Carly Phillips - Lucky Charm

“Nope. Not talking. Anything I say can and will be used against me.” He slammed the door closed.

“They don’t call him a recluse for nothing.” With a shrug, Derek grabbed her hand and started back down the walk. He hadn’t come to see his uncle, anyway.

“This trip has already revealed a lot,” Gabrielle said.

“Such as?” He couldn’t imagine what she’d discovered.

They walked across her uncle’s driveway and headed to the place next door.

“The jujus, the hermit lifestyle. I’ve been taking mental notes on what they looked like so I can do some research into exactly what evil your uncle hopes to ward off, how he thinks they’ll work, things like that.” Gabrielle’s voice sounded more animated with each word she spoke. “Since I’m planning to write about the effects of a curse on a real family, I can use everything I saw today firsthand.”

“I’d rather you didn’t write about the insanity that runs in my family,” Derek muttered.

She yanked on his hand, pulling him to a stop.

Turning, he met her gaze.

“There is no insanity in your family.” Her eyes flashed with sincerity, which surprised him.

She didn’t think his uncle was nuts?

“Look, I was a psychology major and I understand that people react to events in different ways. Your uncle retreated into himself. That’s not unusual. People also look for ways to protect themselves. Cut him a break. I promise you I will.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I appreciate that.”

“I’m glad. What I write will be factual, not derogatory in any way.”

“I appreciate that, too.” Derek squeezed her hand tighter. “Ready to move on to Harry Winters?”

She nodded. “I hope he’s more talkative than your uncle was.”

“He wouldn’t have to say much in order to do that.”

Knocking on Harry Winters’s door didn’t elicit a response.

Gabrielle let out a sigh of frustration, but Derek knew Winters had to be home. He never went anywhere else.

“Let’s go around back. There’s a pond there. He might be outside,” Derek said, unwilling to give up.

They rounded the back of the house and started down the hill leading to a large pond. Sure enough, a man sat beneath a tree, staring out at the water beyond.

“He can’t be any older than his midforties,” she said, obviously surprised.

She shoved her hands into her shorts pockets and followed Derek down the rocky path.

Derek drew a deep breath. He knew more about Harry Winters and his background than he’d told Gabrielle. But he wanted her to hear the truth from the man himself. Then Derek could help her put things together and figure out how to solve her problems.

“Mr. Winters?”

The man didn’t stop staring out at the water. “Who wants to know?”

Gabrielle stepped forward, but Derek touched her arm to stop her. He wanted to be the one to introduce himself and ease into conversation.

“I’m Derek Corwin, your neighbor Edward’s nephew.”

“Bully for you. What do you want with me?”

Gabrielle knelt beside to the man. “My name is Gabrielle Donovan. I’m with Derek, but I’m really the one who needs to talk to you,” she said softly.

“About what?” he asked in the same monotone voice he’d used since they’d arrived.

Gabrielle swallowed hard. “I’ve been having some problems since I arrived in town.”

“What’s it to me?”

At least he was curious enough to ask, Gabrielle thought. “I’m an author and I’m writing a book about Derek and Edward Corwin’s family history. The Corwin Curse, to be exact.”

Without warning, the placid man scrambled to his feet, his eyes wide with fear. “I don’t want to hear any more.” He bolted for the house.

Gabrielle rose. but before she could take two steps toward him, she twisted her ankle. “Ouch.” She hobbled the rest of the way up the hill and was grateful to see Derek had managed to corner the man before he could lock himself inside his house.

Gabrielle joined them.

“Are you okay?” Derek asked.

She nodded. “I just twisted my ankle getting back up here. I’ll be fine.”

Derek placed a hand on her back and together they faced the frightened man. “We don’t want to hurt you,” he said.

“Or scare you.” She spoke quietly. “It’s just that someone’s making things really difficult for me. They obviously don’t want me to write about the curse. I’ve had a note left telling me to leave town or else. Then someone keyed my car and broke into both the boarding house where I was staying and my apartment in Boston. I’m just hoping you can help me.”

Harry Winters wrapped his arms around his waist and leaned against the slatted wood of the house. “Why? What’s it got to do with me?”

“I was hoping you could tell me that. You see, earlier today, someone handed me a sealed envelope, and inside it had your name written on a piece of paper.

“Who gave it to you?” Harry asked.

“I don’t know. She said she was once Mayor Perkins’s assistant.”

“So she can join the club.” He laughed wryly.

Gabrielle sucked in a surprised breath. “You were the mayor’s assistant, too?”

He shook his head. “No, she’s just had a long line of fired assistants before one of her granddaughters was old enough to work with her. That family carries power throughout the line, you know. Especially those witches named Mary. They continue the legacy throughout the generations. Make no mistake. One Mary is as evil as the next.”

It seemed a ridiculous notion to think any Perkins woman named Mary was a witch, just as it seemed silly to believe the Corwin men were cursed by them.

Gabrielle thought about the mayor’s assistant and the obvious flaw in Harry Winters’s reasoning. “Mayor Perkins’s granddaughter’s name is Elizabeth.”

He nodded. “Mary Elizabeth Perkins. She goes by her middle name so as not to be confused with her grandmother.”

Suddenly the note on the mayor’s door made sense. It had been signed “M” and Gabrielle had thought Mary Perkins had signed it. But then the mayor had told Lauren that Elizabeth had left the note for her. Of course the sisters would use their given names with each other. And besides, Mary Perkins would probably have signed “Grandma” when leaving a note for her granddaughter.

But just because the women had a similar name didn’t make Elizabeth evil. She wasn’t going to argue with a man who’d been driven to living in isolation by his demons.

“Nobody knows what Mary Perkins is capable of better than me,” he continued. “I had the misfortune to run against her in one of her early mayoral campaigns.”

“What happened?” Gabrielle asked.

He settled his back against the house.

Sensing the man was caving in, Gabrielle joined him, ignoring the dull throb in her ankle. She’d deal with it later. Derek remained standing, more of a lookout than a participant.

“Campaign issues happened. I tried to run a clean campaign on the issues that should have been important to the community, but Mary Perkins didn’t play by anyone’s rules but her own. Everything came back to her status and power. Power she had no intention of losing.”

“I don’t understand,” Gabrielle said.

“Obviously you do understand or you wouldn’t be here. She went after me. And now she’s going after you. Mary Perkins doesn’t care about fairness. The only thing that’s important is power and winning at any cost.”

GABRIELLE STARED AT THE MAN in disbelief. “Mary Perkins wants me gone? She’s behind everything?” She shouldn’t be surprised and yet…“Tell me more.”

“She never fails to remind people of the family curse, but not in public. Not in her speeches. In private. When asking for donations. When she’s trying to push her own agenda on town council. She achieves her goals by frightening people into submission. And as you’ve no doubt seen and heard, people need only look to the Corwin men as proof of her point.”

Gabrielle winced, not looking at Derek. “Go on.”

“I tried to bring her dirty dealings out in the open. There was a Fourth of July gathering in the center of town and we were each making a speech. All I did was say that votes must be earned, and curses were only in people’s minds.” He cleared his throat, glancing out in a fog once more.

Gabrielle waited him out.

Finally, he continued. “My life went downhill after that. A picture surfaced of me and a prostitute. At first, it came to me alone with a note threatening to reveal it if I didn’t drop out of the race. It didn’t matter that I swore up and down it wasn’t me, I couldn’t prove it any more than I could prove Mary Perkins was behind it. But I knew.”

Gabrielle shivered because she knew, too. And now she knew who was behind Sharon’s pictures reemerging. Mary Perkins had somehow gotten ahold of them. Sharon and Richard were off talking to her ex-boyfriend. If he hadn’t sold them to Mary Perkins, she’d found another way to get her hands on them.

“So what did you do?” Gabrielle asked. Because she knew this man hadn’t gone from being a mayoral candidate to a hermit over some photographs. There had to be more.

“I refused to give in to the blackmail, of course. I was young and brash and I believed in integrity. I thought I could beat her despite it all. I never got that far. Shortly afterward, my wife had a car accident. It looked like she lost control of her vehicle, even though it wasn’t raining and the roads were in good shape.”

“You don’t believe it was an accident, do you?” Gabrielle asked soberly.

From everything Gabrielle had heard so far, Mary Perkins wasn’t just arrogant, she was evil. And that scared her. Not because Gabrielle believed in witches or curses, but because she feared what the woman was capable of if her power was threatened.