by Ellen Jane
A high-pitched squeal of greeting dragged her out of her thoughts, and she looked up to see Barbara Newland—closest friend to Patricia and backup pain in Heather’s neck all through school—standing beside her.
“Heather! It’s been so long!” Barbara reached down and hugged Heather around the shoulders.
Through the fog of bewilderment and irritation, Heather managed to hug her back.
“Barbara,” Heather said, more as an acknowledgement of fact than a greeting. “How are you?”
“Great, just great. Loving life!” She pulled up a seat and sat down, beaming at the two of them. “I hope you don’t mind me joining you? It’s just been so long. We must catch up.”
“Actually—” Sinéad began, her nose twitching like she had been forced to smell test eight different kinds of fertiliser.
“Splendid,” Barbara continued, glaring at Sinéad. “I’m only dropping in. I’m meeting some people at seven, you see.”
She gave them a very pointed look, and Heather inwardly groaned. Now the mysterious note made sense. Barbara had probably been standing at one of Patricia’s upper windows. No wonder they hadn’t been able to find who had thrown it.
“Right,” Sinéad said slowly, the expression still on her face. “So then—Barbara, was it?—I’m Sinéad. Lovely to meet you.”
Barbara eyed Sinéad with faint alarm. “Charmed,” she said, then her eyes blinked into focus. “Oh, you’re the sorcerer!” She lowered her voice. “Patricia raved about you for months before the party. I couldn’t wait to see the piece.” She wrinkled her nose, waving her hand vaguely in the air. “It was a little too bold for me. I don’t like things quite as strong. But lovely work, just lovely.”
“Oh no, I’m so sorry,” Sinéad said, in the same tone as one might say ‘oh, look, that patch of paint appears to be drying.’
“Are you sure you want to talk here?” Heather asked quietly.
She was rewarded with a fierce glare.
“Can’t think why not,” Barbara insisted. “Such a lovely, bustling place, the inn. So relaxing. So un-suspicious.”
“Yes, yes,” Sinéad cut her off. “Get to the point, before my dinner can’t take the suspense anymore and escapes out the window.”
Barbara looked down at Sinéad’s very dead fish in alarm.
“Of course,” she agreed in hushed tones. “Well, I just wanted to say Patricia has not been acting herself lately, I can tell you. Not one little bit.”
She looked around at them both with a triumphant air.
“Is that—” Heather blinked. “Is that it?”
Barbara’s face twisted into annoyance. “What do you mean ‘is that it’? Patricia is the absolute queen of propriety. She never loses her calm, and yet, these last two days, she has seemed more and more scattered. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”
“Well, there was that small matter of the murder in her lounge,” Sinéad said, cutting into her fish and selecting a large forkful. “Could have something to do with it.”
“Are you trying to suggest Patricia has something to do with this?” Heather cut in before Barbara could react.
Barbara’s hand fluttered to her chest. “Of course not. How could you even—” She cut herself off and shook her head. “Can’t expect anything else from you, I suppose. Shouldn’t be surprised, really. You never got along.”
“Hey!” Heather interjected, but Barbara ignored her.
“Of course I don’t think Patricia had anything to do with it; I think she knows who did. There’s no one more loyal and supportive of her girls than Patricia, and I’m sure she’d defend them to the very last.”
“You know that’s illegal, right?” Sinéad pointed out. “It’s called aiding and abetting. She could be prosecuted for that.”
Barbara drew in an enraged breath. “Do you two actually want to solve this horrible case, or do you just want to sit around and throw out baseless accusations?” She turned to Heather. “I know you’ve never done anything else.” She turned back to Sinéad before Heather could speak. “But you don’t even know her. Shame on you.”
Sinéad shot Heather an incredulous look. Heather rolled her eyes and shook her head in a small movement. There was no point in arguing.
“All right,” she said, “so you think that Patricia suspects someone in your ladies group, but that she has no evidence and she won’t reveal them to the police out of loyalty.”
“Precisely.” Barbara nodded. “Or if it’s not one of our ladies group, it’s some little waif she’s taken under her wing. She’s far too good, that girl. It will be the death of her.”
Heather mimed vomiting into her pie while Barbara wasn’t looking, and Sinéad nearly choked on her wine in surprise.
“Thank you,” Sinéad managed to say when she’d regained her breath. “We’ll look into it.”
She didn’t look at Heather, who fought not to grin stupidly over the fact that she’d managed to make the intimidating and confident woman laugh.
“How did you know we were investigating, by the way?” Heather asked, suddenly remembering. “It’s meant to be a secret.”
“Well, there’s no other reason for the two of you to be spending time together, is there?” Barbara asked guilelessly. “I mean,” she laughed, “look at the two of you.”
Heather felt her heart sink at the reminder. Sitting across from Sinéad, in her jeans and a worn jumper full of holes, the comparison couldn’t be more obvious.
“I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean,” Sinéad said, her demeanour changing as she glared at Barbara over the top of her wine. “Unless, of course, you’re feeling out of place interrupting dinner between two accomplished magic users?”
Barbara’s laughter died. She sniffed the air primly and got up to leave.
“You might have a few nice tricks we haven’t seen before,” she nodded at the painting on the wall, “but you’ll find we don’t much hold with that magic malarkey here. We Old Wetchhaveners stick to old-fashioned, traditional values.”
“Oh, you mean like bullying and class division?”
Heather’s eyes widened, and it was her turn to nearly choke on her drink. She missed Barbara’s parting remark as she tried not to breathe in half a litre of water, and turned back to find Sinéad watching her shrewdly.
“What?” Heather asked.
“Your town is awful,” Sinéad said.
Heather felt a stab of outrage. “No, it’s not. You’re only noticing the worst parts of it.”
“Then the worst parts of it are awful,” Sinéad amended without skipping a beat. “What are the good parts?”
Heather thought back to early mornings with her dad, riding around to deliver the paper, cooking with her mum in the kitchen, crafting new and improved spells that, more often than not, ended with both of them being covered in flour.
“Family,” she said bitterly.
She looked up to see Sinéad eyeing her with that strange look again, and she felt self-conscious. She looked away, and a thought occurred to her.
“You were just as snooty as Barbara when you first met me,” she said, remembering their conversation with incredulity.
Then, the words caught up to her, and she froze at the realisation that, for once, her thought had actually made it out of her mouth.
Sinéad paused, her fork halfway to her mouth. “What are you talking about?”
“You couldn’t believe I was a witch,” Heather explained, figuring that since she was already in this deep, she may as well continue. “You looked offended that I was doing decent magic.”
Sinéad frowned. “That was a compliment. I mistook you for a sorcerer. I still say you must have sorcerer blood somewhere in your lineage. You’re far too strong for a witch.”
Heather set her fork down sharply. “That’s what I mean. You don’t think much of witches at all.”
There was silence as Sinéad frowned, taking in Heather’s words. For once, she seemed at a loss for what to say.
“I’m a witch,” Heather finished, a little more sullenly than she meant to. “And I’m proud of that.”
Sinéad opened her mouth, but then shut it again after a moment’s pause. “Yes,” she said, her tone sincere. “You should be.”
Before Heather could say anything, a buzzing sound came from Sinéad’s handbag. She pulled out her phone and answered it, and Heather took the opportunity to take down her notes on the strange conversation with Barbara. She rifled through her bag until she found her notebook and set it down on the table.
“Hello? Tracy, is that you?” Sinéad said, her voice oddly clipped, until she spotted Heather’s notebook and recoiled in horror. “What is that?”
Heather looked from her lilac-coloured, glitter-coated notebook, to Sinéad, and back again, before grinning.
“You don’t like it?” she asked, holding up the book so Sinéad could see it properly.
Obviously, Sinéad hadn’t seen the cover when she took it out at the manor.
Sinéad shuddered. “It’s covered in glitter.” She seemed to remember she was on the phone. “What was that? No, I’m just talking about a notebook. It’s awful; you should see it. You know how much I love lilac.”
Heather thought she should be offended by the words, but Sinéad shot her a friendly grin that took the edge off them. As she turned her attention back to her notes, she realised that Sinéad’s voice had taken on that same rigidity it had when she’d answered the phone.
“No, I heard. How did you—” She broke off with a frown. “You what? Why were you reading— What? How could you even—?”
The chatter in the pub around them faded a little as her voice rose, and a couple of people glanced over curiously. Heather shot them a soothing smile, and they turned back to their meals. She tried to hint to Sinéad that she needed to quieten down a little, but Sinéad wasn’t looking at her.
“You honestly think I would do that?” Sinéad’s voice had become flat, sending prickles of alarm running up Heather’s spine.
“Well, if you’re so certain, I’m not going to bother trying to convince you otherwise,” Sinéad snapped and hung up the phone.
“What was it?” Heather asked, once the noise around them had risen again.
“My ex thinks I did it.” Sinéad drained the rest of her wine in one gulp. “She works for him—it’s how we met—and she knows I’m still mad about the painting. She read the write-up on us—heard about the painting and the spell.” Her shoulders were stiff, her expression murderous. “Nice to see our relationship was based on a core of trust and respect.”
The phone immediately began buzzing again. Sinéad rejected the call.
Heather pushed her pie around her plate, her appetite lost. “I guess that’s why she’s an ex?” she said, mentally kicking herself at the inappropriateness of the comment as soon as it was out of her mouth.
To her surprise and relief, Sinéad gave a tiny snort of laughter. “You can say that again. Let’s call it a night. I’m exhausted.” She pushed away the remains of her dinner, and Heather followed suit with relief.
“Oh, I didn’t mean you had to finish,” Sinéad said, wide-eyed, as Heather stood up. “I only meant I didn’t want to talk about the case anymore.”
“I’m not hungry, either,” Heather insisted, shaking her head. “I kind of just want to go home and sleep.”
Sinéad nodded. “I know what you mean.”
They stood up and gathered their coats and bags.
“Well, I’m just upstairs,” Sinéad said, nodding towards the staircase. “Do you want to meet here tomorrow? We can decide where to go next.”
“Sure,” Heather agreed, buttoning up her coat in preparation for the cold night.
Sinéad watched her with a small frown. “Are you sure you’re all right to walk home alone? There’s a killer on the loose, after all.”
Heather shook her head. “This is my town. I’ll be fine.”
A look of concern passed across Sinéad’s features, and then it was gone.
“All right.” She smiled. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
They said goodbye, and Heather stepped out into the freezing wind. It wasn’t very far to her house, and she was certain she wasn’t in any danger. Whoever was behind the murder was unlikely to strike again.
When she arrived home to find her front door open and her house ransacked, her certainty began to rapidly fade.
Chapter Five
Heather stared at the mess in her lounge room for several moments until her brain caught up to her and she remembered the dogs. In a panic, she began to run through the house.
“Teddy! Bear! Lucifer!”
At the sound of her voice, a muffled whimper came from the laundry, and she heard three sets of heavy paws bounding down the hallway. She dropped to her knees in relief to see them all safe, though they were clearly shaken up as they jumped all over her, trying to climb into her lap and onto her shoulders.
“Some guard dogs you are,” she muttered, secretly relieved that they had chosen to hide.
She pulled out her phone and called Sinéad, half convinced she’d be asleep and her phone on silent.
To her surprise, Sinéad picked up immediately.
“Hello?”
“Sinéad, someone’s robbed my house!”
She heard the muffled sound of swearing and movement. “I’m coming now. Are they still there?”
Heather froze. She hadn’t checked that. When the silence dragged on, Sinéad swore more clearly this time.
“You haven’t checked, have you? Get out of the house, now.”
Heather grabbed the dogs’ collars and shuffled them out of the house at a stooped run, struggling not to get pulled over by their strength. Within minutes, Sinéad was at her front gate, panting as if she’d run the whole way.
“Right,” she said, somehow managing to look commanding even in thin satin pyjamas and snow boots—obviously the quickest thing she had been able to grab. “Have you called the police?”
Heather shook her head and fumbled for her phone.
“While you’re doing that, I’m just going to have a little look inside.”
“What? No!”
Sinéad smirked. “I’ll be fine. Trust me. I just want to make sure no one’s about to jump out and attack.”
“Why don’t you just let the police do that?” Heather insisted, pulling out her phone and hovering her thumb over the screen. “They’ll be here in minutes.”
Sinéad turned to her, her eyes shining fiercely for a moment until she stepped out of the light from the streetlamp and into the shadow.
“Just let me do this for you?” she pleaded, and Heather gaped wordlessly as Sinéad kicked off her snow boots and crept into the house.
She dialled the number, and within seconds, she was reassured the police were on their way.
Halfway through the operator asking her for further details and ensuring she was far away from the action, Heather heard a muffled shout and a loud bang, and without even thinking, she hung up the phone and sprinted straight into the house.
Someone yelped from the upper landing, and she flew up the stairs, taking them three at a time, and ran towards the prone body lying at the end of the corridor.
The body twitched and rolled backwards.
“Christ, that hurts!” the man yelled, and Heather stumbled to a halt just before she dropped down to help him.
“You’re not Sinéad,” she blurted out.
“No,” came the dry voice from beside her, hovering in the doorway of the bedroom.
Sinéad’s face was twisted into an expression of bewildered amusement.
“And before you tell me off, I didn’t even touch him,” she continued.
“Well, you wouldn’t bloody need to, would you?” the man spat, clutching his left knee and wincing. “Not with my bloody leg doing such a piss-poor job of keeping me upright, anyway. Stupid thing gives out on me all the time, ‘specially in this weather. You may a
s well’ve just sat down and had a cup of tea while you waited.”
He rolled onto his side and propped himself up. Sinéad calmly reached out with one leg and pushed him over.
“Oi!” the man yelped, flopping straight back down again. “That’s just adding insult to injury, that is. Hardly fair. Do you enjoy going ‘round and kicking old men, then?”
“When they’re robbing my friend’s house, yes, I do,” Sinéad said. “You left the front door open. The dogs could have gotten lost or hit by a car.”
The man’s eyes widened. “She’s got dogs? Christ, I hate dogs.”
Sinéad gave him a sharp kick. The man howled.
“Look, I didn’t take nuffin’! Just let me go and you’ll never see me again!”
“What were you looking for?” Sinéad asked.
The man looked up at her shrewdly. “Not just a pretty face, then.”
Heather’s shaking had slowly been subsiding at the sight of this pitiable man in front of her, and at this last comment, she rolled her eyes and whistled. The house shook as the three dogs regained their bravery and came charging up the stairs.
“Oh, Christ, no!” the man squealed and pulled himself backwards. “All right, all right, I was looking for a book!”
“What kind of book?” Sinéad asked calmly.
The three dogs sat themselves at Heather’s feet, but Teddy was starting to perk up with interest at the sight of the man on the ground. He looked up at Heather, waiting for a command.
“A notebook!” he yelped. “Purple and glittery, that’s all I know! Some woman called me up and told me where to go. Real proper sounding, she was.”
Heather sucked in a sharp breath, and Sinéad shot her a look. Before they could say anything further, the previously distant sound of sirens turned onto the street, and the police were soon charging up the stairs.
“We’ve got him,” Sinéad called down, wrinkling her nose as the man tried to hide from Teddy behind the hall table. “You should probably think of a new career,” she told him.