Where There's a Witch

by Alt, Madelyn

  Chief Boggs had been making notes as I spoke, and now his pen paused over the spiral notebook. He glanced up at me. “Anything else you remember?”

  “Well, she did say a little more to me after he disappeared into the church. The gist of it was that their relationship was very sexual in nature.” I blushed, because I could feel everyone hanging on my every word. Lowering my gaze so that I didn’t have to look any of them in the eye, I continued. “But according to her, she had grown past that. She was done with him. She’d found God or something through this church, and she was moving on to better things.”

  Chief Boggs had a thoughtful expression on his face. “Was she? I wonder.”

  It was frighteningly easy to see his point. Especially as the camera flashes in the background behind him turned the scene wonky with an unearthly strobe effect.

  “Anything else?”

  I cleared my throat. “Actually, yes. Later in the afternoon, I was visiting with Mrs. Clark here out in the garden—this was before the excavation started, you understand—and we overheard an argument coming from somewhere in the church. I thought it was in the existing wing addition. All I heard was a man’s voice protesting something. There was even some kind of a scuffle, judging from the sounds that came drifting out through the open windows. Mrs. Clark went to try to intervene, and I headed in the other direction, figuring one of us would be able to find them if we were moving in opposite directions.”

  “And did you?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “I did see Ronnie leaving the building in a hurry. I only saw her from the back, but I think she was wiping her eyes. Maybe crying? I have no way of knowing for sure, but I had the feeling that she could very well have been part of the scuffle.”

  Boggs scribbled some more. “What about anyone else? Mrs. Clark, Miss O’Neill said that you had gone one way to try to intervene with whoever was doing the arguing?”

  Letty Clark nodded. “Yes, sir. I decided the closest route would be to enter the church from the far end of the addition.”

  “And did you see anyone or anything?”

  “No. No one.” She gave me an odd look. “Miss O’Neill didn’t mention that she had seen anyone emerging.”

  “No, I didn’t,” I admitted. “Mostly because of the argument I’d already witnessed. I felt that it was private and should stay that way. You know how gossip travels around this town.”

  She sighed. “True. A pity that people like to talk so. Perhaps the good Lord should have added that to the stone tablets he saw fit to provide us. The eleventh commandment. Might not have been a bad idea.”

  “Uh-huh.” Boggs didn’t even look up this time. “Did either of you see or hear anything else? Anything at all?”

  When Letty demurred, I sheepishly raised my hand. “One last thing before I left the church, trying to find the girls here. As I was leaving, Ty Bennett came up the stairs from the basement.”

  “Bennett again, huh?”

  “Yeah.” I didn’t much like telling him about Ty Bennett and whatever beef he’d had with Ronnie. I had a bad feeling about it, like I was saying too much or putting too much of an emphasis on the encounters I’d had. But what could I do? Facts were facts, and Chief Boggs had asked for the truth. I couldn’t not tell him. “He said he’d been waiting in the air-conditioning with all the other guys on the construction crew in the big assembly room in the basement until it was time for them to get the machinery ready to go for the groundbreaking.”

  “It’s true,” Charlie offered. “We were all down there for a couple of hours. Better than waiting out in the hot sun, let me tell ya, when you’re gonna have to be working out in it. There’s no real reason that we needed to be here so early anyway, but the pastor asked, and they were paying us for it, so we all came. All of us were glad for the extra bucks, since we were gonna be working today anyway.”

  Boggs frowned. “So you’re saying that he was down there with you all the entire time?”

  “Well, no. I mean, it’s hard to know really, when you’ve got a bunch of guys—”

  “And girls,” Tara pointed out.

  “And girls,” Charlie corrected automatically, as though used to that kind of intercession, “all together, messing around, laughing, talking. Well, I mean, who knows if anyone goes in or out.”

  “He said he had gone out to use the bathroom, and when he came back everyone was gone,” I volunteered. “He was looking for everyone, wondering where they had gone.”

  Boggs accepted this without comment, the scritch- scratching of his pen on paper his only response. After a moment, he asked, “Anyone have anything else to offer?”

  We glanced around at each other, all of us shaking our heads in the negative.

  “Nothing at all? Miss O’Neill, which direction did you say that the victim headed toward when she left the church?”

  “She was headed off to return to the fundraising events, from what I could tell.”

  “And that was at what time?”

  Time was just not my forte. I squinched up my nose, considering. “Three? -Ish? I’m sorry, I’m just not certain.”

  “And that was the last that you personally saw of her.”

  “Until I saw her lying over there in that hole, yes.”

  Boggs turned his attention to Letty. “And what time did the fundraising events finish up?”

  “The end to the excavation pretty much put a real damper on any kind of a celebratory mood we were in,” Mrs. Clark responded in dry tones. “Too many questions, too much curiosity, and no answers to any of it. Once everyone figured out they weren’t going to be allowed a close-up look, they started drifting away. We started closing down around five o’clock. Everyone was gone by six.”

  “And all of this can be verified by your son-in-law, Pastor—”

  “Robert Angelis. Yes, it can.”

  “Is he here? I’d like to speak with him, if I could.”

  With a regretful shake of her head, she said, “I’m so sorry, Chief. He was pulled away on a welfare call this evening. He’s been gone since, oh, five, five thirty.”

  “Ah. I see. Tomorrow, then.” He looked up from his notebook. “What about your daughter? I’m assuming she lives here with you both.”

  “Yes, of course. My daughter . . . well, of course you can speak with her if you like, but I can assure you that she went from the fundraiser straight to a hot bath, and from the bath to her bed. My daughter is unwell, you see. She shouldn’t be distressed or overtired in any way. She has been under doctor’s care for a while now, and—”

  Boggs waved her concerns away. “I won’t need to speak with her tonight, Mrs. Clark. But if there’s a way for me to speak with her when she has rested . . . just to get a confirmation of a couple of points here . . .”

  Mrs. Clark could see she had little choice. “Of course,” she concurred.

  “Now, about this excavation . . .”

  As the only representative from the crew present, Charlie took up the tale, explaining to the chief about what had happened during the groundbreaking ceremony and what his crew foreman, Tim Kendall, had seen below-ground, that the site had been closed due to fears of instability—this made Chief Boggs’s eyes bug out—and that excavation had stopped immediately, to be resumed only after engineers could be called out to review the situation.

  Boggs took down the foreman’s name from Charlie, then said, “That about covers it for now. Mrs. Clark, you are free to go on back to the parsonage now, but the rest of you—I’ll need your name and contact information so that I can get in touch with you. Once I have that, you’re free to go. I’ll be needing official statements from all of you, so we can talk later about the best time for each of you to come down to the station.”

  Mrs. Clark waved her hand toward the garden. “If you don’t mind, Chief, I’ll just watch from over here for a while. I promise I won’t be in the way. I often sit in the garden when I’m troubled, you see. I find it very soothing.”

  “Fine, fine.”r />
  Charlie, Tara, and Evie went first, volunteering their home phone numbers without reservation, other than Tara’s whispered, “My dad is gonna kill me for this!” Marcus, next, gave only his cell, since he often worked either in his workshop in his garage or with the band.

  When it was my turn, I asked, “Chief Boggs? What was her last name?” At his questioning glance, I explained, “It seems wrong to keep referring to her as just Ronnie, somehow, considering that I didn’t actually know her.”

  “Maddox,” he answered. “Her name was Veronica Maddox.”

  I nodded and gave him my cell number but told him it would probably be easier to find me at Enchantments. I gave him the number there, too.

  Boggs’s pen stopped midscratch. “Enchantments? That store down on River Street . . . the one that’s owned by the witch?”

  Chapter 8

  I drew myself up with as much dignity as I could muster. “Felicity Dow is the owner of the store, and whatever she is or is not is pretty much up to her, now, isn’t it?”

  Boggs grunted. That could have meant yes, or it could have meant hell, no—I wasn’t too sure.

  Finally we were able to leave, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Who’da thunk the store would get a reaction like that!” Tara said, sounding impressed as we trudged in the dark back to the car and Marcus’s bike. “For a second there, I thought he was going to go all whoop-ass on you.”

  “Don’t exaggerate, Tara,” I said, feeling the edginess of annoyance grate at me. It had been quite a day.

  “Seriously. First the stupid Church of Light, and now the Chief of Poh-Leece. You’d think that Liss was the freakin’ Jezebel of the Cornfields or something.”

  “I have never been so glad to get out of a place in my life,” Evie confided to us.

  “The church?” I asked, distracted.

  “No. The garden. Bleah. I didn’t like it.” To demonstrate her point, she lifted her shoulders up and made herself shudder.

  Well, I wasn’t all that big on bugs myself, but the garden had been quite nice, I’d thought. Chalk it up to personal differences of opinion. Or maybe she was just reacting to the whole stumbling-over-a-dead-body thing. It made sense.

  “So . . . who’s riding with me?” Marcus asked.

  I couldn’t help noticing that he was looking at me hopefully. I pretended to be digging through my bag and said, “Well, I guess probably Tara should go with you, and I’ll take Evie home.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Okay.”

  “You know, because it’s late now.”

  “You’re right. It is.”

  I heard the disappointment in his voice, but what should I have done? Guilt was an emotion I was quite familiar with. Not comfortable, but familiar. And already I was thinking about Tom and our issues with timing. We really needed to talk, he and I . . .

  Frowning, I fumbled with my key ring. “So . . . thanks, Marcus, for coming over, and for coming with us tonight.”

  “Well . . . you’re welcome, Maggie.”

  We were both being so formal, so stiff, it was almost laughable. Except it wasn’t funny. The tension between us was a physical thing hanging in the air. What had happened to the easy candor we usually enjoyed as friends?

  “The night would have been even more horrible without you here,” I offered, trying to regain it.

  “Thanks. I think.”

  Evie coughed. “Hey, Tara. Did you see this over here?” she asked, grabbing her friend’s arm and pulling her over to look at one of the machines left behind by the on-hold construction crew.

  Marcus watched them go, shaking his head. “Wow. That was obvious.”

  I laughed in spite of my discomfort. “They should work on their excuses. That was far too implausible. Pure high school stuff. Go figure.”

  He studied me a long, serious moment, searching my face. His directness had always thrown me for a loop, and this moment was no exception. I lowered my gaze, keeping it focused directly on the ground at his feet, so I knew exactly the moment he took that single questioning step toward me. My breath caught and I instantly backed away. When he didn’t move again, I was forced to bring my gaze up to look deep into the all-seeing eyes I had been trying to avoid.

  Marcus shook his head again. The smile he wore was just the teensiest bit regretful. “Still scared, Maggie?”

  Am I ever. Only of myself, not of you. I shrugged.

  “There’s no need,” he whispered, making sure no one could hear but me. “We’re friends, yes?”

  I could barely find my voice. “Always.”

  Friends who wanted each other but who kept dancing around that fact.

  He nodded. “Always.”

  I knew he was well aware of the boundaries I had forced myself to reiterate just now, and I knew he respected that. It would mean that I’d have to be strong for myself, to forgo the relief of collapsing into his arms to take the edge off the anxiety the night’s events had reintroduced into my life . . . but it was for the time being necessary. Where we would be in the future remained to be seen . . . but I knew I couldn’t with any conscience move into a future at all without trimming up a few loose ends. Not without losing all respect for myself.

  Turning toward where the girls hovered, watching us from the corners of their eager little eyes, I called out, “Ready, Evie?”

  Tara said something under her breath to Evie before they headed in our direction. I had a feeling it was either pitying or exasperated in nature. Tara’s expression as she picked up the spare motorcycle helmet that had flattened my hair earlier pretty much said it all.

  I got into my car and rolled down my window as Evie circled around behind to the passenger side. “Marcus?” I said softly.

  “Yeah?”

  “Thank you.”

  No further explanation was required. With him, it was always that way. He always seemed to understand, even when I was still muddling through myself. “Anytime.”

  “Bye, Tara,” Evie said with a lackluster wave. “See you tomorrow. If my parents let me live, that is,” she amended gloomily.

  I headed to Evie’s house first, asking whether she’d like me to come in and explain things to her mom and dad. She declined. I had a feeling she wouldn’t be telling them much. At least not yet. After dropping her off at the curb and waiting for her to get inside, I made my way home to my apartment, still mercifully well lit, and Minnie, who spent the next ten minutes scolding me for being gone and leaving her alone for so long. She seemed to have made the most of her time alone by knocking the stack of magazines off the end table and scattering them to the four winds. And then there was the toilet paper puddle on the floor in the bathroom, the entire length of which bore the distinct signs of claw and tooth marks.

  With a weary sigh I picked up the magazines, tore off the length of toilet paper and wound it up, setting it aside, then picked up a still chirruping Minnie and took her off to bed with me. Soothed and happy, Minnie was out within minutes of my turning off the bedside lamp, but I stayed awake longer than I would have liked, unable to rid my mind of the body crumpled in that weird hole and the image of crosses, crosses, crosses nailed to the walls in every direction, filling my vision as it spun ’round and ’round and ’round in exhaustion.

  It was not a good night.

  Dreams again. Wild, wacky, and weird. Filled to the brim with flashes of things better left unthought. I don’t know when I fell asleep, but the next thing I knew, I was rolling over and slitting one eye open to squint blearily at the glaring lights from the digital clock on my bedside table. Six forty-five. Which meant my alarm was going to go off in ten minutes. Yawn. I rolled over and covered up my head with my pillow.

  Then promptly flung it off when I started feeling like I was breathing in cotton.

  The second I did, I felt a weight on my chest and a scratching rasp on my chin. I opened my eyes again. I could only just make out Minnie’s loving tongue very attentively whorling around on my face from the dim glow em
anating from the light that I always left on in the kitchen. For security purposes, you see. Not because I was afraid of the dark.

  And if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.

  Minnie sat up to blink at me when I folded back the covers and got out of bed. Her head cocked to an inquisitive slant. I told her, “Some of us have to get ready for work, snuggle bug, and can’t laze about until it’s time to walk out the door.” She just yawned, then rolled herself up into a fuzzy black ball. I don’t think she believed me.

  I went through my early morning routine, yawning widely through my shower, through my breakfast of toast with honey and cinnamon, through deciding what outfit I could possibly wear that would keep me as cool as possible through the July swelter and yet still look professional and put-together enough for the store. I settled on a light cotton sundress that came down to my ankles, with a tissue-weight shrug to cover my bare shoulders and upper arms. I’d been air-drying my wavy hair, which had a tendency to be unruly, especially in humid conditions. Like summer. All three-plus months of it. What to do, what to do? Finally I settled on twisting the back into a mass of smooth loops and securing them all at the base of my skull, creating a large kind of bun (but not). The clips and a goodly amount of spray gel kept it fully contained against the weather. Satisfied, I studied the final effect in the mirror: calm, cool, and collected. Success!

  Running back into the bedroom to check the time and to grab my essentials of cell phone, lip balm, and sunscreen, I gasped when I saw the time. “Eep! How did that happen?” My things weren’t on the dresser tray where I always leave them. “What the heck? Minnie, have you been acting up again? Go on. Cough ’em up, you little minx.” Not even a peep of an answer. I sighed, then got down on my hands and knees to look under my dresser. Nothing. As I pushed back up on my hands, I saw a dark shape move past me in my peripheral vision. “I suppose you’ve come to apologize,” I halfheartedly grumbled at the kitten I knew I’d find doing her best to be cute if I looked that way. “Well, you can just forget about that, missy, until you show me where you’ve hidden everything. Come on.” Normally Minnie would have bumped up against me by now, purring and rubbing. She might even have jumped on my back, claws dug in for balance. But she did neither of those things. Which, I had to say, was . . . unexpected. I glanced over at her, where I’d seen the dark movement.