A Murky Murder

by Constance Barker

  “I am your grandmother,” she said. “And soon we will meet in another world, then you can tell me what you’ve learned.”

  Something was changing around her. “Where will we meet?” Charli blurted the question out, but she was too late. She was waking up.

  WHEN CHARLI WALKED into the shop, Dorian was dusting an assortment of netsuke. “Japanese fetish objects,” she laughed.

  “Not really,” he said. “They were developed as functional items in the 17th century.”

  “How are little sculptures functional?”

  Dorian raised an eyebrow. “Kimonos didn’t have pockets, but even back then people had items they needed to carry about with them. Not car keys, but seals of office, tobacco, and pipes, medicines, things like that. So they came up with sagemono, which were containers they hung from the obi—the sashes. They needed a way to secure the cord that held them, and came up with netsuke. Ne, meaning root and tsuke meaning attach.”

  “Still, they won’t have ignored the symbolism of the animals or their mystic powers.”

  “Something they share with the Indians.” He turned and smiled at her. “From your cheery attitude, I assume you learned something last night.”

  “Or at least dreamed something. The Lake Woman promised to give up Carter’s body. I’m not clear how that works... I doubt she’ll call 911 and report a body, but she said she’d take care of it.”

  “I wouldn’t hold my breath, or you might join him.”

  “Cynic. I also learned that the Lake Woman doesn’t simply grab random fishermen for a husband. In fact, there is a rather sinister tone to her idea of what a husband’s role is. And she claims she takes the ones who threaten the animals. Carter and his buddies were disrespecting the sacred land.”

  “So now she is content,” Dorian said.

  “That's a bit strong, but she is pleased with herself for the moment.”

  “She told you all this?”

  “Brown face-to-green face, she did. And I believe her.”

  “Okay then. Time will tell.”

  “The Indian woman who said she was my grandmother said we would meet someday.”

  “And you believe her too?”

  “I was in a believing mood.”

  “So she's going to drop in for a daytime visit? Or are you going to see her?”

  Charli chuckled. “The details will be determined later. It seems my mother has some serious explaining to do." She scowled. "I never knew I had a grandmother... one who is alive, but now...”

  “She said she was alive?”

  “No, but she said I’d see her soon, and I'm certain she didn’t mean in another dream, so...”

  Dorian smiled. “Well, life is getting more interesting every day.”

  “So are the dreams,” Charli said. “They are getting more understandable.”

  Dorian grinned; the grin wrinkled his nose. “Or the dreamer is getting new skills in understanding them.”

  “It’s sort of the same thing,” Charli said.

  He clucked his tongue. “Nope. Not the same thing at all. Not even close.”

  Whatever Dorian’s theory was, Charli was pretty sure she wasn’t ready to hear it right then. “I’m going to go home,” she said. She saw his questioning glance and laughed. “I need to call my mother and make her tell me what the hell is going on before you do. It’s a matter of family pride.”

  He held up his hands in surrender, then turned back to his netsuke, carefully wiping the dust off each piece and returning it to its proper place.

  Chapter 20

  Body Language

  “So, Charlene, after all the effort you two put into this... investigation of yours, Carter Block’s death will remain a mystery,” Lester Kramer said, as he poured them all drinks. Lester was the only person in the universe who called her Charlene and it always sounded to her ears as if he was talking to someone she barely knew.

  “Maybe not,” she said, glad he was handing her a drink. She needed one.

  “Of course it will,” Lester snapped.

  Elle sipped her drink, then stood. “This is strong stuff on an empty stomach. I’ll get some crackers and cheese. I’ve got some nice Brie.”

  “Perhaps it will remain a mystery,” Charli said. “But I have reason to think that will change soon.”

  He shook his head. “You have reasons? Well, I expect that is a doubtful outcome now. Either whatever’s left of him is rotting in the muck of the shallow lake bottom or he's on a beach in Mexico.”

  “Lester doesn’t like mysteries very much,” Elle said over her shoulder as she rummaged in the kitchen cupboards.

  Charli knew Lester hated mysteries almost as much as he hated myths, legends, and other fairy stories. To him, the existence of a mystery meant things were not well understood; Lester wanted everything clear cut and set out with precision. “And anyway, his death is not really so much of a mystery,” she said. “It’s just that things are still making themselves clear. It will be sorted soon.”

  “What?” Lester said. “That sounds like you're still investigating.”

  “Not really.”

  “I thought you stopped searching for his killer.”

  “From the beginning, what we’ve been doing has been less of an investigation and more of a process,” Charli said. “I didn’t get that at first. But all along we’ve had to nudge things to make them show themselves.”

  “You mean like clues?”

  “Sure. All the facts.”

  He snorted. “I suppose you are including your invisible Lake Woman silliness among those things you are loosely calling facts.”

  Charli realized that Elle hadn’t told him what she’d seen. Now she saw her friend standing behind her husband, looking horrified and shaking her head. “If the Lake Woman produces results, then I’ll have to consider her something more than silliness. Even you will have to admit that people’s beliefs factored into the investigation. Melly Block put that fetish object by the lake with the same sense that Egyptians buried household objects with the dead.”

  “Superstitions are powerful,” he said.

  “These are more than superstitions—they are possibilities,” Charli said.

  He sneered. “And what possibility, what new ‘fact’ are you waiting for that will make a difference?”

  The phone rang and Elle stopped what she was doing to answer it.

  “I think it’s coming now,” she said, pointing at Elle, who was waving a hand animatedly as she talked.

  “That’s fantastic,” Elle was saying. “How did you find him? Really?”

  She hung up the phone and came into the living room with the plate of cheese and crackers, setting in on the coffee table. “That was Ranger Tanner,” she said, grinning at Charli. “They found Carter Block’s body. At least they are pretty sure it is his body.”

  Lester looked at Charli. “You aren’t going to claim your spirit had something to do with this discovery, are you?”

  She folded her hands in her lap. “How about this... before Elle tells us the details of the call, I’ll tell you that an animal led the rangers to the body. Most likely by an animal that is normally rather shy and seldom seen.”

  Lester looked at Elle. She nodded. “The panther was kicking up a fuss. Ranger Tanner said he’d never heard one be so noisy. They wondered if it was wounded. A hurt panther can be dangerous, so they set out to track it down. It led them right back to where they’d found Carter Block’s footprints.”

  “The tracks they decided were his,” Lester said firmly.

  “Okay. Whatever. Anyway, as they were standing there, the cat started making noise again. They followed the sound and it led them into the stand of Cypress, wading up to their knees in muck. Roger said he almost tripped over the body.”

  “Roger?” Lester asked.

  “The ranger. When they realized what it was, he and another ranger began fishing the body out of the swampy mud. While they worked, the panther appeared on a knoll right near them. I
t looked at them, gave a growl and then disappeared.”

  “So they stumbled over the body while chasing this cat,” Lester said. “So what?”

  Charli saw that Lester was ready to agree that the spirit of Elvis had returned from Mars before he’d accept the involvement of some wild spirit. “Seems so,” she said.

  Elle nodded. Charli saw she was relieved to see Charli letting the matter drop. “Ranger Tanner,” she said carefully, “thinks he tripped and got sucked into the muck... he was probably chasing a wounded deer, as his friends said. Maybe the panther frightened him. The police took the body. Although there will be an autopsy, he thinks the cause of death is nothing more sinister than an accidental drowning.”

  “Makes sense,” Lester said. “That sort of thing can happen if a person is foolish enough to walk into that treacherous slime.”

  Charli nodded. “And now, Elle, you’ve got a body. Soon there will be an official explanation that will fit properly on your form.”

  “Hallelujah.” She picked up a cracker and spread some Brie on it. “Melly Block will get her death benefit and can plan her future.”

  Lester frowned. “It seems the girlfriend didn’t do as well.”

  Elle made a face. “I don’t know. She collects on a policy too. Talking to her, I got the impression that even before she knew he was dead she had changed her view on her future with Carter. It’s likely she found someone else to be the new answer to her prayers.”

  “And life goes on,” Lester said.

  And so did the afterlife, as far as Charli could see. Regardless of how Lester or anyone else interpreted it, she knew that the Lake Woman had kept her promise.

  As she sipped her drink and tasted the crackers and brie, she half listened to Lester talking about a new client with some innovative product. There were consequences to accepting that her dreams were so tightly connected to the world that everyone called the real world, but she needed to deal with that. One of them was figuring out why her grandmother was in her dreams and how it was her mother had warned her not to talk to her.

  In short, finding out what was going inside her head required getting to know more about herself, about her family, about the part of her life she’d happily ignored. And who knew where that would lead?

  EPILOGUE

  The longer she lived, the more Charli came to see Karma as an uncertain force in her life. She had agreed to use her gift to help Elle and in the process been forced to confront who she was. Part of that was the dream thing... trying not to understand it thoroughly.

  Another aspect of the investigation was that it had made Charli realize what a recluse she’d become. She'd devoted herself to the study of myths and made a futile attempt to ignore her dreams, to discount them. She'd learned that other people poached deer, had affairs, went to Mexico, and sold fetishes while Charli lived quietly.

  It wasn’t a quiet desperation, but it kept her unengaged from life. That had changed her awareness. What she’d thought of as living had turned out to be little more than drifting.

  By jumping into the search for Carter Block she’d learned those things, and she’d also met the dreamy Roger Tanner. Although they came from different worlds in almost every sense, he was charming, handsome, and interesting. Best of all, he’d shown an interest in her. He’d called with the pretense of bringing her up to speed on the case, but ended it by inviting her out to dinner.

  She’d accepted in a heartbeat.

  He took her to a lovely Asian Indian restaurant in Martin. “A place, a culture, with different legends,” he said.

  “But that has amazing similarities to those of American Indians,” she said. “I should teach you how they are connected. For instance, the Apache have roots back in Mongolia. The throat singers there make our Apaches feel quite at home.”

  “Excellent,” he said. “I think I’d enjoy a better, deeper understanding of how the legends evolve. They come from the land, after all. And speaking of which, now that I have introduced you to our lake...” he said, “I should teach you to fish.”

  For the first time in her life, the idea of sitting in a boat waiting for a fish to bite sounded interesting. Of course, most of that was an excuse to spend time with Roger, but after her experience camping, despite a little ghostly interference, she realized that getting closer to the land might help her understand the role of her dreams more. Either way, she warmed to it. She smiled at him. “We can combine the two.”

  “Yes,” he said. “You can help me understand the legend even better while we wait for the fish to reward our patience. And we could get to understand each other better along the way.”

  She considered that the way he said it skewed the priorities somewhat, but then they were both being cautious. The relationship was new.

  That night, after Roger took her home and kissed her on her doorstep she grew even more certain that her life was opening up, becoming more complete. He aroused strong feelings in her and the prospect of engaging with the world appealed to her.

  After he left, Charli went to bed and fell into a deep sleep. Given the warm and romantic feelings that lingered, she expected that she would dream of Roger. Instead, however, she dreamed of a variety of things that were not what they seemed at first. She saw objects that changed, becoming other things. A series of objects morphed into new things and took their place, although the reason they did this wasn’t clear. The power of force that made it happen, or person, was unknown as well.

  The old woman, her grandmother, had once explained that even in a lucid dream, the lucidity, the clarity, was limited by the fact that it was, in the end, a dream. She’d never had a dream like this and now that truth made sense to her. Visions suffered from ambiguity, vagueness, and other shortfalls, especially dreams that were prophetic. For the future wasn’t set yet, not quite firm. And somehow she knew this dream of changeable things, was, at least in part a prophecy of some kind.

  “Yes,” the old woman said, coming forward. “Now that you are learning how to see what is now, the dreams will begin to talk more of the future.” And then she was gone.

  A new set of unknowns was all she needed. If she would be dealing with visions, Charli wanted them to arrive wrapped in plain brown paper and then spelled out, using simple words, and going straight to the point. Apparently, that wasn’t the way of dreams. Not of Charli’s dreams, at any rate.

  She woke to an uneasy feeling. It was dark when she got up to pace the room, stopping to write down the parts of the dream that remained in her waking mind. When she’d identified them all, somehow certain her notes would be useful in the near future, she went back to bed.

  This time she drifted off with thoughts of Roger Tanner firmly in focus. He was holding her hand, helping her balance as she stepped into a small boat. She could smell the fresh air and feel his strong hand holding hers, his other hand touching her back.

  She glanced around her and noted happily that, for now at least, in this dream, her grandmother was nowhere in sight.

  Get the second book in the Dreamer Trilogy:

  An Unearthly Undertaking

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  Catalog of Books

  Triplet Witch Sisters Mystery Series

  Two’s Company, Three’s a Coven

  Resting Witch Face

  THE WITCH SISTERS OF Stillwater

  Hoodoo and Just Desserts

  A Shade of Murder

  That Ol’ Black Magic

  A Whole Lotta Witch
in Goin On

  The Beast Cometh

  Secrets and Sorcery

  The Sinister Case Series

  The Sinister Secrets of the Snake Mirror

  The Sinister Secrets of the Deadly Summoner

  The Sinister Secrets of the Enchanting Blaze

  THE GRUMPY CHICKEN Irish Pub Series

  A Frosty Mug of Murder

  Treachery on Tap

  A Highball and a Low Blow

  Cursed With a Twist

  A Whiskey Sour Wipeout

  THE CHRONICLES OF AGNES Astor Smith

  The Peculiar Case of Agnes Astor Smith

  The Peculiar Case of the Red Tide

  The Peculiar Case of the Lost Colony

  OLD SCHOOL DINER COZY Mysteries

  Murder at Stake

  Murder Well Done

  A Side Order of Deception

  Murder, Basted and Barbecued

  Murder Ala Mode

  THE CURIOSITY SHOP Cozy Mysteries

  The Curious Case of the Cursed Spectacles

  The Curious Case of the Cursed Dice

  The Curious Case of the Cursed Dagger

  The Curious Case of the Cursed Looking Glass

  The Curious Case of the Cursed Crucible

  THE WE’RE NOT DEAD Yet Club

  Fetch a Pail of Murder

  Wedding Bells and Death Knells

  Murder or Bust

  Pinched, Pilfered and a Pitchfork

  A Hot Spot of Murder

  WITCHY WOMEN OF COVEN Grove Series

  THE WITCHING ON THE Wall

  A Witching Well of Magic

  Witching the Night Away

  Witching There’s Another Way

  Witching Your Life Away