Page 33 of The Witch’s Orchard

“Well, I guess she was pretty dang ugly. He came after her with an ax, but she turned herself into a crow and flew away. And he hunted her down. He hunted all the crows down until he found her in that stone circle. And that’s where he killed her.

And she turned back into an old witch and her blood soaked the stones and the Devil drank it up and that’s why they make that echoing sound. That’s the Devil laughing.”

“Because… of blood?”

“Yeah,” he says with a shrug. He opens the big box in the back of his pickup and stows his tool kit, then slams it shut. “Magic blood.”

I watch him get in the truck and drive off and I stand there thinking about stories. The way mythology twists around on itself and throws out new branches every now and then. How the key ingredients are the same in both stories. A witch. Two daughters.

My phone rings, and I answer.

“Hey, AJ,” I say.

“Hey, I wanted to let you know I opened up Dwight and Elaine Hoyle’s house. An investigation hasn’t officially been opened just yet, but I need to check the premises for risks of another explosion.”

“Find anything?”

“Nothing nefarious. There’s a bunch of soap-making stuff laying around. Aside from that, looks like they did most of their science experiments in the old factory,” he says. “Also, no sign of Jessica or Molly. It was a long shot, but…”

“It’s better to check,” I say. “But nothing?”

“No. And this place is pretty small. Two bedrooms, one bath. There’s a crawl space but no basement. No attic. Anyway, I’ve only been here about half an hour and I’ve got to head back out. There’s a bunch of goats loose out on Cooper’s Cross.”

I can’t help but laugh.

“I feel like when I watch those suspenseful TV cop shows, they usually omit the nail-biting goatherd scenes.”

“The life of a public servant is a never-ending roller coaster. I did want to let you know one thing before I leave.”

“What’s that?”

“Like I said, I haven’t been here long, but I did do a quick sweep. From what I understand, neither of them worked. Dwight took disability from a forklift operating injury about six years back and Elaine had the occasional side hustle—”

“Like soap and meth.”

“Exactly. That’s the thing. They drove a pretty new truck and they have a recent-model TV in here. A new laptop. Not brand-new but all within the last couple years or so. I found a bank statement. All their deposits were made in cash.”

“Sounds like typical drug dealer behavior to me.”

“The thing is, County Fire pulled both bodies out last night and they’ve been going through the wreckage today. Far as they can tell, neither of them were armed.”

“Huh,” I say.

“Yeah. Like I said, I’ve only been here about thirty minutes but, still. When’s the last time you met a drug dealer who didn’t pack heat?”

“Huh,” I say again. “Maybe they were just getting started, didn’t want to risk racking up more charges in case things went wrong.”

“Maybe.”

I let him rush off to the great goat escape and check my phone for the time. Right on cue, my belly grumbles. I start up Honey and we roll around to the other side of Main Street and park in front of Shiloh’s Sweet Treats. I follow my nose inside.

I look past the small crowd to the door behind the counter.

The girl in the apron gives me a nod of recognition and I walk into the back.

Pushing my way into the kitchen, I find Shiloh in a cloud of sugar-scented air, stacks of cakes and lavender cake boxes on the counters and tables around her.

She hugs me as a matter of course and then ushers me to her big stainless-steel counter and pours me a glass of milk.

Before I can even thank her, she pushes a plate of pumpkin streusel in front of me.

“I—”

“Just eat,” she says. “You look famished, Annie. You’re pushing yourself too hard.”

“Me? What about you?” I gesture toward the huge tower of cake boxes beside her.

She throws back her head and lets out a long, loud groan.

“They’re all for the Fall Festival’s cakewalk. My mom talked me into it. Heaven help me, I don’t know why I agreed to it in the first place. Even under normal circumstances it would be tough to get all these done around our regular business, but with Molly being found and…”

She sighs.

“I heard Greg Andrews is back,” she says. “Has he spoken to you?”

“Yeah. Max’s dad is a real prize. He wants me to quit the investigation.”

“Wow,” she says. “He never wanted Max to hire a PI. He and Janice tried it once, when Max was little, and they didn’t find a single thing. I think he feels like PIs are some kind of con. No offense.”

“None taken.”

“You’re not going to quit, are you?” she asks.

“No,” I say. “I’m going to do what I said I would.”

“Then, eat. You’ve got to keep up your energy.”

I sigh and dig in. And we stay that way for a few minutes, Shiloh bustling around the kitchen while I take long drinks of milk and eat progressively bigger bites of streusel. Eventually, I get around to the real reason for my visit. I want to hear the witch story, from her this time.

“The witch story?” Shiloh asks from behind several boxes of cakes.

“Yeah,” I say. “The Witch of Quartz Creek, right? The one with the daughters?”

“Yeah,” she says, writing “White Chocolate Raspberry” on a label and sticking it on the outside of a box. “Only, the way I heard it, they weren’t her daughters.”

I’m too busy letting the pumpkin and cinnamon tastes roll around on my tongue to make real words so I say, “Hmmm?”

“No,” Shiloh says. She opens another box and writes “German Chocolate” on the label, sticks it to the thin pink cardboard. “No. You know my family settled here eight generations ago?”

“Mmm?”

“Of course, a lot of other families did too. Anyway, my mamaw told me the story when I was little. She was sort of our family historian. She knew all the old legends from this region. She said that one winter, long ago, it was colder than it had ever been, and snow turned to ice and froze everything. Everything. People couldn’t keep fires lit—that’s how cold it was.

And their food stores ran dry because the winter lasted so long. ”

She opens another box and looks inside, then closes it and writes “Tiramisu” on the label.

“But, amidst all of this cold, there was a witch who lived in the woods up above Quartz Creek. She had an apple orchard full of bright green apples that never took a chill and grew all winter long.”

Picturing the apples, bright green, in a landscape of ice and snow, I can’t help but shiver. I take another fortifying bite of streusel.

“One day a young mother took her six starving children up the high climb to the witch’s home. She told the witch that they were starving. That she would do anything to keep them fed.”

She opens another box and inside I see a round white cake topped with beautifully delicate buttercream roses. Shiloh smiles down at the cake and then closes the box and writes on the label: “Rosewater Vanilla . ”

“The mother pleaded with the witch,” she says, sticking the label on the outside of the box.

“And the witch said that if the mother gave her her two oldest daughters, she and the rest of her children could take all the apples they could carry and that the apples would not wither or rot but would stay bright and fresh until eaten. And the girls would be fed and educated and taught to sing and dance like fairy princesses.”

“She couldn’t refuse,” I say.

Shiloh shakes her head, her eyes downcast and full of emotion.

“It never hit me,” she said. “How awful the story was. I guess it’s different when you’re a mom, what you’d do for your kids.” She lets out a long breath, her hands flat on the countertop. She blinks, shakes her head.

“Anyway,” she says, clearing her throat. “The girls grew into beautiful young women, with the most delicate singing voices in all the mountains. But the witch became jealous of their voices, the attention they received, their radiance.”

She opens another box then closes it, writes, “Sugar Free Chocolate.”

“So she turned them into birds—a robin and a bluebird—and put them into a silver cage. And their songs made her joyous. Until they made her bitter.” Shiloh sticks the label on and then surveys the next cake.

“She killed the birds and ate their hearts and took the beauty and youth and songs of her daughters. She married a young huntsman who was taken with her stolen gifts, but, eventually, he discovered her true identity. He tried to kill her, but she turned herself into a crow.”

“Did he ever find her?”

Shiloh shakes her head.

“No,” she says. “She flew into the forest, where every night she tried to sing the very songs she had taught her daughters, only to hear the sound of her ugly crow voice forever and evermore.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, I know.”

We both look into the next cake box. A mouthwatering orange buttercream rose sits in the middle of a field of white icing and caramel drizzle.

“You haven’t seen Max, have you?” she asks.

“Not since he asked me to find Molly’s killer,” I tell her.

She nods, then sighs and says, “I’ll check in with him tomorrow. After all this festival stuff is done.”

She looks over the boxes, all labeled, and crosses her arms on her chest.

“This is all for First Baptist’s festival?” I ask.

“Yeah. The festival raises money for the church’s food bank, which, whatever I might think of First Baptist’s politics, I can’t argue about feeding hungry people. Now, I just need to load them into the van.”

“You want a hand?”

“You sure you’re finished with all your important PI stuff?”

“Who says I’m done asking questions?”

I help her move the cakes onto a rolling rack and then, as we’re wheeling it out to the van, I ask, “You said you went to First Baptist when you were a kid, right? What was your impression of Rebecca Ziegler?”

“Hmm… She always just… seemed like someone’s strict grandma. The sort of woman who handed out little stockings at Christmas with toothbrushes and mini New Testaments inside.”

“Was she a grandma? Did she have grandkids?”

“Huh,” Shiloh says, loading the cakes into the van.

“You know what? No, I don’t think so. I don’t think her and Brother Bob ever had kids.

” She puts the last cake in and then shuts the door and looks at me with her head tilted, her hands on her hips.

“Do you think they had something to do with the kidnappings?”

I take a deep breath, the story about the witch and the birds still spinning in my mind.

“This whole thing feels very ritualistic,” I say, and realize I’m echoing an old coot who intentionally makes people wait for his plumbing services.

Maybe I’m grasping at straws, but I don’t think so.

All he’d done was give voice to a feeling I’d already had and been afraid to say.

“The dolls, the velvet dress, the stone circle, the crows…”

“Which is why you’re asking about the witch,” Shiloh says.

“Yeah.”

“And you’re wondering who, among the old women of Quartz Creek, might be a witch.”

“Do I sound crazy?”

She laughs.

“No,” she says. “You’re just starting to sound like someone from around here. When I was a kid, it was practically common knowledge that the Witch of Quartz Creek took those girls. I remember it made Max’s dad furious.”

“Why?”

“Because I guess… in his mind, you’ll never find the truth if you go around trying to catch someone who doesn’t exist.”

I open my mouth and then close it, but an uneasy feeling flutters around my heart.

Are you so sure the witch doesn’t exist?

She climbs into the van, starts it up, and opens the window. “You coming to this shindig tonight?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I want to talk to Bob and Rebecca. I’ll be around.”

“Okay,” she says. “See you there.”

I watch as she pulls out and drives away, and I think about the mother who traded her little girls for all the apples she could carry.