Death, Snow, and Mistletoe

Despite all the changes, the paper would be delivered on time, tomorrow morning. We celebrated with cups of coffee, mine liberally doctored with artificial cream and sugar to kill the bitter taste.

Our conversation turned, rather naturally, to Oretta's tragic death. “If only she hadn't gone back inside,” Cas- sie said. “I wonder why she did.”

“I've been wondering the same thing,” I said. “I can't help thinking she might have gone in to rescue her manuscripts-that's what I'd worry about if my house caught fire.”

Cassie nodded in agreement. “Me, too. Even though I always leave backup copies of my computer disks at my neighbor's house.”

This was my perfect opportunity to ask Cassie about her book, Moon Goddess. At first, she was reticent about discussing it. “You'd keep it quiet, too,” she said, “if you were a practicing wiccan, living in a small, religiously conservative town.”

“Wiccan is another word for witch, isn't it?” I said.

From her pained expression, I realized I'd just displayed my ignorance of New Age neopaganism.

“I don't like that word,” Cassie said. “It reeks of satanism, and that's not what we're about. We worship the Goddess, not the devil.”

“Which goddess?” I asked.

“The Goddess, Tori. For crying out loud, I can't explain it in a few minutes.” She reached into the bottom drawer of her desk and pulled out a book. “I was going to give it to you for Christmas,” she said. “It'll tell you everything you want to know.”

I opened it to the title page and saw she'd autographed it. “Thank you, Cassie. I really appreciate this.”

Suddenly, I recalled a couple of lines from Oretta's Christmas pageant. “Hail to the Goddess. Hail to the wyccan.”

“Was Oretta Clopper a witch-I mean one of you?”

Cassie shook her head. “She looked into it once, but didn't stay. I think she was afraid of being sky clad.”

“Sky clad?”

“Nude. Naked. Bare.”

“Well, do you? Do it… sky clad?”

“No way. Most of us are middle-aged or older. I know I've reached a point where I look a lot better with clothes on than I do with them off.”

Oretta in a black leotard had been grotesque enough. No wonder she hadn't wanted to run around in the buff.

“What about the others in the pageant?” I asked. “Bernice and Weezie?”

“Bernice was a member of our coven,” Cassie admitted. “In fact, she was recently elected high priestess. But Weezie? That would never happen. It was a stretch for her to even participate in something at Trinity. She belongs to a very fundamental church.”

Bernice's death threat, which I had blown off as being harmless, now took on a new dimension. The anonymous writer had begun by calling Bernice which one, a phrase I now realized might have meant number one witch. The author had misspelled San Antonio, so why not the word witch?

“Could someone have wanted Bernice dead because of her involvement with your coven?” I asked Cassie. “Maybe you're in danger from a religious fanatic.”

She gasped, then frowned. “I hope not. I really hope not. But I have been worried lately. There have been signs… like someone leaving a broom on the doorstep every night… that indicate someone's out to get me.”

I glanced over at the corner where the two brooms I'd found on the stoop still stood. “What about the brooms?” I asked.

“There's a superstition that a witch can't step across a broomstick to get into a building. Whoever laid the brooms on our top step must have believed that.”

“Who else is in your coven?” I asked. “Do you know if anyone else has had a similar experience?”

“Not that I've heard,” Cassie said. “And I'm not giving you any names, Tori. Even wiccans have a right to privacy.”

“I wasn't being nosy,” I protested.

“Of course not,” Cassie said, turning back to her desk.

Our discussion was apparently over. To take my mind off my missing cat, I turned to the pile of letters in my IN box to determine which ones I would include in the next issue of the Chronicle. I couldn't help giggling over the first, a tirade at a supposed government conspiracy to put the farmers out of business by seeding the clouds to stop rainfall. The second was full of Bible quotes and dire warnings about the dangers of a nuclear attack in our own backyard: “us'uns being so close to old Fort Ritchie's secret bunker and all.”

The third letter, handwritten and mailed the day before Bernice died, spoke vehemently against the borough's plans to construct a mall in downtown Lickin Creek. The author claimed Bernice's gift of her cold-storage building to the borough was self-serving, since she owned much of the adjoining commercial land and would profit tremendously from the mall. The last line caught my eye; in it the writer described the project as a poor man's “San Antoinio River Walk.” It was the same misspelling of San Antonio that I'd seen in Bernice's anonymous threatening letter. Only this one wasn't anonymous. It was signed by Weezie Clopper.

CHAPTER 13

Please bring me a figgy pudding

CASSIE AND I WORKED QUIETLY AT OUR DESKS for another half hour or so. I would have liked to explain that my curiosity about whether members of the coven had been threatened came not from nosiness but from a concern that she and her friends might also be in danger. Tomorrow-I thought-tomorrow I'll smooth things out with her. Surely she'd understand.

A messenger arrived with the pictures, and I was pleased to see that several had actually turned out good enough to use.

“Either I'm getting used to the camera, or it's getting used to me,” I said, hoping to provoke a smile from Cas- sie. It didn't work.

“I'm off for the print shop,” Cassie said. “Don't forget the staff Christmas party tomorrow.”

“Staff party? We have a staff?”

“Who do you think delivers the papers? And sells the advertising?”

I waited a few minutes until I heard Cassie's truck pull out of the parking lot, then I picked up the phone and called my friend Maggie Roy, Lickin Creek's head librarian.

“Have you had lunch?” I asked.

“Nope. I was just sitting here hoping someone would call and invite me out.”

“I'll be there in five minutes.”

I “outed the lights” as I've learned to say, gathered up my fanny pack and a notebook, and left the building. Maggie can usually tell me what I need to know, and her answers don't necessarily come from the reference section.

Downtown was coming to life. A few merchants were taking advantage of the day's unusually warm December weather and had set up sale tables in front of the stores. Christmas decorations brightened the shop windows, and carols rang out from loudspeakers. Hundreds of tiny white lights sparkled in the bare branches of the trees on the square.

The living creche had been cleaned up, and Cletus Wilson's Civil War artifacts were gone. If I didn't know that there was a fountain, mermaid and all, in the center of the square, I could almost believe the manger had always been there, so well made was it.

A cow, a sheep, a Vietnamese potbellied pig, and a grumpy-looking llama stood watch over the baby Jesus. A