Be Careful What You Witch For (A Family Fortune Mystery) (22 page)

36

Sunday morning, after we walked the dogs, I left Seth with his computer and told him I had some errands.

Mostly, I needed to think. I had too many mysteries, and not enough insight into any of them. Now that Dylan was out of jail, I felt less urgent about figuring out who killed Rafe. Vi’s concerns about a roving lunatic aside, I felt like I needed to deal with some mysteries closer to home. Neila’s confessions yesterday had been eye-opening but none of it explained why my mother was so against my seeing her that Vi had to go behind her back to get me up there. I understood the recluse excuse, but I didn’t understand why she was venturing into town after so many years of self-imposed exile. She must have been trying to get close to Rafe’s memorial the night that Mac had driven her home. But why was she causing trouble with Howard and Millie?

I turned my Jeep up the now familiar gravel driveway toward her house. I had grown accustomed to the desolate look of the house, but this time it seemed shut down. I realized the difference was that on my first couple of visits I had smelled wood smoke from her chimney. It was absent this time.

My knock seemed loud in the small clearing and I listened carefully for sounds from within. It was silent. I knocked again and started to get worried. She was over ninety, after all. I had stepped off the porch with a plan to go to the back door when I heard the front door swing open.

“Hello, dear. I’m moving slowly today.” She attempted a tired smile that didn’t make it to her eyes.

“Hi, Ms. Whittle. I . . . wanted to check on you after our talk yesterday.”

She nodded and swung the door open.

Her house seemed colder today, as if the life had been leached out of it. She led me back down the hall to the kitchen, as usual. There was no fire today, as I had surmised while still outside.

“Can I get you anything?” she asked.

I shook my head no, and she settled slowly into her chair.

“Ms. Whittle, I spoke with Millie and Howard last week.”

She perked up a bit at this news. “Oh my. Millie doesn’t like me very much.”

“She thinks you’re trying to steal Howard.”

The deep laugh that erupted seemed out of place coming from such a tiny person. I smiled along with her.

“She does get ideas,” Neila said.

“You’re not trying to steal Howard?”

She shook her head. “No, I just wanted to talk to him. We were . . . involved . . . a lifetime ago, but that’s been over for longer than you’ve been alive.”

“That’s about what Howard said,” I agreed. “Can you tell me why, after all this time, you wanted to talk to him?”

She sighed and gestured for me to sit. “He was Rafe’s father. I thought he should know that I had found our son. And that he had died.”

“I’m sorry. Did you get a chance to tell him before Millie came in?”

She shook her head. “No, and then I had second thoughts. Maybe it would be kinder to let him think . . . whatever it is he thinks. Sometimes the truth isn’t as kind as hope.”

I took a deep breath. I wasn’t sure now whether I wanted to know the answer to my next question, but I plowed on anyway.

“I came to ask you about something else as well. I know you may not want to talk about it, but I really need to know what happened between you and my mother,” I said, and leaned my elbows on the table. “You must have known her if you and my grandmother were as close as you say.”

Neila glanced at me and looked away. She sighed and seemed to crumple into herself.

“I gave your mother some bad news a long time ago and she’s avoided me ever since.”

My chest squeezed as I realized the kind of news she must have shared.

“You think my mother will outlive one of her children?”

Neila nodded and wouldn’t meet my gaze.

“Do you know which—”

She held up her hand and shook her head.

“I don’t know which child it will be. I hope that I’m wrong. I’m sorry, Clytemnestra.”

“Well, that explains a lot about my mother,” I said. I thought about her overprotectiveness, her insistence that I use my abilities to protect myself, her vocal disapproval of my choice to go to police academy. She must have been concerned I was in constant danger.

“When did you give her this news?”

Neila watched me for a moment. “When you were just a toddler. I don’t even think you were talking yet. Your grandmother and mother brought you and Grace to see me. Your grandmother had a knack for reading faces and picking up on subtle things. She knew I’d seen something and badgered me until I told her.” Neila hugged herself and pulled her shawls more tightly around her shoulders.

I sensed there was more and waited.

“Your mother gathered up you and your sister and left. I haven’t spoken to her since then. Agnes brought you here sometimes, but I never saw Grace or Rose again.”

*   *   *

I left Neila’s
house and drove slowly back toward home. It was one of the few times in my life when I wished I had just let things slide. Neila was right—sometimes it’s better not to know. I thought about my own premonitions and how they were just gloomy predictions of doom. I knew that because I hadn’t honed the talent, or ever fully tested it, I tended to interpret the dreams in the worst light possible. Last summer I had been sure that Mac was in danger and things hadn’t turned out that way at all. My efforts to protect him had only complicated matters.

These dreams about Seth really bothered me. I couldn’t tell if they were related to what had happened to Rafe, or whatever was going on with Seth in New York, but it seemed pretty clear to me that he was in danger and that I would be useless as a rescuer.

Seth. We’d left things undecided the day before. We had to make a decision, and soon. I pulled into my driveway and shut off the car. I wondered if, when we were done talking, I would feel the same about his truths as I did about Neila’s.

I found him camped out in his room, dogs watching his every move as he ate chips and clicked away on his computer.

He looked up when I came in. “Hey,” he said, and smiled.

I moved some clothes off the only chair in the room and sat.

His smile faded to a wary line.

“We need to talk about your plans for going back to New York.”

He clicked rapidly on the keyboard and then folded up the laptop.

“’Kay.”

“You can’t just do your homework through e-mail for the rest of the year. You have to be in classes.”

I was surprised when he nodded. “Yeah, I know. I looked into transferring to Crystal Haven High.”

“What? Do your parents know?”

“Kind of. I told them I didn’t want to continue at my own school. A lot of the kids I was with in elementary school go to boarding school now. There are some really good ones, and my mom and dad have mentioned it a bunch of times.”

“Boarding school? That’s what you want?”

“No, not at all. But I told them it would be no different than if they sent me to boarding school. They couldn’t really argue with that.”

I sat back and narrowed my eyes at him. “When were you and your mother planning to tell me you had moved in?”

He grinned. “Now seems good. Dylan’s out of jail, the Fall Fun Fest is over, so I guess we could talk about it.”

I started to wish I hadn’t gotten out of bed that morning.

“Your mom is okay with you going to CH High?”

He lifted a shoulder and tilted his head. “She went there.”

“That’s different. She lived here.”

“Yeah, that’s why I want to move here. I can’t take it in New York. There’s just too much noise, and I’m not talking about traffic. The animals there are . . . well . . . pushy.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it.

“How are they pushy?”

“They’re constantly complaining about the noise and the other animals and it’s just too much. I can’t think when I’m there. Ever since last summer when I heard Baxter, I just can’t shut it out. I’m not ready to tell my parents about it. I thought maybe you could help me.”

I understood his situation only too well, but I hadn’t figured out my
own
methods yet. How was I going to help him? Then I remembered the dream. Maybe this is what I was supposed to save him from. New York has a lot of tall buildings. Maybe it was saying I needed to rescue him from New York. Did my sister cackle like a witch? Was I saving him from his own mother?

I must have spaced out for a moment because Seth had gotten up to come snap his fingers in front of me.

“I asked my mom if she would let me stay through till the New Year and see how it goes. I can register at CH High and they can talk to my old school about which classes I should take.”

“I’ll talk to your mom and we’ll see what we can work out.”

Seth’s smile told me he thought this was a done deal.

37

Monday morning Seth and I had just returned home after walking the dogs when a black Tahoe pulled into the driveway. I squinted at the glare shining off the windshield and waited.

Skye hopped out and walked toward us.

“Hi,” she said and bent to pet Baxter. Her hair fell and covered her face. Baxter wagged his whole body and acted almost as besotted as Seth. Tuffy glowered from under his ponytail until she turned to him and rubbed his ears.

“What’s up?” I asked.

Skye pulled a file folder out of her messenger bag.

“I was talking to Diana at work and she told me I should bring these to you.” She held the file out to me.

“What is it?” Seth asked.

She bit her lip and wouldn’t meet my eyes. “It’s Rafe’s family tree.”

“What?” I snatched the file from her and flipped it open. It was the same diagram I had seen last week when we searched Rafe’s house. “How did you get this?”

She glanced nervously at me and stepped a little closer to Seth.

“I went back after the police left last week. I wanted to see if they had found this.” She pointed toward the file.

“You took it?” I tamped down a surge of guilt at having stolen Rafe’s grimoire and the knowledge that I would have taken the family tree as well, if it had been there when I went back.

She nodded. “I knew it was important to Rafe and that he didn’t want anyone else to see it. He wouldn’t even let me look at it, and I was doing research for him.”

Seth bounced on his toes and rubbed his arms. “Can we talk about this inside?”

We went in the house and dealt with the dog treats. Baxter would be both spoiled and in another weight class by the time Seth left.
If
he ever left.

“Tell me what this is about,” I said when we were settled in the living room.

Skye took the file from me and laid some papers out on the coffee table.

“This is Rafe’s family tree according to his grandmother. See the signature in the corner? That’s Amity Leal.”

Seth and I leaned forward to look.

Skye continued, “According to this diagram, Rafe’s grimoire was passed down through the female side of his family, and because he was the only child, he received it from his mother. These notes here show the passage of the grimoire down the female line to Rafe.”

Seth and I nodded and I wondered where this was leading. I knew Rafe had the grimoire, as did everyone else. It was how he had claimed his leadership role in the coven.

“This is the part that gets weird. When I showed Diana this family tree, she showed me this other one.” Skye reached into her bag and pulled out a copy of the genealogy chart from the back of Dylan’s book.

“It looks the same to me,” Seth said.

Skye nodded. “It’s almost the same. However, the one Diana has clearly shows that Rafe was adopted.” She pointed to the dashed line linking Rafe to his adoptive parents.

I nodded. “Did you know he was adopted?”

Skye shook her head. “He never told me. As I said before, he had an interest in Neila Whittle and her family tree. That’s what we were working on. He never told me why, just that he had a personal interest.”

Seth pointed to the diagram Skye had taken from Rafe’s house. “What’s this other part?” He pointed to another branch that came off the marriage between Rafe’s great-grandparents.

“That’s what I wanted you to see,” Skye said to me. “This shows that there was another branch of the family, but it went through the son who died in World War II.” She pointed to the notation. “And down to this person.” Her finger landed on a circle with the name Monica.

I shrugged and looked at Skye. Her finger tracked back to the father of Monica—his name was John Lavelle.

“So?” Seth scooted forward to get a better look.

“Is this Morgan Lavelle?” I asked.

Skye nodded. “I heard them arguing once and Rafe said he liked her old name better. I didn’t think much of it at the time because people do change their names sometimes if they join a coven.”

“According to this, they’re second cousins,” I said.

“No offense, Skye, but what does it matter?” Seth said.

“It matters because of this.” She pulled out another document. This one said “Last Will and Testament” at the top. “According to this, the grimoire gets passed down the oldest female line along with ‘all my worldly goods,’ unless there is no blood relative, in which case it passes down to the other children’s children.”

“Rafe wasn’t a blood relative because he was adopted,” I said.

Skye nodded. “Amity Leal tried to cover it up by listing Rafe as a blood relative. I don’t know how they managed to trick the great-grandparents, but they must have because Rafe has always had the grimoire.”

“But technically, Monica/Morgan should inherit,” Seth said.

Skye nodded. “I don’t know if this is related to Rafe’s death or not, but he had a very good reason to want to keep his adoption a secret. Besides the fact that he claimed control based on his ‘bloodline’ he also had his inheritance at stake.”

“Do you know what he inherited?” I asked.

Skye nodded slowly. “I think it was some land and maybe a house up in Traverse City. He told me a few months ago that he had to go up there to deal with some repairs on a family home. He said he had just inherited it and was fixing it up to sell it.” She pulled out the will I had seen that day at Rafe’s house. “This will leaves everything to Diana and Dylan, but it’s unclear what was actually Rafe’s property.”

“If Morgan knew about this, it gives her a very good motive for murder,” I said.

Skye and Seth waited.

“You have to take this to the police, Skye.”

Her shoulders slumped. “I thought you would say that.”

“What’s the problem? You have evidence that might help them,” I said.

“Morgan is my friend. She’s always been really supportive of me and I just can’t believe she would hurt Rafe.”

Shocked as I was about this statement, I started to see why Seth always defended her.

“If she’s innocent, it won’t matter.”

Seth snorted. “Say that to Dylan.”

Skye left with the promise that she would go to the police with all of her charts and notes. I was glad that I had decided to stay out of the investigation. It was getting much too murky for me.

Seth and I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening with the dogs. I attempted to help him with his homework and he ended up teaching me how to do geometry proofs. I never saw the point the first time around, but hid my lack of interest for the sake of being a good role model.