Stuck with a Spell (6 page)

Captain Allen and I just looked at each
other. I mean...c’mon on, how do you respond to that?

W
hile the Captain and Sam constructed our reversing boxes using
the Voodoo dolls they’d collected, the rest of us busied ourselves
with either spiritual bathing, house cleansing and floor washing or
hanging protective charms around the farmhouse.

Molly, my housekeeper, was usually a
cooking and cleaning machine. But not tonight. As we went about our
nonconventional “housework,” she stood off to the side, making
tsk-tsk noises, and drawing the sign of the cross over her head and
chest. An avid churchgoer, she wasn’t having anything to do with
what we were up to on this chilly winter evening.

I’ll admit, this whole situation was
turning out to be ironic and a major challenge for all of our
belief systems. Take me, for instance. I’ve prided myself on being
free of any supernatural hang-ups for a long time. But here I am
concocting potions and preparing incantations to chant.

A skeptic by nature, I’m still having a
hard time taking seriously the connection of Liza’s actions to the
unfortunate incidents that had befallen the two exes. Skepticism is
a good thing if you’re a detective working a murder case. It’s also
come in handy while constructing my fictional crimes and their
resolutions.

But as I watched the reversing spell
potion bubble away in my chili pot, I realized I was in uncharted
waters.

Note to self: Time to get a new chili
pot. There was no way I was going to subject a group of friends,
innocently gathered for chili and football, to whatever lingering
effects might be attached to my poor, doomed pot. And damn if I
didn’t really love this thing too.

“
Do you think all of this
stuff is going to work?” Sam’s cousin, Zoey Witherspoon, asked
while hanging a horseshoe over my back door.

“
I don’t have a clue,” I
said, figuring there was no sense in getting everyone’s hopes up.
“Everything I’ve read says we have to understand the culture of the
person casting the spells. Who the hell understands
Liza?”

“
Good point,” Zoey said,
going over to check on Grams who was completely engrossed in a
small pot she had on one of the back burners of my stove. “What are
you working on?”

“
The pages I printed out
said to put a piece of red flannel in hot water on the back of the
stove and let it boil,” she said, cranking up the heat on the
dial.

“
What’s that supposed to
do?” I asked.

“
It makes the one who has a
spell over you come and ask forgiveness.”

Great, I thought. That’s just what we
need. More Aunt Liza.

“
Personally, I like this one
best,” Grams said, pulling a second printed sheet from her apron
pocket. “It says all we’ve got to do is freeze the
bitch.”

Zoey and I choked on our whiskey,
looking at each other as if deciding in the silence if we (a)
wanted to know more about that and if so, (b) who was going to ask
for clarification.

What the hell? I loved Grams’
perspective on things, so I took the challenge.

“
How exactly are we going to
freeze Aunt Liza?” I asked.

For the record, I was all for it, btw,
and just needed to know how to get ‘er done.

“
Says here you just take a
bottle of water, preferably Holy Water, drop a slip of paper into
it that reads something to the effect ‘Aunt Liza is out of -
person’s name here - life forever’ and set it at the back of your
freezer. Thus, freeze the bitch,” Grams said, looking very proud of
her scoop.

“
Did someone ask for Holy
Water? I have some,” Sam said, coming back into the kitchen with
the Captain.

“
Perfect! Give me that
stuff! We’ve got a bitch to freeze!”

Grams was waaay too excited about this
whole thing. But at least she added humor to an otherwise
not-so-funny predicament.

Why the hell did Sam have Holy Water,
anyway? That was Sam. Always working every angle of the
metaphysical playing field. One day, she’s all about Buddhism, and
the next, she’s carrying a vial of Holy Water like it’s the most
natural thing ever. Nothing wrong with covering your bases, I
guess. That said, I decided it wasn’t the time to ask because that
would get Grams even more whooped up. And we certainly didn’t need
that to happen.

So, while Grams and Sam put Aunt Liza
into the sub-zero, I finished sprinkling red pepper and salt in
every corner of the kitchen, which is also supposed to help take
off any spells cast on me.

“
Looks like we’ve got the
reversing box ready to bury,” the Captain said, setting the one
he’d made for us on my kitchen table.

Before I could check it out, Liza was
knocking on my back door.

Molly, who would normally answer the
door if I was busy, made the sign of the cross again and headed for
her suite.

I shook my head, glad I’d also added
red pepper to the insides of my shoes too. There was no such thing
as over-preparing when it came to Aunt Liza.

“
Wait! Wait! Don’t open that
yet!” Grams yelled, reaching for an onion.

She chopped the thing in half with one
dangerous thrust of a meat cleaver and held it high in the air in
the direction of my back door.

“
Onions keep the evil
spirits out!” She yelled.

Who was I to argue?

“
What the hell are you all
still doing over here?” Liza asked.

Then she whispered in my ear. “Has that
crazy ass Grams lost it again?”

Talk about the pot calling the kettle
or chili pot black.

“
I just came over to
apologize for all of this...”

“
Aha! I told ya that boiling
red flannel would do the trick!” Grams cackled as if she were the
witch and not Liza.

Hell, what if they both were? I suppose
that’s highly possible. If I’d only already had a dime under my
fireplace to keep the witches out.

“
Oh my God! You’re binding
me?!” Liza shouted, then shrieked as she stared at the reverse
mirror box.

For a moment, it felt as if we were in
Oz, about to dump a big-ass bucket of water on The Wicked Witch of
the West.

“
Is there a better way to
stop your crazy ass spells?” I asked, knowing if there was she’d
sure as hell never tell us.

“
Well, no. But I could tweak
that so that I...”

“
No tweaks!” We all shouted
in unison.

N
ow
I was tweaking. Well...my phone was.

Damn. I did not need any more
distractions. Already at my whit’s end, my phone rang again,
pushing me ever closer to the edge of insanity.

I looked at the caller name
on the screen and couldn’t believe my eyes. It was
my
ex, Adah.

My blood froze. Holy crap! Liza hadn’t
been applying her wanna-be witch shenanigans to her too, had she? I
thought she just had it in for her and Sam’s exes.

I excused myself, went into my office
to take the call, then reluctantly pressed the talk button.
“Hello?”

“
Hi.” The tone of her voice
was distant, seemingly indifferent.

“
Hi. Is everything alright?”
I asked.

“
Why wouldn’t it be?” She
fired back.

“
It’s just that I haven’t
heard from you in so long...” I said then paused.

There was clearly no way I could ask
her if, within the past few hours, she’d experienced some
life-jeopardizing incident. Heck, any question I asked might make
her suspicious.

She’s a research scientist and
instructor at a prestigious academic institution on the East Coast
that just happens to rhyme with barvard. So, without demonstrable
proof, she wasn’t likely to think anything that occurred during the
past few hours would have anything to do with me or my tragically
eccentric aunt.

But Adah always did seem to have a
sixth sense that she attributed to being her mother’s daughter. And
her mother was one formidable soul. From a family with roots in
Zanzibar as far back as written records were kept, she was from the
old country...the oldest, literally. Her father was just as
formidable. He was the son of a Zulu chieftain who became a famous
Keynesian economics professor at Cambridge.

She wasn’t the most likely partner to
be hooked up with this farm boy, I’ll admit, but from the first day
I’d met her, I was beyond smitten.

“
Hello?”

“
I’m here,” I said, coming
out of my revelry, although my mind was still racing trying to
figure out what Liza might have done to her. “How are
you?”

“
I’ve been
better.”

“
What’s the matter?” I
asked, totally terrified of the answer.

“
I was in the process of
rearranging my lab earlier, and one of my graduate assistants
dropped a centrifuge at a rather inopportune time. Now I’ve got
three broken bones in the top of my foot. Needless to say, that’s
the end of my triathlon training.”

Shit. Shit. Shit. Liza was gonna pay
for this. Adah and I weren’t married anymore, but I still cared for
her, and Liza knew that.

“
I didn’t know you were
training for a triathlon,” I said, trying to sound as casual as
possible.

“
How would you? We haven’t
spoken for some time. I’m just sitting in the hospital with my foot
in the air, and I thought it would be a good time to check in.
You’ve been on my mind since I saw the article in the Globe about
Jack Collins’ murder. When I read that his body was found on your
farm, I nearly spit up my espresso. So, how are you holding up out
there?”

“
I appreciate your concern,
but I’m fine. Really, I am,” I said, doing my best to sound halfway
convincing, which was tough considering my blood was beginning to
boil.

Why the hell would Liza have any reason
to mess with Adah?

The only thing I could think of was the
pronunciation of her name. It sounds just like Ada, which is a
palindrome - a word that can be read the same way backwards as
forwards. And that was just the sort of oddity that appealed to
Liza.

One of the books on my bookshelves,
which Aunt Liza had recently borrowed and couldn’t stop talking
about, was The Poisonwood Bible. One of the main characters in
Kingsolver’s story was named Adah, and she was obsessed with
palindromes. She even imagined an alternate, darker version of
herself named Ada. Surely Liza wasn’t trying to tap into those
kinds of energy fields too?

But dammit all of this is just plain
crazy! Why was I even thinking about this? I swear, all of this
Liza nonsense is really starting to drive me mad. Palindromes? I
had to get a grip.

“
Are you still there?” Adah
asked.

“
Yes. Sorry. I’m just in the
middle of some damage control here.”

“
What’s going on? Not
another body, I hope.”

“
No. Nothing like that.”
Although, it certainly could have been. “Just cleaning up another
one of Aunt Liza’s messes.”

“
Say no more. We should have
lunch next time you’re in Boston.”

“
I’d like that,” I said,
relieved that Adah hadn’t inquired any further into the nature of
my aunt’s latest shenanigans. “Keep off that foot and get healed up
quickly.”

“
I will. Goodbye,
Nick.”

I said my goodbye, unable to get off
the phone fast enough.

“
Liza!” I screamed, and I
didn’t give a damn if everyone else in the house heard
me.

“
Yes, Nicky?” She said,
using her most innocent-sounding voice as she stepped into my
office from the kitchen.

“
I just got off the phone
with Adah.”

At the mention of my ex, the color
drained from her cheeks. And that was all the confirmation I
needed.

“
How many dolls were in that
explosion?”

“
What do you
mean?”

“
Don’t jerk me around, Liza!
How many?”

“
Uhm...Three.” Her answer
came out so softly that I couldn’t be certain of what she’d
said.

“
Pardon me? I didn’t quite
catch that.”

“
There were
three.”

“
Dammit, Liza! What the hell
were you thinking? What did Adah ever do to deserve one of your
hexes?”

“
She broke your
heart.”

I shuddered. She had me
there.

“
C’mon. You know we
separated amicably. It just didn’t work out, and you know that. Try
again.”

After a long pause, Liza hemmed and
hawed until she finally came out with it. “The spell works best in
threes.”

“
Okay. Fine. But that still
doesn’t explain why you would choose Adah.”

“
Because she’s another ex.
And that fact alone gave the spell the best chance to work. I did
make her situation less severe than Hank and Darryl’s.”