Witch One Dunnit? (Rachael Penzra mystery) (10 page)

       “Sheriff Alberts said he counted
thirteen
stab wounds,” she ruminated, dwelling on the thought morbidly. 

       “Well, he might have counted wrong.  I mean, she was really a ...” I was going to say
mess,
but decided against it.  “There was a lot of blood.  He can’t know the exact number of stab wounds for sure.”

       She looked at me, unseeing.  I realized that her unnatural calm was taking all of her energy to maintain.

       “Lucinda, it’s going to take a while for the autopsy to be completed.  Once they’ve done it, they might find out she was poisoned, or hit over the head.  The stab wounds might only be a cover-up for the
real
cause of death.  I really don't think you should worry about them blaming it on the coven.  And even if it was thirteen stab wounds, the number thirteen doesn’t necessarily mean anything bad!  That’s just superstition.”       I was desperately grasping at straws, and I didn’t care.

       “You know it, and I know it, but humans are superstitious beings, aren’t they?  If they want to connect the number thirteen to the Craft, they’ll do it…no matter what
we
tell them.”

       I felt a brief moment of selfish relief that I didn’t actually
belong
to the coven.  Lucinda immediately squashed it.

       “The word
witch
scares a lot of people, ignorant people, and now there have been two witches killed in our little community.  It’s enough to make
me
question it.”

       Two?  She was talking about Aunt Josie again.  Normally I’m not a slow-witted person, but despite all the hints, it hadn’t occurred to me to connect the two deaths.

       “Rachael,” her voice quivered.  “You didn’t do it, did you?  Or Patsy?  Shelly really liked your niece.  You don’t think she could have done it, do you?”

       “No.  NO!” I almost shouted, startled.  Patsy?  Of course not.  I knew
I
hadn’t done it, but Patsy?  Why on earth
would
she?  It hadn’t really occurred to me we’d actually be suspected, not beyond minimal suspicion.  Apparently I was living in the land of make-believe.  Hadn’t it happened in my locked house?

       She sighed.  “I know you didn’t do it, but I’m not sure about Patsy.  I don’t know her well.  But who
would
do something like this?  I’ve got to get back to the house.  Everybody’s driving me crazy!  They won’t let me grieve alone.  I can’t even read the Cards.  I got just enough to know you’re innocent and I should go to you for help.  You’ll help me, won’t you, Rachael?  You can use your talents.  I’ll pay you.  I’m quite well off.  You’ll help, won’t you?”

       “I don’t know how I can,” I gasped, weakly.  How do you deny someone help under such circumstances.  “I don’t have any control over my power.  It comes and goes.  I’m trying to learn to discipline it, but I’m not having much success.  I don’t see how I can help, but of course I’ll do what I can . . .” Even while my mouth was sputtering those foolish promises, I knew I was biting off more than I could chew.  Still, what else could I do?  Tell her
no, I won’t try to help you find out who killed your daughter? 
Not likely. 

       It satisfied her, at least for the moment.  Her intensity relaxed a notch.  “Thank you, Rachael.  At least I have hopes of getting a little rest now, knowing you’ll work on it.  I’ll be in touch tomorrow.” 

       We returned to the kitchen, she once again in the lead, me meekly following.  She said polite good-byes to us, and slipped out the door. 

       “What’d she want?” Patsy asked.

       My first impulse was to shrug the question off, avoiding the topic of witchcraft like the plague, particularly in front of clean-cut deputy Joe.  I then realized it was foolish to even try.  There were too many witches in the area for this not to come to light in the near future.  If I tried to cover it up now, it would only serve to make everyone look guilty.

       Thankfully, I had filled Patsy in on my religious beliefs by her second day in Balsam Grove.  My instincts had been right.  She found the whole thing fascinating, and had been busily pumping me for information ever since.  I casually suggested she not mention my religious beliefs to her mother, and she heartily agreed.  She had no intention of cutting short her summer in Balsam Grove. 

       “She thinks the police are going to try to call it a ritual killing, and blame the coven.”

       “But that’s ridiculous!  Patsy exclaimed.  “I may not be an
official
witch, but even
I
know witches don’t
murder
people!  It’s as much against their religion as it is anyone else’s!  Of
course
the coven had nothing to do with it!”

       Our deputy’s eyes grew wide, and he stared at his love-interest in stunned disbelief.  I got the impression he was looking at the multi-colored hair and the nose ring in a whole new light. 

       “Patsy’s not a witch,” I assured him.  “She’s a Lutheran.”

       “I’m seriously considering converting to Wicca, though,” she told him candidly.  “It really is a gentle religion, you know.  All that nonsense about the evil eye and such has nothing to do with Wicca.  When you get into wickedness, and demon raising, you’re going off on a power trip.  That’s contrary to
any
decent religion.”

       “Witchcraft isn’t a religion!” Joe insisted, somewhat desperately.  “You don’t want to get involved in something like
that.
”

       Patsy shut her eyes for a moment, looking as if she was prepared to give our deputy an hour-long lecture on the do’s and don’ts of being a witch.  Since that was the last thing we needed at the moment, I stopped her by explaining how the sheriff said he had counted thirteen stab wounds, and she and I could possibly be under suspicion.

       “That’s stupid!” she complained.  “You wouldn’t kill anyone.”   Thinking it over, she added, “And I certainly didn’t.  What a crock!”

       Her righteous anger seemed to pacify Joe, at least for the moment.  “Killing her in here and leaving the body here was an attempt to pin it on you two,” he declared.  I didn’t feel it was necessary to put ideas in his mind about the possibility that we were trying to be overly clever by placing the murdered body in our own house.  It didn’t matter.  It was clear his loyalties were settling on my exotic-looking niece, the girl with the practical brain under the pierced, dyed surface, and this despite her interest in Wicca.  He probably harbored the silly notion he could dissuade her.

       I excused myself, leaving them busily discussing potential murderers, slandering people right and left.  I should probably have stayed and joined in the gossip, picking up useful information from the deputy, but I felt I could leave it to Patsy.  Gossip about people I know is not my thing.  I haven’t really got the knack of it.  I take it all too personally, worrying about feelings and reputations.

       What I really wanted and needed was a long ritual bath and a cleansing ceremony.  I needed to balance myself.  The chaos surrounding me had me off-center in a bad way.  My mind was rushing around, caged instead of free.  Freeing of her mind was one thing Aunt Josie always delighted in.  “I just let it roam,” she told me.  “At first it didn’t go far from home, niggling at unimportant little things.  As I matured, all those minor problems were easily handled and I was free to
be
, not to think.   It sounds contradictory, but doing nothing is an art, and once you’ve mastered it, you’ll want to practice regularly.  All those guys in India, sitting around cross-legged? That’s all they’re doing.  They’re practicing true freedom.”

       Of course freedom is never truly free.  It takes a lot of discipline and practice to learn it and I was just beginning to reap the benefits.  When I’d first felt the passing of time – neither fast nor slow, but simply full of contentment – I’d thought I’d mastered the art of meditation.  What I’d done was put myself into a light state of self-hypnosis.  But it was a start.  I enjoyed the sensation of loosening myself from the petty dictatorship of daily living.  When you separate yourself from family and friends, money and poverty, needs and wants, anything taking you away from
that moment,
it’s amazing how free you are.  Otherwise, we spend a great deal of our waking (and sleeping) time fretting and fussing over things we can’t do anything about at
that moment. 
Wasteful energy.  Mothers are especially good at it. 

       The simplicity of my ritual is almost embarrassing.  I have formulated what works for me, starting with a hot, scented bath and working up to a period of assessment about what’s been happening in my life (in this case, quite a litany), then finally the release of the things bothering me.  No, they don’t just disappear from my life, problem solved.  All I’m doing is recognizing what part of the problem I can work with or at, when I can do it (right now, tomorrow, never?) and then not letting it devour me emotionally.  It’s humbling to realize how much of my worry and fretting is nothing more than a superstitious vanity about my ability to solve the world’s problems.

       My Book of Shadows is pretty flimsy, but I do have a few special rituals and spells that I use regularly.  Magick.  Oddly, that seems to be the perfect word for my spells.  Christians have similar rituals with their prayers, and particularly with prayer beads.  The lighting of a candle is an affirmation of the prayer.  A good Christian can say her prayers concerning a particular problem and then leave it with God for a time.  The problem isn’t gone, and it isn’t forgotten, but it’s given over to a higher power to deal with it.  That’s what faith is, and faith in any form is powerful magick.  We have what’s in our hearts.  The rest is just words.  Symbols and props simply “set” the magick for us.

       I have yet to perfect my cleansing ritual, but it works to some extent.  The enervating nervous fear of the unknown dissipated, and the tension from the day of waiting for an unknown event to occur, faded.  I finally climbed into bed and went to sleep, dreaming vividly.  Yet when I awoke and tried to write the dreams down, as I was training myself to do, I couldn’t hang onto any of them.  All I had left was a sense of danger, and that too slipped away when I tried to pinpoint it. 

   I tried to fall back asleep, but it was a losing battle.  Questions spun through my mind like a Nevada dust storm.  Was there a connection between Aunt Josie’s death and Shelly’s murder?  Was Shelly killed right in my own house, or had the body been put here after the fact?  If she
was
killed in the house, what on earth was she doing here? 

       And the big question: who had wanted her dead?

   I gave up the fight, arose and went downstairs to fix myself some hot chocolate.  Surprisingly, after I finished my hot cup of chocolate-comfort, I went back upstairs and slept soundly for the remainder of the night.

       If I dreamed again, I didn’t know it, but in the morning the nightmare of reality was right where I’d left it.

CHAPTER SEVEN

From the Wiccan Rede:

Widdershins go by the waning moon

Chanting out the baneful rune.

   The sheriff arrived at seven-thirty.  I wasn’t expecting him, but his arrival didn’t exactly surprise me either.  This whole mess was far from over.

   I was still a little groggy from a morning of making quick decisions about whether or not to reopen the shop, deciding in favor of doing so, and checking for missed stains in the library, although other than the clothing, I hadn’t seen any around.  Patsy had done a wonderful job of cleaning the room, even managing to move a rug from the entryway to cover the “spot” without it looking out of place.  I’d risen at four-thirty, thanks to my early rush to bed the evening before.  After Lucinda’s demonstration, I had the feeling that opening the shop was the best thing to do for everyone concerned.  The main reason I’d be keeping the store closed was out of deference to Shelly, and apparently it wasn’t what her mother wanted.  I’d need to hire more help, too, but that could wait a few days.  I wondered if anybody would want to work for me now.

       Sheriff Alberts, though, wasn’t interested in my personal problems.  He wanted answers.  Yesterday’s mild deference to our upset had been replaced by a working attitude.  He’d brought along a deputy to take yet more notes.  This time it was done with a show of efficiency, not presented as an irksome necessity.  The deputy was a woman, I was pleased to note, but I wasn’t happy with her job as glorified secretary.  “This is deputy Camron,” he told me.  We women nodded to each other.  Apparently a formal introduction of my name wasn’t necessary.  Deputy Camron knew exactly who I was.

       I can think of better ways to spend my fifteen minutes of fame.

       “Lucinda stopped by yesterday evening,” I told him.  “Oh, of course you knew that. Anyway, she seemed to feel I should go on with life, so I’ve decided to open the shop today.  As you said, these summer months make or break a shop like this.”

   “Are you a witch?” he asked, out of thin air.

   So much for subtlety.  “As a matter of fact, I am.  Why do you ask?”

   He ignored my question, but nodded at my answer, as though he already knew—although how he
could
was beyond me.  I didn’t exactly advertise the fact. 

   “Do you belong to the local
coven
?”  He actually
spat
the last word, as if it left a bad taste in his mouth, and that immediately got my defenses up.  I was tempted to ask if he belonged to the local
church
(using an identical nasty tone) but decided it wasn’t a good idea to make a big man with a gun angry.

   “I’m afraid not,” I said, as though I regretted it, which I didn’t. 

   “Why not?”

   “Because my religion is a personal matter to me.  I don't feel the need to have a group of people reinforce my beliefs.  Wicca is a purely ...”
   “Save me the song and dance about Wicca,” he interrupted me.  “I spent the evening reading all about it.  Circles and candles and spells and bullshit – if you’ll excuse my saying so – but . . .”

   My turn to interrupt him.  I’d spent many years enduring that sort of superior attitude from my dearly-departed husband, and I had decided I wasn’t about to spend the rest of my life taking it from anybody else.  Not my children, not my mother and sure as hell not this back-water, red-necked sheriff.

   “I don’t think you’d get away with saying anything like that about one of the Christian branches of religion,” I told him, my voice steady and hard.  “And certainly there’s enough
bullshit
in some of them.   It seems to me there’s a lot of candle-power used in Christian churches.  Pagans believe candles carry their prayers to the heavens. Or hadn’t you noticed?  Now you’re going to drag in Skyclad covens, and demon-raising groups.   Yes, they exist.   Skyclad is more popular in the British Isles and Europe than it is here, but it’s certainly nothing to be upset about.  Those of us who aren’t into nudity look at it much the way we, as a nation, tend to look at nudists.  A bit of a giggle.  People who try and raise demons have their own problems to deal with, and always have had.  It’s a dangerous practice.  You, of course, won’t believe in the actuality, but surely you can understand the disturbance that would live and grow in a mind obsessed with such things.  If you
really
studied my religion, you’d understand that Wicca is not a scene of three hags stirring a cauldron in order to predict disaster. . .”

       Apparently the man could take a hint, at least when he was hit over the head with it.  He held up his hand in mock surrender.  “Yes, I understand all that.  I admit I was surprised to read what Wicca and witchcraft actually
is
.  I know the ‘harm none’ bit, too, so spare me.  I
also
know about devil worship, and while I’m willing to agree with your assessment of Wicca in general, I think you must realize that some people are going to carry their interest into the darker regions.  And you have to admit there can be a darker side.  What you practice as Wicca, others call witchcraft and practice something entirely different.”

       “There’s a darker side to
everything
in life,” I agreed, grimly.  “It’s an unfortunate side-effect of free will.  You might recall the Spanish Inquisition.  And there’s the temptation to exert power is in most of us…all
of us…to some degree.  Look at the job
you
chose.” That should dampen any tendency he was feeling to bully me.  “You can use the power of your badge for good or for evil. You law officers makes that decision every day, don’t you?”

       “Right now I’m using that
power
to try to find out who murdered a young woman.  Now – one more time – tell me about Shelly Dewitt.”

       We’d both laid our groundwork, and now we were down to the nitty-gritty.  As difficult as I find it to speak ill of the dead, I decided to be as honest about Shelly as I could.  I still harbor that vague belief that most law officers truly want to see justice done.  “Shelly was a little difficult,” I began.  “She was rather shallow in her interests and not above showing she was bored with both the customers and the job.  In a way I couldn’t blame her.  Her mother has, apparently, a lot of money, and she kept her daughter quite limited in funds.  I think the job was to teach her responsibility more than anything.

       “She’d be exasperating until I was ready to fire her,” I continued.  “Then she’d say or do something that showed what an unhappy child she really was, and I’d find myself ready to overlook just about anything.  It sounds awful to say when she’s dead like this, but she was basically kind of pitiful.  Did either of you happen to know her?”  They shook their heads.  “Well, I’m sure you can find a teacher or someone who saw what a pathetic thing she really was under her surface.  She was irritating, but I can’t imagine why anybody would want to
kill
her.”  I swallowed.  Every time I saw the image of her body again, I felt sick.  I’m not queasy about dead things.  They’re simply bodies, and I happen to have a strong stomach.  I don’t do well, though, when I think of anything suffering, mentally or physically.  I can drive past road kill, but I can’t ignore an animal hurt by the side of the road.  Dead they become more content than I am.  Suffering . . .  I hate the thought.  And what I feared was that Shelly had been frightened and hurt before death kindly claimed her.  “I’ve... I’ve told you all this before.”

       He apparently saw the genuine distress in my face.  I’ve never been gifted with a poker face, hard as I’ve tried to develop one through the years.

       He cleared his throat, a real “harrumph” sound.  “How did the deceased and your niece get along?”

       “Pretty well,” I said, hating the earnestness creeping into my voice.  I wanted to sound casual.   “I think Shelly thought Patsy was the epitome of Big City Woman, when really she’s just a teenager in rebellion.  Even her rebellion is practical, the resulting curse of her basic nature.  She’s explained to me that she would never tattoo her face because that’s a permanent thing.  Her reasoning, of course, is that style is generally impermanent.  The
real
reason is, teen rebel or not, she’s not a fool.  If you met my sister, her mother, you’d understand better.  Sandra takes conservatism to the extreme.  Patsy is the usual youthful liberal.  The sad part is that my niece will someday be a conservative, too.  Not as bad as Sandra, of course, but still ...”

       Unwittingly I had struck a chord.  “Got two teenagers of my own,” he conceded, sounding reluctant.  “My son seems to go out of his way to prove that he’s ‘nothing like his old man’”.

       “Well, that’s pretty typical, don’t you think?  And the odds are pretty good that, no matter how hard he fights it, he
will
end up being like ‘his old man’.  And when he does, he won’t think it’s so bad.”

       “Shelly was a witch too, wasn’t she?” he asked, getting back to the subject at hand.  He apparently had to play good-cop/bad-cop alone.

       “Yes.  And so is her mother.  That doesn’t make them bad people, Sheriff.  You need to understand that Wicca is a
religion,
just like any other religion.”

       “I knew there was a coven in the area.  It’s never caused any trouble, though,” he said thoughtfully.  “How many people belong to it?  Do you know?”

       “Twenty-two, as far as I know.  Well, twenty-
one
now.  I think you’d be surprised at how popular this religion has gotten, although many choose to be solitary witches.”

       “How well do you know the rest of the ... congregation?”

       I shrugged.  “I think I’ve met all of them, but I wouldn’t say I know
any
of them particularly well.  Many of them don’t live in town. Most of them do some shopping here, and they all knew my Aunt Josie.  That’s about it.  As far as I know, they’re all just normal people.  And of course there’s a central core, ones who actually get things done and are always at meetings.” 

       “I’m going to want a list of their names,” he said.

       “I think you should get that list from Lucinda, or one of the other coven members.  It’s apt to be more accurate.  Nevertheless, I have to tell you that I think you’re looking in the wrong direction.”

       It was his turn to shrug.  “We have to start somewhere.”

       Everything was going fine until Patsy came galloping downstairs.  Today’s nose-ring of choice was an interesting shade of purple, and it stuck out like a ... Well, like a purple ring through the nose.

       “Are we opening the shop today, Aunt Rachael?” She skidded to a halt when she saw our company.  “Oh.  I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

       He turned his suspicious gaze on her spiked, neon-colored hair.  His eyes drifted to her nose-ring, to her wild eye shadow, to her bright, clever eyes.  She must have somehow reminded him of his son, perhaps just because of her age and energy.  His good mood, the one I’d so carefully cultivated, collapsed.  He turned to her, dismissing me from his sight as well as his thoughts, and concentrated on her.

       “What did you think of the deceased?” he demanded.

       I jumped in protectively.  Meditation, self-discipline, control – they’re all very well and good, but they tend to fall by the wayside when one’s young are threatened, and I’d become very fond of my weird niece.  I was rewarded just like most do-gooders, with dirty looks from both sides, but I got my say in.  “She hasn’t even had time to have breakfast yet.”

       “Go ahead and eat.  We’ll wait.”

       “I don't need breakfast.”

       Uh oh.  No breakfast for Patsy?  She must be more upset than I thought.

       They glanced at each other, then both glared at me. I smiled weakly at them, retreated in defeat, and reluctantly allowed Patsy to handle the sheriff on her own.

       “Shelly was awfully immature for her age,” Patsy informed him, fetching herself coffee and refilling his cup as well as Deputy Camron’s. “It’s hard to believe she’s…she was…older than me.  I got along with her okay, I guess, but it was up and down all the time.  One minute she wanted to tell me her life’s story.  The next she made some snotty remark about my hair or something.  Mostly I just ignored her if she was in a bad mood.  She wasn’t very good around the store.  Sometimes she made customers mad. I was just about to tell Aunt Rachael about it.  Not that I wanted to get her fired or anything, but I thought maybe Aunt Rachael would know how to get her to chill out a little.”