Grammy’s voice again.
I hadn’t used the name Seraphim in a very, very long time. It was the name given to me by my parents. A seraphim was the name of the highest order of angel in the heavens. They were the watchers, the guardians, over those on earth. They protected their charges, keeping them safe from harm, shielding them from evil.
My parents bestowed the weighty moniker upon me because it was my birth that protected my father from compulsory enlistment in the Warlock Wars, a dark time in the paranormal community that saw many good witches and wizards die horrible deaths.
“Our little guardian angel,” they had called me.
I didn’t live up to the name.
But, that was neither here nor there. What was here was a lycan, and let’s just say, it wasn't the right time of the month for him. If my little potion didn’t work? Well, I didn’t even want to think about the consequences.
The yellow in Rad’s eyes seemed to be diminishing. He had stopped pacing and now sat, quietly on the bench along the wall. He was no longer snarling and growling. No. Now he just looked like a defeated old man.
But, my potion had worked. It had actually worked! Then I grimaced.
Onyx will never let me live this down.
“Rad?” the Chief asked cautiously. “How are you feeling?”
Rad sat, crumpled in a defeated hunch. His breath was ragged, weary. The years had caught up to him in a matter of seconds, aging him by decades.
“A bit ashamed, actually,” he rasped throatily.
“Why’s that?” Chief Trew continued.
“I should have known better than to go to the tavern so close to moonrise. But, the wolf in me craves the pack. I was lonely. I had to go. I thought I could leave in time to get to my safe sanctuary, but,” he paused. “I was a fool. Just an old fool.”
“Tell us what happened at Spithilda’s, Rad.”
Rad sighed. He stood and walked towards the bars. He opened his mouth to speak.
Suddenly, Officer Calhoun, a handsome young wizard fresh from the Academy, burst into the squad room.
“Chief! Chief! It’s Maude Dulgrey. At the morgue. She says she’s got something you’re gonna want to see right away. And she said to bring Ms. Jenkins, too.”
The Chief and I looked at each other. Even Fraidy dared poke his head out of the trash can. What had Maude discovered?
“Rad, I think it’s best if you sit tight. Just in case something goes wonky with Hattie’s potion.”
Thanks for the vote of confidence, there, Chief.
“But, I still have a lot of questions for you.”
Rad just looked at him, still more than defeated.
“Watch him,” the Chief ordered Officer Calhoun, who gave a quick salute. The cats fell into step behind us.
As we walked toward the exit, Jet whispered in Fraidy’s ear.
“Who’s afraidy of the big bad wolf now?”
He chuckled all the way to the morgue.
5
Dead to Rights
Solid. Solid as a rock.
The snippet of the old Ashford and Simpson R&B tune popped into my head as Chief Trew and I stood on the threshold of the imposing granite edifice of the city morgue. I guess I can’t help myself sometimes. My head is a rotating Wurlitzer of old school rock, rhythm and blues, and jazz. Hazards of having music aficionados as parents, I suppose. Dad used to drop the needle on any number of his LPs in the years before the tragedy. He swore by his vinyl, testifying that the warm, chocolate-rich sound was better than anything a CD or compressed MP3 audio file could offer. Our beat-up old coffee table had been shoved to the side on more than one occasion to turn our living room into an impromptu dance floor.
Not a lot of dancing went on inside the building before us, however. The dead tended to be a little less lively. Or they had two left feet, like Maude Dulgrey, Gless Inlet’s Chief Medical Examiner.
No, really. I mean two, actual left feet. When you were a ghoul, such as Maude, occasionally you had to replace a decaying body part or two. Or, a limb that may have met with a certain acid you used in your embalming craft. And, sometimes, you couldn’t always wait for the perfect piece. You just had to make do with what was available.
Maude may have had to temper her tango, but the coroner was no less spry. She bubbled with enthusiasm at our arrival to her domain, gray lips stretching thin over a toothsome grin.
“Hattie! Chief! I am so glad you could make it!” she effervesced like we were simply popping by for tea.
“And Fraidy and Jet! What have you two rapscallions been up to? I’m surprised your brother didn’t join you for a visit.” She reached down and scratched the two cats with a bony hand. Fraidy trembled, more than a little, then scrambled behind my legs. Friendly as Maude was, he wasn’t too keen on being stroked by a spook.
“Carbon’s minding the shop’s hearth, Maude,” Jet offered, perfectly content to accept a good scratch from anyone; living or dead. “But, he sends his regards.”
“Well, I guess that just means more treats for you!” Maude gushed with enthusiasm.
Fraidy’s ears perked at the word. He even poked out his head from behind my leg. “Treats?”
Maude grinned. “Yes, Fraidy. I think I have salmon-flavored today. Would you like one?”
For the first time in Gless Inlet history, Fraidy zoomed faster than Jet. He was inside the iron-hinged, wooden door and down the torch-lit hallway before you could say Happy Halloween.
We followed the fleeing feline down the narrow stone corridor. Flickering torches were stationed every few feet, their crack-pop echoing off the stone walls. The orange-yellow glow of the flames danced a mysterious waltz on the walls, a fitting precursor to the many mysteries Maude solved on her slab.
Walking the breadth of Maude’s domain of the dead was a trippy Whovian mind twist. The medieval flavor of the entrance foyer gave way to a surprisingly state-of-the-art pathology lab. There were no bubbling cauldrons, no obscure herb jars, and no enchanted wands. That didn’t mean that any of the miracles Maude performed were any less magical. Her accoutrements just happened to be a little less Penn & Teller and a little more Pasteur: a mass spectrometer; a high-performance liquid chromatograph; and a centrifuge, just to name a few.
“Check it out!” Jet shot toward the centrifuge where Fraidy had taken up a temporary roost.
“No wonder Carbon likes coming here so much!” he continued. “Maude’s got rides!”
One black, furry paw reached out and depressed the centrifuge’s power button and sent Fraidy catapulting across the room.
“M-e-e-y-o-w-w-l!” Fraidy’s exclamation of terror arced over our heads and right into the surprised arms of Maude’s assistant, Hector Muerte, who we’d seen earlier at the crime scene.
“Oh, my goodness! Thank the stars!” Fraidy exclaimed, grateful for the soft landing. That is until he realized just who his rescuer was. Fraidy promptly passed out, limp as a furry black noodle.
“Thank you, Hector.” I acknowledged the zombie appreciatively. Hector let out an unintelligible grunt and shuffled off to tuck Fraidy in a safe corner.
“Shame on you, Jet!” Maude scolded. She deftly reached over and switched off the centrifuge. “Just for that, no treats for you!”
“Aw!” Jet complained. “You cats ruin all the fun for a guy!”
“We’re not here for fun, Jet,” Chief Trew interjected. “You said you had something interesting for us, Maude?”
“In fact, I do,” Maude replied, pulling bottle-thick lenses over her filmy white corneas. She blinked thickly as she thumbed through the file she picked up from her desk.
“It would appear that Miss Roach had a nasty little habit.” Maude shuffled toward the body. “Come see this.”
She waved the Chief and me over to the examination table where Spithilda’s body lay stiff and unmoving under a green drape. The thick, chunky stitches of the autopsy Y-incision peeked over the top fold. It appeared Spithilda did not approve of Maude’s n
eedlework. Even in death, Spithilda’s countenance remained pursed in sour disdain.
“Careful,” I muttered, remembering my mother’s admonishments when I’d stick out a tongue at an irritating playmate. “Or one day your face will stick like that.”
“What’s that?” David asked.
“Nothing,” I squeaked, not realizing I said anything out loud.
“So, what was this ‘habit,'” the Chief turned his attentions back to Maude.
“Well,” Maude began. She pried open Spithilda’s wrinkled, puckered mouth with gloved hands. Grabbing a tongue depressor, she flattened Spithilda’s papillae, and directed the exam light into the open orifice, over Spithilda’s stained tongue. “Look at these strange marks. Here and here.”
Maude pointed out the irregular streaks and spots dotting the pale pink muscle.
“Ink!” The total recall of my dream came flooding back. “I kept scratching my tongue with the nib of my quill!”
The abrupt confession drew startled glances from both Maude and the Chief. I figured I had better explain myself before I wound up in a straightjacket and rooming with Cressida Dreddock at Midnight Hill Sanatorium.
“The dream,” I offered. “Remember, Chief? I had that dream about Spithilda the night she died. In it, I was Spithilda. I remember continuously putting the nib in my mouth after I dipped it into the inkwell.”
Judging from the look of relief that suddenly washed over the Chief’s face, I supposed I was off the hook for a crazy-suit fitting. At least for a while, anyway. When you owned eight immortal and magical felines, crazy had a way of following you around.
“Well, that’s not unheard of. I chew on the end of my pen at the office all the time when I’m thinking,” Chief Trew offered.
“Have a little pent up aggression and frustration there, Chief?” Maude needled.
“Huh?”
“Well, there’s solid psychophysiological research that suggests chewing and crunching are natural outlets for inborn aggression. You know there’s a much better cure for that than masticating poor, innocent office supplies.” Maude winked a milky eye and elbowed Chief Trew in my general direction.
My face flushed pink as a pokeberry flower. For just a moment, I toyed with the concept of crawling under the sheet with Spithilda. Fortunately, Maude’s less-than-subtle suggestion was completely lost on the Chief. I decided to take full advantage of the opportunity to change the subject; and, fast.
I moved closer toward the body, jockeying for a closer look at Spithilda’s self-inflicted graffiti. “I can remember writing. I kept saying ‘That will teach them,' and scratching furiously on a piece of yellowed parchment. I didn’t really get a good look but knowing Spithilda, I wouldn’t be surprised if she had been crafting some crazy, newfangled spell.”
“Hmm,” Maude mused, stroking her angular chin thoughtfully.
“What’s up, Maude?” Chief Trew queried.
“It’s just, well, Spithilda presented with a conjunctival interjection.”
Chief Trew’s face screwed up in consternation. If there was one thing he despised more than magical words and phrases, it was medical ones. “Translate, Doc.”
“Laymen’s terms?” Maude confirmed.
“If you please,” the Chief grumbled through gritted teeth.
“Bloodshot eyes.”
“Sounds like Spithilda had one too many glasses of elderberry wine,” Jet conjectured. “I’ve had nights like that. Albeit, with a different variety of poison.” My mercurial cat reflected momentarily, smiling and glassy eyed, on the catnip sessions he’d had over the years.
“Ah, my dear Jet,” Maude began as she left-footed it over to the printer. “You are ‘berry’ close.”
Maude retrieved a report from the feed tray. Two skeletal fingers pinched the frame of her wire glasses, and those cataract eyes peered over the rims. She looked like an ancient gray turtle about to dispense some sage wisdom.
“But, my dear pussycat, if Miss Roach had, indeed ingested elderberries, I would have discovered sucrose, glucose, and fructose. Standard fruit sugars. More importantly, however, I would have been able to detect several particular acids, including citric, malic, shikimic and fumaric. Throw in a few good flavonoid glycosides and several anthocyanin glycosides and diglycosides, a good oak barrel and a little yeast, and in six months, give or take, you’ve got yourself an excellent, basic elderberry wine.”
“There’s a reason I stick to whatever Horace has on tap at the Moon,” the Chief whispered into my ear as he leaned in and dropped a low hand on the small of my back. A quick, little tingle shivered up and down my spine. Portia’s butterflies erupted once again in my gut.
Focus, Hattie! You want to earn points with the Chief? Keep the focus on the case!
“I sense a great big ‘but’ coming,” I blurted with the worst possible timing as the giant lumbering Hector bent over a chiller drawer exposing just a hint of a plumber’s crack over the edge of his waistband.
“Huh?” Hector exclaimed. He looked a little offended. Who knew the undead were still so body conscious? Even Maude and Chief Trew were a little taken aback. I shook my head vehemently.
“No, no, no, Hector. I wasn’t talking about your butt. I was talking about Maude’s ‘but,'” I offered by way of condolences. Hector sort of gave me a blank, undead stare. He looked from me to Maude, then from me to Chief Trew. He shook his head and did the zombie lumber away to other parts of the lab – probably a part inhabited by less live people; his kin.
“Hattie’s right,” Chief Trew broke the silence. “I’m guessing you did find something interesting, Maude.”
“And you’d be absolutely correct, Chief,” Maude confirmed, seemingly glad to get the appropriate conversational train of thought back on track. “What I did find was phytolaccic acid combined with small quantities of acetic, citric, and tartaric acids.”
I noticed the large vein on the side of the Chief’s neck was pulsing at an alarming rate.
“Maude?” I suggested. She quickly noted my discreet head nod toward the steam-kettling Chief.
“Oh! Oh, my goodness, yes. Sorry about that. Chief,” Maude gave a dry cough to clear her throat. “I believe Spithilda Roach was poisoned by none other than phytolacca americana, or as it is more commonly known…the pokeberry.”
“Chief?” I turned to him with full eyes.
“What’s that, Hattie?”
“Guess who has an entire garden filled with pokeberry bushes?”
“Can’t you just tell me? It’s so much more efficient.”
Part of me didn’t want to admit it because I knew it would mean another visit to the creepy old manor. But, Chief Trew had asked for my help on this investigation, and by gum, I meant to give it to him.
I swallowed hard. “Portia Fearwyn.”
A sudden, heavy pall of silence draped the room, weighing heavy on all of us.
Jet, my laissez-faire, fear-no-evil puss, entwined himself around my leg.
“You’re not going to go see her, are you Hattie? You’ve already accused her for the death of Nebula, so I don’t think she’ll be too pleased if you muscle in on her with Spithilda’s death too.” He meowed nervously. My cat was right; Portia would not be pleased. I’m not sure how she kept cropping up on the suspect list, but there was no way we could leave this lead cold and dangling. Ms. Fearwyn would be subjected to our questions. Whether she, (or, maybe, we) liked it or not.
“We have to, Jet,” Chief Trew interjected. “Portia may have information that’s vital to solving this case. Sure, she’s a little…ah, prickly, but we can’t let her ire put us off doing what needs to be done.”
“Sure you can!” Jet countered.
“What’s – meow – going on?” Jet’s outburst prompted Fraidy to come out from hiding.
“Hattie and Tinsel-Badge here,” Jet pointed an accusatory claw toward the Chief, “suddenly think it’s a brilliant plan to go see Portia Fearwyn!”
“Oh, no, Hattie!” Fraidy
pleaded. “Please! You can’t! Portia’s swamp? That’s where things go…and they don’t come back! Not even Church!”
Way to go, Fraidy. Sneak in a reference to the King of Horror. Thanks bunches. That’s the LAST time I let your siblings talk me into letting you in on an all-night Stephen King marathon.
“I can’t believe I’m actually going to admit this, but I agree with Fraidy,” Jet stated.
Jet’s uncharacteristic anxiety gave me some pause for concern. I turned to Chief Trew.
“We have to at least go question Portia, right? I mean, if she even possibly had anything to do with Spithilda being dead, right?”
The Chief nodded. “And with any amount of luck, she’ll confess, and we’ll have her dead to rights.”
I felt Jet’s persuasive tug at my pant leg.
“Dead.” He hissed.
I gulped. “Right.”
6
Witchful Thinking
The topography of Glessie Isle was a good parallel to its inhabitants. There was my own near and dear Gless Inlet, with its warm and sunny beaches, salt-tinged air, majestic dunes, and bright, painted storefronts. There was the pleasantly pastoral Vale; home to content, cud-chewing cows, and peaceful elves, where life grazed and toiled lazily under perpetually blue skies. There was Spithilda’s Hagsmoor, out in The Humps, with unappealing, sucking quagmires and relentlessly jutting bedrock. And, lest we forget, the prickly, unforgiving, toffee-nosed heights of The Spires; the late Nebula Dreddock’s last address. But, perhaps no geographical corner of Glessie Isle better suited its denizen than Portia Fearwyn’s swamp.
Some people readily confused the various types of wetlands that occupied different corners of the country. Truth of the matter was, marshes weren’t swamps, and swamps weren’t bogs, and fens were none of the above. The only thing the different places had in common was that they were neither exactly just land or water. Rather, they were a treacherous mix of unsure footing, gloopy shoe-sucking pitfalls, merciless jags of rock, and spine-tinglingly strange, even carnivorous, plants.
The Violet Countercharm: A Paranormal Cozy Mystery (Hattie Jenkins & The Infiniti Chronicles Book 2) Page 5
