There was also, however, an interview with an artist named Lindsay of the Artist’s Art Galley, which was run by a man named Andre. Liam had said that the Gallery was his prime competition, and seeing the article splashed across the front page (below the fold) didn’t make me feel any better about Liam’s prospects of winning the competition. One of Charlie’s coworkers, obviously tired of Charlie always getting the scoop, had written that day’s feature on the competition, with the Artist’s Art Gallery as its centerpiece.
The story was about the Gallery’s dominance of window display competitions in years past. Basically, that the Gallery would win was a forgone conclusion, at least according to this reporter.
Lindsay simpered, even on paper, and was very confident that the Artist’s Art Gallery was going to win. Again. “There’s just nothing like us,” she said.
There was even a quote from Andre saying that the Gallery had the most beautiful space on Main Street, and it was a no-brainer that it should be the shop displayed on the front page of the paper for all the town to admire.
The gallery was indeed a beautiful space, but Liam’s shop was gorgeous too, and in this situation it was all about who had the best display on the day of the ribbon-cutting.
I didn’t even bother finishing the article, but I was sure Liam would see it, and I didn’t know what he would do in response. He was determined to achieve victory, but it turned out he wasn’t the only one.
Liam had texted to say he’d bought supplies and could we come over in the afternoon. I told him we had something to do first but we’d come over afterwards.
After a quick breakfast of cereal and a hastily drunk cup of lukewarm coffee, I raced out to the back shed to make sure the canoe was still in one piece and didn’t have any gaping holes. Who knows what my grandmother could have gotten up to in the years since I last used the canoe!
As it turned out, the boat was covered in layers of dust and cobwebs, and I was afraid that spiders lurked in every corner and every cranny. I imagined them crawling up my legs in the dark . . . gross! But at least it looked seaworthy. The canoe was a bright blue now, more or less, but my grandmother had painted the bottom several times, so there were layers of peeling paint making rainbows here and there. Just like my grandmother, the canoe was eccentric but probably functional.
“How does it look?” Greer asked, coming up behind me. The day was sunny but the wind chilled the air and the crisp smell of falling leaves filled my nostrils as we stood examining my grandmother’s shed.
“Good,” I said. “Should be ready for an adventure tonight.”
We had to wait until dusk so Paws could go, but thankfully that wouldn’t be very late at this time of year.
“Have you texted Jasper to let him know we’re coming back to the barn?” Greer asked. The reddening of my face was all the answer she needed.
Greer had been picking up a few more shifts at the bar recently to try and keep busy, and she had to work that day, but Charlie was going with me to see Mary Caldwell. As a journalist, Charlie tended to legitimize my investigating, so she’d be invaluable to have along when I went to question Kayla’s sister. Charlie could say that she wanted to do a series of articles on unsolved cases, and that would give me the perfect excuse to ask questions on behalf of Kayla’s ghost.
Before we left, Charlie dug out some binders filled with articles on Kayla’s disappearance. We skimmed through the material, but nothing jumped out at us beyond what Kayla had told me the night before. She disappeared, and everyone except her sister thought she’d run off to Vegas. The town office people were very sad, but they had to move on because the work needed to be done. In the end, Kayla’s sister had been the only one who thought her disappearance was unusual or mysterious in any way. The police had said they were looking for her, but they didn’t really know where to look, and it had certainly never occurred to them to dredge the lake or send divers to look for her car. In fairness, they wouldn’t have had a clue where to start even if they’d had a reason to focus on the lake; it wasn’t exactly a tiny body of water.
Our plan was to stop at Liam’s late that afternoon to plan our mode of attack, as he called it, and then we’d go back to the barn with the canoe and Paws.
In short, it was going to be a busy day.
Charlie and I hopped into the Beetle and drove to the address I had found for Mary Caldwell, which just so happened to be in an apartment building. I wondered if it was the same apartment where Kayla had lived before she had crashed her car, or been crashed into, and died. I tried calling Mary Caldwell before we left the house, but there was no answer, so we decided to just drive over. Lots of people these days didn’t answer their phones if they didn’t recognize the number, so I figured there was a good chance Mary was at home, or would be by the time Charlie and I arrived.
The apartment building was nice, if old and a little rundown. I found myself wondering why, if this was indeed where she had lived with Kayla, Mary had never moved. We walked right up to number eight, the number listed in the phone book, and knocked. Drapes covered the window, so we couldn’t see inside, and we waited a very long time. But at one point the drapes moved very slightly, as if the wind had touched them, and that was enough to convince me that someone was inside watching the porch and trying to see who the visitor was.
My roommate and I exchanged glances. Tacitly we agreed that I had to push a little harder, so I called out in the direction of the door, “I’m from Mintwood, and I’m a friend of your sister.”
That did the trick.
The door opened slightly to reveal a woman in her fifties with steel-gray hair. Even with the age difference, I could see a resemblance between this woman and the girl I had met the other night, a young woman who would never grow old. This woman’s eyes were further apart and she was taller, but they were definitely related.
“What you want?” she asked. “I’m sick and tired of doing interviews and nobody finding my sister. It’s been almost twenty-five years.”
There was no way I could explain to Mary Caldwell that I was a witch and could see ghosts. This was a common problem for me, and I tried to avoid that explanation whenever possible.
“We just wanted to talk to you. My friend works at the newspaper,” I said. I pointed at Charlie, who was standing next to me beaming. Charlie had a way of setting people at ease, and I hoped she’d be able to work her magic this time. We weren’t getting off to the best start.
Mary Caldwell sniffed. “Nobody at the newspaper believed my sister was anything other than a runaway. Why should I talk to you?”
“I’ve been reading up on your sister’s disappearance,” said Charlie. “I don’t believe she was a runaway, and I was wondering if you might talk to me about that night and what you think might have happened that was never discovered.”
Mary Caldwell eyed Charlie skeptically for a long time, just standing there with the door open a sliver but not enough for us to see past her. Finally she sighed and open the door further. “Come in,” she said.
Charlie and I filed inside Mary Caldwell’s apartment, a set of rooms that looked like they’d been frozen in time. The TV looked like it was from the seventies, so actually a lot like my grandmother’s TV, and there was a sort of yellowish green wall-to-wall carpet.
“Please sit down,” Mary said, indicating an uncomfortable-looking sofa. Charlie and I both sat down at once, and the sofa was indeed so hard that Charlie’s eyes flared.
“I’ve wanted to move to Florida for a few years now,” said Mary, “but I just can’t bring myself to do it as long as I don’t know where Kayla is. I keep thinking she’ll come back, and how will she find me if I don’t live in the same place? I know it’s foolish, but I’m an older sister and I was always protective. I thought she’d be fine working at the town hall, but it turns out she wasn’t. We did have fun living here, though. Her room is just the same as it was when she last left it.”
She paused as if wondering whether to tell us the next bit
, then, with an air of having made a hard decision, she said, “Well, except for that no-good woman who came and took away some town papers right after Kayla disappeared. I never did like her.”
“What woman is this?” Charlie asked, pulling out the same notepad she’d used when we interrogated Jeff recently, after Gracie Coswell went missing.
“Mrs. Luke,” said Mary. “She supervised Kayla for the whole year she worked at the Caedmon town office. Mrs. Luke had been there longer, and Kayla said she was hard to work with and difficult. Kayla didn’t think she liked her. That is, Mrs. Luke didn’t like my sister. After Kayla went missing, Mrs. Luke never said a word to me, except one day she showed up here and insisted on taking away some boxes that Kayla had left in her room. It was after the police had searched everything, so I suppose she had a right. I asked Mrs. Luke what she needed the papers for and she said it was town business. That was the last time I saw her except for eight years ago, when I made the mistake of going to the grocery store on a Saturday morning. There was Mrs. Luke buying bread as if she had any right to buy bread after my sister had gone missing and no one ever even apologized for it. She probably believed Kayla ran off to Vegas like everybody else. In fact, she’s probably the one who started the rumor.”
“So you agree that Mrs. Luke disliked Kayla?” Charlie asked, scribbling frantically in her notebook.
“She certainly wasn’t friendly,” said Mary. “I don’t think she hurt Kayla, though, if that’s what you’re getting at. I don’t know who did, I just know that Kayla would never have left without talking to me.”
“So, you don’t think she ran off somewhere?” I said.
“It’s not as if she had any interest in Vegas! Who cares about Vegas! Lots of lights, late nights, noise. It’s ridiculous. Kayla never had any interest in that kind of thing, she just wanted to have a job and do good work at the town hall and eventually find a fella and get married. She said I could live with her as long as I wanted to. I don’t know what would have happened if she hadn’t disappeared, but I believe she would’ve found her fella and gotten a cute house and still mainly worked at the town hall. Her boss, Mr. Buxton, said she was great.”
“I’m sure she was,” I said.
“Anyway, why’s she the one asking all the questions?” said Mary, pointing to Charlie.
“I’m trying to learn the ropes,” I said. “Charlie already knows everything, so she’s helping me.”
Mary Caldwell appeared satisfied with this answer. “Mr. Buxton passed away not long after,” she said. “The town of Caedmon gave him a fancy sendoff for all his years of service when he retired. Of course, my sister disappears and she doesn’t get a fancy sendoff because she’s lolling around in Vegas.” Mary Caldwell rolled her eyes to indicate she didn’t believe this for a moment.
“What do you think did happen to your sister?” I said.
Mary sighed and glanced at Charlie. “I have a theory, but I don’t want it in print unless you have proof. I’m worried you’ll think I’m some rambling old lady who’s just sad about her sister.”
“Our conversation can be off the record,” said Charlie. “Just tell me what you suspect and why you suspect it, and I’ll go from there.” My friend made a show of capping her pen and closing her notebook.
Mary Caldwell nodded, resigned. “I suspect she was murdered.” She glanced between the two of us to see what the impact of her statement would be, and when neither of us reacted as if she was crazy she appeared to take heart and continued.
“A couple of days before she disappeared she said something about a funny business she thought she’d found. She said she was going to look into it further. She thought it was probably nothing, but she couldn’t let it go.”
“What did you tell her?” I asked.
Mary Caldwell snorted. “I told her to hold onto it like she would hold onto a hot coal. If she found something illegal in the goings-on at the town hall, I didn’t think she wanted any part of it. I told her there was no point in stirring up trouble and she should just do her job and come home at night and eat porridge in the morning. She did love her porridge.”
“And what did she say?” I asked.
“She said it was probably nothing,” said Mary, shaking her head.
It puzzled me that Kayla hadn’t said anything about this when I talked to her by the lake, but I decided that maybe she’d been run off the road while still thinking that what she’d found wasn’t significant. Maybe she was right. Maybe she wasn’t.
“I thought about looking into the matter myself,” said Mary Caldwell, “but I’m not the detective type. I didn’t have suspicions until Mrs. Luke came and took the boxes away. That was a couple of weeks after Kayla disappeared, and by then it was too late. I tried calling a reporter but I didn’t even know what to tell them. Kayla had specifically said she thought something was fishy at the town office, and as I hope I’ve already made clear, Mrs. Luke wasn’t going to be any help.” She left unsaid the possibility that Mrs. Luke was actually the problem.
“There really wasn’t much you could do,” said Charlie. “You did your best for your sister.”
Mary Caldwell nodded, looking sad. “I just wish I knew what happened her. Then I could move to Florida and have peace. I don’t know why anyone would want Kayla gone. She was a sweetheart. She never did anything wrong her life!”
“Do you mind if we look around her room?” I said.
“I don’t suppose I do,” said Mary Caldwell. “She was very neat, my sister. She left everything in its place, so it’s been terribly easy to dust all these years. You might think it’s silly that I leave it the way she liked it, but why not? I don’t need the space. Besides, it’s not as if she died and there’s a burial place I can visit, is it?”
Charlie and I exchanged glances. Mary Caldwell wanted to know what had happened to her sister, and I had a feeling that at the very least, she would know in a few days where her sister had died. Now I just had to find out who killed her.
Chapter Five
We didn’t stay in Kayla’s old room for long. There wasn’t much there, and certainly nothing that would indicate who had killed her. She’d been single, but she did have a couple of good high school friends who, Mary Caldwell said, had since moved away. So there wasn’t really anyone else to talk with about her except her coworkers.
“Poor woman,” said Charlie when we were back in the car and on our way home. “She just wants to find out where her sister is, and she’s stayed in that apartment all these years.”
I agreed, and now more than ever I wanted to find out what had happened to Kayla. In the meantime, we had other agenda items to take care of.
We drove over to Liam’s later that dat. Greer, who’d been working a day shift, was planning to meet us there, and then the four of us would hunker down and hopefully figure out a window display so utterly amazing and fantastic that Liam just had to succeed in getting the ribbon-cutting ceremony in front of his store.
Charlie and I arrived in downtown Mintwood to a flurry of activity. Nights were usually quiet, but with a window display competition in full swing, we weren’t the only ones who were getting to work. The winner would be announced on Friday and the ceremony would take place on Saturday, so there wasn’t a lot of time. Charlie, Greer, and I all tried not to look over at the Artist’s Art Gallery, but we couldn’t help it.
There were at least ten artists standing out front, all intent on the window display. One of them even had an easel set up and was painting away. Meanwhile, Liam’s Twinkle Costume Shop was dark and closed, the display windows hung with black curtains. Liam was clearly carrying out his threat to hide his efforts until the last moment of reveal on Friday morning.
I tried the doorknob, but it was locked, leaving us no choice but to knock.
“Who is it?” Liam asked.
“It’s the secret stealers,” Greer called out.
The door opened just enough for us to slip through.
Liam’s mood could
often be determined by the music he was playing in the shop. Today it was classical, inspiring; he wasn’t messing around.
After we were safely inside, Liam glanced down the street, saw the Artist’s Art Gallery, sniffed disdainfully, and closed the door behind us with a snap.
“How’d the shopping go?” Charlie asked.
Liam shrugged. “It went well, but I felt it was impersonal. I want to do something personal to the shop and personal to me that’s gorgeous and extravagant. I think that’s the only way to win.”
He had spent the day buying supplies, and now it looked as if a craft store had exploded all around the Twinkle. He had at least eight bags of markers and glitter, special paper, crayons, and a special knife, all in the service of creating the best window display ever. He had different paints, and rolls of cloth in shimmering colors. He was very excited about all of it. The problem was, he didn’t know what he wanted to use any of it for.
“What did you come up with?” Greer asked.
Liam shook his head. “I have no idea what to do.”
We all looked at each other in dismay. Wasn’t he supposed to be the creative one?
At the moment, the shop window had the display of vintage T-shirts, most of which were black and many of which sported rips in strategic places. The first thing we did was to take out everything in the display, fold it, and pack it away in boxes. Liam wanted to start fresh, and T-shirts, especially ripped T-shirts, were not going to be involved.
“Do you have anything really special?” Charlie asked.
“What do you mean?” Liam wanted to know. “It’s all special.”
“I mean gorgeous vintage dresses that haven’t been on display yet, stuff like that,” said Charlie.
“What about old maps?” said Greer.
“Old maps? Of what?” Liam asked, frowning.
“Maps of the town,” said Greer, brainstorming. “We could somehow tie in the fact that it’s the town’s two-hundredth anniversary with the window display.”
“That’s a great idea,” I said.
Witch Some Win Some (Witch of Mintwood Book 2) Page 3
