The Witch and the Dead (21 page)

“I need to talk to you,” Glinda said, grabbing my arm. “It's important.”

My jaw practically hit the floor. They had the same eyes! That same brilliant blue. Oh. My. God.

“H-how?” was all I could stammer as she tugged me
along. Dorothy had been out of the country when Vince was born. . . . This didn't make sense.

“Long story,” she said drolly.

Penelope and Oliver came back inside, cutting us off.

“I'm sorry, Darcy,” Penelope said, “but I think it's best we left. I just need to get my things; then I'll get out of your hair.”

“I understand,” I said, mentally shooing them out the door. I wanted to hear what Glinda had to say.

“A family emergency,”
she'd said.

It was putting it lightly.

I glanced over at Vince. He'd abandoned the nail gun.

Thank God.

Unfortunately, he was headed this way.

He sauntered over and stared at Penelope. “You said earlier you were going to run off with Miles Babbage. You had a relationship with him?”

Her eyes narrowed in confusion. “I'm not sure how that's any concern of yours.”

Oliver stepped in close to his wife. “Leave her alone, Vince.”

“No,” Vince returned as he folded his arms across his chest. “If she had a relationship with Miles, then I have a right to know.” He faced her head-on. “Are you my mother?”

Her eyes flew open wide. “What? Your
mother
?”

Oliver sighed.

“Is Miles your
father
?” She gasped. “Oh my God. You have his chin.”

“Are
you
my mother?” Vince asked Penelope again.

She kept staring at him as though seeing him in an all-new light. Tears brimmed in her eyes, pooling along the lashes. “How didn't I see it before?”

“She's not your mother,” Oliver said to Vince in a firm voice.

Vince jabbed Oliver in the chest. “You expect me to believe you? I want a DNA test.”

Oliver jabbed back. “Keep your hands to yourself, son.”

“Don't call me ‘son,'” Vince said, taking a swing at him. It connected with Oliver's jaw and sent him reeling backward.

Penelope screamed.

Oliver rubbed his jaw, then lurched forward. The two men fell into each other, punching and grunting and shoving as they yelled nonsense at each other.

I recalled how Oliver had said he'd never had a fight in his life and felt sorry for the man as I backed up to protect Mimi. Hank hurdled a sawhorse to break up the pair as Evan came sprinting into the room, Archie on his shoulder.

“What's going on?” Evan cried.

“They're going to kill each other,” Mimi said, poking her head out from behind me.

Glinda joined in the fray, trying to get a grip on Vince, while Hank tugged on Oliver. I glanced at Starla across the room. Tears streamed down her face. She shook her head, turned, and ran out of the room.

I'd grabbed Mimi's arm to follow Starla out when Archie let out an earsplitting whistle and Evan bellowed, “Enough!”

It was enough to startle Oliver and Vince so they could be separated. Glinda pushed Vince behind her, and Hank held his arms wide, corralling Oliver.

“I'm pressing charges!” Oliver huffed. Blood seeped from a cut above his eye, and I went instantly woozy.

I had to look away.

“Do it!” Vince prodded, and after he adjusted his
glasses, he pushed against Glinda as though he wanted to continue the fight with Oliver. “I'll be glad to tell them all about my
adoption
.”

I continued to edge my way out of the room with Mimi.

“What is he talking about, Oliver?” Penelope asked.

“Stay out of this,” he told his wife.

“Let me at him.” Vince tried to bob and weave around Glinda, but her police training had prepared her well.

“Settle down,” she told him, keeping him contained.

“Enough!” Evan said again, coming to stand in between the warring parties. “What is going on?”

If anyone thought it odd that Archie was perched on his shoulder, they didn't say.

Archie was practically rubbing his wings together, delighting in this drama. For him, seeing this might be even better than helping with the auditions.

“I'm just trying to find out who my mother is.” Vince's left eye was quickly blooming black and blue. “No one will tell me. I have a right to know!”

“Well, it's certainly not me!” Penelope cried.

“No,” a voice said from the doorway. “It's not.”

Mimi and I froze as Dorothy
click-clacked
into the room.

“Then who is it?” Vince demanded of her.

Dorothy walked past me with nary a sideways glance. She stepped up to Vince, looked him straight in the eye, and said, “It's me.”

“‘N
obody knows the trouble I've seen; nobody knows my sorrow.'”

It was a line from a song in
The Lion King
. Archie had perfected the despondence of the lyric in his mournful delivery. His imitation of Zazu, the red-billed hornbill in the movie, was spot-on. No wonder. They were very much birds of a feather.

I patted his head. “The auditions will be rescheduled.”

Evan had postponed tonight's auditions in light of the fight and the revelation that Dorothy was Vince's mother. Everyone had been in such a tizzy that it wouldn't have been fair to the actors trying out for the play. No one would have been paying much attention.

“If I'd known building sets would be so exciting, I would have signed up,” Harper said glumly.

We were sitting at my kitchen island, pints of ice cream dispersed among us. Archie sat on the edge of
the counter, his long tail hanging down. Higgins and his drool were patiently waiting for his share of dessert.

“It wasn't exciting. It was dreadful,” Starla moaned from the sofa. Her headache had turned into a migraine. She was lying on the couch with a wet cloth on her head. Annie was curled on her chest. “Vince was . . . out of his mind. Now that I know he's Dorothy's son, it kind of makes sense. Like mother, like son? She's always been loony tunes. No offense, Glinda.”

Glinda jammed a spoon into a pint of rocky road. “None taken.”

Mimi sat with Missy on her lap. The little dog kept trying to lick her spoon. She said, “Starla, do you think you'll get back together with Vince now? I mean, he's a witch, right? You wouldn't have to keep any more secrets. Wait. Is Dorothy going to tell him he's a witch?”

Glinda sighed. “That's her plan.”

“You don't think he should know?” I asked.

“It's not that,” she said. “It's . . . complicated. And it's going to be weird.”

“Totally weird,” Mimi agreed. “Especially when he finds out you were a witch all along, Starla.”

Starla sat up and groaned. “Don't remind me.” The washcloth fell into her lap. Annie wiggled out from beneath the damp rag and hopped onto the floor. “And I don't know what I'm going to do about Vince. I just don't know. It's a lot to think about and my head hurts.”

“Should I call Cherise?” I asked.

“Maybe,” she said, closing her eyes and putting her head back down. She replaced the cloth on her head and said, “Why didn't he tell me he was adopted?”

I didn't think she was looking for an actual answer. She was talking out loud, trying to make sense out of something that didn't.

Mimi spooned a helping of cherry vanilla ice cream
and looked at Glinda. “You really didn't know Vince was your brother?”

“I really didn't,” Glinda said. “I only took the DNA test as a lark, wanting to see how it worked and what it would show in terms of the Craft. I'd planned to show it to Vince as a way to stretch out the case until I could convince him to drop the warlock nonsense. Which I guess wasn't nonsense after all. When the results came in today's mail, I couldn't believe what I was seeing.”

At that point, she'd gone straight to her mother, who'd explained everything.

Dorothy had been pregnant with Vince during her vow renewal and second honeymoon. She and Joel had stayed away long enough for her to give birth and get pregnant again so no one suspected. There had been no trip around the world. They'd been staying up the coast in Marblehead. Only Oliver, the family attorney, had known the truth.

“Apparently,” Glinda said, “my father insisted she give the baby up for adoption. He didn't want a constant reminder of her infidelity. She wanted Dad back, so she agreed. When the time came, Oliver promised her the baby would have a good home. She knew only that she had a son. Not who his new family was, or where he lived. She said she wondered just about every day what had become of him. . . .”

I wondered if somehow what she had gone through with Vince spurred her decision to adopt a baby with her second husband. To give a home to a child who needed one, as her child had once been the one in need.

If so, Dorothy might have a heart under all that cleavage after all.

“What of the weasel?” Harper asked. “Did he know your mom was pregnant?”

Glinda pushed the pint of rocky road away from her.
She set her elbows on the counter. “He did. They were dating when she found out. As soon as she told him, he told her to get rid of the baby, that he wasn't cut out to be a father. She refused. He quickly left town. Almost as soon as she reconciled with my father, Miles came back. Apparently he was having second thoughts about fatherhood. My father decided the best way to get rid of Miles was to pay him off. A hundred thousand once the baby was born to sign over his parental rights, leave town, and never come back. Mom said it took some convincing, but Miles eventually took the deal.”

“But return he did,” Archie said. Higgins tried to lick his tail, and Archie flicked him in the face with it.
“Pzzt!”

Glinda said, “He came back to town on what would have been the baby's first birthday. He wanted to know what happened to the baby and wanted to see him. Kept going on and on about having made a mistake with the adoption.”

Roots. Miles had been trying to plant them. Too little, too late, it seemed.

Glinda put the top back on the pint of ice cream. “My mother says they fought about it.”

I'd bet that was the fight Terry had witnessed.

“Miles threatened to track down the whereabouts of the baby and challenge the adoption. He said he'd use Ve and As You Wish to look into the adoption. Mom still refused to tell him anything. Later that week, he eloped with Ve. Mom tried to contact Miles to work out a solution to their problem but was never able to reach him. He'd disappeared.” She dropped her head into her hands. “I thought my mother was going to be sick today when I told her about Miles' amulet.”

It had to have been startling, but I knew that Dorothy had stayed with Miles of her own free will.

In light of all that had happened, it was probably best if she never knew that.

I kept thinking about what Glinda had said about Miles threating to use Ve to find the baby. . . . I'd been wondering why he'd chosen her to marry, and I suspected he'd taken advantage of opportunity. He'd gone to see her about the baby . . . and probably liked what he'd seen. The next thing Ve knew, she'd woken up a married woman.

“Weasel!” I said suddenly, hopping off my stool.

Starla leaned up. “Are you okay?”

I dropped in front of the file boxes that were still on the living room floor. “Ve called Miles a weasel.”

“Fittingly,” Archie intoned.

I found the box that held the
W
files and thumbed through the tabs. “Weasel!” I said as I pulled out the file. I flipped it open. “This is it. He wanted Ve to find Baby Boy Babbage. A child he'd had with . . . Dorothy. There's a dozen exclamation points after that last part.”

“Whoa,” Mimi said.

Harper set her spoon on the counter. “If Dorothy knew that Ve knew . . .”

Archie said, “Then she would've gone to great lengths to make sure Ve unlearned that information.”

“The memory cleanse.” It made perfect sense. Dorothy had to erase the knowledge of the baby from Ve's memory . . . and in doing so she'd also taken away all Ve's memories of Miles.

Dorothy, I realized, had also given herself away yesterday, but I'd been too preoccupied to catch it.

Pepe had told me how Ve had told only a trusted few that she hadn't been able to recall the wedding. Yet Dorothy had taunted me during our altercation that Ve might not remember that she'd killed Miles.

Dorothy wasn't one of Ve's trusted few; she shouldn't
have known that Ve had no memories of that time. Unless she'd been the one to erase them in the first place.

The things people did to protect themselves. It baffled me.

As I stood up, the front doorbell rang. Higgins looked conflicted. Stay and hope someone shared ice cream? Or greet the visitor?

When the doorbell rang a second time, he couldn't resist the lure of its magical tone. He let out sonic woofs and ran for the door.

Starla moaned at the sound.

Glinda said, “I'm calling Cherise.”

Missy yapped and wiggled in Mimi's lap, but she kept a firm hold on the dog.

It was utter chaos.

It was
home
.

I peeked out the sidelight and saw Steve Winstead on the porch. Instead of inviting him into the bedlam, I slipped past Higgins and wiggled out the door, closing it firmly behind me.

It wasn't late, not even five yet, but there was a chill in the air, and I was instantly cold. “Steve?”

He paced. “I didn't tell you everything yesterday.”

“About?” As he paced my way, I caught the scent of alcohol. He'd been drinking.

“I was so stupid, thinking she loved me, too, all this time.”

“Steve,” I said softly. “Maybe you should come back tomorrow.”

“No.” He stopped, shook his head. “No. I've been keeping this secret all these years, trying to protect her.” His voice cracked. “To protect the woman I loved, because I thought she loved me, too. . . . So
stupid
.”

He might have been drinking, but he was too lucid to be drunk. He knew what he was saying and why.

“What secret?” I asked, rubbing chill bumps on my arms.

“Penelope might have been whisked away to the Cape by her family after that fight I had with Miles, but she found a way back. I saw her two nights later, at Wickedly Creative. She'd just come running out of Miles' bunkhouse. She was crying.” His shattered gaze lifted to meet my eyes. “I went to see what was wrong. She had blood on her hands.”

I leaned against a porch column. “Blood?”

“She told me . . . she told me she cut herself on a sculpting blade. I brought her inside the studio, helped her clean up, and made sure she got home safely.” He held my gaze. “I knew the whole time she'd been lying to me about the blood.”

“How did you know for sure?”

“Darcy, there wasn't a scratch on her. The blood wasn't hers.”

“Did you check on Miles?”

“Not right away. I drove Penelope home first. By the time I went back to the bunkhouse, the door was ajar. I went in. There was no sign of any blood. And no sign of Miles, either. He was gone.”

Gone? Where? “What did you do?”

A tear leaked from the corner of his eye. “I closed the door and went home to wait for Penelope to come back to me. I've been waiting for thirty years. Today . . . today I realized she was never coming back. And that I needed to finally tell the truth.”

*   *   *

Half an hour later, the side door opened, and Nick's voice came from the mudroom. “Darcy?”

“In here,” I said in a stage whisper from the living room.

Starla and I were on the sectional, watching
Toy Story
.

We'd needed something light after the day we'd had.

Well, I was watching. Starla was sound asleep, thanks to a little magic from Cherise Goodwin. Starla's headache was history. For now. I had the feeling that as she sorted through her feelings for Vince it would return.

As soon as Harper heard what Steve had told me, she had set off to find Marcus, and Glinda had gone home. Once Starla had drifted off, and I kept shushing Archie and Mimi, they headed out to fill Ve in on what had happened today.

It had been a lot.

But despite all I'd learned, I still had no clue what had happened to Miles.

If Penelope had killed him, what had happened to his body in the time Steve had driven her home? Had she used the Special Delivery Spell to move Miles to Ve's garage?

“I went to the playhouse, but it was”—Nick stepped into the kitchen, took note of Starla and me huddled on the couch—“dark. What's happened?”

Higgins and Missy went to greet him as he set a briefcase on the island.

Trying not to disturb Starla, I dislodged Annie, who'd been snoozing on my lap, and carefully stood up and motioned for him to follow me.

Higgins took my warm spot on the couch, and Missy trotted behind Nick and me. In my office, I slid the doors closed behind us.

“What
didn't
happen?” I asked, holding up a hand. I began to tick off fingers. “Penelope has no powers. Vince and Oliver got into a fistfight. Dorothy is Vince's mother. Steve saw Penelope with blood on her hands. Thirty years ago,” I amended. “Not today.”

Nick held up both hands, palms out. “Hold up. Dorothy?”

“Long story,” I said, dropping onto the sofa and drawing up my legs to tuck beneath me. “And I'll tell you, but first tell me what you learned from the ME's office.”

He sat next to me and pushed his palms into his eyes. It had been a long day for us all. “The death has been ruled a homicide. The postmortem exam revealed that a small bone in Miles' neck was broken. The hyoid. It usually only breaks when someone is strangled to death.”

“What about the blood in the bunkhouse?” And on Penelope's hands . . .

“No way to know,” he said. “Could be related somehow. Maybe not. Now tell me what happened today.”

I spent the next half hour filling him in. He just kept shaking his head as though he couldn't believe what he was hearing.

I said, “Are you going to go talk to Penelope?”

“I'll call, but any questioning will likely have to be tomorrow. There's no way she or Oliver would agree to meet with me without counsel present.”

Counsel
would
be hard to come by this late. Unless they turned to Marcus, which was always a possibility. Especially if he dropped Ve as a client.

“It's amazing, isn't it? That one little amulet caused so much grief. Though, really, it wasn't the amulet's fault, was it?” I couldn't stop thinking about Miles. His life. His choices. And all the choices that had been made for him by his father.