“My aunt died recently, and she left me a lot of money,” Vivian Vogel told me.
I wasn’t sure how to respond. I’m sorry? Congratulations? I just nodded. “Go on.”
Vivian Vogel was in her 40s, like me, with short dark hair and narrow, guarded blue eyes. We sat in a downtown coffee near her office, where she worked as a sales manager for a pharmaceutical firm.
“I’m—nervous about where all the money came from.” She leaned down to open a briefcase, then dropped a spiral-bound notebook between our coffees, the kind college students used before laptops and iPads. She opened it to a page halfway through, marked with a Post-it.
I took a look. It was a list of names, dates, and dollar amounts. Kevin Schneiderman, 5-13-22, $350. Margaret Montgomery, 5-27-11, $750. Cheryl Macon, 7-5-22, $1,250. The entries stopped three months ago. The notebook went back years.
“This was two weeks before she died.” Vivian pointed to the last line, halfway down the page. “And it goes back to 2015.”
“Do you know any of the names?”
She shook her head. “My aunt—her name was Emma Shipler—she did a lot of things. Ran an art gallery, a yoga studio, Tarot readings, so I guess she met a lot of people. And she did good. She left me her house, and I don’t know what I’m going to do with that.” She sighed. “And my other aunt is mad because she didn’t get the house. But anyway, it’s a nice house, and now I’m wondering, where did all the money come from? Is it legal? Who are all these people? Are they going to come after me?” She sighed again and took a gulp of her coffee.
I skimmed a few pages of the notebook. “Well, a lot of these names are fairly distinctive. I should be able to find at least some of them and just ask. Is that what you want me to do?”
“I guess. I could do it, but—well, I’m afraid of what they might say. If it is stolen money, am I going to have to return it? I don’t know.” She groaned softly.
“Well, you might consult a lawyer. Whoever handled her estate, maybe. But one step at a time—I’ll start calling these people and tell you what I find out.”
We discussed my fee, and she wrote me a check for a retainer. Then she stood up. “I have to get back to work. Thanks for meeting me.” She left the notebook with me.
It wasn’t my usual P.I. case, but it looked like an interesting break from cheating spouses and workers comp fraud. I flipped through the notebook, then finished my coffee and headed home.
Rachel was getting ready to go to class. “How was the client? Don’t talk to me. I’ll be home early. Or maybe late. Where’s my phone? You’re making dinner. Can I borrow $20? I’m almost out of gas.” She zipped up her hoodie.
Rachel’s my girlfriend. We’ve been living together for years. She’s got red hair, hazelnut eyes, and mild psychic abilities, which come in handy on some of my cases—the psychic powers, I mean. She’s been studying psychology on top of working as a graphic designer, so lately she’s been pretty busy. I was trying not to feel neglected.
I gave her $20. She gave me a quick kiss before leaving. “Wish me luck on my presentation.”
What presentation? I had no idea, but I said, “Break a leg!” anyway. She was already halfway out the door.
After checking my email and doing some paperwork on my other cases, I started on Vivian Vogel. First I did a quick check on her aunt, Emma Shipler, just to confirm the details of Vivian’s story.
Emma Shipler was in fact dead, at least according to the obituary I found. She was 73, an “entrepreneur who founded multiple businesses throughout her life,” a traveler to Europe, Asia, and Africa, and a big fan of Elton John, claiming to have seen him in concert 32 times. Cause of death wasn’t specified. She was survived by a niece, a sister, and a distant cousin. She’d died three months ago.
Research beyond the obituary told me she owned a house in the Ravenswood neighborhood, had declared bankruptcy twice, and had been arrested on a few minor drug and traffic charges. None of it directly contradicted anything my client had told me, but it gave the case some extra context. She wasn’t a master criminal, but she wasn’t about following the rules obsessively.
I ate lunch, made some phone calls for other cases, then opened the notebook. I started with the middle of last year, looking up names in and around Chicago, skipping common names like “Mary Smith” and “Joe Brown.” In half an hour I had 26 names. I started calling.
A few didn’t answer. I left voicemail messages. Some answered, but were definitely not the right person. Others answered and said they’d never heard of Emma Shipler. But they sounded like they were lying. And scared.
“Emma—what? Shipler? I don’t think so. No. Sorry. No.”
“Who? No.” Call ended.
“I knew someone like that—wait. Wait, no, I didn’t. That was—someone else. Sorry.”
Finally, close to the end of my list, I found someone. Her name was Lilah Osgood. The amount next to her name, from six months ago, was $360.
“Emma? Yes, I remember her from a class I took on healing crystals. She was—why are you calling again?”
“I’m going through some financial records of her. She passed away a few months ago—”
“Oh! That’s too bad. I didn’t know her that well, but—that’s too bad. Are you a relative?”
“No, I’m working for a relative. We have records of a payment you made to Ms. Shipler of $360 on Nov. 21 of last year. Can I ask what that was for?”
She hesitated. “Well . . . I guess it’s all right. It’s just—it’s going to sound a little silly.”
“That’s all right. We’re just making sure everything is accounted for correctly.” I waited.
“Well . . . my dog Pepper was sick. Really sick. And Emma said—it’s just, I was so worried, and when she said she could make Pepper better, I gave her some money. And then she got better. I don’t know what she did, or if she really did anything, but my dog was happy and healthy again, and I didn’t think about it again.” I could hear the smile in her voice.
“So Ms. Shipler cured your dog, and you paid her?” Honestly, that’s far from the craziest thing I’ve ever heard as a P.I., and that’s not even counting vampires and demons.
“Yes. She knew how much I love Pepper, she’s all I’ve got. One day Pepper was fine, and the next she wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t go for walks, just slept all day. And had—stomach problems, you know?”
“Right. But Pepper’s fine now?”
“Absolutely perfect. The vet couldn’t figure it out, but all I care about is my dog is here with me. Aren’t you, Peps? She’s here right now.”
“That’s good. Well, thanks, Ms. Osgood. You’ve been a big help.”
The next two people on my list said they’d never heard of Emma. They seemed to be lying, but I didn’t push them. Then came Cristen Archer.
“I swear she did something to my plants.” She barely let me have any time to explain who I was and what I wanted. “I have dozens of plants—mostly succulents, they take a lot of care. She lived in my building for a few months. My plants just started dying for no reason, and one day I ran into her outside and she asked, out of nowhere, how my plants were doing. And I knew, I just knew, you know?” She paused for breath. “And she said, maybe she could do something about them, but it would cost me. I didn’t understand what she meant, but in the end I gave her a check for $120 just to see if she could do anything. I figured I could stop payment if I wanted to, but then right away my plants started recovering. I looked for her to ask what she did, but I never ran into her. I guess she moved out.”
I thanked her, made some notes, and took a break for a Coke.
Rachel came home. “How’d your presentation go?”
“I was great.” She dumped her backpack on the floor and unzipped her hoodie. “Abnormal psych is my thing, apparently.”
“With me around, you’ve got lots of material. Not even counting the vampires and monsters and stuff.”
“You’re very abnormal.” She gave me a quick kiss. “How’s the new case?” She slumped in her chair and closed her eyes.
“Getting interesting. A few more calls, and I’ll start on dinner.” We take turns, mostly, although lately I’ve been in charge of dinner more because of Rachel’s grad school schedule. “Vegetarian tacos okay?”
“Lots of jalapenos.” She yawned. “Let me check my email and pretend to do work for half an hour.”
She put on noise canceling headphones while I made my calls. The next few didn’t get me anywhere. But then—
Bryce Preston started talking right after I introduced myself and mentioned Emma’s name. “That bitch! What does she want now?” He’d paid Emma $1,200 in January of this year.
“She’s dead,” I told him. “I’m working for a relative. It’s about the $1,200 you paid Emma Shipler on Jan. 19 of this year.”
“Dead?” He hesitated. “Okay. I mean, I’m sorry she’s dead, but—honestly, she screwed me over like a—I don’t mean screwed, it wasn’t like that. More like a gangster.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s—” He sighed. “I was stupid. I think. We were in a creative writing class together. I was—well, I wrote a profile of my girlfriend. Fictional, but her. And we read it in class, we’d exchange projects and make comments on them, and she got mine. When she gave it back, her comment at the button was, ‘It would be bad if she got sick.’ I didn’t know what she meant. I was exaggerating some stuff, all right? I made my girlfriend out to be worse than she really is, maybe I was mad at her that day.”
I glanced over at Rachel. “That happens.”
“But the next day my girlfriend got sick. Really sick. Like, throwing up and a fever and blurry vision and everything else. She wouldn’t go to the ER. And I remembered that note from Emma, and I emailed her, and she basically said she could make Sherry get better if I helped her out. And I was half crazy, so I sent some money to her Venmo, and right away Sherry started getting better. It was weird. I sent her another email asking her what was going on, you know? And she just said, ‘Things happen.’ And she never came back to class after that.”
I looked at Preston’s name in the notebook, processing his story. “You think she was somehow responsible for your girlfriend getting sick?”
“I don’t know. All I know is she took me for $1,200 when I was too worried to think straight. I never wanted her dead or anything, but—I just never want to have anything to do with her again.”
I thanked him, and he hung up.
I wrote up some notes. Rachel was still working. After finishing off some minor business, I went to the kitchen to open a beer and start dinner.
Rachel came in while I was putting tortillas on a plate. “Smells good.” She opened the refrigerator for a beer.
I told her about Vivian, Emma Shipler, and her list. And the people I’d talked to. “It looks like Emma was some kind of a witch.”
Rachel shook her head. “I swear, these cases just find you. Like it’s your curse.” She started assembling her taco. “Pun intended.”
“At least she didn’t kill anybody. That we know about.” I took a sip of beer. “I just wonder what my client’s going to say when I tell her that her aunt was apparently a curse-slinging witch. It’s not exactly what you expect to hear from your friendly neighborhood P.I.”
“It sounds like the mafia, or some sort of witchy protection racket. ‘Nice dog you’ve got there, shame if anything happened to it.’” She grabbed the hot sauce.
“That’s me, Tom Jurgen, private eye. Tangling with the witch mafia. I hope the client believes me.”
I called Vivian Vogel the next morning. She listened to my report without interrupting, and then said, “That’s crazy.” She thought for a moment. “I mean—that is crazy, but I can kind of believe it. Emma was—weird. Different. Like I said, she never could settle on any one thing. And I always wondered how she could afford things. Like the house she gave me. I guess—” She sighed. “I was worried she was selling drugs or running a brothel out of the house. This is better, I guess.”
“None of the people I talked to said she’d done them any permanent or serious harm,” I said. “I mean, I can’t say that’s a good thing, but I don’t think they can come after you in court.”
“Yes, but—that doesn’t mean I’m comfortable with all that money. Should I try to track people down, or—wait a minute.”
“What?”
“How would she do it? Snap her fingers? Do a spell? Summon a, a demon?”
I don’t know a lot about witchcraft, although I’ve encountered enough witches in my work. “Any of those ways, yes, or it could be something else. I’ve, uh, had some dealings with the supernatural.”
“I’m just thinking.” She sighed. “My other aunt, Mina. She’s mad at me because Emma didn’t leave the house to her. She made me let her into the house so she could look for stuff that belonged to her. I wonder—what if she took something?”
Something that helped Emma set the curses on people? That could be a problem. “Where did you find the list?”
“At her house. She had an office. I don’t think Mina went in there, but I wasn’t with her every single minute.”
“Could you tell if something was missing?”
“Maybe. I might.”
Rachel walked into the office, carrying her Wonder Woman coffee mug.
“Any chance of going to the house sometime today?” I asked Vivian.
“I could take some time this afternoon. Maybe around two?”
“I’ll call you back.” We hung up.I looked at Rachel.
Rachel sipped from her mug. “What’s going on?”
“Do you have class today?”
“It’s a night class. Why?” She was justifiably suspicious.
“The house where the witch, or whatever, lived. Could you come out with me to see if you feel any magic? There might be something missing or stolen that you could pick up traces of.”
Rachel set down her mug and crossed her arms. “So you want me to blow off all my work to help you on another case? Should I tell you how much work I have to do? How much homework I have? How much stress I’m under?” She took a step toward me, and I tensed.
Then she leaned forward to give me a kiss. “Thank God. I need a break. But you have to buy me ice cream afterward.”
“As you wish.” I smiled and picked up my phone.
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