In the morning, I wake up to a sound I’m all too familiar with. It’s my alarm clock going off. I sit up groggily and look around the room.
Why? Because the darn thing moves, that’s why. Turkey ordered it online, and insists on setting it for me every night.
Where is it?
Soon I spot the red hunk of plastic and metal, cruising on two wheels in an erratic pattern towards my dresser. The beeping sound gets louder and louder.
“Stupid freaking hunk of plastic,” I mutter as I swing my legs over the side of the bed and push my toes into my fuzzy slippers. “It’s too early to be... look at that! Still dark outside... it’s not natural to...” I rub my eyes as I shuffle towards the little contraption.
Thud! I bang my slippered foot into the bedpost. “Ow! Ow, ow...” I’m wincing and hobbling by the time I catch the alarm clock and turn off the loud beeping.
Ah. The relief of silence is short lived. Soon my throbbing toe and the fact that it’s still dark out remind me of my upset.
“This is ridiculous,” I mutter aloud, eyeing my bed. The covers are thrown open, ready to swallow me whole if I just crawled back in and—
“Good morning!” Turkey transmits, striding into the room with his tail held high. “Glad to see you’re up and at ‘em!”
“That alarm clock you bought is killing me,” I say dramatically, as I bend at the knees and reach for my still-throbbing big toe. “If I stub my toe one more time, I swear—”
“You’re supposed to walk around your bed, Penelope, not into it.”
“I can’t walk around it when it’s pitch black in here.”
“Ah. I see. You need the lights to come on too. I believe there’s a way we can arrange for that to happen. Let me do a bit of research...”
I have a sudden vision of waking up to that dreaded beeping sound plus the lights snapping on. That would truly be a nightmare. “No,” I say. “Never mind. I don’t need the lights to come on.”
Turkey weaves around my ankles, which is a sure sign that he wants to be picked up. I bend down and scoop him into my arms. Holding him always puts me into a better mood. He’s warm and soft and fluffy and now he’s purring, which makes me even happier.
“Good morning,” Penelope,” he says, nuzzling my chin.
“Good morning Turkey Werky,” I say. I give his forehead a few kisses. How could I possibly stay mad at him? He’s so darn cute.
“Are you ready for your coffee?” he asks.
“I am,” I say. I carry him towards the bedroom door. As we move towards the kitchen I say, “Did you find a way to make my coffee for me?”
“Unfortunately, I did not,” Turkey says. “I was merely asking you if you were ready for it. If I could make your coffee, I would. But I don’t have—”
“Opposable thumbs,” I finish for him, with a nod. “Right, right. Well... I’m guessing that one day you’ll find a way to work around that. Some kind of robotic hand or something.”
I giggle at the thought of it, and set Turkey down lightly on the kitchen’s linoleum floor, by his water dish.
Turkey doesn’t laugh. Instead he says, “Robotic hand... now... Penelope, you might be onto something there.”
I roll my eyes as I start filling the coffee pot with water. “I was just kidding, Turkey,” I say.
“Well. I don’t think my shortcomings are something to joke about.”
“They’re not shortcomings, Turkey. You’re a cat. You’re perfect. You’re not meant to have opposable thumbs.”
Now that the coffee is started, I shuffle towards the pantry to get Turkey’s food out.
“You’re right,” Turkey transmits. “I suppose that’s what humans are for.” He starts lapping up his water.
I grin. For a minute I have an image of myself as one giant prosthetic limb for Turkey. Then, as I reach for his bowl and start filling it with dry kitty kibbles, my grin fades. I do sort of function as my cat’s opposable thumbs. He has me trained.
I reach into the fridge for his can of Feisty Feast. Turkey looks up. “A little bit extra of the wet food today, please,” he says. “I’ve been up for two hours already and I’ve worked up quite an appetite.”
“Turkey, you’ve been up since four? Doing what?”
“Research, of course,” Turkey says. “I looked for gold nuggets that were registered in the surrounding area around the time of Felix Greene’s death, thirty years ago.”
“What did you find?” I ask.
“Well, I started with the four corner states, and focused on the first five years after Felix died.”
Turkey’s tail swishes back and forth. I can tell he’s pleased with himself. He leans down and laps up a bit of the wet food that I’ve put down.
“And?” I prompt.
Turkey licks his lips. “Nothing,” he says. “Not one gold nugget of a significant size. Now, they could have broken it into two of course, to stay off of the radar, but that would have lessened the value of it. I suspected that they didn’t do that.”
“And there was nothing?” I ask. “Then what did they do with the gold?”
“I’m getting there,” Turkey says. “Isn’t patience one of the three P’s of witchcraft?”
“Yes, but that’s about working magic, not being a PI,” I say.
I glance over at the coffee pot. Luckily, there’s enough for a cup. I reach up for a mug.
“So what did you find?” I ask, in a very not-so-patient telepathic tone.
Turkey takes another bite of food. While he chews he transmits. “I widened my search. I looked for a gold nugget of that size that was sold anywhere in the US since Felix died.”
“Anything?” I ask.
“Nothing registered with the Federal Gold Index, which is the national registry for melting gold.”
“Does that mean that Rich lied?” I ask. I take a healthy swig of my coffee, thinking this over. Was it possible that Rich was making up the story about the large gold nugget?
I’m not sure, but it doesn’t seem like he’d have any motive to lie to me. If anything, he had motive to keep the nugget a secret. After all, spilling his secret could have led to his death.
Turkey continues. “Gold nuggets are collector’s items, Penny. The larger the nugget, the more it is worth. I realized that a nugget of that size wouldn’t be melted down and turned into bars. Someone would want to keep it intact—in its natural form. And if they did, it would still be around.”
“Okay...” I say. I sip my coffee again.
“I found exactly eight nuggets of ‘softball’ size—a sphere with a circumference of roughly twelve inches—throughout the globe. And seven of them had very clear origin stories; you know, ‘this nugget was discovered by so and so while he was out plowing his field’, and what-not.”
“Seven of the eight large nuggets had origin stories,” I repeat. “What about the eighth?” I take a seat on one of the beat-up barstools next to the kitchen counter, and place my cup down before me.
Turkey looks up at me and grins.
“The eighth gold nugget, owned by a collector in South Africa, didn’t have a story behind it. The more I dug, the clearer it became. The owner was very private about where the gold came from. It seemed to just appear out of nowhere. I knew that wasn’t the case. So I kept digging. Look at the note I typed on your laptop.”
He motions with his cute pink nose to my laptop, which is sitting open on the countertop to my left.
I sip coffee as I wake the computer up. The black screen comes to life, and I see a document with typed notes.
‘Sale—29 years ago. 11 million dollars paid out to Rich and Victoria Dempsey’
“What does this mean?” I ask. “The collector in South Africa bought the gold nugget from Rich and Victoria?”
“Precisely,” Turkey transmits. “It wasn’t registered anywhere officially, but I knew that some hobbyist somewhere must have caught wind of that nugget and investigated it. I found a guy who has a blog all about gold sales, and
then I leveraged the research he had already done.”
Leave it to my cat to talk about leveraging research at six in the morning. I scratch my head, slightly confused. Then I sip my coffee, hoping it will help me fire up my brain.
Come on, noggin. I need you!
Turkey continues. “I emailed the blogging hobbyist and found out that he’d gotten into contact with the gold’s owner—well, stalked him, really, given the fact that the ‘relationship’ ended in a restraining order. But the hobbyist's enthusiasm paid off. He found out that the money from the sale went to the Dempsey’s, exactly twenty-nine years ago.”
“Just a year after Felix died,” I say.
Turkey nods. “If Rich and Victoria got that gold in a shady way, they needed to wait a little while for the dust to settle. They weren’t that patient, as it turns out, because they only managed to hold off for a year.”
I nod. “It makes sense. If news of the sale did leak out, they wouldn’t want to be in the spotlight. It could make people question Felix’s death. They waited a year, holding onto the giant hunk of gold, and then finally sold it to a collector.”
“For eleven million dollars,” Turkey says.
“A big chunk of change,” I say.
Turkey nods and burrows his face in his food again, eating away happily.
“So now we know that Rich and Victoria sold a gold nugget for eleven million dollars, and no one in this town even knew about it,” I say. “But what does that mean? Why would they try to hide it? Does that mean that they killed Felix? And what does that have to do with Rich’s death?”
“If we want to know more,” Turkey says, “I suggest we follow the money.”
“The eleven million?” I ask.
“Yes,” Turkey says. “The Dempsey’s live in Hillcrest. I’m betting that they don’t travel an hour to Melrose to do their banking. They must do their banking here in Hillcrest. There’s only one bank in town.”
“Miner’s Bank,” I transmit with a nod. “You’re right. If we follow the money, we might get some real insight into this case. We might finally get the big picture. Hey—I have an idea! Annie’s brother works at the bank. Maybe he could help us.”
Turkey motions with his paw to the laptop again. “Already on it,” he says. “Open up your email. I sent him a message just before your alarm went off. Hopefully he’s responded by now.”
I do as Turkey says. While I click over to my email, I say, “Turkey, it’s only six-thirty in the morning. No one in their right mind would check their work email, let alone respond this early in the—Oh.” I stop short. There in my email inbox, I see a new, unopened message from Mike Mitchell, Annie’s younger brother.
“Most adults wake up early,” Turkey says. “I hate to break it to you, but sleeping in is for teenagers. A working, professional adult will usually wake up, eat a healthy breakfast,” he emphasizes the word healthy, because he disapproves of my chocolate cereal habit, “exercise perhaps, catch up on news and emails, shower, and then head off to work.”
“All that before work?” I say in awe. This is news to me.
I open Mike’s email.
To: Penny Banks
From: Mike Mitchell, Lead Loan Officer, Miner’s Bank
Subject: Appointment
Hi Penny,
It’s nice to hear from you. I’d be happy to meet with you today. Is this with regards to a loan? I have openings at ten and eleven. Please let me know what will work best for you. Thank you, by the way, for all that you’ve done for Annie recently. You come up in conversation often, always with the warmest affection.
Kind regards,
Mike
I finish reading, and then look at Turkey. “He can meet with me,” I say. “What am I supposed to do? Tell him that I’m conducting an investigation...? I don’t know if he’s going to be able to share details of someone else’s account with me. It’s not like I have a search warrant or anything.”
“You’ll think of something,” Turkey says. “Even if Mike can’t give you direct answers, you can read his expression. Remember the module about facial tells?”
I try, but at the moment it’s escaping me.
“I think you should take the ten o’clock appointment. That way you can still meet up with Chris for coffee at eleven.”
I slap my hand to my forehead. That’s right! I’d almost forgotten about my coffee date with Chris. Er—not date. Coffee meeting. Yes. This is going to be purely professional. A private investigator and an officer of the law, getting together to exchange information. That’s all.
I move my fingers on the keyboard, typing up a quick response to Mike. Then Turkey hops up on my lap and commandeers the touch-pad mouse.
He navigates to my Speedy’s Online Private Investigator’s saved slides, and begins flipping through them. “You have a meeting at the bank at ten,” Turkey says. “That means we have at least an hour to study. Let’s start with the module about facial tells.”
I groan.
My disappointment doesn’t deter my cat. Soon he’s reading over the slides, and I’m reluctantly listening while drinking a second cup of coffee.
By ten o’clock I’ve had twenty visual signs of lying and fifteen facial tells jammed into my brain. I’ve eaten a not-so-healthy breakfast of cereal with banana slices and soymilk, done my sit ups for the day, showered, and dressed in (my favorite these days) all black plus cowboy boots.
My accessories include my fake glasses, of course, my pearl necklace, and my pink Minnie Mouse watch—which thankfully hasn’t alerted me to any comings or goings at the portal gate.
Though everything else in my life seems to be a bit chaotic at the moment, at least there’s no action up on Hillcrest Pass.
As I hike up the staircase that leads into the massive brownstone building that is Miner’s Bank, I even remember to do the Perfect Hair Day Spell on my mop of brown curls. Bobby, a guy I went to high school with gives me a strange look as I feel the shimmering sensation of my hair falling into place. I reach my hands up and pretend to smooth my hair as he stares at me.
“Just got it cut and styled!” I say, patting my locks. “Those stylists over at Bliss Salon really can work magic!”
Bobby shakes his head with wonder and keeps moving down the steps. I chuckle to myself as I pull the heavy bank doors open.
Chapter Eight
My cowboy boots click against the shining pink marble floor as I cross the Miner’s Bank lobby. There’s a little coffee station on the far wall, which I always stop at first thing (obviously!) when I visit the bank.
Once I have a little Styrofoam cup in my hands, I sidle over to a teller station. One of the bankers, Monique, is fiddling with a radio on the back corner. I don’t know who she’s kidding—the only station we get here in Hillcrest is Wolf Country. Once in a while, on a very clear, cloudless day, the pop station from Melrose will come in, but based on the weather I noticed when riding into town, today’s not that day.
“Any luck?” I say, as she makes her way towards me.
“No dice,” she says with a shrug.
“Clouds are looking pretty thick out there,” I say. “I think we’re supposed to get more snow this afternoon.”
“Oh really?” she says. “I didn’t know. Darn it. I hate the sports hour. Don’t these guys know that not everyone enjoys hearing a blow-by-blow of the latest league games? I mean really, town sporting events are so boring.”
“You’re preaching to the choir,” I say. It’s true. I never listen to the sports hour on Wolf Country. “Hey, can you point me towards Mike’s office? I have a meeting with him.”
“Oooh!” Monique says with a grin. “You taking out a loan? For something exciting?” She leans against the counter.
I’m not sure how much I want to tell her. News travels fast in this little town. I’d better keep my investigation out of it.
“Nothing too exciting,” I say. “I just want to talk to him.”
“That’s how it starts!” Monique s
ays. “That’s exactly what everyone says before heading into Mike’s office. ‘We’re just talking’. Well, honey, I have news for you. All that talking is going to lead to a loan, because that’s Mike’s specialty. And it’s a good thing, too. He won’t give you more than you can handle. Then you can have that new house or new car or whatever it is you’re after.” She points towards the right, where I see a doorway. “Through that door, ” she says. “Mike’s office is the first one you’ll come across.”
“Thanks,” I say. “Really, I’m not after anything.” Except information, I think to myself. “We’re really just going to talk.”
“We’ll see about that!” Monique says happily.
As I turn my back I hear Monique greet another person in the lobby. “Hi there Bess!” she says brightly. “How are you?”
I hear Bess Johnson, the owner of the Antique Haven, answer. “Cold. Did you hear about the storm that’s rolling in?”
“Penny was just telling me!” Monique responds.
“Oh! Is that Penny?”
I move quickly towards the door before I can get roped into a conversation with Bess and Monique.
“Hi Bess!” I call out over my shoulder, before pulling open the door and sliding through it.
I find Mike’s office easily.
Mike is Annie’s younger brother. He’s quite a bit younger in fact. Fifteen years, to be exact. At fifty-five, Mike looks like a male version of my friend. He’s about her same build (on the shorter side, with a slight frame). His hair isn’t quite as white as Annie’s, but it’s getting there. He has the same bright blue, sparkling eyes.
He stands as I enter.
“Penny!” he says happily. “Right on time! Take a seat.” He motions to one of the chairs across from his desk.
I sit carefully, removing my bag and placing it on the floor next to the chair.
Marley told me once that whenever she works on her financials, she wears orange underwear. She said that it has something to do with chakras, which are apparently some kind of balls of energy that whirl around inside of us.
I have no idea if there’s any truth to it, but ever since she told me about her orange-underwear method, I try to do the same. If I’m ever doing something that has to do with money, I wear a pair of orange underwear—which I bought, by the way, because Marley insisted I do so. We were on a shopping trip in Melrose, and I swear, my friend wasn’t going to let me walk out of Target without a half-dozen pair of orange underwear in my shopping bags.
A Hillcrest Witch Mystery Collection Page 76