by Willow Mason
I played along. If this was for someone else’s amusement, let them have a good show. “What’s the actual position?”
“You’ll be my receptionist. Take the details from the clients, collect payments, that sort of thing.”
“No investigating?”
“I might need you to do a little.” He held up his front paw and flapped it about. “I’m working with severe limitations.”
“Why d'you need a witch, then?” I rolled back on my heels, raising an eyebrow while I stared down into his cute wee face. “Couldn’t any muppet do this role?”
“Well,” he frowned, his eyes almost disappearing beneath his creased brow, “because of this.”
I pulled my mouth down at the corners. “What?”
“This.” He jerked his paw towards me then back to himself a few times.
“Our rapport?”
“No! I need a witch to hear what I’m saying. If I got a human in, all they hear is yapping.”
I laughed and shook my head. “What? D’you think you’re barking right now?”
“I am barking.”
Beezley sounded so serious, I stopped chuckling and tilted my head to one side, studying him. “You mean, if I wasn’t a witch, all this talk would just be yap, yap, yap?”
“Yes, that’s what I mean. Don’t you even know you’re translating when you’re doing it?”
For a moment, I couldn’t tell who was more astonished. After a second of reflection, I decided it was definitely me. “How much are you paying?”
Beezley named a figure that was quite generous for a daily wage, then ruined it by tagging ‘per week’ onto the end of the sentence. “It’s above minimum wage, so it should be satisfactory. As a dog, I must be careful with my finances.”
“Ha! I’m a witch and I need to be careful with mine. You can’t expect me to come in here with my years of witch training and my… My highly specific skill set, then pay me the same as the new recruit at the local chippie. You’re not even offering me a free lunch.”
“I’m not made of money.”
“Neither am I, mate. And I’ve got rent to pay.”
He sat back on his haunches, staring sadly at me. Or grumpily. Maybe angrily? It was hard to tell with him being a Frenchie since their faces were always scrunched up.
“How about I throw in room and board? There’s plenty of space in this house and there’s no mortgage to pay.”
I slipped on my jacket, pulling down the sleeves with care to give him the chance to reconsider. Nothing. “Thanks for your kind offer but I’m not about to move in with a strange man. Even one who’s trapped inside the body of a dog.”
“But I need your help!”
“Yes.” I bent down and stared him in the eye. “Which means I have the upper hand in this negotiation, but I don’t sense any movement on your part.”
I straightened up and picked some lint off the front of my skirt. It was the last piece of clothing I could adjust without making it obvious I was stalling. With one final glance of inquiry, I sniffed with disdain and headed out the door.
Even with a pause on the front porch just in case, the dog didn’t chase me down to extend a better offer. I sighed and headed for home.
It was a pity. The job sounded interesting even if I’d soon get a crick in my neck bending down to converse with the boss. I couldn’t imagine what sort of cases came the way of a French bulldog. Probably not the cream of the crop, nothing important. Still, better than scanning groceries through checkout and organising them in reusable shopping bags.
Speaking of groceries, I needed to sort out something for my lunch, and sharpish. The overhead sun was very bright and friendly, but it was also a reminder I hadn’t eaten since breakfast.
If I wanted to be lazy, I could have another breakfast, and then perhaps a third. Another option was rooting around in the back of the sofa for enough change to buy a scoop of chips, with an instruction to go heavy on the gravy.
However, all thoughts of what to eat departed as I turned into my street and saw Glynda on the front doorstep. With her treatment of me the day before, I’d not expected to cross her path again for quite some time. Her quick appearance didn’t bode well at all.
With a bright smile installed, I walked swiftly up the path. “Fancy seeing you here, Glynda. I hope you’re well.”
“Here,” she said, pushing a piece of paper at me. “I was going to leave it on your front door but since you’re here…” She trailed off, glancing up and down before pressing her right forefinger to her nose.
I grabbed the notice and unlocked the door, pushing past her. “Are you coming in?”
Without waiting to see, I walked inside and put the kettle on. The least I needed to deal with Glynda’s appearance was a strong coffee or maybe a fancy cup of tea. I flattened out the piece of paper.
NOTICE OF EVICTION it said in bold lettering, right at the top.
I bit the inside of my cheek to stop from exclaiming and scanned through the rest of the information quickly. When I turned, Glynda was hovering in the kitchen doorway, wearing a snide smile.
“I hate to do it to you, but I don’t have so many rental properties in town that I can afford to let this one to a non-witch.”
“I’m not a non-witch, I’m a non-coven member,” I snapped back, then smoothed down my hair while the kettle shrieked its achievement of boiling water. “You have to give me three months’ notice before you can start eviction proceedings.”
“Not when you haven’t paid your rent for the past six months. I can initiate them at any time.”
I stared at her open-mouthed, feeling the earth shift under me like quicksand. “But the rent was part of my wages for working with the occult spells. It was written into the contract.”
“What contract?” The glib smile on Glynda’s face made my stomach go on a roller-coaster adventure ride.
“Our signed contract. I still have a copy.”
“And if you want to raise the ire of the supernatural council by presenting it in a dispute tribunal, you go right ahead. Until that happens, I’m just going to work on the assumption you’re not stupid enough to throw your entire life away, and insist you vacate the premises by the end of the week.”
“Y-you can’t.”
“I have.” She clapped her hands together as though stealing my home had just been another tick on her to-do list. As my throat clutched with an understanding of the bind I was in, I realised she saw me as exactly that.
“Fine,” I said through gritted teeth, not wanting to give her the satisfaction of seeing me cry. “I’ll be out of here in five days, tops. I suppose you’re not about to return my security deposit.”
“You suppose right.”
As I opened the door to show Glynda out, I saw the French Bulldog from earlier camped out on my top step. From the grin on his face, I understood he’d heard the meaty part of our exchange. With a slump in my shoulders, I arched an eyebrow, “Yes? Did you want something?”
His expression now leaned towards a smirk. “I heard you need a place to live. As I said, I can offer my assistant the run of the house, apart from my bedroom and the study. What do you say?”
Considering my impending homeless state, I said the only thing I could. “Fine.”
Chapter Three
“You’ll need to set up the computer system,” Beezley said as I joined him in the office. “It’s all been delivered in the boxes, but I don’t have a hope of putting it together myself.”
“What’d you need a computer for?” I asked with a grin. “I thought your business was based around sniffing out trouble.”
He stared at me with those mournful eyes until my cheeks coloured. “Since I’m your boss, it’d be good if you laid off the dog jokes and showed me a bit of respect.”
“Sorry. I’m still getting used to things.”
“Well, catch up.” He turned to show a stubby tail poking high into the air. “I thought as a witch you’d be used to these situations.”
Beezley cocked his head to one side. “Is that something spells do?”
“Not with me to keep watch, they didn’t.”
I was about as familiar with computer equipment as I was with dogs who used to be people. Even going through the instructions slowly, I found it difficult to tell what was written in a foreign language from what was meant to be English. The whole thing appeared nonsensical. Perhaps it was all Greek?
“What’s a router box?”
“It’s the modem,” Beezley said, sighing when it didn’t cause any illumination to take place in my brain. “Keep an eye out for a plain box with lots of plug holes in the base. It should have a listing of lights across the top, saying things like wifi, DSL, Internet, and WAN.”
Swahili, maybe? Morse code?
“Can’t you wave a wand and have it done?”
“Only if I know what the end result’s meant to be. At this rate, I’d use my magic powers and end up with an expensive window box for flowers.”
YouTube came to my rescue. If the dog needed something else like this done, I’d have to start charging my phone plan to the company. After watching someone set up a PC with painstaking slowness, I finally managed to get all the bits and bobs where they should be.
“Voila!”
I turned the monitor on to find a kind message assuring me they were setting things up. Good. It was nice to leave that bit in the computer’s capable hands.
“What else do you need?” I asked when I’d crushed the delivery boxes into cardboard flatpacks and shoved them down the side of the recycling bin. “Should I type something up for you? Email?”
“Get onto the police website,” he said instead, taking me aback.
“You mean hack into it? Isn’t that like illegal?” Not to mention, impossible. If a gadget didn’t work out of the box, I sent it back.
“Not if you’re a police officer.”
I stared at him, wondering if the little dog had lost his mind. “Which I’m not.”
“I used to be, and I need to get access to all my old information. If you’re quick enough, we can use my old password and hopefully copy across the entire caseload of files before they get around to deleting my account.”
“Right.” I bit my bottom lip, unsure of how to proceed. “I thought you said you were a private investigator?”
“Only because of this.” He waved a paw along the length—or rather shortness—of his body. “My actual title was Detective Sergeant Beezley, and I worked in homicide and serious crimes for the last sixteen years.”
I inclined my head. Impressive. “What’s your password, then?”
For a long moment, I thought he wasn’t going to reveal it to me. He took a step back and stared hard at the floor.
“Am I just meant to guess?” I turned to the keyboard and jiggled my fingers lightly on the keys. “How many goes do I get before it locks me out completely?”
“Fine. It’s Beezley with a capital B and the number 3 instead of the first e.”
“Wow,” I said, tapping it in. “And you’re from the police, you say. I guess nobody there’s worried about cyber-crime.”
“What’s your password?” he snapped.
Good point. After a few experiences of coming dangerously close to locking myself out of my phone forever, I’d relied on a magic spell to keep the screen blank, choosing the passcode 0000 so my mind could rest easy at night.
“It’s something magical,” I said, turning the monitor so he could view the screen with ease. “What do all these choices mean?”
He ran through a list of commands to take me through his folder tree, copying everything across to the computer’s hard drive. It was slow going. Some of the folders must have been packed full of pictures. High definition, given the slow crawl of progress.
“That’s a relief,” Beezley said when the last of the active files had been moved. “Now, let’s see if there’s anything new since I was last able to log on.”
Again, he ordered me around the system until a series of alerts popped up on screen.
“Click on the case file starting with SCU–that’s my old department.”
I clicked and immediately wished I hadn’t. The body of a young woman filled up the screen. Her blank eyes told me she was dead.
“How about I sit you up here,” I said, turning and picking my new boss up before he could object. “Then you can use the mouse and the keyboard to take a good look around while I make us a nice cup of tea.”
“I don’t drink tea,” he said, but settled onto the tabletop, pushing the mouse around with his front paw. “You can put on a microwave dinner, though. It’ll be a change to eat something hot.”
The mess in the kitchen spoke volumes about the limitations of an animal with no opposable thumbs. Cartons had been stamped on until they split, releasing the contents. Packets had been chewed open. Although Beezley had dragged used containers into one pile, he hadn’t managed to work out a way to stick them inside the bin.
I breathed a sigh of relief as I saw the packet of latex gloves in the kitchen cupboard. With my hands safely enshrined inside, I began to pick up the rubbish lying about on the floor.
“Quick, come here!”
With my hands inside the bin, I jerked back and managed to throw a half-consumed banana onto my chest. My mouth formed into a rictus of disgust as I wiped the sticky mess back where it belonged. The sharp odour of rotting fruit clung to me like a needy child.
“What is it?” I asked in a tone completely unsuited for addressing an employer.
Beezley didn’t seem to notice. He nosed the mouse towards me, then jerked his head toward the screen. “Look. It’s a new one!”
A new what? With a trepidation born of the last terrible image I’d seen on the monitor, I flicked my eyes at the screen, then just as quickly shut them. Another body.
Did this dog think I had a serial killer fetish? After recent events, I couldn’t even stand the sight of a dead bug.
“Sorry,” he said, reading my face. Or my mind. “Don’t look at the picture, read the report.”
When I cracked my lids open, only a document remained on screen. I scanned through it quickly, not finding anything worthy of a shout. “It’s an incident report,” I said with a shrug. “Isn’t that what you do?”
“Yeah. But it fits an existing MO.” Beezley nosed the mouse again, then sat back panting, his tongue lolling from his mouth. “That means modus operandi. It’s a repeated method or other signature belonging to a criminal that—”
I held up my hand. “Thanks, but I know what it means. I watch CSI.”
“Sure.”
Was he giving me an eye-roll? Seriously? Homelessness started to appear more attractive.
“You’ll need to tell me about the other cases before I know what you’re talking about,” I said in a stern tone. “I only copied your files to the disc—I didn’t commit them all to memory.”
“Yeah, good point. Until I was… altered, I worked a case where a man and a few women were victims of the same killer. At least, I thought that’s what was happening. My superior officers weren’t as convinced.” He shook his head in dismay. “Anyway, the signature of the killer was a mark left on the skin of each victim. On the backs of their hands. See.”
I slapped my hand over my eyes before the dog could even think about moving for the mouse again. “Just describe it, thank you. I’d prefer to sleep again sometime this year.”
“You need to learn how to be less squeamish,” Beezley said with a sniff. “If you were a recruit at the station, I’d soon knock that out of you.”
“If I were a recruit at the station, someone would be kind enough to point me towards a desk job, just like you described this as being.”
“Fine. It’s a pentagram. I
missed it for a while because the marking is smudged and sometimes almost completely gone. You can look now, it’s just a close-up.”
I parted my fingers gingerly, then took my hand away, frowning. “I’ve seen that symbol before.”
“Pentagrams are common. They’re an old symbol from many cults and religions. Mostly, they’re associated with witchcraft.”
“I know what pentagrams are,” I snapped, moving him aside to get a better view of the screen. The main symbol was just a rudimentary star, but it had a pattern of lines around the outside, enlarging it into something more beautiful. In magic, beauty equates to power. “But this design, it’s distinctive.”
“Right? Would anyone in your coven use such a thing?”
That earned him a snort. “I don’t belong to a coven, thank you very much. I’m a solo practitioner. A witch under her own steam. A bird soaring high above the flock. A—A…”
“Right.” Beezley gave me a strange glance before returning his attention to the screen. “Anyway, it’s turned up on three different bodies so far, and this one would make it four.”
“There’s a murderer on the loose who’s killed at least four people?” The horror in my voice was nowhere near enough to match the chill in my heart.
“Maybe. Maybe not. As I said, my superior officers didn’t see the same connection.”
“But they’re all murder victims.”
Apparently, it’s possible for a French bulldog to appear shifty as all get out because that’s how Beezley suddenly acted. “Well…”
“They’re not murder victims?”
“The unit had one down as accidental death,” the dog admitted with great reluctance. “One was a suicide, and another is listed as natural causes. They’re going to list Fenella Wainwright as misadventure, I just know it. They’ll say she walked into the street and got hit by a car, nothing more.”
“Well, thank goodness. You had me going there.”
“It doesn’t mean they are. Just that I hadn’t convinced them of my line of thinking, even though it was sound. They were intent on the differences between the victims—their manner of death, their ages and gender—rather than the similarities.”