Ginger of the West

by Meg Muldoon

  “People say that after nearly 40 years of getting bossed around by his wife, he finally found the courage to leave Penelope. Of course, that’s not how Penelope told it. She made Jerry out to be a conniving, controlling husband who couldn’t stand that his wife was more successful than he was.”

  “Does he still live in town?”

  “No,” I said. “He moved when it was over between them. I think about five years ago, maybe a little longer. I don’t know where he is now.”

  Eddie nodded as he wrote in his notepad.

  “He should be questioned. And so should everybody who had been in contact with the mayor in the weeks leading up to her death.”

  “Well, that would be me too, then,” I said.

  Eddie looked over.

  “I thought you said Mayor Ashby never came into the café.”

  “She never did. But Penelope made an exception when she came in for, uh… for my after-hours consultations.”

  Eddie knew that I had a magic touch. Like when we were kids playing baseball together and I always could guide the fly balls into my mitt. Or when we were at the beach and my kite always flew highest, even without much wind. Or when we visited Mac Doyle’s ice cream parlor and the stingy old man regularly gave us a couple of extra scoops.

  Eddie loved my magic.

  But he didn’t know that the same magic was also responsible for ruining us.

  “What did Mayor Ashby want from you?”

  I leaned back in my chair and looked out the window.

  “She wanted me to make her a love potion.”

  I could feel my chest tighten as soon as the words left my mouth.

  I searched Eddie’s face for any inkling of skepticism or something worse. The kind of expression on Steve’s face after I talked about helping people with my gift.

  “You see, in addition to running the café,” I continued, “I do things like that for people. If they need help, I do what I can.”

  I braced myself for the worst. Skepticism, resentment, judgement.

  But Eddie just smiled.

  “Who did she have her eye on?” he asked.

  He hadn’t even missed a beat.

  “Wait – you don’t think that’s weird, what I do?”

  “Not at all,” he said. “I remember those days, you and me together all summer. You could always make things happen, Ging. I’ve always known that about you. So you do what Aunt Viv used to do, right?”

  I nodded.

  “You know, once Viv helped my grandmother,” he said. “Grandma Ruth used to have terrible backaches. She tried everything to fix it – chiropractor, injections, surgery – nothing worked. Then she went to go see Aunt Viv. And a couple of weeks after drinking this special tea she sent her home with, my grandmother was cured. It got so she actually started walking on the beach again, and then that turned into longer and longer walks. She ended up walking the Newport Marathon. She was the oldest participant there.”

  “Really?”

  Aunt Viv hadn’t mentioned anything about that.

  “Grandma Ruth loved your aunt. She said Viv gave her a second chance at life. So no, I don’t think what you do is weird. Not at all. And if you’re anything like Aunt Viv, then this town is lucky to have you.”

  A stiff breeze shook the chimes out on the deck, and for a second, I caught just a whiff of that magic wind.

  I gazed into his eyes, remembering that kiss on the porch.

  Thinking about purple tulips and first loves.

  “So did Penelope say who she wanted the love elixir for?” he asked, breaking the stare.

  I cleared my throat.

  “No. We didn’t get that far. I couldn’t do it for her.”

  I dug my hands into my pockets, feeling a little awkward suddenly. I didn’t ever talk to anyone except Aunt Viv and my clients about what I did, and—

  My fingers hit a crumpled-up piece of paper.

  I’d been so busy that I’d hardly had a moment to look at the list Sapphire handed me at the café. The one her mom, Joyce, sent with her.

  “Oh, I completely forgot about this,” I said, taking it out and unfolding it.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “It’s a list of names. Everyone who was at Penelope’s book club meeting last month. That snooty book club I was telling you about? Joyce, my baking assistant’s mom, went to the last meeting. She told me that people were mad as hell with Penelope because she locked everyone in her house until the next morning, telling them they couldn’t leave until they solved a fake crime.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Eddie said. “I tried following up on that for my article, but I couldn’t get anyone to talk about it.”

  “Well, according to Joyce, some people were so mad that they were considering filing a lawsuit against Penelope.”

  “I’d do the same if some crazy lady locked me in a house all night and—”

  Eddie stopped speaking as a loud creaking sound echoed through the house.

  He didn’t know the old Victorian well enough to know what the sound was, but I sure did.

  The front window.

  The one that Aunt Viv always left unlocked, just in case.

  My eyes grew wide.

  Who could it be?

  Who would have the gall to sneak into the house in broad daylight?

  Was it the person who vandalized the Victorian? Were they back for more?

  Goosebumps crawled up my arms.

  Eddie stood up, shielding me.

  We listened to the window close. It was followed by loud footsteps coming down the hallway.

  Heavy boots.

  The brie sandwich I’d just eaten started creeping up my throat.

  My heart started beating overtime, along with my thoughts. Wondering what the person wanted. Wondering why they had destroyed the old house in the first place. Wondering—

  “Ging, you here?”

  I let out a relieved sigh.

  “In the kitchen, Mads!”

  With the front door boarded up, Maddy must have decided to come through the window instead.

  A few short moments later, she stomped into the kitchen. Lindsey Buckingham followed behind her, parading as if he’d dragged her in himself.

  She looked about as angry as those book club members must have been after being locked in Penelope’s house all night.

  “Maddy, what’s the matter—”

  “That chauvinistic, macho BS police department I work for, that’s what!” she yelled.

  Chapter 38

  “They really suspended you?” I said for the third time since she’d come stomping into the kitchen.

  She took a sip of the stress-relieving tea I’d just brewed – the one Aunt Viv always kept stocked in the cupboard for times like these. Lindsey Buckingham walked across the kitchen bar, brushing his tail against her face, the way he did when somebody was agitated and he was trying to calm them down.

  But Maddy was beyond anything the tea or an orange cat could do.

  “They made me turn in my badge and gun. All because I suggested to the chief that there might be other suspects in Vivian’s case that weren’t fully vetted by our department during the course of the investigation. And what do I get for doing my job and exploring all possible leads? I get an email saying to go home until they notify me I’m off suspension. Can you believe that hypocritical bullsh—”

  Her eyes drifted over to Eddie, who had remained mute since Maddy’s dramatic entrance. She had yet to acknowledge him, and it seemed as if she only just noticed him. The last time they’d spoken to each other had to have been that summer before Eddie left for college.

  “Oh, hey, Eddie,” she said matter-of-factly, like it was completely normal finding him sitting here in Aunt Viv’s kitchen eating a sandwich. “Nice to see you again.”

  “You, too, Maddy,” he said.

  Her eyes swiveled over to me. I knew what she was thinking.

  That I ought to be signing those divorce papers ASAP.

 
; “Sounds like you got railroaded,” Eddie said.

  “Damn straight, I did.”

  She took another sip of her tea. She still looked angry, but the wild fever had cooled some. Maybe the tea was kicking in.

  “That’s the kind of thing that happens when you work for a bunch of men whose heads are so far up their own as—”

  “I’m sorry about this, Maddy,” I said, cutting her off before she could finish the description of where her bosses’ heads resided.

  She rubbed her face. She looked tired.

  The 21st century might have existed at police departments in the cities, but here, things were different. It didn’t matter that she had finished third in her class at the academy, or had stellar recommendations from her years working in San Diego. Being a woman on the Broomfield Bay Police force, Maddy was considered an amateur, or not considered at all.

  It made me mad. I wanted to walk right down to the police station and let Chief Logan have a piece of my mind.

  “They’re just a bunch of lazy fools,” Maddy said. “I mean, why find the real murderer if you can just pin it on the crazy old witch in town? No offense, Ging.”

  “None taken,” I said.

  She was a crazy old witch.

  “Locking up your aunt makes for good headlines, as well as makes the chief look good,” Maddy said. “He caught the mayor’s murderer in record time. He’ll probably end up getting some sort of stupid award for it, too. That’s how things work here.”

  It was as if we were still living in colonial times. Nothing had changed. Crimes were still pinned on the strange old ladies rumored to be witches, just like they were in Salem, Massachusetts, circa 1692.

  “But I’m not the only one there that feels like the police department missed the mark on this case,” Maddy said. “You know that special investigator they brought in?”

  I tensed up a bit.

  “Agent Graybeal, right?”

  I was pretty sure he was the one who had put the nail in Aunt Viv’s coffin during the so-called investigation. He’d been here the morning before, dropping her car off and asking questions.

  “Yeah, Agent Graybeal. I heard him asking the chief whether he had any other suspects. In fact, he brought up Penelope’s ex-husband, wondering when he would be interviewed. The chief told him to go home, that the case was essentially closed because they had Viv’s fingerprints on the outside mirror of Penelope’s car. Can you believe that’s all they have? Their supposed ‘avalanche of evidence’ is nothing more than a few fingerprints Viv probably left that day of the argument out on the street.”

  She shook her head in anger.

  “My boss is one pig-headed bastar—”

  “Maddy?” Eddie asked, leaning across the kitchen island toward her.

  She stopped speaking and raised her dark eyebrows.

  “Who do you think really killed Mayor Ashby? I mean, you must have some insight into it. Who had it out for the mayor?”

  She crossed her arms and looked past us, out the window at the foamy breakers in the distance.

  “Ging tells me you’re a reporter now?”

  Eddie nodded.

  “Is this off the record?” she said. “Because I really don’t need to get myself in any more hot water than I already am if I ever plan on having a job in this town.”

  “I’m not here as a reporter,” he said. “Yes, it’s off the record. I’m just trying to help out as a friend.”

  He glanced over at me. I swallowed hard.

  Maddy hesitated. She gave him a sharp look.

  Then she spilled it.

  “I saw the inside of Penelope’s house,” she said. “Most of it was normal – there was what you might expect to find in a wealthy person’s home. Tiffany lamps and fancy furniture and a library of leather bound books signed by Nigel Parks and stuff like that. But the thing that struck me as odd, as we were going through the house, was that on her desk there was this big stack of…”

  She looked around as if afraid somebody might have bugged Aunt Viv’s kitchen.

  “Stack of what?” I asked.

  “Well, in Penelope’s house we found all these Wiccan books,” Maddy said, lowering her voice as if Wiccan was a profane word. “They looked brand new, too. I mean, they were all about casting love spells, which made me wonder if our mayor was trying to cast those love spells on somebody in particular.”

  I guess because I had told her no and sent her away, Penelope decided to take matters into her own hands. But spells like that in the hands of a novice could do a lot of damage. And if done with malice in the heart, things could spin out of control quickly.

  The kind of spinning that could get a person so mad at you that they cut the brake lines on your car allowing it to roll off the cliff with you behind the wheel.

  “And after what Ginger told me about the mayor paying her a visit, it just seems like a solid lead to me,” Maddy continued. “The cops investigating never looked into the possibility that Mayor Ashby was involved in an illicit affair, and that this person could have had something to do with her death. I mean, everyone liked Aunt Viv for the crime from minute one.”

  “Did you ever come across any potential love interests during your investigation?” Eddie asked.

  Maddy pursed her lips.

  “No. She must have been kind of lonely, though. She didn’t seem to have many friends. There was a gardener who she talked to sometimes, but other than that, it seemed like she wasn’t close with anybody. Maybe that was why she started that crazy book club in the first place.”

  I scanned the list of names as she said that – the one that Joyce had given me.

  “Did you guys talk at all to anybody in the book club?” I asked.

  “‘Don’t waste your time on that, Fox. We’ve already got the murderer in our sights,’” Maddy said in a deep voice, making air quotes with her fingers.

  Eddie sighed.

  “They sandbagged Viv,” he said.

  I could tell it really got under his skin, the fact that the cops botched the investigation so badly.

  Maddy ran a hand through her dark hair as a silence took over the kitchen, and for a moment there was nothing but the sound of wind chimes clanging together in the breeze.

  “Well, I guess this means only one thing,” Eddie said.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “It’s up to us to find out who really killed the mayor.”

  Maddy stared down at her empty mug of tea, as if unsure about this new plan. But then after a long pause, she looked up, an expression of determination lighting her features.

  “I’m in,” she said.

  I smiled at my best friend.

  I knew it wasn’t an easy decision. After all, she was on suspension. If her co-workers or Chief Logan found out she was participating in this little side investigation, I was sure her career would disappear as quickly as chum in shark-infested waters.

  “Where do we start?” she asked.

  “Easy,” I said, tapping the list of names lying on the counter. “Where the police didn’t bother to look.”

  Chapter 39

  I got into the passenger’s side of Eddie’s car, struggling to shut the door against the gusts. It was late afternoon, and that blue magical day had turned into something else entirely. The dark clouds that had appeared on the horizon earlier now covered the sky in a thick blanket of gray.

  I pulled out the list of names and a pencil from my pocket. Next to the fifth name – Mike Riggins – I put the initials “NC.” It stood for: No Comment.

  So far, we had those initials next to five out of the twelve names. Eddie and I were getting nothing but doors slammed in our faces and sour looks from the people who had been part of Penelope’s book club. Nobody wanted to talk to us, even when I explained to them that it wasn’t for any kind of news story, but to help free a woman wrongly accused of murder.

  Mike Riggins, the interim mayor, had been the latest to slam his carved totem pole motif door in our f
ace. Something I hadn’t expected at all considering I’d helped him with an acute case of tendonitis last spring, making it possible for him to ride his bike to work again.

  We sat in the car for a minute, and I looked up at his big, freshly-painted house in the wealthy Agate Heights neighborhood, trying to get my anger under control.

  “You okay?” Eddie said, breaking through my stormy thoughts.

  “I guess. But honestly, I’m surprised. I thought Aunt Viv had some friends in this town. She’s helped most of them with one thing or another over the years, but now that she needs their help, they’re ignoring her. I don’t get it.”

  “That’s just how people are, Ging,” Eddie said. “The minute you need their help on something that requires any bit of sacrifice, they’re suddenly not returning your calls.”

  “Well, that’s what you might expect in a big city, but it’s not supposed to be that way here,” I said. “Small towns are supposed to be close-knit.”

  “Well, people don’t act the way they should when others need them the most, sometimes.”

  I swallowed hard. I wondered if he was talking about something else.

  “But it’s too early to write everyone off just yet,” Eddie continued, looking out the window. “All we need is one person. Maybe the next door we knock on will be the person who acts right. So who’s next on the list?”

  I looked down.

  “Nancy Wallis,” I said.

  “Who’s she?”

  “A librarian at the Broomfield Bay Public Library,” I said.

  And, as typical with most librarians at the small branch, not a very nice one either. Much like her boss, librarian administrator Lilliana Marsh.

  “Just a librarian? Not a wealthy real estate developer or a millionaire banker like everyone else on that list?”

  “Nope.Just a librarian.”

  “What gives? Penelope was slumming it there,” he said jokingly, pulling out onto the street and heading toward downtown.

  “I’m betting that Penelope thought adding a librarian to her book club would give it some sort of credibility.”

  “Well, maybe that’ll help us that she’s not one of them. Maybe she’ll be more willing to talk.”

  I nodded.