The Magic of Murder (2 page)

I must have dozed off, because when I opened my eyes it was dark outside. Wind-blown snow pelted the French doors. I rose from my chair to close the mini-blinds. As I did, I heard something scratch the glass. It couldn’t be the azaleas—I’d cut them back months ago. I shoved the blinds aside and looked out. With the snow rushing past it was a whiteout. As a result, I almost missed what caused the scraping. Then the fat white cat opened its pink eyes.

Startled, I jumped back. An albino cat was staring at me.

“Elvira?” I said, knowing it couldn’t be. Elvira lived in The Black Cat. In Ellicottville. Fifty miles from Niagara Falls.

The cat mewed, shivered, and scratched the glass again.
I thought about dropping the blind and returning to my comfortable wingback chair. But that was only for the second it took to be overcome by guilt. I pulled the door open. Blowing snow stung my face.

Her tail raised, the cat swaggered into my house. She stopped by my legs, sniffed, and looked up at me though one eye.

The slats of the blind rattled as I slammed the door. When I turned, I saw the cat curled up on my chair.

“Hey, get off there!” I shouted. “You’re drenched.”

The cat glanced at me, and yawned. Then she put her head down and began to snore. I mean it, the cat actually snored! Friends who have cats tell me theirs also snore. With deference to those friends, their animals don’t snore. They make a whistling sound. Elvira, on the other hand— I stand by my statement.

I wasn’t a cat person. In fact, I had no desire to share
my home with any four-legged critter. Feline, canine, didn’t matter.
I didn’t want to share it with a two-legged one, either. Since my ex walked out on me, I’d lived alone. I preferred life that way, so I certainly didn’t want this creature to get comfortable in my house.

Screwed into a corner of my living room wall is an old railroad station clock I’d picked up at a yard sale. The clock’s hands formed a right angle. Nine o’clock. It was too late to call Rebecca Nurse, and tell her to drive up to the Falls and retrieve her pet. I laid her business card on the kitchen counter next to my coffee pot. I would make the call in the morning.

Chapter Two

Elvira

             
W
hen I came downstairs the next morning, I peeked around the partition separating my living room from the front hall. The cat had rearranged the pillows on my chair to make a nest. With a groan, I settled on a stool at the kitchen counter, my first morning cup of coffee at my elbow. Glaring in the direction of the cat—the comfortable wingback chair she had claimed as her own was where I preferred to begin my days—I dialed the phone. It rang five or six times.

“Seems Rebecca Nurse doesn’t want you, either,” I muttered to the white lump of fur.

Elvira opened her eyes, blinked twice, and turned to face the French doors. That damn cat was ignoring me.

The phone rang another three times. Annoyed at the cat, even more annoyed because it appeared the only way I’d get rid of this pest was to drive her back to Ellicottville, I was about to slam down the receiver.

At last, “Black Cat,” Rebecca Nurse said. She sounded half-asleep.

“Not black cat, white cat,” I rasped, my throat burning from the mouthful of hot coffee I’d gulped.

“Huh?”

“You heard me. Your cat followed me home.”

“Oh, I wondered if she’d done that.”

“Now you know. Come get her.”

“Can’t,” the Nurse woman said. “She isn’t mine.”

This time
I
said, “Huh?”

“Elvira comes and goes as she pleases,” the sleepy voice said. “She settled in with me a year or so ago, but I knew she wouldn’t stay. She was just waiting here for the person she’s supposed to be with. You finally came.”

“She’s supposed to be with me?” I said. “What are you talking about?” I almost asked,
What are you smoking?
But insulting the woman wouldn’t get the cat out of my house.

I reached into the refrigerator for milk to put out the fire now burning my stomach. Then I looked over at my favorite chair. Elvira turned her head to me, and yawned.

“You haven’t read
The Witch Trials
yet, have you?” Rebecca Nurse said. “Read it and you’ll understand why Elvira gave it to you.”

“I don’t intend to do any such thing,” I said. “It has nothing to do with the story I’m writing.”

“Oh, but it does. That’s why Elvira wants you to have the book.”

Before I could object—which is a polite way of indicating what I was about to say—she hung up.

While I sat, fuming, on the hard wooden stool, a voice broke into the music on my radio.

“Hope you’re all safely tucked in at home,” the disc jockey said. “The National Weather Service in Buffalo just issued a severe winter storm alert for all of Western New York. We’re getting hit by the worst blizzard in years. Gonna go now to Tracy Storch who’s braving the weather in the WLOV traffic helicopter.”

“Thanks, Dan,” a bright feminine voice called from amid beating blades. “We’re over the intersection of the 190 and the 290. The road’s slick, traffic’s at a crawl. Out by the Delaware exit it looks like a van’s slid off the road.”

“Be careful out there, Stacy,” the DJ broke in. “So folks, there you have it. If you don’t have to go out, stay home.”

The voice was replaced by an instrumental version of
Winter Wonderland
.

The recorded sleigh bells heightened my annoyance. No way would I be able to drive the cat back to Ellicottville
where she belonged. Muttering, I grabbed
Magical
Herbalism
and my pad from the lamp table. Parked at my desk, I flipped the back cover of the book, and ran a finger down the index.

The cat lifted her head, opened her mouth, and then snapped it shut. It was as if she were telling me I could look all I wanted, this book didn’t list a combination of herbs and spices that would get her out of my house. Or even off my chair.

I scowled at her and turned on my computer. In a few seconds,
The Swamp Witch
appeared on the screen. I glanced down at the notes on my pad, started to type:

Sarah sprinkles ground mistletoe in the plot she’s carefully prepared. Pointing to the north, east, south, and west, she calls on the gods of the four elements to bless her efforts with renewed life.

On her knees now, she works the mistletoe into the soil with bare hands. “Gotta feel the earth, let it feel me, too,” she reminds herself as she leans back on her bare heels, and brushes unbound hair the color of autumn wheat from her face. She won’t make the mistake she’s made before. This time she will follow the old ways from earth to pot—

After five minutes, I deleted what I’d written. It wasn’t right. I couldn’t concentrate. Though the cat hadn’t done anything, hadn’t even moved, the fact she was curled up on my chair was a major distraction. This was impossible!

I rolled my desk chair back, went to the French doors, and pulled the mini-blind aside. Large snowflakes blew across the field and clung to the branches of the birch tree to the left of my terrace. Crystals settled on the window. I wrapped my robe tightly around me and opened the door. A blast of wind made me shiver.

My voice quivering from the cold, I announced, “Oh, what a beautiful day. A perfect morning to be outside. Look at that squirrel scamper across the lawn.”

I peeked over my shoulder. Elvira hadn’t moved.

“It’s nice out,” I said. “Get out there and play!”

Her expression said,
Who are you kidding
? Most cats can’t make that kind of face. I swear this one did.

“Give me a break, Elvira. Go haunt someone else. I need to work.”

At last she moved, but not toward the open door. She stood on the chair, circled twice, and settled against the armrest with her head on the books I’d left on the lamp table.

Frustrated, I slammed the door. Still shivering, moving as quickly as I could in my half-frozen state, I yanked the books from under the cat’s head. The one on top was
Salem 1692—The Witch Trials.
It was as if the cat insisted I read it.

I threw my hands up in exasperation. Why ever had I gone to The Black Cat? And once I’d seen Rebecca Nurse conversing with an albino cat, why hadn’t I immediately run from the shop? That’s what a normal person would have done. Not me, though. I’m a writer, which by definition means I’m slightly off kilter. Besides, my mind had been wrapped around the story I wanted to write. I had no idea what brought that story to mind, it just bounced into my head because I couldn’t figure out how to save my
heroine. Now I had a cat in my house and a book I didn’t want to read in my hand. To quote the comic-strip
character, Charlie Brown, Augh!

I dropped my eyes to the chair. Elvira grinned at me. I know cats can’t smile—their lips don’t have the proper muscles. But it sure looked as though she grinned.

While I hovered over her with the book raised to swat her off my chair, I wondered how much worse this situation could get. That’s when the sky went totally dark. The wind howled, the windows rattled, and the lights went out.

Before my trip to The Black Cat I’d been trying to create an atmosphere in my living room, a sense of place to fit my story. Now I had it. As people say, be careful what you wish for, especially when you’re writing about witchcraft.

***

Where I live, a blackout caused by evil weather patterns was nothing new. As a result, over the years I’d amassed a collection of candles: tea lights, tapers, scented ones in jars. When I needed to find a moment of total relaxation, I would fill my bathroom with them, turn off the florescent light, and read until my skin looked like a prune. If candles surrounding my bathtub worked, surely my ill-humor could be assuaged by a living room lit like an old-fashioned Christmas tree.

Glittering candles on the window ledge and every table, I stretched out on the sofa with my legs covered by the afghan my grandmother knitted during a snowstorm almost a century before. The novel I was in the middle of reading was on the coffee table next to me. The blackout handed me a perfect excuse to spend a lazy day away from my computer and my half-written story. The idea of doing nothing, not even bothering to dress, brought a smile. I reached for the novel.

Elvira shifted on the wingback chair. Her head on her paws, she shot me a pink-eyed glare.
Read about Salem, dammit! You’ve got time now,
she seemed to say.

“You’re an oversized pest,” I told her. “I ought to tape you in a box and ship you back to The Black Cat.”

That outburst reminded me of Rebecca Nurse, and what she’d said: I’d find something I needed to know in the book about the Salem witch trials.

My stubborn streak kicked in. “Not gonna do it,” I muttered.

Lower lip out in a pout, I closed my eyes, and took a deep breath. When I opened them again, the cat was on the floor next to me, staring up.

“Stop it,” I said. “You’re not gonna change my mind.”

Elvira didn’t move. Her eyes didn’t waver.

I pulled the afghan up to my chest, as if it were armor. It didn’t help. Those pink eyes penetrated my resistance, took control of my intention. I put down my novel, and reached for the Salem witches.

Now that the cat had accomplished with her eyes what Rebecca Nurse hadn’t been able to do with words, she returned to the wingback chair.

Settled again under the cover on the sofa, I opened the book.

The first page contained a chronology. As I skimmed down the lines, I saw movement from the corner of my eyes. The cat was sitting up, alert.

“What now?”

She leaned toward me.

“Go to sleep,” I said, and turned my attention to the book. That’s when I saw it:

July 19, 1692: Susannah Martin, Elizabeth Howe, Sarah Wildes, Rebecca Nurse, and Sarah Goode are hanged on Gallows Hill.

Rebecca Nurse. Sarah Goode. Gallows Hill.
Hanged!

I sprang from the sofa in stocking feet to stamp out the flame of the candle that, in my shock, I’d knocked to the floor. Panting, I stared down at the black spot on my carpet.

Elvira jumped from the wingback chair, circled my legs, and rubbed her back on my flannel pajamas.

“Look what you’ve done!” I growled.

She licked her face, and looked up at me, as if to say,
Don’t blame me. I wasn’t there when they got hanged.

I shivered now from both the cold, annoyance, and from something else I couldn’t name. I went to the kitchen to brew a mug of tea. Minutes later, I returned. With the mug clutched to my breast, I retrieved the book and plopped onto the sofa. Elvira leaped up and snuggled between me and the cushions. Cold house, chilled by what I’d just read, a warm cat lying beside me: without realizing I was doing it, I scratched the cat’s neck. Her response was a contented purr.

With the book resting on my lap, I raised my mug and blew at the steam. “Satisfied now?” I said.

The cat rubbed her head on my arm.

“Yeah, I’m going to read it.”

She mewed.

I rested the mug on the coffee table. The afghan pulled nearly up to my chin, I opened the book.

Through the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon, I devoured the text as if it were food and I was starving. It told that, though accusations of witchcraft in Salem had begun years before, the witch-scare reached a crescendo in January 1692, when a group of young girls began to behave as if they were high on LSD. Which they were. Sort of. I’d read somewhere it was ergot poisoning—something in the wheat they harvested back then. It didn’t dawn on the girls to say they’d been bewitched until a country physician named Griggs suggested it. In short order, suspicion ran wild, and a farm woman asked a slave
named Tituba, to bake a ‘witch cake’—a concoction guaranteed to lift any spell cast by Devil worshippers.
Then, as if late at night people heard Macbeth’s three witch sisters cackling around their cauldron, the madness spread. Pressured by the townsfolk, at the end of February one of the girls identified Tituba as the source of the spell. Then they said it was Sarah Goode. No one thought to catch his breath, step back, and logically consider what was going on—not after Judge Cotton Mather insisted the Court of Oyer and Terminer had to conduct the trials so quickly, the accused might have been hauled in the front door, condemned, and dragged out the back door to Gallows Hill in less than an hour. That’s what happened to the Goode woman, who in July took what was once called a ‘short-drop’—dangling from a tree branch until she choked to death. Fearful she might be the next to be accused, Sarah’s daughter, the child of her first marriage to Daniel Poole, fled Salem. The girl’s name was Emlyn.

Emlyn. Sarah Goode. The book spoke about my family!
My great, great, great, great—I gave up trying to count back generations—grandmother had been hanged as a witch. No wonder my parents never spoke about our family.

When I closed the book, perspiration was dripping down my neck. I’d been so lost in the trials, convictions, and executions, I hadn’t realized the power had been turned on. My house was now overly warm. Or perhaps it was my brain that had gone hot.