Arcadia Falls (22 page)

“Like what?”

I sigh. “She was angry that Isabel had told Dean St. Clare that she’d done all the work on their paper. She said she had a plan to get even with Isabel.”

“And you didn’t think this was worth telling me when Isabel showed up dead the next day?”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I honestly didn’t remember it until now.”

He makes a disgusted noise and gets up. “Do me a favor,” he says, peeling a few bills out of his wallet and laying them on the table. “The
next time you have information about a murder investigation, come and see me right away. Okay?”

I nod numbly as he walks out of the diner. I had no idea that Isabel’s death was being treated as a murder. I push away the half-eaten apple pie, my appetite spoiled. How can I keep Sally at a school where a girl was murdered? Should I leave? But go where?

I leave the diner in a haze and start toward my car, but I’m not ready to go back to the campus. Instead I wander into the first store I see—the little New Agey gift shop, Seasons. I’m greeted by the sounds of clattering bamboo, running water, and birdsong, as if I’d stepped into a Buddhist meditation garden. The store is dim after the bright sunny street, the sunlight filtered through colorful madras curtains. When my eyes adjust I realize that the sounds are coming from a recording. There’s no bamboo grove, although there is a bamboo curtain screening an alcove full of crystals, candles, and books. At first I don’t notice the saleswoman behind the counter. The kurta she wears blends in with the wall hanging behind her as do her short, pixie-cut sandy hair and freckled skin. She sits still as a baby deer gone to ground. When I make eye contact, she presses her hands together in front of her chest and inclines her head in my direction, but she still doesn’t speak. I smile and step through the bamboo curtain into a dimly lit alcove lined with books.
Celtic Wisdom
, I read from one spine;
Making Magic with Gaia
is another. While my back is turned, I hear the door open and a burst of laughter and loud teenage voices disrupt the bamboo-grove quiet.

“Chloe said we had to get the candles
here,”
one of the girls says. The voice is familiar, but I can’t at first place it.

“If you ask me, Chloe’s gotten pretty damn bossy. Ever since she got picked to play the goddess, she thinks she is one. I think we should let someone else play the goddess for the equinox.”

The second voice is also familiar. I half turn, shielding my face with a copy of
Seasons of the Witch
to get a look at the two girls. It’s Hannah Weiss and Tori Pratt—an unlikely pairing even though I knew they hang out with Chloe. Tori is a type familiar to me from my years in Great Neck: a preening queen bee, groomed within an inch of her life from her artificially
straightened hair to her pedicured toes (visible now in flip-flops). She’s the one complaining about not getting her turn to be goddess.

“I just don’t buy Chloe’s argument that it has to be the same goddess for the whole cycle.”

“You do have a point,” Hannah, who’s wearing a plaid flannel jumper, orange tights, and corduroy Mary Janes, says, “It is a
cycle
. That means it doesn’t have a beginning or an end.”

I have to give Hannah points for Geometry 101, but it still strikes me as passing strange that these girls are arguing not about a part in a play or getting to be prom queen but assuming the role of goddess in a pagan rite.

“Well, tell that to Chloe. She thinks that since Isabel died it means she was a real pagan sacrifice and so the cycle is really
charged
or something.”

“That’s sick, Tori.”

“Maybe, but I’m not going to be the one to tell Chloe that, especially now with her insisting we have the equinox thing on the ridge. She might push
me
off this time.”

“Don’t say that! Chloe didn’t push Isabel off the cliff.”

“How do you know? Were you there?” When Hannah shakes her head Tori goes on.

“You know how mad she was at Isabel for getting her in trouble with the Dean. And she always gets what she wants. Look at how she’s got Clyde wrapped around her little finger, and she’s got that new girl eating out of her hand. I do have an idea for cutting her down to size, though.” Tori bends down toward Hannah and lowers her voice. I lean forward in my alcove to hear her above the tinkling of wind chimes and recorded water music, but I miss whatever she says.

“No way!” Hannah replies. “I’m afraid she’d put a curse on me. Let’s just get this over with, okay?”

The girls approach the counter where the proprietor looks up at them placidly, seemingly oblivious to the girls’ conversation and my eavesdropping. “Um, excuse me?” Tori says. “We have a list of things we need. Can you help us?”

“We don’t sell curses,” the saleswoman replies. Apparently she had been listening after all.

“Well, good, because we don’t need any,” Tori snips back. “We’re supposed to get twelve candles, six brown and six white, each blessed for the …” She consults a folded sheet of notepaper. “… blessed for the ritual of the autumn equinox. Have you got any of those?”

The saleswoman turns wordlessly and disappears behind the Indian wall hanging. Something thuds, creaks, then crashes. I stay in my alcove, hoping the girls will continue their conversation. I suspect the “new girl” they mentioned is Sally and I’m also curious about Tori’s plans to cut Chloe “down to size.” I’m worried, too, that Chloe wants to have the equinox celebration on the ridge. It’s the first I’ve heard of that. But the girls wait in silence until the saleswoman returns with an armful of candles and glass canisters. “You’ll want these herbs to go with the candles,” she says.

“We don’t want any such thing,” Tori announces. “Here’s our list.” She holds the sheet of paper an inch from the saleswoman’s nose. “See, it says twelve candles. We’re not here to buy anything else.”

“The herbs are free,” the saleswoman says. “They come with the candles.”

“Oh, in that case, sure. We’ll take them.”

The saleswoman scoops out some dried yellow flowers into a brown paper bag. “Marigold petals,” she says, “to stand for the dying sun. Ring these around your white candles.” She scoops some dried seed pods into another bag. “Then strew these around the brown candles.” Hannah peers into the canister the seeds came from.

“What’s that?” she asks.

“Poppy husks. That’s for the dark, which you’re welcoming.”

“Poppies? Isn’t that where opium comes from?”

“Yes,” the saleswoman replies, with a small smile. “Don’t eat them.”

“Have you got any eye of newt?” Tori asks, starting to laugh. A look from the saleswoman suddenly silences her. Hannah hands over the money for the candles and herbs, grabs Tori’s arm, and pulls her out of the shop. I can hear Tori’s shrill laughter exploding on the street and her clear exclamation: “Jeez, did you think she was going to turn us into toads?”

I approach the counter holding up a copy of
The Meaning of Witchcraft
by Gerald Gardner. “Would you recommend this book?” I ask the
saleswoman as she closes the glass canisters and brushes some dried chaff from the countertop. An acrid smell rises to my nose and makes me sneeze.

“May the Goddess bless you,” she says, handing me a Kleenex. “And yes, I can recommend that book quite highly. Gerald Gardner is the father of modern Wicca.” She squints at me. “You’re a teacher,” she says—a statement, not a question.

I nod my head.

“So you’ll want to approach the subject in a rational, scholarly way.” She smiles at me as if she’d just identified an endearing but eccentric character trait in an old friend. “Come with me.”

When she comes out from behind the counter I see why there’d been so much noise in the back room. Her left leg is in a metal brace and she’s learning heavily on a carved wooden cane. “You’ll want Margaret Murray’s
The Witch-Cult in Western Europe
and Vivianne Crowley’s book on Wicca. Vivianne has a doctorate in psychology from the University of London. That should be enough scholarly cred for you.”

“Do you think I’m some academic snob who won’t listen to anyone who doesn’t possess a degree?”

The woman laughs, which makes the lines around her eyes crinkle. She’s older than I thought at first. In her thirties, not her twenties. Instead of answering my question she switches her cane to her left hand. I notice that the handle is carved into the shape of a leaping deer. She holds out her hand to shake. “I’m Fawn, by the way.”

“Meg Rosenthal,” I say, shaking her hand. I find myself grinning as if we were sharing some private joke. “How did you know I was a teacher?”

“The way you were hiding from those girls,” she says, limping back to the counter with the books she’s chosen for me. “You didn’t want them to see you, and I think you were interested in what they were talking about.” She lifts one tawny eyebrow.

“I was,” I admit. I have a feeling that lying to this woman would be pointless. “There was a death at the school last month.”

“I know. That poor girl. She had come in here a few times.”

“Really? I wouldn’t have pegged Isabel Cheney as being interested in witchcraft.”

“I doubt anyone would peg you for that, either,” she says, ringing up my books and taking the bills I offer. I’m about to tell her that my interest is purely scholarly, but that would only confirm her initial impression of me as a snob.

“So what was she interested in, then?” I ask.

“She started coming in last year for charms to help her in school. She was very ambitious but sadly unsure of herself under her confident pose. When she came back to school this term, though, she had a lot of questions about local traditions. She told me it was for a paper she was writing.”

“What kind of traditions was she interested in?”

“She wanted to know about the legends surrounding the clove and the woods above it, specifically about the
wittewieven
—who’s supposed to haunt those woods.”

Callum Reade had told me about the
wittewieven
the first night I met him. I wonder if he learned of it through Fawn … maybe he and Fawn … I silence the next thought and ask Fawn what she had told Isabel.

“It was a very old legend that went back to the days of the first Kingston settlement. A woman named Martha Drury was accused of being a witch. Rather than be hanged, she fled Kingston into the mountains. She settled in the clove, where she gained a reputation for being a healer—or, as some might say, a witch. After she died, people claimed to see a white shape hovering over the falls and said it was the ghost of Martha Drury. That’s how the clove got to be called Witte Clove.
Wittewieven
means ‘white woman,’ but it also means ‘wisewoman’—a healer, an herbalist—and as I told Isabel many people around here believe that if you enter the clove with a pure heart you will be protected and healed. I think she must have run there because I told her that.”

I’m silent for a moment, then say, “It doesn’t seem like the spirit of the white woman was able to protect her.”

“No,” Fawn says, handing me my bag. “Which makes me wonder what she was running from.”

F
awn’s question haunts me all week. Who—or what—had Isabel been running from? Could she have been running from Chloe? But why? And how could a tiny girl like Chloe force a bigger girl like Isabel off a cliff? As ridiculous as it seems, I call Callum Reade to tell him what I overheard.

“You requested that I inform you of any information I might have,” I say formally when I reach him at the police station. I describe the girls’ conversation as best as I can recall it.

“And where were you when this conversation transpired?” he says, picking up my tone.

“Uh … behind a bamboo curtain in an alcove,” I say, instantly realizing how silly it sounds.

He makes a noise that is something between a bark and a cough.

“If you’re not going to take what I say seriously, I won’t bother you again—”

“No, no, I just got something stuck in my throat. This is very useful. You were right to call. I’ll question Chloe again. In the meantime, I’m concerned about this ceremony the kids are planning above the clove. Perhaps you ought to speak to your dean about it.”

Dean St. Clare is the last person I want to talk to, but I realize he’s right. I make an appointment to see her the next day.

“I appreciate your concern,” she tells me, leaning forward with her hands clasped together on her desk. “I had my doubts as well when the students asked my permission, but then I realized that it would provide just the closure they need after such a senseless tragedy.”

“But can’t they reach that closure someplace
safer?”
I ask. “Someplace on flat ground instead of the edge of a precipice?”

Ivy St. Clare tilts her little birdlike head at me quizzically. “I suppose it’s being a mother that makes you so … paranoid. Why don’t I put you in charge of overseeing the event? That should channel your energies constructively. I believe the club is meeting upstairs in the Reading Room right now. Why don’t you drop in on them to discuss security measures?”

Dismissed, I head upstairs to the Reading Room, wondering if the dean always responds to criticism by handing out extra work. It would be an effective deterrent.