From Herring to Eternity (25 page)

Watching Kamala Moon was like watching a blowfish . . . deflate. Now that she had something to lose, she wasn’t so interested in manning the barricades. And maybe there was something else at work, the revelation that there was another way to do this. Not by making demands but by making conversation. If college taught her nothing but that, it would be worth the time and expense.

“You promise to talk to Dr. Sterne?” she asked, some of her belligerence returning—for show, I imagined.

“I said I would. Don’t push me.”

“You’re pushing me.”

“I’m thinking those should be your last words before you go,” I said.

Young Kamala Moon, the self-appointed voice of her generation, hesitated—then grabbed her bag and turned to go. Thom was standing in front of her, between tables, so she couldn’t go around.

“That’ll be a buck from everyone,” Thom said in a loud voice. “And a tip would be greatly appreciated by your waitstaff.”

Kamala Moon fished a crumpled dollar from her back pocket. Bills and coins hit the tables like pennies from heaven as the kids didn’t wait for the checks but left. When the door had clapped shut behind the last of the powdered
tuchases
, Luke came from the kitchen and hugged me.

“You were awesome,” he said.

There were nods from the remaining patrons and proud smiles from the staff. I grinned tightly then went to my office to
plotz
. The whole thing was kind of a blur, and I think I was mostly bluffing, but at least the second of the mysteries was cleared up.

I knew who took the trumpet case.

I knew who tried to poison me.

Now all that remained was the eight hundred pound
behemot
in the room: who killed Lippy and Tippi?

Chapter 25

It was strange to be checking off solutions without sharing them with Grant. Not strange in a personal context, just in a procedural sense. In the few cases that had fallen in my lap since Hoppy Hopewell literally fell in my lap, he was always a part. That’s how we hooked up, turning brainstorming into a sleepover.

It felt good to be flying solo in that regard as well. It was narcotic, lifting me from the quasi-depression that I was in. I blew through the rest of the day on adrenaline, and when I went home, I was ready to sleep. The lawn was clear of Wiccans and their tent, the street was clear of what may or may not have been Dickson watching me from a car, and I didn’t smell anything that hinted of an unwashed mass. I knew I was safe because my cats came to the door to let me know they were hungry.

I felt a twinge of guilt as I cranked open two cans of cat food. The way I thought about the students
did
cause me to face the fact that my disappointment with the young and with Dickson was turning me into something of a reactionary. I had seen that happen with my uncles and with senior investment people. I had never liked it in them and I didn’t like it in me—though apart from this little pang, I didn’t throw up any sandbags. They had caused it. That’s why the word was “reactionary.” And there was—of course—a Yiddish phrase which took on that inevitability:
An ofter gast falt tsu last.

A frequent guest becomes a burden.

Throughout my adult life I’ve listened, I’ve listened some more, I’ve given to charity, I’ve given my trust, and all I hear is the same thing: give me what you worked hard to have. Not just my assets but my self-respect. My freedom. So I’ve moved to the right where I don’t have to hear. I’ve backed away from men so I don’t have to be disappointed.

Who’s at fault?

I had brought home split pea soup, and while I warmed it and heated a few slices of
challah
, I went to the laptop on the coffee table and checked e-mail and Facebook. There was nothing pressing, nothing especially interesting. Facebook had too many obscure posts with people asking what they meant, or self-pitying laments with friends offering the expected buck-up replies. It was a waste of tired eyeballs. Even the photos, which took too long to load, showed more and more people who I knew less and less about. Allie Mihalko, who I had worked with in New York, had a husband and he had a family. My Manhattan neighbors had puppies; I was glad I wasn’t there to hear them bark.

Vei is mir,
I thought. The world is growing utterly narcissistic and you are going completely sour.

Thinking of the world made me wonder if the earth was happy, now that it wasn’t going to be forced to share its bounty with the university. I went ahead and looked to see if there was a Facebook page for the Nashville Coven. There was for everything else. I hadn’t bothered to look before because, honestly, I’d had enough of Wiccans right from the start. Now was the time to do the whole “keep your enemies closer” thing.

I found it and was surprised to find someone I didn’t know post about this being the fifth anniversary of their entry into the coven. There were, as was to be expected, a battery of “likes” and a flurry of congratulatory replies.

There was something else. More of the same.

I got my soup and sat by the computer with it and researched Wiccan anniversaries. They were referred to as Days of the
Propicius Sp
ritus
. I looked it up. The phrase was a merging of English, Middle English, and Latin—symbolically, a stretching-across-time—and it meant, not unexpectedly, days of propitious spirits. Meaning that it was a good time to act.

“Act on what?” I wondered.

Further reading revealed the expected: It was a good time to act to honor whatever you were celebrating. But it was also a good time to act against whatever bad may have occurred on that date.

I looked back to the day Lippy was killed; no one had posted anything about any anniversary. So that was a dead end.

And then it was
Whoa Nellie!
as Bozo the Clown used to shout on TV when I was a very little girl. What I saw was like a thunderclap, scary but illuminating. I looked up
Come Blow Your Horny
on the tongue-twisting site, AFCACDB. Damn—the answer was there.
Right there.
I looked up a celebrity home on Google Map, then checked the online archive of the
Nashville National
. I had an all-access password thanks to a debt owed me by the owner, Robert Reid. I went back ten years—and
bingo!
again. Both were a perfect fit. I looked up Bill “Spud” Carla’s online store, checked the list of vitamins and supplements he offered for sale. I clicked on several of them to see what they did. I found what I was looking for as I finished my soup.

It all made sense. Sick, vengeful, nasty sense.

I checked an address in the online white pages, then grabbed my bag and got in the car.

I had no idea exactly where I was going, so I plugged the address into my cell phone GPS. When that was set I made a call. What was about to happen would not be pretty, however it went. If it was at all possible, I wanted to make sure it wouldn’t also be deadly.

But this thing was also mine. I didn’t want Grant Daniels involved in this. He would probably think I was nuts. If I was, no one would know but me. Besides, if he showed up, there was no guarantee that things would go the way they needed to.

There were no Native American reservations in Tennessee. The state did, however, have a Native American Indian Association, which oversaw small communities and apartment buildings that provided housing and assistance for persons of Native American descent. For the Cherokee in Davidson County, that was an older housing development in the Bordeaux-Whites Creek area west of the city. Bordered generally by the Cumberland River, I-24, and the county line, the region is mostly rural and hilly with occasional pockets of tract houses fifty and sixty years old and trailer homes which only looked that old. Frank James, the notorious brother of outlaw Jesse, lived here for many years.

The perfect place for a criminal to hide
, I thought as I left the highway and made my way along dark, untraveled Whites Creek Pike.

I probably should have waited until the daytime, but I wouldn’t have been able to sleep. Not with this new idea bubbling in my brain.

Better to be dead?
I asked myself.

Not if I did this right. And that was it, wasn’t it? I wanted this challenge. I created it, I invoked it. I had pushed myself and, so doing, I had cleared my property of squatters and found out who had attacked me.
I
did that, without Grant, without an attorney. I liked feeling
something
, even if it was dangerous—including fear over the possibility of being force-fed daphne or some other unhappy herb.

I had the window open. I could literally smell the change of scenery from my tree-lined street with the clinging scent of gas fumes and neighborhood cooking to—how had A.J. once put it? “To where the Cumberland Plateau just wears out.” The Appalachians were to the east and they sloped down to where I was now, a world of old growth trees like eastern hemlocks—isn’t that what Socrates drank to depart Ancient Greece?—northern red oaks, and American chestnuts. It was like a salad bar in a health food store. I loved the sizzling grill at the deli, but that only went as far as the nose. There was no doubt that this air got into your cells and did a Snoopy dance.

It was almost anesthetizing and I had to focus to stay alert—especially with a road where there was more likelihood of hitting a bear than another vehicle.

The thirty-acre spread of lowlying homes—cottages, really—came up on the right. I got off the highway and followed the curving exit to the north. The Cherokee Nation Village was announced by a weather-worn wooden sign planted in the ground. An old post stood behind and above it with a red-and-white P
RIVATE
P
ROPERTY
sign—peppered with rusted dents from what looked like target practice with a BB gun. The pulsing dot on my cell phone told me to follow Whites Creek Annex—a big C-shaped road—to near the end. Sally Biglake lived on a small, dead-end street named Coventree.

Of course.

I knew the witch would be in because the Facebook page said she was holding a meeting at her home. I was guessing their banishment was on the agenda. I had every right to be there, I supposed, though I had no idea whether I would be welcome. That I would be admitted, I did not doubt, not after I said what I had to say.

Sally’s home was at the end of a cul-de-sac. Illuminated by a single yellow lantern above the front door, the cottage was an adorable log cabin. There was a rainbow spray of all kinds of plants in hanging pots and window boxes, in the garden along the entire front and in the windows. The driveway was to the left, a vegetable garden was fenced off to the right. The nearest neighbors were about two acres behind me on both sides of the street. Sally’s motorcycle was there, along with a van, a Volvo, and a vintage Volkswagen love bug.

I killed the headlights as I neared and pulled to the curb well before the cottage. I exited quietly and took several long, deep swallows of rustic air. My heart was thudding so hard it actually scared me; I didn’t know hearts could do that without
plotzing
.

I started toward the cottage, my shoes crunching on dirt that had washed down onto the old asphalt road. Apart from crickets, owls, and an occasional dog bark, it was the only sound. I looked up. The stars were brighter here than in Nashville. I smiled as I flashed back to being at the Hayden Planetarium as a sixth grader. It had been fan cooled, like the air felt now. My heart was thumping then because I had loitered and maneuvered going in so I would be next to Hershel Lewis. I’d had a crush on him. He was a tall, quiet kid who was also the president of the audio-visual club. I’d admired how sure he was of his equipment. His projectors and record players, I mean. He had a ring of school keys hooked to his belt and stuffed in his pocket and whenever he had to leave class there were no questions asked.

Maybe I was spoiled at a young age to be drawn to men who had confidence and suction with the powers-that-be. My husband had been like that. And Grant. And the crush I had felt on that bum-lord Stephen R. Hatfield, who treated his tenants and his women like crap, but, boy, did he have confidence and local pull.

Get over that
shmontses, I told myself.
It was understandable when you were twelve. It isn’t now.

I was at the front door. Beating myself up had slowed my heart rate. The cat that had gone rat-catching at my house was circling my feet and mewing. I didn’t need to ring the doorbell—which, I noticed now, did not exist. Sally opened the door. She was dressed in a white robe with red floral patterns on the sleeves—roses and thorns. She looked at me with a rocky jaw, all solid lines and lumps. It softened quickly.

“Sister Gwen,” she said. “It’s so good to see you! You were the one most hoped for yet the last anticipated.”

“I’m sure,” I said. “I mean, after all the hubbub about the temple.”

“All in the past now.” She pivoted away like Ali Baba’s stone wall swinging wide. “Please. Join us.”

Chapter 26