“Edmund didn’t want to bias your judgment in case his brother really had done something wrong,” said Mr. Nutcracker, keeping his cool as always. “Also, like I said, he hoped that the political weight I carry could be useful. Finally, he didn’t know what Grant would bring to the table.”
Grant, busy taking a sip of his piping hot tea, set down his mug and said, “I always strive for fairness. I’m very happy to be here and would never do anything to jeopardize an investigation or my relationships with the supernaturals.”
“Well, aren’t you just the well-behaved one,” said Cookie.
“Given that I’m an investigator, I would certainly hope so,” said Grant with a smile.
“So explain to me again exactly what happened,” said Lizzie. “I can’t believe that yet again I wasn’t here to protect Cookie.”
“You think you’re funny. In fact, if I see you once more in the next week I’ll throw you off the cliff,” grumbled Cookie. She was sick and tired of Lizzie shadowing her, a fact grasped long since by everyone but Lizzie.
Lizzie shot a glare in my direction, but even she knew better than to continue arguing with Cookie. Cookie didn’t miss the look, but she didn’t say anything, at least for the moment. I had a strong hunch that my grandmother would corner me later and make me explain.
Mom broke the silence. “I do think a summary of exactly what happened would be useful,” she said, aiming a pointed look at Cookie.
“Okay,” said my grandmother. “Here’s what I know. Sharon decided to steal Fudge’s crown, but she needed to enlist outside help to pull it off. She knew Blu from her past life as a criminal, but Blu had turned to a life of assassination in the meantime, and she didn’t know that part. He got the job at the Speedy Spider Delivery Service specifically so he’d have an easy route to killing me.
“When Sharon couldn’t get the crown out because of Jefferson Judge, and Blu was dead, she had to make another plan.
“It turns out Horticulture also had a criminal past and was perfectly happy to make a new deal with her. Horace knew what was going on all along, and the three of them formed a new crime syndicate. They were going to split the money from the crown once they got it out and found a buyer. But Horticulture didn’t know Blu was an assassin either, at least until after Blu was killed.”
“And who hired Blu?” my mom asked.
She had mostly been quiet since the arrests had been made, but she was clearly unhappy about what had happened when she’d gone to dinner at Edmund’s. She was doing marginally better at holding her tongue these days, but I could see the effort it took. I felt sorry for keeping her out of the loop, but I knew it had been necessary.
“We all know the answer to that,” said Cookie.
“We do,” said my mother, looking around the room. “The Root of All Evil wants Cookie dead. Now that its members aren’t allowed on the property, they’ve enlisted surrogates to try and kill her. Clearly we’re going to have to do some things differently from now on. The threat is real. We can’t have Cookie dying at the hands of Mirrorz.”
“How very sweet of you,” said Cookie.
“What is the government doing about the Root of All Evil?” Meg asked, looking pointedly at Mr. Nutcracker again.
He looked as if he didn’t really want to talk about it, but with all the eyes in the room on him, he didn’t have much choice. “It wasn’t until this past week that the government started taking that organization seriously,” he admitted. “After they were driven out of the mansion, nobody really believed they were much of a threat. The attempts on Cookie’s life have destroyed that theory. Still, anything substantial is going to take time.”
“Is that your way of saying that the government isn’t doing anything about them at the moment?” Lark asked.
Meg gave her daughter a look but didn’t tell her to behave, probably because Lark had a point.
“At the moment we aren’t doing anything. You are right,” said Mr. Nutcracker. “But we were doing plenty of hunting before there was a murder here, and I hope we get back to that. We’ve already found several members of the organization, and I’m sure we’ll find more.”
“That’s something,” I said, “but it isn’t enough. As long as the head of the beast is still alive, there will be an organization and Cookie will be in danger.”
“We’re just going to have to be ready,” said Cam. “With such an incredible investigator on the property, I’m sure we’ll be fine. And Jane is here too,” he added with a smirk.
I rolled my eyes.
For today, at least, Cookie was safe.
Chapter Thirty-One
Everything went back to normal after that.
Sort of.
The only trouble was, what’s normal when you live at a living, breathing haunted house?
The days had grown cold, and I was feeling the chill. I found myself wearing fleeces in the house most days. Sometimes the fires would be stoked and sometimes they wouldn’t, so I took it upon myself to make that my job. Well, my second job, on top of acting as a liaison between the criminal underworld and the haunted house.
One of my main goals was to develop a routine in my supernatural management job. It turned out that it made a lot of sense for me to meet with Jefferson Judge on a weekly basis. We did this through the storm door, because that way I didn’t have to make my way through the maze that was Down Below. I also planned to have informal meetings with the Fudge from time to time, but he wasn’t that eager to talk to me. He thought it would destroy his credibility with the thieves.
Jefferson Judge’s main concern was also not something we could discuss in the open. He was very worried about the Root of All Evil.
During our first meeting in the space he called his office, which was also where he slept on a cot in the corner, he said, “I thought we had a monopoly on supernatural criminality.” He was bemoaning the rise of Mirrorz’s organization.
“What exactly worries you?” I asked.
“Everything. I wouldn’t say that our relationship with the Garbo family is perfect, but it’s far from terrible. All of that could be thrown into question if the Root of All Evil becomes any stronger. What exactly are you doing to stop it?” he asked.
“We’ve been chasing them up and down the coast for weeks. My entire family was away on that quest when this whole thing with the delivery service started,” I explained.
“That’s all well and good, but what are you doing to undercut their recruitment?” he asked.
I was surprised. That sort of thing hadn’t even occurred to me. “What do you mean?”
He shrugged. “They’re getting new members somehow, aren’t they? Where are they getting them? The majority are vampires, but some aren’t. You know the endgame, but do you know how they intend to get there?”
As a matter of fact, I didn’t, and I was embarrassed to say that I hadn’t thought about it at all. We had been so busy playing defense that we weren’t thinking about offense, to use a sports analogy.
Okay, I had never played sports. Maybe that was why I didn’t usually think in those terms.
I was starting to appreciate how much I could learn from Jefferson Judge.
“I promise I’ll think about it and get back to you. Is there anything else I can do for you?” I said.
“You want to hear about the judgment on Sharon’s fate?” he asked.
I shook my head. I most certainly did not. “Has it been taken care of?”
“Yes, Down Below has rules about what happens if you break rules. The judgment has been passed down. I do believe that if you knew what it was, you would find it fair.”
I sighed. Maybe he was right and maybe he wasn’t. It all depended on whether the Fudge had been in charge of the ruling.
“Can you tell me a little bit more about how everything works Down Below?” If I was going to be a liaison, I’d need to get my bearings, and quickly.
“I suppose I can. For the most part it doesn’t work. Criminals do what
they want. Groups are usually made up according to what criminal activity the members specialize in, and nothing else. It isn’t as if the skeletons are against the vampires. The ghosts don’t reign supreme. The Fudge is really the only constant. But we do we have a very low turnover rate. Once you move Down Below, you don’t want to leave. Somehow the supernaturals are happy here.”
“What’s not to like?” I said. It was a rhetorical question, and Judge didn’t bother to answer it. But he did have one more thing on his mind.
“There is a personal matter I’d like to discuss with you before you go.”
“What’s that?”
I wasn’t sure what he meant by a personal matter, or whether it was my responsibility to discuss such things with him. I held my breath and hoped he wouldn’t ask anything too difficult when I was just getting started.
“It’s about my brother. Edmund wanted me here years ago, and I came. Little did I know how much I’d end up liking it. Little did we know how long he would live. He’s over there at the manor living with vampires.”
Jefferson Judge was giving me a very strange look as he said it. I frowned, trying to understand what he was implying. Then it dawned on me.
“Are you worried that they’re members of the Root of All Evil?”
“I’m not worried about that yet, but I do feel that the situation could be heading in that direction. It really depends on how wide a net the Root of All Evil casts. It makes me worry about Edmund. He’s old.”
“What did you want from me?”
“What I want from you is simple. I want you to keep an eye on him. When you go into town, I was wondering if you could stop by and check in to see how he’s doing. He might grumble about it, but I think he’d really appreciate the visits. Your cousins are pleasant to be around too, so maybe they could go along sometimes. I just want to make sure the vampires don’t get any bright ideas.”
“Some of my cousins are great and some are less so,” I told him, with Lizzie topmost in my mind.
Judge didn’t know what I was talking about, so he frowned a bit. I gave him an awkward smile but didn’t think it was worth trying to explain Lizzie to him.
“Why did you become so suspicious of Evangeline’s place?” he asked me.
“Because of the flickering lights,” I said.
“Ah, that. I knew that would get me into trouble,” he said. “It was just that I could never decide if I wanted them on or off, if I wanted to go to sleep or stay awake.”
“They just tipped me off that something else might be going on there besides Evangeline’s normal routine,” I said.
Judge shook his head. “I was always better at sentencing criminals than at evading detection.”
“One more thing,” I said, a bit apologetically. When he nodded I asked, “Why do you and your brother have different last names?”
“Ah, yes. I was wondering when you’d ask about that. As a judge I was respected and feared. There were times when it would have made sense for someone to come after my family. Even as a warlock I didn’t want that for my brother, and he very kindly agreed to change his name,” said Judge.
I nodded. That was simple enough.
“Well, if there’s nothing else, I should probably get going. Until next week?” I said.
Jefferson Judge stood up with me. He was a tall man. “I’m glad this liaison position has been filled again. It is long overdue. I’m also glad you’re the one who filled it. I’ve heard nothing but good things about your work around Haunted Bluff Mansion.”
I raised my eyebrows. Then I realized he had probably just been talking to Peter. The skeleton would say good things about a rock if it would get him what he wanted.
Epilogue
That night I heard from Cookie that I was about to have a visitor. When I looked out toward the front lawn, I was surprised.
My guest was Orwell. Shockingly enough, the prospect of speaking with a giant spider was terrifying, but I took a deep breath and tried to suck it up. If he had been brave enough to risk coming here, I could certainly be brave enough to meet with him.
The gargoyles weren’t thrilled about his presence, but he promised to wait for me where they could see him and plopped himself down behind the biggest gravestone. From there, if a car were to drive into the driveway, he would almost look like a shadow until the car got very near.
“Hi, Orwell,” I said, walking toward him. There was a crunch of frozen grass under my feet, a sure sign of the colder weather to come.
Down the side road I could see a bit of light shining, and I wondered if Grant was at home. If he was, I intended to pay him a visit. We still had never talked about our date, among other things.
But I had a giant spider to deal with first.
“Thanks for coming to talk to me, Jane. I know you have a lot going on right now,” said Orwell, not meeting my eyes.
Despite the general creepiness of spiders, this specimen had big doe eyes. There was something kind about him, at least from a distance.
“No problem. What is it you wanted to talk to me about?” I said.
“I just want to apologize about everything. I had no idea Horace was involved in criminal activity. He put you at risk, and that’s unforgivable.” He hung his head. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right,” I said. “When the spiders were chasing me I was terrified, but in hindsight they were just trying to protect you.”
“It’s stupid. I don’t need protecting. They’ve never wanted to protect me before. I’m the runt of the family. My dad didn’t care when I joined the delivery service, and that has me meeting all kinds of people,” he said. “It’s a nice change from the usual.”
“Your dad doesn’t care about what you do?” I said.
“He does more now. He’s realized that there’s something to it. He was impressed when he heard I came to Haunted Bluff on a regular basis to deliver wine,” said Orwell.
“How regular is that basis?” I said.
Orwell shrank away. “I don’t want to make Cookie mad.”
At least he was honest.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me,” I said.
He relaxed again. “I’m sad about Blu, though. It’s good that Horace didn’t have anything to do that with. I know he never would. Horticulture either.”
I decided not to mention the part where Blu had been hired to kill Cookie.
“What’s going to happen to the delivery company without Horticulture?” I said.
“He’s asked me to take care of it for now. I told him I’d be honored,” he said.
“You’re going to be running a company,” I said. “That’s impressive.”
“Even my dad was impressed,” he agreed.
Spiders couldn’t smile, but somehow Orwell was.
After I said goodbye to the spider, I headed toward Grant’s cottage. We hadn’t had a chance to talk since Sharon had been caught. Plus, Mr. Nutcracker had said a number of interesting things in our meeting, and I wanted to talk to Grant about them. Above all, if I were being truthful, it had been too long since I’d seen his dreamy blue eyes.
Walking past Evangeline’s cottage on the way to Grant’s, I saw the window curtains flutter. A moment later her front door opened.
She stood on the threshold in a cozy-looking robe thrown over her silk PJs.
“Jane, you’ve been passing by here a lot recently. Do you have a minute?” she asked.
I tried not to blush and told her that I did.
She ushered me inside, but didn’t ask me to sit down.
“I’m sure you have somewhere to be, so I won’t keep you. I just thought we could speak out of the cold,” she explained.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
Evangeline sighed. “I miss having Jefferson here. We had nice long chats in the evenings. He was good company. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed living alone for years, but it was nice to have a friend stay for a few days. Even if it was a life or death matter,” she e
xplained.
“I’m just glad you’re fine,” I said. “You weren’t home when Sharon came?”
“No, I was at my weekly bridge game. I had a bad feeling when I left, though. I just knew Jefferson was in trouble, and it turned out that I was right. I’m sorry for lying to everyone. We had met years ago when he was working as a judge. I used to cut his hair. It was an incredible coincidence that he ended up living Down Below. It wasn’t until later that I found out he was Edmund’s brother.”
“Had you met Edmund in real life?”
“No, Jefferson and I weren’t that close. He would just come in for haircuts and we’d chat about whatever was going on that week. It was never anything very exciting.”
“So, when he needed a place to hide, he came to you.”
“It was the obvious choice. Down Below hasn’t had good relations with the haunted house for years. He didn’t know whom to trust there. He knew Fudgy would be out to kill him, so he didn’t have many options. I asked him why he didn’t just chuck the crown into the ocean. He said it wasn’t his to get rid of.” She smiled. “Anyway, I wanted to apologize to you. Next time I see Cookie I’ll try to apologize to her as well. I expect she’ll just throw something at my head for my trouble.” She smiled wanly.
After that I didn’t linger long. I wanted to get to Grant’s, and Evangeline said she had sewing to do.
A cold breeze rustled my hair. I zipped my burgundy coat up to my chin and squinted my eyes against the cold daytime sun. It was a beautiful day to have solved a difficult mystery.
As I left I came up with the answer to something that had puzzled me for a while.
The note I had received saying that “the old woman knows where he is” must have meant Evangeline Scott, and not Cookie. I resolved not to say anything else about the note for now, but there would come a time when I would.
Glancing back toward the mansion as I headed toward Grant’s at last, I saw Lizzie down on her knees in her expensive leather pants. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but it looked like she was begging Cookie for something.
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