Now Jasper look down and blushed a little. When he didn’t say anything my eyes widened.
“You had it in case I came by?”
“I knew you’d come by at some point,” he said, still not looking at me. “Anyway, I’m sorry about what happened,” he said. “My grandfather should never have approached you. Just because you had the misfortune to run into him doesn’t mean he gets to ruin your night or say mean things.”
“I don’t know why I’m so upset about it,” I said. “I guess . . . I always knew my grandmother didn’t want us to be friends, but I just . . . She would have loved you.”
DID I JUST SAY LOVE?
I dove back into his shoulder.
When he didn’t say anything, I finally looked up.
Jasper looked out the window for so long I was afraid he wasn’t going to say anything more. Maybe he was angry that I had brought this to him. Maybe he didn’t think it was his problem, or he didn’t want to hear anything against his grandfather. I couldn’t really blame him. Dylan Wolf had raised him, was his ultimate boss, and in general was the most important man in his life.
Then Jasper looked at me with such warm eyes I nearly started crying again.
“We’ll figure it out together,” he said. “Clearly I need to have another chat with my grandfather.”
“I’m sure he’ll love that,” I said.
“I don’t really care,” said Jasper. “He’s run a lot of my life. I want to help out with the family business. It makes me proud to be part of this Mintwood community. Still, his talking to you is over the line. I don’t care who he thinks you are or who he thought your grandmother was. I don’t care who you are or who your grandmother was. This is only for me to decide.”
I gave a watery laugh. I couldn’t have expected a better response if I had planned one in my head. “Okay, you talk to him.”
“In the meantime, I don’t want you to worry,” said Jasper.
“What, me worry? I would never.” I laughed again and Jasper smiled. I worried almost all the time, especially lately since the coven had come into my life and Ellie had tried to take over Mintwood, which was my town.
Ellie wasn’t finished, either. And if the coven didn’t end up helping me I really had no idea how I could stop her. Everything my grandmother had tried so hard for so long to protect could be lost.
All because of me.
Chapter Twelve
I stayed at Jasper’s a while longer; being with him was comforting beyond words.
When I finally decided to go home, mostly because Paws was having a hissy fit in view of the window and spoiling the view, Jasper offered to follow me. I told him that wasn’t necessary and said my goodbyes.
“That took forever,” said Paws as I emerged into the dark night.
“I didn’t realize we had a schedule,” I said. “Let’s just go home.”
“As I’ve been saying for the last half hour,” said Paws.
The farmhouse was dark and quiet when I arrived, but I didn’t mind. My friends had probably gone to sleep a long time ago.
The ghosts were around, but none of them did more than wave to acknowledge my arrival.
Without another thought I went upstairs, showered quickly, drew the curtains, climbed into my bed, and fell asleep.
When I finally woke up the next morning I could tell I’d slept in. The light was bright as it filtered through the curtains and I felt very well rested. When I saw that it was nearly nine o’clock I yelped. That was late even for me.
Charlie had left a note on the coffee pot saying she’d be by around lunchtime to pick me up. We would then go and fetch Hansen Gregory.
I wasn’t the least bit surprised that she was avoiding being alone with Hansen.
And if we were going at lunchtime, Greer might even be awake.
Usually I started the morning looking at the papers, but since it was so late I decided to go check on Cesar first. After I finished that duty I came home and had breakfast. The house was still quiet; Greer wouldn’t be up for at least a couple more hours. Charger was asleep in a patch of sunlight streaming through the kitchen window.
I took a look through the papers. The big topic of the day was of course what had happened at the library. No one could believe that a skeleton had been unearthed, or that it was of relatively recent vintage. One of the working theories was that it wasn’t a year old but instead a hundred years old. Maybe it was a prehistoric skeleton. You never knew.
I wondered when the woman would be identified to the public. Detective Cutter was probably trying to wait as long as he could, and I was sure Charlie was trying to wait until she could get an interview. She wanted quotes from the family. She also wanted to know what had happened to the skeleton.
My other mystery was Scarlett, but of course I wouldn’t find anything about that in the newspapers. Her grandmother had been careful not even to report her missing. As a witch, you don’t want that sort of attention.
Still, I went to the old bin by the door where we threw the daily papers until we took out the recycling. I leafed through to the day Scarlett had disappeared. I was curious to see whether anything had been said about Hazelwood.
Slowly, I flipped through the pages.
There were a couple of articles about Hazelwood, but there wasn’t much that was of interest. One article said there’d be a town parade in a couple weeks. Another said something about a mini-mudslide having occurred on the forest. Neither said anything about people.
Having witnessed a capable witch like Sicily performing magic, I was jealous. I decided to spend my free time that morning practicing spells until Charlie arrived.
I had set up a pretty good stash of my grandmother’s books in the living room, shelved in one of the cupboards. Having finished with the papers and cleaned up from breakfast, I went in there, pulled out Beginner Spells, and drew the curtains.
An hour later I had managed to turn the lampshade from green to mottled purple, to throw sparks into the air three times, and to light a candle on the mantle.
If only that had been intentional, and I had managed to, shock of all shocks, make the coat rack walk.
Well, it sort of hopped.
Once.
Then it collapsed.
I then spent twenty minutes trying to get it to rebuild itself. At least when I was finished it sort of worked as a coat rack again.
By the time Charlie arrived I was sitting on the porch with a magazine. I had made myself a sandwich and some tea for lunch and was enjoying the cloudy day as I waited for my friend. February in Maine was no fun, and I relished these summer days when it wasn’t the least bit cold outside. Any amount of time I spent thinking about February in July made it all the worse, so I tried not to think about it at all.
Greer had just finished showering. I had made her a sandwich too, and she grabbed it to go. She was just coming out onto the porch as it was time to leave.
“Hey,” I said to Charlie as I hurried to her Volvo with Greer right behind me.
“You’d better not be planning to eat that sandwich in my car,” said Charlie.
“Why not?” Greer asked.
“Crumbs,” said Charlie. “My car is always clean.”
“Your car is older than I am. It’s not always clean. A car that old can’t possibly be clean,” said Greer.
“Oh, but mine is,” said Charlie.
Greer looked at her sandwich sadly. “Okay, I’ll wait.”
Hansen Gregory’s office was in a cute house that had been turned into the headquarters of the Caedmon Chronicle.
Hansen was waiting outside when we arrived, and he climbed into the back seat with me.
“Afternoon,” he said.
“Did you already eat lunch?” Greer asked him.
“I did,” said Hansen, sounding a little confused.
“Good, because you aren’t allowed to eat it in here,” said Greer bitterly.
Hansen chuckled.
“I wasn’t expecting you to be w
aiting for us,” said Charlie, her fingers squeezing the steering wheel.
“I figured if I wasn’t, you might just drive by and leave me behind,” he said with a grin.
“I wouldn’t do that,” said Charlie.
“It would definitely depend on your mood whether you’d do that or not,” said Greer.
“Did you call them?” Charlie asked, ignoring Greer and looking at Hansen in the rearview mirror.
Hansen chuckled again. “Right down to business. I like it. Yes, I called them. They were more than happy to have us come by.”
“Call whom,” I asked.
“The Grays,” said Charlie and Hansen in unison.
“They know we’re coming?” Greer asked.
“Yes, we didn’t want to call on them unannounced. Turns out they’re more than happy to talk,” said Hansen.
“How was the rest of your dinner?” I asked.
At least one of us needed to make polite conversation, why not me? As usual, we couldn’t count on Charlie for that in relation to Hansen.
“It was great. Like I said, I love that place,” Hansen said. “Penny really liked it too. She wants to go back.”
“Yeah, we were hoping to as well,” said Greer.
It didn’t take us long to reach the Grays’ address, so we got no further with the restaurant and Penny topics.
“This is a nice house,” I said.
The house was tall and spacious. It didn’t look new, as many houses in Maine didn’t. It also looked like it was only lived in during the summer, as many houses in Maine were. It was painted a cheery yellow with dark green trim.
I wouldn’t have minded spending a weekend there.
“I never like those two colors together,” said Greer.
“There are a lot of cars here,” said Charlie.
“There’s a lot of family,” I said.
After this interview, we’d be dropping Hansen back at his office and then going to the bar, where we hoped to find Isabel and ask her more questions about what had happened the day she died. Charlie was especially looking forward to that interview, but we had to get this one over with first.
A man was walking toward our vehicle and we all got out to speak with him.
“Can I help you?” the man asked.
He was dressed for the city, in fancy shoes and a button down. He didn’t look dirty. There was something about people from the city; they never looked like they’d had any contact with dirt.
“Hi, I’m Hansen Gregory,” said the Caedmon Chronicle reporter, extending his hand and giving the suspicious man a very disarming smile.
The man instantly relaxed and said his name was Skip. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Charlie looking jealous.
After introductions were made the man said, “Yeah, I’m married to Isabel’s granddaughter, Margarita.”
“Is the rest of the family here?” Hansen asked.
“We’re all over the place,” said Skip, shrugging. When he realized we expected him to say more, he explained.
“A few people are in the house. In the summer, though, it’s hard to tell where people are. I was on the boat, but some of the others are hiking, and I think some have gone into town. Let’s go inside and I’ll introduce you to everyone who’s around.”
The first floor windows of the house were all thrown open, so a cool breeze aired the place out. What could have felt stuffy instead felt like a welcome respite from the sun.
Skip led us from the small but airy front hall into a sitting room, where we found two women whom he introduced as Isabel’s cousins, Lucky and Esther. Apparently everyone else was off gallivanting.
“Terrible business,” said Esther, shaking her shaggy white head and setting down a pair of knitting needles. “I knew it the instant she went missing. Who goes missing like that? It’s not as if she went to the longest yard sale ever.”
“I thought she did it to get away from the family,” Lucky sniffed. “Smart woman.”
She gave Skip a hard look, but he just shifted. Even if he agreed that getting away from the family was a good idea, he couldn’t very well say that while he was sitting in their living room.
“Do you have any idea who might’ve wanted to harm her?” I asked.
Esther blinked at me as if she was trying to remember which newspaper I worked for. Giving up, she said, “She didn’t get along all that well with any of her children. They all wanted her money.”
Again both women looked at Skip. Again he shifted.
“What is it that all three of you do?” Charlie asked.
When they looked surprised she added, “I don’t want to just pepper you with questions. I’d like this to be more of a conversation.”
The women seemed to be running the show, and I figured Charlie was smart to acknowledge it up front. Otherwise I doubted we were going to get much out of them.
“We’re retired,” said Esther. “Lucky and I used to run a candle shop together down south.”
“That must have been fun,” I said.
“Being your own boss is fun,” said Esther. “It’s also an awful lot of work. Especially when your kids won’t help out.”
This time neither of the two women bothered to look at Skip.
Skip, for his part, did have some sense of self-preservation. “I’ll go back to the dock and get back to cleaning the boat. If you have any questions, you can find me there,” he said, looking our way before making a quick exit.
I wondered just how much cleaning he was doing in those clothes, but I kept my skepticism to myself.
“You’ve always spent summers here?” Charlie asked the two women
“For the past three years we’ve been able to spend the summers here together,” said Lucky. “Before that we always had to take turns, because somebody had to be at the shop.”
“We’ve always come in and out, except for Isabel. She would come up here in mid-April to get everything ready, and she refused to leave until mid-September. She really loved it here.”
“You four grew up here?” Esther asked.
“Born and raised,” I said.
“That must be nice,” said Esther. “Like we told the detective who came by last night, we really don’t know what happened to our dear cousin.”
“Can you tell me about the day she went missing? Anything you might remember could be helpful,” Charlie said. “Also, it would really help if you could think of anyone who might have wanted to harm her.”
“Isabel was a battle-axe,” said Lucky. “She really didn’t suffer fools gladly. But I can’t imagine anyone took it seriously enough to murder her. As far as the day she went missing, it was just like any other. Isabel would wake up and go for a long walk. Usually after that someone would be cooking breakfast and she’d come in and tell them what they were doing wrong. Eggs too runny, the bacon too burnt, that kind of thing.”
“That day she wanted to go to the library,” said Esther, taking up the tale. “But she didn’t have time. She has four kids and they all wanted three different things that day. She spent the whole day helping one with this and doing that with the other. Finally around evening she just up and left. It was after dinner and she said she going to take a stroll to the library before it closed.”
“Most of us had spread out by then. Usually we don’t all eat dinner together,” said Lucky. “The library closed at nine, she left here around eight-thirty. She wouldn’t have had much time to pick up books, but she would have had enough time to grab something she already knew she wanted.”
“And you two were here?” Charlie asked.
Esther and Lucky exchanged glances. In the end it was Lucky who answered again. “We were here, but we weren’t together. Like I said, people spread out. I really can’t tell you where anyone else was.”
“Are you sure?” I pushed. “It might turn out to be important.”
Again the two women shook their heads. “We’re sorry we can’t be more helpful. It does appear as though Isabel was murdered, e
ven if that hasn’t made it into the papers yet.”
“It probably will tomorrow,” said Greer.
“Given that we’re giving an interview to journalists, I would expect nothing less,” said Esther. “But see here, we didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“If it wasn’t a member of the family, who do you think it was?” Charlie asked, nothing if not persistent.
“Someone from the village, of course,” said Lucky. “No offense, but we’re from the south, we’re refined individuals. Here you have stores like Mintwood Mountain Mucking.”
“So, you think someone from around here killed Isabel, just because we have stores with funny names?” I asked, trying to keep my cool.
“Of course,” Lucky blustered on, oblivious to offending the locals who were sitting right in front of her. In fairness, Charlie and Hansen had both schooled their features into bland interest. It was Greer and I who were the problem.
“It’s the only explanation,” said Lucky, driving the knife home.
“But you said you can’t think of anyone she’d made angry,” Hansen pointed out before Greer could say the words that were hovering on the tip of her tongue.
“Yes, that’s right, I said that. I can’t think of anyone, but I certainly know that no one in the family would hurt her.”
“So you can’t tell us of anyone she didn’t get along with around town?” I asked.
“No one except for André,” said Lucky. “They couldn’t stand each other.”
“André who owns the art gallery?” Charlie asked incredulously.
“The very same,” said Esther severely. “He thinks he’s better than everybody else because he’s been to Paris.”
My friends and I exchanged looks. We couldn’t exactly argue with that.
“What did they not get along about?” Charlie asked.
“They didn’t get along about the fact that Isabel wanted to get a discount on a large purchase of paintings from him,” said Esther. “They were doing something of an exchange. She had a couple of old paintings to sell him, and in exchange he was going to give her a discount on some paintings she wanted. The only thing was, they didn’t agree on how much the discount was going to be.”
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