Read Online Casting Spells by Barbara Bretton - Free Book Online Page B

mother?”
    “Your mother,” I confirmed.
    Janice handed me a bottle of water. I uncapped it and held it to his mouth.
    “She put on quite a display,” I said as he gulped down some of the liquid. “I think you got caught up in the afterburn.”
    “Collateral damage.” He rubbed the back of his head and winced. “Maybe we should hand out crash helmets when she’s around.” His sense of humor was back. That was a good sign.
    “And Kevlar vests,” I said, helping him to his feet. “She’s formidable.”
    “She’s a bitch,” Renate said, hovering in the air between us. “I know she’s your mother, honey, but I went to school with her. She was a bitch then and she’s a bitch now.”
    Nobody argued the point. Isadora was all of those things and one other: she was right. Sugar Maple had opened its collective arms to me years ago, and magick or no magick, it was time for me to repay the debt before it was too late.

5

    LUKE
     
    It was like being trapped inside a snow globe inside a Hall-mark ad inside a Disney movie.
    The Chamber of Commerce information Fran printed off the web had mentioned the “old-fashioned charm” and “wonderful New England ambience” of Sugar Maple, but those descriptions didn’t even come close to the town spread out before me. The place belonged on a Hollywood soundstage from the 1940s. Maybe the 1840s.
    Gas lamps lined the main street. Candles burned in front windows. Wreaths of holly and pine decorated front doors. Even the snow drifts looked like someone had airbrushed them until they were ready for prime time. I could almost hear Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas” in the distance.
    The only thing missing was a flyover from Santa and his reindeer.
    Perfect?
    Definitely.
    Weird?
    Just weird enough to bump my cop’s curiosity up another notch. The original plan was to do a quick drive-by on my way to the motel north of town where I’d be staying, but maybe a closer look wasn’t a bad idea.
    The bridge let me off at the corner of Osborne and Bishop. I made a right on Osborne and rolled past a bank, an apothecary, and a candle store before I rounded the curve that led me to the lake.
    Snow Lake was more like Snow Pond, a perfect oval that I would have guessed was man-made if I hadn’t skimmed a few paragraphs about Sugar Maple’s geographical features over a Big Mac earlier in the day.
    I was a New England kid. I’d grown up playing hockey on the lake behind our school. You didn’t have a Zamboni maintaining the ice. You learned to skate over tree trunks, broken branches, divots and pits and soft spots. And you did it on hockey skates, not three-inch Manolo Whoevers.
    What the hell had Suzanne been thinking? The guy who found her body said she had been wearing some kind of scarf, a cocktail dress, and her skates. She must have been drinking. Nothing else made any sense. I walked the perimeter, trying to see it with Suzanne’s eyes, but my attention was drawn to the cracked portion left of center from where I was standing.
    That was where she had gone in. I could hear the cracking sound the ice made when she broke the surface. Her yelp of surprise as she dropped into the shockingly cold water. I knew the gut-twisting despair she must have felt when she realized it was too late.
    A small wooden bench was positioned near the skate rental shack. The bench was piled high with snow except for two long indentations. On closer inspection they looked like prints from a pair of women’s high-heeled shoes.
    Suzanne’s.
    Reading about Suzanne’s death had been tough enough, but seeing this last reminder of her vibrant, complicated self punched it home. I felt like I had been Tasered. I stood there for a few seconds, looking down at the snow prints, letting my mind spin back through the years.
    Trips down memory lane aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.
    I turned away from the bench and scanned the terrain. Mostly I saw trees. Sugar maples with a few pine, spruce, and fir