I was about to ask her how she knew that, but then it dawned on me. “Small town.”
“That it is. But I think it’s great that you’ve moved there. It’s such a neat old house, and it was a shame that it sat empty for so long.”
“You’ve been inside?” I asked. Annika didn’t look old enough to have been around before Great-Aunt Maude was sent off to the asylum. If she was, then she was a very young child when it happened.
“Yeah, it was a rite of passage in high school. The legend was that Mad Maude, sorry if that’s offensive,” she said, and that time her cheeks colored.
“It’s not. She was a little mad, but I still loved her,” I said. “But please tell me. Go on.”
“Okay, so the legend was that Maude put a curse on the house to protect it from any Skeenbauers. So it’s been a family tradition for at least a couple of generations for teenage Skeenbauers to sneak into Hangman’s House on a full moon. If you spend the night, then it means you’re…” She hesitated. “It means you’re pure of heart or something. I can’t remember exactly, it’s been a decade.”
“The Skeenbauers?”
“Oh, yeah,” Annika said. “I’m Annika Skeenbauer. Our families, assuming you’re related to Maude, have been locked in a feud for, like, ever.”
“And do you believe in that stuff? I mean the curse, not the feud.”
“Eh,” she said with a shrug. “It is what it is. But I spent the night in the house, so either I’m pure of heart or it’s just a legend. The house is really cool though. I hope you’re able to bring it back to its former glory.”
“It’s not in as bad of shape as I thought when I got to town.”
Before she could say anything else, Keisha delivered our pancakes and bacon. “I forgot to ask you if you wanted a drink,” she said.
“A Diet Coke when you get the chance,” I said.
“Be right back.”
“I think we’re going to get along just fine,” Annika said as she picked up her glass and took a sip.
Keisha returned with a glass for me moments later. “I’ll be back to check on you ladies in a bit.”
“Thank you,” Annika and I said in unison.
“To new friends and Diet Coke,” Annika said and raised her glass.
We toasted, giggled, and then dug into our food. It must have been a day when Annika skipped lunch because she tore into her stack of pancakes as enthusiastically as I did.
Our conversation stopped while we ate, but I noticed that I felt completely at ease with Annika, something I never expected to feel with a stranger in an unfamiliar place.
Her phone was on the table face down, and I hadn’t really noticed it until it began to vibrate. Annika finished chewing and took a swig of her drink before she picked it up and looked at the screen.
“I’m so sorry to be rude, but I have to take this. Do you want me to go outside?”
“No, it’s okay,” I said. “As long as you don’t mind.”
“Not at all. Please finish your food. Hopefully this is good news and a short call.”
Annika answered the phone with an expectant hello. “This is she,” she said, and then it seemed to go downhill from there.
I could hear the other person squawking, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. The call wasn’t short, and from the look on Annika’s face, it wasn’t good news.
“Thank you,” she said tersely and hung up.
For a moment, I wasn’t sure what to do. “I guess I should ask you if everything is all right, but feel free to tell me to pound sand since you don’t really know me.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “That was just my insurance company. I’ve had some shoplifting going on in my store. I own Annika’s Closet just off the square. It’s a resale and vintage shop. Anyway, the insurance company isn’t going to reimburse me for the value of a couple of things that were stolen. They don’t think the items were worth what I know they were worth. So unless I get them back, I’m kind of up a creek over it.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“It’s okay. I mean, it’s not enough to put me out of business or anything, it’s just kind of a bummer. But that’s enough of my sob story,” she said. “Why don’t you tell me more…”
Her phone buzzing cut her off again. “I’m sorry,” she said and looked at the screen again. “Man. It’s my grandma. I’ve got to go. It was so nice meeting you. Can you meet me here tomorrow at noon for lunch?”
“Sure,” I said.
Annika stood up and scooted out of the booth. It was then I noticed she was dressed in an eggplant sixties style sheath dress and white go-go boots. Her auburn hair was tied up in a high ponytail, and I couldn’t help but think she pulled the look off perfectly.
“Awesome sauce. I’ll be here at noon on the dot. See you then,” Annika said cheerfully. “Au revoir.”
“Can I get you anything else?” Keisha asked moments later.
“No, I think I’m all done,” I said. “Thank you so much for everything, and it was nice meeting you.”
I left the diner feeling better than I had in months. Since I was going to be in Coventry for the foreseeable future, I decided to learn all of the shortcuts through town. To me, that just meant walking home a different way.
Coventry being a small town, there weren’t really many other routes home, so I decided to cut through the alley behind Dumbledore’s Diner. I was bebopping along thinking about how nice it would be to have a friend in town when I almost tripped over someone lying in the alley.
“Oh, my,” I started. “Are you okay?”
I had my phone out to call 911 and was halfway bent over to check on the person before I realized that it was Harkin and he was dead. He was deader than dead. He was gray and his eyes were vacant, and suddenly I was almost screaming.
The hysterical shock and dread climbed to a fever pitch inside of me when a big black cat jumped onto my shoulder. The cat, my cat but not my cat, rubbed his face against my ear and purred softly.
I could clearly hear him begin to speak. “Brighton, you need to pull yourself together. Calm down and handle this like a big girl. I know you can do it.”
It felt like I was in a trance when I dialed 911 and told the operator where I was and what I’d found, but I knew I wasn’t. That was impossible. Not only could the cat not talk, but he certainly couldn’t put me in a trance.
As I hung up the phone with the operator, I had that strange sensation again. It was like something was trying to surface in my mind. I started to wonder if Mad Maude was really so crazy. I wasn’t dreaming, and I would swear under oath the cat just whispered to me.
What if all of her talk about magic, nodes, ley lines, and witchcraft weren’t just the ramblings of a disturbed mind? Or maybe I was just as nuts as my great-aunt if I thought I heard the cat talking to me.
Chapter Four
I sat on the curb near the alley when the sheriff’s cruiser pulled up. A stern but handsome-looking man in jeans and a black t-shirt stepped out of the car and walked toward me. I figured that he must have been off duty when the call came in because he wasn’t in uniform. Either that or he was the killer and he’d stolen the sheriff’s vehicle, but that was just my overactive imagination getting away from me. Making up a story in my head distracted me from the grim reality I’d stepped into after dinner.
To keep my mind off the dead body in the alley, I studied the sheriff’s very much alive one as he approached me. Strong jaw, broad chest, big biceps. He was a walking hunky, small-town sheriff cliché with his wavy blond hair and intense blue eyes.
He ran a hand through that wavy hair before offering me a hand to help me to my feet. “Good evening, ma’am.”
His hand was warm and comforting, though the electric sparks I half expected from reading too many romance novels did not materialize. “Thank you,” I said as he pulled me to my feet.
“I’m Sheriff Thorn Wilson. I assume you’re the person who made the 911 call.”
; “Oh, no. I just like hanging around dead bodies. I don’t know who called it in,” I said with a chuckle.
I instantly regretted making the joke because he did not laugh. In fact, all Sheriff Thorn Wilson did was narrow his eyes at me before pulling out a notepad and pen. I swallowed a lump in my throat as he scribbled something down.
“I was joking,” I said, but it came out as kind of a high-pitched squeak, so I took a deep breath and tried to start again. “I’m Brighton Longfield. I just moved to town, so I’m new around here. And yes, I did make the call. He’s back there in the alley.” I pointed my thumb over my shoulder. “It’s Professor Max Harkin.”
“Wait here,” Thorn said and brushed past me quickly.
I turned around and watched him walk up to Harkin’s body. He knelt down and looked him over before standing back and walking in my direction again.
“Keep waiting,” he said as he walked past and went to his car. “I’m going to talk to you after I call this in.”
Thorn didn’t even stop walking to speak to me, and I feared I’d made a terrible impression with my stupid joke. I didn’t know what had possessed me to say something so horrible, but I could only guess it was my way of dealing with the stress of the situation.
He got in his cruiser and I watched him radio in the body. After a couple of minutes, he got back out of the car and came back to me.
“Ms. Longfield? Correct?” he asked.
“Yes, or you can call me Brighton.”
“Okay, Brighton. How well did you know the victim?” he said and readied his pad and pen.
It was then that I realized that I was probably a suspect. I should have known that at least initially I would be, but I hadn’t even thought about it. All I had to do was stay calm, tell him what I knew, and that would lead him to the real suspects. I was just the new girl in town who found a body.
“I didn’t really know him well at all,” I said because I didn’t.
“But you knew who he was despite only being in town for a couple of days.”
“Well, yes. In that couple of days, I’ve had two rather unpleasant run-ins with Professor Harkin.” That statement probably made me look even more like a suspect, but it was the truth. I had nothing to hide, I reminded myself.
“Why don’t you tell me about that.” Sheriff Wilson put the tip of his pen to his pad and prepared to write.
So I proceeded to fill him in on the details of my stay at Mama Hattie’s and dealing with Harkin at dinner. After that, I told him about witnessing Harkin’s cruel rejection of Prue in her candy store. He listened the whole time and took notes while nodding his head.
“I’m going to need you to stick around town for now,” he said. “You said that you just moved to town? You don’t need to travel for the move right now, do you?”
“Yes, I inherited Hangman’s House when my Great-Aunt Maude died, and I’ve just recently decided to move in. I’m not going back to where I came from. I do need to take my U-Haul back.”
If I wasn’t mistaken, he seemed a little stunned, but he didn’t say anything to explain his surprise. All Thorn said was, “Just don’t go anywhere since you’re part of an active investigation. Okay?”
“I understand,” I said. “I can go?”
“Yes, I think it would be better if you cleared out before the coroner gets here,” he said. “Hey, before you go, I can send one of my deputies over to take that U-Haul back for you.”
“You think I’m that much of a flight risk that I’ll try to abscond when I return my moving trailer?”
“No, I think this is a small town and we help out when we can. It’s one of the benefits of living in Coventry,” he said, and I could swear he almost cracked a smile.
“I’ll take you up on your hospitality, then. Have a good night, Sheriff,” I said. “And thank you.”
“You do the same, ma’am. And you’re welcome.”
The thing he said about me being part of an active investigation sounded ominous. “He must suspect that I killed Harkin,” I said to the cat who was strolling next to me as we make our way home. “And I don’t know if I buy that returning my U-Haul is just small-town hospitality. He must think I’ll try to run off or something.”
“Telling you that was just standard operating procedure, Brighton. It doesn’t mean that you’re an actual suspect. Besides, you didn’t do it, so there’s not going to be any evidence linking you to his death,” the cat responded. “And it is small-town hospitality. Not everyone is Coventry is so friendly, but Thorn is one of the good guys.”
“That should make me feel better, but it doesn’t. This whole thing makes me anxious. Plus, I almost tripped over a dead body. That’s pretty gross.”
I stopped chatting and stared straight ahead when I realized that I was talking to the cat. My breathing became shallow when it further occurred to me that I’d very vividly imagined him answering me.
“It’s going to be all right,” the cat said.
“I’m so going nuts. I’m going to end up in the asylum like Maude,” I said to myself and not the cat. “These things run in families. And now I’m talking to myself.”
“I’m not going anywhere just because you feel like you need to pretend like you can’t hear me,” the cat said. “We’re in this together for reasons that are going to become clear soon.”
I reached the edge of my yard and hurried toward the front door. After I practically leapt up the steps, I paused at door. As turned the knob and walked through, I felt a chill run down my spine. Again, I was on the verge of some sort of realization, but it completely fizzled once I was inside. I decided that it must have been stress-induced anxiety from finding a dead body.
One thing was for sure, I felt like I needed a proper bath after spending time in the alley with a dead body. Even if I didn’t touch it and I was only in the alley for a minute, it felt like some of the ick had seeped into me. So I ran a tub of hot water and poured in some of my favorite lavender relaxation bubble bath.
I was just relaxing in the tub trying to clear my mind when the cat jumped up on the counter and knocked the bottle of bubble bath on the floor. “Hey,” I scolded, but then I glanced at my phone and realized that what I’d thought was just a minute was nearly a half hour. I’d almost fallen asleep in the tub, and the cat had saved me. “Sorry,” I said as I pushed myself to my feet.
It had been a long day, and what I needed most was to get to bed. After drying off, I opened the blinds to the room and put on my pajamas. The bed looked warm and inviting, but I was afraid I’d lie awake thinking about Harkin.
Those fears were unfounded, though. The weight of the day pressed on my eyelids, and soon enough, I was ready to drift off again. Seconds before sleep took me, the cat jumped up on my pillow.
“Hey,” I said. “I’m thankful that you saved me from drowning in the bathtub and all, but I said you had to stay off my pillow, cat.”
“My name is not cat,” he said haughtily. “My name is Merimus, but you may call me Meri if it suits you. I am the Tuttlesmith family familiar, and I am at your service, Brighton. But I would prefer to be called by my name and not cat.”
“I’m dreaming,” I said and scrunched my eyes closed as tight as I could. “I have to be dreaming.”
“You’re not dreaming and, Brighton, I’m talking to you. Closing your eyes isn’t going to stop you from hearing me.”
So I grabbed the covers and pulled them up over my head. “I don’t want to be crazy. I don’t want to live in an institution,” I mumbled to myself.
“You don’t need to go to an institution, Brighton. You’re not crazy, and neither was Maude,” Meri said. “She was the best of the Tuttlesmith witches, and that scared the wrong people.”
I tossed the covers back and sat up in the bed with my legs crossed. “You need to stop talking because cats cannot talk,” I said. “You cannot talk, and I cannot hear you. I just need to get some sleep.”
“You can hear me and let me tell you a little bit abou
t why,” Meri began. “I’m a familiar. That means that I’m like your magical assistant. That’s the easiest way for me to explain it. I’m not a witch, and I never was, but you are. Your entire family is. Maude was too. She wasn’t mad at all, and I’m sure if you think back very hard you can remember her talking about her cat or you’ll remember seeing pictures of her with me in them. Think hard, Brighton.”
I was about to put my fingers in my ears and start singing when I recalled a picture my grandmother had shown me of Maude when she was much younger. Maude did have a big black cat named Meri. When I was little, I’d always assumed it was a girl named Mary, though.
“No,” I said. “It just can’t be.”
“It is, and I am in your service. At one time, I was the familiar for the Skeenbauer witches, but I might have dropped a house on one of them or something by accident. It’s hard to recall,” he said and swished his tail as if to sweep the memory away. “Either way, they cursed me to serve the Tuttlesmith family for eternity. The only way I’ll ever be free of my service to your family is if the last Tuttlesmith or Skeenbauer witch dies. They were my family, but now you’re my family. Which I am totally thrilled about. No really, it’s amazing.”
“You’re kind of snarky,” I said. “Wait, Skeenbauer? That’s Annika’s last name. So she’s a witch and I’m a witch, and our families are involved in some sort of witch feud? And you were their familiar, but they cursed you and sent you away? That’s terrible. I’m so sorry.”
I felt very bad for him. Being cast out when you were no longer useful was a feeling I could identify with wholeheartedly.
“That’s the very abbreviated version,” Meri responded.
“Well, it’s going to stay abbreviated because I’m going to sleep, and when I wake up, I’ll realize this was all a very sad but realistic dream. Because cats can’t talk, and witches don’t exist.”
I lay down, rolled over and pulled the covers up over my head again. I heard Meri make a tsking sound, but he settled down against my back again. I stared out through the open blinds for a few minutes trying to make sense of what was going on, but sleep won quickly as I drifted off.
Wicked Witches of Coventry- The Collection Page 4
