by Tess Lake
I held out my hand to William. He shook it and smiled at me.
“I’m Will Truer. Your mothers had me quote on the landscaping and then they invited me to dinner,” he said, seeming to feel the need to give me an explanation.
I held out my hand to Oliver and he shook it.
“Oliver Spencer. Call me Ollie. Your mothers came to the library, and they wanted some information on the historical characteristics of this mansion, so they invited me to dinner.”
“I’ll bet they did.”
“This place is amazing. I studied historical architecture. I’d love to take a tour sometime.”
“I can take you!” Molly said, practically jumping in the air.
“That would be wonderful,” Ollie said, smiling at her.
“Maybe after we get a few more of the renovations done. The floors are pretty dangerous down there. So very easy to stumble across things that aren’t safe,” I said, looking at Molly and desperately trying to transmit information with my gaze. She frowned at me.
“No, it’s fine.”
Either she had forgotten about our frozen-in-time grandmother or was too overwhelmed by the cute librarian standing in front of her to think clearly. She also didn’t know about Cass’s mad scientist laboratory. So long as the tour didn’t take place tonight, hopefully we’d be okay.
Mom came into the dining room, wiping her hands on a hand towel. She was smiling, but it vanished and was replaced with a look of concern when she saw Sheriff Hardy.
“Sheriff? Something wrong?”
I leapt in smoothly with a lie.
“Aunt Ro said we should invite him, so I did, remember?”
She recovered like a champ.
“Oh, yes, certainly. Sorry. Silly me, I did forget. How are you, Lamont?”
Lamont? How did I not know that?
“Good evening, Dalila. I brought a bottle of wine.”
“Wonderful. I see almost everyone else is here. We should be ready to have dinner soon.”
Almost everyone? That wasn’t good news. There came a knock at the door and my heart sank as I realized the mothers had managed to pull off the perfect trifecta of love-life meddling. Sheriff Hardy opened the door.
It was Jack.
Their eyes met, and for a moment Sheriff Hardy frowned at Jack as though he knew him. Then he recovered, bringing his face back to that stone cop look he has.
“Hi, everyone, I’m Jack Bishop.”
Sheriff Hardy stepped aside to let him in. We went through the introductions again and by the time we were finished, Aunt Freya had come into the room as well.
I was doing my very best not to look at Jack. It was difficult, though. He’d gone with the casual jeans and shirt look just like Ollie, and with his scruffy hair and stubble, he was looking like a rock star on his day off as well.
“Everyone is here!” Aunt Freya said, clapping her hands together. “Okay, places, everybody.”
Molly, Luce and I sat together on one side of the table with Ollie, Will and Jack opposite us. She put Sheriff Hardy next to them and said that Ro would be sitting beside him. At this, Sheriff Hardy very awkwardly said, “Oh, okay.”
Had we been wrong about them? Or was Sheriff Hardy incredibly good at faking that there was nothing going on?
Mom and Freya returned to the kitchen to get the food. About then, Aunt Cass emerged from the lounge and took her customary position at the head of the table.
She looked the line of men up and down with a calculated eye.
“Lamont. Good to see you.”
“Cassandra,” Sheriff Hardy replied.
She focused her gaze on Will.
“Your grandfather is William Truer, isn’t he?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Is he still brewing that illegal peyote wine?”
I saw Luce’s eyes go wide, and a split-second look of shock crossed Sheriff Hardy’s face. But Will only laughed and shook his head.
“I think he gave that up many years ago. He mainly plays bocce on the lawn and walks on the beach these days.”
“And what’s your name?” she said, looking at Ollie.
“Oliver Spencer. I’m the librarian of the Harlot Bay Library.”
“You’re the one who writes the history website about Harlot Bay and the surroundings, aren’t you?”
How did Aunt Cass know there were so many different websites? The mothers really didn’t bother much with computers, and my cousins were permanently connected to their phones. My laptop stayed with me. How was she getting access?
“Yes, that’s right. I’m hoping to do a book one day.”
He turned to Will.
“So your family are the Truers who originally bought the island?”
“Some great-great-great-grandfather way back paid five dollars to buy it from someone else who had bought it from someone else who had stolen it from someone else. We still own some land over there, but most of it has been given back now and kept wild.”
“I’ve read about William Truer’s pirate treasure—do you think it’s true?”
“We don’t talk about it much in my family. My grandfather went mad digging the island trying to find it, and his dad as well. It was a bit of an obsession for some of my uncles and aunts. All they’ve ever dug up is old bullets and rusted tin cans. I think the story of buried pirate treasure is probably just a myth.”
“Shows what you know,” Aunt Cass muttered. Somehow she managed to get hold of a bottle of wine. She was filling her glass to the top.
“Aunt Cass!” Luce said and then smiled at Will.
“There are a lot of things buried over on that island, treasure included, for anyone foolish enough to search.”
Great. We weren’t even ten minutes into dinner and already we were having problems. Before anyone else could speak, our mothers entered from the kitchen carrying dinner. It was slow-cooked roast pork belly served with root vegetables, crispy salt crackling, a ginger-garlic-chili sauce and a leafy green side salad. Mom had Sheriff Hardy’s bottle of wine open and a few other bottles as well to place on the table.
“Serve yourselves, everybody,” she announced.
Aunt Ro sat down beside Sheriff Hardy, and they greeted each other as though they were friends and nothing more. I couldn’t believe that I could have been so wrong about them. Clearly the sheriff had been at the bakery and probably had just said something to them that Ro picked up, or maybe it was the other way around. That wasn’t good news. I’d been hoping if there had been anything going on between them that my mom and Aunt Freya and Aunt Cass would focus on that rather than Jack, Ollie and Will.
The first few minutes of dinner consisted of everyone serving themselves and biting into their delicious meals and then groaning with pleasure. The pork belly had been slow-cooking for more than six hours. The meat simply fell apart while the crackling on top was crispy and deliciously salty. The ginger-garlic-chili sauce was homemade, sweet and vinegary at the same time, and so thick it was like jam. The leafy green salad was crisp and fresh and provided the perfect palate cleanser for the rest of it. Everyone filled the glasses with wine and dug in.
“Molly, I understand you bought a coffee machine for Traveler?” Aunt Ro said. She turned to Ollie and Will. “Molly and Luce run the Traveler tourist shop. They’re just about to start selling coffees as well.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” Ollie said politely.
“We should be up and running in a few days once we get a bit better at making coffee,” Molly said, lying through her teeth.
“I thought the Bellissimo was quite easy to use?”
“We decided not to go with that one. We got a different one.”
“Does it make good coffee?” Freya asked.
“It’s very advanced,” Molly said. “Who wants more wine?”
“Will, how is the landscaping business going?” Mom asked.
“It’s not bad. I have a lot of steady work from some of the houses on Truer Island, and I’m looki
ng after a few of the properties over on Barnes Boulevard.”
Barnes Boulevard was where Zero Bend was staying. One of the richest streets in Harlot Bay. Color me impressed.
“Do those horses on Truer Island cause you any problems? Or the gardens?”
Truer Island is home to the descendants of Spanish horses that had escaped shipwrecks. As the horses had originally been domesticated and then escaped, they were referred to as feral horses rather than wild horses. Except in all the tourist brochures about Harlot Bay, of course, because wild horses sounds lovely and feral horses sounds terrible. They roamed the rough half of the island, and every year the park service had to take some of them away to keep the population under control.
“They’re not too bad. Sometimes tourists have been feeding them, so they come over and they’re a bit annoying trying to get food from you. People get bitten occasionally, but most of the locals know better.”
“So, Jack, what is it you do?” Mom inquired.
“Well, I used to be a police officer,” he said.
Gah, what? I nearly choked on my salad.
“Really?” Sheriff Hardy said. “How long?”
“About six years. Then I decided to do something else. I’m sort of in that phase right now.” He looked directly at me. “I’m really looking for something different in my life, looking to settle down.”
“Do you know what you’re going to do?” Freya asked as I hastily focused all my attention on my meal.
Jack bit through a piece of crackling, the crunch of it echoing through the room.
“Well, my grandfather was a carpenter and so was my dad. I actually worked with him for a while before I went to the police force. I’ve been thinking about taking that up again.”
“How coincidental! We’re planning on renovating the Torrent Mansion. Do you think you’d be interested in doing anything like that?” Aunt Freya asked, practically grinning at me.
This was getting out of control. If I didn’t do something soon, Jack would be here renovating the house, Will would be doing the landscaping, and Ollie would be writing a book about its history.
I was about to say something to divert us from this line of questioning, but Jack spoke first.
“It has been a few years, so I’m probably going to start small—just a few handyman jobs, small renovations, maybe build some furniture. Once I get back into it, maybe I’ll take on restoration work. It depends upon what’s around.”
“So are you moving to Harlot Bay?”
“I’m not sure yet. Perhaps if there is a reason to stay,” Jack said.
Before I could interpret that, Luce kicked me under the table. I looked at her, half-expecting her eyebrows to be going crazy on her face, but all I saw was alarm and perfectly normal eyebrows. Then she pointed at the salad on her plate. The lettuce was growing. Our mothers had put tiny sprigs of herbs in the salad and they were growing too. Molly was looking at it with horror on her face. I looked at my plate and saw the herbs were growing as well, although not as fast as Luce’s plate.
“Eat all your salad right now,” I hissed at Luce. She quickly grabbed her growing salad and shoved it in her mouth, chewing as fast as she could. I saw our mothers looking across at her with frowns on their faces.
“Chew your food, darling,” Aunt Freya said gently. I saw the salad that remained in the bowl in the center of the table was also starting to grow, so I did the only thing I could and accidentally spilled my entire glass of wine into it.
“Oh no, it’s ruined, I’ll have to take it away.”
I grabbed the salad bowl, scooped the salad off mine and Molly’s plates and threw it in there, and then rushed out of the room with my mother close on my heels.
“What is that about?” she demanded in the kitchen.
“We had to do a growth spell to get Luce’s eyebrows back after Aunt Cass magicked them off. It must have an area of effect and it was making the salad grow.”
“Why did Aunt Cass take her eyebrows away? What did she do to deserve that?”
“Nothing, and Aunt Cass was helping.”
“Helping? Growth spells are nothing to mess around with. I’m going to have to cast a counter.”
A counter is basically a spell that stops other spells in its vicinity. The more powerful the spell is, more powerful the counter needs to be.
“No, you can’t do that. I cast a growth spell on Luce’s eyebrows. It might make them disappear again.”
“Okay, well, the main course is nearly over and I don’t think there’s anything that can grow with the dessert. Get back out there and make sure no one’s lettuce is about to grow legs. Honestly, it’s like you girls don’t even want to get married.”
She pushed me back out of the kitchen and into the dining room. I only barely managed to make it look like I hadn’t been shoved.
The side of the table with Jack, Will and Ollie on it was fine. They were talking amongst themselves, and Aunt Ro and Sheriff Hardy were talking and laughing together.
My side of the table was decidedly different. Molly and Luce are wearing the same frozen expressions of shock trying to be disguised by fake smiles. I looked over them and then noticed that the vase of flowers sitting on the side table behind Luce had started to grow and bloom. I rushed over and deliberately knocked the vase over. It hit the carpet and luckily didn’t smash. The flowers went everywhere.
“Whoops! Oh no again, I’m so clumsy. Molly, help me.”
Molly jumped out of her seat like she’d been electrocuted to help me gather up the growing flowers and the vase. We got them out of the room as fast as we could and into the kitchen, where I told her in a hushed whisper that we couldn’t counter the spell right now so we just had to get any plant matter out of the room that might grow.
We rushed back in and sat down to receive a trio of glares from our mothers. Jack looked at me with a bemused smile on his face. He could tell something was going on, but he wasn’t quite sure what. While we were gone, the conversation had turned to the Butter Festival and then the unfortunate murder of Holt Everand. Apparently everyone had read my article and also Carter Wilkins’s in the Harlot Bay Times.
“So, do you have any good leads?” Jack asked Sheriff Hardy.
“We get a lot of visitors to Harlot Bay and we’re following up some leads,” Sheriff Hardy said somewhat stiffly. His very specific response seemed oddly directed at Jack.
“Did you find out who’s been vandalizing the front of the shops with paint?” Aunt Cass said, gulping down some wine.
“Again, we have a few leads.”
“It was Zero Bend. He should be arrested and locked up. What is it you do all day?”
“Dessert time!” Mom announced, clapping her hands together. She rushed to the kitchen and back in record time and plunked a chilled chocolate mousse in an ornate crystal bowl on the table. She quickly served up the dessert and put in vanilla wafers I’d seen in the kitchen. There were sprigs of mint to accompany it, but she had wisely left them in the kitchen.
It was about then that Adams sauntered into the dining room. He’d been given very strict instructions not to speak in front of anyone not in the family. To these instructions, he’d only answered, “Maybe if I get something nice to eat, my mouth will be full and I won’t be able to speak.”
The little blackmailer.
There was no point locking him in any room. He could seemingly escape from anywhere. I’d hoped he might sleep through dinner. He walked under the table and vanished.
“Ollie, did you say you are writing a book? You know Harlow is a writer too,” Mom said.
“I read your website. It’s good.”
“It’s okay,” I said, feeling a small, furry shape move past my legs.
“Mousse,” Adams whispered from beneath me. With everyone’s gazes on me. I couldn’t exactly feed the cat under the table and get away with it.
Desperate times called for desperate measures.
“Aunt Cass, you should do an interview wi
th Ollie—she knows a lot about the town’s history.”
“Oh . . . yes, that would be good,” Ollie said somewhat uncertainly.
“I can tell you stories about Harlot Bay that would make your toes curl,” Aunt Cass said, pointing her mousse-covered spoon at him. “Do you think your book is good enough to handle the truth?”
I used this opportunity to slip Adams a bit of chocolate mousse.
Ollie laughed weakly.
“It’s not really a book yet, it’s more just a series of articles. I would love to get the true story.”
Luce kicked me in the ankle again. This time it really hurt.
“Ow, what are you doing?” I whispered.
She indicated upwards as best she could. I glanced up at the ceiling. Oh no. There was a tendril of green creeping down around the light fixture. It was growing rapidly, stretching out and heading toward Luce. There must have been a plant in the room above us, or a seed that sprouted. There was no way we’d be able to explain this when it came drooping down to the middle of the table. Thankfully, everyone was almost finished with their chocolate mousse. Time to put into play what I had learned from Sheriff Hardy. I stood and held up my wineglass.
“Let’s go outside to look at the stars and have a drink!” I said desperately.
I pulled Luce up beside me.
“Yes, let’s do that right now!”
Luce grabbed a bottle of wine off the table and rushed around to the other side. Will only managed to just get up out of his chair in time before she grabbed him and hauled him out the door. Molly rushed around and grabbed Ollie by the arm. I followed suit with Jack.
I managed to alert my mother about what was growing through the ceiling, and she rushed Sheriff Hardy out after us, quickly followed by Ro. Aunt Cass came out last, finishing her chocolate mousse. Behind them I saw the green tendril stretch down from the ceiling and hit the tabletop. I also saw Adams jump up onto the table to start licking discarded bowls before Mom shut the door.
Outside, I found myself standing next to Jack on the gravel driveway looking up at the stars. The rest of group moved across to a small veranda where there were a few chairs, and suddenly we were alone.
“That was certainly an interesting dinner,” Jack remarked and sipped his wine.