Witch One Dunnit? (Rachael Penzra mystery) (26 page)

       When the other person hates you, personally, it’s frightening.  It’s also a shock, particularly to someone like myself who’s spent a lifetime trying to make people like her.  It isn’t an especially pretty picture to see ourselves as others see us. It can be annoying, like catching a glimpse of someone familiar in a shop window as you pass, and you wonder who the heavy-set person is (you know you know her from somewhere) and then you realize it’s
you. 
Again, everything is the same, yet subtly changed.  I feel as though I’ve stepped through a doorway into a twin universe that exists in time alongside ours.  It’s the same,
but...

       So I spent the morning smiling at customers and feeling surges of hate engulfing my mind at disturbingly regular intervals.  It was, to say the least, an unusual sensation.  What made it bearable was the change in my own attitude.  No more hiding.  I was trying to will it to open up for me, to let me see behind the mask.  All I got was waves of raw emotion, none of it nice. 

       Patsy didn’t seem to notice anything unusual, but David seemed to be keeping a close eye on me, even working nearby when possible.  His concern was not that of male/female interest.  I smiled at him with as much fake heartiness as I was using on the customers.  I still didn’t trust him in the least, although learning of his relationship with Elena and her unusual background made me more tolerant towards his ability to block his true personality from my mind.  I imagine being surrounded by mind-readers of one sort or another can be difficult for a growing child, much less an adult.  His talent for hiding his thoughts had likely been developed as a form of self-defense.

       It still irritated me.

       When I had a spare moment, I told him I intended to so some research about artificial ponds and waterfalls.  I’d been truly impressed by the one we’d looked at.  If nothing else good came from the outing, I now had a new interest.  I like water.  In the past few years I’d seen several small ponds and found them intriguing. None of them quite satisfied my tastes, however. It was the sort of thing I would enjoy creating myself, an outlet for my creative juices.  My herbs I considered a domestic talent.  A waterfall, on the other hand, was pure Art. 
Plants,
I thought,
I’ll have ivy growing up some driftwood.  Water and earth to go with my winter fire in the fireplace.  Candles scenting the air! 
I was on a mental roll during lunch, sitting in the kitchen, chomping absently on an apple, planning my new project.  Then the hate hit again.  My pleasant images faded.  Nasty, red anger replaced them.  He, She, or It was back.

       Anger can work in a lot of ways.  In childhood it can rear its head as a defense mechanism against an attack, creating the look of aggression.  It does have its uses, sometimes good ones.  It kept me going throughout the day.  The more I thought about being an innocent victim, the madder I got.

       Here I was, a middle-aged woman trying to lead her own life, not interfering with other peoples’ business, just getting along as best I could.  Then along comes this
murderer,
this selfish, cruel, vicious person who not only takes a human life, and a young one at that, but also starts persecuting
me! 
Why?  Because I’m psychic?  Because of the store?  What
was
the motive?  I’d gotten side-tracked from that basic problem.  I’d been too upset with Lucinda’s need for vengeance and by my own lack of confidence, to concentrate on that most basic of basic questions: who benefits? 

       Enough!  From now on I was going on the offensive.  It was starting to dawn on me that I was in very real danger.  Someone hated me.  The same someone who had killed once already, if not
twice
.  Talk about being slow-witted!  I’d stared at a dead girl, who’d been stabbed repeatedly, and not felt threatened.  I’d felt someone trying to kill me, someone whose hatred towards me had frightened me into denial.  Apparently I was like a mule.  I needed to be hit over the head with a board to get my attention.  Ugh.  Not a nice image under the circumstances.

       Two things occurred to me then, things I should have thought of long ago.  First of all,
if
Aunt Josie had been murdered, and
if
that same person had murdered Shelly, what was the connection? Was the store somehow the real target?  Was someone trying to drive me out?  Shelly had worked for Josie the previous summer, but what could
that
have to do with anything?  So I made my first mental note to myself: try to find a connection between Aunt Josie and Shelly.  Preferably one that made sense.

       The second thing to occur to me was that I had never read any of Josie’s personal files on her computer.  She’d kept a journal and her personal Book of Shadows on the computer.  When I’d first dug through her system, I had decided to burn two copies of each of these personal thoughts onto CDs, and to put them away until I felt ready to read them.  Her business files I kept where they were.  They weren’t personal, and I needed to have easy access to them, but I’d deleted the personal files off of the hard drive.  Maybe it was time to look them over.  Maybe there would be
something
in them to point me in the right direction.

       I took an afternoon break, something I rarely did except to run to the potty.  I used the time to call Lucinda.  “Can you persuade Ronnie to come and talk with me tonight after work?”

       “Do you know something?” she demanded.

        “No, nothing.  I just think it’s time I took the initiative.  Maybe if I shake a few branches, something will fall out.  Unless the police have told you something new, I’m beginning to feel as though nothing’s going to be solved.  I want to start talking with people again, one by one, and Ronnie wasn’t just Shelly’s cousin, he was also fairly close to her age, so maybe he’ll have a little better insight into her than we’d have.”

       Lucinda sounded almost fond of her nephew, a new touch.  She explained it.  “When they were little, they fought like ... siblings, I guess.  They were both only-children and spent quite a bit of time together.  He’s four years older than her, and Shelly worshipped the ground he walked on no matter how much he picked at her.  They got closer as they got older, I believe. Never mind that, I’ll send him over at seven.  Shall I come with him?”

       I talked her out of joining us, using the simple truth.  Nobody would want to talk about Shelly for fear of upsetting her, even by saying nice things, and they wouldn’t want to gossip when the matter was so close to her heart.  “People love to gossip, you know.  And usually it’s just speculation, but sometimes enough of that sort of thing adds up to an important fact.  If you’re here, whomever I’m interviewing is going to carefully guard every word.  It’s natural, really, but won’t be much help to me.  I need people to be honest, and their minds to be relaxed enough to be open.”

   “I suppose that’s true,” she grudgingly admitted.

   “There was one thing I wanted to ask you about, though.  Can you think of any possible connection between my aunt and Shelly?  Other than the store.”

       “Do you think the same person murdered both of them?” she asked eagerly.

       “Lucinda, I’m not even sure I believe Aunt Josie was
murdered
.  But since it is a possibility, I don’t think it’s out of the question for it to have been the same person who killed both.”

       She was silent for a moment, thinking. For a few seconds, her thoughts were as plain as day, and I knew what she was going to say before she said it.  “Other than the obvious fact that they were both witches, belonged to the same coven, and worked at the same place, the answer is no.  I’ll give it some more thought, though,” she promised.

       I refrained from telling her I planned to look into Josie’s personal files.  I wasn’t sure I’d find anything useful anyway, and I was already uncomfortable with snooping into my aunt’s personal writings.  Foolish, I suppose, but it was still the way I felt.  I certainly didn’t want
Lucinda
reading any of it.     

       Having made my decision to throw myself into trying to help Lucinda, everything seemed to go more smoothly.  I hadn’t realized how much I had been fighting myself about getting down to business.  I don’t make commitments easily, mainly because when I do, I’m stuck with them.

       By seven I’d chased Patsy upstairs (another night of Joe working late) and had more or less arranged some questions in my mind.  I’d even started a list of suspects, complete with who, what, where, why and when – going on the theory that those must be the questions
real
detectives ask themselves.  “Why”
seemed the most important question at the moment.  It’s all very well to talk about solving a crime, but sit down and try it sometime.  Even alibi-proving seemed beyond my limited abilities.  I just had to accept peoples’ word about where they were at any time.  No one seemed to have much of an alibi anyway.  Somewhere there has to be a point where even the law feels confounded.  If I’d committed a crime and said I was with my boyfriend, and he confirmed it, was that an alibi?  Wouldn’t my boyfriend be willing to lie for me?

       I knew
where
.  My house.  According to Patsy, by word of Joe, we were fortunate we weren’t still cleaning up blood.  Shelly had apparently been knocked insensible (that being similar to the blow I’d suffered, where I wasn’t unconscious, but couldn’t function for a few moments), and then stabbed in the back.  The knife had been held there long enough for the original burst of blood to flow into the body rather than squirting all over.  Her clothing (and they thought something the murderer had held over the wound) had caught a lot of the initial leakage, too.  I shuddered thinking about it.  I’d thought there was enough blood as it was.

       The murderer (murderers) had then rolled her over before striking the remaining blows.  After that gruesome task was finished, the body was carefully arranged into a ritual position, and left for me to find in the morning.  It still infuriated me to think that Patsy might have been the first one to walk into the room.  But I suppose if you’re willing to murder a woman who was little more than a child, you’d hardly be overly sensitive about who discovered her body.

       Ronnie showed up only five minutes late.  “Sorry, Rachael,” were his first words.  “Got caught talking to Karyn on the street and I didn’t want to get into a discussion about why I had to get here at a certain time.  I told her I was delivering some papers from my aunt.  She’ll be straight off to tell Robert as it is, but at least I deflected her a little.  I don’t see why she wastes her time on that egotistical jackass.  She could do better.  Besides, he’s
old.
”

       I’m afraid I had to take silent umbrage at that last comment.  Robert was around the same age as
me
.  “He seems pretty decent to me,” I said. “Of course I don’t really know him.  And Karyn seems to be a sweet girl.”

       He didn’t need prodding.  “She is.  He just uses her and doesn’t give her anything in return.  He
knows
she’s madly in love with him.  He acts like it’s every woman’s duty to fall for him. I just don’t know what she sees in him,” he said sulkily.

       “Karyn’s young,” I told him, not bothering to add the detail that so was he.  “A lot of young people get painful crushes on older people.  Most of them grow out of it eventually.”

       He grunted in obvious disbelief.  I hadn’t thought of him as having a crush on any
particular
female.  He’d seemed more than willing to chase after any and all of the available ones.  Maybe that was just his protective coloring.  “Anyway,” he changed the subject, not bothering with subtlety.  “Aunt Lucinda sent me over to answer any questions you might have about Shelly.”

       “She says you’ve been very kind about helping her out with things,” I compromised, stroking his ego and hopefully putting him at ease.

       The ego-stroking works.  It usually does with men.  All right, with women, too.  But
particularly
with men.

       “I’ve been sticking pretty close, trying to help out,” he stated.  “It isn’t the easiest thing to do.  She keeps going on and on about Shelly and how wonderful she was, and how smart, and how kind....  You worked with her. 
You
know what Shelly was like.  I never really understood why she tried so hard to be so ... unlikable, I guess.  Deep down, she really wasn’t as bad as she seemed.  She was a pretty nice
little
kid. For some reason she seemed to
want
to come off as hard and cold.  Maybe it was the witch thing or something ...” He hesitated, seemingly at a loss for words.

       “That’s the sort of thing I need to hear,” I encouraged him.  “What her life was really like.  I can hardly ask your aunt what sort of trouble she might get in, or if she ran with a bad crowd.”