by Elise Sax
“All of this is her land,” Jack explained. “She owns half the town, you know. Bought it up from the Goodnight family. There’s a lot of fighting about that at the dinner table during the holidays.”
“I wonder why she bought here in Goodnight.”
“She’s sort of crazy. She thinks that Goodnight is going to be the next Santa Fe. She keeps trying, but ain’t nobody here thinks that’s going to happen.”
There were five cars parked near the front door, and just as we got there, Jenny and Joyce were getting out of theirs and walking up to the house. Holy cow. The witches.
“Do you mind if I go in with you?” I asked Jack. “I promise not to step on your toes.”
“That’ll be fun. We’ll be like Woodward and Bernstein.”
Jenny and Joyce had already gone in by the time we rang the doorbell. A servant opened the door and walked us into a great room which was almost as great as Jenny and Joyce’s. The house was decorated in New Mexico chic. Lots of colors and rugs. I heard Mabel before I saw her.
“I’ll sue your ass!” she was yelling. “Or I’ll stab you in the eye! Someone give me a knife so I can stab her in the eye!”
“It’s not my fault, Mabel. Lisa was in charge of the posters,” a woman pleaded.
The servant stopped walking, and Jack and I stopped behind her. Mabel was seated at the head of a long dining table, and about fifteen others—all terrified—sat around it, too. There was a large poster on an easel behind her.
Chile Pecker Cock Off, it said in big red letters with a long, phallic chile pepper beneath it. Jack snickered next to me.
“Maybe no one will notice,” someone said.
“You mean a blind person? A blind person won’t notice?” Mabel was shrieking, and her face was bright red. If I had a cell phone, I would have called the paramedics, because she was about to blow.
“It’s kind of funny, if you think about it,” another woman said. “It might be cute, get people talking about the Cook-off.
“Talking about it?” Mabel shrieked even louder. “About the Pecker Cock Off?”
Jack was scribbling furiously in his reporter’s notebook. He had pages of notes already. I was peeking at them when he elbowed me. “She’s looking at you,” he whispered.
I looked up. Sure enough, Mabel’s eyes were lasering in on me. “What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded.
I turned around, but nobody was behind me. I pointed at my chest. “Me?” I asked.
“You wrote that libelous piece of garbage about my tea party raves, and now they’ve been closed down. You’re the reason the town is in the toilet. I’m working against a bunch of idiots, sabotaging me at every turn.”
I might have been seeing things, but I could have sworn I saw smoke come out of her ears.
“I thought I wrote a nice story about the tea party raves,” I said, my voice a dead ringer for Fifi’s.
“You wrote all about the seizures and the convulsions. They shut me down because of it. Like I can help it if perfectly normal strobe disco balls with a multi-colored flash make certain folks have seizures.”
“I didn’t write about the seizures,” I said.
“Liar!”
Jack elbowed me, again. “Red lines,” he muttered under his breath. Rewrites. Oh, yes. They rewrote my story to make it better. And now I was being blamed.
“Can we get back to the Cook-off?” a man at the table asked impatiently.
“You mean the Cock Off?” another man asked, and the table erupted in hysterics, except for Mabel. Jack continued to write in his notebook.
Mabel threw a pad of paper, a pen, and two posters. And she was just getting started. Mabel Kessler was having a major hissy fit. The people scattered like shrapnel. Jack stayed firm, waiting for more money quotes from Mabel, I assumed.
Jenny and Joyce made a beeline for the front door. It was my chance to corner them. “Hurry, Mabel’s after you,” I lied and corralled them into the large coat closet in the entryway.
“Who hired you to curse those people?” I demanded as soon as the door was closed, copying the voice I had heard Nora use so often on her multitude of kids.
“As custodians of the universal eye, we can’t divulge that information,” Jenny said.
“It would upset the psychical karma rainbow,” Joyce agreed.
“Cut the crap!” I growled. “You’re going to tell me, and you’re going to tell me now. Who hired you? People are dead because of you two con artists.”
“How dare you!” Jenny yelled.
“We know all about you, going around saying you talk to dead people. That’s so 2002. Who do you think you’re fooling?” Joyce sneered. “I see dead people. I see dead people. Oh, please. Amateurs like you have come and gone for years, and none of them could compete with us.”
“We’ve been through mediums, psychics, channelers, mesmerists, scryers, and crap tons of alien abductees,” Jenny said.
“And about five years of ‘I see dead people,’” Joyce said.
“Damn that M. Night Shyamalan,” Jenny said.
Joyce leaned forward and got in my face. “We even had Shirley MacLaine. We ran her ass out of here all the way to Santa Fe.”
“Really? Shirley MacLaine?” I asked. “I loved her in Terms of Endearment.”
“All those people came and went,” Jenny continued. “But we’re still here. And all of the alien abductions, channeling, and all the rest don’t matter. Because in the end, we’re the only witches. Yep, we know what people around here call us. Witches.”
“We’re the only ones,” Joyce agreed. “In other words, there’s no place for you.”
They flanked me on either side, trying to scare me with their witchyness. But I was done being scared. I was done being lied to, manipulated, and treated badly. “Listen,” I said, punctuating my words by poking them in their chests. “The difference between me and all of you is I really did talk to dead people. And I brought a dead person to life, too. Well, that’s a maybe. But anyway, none of that matters. What matters is that there’s a killer out there. Or killers. In fact, I’m not convinced that you two aren’t killers. But what I want to know…no, what you’re going to tell me now, is who hired you to curse those people!”
It shouldn’t have worked, but it did. They were finally ready to talk.
“I’ll tell you, but then you back off,” Joyce said.
“Joyce…” Jenny said, warningly.
“No more treading on our territory,” Joyce continued. “No more sending spies. Yeah, we know about Nora.”
“Who hired you?” I asked, again.
“Haven’t you figured it out?” Jenny asked. “Margaret Marshall. The meanest bitch in Goodnight hated a lot of people. She hired us to do the curses.”
Part IV: Matilda Attends the Chile Pecker Cock Off, and She Has a Date with the Killer
Potato Burglar Accuses Local Man of Murder
by Silas Miller
Shockwaves went through Goodnight today when an eyewitness came forward with an accusation of murder against Bernard Marshall. The so-called potato burglar, who has allegedly robbed and burgled at least five houses and two citizens in the past week, sent a note to Sheriff Goodnight, claiming that he saw Mr. Marshall push his mother, Margaret Marshall, off a cliff to her death.
“The investigation is ongoing, but you have to take into account the source of the accusation,” Sheriff Goodnight said. “I mean, the man burgles homes with a potato.”
Ms. Marshall’s death was initially ruled an accident after she fell into the canyon behind her house. The new evidence, even from the dubious source, has reopened the investigation, according to sources.
When reached for a comment, Mr. Marshall insisted that he wasn’t guilty. “I didn’t push my mother. She wouldn’t have liked that,” he said.
Mr. Marshall’s brother, Theodore Marshall, reiterated his brother’s innocence. “This is ridiculous. My brother won’t even fish. A man who won’t kill a fish won’t kil
l his mother.”
The Goodnight Gazette was not able to reach the potato burglar for a comment.
Chapter 13
I took Jack back to the office so that he could write the story about tomorrow’s Cook-off. Silas was working on three stories at once, and I sat down at my desk and caught him up on the witches and Margaret hiring them to do the curses. I kept my promise to Amos to hold off on the information about Leonard’s death.
“It sounds like it’s all getting murkier,” Silas told me. He kept typing while he spoke to me. “It’s like the deaths were all tied, but not tied at all. Murkier than the Mississippi.”
But I didn’t think it was murkier. I was starting to understand that there were multiple puzzles, and yes, they were all connected. A working theory was tickling at my brain, but I still needed more information. Most importantly, I needed to know who was selling the tickets to heaven.
“Sending you the poop update story, Klee,” Silas announced. He tapped on his keyboard and then he lit up a cigar.
“You want a present, boss?” he asked me with a shit-eating grin.
“What do you mean?”
“A present. A gift. A story. You want one?” He was smiling wide with the cigar in his mouth. He leaned back in his chair, making it creak loudly. I glanced over at Klee. She was busy and didn’t hear Silas.
“Okay?” I said like a question. “You’re not teasing me, are you? Playing a trick on me?”
“No, boss. I wouldn’t do that. I’m giving you an exclusive. We need to publish it tonight. Normally, I should tell Amos about this pronto, but I like to be cutting edge. So, we’re keeping this secret just for a couple more hours until we can get the paper out. You understand me, boss?”
“No.”
Silas opened his desk drawer. He took something out and slammed it on my desk next to my hand. He leaned back and put his hands behind his head.
“What is that?” I asked.
“Pick it up.”
I picked it up. “It’s a potato. Oh my God, it’s a potato. Is it the potato?”
“The moron dropped it at his latest burglary,” Silas told me. “Cynthia Jackson’s house. We’re friendly, so she brought it to me. Keep looking at it.”
I turned it around. “Is that…?”
“Yes.”
“His name? The potato burglar’s name?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“The moron wrote his name on the potato? No, it can’t be. You’re making this up.”
“Chaz Lupo.”
“Chaz Lupo,” I repeated. “Who’s that?”
“I have no idea, but I did some searching.” Silas opened his drawer again and handed me a piece of paper. “I couldn’t find him, but that’s his mother’s name and address. Good place to start, and I know how much you like to snoop.”
“Really?”
“Track him down. Write it up. Be a star. I know you can do it, boss.”
He didn’t have to tell me twice. I put the paper in my purse and ran out, excited that I was given my first investigative assignment. As I walked out the door, I nearly bumped into Boone.
“Were you coming to check on me?” he asked.
“Why?”
He looked down at his feet and took a deep breath. “Because you broke my arm with a crowbar!” he yelled, raising his casted arm above his head and pointing at it with his good hand.
“I’m so sorry about that, even though you snuck up on me.”
“You were skulking.” We locked eyes. He had pillow marks on his cheek, and his thick hair was standing up on end. Sex hair. He was so damned sexy. It was all I could do not to run my fingers through his hair.
With everything going on, I had forgotten to feel guilty about breaking his arm. Now, he obviously wanted me to comfort him. A fantasy involving rubbing soothing oils all over his body flitted through my mind. Uh-oh. Focus, Matilda.
I patted his back. “I’m sorry you snuck up on me and I was forced to break your arm with a crowbar. I have to run out. When I come back, I’ll make you more instant hot chocolate.”
“Where’re you going?”
“Out. I’ll be back in a couple hours.”
“Are you going after the witches?” he asked.
“I already did that. Now I’m on assignment.” I took Boone’s keys to his truck out of my purse and clutched them in my hand.
“Are those my keys?” he asked.
I put them behind my back. “Maybe.”
He put his hand out, palm up. “Hand them over. I’ll drive.”
“But you don’t know where I’m going.”
“You’re going somewhere where there are dead people, and you’ll probably get into some life-threatening danger. Am I close?”
“You’re so dramatic,” I said. “This has nothing to do with dead people, and I’m not going to get into danger. I’m visiting Chaz Lupo’s mother.”
“Who’s Chaz Lupo?”
Boone drove one-handed while I caught him up on the witches, Margaret, Bernard, Leonard, and the potato burglar. I swore him to secrecy.
“Don’t worry. I’m very good at keeping secrets,” he assured me.
“I noticed.” I still didn’t know what Boone did for a living or where he had gone for two weeks. Each time I got close to finding out, he changed the subject. As far as I could tell, his entire worldly belongings were on his body and in his truck.
Lillian Lupo lived in a tiny cottage in the middle of nowhere, about ten miles outside of Goodnight. Boone parked on the street in front of her house.
“I’m going to get as much information about Chaz as possible. That’s it. Got it?” I asked Boone.
“I’ll be invisible. Fly on the wall. Won’t say a word.”
Lillian didn’t have a doorbell, so I knocked. “Coming,” a woman sing-songed from inside. A minute later, she opened the door. She was a lovely little old lady, dressed in a flower-printed cotton dress and slippers. She had long gray hair pulled back in an elaborate bun. She smiled wide when she saw me, as if she had been waiting for me.
“Company! Oh, goodie. Father! Janie! Company’s here,” she called behind her. “Tell me, honey. Are you with the Jehovah’s Witnesses or are you selling solar panels?” she asked me.
“I’m with the Goodnight Gazette. I came to ask you some questions.”
“That’s a first. Come on in. Do you like lemon bars? I just made a fresh batch.”
Boone and I followed her inside. It was just like Snow White’s cottage, everything half-size and covered in chintz. A small bird sang in a cage, hanging from the ceiling in the corner. “This is my husband. He’s shy,” she said, gesturing to a man sitting on the couch. He was wearing a suit and was deep into his reading of the paper.
“Nice to meet you,” Boone said to him and got no reaction. Boone shrugged at me.
We followed Lillian into the kitchen. A woman was sitting on a chair with a teacup and lemon bar in front of her on the table. “This is my sister Janie. Janie, aren’t you going to say hello to our company?” Janie didn’t say a thing. She was focused on her tea and lemon bar. My stomach growled. The mountain air really spiked my appetite.
Boone and I sat down at the table, and Lillian served us. “So what can I do for you, honey?”
“Actually, the Gazette is doing a story about your son, Chaz.”
“Oh, isn’t that nice,” she said, delighted. “Is this your sweetheart, honey?” she asked, pouring tea for Boone. “He’s a handsome man. Would you like sugar in your tea, handsome man, or are you sweet enough?”
“I’ll take it plain. Thank you, ma’am,” he said.
“Have you seen Chaz, lately? Does he live here?” I asked and took a bite of the lemon bar. My mouth puckered, and I almost spit it out. Lillian had forgotten to put sugar in the lemon bars. It was all I could do to swallow it down. Boone picked up his lemon bar, and I put my hand on his in warning and shook my head. He dropped the lemon bar back on his plate.
“Chaz hasn’t lived he
re for quite some time. His work with the railroad takes him all over the world, you know.” Lillian loved talking about Chaz. She went on and on about him as a baby, a toddler, an adolescent, and the perfect adult he had grown up to be. I assumed ninety-percent of it was lies, but even so, Lillian sure believed every word. I took copious notes.
About fifteen minutes into her monologue, when Lillian was getting more lemon bars from the refrigerator, Boone leaned over and whispered in my ear. “Don’t panic.”
“I’m not panicking,” I whispered back.
“But you will panic. So, I’m telling you in advance not to panic.”
“Why should I panic?”
“I’m debating whether to tell you. If I tell you, you’re going to panic,” he whispered.
“Geez, you really don’t have a lot of confidence in me.”
“Yes, I do. I have a lot of confidence in you that you’re going to panic.”
“What’s going on?” I asked. “Do I have a spider on me? If I do, please get it off.”
“Listen, Janie hasn’t blinked once this entire time. Don’t panic. Don’t draw attention to yourself.”
Lillian came back to the table and continued to drone on about Chaz’s railroad career and how he had saved a cow. She was in her own world, content to go on and on about her son. I sneaked a peek at Janie. She was sitting rock still. She hadn’t touched her lemon bar, which I didn’t blame her for one bit. She hadn’t touched her tea, either. Her hands were in her lap, and she was staring intently at her tea cup.
And Boone was right. She wasn’t blinking.
“And he says he’s starting a hedge fund,” Lillian continued and went to the stove to put on more water for tea.
As soon as her back was turned, Boone hopped up and waved his hand in front of Janie’s face. Then, he sat back down. “Don’t panic,” he whispered.
“Will you stop saying that?”
Janie still wasn’t blinking. She didn’t flinch when Boone waved his hand in front of her face, and she was still sitting in the same position without moving a muscle.
