Marriages and Murders

by Raven Snow

  “No,” Rose admitted, looking at the floor. “I do want to marry him. I always said I’d be fine with a little wedding. Who knows when we’ll be able to marry if not now.”

  “Then just stay engaged. Get married when the opportunity really presents itself.”

  Rose looked up. “Who knows when that will be? He’s always so busy, and I’m no better. I’m at the paper almost all the time.”

  “He got off for Nadine’s wedding,” Rowen pointed out.

  “That was mostly luck. He’s so busy, it’s hard to plan anything ahead of time. We mostly just do stuff at the last minute.”

  “Like get married?”

  “Like get married.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you then,” Rowen admitted. “I’m sorry I can’t be more help, but this is really something you should probably figure out on your own. If this is something you’re going to regret and resent him for, I’d suggest letting him know.”

  “You’re right.” Rose groaned and flopped back on the sofa. “Why does this all have to be so complicated?” She didn’t wait for an answer— not that one was forthcoming. Rowen really didn’t know what to say. She had already said all that came to mind. Rose’s gaze drifted to the laptop open on the coffee table. “What’s that?”

  The laptop was still open to the social media page of Veronica Drew. Rowen quickly reached out and closed it. “Don’t worry about it. It has to do with that case Ben called me out on.”

  Rose’s expression fell. “Right,” she said, sagging into the sofa a bit more.

  “It wasn’t anything big,” Rowen assured her.

  “Sure.” Rose didn’t sound like she believed that. “That’s why you’re looking it up at night and not letting me see, right?”

  Rowen smirked. Rose read her a little too well sometimes. “Okay, fine. It’s really not like that though. It really looks like natural causes. I’m just being nosy.”

  “You’re being nosy because you have one of those feelings of yours.”

  “Something like that.” Rowen flopped back on the sofa as well. “You’re not mad at Ben for not telling you about what’s going on at work, are you?”

  “No,” Rose said quickly. “It’s always been this way. It’s better if we keep our work and personal lives separate.”

  “Sometimes there’s some overlap, though. There can’t not be.”

  Rose shrugged. “I guess so. I mean, I won’t lie. Maybe it is starting to be a bigger problem the longer we’re together.”

  Rowen felt a pang of sympathy for her cousin. “Is there anything you can do about it?”

  “Not that I can think of.”

  “Have you talked about it?”

  “No, but there’s a lot we don’t really talk about.”

  Rowen was getting the sense that that was where most of Rose and Ben’s problems lay. She didn’t even need her witchy senses for that. “You two have to sit down and have a real talk, you know? You need to hash these problems out.”

  “You’re right.” Rose stood straight ahead. It didn’t sound like she meant that. It certainly didn’t look like she was thinking about going through with it.

  “You’re not going to though,” said Rowen.

  Rose winced. “What if it hurts our relationship? What if it ends it?”

  “Then the two of you were never compatible anyway. You have to be with someone for a while before you can really see them for who they truly are. That honeymoon phase has to end. You have to slip into a kind of comfortable normalcy, you know?”

  “Can anything in Lainswich really be called normal?”

  “Stop playing dumb. You know what I mean.” Rowen elbowed her. “Come on. Just talk to him. It’ll make you feel better in the long run. I promise.”

  “What if it makes us break up?”

  “I said better in the long run,” Rowen reminded her. “You’re not going to be happy if you can’t be your real self around him and voice your problems.”

  “You’re right,” sighed Rose. “Though that is easy for you to say. You broke up with him.”

  Rowen thought back to high school, when she and Ben had briefly dated. “More like he broke up with me because I put a curse on his mom. Point taken, though.”

  Rose folded her hands in her lap. She stared straight ahead as if considering something. “I do want to marry him. Maybe I should just be happy that we are.”

  “It’s up to you.” Rowen still thought that Rose should take the time to speak with Ben, but it wasn’t like she could tell her how to live her life. She had already mentioned several times what she thought of the situation.

  “Thanks.” Rose stood. “I should be getting back home. It’s my turn to get dinner ready tonight.”

  Rowen stood as well. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help.”

  Rose shook her head. “Honestly, it’s nice just to get that out of my system.” She shot a smile in her cousin’s direction as she left. It felt forced. Through the window, Rowen watched Rose head back to the car. She seemed to drag her feet. It was difficult to read her expression from the distance she was at, but it looked like that smile had fallen.

  Rowen closed the blinds and headed up the stairs to her bedroom. Eric was lounging where he said he’d be. He was sprawled out on the bed, Chester at his feet. There was some dating reality show playing. “Did she leave already?” he asked, looking up when Rowen entered the room.

  “Yeah,” Rowen went to the bed and climbed in beside him. “She’s having second thoughts about this whole marriage thing.”

  “She doesn’t want to marry Ben?”

  “She does. She’s just not sure how she feels about the wedding being this last minute thing on the tail end of another wedding.”

  “I don’t suppose most people would be thrilled with that,” said Eric, turning his gaze back to the glamorous couples on the television screen. “She should talk with Ben. Has she talked to him about this already?”

  “That’s what I suggested. But, no, she hasn’t talked to him about it yet. Rose isn’t much of a complainer. It’s not a big deal in most situations, but now?” Rowen shook her head.

  “Well, you can’t force her into anything.”

  “I know.” Rowen sighed and rested her head on her husband’s shoulder. She counted herself lucky to have a man like him. If only Ben was as easy to talk to.

  Chapter Four

  Rowen awoke to her cell phone ringing. She opened her eyes drowsily and looked at the clock on her nightstand. Her alarm hadn’t even gone off yet. It was only about 8 AM. To Rowen’s left, Eric groaned and rolled over. He put a pillow over his head to block out the noise. At the foot of the bed, Chester appeared similarly annoyed. He grunted and poked his head under the comforter.

  The screen of Rowen’s cell phone said that it was Ben calling. With a weary sigh, she picked up the phone and headed out into the hall before answering it. “What’s up?”

  “Did I wake you up?” asked Ben.

  “No, you’re fine. I always wake up at 7:30 on my days off.”

  “That’s good. I was wondering if you could do me another favor today.”

  “What kind of favor?” asked Rowen. She couldn’t deny that her interest was immediately piqued.

  “Not so much a favor.” Ben paused before rephrasing what he had just said. “I’ll pay you and Eric as consultants. The Drew family wants to speak to you.”

  That news certainly woke Rowen up. “What do they want?” she asked. The way the rest of Lainswich tended to react to the Greensmiths, Rowen’s first guess was that they were angry she and her husband had been snooping around their mother’s house.

  “It came up that you consulted on the case with me yesterday,” Eric explained. “They had heard that you had been there from some nosy neighbors. They asked if you had sensed anything. I told them you didn’t sense any foul play, but they asked if you had come across her spirit and—well, I couldn’t very well lie to them. I told them that was what you had told me.”

&
nbsp; “So they want to know what their mother said.” Rowen couldn’t blame them. She would want to know the same if she was in their shoes. “Are they angry with us or just genuinely curious?”

  “They didn’t seem angry, but I couldn’t really say. Mostly they’re just very distraught right now.”

  Rowen sighed. It wasn’t difficult to imagine what they were going through. Rowen had hit a similar low point when her own grandmother had died. That woman had been like a mother to her. “I’ll go,” said Rowen.

  “I’m glad to hear that.” Ben sounded relieved even over the phone. I’ll let them know and get back to you with a time and place.”

  “Got it.” Rowen hung up. She considered going back to bed, but she was wide awake now. Instead, she headed downstairs and made herself a nice breakfast. She cooked herself some French toast, just the way her Grammy had taught her.

  ***

  The meet up with Richard and Veronica Drew turned out to be at Dina’s house. Rowen was a little uncertain about meeting them there, but Ben insisted that it was what they wanted. Apparently, they would be there all day going through her things.

  She mentioned the visit to Eric. He didn’t have to come, she had told him. She was the only one who had talked to Dina, after all. Eric insisted on coming anyway. “You don’t know what these people are going to be like,” he had told her. “I should be there just in case they get angry or something.”

  Rowen didn’t argue with him. She was happy for the company. A little after noon, they got into his car and headed for Dina Drew’s old house. There were a couple of cars in the driveway when they got there. One was a big family-sized SUV, the other was a jeep with a rack on top. It wasn’t hard to guess which car belonged to which sibling. Eric tried to park so that they weren’t blocking in either of them. Together, they headed for the door and knocked.

  It wasn’t long before Veronica answered. She opened the door only slightly at first. She frowned when she saw Eric. “Who are you?”

  Rowen stepped in front of her husband. “He’s with me. I’m Rowen Greensmith. Ben told me you wanted to talk.”

  Veronica’s expression softened. She opened the door the rest of the way, stepping back so that they had room to enter. She was dressed in a tank top and leggings just like she had been in her photos online. Rowen doubted she had spent the morning working out. More likely, fitness clothing was what made up the bulk of her wardrobe. She led the way down the hall. “Sorry for the mess. Richard and I have been going through Mom’s paperwork. She never really organized it. We know she had a will and a life insurance policy, but we can’t find it for the life of us. You never really think about these things until something like this happens. She didn’t tell you where we might find that stuff, did she?”

  “Afraid not,” Rowen was relieved to hear that Veronica believed in ghosts. She had sort of expected this to be some sort of trap. Thinking back on it, that seemed awfully self-centered of her. Even so, she was used to people in Lainswich being one of two extremes, either wildly skeptical or afraid.

  “Then I guess we’re up for a lot more searching.” Veronica stepped into the living room. “Richard, the Greensmiths are here.”

  Richard was seated on the floor. There was a big stack of papers in front of him, adjacent to a much neater stack. It looked like he was going through them one by one. He looked up when his sister spoke. “Oh, good.”

  Rowen had seldom heard from people who were happy to see them. The siblings in front of her could not have looked more different. Where Veronica was buff and blond and had her hair pulled back, Richard had dark, closely cropped hair and a pudgy frame. “I’m happy to help in whatever way I can.”

  “Did our mother tell you where we might find all this paperwork we have to get together?” asked Richard.

  Rowen swallowed. “Sorry. That wasn’t a question I thought to ask.”

  “I already asked her that,” added Veronica.

  “Is there anything you wanted to ask aside from that?” asked Rowen. She imagined there was. Surely, they hadn’t called her all the way here just to ask that one little thing.

  Richard looked at his sister. She took a deep breath and sighed it out. “I’m not really sure how I feel about this.”

  “But we both decided asking couldn’t hurt,” Veronica said, firmly. The look she gave her brother suggested she was the one who was curious about this whole talking with spirits business.

  “Right,” Richard agreed quickly, giving Rowen and Eric a tight-lipped smile. If Rowen had to guess, she would say that he was only doing this for his sister.

  “Please, sit down.” Veronica motioned to the sofa. She sat down in the recliner that had once been her mother’s. Meanwhile, Richard stayed on the floor. He continued going through his papers.

  Rowen and Eric both took a seat on the sofa as they had been instructed to. “This place looks good,” Rowen commented, taking a look around. “Just yesterday it was crawling with cops. I’m surprised all that yellow tape is down so soon.”

  Veronica nodded. “Yeah, well, no point in dragging things out when it comes to dying by natural causes.”

  Rowen opened her mouth to add her own two cents to that. She ended up closing it right back. Who was she to argue? She didn’t know what had really happened, after all. “That’s good that they didn’t drag things out.”

  “You’re telling me,” Veronica sighed. “All that talk about checking all the angles had me terrified. Can you imagine? Who would murder my mom?”

  Rowen had seen her fair share of murders in Lainswich. It felt inappropriate to point that out now. “I didn’t know her well,” she said instead.

  “She was a great woman,” Veronica said. “Everyone loved her.”

  Richard didn’t add anything to that. His eyes were still on the papers. He picked up a finished stack and straightened it by dropping it lightly against the carpet a few times.

  “So…” Veronica leaned forward. She rested her arms on her knees. “Did you talk to her? I heard that you did.”

  At this point, Richard was determinedly ignoring everything that was being said. Rowen was more certain than ever that he didn’t approve of this. “I did talk a little with her spirit. If I’m being honest, she didn’t say much.”

  “Oh,” Veronica bit her bottom lip. “Well, what did she say?”

  “Fairly basic stuff.” Rowen thought back to the day before. She thought about the fairly generic things that Dina had said. She wished there was something more impressive, something secret that only people very close to Dina would know. As things were now, she didn’t really have much proof that she had even talked to the woman. “She wanted me to tell you that she loved you and that she loved her friends.”

  Even Veronica, who seemed to believe in this sort of thing, looked disappointed. “Is that all she said?” she asked.

  Rowen considered telling Veronica how Dina had explained the way she felt as she died. That didn’t seem appropriate to share, though. “She was confused at first, but she moved on right after we spoke,” Rowen said after some consideration. “I know that doesn’t seem like a lot, but it is good. It means she won’t get stuck on this plane. She’s passed on.”

  Veronica sat there and watched Rowen as if eagerly awaiting more. When she realized Rowen didn’t have anything else to say on the matter, her expression fell to one of disappointment. “Well, that’s good… I guess.”

  “Sorry.” Rowen knew that Veronica had been hoping for more than that. People generally did. They wanted reassurances. They wanted to hear a special message just for them. They wanted to know that their loved ones were going somewhere where they would be happy. With such little information to go on, Veronica couldn’t even be sure that Rowen wasn’t some kind of phony making up these stories for kicks and giggles. “She knew that it was her time. She accepted that. That’s generally a good thing. You want people to be able to move on.”

  Veronica nodded and wiped at her eyes. “Right, right.” She sniff
ed. “I’m sorry. I think this stupid plant is messing with my allergies or something.” Veronica stood from the chair, plant in tow. She carried it to the other end of the room.

  “Your mother sure liked her plants,” Rowen commented, changing the subject rather than calling attention to Veronica’s tears.

  “I suppose,” Veronica agreed, going back to her chair. “I’m not sure what we’re going to do with them all, if I’m being honest. I’m not at home enough to give them the attention they’ll need, and Richard over there hates flowers, if you can imagine that. Who hates flowers?”

  “I don’t hate flowers,” Richard said, raising his gaze from the papers long enough to glare at his sister.

  “Whatever.” Veronica turned her gaze back to the Greensmiths. “I don’t suppose you two like flowers?”

  “Once we got a fern and the dog ate it,” said Eric. “I don’t think flowers would fare any better.”

  Veronica smirked. “Fair enough. Maybe Dimitri will take them.”

  “Who’s Dimitri?” asked Rowen. That name spurred something instinctive inside of her.

  “He and Mom have been seeing each other for the past year,” said Veronica. “He’s a nice guy, very well off. He and Mom met when I took her out to a marathon in Tarricville last Summer. They really hit it off. Richard and I approved of him. He brought her new flowers and plants all the time. Mom had the patience to take care of all of them in their own unique way.”

  “That’s quite the green thumb your mother had,” said Rowen. Frankly, she was more interested in this Dimitri fellow. “I assume Dimitri was told about what happened?”

  Veronica took a deep breath. “Unfortunately, he it took it hard. How could he not? He offered to come down and help in whatever way he can. I told him to just wait until the funeral.”

  “Come down?” Rowen repeated.

  Veronica nodded. “He lives in Tarricville. That’s a long drive for a guy his age. I wasn’t going to make him do it when there’s not a whole lot to be done here.”

  Rowen glanced at Eric. He didn’t look nearly as interested in this bit of news as she was. “Why do you assume he’s well off, if you don’t mind me asking.”