“Mine, too,” Garcia whispered back. “And he was a prick.”
Now the woman stood in the middle of the room with her hands on her hips. “Do our chant.”
The entire room went, “Ooommm.”
Someone giggled.
“Marie,” the instructor said. “That didn’t sound like our chant.”
The entire room laughed.
She was back to Garcia and Bernadette. Scrutinizing Bernadette’s jacketed midriff, she asked, “How can I help?”
Garcia started to answer. “We’re with—”
“Child!” the woman spouted. “Of course. Congratulations!”
Bernadette gritted her teeth and said nothing.
Graham smiled at Garcia. “And this gentleman is … Dad?”
Before Garcia could answer, the woman turned back to her clients. “Keep chanting.”
“Ooommm,” hummed the room.
Behind the woman’s back, Garcia gave Bernadette a sympathetic smile. “You can’t possibly believe you’re even remotely—”
“I hate this jacket,” Bernadette hissed, unzipping the down. “It makes me look fat.”
“I’m Sonia Graham,” the woman said, extending her hand to Bernadette.
“Nice to meet you.”
Graham trapped Bernadette’s gloved fingers between her own massive mitts. “How about a cup of hot tea? It’s a special herbal blend for expectant moms. No caffeine.”
“I’m good.” Bernadette examined the woman’s hands. Definitely large enough. No jewelry or tattoos but a rubber band around the left wrist.
Graham went behind the front counter and slapped a clipboard and a handful of brochures on top of it. A pen in the shape of a candy cane was added to the pile. “I can sign you up for an informational appointment. How far along are you?”
Bernadette: “I’m not—”
“I can hook you up with some fantastic exercise wear that grows with you,” said the woman, ducking down behind the counter and digging around. “Let me get you a catalog. Where did I put it? I can’t remember anything, I swear. I have the worst memory.”
“Stop her now, before I shoot her,” Bernadette whispered to Garcia.
“I have exercise wear for kiddies, too. I offer postpartum classes for new moms and their babies … here it is. I knew I put it back here.”
Garcia stepped up to the counter, leaned over it, and said in a low voice, “We need to talk privately, Ms. Graham.”
Graham stood up with a catalog in her hand. She looked from Garcia to Bernadette and back to Garcia. “I apologize if I came on too—”
“We’re with the FBI,” said Bernadette, more than happy to shut the woman up with a flash of her identification badge.
The woman dropped the catalog on the counter. The gym teacher’s voice suddenly became demure and soft. “My office is in back.”
Graham sat behind her desk with her hands resting atop a copy of Fit Pregnancy magazine. This month’s cover stories: “How to Select a Nursing Bra” and “Sex in the Third Trimester.” Graham nervously snapped the rubber band around her wrist. “Can I get you something to drink? Coffee? A soda?”
“I’m good,” said Bernadette.
“No thanks,” said Garcia.
The agents sat on the opposite side of the desk on a set of webbed lawn chairs. The office was the size of a closet and felt as hot as an incubator. Its walls were tacked with posters of exercising women, many of them pregnant. Garcia’s eyes darted this way and that as he frantically searched for a focal point that wouldn’t get him into trouble. He settled on the paper decorations that were dangling from the ceiling. Stars, with five points.
Bernadette tried to start off with small talk. “Business looks like it’s going good.”
“It is,” Graham said, and snapped the rubber band.
“Did you have an exercise studio in Vermont?” asked Garcia.
“No. This is new for me.” She paused, snapped again, and asked, “Who told you I was from Vermont? Has someone been talking about me?”
Instead of answering, Bernadette slid Lydia Dunton’s photo across the desk. “Have you seen this young lady around town recently?”
Graham looked down and quickly looked up again. “No.”
“Take your time,” said Garcia, his eyes finally surrendering to the object that was sitting on a corner of the woman’s desk: a model of a uterus. The cutaway was resting on its side, and harbored a curled fetus.
Graham raised her hand to her throat. “The girl who was killed!”
“That’s right,” said Bernadette.
Snap. “Who suggested that I might know this girl? Why did you stop in here?”
Garcia took the uterus off Graham’s desk and examined it as he spoke. “We’re going up and down the street with the picture. Saw all the gals through the window. Thought we’d take a chance. Maybe this young lady came by.”
“News said she was pregnant,” Graham said evenly.
“Yes,” Bernadette answered.
“Maybe you should try the hospital,” Graham said.
“Mind if we showed her picture to the ladies out on the floor?” asked Garcia. He took the fetus out of the model and set the empty uterus back on the desk. “Won’t take long.”
“I really don’t want my clients to think I’m in some sort of trouble with the law. It could hurt my business.” Two snaps of the rubber band. “Please don’t.”
“Have you had problems in the past?” asked Bernadette, wanting to hear Graham’s take on the story.
Snap. Snap. Snap. “I’m also a midwife. One of my patients had issues during a home delivery. Mother and child turned out fine, but it was … complicated.”
“What happened, exactly?” asked Garcia, the fetus cupped in his hand.
“There was some excessive bleeding, that’s all. Nothing my fault. They got to the hospital in plenty of time.”
Bernadette: “We were told a different version of events.”
“By Dr. Bossard, I’ll bet,” said Graham, her face reddening. “That’s who you’ve been talking to.”
“You aren’t best friends, I take it,” said Garcia.
“I offer an alternative to traditional hospital delivery. Many physicians are uncomfortable with that, including Eve. She’s a brilliant, brilliant medical professional who has done a world of good in the area, but she has problems with …” The woman stopped herself.
Bernadette raised her brows. “Yes?”
Graham sat straighter in her chair. “Every year, midwives in this state attend thousands of births. Thousands. Did you even know that?”
Bernadette didn’t like getting a lecture. “We’re not here to—”
“We’ve got our own registry and professional groups. When people hear the word midwife, they think home delivery. In fact, ninety-nine percent of nurse-midwife deliveries actually take place in an institutional setting.”
Bernadette wondered if the woman’s latest delivery had taken place in the vicinity of Paul Bunyan State Forest. Graham looked muscular enough to overpower a small girl. “Where are most of your births?” Bernadette asked. “At the hospital? At home?”
Graham’s fingers meshed together atop her desk and tightened. “Dr. Bossard has … derailed my practice for the time being.”
As he tossed the fetus back and forth between his two hands like a flesh-colored baseball, Garcia lobbed the big question at her. “Where were you New Year’s Eve?”
Graham’s eyes widened. She unclasped her hands and locked them over the edge of her desk. “I had nothing to do with that! Why would you think I had something to do with that?”
“No one is accusing you of anything, ma’am,” said Bernadette. “Please answer the question.”
“I was here. I had an open house.”
“What time?” Garcia asked.
“It ran all day. People floated in and out.”
Garcia asked, “Any witches or Satanists on the invite list?”
“What?”
Garcia glanced up at the paper stars again. Some were hung upside down. “Oh, and those five-pointed … what are those called again, Agent Saint Clare?”
“Pentagrams,” said Bernadette.
“Know anything about those?” asked Garcia.
Graham leaned forward and smiled. “I think Eve might be a better person to ask.”
Bernadette and Garcia exchanged glances. Bernadette asked, “Is Dr. Bossard a—”
Graham stood up. “Unlike Eve, I’m not a Judas. You want to ask her about her extracurriculars, go right ahead. It’s not my place.”
“That isn’t an answer,” said Garcia.
Graham walked around the desk, went to the door, and opened it. “I’m not answering any more questions without an attorney. Please leave.”
The two agents didn’t move.
Graham’s eyes went to the barren uterus on the corner of her desktop. “That’s an expensive model. Where’s the fetus? What did you do with it?”
Garcia set the fetus inside the model with its legs crossed. “Did I do that right?” he asked dryly.
“No,” said Graham. “It’s in complete breech.”
“Mother and child could die, right?” asked Bernadette, as she plucked Lydia Dunton’s photo off the desk.
They exited the office and Graham followed them to the front door, locking it after them. Bernadette thought back to her vision earlier in the day. It had been before lunch. She checked the hours painted on the glass door.
The studio was closed two mornings a week, including that morning. Bernadette pointed this out to Garcia.
“Interesting. But what about the bombshell she dropped about Bossard?” he asked.
“Bullshit, I’ll bet. But we’ll have to check it out.”
“What about her own background?” asked Garcia. “Think she’s really from Vermont?”
“She’s not from here,” said Bernadette. “She offered us a soda. No one from Minnesota says soda. We say pop.”
“Let’s have Cahill run the background on her, Bossard—” Garcia’s cell rang. He took it out, flipped it open, checked the screen. Sighed and put the phone to his ear. “Assistant Special Agent in Charge Anthony Garcia … Yes, Senator.”
While her boss spoke into the phone, Bernadette saw a group of women turn the lock and let themselves out of the studio. They’d changed into their street clothes and had their gym bags slung over their shoulders or in their hands. Graham was nowhere in sight. Bernadette pulled out Lydia’s photo. Held it out to the first woman in the line of escapees and identified herself as an FBI agent. All six women formed a circle around Bernadette.
They passed the photo around, each taking her time studying it. The last woman handed it back to Bernadette. “Who is she?”
“Did any of you spot her around town? Recognize her at all?”
None of them had seen Lydia. Then a woman put a mitten to her mouth. “You’re investigating that dead body in the woods. That girl is the dead body.”
A plump older lady in a peacoat—she was able to fasten only the top button—asked, “Do you have any suspects? Have you arrested anybody?”
That let loose a string of other questions from the circle:
“Why’d they do it?”
“Did they rape her, too?”
“What was her name?”
“She wasn’t from around here, was she?”
“Who’re her parents?”
“What happened to the baby?”
“Pipe down,” the peacoat said to her friends. Then to Bernadette: “Inquiring minds want to know what you were doing in Sonia’s studio. Don’t tell me you think she’s got something to do with—”
“We were shopping the photo around, going up and down the street,” Bernadette said quickly. While she had suspicions about Sonia Graham, she didn’t want to torpedo the woman’s business just yet. “Ms. Graham’s establishment happened to be one of the few still operating during the bad weather.”
“You do know that Sonia has a … history,” said the peacoat.
“Eleanor,” gasped a woman in a hunting jacket. “Don’t.”
“Why not?” the peacoat snapped.
“Ms. Graham told me she had complications during a home birth,” said Bernadette. “She said there was some bleeding but that the mother and child made it to the hospital and everything worked out.”
All the women nodded and the hunting jacket said, “That was my cousin’s dippy wife. Bad deal, but it wasn’t Sonia’s fault. The dip thought a home birth would get her out of another C-section.”
“See,” said a skinny woman in a down jacket. “Sonia told the FBI people everything. Sonia’s a good person.”
“What about her other activities?” asked the peacoat.
Silence from the gang of women.
Then one said, “I have to go.”
“Me, too,” said another, hiking her bag over her shoulder.
“Wait,” said Bernadette, holding up a hand to halt any exits. “This is a murder investigation.”
“She’s a lesbian,” the peacoat blurted.
“God, Eleanor,” said the hunting jacket. “You had to tear the top off that can of worms, didn’t you?”
“Things should be out in the open, that’s all,” said the peacoat, trying to pull the garment tighter around her body as a wind rolled down the street.
“She came out to a few of us,” said the peacoat. “Asked us to keep it quiet.”
“Good job with that, Eleanor,” sneered the down vest.
“But is she a Wiccan?” asked Bernadette.
Half of the women frowned with confusion.
“A witch,” Bernadette said. “Is she a witch?”
“Oh, you mean like Jordan,” said one.
“Right,” said Bernadette. “Know of any witches around town, besides Jordan Ashe? Any Satanists?”
One shrugged. “Sonia can be a bitch, but I don’t think she’s a witch.”
The down vest laughed.
The peacoat: “How can Sonia be a witch? She plays Christmas music. She throws a Christmas party every year.”
“When does she throw it?”
“New Year’s Eve,” volunteered the hunting jacket.
“She was here all day New Year’s Eve?”
“I helped make the punch with her in the morning,” said the down vest.
“I was here in the afternoon and saw her,” said the hunting jacket.
“Me, too,” said another.
“Were any of you with her at the studio, and she disappeared for a while?” asked Bernadette.
The women looked at one another and shook their heads.
“What’s this about?” asked the peacoat.
Garcia came up to Bernadette and put his hand on her arm. “Let’s go.”
Bernadette slipped the photo back inside her jacket and took out a handful of business cards. Passed them out. “Call me if something else comes to mind. You suddenly remember seeing this young lady somewhere. Whatever.” Her eyes met the eyes of the peacoat lady. “Anything.”
“I showed them Lydia’s photo,” Bernadette said as she and Garcia got into the truck.
“No luck?”
“No luck.” Bernadette reached over and turned up the heat. She told Garcia that Graham was in the studio on New Year’s Eve, at least for the most part, and that none of her clients believed she was a witch. She also revealed that Graham was a lesbian.
“Knock me over with a feather on that one,” said Garcia. “Did you ask about the doc being a witch?”
“I didn’t want to throw her name out there. I think Graham made it up to make trouble.”
“Since this ain’t seventeenth-century Salem, we can’t lock up someone based on rumor and innuendo. That’s about all we have right now. As much as the bosses in D.C. want to impress the senator with a quick arrest…” His voice trailed off.
She eyed the dashboard clock. It was nearly suppertime. “Shouldn’t you and Dunton be getting toget
her soon? Is that what that phone call was about?”
“Meeting switched to tomorrow. Said he’s too pooped to meet today. Took too much effort to haul up here.”
“That’s a good excuse,” said Bernadette.
“He apparently thought so.”
They drove past the tatt shop. It was closed for the night. “So much for that idea,” said Garcia. “Let’s regroup at the cabin.”
Bernadette opened the storage box between them and eyed the candy bars. The sight of them turned her stomach. “I need some real food,” she said, slamming it shut.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Garcia thawed some walleye fillets in the microwave, coated them with cracker crumbs, and started pan-frying them on the range. “Talk to me,” he said, his lids drooping. “I’m falling asleep at the wheel.”
Bernadette closed the fireplace doors, dusted off her hands, and launched into a to-do list. “Let’s get some of the Minneapolis guys to check around at the other clinics. Cahill needs to start those background checks we talked about. Oh, then tomorrow morning you and I can—”
“Not the case,” he said. “Anything but the case. Tell me about… tell me about your stint in New Orleans. What was that like?”
She dropped onto the couch and accommodated him, rambling on. “When I needed a quick lesson on anything weird—spells, rituals, chicken decapitations—all I had to do was walk up and down the streets of the French Quarter. Poke my head into a shop. They knew everything about voodoo dolls, potions, gris-gris bags.”
“Gris-gris bags?”
“Sacks filled with roots and herbs, for good mojo. Attract a mate, get rid of an enemy, have a safe trip.”
“I’ll stick with my Saint Christopher medal.” He adjusted the heat under the pan. “That’s where you became the big expert on witchcraft and all that.”
She put her feet up on the cushions. “I wouldn’t call myself an expert.”
“Tell me about this star stuff,” he said, flipping the fish. “I get the pentagram. Pointing down, it’s satanic. Pointing up …”
“Pointing up, it’s a symbol for witches representing Mother Earth plus the four basic elements of wind, water, earth, and fire. Add a point and you’ve got a hexagram. Represents the interaction of God with humanity. With seven points, well, there’re a ton of seven-based belief systems. The seven heads of the beast in the Book of Revelation. In Galician folklore, the seventh son born into a family will be a werewolf.”
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