And they hadn't held a festival last year, or the year before. This summer had been the first. Damn.
She raised her eyes from calico ears. "I thought you saw her body."
Daniel shrugged. "I saw a body, in a security monitor, view from twenty-thirty feet." Remembered pain twisted his face. "I wasn't in any condition to step outside and check closer. When we compared notes, the time and place were right for her, just by the corner of Tom Pratt's carriage house and the fire well underway. You'd both heard shots, full-auto rifle. Kate said it was an AK. And what I saw wasn't likely to be getting up and walking away. Face down, exit wound took the back of the skull right off. Messy enough to show even at that distance."
"Ugh. You never mentioned that before."
"Didn't think it would help any."
And the DA's forensics team had found blood there, a lot of blood, fragments of skull, brain tissue, DNA tied matches from Kate's trailer, and that ancient Browning automatic that Jackie had stolen. Ballistics match to the bullets from Kate's shoulder and hip, Alice's back. Shell casings back on the gazebo trail had matched, too. But no body. Pieces of a puzzle, forming a picture Alice didn't like.
She gave up on trying to find a comfortable position, gathered Atropos in her arms, and stood up. She paced over to the window and stared out, thinking. The view didn't improve her mood — that damned white Ford Explorer was back, under gray skies that threatened rain.
As soon as she noticed the car, it rolled off, slow and insolent, leaving a sense of cold menace behind. Third or fourth time she'd seen it, and it always rolled away before she could walk up to it and ask what the hell was going on. And mud blurred the license plate, so she couldn't ask Kate to run the tag. Kate . . .
Alice sighed. "I don't think it'd be a good idea if you told Kate about this. It's too easy for a drunk to toss disconnected memories all together in one stew. I've seen 'em in the ER, twitching with the DTs and claiming a fresh broken arm was a war-wound from the Tet Offensive. Vietnam. We don't know, and she's just starting to recover."
"Me talk to Kate? Not likely." He glanced at the floor under their feet, as if looking through into the cellar. "Ben and I usually avoid coming within a mile of that woman. She's nowhere near as dumb as she looks, and she's known both of us as long as you have."
As if on cue, the stereo hiccuped with a loud snap and the lights flickered for a moment. Muted curses rose up from under their feet. Then something large thumped the floor. Kate's voice came up, muffled: "You still got lights up there?"
"Yep."
"Okay. I'll try to keep it that way." The rest of what she said dropped off to a private mumble, of which Alice only caught ". . . cantankerous old bitch . . ."
Alice didn't think her lover was talking about a female dog. Daniel had jumped up at the sound and now looked rather nervous. Alice had to smile — even Morgans got trapped by "out of sight, out of mind" on occasion.
He'd known Kate was working in the cellar, known she wouldn't come out until Alice was through talking with her "client" and sounded the all-clear. Kate might suspect a great number of things, but she could go miles out of her way to avoid knowing them and having to put on her cop hat.
At least where Alice and the Morgan girls and witching were concerned.
Daniel shifted nervously from one foot to the other almost like a small boy who needed to pee. "I think I'd better be going. When do you want Caroline to see that corpse?"
"As soon as possible." She glanced at her watch and shook her head. Too late for today. "Tomorrow morning, first thing. She'll get in touch with Ben and meet you in town. I showed her your message. She already knows what's going on."
"Ummm. That message was private, 'Eyes only' stuff."
"These days, Caroline is my eyes. Just like with Gary, you've got to learn to trust the kids. You, me, Lainie, Maria, we've spent years winding them up. Now we have to turn them loose and let them run."
He didn't look satisfied. He did look like he wanted out, wanted to put that measured mile between him and Kate.
She opened the door for him, parlor to kitchen, giving the house word that she was through with this man and he could leave. Peggy and Ellen Morgan looked up from the kitchen table and their chaos of basket materials.
Cute kids, Peggy still thin and neuter at eight, Ellen a precocious thirteen with curves that were starting to get dangerous. They looked about as different as two girls could and still be obvious sisters — Ellen with dark blonde hair and olive skin, Peggy with hair nearly Indian black and pale freckled face. Mixed Welsh and Native and Italian genes could do that sort of thing.
Lainie had started them on basketwork; it looked like sweetgrass for training. Easier than ash splits for young fingers weaving, harder to weave well because soaked ash would hold a form after it dried out while sweetgrass drew its strength from structure and technique. The girls were trading off, Ellen working up a basket around one of Lainie's smallest wooden forms, Peggy braiding cured sweetgrass into twine.
But they worked quietly. "Hasn't Aunt Elaine taught you the song to go with that? That's how you wake up the magic in your basket. Songs for sweetgrass, songs for split ash, songs for porcupine quills and beadwork and the dyes of root and bark and berry, special songs for special patterns in the weave. Aunt
