The Innocent Dead: A Witch Cozy Mystery (The Maid, Mother, and Crone Paranormal Mystery Series Book 1)

by Jill Nojack

  Gillian smiled at Nat, one eyebrow raised. “Who would have thought you’d be so sensitive to the situation? But yes, I agree for once. If you want to, you can even do it without letting on to her sister.”

  “I didn’t say it was the best option not to tell her,” Natalie said, jumped in again. “Personally, I think you should. It’s what I would do. After her training, the coven would be happy to have her if she’d have us. Without a few youngsters, it will soon die out.”

  “I really have to think about it,” Cassie said. “Not about hiring her—that would give the two of you someone else to boss around instead of constantly trying to one-up each other, so that’s a win already. But it doesn’t feel right to me not to tell Daria and Twink what’s really going on.” Cassie tugged her lip, her eyes tightening at the corners. “Yep, it’s going to take a little thought.”

  Gillian lay a hand on her shoulder. “I wouldn’t wait too long, sweetie. Just for the safety of the girl and everyone around her.”

  Cassie nodded. “Decision by morning it is. I’ll talk to Tom tonight. He usually has a pretty good perspective on stuff and he won’t have any ulterior motives about bringing new blood into the choir.” She looked pointedly at Nat.

  Natalie’s lips vibrated as she exhaled, her head moving backward in feigned surprise. “The things you suspect me of.”

  “And speaking of people making choices and keeping secrets,” Cassie started, then hesitated before continuing, “I really didn’t appreciate that one of you spilled the beans about my pregnancy to the rest of the town.”

  The two older witches looked at each other with confused expressions, then back at Cassie.

  “I didn’t,” said Gillian. “I wouldn’t. It was only yours to tell, sweetheart.”

  “What she said,” Natalie agreed. “I’ve been silent as a corpse on the subject.”

  “Oh, then . . .” Cassie’s hand covered her mouth and her eyes went to the ceiling as she tried to figure it out. “Well, I didn’t tell anybody, and Tom didn’t have time to tell anyone, so how did people find out the day after Tom did?”

  Natalie raised a finger as if to punctuate her observation. “Another mystery to add to the pile, it seems.”

  14

  The next morning, Cassie knocked lightly on the back door of the shop after Twink had left for school. She and Tom had talked about the Twink situation, and it seemed like the best way to handle it would be to introduce the topic to Daria first.

  Cassie wasn’t looking forward to the conversation. “By the way, D, that whole witch vibe Giles has going on? All true. Oh, and my homegirl witches need to start training Twink in magic so she doesn’t burn the house down. You don’t have a problem with that, do you?”

  She’d spent most of the time she should have been sleeping running over the conversation in her head a hundred different ways, and she hadn’t thought of a single way to say it that wouldn’t sound nutty.

  She closed her eyes. “Omigoddess. Omigoddess. Omigoddess.”

  She opened them when she heard the door swing away in front of her.

  “Cass!” Daria folded her in a big hug. “I love this place. I love it. You’re amazing for making it possible for us. I think Twink is even starting to relax a little.” She grabbed Cassie’s hand. “Come in!”

  She pulled Cassie along to the big couch in the parlor. “Is it too early for wine?” She glanced at the clock and pouted. “It is, isn’t it? You want coffee?”

  Cassie caught her arm as she headed to the sink. “Just wait . . . I . . . there’s something I need to tell you. Something about Twink.”

  A loud, rapid knock sounded at the back door followed by a deep female voice shouting, “Daria, you open up right this minute. And if you even think about sassin’ me, girl . . .”

  They couldn’t see her through the curtains that covered the back door window, but those tones of retribution could only belong to one woman. The friends looked at each other, their eyes wide with fear. “Mama,” Daria squeaked.

  They stood frozen for a minute.

  Daria unfroze first and broke the silence as the pounding continued. Her voice sounded small above the onslaught. “I have to answer that, don’t I?”

  Cassie shook her head yes, realizing at the same time that she felt a little unsteady on her feet.

  This could end up being way worse than she’d imagined.

  ***

  “Did you think I wouldn’t find where you were staying?” Ella Barton’s voice rung out as soon as Daria opened the door.

  She wore a patterned cotton dress covered in big, bright flowers and carried a black handbag over her arm. A petite black hat sat atop her salt and pepper hair, and its netting drifted down over her forehead. She should have looked like someone’s granny on the way to church, but Mama Barton was a physically imposing woman. Cassie always thought she looked more like someone’s burly linebacker brother in drag.

  When Mama turned to her, Cassie covered her stomach reflexively. Mama wouldn’t harm a pregnant woman, would she? Big bark, not that much bite, that’s what Daria always said.

  Mama’s eyes bored into hers.

  She dropped her own to make it stop. It didn’t make a difference. She was in the crosshairs now.

  “I told my daughter to stay away from you and your sinful grandmother years ago, and where do I find her? Right in the nest of vipers. What kind of spell have you worked on her?”

  “Mama Barton, I . . .”

  Cassie didn’t need to continue. The elder Barton had turned back to her daughter.

  “And you—I just found out you ran off with Twink to protect her from me because she kept a boy in her room overnight. I didn’t raise you to take part in that kind of wickedness.” Mama’s pointing finger trembled.

  “Mama! She’s just a kid. And I knew how you would react. You can’t raise her any more than Delia could. Kids need room to make mistakes, and a lot of attention—the good kind, not the threatening kind.”

  “Don’t you dare talk back to me,” Mama replied quietly. Cassie thought that somehow sounded even more dangerous than the shouting. “You gather up Twink’s things. We’re taking her out of school and delivering her right back to her no-good mama. We don’t need any more of her kind ruining our family’s good reputation.”

  Any more of her kind. The words smacked Cassie in the middle of the forehead. Nat was so right! Mama Barton knew exactly what was happening with Twink. Cassie pulled from her small well of courage by picturing herself standing with Tom, Gillian, and Natalie when they’d faced Anat and won. Mama might be imposing, but she was as friendly and playful as Cat when you pictured her next to a demon.

  “Mrs. Barton, I think you’ll want to join us in the parlor.” Cassie swept a hand out to usher her toward the couch. “Because I know why you want to deliver Twink far away from here. Natalie Taylor told me about your mother. The big voodoo lady, right? So, if you want to talk about ruined reputations, I’m sure there’s some juicy stories there I could resurrect.”

  Mama glared at her, her black eyes burning with terrible intent. Cassie swallowed, trying to keep her lip from shaking. If looks could kill . . . Ella Barton better not be a witch, because if she was, Cassie would be the recipient of some very ugly conjuring.

  All at once, the woman deflated like a punctured balloon. Cassie exhaled slowly as Mrs. Barton walked quietly past her to the couch.

  15

  Marcus dug around in his backpack for his sunglasses. He hadn’t been able to find them before he’d walked home from school, and he’d had to squint the whole way. He’d definitely want them before he had to go to work tomorrow morning—what if it was sunny again? They were good shades, and he didn’t like driving without them.

  What if he’d lost them? Or if they’d been stolen? And they were good shades. He’d hate it if they were lost. Or stolen. He’d forgotten his backpack in the car last night when he’d come home from work and the car door hadn’t been locked this morning when he’d gone out
to look for it. He guessed it served him right if someone had taken them, forgetting to lock up like that. Except he was sure he had locked it, and Twink held his second key for him. There was no way she’d come into Boston overnight and got into his car. I mean, how would she even get into the city?

  At least he’d had his phone in his back pocket. Losing that would have really hurt. Twink and his mother wouldn’t be able to reach him if that went missing.

  It wasn’t like you got to hang on to much when you were a foster kid. The other kids were always getting into his stuff, taking what they wanted. At least it was better with a foster family than it had been at the group home. They’d let him get a car as long as he kept up with the insurance. But with the Starrs fostering two other boys too, he still had to keep things he didn’t want to see disappear close. At least they never narced him out for slipping out to see his mom.

  He went about making sure he hadn’t missed his glasses in an organized way. First, he pulled out his notebooks and stacked them up on his small twin bed. Next, he pulled out the stuff in the pockets: an extra pair of socks, a ballpoint pen, a pencil with a chewed-up eraser, his shirt for work, and a couple of scraps of paper he didn’t recognize. It wasn’t even his writing. In fact, it wasn’t even English, as far as he could tell.

  The doorbell rang, and he heard his foster mother coming up the stairs as he went through the outside pockets one more time, but his glasses weren’t there.

  When she got to his door, she didn’t look happy. Giles’s chief of police was standing behind her. This was the second time the chief had come around, and if his foster mother found out that he’d stayed late at Twink’s, or at least what she thought was Twink’s, she’d ground him for at least a month. Which he’d probably deserve if that’s what he’d done.

  If she knew where he’d really been, she’d kick him out and he’d be right back at the group home, where the door was locked at ten and the windows had bars on them.

  “Marcus,” said Mrs. Starr, “Chief Denton would like to talk to you. You and I will talk about this later.”

  He figured that was a fancy way of saying, “Whatever you did, here’s a month on extra chores for embarrassing us with the neighbors by having the cops out again.”

  Denton leaned against the side of the door frame, his eyes moving over the pile of stuff on the bed. “I’ve got a few more questions for you,” he said, then walked casually over to the bed and picked up one of Marcus’s notebooks, leafing through it.

  “This is rough stuff. Physics, right? I never had much of a head for it.”

  “Physics is OK. I do all right at it,” Marcus replied, cleaning up the mess as he talked. He wadded up his work shirt and managed a layup into the clothes basket by the bunk beds that took up most of the rest of the room. He scooped up the crumpled scraps of paper and set up for another score, this time into the wastebasket, when the chief held out his hand. “Mind if I take a look at those?”

  Marcus shrugged. “Sure.” Ms. Taylor had said she wasn’t going to rat him out about not being at Twink’s that night, but you never knew what people were really going to do. All he had to do was cooperate. They couldn’t arrest him for seeing his mother. But he never wanted to go back to that group home.

  Denton studied the scraps of paper, first sounding out what was written on one, then switching it out with the other and looking real intently at that one too. He finally looked up at Marcus. “How do you know Italian?”

  “I don’t. Found those in my backpack when I was looking for my shades. They’re missing. I really like those shades.”

  “Pretty good shades, are they?”

  “Just knock-offs. Twink saw Russell Westbrook wearing a pair like them in a magazine. Just a black frame. Nothin’ special.”

  Denton nodded and gestured with the hand holding the scraps of paper. “And where did these come from?”

  Marcus shrugged. “Dunno.”

  “Well, kid, I don’t think those shades are going to do you much good where you’re going. I’ll need to take you back to Giles with me for a longer talk.”

  Marcus zipped his backpack. He was surprised, but not that surprised. The old woman had probably blown his alibi after all. You can’t really trust anybody, he knew that. He said, “Yeah. Can I bring my stuff? I don’t like leaving it around here. It could disappear.”

  Denton stood back to let him lead the way into the hall. “I think that’s a good idea, son.”

  ***

  Dash’s mustache quivered as he slammed the stapler into the wad of receipts on the gallery counter. “You should have heard him. The things he said!”

  Cassie’s hands spread wide, palms up, to encourage him to keep talking about the disastrous dinner party with Lou Frank. Talking always helped him calm down when he was upset. “So, yeah . . . what did he say?”

  “He said the gallery was good enough to satisfy the art needs of the bourgeois housewife, but that advertising in Boston was a ridiculous idea. He actually had the gall to say that except for his work, the art we carry simply isn’t up to snuff for a more sophisticated clientele. That’s outrageous, and just plain rude!” Dash slammed his palm down hard on the top of the stapler again.

  Cassie’s mouth turned down at the corners as she gently took the stapler. “Why don’t you organize the receipts, and I’ll do the stapling? And I’m sorry he said something terrible like that. He’s like night and day.”

  “Oh, it gets better.” Dash shuddered, then leaned in to her. “When I was out of the room getting dessert, he told my sweet Jon—my patient, kind, handsome partner—that it was a good thing we had decided not to get married even though Massachusetts has allowed gay marriage for over ten years. Because obviously, a relationship like ours could only end in divorce. What would he know about it?” Dash’s face was turning dangerously red. “It’s not like we decided not to marry because we’re not committed to each other . . . we’ve been together for twenty years. It’s hardly a passing fancy. It’s just that John’s children have never really accepted me, and well . . . he’s afraid he won’t be able to see his grandchildren if we tie the knot. His children wouldn’t be able to pretend I don’t exist after that. It’s a very difficult position for him.”

  Cassie went to her boss and hugged him. She could tell when he started crying from the jerky gasps against her shoulder. She patted his back gently. “Dash, you know that Jon worships you! How could you let that pompous, arrogant, mean-spirited Lou Frank upset you so much? I’m never talking to him again. He’s the most two-faced jerk I’ve ever met. And I had finally talked Tom around to having him to dinner. That will never happen now. Never.”

  “No, you’re right, I . . . well, I need to get myself together, don’t I? This is the last time I’ll be taken in by Luigi Franconi.”

  “Who?” Cassie asked.

  “When he was just an unknown kid from Giles, Lou Frank was Luigi Franconi. His parents were immigrants. His mother worked for the Stanford family as a maid. He changed his name after his work was accepted in a New York gallery and, well . . . you know how it went from there. I think if you look at the signature on the Giles Corey bronze, it says Franconi, not Frank.”

  That was interesting. She’d have to look for the signature now.

  Dash stood, his eyes red and blotchy. “I’m giving myself a timeout downstairs. A small meditation would do me good.”

  The thick curtains that hid the back room swished closed behind him. She heard the sound of the trap door, which was hidden by an oriental rug, being opened and then closed again. She had never been in the secret room, although Tom had. She could only guess what was in there that helped to calm him. Tom was sworn to secrecy, and so far, he’d kept his promise.

  About an hour later, the bell over the door tinkled gaily. The sound was completely out of sync with her emotions. Dash still hadn’t returned from downstairs. She turned from her dusting, her business smile in place, hoping it was someone with some good news. Her smile faded.

/>   “How could you possibly think you’re welcome here?” she growled as Lou Frank entered.

  “I know, I know,” he said, clasping his hands together against his chest pleadingly. “I’m sure he told you, as well he should—I was terrible to dear Dash and Jon at dinner last night. But I just . . . well, something awful happened that day, and I was losing my temper with everyone. I brought some of my best small bronzes with me instead of placing them in a gallery in New York, and one of them has been badly damaged by the careless handyman I hired. Not only that, but he tried to hide it from me with a bad epoxy job. I can repair it, but like the Giles Corey bronze, it will never be the same.” He slid the large leather bag off of his shoulder and took out a cylindrical package wrapped in silver and gold paper and decorated with a gigantic bow. “So, please, if Dash is here . . .”

  “He’s not. Go away. Why do you always think that you can be a jerk and then get away with it by giving people presents? Just go . . .”

  She heard the curtain part behind her. Nuts. She’d hoped she could spare Dash any contact with the guy, but that wasn’t going to happen now. And when Dash said, “It’s okay. Let the man speak,” she knew that he was going to forgive him. Dash was like that. He couldn’t hold a grudge even if his fingers were glued to it.

  Lou walked to him quickly and took Dash’s hands in his. “You must believe me when I tell you that I’m ashamed of how I behaved last night. You know how New Yorkers are; we’re so rude to each other we forget that most people don’t act that way. I haven’t quite adapted to being back in Giles, although I think having friends like you, Jon, and Cassie is exactly what I need to help me develop kinder, gentler ways.”