Witch at Heart: A Jinx Hamilton Witch Mystery Book 1 (The Jinx Hamilton Mysteries)

by Juliette Harper

  “How many of them have there been?” I asked.

  “Six,” he said. “One every five years since the first. One of you will be the seventh.”

  The next question was equal parts curiosity and a real desire to know.

  “Why do you do it?” I asked.

  “To bring her back, of course,” he said. “But if it works this time, you’ll come back, too. Try not to be too concerned. I think I understand how to do it correctly now.”

  From the darkness to our right, another voice said, “No, boy, you don’t. This stops now.”

  Woodrow Evers walked out of the night and faced his son holding a double-barreled shotgun in his hands.

  “You don’t mean that, Dad,” WJ said, his voice taking on a childish note. “I can bring Mom back, just like the Seneca legend says.”

  The moonlight carved deep ridges in the older man’s face. “I protected you when you killed the Barlow girl,” Woodrow said, his voice breaking. “You were just a boy, obsessed with made-up stories, grieving for your mama. I couldn’t lose you, too, so I protected you. Took you to doctors. Tried to find someone who could help you. I sent you to that boarding school and then off to college, but what did you do? You kept up this nonsense about Indians and raising the dead even after you failed time and time again. You spent my money to get a degree in the damned stuff and just kept on killing.”

  WJ’s face took on a defiant arrogance. “I was studying, accessing the wisdom of my people, and finding my personal magic. I am a highly regarded expert in my field.”

  Woodrow spat out his next words. “You’re a highly regarded lunatic,” he snapped. “There’s no such thing as magic in this sorry world. You’re born, you work your whole life, and you die. Your mama died, boy. She was just an ordinary woman and she died.”

  A roar of rage rose from WJ’s throat. He raised the pistol and fired at his father. The bullet struck the old man in the shoulder, but not before his father could pull both triggers of the shotgun.

  The blast echoed through the trees, lifting WJ’s feet off the ground and throwing him backwards. He landed sprawled on the ground, blood pouring from a gaping wound in his chest.

  I don’t know why, but I went to him, kneeling on the ground and taking his hand.

  As the pleading light died in his eyes, WJ Evers whispered, “It would have worked this time. Mama’s tree would have made it work.”

  30

  Sheriff John Johnson scratched his chin and looked at me skeptically. “Tell me again what you two were doing out here in the middle of the night?”

  Tori and I had opted to tell a hybridized version of the truth. “We got interested in the unsolved murder case when we found Elizabeth Barlow’s bones,” I said. “When I talked to WJ Evers, I thought he sounded suspicious. We were trying to get a better look at the things in his museum to see if any of them could have been the murder weapon.”

  Under normal circumstances, no one would have bought a story that full of holes, but Woodrow Evers had already confessed to everything, so the Sheriff was fairly willing to let our role in the night’s events slide.

  After Woodrow shot his son, the old man sat down on the ground and said simply, “One of you girls should call the police.”

  When the Sheriff arrived, Evers waived his rights and refused medical attention. “Bullet went clean through,” he said. “I won’t bleed to death in the time it takes me to tell you this story. And here is the only place I’ll tell it. One time. Listen to me now, because I won’t say another word once you take me off this land. And I want those two young women to hear what I have to say, too. They earned that. They were idiots for coming out here, but doing it took guts, and I respect that.”

  The Sheriff agreed that we could witness Evers statement, but only if we kept our mouths shut. The story the old man told proved to be so shocking; silence wasn’t a problem on our part.

  “WJ never got over his mama’s death,” Woodrow said, speaking into the video camera a deputy set up in the campground office to record his statement. “He was in Boy Scouts and did a merit badge on Indian stuff. He got all obsessed with myths and legends. I never should have let him buy that damned tomahawk. It wasn’t even made around here. Next thing I know all WJ can talk about is Seneca Indians and how they thought people could be brought back from the dead. That’s what all this was about.”

  The Seneca myth referred to the bones of the dead person. According to his father, WJ wanted to find out if the ritual would work before he dug his own mother up. “He got it in his head that he had to kill them right there at the tree,” Evers said. “You see, that’s where it happened. My wife had an aneurysm in her brain. We didn’t know about it. She and WJ were down there at the hickory when that thing burst. She dropped dead right in front of him.”

  Woodrow described the night, three years after his wife’s death, when he came upon WJ dressed in native clothing standing over Beth Barlow’s body. “He was just a boy,” Evers explained. “It would have destroyed his life. Nothing was going to bring that girl back. I cleaned everything up and carried the body up to Weber’s Gap. WJ begged me to bury her at the base of a hickory tree. It was nonsense, but I did it for my son. I thought it was all over and done with.”

  Then, five years later, when WJ was in college, he kidnapped a woman off the streets and brought her to the campground. “I don’t know who she was,” Evers said. “She looked like she might have been a runaway, maybe a call girl. WJ never told me if she had a name. I didn’t even know they were on the property until I heard her yelling at him. It was the off-season. No one was here. I carried the body farther away this time. Put her at the base of another damned hickory tree, just like the first one.”

  By the third girl, the one the town knew as Jane Doe, the old man was covering for both WJ and himself. Woodrow knew he was completely complicit in the crimes, but he refused to turn his son over to the law. “Other than Elizabeth Barlow, none of those girls had any significance to me,” he said.

  God. No wonder WJ turned out the way he did.

  “I messed that third one up,” Woodrow said contemplatively. “I picked the wrong time to try to get rid of the body and almost got caught. I had to leave her out there on the trail in the open. That’s when the whole town took her on as some kind of cause. I had a talk with WJ and told him there couldn’t be any more body dumps, but that didn’t stop him.”

  With the same dispassionate tone, Evers described three more murders. “He brought them all here and killed them down there at the hickory tree. It worked out better for me, and I thought doing it all here was actually good. It should have gotten the whole resurrection idea out of the boy’s head because I played along with that fourth one. If it was going to work, it would have worked then with me supervising everything so the idiot wouldn’t screw it up.”

  Would have worked? Dear God. They were both crazy.

  “We let some time pass,” Evers said, “and then dug up the bones so WJ could do his mumbo jumbo. He always insisted on videotaping everything. The tapes are all locked up in the safe there. I’ll give you the combination so you can watch them.”

  We were so not going to that viewing party.

  “Of course the damned spell, or whatever he called it, didn’t work,” Evers went on. “We reburied the girl, and then I will just be damned if WJ didn’t go off and get himself another degree in Indian lore. Next thing I know, he’s here with another girl, going on and on about how he’s finally figured out what he was doing wrong. We went through the whole thing again, and that one stayed just as dead as the others.”

  Evers turned to me. “It was about that time that your aunt started to be a problem,” he snapped. “She was just as bad as the rest of the town about trying to figure out who that third girl was, the one they all called Jane Doe. There wasn’t one shred of proof linking that girl to us or to this place, but Fiona came snooping around anyway. She came right out and told me she felt evil on this land and warned me it was all go
ing to come out one way or another. Even tried to help the electric company cut my tree down. Guess we showed her. The old bat dropped dead before we got caught.”

  You have no idea how much I wanted to tell him that Aunt Fiona might be dead, but she’d just sent in the B team to get the job done anyway.

  “After the last girl, five years ago, I told WJ it was time to give up. And he agreed,” Evers said. “She was one of his students up at the community college in Sparta. It was just getting too risky. I didn’t know he was planning on trying again until I heard him say it tonight. I didn’t go down there to kill my boy. I saw you two skulking around in the dark and was going to scare you off with my shotgun. Then I heard what WJ said and I just snapped. I’m an old man. I’m tired of digging graves.”

  The digging made him snap. Really?

  “I’ll show you where you can find the others,” he said. “The belongings we took off all of them are up in my attic. You can have all that, too. That’s it. I’m done talking.”

  As we watched, deputies escorted the old man out in handcuffs.

  “What will happen to him now?” I asked Sheriff Johnson.

  “First, he’s going to the hospital whether he likes it or not,” the Sheriff answered. “Then he’s going to prison for whatever’s left of his miserable life.”

  Johnson drove us back to my car and let us out with a stern admonition to stay out of trouble. Dawn was breaking as we drove into town and went into the shop. Beth was waiting for us.

  “What happened?” she said. “I had the most awful dreams.”

  Ghosts dream?

  “About what?” I asked, but I knew the answer.

  “The night that crazy boy in the Indian costume killed me,” she said. “He was the campground owner’s son, wasn’t he?”

  “He was,” I said. “Do you want to know why he killed you?”

  “Yes, please.”

  We all went into the storeroom. Tori made coffee, and I told Beth the story. When I was done, she looked at me plaintively. “Now what do I do?”

  “What do you want to do?” I asked.

  Without hesitation, she said, “I want to go where my dad is.”

  Just as I was starting to tell her I’d try to help her, a strange light filled the room. By the door, the form of a tall man came into focus. A look of joy came over Beth’s face as she flung herself into his arms. “Daddy!”

  Don Barlow closed his eyes as he held his daughter close. When he opened them, he gave me a look of such gratitude, tears started to run down my cheeks. “Thank you for helping my baby girl,” he said, in a rich baritone voice. “I’ll take it from here.”

  They started to fade, and then Beth said, “Wait!”

  Turning to me, she said, “Thank you for letting me stay with you. It was fun. Will you tell the cats I’m going to miss them?”

  “I’ll tell them, honey,” I said, my voice thick with emotion.

  “I’m going to miss you, too,” Beth said. “You’re going to like having Tori here. And that nice man next door? He really likes you.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked, smiling through my tears.

  “Duh,” she said mischievously. “What’s the point of being able to walk through walls if you don’t do it sometimes? He talks to Festus about you.”

  I laughed. “What does Festus say?”

  “He likes you, too, and so do I. Can I come back and see you?”

  “You can come back anytime,” I said, “but I think you’re going to be too happy where you’re going to be worried about what we’re doing.”

  “Will you help Jane now?” Beth asked.

  “I’m sure going to try,” I said. “Now go on with your dad, honey.”

  As Tori and I watched, father and daughter faded away and the room returned to normal.

  “Wow,” Tori said. “That’s all I’ve got. Just wow.”

  I couldn’t have said it better myself.

  31

  Late Saturday afternoon, Sheriff Johnson walked in the front door of the store. Chase, Tori, and I were all sitting in the storeroom talking, so we invited the Sheriff to join us. I had to stifle a giggle when Rodney discreetly disappeared between his liniment cans.

  “I just wanted you to know that all of the girls have been identified except the one Evers thinks was a runaway,” he said.

  Twenty-Five. She said she was taken because no one knew her name.

  “Who was Jane Doe?” Chase asked.

  “A young kid from Oklahoma City, Susie Miller,” the Sheriff said. “She was working her way across the country trying to get up to New York City. Had her heart set on being a model. She actually worked at the campground for a few days after Fiona saw her here in town. Evers hired Susie to clean up the bathrooms and the big party barn. WJ killed her when he was home from graduate school one weekend. I honestly don’t think the old man even remembered he actually knew her.”

  Chase shook his head. He’d been none too thrilled when he found out we’d taken it on ourselves to go out to the campground. “You could have told me,” he said, sounding a little hurt. “I would have helped you.”

  Now, listening to the Sheriff, Chase said, for at least the tenth time, “It’s a wonder that crazy old coot didn’t kill you both.”

  “Amen to that,” Johnson agreed, fixing me and Tori with a stern look. “I assume we’re not going to have any repeat incidents of this sort of behavior.”

  “No, sir,” I said, holding up my hand as if I were taking an oath. “My amateur sleuthing days are over.

  Yeah. Famous last words.

  It took a couple of weeks, but the Town Square Association raised the money to buy Jane a new tombstone. The night after it was put in place, Tori and I went to the cemetery. We found the ghost standing there looking down at the granite slab with a joyful look on her face.

  As we approached, she turned toward us and said, “My name is Susie Miller.”

  “Hi, Susie,” I said. “Do you like your new marker?”

  “It’s beautiful,” the girl said. “It has my real name on it.”

  The Sheriff had done everything possible to locate Susie’s relatives, but her parents were both dead and there wasn’t any extended family. She really did belong to Briar Hollow now, so in Briar Hollow she would stay.

  Colonel Longworth joined us at Susie’s grave. “Miss Jinx, Miss Tori,” he said, “would you do me the honor of walking with me?”

  We fell in beside him, and once we were out of Susie’s range of hearing, Beau said, “The others have asked me to convey their thanks to you. Young Susie is so very happy now that she knows who she is. Although she, like the rest of us, cannot leave this place, she is at peace for the first time since her life was taken. You have performed a great kindness for her.”

  I appreciated what he said and told him so, but I was still bothered by the fact that the cemetery spirits were trapped there. I had no answer for them, and I’d honor Aunt Fiona’s tradition of keeping them company, but I wanted to find a way to give them all the same kind of choice Beth had been given.

  There was one loose end to the whole business that simply could not be tied up, however -- Twenty-Five. Earlier in the day, Tori and I returned to the clearing where her bones were discovered and once again encountered the angry spirit.

  “Did you bring my body back?” the girl demanded, hovering menacingly in front of us.

  “I told you last time that we didn’t take it away,” I said, holding up my hand in warning when her form started to pulsate. “And just hold it right there. No more of your tantrums. We came up here to tell you that the man who killed you is dead and his accomplice is going to prison for a long time. I’m sorry, but we still don’t know your name or how to get in touch with your family.”

  “I told you,” the girl said fiercely, “I was somebody.”

  “I know you were,” I said.

  “But you won’t give me my body back,” she snarled.

  “That’s not in my power to
do,” I explained.

  “Then you’re just as worthless as the rest of them,” the girl said. Around us that same chill wind picked up strength sending the dust around our feet swirling. When the wind died away, Twenty-Five was gone.

  “And that would be one for the loss column,” Tori said.

  “I know,” I said, “but there’s nothing we can do.”

  After that experience, Susie’s positive reaction to her new gravestone and Colonel Longworth’s gracious appreciation on behalf of the whole cemetery population felt really good.

  Back at the shop, Tori bedded down for the night on the couch, and the cats and I retired to the bedroom to read. After a few minutes, I felt the mattress sag a little and looked over the top of my book to find Aunt Fiona sitting at the foot of my bed.

  “Well,” I said, “there you are.”

  “Aw, honey,” she said, “you didn’t really need me.”

  “So says you,” I grumbled. “I could have used a few hints along the way.”

  “That’s why you have Myrtle and Rodney,” Aunt Fiona said fondly. “And Tori. I’m thrilled she’s going to be running the shop with you.”

  “You like the coffee shop idea?”

  “I love it!” she said. “And you and Chase McGregor certainly seem to be getting along.”

  Studying my aunt’s face, I asked, “Are you spying on me?”

  Chase and I had gone to dinner together the night before. At the end of the evening, as he was showing me the beautiful Civil War boots he was making for the Gettysburg film production, he suddenly looked at me and said, “Please don’t do anything dangerous like going out to the campground again. I can’t stand the thought of anything happening to you.”

  “You can’t?” I said, my voice sounding a little breathless.

  “No,” he said, taking me in his arms, “I can’t.”

  I have mentioned that Chase is a good kisser, right? Like a really, really, really good kisser.

  When I put the spying question to Aunt Fiona, she huffed up a little bit and said, “I prefer the word ‘observing.’” She was silent for a moment and said, “He’s a hunk, isn’t he?”