“You think I stole the presents.” Heathcliff's words were clipped, dripping with scorn.
“If you didn’t, then why are you trying to hide these from me?” Heathcliff’s entire face shut down. “If you’d just talk to me, we could—”
“What’s the point in talking? You’ve already made up your mind.” Heathcliff collected the gifts in his arms, stomped from the room, and slammed his bedroom door, shrouding the room in heavy, hurtful silence.
Chapter Fourteen
I ran downstairs. The furniture guys were just removing the sex desk and dumping out the contents of Heathcliff’s drawers in a pile in the corner. I slumped against the wall, my head in my hands. Quoth hopped across the rug in front of me, tugging a string of tinsel for Grimalkin to chase. Even their antics couldn’t cheer me up.
At least the furniture guys didn’t have any qualms about stepping into the shop owned by Heathcliff the evil Christmas Grinch. The desk’s absence left a square of bright blue on the rug, vibrant against the dull grey where the exposed carpet had faded.
A hand rested on my shoulder.
“I don’t want to see any more of this moping, gorgeous. We’re still working the case.” Morrie dragged me to my feet, brushing stray pine needles from the breast of his jacket.
“What’s the point? Heathcliff stole the gifts. He won’t give them back, and he won’t say why he did it.”
“Do you really believe that?” Morrie’s ice eyes bore into mine. “Do what my arch-nemesis Sherlock Holmes would never do, and put aside the evidence for a moment. You know Heathcliff better than anyone. Would he steal the presents and then hide them right here in the shop?”
I squeezed my eyes shut, bringing up every tender moment and every scorching kiss Heathcliff and I had shared ever since I took the job at Nevermore Bookshop. From our picnic date beside the stream in King’s Copse and shagging in the bathroom at Lachlan house to attempting regency dancing at the Jane Austen ball. I’d trod on Heathcliff’s feet every few steps, and he never complained. Okay, he did complain. But he never stopped dancing.
“No,” I said. “He didn’t do it.”
“Exactly.” Morrie handed me a brand new notebook. “Now let’s prove it.”
I hunted around in the pile of stationary in the corner for my favorite sparkly pen, but it was still nowhere to be found. Sighing, I picked up another and made a note at the top of the page. “We know Earl and his friends took the tree around 1AM, and the presents were still here. I discovered the presents missing around 7:22AM. That means there’s a six-hour window during which the presents could have been stolen. Maybe an intruder snuck in while Earl was leaning out the side window talking to his boys?”
“I’m still betting on the accountant,” said Morrie. “I’ve been tracking him all day. He visited five different shops and businesses in the village and begged them to pay his invoices. He had his dog and her four puppies on a lead, and they’re looking very well fed. They all had brand new collars, too. I bet those came from under the tree.”
“Princess had five puppies,” I corrected him, writing that down.
“Did she? I must’ve counted wrong.” Morrie sounded put out. He didn’t like to have his intelligence or observational skills questioned. “Anyway, I think he’s our strongest suspect, but he’s tricksy. Our only hope of beating him is to catch him red-handed.”
“You’re probably right. I don’t see how we can get him to confess,” I said.
“There’s always a means.” Morrie cracked his knuckles.
“What do you think about Roland Crabapple?” I’d been wondering about the creepy photographer. “He was MIA during our window.”
Morrie tapped on his phone. “Interesting that you were thinking about him, too. I was intrigued by something Tabitha said, about him going to King’s Copse and video-chatting his cat. So I did some sleuthing on the Dark Web. It turns out our friend the BDSM photographer is a known dendrophiliac.”
“What’s dendrophilia?” Morrie turned his phone around. At first, all I could see were arty pictures of trees. But then I noticed people in the images as well, hugging the trunks and bending themselves into strange shapes. They were all naked and…
Ew.
Gross.
What?
I shoved his phone away. “I can’t unsee that. People are sick.”
“Don’t be such a prude. Most dendrophiliacs aren’t shagging the shrubbery. It’s a bit of a mother-earth cult thing, where trees stand as phallic symbolism—”
“Okay, fine, I get it.” I held up my hands. “You’ve painted a vivid picture. So Roland has a tree fetish, which might explain why he wanted to shag Tabitha at the shop or why he might go to King’s Copse. But do you think our tree shagger friend would steal the presents?”
Morrie stared at his phone screen, deep in thought. “Roland knew Tabitha had the key. He could have easily slipped it from her pocket and returned it at breakfast. Maybe he got angry when he came back to the shop and found the tree gone, so he decided to steal the presents as a kind of retribution. But I have another explanation – I found this.” Morrie handed me his phone again.
I stared at the screen. It was a photograph of a grumpy-looking Persian cat sitting on a throne that looked like something the Romanovs would’ve turned their noses up at for being too extravagant. I scrolled down. The article was from one of the gossip rags, explaining in lurid detail how Roland was squandering his fortune buying every conceivable luxury for his cat, Miss Purrfect. Apparently, she ate only the finest caviar, had a litter box made of solid gold, and even owned her own Soho penthouse. ‘He may be a dominant in the bedroom, but Roland Crabapple has his own master. He’s addicted to that cat’s approval,’ said one source. ‘And we all know about cats – it’s impossible to truly win their love.’
“All those presents sitting there, going to filthy charity animals when Miss Purrfect was in need?” Morrie remarked. “He had the means and motive.”
I circled Roland’s name, then Bertie. Who did it? And how do we find out? Both of them had a way of getting into the shop, both had a motive, and neither of them seemed like the type to confess their crime just because I asked nicely—
“I’ve got it!” I cried. “You remember how crazy Grimalkin went over the smell of that catnip spray, even after we cleaned it up? Tabitha said she broke the bottle after she and Roland had finished their… you know. He was already outside the shop when that happened, so he wouldn’t have got any on him unless he came back for the presents. Whoever stole the presents would reek of the stuff, and I bet it hasn’t washed off completely yet. I’ll put Grimalkin in my purse and we’ll go visit both our suspects. Whichever one she reacts to—”
“—we know that’s our Christmas Grinch!” Morrie stood up. “Excellent plan. Now, where is our favorite little thief catcher?”
“Good question.” I glanced over at Quoth, who had managed to twist the tinsel string around his wing, and was frantically trying to flap it off. Grimalkin was nowhere in sight. “Where’s Grimalkin?”
“Croak.”
“Well, didn’t you see where she went?”
“Croak.”
“You’re no good.” I stood up and peered under the table. She wasn’t there, nor was she skulking along the top of the poetry bookshelf, nor had she busied herself in the boxes of secondhand stock at the back of Heathcliff’s office – her favorite spot to hide decapitated rodents. “Grimalkin, here kitty, kitty…”
“Meow.”
I spun around just as a flash of black darted through the hallway, trailing a tail of bright tinsel behind her.
“Meow!” Grimalkin called happily, her feet skidding on the wooden floor as she dragged Quoth’s tinsel behind her.
“No, Grimalkin, come back with that!” I scurried after her, Heathcliff hot on my heels. Grimalkin assumed it was a game and poured on speed, ducking and weaving between the shelves to confuse us before dragging her prize through a narrow gap behind the Natural History s
helves. I bent down to peer inside, and a blast of cold air hit me square in the face.
“What’s this?” I asked Morrie.
He frowned into the gap. “Odd. The cellar door is behind that shelf. But it’s locked. There shouldn’t be a breeze. Congratulations, gorgeous. You’ve found the source of the shop’s mysterious draft.”
“But how is there a draft where there are no windows or entrances in the cellar?” I shoved the end of the bookcase. “Help me with this. If Grimalkin’s gone down there, we have to find her.”
Morrie dropped his shoulder against the wood and shoved. Luckily, this particular bookcase was on wheels, and it slid aside easily so we could access the cellar’s latch. I flitted it open to reveal rickety stone steps leading down into a black hole.
I slid my phone out of my pocket and flipped on the flashlight app. Frigid air screamed up the stairs and blasted my bare face. After a few steps, even the flashlight beam was useless. Down here it was so dark, I was completely blind.
“Grimalkin, where are you?”
I kept my hand pressed against the wall and used my feet to feel for the next step. Cold air rushed up. I could hear Grimalkin chattering away, but she sounded muffled, like she was trapped in a cupboard or something.
I yelled up the stairs. “Morrie, help!”
A few moments later, footsteps clattered on the stairs. “The Napoleon of Crime to the rescue,” Morrie purred in my ear, wrapping his arms around my body and kissing along my neck.
“As tempting as you are, it’s too cold for your shenanigans.” My teeth chattered. I pressed my phone into his hand. “Grimalkin’s down here somewhere, chewing up my tinsel. Can you find her? I can’t see.”
By Isis, I hated asking for help. I hated that I couldn’t do something. But my feelings weren’t important right now. We had to find Grimalkin. It might be dangerous down here, and I didn’t want her to crawl into some tight space and become stuck.
“Of course.” Morrie shone the phone around the gloomy space. “Here, kitty, kitty…”
Grimalkin responded with a defiant, “Meow!”
“Ah. I see tinsel.” Morrie lunged into the darkness.
BANG. CRASH.
“Meorrrrrrrrw!”
“What’s going on?” I squinted, but I couldn’t make out anything except the beam of light swinging wildly.
“It’s fine!” Morrie panted. “I’ve got everything under control—argh!”
CLATTER! CRASH!
“What happened?” I surged forward, my hands in front of my face to feel for obstacles as I fought my way through centuries of spiderwebs to reach Morrie.
“I caught Grimalkin’s tail, but she scratched me and I sort of… fell through the wall. It must’ve been thin here—hang on a second…” There were a few more clatters and thumps, and then a warm hand circled my wrist. Morrie pulled me close as a frigid draft screamed past us. “Mina, there’s a tunnel behind the wall.”
“What?”
“A tunnel. It’s where the draft’s coming in. There was a small hole in the corner, just big enough for a little cat to fit in and… well, looky here.” Morrie swung the beam into the mouth of the tunnel.
“Morrie, what?”
“Go on. Guess.”
“I hope you’re not mocking the visually impaired, because I’m not in the mood. Tell me what you see.”
“It’s all the small stuff that’s gone missing from the shop over the last couple of weeks. Your sparkly pen. Your hair clips. A couple of your mother’s expensive baubles. It looks like you’re not the only one who loves sparkles.”
“Oh, Grimalkin.” I couldn’t help but grin. I loved that crazy cat.
“This is wild.” Morrie held up the treasures under the light. Glitter sparkled as my mother’s baubles and several of my favorite bobby pins came into view. “We have a real-life cat burglar in our midst. It makes me wonder if Grimalkin was the one who took the presents.”
“Meow?” Grimalkin batted at Morrie’s arm, as if to say, ‘hands off my treasure.’
“That’s impossible.” I rubbed Grimalkin between the ears until she purred.
Morrie shone the flashlight back into the hole. “Maybe, but I think we might have another idea of how our burglar entered the shop. In the corner of the panel is a board that’s nearly rotted away, where Grimalkin was squeezing through. Now I’ve broken the whole thing, I can see it’s a door fitted on a spring. You can open it from the inside and out. This has probably been here for centuries and we never knew about it.”
“That’s so cool.” I shoved my pilfered belongings into my pocket and gripped his shoulder. “Help me in. We’ve got to see where it leads.”
Good old Morrie. It never occurred to him to question if it was a good idea for us to explore a dark and possibly dangerous tunnel without telling anyone else what we were doing (spoiler alert: it wasn’t). He fitted my hand into the crook of his arm and steadied me as I felt for each step with my feet. “I’m stooping because the ceiling’s low,” he said. “But you should be fine to stand up straight.”
“Thanks, Morrie.” We shuffled down the passage, the thin beam of light from both our phones illuminating stone walls slick with damp. Above our heads, the cold air rushed in from a vent that must connect with the street above, judging by the tiny grey shaft of light it cast on the ground.
“Watch your head,” Morrie said, just as my forehead smacked into a low arch.
“Thanks for the warning,” I muttered, rubbing my head.
Water dribbled down the brick walls, and my boots crunched on ice formed between the stones. What a miserable place.
“This stone looks old,” Morrie said. “This tunnel could have been part of a drainage system for the village, or a secret passage for smugglers, or it could be connected somehow to the time-traveling room.”
Another of Nevermore Bookshop’s uncanny secrets.
It didn’t take long until we reached the other end of the tunnel. My foot kicked something on the floor. I picked it up and felt it in my hands. It was a stainless steel dish – the kind you’d give a dog for water or food.
“There’s stairs here,” Morrie led me up narrow stone steps. The wall on one side of us turned from stone to wood, and I had the sense we were moving between the walls of a house.
There was a click as Morrie popped open another door. We stepped out into a bright room. I blinked, and in a few moments my eyes had adjusted enough to make out the space.
We were in a bedroom – small with a low ceiling, but comfortable. The walls were painted pastel yellow and covered with posters of cats and puppies and pop stars. An overflowing suitcase at the end of the bed spilled clothes across the floor, and a stack of books on the nightstand showed the room’s inhabitants had a thing for YA vampire fiction.
But that wasn’t the most extraordinary thing about the room. On every surface were stacked bright colored boxes and parcels tied with bows. Gifts of all shapes and sizes, many of them opened and the contents raided. I picked up a gift tag and flipped it over to read the message written in a child’s loopy handwriting.
DEAR ANIMALS OF ARGLETON. I HOPE YOU FIND SAFE HOMES FOR CHRISTMAS. LOVE ARTHUR.
The presents from our Christmas tree. We’d found them. But who had taken them—
“You shouldn’t be here,” a voice said.
“Arf!” added another voice.
My heart leaped in my throat. The thieves were right behind us!
I whirled around just as a figure stepped into the room.
Chapter Fifteen
The shadow advanced, arms outstretched. It let out an inhuman yowl that chilled my bones. Was it even human? Had we come face-to-face with a dark nightmare from an HP Lovecraft storybook—
“Jonie?” I gasped as the figure came into view. In her arms, she held a tiny golden retriever puppy with the biggest, roundest brown eyes. The puppy whimpered. “Arf?” it asked weakly.
Jonie didn’t even acknowledge us. She set down the dog in a brand-n
ew bed, patting its matted fur. “Here you go, Buster. I know they scared you, but it’s okay. I’ve got some treats here to make it all better.” She plunged her hand into one of the gift boxes and pulled out a bag of dog treats, which she tipped on the rug. The puppy, Buster, sniffed at the treats, then turned his head away. His tail flapped a couple of times. He looked sick.
“Jonie, you stole the presents from under the Christmas tree.” I couldn’t believe it. “You love animals. Why would you want to hurt them like this?”
Jonie slumped on the bed, wiping at her eyes. It took me a moment to realize she was crying.
“I know what I did was wrong,” she sniffed. “I was going to pay for new presents, so none of the animals would have missed out. Grandma always gives me a check for Christmas. I would use the money to replace all the toys and food so none of the animals would have missed out. But Buster needed things now. I don’t have any money, and I couldn’t ask Mum for it because she’s in Paris and doesn’t want to talk to me.”
I sat down beside Jonie, starting to put together what might’ve happened. “Where did you get Buster?”
“From Bertie – that weird guy with the tiny glasses.” The puppy slumped at Jonie’s feet. She pulled him onto the bed, where he rested his head on her lap. She stroked him, her face brightening into a smile. “I met him when he came to ask my Grandma about the accounts for the Christmas market. He said he’d give Buster to me for free if I could feed him and keep him healthy. So I snuck through the tunnel and took the presents, and then Bertie let me take Buster home after the market. I’ve been such a good mama to him! I fed him and played with him and given him lots of snuggles. The only time I can’t be with him is when Grandma’s home – I have to hide him in the tunnel. Today I even tried to take him out for a walk. But he’s so sad. He just sits in that bed and he won’t eat and I don’t know what to do!”
I remembered Bertie talking with Jonie at the fete. He gave her one of the puppies. I thought she was just having a cuddle, but she must’ve taken him home. I rubbed my hands together, trying to get feeling into my numb fingers. If the puppy was stuck in that tunnel for any length of time, no wonder he’s feeling sick.
How Heathcliff Stole Christmas: A Nevermore Bookshop Mysteries novella Page 8