Next, she took a blue candle and lighting it, turned to the right. “I call upon the element of water to be present and to bless the work to be done. Hail and welcome.” She pushed it into the ground.
Lastly, she took out a green candle and held it up toward the altar. “I call upon the element of earth to be present and to bless the work to be done. Hail and welcome.” She burrowed it deep into the ground.
Anisa could feel the power of her words swirling around her. The clearing was already a magical place.
The invocations that she did here intensified the ancient mystical elements that roamed the woods. She could almost see the magic in the night sky. A faint warm glow emanated around her. The spell would be powerful. She had no doubt that it would work.
From the basket, she took out a small clay bowl and set it on the altar. She took out a small, brown, glass bottle, opened it, and dripped oil into the bowl.
The sweet warm smell of cinnamon wafted up to her nose. She took in a deep breath, reveling in the scent.
She took out another bottle, a plastic one, full of avocado oil, and poured some into the bowl.
After putting the oils back in the basket, she took out her bolline, and two pink candles. With her ritual knife, she carved an ancient symbol into one candle and set it on the altar. She dipped her hands in. As she lifted them from the bowl, oil dribbled down her arms. She picked up the candle and rubbed it between her hands, taking care that the entire candle was anointed. She set it in a holder on the altar between the gold and the silver. She carved another symbol into the other candle, anointed it with oil. She set it beside the other pink candle on the altar.
She smiled evilly as she picked up the Polaroid picture of an aging but still good-looking pudgy man.
She fully submerged the picture into the oil in the bowl. She would kill two birds with one stone, she thought, and have her revenge. Her thoughts were uncharitable and against all that she had learned and lived her life by. But she had had enough. The man needed to be taught a lesson.
She lit the two pink candles. The wind picked up and swirled violently around her, but miraculously did not extinguish the flames. Her magic was strong.
She had seen it do amazing things. This spell, she hoped, would be one of her most effective.
Anisa raised her arms to the heavens, closed her eyes, and bowed her head. “And let it be done.”
Chapter Two
Alexander swore as he spilt his coffee for the Asecond time since being rudely awakened by the ringing phone. It was way too early in the morning for a normal person to be up and about. He signed on for this job because he thought he would never have to wake up before eight again.
It was just his second day in Raven’s Bay, the quaint little town he fell in love with after announcing his intent to transfer out of the city, and he was investigating a dead body, his first as the new sheriff.
Deputy Coleman opened the front door of the Hart estate as Alex stumbled up the cement steps, bleary-eyed and grumbling under his breath. He wiped at the second coffee stain on his khaki pants. Stain resistant, my ass, he thought.
“Jean found Stan in the bathtub.”
Alex stepped through the door and into the large foyer. He handed his coffee to the deputy.
“Who’s Jean?”
“The housekeeper.”
Alex pulled out a pair of latex gloves from the little box he carried in his jacket pocket and put them on.
“Ted, you’re going to have to give me full names on these people. I don’t know who the hell you’re talking about, remember?”
Ted nodded eagerly. “Sorry, Sheriff Branwell, I keep forgetting.”
“It’s okay.” He smiled and patted Ted on the back.
“And just call me Sheriff.”
“Okay.”
Alex looked around the opulent entrance. “Show me who we got.”
“He’s upstairs. We left everything untouched like you said.”
Ted led the way up the lushly carpeted staircase to the second floor. The railing was done in a deep cherry wood. Along the wall up the stairs, the walls were adorned with paintings. The man obviously had a lot of money. Alex assumed by the man’s last name that he was the owner of Hart Realty and Hart Holdings, which in turn owned the hotel and two of the restaurants in town.
Ted stepped into the master bedroom and pointed into the corner where an ornate archway led into the ensuite.
Alex glanced around the bedroom, taking note of every little thing. The king-sized bed with messy blankets on only one side. An end table with a bottle of scotch, one glass and the remote for the 52-inch flat screen TV mounted on the far wall.
“Let me guess, Mr. Hart’s in his forties, never married, and has no current girlfriend.”
Ted looked at him, eyes wide. “How did you know?”
“It takes some time to acquire this kind of wealth, if he’d been married the other side of that bed would be in disarray, if he’d been divorced this would be the ex-wife’s house, if he had a girlfriend, he wouldn’t have been here alone on a Friday night drinking scotch and watching his big-ass TV.”
“Wow, you got all that just from being in this room for two minutes?”
“Yeah, plus I have fifteen years on the job and a bitter ex-wife.”
Ted chuckled but stopped when Alex did not join in. He sheepishly stood aside as Alex walked further into the room and toward the adjoining bathroom.
He surveyed the room as he made his way to the open archway. Stan Hart supposedly drowned in his bathtub. Alex had a hard time believing that. Unless Stan had been very drunk and passed out in the tub while he bathed, it would be a difficult thing for a grown man to drown in that small amount of water.
Not when a person could easily sit up. Now if a person was restrained or pushed down, well…that was a whole other thing altogether.
Alex stepped into the bathroom. He supposed that was the understatement of the year as he gazed around at the opulence of the room. There was a glassed-in shower that could easily fit four or five people. The vanity was along one wall, with two shell-shaped sinks. An open archway to a dressing area led to, by the looks of it, a drive-in closet. And in the corner under a skylight and surrounded by potted plants, was the sunk-in Jacuzzi tub.
Stan Hart still lay in the water, his body bloated, and his face slowly turning gray.
As Alex stepped closer to the tub, he noticed water pooled on the floor. He peered down into the tub.
There was no blood evident. Alex checked the man’s neck. No marks showed on his skin. His wrists were clean of abrasions or ligature marks.
It looked like the man accidentally drowned. If it weren’t for the water splashed onto the floor, Alex might have accepted that.
He went to the vanity and checked the medicine cabinet. There were a few prescription bottles of penicillin and Tylenol 3, but no other drugs. Alex went back into the bedroom. He opened the night table drawer and rummaged through it.
“Do you know if Mr. Hart took drugs?”
Ted furrowed his brow. “Like coc**ne, you mean?”
“Yeah, like coc**ne or he**in or meth.”
“No, sir. Drugs like that aren’t in Raven Bay.”
Alex glanced over at Ted. “Don’t kid yourself, Deputy, drugs like that are everywhere.”
Alex shut the table drawer. Nothing in there, but a paperback novel, Kleenex, and a pack of breathmints.
“Where’s the housekeeper?”
“In the kitchen.”
Alex moved across the room in three strides of his long legs. “Okay, I want the bathroom and the bedroom printed, and every inch of it searched.”
“You don’t think it was an accident?”
“No.” He passed Ted without another glance.
* * * *
The kitchen was big and elaborate, like the rest of the house. Jean, the housekeeper sat at the center island nervously sipping a cup of coffee, tears still rolling down her flabby cheeks. The other deputy, Jill Banks, sat with her, holding her hand.
Both women jumped as he entered the room.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.”
Jill smiled. “That’s okay. Would you like some coffee, Alex?”
“No, I wouldn’t, Deputy Banks, but thank you for asking.”
Jean turned wide eyes toward Alex. She looked him up and down. “You’re the new Sheriff?”
“Yes, ma’am. Now, could you tell me exactly how you came to find Mr. Hart.”
“Well, I came around five, like I always do on Saturday mornings.”
“Was the door locked?”
“Yes.”
“And you have a key?”
“That’s correct.”
Jill cleared her throat and put a firm hand on Jean’s shoulder. “Does she really need to go over this again?
She already told me what happened.”
Alex bristled and straightened his shoulders. The woman knew how to get under his skin, and not in a good way. From the moment they had met yesterday, he knew that she was going to be a thorn in his side, a burr up his butt. She was obviously not pleased of his presence as Sheriff. Maybe she thought the job should have been hers. Who knew, but one thing was certain, he needed to put her in her place and soon if he was going to gain the trust and respect of the townspeople of Raven’s Bay.
“Deputy, go upstairs and get Deputy Coleman to come down, then you can go back to the station.”
Jill stood abruptly, nearly knocking over the stool she was perched on. “Why?”
“Because I asked you to,” Alex stated slowly and firmly.
She looked like she was about to say something, but thought better of it. She pressed her lips together and stomped out of the kitchen.
Alex smiled down at Jean. “Can you continue, Mrs…?”
“Ms. Brown, but you can call me Jean.”
“Okay, Jean, I need to hear the rest.”
“I came into the kitchen, and started the tea. Stan loves his tea in the morning.” She smiled fleetingly, then frowned like she forgot herself. “I sliced his bagel and put it in the toaster oven. I noticed that there was a stain on the tile floor, so I went upstairs to the main bath, where I had left the stain cleaner I always use.”