Hexes and Hemlines

by Juliet Blackwell

  “Sorry you got caught in the middle of all of this,” said Atticus.

  “No, we’re the ones who should be apologizing,” said Gregory. “We certainly didn’t mean to interrupt. We’ll just leave you to it—”

  He turned toward the door.

  “Don’t leave,” said Oliver. His eyes were rimmed in red, and despite his natural handsomeness he looked dissolute, the type whose looks soon would be ravaged by too much abuse. “Dude, I feel really bad about the cops going after you like that. I didn’t mean for that to happen. I was just . . . like I just told them what I heard and they came to their own conclusions.”

  “I know,” Gregory said. He stopped his nervous shifting, met Oliver’s eyes, and spoke in a surprisingly warm, calm voice. “No worries.”

  “Glad you’re not behind bars, anyway,” said Oliver.

  “Behind bars?” Oliver’s father asked. “What are you talking about?”

  “I haven’t even told you this part,” Oliver said. “There was a murder.”

  “A murder? And you were involved?”

  “Just barely. It’s the bad luck,” Oliver mumbled. “Everything in my life has turned to sh—”

  “Oliver,” snapped his father. “There are ladies present.”

  “Sorry,” Oliver said, eyes flickering over to his mother.

  “This totally blows,” said one of the younger participants, a fair-haired teenager who looked as though he might be a cousin. All in all, the Huffman family resemblance was startling. “I’m so gonna bounce. I’m outta here.”

  He got up off a muted gray couch and went out the front door, trailed by two other teenage girls. Like an anthill that had been disturbed, the others began to shift in their seats, looking for their own excuses to leave.

  “A murder.” The senator shook his head, his ruddy complexion turning even redder. “Are you kidding me? Just when were you going to mention this?”

  “Maybe once you chilled over this thing,” said Oliver. “Damn, I woke up to all of you, all of this—”

  “It’s one o’clock in the afternoon!”

  “I was out late,” Oliver said.

  “I’ll just bet you were. Out late and involved in a murder?”

  “He wasn’t involved,” said Gregory, stepping in to stand up for his friend—the same friend who had fingered him to the police. “It happened night before last. And Oliver was just a dinner guest, like I was. Later that night, after we’d all left, our host was killed. It has nothing to do with any of us.”

  “Yeah,” Oliver said. “Nichol and I came back early. The police already checked the kiosk security log.”

  “And who was this host?” asked the senator.

  “Malachi Zazi.”

  He threw up his hands. “I thought I told you to stay away from that lunatic!”

  “He wasn’t a lunatic, Dad,” said the lovely young blond woman in a soft, sweet voice.

  The senator ignored the interruption. “Do you have any idea what Malachi Zazi’s father is capable of? Are you kidding me?” The senator made a disgusted sound, whirled around, and went to stare out the window, hands on his hips.

  “So you were there that night also?” Atticus asked of us.

  “Just me,” said Gregory. “And Oliver, and Nichol was there as well.”

  “And your friend . . . ?”

  Again, all eyes rested on me. I was clearly the odd one out.

  “I wasn’t there, but the police asked me to look into the crime,” I said. My phrasing made it sound more official than it was. I cringed inwardly that I hadn’t thought to come up with some logical description of who I was, and why I was asking questions.

  “You’re a police officer?” asked Atticus, clearly doubtful.

  “No, I—”

  “Don’t say another word,” bellowed Senator Huffman to everyone still gathered in the room. He stuck his arm out, hand held up, as though stopping traffic. “None of you. I’m calling my lawyer.”

  “Oh, dear,” said the mother, the first peep out of her.

  “It’s not that kind of thing,” I said. “I’m not a police officer; nothing I hear could be used against you in a court of law.” It sounded like a rather twisted version of the Miranda rights.

  “I’d still feel better if you left, young lady,” the senator said, his cell phone already held up to his ear. “This is a private family matter.”

  “I understand,” I said. “I apologize that we broke in on your meeting. I’ll go.”

  “I’ll see you out,” said brother Atticus.

  “I’ll join you,” said the blond woman who spoke earlier. Her name tag read “Nichol.”

  As we stepped outside into the cool air, I asked, “Nichol Reiss?”

  She laughed, a tinkling, lovely sound. “That’s my screen name, yes. Thank you for recognizing me.”

  Atticus came up behind his sister and put his hand on her elbow.

  “I thought we’d never escape. The whole intervention thing’s a good idea, but Dad insisted on doing it himself, without a real therapist, and . . . Sorry. This isn’t your problem. But I appreciate your coming along and giving us an excuse to break up the sad little party.”

  “I take it you both know about what happened to Malachi Zazi?” I asked.

  The siblings exchanged a significant glance.

  “I’m not a cop, or a reporter. I give you my word,” I said. “I’m just looking into this, in part to help Gregory. Maybe we could sit for a minute, talk about a few things?”

  After another shared look, Atticus shrugged. “I guess it couldn’t hurt.”

  We all took seats at a glass café table situated under a low-hanging Canary palm. The air was heavy with the scent of honeysuckle and the brine of the ocean. Birds twittered, splashing in a nearby carved birdbath. Sad to think a person could grow up in a place as bucolic and graceful as this and still turn out to be a miserable, drugaddled adult.

  “You’ll have to excuse our dad,” Atticus said. “He’s a politician, always has been. The habits run deep. But we all really care, as a family, about what happens to Oliver.”

  “I can see that,” I said. “So you both knew about Zazi’s murder?”

  “Yes,” said Nichol, her beautiful eyes filling with tears. “Dad’s been out of town ’til today, so I guess he didn’t hear. But the police came by and talked with us. We all knew Malachi, since way back in high school. He was a friend. And I was at that last dinner, too.”

  “Look, Oliver has a drug dependence—that much is clear. And we’re going to get him into treatment, one way or the other.” Atticus shook his head. “But even when he’s high, he could never do anything violent to anyone. That’s just not his way.”

  In my experience people could do things under the influence of drugs they would never imagine. It snatches a bit of one’s soul—that was precisely the problem.

  “Did you witness the argument between Gregory and Malachi as well?” I asked Nichol.

  She shook her head. “But you know, it’s embarrassing to say—it always took me so long to get the damned dress on that I was always late. We all were, all the women.”

  A little brown sparrow swooped onto a low branch near the table. It made jerky, robotic movements with its head, reminding me of the bird flitting through Malachi Zazi’s apartment, signifying death. Funny how something so innocuous in one setting could be so threatening in another.

  “What was Malachi like?” I asked Nichol.

  “He wasn’t like they say. He wasn’t crazy.” Her eyes shone with tears. She was truly lovely, almost otherworldly. “He set those bad luck symbols out to disprove their power, in the pursuit of rationalism.”

  “I hear his father was . . . odd. Were the symbols—”

  Nichol jumped up, hurried across a patch of lawn, and disappeared into the cottage next door to Oliver’s.

  “Nichol and Malachi had a . . . relationship,” Atticus explained in a low voice. “She’s been very upset over his demise.”

&nb
sp; “Oh. I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “Is that why your father was so upset to hear Malachi Zazi’s name?”

  “Like I said, Dad’s a politician. I guess none of us turned out quite the way he’d like. We’re far from perfect offspring.” Giving a self-deprecating smile, Atticus tucked his head and looked for all the world like a child at that moment.

  Atticus said, “You’ve probably heard of Nicky’s famous Hollywood meltdown, and now Oliver. . . .” He let out a breath and shook his head, then leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. “We’ve been trying of keep him out of the news for the last couple of years. He’s an addict. It’s a disease, plain and simple. But you know how these things play out in the public eye. It becomes fodder for every tabloid TV show on slow news days. Dad’s up for reelection this year. It would be a public relations disaster.”

  “I can imagine. Sounds like your father wasn’t wild about y’all having any kind of relationship to Malachi.”

  “You can say that again.”

  We all fell silent for a moment. I thought I could hear the sound of the ocean, the mighty Pacific pounding against the rocks at the bottom of the cliff. I wouldn’t mind a nice cleansing walk on the beach at this point.

  “So your whole family lives here together?”

  “Oliver and Nichol still live here with my folks, but I haven’t spent more than a night under my parents’ roof since I went off to Princeton. They’re good people, and they were loving parents. But I had my fill of political dinners and cocktail parties by the time I was in middle school. It’s not really my style. I couldn’t wait to get out of this life.”

  “Atticus is the one escapee from chez Huffman,” said Nichol, returning to the table with a small bundle in her hands and a beaming smile on her face, suitable for an Entertainment Tonight photo shoot. A delicate pink blush around her eyes was the only sign she’d been crying. She had refreshed her makeup and lipstick, and looked radiant and beautiful.

  I thought about her coming into Aunt Cora’s Closet yesterday. This seemed like one too many coincidences, but I couldn’t figure out how they would all fit together as part of some plan.

  “Atticus lives out in the Marina, with a great wife, two beautiful kids, the perfect dog, and he even has a real job. Dad must wonder why he couldn’t have just made three of us in his mold.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Atticus said, mimicking the deep voice of his father. “What would Dad do without his little princess? He adores you.”

  Nichol reached out and fluffed Atticus’s hair. It must be nice to have a sibling, I thought, to have that kind of ease with someone. And they were both clearly committed to helping their brother Oliver as well. The Huffman parents must have done something right, to instill such closeness in their children.

  Nichol set the package on the table—it was an old-fashioned stack of letters sealed with red wax and tied with a baby blue satin ribbon. I thought they might be antique, but the envelopes showed none of the yellowing that comes with age.

  “Malachi sent me these,” she said, reverence in her voice.

  “What are they?”

  “Love letters. Poems.” She undid the bow slowly; the blue satin gleamed in the sun. She extracted the top letter and handed it to me.

  “I didn’t think anyone wrote real letters anymore,” I said. “Sealed with wax, no less.” The wax had been pressed by a ring with a snake design, a symbol of Serpentarius.

  “I know, right? Malachi was so gentlemanly, old-fashioned,” Nichol said. “It was as though he’d been pulled out of another century.”

  I glanced over at the silent Atticus.

  “Don’t look at me,” he said with a duck of his head. “I haven’t exchanged more than a dozen words with the guy since high school. I was never invited to his exclusive dinner club.”

  Nichol elbowed him good-naturedly. “Don’t act like you were missing out. I could have gotten you an invitation if you’d really wanted.”

  “People sitting around in costumes, looking at bad luck signs?” He smiled and shook his head. “Not what I’d call my thing.”

  “Oliver mentioned that he’d had a lot of bad luck lately,” I said. “Gregory feels that way, too. Have you experienced anything like that, Nichol?”

  “My whole life’s been bad luck.”

  Atticus gave her a wry look.

  “Okay, it’s true that I’ve had a hand in that myself. No, any bad luck I’ve had is my own fault.” She looked at Atticus and smiled. He nodded as though proud of her.

  I bowed my head and concentrated on the letter from Malachi, trying to sense any emotions coming from it. I felt sadness, a deep kind of soul in darkness, as in depression. But the sensations were vague, muted partly because I couldn’t concentrate properly with all these people around, and partly because I wasn’t as sensitive to other objects as I was to clothes. Which reminded me . . .

  “Did you happen to take your gown home, Nichol?”

  “The gown we wore to the Serpentarius dinners? Actually, I have several of the women’s gowns here. We’d meet here first and help each other button up, that sort of thing. Those dresses are a real pain.”

  “Do you think I could take them with me when I go, check them out?”

  “Check them out how?” asked Gregory.

  Only then did I realize it sounded like an odd request. What possible normal reason could there be for wanting to look at the dresses?

  “I wanted to compare them to some of the old pictures of the original Thirteen Club, the one that the Serpentarius Society was based on,” I said. Not that it made any sense.

  “Oh, okay,” said Nichol with a shrug. “Sure. They just make me sad now, anyway. Go ahead, read the letter.”

  I opened the envelope. A slanted, elegant hand had written a long, emotional ode to Nichol’s beauty, grace, and smile. It was an eloquent treatise on love and devotion, and it ended: One day it will all be as it should be, and you and I shall walk arm in arm, facing the world as a couple, walking as two should walk, never again alone.

  A wave of sadness washed over me as I remembered the man in my vision, huge hourglass in his hands . . . his time running out.

  “Can you believe that?” Nichol asked, staring at me, tears once again welling in her eyes. “You really think the son of a devil could write something like that?”

  Chapter 11

  “The ‘son of a devil’?”

  “That’s what everyone called him.”

  “Back in school,” Atticus explained. “I was a couple of years older, but everyone heard the rumors. We all knew his house. Poor kid tried to be normal, but with a dad like that . . .”

  “Did you know his father?” I asked.

  “Only by reputation.”

  “The ‘Prince’?” Gregory spoke up. “I’ve caught sight of him once or twice. But we all knew what he was about. And I guess we knew a little about what Malachi went through in that house. It couldn’t have been easy to be raised that way.”

  “Do you know why his father called himself a prince?” I asked.

  “Not exactly . . . I always figured he was what you’d call self-proclaimed royalty.”

  “In what sense?”

  “In the sense that he pretty much made himself king, or prince anyway, of his little world.”

  “As in . . . Prince of Darkness?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Wow. No wonder his son was a little . . .”

  “Screwed up? True. But he wasn’t a bad person.”

  “So it was Malachi, Gregory, Nichol, and Oliver at that last dinner. Who else?”

  “Mike Perkins,” said Nichol.

  “I can’t believe Mike would get mixed up in that sort of thing,” said Atticus with a shake of his head. “Mike’s many things, but I wouldn’t imagine he’d be interested in the occult in any way.”

  “How do you know him?” I asked.

  “I used to work at Perkins Laboratories, but that was a few years ago. The money was
great, but I was happy to move on. My dad was an investor in his company years ago, and Mike donated to Dad’s campaigns. I thought it might be perceived as a political problem that I worked for him, too many connections.”

  “So you and Gregory both worked for Perkins? And your father was connected to him politically?”

  “Sort of. Oliver worked for him for a while as well. It’s not as odd as it might sound—the man owns an important corporation, and employs people he’s known and trusted for years.”

  “I think I was the first connection there,” Gregory said. “Mike recruited me as a researcher straight out of grad school. Then I got Oliver the job, though he didn’t last long. But half this city’s had dealings with Mike Perkins; even Malachi’s father, Prince High, was an investor in Perkins Laboratories.”

  “I guess everyone’s looking to diversify,” said Atticus. “Even the devil himself.”

  “Atticus, Nichol, do either of you know a woman named Doura?”

  “There was a woman by that name at the dinner on Saturday night,” said Nichol.

  “Did she say anything about herself? Do you have any idea how I could get in touch with her?”

  Nichol shook her head. “She looked lovely, though. She wore a red brocade that really set off her coloring.”

  I glanced at Atticus.

  “I don’t know her,” he said, shaking his head.

  There didn’t seem to be much more to discuss. Nichol and Atticus retrieved several plastic-shrouded antique gowns from Nichol’s cottage, and together we carried them to the van.

  This perfect, precious little world seemed marred by the presence of my dusty purple van in the drive. In this glittering picture of privilege it should have been a shining Jaguar or Lexus, like in the car commercials. It was sad that despite all the outer trappings of beauty, the Huffman family was marked by difficulty, substance abuse, shoplifting. . . . Only Atticus appeared relatively unscathed, but I knew how that went: He was the perfect one, the one keeping it together because he had to hold up everyone’s end. I wondered whether, if Nichol and Oliver ever managed to pull themselves together, he would fall apart.