THE WITCH AND THE TEA PARTY (A Rachael Penzra Mystery) (8 page)

Finally the hot chocolate was consumed along with most of the cookies. The two seniors looked much livelier and once Dora saw that Eloise was perfectly contented
with trying to decide where to hide the nickel I’d put in with her food, she visibly relaxed. Patsy and I exchanged looks.

“All right,” Patsy turned her stern gaze on them. “Tell us about it.”

Ley lines cross and crisscross the world, maybe even the universe. Generally they’re considered to be invisible lines connecting various artifacts (Stonehenge) and/or places that contain a lot of power and energy. Some believe they gathered their strength during the Megalithic Age, the time of the stone builders, but most believe that the various monuments weren’t the draw, but the other way around. Whichever came first, the power seems to have been absorbed into the stones. There is the belief that the secrets of ley lines died with the last of the Druid priests. Where the lines intersect or lie close to the surface, dowsing rods will often reveal them. Strange lights and poltergeist activity is often connected with many buildings or monuments that have been built on ley line intersections. Ley lines, some people believe, carry the Chi of Mother Earth.

Chapter Four

“We didn’t do
anything
!” Aunt Myrtle wailed.

“Nobody has said that,” I reassured her, not mentioning certain worries that had been racing through our minds over the past hours. “We don’t even know what’s happened. We heard that Mrs. Brown-Hendricks died. Do you know what she died from?”

“Probably from eating too many sour grapes,” Dora grumbled.

“She told Dora that sweet little Eloise was nothing more than common vermin and should be killed rather than kept around to spread disease.”

“I’d rather be bitten by a rat than by her,” Dora claimed.

“She turned out to be really mean,” my aunt continued. “She knew Eloise lived there. She’d been in the store lots of times. She treated us like dirt. She had never been like that before.”

“Thought she’d bought us.” Sometimes my neighbor surprises me with the acuity of her remarks. “The minute we cashed her check she thought she could run the show.”

“She bossed everybody around. I don’t know how her guests could stand her.”

“What actually killed her?” My niece brought the subject back to the basics.

“Probably a heart attack,” Aunt Myrtle made it half statement, half question. “Nobody would tell us anything.”

“Moondance heard the paramedics talking about poison,” Dora said. “That was before they all shut up and called the cops.”

“You said on the phone that they’d taken away your tea,” I reminded them. “Had she had any to drink?”

“That’s what’s so bad,” Dora admitted. “She said it tasted like poison. Put a quick stop to any sales we might have made. But she still drank hers bit by bit. Too cheap to pass up something free.”

“Now we have all that tea made up and nobody will ever buy it after this.”

“You’ll have to drink it yourselves,” Patsy told her, a little maliciously, probably because she’d been forced to try some to make them happy.

Both their faces fell.

“I’m sure they took away everything that was edible, didn’t they?” I asked.

“Yes, they even took your urn, Rachael,” Aunt Myrtle exclaimed indignantly. “I suppose they thought the water in it was poisoned. It wasn’t. I’d already had a cup of tea from it.”

“Your special tea?” I didn’t say that to be mean, but she flushed.

“Well, no. I
was trying out some regular peppermint tea,” she admitted. “My stomach was a little jumpy. Nerves, I expect, don’t you?”

“Probably,” I threw her a bone. No sense in rubbing in her abandonment of their product. I would have done the same. “So the water was definitely okay. Did anybody else try the tea before she made her statement?”

“Two of the ladies did,” Dora said triumphantly. “So that goes to prove it wasn’t anything we gave her.”

Patsy and I exchanged looks of tremendous relief. Even knowing the ingredients were harmless, it was easy to imagine it poisoning someone once we’d tasted it. That still left my earlier fear that they’d somehow changed the formula.

“Tell the truth, now,” I smiled falsely at them both. “Nobody will be upset. Did you add anything to the recipe since you gave me a copy?”

“Absolutely not!” my aunt declared. “It was as perfect as it was apt to ever be. It should have cured just about anything. Of course we didn’t change it.”

I backtracked humbly. “Sorry. I just had to be sure. Some of the most common herbs can cause allergic reactions. For that matter, anything can, even water, but some affect more people than others.”

Dora settled the matter. “We didn’t do anything differently,” she said. I believed her.
She doesn’t worry overly about other people and what they think.

“Did she just fall over?” Patsy asked. “Did she feel sick ahead of time, or was it fast?”

“We don’t know for sure,” Dora explained. “If she felt it coming on, she didn’t tell anybody. She was way back in the building. We don’t know how long she was there. The sheriff was trying to get exact times from people, but everybody was milling around.”

“Who actually found her?” I wondered aloud. I’d found a body once. It isn’t a pleasant experience.
It’s bad enough to come across a dead animal in the woods. Unexpectedly finding someone you know not only dead, but murdered in your parlor, is upsetting to say the least. I can remember later thinking, “the body, in the parlor, with the knife” – over and over again. I kept putting myself into a state of near hysteria with the chant.

“It was that stupid Jasper woman,” Dora doesn’t always pull her punches. “Later she kept saying the stars had warned her about death and deception. She didn’t mention any of that earlier, not even when she was being read by Moondance.”

“We were really disgusted with her,” my aunt added. “She wouldn’t let Moondance give her a decent reading. She kept interrupting and adding her own ideas. If Moondance said she saw money in the future, Ms Jasper would interrupt and explain why that couldn’t happen, or that it would because the stars had predicted it years ago.”

“An
noying,” I agreed. “But how did the… victim happen to be in the back of the store? Was everyone wandering around that much?”

“Yes, I’m glad I made some decent sales before they found her,” Dora
admitted. “If she hadn’t gotten herself killed, I think I might have come close to matching my best day. Of course, that wouldn’t really count, because I was open those extra hours. Still, it was a good day.”

“When you add in your share of the party money, it will really be good,” Aunt Myrtle said. “If only she hadn’t died…”

“I’m more worried that it was murder,” her friend said, bluntly, coming right out with the word we’d been tiptoeing around. “She was the type of woman who invites murder. Still, whoever did it could have done it somewhere other than my store.”

“Who’s this Ms Jasper?” I asked.

“Some woman who believes in all sorts of silly things,” said my aunt, the pot. “I could see someone killing
her
.”

“Name’s Rita,” Dora added. “Divorced from what I overheard. She kept talking about her ex to her date. I suppose you’d call him that. She was certainly clinging to him and everybody seemed to be more or less partnered off.”

“For the dinner table, I imagine,” Patsy said. “Can you give me a list of everybody’s names and tell me what you know about them?”

Aunt Myrtle reached into her purse and pulled out a sheet of paper. “We took everyone’s names ahead of time. Moondance told the Brown-Hendricks woman that she often got special vibes from written names. She really wanted them so she could try and connect the names with the customers. She thinks it helps her concentrate to say their names out loud
.”

Patsy took the list eagerly.

“Shouldn’t we wait a bit and see if there’s any cause for thinking it was murder?” I asked. Much as I wanted it to be a simple heart attack or something, I had to concede that it didn’t sound as though the sheriff saw it that way. I hoped he wasn’t being paranoid because of past experiences with me and my family. These things aren’t something I’m magically causing to happen. As I said, until I moved to Balsam Grove, my life had been mundane to say the least.

My aunt yawned hugely. “What we should do is get to bed,” Patsy told us. I noticed, though, that she carefully refolded the list and hung on to it. I thought of staying up and going over the names with her, but yawns are contagious and I’m highly susceptible to them. We all dutifully traipsed up to our beds.

Morning came much too soon. I’d gone to bed with firm plans to get up early and find out any news I could. Instead, I groaned and pulled my pillow over my head when the alarm sounded. For someone who had gone to bed afraid that she wouldn’t be able to sleep, I’d done amazingly well, and would have liked to continue. Of course modern clocks come with built-in nags inside, and ten minutes later, I was beeped at again. I gave in and got up. The store would still have to be opened and operated. It’s certainly a good thing that life goes on in its usual way, even when tragedy strikes, but it’s never seemed right to me.
Something
symbolic should be acknowledged. But the fact was that a woman had died. I didn’t know her. My only connection was through my aunt and her friends. Still….

Patsy, already at the kitchen table, was writing notes as Aunt Myrtle and Dora tried to describe the guests at the party. They were in complete agreement that the outstanding thing about them was that they seemed so mismatched. “I’ve never been to a dinner party,” Dora told us, without any hint of self-pity. “But it seems to me th
at you’d invite people you like and who were apt to like each other.”

“Maybe it was their mutual interest in fortune telling,” I suggested. “Didn’t you say the one woman was going on and on about
her horoscope?”

“Some of them were really interested,” Aunt Myrtle said. “Those two sisters seemed to at least enjoy the idea. I don’t know if they really believed. “

“That would be Stella Lang and Martha Stone,” Patsy asked, glancing at the list.

“Most people don’t really believe in their fortune,” Dora said. “They’re superstitious
in their own way about not paying attention to a warning, but if you’re told you’re in danger in the next week, you’d be a fool not to be a little cautious and keep an eye out for problems. I’d listen to something like that, even if I didn’t believe, even if it was Moondance telling me.”

“She’s really good,” my aunt insisted. “You’ve heard all the good comments people make when they come out.”

“Half of it’s following the instructions in that book,” her friend argued. “Set formulas that work for eighty percent of the time. But you’re right. For some reason, she’s really good at it.”

“You’re using a book to tell fortunes?” Patsy asked, interestedly. “I didn’t know you could buy something like that.”

“I don’t think there’s a subject that doesn’t have at least one book written about it,” I put in my two-cents. “Look at the internet. I dare you to think of a subject we couldn’t find lots of information about. And you can bet there’ll be entire books written about it.”

“Not a bet I’d take,” she conceded.
“I’d like to read it sometime if you think she’d loan it to me.”

“It’s in the store,” Dora said. “We found it at one of the yard sales we went to. Since Moondance was already doing that sort of thing, I grabbed the book.”

“It’s a magic book,” my aunt added.

“You mean a book about magic?” my niece responded.

“No, it’s a magic book. It says so on the first page. We have to treat it with great respect. Moondance keeps it wrapped in purple velvet in a beautiful wooden, covered box. She takes good care of her Tarot cards and the crystal ball, too. We got a perfect stand for the ball there, too.”

“I’d like to see it
,” I said. Unlike most people today, I believe in magic. And as with everything else, there’s an upside and downside involved. It isn’t anything to be played around with. There are consequences.

“We can see it later,” Patsy said. She isn’t as convinced about that sort of thing existing, much less being potentially dangerous. “So we have Rita Jasper being involved in horoscopes and probably other stuff along that line. I can understand her being at a party that ended up at the readings. She seemed to be the date of Captain Hastings. John Hastings. There’s something familiar about that name…”

“I don’t recall the John part, but I think that was the name of a sidekick of Poirot.” I’m a big mystery fan, but I have to admit that names don’t usually stick with me. Still, with the number of books and the many times I’ve read Agatha Christie, some had remained in my brain. “I wonder what he’s a captain of. Most civilians don’t run around calling themselves titles like that. I mean, an airline pilot is more apt to be introduced as John Hastings, not Captain Hastings. Am I making any sense?”

“Maybe he’s an imposter,” Aunt Myrtle said, delighted with the idea. “There are lots of them in the old mysteries.”

“I think it’s probably a little more difficult these days,” Patsy told her. “But we can check up on him later. You said she hung on him, but he didn’t seem too interested?”