Deadly Harvest (3 page)

Brad was made to look bad, with mention of an affair.

The worst was that Mary's parents were convinced Brad had done away with his wife, and someone had suggested that Brad's law enforcement background would have given him the skills to kill Mary and dispose of her body, before putting on a desperate-husband act.

Rowenna, reading over his shoulder, said, “I'm sorry. It looks like terrible news.”

“I worked with the guy for years, and I know his wife pretty well, too. Hell, I was in their wedding. This guy was my partner for several years. They went through a really bad spell—she's a professional ballroom dancer and travels to competitions. Her partner's gay, and there isn't a soul who'll tell you she does anything but dance when she goes out of town. I think Brad just got a little lonely…. Anyway, they worked through it and got back together.” He stopped talking, realizing that he had given her a lot of information, and she hadn't really asked. “I know Brad, and I don't believe for a minute that he would hurt her, but when something like this happens, it seldom ends well. I hate to say it, but the odds are she's dead, and the cops are likely to waste time focusing on Brad instead of going after the real killer.”

She shook her head sadly.

“It's very strange,” she said, and briefly looked his way. “Sorry,” she added in response to his quizzical frown. “I mean it's strange the way she disappeared. Into thin air. Without anyone seeing anything. Salem at Halloween is insane. There are people everywhere. It's hard to believe no one saw anything.”

“Oh? How do you know so much about it?”

She offered him a dry smile. “Salem is my hometown. I was born there. Well, not in the city proper—my area is still unincorporated—but I grew up on stories of the witch trials. It would have been a plain old fishing village like a hundred others if not for that.”

“I knew you were from New England,” he told her. “I guess I just figured Boston, from the PR bio they sent me before you got here.”

“I went to college in Boston,” she said. “Actually,” she added with a laugh, “I went to college in a number of cities in a number of states.” She smiled self-deprecatingly. “What can I say? I like school. And one interest led to another.”

Jeremy idly ran his fingers through his hair, staring at her. “Just how many degrees to you have, Miss Cavanaugh?”

“Two. Philosophy and communications,” she assured him. “I like electives. I have tons of those. Ancient Greek legends, Roman beliefs and superstitions, and a lot of history.” She looked away for a moment, then went on. “Naturally I looked into the history of my own area. Back in the time of the witch trials, people were convinced that Satan actually walked the earth. Thousands were executed in Europe. Despite the madness, it never got as bad over here.” She grimaced. “My family was already in the area when it all happened. My great-great-great—well, a lot of greats, anyway—grandfather was arrested. His family had the money to get him out of jail, so he survived. The thing is, what went on then has nothing to do with Salem now. Today's witches are completely different.”

“Today's witches?” Jeremy echoed skeptically. “Great. Mary disappeared in a town where everyone thinks there are still witches.”

She was silent for a minute. “You're missing the point. Today's so-called witches are really wiccans. Wicca is a pagan nature-based religion. There's no relation between what wiccans practice today and what the witches of the past were supposedly doing.”

“Oh, please, you don't buy into all that, do you?” he asked her.

“I'm not a wiccan, if that's what you're asking, but I have friends who are,” she said, keeping as much indignation as she could from her voice. “Wicca is a recognized religion, you know. If a soldier comes home to be buried, he can have the sign of the pentagram on his marker, just the same as he could have a Star of David or a cross.”

“I'm sorry,” Jeremy said. “It's just that…well, bringing that kind of woo-woo superstition into things always complicates matters.”

“It shouldn't. Wiccans don't believe in doing evil. Whatever one person does to another is returned threefold. So a wiccan wouldn't hurt anyone, because they would be hurt three times as badly in return.”

“Yeah, and if you're Christian, you go to hell if you kill someone. That doesn't stop a lot of Christians from turning into cold-blooded murderers.”

“I agree with you there,” she said.

He'd had enough of the discussion suddenly. “Look, we're not going to solve anything here, so why don't we head over to the Quarter?”

“You're taking me up on that drink?” she asked.

He was. He wasn't sure why, but he was. He liked the sound of her voice. He was interested in the things she had to say. He was drawn to her—well, hell, any heterosexual male was going to be drawn to her—even though he still felt as if he needed some kind of barrier between them.

Not that it really mattered now. Today was it. She was leaving after tonight's party. No more debates. Their paths would not cross again.

“Yeah, let's do it,” he said. “In fact, how about we grab some lunch?”

They headed toward Royal Street and a quiet restaurant, where Rowenna ordered tea and crawfish and he decided on jambalaya.

“So go on,” he told her, once they had been served. “I want to know more about what witches are today.”

“Really?” she asked.

“Yes, really.”

She arched a brow, doubtful, then plunged on. “The Salem witch community started in the early 1970s, when a woman named Laurie Cabot, who's now considered the official witch of Salem, moved to town. There are now several thousand practicing wiccans in the area. They would have been in real trouble back when the Puritans were in charge. Ironically, they left England looking for religious freedom, then went on to persecute anyone who didn't worship as they mandated. But wiccans—if there had been wiccans back then—would never have practiced Satanism the way the Salem witches supposedly did. The devil is a Christian concept, a fallen angel. So wiccans
can't
worship the devil or sign a pact with Satan, because in their religion, he doesn't exist. That's not to say there aren't Satanists out there, because there are, but that's a different philosophy entirely.”

He stared at her and nodded gravely. Was it a lecture on the ironies of man that he really needed? Maybe, in a way.

Brad and Mary had gone to Salem. Mary had disappeared. He needed to know anything he could about the place, and Rowenna knew a lot about it. She was also beautiful and, frankly, enchanting, and the scent of her cologne was arresting. Mesmerizing. He felt his pulse stutter.

She had never claimed to read minds, but he felt that she knew what he was thinking. That he didn't really think witches or Satanists, real or imagined, past or present, had anything to do with Mary's disappearance and the probability that something terrible had happened to her.

Unless someone out there believed he was following the dictates of Satan.

She smiled. “You think anyone who decides to practice an ancient and long-dead religion is an idiot.”

“I don't care if you want to worship palm trees—as long as you don't use your belief as an excuse to hurt or kill anyone else,” he told her.

She laughed. When she did, her eyes were like liquid gold, he realized. “You'd like the wiccans just fine, then. Like I said, they do no evil, because evil comes back threefold.” She shrugged. “I don't think anyone has the answers to the questions that plague the universe. We all want to think people who hurt others will be punished—in this world or the next. Or, better, now
and
in the afterlife, assuming you believe in an afterlife.”

“Are you saying you don't?” he asked her.

“I definitely do.” She gave a little shiver as she said it. “You're thinking about something else, aren't you?” he asked.

She looked startled, then offered him a rueful grin. “We have a legend up where I live about a sort of bogeyman. We call him the Harvest Man. He's a creature of evil—drawn from old pagan practices, even Native American beliefs, and the concept of Satan, as well. When someone disappears, when something awful that can't be accounted for occurs, we chalk it up to the Harvest Man. He doesn't have horns and a tail. In fact, he doesn't really look all that scary. He wears a crown of autumn leaves and a cape the color of the earth. He's taller than most men, too. Huge.”

“So he goes after young women?” he asked.

“I don't know how the legend got started, to tell you the truth, but the oldest story I know is from a few hundred years ago, sometime after the witch trials, when a series of young and beautiful women disappeared. They never caught the killer, so colonists, probably influenced by the local tribes, said the Harvest Man was out there, stealing their souls.”

“Don't tell me you're saying Mary was taken by the Harvest Man.”

“Of course not. I'm just saying it's New England, there's a story to go with anything that can happen. But if you're wondering if I think there's a real-life killer out there, someone just as evil as the Harvest Man, then I'm afraid it's a real possibility.”

Just then his phone rang, and he had the strangest feeling, even before he glanced at the number, that it was going to be Brad.

It was.

He excused himself, and stepped outside.

 

Rowenna played idly with the straw in her iced tea, wishing she'd made a hasty goodbye when Jeremy had taken the call.

Maybe it was just having too much time to think while their conversation was still fresh in her mind, but she had an awful feeling she knew what was going to happen. Brad was going to call Jeremy for help—in fact, for all she knew it was Brad who had called just now—and Jeremy would come to Salem.

She felt her heart pounding a bit too hard, and she tried to still it. She wouldn't see him, even if he did. He didn't like her, so he would hardly give her a call or ask for her help.

But she
would
wind up seeing him.

Detective Joe Brentwood would call her, and Jeremy's eyes would widen when he saw her, and she could only imagine his anger—and his opinion, whether kept inside or voiced out loud. “My friend is in trouble, and you're going to bring a psychic quack in on it?”

“Will there be anything else?”

The waitress startled Rowenna, who barely managed not to jump. “No. Thank you. May I just get the check, please?”

As soon as she had paid the bill, she slipped out and hurried to her car. He wouldn't be heartbroken to discover her gone, and she knew that even though he owned one-third of the Flynn plantation, he wasn't living out there and instead was staying at a small, privately owned hotel just the other side of Jackson Square.

Her own hotel was just down Royal, and as she drove those few blocks, she couldn't help wondering whether she would be stuck dreaming about him for days to come, and paradoxically hoping both that he wouldn't show up in Salem…and that he would.

 

Upstairs in her room, there was little to do. She had organized almost everything over the last few days, knowing she would be heading out in the morning.

Feeling absurdly disconsolate, she sat on the bed, then nearly jumped sky-high when her cell phone rang. She expected it to be Jeremy, wondering why she had walked out on him without even saying goodbye.

So much for psychic connections. It was Kendall.

“Hey,” Kendall said.

“Hey, yourself.”

“You're leaving tomorrow—you weren't even going to call?” Kendall asked.

Guilt washed over her. She had known Kendall for years, having first met her at Tea and Tarot, the shop Kendall had owned until recently, when she'd sold out to an employee, so she could give her full attention to her marriage and the theater she had dreamed of founding since college.

“No, of course not,” Rowenna said. It wasn't a lie. She would have remembered to call. Wouldn't she?

“Why don't you come out for dinner?” Kendall asked her. “We won't keep you late.”

Rowenna looked around the room. She thought about lying, about telling Kendall that she was a mess, that she had a million little things to do to get ready to leave, after having lived in a hotel room for two weeks.

But she wasn't going to. Kendall had been her friend forever. Yes, she was married to Jeremy's brother, but that wasn't worth ruining a friendship.

“I just had a late lunch,” Rowenna said.

“I won't make you eat a lot,” Kendall told her.

Rowenna laughed. “Sure, I'll drive on out. Thanks. It will be good to say goodbye one last time.”

“Hey, don't say that,” Kendall protested.

“Sorry, I didn't mean it that way. I mean, before going home.”

“Great.”

“Hey, you know, you guys could come up my way for Thanksgiving,” Rowenna told her.