Tales of the Witch (7 page)

“I did think I’d mentioned it last night to your dad, Conrad. That we want to be on the water, you know?”

“Ah, you’re right, sir, you did, sir.” Since Conrad was at least twice Skip’s age, Skip had to conceal a grimace at the ‘sir.’

At the next location, Skip got out of the car. Conrad was practically quivering with excitement…not an attractive sight in an older man, thought Skip. Obviously, here was land Conrad ached to sell him.

A grassy twenty foot cliff overlooked a stretch of pristine beach and a view that could soothe the most ragged of nerves. Beyond the beach, the vast Sound stretched, disguising the distant Connecticut shore as a misty Camelot. On this side, the waves hushed and sighed serenely against the sand. The property was vacant except for a large deck made of age-silvered cedar that jutted out over the cliff’s edge and trailed ramshackle steps down to the beach—perfect for al fresco anything. From the vantage point of this deck, Skip turned his back on the water and scanned the property edges. Wide and deep, bordered on the east and west with wooded hills—this lot was within the price range outlined to Mr. Harder, Sr.?

But Conrad confirmed it. Conrad admitted it’d been on the market for years…recession, he explained with embarrassment. Well, Skip could certainly understand tough financial times. They shook hands and Conrad raced back to the office to begin the paperwork, leaving Skip and his builder pacing outlines in the grass.

That same afternoon, a check for earnest money to each of the builder and the realtor was exchanged for special permission from the absent owners to begin building right away, to accommodate Phantom’s pressing schedule. The transaction might have been unconventional, but no one minded.

On the day the bulldozers arrived to start digging the foundation, a tall thin figure, silhouetted against the morning sun, appeared on a hill to the east of the property. Wrapped in black robes being whipped by the breeze, he, or she, stood gazing down on the proceedings.

Eyeing the dark figure uneasily, Skip asked the builder who could this be? Ernie, an easy-going older man with a pot belly, possessed a shrewd intelligence that Skip had quickly learned to trust. He and Ernie had felt at ease with each other’s good sense right from the start.

Ernie grinned at Skip’s nervousness. “Just our local witch. Mrs. Risk. She’ll be your neighbor come the end of sixty days and we get this house finished.”

“A real witch?” Skip gave Ernie a sideways glance to see if he was being ragged.

Ernie removed his Giants cap and scratched at his thinning hair. “Well, that’s what some say. She does seem to know things nobody else’d even guess at.

“Nice woman, I think, although some’ll tell you different. The thing is, the ones who disagree are those I wouldn’t trust with a bent nail.” Ernie shot a glance at his young employer. “It’s been said that if people get into trouble—which, just about anybody alive does, y’gotta admit—she’s awful good at doing what needs to be done.”

Skip gave a short laugh. “For them, or
to
them?”

Ernie wagged his head side to side, “She is an odd bird.” He grinned at Skip, then picked up his sheets of plans. “Got a sharp tongue on her, too,” he added as if in admiration. “I got the idea that a long time ago, when someone first called her ‘witch’, they were thinking the word started with ‘b’. Some just can’t stand a woman smarter than they are who doesn’t hesitate to tell them unpleasant truths.” He chuckled to himself, then concentrated on his layouts.

Skip stared curiously at the figure until she suddenly turned and descended the rise, disappearing from his sight. Then he forgot her and began discussing stucco walls with Ernie.

He didn’t even remember her two days later when the carpenter was killed, picked off by a rifle shot from where he rested, perched on a piece of stone, while his buddy fetched more nails from the truck.

After the village constable called in the County’s Sixth Precinct homicide squad, and they finally allowed the carpenter’s body to be taken away, the shock was still severe. Skip cancelled everything for the day, even deliveries.

After buying the men a restorative beer at Murphy’s, he watched them hurry to their various homes. He thought about how someday he’d be hurrying home to Alexia in times of trouble…if he could pull this off.

It baffled him why anybody’d shoot the carpenter, who’d seemed to be a pleasant guy, a hard worker with a family. As he ordered himself another beer, he wondered uneasily if it had anything to do with his scheme…

He painstakingly re-examined the details of this last—his very last—attempt to solve his problem. The problem wasn’t a new one to mankind anywhere—he needed money. Lots of money.

At first he’d tried saving it, skimping on food and clothes. But as he lost weight and stuffed cardboard into his work shoes, he realized that even if he starved, it could take decades to accumulate the nest egg he needed. He’d tried investing in a small enterprise a school friend had started, and lost both his money and his friend. Other schemes had made him rich only in experience, but at least he’d kept the rest of his friends.

That’s when he’d begun working the lottery…buying hundreds of lottery tickets…until it became obvious that he wasn’t destined for any winning ticket—anywhere—anytime.

Then, down to the last of his savings and out of ideas, he’d driven to Atlantic City. In this final, desperate ploy, either he would win enough money to marry his angel, the female he ached for with every ounce of his being, or…he could think of nothing else to do…he’d jump into the cold dirty ocean that ran alongside the casinos and drown himself.

It would take a miraculous run of luck, but how else could he ever marry Alexia—gorgeous, laughing, light as air Alexia, whose parents had always provided her with the finest clothes and a luxurious home? Alexia, who, Skip never doubted, could choose any man she wanted…and she’d chosen him. How could he ask her to accept so much less than what she was used to having?

He remembered that last fatal day, the final day when everything had happened, when fate had brought the edges of his plan together…he’d gone to pick Alexia up from her job as a grocery store cashier. He remembered thinking as he’d stood to one side, watching her finish with the last customer of the day, how she was the object of his dreams, the future mother of his future children, the most breathtakingly beautiful female he’d ever seen in his life.

After pulling her jacket from under the counter and holding it for her, he’d swept her to his chest with one well-muscled arm. She’d giggled and squirmed out of his clutch. “Outside, Skip. Wait a second, will you?” he remembered her saying.

He’d yielded and followed her outside, but for the thousandth time he was dizzy with both bliss and despair as he watched her walk with dancing steps through the automatic doors.

When they reached his pickup truck, he opened the door for her. As she beamed at him, he remembered noticing how, when her pale hair moved in the cool breeze, it caught the light the same way that fishing line catches the sun on a sultry afternoon.

He’d driven her home, only letting her escape after ransoming herself with dozens of sweet-tasting, tender kisses. She’d whispered in his ear that she loved him, but by then he’d become so sunken in misery that he hardly heard her. Would he ever see her again? Only luck would decide.

After topping off his gas tank at the self-service station, he’d begun the trek to Atlantic City in New Jersey. He’d had plenty of time to think, then. To worry.

An apprentice carpenter’s salary was better than a gas station attendant’s, and he wouldn’t be an apprentice forever, but the fortunes of those in the building trades rose and fell with roller-coaster irregularity. What could he give her besides babies and bills and a sorry little house in mid-island? She only worked as a cashier now because she thought she was too old to be totally dependent on her parents. He certainly wouldn’t want her to keep working when the babies came.

She had soft hands, soft lips, a soft voice, and soft skin, like a princess. Skip had seen what a penny-pinching life took out of a woman. How it roughened their skin. Harshed-up their voices. Worry could squeeze the sweetness right out of a woman’s nature. He’d seen it happen to his mother. He wouldn’t risk that happening to his Alexia.

He remembered patting the rolled up savings that made a thick ball in his pocket before gripping the steering wheel with the white knuckled fists of determination.

Seven hours later, he’d found himself counting out with the house manager…twenty thousand, twenty thousand five hundred…in a voice hoarse from shouting at the dice, lack of sleep, and too many coffees alternated with whiskeys.

At the end of the count, he breathed deep to steady himself, then rolled it all up into four bundles which he shoved deep into his pockets. He walked out of the casino, across the boardwalk, onto the sand, then leaned against a piling and inhaled the salt air, ridding his lungs of stale smoke and bar fumes.

Fifty thousand dollars. His shocked elation made him dizzy—until he suddenly remembered Alexia’s last birthday present from her parents…the sticker price for that little convertible came to double what Skip paid in a year for his apartment. His precious goal, which for a few seconds he’d imagined won, slipped tortuously far from his grasp—again.

Fifty thousand dollars might seem a fortune to Skip, but to Alexia…he knew it wouldn’t be enough. He glanced swiftly up at the sky after that admission, ducking in case of retribution for ingratitude, because he’d lit a candle in church before coming.

Well—that’s it, he thought. And he meant it.

No longer despairing, feeling only numb from hopelessness, he walked off down the beach to work a few kinks out of his cramped muscles…in preparation for diving, once and forever, into the water that beckoned beyond the pilings.

And it was while he was walking that he got it. The whole idea. It burst into his head full grown, bypassing babyhood and adolescence. It stopped him dead in his tracks. He spent several minutes examining it up and down and backwards and inside out…but found no flaws. And so he drove home…

The next day the homicide detective told Skip that the bullet was a common .303 used in hunting rifles. Though the killing was tragic, it probably was a hunting accident. The woods around Phantom’s long vacant property were known to be full of small game. Lots of hunters in the area, more than usual in the last few economically lean years. The perpetrator would possibly never be discovered.

Skip explained all this to Ernie and Ernie’s crew. Even though the men were understandably upset at the loss of their friend, several shoulders lowered in an easing of tension at hearing that it could’ve been a hunting accident, and work resumed.

After few more days, the crews were working up to speed again and the shock faded.

Then, a week later, Ernie stepped into an animal trap. Ernie, a normally soft spoken man, screamed in a shrill agony that caused the men to drop their tools and run to him from all over the site. The trap, an old iron one that Ernie swore hadn’t been there the day before, was big enough to incapacitate a full grown bear. Although the rusted jaws could’ve severed his leg, Ernie was lucky to be wearing work boots that limited the damage to broken bones.

As the ambulance trundled an agonized but sedated Ernie to St. Charles Hospital, the men stared at each other with white faces. Skip was speechless. Without being told, Ernie’s assistant, using Skip’s car phone, called the constable, who immediately called homicide again.

…After much discussion, even Skip had to admit that the detective’s theory—that it was only more hunting equipment, long forgotten and overlooked by Ernie’s crew—was somewhat reasonable.

The lot, he remembered Conrad saying, had stood vacant for years. The men agreed with the detective, although he could tell they were uneasy about it. He didn’t blame them. He wasn’t too convinced, himself, but at least Ernie would definitely be okay, suffering only a broken leg…unlike the poor carpenter. After an hour’s milling and an early lunch, the men returned to work. It sure was a puzzle.

A few days later, Skip ‘heard’ from his boss.

Skip called an impromptu meeting at the mayor’s office. After off-handedly pointing out the report of Phantom’s whereabouts in the
Newsday
newspaper (Liz Smith’s column) to Mayor Harper, Mr. Drexel, Doctor Villas, Mr. Harder Sr., the nice-looking Ms. Bellwood, Conrad, and Ernie’s assistant, Skip showed them the message Phantom had faxed direct from Eastern Europe where he was doing benefits for the newly formed ex-Soviet Satellite countries..

The lengthy communication, typed in faded, ‘foreign looking’ letters, complimented his manager, Mark Daniels, and the people working so hard from the village of Wyndham-by-the-Sea, for their quick work in carrying out his—Phantom’s—wishes.

However—and it was a big however—Phantom stated that he was walking a mental and physical tightrope that could snap at any time, so he’d be flying direct to Wyndham in his private jet from the location of the last gig on his tour.

‘Mark’ must speed up work even more, and arrange safe shipment of his furniture, art collection, sound equipment, etc., from where they were presently being stored so that all would be in place for his arrival. Phantom’s tour was at a particularly manic stage. In lieu of transferring funds from bank to bank—a nightmarish tangle of transactions when attempted from deep within the Eastern Bloc—he promised to settle all accounts fully the day he arrived. Then from that point, Phantom stated, he looked forward to the complete rest and total quiet promised him by the villagers of beautiful Wyndham-by-the-Sea. “See you all soon. Phantom.”

Mr. Harder and Mr. Arsdale, who’d jointly been pressing Skip for additional deposits and signed papers, retreated in awe. ‘All accounts settled fully’…the words floated in the air like the promise of paradise. With a flourish, Skip wrote out another draft on the borrowed bank funds and handed it to Ernie’s assistant.

“To hire new crews?” asked the assistant.

Skip nodded gravely.