by Shayla Black
Rocky grinned. “Can’t get the attorney out of the agent, huh?”
“Thing is, once we get a murderer, we’d like to see he or she locked up, not free on a technicality.”
“I just wish we could find this woman,” Rocky said.
“Angela just texted me,” Devin said. “There’s a little place near the end of the Salem Harbor Walk, owned by a Wiccan woman who is in a hive that’s an offshoot of Tandy Whitehall’s coven. It’s called the Goddess, serves a lot of Paleo foods, vegetarian offerings, homemade wine and beer. It’s two blocks from Tandy Whitehall’s house. Sounds like a place to start.”
“Sound good to me,” Sam said.
So far they’d managed to keep themselves out of the news. He and Jenna had been involved in the Lexington House case four years ago. It had been just a little more than a year since Devin and Rocky had met here to solve an old murder, which had been hard on Devin, since it had involved one of her old circles of friends. They needed to maintain their anonymity.
They headed down along the dark streets, avoiding revelers, costumed or not. Sam had loved Salem growing up. True, a lot had gone commercial. But the Peabody Essex museum was wonderful, teaching the history of fear and suspicion and distrust of one’s neighbors and what those emotions could do to a community. The people who lived and worked here gave the place a pulse. And yet the old could still be found, along with the new. Quaint stood side by side with fun and the silly. So many restaurants had brought in excellent chefs. The House of the Seven Gables still stood, a testament to the past and a reminder that the past came alive through great literary works. Ships continued to ride high in the harbor, beneath the moon, the water seeming to stretch out forever.
Devin suddenly squeezed Sam’s hand. “One way or the other, if we find Tandy or not, you need to tell Rocky and me what’s going on with you and Jenna.”
He looked at her with surprise. “We’re good. We’re great.”
“You were acting a bit strange. You kept looking at her as if you’re afraid you’re never going to see her again.”
Rocky nodded. “She’s right.” Then he paused and pointed. “There’s our place. Rambling, with lots of rooms. Plenty of hiding places. Angela may be hundreds of miles away from here, but she can track like a bloodhound.”
“Let’s see what we find before we canonize her,” Sam said, grinning.
The bar/restaurant was situated in a house where a plaque on the door informed them that it had been built in 1787. Plain dark wood on both the outside and inside. Booths offered hardwood benches, those along the wall with backs. Doors opened to additional rooms on either side of an oblong bar. Like everything else in Salem, it was decorated. No monsters here, though. Only pumpkins, Indian corn, and all manner of natural fall decoration. The place was busy, but not overcrowded, and a young hostess asked them if they’d like a booth or a table.
They opted for a table. Soon, they were sipping locally brewed brown beer with steaming bowls of chowder before them, listening to the snatches of conversations from those around them.
“Will the gala go on? I mean a woman is dead,” a tall blonde at the bar said to her companion.
“Probably. There are sponsors, bands and tickets were sold. They can’t cancel it,” her male companion said.
“I heard this is a real Wiccan hangout,” another girl said.
“Tourists,” Rocky murmured, then he looked at Sam. “What’s up with you?”
Sam hesitated, but these were his coworkers. They’d worked well together because they were straight with one another, even when it seemed ludicrous.
“Boo-hag,” he said.
“What?” Devin asked, a frown furrowing her brow. “That’s not like a redneck banshee or something, is it?”
“More like a vampire, a really creepy, ugly one,” Sam said. “And we keep seeing one in particular. A boo-hag nearly threw itself on the car when we were driving into town. And Jenna saw one right before she found Gloria Day’s body.”
“You mean—someone costumed as one?” Devon asked.
Sam smiled. “Sure, what else. And I dreamed about one coming after Jenna. I couldn’t get to her in time, and it was going to suck the life out of her. A dream, I know. But boo-hag keeps coming up, and it’s bugging me.”
“Where would one find a boo-hag in Salem?” Devin asked. “If we find someone in a boo-hag costume on the street, we can’t just stop and search him.”
“There’s a community of Gullah people here who I want to check out tomorrow morning,” Sam said.
“Gullah?” Rocky asked.
“It’s a blend of different African and island cultures, along with a Creole mix. The culture originally stretched from the coastal areas of the Carolinas to Florida. Now, it seems, they’re mostly in South Carolina. The boo-hag is one of the demons, I believe, in their storytelling. It’s hideous, shedding its skin, answering only to a boo-daddy.”
“Ah, yes,” a female voice said.
Sam turned and saw a petite, attractive woman standing behind him dressed in black and wearing a beautiful gold pentagram. Her platinum blonde hair was short and curled around a thin, lovely face.
Tandy Whitehall.
“Young and lovely women meet unwary men,” she said. “They seduce them and use them, and, when the time is right, take their husbands or young lovers to their boo-daddy. He consumes them, down to gnawing on their bones. Every society has its monsters. The boo-hag is a bad one.” She glanced around the table and smiled, then shook Sam’s hand. “Emily told me you three were here. Would you care to come into the back where we can talk in private?”
“Tandy?” Devin said.
“Devin Lyle. You know, I miss your Aunt Mina. She was an amazing friend.”
She drifted away from the table. They followed. Which seemed expected. They’d wanted to find Tandy Whitehall.
And had done so.
* * * *
Jenna knew this was her best opportunity to find out the truth.
“The oddest thing is that I don’t believe Tandy Whitehall had anything to do with this,” Gloria Day’s ghost said. “You have to realize that some of the argument between us was all for hype and promo. We go about things differently—went about things differently.” She looked at John Bradbury. “This is really so unfair.”
“Tell me about it. I had children.”
“And I’d hoped to have them one day, too,” she said. “You didn’t like me a whole lot, John. So don’t pretend that you do now.”
“I didn’t like your Wiccan kick against haunted houses,” he said. “You, I hardly knew.”
Gloria made a face at him. “I just tried haunting the place, but no one could see or hear me.”
“Could you two focus on the problem at hand,” Jenna said. “We’re trying to figure out who killed you, and disprove that it was two suicides.”
“Hard to hang yourself over a tree,” Gloria said. “You need some help.”
“It’s like with your death they want us to know a murderer is at work,” Jenna said. “That might be because the killers have realized John’s death isn’t going to be accepted as a suicide.”
“Either that,” John said, “or someone is going about recreating the deaths of those condemned to hang, and maybe even Giles Corey’s death, too. This could get really bad.”
“Do they want it to look like a Wiccan war? If so, they missed the debate somewhere along the line. John and Tandy Whitehall were close,” Gloria said.
“Gloria, I need to know what happened to you,” Jenna said. “You didn’t drive yourself out here, somehow make your car disappear, then hang yourself.
She wasn’t meaning to be cruel, but Gloria seemed the type who wanted things straight.
And she did.
Gloria arched a brow with a shade of humor and said, “I don’t know what happened. I was in the shop, just straightening up, and some kind of a bag was suddenly over my head. I was suffocating and passed out. I came to feeling the roughness of a r
ope around my neck, then agony and darkness. And I was here. On the other side. I wandered out of the trees and was surrounded by gravestones. I saw the mortuary up on the hill and had no idea how I had gotten here. And then, of course, I realized. I was dead. And I’ve been trying ever since to find someone who could hear me.”
“Any smells?” John asked her.
“What?” she asked, looking at him, a faint wrinkling forming above her brows.
“A smell, a feel, a sensation? Anything?”
“The trees. I remember the smell of trees. Something like a forest.”
“I smelled the same thing,” he said.
“Did either of you recognize the scent? From a store, a shop, either one of the big department store colognes, or anything more local?” Jenna asked.
“I know where something close can be bought,” Gloria said after a minute. “A woodsy scent. At Tandy Whitehall’s shop.”
“You really think Tandy did this?” John protested. “I’m a big man, and even with a noose around my neck it would take more than a tiny woman like Tandy to take me down.”
“We know from what you heard, John, that there were two killers,” Jenna said.
“I don’t believe Tandy did this to me. I really don’t,” Gloria said, looking at John. “We had our differences, but I respected her. No, I may be dead, but right is right, and I won’t attack the woman, even if I am dead.” She seemed to shake off her sadness and looked at Jenna with purpose. “But I know that scent, and it can be bought at Tandy’s shop.”
“Tandy has disappeared,” Jenna said. “She’s wanted for questioning. Would she have fled Salem?”
“Never,” John and Gloria both said.
Jenna’s phone buzzed and she glanced at it quickly.
Sam.
She answered and learned that John and Gloria were right. Tandy was still here, with Sam, Devin, and Rocky, and Sam’s assessment was clear. She’s not our killer. So everyone seemed in agreement, Tandy was innocent.
Jenna looked over at Gloria.
“I appreciate you finding my body,” Gloria said. “I could have hung there a long time.”
But it had been the boo-hag who led her. Had it intended for her to find Gloria?
She texted Sam.
Check Tandy’s inventory. Find out who bought a woodsy scent that she sells. Find out about the Gullah community.
She finished her text and looked up.
“Someone is trying to make this look as if the Wiccans are evil,” Gloria said. “As if the community should be hanging us again.”
“Or trying to make it look like a feud,” John added. “I was killed, so someone from the other camp had to die, too.”
“What do either of you know about the Gullah community?”
“I know a number of folks who moved up here who are basically Gullah, but they don’t really follow any special practices. There’s one church in town that has a Southern twist, but it’s basically Baptist. Most of them attend there. They’re actually all great people,” Gloria said. “Where do they fit in here?”
“I don’t think they come into it at all. I think that boo-hag is being used.”
“Boo-hag?” John murmured.
“Creepy, soul-sucking yucky demon,” Gloria explained. “Gullah. Red. Woodsy. Mortuary.”
“Red mortuary?” Jenna asked quickly.
“Maybe it’s because you said boo-hag,” Gloria said. “But I have an impression of red in my memory. For some reason, I seem to remember a whisper of the word mortuary.”
Gloria paused and gazed across the graves to the mortuary on the hill.
John joined her, then glanced at his wrist and shrugged with an unhappy sigh. “I always wore a watch. But it stopped when I died. Go figure. Loyal watch, I guess.”
“It’s way past midnight,” Gloria said. “The lines are gone and people are leaving. They try to have it all closed up by 2:00 A.M.”
Jenna looked over at the mortuary, too, which appeared both dead and eerily alive, as if on a plain between the living and the dead. Haunting, opaque, sheathed in garish Halloween décor, in the moonlight it appeared decayed and faded.
Jenna was certain the answers she sought lay there.
“I’m going up there,” she said. “Care to join me?”
* * * *
The back room at the bar/restaurant reminded Sam of an old brothel, especially the brocade cushions in gold and burgundy on the sofas and loveseats. Tandy served them an excellent herbal tea and talked about Gloria Day.
“I have to admit some of the bad feelings were jealousy. Every time I looked at her, I thought I should start singing Memory. But I actually liked her. We both managed to get people to ball-hop on Halloween, after the Sabbat on the Gallows Hill, of course. There was plenty here for everyone. So I want you to know that I’m not leaving town. I have no intention of running.”
“Tandy,” Sam said. “We need a list of people who wear, or have recently purchased a scent you make at your store. It’s something woodsy, smells like a forest, that kind of thing.”
She found her phone and tapped a message. “I’m getting it for you.”
He leaned forward. “And what do you know about the Gullah community?”
“How did you even know we had a Gullah community?” Tandy asked, bemused. “They’re usually in coastal South Carolina or Georgia.”
“We heard there was a group here,” Devin said.
“We do have a group here now. Almost a hundred,” she said. “All good people. Some are more conventional; some have converted more or less to the Wiccan religion. They have their own language, a Creole similar to a Krio language spoken in what’s now Sierra Leone. Their religion is based on Christianity, but includes a great deal of believing in the spirits of their ancestors. I buy a lot of merchandise from them to sell at the store. Beautiful, hand-crafted masks and totems, and jewelry.”
“What about the boo-hag?” Sam asked.
Tandy smiled at that. “What about it?”
“It seems to be a popular costume.”
“Wait here,” Tandy said.
She rose and disappeared from the room, returning a moment later with a young woman, clad in black, wearing a beautifully crafted pentagram.
“Sissy, this is Special Agent Sam Hall, and Special Agents Lyle and Rockwood,” Tandy said. “Meet Sissy McCormick. She’s from Gullah country in South Carolina.”
“Nice to meet you,” Sissy said, joining their grouping by taking the chair Tandy had vacated. “My people are Gullah.”
Sissy was striking, her skin coffee-colored, her eyes a soft blue. She had dark hair, queued at the nape of her neck, wearing a black cape over a long black skirt and tailored shirt.
“You’ve chosen to be Wiccan?” Devin asked.
Sissy nodded. “Something speaks to all of us, and not always what’s in our heritage. But, basically, I follow the tenets of almost any creed. Be good to others, care for the elderly, sick, and injured, cherish all children, never offer violence. Be a good human being.”
“Nice,” Devin said. “Gullah is based on Christianity?”
“Of course, but so is voodoo,” Sissy reminded her. “And look, many fundamentalists have caused tremendous harm to others in the name of traditional religions. Every faith out there has those who choose to take it too far, or read into it what isn’t there.”
“Or use it,” Sam said. “Sissy, we’re seeing a lot of boo-hag costumes, or at least one boo-hag costume, over and over again. The boo-hag is a Gullah demon, right?”
Sissy nodded. “Some manufacturer came up with that awful costume. Red latex to look like a fleshless body, a horrible demon face. My mother was so upset. She said it’s just going to make people anti-Gullah. But it’s just part of Halloween. People dress up as crazed movie characters. They know Freddy and Jason and all those fictional killers are just from movies. They’ll know that a boo-hag is simply from legend, like a vampire or a werewolf. No true Gullah in this community would ever buy or we
ar such a costume.”
“Here we go,” Tandy said, slipping a pair of reading glasses from her pocket to stare at an incoming message on her phone.
Sam’s phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number, but it was local, so he answered. For a moment, there was nothing. Then he heard something like a snuffled tear.
“Sam?”
For a split second, he was confused.
Then he knew.
“Elyssa?”
He heard a sudden cry.
Then a whispered voice. “You want this one to live? Then get your wise-ass partner under control. All of you back down. Leave this alone. Let these murders go into the great cauldron of unsolved crimes. That is if you ever want to see this kid again. You back off, and she’s free on November 1. You keep it up, she dies before Halloween.”
Sam forced himself to remain calm, glancing at Rocky, who knew what the look meant. Trouble. So he worked to keep the caller on the phone, as Rocky called headquarters to run a trace through Sam’s phone.
“We want Elyssa alive,” he said. “But I have to have some kind of assurance that you’re not going to hurt her regardless of what we do.”
A soft laugh seeped through the speaker. “Trying to keep me on the line? You’re on your cell, not at police headquarters. So you’ll need some time to run a trace. It was nice that Elyssa kept this number in her phone. You were an attorney, so I would hope you understand the fine art of negotiation.”
“So negotiate,” Sam said. “I have to know that Elyssa remains alive.”
“A call every six hours. But there’ll be a new number each time. If I even suspect you’re playing me, this pretty little girl will be hanged. Maybe by the witch memorials or the cemetery, right there amidst all the tourist attractions. Or I could find another cool place. So you need to find Jenna Duffy. Actually, I wouldn’t mind seeing her hanged either. Now there’s a thought...”
“Touch her,” he said, “and you’ll face hell a thousand times here on earth before going to the real thing.”
Laughter followed his remark.
