Written in Stone (A Books by the Bay Mystery)

Millay paused, and a moment passed as the group recalled the havoc Ophelia had wreaked upon their town. “Back when computers weren’t around,” she continued, “the wives would go to see Munin before letting their husbands go out on long and risky trips. If the witch said they shouldn’t go, the women would pitch a fit until the men stayed put, even if it meant going hungry. ‘Hungry’s better than dead’ is a phrase I hear all the time from these guys.”
    Harris had closed his spiral notebook and slid it into a black laptop case. He glanced up at Olivia from his place on the couch. “Why did you visit her, Olivia? I can’t see you traipsing through the swamp to get a weather forecast.”
    Reluctantly, Olivia told them the truth. “She asked me to come. I wouldn’t have gone but she claimed to have met my mother once. I guess she also wanted to give me the jug, but I don’t know why she gave it to me.” She hesitated and then, in a very low voice, amended the latter phrase. “Well, she told me why, but it’s going to sound really strange.”
    Millay snorted. “This dysfunctional little group has seen plenty of strange. Lay it on us.”
    “The jug is supposed to provide clues,” Olivia said, moving toward the door in preparation to leave the cottage and walk the short distance to her house.
    “To what? The witch’s own death?” Harris furrowed his brows in confusion.
    Olivia shook her head over the absurdity of it all. “She said death would come to the forest and that I’d find answers I was seeking on the jug. I told you it was bizarre.”
    “Why you?” Laurel asked.
    “Apparently, my mother had been kind to her once and she wanted to repay that kindness through me. There’s an object stuck to that piece of pottery that she knew I’d want.”
    Millay stood up and carried her empty beer bottle into the kitchen. “The guys at the bar mentioned her weird jugs. They said no one went to the witch without paying a price. Sometimes she asked for their wedding rings or photographs or some other trinket. I stopped listening when Crazy Charlie said she collected fingernails and baby teeth.”
    Laurel squealed in horror.
    Olivia took her by the arm and steered her to the front door. “Don’t worry, I didn’t give her any DNA samples, but she did have a glass jar filled with animal teeth. Probably from possums and raccoons. She’d have come across plenty of skeletons in the forest over the years and she trapped animals for their meat too.”
    Harris followed on their heels. “Not to sound callous, but you should write about this woman, Laurel. She sounds like no one I’ve ever met. It would make a great article.”
    “There’s nothing to report!” Olivia said with more heat than she’d intended. “As of this point, it’s all gossip and hearsay. No one knows her story. Not yet.”
    “We know how it ended,” Millay murmured and closed the door to the lighthouse keeper’s cottage.
    * * *
    Haviland nosed his way into the closet ahead of Olivia and came back out with a tennis ball clamped between his jaws.
    “Sorry, Captain. No time to play tonight,” Olivia said and gave him a bone to chew on as a consolation prize.
    Cradling the burlap sack containing the memory jug in her arms, she carried it into the kitchen, where Rawlings and the other members of the writers’ group had gathered around the large pine table. She pulled the sack down and away from the sides of the jug, like a woman shimmying out of a tight dress, and then unwound layer upon layer of protective newspaper.
    “It seems like you’re unwrapping a mummy.” Laurel let loose a nervous giggle.
    No one answered her, for the jug had instantly become a presence in the room. All eyes were riveted on the shrouded piece of pottery, and when Olivia removed the last sheet of newspaper, there was only an astonished silence.
    The jug was about the size of a table lamp base. It had a barrel-shaped belly and a pair of sloped shoulders that eventually narrowed into a stumpy spout. The spout’s opening was half an inch wide and the jug could probably hold two gallons of liquid. Its brown river clay had been fired in Munin’s wood-burning kiln and then covered with a gray-hued epoxy. Lastly, the old woman had covered every available surface with a seemingly incongruent group of objects.
    “Whoa,” Harris breathed. “It’s totally ugly at first glance, but when you really look at all the stuff on here, it stops being ugly and