I was just finishing breakfast when Charlie emerged, yawning. She gave me a sleepy smile and a wave as I headed to the living room to read the newspaper, and joined me there not long afterward. For a little while, everything was quiet. Then the comfortable silence was broken by the ringing of the house phone. We exchanged looks, since no one usually called this early in the morning. Since it was technically my house, I got up and answered the phone.
“Good morning,” I said.
“Good morning, this is Lena at the Mintwood Gazette,” said a high-pitched voice on the other end of the line.
Alarm bells went off in my head. Lena was Charlie’s editor. “Can you put Charlie on the line?” she asked.
Charlie had just stood up to head for the shower, but I gave her a look that said to wait, then told her who it was and handed her the phone. She frowned into the receiver. The poor girl had been through a lot, but apparently her bad twenty-four-hour stretch wasn’t over.
The conversation was short. When she hung up the phone, she looked confused.
“What happened?” I asked.
Charlie returned to her seat without saying anything. When she finally spoke, it was only two words: “Hansen Gregory.”
It turned out that Hansen had gotten an exclusive interview with the tow truck driver who had pulled Kayla’s car out of the lake, scoring a detailed description of everything that had been found in the car. His article had been published on the front page of the Caedmon Chronicle that very morning.
Lena was livid that Charlie had been scooped. Charlie’s promise that Mary Caldwell was going to do an exclusive interview with her didn’t help, because the interview hadn’t happened yet, and nothing had been printed in the Gazette that morning to get readers to buy the Gazette instead of the Chronicle.
It took an awful lot of will power on my part not to run out on the spot and buy a copy of the Chronicle, so I could see what the tow truck driver had said. Sometimes I do things to support my friends to the detriment of my cases, and this was one of those times, but that’s not to say I was happy about it.
I didn’t think the article would matter much in terms of finding out what happened to Kayla the night she went off the road, but still, Hansen Gregory had gone after this story, and now he was beating Charlie. Charlie, I knew, wouldn’t stand for it.
Lena had told Charlie to take the day off, telling my friend that she had been working too hard. Charlie had argued, but not for very long. Lena could be very convincing.
Charlie just continued to sit in the living room; she seemed to be terribly confused about what one did with free time. She went so far as to examine the carpet to see if it needed vacuuming, but since she had vacuumed less than a week ago, it really didn’t.
I was about to head out to check on Vertigo when Charlie’s voice stopped me. “Can you pick up a copy of today’s Chronicle? Let’s see what all the fuss is about.” Her voice was remarkably calm, and that made me nervous. But all I said was, “Yes, and I’ll be back soon.”
Vertigo was delighted to see me, as usual, and he ran around in ever-increasing circles until he saw me getting ready to take him outside. I was pretty sure that whatever was making a racket in the woods was a ghost, and that he or she would be quiet until nighttime, so we could be a little more free in our wanderings than we had been last time.
The fall day was cool but brilliantly sunny. I loved how the bright light shone through the trees and turned the leaves from orange, brown, and red to shades of warm, buttery gold.
When I let Vertigo run off the leash he tore away, happily disappearing into the forest. He always came when I called, so I knew there was no danger that he’d get lost. He knew the woods better than anyone, including probably his owners.
I had been walking for fifteen or twenty minutes, my mind lost in thoughts about the Kayla Caldwell case, when the same noise I’d been hearing came again, only this time it was fainter. I paused. Vertigo came running back toward me at the same moment, knowing by some puppy instinct that it was nearly time for us to go home.
I couldn’t quite make out the words, but the voice sounded angry. Hearing it again, and in daylight, was the last straw! I simply had to come back later tonight to find out what the ghost wanted. I had been avoiding it in hopes that it had nothing to do with me and would go away, but clearly that wasn’t going to happen.
Into the bright sunshine I yelled, “I’ll be back tonight! Let’s talk! I’m sure I can solve your problem!” I wasn’t remotely sure that was true, but saying so wasn’t going to do any good.
Feeling like an idiot for yelling into an empty forest, I trudged back to the house with Vertigo trotting alongside me.
This whole Witch of Mintwood thing had its ups and downs, and I was pretty sure that this was a down week. Still, when I had yelled that I’d be returning to find out what the trouble was, the strange noise had ceased, so I figured I wasn’t wrong that the voice had been trying to get my attention.
Before I left town I stopped at the barn. I had been putting it off, but I had to talk to Jasper, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it when my friends were around because my face went bright red whenever I spoke to him. I needed to apologize to him for always being on his property without permission.
I really had to get it together.
Jasper had a variety of projects going on, so when I drove past the barn and saw that his truck wasn’t there I decided to try his other work site in Mintwood. Part of me hoped he wouldn’t be there, either, and I told myself not to try so hard to talk to him. But who was I kidding? I was going to try my hardest to talk to him, and I might as well admit it.
Just as I was reaching the second construction site, my Beetle started shaking violently. The car did have trouble on hills and mountains, I knew that, but Greer thought I had unreasonable expectations of what I could ask it to do.
“The car has trouble, and it’s not like you ever drive it up an actual mountain,” she’d said.
Okay, since Greer wasn’t here I was willing to admit that this wasn’t even really a hill. It was more like a gentle slope tilting upwards, and even so the Beetle couldn’t do it. I sput-sput-sputtered to a stop just within view of the construction site. A couple of the workers glanced in my direction, then went about what they’d been doing before I puttered into view.
I could just imagine what they were saying. “That girl doesn’t know anything about cars. Who let her drive?”
Smoke was coming out of the front of my car, so I got out and gave it an angry glare. Then I realized that not only would glaring do no good, I could never be truly mad at Beetle.
Frustrated, I decided to give the car a few minutes while I went in search of Jasper. At this point I barely remembered what I wanted to talk to him about, but I had come too far to back out now. Besides, my car was resting.
It wasn’t until I was walking into a building that looked a lot like a warehouse that I realized I should have called ahead. My excuse for not calling, of course, was that cell phones didn’t work well in Mintwood. But it didn’t seem to matter this time, because despite there being a whole crowd of men wearing hard hats on this site, Jasper was nowhere to be seen.
The men who were here were looking at me questioningly, but I could see Jasper’s truck among others parked nearby, so I was determined to find him, embarrassment be damned.
Finally, in the middle of the warehouse, I saw Jasper’s back. He was talking to several other workers, and I found myself smiling involuntarily. Maybe it was because I was admiring the strong plane of his shoulder blades or his broad back or how his waist tapered downwards, but whatever it was, I had to get stern with myself.
“Get a grip, Lemmi,” I told myself.
“Hi Jasper,” I said out loud as I walked up to him. He turned around, his eyes sparkling in surprise when they landed on me, causing butterflies to tap dance in my stomach.
“Hi, Lemmi, what brings you here? Everything okay?” he said. Green eyes were distracting.
“Everything’s great,” I lied. “I just want to talk about something if you have a minute.”
“Jasper, who might this lady be?” said one of the men he’d been talking to. Looking at the man more closely, I was suddenly nervous. This man was older, about Jasper’s grandfather’s age, and dressed in a nice suit and a purple-and-blue-striped tie. He looked serious, and he also looked like Jasper, so I had to think that it could in fact be his grandfather.
“Grandfather, this is Lemmi, we went to high school together. Lemmi, this is my grandfather,” said Jasper, smiling. If I hadn’t known better I would have said he was very happy to be introducing us. Unfortunately, that happiness quickly faded.
His grandfather wasn’t smiling, and he didn’t extend his hand to me. Luckily I hadn’t stuck mine out yet. I was definitely getting a bad vibe.
Chapter Fifteen
“You look like a woman I know. Do you happen to be any relation of Evenlyn?” he asked. Jasper glanced his grandfather, now looking a little uneasy himself.
“I’m her granddaughter,” I said, trying to keep the nerves out my voice. I wish I could say that his eyes snapped or bulged or his face turned bright red with anger, but none of those things happened. In fact, his facial expression didn’t change at all. Not a muscle moved, not an eye twitched. It was almost worse than an overtly unpleasant reaction; it was almost as if he was frozen.
The other guy who’d been standing with them, who could only be the foreman, cleared his throat. “I’d better get back to work,” he said, quickly walking away. But even that man’s departure didn’t thaw Jasper’s grandfather.
“It looks like I came at a bad time. I didn’t want anything important, I’ll just get going,” I said.
Jasper started to move, or say something, as if he had just awakened from a trance. I could tell he didn’t know what to make of his grandfather’s reaction. The two of us had joked about our families not getting along, but we’d never really thought about confronting the enmity in the flesh.
When Jasper didn’t actually do or say anything, I turned around and started to walk away, just when a man walked by carrying a very long board. I nearly tripped and toppled over in an effort to avoid him, while he swung away from me with a concerned cry.
Once I righted myself, I realized that everybody in the warehouse, including Jasper, his grandfather, and the foreman, was looking at me. I tried to play it off as if nothing had happened, but that was difficult given that my face was the color of flame and my shoe had come half off.
Still no one said a word, so I hobbled back to my car. At least it had stopped smoking, but now there was an old guy standing next to it wearing a vest and a hard hat. When he saw me coming he smiled and tipped his hard hat at me. Here’s where all the gentlemen had gone, I told myself.
“Hope you’re not planning on driving this thing,” he said. “It needs a little work.”
“I am afraid I am planning on driving it. I have places to be,” I said. I had yet to pick up a copy of the Chronicle for Charlie.
I was just about to dodge around the man when Jasper’s voice rooted me to the spot. “Is there something wrong with her car, Henry?”
“Yes, sir. It shouldn’t be hard to fix, but until it is she shouldn’t be driving it,” said Henry.
“I was just about to leave. I’ll give her ride into town,” said Jasper.
“That’s really unnecessary. Charlie’s at home going crazy because she was given a mandatory day off. I’ll just call her and she can come pick me up,” I said, standing next to my car and trying not to look awkward.
The idea didn’t thrill me, because it risked Charlie seeing more copies of the Chronicle. On the other hand, the idea of Jasper driving me did thrill me, but on the third hand, I was unwilling to be at the mercy of his courtesy. On the fourth hand, of course, I couldn’t call her because my cell phone was unlikely to get through.
My own stubbornness was getting in the way of all the fun, as usual.
“I’m afraid we’re done with our meeting. You’ll have to find someone else to give her a ride,” said Wolf Sr., who had followed Jasper out of the building and was staring at me, his eyes cold. I shivered involuntarily, suddenly very much wanting to get out of there.
“Henry, was it?” I said, looking again, and gratefully, at the man who had said my car needed work. “Would you mind giving me a ride into town? That’d be great,” I said.
Jasper gave his grandfather a very long look. Neither Henry nor I knew how to pretend we weren’t seeing what we were seeing, so we did the age-old look up and examine the pretty blue sky routine. Luckily, we didn’t have to pretend for long, because Wolf Sr. turned around immediately and walked away. Jasper looked at me with a faint smile, but underneath it he looked very unhappy. He had just started to say something to me when his grandfather barked at him to come along.
“I’ll see you soon,” he said, and he turned around and followed his grandfather.
“I’ll get my truck and come back here,” said Henry. “Don’t worry, we have several mechanics working here. One of them will take a look. Shouldn’t be anything too serious.”
What was it I said before? Embarrassment be damned?
Henry talked about his truck for most of the ride. It was clearly his favorite topic, and he was very proud of his vehicle. I didn’t mind. Acute embarrassment harms the vocal cords and renders them temporarily useless (yes, that was my official diagnosis), and I didn’t think I’d be able to speak for a month, or until Charlie was going to cook again and I needed to use the phone to order takeout.
It turned out that picking up a copy of the Chronicle was easier said than done. The main street of Mintwood had become a polite war zone. The stakes were high, the tension was enormous, and the cranberry biscuits smelled amazing.
All was lost if a shop owner failed, and because everyone knew whose side I was on, this week I was something of a pariah in the other shops.
I tried the Main Street General Store, but they had already sold out of the Chronicle. To my dismay, the stack of Gazettes was still sitting there, unbought, a circumstance I was not going to relate to Charlie.
Old Bud, the proprietor of the General Store, looked at me with raised eyebrows. Most of his face was obscured by a scraggly beard, and what he hadn’t managed to hide that way he covered with large wire-rimmed glasses.
“Don’t let that friend of yours catch you looking for the Chronicle,” he warned me.
“My friend is the one who sent me out for it,” I said primly, enjoying the surprise on Bud’s face as I left.
Next I tried The Daily Brew, where I had more luck. The coffee shop was already full, and the hot topic of conversation was the car in the lake and Kayla Caldwell.
Mrs. Barnett was on the town Council and presided over town affairs as if she was born to do it, which in fact she was, her mother having also been a councilwoman and her father having served as well.
She also owned The Daily Brew.
As I walked in, Mrs. Barnett was saying how very strange the whole Kayla business was. When she caught sight of me she waved, smiled, and whispered something to the woman next to her. My grandmother had always been something of a topic of conversation around town, not least because there had always been a rumor that she was a witch. I was resigned to the fact that I had simply slotted into my grandmother’s role in more ways than one, and this was one of them.
I waved back at Mrs. Barnett, grabbed and paid for a copy of the Caedmon Chronicle, and hurried back to the farmhouse.
Henry had very kindly taken his lunch break while I grabbed a copy of the Chronicle. When we finally reached the farmhouse, he told me that someone would be along with my car shortly. Red-faced, I thanked him and hopped out of the truck as quickly as
I could.
At least it was daylight and Paws wasn’t there to see my shame.
I could hear banging in the kitchen as soon as I opened the door, so I headed that way to find out what was going on. It was late enough in the day so that even Greer should be awake, but when I got to the kitchen the fridge was open, and although I couldn’t see her, I knew it was Charlie, cleaning.
“Is it Sunday?” I asked.
The first Sunday after Charlie had moved in, Greer and I found her cleaning. She said that’s what she always did on Sunday – clean the house from top to bottom. Today wasn’t Sunday, and yet here she was, her blonde head sticking up over the fridge door, her cheeks a little pink from the cold.
She said, “No, I’m stress cleaning.”
At least she had the self-awareness to know it and the honesty to admit it.
I had taken a quick glance at the front page of the Chronicle on the way home as a way to avoid talking to Henry, because my embarrassment was still super fresh, like carrots picked right from the garden. Having glanced at it myself, I didn’t think seeing the rival newspaper was going to help Charlie’s mood. I didn’t offer it right away and she didn’t ask; she was too absorbed in her task. “Something smelled in the fridge,” she said, “and I couldn’t take it anymore.”
She was right, something had smelled in the fridge, but I hadn’t had time to look into what it could be. It might have been the peaches rotting in the drawer, except that I had thrown them out yesterday.
Greer came into the kitchen, took one look at Charlie, and started to walk out again.
“I see you have a copy of the Chronicle,” she said, stopping when she saw what I was holding.
Witch Some Win Some (Witch of Mintwood Book 2) Page 10
