Poisoned Prose (A Books by the Bay Mystery)

woman’s larger-than-life presence. As petite as she was, she seemed to loom above them, commanding every ounce of their attention. Olivia wondered if this was what it felt like to be hypnotized.
    “Once upon a time,” Violetta repeated, her accent thickening as her shadow stretched and lengthened. It rose up the back wall like a castle tower, and when she lifted her arms, the shadow turned into a tree. Tall and thin and a little frightening.
    “Once upon a time, there was a girl who told a story that shouldn’t have been told. Her daddy warned her not to tell it. He said she’d get herself killed if she didn’t keep quiet. But she didn’t listen. Soon enough, she’ll be punished. She’ll turn into a ghost. A haint.” She raised a finger and pointed at someone in the crowd. Someone seated on the other side of the room from Olivia and the Bayside Book Writers.
    “But not yet,” Miss Violetta said in a voice as slick and smooth as a river rock. “Not just yet.”

Chapter 4
    We dance round in a ring and suppose,
    But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
    — R OBERT F ROST
    V ioletta didn’t elaborate on that first story. Instead, she told a haint tale about a tiny mountain cabin that hadn’t been occupied for many years. When it was finally sold to a young couple, the woman couldn’t sleep at night because she was continuously woken up by the sounds of a baby’s cry. Her husband didn’t hear the cries, and eventually he began to think that he’d wed a crazy woman. Their marriage suffered. The woman slept less and less. She could hardly complete her chores. She burned the stew, wove crooked patterns on her loom, and failed to tend the vegetable garden. Weeks passed. The house grew dirty, the clothes were unwashed, and her loom sat silent in the corner of the cabin. One day, the husband came home from chopping trees in the forest to find that his wife had hung herself from the rafters.
    “He took her down and held her close, remembering what she’d been like when he first courted her,” Violetta whispered sorrowfully. “He buried her in the churchyard, and after the service was over he went on back home. The man reckoned his wife had truly lost her mind. He also felt sorry for himself because he was now all alone. But he wasn’t.” She paused to glance over her left shoulder. Peering into the blackness behind the stage, she took a step to the right. Her body went stiff. “That very night, he heard the baby crying. Heard his wife too, calling his name. Clear as a bell ringing over the hills it was. He wrapped a quilt ’round his shoulders and went outside. The moon was hanging low in the sky like a shiny silver coin, and there was his wife standing in the middle of the road. She was wearing her favorite dress and looked pretty as a new bride. She had a baby in her arms.
    “The man rubbed his eyes, but she was there, just as real as you and me. She waved to him and then walked off into the woods. He followed her all the way to the river, but she vanished. He stopped chasing after her then ’cause everybody knows that a ghost can’t cross a river. Even a frozen one. The man never saw his wife after that. Never heard that baby cry again neither. Years later he learned that the family who’d lived in his cabin caught the pox. It killed all of them. Folks said that the baby was the last one to die and he cried and cried all through the long night before he finally died.”
    Before Olivia could finish absorbing the tragic story, Violetta began another. This one was called Jack and the Giant. As with the traditional fairy tale, Jack was poor and hungry. He and his mother scratched out a feeble existence from the land. Violetta described Jack’s constant obsession with food with the vividness of one who’s known poverty and the hollow ache of an empty belly. In contrast, the giant was rich and feasted like a king. He ate mutton stew, roast pork, brown bread dipped in gravy, and dozens of berry cobblers at a time. He didn’t live in a castle above the clouds, but in a cave deep in the hills. He smoked an enormous pipe and owned hundreds of hearty sheep and fat pigs. Jack, who played the banjo and was as foolish as he was brave, was a likable hero. Olivia laughed when he tricked the giant and sighed with relief when he was able to return to his simple cabin and present his mother with the giant’s treasure.
    He’ll finally be able to eat,
she thought happily.
He can stuff himself until