Charm Stone

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  “If you’ll excuse me,” she said, “I’m due at a meeting.”

  “Let me help you.” Alasdair reached into the back of the car and picked up a sturdy cardboard box a little bigger than a toaster oven.

  “That’s not going inside, thank you just the same.”

  Alasdair stood transfixed, staring down the box in his arms, at the UPS stickers, at the British customs forms: Contents, reproduction antique. Value, fifty pounds.

  “You get your UPS deliveries early,” Jean said, wondering if her voice sounded as artificial to Barbara as it did to her.

  It did. “What makes you think I haven’t had that in the back of my car for a week?” Barbara demanded.

  “It’s time we were having us a chat,” said Alasdair, matching chill for chill.

  Barbara’s eyes narrowed into a canny gleam. In one sudden leap she dove between Jean and Alasdair. A hard double-sided shove sent Jean toward the cold metal horizontal of the hatch and Alasdair against the hood of the van behind. Two running steps, three, and Barbara scrambled into the driver’s seat.

  The car lurched backwards. Jean’s duck to avoid smashing her head against the hatch became a jackknife roll over the back bumper into the storage space. One brain cell thought, Wow, that was smooth. You couldn’t do that again.

  Another cell saw Alasdair, every tooth clenched, spinning across the front of the van and springing clear just as the bumpers crunched, juggling the box all the while.

  The impact threw Jean against the back seat. Her bag slipped off her arm and landed with a thump against the wheel well. She shouted, “Barbara, don’t! Stop, wait!”

  With a clash of gears and a squeal of tires, Barbara hit the accelerator and the SUV jumped forward. Metal crumpled as her fender skinned the back corner of the car in front.

  “Jean! Jean!” Alasdair’s bellow, more of pain than of anger and alarm, barely penetrated the squeal of tires and the roar of the engine.

  Oh, shit, Jean thought.

  Barbara’s hard left and harder right out of the parking lot threw Jean backwards, toward the open door. Frantically she dug her fingernails into the gritty carpet. Her bag flew out the back and crashed onto the street.

  Jean cast one frenzied look behind her to see Alasdair throwing the box toward the bellman and his horrified face. Then Alasdair, the loggia, and the Lodge itself was swallowed by the mist.

  Slowly, one movement at a time, Jean locked her hands around the back seat headrest. She looked up, only to catch the glint of amber eyes, hard as Stephanie’s jet black, in the rearview mirror. “Nice move,” said Barbara. “Now what?”

  Jean croaked, “I’d suggest stopping.”

  “I don’t think so,” Barbara said.

  She turned and turned again, probably on two wheels—Jean was thrown to the side, her heart in her throat, her stomach in her toes—a hazy retaining wall shot past the window and she realized Barbara had turned onto the Colonial Parkway. Heading south.

  Jean dredged her mind for a map. The Parkway looped like graceful Jeffersonian script from Yorktown, through and beneath Williamsburg, to Jamestown. Where it ended. Wasn’t Jamestown on a peninsula? Stephanie couldn’t send any police cars from the other end, then.

  Barbara lived here. She knew the lay of the land. She had to know she couldn’t escape this way. Maybe she’d been confused by the fog.

  The phone was in Jean’s bag. It was probably electronic litter now. She visualized Alasdair tearing into the Lodge like a wounded bull, grabbing the first landline he came to—would he remember that here in the U.S. emergency was 911, not 999? Would he remember Stephanie’s phone number? Or was Stephanie almost at the Lodge anyway? Jean visualized Alasdair running into the street and throwing himself into a squad car. They went thataway.

  A sound resolved itself from the mist, a distant banshee-wail. A siren. Barbara speeded up.

  Okay. Jean gulped her heart back down to her chest. The sludge of her omelet seethed like a tar pit and she told it to stay in her stomach. This wasn’t going to end well. All she could do was hope she survived long enough to have that long-overdue conversation with Alasdair. Finish off the investigation. Work a little while longer on earning a gold crown and a white robe, alleluia.

  But today was El Día de los Muertos. The Day of the Dead.

  With another little gulp and squeak she didn’t allow herself to analyze, Jean inched into the passenger side of the back seat and buckled herself up. Sweat oozed down her back and between her breasts, tickling like that slow stroke of the paranormal.

  Barbara’s profile was an axe cutting through the misty landscape. The car sped along in its own little bubble of space and time, enclosed by uncertainty, every now and then an embankment, a tree, another a car materializing and then vanishing again. She said nothing.

  Her blood hammering in her ears, Jean tried Alasdair’s ploy. “You went down to the pond to remind Wes about the reception, and you heard him arguing with Sharon. For whatever reason, you didn’t intervene. You left them alone. And then, later, you found out Wes was dead.”

  Barbara faced front, but her hands tightened on the steering wheel, so that her knuckles glinted ivory through her skin. Her coat slid up her arms, revealing two angry red scratches on the almost transparent skin of her right wrist. Jean thought of Lady Macbeth, trying to wash her victim’s imagined blood from her hands. But the blood on Barbara’s hands was her own.

  “You didn’t tell the police what you’d heard at the pond,” Jean said. “When you overheard Jessica asking Sharon to meet her behind the Courthouse, you went there yourself. After detouring to the cabinetmaker’s shop to pick up one of the chair spindles you knew were stacked outside. You were that sure Sharon was the murderer.”

  Was the siren a bit closer? Hard to tell. The mist distorted the sound. It probably was distorting the speed of the car too. At least Jean hoped it wasn’t going as fast as it seemed.

  “Just as Wesley assumed Sharon wasn’t a physical threat, Sharon assumed you weren’t. You made small talk—something about the Witch Box, probably—long enough to get her to the tree. And then you went for her throat.”

  The terrible eyes considered Jean in the mirror.

  Jean wanted to yell, “Don’t look at me, look at the road!” Instead she tried lowering her voice, like Alasdair with his menacing purr, trying to sound like she knew what she was talking about even though she was now edging into terra less cognita. “You took my computer from the Dinwiddie Kitchen. Either you called Matt after you left the church or he called you—you’ve probably got a cell phone, who doesn’t? Either way, you heard that I was going around asking questions, that Alasdair was on the trail. You figured I wouldn’t be able to function without my electronic brain, so you took it. To buy yourself some more time. Maybe you’d get lucky, and Jessica would be convicted.”

  Barbara shook her head. Perhaps she was only stretching the tight muscles in her neck. Perhaps she was imagining the last sensation Sharon might have felt.

  “Your life work is in healing traditions. You think witches were actually village healers, and were persecuted by the new medical establishment. You sympathize with Robert Mason’s study of witchcraft, an iffy hobby in his day, because you’ve taken criticism for your own work. You’ve been marginalized and insulted for being a woman on your own, like the women called witches here and in Salem. All you’ve wanted is to find your own place.”

  Barbara chuckled, a sound so dry it made Alasdair’s usual desiccated chuckle sound lush as a rose garden.

  “You agreed to receive stolen goods, let Kelly send you the replica Witch Box, to get the Dingwalls off Wesley’s back. But it was too late to save him. You helped Sharon track the charm stone, but she betrayed you, killing one of your best friends. You were willing to hold your nose and work with them because, well . . .” It had to be, Jean told herself, and concluded, “You wanted the charm stone for yourself.”

  From what Jean could see of Barbara’s expression, it seemed to
have eroded a bit. The car seemed to be slowing down. The siren—more than one siren, now—was closer.

  The heat in Jean’s face and body was ebbing swiftly in the cold rush of wind from the open hatch.

  She glimpsed an expanse of dull pewter, the glassy surface of the James River paralleling the road, its rim matted with fog.

  Choking down what felt like rubber cement, she went on, “Tim and Sharon don’t believe in the paranormal. You do. Or you believe in the supernatural, which isn’t quite the same thing. Heck, attending church proves you believe in the supernatural. Me, I see ghosts. Have you ever seen the ghost of your husband?”

  To her surprise, Barbara answered. “No. I’ve felt his presence. I’m not whole without him. But I’ve been without him for many years now.”

  Alasdair, Jean thought, her other half. She pitied Stephanie having to deal with him right now, his icy facade breaking, melting, flooding into steaming pools. Shattering and simmering because of Jean herself.

  What was I thinking, not throwing myself into his arms when I had the chance?

  She said, “Maybe Tim and Sharon had it right, there’s nothing supernatural, that nowadays junk news is the opiate of the people. But they themselves were intoxicated by their own vision.”

  “If some people perceive a world beyond this one, is that so wrong? What’s wrong with wanting more?”

  “Nothing. There is more.” Jean didn’t think she’d find Barbara talking sense, but here they were. And the car was definitely slowing. “Why did you kill Sharon?”

  “I don’t have enough time to wait for justice to work its slow, halting, all-too-imperceptive course. I have a cerebral aneurysm. I could die at any moment.”

  Jean felt her mouth drop open. Her first thought was, Please don’t do it right now. Her second was, Oh yes, this road was a dead-end in more than one way. Barbara never intended to escape, just to make an end on her own terms.

  Jean’s third thought was the one she vocalized, as soon as she retrieved her jaw from her chest and her heart from the pit of her stomach. “Your motive was revenge for Wesley’s murder. And more. Frustration at getting involved with the Dingwalls to begin with.”

  “I tried to warn Jessica off them. She can be obnoxious, but she was right about Sharon, the woman was a witch. Not a village healer. A witch in the traditional sense. Enchantment, charm, conjuration, slander, scandal, all of the above. She used her erudition and intelligence to beguile me into an alliance. She promised me the charm stone once they’d put it to use.”

  “But there’s nothing to use. It’s not a healing stone. It’s not even a cursing stone, and yet, well, look at us here, now. Look at this mess we’re in.”

  “I know! I dragged Wesley into this, recommending he make a replica Witch Box, giving Jessica every opportunity to get her claws into him. You can’t choose your relatives, but you can choose your friends. He was my friend. It’s my fault he was murdered. It’s my fault Jessica’s in jail, but I don’t want her to be convicted, I was going to leave a note.”

  Right, Jean thought.

  “But you’ll be my witness, won’t you? Yes, I killed Sharon. I decided she deserved to die, and I acted. I take responsibility for it all, lies, thefts, murders, however much this has cost the authorities, everything.”

  Jean heard once again Barbara’s words at the reception, gently rebuking Matt, light, almost joking. That’s the one good thing about getting old, you can damn well say what needs to be said and do what needs to be done.

  The cold wind from the open hatch had sucked the rush of heat from Jean’s body. She shriveled into her coat, but she wasn’t half as chilled from the wind as from Barbara’s permafrost voice. Jean tried, “If you perceive that it’s all your fault, then you perceive that it’s your place to fix it. It’s not either one.”

  “I never thought the stone would heal me. I just wanted to know. To touch something beyond this world. But it won’t be long now, and I’ll have all my answers.”

  “What about Matt? What about Rachel?”

  “I’ve already failed them.” Barbara’s voice was so bitter it acid-etched the windshield. “Matt? Jesus, look what the man’s done to himself, marinating in self-pity. And Rachel, wasting herself on that Dingwall boy in spite of all the opportunities women of my generation, of her mother’s generation, gained for her. But that’s the young generation.”

  Jean, neither as young as Rachel nor as old as Jessica, said nothing.

  The eyes in the mirror saddened, adding rue to bitterness. “Rachel’s intelligent, she’s talented. The jewelry she was wearing at the reception, she made it from some agates Wes gave her and some pebbles—she’s like a magpie, always picking up pretty things to use in her jewelry—he said she had excellent potential in both design and execution.”

  Jean wasn’t sure if one of her bells jangled at that. All their clappers were chattering like her teeth.

  Hitting the brakes, Barbara turned the wheel. The car skidded into a parking area on a small spit of land surrounded by reeds and stopped. Jean jerked forward against the seat belt, fell back, then loosed the buckle and seized the door handle. It didn’t work.

  “Childproof locks.” Barbara leaned into the passenger seat, considered something lying there, and then turned to Jean. Her eyes glittered. The gun in her hand did not. The hole in the muzzle looked wide as a church door, deep as a well.

  Jean shriveled even further. She wasn’t sure she was breathing. Her entire perception was centered on the gun, and the pale, scrawny hand holding it, and beyond it the river. The fog was thinning, revealing mysterious shapes and shadows—the opposite bank, the three ships bringing the original settlers to Jamestown, Tolkien’s last ship into the west gliding away, never to return.

  That whining noise wasn’t coming from her own throat, it was a siren, two, maybe three, shattering the stillness. That thumping wasn’t her own heart, it was a helicopter beating through the mist overhead. The same one they’d seen Friday night hovering over Dunwich Pond, or a news helicopter—Jean could see every news station on the East Coast leading with a piece on the desperado grandma and the mild-mannered, well-meaning journalist who was her inadvertent hostage.

  Tires screeched and skidded. Doors slammed. Voices shouted. Jean heard one in particular, Alasdair’s, calling her name. Then silence fell, broken only by the thrum of the helicopter. And by Barbara’s heavy sigh.

  Out of the silence came another familiar voice. “Mrs. Finch. It’s Detective Venegas. Throw the gun out of the window.”

  Barbara didn’t move.

  Jean could feel Alasdair’s presence, the intensity of his emotion. If she’d been a ship, she could have navigated to his north star, to his lodestone. Oh, Alasdair, I’m sorry . . .

  “Mrs. Finch!” Stephanie called.

  A shuffle of footsteps, several clicking, scraping noises. Weapons, probably. There was enough firepower out there to blow the entire car to kingdom come.

  Barbara smiled the ghastly smile of the crone, Mother Death—certainty, irony, regret. And then calm. She called, her voice strong, “Yes, I killed Sharon Dingwall. Not murdered, killed.”

  Jean saw Mary Napier at her trial, saw the Berwick witches, the accused at Salem, confessing because all eyes were on them.

  “You never suspected me, did you? You never even talked to me about Sharon’s death, only asked me if Wesley had had any enemies. I told you then, yes, he did, but you did nothing.”

  What more could Stephanie have done?

  “I’m sorry,” Barbara said to Jean, “I didn’t mean to make a public spectacle of myself, here and now.”

  Jean tried to say something, anything. The words didn’t get past the knot in her throat. The noose around it.

  “I didn’t mean to involve you. You’re not guilty. I am.” Turning the gun away from Jean, Barbara fell back into the driver’s seat and aimed it at her own head.

  A hoarse shout. Racing footsteps. Something large and black—an armored policeman—hit
the passenger-side window. Barbara’s face jerked toward him. The driver-side door beside her opened. She spun back that way, gun still raised.

  The sound of the shot smashed into Jean’s skull like a wrecking ball. She felt her features shaping into a scream. She felt the scream welling up in her chest.

  Move, move, move, she ordered her leaden limbs. Like an ungainly spider, more whimpering than screaming, she scrambled over the seat and out the back, falling to her hands and knees on cold rough asphalt. She sucked in air, damp air, tinged with fish, mud, swamp, and below those odors the salt-sweet of the open sea.

  Alasdair’s white face, the scorched blue of his eyes—fixed on her face, oddly startled—the broad shoulders of jacket, his sweater, sank into her line of sight. He was crouching over her.

  No. Even as her eyes reveled in his presence and her heart leaped toward him his crouch collapsed into a huddle, and she saw the crimson stain spreading across the green of his sweater.

  Her cry of anguish swelled in her own ears, making the second shot seem a long way away.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Jean figured it was a good sign that the ambulance was speeding back to Williamsburg without the siren blaring. Bracing herself against the side of the gurney, she clasped Alasdair’s cold hand between her dirty, trembling ones, hanging on for dear life.

  The paramedic peeled off his gloves. “The bullet just creased the skin between your ribs. No internal damage, and I don’t think either rib is cracked, but they’ll check you over and bandage you up. You’re one lucky cuss.”

  “Aye, I reckon so.” Alasdair’s voice was threadbare but steady. His whey-colored face turned toward Jean. “I’m sorry. Your sweater’s spoilt.”

  “I’ll knit you twenty more,” she choked out. “Every color of the rainbow. Wool, cotton, silk, cobwebs. Nettles, like in the fairy tale. Anything.”

  Jean could still see Barbara’s intense face, shifting from guilt to pride to regret and finally settling on contentment, even peace, as she put the gun to her own head.