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MURDER BY MAGIC
Twenty Tales Of Crime and the Supernatural

Edited by
Rosemary Edghill




PART I
Murder
Most
Modern







Piece of Mind
Jennifer Roberson
Jennifer Roberson has published twenty-one novels in several genres, including the Cheysuli and Sword-Dancer fantasy series and the upcoming Karavans saga. She has contributed short fiction to numerous anthologies and has edited three herself. Though the story's heroine is indisputably not the author, she does nonetheless live with ten dogs, two cats, and a Lipizzan gelding and has frequentЧif one-sidedЧverbal conversations with all of them.

in the Los Angeles metro area, you can pay $250K-plus for a one-bedroom, one-bath bungalow boasting a backyard so small you can spit across itЧeven on a day so hot you can't rustle up any sweat, let alone saliva. And that's all for the privilege of breathing brown air, contesting with a rush "hour" lasting three at the minimum, and risking every kind of "rage" the sociologists can hang a name on.
But a man does need a roof over his head, so I ended up in a weird little amoebic blob of an apartment complex, a haphazard collection of wood-shingled boxes dating from the fifties. It wasn't Melrose Place, and the zip wasn't 90210, but it would do for a newly divorced, middle-aged man of no particular means.
Interstate 10 may carry tourists through miles of the sere and featureless desert west of Phoenix, but closer to the coast the air gains moisture. In my little complex, vegetation ruled. Ivy filled the shadows, clung to shingles; roses of all varieties fought for space; aging eucalyptus and pepper trees overhung the courtyard, prehensile roots threatening fence and sidewalk.
I found it relaxing to twist off the cap of a longneck beer at day's end and sit outside on a three-by-six-foot slab of ancient, wafer-thin concrete crumbling from the onslaught of time and whatever toxins linger in L.A.'s air. I didn't want to think of what the brown cloud was doing to my lungs, but I wasn't motivated enough to leave the Valley. The kids were in the area. Soon enough they'd discover independence, and Dear Old Dad would be relegated to nonessential personnel; until that happened, I'd stay close.
Next door, across the water-stained, weather-warped wooden fence, an explosion of sound punched a hole in my reverie. I heard a screen door whack shut, the sound of a woman's voice, and the cacophony of barking dogs. She was calling them back, telling them to behave themselves, explaining that making so much racket was no way to endear themselves to new neighbors. I heartily concurred, inwardly cursing the landlady, who allowed pets. She was one of those sweet little old widow ladies who were addicted to cats, and she spent much of her income on feeding the feral as well as her own; apparently her tolerance extended to dogs, now. Dogs next door. Barking dogs.
Muttering expletives, I set the mostly empty beer bottle on the crumbling concrete, then heaved myself out of the fraying webwork chaise lounge with some care, not wanting to drop my butt through or collapse the flimsy aluminum armrests.
The dogs had muted their barking to the occasional sotto voce wujj as I sauntered over to the sagging fence, stepped up on a slumping brick border of a gone-to-seed garden, and looked into the yard next door. When they saw meЧwell, saw my head floating above the fenceЧthey instantly set off an even louder chorus of complaint. I caught a glimpse of huge ears and stumpy legs in the midst of hurried guard-dog activity, and then the woman was coming out the back door yet again to hush them.
I saw hair the color some called light brown, others dark blond, caught up in a sloppy ponytail at the back of her head; plus stretchy black bike shorts and a pink tank top. Shorts and tank displayed long, browned limbs and cleanly defined muscles. No body fat. Trust her to be one of those California gym types.
She saw me, winced at renewed barking, and raised her voice. "Enough!"
Amazingly, the dogs shut up.
"Thank you," she said politely, for all the world as if she spoke to a human instead of a pack of mutts with elongated satellite dishes for ears and tails longer than their legs. Then she grinned at me from her own wafer-thin, crumbling, three-by-six concrete slab. "They'll quit once they get used to you."
"Those are dogs?"
Her expression was blandly neutral. "Not as far as they're concerned. But yes, that is what their registration papers say."
"They're not mutts?"
"They're Cardigan Welsh corgis." She made a gesture with her hand that brought all three of the dogs to her at a run, competing with one another to see who'd arrive first. "I work at home much of the time, or I'm not gone for long, so I'll try to keep them quiet. I'm sorry if they disturbed you."
I didn't really care, but I asked it, anyway, because once upon a time small talk had been ingrained. "What do you do?"
Abruptly, her expression transmuted itself to one I'd seen before. She was about to sidestep honesty with something not quite a lie, but neither would it be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. "Research."
And because I had learned to ignore such attempts, and because it would provoke a more honest response, I asked her what kind.
Across the width of her tiny yard, the twin of mine, and over the top of a sagging fence that cut me off from the shoulders down, she examined me. A wry smile crooked the corner of her mouth. "You must be the private detective. Mrs. Landry told me about you."
"Mrs. Landry's a nosy old fool," I said, "but yes, I am." I paused. "And I imagine she could tell me what kind of research you do."
Unexpectedly, she laughed. "Yes, I imagine she could. But then, we met when she hired me, so she ought to know."
"Hired you to do research?" I was intrigued in spite of myself; what kind of research would a little old widow lady want of my new neighbor, who looked more like an aerobics instructor than a bookworm?
"In a manner of speaking," the neighbor answered. She eyed me speculatively a moment, as if deciding something. "Do you have any pets?"
"A cockroach I call Henry."
She studied my expression again. Something like dry amusement flickered in brown eyes. "Sorry, but I don't do them."
And with that she went into her shingled, ivy-choked box along with her three dogs and let the screen door whack closed behind her.