by Morgana Best
Killian’s face flushed. “No, I couldn’t imagine she had a grudge against him.”
Aunt Agnes nodded. “Okay, thanks.” When she didn’t say anything else, Killian said, “What have you heard about her?”
I was about to speak, but Aunt Agnes got in first. “Nothing, nothing at all. I just heard that she’s a member of the orchid club, that’s all. Lovely woman.”
Killian nodded and headed off to attend to someone else’s feet.
Aunt Agnes leant across to me and spoke in low tones. “Do you think Killian is the one who is having an affair with Mrs Mumbles?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I whispered, “but I do think it a little strange that he said it couldn’t be Mrs Mumbles, whereas everyone else has told us the rumours that she’s being blackmailed. I also thought it was strange how he defended her. Did you notice how his wife is acting a little snarky towards him?”
“That could be anything,” Aunt Agnes said, “but I do think it strange he didn’t think it could be Mrs Mumbles.”
“Should we mention mealy bugs to him?” I asked.
“Yes, I think you should.”
I certainly didn’t intend to ask while he had the toenail clippers in his hands. What if he slipped?
I shuddered.
When Killian returned, wielding his toenail clippers and cuticle cutters, I shrank back in the seat. I held my breath, but so far it had been painless. Then again, I hadn’t done anything to upset him.
Aunt Agnes was making inconsequential small talk, I figured to lull them into a false sense of security. Just as Killian had almost finished with the cuticle cutter, Aunt Agnes asked him, “Did you know there’s a rumour going around that Ethelbert Jones put mealy bugs on your orchids?”
I flinched, but Killian did not dig the cuticle cutter into my flesh. He simply laughed. “Why would he do such a thing? The whole thing is preposterous. It’s obvious the rumour was started in order to discredit my orchids. I can assure you, they don’t have mealy bugs.”
I had a full-blown headache by now. I studied Killian. He was certainly strong enough to drive an orchid stake through someone. But how much strength did one need for that? Surely it would depend on the sharpness of the stick.
Killian was well muscled and looked like he spent most of his spare time in the gym. His shoulders and arms were particularly bulked-up and his quadriceps bulged under his trousers. His wife too looked as though she worked out. They both had the look of gym junkies. Either of them had the physical strength to do it, I figured.
As Killian changed the subject and chatted away about the weather, the drought inland, and the recent shark attacks, I zoned out. At least Killian hadn’t made a move for my hair.
That’s when it hit me—toenail clippings! I had put myself into the very right place for someone to gather my toenail clippings. How silly of me! I had forgotten toenail clippings and had been concentrating on hair. If Killian Cosgrove was working for The Other, then he would have full access to do whatever he liked with my toenail clippings. I could hardly ask to take them with me.
Chapter 18
“What a pleasant shade of blue on your toenails, Valkyrie,” Aunt Maude said, bending over to inspect my toenails.
“What about mine?” Aunt Agnes demanded.
“Yes, all that glitter and the purple and green stripes look lovely on your toenails too,” Aunt Maude said, although she pulled an expression of distaste as she spoke.
“Lucas!” I hadn’t at first noticed Lucas sitting at the kitchen table sipping Witches’ Brew.
“Aunt Dorothy has been filling me in on your activities,” he said. He did not look impressed.
I put my hands on my hips. “Aunt Dorothy!”
“I think he casts some sort of a Cleaner spell on me to make me confess.” She winced.
“I do no such thing,” Lucas said sternly. “Pepper, what you do is your business, but I couldn’t bear to see you in danger again. Please be careful. I do worry about you, you know.”
I went all warm and fuzzy inside and shot him a silly grin.
He stood up. “Your parents want to see you again.”
I caught my breath. “They do?”
“Yes. Now, we don’t want anyone coming to the door banging and calling out for us when we’re in the tunnel. Does anyone know where Euphemia Jones is at the moment?”
“We saw her drive to town a while ago,” Maude said. “I assume she’s still in town. Was her car here when you came back?”
We told that it wasn’t.
“And Breena is asleep in the bay window in the sunlight,” Aunt Dorothy said, “and if we leave a saucer of milk on the floor, she won’t come looking for us.”
“I’m sure she doesn’t need a saucer of milk on the floor, Dorothy,” Aunt Agnes said. “We need to encourage her to act like a person when she is in person form.”
“Then put a saucer of milk on the table for all I care,” Dorothy said, frowning.
Aunt Agnes held up her hands and looked at the ceiling.
“We should go now,” Lucas said. “They’ll probably be waiting there.”
I was beyond excited to see my parents again. Still, I was terribly worried that something might happen to them. I couldn’t help worrying and it was churning me up inside.
Aunt Agnes hurried to check on Breena and then came back. “She’s still asleep,” she whispered. “Let’s go. First, Valkyrie, run up to your room and get some sensible shoes. It wouldn’t be good to walk through the tunnel in those sandals.”
After Aunt Agnes and I had changed our shoes, we all went to the secret room. She pressed a button to open the door and it slid aside.
We tiptoed into the room in the darkness. Aunt Agnes pressed a button and the trapdoor slid open. She flipped the switch to turn the light on.
I gingerly made my way down the wooden stairs. I was afraid one would give way like on all the horror movies you see on TV. I lost my footing at one stage, but Lucas was there putting his arm on my elbow to steady it. Tingles ran through me as his touch and I leant into him.
My eyes adjusted to the light quite quickly. One of the advantages of being a vampire was that I could see in the dark, although my eyes still needed to adjust when coming from bright light to total darkness.
We reached the bottom of the stairs and I looked around the room once more. I didn’t like being in closed-in spaces. Although the tunnel had plenty of headroom, I was still afraid. The floor was dirt and I thought of my newly cleaned feet. I was pleased I had changed into sensible shoes.
It was still in the tunnel. I hadn’t realised how loud outside life was. It might seem quiet, but then there’s the noise of a passing car in the distance, the chirping of the cicadas, the noisy birds overhead. There was always noise in the daytime, no matter how insignificant it seemed, but in the tunnel there was silence apart from the low breathing of my companions.
A horrible fear hit me that someone else was in there with us, but I dismissed it as my imagination. We made our way along the short distance beside a straight wall and came to the room just before the open doors. We passed through the first set of doors and continued on.
Aunt Agnes unlocked the doors and I held my breath. Would my parents be all right? The doors swung open. I at once enveloped my mother in a big hug, and my father’s hand clamped on my shoulder.
“I can’t believe I’m seeing you again so soon,” I said breathlessly.
“Do you have information for us?” Lucas asked my father.
“No, Dahlia wanted to see Pepper,” he said, “as did I. Do you have any information for us?”
“I’m afraid not,” Lucas said. “However, your daughter spoke to some of the suspects in the murder of Ethelbert Jones…”
Both my mother and father and mother interrupted him in unison. “Pepper, you didn’t!”
“I had someone with me,” I protested. “Anyway, I spoke to Mrs Mumbles who runs a plant nursery, and Alec Aldon, the creepy man who lives out nea
r Beckett Maxwell’s old place. When I was at Mrs Mumbles’ nursery, someone bumped into me. When I got home, I found a chunk missing out of my hair.”
“The tracking spell,” my mother said.
“Yes, so it actually narrows it down to one of those being the spy for The Other,” I told them. “It has to be Mrs Mumbles, Alec Aldon, or the mysterious person who bumped into me.”
“Was it a man or a woman?” my mother asked.
“Well, I thought it was a man at the time, but I can’t really be too sure,” I said.
“That does indeed narrow it down,” my mother said. “The spy realised the tracking spell wasn’t working, and so has taken some personal concerns to do another one.”
“Yes, and I’m sure it couldn’t be Killian Cosgrove,” I said, “unless he’s in it with someone else, but he gave me a pedicure today so he would be able to get away with my toenails.”
“He gave you a pedicure?” my mother said. “I don’t mean to sound sexist, but I haven’t heard of a man giving a pedicure before.”
“He and his wife own the business,” I explained. “I’m afraid I’ve walked right into it by providing him with my toenails, but then again if he’s working alone it couldn’t have been him who took my hair. He wasn’t anywhere near me when I had that chunk of hair removed.”
“As you rightly pointed out, he might be in cahoots with someone else,” my father said.
Lucas shook his head. “I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.”
“Have you checked whether she’s got another tracking spell on her?” my mother asked my aunts.
I nodded. “They did. We removed the last one and took precautionary measures against more.”
“I’ll do another egg reading,” Aunt Maude said, “just to be on the safe side, and we’ll increase the protection.”
Just as I was about to say something, we saw a cat run into the tunnel in the direction of Henry Ichor’s house.
“Breena!” I said, shocked.
“It’s the cat!” Aunt Agnes yelled.
“I’ll catch her.” My mother sprinted into the darkness. My father sprinted after her.
“You stay here, Pepper,” Lucas said, “just in case there’s a tracking spell back on you. I know it doesn’t seem like that, but we can’t take any risks.”
“How did she get down here?” I asked no one in particular.
“We know what cats are like,” Aunt Dorothy said. “She must have slipped past us as we opened the door.”
“You don’t think she’s involved with The Other, do you?” Maude said.
“Instinctively I feel she’s not,” Aunt Agnes said, “but we really can’t take any chances. I mean it was a typical thing for a cat that she did, but also it would be a typical thing for a spy to do as well.”
I stood there and clutched my throat. My heart was beating out of my chest. Surely my cat was not working for The Other.
It was not long at all before my parents returned with Breena. Breena was in human form and was wearing my mother’s coat.
“She doesn’t say much, does she?” my mother said. My mother didn’t seem overly worried, so that made me relieved.
“Do you think she’s safe?” Aunt Agnes asked my mother, wriggling her eyebrows up and down.
“We can’t be positive, but I suspect she is,” my mother said. “And she didn’t go too far. We do have vampire speed, after all.”
I knew they were talking over Breena’s head, discussing whether Breena could be working for The Other. I was relieved they didn’t think she was, and I hoped they were right. I also knew that they had overtaken Breena before she got too far down the tunnel, so she would have no idea where it led.
“She’s been turning into a cat and back again more easily in the last day or so,” Aunt Agnes said.
“That’s a good sign,” my mother said. “Do you have any idea why she was stuck in cat form for so many years? Any clue at all?”
The aunts shook their heads. “She really doesn’t say much,” Aunt Agnes said. “She doesn’t have much human language, even in human form.”
“You know, you could use her to your advantage,” my father said. “You could send her to spy on the suspects.”
“That’s actually quite a good idea.” Aunt Agnes smiled and nodded. “I wonder why we didn’t think of that.”
I wondered if it would be such a good idea to send Breena to spy on people if she was working for The Other, but then figured that even if she was, there was still a murder to solve and she could bring back information. Worst-case scenario, if Breena was working for The Other, she would likely help us solve Ethelbert Jones’s murder as a cover.
I nodded to myself.
“I think we need to find out who Mrs Mumbles’ lover is,” Aunt Agnes said. “Mrs Mumbles is married and her lover is said to be married. Assuming her lover lives in this town, it must be difficult for them to meet up. They can hardly take a motel room, because it would soon be all over town. They must be meeting somewhere. If we could find out where they’re meeting, then we could stake out the place and discover the identity of her lover.”
Lucas agreed. “If it’s true that Ethelbert Jones was blackmailing Mrs Mumbles, then that seems to be the biggest motive for murder we have so far.”
“Yes, because if Alec Aldon is telling the truth about his car, that’s not a motive at all, and if Joyce Batson is on the level, she doesn’t have a strong enough motive either. The strongest motive so far seems to be the blackmail,” my mother said.
“What about Euphemia Jones?” my father said. “That is, if she does stand to inherit a sizeable amount.”
“I’ve already looked into that,” Lucas said. “That’s what I’ve been working on. Yes, she will inherit a sizeable sum. She wouldn’t ever have to work again and she’ll be quite well off when her husband’s money comes through.”
Aunt Agnes nodded. “It looks like the way to go is to investigate the blackmail, and if that doesn’t seem to take us anywhere, then we can look more to Euphemia Jones.”
“What specifically can we find out about Euphemia that will help?” I asked Lucas.
“We could see if she actually had an alibi. That would involve going to Nelson Bay and asking people who knew her,” Lucas said. “I’m reluctant to leave town considering Dahlia and Baudelaire are here. That’s why I want to investigate the blackmail first. I’ve looked into Joyce Batson’s fake painting and Alec Aldon’s car and it does seem they were both on the level about that. Of course, that doesn’t preclude the fact that there could be another motive, but as for the damaged car and fake painting, then yes, those turned out not to be motives at all.”
“The blackmail and Euphemia Jones it is, then,” I said. “But that’s only as far as the murder goes.”
“And as for the spy for The Other,” Aunt Agnes said, “it has to be Alec Aldon, Mrs Mumbles, or the mysterious person who bumped into you. Of course the mysterious person could have been anyone.”
“And I suggest you send Breena in her cat form to spy on Mrs Mumbles,” my mother said. “That is, if Breena is able to turn into cat form at will now.”
Breena transformed before our eyes. It was over in a flash, leaving a cat’s head sticking out from under my mother’s coat.
“Meow,” she said.
Chapter 19
As Aunt Agnes and I drove Breena to Mrs Mumbles, leaving Aunt Dorothy and Aunt Maude behind to manage the fort and deal with any problems that might arise with the unpleasant Euphemia Jones, I lamented the fact I had not had a chance to speak to Aunt Agnes in private.
Could we really trust Breena? Instinctively I did, but my instincts hadn’t always been right, and it seemed a perfect opportunity to place a spy in our midst. Who would suspect a cat? And she would not have turned into a human if it had not been for our spell. Her taking human form was entirely an accident.
I knew that if I was thinking along those lines, then Aunt Agnes would be too. Was this all a ruse? Was Aunt Agn
es sending Breena to spy on Mrs Mumbles as some kind of test?
I had no idea.
Then again, as I pondered on it some more, I figured that if the murder incident was entirely separate to the matter of The Other, then Breena might actually be of some help. If The Other was not involved with the murder, then The Other would want the murder solved rather quickly because they would not want their spy investigated in any capacity. It could prove too revealing.
When we reached Mrs Mumbles, Breena was still in her human form. She was sitting in the passenger seat next to Aunt Agnes. “Breena, do you understand what you’re to do?”
Breena nodded, but Aunt Agnes pushed on. “You are to go to over to that plant nursery there and seek out a woman called Mrs Mumbles. We showed you her photo back at the manor. Do you remember what she looks like?”
Breena nodded.
“Would you like me to show you her photo again?”
Breena shook her head.
“Stay in your cat form until you get back to the car. Do you understand? I want you to follow Mrs Mumbles at a safe distance and spy on her to see if she mentions the name of her lover. If you can’t find out his name, at least find out where she meets him. If you have any information at all, come straight back here, even if you don’t think the information is terribly significant. And if you don’t find out anything in a few hours, come back anyway.”
Breena nodded and jumped out of the car. She hurried off into the bushes, thankfully walking upright and not on all fours. She disappeared into the bushes, and soon a black cat stalked out.
“I do hope she’s all right,” I said to Aunt Agnes.
“So do I,” Aunt Agnes said, “and I do hope that we discover something. Stakeouts might look like fun on TV, but I’m sure they’re not. Besides, I don’t eat donuts.” Aunt Agnes chuckled to herself.
“Aunt Agnes, what if Breena is the one who is working for The Other?”
“She is the most likely suspect,” Aunt Agnes said, “but it will be interesting to see what information she brings us back. Maybe she will misdirect us.”
