by Angela Zeman
The Witch and the Borscht Pearl
A Mrs. Risk Mystery
Angela Zeman
A MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM BOOK
Contents
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In Gratitude
1
WHEN MRS. RISK AND I first met, it was late summer, and I was not quite eighteen. She’d walked into my husband’s fish market on my second day as his wife, and he’d presented me to her. The way he straightened up and gripped his thick hands behind his back, and then didn’t charge her full price for a bluefish fillet, obviously his opinion was that she was somebody.
My first visit to her cottage came almost exactly one year later. I’d become a widow the week before.
The day of that visit was warm, but it was pleasant under the oaks shading the front of her cottage, so we stayed outside. As I settled into one of her green-enameled aluminum lawn chairs, I remember thinking back to our first introduction, how Ike had behaved, and vowed not to act so submissive, myself. After all, I told myself, who was she? A middle-aged woman living alone in a Long Island backwater.
Well. After a while in her company, I discovered my opinion changing.
In appearance, she’s tall, athletically lean, with thick hair, darker than mine, long and wild down her back as if she’d never cut it. As frighteningly formidable as an old empress, yet not old. She swings down Wyndham’s boardwalk with a soldier’s gait and laughs from the belly, nothing delicate. Her black eyes make you feel she knows you and every idea you ever thought. I soon learned how hard it was to outsmart her on any subject. That’s a game I’ve become addicted to. Okay, childish, but I can’t resist.
How odd that, despite our differences, during that afternoon at her cottage Mrs. Risk and I somehow, subtly, joined forces. Although I didn’t realize it then. She probably knew. After all, she’s a witch, isn’t she?
I’m Rachel.
Until arriving to live with my new husband in the village of Wyndham-by-the-Sea, my short life had taken place in a grubby urban section of Queens on the bulbous western end of Long Island, New York.
The farther east a person travels on Long Island, the more he or she finds farms and vineyards and beach communities kept carefully rustic for the tourist trade. Tiny Wyndham, one of those beach communities, snores complacently on Long Island Sound, on what New Yorkers call the North Shore. Not that Wyndham can’t wake up and get lively, but mostly the area offers tiny little shops lining a boardwalk, and quiet wooded hills fringed with beaches.
Wyndham’s population consists of about 900 families, many of whose homes were built in the 19th century, a few dating from before the Revolutionary war. Most of the houses cluster tightly in a ragged semi-circle around the commercial area, which is locally called ‘down port’ because you have to go downhill from all sides to reach it, like tumbling down the sides of a deep bowl. Also because the village edges Wyndham Bay, which is a natural port. Main Street cuts this charming bowl in half north to south, perpendicular to Shore Drive, the picturesque one-lane highway that edges Long Island Sound from here to Brooklyn. Wyndham Bay itself is small, formed by two sandy spits of land like outstretched arms that almost meet, offering protected mooring to dozens of small fishing and pleasure boats and accommodating a fat white ferry that chugs back and forth across the Sound from Wyndham-by-the-Sea to Connecticut.
Basically, we have one industry: tourists. ‘Picturesque’ is serious business in Wyndham. Our one large corporation, Aisa Garrett’s fuel storage and distribution company, pays a lovely amount in taxes, but employs too few villagers to count for much else.
As you’ve no doubt noticed, I married young. Not usually a smart move, and my case proved no exception. Ike Elias was in his early forties when he appeared on my parents’ doorstep one day in September and introduced himself. A tall, husky guy with short reddish fuzz fringing his round head, two over-muscled forearms hanging from rolled up sleeves. While shopping in Queens for a delivery van to use for his fishmarket, he’d spotted me and asked around until he found out where I lived. I had no idea who he was and had certainly never heard of Wyndham-by-the-Sea. I’m embarrassed to admit how few weeks passed before I found myself in a justice’s office, clutching a mass of freesias and making rash promises. Well, why not. In my less than eighteen years, I’d learned nearly nothing about the world and people. My wedding, my marriage, became just one more mystery lost in the fog of my unawareness.
Our life together began amiably enough. He’d already furnished the upper floor of the freestanding building he owned on the corner of Main Street and Shore Drive, a prime location in Wyndham—a fact I only appreciated a year later. His fish market took up the lower floor. That same afternoon, he installed me upstairs. No honeymoon, but my former life had taught me not to expect things other people always seemed to get.
The first imperceptible step in my awakening occurred nearly a year later, in late August, when Mrs. Risk halted her stroll on the boardwalk and peered up to the roof of our building, where she saw me desperately seeking a bit of cool morning air. She spoke:
“You seem to be the only person I ever run into at this infant hour, Mrs. Elias.” She didn’t use any kind of cheery tone, either. You would’ve thought she owned the boardwalk and had caught me trespassing. “Except your husband, of course.”
I knew she liked my husband. He’d lately begun feeding her cat, Jezebel, and Mrs. Risk adored her Jezebel.
“And the milkman,” she continued. “Wasn’t it he I saw dashing from your back door a minute ago?”
I’d have to be a dolt not to know what she meant by that.
The breeze I’d come up here to find suddenly lifted the draperies of her dress. She wore what looked like several folds of black cotton gauze. Nobody knew if the material made up a robe, a dress, or was merely several yards of stuff wound around her tall, gaunt body. Nobody had the nerve to ask. That was because of her reputation for being a witch. She intimidated the hell out of most of the villagers.
Her dark figure appeared doom-laden on the pale boardwalk already shimmering with heat.
“Well, Ike has to get up early, no help for that,” I said, to distract her from the milkman.
“Poor Ike,” she said. “Up before dawn every day, then slaving until dark in that fish market. I do believe your husband’s one of the village’s hardest workers.”
Ike daily left our house before dawn to bargain with the fishermen for their catch as their boats first touched shore. Yes, he worked hard.
The wind stroked one tattered strap of my nightgown from my shoulder and for one blissful moment, I forgot Ike, work, the heat, and her presence.
“Your roses, they’re doing wonderfully well,” she said, bringing me back to the present.
“Thank you.” I stirred restlessly as the sun moved higher.
“You have a touch for growing things. Your garden thrives, even now when everyone else abandons all effort in this heat. And what have you added since I last looked? Henbane? How enterprising. Did you know the hellebores you have there were used in old times to counteract witchcraft?”
The witch gave
me a slow smile before resuming her inventory. “And lily-of-the-valley, I see. Monkshood and the Christmas Rose. You’re attempting something not quite the usual.” She eyed me with an interest that was disconcerting.
I wafted a lethargic hand at the narrow garden below. “I couldn’t do those herbs and things you suggested, to attract lady bugs to eat the aphids and other pests. Ike complained doing it that way took up time he’d rather I spent working in the market. So I have to kill the bugs with some canned pestkiller he bought me.” We had discussed this before I’d planted my garden.
The witch sighed. “That’s a shame, but understandable.”
I’d first thought of making the garden because I wanted a bright, softening barrier between our market and the boardwalk next to it, built to shield tourist feet from the burning sand. I’d asked Ike for a tree, but he’d balked at the expense. Nothing shaded our miniature rooms on the top floor, so they were uninhabitable during summer days. Only the market had an air conditioner and fans and shades for the plate glass windows. It was as if Ike felt the fish had to be comfortable, but we ourselves needed no consideration.
Mrs. Risk inspected the lush roses drooping from their own weight on the stems. “When roses struggle a bit against sand and sun, it’s good for their character. As you see.” She peered up again at me. Clearly she judged that my own struggles hadn’t benefited me in any way.
“I just … early mornings don’t agree with me, I guess,” I said defensively, trying to push back my heavy, unkempt hair.
“Nonsense. You’re lovely. No wonder your husband keeps you so tenderly beside him all day in his fish market. And how is Ike? His blood pressure behaving itself? I’ve noticed his waistline isn’t getting any smaller.” She tsked.
“The heat is hard on him. He won’t diet, but I try to make sure he takes his medicine.” I made a wry face. “He thinks it’s an insult to his manhood to need it.”
Mrs. Risk stroked the head of her cat which had suddenly thrust open the lid of the basket on her mistress’s arm. She yowled in complaint at the long pause in the morning’s entertainment, then huffily withdrew.
“Jezebel adores your husband.” The witch chuckled softly down at her pet. “She would be devastated if anything happened to him. If, say, he would carelessly forget his medicine.” She glanced piercingly at my garden, then up at me. I tensed, but the witch only continued her poised stroll down the exact center of the boardwalk and faded like the shadows before the morning sun.
Later that same day, when business was hectic, Mrs. Risk appeared again, but this time inside the market. She slipped through the door and stood leaning against the wall, watching silently. We sold not only fresh fish, but also deli salads and cooked fish dishes to the locals and the tourist trade. A huge cooler in the corner kept bottled and canned drinks icy. Ike’s Fish Market was a popular place around noon and we did a brisk business.
The bustle in the small market dimmed somewhat with Mrs. Risk’s appearance, but after the first nervous moments, the pleasant smile on her face disarmed tensions. People resumed shouting orders and reaching across each other to grab napkins and other items.
I tried to keep an eye on her, but too often I had to duck into the rear of the market to bring out new salads, or haul out new buckets of ice. Jezebel patrolled the floor in front of the fish cases, softly yowling, anticipating, no doubt, her treat at Ike’s hands when the crowds slackened.
As two o’clock approached, Ike gave a great sigh, wiped his ham-sized fists on a clean paper towel and brought out a large covered plastic container from the cooler behind him. He handed it to me. I didn’t want it, but as happened daily, he insisted, kissing me on the forehead. “You’re getting too thin,” he said to me, as he did every day lately. “You waste away before my eyes and I want you healthy and strong.” He patted my behind to push me on my way to the back room of the market. He added, “To please your Ike, okay? Just for me, eat it all.”
I nodded and left, but then hovered just out of sight behind the door, still curious about the witch.
Wiping his hands again, he turned, beaming, to confront Jezebel. Lifting three small silvery fish from the ice, he laid them on a china plate with a flourish probably inspired by the witch’s close scrutiny.
“Sweet and fresh, just for you,” he pronounced. Jezebel greedily pounced.
The witch began a leisurely approach to the counter. I ducked deeper into the shadows of our back room. “That was very touching, just now,” I heard her say.
“What, feeding the cat?”
“Feeding your wife. What was it? Is she ill and is it medicine?”
Ike waved away such suggestions. “No, no. She’s just so pale these days, with the heat. I fix her lunch every day, just like she fixes my breakfast. It’s only fish and pasta, with chopped potatoes, peppers, and vegetables. Things that’re good for her. She’s not as strong as me, and it’s a lot of work, running this place every day. I take care of my wife.”
“She’s always seemed quite robust to me before.”
“It’s just the heat, just the heat.” Ike pulled his apron from around his immense middle, and with the clean side of it wiped his face, which was red from exertion and sweaty despite the extreme coolness of the shop air. “Affects me, too. I try to keep her from working so hard, but she won’t listen.”
“I noticed she tries to wait on customers, but you won’t let her.”
Ike shrugged. “The men’re rude, half of ’em. I won’t have them talking to my wife that way.”
Mrs. Risk’s eyebrows rose. “Asking for fish?”
“Yeah. And the women are worse, they don’t know what they want, most the time. Keep her standing around while they ‘think’. She’s got better things to do.”
He threw up his hands in disgust. “And for the last month, instead of resting in the evening, she spends her time fiddling with those flowers in the yard. You’d think her whole future was invested in those things, instead of keeping herself for me and the work at the market, here. The way she slaves over ’em, digging and poking and—” He reached behind him, brought out a pail of fish guts. “She even buries this stuff under them, can you beat that?”
Mrs. Risk smiled. “I told her it was good for them. Makes this sandy barren soil better, Ike. Let her play with her flowers if it gives her pleasure.”
Ike shrugged, then smiled. “What can I have the pleasure of getting for you today?”
I left them to their conversation, too tired to stand up any longer.
The back room was as close as an oven. It had only two windows, which I kept open. They were too small and faced the wrong way for light, but I left the room dark. To turn on a lamp would only add to the heat. I slumped onto a plywood crate and pressed my forehead against the screen. If the slightest breath of air would stray in from outside I didn’t want to miss it.
I’d just closed my eyes and braced myself for my first bite of food, when a peck at the screen made me start. I looked and there she stood.
Mrs. Risk asked, “Dear, you look terribly hot in there. Why don’t you eat in the shop, where the air conditioning is? Or come outside, sit on the dock across the street?”
My mouth twisted wryly in spite of myself. “Because customers might see me eating. Doesn’t look good.”
“Who said?”
I shrugged.
“Ah. Well, at the very least, don’t eat that stuff if you don’t want it. It can’t be settling on your poor stomach very well at these temperatures.”
“I have to eat it.” Involuntarily, I cast an anxious look behind me. “Ike gets very angry,” I added reluctantly.
“What, does he check?”
I made no answer. It wasn’t her business.
“Look. I’ve decided to bring your darling husband something in gratitude for his treatment of Jezebel; but for you, my gift to you is to take something away. Let me have that.” With a swift motion, she swung open the screen on its hinge and before I could react, the entire content
s of the box were dumped into the depths of Mrs. Risk’s basket.
“There.” She handed the empty plastic box back to me.
“Men can be incredibly impractical at times,” Mrs. Risk continued. “Now, don’t tell him. He means well and we must consider his feelings. Agreed?”
I goggled. From the stillness of the basket on Mrs. Risk’s arm, I could only assume Jezebel was still in the market, eating her fish. Gratitude filled my throat, choking off any ability to speak.
Mrs. Risk then said, “You receive your lunch from him every day around now?”
I nodded.
“And he always inspects to make sure you finished it all?”
I nodded again, still speechless.
“I’ll be here every day at this time. Wait for me if I’m late. Don’t eat this heavy mess until the heat wears off the summer, and I’m betting you’ll feel excellent for it.”
I finally started to say something, but Mrs. Risk held up her hand and said, “Hup! Never mind. See you here tomorrow. Not a word to Ike, remember.”
For a week this continued, myself meekly handing over the contents of the large plastic container and Mrs. Risk depositing it inelegantly into her basket, the process taking seconds. Mrs. Risk would return to the boardwalk and continue on her way before anyone had a chance to notice that she’d been standing at the back window of the fish market.
And daily, in the early hours, Mrs. Risk would glance up at the roof of my house. What she was observing I couldn’t imagine, but I felt better and better. Always, before passing on, Mrs. Risk would inquire pointedly about Ike’s blood pressure and how well he was taking his medicine.
One day, as Mrs. Risk disposed of Ike’s well-intentioned lunch, I hesitated for a moment, then leaned close to the screen and whispered faintly, “I feel I owe you … Ike feeds your cat only because when you come into the shop, it impresses the other villagers and brings him business. It isn’t … it isn’t …”
“It isn’t because he loves cats? I know, dear. But deplorably, Jezebel’s a slave to her appetites. She’ll take fresh fish however she can get it.” She twinkled at me.
