by Willow Mason
“To the police station, speaking of which…” Rosie made a show of glancing at the clock on the wall. “Eat up.”
I didn’t need to be told twice. With a thorough dousing of maple syrup, three pancakes slid down my throat with ease. I would have tried for a fourth, but the clock told me otherwise.
“Are you coming?” I asked Hazel as I made myself presentable. Well, as presentable as a woman with bright pink hair standing on end could be.
“Not a chance.” She grimaced while patting her belly. “I might’ve overdone things a little. You’d have to roll me into the station.”
“We don’t want too many crowding in there, anyway,” Rosie said. “Four is enough to ensure even Lucas gives us proper attention without being so many he sends half of us back out again.”
“Perfect.” Hazel clapped her hands together and frowned at the staircase. “Did somebody oversleep?”
Muffin yawned as she strolled into the room, her jaw widening so far, she appeared to have a flip-top head. “Why? What’d I miss?”
“Everything,” Posey said, placing the remnants of the pancake stack down on the floor. “But we’ll have to catch you up later.”
“Aren’t I coming with you?”
“Not unless you want to spend the day stuffed down my blouse again,” I said with a smile, giving her a quick pat. “But we shouldn’t be too long.”
“It looks like someone might’ve been genuine about wanting to make amends,” Posey said, pointing down the driveway to where Brody was parking his car.
Relief flooded through my body and I resisted the urge to smile. After the shock of finding out he couldn’t be trusted, I was happy to see Brody might be a good guy after all.
A short time later, we shocked PC Bronson by turning up en masse and taking up all the station’s chairs. If somebody else decided on a spot of early morning crime fighting, the perps would be forced to stand.
With a quick rundown on what Brody had seen, minus the supernatural elements, the officer soon produced a book full of mug shots for him to peruse the likeliest suspects.
“Don’t they have this on the computer?” Rosie grumbled. “I thought even our small town had evolved beyond this.”
“You can look at it on a computer screen if you feel that strongly, but since we’re potentially talking about hours with me not able to do any work while you wait to flick right on criminal tinder, I’d prefer to do it the old-fashioned way.”
“Hours?” Posey appeared horrified at the thought. “Surely we don’t have that many criminals operating in our town?”
“You’ve seen the road out there,” Bronson said, his grin dripping with sarcasm. “There’re these things called cars can roll right on up them and straight back out again, taking people from place to place. It’s a modern miracle.”
“All right, smarty-pants.” Rosie fixed him with a no-nonsense stare. “Remember we’re here helping you with your job at the expense of ours.”
I shifted on my chair, the wooden seat already numbing my rear end. “Perhaps we should leave Brody—”
“Got him.” Brody shoved the heavy volume across the desk, pointing to a small picture in an array resembling the world’s worst yearbook. “I’d recognise that smug smile anywhere.”
Bronson perused the image for a few seconds, then brough up a file on his computer. “Trey Wright. He’s from out of town, so he must have a contact here to be bothered selling stuff out of a local restaurant.” He turned the monitor to face Brody’s direction. “You recognise any of these known associates?”
Although Brody squinted at the images, taking his time to scrutinise each one, I immediately saw the likely culprit. My stomach twisted into a knot and I regretted eating the pancakes earlier.
“That’s Georgie Grey from the supermarket.” I pointed to his mugshot with a growing sense of betrayal. Was no one in this small town as lovely as they first appeared? “One of his best friends lives next door to me, so he must’ve known Esmerelda.”
Chapter Fourteen
“I didn’t realise it was a crime to have friends in this town,” Georgie said, planting his hands on his hips. “Sure, I know Trey Wright. We were best friends from primary school onwards.”
“But he lives over in Christchurch now?” PC Bronson matched the young man’s belligerent tone with his own.
“Again, not a crime.” After a few moments spent glaring, Georgie’s posture softened, and he rubbed the back of his neck. “His mum moved there when Trey was in his last year of high school. We’d had a bit of trouble—”
Bronson snorted, shaking his head. “You were arrested for car theft and nearly went to prison.”
“We were arrested for suspicion of car theft and the case fell apart before we got anywhere near a courtroom. Trey had a lot of troubles growing up so it’s no surprise if he went off the rails a bit. His dad took off before he was even born, and times were hard for him and his mum.”
“They must still be hard if he’s selling illegal substances out of the local restaurant.”
“I never said he was perfect, and I still don’t know what this has to do with me.”
“Have you seen him since he’s been back in town?”
Georgie’s eyes flicked to the side, and a flush crept up the base of his neck. “What if I don’t want to answer that question?”
“Then I’ll spend the rest of the day tracking down the location of your friend,” Bronson said with a shrug. “And when he asks how I found him, I’ll tell him we paid you a call this morning.”
“You can’t do that!”
“I won’t say anything that isn’t true, but you know how petty criminals get. He’ll probably put two and two together and make five, and it’ll be nothing to do with me.”
“Fine.” Georgie took a step inside and rummaged around in a duffel bag. “Here’s the place he’s staying.”
“You shouldn’t be hanging around with men of such low character,” Rosie said. She’d been bobbing on the toes of her feet, impatient for the opportunity to have her say. “You’re a good boy and you’ve got a steady job—”
“And I can be friends with whoever I want.”
Rosie sniffed and glanced at her sister. “I’m just trying to look out for you.”
“Just as I’m trying to look out for Trey. He was my friend well before he ever got mixed up in anything shady and he’ll stay my friend until he comes back on the straight and narrow. How do you expect anyone to give up bad habits if their best friends abandon them during their roughest patches?”
It was a good point and Rosie had the common sense to let the matter drop.
“Sorry about all of this,” I said, shaking Georgie’s hand as our group departed. “We aren’t trying to cause trouble.”
He gave a large sigh, running a hand through his hair. “It’s not your fault. I’m just disappointed and having a policeman giving me grief on top of it is the last straw.”
“Maybe it’s all a misunderstanding?”
Georgie’s mouth curled in a sad smile and he shook his head. “Probably not but I’m not about to hold it against you. It’s Trey’s problem, not yours or mine. You don’t need to worry about me refusing to serve you at the supermarket.”
“That’s good because the self-service machines scare me silly.”
When I joined PC Bronson at the car, he held out the card for me to examine. “It’s a small B&B on Foxgrove Street.” He glanced over at the twins and Brody. “No offense but it might be best if we restricted this visit to just the officials.”
“Of course. We’ll go home and wait to find out what’s happening.”
Posey ran up to me as Bronson drove off. “What’d he say?”
“He doesn’t want us crowding up his investigation,” I said with a smile. “But he told me that right after he showed me the address. I’m sure if we wanted to turn up there for no particular reason, he can’t do anything to stop us.”
She giggled, talking excitedly with Rosie as
they piled into their car, Brody giving a strained glance at his watch.
“Do you want me to drop you off?” I asked, remembering his earlier concern over being late to work.
“That would be great. Just back at your house and I’ll take my car from there.”
“Okay.” I leaned over and told the twins where we were going. The thought of sitting at home, with the excitement of the morning over, was attractive. Just blobbing on the couch with Muffin purring somewhere nearby sounded like heaven.
“You know, I’m sorry about everything,” Brody said as soon as we pulled away. “When you came to offer me a room, I felt so bad about what I’d done, I couldn’t even face serving you lunch.”
My automatic urge was to say it didn’t matter, but I bit down hard on my lip. My fear when the ghost first showed up, screaming and wailing, had been so extreme that I didn’t want to cheat myself by undercutting Brody’s apology.
“The inheritance was always going to be a long shot, and I truly didn’t think the money mattered to me. If it had, I would’ve asked Esmerelda for some help when she was alive.”
“Would she have given it?”
Brody tipped his head back and half-closed his eyes. “I think so,” he said after a long pause. “She had plenty and never begrudged helping others. If the laws weren’t so stringent, I think she’d have been happy to spread the inheritance around.”
“Why are they built like that?”
“You’d have to ask the twins. They’re the lawyers. I just do what I’m told.”
There was another point which had twitched at my curiosity and I decided it was now or never. “How’d you convince Maisie to go along with your plan?”
“A lot of begging and complaining, I guess.” Brody looked bemused. “She must get bored just floating around all the time and she leapt at the idea without knowing the slightest thing about you.”
“Perhaps we should find out what Maisie likes to do and provide her with some entertainment. I’d hate to think what else she’ll get up to if this happens when she’s bored.”
“A ghost party?”
“Why not? It’s just like a regular party without the food and drink!”
“Sounds fun.” Brody clicked his fingers and winked. “I only turn up to shindigs to demonstrate my smooth moves, anyway.”
I mimed retching while turning into my street. Then Brody grabbed the steering wheel and aimed it for the curb. “Pull over!”
“What? Why?” Despite my barked questions, I obeyed and drew up outside a pink Summerhill stone cottage. “Is there something wrong with the car?”
“No. There’s something wrong with your neighbour. Look.”
Brody pointed down the road to where Hazel stood at the gate, talking to a man with his back to us. I waited for a second, my nerves bombarding me with sensory information until my brain burned, but I couldn’t fathom the problem.
“That’s the man I saw at the restaurant,” Brody whispered, though we were far enough from the house he could have shouted and not been heard. “It’s the man selling your pixie dust.”
Pieces of a jigsaw puzzle slotted together, and I didn’t like the image they revealed at all. Hazel had known Georgie for a long time, apparently long enough to be an acquaintance of Trey as well. She lived next door to where the burglary had taken place. Her fledgling business had seed capital, although Georgie’s teasing suggested she’d either kept it secret or come into the money recently.
No wonder she’d turned pale when she thought Esmerelda was visiting me as a ghost. The older pixie would have pulled the clues together in a heartbeat. And of course, she hadn’t wanted to come with us to the station. Any revelation to PC Lucas Bronson might have given her away.
“We should call the police.” I fumbled for my phone then cursed when I remembered it was still plugged into the laptop. “Can you phone Bronson? He’s probably discovered Trey isn’t at the bed-and-breakfast by now.”
“How about we have a word to them in private?” Brody said, pulling at his earlobe. “We don’t know anything for sure and I’d hate to dob someone into the police for something they didn’t do.”
“Trey’s already been dobbed in,” I pointed out, frisking him for a phone. No luck.
“It’s in my glove box,” he explained as though that was normal. A second later he jumped out of the car and when I turned around to look at Hazel and Trey, I saw why. They were waving goodbye with Trey about to leave the scene and perhaps disappear back to Christchurch.
Not stopping to think, I scrambled out of the front seat and followed Brody.
Chapter Fifteen
“You’re not going anywhere,” Brody yelled at Trey when I caught up with him. “Not until you tell us where you got the stuff you’ve been selling in my restaurant.”
Hazel backed up, her eyes wide, but I reached out and grabbed hold of her sleeve before she could go far. “How do you know Trey?”
She turned blank eyes towards me then shrugged. “He’s a friend of Georgie. What’s got your goat?”
Brody spun Trey around and spread-eagled him on the brick wall bordering Hazel’s house. He patted the young man down, crowing in triumph as he pulled a large plastic bag out of his jacket pocket. “Caught red-handed. The police will love this.”
“Give it back.” Hazel reached across and snatched the bag away before Brody could step out of range. “That doesn’t belong to you.”
“Nor you.” Brody jerked his head towards me. “It’s Elisa’s inheritance you’re holding there.”
Hazel pulled open the bag and flung a handful of fabric samples at Brody’s face. “Call this an inheritance? They’re samples for a dress Trey’s mother ordered on my website. Since she’s my first paying customer, I wanted to make extra sure she was happy.”
I stared at the scattered swatches lying on the ground. Hazel gave a choked sob and bent to pick them up, knocking my hands away when I tried to help.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t apologise,” Brody snapped. “Just because you’re carrying innocent stuff now doesn’t explain what you were doing in my restaurant yesterday. I saw you selling pixie dust to the customers.”
“Pixie dust?” Hazel stopped moving, her face turned to Trey’s with an expression I couldn’t fathom. “You were selling drugs at Brody’s restaurant? How could you?”
“Hey,” Trey held his hands up and stepped away, his back hitting against the brick wall. “How about we stop calling it Brody’s restaurant, okay? He just works there.” The young man checked his watch. “Apparently making his own hours.”
“Today’s been a special day,” Brody said through thin lips. “We’ve spent a good portion of the morning at the police station, identifying you from a mugshot.”
Trey’s face paled before he gave a shrug. “Whatever. If you had any evidence on me, I’d be down at the station already.” He picked up a swatch that had landed near his feet, waving it as a taunt. “Let me see…” Trey shoved his face so close to Brody’s their noses kissed. “You thought I was doing something wrong but didn’t approach me at the time and the CCTV cameras in that dive are just for show, which leaves you with…” He formed his thumb and forefinger into an o shape and raised his eyebrows in a mocking gesture. He swayed back and forth on his feet like someone drunk on victory.
“I can’t believe you’d burst into my property and make these wild accusations,” Hazel said, her eyes filled with tears. A flush darkened her cheeks to crimson in large blotches while her hands shook as they clasped the fabric samples. “And here I was thinking you were my friend.”
“I am your friend.” I waved my hand at Trey, unable to look at him. “This man has been doing something illegal and I’m sorry if I implied you were—” I broke off as Trey staggered to the left, a goony grin on his face. He wasn’t high on triumph, the man just appeared flat-out drunk.
The swatch was still in his hand and I grabbed it, holding it up to the light where a million colours of sparklin
g dust caught the sun. “This is pixie dust. You’ve infused it into the fabric.”
Hazel stood still for a second, her mouth working while nothing came out. Then she turned and ran.
She thumped against her front door, pulling at the handle. When she found it locked, she turned and vaulted over the short fence between our properties.
Muffin stood at the edge of the front porch, staring with interest at the scene. Interest that changed to alarm as Hazel swept the kitten into her arms and held her like a hostage.
“Don’t come near me or I’ll hurt Muffin!”
Brody pushed Trey over, the young man landing with a solid thump on his side. “Let her go. This isn’t worth it. What d’you even get for a box of dandruff these days?”
“Hazel, please let the kitten go. If you don’t want us to go to the police, then we won’t. They’re already looking for Trey, but Bronson isn’t searching for anyone else. We can just forget about the whole thing.”
Instead of releasing Muffin, Hazel clutched her tighter. The alarm on the kitten’s face changed to anger, and she bit down on the young woman’s arm.
“Ow!” Hazel swirled in a circle, shaking Muffin but not letting her go. “Do that again and you’ll regret it.”
She seized the front door and flung it open, disappearing inside.
“What on earth is she doing, using my house for a refuge?” I asked, running after her. I was already incensed by her actions and now felt like my head was about to explode.
“Use your magic to stop her,” Brody said, shoving a handful of dirty swatches into my hand. “You can bind her feet and hands to stop her hurting Muffin.”
“I don’t know how.” I flung the samples back to him. “Can’t you do it?”
“Your magic’ll be stronger.” He stopped me and put a hand on either shoulder, staring into my eyes. “Just think of Muffin. You want to protect her, don’t you?”
“Of course, I do.”