Witch at Odds: A Jinx Hamilton Mystery Book 2 (The Jinx Hamilton Mysteries)

by Juliette Harper

  “And I’ll tell you another thing,” he blustered, “I will have my murder avenged.”

  “I would expect no less of a man of your noble disposition,” Beau said smoothly. “The pursuit of justice is clearly an ideal near and dear to your heart.”

  Howard’s brow furrowed. He couldn’t tell if Beau was being sincere or not, but finally decided to err on the side of dignity — his own.

  “Exactly,” the mayor said with studied finality. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

  That was the opening I’d been looking for. “Well, we won’t keep you, Mr. Mayor,” I said pleasantly. “I know you have a lot of work to do.”

  Howard picked up on the brush-off, but he couldn’t really object without making it look like he had no reason for existing, which he kind of didn’t. He gave each of us a curt little nod and went striding off across the courthouse lawn fairly pulsating with self-importance.

  “That should take care of him for a while,” Beau said. “I think you have more than enough on your hands for the moment.”

  Seriously. I’m getting him one of those t-shirts that reads, “Got understatement?”

  17

  We treated ourselves to a lazy Sunday morning. Tori asked me to come down to her place for breakfast. We ate at the convertible coffee table in the tiny living room, keeping the conversation light. I mentioned that the micro apartment reminded me of our childhood tree house, which touched off a wave of happy nostalgia. I can’t even begin to estimate how many hours we spent up in that old mulberry tree reading and dreaming of what we’d do when we grew up.

  Not talking about ghosts and resurrected witches was the best thing we could have done. By the time I went upstairs to spend some quality time with the cats, I felt better than I had in days. Understand that when I say “quality time” I mean that I sprawled on the couch to watch Jessica Jones on Netflix with Winston, Xavier, Yule, and Zeke sprawled on top of me. It’s a sprawlage bonding thing with intermittent snoozing involved.

  Fortunately I thought to set an alarm on my phone, so I made it downstairs on schedule just a little before 1 o’clock. To my surprise, Darby was waiting by the front door with Tori.

  I shot her a raised eyebrow and she just shrugged, telegraphing the message “you deal with it” in nonverbal BFF speak. I supposed that was fair, since the little guy thought of me as more or less his employer.

  “Uh, hi, Darby,” I said. “Do you need something?”

  “I am accompanying you to the library,” he answered brightly.

  This wasn’t an idea he’d floated by us and I wasn’t so sure it was a good one. Not wanting to hurt the little guy’s feelings, I said neutrally, “Any particular reason why?”

  Darby looked confused. “Aren’t you planning to look for something that belonged to my master?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said, “that’s the idea.”

  “How will you know that what you find really belonged to him?” the brownie asked.

  I have to admit that question hadn’t occurred to me.

  “I, uh, well, I guess I’ll just pick it up and see if Alexander comes into to my mind,” I said lamely.

  “Do you know what my master looked like?” Darby asked.

  By this time, Tori could no longer contain herself. She laughed. “He’s got you dead to rights,” she said. “I’d say he’s riding shotgun.”

  Alarm filled Darby’s features. “Please don’t make me do that,” he protested. “I am afraid of firearms.”

  Tori patted him on the shoulder. “That’s not what ‘riding shotgun’ means,” she said. “It’s an expression for ‘you’re coming along.’”

  He was instantly on board. “Oh, good,” he said. “Then, please, may I ride the firearm?”

  It’s pretty much impossible to spend time with Darby and not fall in love with him. The non-sequiturs alone will do it.

  “Yes,” I said, looking down at him fondly, “you can come along, but you have to stay invisible and you can’t talk if anyone else is nearby. Understand?”

  Darby nodded enthusiastically and immediately popped out of sight.

  The three of us walked across the courthouse lawn toward the library. As we passed the Confederate monument, Tori said, “So this is where Howie did the whole ‘as God is my witness I’ll never be dead again’ speech?”

  “Yep,” I said, “floating right over the cannon.”

  “You have to admit that would make one heck of a campaign poster,” she said.

  “Do not encourage him,” I warned.

  When we walked in the building, the librarian, Linda Albert, greeted me by name, and I introduced her to Tori. We had already concocted our story. Tori claimed to be taking a history class with an online university. She was supposedly writing a paper on Scottish immigrants in the Carolinas and had gotten interested in Orkney Islanders in particular.

  “I ran across the name ‘Alexander Skea,’” she said, sounding as academic as a woman with magenta highlights can manage. “It was in a letter to his, uh, cousin, back in Scotland describing how he married a Cherokee woman who was from around here.”

  Linda frowned, making her half glasses bob up on her nose. “That’s quite some story,” she said. “If it’s true, I can’t imagine why I’ve never heard it. The name Skea is pretty unusual.”

  “I think his wife’s name was Knasgowa,” Tori supplied helpfully.

  “Oh!” Linda said, snapping her fingers. “I do know about her. She’s buried in the local cemetery under a real nice black tombstone. It’s an unusual marker for the period. I think she died around 1850 or thereabouts. The stone doesn’t give a last name though. That’s the Alexander you’re looking for?”

  “I think so,” Tori said. “Do you have any more information about her?”

  Linda shook her head. “Not really,” she said, “but you’re welcome to go through the files for the 1850s to see if you can come up with anything.”

  We followed her across the library and through a door emblazoned with a plaque that read “Briar Hollow Historical Association.” Linda disappeared into the shelves and started carrying out boxes, giving us white gloves to wear while we handled the contents.

  “You don’t have to stay with us,” I said, trying not to sound like I wanted her to leave, which I did. “We’ll be super careful to keep everything in order.”

  Linda looked uncertain for a minute and then seemed to come to a decision — the right one.

  “Okay,” she said. “I wouldn’t normally do this, but I trust you since you’re Fiona’s niece. I have an absolute ton of paperwork I need to get done today. If you all want coffee, just help yourselves to the machine in the front, but you can’t bring any food and drink in here. Okay?”

  We promised and waited until we could no longer hear her footsteps to say anything.

  When I was sure we were in the clear, I asked, in a low tone, “Darby, are you still here?”

  “Yes, Mistress,” his disembodied voice said from the area to the left of my chair.

  “Can you see the things we’re looking at from down there?”

  “No,” he said. “I am not tall enough.”

  Without being asked, Tori moved a third chair to the table, setting it away from the edge. We waited until the chair wobbled slightly, indicating that Darby was in place, and then we began to go through the boxes.

  There are far worse ways to spend a Sunday afternoon. We were both quickly engrossed by the letters, journals, and daguerreotypes in the boxes. Three hours passed, however, without one mention of Alexander and Knasgowa.

  Then, at the very bottom of the sixth box I took out a picture of a group of men wearing Masonic aprons. Beside me, Darby gasped. “That is my master!” he said.

  “Which one?” I asked.

  Darby made himself visible and carefully pointed to a tall, handsome man in the back row. Alexander Skea stood head and shoulders over his Lodge brothers, looking at the camera with grave dignity, but there was also a glint
in his eye that betrayed good humor.

  On instinct, I turned the photo over, and sure enough, there were names penciled on the back. Alexander, however, was labeled “unknown.”

  “What was your master like, Darby?” I asked, suddenly curious.

  The brownie stared wistfully at the photo. “Master Alexander was kind,” he said finally, loving sadness filling his voice. “When he laughed the sun in the sky grew brighter.”

  “You miss him, don’t you?” Tori asked.

  “I miss Master Alexander and Mistress Knasgowa,” Darby said. Then he looked at us with loyalty in his eyes. “But I am very happy in my new home.”

  See what I mean? Completely adorable and he loves to cook and clean. Put another 3 or 4 feet on Darby and he could be Bachelor material.

  “Do you get any images off the photo?” Tori asked.

  Closing my eyes, I cleared my mind, opening a space for impressions to enter and solidify, but there was nothing.

  After several minutes, I shook my head and gave up. “Nothing,” I said. “Maybe it’s not working because the photo didn’t actually belong to Alexander.”

  Tori chewed her lip and then something occurred to her. “Maybe it’s the gloves,” she suggested. “You know, blocking the signal or something?”

  I peeled off the white gloves and gingerly picked up the photo again, holding it by the edges. The last thing I wanted to do was leave fingerprints.

  As soon as my skin touched the aged cardboard, I felt a little frisson of energy, but when I closed my eyes, I didn’t see Alexander Skea. Instead, I was in a Masonic Lodge hall during a ceremony. My eyes snapped open instantly and I dropped the picture.

  “What happened?” Tori asked.

  “I got an image of the Lodge hall,” I answered. “I’m not supposed to be in there.”

  Both of our dads are Masons, so I knew the meetings are conducted in secret.

  Okay, settle down. Don’t go all conspiracy theory on me. Other than having fantastic potluck suppers and wearing silly hats if they go on to become Shriners, Masons are totally harmless.

  My reaction to the fleeting vision was just a matter of my respecting a tradition kept by the men in my family. Besides, I’d had just enough time to glance around the meeting room in my mind. Alexander Skea hadn’t been there.

  We’d gone through all the boxes Linda brought out to us and it was after 4 o’clock. It didn’t seem likely that we’d find anything else today, so Tori and I agreed to give up for the time being.

  Before I returned the picture of Alexander and his Lodge brothers to the proper box, however, I took out my phone and snapped several photos front and back, including a close-up of Alexander himself.

  To make sure the pictures were in focus, I quickly thumbed through them on the phone, only to stop when one name at the bottom of the list jumped out at me: James McGregor. It took some flipping back and forth, but I finally figured out that he was the man in in the center of the image. By his name, the letters “WM” indicated he had been the Worshipful Master or head of the Lodge at the time the group posed for the photo. Could he be Chase’s ancestor?

  We thanked Linda on our way out. Since the switch to Daylight Savings Time had already happened, which my dad calls “damned government time,” there was still plenty of light left in the day.

  As we approached the shop, Chase came out the front door wheeling his bike. He greeted me with a hopeful, “Sure you don’t want to change your mind?”

  I glanced at Tori, who gave me a meaningful look that fairly screamed, “Go!”

  “Can you give me, like, 10 minutes to change and get my bike?” I asked.

  Chase looked like he’d just won the lottery, which kinda made my heart do that “pitty patter” thing. The bike ride would be good exercise, but honestly? I can get all the cardio I need just looking at Chase McGregor.

  “You bet!” he grinned. “Take as much time as you like. We have plenty of daylight left.”

  Most of my reason for running up and getting changed at lightning speed was the prospect of an outing with Chase, but I did have an ulterior motive. I wanted to find out if my hunch about James McGregor was correct. The last place I expected to get a lead on Alexander Skea was right next door, but I certainly wasn’t going to turn it down.

  18

  As we pushed away from the store on our bikes, Chase suggested heading south out of town. The hills are a little less brutal at that end of the county, and we could pick up a bike trail through the woods about three miles past the city limits.

  I knew that Chase rode the tougher routes up into the mountains routinely, but let’s just say that even though I’m in pretty good shape, I’m hardly training for the Tour de France. While I was upstairs, he’d switched his lean, mean road bike out for a more casual hybrid with suspension like my own ride that would handle the forest path.

  We pedaled along companionably, waving at townsfolk out in their yards mowing the grass or just sitting in lawn chairs drinking sweet tea and passing the time of day. A couple of dogs trotted along after us in half-hearted pursuit, but neither one of them even bothered to bark.

  Before we’d gone a mile, I was already reveling in that marvelous feeling of freedom that always comes over me on a bicycle. I love the smooth feel of pavement rolling under the wheels and the way the breeze from the forward motion picks up my hair and blows it back.

  I know, I know. I’m supposed to be wearing a helmet, but what can I say? I ran with sparklers when I was kid and drank out of the garden house. When you take those kinds of risks and live, you’re a thrill seeker for life.

  Chase and I had ridden together before and to our delight discovered we can strike a good matching pace. The first time we took the bikes out, I was ridiculously pleased when Chase said admiringly, “Hey! You can keep up!”

  I know. It could have been a condescending comment. I guess you would have had to hear the inflection he put on the words to really understand that it wasn’t. In the couple of months I’d been in Briar Hollow, I’d observed that while everyone knows Chase and he has some casual friends like my contractor, Mark Haskell, the guy is really kind of a loner.

  When he said that about me being able to keep up, I instantly understood that Chase was pleased to have someone to ride with, and I think a little extra pleased that that someone was me.

  As we neared the outskirts of town, Chase told me about his week in the cobbler’s shop and I talked about ordering the espresso machine and our plans for the coffee bar. By the time we turned into the forest, I felt energized and alive, enjoying the sights and sounds of nature around me.

  At the 10-mile mark, Chase suggested we stop at an overlook on the trail right by a cascading waterfall. He reached in his saddlebags and brought out an apple, which he sliced with a folding knife, using the same implement to divide up a hunk of sharp cheddar cheese.

  I wasn’t expecting an impromptu picnic, but the instant I saw the food, my stomach growled. I hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast that morning.

  “What were you all doing over at the library?” Chase asked, munching on an apple slice.

  The cardinal rule of fabricated stories is don’t mix it up too much.

  “Tori is taking an online class,” I said, faithfully sticking to the story du jour. “It’s kind of a history, genealogy, ancestry thing. She was looking for some information on a guy from the Orkney Islands named Alexander Skea who settled around here back in the 1800s.”

  For just an instant, I thought Chase had heard the name before. An odd look came over his face when I said Alexander’s name, but then Chase grimaced in annoyance and swatted at a fly buzzing around his head.

  “I like everything about the outdoors except bugs,” he grumbled. “Especially the ones trying to steal my food.”

  “Aw, come on now,” I laughed, “we’re the ones invading their territory.”

  “I cannot adopt a liberal position where insects are concerned,” he said, slapping at the buzzing f
ly again.

  When his personal air space was once again clear, Chase said, “So, did Tori find what she was looking for?”

  “Yes and no,” I answered. “She found a picture that she thinks has the guy in it.”

  “How does she know what he looked like?” Chase asked.

  I walked right into that one, forcing myself to expand our fictional backstory a little bit.

  “The picture kind of looks like one she saw online,” I improvised.

  “Really?” Chase said. “Where?”

  “Oh, you know, one of those places where people make their family trees,” I said vaguely.

  Before he had a chance to ask me anything else, I added, “Want to see the picture?”

  He looked at me suspiciously. “Am I going to have to report you to Linda for stealing things from the Historical Association?” he asked with a fake, disapproving glower.

  Laughing, I said, “Of course not. I took a picture of the picture.”

  Which technically wasn’t against the rules either, because I hadn’t used the flash.

  Digging my phone out of my pocket, I found the copy of the group photo and handed the device to Chase.

  He looked at the screen with interest, and then observed ruefully, “They don’t look like they were having much fun, do they?”

  “I read somewhere that people had to sit still for a long time to have their picture taken back then,” I replied. “It’s why people in old photos always look so miserable.”

  “These guys sure qualify for that description,” he agreed.

  “I don’t guess you recognize any of them, do you?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

  “Hey!” Chase cried with mock outrage. “Just how old do you think I am, anyway?”

  “I’m just giving you a hard time,” I said. “And I’m not telling you the whole truth. See that guy there in the middle? The inscription penciled on the back of the photo says his name was James McGregor. I was wondering if he might be related to you.”

  Chase used his thumb and forefinger to enlarge the image, staring at it more closely. “Well, would you look at that,” he said finally. “I think you might be right. My great-great-something grandfather was named James McGregor. I think my dad had a picture of him.”