by Tess Lake
I left my bag in the small office, hiding it in the drawer. I wanted to be unencumbered. In the end, I only had my phone and my car keys when I slipped out of the office and made my way across to the trailers. It seemed filming had already begun. Outside the warehouse was a large red light flashing above a sign that said, “Do not enter if red light is lit.” Most of the people who’d been scurrying around the lot when I’d arrived were now inside. The lot was now guarded by only a few security guards who mostly stood on the outside to stop people from coming onto the set. It was a beehive scenario: once you got past the guard, you could pretty much walk around and do whatever you wanted.
I made my way over to Mattias’s trailer, glancing around to make sure that no one was watching me. There was a guard standing at the far gate, but he was facing outward, with his hands laced behind his back. As I approached the trailer, I took one last look around and, seeing that no one was watching, decided to skip the concealment spell. It was a good thing, too, because the door to the trailer was locked and I had to cast a quick unlocking spell to get inside. It was incredibly hard, though. It felt like I was trying to shift fifty pounds with one arm. I pushed with the magic, but it didn’t want to cooperate, until finally the lock reluctantly clicked open and I slipped inside, closing the door behind me.
It was dim inside Mattias’s trailer and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust. I needed that moment because I was shaking off a wave of tiredness that had come over me from unlocking the door. It seemed that whatever this slip witch power was that was affecting the storm was making me weaker in every other area. I’d have to do an experiment, but I got the feeling that if I tried to boil the well out in back of the mansion, I’d barely be able to get a whisper of steam off it.
After a few moments, my eyes adjusted to the gloom and I saw that the inside of Mattias’s trailer was as luxurious as Tobin’s was. The main room was decorated in shades of white. White leather sofa, a thick white shag rug, white vases with lilies in them, and through an open door at the end I could see a large king-sized bed with a white cover on it. I couldn’t risk turning the lights on, so instead I summoned a small ball of light in my hand and let it drift up. It was definitely harder than usual to do it, so I didn’t have much time to search before I would become exhausted if I kept it running. I looked around the main part of the trailer, opening cupboards and drawers but not finding anything really unusual. It was mostly like a hotel room. The kitchen part of the trailer had drawers full of knives and plates and cutlery, a chopping board, and there was even a cooktop and a microwave. The lounge part had a large flat-screen television, a comfortable sofa and a beautiful dark table.
I went into the bedroom and found some of the closets in there were open as though someone had already been snooping. There were a few pieces of clothing hanging in the closet. It appeared that someone had emptied it before I’d arrived. I couldn’t necessarily attribute anything suspicious to that. After all, Mattias’s wife, Liberty, might have taken his possessions away. When I thought of her, I realized I didn’t know where she had gone after Mattias had died. They had both been staying in the trailer on set. Had she left Harlot Bay already? The trailer had a distinct unlived-in feel, so I suspected she hadn’t been staying here.
I shut off the summoned light and waited a moment for my energy to return. Risking someone hearing me, I quietly called out to Mattias.
“Mattias? Are you here?” I asked the thin air.
The thin air didn’t respond.
Satisfied that the script was nowhere in the trailer, I was about to leave when I heard someone outside fumble at the door. I dived into the closet and gently pulled the door shut as someone entered the trailer and closed the door behind them.
“Quick, hurry up!” I heard a man say.
“There’s nothing else of his here,” another man replied. I heard footsteps approaching the bedroom and was barely able to get a concealment spell in place before a man pulled the closet open and looked inside. I was hunched into the corner, staring directly at him, my feeble concealment spell draining my energy by the second.
The man was young, with blond hair and wearing all black, with the word Crew stitched onto the front of his T-shirt.
Without hesitation, he grabbed the last few remaining shirts hanging in the closet and then slammed the door shut just as my concealment spell failed. The sound of my breath and my gasping sounded abnormally loud in the small confined space, and if either of the men opened the door again, there was no way I’d be able to hide myself this time.
“Is that all there is?” I heard the first man ask the second.
“That’s everything. Take a look if you don’t believe me,” he replied. The first man obviously decided that he would take a look because I heard his footsteps come into the bedroom. Before he could open the closet door, though, I heard a cat from the main room give a loud screeching meow and then start growling.
“Holy crap, it’s a cat! Shush, be quiet, shut up!” I heard one of the men say.
My fear of being discovered was replaced by confusion. I’d recognize that howling yowl anywhere. It was Adams. Had he been following me?
Whatever he was doing there, I was grateful, because after the man unsuccessfully tried to quiet him, they bolted out the door and closed it behind them. The moment they were gone, Adams stopped howling, and then a second later he spoke out of the darkness inside the closet.
“Someone has stolen our cheese again. Right in front of George,” Adams said.
The surge of relief nearly brought tears to my eyes, and I reached down in the dark to have Adams nuzzle against my hand. As usual, being a magical cat, he’d appeared in the closet without having to open the door.
“I’ll get you more cheese, I promise,” I said.
“There’s a thief who needs to be taken out. I think it’s some kind of supernatural monster,” he said, starting to purr as I scratched behind his ears.
I didn’t have time to discuss with Adams his theories on why the cheese was disappearing (my guess was: he was eating too much of it), and I was still hiding in a trailer closet, at risk of being discovered. So I told him I’d see him at home later and then escaped from Mattias’s trailer. I had barely enough energy to cast a concealment spell again before I exited the door and managed to get around the corner of the trailer before it wore off, leaving me standing there with my hands on my knees, gasping and feeling like I’d run a marathon. After only the short time I’d been hiding, my ability to cast a concealment spell had weakened considerably. As if to taunt me, I heard a grumble from the sky above as the clouds threatened to form into another storm.
I was still standing there gasping when Mattias appeared, now dressed in some kind of military officer uniform and looking like he was about thirty years old. He had pointed ears and the ends of his eyebrows were shaped oddly, giving him a strange alien appearance.
“Are you going to follow those thieves? They already ransacked my trailer a few days ago. One of them could be the murderer!” Mattias said.
“Do you know who they are?”
Mattias waved his hand at me as though I was an annoying fly.
“Of course I don’t know their names. Why would I, an award-winning actor, know their names? But that blond one, he has that old blue car in the parking lot. I need you to follow him.”
“Fine, but before you vanish, I need you to tell me you didn’t damage the brakes on the car that crashed a few days ago.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I saw you watching the car accident. You were looking very happy about something. Did you sabotage the car so it would crash?”
Mattias frowned and then transformed, shrinking and aging backwards until he was a little six-year-old boy dressed in pajamas with teddy bears all over them.
“I love film. I would never do anything to stop this film from going ahead. I was happy because I managed to knock over a cup in Gustaf Hemingway’s audition. Next time you decide to ac
cuse me, young lady, think about who you’re talking to and what I have done for film,” he said. Although he had started off in a young, hurt voice, he’d ended with virtually a threat, his face turning dark. Before I could say anything more, he vanished.
Great, now I had a ghost angry at me as well.
I made my way out from between the trailers and went across to the parking lot, where I discovered a very old, beat-up blue Toyota. It was the only blue car in the lot, so if Mattias was right, this was the thief’s car. I wouldn’t be able to stand around in the parking lot all day waiting for him to come out, and given it appeared he worked on the film, I didn’t have to follow him today. I decided that if the opportunity came up near the end of the day to follow him, I would do so.
I walked back to the set and waited outside, a nervous assistant joining me until the red light stopped flashing and she bolted in carrying a cup of coffee. I followed her into the darkened warehouse and made my way to where today’s filming was taking place. Today’s scenes featured Bella Bing and her sidekick, a quirky girl named Carla Mia, trying to figure out what to do about the dead body that had been discovered behind their bakery. There was a lot of snappy back-and-forth and funny jokes, even though they had the serious issue of the dead body to deal with. I sat in my chair to observe the set and do the job I was paid for, wishing that real life was full of fun sidekicks and witty banter.
Chapter 9
“So how did that happen?” I asked Molly, who was desperately trying to cover up a whopper of a black eye with concealer.
“This is too dark! Why don’t we have any concealer that’s my skin tone?” Molly complained as she faced herself in the mirror.
“She was running from a crazy girlfriend,” Luce whispered to me.
“What happened?” I whispered back.
“We were snooping on one of the builders, Jimmy Fratelli, and best I can figure is that Jimmy might be a little bit of a cheater and his girlfriend knows it. So when she saw Molly lurking outside Jimmy’s house, she came out to confront her and, as the police say, a chase ensued.”
“She had a soup ladle! A big silver soup ladle!” Molly said and rubbed more concealer around her eye.
“So she ran and got away, but then tripped and hit her face on the sidewalk,” Luce said.
“Where were you when this was happening?” I asked.
“I had to go pee, so I walked over to the park to find the public restrooms. I didn’t know that Molly was about to get chased with a soup ladle,” Luce said.
I turned back to Molly, who was now spreading the concealer down from her eye across her cheek.
“Is that such a good idea?” I asked.
Molly turned around and glared at me. It was quite scary given that half her face was painted brown and I could still see the black eye.
“I don’t have any other concealer, so I’m going to have to do my entire face.”
She whirled back around to the mirror and continued spreading the concealer, turning herself slowly brown. By the time she was finished, she was going to look like she’d spent far too much time on a tanning bed.
“I don’t understand… why didn’t you cast a spell?”
“Oh, she doesn’t understand. How wonderful for her,” Molly said to herself, loud enough for me to hear.
I turned to Luce, who evidently was translating.
“The storm across Harlot Bay is interfering with the magic,” Luce said.
“Really? Oh no…” I groaned.
Since that afternoon’s close call with the two men who were intent on robbing Mattias Matterhorn’s trailer, I’d been at a low buzz of anxiety. This had translated into a storm high above Harlot Bay that spent the entire afternoon grumbling to itself. At one point it had gotten so loud that they’d had to do a few extra takes of some of the movie scenes.
Eventually the day had finished, and when I’d gone to the parking lot I’d found that the blue car was already gone. I saw it driving around the corner but decided not to engage in a car chase, given that tonight we had the family dinner that Jack would be coming along to. So I went home in an attempt to calm myself down and hopefully get out rid of the storm before Jack and everyone else arrived.
“Oh no, is what she says. That certainly didn’t help me, Harlow, when I couldn’t cast a spell to get away from that crazy girl,” Molly said. She managed to cover her entire face with foundation and now was working on her neck. Her ears still looked ridiculously pale, though.
Luce nodded to me and motioned to follow her back out into the main living room.
“She invited Ollie to come to dinner tonight, but he didn’t want to because Molly’s been fighting with him so much,” Luce whispered to me.
“Do you think they’re going to break up?”
Luce shrugged and ran a hand through her hair, a nervous, worrying gesture she had.
“If she doesn’t calm down about the coffee machine being stolen, they might.”
“Would you two be quiet? I’m trying to catch a thief,” Adams said from somewhere behind the sofa.
“If we’re standing here, it’s fairly unlikely a thief is going to steal your precious cheese,” I said.
“Shows what you know,” Adams muttered. I looked behind the sofa, but I couldn’t see him anywhere. When that cat wanted to, he could really hide.
“Thanks for rescuing me today, by the way,” I said to thin air.
“Shh!” Adams said, his voice now appearing to come from around the side of the sofa.
I stepped around there, but he was nowhere to be seen.
“Rescued you? From what?” Luce asked.
I gave the rundown of my day, including sneaking into Mattias Matterhorn’s trailer and nearly being discovered by two thieves who stole some of his clothing.
“Do you think someone murdered him so they could steal his stuff? You know, a lot of celebrities own a lot of valuable things,” Luce said.
“Maybe, but they only stole a couple of shirts. I mean, really, how much stuff could he be possibly carrying around in his trailer anyway?” I said.
“Well, he was fairly rich. Maybe he carried like his favorite watches or something with him,” Luce said.
“If he really was murdered, I think it’d be more likely that one of the prime suspects would be Gustaf Hemingway, the guy who replaced him. Because he’s come in at the last minute, he’s getting a million dollars to film two scenes,” I said.
“Maybe we should investigate this Hemingway guy, then?” Luce said.
I was only spitballing, but it suddenly seemed that she was serious.
“Aren’t you trying to track down your coffee machine?” I asked.
“Well… yeah, I guess we are, but I don’t really want to keep doing it. I’m mostly doing it for Molly now.”
“But haven’t you guys given in to Aunt Cass’s request to work for her so you can get your hands on the truth serum? It seems like a good lead to follow that one of the builders or carpenters could be connected to the theft somehow.”
“Yeah, about that…” Luce began.
“No talking!” Molly yelled from the bathroom.
Luce sighed and put her hands on her hips.
“We had to sign a quote nondisclosure agreement unquote this afternoon,” Luce said somewhat sarcastically.
“Don’t get us cursed, Torrent,” Molly called out.
“Harlow is going to find out what it is anyway!” Luce called back.
Molly came marching out of the bathroom, looking like she’d walked out of a tanning salon. Maybe the lighting wasn’t so great in there, but out here in the living room she was definitely looking a few shades browner.
“She might find out, but we’re not gonna be the ones who tell her, okay? Sorry, Harlow, if you want in, you need to talk to Aunt Cass,” Molly said and marched back to the bathroom.
“So stupid…” Luce muttered to herself and went off to her bedroom to get changed.
“I know what she’s doing,” Adams sai
d from somewhere beside the sofa.
I sat down on the sofa and looked over the side. I still couldn’t see him.
“What is Aunt Cass doing?” I whispered.
“First I want you help me track down this cheese thief,” Adams said.
“And what is it exactly you want me to do?”
“I left a catalog of security camera equipment on the kitchen counter. I’ve circled the cameras that I want,” Adams said.
I rolled my eyes to myself but managed to suppress a sigh. I’d seen the brochure full of security equipment on the counter earlier but assumed it was junk mail.
“What do you want to do with those security cameras?” I asked.
“Set them up around the house, of course. Then we can catch the thief!”
Adams sounded like he was speaking from directly underneath the sofa at this point.
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
“Well, then, I’ll think about whether I’m going to tell you what the old witch is doing,” Adams replied. Then I felt a paw swipe at the back of my foot, some claws catching on my socks. I pulled my foot away and looked down, but there was no cat to be seen.
I leaned back on the sofa and took a few deep breaths. High above, the storm was still grumbling to itself, and now that I knew that it was interfering with the magic in the area, I was feeling that creeping stress start to climb. To my dismay, Jack had readily agreed to come to dinner, although I had strongly suggested that he should make alternate plans and then I would come with him. But he was ultimately a man, and the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, and last time he had eaten at the Torrent Mansion Bed and Breakfast, the meal had been, in his words, spectacular.