by SM Reine
“Hate me all you want, but I need to fix this.”
“You should have fixed it before you followed your naughty little bits over a cliff edge and took my sister with you.”
It’s amazing how quickly grief could turn to anger. Or maybe that’s just the way we drunks did it. “Look, just tell me where they think she is and I’ll be out of here.”
“Yeah, like I trust you to blunder into the scene while your deranged ex is holding a little baby hostage?”
“I need to do something to help.”
“You’re still a selfish bastard, even after all that’s happened?” She said it with a sense of dubious amazement. “You wreck four lives, and all you can think about is absolving your guilt?”
Damn right. I killed the beer and headed for the liquor cabinet. The Mead family was upstanding, the father in real estate, mother heading a non-profit arts organization, and they were the kind who socialized. Me, I never had a liquor cabinet. I could never own two bottles at the same time without emptying one and a half.
“You haven’t changed a bit,” Tabitha said, and it was almost like Amanda was sitting there, her ghost accusing me in a way her living spirit never would have dared.
The whiskey looked good in a glass and even better heading toward my mouth. Which was good, because it kept my tongue from spewing enough venom to get me kicked out before I got what I came for.
Her tone changed again as I refilled my glass, high and neat and heavy in my hand. Tabitha was riding her own emotional roller coaster, and she’d barely sipped her beer. “Amanda loved you so much. Even though she knew you were an asshole. But she saw something sweet in you, something good and hopeful that the world needed. That’s why she kept the baby.”
That cut me in mid-swallow. “Thank you.”
We were silent for a moment. I was gathering my thoughts; she was staring at me, her eyes wide and blue and shiny. Without hardly any forethought, my mouth opened and these words poured out, blowing my script all to hell: “I loved her, too. God, I loved her. She was so wonderful. We were perfect for each other. She...she never let me explain. I would have given up everything for her, everything in the world. I wouldn’t have gotten serious if I had any doubts, but I knew I was divorcing my wife. It wasn’t just an affair. It was a relationship. She was the love of my life.”
Tabitha was still guarded. “Are you divorced now?”
“No, separated. My wife can sometimes display a temper not found on mentally balanced people. I didn’t discover this temper until we had been married for some time. Quite frankly, she scares me, and when I met Amanda I knew I had the strength to go through with the divorce. Last month I talked to my attorney about it, about how I could do it quickly and get out of the relationship. I could see Gerda doing something mean, horribly mean, and that scared me. And I had this little dream of finding Amanda and winning her back.”
“Albert Shipway as a dreamer. That’s a new one.”
“I don’t see a badge on that tank top.”
“You know what they say about cops. We take the job home with us. Especially when it’s personal.”
I tossed down another couple of ounces of eighty proof. I’d need it for the next part. “There’s a little bit more to it.”
“Besides what you told the detectives this afternoon?” She caught my look. “Yeah, I read the report. And obstructing justice is a pretty serious charge.”
“Great. After you get done frying me, you can scrape me off the chair with a spatula and give me a lethal injection.”
“Have a drink, Albert. You look like you could use one.”
I slammed the glass down nearly hard enough to crack it. “That thing I didn’t tell the detectives? I think it’s all tied in with this, but I didn’t want them to think I was nuts.”
“Hey, I’m a Mead. We can handle weird. Or maybe Amanda didn’t tell you everything about us.”
The mention of her name sent another spike through my heart, and even the whiskey couldn’t blunt the pain. “I can’t do this.”
“The clock’s ticking, Shipway. Every second you waste feeling sorry for yourself is a second Amanda’s child might get closer to death. If he’s not dead already.”
“Fine. How’s this? A crazy old woman came up to me on the street today and said I’d meet my greatest fear. Since then, I found out Amanda was killed, that I was a father, and....”
Her face was blank and eyes like Arctic ice. No more judgment, just waiting for me to get done so she could make up her mind.
“And she put a curse on me. I think. No, I’m certain. Something from my childhood, something she couldn’t have known about unless she was clairvoyant or something.”
“A curse?” Her face didn’t crack in the slightest.
“Yeah, and the reason I came here is because I thought she looked familiar. Down the hall, that photo from what looks like a family reunion. The little old woman in the center–”
“Nana.”
“Yes. Well, Amanda had mentioned that your mother had died when you two were very young.”
“Yes, when I was eight and Amanda was twelve. Nana raised us.”
“Your grandmother. Amanda told me she was different, and I suspect that was why Amanda strived so hard to conform and appear straight-laced. She was so afraid of turning out like that. You know....”
“A witch?”
Witch. The word seemed like it should never be uttered in the real world. It was a word that belonged in Halloween movies, with black cats and broomsticks and bubbling cauldrons. Yet Tabitha presented it as scientific fact.
I continued, a little embarrassed for both of us. “It’s really important that I know this, and I will tell you what I’m getting at and what has happened to me in just a minute.”
“I told you, we don’t have a minute. Nana’s a witch. And Amanda could have been, but she chose the right-handed path.”
I watched her lips for any sign of a smirk, but all I saw was grim impatience and determination. Nothing to do but spill it all.
“I got home and there were all these...mice, just like the one that killed my best friend when we were kids.”
“That’s not good.”
“Tell me about it.”
“No, it means she really did a put a curse on you. And when Nana puts on a curse on you, it usually sticks.”
“Ah, so this is a family thing, right?”
“Every family has secrets, Shipway.”
“Does your grandmother—Nana—live in the area?”
“In an old folk’s home in Fullerton, about ten miles from here. But if she wanted out, she has her ways.”
“Let me guess. Magic spells, mumbo jumbo, cloak of invisibility.”
“If I know Nana, she blames you for Amanda’s death.”
“You’re serious.”
Tabitha took another sip of her beer, leaving a dot of foam on her nose. Ordinarily it would have been incredibly cute, but right now all it did was give me a few seconds to get grounded again.
“Tell me everything, and don’t treat me like a cop,” she said. “Treat me like Amanda’s sister. I have a right to know what we’re dealing with.”
Great. Permission to sound like a lunatic.
So I told Tabitha of the events of the day, starting with my encounter with the old lady at lunch, my feeling of losing a minute of my life, of the old lady mentioning my fear of mice, of the old lady saying just what would be done and that she would then be content but never satisfied. And then I told her that something about the old lady alarmed me, and I had indeed thought of Amanda. And then the cops delivering the guillotine blow of Amanda’s murder. And my call to the Mead house, knowing Tabitha was my last link to learning the truth. And then I told her of the mice swarm.
“That weird voodoo doll they found at the crime scene,” Tabitha said. “That doesn’t sound like Nana’s style.”
“So, what now?” I asked, still expecting her to laugh me out of the house, or maybe follow through on
her threat to kill me. Revenge seemed to run in the Mead family.
“Your wife. What’s her name again?”
“Gerda Shipway.”
“Sounds like a real bitch.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“Well, the detectives had a lead up in Oregon, something about her in-law’s property out in the sticks. But she’d never do the expected, right?”
“One thing about Gerda, she doesn’t play by the rules.”
“And neither does her husband,” she said, spearing me with those eyes that were as blue as Scandanavian skies and as sharp as a February icicle.
I said, “Like you said, we’re wasting time.”
“I have never told another living soul about my nana, about what she can do. Neither had Amanda, I’m sure of it. Plus, our nana made us promise to never tell anyone.”
“Or she’d curse you, too?”
“Only if she had to.”
I had lied to Amanda, but only about one thing: my marriage. Maybe that was a big thing to hide, but the bigger truth was more important. I loved her. But I had a feeling Tabitha wouldn’t tolerate lies, and would actually see right through them, whether due to her cop training or her innate ability to know things she shouldn’t know. And that veiled threat in her voice inspired me to lay out the rest of it.
Of course, Amanda had apparently kept a secret or two from me.
“Okay,” I said. “It looks like there’s only one person who knows more than she’s saying.”
“Nana.”
I reached for the bottle but her sharp command stopped me.
“No. You’ve had enough.”
Good. The booze wasn’t working, and that scared me almost as much as the mice and Gerda and fatherhood did.
9
“I’ve seen what Nana can do,” Tabitha said. “It’s powerful. We have to find her as soon as we can and make her stop this. Because you’re not a killer. I know killers, and you don’t have it in you.”
“Thanks. I guess.”
Like the two detectives, her instinct had been to look for the smoking crotch. Women who got dumped usually had relatively healthy ways to get over it, such as eating lots of chocolate, engaging in “What an asshole” crying jags with their girlfriends, and marrying boring but wealthy accountants. Men tended to engage in “If I can’t have her, no one else will” thinking, because of course we were all generously endowed alpha dogs that any woman would be crazy to reject. Murder was rarely cold-blooded, and, like witchcraft, was usually kept between loved ones.
I was glad Tabitha was over killing me. However, curiosity was eating at me. “How is your nana able to do something like this?”
“I didn’t go down that path, either.” Tabitha was already getting up and moving out of the living room and into the hallway, raising her voice as she did. “So I really don’t know. It’s probably safe to say that very few people in the goddamned world know how to do what she did.”
“If she did it,” I said, not sure if she heard my voice, for she had disappeared down the hall. There I was again, clinging to the hope that it was all my imagination. Ironically, being cursed might actually give me a better chance of figuring out where Gerda and my kid were.
We’ll see.
A moment later, Tabitha returned, carrying Amanda’s black woolen trench coat. The sight of the coat took my breath away. Amanda had worn that coat religiously. With even the merest hint of nip to the air, the coat would go on.
Tabitha didn’t notice that the blood had probably drained from my face. Which was good, for I was suddenly plagued with grief and memories and was sure my voice would have sounded like a croaking frog.
“My grandmother did it, all right,” Tabitha said. “This is her mark. I’ve seen it before.”
I suddenly found myself laughing. I was even holding my belly, feeling it heave upward over and over as I laughed, booze gurgling a little inside me. Through streaming eyes I saw Tabitha looking at me with her hands on her hips. She didn’t look surprised or upset—at least that’s what I thought—but looked concerned, as if she thought I might have finally surrendered to stress and disbelief.
And her concern was completely substantiated by my loud, deep barks of laughter. I could not help myself. The thought of someone having a special mark of ownership to a curse just tickled my funny bone with a knife tip, even if I was apparently the subject of one of the curses.
God, it was all just so insane.
The tears of laughter streaming down my face soon turned to tears of pain, for the full realization of what had happened to Amanda came over me, the complete fear she must have faced when she knew she was going to die by the hand of someone so heartless and evil.
Most of us imagine facing our last moments on earth with those we love around us, comforting us when we finally breathe our last; at least, that’s what I’ve imagined. I pictured Amanda, her throat slit, unable to draw in a last breath, and looking up at her grinning killer, wondering if her infant was going to be next. That was no way to die.
I don’t think I was crying as loud as I had been laughing, but I must have looked like a wet train wreck. The next thing I realized, Tabitha had her arm around me, a muscular, firm grip that provided comfort and sympathy. And damned if she wasn’t crying, too, her resolve finally finding an excuse to break. I took her in my arms as we shuddered and blubbered, both crying over a person we’d both loved, but in far different ways.
Or maybe there is no different way to love. Maybe all love springs from the same source and we just give it different names and categories. The thing about love was it didn’t give you a choice. That’s why I’d fallen for Amanda knowing it would come to bad news, one way or another. The happy ending was just a lie I’d built to cover a lie, because I knew she would never be able to trust me once she found out about Gerda.
“You wouldn’t have done anything to her, would you, Al?” It was a question someone would ask when they already knew the answer; the kind of question a person would ask when they needed to be reassured one last time. And she’d used my first name the way Amanda would. I felt almost absolved, at least in Tabitha’s eyes.
I pushed myself off her chest quickly, noticing the softness of her lower chest against my lips and chin, even as I was shocked by her question. “My God, never!”
“I’m sorry. It’s just that I personally know that my grandmother has...ways of knowing certain things.” Tabitha looked away from me. She stood and began pacing the small square of carpet that lay between the coffee table and the fireplace. The fireplace looked well-used and dirty. Amanda, as I well knew, loved the sound and smell of a fire, even if the weather didn’t exactly call for it.
“My grandmother, to put it bluntly, has the means of discovering who killed Amanda, or get pretty damned close. She must have felt she had good reason to do to you what she did.”
“Where is she?”
“She’s in extended care at Fullerton LifeWay, north of town. She’s voluntary, even at 97, because she can talk a sane game when she sets her mind to it. That means she can get out on her own. Or slip away without anyone noticing.”
“Sounds like a starting point.”
“You’re thinking like a cop, Al.”
“Yeah, and it makes me wonder why you didn’t think of it first.”
She stopped pacing and stared at me. Was there fear in her dewy, bloodshot eyes?
Jeez, if the witch’s own family is afraid of her, what chance do I have?
I went on: “You said she knows things. It’s our best bet to find out where the baby is. And who really killed Amanda. And maybe when she realizes I would never have hurt her granddaughter—ever—we can settle this mess.”
She nodded, but seemed lost in her own thoughts. I could imagine what she was thinking. It was apparent that she believed me, otherwise she would have gone after me with a knife, and then left me for her grandmother’s mice to finish off. Why she believed me, I don’t know, for she was just taking my
word for it at this point.
Maybe she could see that I loved Amanda too much to ever cause her any harm—knew, in fact, that I had given up on pursuing Amanda and had quit trying to make contact for quite some time. I hadn’t seen Amanda for ten months, though I’d often thought about her. I am sure that Tabitha had picked up on the fact that I had never before shown any signs of being an extremely jealous ex-lover.
So maybe that’s why Tabitha believed me right then and there that I wasn’t her sister’s killer. She was, though, obviously plagued by the doubts that her grandmother’s damn magic had created. Her grandmother, seemingly, felt I had been the killer, and should be duly punished by a death to fit the horror of the crime.
There was only one way to solve this problem, or at least get to the heart of it. We needed to reason with her grandmother.
But what’s that going to solve? I asked myself, still staring down at my shoes. Obviously her grandmother thought I did it. That seemed apparent. Would her grandmother listen to reason, listen to my heart? I didn’t know, but we had to see. Her grandmother had to call off the mice and use her magic to find the real killer.
And the kid. I tried to picture its chubby little face, wondering if it had Amanda’s eyes and my nose.
I stood up, suddenly dreading the thought of a mouse army waiting outside. I took a deep breath. Tabitha was glaring at me.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, no hiding the alarm that suddenly filled my voice, squeezing my vocal chords tight, until I was almost squeaking like a mouse. I had to fight an urge to turn around to look for the mice that might be scuttling my way. After all, Mead magic probably worked best in a Mead house.
“There’s no taking back a curse, Albert. Once a curse is in motion, it must be fulfilled.”
“Shit.”
“At least, that’s what Nana once told me. She hasn’t told me much, but that much I do remember.”
“Well, let’s talk to her anyway. There has to be a way. And maybe along the way, you can tell me everything you do know about these curses.”
