THE WITCH AND THE TEA PARTY (A Rachael Penzra Mystery) (28 page)

“What happened?”

“Would you believe that somebody almost killed Nicholas?”

“How? Is he badly hurt?”

“He’s got a broken leg,” she told us. “And they figure he was lucky that’s all
he broke. Can you believe that someone sneaked into that mansion of his, made it to the second floor, and managed to stay out of sight until he started down the stairs. Then whoever it was popped out from one of the bedrooms and pushed him.”

“Are they sure?” David looked skeptical. “How do they know he didn’t just slip and fall?”

“That’s what they probably figured happened at first,” she explained. “But it seems that he had a definite bruise in the middle of his shoulders, just like a hard push would make. There’s more than that, but I couldn’t worm it out of him.”

“I imagine they’ll check for fingerprints in all the nearby rooms,” I said. “That would be the first thing. Then if they found prints inside the door that don’t belong, they’d have some sort of proof.”

“I read somewhere that clothing can hold fingerprints,” David added. We were busily spouting all our amateur knowledge, gathered from television and books.

“It would take special conditions and material to take prints,” our semi-professional told us. “Of course they’ll check all that. It’s exactly what Joe is trained to do.”

“I’d better go visit him,” I decided. “If he’s allowed visitors. I wish we had something to tell him.”

“I’d call first,” Patsy suggested. “Meanwhile we can throw together some of the guesses we’ve made and make them sound as though we know something.”

I would never have been so crass as to openly state my ulterior motives, so I was glad I had others around to do it for me.

We did manage to create a little list of semi-factual material. I wasn’t
too happy about presenting the information, since none of it was complimentary to his wife. Much of what we had found out hinged on her behavior. It was sad that we hadn’t anything good to report, barring that the suspects all had motives, much of it centered around money. I decided it might be time to tell him about the earlier attempts on her life, now that he was more or less cleared as a suspect. Patsy talked me into holding out on that, reminding me that it didn’t entirely eliminate him from the list. There might be two killers out there, and the reason for getting rid of him might be the same one he had for killing his wife. Money.

“Granted they’d have a good chance of getting their money from the will if he died,” I said. “Possibly even a better chance, think of the time and money spent on lawyers that might be involved.”

“They could easily file a class suit under the circumstances,” she reminded me. “That would cut any lawyer costs considerably.”

“So much depends on how much she left each of them,” I grumbled. “The sheriff almost certainly knows…”

“Maybe not,” she interrupted. “He might not even be sure there was a non-binding codicil in the will. It might not have been attached at all, and just something left with the lawyer in a sealed envelope. If I were Nicholas, I’d let everybody know the list existed, but not who got what. That way he maintains control over them, and he lowers himself on the killer list by raising the others.”

“
Being  controlled is something the murderer doesn’t seem to care for,” David said, dryly. “I can’t say that I blame him. Nobody likes being jerked around by somebody else.”

“There are other ways to fight back,” I laughed.

“None more sure to work,” he retorted. “Imagine what it must be like not to care about taking a human life. Think of the freedom it gives you. There aren’t any rules you have to follow except ‘don’t be caught’.”

I’d like to have given him a thousand reasons that wouldn’t be possible, but he was right. Once you put aside the internal ban against murder, the only point of interest would be how to get away without getting caught.

“Usually they get caught,” Patsy assured us.

“Not the smart ones,” David teased her. “Those are the ones when nobody knows murder was done.”

“Whoever it is, he or she is really sneaky,” I grumbled. “Poison, pushes, all without facing the victim.

“Must be a woman,” David declared, teasingly
. “No man would behave like that.”

“David,” my niece protested. “Stop it. We really need to make some progress. This is getting out of hand. What if the killer decides Aunt Myrtle or Dora might know too much? Moondance is a little safer, stuck in the house, but not necessarily. She’d probably open the door to anyone.”

Great, now I had to worry about that. Could it be that Aunt Myrtle’s accident wasn’t one? That it was somehow a murder attempt? We really needed to get to the bottom of the trio’s behavior. Were they getting themselves into trouble with a killer? A few likely scenarios passed through my mind, one of them being that they sent letters to all the suspects, pretending to know who did the murder, hoping to stir the pot. Knowing them it would create a maelstrom.

“When did it happen?” I asked, returning to our original subject. “Was it last night?”

“It was right around five-thirty in the evening,” Patsy said. “Kind of an odd time when you think about it. It was light out, the cook was still there, so the killer couldn’t count on having time to finish Nicholas off if the fall didn’t do it. The sheriff isn’t completely convinced it was a murder attempt. It has the trappings of a daylight burglary, a time when the thief could figure everybody would be gone or busy. He might have thought that Nicholas was at work.”

“Kind of a chancy situation,” I commented.

“Daytime burglaries are becoming more popular,” she explained. “Smart move if you check things out thoroughly ahead of time. And addicts will strike anytime. They’re so desperate that they can’t think things through.”

“I suppose…” I conceded, reluctantly. “It still sounds too convenient to me.”

“Me, too,” David added.

“To be honest, me too,” she laughed. “And since nothing at all seems to be missing, it’s hard to buy the burglary idea. Still, it’s something they have to take into account as a possibility.”

“We’re going to have to be more careful about keeping our back door locked,” I groaned, knowing full well who the worst culprit was, and it wasn’t either of them. “The alarm system doesn’t do any good if we don’t lock the door.”

Patsy groaned with me. “How many times has Aunt Myrtle, not to mention you, set the thing off? It’s a wonder anybody pays any attention to it.”

“We’ll just have to be more careful,” I decided, breezily, almost as though that intention would last more than a day or so.

David, being a male, did the practical thing and ran upstairs to check that nobody was hiding there. He finished off the job by checking out the basement. “Just be careful at night,” he said. Then recalled what had happened the day before. “All the time. Just be on your guard.”

“We will,” I promised, and I really meant it. Alas, another pathway on the road to Hell.

Automatic writing, also called
Trance writing, can be done by hand or on a computer. The pros of doing it by hand are that picture symbols can be added to the page. Either way works. It is the simplest way of opening yourself up to other levels. You can just sit down and scribble, or more wisely, you can take the time to relax and welcome only friendly, gentle entities to take over your writing. Basically, you relax, have a pen or pencil in hand, place point and hand (not necessarily forearm as that can limit easy movement) lightly on a sheet of paper, look away, and think of other things than what your hand is doing. When you feel tired or feel the spirit is tired, stop. At first you will most likely see only gibberish. For most people, it takes some practice. You can approach it as you would reading tea leaves, with a lot of imagination and intuition. Psychologists feel that it is a form of releasing hidden thoughts. Skeptics say we subconsciously guide our hands. Believers can become quite good at writing and conveying messages. As with most things in life, none of us need heed skepticism or mockery in whatever we do, paranormal or not.

Chapter Thirteen

              Maybe being on guard meant opening myself up to a psychic experience. If so, it worked. I’ll never figure out why the system works that way. Usually I’m relaxed, completely disconnected from the mind I tap, but this time I was busily dwelling on all sorts of aspects of the case. I fussed about checking out the house, bringing both dogs around from top to bottom, watching them for signs of interest in any area. I’d long since given up on them as watch dogs, despite George’s barking that one night. Binky did whatever George did, so that didn’t help.

             
With his usual pleasure in everything life has to offer, the big dog trotted to the attic with me, sniffed around happily, but only showed interest in a tiny crack in a corner. At least it warned me that mice might be around. In the living area he snuffled around for any potential crumbs that might have been spilled since his last visit. The bedrooms seemed to bore him, except Aunt Myrtle’s where Alexander was napping. I left him cowering outside and checked in the closet and under the bed. The store kept him busy for a few extra minutes. Lots of interesting smells that he usually had to study from a distance. The store is off limits to the dogs, and theoretically to the cat. The basement yielded nothing, not even interest in the possibility of mice.

So the house was safe for the night. Even Patsy had elected to stay home and help keep an eye on Aunt Myrtle. The latter, finding herself confined to home, and apparently not feeling too great despite a delivery by Dora of wildflowers Mac had picked for her
, was basking in having the two of us at her beck and call. We brought new magazines to her room, fluffed pillows, refilled the water glass, and plied her with goodies. She allowed me to make some of her favorite butterscotch brownies, and condescended to eating the hot fudge sundae I concocted with home-made fudge sauce.

It was a quiet evening, not what I’d blithely pictured. My evening with David was once again pushed to the back burner. It was when I was lying in bed, feeling surprisingly angry about the murder and its effect on my free time, that I got hit by a blast of matching fury.

“Matching” isn’t the right word. My anger had been more frustration than rage. But it was apparently enough to open my psychic door. I was appalled at how furious I suddenly felt. It took a few seconds for it to register in my conscious mind that it wasn’t me experiencing the emotion. And of course the minute I tried to pull myself together and gather some information, the sensation was gone.

I got up and tried some automatic writing. Elena had mentioned that she often had good results with it. I knew David had some form of ability along those lines. He had read my mind and drawn perfect pictures of two men who had kidnapped Aunt Myrtle. He said he had no recollection of being in my mind, or of doing the drawings. He’d done them with his eyes shut, his mind seeming to act as a conduit between my brain and the paper.

It wasn’t exactly scary to watch him, but it was certainly startling.

I’d tried letting my hand write automatically several times, with mixed results. One minute I’d have squiggles on the page, the next I’d write words and images. This time, naturally, when I really wanted it to work out, squiggles ruled the day. Not even my overly active imagination could make them anything other than that.

I lay back down, but I felt restless. Leaving my lights out, I went to the window. It wasn’t one of the truly dark nights. Anyone with normal vision can see in the dark to some degree, but definitely we need a lot more light than most animals. I was once in a cave without any light. That was true darkness. I honestly (I know because I tried it) couldn’t even
sense
my hand in front of my face. Looking out the window, I could make out large buildings. Several of the businesses along the street had small lights over their doors. Dora’s place, across the road, remained a dark hulk. For some reason that bothered me, although it was always dark over there once she went to bed. She doesn’t believe in wasting electricity, even when it’s used as a burglar deterrent.

The longer I stood there, the more uncomfortable I felt. But there was no way I was going to go over there and investigate. I had just decided to phone her, whether I woke her or not, when I heard a car coming. It turned out to be a truck, and thankfully it was manned by Mac. He hopped out, took a moment to look around him and then went directly to a small door that led directly up to his sister’s living quarters from the street. She didn’t often use that entrance, but he apparently had a key. I watched as he went inside. A few minutes later a light came on in the kitchen area.

The bad feeling, the niggling irritation that had prevented me from sleeping, dissipated. I crawled back into bed, and this time I slept soundly until morning.

The first sounds I heard were from Patsy, asking Aunt Myrtle what she wanted for breakfast. I couldn’t hear the reply, but my niece went down the stairs. I dressed quickly and after a quiet knock, poked my head into my aunt’s bedroom. “How are you feeling this morning?” I asked in a falsely cheery voice.

She didn’t seem to notice the fake heartiness. “I’m fine. I told Patsy that I’m quite capable of going downstairs for breakfast.”

“You look much better,” I assured her. She did, and I f
elt a retroactive twinge of empathic pain for how she’d looked the day before. “Still, it won’t hurt to take your time getting up and around this morning. Breakfast first, and when that settles, you can get up. But don’t try the stairs until one of us is there with you.”