As usual, Cesar was happy to see me. I stayed for a few minutes to give him a bit of company, even going so far as to throw his ball so that he could run after it with his usual delighted enthusiasm. Then, making sure he had everything he needed, I shut him back in the house and headed for the car.
“Should we get Paws to come with us to Ms. Ivy’s?” Charlie asked once I was back in the driver’s seat.
Greer snorted. “Why drag ourselves down?”
“No, Charlie’s right,” I said. “We need him to be part of the investigation.”
“If you insist,” said Greer with a sigh. “But can he even come out during the day? We haven’t done that before, have we?”
“I think he can, we just won’t be able to see him,” I said.
As we drove home, we filled Greer in on what we had found out at the library. “Maybe she was meeting somebody,” said Greer, coming to the same conclusion we had.
“Do you think it was Gerry?” Charlie asked.
“It could’ve been. We really need to find out where she was that night,” I said.
“Maybe she was meeting a boy,” said Greer.
“Either way, we need to find out who it might have been,” I mused.
“Do you think Ms. Ivy will be able to tell us?” Charlie asked.
“I doubt it,” I said. “But she might be able to tell us where some of Jackie’s other friends are.”
“Can’t Gerry just tell us that?” Greer asked.
“Not if we don’t talk to her,” I muttered.
“You think she should be released?” Greer asked.
“I don’t think Detective Cutter would have arrested her without some hard evidence,” said Charlie. “And we have to find out what that is.”
When we got back to the farmhouse there was a very faded outline of Paws sitting on his usual perch.
“You want go to the Ivy place with us?” I asked.
“Do they have cats?” he asked.
Wary of any occasion when Paws looked excited, I nevertheless said, “Yes. Three.”
For the first time in days, Paws looked happy and interested. He jumped off the box and trotted to the car, but as he crossed the gravel driveway I nearly lost track of him; it wasn’t dark enough so that he’d be easy to see.
I exchanged looks with my friends and predicted, unnecessarily, “This is going to be interesting.”
“Come on, you lazy humans. What’s taking you so long?” Paws yelled from the car.
“Yeah, the Ivy cats are definitely not going to recover from this visit in a hurry,” said Charlie.
I could see all three cats as I pulled into Ms. Ivy’s, all of them on the lookout exactly as if they had been expecting us to show up. One was on the porch, one was in the tree, and another was under Ms. Ivy’s car.
Every time I stopped by the Ivy place these days I thought of Betty’s house up the street and wondered when I would next see a dark witch. It was like a cloud hanging over my head, especially when I didn’t ever seem to find time to practice spell-casting.
“There she is,” I pointed to the front door.
My former client was walking around her large porch and waving at us.
“I just want to hang out with the cats,” said Paws.
“You’re not to distress them,” I ordered. “We’re here on business.”
“I don’t see why there can’t also be a little bit of pleasure,” Paws muttered.
The four of us got out of the car, three of us visible. As we walked up to the house Ms. Ivy called out, “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“We’re actually hoping that we could ask you about the barbershop,” I told her. No sense lying, she’d see right through that.
“I wondered who’d be the first to come by and ask me about that. You even beat the police,” she said.
I didn’t mention that that was probably because the police had more leads to track down than we did.
“Would you mind?” Charlie asked.
“I love talking to reporters. Doesn’t everyone?” joked Ms. Ivy. “Reporters shoot hard questions at you and you’re expected to answer them. At least it’s a nice spring day.”
Ms. Ivy’s house was just as I remembered it: warm and cozy. “It’s a bad business,” she said. “I heard about the arrest. I’ve known Gerry since she was a kid and I can’t possibly imagine her committing murder.”
“Neither can her son,” I said.
“He’s a sweet kid. Weird store, though,” Ms. Ivy said, shaking her head. She was from a generation that did not sell clothing with sparkle decorations on the sleeves.
While we settled in to enjoy the tea and cookies, Paws was slinking around behind us, looking around suspiciously at everything, but of course our hostess didn’t know that.
“I’m afraid there’s probably not much I can tell you,” Ms. Ivy said. “My father’s unexpected death sent the family into disarray, not surprisingly. His barbershop just fell through the cracks while the family fought about it. It was prime real estate on Main Street, but no one could think of anything else to do with it. None of us had talent cutting hair like he did, and eventually we just stopped paying the mortgage on the space and sold it.”
The ghost cat had taken a post near Ms. Ivy, and I had the feeling that if he could be chewing tobacco and taking her pulse while we did this interview, he would be.
“Didn’t he have a couple of other associates working there?” Charlie asked.
“He sure did,” said Ms. Ivy, “but they moved on. I don’t think there were any hard feelings. None of them wanted to run the business from the ground up themselves. It was a town institution. No one could see doing it better than my dad.”
“Did you check on the place that year?” I asked. I wondered if they had seen anything amiss.
Ms. Ivy grimaced. “Unfortunately, not as much as we probably should have. It’s certainly conceivable that a body could have been put in the wall and then plastered over, and no one would have noticed.”
“So the place was basically empty?” I asked.
Ms. Ivy nodded.
“Did you know Jackie Morris?” Charlie asked.
“No, I don’t think I did. I was older, and I had already graduated from college by the time she and her crew were seniors.”
“You say crew, did you know who her friends were?” Charlie wondered.
“Sort of,” Ms. Ivy said, frowning a little as if she was trying to remember. “They were the successful kids, the ones who ran the glee club and the theater group, the baseball pitcher, the field hockey scorer, that sort of thing. They were the kids who got their names in the paper.”
“Do you remember any of her friends’ names?” I asked.
“I’m afraid only Gerry,” said Ms. Ivy.
“Lies,” Paws cried suddenly. “Tell us the truth right now. Stopping being a hostile witness.” He was sitting at her feet yelling at her, but of course she had no idea, not being able to see ghosts.
“Do you think Gerry had any reason to be in the barbershop back then?” Greer asked.
“No, I’m afraid nobody had any reason to be in there. We didn’t even pay for a cleaning service, and I believe most of the materials had been removed by the time graduation came around that year.”
I was rapidly coming to the conclusion that talking with Ms. Ivy was a total dead end. We needed to find out more about Jackie’s friends, and this interview was getting us nowhere fast. We needed to talk to somebody about that night, and I still had no idea where to begin.
“You know, now that you mention it,” Ms. Ivy said, interrupting my thought train, “Jackie did have one good friend who I think is still around here.”
“Who?” All three of us chorused.
“Oh, what’s his name? He runs that weird shop on Main Street. Not the one we were talking about before, but the other one, with the shop that I don’t understand why anyone would go into,” she said.
“Do you mean the gallery?” Greer asked.
“No, t
he rustic one,” she said.
Greer sat back, her face considerably redder.
“Mintwood Mucking,” she said gleefully. “That’s it.”
“Keith?” Charlie asked, looking at me and Greer.
“Yes, that’s his name. He’s the same age as Gerry and Jackie,” she said.
“We’ll talk to him. Thanks so much,” I said, rising to go. Now we had even more reason to talk to Keith. Ms. Ivy remembering him as one of Jackie’s good friends just corroborated what we already knew.
“How was taking care of the cats, dear?” she asked.
She asked this question now every time I saw her.
“They were great,” I said. At least two of them were, but I didn’t say that part.
Ms. Ivy’s third cat had had a habitual “Death Has Come” look, the textbook picture of a fraidy cat. Paws’ presence surely wasn’t going to help.
We left Ms. Ivy’s quickly after that. I had a feeling Detective Cutter would be along shortly to ask his own set of questions, but I just hoped Ms. Ivy wouldn’t share with him that we’d been there. That might really put him over the top.
Just as we were leaving the house, the sky opened up and rain started to pour down. The clouds had been darkening all morning, and now we were seeing the result.
“IIIIII . . .
“HAAATTE . . .
“WATTER . . .
I saw a very pale streak go flying past us as Paws made a life or death dash for the car.
Once we were safely in the Beetle, Greer breathed a sigh of relief. “That woman . . .” was all she could manage to say. She sat there shaking her head all the way down the street.
“I feel like every time I come here it rains. Maybe it’s a sign,” said Charlie, trying to dry her clothes with a tissue.
“A sign that you should hang up your investigative hat and take up knitting?” Greer asked.
“Definitely not,” said Charlie.
“Water . . . bad,” Paws managed. He was sitting on the back seat next to Charlie, staring forward like a drenched statue.
“It’s okay. We’re inside now,” Charlie cooed.
“Water bad,” the cat repeated.
“Right,” said Greer. “What did you think of what Ms. Ivy said?”
“I think she did it. She was one shady character,” said Paws.
“She’s a retired music teacher,” I told him.
“Close enough,” said Paws.
“It didn’t really help that you yelled at her,” I continued.
“She was a hostile witness and needed to be treated as such. I apologize for nothing,” said the cat.
“Believe me, I know,” I muttered.
Just then Greer’s phone rang. She looked at it and frowned. “I guess because we’re so high up I’m getting service . . . Hello?”
I couldn’t hear what was said on the other end of the line, but my friend’s eyebrows rose.
“Okay . . . got it . . . do you want to . . .” But she lowered the phone without finishing her question.
“What is it?” Charlie asked, pulling herself forward from the back seat.
“That was Liam,” said Greer, looking grim.
“What did he say?”
“He said he’s been trying all of our cells and he finally got through to mine. He just heard, his mom isn’t getting out of jail. Not only that, they’re still not allowing any visitors.”
Chapter Twelve
I put the wipers on as fast as they could go and made for Mintwood Mucking. There was no time to waste.
A crackling noise raced through the air.
“What’s that?” Charlie asked.
“Nothing good,” said Paws.
I glanced into the back seat to see the ghost cat sitting tensely.
The crackling stopped after a few seconds and I breathed a sigh of relief. Then, just as we got to Main Street, a bolt of lightning snaked across the sky, making Greer’s face look ghostly. In the back seat, Charlie gasped.
“I don’t like rain,” said Paws unhappily.
“It’ll be okay. You can stay in the car,” Charlie offered.
“You think I’ll let you go investigating without me? Like I’m expendable or something?” Paws did not sound happy, and Charlie quickly apologized for even the appearance of having cast aspersions the cat’s way.
Given how hard it was raining, it was difficult to find a parking spot anywhere near Mintwood Mucking. Lights shone brightly in the windows, but there was no one on the streets.
We hurried to the shop, only to find it empty. There wasn’t a sign of Keith anywhere.
The walls were hung with merchandise: heavy duty backpacks and all kinds of camping equipment, most of which I didn’t recognize, not being much of an outdoors girl. On the shelves sat portable cook stoves, lanterns, metal dishware, and yet more paraphernalia, the use of which was obscure to me. The entire store seemed to be composed of muted colors of green and brown, except for the colorful tents spread around the open space in the middle.
On the counter was a bell. I dinged it.
The first thing I saw coming out of the back room was Keith’s impressively bushy beard. Thick and brown with flecks of red, it brushed against his barrel chest as the rest of his body came into view.
When he caught sight of the three of us, his eyebrows rose.
“Lemmi, what brings you here?” he asked, bracing his beefy hands on the counter with a smile.
“Hi, Keith, how are you?” I asked.
“Oh, fine. This weather is putting a damper on the shopping, though. I have a feeling anyone out camping right now isn’t too happy.”
“Probably not,” I agreed.
“This is Charlie, this is Greer,” I said, introducing my friends.
“Charlie Silver, of course,” said Keith, shaking hands with both of them. “You’re something of a local celebrity.”
“Oh, stop,” said Charlie, in a voice that actually implied, “Please continue.”
“I was just telling that young whippersnapper over at the Chronicle that I like your writing better,” Keith said with a smile, expecting Charlie to share in his fun.
Instead she looked perplexed. “Who? What?”
Her voice sounded deadly to those of us who knew her. Greer and I exchanged glances.
Keith of Mintwood Mucking might not realize it, but he was skating on thin ice with hot blades.
“Nice guy, but how nice can you be when you work for the Chronicle?” Keith had an “Am I right” expression on his face, but Charlie wasn’t buying it. Her own pretty features had contorted into pure annoyance. She was about to explode.
A crackle of thunder forced us all to look up and out before Charlie detonated.
“Hum, didn’t think we were going to have lightning today,” said Keith, sounding confused.
“It wasn’t in the forecast,” said Greer.
“They can’t always be trusted,” Keith agreed.
“A lot of stuff can’t,” said Greer.
“What is it I can help you with, anyway?” he asked, suddenly looking nervous.
“We were hoping to ask you some questions about Jackie Morris,” I said.
Keith’s face darkened considerably. “How’d you find out we were friends? Did Gerry tell you?” he demanded.
“I’m afraid a good detective never reveals her sources,” said Charlie. As an afterthought she said, “Neither does a good reporter.”
“I’m not going to go around gossiping,” Keith said angrily. “Not when my friend was murdered!”
“We aren’t looking for gossip. We’re looking to clear Gerry’s name,” I said.
“That old kook,” Keith snarled. “If she did it, then she should face justice.”
“There’s no way Gerry killed anyone,” said Greer.
“Prove it,” Keith huffed.
“That’s what we’re trying to do,” I informed him.
“Yeah, well, not with my help, and with Mike gone I’m all you got.” He grabbe
d a stack of men’s shirts and whirled around, heading for the back room.
After he disappeared we heard a door slam.
“I don’t think he wanted to talk to us,” said Greer.
“What tipped you off?” Charlie muttered.
“I’m sure he wouldn’t have been willing to talk to Hansen either,” said Greer slyly.
Charlie just glared at her friend.
“Something happened amongst that group of friends after Jackie disappeared,” I mused. “And it was bad.”
“What happened to Mike? The other friend?” I wondered. Keith had revealed something even if he hadn’t meant to, the existence of another friend whose name was Mike.
“I think one of the articles I came across said that he died in a car accident a few years ago,” said Charlie. “The night Jackie went missing he was away at a casino.”
“We really have to talk to Gerry,” I said, rubbing my temples.
Keith didn’t reappear, so we finally took the hint and left. As we made our way to the car another crack of invisible thunder sounded overhead.
Chapter Thirteen
Charlie and Greer both had to get to work, so I was on my own. Left to my own devices, I of course started to stew.
As I was driving home, something occurred to me that was totally unrelated to our quest to find Jackie’s killer.
I wanted to go on a date with Jasper Wolf, and I’d waited long enough for that to happen.
Yes, there was a murder to be solved and a ghost who needed to be put at ease. But if I waited until ghosts weren’t a problem to go on a date, something told me I’d be waiting an awfully long time.
Jasper and I needed to have a little chat.
But after I decided on that basic fact, I went back and forth for the rest of the day about whether to warn Jasper about our upcoming conversation. In the end I decided that surprise was my best bet.
Why? Well, because then he couldn’t get out of it. Guys don’t like having conversations about feelings, everyone knows that, so I imagined him resisting until he saw the inevitability of it all.
I was terribly nervous, and I spent a lot of time that afternoon trying to work out exactly what I should do about the mint-green-eyed man I had loved for so long. I wanted a date, but I wasn’t sure how to get it.
Witch Raising Situation (Witch of Mintwood Book 5) Page 8