Witch One Dunnit? (Rachael Penzra mystery) (34 page)

       Her face faded into darkness, but was almost immediately replaced by the image of my one portrait of Aunt Josie.  The head and shoulder view gradually developed into a full body view and she stepped out of the frame to approach me.  “Oh, Rachael!” she exclaimed, a half-smile on her face, a smile completely opposite of the one Lucinda had shown me.  “You do manage to do things the hard way, don’t you?  Well, I’d love to stay and visit, but there simply isn’t time.”

       She faded away, only to be replaced by a monstrous old oak tree.  I found nothing odd about the fact the oak tree had large eyes.  It simply watched me, blowing in a wild gale, swaying and bowing, its leaves being swirled away.  It was autumn, I realized, my favorite time of year.  I was glad, but sorry I had to die before I had a chance to enjoy the season.  But then, I like winter, too, and of course spring, as well as the lushness of summer.  Then it became night and the moon was behind the oak, clouds flying past its grasping branches.  “Oh, there you are!” I called to my aunt.  But she wasn’t.  It was all gone but the darkness, and even that was turning blood-red. 

       “How is she?  She’s bleeding all over!”  Patsy!  I had to reassure her.  But what about? 

       There was a lot of noise and fuss going on around me, but I refused to open my eyes.  I was annoyed.  I wanted to return to the oak tree and the moon, and Halloween.  Yes, that was what it was.  It must be Halloween and the dead often came to visit then, welcome or not. Aunt Josie had been more than welcome.  I tried to think myself back to her.

       I scrunched my eyes tight and concentrated.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

From the Wiccan Rede:

Where the rippling waters go

Cast a stone and truth you’ll know.

       Aunt Josie had apparently left the oak tree scene and gone to the hospital, because that’s where I was when I next opened my eyes.  I would have sworn no time had passed in between waking spells, but they’d managed to get me to the hospital and patch me up without me realizing I’d gone anywhere at all.

       I seemed destined to be banging my head against hard objects.  Fortunately, my head seems to be fairly tough, content to leave me with a magnificent headache, but no noticeable brain damage.  This time I’d crashed into the cement wall in my flight backwards. 

       I was awake a few minutes before anybody seemed to realize it.  I just didn’t want to be bothered with anything at the moment.  My head hurt a lot.  My side hurt, not equally, but enough so I could distinguish it from the head.  People were talking all around me, too, irritating murmuring I couldn’t avoid hearing, but not speaking distinctly enough for me to understand them.

       They sounded excited.  Happy, too. 
Well, goody-goody for you!
I thought, nastily, and went to sleep again.  Passed out was probably a better term, since the comings and goings of the whole night passed over and around me without my taking the least notice.

       I never did get back into my pleasant dream of Aunt Josie and the Halloween tree. It had seemed so real, and been so strangely comforting.

       When I woke up the next morning, the headache was still with me, along with the pain in my side, but they’d lessened considerably.  The voices, subdued now from exhaustion, were nevertheless clearer.  Someone was talking about the weather!  I was lying there, close to death for all anyone cared, and they were talking about the weather. 

       At least I knew I was still in Minnesota.

       And I knew I’d live.  It just didn’t seem terribly important at the moment.  Not like it had in those seconds as I grabbed for the spray can to hurl at Peter.  Peter!  And Lucinda?  What had happened to her?  I didn’t really care about him, except to have the passing thought that he should be caught and put into jail.  He
really
wasn’t a nice man.  Those last minutes, with his mind fully open to mine, I’d been utterly repelled. 

       His mind was like a shrunken, dried-up little creature, shrieking nastiness at everyone who appeared bigger than he, and almost everybody did.  He was jealous and vindictive, but so are a lot of us at different times in our lives.  The difference was that he
thrived
on jealousy and vindictiveness.  He fed on those black emotions, sucking the marrow from their bones, leaving a shell of a soul, hating, hating, hating....

       I opened my eyes.  Maybe later I’d worry about Peter.  At the moment I wanted all those other souls, the loving ones, the daily ones.  The mediocre, run-of-the-mill sinners like myself.  Madness, I decided then and there, was basically extremism. 

       It seemed I’d missed most of the drama.  Everybody else, of course, thought I’d been through the exciting part of the evening.  Personally, I hadn’t found it to be at all exciting.  Mostly it had been worrisome.  Lucinda’s cracked smile had caused me worry over her sanity.  Peter’s mind had caused me worry for our lives.  And my own mind?  Well, given that my uncontrolled psychic powers had been the cause of so much madness, I was
definitely
worried about my own mind.

       And why not?  It had been about the money trail all along, and my silly mind had concentrated on every possibility but the simplest one.  Aunt Josie’s mental probing, and my own amateur attempts, had sent Peter over the edge of sanity.  What had I been thinking, trying to use a power over which I had no real control? 

       I’d been thinking I could
help. 

       When Lucinda had shown up at the kitchen door that night, she had been over the edge.  It sounded, from what the others said, she still wasn’t her old self. She was docile, Patsy told me, her eyes wide with wonder.  “And poor Ronnie doesn’t know what to do with her.  The doctor’s suggested she go into a home for a
long
rest, but Ronnie doesn’t want to stick her in an institution like that.”

       Personally, I thought a good long rest was exactly what Lucinda needed at the moment.  She’d recover.  She was a very strong woman, but even the strongest of us need a little break from reality now and then.

. . . . . . . . . .

       I stayed in the hospital for two days, until I got cranky enough for the staff to be more than willing to let me go home.  Home, where I mistakenly thought I’d get a little peace and quiet and some edible food.  Well, I got the edible food part.  Dear Patsy put aside her own Vegan beliefs, and fed me anything my heart desired.  The peace and quiet, though ... 

       Percy, who was making himself quite at home in our little postmortem gatherings, first at the hospital and then at the house, surprised us all.  His advice to Ronnie was to get someone else to take care of Lucinda.  “Don’t try to handle it yourself.  She’ll eat you alive.  There are plenty of good people out there who are willing to take care of her so you can live your life.”

       Then he winked at me.  He, after all, was the expert in the field.  I wondered if Balsam Grove would soon see the last of Percy.

       Patsy had explained to me what had happened after I’d succeeded in getting myself shot and then knocking myself out.  “We were all upstairs,” she explained.  “It was the weirdest thing!  I just
knew
I’d left one of the burners on the stove turned on, or else you had.  I made poor Joe drive me straight home.  And there were David and Elena, actually going
into
the house.”  She paused, thinking about it.  “You know, I think I’m going to have to have a talk with David about his ability to enter locked houses like he does.  Remember when George was poisoned and we were late, and he said the door was unlocked?  Well, I swear I locked it, and ...”

       “Never mind that,” I told her, reaching over to stroke George’s big, ugly head.  Bless his heart, the night janitor at the veterinary clinic had almost had heart failure.  George had responded to my mental pleas for help and almost torn the cage apart.  By the time the vet was called, he was calm again.  I understand the janitor quit the next day.  George on a rampage could not have been a pretty sight.

       Patsy still frowned.  She liked everything orderly.  “Anyway, David shushed us up and we all crept inside.  The basement door was wide open and we could hear you guys talking.  I could see your shadows moving.  I was so scared!  Joe grabbed my arm when I started down, but David was ahead and kneeling so he could see what was happening.

       “All of a sudden David absolutely
leaped
through the air.  I swear he never touched a stair on the way down, and Joe almost threw me aside going after him.  And that gunshot!  It was so loud I thought
I’d
been shot.  I swear I could feel the air hit me.  Then we were all downstairs and you were lying there all covered with blood, and David was literally holding your skin together.  Maybe it was good that the bullet only grazed you, but it made you bleed like a stuck pig.  Joe was fighting with Peter, and I went to help him, but then Joe knocked him out, so I ran back to you.”

       “The scariest thing of all was Lucinda standing there with that stupid smile on her face.  Honest, Aunt Rachael, she just stood there like we were at a wedding reception or something, and she was the hostess.  It was bizarre!”

       Elena told me later that she had been visited by Aunt Josie, telling her to go to me immediately.  She had met David outside my house.  He repeated Patsy’s claim of a fire, saying something about smelling smoke.  He never did explain why he thought he smelled smoke in his own house and then came to the conclusion
my
house was burning.

       It was almost a week later when Ronnie appeared one evening, knocking at the kitchen door.  Patsy was off on one of her jaunts with Joe, so I was alone.  I invited him in and fixed him coffee.

       “I’m sorry I haven’t been here to see how you’re doing,” he started, hesitantly.

       I interrupted, feeling the agony flowing from him.  Talk about awkward social calls.  “Ronnie, please.  You’ve had more than enough to handle at home.  I’m sure you knew all I had was a flesh wound and a crack on the head.  And surely you also know none of this is your fault.  How’s Lucinda?”

       He sounded better when he spoke.  The first moments had passed safely.  “I don’t know.  Percy suggested getting someone in to stay with her.  She’s got plenty of money for that.  The judge made me a temporary guardian, but I’m going to insist on having someone else listed too, if she doesn’t get better.  I mean, she’s all right...  She just sits there and smiles.  She answers me and seems okay, but she just isn’t really there.  I mean, she just isn’t
Aunt Lucinda
.”

       That didn’t sound
all
bad, though of course I couldn’t say that.  We didn’t talk too much about his father, now cozily housed in jail and awaiting trial.  Peter was becoming more demanding of his son as the days went by, insisting on the best lawyers and expecting regular filial visits.  He was also apparently filling his son’s head with nonsense about how it had “all been for you, Ronnie.”  I could feel the poor kid’s confusion.  He wanted to believe his father, but despite what Peter thought of him, he wasn’t stupid.

       Peter Pfeiffer was busted, as they say, big time.  Not only had he confessed to me, but after Joe had managed to subdue him, he’d foolishly bragged about having the spare key Aunt Josie had given to Lucinda.  Apparently my aunt had sensed something was wrong with Peter and hadn’t actually given
him
a key.  Lucinda had forgotten she’d ever even
had
a key to Josie’s house, so she hadn’t noticed it was missing.

       He’d gotten Shelly inside my house by convincing her to accompany him to play a practical joke on me, and then knocking her out right inside the door.  He then carried her unconscious body into the library and finished his horrific job.

       Aunt Josie?  He’d simply run her down and then left the scene as she went for a walk.  He bragged that hitting her hadn’t even left a dent on his sports utility vehicle.  If ever in my life I’d been tempted to cast a spell to do harm, it was after I heard that bit of information.  He’d
bragged
about killing my wonderful, loving aunt.