THE WITCH AND THE TEA PARTY (A Rachael Penzra Mystery) (9 page)

“Some women have no pride,” my aunt sniffed.

“He was more interested in the Mandrell woman,” Dora said. “She’s married, but he acted as though her words were all pearls of wisdom.”

“She is
kind of pretty,” Aunt Myrtle reluctantly said. “But her husband was right there beside her. It really looked odd.”

“The captain, or whatever he really is, seems to think he’s God’s gift to women. He looks kind of like that actor, the one who never marries his girlfriends.”

“George Clooney?” I guessed. They nodded. “He probably is a hit with the ladies if he has any charm to go with the looks.”

They reluctantly agreed that he did.
Apparently he hadn’t wasted any on them, or I was sure they’d be much more impressed by him.

“Okay, that’s Rita, our questionable captain, Mrs.
Mandrell… Helen, it says on the list, and her husband is Brandon. Do you have any idea what these peoples’ relationships with the dead woman were?”

“Business,” Dora spoke with assurance. “At least the
Mandrell guy. I heard him speaking of Mrs. B-H as his boss.”

“Her? Not her husband?”

“Sounded like he meant her, but maybe it was the two of them he meant.”

“I think that must be the connection,” my aunt said, excitedly. “Now that you mention it, I heard the Lang wo
man making a snide remark about Karen Powell having a thing about her boss’ husband, so it must be the dead woman who’s the one with the money.”

“The guy with
that Karen was her brother, I think,” Dora thought about it for a minute. “I think she said something to him about not acting the big brother again, that she didn’t need his advice.”

“What about the husband, Mr. Brown-Hendricks?” I asked. “What did he seem to think of the whole fortune telling thing?”

“He was nice about it,” Dora, the toughest nut to crack when it concerned men, seemed to have fallen victim to the man’s charm. That said a lot about him. “He came over and talked to me about Eloise, was really interested in how you found her and how she was an herbivore and had such different hair patterns than most rats.” Aha, that explained it.

“And he wanted to know how we had decided to start up the fortune telling business and how our clients reacted to their fortunes,” Aunt Myrtle, too, found him charming. “He said that he could understand wanting to know the future, but that it might be a little frightening.”

“Well, don’t forget that the spouse is always the most likely killer,” Patsy scolded them, half laughing. “Still, until we know if it was a murder and not just something natural, I guess we shouldn’t tar and feather him.”

“Oh, I don’t think someone like that would commit murder,” my gullible aunt cried.

“Wouldn’t think he’d have to.” Even charm couldn’t completely bury Dora’s practical view of life. “I would think he got most anything he wanted in life.”

“Well, he couldn’t have wanted to be married to that woman,” Aunt Myrtle said, decidedly. “She was just as nasty to him as she was to everybody else.
You’d never know she was the same woman who pleaded with us to have the readings.”

“She wasn’t in control then. Told you that once she paid the money she thought we were automatically her slaves.”

“It isn’t as though we’d sold our souls,” my aunt said.

“The way she acted, I would guess anybody who worked for her for long must have felt like they had,” Dora replied. To us she added, “I don’t think she missed anybody with her mean little remarks. Some of them I didn’t get, but I could tell they upset everyone in one way or another. If she was always
like that, I wonder how she stayed alive as long as she did.”

David knocked on the door, entering at our call. The two older ladies quickly brought him up to date on what had happened. When they finished their duet, he turned a puzzled face to me. “Someone was murdered at the party last night? With their tea?”

I filled him in as thoroughly as I could in the time we had left before opening. “Why didn’t you call me?” he asked, looking a little hurt.

“If there had
been one thing you could have done besides hold me, I would have been on the phone first thing. But there was nothing to do but wait and wait.”

“I would have been glad to hold you,” he said, still sounding a little huffy.

“And I would have fallen to pieces if you’d been there to lean on,” I told him. “A lot of good that would have done. As it is, you’ll probably be stuck with most of the work today. I already feel as though I’ve been up twelve hours.” I got up and hugged him. “David, honestly, I kept telling myself it would only mean two of us had to stay awake.”

“You don’t have to do everything yourself, Rachael,” he scolded, but he liked the hug in front of the other three. We both tend to be
very private people about our romance.

“What we all have to do is open the store,” Patsy interrupted our little cozy moment. “Can you go back into your place, Dora?”

“The sheriff said I had to wait until he told me I could return,” she snorted. “If they didn’t find all the clues last night with all of them searching, anything that’s left is no doubt crushed by their big feet.”

We left them to go back upstairs and headed for the day’s work.

To say we were busy has to be the understatement of the year. We banned the Press by the simple expedient of having David escort them out when we claimed ignorance and said we had no statement to make. He has extensive training in varied martial arts, some I’m not sure even exist in the general public’s knowledge. He would seemingly gently take an elbow of a reporter who wouldn’t take no for an answer, and he’d ‘guide’ them outside. Since they tended to be tiptoeing along trying to get away from the grip, it must have hurt.

“It won’t leave any marks,” was
all my hero said to me when I asked him what exactly he had done to them. My own training is limited to pretty basic stuff. I’m good at it, but I don’t have any secret masterly moves at my disposal. My best move is to completely avoid conflict.

People were slyly or openly curious about what had happened across the road. It was fascinating the stories they’d alr
eady heard—or made up.
Somebody
has to make up those wild tales that circulate with every event of interest, particularly the bloody and macabre ones. I’ve always wondered exactly how they get going. Who has the nerve to make something up out of whole cloth? Or maybe each person just adds a little personal touch as it goes around.

Whoever, or whatever, the answer is, throughout the day I heard that seven people had been stricken with poisoning (another note of interest: why seven in particular?), that Mrs. Brown-Hendricks had been struck with a rusty axe that had been amongst the innumerable items for sale in the store (the axe murder alternated with a rusty knife contingent), that Aunt Myrtle had been arrested along with Dora and Moondance, that Moondance had predicted the murder while doing a reading, and many other fascinating tales of mayhem. The man who told me she’d been shot quickly altered his story when I mentioned that nobody had heard a shot,
adding that of course a silencer had been used. Adaptation seemed to be the driving force behind the stories.

It didn’t make much difference when the details came out on the news and in the papers. Most people accepted the bare facts of poisoning, but the elaborations continued. Fortunately, most people have a basic sense of decency, and understood the concept that a visit to the store to glean information meant a trade-off. They bought things. We had early on learned to tell what we knew about the death. She had been taken ill (we didn’t say poison until the autopsy confirmed it) while hosting a party at the store, the group having their fortunes told after enjoying a nice meal at her house. I didn’t think there was any
harm in adding that last fact, and sure enough, I was soon hearing all about slow-acting poisons that were no doubt consumed during the dinner. I nodded sagely, adding that nowadays people were smart enough to coat things so they wouldn’t hit the system too soon. I really haven’t a clue if that’s a feasible theory or not in real life, but I don’t read mysteries without learning some esoteric facts.

At lunch Dora told me that she’d been given permission to return home. I wasn’t happy about that, but what could I do to stop her? Aunt Myrtle intended to accompany her there and keep her company, and while I didn’t see how two old ladies could ward off an attack much better than one, I did feel that two would b
e less liable to be attacked—especially during the day with the entire population keeping an eye on the store, no doubt hoping that something more would happen. We compromised by deciding that one of us would make regular checkups on them.

What I didn’t like was Dora’s look as she listened to the busy hubbub through the closed pocket doors. I attacked her outright. “You aren’t planning on opening the store today, are you?”

“I thought I might as well,” she told me. “I figure we lost a fair amount last night when everybody thought the tea was poisoned. Nobody would buy it after that. And besides, they were wandering around the store and a few of them had put items aside to buy before they left. I doubt they’ll be back for them.”

There wasn’t much to argue about. I was making a killing (if that isn’t too insensitive a term to use under the circumstances) from the whole thing. Why shouldn’t she get in on the profits? “Just don’t talk to reporters,” I warned her. “They’ll distort everything you say.”

“I don’t intend to,” she assured me. “There’s always the possibility that if I keep my mouth shut, I’ll be offered some big money for my story.”

I flinched inwardly. I looked over at my aunt. Dora might be capable of keeping quiet, but could Aunt Myrtle?

Dora, seeing my look, reassured me. “Mac’s coming over to keep an eye on things.”

Her b
rother was my aunt’s boyfriend, in Aunt Myrtle’s own eyes, at least. He could make sure she didn’t jabber if anybody could. And Mac, eccentric as he was, would take good care of them.

“The only thing is,” Aunt Myrtle complained. “We can’t get hold of Moondance.
Jimbo finally answered our calls and told us that she wasn’t available today. Can you believe that? Do you think he’s holding her prisoner, or something?”

Jimbo
, usually the most complacent of husbands, had apparently decided that enough was enough. I hoped it didn’t mean the end of the trio’s friendship. They loved being together and made nonsense of the idea that calcification of the brain and loss of enthusiasm comes with age. On the other hand, I could hardly blame him for being upset.

“I’m sure he’ll get over it,” I lied. I wasn’t altogether sure, but Moondance, in her strange way, seemed to rule the roost for the most part. I think she must wear him down.

“We won’t be able to open the fortune telling booth,” Dora grumbled.

Aunt Myrtle perked up suddenly. “Why couldn’t I do it?”

“Moondance wouldn’t let you use her ball or her Tarot cards,” Dora reminded her.

“You’ve got that smaller old ball,” my aunt said. “And yo
u have several old Tarot decks, or at least parts of them.”

“No!” I ordered. “You can’t be fooling around with other people’s decks like that. You don’t know what
energies might still be in them. They could well be negative.”

“Oh, they’re probably just stuff people played around with. Not used for
real
readings.”

“That’s a wrong thing to do,” I scolded her, quite earnestly.

“I could buy a new deck. They sell them at that odd shop that opened up last month.”

She was referring to a magic shop that offered lots of supposedly magical clothing, very high
-end costs. Moondance had even bought a new cape there, a lovely thing I coveted. They didn’t sell cheap items like fake spells or cheap crystals. They only sold the large, real things. It was a fun shop to browse through, and since they weren’t in competition with my items, I could enjoy visiting it.

“You don’t know how to tell fortunes,” I reminded her.

“I’ve learned how to do it from Moondance.”

“She really has,” Dora confirmed. “She’s not as good as Moondance, but she has the right idea of what to say to people.”

I gave up. My lunch break was over. I whispered to Patsy what they were up to, and she promised to do her best to stop them. She went to take her break, but before she was through the doors I saw Dora and my aunt scurrying across the street. I sighed and told David what was going on, talking in bits and pieces because of the customers, all of whom seemed to have big ears that day. It didn’t help that within a few minutes the roar of Dora’s beloved car sounded in the street. Sure enough, off they streaked, returning within the half hour, my aunt clutching a bag to her chest, glancing nervously toward my store.

“They won’t come to any harm,” David reassured me. “The Tarot isn’t that easy to manipulate, you know. It takes a bit for it to warm up to you. Before that, Moondance is sure to be back. You worry too much.”

One thing the two of us would never agree upon was the terrible trio. He still thought they were sweet old ladies, and that was in the face of the facts. He’s seen them in action, but he maintains that they’re harmless, and have perhaps been a tad unlucky in the past.