by Tess Lake
“She had a delivery of sixty-four eggs,” I said.
“That fact will crack the case wide open,” Luce murmured.
I suddenly remembered the list of ingredients Mom had given me. I grabbed it out of my bag and then very carefully tore it in half, passing Molly the bottom of the list, where the ingredients started to get a bit wild. She looked at it with tired eyes.
“What is this? The tears of a child under the age of ten? This can’t be serious,” she said.
“I said the same thing to Mom, and she thinks maybe you could use anyone’s tears, but she doesn’t want to risk it,” I said.
“What ingredients are on your list?” Molly said suspiciously.
I hastily stuffed the list back into my bag. “Tons of weird stuff. I’m probably going to have to pull some old man’s eyebrows out.”
“Maybe you could use Carter’s eyebrows, do everyone in the town a favor,” Luce said.
“Where are we supposed to get the tears of a child who’s under the age of ten?” Molly asked.
“I can make a kid cry. Easy done,” Luce declared.
“Oh, really? You’re going to make a child cry?” Molly said.
“Sure. We’ll find the worst bully at the Harlot Bay Primary School and flick him on the nose or something. Kid probably deserves it,” Luce said. Molly and I waited her out. Then she cleared her throat. “I mean, I don’t want to make a kid cry, and that bully is probably only acting out because he’s having such a tough time at home and really he just needs love and support, and not someone flicking him on the end of the nose,” Luce said in a rush.
“You’re not making anyone cry with that attitude,” Molly said.
I finished my coffee and rubbed my eyes, but there was only so much caffeine could do. It was approaching lunch, but because of the recent influx of customers, Molly and Luce could no longer lock up Traveler and go wandering off, comfortable in the knowledge that no one would be showing up to buy anything from them. So they had brought their lunch from home, and my plan was to steal some of it. Luce retrieved lunch from the refrigerator out the back. Today it was cold falafel wraps, which she cut up and shared between the three of us.
“These are really good,” I said, mumbling through a mouthful.
“I know, I think we should start selling them,” Luce said.
“Maybe something not as fiddly as falafel,” Molly said.
We ate lunch in a sort of quiet exhausted silence. I was worn out from surveillance and Molly and Luce were tired from a day working behind the coffee shop counter. Still, theirs was a good kind of tired, a nice kind of tired where they were making money, and after a while wouldn’t be living in the dire poverty our entire family had slipped into.
“So you didn’t see anything weird out at Sunny Days Manor last night?” Luce asked just as we were all finishing up lunch.
“Nope. Quiet as the grave, or an old folks’ home.”
“Harlow!” Luce said.
“What?”
“Old folks’ home and quiet as the grave? Are you saying these people are one step before the grave?”
“No, that’s not it at all!” I said, and then a sudden thought hit me with enough force that I took an awkward bite of the last my falafel and nearly choked on it. After Molly finished thumping me on the back, I swallowed some water and let my idea out into the light.
“Okay, so just follow me on this. Sunny Days Manor is full of old people, right? And old people die, right?”
“Okaayyy,” Luce said, uncertain of where I was going with this.
“So, because old people die, if someone’s doing something that happens to cause an old person to die, it’s really easy to cover up. Because no one thinks, ‘Oh, they were ninety, that’s unexpected.’”
“I guess so. But are you talking supernatural things killing old people, or just ordinary people being bad, killing old people?” Molly said.
I didn’t get to answer because Luce had jumped up from the booth and started pacing. I’d started to jump off into the deep end, but that’s where Luce lived most of the time.
“No, no, no, she’s right! No one investigates. No one looks too deeply. You could get away with practically anything! For all we know, it’s one of the other residents spiking people’s food or drink with something for some nefarious purpose. I bet if you looked into their wills, you’d find they were mysteriously changed right before they died. The murderer could be out there right now!”
Luce pointed a dramatic finger out the front window. The street was empty except for old Mrs. Osterman shuffling along with her dog Rumtum in front of her. She stopped and looked across the road in the front window at us, where Luce was still standing there with her arm dramatically flung out.
“That happens way too often to be a coincidence,” Molly commented.
“Yeah, can’t you say, ‘And then a million dollars fell out of the sky,’ and point dramatically out the front window?” I said.
“And then a million dollars fell out of the sky!” Luce said and pointed out the front window again.
Nothing happened.
“What is she doing over there?” Molly asked, narrowing her eyes at Mrs. Osterman.
“Probably something nefarious,” Luce muttered.
We all watched as Rumtum took his time to mark his territory on a fire hydrant.
“Or maybe that dog is taking a bathroom break,” Molly said.
“A highly convenient bathroom break to make it look like she’s not watching us,” Luce said.
She kept watching Mrs. Osterman and Rumtum until they shuffled off down the street and around the corner.
“So what are you going to do with this new hypothesis?” Molly asked.
“I’m going to put on my journalism pants and meet Mr. Sharp, the director of Sunny Days Manor. I’ll ask him some hard-hitting questions and see if I can get an answer. Maybe while I’m there, I’ll visit Hilda and see if I can get any of the other residents to talk to me. If there’s something going on there, whether it’s supernatural or not, I’m sure I can find it,” I said.
Molly and Luce shared a look that I knew well because I’d seen it often on my own mother’s face.
“Okay, what?” I said.
“Nothing,” Luce said quickly.
“Chicken, you said you were going to say something,” Molly said.
“Say what?” I asked.
“I am not a chicken, I think that maybe Harlow should be able to do whatever she wants,” Luce said.
“What are you talking about? Tell me now!”
Molly took a deep breath beside me and then let it out again.
“Recently it has become apparent to Luce and me that our moms have begun acting differently. Specifically, they seem to be holding back from telling us what to do.”
“Which is weird and unsettling and wrong,” Luce said.
“I guess I, or we, were wondering if it’s a good idea to go on midnight stakeouts or to investigate anything that that sleazeball Sylvester Coldwell is involved with,” Molly said.
“What you’re saying is that since our moms have stopped telling us what to do, we need to start telling ourselves what to do?” I asked.
“I don’t like it any more than you do, but you have to admit that sometimes when they told us to watch out for dangerous things, we actually did watch out for dangerous things,” Molly said.
“This is like a really weird form of Stockholm Syndrome,” I said, finding my bag and standing up.
“I said that too! But then I sorta do agree with Molly that if our moms aren’t telling us to watch out for anything, then maybe we need to tell each other so we don’t go crazy and do things like head out to creepy old abandoned mansions on Truer Island that apparently have spells cast on them,” Luce said.
I could feel myself getting a bit annoyed with my cousins, but then I let it go. I could see that they had a point somewhere buried in there.
“Maybe what we need to be doing is more training in w
itchcraft, so when something inevitably happens we can handle it,” I said.
“Won’t that just make the moms suspicious and maybe reverse their whole new approach?” Luce asked.
“Maybe. But they made a big deal in the past about how if we want to learn things, all we need to do is ask. Maybe we should do that. If we manage to get Aunt Cass unfrozen, I’m sure she could teach us a lot. Or if we really want, we could see Hattie Stern. I know she is an incredibly powerful witch,” I said.
“No, no, no, no, no, I don’t want to learn from Hattie,” Molly said hastily.
I wasn’t quite sure why I’d said it, actually. I’d once trained with Hattie to learn to control the power where I could grab heat out of things. It was an incredibly addictive magic, and I’d visited her once a week for quite a while before I’d managed to get it somewhat under control. But they certainly weren’t pleasant visits. She carried a ruler about her person that you never saw until it came whipping out to crack you across the knuckles whenever you did something wrong, like, for example, moving your hand while trying to cast a spell. She really was all about control. But as I’d suggested her, I realized that there was something there. Perhaps it wasn’t so crazy that I go to talk with her. After all, I had other reasons as well, such as Juliet’s journal saying that she was going to go hunting with a Torrent.
“Well, I don’t know. Might be something to think about,” I said.
The rest of our conversation was cut short by the sight of the bus pulling up in the street outside. Molly rushed over to unlock the front door while Luce cleared up our lunch. I said goodbye to my cousins and got out of there, heading back to my office so I could get ready to go out to the Sunny Days Manor to meet Mr. Sharp. The Harlot Bay Reader was definitely hanging on by a thread, but I was going to put on my journalism pants and journalism hat, and get out my journalism pen and my journalism notepad, and see if I could find out if there was anything strange happening at Sunny Days Manor.
As I walked back to my office, feeling the tiredness and caffeine fighting a battle inside me, I realized it was entirely possible that I was going slightly mad.
Chapter 11
By the time I reached Sunny Days Manor, the caffeine had taken the high ground and was winning the fight against tiredness. Still, I could feel it tugging at me and I was in a weird kind of state where I was tired but buzzing with caffeine at the same time. Everything had taken on an odd crystalline tint. I got out of my car, and in my new state of sleepy but hyperaware at the same time, details I’d missed before leaped out at me. Perhaps because I’d been following behind Eve last time with Jack, I’d ignored everything around me.
I noticed the path from the parking lot to the front door was cracked and some of the tiles had the edges broken off, which was clearly a tripping hazard and definitely unsafe for elderly residents. The front windows were a little grimy, and there was a cobweb in one. When I went inside, I noticed a crack in the wall, some peeling paint, and the curtains in some of the residents’ rooms were ratty. It wasn’t that the place was a run-down dump; it was simply old and perhaps not as well cared for as it should be.
I introduced myself to the receptionist and asked to see Mr. Sharp. She raised her eyebrows at me when I said I was from the Harlot Bay Reader and then picked up the phone and called him, murmuring in a low tone that a “reporter is here to see you.”
I waited around, resisting the urge to pace to get the buzzing feeling out of my legs, and took in more details around me. The computer behind the receptionist’s station looked old. The filing cabinet was scuffed. She was taking some notes with a pen that looked like it was cheap.
I was pulled out of this observation by the appearance of Mr. Sharp. Although it was a cool day, the winter cold still pulling at us, Mr. Sharp was definitely overdressed. He had on a double-breasted suit and under that a vest and under that a shirt, and I’m pretty sure you could’ve peeled more layers off, going down to an undershirt and probably another whole set of clothing beneath that. Yet when I shook his hand, it was ice-cold, as though he’d just come out of a meat locker.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Sharp. I’m Harlow Torrent from the Harlot Bay Reader and I’d like to ask you some questions about some of the elderly residents who have been found wandering around town,” I said in my brightest, most professional journalist voice.
Mr. Sharp shrank back into himself as though he was a turtle trying to retract into his shell. I saw him glance at the receptionist, and a flash of fear appeared on his face before he recovered.
“Of course, of course, of course, please follow me. We’ll go to my office,” he said. He took off at such high speed that I swear I was pulled along in his wake by the sheer pull of gravity itself.
We rushed down a corridor, turned and turned again, and then we were suddenly in a medium-sized office that was all wood paneling and 1970s decor. There was a giant wooden table that was stacked high with files, and a chair behind the desk that looked distinctly uncomfortable. I didn’t get to see the room for very long, though. The moment Mr. Sharp went behind the desk, he threw up his hands to his head as though he was just remembering something, told me to follow him, and then rushed right out of there again. I looked down at the files, seeing that they had names of who I presumed were residents of Sunny Days Manor printed on them. I then turned and followed him out.
This time we went outside to the grounds where the independent residents lived. Mr. Sharp might have been cold before, but with all this rushing around he was starting to sweat. He started talking at high speed.
“Yes, we have become aware that some of the residents have left the facility, and we are taking every measure we can to ensure their safety,” he said, looking directly ahead of him rather than at me. We passed one of the independent units, and I saw a man come outside with a loaf of bread and start tearing up pieces of it to throw onto his lawn. I had a look around for some birds, but I couldn’t see any.
“Do you think we could slow down for a moment so I could ask you some more detailed questions?” I said.
“Sunny Days Manor was built many decades ago and was formerly a home for a quite wealthy family. After they moved away from the area, they transformed it into the business you see today, a business in the business of caring for people, which is our business,” he said.
I looked at him and saw that he was sweating so much it now appeared that he been doused with a bucket of water. I was also pretty sure he’d said “business” about four times, and if I’d tried to make him stop, he would have started trembling.
“It is highly unusual to have the number of residents you have wander away, though, isn’t it? Even one case would be extraordinary,” I said.
“On Tuesdays, we have badminton and there’s also bocce, and in the coming year we’ll be building a larger indoor swimming pool, where residents can enjoy aqua therapy all year round,” Mr. Sharp said.
What was going on here? He wasn’t even bothering to look at me, now staring straight ahead as we marched through the grounds.
“If you need to talk privately, we can do that,” I said in an undertone.
Mr. Sharp didn’t answer, and we continued marching along. We passed another unit, where this time there was a woman out the front tearing up bread and throwing it on the lawn. At the pace we were traveling, I was starting to feel my thighs burning as though I was doing an exercise session with Kaylee out on the beach.
“I understand Mr. Coldwell—” I began to say when Mr. Sharp grabbed me by the arm, his fingers digging in.
“Please stop talking,” he said through gritted teeth and then let me go. I kept following him, and unfortunately that jittery feeling of caffeine mixed with the burst of anxiety that came from him grabbing me. We continued walking for another minute, me in complete silence, trying to work out whether I should just abandon this or give him a business card or force him to stop to get something out of him. I was just about to go with getting out of there and figuring out another way to cont
act him when he veered off the path and into the garden.
I followed him as we went down a dirt path beside one of the independent units and then around the back where it became a forest. Out there was a small gardener’s shed. Mr. Sharp led me to it, retrieving a key from his pocket and unlocking the door. When he opened it, I saw a few lawnmowers and other gardening implements in the gloom. This meant there were quite a lot of sharp objects hanging from the walls, in a shed far away from where anyone would hear me scream if he decided to do something.
I hesitated outside as Mr. Sharp went in. Witch or not, someone catching you by surprise wasn’t going to turn out well. Then I saw Mr. Sharp turn around inside, the look on his face pleading.
“Please come in where he can’t see us,” he said.
Anxiety bubbling away, I stepped into the gloom and then Mr. Sharp closed the shed door behind me. Inside, it smelled of old grass, oil, and metal slowly rusting away. There were small holes in the roof and on the walls that let in beams of light. Once Mr. Sharp closed the door, he turned to face me and started wringing his hands together.
“Food quality has been dropping, it’s been dropping, they keep cutting back the budget and there’s only so far you can go, and first of all you start using lower-quality ingredients, but then even that’s not enough and you start trying to buy in bulk and then soon you’re buying ingredients that are on the edge of being expired and then eventually you have to make the decision to buy the expired ingredients, and then staff are being fired and they’re not being rehired and we need to have a plumber to fix about eight different toilets but that’s not happening, and our budgets keep constricting and now residents are disappearing in the middle of the night and ending up miles away and I just can’t take it anymore!” Mr. Sharp said in one long outburst.
“Sorry, is it Coldwell who’s doing this?” I asked.