by Ava Collins
“And you’re giving this to me?” I asked.
Porter nodded.
“But you need it,” I said. I felt like I shouldn’t accept it. He was on the run from the League of Sorcery. I wasn’t. At least, not yet.
“I’ll make another one.” He smiled, softly.
I gazed at his perfect features. Then I suddenly remembered. “Bancroft!”
“Bancroft?” Porter asked.
“Bancroft is trapped in the elevator.”
“Who’s Bancroft?” Gibbs asked.
Porter looked confused. “How does a ghost get trapped in an elevator?”
“A ghost?” Gibbs was shocked. “Why does this surprise me?” he muttered to himself, shaking his head.
“I don’t recommend trying to free him just yet,” said Porter.
“Why not?” I asked.
“For one, you and I both expended a lot of energy to bring your cat back from the edge of death. Confronting a powerful, evil witch right now would not be a good idea. Two, the minute you break that spell, if it can be broken, you lose the element of surprise. The evil witch will feel it.”
“I can’t just leave him there,” I said.
“Trust me, he’ll survive. He’s not mortal,” Porter said. “You are.”
He had a point. It wasn’t going to do Bancroft any good if I went and got myself into a confrontation with a witch. Especially in a weakened condition.
“I really need to go. It’s best for me not to hang around after I’ve done some magic."
“What am I supposed to do?”
“First, you need to figure out who you’re dealing with,” Porter said. “Until then, keep a low profile.”
Gibbs stifled a laugh.
Porter was growing nervous and starting to fidget. This League of Sorcery thing really had him spooked. He headed for the door. “We’ll talk about this later,” he said. “Right now, no more magic. Let the energy die down. Maybe no one will have noticed.” Porter slipped out of the apartment.
I think the martini had caught up with Mom. She sauntered over to the couch and promptly crashed out.
“Well, I think I’ve had enough excitement for one day,” Gibbs said. “Try not to get into any more situations.” Gibbs eyes pleaded with me. He looked exhausted.
“We still don’t know who killed Mrs. DuMond.”
“We’re not going to figure that out today, I can tell you that.” He started for the door. “Look, tomorrow we’ll go knocking on doors. If that stone of yours turns red, we’ll follow up on it. In the meantime, take it easy. Deal?”
I frowned.
“Deal?” Gibbs asked again. It was more of a demand.
“Deal,” I sighed.
Gibbs left. Mom was passed out. And Newport was watching TV, like nothing ever happened.
I hadn’t slept in days, yet I was too wired to go to bed. My mind kept going back to Mrs. Abbott. After all, she baked the cupcakes. She would have been the most likely person to put a spell on them. But that thought just didn’t sit well with me. She didn’t strike me as a witch. Though, one can never tell by looking. But she seemed genuine when she said she didn’t poison the cupcakes.
I just needed to get close to her, and the stone would tell me one way or another. Knocking on her door for no reason might have looked suspicious. I needed to come up with a good excuse. While I was plotting my story, I headed down to check the mail. It was nothing but bills and junk mail.
On the way back up to the apartment, I ran into Elliott and Charlotte in the lobby.
“Hannah,” Elliott said. “I’ve been meaning to speak with you.” He looked a little nervous. “It’s about your eviction notice.”
I had forgotten about it. With everything that had been going on, I had pushed it aside. There was a glimmer of hope inside me that he would extend the deadline.
“The deadline is tomorrow,” he said. “I just want to make sure that you will be in compliance.”
My glimmer of hope was crushed. “Couldn’t you just give us a few more days?”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t do that,” Elliot said. He had zero experience managing a building. It seemed that he was going to carry on in the same management style as his stepmother. This surprised me. Maybe I didn’t know Elliott as well as I thought I did.
I felt the gemstone in my pocket heating up. Soon it was blazing. If it got any hotter, I thought it might burn through my pants.
Elliott excused himself and walked away.
“I’ll talk to him and see if we can work something out,” Charlotte whispered.
The stone in my pocket burned.
Charlotte turned and caught up with Elliott. I pulled the stone from my pocket. It was glowing red.
CHAPTER 32
I SPENT THE evening going over every shred of evidence. I charted every detail out on a timeline and organized all of my notes. Then I conferred with Bancroft. I passed out in the service elevator around 3am.
I woke up around 9am with a massive crick in my neck. Bancroft said he tried to wake me during the night to send me home, but I wouldn’t budge. I dreamt about the murder all night. By morning, everything made sense.
I called Gibbs. “I figured it out. Meet me at the DuMond as soon as possible.”
“Oh, sure. I’ll just drop what I’m doing,” he said, with an air of sarcasm.
“Gibbs!”
“Okay, okay. It’s going to take me at least 45 minutes to get over there,” Gibbs said.
I gathered up all of my notes and was going to head back to my apartment. A shower sounded good. But on my way through the lobby, I ran into Charlotte Fox.
“Hannah, I was just looking for you. Do you have a moment to talk?”
“Uh, sure,” I stammered. The stone in my pocket wasn’t hot. It wasn’t even warm.
Charlotte suggested that we’d be more comfortable talking about my rent situation in private. We went into her apartment.
The stone remained cool.
“I wanted to tell you, I’ve got good news,” Charlotte said, with a beaming smile.
“Where’s Elliott?”
“He’s on the golf course. Where else would he be this time of day?” She chuckled.
I didn’t figure Elliott for a wizard. I didn’t think he had the stomach to kill his stepmother. But the stone remained cold. When I woke up this morning, I was convinced that Charlotte Fox had killed Mrs. DuMond. But now I wasn’t so sure.
“So, do you want to hear my secret?” Charlotte asked.
“Yes, I’d love to.”
“I talked to Elliott, and he’s agreed to extend the deadline on your rent for another week. Isn’t that exciting?”
“That’s great. Very kind,” I said.
Her eyes lit up. “I think this calls for a celebration.” She sprang up from the couch and dashed into the kitchen. She returned a moment later with a tray of cupcakes. “I’ve got some of Mrs. Abbott’s special cupcakes.”
She extended the tray to me. “Go ahead, take one.”
“No, thank you.”
“Oh, go on. One’s not going to kill you.” She smiled, and her eyes sparkled with mischief.
“I’m pretty sure those cupcakes are lethal.”
Charlotte giggled. “Mrs. Abbott swears there’s no sugar or fat in these things. Your thighs are safe.”
“Why don’t you eat one?”
“I’ve had three this morning already.” She smiled.
“I know you killed Mrs. DuMond.” I couldn’t help myself. I just blurted it out.
Charlotte’s smile faded. “Why, that’s preposterous. In case you’ve forgotten, I have an airtight alibi. And I must say, after all I’ve done for you, I’m shocked that you would utter such nonsense.”
“I have a witness that saw you. He’s willing to testify.” I lied. I was hoping she wasn’t as good at spotting bluffs as Mr. Giovanni was.
“Who?” Charlotte asked, shrugging it off with a laugh.
“The thief who stole your jewelr
y.”
The room fell silent.
“He’s lying,” Charlotte stammered. “It’s clearly an attempt at blackmail.”
“No. You cast a spell on Mrs. Abbott’s cupcakes. When the cupcakes didn’t work right away, you panicked. It was the perfect night for a murder. Mrs. DuMond had public confrontations with Isabella and Jake. You couldn’t let that opportunity go to waste.”
“Cast a spell?” Charlotte sneered. “Like I’m some kind of witch?”
“Yes. An evil one.”
Charlotte’s eyes narrowed at me. “So, you’re suggesting that I went into the maintenance closet, put on Jake’s clothes and boots? Then I hid in the basement and bashed the old lady over the head?”
“That’s exactly what I’m suggesting. The medical examiner said the angle of the impact wound came from a left-hander.”
“I’m not left handed,” Charlotte said. She smiled triumphantly.
“No. But you have a hell of a backhand, don’t you?”
Her sly grin faded.
“You put the bloody boots back into the maintenance closet. And after Jake was arrested, you planted the bloody coveralls in his apartment. You certainly had access to the master keys.”
“I have an alibi,” Charlotte reiterated.
“One who will testify that he was put on hold for 10 minutes during your conversation.”
“Why on Earth would I want to kill Mrs. DuMond?”
“Because Elliott is now a very, very rich man,” I said. “The wedding’s next week, right?”
Charlotte sneered at me. “You little twerp. Do you think a jury is going to believe the testimony of a petty thief?”
“They won’t have to. The video he took on his cell phone speaks for itself.”
Charlotte’s face went pale. Her head fell in her hands. She began to sob. Then she started blathering on in a panic. “I’m ruined. What will people think? That video will be on every sports channel. My legacy will be destroyed.” She started biting her nails. “I can’t do prison.” She was having a meltdown.
“You cast a poison spell on these cupcakes, didn’t you?”
“I’ve always known you were a witch. That pendant of yours radiates energy. Might as well walk around with a sign on your forehead. Quite frankly, I never thought you possessed the skills to be a threat. Always fumbling about, screwing up spells. But yesterday, I sensed a powerful gemstone. I thought, perhaps, you had become a threat after all. And now here you are to ruin me.” She sighed. “Yes, I cast a spell on these cupcakes.”
I pulled the stone out of my pocket. “Why isn’t the stone working now?”
“Because I did a blocking spell,” she said. “You really aren’t any good at this witchcraft thing, are you?”
“Apparently, neither are you,” I said.
“My magic works. It made me a star. The youngest champion ever to win Wimmelsdorf,” she said, proudly.
“But it backfired, didn’t it?”
“All magic has a cost,” Charlotte said. “Mine was a knee injury.” Her eyes lost their sparkle. A grim pallor washed over her face.
Charlotte was lost in thought for a moment. Sweat was beading on her forehead. Life as she knew it was over. She would be the subject of endless gossip among her society friends. The public would turn on her. She’d be remembered as a murderer, not a tennis superstar. She wouldn’t last a week in a super max prison, and she knew it.
She eyed the tray of cupcakes. “I can make all of this go away.” Charlotte picked up a cupcake. “Promise me something.” Her voice was grave. “My reputation stays intact. No one ever needs to know the truth. Not even Elliott. Especially Elliott.”
I nodded.
“I do love him, you know. It wasn’t all about the money.” Tears were streaming down her cheek.
“Did you kill Roger DuMond as well?”
She looked at me, aghast. “Absolutely not. He was a wonderful man. Somebody had to avenge his murder.”
“Are you saying that Mrs. DuMond killed him?”
Charlotte nodded. “I think knowing that made it easier for me to do what I did. It made me feel like what I was doing wasn’t so terribly wrong.” She stared at the cupcake. “Am I really so bad?”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t have to.
Charlotte peeled the wrapper from the cupcake and gobbled it down. In fact, she ate the whole tray.
CHAPTER 33
BY THE TIME Gibbs arrived, Bancroft was once again strolling through the hallway. The cupcakes must have worked their evil magic on Charlotte. A witch’s spell dies with the witch. Banksy was overjoyed to be free again.
I had recorded my entire conversation with Charlotte on my phone. I gave a copy to Gibbs. It was enough to absolve Jake of any wrongdoing.
Elliott was devastated at the loss of Charlotte. Everyone close to him had died in the past several months. I felt sorry for him.
Things were getting back to normal. If you could ever call things around the DuMond normal. I still had that rent situation to work out. And the looming consequences of magic. The DuMond had become a hotbed of supernatural activity. It would surely register as a huge spike on the radar of the League of Sorcery. And from what Porter had said, they didn’t look kindly on unauthorized uses of magic.
That afternoon, a messenger delivered a package. It was a bubble wrapped envelope containing a USB drive and a key. There was also a piece of paper with a four digit code.
The messenger was a young guy with brown hair that fell into his eyes. I don’t know how he could see anything through it. He kept flicking the hair out of his eyes, but it would only fall back in an instant later.
“Freddy said if I didn’t hear from him by 4pm every day, that I was supposed to deliver this to you. It’s a day late, sorry,” he said.” I got busy yesterday and kind of forgot about it.”
The USB drive was a backup of the audio recordings. I sure could have used this yesterday, I thought. I listened to the entire recording. It wasn’t long. Maybe thirty seconds total. Just one clip of Mr. Giovanni ordering a hit. The same clip that Falco had played back at the grain silo. It wasn’t nearly the mountain of evidence that Freddy Stryker had claimed it to be. Falco had taken Freddy’s bluff and ran with it.
The key was to a private storage unit—Pete’s Climate Controlled Self Storage. Stamped on the plastic keychain was a unit number. Banksy and I went to check it out. At the main entrance, I punched in the access code on the keypad. The glass door buzzed and clicked, and I pulled it open. Bancroft was already inside by that point.
We wandered through rows and rows of corrugated orange, pull-down doors. We finally found unit number 323. I put the key in the padlock and twisted. The lock clicked open.
My eyes scanned the hallway. I wanted to make sure no one was around. I wasn’t exactly sure what I’d find inside. I reached down, grabbed the handle, and lifted the corrugated door. The storage unit was full—floor to ceiling full.
There was barely an inch clearance for the door. The storage unit was five feet deep, ten feet wide, and ten fee tall. Crisp, clean $100 bills were stacked neatly.
Money has a distinctive smell. The paper isn’t really paper at all. It’s a cotton/linen blend, with silk fibers. Most of the smell comes from the unique blend of inks. I was looking at several million dollars in cash. The sight was beautiful. The smell was intoxicating. It was more than enough to cover my rent, tuition, and Mom’s medical bills.
This was all of Freddy Stryker’s ill-gotten gains. I remember Freddy saying he had several stashes of cash. How many other storage units full of cash were there in the city?
I didn’t know what to do. I stared at the cash. I’d never seen that much money before. I don’t think most people ever see that amount of cash in one place. Except maybe bankers. But I was torn. Stryker had done a lot of bad things to get this money. I was going to have to think long and hard about this.
What would you do with all that money?
The End
Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed this book as much as I loved writing it. As you know, reviews are the lifeblood of indie authors. Please consider rating and reviewing.
--Much love, Ava
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