Once she’d been loaded into the car, Mrs. Welsh promptly passed out. Jo tried calling Nessa. The phone went straight to voice mail, and when she drove past Nessa’s house, the lights were all off. She couldn’t haul the woman back to her own home, so she continued down Woodland Drive and pulled up in front of the town’s most infamous residence.
Harriett answered the door in a sheer linen muumuu that did nothing to conceal the naked body underneath. “Long time no see,” she said.
Jo tried not to stare. “Hey, yeah, I’m sorry to bother you. I was on my way to my gym and I ran into a woman throwing plants at the police station.” She knew how crazy it sounded, but she kept on going. “I think she’s the mother of one of the girls Nessa saw. She’s drunk off her ass and looks seriously ill. She needs our help.”
“Of course. Darling?” Harriett called back to someone. “Would you mind pulling on some pants and giving me a hand for a moment?”
Jo watched in astonishment as the sexiest man who’d ever worked at a Mattauk grocery store appeared buck naked in Harriett’s living room with a pair of old jeans in his hand. Jo averted her eyes until he’d managed to put them on.
“What can I do for you?” he asked Harriett.
“There’s a drunk woman in my friend’s car. Will you please bring her into the house?”
“Sure thing,” he said, flashing the ladies his movie-star smile.
They both watched him walk out to the drive, bare-chested and shoeless. “You’re my hero, Harriett,” Jo said. “But for the record, I could have brought her inside.”
“I know,” said Harriett. “It’s just that Eric likes feeling useful. And it was about time he got dressed and went home, anyway. Come in and make yourself comfortable.”
When Jo looked around, she could hardly believe she was indoors. The walls of the house had been transformed into vertical gardens, and trees bearing unusual fruit grew out of containers. Jo examined the herbs sprouting from the hanging planter affixed to the nearest wall, but couldn’t identify a single one of them. Books bristling with scraps of paper marking important pages were stacked high on the Eames coffee table and rose like columns from the floor beside the Knoll sofa. On top of the piles closest to her were Working Conjure: A Guide to Hoodoo Folk Magic, Cleansing Rites of Curanderismo, and Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing. Squirrels were building a massive nest in the living room fireplace, and a flock of little green parakeets chased each other around the high ceilings.
Harriett’s gentleman caller reappeared with a limp Ms. Welsh cradled in his arms.
“Just put her on the sofa, please,” Harriett told him.
When the woman was laid out like Sleeping Beauty, Harriett handed the man his shirt and shoes, then leaned down to examine the new arrival. She pried open one of Ms. Welsh’s eyes, examined her fingernails, and sniffed at the breath leaking out of her lungs.
“Jo, would you mind popping into the hall linen closet and grabbing a spare blanket for our guest?”
Jo did as she was asked. On her way back to the living room, she stopped to wait while Harriett finished saying a very warm goodbye to her gentleman friend.
As soon as she heard the door close, Jo headed for the sofa and spread the blanket over the sleeping woman. Harriett had slipped on a pair of glasses and taken a place behind a wooden counter that had once served as a bar but appeared to have been transformed into a workbench. There were still liquor-filled bottles lining the shelf behind her, but stuffed inside them were leaves, roots, and various other ingredients Jo wasn’t certain she wanted to identify. Glass jars with cork stoppers held dried mushrooms, a rainbow of berries, and something that upon closer inspection appeared to be shriveled caterpillars.
“I hope it’s not rude to say so, but your boyfriend is smoking hot,” Jo remarked casually.