by Morgana Best
“You, of course,” Camino said.
I waved that comment aside. “Anyone else?”
“Ruprecht refused to keep my onesies in the house and always gave them back to me,” Camino said, “but I did send onesies as gifts to my friends.”
“In Bayberry Creek?” I asked her.
She shook her head.
“Let’s hope the spell only made Camino’s onesies in Bayberry Creek come alive,” Marina said.
To my relief, Alder appeared on the scene. “We have to contain the onesies, then capture the onesies that have escaped, and then we need to reverse the spell,” he said.
“You make it all sound so simple,” Ruprecht said, “but as Derrida said, ‘Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: “Here are our monsters,” without immediately turning the monsters into pets.’”
Camino rolled her eyes. “There’s something else not particularly good that’s happened,” she said. “I wanted to tell you all as soon as I arrived, but I was distracted by all the onesies coming to life.”
“What is it?” I asked her.
Camino shook her head sadly. “You know how I was visiting my friend in hospital? The one who’s in a coma?”
We all nodded.
“While when I was visiting her, someone was murdered in her room.”
We all gasped.
“That’s terrible,” Alder said.
Camino agreed. “And that’s not all! I’m the main suspect.”
Chapter 4
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“Who was murdered?” Marina asked her. “Was it anyone we know?”
“Henry Vanderbilt!” Camino announced.
I gasped. “Not the famous actor?”
Camino nodded. “The very same. He was in Neighbours and Home and Away years ago, before going to Hollywood.”
“What on earth was he doing in Bayberry Creek?” I asked her.
“He was born here.”
“He was?” Marina shrieked.
“Born and raised,” Camino said. “He left as a young man and I don’t think he’s been back to town too many times since.”
I was puzzled. “Why was he in the hospital room with your friend? Did he know her? Where were you?”
Marina was talking over the top of me, asking the same questions. Ruprecht was muttering to himself.
Alder held up one hand for silence. “We need to secure the onesies, and then Camino can tell us everything. Right now, we have more pressing matters on our hands.”
A giant teapot appeared beside us.
“It’s a teapot onesie,” Camino said, somewhat unnecessarily. “I think it wants to know if I’d like a cup of tea.”
Alder scratched his chin. “At least, it seems like one of the more harmless onesies. Camino, can you ask it to go into the kitchen?”
Camino did as he asked. Alder turned to me. “Are there any other physical barricades we could use?” He nodded to the large chest of drawers across the door. “Doesn’t that door open inwards?”
“It does, but after we locked it, I tied some rope around the door handle and around the chest of drawers,” I told him, pointing to said rope.
Alder nodded his approval.
“But Alder, you need to go up on the roof and block the chimney, because some bats have already escaped. Be careful,” I called out to his departing back.
We all hurried outside in time to see another bat fly out of the chimney. It screeched before flying away. I put my head in my hands. “This can’t be good. This can’t be good,” I said over and over again.
Alder shimmied up the ladder while holding a small, square piece of corrugated tin. He placed it over the chimney and then placed some bricks on top of it.
“Where did he get those bricks from?” Marina said to nobody in particular.
“Everybody in this town has to cover their chimney in summer, so the flies and possums don’t get down,” I said. “Camino hasn’t done it yet because we’re still getting some cold nights despite it being the middle of spring. Every summer, someone has to carry a piece of tin or something up there to put across the top of the chimney, but there are always bricks left up there to put on the piece of tin to hold it down.”
“I see,” Marina said, although it was clear that she didn’t.
“That should hold the bats, at least for now,” Alder said as he jumped down from several rungs up the ladder and landed on his feet.
“Isn’t there anything stronger?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “That will hold them for now. Amelia, you and I need to do a binding spell to hold everything inside this house.”
“Will it hold humans inside too?” Camino asked him.
Alder appeared to be thinking it over. “Possibly. Camino, hurry and grab some of your things. You had better stay with someone else until this is all over.”
Camino didn’t need telling twice. She hurried away. “You go and help her,” Alder said to Marina. “Amelia and I will need to concentrate to do the spell.”
“Don’t do the spell until we’re out of the house,” Marina said in alarm. When Alder didn’t respond, she hurried after Camino.
“What did you have in mind?” I asked him.
“We don’t have time to use candles or name papers or anything like that. We’ll have to hold hands and focus on the house being sealed—nothing in, nothing out.”
“Sounds good. What are we going to do about the other problem of Camino being a suspect in a murder?”
“Maybe we should go to Ruprecht’s house to discuss it,” Alder said. “We have the other pressing problem of rounding up the onesies that have already escaped. How many were there?”
I bit my lip. “I’m not sure, to be honest.” I turned to Ruprecht. “You were here when we arrived. How many do you think escaped?”
Ruprecht was bending over a banksia onesie sitting in Camino’s garden between some rose bushes, chatting to it.
“He does seem a little more peculiar than usual,” Alder said to me.
Camino and Marina hurried out of the house. “If you’re going to do something, do it now,” Marina said. “There must be a big, strong onesie on the other side of that door, because the door handle looks as though it might come off at any minute.”
Alder grabbed my hands. “Focus on the house being completely sealed,” he said.
I shut my eyes and focused hard. I imagined an invisible membrane going around the house, across every door and window, across the roof and across the floorboards at the bottom until it formed a complete bubble—no way in, no way out. I could feel Alder’s focus and power rising in harmony with mine. I concentrated harder and harder until I felt a sense of relief. I opened my eyes.
“Done,” Alder said. “Now we should go to Ruprecht’s and discuss this matter.”
Ruprecht walked over. “What? My place? Why would you want to go to my place?”
Camino took him by the arm. “Because we always go to your place to discuss murder matters,” she pointed out.
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea…” he began, but Camino was already marching him down the path. We all reached the front fence together.
“Where’s your car, Ruprecht?” Camino asked him.
He shot an absent-minded look around the street.
Camino tut-tutted. “Never mind. You can come with me,” she said.
Given Bayberry Creek has a population of less than five thousand people, we arrived at Ruprecht’s shop in double quick time. The heavy shower of rain came out of nowhere just as we stepped from the cars onto the street. “We needed the rain for the garden,” Camino muttered to herself.
; The grey sky and the cold rain dampened my mood. I had started the day with dread, wondering what Marina’s annual Halloween spell would be, but when she had asked me to do the spell for Camino, my spirits had lifted. Since then, onesies had turned to life and escaped, and Camino was a suspect in a murder. It looked as though this Halloween was going to be as eventful as all the others since I had moved to Bayberry Creek.
We stood back to allow Ruprecht to unlock his store door, but the door swung open. I gasped. Ruprecht hadn’t even touched the door.
I looked inside Glinda’s, Ruprecht’s combination antiques and bookstore. I gasped again when I saw Ruprecht standing inside the shop.
“Ruprecht!” Camino, Marina, Alder, and I said in unison.
“Two Ruprechts!” Camino added.
Chapter 5
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“Goodness gracious me!” Ruprecht—the Ruprecht inside the house—raised one bushy eyebrow.
“It’s a case of doppelgängers, I believe,” Alder said.
“Then come inside quickly.” Ruprecht gestured us inside.
The outside Ruprecht looked the inside Ruprecht up and down.
Ruprecht led us through a labyrinth created by various alchemical objects such as aludels and athanors, along with musty antique pieces covered with the DNA of decades of past owners, and through a back door into his apartment at the back of the shop.
“Sit in front of the fire and dry yourselves,” he said through a cloud of white sage smoke. “I shall make us a nice cup of peppermint and lavender tea and then you can tell me what’s going on.”
With that, he disappeared into the kitchen.
“Only Ruprecht would take the matter of his doppelgänger so calmly,” I said with a shiver. Alder took off his coat and put it around my shoulders.
Nobody spoke until Ruprecht appeared with a tray, on which was a fancy teapot along with several cups and saucers. “I have Tim Tams,” he said with a smile. He set down the tray on the coffee table in front of the fireplace. “Now, you had better tell me what’s happening. I am particularly keen to know why you have brought a man who looks somewhat what like me, although not quite so distinguished.”
The other Ruprecht huffed.
I spoke up. “Camino visited her friend in hospital, and now she’s apparently a suspect in a murder case, but we haven’t heard the details yet because of Marina’s Halloween spell.”
Ruprecht and Alder exchanged glances. “And what was the yearly Halloween spell this time?” Ruprecht asked Marina.
Her hand flew to her chest. “It wasn’t for me this time,” she said. “This time it was for Camino.”
“For Camino?” Ruprecht asked in obvious disbelief.
Marina nodded. “I asked Amelia to do a spell to grant Camino her heart’s desire for her onesies.”
Ruprecht stroked his beard. “Aha! And Camino’s heart’s desire apparently was that all her onesies would come to life.”
“How did you know?” Marina said, and soon added, “But Ruprecht, what has caused your doppelgänger?”
“That, I presume, is a onesie of me,” he said casually.
The rest of us stared at Camino, who had turned bright red. She looked down at her shoes and shuffled her feet.
“You made a onesie of Ruprecht?” I asked her. “But why?”
Alder elbowed me gently in the ribs.
“I just like to chat with Ruprecht, so I made a onesie of him,” she said in a small voice. “When Ruprecht wasn’t there and I had a problem, I would tell the Ruprecht onesie my problem.”
“But he couldn’t answer back because he was a onesie,” I said.
She shrugged one shoulder. “But that didn’t matter, because simply saying problems out aloud often helps. He was an ear, so to speak. At any rate, it’s no different when I tell the real Ruprecht my problems. He always mutters something philosophical that makes no sense.”
Ruprecht did not appear to mind. “Then, until we can deal with this other me, we need to identify him in some way.” He disappeared from the room without another word. We all looked at each other. Before anyone had a chance to speak, he returned with a bright yellow scarf. He tied it around the Ruprecht onesie’s neck. “Don’t take this off,” he said to his onesie self.
His onesie self nodded.
The real Ruprecht tapped his chin. “We have to make sure both of us don’t appear in public at the same time. Now, you said there was another matter, a matter of a murder?”
“And none of us know anything about it,” I told him. “We were waiting until we came here.”
Ruprecht pulled an old green chair over to the fireplace and sat down. “All right, Camino. You had better start at the beginning.”
Camino took a deep breath. “I went to see my friend who is in hospital in the next town. She’d had a hip replacement and she had a bad reaction to one of the drugs. They think she should be all right, but she slipped into a coma.”
“So it wasn’t an induced coma?” Alder asked her.
She shook her head. “But all her other signs are good, so they think she will come out of it soon.”
“And how do you know her?” I asked her.
“We’re in the croquet club together,” Camino said. To Ruprecht, she said, “The murder victim was Henry Vanderbilt.”
Ruprecht gasped. “The famous actor?”
Camino nodded slowly. “Anyway, my friend, Nancy Newton, was his nanny back in the day, so he came to visit her.”
“It was awfully good of him to come all that way,” I said.
Camino waved one hand in dismissal. “Yes, it was good of him, but he was already in Australia at the time. He has a holiday home at Byron Bay, and he has the family estate in Bayberry Creek.”
We all nodded. “Go on,” Ruprecht said.
Camino threw her hands up. “So much has happened today! I’ll start from the beginning. I went to visit Nancy in hospital. I talked to her and I played some music for her, because the doctor told me that when some people come out of comas, they remember everything that happened. So, you know how they bring around tea and coffee?”
We all nodded. She pushed on. “Well, I had three cups of tea, and so then I needed to use the bathroom. Nancy had a private room with its own bathroom. I went to use the bathroom and when I came out, I saw someone on the floor with a knife in his back.”
We all gasped.
“I ran out and called for help, and the nurses ran in and then they called the police. Of course, I wasn’t allowed back in the room, so I had to sit in the lounge a short distance away. I sat there for ages and then the police came and questioned me.”
“Did they tell you who the victim was?” Ruprecht asked her.
“No, I overheard the nurses talking.”
“What makes you think you’re a suspect?” I asked her.
“Because I was in the room when he was killed. Well, not exactly in the room, but the police don’t know that, do they? They asked me all sorts of questions. They wanted to know if I had gone there alone, how long had I known Nancy, and then they asked me if Nancy knew Henry Vanderbilt.”
“That does show Henry Vanderbilt was definitely the victim,” Alder said.
Camino agreed. “They asked if I’d ever met him and I told them I hadn’t, and they asked if he knew Nancy and I said yes, Nancy used to be his nanny. Then they gave me the third degree, saying if Nancy was his nanny, then surely I had met all her famous charges. I pointed out he was a child at the time and didn’t become famous until years later. So of course, I didn’t know him. I mean, it is a small town, but we don’t know everybody.”
“Did y
ou have to give a witness statement?” Alder asked her.
“I gave a statement at the hospital,” Camino said. “They said I had to make myself available for questioning at a later date. I know they think I did it.”
“Okay, we know you didn’t do it, so think of everything you can now, while it’s still fresh in your mind,” Alder said. “Did you see anyone else around, anyone who looked familiar?”
Camino looked into the fire for a while before answering. “No, not really. I saw some patients walking around, some visitors, some nurses, someone who looked like a doctor because he was wearing a suit and had a nurse with him, that sort of thing. I didn’t even hear anything when I was in the bathroom, but I did have music playing for Nancy. The ward happened to be quite noisy at the time because some young children were visiting one of the patients in a nearby room.”
“So the murderer must have known that Henry Vanderbilt was visiting Nancy or that he would be likely to visit Nancy at some point. Did you get a look at the knife?” Alder asked her.
Camino shook her head. “It could have been a pair of scissors, for all I know.”
Ruprecht stood up. “Mint and Thyme have arrived,” he said. He strode from the room.
“How does he do that?” I asked Alder. “I didn’t hear a doorbell or anything, did you?”
“There is no doorbell,” Alder said. “Ruprecht must have a six sense about such things.”
Presently, Thyme and Mint hurried into the room and headed straight for the fire. We all moved our chairs aside a little when they shook themselves, as droplets of water flew all over the floor.
“Tim Tams!” Thyme wasted no time popping one into her mouth.
“Did you manage to secure your onesies?” I asked them.
They exchanged glances. “I have them all locked in my bedroom with a bucket of water in case they’re thirsty,” Thyme said through her Tim Tam.
Mint let out a shriek. “There are two of them!”