Witch Water, page 21
Hi, doctor. I’m pretty much convinced that I’m NOT actually hallucinating. What do I mean by that? Well, see, that looking-glass I stole WORKS…
He still had to think about that determination, he knew, but didn’t want to bother with talking to her now. And when he thought to call in to his main office, his phone rang.
“Artie, I was just thinking about you,” he said.
“Good things, I hope. I wanted to get back to you so you wouldn’t think we’re sluffing.”
“I would never think that.”
“We got ahold of Eldred Karswell’s secretary, danced around some issues, and got her to tell us about your guy. The, uh, warlock he was writing about was named—”
“Jacob Wraxall,” Fanshawe said. “I already got that, Artie.”
“You make me feel useless,” his manager griped. “And that’s all she would say except for bibliographic crap. Nothing else about the warlock.”
Fanshawe appreciated Artie’s humorous emphasis. “I got the scoop already, but thanks just the same.”
“Well here’s some scoop you probably haven’t gotten yet. About five minutes ago the Prosser Fuel Corp stock split, and it skyrocketed just like you said. Congrats. You just made a couple million.”
Fanshawe’s eyes roved about the shops and passersby on the street, not particularly interested in what Artie had just said. “That’s cool, Artie, but—”
“Cool?” Artie sounded shocked or angry. “I just told you you bagged a couple mil on the side, and all you say is cool?”
Something in the back of his mind itched at him, and it was just that second that he knew what it was. That picture of Letitia Rhodes’ baby made him feel terrible. “The split’s great, Artie, but I’m kind of distracted at the moment. Write down this name and address.”
“Ready.”
“Letitia Rhodes, 13 Back Street, Haver-Towne…”
“Got it. Why?”
“I want you to contact the county tax office here and pay off any outstanding property-tax debt. And while you’re at it, pay off the next, say, five years, in advance. Use one of the ancillary accounts.”
“Ooooo…….kay,” came the response. “Let me guess. A hospice? Someone who runs an animal shelter?”
“No—”
“Oh, wait! Some chick you’re hot for?”
Fanshawe’s eyes glimpsed Abbie across the street; she was watering plants at the entrance. She smiled and he waved. Oh, man. I better get my ass in gear and ask her out again… “Actually I have met someone, Artie—”
“Eureka! Finally getting over the divorce shit!”
“No, no, it’s someone else, not Letitia Rhodes. I just…feel bad for her, so pay off her prop tax like I told you.”
Artie seemed resigned over the line. “Always the good Samaritan, okay. I’ll get on it.” A confused pause. “But…who is she, this Rhodes woman, I mean?”
Fanshawe was about to tell him to mind his own business, but then he smiled. He’ll love this. “She’s a palm reader, Artie. A fortune teller.”
The next silence seemed to unroll. “Great, first a warlock, now a fortune teller. Just another day at Fanshawe Enterprises.”
“You know what she told me?”
“Uhhhh—”
“My wealth will increase a thousandfold,” and then Fanshawe laughed.
“That’s a good one, boss. So you’re going to be the world’s first trillionaire?”
“Thanks, Artie”—he kept laughing—“I’ll talk to you soon.” He hung up.
That’ll give him something to talk about at the office. But, next, he considered his impulsive order: paying off the taxes of a woman he didn’t really know. Fanshawe had thrown lots of money at charity situations but…not like this. He simply felt awful for the woman—Baby died, the father booked, can’t make a living anymore because of the economy, and she was about to lose her house for defaulting on taxes. But now that he’d done this, he felt much better. I helped someone in need—and his next thought amused him. Who says I’ve got a black heart?
He looked back to where Abbie had been but she was no longer there. He couldn’t wait to see her—
Mrs. Anstruther wriggled her fingers at him. The tourist couple was gone. He brought her tea to the kiosk.
“Thank you, sir, oh, that’s perfect, it is,” she said, sipping from the to-go cup.
“Now—what were you saying?”
The woman’s stiff hair moved when her brows rose. “Oh, yes, sir, ’bout Miss Rhodes and that man she were with what made her in a mother’s way.”
“Yes, you were saying that he left Letitia when he found out she was pregnant.”
She nodded in a way that seemed cunning. “And that ain’t all he done neither, sir. See, when he left her he also stole a fair rooker of ackers from her.”
“He stole…what?”
“Quite a considerable sum of money, sir, what that she save up from her palmist’s business—oh, yes, sir. Several thousand dollars it was.”
“Jesus…”
“A bloke like that, sir? What it is we call a bloke like that in England is a man who hain’t worth a brown trout,” and then she smiled as if amused.
Ain’t worth a shit, Fanshawe translated. “I hope at least that the police got him for the theft.”
She ruefully shook her head. “’Fraid not, sir, oh, no. See, what this bloke done after he took the money is he broke out a winder from the outside, so’s ta make it look like a burglary, sir. The constables couldn’t charge him with no theft on account there was insufficient evidence.”
“Damn,” Fanshawe muttered. “Well I hope the bastard at least paid some child support before the baby died.”
“No, sir, I’m sorry to say he did not. ’Tis the way things work out sometimes, sir. The folks who wouldn’t ’urt a fly are the ones who get roughed up.”
“Unfortunately—”
“But it hain’t the end’a my story, sir,” she went on, at once enthused. “As I were just relatin’ to ya, the day after that scoundrel found out what that Miss Rhodes was havin’ a baby, he left her. But ’ere’s what else, sir.”
Fanshawe tapped his foot. By now he was quite used to people deliberately keeping him in suspense. “Any day now, Mrs. Anstruther.”
She grinned. “The day after that poor li’l baby die…he die.”
“What, the child’s biological father?”
“The same, sir.”
Fanshawe felt a satisfaction at this news. “Pardon me if I sound callous, ma’am, and pardon my language, but when shitty people die, I don’t call it unfortunate, I call it justice.”
The old woman laughed. “Oh, sir, I’m so ’appy to hear you say it ’cos your feelin’s are the very mirror to what all of us thought. But tell me what your mind tells ya of this: that man? It weren’t a accident what killed him, it were a massive ’art attack which since he were only in ’is thirties, we all found quite odd, we did, quite odd.” Then she paused to look at him, with that same cunning cast to her face.
“Odd, sure, but it happens,” Fanshawe said.
“Sir, if I may, it might well be that you hain’t receivin’ the full measure of my meanin’, sir.”
Fanshawe tried to study her words with as much introspection as possible. What does she m… “You’re not saying that Letitia had anything to do with the guy’s death, are you? That’s impossible. What? She slipped him some drug to cause heart failure?”
“What it might be that you should do is like what my father used say to us when we was girls, sir, and what he said was that the surmise, sir, might call for a bit more forceful ponderment, sir,” and then she winked at him.
Fanshawe felt his face go blank when something seemed to snick in his mind. “Oh, come on, Mrs. Anstruther. She put a curse on the guy? She stuck a pin in a voodoo doll?” He laughed. “She’s a palm reader, not a witch.”
Mrs. Anstruther’s expression turned dead-serious. “Oh, hain’t she now? Are you sure of what it is you’re speakin’, sir?”
Fanshawe just kept looking at her.
She turned quickly, offering a lively pretense as a man, woman, and two young teenagers approached the kiosk. “Lovely talkin’ to ya, sir, as always, and I hope to talk to ya again soon. Got ta tend to these tourists now—”
“Have a good day, ma’am”—again he couldn’t resist. He put a $10 bill in her tip jar.
The woman brought her hand to her heart, acting overwhelmed. “Gracious me, sir! The proper words simply don’t exist to express my feelin’ of gratitude, sir, and bless you, sir!”
Smiling, Fanshawe pointed to the jar full of bills. “Looks to me like you’re doing all right today.”
She hunched over to whisper, “Yes, sir, but most’a that ain’t but a bunch of piddling singles, sir. Ten-spots, now, they’s what we call in England rare as rocking-horse shit!”
Fanshawe could’ve gusted laughter as he left her to her business. But as he crossed the cobbled street, the levity faded. What the old woman had distinctly implied stuck to him like burrs.
Letitia Rhodes? A witch?
The idea seemed absurd, but then why should he discount it so quickly when he’d already convinced himself that Wraxall’s sorcery, and Evanore’s witchcraft, was real?
— | — | —
CHAPTER TEN
(I)
Fanshawe felt physically aimless when he re-entered the inn, went upstairs, and showered and changed.
Physically but not mentally.
His thoughts had become something like an apparatus of many moving parts, all turning in synchronicity so to process everything Fanshawe had experienced.
A relapse into his voyeuristic obsessions hand in hand with Abbie, his only romantic interest since his marriage; the Wraxall legend; death by ‘barreling’; what were possibly hallucinations of a barking dog and then what he’d witnessed in the wax museum; Karswell’s dead body and its coincidental condition, not to mention that he was investigating Jacob Wraxall just as Fanshawe was; the secret attic room and the discoveries of a more telling diary penned by Wraxall himself, plus multiple containers of witch-water and more looking-glasses; and not only his curious fortune as told by Letitia Rhodes but also yet another 300-year-old diary penned by her linear ancestor Callister Rood…
My aura is black, which means my heart is black, he thought.
No, he didn’t know what any of it mean but he did know that all of these things had seemed to replace all of his previous priorities. I don’t even care about my businesses any more. I only care about…THIS…
The drone followed him back downstairs. When he crossed the atrium, the two joggers, shapely as ever in their perilously tight running gear, cast sideglances at him—and even smiles—as they entered through the automatic doors. Fanshawe nodded stiffly, though, barely noticing them. Where am I going? What am I doing? He felt driven just this moment but didn’t know what toward. Next thing he knew, he was walking into the Squire’s Pub.
“Aw, I’m sorry Mr. Fanshawe,” came Baxter’s crackly voice. He was stocking the bar shelves. “We ain’t open just yet,” but then he cracked a laugh. “Aw, shucks, what am I sayin’? I own the place, so if it’s a drink you’re lookin’ for, what’ll it be?”
For some reason, being addressed directly by another person brought more of his consciousness back to the surface. “Thanks for the offer, Mr. Baxter, but—”
What was he here for?
“—I just stopped by to see Abbie. Is she around?”
“Oh, sure!” Baxter replied with a little too much zeal. “She’s back in the storeroom.” He pointed out the bar entry. “It’s that door next to the check-in desk.”
“I don’t want to bother her if she’s busy working—”
Baxter flapped his hand. “Naw, naw, just you go right on in. And if that pipe-cleaner of a desk clerk gives ya any grief, just you tell him I said you can go in.”
“Thanks, Mr. Baxter.”
The clerk wasn’t even at the desk. Fanshawe opened the door indicated and entered a long corridor stacked high on either side with boxes of various supplies. It was fairly dark. He saw no sign of Abbie but did notice white fluorescent lights burning at the corridor’s end. Though it hadn’t consciously occurred to him before now, Fanshawe knew why he was seeking her: to ask her out on another date. Should he call out her name? No. With my luck she’s already left. He reached the end of the corridor, noticing that it T’d. He stepped into the light, turned left, didn’t see Abbie, then turned right—
Holy sh…
Abbie sat hunched over a metal desk lit by a hooded lamp. She looked intent, keenly focused, yet lost at the same time. With great care, her fingers tweezed a typical key, like a house key. Then, with a meticulous effort, she raised the key to a nostril and quickly sniffed an accumulation of something white off of it. She paused, sitting upright, then stuck the key into a plastic bag full of white powder, and repeated the process.
Fanshawe didn’t say a word. At once he wanted to leave unseen, but it was impossible for him even to move much less retreat out of the area.
After Abbie had done it a third time, she sat back and sighed, staring at the wall before her. She wiped her nose, seemed to grind her back teeth and swallow several times, then she rubbed her eyes. She stared out a moment more, and only then did she very slowly turn her head toward Fanshawe.
Her mouth fell open, then she thunked her head down on the desk. “Of all the shit,” she muttered, already sobbing. “How much more shit is going to happen to me?”
“Abbie, I…,” but Fanshawe could think of nothing to remark.
She kept her hands to her face, and her face still against the desk top. Her words croaked: “What are you doing here?”
“Your father said I could come in. I wanted to see you.”
“Why!” she somehow whispered and shrieked at the same time.
“To ask you out again.”
She sniffled and finally raised her face up. She managed a sardonic laugh. “Bet’cha don’t want to now.”
Before he could decide how to reply, he already had. “Yes. I do.”
At last, she looked right at him. Pink patches splotched her face; tears ran down her cheeks. It didn’t even sound like her when she said, “I’m a drug addict, Stew. I’m a coke-head—a junkie.”
“I never would’ve guessed.”
Another cynical laugh. “Yeah, the Girl Next Door turned middle aged. The Happy Innkeeper. Always a smile! Then—bang! The truth.”
“How long?”
“This time? I don’t know. Six, eight months.”
“So you had a problem in the past,” he interpreted, “got clean, but now you’ve relapsed?”
“Yeah.” She seemed crumpled where she sat now. “Remember when I told you I lived in Nashua for a year?”
“Right, after college.”
She nodded, turning the key over in her fingers. “Well, I guess it’s a universal story. Young, idealistic, adventurous. First time away from home. I met a guy there, fell in love, but then found out that the only thing he really loved was coke. He sold the stuff, too, was a pretty big dealer. He didn’t sell half ounces to college kids, he sold quarter keys to regional bagman. Next thing I know, I’m so hooked, I’m selling it for him.” She faltered as if steeling herself, then looked right at Fanshawe. “And that’s not all I sold for the guy.”
Fanshawe gulped.
“You’re still here?” she asked, acid in her tone.
“What’s it look like?” Grimacing, he picked up the bag of cocaine, knelt, and—
Abbie jumped up. “Don’t you dare!”
“Try stopping me,” he suggested, and emptied the bag into a drain on the floor.
She stood there, slumping. “You son of a bitch. Do you have any idea how much that cost?”
“Yeah, your soul.”
“It’s almost impossible to get around here!”
“Good. I just did you a favor so you can thank me.”
“How about this? Instead of thank you, fuck you.”
Fanshawe chuckled. How did I get myself into THIS? He scuffed his shoe over the drain. “Please don’t cuss, Abbie. It doesn’t work for you. And anyway, I’ve seen men who are analytical geniuses turn into useless waste products because of cocaine. Captains of industry, economic gurus, people who could create fifty thousand new jobs just with one deal, but now? They’re all either dead or useless. I’ll be damned if I’m going to watch that happen to you.”
She kept glaring at the drain.
“I’ll cut my stay short,” he said, “then take you to New York and put you in a rehab, a good one.”
“Oh really?” Her tone seemed to dare him.
“Yeah.”
She sat back down, looking completely defeated. “Fuck. I can’t believe this happened. Couldn’t you at least have fucking knocked?”
“I’m serious about the cussing. It makes you sound trashy.”
Her chuckle bubbled like hot pitch. “You don’t know trashy. You’d be sick to your stomach to know some of the things I did in Nashua.”
“Probably. So don’t talk about it.”
She stood up again, with a sudden expression that was confused and sluttish at the same time. “So you’re gonna put me in a rehab, huh, Stew?”
“Yeah. You sound like you don’t believe it.”
“Why should I? It sounds no different from all the other bullshit men have been telling me my whole life. I’m not naive anymore—I know what this is all about.”
“What do you mean?”
She walked right up to him. “It’s the oldest trick in the book that every stupid woman falls for every time. Oh, yeah. The knight in shining armor, makes the girl think he really cares about her, tells her all the things he’s gonna do for her, how he’s gonna rescue her. And what does she do? She believes it, because she’s made so many mistakes and been fucked over so many times, she’s got nothing else to believe.”
“It’s not bullshit,” he said.
She crossed her arms, talking to him with absolute virulence. “Gimme a break! I’ve seen this so many times, if I don’t know by now I might as we’ll jump off a fucking bridge. In the end the girl finds out it was a crock of shit and all the guy really wanted was a fuckin’ piece of ass. Well, I’ve fucked guys for bullshit before, so I guess I might as well fuck you—”
