Sand Witches in the Hamptons (9781101597385) (23 page)

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-NINE

I
had so much to do and so little time, with so little sleep last night. And I still had a stalker.

They'd delegated me to take charge of the Andanstans and all the efforts to placate them or talk to them. How could I do that when I had to stay hidden away, out of danger?

I met Lou outside when Harris walked me to get Little Red out of the agent's car. I gave the dog some water to hide my mopping at a suspicious wet spot on the seat.

Lou walked us back inside. He reported a trace on the email. Not a name or an address, although they felt they had enough evidence of a serious threat to get a warrant on the server. “But we know he sent that last message from an unregistered smart phone at a coffee shop in Queens. So he's not out here.”

Yet.

After Lou explained the new findings, my grandmother decided we had enough time. Or she cared more about the festival going off than she did about my safety. “So you can take Jimmie to the beach, gather the gold and diamond dust, sing songs, have poetry contests and all the rest. If you keep corresponding with the unpleasant person, Lou can keep track of his whereabouts.”

“Fine. Then you deal with my mother.”

She pretended not to understand. “Of course I'll see she is informed before the festival.”

“Someone will tell her first, then she'll be furious at all of us, from hearing it secondhand.”

Grandma Eve looked down her nose at me, hard to do when she stayed seated and I stood in front of her table. “No one will speak of it. I'll see to that.”

I believe she could, if anyone could.

“But what are you going to do about that unfortunate Miss O'Dell?” she asked.

“Me? I got Carinne here. You people can fix her.” I turned to Lou. “Is she all right now?”

“Yes, the mayor helped her forget about the kid, and Doc helped her relax. Monteith is taking her home. He'll help her sleep.”

“Monte?” Jimmie asked. “My godson is liable to smother her cat while she's unconscious.”

I didn't think Monteith would go that far, but I didn't think he'd help Carinne do anything but move out.

“He says he can make her sleep so her body recovers from the trauma.”

My grandmother turned her scowl on him. “You'd let him drug her? He's no pharmacist or herbalist. I can send something to help.”

“No, he doesn't use drugs. No saying how they'll react with a wild talent like hers. He said something about doing yo-yo tricks.”

I'd seen his yo-yo, the shiny, spinning silver circles. “You mean he's going to hypnotize her?” I was horrified. After my last experience with an egomaniacal mesmerist who used his powers to kidnap, steal, and embezzle, I didn't trust anything about that particular mental manipulation. Especially not for Carinne, whose fragile personality could not stand much more.

The professor agreed with me. “Monte's good at his parlor tricks, but I do not know about his skill at such a delicate operation. What if he puts her to sleep and cannot awaken her?”

I patted his trembling hand. “I doubt he's that foolish. He knows I'll sic my grandmother on him. And Oey, when she gets back.”

“Ah, yes. Oey might have answers.”

Lou shrugged. “We can't wait for a broody parrot. We don't have much choice about helping Carinne right now.” He echoed my feelings by adding, “She's at the end of her rope.”

“Can't you do something?”

“Mayor Applebaum can make her forget, but that won't help the next time she sees a child that's not going to grow up. We can wipe out the talent, but sometimes other stuff gets wiped out, too. Like speech and memory and visual recognition.”

“In other words, she could be a vegetable.”

“It's not a chance anyone is willing to take.”

It better not be. I figured I was Carinne's next of kin, and they'd destroy her brain over my dead body. I must have squeezed Little Red too hard because he growled. Lou got up and took a few steps back. “Grandma, you must know a way to help. Carinne's birth is not her fault. She needs us.”

“I'll read some of my research books, but I've never heard of a cure for sorrowful or frightening foretelling. Maybe someone in England knows more.”

Lou pulled his chair closer to Grandma Eve, away from me and Red. “I've already sent out the call for assistance. They'll try. And we'll try to keep tabs on the kid she saw today, steer him in safer directions. Monte wants to document everything that went on this morning. That way, he says, he can justify the expenses as necessary research.”

“Good for him.” Yes, that had a touch of sarcasm. I still felt the new director of Rosehill cared more about the bottom line than about helping people. “But if you keep Brock away from motorbikes, he could drown surfing or get hit by a car or get food poisoning.”

“Bad things happen all the time. We'll do what we can. We have to see how unchangeable Carinne's prophecies are, and how accurate. Sometimes a seer misinterprets what he sees.”

Grandma Eve made a snorting sound. “Just ask the poor woman's father. The jackass never gets anything right, or not so anyone can figure out.”

“I never said Dad was her father!” Between my mother and her mother, only one jackass existed.

“You didn't have to. I was with your mother when you were born. She did not give birth to twins.”

“Carinne is two years older. They weren't married.”

Another snort. “It wouldn't matter if she were ten years older than you, he never told us about her. Maybe if he got her help sooner . . .”

And maybe if my mother had been easier to talk to, he would have. It was too late for finding fault. “So what happens in the meantime? I wanted to take her around, introduce her to people so she could see she's not the only freak. That is, the only psychic here. Now I don't dare. But you cannot keep her cocooned, or locked away at Rosehill. If you”—I glanced between my grandmother and the man from DUE—“can't help her, she'll be a prisoner in her room there, afraid to see the new students when they come or Lily's grandchildren or the young lawn-mower guys. Jimmie will be her only companion except when a couple of us visit.”

Jimmie looked even more troubled. “I won't be around forever, you know.”

No one wanted to go there. Lou hurried to say, “I've got a task force working on it, checking for any precedents.”

Like my father's mother, who heard voices, too. She never told fortunes, as far as I knew.

Lou rubbed at his bristly chin. “It could take a while. We're spread kind of thin right now. There's a lot of stuff going on.”

Trust my grandmother to say, “There always is, when Willow is involved.”

“You're blaming the Andanstans and Carinne's misery and Brock's dire prophecy on me?”

“Of course not.”

But I know she was. They all were. They always did.

“I'll try to work with the Andanstans, but that's it. I don't know how to save Brock, or how to train Carinne to tune out bad news. Maybe the mayor could teach her to have a selective memory. I can't, and I cannot be the one to tell my mother about her. Not if I have to live with Mom in my apartment while she tapes her new show.”

Grandma Eve nodded, but she didn't say anything.

I went on: “She has to know before she gets here. It's only fair, so she doesn't walk into Lily's kitchen and find Carinne there, in front of scores of people, all watching for her reaction. I tried to tell her not to come on account of the stalker, but it's like telling the Andanstans to put our sand back. Or trying to hold one of them in your hand. Dad thinks she'll have apoplexy or something when she sees Carinne, so someone has to warn her.”

“I do not see why,” Eve said. “Rose loves being the center of attention, my TV star daughter, so let her rant and rave all she wants when she gets here. There's nothing she can do about it, is there? If I call and tell her, she'll fume and fuss all the way here. That's not good for her driving, or her manners at rest stops and gas stations. Or airports if she flies.”

I could imagine my mother's road rage through seven different states. And what she'd say to the guards at the security gates when they wanted to pat her down. Not a pretty picture.

Lou rubbed his chin. “We already have an agent on the way to see she gets here safely. He can block her calls. Or slip her a sedative.”

Now both Grandma Eve and I gave him dirty looks. “You cannot solve problems by drugging people.”

He shot back: “You can keep them from getting arrested.”

I thought about it. “No matter how we try, we can't do anything about her broken heart.”

The old witch snorted again. “That's a crock, Willy. Not even you with the stars in your eyes can believe it. She divorced the jackass decades ago. She hasn't been pining for him all these years.”

I couldn't deny the other men my mother regularly dated, or stayed with. “No, but she rushed to his side when he got sick. And she always wanted to believe him.”

“But she never did. She mistrusted his fidelity from the day they wed, and you and that woman proved her right. So, no, she won't be brokenhearted. She'll feel vindicated.”

I had to concede the possibility. Mom could gloat with the best of them. Her
I told you so
would be loud and lasting. “I'll stay at Matt's.”

“Speaking of that, Rose will be more upset to hear you are not officially engaged.”

“Then she'll just have to be upset, won't she? I already tried to tell her, and I am certain your spies have already called to give her the latest update. Maybe besides Carinne, you can get your friends to keep their mouths shut about me and Matt, too.”

Lou cleared his throat to interrupt an argument about gossip vs. caring interest that had gone on for at least ten years. “Ladies, we have to talk about the stalker, too. We're getting closer, and we're showing your sketch to where we think he bought the phone we traced. All we need is a name and address and we can scoop him up. Meantime, Eve is right. We need you to stay in touch with him. Keep him communicating.”

I hated the idea, but the tech guy, Russ, came in when the chief buzzed him, carrying a clone of my computer already set up with a “compose mail” box. “You've got to respond, Willy, so we can track his whereabouts. The fool shouldn't have switched to his cell phone, even if we can't get him ID'd through it if he used cash and got a prepaid card for it. What do you want to say?”

Uncle Henry came and stood over my shoulder while I reread Deni's last hateful message about my mother. “Don't threaten him, or he'll take it as a dare to escalate. And don't sound scared. That's what he wants.”

“I am scared, and I would wring his scrawny neck if I had it between my hands.”

“Not the message you want to send, Willy.”

So I typed in: M
Y MOTHER IS A DOG TRAINER, NOT A WITCH.
S
HE SAVES ABUSED AND ABANDONED ANIMALS AND WORKS WITH THEM UNTIL THEY ARE ADOPTABLE.
R
IGHT NOW SHE HAS A
G
ERMAN
S
HEPHERD THAT WAS KEPT TIED OUTSIDE A METH LAB, A PIT PULL FROM A DOG FIGHTING RING, AND A
D
OBERMAN PINSCHER SENTENCED TO DEATH ROW ON ACCOUNT OF HIS AGGRESSION
.

“Should I add anything else? Like mess with her at your own risk?”

After he chewed a couple of stomach pills, Uncle Henry said, “I think even a moke like this punk can get your message. Good job, Willy. But add some kind of question, to make sure he responds.”

“Like how about lunch?”

“I don't think he'll believe you if you invite him over for soup and a sandwich,” my grandmother said.

“Not Deni. Me. I'm starving.”

“Finish the letter.”

I wrote: A
RE YOU PUTTING ALL THIS IN YOUR NEXT BOOK?
D
O YOU WANT TO BE IN MINE?

“That should do it,” Lou said, after making sure Russ saved copies of all the notes as evidence. “You'll have Harris and maybe Colin and Kenneth to go wherever you and the professor need to go. I'll stay at Rosehill with Carinne.”

The chief said he'd put one of his men on watch at my mother's house until Harris got back. Russ swore he put beepers on my computer and his clone of it to monitor any incoming mail. He also had any phone calls at Mom's house transferred here to police headquarters where someone would be on duty at all times, listening for threats.

Between all of them—the police, DUE, the cyber crimes geeks and the agent left in Manhattan to guard my apartment and Mrs. Abbottini and the Rashmanjaris—they really were spread thin, and really were looking out for me.

Lou brushed my thanks aside. “We're not taking any chances, especially not until you get the sand back.”

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY

I
had a posse.

Instead of making me feel safer, the three big men surrounding Jimmie and me and Red brought the danger closer. If Deni were in New York City, I ought to be free to go anywhere I wanted, by myself. If Lou thought I'd be safe, these guys would be off playing golf.

On the other hand, or hip, the outline of the gun at Harris' side did make me stop cowering at every car door slam.

My first stop had to be at my house to get more clothes, not that Matt had a lot of spare closet room or dresser space. I'd lived out of suitcases before.

Harris took the time to check all his instruments and sensors. I checked the phone messages myself. I knew they'd been listened to from here to hell and back, but I still had to listen: my editor's assistant about a copyediting question; a poll taker I had no intention of responding to; the upstairs apartment guys wanting to know about the sublet in Mrs. Abbottini's unit; my college asking for money.

I packed as many clean clothes as fit in the case, and one of Susan's sexy summer nightgowns. I counted on Matt to keep me warm.

Harris found no signs of intruders.

Next I checked on my mother's two dogs, who were staying at Aunt Jasmine's. Uncle George came home from the farm frequently to walk them, since they couldn't be put out in a pen in the yard, not with Deni's threats. They gave me unenthusiastic tail wags and went back to sleep.

Then we drove into the business area of town, all three blocks of it. I'd wanted Carinne to see Paumanok Harbor at one of its prettiest seasons. The trees still had some color, the village green had pumpkins and mums and bales of hay at every corner, walkway, and lamppost. The streets had easy parking spaces now that the summer crowd was gone. More important, the shopkeepers and passersby had more time and more patience. Carinne could have seen how friendly the Paumanok Harbor people were, how multitalented. I thought that important if Carinne were to live here for any length of time.

People waved and asked how my cousin was. Clerks left their cash registers to say they'd hang posters or put out collection jars for the sand reclamation. Two women handed me gold chains. I handed them to Harris for safekeeping. One of the school board members offered to get the sixth graders to write poems. Bill at the hardware store set the keys to playing
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
, most likely in honor of the Andanstans, but I harbored the warm thought it was for me. Little Red snarled.

Carinne might have been impressed when Joanne at the deli had takeout containers of macaroni and cheese all ready for me and the professor. The perfect thing for mid-October, even the right color, with toasted bread crumbs on top. Jimmie'd never had an American version, so he was delighted. Harris wasn't, when Joanne refused to make him a bologna sandwich on white bread with mustard, and handed him ham and swiss on rye instead. Then he laughed, saying he was only testing her.

She laughed back and teased me about cornering every handsome man in the Harbor.

“But the most handsome one is at the vet clinic, getting a rubber ball out of the Maclays' puppy's stomach.”

Which kind of ruined Colin's appetite for his meatball hero.

We sat on benches outside the deli to eat and watch more people go by, many wishing me good luck, others volunteering to help. No one volunteered to talk to my mother, of course. And you could see them biting their lips about Matt, but they showed tact, for once. Or fear of Grandma Eve. I kept my baseball cap on, so no one had to pretend not to see my pink hair.

Janie came out of the hair salon at the side of her house to fetch lunch for her and Joe the plumber at the deli. Showing no tact whatsoever, she pulled my cap off and shook her head.

“Next time, go to a professional.”

I put the hat back on.

Jimmie patted my shoulder. “I think it is lovely, my dear. It matches your blushes and a rose that I used to cultivate.”

Great. So I looked like a faded blossom. “Thank you, and for being a good friend to me and to Carinne, too.” She'd need his gentle companionship more than ever if she couldn't leave Rosehill. No, there had to be a way to help her. I'd find it.

Carinne's existence complicated my life, sure, but I felt sorry for her. And I liked her. She looked like me. She was my sister.

I gazed around, trying to imagine her here in the village, seeing the small town through a stranger's eyes. Not bad.

Until Walter from the drugstore ran across the street and handed me a brown paper bag, then a white pharmacy bag with a tube of something that I doubted was toothpaste.

“If you keep using all these”—the brown bag—“then this”—the white bag— “might help.”

How could I even consider staying on in this place, or thinking Carinne might be happy here?

Walter handed a brown bag to Harris. I glared at the bodyguard despite my embarrassment. He was supposed to be guarding my house and the road to Grandma Eve's house and the farm stand. He was not supposed to be entertaining women there, and definitely not my cousin Susan.

Harris looked into the bag and grinned.

Walter handed another to Colin and Kenneth to share. “You can never be too careful.”

Jimmie didn't get a bag. “I say, did everyone have prescriptions to fill?”

Walter took a Cadbury bar from his white coat's pocket. “Made in England, so you don't get lonely.”

Jimmie beamed. “I've never had so many friends in my life.” He waved the candy bar at us on the bench. “I'll share my treat if you'll share yours.”

We hustled him to the library.

Mrs. Terwilliger did not have any books for me today. “You're too busy writing your own and helping the town. But here's a printout of the local real estate offerings.”

“But I'm not—”

“You will. Talk to him.”

I decided she meant I should go talk to the House on Shearwater Street again, where the two homes on either side were back on the market. I silently wished the real estate people good luck in selling either of them.

Jimmie got a book on chess, and the guards got copies of the latest Reacher novel. All without asking.

“Do you have anything I could bring back to my cousin, who is not feeling well?”

Mrs. T didn't ask what Carinne liked, what her usual reading was. She thought a minute, scurried off down the stacks, and came back with James Herriot again, this time for Carinne and the professor to share, and a book about choosing the right college.

“Oh, I don't think Carinne will go back to guidance counseling.”

“I do. She needs to stay current.”

Carinne might have taken heart at the old librarian's confidence . . . or inside information. She'd appreciate the new library card tucked inside the college book, already made out in her name.

There were mothers with strollers, though. Toddlers coming from story hour. A couple of younger people on the library computers. Twenty-somethings jogging outside.

Thank God Carinne hadn't come to town.

The toddlers reminded me that I wanted to see how my friend Louisa was doing with her new baby, and tell her I'd volunteered to teach that course. I didn't expect her to be at the community center. She managed the arts side of the building, which housed a magnificent collection and gave all kinds of classes. I thought I'd ask her assistant if Louisa was ready for a visit, because I didn't want to call and disturb her if she was resting. I could drop off the wrapped package I'd brought for the baby here, with a message to call me.

There she was, though, with a tiny bundle crosswise at her chest in a sling. She, of course, had either not heard or not cared about my grandmother's caveats. “I love your hair! Can I help plan the wedding? Does it have to be all pink to match? I have the perfect flower girl and ring bearer. They're at school and day care, thank heaven. Oh, and I'd love to meet your new relative. Is she talented like you?”

I knew Louisa meant my books, not the paranormal bit. She herself had no esper aura whatsoever.

I shook my head. Carinne's talent was far from mine, from anyone's here, and potentially harmful. I doubted she could ever be Louisa's friend, or visit the arts center programs and concerts, not if Louisa intended to carry the new baby like a papoose, like I carried Little Red.

The thought made me sad.
I
didn't particularly want to go to many of the cultural activities—Why should I, when I had all of Manhattan's museums and galleries and auditoriums at my fingertips?—but I wanted Carinne to be able to go.

While the professor and the DUE guys looked at the paintings that formed a small part of the building's benefactor's collection, I admired the baby. Out of her swaddles she looked even tinier. I prayed Louisa wouldn't ask me to hold her while she checked the course calendar. I jiggled Little Red, just in case Louisa got ideas.

“After Halloween, I think. The kids get too hyped up about that.” And the sand problems would be over by then, one way or another.

“The kids?” she asked. “The whole town goes bonkers, if you ask me. All I'm hearing at sculpture class is talk about that festival. And morning yoga is full of who's bringing what to the women's night before All Hallow's Eve gathering on the beach, then to the big party on the village green on Halloween itself for all the local kids. You know, I've never been invited to the beach.”

“I, uh, didn't know it was a private affair. I've never gone.”

“But your mother and grandmother run it.”

“That's why I've never gone. Why would you want to?”

She unbuttoned her blouse to nurse little Emma. I watched as she gave a Renaissance Madonna's smile at the fuzzy little head at her breast. Then she looked at me with a grim look in her eye. “Because I heard they send out blessings and prayers on little paper boats with candles in them. Because I heard they call on every deity ever known, and more that aren't, to protect the land and all its people. Because they join hands and celebrate women and girls.”

I never knew what the witches did on the night before Halloween, just that it used to be called Mischief Night. What she described sounded a lot more appealing than naked old pagan women dancing by moonlight.

Emma finished, and Louisa got her to burp. “And I wish to go because I am a woman who lives here and raises her children here.”

I understood. We'd been outsiders together as children in the Harbor. We were summer kids, not locals. We lived in summer cottages, not real houses. Our fathers were businessmen on vacation, not fishermen and farmers who worked here year round. It wasn't just a class thing, because neither of our families was wealthy. It was an “us against them” thing. Louisa and I hung out together because none of the other kids would play with us. We thought they were brats. They thought we were snobs. It was like we were from two different countries, speaking two different languages.

And we never, ever understood why the adults had so many meetings and private gatherings and whispered conversations, or why so many weird things happened in the stupid, boring little town we both despised. Why would ten year olds suspect that the blind postman used magic to sort the mail? Or that the bay constable could control the winds when he needed to, or that crazy Mrs. Grissom really did talk to her dead husband when she walked down the street? Magic existed in storybooks, not real life. So much that went on here was so far beyond our innocent comprehension, our beliefs in how the world operated, that we just ignored the anomalies. The Drurys' lawn never needed mowing? A new variety of grass. The Waskinkis' flowers grew twice as high as anyone else's? Better fertilizer. The rest we disregarded as more adult mumbo jumbo we'd figure out as we got older.

I did. Louisa didn't.

I knew she had inklings. No adult who lived here could be that trusting, that ignorant of how many peculiarities got taken for granted in Paumanok Harbor. So what if she couldn't remember the twenty white mares appearing out of the air at the horse show, or the tsunami that stopped before it reached our shores? She still had to know there was some kind of magic involved, and she had to know she was still an outsider.

But now? Now she had children, kids she wanted to see happy and well adjusted and knowing they were as smart and strong as the boys and girls down the block and in the same school. She wanted her kids to make lifelong friends here, be part of the community. And she wanted them blessed by whatever superstitious, quasi-religious sorcery the women used.

She had every right to be there. More than many, in fact. She'd been the one who influenced the arts center donor to bequeath his collection to the town, along with enough money to build the handsome building. She was the one who made it be more than a sterile museum, but open to everyone, to bring the arts to Paumanok Harbor. She'd managed the galleries and the classes and the recreation center with the seniors and the after-school programs as well, until the job and her family got too big. I knew she and her wealthy husband never turned down a call for help, be it sponsoring the horse show or using Dante's vast computer system to catch the embezzler. I think Dante donated the land for the community center, although that was a closely guarded secret, too. I knew for a fact that he helped Ty Farraday get financing to make Bayview a world-class horse ranch and equine rescue facility.

Yes, they were good, giving people, and yes, their children deserved the same rituals as Janie's grandniece Elladaire, who swallowed a firefly and almost set the whole village on fire. But no, they would not be invited to the secret festivities on Halloween eve.

Unless I took charge. It was bad enough that Carinne couldn't go, not when there'd be so many young people. Maybe I couldn't go either, not if Deni'd be lurking behind the beach grass, or in costume among the crowds. But Louisa and her babies? They had to be blessed, whatever that meant. Enough of this polarized caste-system crap, this hush-hush paranoia. Sure Paumanok Harbor had to be protected from the outside world, and from the federal government, too. But Louisa was a citizen, a taxpayer, a pillar of the community. Between Lou and Grandma Eve and the mayor and the chief of police, there had to be a way. I'd make them find it.