“My friend’s shop. She has a number of them. I’m not much for diamonds, but I do love colored stones.”
“Like rubies, emeralds and sapphires?” he queried. It wasn’t an attack, though he could tell from the way she looked at him that she had taken it as one. She seemed to believe that he suspected her—or her friends—to be guilty of something.
“Citrine, aquamarine, opals—fire opals are my favorite,” she said. She set his coffee on the natural-wood coffee table that stood between what Rocky was pretty sure was a grouping of eighteenth-century carved chairs and a love seat.
“Your questions can’t be about my likes and dislikes when it comes to jewelry,” she said, sitting down. “I don’t know what else I can tell you. I heard a noise outside. I grabbed my hockey stick and went out into the woods, and there she was. My first instinct was to get help—to get the police. I was closer to the road than I was to my house. Okay, I was panicked and afraid the killer might be around and follow me home, so maybe that’s why I ran to the road. I saw her, but I didn’t know her,” she added quietly.
He took a seat across from her.
“What did you hear?” he asked her. “The M.E. reckoned that the time of death was around five o’clock. You found her hours later. That’s why I’m asking.”
She shook her head. She was evading him, he thought. “I don’t know exactly. I just thought that someone might be hurt or something, so I went out.”
He could press it, but he could tell she wasn’t going to say more. So far he’d called her beloved deceased great-aunt a crazy witch and jumped down her throat over a medallion. Not good. He wanted her help.
She turned the tables. “So you’re from here?” she asked him. “You said something about Peabody.”
“Born there. My mother could trace her family back to the Mayflower. She’s proud of it. I have more of a tendency to think the ship was filled with hypocrites. They wanted freedom, so they came here and persecuted others, and, as we both know, their descendants tangled themselves up with the witchcraft trials. My father was from Texas, but he loved my mom, so I was born here. What about you?”
“I grew up in an old Victorian right here in Salem. I could see the House of the Seven Gables whenever I went outside.”
“And you never left?” he asked.
“No, I left. I was a reporter in Boston for a while, then I came back. But I’m sure you didn’t come here to chitchat about growing up in New England.”
She had blue eyes—deep, direct blue eyes. The color of the sapphires on her pentagram. He lowered his head for a minute, hiding a dry smile. She was the perfect image of a witch, or of the Hollywood version, at least. Her hair was as dark as the wings of her pet raven. She was tall and slender, with elegant curves and perfect posture. She was in jeans today, and a soft sweater that hugged her form nicely, but—given a cloak and a scepter—she could have stood on a hill in the wind and, with an evil chant, lifted her face to the heavens and demanded that the lightning strike and the thunder roar.
And there was something she wasn’t telling him.
“I wish there was more I could tell you. I so wish I could have done something to help that poor woman. If I knew anything that might help assist you, I would be writing it down to make sure you had it right,” she told him.
“Thank you. I do need the name of your friend—the one you bought that medallion from—and her store.”
She nodded. “You know, there was another woman killed in Swampscott two weeks ago,” she said.
“Yes.”
“The police aren’t giving out much information. And they aren’t saying much about the woman I found, either,” she said. “It was the same killer, wasn’t it?”
“They aren’t giving out information because they’re trying to weed out all the crackpots who want to confess to murders they didn’t commit. They’re also trying to avoid—” He stopped abruptly.
“To avoid?”
“Copycats.”
“The officer last night asked me not to give out any information about the body,” she said.
“And that’s important. Luckily, we managed to have the scene sealed off and most of the work done before the press showed up last night. They don’t know that you’re involved, so hopefully there won’t be anyone trying to get information out of you.”
“I can keep quiet,” she assured him. She hesitated. “But...this is also like that other murder...the one that happened thirteen years ago.” She looked at him with that direct blue stare of hers. “In Peabody,” she said.
“Yes,” he said quietly.
“You...were there?”
“I was a senior in high school at the time.”
She rose and walked over to the mantel. “Were the other women found with medallions like mine lying on their breasts, as well?”
He hesitated, then realized that having seen one victim, she was smart enough to draw conclusions.