by Tess Lake
“Oh, so you didn’t visit a certain lawman recently? I guess it wasn’t you who stole a bunch of my tracking crystals?” she said, smirking sideways at me.
I shook my head, feeling sweat dripping off my nose.
“Didn’t steal crystals,” I said, feeling fire burning in my lungs.
“Oh no, I guess you didn’t, just like when the three of you were teenagers, you didn’t steal my wine. I must be mistaken. Have you looked into Harold Jackson yet?”
Harold Jackson was the man who had died at the beginning of the week, apparently scared to death, according to Aunt Cass, and was now the subject of a murder investigation, according to Sheriff Hardy. I hadn’t done any investigation into him at all. I was trying to stay focused. Luce was figuring out a party that we could sneak into, and perhaps we’d be able to track down who had stolen the coffee machine, but that was as far as I was willing to take it right now. As far as I was concerned, Sheriff Hardy could arrest the teenagers breaking into homes, and if Aunt Cass wanted to be secretive all the time, she could be secretive about this too and keep me out of it.
“What’s with the hidden lair downstairs?” I managed to get out.
“Come on, guys, it’s not that much further,” Kaylee called out from far ahead of us.
“It’s none of your business,” Aunt Cass said, the smirk dropping away from her face.
“Maybe you should tell me so I can help you,” I said back to her.
“Investigate Harold Jackson, and then I’d take a look at those deaths forty years ago,” Aunt Cass said before increasing speed and running away from me up the beach. The rest of the exercise session went fairly quickly. I plodded my way up to the pier, turned around and then plodded all the way back. Aunt Cass demanded to be dropped off in town, which I was happy to do, and then, despite the fact that I was sweaty and smelly and desperately in need of a shower before I went to work at the library, I drove to my office instead and went inside. I kept telling myself I wouldn’t get involved, but my journalistic curiosity was still alive and well.
When I opened the front door to the building, Jonas was standing near his office and nearly jumped out of his skin in fright. It looked like the poor guy hadn’t been sleeping. His stubble was growing out and he had bags under his eyes. He was looking around like he was a wanted fugitive.
“Oh, Harlow, it’s just you,” he said and let out a sigh of relief.
“Still having girl trouble?” I asked.
Not too long ago, Jonas had ended up in the hospital when he’d gotten tangled up in a fight between two girls. He’d been hit with a full glass dish of brownies, which had knocked him out cold. I think since then he’d been trying to put out the word that he wasn’t particularly desperate to find a girlfriend. But the women of Harlot Bay weren’t having any of it. He was an eligible bachelor and the rumor had spread that he was looking for a wife.
“I need to find myself a girlfriend before someone kills me,” Jonas said and rubbed his eyes. “Do you know anyone?” he asked me.
I was about to say no out of habit, but then I remembered my friend Peta, who was returning to town just before Christmas. She was single and gorgeous and coming back to live in Harlot Bay. Jonas must have seen the look on my face, because he grabbed me by the arms like a desperate man.
“You know someone, don’t you? Please, you have to help me,” he said.
“I do know someone, but she won’t be here until next week. If you want to meet her, come to our Christmas Day dinner,” I said.
“I don’t know if I’m gonna make it another week, Harlow, but I’ll try,” Jonas said and then took himself off to his office. When he closed the door, I heard a number of locks latching into place. I smiled to myself and headed upstairs, where I found John Smith sitting on the sofa, watching the television at a very low volume. As usual, it was set on the home shopping channel, and this time it was some sort of microwave egg-cooking device. The food that was coming out of it looked absolutely disgusting.
“Hey, John,” I said and sat down to turn on my computer.
“Microwaved eggs. I couldn’t think of anything more revolting,” John said.
“What about a chicken smoothie?” I asked.
“Yuck! Do people really drink that now?” John asked.
“Nah, I’m pulling your leg.”
John continued to watch television. I headed onto the Internet and read through the three articles that Sheriff Hardy had given me again. In the first one, a man who’d had a heart attack after being surprised by burglars had died. His name had been Henry Jackson.
No wonder Aunt Cass was interested in this. There was definitely something weird going on. The old man who died a few days ago, apparently scared to death, had been Harold Jackson. Were they related? I quickly searched around for any link between Henry Jackson and Harold Jackson, but I couldn’t find any information connecting the two.
I moved on to the second article, in which a man by the name of Reginald Layton had been hung by the neck until he was dead. Police had suspected that someone had actually hung him deliberately. If there was some kind of weird family or name connection, that would mean that perhaps, if someone was going to be hung to death now, their last name might be Layton too. I did a quick bit of searching and found there were a few Laytons in Harlot Bay.
I went on to the third article. Three teenagers, two boys and a girl, had died in a house fire, and the police said that there had been a string of thefts around town and some of the stolen goods had been recovered after the house had been burned to the ground. Their names were Benjamin Abbott, George Moloney, and Marla Stone.
I started searching for information on all three of the deceased and came up with a few bits and pieces. It seemed the archive that Ollie was updating was available to everyone on the Internet, and old newspapers and articles were being added all the time. I found that one of the boys was on a rowing team, but it wasn’t until I searched for the two boys together that I hit the jackpot.
The holy-moly-I-can’t-believe-it-this-cannot-be-true jackpot. The Internet dredged up an article from the archives talking about a trio of rowers who were going to the State Finals. It brought forth a photograph that was old but as clear as a bell. In it, one of the boys had his arm around the girl who had died in the fire, but then over to the other side was another boy named Arnold Harrison. He had his arm around a girl was well. That girl was Mom. Young Mom. She was a teenager, slender and small, beaming a toothy smile. I sank back in my chair as the shock washed over me. Mom had known the teenagers who died? Had she been friends with them?
“Oh, now they’re selling something that microwaves meat, disgusting,” John muttered to himself.
Chapter 10
It was another day before I could get Mom by herself. It was Friday morning and Aunt Freya and Aunt Ro were out doing deliveries around town. Aunt Cass had gone into Harlot Bay to work on her chili sauce business (as far as we were aware), and today Molly and Luce were working for her. Thus far, Luce hadn’t tracked down the location of the latest teenage party, but she said she’d be talking to Kira later. Whether we found the explicit location or not, we were going to be going out to Truer Island tonight no matter what. If it came to it, we’d find some teenagers and follow them. Today, apart from seeing if I could get any information out of Mom, I was going to go to work at the library, where I figured I could put Ollie on the case of digging up more information on the three teenagers who’d died.
As I was eating breakfast, Adams jumped up on the table and dropped a very sorry-looking brown toy mouse beside my plate.
“This is Sanchez. His twin brother has gone missing,” he said mournfully.
I pushed Sanchez away from my plate, and despite the fact that Adams was acting sad, he followed the movement of my hand quite closely, waiting to see whether I would fling Sanchez across the room.
“Someone stole another one of your toys?” I asked.
“Stole another one of my friends, you mean,” Adams corrected me. “Whe
n are you going to be buying me a security camera?”
“Well, about that… with all the witchy stuff that goes on around here, including you having conversations with us, I’m not really sure if putting up a security camera is a good idea.”
“If you told sawdust man that you were a witch, then could we do it? Should I tell him?”
I felt a jolt of panic at the idea. Jack had come over to the house plenty of times, but on all of those occasions Adams had acted like a standard house cat and hadn’t said a word to anyone. Imagine what Jack would do if Adams waltzed up to him and said good morning!
“No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I don’t want you to do that. Look, I’ll find a security camera I can borrow and put it up for a few days to see if we can catch anyone stealing your toys.”
“Or my cheese, or my tuna.”
“Or your cheese, or your tuna, but then we have to take it down, and then we have to destroy any footage that shows anything witchy going on, okay?”
Adams put his paw out and I shook it. The deal was sealed.
I finished my breakfast and then, as soon as I saw Aunt Ro and Aunt Freya drive away from the house to start their deliveries for the morning, I rushed down to the main part of the mansion. There were only two guests in tonight and they’d be leaving this morning. Another couple doing their retirement tour around America. I got to the main part of the house and found them sitting in the dining room, eating the sumptuous breakfast that Mom had made.
As I came in, Mom walked back into the dining room carrying a pot of hot coffee.
“Ah, Harlow, you’re here, good. This is my daughter Harlow. Harlow, this is the Nortons, Ted and Eliza,” Mom introduced us.
Ted was a round ball of a man who had long ago lost all of his hair and was dressed in a ridiculous riot of color, wearing a bright Hawaiian shirt for some reason, even though it was quite cold outside. Eliza was wrapped in a shawl although the room was warm, and it appeared that she had just come in from a freezing storm. Ted mumbled hello through a mouthful of bacon, and Eliza smiled and greeted me.
“Good morning, everyone! Mom, can I talk to you in the kitchen for a minute?” I said. I walked into the kitchen and Mom joined me a moment later.
“You could have taken a moment to talk to them. I’m trying to make this a lovely, warm environment,” Mom told me.
She poured me a cup of coffee and then made one for herself. I’d had a cup of instant coffee already, but there was no way I was going to turn this one down. Despite flirting with the edges of poverty, the moms had splashed out and bought some good beans and were hand-grinding them to make delicious coffee for the guests. I sipped it and felt the warmth plume down into my stomach and spread through my body.
“Oh, that’s good,” I murmured.
That warm, relaxed feeling evaporated half a second later when Mom fixed me with a look and said, “You’ve come here to ask me about Arnie, haven’t you?”
I nearly spurted my delicious coffee but managed to hold it back.
“How did you know that?” I croaked.
“I know lots of things,” Mom said, for a moment looking eerily like Aunt Cass, who frequently said such things. “You want to know about my old boyfriend and why he was friends with those teenagers who died in that fire, right?”
I was still somewhat taken aback and fumbling to grab hold of the situation, so I just nodded.
“Sorry to disappoint you, but the story is very boring. I had a boyfriend, Arnie was his name, and then we broke up. A couple months after that, those three teenagers were caught in a house fire and they died. End of story.”
“No, really, how did you know I was going ask you that?” I said, still trying to get my bearings. Mom finished her coffee, moved over to the pantry and started pulling out bags of flour.
She started talking as though I hadn’t asked her any question at all.
“I know you’re investigating things, Harlow, and I seem to recall you made a promise to me not to get involved in anything dangerous, or have you forgotten?” she said. She dropped a bag of self-rising flour on the counter with a thud and gave me a very severe look. Was she… angry?
It was true. I had promised her not to get involved in anything dangerous, but that was only after her badgering me for days, and it was clear that Aunt Freya and Aunt Ro had done the same to Molly and Luce. I was still holding the position that if you were forced to make a promise, you couldn’t really be held to it, even if I felt a little bad about breaking my word. Besides, I thought, apart from sneaking into that old man’s house where those teenagers were, I hadn’t really done anything that dangerous.
I remembered Luce nearly falling through the floor of the mansion and quickly pushed it out of my mind.
“I did make that promise, and I haven’t done anything dangerous,” I said, smoothing over what I had actually done. “I am still a journalist, though, and all these thefts across town are worth reporting on,” I said.
“Oh, please, Harlow. You’ve barely worked on your newspaper at all,” Mom snapped.
The sting I felt was sharp and immediate, and I felt tears prickle in my eyes. Mom could snap sometimes, but usually it was momentary, and I always knew that underneath it she loved me deeply. But this felt different. She was angry, maybe angrier than I’d ever seen her, and was barely holding it back. Then I saw her glance at me and I realized it wasn’t anger that was driving her, but fear. Mom was terrified.
Mom pulled another bag of flour out of the cupboard and dropped it on the counter before coming over to give me a quick hug. I relaxed into it and then quickly wiped away the small tears before she could see them.
“You’re my only daughter, so please, please promise me you won’t do anything dangerous,” Mom said.
What could I do? She was holding my hand and peering into my eyes and, yes, even trembling a little bit.
“I promise,” I whispered.
Mom bustled me out of there after that—she still had the rest of breakfast to finish for the guests, and she reminded me that I was going to be late if I didn’t get going. By the time I got back to our end of the mansion, my worry about Mom had started to fade a little and I was wondering if I had been rolled by a very sneaky poker player. This was the problem with having devious moms who loved to meddle: they would definitely put on the sobbing, scared, broken mother act if it meant they could get what they wanted.
I collected my stuff for the day and drove to work at the library.
As usual, Ollie was there already, covered head to toe with dust and cobwebs.
“Harlow, I found some prison records!” Ollie said by way of greeting.
I say this as a girl who is absolutely in love with her own adorable boyfriend, but I could really see what Molly loved about Ollie. He was about as big a nerd as you could ever imagine, but he was so in love with the things that he did that it made you love him too. A stack of old historical documents was like catnip to him, and you’d see the joy radiating from him as he went through them.
“Is Hattie’s old relative in there?” I joked.
“No, she’s not,” Hattie said from behind me.
I whirled around, feeling a cold shock of adrenaline rush through me. Hattie must have followed me in without my noticing, or maybe she’d been waiting in the corner with a concealment spell over her.
“Hattie!” I blurted out.
She looked past me and then narrowed her eyes at Ollie.
“Here, I found this,” she said and then held out an old leather-bound journal.
Ollie rushed past me and then must have remembered that it appeared Hattie didn’t like him, so he managed to slow down at the last moment and then very nonchalantly take the journal as though he didn’t care too much about it.
“What is this?” he asked, even as he opened it.
“It is Juliet Stern’s journal of her time in Harlot Bay,” Hattie said.
I looked down at the pages, which were filled with a looping, stretched-out script that was
beautiful and near unreadable. I could make out a few words such as “at work in the bar,” and then there was some entry about the local priest’s son. Without really intending to, I reached out and touched the journal. At first I felt nothing, but then I caught the faint hum of magic.
I took my hand off it when I realized that Ollie was looking at me sideways, wondering what I was doing touching the journal.
“Well, I’m sure Ollie will read it, and if he finds anything interesting, he’ll update his website,” I said to Hattie.
“Oh, yeah, sure,” said Ollie, who had immediately gone back to reading the journal.
“I certainly hope so,” Hattie said and then marched out the door.
“I’ll be right back,” I told Ollie and followed her. I caught up with her outside—wow, she moved fast.
“Hattie! Why you bothering with this?” I called out.
She turned around, and I was expecting that same Hattie Stern expression that I’d seen a million times: somewhat disappointed, looking down upon you as though you weren’t really good enough to be talking to her and were a disgrace to every witch that had ever lived. To my surprise, she looked sad, heartbroken almost.
“What I said was true, Harlow. There were plenty of people who turned against Juliet, and so they tried to smear her name.”
“Hattie, I saw the Merchant Arms when I slipped a while back. I could see the past, and I walked around a corner and there it was, and I saw Juliet out in front of it, and I can tell you it was no simple drinking establishment,” I said.
I don’t really know what had come over me. Perhaps I was feeling that there was no point in telling lies to make people feel better. It was the way to behave with ghosts as well. Some of them were delusional, not really willing to accept that they were dead and disconnected from this world, and if you kept skirting around it, they would never accept the reality and move on. I realized that Hattie had been acting like this as well. She’d been petitioning for years to change the name of the town, and now I understood it was because of the connection to her ancestor, and that for some reason this was deeply embarrassing for her. But as they say, the truth will set you free. And surely a set-free Hattie would probably stop trying to change the town’s name every opportunity she got.