The Witch's Mind

by Iris Kincaid

  “Also not the facilities, I would imagine,” Doctor Svenson mused. “You need state-of-the-art storage facilities for the organs and a top-quality operating room.”

  “Those I can provide. I can get to work on putting in place all the technology and equipment needed. What I don’t have yet is the surgeon. Can I interest you in giving it some consideration? Just a month would be absolutely wonderful. And . . . and to sweeten the deal, after your month is over, maybe I can treat you to a second month, all-expenses-paid in your favorite destination? Paris? London? Florence? Greek Islands? Maui? You name it.”

  Melody had really perked up, following the conversation with great interest. “You know, I think I could probably get a two-month sabbatical off work. What do you think, honey? You have such a special skill. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to share with the world?”

  With Lilith Hazelwood’s body parts dwindling and retirement looming, Doctor Svenson had been wanting to see for some time what the next phase of his life would look like. And now he knew.

  “With you by my side, I think I’m up to any challenge,” he told his wife. “Now, young man, I gather you have a lot of financial resources, yes? So . . . I do have a few useful organ and tissue samples that I would like to bring with me. It will be a very expensive transfer to keep them well-preserved. Is this possible?”

  “All things are possible. Oh, this is fantastic! I can’t wait to get things set up,” Griffin said ecstatically.

  The four of them chatted at great length about this upcoming medical adventure. Eventually, the doctor and Melody left to start making some extensive preparations.

  “Are you aware that you just talked me right out of a job?” Ruby demanded with mock irritation.

  “I’m sure you did a great job for Dr. Svenson. But that’s just the tip of what you’re capable of. You weren’t meant to spend your entire life as an assistant. You are the epicenter. You’re the real deal.” It was the corporate equivalent of Nobody puts Baby in the corner. Classic dialogue from a leading man to his leading lady.

  *****

  Their cozy brunch was finally brought to a close by a call from Finn Cochran.

  “Hey, I just thought you should know that Irma Taggart has been put in the hospital. Heart attack, I think. Anyway, I remember that you were giving her a hand with things and that you’d probably want to stop by and see how she’s doing.”

  “Of course. And . . . her cat! Who’s going to be feeding her cat?”

  “You, I suspect,” Finn suggested.

  Griffin dropped Ruby off at the hospital, not at all surprised at her attentiveness to an elderly woman whom she barely knew. When Ruby entered Irma’s room, the old woman’s eyes were closed, and she looked frail and vulnerable. Ruby was relieved to see those eyes fly open as she dragged a chair over to sit next to Irma.

  “Hey, Irma. How are you feeling?”

  “Ruby. I’m so happy to see you. But you have to leave right away. Right now.”

  “Oh, okay. I suppose you’re thinking about Rosie.”

  “Yes. That is exactly right. She hasn’t eaten since last night. She must be so hungry.”

  “Irma, I gotta tell you, there is no way that cat could starve in under twenty-four hours. She’s got some serious reserve fat for these kinds of emergencies. But I will head over there right now. Is there anything else that I can do for you?”

  “My bills. My bank deposit. I don’t want anything to be late.”

  “I’ll take care of all those things. Open up the bills, the mail. Make sure that everything that needs to go out goes out. And I’ll fill out checks and bring them to you tomorrow for you to sign. How does that sound?”

  “That would be wonderful, Ruby. Thank you so much. You really set my mind at ease. Now, off you go.”

  There was no convincing Irma that another two hours wouldn’t be a grueling deprivation for her chubby little Rosie. So Ruby left immediately to help set Irma’s mind at ease and headed straight for the house.

  Inside, on the floor in front of the mail slot, was a small stack of mail. And there were more letters on the living room table, where Irma generally tended to her paperwork. Ruby didn’t want to be intrusive, but she also didn’t want to miss anything. Best to open everything and then figure out what required action.

  The dividends check was for $4,500 dollars. That’s a nice chunk of change coming in every month. Hmm. And the capital was over $800,000. Irma was fixed very nicely. Ruby was vaguely aware that she had been widowed for almost two decades. Perhaps this had once been jointly owned with her late husband.

  Then Ruby opened up the bank statement. She certainly didn’t want to be writing checks against money that wasn’t there. But there was plenty of money there—over $400,000 in her checking account. That was insane. You don’t keep $400,000 in a low-interest checking account!

  “It doesn’t get much easier than this,” Lilith said gleefully, looking over Ruby’s shoulder. “Checkbooks, bank account. Old lady in the hospital.”

  I hope you’re not implying what I think you’re implying. You are not suggesting that I steal from this poor old lady, are you?”

  “She’s far from poor. In fact, you could take a quarter-million dollars off her and she still wouldn’t be poor. It’s there for the taking. What you need, an engraved invitation?”

  “What a horrible thing to even think of.”

  “Aren’t you going to be out of a job soon? I should think that you should have more care for your future. Besides, you know exactly how she intends to squander this money after she is gone. She’s leaving it all to her cat. I was uncommonly fond of my cats, and they were far more talented and useful than that creature she fawns on. But none of them required a million dollars for their upkeep. That’s ridiculous and you know it. So, with no one else having a legitimate claim on the money . . .”

  “It’s out of the question. I could never steal money from anyone, much less a helpless old lady.”

  “These scruples are nonsensical. No one else would hesitate if they were in your shoes.”

  “Plenty of people would.”

  “No, you’re simply projecting your own prudish values. Not one in a thousand people would resist this easy money.”

  “That’s absolutely not true. I can give you a name right now. Sam Singleton. Sam helped Irma out with her bills all the time. He had access to her deposit checks, to her bills, and he knew exactly where she put her checkbook. He could’ve really done a number on her. But he didn’t.”

  “Didn’t he?”

  “No. He helped her out every possible way that he could, and he was never tempted to steal from her.”

  “Wasn’t he?” Lilith extended a hazy finger in the direction of Irma’s bank statements. “Why don’t you take a closer look?”

  So Ruby did. And what she discovered gave her a queasy feeling in the stomach. Irma’s $4,500 dividend deposit extended back for several years. But in the past three months, they had suddenly been reduced to $1,500 deposits.

  It seemed as if the additional $3,000 had been taken away as cash right at the bank counter, while the remainder was put into Irma’s account. There were five separate deposits of $1,500, and then quite recently, there was another $4,500 deposit, corresponding with the mailing that Ruby had just assisted Irma with. But there was $15,000 missing here.

  “What was that you were saying about Sam?” Lilith gloated.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Martine Cadet’s talent did not begin and end with weather forecasting and love predictions. She knew how to hack her way into highly protected bank databases. Together, she and Ruby looked at Sam Singleton’s local bank accounts, searching for answers and hoping to find nothing.

  “I’m not seeing an extra $15,000 here,” Martine said. “But, wait. Here’s something. It’s a $3,000 cash deposit, and then six days later, a $3,000 check withdrawal. It looks like a mistake. He left a paper trail.”

  “Can we find out who the check was to?” Ruby asked.
>
  “Sure. That’s easy. Pay to the order of Kristin Byrne. Who’s that?”

  It was Sam’s former coworker, the postal employee he had gotten fired after her hangover and mail dumping. But why was he giving her $3,000? And how about the other $12,000 cash? She seemed like a very likely recipient for that as well. But that didn’t make any sense. Weren’t those two adversaries? Hopefully, Kristin would be in a talkative mood.

  *****

  “Yeah, Sam gave it to me. A friend of mine at work told him that I was facing eviction from my apartment. I had no savings, no unemployment check, and no one who was willing to even give me an interview. I was about to be homeless.

  “So, when Sam heard about it, he was feeling pretty guilty about ruining my life. He came over to talk to me. Asked if it would help if he could give me a few hundred dollars or so every month. I said, yeah, right. That’ll help me to buy a sandwich every other day when I’m living in the park without a roof over my head. I needed some serious money to stay here.

  “So, he goes away, and about a week later, he comes back with $3,000 for me. And he says that he’s going to try to do his best to get $3,000 to me every month. I couldn’t believe it. It was the exact right amount of money to replace what I’d lost, especially considering that it was under the table. After taxes out of my paycheck, I’d always had about $3,000 left. Although, I sure didn’t see how he was to keep it up forever. But he did come back, month after month. He kept his promise.”

  “Did you ever ask where the money was coming from?”

  “I wondered, of course. And I did ask once. He said I didn’t want to know, and he was probably right. So I stopped asking. Why? Where was it coming from?”

  “From an old lady’s banking account. Sam was stealing money from her to give to you.”

  Kristin groaned. “That is not what I wanted. I needed to stay alive. I needed to survive. But that’s awful. I can’t believe he would even do such a thing. On the other hand, where would I be if he hadn’t?

  “Right where I am right now, that’s where. Sam is dead, the money has stopped, and now I’m right back to where I started. Two weeks away from rent due, with no way to pay it. What am I going to do?”

  “I’m sorry, Kristin. You’re in a really bad spot. But I appreciate your telling me exactly what was going on with Sam. It was important to know. And I wish you the best of luck. I really do.”

  “I haven’t had a drink in sixty-four days. I was so determined to start over. But how can I?”

  Ruby left a down-in-the-dumps Kristin to find a chastened, ghostly Sam Singleton hovering outside.

  “Now, you know the worst of it. You know that I was a philandering cad, and now you know that I was a thief.”

  “Sam, there’s no good excuse for what you did. But I guess I’d be madder at you if you had taken it for yourself. You didn’t start taking it until you became aware of Kristin’s situation, and then you gave everything you took to her. Again . . . not right. And I feel badly for her too. But Sam, you took money that Irma Taggart wanted to leave to her cat.”

  “Precisely. I took money that wasn’t going to help out a person or a family or human beings. It was just going to help keep her spoiled cat in the lap of luxury. And giving it to Kristin seemed like such a better use of the money. Of course, that decision was not mine to make. It was an error in judgment, perhaps.”

  “It was more than an error in judgment, Sam. Don’t you see? Irma loves her cat more than she loves anything on this earth, and you did something that threatened the cat’s future survival and prosperity. You know how she must’ve felt about you when she discovered that?” Ruby thought back to Lilith’s violently harsh response after finding out that her familiar had been accidentally killed.

  “It was a fatal error in judgment, Sam. Irma was prepared to do anything conceivable to stop you from stealing from her cat’s future.”

  “You can’t mean . . . you don’t mean . . . surely, you can’t suspect . . .”

  Ruby nodded sadly. “You messed with the wrong eighty-six-year-old woman.”

  *****

  By the time that Ruby went back to the hospital to confront Irma, the nurse at the front desk had sad news to share.

  “I’m afraid that Mrs. Taggart passed away just a couple of hours ago. I’m glad that you were able to get that one last final visit in with her today. But she’s gone now. You can go in and spend a few quiet moments with her if you’d like.”

  Gone. Already. Ruby sighed and headed sadly into Irma’s room. There she found two ghosts, Sam Singleton and Irma Taggart, perched on the side of Irma’s hospital bed, having a congenial conversation and happy that she had come to join them.

  “Ruby, I knew that you were a smart girl,” Irma’s ghost said. “I knew that you would figure it all out, in good time. And in fact, the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. I do appreciate Sam stopping by and giving me a proper apology for his misbehavior.”

  “I absolutely am so sorry for what I did, Irma. I just didn’t stop to think about what your cat meant to you. She really was your whole family, wasn’t she?”

  “She certainly was. So sweet, and so devoted to me. But, Sam was just telling me about that friend of his who was going to be kicked out of her apartment. Now that’s no excuse.”

  “No. No excuse,” Sam echoed.

  “But I understand why he did it. To help out someone in need. I always thought that Sam was a good man, and I think I was right. I shouldn’t have killed you, Sam. I should’ve just demanded an explanation or even called the police. But I let my emotions get the better of me. And I should never have ordered that poison.

  “Incidentally, I do have a computer, Ruby. But I hid it. I didn’t want the police to be able to look up my browsing record—there were quite a few poison searches. And then I was finally able to get the dimethylmercury online. Imagine that! The things you can buy through the mail . . .”

  “I have no one to blame but myself,” Sam said. “You wouldn’t have done what you did if I hadn’t done what I did. And now I have to live with the consequences—except the consequences are, I don’t get to live. So be it. I would’ve arrived here sooner or later. We all do. But, I’m feeling a whole lot better now that I know that you forgive me.”

  “I really appreciate your forgiving me too, Sam,” Irma said sincerely.

  It was an afterlife lovefest.

  “Irma, you didn’t happen to write down any kind of confession before you died, did you?” Ruby wondered.

  “Oh, no, dear. But I give you permission to let the police know what I did.”

  Finn Cochran was probably the only police officer who would believe a confession that Ruby had obtained from a dead killer. In all likelihood, Sam Singleton’s murder was going to remain a cold case.

  “One last thing, dear. When you took that stray cat from my house, I couldn’t help but think that you were just such a caring, responsible person when it came to cats. Before Sam died, I did make the foolish mistake of making him the executor of my will, back when I was entrusting him with my bills and income.

  “But after his death, I changed the name of the executor to you. Because the executor’s going to be responsible for setting up the welfare of little Rosie. Finding her a wonderful apartment. Finding her the proper custodian—a loving and fully committed custodian. You’ll do that for me, won’t you? They will have the $4,500 dividend check to pay for all of Rosie’s expenses, and of course, they’ll be able to live alongside her. You’ll do that for me, won’t you?”

  How could Ruby say no?

  *****

  With Sam Singleton’s murder solved, Ruby was able to breathe a huge sigh of relief. After a long walk from the hospital to the center of town, she stopped at a pleasant sidewalk café for a cup of tea and to sit and reflect on the peaceful and satisfying resolution of a murder case. It sounded a bit strange, but it was just as well that Irma had died right before her crime was uncovered. Nobody wants to see an eighty-six-year-ol
d lady thrown into jail.

  “Ruby! I’m back. I’m back.”

  It was Erin Sweeney, who had just returned from the Big Easy to meet her biological family. Ruby leapt up to give her a big hug, and they settled down for a joyful reunion.

  “Tell me all about your family. And New Orleans. I hope they were wonderful. Where they wonderful? Was it awkward? Did you like them enough to see them again? Are you going to stay in touch?”

  “Yes. No. Yes. Yes.” Erin laughed. “It was pretty fantastic, actually. They were so excited to meet me, which felt terrific. I slept on a bunkbed underneath my seven-year-old niece. She wanted to stay up and talk all night. There’s so much to tell. So much to tell. However, that can wait for another day. Martine has been telling me some interesting things about you and Griffin Wynter. We are talking about the Griffin Wynter, aren’t we? Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Oh, my God. You certainly had . . . quite a night, didn’t you?”

  “Stop reading my mind. Stop reading my mind. Stop reading my mind,” Ruby protested.

  “Okay, hmm, how shall I put this? I leave for two short weeks. What on earth has been happening here? Now, spill the dirt, because you’re not gonna be able to stop thinking about it, and I’ll find out anyway. Tell me everything.”

  Ruby was very unused to having an exciting, eventful life to report on. It was a gratifying change of pace to share the exhilarating twists and turns her life had just taken with such a special friend.

  One person who had no interest in hearing about Ruby’s romantic euphoria was Lilith Hazelwood. She had learned from repeated experience that love and romance rendered the transplant heirs virtually useless to her. It undermined their capacity for wrath and vengeance. But Ruby was too valuable to give up on. And the girl had given her word. Lilith was going to hold her to it. It was time for extreme measures.