Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 40, No. 6, June, 1995

The crowd climbed back into their cars, murmuring among themselves, wondering what was going to happen and how long the holdup would last. Detective Michael Hahn turned to thank the witch for her help but discovered she’d already gone.

Skip was deeply relieved at the detective’s action. He walked slowly over to the deck that hung over the beach, then stood there gazing back at the unfinished house. His plans were in shambles. He needed to think. For no reason he could explain, he turned and looked to the east.

As if she were an apparition conjured by his thoughts, a young woman with wildly curling long dark hair stepped up onto the deck, startling him so completely by her sudden appearance that he was forced to clutch at the deck’s railing to keep from falling backwards. While the thumping of his heart subsided, he stared, taking in the lush figure barely confined by the white silk shirt, tight jeans, and slim leather cowboy boots she wore.

“She sent me to fetch you,” the apparition announced.

“Uh-who?”

She shifted impatiently. “Mrs. Risk.” At Skip’s continued blank look, she added, with a roll of large, lovely eyes, “The witch.”

Skip blinked at her. Sighing with exasperation, she grabbed his hand and pulled gently. “C’mon,” she said, as if to a small child. He came.

The young woman, who’d been introduced to Skip merely as “Rachel,” settled the tray of drinks on a low, highly polished tree stump and handed Skip his beer.

“The letter told me about the poisoned water,” Skip said as he accepted the tall, frosted glass. He wiped perspiration from his forehead with his arm and continued staring down at the grass on which he sat, remembering. The surrounding trees rustled in the breeze as if they were whispering about the situation.

Mrs. Risk crossed long legs, draping her gauzy black skirt in graceful folds across them. She poured herself and Rachel glasses of glittering gold wine, cradled hers in both hands, and leaned back in the rope hammock to listen. Rachel pulled an old aluminum lawn chair closer to Skip and sat.

“And because the other letters had been — been accurate, I drove like a maniac out to the site and, as you know, was just in time to stop the... the...” He seemed unable to go on.

“The carnage, so to speak,” she finished for him.

Rachel made a small unidentifiable noise.

He nodded, his eyes sick with memory.

“Please relax, Mr. Daniels. You’ve averted a tragedy. Also, your anonymous letter writer demanded that you stop all work, and you have, so you’ve no reason to expect further atrocities. Isn’t that correct?”

Skip nodded again.

“The letters — tell me about them. Were they typed? Were they mailed from Wyndham? That sort of detail might tell us a great deal.”

Skip shrugged. “I never noticed. They were sent to me at a post office box I hired. Just about everybody in Wyndham has the address. But here’s the one about the water.” He pulled a much folded envelope out of his back jeans pocket. “You can have it, if you want. They were all just like that one, I think. I threw the others in the trash.”

She took it from him and examined the grubby wadded paper. “So much for television detective shows teaching fingerprint and forensic technologies,” she said, sighing as she unfolded it.

“The first one came the day after I agreed to buy the property. Said if I didn’t want ‘death and disaster,’ I had to leave that parcel of land alone. Buy someplace else. I didn’t pay attention, you know? Figured it was some nut getting his kicks. I got a second one, same message, and pitched it, too. Then right after the next one, that warned he was gonna hurt somebody, the carpenter was shot. I thought of this guy first thing, but the cops said it was likely an accident. I got kinda jumpy then, but the cops were so convincing...

“Then another one came. And Ernie got it in the leg. He coulda lost the whole leg, did you know that?”

Rachel blurted heatedly, “His leg? He could have been killed! What if he, or someone else, had been trapped when nobody else was around to rescue him? He might’ve bled to death.”

Skip blinked hard, and finding himself unable to reply, took a drink of his beer. He was startled to notice that the witch was barefooted. Her feet were smooth, slim, and tanned a golden brown.

The breeze from the water caressed and cooled his skin. Reluctantly he disturbed the peace of the grove. “And, ma’am...”

Mrs. Risk looked up.

“I’ve got something else to tell you. My name isn’t Mark Daniels.”

Her eyebrows lifted, but her eyes looked unsurprised. “No?”

With a sigh dredged from the bottom of his workshoes, Skip told her the whole story, from Alexia to the present.

“Well,” was all she said, at the end. She smiled faintly. Skip had been expecting something a little stronger. Like a demand for a jail sentence.

“You’re quite an interesting young man.”

Skip was shocked. That didn’t seem an appropriate thing for a lady like her to say on hearing how he was doing something illegal.