An Old Witches Tale

by Agnes Lester Brown

  …Vaporius…

  …Unanimus…

  The leaves around Joe’s body rustled softly as his body slowly started rising. Bay leaves and flakes of ceiling board dropped off his body as he gradually rose from where he’d been lying. His corpse kept rising until it hovered three feet in the air.

  “He looks so peaceful, as if he’s asleep,” Dinah whispered.

  “Rest in peace, dear Joe,” Fae said, her voice thin. “Thanks for being a wonderful friend and confidante. We’ll miss you.” She thought back on his dry sense of humor and the mischievous look in his eyes. But a nagging worry was forming at the back of her mind. Who was going to open the front door for them in the future, when they made their deliveries in the cover of dark?

  Putting her thoughts aside, Fae handed out instructions. “Alright, let’s do this. I’ll make sure the basement door’s open, and Dinah, you make sure Joe gets to Room Fifty-Four.” She looked at Blaise, her eyes closed and face lined with concentration. “You’ll be alright getting him up the stairs, Blaise?”

  Blaise nodded, and at the same time, Joe started drifting slowly towards the staircase, his arms hanging limply by his sides. Fae and Dinah led the way to open the doors upstairs.

  Ten minutes later, the three were gathered back in the cellar. They looked relieved as they filled small potion-mixing bowls with whiskey from a flask Fae had found in a cupboard behind a clutter of old potion bottles.

  “Thank goodness for this,” Fae said and poured herself a refill. “I need something to calm my nerves. Now we have to hope no one moves into Room Fifty-Four before we can relocate the body.”

  “Don’t worry, I tucked him nicely into bed,” Dinah said, proud of her handiwork. “Anyone who came into the room will think it’s a person sleeping in the bed and leave him alone.”

  “You should have hidden him under the bed, silly,” Fae scolded her. “We don’t want the room to look messed up.”

  Blaise patted her cardigan, and a puff of dust appeared. “Let’s go get cleaned before we do anything else,” she said. “I think cleaning up here can wait, now that Joe’s safely stowed away for the moment. She looked at her watch. Teatime’s over in a few minutes anyway. We got Joe out of here just in time.”

  Chapter Three

  With a start, Fae sat up straight on her bed, transfixed.

  A blood-curdling scream echoed down the passage outside Room Fifty-Five. It was so deafening, Fae was sure it reverberated throughout the whole Shady Pastures building. In all the time she’d been living at the old age home, she’d never heard such an ear-piercing yell. There was never any reason for anyone to shout, or raise their voices. Everything about Shady Pastures was eternally peaceful and tranquil. Her first reaction was that a film crew must be shooting a horror movie somewhere in the building, and that the sound was fake.

  Blaise popped her head around the bathroom door, wrapped in a towel with her hair dripping water on the floor. Dinah, who’d been snoozing, sat up, wide-eyed and clutching her pillow.

  “Who’s kicking up such a racket?” Fae was the first to find her voice when the scream finally died down.

  “Sounds like Mrs. Yankelich,” Blaise said. “Did you hear her sing that Verdi opera aria at the last talent competition? I’m sure that’s her hitting the high notes.”

  “Why would she be singing at this time of the morning?” Dinah asked, frowning. “She lives further along the passage, in Room Forty-Five. Heaven forbid she got lost and wandered into Room Fifty-Four. That’s unlikely. What would she be doing in…?” Her voice trailed off. “Unless I got confused and—”

  Fae sank her head into her hands. “No, no. Please don’t tell me you got the rooms mixed up, Dinah. Not that. Please.”

  “Dinah, did you put Joe in Room Forty-Five instead of Fifty-Four? What exactly did you do with him?” Blaise, her hands two fists in her sides, strode up to where Dinah shrank back into a corner of her bed.

  “I might have gotten the numbers wrong,” Dinah replied slowly. Then she got weepy. “I’m so sorry, girls, I think I messed up. I skipped my medication last night, plus, all this drama—”

  “I completely understand how that could have happened,” Fae hurriedly said to stop Dinah from descending into a meltdown. “Mrs. Yankelich’s husband died a few weeks ago, you’ll recall, and since then his bed’s been vacant. You must’ve put Joe in his bed and not noticed in your hurry that it was her room.” She knew the situation wasn’t funny at all but nevertheless had to suppress a giggle. “Imagine returning to your room and discovering someone sleeping in your late husband’s bed.”

  Blaise wasn’t as good as Fae at covering up her urge to laugh out loud. It was contagious, because the next moment, all three were rolling with nervous laughter, brought about by anxiety more than the comedy of the situation.

  An urgent knock on the door had them sitting up and quieting down.

  “Hold your horses,” Fae called out to the visitor as they hurried to make themselves presentable.

  Fae smiled as she opened the door. “Morning, Mr. Drake. Pleasant morning, isn’t it?” She did a double take when she took a second look at his face. His freckled complexion was a ghostly white below his orange hair, and his expression was grim.

  “Hello, Mrs. Whitewood.” Mr. Drake’s voice, usually ready to dish out a snarky remark or biting sarcasm, was strained. “When last did any of you see Mr. Humberton? Did you speak with him this morning?”

  Fae shook her head and craned her neck to look past him at Mrs. Yankelich’s room, at the far end of the passage. She saw the resident doctor, Dr. Farmer, come rushing around the corner and run straight into Room 45. He was closely followed by two nurses carrying medical equipment. In the distance, she heard Mrs. Yankelich babbling incoherently.

  Fae kept a deadpan face. “What’s going on there? Anything the matter with Mrs. Yankelich? She hasn’t been herself since her husband passed on.”

  Claptrap straightened his shoulders and collected himself. “Never mind,” he snapped. “Stay in your room until further notice. We have a situation to deal with. Go inside now.” He looked over his shoulder, at the exact moment the nurses and Dr. Farmer wheeled a bed out the door of Room 45. The top of the bed was covered with a white linen sheet, covering the contours of a person’s body underneath it.

  “I said, in you go.” Claptrap shooed Fae back and forced the door shut in her face.

  Fae sighed and sat down on the bed. “I guess that’s it, then. Dinah, I think you’ve actually done us a huge favor—we don’t have to worry about where we’re going to bury Joe anymore.”

  “I can’t help feeling a little disappointed,” Dinah said, wiping away a tear from the corner of her eye. “I was looking forward to giving our beloved Joe a personal send-off, as a last favor from us.”

  “I can’t recall him ever talking about family. Did he have any?” Blaise asked. “Surely someone should notify his next-of-kin.”

  Fae thought back on her past conversations with Joe. Although he was jovial and friendly, he was also private and reserved when it came to personal matters. “No one he ever spoke of comes to mind. His wife left him shortly after his son was born, which was more than twenty years ago. And he’s had no one in his life since dumping what’s her name. That girl with the purple hair. Who’s that girl again?”

  “You mean Petula,” Dinah said. “I don’t think she returned after that tantrum she threw in the reception waiting area when they split up.” She sighed. “It’s sad when such a good person dies all alone.”

  Everyone in the dining room was speaking in hushed tones, so engrossed in their conversations that hardly anyone noticed when Fae, Dinah and Blaise entered for lunch. Claptrap might have tried his level best to keep Joe’s sudden death and subsequent discovery a secret, but it was impossible to keep anything like this under wraps in a retirement home. Such news traveled like lightning, and there was little doubt everyone already knew about his demise.

  A pretty twenty-something gir
l with a tight-fitting uniform and long pink nails headed for their table soon after they’d seated themselves at their usual spot near the kitchen door. Myrna was their favorite member of the kitchen staff—a quick-witted born-and-bred Kentucky gal whose love life Blaise had saved on more than one occasion by giving her a potion to dish out to reluctant lovers, under the guise of it being an energy drink. The part they liked the most about Myrna, though, was that she was a first-class gossip and always keen to share the latest rumors and hearsay with them.

  “What am I getting you ladies to drink?” Myrna gave them all a mournful look. “I’m sure I can organize a little shot of bourbon in your coffees, in remembrance of poor Joe?”

  “Why?” Fae feigned shock. “What happened to Joe?”

  Myrna leaned forward and put her arms around Dinah and Fae’s shoulders. “Mrs. Yankelich found him dead in her room this morning after teatime. In her late husband’s bed, no less. Can you imagine? She must’ve had a near heart attack, poor thing.”

  Fae solemnly shook her head in sympathy, glancing at the others at the same time. “How did he die? I mean, last we saw him, he was fit as a fiddle and full of jokes.”

  “You didn’t hear it from me, but rumor has it he’d been caught with his hand in the till and was about to be fired,” Myrna said. “Someone in the kitchen overheard Mr. Drake yelling at him about money that’d disappeared. So, maybe he committed suicide because he knew he was going to jail. Then again, maybe him and Mrs. Yankelich were up to some hanky-panky no one knew about.” She winked at the three shocked faces and shrugged. “Just sayin’, you know. There are so many stories floating around, you don’t know what to believe. One of the girls in the kitchen claims she saw—” Myrna straightened up in midsentence when she saw Mr. Drake entering the dining room. “Here comes Claptrap,” she said out of the corner of her mouth. “I better scoot. See you ladies later.”

  Blaise shook her head. “All that loose talk sounds very far-fetched to me. My bet is he somehow slipped and fell down the chute. It was an accident. At least, I hope so. Last thing we need is a major murder investigation with nosy CSI teams and forensic experts snooping around, and coming across what we’re up to in the basement.”

  “Nah, I don’t buy the suicide theory either,” Fae said and sat back, folding her napkin. “Joe’s always been a cheerful chap. He always saw the positive side of things when the rest of us oldies were only seeing doom and gloom.”

  The other two nodded. “Maybe Joe had information on a scandal,” Blaise, the conspiracy theorist in the group, said. “I bet he was about to go to the newspapers and expose a huge drug-smuggling scheme that’s been going on here.”

  Fae looked around the dining room. All the tables were taken up by seniors slowly picking away at their meals, or being fed by helpers, one spoonful at a time. “Not much scandal going on here, I’m afraid,” she commented drily.

  “I wonder if Joe did indeed meet with Claptrap this morning, as he commanded Joe last night. Maybe Joe was about to get fired, like Myrna said. Claptrap did sound very ominous, and Joe might have already known what it was going to be about.”

  At that moment, Mr. Drake walked past them to the front of the hall. He got up on a small stage in the corner of the room, looking grim.

  “I have a feeling he’s not up on that stage to sing for us,” Fae whispered as the room fell silent.

  Mr. Drake cleared his throat. “Dear residents, since we have you all gathered here for lunch, I thought it would be a good opportunity to break to you the sad news we received this morning.”

  Several residents nodded gravely, and one or two wiped tears from their eyes. “Like half the room doesn’t know already,” Fae whispered. Blaise kicked her under the table and gave her a stern look.

  “Our beloved janitor and trustworthy security guard, Joe Humberton, was found dead this morning.” Gasps of shock could be heard as Mr. Drake continued. “The cause of his death has not been confirmed, but initial indications are he had a heart attack.

  “We know that many of you were friends with Joe, and that he held a special place in your hearts. In his honor, we will be holding a memorial service for him tomorrow afternoon, in the chapel.”

  Most in the audience were in tears when Mr. Drake left the stage.

  “Do you think he’ll get the police in to investigate?” Dinah asked, looking worried.

  “Not right away,” Fae said. “Staff here deals with death on a daily basis, and they would’ve noticed if something obvious was amiss. For now it’ll be treated as a natural death. Besides, Claptrap will do his best to keep the cops away, even if it’s only to avoid bad publicity that could ruin Shady Pastures’ good image. Not having someone snooping around is great for us, but then we may never get to the bottom of what really happened to him.”

  “It’s up to us to find that out,” Blaise said. “We owe him that.”

  “Darn, another order for a batch of moondust sachets just came in,” Blaise said, looking at her cell phone as the three walked back to their room after lunch. “And we have those brooms to deliver tonight. They’re for Levinia Sagelove, and we all know how cranky she gets if something goes wrong with her order.”

  “You better call her and delay the order, because with Joe gone, we have no way of getting out the front door to make the delivery,” Fae said.

  Blaise fretted but dialed a number on her phone. “She’s gonna go through the roof,” she muttered just as Levinia answered.

  Blaise spoke into the phone in her most soothing voice.

  “Hello, is that Levinia Sagelove? Hello, dear, it’s Blaise here from the Potion Portal. Yes, indeed. I’m calling about your delivery due for tonight. Well, you see, we have a slight problem with the delivery. Would it be okay to delay it for a week? I know it’s an inconvenience, but—”

  Fae saw from the way Blaise’s mouth turned down she was getting shouted at.

  “Oh, I see,” Blaise said after listening for a full minute to Levinia’s tirade. “You have a Maypole celebration coming up and need the broom for—” Blaise’s mouth fell open. “You’re cancelling the order? And we must remove you from our mailing list? But… hello? Hello?”

  Blaise ended the call and sighed. “She’s furious and hung up on me. Says she’s done doing business with us. Girls, we’re going to pull off a miracle, or we’ll have a crisis on our hands, and then it’ll be bye-bye Potion Portal.”

  “I’ve seen a front door key hanging on the key rack in Claptrap’s office. We’ll have to break in and get it. I can’t think of any other solution,” Fae said as she unlocked their bedroom door and they all went inside.

  Dinah wasn’t keen on the idea. She shivered and folded her arms as everyone sat down to discuss Fae’s suggestion. “I don’t have the stomach for breaking into any rooms or snooping around like cat burglars, especially after what happened downstairs. Can’t we think of another plan?”

  Fae persisted. “We’ll be killing two birds with one stone if we can get into Claptrap’s office. First, we’ll have a key that’ll solve the delivery problem, and we might also find some clues about what led to Joe’s death. For all we know, they had a fight in Claptrap’s office, and he killed Joe. It’s no secret Claptrap bullied him.”

  “Dinah has a point, though,” Blaise said. “Everyone’s on edge at the moment. If we’re caught breaking in, we’ll be toast. We can’t risk that.”

  “Well, we might us well turn Claptrap into a frog with one of Blaise’s spells and be done with it,” Fae said, frustrated with her timid friends. “Or do any of you have a better idea?”

  Blaise’s face lit up. “Wait, you may be on to something there. We can’t willy-nilly turn the man into a frog, no. Think of Brenda, his poor wife, left clueless as to why her husband disappeared without a trace, or why a bothersome frog is croaking all night at her front door. On the other hand, maybe we can think of something that’ll put him out of action long enough to grab the key. No one will even know, and we won’t have to
resort to anything illegal.”

  Fae nodded slowly. “Okay, so if we’re not turning him into a frog, what else is there? Let’s go down to the basement and see what we have in the line of potion stock that might do the trick.”

  Downstairs, it took the witches a good three hours to clear away the dust and rubble and restore their operation to what it had been before the incident.

  “Well, at least this whole thing forced me to tidy up the storeroom,” Blaise said as she poured everyone a cup of coffee. “I found a whole crate filled with potions I’ve had since my days at the Blainsworthy School of Magic.” She took out a small purple glass bottle and put it on the table.

  “What is this?” Dinah said, peering at the faded label on the bottle. “It says here, ‘Freeze-me.’” She held the bottle an inch from her eye. “Oh dear. It expired in 1988. I don’t think it’ll work. Blaise, do you have the recipe so you can mix another one?”

  Blaise looked flustered. “I guess it must be somewhere, but I have no idea which book I wrote it down in.” Everyone looked at the bookshelf behind them, packed with more than a dozen rows of potion recipe books.

  Fae frowned at Blaise. “For heaven’s sake, Blaise, you really ought to find some way of cataloging the recipes you have in those one-hundred-and-something cookbooks.” She interrupted Blaise as she was about to defend herself. “And, yes, we all know you’re going to do that as soon as you retire and have the time.”

  “Let’s try it and see,” Dinah said, holding the bottle up to the light and giving it a gentle shake. “We’ll give him an extra-strong dose and hope it works. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

  “Either way, a proper dose only works for three minutes, so we’ll have to be quick,” Blaise said. “We’ll take him a cup of tea with a few drops of Freeze-me, grab the key, look around, and be out of there quickly without him noticing something is amiss.”

  “Right. Let’s do this, then,” Fae said, rubbing her hands. “We’ll be at his office first thing tomorrow morning with tea and a little something in it. The sooner we get this out of the way, the better. Then we can focus on what happened to Joe.”