Free Triple Witch by Sarah Graves Page A

curtains, the date on which Wade first left his truck in my driveway overnight, and even the size, color, and preferred fabric of my underwear.
    Which, believe me, everybody in Eastport does know, and I know the equivalent about them. Briefly, it occurred to me that in a town whose gossip network made the Internet look like two tin cans tied together with string, somebody knew something else, too: where Hallie Quinn was getting that heroin.
    But then I had to start watching the route George Valentine had described to me, for getting to Baxter Willoughby’s house. I’d been out here before, but in November, and summer in downeast Maine is the equivalent of seeing in color after years of black-and-white; everything looks completely different.
    Just past the gas station on the far side of the Dennysville bridge, I took a left onto a narrow, curvingmacadam road leading between ancient maple trees. Next came an old brick schoolhouse with a wooden bell tower, a granite doorstep, and two front doors: one for boys, one for girls. Finally, I spotted the turnoff.
    And blinked, startled at the change since I had seen it last. Where a dirt lane had rutted between cedar hedges, now a straight blacktop path ribboned up, the cedars lopped off and hauled off. I had a moment to mourn them before the next shock came.
    The house on the hill had stood vacant for thirty years: gathering cobwebs, sheltering pigeons, and rotting away. Wade and I had come out here to look at the place, but it had turned out to be a sad wreck of its former self, too far gone for us to even think of rescuing it.
    Now, though, above the vista created by the slaughter of all those cedars, the old house
gleamed:
new siding, new windows, and a new foundation. The chimneys were rebuilt, the front porch demolished and recreated, with white lattice under the deck. The gutters shone and the glass dazzled with expensive newness; from the wide front steps, a flagstone path led around to—
    —yes: a glass-topped indoor swimming pool.
    Which in Maine was the luxury equivalent of the Taj Mahal; just heating the thing would cost a fortune, and never mind trying to keep snow from collapsing the roof.
    After all that, the fact that Willoughby’s place was also home to a small army of llamas came as something of an anticlimax.

 
    15 Llamas are South American cousins of camels, smaller and without humps. Here in Maine, they are kept for their wool and as pack animals; sure-footed and with pleasanter dispositions than their larger African relatives, they carry tourists’ camping gear on guided expeditions, lending a cheerful, totally spurious air of “roughing it” to the tourists’ outdoor experience.
    These llamas didn’t seem happy, though: their black-and-white or desert-tan coats looked a little ratty, and when I approached the rail fence that enclosed them (that, I gathered, was where all those cedar trees had gone), one of them spit at me.
    Fortunately, he missed; llamas, apparently, didn’t have the distance on their spitballs that I’d heard camels could achieve. And the animals’ enclosure was furnished with a large trough of fresh-looking water, along with a tub generously filled with small brown pellets, like Monday’s dog food, that I figured was their chow.
    Also, the acre enclosure held only a dozen of the creatures, and in one corner stood a barn that looked aggressively new and sturdy. So I thought they weren’t doing too badly, even if whoever kept them wasn’t pampering them with lots of affection. After all, not every animal can live like Monday, who likes to lie in bed at night and eat buttered toast while someone reads mystery novels to her; she particularly enjoys the cat characters.
    “Hello.” In the rural silence I jumped at the voice. Turning, I confronted a tall, silver-haired fellow of fifty, resplendent in blue chambray shirt with pearl buttons, hundred-dollar jeans, and moosehide loafers. He stood smiling at me in the cautious,