Anna Denning Mystery Series Box Set: Books 1–3 Page 9

  “In fact,” Anna said, digging into her jacket pocket, “I have it with me. Jazmin didn’t want it.” She placed the athame on the desk in front of Schaeffer and he leaned in close, studying it.

  Anna hadn’t planned to tell anyone about the athame. It was clear to her that Jazmin was more afraid that Anna might talk about the dagger, even to Rowan, than she was of the dagger itself. But tell Schaeffer she would. And Liz and Dan. After all, Tom and Darlene weren’t keeping things to themselves. They were talking, and expending a lot of energy lying about her. They had the nerve to accuse her of stealing—and of all things, an athame.

  Schaeffer opened the folder again. He turned the athame over in his hand and examined the black bead on the end. “This fits the description of the one she said was stolen. Looks like obsidian at the end here.”

  Anna crossed her legs and folded her arms tightly against her chest. “I should have known. Darlene planned this, and Rowan’s probably in on it, too. Maybe even Muncy or Jazmin.” She looked away from Schaeffer to the office window overlooking the parking lot. She was worried she was sounding paranoid. Tom, Darlene, Jazmin—all against her. What was Schaeffer thinking? Her eyes went back to him and she pointed at the athame on his desk. “I didn’t steal that.”

  “It’s unlikely you’d steal it then bring it to me, yes.”

  Anna took a deep breath and relaxed.

  “But it’s been reported as a theft and I have to ask. Why would Darlene Richelle accuse you of taking it?” He grabbed his coffee mug and leaned back in his chair. “I mean, if she knows you didn’t.”

  Anna told him everything she could remember. Darlene’s threats, how Jazmin found the athame in her couch, the message in the form of an address on one of the photos. When she told him about the chalk pentacle on her doorstep he made her promise to report any other incident, no matter how small, and to leave the evidence in place.

  “I don’t think you have anything to worry about,” he said, “but let’s play it safe. And keep the pentacle photo.”

  “I will.”

  “If you have any more problems of that nature, I’ll want to look at it.”

  “I don’t think whoever it was will do it again, but I’ll hang onto it.” Anna stood and walked to the window. There were black clouds over the highest mountain peaks, fading to gray as they spilled into the foothills. It was snowing again, flakes the size of grains of salt, the kind that fell when it was dry and bitterly cold. The Colorado ski resorts called it champagne powder.

  “We’re supposed to get a foot and a half of snow by the time this storm’s over,” Schaeffer said from his chair.

  “I guess I’ll have to break down and shovel,” Anna said. “Anything under five, six inches and I pretend it’s not there.”

  Schaeffer laughed, and in the reflection of the window Anna could see him upend his mug and down the rest of his coffee.

  Across the parking lot a tall woman in a green coat, her back to Anna, started making large circles in the air with her left hand, like a traffic cop hurrying a car on its way. Only there were no cars in motion. And no people. Just a woman in green, brushing the air with her hand.

  Anna remembered Darlene’s green coat and her breath caught in her throat. She told herself to calm down, there was no safer place to be than in a detective’s office at the police station.

  In an instant the woman whirled around and met Anna’s eyes. Darlene. Anna felt a sudden tingle, like insect legs in motion, at the back of her neck. She resisted the impulse to pull back from the window and kept her eyes on Darlene. There was something very wrong with this woman. She was taking things irrationally far, and she believed she had the power to back up the threats she issued with her eyes. Someone that deluded might do anything.

  You’re her enemy now, Monica had said, her voice a mixture of pity and dread. But why? It had to be more than Anna’s comments about Yule and her challenge to Darlene’s authority. Was it the visit to Jazmin’s apartment that brought her to this parking lot, standing in the snow, her eyes slits? Darlene had heard about the visit already, Anna was sure. She’d probably heard about it last night, right after Anna called Jazmin. Her employees told her everything.

  “What is it?” Schaeffer asked.

  “It’s Darlene Richelle,” Anna said, still watching her through the window. “How did she know I was here?”

  Anna heard the squeak of Schaeffer’s chair. He joined her at the window.

  Darlene smiled, acknowledged them both with a wave, then walked away, heading west down Palmer Street.

  “What’s wrong?” Schaeffer asked. “What was she doing?”

  “She was doing something”—Anna raised a hand but quickly dropped it—“with her hand. Some looping hand motion. I don’t know what it was.”

  Anna realized that Schaeffer was watching her closely, and she thought he was deciding then and there if he would believe her. Maybe he would come to the conclusion that she was unbalanced, that grief had made her unable to distinguish fantasy from reality. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. She forced an indifferent smile and hoped he wasn’t good at reading facial expressions.

  “It seems that either Darlene Richelle herself or her name keeps coming up,” Schaeffer said, walking back to his desk. “And you’d never met her before yesterday?”

  Anna turned back to Schaeffer. He was sitting on a corner of his desk. “No, and I only met her then because I had to talk to Jazmin.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “Could you have known her ex-husband or any of her friends?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Could your husband have known her?”

  “No, I would have known.”

  Anna knew she was missing most of the pieces of this puzzle, and that made her uneasy. Darlene, and probably Jazmin and Rowan, knew what was happening and why. Anna didn’t, and it put her at a disadvantage. Who could she trust to tell her the truth? It was best to be leery of everyone connected with What Ye Will. Maybe Darlene was pulling the strings, but the puppets seemed happy and willing.

  Anna heard Sean’s voice in her head. Never stick your hand where they like to live. They’d been walking in Owl Canyon north of Fort Collins, and as she was about to reach for a pretty rock by a ponderosa log, he grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back. Count on there being rattlesnakes, he said. It doesn’t matter if you see or hear them, never stick your hand where they like to live.

  Maybe she’d stuck her hand where she shouldn’t have, Anna thought. Watching Darlene disappear down Palmer Street a moment ago, she’d realized for the first time that more than her business might be at stake.

  “About Tom Muncy,” Schaeffer said. “I’m going to have a talk with him and let him know how serious this is.”

  “You can check my license on the second floor of this building,” Anna said. “It hasn’t been pulled and I’ve never had a complaint filed against me.”

  “Then he lied with the intent to damage your business. I don’t know what’s going on with him, but I’ll find out.” He tugged at the button on his suit jacket. “I’ll have him retract what he said, to Gene Westfall and anyone else he talked to. He’s not thinking straight right now, so if we can settle this without taking it any further, I’d like to.”

  Anna agreed. As angry as she was at Tom, she was willing to believe she hadn’t seen the real Tom Muncy. She’d give him a do-over. This once.

  “And I’ll hold onto this.” Schaeffer raised the athame.

  “Oh, please do,” she said with a smile.

  Anna was out the building and into the parking lot heading for her car before she remembered the note in her pocket. It was just as well. The witch’s alphabet on it wouldn’t make any sense to Schaeffer, and she was eager to look it up on the computer. Jackson was waiting for her in the Jimmy. She’d let him play with Suka behind the Buffalo Café, talk to Grace, then drive home and do a little research.

  11

  Anna typed “Hannah Wells,” “Durham,” “1752,” and
“witch” into the search engine on her computer. Five minutes later she discovered what she was looking for, and the reason why Hannah had been buried in Maine, so far from Durham, New Hampshire. It was as she’d thought. Hannah had been a witch.

  At least that’s what her neighbors in Durham had said. In 1752, when Hannah died, the locals didn’t like the idea of her being buried in the local cemetery, so her husband Isaac traveled to Maine to find a cemetery that would take her. All of eastern New Hampshire knew about Hannah. And about her daughter Sarah, who, the citizens of Durham said, was also a witch and schooled her daughter, Jane, in witchcraft.

  “Gee, I think I’m seeing a pattern here,” Anna said to Jackson. His ears lifted faintly on hearing her voice.

  She rose from her desk and headed for the kitchen. The apple wine was going to go bad in the refrigerator if she didn’t finish it tonight or tomorrow. It was the last of the apple wine from New Mexico. Maybe she’d take a trip down there in the early spring. She hadn’t been to New Mexico in four years, the last time she and Sean had been there.

  It was where they’d met, eight years ago, both of them on vacation and visiting the Santuario de Chimayó north of Santa Fe. She was in the sanctuary, focused on the elaborate carvings behind the altar, and Sean was admiring a large retablo of the archangel Michael on a wall. He took a step backward, and so did she.

  They hit, back to back, and Anna’s attempt to keep her balance only made things worse as her ankles wrapped and she went down on the stone floor, hard. If she had stumbled but remained standing, Sean would have apologized and left. But she fell to the floor, clutching her ankle, and it was only polite of him to help her up and talk to her.

  They discovered they were both living in Wyoming, she in Cheyenne and he in Laramie. Eight months later they were married, and six months after that they moved to Elk Park. Remembering it, Anna smiled. There’s providence in the fall of a sparrow, and there’s providence in the fall of a woman to the floor of a chapel in New Mexico.

  That’s what she’d thought at the time, anyway. Now it was hard to see the providence in anything, or the goodness in providence. What was good in their marriage ending so cruelly, and after only six years? Some couples got thirty, forty, or more years together. She and Sean had been cheated. And they had just decided, too late, to start a family. The family that would never be.

  Sean had trusted God and had died a brutal death. Though He slay me. God existed, yes, Anna thought. His existence was a fact she could never deny. And she believed in Him—enough to tell Him in her prayers that she no longer trusted Him. He wasn’t merciful. He was hard, frightening, capricious.

  Anna shook her head. Enough, she thought. She didn’t dare start down that road, not alone, at night. She was about to pour the wine when her phone rang. It was Liz, wanting to know why she was getting text messages from employees at What Ye Will demanding that she drop Anna’s business ad from ElkNews.com. Anna was a fraud, they said, and her license had been pulled. Even Jason had sent a text message. Jazmin had sent two.

  Anna felt a surge of anger. She held the phone away from her mouth and let out a roar of frustration. “I’ve had it with them!” she said.

  “You know I don’t believe them,” Liz said, “but you need to know what’s happening.”

  Jackson barked and Anna jumped, almost dropping the phone. She fixed her eyes on the door.

  “Anna?”

  “Wait,” Anna whispered into the phone. She watched Jackson as he studied the door, the fur on his back, shoulders to tail, raised.

  “What is it?”

  Through the curtains Anna saw the light at her front door go out. No, she thought, not again. She heard a faint scratching at the door, and Jackson gave a deep growl. He moved closer to the door, his body stiffening into an arrow.

  “Anna, what’s going on?”

  “Somebody’s here,” she said. “At my front door.”

  “What?”

  “One of those witch people. They drew a pentacle on my doorstep last night, and they’re back. Someone’s out there right now.” Anna felt her fingers curl. Her fear was ripening into anger and resolution.

  “Don’t open that door, Anna Ivy Denning. I know you—don’t do it. Dan and I are in the car, three minutes from your house. Anna?”

  “Right.”

  “I mean it. Stay on the phone with me. Dan wants to know if you have your gun.”

  “I’m getting it.” Anna started down the hall for her bedroom. Her gun was twenty seconds away, her friends three minutes, and the police five minutes. Her choice was obvious.

  She looked over her shoulder and saw Jackson reluctantly following her. He stopped in the hall outside her bedroom, staring back at the front door as Anna opened the gun safe in her closet. She checked the Ruger’s cylinder—six rounds—then snapped it shut and doubled back to the living room. Jackson ran ahead of her, taking his position near the door.

  “Anna?” Liz said again.

  “Got it. Shout when you get here.”

  “We’re almost there.”

  “Look for someone around the house when you drive up. Or someone running from it or driving away. I’m hanging up to call the police.”

  Two minutes later Anna saw a car’s headlights arcing over the curtain by her front door, and a moment after that she heard Liz and Dan’s voices, calling out to her as they approached. She placed the Ruger on her kitchen counter, called Jackson from the door, and opened it.

  “Are you okay?” Liz bounded through the door, gave Anna a hug, then shot glances about the room, her eyes narrowing as she searched for anything out of place.

  “I’m fine, but I’m glad you’re here.” Anna looked over to Dan, who was standing on the darkened doorstep, staring down at something just to the right of his feet. “What is it?” she asked.

  He bent down to get a closer look. “Hell,” he said, straightening quickly. He looked at Anna, and as she stepped to the threshold, he raised an arm to stop her, then relented. He knew it was pointless to try to shield her. It was her own front door, and she was going to look.

  Anna twisted the light bulb into the fixture until the light came on then turned to look at the doorstep. There, in the middle of a foot-long pine branch, was a small bird, its wings splayed wide. Anna bent forward. “No!” She stood and took a step backward. The bird’s tiny wings had been fastened to the branch with nails, one in each wing, and green and blue ribbons, hanging like party streamers, were wrapped around both ends of the branch. “Please tell me it’s dead,” she said to Dan as she looked away and stepped toward the light.

  “It is.”

  “That makes me sick,” Liz said. She walked back into the house, leaving Dan and Anna on the step.

  “There’s something here,” Dan said. He reached down and pulled a blue square of paper from under the bark. “It’s a note. It says, ‘The wren, the wren, the king of all birds. Happy Yule.’” He looked at Anna, anger and confusion washing over his face. “What kind of lunatics work at that store?”

  “Leave the bird there,” Anna said, motioning for Dan to enter. “The police will be here any minute.”

  “Seriously, Anna,” he said, laying the note on her kitchen counter, “what kind of people are you dealing with? What’s going on here?”

  “I don’t know.” Anna folded her arms to steady them and walked to the living room, taking a seat in the armchair nearest the Christmas tree.

  “You’ve got a deadbolt?” Dan glanced over his shoulder at the door. “Locks on all your windows?”

  Anna nodded.

  “What about that?” Dan stepped to the sliding glass door in the living room.

  “A poor, defenseless bird,” Liz said, following Dan into the living room.

  “Look at the track where the door slides,” Anna said.

  “Sawed-off broom handle?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s this about a wren?” Liz asked. “That wasn’t a wren, it was a junco. I see them on my fe
eders all the time.”

  “They probably couldn’t find a wren,” Anna said.

  Dan opened the wood stove’s door. “I’m going to start a fire if you don’t mind.”

  “Yes, thanks,” Anna said.

  Liz took a seat on the couch, tucking one leg beneath her as she sat. “What do you mean? Why a wren?”

  The doorbell rang and a voice called out, “Elk Park Police.” Pushing out of her chair, Anna commanded Jackson to sit then answered the door. She talked for several minutes to the police officer, who then conducted a short tour of Anna’s front lawn and asked Dan and Liz if they had seen anything on the way to Anna’s house. “We’ll drive by a couple times tonight, but I don’t think you have anything to worry about,” the officer said before taking the branch and the note with him to his patrol car.

  That was the second time today Anna had been told there was nothing to worry about.

  “That’s all?” she called out. “Can you examine it for fingerprints or something?” Perturbed, she waved her hands in front of her. “I mean, try to find out who did this?”

  “I don’t think we’ll find anything on it,” he replied, looking back at her as if she were hopelessly naive. “We’ll see if anyone else has reported anything like this and you can give the department a call tomorrow,” he said before driving off.

  “Yeah, nothing to worry about, it’s all perfectly normal,” Dan said as Anna shut the door. “We’re staying tonight.”

  “That’s right,” Liz called from the couch. “We’re not moving.”

  “Roads are icy anyway,” Dan said, walking back to the wood stove to work on his fire.

  “Thanks, guys. I’m not going to argue with you.” Anna took her seat in the armchair by the tree. She felt a chill and was glad Dan was starting a fire. It took several minutes of arranging newspaper, kindling, and logs to get a fire started in that stove, and she didn’t feel like moving from her chair. The energy to make anything more than the smallest of movements had drained out her limbs, sapping her strength.

  Anna knew now that she’d underestimated what she was facing. This was much more than power games played by misguided people. This was real evil.