Home for a Spell

by Madelyn Alt

  “Hm. Probably true.”

  “Look, we know Uncle Lou is a member. But he’s been the one person throughout all of this that has given information without withholding a thing. In other words, I’m certain he’s not hiding anything. Why not run the names past him? Maybe you’ll be able to find out what you need to know without alerting anyone within the organization that aspects are being investigated.”

  He nodded. “I’ll do that.” He took Lou’s number from me.

  After Tom left, I went inside and found Marcus in the computer center. The window beside him was open. “Hey,” I said, coming up behind him and putting my hand on the crook of his shoulder.

  On the desk in front of him was one of his old computers—he had added the hard drive from Locke’s apartment to the computer’s existing drive and was just setting it aside so that he could get to work. “Hey.”

  There was a heavy tone in his voice, a quietness not usually there. “What’s wrong?”

  “You two were . . . awfully cozy.”

  I gaped at him and uttered a soft cry of surprise. “Marcus Quinn. Are you . . . are you jealous?”

  He brushed my question aside. “Of course not.”

  “You are! Don’t deny it, I can see it on your face.”

  “Well . . . maybe for a minute. Or less.”

  I shook my head, smiling softly. “There’s no need to be, you know. Tom is a good guy, but he and I . . . we never meshed, really. You know?” I stroked my hand down the back of his head, then leaned down and looped my arms around his chest, laying my cheek along the side of his warm, strong neck. “I never felt with him the way that I do when I’m with you.”

  “Oh.” He turned his head toward his shoulder and nudged his way into a surprisingly sweet kiss. “Good.”

  I’ll say.

  Reassurances and everything else out of the way, there was nothing more to do but . . . “I suppose it’s time for me to head in to the store now.” Amazing how much could happen in a single morning, and I could still make it into work to bring home the bacon. It had to be better than this morning’s burnt offering at least.

  “Check.” He bounced up out of his chair with all the restored assurance of a man who had just been told that he had nothing to fear from another man. Even an old boyfriend. “Do you want Minnie today, or can she stay with me? I kind of like her here. Maybe I’ll have to keep her forever,” he teased.

  “Only if you keep me, too,” I teased right back.

  “Hm. I might have to do that,” he teased again. Only suddenly he didn’t sound teasing at all.

  My heart leapt into my throat, and I was forced to catch my breath. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to think about it or influence it or jinx it in any way. We would cross that bridge if we came to it.

  Or did I mean “when”?

  The morning whizzed past for both Liss and me as we finished the preparations for the weekend’s coming Sidewalk Days, deciding what was safe to be put out on tables, what would be marked down, how we could best showcase some of the wares we had to offer. This would not be an event meant to play to our witchy clientele. This was for the mundanes, the regular, everyday folk who had no idea that when they searched for their favorite scents, lotions, and antiques, they were rubbing elbows with witchy folk who came from Indiana and all four surrounding states to sample our more witch-centric wares in person. Our air-conditioning had gone out sometime during the night—electrical in the old building was not quite up to modern needs—so it was hot, and we were both sweating and tired.

  Around eleven as we were finally nearing the end of our preparations, my cell phone buzzed in my pocket. New Message from Tara, the front screen said. Hm. Texting while in school, against school rules? Shamey, shamey.

  Yo, Mags. I’m supposed to pass something on to you for your cop friend, Officer Stuffy. From Abbie Cornwall. She wants him to know about the cameras. Big mirror in bedroom—she broke accidentally while moving in. Locke

  The message ended due to too many characters. I waited, not quite patiently, for her thumbs to tap out a second message. Finally another message popped into my Inbox, continuing on from the previous text.

  flipped out, sent someone in to fix it. Afterward, she found small, battery operated, remote control camera. Had rolled under her bed. Fallen from behind original mirror? She thinks. Wants Officer Stuffy to know in case is important.

  A camera behind the mirror?

  And if Abbie hadn’t broken it, would anyone ever have known?

  Not until Locke was dead. And maybe not even then.

  A third text came in.

  More cameras possible, Abbie thinks. All apartments? No sense to be in just 1. Mgr was creepy. Always watching. Didn’t say b4 cuz afraid would be in bigger trouble.

  Bigger trouble. Bigger trouble? Good heavens, sometimes teenagers simply did not use their heads.

  My mind was running at a mile a minute, turning over and over all of the things we’d learned about Locke and his strange little eccentricities since he had earned such an ignominious end.

  The words of an old Tennyson poem flitted in a whimsical path across my thoughts: Out flew the web and floated wide; the mirror crack’d from side to side; “The curse is come upon me,” cried the Lady of Shalott.

  Ah, dear Lord Alfred. His prescience astounded me. It was as if he had seen Stony Mill in his mind’s eye long ago. What web were we all ensnared in? What curse? And was it one that we were subjected to? Or one of our own making?

  I texted Tara back, telling her to thank Abbie for me, and to let her know that I’d pass on the info.

  Bet your booty I would.

  A camera behind the mirror.

  That would certainly explain the different perspectives I had noticed in the pics on the thumb drive. The way some seemed to be taken from outside of the room, through the window, and others seemed to have been taken from within the bedrooms themselves.

  Did all of the apartments in the complex have these cameras built in? My guess would be a resounding yes. Wow. Wow, wow.

  “What’s up, ducks?” Liss had evidently seen my raised eyebrows and had attuned to them accordingly.

  I explained what Tara had texted to me as I tapped out a text message to Tom, asking him to call me when he got a chance.

  Liss was shaking her head in astonishment. “The things that happen these days. I suppose I should be thanking my lucky stars Geoffrey insisted on building the Gables,” she said, referring to her late husband and their manorlike home on Victoria Park Road, “even though I still find it ostentatious and far too much for an old bird like me. Although, since I am an old bird, I suppose it would all be a very moot point. No cameras awaiting me in my cupboards. And on a day like today, I suppose I should be grateful for that,” she said, lifting her hair from the nape of her neck and fanning herself with a thin brochure she had at hand. “Good goddess, it is hot out today.”

  I laughed. “I hate to tell you this, Liss, but perverts come in all shapes and sizes. Some like their prey very young, and some, not so.”

  “Ooh, do you think so?” She almost looked intrigued, which I found even funnier. “Never mind, if you’re intent on laughing at me. I am a poor, unaccompanied widow, you know.”

  “Who could have her take of any number of gentlemen, need I remind you,” I pointed out. “Young or old. Er. Older. Not old. My mistake.”

  The corner of her mouth curved in a pretty smirk. “Well, perhaps I just haven’t found my One yet.”

  Or perhaps her One was the husband she had lost. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t still have some fun. Sow some wild oats. Or even some tame ones. Her husband was dead. She was not.

  Another text buzzed in my pocket. This one was from Marcus.

  Hey, sweetness. Running over to campus to pick up all my books and materials will need for Monday, and have meeting with counselor. Be back on time to pick u up. Wait til u see what I found on hard drive. Love.

  Love.

  I know, I
know. It was awfully early for that. But it still made my heart go pitter-pat.

  Buzz. A second from Marcus.

  “Gracious, you are in demand today,” Liss teased.

  Forgot to say . . . Ran out and am pretty sure forgot to shut Minnie into her room. Don’t think I left any windows open, but . . . Worried about her with the screens. :(

  I frowned and bit my lip. Minnie had done a number on one of the bedroom screens one Saturday afternoon when Marcus had taken me out to pick up a DVD rental. We hadn’t been gone long, but long enough for Minnie to attempt her great escape into the great green yonder to join her favorite feathery compadres, thanks to the razor-sharp talons she spent a good deal of time making sure were in top form. One shredding zip of the screen, a curious poke through of her round-jowled head, and “escape artist” was her middle name. Thank goodness she had been too distracted by the twittering birds around the feeder to go far.

  “What’s the matter?”

  I looked up. “Marcus texted to say he was worried he’d forgotten to close the windows.”

  “Oh?” Liss glanced out the windows, puzzled. “Well, that shouldn’t be too much of a problem. The sky is clear as a proverbial bell.”

  “Normally it wouldn’t be a problem,” I agreed with her. “Except we also left Minnie there with him today, and he also forgot to close her into her room. Remember the last time we did that?”

  She covered her mouth. “Bird feathers. Everywhere!”

  “Precisely.” Oh, Minnie hadn’t caught any of the little winged darlings. She had, however, given them a run for their money. Feathers, feathers, everywhere. The little furry-faced rascal.

  Liss looked at me.

  I looked at Liss.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she asked me.

  I was hoping I was.

  “Well, it is hot in here today. And we can’t just leave the mischievous little darling to her own devices, now can we? And we could stop for a quick ice-cream treat for lunch on the way . . .” That was Liss for you. Always game for the truly important missions in life.

  It didn’t take the two of us long to come to a mutual decision. Liss put the “Be Back Soon” sign up on the front door and locked it, and then we scurried out the back to Liss’s black Lexus. It was blisteringly hot inside its smooth leather interior. We were going to need lots of ice cream after this.

  The Old Burger Dairy was on the way, so we stopped there first. Drive thru, of course. The trouble was, it seemed most of Stony Mill had that same idea at the exact same time. We decided cups of ice cream would probably be the best option if we didn’t want to be wearing as much ice cream as we managed to inhale. I opted for Double Strawberry Fudge Ripple; for Liss, it was Vanilla Custard Raspberry Swirl. Who needed sandwiches and fries when there was ice cream to be had on a hot late summer day? We were happily licking it off our spoons before Liss could put her Lexus in gear again. With that out of the way, we zoomed off toward our destination

  My cell phone rang just then. Tom.

  “Hello there,” I said into the mouthpiece.

  “Hey. Got your text asking me to call. What’s up?”

  “I was given a message to give to you. Information to give to you. From someone you’ve already questioned. She was afraid to talk to you again, but now that she’s thought about it, she wanted you to know.”

  “Who are we talking about here?”

  “Abbie Cornwall.”

  “The teenage girl who used to live there.”

  “And who was expelled from the apartment, along with her mother, for defying the terms of the lease agreement, at Locke’s discretion. Yeah. Abbie.”

  “What about her?”

  “No, no, it’s not about her. She wants you to know about the camera. Tom, while she was living in the apartment, she found a tiny camera. She accidentally broke the mirror in her mother’s bedroom, and after the glass fitter had left, she found a camera that must have fallen out of the space behind the mirror and rolled under the bed. And Tom, I think Abbie’s the one who was telling the other tenants about her suspicions that Locke was spying on them. I think she thought if there was a camera in one apartment, it was likely there were more. She didn’t say anything to that effect, but . . . that’s what I think. It makes sense.” I gave Liss a sidelong glance, realizing what I had just mentioned in front of her. Maybe she hadn’t noticed.

  “Wait, whoa, Maggie, back up there. There was a rumor going around that Locke was taking pictures of them?”

  I had forgotten. Tom wasn’t there when I heard that. “Well, yeah. I was chatting with one of the tenants yesterday, and she let out that she had overheard you talking about the, um, the things,” I said, with slightly belated deference to confidentiality, “with Marcus. She seemed rather pissed, actually. Anyway, I’m wondering now if that’s the reason Angela Miller wanted out of the lease so badly.”

  “Hm. Possible.”

  Liss pulled her Lexus up to the curb, uttering a long-suffering sigh as she cut the engine and it sputtered and conked no less than six times before it finally shut off. She looked over at me and mouthed, Sorry, ducks.

  “I would guess that Abbie might still have the camera, if you wanted to see it. At least that would exonerate Angela beyond a shadow of a doubt with the school board, since it means the pictures weren’t shot with her knowledge,” I said as I clamped my cell phone between my chin and shoulder and Liss and I slowly made our way through the front gate and up the broad steps to the bungalow’s front porch. “Assuming you see fit to release that information in time. Oh, hey. Did you talk to Lou?” I had to stand on one foot and lean my crutches against the siding in order to free up a hand to unlock the door.

  “Yeah. I guess I gotta hand it to you. You were right, Maggie. About the lodge connection and Locke and his side . . . business, I guess you’d call it. Austin Poindexter’s father is a lodge member. And per Lou Tabor, every last name on that list would also be found on the registry to the club . . . except for one.”

  Minnie came rushing out and swirling around my feet as soon as I pushed the door inward. Liss picked her up and carried her back inside, cooing to her, checking windows as she went.

  “And which one was that?” I resituated my phone and picked up my crutches, trailing behind the two of them. Walking from the bright, sunny outside to the curtain-darkened room inside made me blink as I attempted to regain my vision and equilibrium.

  “Alex Cooper,” he said.

  Alex Cooper. Alex Cooper? “Tom . . .” I was starting to get that eerie feeling again. The baby-fine hairs on my arms were suddenly standing on end. “This may be just coincidence, but . . . the tenant I was talking to yesterday . . . the one who first told me about the rumor that Locke was taking pictures of tenants . . . that was Alexandra Cooper.”

  “The name on the account was most definitely Alex,” Tom said, but I could hear the hesitation in his voice.

  It occurred to me suddenly that there had been no pictures of Alexandra Cooper amongst the scandalous photos on the hard drive. At the time, I hadn’t even realized. But now that I did, I couldn’t help wondering why she had been the lucky one to have been left out. She and Abbie Cornwall. With all of my senses tumbling over one another in a jumbled, urgent chaos, I made my way back toward the computer room at the rear of the house as quickly as I could manage, with Liss and Minnie hot on my heels.

  Why had Alexandra been the lucky one? Abbie, I could see. If Locke had managed to obtain pictures of her, maybe he’d destroyed them once he realized she was underage. He’d been in trouble for that once before—maybe he’d decided it was too much to risk a second go-round with the law. Maybe, just maybe, that was the whole point of the no-children-under-the-age-of-eighteen rule in the first place? But Alexandra . . . why would she have been any different from the other tenants? He had given her a generous deal to sign the lease. Obviously he must have found her attractive. Why no pictures?

  Maybe they just weren’t kept on the thumb
drive, I reasoned. I needed to see the hard drive itself.

  “I don’t suppose she has a brother by that name? Or a father, or an uncle? What was the address on the account?”

  “The address . . . let’s see, I’ve got them right here. Somewhere.” I heard the sound of pages flipping. “The address is . . . Wait. The address is the apartment complex itself. Apartment 1C.”

  “That’s her apartment,” I said, biting my lip.

  “That does not make sense.”

  The computer room was as bright as it was outside. The shades were pulled high, not closed the way we usually left them. Marcus really must have been in a hurry. At least the window was down. I immediately crutched my way to the desk where Marcus had added Locke’s disk drive to an existing PC . . . but, even as nontechie as I was, I could see that the slot on the computer in which he had installed it was empty, open space. I frowned, looking around, lifting papers, looking in drawers.

  “It’s gone.” On the other end, Tom didn’t say anything. My voice had been faint, maybe he hadn’t heard me. “Tom, the hard drive. I don’t see it anywhere.”

  “What do you mean, it’s gone?”

  “It’s not in the computer Marcus installed it into. It’s not on the desk. It’s not in the drawers. I just don’t see it. Liss, do you see it?”

  She had been lifting, sifting, shuffling as well on all the surfaces I couldn’t reach, but to no avail. She shook her head. “I’ll call Marcus,” she told me. “Perhaps he moved it elsewhere for safekeeping.”

  “What’s going on, Maggie?” Tom said in my ear, drawing my attention back.

  “Liss is calling Marcus. Hang on.”

  But Marcus hadn’t moved it. He had left it installed, and was as shocked to hear it was gone as I had been to discover it missing. “No, luv. You stay, get your things done. I’ll let you know if anything turns up,” I heard Liss tell him. To me, she said, “Marcus says, no worries. Things could be worse.”