Witch is When My Heart Broke (A Witch P.I. Mystery Book 9)

by Adele Abbott

  “I might do that. Anyway, I’d better get going. I have important things to do.”

  “Of course you do. Okay, catch you later.”

  If Kathy could hold down a job, look after two kids, run the house, and still find time for Neighbourhood Watch, I didn’t have any excuse not to do it. Maybe I’d give it a try. I might even meet some hot guys there.

  But right now, I had an important phone call to make.

  ***

  When I arrived at Cuppy C, the twins were just on their way out.

  “Where are you off to, girls?”

  “We just had a call.”

  “The call,” Amber said.

  “The call?”

  “From Trixie Day’s people.”

  “Oh? Right. The call. So, are you going to shoot the pop video now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You do realise it’s raining, don’t you?”

  They were both wearing summer dresses, and neither of them was wearing a coat. “You’re going to get absolutely soaked.”

  “Patty said that we had to wear these, and that we had to get to the park straight away. We’re going to get a taxi.”

  “Why would they want you to wear summer dresses when it’s pouring with rain?”

  “Patty said they can use special effects to make it look as though it’s a sunny day, even though it’s raining.”

  “That’s really clever.”

  “I know,” Amber said. “It’s fantastic what they can do these days.”

  “Couldn’t you at least take an umbrella?”

  “We don’t need to because the taxi will be here in a minute. Patty said they’ll meet us in the park, near the lake, and there’ll be plenty of shelter. So, we’ll be okay.”

  “Don’t catch your death of cold.”

  “We’ll be fine.”

  Yeah, I don’t think so. Snigger.

  I treated myself to a strawberry cupcake and a latte while I waited. Just over an hour later, the twins were back. They were absolutely soaking wet, and looked thoroughly miserable.

  “Girls, whatever happened?” I should get an Oscar.

  They dripped their way across the room to join me at the table.

  “Nobody was there.” Amber looked dejected.

  “The park was empty,” Pearl said. “We waited for ages next to the lake, just like Patty told us, but nobody turned up. We’re absolutely soaked through. I’m frozen.”

  “Oh dear. Tell me something, girls. The woman who rang you earlier to tell you to go to the park—did she sound anything like this?

  Hi, it’s Patty Emier. We need you in the park straight away—next to the lake. Wear summer dresses. We can use special effects to make the weather look sunny. We’ll provide umbrellas and there’ll be plenty of shelter.”

  The twins stared at me in disbelief.

  “That was you?”

  I laughed. “Yeah. It was me.”

  “You’re Patty Emier?”

  “None other.”

  “You made the whole thing up?”

  “Pretty much. Hilarious, isn’t it?”

  “No, it isn’t,” Pearl said. “Why would you do that?”

  “Well, I’ll give you a clue.” I took a notepad and pen from my handbag. “What was Patty’s last name?”

  “Emier,” Pearl said.

  “And who was the video for?”

  “Trixie Day,” Amber said.

  “Now let’s see what we’ve got. Patty worked in PR. Her last name is EMIER. And she wanted you to appear in a video for Trixie DAY.”

  I pushed the note in front of them.

  “What do we have here? Oh, yeah. PREMIER DAY. The day when you faked flu so you could go shopping. You must remember that, don’t you?”

  If looks could kill, I would have been dead on the spot.

  Revenge was so very sweet!

  ***

  When I’d asked to see Daze, she’d suggested we meet in the park. We’d arranged to see each other on the bench at the top of the park, near to the entrance which Barry and I usually used. Luckily for me, the rain had stopped, and the sun had fought its way through the clouds.

  I was running a little early.

  Daze was there already, but she wasn’t alone. She was locked in a passionate kiss with someone who I assumed was her new boyfriend, Haze. I felt a little awkward. She obviously hadn’t expected me to arrive early. As I got closer, Daze spotted me, and they pulled apart.

  “Hi, Jill,” Daze said, looking more flustered than I’d ever seen her. She was usually cool, calm and collected, but today she was actually blushing.

  “I’m a bit early, I hope that’s okay.”

  “No problem. This is Haze. Haze, this is Jill Gooder.”

  He was a mountain of a man. Six-feet-five if he was an inch, and built like the proverbial.

  “Hello, Jill.” His voice didn’t match his build. It was rather high-pitched, but he had a lovely smile.

  “Hi, nice to meet you, Haze.”

  “You too. Daze has told me a lot about you. Anyway, I know you two have business to discuss, so I won’t hang around.”

  He gave Daze a quick peck on the cheek, and then went on his way.

  “Have a seat, Jill,” Daze said. “Sorry about that. I thought Haze would be gone before you arrived.”

  “No problem. It was nice to meet him. How are you two getting on?”

  “Famously.” She had a broad smile on her face. “I think he might be the one.”

  “Really? So soon?”

  “Yeah, sometimes you just know, don’t you?”

  As if I’d know.

  “Anyway,” she said. “What is it you wanted to see me about?”

  “I need a favour.”

  “Go on.”

  “Do you remember when you and Blaze followed those two girls for me in Candlefield?”

  “You mean the girl who had supposedly disappeared?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “She hasn’t gone missing again has she?”

  “No, nothing like that. She was a bit worried about moving to the human world, so I gave her a sort of pep talk. I said she’d still be able to use magic, but that she would have to be discreet. It appears that she misinterpreted what I said because she’s gone a bit wild, and is now running amok with her magic. She’s disrupting her lessons in school, and having a lot of fun at the expense of humans. I had a word with her, and I thought that had done the trick, but it obviously didn’t because her parents came to see me, and they’re still very worried about her behaviour. They asked if there was anything I could do, and I thought of you.”

  “Do you want to scare her a little?”

  “That’s the general idea.”

  I spent the next ten minutes explaining to Daze what I had in mind; she seemed quite happy to go along with the plan. I was just about to leave when I noticed a young couple walking towards us. I turned to Daze.

  “Is that who I think it is?”

  Daze nodded.

  It was Blaze, arm in arm with a young woman who was also dressed in a catsuit. They were of a very similar height and build, and looked very relaxed in each other’s company.

  “Hiya, Jill,” Blaze said. “This is my girlfriend, Maze, short for Maisie.”

  “Right. So, Blaze and Maze?”

  “Oh, yeah.” He grinned. “I never thought of that.”

  Maze laughed too; she seemed sweet but a little shy.

  “Are you a Rogue Retriever too, Maze?”

  “I’m an apprentice. I’m actually Haze’s new partner.”

  “So is that how you and Blaze met?”

  “That’s right. We were lucky that Daze and Haze got together.”

  No wonder Blaze had been so keen to play cupid to Daze and Haze. He’d obviously done it so he could get close to Maze.

  The crafty little so-and-so.

  Chapter 6

  There was still no word on Carly Baxter, so I decided to take a look at the Wyre Valley where she�
�d disappeared. The footbridge wasn’t as high as the one on which I’d met Tony Bow. Even so, anyone falling from there definitely wouldn’t have got up and walked away. And yet, it appeared that Carly Baxter had done just that.

  I parked as close as I could get to the footbridge, and then walked towards its centre. My knuckles were white as I held on tight to the rail, and peered over the edge. It was a very long way down. Why anyone would want to fasten themselves to a rubber band, and then jump over the edge, was beyond my comprehension. And, to think they actually paid for the privilege!

  There are some very crazy people around—and I should know!

  I carried on to the far side of the bridge, and began to make my way down the hillside. Although it was a long drop to the bottom, the sides of the valley weren’t particularly steep, so I was able to scramble down without too much difficulty.

  There was no doubt in my mind; Carly Baxter could not have survived a fall from the footbridge. The area immediately below it was all rocks. I scrambled around for a little over thirty minutes—looking for what, I wasn’t sure. Exhausted, I sat on a rock and looked up at the footbridge.

  That’s when I spotted it. There was a small patch of red which stood out against the grey metalwork of the underside of the bridge.

  I was much too tired to climb back up the way I’d come, so I took the lazy way.

  Levitation took a long time, but I wasn’t in any hurry. When I was level with the underside of the bridge, I pulled myself up onto one of the beams. There, snagged to the metalwork, was a small piece of red cloth—the same colour as the jumpsuit Carly Baxter had been wearing in the photo that Alison Shine had shown to me. How could it have got there? I looked all around, and eventually spotted a small ring clamp which had been screwed into the underside of the footbridge, directly above my head.

  For the first time, things began to make sense. Carly Baxter must have been attached to the footbridge, by not one, but two bungee cords. When she jumped, she must have released the first cord, and allowed the second cord to pull her back up under the bridge.

  When the people on the footbridge had looked down, they hadn’t seen her because she’d been perched where I was now. I would probably never have worked it out if the cloth, which must have come from her jumpsuit, hadn’t got snagged on the metalwork.

  That still left a couple of questions: Why had she done it? And where was she now?

  When I called Jack Maxwell to tell him that I had new information, he was just about to interview Gerry Baxter. He agreed to postpone the interview until I got to the police station, and brought him up to speed.

  “What exactly are you suggesting, Jill?” Maxwell had his impatient head on when I arrived at the police station.

  “I’ve told you, it was obviously some kind of trick. Carly Baxter was attached to two cords. She released the one that everyone saw come back empty. The second one took her back up under the bridge. While everyone was looking for her down on the valley floor, she must have made her way out along the underside of the bridge, and got away.”

  “So, where is she now?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Look, I’m going to interview Baxter. You wait out here, and I’ll let you know what happens.”

  “Okay.”

  He left me outside the interview room, so I used the ‘listen’ spell to overhear what was being said. Maxwell and his assistant first went through the formalities of introducing themselves for the benefit of the tape, then they asked Gerry Baxter to do the same.

  “Why am I here?” he said, obviously annoyed.

  “We’re trying to find your wife, Mr Baxter. I’m sure you want to help us to do that.”

  “Of course I want to find her, but I don’t know what good asking me questions is going to do. You should be out there looking for her.”

  “All in good time. First though, I have a few questions that I need you to answer. Can you tell me why your wife had two bungee cords attached to her when she jumped?”

  Baxter fell silent, and I could almost sense his discomfort through the wall.

  “It—err.” He stuttered. Maxwell had obviously caught him off guard.

  “Are you denying that she had two cords attached to her?” Maxwell pressed.

  “No.”

  “Was this whole thing some kind of stunt? You’d better tell us everything you know. It’ll make it easier for you in the long run.”

  “Okay. Yes, it was. We thought that the press would get hold of it, and we’d get the headlines. You know what they say: there’s no such thing as bad publicity.”

  “Don’t you think you’ve carried this a little too far? Wasting police time is not a sensible thing to do. And it’s something for which you’ll be charged.”

  “I didn’t call you; I just called the press. We never intended that the police should get involved. As soon as the article was published, Carly was going to re-appear, and that would have been the end of it. We thought the publicity might land us more business.”

  “So where is your wife now?”

  “I don’t know. Honestly. The plan was for us to meet in Black Woods after I’d fed the story to the press. But she didn’t turn up. The last I saw of her was when she jumped off the bridge.”

  “And you haven’t seen or heard from her since then?”

  “Not a word.”

  “Do you seriously expect me to believe that, Mr Baxter?”

  “It’s the truth. I’m really worried about her.”

  Jack Maxwell kept at Gerry Baxter for almost an hour, but got no more out of him. When Maxwell came out, he and I went back to his office. For a moment, I almost forgot myself, and asked him whether he believed what Baxter had told him. That would have been embarrassing because, as far as Maxwell was concerned, I didn’t know what had been said in the interview. I had to play dumb.

  “How did it go?”

  “It was all a publicity stunt, apparently. The idea was that they’d get it in the papers, then Carly Baxter would turn up out of the blue. He insists they never intended to involve the police.”

  “That’s just stupid. Why would a story like that bring them more custom? I would have thought it would put people off.”

  “Who knows? People’s stupidity no longer surprises me.”

  “Is he still insisting he doesn’t know where she is?”

  “That’s exactly what he’s saying. And, to be honest, I believe him. He seems genuinely worried.”

  “Why didn’t she turn up after the papers had got hold of the story?”

  “I have absolutely no idea, and until I do, I have no reason to hold Baxter any longer.”

  ***

  I had the radio on while driving back to the flat. The breaking news was that a woman’s body had been discovered on the Freeman Industrial Park. The details were sketchy, and it could have been anyone, but I had a bad feeling about it.

  There was a police cordon around the industrial unit which housed Bouncers, so I parked as near as I dared, and made myself invisible. Once through the cordon, I got as close as I could to where the body was still lying. It was Carly Baxter; I recognised her from the photo that her sister had shown to me.

  There were several policemen on the scene, as well as a pathologist in white coveralls.

  “What can you tell us?” One of the police officers addressed the question to the pathologist.

  “There’s no sign of a struggle. She was stabbed in the back. Either the assailant crept up on her or she knew and trusted him enough to stand with her back to him.”

  I was sure the discovery of the body would mean that Maxwell would be able to charge Gerry Baxter, but then the pathologist continued. “This happened within the last hour or so.”

  “Are you sure about that?” the police officer said.

  “Absolutely.”

  Bum! If it had happened within the last hour or so, it couldn’t have been Baxter. He’d been at the police station. So who had killed Carly Baxter?

  ***<
br />
  I went straight over to Alison Shine’s house, but there was no one in. I was just about to leave when her car pulled into the driveway. She looked surprised to see me and a little flustered. Perhaps she’d heard the news item on the radio and put two and two together.

  “Have you found Carly?” she said.

  Obviously she hadn’t heard. This wasn’t going to be easy.

  “Shall we go inside?”

  “What’s happened, Jill?”

  “Let’s go inside, and I’ll tell you.”

  She led the way into the living room.

  “Well? What is it?”

  “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news.”

  “No!” She screamed, and collapsed onto the sofa. “No! Not Carly! Are you sure? The police haven’t contacted me.”

  “They will. Any time now.”

  “Was she—murdered?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Gerry did it! That man is evil. They should lock him up and throw away the key.”

  “It can’t have been Gerry, Ally.”

  “Of course it was him. Who else would it be? I told you, didn’t I? I told you he’d done this. I hate that man.”

  “It definitely wasn’t Gerry.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because at the time that Carly was murdered, Gerry was in police custody. I saw him there. Carly was still alive until a few hours ago.”

  Alison looked shocked. “I don’t understand. Who else would want to kill her?”

  “What about Tony Bow?” I suggested. “You said that Gerry suspected Carly of having an affair with him.”

  “She swore to me it wasn’t true.”

  “But you did say that she and Gerry didn’t have a happy marriage?”

  “They didn’t. Gerry is a horrible man. Maybe she did seek comfort with Tony. I don’t suppose she told me everything.”

  “I think I should pay Tony Bow another visit.”

  “Will you let me know if you find anything?”

  “Of course. Can I call someone to come and stay with you?”

  “No. I’ll be okay. It’s not like anyone cares anyway.”

  Chapter 7