by Alt, Madelyn
The rest of the front page was taken up by a speculative letter to the editor titled “Chaos In Our Midst?” and proved to be a recap of the string of bad luck—murders, that is—the town had suffered in the last nine months. It was not pretty. It wasn’t even polite. And it pretty much called out the police department for being inadequate and even unequipped to cope.
The letter writer seemed to have a dual purpose: It suggested that there were more insidious, behind-the-scenes threats to the town’s well-being that others might not be aware of. The readers were hereby advised that there was now a group of ghost hunters in Stony Mill, headed up by self-professed witch Ms. Felicity Dow, owner of Enchantments, with the author opining that the group’s conversing with spirits might be a reason that the town’s luck had been changing. Furthermore, it was revealed that Ms. Dow had been personally involved in a ritual “clearing” of a demon at an unnamed Stony Mill residence within the last month. The author of the letter suggested that, while the witches in question purported themselves to be performing a beneficial service by clearing away evil spirits, there was no reason to trust that claim. Witches in Stony Mill, demons on the loose, murders on our door-steps. Was this the sort of future we wanted for our town? Readers were advised to contact their local clergy and ask what they could do to help ensure the spiritual well-being of their families and the community at large.
It was signed by Anonymous, but I knew, I just knew it must be Margo Dickerson-Craig. Putting her gossip to good use, I see. Who else could have been timely enough to make the “Special Edition” with her own personal brand of spew?
My stomach burned when I saw that Tom was singled out by reputation, if not by name. Even the addition of a Special Task Force Investigator to the city budget cannot squelch the violence in our town, was the specific charge. Well, of course having Tom take on the additional duties of the cross-departmental task force wasn’t going to stop the violence from occurring. The murders that we had endured weren’t in any way related. They were random, separate, without ties in any way. Completely unpredictable. All of the murders that had happened had been solved . . . I couldn’t for the life of me understand what more dear Anonymous (cough, cough) thought could be done.
“What she wants is impossible,” I protested, stabbing a finger down at the op-ed piece.
“You didn’t finish reading it, Magster. She’s calling out Tom for his ties to this store. Through you, obviously.”
“What?!”
It was true. I read the words myself. “She has way overstepped her bounds.”
“She’s gone completely mental,” Tara corrected. “I mean, I’m not exactly Tom’s number-one fan, but even I can see what’s what, and what’s what definitely doesn’t include him not doing his job. Sometimes he does it only too well.”
Well, she would say that, having been busted by the man in question down at the hanging gardens at the old quarry, a favorite make-out destination among the local teenagers and so-not-teenaged. And that’s pretty much what Evie told her. With glee.
“Bite me, Evil.”
I was going to have to find Tom and get his take on all of this. That much was obvious. What wasn’t obvious was how he was going to take the news that I had been with Marcus when I once again found myself in the thick of trouble. Not trouble that I had caused, and yet trouble nonetheless.
And then there was the information about Tom that Annie had helpfully passed on.
Marian left, saying that she had a lunch meeting with a judge on behalf of the county historical society. I decided to follow her lead. With a nervous twinge in the pit of my stomach, I told Liss I was going to take my lunch just a little bit early. After promising to bring Tara and Evie each a large order of fries and a strawberry milk-shake from the drive-up Coney Dog restaurant and giving Minnie a kiss between her ears, I took myself off to find Tom. There was no answer on his cell, so I headed over to the police station.
His car was there, parked in its usual spot. I pulled into a visitor slot and popped the gearshift into first gear to hold the car in place, since Christine’s emergency brake was a little unreliable. Then I flipped down the visor to check my appearance in the vanity mirror I’d Velcroed there long ago. My hair had absorbed the steam from the air, even though it had been clipped and moussed into place. I ran my palms over the front and plucked at the bangs, hoping to make it appear that I had at least tried to be tidy. I wished I understood the fundamentals of a Glamour charm better. I might be tempted to try it, if I thought beauty would be enough to distract Tom from the real issues at hand.
Just my luck that Tom had ethics.
Still, a woman knows instinctively that her wiles can get her out of a tight spot here and there, and it certainly doesn’t hurt to employ the arsenal, even when uncertain of the effectiveness of it. So, I grabbed my lip gloss from my purse and applied it liberally. The slick of rosy gloss on lips can have a distracting effect on even the sternest of men, doncha know. So does adjusting the boobage upward, back from the sad state of affairs gravity drags them into. Getting out of my car, I smoothed my sundress as best I could—steamy heat makes the worst, limp wrinkles—and closed my door, not bothering with either locks or windows. Anyone who would steal a car without air-conditioning on a day like this was welcome to it.
Jeanette was behind the counter window when I walked in. She opened it as soon as she saw me. “Hey there, Maggie. Long time no see.”
I smiled uncomfortably. Even Jeanette had noticed. “Hey, Jeanette. I don’t suppose Tom is around, is he?”
Her smile stiffened as, from an office down the hall, raised voices came thundering out. “Get the hell out of my office, Reed!”
“Now, Hiram . . . don’t get your gun belt in a twist—”
“You come in here and accuse me of spilling my guts to the local fish wrap, then tell me to calm down? You’ve got some nerve, you ham-handed excuse for a politician. You’re not a lawman. All you care about is catering to the city council and being their whipping boy when it comes to budgets and protocol.”
“There’s no need for you to get personal about this. I only said—”
“You accused me of giving the Gazette all of the details about the crime. Do I look that stupid? Do I look like I’ve never handled a case before? Jesus-H.-Christ-in-a-box.”
Jeanette sent me an apologetic shrug. She and I both knew that all we could do was wait out the storm.
“I asked you whether you talked with them. They’ve been alarmingly close with their information all year long. Too close. I just thought—”
“Well, you can just think again. You got problems with the way I do things, tell me. But only when you got your facts straight.”
Sheriff Reed said something low that I couldn’t quite make out. I was really trying not to look too much like I was eavesdropping, even though Jeanette and I both had our ears open and we both knew what we were doing.
“Fielding!” Boggs barked. “You find out who spilled the beans to the Gazette.”
“Sir, with all due respect”—Tom’s voice, obviously in conference with the two of them—“it’s not against the law to talk to the press when you’re a civilian.”
“Not illegal, maybe . . . but someone knows an awful lot.”The faint rustle of papers. “According to
“Sir . . .” The faint rustle of papers. “According to Johnson’s report and yours, there were a number of people on site at the crime scene. Professionals as well as civilians. Any one of them could have—”
“You’re right. Any one of them could have. So be sure you talk to all of them. You can start with that girlfriend of yours.”
Jeanette’s eyes flicked to mine. She opened her mouth, then closed it again and stared down at the stack of papers in front of her, extra attentive and conscientious, then reached out and silently slid the window closed, a too-late gesture for the sake of discretion. I turned my back to the window entirely and leaned against the wall to wait. I didn’t blame Jeanette—she was only doing
her job. At that moment I was strongly considering sneaking out and calling Tom later from my cell phone.
Why did I have to come here now? I was beginning to wonder at my usual stellar timing.
“And while you’re doing that,” Boggs continued, his voice muffled by the glass but certainly not inaudible, “you get Ty Bennett in here. We know he’s the one who did it. Do your job and get the dirt needed to put him away.”
They really needed to look into soundproofing this window. Closing it didn’t make a bit of difference.
“Yes, sir.”
“I want him in custody before the end of the week. Before he has a chance to fly the coop.”
“We’re keeping an eye on him, Chief.”
So they suspected Ty Bennett, to the point of exclusion? I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. I knew what I had witnessed yesterday was the truth—the first argument had been heated. And who else could the second argument have been between but Ty and Ronnie? In fact, the very thrust of the second exchange suddenly made sense. She’d said herself that their relationship had been very sexual and that she wasn’t ready to give that up when he had cut her loose. Whoever had been in that room with her—because clearly it had been Ronnie who’d come out of that second confrontation with angry tears—had been the prey to her predatory thrust. So to speak. The man in question had been trying to fend her off. That much was certain. Given that bit of insight, I knew I had no real reason to think the man of that moment wasn’t yet again Ty Bennett.
And yet . . .
Oh, stop it, Maggie, I thought to myself. Who else could it have been? At least Ty was a good place for them to start.
Unfortunately, he also seemed to be a stopping point for the Stony Mill PD. Or, should I say, for Chief Boggs. Was that right? Was it fair? Worse yet, was that my fault? I just didn’t know.
“What are we hearing from the engineering crew? Anything?”
Reed said, “They’re still getting safety measures set up so they can send down a scope and take a look. The dirt should have settled enough by now from the actual collapse to take a good gander.”
“Don’t matter, I don’t guess. We aren’t going to find anything down there relatable to the murder itself.”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” Reed said. “But did you stop to think, Hiram, why the victim was in that hole to begin with?”
“Nope,” Boggs said stubbornly.
“She wasn’t killed there. We know that much from the shortage of physical evidence.”
This was news to me.
U-L-C . . .
Again the memory of the Ouija reading came to me. What? What would I see?
“And there was no murder weapon found,” Reed went on. “Maybe . . . just maybe it’s down in that hole, where we haven’t searched yet.”
“Any clues as to what caused the puncture marks?” That was Tom.
“Nothin’ that we saw,” Boggs admitted. “They didn’t resemble anything I recognized. Some triangular object with blunt points seems to be the best guess from preliminary examinations. Whatever it was tore through the skin and bone pretty roughly. Definitely not clean marks, that’s for sure.”
Abruptly the image of the girl’s crumpled body tore into my head, unbidden. Just a flash, but enough to make me flinch and cause my head to ache. Biting my lip, I closed my eyes and leaned against the counter to keep myself upright. I was seeing stars, and it was all I could do to breathe deeply, purposefully, steadily, until the expanding pinpoints of light had diminished to a manageable level. I thought I felt a tingle along my cheek, a warm tracing of something. I brushed my hand there, not sure why I half expected to find blood . . . but my fingertips came away clean.
Linking to a subject was something that an adept clairvoyant or medium could do at will, given the right circumstances. I wasn’t adept at anything except for finding ways to include chocolate in my life. Instead, when I made a connection of the psychic kind, it tended to be random, erratic, and completely unpredictable, like a stereo receiver that suddenly and temporarily picked up a broadcast from distant lands where before there was nothing but dead airspace.
An accidental empath, that was me in a nutshell.
Nutshell, not nuthouse. Big difference.
I was so caught up in the moment that I didn’t realize the meeting had ended until the door opened to my right, catching me unawares.
“I was wondering when I’d see you.”
Tom stood in the doorway, a grim look on his rug gedly handsome face, his gray-green eyes clouded. I raised a hand and waved at him. “Hi.”
“Hi yourself.” Without another word, he grabbed my wrist in an unyielding grip and pulled me toward the door. Off balance the entire way, I just barely managed to keep from stumbling along behind him.
Outside, I blinked against the blinding glare of the sun. I would have reached for my sunglasses, but before I could, Tom whipped me around to face him.
Someone was not happy.
“So.”
I fluttered my eyelashes. I couldn’t help it. The sun was making my eyes water. “So?” I asked innocently.
He stared at me a long moment, then let his breath out in a long-suffering sigh. “I can’t wait to hear the whole story. I really can’t. I just know that the truth is so fascinating and unexpected that you couldn’t wait to share it with me, so you rushed over here at your first available break from the store. Am I right?”
Well, now he was just being insulting. I pulled my wrist out of his grasp and started to rub the blood back into it. “You seem to know everything already. Why don’t you tell me?”
“Cut the crap, Maggie. Yeah, I know it all. I read the report.” He paused, waiting for the words to sink in. “Did you hear me? I read. The freaking. Report.”
In my dreams, my tongue was as witty and sharp as they come. My reality rarely lived up to that, more’s the pity. I stared him down, feeling a twitch of annoyance start at my temple. “And?”
He closed his eyes. Probably praying for self-control. “What was it this time, Maggie? Just your lucky day? Bad timing? Bad karma? What?”
Suddenly I was feeling the need for self-control just as much as he was. “I was helping a friend,” I grated out.
“Oh, well, that makes all the difference in the world. Helping a friend. Would that friend be Marcus Quinn?”
I wasn’t going to rise to his bait. I wasn’t. “No.”
“And yet there he was with you. Helping your friend.”
“It was all completely innocent, Tom.”
“Huh. I’ll bet. You are found in an out-of-the-way place, late, with a man who I know for a fact is out to get into your pants—”
“Oh, that is so unfair!” I fumed. “You don’t know Marcus—”
Tom cut me off with a steely gaze. “Maggie, he’s a guy. He’s single. He’s hanging around you of his own free will. Of course he’s trying to get into your pants.”
I wasn’t about to argue that point further with him. I actually wasn’t completely sure what Marcus wanted from me, but I did know that he was my friend, no matter what we chose to do or not do in a physical sense. And I knew that he was okay with that.
Or at least I thought I did.
“We were there,” I told him flatly, “to find Tara’s cell phone. She lost it when we went to the church fundraiser yesterday afternoon.”
“You’re all about being in the wrong place at the wrong time, aren’t you?” His mouth had not relented from the hard line it often took when he was put out. “It’s amazing, this innate ability you have.”
“If you’re insinuating that I want to be involved in all of this, you’re out of your mind!”
“I’m not insinuating anything. I’m telling you, it’s awfully strange that you keep ending up in the middle of things. And I’m not the only one who’s noticed.”
I knew who he meant. But he didn’t know that, and I wanted him to spell it out. No tricks, nothing left unsaid.
I crossed my arms over my chest.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
He crossed his, too. His display was more impressive than mine, because it pushed out the already taut muscles in his arms. “The whole town is talking about your boss.”
“Yes, I know. All thanks to my sister, who should know better, but who has never heard a rumor she hasn’t wanted to spread.”
“So it’s just a rumor that Felicity Dow’s a witch, then. Is that how you’re spinning it to everyone?”
“I’m not spinning anything! I don’t need to spin anything. What Liss is or is not is no one’s business but her own.”
“Maggie. We live in a small town—”
“A provincial small town,” I corrected him.
“No more provincial than any other,” Tom shot back. “You know how things are done here, and you know the way people are. You can’t just make them change longtime behaviors and attitudes just because you want them to.”
“How about because it’s not right to be so judgmental? The Bible says we should love our neighbors—”
“It also says, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,’ ” he said, a touch too quickly for me to think he’d not rehearsed it a hundred times.
“Actually, it was mistranslated,” I had to correct him, yet again. “Liss says some scholars believe the translation was altered intentionally during King James’s reign to reinforce feelings of the time into the text. The original word in Hebrew should have been translated as ‘poi soner,’ not ‘witch.’ And there are other instances in the Bible where godly men have consulted with seers and diviners. Hence, witches. The Witch of Endor ring a bell? Good old Saul went to her for help, you know.”
He stared at me as though I had just told him I had been born on the planet Valron and my parents were blue. Long enough that my annoyance had a chance to rise to new and improved heights. “Just how much time have you been putting into studying stuff like that? Good Lord almighty, Maggie. Do you even hear yourself? I thought the crap you were spouting before was bad enough—all that psychic touchy-feely mumbo jumbo—but this . . . this goes way over the top. Do you hear what being around that woman has changed in you?”
