by Mara Webb
“Who buys perfume this late?” I asked.
“You’d be surprised. Have you been to the jewelry store yet?” he said, pointing at the building beside the perfume store. “It’s called Bearbrooks and the buzz around that place in the weeks leading up to Valentine’s day is outrageous,” Miller grumbled.
“Have you had a lot of experience buying people gifts for Valentine’s day?” I asked, hoping it sounded casual and not like I was prying.
“I’ve… dated,” he muttered. “My point being, Bearbrooks figured that if they were open late every night of the year then it might help with the queueing issue around big holidays. We also have our own Valentine’s thing here.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, I think it was actually the owner of Bearbrooks that invented it. It’s the Hallow Haven Shell’s Day,” Miller laughed. “It sounds dumb, but apparently shells used to be an early symbol of love. If you see a painting of Venus, she is usually standing in a big scallop shell. Bearbrooks makes these Shell necklaces with all sorts of precious stones in them.”
“When is Shell’s Day?”
“Well, it used to be once a year, but now it’s quarterly,” he said. “Well, we’re here!”
We were standing at the tape barrier that surrounded The Guitar Yard. There was no light on in the apartment above and it occurred to me that if Jake’s wife had come back to the building and seen that it was a crime scene then she probably knew what had happened already. Would she even be able to get into her apartment?
Miller nodded at a police officer that was standing guard and we motioned to duck under the tape when someone behind us started talking.
“This is the place, huh?”
We span around to see a middle aged woman wearing all black, a pair of mirrored sunglasses and a comically long cigarette. It hung from her lips like a skinny branch, glowing wildly as she inhaled.
“Excuse me?” Miller said.
“My husband got shot, that’s the situation is it not?”
“Oh, Mrs. Hall. I’m so sorry for your—” Miller stuttered.
“Save it, Sheriff,” she snapped. “I’ve heard all about it. I’ve heard how you lost his body and have no idea where he is. I imagine my lawyer will be tap dancing with delight when I call him about this.”
“Lawyer?” I repeated.
“Oh yes, you see this is negligence. I’m pretty sure it’s in the police officer handbook to solve crimes, not make things worse.” She shrugged, took another drag from her cigarette and turned her mirrored glasses in my direction. “I’m no lawyer, but there’s money to be made here. I can smell it.”
“We need to ask you a few questions about your whereabouts today, Mrs. Hall,” Miller announced, trying to regain command of the conversation. “Please give as much detail as you can.”
“First things first, I won’t be speaking to you without a lawyer. I’ve seen ‘Law & Order’, and momma didn’t raise no fool. Secondly, look at the time! I have to get back to my house and begin my skin care routine. It is a forty-minute ceremony involving hyaluronic acid and yak’s milk,” she said. “Obviously now that I’m legally single I need to pay even more attention to my beauty regimen.”
“Where is your house?” I asked, my eyes looking up at the apartment windows above The Guitar Yard.
“We have a home on the other side of the island. Thank goodness for magic, eh? Otherwise I’d have had to take a cab here.”
“What about this place?” I said.
“What about it? This was Jake’s pet project and I never saw the appeal. He made all his money writing jingles for a washing machine company and kept this ghastly place for fun. I told him to rent out the space above instead of just using it for storage. The man had no business sense,” she huffed. With that she snapped her fingers and disappeared.
Miller and I exchanged looks.
“It isn’t just storage up there. Jake had a bed and everything,” I said. “Either she’s lying about something, or she didn’t know about the apartment. Either way she’s on my list.”
“Well, I ‘d better head home,” I said to Miller.
“I’ll keep guard outside. Things don’t feel safe at the moment.”
“Don’t be ridiculous! Everything is fine!” I scoffed.
“Well, I’m doing it either way. I’m your guardian.”
I shook my head at his stubbornness. “If you’re going to be like that then at least sleep on the coach.”
9
The humidity was high, again. My hair was puffing out in strange ways that no amount of product seemed to be able to tame and I found myself considering pulling a giant hat over my head to hide the mess. It was way too hot for a hat though.
“Are you coming or not?” Effie yelled up the stairs.
“I’m coming, I just…” I didn’t have a reasonable excuse for keeping Effie and Kate waiting. I needed to ask them what they were doing to their hair because I clearly had no idea how to control it without magic. We were only going for a hike, so it wasn’t like I needed to be ready for a photoshoot or anything, or at least I hoped no one would be taking pictures.
I pulled my hair up into a messy bun and sighed at my reflection before jogging down the stairs of my house. Effie was leaning against the wall of the hallway and Kate had the door open already, impatiently tapping her foot on the floorboards.
“What were you doing up there?” Kate asked.
“I thought you were a mind reader?” I replied, grinning at her impishly.
“Yeah, but it’s still polite to ask,” she laughed. “You have magic powers, why not just use those to keep the frizz at bay?”
“I’m worried I would do something wrong and it would all fall out,” I confessed.
“Oh brother,” Effie muttered. She put both of her hands on top of my head, just for a second, and I could feel a slight tugging on my scalp. I reached up to feel two perfectly formed French braids that twisted at the back of my head to form an elegant up-do. “There you go.”
“Thanks!” I grinned. I instantly felt better.
“The next time I fix it, I’ll be putting a streak of flame orange in this bit by the front,” Effie said, pointing at the hair on the left side of my forehead. “You’ve been warned,” she teased.
“Noted,” I replied. We stepped out onto the sand and I pulled the door shut behind me. Even with the air conditioning on inside the house, it had been too hot. Maybe my AC was faulty, or maybe the weather was just too powerful for it to fight. It was near sweltering on the beach and I was desperate for us to get up into the cool of the tree covered hills.
“Are you sure you remember the way? We could always give Ryder a call?” Effie said.
“So you can drool over him?” I smiled. “No chance. He wanted me to consult with you guys and that’s what I’m doing. He will only start ranting about werewolves again and I don’t need the headache.”
“What if he’s right?” Kate asked. “What if Miller is dragging people up onto the hill and eating them for… I dunno… werewolf reasons? Would you still be dating him?”
“First of all, we aren’t dating. Secondly, and I can’t believe I have to say this out loud, but I would put cannibalism on my list of dealbreakers,” I said.
“And she wonders why she’s single?” Effie laughed. “If you keep setting the bar so high then no man will ever live up to your standards. Oh, look at me, I only date people that haven’t eaten human flesh!” She was performing a flamboyant impression of my voice and waving her arms around. We all laughed as we continued our walk towards the base of the hill that Ryder had taken me to previously.
The shadowed area beneath the trees was cooler and I felt almost immediate relief to be out of the blazing sunlight. No one had spoken in a few minutes and I wondered if I should tell them about Miller walking me home last night. As soon as the thought crossed my mind, I knew I was in trouble, especially so close to a mind reader.
“What!” Kate gasped. “Miller slept over and you
thought you could hide it from us?”
“Excuse me!” Effie shrieked. They were both now standing directly in front of me to prevent me from hiking any further up the hill without giving them the information they desperately needed. “I want details, all of the details, even a detail that you don’t think is important… I want that too!”
“Guys, chill,” I laughed. “He walked me to the house and then he slept over on the couch downstairs. It’s not a big deal!” I was blushing wildly, and I just hoped they couldn’t see how red my face was in the mottled light beneath the trees.
“Sadie, I… am… speechless,” Kate said, dramatically pausing between every word. “He slept over, you kissed goodnight, right? You held hands on the sand on the way to the door, right? Did he read you a bedtime story? Ah! My heart is racing!”
“You are both ridiculous. None of that happened,” I replied. “Look, he walked me home after some weird confrontation with Jake Hall’s wife and when we got back to the house, he immediately said he would be sleeping in the living room and I went up to bed. He left before you guys got to the house, I guess.”
“Could you not have just lied to make the story more interesting?” Kate sighed as she turned back to the slope of the hill.
“Yeah, never let the truth get in the way of a good tale,” Effie agreed. The truth was that I had lay in my bed staring at the ceiling for an hour as I thought about Miller downstairs. The truth was that I was hoping we would have talked about something other than a murder; I had wanted him to talk about the feeling when our hands had touched.
We carried on twisting around trees and over fallen branches until I could see the clearing ahead of us. Seeing the scorched earth and the stone in the center then reminded me of the electricity between Ryder and I. Oh boy.
Was I just so desperate to fall in love again that I was imagining things? Maybe they had just both given me a static shock. I had gotten out of a long-term relationship and then flown straight out of town and moved to a remote group of islands. There’s a chance that it wasn’t the healthiest way to handle a break-up.
Effie stepped further into the clearing to inspect the dark stain on the rock.
“This is blood all right, no doubt in my mind. Kate?” Effie said, seeking her sister’s opinion.
“Y-yeah, blood,” Kate nodded.
“What do you think about all this burned plant life? I feel like I’ve read about something like this before, but I can’t place it,” Effie continued. Again, she looked over at Kate who was walking around the perimeter of the clearing with a concerned expression.
“Yeah, it’s burned big time,” Kate muttered. Effie’s cell phone began to ring, and she answered the call, turning away to begin the conversation.
Kate scurried over to me and grabbed both of my shoulders. “What’s up?” I asked, smiling nervously as I stared into her panicked eyes. Effie turned back to face us, and Kate immediately let go of me to look at the ground again. What?
“Dude, that was the café. They said they’ve been trying to call you, but they got no answer,” Effie said. I pulled out my phone and saw no missed calls. Weird.
“Sorry, it must have not had any signal,” I shrugged.
“They just need someone to come and help organize the walk-in fridges because the new delivery guy brought over a bunch of fruit from one of the islands and nothing is in the right place. I swear I have labeled those shelves a thousand times…” Effie groaned. “I’ll go, you and Kate look around and I’ll catch up with you when you get back.”
At that, Effie bounded down the hill and was out of sight within seconds. Kate turned back to me and resumed her look of concern.
“I need to tell you something,” Kate said conspiratorially.
“Do I want to hear it?” I replied.
“I’ve been here before,” she blurted out. I raised an eyebrow. “You know I said that I went hiking with my GPS roulette thing and met a guy in a clearing? Well it was this clearing. Only, it didn’t look quite like this.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” I asked.
“Because I still haven’t told Effie about Tim. It just didn’t seem like a good time to mention that I was dating someone she’d never heard of,” Kate trailed off. “But… there’s something else but it probably doesn’t even need mentioning really. I’m probably just getting carried away. I shouldn’t bring it up—”
“Kate!”
“He had a thing of gasoline. I don’t know what you call it, like a bottle but it’s shaped like a box, or is it more like a tub?”
“Tim was up here with gasoline?” I interrupted.
“Yeah, and a lighter. I didn’t ask any probing questions about why he had those things, but now that I look down at the earth, all burned like this, it seems that maybe I should have made some enquiries,” Kate shrugged.
“So the clearing was already here, someone just set fire to the ground?” I asked.
“It looks like it, yeah. The rock was already here too, but the burning is weird. Definitely suspicious,” she mused.
“I think we should probably ask Tim some questions then, don’t you?” I pushed.
“Yeah, I agree with Sadie,” Effie announced. She jumped out from behind a tree and Kate almost fell over from the shock of being pounced at.
“Effie!” Kate cried.
“I knew you were up to something. You think you can hide anything from me?” Effie laughed. “Considering we’ve been sisters for so long, you’d think that you knew me better by now.”
“What do you know?” Kate exclaimed.
“I knew you were dating somebody for starters. I also knew that you were up to something when we got here, and you had that weird look on your face. All I had to do was lay in wait until you blurted it all out to Sadie,” Effie said, folding her arms triumphantly.
“Does that mean that there isn’t an issue with the walk-in fridges?” I asked.
“Oh, there is. They are messed up, big time! But this is more important!” Effie announced. “Your freaky boyfriend burned the earth around this rock, and I want to know why. I think we both recognize that Ryder was right about this place; this is a ritual site.”
“You think her boyfriend is performing rituals up here?” I interjected.
“He’s not my boyfriend!” Kate cried out. “We’ve just been out a few times, it’s not serious or anything.” She was now trying to pretend she had never claimed to have been in love with him when talking to me about him earlier.
“Look,” I said, holding out my hands with my palms projected in the direction of each of them. “Let’s just take a minute to calm down and think about—”
“Your boyfriend is performing dark magic!” Effie shrieked. My calming hand gestures hadn’t helped.
“Hey!” I shouted. “We should just ask him, right? Why don’t we ask Tim to give us the perfectly reasonable explanation as to why he had a container filled with gasoline with him on a hike up to this clearing in the trees?”
“He won’t speak to either of you two about it,” Kate grumbled.
“I don’t even want to speak to your little lord of darkness,” Effie sulked.
“Come on, you’re adults. How do we resolve this?” I asked.
“I want to do the movie thing,” Effie said.
“Oh, don’t make me do that,” Kate sighed. “Anything but that, it never works!”
“What movie thing?” I said, looking confused.
“She wants to have me take Tim to a restaurant and have you both at the next booth over behind a couple of big menus so you can eavesdrop. It happened in, like, three of the films we watched last week,” Kate explained.
“Why wouldn’t that work?” I asked.
“Great, so you want to do it too?” Effie grinned at me. Without saying a further word on the matter it seemed as though I had agreed to participate.
How bad could it be?
10
“You guys are really just going to follow me around all day?”
Kate moaned.
“You better believe it, missy,” Effie grinned. After some back and forth, it was decided, without any input from me, that we would all go along with the plan to ambush Tim at a restaurant. It was also decided that we would be stopping off at the radio station first too.
It was too early to eat a meal yet, so Kate had sent a message to Tim inviting him out for lunch. We had some time to kill, so Kate figured we should go and listen to some more entries for the Battle of the Bands.
Considering that I was supposed to be some sort of authority figure on the islands, it seemed that the two sisters had little interest in my point of view on the matter. I just followed along as we wandered back down the hill towards the high street.
As we sat down in a side studio at the radio station, Kate emerged from a storage room with a giant plastic tub of cassette tapes.
“How do you guys still have those things here? I haven’t seen one since the 90’s,” I laughed.
“This place is like a time capsule,” Effie said. “I think people assume that cassettes might come back around like vinyl records did.”
“One guy sold his vinyl collection online and made enough to have a pool built in his back yard,” Kate sighed. “Everyone thinks they can make it rich if they hang on to this junk.”
“How many entries have you had so far then?” I asked, looking at the pile of tapes as Kate tipped them out onto a table. “Did you get the name of the good entry we heard the other night?”
“No, that one is still a mystery. There has to be at least forty tapes here and I know we’ve had email entries too,” Kate explained. “It should keep us busy until lunch at the very least.”
“Who’s up first?” Effie asked, digging through the pile.
“How about this one?” I said, holding aloft a cassette with a rainbow drawing beneath the name. “It’s ‘Tide In’ by ‘The Whirlpools’. Cool band name!”
“Eesh,” Kate sighed. “They are the house band for the Italian restaurant on the high street. I will bet you a thousand dollars that this song mentions lasagna.”