Wicked Witch Murder (15 page)

“That's what happens, Lucy. When your heart stops beating, you're dead.”

“In other words, you don't really know why she died, right?”

“Exactly.”

“In that case, isn't there supposed to be an autopsy?”

He sighed. “The family strongly objected, and it was no secret she had been suffering from some undiagnosed ailment for some time. They apparently have no faith in medicine, and I have to admit I'm not entirely unsympathetic to that point of view. I didn't see any reason to add to their grief.”

“I understand. I saw Ike myself this morning, and he's terribly upset. But he's also accusing Diana Ravenscroft of killing his wife by bewitching her.”

“Hmmm,” said Doc Ryder.

“If there was an autopsy, there'd be no question, would there?”

“Not necessarily,” said the doctor. “Lots of autopsies are inconclusive. Maybe she had stomach cancer; that would be nice and neat. But maybe she had a weak immune system, or overdosed on vitamins or herbal remedies. Those things don't show up without expensive lab tests that the town can't afford.”

“I suppose you're right,” said Lucy, glancing at the clock, which was steadily ticking its way toward the noon deadline. “Thanks for your time.”

“No problem,” he said, but Lucy disagreed. It seemed to her that the doctor's decision to skip an autopsy was going to cause no end of problems. She reached for the phone to give Diana a heads-up.

“Just wanted to let you know that Miriam Stoughton is dead—”

“Poor little Abby!” Diana exclaimed, interrupting Lucy. “She must be devastated. I must go and console her.”

“Not a good idea,” said Lucy. “Ike Stoughton is claiming you killed Miriam by bewitching her.”

“That's absolutely ridiculous,” said Diana. Lucy could hear the shock in her voice.

“Of course it is, but I think you need to be careful.”

“This is just absurd,” exclaimed Diana. “There's absolutely nothing to fear about Wicca! Do you know that Catholic priest? Father Ed?”

“Sure,” said Lucy.

“Well, he called me up last night, quite late, and tried to get me to submit to an exorcism. Can you believe it?”

Lucy knew that Father Ed was a sociable sort who spent most evenings down at the new waterfront pub that had replaced the notorious Bilge. If he'd called late at night, he'd probably had a drink or two and was probably reacting to the scuttlebutt he'd heard from the local fishing crowd.

“You need to take this seriously,” warned Lucy. “It sounds to me like people are talking about you and not in a good way. We've also been getting letters here at the paper complaining about you.”

“Look, thanks for calling and everything, but I am not going to be intimidated by a bunch of barflies and gossips. Business is up now that summer's finally here and the tourists have arrived, and I'm not about to turn tail and run. It seems to me that the best thing I can do is just carry on, and pretty soon people will get used to having a witch in town—a good witch.”

Ted had arrived and Lucy knew she had to get back to work. “Well,” she said, ending the call, “don't say you weren't warned.”

“I've got a warning for you,” said Ted, striding across the office to his desk. “It's a deadline, not a guideline.”

“Everything's under control,” Lucy assured him, wishing she believed it.

 

Miriam's funeral was scheduled for eleven o'clock the following Saturday morning. Lucy had an interview scheduled with a woman who was organizing a drive to fill care packages for soldiers in Iraq, so she was running late. The service was well under way when she and the girls arrived, slipping in a pew at the back of the church.

Funerals were always well-attended in Tinker's Cove, so even though Miriam had led a secluded life, there was a good showing and most of the pews were full. The choir was singing “The Lord's Prayer,” so Lucy took advantage of the musical interlude to consult the order of service. She'd missed Reverend Sykes's sermon, she noticed, but not the eulogy. It was next, and Ike Stoughton was going to deliver it.

Just the thought of this bereaved husband, or any bereaved husband for that matter, or even any family member actually getting up and speaking about such a personal loss, was tremendously moving to Lucy. She knew it was something she could never do, and she wasn't sure she could bear to listen to it, either, so she pulled a handkerchief out of her purse and clutched it in her hand, preparing herself for the tears she was sure would come.

Thus armed, she turned her attention to the choir. Mrs. Wilberforce was in fine voice today, and her wavering soprano clearly dominated as the song came to its crescendo: “For thine is the KINGDOM, and the POWER, and the”—here, Mrs. Wilberforce really let it rip—“GLORY, FOREVER AND EVER.” The tones were still reverberating against the clean, white-plastered walls as the final Amen was intoned.

Then Ike Stoughton rose from his seat in the front row and strode to the lectern set front and center before the altar. Behind him was the church's single stained-glass window, which pictured a white-robed Jesus in a flower-filled garden surrounded by little children and lambs.

“As the reverend so rightly pointed out, a service like this should be a celebration of a life and a thanksgiving for the gift of that life,” he began, gripping both sides of the lectern with his hands and gazing at the white coffin reposing in front of him, covered with a spray of pink roses.

“Miriam was truly a gift from God,” he said, his voice cracking, causing an eruption of sniffles in the congregation and a fluttering of tissues. “She was better than me, better than all of us put together, and I don't know how I'm going to go on without her.”

Now there was a general dabbing of eyes, Lucy's included. She glanced at the girls to see how they were doing, and noticing their brimming eyes, passed along a packet of tissues. Trying not to be too obvious, she glanced around the church, looking for Abby and her brothers. They were sitting together in the front pew, where Abby seemed little more than a wraith herself squeezed between her two beefy brothers.

“Her life wasn't easy,” he continued. “My poor wifey suffered terribly, as many of you know. Pain wracked her body. Some days she barely had enough energy to sit up, but she never complained, not once.”

Now most women in the congregation were in full flood, and some men were even dabbing their eyes.

“Instead of complaining, my Miriam turned to prayer, praying not for a cure but for the strength to endure her suffering, just as our Lord Jesus suffered on the cross. For Miriam understood there was no cure for what ailed her. There is no medicine that can cure evil, and she knew that her body—the body that had borne our three children—had become a battleground between good and evil.”

For the first time, there was a general rustling, a sense that people were becoming uncomfortable.

Stoughton was leaning heavily on the lectern now, his eyes glaring angrily at the mourners transfixed in their pews. “Oh, I know nobody talks about evil much anymore, but believe me, evil walks and breathes and lives among us. It is always with us. Oh, Satan is a crafty one and takes many, many forms. Sometimes a virus, sometimes a fire or a flood, and sometimes the body of a beautiful young woman. But make no mistake,” he thundered, raising his hand high above his head with his index finger extended. “Oh, make no mistake—she is here and she will work her evil mischief among us unless we take steps to stop her.”

“Amen, amen,” chorused a number of people as Ike reclaimed his seat next to Abby. Others clearly looked uncomfortable, relieved that he was done. Lucy sensed that battle lines were being drawn, right here in the white clapboard community church, between those who believed in tolerance and acceptance and those who were looking for a scapegoat. Because it was clear to her exactly who Ike considered to be the evil one, even though no names had been mentioned.

Lucy didn't want to join the procession to the cemetery; she found burials upsetting and tried to avoid them when she could, but the girls were insistent.

“We need to support Abby,” said Sara. “It's the only chance we'll get.”

“You went to the service,” said Lucy.

“I don't think she saw us,” said Zoe.

“It really means a lot to me, Mom,” said Sara. “She's my friend.”

“Okay,” said Lucy, adding a warning. “Burials are really depressing.”

But when they joined the people clustered around the gravesite, Lucy was surprised to see a black-suited Kyle Compton standing with the family. And when the final words had been said and the casket lowered into the ground, and people were beginning to disperse, she saw Abby slip away from her family to be embraced by Diana. Her absence was noted almost immediately, and it was Kyle Compton who went to retrieve her and bring her back into the family fold, practically shoving her into the waiting black limousine. The town car pulled away, and Diana was left standing alone, a dramatic figure with her abundant breeze-tossed ringlets and the long black dress that clung to her figure, revealing every feminine curve.

And alone she remained, as people scurried past her, eyes averted and offering no greeting as they hurried to their cars.

A
s Lucy went about town in the days following the funeral, she often heard Diana's name mentioned, and not in a good way. “That Diana Ravenscroft has a lot of nerve, showing up at the funeral like that,” Mimi Rogers was heard saying into her cell phone as she loaded groceries into her car.

“And what is going on between Diana and that girl Abby? That's what I want to know,” wondered Chris Cashman, power-walking down Main Street with a friend.

“I sympathize with Diana, I really do,” said Franny Small, picking up a
Wall Street Journal
at the drugstore, “but she seems to be asking for trouble. She'd be smart to lie low for a while.”

As far as Lucy could tell, Franny was the only one who seemed to have the least bit of sympathy for Diana. Letters continued to arrive at the newspaper, some calling for an investigation into the witch's practices, others declaring there was no place for her in Tinker's Cove. And if she wouldn't leave of her own accord, wrote several “concerned citizens,” she should be forcibly removed.

Lucy found it increasingly difficult to get through each day. Her thoughts kept turning to Miriam's untimely, shocking death, and she was worried about Abby, now alone with her father and brothers. And she was worried about the way public sentiment had turned against Diana. It was discouraging to see otherwise rational people letting their suspicions run rampant and even succumbing to superstition.

So she was surprised and somewhat heartened when she got home from work on Friday afternoon and found Sara and Zoe elbow-deep in a big bowl of dough.

“What on earth are you doing?” she asked.

“We're making bread,” said Sara.

“Or trying to,” said Zoe, holding up her hands, which were covered with sticky dough.

“I can see that,” said Lucy. “But why?”

“For Lammas. It's a traditional Wiccan holiday celebrating the first harvest. Diana gave us the flour and the recipe.”

“I thought you were done with that nonsense,” said Lucy, sighing. If only they'd been inspired by Martha Stewart instead of Diana. “And you need more flour.”

“Are you sure?” asked Sara. “The recipe said six cups, and that's how much she gave us.”

“I'm sure,” said Lucy. “Bread recipes are approximate. You need to add more flour when it's humid like this.”

“How much should we add?” asked Sara.

Lucy peered over her shoulder at the sticky mess in the bowl. “I'd start with half a cup, then add more if you need it. It's supposed to be silky smooth, like a baby's bottom, after you knead it.”

Thinking about babies' bottoms made her think of Patrick, and she was reaching for the phone to call Molly, just to check in, when it rang. It wasn't Molly, however; it was Diana.

“Oh, Lucy,” she began. “I need to ask a favor.”

Lucy found herself agreeing with Mimi Rogers: The woman sure had a lot of nerve. “I have a bone to pick with you,” grumbled Lucy. “You know I don't want my girls practicing witchcraft, and here they are baking bread for some holiday or other I never heard of.”

“Lammas, or Lughnasa. The first of August. It celebrates the beginning of the harvest.” Diana's voice was mechanical, as if she was distracted and was reciting something she'd learned by rote.

The recollection of Diana standing all alone after the funeral popped into Lucy's mind, and she knew she wasn't going to be able to stay mad at her for long. She gave it one last stab. “I don't care what it is. I don't want them dabbling in witchcraft.”

“There's no harm in making a loaf of bread,” argued Diana. “It's a good housewifely skill. And it's organic wheat flour that was planted under a full moon.”

“I give up,” said Lucy with a sigh. “Just so long as they're not prancing about the woods by moonlight without a stitch on.”

“Not with me, they won't,” said Diana. “That's why I called. I'm going away for a while to visit my mother out in Arizona. I was hoping Sara and Zoe could water my plants and feed my cat while I'm gone.” She sighed.

Lucy felt a sense of relief; this was definitely a good time for Diana to make herself scarce. “No problem,” she said. “How long are you going to be gone?”

“I'm not sure,” replied Diana, sounding anxious.

“Has something happened?” asked Lucy.

“Nothing specific. I just don't feel safe.” She paused.

“Because of Ike Stoughton?”

“That's part of it, but last night I just had this creepy feeling that I wasn't alone, that somebody was watching me. And I think some things in my apartment have been moved, but I'm not exactly sure. Maybe I'm imagining things.”

“I think it's a good time to get away for a bit,” said Lucy.

“I'm really torn,” confessed Diana. “I don't like to leave the coven, but Lady Sybil has promised to fill in for me.”

“That's nice of her,” said Lucy.

“I'm not so sure about that,” said Diana cryptically. “But I really appreciate the girls taking care of Piewocket and the plants.”

“No problem. We'll keep an eye on the place.”

“Thanks, I knew I could count on you,” she said. “Blessed be.”

“Same to you,” muttered Lucy, hanging up and turning her attention to the girls, who had just finished kneading the bread, which was now a perfectly rounded ball of dough.

“That's perfect,” she said, after giving the dough a poke. “Now you just have to let it rise.”

 

She took half a loaf of the Lammas bread into work on Monday, along with a pot of Rebecca's homemade strawberry jam. She was nowhere to be found when Lucy stopped by the farmlet, but the animals had plenty of food and water, and an array of produce had been left out on a shaded table. The prices were clearly marked, and a box was left for payment on the honor system, so Lucy figured Rebecca had planned for this absence and would return soon. It was the first of August, and Lucy suspected she was off with her family in New Hampshire observing Lammas, a supposition that was supported by the large shock of wheat she'd hung on her door.

Lucy tucked a five and two singles into the slot cut into the top of the cash box and chose one of the little Ball jars of jam; it was twice what she'd pay for a bigger jar at the IGA, but there was something about the color of the jam and the sunshine and the scent of the garden that she found irresistible. Everything at Rebecca's place seemed so alive and vibrant that it was hard to put into words—even for Lucy, who had won prizes for her reporting from the New England Newspaper Association—but she definitely felt it.

So did Phyllis, who never indulged in between-meal snacks since she had lost all that weight. “Just a smidge,” she said when Lucy set out the bread and jam by the office coffeepot.

Lucy obligingly cut a slice in half, one for her and one for Phyllis. Ted wanted a big, thick slice, and she cut that for him, too, spreading them all with appropriate amounts of jam: Phyllis got her smidge, Lucy had a healthy dollop, and Ted's was loaded. They all had the same reaction.

“Mmm,” said Ted, speaking for them all.” This is amazing.”

“I don't know which is better, the bread or the jam,” said Phyllis.

“I can't believe my girls made it,” said Lucy, wondering if magic was indeed afoot on Lammas.

Thus fortified, they all got down to work. Phyllis tackled the listings, Lucy wrote a summary of the selectmen's meeting, and Ted started his editorial column for the week.

“I'm thinking of calling for tolerance,” he said, scratching his chin thoughtfully, “but I don't want to name Stoughton directly. The poor man just lost his wife, after all. But I don't want to dodge the issue either. From the number of letters we've been getting, there's definitely a growing anxiety about witchcraft.”

“Diana's leaving town for a while,” said Lucy. “This might be a good time to bring it out in the open.”

“I'll give it a try,” he said, bending to his keyboard.

Soon nothing was heard in the office except the clicking of keys and the tick of the old Regulator clock that hung on the wall. Lucy finished her story, then turned to the legals, noticing that the file was longer than usual. More mortgagee sales of real estate, but none with names she recognized, which was a relief. They seemed to be vacation properties, bought by speculators, and no townsfolk were going to lose their homes this week. She was just about finished when she received a fresh e-mail, from the probate court, and opened it, finding a notice that the will of Miriam Compton Stoughton, late of Tinker's Cove, had been presented to the court.

“Listen to this,” she said, reading the relevant parts of the ad aloud.

“Goodness, that was fast,” said Phyllis. “The poor woman's barely cold in her grave.”

“Ike is a stickler for detail,” said Ted.

“I wonder what the ‘Compton' means,” mused Lucy. “Do you think she's related to Kyle Compton? And did she have an interest in Compass Construction?”

“Well, there's one way to find out,” said Ted. “Get over to the probate court and read the will.”

Lucy was on it, rising from her chair and grabbing her purse.

“But not today,” said Ted. “I need you to proof the back-to-school special supplement.”

Lucy couldn't believe it. “Already? Summer's only half over.”

“That's how it goes,” said Ted. “Like the Christmas decorations coming out around Halloween.”

Lucy felt a twinge of guilt. “Halloween! I'm on the committee, and I haven't done a thing,” she confessed.

“Well, you better get cracking,” observed Ted. “'Cause once school starts, Halloween is just around the corner.”

“Point taken,” said Lucy, sinking back into her chair. “So when exactly do you want me to check out this will?”

“How about Wednesday afternoon, after deadline? It's kind of a long shot; there's probably nothing in it anyway.”

But when Wednesday finally came and Lucy examined the will, she discovered he was wrong. Miriam Compton Stoughton had owned fifty percent of Compass Construction and had left all her shares to her husband, Ike, who was also the executor of her estate.

No wonder Ike was in a hurry to get the will through probate; he stood to become a very wealthy man. Compass Construction was one of the biggest local contracting companies. They undertook large projects like shopping centers and industrial parks worth millions of dollars. Miriam, that meek woman whom Lucy had suspected was abused by her husband, had been a very wealthy woman. The realization stunned Lucy, and she sat for a long while at the table in the probate court office, fingering the thick legal stock the will was printed on.

Did this really change anything? she wondered. Miriam had been wealthy, but Lucy doubted she'd ever exercised her rights as coowner of the company. It seemed more likely that she had deferred to her husband when it came to business; somehow Lucy couldn't see Miriam opposing him. Money was always a prime motive for murder, but Lucy didn't think it applied here. She believed Ike's sorrow was genuine, but even if it wasn't, he had little to gain by killing his wife since he already controlled everything she did. Or did he?

Compass Construction was a private corporation; the shares were all owned by family members, and Lucy knew from experience that it was very difficult to get information about such companies. Tax records were confidential, and there were no glossy annual reports like the ones big corporations issued. The best way to get inside information was from an employee, preferably a disgruntled former employee. Those folks could be gold mines, but Lucy couldn't think of anyone who fit the bill. Another source could be a competitor, and she realized her neighbor Fred Stanton, who had built the new subdivision on Prudence Path, might fit the bill. She returned the will to the clerk and went outside, reaching for her cell phone as she crossed the parking lot. Seated in her hot car, with the windows rolled down to take advantage of the cooling breeze, she put in a call to Fred.

“I need a little background information,” she said after they'd gone through the usual pleasantries. “Strictly off the record.”

“Sounds intriguing, like Deep Throat.” Fred chuckled.

“Don't I wish,” said Lucy. “This is no Watergate. It's probably nothing at all, but I wondered if you know anything about Compass Construction?”

“Like what?” asked Fred.

“Just basic stuff. Like is it profitable? Are they making money? Losing money?”

“Probably a little bit—no, make that a lot”—Fred chuckled—“of both. This is a tough business climate. Oil prices are skyrocketing, building materials, too, at the same time real estate is tanking.”

“But an outfit with capital could make a killing,” said Lucy.

“Sure, there are bargains to be had.”

“We run ads for foreclosure auctions all the time,” said Lucy.

“Yeah, I looked into that, but there aren't really any bargains, because the banks don't want to take a loss. Nope, the best way is the way Compass does it—through adverse possession.”

“What's that?” asked Lucy.

“Well, the tax rolls are full of land that's listed as owner unknown.”

Lucy remembered Rebecca using that term, in reference to land adjacent to her farm. “Right,” she said. “There's a piece out by the interstate.”

“It's everywhere in these old towns. People move away, Uncle Harry dies, nobody can find the heirs, so the land just sits there. The town's not collecting any real estate tax, sometimes for decades. So there's this procedure. Say a neighbor starts to kinda expand his boundaries. He puts a vegetable garden on the land or parks his truck there. If he does this long enough, and nobody objects, he can take the land. He just has to pay the back taxes.”

“Oh,” said Lucy. “That doesn't seem right.”