Witch in the Wind (Bandit Creek Books) (3 page)

Avy stepped out the door of the vet clinic and paused. “Well, Busby. I’m sure Dr. Egan will find your owner.”

He’d promised to call other clinics for her and meet her the next morning at Ma’s Kitchen to give her an update. She felt a flutter in the pit of her stomach. It wasn’t that she felt at all like dating right now. Maybe it was white coat syndrome or something, but just standing next to him seemed to make her feel better, to ease her grief. And his eyes. They were the strangest color she’d ever seen. Maybe Dr. Egan could be a friend. She really needed one right now. Someone to help her get through everything. To get through the funeral. The murder investigation. The terrible loss. Her breath hitched.

Busby leaned against her leg and gave a soft bark.

Avy smiled down at him. “Of course, you’re my friend too, Busby. You’re my best friend.”

Busby barked his agreement. Then stood to await her lead.

She sucked in a deep breath of the crisp mountain air and looked up at the endless cerulean blue of the sky. This was the one thing she missed about Bandit Creek. It was as if the air here was fresher, or maybe just easier to breathe.

She wrapped Busby’s leash around her hand, shifted the bag of free dog food the vet had given her to the other hip, and settled her purse more securely on her shoulder. “We’ve got lots to do. Where should we start?”

Busby grunted and hung the full length of his tongue out the side of his mouth and ran it from ear to ear.

Avy felt a stab of guilt. “Oh, right. Sorry, buckaroo. Just because my stomach is too upset to eat doesn’t mean you aren’t starved. How about we stop at Ma’s for a quick coffee while I give you a bowl of chow?”

She was counting on missing the Friday morning breakfast crowd but once there, that wasn’t the issue. The coffee took fifteen minutes but the hugs and chat took another forty-five. It was almost noon by the time they were back on the sidewalk.

“Now, let’s track down the mysterious Mr. Shipley to fix the porch.” The night before, visible signs of her parents’ death struggle had been a shock. In the full light of day this morning, it looked like a dragon battle had been fought on her front lawn. The sight made her physically sick.

A nudge from Busby got her on the move. She glanced at the small yellow piece of paper that Cora had given her and headed west along Walnut Street towards Murphy’s Boarding House where the handyman, Shipley, lived.

It took less than fifteen minutes for Avy to find George Shipley and arrange for him to do the house repairs. She backtracked along Walnut. She knew she should go over to Brubaker’s Funeral Home. She couldn’t be sure when her parents’ bodies would be released, but she should make arrangements. Tears pooled in her eyes. She pulled a tissue from her pocket and blotted them away.

She glanced at the sheriff’s office as she passed. She wanted answers he didn’t have yet. With nausea churning her stomach, she wasn’t ready to hear more details about their death. She decided to postpone the visit.

As she passed Ellis Park, a voice drifted towards her. She knew who it was even before she saw him stretched out on the park bench.
It wasn't clear whether
Jack
, or
JD
as he was also called, was his real name
since
his drink of choice
was
Jack Daniels
.
He'd
been a permanent fixture of Bandit Creek for longer than anyone could remember
.
Some of the old townsfolk said Jack had always been here, but obviously, that wasn’t true since the town was over a hundred years old. Decrepit as
he
appeared, he wasn’t that old.

From the time she was very young, Avy’s parents insisted that she treat Jack with respect because he was a shaman. They said he was a very wise man and hid the truth within his nonsense as a reward to anyone who was paying attention. As a child, Avy had
a lot of trouble paying attention.

“Sorry Jack. I didn’t catch what you said.”

After a silent pause, she considered ignoring him but maybe he needed some help. She took a deep breath and walked over to the bench.

She looked down at him. He was buried under what had once been a colorful woven blanket but was now threadbare, faded and torn. A shabby cowboy hat shaded his face.

“Jack?” She tapped on the bench back as if it were a door. “Hey Jack.”

A wrinkled claw of a hand pushed the hat up to reveal a grizzled face framed with wiry gray hair braided down over his ears and disappearing under the blanket tucked up under his stubbled chin.

She thought she saw a spark of intelligence in his eyes. It was gone in an instant, unless it was never there. It could have been the morning sun.

“The end before the beginning,” he said in a low growl. Then, he closed his eyes again with a long sigh, as if an arduous task was now complete.

She tapped on the bench again. “Not getting it Jack. Could you expand on that?”

He grunted in response. She frowned, not sure if he was actually saying anything or just snoring.

“Jack?” She walked around to the front of the bench and laid her hand on his shoulder. “Jack, it’s Avalon Gwynn. Was there something you wanted to tell me?”

This time the words emerging from his dry, chapped lips were crystal clear. “Coming together leads to the beginning.”

He then fell into a deeper sleep, or more likely passed out, and this time Avy couldn’t rouse him at all.

If the end leads back to the beginning, you’re going in circles, she thought. What the heck did he mean this time?

She closed her eyes and leaned on the back of the bench. “Not much help there, Jack,” she said.

She waited a few seconds and then squelched her impatience. She reached into her pocket and pulled out an energy bar she’d grabbed that morning. She tucked it under the edge of the blanket. “Don’t forget to eat, Jack.” She patted the blanket and continued on her way.

Her next stop was
the town’s undertaker, Deloris Brubaker
.
As
hers was
the only pagan family in town,
Avy didn't
expect Deloris to be much help. While the Wicca funeral ritual had some similarities to Christian ceremonies, Avy was determined to respect her family’s religious beliefs as her parents were laid to rest no matter what the townspeople might think of her.
Like all the kids in town, she remembered Mrs. Brubaker as a scary, spitfire of a woman with a rasping smoker’s voice. Seeing the world through adult eyes gave her a different view.
An hour later, she’d completed the funeral arrangements
and found
Mrs. Brubaker
to
be kind and respectful
as
Avy explained the ritual
. Together, they arranged for a funeral service
that satisfied her own and the town’s sensitivities.

She stepped out the door and turned to give the undertaker a final wave. The sun was dropping behind the tips of the mountains and the air was taking on the cooler afternoon temperatures of spring. Her mother had loved spring with new life emerging in every nook and cranny of the town. Avy squared her shoulders and firmed her bottom lip to keep it from trembling. She headed back to the vet clinic where she’d left her car.

***

When Avy arrived home, she found several casserole dishes,
loaves of
home baked bread and plates of cookies on her doorstep. The one belief shared by everyone living in small towns was that a family in crisis could best be helped with good food. Her stomach wasn’t ready for beef stew, but the kindness behind the gift made her smile and put a hitch in her breath.

Soon enough she’d have to face the other neighborly remedy for tragedy, a steady stream of visitors. Her grief was so fresh and raw she couldn’t bear to expose it. She sat on the front step, wrapped in her father’s pile-lined jacket, and looked out over the town. Busby stretched out beside her. Shunning the stew, Avy nibbled at the sandwich Lucy had forced her to take with her coffee when she’d stopped by Ma’s. It was good and seemed to settle her stomach.

As she stroked the dog’s head, she realized how much she wanted to keep Busby. He’d comforted her the night before as she drifted to sleep and had made her feel safe when she woke during the night in tears. She tore a bit of the roast beef from her sandwich and let him take it from her hand.

“I wish I could keep you, boy, but I’m sure your owner’s missing you.” The words brought the knot back to her stomach and she fed the rest of her sandwich to the dog.

Finally, she got up and went inside to begin her inspection of the mess left by her parents’ attacker. Overwhelmed the night before, she’d taken refuge in her old room which had apparently not held any interest for the intruder.

The living room seemed even worse in the daylight. Like a tornado had whipped through. Papers were strewn everywhere. An heirloom vase lay smashed on the floor amid a puddle of wilted flowers. Every drawer had been pulled out and dumped.

She stood gazing at the chaos that had been her home. She fought the overwhelming urge to turn around and run back out the door to escape. Or worse, to sink to the floor and give into the crying jag that had been threatening all day. Instead, she took a long slow breath, stretching her rib cage to its absolute limit and then exhaled very, very slowly.

She moved towards the kitchen. It was in worse condition. Tea towels had been tossed around, as had every box, bag and container from the pantry. On the counter, beside the old farmhouse-style sink, a mountain of cutlery had been dumped and the drawer flung across the room, where it landed next to the refrigerator. The flour bin had been thrown so violently against the wall that a fine white coating covered every exposed surface. On top of that, the sheriff’s team had obviously walked through the flour as they looked for fingerprints and other evidence, and tracked it through the house.

The sheriff needed to know if anything was missing. She was the only one who could tell him. She retrieved the recycle bin from the back porch and turned back to the living room. The room seemed to blur and she rubbed her eyes to clear them. Her fingers came away wet with tears.
Grief is a strange thing,
she thought. Her feelings were numb, yet her eyes kept leaking.

She began with the loose papers in the living room. She glanced at each piece as she picked it up. Important papers were neatly stacked and then returned to her father’s antique desk in the corner. The rest were dropped in the bin. She uncovered the desk drawer behind the sofa and pushed it back into place. Halfway in, it stuck. She pulled it back out, peeked in, and pulled out a crumpled paper that had been caught in the runner. Smoothing it out, she could see it was an insurance report.
Keep,
she thought, placing it on the top of the pile before moving on.

Tidying, mopping, cleaning. Busby followed her progress with his eyes from his perch on the sofa. The garbage bags piled up at the back door ready for pickup. When the kitchen and living room were done, she sat down on the sofa and assessed her progress. Everything smelled fresh and clean. Sanitized. Unfamiliar.

She stretched her arms over her head and worked the kinks out of her back. The late afternoon sun glinted off the silver on her finger. She brought her hand down for closer scrutiny.

“That’s so weird.”

Busby cocked his ear.

She tugged on the ring and it came off in one piece.

“I didn’t know the rings were made to fit together.”

She hadn’t thought about the rings since the vet mentioned them that morning. She could see now why he thought they were just one heavy ring. Together, only the eagle head of one ring, and the lion’s body from the other, were visible. She tried to pry them apart, again without success.

“Must be some kind of puzzle ring.”

Busby nosed her hand and tried to get a closer look.

Slipping the ring back on her finger, she held her hand up, palm outward, to b
etter examine the piece.
Dr. Egan’s comment earlier came back to her.

“This way they do look like a gryphon.”

“Mom and Dad’s animal symbols were important to them,” she said to Busby. “If their two rings were made to join, I bet the gryphon is significant too. Let’s look up the meaning of the gryphon—”

Within a few minutes, she was sitting on the front steps with a well-thumbed book on her lap. She gently pushed Busby’s snout out of the way as she turned a page.

“Here it is,” she said. The dog’s head pushed back under her arm and his nose reappeared over the page she was trying to read. A sharp word and he eased back out of her line of vision. She ran her finger along the line as she read. “Gryphon,” she said. “There are two meanings here.” Busby voiced his interest with a rumble in his chest. “Gryphons are the symbol of the duality in all of nature. A balance of both good and evil qualities.”

She looked up from the book. “That doesn’t apply to my parents, at all. It must’ve been the second meaning.” She looked back down at the book and found her place on the page. “According to legend, gryphons are protectors or guardians and were said to stay loyal in their protection even in the afterlife.” Avy looked at Busby, and found his warm brown eyes locked on her. She shook her head. “That’s not it, either,” she said. “My parents wouldn’t have anything they’d need to protect into the afterlife.”