Holly visibly blanched and then looked at Jax. “Umm, what do you consider baking?”
“Well laying out in your bikini on a California beach certainly isn’t what she’s talking about,” Alba growled.
Reign groaned as he ran a whisk through a bowl of eggs.
“Alba!” Sweets chastised, looking up at Reign nervously. “You’re supposed to be peeling.”
She held up one hand. “I’m peeling. I’m peeling.”
“I’ve baked before,” Jax said. “I made oatmeal raisin cookies once. My mom said they were good.”
“That’s like your mom telling you you’re the smartest, prettiest girl in the world,” I told her. “Stuff like that doesn’t count coming out of your own mother’s mouth.”
Holly looked at me with a frown. “It doesn’t? Why doesn’t that count?”
“Duh, because mothers lie to make you feel good,” I explained. “When you win the pie baking competition then you can say you’re good at baking, ok?”
Jax nodded. “Fine.”
Seconds later, I heard the sound of my mother’s flirty laugh wafting through the kitchen door. Without looking, I knew who had to be causing it. “Alba, I think Detective Whitman is here,” I said matter-of-factly.
Alba dropped her peeler and apple onto the counter and wiped her hands on the nearest towel. I followed her into the dining room to see Mom leaning over the counter suggestively towards Detective Whitman.
“Do you have news?” Alba asked, her jaw set tight with her business-only greeting.
The laughter in his eyes vanished immediately as he pulled his attention away from my mother and nodded hello to Alba. “Well, I don’t know if it’s news, but I do have a little information,” he said. He pulled a barstool out and sat down.
“Can I get you something to eat, Mark?” Mom asked as she filled up a coffee mug with coffee for him.
He held up a hand. “Thank you, Linda, no. I’m fine. I had something this morning.”
“Ok, well, if there’s anything I can do to help, you just holler,” she said and left Alba and me to speak to the detective.
“So what did you find out?” Alba pressed, leaning with flattened palms onto the counter.
“I looked up the Maxwell family. The mother and father moved out of state about six years ago. Arthur’s uncle, Samuel Davis, never lived in Aspen Falls, but the grandmother still lives in town. I couldn’t find much information on her. She’s had no involvement with the police, as far as I can see; she’s just an elderly woman.”
Alba looked hopeful. “But she lives in Aspen Falls?”
Detective Whitman nodded. “She does.”
Alba’s spine straightened as she got her hopes up. “Can we have her address?”
He chuckled. “You think I’m allowed to give out people’s addresses?”
“It’s for a missing person!” Alba exclaimed. “Don’t you want to help me find Tony?”
“Of course I want to find your husband, but we’re talking about an elderly woman here and we have absolutely no evidence to support the idea that she has any involvement in his disappearance.”
Alba pinched her lips together tightly and gave him a curt nod. “I understand,” she said reasonably.
I couldn’t believe she was just going to let him off the hook that easily. If anyone else had had the information she needed, she wouldn’t have hesitated to get physical with them.
Detective Whitman looked surprised too. “Ok,” he said, nodding. “Well, I’ll keep digging and see what else we can come up with.”
“Thank you, Detective,” Alba said tersely, before turning around and heading back into the kitchen.
My jaw dropped as I watched her leave. Poor Alba, I thought. She’s just in shock.
“Hey, thanks for the heads up about Merrick,” he said to me when we were alone. “Can I ask you a quick question?”
I leaned into him. “Sure.”
“What are your mother’s favorite kind of flowers?”
I smiled. He’d taken me seriously about bringing his A-game. “Well, she’s really not into roses; I know she likes sunflowers and lilies. I also know my mother doesn’t like it when flowers die, so a plant might be better. Oh! Or a bottle of wine. She likes red wine. I know that. That might be more appropriate for a dinner party.” Who was I kidding? I didn’t know the first thing about romance. He’d be better off asking Alba for advice about how to romance my mother than asking me.
Detective Whitman gave me a thankful little grin and nodded at me. “Thanks, Mercy. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I gave him a little wave as he headed towards the front door of the restaurant – stopping only to give my mom a nod goodbye. With a small sigh I headed back into the kitchen, sure I’d have to do more damage control between Alba and Holly.
When I entered and found Sweets silently peeling the apples she’d assigned to Alba my eyes darted around the room. “Where’s Alba?” I asked.
Jax turned around and threw a thumb over her shoulder. “She just left.”
“She left?!” I hollered. I ran to the back door and threw it open, just in time to see Alba backing Sweets’ car up. Without a word, I let the door slam behind me and sprinted towards the car. Alba looked up as I knocked on the window. She rolled down the window.
“What?”
“Where are you going?!”
“I’m going to find my husband. Do you want to come or not?” she asked hastily.
“Unlock the door!”
11
“So do you have a plan or are we just going to drive in circles all day?” I asked as we circled the waterfall in the center of town for the third time.
Alba peered through the windshield uncertainly. “I don’t know. I thought maybe I’d be able to feel his presence. I’m a witch you know. Why can’t I just know where he is intuitively?”
I smiled at her lightly. “Alba. We all have different powers. That’s just not a power that you have.”
She frowned, pounding her palms on the steering wheel. “I just don’t get why Whitman couldn’t give us that woman’s address. What does he think we’re going to do? Go over there and shake her down?”
I chuckled. “I suppose he thinks that’s something we would do. Have you looked her up?”
Alba nodded. “I googled her name last night. I couldn’t find an address anywhere online.”
“Well did you try a phone book?”
Alba’s head cocked to the side curiously. “A phone book, geez. Who has one of those anymore?” she said with a little snort.
“Puh, I have no idea,” I said with a laugh. “Hey, I bet that place over there has a phone book,” I said, pointing towards a run-down gas station down the road.
“Good idea.”
Alba pulled the car into the full-service station; our tires ran over a thin hose causing a bell inside to chime. A tall man with a thick beard and mustache and grimy pin-striped overalls came out of the attached garage within seconds of our parking.
“Something I can help you with?” he asked, wiping his greasy hands on a shop rag.
“Sorry to bother you,” I said sheepishly out the window. “We just wondered if you guys have a phone book? We’re looking for an address.”
The man stopped walking and turned around. “Yup, on the counter,” he hollered over his shoulder. “Help yourself.”
Alba shut the engine off, and the two of us scampered quickly out of the car and into the small, filthy office. There was a thick 2010 phone book sitting on the counter.
“It’s from 2010,” Alba said glumly.
I shrugged as I began flipping through the grease covered phone book. “She could still be at the same address.”
I found the small town of Aspen Falls in the thick book of local communities and began to search alphabetically flipping right to the M’s. “Here it is. Maxwell. Charlotte Maxwell, 1827 Bluff Road,” I said with bright eyes.
Alba smiled widely with surprise. “They actually have her ad
dress in there?”
“So you do own a smile,” I exclaimed, shocked to see such a big smile on my usually gloomy friend’s face.
“You’re funny, Red. No time for jokes though, we’ve got to go find Tony!”
I headed for the glass door. “What are we waiting for?”
“My GPS says it’s right here,” I said, looking out my window. “I don’t see a house. Do you?”
Alba peered over my shoulder and out my window. “No. I don’t see a house. Maybe we should park and get out and walk around.”
“What’s that going to do? It’s an empty lot!” I exclaimed. “A house isn’t just going to appear out of nowhere.”
Alba sighed. “I’m going to park anyway,” she insisted as the car swerved over quickly, the tires bumped up on the curb.
“Park much?” I asked.
“I don’t drive very often,” she grumbled. Her perky attitude was long gone now that there was no house to be found.
The two of us climbed up a short set of concrete stairs to a sidewalk and stood back to look at the row of houses with one missing, like a smile missing a front tooth. “I can’t believe the house is just gone,” said Alba sadly as she walked to the center of the empty lot and held out her arms, turning around slowly.
“Maybe there was a fire,” I suggested, shrugging.
“Maybe,” Alba whispered more to herself than to me.
The empty lot was lined with tall trees on either side and ankle high grass rustled quietly in the small breeze. The two of us looked around the lot in silence, unsure of what to do next. Without warning, Alba fell to her knees in a pile of golden leaves blown together under the row of trees. She let her head fall into her hands.
“Alba!” I exclaimed as I dashed towards her. Alba was a hard one to understand. Her outer walls were thick. Thick and often impenetrable, but it was obvious, there was a real person living behind those walls. I fell to my knees in the patch of grass beside her. “Are you alright?”
She pounded a fist on her thighs. “No! We’re never going to find him!” she cried, with real tears dampening her cheeks.
A lump formed in my throat. “Don’t say that. We’ll find him. He’s going to be ok, Alba. I promise.”
With her forehead leaning on her flattened palm, Alba glared at me out of the corner of her eye. “You can’t promise that,” she answered with a bite to her words.
“Yes I can. You and I would know if Tony were dead. He’s not dead. I’d feel it. I always feel it when someone is dead. You know that. I’d be shivering like crazy right now. I’m not even cold! Look, I’ll take off my hoodie!” I said and pulled my favorite sweatshirt off over my head. “See! Not even a goosebump to be seen on my arm.”
Alba sighed and fell backwards into the leaves, extending her legs out in front of her. She closed her eyes, letting the warm fall sun beat down on her face.
I followed suit with my head next to hers.
“You might not know this about me, Red, but I’m not really a sensitive person.”
I smiled, cautious not to laugh at a time like this. “You don’t say?”
“I know. I can be kind of rough sometimes, but I’m a girl, and most people think that girls should be sensitive. But I’ve never been very sensitive. I grew up with two brothers. Pops took me everywhere with the boys. I was raised like I was a boy. So I needed to be as tough as they were, or I’d just get trampled over. And when I met Tony in high school, he actually made me feel like a girl, even though I didn’t feel like I acted like one. Then my family got involved. Tony became friends with my brothers, and my dad accepted him into the family. Eventually, he became just another one of the boys in the family. And I stopped getting treated like a girl. I got treated like one of the guys again. Which is fine. I think it’s who I am now. But I stopped looking at Tony like he was my husband and any sensitivity I had, vanished. Now Tony’s missing, and I’ve had this rush of feelings and emotions that I honestly didn’t even know I had. It’s like who am I? Why am I acting like this – this – big, baby?”
“You’re not acting like a baby, Alba,” I assured her.
“Then what is going on? I’m crying? I’m worried? That’s not like me at all. It’s freaking me out a bit, to be honest.”
I rolled onto my side and pulled my hands up under my face. “Maybe being away from all that testosterone is allowing you to get to know the real Alba?” I suggested.
“I thought I knew the real Alba,” she whispered.
“College is about self-discovery. Maybe you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself. Maybe you should just see what happens. I know that I’ve changed since I’ve been here – it makes sense that you’re changing a little bit, too.”
She opened her eyes and then held up a hand to shade them from the sun. “Yeah,” she whispered. “Maybe.”
“And it makes sense that you’re worried about Tony. I think that proves how much you actually do love him.”
Alba thought about it for a moment and then abruptly sat up. “We need to find him. I need to tell him that I love him.”
A smile flooded my face. “Then what are we laying around here for?” I sat up and let Alba pull me to my feet next to her. “Let’s go find Tony.”
As we started towards our car, we heard the slight tinkling of a bell in the distance. We could hear it coming closer, but couldn’t see what it was yet. Then around the corner, came a little dog on a leash. It sounded like the bell must have been attached to his collar. A few steps behind him was a short round lady with high watered yellow polyester pants, white sneakers, and a sun visor over her curly white hair. Her steps were quick and succinct. She seemed to be a spunky old gal.
She walked past us on the sidewalk, giving us a thorough inspection, as the dog sniffed at our feet.
“Hello,” I said kindly. “Do you know where this house went?”
“This house?” she said, pointing to the empty field between the two small bungalow style houses.
“Yes,” I replied.
“There’s no house there,” she explained as if we were senile.
Alba snorted.
“Yes, right. I assume there was a house here at one time?”
The old woman frowned and pulled her dog back towards her when he tried to run into the street. “Regis, stop it,” she ordered then looked back up at us. “No. Not that I can recall.”
I looked at her curiously. “Do you live around here?”
“I do. I think I’d know if there had been a house there before.”
“How long have you lived here?” Alba asked.
“Oh, going on forty years now,” she said.
Alba’s face dropped.
“If you’ve lived here for 40 years, then maybe you might know who we’re looking for,” I suggested.
The woman nodded. “I can sure as Hades give it a try! Who are you girls looking for?”
“A woman named Charlotte Maxwell. Ever heard of her?”
The woman’s eyebrows rose up, crinkling her forehead. “Oh, you’re looking for old Char, are you?”
“Yes, ma’am. Do you know her?”
The woman shrugged her shoulders. “Yeah, she used to live around here. She left town though.”
“She left town?” I asked, stunned. “How long ago?”
“Oh, I suppose she’s been gone for a bunch of years now.”
“Do you know where she went?” Alba asked.
The woman peered at the two of us closer. “Why do you ask? Do you two know old Char?”
I shifted my weight onto my right leg. “No, we don’t know her. We just thought maybe she could help us find someone that we’re looking for.”
The woman raised one penciled-on eyebrow curiously. “Who are you looking for?”
Alba and I exchanged glances, unsure if we should tell the stranger who we were trying to find. I wondered who it would hurt to spread the word that we were looking for Tony.
“Her husband,” I said to the woman. “He hit his head in a c
ar accident. He was coming to see her.”
The woman’s eyes widened as she turned her eyes to Alba. “But you look so young. You must have gotten married young!” she exclaimed.
Alba turned around and headed back towards the car. “Come on, Red. This isn’t helping.”
“Thanks for your help,” I said quietly. “And sorry about that, my friend is having a hard time. Her husband drove six hours to see her, and he’s been missing for several weeks. She’s just really worried.”
The old lady nodded, wordlessly as I walked down the concrete steps and rejoined Alba already in the car.
“What a waste of time,” Alba grumbled, as she turned the key and the car lurched forward.
I peered out the window at the old woman and her little dog as they resumed their walk. Unable to peel my eyes away, I turned to look over my shoulder and out the back window as we drove down the street. “She lives next door!” I exclaimed, watching as the woman and her dog disappeared inside the house next to the empty lot.
Alba took her eyes off of her rearview mirror. “I saw that. I’m sure she knows where Charlotte moved to. Maybe we should go back?”
“Do you really think she’s going to tell us?”
Alba winced. “No. I don’t, but we could ask the rest of the neighbors. Someone has to know something.”
I looked at the clock on the dash. “We don’t have much time. The pie competition will start soon. Knocking on doors is going to take awhile. We should probably go back and help the girls. Sweets won’t like it if we don’t get her car back in time.”
Alba groaned. “The minute that competition is over, you promise to come back here with me and knock on doors?”
I held out one hand to Alba. “We’ll canvas the neighborhood. The rest of the girls will come too, and we’ll shake down every elderly person on the block until we find one that knew Charlotte Maxwell and tells us where she moved to!”
A little smile spread across her face as she took my hand to shake it. “You’re an evil witch. You know that, Red?”
12
Witch Pie: A Witch Squad Holiday Special (A Witch Squad Cozy Mystery Book 4) Page 7
