THE WITCH AND THE TEA PARTY (A Rachael Penzra Mystery) (29 page)

She sighed, sending a clear message that we were all being silly, but she didn’t say anything more. When I left, she was sitting up straight and arranging the covers to make a smooth place for a tray.

Remembering my disturbed night, I went back to the front window. I was lucky enough to catch sight of Mac climbing into his truck and leaving. All must be well, and if I knew him, he was headed for his favorite diner where he could get a decent breakfast. Dora isn’t known for having a stocked larder.

Patsy was just adding a sprig of parsley to an artistically arranged plate of eggs and toast. “She looks much better, doesn’t she?” she asked me.

“Much,” I said. “Poor thing. Whatever happened, she was really hurt.”

“It couldn’t possibly be anything to do with the murder, could it?”

“I don’t see how, but I wish we could get an honest answer out of her. It definitely had something to do with their getting in touch with each other.”

“I’m going to check out the area where she was sup
posedly hurt.” My niece’s face held the familiar, rather frightening to those who know the family, look I’d seen all too often on the face of her mother and my mother and six aunts.

For once I was right behind her. “Yes, we need to be sure that they’re safe.” I meant all three of the trio.
Jimbo was in charge of Moondance’s safety, but she spent so much time with the other two, that they were almost considered one, and not in a religious way.  And while Mac could take care of his sister, he couldn’t always know what was going on with her and her cronies. It did help that he’d become my aunt’s boyfriend, but the more eyes we kept on the three of them, the better chance we had of keeping them out of trouble.

Work went much as usual, if you consider a visit from your local sheriff to be usual.

He called first, so I was able to meet him at the back door. Of course, a sheriff’s car in the driveway was hardly hidden from my customers, but at least he didn’t push his massive body through the store. And happily, for once he wasn’t mad at me.

We sat down at the kitchen table after I’d supplied the expected cookies, bars and coffee. I’d love to call him fat, but it’s all muscle and the
carbs he sucks down in my house don’t seem to make any inroads. Maybe it’s only at my place that he feels the need to pacify himself with sweets. He does seem to find me and mine upsetting at times, and maybe he needs them when he visits. I noticed that he didn’t mention his diet this time.

“You heard about Brown-Hendricks,” he said, making it a statement rather than a question. “He’ll recover, but it could happen again. Ever see that show about a thousand ways to die? Those are accidents. Add purposeful intent and you up the number significantly. Murder isn’t that difficult.”

“Are you sure it was a murder attempt?” I asked. I have a hard time keeping straight what I was supposed to know and what I had learned illegitimately.

He confirmed the bruise story. “It could have been a freakish move on his part. He might conceivably have been spinning down the stairs, still upright, managed to crack his back on the rounded stair post at the bottom and then smashed to the floor.
He was hit hard. Almost impossible to fall like that, and the bruise isn’t wide enough to match the post, but odd things do happen.”

“But you don’t think it really could be an accident,” I said. “I wouldn’t either, especially when his wife was definitely murdered such a short time ago. Only I can’t understand how anyone could just walk up to the house, find an open door, wander upstairs, hide in a spare bedroom, and then manage to top it all off with
the victim conveniently posing at the top like that.”

“Two ways to look at it,” he paused to consume two brownies and the rest of his coffee. He waited for me to refill his cup before continuing. “It really isn’t that difficult to enter a house during the day. The trick is to remain unnoticed. Burglars are finding it more and more convenient, and often easier, to do daytime jobs. You simply have to look as though you belong in the ne
ighborhood. Some burglars even walk dogs in order to appear natural and to give themselves time to scope out a place. And people often don’t keep their houses locked if they’re at home. Stupid, but true. So if you see someone in the back gardening or sunbathing, chances are the house itself is not only open, but empty. It takes guts, but it works. And if they are spotted, escape is usually within a block, car either stolen or license plates unreadable or changed with another car.

“
In the case of a funeral, people would attract more attention than at other times, due to simple human curiosity about who comes and goes to a house in mourning. That’s counterbalanced by the fact that his expensive house is set so far back from the road, and is blocked from the neighbors’ view by trees and shrubs. The cook was busy in the kitchen and not apt to be aware of anything outside that room.

“It took either nerve or insanity, mixed with a lot of luck, to pull it off, but it worked.”

“And nobody noticed anything?” I probed.

“Nothing. We’ve interviewed everybody within half a mile of the place. Nobody saw anybody, not even innocent people like delivery men.”

“Then what can you do?” I asked, really interested.

“Wait until the luck turns our way, I guess,” he sighed. “Sometimes the longer I’m in law enforcement, the easier being a criminal seems to be, particularly when I know all the ups and downs of investigations and how to avoid pitfalls. Unfortunately, the bad guys are often just as up to date and prison seems to be more of a learning experience than punishment. Kind of like being sent to a private school.”

“I don’t envy you your job,” I told him honestly.

He ignored the sympathy and got down to the reason for his visit. “I’ve talked to your aunt and her… friends, but even Moondance doesn’t seem to have any knowledge buried in her subconscious. I’m glad they taped the interviews. It at least gives us some ideas of where to start looking for suspects. She wasn’t a very well-liked woman.”

“From what Aunt Myrtle has said,” I picked my way through my somewhat deceitful words. “It seems as though the party was given just so Moondance could talk to the person Frances thought must be trying to kill her. I’m not exactly clear about that part.”

“She was apparently an astute and intelligent woman,” he said. “But she had a weakness for the paranormal nonsense…” He stopped, eying me for an indignant reaction. I was used to that sort of comment, though, and let it pass unchallenged. “She honestly thought silly Moondance could tell fortunes, and that the ability would somehow
show which of them intended murder.”

There was no way I was going to mention the strange entity that seemed to have taken over Moondance when she used the crystal ball and stand together. David had been true to his word and had managed to remove the stand without actually touching it. Once the two pieces were separated, he said, neither one was dangerous. He’d turned the stand over to Elena who knew of a man who would take in artifacts and keep them safe from ignorant hands.
He put another stand under the ball. Destroying either of them seemed wrong, but using them together was worse. Never having come across anything like that before, I admit I found the idea fascinating—until I recalled how I’d been drawn toward the ball and stand. I shuddered inside just thinking about it.

“Moondance was doing pretty good, from what I heard,” I told him. “Even Aunt Myrtle seems to be popular. But certainly very few people would take them seriously.”

“The Brown-Hendricks woman did,” he reminded me. “Poison pen letters, and slander can be nasty, but while we don’t credit most of what we hear, it’s true that hints and names often help us in our cases. I want people to know that anything they say to us officially will be viewed as opinion, not defamation or anything they can be held to if they aren’t direct witnesses. We want guesses and speculation, vicious lies or not. We can sort things out and clear the wheat from the chaff.”

“I imagine you know that I’ve been interviewing people,” I decided I wasn’t going to get any inside information out of him and might as well get to the reason for his visit. “
Nicholas begged me to help. I’d like to think his reasons were pure, but it wouldn’t be unreasonable to believe that he is really doing it to make an impression on the world that he’s doing all he can to bring his wife’s killer to justice. There! I’ve provided some more vicious slander for you. And he’s probably completely innocent. That wouldn’t prevent him from wanting the fact to be recognized. I suggested he hire a private investigator, but he shied away from the idea. Silly of him, because if he has something to hide, you’re sure to find out about it…” I paused hoping he’d fill in the empty space. He didn’t, so I continued. “All any of them did was say nasty things about the others.”

“Did you follow in your aunt’s footsteps and tape any of it?”

If he hadn’t sounded so snotty, I might have confessed. “David, and sometimes Aunt Myrtle, hid on the steps and listened to them all. So I’d have witnesses if I needed any.”

Surprisingly, he didn’t pick up on my evasion. I must be getting better at lying. Practice, sadly, makes perfect. “Were there any definite accusations?”

“No, not really.” I tried to think of what exactly was said during the sessions. “I didn’t think there was anything other than innuendo. Do you want me to try and recall what was said? I can have David help me and write down anything that was a real accusation.”

“That won’t hurt,” he agreed. “We probably heard it all when we questioned them, but sometimes people won’t say things to us that they’ll freely share with others. And put in any feelings you got when they talked. You might have heard something in the tone of voice that won’t show up on paper.”
That was as close as he’d ever come to telling me to use any psychic information I came across.

I agreed. The goodies plate was empty. He wound up the interview and left. I hustled back to give
David and Patsy an update.

“At least we’ll get some time together,” David said.

“Did you tell him about last night?” Patsy asked.

             
              I assumed she meant Sheriff Alberts since I’d told David about it earlier. “I wasn’t about to open that door again,” I groused. “You know how he is about psychics. And I didn’t have anything to say, really. I thought I was experiencing someone else’s anger? I thought it was someone I knew?” I added the last, because most of my experiences do seem to be related to things and people I’m involved with.

“It probably would have put him off,” she conceded.

“If it had been anything pointing to someone, even gender, I would have told him and let him do with it what he chose—probably ignore it.”

Aunt Myrtle had come down after breakfast and scooted over to Dora’s. I noticed that the sheriff’s car ended up across the street, so I assumed he’d gone over to talk to those two before he headed back. At least he had the decency to remove his car from my driveway. Despite what they say, not all publicity is good. Although, thinking it over, I’ve been surprised to find that most of it actually is. People are snoopy, if nothing else, and maybe there’s a sense of adventure in being close to people involved in something exciting.

I called the hospital, but they informed me that Nicholas wasn’t allowed visitors. I was relieved, but dutifully left a message that I’d tried to get hold of him. I wondered if he was too sick or if the sheriff was protecting him.

The minute we closed the store, I told my aunt and niece that they’d have to find their own sup
pers. I was headed for David’s, under orders by the sheriff to write down everything we could think of about my visitor’s confessions. I grabbed the tapes and the dogs, and made a run for it, beating David to his house. He’d stopped along the way to pick up some Chinese food.

I have a key, so I went inside to wait. The dogs greeted us happily, after a loud bout of barking. They sounded more fierce and numerous than they were. I was torn between being glad my dogs weren’t noisy, and thinking it might be nice to have a reliable watchdog on the premises. After the excited greetings, I let them all out to run around the fenced-in yard. A short time later the barking started up again, this time including a few deep bass woofs from George.

“Alone at last!” David entered and dumped his bags of food on the kitchen counter. “If something interrupts us tonight, I might have a breakdown from pure frustration.”

“We could run and hide in the cave,” I suggested, referring to the cave system that ran behind his house, reachable through hidden entrances in the barn and the basement.

“That might be an idea,” he brightened.

Just like a man. They can enjoy sex any place, any time. I prefer a nice cozy bed, preferably located close to a bathroom. I did give in on a major issue, though
—not waiting around to build up steam with cuddling. We didn’t have to. We left the dogs and the food while we went upstairs and took care of private business.

Later, satiated with
fun and food, we got down to work. The four dogs found comfortable spots on the carpet. I was so proud of Binky. Having done her chores outside, I could feel fairly confident that she wouldn’t need to go again for some time. We had been letting her enjoy the house more and more as she matured, but I still keep a close eye out for signs of restlessness.