Ghostly Garlic

by Ami Diane

  “It’s my latest recipe. I’ve been working on it for the better part of a year. Thought it would help us.”

  It certainly would. Libby marveled at the sight for another minute before ducking into the barn. The odor of hay and manure lingered in the air, despite the building clearly having been neglected for years. Dust motes rode on shafts of evening light leaking between gaps in the walls and roof.

  Around the interior, the group sat on rotting hay bales and farm equipment. Libby’s first order of business was to locate the snack bar which she did immediately. Plates of brownies and lemon bars sat beside chips, all on top of an ancient tractor with flat tires. Gladys and Betty had just moved up several brackets on Libby’s list of favorite people.

  “Now we’re talking.” After loading up a paper plate, she picked the seat beside Marge.

  After handing over the container of cookies, she explained the present. When ingested, the potion turned skin the color of green—or so the label on the bottle had said.

  “It’s a kind of thanks for last night, for not letting me become the first female astronaut to leave earth’s atmosphere without a spacesuit.”

  She had been tempted not to tell the apothecary of the cookies’ melanin changing properties, letting the woman discover them for herself. However, with Bruce’s size and temperament, seeing a used car salesman who looked like the Incredible Hulk was too good of an opportunity to pass up. Really, they would be helping him as he was sure to draw a crowd. Libby and Marge would need to remember to take pictures.

  Marge, whose smile had been widening with each sentence, grinned from ear to ear when Libby finished. “This is perfect. Thanks, Red. I can ship these to him, pretend they’re from his sister.”

  Shelly stepped into the middle of the circle, adjusted a scarlet scarf, then proceeded to clap her hands for their attention.

  “You’re standing in poop.” Gladys pointed down at the bookkeeper’s white sneakers.

  Shelly’s mouth turned down, and Libby could swear she heard the demure woman curse. At least the manure was just a dry patty, brittle enough to turn to dust when Shelly stepped away.

  Across from Libby, Stacy wrinkled her nose then karate chopped a cobweb that had the audacity to be near her head. “Someone want to tell me why we’re meeting in a poop factory?” Unlike the others, she refused to sit, opting to stand, her arms crossed, with a dour expression permanently etched on her face.

  “It’s a barn,” Libby said, speaking slowly. “Say it with me, B-A-R-N. Barn.”

  Stacy glared daggers at her while, beside her, Marge coughed.

  “Alright, ladies. That’s enough,” Shelly cut in. “We’re meeting here because, for whatever reason, the AWC has a knack of knowing where we’re meeting.”

  Someone, Caroline perhaps, whispered the word “spy.” This was met with furtive glances around the circle.

  Libby and Marge exchanged a meaningful look. Earlier over the phone, they had agreed to remain mum about the sheriff being in the AWC for the time being. On the off chance there was a spy amongst them, it gave them the upper hand.

  This way, they could feed misinformation to the coalition. Also, it protected Millie, who worked at the sheriff’s office—unless she was the spy, of course. But Marge had been adamant on that point, saying that the woman was as dependable as a sunrise.

  “We have no reason to believe one of us is a spy,” Shelly was saying.

  “Maybe they have us bugged,” Allison said. She sat the furthest from Marge, on a bale of brown straw near the tractor.

  Libby leaned close to Marge. “She doesn’t mean actual bugs. She means—”

  “I know what she means,” Marge said. “I’m not senile.”

  Libby’s voice rose a full octave. “Well… I wouldn’t go that far.”

  Shelly cleared her throat to bring some semblance of order to the meeting. “Does anyone know where the police are with Bea’s murder?”

  Millie piped up. “They’re keeping a tight lid on the investigation.”

  Turning, Shelly fixed Libby and Marge with a stare.

  Libby shoved a lemon square into her mouth then turned expectantly to Marge.

  “Right, well,” Marge began before brushing crumbs off her electric green shirt, “I know they were looking into Brent Stevens, but that’s a bust.”

  “What about the potion?” Allison asked.

  “What potion?”

  She fidgeted at Marge addressing her directly. “The invisibility potion. Did you ever locate it?”

  “It got used up, remember?”

  “But you were able to create a reverse potion, right?”

  “Yeah, I left it at Libby’s.”

  “Wait, what?” Libby’s head whipped around. “When?”

  “During one of our lessons. I accidentally left it on your counter.”

  Libby squinted at the dilapidated ceiling, drudging up the memory. “Oh, yeah.” She must have scooped it up with her equipment and jars. It must still be in the box on her laboratory floor, yet to be unpacked.

  “Why are you asking about the anti-potion?” Marge asked Allison, her expression darkening.

  Everyone turned to the ice cream slinger whose cheeks colored at the attention. “You can infer the invisibility potion from the reverse potion, can’t you?”

  “Why would I want to?”

  Libby cleared her throat softly and said the apothecary’s name under her breath, a warning to her friend to keep it civil.

  “B-because,” Allison stuttered, searching the faces of the others. “It could be useful. For one, we wouldn’t have to search out a different place for every meeting.”

  “It’s on the restricted list,” Shelly reminded her.

  “I think she knew that,” Stacy said, uncharacteristically coming to Allison’s rescue. “I think her point was it shouldn’t be. And I, for one, am in agreement.”

  “Big surprise there,” Libby muttered. The real estate agent, either through some auditory enhancing elixir or some other means, heard her.

  Stacy’s hands turned to fists. “You have something you want to say?”

  Libby set her plate down. “Sure, why not? You’ve made it no secret that you want your hands on that potion or any of our potion books, for that matter.”

  “So would half the others in this room. What’s your point?”

  “My point is,” Libby spat, leaning forward, “there was no forced entry at Bea’s, so she knew her attacker. Her potion book is missing which meant her killer knew its significance. Lastly, we know someone is feeding our meeting locations to the AWC.

  “I’ve got one question for you, Stacy.” She said her name like a curse. “Where were you last Wednesday between the carwash and our meeting?”

  If it were possible for a vein to break open from rage, she was sure the one throbbing across Stacy’s forehead would have. The woman’s mouth opened and closed like a fish sucking air.

  “How dare you?!” she screamed.

  Marge whispered out of the side of her mouth, “Didn’t Marty say they were following us to our meetings?”

  “Yep.” Libby watched the aftermath unfold as she’d hoped it would.

  Stacy would never tell Libby where she was or what she was doing, but with the rest of the group suspicious and prodding, she might feel forced to reveal the answer.

  “I don’t have to tell you,” Stacy seethed after Shelly finished saying that it was a reasonable question. “I don’t have to answer to any of you.” She rounded on Libby, pointing a shaking finger. “And you, you can go to hell.”

  She stormed across the barn—or at least attempted to but her pencil skirt constricted her strides.

  “Careful you don’t step in poop—” Libby’s warning was cut off by the crash of a pitchfork hitting the only patch of bare floor.

  It had been leaning against the wall, several feet from the nearest person, and fallen after Stacy passed yards from it.

  “Did she just move that with her mind?�
� Libby gaped at the pitchfork. “Is she telekinetic?” She looked at Marge. “Why didn’t you tell me we had powers?”

  Marge frowned. “She didn’t do that.”

  In the corner, a stack of hay exploded. Straw flew out, and flames spread as if a match had been tossed on gasoline.

  Pandemonium broke out.

  Libby jumped to her feet. “Everybody out!”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  LIBBY CHOKED ON the smoke rapidly filling the barn.“Why is it always fire?”

  When she was younger, in elementary school, a firefighter had given a chat with the students about what to do if they were ever caught in a blaze. His instructions had not been to curl up into the fetal position as she had just done.

  Remembering this, she now crawled across stale manure and moldy straw. Thanks to Fireman Dave—or was it Henry? Thanks to Fireman Dave-Henry, she knew there was less smoke near the ground.

  More explosions followed, making the place feel like a war zone or a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. The explosions sent sparks of varying colors flying, and despite thinking she was going to die, she found it all rather pretty.

  A particularly loud explosion erupted three yards away. She rolled away as a fountain of fuchsia flames shot up.

  Fireworks. The explosions and sparks were fireworks. Someone was detonating them inside the barn.

  “Marge?” Libby shouted, half to locate her friend in the chaos and half in accusation.

  “It wasn’t me,” Marge called out from near the front door.

  The old coot, who normally moved at the pace of a snail, had somehow beaten Libby to the only exit. It might have had something to do with the precious seconds Libby had wasted curled into a ball, praying for the sweet surrender of death.

  Mercifully, someone kicked open the door, giving the smoke a proper chimney by which to escape. Libby groped across the grime, doing her best to breathe through her shirt.

  A figure wearing a red scarf over her mouth shuffled on hands and knees nearby.

  “Shelly?” Libby croaked. “Are you okay?”

  “I think so.”

  They were halfway across the barn. Libby cursed her need to be near the snacks which had been placed at the opposite the door.

  The old hay fed the fire as it spread over the floor. Flames consumed the hay bales in a whoosh.

  Several ground fireworks went off between them and their exit. They threw a wall of purple flames and sparks out in both directions.

  She and Shelly were trapped.

  “Marge! Where’s your stupid water potion?!” The older potionist was on the other side, near freedom. Her silhouette stood out amongst the blue smoke in the doorway.

  “I’ll get it!” she yelled before disappearing.

  If the flaming bag of excrement on Gladys’s porch was any indication of how the group handled a crisis, Libby didn’t hold out much hope she’d escape unscathed. The others were probably huddled outside right now, arguing over how to put out the inferno.

  Libby crawled to a portion of the wall that hadn’t yet been swallowed by flames, and Shelly followed. They pressed their mouths to the wide gaps between the slats, sucking in the fresh air.

  “Are we the only ones trapped?” Libby asked between gulps of air.

  Shelly’s body shook with a racking cough. “I think so.”

  Just to be certain, Libby called out. The only response was the screeching of another firework.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” she rasped, needing something to focus on besides the burning in her chest. “Where did the fireworks come from?”

  “Maybe the previous owner stored them here and forgot.”

  In an irresponsible way, it made sense. She hadn’t seen anyone lighting them, and they were going off all over the place.

  When enough precious seconds lapsed to convince her they weren’t going to be rescued, she took matters into her own hands—or feet as it turned out. She focused on the gray boards before her and, leaning back, donkey-kicked one.

  The first strike sent pain shooting up her leg. The second created a crack in the wood.

  Shelly crawled closer and joined in. “She was showing a house.”

  “What?”

  “Stacy. She was showing a house after the carwash. I was waiting to see if she’d tell everyone because there’s no reason to keep it a secret.”

  “How do you know?” Libby used her heel for another strike. The board popped out, still attached at the top.

  Smoke barreled out through the opening like a freight train as they started on another board. By now, her lungs felt like they had their own fireworks show popping off inside.

  “Because it was my neighbor’s house across the street.”

  “And she was there the whole time?”

  “Yeah, up until I left for our meeting.”

  “What time was that?”

  Shelly wheezed. Her eyes watered, creating sooty streaks down her cheeks. “About 5:45.”

  Libby’s own eyes stung as if she had been pepper-sprayed. That wasn’t enough time to go to Beatrice’s, kill her, then show up for the meeting. Unless Stacy had figured out a way to sneak off while showing a house and sneak back, she wasn’t the killer.

  She released her frustration on the next board.

  At the moment, the explosions had all but ceased. However, the fire hadn’t. It roared, encroaching closer at a frightening speed.

  They were working on their third board when the wall of fire near the front of the barn turned to steam. Loud hissing replaced the roar of the flames.

  A moment later, Marge emerged through the white wall billowing out and held out a hand.

  “Come with me if you want to live.”

  Libby had never been more happy to see the old bag. Grabbing her hand, she let Marge pull her to her feet. “Great movie reference, by the way.”

  “What movie reference?”

  Together, they pulled Shelly up. The bookstore owner was so petite that the momentum nearly sent her sprawling forward.

  Once they were outside and a safe distance away, Libby collapsed onto the dry grass. Marge stuffed the water potion into her purse and apologized for taking so long to locate it.

  Libby waved aside the comment. “At least you found it. And that’s all that matters.”

  The others, hacking, gathered around Libby and Shelly, who had suffered the worst of the smoke inhalation. Caroline had her cell phone pressed to her ear.

  “The fire department’s on its way.” She pointed to the empty field beside the burning building and said to Shelly, “You might want to… you know.”

  Nodding, the woman groped through her pockets until she located a vial. She passed it off to Allison who ran over to the row of seedlings. Within a minute, their cars had been returned to their dirt-covered glory.

  Libby’s voice felt raw when she spoke. “What do we say when they get here?”

  EMTs cleared both Libby and Shelly while in the background emergency crews worked to put out the blaze that had now consumed the barn. The noise from the firetruck made conversation next to impossible, but that hadn’t stopped Deputy Jackson from questioning them, even if it meant repeating himself multiple times to be heard.

  Only Libby, Marge, and Shelly had stayed behind, sending the other potionists away before emergency services arrived. It had taken Marge a concerningly short amount of time to come up with a cover story, and they felt the fewer people involved having to lie to the sheriff’s department, the easier it would be to keep the story straight.

  “So, you lot thought it would be a good idea to have your book club meeting in a barn?” Jackson shouted over the engine noises nearby.

  Libby and the others nodded.

  “We’re reading The Catcher in the Rye,” Libby supplied. “It seemed sort of fitting.” She coughed before motioning to the sweeping fields around them.

  “Uh-huh. And you—” he looked down at his notes “—lit a few candles for ambiance?”

 
“Yep.”

  “And all of this before the others arrived?”

  “We started setting up early,” Shelly explained again. “I’m such a klutz, I accidentally knocked over a candle. Well, the place went up like a match. After we called the fire department, I called the others to tell them not to bother coming.”

  There was about a fifteen-minute gap in their story, but Libby figured they could fudge that.

  “Right.” Jackson blinked a few times then flipped his notebook closed in a way that said he didn’t have time for this.

  Libby’s main concern was whether or not a fire marshal would poke through the ruins. Before, she’d wanted the flames to stop, but now, she hoped they destroyed all evidence of the fireworks.

  Although they were innocent and hadn’t started the blaze, she didn’t think they could come up with a plausible explanation for what happened. Heck, she couldn’t even come up with one to tell herself.

  Once Jackson told them they could leave, Libby waved goodbye to the other two ladies and hopped into her car, eager to get home and out of her stinky clothes. She didn’t think they could be salvaged since the fibers were now permanently woven with the stench of smoke.

  The sun was setting by the time she arrived home. She changed and fed both Orchid and Jasper before fumbling into the kitchen, both exhausted and hungry. That’s when remembered she had used up her last microwavable meal the night prior and had eaten her last bowl of cereal earlier that morning.

  Sighing, she grabbed her keys and announced to no one in particular that she’d be back.

  Evening was turning to night, and darkness descended on the streets. Lights winked on along porches and sidewalks. As she drove to the grocery store, she replayed the past two hours, beginning with Stacy’s comments and the way she had stormed out.

  Something niggled at the back of Libby’s mind, something she was overlooking. As she pulled into a parking spot, it hit her. The pitchfork had fallen, seemingly of its own accord. That fact had been overshadowed during the ensuing fire, but now it surfaced, fresh.