I stood up too. I had been gone from the farmhouse for so much longer than I’d meant to that even Paws might have started to worry. With that in mind I said my goodbyes, giving an awkward little smile toward Garnett. Something inside me desperately wanted her to like me.
As we left, I saw Mrs. Barnett watching me closely. I couldn’t read her expression, but I had a feeling it said something like, “Get it together, girl.”
I squared my shoulders and determined to do just that. There was a lot of work that needed to be done. I couldn’t very well sit around mooning after Jasper Wolf, no matter how tempted I was.
It was a quick drive home, and Paws was waiting for me on the top step of the front porch, a very unusual position for him. Usually if he was on the porch he was on his crate. Nowhere else would do.
“Where have you been, young lady?” he demanded.
“I was running errands. I told you I was going to,” I said.
“I suppose you did, but I didn’t think you’d be gone for so long. How long does it take to take care of a dog? Can’t he take care of himself?”
“No, he can’t really take care of himself. He also does like attention and affection. A lot of animals do, especially pet dogs. He misses Mr. John. After I saw Cesar, I went downtown and stopped in to see Liam,” I explained.
“And that gives you a reason to be so late?” Paws demanded.
I rolled my eyes. No, I didn’t think that gave me a reason to be late. What I thought gave me a reason to be late was chatting with my friends and being an adult. Excuse me.
“I can see from your expression that you’re thinking argumentative thoughts. Care to share them?” the cat demanded.
“No, I don’t think I will. In fact, I’ll thank you to stay out of my head,” I said.
“That’s difficult when you write all your opinions across your face,” he said.
“You’re just going to have to live with it,” I shot back. “Really, I expect better from you. You’ve been here for a long time. You should know how things work. And how they don’t.”
“Trust me. I’m getting an excellent idea. I further do not think you want me to get an even better idea. We cats are perceptive, and don’t you forget it,” he said.
At last I told Paws everything that had happened over the course of the morning. He wasn’t impressed. He didn’t think I had discovered anything that was going to be of much use. He said that finding Mrs. Earle was nice, but not helpful, and anyhow, he didn’t think I’d done any work to find her. To be fair, he wasn’t wrong about that. I hadn’t gone in search of her, she had just appeared. Still, I thought that knowing she’d been blackmailing somebody at the real estate agency was important. On top of that, it wasn’t just anyone, it was the boss. But Paws didn’t think that mattered either. He said it had been going on for so long, why would anybody care now?
“I don’t understand what you mean,” I said.
“What I mean is, if she’d been blackmailing him for years, why did he suddenly get so offended by it that he killed her?” asked Paws.
“We don’t know. Maybe something changed,” I said.
“Are you moving out?” he asked.
“No, what? Why?” I said.
“Just wondering if something was actually changing,” he said.
I rolled my eyes, but I had to admit that the ghost cat did have a point. “If Mr. Oakley killed Mr. Earle,” I mused, “then the finding of the body is something that changed. Mr. Oakley thought that something to do with the body would implicate him in the murder. You have to think that somebody would notice that.”
“Yes, I do think that,” said Paws. “I think something having to do with the body of Mr. Earle would implicate the murderer. There was a specific clue at the murder scene that the murderer thought Mrs. Earle might recognize. That’s why the murderer went and killed her. Nobody would have any idea that she would return as a ghost. Mostly because the ghost doesn’t remember what happened.”
An idea was crystallizing in my mind as Paws rambled on. “All I have to do is tell Mrs. Earle about the murder scene, and maybe she’ll recognize what happened!” I said. This was the first time I had really thought of that. To be fair, I wasn’t the one who had thought of it. Paws had done that work for me.
“Yes, I’d say that’s about right. If only you could find Mrs. Earle to tell her the details about the murder. Oh, wait. You found her this morning and you didn’t mention it,” he said.
“Don’t be judgmental. I didn’t think of it at the time. Now that you went and said something, I think it makes perfect sense. I’m sure I can catch up with her body again,” I said, “and the ghost shouldn’t be far away.”
Yes, okay, that sounded morbid. But as someone trying to solve a murder, I didn’t really have a choice. Ghosts were not the easiest beings to deal with. I might even say that ghosts were more difficult than the average creature to deal with. In the end, I would say that dark ghosts are the worst of all.
There was no point in continuing to argue with the cat, so I headed into the house. He might have a point, and it gave me a new angle to explore, and that’s all that mattered.
After my shower, I went to have a look at my grandmother’s spell books. I had now placed the ones I used frequently among the cookbooks in the kitchen, where they fit in well. I pulled a couple down and started to riffle them, not in an effort to find something that would help me solve the murder cases, but rather to see if I could find anything that would help me solve what I was sure was my grandmother’s murder. Beyond that, I wanted to be prepared if any dark witches picked a fight. I didn’t get much time for studying how to be a more effective witch, so I tried to take my chances when I could find them.
I also gave the bar a call to see how Greer was doing, but no one answered the phone. They weren’t big on answering their phones, so that wasn’t crazy and it didn’t particularly alarm me, but it did annoy me a bit. All I wanted was to make sure Greer was okay.
I spent a quiet afternoon drinking tea and reading Evenlyn’s spell books, which were fascinating. She had written lots of notes in the margins, and I enjoyed reading her writing even though it made me miss her even more. Her death had been a shock, especially since she was in good health and not really all that old. I had never expected to become the Witch of Mintwood in the foreseeable future. Then, suddenly, I was.
Now that I was sure Evenlyn had been murdered, I was more determined than ever to avenge her death. The first step of that quest was to figure out what had happened in the first place. As Paws had recently pointed out, I needed to get better with my spells in order to do that. Even I agreed, and where Paws was concerned that wasn’t something you could take for granted.
It was dark outside by the time I looked up from the books. I was still sitting alone in the kitchen. Paws had gone to sleep on his crate out on the porch. He seemed to think it was fine to return to his usual spot after making sure he had yelled at me enough.
Neither of my friends had come home. I was just starting to realize how strange that was when I heard a car drive up. Usually I waited for Charlie and Greer to come inside; I didn’t want to appear over-eager. But this time I was so excited about the day’s events that I decided to greet them at the door.
When I got there, I saw Charlie’s Volvo parked next to my car, and Charlie herself trudging up to the farmhouse. When she caught sight of me she gave a little wave. “Hey, how’s Greer doing?”
“I don’t know. I tried calling her, but she never answered,” I said.
Charlie stopped dead, her usually pale skin going a shade whiter. “She said she wanted you to call. I told her I was certain you would. On top of that, she said she was going to be home by now. I don’t see her truck.”
“Forget it. Something is definitely wrong. This never happens with her. Let’s go to the bar,” I said.
Charlie didn’t hesitate. She threw her stuff down in the living room and we turned right back around and headed for the Beetle. “Pa
ws, are you coming?”
“Yes, I am very concerned about the grumpy one’s well-being,” he said.
“Did you learn anything else since you got home?” Charlie asked as I pulled out of the driveway.
“She ran into Mrs. Earle’s ghost. She didn’t think it was your fault that she was dead. She thought that once her husband’s body was found, her time was up,” said Paws.
Charlie gave the cat a stricken look. Even though he was trying to exonerate her, it was hard news for her to hear. But I could tell she was also slightly relieved. She hadn’t wanted to be responsible for somebody else’s death, however indirectly.
“My work has real-life consequences,” she said. “I have to understand and accept that, and I always have. I thought about how those articles would be received. I just didn’t realize that doing an interview could cause so much damage.”
“Now you’re hearing that the interview isn’t what caused the damage,” I told her.
“That’s true. It does help. I do wish I could have spoken with Mrs. Earle myself,” she said.
“We may still need to speak with her,” I said. I told Charlie about what Paws had suggested.
“That’s a brilliant idea. There’s probably something about the crime scene that she would find fishy. All we have to do is find out what it is,” she said eagerly.
“Here we are,” I said, pulling into the parking lot next to the bar.
The place was busy. Well, okay, it was always busy. But Greer was supposed to be off work by now. Her truck was in the parking lot, but that was to be expected since she had told Charlie she planned to leave it there. After she’d been nearly run off the road, she wanted a break from driving. Deacon would be glad enough to chauffeur her home.
We made our way into the bar, where we found a lot of guys dressed in leather vests and covered in tattoos. But Greer was not behind the bar, and in fact I didn’t see her anywhere. I walked up to the bartender and asked for Greer, and he said she’d left a couple of hours ago. “She said she was going home.”
I frowned at the bartender. He was new, and I didn’t know him well. But I had no reason to think he’d lie to me about Greer. If she had left a couple of hours ago and said she was going home, that’s probably what she had intended to do.
Yet she had never arrived.
Something terrible had happened to my friend.
Chapter Nineteen
“If she isn’t here, where would she have gone?” I asked Charlie. We were standing outside the bar, surrounded by a sea of motorcycles. I felt very much out of place. Charlie, still wearing her work clothes, looked even more out of place than I did.
“I don’t think she even tried to get home,” said Charlie. “At least, she didn’t do that and get run off the road, because if she had, we would have seen Deacon’s truck on the way. There aren’t that many ways to get to the farmhouse.”
“You think maybe she went to Deacon’s?” I asked.
“There’s a good chance. Maybe she wanted to stay with him for a while. But I’m sure she would have called us and let us know where she was,” Charlie said with a threatening note in her voice. “She let me know about the accident, so she would have known I’d be worried.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that. It’s not as if she’s that responsible,” said Paws.
Charlie rolled her eyes at the cat, then turned to me and said, “You want to go to Deacon’s now?”
“I think that’s the next place, yes.”
We made our way back to the car and headed out. In the time it took to drive to Deacon’s, I got really worried. None of this was like Greer. We’d had a strange visitor at the house just the night before, and now Greer was missing. I wondered if someone had targeted her specifically, but then I had to ask: Why? I couldn’t think of any reason why someone would pick Greer out for special attention.
We reached Deacon’s house and saw several lights on and his truck parked out front. Deacon’s family was wealthy and he lived in a very nice part of town, in a house with a nicely landscaped lawn. He also owned three local apartment buildings. And he worked very hard.
“She’s here. She must be,” said Charlie, hopping out of the car and rushing up to the front door.
It took me a bit longer, because I had to gather Paws before I could follow her. Charlie didn’t even bother knocking. At least, she knocked, but only as she was already walking through the front door.
I could have yelled at her to wait for me, but I didn’t even try. I knew she was too worried about our friends to wait.
“There’s a fine line between a reporter and a burglar. I think Charlie might be crossing it tonight,” said Paws.
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” I said.
“Hopefully Deacon recognizes her before he calls the cops,” said Paws.
“Charlie, I wouldn’t just barge in like that,” I called out.
It was too late. She was already inside, and I was still pretty far behind her.
For a few steps everything was fine. Then everything started happening in a strange slow motion. I could feel the exact moment when my foot touched the pavement and simultaneously I heard Charlie scream. Then the door slammed shut.
Without thinking, I raced forward and tried the door. It was locked, and everything inside had gone silent.
“Just use your wand now,” said Paws.
“How can I do that when I don’t know what’s happening inside?” I demanded. I slammed my shoulder against the door, but then a sudden inspiration took over. I raced down the front steps and ran around the back of the house to where I knew Deacon’s living room was. I looked in through the wide windows, only to find the curtains drawn and the lights off.
Finally, I ran back to the front door and brandished my wand. If the neighbors asked, I would tell them I was practicing to be a magician. Sometimes that didn’t feel too far from the truth.
“I can’t risk her safety. I’m going to have to use this now,” I said. Paws did not disagree.
I waved my wand and made streaks of green magic float toward the door. A million sparkles disappeared into the lock. The next instant it popped off.
I sighed with relief as I cautiously opened the door. Deacon’s hallway was dark, but I had expected that after whatever had just happened. I left the door open behind me and crept forward with Paws at my side.
As we moved along, I tried desperately to get my thoughts in order. At the moment they were a terrified jumble. Charlie, Greer, and I had never discussed anything like this, nor had Paws and I. If something went wrong, the team wouldn’t really be able to help, since most of the team was in whatever trouble we were about to uncover.
With those comforting thoughts, I took a few more steps forward, inching along the wall so that I could see into the big room with windows. Disappointingly, it was too dark for me to make out anything inside the room. There was no noise and no movement anywhere in the house.
I hadn’t been to Deacon’s house often, but I’d been there enough to know my way around a bit. For all that I could see, Deacon, Greer, and Charlie were in this room—or out back—or anywhere. Furthermore, since I had no idea who else was involved in this mess, I didn’t want to say anything for fear of revealing my presence in the house.
Luckily, Paws didn’t have that problem. He could speak as much as he wanted and not be heard, as long as any intruders were humans and not witches or ghosts.
“I’ll find them,” he said, trotting away. He didn’t bother looking in the room with the big windows; somehow he had already figured out that they weren’t there. He took off down the hallway and was soon out of sight.
I held my breath and waited in suspense for the cat to report back. As long as I didn’t hear any screams, I had to believe that my friends were okay. Or at least unharmed.
Silently, I kicked myself. I couldn’t believe I had let Charlie walk in with no cautions whatsoever. How foolish of both of us! Not that Charlie was easy to stop. Boulders rolling d
own a hill had less forward motion than my reporter friend on a scent.
Luckily, I didn’t have to wait in the dark for long before Paws came trotting back. “They’re in the kitchen. Don’t worry, they aren’t having a nice meal without you.”
“What’s happening?” I whispered.
“They appear to be tied up. Both Deacon and Greer have gags over their mouths. Someone did something right there. I’m sure Charlie hasn’t been here long enough for that to happen to her, but it’s only a matter of time,” he said.
“Who tied them up?” I asked.
“A woman. I’m sure she has a gun. If she doesn’t, I can’t see how she could have overpowered someone like Deacon,” he said.
“Are they injured?” I asked. My heart ached just having to say those words. I couldn’t believe this was really happening. So far I had been able to protect my friends from serious trouble, but now serious trouble had come to Deacon’s doorstep.
“No, they did not appear to be injured,” said Paws.
“Did they see you?” I asked.
“The ladies did. Deacon can’t see ghosts, and anyhow he was busy trying to untie himself. I told him that wasn’t going to work, but he didn’t hear me.”
“Let’s not waste any more time. Did you see where this woman was?” I said.
“Standing by the window. There’s a back door on the far side of the room, and I think she thinks you’re going to come in that way. She probably thinks the front door is secure. Foolish woman should have anticipated witchcraft,” said Paws with satisfaction.
I smiled thinly, wand at the ready. It was time to end this and find out who exactly this woman was and what she wanted.
I crept toward the kitchen as silently as possible, terrified by the thought that the woman might have a gun. If she did, all our lives were in danger, and I would have to act as fast as I ever had to save my friends.
“Do you have a plan?” Paws asked.
“Yes, I have a plan,” I whispered.
I rounded the corner into the dark kitchen. Everything was a blur as I moved as fast as I could. The dark figure by the window yelled and lunged forward, while I dropped my hand so my wand was at my waist. The island between me and my friends’ captor hid my arm. With that protection, I performed a spell to call the gun out of the woman’s hands. Given that she wasn’t a witch, she couldn’t see the magic. When the gun inexplicably went flying away from her, she yelled and tripped at the same time. I tucked the wand back up my sleeve, then stepped forward.
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