Chapter Thirteen

Thirteen

The call with Linda left Sherry feeling strangely drained of energy. She knew that she should do what she'd set out to do and call Caroline. Instead, she pulled the yew branch out of her coat pocket and turned it around in her hands. It didn't have the same air of menace in the warm light of her living room. Still, there was something about it.

She got the salt and poured a circle, like Lord Thomas had made her do the last time. Then she looked around for her cat. There was no sign of him. Of course there wasn't. He was a cat, and she wanted to find him, so obviously he was nowhere to be found. "Lord Thomas?" she said aloud, feeling, as ever, self-conscious over the fact that she was speaking to her cat. "Lord Thomas Cromwell?"

A moment later a little orange head pushed itself out from under the sofa. "May I be of some assistance, Mistress Pinkwhistle?"

She smiled. She couldn't help it. "What were you doing under the sofa, Lord Thomas?"

"I was at my repose," the cat said with enormous dignity. "And I cannot cross your circle. You must lift me inside."

She picked him up, avoiding eye contact—she felt suddenly, strangely aware of the fact that her cat wasn't wearing pants— and set him quickly down again inside the circle of salt. He sat on his little haunches, his tail neatly curled around his front toes, and looked up at her. "You have need of me?"

"Y- es ," she said, though she felt uncertain now. "I was just wondering about this." She gestured vaguely with her yew branch, feeling sillier than ever. "I was wondering—I don't know. I think that maybe it has resonances ? But I don't know what's supposed to happen next."

"You may not know," the cat said. "But your hands are sure even as your mind is uncertain."

"My hands?" Sherry asked, and looked down at the appendages in question. They looked normal. It took her a second to realize what he meant: she'd been fiddling with the branch, nervously stripping off the twigs and needles to turn it into a stick. "I don't get it," she said. "I'm just…fidgeting."

"You are crafting something," the cat said. "You know that you are."

"I don't know about that," Sherry said, but looked again at the stick. It looked like a stick. Or like— "Can you stop a demon by driving a stake through its heart?"

The cat tilted its head to the side. " Can you?"

"That's what I'm asking ," said Sherry, with a small flare of temper. "I don't know how it works, I'm not Van Helsing . Can you just answer the question?"

Lord Thomas remained annoyingly unruffled. His fur lay smooth across his back. "I asked you a question in return. You spoke of the demon's heart . She is a heartless creature. To have a heart she must take human shape. When she takes a shape, she takes that of a mortal. She rides a mortal body like a hunter spurring on his horse. Here, she will pick someone she finds at hand to ride. One of the people of your little village. Can you look one you know in the eye and drive a stake of yew into their beating heart, Mistress Pinkwhistle?"

Sherry swallowed. Then she shook her head. "No," she said, but even as she said it, she felt her hand tightening around the stick. No. No, of course not. But— "Maybe," she said. "Maybe. If I had to."

"Very well," the cat said. "If you had to. If your need was great enough. If your conviction was strong enough. If you looked your friend in the eye and drove the stake home with the intent of banishing her back to her cold home—then yes. I think that she might accept this as a killing blow, and leave you, at least for a time. She is a gameswoman and a lover of tales. She does not attend to any human law, but certain rules and rituals are older than even she. But you must enter into the spirit of what you plan to do. You must act without detachment, without doubt or irony. There can be no hesitation in your hand."

Sherry nodded. She had already entered into the spirit of the thing, she thought. Her ability to be flip and ironic felt as if it had long since run out. "If I craft it," she said, "with intent. If I sharpen it alone and quietly, and rub it with some sort of sacred oil and—" She swallowed again. "Should I pray?"

The cat's eyes gleamed. It didn't look stupid at all. "Yes, Mistress Pinkwhistle. You should most certainly pray. To whatever god will have you, you should pray."

Sherry nodded. She thought, Enter into the spirit of it. Then she bowed. "Thank you, sir, for your counsel."

He inclined his head. "You are most welcome, mistress."

Sherry went to bed and had strange dreams. She dreamed that she was waiting in a stand of huge white trees, in the middle of a circle of hooded figures whom she knew were druids . Beside her was a masked figure tied to a stone altar. One of the druids handed her a wooden dagger. "Strike true," he said.

"I don't think I can," Sherry told him.

"You must," the druid said, "or she will eat your heart."

She was in a ballroom then, wearing a velvet gown. Someone tapped her on the shoulder. She turned. It was a man in a black cap, with a beaked nose and dark, sad eyes.

"You're Thomas More," she said.

"Pray," he said. His breath was horrible. "Pray to whatever god will have you."

She woke up with a jolt and checked the time. Just after four. She stayed awake, not moving, her eyes on the window, waiting for the dawn. At about five there was the thump of her cat jumping onto her bed. She scratched his ears and let him push his little head into her palm. "You were right," she said, "about his halitosis."

Lord Cromwell purred smugly. Sherry closed her eyes and tried to pray.

An hour later Sherry woke up with the sense that she had just gone on a very, very long walk and was still tired from the journey. She knew that she ought to call Caroline, or work on what she'd started to think of as her yew dagger. Instead she made excuses to herself about how it was too early for a potentially emotional conversation or for any kind of ancient ritual magic. Then she gulped down some coffee before pouring the rest into a thermos, tromping her way down into town, and letting herself into the library an hour before it would usually open. It had occurred to her over the past few days that there were more things about Alan that she didn't know than she had realized. Maybe the records in the library would be able to fill in the gaps.

The Winesap Library, though small, was an absolute treasure trove when it came to any sort of local history. Every issue of the Herald , its predecessors, and every other publication and periodical that optimistic locals had launched before their inevitable folding a few months later had been duly collected, cataloged, and stored on microfiche. Still, trying to dig up some theoretical scrap of information that might possibly be relevant in some way to a current murder case would take some time, particularly when there was no guarantee that there would be anything at all to find.

Sherry tried to be methodical about it. She remembered that Alan had had a fifth-anniversary sale at the shop the previous autumn, which meant that the grand opening would have been in September or October—she couldn't remember which—five years earlier. A new shop opening up in the village was exactly the sort of thing that their tiny local press corps covered in lavish detail. She pulled all the issues of the Herald from the relevant time frame, plus the ill-fated regional alternative weekly based in Albany that had been in print at the time and then folded not long after Sherry had moved to town. She went straight to the Life and Style section in each paper, working under the assumption that the opening of an antiques shop would be there and not under Business.

She'd skimmed her way through a month's worth of papers when she found it. It was a nice long article, with a picture of a smiling Alan in front of his shop, and the excessively alliterative headline, local lawyer launches lifelong dream shop . It included all the bits that Sherry had expected: Alan's years of drawing up wills and doing other essential legal work as the only lawyer in little Winesap, and his childhood interest in antiques spurred on by a grandfather who was an ardent collector of Revolutionary War artifacts. Then, something that startled her: "After leaving his first legal job as a public defender in Schenectady…"

Sherry frowned. She'd known that Alan had grown up in Schenectady and gotten his degree from Albany Law before he'd moved down to the city for a few years to work in some sort of financial law, but he'd never once mentioned having been a public defender. That immediately struck her as something that might matter. People tended to talk about their first jobs, especially if it was something as inherently worth talking about as defending people who'd been accused of crimes. If anything, it would have come up while Sherry was talking to him about her cases. She felt her face go slightly warm. He must have known things that she didn't, and he never said. She must have sounded like an absolute idiot sometimes. She couldn't help but feel embarrassed, despite the fact that he was gone now and no one else would ever know. "Sorry, Alan," she said aloud.

Once she was over her embarrassment, she could focus on this new twist in the case. This, finally, might be a fruitful direction for her investigation. There were probably few occupations that were richer soil for making dangerous enemies than criminal defense attorney. He could have gotten someone off after they'd sinned against someone with a violent temper and a long memory. More likely, she thought, given the time frame, was someone Alan had failed to get off blaming him for the many years that they'd spent locked up. That would fit perfectly well: Alan's former client tracking him down after his release and appearing unexpectedly at his home. Alan, wanting to be kind or perhaps truly feeling some sense of guilt or responsibility, had invited him in and made him tea; possibly because the man—in Sherry's imagination this person was certainly a man—had been drunk, or because Alan knew that his former client was supposed to be on the wagon. Maybe the former client had been agitated: maybe he'd demanded an apology for a perceived wrong or asked Alan for money or a place to stay. Maybe they'd argued, or Alan had gently refused his request. Then a terrible, stupid, impulsive moment: a flash of rage, grabbing the lamp, bringing it down onto the back of Alan's head.

It fit. It fit perfectly. It also presented a problem. Alan had been a defense attorney decades ago, and he wasn't around to ask about which of his former clients might have a grudge against him. She was, unfortunately, going to have to do some actual detective work, so far as she was capable of such a thing. Lately she'd grown skeptical of her own abilities in that quarter. If a murder wasn't really a murder if the devil made you do it, surely the same principle held true for a murder investigation.

She pulled out her notebook then, and drew a small chart to organize her thoughts.

SUSPECT

SUSPICION LEVEL

METHOD OF INVESTIGATION

Alice

Low. No clear motive; second-to-last to see Alan alive.

Probably cleared. Could not have walked to Alan's house and back in time. Check to see if any strangers with cars in town? Could have had co-conspirator? (Unlikely)

Blonde woman (possibly Alan's ex-wife) seen with him in diner on day of death

Moderate. Spouse/ex-spouse always a suspect; saw Alan on afternoon of death. Financial motive?

Find Susan to confirm/deny it was her he met. Ask alibi for time of murder. Find Alan's will?

Antiques dealer

Low. No clear motive. Fraud? Interacted with Alan on day of death.

Get number from Alice, call to confirm alibi.

Possible aggrieved former client/victim of former client

Low/high. Such person may not exist. If exists, most likely suspect.

Check Schenectady papers for articles re: Alan. Talk to ex-wife? (How?) Contact former colleagues? Might have to drive to Schtdy: ask Janine to borrow car.

Me

Low/high. Low: I know that I didn't do it. High: was last person to see Alan alive. Probably police's #1 suspect. Might have done it while possessed by demon.

Find whoever actually did it.

Sherry stared at what she'd written for a while, feeling a headache start to build behind her eyes. Then she sighed, put away everything that she'd pulled, and went to the front desk to call Alice.

The phone rang for a long time before Alice picked up. When she did, she sounded groggy, as if she'd been asleep. Not unreasonable, since it was still only about eight thirty. Sherry pretended not to notice. "Good morning! Did you get a chance to find one of Mr. Kaminski's business cards?"

"Huh?" Alice said.

"That antiques dealer," Sherry said, with what she thought was very admirable patience. "The one you said spoke to Alan the other day. Mike Kaminski. You said that you'd get me one of his business cards."

"Oh," Alice said after a pause. "Right. Uh, hold on." There was the sound of the telephone clattering down onto a hard surface, then another, longer pause. Eventually Alice spoke again. "I found it. Do you have a pen?"

"Yes," Sherry said, and Alice read off the number. Sherry wrote it down, thanked her, and hung up. Then she immediately picked up the receiver again to make another call.

This time it was picked up almost immediately. "Hello?"

"Mr. Kaminski? This is Sherry Pinkwhistle," Sherry said. "I'm with the sheriff's office up in Winesap. I'm calling about Alan Thompson." In her experience, it was best to load a whole stream of very crisp, professional-sounding words at the front end of a conversation, to lull your interlocutor into the mental state of a person on an airplane being told what to do by the flight attendant.

"Oh, I heard about his having been killed," said the man who presumably was Mr. Kaminski. "Awful to hear, he was a great guy. So how can I help you?"

"I just had a few questions," she said. "Did you notice anything off about him when you spoke with him the other day? Anything he said, or anything unusual about his behavior?"

"Yeah," Mr. Kaminski said immediately. "He was definitely off."

Sherry blinked. She hadn't expected that. "He was? In what way?"

"He was worried about the shop," Mr. Kaminski said. "Stressed about the finances. Said he was glad I'd come by because he couldn't guarantee that it would be around in a few months, between how the books looked and his ex wanting to talk to him."

Sherry was glad she wasn't talking to him face-to-face: there was no way for him to see her expression. What were you up to, Alan? Why didn't you tell me that you were worried about the shop? "He said that his ex wanted to see him? Did he mention why?"

"Said he didn't know. Thought she probably wanted to ask for money, though."

"I see," Sherry said, and furiously underlined Find Susan in her chart. It had definitely been her, then: now the question was what she wanted, and whether or not she had an alibi. "Thank you, that's very helpful. And I apologize for asking, but where were you between ten and midnight Saturday night? Just so that we can eliminate you from our investigation." She was proud of herself for getting that line out so smoothly: she'd learned it from TV and thought it sounded very convincing.

"Club Sixty-Three," Mr. Kaminski said. "It's a cigar lounge on the Upper East Side. I have three friends I meet there every Saturday night. I took a cab home after. Will you need the receipts? Or numbers for the guys I was with?"

"That probably won't be necessary," Sherry said. He'd started out as her weakest suspect, and nothing that he'd said had moved him even slightly farther up her list. "Thank you for your time, Mr. Kaminski. I'll call back if there's anything else."

"No problem," Mr. Kaminski said. "I hope you catch the guy."

"Me, too," Sherry said, with feeling. Then she said goodbye, hung up, and made some changes to her chart with a different pen.

SUSPECT

SUSPICION LEVEL

METHOD OF INVESTIGATION

Alice

Low. Moderate. No clear motive; second-last to see Alan alive.

Account of Alan's mood day of death conflicts with Kaminski.

Probably cleared. Could not have walked to Alan's house and back in time. Check to see if any strangers with cars in town? Could have had co-conspirator? (Unlikely)

Blonde woman (possibly Alan's ex-wife) seen with him in diner on day of death Susan, Alan's ex-wife

Moderate. Spouse/ex-spouse always a suspect: saw Alan on afternoon of death. Financial motive? Kaminski thinks ex-wife may have wanted money.

Find Susan to confirm/deny it was her he met. Ask alibi for time of murder. Find Alan's will?

Antiques dealer Mike Kaminski

Low. No clear motive. Fraud? Interacted with Alan on day of death.

Get number from Alice, call to confirm alibi. Probably cleared. Offered evidence was in city. Check back if other leads fall through.

She looked over her chart for a moment, feeling a bit tired and overwhelmed. There still wasn't very much to go on. What was there, unfortunately, seemed to be pointing her toward a drive to Schenectady followed by several hours in a basement somewhere digging through newspaper archives. She sighed. Then she closed her notebook and marched off to find Janine.

Sherry knew Janine's schedule well enough to know that she would be home when she dropped by. It only occurred to her after she knocked that Janine might not appreciate Sherry suddenly appearing on her front porch without any forewarning. She wasn't sure where her mind was at the moment. It was as if she was doing things without planning on it, the way Charlotte had described finding herself suddenly at the library without remembering having decided to go there. The skin on the back of her neck felt frostbitten despite her thick woolly scarf. Maybe she was just distracted and overwhelmed. Maybe she was being puppeteered .

The door opened, and Janine's expression indicated very clearly that Sherry's presence was a less than completely welcome surprise. "Sherry? Is something wrong? I was just getting some paperwork done." She ushered Sherry inside, anyway, and closed the door behind her to keep the cold wind out.

"Sorry," Sherry said quickly. "I know I should have called. I don't know what I was thinking. But something's come up, and I was wondering if I could borrow your car for a few hours."

Janine crinkled her nose at her, then quickly uncrinkled it. Nose crinkling probably wasn't the sort of neutral-but-supportive expression that Janine was supposed to make in her professional life, but people could be forgiven for slips made while off duty. Sherry was frequently guilty, in her personal life, of dog-earing paperbacks. "It's pretty last-minute, Sherry," she said finally. "I was hoping to run some errands this afternoon."

"I'm sorry," Sherry said. "It's just that I think I might finally have a lead in the case." This was a gamble: Janine had been fairly negative in their meeting the other day, but historically she'd found it difficult to resist discussing Sherry's cases when the opportunity came up.

"Oh?" Janine said, her eyes lighting up very slightly. Then she went pinched again. "Do you need to drive to meet a warlock?"

"No," Sherry said. "I need to drive to Schenectady."

Janine raised her eyebrows. "Schenectady? Why?"

Sherry explained. Janine, finally, looked interested. "That does sound like it would make sense," she said. "Psychologically, I mean. Not that there is a former client out for revenge. But if there was one…"

"It would fit," Sherry said. "I agree. Alan letting him in and everything."

Janine hesitated. "Do you think you could have the car back by five?"

"Definitely," Sherry said immediately. "Can I pick anything up for you on the way back? You said you had errands to run."

"Could you?" Janine asked. She looked relieved now. "That would be great, if you could. Just my groceries. The list is on the fridge, I'll just—" She darted off. Sherry waited patiently. Janine was the sort of person who liked you to take your shoes off before you ventured farther into her house than the foyer, and at the moment Sherry didn't feel like bothering with that. Janine was back quickly enough, anyway, with the car keys and a neatly written shopping list in hand. "Thanks, Sherry," she said, having apparently forgotten that it was Sherry who'd shown up on her doorstep to ask for a favor in the first place. "I'm really swamped; I was dreading having to go to the store."

"Thank you ," Sherry said, feeling much more magnanimous than she deserved to be. "I'll fill up the tank before I bring the car back." Then she hurried off before Janine had a chance to change her mind.

She took a moment to sit in the car before she started to drive. This happened every time now: the wave of anxiety, her heart beating faster. She took a deep breath and flicked on the radio. Janine had it tuned to NPR. Sherry let the droning voices wash over her without paying attention to the words. Then she started the car and very slowly and carefully backed out of Janine's driveway. She tried to ignore the quiet chattering voice in her head reminding her of the last time she'd gone on a long drive, the rain beating against her windshield and the sudden jolt of impact. She'd been cocky and sure of herself back then, but it had been easy to feel that way around Caroline. The woman had always known how to spin up a kind of gleaming magic around herself, and Sherry was exactly the sort of very small, dull, ordinary person who headed right for that gleam like a moth slamming into a screen door.

It wasn't the right time to think about Caroline, and the things that Sherry was almost certain that she'd helped Caroline do.

She just drove for a while, slowly and carefully enough that she annoyed a few people who got stuck behind her and ended up huffily passing her on the narrow country road. She couldn't stop thinking about the chance that she could get into an accident. That had happened on that night with Caroline. Only a fender bender, really, but it had been a nasty shock: someone rolling through a stop sign and not seeing Sherry's car through the rain. Sherry had wanted to wait for the police, but Caroline had insisted that they had to go, that she had a plane to catch, that she couldn't miss it, that she wouldn't be safe if she had to wait any longer. Sherry had done what Caroline had wanted.

Sherry was so wrapped up in thinking about Caroline that at first she didn't notice the body in the road.