Aunt Dimity Goes West (19 page)

you think.”

My cell phone rang, frightening a camp-robber

bird that had flown over to see if we had any crumbs

to share. It flew off, twittering irritably, and I took the call. It was from Annelise, who wanted to know if she

and the twins could have dinner at the ranch.

“They’re having a cookout,” she explained. “Will

and Rob are dying to try buffalo burgers.”

“What about you?” I asked.

“Belle Whitcombe took me out to see the buffalo

calves today,” said Annelise. “I’m planning to have a

salad for dinner.”

“A farmer’s daughter turned vegetarian?” I said,

feigning surprise. “Those calves must be cute.”

“They’re
adorable,
” she said. “We’ll be back by seven, half past at the latest.”

“Have fun,” I told her. I put the cell phone back into

my pocket and turned to Toby, announcing, “We’re on

156

Nancy Atherton

our own for dinner. Annelise and the boys are eating

theirs at the ranch.”

“We can pick something up at the cafe,” he sug-

gested.

“Good idea,” I said. “I wanted to go back into town

anyway. I need to hit the grocery to pick up a few

things for lunch tomorrow, and I’d also like to find a

gift for Bill.” I held up the bag from Dandy Don’s.

“Strange as it may seem, my husband isn’t into stuffed

animals, flower seeds, or earrings.”

Toby laughed and we turned our steps once more

toward Stafford Avenue. Fortunately, Maggie Flaxton

was too busy browbeating a hapless neighbor into par-

ticipating in Gold Rush Days to notice our presence in

her store, so our shopping there went off without a

hitch. I then spent twenty minutes meandering in and

out of shops, rejecting one tacky souvenir after an-

other, before Toby came up with his brilliant idea.

“How about a geode?” he proposed.

“Fantastic,” I gushed. “What’s a geode?”

“It’s a round, hollow rock,” Toby explained. “It

doesn’t look like much on the outside, but the inside’s

lined with crystals. When you break a geode in half, it

looks like a twinkly cave inside. They’re really pretty, but not in a girlish way. Granddad used one in his office as a paperweight.”

“A man can never have too many paperweights,” I

said. “Where do we find geodes?”

“Mystic Crystals,” Toby said promptly. “Also known

as the rock shop.” He began to walk rapidly toward the

Aunt Dimity Goes West

157

top of Stafford Avenue. “I hope it’s still open. Amanda

keeps her own hours.”

“Amanda?” I said interestedly, scrambling to keep

up with him. “The local loony-tune?”

Toby snorted disparagingly. “Amanda Barrow is

Bluebird’s resident hippie. She runs a commune in

the geodesic dome with her cat, Angelique, and an

everchanging cast of crazies who think the dome sits

on a vortex.”

“Wouldn’t it twirl around?” I said. “Like Dorothy’s

house in
The Wizard of Oz
?”

“It’s not that kind of vortex,” said Toby. “According to Amanda, it’s a focal point for the mystical energies of

the universe. According to me, it’s a focal point for

people who smoke too much wacky-weed—organically

grown wacky-weed, of course.”

“Do I detect a faint note of skepticism in your

voice?” I asked, suppressing a smile.

“You detect a deafening roar of skepticism in my

voice,” Toby returned. “Don’t get me wrong, I like

Amanda well enough, but you never know what

belief system she’ll subscribe to next. Granddad used

to say that she belonged to the goddess-of-the-

month club. Grandma called her the queen of hocus-

pocus.”

“I’ll bet she has some interesting theories about the

Lord Stuart curse,” I said, grinning.

“I’m sure we’ll hear all about them,” said Toby, “so

brace yourself.”

“I’m braced,” I told him.

158

Nancy Atherton

I probably could have found Mystic Crystals with-

out Toby’s assistance, but I wouldn’t have known it

was a rock shop. Amanda Barrow ran her business

from a small Victorian house that stood between

Eric’s Mountain Bikes and the Mile High Pies pizza

parlor. The house had been painted an eye-catching

shade of hot pink that clashed resoundingly with the

fluorescent orange and lime-green sandwich board

sitting next to the front door.

The sandwich board advertised a well-rounded

menu of metaphysical services—palm reading, tarot-

card reading, aura reading, rune casting, crystal-ball

gazing, psychic healing, dream analysis, and past-life

retrieval—along with aromatherapy, medicinal herbs,

meditation aids, and yoga classes. A long-haired white

cat lounged in the shop’s prominent bay window

beneath a dangling display of spinning prisms, wind

chimes, dream catchers, and multifaceted crystals.

“Angelique,” said Toby, nodding at the white cat.

“I didn’t think it was Amanda,” I said dryly.

“Couldn’t be,” Toby joked. “Amanda’s a redhead.”

I felt as though I’d stepped into the vortex.

“Whoa, hold on, stop . . .” I seized Toby’s arm to

keep him from entering the shop. “Are you telling me

that Amanda Barrow has
red hair
?”

“Yeah,” said Toby. “She’s got freckles, too. So?”

I put a hand to my head in an attempt to stop the

whirling, but the pressure only seemed to magnify the

image spinning in my mind of Miranda Morrow,

Aunt Dimity Goes West

159

Finch’s red-haired, freckle-faced witch, who lived with

a black cat named Seraphina.

“Are you okay, Lori?” Toby asked.

“Yes,” I managed. “Just a little dizzy.”

“I shouldn’t have walked so fast,” he said contritely.

“I always forget that Stafford Avenue goes uphill.”

“I’ll be fine in a minute,” I said.

“Take your time,” he urged me. “There’s no hurry.

The shop’s still open.”

I closed my eyes, breathed slowly and steadily, and

forced myself to concentrate on the myriad of differ-

ences between Finch’s Miranda Morrow and Bluebird’s

Amanda Barrow. Miranda conducted her business over

the telephone and via the Internet, not in person. She

lived in a modest stone cottage, not a geodesic dome,

and she didn’t have a garish sign on her front gate advertising her profession. The only time I’d seen her read

palms was at the Harvest Festival, when she’d played the role of a gypsy fortune-teller in order to raise money for the St. George’s Church roof repair fund. No one in

Finch—not even Peggy Taxman—had
ever
referred to Miranda Morrow as a loony-tune.

“Okay,” I said, when I’d regained a modicum of

mental stability. “All better.Take me to the geodes.”

“This way,” said Toby.

He opened the front door and we stepped into a

high-ceilinged, rectangular room filled with the cloy-

ing, sickly sweet fragrance of sandalwood. A handful of

joss sticks burned in a brass holder next to the cash

160

Nancy Atherton

register on the rear counter. The smoke trailing up

from the joss sticks was the only sign of life in the shop, apart from Angelique, who took one look at us, gave an

unearthly yowl, and streaked through a bead curtain

behind the counter.

“I’ll be right with you!” a woman’s voice called

from beyond the bead curtain.

“Amanda,” Toby murmured. “She really shouldn’t

leave incense burning unattended. If Angelique knocked

it over, the place would go up like a tinderbox.”

“She shouldn’t be burning incense at all,” I mur-

mured back. “It’s an insult to the pure mountain air.”

The room was divided into two distinct spaces. To

our right, bathed in the sunlight pouring though the bay window, freestanding glass shelves held candles, stone

pyramids, bottles of aromatic oils, packets of incense,

brass incense holders, onyx Buddhas, chunks of quartz

crystal, strings of stone beads, and baskets of polished rocks. Necklaces, earrings, and bracelets hung from a

Peg-Board behind the counter, and a wooden bookcase

against the far wall was filled with books on a wide

range of metaphysical topics. CDs featuring New Age

music complemented the book display.

To our left, shielded from direct daylight by a gauze

curtain, sat four wooden chairs, a round wooden table

covered with a circle of star-spangled black velvet, and a tall dark-purple cupboard in which, I imagined,

Amanda Barrow stored the tools of her trade: crystal

ball, tarot cards, rune stones, possibly a Ouija board

and some dousing wands as well. The walls on either

Aunt Dimity Goes West

161

side of the purple cupboard were decorated with pos-

ters illustrating acupuncture points, meridian lines,

and the constellations.

Toby ignored the left side of the shop and went di-

rectly to a glass shelf displaying a selection of geodes that had already been split in half.They were exactly as he’d described them: dull and boring on the outside,

but alive with twinkly amethyst crystalline formations

on the inside. I picked one up and carried it to the bay window to look at it in the sunlight.

“It’s like the Big Rock Candy Mountain,” I said,

smiling delightedly. “Bill will love it. He’s one of those guys who has everything, but he doesn’t have anything

like
this.
Thanks, Toby. It was a great idea. I think I’ll get one for my father-in-law as well. It’ll add a certain something to his law office in Boston.”

The bead curtain rattled and I looked over my shoul-

der as a short, stout, middle-aged woman emerged from

the back room. She had to be in her late fifties, but

she dressed as if she were still in her teens, wearing a low-cut, embroidered peasant blouse; a flouncy, ankle-length muslin skirt; clunky leather work boots; an

apple-seed necklace; and a pair of huge hoop earrings

accented with feathers. Her face, chest, and arms were

plastered with freckles, and her henna-enhanced red

hair fell almost to her waist.

“Hi, Amanda,” said Toby.

“Hello, Toby,” said Amanda, coming out from be-

hind the counter. “You’ll have to forgive Angelique. I

don’t know what’s gotten into her. She’s in the back

162

Nancy Atherton

room, hiding under the sink. I tried to get her to come

out, but—” Amanda broke off abruptly as she caught

sight of me. She gasped, her green eyes opened wide,

the color drained from her face, and she raised a trem-

bling finger to point at me.

“Death!”
she cried. “You bring
death
with you!”

Fourteen

A manda’s arm fell and she tottered as though

her knees were about to buckle. Toby sighed

impatiently, but he thrust the box of Calico

Cookies into my hands and hurried over to guide

the wobbling woman to a chair at the velvet-covered

table. I stood in shocked silence for a moment, then

returned the geode to its place on the glass shelves and crept quietly past the gauze curtain to stand a few feet away from Amanda and Toby.

The red-haired mistress of Mystic Crystals sat

hunched over the table with her eyes squeezed tightly

shut, massaging her temples and talking to herself.

“Yes, yes, I understand now,” she muttered. “An-

gelique saw him, tried to warn me, to prepare me. . . .

I should have listened, but how was I to know? Death

comes to us unbidden, when we least expect it. Even

those of us who see beyond can be taken unawares. . . .”

Toby rolled his eyes expressively, as though to reas-

sure me that Amanda’s histrionics were par for the

course, then bent over her and asked, “Amanda? Can I

get you a drink of water or anything?”

“Water, yes, water,” Amanda whispered. “Water to

cleanse, to clarify, to purify, to—”

164

Nancy Atherton

“I’ll get it,” I said quickly.

I placed the cookies and my bag of souvenirs on an

empty chair and headed for the back room. I didn’t rel-

ish the prospect of facing a yowling Angelique again,

but I didn’t want to be left alone with Amanda Barrow,

either. If she passed out, I doubted that I’d be strong

enough to keep her from hitting the floor.

The back room turned out to be a small and remark-

ably tidy kitchen. After a hasty search, I found a clean glass in a cupboard and approached the sink. I did so

with some trepidation, expecting at any moment to feel

a set of sharp claws sink into my calf, but Angelique had evidently gotten over whatever had startled her. She

leapt onto the draining board and sat there, watching

interestedly, while I filled the glass with water. I stroked her fluffy back, then brought the glass to Toby to pass to Amanda. I wasn’t sure she’d take it from my hand.

Instead of drinking the water, Amanda dipped her

fingertips into it, pressed them to her eyelids, her forehead, and her breast, dipped them again, and flicked

little splashes into the air, to the north, south, east, and west. Finally, she opened her eyes, threw her hennaed hair back over her shoulders, and turned slowly

toward me. Her green eyes searched the empty space

around me avidly before coming to rest on my face.

“He has gone,” she announced. “His energy has trav-