The Magic of Murder (19 page)

Rebecca jumped in. “But it was close enough, so we
had to see. Visions aren’t always precise. Sometimes they’re
more metaphoric—”

“And while I tried to figure out where—”

Like a traffic cop, Roger held up his hand. When we stopped jabbering, he pulled his cell phone from his pants pocket. In a few terse words, he told about the barn, the SUV, and the men in black ski masks.

As soon as he snapped the lid of his phone closed, I asked, “They’re letting you work the case?”

It was another rhetorical question.

He came to the sofa and tucked the afghan tight around me and Rebecca. “With Woody locked up while we investigate his wife’s homicide,” he said, “the Feds decided to let me work with them. Deputy Chief Reynolds vouched for me.”

He picked up the caulking gun and returned to the window.

Rebecca glanced at me. “Kevin?” she whispered.

After fearing for my life while we were chased, and the utter relief when it turned out the legs on my basement step were attached to Roger’s body, I’d completely lost sight of the reason Rebecca and I left my house in the first place.

“Roger, was Kevin at the stone house?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Your ex was there sometime in the past few days, though. Seems like he camped out in one of the bedrooms. We found a sleeping bag and fast food wrappers on the floor.”

Rebecca and I exchanged glances.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” she said.

Without hesitation, she spoke about the tarot readings she’d done for Ira Smith, how nervous he’d been at their last session, and what he told her about Kevin getting him involved with dangerous people. “Only he didn’t mention Kevin Reinhart’s name. That’s why I didn’t know Ira was connected to all this.”

Roger was again on the chair, sealing the upper edge of the window. When Rebecca got to the part about her own reading and the funeral the cards showed her, a long line of clay spurted from the caulking gun. His back to me, I saw the muscles twitch in his shoulders and tense in his neck. I was glad I couldn’t see his face when, in words almost hissed, he said, “That won’t happen on my watch.”

He climbed from the chair, carefully laid the caulking gun on the old sheet he’d spread across the carpet and turned to us. “In ten minutes there’ll be a squad car in front of your house. A cop will check your backyard regularly. No way those guys are gonna get another chance at you—”
he glanced at Rebecca “—at either of you. You know why?”

I figured he didn’t expect an answer. I knew I was right when he strode to the sofa, loomed over us, and answered his own question in a staccato monotone.

“Because you are both going to stay put, is why.”

The way Roger’s forehead creased and his eyes flared, he was more frightening than the man in a black ski mask who’d aimed a rifle at my car.

Rebecca latched onto my blouse and meekly nodded.

Elvira buried her head between us.

“But—” I got no further.

“Am I being perfectly clear this time?”

My mouth snapped shut.

I guess he thought my compliance came too easy, because he glanced around and said, “Where are your car keys?”

My lips tight, I dropped my eyes to my lap.

Her face still buried and her body shaking, Elvira whined in a way that said,
Don’t ask me, sir. I’m just a cat. I don’t drive.

Rebecca pulled her hand from under the cover. She pointed at her floral shoulder bag on the coffee table.

I glared at her.

“Your keys in there, too?” Roger said.

She nodded.

“Are you going to let him get away with this?” I said.

Again Rebecca nodded.

This time Elvira’s whine told me to shut up, Roger was already angry enough.

After dropping our keys in his pocket, he said, “I suppose I won’t have to worry about you pushing your car back to the Falls?”

I hadn’t been scolded this way since Mrs. Keller made me stand in the corner for hours when I was in the third grade. Or maybe it was Mrs. Edelman, my seventh grade gym teacher. Regardless, it had been a long time. My face grew hot. My temper was about to flare.

Roger must have sensed this. He slowly turned back to us with a tight-lipped grin. “Of course, I could lock you both in a cell for reckless driving if you prefer. I hear the traffic squad would like to have a few words with the maniacs who ran a light and caused an accident on Pine Avenue this afternoon.”

I had to hand it to him, he played quite a good trump card. It shut me up.

For the moment.

Chapter Twenty

Sarah’s Goode Advice

             
 
B
efore he left for the Hyde Park Road precinct, Roger checked the windows and the locks on the French doors and the kitchen door.

“These stay closed,” he instructed. “Don’t let anyone in.”

“But my window,” I said. “I have to call Fred Silbert, have him come over and fix it.”

Roger dropped his hands to his hips. “You aren’t deaf. I know you heard me. No one gets in here. Not Fred, not even one of the cops from the patrol car. No one.”

I gazed at the plywood sheet nailed over my front window. I dropped my eyes to the burn marks on my living room carpet. In my mind, my house had begun to look like the ramshackle hovels I saw in my vision. Soon, it would look like the falling-apart barn those masked men came out of. This wasn’t a hovel. It was my home, my sanctuary. No way would I let it stay a rundown mess.

Roger must have seen my eyes roam around the room, because he muttered, “You are such a pain.”

He lifted the skirt of his camelhair coat and reached into his back pocket. When his hand emerged, a pair of handcuffs dangled from his fingers. He took a step toward me, and held them out. “Let’s go.”

The man was serious.

I grabbed the armrest of the sofa and shook my head. Hard.

“Let’s
go
,” he said more firmly. “I don’t need to be distracted by worrying about you.”

I pulled the afghan up to my chin. The movement shook Elvira to the floor. She rolled over and sat for a moment with a stunned expression.

“Coming?” Roger said.

If I didn’t know better, I would swear the cat stuck out her front paws for him to cuff (what was it I said about my strange imagination?).

I leaned as far from Roger as I could. “Okay.” I said.

A satisfied smile crossed his lips. “Okay, what?”

“Okay, we’ll stay put.”

“And no one gets in?”

I sighed. “I won’t let anyone in.”

A writer, I try to use words precisely.

Roger had known me long enough to sense what was on my mind. He held the handcuffs out to Rebecca, “
You
won’t let anyone in, either. Right?”

She raised her hand, three fingers up as if giving the Girl Scout oath.

“Good, now we understand each other,” he said, and headed for the front door. As he opened it, he called over his shoulder, “Elvira, you’re the only one here with any sense. Make sure they keep their promise.”

I looked down. The big white suck-up wore a smug expression.

***

As soon as I heard Roger’s Trailblazer pull out of my driveway, I turned to Rebecca. “Now what do we do?”

“We do what we promised,” she said. “We stay put.”

“I can’t do that. I won’t be a sitting target when people are trying to kill me.”

“Trying to kill
us
,” she said with a pout.

“Okay, us. You don’t want to make it easy for them, do you?”

She shoved the knit cover from her lap. “I swear to you, Emlyn Goode, if the cards had shown you’d get me into this kind of trouble, I…I would have let that stupid Molotov cocktail burn you to a cinder.”

She jumped from the sofa, sidled around the coffee table, and stormed past the wingback chair and into the kitchen. Water hissed in the sink. Metal clanked, a cabinet opened. How could she make tea at a time like this?

I heard her mutter, “I can’t believe the way I drove today. I never do anything like that. Never even drive as fast as the speed limit.”

My eyes turned down to Elvira. “You’ll help me, won’t
you?”

She gave a long
meeeeow
.

I had really gotten to understand her. She’d just told me,
Uh-uh. I don’t want to land in jail. That’s where Sarah Goode wound up, and you know what happened to her
.

“Traitor,” I muttered, then called aloud, “You hear me, Rebecca Nurse? You’re both traitors!”

My friend came from the kitchen carrying two steaming
mugs. On her face she had what I took as a wistful smile.
“You know,” she said, “it was actually fun, sort of, being bad
today.”

“We weren’t bad. We were trying to stay alive.”

“Still—” she handed me a mug. “Here, drink this.”

“What’s in it, sleeping pills?”

“No, rosemary and lavender. This will calm you.”

“I don’t need to be calm,” I shouted. “I need to do something!”

“I know,” she said. “But we won’t be able to figure out what with our minds beating a tattoo because of the excitement. So, we drink this tea and relax.”

“Then what? We take a nap?”

“No. Then we sit quietly and listen. The earth and wind
will tell us what to do.”

I took a few breaths—what my yoga instructor called calming breaths. In a few moments I had calmed enough to realize Rebecca was right. It seemed as though she always was—well, at least most of the time. I raised my mug. “Here’s to the earth and the wind.”

As we sipped the rosemary and lavender brew, the windows on the French doors rattled. Apparently the wind agreed with my friend.

We sat with our backs straight against the cushions, me on the sofa, Rebecca in the wingback chair below the railroad station clock. Through deep and relaxing breaths, I visualized the wind and how it swept across the earth. How it caressed the branches of trees. How it swirled upward to the heavens. The wind was free, moved with its own will.

My eyes fell on Sarah Goode’s
Book of Shadows
. When
I lifted it, the book fell open. I scanned the page. It seemed as though my ancient relative spoke to me from the distant past.

4 March, in the year of our Lord, 1692.

It has happened. Those foolish children, Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Williams, have denounced me as a witch, a Devil worshiper
. Why? I did naught but seek them comfort from the brain fever that causes them to twitch and moan, and run among the wheat stalks unclad. So today I have a roof above me, and I sleep on cold straw. Bars on the door keep me from bringing low other weak-minded children with my potion that is naught but lavender and rosemary.

The black slave, Tituba, lies here also, for the crime of obeying her superstitious mistress’s demand for a devil cake. And though fed to those children the cake cured their brain fever, Magistrates Hathorne and Corwin say it was the Evil One’s work. 

Is there no end to this madness?

And, oh, the shame! Two days ago the Magistrates entered my cell, tore from me my blouse, and examined my bare breasts, seeking, they said, for a mark to show I have suckled the Devil’s familiars. And my youngest daughter, my Dorothy, only four, is held in custody until she swears an oath against me, and says the Devil’s milk nourished her at my breast.

I must flee this place. I must do as some in this Salem town now swear they have seen me do, and soar on the wind across the night sky. This is a real and true gift, even if it is only in my mind. Without my herbs and spices I can do this. The good God has seen fit to give me this gift by which, with breaths and concentration, I might fly from here to confront those who would do me evil…

I shut the book and looked over at the wingback chair. Rebecca’s eyes were closed. Her breaths came at an easy, steady rate. Elvira was curled on her lap, snoring.

I placed the book gently on the table. I tiptoed to the basement door. Strange, I didn’t think to take my crutches. Yet I didn’t limp. I felt no pain in my foot and leg.

The door didn’t squeak when I opened it.

Roger must have oiled the door when he fixed my window
, I thought. I glanced at the window. No plywood covered it now. When was Fred Silbert here? I didn’t dwell on the question. The sun had set. An east wind whipped though the birch branches. The trees danced to a manic rhythm.

Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Williams must have behaved like those tree limbs, hands flashing this way and that as if they were bewitched.

In the basement, I opened the door to the closet in which I stored my candles, athame, and other tools of my new craft. In a corner was a besom, an old fashioned broom made of twigs. The kind Sarah Goode would have used. Where had it come from? I had no time to consider that.

I clutched the broom in my arms and climbed the stairs, then another flight to the second floor of my cottage. In the upper hall, I yanked the string to drop the trap door. I pulled down the ladder-like steps and climbed to the attic. Even with insulation tacked between the joists, the beating of the wind on the roof sounded like thunder. I didn’t feel the bitter cold, though. I knew why: the wind could not touch me while my complete concentration rested on the flight I was about to take.

Carefully, I stepped from beam to beam until I reached the round portal at the far end of the house. The back end. If I flew out this way, the officers in the patrol car parked out front wouldn’t see me leave. They wouldn’t call Roger and tell him to come over and pull me back.

With my shoulder, I shoved the round window open. The chill wind blew through my hair and caressed my face. I felt as though I were one with the wind, one with the air. I could do this. I knew I could.

I took a step back. The broom between my legs, I bent over and launched myself into the dark universe.

In moments, I soared over Niagara Falls and hovered above the Hyde Park Road precinct. Looking down, I saw Roger’s Trailblazer parked in the lot. He stood beside it, earnestly speaking with two men. I tilted my body like a plane dipping its wings and veered toward the Woodwards’ house. Again I looked down—

Pounding. Where did that pounding come from? Was it the wind beating against my ear drums?

“Emlyn.”

The wind shook me.

“Emlyn!”

Now it called my name.

“Wake up, Emlyn.”

I began to twist, like in a whirlwind. No, like in a whirl
pool
. A gust of wind must have blown me over the Niagara River just before it flows into Lake Ontario. I tilted downward, drawn toward the eddying frigid water—

“C’mon, wake up.”

“Huh?” My eyes shot open. “What…what happened?”

“You fell asleep.”

My head sprung forward. My mouth as wide as my eyes, I looked down. My grandmother’s knitted afghan was spread across my lap. Sarah’s book was open in my hands.

I heard more pounding. This wasn’t the wind. I shifted left, right.

The raps grew louder, more insistent.

Rebecca had a death-grip on my arm. Her face taught, her nails dug into my flesh. “Someone’s at the French doors.”

“Who?”

“How would I know?” she said. “Probably those men. They came back! They’re trying to break in. We have to call Roger.”

“There’s no time for a phone call. Quick. Outside. The cops watching the house—get them!”

While I sat, stunned by my abrupt awakening, Rebecca ran for the front door. She threw it open. Within minutes I heard running in my backyard and frantic voices.

“Stop! Now!”

“Over there! He’s there by the tree.”

“I see him.”

“He’s climbing. Gonna swing over the fence.”

“Got his leg. Help me!”

I heard a thud and the sound of a struggle.

The
wawawa
of a siren broke the silence on River Road.

“Got him!” someone shouted.

Another voice said, “Stop fighting, dammit!”

My storm door flew open. Roger ran in. In a few long strides, he crossed the living room and unlatched the French doors. He dashed out.

Rebecca came in from the front. She closed, locked the door and stood in the hallway, her arms crossed, slapping her shoulders. “
Brrr
.”

I threw off the cover and hobbled to her. “What’s happening?”

“I don’t know,” she said. Her ribbed turtleneck was so stiff it might have frozen when she ran from my door to the patrol car.

Holding tight to each other’s hands, using my friend as a crutch, in half-steps we approached the French doors. We leaned out.

To the left of the azalea bushes, beneath the birch tree a pile of heavy blue uniforms rolled in the snow. It looked as though it were a gang of children at play. Roger stood over them. With his pistol drawn, he leaned down.

“Knock it off,” he said. “Or would you rather get a bullet in that pea-sized thing you call your brain.”

The struggle ended. One cop put his knee on the spine of the man he’d tackled, the other cop pulled out his handcuffs. Looking very much the way I imagine Wyatt Earp appeared on the streets of Dodge City, Roger tossed back the skirt of his overcoat and holstered his weapon. Only then did the man beneath the pile sit up.