The Magic of Murder (3 page)

Stiff from lying in one place so long, I rolled over on the sofa and lifted the afghan. Something about it caught my eye. I held up the knitted cover, and closely examined it for the first time. The designs my grandmother had sewn looked like runes I’d seen in the book about magical herbalism. Those were symbols a witch might draw. What the hell was going on here?

I got up and stumbled to the telephone.

This time Ms. Nurse answered after two rings. “Have you finished reading it?” she said.

“Why’d you give me that book?” I demanded.

“Wasn’t me,” she said. “It was Elvira.”

“Yeah, right.”

She didn’t respond.

The phone tucked under my chin, with my hands on my hips, I said, “Why would a cat want me to have it?”

I heard her take a deep breath. “
Your
ancestor wasn’t the only one killed by those crazy people.”

“Yeah, I saw,” I said. “Someone named Rebecca Nurse was hanged the same day as Sarah Goode.”

“It wasn’t her I meant.”

“Who, then?”

“Elvira’s ancestors have been around as long as ours.”

I couldn’t help myself—the words got out before I could stop them. “How do you know that?”

Without a moment’s hesitation, she said, “Elvira told me.”

My eyes rolled back, I slowly shook my head.

“She wants you to avenge what was done to her family.”

“Me?”
The lady’s nuts,
I thought.

“It’s in the genes, you see,” she said.

“What is?”

Instead of rushing on, Rebecca Nurse said very slowly, “Of all the people hanged in Salem for being witches, only one really was.”

This was too much. I slammed down the receiver.

***

I tossed the book into the trash, which was where it belonged. It was dark now—winter nights fall early in Niagara Falls. My stomach grumbled. Except for a couple of mugs of coffee and tea, I hadn’t put anything in it all day. I pulled a box of corn flakes from the kitchen cabinet,
and settled down at my dinette table with
Magical Herbalism
open in front of me. Though I knew it’s
impossible for herbs and incantations to alter the workings of the universe, I was now fascinated by the prospect of it. Credit my family history and a writer’s imagination for that.

It’s in the genes
, the Nurse woman had told me.

Ridiculous! I snorted at the idea. Still, I kept reading.

Elvira strolled over and sat at my feet. When I glanced down, she seemed to say,
Aren’t you going to do anything about it?

“About what?” I said to her. “That happened more than three hundred years ago. People got caught up in mass hysteria, what can I do about―?”

I stopped in mid-sentence. I was talking to a cat. Worse, she was talking to me. I felt as though I’d lost my mind. I shoved the cereal bowl and book aside, and sat, head cupped in my hands. I must have stayed that way for an hour or so. I might have remained like that all night if my phone hadn’t rung. It was my mother, calling from Florida to check up on me.

“I just heard the weather forecast for up there,” she said. “Are you all right?”

“It’s snowing, Ma,” I said. “This is Niagara Falls. It snows here. Have you forgotten already?” Ten years before, my mother had traded the frozen north for the beaches of Naples.

“Don’t bite my head off,” Mom said. “I worry about you.”

“There’s nothing to worry about. I’m fine.”

She was quiet for a minute before she said, “You don’t sound fine. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing’s wrong!” I said too quickly, which, in the parlance of mothers and daughters, told her something was.

“Tell me,” she insisted.

I’ve never been able to resist that tone in my mother’s voice, so I told her all of it. The Black Cat, Elvira, the book, and what Rebecca Nurse told me about our family tree. When I finished, I heard her breathing hard.

I sighed. “How ridiculous can anyone be, Ma?”

I heard her light a cigarette and inhale the smoke.

“Ma?” My stomach began to do a slow twist. I was afraid of what she was about to tell me.

***

I had started out to write a short story about a woman using witchcraft to wreak vengeance on a man who mistreated her. I knew where the vengeance part came from—I wanted vengeance on the man I’d married and divorced three years later. It doesn’t matter that I call what I write fiction, there’s always a smattering of truth behind the storyline. The idea of smacking him with a spell popped into my head when I read the book about herbalism. Apparently, Rebecca was right about this thing being genetic.

I’ve kept the books she sold me and bought a few others from her on the subject. More than a few, actually. Over the next three months she became a friend and helped me understand my family. She helped me with a bit more too—it seems that causing my ex-husband to go bankrupt was more than I could manage alone. With the two of us, though, chanting together over the right herbs―

We’d just begun to work on what Elvira asked me to do—
Ancestry.com
led us to some descendants of Cotton Mather—when fate spun its head and stuck its tongue out at me. By which I mean my genetic bent was dragged into the middle of the Osborn murder.

Chapter Three

Detective Frey

            
 
M
arch brought a worse storm than the one we were hit with in December. It seems that’s how we celebrate St. Patrick’s Day around here. When it ended
after four days, a reserve unit from the Niagara Falls Air Base declared war on the snow. With military precision, the reservists piled the stuff into dump trucks and carted it to Lake Ontario, Lake Erie, and the Canal. They might have hauled it to the top of the mountains if their trucks’ tires could get enough traction. Since they couldn’t, it appeared as though they shoved what was left to the shoulder of River Road and into my driveway. When I gazed through the kitchen window at gray heaps so high my mailbox was buried, I was certain the dunes would still be there in July. They weren’t, of course. In two days the streets had been plowed and salted, and cars crawled past. Thanks to my neighbor, Roger Frey, even my driveway had been cleared. In Western New York we know how to deal with the white stuff.

My preferred way of dealing with it is to turn up the thermostat and remain inside, comfy and warm. At least until the sun pokes through the clouds. This is why, still in my robe and flannel pajamas with thermal socks pulled up to my knees, I was snuggled on the sofa under my grandmother’s grey wool afghan. I still wondered about the runes Grandma had sewn into the afghan. Maybe one day Rebecca Nurse would find a book to help me interpret them.

From a corner of what had become
her
wingback chair, the hefty albino cat—Elvira detested it when I referred to her as fat—glared at me. She seemed annoyed I was wasting the morning on a made for TV movie.

“What?” I said to her.

She rolled her eyes—well, that’s what it looked like to me.

“Give me a break, will you?” I said. “I was up half the night writing.”

She snorted.

“What do you mean I didn’t write anything that mattered?”

She tilted her head.

I shifted on the sofa and bent toward her. “I’m not bullshitting you!” My voice went up an octave. “You were there. You saw what I was—”

At the very moment I realized the cat had again drawn me into an argument, I heard a knock on my front door. My face hot—from anger at Elvira or embarrassment at letting her get the better of the argument?—I jumped from the sofa and yanked the door open.

“What?” I demanded with a sharp edge to my voice.

On my door stoop stood a black quilted jacket, green rubber boots laced over baggy jeans, a flannel scarf wound around the little I could see of a face, and a knit cap pulled so low on a head the figure looked like a cartoon character with no ears. The man on the stoop might have been a predator who intended to break into my home, ravish my body, and make off with my treasures. Okay, I’ve already admitted I have an active imagination. There are no treasures in my home, and my body—well, let’s just say it’s been a long time since anyone would risk jail for ravishing me. Besides, I knew who this was. Earlier, while I poured my coffee, through the window I’d watched my neighbor ride his snowplow like it was the mechanical bull at Flannery’s Bar. 

On the frigid side of the storm door, Roger Frey swiveled his head from side-to-side, as if searching for who I hollered at.

At times, I’ve stood before a mirror, arguing with myself, and seen what I look like when I blush. My neck gets as red as my hair, then the color dashes uphill past my face to my forehead. So, I knew what Roger saw when he looked at me.

“Sorry,” I mumbled to what I could see of his face. “Cranky. I was up half the night.”

His voice muted by the scarf covering his mouth, he said, “No need to apologize.” He knew the hours I kept when the muse plopped down next to me.

The glass door misted when he leaned close to peer past my shoulder.

I looked behind me. Elvira had followed me to the door. She stared at us, head slightly tilted. The pale pink of her eyes darkened as if she’d decided something.

Roger nodded at her. “At least you’re not alone anymore.”

“Me or the cat?” I said.

“Both, I suppose.” When Roger pulled down the scarf, his grin showed the small gap between his front teeth.

“I prefer being alone,” I said. “If
you
want company, feel free to take the cat.”

My friend and neighbor had been alone since his wife took off for a warmer place three years ago.

Elvira sniffed once. Then she turned abruptly, wiggled her large derriere at me, and curled up on the floor at my feet.

Roger laughed out loud.

As if loosened by the laughter that exploded from deep inside him, a sheet of snow skidded off the roof. He must have heard the rumble, because he took a quick step backwards. He wasn’t fast enough, though. While half the snow thudded to the ground, the rest flattened his wool cap and spilled down his face. His hazel eyes rounded in surprise.

Now
I
laughed. With snow all over his body, it looked as though Frosty the Snowman was on my stoop. I opened
the storm door and brushed the snow from his cheek. “Come in here,”
I said. “Let me dry you off.”

He stamped his feet on the mat to rid himself of most of the snow.

As I stepped aside to make room for him to pass, I stumbled over the cat.

Roger moved faster than he had to avoid the snow drift from my roof. His arm shot out. “Careful!” he said, and grabbed me around the waist just as I began to flop like a rag doll to floor. 

The man is certainly strong. In a single motion, he lifted me from my feet then set me down. His arms still surrounded me.

“You okay?”

I nodded, but couldn’t speak, not even to say yes. I’m sure it was because I was a little bit in shock.

At last he released me, and bent to stroke the cat. “That wasn’t nice, Elvira,” he said. “You could’ve hurt Emlyn.”

I also leaned down to stroke her. “This beast probably intended to do it.”

When I glanced at Roger, his face was precariously close to mine. The look in his eyes told me he might not mind being nearer still.

“Uh, yeah,” I mumbled, and pulled back to put a safe distance between us. “She probably did it on purpose…” My words drifted into a crimson haze.

His cheeks also a bit red—I told myself this was probably from the near-zero temperature outside—he straightened up, and unwound his scarf. His chin and upper lip were dark. The morning stubble enhanced rather than detracted from his chiseled cheekbones and slightly cleft chin. This was a handsome man by anybody’s reckoning. More than that, he was kind. He looked after his neighbors, and made sure we were safe. I’d often wondered why Judy, his ex-wife, would leave such a man.

“I, uh, stopped by to, um…” he said.

I looked down. I had nothing on but my pajamas and robe, and the robe had fallen loose when I nearly fell. Trying not to be obvious about it, I tied my robe closed.

Roger took a deep breath. “Yes, uh, the UPS guy brought this.”

He pulled off his gloves, unzipped his jacket, and took a cardboard box from a large inside pocket. Holding it out, he said, “It came yesterday afternoon. All the snow, the UPS guy couldn’t get to your door, so he left it with me.”

The box was about nine inches wide, a foot long, and maybe two inches thick. I turned it over in my hands, examined the label. The return address said the package came from Naples, Florida.

“It’s from my mother,” I said.

“What is it?” Roger asked.

I shrugged. “I’d have to open the box to find out.”

“So, open it.”

Glancing sideways at him, I smiled. “Later.”

“Come on,” he said, and reached for the package. “I hauled it all the way over here. Plowed out your driveway while I was at it. You gotta show me what’s in there.”

“All the way over, huh?” I laughed. “You live next door.”

“Yeah, well.” He took off his jacket, and draped it over the back of a kitchen chair. His black hooded sweatshirt barely made it to his hips. “I had to wade through three feet of snow to get here. That’s gotta be worth something.”

I laid the package on the kitchen counter. “How about some coffee?”

I yanked the wet knit cap from his head, and tossed it into the sink. Snow clinging to the fibers sprinkled onto his dark brown hair, and melted into the gray that had begun to invade his temples. While I brushed the wet beads from his curls, I said, “A gentleman takes off his hat when he comes inside.”

He picked the box up and handed it to me. “Don’t try to change the subject. I know you, Emlyn Goode. You’re dying to look inside.”

I was. But it was just so much fun to tease him. A girl’s got to do that now and then, just to stay in practice. I turned my back, and refilled my mug then poured coffee into a second mug.

He pushed the box in front of me.

“You’re a big snoop, you know that?” I said.

He let out the laugh that never failed to disarm me. “Of course I am. I’m a cop. Snooping is what I do.”

“Yup, and I’m your good buddy. Like in novels, it’s the sidekick’s job to give the cop a hard time. That’s in my job description.” I pointed at the package. “And see, it’s written right here.”

Another deep, resonant laugh burst from him. “You’re definitely a piece of work,” he said.

Elvira seemed to grow impatient with my stalling. She leaped onto the counter and pawed at the package. How the devil did she manage to move her large body so lithely?

“Okay, okay,” I said. “I can’t fight both of you.”

I took the box to my dinette table, and sat, glancing around.

“What now?” Roger asked.

“I need something to slice the tape with.”

He tilted sideways in his chair and pulled a Swiss army knife from his pants pocket. As he flicked open the smaller blade, he said, “I was a boy scout, I’m always prepared.”

Settled on Roger’s lap, the cat smacked his hand with her paw. Then she glared at me.
C’mon, knock off the flirting and get to it,
she seemed to say—well, that’s what her growl sounded like.

I slit the tape and raised the cardboard flaps. Inside was what appeared to be a very old book. Without removing it from the box, I carefully lifted the leather cover. The words on the first page were faded. Still I was able to make some of them out.

“What is it?” Roger asked.

“Seems to be someone’s diary.” I suspect I sounded puzzled. Why would my mother send me something like this?

Between the next two pages was an envelope addressed to me.
Inside was a note.
I’ve been holding onto this,
Mom wrote,
hoping the line that’s led from Sarah Goode would end with me. Apparently it hasn’t, so I’m sending you this. Please, Emlyn, try to make better use of this than some of our ancestors have.

Elvira sniffed the book and purred.

Quickly, I refolded the letter.

Roger leaned over, peered into my eyes. “What is it?” he said.

“It’s…um, it’s…” I stammered as I searched for a lie he might believe. I didn’t want to tell him my mother had sent me Sarah Goode’s
Book of Shadows
. A guy like Roger—his life was built on the belief every mystery could be logically explained, and magic is nothing but sleight-of-hand. He’d remarked about that the night we saw David Copperfield perform at the Seneca Niagara Casino. The fastest way to end our friendship was to tell him I’m the latest in a 350-year line of witches. If I said that, he would stare at me as though I’d winked at him from a third eye in the center of my forehead. Then he’d leave and not come back. Oh, he’d be polite about it—Roger’s always polite. But our friendship would be over. I mean, if it ever got out
Detective Roger Frey of the Niagara Falls Police Department had a witch for a friend, he’d die of
embarrassment. Or maybe he’d have to resign his position or even move to Rochester or something. If he did, who would plow my driveway then knock on my door to share my morning coffee and help me with the Sunday crossword puzzle?

What? I already said I have a vivid imagination.

As if Sarah Goode’s book was catnip, Elvira dropped her head on it, mewed, and rubbed her paw across her face. Roger shoved her aside, and leaned over to see, I supposed, what caused my concern.

Before he could remove the book from the box, I closed the flaps.

“It’s, uh…um, just an old family diary,” I said. It wasn’t much of a lie. A Book of Shadows
is
a diary of a sort. Witches record their herbal mixtures in it, and the words they chant to work their magic. My friend, Rebecca Nurse, had explained that when she showed me hers.

“Gotta be something more than a diary to startle you like this,” Roger said.

I glanced at the coffee pot and raised my mug. “Yours must be cold by now. I’ll get you some more.”

“Emlyn?”

It’s tough having a cop for a friend, especially a perceptive one. Only the truth would satisfy him.

“Uh, well…there’s, uh, something I ought to tell you.” I crossed my fingers. I hoped when I told him about my family and what was in my genes, his reaction wouldn’t match what I’d imagined.