A Witch Axe to Grind Page 6

  They left, all except Tom. As a tattoo artist, he worked mostly nights. His gaze fell on the pet cemetery. “I guess this has been here a long time. Great Catsby.” He smiled.

  Nann shot a look over her shoulder, but Charlotte’s window was dark. “Nick O’Broin was asking questions at the shelter?” she asked Tom.

  He nodded. “A bunch of workers confessed to murdering that man, Perkins. The cops let them go. Not sure why.”

  So, Nick had beaten her to the punch. No matter. Maybe she could learn a little bit about the late Arthur Perkins and Nick O’Broin’s motives at the same time. She caught Tom looking up at Charlotte’s window. He saw her noticing. “Well, better open up. Got a few clients coming in.”

  He walked through the backyard to the loading dock and the tattoo shop’s back door. The VHS held their meetings right on top of a sleeping vampire. Nann wondered if Tom actually knew what was up there. She had no time to ponder. Nann had a pig to feed, and a mysterious author to investigate.

  Chapter 12

  Early the next morning, she pulled into the animal shelter lot. There was still an hour before she opened up. Nann didn’t know if she would learn anything in an hour.

  The same receptionist sat at the desk. Christa, Nann recalled.

  “I’d like to exchange a cat,” she said.

  “Exchange?”

  “He doesn’t meow. He only grunts—Rrr.”

  Christa blinked in response. “Well, maybe you should take the cat to the vet. There’s one right next door. She works with the shelter.”

  Maybe a cat not meowing was not such an oddity. Nann decided to change tack. “It’s funny, I had a dream the cat ate a bunch of Little Debbie snack cakes and rolled around like a beach ball.”

  This did the trick. “Y’know, I’ve been having a lot of really weird dreams, too.”

  “Seems almost contagious,” Nann prompted.

  “You know what’s even funnier? A guy was in here asking about dreams.”

  Nann figured it could only be one person. “Nick? Nick O’Broin?”

  “You know him?” Christa took some paperwork and fanned herself. “He may be an odd duck, but, whew!”

  “Asking about dreams, huh? Who was he asking?”

  “The ones who confessed—wait a minute, I know you. You were here when Mr. Perkins died. You’re the deputy’s girlfriend.”

  How a woman might know about her mild interest in Keith Schwenk, when no one knew a bookstore had opened in town, eluded her. “He’s just a friend.”

  “The girls who confessed to killing Mr. Perkins. One shelter employee and one volunteer, and four employees from next door. Can you imagine? I guess they all went crazy or something. Not a one of them would hurt a fly.”

  Nann remembered the lack of staffing at the veterinary hospital. “They’re back, then?”

  Christa nodded. “Yep. Cops let ’em go. Not enough evidence or something. Why would they confess like that?”

  Nann didn’t know, but she wanted to ask them. “Which ones are they?”

  “Well, Annette for one. Hey, Annette!” Christa called.

  “I’VE WORKED AT THE shelter for years. I just love cats and dogs. Especially dogs,” Annette said as she placed a paper bowl of cat food in a cage. An excited blotch tabby rubbed his face against the bars.

  “Why did you confess to murdering a man?”

  “Because I thought I did.” Annette gave her the “duh” look. “I gave him a lethal injection in the neck.”

  “Just one?”

  “How many does it take?”

  “Based on what, though? I saw the man fall through the door,” Nann pointed. “No one was around him. You were doing something in the shelter.” Nann thought it over. “You were bringing me a cat, in fact.”

  “It takes a little time for the drug to take effect.”

  Nann, who had little experience with euthanized animals, changed her approach. “Why him? Why Arthur Perkins?”

  “He was an evil man,” Annette said. She put a food bowl in an empty cage, the animal out for repairs or something?

  “Evil how?”

  “Well, for about a year or so, Mr. Perkins adopted dogs. A lot of dogs. But specifically, older dogs, dogs that led very hard lives. Abused animals, missing a limb, very sick, blind, like that. At first I thought he was being very kind, giving these poor dogs a lot of attention in their last days. Kind of a dog hospice.”

  Nann waited. When Annette didn’t go on, she prompted, “But he wasn’t?”

  “No. Oh no. He was being cruel to the dogs. He didn’t feed them. Didn’t clean up. He kept them in cages. Just the most reprehensible ways to keep dogs...”

  At this point, Nann caught on. Annette wasn’t losing her train of thought. She had never had a train of thought to begin with. “You learned about this in dreams.” Not a question.

  “More than dreams. I could hear those dogs whining, smell the filth, the blood, the—the. It was horrible, just horrible, and that man, Mr. Perkins.”

  “Horrible?”

  Annette sighed. “I could do nothing about it legally. The shelter couldn’t refuse him more animals. Not without an investigation. There was no evidence, really. So I...”

  Nann got it. She changed direction again. “What did Nick O’Broin have to say about this?”

  “He found it... interesting.” Annette’s features took on a troubled cast. “He’s very good looking, Mr. O’Broin. I mean, like you’re meeting a movie star. But when he found the criminal mistreatment of animals, of first-degree murder, interesting—I just got the coldest feeling.”

  “Well, I think both of those things are terrible,” Nann said. “What I do find interesting is that six people confessed to killing Arthur Perkins. What do you make of that? Do you think the others did it for the same reason—that Perkins was a horrible person?”

  “The others all work with animals. Nurses and assistants at the veterinary hospital always volunteer for adoption events. I’d have to say yes. Because Arthur Perkins was abusing dogs. Defenseless animals. We care about stuff like that. That’s why we do what we do.”

  Annette fed another cat, an orange tabby who only moved his eyes toward the bowl.

  “Did Nick talk to other workers here?” Nann asked.

  “Yes, he talked to one of the volunteers, Cathy.”

  “Cathy was another one who confessed?”

  Annette nodded. Nann could still see guilt weighing the woman down. Either guilt for killing a man, guilt that someone else confessed to it, or both. It seemed a waste of time to keep talking to the women who had confessed. She thanked Annette for talking to her. For now, she was going straight to the source.

  The sheriff’s substation was a short walk away. It was a pleasant late summer day, so she left Cricket in the lot and hoofed it. The dispatcher sat in the front reading People Magazine. When Nann asked to see Detective Schwenk, she waved her back without looking up from an article about Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.

  Keith Schwenk sat behind a fortress of paperwork. She could barely see him over the top of it. When he saw her, he closed the file he was reading. “Nann. Nice to see you.”

  “You look busy.”

  “Do I?”

  Nann opted to leap past the sarcasm. “Six confessions and no arrest?”

  “We uncovered evidence that precludes murder.”

  Knowing that he wouldn’t talk about an ongoing investigation, she did her best to muddle it out. She couldn’t.

  Keith surprised her. “We recovered two syringes. Fingerprints matched. It wasn’t a murder, but suicide.”

  “Suicide? Twice?”

  “Maybe the first dose didn’t take, or act quickly enough. We’re not sure. Tox found enough of the drug to kill a hippopotamus. We searched the victim’s home out in the county. No note. Lots of dogs. Speaking of which, I have an enormous animal control issue out there.” He put his hand on one of the stacks. He then moved it to another. “Also twenty-five domestics. These are assa
ults, simple, ADW, bar fights.”

  His hand was on the tallest stack of files. Nann made a face. “Holy schmoly, those are all fights?”

  “It’s like a contagious paranoia. All these people are acting out, some guy smacked another guy after a fender bender. Two guys beat up a third because it was his turn to buy a round. The suspects all felt they were personally wronged by the victim, but not for any good reason.”

  “It was in their dreams,” Nann said, and realized she’d said it out loud a beat too late.

  Keith focused on her, eyes intense with the question. “How did you know that these suspects claimed they’d been wronged in a dream?”

  “Just like the women who confessed to murdering Arthur Perkins,” Nann said.

  The deputy’s brows lifted.

  “I talked to one of them.” Nann blew out her cheeks. “But how could the other ones all have the same dream?”

  “Love to know that.” Keith folded his arms. “Any clue?”

  While Nann tried to keep the magic stuff out of the deputy’s view, just being around a practicing Druid, he was bound to see some strange things. Keith Schwenk was no dummy. Even if he wasn’t a believer, he was employed to be suspicious.

  “If I find a clue, I’ll clue you in.”

  “Sure you will.”

  Nann wearied of the sarcasm only an overworked cop could generate. “Gotta go open the store.”

  Chapter 13

  On the short drive, she mulled it over. Since Perkins’ death, dreams and nightmares had plagued the town. And to look at Keith’s desk, it was getting worse. Was Perkins involved in some sort of magic? Nick O’Broin was certainly curious about Perkins, and Nick was already exhibiting some odd, and a few impossible, behaviors.

  Tink’s tow truck parked behind Zinnia’s red pickup outside Amity Center. Her two friends had lived in Amity Corners a lot longer than Nann. Maybe they knew Arthur Perkins.

  Nann parked Cricket and pushed into the gallery. When Zinnia saw her, she turned away with enough drama and force to raise her hair. Tink, far less into drama, put her fists on her hips. She was a lot more forward than Zinnia.

  “Why are our boyfriends dreaming of you? Are you doing some kind of Druid love spell?” Tink raised the back of her hands toward the ceiling and wiggled her fingers.

  Nann felt a little insulted. “Druids don’t do love spells.”

  “What’s the deal, then?”

  Zinnia, still facing away, lifted her nose. “She’s got that deputy and the smokin hot writer. Isn’t that enough for her?”

  “Yeah. What do you need with our guys?” Tink said.

  Nann remembered the dream about Tink’s boyfriend, Manuel, cooking her breakfast with a guilty start. There was nothing untoward about that dream. Maybe she just got up later than Manuel. Or went to bed earlier. Or something. “They’re just dreams, guys. I’m not after your boyfriends. Everyone in town is having crazy, mixed up dreams. But that doesn’t make them real.”

  Tink hung her head for a moment. “Look. I’ve shown my ears to Manuel.”

  “Kinky,” Zinnia said.

  The shop goblin lifted a reddening face. “What I mean is, Manuel is the first guy I’ve been with who doesn’t think I’m a freak, or a monster. He’s someone I trust. We’re getting closer. There’s a real connection. And then all of a sudden, he’s dreaming about you, Nann. He should be dreaming about me. It feels like you’re stealing him away.”

  Nann shook her head. “Nope. Not doing that.”

  “I can’t help but think that something’s going on, Nann.”

  “Something is going on. I don’t know what. But, c’mon, Tink.” Nann gave her shoulder a light backhand. “We’re buds. Zinn, I’d never do that to you. You know that, right?”

  Zinnia put her face in her hands, making her voice hard to understand. “Yes, I know that. But it all feels so real. My fear, my embarrassment, my anger, is real. Even if these are just dreams, I can’t get past my feelings. Stupid as it is, I’m so pissed off at you, Nann.”

  Tink cocked her head. “Stupid, but true. We’re officially pissed off.”

  NANN STALKED TO HER store, officially pissed off as well. Was she the only one in this town who knew dreams weren’t real? She unlocked the door. Okay, hold the phone. People knew dreams weren’t real. They were just acting off the emotions sparked by the dreams. Was that a significant difference?

  She put her thermos down on the shelf behind the checkout. Nick O’Broin smiled at her, his blown-up photo propped on an easel borrowed from Zinnia. He’d be here tomorrow, signing books. She had questions for the man.

  Outside, she saw Tom walking toward his apartment. She could almost hear the rattle of stakes inside the backpack slung over his shoulder. Nann wasn’t the only one with questions for O’Broin.

  But what about Arthur Perkins? Craziness hadn’t ensued in Calamity Corners until the man dropped dead at the adoption event. She did a search on the computer. There were many Arthur Perkinses engaged in social media, but none of them an old man in Upstate New York. She found no dog lovers, no Lake Ontario, nothing until she reached the third page of her Googling.

  There was a Linked-In profile, an old one. She hit up the site, and saw no activity for the past couple years. Arthur Perkins it turned out was Dr. Arthur Perkins, DDS. Backtracking, she located his practice. It was in northwestern PA, not New York. A few searches showed the office long closed. She dialed the number, but it had been disconnected, of course.

  Perkins’ former office was over two hundred miles from here, closer to a different Great Lake. Could she wring any meaning from that? Other than people moved occasionally, no. She sat back, thinking. With no helpful information about Perkins, which was on par with what she’d come up with for Nick O’Broin, where did she go from here?

  Questioning anyone about their dreams was a tricky business. It was probably best left to either psychologists or divinators. Neither was Nann’s forte.

  A few customers came in, most of them buying a copy of Nick’s book in advance. The lengthy quiet in between gave her time to think. If these dreams were shared, what did that mean? Were they broadcast from one sleeper to another? Nann didn’t think so. She liked Manuel. He was a good guy. But she had no feelings for him, nor did she interact with him enough to stir up her unconscious mind. Keith, on the other hand... Yet she’d had no dreams of Keith Schwenk.

  On the other hand, dreams were so random it was hard to pin down a source at times. That naked in public dream; the end of the school year and I haven’t studied dream; the slow-motion running dream; the flying dream—these people had in common. These, however, were not shared.

  She needed a third hand, because there were prophetic aspects to the dreams she’d had. Toast the cat going Rrr instead of Meow, for instance; the VHS members linking O’Broin to the bookstore before the newspaper ad came out, for another.

  Dreams both shared and prophetic reeked of magic. What she needed to do was to look at the dreams in an objective way. On the face of it, this seemed impossible. Still, she let the idea run around her mind all day. Then she closed shop and headed home to feed her familiar.

  NANN PUT ON THE RADIO in the dining room and set to chopping veggies, and a few pears, for Pokey’s dinner.

  “How was your day?” the pig asked through the radio.

  “Sold a few books, looked into an impossible mystery. The usual. You?”

  “Oh, rooted around in the garden, pooped in secret places. The usual.”

  Nann let it slide. “I need to work on some magic stuff. You wanna help?”

  Pokey wandered over to his bowl and sat. “You’re my familiar, Nann. Of course I’ll help.”

  “I think I need to wander the oak grove and the ceremonial space. Not sure what I’m looking for, but it’ll be good exercise.”

  Pokey turned his head, focusing one eye on her. “That’s a lot of stairs. Maybe throw in a Little Debbie cake?”

  “The idea would be to work off the Little
Debbies.”

  Pokey sat, looking thoughtful—for a pig. “Y’know, I think I’ll let you meditate on this by yourself. You might find answers in solitude. Do you think you could put the news on after dinner?”

  Nann scraped the food cubes into Pokey’s bowl with the back of her knife. He dug in. For sure, Pokey was a lazy pig. In a way, given her penchant for movie-watching over gardening or housework, Nann felt somewhat responsible for this attitude. Perhaps Pokey was right, though. She didn’t really know what she was doing. The pig would only be a distraction.

  “Sure. What channel do you want to watch?”

  “I’m not good with numbers. I prefer Action News to Eyewitness News.” It was kinda weird that Pokey could eat and talk through the radio at the same time. Of course, it was weird that he could speak at all. Some things, you just got used to, she supposed.

  Nann grabbed the remote. It took a few clicks to find the station. Pokey wandered in, looked from her to the couch and back.

  “I put that ottoman there so you could use it like a step to get on the couch.”

  “What is it with you and steps, Nann?” He trotted backward a few feet; then ran forward, jumped, hooves scrabbling on the cushions. With a totally porcine oink of frustration, he backed up and tried again. Nann figured this was good enough exercise and headed down to the backyard.

  Chapter 14

  Founder’s House was left to her by Nann’s Great-Aunt Nancy, a big Victorian pile of a house, but well-maintained over the years by her Great-Uncle Ed, a contractor. It sat atop the bluff overlooking Lake Ontario. In the dead of winter, with the leaves off the trees, she could see all the way to Calamity Corners from the highest point of the bluff. In addition to the house and lots of woodsy land, behind the house was a broad space for ceremonies. And barbecues. Sometimes these things melded.

  She took the wooded steps from the back patio down, and down, winded as she finally reached the flattened ground at the bottom. A half-circle of oaks surrounded the area, like arms out for a hug. At the end opposite the stairs, two concrete pads and a line of weeping willows marked the end of the space before it dropped off to the creek below. Centered was a circle, the engraved flagstones represented the Wheel of the Year.