THE WITCH AND THE TEA PARTY (A Rachael Penzra Mystery) (27 page)

“I guess you could ask
Nicholas to let you see the paper listing the amounts,” I suggested.

“Not until I have the check cashed,” he said, coldly rather than humorously. He really wasn’t a very friendly man.
“He’d give me less and still refuse to let me see the original list.”

“Well, I wish you luck,” I told him. “But please take a few guesses, no matter how unlikely. You seem to be the one person who might know how her mind worked.”

He liked that. “I can eliminate the great romance of the century without any problem. Nicholas is too smart to ever give Frances any legitimate cause for divorce, or even to want one at this point. I happen to know they had a pre-nuptial and it included a cheating clause. Besides, outside romance was just an ego trip for him. Now that he’s got the money to himself, he can do a lot better than silly Karen.

“Hastings is an old buddy. He always gets himself invited to their dinners. I doubt if Frances liked him much, although I don’t think he ever let her know what a sexist
pig he is. He treated her with great respect, at least to her face.

“Rita? A cousin of sorts and she usually comes as a duo with the good captain. Maybe it was some sort of getting all the least welcome out of the way all at once. Helen and I were hardly social equals with them. We knew that. Frances liked the way I saved the company, and he
r personally, lots of money. Those odd sisters probably were part of the obligation to feed the relatives occasionally.

“I don’t know. It was an odd combination of people. I can see some of them being asked because they’d be interested in the fortune telling, but that wouldn’t include me. Guess you’ll have to rely on your flaunted psychic ability, won’t you?”

Seems we were back to the beginning antagonism. For a few minutes he had seemed interested in figuring out the reason for the get together. Once it came around to his presence he realized that he was hardly there because of his hostess’ love of his company. He quickly backed away and retreated into surliness. And for the record, I don’t flaunt my ability. Anything but. I’d be happy if nobody knew about it.

“It was an odd mix, wasn’t it?” I probed, hoping to get him back to speculation, but he was through with me.

“I think I’ve done my duty,” he told me, standing. “Please tell our new employer that I answered all your questions to the best of my ability.”

I let him leave, as glad to see the last of him as he was of me. David and Aunt Myrtle appeared as quickly as I closed the door.

“He’s certainly not a very nice person,” my aunt declared.

“At least he’s as confused about the dinner party combination of guests as we are,” David said. “Didn’t it strike any of them at the time how odd the guest list was?”

“I think they just followed orders when Mrs. B-H gave them,” I shrugged. “I should have asked if they’d ever been invited together other times.”

“Probably for Christmas parties, or maybe a summer company picnic,” Aunt Myrtle guessed
, no doubt accurately. “They all did seem to know something about each other.”

“I can understand the company gossip covering
information about some of them, but that would leave out the relatives.” I tried to remember if anything anybody had said would explain their knowledge of each other. “Somehow Mrs. B-H doesn’t strike me as the type to gossip, but she might have said some mean things about some of her family and employees. She’d talk about one group to the other, I imagine.”

“You should check with the husband to see if there were other pe
ople who benefit from the will, other than regular charities. If not, it’s definitely the bequests that made her isolate them and ask them together,” David suggested.

“The money and the attempts on her life,” I agreed. “She was pretty sure one of them was the one who tried to kill her. I wish she’d been more open about her own suspicions.”

“She strikes me as a secretive person,” David said.

“And one who thought she could handle everything on her own,” I grumbled. “If she’d gone to the sheriff in the first place, that might have been enough to scare off her killer.”

“Maybe for a while,” he decided thoughtfully. “I think that once the mental point of becoming a murderer is truly committed to, it’s only a matter of time and chance that prevents it. If the chance never occurs and you can’t work any way to manipulate things, you might be prevented from carrying through the deed. Or better, if time works its magic and you grow up a little more. Maybe a new interest buries the old intensity.”

“Like a kid saying he could kill someone,” I agreed. “
I have to admit that I’ve had some pretty angry and aggressive thoughts in my lifetime.”

“But for most of us, there’s always that deep understanding of what it would really mean, so we don’t indulge in more than words,” he laughed. “Can you imagine how many murders there would be every day if we gave into our momentary impulse?”

“After all these centuries, we wouldn’t be worrying about a population explosion problem.” I thought that over. “Just goes to show that there’s always a good way to look at things.”

“My sisters would all be dead,” Aunt Myrtle volunteered
after giving it a moment’s thought. “Hard to believe, isn’t it, that we could get so mad over little things?”

“Good thing you’re civilized,” I told her. “Or I wouldn’t be here.”

“I think Iris would have killed us all off,” she continued her own line of thought. “She’s older and meaner than most of us.”

I thought of my siblings and how we’d fought. Best not to follow that
idea too far. “I’m sure we’re on the right track about suspects. I just wish we could get a little further along. I have to admit that I haven’t done much actual thinking, or any reasoning. I keep adding information, but I haven’t sorted it yet.”

“Seems to me like they’re saying the same things over and over, only leaving
themselves
out of the criticism,” Aunt Myrtle grumbled. “But we’ve got our suspicions.” She gave us a calculating look and decided not to share. “Well, I’d better be off to bed.”

When she trotted upstairs—a
nd yes, she still trots up them—David decided he’d better leave, too. “I have to recharge my energy for an entire evening of having you to myself,” he teased. “Remember, tomorrow night is a date night, just like the kiddies have play dates. It’s more or less set in stone.”

It’s a good thing he added the ‘more or less’, because like so many things we think are set in stone, this one had to give way to the
quicksand of life.

The night was peaceful from my perspective, but then I wasn’t out
attempting murder or being attacked. Two people in my small world were.

We didn’t know that the next day, and I was in a good mood, would have been whistling while I worked if I’d the slightest talent and thought my customers would
stand for it. David was a little energized himself, giving me winks and pats that I hoped went unnoticed.

The rain had continued, giving some of my customers a damp animal odor. Even cotton clothing seems to pick up the
clammy smells. To me the downpour meant a good day of sales, and more importantly, an evening curled up by the fire at David’s. At least to start off…

It wasn’t quite that appealing to Aunt Myrtle, as I found out around one in the afternoon. After lying in the wet grass alongside a secondary road, someone had finally noticed her body. Her live body, fortunately.
She said later that her waving arms had finally caught someone’s attention.

Of course I didn’t know anything about it until she was safely in the hospital
emergency room and patched up. Dora, I was a little annoyed to find, had been the first one she called, and the one who called me. Being Dora, she said she’d just chased all her customers out and locked the door to the shop behind her. I would have done the same thing if I’d had to, without giving it a second thought, except I’d be apologetic to my customers. I had a feeling that my neighbor hadn’t bothered with social niceties.

In my usual state of panic when I reached her room, I was greeted by the usual
unruffled scene of an aunt far more wound up than in pain or danger. “What happened?” I demanded.

“Slipped on some wet leaves,” my aunt said. Her head was wrapped in a jaunty bandage.

“Wet leaves? Where did you find wet leaves?”

“On the side of the road. I was power-walking and didn’t want to get splashed by a car I heard coming, so I
jumped up off the road. It was when I was coming back to the asphalt that I slipped. Cracked my head open. Must have hit a rock or something.”

“Power walking?” I was stuck there.

“I’ve decided that at my age I should be getting more exercise.”

“She’s been doing it for weeks,” Dora claimed.

I didn’t believe either one of them, particularly since the road she’d fallen on just happened to be
very
near to Moondance’s house. They apparently thought I wasn’t aware that the street her house was on turned off that road. My aunt might have slipped and fallen, just like she said, but it hadn’t been because she was out walking for her health.

“I’m okay,” she said, nervously. My frown must have upset her.

“Good,” I said. “I think I’ll go talk to the doctor.”

They didn’t seem worried about that, so I talked with the woman at the desk.
I asked her who had brought my aunt in. She told me. She said I’d have to wait a few minutes for the doctor to be free. I went back and sat with them until I was called into the back.

The doctor c
onfirmed Aunt Myrtle’s story—sort of. “She got a good cut. Absolutely no sign of any concussion. I had to shave a chunk of hair and give her ten stitches. I gave her some pain pills, but she should be fine. She has papers listing any potential systems. Don’t worry. She’ll be okay. What a sweet ol.. sweet lady she is.”

I thanked
him (how could he know otherwise about her nature?) and returned to the duo. “Thanks for coming to the rescue,” I said to Dora. “I can take Aunt Myrtle home and let you get back to your store.”
              “I can bring her home,” Dora offered. “No sense opening up again today, anyway. That’s why she called me. Didn’t want to inconvenience you. This way you’ll still have some time to make money since the shop’s still open. Besides, people would be wanting Myrtle to tell fortunes if I’m open, and I don’t think she should.”

I looked at my aunt with her wrapped head. What I saw was a nutty-looking swami. It was too much. I burst into laughter.

“I don’t look that funny,” she declared.

“Sorry, nervous laughter,” I stifled my giggles.

We left it at that. I drove my aunt home. She was looking a little pale and seemed more than happy to have David help her up the stair while I fussed around for water and an ice pack and of course some cookies. On second thought, I went back and grabbed some grapes. They might taste good and she wouldn’t have to chew much on them.

“I’ll go up and stay with her until the store’s closed,” Patsy said when I got back down.
“She shouldn’t be left alone with a head injury.”

“The doctor said she doesn’t have any signs of a concussion,” I reassured her. “He said it was more of a cut than a blow. But listen to this little detail,” I paused, ready to drop my bombshell. “It wasn’t a kin
dly passerby who brought her in; it was Dora. I don’t think there was any stranger involved at all.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” she groaned, well aware that much of what the trio did never made a lot of sense to anybody other than themselves. “First we have
Jimbo saying that he isn’t holding Moondance hostage anymore, that she’s doing it herself, and now we have Aunt Myrtle lying about where and how she got hurt.”

“I can understand the Moondance part,” I said. “There isn’t any drama if she’s now free to communicate with
them through regular channels, but Jimbo still doesn’t want her being around them. No doubt she’s holding out for complete capitulation on his side.”

“How on earth did Aunt Myrtle come to crack her head like that?” Patsy mused. Since neither of us had an answer, she left to
run upstairs and babysit.

David came back down, smiling. “She says she’s fine, but I talked her into taking a pain pill just to be sure. She looked as though she was hurting.”

“If they were up to mischief, she wouldn’t want to admit that she hurt,” I said, and told him what I’d learned at the hospital. “I imagine she was relieved when you made her take something. The doctor was very clear that it wasn’t a blow. I hope she’ll sleep now and feel better when she wakes up. I thought she looked pale. She forgets that she isn’t a young woman anymore.”

“She’s pretty limber,” he argued.

“I know. That’s why I worry about what she was really doing to get hurt like that.”

We were just closing up when Patsy came clamoring down the stairs. She checked that there weren’t any customers still around. “Joe just called. We were going to a movie tonight. He called to cancel and I finally got the reason why out of him. He was acting so suspiciously that I just knew it was something about the case.”