I could only assume that meant this was where Charles had been thrown from. But why? Why was he here? What was he looking for inside the management office at his job? Was he trying to rob us? Surely even he would have known that my parents kept absolutely no abras in the office. It was strictly paperwork, and all of the important papers were kept in the safe at the back that had been protected with so many wards that even the best wizard in the world wouldn’t have been able to break into it.
I frowned as I made my way into the office and looked around. It certainly looked as if somebody had been in here; the day before, I had shuffled papers around as I tried to organize things a little bit and figure out what was where, but this was definitely in a much worse state than I had left it.
Papers were scattered on the floor, and even my father’s normally spotless desk looked haphazard and ransacked.
Next door to the main office was a storage area where I knew my parents kept a ton of supplies. I decided to have a look in there as well, to see if maybe whoever had been in the office had been looking to steal supplies. Walking into the supply office, I looked around. Everything seemed fairly well-organized. Large boxes were stacked up against the far wall, filled with chocolate. The near wall seemed to hold a lot more of the office supplies, with a couple of extra chairs, lots of paper, boxes of pens, and even a blanket folded on top of one of the stacks of cardboard. However, nothing seemed out of place, not at all like in the office next door. Apparently Charles Perkins hadn’t come in here, but he had ransacked my parents’ office.
I bit my lip for a second, wondering what to do. Then I decided. I made my way back out of the office and called down to the two Enforcers.
“It looks like somebody has been in the office and ransacked it,” I called out. “Would you still like me to find that list for you, or do you want me to leave things alone and not touch anything until you have a look?”
More than anything, I wanted to look through the office myself. After all, maybe that way I could get a clue as to what Charles was looking for. However, I was all too aware that the Chief Enforcer currently did not hold my family in high esteem, and I figured that being as honest as possible about things was the best way to keep myself and the rest of my family off his suspect list for the murder.
“Don’t touch anything,” Chief Enforcer Lupo called out. “We’ll be right up.”
I waited for the two Enforcers to come up, and while I obeyed the instruction not to touch anything, I did follow after them into the office. After all, I wanted to know as much as possible about what had happened here. And, to be completely honest, I didn’t entirely trust Chief Enforcer Lupo. After all, he had arrested my parents just a couple of days earlier. Who knew what he would get up to if he was back in this office by himself?
“This wasn’t like this when you left last night?” Lupo asked, and I shook my head.
“Not at all,” I replied. “That desk over there, my father’s, has always been spotless. And while my mom’s has always been super messy, I spent a good chunk of yesterday going through and organizing all of the papers on it and sorting them out for myself. Now it looks even worse than it did when I came in yesterday.”
Ming nodded. “It certainly looks a good deal worse than when we came in the other day,” she said, shooting me an apologetic glance, like she felt bad that she had to search this office. “I was in charge of that search and I made sure that everything that we didn’t take was left exactly how we had found it.”
“Thank you for that, I appreciate it,” I said with a small smile. “Goodness knows organizing the desk after my mom had been at it was trouble enough.”
“Do you know where the list of employees is?” Chief Enforcer Lupo asked, and I made my way toward my father’s desk.
“Yesterday it was in a blue folder on this desk,” I said, motioning toward it. “I don’t see it straightaway, but I mean, it could just be covered in papers.”
Chief Enforcer Lupo nodded and pulled out his wand. “Mars the great, give me a hint, reveal any fingerprint.”
He waved the wand around the room, and a moment later I gasped as hundreds of fingerprints appeared on almost every surface in a shimmery purple light.
“We’re going to have to take your fingerprints,” Ming told me. “After all, you’ve almost certainly touched a whole bunch of these papers, and we need to eliminate the fingerprints of the people who have been here with permission from those who haven’t.”
I nodded. I could definitely understand her reasoning, but I still didn’t like it. I couldn’t help but feel as though my entire family was being targeted by the Enforcers here in town.
“Okay,” I said dully.
“In the meantime, I think you should get home to your sisters. You’re going to stay in town for a little while, right?”
I nodded. “Yes, absolutely. At least until my parents’ innocence is proven,” I said, shooting daggers at Chief Enforcer Lupo’s back.
“Good,” Ming said. “We’ll come by later to take your fingerprints and ask anything else that we need to.”
I nodded and left the room, and the factory, my head spinning. Was this really happening? Things really did seem to be going from bad to worse.
Chapter 7
When I got back to the house, Andrea and Ashley looked at me curiously as they sat at the kitchen table eating some toast.
“What’s wrong?” Andrea asked.
“One of the workers at the factory died,” I said. “Charles Perkins. He was murdered there.”
Ashley full-on let the piece of toast she was holding drop onto the floor. “What?” she said in a voice that was barely more than a whisper.
“He was that annoying guy that always gave Dad a hard time about wanting more vacation days than he was allowed, wasn’t he?” Andrea asked.
“I don’t know, but that kind of sounds like him,” I replied.
“Yeah, that was him,” Ashley said. “I can’t believe this. What is going on?”
“And he was killed in the factory?” Andrea asked.
“Yeah,” I nodded. “Early in the morning, a couple of hours before I got there.”
Ashley stood up from the kitchen table suddenly. “I have to get to work. I can’t believe this. I can’t believe somebody has just been killed in Pacific Cove.” She picked up the toast and threw it in the trash, dropped her dishes in the sink, muttered a quick spell that immediately cleaned them, and rushed off toward her room. I was fairly certain I saw her brushing a tear away from her eyes as she left.
Andrea shook her head sadly. “This is all hitting Ashley so hard. She’s such a sensitive person to begin with, and with Mom and Dad having been arrested, and now this, I hope she’s going to be okay.”
“She will be,” I said. “Ashley is stronger than she thinks she is.”
“I hope so. After all, I’m not sure that going to work in her state is a good idea otherwise.”
Ashley worked in town as a magical fixer. It was actually one of the more prestigious jobs for a witch to have, and traditionally very wizard-dominated. Essentially, whenever any business in town had some sort of problem—be it natural, like too much water flooding a basement, or magical, like a spell going wrong and causing anyone who entered a shop to find themselves having lost all their hair—Ashley’s company would be called in, and Ashley would be sent to cast a spell that would fix whatever issues popped up. It required Ashley to know an enormous number of spells, and for her to be creative in the creation of new ones. In the past, only wizards had been allowed to work as magical fixers, since it was assumed that only wizards had the magical skills to be able to fix literally any problems that popped up.
However, about a hundred years ago, along with the rest of the push for witch and wizard equality, the laws were changed and slowly witches began to move into the field. I had never really thought of Ashley as the type of witch who would go into magical fixing growing up, probably because she was so shy and sensitive on the outside.
But she absolutely loved the work, and when she got the opportunity to train as a magical fixer, she took it. I knew her life wasn’t all butterflies and roses, and that a lot of the people she worked with still had old-fashioned ideas about the roles a witch and wizard should have, but overall, Ashley loved her job, and she was very good at it. She could be very creative with her use of magic to get what she wanted.
“How about you?” I asked, looking over at Andrea. “What are you doing with yourself these days?”
Andrea smiled at me. “I’m afraid I’m not quite living up to the expectations Mom and Dad had for their children the way you and Ash are. But it’s ok; since I’m the baby of the family, I get away with it.”
“Is that code for you’re not working at all?” I asked with a sly smile. Andrea had always hated the Academy when we were kids. It wasn’t that she was bad at magic. In fact, she was actually pretty good at it, when she bothered to do the work. The problem was, Andrea could be phenomenally lazy.
“No, even I’m not that bad,” Andrea said. “I think Mom and Dad realized that if I could get away with that forever then I’d never do anything with my life. So they started charging me rent, and I had no option but to figure something out.”
“There it is,” I laughed. “What’s your job now, then?”
“I work at the local bakery. I don’t actually do any of the baking, but I make potions for them to add to the breads and goodies.”
“Oh, nice,” I said.
“Yeah, it’s actually kind of fun. And it turns out I’m pretty good at it. I work four days a week, and there’s another witch who does the other three. Today’s my last day off before I go back to work.”
I looked over at Andrea carefully. Of my two sisters, she was easily the one more likely to agree to my insane plan.
“I think we should spend your day off looking into the death of Charles Perkins.” I cringed inwardly, getting ready for a rebuke that never came.
“Oh good, I was hoping you’d say that,” Andrea replied.
“Really?” I asked, somewhat surprised.
“Yeah,” Andrea nodded. “I mean, we can’t see Mom and Dad until tomorrow, anyway. So I don’t have anything to do. And I don’t like the fact that Perkins was killed in our family’s factory. Especially not since someone is obviously framing Mom and Dad for something they didn’t do. Could this be linked to that? We need to find out. I don’t trust Chief Enforcer Lupo at all.”
“I’m so glad we’re on the same page on this,” I said, relief flooding through me. “I agree. Something weird is going on here. I don’t know if Charles’s death has anything to do with Mom and Dad being framed for fraud, but we need to solve this murder.”
“Good,” Andrea said, standing up. “Let’s get going.”
She jumped up, then paused, looking at me before continuing sheepishly. “Of course, I have no idea how to actually do this. I don’t really know anything about Charles Perkins. How do we figure out who might have wanted to kill him?”
I laughed. That was typical Andrea: come up with an idea and be all gung ho about it while having no clue what to actually do. She was definitely the epitome of putting the cart before the horse.
“Luckily for you, I actually do have a few leads. For one thing, I know Charles Perkins apparently stole millions of abras from his ex-wife’s mother’s estate. That’s probably a good place to start.”
“Oh, yeah, for sure. I actually know his ex-wife. She comes into the bakery every day to get some bread. Normally I don’t deal with customers, but I overheard her complaining about the potion in one of the breads one day, so I came out and gave her a piece of my mind.”
“Great, so our number one suspect already hates you,” I laughed.
“To be fair, I’m pretty sure Peggy Perkins hates everyone.”
“She doesn’t know me, though, and I’m great at sucking up to people.”
Andrea rolled her eyes. “Even you, little miss perfect, probably won’t be able to win over Peggy. I hope she’s our killer, though; it would make me happy to see her in jail.”
“Only if she actually did it,” I warned. “We want to find the real killer, not just whoever we don’t like.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Andrea replied. “Well, I’m allowed to cheer for the person I hope did it.”
“Pretty sure that’s literally the opposite of how it’s supposed to work,” I retorted. “You’re supposed to go in with an open mind and see where the actual evidence takes you. Anyway, if you know where to find her, let’s go.”
Chapter 8
Having been away from Pacific Cove for a few years now, busily studying away at Spellford for over five years, it was kind of strange to be back. It wasn’t like I’d never come home. I was here during holidays, and for the few breaks we had during the year. But they had never been long stays, and now, for the first time in years, I felt like I might actually be spending a longer period of time back home.
After all, while I had initially thought that the charges against my parents were just some sort of mistake that was going to be corrected easily, it looked like it was actually a lot more than that, now that there had also been a murder at their factory. Obviously, there was no way they could be involved in that, but if I was going to try and solve this murder to clear the family name completely, it might take a bit longer than the few days I’d planned on staying here.
“So where is Peggy Perkins likely to be?” I asked Andrea as we grabbed our brooms from the side of the house and began flying casually back toward downtown.
“She and some of her old, annoying friends like to hang out at the picnic tables by the beach during the day, where they sit around and openly judge passersby, eat food, and just generally bug people.”
I laughed. I honestly thought Andrea was exaggerating slightly, until we made our way past downtown and to the beach, where Andrea led us to the southern end where about a dozen picnic tables were set up for anybody looking to enjoy a bit of peace and quiet.
Sure enough, sitting at one of the tables toward the end were five witches who looked to be in their forties and fifties. They watched Andrea and me carefully as we came by, and I immediately knew their type. They were the kind of witches who always asked to see a manager when they were shopping because they weren’t happy with the service they were getting, and who complained that young witches and wizards were always on their phones rather than discovering nature the way they did when they were young.
Andrea and I stopped our brooms and made our way toward the witches.
“Shouldn’t you two be working?” one witch with short gray hair asked, making a face quite akin to that of eating a sour lemon.
“I could ask you the same question,” Andrea replied. “Now get out of here. We need to speak with Peggy for a few minutes.”
“Whatever you need to say to Peggy, you can say to us,” one of the other witches said, crossing her arms in front of her. She was short, a little under five feet tall, and quite stocky.
“As much as I’m sure you think that, this really does need to be a private conversation. Peggy can tell you what happened after if she wants. Now get out of here, go find somebody else to bother for a little while.”
Everyone looked toward one of the witches on the bench who just had to be Peggy. She was tall, of medium build, with a long nose and deep-set eyes that gave her a real birdlike appearance. After a minute, Peggy nodded.
“Fine. But this better not be a waste of my time.”
The other witches all got up from the table and made their way toward downtown. I could see them turning to look at Andrea and me as they left, and I had a sneaking suspicion that they were going to try and cast an eavesdropping spell on us.
“Mars, make a raucous din, stop anyone else from listening in.” Andrea obviously had the same thought I did as she cast a spell that would prevent anybody from being able to overhear the conversation we were about to have. The frowns that suddenly appeared on the witches’ faces up ahead t
old me that our suspicions had been completely justified.
“You’re the witch who works at the bakery,” Peggy said to Andrea, glaring slightly. “What do you want? I’m busy.”
“Oh yeah, sitting here and complaining about everything must be such hard work,” Andrea replied. “Anyway, I thought you should know your ex-husband Charles was murdered this morning.”
Peggy spat on the ground. “Really? Good riddance. Best news I’ve gotten all week.”
“Did you kill him?” I asked. Peggy looked at me carefully.
“I don’t know you at all,” she said. “But no, I didn’t kill him. Am I glad he’s dead? Yes. Absolutely. But I didn’t do it.”
“Where were you this morning around, say, five to seven in the morning?” I asked.
“Sleeping, like any normal witch,” Peggy replied.
“Can anybody back that up?” Andrea asked.
“I swore off wizards after that bastard Charles stole the money that was rightfully mine. They’re nothing but trouble. Why do you think I did it, anyway?”
“Well, that you seem borderline gleeful that he’s dead is usually a good indicator,” Andrea replied.
“I suppose that’s true,” Peggy said. “Still, you’ve some nerve coming to me first. There are plenty of other people who also would have wanted him dead. The thing Charlie was best at in this world was annoying people.”
“Tell me about the money he stole,” I said. “What did he do, exactly?”
Peggy grunted, like she didn’t want to talk about it, but she quickly relented and began her story. “Charles and I were still married when my mother died a few years back. I was the only child, and so the entire estate should have passed to me. Only, I was dealing with a few health issues at the time. The lawyer deposited all of the money from my mother’s estate into the joint account Charles and I shared, and while I was dealing with the Healers in the hospital, he went ahead and moved all of the inheritance money into an untraceable account, I assume. I don’t know where the money went, to be honest. I just know that he took it out, and no one was able to find it afterward, not even the detective I hired. As soon as I got out of the hospital and found out what he’d done, I went to a divorce lawyer.”
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