by Mara Webb
As I ran in and got closer, I saw his bright blue suit on the ground, his body lying face down on the shiny alien set. There was a wound on the back of his head and blood all over the ground.
Tyson Bryce was dead.
4
“Chelsea what do we do?!” mom said in a panic. “I’m freaking out!”
“First step let’s stop freaking out,” I said. “What the heck happened here mom?”
“I came back here to find my handbag and found Ty dead on the ground! Oh Chelsea, darling, can we please get away from the body?!”
I don’t think mom had ever been this pale before. I took her by the arm and we moved away from the body, but as we did I noticed something on the ground, a small handkerchief that looked as though it had been dropped.
“Hang on mom, wait here a moment, won’t you?” I said as I moved in closer to get a better look. I didn’t want to touch it for fear of disturbing the crime scene, but I could very clearly make out two initials embroidered on the corner of the handkerchief: MM. “Interesting. All right mom, we should go and call the police,” I said and headed back towards her. We were just on our way out of the stage when a figure rounded the corner. It was the large heavyset guard that had denied us entry to the studio at the start of the day.
“You two!” he growled. “How did you get in? What’s going on here?! Where are you sneaking to?!”
“Call the police,” I said, “there’s been a murder, Tyson Bryce is dead.”
The guard looked around us both and saw the body lying on the ground. His eyes bulged and he grew pale. “Oh, man, that’s a lot of blood!” he said, stumbling backwards and dropping to the floor as he passed out.
“Oh for heaven’s sake!” mom said.
“I guess I’ll call the police then,” I muttered to myself as I stepped over the guard and pulled out my cell. “Mom, stay here with him and make sure he’s all right, this won’t take a moment.”
I stepped outside of the studio and into the fresh evening air. As I whipped my phone out, I did consider calling the station directly instead of dialing the emergency number, but I decided it would just be easier to phone my boyfriend Deacon, who was the Sheriff of Pendle Island. Deacon answered pretty much straight away.
“You don’t have to warn me,” he said as he answered. “I’ve already braced myself.”
“What? How could you possibly know?”
“This is the first full night since your mother got to town. I assumed we’d be going for dinner. I don’t mind Chelsea; I’m looking forward to meeting her. What are you thinking for dinner? Pizza? Italian? That new Thai place? I can do lobster if you really want to, but I’ve not been getting on with seafood lately—”
“Deacon, stop talking for a moment sweetie. I’m sure we’ll have to endure an uncomfortable dinner at some point, but it won’t be tonight. The only meal we’re having tonight is one of mystery.”
“You’re kidding me,” he said. “What happened now?”
“Moon Drop Studios, do you know the place? My mom just stumbled over a dead body, and it’s one of her ex-lovers.”
“Well from what you told me about her that’s more likely than not,” he said with a chuckle. “I haven’t had anything through from the station.”
“I called you first, it’s just happened.”
“Oh!” I heard something clutter in the background. “Sit tight then. I’ll call it in and meet you there in five minutes. Where about in the studios are you?”
I gave Deacon the directions and ended the call, bracing myself as I went back inside to find mom kneeling by the passed out guard. She was fanning him with her hands and trying to get him to wake up.
“It’s no use Chelsea, he’s not waking up. Clearly, he doesn’t have the stomach for this type of thing, isn’t a guard supposed to have training?!”
“I don’t think the guard of a TV Movie Studio is expected to deal with many dead bodies, but I may be wrong. Maybe I could fetch him a glass of water—”
“Or use magic to wake him up,” mom suggested, not very subtly.
“Magic?”
“Magic! You need to start thinking like a witch, come on Chelsea! Magic should always be your first port of call when dealing with any problem. You have powers, and you should use them.”
“But how do I wake someone up?” I asked.
“You can—” She stopped herself and gave me a disproving look. “No. No more freebies. I’ve already given you everything you need to teach yourself about magic. It’s up to you if you’re going to use them or not.”
“What have you—” I realized she was talking about the great big ugly ring on my finger and contemplated that maybe I wasn’t thinking as much for myself as I possibly should. “Ohhh… yeah. Well, let’s see what Granny Sponks has to say then.”
I rubbed my thumb over the awkwardly shaped ruby and thought of the question: how do we wake this guy up?
A flurry of red sparks came from the ring and the image of my long departed granny appeared in front of me. She was a small woman, not much bigger than five feet in height. Her brow and mouth were permanently etched with the wrinkles of misery and scorn.
“You again?!” she snapped. “What now?!”
“I need to wake this guy up,” I said, pointing at the fat security guard. “Any ideas?”
“Have you tried slapping him?”
“…No.”
“Are you going to slap him?”
“…No?”
“Then I’m all out of ideas. I mean, I guess you could blow a little snoot in his face.”
“Snoot?”
“You’ll need some pixie sticks, peppermint, wolfsbane, and a liter of root beer.”
“What’s the root beer for?”
“I’m thirsty, now do you have the ingredients or what?”
“Funnily enough I don’t. Maybe I’ll just try slapping him. It feels like we’re going nowhere here.”
“Learn some patience, snowflake!” the old woman hollered, she pulled something from her overalls, a small herb bottle. Granny Sponks went to hand it to me, but my hand passed through the red holographic image. “Oh yeah!” she said, starting to holler. “I forgot I’m not real. Can’t help you out, sorry cupcake!”
“But I—”
With another crackle of red lightning she was gone. The ring buzzed on my finger and then everything was normal again. Well, relatively normal.
“Well?” mom said.
“She’s not helpful all the time, is she?” I asked.
“Maybe twenty percent of the time!” mom laughed. “What did she say?”
“Slap him awake. But I—”
“Suits me!” mom said. She raked her hand across the fat man’s face, and he jolted awake.
“What the?!” he barked.
“Yay, he’s alive,” mom said sarcastically.
“Hey lady, what’s the big idea?!”
“You passed out honey, and we were having a hard time rousing you. Turns out you just needed a woman’s touch.”
The guard blinked a few times before sitting up properly with my mom’s help. “That’s Mr. Bryce,” he said, looking a little pale again as he stared at the body lying across the way from us. “This is bad!”
“Any idea who would want him dead?” I asked.
He guffawed. “Only everyone! The guy was a bit of a jerk, if you didn’t realize!”
“We had noticed,” I said. Just tailing Tyson for a day made that easy to see, I was surprised it had taken this long for someone to do the deed. I looked over and saw another unreadable expression on my mom’s face. It occurred to me that perhaps I was being a little insensitive, she did have a past with this man, and she thought there was a chance he might be my real dad, so this might require more delicacy than usual. “Mom, are you ok?”
“Yes, I think so, this is all just a little bizarre. When is your police friend getting here?”
“A few minutes. You look like you just realized something. What is it?”
“Well, it’s… it’s not really relevant to the mystery right here, but I just figured out that Tyson can’t be your father. I guess that whittles down our list a little bit.”
“How could you have figured that out?”
“A muse is a very powerful thing,” my mom said. “Once a witch’s soulmate dies half of her magic will fade forever, she will feel it straight away. My magic feels completely normal, so Tyson couldn’t have been my muse, meaning he couldn’t have been your father.”
Well. That was a relief.
“Excuse me?” the guard said. We both looked over, having forgotten he was there. “What are you two broads talking about?!”
Mom lifted a hand in his direction and didn’t even bother to look. “Fuhgeddabout it!” she shouted in her worst Italian accent, using a spell that made mortal folk forget everything that had happened in the last minute.
The guard blinked and stared at the two of us. “That’s Mr. Bryce! This is bad!”
“Yes, yes,” I said. “The police will be here in a minute. Maybe go get us all a cup of coffee and some donuts if there are any left. It’s terribly important.”
He scrambled to his feet, acting as though my fleeting request was a mission from the Queen herself. “Right away!” he shouted as he waddled out of the large open doors.
“That leaves two people then, right?” I asked. My mother said her shortlist of father suspects had three candidates, with Tyson Bryce being the first. Now he was gone, meaning we were really in a heads and tail situation of figuring out who my real father was. “Who are the other two?”
“Perhaps its best we stop venturing down this road,” she said in a cautious whisper. “What if there is a curse about, preventing me from finding your father!”
“I think that’s highly unlikely. If a curse is hanging around anyone it’s me. Do you know how many dead bodies I’ve tripped over since I moved here?”
“I tripped over this one darling, and I don’t think it hurts to be a little superstitious, especially with a murderer running about! Let’s speak no more of it today. I don’t want to put two more men in the ground with my cursed tongue!”
I rolled my eyes and sighed. She wasn’t cursed, but mom was the superstitious type, and whenever she opened that box there was no closing it until she made her mind up. Fortunately it wasn’t long until Deacon arrived. He crossed paths with the guard as he was coming back to the studio and they both arrived at the same time, Deacon already holding a cup of coffee and a donut.
“Evening,” he said and kissed me on the cheek. He smelled of sugar and raspberry jam. I took a coffee from the guard but declined a donut, I didn’t exactly have an appetite given the circumstances. “Miss Sponks,” he said and held out his hand. “It’s good to finally meet you.”
“Charmed, Deacon,” mother said. “And it’s Miss Moon.”
“Legally you never changed your name,” I said. “It’s still Sponks.”
“So what happened here?” Deacon asked.
“Deacon darling it was terrible!” mom said, launching into her best damsel in distress act. She briefly recounted her version of events, which was more or less accurate to my knowledge, though a tad dramatic.
“I see,” Deacon said when she was finished. “So you came back here for your bag and found him dead?”
“Yes!”
“And then what happened?”
“I screamed, and then I saw Chelsea. She came here, and then the guard showed up.”
“My name is Larry,” the guard said.
“Any cameras in here Larry?” Deacon asked.
“Only the ones that film the action, and they’ve all been put away. The only surveillance cameras are on the outsides of the buildings.”
“How many people are currently left in the studio? It’s late, I’m guessing most have gone home by now.”
“Well I’ve got the gate log here!” the guard said, holding up the clipboard in his hand. He thumbed through the pages. “There’s a half dozen people left, looking at the names most of them are from wardrobe and design, you know… they usually have a meeting on a Monday night in Studio 1, that’s at the other end of the lot!”
“Looks like our killer might be hiding there then,” Deacon said. “Larry, do me a favor and make sure no one else leaves this studio until I talk to them. There will be more officers here in a moment, can you go and meet them at the gate?”
“Sure can!” Larry said as he disappeared out the door again. He looked at me and the body behind me.
“Come on. Let’s take a look.” Deacon walked over to the body and I followed him, mom staying clear for her own good. Deacon crouched down and looked at the body but didn’t touch anything. “Blunt force trauma to the back of the head,” he said to himself.
“That’s what I thought. No murder weapon though.”
“What about that?” he said, pointing to an object that looked like it had rolled underneath a nearby part of the set. Deacon pulled a cloth out of his pocket, got down on the ground and reached under an alien-looking cabinet. A heavy ball rolled out and over the floor. It was spray painted silver and obviously meant to be a part of the set. Deacon picked it up in the cloth and tested the weight.
“What is it?” I asked.
“A bowling ball. Looks like it was stuck on top of here.” He pointed to a post just behind us. There were two, one had a shiny silver ball on top, the other was missing. The ball on the ground had a dark splatter of blood across it, there was no mistaking that this thing had killed Tyson.
“Maybe it fell on him?” mom shouted from across the studio.
Deacon and I looked at the posts and came to the same conclusion. “Not high enough,” I said.
“That’s what I was thinking. The ball is about head height with me standing up, this fella doesn’t look much shorter. No… someone picked this thing up and used it deliberately.”
“Oh, there was a handkerchief!” I said, suddenly remembering the item that looked like it had been dropped.
“By the body?” Deacon asked, turning around to look and see if he had missed it.
“It was right…” I stopped as I came around. The handkerchief had been between the body’s legs, but it was gone. “It’s gone! Someone took it!” I said, turning quickly on my heels and inspecting the dark borders of the stage to see if I could see someone hiding there. “Hello? Is there someone there?!”
Deacon turned his flashlight on and lit up the shadow. The hairs were standing on the back of my neck, but a few quick sweeps revealed that we were in fact alone. “Hm. No one there,” he said, but it looks like there is a way out. Did you hear anyone else in here?”
“No,” I said. “Mom? You?”
“Only that Larry,” she said. “You mean to say the killer snuck about while we were in here?!” A shiver overcame her. “Chelsea, it’s time to go!”
Just then we heard a concerned flock of voices come around the corner. Looking up I saw a group of people come through the main doors, all murmuring amongst themselves and appearing slightly panicked.
“Mind telling me what’s happening here?” a man from the front said. He was older looking, maybe in his fifties, with short silver hair and a plaid shirt tucked into his beige slacks.
“Sheriff Deacon Long,” Deacon said as he stood up from the body. “Pendle town P.D.” He showed his badge and held up his hand. “I’ll have to ask you all to stop right there.”
“Oh my goodness!” a woman in the group said. “Is that Bryce? Is he hurt?!”
“He’s dead,” Deacon said. “Murdered. It looks like someone smashed him over the back of the head.”
All at once the small group reacted to the news. The silver haired man closed his eyes and turned away. Thankfully some of Deacon’s men arrived and he had the group escorted outside and sealed off the crime scene. We caught up with the man and woman outside as Deacon did a preliminary sweep of the group.
“What’s your name?” he said to the silver haired m
an.
“Marty. I’m the director on the picture.” He wrung his hands nervously, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else. “Is he definitely dead? There’s no chance to save him?”
“Dead as a Dodo,” my mom said from behind us. She seemed to realize the irony only after she had said it.
“Sylvia,” a woman with tightly wound brown curls said. “Marty and I were in a meeting with the others over on Studio 1. We have a creative meeting every Monday night. I’m the head of design.”
“Did Mr. Bryce usually come to these meetings?” Deacon asked.
Marty and Sylvia both looked at one another in a suggestive way. “He was supposed to, but he didn’t usually bother,” Marty said. “He said he was going to come tonight, he just had some business he had to wrap up on Stage 4, the place he was found dead.”
“Any idea who would want Mr. Bryce dead?” he said.
They shared another look with one another. “Ty was hard to work with,” Sylvia said diplomatically, “but I don’t think Marty or I ever had a problem with him.”
Marty turned his head in a disagreeing manner. “I had problems with him, but nothing major. Just regular work things. Not enough to kill someone over!”
“Problems like what?” Deacon asked.
“Ty was… how can I put this?” Marty said.
“A bully,” Sylvia concluded. “He was rude to people, abrasive, and hard to deal with if you didn’t know how to deal with him.”
“How do you deal with him?”
“Don’t waste his time, and deliver results,” Sylvia said. “If you don’t get in the way of his vision, he’s nice more or less.”
Marty nodded his head as though he agreed. “That sums it up nicely.”
“That poor girl is going to take it hard,” Sylvia said. “Has anyone told her yet?”
Deacon and I both shared a look. “Who?” I said to Sylvia.
“Winnie! She’s acting in the flick, she’s the main female lead! She and Tyson were seeing each other.”
I suddenly thought back to the conversation my mom and I had overhead that morning when we ran up to Tyson’s trailer. He’d argued with the young woman, telling her to break off an affair.