Witch One Dunnit? (Rachael Penzra mystery) (27 page)

       “No, Aunt Lucinda thinks Shelly was a saint.  I think she knows better, but she seems to need to pretend.  I guess that’s easier than facing the truth. She was one of those people who didn’t always think before they talked, and then they think they can say anything they want to about people.  Now, when I think about it, she was a lot like her
mom
.  I hadn’t really thought about it that way before.  Lord!  She was going to turn out to be just like Aunt Lucinda! 
That
would have horrified her!”

       I hoped it was the first time he’d thought about it, because if his expression was anything to go by, I thought I’d just found his motive for killing her.  She was going to turn out to be just like Lucinda and he was saving the world, and himself, from another one of
those
.  That and the probability that as things stood at the moment, he was the logical person to inherit from his aunt.  For someone as young as he was, with an aunt her age in such excellent shape, the inheritance-angle would normally mean little.  Very few young people have the patience to court their elders assiduously for future inheritances.  If nothing else, it’s boring.  And it wastes the greater part of one’s youth.  Still, money means different things to different people … for different reasons.

       On the other hand, with a killer running around on the loose, it was certainly a possible motive. He might believe his aunt would turn to him, treating him to the monetary benefits his cousin had enjoyed.

       I mentally shook my head to clear it.  Across the kitchen table from me, his expression thoughtful and earnest, sat a potential murderer.  As usual, my powers refused to cooperate when I wanted them to.  I could feel the on-again, off-again waves of hatred coming from
somewhere,
but those waves were no stronger or weaker than they ever were.  There was no reason to feel they were coming from Ronnie.  And no reason to feel they
weren’t.

   I tried surreptitiously squinting my eyes when he looked down to take a sip of coffee, trying to see if the change would show a different view of his personality.  I wish I was better at seeing auras.  The squinting just made him look a little blurry, and made me look more than a little foolish when he glanced up and asked what was wrong.

       “Nothing,” I said, quickly.  “I’m having a little trouble with my eyes.  I think I need stronger glasses than my reading ones.  My vision tends to blur at the end of the day.  Now, about Shelly ... Can you think of anyone her age who might have been more deeply involved with her than anyone realized?  It sounds as though the boyfriend’s been cleared.”  Joe had leaked that information to Patsy.

       “They weren’t very serious,” he said with a shrug.  “That seems to leave me, you and Patsy as the most likely suspects.  I’m surprised Aunt Lucinda hasn’t caught onto that yet.”

       “Ronnie, will you inherit anything now?” I asked suddenly, ignoring his reference to my niece and me.

       He cocked his head to the side, and then shrugged.  “I suppose I will, eventually. It doesn’t matter much.  Aunt Lucinda will live forever.” He sounded gloomy, but I felt he was holding back on something.

       I wasn’t so sure about Lucinda’s longevity. She’d put on twenty years since her daughter died. He seemed sincere in his statement, though, but I still wasn’t getting a grip on what was going through his mind.

       “I know I didn’t do it,” he said thoughtfully.  “So I suppose that mainly leaves you and Patsy, and I don’t think you two are the best suspects in the world.  Aunt Lucinda is positive
you
didn’t do it, and I have to agree with her. I can’t imagine what possible reason Patsy would have to kill Shelly.  It probably wasn’t easy to tell, but Shelly really admired your niece.  It was probably because Patsy manages to convey weird without being offensive. Still, my cousin could be really annoying.”

       I frowned.  Try though I might, there was nothing I could pick up from his mind that shouted deviousness or anger. The absence of bad vibes didn’t mean much, but you’d think
something
would slip through as we talked.  But I’d learned long ago my talent was the least reliable of all my faculties.  It was about as reliable as a cat.  It came and went when it felt like it, with no rhyme or reason.  A cat, though, would at least come through when it was a matter of survival.  Not so with my psychic abilities.  This was definitely a matter of survival, and my abilities couldn’t care less.

   No matter what I read about the various forms of mind-reading, it all came down to unreliability.  The only consistency at all tends to be interactions between certain people.  I’ve found I can almost always tell not only when my oldest son, Michael, is lying to me, but can also see all the details of his thought.  The other two kids can lie until they turn blue in the face and I’ll have no clue through my psychic talents. Nevertheless, my motherly instincts are in great shape.  Molly looks me straight in the eye when she lies.  She’ll go out of her way to make sure I can see her straight-forward, honest, not-afraid-to-look-my-mother-in-the-eye look.  Daniel, being a male and less devious, will roll his big, brown eyes, casually studying the ceiling, the window, the light switch—anything but his mother’s face.

       I enjoy quite a reputation with my children.  All three have tales of awed respect to tell about how their Mom always
just knew
.  Unfortunately, I didn’t know Ronnie well enough to use my infamous Mom-abilities on him.

       “Try and think of anything she said or did lately,” I encouraged him.  “Did she act smug, like she had a secret?  Was she worried?”  Personally, I thought the girl had often looked smug and self-satisfied.

   He shrugged.  “I didn’t really see much of her lately.  I mean, you saw her a lot more than I did.  We didn’t mix much socially, you know.  Mainly we saw each other at coven meetings or when Dad and I went over to Aunt Lucinda’s for our ‘duty-dinner’.”

       “Duty-dinner?”

       He grinned.  “That’s what I called it.  Once a month, the first Sunday, we had to all be together for dinner.  It’s been going on since I was a baby, probably even before that.  And after Mom and Uncle Rudy died, Dad and Aunt Lucinda have kept the tradition alive.  The whole dinner is dumb and awkward, kind of a recital of the past month’s activities.  To tell you the truth, I don’t know why we all bothered with it.  It’s not like Dad and Aunt Lucinda are all that close.  Tradition, I guess.” 

       And then I got one, tiny spark of emotion that definitely came from the young man sitting in front of me.  Sadness. Unfortunately, I couldn’t give those emotions all of the credit they deserved, as much as I wanted to.  Murdering someone didn’t automatically mean you wouldn’t be sad, in some ways, once she was gone.  If there were some reason a person felt they
had
to kill someone, it didn’t necessarily mean they
wanted
to.  And Ronnie could quite possibly be a good example.  If he felt that he
had
to inherit Lucinda’s wealth (say he had a drug addiction or something, and he might
have,
for all I knew) then he might not have wanted to kill Shelly, but he might have felt that he
had
to.  There are plenty of people who are selfish enough to feel entitled to everything they want.

       We talked a while longer, but he didn’t have anything of importance to add.  He “kind of” believed in Wicca, but hadn’t found his spells worked very well.  I had the feeling his attempts at casting spells were probably aimed at his sex-life or lack thereof.  Fortunately for the young, female population of Balsam Grove, that type of spell is rarely terribly successful.  It is too … selfish, I guess.  Spells work best when there is an actual
need
involved. 

       Although, in all fairness, Ronnie probably sincerely thought of his desires as a need.

       When he was ready to leave he wanted to know who I wanted to talk to next.  “Aunt Lucinda told me to find out who’s next on your list.  She’ll see they show up.”

       “I think I’ll try to get people here on my own,” I decided.  “You were nice enough to come because you wanted to please your aunt, but other people might feel a little resentment, or worry she’s somehow trying to involve them.  If I need help, I’ll certainly let her know.  Thanks, Ronnie.  I feel like I know Shelly a little better now.”

       He nodded, ducking his head, and scooted on his way.  I returned to the kitchen to think about all he’d said.  If he were telling the truth, he and his cousin had enjoyed an almost sibling-like relationship, the two of them bickering, but standing together against the world of adults.  Siblings
do
kill one another now and again, but considering the stress of their relationships, it’s really quite rare.  It’s just that we
think
they’re going to kill one another sometimes.  And while accidents do happen, a planned murder between them is unusual.  Interestingly enough, sibling bloodlines are closer to each other than to either parent. Maybe that’s why they can fight the way they sometimes do.

       The end result of my conversation with Ronnie, though, was that he has basically the same opinion as everyone else did about Shelly:  She wasn’t terribly likable.

       The question was, who found her unlikable enough to want her dead

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

From the Wiccan Rede:

Nine woods in the cauldron go

Burn them fast and burn them slow.

       Patsy came clattering downstairs as soon as he’d left.  “I think it sounded like he was telling the truth, but there were some odd hesitancies in his voice,” she informed me.  She was not at all shy about admitting she’d been listening to our conversation.  “But his aunt has a lot of nerve suspecting me!  What’s she thinking?  That I was jealous?  Of what?”

       “We seldom hear good about ourselves when we eavesdrop,” I told her in sanctimonious warning.  “And I don’t think he made it sound as though she actually thought you had anything to do with it.  It’s just that it doesn’t seem
anybody
should have anything to do with it.  I wonder if we’re missing an important fact, like the idea the killer is someone we don’t even know.”  Even as I said that, I took it back mentally.  This killer knew me, and if he knew me, I must know him.  The English language really does need a simple neuter noun.  All of my feminist’s genes flared when I heard myself automatically referring to an unknown person as he.  Unfortunately, like everyone else, I do it all the time.

       I could forget about protecting my niece from nasty reality.  She was perfectly capable of figuring out what was wrong with my statement, despite knowing nothing about the surges of hatred I’d been being mentally bombarded with.  “That doesn’t make sense,” she told me.  “Why the attack on you the other night, then?  And how’d he get inside with Shelly?  Of course, I still think she must have let him in, don’t you?  I can just picture her thinking it was a good joke on us if she had a boyfriend inside the store to fool around with.  It’d make her feel like she had a secret.  She’d like that.”

       I agreed with her, but somehow it just didn’t ring true.  I thought if Shelly had been going to try to pull one off, she’d have done it to her mother.  I simply hadn’t been important enough in her life to waste her time trying to yank my chain, so to speak.  Certainly not when there was any risk for her.

       “If you’d had a guilty secret, how would you have felt about her?” I asked.

       She thought about it.  “Differently, I suppose.  I’d probably see her smug look as a threat.  You think that’s what might have happened?  She pushed the wrong buttons on someone?  Nasty little hints, even if she didn’t know anything.  I can see her doing that.”

       How sad it was we could so easily picture such behavior coming from Shelly.  We picked at the idea for a while and then gave it up, deciding to take George for a long walk instead.  I’d been so indolent physically since I’d moved to Minnesota I knew I was going to feel not just the muscles I knew about, but also some strange ones I hadn’t realized were there, much less that they could be so impressive.

       One part of my mind fretted about our being out there in the open as we were, walking the dog along the trail in the woods.  Another part refused to be intimidated.  We were two healthy females, alert to potential danger.  We had George, the monster dog, as protection.  What protection he’d actually
be
might be open to question, but at least his appearance was intimidating.  Besides, hadn’t he more or less attacked the murderer once already?  It must certainly have appeared that way to my attacker, sending him off in a panic.  If the killer had a gun, forget safety anyway.  Killing isn’t all that difficult.  I would be willing to wager I could murder almost anyone who wasn’t professionally guarded – and do it without being caught in the act.  I might be caught later, through investigation, but I could manage the actual slaying.

       Except ...

       The “except” is what keeps most of us alive and prevents us from being murderers.  I don’t kill people.  I might do it in self-defense, or even in panicky man-slaughter, but I don’t murder for profit or revenge or hate.  The normal, healthy person would run before they’d attack someone with the intent to kill.  I have sometimes wondered if I were being blackmailed over something dangerous to my own life or freedom if it were exposed, what I’d do.  Probably go on being blackmailed.  Besides, a murder because of blackmail would more or less come under the heading of self-defense.

       I thought of those things while we walked, sharing my ideas with Patsy.

       “You have a weird mind, Aunt Rachael,” she told me yet again.

       Apparently not everyone develops elaborate scenarios to go with their random thoughts.

       It would be more helpful if my fanciful mind would stick to more useful imaginings, and then follow those thoughts through to a firm conclusion.  As it was, I started out thinking about who the murderer might be, and ended up wondering what my own potential for killing was – if the point ever came up.  I obviously wasn’t one of those people who go for a long walk and let their problems float through their minds, leaving them with a solution in hand.  It didn’t work that way with sleep for me, either.  My worst problem with dreaming, as well as the state of mind somewhere between true dreaming and wakefulness, is that I sometimes end up confused about what has really happened and what I’ve dreamed.  This is always embarrassing, but some of my dreams are so prosaic, so lacking in the weirdness we expect in dreams, the events seem to have actually happened.  I’m very easily swayed.

       I might dream of someone I know breaking a leg, going through the accident, the hospital, the aftermath of visits and gifts, and then, a week or so later, find myself surprised they’d recovered so quickly, no cast or anything.  When that happens, I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut. It has nothing to do with my psychic abilities.  Those are entirely different.

       Never mind.  I guess Patsy’s right.  I have a weird mind.

                                     ...

       The next day I was pulling weeds in one of the herb beds when Karyn arrived at the boutique.  I called over to her, inviting her to stop and have coffee with me before she went home for the evening.  She looked a little startled by the invitation, but accepted readily enough.  It was simply accidental I was talking to her instead of one of the others (I’d simply seen her first) but when she came over shortly after five she seemed nervous.

       I tried to put her at ease, something I’m not very good at.  When I encounter awkwardness in other people, all my own latent shyness magnifies itself.  So we had an uncomfortable start, with me covering her with false effusiveness and her responding just as falsely.

       When we were finally seated, she took a deep breath.  “I don’t know why you want to talk to me, Rachael.  I know you were talking to Ronnie last night.  If this is still about Shelly and that little twit said I had anything against her, he’s a liar!  I didn’t like her. I admitted that to the police.  She was a slut, always chasing after men, but I certainly wouldn’t lower myself to killing her.
 I
simply
ignored
her.”

      
My, my,
I thought. 
Aren’t we above the common man? 
Aloud I was more tactful.  “Oh, Karyn, I’m sorry.  No, we didn’t even discuss
you
yesterday.”  Chalk up one more little white lie.  “Ronnie came over to help me try and form an accurate picture of his cousin in my mind.  I want to talk to everybody separately, and you happened to be the first person I saw.”

       “Well ... he’d better not be saying things about me.  He thinks he
knows
me just because we went to high school together.  He doesn’t know me at all.”

       They always say redheads have quick tempers.  I haven’t necessarily found it to be particularly true.  Lots of people are quick off the mark.  In her case, it was the red face that struck me.  Maybe flushing is where the theory actually came from.  Redheads so often have unique, pale skin.  When they flush, you know about it.  Darker-skinned people like myself can cover anger or embarrassment a little better. 
Everything
doesn’t show immediately.

       “Karyn,” I put my hand up in a gesture of honor.  “He didn’t say anything bad about you.  He’s been having a difficult time trying to cope with the death of his cousin, and his aunt’s needs.  I think all of his attention is focused on them right now.”

       “Maybe, but I doubt it.” She allowed for the possibility, but didn’t look convinced.  No one over thirty has the massive ego of the young.  Almost nobody, I should say.

       “Tell me about Shelly,” I pleaded.  “From a young female’s point of view.  Did you know her well in school?”

       “She was two years behind me. Ronnie and I were in the same grade,” she spoke with contempt.  She’d learn soon enough how little those few years meant as she grew older.  “She was always a geek.  No one liked her.  She tattled all the time, even as a teenager.  I can remember hearing she was always teacher’s pet.  My little brother was a year behind her and he said everyone hated her.

       “She was always coming on to the guys, even the teachers.  I don’t know what she was trying to prove.  She wouldn’t take no for an answer.  I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but she was Trouble.  I got so disgusted when she was always sidling up to Robert, batting her false eyelashes.”

       Well, there was at least
one
lie in that statement.  Karyn
loved
speaking ill of this particular dead person.  I would have to guess Karyn was about twenty-three, but at the moment she wasn’t acting a day over
thirteen. 
I wondered if Shelly had managed to take only
one
man from her in the past, or more.  Karyn was certainly harboring a large grudge.

       “Did you ever see any sign of her doing drugs, or hear about it?” I asked, deftly changing the subject from petty jealousy to something a little more concrete.

       She thought about it so hard I knew she was trying to come up with something, anything, she could recall which might throw a bad light on her dead rival.  She lost the struggle, apparently being basically an honest soul, or a weak liar.  “No, but I know she hung around with some real losers.  I wouldn’t be surprised to hear she’d at least
tried
drugs.  I saw her smoking a cigarette behind the theater once.”

       If she’d been old enough, the chances were she’d have seen
me
sneaking a cigarette behind a theater, too.  Teenagers are prone to that sort of behavior.  The way the fact was dug up and tossed to me so hopefully gave me a good idea any real dirt wouldn’t be coming my way from this source.  She’d have loved to tell me something really negative.  She simply didn’t have anything special to tell.

       I probed a bit more, but I’d clearly heard all there was to hear.  The conversation, as it was prone to do with Karyn, changed over to her boss and his antique shop.  The man was more fortunate than he probably realized.  His employee loved his antiques almost as much as she loved him.  The chances were good that her secondary love would last longer than her first, romance being what it is, but he was certainly fortunate at the moment.  I told her so, carefully omitting any remarks about her blatant adoration of her boss.  Even the faint connection with his affection about antiques seemed to exhilarate her.  On the wave of her enthusiasm she promised to send him over the next evening.

       “He might be more help than I’ve been,” she said, naively.  “I’m a little prejudiced about her because I could see right through her little visits and her pretending to be interested in antiques.  Robert’s a shrewd judge of character most of the time, but he doesn’t realize what an impact he can have on women.”

      
Right! 
I wondered if she really believed that.

       “Maybe an outsider’s view, a man’s view, would help,” I told her.  “They tend to look at things differently than we women do.”  That, at least, was true.

       We parted with reestablished good will on both sides.  She’d managed to convince herself that I believed in the innocence and integrity of her boss as much as she did.  I hoped that, sometime in the future, she ended up with a gentle man.  She was certainly a born victim in the making.  The trouble with people like her, you couldn’t help wondering just how far she’d go to protect her love interest from any threat.