Witch One Dunnit? (Rachael Penzra mystery) (7 page)

  Shelly did know the products – better than I did, despite my hours of intense studying and memorizing.  She was a good worker, too, but was only available for four hours a day, leaving me with the greater part of the day to struggle through alone. 

       I was waiting for the Boston schools to let out.  That would not only bring in a fresh influx of tourists (and their wallets) but also my niece, Patsy.  My sister, Sandra, is a rabid conservative.  Somehow I had forgotten to mention to her I was now a card-carrying witch and if it hadn’t been for this small oversight, there was no way she’d have allowed Patsy to come work for me.  As it happened, she was operating under the assumption that I was still a member of the Lutheran church, thus a safe relative for her daughter to spend the summer with.

       I didn’t intend to make a big deal out of my religion to my niece.  Okay, I admit I
had
planned to go out of my way to hide the fact from her, but I was beginning to see that with all of the witches who came and went through my kitchen door, it might be impossible.

       I decided not to worry about it.   If Patsy found out about my religious preference and it offended her delicate sensibilities, then I’d send her back home to her mother.  No big deal.  I hoped.

       For the moment, though, I desperately needed more help and I’d be glad when Patsy arrived.  I hadn’t particularly wanted to have her living with me, but at seventeen she was going to have to stay with
somebody,
and like it or not, I was the logical choice.  At the moment, I was too tired in the evenings to care if anybody was around or not.  I planned to set strict limitations for both of us.  I had no energy left over for socializing with a teenager.  Hopefully she would be a typical teenager and have even less interest in me.  Her curfew had been strictly set by her parents.  If she didn’t adhere to the rules, home she went.  Already, even before the poor girl arrived, I wished I had some middle-aged woman, pleasant and capable, who could help me out during the day, and then go home and leave me in absolute peace. 

       As is usual in life, things weren’t working out exactly as I’d planned.

       Patsy arrived by bus on a Monday afternoon.  When I saw the passengers disembarking, I hoped she’d somehow managed to miss the bus, and the only possible female in the correct age category was not my shy little niece.  No such luck.  This young female was tall, thin, and garishly equipped with red hair.  And purple hair.  And a nose-ring.  And wearing a turquoise caftan of some sort. When anyone else failed to emerge from the bus, I put on my biggest fake smile and went over to greet the . . . creature.

       “Hi!  Are you Patsy?” At her nod, I babbled on.  “I’m your Aunt Rachael.  I remember you as such a tiny thing.  You couldn’t have been much older than ten or eleven!  Cute as a button, you were.  I don’t suppose you recall me at all.  Of course not!  You were much too young to ...”

       “Your son, Danny, lost my baseball glove,” she told me, sealing any hopes I’d have of a wonderful aunt/niece relationship such as I’d enjoyed with Josie.  Then she grinned and the hair, the pierced nose, and the baseball glove were all forgotten.  Underneath all the teen-angst was a very pretty young woman with a warm smile.  “He was mad because I was better at baseball than he was.”

       I laughed.  “Apparently you spurred him on to greater heights,” I told her.  “He has a small baseball scholarship for college next fall.  He loves baseball, but to tell the truth, he’s better at football.”

       “So why doesn’t he play football?”

       “He doesn’t
like
football.  He drove the poor coach nuts.”

       That comment made her grin.  I guess most teenagers like the idea of a fellow teen yanking the chain of
any
adult.

       We gathered up her luggage (she apparently had a huge variety of her strange clothing along, judging by the size and weight of her three suitcases) and piled them into the trunk.  We chatted on family subjects until we reached Balsam Grove.

“I think I’m going to like this place, Aunt Rachael,” she said.  “Big cities are not my thing.   And they’re environmental disasters.”

       “You’ll have to renew your acquaintance with my son, Michael.  He’s very concerned with the environment,” I told her.  Then I asked what she preferred in the line of food, so we could stop off at the grocery store on the edge of town before we went back to the shop.  As long as I had conned Shelly into working the afternoon shift, I intended to take a little dishonest advantage of the situation.

       “I’m strictly a Vegan,” she announced.  This would have surprised me before she got off the bus, but having seen her, it didn’t astonish me in the least.  “I can fix my own meals, Aunt Rachael.  I’m used to doing it at home.  I brought along some ingredients I was afraid I couldn’t find up here.”

       Inwardly I smiled in rare contentment.  I could live with this girl, if she continued to develop on these lines and meant what she said.  One look at her long Scandinavian face reassured me.  That strong jaw line wasn’t there simply for show.  It was there to denote stubbornness.  What she said, she meant.  It could be carried to extremes (and often was) but it is an admirable trait, at least when the stubborn one is doing what you want done.

       And it didn’t hurt that I’d experienced a flash of insight about my niece.  I could set aside my worries about her discovering I practice Wicca.  When she figured it out  (and at the moment I was seriously considering just coming right out and telling her) she would be accepting, and interested, and best of all, she’d be in no hurry to confide in her mother.

       We picked up some fresh fruit and vegetables at the store.  Fortunately, her sense of adventure when it came to food was somewhat limited, either from lack of opportunity or by choice.  I don’t handle some hot foods well.  Some literally burn my mouth.  Not my stomach, mind you, but the skin in my mouth. Usually I suffer through it in silence, resigned to losing a layer of skin.  It heals.  The tomatoes, onions, garlic and green peppers Patsy chose were hardly exotic foods to my mind, but who knew what she had packed in her suitcases.

       She worked in the store that afternoon.  I tried to convince her to rest and take her time acclimating herself to the place, but she felt the sooner she was actually working, the quicker she’d learn the routine.  I didn’t try
too
hard to dissuade her.  Anyway, she was probably right.  Young people have an infinite capacity to learn and remember things, along with the complete confidence in their abilities older people often lose. Shelly enjoyed her position of being teacher, but I could see she resented my niece’s absurd hair style and color job, not to mention the pierced nose.  Shelly went more for the Morticia Addams look.  Together they made a great contribution to the store, assuring New Agers our merchandise was up to date.  The gruesome-twosome fascinated the more conservative customers, giving them a feeling of recklessness when buying our products.

       Since I couldn’t compete with their strangely exotic looks, I capitalized on an idea I’d seen used in Las Vegas.  In the months I’d been back there, I’d raided most of the more exotic stores in town, returning home with both purchases and stolen ideas.  One thing that had caught my attention was in a small, pretentious store whose owner reiterated, to virtually every customer, that she was “ahead of the provincials” in the States.  She made several buying trips every year to Europe, Africa, and the Far East to keep abreast of the times.  People bought on her self-assurance alone, no doubt returning home to brag about their ultra-modern purchases.  I simply saved myself some time and money and hopped aboard the Internet to get the same results.  Once I was onto an idea, I could trace it.  Homeopathic products are available in unbelievable numbers, with equally unbelievable claims made about them, and they all need to be thoroughly researched before I decided to carry them in the shop.

       So while I didn’t use the word
provincial,
I made it clear that many of our products were straight from Africa and Asia, made by natives.  I didn’t mind selling for them, since far more of my products were made by local craftsmen, and those numbers would soon include my own creations.

       I found to my delight, along with the store, I had an herb garden to tend.  Aunt Josie had made flagstone paths weaving through the front and side yards, filling the open sections with herbs and plants that attracted butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds.  What annuals were needed, and where, was carefully marked on a plat on the computer.  My aunt was not only charming, she was also intelligent and practical.  She was up to date on everything.  The yard, with its abundance of bright, heavily-scented plants and flowers, put buyers in the mood to purchase the dried herbs and scented products inside. 

       And every natural product we carried had an explanation to go along with it.  Homemade soap was accompanied by a short story about the history of soap.  Herbs had their uses and magical properties listed.  Scented oils had another short history included.  It made the whole shop fun to browse through, and gave a person a feeling of intimacy with the products. 

       Patsy, with her friendly manner, was a perfect sales clerk.  The customers loved her.  Shelly, on the other hand, would almost always off-put a customer, if only slightly.  It wasn’t anything she actually said or did.  She gave a
sense
of distaste, contempt customers could feel.  There wasn’t much I could say to her.  She didn’t really do anything I could pinpoint.  I don’t think she even realized what she was doing.  She seemed more hurt than disgusted when someone made a point of waiting until Patsy was free for help.  She was still young enough to be constantly putting on a show in public.  Unfortunately, the character she’d chosen to play wasn’t a popular one. 

       The two girls got along fairly well. We stumbled along, all three of us learning as we went.  If I’m to be totally honest, I must admit I didn’t care for Shelly, but her knowledge of my aunt’s selling habits was useful, and when she forgot to act her part, the girl wasn’t too bad.

       I never expected to find her dead.

CHAPTER FIVE

  
From the Wiccan Rede:

Soft of eye and light of touch

Speak little and listen much.

       Later, when my mind had cleared enough to think about it, I was grateful it was me, rather than Patsy, who came downstairs first that horrible morning.  It wasn’t unusual for Patsy to be the first one down.  Breakfast was her favorite meal and she could pack away breakfast foods like a starving lumberjack.  But fortunately that morning she was working on an involved session of hair touch-up.  I, having no excess energy to waste on things of little or no interest to me, was letting my dark hair take its natural course.  That meant those “little gray soldiers” were definitely winning the war.  I kept thinking I should have
some
desire to dye my hair, but it seemed like such a lot of work.  And once the battle was joined, there would be no end to it.  Age gets us soon enough, I decided, without adding to the stress by trying to fight it every inch of the way.  And maybe, if I didn’t cause any trouble, it wouldn’t notice me.

       Those, and other frivolous thoughts, were flitting through my head as I hummed my way down to the kitchen.  It was a sunny day with a brisk breeze, promising not to be so hot we had to have the air conditioner blowing all day, and not so humid everybody came in smelling like damp things
–
clothing, hair, perfume, and sweat.  The humidity made every smell worse, and the last thing
some
of my customers needed was to smell worse.  I’m as into “all things natural” as the next person, but I also think water was put here so we could
bathe,
and a little deodorant now and then isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  But I kept telling myself they were on vacation.  For a blissful few weeks, they were free to smell however they chose.

       Before it was time to open the doors to the masses, I had two blissfully free hours to eat a leisurely breakfast, and maybe work a bit in the yard.  It was even possible I’d break down and do a little housework.  Okay, so probably not the last part.  I’d started my new life out right by hiring someone else to do the cleaning.  Old habits still kept me straightening this and dusting that, but someone else, someone who got paid in cold, hard cash, did jobs such as scrubbing the floors and washing the windows.  It made me feel downright decadent.  Elaine,
my cleaning woman
  (doesn’t that sound haughty?) was a symbol of my successful foray into the world of business.  And like an old ex-waitress, I intended to see she was well-tipped and her ego well-stroked.

       It wasn’t until I went to turn off the security alarm that I felt my first twinge of unease.  It was
already
turned off.  Granted, I
could
have forgotten to turn it on the previous night, but I was still new enough at the routine to be a little paranoid about locking up.  The kitchen looked untouched, and I walked into the shop, turning on the lights as I went, without feeling terribly worried.  I could see right away that several rather valuable antiques we used for displaying our products were intact. 

   If someone had come in after money, he’d be a disappointed thief.  I ran the great bulk of our income to the bank every evening, usually walking with Patsy or meeting with Karyn at the Balgrove and going with her.  I’d never thought of it as a risky walk.  We might make a nice cash haul for a snatch and run, but hardly anything that would set the thief up for life.  Besides, there were always a lot of people still roaming the streets.  I’d followed Robert’s advice and continued closing my store at five, or as soon after that as possible, rather than trying to stay open and catch a little late business.   “They’re just strolling around killing time until they’re ready to go out to eat,” he’d warned me.  “They aren’t buyers.  It isn’t worth the occasional sale.” 

       Of course, to begin with, and despite his good advice, I had to learn my lesson the hard way.  I tried two weeks of staying open a little later, and found out (big surprise) he was right.  It wasn’t worth the effort.

       If I hadn’t been looking to see if anything was missing, I doubt I would have noticed her.  She was stretched out on the library floor, laid out like a corpse in a casket, but she was so covered with blood that she blended right in with the predominantly red, imitation oriental carpeting.  As it was, I stood there and blinked, trying to clear my sight of what I couldn’t
possibly
be seeing. The more I tried to blink the vision away, the clearer it became.

       I’m not sure how reliable my memory is about those first moments of seeing the body.  As I recall, I went up to her and knelt down to check for signs of life.  That was more denial than anything, but with the advanced medical techniques, there’s always a small chance.  One touch of her body ruined any hope.  Her skin was cold and
firm
to the touch.  That sounds silly, but it’s what it felt like.  The flesh had changed, not just gotten cold, but
firmed
somehow.  All the same, I found myself searching for a pulse, checking first her wrist and then her neck, refusing to believe my senses. Defeated, I got up and went to the kitchen and called the police.  I ignored the closest phone on the desk and went straight to the security of the kitchen.  The
safety
idea was purely emotional.

   One thing that never occurred to me was the possibility the killer might still be in the house. It was much later when such an eminently practical thought struck me.

       I unconsciously brewed a pot of coffee, my ears tuned for both the sound of the law’s arrival and Patsy’s descent.  It wouldn’t do for her to walk in on Shelly’s dead body.  There was no reason she should go into the library before breakfast, but the fear she might seemed reasonable at the time.  Maybe I was simply hanging onto something tangible to worry about.  The thought of calling Lucinda fluttered through my head, but I refused to give it clearance to land.  I
couldn’t!
 
I just couldn’t!
  Denial is something any parent understands.  I was in denial for Lucinda.  My fuzzy, horrified mind had decided that if I didn’t actually call her, everything would be all right.  Somehow.    

       So I sat in the kitchen and fought the urge to go back into the library and place a blanket over the poor girl.  I’m not sure why I wanted to cover her with a blanket, except I had yet to really accept the truth that she was dead.  Fortunately, the realistic part of my brain was still functioning enough to convince me to leave the body alone.  The only way I could help now was to give the police a chance to find out who’d done this horrible thing.

       The police vehicle arrived before Patsy finished her ministrations and came downstairs.  The squad car pulled right up into my driveway without using the flashing lights or sirens.  I was grateful for that.  I didn’t want anyone noticing there were policemen at my house.  The thought of talking to
anyone
at the moment was more than I could handle. 

       The only thing I really wanted to do was to return to the womb.

       I was a bit surprised it was a deputy who came to the door.  Sheriffs can’t rush out to each and every call, I’m sure, but to a
murder?
  This wasn’t New York City.  It was Balsam Grove, Minnesota, and surely a murder wasn’t a mundane event in this neck of the woods.  But what did I know about such things?  Maybe it was typical for an underling to handle
every
initial approach to a crime scene.  Deputy Johnson, as he introduced himself, didn’t strike me as anybody’s underling.  He exuded macho confidence, completely at home in his weight-lifter’s pumped body.  He stood well over six feet and his shoulders didn’t seem to be an awful lot shorter, measuring from side to side.  He was a big boy.  I led him to the body and felt a nasty, middle-aged, going-to-pot spasm of satisfaction when he grunted as he dropped to one knee beside the body. 

       “I felt for her pulse,” I told him, foolishly hoping he’d check it again and find I was wrong, and it was all just a silly mistake. She had simply fallen asleep on the floor of my library.

       And someone had spilled a lot of blood on her.

       My mind wasn’t functioning too well.

       “You shouldn’t have touched her,” he told me, sounding stern.  Then he relented.  “It’s what everybody does, though.  You always think there’s a chance.”

       I suddenly found myself swallowing bile.  His momentary humanity had broken through my shell of shock.  “I couldn’t help it,” I said.  “You hear about people being saved . . . But when I felt her, she
felt
dead.”

       He rose to his feet, without a grunt this time.  “And you were right.  She’s definitely dead.  The coroner will have to make it official, but she’s dead. Anybody else been in here?”  At my assurance that I was the first and only person to see the body, he herded me out of the room, his body bulk maneuvering me through the door without words or touch.  He pulled a two-way radio device from a holster on his belt.  I suppose they’re called something far more advanced than two-way radios these days.  I pondered about that. My mind was frantic to rush off on little side tangents.  At the moment, anything was better than reality.

       I led him back to the kitchen, but he stepped outside the door to call in his report.  I don’t know if it was because there was better reception outdoors or he didn’t want me to overhear what he was saying.  He didn’t move far enough away that he couldn’t watch me through the window.  I didn’t care.  I felt very tired, all the morning zest I’d experienced earlier was long gone.  It wasn’t yet eight o’clock and already I felt exhausted.  I recalled the fresh coffee I’d made, and was pouring myself a cup when he came back in.  It seemed as though he’d been gone for hours.

       “Sheriff’s a great one for detail,” he told me, eyeing my coffee enviously.  I offered him a cup and he accepted without hesitation.  Apparently I was allowed to use bribery of a sort.  I got out some donuts I’d picked up from the excellent bakery the town boasted.  Yes, apparently pastries, too, were acceptable.  There have to be
some
perks in a job requiring a person to look at dead bodies on a regular basis.

       “I’m worried about my niece seeing her,” I told the deputy, when I’d decided he’d been sufficiently softened by food and drink.  “She’ll be down any minute and I don’t want her somehow going in there and seeing . . . Shelly.”  I almost choked on the name, but it seemed obscene to call her
the body
.  And saying
it
felt equally wrong.  But it wasn’t Shelly lying there.  It simply wasn’t.

       “We’ll hear her coming,” Deputy Johnson assured me.  “No reason for her to go in there, is there?”  He watched me, trying to act casual about his scrutiny.

       “No,” I admitted.  “I’m being silly, I suppose, but it was such a shock . . .   And normally I wouldn’t have gone into that room either, at least not until I’d opened the shop.  What if Patsy had come down before me and gone in there?”

       He grunted in what might have been empathy.  “Why
did
you go in there this morning?” he asked.  He quickly pulled out a notebook.  I had the feeling it wasn’t his job to ask questions and his curiosity had gotten the best of him.  He seemed awfully young to me, despite his bulk.  Maybe he was in his middle twenties.  Once you looked past the uniform and the confident body language, there was a man not many years removed from a cracking voice and the curse of acne.  I told him about the alarm being turned off, and how I had been checking for a robbery when I found the body.

       “Anything taken?” he asked, perking up at the hint of something he understood.  Given all of the wealthy summer-residents in the area, it was a fairly safe bet
burglary
was run of the mill in Balsam Grove, even if murder wasn’t.

       “I didn’t find anything missing,” I admitted.  “But I haven’t really looked thoroughly.  We don’t keep much cash overnight.”

       “That’s smart,” he was telling me when Patsy came clattering down the stairs.  She erupted into the kitchen.   I lost Deputy Johnson’s attention from that point on.

       “How’s the hair look?” she asked, as she came bounding into the room.  Seeing our visitor, she stopped still and stared back at him.

       “Come and sit down, Patsy,” I told her, with a vague idea that sitting somehow softened bad news.  I suppose it goes back to the old days when ladies might – nay, were
expected
to – faint over major, as well as minor, upsets.  “This is Deputy Johnson.  I called him because when I came downstairs this morning I . . .  The alarms were off, and you  know how particular I am about the locks ...  So I was checking out the rooms ... seeing if anything was stolen ... and I found . . . that’s to say ...”