Page 39 of The Witch’s Orchard

THIRTY-TWO

I ’M ONLY A LITTLE out of breath when Deena pulls into the driveway and finds me leaning against Honey like I’d been there all along. There’s a rustle in my chest and I cough, hard, before she approaches me, annoyance and frustration rolling off her.

“Miss Gore, I told you—”

“That if I came back, you’d call the sheriff. And I’m sure he’d love only too well to have a reason to escort me off the premises, but a little girl has been taken. She wasn’t taken ten years ago. She was taken last night. I need your help.”

I give her my “I’m not going away” stare and, finally, she sighs and nods toward the front door. When she gets there, she seems unsurprised to find the door unlocked, and so I guess this must be a habit with her.

“Oh wow,” I say, as I enter the great room behind her. Trying, possibly harder than I need to, to sell that I’ve never been inside. “What a lovely house.”

“Thank you,” she says, and drops her keys into a little bowl on the table next to the door.

“Would you like some coffee? Tea?” Deena asks, her southern lilt and slow, easy demeanor have been unadulterated by over twenty years of mountain life.

“No, thank you,” I say.

“It’s tragic what’s happened,” she says. “Absolutely awful.”

“Do you know Shiloh?”

“I used to see her at church, when she was younger. But, no. Really, I only know her from the bakery. She is truly an excellent pastry chef. I can’t imagine a bakery like that will last very long in a town like this but… Well, as I said. It’s a tragedy.”

“Yes,” I say.

I’m sitting on the very edge of the well-worn, overstuffed sofa. If I sat any farther back, I’d sink in and be too dangerously comfortable for cogent questioning.

Deena settles onto a high-backed antique armchair. Her slender form fits well within the confines of the beautifully carved wooden arms. Her feet rest flat on the floor and her posture is impeccable.

“I heard about the accident at the old factory,” she says. “I’ve been saying for years they should tear that place down. Are you unharmed?”

“Yes,” I say. “I’m all right. Thank you.”

She tilts her head to acknowledge her own graciousness in asking after my welfare. Her hands are folded in her lap. Her long, supple fingers seem almost weightless, neither tense nor fully at ease.

“Did you attend the festival last night?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

“Do you usually attend the church festivals?”

If she’d had worse manners she’d have shrugged. Instead, the corner of her mouth just barely twitches.

“Christmas,” she says. “I attend the Christmas Eve service. And, of course, I play the piano for all of the holiday services.”

“Why don’t you attend the other festivals?” I ask.

“They are somewhat… garish.”

“They’re for kids,” I say. “Kids are sort of garish.”

“I suppose.”

“You don’t like kids?”

“I do not have much experience in the area.”

“You didn’t have kids?”

“No. Do you?”

“No,” I say, automatically.

“Do you want them?” she asks.

It catches me off guard.

“I…” I start. “No. I do not. At one time—but no.”

“It happens,” she says. I do not know what, precisely, “it” is. And yet I can feel it. Can feel the shape of it. The heaviness. “It,” whatever “it” is, is a thing that women know of. A thing we all carry. A decision. A gift. A burden. A chance. A mistake. A choice.

“Yes,” I agree. “It happens. Not all of us are destined for motherhood.”

I’m desperate, suddenly, to pull the focus away from childbearing, and I glance around the room. The river-stone fireplace, the raw-edge coffee table, the elegant drapes. Every surface is perfect, clean, dust-free.

“Do you have a maid?”

“Of course,” she says, the unspoken and sarcastic “Don’t you?” omitted but implied.

“Does she live in?” I ask.

“No,” she says. “She lives in town. She comes two days a week, or sometimes more if I need her an extra day.”

“Like when you throw the Christmas party?”

“Yes.”

I look around the room. The head of a water buffalo hangs over one wall, its brown glass eyes and gentle mouth so lifelike as to be disarming.

“Ten years ago,” I say. “You visited the Andrewses’ home to teach Max piano.”

“Yes.”

“And, while you were there, you saw a plumber? What do you remember about him?”

“Not very much.”

“Try,” I say. “The thing is, he’s dead now. He died in the factory explosion and so I can’t interview him. ”

“I see,” she says, looking down at her hands. “All right. I suppose…”

She closes her eyes and I watch her, even admire her. Her composure. Her posture. Her easy grace. I feel my suspicion creeping back up and remember, again, what Leo had said about blind spots.

“He was very tall,” she says. “Sort of scruffy but strong-looking. He was carrying a very large toolbox, I remember. Larger than the usual kind. And he had a piece of pipe slung over his shoulder.”

“Did he speak to you?”

She opens her eyes and meets my gaze.

“Only to say what a hot day it was. And to say that he was leaving. His truck had been blocking my car, you see.”

“And then you both left?”

“Yes.”

“Anyone else?”

“No, I…” She stops herself, abruptly, her hands knotting together on her lap.

“What is it?” I ask.

“It’s nothing—” she says.

“Anything might help,” I say. “Anything at all.”

“It’s only that… well, I remember I thought I saw someone in the field.”

“The field behind the Andrews farmhouse?”

“Yes. As I was coming out. I was standing on the back porch and I thought I saw someone in the field, but I was wrong. It was only a scarecrow.”

“A scarecrow?”

“Yes,” she says.

“But you didn’t get a good look at it?”

“No, I was worried about making it to my next appointment. I was in a hurry to leave. I remember being a little startled—thinking someone was in the field watching me—and then I realized it was only a scarecrow. It was quite far away and I’d never noticed it before, that’s all.

But, as I say, I realized it was only a scarecrow and I went down the steps and toward my car. And that’s when I saw the plumber.”

I think back to what Mack had said. That Dwight had also seen what he’d taken to be a scarecrow that had turned out to be a person.

But for some reason, it had spooked him.

I think, again, that I need to get those witness statements from AJ.

See exactly what was said on that day. What was seen.

Now, though, I need to get back on track and back on the road.

“Did you know that the Zieglers also visited the Andrews family on the day Molly was kidnapped?”

“Did they?”

“What is your opinion of the Zieglers?” I ask.

“They’re friends of mine,” she says.

I’m surprised to hear Deena identify any of the residents of Quartz Creek as friends. “Are they?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think they’re good people?” I ask.

She blinks at me, her head tilted in mild confusion. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

“Are they decent?”

“Decent?”

“Do you have a high opinion of them?”

“They would not be my friends if I did not.”

“Did they ever offer counseling to you and Mister Drake?”

Her lips purse into a near smile but she turns it off almost before I see it. “I’m not sure how that’s relevant to your investigation, Miss Gore.”

“I’m not sure either,” I say.

“Excuse me?”

“Well, I’m asking questions for the explicit reason that I do not know their answers. It’s only when I have answers that I begin to understand their relevance and am able to form a larger picture.”

“Like a puzzle,” she says.

“More like a map,” I tell her. “A map that I’m trying to fill in.”

“The Zieglers offered Mister Drake and me the same gracious service they would offer to any member of First Baptist’s congregation.”

“Was your husband close with them?”

A small hesitation. And then, “Yes. Bob and Harvey were as close as two men of that generation ever are. They played golf together. A few times, Bob went with Harvey on hunting expeditions. Bob and Rebecca occasionally had us over for dinner.”

“Not anymore?”

“Not since Harvey passed. It reminds me too much of the time before. We fell out of practice and then, well, it simply never came up again.”

“You sound like you miss it.”

“I miss everything about the time before Harvey passed.”

“I’m sorry,” I say.

We sit and look at each other.

The grandfather clock down the hall ticks. The animals stare.

“Have you ever visited Susan McKinney?” I ask.

There’s a hesitation. She looks down, away from me, and then at her fingernails.

“She buys my rose hips from me.”

“That’s not what I asked,” I say. “Have you ever visited her, in her cabin.”

“I—yes. Several years ago, after Harvey died. I was grieving. I needed… I don’t know. I needed someone to talk to, I suppose. I’d heard about her in town.”

“Did she tell your fortune?”

“Yes. It was all just hokum. Platitudes,” she says, letting out a frustrated exhalation.

“I should never have gone. Susan McKinney knows the plants of these mountains better than anyone and her teas are second to none but, when it comes to any sort of… ability, she’s no less a fraud than the psychics you see on television. ”

I feel certain there’s something else there. Something she isn’t saying. I wait awhile longer. Let the grandfather clock tick by. But she offers nothing else.

Eventually, I ask, “Do you know the story of the Quartz Creek Witch?”

“Yes. Harvey told me the story several years ago.”

“There are a few different versions,” I say. “Could you tell me the one you heard?”

“I’m not sure if I remember it.”

“Just tell me what you remember,” I say.

“There was a witch, long ago, who lived deep in the forest amid a grove of enchanted apple trees,” she says. She begins slowly, but, as the story goes on, her voice picks up a melodic lilt.