a witchcraft mystery 08 - a toxic trousseau (32 page)

Mrs. Morgan tottered over and peered in and chuckled. “If I didn’t see it with my own eyes I wouldn’t believe it. A pig!”

Oscar awoke with a snort and rolled over to look at us. This made Mrs. Morgan laugh more.

“You should let him come out and play with the others.”

“You think so?”

“Oh, yes, of course. This is a friendly crowd—as long as he’s a friendly pig.”

“Very,” I said, partly lying given his encounter with Autumn Jennings.

“You want to come out and play, Oscar?”

He gave me a look. His snout was still smeared with chocolate, but nonetheless I realized I was going to pay for this one. He gave a quick shake of his head, then snorted and curled up with his butt to us, wiggling his little tail.

“I guess he’s not up for it,” I said. I should have known. Oscar found it humiliating to be lumped in with dogs and other pets. “Would you like me to stay with you, and then I could give you a ride home?”

“Oh, would you? That would be wonderful. Thank you.”

Mrs. Morgan and I sat on a bench and watched the dogs play with one another and their humans. Rolando threw the ball for Colonel Mustard over and over; his dog and the Colonel seemed like good canine buddies.

It was a beautiful Bay Area summer day, warm and sunny but with a pleasant breeze. Nothing like the summers I had grown up with: hot and sticky. On the other hand, there were no fireflies here, and rents were exorbitant. Everything had its pluses and minuses.

“You know,” said Mrs. Morgan. “I don’t mean to be presumptuous, but if you love dogs and coming to the park, I could pay you to walk Colonel Mustard for me.”

“Oh, I wish I could, but I actually have a job, across town. I have my own vintage clothing shop.”

“Oh, of course you do, so silly of me. You already told me that. I’m sorry; I forget things.”

“Actually I was here today looking for a young man named Cody who comes here often with his dog Bojangles. Do you happen to know him?” I had asked her before but hoped her memory might have been jogged.

“Oh, I wouldn’t know. I’ve met a few people here, but truth to tell, they all run together! I’m terrible with names. I’d like to blame it on age, but the truth is I was never much good at remembering names. Faces, now, that I remember.”

“Cody’s a young man, probably midtwenties, with a full black beard, at least until recently.”

“I’m sorry, but I really don’t know.”

“You know, Rolando mentioned that you were new to the neighborhood, just moved in a year ago.” She nodded, her eyes still on the dogs. “I guess I assumed you had been here a while.”

“No, not long. It’s a lovely neighborhood, though, isn’t it?”

“It is.” I wanted to ask why she would buy a house with so many steps but decided it was none of my business. She wasn’t my grandmother, after all. But I hated to think of her struggling with them every day.

We watched the dogs for a few more minutes, and then I gave Mrs. Morgan a ride back to her house. Oscar was disgruntled at having to share the backseat with Colonel Mustard, but in response to a stern look he moved out of the way.

I pulled into Mrs. Morgan’s very small driveway, parked, and came around to help her out.

“I’m just fine at the moment, but thank you,” she said as she started climbing the stairs. “It’s the Parkinson’s. It comes; it goes. Sometimes I swear I feel a mere sixty years old, like I could walk miles! People find it
odd, sometimes, think I’m faking. But it’s the way of this disease.”

“I’m sorry. That must be very difficult.”

“I’m much luckier than many. Look at what happened to poor Autumn! One never knows what’s in store. That’s why it’s so important to appreciate every day.”

“So true,” I said as I followed her up the stairs, holding Colonel Mustard’s leash. When we got to the door Mrs. Morgan searched her handbag for her key.

I noticed a package had been left on the landing, so I picked it up to bring it inside, barely glancing at the name.

Mrs. Morgan opened the door and let us in.

“I would be happy to help you take those catalogs down for the recycling, if you like,” I said, setting the package on the foyer table and reaching for an armful of catalogs.

“No, thank you. There’s really no need— Put those down,” said Mrs. Morgan.

I had glanced at the name on the package, but it hadn’t registered. Now I looked back at it and read:
Mrs. Mildred Parr Morgan.

Parr.
Unlike Mrs. Morgan, I was usually pretty good with names. And that one rang a bell.

“The nob’s name was Clark. The shoeshine boy was Thomas Parr.”

Not that it was a particularly rare name. But she had that catalog from Rodchester house. . . .

“I wondered if you’d figured it out,” said Mrs. Morgan. She was holding a gun trained on me, and unlike when something similar happened just a few days ago with Autumn Jennings, her hands were steady. So steady, in fact, it made me wonder if the whole Parkinson’s thing
had been an act. Like everything else about Mrs. Morgan, apparently.

I stood very still, trying to think through my options. Oscar was out in the car and often had a kind of psychic awareness of when I needed help. But he wasn’t faster than a speeding bullet, so if Mrs. Morgan was actually intent on killing me here and now, I’d better think fast.

“I do know Cody; of course I do,” she said.
Good
. At least she wasn’t in any hurry to end this. That was good. “In fact, when he mentioned you were going to be at the Rodchester House of Spirits I sent him down there to take care of things. Made him shave first—that ridiculous beard made him so conspicuous. I expected he’d push you down a flight of stairs or something— My word, there must be a thousand easily explainable accidents that could happen to a person at an overnight in a place like that! But no, he gets into a scuffle with some sort of
bodyguard
? I know it’s trite to say, but it really is hard to find good help these days.”

“Why would you want to kill
me
?”

“I didn’t. Not at first. You didn’t have anything to do with this. But then you got involved and made the connection between the stolen trousseau and Scarlet, and I knew that stupid girl would talk. She’s not very bright.”

“Just FYI, she didn’t rat you out. And she seemed bright enough to me. Granted, last time I saw her she was suffering under the effects of arsenic poisoning. But prior to that, she served me with legal papers, and apparently she was smart enough to steal that trousseau for you.”

She scoffed. “She and Cody are so easy to manipulate. He was afraid I would tell his precious Eleanor that
he and Scarlet were having an affair, and Scarlet fancied herself in love, would do anything for Cody—also, that girl will do just about anything for cash. Rents are terrible in the city, aren’t they? It’s such a scandal.”

“How did you find the trousseau?”

“Scarlet told me all about falling in love with a wonderful man—the only hiccup being that he was
married
, of course. But she was enamored and showed me the catalog he had put together for the Rodchester House. Poor thing was so in love, she treated that catalog like a diamond ring. I convinced her to leave it here for safekeeping and looked through it, as I do the catalog for every antique auction I come across, and lo and behold, after all these years! The very trousseau I had been looking for, right there in the Rodchester attics. It really was fate that brought Cody to me, I feel sure.”

“But why would you want to harm Autumn with a cursed trousseau?”

“Autumn’s maiden name is Clark; didn’t you know that? Somehow she escaped the curse my great-grandfather laid upon hers.”

“I don’t know if that’s true. Everyone she loved died, after all. That’s a curse.”

She shrugged. “It wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. It came to me a couple of years ago, after my husband committed suicide. No children, no friends. And I was afflicted with old age and ill health:
This
was why I’m still alive. This was my purpose. I tracked Autumn down and spent my life savings to move into this house right across the street. But then what? I can barely get around. How could I enact this final curse, avenge the death of my great-grandfather?”

“And then you discovered the trousseau.”

“Exactly. I almost gave up, more than once. But then Autumn came over here, whining about losing her husband, everyone she loved, as though
I
haven’t lived a life full of pain. That’s what life is. My great-grandfather was
poisoned
by the shoe polish he used every day. Do you have any idea how painful that was for him to be slowly killed by nitrobenzene while he polished the shoes of wealthy men?”

I shook my head. I certainly didn’t, but I was pretty sure she didn’t, either.

“So you paid Scarlet and Cody to steal the trousseau from Rodchester House of Spirits, and then what?”

“Then I gave the curse a little boost. I know a lot about poisons—something else that was passed down through the family.”

“You added powdered arsenic to the dresses.”

She nodded. “And I called and told Autumn I had some very old dresses to sell, from an old trousseau. She didn’t make the connection that it was attached to the family curse. She was blinded by her own greed—she thought she was getting something over on me, that I didn’t know how valuable the clothes were.”

I remembered Jamie saying Autumn had bought the trousseau from a neighbor, only realizing afterward that this might be related to the family curse. I had thought “neighbor” referred to Renee, but I had been wrong.

“Don’t feel too sorry for her,” continued Mrs. Morgan, shaking her head and tsking. “Willing to take advantage of a little old lady. Who
does
that? And she was no saint; she used to sew fake designer labels into her clothes to boost the prices. Scarlet’s old boyfriend, Brad, helped her sell them over the Internet.”

“Did you at least warn Scarlet about the dresses?”

She made a dismissive sound. “Unlike Autumn,
Scarlet
knew that trousseau was cursed. What kind of fool tries on dresses she knows to be cursed?”

“Cody doesn’t believe in curses. He probably scoffed at the idea.”

Mrs. Morgan shrugged. We stood there for a moment, two adversaries assessing each other in her front entry, which smelled of lemon polish and potpourri. The place was beautiful, with a warm redwood trim and a small tiled fireplace. Colonel Mustard was curled up on the stair landing. It could have been a beautiful, welcoming home, if not for the madwoman intent on vengeance for a great-grandfather she’d never even known.

The hand holding the gun began to sag, and Morgan used her left hand to help support it. And then her head began to shake. Were these the off-again, on-again tremors she had told me about?

And then I saw an ugly gargoyle face in the window.

My knight in shining armor.

“What are you smiling about?” Morgan demanded.

“You know how sometimes something—or someone—is physically attractive but truly a terrible person, and once you realize that, all you can see is the ugliness? And sometimes it’s the other way around: Someone is a truly wonderful soul but just as ugly as a mud fence. And you’d rather have their ugly than the beauty, any day?”

“What on earth are you going on about, child?”

“Mrs. Morgan, your world is about to be taken apart. And I’m not your child.”

“What—”

Before she could get the sentence out, Oscar crashed through the window and bowled her over. Morgan cried out in pain as she went down. The gun skittered across
the tile of the foyer; I lunged for it, then pointed it at the old woman, who lay, frail and pathetic, on the floor.

“My arm!” she cried out. “That . . . that thing
head-butted
me!”

“Heh,”
said Oscar. Then he looked at me. “It was okay this time, right, mistress?”

I nodded. “It was just fine, Oscar, just this once.”

Chapter 26

When the police arrived I told them I had disarmed the old woman myself and that I had no knowledge of how the window had been shattered, shaking my head about the things that happened in urban neighborhoods these days. Mrs. Morgan tried to tell the paramedics about the horrifying creature that had crashed through her window and head-butted her, but they assumed she was hallucinating.

Oscar waited patiently in the car, in pig form, while I told Inspectors Ng and Stinson what I knew about Morgan’s belief in a family curse and how she’d admitted to adding arsenic to the dresses to be sure the curse came true. I suggested they speak to Scarlet and track down Cody for the rest of the story.

“What do we do with the dog?” asked a young uniformed officer.

“Call animal control,” said Inspector Stinson.

“Maybe someone at the dog park wants him,” I suggested.

“You want to take care of it?”

“Not really, but I feel bad for the poor thing; he just lost his person and now he gets shunted off to the pound?”

Stinson shrugged. “I got much bigger things to worry about.”

“All right,” I said, giving in to the inevitable. Maybe I could find yet another hapless friend to take Colonel Mustard. He was a sweet dog.

It was a long time before they’d finished asking their questions. When Colonel Mustard and I finally descended the stairs, drained from the grilling and exhausted by the emotions of the day—not to mention the lack of sleep last night—my gaze alit on a welcome sight across the street: Sailor, straddling his motorcycle. His helmet was off and he appeared to be simply waiting, arms crossed over his chest, eyes fixed on Mrs. Morgan’s house.

I stashed Colonel Mustard in the car with Oscar and made a beeline for him.

He enveloped me in a hug. I could feel myself letting go, relaxing, savoring the strength of his arms around me, the scent of his leather jacket and the indescribable aroma of citrus and spice that always seemed to linger on his skin.

Neither of us said a word for a very long time.

“You drive me absolutely insane—you know that?” he said finally, his voice gruff with emotion. “I thought you were going straight back to Aunt Cora’s Closet.”