Hex Marks the Spot

by Madelyn Alt

  The men muttered together. Finally the older man, acting as spokesman for the lot of them, nodded in acceptance. “We will do as you ask.”

  Tom’s authoritative stance yielded just a notch as he offered, “If it will help, we’d be happy to send an officer out to your farms to take your formal statements.”

  “Thank you, officer. Ja, that would be helpful. You can appreciate that the springtime is one of our busiest times of year.”

  “Yes, sir. I can appreciate that.”

  Tom waited until they had made motions to leave before turning his attention to me. “Maggie.”

  “Tom.” Suddenly nervous beneath the weight of his measuring stare, I lifted my chin, determined to hold my own. False bravado, sure, but it works if you work it.

  “I don’t suppose you can tell me”—he came a step closer—“why I continuously find you smack dab in the path of danger?”

  I opened my mouth to deny it, but with three unexpected deaths in my wholly innocent wake, it hardly seemed a debate that was triumph bound. “Well, I’m sure that’s an exaggeration.”

  “Is it, now?”

  I cast around for reinforcements, but Marcus provided no assistance to that end. He’d melted away as soon as the other men had rounded up their buggies, muttering something unhelpful about leaving the two of us alone. I saw him rummaging through the saddlebag on the back of his bike and pretending not to be paying attention.

  “Maybe you want to explain just how you came to be here tonight,” he pressed a little harder.

  The overbearing tone annoyed me just the teensiest bit. “Liss and I had dinner together, and I was just on my way home when I came upon this.” I swept my hand wide to indicate the scene behind us, quiet now that all the buggies had pulled off into the distance.

  “Umhmm. And Quinn, he comes into this…how?”

  That was it? That’s all he was concerned about with regard to my presence tonight? All of a sudden, everything clicked. “You’re jealous.”

  His brows pulled together, and he drew his chin in. “What?”

  “Of Marcus.”

  “I amnot jealous.” His voice had risen appreciably with each clipped word. The heads of the two EMTs and the sheriff’s deputy swung sharply in our direction. Tom stopped and lowered his voice. “I am not jealous of Quinn. Unless…”

  “Unless?”

  He glanced over at the crime scene again, but the men had gone back to doing their thing. Marcus had taken out a Maglite that he kept in a saddlebag lashed to the back of his motorcycle and was flashing it along the roadside. He was also patently ignoring us. Traitor!

  Satisfied, Tom edged a fraction closer to me. His eyes softened; he lifted a hand to brush the hair away from my eyes. “Unless you’re telling me I have reason.”

  Drat. That sweet-eyed expression got me every time, but I didn’t necessarily want him to know that. “We’re just friends, Tom.”

  His hand fell away, and his brows pinched, ever so slightly. “Yeah, I know. Just friends who relate to each other on a level I’m not comfortable with, and who spend an awful lot of time together.”

  “I enjoy his company.”

  “Thatmakes me feel better,” he said flatly.

  “And besides, it’s not as though you and I are excl—”

  “We could be.”

  We could be. And that was my fault, I supposed. “Tom…”

  “Every time I turn around, he’s panting at your feet.”

  And there we were again, circled around back to the Marcus issue when we both knew that wasn’t what was holding me back. “He is not …” I stopped myself just in time. There was something terribly wrong with discussing your love life when a dead man was in the wings. “We can talk about it later, okay?” I said, inclining my head pointedly toward the crime scene.

  His mouth opened, then pulled into a rueful grimace. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  “Forgiven.” I meant it. Ours was a relatively young relationship, and like any other it was not immune from occasional moments of insecurity and doubt.

  He cleared his throat. “Right. So, you were visiting your boss, you were driving home, and came upon this.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Pass any cars along the way?”

  “None that I recall.”

  “Anyone on foot?”

  “No one. Tom…this really is unsettling, isn’t it?”

  “Murder always is.”

  Tom was a small-town cop—it wasn’t every day that we Stony Millers had to deal with something as worldly as murder. And yet, three such tragedies had now befallen Stony Mill in the last seven months. This crash course in murder investigation and helping the victims pick up the broken pieces of their lives…well, it was enough to make anyone twitchy. From that perspective, Tom and his cohorts probably deserved medals.

  “Any ideas?”

  He shook his head. “None that leap immediately to mind. There are too many questions that need to be answered right now.” He paused, then said as a gentle admonishment, “You shouldn’t be asking, though. You know the rules.”

  “I know.” No fishing for info from the local officers of the law. Even if I did have a semi-close and almost-but-not-quite-personal relationship with one of them.

  Which is why his next words took me by surprise…

  “You don’t read the papers much, do you, Maggie?”

  Picking up on the undertones I sensed in his words, I gave him a sideways glance. “No. No, I don’t.”

  He measured his words with care. “Two weeks ago, two Amish men were attacked and robbed in two separate incidents. One, just across the county line, in his own barn, and the other not too far from here, actually, out on the road. It’s happened before, too, and our area doesn’t seem to be the isolated case. Since they don’t use the banking system, Amish men are rumored to have sums of cash on their property and on their person. Given the economy, not to mention the drug problems that seem unavoidable nowadays, is it any wonder?”

  My mind percolated over all of this information. “Do you think those events and what happened to Luc Metzger tonight might be connected?”

  Tom shrugged, leaving the conjecture up to me. “Chief Boggs issued a statement after the one that happened in our county, warning the Amish community to take precautions. We’ve made visits to as many local hubs as we could…but somehow that hasn’t been enough. That much is clear.”

  “Were any of the others killed?” Surely not, I haven’t heard anything, I would have heard, everyone talks, that would be big news …

  “No. But that doesn’t mean the same people aren’t responsible.”

  I nodded to myself. “So maybe the situation got out of hand, or maybe he recognized the attacker, or maybe drugs were involved and he happened into the wrong place at the wrong time, or…Do they have any leads in the other cases, Tom?”

  “The only thing I can tell you is what was reported in The Gazette. The Amish man who was attacked in our county—he recovered fully, by the way—said his attackers wore masks.”

  Attackers. As in plural.

  Marcus sidled up, his Maglite announcing his presence. “Everything okay over here?”

  Tom held up his hand in annoyance as the light accidentally—it was accidental, I hoped—caught him in the eyes. “Peachy. I’ve already talked to Maggie here. She said you both just happened upon this scene tonight. You want to corroborate that statement?”

  “It’s as she said. I was following her into town on my bike. The buggies were blocking our way. I went up to see if there was anything I could help with, and found this.” Marcus shrugged.

  Short, sweet, and to the point.

  “Kinda cold for a motorcycle, isn’t it?”

  “I guess, if you’re the type to be bothered by something like a little nip in the air. It’s no big deal.”

  Tom stared at him, wanting to say more but holding back. “Maggie said that the men were already gathered around Luc Metzger’s body when you ar
rived.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you see anyone touch him?”

  “No. They were just standing there, around him. One of them, I forget who just now, said no one had touched anything. By the time I got here, it was pretty obvious that the guy was too far gone for help. I imagine they had come to the same conclusion on their own.”

  His words brought the visual again, thoughts I’d rather not entertain. Violence of any sort makes me cringe. I didn’t know what it was, but all it took was a mere mention, and I could feel all sorts of things I’d prefer to be oblivious to: impact, shattering, crushing, grinding, and pain, sometimes unbearable.

  If they intended to talk specifics…“Would it be all right if I went home now?” I asked.

  Tom glanced over at me, and his eyes softened in a way that I knew well from more private moments. “You’re tired.”

  I nodded, even though I knew it was more than that. But for Tom, the too much information rule might be wise to uphold. Given his general suspicion of Liss and her beliefs, I was hesitant to bare my natural inclinations to him, for his approval or rejection. Would he accept my gifts for what they were, or turn away from me in distaste? At this point, I just didn’t know what the answer would be, and I wasn’t yet ready to risk finding out. And that, my friends, was the rub.

  “Let’s get you home, then. I’ll be here awhile longer, and then more paperwork.”

  So much for our evening plans. I had come to realize pretty early on in this dating thing that the paperwork associated with Tom’s job could be endless, and that was just with the petty stuff he dealt with on a day-to-day basis. With something like this, I’d be lucky to see him before Christmas. “So,” I said softly, “I probably won’t be seeing you tonight, I’m guessing.”

  He shook his head. “Sorry.”

  Not as sorry as I was. What I wanted more than anything just then was to nudge my way into his arms, tuck myself under his chin, and make the events of tonight recede into the darkness from whence they came.

  I turned to go, too aware of Marcus’s eyes on me, my emotions in turmoil. Tom followed me back to Christine, my Bug, and waited as I started her up. I watched as he gazed cautiously over his left shoulder. Satisfied that no one of importance was watching, he leaned in and gave me a swift kiss that left a lot to the imagination. Too much. I grabbed his collar and pulled him back for one that was a teensy bit more intimate.

  Just as the familiar heat was creeping through my veins, he pulled away. “You be careful going home,” he said, brushing his thumb along the line of my jaw in a gentle caress.

  I nodded. “You, too.”

  I wanted to say more. I wanted to say that I would miss him, that I wished we had more time together, that sometimes I would be satisfied just to be in the same room with him, each doing our own thing but breathing the same air. It happened all too rarely. But I shouldn’t complain. I had no right to complain about something so petty at a time like this.

  So instead I closed the door and waved good-bye to him through my window, wearing a brave face.

  It was as I put Christine into gear and began to ease into motion that the world around me went dark.

  Not dark as in fainting dead away. Nothing so simple as that. Dark as in Christine’s headlights completely cutting out…as did the engine, the ambulance lights; even the emergency beacons and flashlights blinked away into nothingness.

  No power. Anywhere.

  “What in the blue blazes—?”

  I unbuckled my seat belt and pulled myself forward in my seat by the steering wheel so that I could peer out. The night was black as pitch—we might have been swallowed alive by a great beast, for all that I could see. I was still peering out the blank canvas of the windshield when a knock at my window nearly sent me straight through.

  My heart pumping wildly, I rolled the window down.

  “You okay, Mags?” I could tell it was Marcus by his voice, though I couldn’t make his face out.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. What happened?”

  “Don’t you feel it?”

  Of course I did. It was the river of energy I had been feeling, running just below the surface of reality on the underpinnings of the astral tide.

  Spirit energy.

  I closed my eyes, testing it as it nudged against the outer edges of my personal boundaries. “I feel it. Is it Luc?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Maggie! You okay?” Tom came bounding up, his body tense as his gaze searched our surroundings for the cause of the disturbance. “I don’t know what the heck is going on. All of a sudden…boom. Nothing. No lights, no batteries…What the hell, even my watch has stopped. I don’t get it.”

  I wasn’t in the habit of wearing a watch, but…I reached for my purse and dug around in the depths until my fingers bumped against the sleek metallic case of my cell phone. Withdrawing it, I flipped it open. No power there, either.

  Without warning, the cell phone flared to life in my hands, so suddenly that I dropped it in my lap. One by one, everything else followed suit. Lights, engines, aaaction!

  Was Luc trying to tell us that he was still around? Gone, but not about to be forgotten? Or was this a sign of something more?

  I was too inexperienced to know for sure.

  Maybe I didn’t want to know.

  Chapter 5

  By Sunday morning, the whole town seemed to know about Luc Metzger’s untimely end. I heard the buzz at the gas station when I stopped in for a cup of bad coffee, and I heard about it in front of the video store drop box. By the time I arrived at Enchantments to play catch-up from Saturday (yes, it’s true—I have no life) and let myself in the back door, I was pretty sure there were few in town who were still in the dark about Luc Metzger’s murder.

  Liss was there ahead of me, hunched over some catalogues at the old rolltop desk, a single lamp providing light as she pored through them. She looked up as I closed the door behind me.

  “Well, well. Good morning,” she said, gazing at me over her half-moon glasses. “Wehad quite the evening, didn’t we?”

  “I guess you’ve heard,” I said, setting down my purse and starting to remove my jacket.

  “I would guess most everyone has heard by now,” Liss said with a rueful smile. She swiveled in her chair to face me and folded her hands in her lap. “Marcus called me last night. How completely awful for you, ducks.”

  I fell into the chair beside the desk with a sigh. I had slept hardly at all. Every time I did, I dreamed I saw Luc floating and hovering above the crime scene, gazing down on the proceedings. Ultimately my dream perspective morphed and I saw things through his eyes: The circle of his friends and compatriots, heads bowed over his body. The mishmash of buggies. The arrival of the ambulance. I was more than a little disconcerted to see Tom lean in to kiss me. Not Luc me, but Me me. And then I felt my energy withdraw, and I flew straight into the darkness of the wooded plot opposite where Luc was found, dissipating upon…impact.

  Weird.

  I shook the dream images away. “Have you heard from Eli?” I asked Liss. “He wasn’t there last night.”

  Liss shook her head. “I thought I might take a drive out to see him after lunch. If you don’t have anything else planned, you’re welcome to join me.”

  And that was how I ended up, for the second time that weekend, bouncing along a narrow county road. Destination? Buggy Central.

  Eli Yoder’s farm was located on County Road 500 North, on the outer fringes of the close-knit Amish community the Metzger family was also a part of—community in this case meaning not one solid block of Amish families, but an area with a high concentration of Amish families. Eli’s farm stood near Joe Aames’s place, with the old, dilapidated Rosemont Cemetery situated firmly between the two. Both farms were within two miles of where Luc Metzger had been found, a short distance from his own home.

  Liss circled the gravel turnabout, passing the starkly neat white farmhouse with its low-slung front porch, and parked just o
utside the open door to the barn. From within came the buzzing whine of a saw making contact with wood, countered by the lower rumble of a gas motor. Leaving the Lexus behind, we made our way to the yawning entrance.

  It was, in many ways, your typical Hoosier barn. Old school, of course, with weathered wooden planks faded from years of sizzling beneath the hot summer sun, the paint cracked and in places scoured away by wicked winter winds, and inside, cavernous spaces and massive wooden beams high above. The saw cut off as we reached the door. Eli was hunkered down over a group of sawhorses, surrounded by lengths of clean-smelling wood and piles of powdery sawdust on the dirt floor. He raised his head at our approach and lifted a gloved hand.

  “I was not expecting company, ja?” He pushed his dust-speckled safety goggles up on his forehead, looking at us with a grim smile. “Not on such a day as this.”

  Liss moved forward to put a comforting hand on Eli’s arm. “We wanted to come out and offer you our support, Eli. We just heard about Luc. We’re so sorry—it must have been a blow.”

  “Ja. Ja, it was. I was out making deliveries last night after the market closed, and I didn’t hear about it until this morning, first thing. It is…a tragedy.” Sawdust drifted down as he scrubbed a hand over his whiskers, a sure sign that he was under duress, and likely the only clue we would receive. Words came at a premium for our Eli; words conveying emotion even more so. “Luc was…a good man. Hester and the children will feel the loss far more than I.”

  “What will she do?” I asked.

  “What she can. It will be difficult, but God will provide.”

  God will provide. It was a message I had a real problem accepting, but that had more to do with my own private hang-ups than what I saw in the lives of others. But if God could be relied upon to provide, would He have allowed this to happen? Would he have allowed a whole family, assuredly God-fearing, to suffer so terribly? It hardly seemed charitable or loving.

  Would a loving God have created darkness at all?