A Little Bit Witchy
Riddler’s Edge Book One
by A.A. Albright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organisations, places, events and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.
Text Copyright © A.A. Albright 2018
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.
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Website: https://aaalbright.com
Table of Contents
1. The Daily Dubliner
2. Let’s Go Round the Bend
3. Life Is But A Dream
4. There Has Most Definitely Not Been a Murder on the Riddler’s Express
5. The Vander Inn
6. The Daily Riddler
7. Undying Love
8. Norman Normal
9. To the Lighthouse
10. Can’t See the Woods for the Mist
11. Riddler’s Cove
12. Fuzz
13. The Evening Edition
14. Fish Fingers
15. Wizardly Wagon
16. Rat in a Cage
17. The Best Man for the Job
18. The Fisherman’s Friend
19. Family Ties
20. The Sweet, Sweet Taste of Crud
21. The Kiss of Life
22. The Things We Do For Love
23. The Test
24. A Little Bit Witchy
Extract from the Compendium of Supernatural Beings
1. The Daily Dubliner
I sat in the most uncomfortable chair in the world, staring at my computer screen.
Bike for sale in Blanchardstown. Seat, handlebars and back wheel missing, otherwise in good nick. Call after six.
Cat bed for sale. 10 euro if you want the cat sick washed off, 5 euro if unwashed. Call at any time.
Wild pigeons for sale. Meet me on O’Connell Street to discuss terms.
I banged my head against my desk. Was this really what my life had come to? A few short months ago I had been a reporter on this very newspaper. I was going places. Now … now I was stuck in the basement of the Daily Dubliner office, preparing classified advertisements and obituaries.
The rest of the morning went on much the same. A woman wanted to sell all of her old shoes, and made sure to add that only the left one of each pair smelled like cheese. A band was looking for a new singer, who had to look like a supermodel and sing like a siren. A modelling agency was looking for new models – and would only charge a three hundred euro fee for a consultation. What a bargain.
As the phone ran for the umpteenth time, I decided to bang my head on my desk again – might as well get the frustration out before I had to talk to the latest nutter – and picked up the receiver.
‘Daily Dubliner classified ads,’ I said. ‘Aisling Smith speaking. How may I help you?’
The person on the other end seemed to be hacking up phlegm. After a few seconds, he said, ‘Got a room for rent. Lupin Lane. Three twenty a month.’
My heart began to drum, and I pulled my special notebook towards me, frantically scribbling.
‘Lupin Lane,’ I said. ‘Where is that exactly?’
The caller hacked a bit more phlegm and said, ‘Y’know. If you know, you know.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But I don’t know. Tell you what – I’ll let you include full directions at no extra charge. You’ll get a lot more potential renters that way.’
He hacked, and then (I think) he spat. Finally, he said, ‘Nah. You’re all right doll.’ He went on to quickly list his credit card details and phone number, not letting me get another word in before he finally hung up.
I stabbed my notebook page with my pen a few times, muttered, ‘Criminy, criminy, criminy!’ and then reluctantly prepared the advertisement.
That was the tenth weird address this week alone, I thought, as I read over the details in my special notebook. And the third occurrence of Lupin Lane. I flipped through the pages I’d filled so far. There were rooms for rent and items for sale in Madra Lane, Lupin Lane, Westerly Crescent, and quite a few more places that didn’t actually exist.
I was making some notes in the margins, trying to make sense of it all, when a shadow fell across my desk – a short, oddly-shaped shadow which belonged to the paper’s editor.
‘Hey John.’ I covered up my notebook. ‘How em … how can I help you?’
‘I saw you hide a notebook, Ash,’ he said. ‘Show it to me.’
I picked up my coffee, taking a casual slug. ‘Ugh! Cold!’ I shuddered and pushed the cup away. ‘You look nice today, John.’
Remind me, will you, that the next time I tell a lie, I ought to make it less obvious. John did not look nice. John never looked nice. And it had nothing to do with the fact that he was short, round and bald. There were lots of bald guys I fancied. Bruce Willis. Mark Strong. Okay, so that was just two. But still.
‘Thanks,’ he said, puffing up his chest. ‘I’m on a new diet. I can eat anything I like as long as it’s meat.’
‘Ah.’ I nodded, taking another sip of my cold coffee. Sure, it was disgusting – but at least I could pretend that the grimace on my face was caused by the beverage. ‘That sounds great. You can really tell. Hey, em ... how’s it all going up above? Anything you guys need help with?’
He sat down on top of my desk, crossing his legs and picking up one of my pens. It had a bobbly unicorn on top, and he started to wave it back and forth. ‘You really like unicorns, don’t you? I don’t know many other thirty-year-old women who do.’
‘I’m twenty-nine, actually,’ I informed him. The truth was I could have been thirty. I really had no idea of my precise age – but I’ll tell you more about that in a while. For now, all you need to know is that, whether John was wrong or John was right, he just had the sort of face that I was always going to disagree with.
‘Sure.’ He smirked. ‘Because that really makes a difference. You know, my little niece likes unicorns, too. She’s three. Oh, and in answer to your question – no. There is nothing you can get involved in up above. Now show me the notebook.’
Darn it! I was sure I’d managed to distract him. ‘Oh, I don’t have a notebook,’ I said vaguely. ‘You must have imagined it. Hey, are you sure you’re getting enough calories on this diet of yours? Last time I went on a cleanse I started to hallucinate. I was totally convinced that the woman in the spa was a vampire. True story.’
For a moment he just looked at me, arms crossed across his large upper body, forehead sweating as his anger increased. As you can see, the feeling of loathing I felt towards my boss was very much reciprocated. After looking at me for a few seconds more, he lunged across my desk, grabbed the notebook and said, ‘Aha! I knew you were up to something.’
I stood up, towering over him even though I was an average five foot six and wearing flat-heeled shoes. ‘You can’t open that, John. It’s an invasion of privacy!’
He wriggled out of my reach and sped away from the desk. How did he move so quickly? He was like a cat, I tell you. And not one of the cute, fluffy ones. He was more like one of those sneaky, stinky cats who manage to poop in corners without you ever catching them.
‘You don’t have any privacy while you’re at work, Ash.’ He was at the other side of the room now, standing under the small window, opening my notebook and peering at the pages. ‘What is this? Why are you writing out all of these classified ad
s?’
My brain raced to come up with an excuse. ‘As a hard copy. I mean – duh. In case the computer system goes down.’
‘Uh huh,’ he said, sounding about as convinced as he ought to be. ‘So what’s with the notes in the margins, then? “Madra Lane – could this be an illegal puppy farm?” What the ...?’
I ran across the room and snatched the notebook from his hands. ‘You’re a terrible boss, do you know that?’
He sniggered. ‘Oh, don’t say that. You’re breaking my heart.’ He crossed back to my desk and made himself uncomfortable in my chair, then began to paw through all of my paperwork. ‘I knew you were up to something down here. I just knew it. You couldn’t just work out your probationary period like a normal person, could you? You’re back to your old conspiracy theory nonsense again.’
I looked away from him. As editors go, I really wished he would – go somewhere, anywhere else, as long as it was far away from me. ‘It’s not conspiracy nonsense,’ I said testily, crossing my arms. ‘It was never conspiracy nonsense. I’m making notes of place names in our classifieds section. Places that don’t actually exist. I think it could be code used by criminal gangs. Madra is Irish for dog, which is what made me think that Madra Lane could refer to an illegal puppy farm.’
‘Criminal gangs!’ he said with a sneer. ‘Criminal gangs! Ash, there are new housing developments going up all over Dublin, all the time. Just because you haven’t heard of a place doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.’
He sat back, looking smug. He seemed to think he’d just said the smartest thing in the world.
‘I don’t assume that because I’ve never heard of a place it doesn’t exist,’ I said. ‘I know these places don’t exist because I’ve looked into it. Extensively. These addresses are not registered. These addresses do not exist.’
He kicked his chubby little legs up on my desk. ‘You know what went through my mind when I woke up this morning? I lay there in my bed, and I thought – I’m going to go and check on Ash today. Gonna take a trip downstairs and see how well she’s doing with her probation. If she’s being a model employee, I thought, then I might let her write some stories again. Within certain parameters, obviously. But if she’s up to any of her old tricks, I thought – seeing things where there’s nothing to be seen, wasting the newspaper’s time and money on wild goose chases – well then, I’m finally going to do what I’ve dreamt of doing since the day I met Aisling Smith. I’m going to fire her.’
I glared at him. I felt like hacking up some phlegm of my own – preferably in his direction. Not only had he told me he was about to fire me. He’d also slipped the disturbing image of him lying in bed into the mix. The dastardly knave. Now I was going to need to come up with some way of washing that picture out of my brain.
‘Fire me, then,’ I said, with about as much bravado as a rabbit at the end of a farmer’s gun. ‘There are a dozen other papers who’d love to have me on board. And as an investigative journalist, I might add. You know – that thing that I’m actually qualified to do.’
Sure, I thought. There were lots of papers hiring right now. Because print news was doing so well. Still, the Daily Dubliner was selling a decent amount of copies, so maybe John thought all papers were the same. He did seem like the self-involved sort.
He sniggered for a few minutes. Then he picked up my unicorn pen again, and used it to scratch his armpit. As he finished off, and moved the pen across his chest, I gasped. ‘You ... you … you put my pen down right now. Do not scratch your other armpit!’
He looked straight at me, and scratched.
Oh, the humanity. Or … the unicornity. Whatever it was called, it was a travesty.
‘Here,’ he said with a grin, holding the pen towards me. ‘I’m finished with it now. You can have it back.’
Oh, how I wanted to take that poor pen out of his hands and give it a decent burial. But much as I loved it, it was tainted now. And possibly carrying a few communicable diseases, as well.
‘You can keep it,’ I said, grabbing my bag and stalking across the floor.
For a moment he didn’t react – probably because he was too busy using the poor pen to scratch the inside of one of his ears. But once he’d waxed it up good and proper, he wobbled out of the chair and raced after me. ‘Hey!’ he called out. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’
I paused at the staircase. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maybe for an early lunch. I mean, I can do what I like now, can’t I? Seeing as you’ve fired the best journalist you’ve ever had.’
His eyes bulged, and he clapped a hand over his mouth, struggling to hold his laughter inside. ‘Okay, let’s set your incredible ego aside for a moment. I didn’t say you were fired. I said I was going to fire you. And as much as I’d still like to do that, I don’t own this newspaper.’
I felt my nose scrunch up. Partially because he had just begun to chew my wax-covered, disease-ridden pen, and partially because I was confused. ‘Wait … what are you saying? I’m not fired?’
He shrugged. ‘I mean, if you’ve got better job offers – which I highly doubt – then you’re free to go. But no, unfortunately you’re not fired. The old man wants to have lunch with you today. And for reasons I will never understand, he actually wants to offer you a trial position that could lead to a promotion and a pay rise.’
My lashes were going a bit fluttery, what with all of the shock. I did my best to compose myself, and tossed my hair. ‘Oh. Well, of course he does. Why wouldn’t he?’
2. Let’s Go Round the Bend
As I walked to Capel Street, I tried to recall what little I knew of Arnold Albright. I’d only met him twice – once, when he bought the newspaper last July, and again when he briefly attended the staff Christmas party. He had white hair, pale blue eyes, and carried a cane everywhere he went. He seemed like your average sweet old man. But your average sweet old man didn’t own a newspaper – many newspapers, according to John. Behind that innocent smile he’d worn, I’d sensed something shrewd.
As I neared the café, one of my migraines began to come on. I say migraines because that’s what the doctor called them. There was no headache, just an odd blurring of my vision, like I was looking at the world through a hazy kaleidoscope. Ten separate tests told me I had perfect eyesight, so I had no choice but to accept my doc’s diagnosis.
The thing about these migraines, though, was that they were oddly specific. Take that very moment, for instance. The café, called Let’s Go Round the Bend, looked perfectly normal to me. As did the shop next door to it – an antique place called Times of Yore. But the drainpipe between the two exteriors. Now, that was shimmering.
I shook my head and looked again. Yep, the drainpipe was still shimmering. Not only was it shimmering, but I could have sworn a guy just walked out through the drainpipe.
‘Get it together, Ash,’ I muttered. ‘It’s nerves, that’s all it is. You need to believe in yourself. You deserve a better job.’
I wasn’t so sure John would agree.
I took a deep breath, crossed the road, and entered Let’s Go Round the Bend. Although I was early, Arnold was already there, sitting at a table by the window. I took a seat across from him, taking him in – he was wearing gold, round-rimmed eyeglasses. He had his usual cane with him – it looked hand-carved, with a golden spiral running along the wood. He had been reading from a small, spiral-bound notebook, but he closed it as soon as I entered and smiled up at me.
‘Miss Smyth,’ he said warmly. ‘Forgive me for not standing up to greet you. I have age-appropriate hips.’
I laughed a little, and sat down across from him.
‘I took the liberty of ordering,’ he went on. ‘I hope you don’t mind. But I did make sure it was your favourite – minestrone soup.’ He pushed a cup of coffee towards me. ‘And I got you a drink, too.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘But how did you know I liked minestrone?’
He patted his nose. ‘I’ve been a newspaperman all my life
, Miss Smith. I make it my business to know everything about the people who work for me. After all, it’s a serious business, a newspaper. Say a group of armed men took over some government or other right now. Why, one paper could report that they were rebels, fighting for their freedom. Another could paint them as terrorists, and a scourge to be destroyed. I like to know if my writers have agendas.’
The waitress arrived with our food. Arnold seemed to have ordered the minestrone for himself as well. I waited until it was all laid out before replying. ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I agree that it’s important to know who’s working for you. Although it’s usually the owners of media companies who get to spin the narrative, not the lowly journalists. And also – I doubt my taste in soup tells you an awful lot about me other than the fact that I like smoked paprika.’
He paused, his spoon halfway to his mouth. ‘You’d be surprised, Miss Smith. It tells me a lot, in fact. It tells me that you have the same favourite soup as me. It was my daughter’s favourite, too.’
‘Oh. Well … that’s good to know,’ I said, beginning to eat. I mean, I suppose it wasn’t the strangest conversation I’d had that week. It definitely wasn’t the strangest conversation I’d had that day. But just because it wasn’t the strangest didn’t mean it wasn’t strange.
We ate in silence for a few minutes. The soup was delicious, nicer than any minestrone I’d ever had. As I scraped the last of it from my bowl, I said, ‘The food’s great here. You chose a good place.’
‘Oh?’ His brows shot up to his hairline. ‘You like it? You feel … comfortable … here?’
‘Of course I do. Who wouldn’t? I’m going to add it to my list of great places to eat.’
‘Oh, that does make me happy.’ He smiled, sitting back as the waitress collected our bowls. ‘I’ve ordered Mississippi mud pie for dessert.’
Wow, he really had been doing his research. Favourite soup. Favourite dessert. Any moment now he was going to start listing off David Bowie songs. As nice as it was that he’d made an effort to find out about me, I was wondering when he was going to start talking about the job.
A Little Bit Witchy (A Riddler's Edge Cozy Mystery #1) Page 1