I looked at Jax with surprise. Suddenly she was in charge of the situation?
Sweets made a face. “Guys, what about classes? We can’t just skip our afternoon classes on the first day of school.”
I looked at the plastic Batman watch on my wrist. “Next class isn’t until 1:30, we can make it there and back in time if we hustle. Holly, leave the purse, you won’t need it. Come on, let’s go.”
The crime scene wasn’t very far away, before we knew it we were cruising down the tree lined road and hoping that Morgan’s ghost would still be there. We pulled up to the scene and were disappointed to find out that the body had already been moved and there were no cop cars to be seen. Traffic was moving as usual in the area. We pulled over to the side of the road.
“You girls stay in here,” I ordered. “Come on Alba, let’s go look around.”
Alba and I got out of the car. She waltzed over to the blood stain on the side of the asphalt and closed her eyes, with her arms extended and her palms facing the sky, she began to meditate as Stone had done earlier. I watched her only briefly, but then felt the flesh on my arms begin to prickle.
“See anything?” Holly asked from inside the car.
I held a finger to my lips to silence her and let my senses take over. They got stronger as I walked towards Alba and they played the hot/cold game with me until I was standing just beside the road. I looked around me, fully expecting to see Morgan’s ghost, but saw nothing. Finally, I looked down at my feet. A small piece of asphalt had dislodged itself from the road, I squatted down and lifted it up and flipped it over, examining it closely. Nothing exciting jumped out at me. I sat it back down, but first noticed a shiny object had been hidden underneath it. I picked it up and my body got the chills. It was a small golden ring with a little cross on it with a tiny gemstone flake set inside of it, I could see a little inscription inside. I rolled it around in my fingers and then looked at it more closely. The inscription read True Love Waits.
I knew immediately it had to be Morgan’s. I stood up quickly and brought it to the car.
“Check this out,” I said and showed them the ring.
Jax took it from me. “I’ve seen these before. It’s a purity ring.”
“A purity ring? Meaning she was saving herself for marriage?” Holly asked Jax.
Jax nodded. “If it was hers, then yeah, I think that’s what that means.”
I handed the ring to Holly. “See if you get a read on this, Holly.”
Holly looked at the ring and then looked at me like I was crazy. “I told you guys, I can’t summon it. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.”
I shrugged and leaned up against the car door. “No harm in trying, right? If it was Morgan’s maybe it will give us some information.”
Holly took the ring and closed her eyes, trying to summon the energy from the ring. I looked at Alba, she was still standing there, chanting quietly. I was suddenly thankful that there were no cars passing us by, they’d think we were a bunch of weirdoes if they had.
Finally, Holly opened her eyes. “Nope, nada,” she said and handed the ring back to me.
“It’s ok. We’ll give the ring to the cops. It might not have even been hers,” I admitted, though my senses were telling me it was hers. “Alba, she’s not here. Let’s go,” I hollered as I got back into the front seat of the car.
Alba opened one eye and looked at the car. She closed it again and chanted one last time. Finally she threw her hands down to her sides, they hit her thighs with a loud clap and her body slumped over in defeat. She came back to the car and got in the back next to Holly. “Let’s go Sweets,” she sighed.
“Don’t worry about it, Alba. We tried,” I told her.
“Yeah, we tried! The body isn’t here anymore, her ghost is probably with her body,” Holly said nonchalantly.
Alba’s eyes perked up. “Duh, she’s with her body! Sweets, we need to find the Aspen Falls morgue. Anyone know this town at all?”
Jax nodded her head. “Yeah, I know where it is. Can you make a U-turn here Sweets?”
{ Chapter Eight}
The Aspen Falls Medical Center was quiet when we arrived. The trees over the slumbering brick building swayed in the breeze as the five of us exited Sweets’ four door Ford Taurus.
“How are we doing this?” I asked as we all approached the front door looking like a pirate band of misfits.
Everyone looked at me curiously.
“We can’t just go in there and ask to see Morgan Hartford’s body!” I pointed out.
Alba nodded. “She’s right, we’re going to have to be subtle about it. Let me do the talking.”
She opened the door and the five of us quietly filed in behind her. We followed the signs through the brightly lit sterile hallways to the double glass doors which read Aspen Falls Morgue. A young man in a white lab coat was working on the computer at the front counter. He was in his mid-twenties with sandy blonde hair, broad muscular shoulders and a tattoo of a bird and a cross on his forearm. Alba approached him and the man looked up. His eyes moved from Alba to me to Jax to Sweets and then settled on Holly. A slow smile spread across his face as he noticed her low cut blouse and swollen exposed breasts.
I laughed to myself. I was right, Holly had the power of enchantment! Alba opened her mouth to speak, but before she could I grabbed her arm and pulled her back towards me and then put my flattened palm into the small of Holly’s back and shoved her forward.
“Excuse me sir, we are doing a paper on morgues for college and we have to ask some questions, do you have a minute for Holly here to ask you a couple questions?” I asked.
His eyes lit up as Holly approached him. I winked at her as she looked back at me and immediately she knew what to do. “Hi, I’m Holly,” she purred sweetly, leaning over the counter towards him, allowing him access to the full range of her physical attributes. “I just have a few questions, it really should only take a few minutes.” She batted her long fake eyelashes at him and smiled sweetly.
He nodded excitedly. I was sure nothing in his day had compared to having Holly’s undivided attention for a few minutes. “Yeah, absolutely. What do you need to know?” he asked her.
“Oh, you know, umm, where do you put your bodies?” Holly asked awkwardly. I wanted to face palm my forehead. We were going to have to work on Holly’s extemporaneous abilities if she were going to play detective again.
He pointed towards the swinging door off to the side of him. “There’s a system back there. I can give you a tour if you like?” he offered.
I shook my head vigorously at Holly hoping she’d get the hint. We couldn’t very well snoop around for ghosts with him leading the way.
“Oh, no, no need for a tour,” she cooed brightly.
I stepped forward. “Excuse me, sir. Do you have a restroom?”
He barely acknowledged me as he pointed to the same swinging door he’d just offered to show us. “Through those doors, first door on your left.”
“Great, thanks. Anyone else need to use the restroom?” I asked the girls.
Alba, Jax, and Sweets raised their hands in unison. “Holly, we all have to go, can you handle the interview by yourself?”
Holly cleared her throat nervously. I could tell she was upset with me for leaving her to deal with the attendant alone, but we needed to go look for Morgan. “Umm, sure. Yeah, totally. I’ll be fine.”
We didn’t wait around for him to change his mind about allowing us to use the restroom. Instead we slid through the swinging door and past the restroom and went directly to the end of the hallway. I peered in the little glass window and saw the lockers of body coolers lining the walls. “This way,” I whispered nervously, suddenly scared that we would be caught before we could find Morgan’s ghost.
The four of us slid into the large open room. It was sterile and cold with stainless steel doors on the walls. Each had a little tag on it, indicating who was inside.
“Shouldn’t Morgan’s ghost just be
hanging out around here? Do we really have to go opening drawers to find her ghost?” Sweets asked apprehensively.
Alba nodded her head. “Yeah, see anything Red? It’s not like she’s going to be laying inside the drawer.”
I looked around unhappily. “Nothing.”
Morgan Hartford’s name was printed carefully on a little tag on one of the coolers. “Here she is. We’re going to have to open it. Her ghost could be in there with her,” I finally said. I wasn’t looking forward to seeing Morgan’s lifeless body again, but we all knew it needed to be done.
Alba nodded.
Sweets looked away as I pulled open the stainless steel door and pulled out the drawer.
My jaw dropped as it slid out of the chamber. Not only was there no ghost in the drawer, there was also no body.
“Where is she?” Jax asked immediately.
“They’ve got to have her somewhere else. Maybe they are doing an autopsy!” suggested Alba.
“Or maybe she’s in one of the other drawers. Should we open them all?” Sweets proposed.
I shook my head vehemently. I was not about to look at any more dead bodies today. “No way they’d put her dead body in a different drawer. She just got here!”
“She’s got to be in an examination room somewhere,” Alba said. “Let’s go look in the other rooms.”
We slipped out of the locker room area and up the hallway. There were only four more doors, one of which was the bathroom. We peeked in the other three and were frustrated to discover that Morgan’s body wasn’t in any of those rooms either. Finally we made our way back to the front counter.
Holly appeared much more relaxed when we found her again. “Hi girls,” she chirped cheerfully. “Alex and I were just talking and you know, there’s a big street dance Saturday night.”
“Is that right?” I asked, not in the least bit interested.
“Yes, it’s the town’s annual Autumnal Equinox celebration. Everyone comes out to celebrate. He asked if I’d like to go with him!” Holly said excitedly.
I looked at Alex, he beamed with pride at having such a hot date for the dance. I assumed he had no idea that he had just asked a witch out for dinner and dancing. But then again, considering that the town was used to us paranormal beings, perhaps he’d asked a witch out before.
“Well, how nice,” I drawled. “Listen, Alex, do you have anywhere else that you keep your dead bodies? Like perhaps if they are undergoing an autopsy?”
Alex shook his head. “Autopsy’s are performed on site. If one needs to be done on a body, we have a room in the back that we do it in.”
“In the back of this office?” I clarified.
He nodded. “Yup, the room next to the bathroom you just used.”
The girls and I looked between each other.
“If someone were killed in say a murder, would their body come directly here from the crime scene?” Alba asked him. “Or would the police keep it for some reason.”
I thought for sure he’d be onto us with that question.
“Yes, as a matter of fact, they come directly here. We actually just had that happen today, funny you should ask. A girl in town was killed and the police brought her body here where she will stay until the funeral home comes to get her,” he explained patiently.
Jax, Alba, Sweets and I all nodded our heads and smiled. That was where Morgan must have gone. “Oh, I see. So the funeral home probably came to get her already.”
Alex furrowed his eyebrows together. “The new girl? Oh, no. She just got here. She’ll be here for awhile before the funeral home guys come to get her.”
“Is it possible the funeral home guys came to get her while you were out to lunch?” I asked nervously.
He shook his head. “No. I ate lunch at my desk. I haven’t hardly moved since she got here. Besides, they have to check her out and here’s my list. See,” he said, showing us the clipboard. “She’s still here. We have to be very systematic about all of that.”
Alba set her dark eyes intently on Alex. “Then where is Morgan?” she asked him.
He regarded Alba and the rest of us skeptically. “I didn’t say her name. How did you know her name?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Alba told him firmly. “She’s not here. Where is she?”
Alex stood up. He was finally starting to get the idea that we were working on more than a school report. He grabbed the phone receiver from the landline in front of him. “You went back there? What’s going on? I’m going to have to call security. You girls shouldn’t have gone back there.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “You let us go back there.”
“I let you use the restroom. I didn’t say you could go in the other rooms!” He argued as he began to dial a number.
Alba pushed the button down on the phone to kill the dial tone. “You don’t need to call anyone. We just want to know where Morgan’s body is.”
“She’s back there. I locked her away myself thirty minutes ago.”
Alba shook her head. “Hate to break it to you Al, but Morgan ain’t back there.”
“She is too,” he disagreed.
“She’s not,” I agreed with Alba. “We just looked. She’s not in the drawer.”
Alex looked at each of us nervously. “What’s going on here?”
“You don’t want to know,” Holly assured him.
“You’re in on this?” he accused suddenly.
Holly’s eyes widened and she looked at Alex nervously. “Well, no, I, uh…” She looked at the four of us, hoping one of us would come to her rescue.
“Ugh! Figures!” he complained, stomping his foot on the ground.
“Does this mean our date for the dance is off?” she whined.
He rolled his eyes at her. “You girls don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ll go back there and prove it to you. Morgan is there.”
We followed Alex to the locker room and quickly proved to him that she wasn’t in her drawer. He looked at us through narrowed eyes. “What have you girls done with her body?”
“Ugh!” I hollered indignantly. “We just got here! What have you done with her body?”
“I didn’t do anything! I put her where she belonged, ate my lunch, and then you five show up and things went haywire! I bet you’re all a bunch of those paranormals from The Institute, aren’t you?”
We all exchanged nervous glances, but no one fessed up.
“Yeah, I knew it. What did you do? Use a magic spell to make her body float away?”
Holly laughed. “Oh, Alex, hardly! That’s not how magic works. It isn’t, right girls?”
I shrugged. “I have no idea how her body disappeared.”
“Yeah, me either,” Alba agreed. “But if he put her in there thirty minutes ago and now she’s gone, there’s a good chance magic is to blame here. But it wasn’t our magic,” she assured him, putting her hands up in front of her.
“Alex, we didn’t do it, swear,” Holly said, her blue eyes twinkled in the light. “We got called down to the crime scene earlier to investigate. We wanted to see the body one more time, and that’s why we’re here.”
“I’m not sure I can believe that,” he said shaking his head.
Alba shrugged. “Call Detective Whitman then. He’ll tell you. In fact, we need to call him now anyway. You’ve got a problem – Morgan’s body is missing, and we need to get it back!”
***
Detective Whitman was not a happy camper when he discovered that Alex had allowed the body to be stolen and that we were on the scene to discover it. “Why are you girls involved?” he asked, waving us away like a swarm of pesky mosquitoes. “I was sure that Miss Stone asked you to let her handle things.”
“We thought we sensed something, so we went back to the scene of the crime to see if the energy returned,” I explained to him trepidatiously.
He nodded. “I see. And did it?”
“In a way – we found this,” I told him and pulled the small ring out of my pocket. “We th
ink it was Morgan’s.”
He looked down at the ring and a little smile spread across his face. “It is hers. Her father told me that her ring was missing. He said she’d gotten it from the youth group at her church. It’s a purity ring. He’ll be glad to get it back. Where did you find it? I had officers combing the whole area!”
“It was under a piece of asphalt. Like it slipped off of her finger during a struggle. I bet it got kicked under the rock.” Sharing my suspicions made me feel better and I felt myself begin to relax for a moment.
“Alright, so you found a piece of evidence, that still doesn’t excuse the fact that Morgan’s body is now missing!” he argued, his mustache twitched as he looked the five of us over. “You know I’m going to have to report this incident to Miss Stone for investigation at The Institute.”
My heart stopped for a moment. My mother would kill me if she knew I was already skipping classes in college. Not only that, but if it got back to the Dubbsburg Police Department that I was involved in the case of a missing body, they’d no doubt revoke the plea bargain that I do a two year stint at The Institute instead of a year’s stint in the Dubbsburg County correctional facility. I shook my head. “Aww, do you have to tell Miss Stone. It’s our first day. We were only trying to help,” I asked sweetly, giving him the best sad face I could muster without making myself sick.
“Yes, I have to tell Miss Stone. She can’t have her students going off the rails on the first day! Now, the five of you need to get back to The Institute before I arrest you for impeding an investigation!”
“Fine, do what you gotta do, we were just trying to help that girl’s family,” I growled and then waved the girls towards me. “Let’s go girls.”
One by one we each spun on our heels and walked away, snubbing our noses at the Detective as we passed him.
Sorceress Stone was waiting for us when we got back. No sooner had we stepped foot onto the oversized tile floor in Winston Hall, than we were pounced on by her highness herself.
“What did I tell you girls?” she immediately fumed, summoning up a swirling storm of energy around us. My hair began to get sucked up into the vortex of her heated emotions.
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