“Well, that could be a solution to my money problems,” I said. “I should open a mine at the side of my property.”
Vicky whispered into the mic that she had to get back to playing and so after that, all I could hear was the sound of the banjo and another bus arriving as news of the latest gold discovery had already hit online.
After that, even more tourists arrived at the park and I had to keep Vicky in line because she wanted to use her break to go gold panning, while I needed that precious time to get her to investigate. Also, I was kinda worried she was going to fall into the water.
“How much longer till your break?” I asked her.
“As soon as the next reenactment starts, it will thin out a bit here,” she whispered. “And then I can go ask some questions.”
A tourist banged into her banjo and she missed a chord. I kept thinking about how much cash they would be spending at the candy shop and what Sarah was making of my swift departure. She was probably loving it. Well, everyone at the park would be loving it now that the detective trying to expose one of them as a killer was out of there…especially the guilty party.
“Okay. We’ve got to get you investigating, remember?” I asked Vicky. There was a concert scheduled immediately after her break, so we didn’t have much time before that got underway.
“You want me to avoid Marvin though, right?” she asked, a little uncertainly as she walked down the main street. I spotted him up ahead at the same time she did.
It could actually be useful to try and get her to talk to Marvin. Maybe the risk would be worth it. I paused and considered it, but he was going the other direction anyway.
“I really need a pick-me-up before my performance,” Vicky said, yawning. She glanced around and the screen shook. “Do you think anyone would notice if I ducked out the front to get a coffee from the coffee cart?”
I told her to go for it even though it wasn’t going to be any help for the investigation. I was starting to wonder if this whole thing was just a giant waste of time.
I realized that Vicky was stopped in front of the coffee cart and not saying anything while Abby just stared at her. Oh, gosh. She was waiting for me to tell her what to order.
“Just order whatever you want,” I said. Coffee wasn’t a clue, it was a necessity to function.
Abby was behind the counter, and I noticed that she had her hair out that day and that it was very long, dark and curly. If she had been inside the walls of the town, she actually wouldn’t have looked out of place as a member of the ‘real’ staff. She told Vicky the price for her cappuccino and then said, “So you work inside the park then?” as she handed back the change.
“How did you guess?” Vicky asked.
“I can see the corset.”
“Yeah, these things suck.”
But Abby shrugged a little. “I always like them when I wear a fancy dress. Makes me feel more feminine.”
“Cool.”
Vicky thanked her, then whispered into the mic. “I wonder how long I can hang out here without Marvin realizing that I’ve left the grounds.”
“I wouldn’t risk it,” I said. “We can’t both go getting fired.”
She quickly finished her coffee. “And the concert is about to start!”
“How much longer is this performance?” I asked Vicky during her second pause. They took a break after four songs, and I thought the concert must be coming to an end soon, surely. I loved country music—well, I was a new fan thanks to Vicky’s influence—but this was a LOT of country music.
“Three hours,” she whispered to me.
My gosh.
We weren’t even a third of the way in.
I told her I was going to take a break from surveillance until they were done playing and that she should text me if anything important happened in the meantime. I took my headset off and set it down and started to think that the entire exercise had been a waste of time.
I had a meeting to go to, and I needed to get going or I was going to be late. The other person didn’t know that I would be arriving early, but that was just what I was banking on.
Beth had a new job at the local library, where she stocked shelves and dished out late fines. She was wearing seven-inch platform shoes when I walked in, which allowed her to reach the higher shelves.
“Ruby!” she said, looking a little startled. “I thought we were meeting at the end of my shift.”
She was teetering on her platforms, almost like she was about to roll her ankle. “Not such a little woman in those,” I said pointedly, nodding down toward her feet. I smiled at her and let the words sink in.
She flinched a little, froze for a moment with a book still in her hand, but she was frowning at me and thinking, like she wasn’t sure if I was actually making a point or whether my choice of words was completely accidental.
Oh, it was completely on purpose.
“I am a big fan of the local theater,” I said, taking a step forward. “I often go along to catch a production. Especially if there’s a musical. My favorite.” I leaned against one of the bookshelves and smiled at her. “I caught a great production two nights ago. A production of Little Women.”
By that stage, the jig was well and truly up, but Beth was trying to remain composed.
She looked nervous. “What did you think of it?”
I pursed my lips. “It was quite a departure from the novel, I thought. Especially Beth’s death scene.”
She glanced down at the pile of books in her hands. “It was reworked a little bit to fit the songs. It was never originally intended to be a musical.”
“Oh, I loved the songs,” I said. “I thought the actress who played Jo was incredible. Such a beautiful voice.”
She looked up at me and glared a little bit.
“Beth, you never told me you were an actress.” My tone was serious now. “And I suppose this wasn’t the first experience you had acting in something historical.” In fact, the time period of Little Women was only a decade, give or take, away from the time setting of Old Swift Town.
She glanced around to make sure that no one was listening to us.
“Teresa was a special girl, okay…” She looked worried. “And you have to find her killer. Because otherwise, other…special people are going to pay.”
“Special in what way?” I asked. I mean, each person on the Earth was special, weren’t they?
“I can’t say more than that, okay.” Beth shoved a book back onto the shelf.
“Why didn’t you tell me that you worked at Old Swift Town?”
She spun around. “There is a good reason, Ruby. I wasn’t trying to deceive you.”
I couldn’t see what this good reason could possibly be. And I wasn’t really buying anything that she was saying to me.
My phone buzzed. A text from Vicky.
It was an emergency.
“But she is my friend,” I said, trying to push past security at the front gate. “And I need to see her. She needs me!”
The security guard assured me that everything would be taken care of and that there was a first aid officer on hand, and that Vicky wasn’t in any actual danger.
“But they are probably using medical techniques from eighteen-seventy-eight in there!” I cried out, still pushing through.
The text from Vicky told me that she had fallen into the water and hit her head on the embankment going down. Luckily, her phone had been hidden in her banjo case at the time so that hadn’t been ruined. But everything else was. I needed to see her to make sure she didn’t have any broken bones or anything like that which was being held together with eucalyptus leaves.
I finally stopped trying to push when I saw a wonky-looking Vicky coming toward the gate.
“Are you okay?” I asked, running over to greet her. She was sopping wet and pressing a cold compress to her head. The sodden electrical material was in her hand. She passed it to me and apologized.
“Didn’t even find any gold,” she said, trying to laugh
it off as she stood there shivering. “I’m so clumsy. I should be more careful.”
I looked down at my ruined microphone and camera. “Vicky, are you sure this was an accident?”
She looked up at me and shrugged. “Yeah, of course it was. You know how clumsy I am. You’ve seen it with your own eyes.”
That was true. In fact, the very first time we had met, Vicky had almost slipped and fallen into a river. The only reason she didn’t was because I’d reached out and grabbed her before she did.
“I’m just wondering, that’s all. With everything you said about us being in danger here…”
She looked up at me like she wanted me to drop the topic, as though this talk was only making her more anxious about it when what she really needed was to get home, take a hot shower, and change into some dry clothes.
She glanced down at the mic. “I’m sorry I ruined it, Rubes. How much does it cost to replace? You can take it out of my paycheck.”
I winked at her. “Don’t worry about that. That’s what my insurance is for.” And I still had the feeling she wasn’t to blame. I glanced down at the waterlogged equipment. The whole kit had cost me $2000, but that wasn’t what I was worried about. I was worried that someone had realized what Vicky was up to and tried to destroy the evidence while hurting her.
The cab pulled up and I told Vicky to get in. “Aren’t you coming with me?” she asked.
I shook my head. “There is something I want to check out.” I nodded toward the gates of Old Swift Town. “I need to get back inside.” I needed to find out who had pushed Vicky into the water.
“Good luck,” Vicky said, in a way that showed she had absolutely no faith that I would be getting back in.
Abby was watching from behind the coffee cart as I marched back up to the security guard at the gate. She also called out ‘good luck’ to me, but I was barely paying attention.
The guard pointed toward a list of ‘banned’ persons. A sort of “wall of shame” with the headshots of people who were excluded from the park, looking like “Wanted” signs from the 1800s. There I was, smack bang in the center of the row, grinning back with my bright red hair.
It didn’t matter how much I tried to argue my way in. There was no way that I was being let into the park.
Not in my current state anyway.
But I had an idea.
8
Maybe a wig would have been an easier solution.
Certainly far less dangerous.
But this was a better option. I just had to do some serious convincing.
And some serious breaking of the rules.
“What are you doing here?” Prudence asked as she opened the door. It smelled like she had been baking gingerbread. I could smell warm spices.
“Just thought I’d pop in and see how you and Geri are, er…getting along,” I said with a smile. “I know that I have been super busy lately with my new job, and I haven’t been able to help out as much as I should have.”
Prudence looked me up and down skeptically, but she was trying not to smile.
“I suppose you have more time now that you have been fired.”
“Oh. I suppose you heard about that then.”
“News travels fast in a coven. Come in. I’m just baking for the next coven meeting. I know how much you all enjoy a refreshment or three!”
Maybe Prudence wasn’t so bad after all, I thought as she offered me a gingerbread cookie and I took a bite. I mean, sure, she had been pretty unwelcoming toward me, but maybe she was just super protective of the witches who were already in the coven. That was admirable, right?
She stopped and sighed as we both looked at a rigid Geri. “As you can see—no movement.”
Prudence offered me a cup of tea to go with my gingerbread and left to boil the kettle, so it was just Geri and I left alone for a few minutes in the dining room. I was glad she was frozen and had no idea what I was up to. It was weird, though… Even though I knew she couldn’t see or hear me, I still felt as though I needed to greet her and I stood there very stiffly and politely while I waited for Prudence to come back with the tea.
Geri looked kinda funny, the way she had frozen with one finger sort of wagging, like she was permanently displeased, and I almost had a little giggle at her, but I could see that it was no laughing matter.
I kept telling myself that it wasn’t like she could hear anything we were saying.
“Yes. She is quite conspicuous in here like this…” Prudence shrugged a little and took a sip of her tea. “But it just seems wrong to, you know, shove her in a closest or something like that while we figure this out.”
I took a sip of my tea and considered this.
“So how come this IS taking so long to figure out?” I asked her, struggling to understand because I still couldn’t get my head around it. “Even you told me it was practically the easiest spell in the book.”
She spun around and glared at me. “You’re the one who put us all in this position, Ruby. Don’t go acting as though this is all my fault.”
“Yes, but now you’ve got the top job,” I said to her. “And that’s why I’m here to talk to you today.”
“Talk to me about what?”
Prudence called all the shots now, for better or worse. Mostly for better. For instance, she baked us all gingerbread cookies. And whenever she brought something up at a meeting, she let us all vote on the matter instead of just dictating the rule to us. However, because we hadn’t gotten off on the best foot when we’d first met, I still felt like I was her enemy. Even when she was feeding me gingerbread and tea.
Definitely time to stroke her ego, though. “I think things have been a lot fairer and more democratic since you took over.”
Prudence dipped her head to hide her smile. She looked pleased to get the compliment. “Yes, well, I am a hundred years younger than Geri.”
“Whoa, that still makes you a hundred years old, though,” I said without thinking. I was startled. Prudence didn’t even look thirty. She was a hundred?
“Do you have a problem with that? Are you ageist?” Prudence asked me, staring at me over the rim of her tea cup as she took another sip.
“No, no, of course not. I’m just surprised, though. You look so young. What’s your secret?”
She rolled her eyes, just a touch. “Witchcraft.”
Of course. Wasn’t that always the answer?
“So, what can I actually do for you?” Prudence asked. “You didn’t just come here to flatter me.” She nodded toward Geri. “And you didn’t come here just to check that Geraldine is still frozen solid.”
“No. I came here to ask you to reverse a rule.”
She frowned but looked kind of interested. “Which rule, exactly?”
I took a deep breath and nodded toward Geri. “The ‘no freezing’ rule. Prudence, I need you to freeze me.”
Geri had been moved into a separate room. Just in case there was any ‘spillage,’ as Prudence put it. We needed space—the entire dining room—for this to work.
Prudence was flipping through a spellbook and murmuring to herself a little excitedly while I shook off the nerves I was having.
She had been both difficult and relatively easy to convince. Once I had explained to her that there might be the lives of witches at stake, she had agreed to help me out—on the condition that I never told anyone what she had helped me do. Not even Vicky.
That was easy enough for me to agree to, even though I didn’t like lying to my best witch friend. I needed the spell, so whatever the deal was, I was going to agree to it.
I thought Prudence still wanted to prove herself as a ‘better’ leader than Geri. More easygoing with the rules and more democratic. Her eyes were gleaming as she got all of her potions and lotions together and gave me one final warning. “You know the risks, right?”
I nodded. “I could remain frozen forever. It’s okay. I get it.”
Prudence seemed both impressed and disbelieving that I was actually going to
go through with this.
“And that is a risk that you are willing to take, is it?”
“Prudence. I need to get into that park.”
She cracked her knuckles and came a little closer to me with a tube of something. “And there is no guarantee that you will be able to hear and see anything, even with the adjustment that I am making.”
She applied a weird lotion to my temples that kind of smelt like lemon drops.
“I know. I am prepared.”
Prudence took a long step back, several feet away from me, like she was worried that she could be ‘affected’ by what she was about to do.
There was an addition to the spell, so that rather than being completely suspended, or in the ‘nowhere’ place, I would be able to see and hear what was going on around me. Prudence had warned me that this was rarely done, but if I wanted to observe what was going on in the park, this was the only way.
I took a deep breath. If I overthought it, I would chicken out, and this was the time to take risks.
“Here goes nothing,” I said, and closed my eyes.
9
Prudence had agreed to be the one to wheel me into the park and put me in ‘position’ in the street that was one row back from the main one. Even though that road got far less foot traffic, it was where the majority of the statues were located so I would have the best chance of blending in. She had a little trolley that she said she used to move stock in the backroom of the restaurant she managed—strange to think of her having a ‘real job’ outside of witchcraft—and I had been loaded onto that. Still in full technicolor of course, but most of the statues in the park were painted.
We’d already had a conversation about the logistics of Prudence getting me inside Old Swift Town before I’d become frozen.
“No one will even question what you are doing. They’ll just assumed that you know exactly what you are doing because there is no reason for anyone to be sneaking a statue into the park.”
A Cold Spell Page 6