

I turned to Aunt Tillie in disbelief. “Why would she steal that? It’s not even valuable.”

“She knows that it’s powerful,” Aunt Tillie said through gritted teeth. She was trying to climb on the top of the table again.

“How is it powerful?”

“It’s full of magic,” Aunt Tillie replied.

I regarded her suspiciously. “What magic?”

“Don’t you worry about that,” Aunt Tillie replied. “I just want it back.”

“What makes you think she has it?” I looked over at Emily, who was crouching in the corner by the grandfather clock. She was annoying, yes, but a thief? I had my doubts.

“I was wearing it earlier and then it disappeared. She’s been the only one around.”

“Are you sure you just didn’t take it off and leave it somewhere?” I was trying to speak to her in a tone that didn’t reflect my irritation with this whole situation. If she thought I was irritated, that would just make her more anxious.

“Are you calling me senile?” So not where I wanted to go – even if I did, in fact, think she was senile.

“Of course not,” I lied. “I think, maybe, you just took the necklace off and put it on a table or something and forgot about it.”

“What’s the difference between that and being senile?” Aunt Tillie’s green eyes were narrowed dangerously. If I wasn’t careful, she’d turn her wrath from Emily to me. As much as I didn’t think Emily was a thief, I also didn’t want to end up on Aunt Tillie’s bad side. If Emily had to be the sacrificial lamb, so be it.

“I just want to make sure that the necklace has actually been stolen before I call Chief Terry – and alert the National Guard.”

My mom and my aunts swung on me suspiciously. “You’re not calling Chief Terry,” Marnie warned me.

Aha! I knew it. They thought she’d lost the necklace, too. They had just called me out here to be the sacrificial lamb for them.

“Theft is a serious offense,” I said carefully.

“Do you really think this girl stole it?” Twila looked doubtful.

Emily looked at me desperately. Could I really sell her out? I turned to Aunt Tillie. I saw her rubbing her fingers together anxiously. She was desperate to curse someone. Screw it. Better Emily than me. “I think we should let Chief Terry sort this out,” I said finally. “He is a professional, after all.”

My mom glared at me openly now. She knew I’d figured out her plan. “We are not calling Terry.”

“Then I don’t know what to tell you,” I said simply.

“You’re dead to me,” she snapped.

I tried to hide my smirk, but it didn’t entirely work. This was a regular occurrence in my family. We were all dead to one another at least once a week. I sat down at the dining room table and poured myself a cup of tea as I watched my mom and her sisters return to their task of trying to wrangle Aunt Tillie into submission.

At a certain point, Emily took advantage of Aunt Tillie’s distraction and bolted upstairs. It took Aunt Tillie a full twenty minutes to realize she was gone.

“Where did she go?”

“She left.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. Probably to her room.”

Aunt Tillie sat down in the chair next to me. I was surprised to see the look of calm that was on her face. I poured another cup of tea and pushed it in front of her. Aunt Tillie drank it down gratefully.

My mom and aunts were watching Aunt Tillie warily, but they each took a seat at the table and started sipping from their own cups of tea. No one could figure out why the storm had suddenly passed.

“Have you talked to the dead boy’s ghost?” Aunt Tillie asked me suddenly.

“Yes.” I didn’t see any reason to lie to her, especially when she wasn’t being judgmental or temperamental.

“Does he know how he died?”

“No.”

“He’ll remember eventually,” she admonished me.

“I know.”

I took another sip of my tea and watched Aunt Tillie skeptically. “You never lost the necklace. Did you?”

Aunt Tillie didn’t answer. She couldn’t entirely hide her small smile, though.

“Why did you make such a fuss?”

“I didn’t make a fuss,” she argued.

My mom was suddenly suspicious, too. “Was that all an act?” She was glaring at Aunt Tillie dangerously.

“I don’t know why you’d think that.” Aunt Tillie was averting her gaze from everyone at the table.

I finally pushed my chair back and got up. “She just wanted attention.”

“That’s not true. . . “ Twila regarded Aunt Tillie dubiously for a second. “Is it?”

“Of course not,” Aunt Tillie scoffed. “I’m not an attention seeker.” All evidence to the contrary.

I moved to leave the room. Whatever the catastrophe had been, it was now over. My mom and aunts were now steadfastly studying their Aunt Tillie, though. They realized I was right about her motivations - -and they’d been played.

“Keep the boy close to you,” Aunt Tillie offered. I could see she was basking in the outcome of her afternoon performance.

“I will.”

“It’s important,” she warned me.

“I know.”

“He’ll remember. And when he does, you need to be there to help him.”

I turned back to Aunt Tillie with an important question on my lips. “Why would they take his heart?”

“That’s a black magic thing,” she said honestly.

“Could they want it for any other reason?”

Aunt Tillie cocked her head as she considered my question. “Maybe,” she finally answered. “But I honestly don’t think so.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Whoever did this, they’re bad people.”

“You think more than one person was involved?”

“Don’t you?”

The truth was, I did. I’d felt that from the minute I saw Shane’s body. “What do I do?”

Aunt Tillie met my gaze solemnly. “Keep the ghost close, and you’re cousins closer. They’ll come for you at a certain point. You have to be ready.”

I smiled at her gratefully. “Next time you want to warn me, just call me on the phone. Don’t cause a scene.”

I didn’t look back as I left the room, but I heard my mom and aunts explode at Aunt Tillie as I left.

“Is that why you did this?”

Ten

On my way back to the paper, I formed a plan.

Aunt Tillie may be crazy, but she was right about one thing – Shane had to remember how he died. If he didn’t, not only could someone else fall victim to his killer, but his murder may go unsolved for good, as well.

I stopped at the guesthouse long enough to pick up my car. I didn’t want to risk getting caught without transportation again.

Aunt Tillie may be a dramatic old biddy, but she wouldn’t have warned me of impending danger if she really didn’t believe it. She didn’t mess around when it came to stuff like that.

I had to find a way to get Shane to remember.

Instead of going to Hypnotic to talk to Shane, though, I decided to return to the office and talk to Edith instead. I found her in the records room watching Dr. Oz. She looked up briefly when I entered.

“Can you believe he did an entire show about poo?”

“Poo?”

“You know, poop.”

“No, I can’t,” I said honestly. “What’s even worse is that people probably watched it.”

“I only watched because I can’t change the channel,” she said indignantly.

“I wasn’t talking about you,” I soothed.

“You better not have been,” Edith grumbled.

I didn’t know how to broach ghost things with Edith. She had never exactly been forthcoming with me. I decided I had better just do it. Otherwise, I’d keep coming up with excuses to delay it – and that would help no one.

“Edith, I have a question for you.”

“What?”

“It’s about . . . it’s about being a ghost.”

Edith turned to me in surprise. “You’ve never asked me about being a ghost before.”

“I didn’t feel it was any of my business.”

“And you do now?”

“No, I still don’t,” I said hurriedly. “But the boy that died in the corn maze. He’s a ghost now. He doesn’t remember what happened to him, though.”

Edith looked surprised. “You went back to the corn maze and found him?”

I didn’t want to tell the whole embarrassing tale of my late night trek with Thistle and Clove, so I merely nodded. I figured she didn’t need to know how we found him – just that we had found him.

“What’s the last thing he remembers?” Edith seemed interested, despite herself.

“I don’t know. I haven’t asked him yet. We just found him last night.”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

“I’m going to. I just wanted to know if you had any tips to make him remember.”

“Why would I have tips?”

I bit my lower lip, lifting my eyes to Edith’s and regarding her seriously. “A lot of people think you were murdered, Edith.”

Edith pursed her lips unhappily. It was an expression I had become familiar with. “I was found at my desk. Why do people think I was murdered?”

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “I just know a lot of people find it suspicious. You were only in your forties. It would be weird to just drop dead at your desk at that age – even in the 1960s.”

Edith turned from me and trained her gaze back at the television. I couldn’t figure out if she didn’t want to answer me or didn’t know how to answer me.

“Were you murdered, Edith?”

Edith surprised me when she shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know how you died?”

“I know how I died,” she said testily.

I swallowed hard. “How did you die?”

“I was eating lunch at my desk,” she said softly. “It tasted funny.”

I wanted to ask what it tasted like, but I didn’t want to interrupt her. I was afraid if I did I would never get the answers I was looking for.

“I knew something wasn’t right about it,” she admitted. “It was too late, though. I tried to get up. I tried to reach for the phone. My hands felt numb, though. I couldn’t push away from the desk. It felt like I was drowning from inside.”

Sympathy bubbled up from inside of me. Poor Edith.

“I died right there. With my face in my spaghetti. My hair was even dripping in it.”

The lurid picture she wove almost made me laugh. I realized that wasn’t appropriate, so I screwed my face up in the most sympathetic way I could. “How long did it take you to come back as a ghost?”

Edith seemed to consider the question. “Just a few minutes, I think.”

“Did you realize you were a ghost right away?”

“No. It took me a few minutes. I kept looking down at my body. I thought I was just having an out-of-body experience,” she said. “Like you see on television. I think I hoped I was having an out-of-body experience actually.”

“When did you know for sure?”

“One of my co-workers, Debbie was her name, she found me at my desk. She tried to shake me awake. I started yelling at her that I was right here. I was standing right here. She never even looked up at me, though. That’s when I knew.”

“Do you think you were poisoned?”

Edith nodded stiffly.

“Do you know who did it?”

“No. And I don’t want to talk about that anymore,” she said forcefully.

I held up my hands in submission. “We won’t talk about it anymore,” I promised.

Edith nodded mutely. “So what do you want me to do?”

“Will you come with me to Hypnotic? Talk to Shane?”

Edith seemed to consider the question seriously. She didn’t look convinced, though. “I don’t ever leave the office,” she said finally.

“I know. The store is just down the road, though. We can walk there together and then you can come right back to the office.”

Edith still didn’t look convinced.

“You would be my hero if you could get him to talk.” Manipulative, I know. I didn’t know what else to do, though.

Edith steeled her shoulders and turned to me. “I’ll go,” she said.

I smiled to myself. Edith may be a pain in the ass – but she did always try to do the right thing. As we left the office to walk down the street, I couldn’t help but notice how nervous she looked. I found it surreal that a ghost was scared to walk down the streets of Hemlock Cove – but I didn’t want to scare her off so I kept my thoughts to myself.

Even though she was initially nervous, I saw that Edith had relaxed a few minutes into our short journey.

“I can’t believe they’ve turned this place into a tourist trap.”

“I don’t think they had a lot of choice,” I admitted. “It was either a tourist trap or let the town die. There was no other way to sustain it – especially since there was no manufacturing base anymore.”