Anna Denning Mystery Series Box Set: Books 1–3 Read online

  There they were: 1945 Walton, Apt. 74 and 1734 Cochrane. That was it, no cities or states. She wished she still had the photos. She remembered a house in the desert with palms and yuccas in one photo, and in the second, a bungalow with an English-style wildflower garden in the front yard. Nothing remarkable about either house that she could recall.

  “Let’s start with these addresses. One piece of the puzzle at a time.” She glanced around the office for Jackson, but he hadn’t come back into the room. If she was going to talk to herself, she thought, she’d rather her dog was there.

  Six years of marriage, all the little things you said every day, from waking to going to bed—how did you just turn it off? How did you stop talking as if someone was listening? She set down her glass and slid it to the back of her desk.

  Searching for “1945 Walton Apt. 74” as a single term yielded nothing, so Anna typed “1945,” “Walton,” and “74,” each a separate term, into the search engine and hit the Enter key. Results filled the screen.

  The first return matched all three search terms. She skimmed all the results. It looked like every link matched all three terms. And every one of them mentioned Walton, murder, and witchcraft. “I don’t like this, Jackson.”

  Anna clicked on the first link, “Walton: The Witchcraft Murder,” and began to read. Charles Walton, seventy-four years old, had been murdered in an English village called Lower Quinton on Valentine’s Day in 1945.

  The details of the murder were gruesome. Walton had been slashed with a billhook and pinned to the ground with a pitchfork driven through his neck. Some of the locals said he’d been murdered by witches. Some said Walton’s murder was a druid sacrifice in what was the month for pagan sacrifices, February. Anna’s mind immediately flew to Rowan, the pagan young man who had said he was leaning toward druidry.

  She scrolled down the page. There was a photo of Walton’s body on the monitor. She could make out two handles—the billhook and pitchfork?—but thankfully the angle of the photo hid the man’s face and wounds.

  Anna realized the address wasn’t an address at all. It was code, a message for Susan Muncy. But why? And what did it mean? Jazmin had given her the photos, but Anna suspected Darlene was the author of this message. But that meant Darlene probably had nothing to do with Susan’s murder. It seemed pointless to send Susan a message but kill her before she could receive it.

  Jackson entered the office again, sat at Anna’s feet, and pressed the top of his head against Anna’s side. “What are you doing, boy?” Anna said, scratching the dog’s neck. “Are you craving attention tonight?” He gave a small rumble from the back of his throat and flung a paw onto Anna’s lap. “Do you have to go out? Just a minute.”

  Anna continued reading, looking for more details on the Walton murder. It had never been solved. It was still an open case with the Warwickshire police, who kept the murder implements on file, and it seemed to be a subject of continuing fascination. It was even possible to take a tour of the village and of Meon Hill, the place where the witch murder had taken place.

  Jackson barked once, loudly, jolting Anna in her seat. Then she heard a noise, a scraping sound at the door. It wasn’t a knock, or any sound a visitor at her door would make.

  She sat straight in her chair, momentarily frozen, and when she heard the scraping sound again, she remembered what Monica had said about being careful and felt a flicker of panic. Jackson walked to the office door and growled in the direction of the door, his neck stiff, ears alert.

  Anna rose quickly from her seat, studying Jackson’s reaction, wondering for an instant if someone was already in the house, if she should grab something from her desk to use as a weapon. Her gun was in a safe in her bedroom, at the far end of the hall, and even with Jackson in the house she’d never make it there in time. She lived on the outskirts of Elk Park and her neighbors’ houses were too far from hers—she didn’t dare try to make a dash outside.

  Jackson suddenly relaxed, sitting down at the office door and bending his face toward Anna’s. There was no way he’d do that if someone was in the house, she thought.

  “Come on, boy.” She moved slowly toward the front door, listening, her dog at her heels. Hearing nothing, she approached the door and peered through the peephole. Black. The light had been on when she came home. She had seen it as she drove into the garage.

  The light was always on, she made certain of it. Either it had just gone out by itself or someone had made it go out. That was easy to do. Reach a hand up into the light fixture and give the bulb a twist until it went out. There were no neighbors directly across the street. No one would see a figure at the door.

  Anna hurried down the hall, unlocked the gun safe bolted to the floor of her bedroom closet, and removed her Ruger revolver. She made her way up the hall, arms at her side, the forefinger of her right hand wrapped around the gun’s grip to keep it off the trigger.

  She snapped off the living room lamp to avoid casting a shadow on the window by the door, then pulled a high-beam flashlight from the counter under the kitchen sink.

  At the window she watched Jackson for his reaction to sounds then gently set the Ruger down atop a bookcase. Her heart racing, she peeled back the curtain and shined the flashlight out the window, illuminating the broad doorstep at the entrance and the yard around it.

  Someone had brushed several inches of snow from the doorstep. Anna saw dark streaks in the half light and angled the flashlight downward.

  “What on earth?” It looked like criss-crossed lines and a circle of paint or charcoal near her door. She aimed the light at the center of the black markings. Someone had drawn a pentacle on her doorstep.

  Anna’s fear turned to anger. One of the What Ye Will gang had done this, she was sure. Or Tom Muncy had, commencing with his threats. Trying to scare her with a pentacle. It was predictable, a witchcraft cliché, but someone had marked her doorstep, her property, and she wasn’t going to put up with it.

  She marched into the kitchen to find her digital camera then headed back to the door. Jackson sprinted out the door as soon as Anna opened it and ran for the driveway. “Jackson, come!” Anna shouted. He ran back to the door, standing guard just inside as Anna crouched down and examined the pentacle with the flashlight.

  To her relief it appeared to be chalk, not paint. It wouldn’t be as hard to remove, and she didn’t intend to let that thing sit on her doorstep. She stood, reached into the light fixture, and rotated the bulb. Someone had toyed with it. Light spilled onto the doorstep and illuminated most of her front lawn.

  Anna took several photos of the pentacle before scrubbing the symbol with a wire brush and soapy water and dowsing the area with bleach and water. She mumbled angrily as the fumes reached her nose then shined the flashlight on the doorstep to better inspect her work. Every trace of the pentacle was gone.

  She stood at the open door, watching the dark beyond the glow of the light. She considered shouting into the night that she had a weapon and she’d use it next time, but she simply shut the door and locked it.

  “I think we’d better turn on the lights,” Anna said to Jackson. She put away her Ruger, switched on several lights around the house, and checked the locks on her windows. She walked into the living room and tested the lock on the sliding glass door, then bent down to make sure the sawed-off broom handle in the door’s track was still in place. That door wouldn’t budge. She headed into the kitchen.

  She felt numb with exhaustion. What an awful day it had been. She longed to sink into Sean’s arms, to talk of feather-light matters and her plans for tomorrow with him.

  And she needed his advice. A power-hungry politician had found her standing near his wife’s body. A witch was threatening her. Insane. Anna was glad she hadn’t known Susan. She didn’t think she could take discovering the body of someone she even remotely knew. She felt drained of the courage she had once possessed and uninterested in regaining it.

  Anna searched the refrigerator for a bite to eat. A piece
of cheese or fruit—anything she didn’t have to cook or mix with anything else. She tried to talk herself out of her fear, telling herself that Tom was understandably wild with grief and Darlene was overcompensating for a painful divorce or some high school gym-class trauma. She took a pear from the top shelf, turned it over in her hands, then put it back and shut the refrigerator door.

  As unreal as the day now seemed, she knew she couldn’t ignore what had happened. She had just scrubbed a pentacle from her doorstep. At the very least someone was trying to frighten her, and both Tom and Darlene seemed the type. It had been evident from the beginning that they were “go for it” people, as her pastor liked to say. People who saw something they wanted and went after it, regardless of the cost to others. Want it? Then go for it. That was the modern way. It—whatever it might be—was theirs by rights, and power and intimidation were at their service.

  “What do they want from me?” Anna said aloud. “Why did Darlene drag me into this?” Jackson stared at Anna, puzzled, his head cocked to the side.

  Anna searched her purse and found the slip of paper on which Jazmin had written her phone number and address. Everything else could wait. It was time to speak with Jazmin face to face, at her apartment, away from What Ye Will and Darlene.

  It was also time to pick up her last check for the Muncy research. Anna had the feeling that if she didn’t get paid soon, she wouldn’t get paid at all. And she had the feeling it was Darlene’s money she’d be taking, not Jazmin’s, which eased her misgivings about asking a young and probably broke store clerk for payment.

  But would Jazmin agree to the meeting? It was pushy to ask, the sort of thing Darlene might do, and Jazmin had every right to say no and insist that Anna meet her at the store. Anna dialed Jazmin’s number, hoping the girl had fixed her phone, if it had ever been broken.

  On the fifth ring, Jazmin answered. Anna apologized for calling at night then paused. Jazmin said nothing. When Anna asked if she could pick up the last half of her payment at Jazmin’s apartment first thing tomorrow morning, there was silence again. Anna wondered for a moment if the line had gone dead, but she heard what sounded like silverware clattering on dishes in the background.

  When at last Jazmin spoke, she sounded weary, almost as if she’d expected Anna’s call and was giving in to the inevitable. Anna had expected some petulance at the very least, but there was no annoyance in Jazmin’s voice. She agreed to see Anna, and she reminded her that she had to leave for work no later than 8:45. Anna said she’d be there at 8:15.

  Anna hung up and stretched out her hand, giving Jackson’s neck a scratch. A lot of girls Jazmin’s age were easy to sway, Anna thought, but Jazmin was more obliging than anyone she’d ever met. And she was naive. It was a dangerous combination.

  8

  As Anna pulled into the narrow drive at the side of Jazmin’s one-story apartment house on Larkspur Street, Jackson sat up in eager attention, his tail thumping the back seat. If there were parking spaces, Anna couldn’t see them under the snow. Four inches or more had fallen overnight. The morning sky was a mottled white, and snow, sifted by the wind, whitened the air.

  She left her car at the side of the building and made her way to the front door. There were no cars, no Christmas lights strung in the windows, no evidence of tenants at all. The building itself was in a state of minor disrepair—its paint faded and chipped by the Colorado sun, its aluminum-frame windows dented—and the skeletons of last summer’s weeds and vines, white with frost and rising from the snow, sprawled over the building’s foundation and clawed up the gutter downspouts. It was only two miles from Anna’s house, but it was a different world.

  Anna entered the unlocked building and knocked on Jazmin’s door. Seconds later Jazmin flung the door wide with a grin Anna knew was meant for someone else. Jazmin’s face fell and she clutched at her robe before stepping back from the door and waving Anna inside.

  “Am I early?” Anna asked.

  “No, I got up late. Come in,” Jazmin said, shutting the door behind Anna.

  “I can wait if you want to get dressed and make some coffee.” Anna gestured toward a small, round table in the kitchen to the left of the front door. “I’ll sit here if that’s all right.” Anna suddenly felt like an intruder. Rude, even by Darlene’s standards.

  “Yeah, hang on, I’ll get dressed.” Jazmin shuffled toward her bedroom door, making a show of her fatigue. She stopped abruptly in the middle of the living room, as if she’d stubbed a toe on the carpet, and Anna heard her gasp.

  Jazmin moved to the window, pushed open the green tab curtains, and swung back to the room, gaping at the tattered couch along one wall. She crept toward the couch, looking down at it as she wrapped her robe around her waist. “No,” she said. “Why?”

  “Jazmin?” Anna followed Jazmin into the living room and stood alongside her, looking down at the couch. A dagger, thrust through a small, folded piece of white paper, was lodged in a seat cushion. Its handle was wooden, thick, with several symbols carved into it and a shiny black bead on the end. It looked like a cheaper, handmade version of the daggers Anna had seen in What Ye Will. Athame. That’s what it was called. A ritual dagger used in wicca and witchcraft. She’d almost bought one back in her college days.

  “Why?” Jazmin said again.

  “Who would do that?” Anna asked.

  “I don’t know.” Jazmin’s expression changed from surprise to confusion as she turned to look at Anna. “It’s not fair!”

  “What do you mean not fair?”

  Jazmin said nothing. She returned her gaze to the athame, standing motionless over it.

  “Let’s take care of this,” Anna said, bending forward and wresting the athame from the cushion. She slipped the paper from the blade and unfolded it. There were symbols on the paper, too, similar to the symbols on the athame’s handle. “Here,” Anna said, trying to hand the athame to Jazmin.

  “I’m not touching it,” Jazmin said, taking a step backward. “You shouldn’t either.”

  “Nonsense.” Anna slipped the athame into the pocket of her jacket and continued to study the paper. It wasn’t any language she could recognize by its alphabet. It was too uniform, with too many repeated curls and shapes, to be a real language, but it was familiar. She’d seen it before.

  “What is this?” she said to Jazmin, holding the paper so she could see it.

  Jazmin’s eyes widened in alarm and she reared back, quivering faintly like a cornered mouse.

  “Jazmin, come on,” Anna said, letting her arm drop to her side. “Someone’s playing a game with you. Someone who was very busy last night, I might add.”

  Jazmin’s eyes rose from the paper to Anna’s face. Her fear was real, foolish as it was. She trembled with it.

  “What’s got you so afraid?” Anna asked. She took Jazmin by the arm and led her to the kitchen table. The girl was compliant, almost limp. It seemed to Anna that every employee at What Ye Will was afraid of something or someone. Anna sat down and patted the seat of the chair next to her, commanding Jazmin to sit.

  “I can’t say anything,” Jazmin said.

  “Would you have seen that dagger in your couch when you got home last night?” Anna asked.

  “Yeah, I watched TV.”

  “After the town council meeting.”

  “Yeah.” Jazmin relaxed her shoulders and let out a long sigh. “It’s not a dagger, it’s an athame. Wiccans and witches use it for rituals.”

  “And what’s this?” Anna slid the piece of paper across the table, forcing Jazmin to look at it.

  Jazmin’s tongue passed over her lips. She shot a look over her shoulder at the clock on the stove then said, “It’s something written in a witch’s alphabet.”

  Witch’s alphabet. Now Anna remembered.

  “I don’t know how to read it, so . . .” Jazmin’s voice trailed off.

  “Look at me,” Anna said, squaring her shoulders to face Jazmin. “The worst thing you can do when you’re afraid is keep
quiet. Tell me what’s going on.”

  “How am I supposed to trust you?”

  “How do I know you’re not involved in all this? This could be a set-up.” Anna brandished the paper. “You set me up before, when you hired me.”

  “That wasn’t my idea.”

  “I know that.”

  “You do?” Relief washed over Jazmin’s face. Alone, without her friends around, she seemed to care very much what Anna thought of her.

  “It was Darlene, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah. She put money in my checking account to pay for it. I’ll write you a check. You’re pissed off, aren’t you?” Jazmin said, a whimper in her voice.

  “Me? What about you? Someone broke into your apartment last night and ripped a hole in your couch. You should call the police. And you should get a better lock on your door and make sure no one has a duplicate key.”

  Anna was about to tell Jazmin about the pentacle, to show her that she wasn’t the only one targeted last night, but she stopped. It was still safer to hide what she knew. “I’d feel a lot better if you’d tell me what’s going on and why,” she said.

  “All I know is Darlene told me to hire you to do Susan Muncy’s family tree.” Jazmin grimaced and smiled at the same time and the words came tumbling out. “She found your ad on the Elk News website. She told me to tell you I was Susan’s daughter. I didn’t think it would be a big deal, really. I thought, cool, somebody gets a free family tree done.”

  “And Darlene gave you the names of Susan’s parents?”

  “No, Tom Muncy did.”

  Anna flopped back in her chair. “Tom Muncy? Are you sure?”

  “I was there. He brought the names into the store on a piece of paper. He gave them to Darlene first.” Jazmin crossed her arms on the table. “They argued about the names.”

  “What did they say?”

  “Tom kept saying it was stupid and Darlene said tough luck, I want the real names. Tom gave in.”

  “And the piece of paper Tom gave Darlene is the same one she gave you?”