THE WITCH AND THE TEA PARTY (A Rachael Penzra Mystery) (30 page)

What we did was condense the information from the tapes into simple statements. It went fairly quickly and helped to clarify things in my mind. David had his arm around me, casually draped, but without any intensity of physical emotion. We were drinking beers, quite relaxed, when the anger hit me again. We both jumped about a foot. It took a minute for me to realize he hadn’t reacted to my twitch. He’d felt the same anger. It took him a second longer to be sure it wasn’t coming from me
personally.

“Whew,” he half laughed when he recovered somewhat. “I never get that kind of psychic blow on my own.”

“I think it was much stronger when the two of us were connected.”

His face paled. “What if it had happened during…
” He looked horrified.

I couldn’t help laughing. “I don’t think it could. I have to be relaxed, not involved in any deep emotion. Occasionally it’ll happen when I’m thinking about the problem.”

A little color returned to his face. “I don’t know whether our being such a good team is a good thing in this case,” he managed a weak laugh, too. “I don’t think I could handle such a blow to my psyche.”

It was funny, but it was also a wee bit scary.
I decided to relegate it to the status of worrying that a meteor might fall on us during one of our sessions. “Did you get anything out of it?” I asked, referring to the psychic hit rather than our earlier actions.

“Nothing,” he admitted. “Your experiences are really rather frightening, aren’t they? Mine are usually just excursions, less raw emotion.”

Aha! I thought. Finally he’s openly talking about his own abilities. I mentally choked back my excitement and treated it all very casually. I was so proud of myself. “Sometimes I just pick up random thoughts,” I said. “It’s new to me to be involved with murderers. I wonder what made the change. Maybe moving here?”

“I suppose it’s possible,
but it doesn’t seem too likely.” He thought about it. “Did your Aunt Josie ever talk about anything like this happening to her?”

He was referring to my late aunt, who had left the store to me. She was the one who had encouraged me to develop my psychic
ability, the very thing I’d tried so hard to bury and hide from all my life. She was a witch, deeply involved in nature. I’d been fascinated by her beliefs and the calm content they gave her. She didn’t go in for worship of gods and goddesses, preferring to follow the old practice of being a ‘wise woman’. It wasn’t a form of worship that she gave to the world around her; it was a love and acceptance. She saw herself as part of the earth, not as a ruler of it. If she took any notice of the Biblical idea of man having dominion, she understood it to mean that the ultimate responsibility for its well-being was hers, not that she could do with it as she wished for her own benefit.

“She never mentioned anything,” I told him. “Do you think it’s possible that the house itself is making a difference in my seeing?”

“It could be,” he said. “Anybody who doesn’t believe there are powerful places in the world is simply not sensitive to them. People and things. They all emit different levels and kinds of energy.”

“I’ve always believed that when a woman—or a man—senses danger, maybe on a dark street at night, that there’s some reason for it. It doesn’t necessarily follow that she’s attacked that time, but the danger was there. Maybe she quickened her pace, or crossed the street, or the attacker backed away for one reason or another. The trouble with that is that once nothing actually happens, we feel silly.”

“We humans are always in the spotlight in our own minds.”

I laughed. “So true. If I’m alone in the woods or somewhere, and I trip clumsily, the first thing I do is look around to make sure nobody saw me.”

“I read somewhere that the reason we laugh at other people when that sort of thing happens is as much because we’re relieved it wasn’t us as because it’s funny,” he added.

“Well, I think I’ll blame my unfortunate tendency to enter the minds of murderers as something to do with my move here. It’s either that or blame Aunt Josie.”

“Do you feel as though you’re entering their minds, or they’re entering yours?” he asked.

“Oh don’t even go there!” I ordered. “I enter their minds.” I spoke decisively, but the fact was that once or twice I’d felt someone probing and poking at my own mind, trying to get in. It was a horrible feeling. I shuddered just thinking about it.

He hugged me closer. “Don’t worry about it, Rachael. It isn’t a problem. You could be the best if you’d let yourself. You work too hard at blocking things. It’s because you’re so good at what you do that you no doubt are more open to others at times.”

“I don’t want to be,” I pouted.

“Why?”

“Because it’s bad people who do it.” I sounded like a whiny child even to my own ears.

“They can’t get anything from you,” he soothed.

But I was on a tear, in no mood to be comforted. “Because there’s nothing of interest in my mind?” I demanded.

He laughed and kissed my ear. “Because there’s nothing they can use as a weapon against you. You aren’t vulnerable to mental blackmail.”

Ha, little did he know about the less than perfect side of my nature, the petty, nasty, jealous side. Poor David. He didn’t understand women at all. That, in my opinion, was a good thing. “I suppose because I’m boring,” I grumbled, but my mood was recovering from the scare.

“Come on,” he urged, ignoring my last try at sympathy. “Let’s look over this list and see what we actually know.”

Look though we did, all we really learned—again—was that almost all of the suspects had motives, some weak, some strong. The trouble was that what we considered to be weak reasons for murder might be all some people would need. Killing is understandable to most of us. Murder is not. Killing is self-defense. Murder is one step beyond that, though as I’ve often wondered, wouldn’t response to something like blackmail equal a form of self-defense? It was an attack of sorts. Words, words, words. I guess what really divided the two
things was the heart of the attacker.

“I’ll give Nicholas a call tomorrow, and see if he still wants a report,” I said. “…if he’s even well enough to receive one. But that’s tomorrow, and there really is no such thing. By the time our tomorrows arrive, they’re
todays. Does that make any sense?”

“Yes,” he soothed. “No sense in worrying about tomorrow. What we have is right now, and I have some more ideas. You mentioned the cave earlier?”

“No,” I insisted. “That was humor.”

“The bedroom again?”

“You make it sound boring,” I grumbled, but I didn’t pull back when he stood and took my hand to lead me upstairs. So I lost a little more sleep. I figured I’d more than make up for it with my mood being enhanced and my body fatigued from all the exercise.

Old customs often promise to foretell the future. T
hink of the names of five boys (or girls) you think might be possible mates, twist the stem off an apple, each turn representing a name in order. When the stem breaks off, that’s your future mate. The female who catches the bride’s bouquet is having her future told: marriage within the year. A broken mirror portends bad luck for seven years unless the prediction is rapidly counteracted. Three people in a picture? Make sure you’re not the middle one, as otherwise you will be the first to die. Wooly Bear caterpillars predict the weather, as does the shadow (or lack thereof) of the groundhog. Every country, every group of people, has beliefs for foretelling the future. Black cats, black dogs, and crows are mainly ominous signs, representing the dangers of the dark, of nights ahead. Believe or don’t believe, we still avoid potential dangerous predictions by walking around ladders, knocking on wood, etc. And by the bye, the wood must be live wood to work.

Chapter Fourteen

    
I stayed the night, something I rarely did. The truth was that I was easily persuaded, not just for pleasure, but because I was a little nervous about going home alone that late. Patsy, when I called, had assured me that she had Aunt Myrtle well under control, having escorted her over to Dora’s earlier and watched from the window as Mac later escorted her back home. “Aunt Rachael, I think they kissed before she came in,” she chortled.

I chortled, too, but I warned her not to let down her guard. “I’d like to say that I can’t believe she’d be foolish enough to sneak away again, at least not so soon, but you know how she can be.”

“I set a trap,” my niece whispered. “If she leaves the house—or for that matter, if anybody manages to get in without setting off the alarm—I’ll know. It’s a simple thread trick. A bell attached to a trip. The thread will snap immediately, so don’t worry that it’ll trip her. And I’ll set my mind to remain awake for that sound.”

I agreed she had things covered, and went to bed with that worry off my mind.

The next morning, as I sneaked myself and the dogs home earlier than my tired body would have wished, I was surprised to find Patsy already up. After the dogs had performed their usual “I’ve missed you so much. Where were you? Why didn’t you come with us? I love you…” routine, I found out why.

“I figured I’d get to you before she wakes up,” she said. I had no problem figuring out who the ‘she’ was. “Would you believe that she sneaked out last night? I could hardly believe it. And of all things, she took the old truck. I barely managed to follow her quickly enough.”

“She drove the truck?” I grasped onto the most unbelievable part. We have an old truck that lives under a carport at the far end of the yard. It runs. However, it’s a stick shift and its clutch brings a new meaning to temperamental.

“Fortunately she wasn’t spotted by anybody or she would have been pulled over for a DUI for sure. Still, she didn’t hit any inanimate
or animate objects, although it was pretty close a few times.” She shuddered. I joined her. “It’s a good thing it isn’t far to Moondance’s. She parked under some trees a few houses away. Now you have to understand that she was driving without lights the last few hundred yards. I’d been all along, but I kept to the middle of the road for the most part, and the street lights were more than enough.”

“Why didn’t you just catch up with her and stop her?” I demanded. The possibilities, as they say, were endless, and none of them good news.

“I was afraid I’d scare her into making a run for it,” she laughed shakily. “And don’t tell me that she wouldn’t have. Besides, by the time we were halfway there, I figured out where she was headed and decided I’d find out once and for all what they were up to.”

“What?” I prodded, glancing toward the hallway to make sure my aunt wasn’t hiding around the corner.

“She was carrying a big envelope and she walked up the driveway and then went around to the back. It really was dark there, so I had to go carefully. Good thing, too, or I would have bumped right into them. There was a tiny glow of light from what I guess was the kitchen. It helped.

“Moondance was there in the yard. They were both under a big old maple, so it was hard to see them. I heard them whispering. After a minute or two
a car went past and in the reflection of its lights off the garage, I could just make out that they were doing some sort of elaborate hand-shake ritual. I almost giggled out loud. Do they think they’re ghetto girls?”

Nobody could have lighter skin than my Scandinavian aunt, and both she and Moondance came from a generation that protected their skin from the sun. Add their Minnesota accents… Let’s put it this way, Ghetto they aren’t. I snickered, but quickly recovered. “So what happened?”

“You aren’t going to believe this, but Moondance tucked the envelope into her bosom and hitched up her cape and gown. By then my eyes had adjusted to the dark. Aunt Myrtle clasped her hands and formed a stirrup for her to step on. Up she went, right up into the tree. Aunt Myrtle warned her to be careful about that strange slippery part, and Moondance assured her that she’d thrown soapy hot water on the area earlier. The horrible part is that she scooted out on a big branch and then
launched
herself into the air. She landed on the open window sill. I guess it wasn’t more than a few feet, but I almost gave myself away. Good thing I was too stunned to react.

“Apparently they treasure that tree, because I went back after I’d seen Aunt Myrtle home safely. I used a flashlight. I’m lucky I wasn’t arrested. Anyway, what they’ve done is saw off the branches on the house side of the tree, so a few of the big branches go
virtually right up to the window. You’d think the roots would hurt the foundation. Still…”

“They’ve been climbing up and down the tree all this time?” I groaned.

“That’s no doubt what happened to Aunt Myrtle,” she added. “She hit that ‘strange slippery spot’ and fell. I wish she’d told us the truth. If they’ve been up and down that tree like monkeys, they should have known about any awkward, much less slippery, spots. I think someone must have greased the tree.”

“Another murder attempt?” I asked, trying to take it all in. “And another chancy try. What are the odds of someone actually dying from a fall like that?”

“Pretty good if you’re in your sixties or seventies,” she said, grimly. “At the very least there’s bound to be some major damage. There was, too. Aunt Myrtle was really hurt.”

“And it explains how her head was damaged,” I tried to put the scenario together in my mind. “It would be easy enoug
h to cut your head open on something, scrape it on a branch that your fall had broken.” The scene suddenly came to life and I was aghast. “Then she managed to crawl all that way to escape the area so nobody would know what they were up to. Of all the stupid things to do!”