Charlaine Harris - Crimes by Moonlight

“How’s Richard’s new job?”

“Like his old job, but without the friends. Long hours. Lots of stress.”

“So what’s going on?”

“The boys are seeing a witch.”

There was a pause. The chop chop of my carrots sounded preternaturally loud. Would it be more shocking, or less, if I’d said, “the boys are seeing a psychiatrist”?

“A nice witch?” Karen asked finally.

“Well, they say she’s a mean witch. But I’m a mean mommy half the time, so take that with a grain of salt. I don’t get a bad feeling from her so much as a sad one.”

“So, wait. You see her, too?”

“No, not at all. Ouch.” The serrated knife edge sliced across my finger, leaving in its wake drops of blood. They dripped onto the carrot rounds.

“Aunt Pauline saw ghosts, you know,” Karen said.

“Madeeda’s a witch, not a ghost.”

“The witch has a name?”

“Mmm.” I found a SpongeBob Band-Aid in the junk drawer and ripped it open with my teeth. “What kind of ghosts did Aunt Pauline see?”

“Apparently Grandpa stopped by the night he died. Stood at the foot of her bed in his uniform, told her to take care of Grandma. She saw a few other people on their way out, too. It was sort of her specialty.”

“I didn’t know it worked like that. What about the tunnel and the white light and all the relatives waiting on the other side?” Tooth, crabby about something, started to whine. I pointed with my toe to his dog food bowl, indicating untouched kibble.

“Some people,” Karen said, “apparently need to make a pit stop before hitting the road.”

THE plants were dying. I noticed this the next afternoon as the sun reached the picture window in the living room. My African violets, survivors of a five-day cross-country move, were all failing at the same rate, velvety leaves turning dry and brittle, pink and purple blossoms curling inward at the edges, like the stocking feet of the Wicked Witch of the East. I touched the rock-hard soil. It wasn’t possible. I’d watered them yesterday. I had. I knew I had. And they’d been okay. My mother had given them to me, for luck. “Bloom where you’re planted,” she’d said. I leaned over and whispered encouragement and apology to each of them in turn, my voice cracking. It seemed to me that a faint scent of Shalimar arose from them.

“Mommy’s crying,” Paco told Charlie.

“Mommy’s flowers are sick,” I said, wiping my eyes. “Maybe they don’t like it here. Maybe they want to go back to Pennsylvania.”

Tooth ambled over to me. I expected him to lick my tears but instead, he threw up at my feet.

“Oh, poor doggie-” I held his shoulders, as his body heaved convulsively. When he was still again, I told the boys to stay back, then went to the kitchen for a towel.

“Tooth throw up,” Paco pointed out, as I made my awkward way to my knees to wipe up the viscous substance. The old floorboards were cracked, and I imagined the vomit seeping into it and settling, like rot.

“Madeeda make Tooth throw up,” Charlie added. “Madeeda sick.”

“Madeeda make everything sick.”

I sat back on my heels and looked at my sons. They nodded in unison.

I called the vet, and then I called Richard. The vet got back to me right away.

“YOU’RE not making sense.” It was close to midnight when Richard came through the front door and collapsed into the recliner, still holding his briefcase. “First you tell me Tooth was poisoned, then you say he ate a plastic bag. What’d the vet say?”

I moved aside a toy cell phone and perched on the sofa opposite him. “He barfed up the plastic bag in the car on the way to the vet. So the vet said it was probably the plastic bag, and I could leave him overnight, but I didn’t. I brought him home.” And saved us a couple hundred dollars, I thought, but didn’t say, because Richard would find that irritating, would respond with “Money’s no object,” as if saying it would make it so. And anyway, it hadn’t been about money; Tooth would hate to be away from us.

“He looks okay now.” Richard snapped his fingers, and Tooth shuffled over to him, heavy tail doing a slow wag. “Is there anything to eat, by the way?”

“Beef bourguignon. And yeah, he’s okay at the moment, but…” I looked across the room. The African violets were doing better, too. No, not just better. They looked completely fine. Thriving, in fact. Robust.

“So why are you going on about him being poisoned?”

“I’m not,” I said, unnerved now, staring at the African violets. “The boys are. And they didn’t use the word poison.”

Richard loosened his tie. “What word did they use?”

“ ‘The witch make Toof fwowe up.’ ”

He half smiled. “What witch?”

“Madeeda.”

The smile died. “What?”

I blinked. “Madeeda. That’s her name. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” He bent over to untie his shoes. The hair on top of his head was thinning; how had I never seen this before? “Where’d they come up with that?”

“The name? I have no idea. I’ve asked the neighbors if it sounds like anyone who lives around here, and I’ve Googled her, using different spellings. Among other things, I found a South African soccer player and a dessert recipe from Sudan.”

Richard eased off his shoes. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why are you Googling her?”

“Because… I think, you know… she’s haunting us.”

Richard rubbed his eyes, then opened his briefcase. “I think your next call should be to Dr. Iqbal.”

“Why? I feel fine. The baby feels fine.”

He brought out a folder of papers and closed his briefcase. “Sweetheart, you think a soccer player is poisoning the dog and the plants. You call me at work, expecting me to do something about it. I want Dr. Iqbal to say it’s some hormonal thing. I’d feel better.”

And I hadn’t even told him about the cracked kitchen window. “You can’t be that worried,” I said. “You never returned my call.”

“It was a bad day. Big meetings. If you’d said it was an emergency, Jillian would’ve put you through.”

“The meetings just now finished, at eleven p.m.?” I hated the edge in my voice.

“I’m sorry, I should’ve called.” He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, briefcase and papers still on his lap. “We’re on a triage system at the office. Life-and-death matters get handled. Everything else waits, and…” There was a pause. Was he asleep?

“Wake up!” I screamed. “This is a life-and-death matter.”

Richard’s eyes flew open, and he looked as shocked as I felt. This wasn’t me. I wasn’t a screamer. I was a happy camper, a team player. And why was I screaming, anyway? Tooth was better. My African violets were positively hearty. I made my voice calm. “Do you want dinner?”

“Uh-” He was at a loss now, not knowing which comment to respond to.

I sighed. “Okay, never mind all that. What’s with work? Why was it a bad day?”

He closed his eyes again. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I don’t care if you want to talk about it. I want to know.”

“I don’t want to worry you.”

“Well, there’s a wrong answer. Now you have to tell me.”

He shook his head.

“Richard,” I said. “Don’t make me come over there and sit on you. I’ve been tiptoeing around this for days, around you, and I’m not in the mood anymore.”

With an agonized squeak, the recliner flattened out, moving my husband backward until his feet dangled off the floor. He looked like he was waiting for a root canal. Just as I was about to yell again, his eyes opened and contemplated the water-stained ceiling. “A few weeks ago I was working on an account. I had a question about the California tax code, so I looked at the books of another account, just as a reference. A big client. Somdahl’s biggest.”