Witch of Mintwood Mysteries 7-9

by Addison Creek

  “You think André killed her over that?” I asked. “The man has been to Paris many times, and I doubt he even knows how to get his hands dirty, must less murder someone and bury the body in the library’s back yard,” said Greer.

  I could tell that Greer had no idea what Paris had to do with anything, but if the cousins thought it was significant, she was going to treat it as if it was.

  Charlie nudged her hard in the ribs.

  “What?” gasped Greer.

  “Not everybody who has been to Paris is snooty.”

  “It’s all just so sad. We miss her so much,” said Lucky, sniffling a little and ignoring the byplay amongst the locals.

  I tried not to comment on the fact that it had taken her an awfully long time to express her grief over the loss of her cousin. Maybe it was because Isabel had already been gone for so long, but the cousins had barely bothered to pretend they were upset by her death.

  Lucky’s less than convincing show of grief was interrupted by the sound of a car driving up. We could tell because of the squealing tires, the clanking metal, and the loud rock music.

  The older women flinched and glanced at each other.

  “That’ll be Anna,” said one of them, sighing.

  “Isabel’s granddaughter. She’s a handful. Luckily she isn’t here much. She hates the sun,” said the other.

  “It is bad for the skin,” said Charlie.

  “This girl’s a vampire,” said Lucky.

  The back door slammed open and slammed closed and stomping boots could be heard. A dark shadow passed by the living room door, then reversed itself until the doorway revealed a young woman, probably about twenty, dressed all in black. She wore black lipstick, black boots, eyeliner far too thick, and an angry expression.

  “Anna, dear,” said Esther, “these are journalists.”

  She said the word journalist slowly as if she was talking to a child or an idiot.

  Anna’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t let them lie to you. One of us definitely killed her,” she said, and kept walking.

  The cousins both gasped.

  “Wretched girl,” stormed Lucky. But she made sure not to say it until long after Anna’s boots had stomped up the stairs.

  “We should talk to André,” I said. “If there’s nothing else you can tell us, we’ll stop taking up so much of your time.”

  The cousins didn’t bother to disagree, but they did manage to see us to the door.

  Once Lucky and Esther had gone back inside Hansen said, “Should we talk to Skip?”

  “Definitely. We should at least thank him and say our polite goodbyes,” said Charlie with a wink.

  We walked down to the water’s edge, where sure enough we found Skip sitting on the dock. To no one’s surprise, he wasn’t cleaning, he was reading. As we approached he looked back and sighed.

  “Did you find out everything you needed?”

  “We certainly got a start,” said Charlie.

  “That’s good. I saw Anna come back. She’s not as bad as Lucky and Esther make out,” said Skip. I liked him a bit more for sticking up for the young woman.

  “Was there something else I could help you with?” he asked when he saw that we weren’t rushing to leave.

  “Where were you the night she disappeared?” Charlie asked.

  “Me? Oh, I wasn’t here that week. My wife and I have an agreement. I come for four nights a summer.”

  “You don’t like it here?” Greer asked. “It’s fine if you don’t. The country isn’t for everyone.”

  “The country is fine with me. I grew up in the country in Maryland,” said Skip.

  “Are you saying it’s the family?” Hansen asked.

  “They’re an awful lot to deal with,” said Skip, looking relieved that someone else had said it for him.

  “What about Anna?” I asked.

  Skip shrugged. “I don’t think she’s as bad as she pretends to be. But if I remember correctly she was here that weekend. It was the anniversary of Isabel’s purchase of the house, and she had wanted everyone to come up. I had business, so I couldn’t.”

  That was the first I had heard that it was an anniversary weekend. It probably meant that there were even more suspects than the ones we already knew about.

  “And can you think of anyone, either in the family or around here, who would have wanted to harm Isabel?” Hansen asked.

  Skip sighed. “Like I said, the family is a handful. I wouldn’t have said Isabel was any more of a handful than the rest of them, except that it was mostly her money that powered all this nonsense. I don’t know anyone who would want to harm her, but she didn’t really get along with her children. She also didn’t get along with some of the townspeople. Did she not get along with one of them more than the others? Clearly, but do I know which one? Definitely not.”

  “Thanks for your time,” said Charlie after she finished scribbling furiously. “If you think of anything else, let us know.”

  “Sure thing,” said Skip.

  As we walked back to the car I noticed a fluttering in one of the windows on the second floor of the house. Someone had just been looking through the curtains. Given that the background was dark and I couldn’t distinguish who was in the foreground, I had a feeling it was someone wearing black.

  “What now?” Greer asked.

  “I should be getting back to work,” said Hansen. “Tomorrow Isabel’s murder will be revealed to the public. I need to get to work on the article.”

  “Same here,” said Charlie. “I’ll stop and talk to André on the way back to the office and let you know what I find out. I can’t imagine him killing anyone, though.”

  The four of us piled into the car and headed to Caedmon.

  “Do you think it could be somebody from Caedmon?” I asked, mostly to make mischief.

  “Definitely,” said Greer. “Why not?”

  “Thanks,” said Hansen with a wry smile. He probably knew we were just needling him, but I wasn’t sure.

  Chapter Thirteen

  We said our goodbyes and Hansen hopped out of the car with a wave.

  Our next stop was the bar. We needed to talk to Isabel, then Charlie was going to talk to André while I headed back to Hazelwood to work on my other mystery. Time was of the essence with Scarlett, and I needed not to neglect the search.

  The bar wasn’t open yet, so Greer unlocked the door and we headed inside. The place would be empty of customers, the perfect situation for talking to Isabel. We expected to see her sitting at the bar waiting for us, but she was nowhere to be seen.

  We looked in all the nooks and crannies, even the restrooms, but there was no sign of her.

  “Where do you think she went?” Greer asked. “The rum is right here.”

  “No idea,” said Charlie. “We need to ask her some questions, so I hope she shows up soon.”

  “I need to get to Hazelwood,” I said, “so we’ll have to try Isabel again later.”

  I decided I’d retrace my footsteps—or rather Sicily’s and mine—in case we’d missed anything the day before. The witches were never going to agree to help me or be impressed with what I could do if I simply sat back and waited for Scarlett to show up on her own.

  Charlie dropped us off at the farmhouse. Greer wanted to help me search for Scarlett, so the two of us put on our hiking boots and set off again, this time in the Beetle.

  “So you met all the witches at last?” Greer asked. I hadn’t had time to update my roommates on my night visit to the Council.

  “Sure did,” I said. “It was interesting.”

  “And now one of them is missing?” she asked.

  “Right,” I said. “She went missing a couple of days ago in Hazelwood. Her grandmother is one of the older, more powerful witches in the area, and she worried that Ellie got her.”

  “Doesn’t that mean we should be paying a visit to Ellie?” Greer asked.

  I sighed. “I was hoping to avoid that, but it’s definitely next on my list.”


  “It would be interesting to go to the town of Puddlewood.”

  “Why would that be interesting?” I asked.

  “Because towns are built up at random, and for that reason they can be confusing. But it’s different if one person is planning a whole town to her liking,” said Greer.

  “Okay, that’s cool. Now imagine that that person is Ellie,” I said.

  “I see what you mean,” Greer nodded.

  We headed off into the woods, and eventually I led us back to the place where I’d been with Sicily yesterday. Sicily had taken the water bottle away, but I had made sure to memorize the spot so I’d know it again when I needed to.

  “And you think Scarlett was going that way?” Greer pointed further into the woods.

  “Definitely,” I said.

  “Well then, we’ll go that way too,” said Greer.

  The two of us marched onward in the direction Greer had indicated. I was starting to be concerned about having too many cases where I had to wear hiking boots; not only were they not stylish, but they were awfully clunky.

  But this was an important case. A missing witch would be notable in her own right, but that she was the granddaughter of someone as venerable as Sicily made it all the more crucial that I solve the mystery as soon as possible.

  As to the hiking boots, I told myself I’d better get over it if I was going to go on living in Maine.

  Which I was.

  End of story.

  We had been walking for twenty minutes in a straight line when the path started getting clearer.

  “Is that a trail up ahead?” Greer asked.

  “I think so,” I said.

  I pulled out a map of the trails of Hazelwood and squinted at it. Greer, who was better with maps, looked over my shoulder and immediately pointed to a spot. “It’s right here,” she said.

  It turned out that we were in a busy area crisscrossed with trails. The feeling I’d been struggling with—that we were about to get lost in the woods forever—was completely wrong.

  We pressed forward to the trail.

  We looked right and we looked left.

  Finally Greer frowned. “Which way should we go?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “It looks like there was a mudslide over that way, and fairly recently,” Greer pointed.

  My heart sank. There had been an article in the paper about a mudslide a few days ago, but I hadn’t thought much of it at the time. I kicked myself for not making the possible connection sooner.

  “Let’s go take a look,” I said.

  I walked quickly toward the part of the trail that was now missing. Mud had eroded about five feet of trail, making it almost impossible to get past. The only question was where had the slide come from. It wasn’t immediately obvious.

  “This is very strange,” said Greer.

  We surveyed the scene in front of us, trying to make sense of it. There was no sign of Scarlett, and my heart slowed a little after some initial panic that she might have been caught in the slide.

  “What do you think happened?” Greer asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  We peered down the small embankment to the brown sludge below. Mostly, it just looked like some mud. I wished Paws had come along. He could have gotten to the bottom without much trouble. Me, I would probably fall on my butt.

  The wind was picking up, adding to my list of concerns. My brown hair was blowing around my cheeks and in my eyes, so I resorted to using my left hand to hold it at bay and cursing myself yet again for forgetting a hair elastic.

  “I think I see something down there,” said Greer, pointing. “What is it?”

  “I have no idea,” I said.

  Greer crouched down as if she was going to try and slide down the slope. Twigs and tufts of green grass poked out of the soggy ground, but there was nothing she could use as a handhold to steady herself. She carefully moved forward a bit and immediately slipped.

  With a yell she grabbed onto the nearest pile of branches, but when she kept slipping I darted forward to try and help. My boots slid in the mud as well, and it took me a second too long to get to Greer.

  She slipped some more.

  I grabbed onto her arm and finally, with a lot of effort, pulled her back up.

  “I have a question,” panted Greer as she examined her muddy legs.

  “What?”

  “Aren’t you a witch?”

  “Yeah, what does that have to do with anything?”

  “Perform a spell.” She waved her hand in the direction of the bottom of the mudslide.

  For a split second I felt at sea. Then the light dawned. “You have much wisdom,” I said to Greer.

  “What I have is a lot of excess mud,” she muttered.

  I pulled my wand out of my sleeve.

  The motion brought vividly to mind the moment when I had performed the spell with Sicily, and remembering that success made this effort easier, and I moved ahead with more confidence than I had felt a moment before.

  I closed my eyes and pointed my wand in the direction of whatever was buried in the mud. Then I whispered words I’d seen in one of my grandmother’s books.

  The first thing Greer said was, “Wow.”

  The second was, “If you don’t open your eyes you’re going to get hit in the face.”

  My eyes snapped open.

  I lifted my hand in front of my face just in the nick of time.

  Once I had caught the thing that was about to hit me in the nose, I wished I hadn’t.

  “Is it a branch?” Greer asked, peering at it.

  My hand shook slightly as I lowered and opened my palm.

  “It’s a wand,” I said.

  Greer and I exchanged worried looks. Then we raced for the car.

  As we drove back to the farmhouse with the wand safely in the back seat, part of me thought I should tell Sicily about it and another part said I shouldn’t worry her until I had more information. I had been put in charge of this investigation, and before I made any decisions about next steps I needed to talk to my partner. Or, being fair to Greer, my other partner.

  That would be Paws.

  Charlie was already at home when we got there. Lights were on in the kitchen and a lot of the windows were thrown open to welcome the summer air.

  “Oh, no,” said Greer.

  “We left her alone too long. She’s probably making dinner,” I said.

  “We need to put one of those invisible fences up around the kitchen. That are only allergic to Charlie,” said Greer.

  “So she can’t eat breakfast either?” I asked.

  “We would take it down as long as she promised not to cook,” said Greer.

  “Makes perfect sense,” I joked.

  “Where have you two been?” Paws asked.

  I sat on the porch for my nightly lecture while Greer went inside to get cleaned up and check on the kitchen.

  Given that I heard her growl as soon as she walked through the door, I imagined it wasn’t going well.

  “I found this,” I said to the cat.

  “Finders keepers losers you,” said Paws.

  I gave him a dirty look. “I was out looking for Scarlett, the Witch of Hazelwood.”

  “Do you think it’s hers?” the cat asked.

  “I have no idea, but it seems likely,” I said. “It turns out there was a mudslide the day she went missing.”

  “Was she at the bottom of the mud?” Paws asked.

  I shook my head. After we’d found the wand, I had in fact made an effort to get down to the bottom of the slide. I had also cast a spell to see whether Scarlett was buried in the mud. But there had been nothing under the slide except dirt.

  “Seems like she dropped that,” said the cat.

  “Someone certainly did,” I agreed. “Can you tell me anything about it?” I asked hopefully.

  The cat examined the wand. He bent his nose and sniffed. Then he looked up. “Mr. Bone?”

  I frowned.
“What do we need him for?”

  “He knows more about this kind of thing than I do. Sicily would know if it was Scarlett’s, though.”

  Mr. Bone came around the corner and smiled. “Lemmi, haven’t seen much of you lately.”

  “Sorry, lots of mysteries to solve.”

  “Have the other witches agreed to help you with a séance?”

  I shook my head. “Not yet.”

  He made a disapproving sound.

  “I was hoping you could tell me about this wand,” I said.

  Mr. Bone looked at the wand.

  “It seems to have been purchased in France,” he said. “See this script right there?” He pointed to some scrollwork on the wand. “That’s the mark that’s always etched into wands made in France.”

  “If you purchase a wand from France does that mean you can only use it there?” I asked.

  “Certainly not. Wands are just like dishes. Doesn’t matter where you pick them up. They work fine wherever you take them,” he said.

  “How illuminating of you,” said Paws.

  “Where was my wand purchased?” I asked Paws.

  “Your grandmother would never say,” said the cat. “I think she stole it.”

  I gasped. “Grandmother would never.”

  “Maybe she found it,” said Mr. Bone. “In any event, this one is definitely French.”

  So who in this saga was French, anyway?

  Chapter Fourteen

  Two days passed. We had a relatively quiet forty-eight hours. Charlie went to work and Greer went to work and I took care of the dog.

  With still no sign of Scarlett, I wanted to have a look at her house, and I had also decided that Sicily deserved an update on my progress, or lack thereof, even though Paws told me I should do no such thing. As long as I was the investigator, he said, I should do exactly that, investigate. Still, I felt that as Scarlett’s grandmother, Sicily deserved to know what was going on.

  That was why, on the third day, after checking on Cesar, I went looking for Sicily. The only problem was that she hadn’t told me where she lived.

  So I decided to do something incredibly daring and brave.

  No, it wasn’t to tell Mr. Wolf to zip it.

  I was going to talk to another witch.

  Since I was near Caedmon anyway, I decided to see if I could speak to Josephine. Maybe she’d be able to shed some light on the witch coven and what Scarlett might have been doing in the forest, since Sicily clearly had no idea. And maybe Josephine would be able to tell me where Sicily lived.