Bell, book, and murder

by Edghill, Rosemary

  Except for one thing.

  The tiny painted woman was recognizably Miriam. And she was wearing something around her neck. It was a yellowish blob, at this size. Maybe a chicken foot.

  34 Bell, Book, and Murder

  Oh, Miriam, you stupid git, I told you and told you the things to look out for. These woods are dark and dangerous, and in them lurk lots of people whose only interest is in being worshiped.

  Sad but true, and at least now Miriam was free to try again, which didn't make me feel a whole lot better, to tell the bedrock truth. I wondered if Lace knew £inything about the group Miriam had been with; it would be good to put the word out on them as being people to avoid. I finished my sandwich, picked up the book and purse, and started back into the bedroom.

  The phone rang.

  I debated whether to answer it through six rings. It was unlikely it was the New York Police calling to see if any housebreakers were home, and nobody else knew that Miriam was dead—unless Lace had mentioned it, which, knowing Lace, was unlikely. It might even be for Miriam—or at worst it might be Rachel Seabrook, checking to see if I was here. At any rate, answering the phone could not get me in more trouble than I was in now. I thought.

  I picked up the phone in the middle of a ring.

  "HeUo?"

  There was a —choke? —cough? —gasp of surprise? from the other end of the line.

  "Holy shit! It's Miriam! She's — " There was a loud hang-up and then a dial tone in my ear.

  I stared at the phone meditatively. Adult male voice, slight boroughs accent. Not expecting the phone to be answered by Miriam in a big way.

  Because he'd killed her?

  You've been reading too many murder mysteries. Bast. Nobody killed Miriam—and if they had, why would her killer be phoning to tell her about it?

  Because he'd poisoned her and wanted to see if it had worked?

  Unfortunately that was too plausible for my peace of mind. The fact that I'd managed to give him one hell of a scare did little to compensate for the fact that now he—my mythical murderer— would be looking for Miriam to finish the job.

  But Miriam Had Not Been Murdered.

  If she had been, would the police notice?

  And why, on the basis of, let's face it, no evidence at all, was I so convinced someone had killed her?

  I didn't know.

  So I did the first sensible thing I'd done since yesterday. I called Bellflower.

  Lady Bellflower, to give her her proper liturgical title, is the High Priestess (HPS for short) of my coven, Changing, and has been in the Witch business longer than I have. She's short, round like the Venus of Willendorf is round, has exophthalmic baby blue eyes and frizzy ash-blond hair that is usually standing out in all directions. Like most of our native New York Craifters, Belle comes from a Jewish humcinist background, got fed up with the man-centricity of Judaism, and went looking for the Goddess. If you'll read the Old Testament (Jeremiah 44:15-19), you'll see this is not the first time Jews have gone looking for the Lady.

  Belle took her training a generation or so out from the original Long Island Coven. The Long Island Coven was founded in the early sixties by an American couple named Rosemary and Raymond Buckland, who were trained by Gerald Gardner in England. I'm Gardnerian lineage; since Belle is the one who trained me, so is she. But aifter running a traditional Gardnerian coven for over a decade (a wonder in itself when the median burnout time for leadership in the Community is about five years), Belle decided to take a more eclectic approach to life. This has made her something of a scandal in the strictly Gardnerian part of the Community. It also makes her one of the few Witches with her own weekly radio show on WBAI.

  I call Belle's approach the New Hope of the Craft. She laughs, but it's ecumenicism that's going to cany us into the next century. If you think that's a good idea, you'd like Belle.

  The phone rang several times and I sat through the "leave your neime and number" message that Belle uses to screen her calls.

  "This is Bast," I said after the beep. "Belle? You there? Okay; today is Saturday, June 16, it's around three — "

  "Bast?" Belle's voice has two registers: basso profundo and squeak. To save time she uses both together.

  "Hi. Look, you got a minute for me to dump my problems on you? A friend of mine is dead. You remember Miriam Seabrook—"

  Belle is a good listener; it didn't take me long to unload the last twenty-four hours. I left in Lace and her phone call but left out the Khazar chicken-foot conspiracy, for reasons I wasn't quite sure of at the time.

  36 Bell, Book, and Murder

  "Do you want us to do a Crossing for her?" Belle asked when I finished.

  Crossing is short for Crossing Over; 1 understand the Witches borrowed the term from the Spiritualists, though most of us won't admit it now. Most Neopagans (who borrowed it from us Witches) believe that after death people go to a paradise (which most of us call the Summerland, another Spiritualist borrowing) to rest, relax, and make plans for their next incarnation, in which most of us also believe.

  Sure it sounds stupid, but try explaining Christian heaven with a straight face ("You die, see, and then you get to wear wings, and a halo, and a long white robe. And they give you this harp. And then you stand around a giant glowing throne, singing. Forever. That's right. No, you don't do anything else. When you're dead you want to sing.")

  Anyway, Crossing Over is about sending good thoughts and good energy to the person currently on their way to the Summer-land. At worst it's harmless and does what all good funerals do, which is comfort the living. At best, well, that depends on your belief system, doesn't it?

  So: "Yeah, sure. That'd be good. When?"

  "Well, Changing's meeting next Friday anyway. Why don't you just pass the word; I'll make it an open circle."

  Open means that any friendly person can attend, regardless of affiliation. Most of Changing's circles aren't exactly closed, but guests generally have to be cleared with the Priest/ess of Importance for the Rite; usually Bellflower.

  "Yeah. Thanks. Lace'll want to be there. Damn it. Belle, how could Miriam go and do a shit thing like that—she was thirty-two and she just dropped dead!"

  I was crying, to my utter astonishment. Belle just hung on the other end of the electronic umbilical and let me snivel. I mopped my eyes on my sleeve and did counted-breathing exercises.

  "Who's making arrangements for the mundane funeral?" Belle asked after a while.

  "Damned if I know. I think there's an autopsy. It'd have to be after that. Her sister is from Indiana, and not exactly wild to do much of anything. So I guess there's not going to be any funeral."

  "Yes there is," Belle said firmly. "Ours. Look, why don't you come on up after you're done there? You're only a few blocks away."

  "Yeah. Okay. Maybe. Look— Thanks."

  Belle sighed, the way she does when she suspects she is not getting through to someone. "Blessed be, Bast."

  "B-B, my Lady. Ta."

  I hung up and went into the bathroom and did a better job of drying and cleaning my face than my sleeve could provide. I splashed cold water on it and looked in the mirror. Same old white-bread wonder Witch. My eyes were living refutation of the fact that blue aind red make purple. I looked like a cross between the American flag and an albino raccoon with leprosy.

  Bellflower says that the reason I haven't left Changing is because I can't find any trainees who would be up to the standards she says I'd set for amy coven I ran. She says I'd rather go along with the familiar even if I disagree with it (we've had discussions about how Changing is run) than put my own ideas out on the line and be forced to change them. She says that I'll be a happier, healthier, calmer person when I stop feeling that there is one right way to do anything, especially in Wicca.

  Maybe. Maybe there isn't one right way. But there are a lot of ways that are demonstrably better than a lot of other ways, and there are some ways (Belle and I differ on this) that are just plain wrong.

  Ha
d I been the wrong kind of friend for Miriam? Had 1 spent so much time insisting that she find the right path in the right way that I steered her away from all the almost-as-goods right down the one she died in?

  Or (admit it to yourself, Bast), died of?

  Okay, it was a stupid idea. But dead didn't have to mean murdered. Hundreds of people die of Christian Science every year, and it isn't called murder. Or even suicide. If Miriam's current spiritual path had included eating things out of boxes marked "Not To Be Taken Internally," it would explain her death. And any competent, responsible, or at least cautious guru would have stopped her—if he could and if he knew.

  I wanted to find out who Miriam's guru was. And if he had known. And if he was a responsible person.

  And, bottom line, I wanted to find out just how much guilt I ought to cop to.

  I went back to finish rousting Miriam's personal possessions. I figured I'd give Lace first pick of the stuff and then the rest could go

  38 Bell, Book, and Murder

  to her friends and mine on a first-come basis. Everything that Shelbyville was likely to want was already piled on the bed—1 didn't think that the arrival of three crates of books on Witchcraft and Paganism would make Rachel Seabrook's life any happier.

  I found Miriam's altar tools, the ones she'd use to set up a circle. I found her personal workbooks, all crammed full of dreams, rituals, poems.

  What I didn't find was her athame.

  Remember that old Dorothy L. Sayers mystery where Lord Peter, arriving on the scene of the crime, is dead certain it's murder because he cannot find the one thing that absolutely, positively, must be there in the kit of a working artist?

  This was like that. There is one thing that almost every Witch and Pagan has —and a wannabe conservative like Miriam certainly would have. In fact, I knew she had one, because I gave it to her myself.

  There was a knife-smith named Ironshadow who was in the Community a while back doing all the local Pagan festivads and Society for Creative Anachronism events. Ironshadow had a nice line in inexpensive ritual daggers—athomes-that had about a six-inch double-edged blade, ebony-wood handle, and your choice of decorator pommels.

  I'd bought one for Miriam after hearing her whine for two hours about that hoary old piece of Craft folklore that says you can't buy your own ritual blade, it must be given to you by a friend. We'd both been at Painthea Festival. Ironshadow's table had been right there. The one I picked had an amber pommel. I'd always felt guilty about how happy it made her. She didn't see the meanness in the gesture at all.

  Was that what my tie was to Miriam? Guilt?

  Anyway, she took it back to Ironshadow and had him engrave her magical name — Sunshrike — around the pommel-bezel, and he signed the blade up near the tang, and I'd know it anywhere.

  Except it wasn't anywhere. And it had to be.

  I turned the place inside out in good earnest this time, looking for every place a paranoid ex-hippie might hide the most precious thing she had, the thing that symbolized her spirit—the thing that was, in occult terms, Miriam/Sunshrike. The phone rang again while I was looking and nearly stopped my heart, but it was only Belle, wondering where I was.

  "Uh, it's going to take me longer than I thought to finish up here. Why don't we just give it a miss?"

  "You're still coming Thursda}^"

  Thursday was Midsummer, one of the Eight Great Sabbats In the Wheel Of The Year. It would be Just Family—all the members of Changing who would manage to juggle work and world to get there.

  "I'm still coming Thursday," I said, as much to the Goddess on Miriam's altar as to Belle.

  By seven o'clock I was starving, and I knew for a fact that Miriam's athame was not in the place. Where it was if it wasn't here was a nagging question that didn't manage to seem too urgent, at least on this empty a stomach. After all, Miriam was dead. Her athame didn't matter to her now.

  Did it?

  I gathered up my two piles. Rachel's went into an old suitcase I'd found. Mine went part in my purse, part bundled into Miriam's ritual robe and lashed together with her belt cord.

  I made a fast circuit of the apartment to make sure everything was tidy for extended absence—closed the windows, stripped the soiled bed (afterthought), doused the candles and the incense on the altar.

  The Goddess looked at me, and I picked her up and put her in my purse, taking off the scarf I was wearing to wrap her in.

  Good-bye, Miriam. I guess you might have been a better friend than I thought.

  And I was a worse one.

  SUNDAY, JUNE 17, 10:00 a.m.

  I'd meant to go down to Chanters Revel and see if Lace'd ever turned up, but going through Miriam's apartment wiped me out worse than I thought. I got home about eight-thirty Saturday night and there were, thank God-or-Goddess, no messages on the answering machine. So I lay down for half an hour and when I woke up it was about five in the morning. So I did what any sensible person would do: turned over and went back to sleep.

  The next time I woke up it was to the sound of my own voice telling somebody to leave their name and number and I would get back to them. Lace was starting to do just that when I grabbed the phone.

  "Lace? It's me." Which is a damned stupid thing to say when answering your own phone, but answering machines do that to people.

  "I thought I better call you." Lace sounded like she had a major head cold—or like she'd been crying for a long time.

  "I think you'd better talk to me. Lace. Did you call the police Friday?"

  "No." Defiantly.

  Well, that was one weight off my mind — assuming Lace was telling the truth.

  "Look, you know where I live. Come on up and I'll fix you a cuppa. And I've got some of Miriam's things for you."

  Lace foghomed something unintelligible and hung up. But

  she'd come. Getting Miriam's things would get Lace here. She didn't have Miriam's keys anymore. 1 had two sets now—Lace's and Miriam's—and at the moment 1 could see no good reason to give Lace either one.

  I piled the jewelry I'd earmarked for Lace on the table and set the tea-water to boil.

  For a wonder in our neck of the woods. Lace is actually Lace's real name. Georgina Lacey Devereaux, from some place down South before she came here to the Big Empty. You can't tell where she's from by the way she talks—unless she gets really mad, when it comes out in her swearing.

  Lace is actuadly an inch shorter than 1 am, but she gives the impression of being really big, in that broad-shouldered, husky, breastless way some dykes get. Her hair is cut I-dare-you short and bleached-out white: in her army surplus, spikes, and leather she looks like a cheap Rutger Hauer clone from Bladeninner.

  When I looked through the door at her her eyes were so red and swollen she reminded me of one of those white mice the government spends millions giving cancer to in an attempt to prove that nicotine may be harmful. I popped my locks and let her in.

  "Want a drink?" 1 said. Ten-fifteen in the morning. But she stopped looking so hostile. I put the tequila and the orange juice on the table.

  "No harm done, Lace. It was real heavy, okay?"

  She smiled at me and began to cry, so I turned away and started working on what would be scrambled eggs and tofu with red pepper. Lace assembled most of the working parts of a Tequila Sunrise and made it go away.

  Like I said. Lace is a vegetairian. Distilled vegetables are her favorite kind.

  When I'd reached the point of charring some bagels in my toaster oven. Lace had reached the point where she was poking through the jewelry.

  "I called her sister Rachel," I said. "She asked me to pack up Miriam's things, so I went up there yesterday and went through all her stuff. I'm sending Rachel the official papers and bank things, and some of the jewelry. I thought you'd want these, and if there's anything else in Miriam's apartment you think maybe somebody could use, I don't think Rachel's going to mind."

  Breakfast was ready. We ate eggs. Lace piled the pieces of jew-

&
nbsp; 42 Bell, Book, and Murder

  elry on each other. Fd packed the gold for sending back to Shel-byville, along with the most mundane of the silver pieces. This was the snake ring and ax earring stuff— aind a pentacle I'd found tossed in the back of a drawer, as if Miriam'd found something better.

  'There was this thing she used to wear around her neck," Lace said. "Where's that?"

  It was in a Ziploc Baggie with the Khazar book, but I wasn't going to tell Lace that. Lace is the violent type. "Where's what? She wasn't wearing anything." I was gambling, just a bit, that Lace wouldn't remember too clearly her last sight of Miriam.

  Lace frowned. "She always wore it. It was ... It was like this rabbit's foot, only a bird."

  If I'd never seen Miriam's pendant, I'd never have recognized it from Lace's description.

  "She wasn't wearing it? You're sure?"

  Lace sounded more upset than seemed reasonable over the absence of a piece of jewelry.

  "I checked the place over before I called the cops. No ritual jewelry on her, and nothing out in plain sight in the apartment. What was Miriam into lately. Lace?"

  "Why?"

  Lace had been mellowing out under the combined influence of tequila, sympathy, and my respect for the fine art of paranoia. Now she looked wary.

  "Well, you know, I kind of got the feeling that Carrie didn't want Miriam around the Revel anymore, and Changing is having a Crossing Over for her next Friday, and I didn't know whether to tell them down there. ..."

  "Daimn that Carrie bitch." The words came out flat and evenly spaced, with no inflection. "She never did like Miriam. She was always going on about how Miri had to make a commitment—and then when she did, Carrie just couldn't hack it. Miriam was always more CM. than she was," Lace added plaintively.

  I could believe that. CM. is Community shorthand for Ceremonial Magic —or Magicfc, if you prefer. CM. is mostly Christianity-based, hierarchical, sexist, and very expensive to practice. From what I'd seen in Miriam's apartment. Lace didn't mean it literally—except that the Khazar book I'd seen had a whole lot more in common with Ceremonial Magic than with Wicca.