Witch One Dunnit? (Rachael Penzra mystery)

WITCH ONE

DUNNIT?

By Elizabeth Shawn

Copyright©2011

Illustrations E. Schram

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Rachael Penzra Series:

WITCH ONE DUNNIT? by Elizabeth Shawn

THE WITCH HITS A GLITCH by Elizabeth Shawn

THE THIRD WITCH by Elizabeth Shawn

Other books by authors:

I MARRIED A GAY MAN by Shawn MacDonald

WHO SURVIVES? by Elizabeth Schram

CHAPTER ONE

From the Wiccan Rede:

Bide the Wiccan Rede we must

In perfect love and perfect trust

   It’s official!  I am now a
certified
witch.  And I have the certificate to prove it.

   I can almost hear Aunt Josie laughing at the sight of me dancing around the room with my gothic-scripted diploma clasped firmly to my chest.

   I know she’s out there—somewhere. There’s never been the least doubt in my mind that the moment I solemnly tossed her ashes into the wind, she was busily gathering them back into a new shape for her spirit to inhabit.  I just wonder what form she’s taken this time around.

   Aunt Josie had—still has—powers.  She made no secret of them when she was alive, and I’m not sure she
could
have hidden them.  When she chose, she could turn her black-eyed gaze on anybody and make him look away.  The power of her gaze didn’t exactly frighten people, but it understandably made them uncomfortable. Not many of us care to have someone gazing into our secret souls.  Our minds are the last stanchion of privacy in this busy, computerized world.

   Try as I might, I can’t seem to achieve the same effect.  My green eye
should
fit the image of otherworldliness, but the effect is spoiled because my left eye is gray.  People tend to look
closer
at my eyes, rather than away from them, and I don’t care for the feeling that
they
might somehow be reading
my
mind, instead of the other way around.  I’m seriously considering getting
a
contact lens, but the last time I tried them, I ended up with watery, red eyes.  I looked like an over-aged drug addict, definitely not
the look I was trying to achieve.  Contacts are supposed to be better these days.  Maybe I’ll try them again, though most likely, I’ll never get around to it.

   My diploma really matters to me.  It’s a symbol of newfound independence. When Aunt Josie died, I was a thirty-eight year old widow and the last of my three children was soon to leave the nest (even if I had to kick him out).  I hadn’t seen my aunt for almost twenty years, but I’d been corresponding regularly with her for the past ten, and it’s just in the last stretch I’ve felt my life moving forward, rather than stagnating. 
She
had made me feel like developing, guiding me through my initial psychic training, bolstering my confidence when necessary, and most of all, refusing to allow me to give in to pressure from others.

   Witches are not generally popular. 

   Walter, my dead husband, would have hated the concept of a religion where women are the main practitioners.  He was heavily into Christianity, with its male-based power structure.  He was willing to
verbally
concede women were equal—but not
really
...  Any disagreement was settled by the Head of the Household.  Guess who that was.

   My mother thought Walter was wonderful.  He took care of me. Never mind that
she
rules the roost in her own household; it still doesn’t alter her belief that a woman needs a man.  Besides, she has no conscious clue she’s the one in charge. She always used to tell us kids to go ask Dad. Ha! He always said, “Go ask your mother.”  Then she’d decide the yea or nay.

   Still, it wasn’t Walter’s death that upset her the most.  It was the idea I was left alone to care for myself and my kids. She’s never really believed I can manage on my own, so I wasn’t surprised at how upset she was when she phoned one evening.

   “Rachael, a lawyer called looking for you!” she announced over the phone, calling just after five (her time.) Ma still believes daytime long distance
has
to cost more.  “Your Aunt Josie left you something!”

   My mother doesn’t call long-distance unless something of great import has happened (usually something bad) so I was suitably impressed. A month earlier, news of my aunt’s death by a hit-and-run driver had also rated a call.  Two calls within a month.  Either Ma was loosening up, or she was going to be extremely unhappy when the phone bill arrived.  I was betting on the latter.

   “My stupid phone’s been dying on me lately,” I told her, more curious than greedy.  As far as I knew, my aunt hadn’t had much.  I don’t believe we’d ever discussed her financial status.  All I knew was she ran a small shop called
The Lady’s Tree,
in a tourist town in northern Minnesota where she sold Wiccan and New Age products.  Her real money, though, came from selling health foods and organic herbal mixtures. As I understood it, those items were what really kept her shop going. 

   “They wanted
you
to call
them
, right in the middle of the day!  I set them straight about
that!
They said they’d tried your number, but they probably dialed it wrong. I gave it to them again.  They’ll be calling you, so I can’t talk long.” She spoke quickly.  Ma operates on the premise that the faster you talk while on long distance, the more value you get for your dollar. 
Nothing
will convince her times have changed and long-distance is generally much cheaper than it used to be.  She gets nervous when I call just to chat.

   “It’s after business hours, Mother,” I reminded her.  I found myself speaking slower than usual, and hoped it had nothing to do with being petty. She does tend to bring out the mule in me.  “They won’t call again until tomorrow, I’m sure, and I have tomorrow off.  Did they give you
any
idea of what I’m getting?” 
Money!  Money!  Money!
my greedy side whispered in my ear.  Wanting to have a little extra money might be a natural desire, but Ma tends to frown upon anything not socially acceptable.  Greed isn’t.

   “They wouldn’t tell
me!
”  Her voice was sullen, signifying hurt feelings.  Along with nagging, my mother’s an expert at conveying hurt feelings.

   “I’ll call you tomorrow, as soon as I hear from them,” I promised.  My parents, you understand, have a lot more money than I do, but they hide the fact well.  Maybe part of the reason they have it is because they don’t do things like rashly make long-distance calls during the “expensive daytime hours” just to placate a sulky relative.

   I’d said the right thing.  She recovered.  “No, don’t go calling in the middle of the day.  You can call tomorrow evening.  I can wait.  It’s certainly not any of
my
business, although your Aunt Iris and I were both
quite
surprised to hear she’d bypassed your father, who after all was her own brother – her
twin
brother – and passed up both of your older brothers
and
your sister, who should have at
least
been considered equally, and settled something on
you
.”

   I wasn’t insulted.  Hierarchy is very important to my mother and her sisters.  There are seven of them.  My siblings and cousins and I refer to them as The Seven Sisters. With no brothers to place superior male claims to anything, they can be very touchy about hearing family news
after
a younger sibling.  It’s very important to have news trickle (
gush
might be a more accurate term) from the eldest sibling on down to the youngest, in proper order.  As far as
inheritances
are concerned, just suffice it to say that the day my grandmother passes away, I’m leaving the country until things settle down.

   “I
was
the only relative who kept in close touch with her, Mother.  Maybe it’s some little feminine memento,” I suggested.

   “That could be it!” she almost shouted in relief.  “Some personal memento.  That would explain it.”  She truly believes males have more importance than females, and although she tyrannically rules my easy-going father, she would be shocked, and quite hurt, to hear such a thing said about her. 

   Comforted with an idea she could understand, she began fussing about running up the phone bill, still insisting I needn’t ring her until the next evening.  Both of us knew I would promise not to call during daytime hours, and then break my word.  It was one of those little social lies we all accept as necessary evils.  If I kept my word about not calling, she’d feel I’d violated an unspoken agreement. 

   When she finally hung up, I sat back and thought about being mentioned in Aunt Josie’s will.

   There aren’t many things my entire family agrees on, but they are all firmly united in their opinion of my aunt.  Aunt Josie was weird.  On the other hand, my family thinks of itself as the epitome of normalcy.  I consider us to be as dysfunctional as any other familial group.  But for the most part my family
is
average. We’re a conventional lot, and I guess that’s the main criteria of normal. 

   Aunt Josie might have been weird, but she was not boring.  She didn’t pretend to be something she wasn’t, and when her beloved Wicca slipped into popularity along with the New Age and Alternative Medicine, she was delighted.  She was a Vegan by principle, ahead of her time.  Mother, on the other hand, is a firm believer in the Mid West Trinity: meat, potatoes and vegetables. In her mind, these three are one.  A Real Meal is all three, with trimmings and dessert.  I think my aunt being a vegetarian was almost as upsetting as her being a witch.  My family doesn’t believe in witches.  Or vegetarians. 

   Whether you’re a Vegan or not, Wicca is much maligned. It’s a hands-on religion and closely connected with Nature, making it automatically pagan in modern eyes.  Nowadays we don’t like Mother Nature right in our faces.  She makes us nervous.  Raw power is always a little intimidating. My own practice of witchcraft has been gentle.  I don’t try to conjure up spirits or control lives.  All I want is a world where I can feel contented, and to me the idea of conjuring up demons doesn’t seem the least bit comfortable.

   I want to live in a world where I can be psychic and not be shunned or maligned.  Is that too much to ask?  Sometimes it seems to be.

   Having psychic powers had always meant punishment to me while I was growing up.  By the time I was a teenager, I’d become a painfully shy, constantly nervous child.  I couldn’t seem to open my mouth without stuttering.  What if I said the wrong thing?  At the wrong time?  To the wrong person?  Unfortunately, I usually managed to do all three.

   By the time I was in high school I had learned to hide my personal onus quite well.  Keeping out of sight and out of mind was the first priority in my young life.  That’s why it was such a surprise when I was invited to Janie Parsons’ eighteenth birthday party, a Halloween/cookout affair.  Janie’s birthday was the twenty-ninth of October, close enough to make the costumed affair feasible.  She was the most popular girl in school.  I was so excited!  I didn’t realize at the time that she was inviting the entire class, all fifty-six of us, one by one.  Her parents were going to make her eighteenth birthday a day to remember, and I never forgot it, at least not the results.  It was the night I tasted my first alcohol, lost my virginity, and became pregnant.

   Poor Walter was almost as much of a nerd as I was.  It was also his first “wild party” and his first taste of alcohol.  I remember him telling me he’d always thought my different-colored eyes were cool.  So in the time honored fashion of drunk teenagers, I was taken first by his flowery words, and then by him.

   The thought of using birth control never crossed our minds.

   I’ve always thought Walter’s status in life was raised by his newly discovered prowess.  He had gotten a girl pregnant!  Even
I
became an object of friendly curiosity at school.  It was (horrible to contemplate now) the best time in school I had in all thirteen years.  I was almost popular. 

   As was the tradition in our families, our parents made us get married.  The solution was all right with me.  I’d known Walter most of my life.  At the time I got in “trouble,” I was simply trying to get through each day without attracting unwelcome attention.  Illegitimate pregnancy was not helping with that, so when I was told I had to marry Walter, it seemed reasonable.  I would get married and then nobody would pay attention to me.  I could go back to living my anonymous life.  Walter would go to work and I would stay home cooking and cleaning and caring for the children.  It sounded safe enough.

   Never having been in particularly close touch with reality, I was wrong as usual.  I
did
get to cook and clean and play Mommy, but Walter had bigger plans for his future than working at the local super market.  He went on to college, which meant I got to live on minimal subsistence, work nights, and watch my husband grow into a pompous, albeit well-educated, ass.