A Cauldron of Witch Tricks

by Constance Barker

  “You are chill AF.” The kid held her fist out the window. Nann did an awkward fist bump. “Girl power!”

  Spirits lifted, she drove west. If a punctured and illustrated girl thought Nann was chill AF, she must be. Soon, Cricket rounded the blocking gate and rolled down a hiking path toward BJ’s shack. The swamp wizard was tinkering with one of his solar panels. Nann wondered if he might have the ability to magic-hack a vault door lock.

  She got out of the car, immediately ruining her sneakers. Damn it, she should’ve worn boots. “Hey, Beej, I picked up your script.”

  The swamp wizard wandered over and took the bag. “Ah. The poison seeds of confinement, numbness and pants-wearing.” He looked a little crestfallen.

  Nann opened the passenger door and took out the fast food bag. “Breakfast sandwich chaser?”

  “The day is looking up already, he thought,” BJ said. “‘You’re a good friend, Nann.’ The wizard of the swamp choked up, but hid his emotions from the fair damsel.”

  “Shut. The truck. Off. Take a pill already, BJ.”

  He rummaged in the bag, ripping open a paper wrapper. He talked around the food. “Busy day today, lots of orders to send out. If I could just get the mailman to stop by here.”

  In the falling down shelter, BJ kept a computer running with the solar panels. He had a makeshift table covered with addressed packages. As she watched, he dumped the remaining sandwiches and used the fast food bag to wrap a few small potion bottles. After taping the bag tighter than a mummy, he pulled a sticky label from an old dot matrix printer and slapped it on top. “Perfect timing.”

  “Your business isn’t that different from mine,” Nann thought aloud. “I sell a lot of books online.”

  “Shipping is kinda tough. I have to walk five miles to the bait shop to send these out.”

  Nann segued. “You sell charms, right?”

  “Sure do.” He took a pill and chased it with coffee.

  “You know what kind of charm is made from a lavender colored stone with a hole in the middle?”

  His face lit up. “You know my work! Yeah, that’s one of mine. Lavender jade. Tough mineral to find, tough to charge. It’s an anti-magic charm. Gotta wear gloves and a mask,wrap it in aluminum foil or put it in a cedar box right away, or it makes me sick.”

  Holy schmoly. “You sell any of these in town?”

  He held up his hands. “Oh no. That’s against the rules. I can’t sell anything magic in Port Argent. I’m almost completely mail order.”

  Nann thought about the boxes in the antique store: internet only. “Has anyone from town come to buy one from you?”

  “No, I don’t sell out of the house. Have to get a business license, pay fees, taxes. Not worth it.”

  “That’s weird, because I saw someone in Port Argent wearing one.”

  “Port Argent?” He angled his head at her. “People in Port Argent hate magic.”

  “I know, right?”

  “He thought maybe Nann was mistaken, but then a thought occurred. ‘Must’ve been the charity ladies,’ he said,” he said.

  “Charity ladies?”

  “Happy Hammers? Handy Hammers? They help poor people fix up their houses.”

  “AMN,” Nann said. Vice president? Audra Simmons. Late president? Blake Simmons.

  “That’s them. I do work for them sometimes.” BJ said.

  Nann looked around the stone shack. She could see the sky through the gaps in the roof boards. Most of the windows were hung with plastic. “Uh huh...”

  “No, not carpentry work. Magic.”

  “But they hate magic you said. What would a bunch of benevolent carpenters need with magic?”

  “‘Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves.’ You know Cher? Sometimes they come around and lay their money down.” BJ sang the intro notes. “D-doo do, do do, do do, do do.”

  Before he could break into a verse, Nann stopped him. “Like what? Love potions?”

  “Yeah, sometimes. Always on the down low. But once they came all together. See, it used to be, a lot of rats lived around here. Back in the day, the pulp boats were full of them, and they disembarked near the mill, and ran into town.”

  Nann went still. Rats. When she first arrived in Port Argent, a mysterious being was stealing children from their homes. “Oh, no, BJ, they asked you to summon a Piper?”

  “Summon ye a piper if you have trouble with the rats,” BJ said, “’Cause everyone knows a Piper Pied is better with rats than are cats.”

  “Stop it!”

  “What’s the big deal? Hey, they had the spell. I just did it for them.”

  “Oh. My. Gawdess! I nearly died banishing that thing!”

  “Banishing? Well, there’s your problem right there.”

  Nann’s anger stubbed itself out. “Come again?”

  “Pipers are Summoning 101, Nann. No big deal. You do the spell, do the blood ceremony, boom, you’re done. But you don’t need to banish them. You have to pay the Piper.”

  “Pay the Piper in what? Human souls? It was stealing children, BJ. Little boys.”

  “That’s ridiculous. No, you just pay them, and they go away. It’s when you don’t pay them, that’s when the trouble starts. But who would be that dumb?”

  Nann might’ve been that dumb. Of course, she would never summon an otherworldly force in the first place.

  “How does the rest of the spell go? I don’t have the spell they brought me. Heck, though, even on my meds I can do the math. So, as far as rats, the old rule of thumb is one rat per person. The nearest population center is Oswego, we’ll round up to eighteen thousand. Now, I think the last part of the spell specifies the price at a tuppence a dozen. So eighteen thousand rats, divided by a dozen, times—let’s give the Brits a decent exchange rate—call it three cents.”

  Nann tried to work it out in her head. But BJ came up with it first.

  “Forty-five bucks.”

  “Wait. That’s all the Piper wanted? Forty-five dollars?”

  “That’s not so bad. Do you know what exterminators charge?”

  Nann was dumbfounded. “Less than fifty bucks, and the Piper would just... go away?”

  “Well, duh.” BJ’s eyes went distant. “I don’t actually know what exterminators charge. But probably more than forty-five bucks for eighteen thousand rats.”

  Nann was stunned. “I can’t believe it could’ve been so easy.”

  “You should’ve come to me. It’s kinda my schtick.”

  “I didn’t know you existed.”

  He nodded. “That would make it tougher.”

  Okay, so that mystery was solved. It had plagued her for months. Still, it wasn’t the mystery she needed to solve. She would have to sort out her feelings about this another time. “So you gave some magic charms to the charity ladies.”

  “I thought it was weird that people so set against magic would want magic charms, even if they were anti-magic charms. Still, anti-magic charms are still magic charms. If you think about it too long, you go crazy. Why don’t the things just self-destruct, right?”

  Nann tried to steer him back on course. “Who did you give them to? Try to remember.”

  “Oh, I don’t know their names. A couple visited for love potions in the past. Like I said, on the down low. No names. Gypsies, tramps and thieves.”

  “Love potions?”

  “One of ’em wanted Love Potion No. 11. I call that the devotion potion. Long-term thing. Most people want a quickie seduction, you know.”

  “Who?”

  He raised an index finger. “Gypsies—”

  “Okay, I get it, I get it.”

  “I offer a money back guarantee. She hasn’t been back, so I guess it worked. It’s closer to actual love than most potions. But true love is true love and potions are just magic.” He shrugged.

  More confused than ever, Nann hopped back in Cricket and set off to work.

  Chapter 15

  “What do you know about the Happy Hammers?” she asked Zinnia.r />
  Zinnia sat in Nann’s shop with a paper cup of coffee. “New coffee place. Really good. You mean the Helping Hammers? AMN?”

  “Yeah. Them.”

  “Their whole thing is about repairing houses of people who can’t afford it. New roof, new windows, whatever they need. It’s not like Habitat for Humanity. They just do repairs. The golf tourney is a big fund-raiser locally.”

  Nann shooed Zinnia from behind the register computer and opened her web browser. It didn’t take long to find a list of local AMN leadership. At this point, she was more interested in the ladies’ auxiliary. She found a note card and scribbled some names, many of them familiar. Audra Simmons, VP and chair of the golf committee; Helen Wozniak (Gene’s wife, she assumed) vice chair of golf events; Anne Walker, treasurer; Margorie Kablonski, sergeant-at-arms. Nann read them aloud after writing them down. “I don’t know Anne Walker or Margorie Kablonski, but Audra and Helen are both tied to local politics.”

  “Oh, you know Margorie Kablonski,” Zinnia said.

  “I do?”

  “You know her better as Margie.”

  Nann thought it over. “As in Margie’s Bar and Grill?”

  “The same.”

  “What’s Marge doing with that high-falutin’ bunch?”

  Zinnia shrugged. “Guess you’ll have to ask her. Does that mean we’re going there for lunch?”

  “Did you have other plans?”

  “There’s this new noodle shop that opened up on East Fifth. Thought I’d give that a try. But since my, uh, accidental alligatoring the other day, I’ve been craving fish and chips. That’s the special at Margie’s on Friday.”

  “I AIN’T TALKING ABOUT no murdered guy.”

  Nann and Zinnia roped Tink in for lunch. Margie scowled at them over her order pad.

  “Actually, I’m not interested in that,” Nann lied. “I’m interested in the AMN Ladies’ Auxiliary buying magic stuff. Love potions. Charms.”

  “What are you babbling about? Them gals hate magic. Who told you that?”

  “Brock Miller Junior,” Nann said.

  “The crazy hermit? Well, what of it? Most of the auxiliary is rich girls. They can spend their money on whatever nonsense they want.”

  “Rich girls like Audra Simmons and Helen Wozniak?”

  Margie shrugged. “I mighta heard something about it. What’s it matter?”

  “Well, as you probably know, BJ is a little light in the brain area. I look after him sometimes.”

  “Talk about light in the brain!” Margie chuckled. “Love potions! Lucky charms! I mean, come on.”

  Margie knew more than she was saying. “Fess up, Margie,” Nann said. “They say they hate magic, and they’re buying stuff from BJ, right?”

  She puffed out her cheeks. “Look, don’t tell nobody I told you. But, yeah, I heard them talking about charms, and Audra buying the love potion. I thought it was weird. She’s married. Was married, I guess.”

  “One more thing, Margie.”

  “Oh, c’mon. I got customers. You three wanna eat before two, I gotta put your order in.”

  Since arriving, Nann hadn’t noticed any other customers in the place. She let it slide. “I’m just curious. Why do you hang out with that bunch? Why AMN?”

  Margie colored a little and faced away. She murmured something Nann didn’t catch.

  “What was that?”

  “I said I love golf, okay? Don’t judge. And don’t you go screwing up this thing. As a member of the ladies’ auxiliary, I get all the free golf I want. Now, it’s all well and good that we been fixing up empty houses in Amity Corners. A couple extra brownie points with the universe is all well and good. But I’m in it for the free golf. Period. Let me get your order started now, okay?”

  Marge stomped away after they ordered. Tink rolled her eyes. “Jeeze Louise. She’s sure defensive about the golf thing.”

  “It’s—a hard thing to admit,” Zinnia said. “This is coming from a semi golf widow. But I don’t tell people that Branden’s a... a golfer.”

  Nann supposed there were worse things. A murderer was probably worse than a golfer, for instance. Ideas were swirling in her head, foggy and indistinct, but she knew the answers were in her brain. Those disparate ideas only needed to link up. Maybe if she could get an inside look at the ladies’ auxiliary, she might come up with a motive.

  Margie returned with their order. Nann thanked her, and asked, “Say, Margie, can anyone attend an AMN meeting?”

  “Nah.” Margie thunked down their plates. “You’ve gotta be invited. Sponsored by a member. And if you wanted me to sponsor you, forget it. The ladies of the club don’t like magic folks.”

  “What if they didn’t know it was me? I could wear a disguise. A wig, maybe some golf clothes.”

  Margie, Tink and Zinnia broke up at the same time.

  “What?” Nann was confused.

  “Even if you wore a Halloween mask, they’d know it was you, Nann,” Zinnia said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Exactly,” Tink said.

  “What we’ah tawking about is that the minute youse open yo-ah mouth, they-ah gonna know it’s you,” Zinnia put on the worst Brooklyn accent Nann had ever heard.

  “I don’t talk like that!”

  “I don’t tawk like dat!” Tink laughed.

  “Youse tawk like a New Yohk-ah, Nann. Very distinctive.”

  “I don’t say ‘youse,’” Nann complained. “Unless I’m talking to all of youse. It’s plural.” Okay, so scratch the infiltration idea.

  “I could go,” Tink volunteered. “Would you sponsor me, Margie?”

  Margie shook her head. “I gotta get back to work. We’re inspecting a house later, and I wanna make sure I’m set up for the dinner rush.”

  “C’mon, Marge!” Zinnia said. “We’re your best customers. Best non-drinking customers, anyway.”

  “All right, fine. The meeting’s Saturday. I suppose it wouldn’t look too weird if one blue collar gal invited in another.”

  “Thanks, Marge.”

  When the grill owner walked away, Tink leaned in close. “You want me to spy on Audra Simmons?”

  “Yep. Her and someone else.”

  Zinnia tucked into her fish and chips, double fish. Tink shoveled two hot fudge sundaes into her mouth. Nann raised her burger, but it stopped halfway to her mouth. What was it? What was just said? Thoughts ping-ponged around her skull. If she could just catch one—

  “You okay, Nann?”

  Slowly, she set the cheeseburger on the plate. “Holy schmoly.”

  “What?” Zinnia dropped her fork. “Is there something in the food?”

  Nann blinked a few times. “No, not that.” Okay, maybe that. She tried not to examine the cuisine at Margie’s too closely.

  “Are you getting that buzzy sick feeling again?”

  Nann lowered her voice. “Could you use one of those cars for sale behind your auto shop and follow Margie when she leaves Tink?”

  Tink, usually unflappable, blinked a few times. “Follow Margie? Why?”

  “Just see where she goes and let me know the address. That’s all.”

  “Why not me? I wanna get in on this spy stuff, too,” Zinnia complained.

  “Because we eat here all the time. Margie knows all our vehicles, your big red truck, Tink’s shop truck, Cricket. She might let it slip if she sees us following her.”

  “Incognito,” Tink said.

  Zinnia seemed placated. “Well, if it’s just a car thing, then okay.”

  “You want me to see what she does?”

  Nann shook her head. “Nope. Don’t get close. Just see where she goes and let me know.”

  “Do you think Margie had something to do with Blake Simmons’ murder?” Zinnia whispered.

  “No.” Nann smiled. “Not exactly, but I think I finally got a bead on this mystery.”

  Chapter 16

  Back at work, Nann got a text from Tink. She brought up the browser on her ca
sh register machine. After doing a couple quick searches, she found a clue. Maybe. Hopefully. From there, she did a few more searches for local real estate. It didn’t take long for a pattern to form. She sat back, tapping her lower lip with a pen. It was good stuff, but it wasn’t proof positive. Finally, though, she felt like she was on the right track.

  She took out her cell phone and did a search, looking for pictures. One, she pulled from the newspaper. The other from the Port Argent government home page. She made sure she could blow both images up as big as her phone screen could handle. It was time to pull on her Nancy Druid pants.

  Before she got anywhere near her suspects again, she needed protection. BJ said an anti-anti-magic charm was ridiculous. He had also mentioned foil and cedar blocking the effects. Foil was easy enough, but where could she find cedar. For the rest of the day, she searched online. Finally, she came up with something. Maybe not the best solution. She could only hope for the best. In the meanwhile—Nancy Druid pants.

  After six, she drove the couple blocks to the sheriff substation. Keith was in his office, barricaded behind tall stacks of paperwork. They were still in a holding pattern. Date Number Three was not even in the planning stage. He gave her a weary smile, as if thinking the same thing.

  “Hey, Nann, what brings you here?”

  “I was wondering if you had a suspect yet.” She gave the paperwork a sidelong glance.

  “Yeah, I have about twenty-five pretty good ones. You?”

  Nann took a breath. “I was looking pretty hard at Gene Wozniak. With Blake out of the picture, he stands a much better chance of winning the county seat. I think that makes him the one with the most to gain.”

  “We thought of that, but dismissed it.”

  “Why?”

  “Frankly, Wozniak is ten points ahead of all the candidates in the race. Simmons wasn’t even on the radar, really. Simmons owned a little antiques store in a little town, speculated in real estate. He’s not a county-level player. Wozniak, on the other hand, owns a bunch of hotels and motels all over the county. Gene Wozniak is a county-level player. Besides, he doesn’t come off as a blustery bully. Maybe some people like that in a candidate, but probably not enough to put Simmons anywhere near a county seat.”