Charmed Bones

by Carolyn Haines

  Their matter-of-fact dismissal of something sinister in the woods was more unnerving than if they’d pretended it wasn’t there. “What is it that’s out there?”

  “Something that was here long before us,” Charity said. “We loved Trevor, but he was a troubled soul. Sometimes talent is bought at great cost.”

  Living in the Mississippi Delta I knew the legend of Robert Johnson and how he’d sold his soul to the devil for musical talent. It was said he’d met the devil at the crossroads of Highways 49 and 61 and sealed the deal—his soul for musical talent. It was a bad bargain for Johnson, who died at the age of twenty-seven, poisoned by a lover’s husband. There was no doubt he was a wildly accomplished bluesman, but he didn’t live to enjoy his fame. The parallels were undeniable with Trevor. And more than scary.

  I’d never bought into stories of soul-selling or magical enchantment outside of the fairy tales I’d loved as a child. But the Harringtons acted as if such things were commonplace. And that possibly Trevor’s outrageous artistic talent came from such a bargain. Had he made a deal and finally had to pay up?

  The front door flew open and I jumped at least a foot in the air. A lean man in a black suit and turtleneck stepped inside. “Forgive me, I tried to knock but the door opened of its own volition.”

  “Who are you?” Again, Faith was remarkably composed. As if strangers walking in the front door was an everyday occurrence.

  “Marlow Spurlock, at your service.” He whipped an envelope from his coat pocket and handed it to me. “Ms. Sarah Booth Delaney, I do believe.”

  “Yes.”

  “The instructions are included.”

  “Wait a minute. What is this about?” I wasn’t about to accept candy—or an envelope—from a stranger.

  “I represent the Pickingill Society. That’s a check to find the true murderer of Trevor Musgrove. We are content the witches are innocent—until proven guilty.”

  “The Pickingill Society?” I was the only one in the room who didn’t know what that was.

  “Thank you for coming,” Hope said. “We’re honored by your support.”

  “We will be in touch.” Spurlock bowed once again and was out the door before I could gather my thoughts. I hurried to the window to watch him get into a limo and drive away. Hope had been correct that someone was arriving. I glanced at the charm that hung in the window with renewed respect. “What the hell was that?”

  “Marlow Spurlock would seem to be a practitioner of the craft. George Pickingill was a cunning man from Essex. The society promotes and protects the rights of witches globally.” She was full of herself. “We’ve attracted some big guns to our cause.”

  “How did they hear about Trevor’s murder?”

  “It’s more than that,” Hope explained. “If we win the fight for school vouchers in Mississippi, it will start a movement across the nation to open Wiccan schools in other states. This is just the beginning.”

  “What’s in the envelope?” Faith asked.

  I opened it and looked at the check for ten grand. Clearly marked was the word retainer. “They want to hire Delaney Detective Agency.” I unfolded the single sheet of paper. “Find the real killer—and the proof to convict him, her, or them—and we’ll meet whatever fees you set.”

  “Wow.” Even Faith looked impressed. “That is a big gun.”

  “But I can’t accept it.” It killed me to say those words. I needed that money.

  “Why not?” Charity asked.

  “Kitten has already paid the agency to find out how you’re financing the purchase of the Musgrove lands. DDA already has a client.”

  She shrugged. “So what? Proving our innocence—if we are indeed innocent—can dovetail with finding out our past sins and financial misdeeds.” Her wicked grin flitted over her red lips. “Seems to me it wouldn’t be a conflict of interest to do both at the same time.”

  I wanted to buy in to her line of thinking, but my honest skepticism reared its ugly head. “I don’t think that would be ethical.”

  “As long as you find the truth—and tell it—how would it be unethical?”

  I’d have to run this by Tinkie and also Coleman. The only thing I really had going for me was a good name and I wouldn’t risk it for an easy ten grand—no matter how much it killed me to walk away. It was time to return to the business that had brought me to the manor.

  “Look, Doc Sawyer is searching for the poison used to kill Trevor. If you had to point the finger at someone who would want Trevor dead, who would it be?” I asked.

  “We don’t falsely accuse people.” Faith lifted her chin as she spoke, as if the moral high ground belonged only to her.

  “Bully for you. I’m trying to help you. If I had a direction to begin my search, it would make the whole thing go faster.”

  “Bob Fontana,” the sisters said at once.

  “Why Bob?”

  “Kitten had a thing for Trevor. She was over here a lot and Bob knew it. He would sometimes park on the road, waiting for her to leave.” Charity looked guilty. “It wasn’t any of our business and we tried to stay out of it. But Kitten and Esmeralda were frequent visitors.”

  “The tabloid reporter?” How had I missed that huge factoid?

  “Yes, she and Kitten often arrived in tandem.” Faith knew exactly what pot she was stirring. “Those three were cooking up some kind of mischief, and Bob knew it. Of course we never saw anything to confirm our suspicions.”

  Not when such a sight might melt the eyeballs in their heads. The idea of witnessing either woman in bed with Trevor might put me off sex for good. “Good to know. And Bob was aware of this?”

  “Some might think he sent his wife here,” Hope said. “We suspected that might be the case. Bob wants this land. Kitten has … abilities that can bring a man to heel. She just didn’t reckon on Trevor. He’d been a libertine since he was thirteen. There’s not much he hadn’t experienced and tried. She was just more of the same to him.”

  “That must have bruised her ego.”

  “Black and blue,” Charity chimed in. “By the way, how is Tinkie? Any morning sickness yet?”

  “I’m asking you, please don’t mislead her and break her heart. This baby obsession is more than just empty-womb syndrome. This goes bone deep for her.”

  “We would never harm Tinkie,” Hope said, and for that split second, staring into her golden-brown eyes, I believed her. “We’re helping her. I promise.”

  “That had better be true.” I prepared to leave just as the front door flew open for a second time in less than ten minutes. Another tall, dark-clad stranger walked into the parlor. It was the man I’d seen in the apple orchard when I’d discovered Trevor’s body. Malvik. Coleman had obviously released him from jail.

  “What are you doing here?” Faith asked him angrily.

  “I’ve come to help.”

  “Oh, joy. We’ll swing for sure now,” Faith said. “Sarah Booth, if you’ll excuse us, we really need to have a word with our … friend.”

  I had no choice but to depart, but my thoughts remained on the Harringtons, Malvik, and what was really happening at Musgrove Manor.

  10

  On the way home from the manor I phoned Cece. We conspired to meet at Millie’s. Cece would stop by Hilltop and pick up Tinkie. It was time for an intervention.

  I captured a table in the quietest part of the busy café and had a moment to confer with Millie before my friends arrived. “We have to snap Tinkie out of this,” I said, letting my chin drop into my hand, elbow propped on the table. I felt exhausted. Something about the Harringtons always left me worn out. I wondered if they might be energy vampires.

  “Sarah Booth, I’d agree with you except for the fact that Tinkie needs to experience this.”

  “What are you talking about?” Millie always backed me up. Even when I was wrong.

  “She’s getting to an age where this dream either has to happen or die. The same can be said for you.”

  My God, was she chann
eling Jitty? Speaking of which, my haint had been unusually silent. She was definitely up to something—another brick on my load of worry.

  “Time is marching by,” Millie said with such compassion that it freaked me out. “Sure, you can have a baby at forty, or maybe even forty-three or four, but—”

  “That’s ten years away. That’s a decade. No rush.”

  She tilted her head. “The older you are, the harder it is to conceive and the harder it will be to be a good parent for your child. Do you want to be sixty-five when your child graduates from high school?”

  “Old men do it all the time.”

  She scoffed. “And they are not the primary caregivers. The woman is. Think of the memories with your mom. At the swimming hole, learning to dance with her, making Halloween costumes, and chopping down Christmas trees. Do you want your child to have memories of you in the nursing home?”

  My mother had been vibrant and alive. She’d been twenty-six when I was born. Only thirty-eight when she died. I was almost there. I would soon be the same age as my mother when she died. That took my breath away. She’d been so … grown. I still felt like a child.

  “I don’t mean to open old wounds,” Millie continued, “but the human body is made to reproduce at a young age.” She slipped into a chair and covered my hand with one of hers. “Let her have this dream or delusion or hope—whatever you want to call it. Let it play out. If you don’t, she’ll never forgive you. You cannot interfere.”

  “I’m only trying to protect her heart.”

  “And you’re a good friend. But you can’t—or shouldn’t —jump in the middle of this.”

  I heard the truth in her words, but there was another truth. The one where my friend did irrational things like stealing a baby. Tinkie was emotional to the extreme when it came to having a child. “She could really flip out. And not come back.”

  I heard it then—my worry for myself, for losing my friend and partner and being left alone. Again.

  “You have to trust in her strength, Sarah Booth. You don’t have to encourage her in this, but for heaven’s sake, don’t make this a choice between you and her need for a child.”

  I nodded. “Point taken.”

  She stood up. “She won’t leave you. Or Oscar. Or Chablis. Or the rest of us. She may flirt with the edge, but she won’t jump.”

  I didn’t know how Millie could be so certain. I wished I had her faith. “Okay.” I conceded because I knew any other action would only lead to more damage.

  The bell on the door jangled and my two best friends walked in. Tinkie looked grumpy and Cece looked victorious. It wasn’t necessary to ask if Cece had leaned on Tinkie to get her here. Clearly she had.

  “I don’t want to hear a word about the baby,” Tinkie said as she sat down and picked up a menu, refusing to even look me in the eye.

  “Not a word.”

  That got her attention and she looked up suspiciously. “Really?”

  “I swear.”

  “Then why am I here?”

  “The case.” I pulled the check from the Pickingill Society from my pocket. “We have two clients who want the same thing, sort of. Can we work for two people?”

  Tinkie fingered the check and looked at Cece. “Yes. The truth will answer both clients’ questions. I don’t see that it’s a problem.”

  If Tinkie said yes, I was good to go. “Okay. So let me fill you in.”

  By the time we finished, we’d wolfed down three cups of coffee each, bacon, biscuits, grits, and eggs. And Tinkie had inhaled an order of fried pickles. Not something she normally chomped at breakfast, but we all three enjoyed the crispy tart dill chips. I licked my fingers. “I need a nap.”

  “Why don’t you call Coleman and work off some of that food?” Cece winked at Tinkie.

  “Maybe I will.” Bacon grease made me sassy. “The problem is that every time Coleman and I have a chance to be alone, something happens. Like Tinkie bursts in the door and terrorizes us.”

  “Maybe take a room at the Prince Albert,” Tinkie suggested. “On me. I booked one the other afternoon for me and Oscar and it was wonderfully romantic. We had private massages, champagne, a fabulous crab salad. And the room had a whirlpool big enough for two. I had to be poured into the bed.” She laughed. “Oscar and I have found renewed romance lately. We’re as hot for each other as we were when we first married. It’s almost … magical.”

  “Good for you,” Cece said. “That’s the secret to a good life—keeping the romance alive.”

  I nodded. I’d promised not to badger her about the baby issue, so I sure wasn’t going to comment on her sex life. At least not right now. Besides, they’d put the idea of a nooner with Coleman in my head and I was eager to act on the suggestion. Cece stood and stretched. “I’m going to work. Esmeralda is trying to steal my thunder. Where in the hell does she come up with the bullshit she’s peddling?”

  “She’s a genius at exaggeration with a salacious twist.” Tinkie stood, too. “I need to get home. Oscar’s going to be there for lunch.”

  “The desk in his office is uncomfortable?” The question popped out before I could stop it.

  “The bed is better,” Tinkie said. “Besides, I picked up some brownies for us. Afternoon delight.” She giggled and twenty years fell away, leaving the girl I’d known in high school who flirted with being naughty but had been raised a proper Daddy’s Girl. I couldn’t even be shocked that Tinkie was indulging in a little weed and romance. Why not? As Millie had pointed out, time was running short. Soon we would be middle-aged.

  “I’ll take you home if you share your baked goods,” I said.

  “Deal.” Tinkie picked up the checks. “My treat.”

  * * *

  The little box of brownies rode silently on the front seat of the Roadster as I left Hilltop. When I was on the county road, I ate one brownie. Then another. I’d given up smoking cigarettes and had no desire to smoke pot again. The brownies, though, were quite tasty. Tinkie hadn’t made them herself, thank goodness, because she was Ptomaine Trudy in the kitchen, but had bought them “from a friend.”

  Coleman would never indulge—he was a law-and-order man all the way. He held himself accountable to the same law he expected others to obey. And since I didn’t want to put him in the position of being in the house with an illegal substance, I ate the third and final brownie as I pulled in front of my home. I called Coleman, a call that was easier to make than I’d anticipated. “Can you come over?” I asked. “I have an indecent proposal.” I had stepped right out of my inhibitions and fears and I had Mary Jane to thank for that.

  “On the way.”

  Was it possible we might actually have some time alone, without interruption? I opened the door and was assaulted by a horrid smell. Something had died in Dahlia House. “Sweetie Pie! Pluto!” I called my critters, frantic at what might have occurred in my absence. Had they found something dead in the woods and brought it into the house? I knew they were miffed at the fact I’d left them home, but this was way beyond payback.

  No sign of the animals in the parlor or dining room. I hurried to the kitchen, trying not to breathe. I skidded to a halt at the beautiful woman with long curly hair stirring a pot on my stove. The horrible smell came from the pot. “What the he—”

  “A potion to bring your lover close.”

  “The smell of that would drive a dead man down the road. What the hell is it?”

  “Magic.” The strange woman turned to me and even though she was pale and fair with long red hair, I knew who it was.

  “What are you up to, Jitty?” The beautiful woman in the medieval dress was my very own ghost, come to torment me.

  “The power of love is in the ability to enchant the soul. You need some help in the enchantment department.”

  “The stench of whatever you’re cooking up would curdle a man’s desire—and Coleman is on his way. I don’t want his desire curdled. Clean it up and clear it out.”

  “It isn’t wise to order a
witch around.”

  “Witch, snitch. Who are you pretending to be now?” I opened the kitchen window and back door to air out the room. The smell was truly rancid. I wouldn’t even consider looking in her pot.

  “Bark of rowan, mold of fern, eggs gone bad, and blood that’s burned, bring the past to one who’s blind, show her magic of her own kind.”

  The incantation sent a shiver down my spine.

  The kitchen window normally gave a view of the back pasture and my horses. What appeared instead was a moment from my past. I was in the car with my mother on a lovely spring day. The top was down and we were flying through the wide-open cotton fields, the new green plants shooting up. My mother reached across the seat and caressed my hair. “No matter how grown you become, you’ll always be my little girl.”

  And then the scene was gone and the horses grazed peacefully in the pasture once again. Had Jitty cast a spell or were the three marijuana brownies I’d gobbled down having an effect?

  “How did you do that?” I asked, shaken by the intensity of emotion I’d felt.

  “Enchantment. You need a child, Sarah Booth. Someone to hold you to the future, like you did for your mother.”

  “Do it again?”

  “I’m not here to push you into the past. It’s only a glimpse of what you should create in the future.” She came toward me, the rich brocade of her dress swishing as she moved. Her green eyes glittered in her pale face, and red curls cascaded down her shoulders and back. She was beautiful. I don’t think I’d ever seen Jitty more beautiful, and I found myself giggling.

  Instead of being perturbed, she only smiled. “I see you’ve taken steps to relax. That’s good. You know the Delaney women suffer from tilted-womb syndrome. Coleman’s little swimmers are fighting an uphill battle as it is. The more relaxed you are, the better the chances.”

  “Who are you?” She was a witch, but I couldn’t put my finger on which one.

  “Morgan le Fay.”

  “The witch of Arthurian legend. Good or evil, or both. You loved the king.” My thoughts were a little helter-skelter.

  “And I betrayed him.”

  “Not as much as his wife and Lancelot did.” The betrayal of King Arthur by Lancelot and Guinevere had ruined my eleventh summer. I’d wept for weeks with all the horrid angst of a middle schooler. I felt the tears building again behind my eyes. I was an emotional mess. “Why are you here as the sorceress that destroyed Camelot?” That was a bit of an exaggeration, but I had to get her to depart. Coleman was on his way.