THE WITCH AND THE TEA PARTY (A Rachael Penzra Mystery) (14 page)

I still preferred the idea of the poison being administered before they ever reached Dora’s.
There were all sorts of coatings that could delay the effects, at least for a while. But that would involve some specialized knowledge. I’d have to remember to look it up on the Internet. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find page after page of information on how to construct pills that were water and stomach acid proof, at least for a space of time. Would they leave any kind of residue? I couldn’t imagine what, or how the forensic people would find it. Would they even think to look for something like that? Had I created a new way to commit the perfect murder?

Rather than approach Sheriff
Alberts in the morning, I thought it smarter to pass the idea on to Patsy, leaving her to mention it to Joe, who in turn could talk to the sheriff. It wasn’t that the latter wouldn’t trace the thought to the source, but I could hope that he’d reach Patsy and not carry it any further. If he thought it came from me, he wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole.

I’m not sure if the poor man really hates me. I don’t think he does. In odd moments, we’ve gotten along quite well. It’s the crime connection that seems to upset him, although I have never been anything other than an innocent bystander. Well, maybe not quite that, but until now I’ve never involved myself in crimes by choice. I blame serendipity as much as anything. That and familiarity. Eventually things just follow the path of least resistance, and murder seemed to have developed a paved highway that led to me.

The weird thing is that I’ve never, in the vast majority of my years, led anything but the most humdrum of lives. Once, many years earlier, I had witnessed a car crash that resulted in a death, but that was as close as I’d ever gotten to violence. Okay, maybe you could consider my late, unlamented husband’s death, also via a moving vehicle, a second example, but I hadn’t actually seen that. Thank goodness I hadn’t, and I gave even more thankfulness that none of the kids had been with him.

That’s it. Hardly a harrowing life of narrow escapes and adventure. Then I’d moved back to Minnesota, inheriting my Aunt Josie’s store and home. From cleaning toilets for a living, I’d suddenly had not only a good income from the store, but a perfect home and a more than adequate monetary source from interest and
her investments. I love it. I have utterly no qualms about not slaving for my wages. Been there, done that. Have no desire to do it again.

A tiny little part of my mind flirts with the idea that my deceased aunt is somehow behind all the incidences. She was literally a witch, and granted she had a highly-developed sense of dry humor, but she didn’t have a vicious bone in her body. There was no way she would have condoned murder just to keep me on my toes. Still… There was the weak possibility that somehow the crimes,
which would have been committed whether I was around or not, had been made to take place near me, somehow involving me and mine.

Nah. None of that made sense even in an esoteric way.
It was just a series of unfortunate coincidences. That would have been a more comforting thought if I didn’t immediately follow the words through to the thought of Lemony Snicket, where the incidences were anything but uncontrived.

Sleep finally caught up with me and I spent what remained of the night being chased by Jim Carey disguise
d as an evil old man.

Wands are used for divination
and guidance, but generally they symbolize power. They are physical signs of leadership, whether the six to eight feet in length signifying a staff of office, or the small wand wielded by the director of a huge orchestra. Merlin is often pictured wielding a magic wand, using it to guide or channel energy. Wands are said to represent air, and occasionally fire. Modern stores now offer wands to represent earth and water. As with most things, the concentration and belief of the person behind the wand is what counts. The Australian aborigines used a bone to point at an enemy, channeling negative energy at him. Drum sticks, especially those used by medicine men, often condense and strengthen the power of reverberations of the beating, sending the waves into the air around them. Native Americans considered the drum stick to be of more importance than the drum itself. Even pointing a finger at someone is a form of using a wand, so think before you point at someone in anger.

Chapter Seven

              “She can’t even talk to us,” my aunt wailed when I staggered into the kitchen searching for coffee.

             
“Who? Huh?” I cleverly responded.

“Moondance, of course.
Jimbo is holding her hostage!”

“What’s he asking for in return?” I asked her.

She looked a little confused for a minute. “Well, what would you call it? It isn’t kidnapping because he hasn’t taken her anywhere. The point is that he won’t let her talk to us. He says that we lead her into trouble!”

I sucked down coffee and woke up enough to keep my mouth shut. I agreed with
Jimbo to a certain extent. The path of our thoughts parted when he blamed everything on my aunt and Dora. The truth was that the three of them made up the perfect team, one leading the other two astray without effort. They were in agreement about virtually everything, and if I had to pick one of them to be the center of the storm, I think Moondance would be the epicenter. She is the one with the active blog, web page, and facebook page. She’s the one who’s an official witch, the kind to jump on the nearest band wagon as it trundles past. And worst sin of all, she writes horrendous poetry.

Like myself, Aunt
Myrtle led a faultless life until she came to visit me. Her change, though, I readily blame on the fact that she’d been drugged and kidnapped. That would have been traumatic for anybody, and I’d like to think it was the shock to her delicate elderly system that altered her personality so much. From a sweet little old lady who crocheted atrocious ‘gifts’ from recycled plastic bags she has become a woman hunting a boy (man) friend, and with half a dozen major interests to keep her busy.

Dora, perhaps, should be the
logical one to blame for leading the others astray. She had been a kleptomaniac for much of her life. Honestly, though, she was the most sensible of the three, the only one who came close to keeping their ideas near, if not within, the bounds of reason.

It was when the three of them got together that everything fell apart. They drove me crazy. I worried sick about them. I wouldn’t have minded locking my aunt up at times. But most of all, they filled me with envy.

They have so much fun.

However, there wasn’t a thing I could do about Moondance. If she really wanted to, she could get hold of her friends. I imagine she felt she was doing some sort of penance and her husband would soon decide that she’d learned her lesson. It had always worked before, but she’d never been forbidden to contact her buddies. This time definitely was different.
Too bad. I really wanted to hear her input about the people. The sheriff was the only one who would have access to her.

That’s the real problem with snoops like me. We really don’t have any way to find out everything. We have to rely on luck and I’m not the type to win any prizes because my numbers were drawn.
This time things had worked out to our advantage. We had the tapes. To balance that, Moondance couldn’t be quizzed.

“Aunt Myrtle,” I said. “You have to realize that
Jimbo is frightened that something bad will happen to his wife. I’m sure he’ll get over it soon. And remember, Moondance isn’t some sort of gothic heroine, locked away forever.”

“But we can’t do anything without her.”

“Sure you can,” I encouraged. “You can keep doing the readings until she gets back and Dora can run her store as usual.”

“You don’t understand. It isn’t the same.”

Aha! I
knew
they fed off one another. “Of course it won’t be exactly as it was, but do you think Moondance wants to come back and find that everything’s changed? It’s best to keep going as you wait patiently.”

“I guess we have to,” she sighed. “Couldn’t you talk to
Jimbo?”

“It wouldn’t do any good at this stage,” I told her. “We just have to wait until he gets tired of her moping around the house. If I get the chance, I’ll put in a good word.”

She agreed, very reluctantly. Having finished her breakfast, she hurried across the street to Dora’s, no doubt to discuss how cruel I was in not going to find Jimbo and demanding that he set his wife free.

Nothing more happened all morning as far as I could tell. Patsy, David and I discussed the tapes and the ramifications whenever we got a break from customers. We each had our favorite suspect. I was surprised that I was the only one who put the spouse first.

“Too obvious,” David told me.

“It usually is the spouse,” Patsy argued. “We have to remember that this isn’t a novel. This is reality. I just don’t feel he did it.”

Baloney. She, for all her mockery, wanted this to be a complicated mystery, something only she (and by extension Joe) could solve. Did she really think I didn’t know who in the household was always reading my mysteries?

At noon Aunt Myrtle was back and seemingly in a good mood.

“Get hold of Moondance?” I asked.

“No, no, not yet,” she gave a nervous titter.

“That’s too bad,” I said. “I hope she’s doing all right. This whole thing has got to be a shock for her, not just the rest of us. After all, the reason they were all there was for her readings.”

“Oh, she isn’t upset about that.”

“She isn’t? Then you’ve talked to her?”

“No. How would we do that when her husband has taken away her phone and computer?”

Hmm. Jimbo had been delegated to the role of ‘her husband’, and probably ‘that man’. I pushed a little. “How can you be sure she doesn’t have a phone or computer? Maybe he only told her not to contact you.”

Her mouth opened, then closed. She took a deep breath. “
I know her. I’m sure, that’s all.”

Right.

“Maybe you could write her a snail mail letter, or send a card,” I suggested.

“That’s a good idea, Rachael,” she praised me in a kindergarten
teacher voice. “We will do that.”

Did she think I was going to believe her? Of course she did. I didn’t disillusion her, but I was curious. Too bad I was now apparently the enemy. Did they have some sort of motto like, ‘Don’t trust anybody under
sixty’?

“I hope things work out quickly,” I told her. “I’m sure she misses you both.”

She nodded. It must have struck her that keeping her mouth shut was the only way to go.

Patsy, on her break right after me, didn’t get any more out of her. “They’re up to something,” she warned me when she got back. “They’re taking it too well.”

David, of course, disagreed. “They’re just being sensible about it,” he insisted. Poor, deluded man. They had him wrapped around their little fingers. He saw them as the grandmothers he never knew. He thinks they’re sweet. He definitely needs a reality check.

After work, I ran a
cross to check on the siblings, mainly to see if they wanted some food at my place. Aunt Myrtle had clammed up and Patsy was off to see Joe. David had deserted me to go home and spend time with his pets. I needed
someone
to talk to about the case.

“Not me,” Mac said, decidedly. “Need a break from all you women.”

“Not me, either,” Dora said. “Nice of you to ask, but I have some left-overs that need to be used up.”

That was a little insulting. She preferred left-
overs to my cooking? It was a good thing I enjoy a strong ego about my cooking abilities. I had the best of teachers in my mother and her six sisters. There was a reason behind her refusal. She usually was the first in line for a free (mainly one cooked by someone else) meal. My worries were confirmed when I could see Aunt Myrtle hovering behind the garage when I crossed back to my place. Hmm. Obviously she’d slipped outside to avoid having to get past me in the house. I pretended not to see her, but once inside I myself did a little hovering. Standing back from the kitchen window, I could see her without her being able to see me. Sure enough, right after I heard the sound of Mac’s old truck leaving, she gave a last quick glance at the house and made a beeline across the street.

She’d left the dogs inside so they wouldn’t give her away by keeping her company b
ehind the garage. I looked at the two hopeful faces. “Okay, let’s go for a good walk. Maybe that’ll clear my mind a bit.” I could tell that George was thinking walk, walk, walk, I love to walk, and little Binky was thinking that George was happy so she must be, too.

Later, back home again with a clear conscience about the dogs
, and figuring that the calories I’d burned left plenty of room for supper, I was back where I started. Who, what, where and why.

A knocking at the back door (our main entry to the privat
e section) was almost a relief until I realized it was Sheriff Alberts. “May I come in?” he asked, more as a social concession than as a request. He had every intention of entering.

“You’re just in time for dessert,” I told him, maliciously. Joe had told us his boss was on a diet.
I held the door wide for him. The door had to be opened wide for him. I’m not sure what his diet goal was, because huge as he was, there didn’t seem to be any excess fat.