by Meg Muldoon
“Look, I don’t think I’ll be able to make it to dinner tonight,” I said.
There was a long silence on the other side of the line.
“Ging, please don’t be upset with me—”
But I was.
Chapter 27
I slid into the passenger’s seat of the squad car, and Maddy took off down Anchor Avenue.
“What evidence are they talking about?”
Maddy kept her eyes on the road.
“I’m not supposed to tell you anything about that,” she said. “Sorry, but the chief would have my job.”
She drove slowly along the side streets, not saying anything more.
“Just tell me one thing – is it really bad?” I said, finally. “I mean, will it make for a slam dunk case like that stupid district attorney said at the press conference?”
She glanced over at me with serious eyes.
“It depends on how you look at it,” Maddy said, mysteriously.
I groaned, frustrated that she wouldn’t say anything more. For a second, I thought about using my persuasive powers. But then I immediately thought better of it. I didn’t do that to friends on purpose. Even in dire moments like this.
“Isn’t there anything you can tell me, Mads?”
“I guess I could ask you the same thing, Ging. Is there anything you need to tell me?”
When she looked over, I saw that her expression had changed. Maddy had her game face on, the one she wore during every high school basketball and soccer game she played in.
“Me? What would I need to tell you?”
She didn’t answer, but turned down Schooner Avenue. A hard silence settled over the conversation.
“We found Penelope’s diary hidden up at her house,” she finally said. “There’s an entry about her big fight with Viv. Penelope wrote that if anything were to happen to her, it was Viv who did it. She wrote about the battle in trying to get Viv to keep the Victorian updated, and about how the old house was becoming the eyesore of the town. About how Viv threatened her in front of witnesses. And about how she was now scared of…”
She paused.
“Of what?”
“‘Scared of the old witch,’ is how she phrased it.”
“Oh my God,” I said.
She sucked in a deep breath.
“And then your name shows up in the diary.”
I felt my eyes balloon.
“My name?”
Maddy nodded sharply.
She pulled over to the side of the road and shifted into park. She cut the engine.
“I think it’s time you told me the truth.”
I swallowed hard.
“Of course, Mads. I mean, I always do.”
“No, not always, Ging.Clearly not always.”
She looked angry and a little nervous, and that scared me.
I felt sick to my stomach.
“I want the truth, Ginger. Do you know something about Penelope Ashby’s murder?”
Chapter 28
Had Maddy really just asked me that?
“We know that you had some sort of secret meeting with the mayor a couple weeks ago,” Maddy said in a grave tone. “Before she died. It’s there in her diary, in black and white.”
“Are you accusing me of murder?”
“Of course not. But why didn’t you tell me about the meeting? Do you know how shocking it was to find your name in Penelope’s diary like that? Why did you hide it from me?”
I tried to steady my voice.
“Maddy – I wasn’t hiding anything from you. Honest, I wasn’t. But my first responsibility is to my clients. I can’t be blabbing about their visits. It would be unethical for me to betray them like that. Most of the time, they’re embarrassed just to knock on my door.”
“So it’s kind of like a witch doctor-patient relationship? Is that your defense? Because you better be thinking a little clearer on this, Ginger. If your aunt somehow gets off, the cops have their eyes on you next.”
I bit my lower lip.
“Anyway, the lady’s dead,” Maddy continued. “That clears any confidentiality issue you have with her. You shouldn’t have withheld the information from me, Ging. She not only had your name written down in her diary, but she also wrote that you refused to help her. The chief has a theory now that the mayor went to ask for help with your aunt. To beg you to intervene is how he phrased it. And that you refused. And that you and Aunt Viv might have even cut the brakes together.”
“Oh, c’mon now,” I said, crossing my arms. “That’s ridiculous, and you know it.”
I felt my face grow red.
“Well, part of it is true,” I said. “I did refuse to help her. But it had nothing to do with my aunt. I didn’t even know that she and Penelope got in a fight until you told me about it.”
“Then what was this meeting about?” Maddy asked.
I looked out at the ocean, feeling like it was swallowing us all up and there was nothing to do. I let out a sigh, and then my mind drifted back to the last time I saw Penelope Ashby alive.
How she ended up yelling at me before stomping out of my café kitchen.
And promising that she would rid the town of witches, once and for all.
I looked back over at Maddy.
“Tell me,” she said.
I paused, but then gave in.
There was no other choice.
“Penelope came by my café wanting a love potion.”
“What?”
I told Maddy the entire story.
Chapter 29
“Penelope didn’t tell me who she was in love with,” I said. “She just said that she needed the man to fall in love with her because she was crazy about him. I never asked who.”
Maddy mulled over that for a long minute.
I didn’t usually discuss much about my side business with Maddy. She came from a devout Catholic family, and while she accepted me just the way I was, I always got the sense that my witchy side dealings made her a bit uncomfortable.
The past ten minutes had been a crash course for her.
“But you didn’t make the love potion for her?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“I couldn’t. I didn’t get a good feeling from her. Obviously, she wasn’t too happy about that.”
“You should have told me about this, Ginger,” Maddy said. “Right when we found out about her death.”
“I didn’t think it mattered.”
“Everything matters when it’s murder.”
“We didn’t know that right away, though,” I said. “And besides, I have my own rules and regulations, Mads. Just like you. I don’t have Chief Logan looking over my shoulder, but I have to keep my clients’ secrets. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be much of a witch.”
Maddy started up the car again. She pulled out onto the highway for a ways, heading toward the old Victorian. After a few moments of silence, she seemed to cool off a little.
“Okay. Here’s the game plan, Ging. I think the only way to save your aunt at this point is to find out who really killed Penelope. I hate to say it, but I think that’s Viv’s only chance. They’ve got a pretty good case going.”
Maddy never failed to tell it like it was.
“Let’s get back to Aunt Viv’s and make a list of possible suspects, okay? Anyone and everyone in this town who knew Penelope Ashby. Maybe we’ll come up with something those boneheads investigating the murder overlooked.”
I nodded.
“A lot of people had an ax to grind with Penelope,” I said. “Aunt Viv wasn’t the only one.”
“Yeah,” Maddy said. “I mean, between those city councilors Mayor Ashby was always squabbling with, the unhappy book club group, and even that ex-husband of hers, I can think of at least half a dozen people with better motives than your aunt.”
Penelope’s ex-husband, Aunt Viv’s former boyfriend, I had completely forgotten about him.
I wondered if the other cops had, too.
We pul
led up to the house and Maddy cut the engine. I stepped out. A wicked wind was blowing up from the beach, and a bank of sea fog was rolling in. The seagulls were crying bloody murder.
We started heading up the steps of the old house. Then, suddenly, Maddy stopped dead in her tracks.
I looked over. Her face had turned the color of driftwood.
“What’s the matt—” I started saying.
But then I followed her gaze.
“Oh my…”
Maddy moved for the gun holster on her hip.
The door to the Victorian was wide open and splintered in pieces, blowing ominously back and forth in the wind.
Chapter 30
I stood in the foyer, holding on tightly to Lindsey Buckingham.
My mouth was as dry as the sand dunes down in Florence.
Words failed me.
Maddy quickly descended the stairs. She placed her service weapon back in its holster.
“Nobody’s here,” she said quietly.
“Did the… did the police do this? When they came and got Aunt Viv?”
“No. I’m positive this isn’t our work.”
She shook her head, looking around. She seemed nearly as shocked as I was.
“Did you see the front door? It’s like a bull came charging in here,” she said.
And that wasn’t all.
The house was trashed. More than trashed – destroyed. Furniture was overturned, its upholstery ripped open. Papers and bills were strewn all over the floor. Lamps had been smashed to the ground and broken. Framed photos had been ripped down from the walls.
Record discs had been shattered. Pieces of Stevie Nicks lay strewn about everywhere.
It was as if a silent tsunami had hit Broomfield Bay while we’d been driving here, yet had only targeted Aunt Viv’s house.
I eventually found myself sitting numbly in the kitchen, stroking the cat’s soft fur. The poor orange feline, who had been sitting on the porch when we’d arrived, had looked spooked. He was purring up a storm as I held him there, looking at me with big green eyes.
Maddy paced across the wood floor in the foyer, talking to dispatch on the phone.
“No, the perps are gone. No. No. Can you just send someone over here quickly, please? Thank you.”
My eyes zeroed in on the broken Le Creuset Dutch oven.
It had originally been my mother’s, and Aunt Viv used it these days in her memory. Every time Aunt Viv made her famous salmon chowder, she used that ceramic pot.
Now she’d never make it again in there. Maybe she wouldn’t have anyway even if it wasn’t lying broken on the kitchen floor. Somehow, I didn’t think salmon chowder was a regular item on the menu at the jail—
“Ginger?”
I raised my eyes.
“More police are on their way. In the meantime, I think that I should take you back to my house. Okay?”
I stared at her, but didn’t respond. I couldn’t seem to.
I held onto Lindsey Buckingham like a life raft.
Who would have done this? It looked like a group of people had stormed through the house.
I thought of all those locals the TV reporters had interviewed earlier. The ones who had turned their backs on Aunt Viv, who had said it didn’t surprise them that she was arrested for the mayor’s murder.
Was this their work?
“C’mon,” Maddy said, nudging me out of the kitchen and toward the front door. “You don’t need to worry about anything, Ging. You can stay at my house tonight and for however long you need. Tomorrow morning, I’ll take you to Viv’s arraignment. Everything is going to be okay.”
I wasn’t so sure.
Chapter 31
One.Million. Dollars.
That’s what I needed.
How in toadstool heaven was I ever going to get the money to spring Aunt Viv from jail?
I pulled my jean jacket tighter as a sharp, misty wind blew into me. Out in the distance, a flat, gray, windless sea rolled over itself as I walked along the cold sand toward the old, beached ship.
The morning had been a nightmare.
The judge at Aunt Viv’s arraignment, a stern-faced, whiskery man, had set her bail at an unattainable one million dollars, citing her as a flight risk and danger to society.
The number took the wind right out of me.
Where would I possibly come up with that kind of money when I couldn’t even get the old Victorian painted?
Aunt Viv, who still insisted on representing herself, didn’t seem concerned in the least with the outrageous bail amount. She even winked at the judge after he announced his decision, as if it was all a game.
The judge didn’t seem too pleased by that.
All in all, the arraignment lasted less than five minutes. I’d barely had a chance to talk to Aunt Viv. Two beefy guards came and hauled her away before I could ask her about anything.
Afterwards, I’d left the courthouse to clear my head and take a walk on the beach. I didn’t know why, but it just felt like the only thing to do.
I stopped just short of the old wreck and looked up at the rusted metal heap towering over me. Its large frame cast long shadows over the beach in the early morning light.
The Peter Alexander had once been a magnificent four-masted steel vessel in its day. But through a series of unfortunate events, the ship capsized during a bad autumn storm. Most of the crew perished in the accident. Meanwhile, the remains of the ship washed up here on the shores of Broomfield Bay. And that’s exactly where it stayed for the past 111 years, rotting and rusting little by little in the harsh salty air.
They didn’t call this stretch of coast the Graveyard of the Pacific for no reason.
An indescribable feeling of loneliness gripped me.
“Ginger.”
The voice, carried gently by the wind, sent shivers down my spine.
I glanced back and saw Eddie standing there. And for a second, he looked just the way he did 15 years earlier. The ruffled hair, dimpled cheeks, bright, electric smile. And those eyes… eyes that had equal parts mischief and kindness. Eyes that I dreamed about throughout my teen years.
“I’ve missed this old ship,” he said, looking up at the rusted skeleton. “Glad to see it hasn’t gone anywhere.”
This was his favorite shipwreck. The one, that as kids, he insisted on visiting at least once a week. The ship fascinated him. Especially the mysterious circumstances behind its demise, which could never be fully explained by historians.
I drew in a deep breath, watching him as he looked at the familiar bulges and aged exterior.
“Rough morning, huh?” he said.
I nodded.
Though I hadn’t seen him among the media in the courtroom, I imagined that he had been somewhere in the mix.
“I hope I’m not out of line in asking this, Ging. But where’s Steve in all of this? Why wasn’t he there with you?”
I supposed I couldn’t keep it from him any longer.
“He wasn’t there, Eddie, because we’re separated,” I said, saying it so fast, as if that would make it hurt less. “He left me three months ago.”
It didn’t hurt less. And though I’d tried not to think about it too much in the last 48 hours, the fact that Steve hadn’t even sent me so much as a text about Aunt Viv’s arrest hurt more than I could say.
A pained expression crossed Eddie’s face.
“Aw, Ging. I had no idea.”
“Neither did I, really. Not until the day he left. I thought we were happy. But I guess…”
I trailed off, leaving the thought unfinished.
“You don’t deserve any of this,” he said.
He looked up at the ship again when I didn’t say anything more.
“Say, remember when we were kids, and I used to make you come here all the time during the summer?” he asked.
I felt my mouth turn up a little at the edges.
“Grandma Ruth told me there was no faster way to lose a girl than to talk to her about history
,” he said. “I didn’t listen, though.”
“Good old Grandma Ruth,” I said.
He dug his hands into his pockets.
“You know, I’ve always wanted to ask you something.”
My muscles tensed. I knew where this was all headed.
“I know it’s not a good time, but I’ve always wanted to know why…” he started, but then stopped himself.
He didn’t complete the question, but he didn’t have to. I already knew what he was going to ask.
“It’s… It’s complicated, Eddie,” I said in a low voice.
He furrowed his brow, the brightness in his eyes fading.
“Were you afraid of me after what happened?” he asked after a long pause. “Is that why you stopped talking to me?”
My stomach dropped.
I had been afraid after the accident.
But not of him.
Never of him.
The truth screamed to get out, but something in me wouldn’t allow the words to be said.
I wanted to tell him that that rainy night when we were alone in the kitchen of Ginger’s – the night when Eddie had told me that he was leaving with a full-ride baseball scholarship to a college in Boston – I’d been devastated. I knew that Eddie was going to college – he was smart, and his grades were through the roof, but I thought he’d go to the University of Oregon or Willamette or even Gonzaga. Some place close and within driving distance. Not all the way across the country.
I wanted to tell him that I hadn’t meant for it to happen. That I hadn’t meant for my powers of influence to affect him like that.
One minute he was grinning, his eyes glowing with excitement and joy as he told me about the scholarship.
The next moment, a dark shadow moved across his face. And anger burned in his eyes.
Before I realized what was happening, Eddie threw a punch into one of the back window panes. He shattered the glass, and cut his wrist so bad that he nearly bled out on the way to the hospital.
The glass had severed nerves. And in a split second, his promising baseball career went up in smoke.
