Witch One Dunnit? (Rachael Penzra mystery) (23 page)

       Coffee did help.  Lots of it.  I’d worry about coffee-nerves later in the day.  Actually I’ve found that’s often a myth.  If I have a day when I
need
my coffee, I don’t seem to suffer for it later.  It’s when I drink too much simply to fill in time that I suffer indigestion and nervousness.  I did help myself to two St. John’s Wort tablets, hoping to stabilize my mood.  I didn’t feel like suffering fools gladly, and when you’re dealing with shopping tourists, it’s always best to prepare yourself for the worst.

       The dog (who really did need a name) had happily trotted off to the great outdoors, heading for the state land.  He dutifully urinated on every upright object between here and there.  I watched him for a minute before deciding that if he ran off, he did.  I wasn’t about to drive myself crazy worrying about him.  Of course I was lying to myself, but as I’ve already admitted, lying is something I do quite often for one reason or another.  Besides, lying to yourself isn’t the same as lying to others.  You’re making a conscious choice whether to believe yourself or not. 

       I needn’t have worried one way or the other.  The dog came back after a bit and was sitting on the back steps, surveying his new domain.  He was so
big. 
No wonder my attacker had fled.  Imagine something that big, completely unexpected, touching you in the dark ...  If I hadn’t been so frightened of my original assailant, I would have been terrified of the dog.  I’d been so involved with warding off the attack I’d had a split second to let the sound of the dog’s barking register in my brain before I panicked.  I’d hardly had time to be scared before I realized what was happening.

       I’ve always wanted to think of myself as someone who’d remain calm under fire.  So much for that idea.  The only reason I hadn’t been completely hysterical was I hadn’t known what was going on until after most of it was over.  Did that count as being calm under fire?  I’d like to think it did.

       When David arrived, Patsy was just coming downstairs.  She immediately regaled him with the full story of the attack, adding embellishments and color to the narrative.  It sounded much better when she told it than it did when I thought about it.
 I
didn’t come out sounding too good, but the dog was made out to be some sort of canine superman.  And unless I came up with something quickly, Patsy was going to have the poor animal named “Guardian”.  As far as I was concerned, the name was much too poetic for such a big, slobbering animal.

       David’s arrival at the back door had been announced with a friendly, quiet woof.  More and more I believed the dog’s brave attack on the intruder the previous night had really been just a big dog coming to see what all the excitement was about, and the chase was just the dog running after the most active person to see the next part of the game.  He came back to me because I was the food source, not because he knew the good guy from the bad guy.  I said as much.

       “Oh no,” Patsy argued.  “Dogs are closer to the primitive world than we are.  They understand those things better than we do; they can
sense
the difference between good and evil.  Can’t they, David?”

       David smiled and shrugged.  “I don’t suppose it matters too much.  He was there when he was needed and did what he needed to do.  You can’t ask for more than that.  And I’m sure that if he ever
did
understand there was danger, he’d be brave.”  The dog grinned up at him.

       “We’ll probably never know for sure,” I agreed.  “And it doesn’t really matter.  Like you say, he was there when he was needed.  That’s all we can ask of anyone, I guess.”

       I graciously refrained from adding that my niece and her big, law officer boyfriend had been nowhere in the vicinity in my time of need.  I don’t like to be petty.

       It worked out surprisingly well to have the dog around.  The one time he tried going around to the front door and entering with one of the customers, he was quite amiable about being pushed back outside.  He returned to his post at the kitchen door, happily accepting his fate.  As far as I could tell, all he did all day was eat and sleep.  Not a bad life.  When Patsy called him out for a walk after work, though, he came to life with a vengeance, leaping and frolicking as though he’d been confined in a closet all day.

       Pets, I realized, and this not for the first time, are awfully good at the art of manipulation for supposedly being dumb animals.

       Despite the night before, other than a dull headache, I enjoyed a nice start to a new day, and I had to admit it was nice having a friendly face (albeit hairy and ugly) around to share its doggy good nature with me.

       David, who had only worked the first half of the day, returned at six to see if I’d go for a ride with him.  He told me he had something to show me – something that might be a good idea for the store.  I was hesitant for several reasons.  For one thing, I certainly didn’t want to do anything with him that might be misconstrued as a social function such as a date, although he’d shown absolutely no sign of interest in me that way.  And again, I was reluctant to leave the house, not just because I was tired and sore, but because I didn’t want to leave its safety, whether that safety was imaginary or not.  Given I’d found a dead body in the house, and been physically attacked there, it was a pretty sure bet the safety was indeed imaginary.

       Patsy, with that nauseating assurance of the young, decided it was a good idea for me to get out after “the incident”.  It seemed simpler to agree with her than to argue, although at the moment I had no interest in anything concerning business.  We had plenty of merchandise in the store.  Who needed more things to worry about?  Like I didn’t have enough already!

    Yes, I was grumpy.

       I went.  David seated me in his older model truck before going around to the driver’s side.  It felt rather nice to be treated like a lady.  I honestly couldn’t remember Walter ever holding the door for me, or doing much of anything to remind me that I was a delicate, feminine little thing.  And since his death I’d been too busy with the business of survival to worry about it.

       “I really do have something to show you,” David assured me, as he started his less-than healthy sounding truck.  “But the main reason I dragged you out when I’m sure you’d much rather go to bed with your headache, is because Elena would like to talk to you, and she refuses to come to you.  She insists her appearance at your house would only make things worse for you, so I’ve been pressed into service.”

       “I didn’t know you knew Elena well,” I told him, surprised – and more than a little suspicious.  Lucinda had mentioned Elena in front of him just the other day, and he’d acted quite vague.

       “Elena is a very private person, and she didn’t want anyone to know we knew each other more than casually, so I’ve respected her wishes.  Having met Lucinda, I have a better idea of why.  She was protecting me,” he chuckled.

That
I could understand.  I wished I’d had someone to protect
me
from Lucinda.

“And as I told you, Elena’s the one who suggested you might need help in the shop.  She and I go back a long way,” he informed me.  “I’ve known her since I was a child, but I hadn’t seen her for many years until recently.  We’re what would loosely be described as cousins.  It’s one of those family connections that exist more by choice than bloodlines.  She and my mother were very close.”

       “Is that what brought you to Balsam Grove?”

       He glanced at me.  “No.”  Then he seemed to feel that his answer was inadequate.  “My mother once brought me to a place similar to this.  I remember it as a special day.  I’m just here to ... visit.”

       I wanted to continue the questioning, but something in his voice made me hesitate.  I wanted to know why he needed to work during a visit to a vacation town.  How long was the visit going to last?  I’d been so glad to grab him for the job I hadn’t thought of that angle.  I’d assumed that he lived here, at least for the summer.  My hesitation, unfortunately, gave him the chance to change the subject.

       We’d driven just a short distance out of town when he pulled to the side of the road and pointed to a house on the left.  In the front yard there was a lovely waterfall-pond centerpiece.  “I thought you might want to consider having something like this installed in your own yard.   You wouldn’t want to copy it exactly, of course, but I think the ornamental grass and several other ideas are nice.  Maybe even some water plants.”

       He’d driven slowly past and then turned in the next driveway to head back the way we’d come.  I tried to quickly memorize some of the more appealing aspects of the setup. He was right.  I certainly wasn’t above copying the basic idea.

       “You’re right, David.  It’s lovely.  I wonder if we could find out who the architect is.  Surely we could come up with the same general idea, but different enough to not be blatant about having stolen the idea from someone else.”

       “Good idea,” he agreed.  “Not really a project for amateurs, and it’ll probably be tax-deductible.  Nothing wrong with getting a little something nice for yourself and being able to write it off at tax time.  Whenever I do that, it makes me feel as if I’m somehow saving money on the deal.  I’m not really saving anything, of course, but it feels like it.”

       I wondered what he did that would place him in a position to write things off as tax-deductible – especially when he was working part time in a small shop like mine.  Again I hesitated and missed the opportunity to ask. What was wrong with me?  It would have been a natural enough question.  There was just something about him, friendly though he seemed, that kept people – or
me
anyway – at arm’s length.  Maybe I was still being influenced by my first strange impression of blankness about him.

       Elena, it turned out, lived in a small house at the edge of town.  It had obviously once been a summer cabin.  It was the kind of cabin, which had actually been just that.  The buildings the summer residents termed cabins these days were usually much more elaborate than the year-round homes of the locals.

Elena’s home was a snug-looking little building that had been renovated at some time.  When this type of cabin had originally been built, I knew, the insulation was usually no more than a few layers of newspaper, just enough to ward off the chill of a summer or possibly early Fall evening.  They certainly weren’t built to withstand a Minnesota winter, although people had lived in them year round. 

       David escorted me to the door, but didn’t enter with me.  Elena looked at me with her deep-set amber eyes, and stood aside to let me pass into her home.  The whole thing happened without words.  I obediently scurried inside.  It was like one of those truly bizarre dreams you accept as totally normal, until after you wake up.  Then you wonder how you could possibly have accepted the strange occurrences you’d been dreaming as reality.

       Once inside the house, I had to stop.  I didn’t know where to go.  We were in a small hallway with several rooms branching out from it.  I had the choice of kitchen, dining room, or living room.  I wasn’t up to making a choice, so I just turned and gave my hostess a questioning look.

       “This way, Rachael,” Elena, the inscrutable, became Elena, the friendly hostess.  “I thought we’d try conducting the reading in the dining room.  I usually sit at the table here, rather than in an easy chair.  A habit from childhood, don’t you think?  I can remember sitting at the kitchen table with my brothers and sisters, all of us studying our schoolwork.  We didn’t have a dining room, you see, and Father liked to sit and read in the parlor.”

       It was easy to guess this was her favorite spot in the house.  I avoided what was obviously her chair and went to one on the side of the table.  It was a cozy room, despite the fact everything was a little shabby.  There was nothing modern in the room except for the bookshelf lining one of the inner walls.  That was an elaborate, glass-door affair, filled to capacity with books.  There were hard-covered, paperback, leather-bound, jacked, books of every size, shape.  In honor of my book-fetish, I wanted to go over and examine them more closely, but felt my status as guest bound me to my seat at the table.

       “This is a lovely room,” I told her with complete honesty.  “No wonder you choose to sit here.  I always like reading at a table, too, especially if I’m doing any kind of research.  Of course, now I use my computer for that, but I still have a small table next to it so I can turn and work at it.”

       She smiled, for once looking not in the least bit secretive. “I’ll get us some tea.  I hope you don’t mind tea rather than coffee.  Sometimes I find it helpful to read the leaves along with the cards and palms.”