The Witch of Agnesi (22 page)

“Closer to the abusive parent,” she echoed. “And what if that parent is a hero, a larger than life Adonis twice decorated by the President of the United States, no less?”

“You got the makings of one screwed up kid.”

“You betcha. Now suppose this kid’s mother and this kid’s best friend in the whole world get it into their homicidal craniums they need to put an end to the mon-ster who is making all their lives a living hell?”

“They’d have to get Peyton out of the way, at least temporarily.” Armen turned his mouth down in dis-taste. “I still have trouble picturing Wendy Newlin with Edmund.”

Bonnie spread wide her hands, signaling she was none too sure of the nature of the pair’s relationship. “It may be nothing more than Wendy utilizing a willing foil. She’s certainly every horny nerd’s wet dream. It wouldn’t take much to wrap the boy around her scheme and make him agree to help her get rid of an abusive husband, especially if that husband was the father of his best friend.”

Armen licked his lips, obviously getting into the spirit of the give-and-take. His eyes went wide. “When you called Wendy from your classroom, the male voice you heard—.”

“Was probably Edmund.”

“And Ralph Newlin himself?”

“By Saturday morning? If it was anybody else, I’d say he was singing in the heavenly choir. Given that we’re talking about Ralph Newlin, I seriously doubt it.”

Armen turned into the tree-lined drive. “Hold it! We both saw Wendy’s face in the wee hours of Sunday morning. Someone broke the woman’s nose.”

Bonnie nodded her agreement. “I considered that. I think Edmund did it.”

“Edmund?”

“Imagine how you would feel if you realized you’d been poisoned. Wouldn’t you lash out?”

Armen looked dubious. “I suppose.”

“It all ties together. And Edmund would hardly suspect Wendy would poison him, especially if she was his lover.”

She meant to explain more but all thought was driv-en from her mind. At the end of the horseshoe drive sat Ralph Newlin’s yellow Stingray. The trunk was open.

Not a sound came from within the sprawling adobe structure. No light escaped either since a series of pleated curtains made it impossible to see through the long stained-glass window.

A woman’s scream sounded from within the house.

The expression on Armen’s face told Bonnie he was thinking precisely what she was. What if they were wrong? What if Ralph Newlin was at that very mo-ment throttling his wife?

Armen reached beneath the dash and popped the trunk. “I’ll go.”

“Not without me, you won’t,” she whispered.
You
idiot, the time for whispering is long past. Whoever’s
in that house probably watched you come up the drive.
She fully expected Armen to give her a hard time about accompanying him, but he only offered a tight smile and nodded.

While Bonnie fumbled in the back seat for her crutches, Armen disappeared to the rear of the car, ap-pearing a moment later with a tire iron. He smacked it once in the palm of his hand.

Bonnie’s heart felt like it had grown too large for her chest. It pounded for release against her ribs. “Let’s do it.”

The door wasn’t locked. Bonnie swung it open, and they peered into the semi-darkness of the front room. Armen squinted as he led the way, the tire iron in front of him like a dousing rod. A sickly sweet smell became apparent.

Blood?

Bonnie’s suspicions were confirmed a moment later when her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom. The body of Ralph Newlin lay face up and spread-eagled not ten feet from the open door. From the single rut-ted depression on the carpet, he’d been dragged by the feet. A streak of dried blood leading back toward the kitchen discolored the carpet.

A grunt came from behind the open door. Some-thing thin and metallic struck Armen in the upper chest. The tire iron flew from his hands. It dropped with a thud into the thick carpet. The metal rod struck again, this time catching Armen full in the face. He fell to his knees and toppled.

Before Bonnie could react, the door slammed shut.

“I knew you’d come flying in here if I screamed.” Her shoulder pressed against the door, Wendy Newlin held a metal-headed golf club in both hands. Her mis-shapen face was flushed. A streak of blood stained the front of her cashmere sweater.

Wendy sighed and fixed Bonnie with a one-eyed stare. “Ten more minutes and I would have had Ralph safely tucked into the trunk of his beloved Stingray.”

Wendy lifted a corner of the curtain and squinted into the morning light. “Good girl. You didn’t bring the police.”

“Wendy, you can’t get away with this.” Bonnie pointed with her crutch. “There’ll be no hiding that blood stain.”

Wendy advanced a step. She clasped the club in one hand. Instead of brandishing it, however, she stroked her swollen and discolored cheek. “You’re wrong. That nice Sergeant Valsecci will bear witness to my husband’s brutal attack of Saturday night. Tearfully, I’ll explain how he returned. This time, he intended to kill me. A woman has a right to defend herself.”

Bonnie took a step back, shaking her head as she went. She knew she should just shut her mouth, play for time, but her Imp of the Perverse prodded her to speak. “I don’t think so. From the looks of your hus-band, I’d say he’s been dead for several days. How are you going to explain how a dead man attacked you on Saturday?”

When Wendy didn’t respond, Bonnie went on. “Edmund get in a few licks before he shuffled off his mortal coil?”

Wendy sighed again and nodded, as if Bonnie had caught her filching the last piece of pumpkin pie rather than how a dying young man had broken her nose. “He surprised me. I really thought he’d succumb quicker.”

She stroked her swollen nose. “No matter—one thing I’ve learned over the years is how to take a punch.”

Again, Bonnie’s saner self demanded she shut her mouth, and again her Imp of the Perverse prevailed.

“Three children are dead because of you. One of them is your own child.”

She took another backward step and felt a panel of drapery brush against her arm. She didn’t dare take her eyes off Wendy.

“Shut up,” Wendy hissed.

She raised the club as if she meant to swing it. “That maniac Edmund killed Stephanie and my son. That’s why I had to kill him.”

Bonnie pursed her lips and offered a sympathetic smile. In a moment of crystal clarity Bonnie knew the woman was lying. “I don’t think so, Wendy. Your last Wicked Little Witch e-mail says otherwise.”

Wendy squinted at Bonnie with her one good eye. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

In for a penny.

“Cut the crap. You never intended for Edmund to read that e-mail. You’d been calling the boy Casper up until that last letter.”

Wendy’s lopsided face blushed. “And I was his Wicked Little Witch.” She shrugged. “He was al-ways over here, hanging out with Peyton, playing video games. One day he came when Peyton was out with his dad. We played a different game.”

Edmund, you poor nebesh. You never had a chance
with this woman. She meant to kill you from the mo-ment
she seduced you.

“In the last letter you called Edmund Samurai, Ali’s pet name for him. You wrote that letter for the same reason a magician gets you staring at the hand that doesn’t hold the coin—misdirection. All along you’ve been casting suspicion away from yourself—first Jesse Poole then Ali Griffith, but the cleverest stroke of all was how you used Edmund.”

Wendy shook her red mane, her face hard, her eyes chips of flint. “You don’t know how close you came to dying Friday night. Edmund talked me out of going into that ravine and finishing you off.”

Bonnie could swear she saw a flicker of a smile touch Wendy’s lips. Bonnie’s heart sank. The woman was a family-sized loaf of banana bread.

Still, Bonnie had to reason with her. “Why did you listen?”

Wendy shrugged again. This time a capricious shrug that said “Maybe I shouldn’t have.” “When you cursed Jesse, we knew you thought he was the driver. Edmund pointed that out to me, and it made sense to let you report Jesse was driving the truck.”

Thank you, Edmund.

Bonnie risked a momentary glance at Armen. He seemed to be breathing, but that didn’t mean his skull wasn’t filling with blood. Whatever she meant to do she’d better do it quickly. When she looked back at Wendy, the woman was once more staring at her.

A sad smile pulled back one corner of Wendy’s swollen lips. She cocked her head. “You know, I meant it when I told you I wanted to be your friend. I had hoped . . .” She drew a long breath and sighed. “. . . when this was all over we could get to know one another.”

Yet, you tried to kill me an hour after you told me
that.
Bonnie adopted the frozen smile she normally re-served for students she wanted to throttle. “I would have liked that, too.”

The corners of Wendy mouth turned down—a look of disappointment rather than anger. “Who’s the liar now? You think me a monster. You have no idea what I’ve sacrificed for that warped little genius: the beatings, the humiliations. The least he could do is support me after I was forced to do away with the Templeton girl.”

Time to get smart, Pinkwater. You need to get on
this strudel’s good side.
Bonnie shook her head. “I don’t think you’re a monster at all. I saw Peyton’s re-cords. He would have been fourteen in a few days. You told me you’ve been married for less than fourteen. How pregnant were you when you got married?”

Wendy laughed, high-pitched and staccato. “Not pregnant at all. I had just given birth. It was a difficult delivery because of my age and the damage Ralph did to my spine in the rape.”

Bonnie wasn’t sure how to respond. She was spared the effort.

“I was twelve. Ralph and his brother held me down and took turns with me.” A tear leaked from Wendy’s good eye. “I was too young, too fucked up . . .”

She laughed again. “In more ways than the obvious ones. Anyway, a deal was struck between my parents and Ralph’s.”

“A deal?” Against her will, Bonnie felt herself being sucked into the tragedy that was Wendy Newlin.

Wendy nodded and swiped at the tear. “Ralph’s brother was already into politics, being groomed to be the governor or senator or something. My parents threatened to make trouble. They’d always been white trash. Still are. Money and a respectable marriage to a respectable family smoothed everything over. Ralph was chosen to do the honorable thing.”

An almost animal snarl issued from her swollen lips. “The honorable thing. Every day of my life, he reminded me what a favor he’d done me.”

Her fingers played over the swollen half of her face. “Some days a little more forceful than others.”

Armen groaned.

The dreamy look that had taken over Wendy’s face evaporated. “I wish things had turned out differently for all of us, but life goes on.” She advanced another step.

Bonnie’s heart raced. She backed up while cast-ing about for anything to give her a little more time. “Franklin knows you poisoned Edmund.”

Wendy raised the club. “Nice try, but obviously, he doesn’t. If he did, he’d be here, not you.”

She advanced another step. “I’m sorry, Bonnie. I wish things didn’t have to be this way.”

Screw this.

Bonnie grabbed a panel of the drapery and yanked. The curtain rod tore free from the wall. With a yell, she hurled the dislodged curtain at Wendy.

Wendy swung and entangled the club.

As Bonnie wheeled on her crutches, she heard Wendy spit curses at her.
That’ll keep her busy for all
of ten seconds, then what?
The tips of the crutches sank deep in the carpet, slowing her down.

Before she’d taken three steps, Wendy was on her. The metal club struck her in the right hand, sending her sprawling.
Jesus Christ, that hurts like a son of a bitch.
She fell onto her
derrière
and toppled backward.

Wendy Newlin bore down on her, the club high over her head.

Bonnie deflected the blow with her crutch. Her in-jured hand shrieked in protest.

Damn you, bitch.
She hurled the crutch at Wendy’s face.

Wendy batted it aside.

Ignoring the pain that sang an aria from every bone in her body, Bonnie hoisted herself to her feet. There was nowhere to run. She turned to face her attacker.

Come and get me, you twisted asshole.

Wendy swung the club like a bat and Bonnie’s head was the ball.

Hell, they call it a walking boot.

Jamming her injured foot into the carpet for stabil-ity, Bonnie swung her remaining crutch at the club and the hand that held it. The golf club clattered against the ribs of the crutch. The next instant the crutch’s tip connected with Wendy’s wrist.

The woman howled in pain and dropped the club. She stooped hurriedly to retrieve it.

Not in this lifetime, sister.

Bonnie pulled back on her crutch and flipped the tip end into her hand. As Wendy rose holding the golf club, Bonnie swung the crutch, putting every foot-pound of force she could muster into the swing.

The metal bracing struck Wendy full in the side of the head. The blow launched her toward the stained-glass mural. Wendy exploded through the glass in a shower of frosted reds and purples.

The late morning sun reflected off the broken shards and the blood pooling around Wendy Newlin’s lacerated throat.

EPILOGUE

N
EXT SATURDAY EVENING FOUND BONNIE staring past a massive ceramic bowl of potato salad at a ten-foot multicolored maypole. The late spring sun had yet to set and lent a surreal aura to the rainbow of colors woven about the monolith.

Armen sat next to her, holding court about their harrowing escape from the clutches of Wendy Newlin. If Bonnie had to estimate, she’d be forced to say she was reserving less than twelve percent of her attention for Armen. The rest she gave over to the impressive maypole which towered over them all in the Griffith’s front yard.

Here she sat at a long picnic table sharing corn bread and watermelon with a slew of witches, and truth be told she felt right at home. She’d had very little to do with the maypole’s creation. That was the work of Rhiannon, Ali, Jesse, Winston, and those witches whose names she knew she could bring to the forefront of her brain if she cared enough to try. Still, something magical had transpired in the weaving of the long rib-bons. Then there’d been the singing, welcoming the goddess back from her long winter’s repose, asking for her blessing on the coming year.

Who’d have thought I’d be so moved by a bunch of
rummy pagans. But what the hell, Beltane is supposed
to be a time of renewal. I guess that’s what we all
need right about now.
She turned back to Armen. He seemed to be winding down on his tale of adventure.

“My mother always said I had a hard head.”

Armen’s swollen nose bore a contraption of alumi-num, sponge, and surgical tape, which did nothing to hide the fact that both his eyes were blackened and his poor proboscis was too obviously broken.

“Truth is, Wendy laid a pretty convincing concus-sion on me. We were lucky Franklin showed up when he did.”

Bonnie could feel the hint of the smile that had been trying to work its way onto her face evaporate. “Not in time to save Wendy Newlin, though.”

Rhiannon shoved aside the large ceramic bowl, engulfing Bonnie’s uninjured hand in her larger one. “Bonnie, don’t beat yourself up over this. You did all you could.”

Rhiannon chucked Bonnie on the shoulder. “You know, I’ve been thinking about Wendy Newlin myself, and what the Tarot had to say about her.”

“How so?”

“Well, two of the cards specifically indicated Wendy Newlin’s situation. The Nine of Swords spoke to Wen-dy’s darkening mind—her despair, the hopelessness of her marriage.”

Bonnie recalled the card—a woman sitting up in bed, her face buried in her hands, a black wall behind her
. Damn it, woman, you murdered your child. Why
can’t I just assign you to the fires of hell and be done
with you?
An image swirled in the mists of Bonnie’s depression—a twelve-year old girl being raped again and again by two grown men.

“Then the Two of Swords,” Rhiannon said.

Bonnie didn’t need any reminder of this card—The Hoodwinked Woman, a woman living a lie. Sold by her own parents to a man who hated and abused her for more than a decade. Bonnie also remembered the alter-native interpretation of the card—a woman desperately needing a friend.

Tears pooled in Bonnie’s eyes before she swiped them away.
I would have saved you, Wendy. God
damn it, I tried.
Bonnie had attempted to staunch the flow of blood that insisted on escaping from Wendy’s throat at an alarming rate. In the end, the woman’s life simply poured out crimson onto her flagstone patio.

“If she lived, she’d have spent the rest of her life in prison, or a mental institution,” Rhiannon said.

“I know.”
And I’ll spend the rest of mine living
with the decision I made staring down at Wendy New-lin’s
lifeless corpse.

The idea had come to Bonnie the instant Wendy breathed her last. What if Wendy hadn’t died without regaining consciousness? What if she’d confessed to the murder of her husband and completely exonerated Edmund?

Hell, it could even be true, but even if it wasn’t, it should be. The entire Newlin family was gone. Not one of them would be hurt if the guilt for all these deaths shifted away from Edmund. Forget the fact that Ed-mund was, at the very least, an accomplice. This wasn’t about Edmund and what he did, or didn’t do, during the final days of his mixed up life. The Sheridans would be spared a horrific ordeal. The decision was made almost as quickly as the idea was formulated.

The police and the East Plains paramedics were called. A still unconscious Armen was taken into Colo-rado Springs. Wendy Newlin was pronounced dead on the scene. Both she and Armen were taken in the same van into Colorado Springs. Franklin Valsecci showed up forty minutes later.

Bonnie fed Franklin the revised tale of Wendy’s Newlin’s final minutes of life. She wove it around Wen-dy’s story of a long ago rape and a lifetime of abuse.

She couldn’t remember where she’d heard the apho-rism, but someone once said that if you wanted a lie to be believed, it should be manufactured of nineteen parts truth to one part fantasy. Bonnie couldn’t swear to a ninety-five percent ratio, but the mixture did the job. If Franklin suspected she was lying, he evinced no hint. He nodded at the appropriate junctures and said it tied in with facts he’d already discovered. Besides, what good would it do to pin blame on Edmund? The boy was dead.

With any luck, the story would bring long delayed justice down on Ralph Newlin’s politician brother.

As Bonnie stared across the picnic table at Rhian-non, she searched her conscience.
I can live with my
decision. Everything may not be as I would have cho-sen
it, but it’s close enough.

“I’ll be okay.”

“I know you will. I threw your Tarot last night.” Rhiannon patted Bonnie’s uninjured hand. “You’re going to come through this just fine.”

“You’re all right, Rhiannon Griffith.”

“Who said I wasn’t?”

This time Bonnie found it easier to smile. “We’ve got to be going.” She grabbed a flowered cane leaning against the picnic table.

Armen rose to join her.

“So soon?” Ali asked.

Bonnie hooked her arm into Armen’s. “I promised this handsome gentleman we’d watch The Best Movie Ever Made tonight.”

“
Casablanca
,” Rhiannon said, matter of factly.

Bonnie squinted up at Armen suspiciously. “Did you tell her?”

Armen shook his head. His black eyes and swollen nose made him seem like a little boy dodging the blame for a broken window.

“Don’t go picking on the poor man.” Rhiannon wrapped an arm around each of their shoulders. “He didn’t need to tell me. I’m a witch, remember.”

Rhiannon winked at Bonnie. “Besides, didn’t A & E proclaim
Casablanca
the best movie ever made?”

Bonnie shook her head. “That was
Citizen Kane
.”

“Well, it should have been
Casablanca
.”

Armen and Rhiannon exchanged glances then almost simultaneously they slurred, “ ‘Of all the gin joints, in all the world, she comes walking into mine’.”

Earlier in the week Bonnie had traded in her crutch-es for the cane. She was glad she had a lock on Armen’s elbow as they walked back to the Subaru. She felt defi-nitely proprietary with regard to one middle-school Science teacher, and was more than a little happy Rhi-annon didn’t follow them all the way to the car.

When they reached Alice, Bonnie turned to wave and noted with satisfaction at how close Ali was sitting to Jesse. The two had become inseparable. They’d at-tended not only Mrs. Poole’s funeral together, but also those of each of their deceased classmates. They’d even celebrated together when Ali was awarded the Sullivan Scholarship.

“Take care, everyone,” Bonnie yelled. “We’ll see you soon.”

Rhiannon mouthed something and held up three fingers. Bonnie chuckled.

“What did she say?” Armen asked as he held the door.

“I’m not really sure. I think it was a line from
Cas-ablanca
.”
I’m getting pretty good at this lying stuff.

Of course, the message had nothing to do with The Best Movie Ever Made. Rhiannon had prescribed the optimal dosage for her patented love potion.

As Armen started up the Subaru, Bonnie snuggled close to him. She fully intended to sit through the en-tire showing of
Casablanca,
but afterward, who knew? Bonnie didn’t think she’d need the love potion. Yes, they were a couple of fifty-year-olds, and certainly they bore multiple contusions, lacerations, and broken bones. Yet, if she had anything to say about it, the evening would end with them creating a little magic of their own.

And the morning after, maybe French toast?