Herve and I climbed out of the car, looking around and taking it all in.
To the right side of the house was a huge, verdant vegetable garden, an herb garden, and something that looked a lot like a witch’s garden. There were rabbit hutches and a chicken coop, and beehives buzzed to the far end of the land, right up against the woods.
The porch was full of white wicker furniture and ferns. A black-and-white tuxedo cat lay curled up on a porch swing.
“Hell’s bells,” I breathed.
“You can say that again,” Herve echoed. “It’s as though the maker of calendars set the whole place up for a photo shoot.”
“Right? Except it’s not fussy… just inviting.”
“Now I’m worried,” said Herve, though he smiled when he looked at me. “It’s just a little too perfect. We should be on our toes.”
And with that, a woman appeared in the doorway.
Tall, strong-looking, wearing a flowing white vest over some sort of red leotard and brightly flowered leggings. Long silver hair fell in soft waves over her shoulders, and silver cuffs outlined her ears.
She smiled, her gentle brown eyes crinkling at the corners.
“You must be Lily. And you’ve brought a friend. Welcome.”
She stepped back to allow us to enter, and I felt a wild tangle of emotions. How did she know who I was and that I was coming? What had she been teaching her botanicals group? So many people in Miriam’s life seemed tied to Calypso’s class. And given what was going on… could Calypso be responsible for the poisonings?
But on the heel of those thoughts came jealousy. Here was a woman with obvious power, but she was grounded and calm and confident. Next to her tall, angular body I felt like a shadowy little gremlin. I envied her this home, the greenhouse, the gardens.
Inside the house, the jealousy grew. Bundles of herbs—hundreds of them—hung from the rafters, drying. The scent was incredible: lavender and rosemary and sage, thick wafting breezes full of exotic dried spices.
“Make yourself at home. You’re welcome here,” she said as she led the way into the kitchen, a cream symphony of bead board, with a stained-glass transom over the door leading to the hall. It was a fantasy kitchen. An assortment of old-fashioned glass cylinders and mason jars stood on rustic wooden shelves, gouged and blackened with age. There were several stone and ceramic mortar and pestles, an electric grinder, even an old-fashioned hand-turned meat grinder screwed to the wall. Kitchen utensils of all kinds hung from pegs along the top of the bead board wainscoting, many of which, I would bet, were used less for cooking food than for working with botanicals.
“It’s chilly out. Would you like hot tea? The kettle’s already boiling. All my teas are my own infusions, from my garden. Organic, planted during the full moon. Or planter’s punch? Something alcoholic?”
“Hot tea would be lovely, thank you,” I said.
“I’ll have the same,” said Herve.
“Calypso, are you a member of the Unspoken coven?” I asked. No sense in beating around the bush.
“Oh no, not at all.”
“No? You’re not part of the coven?”
“I’m not a witch,” she said as she poured hot water over tea leaves. “I’m just an old lady who knows far too much about plants and botanicals. I started years ago, with a copy of Sunset magazine that taught housewives how to plant their own kitchen garden. I put in a little four-by-five raised bed, and somehow I just couldn’t stop. Now I manufacture all sorts of salves and soaps, that sort of thing.”
“But you advise witches?”
She smiled. “I advise anyone who would like to learn about herbs and botanicals. A lot of those people are witches or natural healers, but I hold workshops for chefs as well. I advise several local restaurants, and supply them with organic herbs. You’d be shocked to know how much restaurants will pay for such things. I’ve done very well.”
She handed mugs of fragrant tea to Herve and me and led the way into a front parlor. I noticed that Herve set his tea down on a side table without drinking it—I did the same. Better safe than sorry. The fireplace mantle and every table were covered with framed photographs, mostly of young women. But then I spotted a silver-framed picture of Calypso Cafaro standing arm in arm with Aidan Rhodes.
I picked it up and studied it. She looked at least a decade younger than she did now; Aidan appeared just the same. He also looked uncommonly happy, displaying a genuine, artless smile the likes of which I had never seen.
“Aidan and I have history,” she said before I was able to form a question.
“A lot of history?” I asked.
Another smile, her eyes crinkling adorably at their corners. “I assumed he was the one who gave you my name.”
“No. No, he didn’t.”
“Ah. Well, no matter. I think we both know that Aidan often knows things he has no business knowing.”
Ain’t that the truth.
“And the young women in the pictures—are these your daughters?”
“Foster daughters,” she said, her tone wistful. “I used to take in teenage foster kids—young people in need of a steady home so they could stay in high school and graduate. My sister and I grew up in foster care, so I know the value of having a steady, safe place to live.”
“You say you ‘used to’—you don’t do it anymore?”
“I couldn’t… no. Not anymore. Oh, let me show you my greenhouse.” Calypso abandoned her own tea and led us out to the gorgeous conservatory, crowded with thriving plants and flowers. The space was huge, junglelike with walls of green.
“This is amazing,” I said.
Herve remained mute, but started pinching bits of earth from pots and bringing them up to his nose to smell.
Calypso looked at him approvingly. “It’s my own compost. I make it outside, all the scraps from my gardens, the rabbit manure, the work of the worms… makes for potent potting soil.”
Picking up pruning shears, Calypso reached out to snip off a trailing arm of morning glory. I stopped in my tracks.
I could have sworn I saw several flowers turn in her direction and the plant’s twining strands reaching out toward her.
Chapter 20
Calypso met my gaze in silent challenge. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, a delicate green tendril wrapped lovingly around her upper arm.
I looked away. “I’d love to take one of your workshops. How much do you charge?”
“I do the trainings for free.”
“Why would you do that?”
“There was a terrible incident some years back, when a young Wiccan initiate miscalculated the amount of belladonna she used in a draft. She nearly killed herself.”
“I remember that,” said Herve.
Calypso nodded. “I read about it in the paper and decided I could help. I contacted the coven and offered my services. If you’re familiar with botanicals, you know how important it is to have proper training.”
“That’s very generous of you.”
“I enjoy being around young people. Otherwise I’d just be an old woman in this big old house, banging around alone.”
“Who all’s in the training group now?”
“You must know Miriam, Jonquil, Anise, and Tarra, from the Unspoken coven, and there are two others from other covens. So all in all, six initiates. Plus one botany student from UC Berkeley and a couple of chefs.”
“Is anyone else sick?”
“Sick?”
“Tarra passed away, and Miriam appears to be in a coma.”
Calypso turned ashen. She stumbled and Herve caught her, then helped her to a bench by the doors.
“I take it you didn’t know?”
“No, I… What on earth happened?”
I exchanged glances with Herve. Was she telling the truth, or was she simply a really good actor? I didn’t trust her. There was something about her… But I couldn’t claim that I’d felt any odd vibrations, nothing of the sort. I feared I might be reacting more to her relationship t
o Aidan than anything else. That and the fact that, in some ways, she was who I would like to see myself as in the future… or who I feared. Living alone, seemingly content but still… Though I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it, I guess there was a part of me that longed for a future that included children, a family of my own.
“It looks as though henbane was involved, and mandrake.”
“Are you sure?”
I nodded.
“There’s no way one of my students would have made that kind of mistake. I’ve been very clear about the dangers of poisonous plants.”
“Anise told me that she came here and gathered some henbane flowers to include in a corsage.”
Calypso’s jaw dropped. “Why on earth would she do that?”
“How well do you know Anise? She mentioned that she lived here for a while?”
“She’s a sweet girl. It’s taken her some time to get her feet under her, but she’s making progress, doing well in her job. She has a real way with flowers.”
“Does she always seem a little”—how should I put this?—“vague? Confused?”
“Anise? No, not at all. She’s young, but she’s quite focused and energetic.”
“When’s the last time you saw her?”
“The group was here a week ago last Saturday.”
Two days before Tarra was found dead.
“And what did you do in the class?”
“We went over salves, made our own lip balm from olive oil, beeswax, and essential oils.”
Once again, Herve and I exchanged glances. We were both thinking of the lip balm I found in Miriam’s house.
“The four of them—Jonquil, Miriam, Anise, and Tarra—they’re inseparable. They… they always giggled like little girls, their heads together over the counter while they worked.” She looked up at us, tears in her eyes. “I can’t believe what you say, that Tarra’s gone, that Miriam… There must be some kind of mistake.”
“I’m sorry to say, there isn’t. Right now I’m trying to figure out who would want to harm them. It may be the only way to save Miriam.”
“I wish I knew what to say.” She was slowly weeping now, tears streaming down her face. “Tarra… gone? I can’t believe it. Why wasn’t I told?”
I had no answer for that. Calypso excused herself for a moment and went back into the main house to pull herself together.
“What do you think?” I whispered to Herve.
“She seemed genuinely shocked by the news. On the other hand, she certainly has the skill set to poison folks, if she so desired.”
“So do I.”
“Good point. Remind me not to get on your bad side,” he said with a smile.
Calypso returned a few minutes later, more composed though red-eyed. She offered to show us the gardens on our way out. I recognized wolfsbane and mugwort, foxglove and datura. Medicinal herbs all, but like most medicines, they were poisons in the wrong hands or taken in the wrong dose.
Looking out toward the edge of the woods, I noticed a grouping of immensely tall redwood trees that formed a nearly perfect ring, dotted with ferns and moss-covered boulders.
Calypso followed my line of sight.
“Faery circles are common in the redwood forest. If a tree dies, the babies come up from the still-live roots and form a circle around the mother.” She gave a sad smile. “They say the faeries meet there for their dances during the full moon.”
I nodded, the mention of babies making me think of little Luna. And Miriam. My visit to Calypso hadn’t actually answered any of my questions.
Herve and I climbed into the Mustang and pulled away from the house, Calypso standing in her garden, watching us leave.
“Well, that was something of a water haul,” I said as we passed by the thick, thorny hedge.
“What’s a water haul?”
“Frustrating. No fish. We didn’t catch anything.”
“Ah. In LA we’d call it a wild-goose chase.”
I smiled. “I guess we say that too.”
“But I’m not so certain it was a wasted trip,” Herve continued. “I take it you’re ruling Calypso out as the killer?”
“Not necessarily. But I can’t imagine what kind of motive she would have. Why would she kill off her students?”
“Good question. So, are you going to give her name to your friend Carlos Romero?”
That was a tough one. Seriously, pretty soon people would learn they couldn’t talk to me, and I’d be even more of an outcast than I already was.
“I guess I’d better.”
What did I do now? I shouldn’t make the mistake of attributing witchy attributes and talents only to women. Could Wolfgang have cast a spell of some sort to get Tarra away from Rex? Could it have gone terribly wrong?
“Anyway, you should feel happy that your instincts were correct. You were right to be wary of her.”
“Really? She seemed like a kind person. What did you sense?”
“Much more than that. I’m not saying she’s not kind. But she’s powerful. Surely you noticed the way the plants turned their faces to her?”
“I thought it might be my imagination. Why would she claim not to be a witch?”
Herve chuckled. “Not all who are powerful are witches, my little chauvinist. She appears to have a powerful link to the earth, a kind of symbiotic energy. I’ve met a few women with that sort of plant magic in the Caribbean. They don’t call themselves witches or priestesses because they don’t manifest. Rather, they express the energy of the earth.”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“But you understand the power of the earth, so you can imagine.”
I nodded. In the tradition of witchcraft I was raised in, root workers were among the most powerful, because of their connection to the primordial powers of the earth.
I dropped Herve back at his apartment, then headed home. Before losing my nerve, I called Carlos and gave him Calypso Cafaro’s address. I told him her current profession, and that she used to be a foster mother.
“And what did you get from her? Do you think she’s involved in either of these poisonings?”
“I really don’t know. Oh, here’s another thing. It seems Tarra—Tanya Kolchek—was having an affair with a guy named Wolfgang, who is connected to the Unspoken coven. I don’t have a last name, but it shouldn’t be too hard to find him with that first name, right?”
“An affair? And I’m only learning this now?”
“I just found out myself.”
“All right. Good work. Thanks.”
“Carlos, if you dig up any unusual background on Calypso, would you let me know? I have a whole lot of unanswered questions.”
“I’m a cop, Lily, not your own personal private eye. But I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks.”
* * *
Jonquil had told me that the twice-weekly drumming circle was meeting tonight in Sibley Park. Rex would be there, along with Wolfgang and maybe even Jonathan.
But it didn’t make sense for me to go. What could I hope to learn, anyway? Herve was no longer with me, and I really shouldn’t go by myself.
Besides, I could use a nice quiet evening at home. I would practice backward talk for a while in case, just in case. Also, I should keep up my admittedly clumsy scrying efforts and go to bed early.
After sharing leftovers with Oscar I looked up backmasking on the Internet and even listened to some audio examples over and over, trying to decipher the odd sounds. Then I wrote out a few lines I would like to say to Miriam and painstakingly repeated them backward. The sounds felt foreign and nightmarish on my tongue.
Afterward, I set myself up at the coffee table trunk in my living room, my stones on one side, a pentagram on the other, and the ornate crystal ball Graciela had given me in the middle. I breathed in deeply through my nose, let it out very slowly through my mouth, and concentrated on clearing my mind. During brewing, I reached out to my ancestors, but scrying was more… passive. Cont
emplative. It was a neat trick to keep the mind concentrated while allowing one’s thoughts to wander. Aidan told me the reason I hadn’t been able to master this skill was that I tried too hard to keep control over the situation in front of me; I needed to release control.
I had done everything I could to make the situation conducive to sight. I had taken a ritual bath with olive oil and lemon verbena soap, dressed in black, and set out my stones. I sat cross-legged and breathed. I looked into my crystal ball.
In my mind, I saw Wolfgang, imagined him drumming among the trees. Sibley was sandwiched between Tilden and Redwood Regional Parks. I knew from my research that there were thousands of acres of state and regional lands that linked together, crowning the East Bay Mountains the entire length of Oakland and Berkeley. It must be gorgeous over there. All those redwoods.
Get your mind back on your work, I told myself. Literally trying to shake off my errant thoughts, I stared once again into the murky crystal. Clear the mind.
Nothing.
I glanced at my grandfather clock, newly purchased from a roadside junk store in Benicia. According to its hands, I’d been attempting to scry for only five minutes. Felt like half an hour. Outside, strong orangey light came in my kitchen window, signaling late afternoon.
Dusk wasn’t far away. Rex and Wolfgang would both be at the drumming circle when day met night, according to Jonquil.
Drumming was the most elemental form of music and could sometimes be magical. If it were magical, I might be able to read vibrations or something from it, get a sense of both men and how they interacted. If Rex had acted out of jealousy, how would he be drumming side by side with his rival? I would love to see that.
I blew out another breath. You are not going to Sibley Park tonight by yourself, I told myself. That would be stupid.
I looked into the crystal once again. If I got good at this, maybe I wouldn’t have to traipse around haunted theaters or regional parks anymore, looking for murderers. I could just divine the guilty parties and have done with it.
In A Witch's Wardrobe Page 21
