by Tess Lake
“No, it’s okay, I’ll eat at the bakery,” Kira said hastily, heading for the door at full speed.
My immediate suspicion, of course, was that Kira had stolen the money. She might have seen it when John came in for his counseling session. I knew she’d been having some trouble, but I hadn’t been told precisely what it was.
Normal teenage trouble? Stealing money, shoplifting, sneaking out.
Hattie Stern’s teenage trouble? I dunno, probably forgetting to flush or wearing a sweater that was too “fancy.”
I let the money go. It was a complicated issue and the fact was that I wasn’t Kira’s mother. I hoped she hadn’t stolen from me, but this seemed like one of those problems where understanding would work better than a big stick. Although I wasn’t very happy that my sixty bucks was missing.
I spent some fruitless time on the Internet and then looked through the property transfer documents and list of fires before deciding to give up on that to visit Carter directly. I didn’t know what it was he was expecting me to confirm, but given the rate of fires in town and how I was a suspect, it was probably best not to waste any time.
At the Harlot Bay Times, I let myself in and discovered there was only Carter in the building, his arm still in a sling, packing boxes by himself. I didn’t think it was possible, but he looked even worse than before. He certainly smelled like he hadn’t been showering and had been possibly drinking at some point.
“We need to talk about the fires,” I said to him.
Carter dropped a stapler into a box and then nodded for me to follow him to a small conference room. On the way I saw three offices with no staff. It appeared the Harlot Bay Times had ceased production. I didn’t want to get into that at the moment since we had bigger problems to discuss.
“What did you get out of the papers I gave you?” Carter asked me, rubbing his stubble with his free hand.
“There have been a lot of property transfers, and sometimes the street names are misspelled and the numbers seem to change, and Coldwell and Gresso seem equally involved.”
Carter sighed and rubbed his eyes.
“Did you bring the papers with you?” he asked.
I put them on the table. He shuffled through until he found the list of fires. He pointed to the one ten years ago where a woman had died.
“What can you tell me about that address?”
“There’s a sporting complex there now, I think.”
“That’s right. Who bought the land and some of the adjoining houses at least a year before this house burned down?”
I saw what he was getting at. Having studied the papers, I knew the answer immediately.
“Coldwell did.”
“I really thought you were a better journalist than this,” Carter said, his tone completely flat. I was in no mood to take any crap from him, but the truth was, he was probably right. I’d been reading through the property transfers and the list of fires and hadn’t thought to connect them together to see who had bought land around the fires well ahead of time.
But I wasn’t about to tell Carter that, so I ignored it.
“I don’t think that’s a smoking gun. Developers buy land all the time. Jonas Bishop, downstairs from my office, bought a couple of houses recently near that warehouse that burned out. Does that mean he’s an arsonist?”
“I don’t trust anyone not to be an arsonist now.”
My phone rang. The name on the screen said Kira, which was strange since I was fairly sure I hadn’t given her my phone number and certainly hadn’t stored hers.
“Hello?”
“Harlow? It’s me. Can you come down to the supermarket?”
“What’s wrong?”
“I really need you to come down to the supermarket.”
I had a sinking feeling in my stomach again.
“Okay, I’ll be there in a minute,” I said and hung up.
“I have to go now, then I’m investigating both Coldwell and Gresso.”
“Gresso? He’s got nothing to do with it. Don’t waste your time. I want you to look at Coldwell.”
“I get that he’s evicting you, and he is a sleazy horrible person, but I am actually a good journalist and that means I’m going to do my research,” I said.
I rushed out of there before Carter could answer me, jumped in my car and gambled that “the supermarket” was the closest one just off the main street.
When I arrived there, I saw the owner, Charles Vandenbosch, standing by the front door looking out into the street. When he saw me he quickly waved me inside. I followed him to his office, where Kira was sitting in a chair with her backpack in her lap, her feet huddled together, crouched down like she was trying to shrink herself out of existence. There was a block of cheese, some tampons, a bar of soap and a bottle of shampoo sitting on Charles’s desk.
I knew what had happened immediately, but I had to sit through the excruciating explanation of how one of their staff members had observed Kira putting things in her backpack and then they’d stopped her. She’d screamed at them, then she’d opened her bag and they’d taken her to the back room and called me rather than the police. Throughout all this, Kira didn’t say a word.
“Now, I understand this may have just been a mistake, a one-off thing. But she can’t come back here for at least the next three months. If I or any of my staff see her in the next three months, we will call the police immediately. We have the video footage of her putting items in her bag and we will give it to the police,” Charles said.
“I understand. I’m sorry about this,” I told Charles. I stood up and motioned Kira to come with me.
She followed me out of the supermarket with her head down and we got into my car. I was going to drive back to my office but decided instead to take a long looping drive around Harlot Bay. I have read that talking to teenagers is easier on a car trip because you aren’t looking directly at them and they don’t have to look directly at you. My car coughed and grumbled but soon we were heading up into the hills above Harlot Bay and into the rich neighborhood. I glanced at Kira and noticed she was wearing a top that she definitely hadn’t been wearing when she’d left my office. It was very new. Had she stolen it?
I was out of my depth.
We drove in silence, heading into the rich district, going up Barnes Boulevard, where Zero Bend had burned down part of his house during the Butter Carving Festival. There was scaffolding all around the house. It was probably eighty percent done being restored to its former state. Another few months and you wouldn’t even know that there had been a fire.
As we drove I tried out various conversation openers in my head but then dismissed them all. I wanted to shout at her for stealing from a supermarket. I wanted to ask her what was wrong. I wanted to hug her. I wanted to tell her she could trust me and at the same time I wanted to throttle her.
Was this what it was like with teenagers? Although it pained me to admit it, perhaps I hadn’t given the moms as much credit as I should have. After all, there had been more than one occasion when Molly, Luce or I had come home in the back of a police car.
We drove out of the hills and down into Harlot Bay in complete silence. By the time I returned to my office, I had decided on the only course of action that I could possibly make sense of. Despite my desire to throttle Kira, I pulled up outside my office and then just patted her on the hand before jumping out of the car. Kira followed, still scared, cowering like a dog that knows it’s going to be beaten.
“So are you going to work at the bakery now? Do you want to go to the coffee shop or back with me? We have lunch at about twelve today,” I said.
“Um… is going to the bakery okay?” Kira said, still as timid as a mouse.
“Okay, but you have to give me a high five first,” I said. I put up my hand and Kira looked at it, clearly not understanding what was happening whatsoever. When I touched her on the shoulder she almost jumped out of her skin.
“The Torrent witches are not your family, which means we don�
��t act like your family, okay? No one is going to find out about this unless you tell them.”
Kira nodded, but didn’t answer.
“See you later today,” I said and then headed back upstairs into my office like nothing had happened.
Chapter 17
“So whose house are you staying at?” Molly asked.
“Sarah’s,” she replied.
“Is there anyone else who is staying there?” Luce asked, pointing a finger at Kira.
“No, just me and Sarah.”
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Watching some movies,” Kira said. She saw me raise my eyebrows. “Watching some romantic comedy movies,” she amended.
“Where are your secret party clothes?” Molly asked.
“Rolled up inside my spare clothes,” said Kira.
“I think you’re ready to lie your way into this party,” Molly said.
Three days had passed with no more fires and no progress really on who or what might be causing them. I’d started doing a few more shifts at the bakery in an attempt to earn more money, and the only communication between me and Jack was phone messaging. I know we’d agreed to not see each other so Jack might have a chance of catching someone if they were following me, but that didn’t mean I had to enjoy it.
True to my word, I’d kept Kira’s shoplifting a secret, and thus far, it seemed the story hadn’t spread.
After a day of walking around like a scalded cat, Kira finally relaxed. She must have realized no secret punishment was coming.
It seemed like she was finally starting to let her guard down. She trusted us enough to tell us that she wanted to go to a party being held at the house over on the edge of town.
Having long experience of the moms putting the kibosh on any party plans, we immediately got to work training Kira how to craft an effective lie so she could go out.
Hey, we weren’t her mother! Besides, school holidays were coming to a close shortly, and soon she’d be back in school. The girl deserved to have a little fun.
“You think I’m ready? Really?” Kira asked.
“Ready as you’ll ever be. Remember, short answers, don’t seem too eager but don’t seem too bored. You’re asking permission, but it’s not a big deal,” Luce said.
“Okay, here I go,” Kira said. She put her phone in her pocket and headed out the front door down to the main house. The moment she was gone, Molly turned to me, her face serious.
“I think Kira took some money from my bag,” she said.
Oh no, I really did not want to have this conversation.
“And some more of my clothing has gone missing,” Luce added. “You don’t think she took it, do you?”
“I… don’t know. I can’t really say,” I stammered.
“I asked Mom for more of the story about Kira and she told me she’d been shoplifting and stealing and skipping school. Now money is gone, we’re missing clothing, and I don’t think it was Adams taking the food from the fridge,” Molly said.
“Is she in trouble of some kind? Is she planning to run away?” Luce asked.
They weren’t asking like they wanted to get Kira in trouble and planned to slam her as soon as she walked back in the door. They were genuinely concerned why a teenager would steal money or clothing or food.
“Look, she might have, but I don’t want to talk to her about it and I don’t want to make a big deal. She has serious trust issues and if we pummel her over little things like this, we’re not going to get anywhere,” I said.
“But stealing? Are we supposed to overlook stealing?” Molly asked.
“You stole. You got away with it. And I’m sure the moms knew.”
“I took one thing one time and then I felt so bad that I took it back. Was hardly stealing at all. More like borrowing for a couple of hours,” Molly said.
“I don’t think we should overlook stealing, but let’s wait a bit longer. We need to take a gentle approach because we really don’t know what’s going on with her,” I said.
Molly and Luce agreed with me that all three of us were very much out of our depth. I guess if we had children of our own we would have had years of dealing with big and small problems and might actually be able to come up with a response that worked. I had no doubt that Kira had taken money from Molly’s bag and Luce’s missing clothing as well. But I didn’t really know what I could do about it. Search her room? Prove that she was a thief? Make her hate me so much that she wouldn’t say another word?
“Do you remember that time we snuck out to the party on Truer Island?” Luce asked, changing the topic.
“Which one? The one where the rope broke on the tree swing? Or the one where you kissed Scott and then he sneezed and head-butted you?” Molly asked.
“Like your teenage romantic adventures were so good. What was the name of the guy you vomited on?” Luce said.
“Jeff something,” I said.
“He still went out with me again,” Molly said.
“I was talking about the time we went out to the party and had a huge bonfire and that crazy guy threw a firework in and we thought it was gonna kill everybody but it just shot up into the sky. It was so awesome,” Luce said.
“Yeah, I guess it was pretty good,” I said.
At the time, it seemed sneaking out to a party for illicit teenage activities was the most exciting thing in the world. On the other hand, some of those parties were boring and I can remember being cold and wishing I could go home, but sometimes I couldn’t because I’d told some elaborate lie. One time the three of us ended up on sleeping on the floor of my friend Peta’s house and then had to get out of there at six in the morning before her parents woke up. That definitely wasn’t fun.
We were talking about other parties and teenage misadventures when Kira came back in through the front door, her cheeks pink and grinning at us.
“It worked!” she said. We all cheered and hugged. Yes, we had orchestrated a lie and then she’d told it to the moms, but it wasn’t a big lie.
“Okay, I’ll take you,” Molly said, jingling her keys.
Chapter 18
Today in the bakery there was an undernote of spice along with the cinnamon and sugar and the scent of delicious crusty bread. The moms were always adding something new to the menu and this week it was a spiced fruit bun. They wouldn’t tell me what the spice was, but it had a warmth to it. When you bit into the bun, you got an initial burst of heat and then the back of your throat warmed. They were selling like crazy despite the fact that it was still summer and quite hot. The tourists couldn’t get enough of them.
We were heading past the end of the lunch rush and I was handing over what I think was possibly my hundredth bag of spiced fruit buns. The air conditioner was doing its best to keep Big Pie at a reasonable temperature, but there were so many tourists flowing in and out that it was struggling.
Despite the heat, I was enjoying working at the bakery. One of the good things about working the rush is that you’re too busy to think about anything much at all, which was a good thing since I was possibly facing a future of working at the bakery for many years to come.
Yesterday I’d attended a council meeting where Sylvester Coldwell had put forward his proposal to eliminate the free rent program. Dominic Gresso was there as well and spoke in support of it. Carter had managed to round up a few of the business owners to come to the council meeting to protest against it, but being that it was summer and peak tourist season, most of the owners hadn’t been able to attend. The council had advised that they would take written submissions on the matter and then they’d hold a vote.
I handed another bag of spiced fruit buns over the counter, my mind slipping into the what-ifs of the free rent program being shut down.
First up, it would mean no more office space, which meant I would have to start working from home. That hadn’t been so good in the past. There were just too many distractions, from a hungry cat who would keep asking for cheese to a comfy sofa to a bed, th
e fridge and everything else. It was also really easy to lose the structure of the day if you didn’t have to go somewhere to work. Getting up a few minutes later one day led to a few minutes later the next day, and soon it was ten in the morning before you even opened your eyes. It wasn’t just me who would be affected, either. There were a few businesses who didn’t have any option to work from home, including a crystal shop that had opened only a month ago called Chaos Crystals. The owner, Shirley, used to work out of a rickety old bus she drove around. Now, she’d finally moved into an actual shop and it looked like Coldwell might be successful in shutting her down.
“I can’t stop eating these spice buns,” a woman said to me as I passed a bag to her over the counter.
“I know, they’re delicious,” I replied, returning to the here and now.
The line of tourists finally grew shorter, and eventually I got to the final customer, a sandy-haired man in his forties.
“Hi, what can I get you?” I asked.
“Sorry, I’m not here to buy anything. I was wondering whether I can place this flyer up in your front window. My daughter has gone missing and I’m looking for her,” the man said.
I took the flyer he handed me. The missing girl was Sophira Barnes, sixteen years old. There were two photos of her, a reward offered and a phone number to call Wes Barnes.
My witch intuition had been dormant for quite a while now, but the moment I looked at the flyer, goose bumps ran down my arms and I shivered. I had the very strong feeling that Sophira was definitely somewhere in Harlot Bay.
“I’ll put it up in the window. Do you have some I can leave on the counter?” I asked.
Wes gave me a handful of flyers.
“Thank you so much. She ran away a couple of months ago, and we used to live in Harlot Bay so I’m hoping she came here.”
“Have you tried to talk to any of her friends?”
“They don’t know where she is. Once school starts up again, I’ll see if I can get the principal to put up some flyers.”