Spooky Business (Jane Garbo Mysteries Book 1)

by Addison Creek

“What about the piano?” Pep asked.

  “The grand piano?” Lark asked.

  “How many pianos do you see?” Pep asked.

  “It’s a possibility, but I don’t see how it could have gotten in and out of here to be dropped on someone,” I said.

  Then a prickle of fear went down my spine.

  I stepped around the piano and stopped short, giving a cry.

  Looking back at me was a face.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I stumbled backwards in fright.

  “It’s just a dummy jack-in-the-box clown,” said Pep, rushing to my side.

  Lark brushed past me and walked up to the old clown costume that stood dusty and neglected on the gray concrete floor.

  “It’s like a circus asked to store its supplies here and never came back for them,” I said.

  “I think they used this when the haunted house first began, but we’ve gotten more scientific these days.”

  “It’s terrifying.” I glared at the clown, which looked an awful lot like a le-haunt from the early days. At first glance I had been sure it was real.

  “Don’t be afraid. Pep will protect you,” Lark assured me. I rolled my eyes.

  After that we searched through the furniture for a while longer, but we didn’t find what we were looking for. If there was any evidence of a large object being used to smash the Skeleton Trio to smithereens, it wasn’t here.

  “What about upstairs?” I asked, pointing at the creaking boards overhead.

  All three of us looked up.

  Lark raised her eyebrows and said, “Upstairs is a completely different story. I’m not sure I’ve ever been up there.”

  “Looks like it’s time for us to check it out,” said Pep, brushing off her hands. “I can’t believe the guys didn’t think to look here for clues.”

  “Grant thought they’d found the weapon, so they didn’t keep searching,” I said.

  “No,” Pep said. “I heard them talking this morning and they had realized that the hammer wasn’t the murder weapon. There was no evidence on the hammer. Grant said it had clearly been placed there by someone trying to throw them off. He sounded concerned about the sort of criminal this was.”

  “How did you hear all this?” Lark asked suspiciously.

  Pep fluttered her long eyelashes. “I just happened to be hanging around on the second floor when they were in the foyer getting ready to leave.”

  “Remind me not to have private conversations unless I know exactly where you are,” Lark said.

  “Someone’s trying to throw them off the case?” I asked.

  Pep nodded soberly.

  It wasn’t a good sign that we had such a calculating killer on the loose.

  The stairs leading up to the second floor were right in front of us, and we headed up them slowly. Even so, they creaked so loudly that any mice on the upper floor would probably scatter. I wasn’t going to complain about that.

  I did, however, tell myself to ask Rose to come out here and welcome the mice as only a cat could.

  We had only been up on the second floor for five minutes when there was a rumpling in one of the corners.

  Something skittered across the floor, and Pep screamed. A mouse went darting away.

  “Where’s that damn cat?” Pep cried.

  After that, Pep wouldn’t continue searching until I fetched Rose. Luckily, the cat always came to a loud, sharp whistle that only I could do, so I went downstairs and out the door and whistled away.

  “This better be good,” Rose said after she galloped across the field to meet me.

  I couldn’t help but grin when I saw her white streaking body racing toward me. She ran slightly sideways to make herself look bigger, which in this case served to make it look as if a snowball with legs was coming at me.

  “Mouse on the second floor of the carriage barn?” I said.

  “Count me in,” said Rose.

  She trotted along next to me as I led her back into the carriage house. “This is exciting. This place is usually blocked up too tightly for me to sneak in anywhere. There used to be a hole in the foundation that I could get through, but Cookie filled it up,” Rose said bitterly. “Spiteful woman!”

  “You can come in now. I’ll even hold the door open,” I said.

  “And I can catch the mice?” Rose asked, her yellow eyes gleaming with hope.

  “Of course you can,” I said.

  “Great,” Rose said. “I welcome them with open fangs.”

  I may have thought that cats were sweethearts before I knew exactly what they were thinking. I would never make that mistake again.

  We returned to the second floor of the carriage house and Rose went trotting away, sniffing around and looking for mice.

  “There definitely aren’t going to be any more mice showing up while she’s here,” I assured Pep.

  My friend still didn’t look thrilled, but she came all the way back onto the second floor after Rose arrived to protect her.

  “What do we think happened? That someone smashed skeletons and hid the weapon up here?” Lark said.

  “They could’ve hidden it up here intentionally, or just in the general area where they smashed the skeletons,” I mused. “Like we said, it hit them on the head first and probably hit all three of them at the same time. That’s a big object.”

  We spent another twenty minutes searching the second floor, with no success.

  “Oh, my old doll collection!” Pep cried happily at one point.

  “You didn’t know it was here?” Lark asked.

  “No, when Mom thought I was too old for dolls she just took them away,” said Pep. “I’ll show her.”

  “We share a room now. You are not filling it with dolls,” Lark said.

  “Oh, no. I’m going to fill the drawing room with dolls.” Pep was grinning from ear to ear. “She should have gotten rid of them while she had the chance.”

  “Clearly,” Lark said.

  A creak on the stairs was our only warning.

  “What is the meaning of this!” Cookie cried, waving her arms above her head as if she was swatting fleas. She was dressed in her witch’s costume, complete with the broad-brimmed, pointy black hat. “Get out of the carriage house!”

  “Why do you care if we’re in the carriage house?” I demanded.

  “It’s obvious that she has a stash of wine in here and she’s just worried we’ll drink all of it before she can, which is probably by five o’clock this afternoon,” said Lark.

  “I have few pleasures left in life, and I’ll thank you for not depriving me of the last ones,” Cookie raged. “If I had a broom I’d tan your hide!”

  “Don’t be silly. You couldn’t catch us or swing a broom either,” Lark pointed out.

  Cookie suddenly crooked her finger, and Lark went very still. She didn’t move at all as Cookie marched up to her menacingly.

  “Say you’re sorry,” said Cookie.

  “I’m sorry,” said Lark, her arms plastered to her sides.

  “We were just looking around. We don’t care about your wine,” I informed her.

  “So you say,” she murmured.

  As she stalked back down the stairs she waved at Lark, who could suddenly move again.

  We rushed to the window and watched her walk back to the cauldron.

  “She really told us,” said Pep.

  “Yup, put us right in our places,” confirmed Lark.

  “Be nice or I’ll come back,” Cookie yelled over her shoulder.

  All three of us stopped talking.

  “At least we looked around. I still think one option is the piano,” said Pep quietly when she felt it was safe to talk again.

  “There were no bone fragments, though, and how would someone drop a piano, not have it break into a million pieces, then hoist it back up here again, all clean?” Lark demanded.

  “I don’t see why we have to figure everything out right away,” Pep huffed.

  “We don’t have to figure every
thing out,” said Lark, “just one or two key details.”

  “Rose, what are you doing?” I asked.

  I hadn’t seen the cat since she arrived. Now I went looking for her amidst all the junk and odds and ends and found her crouched in a corner staring intently at one of the boards. Nothing else in the world mattered.

  “Rose?” I asked. She didn’t answer me. Crazy cat. “I’ll just leave you to it and come back later,” I said.

  With that the three of us left the carriage house without having found what we were looking for. Still, we had eliminated at least one spot where the murder weapon could have been hidden.

  Now it was time to look into all the other hidden places on the property. I was about to get a great education concerning my ancestral home, and I wasn’t happy about it.

  Chapter Fifteen

  We had to hear all about the haunt hunters’ adventures that night at dinner. Kip, Corey, my brother, Grant, and even Lizzie had spent the day investigating the smashing, and they were eager to report in.

  Audrey had spent the better part of the afternoon making a delicious meal. There was pork stir fry, three kinds of pot pie, a big salad, and several other small dishes. I watched my brother fill his plate twice before I had even finished my first round. The good food was one thing I had definitely missed about home; wherever I was in the house and got hungry, all I had to do to find dinner was to follow the aroma of Audrey’s cooking.

  “I spent most of my day talking to the ghosts, trying to see if they’d seen anything,” Lizzie said importantly.

  “Did they have anything useful to say?” Cam asked.

  “None of them saw anything, they just described the moment when they saw what had happened,” said Lizzie.

  “We really need a witness,” said Kip.

  “I’m not sure we’re going to get one,” said Grant. “Even if somebody saw something, they’re probably not going to come forward. There’s no benefit in doing so, especially if they know who the killer is.”

  “But if the killer knows someone saw him, isn’t the witness going to be next?” I asked.

  “You’d think they’d want our protection even more because of that,” said Lark.

  “The ghosts protect each other,” said Meg.

  “Not recently,” said Grant. “I wouldn’t be here if they had.”

  “What did you three do today, anyway?” Lizzie asked. She was looking at Lark, Pep, and me, but occasionally her eyes flicked to Grant, checking him out as if he was a piece of meat.

  All three of us went still. I noticed a twinkle coming into Grant’s eyes, so I quickly looked away. Then we all started lying at once.

  “I cleaned the gift shop,” said Pep.

  “I cleaned out the stalls in the stables,” said Lark.

  “I started looking at costumes to see if any of them needed to be mended by Audrey,” I said.

  I saw Audrey’s lips purse slightly. If I really had been doing that, it would have been because she’d asked me to, not because I’d just decided to do it on my own. But I knew she wouldn’t give me away.

  “Everything must be very clean,” said Cookie before taking a big gulp of wine.

  “Very useful,” Lizzie said, and then went back to her meal.

  Cookie took a great gulp of wine out of her goblet. My cousin’s eyes flicked excitedly to Grant again and I saw her take a deep breath. Silently I told her not to ask him what she wanted to ask him.

  I had hoped she’d changed her mind, but clearly she hadn’t. Lark had noticed something was off too, but she hadn’t quite figured out what Lizzie was about to do.

  Pep, on the other hand, appeared to understand perfectly. She sat back in her chair, folded her arms over her chest, and smirked.

  “Grant, I wonder if I might ask you an important question.” Lizzie had gone beyond simpering to downright officiousness. Everyone took notice, including Grant. If he was still at the mansion by tomorrow, I’d have to give him credit for being more tolerant than anyone else I’d ever met.

  “Of course,” said Grant, laying down his fork and looking attentively at Lizzie.

  Lizzie then glanced quickly at Kip to see how he was taking the attention Grant was paying her. But Kip was busy wolfing down an entire loaf of bread, and paying no attention at all.

  Lizzie quickly looked back to Grant. None of this was lost on Lark, who just shook her head.

  “It’s actually something that been wanting to know for a while. I’m sure everyone else wants to know as well. I know Jane, Pep, and Lark do, but I said I’d be the one to ask, because they’re too shy.”

  As was a hallmark of Lizzie, she didn’t notice how the currents in the room shifted with her words. Lark sat up straighter and opened her eyes, trying not to get too angry until she understood where Lizzie was going. But I knew that when she did, she’d be downright furious.

  Mom and Meg, not to mention Audrey, were looking confused, because Lizzie was describing the four of us as having agreed upon something, which they knew couldn’t possibly have happened.

  My brother and my other cousins were too busy eating to notice the dire situation unfolding. Cookie had snuck a third glass of wine.

  Goodness, get on with it! Even Grant’s patience was starting to wither.

  “I was wondering if you knew His Majesty of Magic?” Lizzie asked excitedly.

  Cam, Kip, and Corey all exploded in excitement, darn them!

  “He’s amazing!” Cam cried.

  “He’s the best,” Corey said. “A real warlock! He’s his own man. He’s only called in for the most difficult problems.”

  “Yes, we didn’t want to ask, but do you?” This coming from Kip was the most shocking thing of all. He had used part of his daily three-sentence allotment on that stupid question.

  “So, he’s real?” Lark whispered.

  Grant chuckled. “I know him. You could say we grew up together.”

  “He’s as amazing as everyone says he is, isn’t he?” Lizzie gushed, batting her eyelashes.

  I’ll be honest, I was a little curious myself. Lark was making a face now that she’d been clobbered over the head with Lizzie’s agenda, while Pep was still looking uneasy.

  “He’s worked very hard,” Grant acknowledged. “He’s just trying to do his part.”

  “His part is huge,” said Lizzie, in response to which the three of us snickered and even Grant’s cheeks went a little red.

  “I don’t know about that,” he argued, his eyes twinkling.

  “Oh, no, it’s definitely massive,” Lizzie continued.

  Lark choked on a piece of bread.

  “He’s done great things for the witchy community,” even my mom agreed.

  “He’s caught vampires, he’s fought le-haunts, if dragons were real he would have slain them,” Corey confirmed.

  “Someday I want to be just like him,” Cam said.

  Grant shook his head. “You should always want to be just like yourself.”

  “Is that what His Majesty would say?” Lizzie asked.

  Grant laughed again. “That’s the most ridiculous nickname, isn’t it?”

  “I think it’s fitting,” said Lizzie. “He’s wonderful.”

  “So he is a real person?” Pep asked carefully.

  Grant met her eyes and a split second passed before he said, “He is.”

  “Jane doesn’t think one warlock can do all those incredible things,” said Lizzie, tossing her blond hair over her shoulder.

  Grant turned laughing eyes on me. “Oh, no? Well, it’s might be true that some of the stories are exaggerated.”

  “Yeah, I thought so,” I said. “No one can be that accomplished, especially at such a young age. It doesn’t make sense. I mean, I’m sure there are some good warlocks out there, but what everyone says about him is clearly exaggerated.”

  “Clearly,” Grant agreed.

  “I’m sure some of the stories are false or overblown,” I went on.

  “You think the story of th
e howling hayfield is exaggerated?” Lizzie demanded.

  Now I was afraid she was going to regale us with it, and as usual, I was right.

  “His Majesty heard that a hayfield was haunted by a bunch of rogue ghosts,” she gushed, “and they were terrorizing the local town and putting the magical people at risk of discovery. There was a big witch population there, and the ghosts had gotten mad at them for something trivial. So the ghosts were making a scene, and then His Majesty came to help and forced all the ghosts to leave! A whole field of ghosts!”

  “Are you so impressed with that because the day Jane got here you couldn’t deal with one ghost?” Lark asked her blond cousin.

  “There were three,” Lizzie sniffed, “so I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Look,” I put in, wanting to speak for myself, “I believe there were a couple of ghosts in a field and a warlock went to deal with them. I just don’t believe there were hundreds of them, or that His Majesty of Magic or whatever he’s supposed to be was the only one who could save the village. That’s a bit overblown, don’t you think?”

  “There are really powerful witches who are famous too,” said Lizzie. “This warlock is just especially talented.”

  “Men,” said Cookie waspishly, putting up a conversational roadblock that everyone ignored.

  Grant was visibly embarrassed, and I surprised myself by feeling a little bad for him. But I also thought that if he really knew His Majesty of Magic, he ought to just tell us something concrete. His Majesty, if there was such a person, was the most well known warlock of them all. He had supposedly saved the magical community from disaster countless times.

  “If our situation gets worse, maybe they’ll send him here. Not that you aren’t helping,” Lizzie added quickly with a glance in Grant’s direction.

  “No offense taken,” Grant shrugged.

  He returned his attention to his food, while I glanced at Pep to see what she might be thinking. She was looking thoughtful, but she elected to stay silent.

  “Do you think this situation could get bad enough that His Majesty of Magic might really come here?” my mom asked tentatively. I could hear the hope in her voice, and it irritated me. We could handle this without some famous warlock showing up to save the day!