Thorn to Die
Page 3
He laughed as I hobbled to the stairs. Only twenty steps down and I’d be out of his sight, free to breathe again. I tripped down the last step, nearly breaking my ankle in the process.
Stupid klutzy curse.
I’d never learn to love Uriville. That was absurd. More laughable than watching Kat get his snout stuck in the peanut butter jar, scrounging for the last few drops of peanut buttery goodness.
Ian Larson didn’t know anything.
Chapter 4
Feeling rejuvenated from my sweaty workout on the dancefloor last night and a solid night’s rest, I came to work the next morning excited and motivated. A large hardbound book swung back and forth below my arm as I unlocked the shop and let Kat and myself in. With a loud thump, I threw it on the nearest and cleanest looking surface, not bothering to brush away the globs of dried paint.
The book fell open, yellowing pages flipping over to reveal a century’s worth of magical knowledge collected by the Brunick witches. It was one of the oldest grimoires we owned, dating back to our ancestors that lived and died in Europe.
“This is it, Kat. If there’s a way to help Momma Tula get over her blues, it’s in here. Grammy Jo loaned me her potion book.”
He looked up from his cushion, perking one ear and slowly blinking his beady little eyes.
“Okay, okay, so she didn’t exactly lend it to me. I borrowed it without permission. Sue me. She’s got so many spell books tucked away at home that she won’t miss this one for a day. Besides, I’ve got some serious witchy research to do.”
Potions work had never been my stronghold. You’d think that it wouldn’t be all that different from mixing magical paints, but after nearly burning down the kitchen the third time and turning Grammy Jo’s hair neon pink, I was banned from cauldron work. My mother hadn’t been concerned. It took her decades to come into her full powers. Maybe this time would be different.
The park didn’t open for another half hour. With any luck, I’d have my solution to Momma Tula’s problems by then. I licked the pad of my index finger and flipped through the first couple pages.
“Potion for warts, cure for hangovers, a detecting potion, infertility cures and…ewww, a magical cure for genital warts!” I skipped over that one, making sure to wipe my hands clean on my pants. “Love potion, all kinds of gardening charms, even a potion to make your garden gnome come alive.”
Kat gave an audible shudder and closed his eyes tight. I had to agree with him. The idea was terrifying. Something about those creepy little cherubic ceramic faces bursting to life made me want to crawl under the desk. Yikes.
I thumbed through about a hundred more pages, my eyes growing tired of scanning the loopy scrawl of my ancestors. Nothing and no one had ever written a potion to help my mom. You’d think with the minds of a couple dozen or so Brunick witches combined, we’d have a solution. And yet here I sat, with no magical potion and not even an idea of where to begin.
“Knock, knock, young lady. May I come in?”
I slammed the book shut and turned to face the man standing in my doorway. With a relieved sigh, I realized it was only Allen White, the subject of Ian’s dispute from yesterday. Unkempt white hair sprung from his scalp and down along his wrinkly chin. Dark brown eyes peered at me from behind thick metal-framed glasses perched on his sharp nose. He grasped the wall for support and scuttled on in, his knobby knees bending awkwardly.
“Oh yeah,” I told him, jumping up to grab my electric tea kettle. It resided deep inside one of the art cabinets, a big no-no in Butch’s handbook of nineteenth-century approved items. “Grammy Jo gave me your medicine this morning. Just let me get it ready.”
He nodded eagerly and went about studying my art while I got the water boiling. In my jean pocket, a tiny vial of potion swished back and forth. I pulled it out and examined the light green liquid.
Grammy Jo was officially retired, as far as witch business went. But she did a little medicinal work on the side for a few of the elderly in Uriville. Allen White was a frequent customer, complaining of arthritis in his hands and knees. Not conducive to gardening. While Grammy Jo wasn’t the biggest fan of old man Allen with his stingy pocketbook and stuck-up nose, she liked his money and the prize roses from his garden that he occasionally gave her. It was a fair exchange of goods, she’d say, stuffing her nose into the fragrant blossoms.
“You’re a smart girl, Hazel Brunick,” Allen crooned, examining my sketch of a little blonde girl holding a red balloon. “I always say this. I tell my housekeeper, Laura, this all the time. That Hazel Brunick is a real smart girl.”
I grimaced, waiting for the punch line. “Oh, gee, thanks Mr. White.”
“Yes, ma’am. Smart young lass. So tell me, when are you going to drop this whole art degree nonsense and find yourself a real job? A smart young lady like yourself needs to extend herself, not settle for some artsy fartsy nonsense.”
Ouch, there it was. I gritted my teeth and smiled, ignoring his sage advice. “Almost ready, Mr. White.”
Dropping the potion into a boiling cup of green tea, I stirred it counterclockwise three times. Tea for the antioxidants, Grammy Jo would say, and boiling water to activate the potion. Best drunk immediately. She’d already had me dole out her witchy remedies to several of her clients in town. I was becoming a pro at this.
Allen guzzled his tea as Butch Hall stalked by my shop, glancing impatiently in the door. Uh, oh. Someone was already on the rampage this morning. It didn’t matter how many ways I refused, he was still on me to wear my period clothing during all business hours. It made the experience authentic for the tourists, he’d argue.
Authentic, my shapely rear end.
At the very least, Allen White was good for a shield. Butch would never start an argument with a prospective client in earshot.
“Aw, just the ticket,” Allen said, sliding the empty teacup on the table. “The very pick-me-up I needed today. Thank you, young lady. That Angie Pine and her pathetic little flower shop don’t stand a chance now that I’ve got my fighting fists back in order.”
I rolled my eyes. Allen was always fighting someone in town. From his neighbor to Angie Pine, he had beef with everyone. It was hard to feel sorry for the man when his personality was about as cuddly as a cornered diamondback rattlesnake.
At that very moment, my first customer of the day walked in - a little boy bouncing on the balls of his feet with his dad in tow. I gladly took the distraction and waved Mr. White out, releasing the tension in my shoulders. Magic had already begun to pool in my palms. The paint was calling to me. Allen skipped away, promising to return in a week.
A half hour later, I presented the painting to the little boy. He clapped his hands in delight as he took in the overlarge head and messy likeness of his profile. His father was just about to hand me a twenty dollar bill when Butch flew past my door, knobby knees flying.
My manager might have been only nineteen years old, six years younger than me, but Butch Hall was no runner. His hobbies aligned more along the lines of Dungeons and Dragons, computer games, and wandering around at Best Buy. Something was up. I leaned out the doorframe, watching his coltish sprint toward the south.
Suddenly, three more people began hustling in a similar direction. It might not have been a stampede, but it certainly caught my attention.
“What’s going on?” I asked the blacksmith, Curt Kelly, as he jogged past my store.
He paused only long enough to take a deep breath. “Some old kook’s kicked it. Just up and died in the middle of town. Everyone’s going to check it out.”
My teeth clamped down on the inside of my cheek and the coppery taste of blood filled my mouth. Old kook? Immediately I thought of my grandmother. Could he be referring to Grammy Jo? Surely, she wasn’t the old person he’d been talking about. The woman would never admit to how old she was, but it didn’t matter, she took such great care of herself. Regardless, something in my stomach clenched hard with anxiety.
“Alright, shop’s close
d.” I ushered the boy and his dad out of the shop without payment, shoving the painting into their hands. “Kat, you stay here.”
He didn’t even open his eyes as I shut him in. Lazy urchin.
Trotting past the pyre and the candy shop, I exited the park and followed the small crowd of people making their way up Roosevelt Street. This was where the oldest homes in Uriville sat; their intricate woodwork and masonry proudly maintained above perfect green lawns and immaculate hedgerows. Tall metal lampposts lined the street and parted the curious crowd of onlookers. Angie Pine walked in front of me, clad in faded denim overalls, her huge behind swaying with every step.
“What happened? Who is it?” I demanded, clenching a hand to my cramping stomach. “What’s going on?”
“There’s been a death, girl,” she snapped without even looking at me. I could almost hear the eye-roll. “Right here in Uriville. They say the body’s still rotting in the sun. We’d better hurry if we want to get a good look.”
The excitement in her voice made me want to vomit. Still, I trudged right along, smashed in the middle of the sway. The idea of turning around was too terrifying. I needed to know who had passed away. I couldn’t leave without that bit of information.
Not five seconds later, I found myself abruptly standing at the edge of a black wrought iron fence, looking down into an elegant garden filled with magnificent crimson roses and bordered by a perfectly trimmed knee-high hedge. In the middle of the garden lay someone sprawled out as if ready to make a snow angel in the crushed rose petals strewn across the grassy paths. The pallor of the skin left no questions – this was a dead body. My hands gripped the fence as I realized who we had come to see.
It was Allen White – lying dead in his own bed of roses.
Chapter 5
Allen White’s rigid form hypnotized me for a full minute as the world swirled around my body, clinging to the wrought iron fence. His dark brown eyes remained wide open, staring glassily toward the blue summer sky. The crowd undulated with shock from Mr. White’s death. This was big news for a town like Uriville. Besides the random traffic ticket or domestic dispute, nothing bad ever seemed to happen here.
Until now.
He hadn’t seemed frail this morning in my shop. Thinking back, there wasn’t a moment or even the tiniest hint that this man could bite the dust in the matter of an hour. It just didn’t make sense. How could a perfectly healthy, somewhat elderly man go out like this? Someone should’ve seen it coming.
Angie Pine’s soft and meaty arm bumping into mine pulled me back to the present. The crowd had grown thick, even as police officers attempted to wave everyone back. Butch leaned far over the fence a few feet from me, his pimply face struck by a gleeful curiosity. A few high schooler football players in their team shirts surrounded him, pretending to vomit into his tiny backpack strapped tight over his shoulders. I saw Michelle Dackery in her nineteenth century get-up, a few of the ride monitors, and even the town mayor gawking at Allen’s body. No one had any respect. We were all spectators at a zoo and Allen was the exhibit.
It was then that I spotted Ian in his official blue uniform and hat. He had been sitting in one of the cruisers, talking over the radio. Shutting the door behind him, he left the car and went to whisper to one of his coworkers. I wondered what he thought about this whole thing – the body, the crowd, the spectacle. He looked up from his conversation and his gaze met mine. It only took him staring at me for a moment before he leapt into action and ran back to the cruiser. Pulling a white sheet out of the trunk, he draped it across Allen’s body.
I nodded. There, at least Mr. White could keep a little of his dignity. I wouldn’t want the whole world staring at my decomposing corpse. The crowd must’ve disagreed with my sentiment because they hummed with disappointment.
“If you ask me, old man Allen’s been working his way up to a heart attack for years,” Angie was saying next to me. Her short graying and curly hair was frizzing in the morning humidity. “That man carried a lot of bad juju.”
I couldn’t disagree with her. Allen White’s constant feuds could’ve led his heart to fail. He seemed to carry around a lot of stress. It made sense.
Mrs. O’Brady stood on the other side of her, her sleek brown hair pulled back tightly into a bun which accentuated the handsome curve of her cheekbones and jaw. One of Aunt Piper’s closest friends, I’d met her and her brood of 5 children a few times. She’d been widowed 2 years ago and ran a tailoring business out of her home to support her rowdy family. She lowered her head and made the sign of the cross. “Wherever he is now, at least he’s no longer suffering.”
“Hmph,” Angie replied with a snort, her nostrils flaring wide. “I think it’s more likely Allen White ended up in a different place, don’t you? The land of brimstone and fire?”
I had the sudden and inappropriate urge to burst out laughing. What kind of person joked about that, standing just five feet from the body? Mrs. O’Brady’s cheeks colored, but she didn’t reply.
“I wonder what’s going to happen to Allen’s prize roses…” Angie said more to herself than to anyone else. “It’d be a shame to let them all die.”
Our attention was immediately drawn to the rear of Allen’s two-story colonial style mansion where a thin woman dressed in a crisp white blouse and black skirt had just exited. She screamed and threw herself down the stairs, racing toward the garden. Police officers blocked her path, so she resorted to sinking to her knees on the plush green walkway.
“Poor Laura,” Mrs. O’Brady whimpered. “If anyone’s going to suffer now, it’s her. What’ll she do without her housekeeping job?”
I’d never met Laura Blight, but after Aunt Piper’s latest dream adventure, I probably knew her better than I wanted to. She was the only housekeeper Allen had managed to keep for longer than a year. Whether they quit or he fired them, housekeepers didn’t last long. I couldn’t blame them.
“She should do a jig and count herself lucky she didn’t have to kill the jerk herself,” Angie shot back. The shocked expression on Mrs. O’Brady’s face didn’t even phase her. “Oh, come on. Working for that man had to be worse than rolling naked in a field of prickly pear cacti. She should count it as a blessing.”
Again, Mrs. O’Brady crossed herself. I made a mental note never to make Angie mad. She would really be a buzzkill at my funeral. Probably pop open a cold one and tell my family they were better off. Luckily, I didn’t have much need for her frilly floral arrangements or candy bouquets. Those were for people stupid in love or too in love to know it was stupid. Not happening here anytime soon.
That dreadful feeling in my stomach that had begun back at my shop hadn’t gone away, despite the small relief that Grammy Jo was still somewhere alive and kicking. In fact, the feeling grew with every passing moment. Call it intuition or call it a witchy sensation, but something wasn’t right here. Foreboding filled my bones, causing a shiver to run through my body that left me clammy in the already eighty-degree morning. I crossed my arms over my chest and rubbed the bare skin of my upper arms, hoping for a bit of warmth.
“Make room, make room.” Blythe’s high-pitched voice sounded behind me.
I turned to see her squirming through the crowd, Raven in tow. As soon as people caught sight of the tall olive-skinned woman dressed all in black, they made room.
Blythe smiled victoriously and skipped up to my side. She scanned over the yard and the numerous police officers, turning to me. “What’s going on?”
I pointed to the sheet that covered Allen’s body. How could I explain it? “Allen. Dead.”
Her smile dissolved like snow on a radiator. “What? I don’t believe it.”
“Believe it. I saw his body before the police covered it up. Definitely dead.”
Raven pushed to my other side, despite Angie’s protests, and placed a hand awkwardly on my shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, Hazel dear, you’re ghostly pale,” Blythe added. “Do you need to go lie down?”
Sure enough, Ian was standing in a group with four other officers. As I waved my hands to flag him down, a large black van pulled onto the street. It had Douglas County Coroner stamped in bold white letters on the sides. Four men in blue jumpsuits jumped out of the van with large duffle bags and ran toward Allen’s body. The crowd of onlookers buzzed with their arrival. Something definitely had to be wrong for the cops to pull in the big guns from the city.
“You can’t be over here.” Ian joined me at the gate and shook his head. Small beads of sweat had gathered along his hairline and his forehead was wrinkled in concern. “I’m serious, Hazel. This is a crime scene.”
My stomach clenched again. My worst fear confirmed. “A crime scene? So, you think Allen was murdered?”
A guarded expression crossed his face. He took a step back and wrinkled his nose. “I didn’t say that it was a murder. We just want to be very thorough.”
If there was one thing I remembered about Ian growing up, it was that he couldn’t tell a lie. Not properly, anyway. He had a habit of wrinkling his nose whenever he was stretching the truth. And I could tell he was struggling now.
“Come on, Ian, you know I’m not a reporter. You can be straight with me. I just want to know what’s going on. I have a terrible feeling about this.”
His eyes searched my face for a second as a slight frown played on his lips. He glanced over his shoulder and then back at me, leaning in far enough that I caught the tangy scent of his aftershave. “I’m thinking foul play, but so far, no one else agrees. The only reason they’re bringing in the forensics team is because I called in a favor. We’ll know soon enough.”