The Witch Is Back

Book 6: Witch Way Librarian Mysteries

by Angela M. Sanders

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Mystery; Animal Cozy Mysteries

Synopsis

Just when residents thought life was settling down in small-town Wilfred, Oregon, poison pen letters begin to arrive. Who can celebrate the retreat’s success or the opening of The Wallingford Guesthouse when secrets and less than neighborly transgressions are aired? Librarian Josie Way is lucky to be a witch, since the spellbound books know plenty about murders . . .

Surprised by an unexpected visit from her oddly pensive mother, Josie hopes to distract her with a visit to the Aerie, the clifftop manor where the recently passed Reverend Clarence Duffy lived. Inside, however, Josie hears hissed warnings from boxes of the preacher’s old books—and once home, from the library’s detective novels. When Wilfred residents start to receive threatening letters the next day, the witch-in-training is determined to uncover the missives’ author . . .

But not before the dead body of one of the reverend’s sons is discovered at the bottom of the cliff. Unsettled by the Wilfred residents’ crumbling friendships—and by her mother’s reason for her visit—Josie has her hands full of dilemmas. Sheriff Sam is no help—he laughs off the letter he receives. Then Josie finds one addressed to her, stating that the author “knows her secret.” Josie must trust her fledgling sorcery—as well as a bit of magic from a surprising source—to uncover the poison pen before anyone else receives a deadly delivery . . .

Release date: November 26, 2024

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

“Mom,” I said, “Please tell me what’s wrong.” “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” my mother replied in a chipper tone. She was sore about something, all right.

I cranked down the car window to a hot breeze smelling of pine needles. “I love seeing you. But to show up unexpected? That’s not like you.”

What else wasn’t like my mother was how quiet she was. Normally Mom would have circled my apartment on the top floor of Wilfred’s library with a pad of paper in hand, listing the various ways I could improve my life: More sprouts in the refrigerator; make sure my cat Rodney’s food was high protein; and don’t forget to separate the whites from darks when doing laundry. Instead, she lounged on the couch with a vacant look in her eyes—except for the half hour she’d spent furiously reorganizing my silverware drawer.

She was also cagey about how long she planned to stay. Granted, it had been barely a day since I’d picked her up at the airport, but I didn’t have to be a witch to know something was on her mind.

“Can’t I visit my daughter without an excuse?” was all she’d say.

I couldn’t force her to talk, but I could distract her with a visit to an estate sale all of Wilfred had anticipated for weeks, ever since Reverend Clarence Duffy’s death. Reverend Duffy had shut himself up at home for the past two decades with only his son Adam to care for him. He was a mysterious figure, and the opportunity to peek into his life through his belongings was the weekend’s chief entertainment.

I pulled my old Corolla onto the highway that led out of Wilfred. The road ended three miles later at Marlin Hill, a long-abandoned town built on a collection of steep hills. A few decrepit houses, roofs heavy with moss, clung to its fir-blanketed hillsides, giving it the air of a stage set for a horror movie. Cicadas chirped in the heat. The town’s church, a whitewashed wooden chapel, had survived, however, and so did its former pastor’s home, where we were now headed.

We parked along a rutted dirt road and walked to the house. Cars lined the drive. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this modernist beauty, constructed at angles and cantilevered over the hill.

“Look, Mom.” I sheltered my eyes from the sun and pointed. “Isn’t it magnificent? No wonder they call it the Aerie.”

Mom, still in a foul mood, pulled a fluff of moss from the window next to the house’s entry. “Looks like it could use some maintenance.”

There was no denying the house had seen better days. Oregon’s famously damp winters had rotted its windowsills here and there, and the cedar siding could have used a fresh coat of varnish. But the house loomed above Marlin Hill like the manor on the cover of a paperback gothic romance—if it had been designed by the father in The Brady Bunch, that is.

“I love it. It could be a feature in a 1970s issue of Architectural Digest.”

From behind us came a voice. “My thought exactly.”

We turned to see a stranger approaching from a path emerging from the woods. He wore a white linen suit that would have been more at home in Old Havana than in Oregon, but with his easy posture—hands in pockets—and feline grace, somehow it worked. He lifted his nose to breathe the summer air.

“But it was built a decade later. A late example of the Pacific Northwest regional style,” the stranger said. At our surprised glance, he added, “My father was an architect. Such a lovely property. Quiet.”

I was surprised I hadn’t already caught wind of the stranger’s presence. Wilfred was so small and the grapevine so robust that you couldn’t burn toast without hearing about it the next time you bought margarine. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Josie Way, and this is my mother, Nora.”

“Emilio Landau.” A small green and gold embroidered eel, complete with fangs, adorned his jacket pocket. He noted my glance. “Emilio E. Landau, that is. E.E.L. My emblem.”

I couldn’t help but dig for more information. It would be a hot commodity later, down at the café, and I rarely had the jump on Wilfred old-timers Patty and Darla for gathering intelligence. “A friend of the reverend?”

“Dear me, no. Simply visiting these parts.”

Evasive. I tried again. “You must be here for the”—I wrinkled my nose, trying to recall what workshop the retreat center was hosting—“yodeling camp?” There was little other reason to stay in Wilfred longer than the few hours it took to have breakfast at Darla’s Café and peruse the This-N-That.

He laughed soundlessly, like Charles Boyer in a silent film. “No. Simply looking around, enjoying country life.” He extracted a business card from a silver case. I caught only a glance of his name, his signature eel, and “art appraiser” before my mother deftly extracted it from his fingertips.

Emilio Landau disappeared up the drive as if he were strolling La Croisette in Cannes, taking in a Mediterranean sunset instead of dodging blackberry vines on a dusty dirt road.

Mom watched him walk away. I had to nudge her arm to get her attention. Given her mood, I was glad to see her intrigued about something.

We stepped into a low-ceilinged entry hall with shabby carpet that made the main room, when we entered, all the more glorious. “Oh, my,” Mom said.

Floor-to-ceiling windows stretched two stories high. Instead of browsing the tagged furniture and the case of jewelry near the cash register in the living room, we were both drawn across the house to the view.

I greeted Adam, Reverend Duffy’s son. Adam taught music at the high school and occasionally played the mandolin in a country music ensemble in Forest Grove, Wilfred’s bigger city neighbor, and with his neat beard and short-sleeved western shirt, he looked the part. When Adam stopped by the library, which wasn’t often, the books, making suggestions only my witch’s ears could hear, were desperate for him to take a vacation from caring for his father and offered up travel guides to beach locales.

I introduced Adam to my mother. He slid open the door to the deck. “Come outside. You’ve never seen anything like it. Plus, I’d like you to meet my brother, Benjamin, and his wife Lucy. They’re here from New York.”

Outside, the breeze ruffled our hair. As Adam had promised, the view was stupendous. The rise on which the Aerie was built dropped precipitously, opening to a view to the valley backed by faraway mountains cloaked with lush green conifers. Two weathered wooden chairs sat on the deck, one of them holding a guitar and a mandolin. Apparently the Duffy brothers were both musicians.

“Sunrises must be breathtaking,” I said.

“Unmatchable,” said Benjamin. He might have been a younger, more cheerful version of his brother, with dark shaggy hair and a gap-toothed smile that made me smile, too.

“It’s busy here,” Mom said.

“We’re glad to see it,” Lucy said.

Benjamin lifted the guitar next to him. “I won’t lie. The income from the sale will come in handy.” He picked out a song that might have been written a century earlier, a tune that tugged at my memory.

Adam joined him on the mandolin, and their voices harmonized. Now I knew it. It was the old gospel tune, “I’ll Fly Away.”

“Talented,” Mom whispered.

I fought the urge to sing along. “Definitely.”

As the music drifted through the house, people nudged their way to the deck to listen. One man tapped a windowsill in time.

The gathering audience seemed to trigger something in Adam. He lifted the guitar from his brother’s hands. “This doesn’t feel right. Not now. Not so soon after Dad died.”

Benjamin’s smile faded abruptly. He turned his head toward the faraway mountains.

Lucy, Benjamin’s wife, watched the interaction with an expression I couldn’t read. A tattoo of a rose with black-green thorns wound up her bare shoulder, its stem tucked somewhere inside the halter of her sundress. Her sleek black hair was coiled into a braided bun. Whatever she was feeling, it wasn’t a surfeit of joy.

Absorbed by the view, Mom seemed oblivious to the interaction I’d just witnessed between Adam and Benjamin. What was on her mind? She stepped forward to grasp the railing, but Benjamin quickly blocked her with an arm. “Watch that. I wouldn’t trust the handrail. The house needs a lot of work.” He pulled at the railing to show its wobble. “It’s top of the list of repairs.”

Mom backed off and joined me. A hawk circled above the house, riding a current of warm air. “It’s so nice to be home,” Benjamin said. “I’d forgotten how beautiful it is here.” He slipped an arm around his wife’s shoulders. “We’re both looking forward to settling in.”

Lucy flashed a dim smile. “I’m going into the house for a glass of water. It’s hot out here.”

We followed Lucy inside and joined the dozen or so people wandering the estate sale.

Our first stop was upstairs, the bedrooms. In what must have been the reverend’s room, at the back of the house with the view, was a couple opening a colonial-style dresser’s drawers and measuring its length. Folded linens were stacked on the bed, and the open closet showed frayed plaid shirts. Despite the light and open view, the room felt oppressive. I imagined the reverend’s last weeks in bed. A bell still rested on the nightstand. Had he rung that bell for Adam to bring him lunch, his pills, take him to the bathroom?

“Let’s move on,” I suggested to Mom. Maybe the rest of the house would be more cheerful.

From the hall rose a staircase to the third floor, but it was roped off, and a door on the landing above closed it off from the rest of the house. Books upstairs called to me. I sensed romance and mystery novels, long unread and lonely.

“Mother’s suite,” Adam said. I hadn’t known he was behind us. “Dad wanted it kept as it was when she died. Maybe we’ll open it up now. It’s been a long time.”

We retraced our steps downstairs. On the ground floor, to the left of the entryway, was what must have been Reverend Duffy’s office. A heavy mahogany desk with lions’ heads carved on its legs loomed like a battleship in the room’s center. It was bare, but for a green glass-shaded lamp. But what attracted my attention were the crates, already tagged SOLD, stacked against the opposite wall. Before I entered the room I’d felt their energy. Here were books, scores of them, and they chilled my blood. The books hissed and grumbled, chanting warnings and whispering hellfire. Whoever the reverend was, whatever he’d become, I didn’t like it. I backed out of the room.

Mom grabbed my hand. “Honey, let’s get out of here.”

I was the more powerful witch, but Mom had the gift of foresight, which, due to her reluctance to embrace magic, rarely showed itself. Apparently it showed itself now.

“We haven’t even seen the kitchen,” I said.

“Seriously, let’s leave.”

We waved our goodbyes, and from the dining room, Benjamin returned a wave. Lucy and Adam had disappeared. Mom grabbed my arm and hustled me into the summer afternoon.

Back in the car, I turned to her. “You felt it, too?”

She settled into the passenger seat and stared straight ahead through the windshield. “I don’t know what I feel anymore.”

I started the car and eased down the steep driveway, more to get air circulating through its open windows than to return home. I didn’t have air conditioning. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, honey.”

“You felt that bad vibe from the house, too, didn’t you?” Now we were on the narrow road that led from Marlin Hill, and the afternoon’s stuffiness dissipated.

“Josie, I need to tell you something.” Mom repositioned her purse on her lap and drew a deep breath. “Your father and I are getting a divorce.”

Divorce? My mother must be joking. “You said what?”

She sat resolute in the passenger seat, lips firmly sealed. I knew that look. She’d told me all she was going to—for the moment, at least.

I had certainly not sensed trouble between my parents. My father, a community college professor, seemed happy researching the breakfast habits of Louis XV or exploring some other obscure corner of French history. When he wasn’t at the college, he was usually parked in an armchair in his cluttered office with half-empty coffee cups and stacks of papers around him. The term “absent-minded professor” might have been coined for him. That said, he was a kindhearted man, and he would do anything to help his daughters—if he lifted his nose from a book long enough to notice something was wrong.

My mother ran the house, making sure dinner was on the table, the lawn was mowed, and property taxes were paid. She was also a successful real estate agent known for driving a hard bargain. On the face of it, my parents were as different as gin and milk, but seeing the love in my father’s eyes as he surfaced from his studies when my mother called him to the table, or the tender care Mom took in bleaching ink stains from Dad’s shirts, was proof of their bond.

And now my mother tells me they’re getting a divorce.

When we arrived home at the library, Mom continued to keep silent. We mounted the steps to my rooms on the library’s third floor, an apartment carved from the servants’ quarters from when the library was Thurston Wilfred’s mansion.

“Mom, aren’t you going to say anything? You can’t drop a bombshell like that without telling me more.”

“What, dear?” She plastered a smile on her face.

I could only sigh. I dropped my purse in the living room beneath a gold-framed mirror and froze. The hairs on my neck prickled. In the mirror’s reflection were the trees outside the window opposite, the grandmotherly angles of my worn Victorian sofa, and my mother, with a puzzled expression. There was no me. I was not reflected in the mirror.

“Josie?” Mom said.

My reflection slowly materialized, my expression twice as puzzled as my mother’s. What had I just seen—or not seen?

“Josie,” Mom repeated. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” This was not the first time something eerie like this had happened in recent months, but I didn’t want to alarm Mom. After all, these occurrences, strange as they were, had been harmless. I drew a fresh breath. “Lyndon should have set up the bed for you by now. Are you sure you want to sleep way, way over in the tower room? I can sleep on the couch, and you take my bed.”

Down the hall from my apartment was the door leading to a semi-sheltered room formed by the Italianate tower rising from the Victorian mansion’s face. The door was propped open now, and I led my mother toward it. Sure enough, a twin bed was set up in the corner, and Lyndon, the library’s caretaker, had even been thoughtful enough to bring in a side table and lamp. The floor was neatly swept.

“It will be perfect,” Mom said. “I don’t want you sleeping on the couch while I’m here, and besides, I need space of my own to think.”

My cat, Rodney, swaggered in and jumped on the bed, making himself at home on my mother’s pillow. My gaze shot to Mom, but she didn’t even seem to notice. She wandered to the open windows and stared into the distance while the firs swished in the breeze.

She turned to me. “I have no purpose anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

Rodney, a circle of black fur on Mom’s white pillow, raised his head.

“You girls are grown up now. Toni has a family, and her medical practice is doing well. You seem to have found a good place for yourself.” She laid a hand on my shoulder. “You look good, Josie. Happy. I can’t wait to meet Sam.”

I might have glowed just a bit more. We had plans to join Sam at the café that evening. “He wants to meet you, too.”

“Even Jean is a success.”

We’d all been worried about my baby sister, Jean. She had a talent for getting herself into pickles, but she’d established herself as a wellness coach and had enough clients that she could rent both an office and an apartment with an actual bedroom. She was even talking of holding a yoga retreat in Costa Rica.

“What does that have to do with you and Dad?” I asked.

Mom sat on the bed, and Rodney left his cozy perch on her pillow to pad to her lap. Mom absently dropped a palm to his back. “I don’t think your father even notices I’m alive.”

“Mom!”

“I’m serious. I wouldn’t be surprised if he hasn’t figured out yet that I’m not home. He probably thinks I’m in the den watching TV.”

I sat next to her on the bed. “That’s crazy talk. Dad loves you. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“All he cares about is his work. As long as he has clean underwear and breakfast, he’s happy. And I’m not even sure he’d miss those as long as he had a stack of eighteenth-century Breton birth records to annotate.”

“That can’t be true,” I said. “He loves you.”

“He might love me in his own way, but he lives for his work. I might as well not be there.” She fidgeted with the sheet’s edge. “A few weeks ago I told him I was off to visit your sister and he’d need to get his own dinner. He just grunted. So I told him I would be square-dancing with goats all night long. Thought I’d see if he was paying attention. What did he do?”

“What?” I said, although I suspected I knew.

“Nothing. He grunted again. Then I mentioned the goats were under the care of Charlemagne. That got his attention.”

“What did he do then?”

“He said something in French. I didn’t bother replying, even if I could.”

I got it. Dad could translate old French documents, but he had a horrible accent when speaking. The one time we’d made a family trip to Paris, Dad had somehow accidentally convinced the tour guide I was vegan. I never ate so much leek soup in my life.

The cross breeze through the tower’s windows rippled the linen tablecloths strung up as makeshift curtains. Rodney moved so he could sit in Mom’s lap and rest his head in mine.

“Your father doesn’t understand me. Worse, I don’t think he cares.”

This couldn’t be true. Dad might have taken her for granted, b. . .