The Witches Three Cozy Mysteries 1-3

Chapter 3

Chapter 2

The problem with being from a small town in northwestern Iowa is that it's really hard to leave it if you don't own a car. My mother had never driven, and I had never even learned.

Another one of those things about me no one ever found weird. I guess when you're born in the car crash that kills your father and probably damaged your mother’s brain in a permanent way, it's not crazy to decide you never want to drive.

But mostly, since I could walk to work in less than five minutes, and could walk to the grocery store in less than ten, I never saw the point. That, and the expense of it all. I doubted I would have anything left to save of my wages and tips if I had subtracted out gas and insurance money, let alone the cost of an actual car.

So getting out of town, even with a thick envelope of cash, was tricky. But Mr. Schneiderman arranged it all for me. He was still too weak from his heart attack in the spring to drive even so far as Sioux Falls, but he knew pretty much everyone in town, and they all owed him favors. He found someone that was heading that way to deal with a legal matter and who agreed to give me a lift to the bus station.

It took eight hours to get to St. Paul. The less said about the bus trip, the better. I've had happier days. And I nearly got lost trying to get from the bus station to the local bus that would take me across the river from Minneapolis into St. Paul. But I didn't panic. I had Cynthia's card in my bag (the only bag I owned, the one that used to carry my books in high school, now stuffed with a few changes of clothes and my toothbrush); if worse came to worse I could just call her, and she could pick me up.

But I'd rather arrive on my own.

I got off the bus in front of the cathedral in St. Paul. Somehow, its height was more moving than the skyscrapers of Minneapolis. My eyes just kept going up and up, following the ever narrower tapering of its spire as it stabbed up into the deep blue sky.

I'm sure they have ones in Europe that are more impressive, but it seemed unlikely I'd ever see any of those. I wondered how old it was, how much history had it seen pass by right where I was standing?

Did they still ring the bells? Would I be able to hear them from where I would be staying? What a lovely way to wake up in the morning, to the sound of bells tolling.

When I finally stopped staring up at the cathedral and found my way to Summit Avenue I was blown still further away. Every building around me looked like it had been there for a century or more. And they were all so huge.

My hometown was a cluster of buildings on a crossroads just off the highway, and not a major highway at that. I lived in a tiny box of an apartment, just two rooms, and that's with counting the bathroom as its own room.

But now here I was, walking along a wide sidewalk past lovingly maintained yards and gardens, looking up at grand stone mansions built by the lumber barons and railroad men of another century. The building my apartment was in was only a few decades old, and it was already falling apart all around me and the other tenants. But these places looked like they could happily stand for centuries more and still be worth millions.

I was gawking too much and walking too slow, I realized as a man jogging with a dog had to stray out onto someone's lawn to get around me.

"Sorry!" I said, hugging my bag closer to my side and getting out of the middle of the sidewalk. I didn't think he could hear me with those earbuds in but he glanced back at me with a smile in his green eyes and flashed me a thumb's up. He looked like he wanted to say something, but the Irish setter whose leash was tied around his waist suddenly picked up the pace, and he was compelled to do the same.

It was time to figure out where exactly I was going. I pulled my phone out of my back pocket.

It was the most expensive thing I owned, a first generation smartphone I had gotten refurbished at a terrific bargain.

I wouldn't call it a steal. But that word might be more appropriate than I'd like to think about. I didn't ask a lot of questions.

Since I usually got everywhere by foot and never left my hometown, I hadn't had the need to use the map feature ever before. Now I was discovering in addition to its other little eccentricities of age, my phone's GPS was perhaps a bit subpar.

I squinted at the screen, then looked up at the buildings around me. There was no way I was in the right place, was there?

Then I remembered Cynthia Thomas in her expensive yet not flashy clothes. Cynthia Thomas definitely belonged in this neighborhood.

I looked again at the address then looked up at the surprisingly modern-looking building in front of me. Condos. I could just see the view beyond the building, overlooking the valley and the Mississippi River as it swept past St. Paul for points further south. Even the condos must cost millions.

The house number was too high. I had gone too far. I frowned at the phone, which was telling me I had arrived at my destination. I poked at the screen until I made the street view appear. Perhaps if I saw what the front of the building looked like I would have an easier time finding it.

The street view filled the screen. Quite literally in this case, as a bus parked on the side of Summit Avenue in the picture was blocking me from seeing anything beyond the street itself.

With a sigh I heaved my bag up higher on my shoulder again and retraced my steps, studying the trees on the phone image and hoping to match the branches to anything around me.

"Mind the hostas," someone said to me, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.

"Excuse me?" I said, trying to find the woman to go with the voice.

"The hostas," she said again, and I spotted her. Her yard was completely enclosed by a dense hedge that she could just barely look over. Her face was deeply wrinkled, and a shock of chaotically frizzy gray hair jutted out from under her sunhat as if refusing to be tamed. Her dark brown eyes darted down to the ground then back up at my face, like she was using them to point at something.

I looked down. There at my feet were a row of small hostas. I had veered a bit to one side while looking at my phone and nearly had stepped off the sidewalk I had been so anxious not to block the middle of, although surely not so far as to disturb her plantings. Still, I felt the need to apologize.

"I'm very sorry. I shouldn't walk distracted," I said.

"It's just that they're new," the woman said. "Challenge enough to keep them going, what with all the dog traffic."

"Yes, I suppose," I said. "I wonder if you can help me? I'm looking for a house that should be here between yours and that condo building, but I don't see it."

The woman's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "That's not kind," she said.

"Pardon me?" I asked.

"I know I'm old, but my mind is as sharp as ever," she went on.

"I'm sure that's true," I said, confused.

"As are my eyes," she continued.

"Okay," I said, not sure what I had done to offend her. "Sorry," I said again.

"You should be," she said, still determined to be annoyed with me. "It's not like anyone could miss it."

"Well, I'm afraid I have," I said, and her eyes narrowed still further. There was no getting out of hot water with this woman, apparently. I looked down at the phone in my hand and realized at once how I could win her over. "Perhaps I missed it because I was looking at my phone."

"Those things are a nuisance," she said with a certain gleeful vitriol. "You nearly trod on my hostas looking at your phone."

"I am sorry," I said. "But I was using it to help me find the house. Only the picture on my phone is just a bus, and I can't even see…"

I trailed off as I glanced behind me, mid-gesture to show the woman where I had been when I had started looking at my phone.

There, towering over me, was a Queen Anne house complete with tower topped with a spire, covered front porch that made the front door appear to be in the back of a cavern, elaborate carvings in the details around the windows and along the rooftop. The sort of place the Addams Family would buy if they wanted to upsize.

How had I missed it? I was standing in its shadow. The breeze felt chilly out of the sun, now that I was noticing it. How had I walked right past it not once but twice?

In my defense, it was a very narrow house. I couldn't see how far back it extended, not past the trees that grew crowding close around it, but if the width was anything to judge by this had to be the smallest house I'd seen since walking up the street from the bus stop.

"There it is," I said wonderingly.

"That's what you're looking for?" the woman asked. I had upset her again.

"Yes," I said, my eyes finding the house number over the doorbell. The brass numerals were a dark green, all but blending into the brick.

"Your parties are too loud," the woman said.

"My parties?" I asked.

"Every weekend, more parties," she groused. "Every night in the summertime. It's ridiculous."

I sensed a trap. If I pointed out I had just arrived and didn't, in fact, live here, would she accuse me of ageism again?

"I'm sorry about that," I said. "But really I'm only here for the weekend. But while I am here, I promise, I'll tell everyone to keep it down."

"Tell who?" the woman asked, eyes narrowing again as she quizzed me.

"Um," I said. "Cynthia Thomas?"

"She's rarely here," the woman said. "She ought to be here more. Keep a firmer hand on things. That man she hired to watch the place is far too permissive. Too many parties," she said, stressing each word.

"I'll let her know," I promised.

"If she's even here," the woman said.

"If she isn't, she will be soon," I said. "I'm meeting her specifically."

For some reason, she still didn't seem to believe me. I wondered who had lied to her, and how pervasively, to make her so untrusting.

"Mrs. Olson, I do hope you aren't scaring off new neighbors," someone said. I looked up to see a man walking towards me, the man who had just jogged past with the dog.

He was talking to the old woman, but those green eyes were fixed just on me, and for the first time in a very long time I remembered that sometimes I got intense, not to be ignored feelings that were of a very different nature from my not-quite-precognition.

I didn't know anything about this guy, not even his name, but as he drew to a stop towering over me, smiling down at me with those eyes like darkest jade, I wanted to know everything. And I wanted him to tell it to me slowly, over a lifetime.

I mean, on some level I knew this wasn't any more rational than those other feelings. But it wasn't the level I was currently operating on if you know what I mean.