A Witch In Time

by Madelyn Alt

  My privacy? I blinked, confused, as he shuffled back to his bedroom, his shoulders hunched.

  He’s trying to be a gentleman, Margaret Mary-Catherine O’Neill. And you, might I say, have no shame.

  Hm. Grandma C? Now is not the time, okay? Stuff it.

  He left the bedroom door open at least. If I leaned forward just so, I could see his denim-covered legs lounging on the bed. Much too far away.

  A nice, relaxing bath. Yeah.

  I did relax, though, much to my surprise. I must have been more tired than I thought because my eyes drifted closed and my mind began to waft around on the dream currents of never-neverland almost instantly. I wasn’t sleeping so much as floating.

  And then, just as Liss had predicted, a lightbulb went off. Tony Nunzio, dial 212 . . . Tony Nunzio, 212 . . . Tony ... Anthony ...

  My eyes flew open and I stared at the bright lights above the vanity in dismay.

  Anthony Nunzio.

  That’s where I’d heard the name before.

  Frannie’s special midnight caller.

  It was him. Frannie’s mystery man and the intruder in her home were one and the same.

  Why had it taken me so long to remember that?

  I blame the painkillers. I’m usually much quicker on the draw.

  What had he said to her that night? The words were faint in my memory. Was it really less than forty-eight hours ago? Somehow the last two days seemed to fill a lifetime.

  Regardless, the incident at the hospital proved one thing a lie: the Watkinses had told the police that they didn’t know their intruder.

  At least one of them did. And I was willing to bet, maybe even more than one.

  It was the knowing again, that deep sense of truth that came sailing out of the nebulous nothingness, just as Liss had promised it would if I but silenced my thoughts. That certainty that said You. Are. On. The. Right. Track.

  But which one? Who besides Frannie knew about Tony Nunzio? Who besides Frannie would care?

  Who would care that Frannie and Tony ...

  That they what? That they had shared some sort of association between them? It certainly seemed likely. Even probable. Showing up, after hours, when her husband and family were likely to be away. Skulking about in stairwells and shadows, waiting for the most opportune time to approach her.

  To approach her for what purpose, though? What was it he’d said?

  I relaxed back into the warm water and closed my eyes, willing myself to drift. It had worked once just now; there was a good chance it could happen for me again.

  At first all I saw was the darkness penetrated by distinct red swirls where the vanity lights were burned into my field of vision. I let my focus go softer, shift inward, until my breathing began to slow, naturally, into a deep and rhythmic continuous wave. Ebb and flow. Flow and ebb.

  A blank screen appeared in my mind’s eye, white and shimmering in the fluid darkness. Bemused, I stared at it, watching it bob in and out of sight—out, the harder I focused on it, and in, the more that I let come what may. I breathed deeply through the excitement that had cropped up at the first sign of this new turn in my abilities and worked hard to just be still, of mind and of body.

  “Get away from him . . .”

  The memory floated through my mind, crisper and clearer than it had been that night at the hospital when sleep deprivation and confusion had ruled the moment. I resisted the temptation to latch onto it and clutch it in my hands, turning it over and over in my mind to try to wring out the rest. Patience, I reminded myself. Let it come.

  “Get away from me. ”

  “Gotta get out of town for a while . . .”

  “I heard about the kid . . .”

  “They’ll want to know where he got it . . .”

  All of a sudden Jordan Everett popped into my head again. Jordan whose death was a result of heart failure attributed, most likely, to either steroids or other drugs, verdict still being out as to which. Oh my God. It made sense. Tom had said Nunzio had had run-ins relating to drugs in his past. What if he never stopped? What if he just got smarter about it? Or just lucky enough not to get caught? Until Jordan died. Had Nunzio been supplying drugs to kids in town? Kids like Jordan? Maybe that’s why he told Frannie he was leaving.

  But he would be back.

  “Stay away and leave us alone!”

  There was something in Frannie’s voice that had caught my ear, a low and throbbing urgency that was out of place in the drowsy-lambs-and-dancing-butterflies dreamworld that was the norm for New Mommyland. It was obvious she was afraid of him for some reason known only to her, even though he didn’t seem to be threatening her in the brief exchange I had overheard. But there are many ways to threaten, to influence. To manipulate. Maybe she was afraid for other reasons. Not necessarily for her own welfare, but...

  The baby.

  Marcus had channeled that when we were sitting on the Watkinses’ curb, trying to connect with the otherworldly energy we still felt there. Baby.

  More memories were tumbling in, end over end, merging into some sort of primordial soup in my head. Conversations, gossip, odds and ends and snippets.

  “Oh...”

  Jane Churchill had mentioned that the divorce file Greg’s law firm had prepared contained evidence that Frannie had been having an affair. Mel herself had seen Frannie arguing with a strange guy in the coatroom at the mommy-to-be exercise class she attended. A cute guy, a dark and dangerous motorcycle type.

  I’d seen Anthony Nunzio only twice, and only in passing... but the description matched what I’d seen.

  Was Tony Nunzio Frannie’s former lover?

  “Get away from him!”

  Baby.

  Whose baby? Harry Jr.’s? Or Tony Nunzio’s? And what did all of this have to do with Nunzio being interrupted at the Watkinses’ home in the middle of the night, and shot dead?

  “Marcus!” I called out.

  “You rang?”

  His deep voice came from the doorway, much sooner than I’d expected it to. My eyes flared widely. He was standing there, one shoulder leaning against the door frame, his thumbs hooked in his belt loops.

  “Uh, hi,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything more pithy to say, because I suddenly couldn’t help wondering whether he’d been standing there the whole time I was meditating.

  His attention did not waver in the slightest. “Hey.”

  I became suddenly, acutely aware of just how much skin I knew I must be displaying beneath the bubbles, which were disappearing fast. But I caught myself. I didn’t have time for self-consciousness now. “I just remembered something!” I told him excitedly. “Several somethings, actually.”

  His gaze remained enigmatic, but my breasts were tingling beneath the warm water, and I had a feeling it had nothing to do with the fizzing properties of the bubbles. “Did you, now?”

  Focus, Maggie-girl...

  I cleared my throat. “Remember when I told you about what happened at the hospital the night Mel had the babies?”

  “The elevator thing?”

  “No, I mean the argument I overheard down the hall. What I don’t think I mentioned at the time is that it was coming from Frannie’s room.”

  “Yeah?”

  He might as well have said, “Hmm?” I resisted the urge to wave my hand in front of his eyes (Men!) and instead explained, slowly, “I saw the man she was arguing with,” as I waited for him to catch up. “It was Nunzio, Marcus. The intruder who was shot in the Watkinses’ home. They are one and the same.”

  When I saw his eyebrows rise, I knew I had snared his attention. Or at least he’d managed to stop ogling my ... “You sure about that?”

  I nodded. “Positive. I saw him clearly at the hospital. Not so much this afternoon, but it was still him. I’m sure of it. It just took me a while to place the face.”

  “I thought they said they didn’t know him.”

  “That’s what they told the police, yes. But obviously Frannie knew him. Ma
rcus . . . I think . . .” I couldn’t finish the thought... but then, I didn’t have to.

  Heaving a sigh, Marcus leaned his head back against the door frame. “All right, let’s do this. There’s more to this than a straightforward confession from Harold can account for, isn’t there?”

  I nodded. “I think so. I have no real proof, just... hunches and things heard first- and secondhand.” I paused, trying to get all of my thoughts and impressions to gel together. “I also found out through one of Mel’s friends that Frannie had been having an affair. I think ... I have good reason to think it was with Nunzio.” Briefly I explained my thinking behind my supposition: the gist of the argument, and the coatroom scene that Mel had witnessed at Baby Bellies.

  Marcus stared at me. “If that’s true ...”

  “I think Frannie had a secret, and I think it went deeper than having a lover.”

  Baby . . .

  The word burst out of my mouth, unbidden, as soon as it entered my thoughts. Yes, the baby. So many more things were occurring to me now, blip after blip of memory. Joyce’s explanation to my mother that putting pressure on a young married couple has the potential to end in heartache for everyone involved, and how Harry Jr. and Frannie had been on the verge of splitting when they miraculously reconciled, with an equally miraculous pregnancy cropping up shortly thereafter to seal the deal. The urgency in her voice when she told Nunzio to get away from him. To get away from the baby. Her strangeness about the baby’s dark curls. Even then, her explanation of cradle cap did not ring true, and we all knew it. Even her strange behavior with the bassinet card.

  “The baby isn’t Harry’s,” Marcus breathed. Reading my mind again? “Holy shit.”

  I had begun to shiver violently; the water had begun to cool without me paying attention, but it was psychic tremor, too, a reaction to the energy flowing in and through me. Marcus was on top of things, though. He grabbed a bath sheet and helped me gently to my feet—well, foot—wrapping me efficiently and securely in the big fluffy towel with nary a peek. Well, none that I noticed, anyway. When I was dry, he switched out the towel for a robe, swept me up in his arms, and carried me to the bedroom.

  It would have been romantic if my mind wasn’t already in uber-focus on things like:

  Blood...

  That was another tidbit Marcus had channeled. I didn’t know why it floated into my consciousness just now. Of course there was blood—the man had been shot.

  “You know, I keep going back to the conversation I overheard in the elevator, trying to make it fit; I can’t help it, it keeps coming back to me. Is it at all possible... do you think . . . could it have involved the Watkinses? Because... what if Frannie was the intended victim, and not Nunzio?”

  He considered this a moment in all seriousness. “That would mean that Nunzio was a part of some plan . . .” he said slowly.

  “And somehow ended up the victim,” I finished for him. “It would fit, wouldn’t it? ‘She won’t know what hit her,’ they said. What if Nunzio was hired help, so to speak? And what if, when he visited Frannie in the hospital after hours and they argued, what if he was trying to somehow warn her?”

  “Hired help. You mean, hired thug?”

  I shrugged. “He did seem to be trying to convince her of something. He was going to be lying low for a while, he said. Getting out of town. Something about the Everett boy—the boy who died. Well, he didn’t name him outright. But it fits.”

  “Drugs? Dealing? Including to the Everett boy?”

  “Tom did say Nunzio had a history with drugs.”

  Marcus shook his head. “I don’t get it. Why would Harold Sr. hire Nunzio? To do what? Kill Frannie? Scare her? And why would Nunzio try to warn her? A surge of conscience?”

  “If it was a surge of conscience, maybe that would explain why he went to the Watkinses’ home to begin with. Another attempt to convince her?” I suggested.

  “Hm. Maybe hurting or scaring Frannie aren’t the only possible explanations for what Nunzio might have been hired for,” Marcus suggested pensively. “Assuming he was hired at all.” He sat down on the edge of the bed next to me.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What if his job was simply to lure Frannie away from Harry?”

  Intrigued by this new thought, I said, “Go on ...”

  “Say you are Harold Sr. Say your only son is married to a girl you don’t think is right for him, for whatever reason, or that you think might hurt him. Say you’ve got money to burn, enough to hire a known local reprobate to, you know, sweep her off her feet?”

  “Okay. So Nunzio and Frannie have an affair that is financed by Harold Sr. Then what?”

  “Say Frannie and Harry Jr. separate for other reasons, and Harry files for divorce.”

  I was trying to see ahead along his line of thinking. “Only Frannie finds herself expecting. And that is what Harry Jr. always wanted—remember, Joyce herself said that. So did Jane—she said one of the reasons he’d filed for divorce in the first place is that Harry Jr. thought she had been taking measures to keep from having children.” The Alanis Morissette song “Ironic” came to mind. “So . . . Frannie tells Harry, and they work things out. Only Nunzio finds out and surprises her—”

  “Because he wants the kid, too?”

  We looked at each other, surprised at how quickly we had speculated through a scenario that rang with potential.

  “Maybe that’s why he tried to see her at the hospital,” I mused. “To warn her about her father-in-law and to let her know that he had to go away for a while, but that he wanted to be involved in his son’s life.”

  “Which could present a problem for Harold Sr. Especially if he didn’t want his son to know about his... arrangements on his behalf.”

  Which could potentially equal a motive for getting rid of him. Maybe Harry Sr.’s confession wasn’t as far off the mark as it had originally seemed.

  “But . . . why at Harry Jr.’s house?” I persisted. “That is probably the biggest sticking point for me. If it really was his intention to get rid of Nunzio permanently, why wouldn’t he choose a neutral location? An out-of-the-way back road or some other isolated spot, rather than a crowded subdivision and with family present to boot? Something that wouldn’t implicate himself or his family?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe something went wrong. Something that forced his hand?” Marcus suggested.

  But what? What could that be?

  “What if Nunzio wanted to meet with Harry Jr. and tell him the whole story?” he continued along the same line of thought.

  “That would suggest altruism on Nunzio’s part, which might be a problem. Besides, a phone call was made to him from the Watkinses’ residence, remember?” I reminded him. “Someone there asked him to come.”

  “Not necessarily altruism. It could just as easily have been intended as blackmail. And maybe Harry Jr. was returning an earlier call, accepting a request to meet?”

  “Hm. And then maybe Harry Jr. confided in Harold Sr. about the meeting—”

  “Hence the need for Harold Sr. to eliminate Nunzio?”

  That still seemed iffy to me at best. Again, Nunzio was killed at Harry Jr.’s house, while his wife and new baby were home. I had a hard time believing that a devoted new dad would risk something going terribly wrong while his wife and newborn son were in residence, no matter how pissed off or threatened he felt. Obviously we had to be missing something.

  I shook my head. “It just doesn’t make sense. Harry Sr. could have just paid him off if he wanted to be rid of him so badly, couldn’t he?”

  “Maybe he wanted too much for his silence. Or maybe the paternal instinct was too strong. Or maybe Nunzio found his conscience after the fact.”

  Maybe. Too many maybes.

  “Or maybe it wasn’t Harold Sr. at all,” he continued. At my sharp look, Marcus shrugged. “All this time we’ve been talking through the reasons Harold Sr. could have done what he said he did as though it’s set in stone, simply because he is
the one who confessed. And yet we both have entertained thoughts that it just didn’t ring true, haven’t we?”

  I nodded, folding and refolding the edge of my robe.

  “So maybe we should pause and rewind a sec, huh? What if it wasn’t Harold?”

  “Who, then?” I asked. “Harry Jr.?”

  “Why not? He was alone with his wife and new son. Who would have had a better opportunity?”

  He had a point, actually. I sat a moment, ruminating on this. “Why?”

  “The most obvious reason would seem to be: He found out about his wife’s affair.”

  Or he found out about the baby. Or both. But how? “Jane said the PI report was buried in the divorce file.”

  “Mm-hm. So deeply buried that no one else knew about it, huh? So deeply that no one has ever talked about it, right?”

  I bit my lip. Jane had certainly talked about it easily enough. “I guess that’s true. Someone at the firm could have leaked it.” We seemed to have two viable suspects, then. One was in police custody at his own hands. The other, safely at home with his wife and baby. “But even if that’s true, why would Harold Watkins have confessed?”

  The answer was simply complex and complexly simple: “Love,” Marcus said with a confident shrug, leaping to his feet to pace back and forth in the space between the bed and the door.

  Love. It was a many splendored thing, it was a battlefield, and it made the world go ’round. It will even go on and on. And the love of a parent had to go down as one of the strongest bonds possible, even in the messed-up world we lived in.

  “To protect his son?” I couldn’t help flashing back to the poignant image of Harold Sr. sitting in the backseat of the police cruiser, stoically holding up his hand to the window as a last good-bye to his wife and son.

  “His only son,” Marcus added. “His only son who desperately wanted a family, a two-car garage and summer barbecues, and a dog sleeping on the front porch. The whole picket-fence life.”

  Would a man like Harold Sr. be willing to give up his own life with Joyce in order to give his son the life he’d badly wanted?