Witches' Bane (9 page)

“Whoever stole your plant must have known what they were looking for,” Ruby said.

“I understand that some traditional cultures use wolfsbane to ward off witches,” Sybil said. She looked like a witch herself in a high-necked black robe with long flowing sleeves and a heavy neckpiece of polished wood beads and carved ivory that might have belonged to an African shaman. Her hooded eyes were dramatically made up and her long nails were painted a red so dark it was almost black.

“Really?” It was a bit of herb lore I hadn’t heard, but I could see the logic.

Sybil smiled, not pleasantly. “My husband says the garden is a neighborhood nuisance. He told me not to plant it, and this week, he threatened to have it destroyed.” She paused. “He’s not entirely supportive of my esoteric interests, you see—the garden, tarot, astrology. He’s afraid of them.”

There was an uncomfortable pause. A black-masked butcher-bird chirped once from the wild cherry tree, then flew away.

“I don’t think I’ve met your husband,” Ruby said.

“I’d introduce you, but he went to Atlanta yesterday to handle some family business.” Sybil gave Ruby’s belly dancer costume a glance. “I’m sure he’d be very glad to meet
you.”
She turned back toward the house. “But I didn’t ask you here just to see the garden. There’s something else— not important really, but Angela insisted that I show you.”

She led the way across the wooden deck and into a kitchen that could easily have handled the Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast. A young Hispanic woman in jeans and an oversized checked apron was putting dishes away. She smiled when she saw Batwoman and a belly dancer coming through the door.

I smiled back. “Hello, Angela,” I said. Angela Sanchez is in her early twenties. She has regular features and dark hair in a heavy braid halfway to her waist. I met her when Sarita Gonzales and I helped her brother and cousin get their citizenship papers. To say thanks, she invited us to her sister Eusebia’s
Quincenera,
the traditional Mexican fifteenth-birthday celebration. After mass, there was a dinner and a dance at the Centro Mutualista Cuauhtemoc, with Eusebia in a white dress, surrounded by a court of honor numbering in the dozens. At midnight, everybody stopped drinking and sat down to hot, aromatic bowls of menudo, made of tripe, hominy, and chile poblano stewed with onion, garlic, and peppercorns, and served with hot tortillas and small dishes of chopped chile serranos, chopped onion, and wedges of lime. I don’t know whether it was the fellowship or the menudo (which is said to be a cure for hangovers), but I went home feeling good and woke up feeling better.

“Hello, China,” Angela said. “Hi, Ruby.” She gave Sybil a close look. “Are you going to show them, Mrs. Rand?”

Angela Sanchez is not a woman who sits back and waits for somebody else to take command. She’s a graduate student in the anthropology program at CTSU. She plans to get her doctorate and teach. For now, she supports herself by working in the homes of women who can afford to hire other women. She’s a good worker, the best, and she doesn’t work for minimum wage.

Reluctantly, Sybil went to a desk. On it was a typewriter with a sheet of paper rolled into it, a list of Latin plant names, probably an inventory. She opened the desk drawer and pulled out a curious doll-like object dressed in black. It had black yarn for hair and a bit of shiny copper wire twisted around its neck. Sybil put it on the counter, smiling tightly. “A passable imitation, don’t you think?”

“A
voodoo
doll?” Ruby asked.

“Yes,” Angela said. “Santeria.”

“I found it on the deck this morning,” Sybil said, “with this.” She held up a tarot card. It pictured a grim skeleton holding a scythe.

Ruby’s face became still. “Death. Who sent this, Sybil?”

“If I knew,” Sybil said shortly, “I would have sent it back.” She tossed the card on the counter beside the doll. “Anyway, it’s nothing to get excited about. It’s just some friend’s idea of a joke. I wouldn’t have told you, but Angela insisted.”

I picked up the card and studied it. I hadn’t gotten my own tarot deck yet, but I’d looked at Ruby’s, and I remembered this card, sinister and threatening, a symbol that evoked an ancient fear. “Your friends like to play jokes like this?”

Angela took off her apron. “This is no joke,” she said firmly. “When I was a child, my cousin Juanita’s husband, an Anglo named Carl, decided he wanted a divorce. Juanita said no, because she was Catholic. Carl got this old
bruja
— a Mexican witch—to make a doll and put pins in the throat. When Juanita found the doll at her door, she nearly went crazy. The next morning, when she woke up, she couldn’t talk. For two or three days, she couldn’t talk. She went to the doctor, but there was nothing wrong with her, not physically, anyway. She went to the priest, but he couldn’t help, either. Finally, after a couple of weeks of this, Carl brought over this paper saying that Juanita would give him a divorce. The minute she signed, her voice came back.” She opened the pantry and hung up her apron. “A
bruja
made this doll, too. The death card makes the magic more potent. Somebody’s got it in for Mrs. Rand.”

Sybil folded her arms. “If you’re finished with the kitchen, Angela, you can go.”

Angela refused to be dismissed. “I don’t think you’re taking this seriously enough, Mrs. Rand. It’s witchcraft. Santeria. It’s dangerous. Ruby can tell you—she knows about such things.”

I was surprised that Angela, with her education, was still trapped in the old superstitions. “Your cousin got sick because she believed in the power of the doll,” I said.

“Yes,” Ruby agreed. “It was her fear that kept her from speaking, not the doll itself. That’s the way magic works. It has a great deal of power, but only over those who believe in the power.”

Angela’s dark eyes flashed scornfully. “You’re all missing the point. What Mrs. Rand believes or doesn’t believe doesn’t matter. What matters is the sender’s
motives.
If this threat doesn’t accomplish the purpose, whatever it is, that person is likely to try something more direct.”

I felt like a rebuked kid who’d been set straight. “You’re right, Angela. Would you mind keeping an ear to the ground? Maybe you’ll run across the
bruja
who made the doll.”

That piqued Ruby’s PI. curiosity. “Sure. If we can find the witch, we can get her to tell us who she’s working for. I’ll bet there are fingerprints on the card, too.”

“Yes,” I said. “Sybil’s and mine.”

Ruby made a face at me and I had to smile. Batwoman and a six-foot belly dancer poised to jump into an investigation of Mexican witchcraft. What a team.

Sybil tossed her head. “This is all totally ridiculous,” she said lightly. “The doll’s a joke, not a threat. I can’t believe you’re taking it seriously.”

I looked at her. Her tense, synthetic smile and the uneasiness in her eyes contradicted her words. Who was she afraid of? Who had sent the doll?

Angela went to the back door. “I’ll ask around,” she told me. “Maybe I’ll hear something.” She looked at Mrs. Rand. “Lock up, okay?”

When Angela had gone, Sybil turned to Ruby and me. “Just before you came I got a call from a friend who’ll be dropping by later. I’ll need to leave the party about ten-thirty. If that’s a problem, I can follow you in my car, instead of riding with you.”

“It’s fine with me,” I said, wondering what sort of friend came calling so late at night.

“No problem for me either,” Ruby said. “There’s been some pretty nasty
brujeria
in my life lately. By ten-thirty, this belly dancer will be ready to hang up her tambourine.”

* * *

Deadwood is a crossroads town made up of one store, a volunteer fire station, and a couple of dozen houses loosely strung out along gravel lanes. Mary’s is a cedar-shingled geodesic dome with a wooden deck that overlooks an expansive lawn bordered by flower and herb beds and shaded by huge pecan trees. Beside the large dome is a smaller one, Mary’s studio, which she had prudently closed for the party. I made a mental note to ask her if I could come back some day and see where she works.

The lawn was crowded. Fifty-plus goblins, fairies, goddesses, Indians, countesses, fortune-tellers, and assorted revelers had showed up, including one Lieutenant Uhura, two Hillary Clintons, and three belly dancers. Gretel was there, a fraulein, and I caught a glimpse of Judith wearing a brown hooded robe and carrying a shaman’s staff. Mary’s Wiccan friends weren’t nearly as witchy-looking as Sybil. They wore long white garments with coronets of daisies and fern. Dottie had brought her black cat, somebody had a pink plastic flamingo, and somebody else wore a live boa constrictor named Balboa draped over her shoulder.

After we’d been partying for a while, it was time to sit in a circle for the Samhain celebration. Mary sat next to me and provided whispered explanations of the ritual. Three women dressed as the Fates came forward, chanting blessings. They were followed by eight Wiccans costumed to represent the festivals of the pagan year—Winter Solstice, Candlemas, Spring Equinox, May Eve, Midsummer, Lammas, Autumn Equinox, and Samhain. Each one danced and chanted and offered up wine, bread, and flowers symbolizing the seasons.

Because Samhain marks the year’s end and the passing of life, the eighth priestess was a crone, dressed in a sooty robe and crowned with a circlet of bones. “I am the mother of the dead,” she cried. “This is the night to commemorate our sisters who have died.”

One by one, women, often weeping, spoke the names of the dead—mothers, sisters, cousins, friends, women they had read of—and told how they died. I was struck by the number who had been victims of violence, and enveloped by the terrible sense that in our society the law protects the powerful and leaves the powerless undefended. Ruby reached for my hand, and we called out our friend Jo’s name, sadly remembering how she died the year before. I’ve never been big on ceremonies, but this one was different. The saying of the names was testimony to our common grief and love for our lost ones, yet at the same time, it lifted us out of sorrow and into an acceptance of our own mortality.

Then the crone raised her wooden staff and invited us all to offer up the things in our lives whose time had come to the. “My fear,” one woman cried. “My addiction,” someone else said. “My impulsiveness,” Ruby muttered beside me. I hesitated, then heard myself whispering, “Denial.” Denial of what? I wasn’t sure, for the word had come without my thinking it.

When all the gifts had been given, the crone invoked the names of the Goddess. “Hecate, Cerridwen, Dark Mother, we have reached the cusp of the ancient New Year. Let those who are gone teach us to live our own lives more fully, keeping our hearts in courage and grounding our courage in justice.”

It wasn’t a ritual I would have designed, and part of me felt uncomfortable about participating in the hocus-pocus of costumes and unfamiliar names. But I couldn’t help being deeply moved by its simplicity and sincerity, and I found my face wet with tears. As I looked around the circle, I saw tears in other eyes, too.

“No more weeping!” the crone cried. “This is the time for celebration!” She planted her staff in the middle of the circle and lit it, and it became a flaming torch. As I watched the sparks spiraling into the velvety blackness of the night sky, I thought of the burning cross in Judith’s yard. I was glad to let that image go and replace it with this. We stood up, joined hands, and began to dance. Led by the crone and the Wiccans, we chanted and danced, louder and louder, faster and faster.

That was when the party
really
got interesting. Out front, a siren wailed. Ruby looked at me, startled. “The cops?”

Two men in tan uniforms, boots, and Stetsons—county mounties, they’re called around here—marched into the yard carrying foot-long flashlights. “Who’s in charge here?” one of them demanded raspily, shining his light in our eyes.

“I am.” Mary stepped forward, shielding her eyes from the brightness. “Who are you? Is there some problem?”

“Sheriff Blackwell, Adams County Sheriff’s Department,” the raspy-voiced man said. He was thick-shouldered and stocky, with sandy hair cut short military style, a square jaw, broad square chin. “Somebody phoned in a report about a Klan meeting.” He flicked his light around the circle, picking out the white-robed priestesses. “You got a permit?”

Mary let out a peal of laughter, and the circle caught it up, laughing helplessly. “The Klan?” she managed at last. “You think
we
are the Ku Klux Klan?”

I was laughing too. What Sheriff Blackwell was looking at was probably the biggest assortment of witches, pagans, fortunetellers, belly dancers, and other radical females ever gathered in Adams County—and he thought we were the Klan!

Mary finally got control of herself. “I’m sorry to disappoint you,” she gasped, “but we’re not the Klan. We may look a little weird, but we’re perfectly harmless. We’re having a Halloween party.”

I stepped forward. “Can I help sort this out, Sheriff?” He squinted at me. “Oops,” I said, and jerked off my Bat hood.

He goggled. “China Bayles?”

McQuaid had introduced us at a party for town and county law-enforcement officers. Blackwell and McQuaid, as it turned out, had been undergraduates together in the criminal justice program at Sam Houston State. There’s nothing more fraternal than two cops, even when one of them leaves the brotherhood.

“I don’t believe a permit is required for a party on private property,” I said in my best lawyerly tone. “I trust we’re not disturbing the peace.”

“Not yet, anyway,” Blackwell said gruffly. “Just be careful of that torch. Everything’s tinder-dry.” He might have pressed the issue, but seen up close, the white robes obviously weren’t Klan robes, the burning staff clearly wasn’t a burning cross, and the twenty-five overtime hours it would take to book the lot of us would probably sink his budget. He eyed the six-foot belly dancer standing next to me with her bolero gaping open, and his mouth quirked at the corners. Then he turned away and he and his deputy disappeared around the house.

I laughed again, remembering what Ruby had said Tuesday night. You can get away with murder as long as you don’t tell people exactly what you’re doing.

The sheriff’s raid was the high point of the party. After that, we ate some more and drank some more. Ruby set up her table and gave a few short tarot readings while the rest of us talked and sang. Then we wished everybody a merry Samhain, and Ruby and Sybil and I got in the car and started home. It was eleven when we left Sybil in front of her fortresslike house.

Ruby had said very little. She broke her silence the minute Sybil was out of the car.

“China,” she said urgently, “that was my card.”

I shifted gears. “Come again?”

“The Death card Sybil got, with the voodoo doll. It was mine, out of my deck.”

“How do you know? Are your cards marked?”

“Well, no.” She hesitated. “But mine’s gone. I missed it when I was laying out the Trumps tonight, before I started reading. I always do that, just to get in touch with the cards.”

“Maybe it’s a coincidence,” I said, although it seemed much too coincidental.

Ruby shook her head wordlessly.

“So somebody stole your card and your knife, and gave the card to Sybil.” We stopped at the comer. A car went by, and in the flash of its lights I saw that Ruby was pushing her lips in and out, something she does when she’s very bothered. “I wonder what happened to your knife.”

It was after nine the next morning when I found out. The phone rang on the table beside the bed. Khat stirred next to me and began to wash his charcoal face with one charcoal paw. Getting tidy is always his first serious business of the morning. I groped for the phone.

“Hello,” I grunted. Nothing came out. Even for Bat-woman, the week had been a dilly, and I had slept the sleep of the dead. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Hello.”

Ruby’s voice was fragile and faraway, as if she were phoning from the North Pole. “She’s dead, China.”

I sat up, jostling Khat, who stopped in midswipe and glared at me. “Who’s dead?”

“Sybil Rand. Somebody stabbed her last night. With
my
knife.”

Khat went back to his face-washing.

CHAPTER
7

I pulled on my jeans and an orange-and-white U.T. sweatshirt and drove over to Ruby’s. She was pacing the sidewalk. She jumped into the car and I pulled away from the curb as she slammed the door.

“How’d you find out?” I asked.

“Judith called. She found the body when she went over this morning to pick Sybil up. They were going to San Antonio today.” Ruby covered her face with her hands. Her muffled voice was shaking. “She said she saw my knife on the floor, and she thought I’d better know.”

“She called the cops, I assume.”

“She called Bubba’s office first, but Lake Winds isn’t in his jurisdiction. It’s Adams County.”

“Blackie,” I said.

Ruby looked up. “What?”

“Blackie Blackwell, the county sheriff who raided the party last night.”

“Rats,” Ruby said. “Do you think he’ll remember us?”

I recalled the way Blackie had looked at her belly-dancer costume. “He’ll remember.”

There were three brown-and-white county cars, a green Oldsmobile, and a blue Toyota in front of the stone fortress. “The Toyota belongs to Judith,” Ruby said.

The Oldsmobile belonged to Maude Porterfield, Justice of the Peace. Texas law requires a J.P. to rule on all suspicious deaths, an archaic provision that occasionally creates disharmony at the crime scene. When we reached the open door guarded by a uniformed deputy, I saw Miss Porterfield standing in the foyer, talking to the sheriff. She is seventy-four years old and has been a justice for forty-one years. She was dressed for church in a navy-blue dress with a white lace collar, gray hair strategically arranged to cover thin spots and fastened with plastic combs. A hearing aid was tucked into her right ear, and the sheriff was standing close to her, talking loudly and distinctly.

“I think you’ve done about all you can do here, Miss Porterfield. You want to look at anything else?”

Miss Porterfield shook her head. “I’ve seen enough blood for one morning. Shall I put my report in the mail?”

“One of my men will pick it up,” Blackwell said, and ushered her to the door where we were standing.

She eyed Ruby. “That your knife in there, Mrs. Wilcox?”

Ruby looked pale. “I haven’t seen it since somebody broke into my store and stole it. And I’m not Mrs. Wilcox anymore.” She turned to me. “Miss Porterfield married Ward and me.”

“Shame you had to get mixed up in this,” Miss Porterfield said, shaking her head. “It’s a bloody mess. How’s Ward?”

Ruby raised her voice. “I don’t see much of him lately. We’re divorced. He married again.”

“Is that right?” Miss Porterfield asked, eyes bright with curiosity. “Who’d he marry? Was it that young—”

“Thanks for coming,” the sheriff shouted, and signaled the deputy to take Miss Porterfield’s elbow and help her down the stairs. “It’d be good if we could have that report this afternoon.” He didn’t say “whew” and wipe his brow when she had gone, but he looked plenty relieved.

“I’m Ruby Wilcox,” Ruby said in a small voice. “Judith Cohen said it was my knife that—”

“I know.” The sheriff looked at her. “Weren’t you at the Halloween party last night? In the, er, ah ...” He stopped, looking at her shirt. She was completely covered this morning, in black sweats with—I did a double take. Across the front of her black sweatshirt was blazoned, in big red letters, ‘Sisters in Crime.” Beside the words was a dagger dripping blood.

“Yes, I was there,” Ruby said. “Sybil was with us. We brought her home about eleven.”

“We’ll get to that.” He turned to me. His eyes were pale blue and steady under sandy eyebrows. “What’s your business here, China?”

I pulled my eyes away from the bloody dagger on Ruby’s shirt. “I’m Ms. Wilcox’s legal counsel,” I said. Ruby glanced at me, startled.

“Do you think she needs one?”

“I guess that’s up to you. Ms. Wilcox wants to cooperate with your investigation.”

The sheriff turned. “Den’s this way.”

We followed him through the opulent living room and down a hallway to a large, open room with an ivory cut-velvet carpet. Two walls were cedar-paneled, one wall was floor-to-ceiling glass with a view of the pool, and the remaining wall was lined with bookshelves on either side of a massive limestone fireplace. A fingerprint team was at work by the door, a cop with a notebook was talking to Judith on one of the two white sofas, and a photographer was taking pictures. There was a body on the floor.

Ruby gasped.

Sybil appeared to have been killed when she was sitting on the floor in a cross-legged position in front of me fireplace. Still clothed in the black robe she had worn to the party, she had fallen facedown and slightly to the right. In a ragged circle around and under her, the carpet was no longer ivory. It was soaked with what looked like reddish-black tar.

I suddenly felt sick. Last night, at the Samhain ritual, we had called out the names of the dead. This morning, the first day of the ancient New Year, Sybil was one of them. Next Samhain, if we celebrated the ritual again, Judith or Ruby or I would call out her name. Why had this happened? Was her death a stranger’s random violence, or did she know her killer? I thought of Sybil’s often offensive manner and the doll and Death card someone had sent. Had she herself invoked the dark god who dragged her across the bloody threshold?

But the questions all spun together into one final question. Who? That was the question Blackie was charged by law to answer. I hoped he’d do it quickly, for all our sakes.