by Raven Snow
Julia ran down a list of pretty standard questions. Rowen waited for her to finish. She would speak with Ben once Julia was finished. In the meantime, she looked to Margo.
“Well, this was a waste of time,” Margo complained.
Rowen rolled her eyes at her. “Oh, hush. This is part of the job.”
“It’s a boring part of the job,” Margo grumbled.
“I’m sorry murder is boring.”
Margo didn’t have anything to say to that. She changed the subject instead. “Are we heading home after this? If David is staying at our house, I assume Eric is too.”
Rowen couldn’t keep a smile from her face at that comment. She nodded. “He should be, yeah.” She knew Margo was just trying to convince her to let them call it a day early. Unfortunately, it was working. “Rose has already started on the story. I’ll send her what we learned here, and then we can head home… I guess.”
“That sounds nice.” Margo smiled, pleased she had gotten her way. “I wonder if David’s feeling any better.”
“No, Margo.”
“What?”
“That boy is a mess. You just got rid of one mess. You don’t need another.” She was speaking, of course, of Terry. She hadn’t much cared for Margo’s ex-husband at all. Rowen had a feeling she would like her with David even less. Never mind that it would probably make things more awkward between herself and Eric. She didn’t want that either.
Margo only scoffed in response, like it was ridiculous to think she even had such a thing in mind. Rowen knew better, of course. She considered saying as much, but Julia and her assistant were packing it in. They lingered around to see if Rowen was going to ask Ben anything worthwhile, but left when she started in with the friendly conversation.
“How’s the day been treating you, Ben?” she asked, offering him a smile.
Ben shrugged. “Long. It’s about over, though.” Ben’s eyes followed Julia as she left. “Did you find out anything more about those symbols?” he asked, once she had moved out of earshot.
Rowen shook her head. “Not yet,” she said. “I haven’t gotten a chance to. It would really help if you could send them to me.”
“I’m working on that,” he assured her with a glance over his shoulder. That likely meant the police chief was giving him some difficulty on that front.
“Can you tell us where she was found?” asked Margo, raising the recorder and notepad she had brought along. She tried her best to write on the latter while still holding her umbrella.
“I just talked about that with Ms. Martinez,” said Ben, raising an eyebrow at them.
Margo shrugged. “I know, but we were talking.”
Ben sighed, but explained anyway. “Mrs. Martel was found in her home. Her husband was out of town on business. He found her when he returned. Forensics say she hadn’t been dead for more than a few hours.”
“Does the husband have motive?” asked Rowen.
Ben shrugged, keeping things rather candid. “Most husbands do, I guess, but this one had an alibi. He was accounted for until the hour long drive it took him to get from the airport. She was dead before that.”
Rowen nodded and looked over to make sure the recorder sitting on Margo’s notebook was running. It was. “Did you learn anything else on the occult front?”
“We’re not really equipped to make that sort of evaluation. We don’t have any occult experts or anything. You’re the closest one any of us have talked to. All we know is that there were candles and symbols, and that poor woman was laid out naked like a sacrifice.” Ben took a deep breath and shook his head. It seemed like he was frustrated.
“Have you considered calling in any experts?” Rowen asked on a hunch.
“It’s not in the budget.” Ben gave her a strained smile like this was an idea he’d had as well. “I don’t suppose you could give me a list of other occult practitioners in the area?”
“What? Like witches?” Rowen exchanged looks with Margo. “There aren’t really any aside from my family. We’re really close-knit, though. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the community isn’t crazy about us.” She knew that probably wasn’t what Ben wanted to hear, but it was the truth. “There isn’t like a secret coven that meets up under the cover of night or anything like that.”
Ben looked genuinely disappointed. “Well, it was worth a shot.”
Rowen went through a few more standard questions before wishing Ben the best and heading back to the car. It was a real shame about Lindsay Martel, and Rowen hoped they caught the murderer. She couldn’t help but be more than just a little excited about getting home, though. She swung by the office to drop off the notes and recording, and then straight home.
Rose was understanding. She actually really enjoyed the work, anyway. Rowen imagined that she would live at the office if she could. Besides, Willow and Peony were still with her. They would make sure that the story got out.
There was a tidy little collection of cars outside of the Greensmith house when Rowen pulled up. All three new cars in the drive were nice ones. They looked terribly out of place next to Aunt Lydia’s old Buick.
Rowen parked her own car and headed inside. She could hear Aunt Lydia playing hostess already. That was no surprise. What was something of a surprise was when she overheard what they were talking about.
“So…” Mrs. Richardson trailed off, sounding terribly uncomfortable. “It’s like your religion.”
“Oh, no, dear,” said Aunt Lydia. “It has nothing to do with religion. We’re just witches.”
“But how does that work, exactly?” asked Mr. Richardson.
“Well, how do you think witches work?” Aunt Lydia asked with a laugh. “We do witch things, of course. We cast spells and such.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Richardson. “That sounds… fun.”
“It’s a bit New Age,” said Eric, sounding like he was desperately trying to put a positive spin on this. “You know what New Age is. You’ve seen it on TV and been in one of the shops, right?”
“We’re nothing like that,” Aunt Lydia scoffed, undoing anything Eric might have tried to explain away before he could even try.
Rowen hurried into the room. “Sorry that took so long. Work, you know?” Her eyes found Eric. He was sitting on a sofa with his brother, who was silent and looked absolutely miserable. Eric didn’t look much happier. Rowen couldn’t blame him. This seemed like a pretty uncomfortable situation.
“Hello, dear,” said Lydia, beaming at Rowen. “Just having tea and a chat with our guests— though, I suppose you’ve come to steal Eric away from me.”
“Guilty as charged.” Rowen held out her hand to her boyfriend.
He was only too eager to come with her. She led the way up to the attic with her on his heels. “That was terrible,” he said, once the door had closed behind them.
Rowen went to sit on the edge of her bed. “I can imagine… You know, I’m surprised you didn’t tell your family about us already.”
“I did.” Eric pulled up a chair so that he could sit across from her. “I just left out the witch stuff.”
“That’s pretty hard to leave out.”
“It’s pretty hard to explain, too.”
“Fair enough.” Rowen leaned in close and kissed him. “Long day?” she asked.
“Long,” he agreed, but he smiled and leaned in to give Rowen another kiss. “Worth it, though, now that I’m here.”
“What’s going on with your brother?” she asked. They hadn’t really gotten a chance to talk with him about it before. Everything had happened pretty fast since last night.
“Oh, who knows?” Eric said with a groan, implying that he likely did know and just didn’t want to talk about it. “He’s having trouble getting his life together, lately. He’s been drinking and partying more. Why he was in this neighborhood, I really couldn’t tell you. I’m going to need to talk to him about that.” Something seemed to occur to him then. “Speaking of which, I did talk to him about the roses. My parent
s are going to replace them.”
Rowen quickly shook her head. “That’s really not necessary. They wouldn’t be the same, anyway.”
“Sorry again about that.”
Rowen shrugged. “It’s not like it was your fault.”
“How did your day go? I heard that talk about a murder.”
Rowen’s expression grew a bit more grave. She nodded. “There was a murder.” She told Eric the details and about her conversation with Ben, and all the new things she had found out.
The whole time, Eric just nodded. “Well, that sounds like a mess,” he said, once she was finished speaking. “Sorry you have to deal with all that.”
“It’s news. I’m just worried this particular news is going to come back to haunt me.” It hadn’t been long enough since the last murder her family had gotten mixed up in. Rowen couldn’t help but be just a little nervous. “So, how long are you staying?”
“We talked about it today,” Eric said with a smile, meaning he was pleased with how long he would be able to spend with her. “They’ll be leaving in a few days, but I don’t have any meetings for a while.” He raised an eyebrow at her. “I’ve got a couple of weeks I can spend with you, at least.”
Rowen gave a shriek of pleasure and hugged him. “That sounds great. You can stay up here with me.”
Eric eyed her very small bed. “Or maybe we could get a hotel room?”
“Oh, stay here with me.” Rowen gave him a playful kick in the leg. “It’ll be fun, and you can visit with my family. They all love you, you know. Besides, there’s only one hotel around here, and the owners aren’t fans of me.”
“Fine, fine. I’m coming to work with you, though. I’m not spending all day with Lydia and Nadine. I like them, but they’re exhausting.”
“Fair enough.” Rowen stood. “Let me change into something more comfortable, and then we should probably head back downstairs. Who knows what Lydia and your parents are talking about by now.”
Chapter Five
As it turned out, Lydia was talking about the murder Grammy had been arrested for. She was explaining all the details— ghosts and all. It had gone past awkward by the time Eric and Rowen had made it back downstairs.
Together, they were able to steer the conversation to something more socially acceptable. Rowen talked about work and what she did there. She explained how the whole family helped, which was an easier family occupation to pitch to people than, ‘we’re witches.’
By that time, Lydia was angling to take the conversation back over. Aunt Nadine came into the room to tell them that dinner was ready. Rose, Willow, and Peony still weren’t home, but they could go ahead without them.
Nadine had made tacos. It was pretty simple, but everyone seemed to enjoy them. David was the exception. He made himself a plate, but only picked at it. His hangover was gone, but his thoughts still seemed to be somewhere else. No one really said anything about it, though. At least, Lydia was tactful enough to keep rude observations like that to herself.
After dinner, Mr. and Mrs. Richardson did volunteer David to do the cleaning. No one argued, though David didn’t look thrilled. Rowen couldn’t blame him. They’d volunteered him like he was a teenager that was grounded and not a grown man.
Rowen and Eric stayed behind in the kitchen to help. It felt too strange just leaving David alone with all that work. He didn’t even know where the dishes went.
“Thanks,” said David, when everyone else had gone back into the living room to watch some television before bed. Rowen hoped she could, at least, trust them all to watch television without starting into any cringe-inducing conversations.
“No problem,” said Rowen, turning on the water and rolling up her sleeves. She was genuinely surprised that Margo hadn’t stayed behind as well. Maybe she had taken what Rowen had said to heart— though Rowen sincerely doubted that.
“So,” David began, trying to initiate some conversation as he cleared the dishes from the table. “I hear you run a news service for a living.”
Rowen laughed at the obvious attempt to be polite. “You saw,” she reminded him. “You were at our office just this morning.
David looked a little uncomfortable when she reminded him, like it had slipped his mind. “Right,” he said, stopping by the trash can to scrape out the dishes. “I think I heard there was a murder?”
“That’s right,” said Rowen, frowning at the reminder. She needed to go check on Rose’s progress in reporting that. “A woman was killed last night. She was my age. Sad stuff.”
David nodded. “Do they know who did it?”
“No,” said Rowen. “Or if they do, they aren’t releasing the information.”
“What time did it happen?” asked David.
He was asking an awful lot of questions. “Not too long after the sun went down, I think. They don’t have an exact time on it.”
“About the time you were ramming her house with your car,” said Eric, shooting his brother a dirty look.
David glared at his brother, but did turn an apologetic look to Rowen. “I really am very sorry about that. If there’s anything I can do for you to pay you back, please let me do it.”
Rowan waved a hand, dismissing that notion. “It’s no huge deal. Really. You didn’t hurt anything except the garden and that… can be replaced. I’m just glad you were all right.”
“Do you need any help at your offices?” asked David.
“Office,” Rowan corrected with a laugh. “We just have one.” She was about to say that it was fine; he didn’t owe her anything like that. She remembered he was stuck here for a few days regardless, though. He probably didn’t want to spend that time cooped up in a house with his parents. Rowen couldn’t blame him. “You can come help if you want. Eric’s already helping out, but I’m sure Rose can find something for you to do.”
Coincidently, her cousins came home at about that time, putting an end to their conversation. David still thanked her, though. He seemed relieved.
Rose didn’t have much to report. The story about the murder was already up on the blog and a similar one would be running in the physical paper tomorrow. The online post was getting hits. The only problem was that it was also getting comments. Rose had Willow and Peony moderate them for a while, then finally just turned them off all together.
The comments were what Rowen had expected. People were picking up on this whole occult business. They had some choice things to say about Rowen and her family. There were some accusations flying already. They were all baseless, of course, but that didn’t change the fact that Rowen was worried. This was only the beginning— that much felt agonizingly clear.
When it started getting late, Rowen went back up to the attic and started digging through boxes from the crawl space. Eric came and joined her after a while. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“Looking through some of Grammy’s things,” she explained, opening a box of books. “I drew some of the symbols in the pictures from memory. I’m looking to see if I can find them.” She held out the notebook paper she had drawn them on out to Eric and continued what she was doing. She really wished Ben had been able to give her the pictures to take home and study. Regardless, she still wanted to do what she could to help.
Eric sat on the edge of the bed with the paper in hand. He frowned down at it while she thumbed through a handwritten book. “Well, this one is from an album cover. I’m not sure it means anything.”
Rowen paused what she was doing. She looked back at Eric. “What?”
Eric pulled out his phone. He looked down at it, presumably doing a search. “Yeah,” he said finally. He held the phone out to her so she could see the web search results he was looking at. “That picture there. Isn’t that one of the symbols?”
Rowen took back the notebook paper. She held both the paper and the phone and compared. There was no denying it: They looked awfully similar.
“I went through a death metal phase in middle school,” Eric explained. “Does that mean a
nything outside of the album cover? I probably wouldn’t know if it did.”
Rowen shook her head. “I don’t think so.” She looked at Eric. “This seems like a pretty big piece of evidence. Like… really big.”
“It would make a good story, huh?” Eric looked pretty excited and extremely pleased with himself. “Glad I could help.”
“I need to call Ben and tell him about this before I do anything.” Rowen stood and went for her phone.
“It’s the middle of the night,” Eric reminded her.
