Just in case.
Liam would be an excellent witness. He would also help me make sure nothing happened with Bright Lights that we didn’t want to happen. Because that was surely what this was about; it was too much of a coincidence, otherwise, that we had just started to clear out the old theater, and the next thing I knew was that the mayor was ordering me to come and see him.
Liam was more invested in the cinema’s restoration than the rest of us, except maybe Charlie, who simply thought the project would make an awfully good newspaper story.
Okay, series of newspaper stories.
And she could lord it over Hansen Gregory’s attractive (my word) head for at least a week.
Arriving at the town hall in good time, Liam and I went up and introduced ourselves to Shirley, the mayor’s sourpuss secretary. As usual, she was dismissive. She knew perfectly well who we were; she had been working for the mayor for a long time. It was just that there were some people who she thought had a right to see Mayor Clabberd, and then there were the rest of us. The building could be on fire, and she’d wait to hear it from a more highbrow Mintwood citizen before she did anything about the information. She checked her leather calendar as if hoping that I didn’t actually have an appointment. To her disappointment, I did.
We were saved by an unlikely source.
“Good morning,” said the mayor, coming out of his spacious, well-appointed office and giving a bit of a start when he saw Liam with me.
My friend raised his chin in defiance. He was not about to be made to feel out of place. Certainly not by a man who wore a white top hat.
“Won’t you come in?” said the mayor, adjusting quickly, nodding to include both of us, and graciously stepping out of our way to let us walk ahead of him into his office.
It looked exactly as it had the last time I’d been there, furnished with old oak furniture and graced with one of the best views in town. The mayor ushered us into the two chairs across from his desk, then walked around and sat down as if presiding over a gathering of thousands.
“I’ll just get to the point. What is this I hear about you working in the Bright Lights Cinema building?” he asked.
“Mrs. Cook asked us to. I thought you knew,” I said.
He nodded his head slowly. “She mentioned something of the kind to me. Unfortunately, I hadn’t realized that the work would be undertaken so soon after our conversation. It’s a bit more of a delicate matter than she seems to realize.”
“The place really needs a good cleaning. I don’t see how anybody could dispute that,” I said.
“Very true, very true,” said the mayor. “The problem is, the history of the cinema is a bit dark, and we’ve traditionally avoided discussing it here in town. Removing the stuff that’s stored there and then trying to sell it is one thing, but deciding what to do with the building itself is another. Your work brings all of that to the forefront.”
He was acting as if we were co-conspirators in some drama for which we didn’t actually have the script. What he didn’t realize was that I had a ghost cat who already had claims to that position in my life.
Liam might not know about Paws, but he was still looking at the mayor as if he were mad.
“That’s something that would have to be dealt with sooner or later no matter what,” Liam pointed out.
“Of course. Of course,” said Mayor Clabberd, the very picture of amiability.
“Exactly what history are you referring to, anyway?” I asked.
He gave me a hard look. At first I couldn’t quite interpret it. Then I decided that he was silently asking me a question. Did I really want to go down that road?
I gave him a look back and I hoped it said what I meant.
Yes, please. Fast down the road. On a toboggan.
He remained silent.
I waited him out.
He gave in first.
“You’ve probably heard,” he began, “that Mr. Curtain worked himself to death all those years ago. He died in the very same theater that he had taken care of for his whole life, a theater that he had built into something beautiful. He passed away right before the annual local film festival.
“The mayor at the time was devastated. He had made his own film that was to be shown that year, but upon the death of Mr. Curtain, all the plans were changed. Mayor Julious was very upset that his film could not be screened. After that the place was closed up and used for storage and nothing else. Nobody really wanted to spend any time there. At some point it became unsafe for occupancy. Locals who went inside said it was always very drafty,” said Mayor Clabberd.
Angry ghosts will do that to a location, I thought dryly.
“That’s fascinating,” said Liam. “But I can’t understand why the movie festival didn’t go on as planned, maybe as a memorial to Mr. Curtain. I had no idea that it was such a local festival that it included locally-made films. Poor Mr. Curtain. Are you sure he died of natural causes?”
The question surprised the mayor and me so much that we looked like mirror images, raising our eyes in surprise. I wouldn’t have expected Liam’s mind to go straight to foul play.
Seeing my reaction, Liam looked at me and asked, “Wouldn’t you think so? I guess there must not have been any obvious signs of trauma on Mr. Curtain’s body?”
The Mayor coughed. “No autopsy was done. He was very old, and no, there were no obvious signs of trauma. Besides, he ran a movie theater. Why would anyone want to kill him?” he asked.
I was very intrigued by how much Mayor Clabberd knew about this old case. Very intrigued indeed.
“That would almost certainly be a much better question to ask Detective Cutter and not little old me,” I told him.
The mayor’s mouth twitched. There was a good chance he knew I was being sarcastic. Fair enough, I wasn’t particularly trying to hide it.
“Look,” he said. “I saw the article in the newspaper this morning. I appreciate that Ms. Silver is very excited. All I ask is that you tread carefully. More people than you realize are interested in what happens to that space. I can only keep the peace for so long.”
He looked between us as if he expected us to say something. We both nodded.
Unfortunately for Mayor Clabberd, I wasn’t inclined to give him any reassurances beyond an acknowledgment that I had heard him. Something very strange had happened to Mr. Curtain all those years ago, and I was intent on getting to the bottom of it.
Wherever it led.
The mayor’s secretary did not wish us a good day on our way out. In fact, she made a point of turning her chair away.
“Don’t worry. We’ll show ourselves out,” Liam said to her back.
Once we had gained the front lawn, Liam stopped. “Whoa. You have to keep cleaning out the cinema. Given how worried the mayor is about it, maybe we’ll find buried treasure in there!”
There might not be buried treasure inside, but I thinking there might well be evidence of murder.
Chapter Thirteen
Having dealt with the mayor, I had no time to waste. Liam waved goodbye and returned to his quiet shop on Main Street to get back to work. I zipped up my coat and started trudging across the green. I knew there was a scowl on my face. I didn’t care.
When we had gone into the town hall, the weather had been gray. Now the clouds had transitioned to rain.
Charlie and I had made a plan to meet for lunch at the Daily Brew. Then we would go and pay Honey a visit.
Mr. Curtain’s former employee was the last person to see him alive. She was older now, but from what Mrs. Cook said she was still sharp. I hoped she could shed some light on this whole business, maybe even paint a picture of Mr. Curtain’s final days. Armed with that information, we could return to the cinema, keep on with our work of clearing it out, and maybe even convince Mr. Curtain’s ghost that we could help.
The rain was now coming down in thick sheets that only made me feel gloomier. Charlie wasn’t at the Daily Brew when I got there, but I wasn’t that su
rprised. When she got caught up with work, nothing stopped her.
I ordered tea and a sandwich and went to a corner to wait for my food and my roommate. While I sat, I considered everything that had already taken place. I had decided that this was in fact an investigation, but whether it was really a murder investigation remained to be seen. What had happened to the cinema owner needed to be explored ever so carefully.
I was so absorbed in the cinema story that I barely noticed when Mrs. Barnett put my sandwich in front of me. The part of me that was hungry noticed, though, and I absent-mindedly started to eat.
The most important step in the investigation would be to discuss with Mr. Curtain what he thought of his death. In this case, since he was so skittish, it looked like it would also be the most delicate part to pull off. But it was crucial, because if someone had murdered him, Mr. Curtain’s recounting of his final days would shed the most useful light we’d ever find on the circumstances surrounding his death.
The bell into the Daily Brew twittered, but I stuck to my thought train. If it was Charlie, she’d order and come right over; if it was someone else, I didn’t care.
The clearest explanation I could come up with for why Mr. Curtain’s ghost was still at Bright Lights was that he had left something important undone at the cinema. At the library the day before I had checked on his burial location. As I suspected, he’d been buried with his parents at the Mintwood Muddled Cemetery. Nothing unusual there.
Yet his ghost remained at his family’s pride and joy.
A low hum of voices in the background finally distracted me from my thoughts, but my back was to the door and I still kept staring down at my table, trying to keep hold of the threads. There was something niggling my brain, but I couldn’t zero in on what it was.
One of the voices got louder.
He sounded familiar, though not entirely pleasant.
Finally, my thought train derailed, curiosity got the better of me. Before I could even realize what I was doing, I turned around.
There stood Tyler Spin, who worked closely with Jasper and around whom I had never been comfortable. Now a low hum of dislike rose up inside me as I watched him speak to another man who happened to have his back to me.
Turned away or not, I would recognize Jasper Wolf’s shoulders anywhere.
My heart took off. Like one of the ghost mice being chased by Paws, the center of my very skidded around, wildly upset. I tried to calm down, but my whole body was on fire. My throat felt as if it were stuffed full of cinders. I was melting faster than ice cream on a boiler.
Jasper turned around.
Just as he did, I took a great big bite of food. My cheeks ballooned to twice their normal size. My canines chomped down as if no one had ever taught me manners. My eyes bulged.
Jasper stared hard at me for another second.
I glared back. The smell of mustard filled my nostrils.
Then Tyler Spin, pain in the rump that he was, said something to my darling Jasper.
Jasper turned away from me, but not before I saw the regret in his mint green eyes.
Then they both left the café.
My little heart went tumbling out of the tree it had climbed and slammed into earth.
My cheeks deflated right along with my heart.
There was no longer enough strength in my arms to hold my sandwich, so I set it down on the plate with a dull clatter. My heart raced as I looked dejectedly at the table.
There were several small differences in my boyfriend that I took note of, the most notable of which was that he had gotten a haircut. The buzz was shorter, and it looked really good on him. I hadn’t known about it, and now he wasn’t speaking to me so I wouldn’t have heard about it.
Why a haircut suddenly mattered so much to me I couldn’t say.
I was in real danger of becoming a mopey mess. Luckily, Charlie showed up at the exact right moment to save me. She walked in shortly after I’d stopped eating the sandwich and starting imagining Tyler Spin’s being run out of town by a pack of butterflies.
Charlie nodded my way and went to the counter to order, then joined me. She chattered away for only a moment as she got settled before she realized that something was terribly wrong with her listening beacon, i.e., me.
She quickly leaned over to smell my sandwich and then my coffee. Her behavior was so strange that I glared at her, but she just shrugged.
“I thought maybe you were poisoned into silence. I would have asked you what the antidote was. Or the recipe,” she explained.
“No, nothing like that,” I said quietly. I shifted and tried to stop looking so petulant.
“What happened? What’s wrong?” she wanted to know.
Just then Mrs. Barnett called out Charlie’s order, and she was gone far longer than necessary when she went to fetch it. Behind the background noise of the café I could hear her speaking to the coffee shop owner.
I figured Mrs. Barnett was filling Charlie in on what had just happened, since she had seen everything. At least I knew she wouldn’t tell anyone else. She wasn’t the type to share secrets.
Charlie came back to the table slowly, set her down sandwich and tea, and looked at me sympathetically.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
I picked at the side of my sandwich. “I’ve been better. He got a haircut. I don’t know why that set me off, but it did. One second we were looking at each other and the next I took a great gulp of my sandwich and tried to chew. I looked like an idiot.”
Charlie’s fine eyebrows raised. “You did what?”
I told her exactly what I’d done.
Her mouth twitched into a smile. “You showed him.”
“Showed him what?” I said.
“That you don’t care what he thinks about you. That lunch is more important than appearances. I’ve always thought it was unfair how guys are the ones who are supposed to love food. They eat a lot. They love fuel. Women are the ones who cook. We’re the ones who really love food,” she said.
“Says the woman who has literally burned everything she’s ever tried to cook,” I said with a shaky laugh.
Charlie smiled. “No, you’re right. I’m not being entirely fair. I know guys love food too. Come on, you took a gulp of your sandwich. That’s awesome.”
I smiled a little. Charlie was trying to cheer me up. The fact of the matter was that it was working.
We didn’t linger at the Daily Brew; we had work to do.
Even though I told myself not to, I looked around for Jasper’s truck as we left. I couldn’t resist. There was no sign of it anywhere.
It didn’t take us long to reach Honey’s place. I had told her we’d come by after lunch, and we were right on time.
Honey’s house was typical for a small town in Maine. It was set back in the woods by itself, and at the moment it had a chimney piping out smoke. The house was painted tan and the shutters were brown. The yard was neat and tidy.
Usually when you pull up to someone’s door, and you have reason to think they’re expecting you, they’re there to greet you before you have a chance to knock. That wasn’t the case with Honey.
We knocked. Nothing happened.
We rang the doorbell. That didn’t bring the owner of the house out to greet us either.
“Do you think she isn’t home?” Charlie wondered.
“I told her when we’d come by. She should be here,” I frowned.
Charlie immediately grew worried. “Do you think something happened to her?”
“I hope not,” I said. Though something might have, I acknowledged silently. Apparently Charlie’s newspaper article had set off a bit of a storm around town. Maybe Honey hadn’t wanted to be any part of it. Maybe she had run.
Chapter Fourteen
If the newspaper articles were to be believed, Honey’s life had been turned upside down enough when Mr. Curtain was murdered. She probably wasn’t looking forward to having it happen again.
As I thought about it, my m
ind started to work itself into a fever pitch of possibilities, but just when it was getting out of control, we finally heard swearing from behind the house.
We made our way around to the back of the building and found a woman standing next to a bird feeder. She appeared to be trying to hang it properly.
When she caught a glimpse of us, her swearing only increased.
She had messy brown hair and was wearing an old flannel shirt and sneakers. Around these parts it would really have to be an emergency for people to wear what outsiders would recognize as practical footwear. If there was no flood, there were no winter boots.
“Who are you two? Oh, I remember. Sorry. I’m coming,” she said, starting to wade toward us.
“Thank you for seeing us. Sorry to interrupt your day. Would you like us to come back later?” I asked.
I sincerely hoped she’d say no. I wasn’t sure when we could come back, and besides, I desperately wanted to speak with her.
“Don’t be silly. Nobody has ever asked any questions about this. I can’t wait to talk about Mr. Curtain,” she said. “It’s just that birds must be fed. Follow me.”
We followed her around as she put various garden tools away and dragged the chair she’d been standing on back to its place next to an outdoor table on the small patio.
Then she led us through the back door into a cheery kitchen decorated in an array of bright colors. It was the sort of kitchen that looked as if it had been lived in for years, with varied collections of cookie jars and plates, mugs, and old kitchen appliances that looked well used.
It reminded me of my grandmother’s kitchen. My grandmother always thought that some years after she bought her own appliances, the quality of what was on the market tanked. That explained why the younger generation went through appliances so quickly, but hers were the same as when she was younger. Quality matters, she would say.
“Please sit down,” Honey said, “and I’ll get us some tea.”
Charlie and I sat. I waited quietly, while Charlie flipped her notebook open to the first clean page and poised her pen as if to write. She was ready for anything. If the first thing Honey blurted out was the name of Mr. Curtain’s murderer, all Charlie would need to do was write it down and we’d be all set.
Wonder Wand Way (Witch of Mintwood Book 10) Page 8