The Witch Next Door

TWND-Chapter Four

Copyright © 2012 Dionne Tuttle

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Chapter Four 

I sat there frozen, unable to believe what my eyes were telling me. There had to be some mistake. Maybe I had blacked out briefly and the mayor had slipped off to the men’s room.

     Then why is the pig wearing the mayor’s bow tie, Jane? I asked myself frantically.

     I don’t know. Maybe the mayor has a pet pig and he dresses it in identical outfits, my mind answered.

     No, I thought and suddenly stopped in mid thought. It was bad enough when I had thought that my mother was losing her mind. It was something else entirely to become nuts myself.

     “Did you want to order?”

     I jumped, knocking the water glass that was at my elbow off of the table. “Uh, no, thank you. I’ll just have water.”

     The waitress gave me a funny look. “I’ll just clean that up for you.”

     I panicked. If the waitress were to lean over the table, she would see Mayor Findley-or whatever that was. “No, that’s okay. I’ll take care of it.”

     The waitress smiled politely but her eyes said that she clearly thought that I was nuts. She’s not the only one, I thought as I quickly wiped up the water.

     “Where’d Marty go?” I looked up to see Candy standing at the table, with one hand on her hip.

     I thought quickly. “He had a meeting. Yeah, he forgot about it. That’s why he left so quickly.”

     Candy stood there deep in thought for a minute. I had almost began to wonder if the girl had fallen asleep when she blinked and said, “Who’s gonna pay for dinner? I don’t get paid until tonight.”

     Shuddering to think where the money that Candy was going to get paid was going to come from, I reached for my purse. “I’ll pay for it.”

     Suddenly a high-pitched squeal emerged from under the table.

     “What was that?” Candy tried to peer over the edge of the table. I jumped up to block her view.

     “What was what?” I tried to play it cool and pretend that I hadn’t heard the squeal. Somehow I had to get the pig out of the country club and back to my house without drawing a lot of attention. I winced as the pig let out another squeal. I had a feeling that it was going to be next to impossible.

     “There it is again. Hey, do you have a pig under there?” Candy looked at me suspiciously.

     Just your boyfriend, the mayor. Nothing to worry about, I thought. Yeah, right.

     “Oh.” I tried to pretend that I had just realized that there was a huge farm animal underneath the table. “That. It’s just this pig that my niece is raising for 4-H. Yeah, I have to baby sit him while she’s at school.” Lightning was going to fall from the heavens and strike me for the big whopper that I had just told. My sister was only seventeen and had never had a child but I figured that if ‘Marty’ had tried to pass Candy off as his niece, well then, I could have a non-existent niece too.