Privy to Murder

by Carol Shenold

  Sean gave me the sure-mom look and went to his room. I finished picking up and went into the shed to retrieve my skunk pants. I put several cans of tomato juice in the washer and started it, with no hope that I’d come out with anything wearable.

  I went back into the kitchen, gasped, and ran back to the washer. The note I found at Reneé’s—in the pocket of those jeans. I’d been so distracted I forgot to look at it. I reached into the jean pocket, wet crumbs were all that were left. Damn. I’d never solve that mystery unless I admit to my best friend that I snooped around her house.

  After a night of phantom new babies, crying babies, and Mumsie’s face when I told her she might be a great-grandmother, I woke up with a monster headache and a craving for a super-strong mocha latte. It was a perfect day to make my own, assuring the strength would be right.

  I called Brian for help with school clothes.

  “I told you Sean would be better off with me. You can’t even support yourself much less him. I’ll see you in court.”

  He slammed the phone. So did I.

  “Sean, let’s go. I don’t want to spend the entire day shopping.”

  “Aw, Mom, I hate trying on clothes. Nothing ever fits. It’s boring. Do I have to?”

  I picked up my keys and put one hand on the doorknob. “You need school clothes but I can pick them for you. You were the one who brought it up.”

  “I’ll go. You can’t pick my clothes for me. Are you kidding? You’d get something with Pooh on it.”

  “You loved Pooh.”

  “Yeah, when I was three.”

  I’d seen an upscale consignment shop on Walnut, across from the Treasure Chest antique store. We parked and went in.

  “Sean, I’m going to look at dresses for a minute. Check out those shirts in the boy’s section, the ones in the corner. Is that one American Eagle?”

  I went over to the cocktail dresses on the off chance I could find a special outfit for nothing. I flipped through one after another I touched the green skirt. As I flipped by, I felt a spark. I touched it again.

  I wasn’t in the store anymore. I saw myself, Sean looking at shirts. I floated, then flew over a familiar landscape. I looked back. I was still connected to the store, but not. Light as a feather, dandelion? I flew faster but didn’t feel motion or wind.

  I was back in the outhouse. Hot and smelly. I turned around. A shadow filled, blocked the way out. No place to go. Stabbing pain, paralyzing. Looking up. A face, figure, woman, familiar. Voices.

  I slammed back into my body, in my shoes, in the store.

  “Mom? I want these shirts. Mom? What’s wrong? You look funny.”

  The clerk looked at me, concern on her face. “Miss. Miss! Do you need help?”

  I shook my head and looked down at my hands. They had a death grip on an emerald velvet skirt. I dropped the material and stepped back. “Who brought that in?”

  The clerk looked at the heap of velvet I’d dropped. “Usually I wouldn’t know, but Mrs. Tannehill was so insistent that we price that skirt above our usual limit, I did remember her. Is there a problem?”

  “No.” I sometimes had a flash of insight but I hadn’t had that kind of vision in months and didn’t remember one that long or strong. The astral-plane experience was obviously tied to Mag, but why now, out of the blue?

  “Mom, you’re ignoring me. Can we get them? Are they too much money? You’re really acting weird, you know.” I pulled my mind back to Sean and looked. He’d picked five, all under ten dollars, all name brands.

  “Great job, kiddo. See if there’s a jacket over there too.”

  The world split. Part of me was in the store with Sean while the rest of me was still in that outhouse. I’d seen a woman. That proved, to me at least, that Frank was off the hook. But if Betty Ann had been the murderer, who had killed her and why?

  Pay attention, Tali. School shopping. I had to concentrate on the task at hand. Figure out the rest later.

  * * *

  An excited Sean chattered all the way home. I began supper preparations. Cherilyn would be over for dinner and to help me with a project. Mumsie would be out until after ten.

  I cut chicken breasts into strips for fajitas and put them in the refrigerator to marinate. The doorbell rang and Cass ran past to answer the living room door.

  She came back followed by Donna. “Mom. We’re going to Boots and Saddles with some friends. Don’t wait up.”

  I shook my head. “There’ll be too much smoke, and you can’t drink anyway. You have no business going to a club now.” And certainly not with Donna, I thought, the person you said was so stupid.

  As if she read my mind, Mag’s daughter walked toward me. Here was the old Donna, sweet voice and manner if not the sweet look. She had the boob-exposing, bared-belly, low-rider look. “I just wanted to apologize, Mrs. Cates, if I was rude the other day. I was a little stressed is all. There seems to be a lot of dead bodies in my life suddenly. I really didn’t mean to freak.”

  Cass jumped in. “And, Mom. I’m not even pregnant. It was just a mistake. I did a couple of pregnancy tests, and they came back negative, so I’m safe.”

  “Wait a minute, Cass. When did you find this out? How long have you known? Why the hell didn’t you tell me? I’ve been worried for nothing? I upset your grandmother for no reason at all?”

  “Jeez, Mom. Chill. It’s no big deal.

  “We have to go now. Come on Donna. Sorry about the family business.”

  They were out the door before I could gather my wits. Cass would be dead before she was twenty-one, and I’d be the one who killed her. I could see it now. I looked around for something I could smash but all I had were my glass centerpieces.

  “Damn it to hell and back,” I screamed at Chaos, who tilted her head and meowed. It wasn’t that I was unhappy because Cass wasn’t pregnant. It was that she was so inconsiderate, she never told me.

  * * *

  “Tali. Why are you screaming at that poor little kitten?” I gasped and whirled around when a voice rang through the room.

  Cherilyn came through the door. “Sorry. I knocked about the time Donna and Cass flew out. They almost knocked me down. I didn’t think you heard me.”

  I filled her in on the Cass incident while I stirred fajita chicken, peppers, and onions, popped tops on Mexican beer, cut lime, and set the table. I put the guacamole, sour cream, onions, tomatoes, grated cheese, and lettuce in the middle of the table. After I took Sean the chips and hot dog he wanted, we sat down.

  “It smells so good,” Cherilyn said. ‘I could eat it all.”

  “Go right ahead. I cooked enough for Mumsie and Cass before I realized it would be just us chickens.”

  “Couldn’t talk Sean into joining us?”

  “Not an exotic eater, our boy. So what’s going on with you? It has to be better than here.”

  “I’m dealing with Laurel on a regular basis, so yes, things can be better here. She’s such a witch. However, I did hear a tidbit of news from her. She wouldn’t have shared if she knew you and I would have been interested.”

  I leaned forward. “Give. What did you find out?”

  “It seems Frank has inherited all of Mag’s money. That gives him a great motive for murder. The way Donna has been spending on her hair, clothes, car, and stuff in general, it won’t last long and Frank isn’t reining her in. That filly could rival Paris Hilton for her ability to spend a lot on nothing.”

  I squeezed lime juice into my beer. “Maybe Frank feels sorry for her because she lost her mother.”

  Cherilyn made another fajita. “I don’t know, access to the money gives Donna a motive, but that doesn’t explain why Betty Ann was killed. Do you think the murders are connected or just coincidence?”

  “This is a small town. I don’t think we could have two murders within a few days without them being connected. I just haven’t figured out how yet.”

  “Maybe there’s something on that camera you found.”

  “I don’t know
if JT will tell me anything. He’s pretty pissed at me for showing up at crime scenes so regularly.”

  “You certainly are making a habit of it. What’s this project we’re working on?” Cherilyn took her plate to the sink.

  We cleared the table. “To complement the bright southwest table decor, I found clear glass vases of various heights. I copied pictures of past Queens on onion skin parchment and we can glue them on the outside of the vases, spray them with a finish and put candles on the inside. We’ll set them on mirrors with bright jewels scattered on them. The faces will glow.”

  Cherilyn put dishes in the sink. “Disembodied glowing heads. Charming.”

  I threw a leftover tortilla at her. She ducked.

  “Okay, okay. Clever touch. I mean it.”

  She turned back to the sink just as I heard a crash out back. “What the hell was that?”

  I raced to the sliding doors, turned on the flood light and looked out. I couldn’t see anything. Sean came bolting in from the back room and we all bounded into the living room and out the front door.

  Sean pointed at the palm lying on the ground. On the white shed in the side yard someone had spray painted: “Murderer.” On the rented truck, “Witch” snaked down the side. Our front door said, “Get out of town, now!”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Cerilyn stood in the driveway looking at the spray-painted shed and house and car, red letters dripping venom and hate.

  “Witch? Who would do something this stupid. It almost sounds like a Donna move, but didn’t you say she apologized tonight?”

  I held onto Sean. “Not that I believed her, but yes, she was all sweetness and light.” It was more like something Brian would do or say, and I felt just like I had the day he threw me out.

  I walked around the truck, trying to think what I’d tell the rental company, much less letting Mumsie see what someone had done to her house. No one had done anything like this to her before I came. My presence put the entire family in danger. All I wanted was a life, and a way to make all of this disappear. What if I could twitch my nose and catch the pricks, make the house and everything clean again? Tears pushed against my eyes, threatening to spill over, then dripping down.

  Sean grabbed my hand and tugged on it. “Don’t cry, Mom. Do they hate us like Daddy did? You’ve been doing more of that magic he hated so much. He thinks Mumsie’s crazy, you know.”

  Cherilyn opened her mouth to ask me a dozen questions.

  I shook my head at her and squeezed Sean’s shoulder. “No one hates us, and I haven’t done anything. Some kids just didn’t have anything better to do. Let’s go in, and when its morning we’ll paint over the words and all the meanness will be gone.”

  “What about the fence? Look over on the other side of the house. Someone knocked it down.”

  I ran to the far end of the house, praying I didn’t step in any critter holes and sure enough, the privacy fence had been bashed in. That must have been the crash I heard. Whoever did it hadn’t just knocked the fence over, they had splintered it.

  My stomach felt as if I’d been punched in the gut. After we’d moved home, I tried to put away the fear. It was back.

  I called JT. The cop who came over walked around, looked at everything, jotted notes and said, “We’ll be in touch, Mrs. Cates. Tell Miss Lucinda that I’ll call her tomorrow.”

  “Aren’t you going to dust for prints? Put up crime scene tape? Something?”

  “The rough surface won’t hold prints well. Your gravel driveway eliminates tire tracks. The sandy soil is too dry to hold an impression. Everything is so torn up by the fence that we won’t get any useful information there either. There’s no paint can, nothing.” He walked back to his car.

  I stared at the mess, then we filed back into the house. I couldn’t bend my mind around what had happened. I was the helpless, abandoned person I’d been last spring.

  I’m home. I’m supposed to be safe here. But no one is safe, anywhere.

  Cass came home about that time. “Just like before, only worse. See why Daddy hates us? Come on, Sean. Let’s go watch a movie and pretend this didn’t happen.”

  Cherilyn scowled. “What the hell’s going on? What haven’t you told me?”

  I had never used my gifts as a kid or teen. By the time I discovered what I was able to do, I was grown, away from this town and married. Then I made the mistake of sharing with Brian, using the gifts to help our friends, neighbors. I took a deep breath. Let it out, drew another.

  “I’m a witch. Or at least that’s what some people would call me.”

  “Is that all? With Lucinda as a mother, I wouldn’t be surprised. In fact, I’d be shocked if you didn’t have some leanings.”

  “Not just that. I see things, know things.”

  Cherilyn grinned. “You sound like I see dead people, or something.”

  Tears stung, and I turned my back. “I’m not kidding. Brian threw us out of our home, left us on the side of the road, in the rain, because of me.”

  Her hand was warm on my shoulder. “Which makes him a bastard. If I’d known all that, he wouldn’t still be alive. Come to think of it, why is he? You never used to be passive.”

  “I had to create a life for Sean. Murder doesn’t lead to a stable existence. Neither was seeing the past, or future, or anything that would unsettle things more.”

  “I don’t see where lying to yourself has helped.”

  I described the episode at Duds for Less. “See why I hesitated to tell anyone? Is that bizarre enough for you? Leave before you too become contaminated.”

  “Now you just sound bitter, and that doesn’t become you. Besides, you can’t get rid of me that easily. Tell you what, I’m going. You sort out things with the kids. We’ll get together later this week and make centerpieces. Call me tomorrow.”

  * * *

  Mumsie stormed in as Cherilyn left. “What’s going on? Who created this mess? What have the kids been doing?”

  “What on earth are you talking about? You think my kids pulled off this crap? What spirits have you been talking to, or have you just been drinking them?”

  “Talihena don’t you dare talk to me like that. I’m sorry if you’re pissed off at life but you don’t get to turn around and jump on me.”

  We’d squared off like two cats.

  “Then you don’t make assumptions about my kids.”

  Mumsie sighed. “Tali, we’ll have to cut each other a little slack. Plus, the energy around you doesn’t feel right. I need to do a reading, an evil’s affecting our relationship.”

  I went into the large back bedroom with her. For some reason this room gets the bulk of the air conditioning and is always cool. Mumsie goes for blues and greens, candles and lace. The room is long with the bed at the front. At the far end is a sofa, coffee table, and, beneath the window, a card table covered with a green cloth and lace overlay.

  We drew the blinds, the evening’s fear affecting even this small act, and sat opposite each other at the table. Mumsie handed me the Tarot deck. “Shuffle the cards. Think about everything that’s happening. Do this for a couple of minutes.”

  I felt silly at first but soon lost myself in the mechanical action, letting thoughts flow through my mind, from that day Brian kicked us out, the murder, everything that happened since.

  Mumsie took the cards set them down in a stack on the table. Energy surrounded them. “Now, cut the cards, with your left hand, into four piles, left to right. Take the top card from the first pile and turn it over in front of you. Do the same with each of the piles.”

  I didn’t like this. “Okay. Now what?”

  “Ssh. Let me concentrate. You need to see a question in your head.”

  I heard outside noises, Sean’s video player, kids playing at the football field.

  She turned the cards over, her hands swift and sure. The Queen of Pentacles, Five of Cups, The Devil and Death. I remembered them all from when I used to play with the cards as a kid, when Mumsie wasn’t aro
und to catch me.

  “What does it mean? I just see cards with pretty artwork.” The scent of patchouli in the room was overwhelming.

  Mumsie touched the top one. “Queen of Pentacles. You are finding lots of self-doubt. Not surprising, but you have to believe in who you are and in your abilities. Next, the Five of Cups reminds you of deception and illusion. You dealt with that in the past and it’s creeping into your present life, becoming more evil.”

  “That’s a little melodramatic for Love, Texas.”

  She looked up from the cards. “So are murder and resident ghosts, but we have them, too. Now listen. The Devil reversed says don’t let yourself be intimidated. Don’t let past issues cloud your life now, or your views of others.”

  The candles on the dresser flickered. “What am I supposed to do with all of this? How does it help me? And what about the Death card? What’s with that?”

  “Just listen, Tali. Death is change. You’ve been full of self-pity.”

  The air stirred in the room but didn’t get colder. I opened my mouth, she held up her hand.

  “Tali, pay attention to what the cards tell you. You have to stop doing what doesn’t feel right. You can’t hide from who you are.”

  “I don’t know who I am anymore, what I’ve become.”

  “Time to change that. Just think about it. What the cards do is give you ideas to consider so you can decide which way to go in life. People think they can predict the future but that’s not the way it is. But they can give you an idea of what direction you are going, where you want to be, so you can make decisions.”

  “Does all this mean I should use my abilities to solve this murder?”

  “That’s up to you. I can’t tell you what to do, neither can the cards. Just know that it doesn’t look as if your life will improve if you do nothing. Plus, ignoring evil simply gives it permission to grow unchecked.

  “Now, I’m tired, and you need rest, too. Tomorrow I’ll call someone about the fence before I go into Dallas, and we can paint the shed after I get back. As for the rest, it’s up to you to deal with your own ghosts, living or dead.”