A Murder in Hope's Crossing

by Brooke Shelby

  “I am not!” he snapped back, feeling the guilt sway him.

  “Oh really? You are Mason’s lackey, Carl. Admit it!” she shouted. Her eyes blazed, but then her expression changed to a calmer, more conniving look. “Both beatings were clearly committed by a large strong man, Carl.” Maggie’s eyes scanned his body suspiciously and the insinuation made him feel sick. “It matters not whether you believe in magic or not; those crimes were the doing of a man your size.”

  “Now you listen, Maggie Corey,” he barked, his finger pointed crookedly as his hand shook in rage, “I will not have you imply such ludicrous nonsense.”

  “This Oroville guy,” she interrupted his speech, “is about your size, isn’t he?”

  Carl was stunned to silence. He had felt so genuinely contrite about arresting her that he had been blinded by her hostility.

  “Oroville? Bettina’s son-in-law?” he asked, disarmed by the new accusation she directed.

  “Yeah,” she nodded casually. “I don’t care what you said about their cozy relationship. I know what I saw and I suggest you at least consider what I think.”

  When Carl walked down Maggie Corey’s porch steps, he was deep in thought, hardly remembering to say goodbye. Maggie was glad, though, that finally he might see further than his loyalty to the town and its devils.

  21

  The night was restless as Maggie settled into a nice warm bath. Bramble was downstairs, asleep in front of the fire, and she thought it would be a great opportunity for a good long lavender oil soak by candlelight. After all the animosity and stress she had endured, Maggie felt like she deserved it. Outside, the clouds had gathered under the force of the wind and a storm threatened on the distant horizon.

  Maggie had the bathroom window open by just a hair to let in some fresh air, but with the strong wind rattling the house, she could not afford to open it properly. Besides, the bathroom had stained-glass windows and she did not want the precious antique windows to shatter, so she placed a small towel in the gap, just in case it came loose and slammed.

  “Oh God, yes!” she moaned aloud as she sank into the deep tub, feeling the warm oily water cover her tired muscles. The scent of the steam was divine and the mild howl of the wind sounded like a melody in her weary ears.

  Maggie tried not to relive any of the recent unpleasantness of her incarceration, the threats, the legal hostility, and the general hatred for her that she had not earned. Still, she could not help but think of Carl Walden and his strange, perplexed expression when he’d left her house earlier. There was no conclusive determination of what he could have been thinking and she was still trying to figure out what he was wondering as he left.

  At least she’d reiterated her suspicion to him for the umpteenth time. At least she’d yelled at him and gotten some of her frustrations out, and at least he’d looked a little sorry, she thought. Maggie had a temper. That much, she knew. However, no matter how she tried to sweep away the tension and the constant mental bickering she employed to fight her foes in her head, she simply could not relent in such things—not even in a nice warm bath.

  The gust picked up speed and a loud thwack echoed from down the corridor, startling Maggie from her attempted relaxation session. She sat up as the beads of oil and water meandered down her shoulders and back, listening for the sound. At first, she thought it could be the precious bathroom window frame she was worried about smashing, but upon inspection, she realized that it was still agape with the small towel still wedged in it.

  “Thank God for that,” she sighed. “Could never replace that.”

  Again, she heard a sudden sound off in the house, more like a tree branch having fallen against the wooden panels of the house exterior, but with the storm ensuing soon, she reckoned that she would be in for a night of cracks and thumps in Clara’s old house. Maggie got back in the bathtub and soaked up the steamy air that smelled of flowers, determined to relax for once. A few moments of peace was all she needed, and she began to drift off into a mild slumber, still wary not to sink beneath the water. This state of half-woken vigil kept her hearing sharp even in the stronger wails of the wind.

  Far off, as she wandered thoughtlessly behind closed eyelids, she could hear a gentle roll of thunder as the wind rose and fell. The smell of the coming rain permeated through the window and drifted over her. She loved it.

  A slam downstairs jolted her upward, eyes wide open, and this time, she was certain that it was no tree branch.

  “Bramble?” she called from the echoing bathroom. “Was that you? Did you knock something over?”

  But there was no sound. Bramble was happily napping, she knew, otherwise he would have blessed her with one of his sarcastic gems. Maggie got out of the tub, finally surrendering to the thought that she was to have no more time in its warm sanctuary tonight. Besides, the water had cooled down considerably by now, what with all the interruptions.

  “Just another blow to my little scraps of happiness, right,” she muttered as she dried herself to get dressed. Deep into the obscurity of the ground floor, to the east, she heard another suspicious clap and scrape along the side of the house. It was just too random to be a repetitive act of nature, but as she stole down the wooden floor on moist, bare feet, Maggie heard another sound follow each of the peculiar scrapes.

  “What is that?” she whispered, wary of peeking over the bannister. Every time a thump came, it was followed by the same sound—a kind of suctioning sound. It reminded Maggie of when she was little and played fantastical games with her friends. Drawing in breath hard, through lips made for whistling, she always called it a reverse whistle. This odd sound of sucking in breath happened every single time after a clack or thump and it scared Maggie.

  She refused to descend the stairs. Besides, it came from outside the house on the lower floor, so Maggie thought it better to keep a vigil from the top floor to better ascertain its origin. Never before had Maggie thought her fear for thunder would be lost on her, but even though it rumbled and growled across the sky, she was too invested in finding the source of the sound. When she came to the window of a spare room, she looked out on the small section of lawn that ran into the sidewalk of the main street.

  Maggie gasped.

  Below, dressed in dark clothing and a hoodie, a large intruder was loitering, testing the sides of the house with a crowbar.

  “You son of a …” she sneered angrily, but she elected to watch and see what he was up to instead of coming out of the house with a harpy’s fury. “What do you want, buster?” Maggie briskly rolled up her long hair and fixed it into a bun on her head to keep her peripherals clear. Watching the big man try her windows gave her chills and Maggie had to hold her chest to calm herself. Her heart was aflame again, throbbing madly with fear and anger at the audacity of the intruder.

  “What the hell does he want?” she whispered as she watched him pass one window for another on his way to the back of the house. On the second floor, Maggie followed him accordingly as he wrenched the crowbar into every single hinge and crevice he could try. It infuriated her, but she knew it would be better to watch and see.

  Suddenly, the large frame of the prowler leaned back for a brief moment before he bolted forward with his crowbar to charge at the window. Maggie winced as she anticipated the impact, but what happened surprised her as much as it surprised the burglar. A dull flash sent him reeling as he made contact with some invisible shield and there it was—Maggie’s strange reverse whistle sound.

  “Wait a minute,” she gasped. “That is the sound of some shield? That is where it came from? Every time he tries to attack the house, that flash and that sound push him away?” Her large blue eyes glinted in disbelief and then a smile painted itself on Maggie’s face. “That’s so cool!”

  After a few minutes of scrutiny, the attempted burglary had become a bit of a game to Maggie, although the feeling of danger prevailed inside her. Every time he tried to break a window or force a doorframe, knocking over her potted plants that a
dorned the porch or running the sharp end of the crowbar across her paint, Maggie fumed. Still, his anonymity prevented her from confronting him. After all, not knowing him meant that she had no idea what he would resort to.

  “Geez, you don’t give up, do you?” she sighed, shaking her head as she saw him relentlessly trying to breach the safety of her house. He certainly was unyielding in his attempt, and that was what concerned Maggie the most. He tried to light the fence hedges on fire, and again the strange sound accompanied his failed efforts. The flames simply died the moment he ignited the fuel, leaving black marks all over the place without any harm coming to the bushes. Maggie laughed as softly as she could, crudely growling like a trucker as her gleeful gloating accompanied her dwindling fear of the prowler.

  “So, that was you. Second time around and you still can’t burn the hedges, you moron,” she chuckled. In her thoughts, her inner voice reminded her not to get too comfortable. The man was probably there to kill her or scare her enough to silence her and by the looks of his size, she would be a fool to rely entirely on magical wards and dumb luck. His huge frame forced her to confront a thought she did not want to entertain.

  “Is that you, Carl Walden?” she asked softly as she readied her small handheld camera to film the incident without his knowledge. “You are always so quick to take me in whenever the mayor snaps his fingers, aren’t you? Maybe you just got tired of playing nice time and time again.”

  Maggie’s fingers slid over the buttons of the camera, but she neglected to remove the flash function before pressing the record button. Suddenly, as the timer started rolling, the camera’s flash function streamed a white beam of light down on the burglar, betraying Maggie’s intentions. He looked up so briefly that she could not capture his face in the dark shadow of his hood, but when he saw the camera, he took off running into the dark patches under the trees where the streetlights could not reach.

  “Drat! Damn, that was nearly close enough!” she shouted freely, now that she did not have to be quiet anymore. Checking her footage was no help either. There was just nothing she could use, but Maggie was grateful for his flight—and even more impressed with the wards that protected her beautiful old mansion.

  22

  With the thunder clapping above her, Maggie was already timid. She’d always loved rain, but the roaring sky still frightened her, even though she thought it was beautiful. Perhaps it was her mother’s paranoia when she was little, telling her that the lightning could follow her if she left the window and curtains drawn open. Many of her mother’s tales turned out to be false, probably deliberately so in the throes of parenthood, but Maggie had never really followed up about the lightning thing as an adult. Better safe than sorry, though, and she closed the shutters of her bedroom window to keep out any temperamental electricity.

  As she lay in the semidarkness with the subdued rumble of thunder to serenade her already sinister thoughts, Maggie could not help but feel that she had reached a dead-end in trying to find her aunt’s killer and the person who framed her for Bettina’s murder as well. If she could not find the killer soon, she might end up being the only suspect left after all.

  “I have to know who he is, Bramble,” Maggie whined the next morning, trying to look through the vague and short footage she’d recorded. “The longer I take to find him, the colder the trail. And then? Guess who will be unable to clear her damn name for good? Me!”

  “Marjoram,” he replied, lapping up a delicious concoction of eggnog and warm milk with cinnamon his witch made for him.

  “Excuse me?” she asked.

  “Mar-jo-ram,” he repeated slowly.

  “I am not Clara. I use marjoram in food, Bramble. I am not some veteran witch who can just conjure up spells,” she argued.

  “You are precisely that, you silly woman,” he retorted with a scoff. “You are fortunate that I have so much patience with your deliberate ignorance, you know?”

  “Bramble, I am not a witch. I just happen to be from a long line of witches,” she protested.

  “Because you are a witch,” he persisted casually. Bramble was ancient in years, but he did enjoy employing schoolyard teasing when someone was being oblivious to the obvious, and Maggie was the most tedious of all the people he had ever mocked.

  “What am I supposed to do with marjoram, then? Enlighten me! Teach me your witchcraft, oh majestic feline,” she sang at him.

  “Watch it,” he said abruptly. “You do not want to speak to me in such a tone if you know what is good for you, young lady.”

  “What are you going to do?” she called his bluff.

  Bramble did nothing. He simply leered at her, motionless, soundless, and fixed.

  “Bramble?” she frowned. “What is happening?”

  The large back cat held his pose, a mute and scary static position that made her worry. After all, Maggie did not know anything about familiars or what they could do. What if she had cheesed him off good and well this time? What if he was about to turn into something creepy or vindictive? What if he suddenly attacked her? Maggie regretted forgetting that he was actually not a common cat at all. She crept closer to Bramble.

  “Bramble?” she said softly, leaning in to stroke him.

  Suddenly, the feline hissed, his eyes momentarily shifting from green to yellow and back to green. The gesture sent Maggie stumbling backward into the fridge door in fright. His laughter was jovial, but just underneath, Maggie heard a lower, guttural voice laughing that thoroughly reminded her that he was more than a pet.

  “My apologies, my dear!” he chuckled. “I could not resist that ditty!”

  “You are reprehensible, Bramble! How could you do that to my heart? I will drop dead of fright and then who are you going to torment?” she panted, clutching her chest with a weak smile.

  “Don’t doubt me, dammit,” he purred proudly, flexing his sharp nails from their furry sheaths. “I am telling you. Use marjoram to loosen the tongue of that timid lush next door. After all, she is the only one who knows firsthand.”

  “She knows? Knows knows or might know?” Maggie asked.

  “I think she knows knows,” he clarified. “It was too uncanny that she happened to be at the party and the next day all hell broke loose, Maggie. Just think about it. She knows better than anyone, but she is weak. Weaklings cower and lie. We have to un-make her lies, get it?”

  “With marjoram?” Maggie said skeptically.

  “With marjoram. Trust me,” he assured her. “Clara’s Scottish recipe book. She always called it that because it has some tartan as a cover. Easy to find among the others. Clara had endearing names for all her recipe books.”

  Maggie smiled dreamily. Of all the things that had been happening, she realized that she had almost forgotten why she came here. Ashamed of her selfishness, she shook her head.

  “Auntie Clara,” she said mildly, her smile growing across her face. “I miss you. I miss you so much and I have been neglecting you since I came here. All this nasty stuff. That is no excuse, I know.”

  “Good to see you remember the true reason you need to get this imperative information,” Bramble mentioned. “Clara’s killer is still at large and the least you can do as her heiress, my dear, is to avenge her death by calling out her killer, right?”

  “Right!” Maggie nodded with conviction.

  “Marjoram,” he answered plainly.

  Maggie took a deep breath and tried not to say something she should not. “All right, already! Marjoram it is.”

  She rushed over to the spice rack and rummaged through the sachets and bottles. Confused, she turned to Bramble. “Um, what do I do with it?”

  Bramble sighed and put his paw over his eyes.

  The following day Maggie found herself traipsing through the messy garden of her neighbor, Sharon Blake. Again. In her basket, she had a bottle of wine and some cookies, drenched in marjoram. She was reluctant to believe that it would actually work, especially since she still could not get herself to fully believe in ma
gic. Maggie had to incessantly remind herself of the wards she had seen working against the intruder the night before.

  “Magic is real. Magic is real,” she murmured. “Remember the lightning of the shields? This will work. Just believe it. Believe.”

  “My, my, I thought I was the only mad cow talking to myself,” she heard Sharon’s sharp voice cut through her ears. The plump woman was perched on a wooden stool on her porch, drink in hand. On the other hand, she was wearing a gardening glove full of mud. She saw Maggie’s befuddled look and laughed. “Clara used to tell me that weeding is better when the soil is wet. Don’t think I don’t know how bad my yard looks. I know. I know. I weeded all day over there by the fence, see?”

  Maggie looked toward the direction Sharon spoke of, but all she could see was a mess of muck and grass strands, soil upheaved like a fresh grave.

  “Who did you bury there?” Maggie joked with a wink and a smile, but Sharon failed to see the humor.

  “N-no … nobody, my God!” she quickly replied.

  “I was playing with you,” Maggie shrugged, but Sharon’s reaction was indeed stinking with guilt.

  “Oh.”

  “Sharon, it has been raining all day. You weeded the garden?” Maggie tried to start a casual conversation.

  Her neighbor shrugged and scoffed. “Wet soil, isn’t it?”

  Maggie smiled, trying not to laugh right out. “I brought you some butter cookies. Peace offering for upsetting you last time. Been feeling so bad about it, so I made something nice to beg your forgiveness.”