Anna Denning Mystery Series Box Set: Books 1–3 Page 2

  “So you came in?”

  “I shouted for Mrs. Muncy, and that’s when I heard someone tell me to come in. But I shut the door behind me.” She tugged at the neck of her turtleneck sweater. The furnace hadn’t kicked on yet to heat the still-cool house, but she felt uncomfortably warm.

  “Mr. Muncy said the door was open.”

  “Then someone opened it again, because I shut it when I came in.”

  “You walked back to the bedroom. Then what?”

  “I saw Mrs. Muncy.”

  “Right away?”

  “No, she was on the other side of the bed.”

  “You didn’t see her but you walked into the bedroom. Why?”

  “I smelled something.”

  A ring came from the detective’s inside jacket pocket. He pulled out his cell phone and flipped it open, holding a finger up to Anna. “One minute.” He walked toward the front door and out of earshot.

  Anna’s eyes settled on the mountains again. At the edge of her field of vision she saw Tom Muncy enter the great room from the hall. She turned her eyes to him. He was staring at her, she thought, with the same intensity Jackson watched squirrels in the park. He thought she was responsible for his wife’s death. She couldn’t sit there silently as his eyes bore into her, his accusation unspoken but as clear as Colorado’s winter blue sky. She stood.

  “Mr. Muncy . . .”

  In two strides of his long legs, Tom was in front of her, a foot from her face, his eyes wild. It was the second time he’d done that to her. He hadn’t raised a hand to her, not yet, but he liked how she quaked when she thought he might. At first Anna was willing to let it go, believing that grief had made him a bully, but he seemed too practiced at it. It was a part of him. She folded her arms across her chest and straightened her spine.

  “You’re finished,” Muncy said, his voice low, sliding through clenched jaws. “Your reputation’s down the sewer. If you want to make money, move to Wyoming because you’re not going to work in this state.” He took half a swaggering step forward. Anna could feel the heat of his breath on her face. “And in case Darlene has forgotten, I’m on the town council and state board. Tell her I’ll protect myself any way I have to.”

  “You tell her. You know her, I don’t.” Anna kept her arms folded and met Muncy’s eyes without flinching. No one was going to threaten her or her business.

  He sneered. “So Darlene thinks she has power. A witch. Tell her to watch what a politician can do. Better yet, tell her to watch what happens to you.” He flashed a tight-lipped smile. “Of course she’ll have her own plans for you, once she finds out what you’ve done. Better lock your doors and bone up on your witchcraft.”

  From the corner of her eye Anna saw Schaeffer, phone to his ear, pivot in her direction. “Mr. Muncy.” He snapped his phone shut and moved swiftly toward Muncy.

  “I’m just asking about What Ye Will,” Muncy said, backing away and jamming his fists into his pockets. “I’m wondering if she’s looking forward to its expansion next year. Twice as much room for her wicca, witchcraft, and pagan paraphernalia.”

  “I don’t know anything about it,” Anna said. It bewildered her that he thought she knew all about the store and the people who worked there. She’d been in the place once, that’s all, to meet Jazmin and get a down payment on her genealogical research.

  “Sure you do,” Muncy said.

  Anna shook her head. “It’s not really my thing.” Not anymore, she thought. Her first year in college she’d been involved in wicca. She’d dipped her toe into it, anyway. She’d stood just inside its borders, testing it, challenging it to give her a feeling of power, of control over her own life. She’d even said a few spells, late at night in her college dorm room. Nothing ever happened.

  But the wiccans she met that year were warm—they made a show of being warm—and they accepted what they called her “path.” Without knowing or asking what that path was. They made her lazy. She accepted anyone, anything, any path. The path into the woods, the path leading to a cliff. Acceptance, acceptance. It ate away at her soul. That was eighteen years ago.

  She’d wanted to take a tour around What Ye Will the day she met Jazmin, to see what passed for wicca and witchcraft these days, but the odor of incense coming from every corner, a dizzy mixture of sandalwood and patchouli, had been overpowering. She’d taken the information and check from the girl and exited quickly.

  Now she’d have a look at the store. Jazmin Morningstar, the teenaged girl who worked there, the wiccan, as she’d called herself ten times the day they’d met, had used her to get at Tom Muncy. The question was why.

  One of the officers who’d been in the bedroom stepped to where the hallway met the great room, looking from Schaeffer to Muncy, his hands wrapped around a camera hanging by a strap from his neck.

  “Problem, Josh?” Schaeffer said.

  “Yeah, there is something. Mr. Muncy, about the black glass on the bedroom carpet. Was it broken before?”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “The pieces are silvered on the back, like a mirror. What was it?”

  Tom watched him with utter disdain. “A mirror.”

  “A black mirror?” the officer said. “But you can’t see anything in a black mirror.”

  The expression on Tom’s face never changed. “My wife would disagree with you.”

  3

  Anna gripped and ungripped the Jimmy’s steering wheel, punched it, then grabbed it hard as the back end of the Jimmy slid momentarily into the opposing lane. Jazmin had lied to her, and someone inside the Muncys’ house had called to her, drawing her in. Because of that Tom Muncy had found her standing over his wife’s body.

  Sean had always said there were no coincidences. He’d believed in God’s guiding hand in the smallest of matters. Anna wasn’t so sure. The past two years of her life had poked large holes in that theory. But this? Not all of this was coincidence. It couldn’t be.

  Whatever it was, Muncy, a town council member said to be in line for state senator, was out to ruin her business. He struck Anna as the sort of man who carried out his threats. Genealogy was her living. If she lost her business, she’d lose her house. She needed answers, and Jazmin Morningstar had them.

  Anna turned right onto Summit Avenue and checked her rearview mirror. Jackson raised his head and quivered with excitement. Somehow he always knew when she was on Summit, the town’s main street. It meant he was moments from the Buffalo Café, the coffee shop with the stuffed buffalo named Cody outside its front door and a Siberian husky named Suka out back, waiting to play.

  Anna slowed, stopped at a red light, and searched the curb for a parking spot near What Ye Will. Nothing. Just ahead, beyond the store at the end of the block, Summit curved sharply north, making it look as though downtown ended abruptly there, at the base of a rocky outcrop. From May to September tourists choked the sidewalks of this block, taking photographs as proof of their summer in the Rockies.

  When the light turned green, Anna checked her back and side mirrors then made a U-turn. She pulled into a vacant spot across the street from the store and parked beneath a bare ash, its trunk wrapped in white Christmas lights.

  “Stay, Jackson,” she said, shutting off the engine. She raised the zipper on her jacket and sprinted across the road just ahead of a Ford pickup. The cold, fresh air hit her lungs, propelling her forward.

  Inside the store, Anna quickly spotted Jazmin behind a glass-topped sales counter, smiling as she talked with a customer, waving her small, white hands about, the black polish on her nails giving her fingers a blunt, pruned look.

  Jazmin saw Anna approach and her smile faded. She froze briefly but recovered, handing the woman a small, thick brush fashioned from sage twigs and directing her to the cash register on the other side of the store. Tugging at the fringed ends of the yellow scarf that encircled her neck, Jazmin watched the woman walk off. She refused to meet Anna’s eyes.

  “Jazmin, I need to talk to you,” Anna said.
>
  “Just a minute.” Jazmin gathered several twig brushes from atop the counter and began to arrange them underneath. Smudge sticks, Anna thought. I remember now. The brushes were smudge sticks. You burned them during rituals.

  Jazmin’s nose was inches from the glass, and her short, fine hair fell across her cheekbones, hiding her face. Judging by the inch-long roots, Anna guessed Jazmin’s hair was naturally ash blonde. It was odd she would dye it with something the color of a traffic cone. Anna had always hated her own hair. It wasn’t dark or light, just medium brown, and far too wavy. And there was twice as much gray in it as two years ago, the last time she’d bothered to color it. At least it matched her gray eyes.

  Jazmin stood straight and looked at Anna. She made no effort to brush the hair from the left side of her face, though it must have muddied her vision. “Can I help you?”

  “I was at the Muncys’ house this morning.” She decided not to mention Susan’s death for now. “Mr. Muncy says you’re not his daughter.”

  “And?” Jazmin shot a glance across the room before looking back to Anna.

  “And when you hired me, you told me you were the Muncys’ daughter.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “That you lied to me and used me? Yes.”

  “Can I just . . .” Jazmin motioned over her shoulder to a coffee maker on a small table behind her. “I need some.” She grabbed the carafe, poured coffee into a white mug, then slapped a packet of creamer against the table top. She was buying time, Anna thought, waiting for reinforcements.

  Anna looked around the store. The walls were lined with wood tables and old hutches overflowing with candles, incense, chalices, and gemstone pendants on chains. A woman behind the cash register was dipping a tea bag in and out of a cup, listening to a man about Jazmin’s age talk. His reddish brown hair was a jangle of tight braids, each sporting a colored bead at the end. The woman was much older, maybe fifty, and with every few dunks of her tea bag she tugged at the string of lapis-colored stones around her neck.

  “Tell me what’s going on,” Anna said, looking back at Jazmin.

  “I paid you half already, right?” Jazmin turned and took a long, noisy sip from her mug. She watched Anna over its rim, her blue eyes narrowing.

  “Yes. I’m collecting the other half today.”

  “I can write you a check for it now. So we’re set, right?” Again she looked across the room. Whoever was supposed to come to her aid wasn’t picking up on her signals.

  “No, we’re not set. I want to know why you hired me to do Susan Muncy’s family tree.”

  “What’s the big deal?”

  Jazmin wasn’t giving an inch. Anna knew she had to tell her what had happened. “The big deal is, Susan Muncy is dead.”

  Jazmin lowered her mug to the counter, the expression on her face changing from surprise to skepticism. “I don’t believe you.”

  “You lied to me and sent me to her house this morning.” Anna placed both her palms on the counter and leaned forward. She would make Jazmin understand how serious this was. “Tom Muncy thinks I had something to do with his wife’s death. The police may consider me a suspect.”

  “She’s really dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened?” Jazmin’s face had softened and there was a hint of fear in her eyes.

  “No one knows yet.” Anna straightened.

  “I’m going to pay you the rest right now.” Jazmin spoke louder now, raising an alarm. “Let me get my checkbook.”

  “Can I help?” The woman with the lapis necklace appeared at Anna’s side, smiling first at her and then at Jazmin, one hand to her chest in a gesture of concern.

  “This is Anna Denning,” Jazmin said. “She did the family tree for me.”

  “Oh, yes,” the woman said, grinning and sticking out her hand, “I’m Darlene Richelle, the owner.”

  Anna shook hands. So this was Darlene. Anna rarely met a woman who loomed over her, but Darlene did. She must have been six feet tall. She was large-boned and solid looking, an unbreakable woman with a broad, welcoming smile.

  “I was just talking to Jazmin about that family tree,” Anna said.

  “Is there a problem?”

  Anna opened her mouth then clamped it shut. This was between her and Jazmin. “Jazmin and I can talk later,” she said. “I didn’t know how else to get in touch with her. If you can give me your phone number, Jazmin.” Anna made a writing motion with her hand. “I left my purse in the car.”

  “Just a minute,” Darlene said, pivoting on her heel. “Rowan, pen and paper.”

  The young man with the braids took a pen and small square of blue paper from holders near the register and trotted up to Darlene. “Here ya go.”

  “My phone is broken,” Jazmin said. She looked blankly at Anna, challenging her to make the next move.

  Anna had never heard anything so silly. It’s broken, you fix it. “Do you plan on getting it fixed?”

  “Give her the number anyway,” Darlene said, setting the pen and scrap of paper on the counter in front of Jazmin. “And give her your address in case you don’t fix it.”

  Jazmin stiffened. “Address?”

  “Yes.”

  The request was way out of line, and Jazmin, who began to write on the paper, clearly thought she’d been given an order. But Anna needed to know why Jazmin had lied to her, and if going to the girl’s home was the only way to find out, she would. She smiled at Darlene.

  “I saw the family tree,” Darlene said. “You do good work.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Oh, you’re Anna Denning,” the man with the braids said. “Cool how you got all that information from a couple names and dates.”

  So sometime between five o’clock last night and this morning, Jazmin had shown the Muncy family tree around the store. But why pay for research into a stranger’s genealogy then show the results around? Anna wondered. And why had Darlene and Rowan dropped their work to talk to her and eagerly tell her they’d seen the Muncy tree?

  “By the way, this is Rowan Glamorgan,” Darlene said to Anna. “He works here too.”

  Rowan lifted his chin in greeting.

  “Glamorgan?” Anna said. She knew names. It sounded Welsh.

  “It’s my pagan name. So’s Rowan.”

  “Here.” Jazmin handed the paper to Anna and glanced at Rowan.

  “We’re all different here,” Darlene said to Anna. She drew her auburn hair from her neck and stroked it into a ponytail over her shoulder. “Pagans, druids, witches.”

  “Fluffy bunnies,” Rowan added.

  “Cut it out, Rowan,” Jazmin said.

  “Come on, Jaz,” Rowan said, spreading his hands in apology. “You know I’m only joking.”

  “Yeah, well.” Jazmin’s mouth twisted into a crooked smile. Anna could see the two were friends, used to taking and giving verbal jabs, but how “fluffy bunnies” was any sort of jab escaped her.

  “Anyway, you left out wiccan,” Jazmin said. “The store name’s the wiccan rede, right?”

  Rowan turned to Anna. “A wiccan saying,” he explained. “It’s ‘An it harm none, do what ye will.’”

  “I see.” Anna had discovered the rede as a teenager in a book about the supposed ancient roots of wicca. It was only later she learned just how recent a fabrication the “old religion” was. But people tended to open up to the uninformed stranger, so that’s what she’d be. Ignorant of the rede.

  “Rede.” Darlene drew out the vowel, underscoring the word. “Concocted by a fraud for McWiccans and fluffy bunnies.”

  McWiccans, fluffy bunnies. These were new words. Anna made a mental note to look them up later.

  “I think I hear my herb delivery,” Darlene said. She shot a smile at Anna and made her way to a door at the back of the store.

  “Never mind, Jaz,” Rowan said. He was watching Jazmin as she studied the frame around the counter’s glass top, fingering a chip in the wood. The girl looked fragile, out of p
lace and easily hurt, and Anna felt a twinge of pity for her. What was she doing in this store? She was young enough to still be living at home. She was no match for Darlene or Rowan. Their personalities overwhelmed hers.

  Jazmin continued to poke at the chip in the frame, and as she did, the expression on her face changed, as though a new and disturbing thought were slowly entering her mind. “When did Susan Muncy die?” she asked without looking up.

  “This morning,” Anna said.

  “What?” Rowan said. “She’s dead?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” Jazmin said. She at last stopped fidgeting and looked up at Rowan.

  “Okay, later.” Rowan pointed to a customer standing near the cash register. “Anyway, I have to get back to work.” He raised his chin at Anna again and headed for the register.

  Anna looked back at Jazmin. “Why did you ask about—”

  “We need more mirrors,” Jazmin said. It was clear she wasn’t going to answer any of Anna’s questions. At least not in the store. She tapped on the glass counter, pointing at a round black mirror about eight inches in diameter, its silver frame marked with symbols. A smaller version of the mirror in Susan Muncy’s bedroom.

  “What kind of mirror is that?” Anna said, gesturing with her head.

  “A scrying mirror,” Jazmin said. “You get visions with it. Before we sell one Darlene purifies it with oil and consecrates it under the moon. She has an amazing spell written by Julian Brandon.”

  “The occultist?” Anna said. Julian Brandon was famous. Up there with Aleister Crowley.

  Jazmin nodded. “Darlene’s grandmother knew him personally. She lived with him in London for a while, in the 1950s.” She was proud, honored to be working for a woman with such a grandmother.

  “How does it work?”

  “You go in a room and turn the light out. You take a candle”—Jazmin waved her hand, swatting at an invisible fly—“but it’s too hard to explain.” She paused, probing Anna’s face for a trace of mockery. “It becomes a portal.”

  “Oh.” Anna thought of asking where this portal led but decided against it. She could see in Jazmin’s face and hear in the reverential tone of her voice that the girl believed in these black mirrors. She probably had one, consecrated under the moon.