Miss Spelled (The Kitchen Witch 1) (10 page)

Chapter 19

I turned onto the street where Melanie lived and quickly pulled over to the curb. The woman who would have married Brant lived on the edge of town, on a lonely street named Agrimony Lane. There were four houses here, two on the other side, spaced well apart before the street ended in a cul de sac. Melanie’s house was the second on the left, situated just as the road bulged out into the turnaround.

The home was two stories tall, and gray. It was imposing looking, almost like something you would see in a horror film. The paint was peeling; the porch was wood and falling apart. There were no other cars parked on the street, apart from my car and another parked in the long driveway. I was worried that I stood out like a sore thumb, but there was nothing I could do.

I had planned to park and creep to the house on foot after I got there, but it was still light, and I was sure that could only end badly. But still, I had to do something. I thought that maybe I could walk around the block and head to the house from the back. That was better than nothing, so I turned off the engine and climbed quickly out of my car. As I was heading back to the street corner along the cracked and crumbling sidewalk, my phone buzzed in my jeans pocket. I pulled it out to see Thyme was calling me.

“I’m at Bill Gafney’s place,” she said in a hushed tone over the line. We still hadn’t been able to find out what Brant McCallum had on Bill Gafney and his run to be elected, but it must have been big.

“Is he there?” I asked, as I walked and turned the corner onto Rue Street, the one that ran perpendicular to Agrimony Lane.

“No, but someone’s watching TV in his living room. A woman. She has big hair, but I can’t see much else, because the chair she’s sitting in is pointing away from the window.”

“Is it his wife?” I asked. Bill was married to a prim and proper woman named Charlotte, who was a few years his junior.

“No, I got word she’s out of town. She teaches Bible study at the church, and she and a few others took the kids on a trip for a week.”

“Girlfriend?” I asked.

“Maybe,” Thyme said.

“Well, be careful,” I cautioned her, lowering my voice to a whisper as I approached the house that sat behind Melanie’s.

“You too,” Thyme said, and the line went dead.

I crept through the side yard of a brown house which was both smaller than Melanie’s and in better repair. The lawn was trim and there was a small flower bed running along the side of the house.

It wasn’t dark yet, but it was heading that way. I left the brown house behind and cut across to the backyard of the large gray one. There were enough shadows to provide cover for me, but that didn’t stop my heart from racing out of control. My palms were sweaty and I rubbed them on my sleeves.

A light was on in the gray house, on the ground floor. I peered through the window into the kitchen. There was a refrigerator against the wall, and stone countertops alongside it. Melanie didn’t appear to be in the kitchen, but I was too nervous to look straight in. I moved alongside the house and peered in through the window from the side. Now I could see more of the kitchen, including the stove. It was an older model gas stove, and it didn’t look like it was used much. I wondered if Melanie was a vegan. I bet the woman ate a lot of salads. I couldn’t see Brant eating a lot of salads. The marriage was probably doomed from the start, but was even more so if Melanie had killed her husband to be.

And then the woman herself appeared, coming in through a swinging door much like the one in the cake store that separated the kitchen from a dark hall. Melanie Simpson was tall and young, with long blonde hair. She was wearing running shorts with a baggy pink tee shirt. She looked as though she might be going running, but first she opened the fridge.

I was interested to see what the woman took from the fridge, but then I heard a voice and my blood ran cold. I turned to see a small child standing next to me.

“What are you doing?” the kid asked again.

“Uh,” I said, not sure of what to say. The child looked to be about seven. He was wearing a dirty shirt and shorts, with small gym shoes on his feet. He looked like he had spent a good and eventful day outside. I wondered if he lived in the brown house.

“Are you a bad guy?” he asked.

“What?”

“A burger,” the boy said. “Isn’t that what they’re called?”

I was confused for a moment, but then it dawned on me. “Oh, a burglar. No, I’m not a burglar, or a bad guy.”

I was worried Melanie would hear us and come to investigate, so I moved away from her house as quietly as I could, with the child following me.

“So what are you doing?” the boy asked once more.

“I’m playing hide and seek. I don’t want to be found,” I said in a flash of brilliance.

“Oh!” the boy said, nodding. “Can I play?”

“Sure, is that your house?” I asked, pointing across the two back yards to the brown house.

“Yes, my mom and I live there.”

“Okay, go hide in your yard. I’ll tell my friend someone new is playing when she finds me.”

“Okay!” the boy said, and he turned and ran for the house.

I felt bad for disappointing the kid, but when I turned to look into the window again, the kitchen was empty. It was also now dark. I was thinking about moving around to the front when I heard a car start from that direction. “Shoot!” I said somewhat too loudly. I hurried around to the front of the house, just in time to see Melanie’s blonde head in her car as it zoomed down the street. I watched the woman turn left.

“Shoot, shoot, shoot!” I said to no one in particular as I threw myself into my car and started the engine. I backed all the way out into the street, and hurried off in Melanie’s direction.

Melanie’s car was blue, and I was pretty sure I saw it up ahead, with two cars in between us. I fell into a relaxed pace as I followed her. Melanie turned this way and that, and soon there were no cars between us to keep me hidden, so I fell back a distance.

Melanie headed out of town for the countryside, and after fifteen minutes of driving pulled into a small gravel parking area at the foot of a couple of walking trails. She parked and got out, and hurried down one trail.

I considered what I could do, but I had to go for it. I parked as well and then got out, making a show of stretching my legs before I hurried down the same walking trail that Melanie had gone down.

I tried to stay back, but if the other woman were to turn around, there was nowhere for me to hide. Well, there were plenty of places to hide, but I figured it would be weird if I dived behind a tree. Luckily for me, Melanie didn’t turn around. She kept her head down as she walked, and I could see the bluish glow of a cell phone screen in front of her. Was she texting? Was she meeting someone out here in the bushland? Maybe for payment? Payment for a murder? My head spun as more and more possibilities filled it.

Suddenly Melanie stopped and bent down. I paused, moving off the trail and actually sliding behind a large old gum tree. I felt like an idiot, but it was the only plan I had. I peeked around the tree and saw Melanie digging in the dirt, next to the trail. I hadn’t noticed the small trowel the woman had brought with her, but I could see it plainly now.

Melanie dug up a small box and opened it. She pulled something out of it and slid it into her pocket. Then she put something else in it, reburied the box, and turned toward me.

I ducked back behind the tree. I was pretty sure that Melanie hadn’t seen me, and she walked back toward the parking lot. I let her go and then went to the spot where she had reburied the box. The earth there was soft and I could pull it up easily, and soon I had a small metal box held in one hand. I opened the lid with the other.

Inside the box was a small piece of paper. ‘Too late,’ it read, in slanting scrawl.

What did it mean? I had no idea. I was frustrated. Too late? Who was too late? It dawned on me that Melanie might have known she was being followed after all, and the note was meant for me. No, surely if the woman knew I was there, she would have said something.

I had nothing left to do but bury the box as fast as I could and hurry back to the parking lot. I did so, and once again arrived in time to see Melanie driving away. I had no way of knowing if she was going home, so I decided I needed to follow her once more.

Melanie’s car turned onto the road in the opposite direction to town. As I waited to follow her at a safe distance, my phone rang. It was Thyme.

“It’s him!” she yelled, before I could answer. “He’s the woman!”

“What?” I asked, as I slowly pulled onto the road.

“Bill Gafney is the woman. He got up to get a snack. It’s him, in a wig and a dress! He’s wearing stockings and heels! It’s him!”

I burst out laughing. “Poor guy. Well, we now know what Brant had on him,” I said after I caught my breath.

“Yeah. It’s a doozy. I’m going to keep watching him. You know, he looked better in that dress than I would have, seriously.”

I laughed.

“How are things on your end?” Thyme asked.

“Strange. I’ll fill you in tonight,” I said, and then I ran out of cell service. Melanie was pulling into another parking lot, at the head of another trail.

I followed her once more, and once more she dug up a box. I checked it out after she was gone, and this time there was a pencil inside. I couldn’t figure out what any of it meant. This was getting weirder and weirder. Yet again I followed her at a distance. She walked down the trail with her cell phone out, and she dug up another box. I decided to go for broke. As the woman was opening the box, I walked up to her. I figured she didn’t know who I was.

“Hi, what do you have there?” I asked, trying to be as nonchalant as I could.

“Oh, it’s a couple things,” the woman said, rising and turning. “You geocaching too?”

“Geocaching?”

“Yeah, I figured you got here like I did.”

“No, I don’t know what that is,” I admitted. “I’m, um, out collecting eucalyptus leaves for my garden.” I silently berated myself. What a stupid thing to say! I wasn’t even holding a bag to collect my supposed leaves.

“Oh, yes, they make good mulch,” Melanie said.

Who knew!

She kept speaking. “Someone buries something, and then they post the location, in coordinates, on a website. You have to use GPS to find it. The first one gets what’s inside. This one has a couple bucks and some old buttons from the thirties. Pretty cool stuff.”

“I’ve never heard of any of that in my life,” I said.

Melanie laughed. “I got into it a little while ago. I love it. I…” she paused then, and even in the falling light, with the sun so well blocked by the tall trees around us, I could see the woman’s eyes shining with tears. “I had a friend who did it with me. Well, he was more than a friend.” She sniffled. “He died, and I just, well, I thought that he would always be with me, but he isn’t.”

I smiled and nodded. “He is,” I said. “If you feel him, he’s here.” I hoped that was the right thing to say.

“He showed me about this. No one knew he did it, but he loved coming out and finding treasure. He said it made him feel like a kid again, playing pirates in the back yard. It’s kind of like that, digging something up.”

“It seems like fun,” I said, trying to be comforting.

“I should get going,” Melanie said. “Don’t get lost out here.”

“Yeah, I’m going to go a bit further and then head back,” I said.

“Here,” Melanie said, holding out a button. “Take this. Your first treasure.”

I reached out and took the button slowly. “Thank you.” It was made of tin and had a sharp spike on the back. It indeed looked like it was old.

Melanie nodded, and then turned around and headed for the road. I watched her go, and then started walking after her. I had wasted so much of my day, following a woman I was now convinced hadn’t done anything. As I drove home, I thought of the tears in the poor woman’s eyes.

Chapter 20

It wasn’t quite closing time, but Thyme and I both thought that no one would be coming in at this hour. Besides, it was only cranky customers who came in right at closing time. At the moment, there weren’t many customers, cranky or otherwise, what with all the rumors that cake from my store had killed Brant McCallum.

And this all led to my first lesson in witchcraft, in the store’s back room. I kept throwing nervous glances over my shoulder, as if someone would sneak up on us and ask us what we were doing. But no one was there, and no one was coming, so I turned back around to face Thyme and concentrate on the task at hand.

Thyme was holding a wooden box, as big a shoe box perhaps, with a hinged lid. She sat on the floor of the back room and motioned for me to do the same. I sat across from her, folding my legs beneath me. Thyme put the box in her lap and flipped open the lid. She pulled out a yellow candle first, thick and waxy looking, and set it on the floor. The next thing she extracted was a small plastic baggie with green herbs inside it. She set the box to the side and prepared the area between us.

The herbs were placed on the ground in a particular pattern, and then the candle was placed upon them, though the long stemmed herbs poked out from beneath the candle. “This can help us find out what killed Brant,” Thyme said, and although I wasn’t quite sure how some herbs and a candle were going to help, I thought it best not to say that, so I just nodded.

Before Thyme could go further with the spell, the front door to the cake store chimed as it was opened. I had been wrong. Someone had come in right before closing time.

“I’ll get it,” I said, standing quickly. I went through the swinging door out into the shop and froze. There were two police officers standing just inside the shop, the man and the woman who had come when Brant had died.

“Hello,” Constable Stevens said as she pulled off her hat. The male cop left his on.

“Hi,” I said, stopping at the counter. “Can I help you with anything?”

“As much as I’d love a cupcake, I better watch my diet,” the woman cop said with her trademark wide, and I suspected, fake smile. The male cop, Sergeant Greer, seemed content to hang back and let his partner do the work, wherever the work was today.

Constable Stevens held something in her hand, a manila envelope like one would find in any number of office buildings across the world, and she opened it as she moved to the counter. She pulled a single sheet from the envelope and stared at it. “Mind if I ask you a few questions?” she said after a moment.

“No,” I said. I was quite nervous.

“Do you guys use any old rat poison around here?” Reed asked.

I shook my head. “Is that what killed Brant McCallum? Rat poison? So you don’t think it was natural causes anymore?”

The female cop smiled as Sergeant Greer busied himself back by the door, gazing out of the window there as if he were on a stake out, although I was reasonably sure he had an ear attuned to the conversation at the counter.

“I’m sorry. It’s all strictly confidential. I’m sure you understand,” she said.

“Sure,” I said, and behind me the door to the back room swung open and Thyme came out.

“What’s going on?” she said.

“Just a few questions,” Constable Stevens said again. “I was asking Ms. Spelled if you ever used rat poison here, particularly any older brands. Maybe you would know if you guys ever used it?”

“No, never,” Thyme said, shaking her head. “We love animals here, even the so-called pests. We had a mouse problem a couple years ago, but we used traps that didn’t harm the animals. We baited them with peanut butter and then let them go down by the creek.”

Stevens nodded. “I see. Well, would you guys mind if we looked around?”

I knew that the cops couldn’t look if I didn’t allow them too, but I figured that would make them annoyed as well as suspicious, so I nodded. “Sure, go for it.” I hoped Thyme had cleared anyway all evidence of the spell.

“Great,” Stevens said with her irritating smile. She turned toward Sergeant Greer, who came striding forward. They didn’t spend any time out on the shop itself, but they went straight to the back room. I was relieved beyond measure that Thyme had cleared up the candle and herbs. The box remained out, sitting on a nearby counter, and Stevens flicked it open with a fingertip and looked inside it, although she was apparently uninterested in the contents and closed it quickly.

“When did you say you had a problem with mice?” Stevens asked.

“A couple of years ago,” Thyme said. “When we had that really rainy spring. The creek rose, and it sent the mice from the bushland all over town.”

“I remember the rain,” Stevens said, nodding. Her partner still hadn’t spoken. The two cops moved around the back room without another word, peering in boxes, lifting them up. Finally, they seemed satisfied and they went back out into the show room.

“Thanks,” Stevens said at the door with a smile that showed every tooth she had. The male cop had already headed out the door, and wasted no time climbing behind the wheel of the police vehicle parked at the curb in front of the cake shop.
Another good sign for potential customers
, I thought sarcastically.

By the time I locked the door behind them, we were officially ten minutes past closing time.

“So it was something that shows up in rat poison,” Thyme said after the door was locked.

I nodded. “But
old
rat poison, right? That’s the way she made it sound. Like it was something that wasn’t in rat poisons made today.”

Thyme tapped her chin. “Clever of you to catch that,” she said. “Maybe whatever it was, was too dangerous. They took it off the market.”

I shrugged. “Maybe.”

“If we could find out what it could be, that could help us out with this spell. I have to set parameters, and if we had a smaller list, it would go faster.”

“Well then, let’s check it out,” I said, leading the way to the back room. There was a small table in the room in the far corner, next to the rear door which led out to the alley that ran behind the shop, and contained a dumpster. On the table was an older model computer, but the internet was good, and I hadn’t seen the need to update.

I sat in a metal folding chair and Thyme leaned forward next to me, her hands palm down on the table.

“Where do we start?” I asked, already googling ‘old rat poisons’ before Thyme had a chance to answer. “Thyme?” I said, as she was staring off at the far wall.

“You know, I’ve just remembered something,” she said. “Brant came to the shop once, not too long before your aunt died, and he was complaining that his hair was falling out. Doesn’t arsenic cause hair to fall out? Probably other poisons do, too.”

I shrugged and typed in, ‘Poisons that cause hair loss’.

We spent a few minutes going through the search results, and Thyme took notes. After ten or so minutes, we had a list of poisons known to cause hair loss: arsenic, boric acid, thallium, meadow saffron, and lead. These could all lead to hair loss if introduced regularly to the body.

“Now we have to cross check to see if any of these things were in old rat poison,” I said. My next search, ‘old rat poison ingredients,’ was a good guess, because in only a few minutes of searching a couple different pages we had the list narrowed down from five to three. Arsenic, thallium, and lead had all once been used in rat poison, but had all been banned in the last few decades.

Thyme scribbled out the poisons that hadn’t made the cut. “Okay, that helps a lot,” she said as the two of us sat back down on the floor, and she set up the spell once more.

She laid out the herbs. “Althea,” she said, “for truth. Calamus root and licorice root for compulsion.”

She set down the candle and then lighted it with a silver lighter. She then reached to her neck and pulled up a piece of clear quartz that hung from a gold chain. She tugged the chain over her head and held it up for me to see.

“You need to get yourself one of these, girl,” Thyme said. “It’s a pendulum. I use it a lot.”

“What does it do?” I asked.

“I’ll write the names of the three poisons and the pendulum will swing over the poison that killed Brant McCallum.”

I clasped my hands together with delight. “Well, we can do that to find out his killer!” I exclaimed. “We can write the names of all the suspects on pieces of paper, and the pendulum can tell us who the murderer was.”

Thyme shook her head. “It doesn’t work like that. It would be great if it did. I know all the suspects.”

“So?” I was puzzled.

“Thinking gets in the way,” she said. “I know the suspects personally, so I’m attached to the outcome, even if subconsciously. If I have any information, the pendulum will be influenced.”

I pulled a long face, trying to take it all in.

“I’ll show you how it works,” Thyme said, and she took up the notebook again. She wrote down the three poisons on a separate sheet of paper for each and then tore them out. She placed them at the three equal points around the candle. She then took the quartz and held it by the end of the chain. She let it dangle over the flame of the candle. Slowly, it began to rock.

I thought Thyme must have been moving it on purpose, but as I watched her hand, I realized she wasn’t moving at all. Her fingers were as still as a statue. The crystal was moving on its own. The rocking became more like a circle, growing wider.

Suddenly, the quartz swung in the direction of one piece of paper, and then hovered over it. I leaned forward to read the page. Written in Thyme’s loopy, large scrawl was one word, ‘thallium’.

“There you go,” Thyme said, smiling as she flicked her wrist and the chain fell. She stood up, picked up a silver candle snuffer, and then used it to extinguish the flame. Smoke, gray and thick, curled up from the wick. Thyme took the candle and put it back in the box, and then gathered up the herbs.

“So now we know what killed Brant,” I said.