Any Witch Way You Can (4 page)

“I have, but she doesn’t remember anything,” I finally answered my mom. I couldn’t help myself from arguing with Aunt Tillie – but I also didn’t want to try and cover a story when I could only make left turns. People would think I was stranger than I already was.

“Well, you should help her find out so she can move on,” my mom clucked.

“I offered,” I admitted. “I don’t think she wants to move on. I think she’s generally happy as she is.”

“She’s not happy, she’s miserable,” Aunt Tillie admonished me.

“Maybe she’s happy being miserable? I know some people like that,” I said pointedly.

Marnie hurriedly ushered everyone into the dining room. I think she was trying to head off a big showdown between Aunt Tillie and myself.

Clove, Thistle and I helped carry dishes into the dining room – where a handful of inn denizens were milling about and waiting for the meal. One rule that held fast in The Overlook was that dinner was served at 7 p.m. sharp – and everyone ate together. If you wanted food before or after that, you were just fresh out of luck. Despite that, the legend of the Winchester women and their cooking was enough to keep the inn at capacity most of the time. The curiosity factor is enough to draw in a lot of people.

After everyone had taken their seats – Thistle, Clove and I always sat together as a show of unity for each other– everyone began passing the dishes around the table. The guests were chatting away happily. They all seemed enthralled with Hemlock Cove – and they couldn’t stop talking about the magic that abounded in the small hamlet. They also couldn’t stop raving about the food – which always made my mom and aunts happy.

Occasionally, they would ask questions. We had been trained to answer them politely – and honestly.

“Did you ever have any witch burnings here?” The woman who asked looked to be about twenty-five or so. She was here on her honeymoon. I could tell she just liked the thought of horror. She didn’t really want to hear about any horror.

“Not to my knowledge,” I answered.

She looked a little disappointed at my answer.

“Of course, the records from back in the day were destroyed in a fire in the early 1900s, so there’s really no way for us to know for sure.”

My mom beamed at my answer. The woman nodded thoughtfully. “They might not write it down if they did it.”

“They might not,” Clove said with a smile. “You should never write down your misdeeds.” She’d learned that from personal experience when Aunt Marnie read her diary when she was a teenager. She’d been grounded for a month over the dalliance under the bleachers with the quarterback.

“That’s for sure,” Aunt Tillie muttered as she sipped from a glass of wine. I frowned when I saw her doing it.

“I thought the doctor said you weren’t supposed to drink anymore?”

“Red wine is good for you,” Aunt Tillie argued.

“Yes, but the doctor said one glass a day and I know you’ve had more than one glass.”

Aunt Tillie glowered at me. “You mind your own business. All you reporters, you’re so nosy.”

I thought that was rich coming from any woman in this family, but one look at my mother’s frown told me that pointing that out would be a mistake. Instead, I turned back to the inquisitive woman.

“What are your plans while you’re in town?” I feigned interest – if only to keep my mother off my back.

The woman – I learned her name was Emily -- seemed to glow under my attention. “We’re going to go out to a corn maze tomorrow.”

“The one at Harrow Bluff?”

“I think that’s where it is. It’s new.”

“I’m going out there tomorrow to do a story on it.”

“Maybe I’ll see you there?”

I smiled brightly at the suggestion, but inside I was hoping I would be able to avoid her. Tourists can be a pain.

Emily had glommed on to me, though. She monopolized the conversation for the duration of dinner. I continued to answer her questions throughout the meal – and then quietly excused myself to the kitchen when there was finally a break in the conversation. I was surprised to find Aunt Tillie there. I hadn’t noticed her leave the table, which meant she had done it sneakily -- and she was chopping up something on the cutting board.

“What are you doing?” I asked suspiciously.

“Nothing.”

“It doesn’t look like nothing.” She had pushed her stool up to the counter so she could reach it easily. She obviously meant business.

“I’m just chopping herbs.”

I tried to peer over her shoulder, but she actively tried to block my gaze. That only made me more suspicious. When I finally got a glimpse of what she was doing I grabbed her wrist.

“That’s belladonna,” I admonished her.

“So?”

“What are you planning on doing with that?”

“I’m putting together a sleeping potion. I’ve been having trouble sleeping.”

I’d once seen Aunt Tillie fall asleep at a parade, so I knew she was lying. “What are you mixing up?”

“I told you,” Aunt Tillie wrenched her wrist free from me. “I’m making a sleeping potion.”

“For who?”

“None of your business.”

“I’m telling mom,” I warned her.

“Go ahead tattletale. You always were a bothersome little pain in the ass.”

“You could hurt someone with that if you give them too much.”

“I never use too much.”

“Just tell me who you’re planning on drugging.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Aunt Tillie seemed to be growing in height as her anger at my interference blossomed.

“It matters to me.”

“Why?”

“Maybe I don’t want to see you spend your final years in jail?” Just locked in a home where she couldn’t do any real damage.

“Since when? You’ve never liked me.”

“That’s not true. I love you. You’re just always up to something.” That was also the truth.

“I am not always up to something. That would be you and your two cousins. The three of you were nothing but trouble since the moment you could walk. Before then, you were cute. After that, though? You were always into everything.”

“That’s what little kids do.” I realized she was trying to distract me. She was good at that. “Who is the potion for?”

Aunt Tillie let loose with a long-suffering sigh. “I’m just going to put a little in the tea.”

“What tea? Your tea? Mom’s tea?”

“Everyone’s tea,” she finally admitted.

“Why?” I narrowed my eyes as I regarded her.

“So they’ll go to bed early.”

“Why do you want them to go to bed early?”

“So I can get some peace and quiet.” She was lying. She had something else in mind. I just couldn’t figure out what it was.

Aunt Twila had entered the kitchen and was regarding us curiously. “What are you two doing?”

“She’s mincing up belladonna to put in the tea.” I don’t like being a tattletale, but I also don’t want Aunt Tillie poisoning the guests. She was unpredictable – and that made her dangerous.

Twila wandered over cautiously. “Why?” She had grown up with Aunt Tillie so she was understandably nervous around her when she was plotting something. She knew the extent of the damage Aunt Tillie could wreak when she set her mind to it – which was fairly often.

Aunt Tillie threw up her hands in defeat. “Can’t a body have any privacy in this place?” She clamored down from the stool, cast a disdainful look in my direction – which promised retribution at a later date -- and then flounced back out to the dining room, leaving the mess for us to clean up.

Twila started absentmindedly brushing all of the herbs into the open garbage can on the floor. “I’m worried she’s starting to lose her mind.”

“Starting?”

“That woman is our family,” Twila reminded me. She always was the kindest of her three sisters – which meant she was also the most easily manipulated.

“That doesn’t mean she’s not crazy.”

Twila regarded the belladonna remains ruefully. “No. She’s definitely crazy. She’s still family, though, and in this family we don’t chastise the crazy, we embrace them and love them for their eccentricities.”

Truer words were never spoken.

Four

With the joys of another family dinner behind us, Thistle, Clove and I made our way across the property towards the guesthouse. I had told them about Aunt Tillie’s weird behavior in the kitchen – but they didn’t seem as worried as I was.

“She was just looking for attention,” Clove protested.

“Yeah, but her ways of seeking attention could leave a body count in her wake.”

“She wouldn’t do that again,” Clove said.

“Again? What again?”

Clove bit her lower lip. I could tell she had let something slip she hadn’t planned to. “We were told not to tell you.”

“By who?” I asked suspiciously.

“Everyone,” Clove admitted.

“What did she do?” I swung around to ask Thistle – but she was caught in her own little world and holding a conversation with herself.

“Blue washes me out? Blue washes me out? This from a woman that’s trying to make Ronald McDonald’s color palette look good. I don’t know why I even listen to her. She drives me crazy. Crazy! She does it on purpose, too. I don’t know why I listen to her! She named me after a remedy for people that drink too much. You were named Bay. Clove was another herb. So she wanted to follow the pack. So what did she do? She looked at a bottle of vitamins – not even an herb really. Okay it’s kind of an herb – and read milk thistle on it -- and thought Thistle was a great name? So how she thinks she can say that my hair looks bad is beyond me.”

Yeah, there was no talking to Thistle when she got like this. I swung back to Clove expectantly. “What did she do?”

Clove took a deep breath as she regarded me. “I’m going to tell you, but you can’t, you know, pull a you?”

Pull a me? What could that possibly mean? “I promise. I just want to know what she did.”

“It happened like eight years ago – when you were in Detroit – so it’s really not a big deal,” Clove cautioned. She was stalling.

“What did she do?”

“It really wasn’t a big deal when all the dust settled,” Clove was still hedging telling me. It was driving me crazy.

“I’m going to wrestle you down and make you eat dirt if you don’t tell me,” I threatened.

“That hasn’t worked since I was ten,” Clove argued.

“That’s not true,” Thistle finally piped in. “It worked last year when you borrowed her favorite boots and then lost one – which I still don’t understand how that happened – and then you refused to replace them because you won’t buy leather products.”

Clove glared at Thistle. “Well, other than that time. You just had to bring that up, didn’t you?” She hissed.

Like I had forgotten about the boots.

“I didn’t mean to bring up the boots,” Thistle said sincerely – although I had my doubts that was true. “I just wanted to point out that whenever she makes you eat dirt, you fold like a bad gambler.”

“Well, at least my hair doesn’t wash me out,” Clove shot back.

“It doesn’t wash me out! My mom is crazy!”

“I like your hair,” I admitted. What? I like the color blue. I like purple better. I wonder how she would look with purple hair? Wait. I was letting them distract me. “Back to the subject, though. What did Aunt Tillie do when I was in Detroit that everyone thinks is too bad for me to know about?”

Clove averted her gaze again. She still wasn’t sure she wanted to tell me.

“Oh, good grief, it’s really not a big deal,” Thistle finally said. The more they said it wasn’t a big deal, the more I was convinced it was a huge deal.

“Then tell me what it is,” I challenged her.

“She poisoned everyone at the Senior Center.”

Never what you expect. “And how did she do that?”

“She mixed up some concoction and put it in the coffee.”

“Why would she do that?”

“She was convinced that they were cheating at euchre and she wanted to teach them a lesson,” Thistle answered simply.

“All of them?”

“She was convinced they were all in on an elaborate plan to make sure she always lost at euchre when she was there,” Thistle said.

“Well that seems plausible – or not,” I sighed. “And she killed people?”

“She didn’t kill people,” Clove interjected. “Most of the people were fine. There were only like twelve that had to go to the hospital – and most of them were out within a few days.”

“And she wasn’t arrested for this?”

“The chief let it slide when your mom asked him to,” Clove admitted.

The chief had always had a crush on my mom. Actually, I think he had a crush on Marnie and Twila, too.  It all depended on who brought him baked goods that week. “Is that why they still take him cookies and pie every week?”

“Probably.”

“Does everyone in town know she did that?”

“I don’t think they know,” Thistle said. “I think they just suspect. They can’t prove anything.”

“Well great, that makes it all better.”

“Don’t be sarcastic,” Thistle chastised me. “People hardly remember it anymore, especially since she held the autumnal equinox celebration in the buff last year. That hurt a lot more people than the belladonna incident did.”

I shuddered involuntarily. Yeah, I was one of those people.

The next day, I was still irritated by the fact that my whole family had conspired to keep a secret from me. Thistle and Clove could tell I was bothered when they handed me my usual cup of coffee in the morning.

“Just let it go,” Thistle warned me. “You’re not going to get anywhere if you confront everyone and pull a . . . well a you.”

Why does everyone keep saying that?

Instead of going to the office, I decided to go straight to the new corn maze on the north side of town at Harrow Bluff. It was opening today and it would be one of the front-page stories in next week’s edition of The Whistler. It’s a small town. Sue me. A new corn maze is the height of sophistication and interest in Hemlock Cove.

Since it was a corn maze, I dressed in comfortable jeans and a simple top. That’s the one good thing about working in a small town – and being the editor – you can get away with dressing any way you want to.

It took me about ten minutes to get out to the corn maze – and I was surprised to see that there was already a crowd milling about. Only in Hemlock Cove can a ribbon cutting for a corn maze draw half the town.