Miraculous Mintwood Magic

by Addison Creek

  As soon as I did, I recognized the woman. No, I couldn’t keep my wand out. She didn’t know about magical world, and neither did Deacon. But I didn’t have time to ponder that fact, because by now Deacon had worked himself free and gone scrambling for the gun.

  Once he had it securely in his hand, he looked at Ms. Vertigo, who was making a run for the door I was standing in. Since I was in the way, she tried to grapple with me. She couldn’t decide what was more important, dealing with me or getting away from Deacon and the gun, and in her confusion she was yelling and snarling. But she wasn’t young, and since she hadn’t expected concerted opposition and had now lost control of the gun, she wasn’t really equipped for a fight. Given that I wasn’t a fighter, I wasn’t equipped either. But when push came to push, I was stronger than she was.

  “Let her go,” said Deacon, his voice cold.

  Paws was weaving in between our feet and yowling. He kept trying to claw at Ms. Vertigo’s legs, but of course nothing he did could have any effect on her.

  Ms. Vertigo stumbled away from me. I rubbed my arms where she had grabbed them to try and overpower me. But I knew I was okay, and I knew we were finally near the end of this mystery.

  Never taking his eyes off Ms. Vertigo, Deacon went and pulled the gags out of Charlie and Greer’s mouths.

  “Could one of you lovely people turn the light on?” Greer asked.

  “I knew it was you,” Charlie said, glaring at the real estate agent. “It was the only thing that made sense. You were jealous of how successful he was.”

  Ms. Vertigo stood on one side of the island, breathing hard and glaring at Deacon. I went over to untie my friends.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, glancing from one to the other.

  “Fine. My pride is a little bit hurt. I should have known she was following me,” said Greer. My friend was rubbing her wrists where the bond had cut into them.

  “Why was she following you in particular?” I asked.

  Greer nodded to Deacon as if to say he could explain it while she pulled herself together.

  “She thought Greer had discovered more than she had. She really didn’t care which one of you she followed, but Greer was the first to leave in the morning. After coming by last night, she never actually left, she just hid in a track off the road and waited for one of you to go by. Greer was the first, so she followed her toward the bar,” Deacon said.

  “Then she tried to run her off the road,” I finished.

  “I’m right here,” hissed Ms. Vertigo.

  “Oh, we know,” Charlie shot back.

  “Why did you kill Earle?” I said.

  “He didn’t know what he was doing! He was a terrible real estate agent! He’d been stealing all my good properties out from under me for a long time by sweet-talking the sellers. Well, when he stole the development, that was the last straw. Oakley let him do whatever he wanted. Earle was always his favorite, even though I’d been working there for years before Earle showed up. I was very good at what I did, and they didn’t care. They took my listings and used them for their own purposes.

  “Then one day Earle went out to Hayview to look things over, and I decided to show him once and for all. He thought he could push me out of business? I don’t think so. I went there with him that night. He told me it was so learn the ropes, but when we got there he said he was taking the listing from me! Then he took off his shoes because he was going to climb on the counter or some foolish thing. I grabbed one of his shoes, and when he stepped back down I hit him over the head with it.”

  “Did you mean to kill him?” I asked.

  “No. That was just a happy accident. He fell and hit his head again. The shoe was the least of his problems, but then I had a big one. I had to hide his body. Luckily the place was under construction, so it wasn’t that hard. I simply dragged it into the hole and covered it up, and there it stayed. They thought I didn’t know what I was doing, but I had also worked construction. Like I said, I worked very hard to get where I was. They should have paid closer attention,” she fumed.

  “I can see why you hated him,” Charlie said. “Although I don’t think that justified murder. Nothing does. What I want to know is what happened with his wife?”

  “Oh, that. Yes, I did that too. All these years she thought she was blackmailing Mr. Oakley, when really, she had no idea what she was doing. That idiot. I paid for that lavish lifestyle of hers. For a long time it was convenient for me to do so.”

  “Why did you pay her all that money for all these years? Why did you stop when the body was found?” I asked.

  “She knew I had gone with him that night. I knew that when she heard he’d died there, it would implicate me in her eyes. As it was, she didn’t know when he had actually disappeared, because she’d been away. I had made sure of that. They didn’t talk much, but he had talked to her earlier that day and said we were going to tour the development. When she didn’t hear from him again a few days later was when she got suspicious, but she had no idea when he actually went missing. For all she knew he left the development just fine.

  “I told her that we had parted that night on fine terms. When she found out that he had never left Hayview, she would have been suspicious of me. I couldn’t have that. It was unlucky that I killed her right before she was expecting visitors. I was expecting a longer gap before her body was found,” she explained.

  “Was selling real estate really that important?” Charlie demanded.

  “I guess we’ll never know,” said Ms. Vertigo icily. She didn’t look the least bit sorry. In that moment I found myself very relieved to be a witch.

  “I’m going to call Detective Cutter,” said Charlie. Then she had a sudden thought and turned back to Ms. Vertigo. “By the way, do you know where Hansen Gregory is?”

  I had nearly forgotten about Hansen, but now I realized that if he wasn’t here with the others, it wasn’t very likely that Ms. Vertigo had kidnapped him. In other words, we still had a Hansen mystery on our hands.

  Ms. Vertigo blinked several times. “The good-looking Caedmon reporter?”

  “Yes, that Hansen,” said Charlie.

  “Why on earth would I know where he is?” Ms. Vertigo demanded.

  “Maybe because he was following you and found out something you didn’t want him to know?” said Charlie.

  “I’m just one woman. I can’t go around kidnapping all the men,” she said. “Although there was a time in my twenties when I did think about it.”

  Deacon made a face that I really wished I had caught camera. Charlie disappeared into the other room to use the phone. Her conversation was very short.

  “I called Detective Cutter. He’s on his way. I told him we’d apprehended a murderer,” she said.

  “I should probably call Jasper,” I said. Cutter might do it before I managed to, but he needed to know one way or the other. Hayview was his property and his project, and I didn’t think the detective would mind.

  I switched places with Charlie and got on the phone. I tried Jasper’s cabin in the woods but got no answer. His office at the barn was next.

  “Hello?” he answered on the first ring.

  “Jasper? This is Lemmi,” I said.

  “Why are you calling from Deacon’s? Is everything okay?” he asked.

  “I suppose that all depends on your definition of okay,” I said.

  “Sure, it depends on my definition. By my definition, is everything okay?” he asked. I could hear the panic rising in his voice. If my brain hadn’t been so addled, I would have been clearer. Now it just felt as if I was toying with him, which was not my intention at all.

  “No, everything is not okay. Not by a long shot,” I said.

  Chapter Twenty

  The night’s length could have been measured in any number of ways. It went without saying that something momentous and terrible had happened. My friends had been kidnapped and held at gunpoint. That was no laughing matter, but both Charlie and Greer were holding up well. It was m
ore difficult to tell with Deacon. He was stoic at the best of times, but he too seemed okay for the moment. Charlie managed to whisper to me that she had been on enough dangerous investigations to think that a crazy madwoman was just a hazard of the job.

  If there hadn’t been so much to do, I suspected that she’d have been very concerned about a certain handsome reporter whom she usually didn’t like to talk about.

  Detective Cutter arrived in record time, closely followed by Jasper, who came alone. I could tell when he got out of his truck that he wanted to come and give me a hug, but he managed to refrain. There was a lot of to do and a lot of activity. Many of the neighbors had come out of their homes after noticing the commotion.

  The next thing Jasper wanted to know, after he saw that I was okay, was whether Deacon was okay as well, and whether they could do anything to help.

  As it turned out, the one who had the most trouble handling everything was Paws.

  After the initial excitement of the arrest was over, it just became a lot waiting for things to happen. We had to explain the sequence of events to Detective Cutter, then to another detective. The Applewood police were also called, because the murderer of their dead body had also been found. I hoped that Mrs. Earle would be somewhat relieved to know that her killer was going to be brought to justice. She might also be curious about the blackmail, which hadn’t been what she thought it was. That seemed like something she might want to know.

  Paws was at first hysterically angry that he wasn’t going to be taken home right away. Then his anger subsided into tiredness. After that it transformed into sarcasm. With his last bits of energy he went around harassing as many people’s ankles as he could get near.

  Charlie, Greer, and I went into the sitting room to try to wind down, mostly in silence. After a long wait Detective Cutter came in with Jasper and Deacon.

  “How are you three holding up?” the detective asked.

  “We’re doing okay,” said Charlie.

  “We have a lot of tissues on standby in case there are emotions,” said Detective Cutter. He coughed. “It’s not every day that someone gets kidnapped.”

  “I had faith that we were going to get through it. I’m just glad that a double murderer was brought to justice,” said Charlie.

  “Now don’t go getting all emotional on me,” said Detective Cutter.

  “I want her to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” said Deacon. He had lost some of his calm from before and was now fuming.

  “She admitted to murder,” said Greer dryly. “I think she’s going to prison for a long time.”

  “How can you be so calm about this?” Deacon demanded.

  “I knew Lemmi would come,” she said.

  “Yeah, I doubt that. Why did you think she’d come looking for you?” asked the detective.

  “We live together. She would notice when I didn’t come home,” said Greer.

  “Why wouldn’t she call the police? Say, me,” said Detective Cutter.

  “We didn’t know there was anything wrong. We simply thought she’d gone to Deacon’s,” Charlie explained. “But we did want to make sure. You know how cell phone reception is around here.”

  “By the time you found out that something was wrong, Ms. Vertigo had already kidnapped you?” said Detective Cutter.

  “Yes, that’s about right. Tell me, have you heard from Hansen Gregory?” said Charlie.

  “Why would I hear from a reporter from a different town?” said the detective.

  “I’m sure you hear from him quite a lot,” said Charlie. “Any time he wants to know something for a story, he calls you for a quote.”

  The detective frowned. “I guess I have gotten a couple of calls from someone by that name who said they were on the other end of the line,” he said.

  The detectives had met Hansen countless times. He was either being intentionally obtuse, or Hansen hadn’t made much of an impression.

  “Yes, have you heard from him? I would think he’d be here by now. He usually shows up when there’s news,” said Charlie.

  “Hansen didn’t answer his phone, so I came,” said a man’s voice behind us.

  We all turned to see a tall, gangly guy walking through the door. He was around the same age as the rest of us, except for Cutter; he might even have been a year or two younger. He wore a polo jumper and slacks. His hair was longer than Jasper’s, but not as long as Deacon’s. It sort of flopped away from his forehead.

  “Who might you be?” Deacon demanded. “You realize you’re trespassing, right?” The guy clearly wasn’t from the police.

  “Sorry. Meant to introduce myself. I’m a new reporter around here. The name is Temper,” he said.

  “Do you know where Hansen is?” Charlie demanded.

  “Nice to meet you, too. No, I haven’t heard from him. Our editor isn’t pleased. He was supposed to be covering this story. I told my editor I’d just look after it myself,” he said with a smile. It was clear that this fellow was very happy to be the one stepping in on this story.

  Charlie knew it too and was furious. She turned to the detective. “I would like to report a missing person.”

  “You just found a murderer and now you want to report a missing person?” Detective Cutter repeated.

  “Yes, we can’t find Hansen. He’s been missing for over a day,” she said.

  “Young lady, I’m sure he’s somewhere. Also, he isn’t my problem. If he hasn’t shown up in the morning you can go over to the Caedmon Police Department and deal with them,” said the detective. “I’ve been working overtime on this case as it is, and I’m going to be up all night getting the details taken care of. Hansen Gregory is a young man in the pink of health. I’m sure he’s fine.”

  Charlie’s jaw worked, but no sound came out. She was clearly distraught. Greer and I went to put our arms around her shoulders. The detective left the room and Temper went with him without a backward glance.

  “What’s this about Hansen?” Jasper asked. “He’s too good a softball player to go missing.”

  Charlie smiled a little bit at the joke, but she was still upset. “We were doing some work together in his office the other night. He went downstairs and didn’t come back. I’m worried that something has happened to him.”

  “That’s fair. It’s not like him to go missing. I’ll drive over to his place on my way home and let you know what I find. Maybe he just got sick or something,” said Jasper.

  Charlie brightened, and I was grateful for Jasper’s offer. “I would really appreciate it if you did. Thank you,” Charlie said.

  “No problem. Anything for someone who solves all the difficult cases,” said Jasper with a grin.

  “This case is definitely all Lemmi,” said Charlie.

  “Actually, it was mostly me. Remember me? The one who wants to go home,” said Paws. He had taken a station on the couch and had been glaring around at all of us as we spoke. He had softened slightly when Charlie got upset about Hansen, but the second Jasper started speaking again he had resumed his grumbling hostility.

  When we got home that night, Charlie went immediately to check the message machine. I heard a notification that there was just one message. Charlie clutched the phone as a woman’s voice came over the line. It was Josephine calling, and she wanted to see me. Charlie angrily hit the save button and went to bed. Too tired to hear what Josephine had to say, I resolved to check in the morning. Right now I needed sleep.

  Epilogue

  In the morning I had to drag myself out of bed, and it wasn’t all that early. Toast and coffee revived me somewhat, but I still hadn’t gotten enough sleep. Charlie was already gone, probably in search of Hansen and possibly to officially report him missing. Greer was still in bed. Jasper had called first thing to say that it didn’t look like Hansen was at home.

  Finally I too was worried. After I tended to Cesar, I returned to the farmhouse and listened to Josephine’s message. Now that I was fully awake, I realized it was urgent and wishe
d I’d had the energy to pay attention the night before.

  Josephine said that I had to come over to her place, a shop in a small strip of shops. She said that Scarlett was also coming over. She didn’t want me to bring anything with me, just to come as quickly as I could.

  Thinking over the message, I decided that she sounded a bit panicked.

  I left a note for Greer so that she’d know where I had gone, and hurried out to the Beetle. This time when it coughed and sputtered I nearly panicked. Now was no time for the old girl to break down. Luckily, the engine roared to life a moment later. I pulled out of the driveway and hurried to Caedmon.

  The curtains were drawn and the sign on Josephine’s shop was turned to closed. That was very strange for the middle of the day.

  I knocked anyhow, but at first nothing happened. Then a voice that sounded a lot like Scarlett said, “Identify yourself!”

  I did.

  The door opened, but the chain was still on. Through the slight crack, all I could see was darkness. I raised my eyebrows. Something was terribly wrong.

  “Come in,” she whispered.

  “Who are you afraid will hear you?” I whispered back. She glared at me and pulled the door open.

  I slipped in. She barely gave me enough room to get between the doorjamb and the door.

  Once I was inside, my eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness. Scarlett was already moving toward the back of the house.

  I followed her.

  A meow caught my attention and a sudden movement caught my eye. Hilary the cat was curling her way through Josephine’s wares, her bright eyes watching me as she meowed again.