THE WITCH AND THE TEA PARTY (A Rachael Penzra Mystery) (2 page)

“We wouldn’t say anything until we got the proof,” she insisted. “And we might just send anonymous letters to the cops if we couldn’t prove something, just kind of give them some good leads
, sort of prod them in the right direction. And of course we’d never take any credit for anything.”

Of course not.
In a pig’s eye. At best it would be a case of hint, hint, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Balsam Grove was already a hotbed of innuendo. And proof, in the case of gossip, is almost always limiting. Few crimes or misdeeds are as exciting as they could be. Wild imaginations take up the slack. I’ve heard people I wouldn’t have credited with an ounce of imagination tell tales that make my hair rise. All their creativity seems to go into tale-bearing.

“I’ve got to go,” Aunt Myrtle, sensing that it might be smart to vacate the premises before any hard and fast rules could be set down, decided to cut and run. Besides, she had a lot to share with her cronies, from her brave stand of honesty about Ralph, to our ridiculous ideas about legalities.
There was no sense even pretending that they’d think things over and come to a nice sensible conclusion.

“What ever happened to sweet old Aunt Myrtle?” Patsy asked. We stood at the front window and watched said lady scurry across the street to Dora’s. “Do you remember when she was perfectly happy crocheting horrible things from recycled plastic bags?”

“It all seems so long ago,” I reminisced. “Hard to believe, isn’t it? I haven’t seen her drag out her handiwork for a while. Now it’s all charts and plans and details for whatever scheme they’re up to.”

“Have you ever considered snooping in her notebooks?”

“Me? That’s a terrible thing to do to someone who trusts you. Besides, it’s a dumb question. You’re talking to a mother. Of course I’ve thought of it…even tried it…but she either has the notebook along with her, or it’s an old one with information I’ve already found out about the hard way.”

“And she writes
the good stuff in that old-fashioned shorthand.”

“You’ve snooped, too?”

“Only when I’ve been worried that they’re into something dangerous,” she said, self-righteously.

“That’s most of the time,” I groaned. “I can’t very well tattle on her to Ma, either. The sisters would tear the poor thing to bits and demand that she return to the Cities. Infuriating as she is, I couldn’t do that to her.”

“Or to anyone,” Patsy agreed. My mother and Aunt Myrtle are two of seven sisters. Aunt Myrtle had always held the swing vote amongst them, being in the middle. The three older sisters had formed a cartel, as had the younger three. Aunt Myrtle, the only spinster and the most mild-mannered of the family, had rarely been bribed and courted to gain her favor. She’d generally been bullied and threatened. We want to blame her sudden wild-side personality as being the result of having been drugged when she was kidnapped a while back. It made it much easier all around to have
some
sort of explanation. She was much too old to blame it on The Change.

“I’d better give Elena a heads-up,” I said. “They’re so sneaky they’re apt to tell her it’s some form of charity they’re doing and they need her help.”

“You can call her, but I wouldn’t worry about Elena. They won’t fool her.”

But I did call later in the day, just in case…

I also called David. He’s much more vulnerable to their attacks. He can’t seem to get it through his head that they’re not the sweet little old ladies they appear to be. He should know better, and I know he’s an intelligent man who has lived a hard life and should be street-wise. Nevertheless, where they’re concerned he’s naïve. I think their looks represented something he missed from his life. Elena probably saved his life, but she was hardly the storybook version of Grandma who bakes cookies and spoils children and pets. She could be too scary.

“Nobody would take them seriously,” he laughed when I told him of their scheme. “And certainly none of them is a psychic or mind-reader, so what harm can they do?”

“Argh!” I said, strangling on a gush of words.

“I’ll be their first customer,” he was still chuckling.
Maybe he isn’t as bright as I thought.

“There are sure to be laws or something against fortune-telling,” I insisted—hopefully.

“I’ve seen signs advertising them,” he said. “Look them up in the phone book. That should tell you something about their legality. There will always be fortune tellers, Rachael, just as there will always be gambling. Some things seem to be universal in one form or another.”

“There are laws concerning gambling,” I sounded as petulant as I felt. I’d expected him to be as upset as I was. But then, he could watch the show without having to pay the piper. In one form or another I knew things would end up in my less than capable hands.

“Check on things and then let them be,” he told me. “You can’t stop them and you know how clever they can be when they’re thwarted. Best to keep things ou
t in the open as much as possible. Besides, it might work out. Ralph should certainly be a drawing card.”

“Traitor that he is, he probably will be,” I agreed. “We’d already set it up so he would do a little gentle haunting in the shop, at least on a trial basis. If he was a hit, it would have been good for business.”

“The world of retail is a harsh, cutthroat way to make a living.”

“It isn’t funny, David,” I grumbled. “Well, maybe it is…a little…but you know how prone they are to getting into trouble. They’re like magnets.”

“Said the pot?” he teased.

“That isn’t fair,” I argued. “You know I’ve had nothing to do with the admittedly odd things that seem to be happening around me lately. I’ve spent my entire life being humdrum. I think it has something to do with Aunt Josie, almost like she’d cast a spell on me before she died. You can’t say I’ve ever gone looking for trouble, can you?”

“Aren’t you doing that with this fortune-telling gig? They haven’t done anything wrong.”

“That isn’t
because I’m looking for trouble. That’s my bitter experience recognizing it in the earliest stages—another thing I didn’t use to have to worry about except for when my kids were teenagers, and that hardly qualifies as what we’re talking about. Every parent is on the alert at that point in their kids’ lives.”

“But these aren’t your children,” he reminded me.

“They act like they are,” I retorted. “They get in messes and I have to come along behind them with shovels and mops and disinfectants. Maybe that’s what all those years working as a cleaning woman prepared me for, to clean up after three naughty old ladies.”

He laughed. “Let’s go take a look at the Humane Society,” he offered, treating me like a child who could be easily distracted and bribed.

“Okay,” I said. Yes, I do have my childish side and can be easily distracted. Besides, we’d been talking about doing that for several weeks. He wanted to get a dog, and possibly a house cat. He’d tried to tame the barn cat who had been in residence when he bought his house, but it (a tom as it happened) was not about to be domesticated to that extent. Gilbert was friendly enough, willing to come over to be fed and petted, but he had no interest in giving up his freedom for the luxuries of captivity. David had trapped him long enough to get him neutered and brought up to date on his shots, but once he’d recovered from the surgery, he mewled pitifully to be let outside again. Enriched by a renewable food supply, guaranteed fresh water, a clean litter box for cold, wet days, and a fancy enclosed cat bed in the hay loft, Gilbert lived the good life.

“I’ll be over to pick you up in an hour, if that will work,” he said. “We’d best get this done before you’re open full-time. You know how busy
it gets during the season.”

He was right.
I was already working more hours than I’d like to, figuring out where to put new items, and going over my inventory. I’d thought I was prepared last fall when I closed, but there always seemed to be new issues that needed my attention. And truthfully, I’m still a little anal retentive about the store, uncertain that I’m doing everything that needs to be done, and doing it right. I repeat my work a lot…
just in case
.

So the trip to the animal shelter sounded great to my ears. We’d find a nice normal dog for David to have as his companion, a dog that was not too big or too little, too hyper or too listless, a pretty animal that didn’t demand too much upkeep grooming-wise. We had talked it over numerous times. We were going into the search well-prepared. He might not even walk out with a pet this trip. There was no rush to find the perfect animal.

Ha. Have you ever walked into an animal shelter? Don’t, not unless you’re ready to harden your heart and stand firm. Granted there proved to be some dogs that didn’t appeal as much, but there had to be twenty dogs waiting for homes and at least fifteen of them demanded our love. It was terrible. There were puppies and old dogs, pedigrees and mixed breeds. Some were friendly, some were painfully shy and frightened. How did you take just one and leave the rest behind?

We didn’t.

David steadfastly held himself to two, both females. They’d been brought in together, although no stretch of the imagination could pretend they were litter mates. The first one was black with a white chest, probably lab and Golden. The second one’s coat resembled a calico cat’s, splotched and brindled and occasionally a mixture of the two.

“We think she must have Australian sheepdog somewhere,” the attendant told us. “That might account for the strange mix in the coat.” He didn’t sound too convinced that he was making sense. “None of us have ever seen anything
quite like this before.” He took a deep breath and dropped his tentative tone, saying heartily, “You’ll have a really unique dog if you take her.”

I asked how they’d happened to be caught.

“They were trying to cross the highway,” he explained. “The… er, the splotchy one kept turning back when she was halfway across. Then the other one would turn around, too. They were holding up traffic and wouldn’t approach anyone. They finally trapped the smaller one and then the black one came along easily. We thought it best to let them remain together.”

“Poor frightened things,” I exclaimed, sounding foolish
even to my own ears. The black dog, however, caught the weakness in my tone immediately and tentatively came up to the wire, tail wagging weakly. Wisely, she turned her soulful eyes on David. The thought that she must have some spaniel in her somewhere in order to look that pathetic crossed my mind, but that practical fact was already too late to matter. He was hooked. And of course after that, he couldn’t say no to the other dog, either.

The attendant quickly pointed out that neither dog had approached anybody
up to that point. “She sure seems to have taken to you,” he said, sneakily. “Sometimes that happens, immediate rapport between pet and owner.”

“Well, she seems to be nice
-natured,” David admitted, sounding like an amateur in a car lot. He didn’t seem to grasp that good salesmen caught every innuendo of weakness.

“That she is. Bound to be with that sort of breeding. You can’t beat the retrievers for all around good dogs. They’re smart and friendly and loyal. She’s pretty young, too, about four years old, mature but not old.”

“How old is the other one,” I asked. The man gave me an exasperated glance, but barely paused for a breath before getting back into his pitch.

“Older,” he conceded. “We’re not sure how old she is. I’d say around
six. Not that old when you figure how long dogs live nowadays.”

I mentally added a few years. The poor thing certainly didn’t look very young.
She had a torn ear, her medium-length coat was matted despite visual evidence that attempts had been made to brush her out. “Is she at all friendly?” I asked, dubiously. The dog was hunkered in the far corner of the cage, alternately casting quick glances at her buddy and us. I hoped she didn’t turn out to be a fear biter. She looked as though she could be.

“I’m sure she’ll be fine once she gets used to you,” our friendly used car salesman (as I was now thinking of him) said, his voice confident and earnest. “These abandoned dogs get pretty traumatized sometimes. Imagine what it must be like to suddenly be thrust into
a dangerous world with nothing to guide you.”

Well, I thought, there goes any chance of turnin
g the pair down. David looked over at me, almost as soulfully as the black dog, the smart creature who had already definitely decided that the nice man was taking her and her pal home with him.

“I think they’ll be a good choice, don’t you, Rachael?” he pleaded, well aware that he was ignoring all our carefully thought out, rational plans. “This one is really friendly and the other one really seems to need someone to take care of her.”

I didn’t even argue. Why bother? Besides, I had to admit that I would have found it difficult to turn away at this stage. We never should have stopped. We were doomed from that moment. I carefully kept my eyes from straying to any of the other cages and forced a happy smile onto my lips. “I think they’ll be a good choice. You’ve already put up the fence so they can get used to the area without running off. But it’s whatever you want. They’ll be your dogs.” I added that so I could always fall back on my words if any problems arose.
He
chose them, I didn’t. I just kindly went along with his decision.