Witch Is Why Time Stood Still (A Witch P.I. Mystery Book 13)

by Adele Abbott

  He must have seen my expression because he continued. “I guess that sounds rather bad. It wasn’t meant to come out that way. I should introduce myself. I’m Blake. Blake Lister.”

  “You’re a wizard, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah. I live just across the road.”

  “I didn’t realise there were any other sups around here.”

  “There aren’t many of us, to be honest. I think it’s just me, you, and a vampire who lives a few streets away. I wondered if I could have a quick word—if you’re not too busy.”

  “I have to leave for work soon.”

  “This will only take a minute.”

  “Okay, come in. Would you like a cup of tea?”

  “No, thanks. I don’t want to hold you up.”

  “How long have you lived in Smallwash, Blake?”

  “Just over four years. I was really pleased to see another sup move in across the road. It can feel a bit isolated out here.”

  “Do you go back to Candlefield often?”

  “Not as often as I’d like. I’ve still got family over there. It’s not easy though.”

  “Tell me about it. I’m in the same position. I’ve got family in Candlefield too. So far, Jack’s only met my grandmother. I had no idea just how difficult it would be. Before Jack and me moved in together, it wasn’t so bad. But living with somebody full-time? That’s a different kettle of fish altogether. I assume you’re married to a human woman?”

  “That’s right. Jennifer. Jen.”

  “We’re having a housewarming on Sunday. If you and Jen are not doing anything, you’re welcome to come over.”

  “That’s great. I’m sure she’ll be up for that.”

  “How do you manage to hide the fact that you’re a wizard from your wife? Have you had any close calls?”

  “Not recently. I don’t use magic around Jen at all. Even though there are times when I’d like to. Like when I’m mowing the lawn or doing the dishes.”

  “Don’t mention dishes.”

  “Why, what happened?”

  “It was so stupid. The other day I was really tired, and we had a sink full of washing up. Jack was going bowling, and he’d left me to it. He’d only just gone out the door, when I used a spell on the dishes. It turned out he’d forgotten his keys, and he walked back in.”

  “Oh dear. What happened?”

  “I had no choice. I had to use the ‘forget’ spell on him. The biggest problem though, is when he asks about my birth family. I was adopted and raised by humans, and I didn’t know I was a witch until quite recently.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard a lot about you. Aren’t you the witch who turned down the opportunity to go to level seven?”

  “That’s me. Anyway, like I said, I grew up in Washbridge, and only recently found out about my other family. Jack doesn’t understand why he can’t visit them. I don’t know what to tell him. I have to keep using the ‘forget’ spell, but I don’t like doing it.”

  “I’m the same. I don’t like using magic on Jen. It just doesn’t seem right.”

  “My birth family are coming over here for the housewarming, so that could be interesting. “

  “I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you. Look, I’d better go. I just wanted to say hello.”

  “Nice to meet you, Blake. We’ll see you both on Sunday, I hope.”

  “Yeah. We’ll be there.”

  ***

  My phone rang.

  “Jill? It’s Lacey Ball.”

  “Hi, Lacey. I’d planned on giving you a call later to bring you up to speed.”

  “There’s no need. I’d like you to stop the investigation. Obviously I’ll pay you for the time you’ve spent on it up until now.”

  “But why? I think I might actually be making some progress.”

  “Joe was right. I’m sure it was all in my imagination. I’ve been under a lot of stress. I must have dreamed the phone call. I’ve been having a lot of nightmares recently.”

  “You haven’t been pressured into this change of heart, have you? Would you like to meet somewhere away from your house to talk about this?”

  “No. No one has pressured me. I’ve just come to my senses. We buried Mandy three years ago. I must have imagined the phone call.”

  “But, Lacey—”

  “Just send me your bill would you, please?”

  And with that, she hung up.

  Why the sudden change of heart? I couldn’t help but feel it was related to Joe Ball’s liaison with the woman in the park. I’d obviously spooked him, but why would that have caused him to call off his affair? And more importantly, why was Lacey trying to shut down the investigation?

  If I’d had any sense, I would have left it at that. But I didn’t, so that was never going to happen. I needed to find out exactly what the police knew about the Lacey Ball case. According to her, she’d told the police that she’d had a phone call from her sister, but that they hadn’t been interested.

  Even though I wasn’t Washbridge Police’s biggest fan, I doubted they would have simply dismissed her call for help out of hand. I needed to find out what, if anything, they’d done.

  Getting in and out of the police station was child’s play for me now. I had any number of spells that could get me inside: I could use the ‘shrink’ spell, or the ‘doppelganger’ spell, or even the ‘invisibility’ spell. This time, I opted for invisibility, and made my way to what had once been Jack’s office. It didn’t take me long to find the records I was looking for. I found a file on Mandy Day which was from three years earlier. It concerned the car crash, and concluded that it had been an accident, which had probably been caused by the driver falling asleep at the wheel. I continued to look for other records held under either Mandy’s or Lacey’s name, but there was nothing at all. There was no record of Lacey’s recent request for help, which I found very strange. The one place that would tell me for sure was the telephone log. The police recorded every incoming call that they received.

  I logged onto the system, using the password I’d set up for myself when Jack was still working there. After I’d done that, it was a trivial matter for me to get into the phone log, and even easier to sort it by name. There was no record of a recent telephone call from Lacey Ball.

  What did that mean? It seemed to suggest that Lacey had never even reported the call to the police. So why had she told me that she had? It didn’t make any sense.

  ***

  I was on my way back into the office when I literally bumped into two enormous young men. These guys had muscles—everywhere.

  “Sorry,” I said, trying to get out of the way.

  “Our fault.” They stepped aside.

  “Do you have the office at the top of the stairs?” One of them asked.

  “Yeah, that’s me. I’m Jill Gooder. Were you on your way to see me?”

  “No. We’re going to be taking over the rest of the building.”

  “You’re I-Sweat?”

  “That’s us. How did you know?”

  “I bumped into Zac, the landlord, the other day. He said that you’d signed the lease.”

  “I’m George and this is Brent.”

  We shook hands. My hand felt small and pathetic in theirs.

  “When are you planning to open?”

  “We’ve got a fair number of structural alterations to complete. Then we’ve got to fit it all out. It’ll be a while yet. You’ll have to come along and give it a try when we’re open.”

  “I might do that. Where have you been based until now?”

  “We had a small gym on the other side of town, but we’ve outgrown it. The membership has increased, and we need something better—something more modern. We’ve been looking for somewhere for ages. Finding the right building in the right part of Washbridge, has proven to be much more difficult than we thought. To be honest, when we saw the ‘To Let’ sign, we assumed it was for the whole building. We hadn’t appreciated that someone else was in here. I don’t suppose we could persuade y
ou to move out, could we? We could really do with your office too, so that we have the whole building.”

  Oh, no. Deja vu.

  “I’m afraid not. I’ve been here for quite a while, and I’ve no plans to move.”

  “What is it that you do exactly?” Brent said. “Is it a tanning salon or something?”

  After I’d finished talking to the two I-Sweat guys, I made my way upstairs into the outer office. Mrs V was behind the desk. There were two young women sitting in the chairs opposite her.

  “Are these two young ladies here to see me, Mrs V?”

  “They said that they’re here for the quick tan.”

  “Sorry, ladies. I think you must have the wrong address.”

  “Aren’t you a tanning salon, then?” the one wearing purple lipstick said.

  “No, we’re not.”

  “But you’ve got an orange and white sign.”

  “Didn’t you see the letters after my name? Jill Gooder P.I.”

  “We thought that was like some kind of tanning qualification.”

  “I’m a private investigator.”

  “So you don’t do tans, then?”

  “No, sorry. But there is going to be a health club opening next door soon. They might have sunbeds.”

  “Oh, okay. We’ll probably give them a try when they’re open. Thanks.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell them we didn’t do tanning, Mrs V?” I asked, after they’d left.

  “I would have, but I’d already seen the men delivering the sunbed, so I thought maybe you’d decided to branch out.”

  “What sun bed?”

  “Two men took it through to your office. I didn’t know what to think.”

  That made two of us.

  Winky was lying on the sunbed in the middle of my office. He was wearing goggles.

  “Hey! You!”

  “What?”

  “What is this doing here, Winky?”

  “Giving me a tan. What do you think? Do I look good?”

  “You’re a cat. Cats don’t have tans.”

  “Only because they don’t have easy access to sunbeds.”

  “What’s this thing doing in here anyway? I hope you haven’t paid for it on my credit card.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Or debit card?”

  “No. What do you think I am?”

  “How did you get it here, then?”

  “A guy rang up. He’d driven past, seen the sign, and thought it was a tanning salon. He’s in the business of renting and selling sunbeds. He left a message on your answerphone to see if he could interest you in one. I called him back to say that we’d take one on a free trial, and see what we thought of it.”

  “If he was a human, how did you even speak to him?”

  “Haven’t you heard of text-to-voice?”

  “Heard of what?”

  Chapter 20

  The next morning when I left the house, Mrs Rollo was already out in the garden.

  “Morning, Mrs Rollo.”

  “Hello there, Jill. How are you settling in? I saw Jack leave earlier.”

  “I think we’re getting there. By the way, I’ve been trying to catch you. We’re having a housewarming on Sunday. I realise it’s short notice, but we’d love you to come.”

  “That would be lovely. I do enjoy a party. I tell you what. I’m not doing much today, so I could do the catering for you. It wouldn’t cost you anything apart from the ingredients.”

  I’d already seen the results of Mrs Rollo’s baking. It was an absolute disaster. There was no way I could let her cater for the party.

  “That’s very kind of you, Mrs Rollo, but actually the catering has already been organised.”

  She looked crestfallen. “Maybe I could bake a cake for you? You can never have too much cake, can you?”

  “That’s true.” At least, under normal circumstances.

  “Is there any particular kind you like?”

  Preferably one that actually resembles a cake. “Something simple. Nothing too complicated.”

  “Do you like Victoria Sponge?”

  “Yes, I am rather partial to it.”

  “Then that’s what I’ll do. I’ll get on with it today, and let you have it tomorrow. What time do you want me to come over on Sunday?”

  “Around four o’clock.”

  “Lovely. I’ll bring the cake over tomorrow, and I’ll be there in my glad rags on Sunday. Thanks, Jill. You’ve made my day.”

  ***

  Jules was behind her desk when I walked into the office, but I might as well have been invisible for all the notice she took of me. She seemed to be in a world of her own.

  “Jules? Are you okay?”

  She snapped out of it. “Oh, sorry, Jill. I didn’t see you come in. I was miles away.”

  “Yeah. I could see that. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine. It’s just that a few minutes ago, before you came in, we had a visitor. One of the guys from the new place next door, you know—the gym—”

  “I-Sweat?”

  “Yeah. I think he said his name was Brent.”

  “I’ve already met him. He’s one of the owners. The other guy is called George. Big guys, aren’t they?”

  “You’re not kidding! Have you seen the muscles on him? Even his muscles have got muscles.”

  “Was he looking for me?”

  “No. He just popped in to check what we did in here. He said that you’d told him you were a private investigator, but he seemed convinced we were a tanning salon.”

  Maybe I should change that sign after all.

  “He also said that they were looking for a pretty young receptionist for their new venture.”

  “I hope you’re not getting ideas again, Jules?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Don’t forget what happened last time you jumped ship.”

  “It’s all right, Jill. I’m here to stay this time. Besides which, I’m enjoying the knitting lessons from Mrs V, so I don’t want to leave.”

  ***

  I’d asked Lacey Ball to come in and see me. She hadn’t been very happy about it, but I’d explained that once I’d taken on a case, I couldn’t drop it until the customer signed the ‘case closure’ form. She’d asked if I could post it to her, but I told her I had to witness her signature. All of that was of course complete nonsense. There was no such thing as a ‘case closure’ form. If someone wanted me to stop working on a case, all they had to do was stop paying me. The truth was, I wanted her to come to the office because I had a hunch, and I needed to test it out.

  She arrived at eleven o’clock, as arranged. Jules showed her in, and offered her a drink, but Lacey seemed to be in a hurry, and declined.

  “Do have a seat, Lacey.”

  “I don’t know why I had to come in. I told you over the phone: I don’t want to pursue this any longer. It was all a mistake. I don’t know what I was thinking. I must have been dreaming or something. Mandy couldn’t have called me. I saw her buried three years ago.”

  “If you can just sign this ‘case closure’ form, I’ll work out your final bill, and that’ll be the end of it.”

  “Okay.”

  I held out a sheet of paper and a pen. As she reached out to take them, I caught a glimpse of her hands. Yes! Just as I’d thought.

  She was staring down at the paper. “There’s nothing on here. It’s a blank sheet of paper. I thought I had to sign a ‘case closure’ form?”

  “Actually, that was a lie.”

  “What?”

  “Sorry. There’s no such thing as a ‘case closure’ form.”

  “Why did you get me in here, then?”

  “I thought it was time that you and I had a heart to heart, Mandy.”

  She looked shocked, and sat back in the chair. “What did you just call me?”

  “Mandy. That is your name, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Why d
id you kill Lacey?”

  “What do you mean? You’re talking nonsense.”

  “You’re not going to deny that you’re Mandy, are you?”

  She said nothing for several moments.

  “Let me help you,” I prompted. “My guess is that you and Joe fell in love. Is that right?”

  She took a deep breath. “We didn’t plan for it to happen. We spent a lot of time in each other’s company, and just sort of fell for one another.”

  “What was Lacey’s reaction?”

  “She didn’t know anything about it for a long time. Joe and I saw one another behind her back, but we knew we couldn’t carry on like that forever. We decided that we had to tell her, and thought the kindest way to do it would be for both of us to talk to her together. We didn’t want to hurt her, but we couldn’t go on denying our love for one another. We knew she’d take it badly, but had no idea just how badly. She went hysterical. She flew into a rage, and started throwing things around the house. Then she stormed out, jumped into her car, and drove off at a ridiculous speed. I told Joe we had to follow her because I was afraid she’d hurt herself. We followed her in my car. It was night-time; there was nobody on the road. She was driving like a maniac. Then, when we got out into the countryside, she took a sharp bend way too fast, and the car left the road. The next thing I knew, there was a terrible impact. She’d hit a tree, and the car had burst into flames. We couldn’t do anything. It was horrible. We couldn’t get anywhere near it because of the heat.”

  “Why didn’t you just call the police, and tell them what had happened?”

  “I wanted to, but Joe said that it would all come out about us. People would blame us for Lacey’s death. I didn’t know what to do. I was in such a state. Joe said the best thing would be for us to pretend the person in the car was me. I could take over Lacey’s life. He said that because we were identical twins, the DNA would match. All I had to do was throw some of my jewellery into the car.”

  “And since then, you’ve effectively lived your life as your sister?”

  “Yes. We buried Lacey, and everyone thought it was me. Since then, Joe and I have lived together as man and wife.”