Goosebumps tickled her scalp and she edged toward the open doorway. Her foot hit something and she spun around. A snake.
She shrieked and dashed for the door. Something clattered and she stared again at the reptile. It wasn’t alive. The snake was a taxidermied one, posed in a wavy curl, as if he were slithering along the desert sand, except that his head was raised a few inches off the floor, teeth showing and tongue darting out. She stared at it, hugging the doorjamb, heart beating a thousand beats a second. She blew out a pent-up breath and realized some of the noise was coming from thunder, much closer now.
A flash of lightning lit every window, putting her in the middle of a strobe-filled maze of rooms. Her heart rate ratcheted up again. This can’t be healthy, she told herself. She dashed for the front door and straight out to her truck, soaked by the downpour in the few seconds it took. She reached for the ignition before remembering that she’d left her keys on a table in the living room. She would have to go back in there.
Okay, Sam, calm down. She breathed slowly. What’s scaring you about this place anyway? Well . . . symbols and witchy things and a snake . . . Okay, the snake wasn’t dangerous and neither was the other stuff, was it? Really, some stones on the floor and some painted figures on the walls. Red walls. Pentagrams. Who does that?
Dammit, Beau, why didn’t you warn me about this room? She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and dialed his direct number.
“Ah, the Martinez place.”
“Yes, dammit. The one filled with a bunch of scary shit. How could you have forgotten to mention it?”
“Calm down, Sam. I didn’t actually see it. One of the other deputies went in there, said he didn’t find anything related to the woman’s death. He just described it as a weird room. Lot of old dusty stuff in there he said. I pictured something like an attic full of junk. Got another call and left. I’m sorry I didn’t think to tell you about it.”
Sam felt a little stupid. It really was just a room full of dusty old junk, when you thought about it.
“Can you handle it on your own?” he asked. He sounded genuinely concerned. “I could come out there later, if you want me to.”
Now she really felt dumb. Nothing like being such a girl that she had to have the big old deputy sheriff with her before she could face down a dead snake. “No, that’s okay. I was just startled. I can do it.”
She put the phone back in her pocket and noticed that the rain had already slowed. I can do it, I can do it. She kept saying it as she walked back inside, convincing herself as much as anyone.
Sunlight broke through the clouds, giving a whole new perspective to the house, as she walked through the living room. The rooms she’d cleaned were nice and bright, and the main bedroom felt quite benign now that Bertha’s personal belongings were gone. With a square of late-afternoon sun on the floor, even the red room showed itself to be what Beau had described, a dusty collection of old things. Sam took up a broom and swept the white stones and bundled herbs into a harmless pile. The stiff snake went into a garbage bag. It was a little creepy, picking it up, but she handled it just fine. She dropped the black candles—so dusty that they were nearly gray, in the clear light of day—into the same bag with the snake. All of it went out to the bed of the pickup.
A stack of books in one corner showed titles pertaining to native American symbolism and beliefs, herbal treatments and such. Two of them specifically addressed witchcraft but even they didn’t seem nearly as ominous now. She whipped the dust off of them with a cloth and carried the stack out to join the other books in her truck. There. All done. Alive to tell about it.
Alive and hungry. She locked up and headed off to meet her destiny at KFC.
Zoe stopped by around seven. Sam had showered off her coating of dust and whipped up the batter for her special lighter-than-air white cake. With raspberry and truffle cream filling, and her secret fresh-coconut frosting, the triple layer torte would be the highlight of the ladies luncheon for the Taos Heritage Foundation tomorrow. The three layers went into the oven and she sat at the kitchen table tallying her hours for the two properties she’d cleaned this week. It would add up to a decent amount and she hoped to bank at least half of it in her special account for the opening of Sweet’s Sweets.
“Hey there! Knock-knock.” Zoe called through the screen door and opened it at the same time. “Any more weird things happen today?”
Which? The artist’s sketchbook hidden in the wall at the Anderson place, or the witchy room at Bertha Martinez’s? Sam started to give the condensed version when Zoe spotted the carved wooden box at the other end of the table. Life had been nothing but weird this week.
“Oh, is this it?” Her eyes grew wide and she reached for the box.
“Careful. That thing is . . .” Sam wasn’t sure quite how to describe it.
“Possessed?” Zoe joked.
“I don’t know. It’s got something.”
She turned it over in her hands but didn’t open it.
“I brought you some more strange stuff. I’ll get it out of the truck in a minute.” Sam hadn’t bothered to deliver any of the collected junk from today’s haul. “Some antique bottles with herbal whatever in them, some books on herbs and even a volume or two on witchcraft.”
Zoe set the box down as if it was suddenly too hot to hold.
“Sam . . . do you really think that old woman was a bruja?”
“Never thought about it until I came across that red room at her house. I don’t . . . I don’t know much about any of that stuff, but aren’t the brujas of Spanish tradition more . . . um . . .”
“They were often consulted for their healing powers.” She raised a foot and wiggled her toes.
“No. Forget it,” Sam protested. She did not get hexed somehow by that old lady.
“The stories go every direction,” Zoe said. “A lot of them seem to combine tales from all sorts of tradition—shamanism, Catholicism, voodoo. Many people believe brujas are shape-shifters. They can become an animal like a coyote or an owl.”
“Or a snake?”
Chapter 9
The oven timer went off just then and Sam jumped up to check her cake layers. By the time she pulled them out and turned off the oven, Zoe was antsy to go. She’d left Darryl with the impression that she was bringing home ice cream and she still had to deliver on that promise. Sam poured her a little jar of fresh raspberry filling to use as a topping and they walked out to the driveway together. Sam retrieved the boxes of books and medicine bottles from the back seat of her truck and Zoe headed off, happy with her new treasures.
Sam watched her taillights retreat down the quiet lane, thinking how glad she would be to offload the rest of Bertha Martinez’s stuff, with stops at the thrift shop and the county landfill. Her glance slid sideways to the trash bag that held the stuffed snake. Shape-shifter indeed.
Cake layers occupied her mind for a few more minutes, as she removed them from the pans and laid them out on cooling racks. While they cooled she blended the truffle cream filling for one of the layers, and cooked the raspberry syrup down until it was thick and spreadable for the other layer. The best thing about baking was that little tasks like grating fresh coconut were the perfect way to relax and escape all of the day’s other stresses. Before she knew it, she had more than double what she needed for the coconut frosting. Into the fridge, it would be there for something else.