The Ghost and the Witches' Coven

by Bobbi Holmes

  After they discussed the reasons for the witches of Pagan Oils abducting them, and not coming to any conclusion, they decided it was time to take a drink from that stream Walt had mentioned, and then take a nature break.

  The half-moon provided sufficient light on their trip to the water supply, while the campfire helped guide them back. On the way, they each took turns relieving themselves while the other two turned their backs to the person for privacy while adding protection in numbers. Heather put aside any inhibitions she might have had about going in the woods while accompanied by two men, considering her desperate need to pee.

  Once back at the campsite, they agreed to take turns sleeping while one stayed awake to stand guard. Brian kept the hunting knife close by for protection yet didn’t realize Heather felt far more comfort knowing Walt was there, as opposed to a cop with a large knife. Walt volunteered to stand guard first, since he had been the last to regain consciousness after being drugged. Yet the real reason, he felt he was the one best suited to protect them.

  Heather fell asleep first, leaving Walt and Brian awake. Brian added more branches to the flames, using the knife to cut them into small pieces. When he finally settled back by the fire, he told Walt, “If you want to sleep, go ahead. I’m wide awake.”

  “No, that’s fine. I’m not sleepy either.” Walt pulled the tarp tighter around him. “I can’t imagine what Danielle is going through right now.”

  “And my cousin. I assume she called down to the station looking for me. I wonder if they’ve connected our disappearances,” Brian asked.

  “Perhaps.” Walt stared into the fire.

  After a few moments of silence, Brian asked, “How long have you had that gift?”

  “I assume you mean communicating with animals?”

  “Yes.”

  “Probably longer than I realized,” Walt said, thinking of the decades he had spent as a ghost in Marlow House, never seeing a dog or cat, yet perhaps able to communicate with one had he seen any.

  “Could you do it when you were a child?” Brian asked.

  “No.”

  “I thought you couldn’t remember your childhood.”

  Walt chuckled. “Trying to trick me?”

  Brian shrugged. “Not really. I didn’t consider your amnesia when I asked the question. But remembered it when you gave the answer.”

  “It’s complicated, Brian. But believe me when I tell you I know nothing of Clint Marlow’s life other than what I have been told.”

  “Can you communicate with Hunny and Sadie?” Brian asked.

  “Yes. And with Bella, Heather’s cat.”

  “If I hadn’t seen you with that mountain lion, I would never believe it,” Brian said.

  “Remember when you and Danielle were in the garage with Beverly Klein before I walked in?”

  “Yes,” Brian said while silently thinking, Another example of my poor taste in women.

  “I knew what I was walking into. One of the neighbors’ cats told me,” Walt explained.

  “Who else knows you have this gift? Heather, obviously. I assume Danielle.”

  “Yes. Ian and Lily and Chris.”

  “According to Joe, Kelly always feels like she’s an outsider. Like there’s some secret the Beach Drive group shares, that she’s excluded from.”

  “Beach Drive group?” Walt asked with a chuckle.

  Brian shrugged. “It’s what we call you. And now I know what that secret is.”

  You don’t even know the half of it, Walt thought.

  Twenty

  Danielle absently stroked Max’s head and neck as she sat on the parlor sofa, her feet tucked under her and the cat on her lap purring. Bella slept curled up in a corner. They had picked up the cat from Heather’s house earlier that evening. Chris entered the room carrying two glasses of wine. Everyone had gone home, except for Chris. He handed Danielle a glass of wine.

  “It’s the good stuff,” he told her as he took his glass and sat in the chair facing her.

  “We haven’t had this for a while,” Danielle said, taking a sip of the wine. She let out a little sigh as she savored her favorite and ridiculously expensive brand of wine.

  “I had one last bottle at home. Thought we could use it.” Chris took a sip, then reached down and gave Hunny, who had just curled up by his feet, a pat.

  “I appreciate you staying with me tonight,” Danielle said.

  “No problem. I know Lily would have liked to have kept you company, but it’s too much of a hassle with Connor. You’d almost need to stay over there. And I figured you’d want to sleep in your own bed. Plus, I’m more than comfortable in the downstairs bedroom here.”

  “I wish Marie or Eva would show up,” Danielle asked.

  “I’m not sure how much help they would be at this point,” Chris said. “I’m sure if they knew something was wrong or where Walt and Heather were, they’d be here by now.”

  “At least we know they’re alive,” Danielle said.

  Chris leaned back in the chair with his glass of wine. “I agree. Knowing Heather, if someone killed her, she would be here so quick, demanding one of us do something.”

  Danielle smiled sadly. “I just want them to stay alive.”

  “None of it really makes any sense,” Chris said. “To be honest, my first thought was that they had walked into a robbery at Pagan Oils. If you think about it, someone locked that door after Heather entered, and then after Walt and Brian entered, they ended up going out the back door. But according to what the neighbors of the Parker sisters told the chief, all three left together in the van, and they seemed in high spirits, laughing. Not like someone had just held up their store.”

  “Something must have happened after everyone left out the back way. Maybe after the owners of the store drove off,” Danielle suggested.

  “If we could just talk to the Parkers. Those women were obviously the last ones to see them. They could tell us why they all left out the back door and if they saw anything,” Chris said.

  The doorbell rang and Hunny jumped up and barked. She ran from the parlor to the entry hall. Danielle started to push Max off her lap so she could stand up, but Chris told her to stay put, he would answer the door.

  A few minutes later, Chris walked back into the parlor with the chief.

  “Any news?” Danielle asked.

  “Unfortunately, we still have no clue where they are, but we found these.” The chief held up a plastic bag with three cellphones.

  “Their phones?” Danielle asked. She gently shoved Max off her lap and stood up. The chief handed her the baggie for closer inspection. “That’s Walt and Heather’s cellphones, I recognize the cases. Where did you find them?”

  “Along the highway leaving town,” the chief explained. “It looks like someone pulled off on the side of the road, turned the phones off, wiped them down, and then pitched them out the window. I doubt we would have found them had they turned the phones off before they left town. Not unless someone just happened to find them.”

  “This doesn’t sound good,” Danielle said.

  “It’s beginning to sound like a kidnapping. And maybe Heather was the target,” Chris said.

  Danielle looked at Chris. “Because she works for the Glandon Foundation?”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time someone affiliated with my family was targeted, would it?”

  “I have to agree with Chris,” the chief said. “Maybe someone was watching Heather, followed her downtown, and planned to grab her. But when she didn’t come out of the store, maybe they drove around back, saw her walking out, and instead of waiting for another opportunity after seeing Walt and Brian, they took them all. But I don’t see how they would have taken them by force, considering Walt’s gifts.”

  “What makes you so sure the women who own the shop aren’t involved?” Danielle asked. “They were the last ones seen with them, and they left town before we even realized they were missing.”

  “We’ve done a little background check
on the Parker sisters, and while they are unorthodox and apparently seem sincere in their belief that they’re witches, they have no prior arrests—not even a traffic ticket.”

  “Why do they always say that about psycho killers?” Danielle grumbled.

  “Say what?” the chief asked.

  “Whenever a person without priors is arrested for some heinous crime, you always hear the police say something about how they didn’t even have a traffic ticket. Heck, maybe criminals are more careful, and they’re less likely to get traffic tickets because they don’t want to attract attention to themselves,” Danielle said.

  “I’m just saying they don’t fit the profile,” the chief said.

  “I don’t know about that.” Chris spoke up. Both Danielle and the chief looked at him.

  “Why do you say that?” the chief asked.

  “Remember, I saw one of them walking past Heather’s house yesterday morning in the alley, when I was picking her up for work. Why would she be walking down the alleyway? Where do they live?”

  The chief told Chris where their house was, and Chris then said, “That’s the house we drove by, where the other two were standing outside by the van. Both Heather and I noticed how much they looked like the woman we saw walking down the alley. We suspected they were sisters, and we were right. But why was she walking by Heather’s?”

  “Perhaps we need to look in Heather’s house,” the chief suggested. “If she really was the target.”

  Had they come downtown thirty minutes earlier, they would have seen the police cars parked along the street and alleyway near Pagan Oils, forcing them to abort their midnight mission. But there were no police cars, and they had no idea that minutes earlier the area had been thoroughly searched.

  The three sisters dressed in black, from the knit caps covering their hair to their black leggings. The only things they wore not black were their shoes, each one wearing different color jogging shoes. Before parking, they drove down the desolate street. All the businesses were closed. They pulled into the alley behind one row of shops. When they reached the back of Pagan Oils, they parked, pulling off the road into some bushes to conceal the vehicle. When getting out of the car, one sister noted they looked more like cat women than witches, to which the other two sisters quickly hushed her. Now was not the time to chat.

  Together they crept to the back door of Pagan Oils. The oldest of the three used the flashlight app to illuminate the doorknob. Minutes later the door opened and the three slipped into the store, closing the door behind them.

  Twenty minutes earlier Joe was surprised to find Kelly at home when he walked into their house. She sat on the sofa, wrapped in a blanket, while watching television, with no lights on. The moment Joe walked in, she turned on the lamp sitting on the end table and used the remote to turn off the television.

  “Have you found them?” Kelly asked.

  “Nothing yet. I’m surprised you’re home. I thought you were sitting with Evan and Eddy?” Joe asked, dropping his keys on the coffee table and then leaning down to give her a quick kiss.

  After the kiss she said, “His sister came over; she’s spending the night with the boys. I’m surprised you’re home.”

  “I just stopped by to grab something to eat. The chief called, and he wants us to go through Heather’s house. So I’m going back out.”

  After Joe grabbed a quick bite to eat, he got back in his car, intending to meet the chief at Heather’s house. Fortunately, Danielle had a key, so there would be no reason to break in. On the way over, he drove down the main street, not sure what he thought he might see, but it was the last place Brian, Heather or Walt had been seen, and he felt compelled to check it out again.

  Just as he drove by Pagan Oils, he spotted something he hadn’t expected to see—a light coming through the closed blinds of the front window. It wasn’t like someone had turned the light on in the shop; it looked more like a flashlight moving around the store, and whoever was holding the flashlight appeared to be standing close to the front window. Joe immediately called the chief.

  Feeling cocky at pulling off their reconnaissance mission during the dead of night, the three sisters slipped out the rear entrance of Pagan Oils into the darkness. They had just shut the door and relocked it when floodlights blinded them, and a voice called out, “Police, put your hands up!”

  While Joe and his team went through Heather’s house, looking for anything that might give a clue as to their disappearance—perhaps someone had sent her a warning letter that she hadn’t shared with Chris or her other friends—Chief MacDonald sat in the interrogation room with Finola Baird, while the police held her two sisters separately.

  In the chief’s hand he held a baggie containing a necklace, one made with a thin leather strap and a whalebone carving of a hawk. He looked from the baggie to Finola.

  “You broke into a store in the middle of the night, just to steal a necklace that’s priced less than twenty dollars,” the chief said. “And you already have one.” He pointed to the necklace around her neck.

  Finola fingered the white hawk carving and then said, “May I see it, please? It was too dark in the store to get a good look. And if I have to go to jail for stealing something that’s only worth twenty bucks, I’d like to at least see it.”

  The chief frowned at her request but slid the bag across the table to her. He didn’t object when she removed the necklace from the bag and then took a closer look, studying it while turning it from side to side.

  “What is this all about?” the chief asked.

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out,” she said, placing the necklace back in the baggy and handing it to the chief.

  He took the baggy and said, “What do you know about the disappearance of Brian Henderson, Walt Marlow and Heather Donovan?”

  She frowned. “Disappearance? Walt Marlow, isn’t he the one who owns Marlow House; some distant cousin of his founded Frederickport?”

  “Yes.”

  “I met him and his wife the other day. He’s missing?”

  She seemed sincerely clueless, so he asked, “How well do you know the Parker sisters?”

  “You mean the women who own the shop we broke into?”

  “You admit you broke in?” the chief asked.

  “You caught us red-handed, so it would be silly of me to deny it.”

  “How well do you know them?”

  “I don’t know them at all,” she said.

  “Why did you break into their store?” the chief asked.

  She nodded at the baggie on the table and said, “To get that necklace.”

  “Why didn’t you just buy it?” he asked. “In the long run, it would be much cheaper for you.”

  “Because I didn’t want to step foot in that store while they were there,” she said.

  “Why is that?”

  “Because the Parker sisters have been stalking us for some time now. If I’m to figure out why, I need to know more about that necklace.”

  Twenty-One

  The tarp made a crinkling sound as he rolled to one side. I’m too old for camping, Brian silently grumbled, his back killing him after spending the night on the hard ground. Opening his eyes, he sat up while rubbing sleep from them before looking around. The fire continued to burn, but without more fuel it would soon die. Brian glanced over to Heather, who snored lightly, and then to Walt, who sat bundled in his tarp, silently watching him while the sun rose above the treetops to the east. The three had taken turns standing watch—or more accurately, sitting watch—while the other two slept. Brian had taken over for Walt, and he had expected Heather to be on watch when he woke.

  “Good morning,” Brian said in a quiet voice. He nodded to Heather. “How long has she been sleeping?”

  “About an hour,” Walt told him. “I woke up, couldn’t get back to sleep.”

  “Yeah, not the best accommodations,” Brian said, twisting his body in a failed attempt to work out the kinks.

  Walt stood up and sai
d, “Now that you’re awake, I think I’ll walk down to the creek. When I get back, we should wake up Heather and get going.”

  “Agreed,” Brian said, stumbling to his feet. “I’ll go when you get back.”

  After Walt disappeared through the trees, Brian picked up his tarp and gave it a shake to remove the dirt and pine needles. When he felt the tarp was sufficiently clean, he folded it.

  “I never figured you for a neat freak,” Heather said, now sitting up.

  Brian looked over to her. “You’re awake. How did you sleep?”

  Heather jumped to her feet. “I imagine better than you. I heard groaning last night every time you turned.” She stretched and then touched her toes.

  “Stop showing off,” Brian grumbled, tossing his now folded tarp on the ground.

  “Showing off how?” Heather asked, now jogging in place.

  “Reminding me how old I am. You jumping around like that.” Brian reached down and picked up another tarp; he began to fold it.

  “Wow, you really are a neat freak,” Heather said, no longer jogging in place.

  “I just figure it’ll be easier to carry them if they’re folded,” he said. “And we need to get going. No time to waste.”

  “Why would we be carrying them?” Heather asked. “I’m not normally a litter bug, but under the circumstances, isn’t that a bit compulsive?”

  “I’m thinking more along the line if we need them again,” Brian said.

  “Why would we need them again?”

  “If we have to spend another night in the woods,” Brian suggested.

  “No! I refuse to spend another night out here! I need to shower. I have to wash my hair. I’m hungry.”

  “I don’t want to be here in the first place.”

  Heather let out a sigh and picked up her tarp. “Now that I think about it, even if we don’t have to spend the night in the forest, it would be crappy to leave these behind.” She gave the tarp a little shake and then folded it.