Madelyn Alt_Bewitching Mystery 04_No Rest for the Wiccan Read online

  Then again, in somewhat private moments, I’m not sure that would be an improvement. Could prove a bit of a distraction, that’s for sure. Ahem.

  Still, now that the decision had been made, I was looking forward to spending some time with my family. I glanced at the clock. Nine thirty-five. My mother would be heading home soon, preferring the quieter early mass to the later one overrun by growing families. If I hurried, I could get there first and have a little time with my dad and Grandpa Gordon without my mom’s more . . . forceful personality interjecting itself.

  The plan decided, I launched myself into action, digging through dresser drawers and the closet for any combination that would be comfortable enough to see me through the steamy heat I knew I wouldn’t be able to escape from, and yet leave me covered enough to avoid my mother’s always judgmental eye. I settled on a plain old T-shirt, not too close-fitting, and a pair of knee-length shorts—still shorts, but long enough to cover any wobbly bits that might otherwise have been in view on my thighs. One further concession to comfort was a pair of flip-flops, which I knew my mother hated, but sometimes a girl just has to be herself and go with the flow. Especially when the temps were supposed to reach the midnineties. (Help. Me. Now!) Breakfast was a toasted English muffin and a handful of grapes, both of which were suitable for eating on the run. Which I did, munching my way down sleepy residential streets until I reached the old Indian trail, now residential route, that sheltered the old-fashioned farmhouse that stood out from its more up-to-date neighbors like a plain white hen in a yard full of exotic chickens.

  Home.

  My dad came out of the garage, wiping his hands on a shop rag, when he heard my old VW Bug puttering into the circular drive that looped around an ancient oak that had once held my playhouse in its bowers. Glenn O’Neill was a quiet man—meek, some might say—who had let kindness guide him throughout his lifetime. It was a quality that made him a wonderful father, but might perhaps have served as a detriment in his accounting career. The stresses of his job at the luxury boat factory were evident in the worry furrows and lines that stretched across his brow, the pinched look at the corners of his mouth. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it at all.

  I left Christine parked beneath the shade of the oak and went to give him a big hug.

  “Hey, sis. I wasn’t expecting you today. Good to see you, though.”

  He gave me one last squeeze and big smacking kiss on the cheek. I laughed and smooched him back. file://C:Documents and SettingsLaura HowardMy DocumentsMy eBooksParanormal... 7/10/2009

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  “Hi, Dad. How are things?”

  “Oh, same old, same old. You know.”

  My mouth twisted in distaste. “They’re still working you to death, I suppose. How many hours did you put in last week?”

  He shrugged and wouldn’t meet my eyes. “The work had to be done.”

  “Dad, it always has to be done, and it’s not going to go away. You know that. They know that. I think it’s awful what they do to you. Why don’t they hire some help, if there’s that much to do?”

  He mumbled something about the downshift in the luxury markets owing to higher gas prices and worry over the world economy, but I knew the truth of it as well as he did. If there weren’t someone there already who was willing to step in to fill the void, more help would have been hired. Still, it wasn’t up to me to point that out to him any more than I already had. It was his job. His paycheck. His life. I sighed, wishing for the impossible for him, then changed the subject. “When do you expect Mom back from mass?”

  “She didn’t go.”

  “She didn’t . . .” I blinked at him, certain I had heard wrong. In all my years, I could count on one hand the number of Sunday morning masses my mother had missed. Usually it involved one of us kids coming down with something at an inopportune time, but with all of us out of the house, that left only her, Dad, and Grandpa . . . I glanced toward the house, frowning. “She’s feeling all right, isn’t she? Is Grandpa okay?”

  “Fine, fine. It’s your sister, that’s all. She’s been keeping your mother so busy, she doesn’t know which end is up and which is down. She’s feeling a bit out of sorts and frazzled, that’s all. She wanted to go this morning, but I wouldn’t let her. Told her the Church could do without her one Sunday out of five hundred.” He looked a bit smug about it, too, and I knew why. It wasn’t often that Mom let him push her around. Which meant Mom really must not be feeling herself.

  “I think I’ll go in and check on her,” I said, gazing off in that direction. Besides, Dad’s attention was already wavering back toward the garage.

  “Sure, honey,” he said distractedly with a pat on my shoulder. “She’d like that.”

  My mom and I had enjoyed a somewhat less than perfect mother-daughter relationship for as long as I could remember. Same old story. She didn’t think I was trying to make a life for myself. I wanted a life of my own, rather than living out her fantasies of perfection. We were working on that. Not always well, but . . .

  I heard raised voices as soon as I approached the screen door. “I don’t want to hear about it, Dad, and that’s final.”

  “Don’t tell me what to talk about, missy. It’s bleedin’ hot in here and you know it! My jimmies are hanging so loose, it’s a wonder they aren’t migrating straight outta my boxers in protest, and at my age, that’s not a pretty sight!”

  “Oh, for the love of—! If your mouth hasn’t been just a-running on and on lately, I just don’t know.”

  “Well, it’s true, and I’m too old to be tempering my tongue to keep from insulting a daughter who’s as prickly as a porcupine. You have to admit, Patty, you’ve been a little hard to live with lately.”

  Everyone else in town had their air-conditioning on full blast today in anticipation of the soaring temperatures. My mom was the only person I knew who had insisted upon having central air but rarely turned it on owing to the wastefulness of it all.

  But I’ve got to hand it to my Grandpa G. There weren’t many people who could take on my mom when she was in full-on Control Mode. And I’d lived with her long enough to know that this was all about control. She wanted it, and you were going to give her her due, by golly, or there would be hell to pay. So long as you understood that and stepped aside, you could get along with her fairly well. You just had to be smart and learn how to get around her.

  And I had had a lot of practice at that.

  Mom and Grandpa both looked up when I walked in. Mom sat at the table with a coffee cup clenched in her grip, scowling.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said, breezing into the room and setting my purse on the counter. “Dad told me he file://C:Documents and SettingsLaura HowardMy DocumentsMy eBooksParanormal... 7/10/2009

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  wouldn’t let you go in to church this morning. What’s up?”

  Still glaring at Grandpa, my mom waved off the question. “Oh, you know how your father is. Always worrying about me.”

  Grandpa had steered his Hoverchair over to the old, ceiling-high cupboards and was now leaning dangerously sideways on the seat while he aimed the tip of his cane at a lineup of cookie boxes with the skill and strategy of the wiliest pool shark. The tip connected, as expected. The nearest box teetered on the edge of the shelf and fell to the floor, causing my mom to wince and close her eyes.

  “I’ll get it,” I said helpfully, already bending at the waist. “Here you go, Gramps.” I handed him the box and wrapped my arms around his shoulders, leaning in close. “It’s good to see you.”

  He kissed my cheek soundly. Scruffy gray whiskers prickled the tender skin over my cheekbone, but he smelled good, like aftershave and licorice. “You too, chickpea.”

  “Check to be sure that’s something healthy and not the Thin Mint cookies,” my mom warned wearily, her eyes still closed. “He’s always trying to get into the Thin Mint cookies.”

  Grandpa G surreptitiously slid a tube of the cookies out of the box before handi
ng it back to me with a huffy, “Fine. Fine! Take them. I didn’t want ’em anyway.” He gave me a broad wink as he steered his wheelchair toward the door to beat a hasty exit. Still, he couldn’t seem to resist grumbling under his breath about pushy women and how it was still considered a crime in this country to starve an older person to death, before rolling away down the ramp my dad had built for him with his prize tucked under the flaps of his flannel shirt. Funny, he’d wear flannel three hundred and sixty-five days a year, but he still wanted his air-conditioning. That was Grandpa G for you. I tried not to smile at his sass as I replaced the box on the shelf. It wasn’t easy. Mom waited until he was gone before pinning me with one of her famous penetrating stares. “He had the Thin Mints with him, didn’t he.”

  It wasn’t so much a question as a declaration that she was waiting for me to confirm. I could have lied, but I knew she’d see right through me. “Just one tube, Mom. Not enough to hurt him.”

  “It’s enough to throw his sugars way out of whack, if he eats them in one sitting. Which he has been known to do.” She tapped her fingernails against the table, inhaling deeply. “That man will be the death of me yet.”

  “Sounds like Mel is vying for that distinction lately.”

  Far be it from me to point out my younger sister’s spoiled princess performance to her chief enabler, but . . . oh, I just did that, didn’t I? I know, I know. It was a small and petty thing to do. Some things never truly die, and sibling rivalry is one of them. Cain and Abel, anyone? I rest my case. My mother leaned back with a weary sigh. “I won’t deny it. Your sister has been running me ragged.”

  She stopped for a moment to take a sip of her coffee, which I noticed she was drinking black, without her usual heavy dose of cream and sugar. Wow. Hard core. “It’s the hormones, of course, and the boredom. Her obstetrician just told her that it’s to be bed rest for the next three months solid. Bed rest?

  Your sister? She can’t clean her own house. The girls are running amok without constant supervision during the day. Greg hasn’t been much help either. At the office at all hours. It’s enough to drive any woman around the bend.”

  Mel was always enough to drive me around the bend. But a pregnant Mel, bored, bedridden, and toxemic? Yeesh. “So you’ve been filling in?”

  She shrugged. “During the day, as much as I can. At least the house can be clean, the girls don’t have to be with a nanny or a nurse, and Melanie has someone there with her in case of an emergency.”

  “I don’t get it. Why can’t Greg just cut his hours short?”

  Mom raised her brows and pursed her lips. “Your brother-in-law has a busy schedule. A busy legal practice. You can’t expect him to be the primary breadwinner and take care of everything on the home front, too.”

  Greg Craven and my sister, Melanie, had been married for about six years now, ever since Melanie had graduated from her party-girl-looking-for-a-rich-husband years. Greg won the big prize. Or, perhaps I should say, Melanie did. Greg was as up-and-coming as a young lawyer could be in a small town. His specialty? Divorce and family law, and from what my mom had told me, business was booming, more file://C:Documents and SettingsLaura HowardMy DocumentsMy eBooksParanormal... 7/10/2009

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  so than ever before. I guess that would explain his hesitance to scale back his hours to accommodate his bedridden wife . . . or maybe it was just that Mel could be a royal pain in the ass when she couldn’t do what she wanted to do.

  “You know,” my mom said, interrupting my musings, “there’s no reason you couldn’t help out, too.”

  Wait . . . what?

  “With me there during the day and you in the evenings after work until Greg gets home, the entire day would be covered.”

  Well, yeah, but . . .

  “I mean, you are her big sister. It would be nice if you could be there for her in her time of need.”

  Warning! Warning, Will Robinson! Guilt trip, straight ahead.

  “That is what family does, after all. Looks after each other.”

  “All right! All right. You win,” I said, holding up my hands in submission. I know, I know. I was too easy. But she was right in a way. It would have been awful of me to let my mom suffer alone. “I’ll help out for a couple of hours in the evenings. It’ll be fun, right? Me and the girls? It’ll be like a slumber party. Yeah, lots of fun.” Just me, and the girls, and Mel the Prima Madonna. My mom beamed. “I knew you’d see it my way.”

  Was there any other?

  Oh, my God. What had I gotten myself into?

  My mom had decided that, this being Sunday, it was the perfect opportunity for me to head on over to Mel’s with her, to let Mel know about my willingness to serve, and to show me the ropes on everything that Mel would need done every day.

  Oy.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be helpful. What I didn’t want was to see the look of triumph on Mel’s pretty face when she realized she was going to be able to order me around. Everything looked normal when we pulled into the brick driveway that swirled ever-so-tastefully up to Mel’s ever-so-tasteful home. Mel lived in the ritzy Buckingham West subdivision, where the houses were all taupe, the men business casual, and the coffee klatch wives in serious need of therapy . . . retail therapy, that is. It was where many of the up-and-comings in old Stony Mill society and the property tax refugees from the city comingled in relative peace and harmony, secure in the knowledge of their continued financial well-being. It was an arrogant view, perhaps, a naïve view, but they had had years of prosperity to bolster their faith and complacency. Welcome to the lives of the rich and fortunate. For all they knew, the world had always been their oyster, always waiting for them to take the pearl. And that was the way they intended it to stay.

  The residents liked to think everyone was equal in Buckingham West, and by outward appearances, they were right. There was a sameness here, with the matching color schemes, the garages limited to three cars, the requisite curb appeal. The rules. You see, to be fair to all, the association had put forth many rules with regard to anything that might be viewed by the outside world: frontage size, lot size, style of home, colors of siding, number of windows, those things you could have in your yard, and what you couldn’t. Evenly applied rules meant equal footing between the otherwise competitive Buckingham Westers.

  Of course, the veneer of equality was nothing more than illusion, and the pretense of fairness was the biggest illusion of all.

  Mel was no different from the rest of her lofty-minded neighbors. If anything, she was the queen of the neighborhood watch, if more by attitude than actual status. Mel had always wanted more than what we had grown up with on my dad’s salary alone. Landing Greg, a young lawyer, must have seemed a real coup, the first big step in her life plan. She’d lost no time in quitting her job in order to step into the kitten heels of a socialite and starting a family with Greg, and one of the first things they’d done as a married couple was to dig themselves neck deep into debt on this house, to fit in with Mel’s concept of the American dream.

  Maybe that was why Greg worked all those hours.

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  A more probable cause became evident the moment we set foot inside the house. It was obvious my mom had not been there yet. Dishes from the morning meal lay where they had been left all over the counter, which was soiled with spilled milk and scattered cereal. The milk jug lay on its side, though at least its lid was in place, thank goodness. Newspaper lay discarded on the counter, the floor, and one of the tall stools at the counter—Greg’s doing, no doubt. Coffee was burning in the bottom of the coffeemaker, the scorched smell assaulting the nose almost as much as the smell of soiled nappies coming from the diaper can. A little pink scooter lay discarded on its side in the center of the Mexican tile floor, surrounded by blocks and crayons and a fuzzy purple hippo with a gap-toothed grin. My eyes went wide at the stat
e of things.

  “Um,” I said to my mother, trying to get the big picture, “you were here just yesterday. Weren’t you?”

  Mom was surveying the wreckage with the same dazed expression I was wearing. “Yes.”

  “And this goes on every day?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Together we moved along toward the hall. “Greg?” my mom called out, trying to be heard over the maniacal giggling and yammering cartoon voices coming from the television in the family room. “Greg?

  Girls? Grandma’s here!”

  Nothing.

  “Maybe they’re upstairs with Mel,” I suggested, trying to be helpful. Mom nodded, but instead of walking toward the wide, free-floating steps that led to the upper level, she walked to a box on the wall and pressed a button. “Melanie? It’s Mom. I’ve brought your sister with me.”

  I didn’t need the intercom to hear my sister. Her response echoed off the vaulted ceilings. “Mom! Oh, I’m so glad you’re here. I’ve been so bored up here all by myself, and none of my friends could come over this morning. They’re all busy with their churches. I was even starting to think I was hearing things. Why do houses have to make such odd noises? You’d think, with what we paid for this one, that it would be as silent as the grave.” She gave a nervous laugh. “I’m going stir crazy, obviously.”

  “Melanie,” Mom interrupted her flow, “where are Greg and the girls?”

  “Oh, didn’t I tell you yesterday? Greg and his mom took the girls in to morning services. I could have sworn I mentioned it. Well, it’s a good thing you didn’t get up early to take care of the girls, isn’t it?