Anna Denning Mystery Series Box Set: Books 1–3

by Karin Kaufman

  “Do they know where Susan got the cake?”

  “No. Tom Muncy said he had no idea.”

  “Yew? It must’ve tasted horrible.”

  “Maybe that’s why she threw up. Or maybe yew makes you throw up before it kills you.” Liz strapped her purse over her shoulder. “I hate to leave, but I need to make some phone calls before it gets too late and work on the website. I’m parked on the street.” She pointed down the hall toward the building’s front doors and Palmer Street.

  “I’m in the parking lot,” Anna said, starting down the hall. “Call me tomorrow?”

  6

  The cold vinyl on the seat of her SUV penetrated Anna’s jeans and jacket and swept over her shoulders. It had stopped snowing, for a while at least. Several inches of snow were expected overnight and into the morning. She wished now she hadn’t come to the council meeting. She dreaded the thought of driving home on the icy streets.

  She put the key in the ignition and watched as the wipers swept a layer of dry, powdery snow from her windshield. When she bent down to shove her purse under the seat, she heard a rap at the passenger window. She sat bolt upright and pressed her back to the seat. A gloved hand was wiping away the snow. Monica.

  “Cripes,” Anna said.

  “Sorry.” Monica mouthed the word.

  Anna rolled down the window. “That’s all right. I haven’t seen you in a long time, Monica. I was surprised you were here tonight.”

  Monica looked across the parking lot then back to Anna. “I’m glad you came. I have to talk to you.”

  “You’d better get in, it’s freezing.” Anna reached across the seat and popped open the door.

  “Thanks.” Monica looked over her shoulder again and hoisted herself into the Jimmy. She focused on the SUV’s dashboard as she spoke, avoiding Anna’s eyes. “Jason’s waiting in our car for me.”

  “You’re married to Jason now?”

  Monica nodded and brushed a few flakes of snow from the front of her coat. “Jason Fisk, yeah. We live outside town.” She faced Anna. “You say his name like you know him.”

  “Rowan introduced me to him today, in the Buffalo Café.”

  “Oh. Rowan said he met you, but he didn’t tell me you met Jason.”

  “The last time I saw you was at Faith Chapel, before you were married.” So much time had passed since she’d last seen Monica, Anna thought, and here she was at the council meeting. It was strange—and stranger still that Monica had sought her out in the parking lot and insisted on talking to her.

  Monica inhaled slowly, a small, jagged intake of breath, as though she were searching for a way out of saying what she had to say.

  “Is something wrong?” Anna asked.

  “I’m not sure you’re going to believe me.” Monica removed a glove and brushed back flyaway wisps of hair from her face. Her broad forehead and large, dark eyes reminded Anna of the sentimental drawings of children she sometimes saw on greeting cards. But Monica’s brow was creased with worry. There was a battle going on inside of her. She looked like she might change her mind and leave the car at any second.

  “Try me, I’ll listen,” Anna said, hoping to soothe Monica’s nerves and help her talk.

  Monica wet her dry lips with the tip of her tongue. “I don’t think you understand about Darlene. I mean, who she is and what she’s capable of.”

  “Who is she?”

  “She’s . . .” Monica’s long fingers fluttered in front of her. “Powerful. And she loves using her power.”

  “Do you mean she has connections?”

  “Not like you mean. She has some friends in politics, but that’s not it. You know she’s a witch, right?”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “No, I mean a real witch, a traditional one. She doesn’t just talk witch like some of her store customers, she is a witch. She learned the craft from her grandmother, and her grandmother was one of the best. Witches all over Colorado, all over the West, know who Darlene is.”

  Their breath fogged the windows. Anna started the car heater and felt a rush of cold air hit her shins. “It’ll warm up in a minute. I’m not sure I get what you’re saying. How does Darlene being a witch concern me?”

  “Even if Darlene wasn’t a witch I’d tell you to stay away from her. She doesn’t care who or what she has to mow down to get what she wants. She thinks the whole world owes her, and she’s going to get what she’s owed. She feels discriminated against, by everybody. Her own parents threw her out of the house when she was a teenager. And you’re her enemy now. I saw that look on her face. I’ve seen it before.”

  “How long have you known her?”

  “I met her in Denver, a month after I married Jason.”

  “So he knew her before that?”

  “Darlene used to live in Denver, and Jason started networking with new age and wiccan groups in the area so he could sell more herbs. We rent this big greenhouse our neighbors own. When we got married, he taught me how to make smudge sticks from dried herbs.”

  “You make smudge sticks for Darlene?”

  Monica smiled. “You know what smudge sticks are?”

  “I used to be involved in wicca, a long, long time ago.”

  “Really?” Monica paused. She seemed to have trouble taking in this new information. “Anyway, I make three hundred smudge sticks a month. We grow the herbs in our greenhouses, assemble the smudges, and Darlene makes a huge profit, especially on her website.”

  “Why don’t you sell them on your own website?”

  Monica twirled a lock of her black hair. “Jason’s not ready. One of these days he will be.” She dropped the hair. “But listen, this is important. You don’t want Darlene as your enemy.”

  Anna turned the heater up a notch. “I don’t understand. All I did was ask Darlene a few questions. How am I her enemy now?”

  “You questioned her appointment as liaison. And you challenged her about Christmas. She gets hugely angry when someone fights her on witchcraft. I never say anything around her. I just make those damn smudge sticks and hope she likes them and leaves me alone. I wouldn’t make them at all but we need the money.” Monica turned her face to the passenger window and spoke softly. “I’m beginning to wonder if it’s worth it.”

  “You’re afraid of her.” Anna said. She waited until Monica looked back at her. “Why?”

  “I am a little. But I’m more afraid for you.”

  Anna waved a hand as if to shoo a fly. “Witches don’t scare me. Though Darlene’s an awfully large woman. What is she, six feet? She could probably beat me up.”

  Monica didn’t smile.

  “Do you really believe in witchcraft?” Anna asked.

  “I’ve seen it, yeah.” Monica clasped her hands around her knees and concentrated her attention on the lights of the dashboard radio. “If Darlene wants something, she gets it. And if you get in her way, she’ll destroy you.”

  “Monica, come on.”

  “She’s always talking about loving nature, the earth, other people, and all that. She doesn’t even own a car because she thinks it harms nature. She donates to charities. But when she wants something, nothing else matters. She becomes someone else. I know she does spells, and I know they work. I’ve seen it, Anna. She told me she can see the future using a mirror, and I believe her. She knows things other people don’t know.”

  Anna was silent as she considered what to say. Monica really believed that Darlene was a powerful witch. And because she believed that, she also thought she was warning Anna at great personal risk. It would have been comical except for the fear in Monica’s voice and the fondness Anna now felt for her. Convinced that Darlene had powers, Monica had still done what was right in her eyes.

  Anna wished she could persuade her that Darlene was nothing more than a garden-variety bully. It was even possible that Darlene had bullied Tom Muncy to get him to appoint her as liaison to the committee. But she hadn’t needed supernatural power to do that. Bullies’ weapons were ord
inary and unremarkable.

  “I’ve seen how Darlene manipulates Jazmin,” Anna said at last, “and she likes to give the impression she’s in total control, but Monica, she has no power. She’s just yanking your chain. I’m sure you’ve met people like her before. It’s all show. She gets what she wants by making people afraid of her.”

  Monica released her knees and leaned back on the headrest. “You don’t understand.”

  “How do you think she got Tom Muncy to appoint her as liaison to the governor’s committee? She bullied him in some way. Threatened him, maybe.” Anna rapped her fingers on the steering wheel. “And involved me for some reason I haven’t figured out yet.”

  Monica looked sharply at Anna. “Leave it alone.”

  “Now you sound like Darlene.”

  “I don’t mean to. I’m not saying it in the same way she is.”

  “Do you know why I was talking to Jazmin outside the Council Room? She hired me to research Susan Muncy’s family tree.”

  “Rowan told me.”

  “Do you have any idea why Jazmin told me Susan was her mother? Or why Darlene suggested Jazmin hire me?”

  “No. I stay out of Darlene’s personal life. I don’t want anything to do with it.”

  “Shoot.” Anna slid her fingertips under her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “I just remembered. I still haven’t been paid. I should have asked Jazmin for my check in the hall. I don’t want to go back to that store.”

  “Try her at her apartment. I can tell you where she lives.”

  “On Larkspur Street? Darlene told her to give me her address.”

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  It had begun to snow again. A few tiny flakes. Anna only saw them in the beams thrown by the streetlights or when they hit the Jimmy’s warm windshield and melted. The sight of them made her anxious to go home.

  “What does Jason think about Darlene?” she asked Monica.

  “He doesn’t like her, but he makes fun of me when I talk about her having powers. All he cares about is the money we make from her, and he doesn’t want me to ruin that. He says she’s our meal ticket. We make smudge sticks for two new age stores in Denver and one in Boulder because she recommended us.”

  “That was nice of her.”

  Monica’s jaw dropped. “She’s not nice, Anna. There’s nothing nice about her. She doesn’t do anything that isn’t for her benefit.”

  “There must be some good in her.”

  A car horn sounded from somewhere in the parking lot. Two honks in quick succession.

  Monica grabbed onto the front of her seat and slid down in it until the top of her head reached the level of the dashboard. “That’s Jason,” she said with a gasp.

  “Monica, what are you doing?”

  “Don’t look at me. Where’s Darlene? Do you see her?”

  “For heaven’s sake.” Anna scanned the street and sidewalks, first to her right through the passenger window then straight ahead. Her eyes came to rest on a woman half a block away, standing in the snow-speckled glow of a streetlight. Hands in the pockets of her coat, she stared in the direction of the Jimmy. As far as Anna could tell, she wasn’t moving.

  “Is that her?” Anna asked. “It looks like a woman.” She expected Monica to inch up a little in her seat and take a look, but she remained frozen.

  “Don’t let her know you’re talking to someone.”

  “What am I supposed to do, cover my mouth? Who cares if it’s her?”

  “Jason honked. That means it’s her. I knew it.”

  Monica’s eyes were squeezed tight and she’d sunk even lower in her seat. She looked to Anna like a small child cowering from the monster she knew was hiding in her bedroom closet.

  “Monica, relax. You’re going to give yourself a headache. Look—”

  When Anna looked again toward the streetlight the woman was gone. There was no one in sight on the sidewalk, no cars on the street. She looked through her rear windshield. There were four cars in the parking lot, one of them presumably Jason’s.

  “What is it?” Monica asked.

  “Whoever it was is gone.”

  Monica opened her eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean gone, left. I’m not surprised. It’s freezing out there, and snowing again.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “I don’t know, Monica. Sit up.” She put a hand under Monica’s elbow, urging her into a sitting position. “Whoever it was probably ducked into a restaurant or got into a car while I was looking at you.” There weren’t any restaurants in that part of the block, and she hadn’t heard any cars go by, but Anna wasn’t going to feed Monica’s fears. The woman had simply walked off while Anna wasn’t looking. Nothing magical about it.

  “There’s no one out there,” Anna said. “See?”

  “But she was out there.”

  “Does it matter? Don’t you think it’s a little weird that she wants to stand out in the snow and stare at my car? Why be concerned about someone like that?”

  “She was looking right at us?”

  Anna shrugged. She knew she should have left out the part about the woman staring at her car. “It’s dark, I couldn’t tell.”

  “I’ve got to go, Anna.”

  “Promise me you won’t worry so much.”

  Monica opened the door and slid down from the seat, pivoting back to look at Anna. “Even if you don’t think Darlene has power, be careful. You believe in evil, don’t you?”

  “I believe it exists, yes. Why?”

  “That’s what makes Darlene so dangerous. She doesn’t.”

  7

  Anna kept the pick in her right hand moving evenly, smoothly. She gradually increased her speed until her hand was rolling across the mandolin’s three lower strings, crosspicking like Sean had taught her. Then she began to fret the D string with her left hand, walking her fingers up and down the neck, playing a simple tune. She shut her eyes and imagined Sean beside her. “Keep your wrist loose,” he’d say. “Now you’re rolling.” She was three times as fast now as when Sean had last seen her. He’d be proud.

  She felt he was in the room when she played, especially on nights like this, Jackson fed and stretched out on the couch, a fire snapping in the wood stove. The plink of the strings, which she’d thought on first hearing was about as melodic as pebbles hitting a tin can, sounded in the room again, the sound of Sean.

  He’d loved his bluegrass and Celtic music, and wanted to share his love with Anna. So one day she picked up his mandolin. Three months later he was dead. A year passed before she could bring herself to take his mandolin from its case again.

  He’d been thirty-five when an accident on Highway 34 took his life—a year older than she was at the time. Now she was a year older than him. After the accident her faith in the Lord was the only thing that made sense. Later it supplied the target for her anger. God was the closed door she railed against night after night, demanding an answer or at least an end to the pain, and knowing she’d receive neither.

  Jackson opened his eyes and raised his head as Anna dropped the pick into a small dish near the couch and put away the mandolin. “You don’t like it when I stop, do you boy? But I have to get to work. I need to find out what sort of mess I’ve gotten myself into.”

  Anna walked to the kitchen, pulled a bottle of New Mexico apple wine from a rack on the counter, and poured herself a small glass. Leaning against the sink, she took a sip of wine and looked across the kitchen to the living room and her Christmas tree. She was glad she’d put it up, though Liz and Dan Halvorsen had brought it by, leaving her little choice. They knew she might decide against a tree again this year, like last, and not just to save money. She hadn’t wanted to celebrate Christmas last year. But the tree was warm and comforting. It was a jewel casting its light through the sliding glass door to her snow-covered back yard.

  In her office, Anna switched on her computer and clicked on the Muncy file in her genealogy software, watching as the program loaded name
s into a chart. To the right of “Susan (Bishop) Muncy” were Susan’s parents’ names, Bertha W. Lynn and John Shelby Bishop, then Bertha’s mother, Rose K. Robinson, born in Rockford, Illinois, in 1928.

  The rest of the names extended from Rose’s line, all of them female, ending with Hannah (Gardner) Wells, who had died in 1752 in Durham, in what was then the Province of New Hampshire. Anna hadn’t thought much of Jazmin’s request that she research only the female names in Susan’s line, but now, with all the talk about witches, she wondered.

  Jackson padded into the office, sat at Anna’s feet, and let loose with a high-pitched whine.

  “Stop sulking, baby, I have to work.” She patted him on the head then returned to the computer screen. Hannah Gardner, born in 1717 in Durham, married Isaac Wells in 1738, died in Durham in 1752, and was buried in the wilds of Maine, near present-day Waterville. That was strange, she thought. Waterville was a long way from Durham, especially by eighteenth-century means of travel. She hadn’t considered that before.

  Hannah had given birth to three boys and one girl, Sarah, born in 1746. Sarah (Wells) Hargrave had six children, three of them girls. “Here’s where it got complicated,” Anna said aloud. Jackson barked once and ran out of the office. “You’re very expressive tonight,” Anna called out.

  She turned back to her computer screen, propped an elbow on the table, and lowered her chin into her hand. “What should I be looking for?”

  Three girls were born to Sarah Hargrave, but only one of them, Jane, was Susan Muncy’s direct ancestor, and following Jazmin’s instructions, that was who she’d focused on. As Anna looked over the chart she became convinced that she had to know more about these women in Susan’s direct line. There was a reason Jazmin hadn’t considered the others, the boys especially, worthy of more research.

  She took a sip of wine, massaging the stem of the glass between her fingers and thumb. Staring at the monitor, she remembered the two photos Jazmin had given her. She didn’t have copies, but she’d recorded the addresses someone had written on the backs of the prints. She found the folder marked “Muncy” in her documents files and clicked it open.