The Witch of Belladonna Bay (13 page)

Grant and Charlotte Masters weren't really brother and sister. Though they were raised that way. Susan Masters had lost her husband, Kenny, right after Lottie was born. A boating accident near Belladonna Bay,
too
close some think. Kenny'd been livin' with a woman before he met Susan. And that woman had taken off, leaving nothing but her son, Grant, and a note saying she'd never be back. So Ken raised Grant like his own for a whole year before he married Susan.

Because Susan was the cook at the Big House, and because of her friendship with Naomi, the four of us kids were thrown together young and stayed that way. When we were little, we played mostly at the Big House. But then Grant and I started to like each other a little too much, and—that's all she wrote. Naomi wouldn't have any of it. No more visits from the Masters. She cut off Susan entirely. And even though she'd gotten sicker, barely leaving her rooms by that point, she made it clear to Jackson and Minerva that Grant and Lottie weren't welcome.

Susan got sick right around the same time that Naomi fell into her deepest bout with opium. It was so deep that she couldn't get over her own, self-imposed illness to help Susan out with her cancer. To be her friend again. The first few years I was gone, that was the memory that made me the most angry. How selfish my mother had been.

Nothing could stop the friendship between us kids, though. And Susan still wanted us around, so we simply went over to the Masters' house instead. Naomi hadn't thought through her rules very well. Her intention, as always, was to keep us close to her. Her actions pushed us away.

I was thinking so much I passed their street and kept walking straight down Main. When I realized where I was, I had to backtrack two blocks. The Masters lived on Oak Street, second house on the left. A pretty, old Southern cottage. Whitewashed with a proper porch and a picket fence. The outside looked just the same as it did the day I left.

*   *   *

I stood in front of it, snapping photos.
Click, click.

“It isn't only trouble that comes up behind you, Mama, it's sorrow, too,” I said as I walked under the yellow tape that half dipped between two oaks in the front yard.

The tape was old and frayed. I couldn't figure out if Stick was really still investigating a closed case, or if he was a lazy sheriff.

When I opened the front door, I put my camera up to my eyes. A shield between me and the reality of Lottie's death.

Click, click.
That house. Small … tiny even. One floor, with a peaked attic roof where a circular window let the heat out in the summertime. Two bedrooms only. A kitchen and a living room. That was it. But it held a lot of memories. Too many. And now it was the place that stole the life of two of the people I loved with all my heart.

I'd never get to tell Lottie how much I missed her. How sorry I was that I wasn't around when Jamie was born. I felt dizzy for a second, so I sat down on a chair next to the small entry table.

I looked around. If those walls could talk. There was tape around the kitchen.
So that's where Charlotte and Jamie'd been killed,

I wasn't ready for that yet. Violence in places you don't associate with yourself is one thing. Violence in a house that embodies your own childhood is another. I got up and walked across the living room instead, to the side hall where the bedrooms branched off.
Click, click.
I walked into Lottie's old room first, but it obviously belonged to Jamie now because it was all blue. There were no toys, and the bed was made. It was a plain room with very little personality; Charlotte had been a messy girl, but she'd obviously stepped up and become more like Susan when she became a mama herself.

I went into Susan's room next. The room that held a thousand stories and a thousand more hairpins, bows, and curling rods.
Click, click, click, click.

It belonged to Charlotte now. There was less … I don't know … just less. Less clutter. Less character. Susan always had fresh-cut flowers, even in the green season, but there weren't any vases moldering away in Charlotte's room. And Susan always had a dressing table, messy with pots and potions of all kinds of beauty remedies. Charlotte had the same dressing table, but all it held was a thick layer of dust. She never liked all that fancy stuff.

Sitting on Charlotte's unmade bed, I thought about what a bad detective I made. I didn't even know what I was looking for, and I couldn't even bring myself to poke my head into the kitchen.

So I went back into the living room
(click, click)
where I noticed, next to the telephone on a small table by the worn-out, green velvet sofa, there was a light blinking on the answering machine.

They would have checked it, right?

I know I should have called Stick before I hit Play … or at least put on gloves or something. But I couldn't help it.

I pressed Play.

“Lottie?” a voice I knew well, now choked with grief. “Lottie, I know you ain't there.… I was callin' to hear your voice and Jamie's too, how he yells in the background? And I wasn't gonna leave a message, 'cause it's silly, right? To leave a message on the phone for someone who's dead and buried. But, Lottie? I miss you. And I'm sorry about that thing with Jamie. And most of all? I'm so damn sorry for that fight we had. I mean, shit. What kind of a brother was I to you? What kind of a man was I? I'm just … sorry. I never meant to … it was an accident. Oh, God … I'm sorry—” The voice went silent abruptly.

Grant.

It sounded like it took him two or three times to hang up the receiver.
His hands were shaking. And the police hadn't checked it because the call was new. It was dated right there in the answering machine message. He'd called weeks after her death.

“Grant Masters, what have you done?” I asked the haunted walls. Curious and terrible ideas swirled through my mind.

It was time. I stepped into the kitchen. There were still marks and little tags here and there on the floor and counters. It was a small kitchen but one that always simmered with love and good things to eat. Now it was stuffy and all closed up in the heat and lingering violence. I put my camera up to my face again so I could look toward the spot on the floor I'd been avoiding.

A shadow, quick and deliberate, moved in front of the lens.
Click
. I pulled the camera away.

“Stick?” No one was there. I stood very still and thought of Byrd and her ghosts.

“Lottie?” I whispered.

I saw a shadow on the stairs …

Nothing.

“Don't be stupid,” I said, and focused my camera at the floor. There wasn't any blood. Just a stain. A very large stain on the linoleum.

I felt a tickle at the back of my throat and began to cough, but the words “Find him” came out instead. “Find him? Where the hell did that come from? Okay, I'm done,” I said to the house as I left, quickly locking the front door behind me.

I thought about going back to the sheriff's office to leave the keys and tell Stick about the message, but hell, everyone had already screwed everything up. I'd figure it out on my own.

I didn't want to implicate Grant if I didn't have to. Could those hands that once brought me closer to heaven than I'd ever been be the hands of a murderer?

*   *   *

I didn't go back to the Big House but straight to my little oasis of comfort Byrd had created.

She was waiting for me. Playing music on my record player. On her bare tiptoes and, if it was possible, dirtier than she was when I left.

“Jolene” was playing and Byrd had her eyes closed, her head bobbing back and forth. She sang quietly along with the words she knew and hummed the rest.

“I love that song,” I said.

She opened her eyes and slowly, like a fox, walked toward me.

“I know, that's why it's sittin' there in your collection.”

“You still mad at me?” I asked.

“You can't get mad at people you lo—care about. Don't you know that? We can have a spat every now and again, but then? It's over. That's what family does, right?”

I didn't have the heart to tell her that she was probably right, only that wasn't the way it worked in my own mind when I was younger. No one held a grudge like BitsyWyn Whalen.

Like Jackson used to say, “Right don't mean shit, not if everyone around you is bent on bein' wrong.”

“How about this?” I put on some Frank Sinatra and “Fly Me to the Moon” came crooning out all around us. It made me feel lighter than I had all day. Not to mention, I was floating a bit on her unsaid word.
She loves me,
I thought as I walked back out onto the porch with Byrd at my heels. Dolores still wouldn't come inside but was sitting at the edge of the creek bed staring over at Belladonna Bay.

“I went to Jamie's house today,” I said. “This music reminds me of Susan, Jamie's grandma he never met.”

“I know,” she said.

“You'll have to stop playing around in my mind sooner or later, young lady,” I said.

“You don't have to worry about that,” she said. “Soon enough I won't be able to see nothin' in you at all.”

The heat was getting so oppressive; there was nowhere to escape it. But outside was better because there was the slightest breeze from off the creek. The mist, for all its troublesome ways, held a coolness about it that helped out on these desperate hot days.

The music coming out through the windows was muted and scratchy, like in an old black-and-white movie. I sat down on one of the many wicker chairs Byrd had acquired for my little house. Guess we were supposed to have a lot of company. But she stood right in front of me with her arms crossed, murmuring that damn Declaration of Independence through her teeth. It would have been haunting, if it wasn't so funny.

“Are you nervous, honey?” I asked.

“Plenty,” she said.

“Why?”

She didn't answer me. Just paced a little “We hold these truths…”

“I'd still like to know why you said I was obtuse,” I said, hoping to get at what was bothering her the most, at the same time as I knew she was living in a world of stress. It would be moment by moment with Byrd, as it would be with me. It was gathering, like a storm.

She stopped her murmuring and looked at me with softer, pleading eyes.

“What is it, Byrd?” I asked.

And I could feel her about to tell me, but that's when those guests Byrd was expecting showed up.

“Hey there, ladies! So much pretty in one place it should be
illegal!
”

Jackson, with Minerva and Carter in tow, came striding toward the cottage, one hand holding a pitcher of what looked to be his famous lemonade and the other holding a cigar. Carter followed with a picnic basket and Minerva with a tray.

Byrd moved my feet from the small trunk I'd been using as a footrest and pulled out a bottle of bourbon and a bowl of ice.

“Well, my goodness, you don't leave much to chance, do you, Miss Byrd?

She rolled her eyes at me.

“Let the games begin,” she said, then whispered, “Don't tell Minny about our glow, okay? I want to keep it safe here in my heart for a little while. You can tell them tomorrow if you want.”

“You got it, kiddo,” I said.

“Hey, Minerva,” I called out, “I sure hope you have some dinner with you, I'm starving.”

“Of course I do. What kind of homecoming would it be without some of your favorite things?” she said as she came up the steps, placed the tray on the table next to me, and gave me a hug.

Layers and layers of deep-fried green tomatoes covered in fresh picked crawfish stared up at me. Minerva always tossed the crawfish with some lime juice and some salt. Southern man's lobster. I'd missed the food down here. I never even ate “soul food” up north. It's a fake mess of a thing. Maybe it has something to do with the cooking of it. Like, you have to have high humidity and a certain kind of sarcasm to make it come out
just
right.

Carter began unpacking the picnic basket, setting out big, thick biscuits, flaky and buttery, a bowl of fresh watermelon sliced up and waiting for the sea salt we'd sprinkle over it before eating, and a container of ham, baked especially for me, because I loved Jackson's bourbon-glazed ham when I was little. And a little taste of Fairview too, a nettle salad with mulberry vinaigrette. “Nettles are good for the skin and hair and any type of stomach issues,” Minerva used to tell us. The best thing of all was at the bottom of that basket: a tin of Italian cookies glazed with lemon icing and sprinkled with little tiny multicolored sprinkles.

“Those are mine, Aunt Wyn. Don't even touch 'em,” said Byrd.

“Stella's recipe. Minny here makes a lot of that food for Byrd. Reminds me of Susan,” said Jackson.

“Made ya a fat old drunk, too,” said Byrd.

I didn't want to think about things like never meeting Stella, never cooking with her, not even sending a card when Byrd was born. Not being part of Paddy and Stella's wedding, their life.

“Now, sugar,” began Jackson, standing at the bottom of the porch steps looking like a preacher about to give a sermon. “Let's get some awkward business out of the way so we can all have a pleasant evenin'. I'm sure you have a lot on your mind and a lot of questions to ask. But not tonight. Tonight oughta be about getting reacquainted, agreed?”

“Agreed,” I said.

He nodded with appreciation, and then turned to Byrd. “Byrd! You did a fine job on this ol' shack!”

“You mean she did a fine job coaxing people to help her with it,” scoffed Minerva.

“Don't be bitter, Min … just because you never thought to paint the floors blue in your old abode,” said Jackson.

Their bickering made me smile. They'd always fought. It's something I learned from them. That you could fight and say horrible things and still stay friends. Not that I ever made any friends, not once I moved away. But it always helped with my relationship with Ben. And I always thought it was strange, because those are the things you're supposed to learn from your mother and father. Not your father and your great-aunt/housekeeper/lady-in-waiting. But that's life in an old Southern mansion. Everything's topsy-turvy and right-side up, all at the same time.