“I’m a cat. Besides, they make a mess and throw things and neither of them ever even lived on that property,” said Paws. “You might be on the wrong side of this one, Missy Miss Witch.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Even if Morris and Morton don’t properly appreciate the barn, I do.”
Since the road was empty of other cars, I put my lights on high. I nearly slammed on my brakes at one point when Paws, looking out his side window, said, “Oh, there’s a deer!”
I saw two graceful brown deer out of the corner of my eye as we sped past a large field, but luckily they stayed back near the trees and didn’t run into the road. The deer around here weren’t fazed by cars or loud noises, unless the noises got close.
I had a stop to make before we headed to the cemetery, and Paws was appalled when he heard what it was for. “You’re going to check on a cat?” he said scornfully.
“How can you possibly be upset about that?” I said. “At least it isn’t a dog.”
“You have a cat right here! That’s essentially like saying my standards could be even lower, so I might as well be grateful.”
“Dramatic dead beast,” I muttered.
“Drama queen,” said Paws.
We reached Mrs. Mews’ place, and I went inside to check on Lily. The cat wasn’t as happy to see me as last time, and when I fed her she didn’t rush right to her food. Odd, I thought. After staying for a few minutes and taking a picture of the cat to send to Mrs. Mews, so she’d know her baby was still alive, I headed back out to the car.
Downtown Mintwood was brightly lit, with fairy lights on the trees and shop windows all blazing.
“They’re afraid of the robbers,” I said. “I wonder if the two mysteries are connected.”
“What two?” said Paws, peering longingly at the bake shop window.
“The missing Pier Pearl and the string of local robberies that has Liam all upset,” I said.
“I doubt it,” said Paws. “I have a feeling the downtown robberies aren’t anywhere near so complicated. You forgot to mention Gracie.”
I glanced sideways at the cat. “You’re doing that thing again.”
“What thing?” he said innocently, twitching his nose.
“The thing where you look innocent but you SO aren’t innocent. What do you know that I don’t?” Having a blasted cat for a detective sidekick had better start having some benefits, I told myself grumpily.
We turned off the main street onto Pleasant Avenue, which was narrower but still paved and well kept.
“I know nothing,” said Paws.
“Ain’t that the truth,” I said.
“No need to be rude,” sniffed Paws.
I turned the car onto a poorly lit road called Temple Street, which was even narrower, and less well kept, than Pleasant, with tufts of grass starting to come through the cracking pavement.
I slowed down to look for the turn off of Temple Street onto the unpaved cemetery road. The grounds of the Mintwood Cemetery were small, since usually only locals were buried here. It was so informal that there wasn’t even a chain to close off the drive. I left my car by the side of the road and got out, Paws following. The nearest streetlamp was a good distance away.
“Good thing this isn’t creepy,” I muttered. “I could be home in my pajamas eating pizza and watching a romantic comedy right now, and instead I’m heading into the cemetery with a ghost cat.”
“Because that’s how you want your own life to turn out? Like some invented movie?” said Paws.
“Judgy,” I said. “And obviously.”
I had come to the cemetery a lot with my grandmother over the years to see all of the “special informants” for her “cases.”
Basically, my grandmother liked to gossip with ghosts.
“Can’t you just call them ghosts?” I’d asked her once. She had proceeded to look scandalized.
“They are so much more than that,” she said. “They help with cases!”
Mostly the ghosts themselves were the mysteries, but I didn’t want to ruin her dream.
“Where are we meeting this ‘I’m sure he’s totally trustworthy’ Hank character?” Paws asked.
“He said all the way in the back on the right,” I said.
“Because that’s not an ambush,” said Paws.
“We’ll be fine,” I said.
There were flowers on a few of the graves, and all the plots were well kept. The cemetery caretaker, Mr. Snicks, was dedicated to his job. He was also the dedicated partner of my protest buddy, Mrs. Snicks. Luckily, he liked to do his job during daylight hours, so it was unlikely he’d find me here now.
“Excuse me, what do you think you’re doing here?” An old-looking ghost dog plodded slowly out of the darkness. He looked like a bloodhound, and his ears and eyes drooped amazingly low.
“Move along, dog!” Paws cried, his fur standing on end. “We don’t have to explain ourselves to the likes of you.”
“Good evening and sorry to interrupt. My name’s Lemmi,” I said politely.
“Pleasure to meet you,” said the dog, then, turning to Paws, “Not you so much, though.”
Paws looked relieved and scandalized at the same time.
“I’m Funnel, named after how I used to run in the old days,” said the dog, sounding proud of how fast he used to be.
“Yeah, I’m sure you were a real rabble-rouser back in the day,” said Paws. Then he looked up at me and said, “Why are we wasting time with this fool?”
“Just because he’s a dog doesn’t mean he’s foolish,” I said. “Foolish would be judging before you really knew someone.”
“Somewhere I hear music playing,” Paws said, pretending to look around.
“I hate the dark,” said Funnel. “Would you mind if I walked with you to your destination?”
“You’re a ghost,” I said, frowning. Who ever heard of a ghost being afraid of the dark?
“So? Am I supposed to change who I am just because I’m dead? I hated the dark in life and I hate the dark now,” said the ghost dog. “I feel judged.”
“I judged Lemmi a little while ago for wanting to end up like a romantic comedy,” said Paws. “Then I judged her three more times without telling her.”
“A noble pursuit,” said Funnel.
“Who asked you, anyway,” said Paws, stalking off. “Dogs.”
“Don’t mind him,” I said to the bigger animal. “He’s a cat.”
I shone my light in front of Funnel so he’d be less scared, and the three of us continued on, Paws making a show of his reluctance but following along just the same.
“May I guide you in any particular direction?” Funnel asked. When I told him what we were there for, he didn’t sound surprised. “It’s been a long time since Evenlyn visited. The new Witch of Mintwood was bound to show up sooner or later. You are pleasant.”
We waited by the gravesite in the furthest right-hand corner. The stone was so worn I couldn’t read the name on it, and there were no flowers. It made me sad, so I made up my mind to come back and trim the weeds and plant some flowers when I got a chance. Mr. Snicks did a great job, but he couldn’t clear up everything at once. He’d need magic for that. Ha ha.
“Good evening, this is more of a crowd than I was expecting,” Hank said, appearing from behind me.
I yelped. For a ghost, he looked tired. Paws gave me a look that said very clearly, Get it together.
“Hi,” I said. “I brought my cat, Paws. This is Hank. I assume you know Funnel?”
The dog sat down, then slowly sank to the ground, looking as if he was making himself comfortable for a long session. “What? I like the light,” he said in response to my look.
“I don’t like cats,” said Hank. “I’m Hank.”
“No pleasure here, either,” said Paws. “I’m just along for the ride. No one here seems to like cats. You’re all entitled to your poor taste.”
“He’s my sidekick,” I said, feeling like I had to explain myself.
“The Witches have sunk low,” said Hank dismally. “Gracie will never be found.”
“Hey, I’ll find Gracie! And I’ll thank you not to insult my cat. He may be annoying, but he’s still mine. Anyhow, who did you bring me all the way out here to meet?” I said.
“Me.”
A man came around from where he’d been hiding behind Hank. He wore a fancy coat and tie and he used a cane. “I’m Mr. Arthur McCoy.”
Chapter Fifteen
Stunned, I said, “Wow, nice to meet you, Mr. McCoy.”
When meeting a ghost one can’t shake hands, as my grandmother used to explain, so instead you must give a slight bow. Never to animals, they’ll just laugh at you behind your back and then to your face, but always to other humans. They will bow in return, and then you have politely greeted each other.
“I’m sorry about . . . what happened to you,” I said.
“So you know,” said Mr. McCoy, clearing his throat nervously. He looked to be in his sixties, with broad shoulders and a sizable dent in the side of his graying head, which I figured must be from the fall he’d sustained after he was shot. “That’s good. Don’t have to waste time on the explanation. I hate explaining. I was murdered. I hate that someone got the jump on me.”
“Right, I know,” I said. “It was all over the papers. You were murdered to get the Pier Pearl.”
“Ah, that’s where you’re wrong,” he said. “I wasn’t murdered to get the Pier Pearl. The Pier Pearl was stolen to cover my murder.”
Stunned, I stood there gaping at him. The niggling feeling that something wasn’t right about the articles I had read now made perfect sense. I felt like I’d been standing on the deck of a ship, balancing but only barely, and then the mast had swung down and clobbered me on the head, knocking away all my senses.
Now that he’d said it, a brick had fallen into place.
“You were the target?” I whispered.
“Damn skippy,” he said. “No idea why, though.”
“Did you see who the murderer was?” I said, thinking that maybe all this time he’d been waiting to tell someone who had killed him.
The old man shook his head. “He wore a black mask. Big guy, though, lumbering, no nonsense. I guess I’d say that, though, since he wasted no time killing me. Didn’t even ask me about the pearl, just walked in with a gun, asked me my name, appeared satisfied when he heard it, and boom. He shot me and I fell.” He pointed first to a flap covering his chest, then at the injury to his head.
“Did you know about the pearl?” I asked.
“No, that’s the darnedest thing. The Coswells never said a word to me about any pearl. They just had me over for dinner about once a month. We always had a lovely time, and that night I just happened to be alone in the drawing room when the man in the mask came in.”
Drawing room is a fancy term for a place to sit, I thought.
“Why do you think the intruder was after you and not really the pearl?” Might as well be direct about it.
“At the time I didn’t think much about it, obviously,” McCoy said, scratching his head but being careful to avoid the wound. “I was too busy figuring out what being a ghost was all about. I’ve had piles of time to think since then, though. If he hadn’t returned the pearl I might have thought it was about the money, because it’s a lot of money, but then the pearl got returned and I started to wonder, why elevate a simple robbery to murder, and then return the stolen goods? That’s awful foolish, so then I got to thinking it might be more about me and less about the pearl.”
“But now the pearl’s gone again,” I said.
“Right, can’t for the life of me understand that one,” he said, shaking his head. “Poor Gracie gone with it.”
Gracie was about as poor as the government of a small country, but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by arguing. He was already dead, after all.
In the silent night of the graveyard, I suddenly heard the toot toot of a horn that made the hair on my arms stand on end.
“Why do you think you were targeted?” I said.
He shook his head. “I have no idea. I wasn’t an interesting character in real life, that’s what my wife always told me. I worked in administration at a local college. I can’t think of any reason why someone would want to off me, but after thinking about it, I know I was the target that night.”
This was only getting more complicated, not less, as we went along.
“I should go,” I said. “Thanks so much for coming to talk to me . . . I’m very sorry about what happened to you. I’ll do my best to get to the bottom of it.”
“Just find that girl, Gracie,” he said. “She didn’t do anything wrong.”
Maybe she did and maybe she didn’t. Either way she was missing. They wouldn’t be able to keep her disappearance out of the Gazette much longer. Tomorrow there’d be a full above-the-fold feature on her disappearance, written by none other than my dear roommate Charlie.
Funnel was looking at Paws as if he was trying to work out something complicated, but the cat just glared back.
“Paws . . . has flaws . . . I like rhymes,” said the old dog. “It’s how I best understand people, and you.”
The cat immediately took offense, because dog. “Wow, that’s a good one, rhyming and everything. Where did you go to rhyming school? That was really well done.” Paws coughed up a fur ball.
“Okay, we should go,” I said.
Before I left I told Funnel and Mr. McCoy that it had been nice to meet them, while Paws chastised me for lying.
“I’m not lying,” I said. “He’s a nice pup.”
“There’s no such thing,” said Paws, hopping into my car.
As we drove away I glanced over my shoulder, but the other vehicle I’d heard coming was nowhere to be seen. Still feeling massively creeped out, I hurried away from the cemetery as fast as I could.
“We’re going to the Babbling Brook Barn now,” I said, my hands gripping the wheel tightly. I kept checking the rearview mirror, but there was nothing but inky night behind me. “I need to see how Morris and Morton are holding up.”
Paws sighed. “Do they have dogs?”
“I don’t think so. It’s just the two of them left,” I said. All the other ghosts had decided that hoping to keep the barn was futile, and they had all cleared out one after the other. But Morris and Morton were practical jokers, having died young in a car accident, and they’d once told me that they tried to take as little as possible seriously. That included the barn.
There was a slight niggling voice in the back of my mind that told me I should just let Jasper develop the place and be done with it. Morris and Morton had played there as kids, just as I had, but they didn’t really appreciate it like I did, and as everyone kept trying to tell me, the place was a deathtrap now. The beams sagged and the floor was rotting away. The barn badly needed repairs, and who was going to foot the bill for that?
But I loved the old place, and I just wasn’t ready to give up.
The barn looked dark and imposing against a night sky brilliantly lit with thick-strewn stars. The white walls stood out starkly in the half moonlight, and the gentle slope that led down to the glittering lake was shadowed by trees. The barn had two huge silos that stretched into the sky like massive barrels painted a bright and merry red, but the paint was chipping and faded and patches of the bare old wood were exposed. I remembered when the red of the silos flickered with perfect brightness, but no one had kept the place up since my childhood.
When I pulled onto the property, it occurred to me that maybe I should have told Greer where I was going, just in case. But I had Paws with me, surely I’d be fine. Right?
The barn door was slightly ajar and I slipped through it quickly, not wanting to be seen prowling about; Detective Cutter just wouldn’t understand. Paws was right behind me as we passed the long row of horse stalls and then an open area beneath the hay loft.
“Morris? Morton?” I called, stepping further into th
e building and feeling the chill.
The entire town of Mintwood was now sleeping; I hadn’t passed one car on my way here. I had only the starry sky and a grumpy ghost cat for company, and I was looking forward to seeing the two ghosts. They were easily amused and always happy to see me, unlike some of the other ghosts I knew, who hated the sight of the Witch of Mintwood. My grandmother had liked to meddle, after all. Now that I was in her position and investigating a disappearance, I was learning that meddling was the only way to get anything done.
Suddenly a white scarf appeared in front of me, waving madly.
“Morris! Morton! Stop playing around, I’m here to talk,” I hissed. Why I was whispering I had no idea; there was no one for miles. Then again, possibly that accounted for the chill going up and down my spine.
The white scarf kept waving, then it started backing away. Reluctantly, I followed.
Paws was nowhere to be seen. His love of sniffing out mice before doing anything practical was infuriating. Of course, he would say that he was doing something practical. If he were here he’d be able to see the other ghosts, but they’d chosen to turn off their sparkle and go dark on me, so I couldn’t see them. The barn’s shadows stretched overhead, wrapping my head and shoulders in darkness, the only light coming from the pale moon shining through the windows.
I called out to the ghosts again, but there was still no response. The white scarf was making its way up the ladder to the hayloft, shaking like crazy. Once it disappeared over the lip of the floor, and the ladder stopped shaking and wobbling, I grabbed hold of the wooden rungs and started to climb up myself.
“Come on, guys,” I called out to Morris and Morton. Nothing but silence answered me.
When I got to the loft I paused to look around. The loft smelled of hay, of course, and rafters leaned in, creating an inverted v-shaped ceiling. Pinned to the walls were what appeared to be a hundred or so scarves.
I had no idea what was going on.
“Very funny, Morton and Morris,” I said. “You all are such practical jokers.”
There was a scraping sound to my right and a banging sound to my left. Evidently, the two weren’t done with their amusement.
Witch Way to Mintwood (Witch of Mintwood Book 1) Page 11