Claire and Present Danger (29 page)

That’s right—she’d bumped into Emmie while on business in San Francisco.

“I hope her success now extends to you,” I said, returning the brochure to its refrigerator magnet.

I meant it. I was impressed. But I was also . . . I don’t know what. Irritated by it. Something prickled, though I couldn’t identify it. I wondered if I was jealous of her remarkable success, and hoped not. But I couldn’t think why else her credentials annoyed me this way.

“One thing,” Beth said softly. “You were honest with me the other night, weren’t you?”

“About what? Of course I was. I always am, but what do you mean?”

“About Vicky. That she wasn’t the one you were investigating.”

“Absolutely not the one.”

“Because you’d tell me, right? I mean, even if it’s part of your job, and if you found out I was walking into something bad—

there’s no code forbidding you to tell me, is there?”

“My code of honor would absolutely make me keep you safe.”

She exhaled loudly, as if she’d been holding her breath on this all evening.

I went back into the dining room to be certain that nothing edible was left in sight.

“You’re amazing,” my mother said as Gabby slid a drawer 226

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closed. “How did you know where that went? And before? How did you know where the table pads went, too?”

Gabby winked at me. “Magic?” she said.

“Beth’s magic, probably,” I said. “She’s the most logical person I’ve ever met, so everything is in—”

“He didn’t tell you, huh?” Gabby’s mouth curled in a tight, lop-sided smile.

“Who? Tell me what?”

“My son,” she said in the most matter-of-fact way. “Tell you that I’m a witch.” Her smile expanded till it half-covered her face, and she laughed and pointed at me, at my expression. “Guess not!”

“What—what do you mean?” My mother had her hands raised, cupping the top of her head, all but drawing a pointed hat up there.

“No, no,” Gabby said, the half smile still on her face. We amused her. “Nothing special. Ordinary witchy things. I see things, commune with things.”

We all saw things unless we were blind. And communed, I had to assume, with something. But we didn’t see through solid cherry breakfronts, or commune with table pads as to where they belong.

“I’m not like an Orthodox witch,” she said. “I’m a sole practi-tioner. No coven, no big rituals, and most of all,” she said, looking around to make sure her work was done, “not that stupid bad-spell stuff in fairy tales. That’s not real. That’s just evil propaganda.”

“Of course it is!” my mother said, eager as ever to be prejudice-free. “But then . . . when? What?”

Gabby raised her shoulders and inhaled, then let out the air and relaxed. “I just have . . . powers, but I can’t truly say when it comes on me. It’s erratic. And between us girls, since the change, I think I’m mostly losing it. My grandmother said the same thing happened to her. I mean, look—it’s down to knowing where table pads go.” She shook her head, then smiled again. “Easy come, easy go,” she said. “And now, let us get our poor hostess out of the kitchen, and join our gentlemen friends.”

My mother glanced at me warily, quickly, then away. She obviously didn’t dare to say a word or think it. Gabby might have one 227

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of her rare postmenopausal second-sight bursts and read her mind.

Besides, for all her marital advice and warnings, she’d never once told me to avoid men whose mothers were witches.

We reconvened in the living room, where the conversation rolled back and forth between the out-of-towners about their mutual visits. My mother almost visibly took herself in hand and rose above her reluctance to play with witches, and mentioned possible outings. I moved still closer to my Mackenzie, who put an arm around me and smiled. He was one happy man.

“Your mother just said she’s a witch,” I whispered.

His smile faded, and he closed his eyes for a second. Then he sighed and fixed his blue gaze on me. “I was hopin’ she’d skip that.”

“It’s not news to you?”

He shook his head.

“And you never felt the need to mention it?” It is hard to shout in a whisper, and my throat ached doing so, but I had no choice.

There was suddenly an arid desert between us, littered with important things unsaid, secrets kept. I didn’t dare guess what else lay there. The fact that he’d kept it to himself was much more serious than Gabby’s beliefs. I was up on things. I knew that Wiccan was a feminist religion, a goddess religion, that it really didn’t have anything to do with the dreadful stereotypes fear had created through the ages.

Although I wasn’t sure anything much I knew applied to Gabby’s iconoclastic witchhood that seemed to depend on a ready supply of hormones.

“You were complainin’ this very week that you wished I’d never told you a thing about my past.”

“This is a little different, don’t you think? This would be like being frank with me about a genetic problem, or a history of . . . of—”

“Horse thieves?”

“Okay, not exactly, but—”

“She’s an entertaining, loving lady, isn’t she?”

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“Is witchcraft what you meant when you always added ‘but eccentric’?”

He raised one eyebrow.

“Okay. One of the traits you meant.”

“She’s Acadian. They’re different, you know. Named for the great doomed lovers in Longfellow’s poem, Gabriel Lajeunesse and Evangeline Bellefontaine.”

“They’re fictional. She didn’t inherit this from them.”

“They were family ideals. And do you remember the lovers’ story?

How they found each other again in Philadelphia?” He smiled, as if that made everything all right.

“Found each other in Philadelphia and promptly died,” I said.

He looked at me solemnly. “My sisters do not have the gift.”

“Let me be clear on this. Your sisters are not witches.”

“Correct.”

“And you? Men can be witches.”

He shook his head again. “Apparently, the Mackenzie DNA includes antiwitch matter.”

I couldn’t help but wonder what other family secrets lay in store and whether I was at all eager to enter that store. I just hated not knowing something that central about his family, and worried now that Mackenzie had carefully censored his words, as if he needed to protect me from the truth, or protect the truth from me.

I didn’t like either option.

I wondered if the surprise introduction of a witch in the family gave one an out from a wedding. I’d bet even my mother would accept that as an excused absence.

229

Twenty

“WHATa good time I’m having,” Gabby said as

the four of us walked to the car. It was still early. The dinner hour had been arranged for small children—and the originally planned arrival of the Mackenzies. The evening out here in the suburbs was lovely, with a faint whisper of autumn, a brisk edge to the soft night and, all around us, that wistful scent of the end of growing, of roses blooming for the last time.

“What a grand evening,” Gabby said. “Lovely day.”

“Evening’s still young,” Boy said. “Tell me it isn’t true about 230

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this city rolling up the streets and let us take you out for a nightcap.”

C. K. was grinning, contentment on every feature. He looked over at me. Apparently, he no longer cared about the stack of books he was supposed to be reading for school. He was definitely ready for more, but was letting me decide whether the good times kept rolling.

He was being a gentleman. A happy one.

Is there anything on earth more infuriating than being incensed with a man who’s oblivious to it? “Sure,” I said, because that postponed the argument I knew awaited us. I didn’t want to spoil his parents’ time, either. And it was early, just past eight P.M. “Anywhere. Your call.”

“In that case,” C. K. said, “there’s a bar in South Philly that will provide not only drinks, but local color of a sort that will make you know you’re not in Lafayette, Louisiana, anymore, folks.”

We drove the Expressway in silence. Mackenzie turned on the radio and searched for the easy-listening station, the instant background noise because there wasn’t any foreground. We seemed to have used up our chatter.

Gabby’s need for polite sociability broke the silence. “What a darling family you have,” she said.

“Thanks,” I responded. “They thought the same of you.” And then I set my hearing to “pleasantries,” and let whatever was said blur into the background music becoming, if not white noise, then at best, pale, pale beige.

“Food delicious, too,” Boy said, or something like it. “That lamb . . .”

“House beautiful . . .”

“Lovely . . .”

“Adorable . . . clever . . .”

“Even a lovely dog.” That, of course, from Gabby.

Everything was perfect at Beth’s. She had standards. She didn’t get a mother-in-law who dressed like Merlin and recited chants.

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“What dog have you ever met that you didn’t think was lovely?”

Boy seemed eternally amused by his wife. “This woman is a dog’s best friend. Any dog. All dogs.”

“Good creatures,” she said.

And here I’d thought that cats were witch’s familiars. Macavity had certainly taken to her immediately, but I’d ascribed it to his adoration of all things Mackenzie. Now I knew better.

“Do you think so, Manda?”

“Sorry,” I said. “My mind was wandering.”

“We could make a picnic Saturday? Everybody, includin’ those adorable children of your sister’s.”

Saturday. Their last day. “Sounds great. I don’t know Beth and Sam’s schedule, but I’m sure they’d love it.”

“How about Valley Forge?” Mackenzie said. “Toss in a little history.” He had a future as a tour guide. Bars, picnics, you name it, he’d find the local angle.

“And their dog, too,” Gabby said. “The park would allow him.”

“Oh, Gabby,” Boy said. “You’re too much.”

“I’m so homesick for the babies,” she said. “And so worried Lizzie isn’t going to remember to give Cary Grant his phenobarb both times. You know how she forgets things—and by the time we get home, he’ll be having those fits again.”

I sat up straight. “Excuse me?”

Mackenzie wasn’t listening to me. He was into tour guiding.

“Look,” he said. “This is South Philly. See the row houses? All the same?”

“Like apartment buildings on their side,” Boy said.

“Phenobarbital? For dogs?” I asked.

“New York’s an island and had nowhere to go but up, but Philly could stretch out, and here you see it,” C. K. said.

“Poor Cary’s been takin’ it for a while,” Gabby said. “I just haven’t been away all this long since then, and Lizzie’s sweet but absentminded—”

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“Her mind is pretty absent most of the time,” Boy admitted.

“—and if Cary doesn’t take it twice a day . . .”

I felt as if an electric prod had been applied to my brain. It zigged and zagged and pointed fingers and ran in circles shouting for attention.

Slow down, I told myself, as if I were back teaching the sophomores. Organize your thoughts.

Dogs. Medication. Vicky Baer’s dog.

The ideas spun, chasing their tails.

Joan’s call about Vicky Baer, nee Smith. Grade slump. Nothing the school did . . .

Olivia. Leaving school because of another girl.

Organize your thoughts!

The brochure.

Why the brochure? Why had it upset me? Her triumphant list of schools and foundations. Verbal bouquets from impressive clients all over the map. D.C., Baltimore, Altoona, Chicago, San Francisco . . .

“Cary will be fine,” Boy said. “Not like you to worry this much.”

“Mackenzie,” I said, before he could point out other landmarks.

“Humor me. Word-association time. What’s the significance of these three cities: Baltimore, Altoona, Chicago.”

“They all have an a and an o in their name.”

I don’t know how he does things like that so quickly, but I did know that wasn’t the answer I needed. I sighed and folded my arms across my chest and even shook my head a bit to loosen up my thoughts, shake them out of the ruts they were in, get them organized.

I had it. “The notes!” I spoke as softly as I could, but I couldn’t contain my excitement. “I knew there was something about that brochure—the anonymous notes came from the places Vicky Baer travels to!”

“Lovely. Except . . . so what?”

“So what? She sent those notes. That’s what!”

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“And? Mean-spirited, I’ll grant you, but . . . I repeat, so what?

Legally, what is that? Abuse of the postal service? Claire Fairchild might have been interested in that—if it’s true—but she’s beyond caring. Batya murdered her. Case closed.”

No. It wasn’t. Even if I didn’t yet know why, I knew it wasn’t over. And it felt urgently important that I line up the wild and un-related messages flashing neon in my brain. Find the words to explain the electrical charges in my nervous system.

High school! Olivia. Leaving. Vicky leaving. Not the school’s fault.

Sick dogs! Vicky left the dinner to take care of one.

No. Wait. My brain buzzed, the signs flashed randomly, all together, separately and I still couldn’t make them out.

Phone call! She was going to take care of the dog after she took her phone call.

Emmie Cade had announced a wedding date that day. Was that the call?

Leo had already quarreled with his mother that day. Had found out about her hiring us. Told Emmie. Was that the call?

Pretending! Nobody knew Claire Fairchild was faking her illness then.

Shower! Something made Vicky visit Claire Fairchild that night.

Was the idea of a bridal shower that urgent? Especially after she’d told me she wasn’t all that close with Emmie, though they were old acquaintances, more than real friends.

Friend! Vicky’s visiting a friend who was feeling bad. Right now. “Mackenzie.” I put a hand on his arm.

“And here we are,” he answered. “At the corner.” I saw a beer’s name lit up on a red brick wall. Accurate as ever, he’d found us a Typical South Philly Bar. It could occupy a display at the Smithsonian.