Autumn Bones

Page 10

“Right.” Since I’d been going through the files, other members of the department had gotten more savvy about spotting eldritch signs. The dead leaves were a dead giveaway. “Give me a call if you get another complaint.”
“Will do.”
I took a stroll down the dock anyway. No sign of the kids this morning, but I stopped by a few of the restaurants and bars along the river and asked the managers to call me if the kids returned. My phone buzzed with a reply from Jen, offering to meet me for lunch at Callahan’s Café at twelve thirty. After sending a confirmation, I swung by the Sisters of Selene, Pemkowet’s local occult store, to pick the Fabulous Casimir’s brain.
Technically, I guess Casimir is a drag queen, although his cross-dressing has to do with the shamanic tradition, too. Either way, he cuts an imposing figure. He’s over six feet tall without the wig, and the towering Marie Antoinette number he was sporting today put him closer to seven.
He caught my eye as I entered. I waited patiently while he finished ringing up a purchase and the store emptied for a moment.
“Hey, Miss Daisy.” Casimir fussed with a display of charmed crystals that the last batch of tourists had disturbed. “Whatever went down at Rainbow’s End last night, I hope you know none of my people were involved.” He gave a little shiver. “From what I heard, that was no love spell.”
“No, I know,” I said. “It was a satyr.”
“A satyr?”
“A satyr in rut,” I clarified. “Any thoughts?”
Casimir’s lips pursed. “I deal in magic, not mythological beasties.”
“Okay,” I said. “How about obeah? That’s a kind of magic, right? Do you know anything about it?”
His long-fingered hands went still. “Not really, dahling, no. It’s a little outside my geographic purview.” Beneath heavy makeup and false eyelashes, his eyes were shrewd. “Mind if I ask why? Because I don’t think that had anything to do with the shenanigans at the club last night.”
I shrugged. Sinclair hadn’t given me permission to discuss it, so it was best to honor the eldritch code.
“Never mind.” Casimir tapped his carmine lips with one fingertip. “I can guess. Is it causing . . . problems?”
“No,” I said honestly. “I’m just curious.”
“Curiosity killed the cat, girl. There’s a time and a place for gathering knowledge, and it ain’t necessarily during the early days of a young romance. Romance is fragile, Miss Daisy.” He shook his finger at me. “If you want my advice, don’t go looking for trouble or you might just find it.”
“I’m not!” I protested.
The door chimes rang as another group of tourists entered the store, and the Fabulous Casimir turned his fabulous attention toward them. Checking the time on my phone, I decided to pay a visit to Mr. Leary before lunch.
“Daisy!” Casimir called after me.
I paused in the doorway. “Yeah?”
“I didn’t mean to put you off, honey.” Beneath the mask of white makeup and strategically placed beauty marks, the expression on his face was serious. “If your young man finds himself in trouble, I’m sure we can figure out a way to help him.”
I smiled. “Thanks, Cas. No one’s in trouble. You’re right—I’m just being nosy.”
He made a shooing gesture. “Then go on—get out of here!”
I drove across the bridge from Pemkowet to East Pemkowet, a distinction that many find confusing for good reason, since the communities are intertwined. In terms of tourism, they’re joined at the hip. In terms of governance, they are actually two separate entities, and there’s a little bit of rivalry on the local level, too. I have fond memories of taking part in the annual Easties vs. Townies battle that goes down every Halloween night, complete with water balloons and eggs.
Once upon a time, East Pemkowet was a little more down-to-earth and homespun than its sister-city across the bridge, but in the past ten years, it had become a haven for upscale dining and boutique shopping. Driving down Main Street, I couldn’t help but notice the improvements, which included some pretty ambitious street- and landscaping. Well, except for Boo Radley’s house.
That’s what we called it in high school, anyway. I don’t know what it was called before To Kill a Mockingbird came out. It was the oldest house on Main Street, a rambling Tudor Revival with crumbling white stucco and dark exterior woodwork, the kind that looked like it was integral to the structure, not just a veneer.
According to local legend, Clancy Brannigan, the last living descendant of Talman Brannigan, owned the place. I’d never seen him, but the cashiers at Tafts Grocery claimed there was a standing order for a weekly delivery dating back decades. No one ever got to go inside the house, though. The bill was paid in advance by a check drawn from a business account and deliveries were left in the shuttered, decrepit wooden gazebo in the front yard. Generations of schoolkids had haunted the place, trying to catch a glimpse of our local Boo Radley, to no avail.
Anyway.
Mr. Leary’s cottage was infinitely more pleasant, a charming little place with a wonderful garden. Late-blooming cosmos and zinnias provided a riot of color, and a line of tall sunflowers nodded alongside a weathered picket fence.
“Daisy Johanssen!” My former teacher hailed me from the screened porch, hoisting a glass as I came up the front path. “If it isn’t my favorite teleological conundrum. Would you care for a glass of iced tea?”
I did a little bit of a double take; first, because I’d never known Mr. Leary to voluntarily partake of nonalcoholic beverages, and second, because he had company. As far as I knew, he was a lifelong bachelor, and I’d always found him to be fairly reclusive outside the classroom even before he retired. But no, there was a woman on the porch with him.
And then I did a triple take, because I knew her. Emma Sudbury. I’d, um, killed her sister.
It’s a long story, but the upshot of it is that Emma Sudbury’s sister, Mary, was a ghoul, cast out from heaven and hell for drowning her infant son and believing it was God’s will. That happened back in the late 1950s. For the next fifty-some years, Emma took care of Mary, growing older and more desperate while Mary stayed ageless and batshit crazy. Right up until the end, at least. At the very end, after doing some pretty terrible things, she had a moment of lucidity and begged me to administer Hel’s justice.
I swallowed hard, my right palm tingling at the memory of dauda-dagr’s hilt clutched hard against it, the shudder of Mary’s final death.
“Come in, come in!” Mr. Leary held the door open for me. “Miss Daisy Johanssen, may I present Miss Emma Sudbury?”
“We’ve met,” I said softly. “Nice to see you again, ma’am. You’re looking well.”
It was true. When I’d first encountered Emma Sudbury, she was haggard and unkempt, worn down by grief and terror. Now her white hair was rinsed and set, and she wore an attractive old-lady pantsuit.
But the shadow of sorrow was still there. It would never leave.
“Thank you, dear,” she said with quiet dignity before turning to Mr. Leary. “Thank you, Michael. I’ve enjoyed our chat, but I should be going.”
I watched him usher her out the door and down the front path, his head with its leonine mane of white hair bent solicitously over hers. The last time I’d seen her, Cody and I had delivered the news of her sister’s death. I hadn’t told her it had been by my own hand, only that her sister Mary was at peace with it. We hadn’t volunteered details and she hadn’t asked for them.
I wondered if she suspected she’d rather not know.
Mr. Leary returned to the porch, the expression on his saturnine face unreadable. “Please, have a seat. May I pour you a glass of tea?” He indicated a pitcher sweating on the table. “It’s a blend of jasmine and lemongrass, with just a hint of ginger.”
“Yes, thanks. It sounds wonderful.” I accepted a glass. “How did you and Miss Sudbury meet?”
He took a sip of tea, swishing it delicately around in his mouth. “We met at the senior center. That infernal do-gooding busybody Sandra Sweddon persuaded me to attend a function there. I believe she’s a friend of your mother’s?”
I nodded.
“Well.” Mr. Leary set down his glass. “As it happens, it wasn’t as entirely dreadful as I’d imagined, and Emma has an interest in gardening, although of course she hasn’t pursued it for many years. I like to think our chats have helped draw her out. Hers is a terribly sad story, you know.”
“I know.”
His gaze lingered on me. “I daresay you do. So!” His tone lightened. “How may I enlighten you today, Daisy?”
On the one hand, Mr. Leary was probably a good bet for some satyr lore; on the other hand, his knowledge was largely academic. If I got him on the topic, I’d most likely get an earful of Euripides or Sophocles, not practical information regarding satyrs’ rutting cycles, which was what I really needed. And once Mr. Leary got the conversational bit between his teeth, it was hard to get him to change course. So I went ahead and asked him about what I really wanted to know.
I guess Sinclair’s revelation bothered me a little more than I realized.
“Obeah,” I said. Usually, all it took was one word. I waited for Mr. Leary to go into his familiar mnemonic trance, tilting his head back and closing his eyes before rattling off a string of facts, anecdotes, and conjecture mined from a lifetime of arcane research.
Instead, he frowned. “Alas, I fear obeah is far and away the most oblique and poorly documented of the Afro-Caribbean belief systems. But I have some excellent resource material on vodou or Santería if that might help.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. How come there isn’t more on obeah?”
“Why,” he said.
“Um . . . why what?”
“Why isn’t there more information available on obeah,” Mr. Leary said sternly. “Not how come.”