Sand Witches in the Hamptons (9781101597385)

by Jerome, Celia

  Sometimes I felt guilty about breaking up and maybe breaking his heart. Sometimes I wondered what if . . .

  Most times, like now, I felt awkward calling him, not out of love and affection, but out of need.

  As they say, needs must when the devil drives, whatever that means. Someone had to talk to the Andanstans and get them to leave, without taking our sand with them. Someone else. I could not do this on my own.

  I had finally visualized the sand folk; now Grant had to translate. That’s what he did, when he wasn’t being a viscount chatting with the queen or a top DUE agent chasing rumors of ETs across the globe. Well, he could damn straight get his tight linguist butt over here and talk to the tiny thieves.

  I left a message, a bit more polite than what I was thinking. Then I took two Tylenols and the last of the Oreos while I waited for him to call back on what I knew to be a more secure, “Men in Black” line. Answering these kinds of calls was part of his job.

  He didn’t sound happy about it. In fact, he sounded annoyed, exhausted, and ill. Or maybe the satellite communication had interference.

  I asked where he was. He’d been at the space station last time I needed him.

  “Ireland.”

  Oh, no. They had a million Irish tenors, and they raised racehorses, too. “What are you doing in Ireland?”

  “I was tracking a bogwilly.”

  “You had to track a bog? Do they move? Aren’t there maps?”

  “Not a bog, Willy. A bogwilly, some supposedly hideous beast they use to frighten children into behaving. They should fear the shaggy local ponies instead. I fell off the blasted animal they swore couldn’t be spooked by any, ah, spook.”

  I knew there was a horse. My father’d said so. “Did it sing?”

  “The pony? Bloody thing fainted! Keeled right over on top of me before I could jump off.”

  “No, the bogwilly, with which, incidentally, I have no connection except a shared name. What is it?”

  “I still do not know.”

  “Does it sing?”

  “Not that I heard. I didn’t pick up any psychic sendings, either, just the light. You know, that peculiar iridescence like a hundred prisms reflecting moonlight.”

  I knew it well. I’d been trying to capture it on paper for the professor’s book. “Did you find the, ah, willy?”

  “With two broken legs and a cracked skull from the rock the deuced pony dumped me against?”

  Oh. “Are you all right now?”

  He wasn’t, and he wasn’t pleased about it. “Concussed, seeing double, with an inflammation of the lungs from lying in the blasted bog until they could get a rescue team in.”

  Suddenly the rash did not seem as urgent. I told him about it anyway, and asked if he had any idea when he could travel, by wheelchair if necessary. We needed him to get rid of the sand thieves.

  He cursed. I couldn’t tell if he hated the idea of the wheelchair, or the fact that I only called when I had trouble. Turned out that what he hated, which he expressed in many short words, was missing all the fun.

  “Fun? Everyone has a rash, and the beach erosion is at crisis point.”

  He didn’t care. “If you married me, we could be together on these adventures.”

  Like riding a small freaking horse at night through a bogeyman-inhabited Irish bog? Man, did I not regret breaking our almost engagement. How could I have ever thought our personalities or lifestyles matched?

  I wished him a quick recuperation and promised to call with updates.

  So much for my linguist.

  * * *

  I tried the professor next. Cousin Lily, the housekeeper at Rosehill, answered the phone instead. Jimmie was out, she told me. He’d been out all day, walking the grounds, calling for Oey. Now he’d gone over to Grandma Eve’s farm, the first place people had spotted the rare pink-toed oiaca bird, not knowing how rare it was.

  “I’m worried,” Cousin Lily said. “Your uncle promised to drive him back before dark, but Jimmie refused to have dinner at the farm. He hardly eats when he is here, no matter what I cook. He comes back drained and damp, all scratched up, with poison ivy. Then he sits on the balcony outside his bedroom in the cold night air, with a bottle or two, which cannot be good for his lungs, either. He stays out there all night. I can hear him calling and coughing. It’s enough to break my heart.”

  Mine, too. “But he has other friends now.”

  “Yes, Chief Haverhill and the mayor are always calling, the other poker players too, and every widow in the vicinity. Matt brings Moses whenever he can. The dog drools and sheds, but I put up with it, hoping Jimmie will not feel so melancholy and lonely.”

  “You say he has poison ivy?”

  “I haven’t seen it, but he asked what we use here for a blistering itch. They have nettles in England.”

  Which was another reason for being glad I didn’t marry Grant. “Um, do you have a rash, too?”

  “Not poison ivy. I did get a bad reaction at the site of my flu shot, though. So did a bunch of others from the Harbor. The weird thing is, we all had different batches of the vaccine. Some from the senior center, some from the drugstores in East Hampton and Bridgehampton. A lot of people went to their own doctors for the shots. I understand the County Health Department is looking into it. Why did you ask?”

  “Just a thought, that’s all.”

  “Well, think about getting out here soon. Jimmie needs you. And Eve is running herself ragged about the erosion.”

  “I’m working on—”

  She didn’t let me finish. “Now that you mention it, I think she had a rash, too, from the rosebushes, she told me. And Joanne at the deli had her arm bandaged when I went in for potato salad the other day. She said she scratched a mosquito bite and it turned lumpy. She had it checked out, so she could keep serving food. The physician’s assistant said it didn’t seem contagious, but to keep her arm covered. And Alan from the liquor store closed early yesterday. He’s diabetic, you know. Said he got something wrong when he tested his blood sugar last week, now his finger’s all puffy and sore. His doctor sent his testing kit back to the manufacturer to test for bacteria. Then there’s— Wait. Willy, you know something more about the rashes, don’t you?”

  I rubbed my itchy lip with my itchy forefinger. “Nothing certain yet. I hoped the professor could help.”

  “You do know! You’ve brought something else dreadful here, haven’t you?”

  “No! I’m not there, I’m in New York. And I didn’t draw them”—until an hour ago—“and I’m not sure they caused the problem in the first place.”

  “You do know!” she yelled. “You’ve gone and done something awful again, and we’ll all have to suffer, then wade into ugly, impossible situations to pull you out.”

  “No, I didn’t—”

  “And now that dear old man is losing his will to live and you give him a cough and rash?”

  “I didn’t—”

  “You get out here and fix it, damn you, Willow Tate, or I am calling your grandmother.”

  “I already spoke to her. I’ll be there tomorrow, if I can.”

  “You can’t not.”

  * * *

  My next call was to Oey. I’m no telepath, but she is. I did not know how far away she was, or how far away her powers worked. I tried anyway. ET, phone home. We need you.

  Stupid. I’m no telepath but I am the Visualizer. So I grabbed a pencil and a fresh sheet of paper, drew a willow tree, a weeping willow, then added three little people made of dot sand. They wore scraps of seaweed to hide their privates. They carried shell hatchets and rock hammers in their tiny hands, battering at the tree. I fixed the image in my head, then silently called, Help! I added a magnificent parrot with a forked, scaled fish tail and shouted in my head, Come back. Then I drew a ha
ndsome glittering fish with a long feathered tail, swimming in the water that lapped at the tree. Please, Oey.

  No response reverberated in my head or in my thoughts, just that painful pounding. Shell hatchets and stone hammers, all right. I was out of Tylenol and didn’t know if I could mix them with the Advil I had, whose expiration date was long past. Worse, I was out of candy and cookies. If I was leaving tomorrow, I needed snacks for the three-hour bus ride, too. Maybe Mallomars to get me through the night. And treats for Little Red so he’d stay quiet on the Jitney. The dog needed to go out before September’s early dark, too.

  I packed him in the carrier, went to the drugstore on Third Avenue, bought enough goodies for a week, unless I got desperate, and then freed Little Red to do his stuff near some sidewalk trees.

  I put down my bags and his carrier to pick up his leavings. He walked on the leash nicely until we neared our building, where I put down my bags, his cleanup bag and his carrier. He got in without protest for once, because he knew it was suppertime and we’d get home sooner that way. So I picked everything up again and went home, cursing the need to hide a six-pound dog from the building manager.

  Then I cursed the man and his custodial staff some more when I saw garbage on the building’s doorstep. No, that wasn’t garbage; it was a big rat, as common in Manhattan as taxis. This one was dead, though, with its head cut off.

  Anybody would have freaked out. I screamed and dropped all the bags, except Little Red in his carrier, thank goodness. Between the missing sand, the missing bird, and the bogwilly, I’d completely forgotten about Deni.

  She hadn’t forgotten about me.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I had a decapitated rat and a deranged reader. I also had a pissed-off Pomeranian and a panic attack. Anyone would.

  I rushed inside the building and slammed the door behind me, as if the dead rat could get in and go for my throat. Little Red snarled at being shaken up and kept in his carrier. I ignored him and leaned against the inside wall, catching my breath. Then I realized I had to go back outside to get my shopping bags. I really needed those painkillers, and the Mallomars. Anyone would.

  The rat was still dead. Both pieces. People walking past averted their eyes, the way New Yorkers did when confronted with crazy bag ladies. I looked around. I was the crazy bag lady.

  I gathered my broken cookies and stepped-on candy bars. Everything was in pieces, including the rat. The only item intact was the Tylenol bottle, which no one could open at the best of times. This was not one of them.

  I gathered my stuff into one bag and covered the psycho’s victim with the other. I stopped gasping and shaking and whimpering. My shock turned into anger.

  How dare that . . . that person lurk at my building, waiting for me to leave, just so she could terrify me with a mangled corpse? What kind of person thrives on mutilating animals, or scaring people? Not the kind I wanted to meet.

  I looked around but spotted no one suspicious, no one hiding behind a parked car or in a basement stairwell.

  I didn’t look too hard, just clutched my stuff and keyed the door open again. Little Red yipped in his carrier, between growls. “Hush up. You can’t climb the stairs to the third floor by yourself anyway,” I told the three-legged dog. The first-floor renters yelled so loudly at each other, maybe they wouldn’t hear him. I hustled up the stairs, talking to calm both of us.

  “Easy, good boy. The rat is dead. We’re safe. For now. And we’re getting out of Dodge in the morning.”

  I eyed my door to see if anyone had broken the locks. That’s what all the good detectives did, wasn’t it? Nothing looked different, and nothing waited on my doormat. I breathed easier.

  As soon as Red scrambled out of his container, I called the manager to get rid of the rodent before any of the other tenants saw it. I did not say I had anything whatsoever to do with its presence.

  Then I called Van at the police station. He told me rats died all the time.

  Not with their heads cut off, they didn’t.

  “Get out of town. Escalation is never a good sign.”

  “Neither is animal torture. That’s how serial killers start, right?”

  “You don’t know if the unsub killed the animal herself or simply butchered an already dead one to get your attention.”

  “It got my attention, all right.” An unsub is an unidentified suspect, which I knew from those same cop shows on TV. “And I know precisely who did this. You’ve got to find her.”

  “I’ll get my guys tracking this Deni person. Save the rat.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  He thought about it. “I guess not. If you can’t do that, at least get out of town.”

  I looked out the window at the fading twilight. “It’s too late. I’m not going outside at night, when I couldn’t tell if she’s waiting for me. Even if I took a cab to the Hampton Jitney bus stop, she could follow me. I’d be waiting there by myself, in the dark.” With Little Red, my laptop, a suitcase, and tote bag of drawing supplies and broken cookies. I’d eaten a flattened Cadbury bar while I talked.

  “Okay, I’ll be off duty in an hour. I’ll bring a pizza, sleep on your couch, then put you on the bus in the morning. How’s that sound?”

  I’d lived alone for years, until Little Red this spring. I was good at it, came and went when I wanted, ate cereal for supper if I wished, left the bed unmade sometimes. Solitude worked better for my work, with few distractions. I had my books, my friends, lots to do and see in the city, and Paumanok Harbor for when I wanted, rarely, to have my family’s company. Of all the things I feared—and the list suddenly kept growing by the minute—staying alone in my apartment had never been one of them.

  I almost wept in gratitude that Van offered to stay the night. “Sounds like heaven.” I started hiding the cookies and candy and dirty dishes and my washed bras hanging from the shower curtain. “Thank you for being such a good friend.”

  I felt so much better I decided to check for phone messages after I fed the dog, while I cleaned the apartment and waited for Van. Another threat from Deni wouldn’t bother me now, not when a policeman was on his way. He’d hear it, get the call traced, nab the bad guy, or girl, like they did in books, and I could go back to worrying about the Andanstans and the rash.

  Oh, my god, the rash. And Van was coming. I raced to the mirror to look and lather on concealer, bronzer, a flesh-colored Band-Aid under my nose. Now I’d pass for someone with a bad reaction to a botox injection. Or a battered wife.

  Deni hadn’t called. Sure, she didn’t have time, watching the apartment, catching rats.

  My father had. “I’m on my way out of the house, baby girl, but I got a whiff of someone telling secrets, something bad.”

  As in I smell a rat? Thanks, Dad. You’re too late.

  “. . . And I need to make sure you won’t go anywhere in the morning until I call before my tee time. I won’t be home tonight, but I really need you to do this favor for my friend. Unless that’s the secret. Maybe. No, it doesn’t smell.”

  I ignored my father’s mental wanderings. His friend was going to be out of luck if he needed me to show him around town or let him sleep in the spare bedroom. I hated to disappoint my father, but he’d understand. He’d be a hell of a lot more disappointed if I ended up like the rat. And if his friend’s problem was so critical, Dad could have canceled his date for tonight.

  I kept cleaning and packing and looking out the window.

  The downstairs buzzer went off, too soon to be Van. I didn’t answer it, but someone else in the building could buzz the door open, like Mrs. Abbottini did with the flowers.

  I got my pepper spray out of my purse and dragged the love seat in front of my apartment door. Of course I had to stand on the cushions to reach the peephole to see who knocked on it.

  Deni might have
been better than the person on the other side, banging on the door with a heavy, double-sized fist.

  “Who is it?” I called out, stalling for time while I pushed the furniture back into place.

  “You know damn well who it is, Willy, so let me in.”

  “Who called you?” I sure as hell didn’t call Lou the Lout, Lou from DUE, Lou who was hard, ruthless, with a sense of duty as oversized as his meaty paws. The older man’s duty these days appeared to consist of eliminating threats to paranormals everywhere, but to Paumanok Harbor psychics in particular. I lived in dread he’d find me more of a menace than a benefit because his methods did not bear considering. His means encompassed magic, and his modus operandi had nothing whatsoever to do with the Bill of Rights. His saving grace, and my continued existence, I felt, was that he liked to stay in my grandmother’s good graces. I think so he could stay at her house. Or in her bed, which did not bear considering either.

  “Everyone called. Your grandmother, your cousin Lily, your friend at the police station, his lordship in Ireland, Chief Haversmith at the Harbor. Oh, and Mrs. Abbottini next door.”

  “I told her to stop buzzing in strangers.”

  “I’m not a stranger, and she didn’t have to let me in. I have a key.”

  Great. The scariest man I knew had a key to my building. He was big and mean and wore disguises. I’d seen him pretend to be a janitor, a farmhand, a limo driver, and a wealthy man about town. Today he had on biker leather, complete with a helmet in his hand, which did not give me confidence in his friendly intentions. “Well, everything is fine now. You didn’t need to check on me.”

  He lifted a plastic bag with my drugstore’s logo on it out of his helmet and held it up so I could see it through the tiny viewer. The rat. Both of them.

  I opened the door, in time to watch him put a key in my bottom lock. “You have a key for my door, too?”

  He didn’t answer, just stared at my face. “What the hell happened to you? No one said the berserker gave you a fat lip.”