by Morgana Best
Ruprecht hurried into the room. “Well, this isn’t good,” he fretted as he adjusted his glasses. “If the house gets any more agitated, it’s liable to throw out the entire guest list.”
“I told you that it hated parties.” Thyme tightened her grip on my arm. The house grumbled in obvious irritation as the ceiling sagged in warning.
I bit my bottom lip as I fought off a wave of anxiety.
“We better get them out quick before the house decides to take matters into its own hands,” Mint said in a quiet voice.
Just then, Dermott Smith looked up at the slowly moving ceiling and reached up a hand to rub at his eyes. He gazed at the ceiling, then gazed around at us.
Thyme quickly plastered on a professional smile and made her way across the room. “Dermott, it’s getting very stuffy in here. Just going out for some fresh air, were you?”
Dermott gazed between her and the walls as they seemed to inch closer slowly. “Yes, yes, I suppose so. Tell me, do you see anything amiss with the room?”
Thyme feigned innocence as she gazed around the room. “Oh? Whatever do you mean?”
“Nothing,” Dermott said quickly, shaking his head. “I must be more tired than I thought.”
“Oh, you should go get some rest,” Thyme said quickly. “It’s so stuffy in here and the wine is quite strong.”
“I’m fine. I saw some coffee in the kitchen. I’ll just go grab a cup.” Dermott’s tone was dismissive and he made to push past her. I started forward to offer support, but Mint held me back with a soft shake of her head.
Thyme rested her hand on his forearm. “Don’t you have one of those tournament things coming up?”
“Next week, a big game.” Dermott looked from the sleeve to Thyme. “Never pegged you for a poker player.”
“Oh well, I was curious and thought I might try it out.” Thyme was speaking with such fake enthusiasm that even I wasn’t buying it. “Does it pay a lot of money?”
Dermott gave a snort. “Isn’t a game for amateurs. With the stakes we play for, you’d lose the shirt off your back in the first round.”
“Sounds pretty intense.” Thyme must have had a lot of practice dealing with customers. I had no idea how she was keeping such a straight face as the man launched into a big story about what a wonderful poker player he was. “It’s so stuffy in here,” she said. “How about we go outside and you tell me all about it?”
Thankfully, with the prospect of talking about himself, Dermott seemed more open to going back outside. He gave a final concerned glance around the room before making his way out.
“Now for Bill Gafney,” Ruprecht said.
Chapter 17
Ruprecht and I hurried back up the steps and onto the veranda. As my hand closed around the old brass doorknob, Mint pulled the door open. “Whoa!” she said, startling me. “Amelia! Grandfather! I’m so sorry. We were just looking for you. I think I found the guilty man.”
I pulled a face. “What? But the house just closed in on Jason Mackay as well as Dermott Smith.”
Mint shook her head. “Weird. Well I’m having trouble with Bill Gafney. The walls are buckling around him. He hasn’t noticed yet though, but I can’t get him outside.”
By then we’d reached the library. I looked over at Bill, who seemed engrossed by the books. “Bill,” Mint said, “would you like to come outside now? All the other guests are outside, waiting for Ruprecht to make a speech.”
“A speech?” Ruprecht said in horror, his eyebrows shooting up. He hesitated for a moment. “Oh, yes, I’d like you to hear my speech, Bill.”
Bill chuckled. “No offense, Ruprecht, but I don’t want to hear your speech. Perhaps someone will sum it up for me later.” He chuckled to himself at his own joke.
Suddenly, Bill turned away from the endless supply of books with a look of dread on his face. “What was that? Did you feel that tremor?”
Mint gasped, staring directly at him. “Oh no, did you all feel it too?”
Ruprecht and I nodded, but I had not felt a thing, and I was sure that Bill was the only one who had.
“We all need to get outside where it’s safe,” Ruprecht said.
“There are no earthquakes in this area, though,” Bill said, rubbing his chin.
“That’s what they said in Newcastle in 1989,” I said. “They’d never had a quake there before, until that big one hit.”
Bills face went white, and he clung to the nearest bookshelf. “There’s another one! Let’s get out of here!”
“Yes, let’s go,” Mint said, heading for the door.
To my relief, Bill followed her, but just as she reached the door, it violently slammed shut in front of us.
Mint and Ruprecht both tried the lock but it wouldn’t open.
“The tremors have jammed the door!” Bill said, with fear in his voice
I hadn’t felt a single tremor, and I knew the house was doing it to Bill. However, the door would not open, and I wondered what would happen if we couldn’t get Bill outside.
“What the…?” Bill said.
I looked behind me. Books flew from their shelves. At first, it all happened slowly, one or two books at a time. I watched in horror as the pace picked up and the tomes were tossed to and fro. I tugged on the doorknob, but it wouldn’t budge. Regardless of what I tried, the door seemed to be cemented shut.
Ruprecht took a turn. “I think the locking mechanism broke.” He continued to fidget with the lock.
All of a sudden, Bill screamed. “Oh my gosh!” he yelled, stumbling back toward the doorway. Both his hands were up, like a lion tamer hoping to keep the books at bay.
I turned back to him thinking he was afraid of the flying books, but it was apparently now the walls. Bill was ducking, shielding his face with one hand, and his other hand was pressed against the wall.
There was a muted, screeching noise that sounded as if the bookcases and the walls behind were closing in on their target. It all looked perfectly normal to me, but it was just as obvious to me that Bill was seeing a very different scene. After just a few seconds, the noise was much louder and much more menacing. It sounded like an evil creature scraping its claws against the walls as it was pushing them in.
Despite his fear, Bill must have noticed that the three of us were not afraid. “Can’t you see it?” he yelled.
“See what?” I said.
Ruprecht walked over to the distressed man, and gently laid his hands on his shoulders. “Bill, I need you to listen to me. Perhaps you’ve had too much to drink. That was what my speech was going to be about. We served strong wine before we served the food. If you’ve had too much wine on an empty stomach, you must be seeing things. Do you feel dizzy?”
Bill Gafney slowly looked up, and his face looked less stricken. “Yes, I feel do dizzy! Yes, I did drink. Why?” he asked, his breath labored.
“Like I said, some of the wine has proven to be stronger than usual,” Ruprecht said, his tone even. “Are you hallucinating? Are you seeing things that aren’t really happening but feel real to you?”
I watched on, admiring Ruprecht’s calm manner. The man nodded and smiled, like an immense weight had suddenly been lifted from his shoulders. He took one step, then fell to the floor again, his hands firmly over his eyes. “I can’t! I can’t!” he wailed. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
Ruprecht patted Bill on the shoulder. “Listen, if you’re seeing things that aren’t there, just stand in the center of the room and close your eyes. Breathe carefully and by the time you open them again, we’ll be on our way to get some air, okay?”
Bill nodded repeatedly, closing his eyes as he stepped into the middle of the room. “Just please hurry and get that door unlocked.”
“I will,” Ruprecht said firmly. “Keep your eyes firmly shut, and let me lead you out of the house. Let’s get you outside for some fresh air. You’ll feel much better outside,” he said, helping Bill to his feet.
I continued to fidget with the doorknob. As the so
unds grew louder, I looked over my shoulder to see that the books were dropping off the shelves again.
“Stop it!” I yelled at the house.
At that moment the door opened, much to my shock.
I felt something tickling my legs. I glanced down to see that Hawthorn and Willow were now wrapped around my ankles. “What do you two want?” I said.
Bill ran past us all. He sprinted down the hallway and out the front door, which mercifully opened for him.
Ruprecht, Mint and I followed him outside. “What’s wrong with him?” a lady I’d never met asked Ruprecht.
“He just remembered that he’d left the iron on,” Mint said, as Bill disappeared down the street on foot.
I looked back at Ruprecht. “Him, too? Three of them? How is that possible?”
Ruprecht raised his eyebrows. “That makes no sense at all,” he said, scratching his head. “Something must be wrong. Surely the three of them weren’t in it together. We all need to talk.”
I nodded at Ruprecht, and when I turned away, I found that Mint had disappeared. I figured that Camino and Thyme had gotten Dermott Smith and Jason Mackay home safely, since I hadn’t heard any other screams. I hurried down the hallway toward the library, and when I got there, everything seemed normal.
Mint was in the library, putting books back on the shelves. “So, what happened?” she asked, looking at Ruprecht.
He shook his head, clearly baffled. “I’m not quite sure. It appears that Amelia’s home doesn’t like any of the three suspects.”
“So which of them is the killer?” Camino asked.
Ruprecht sighed. “I don’t know which of them committed the act. Actually, I don’t know if any of them did it, either.”
“Oh boy,” Thyme added. She groaned as she slouched down deep into the loveseat, rubbing her head. “I was Dermott Smith’s captive audience while I was trying to do damage control. I guess this party was a bad idea after all.”
I slumped down on my couch with a groan. Even my eyelashes and toenails felt exhausted. I found parties arduous in general, but this one had really taken the cake. I could swear that I could hear the house grumbling crankily. Ruprecht and the other ladies looked drained as well. “Sorry.” I shot Thyme a sympathetic smile. It had taken forever to round up the three troublemakers. I’d say it was like rounding up a herd of cats, except cats were more cooperative.
“This might not have been the best idea,” Mint said.
“You think?” Thyme said irritably, then gave us an apologetic smile for the tone in her voice.
“So in the end, the house saw all three as dangerous, or at least unsavory, enough to expel.” Ruprecht sighed and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “I’m afraid we caused you a great deal of trouble for naught, my dear.”
“Not at all.” I shook my head. “I did get to meet a few people tonight. And I guess it’s good to know that the house comes with its own security system, but what do we do now? The house didn’t narrow down the list at all.”
“It can’t be helped,” Ruprecht said in a kindly voice. “We will just need to keep an eye on them the old fashioned way. Hopefully, someone will show their true colors.”
Chapter 18
I stepped through the front door of the cake store, holding a large white sign with red writing on it. Thyme was behind the counter, cleaning the top of it with a dust rag. Ruprecht and his granddaughter, Mint, were there as well, each of them standing near the counter, eating a cupcake.
“Have you guys seen this?” I asked excitedly, flipping the sign around and holding it in front of my chest so the others could read it.
“Yeah,” Thyme said, glancing over. “They’re all over town. Popped up a couple of months ago.”
“Do you know why?” I asked. I thought I might have found a motive for Brant McCallum’s murder. The sign was only one of many, and they were posted all around town. They all read the same thing, ‘No Coal Seam Gas’, all in the same blocky crimson lettering.
“Some people are worried drilling for the gas could upset things around here. So what?” Mint asked.
“Well, do you know who owns the property the gas was found on first?” I asked. “Well, I should say ‘owned’.”
“Yes, it was Brant. I remember him making a big fuss about it,” Thyme said.
“That’s when the signs went up,” Mint added. “Almost everyone here was against drilling for it. Brant seemed as though he was going to do it anyway.”
I sighed and tossed the sign onto the counter. “I thought I had come across a motive, but you guys already know all about it. How come nobody said anything about it? I mean, if Brant was going to drill for coal seam gas, well, surely that seems like a motive for someone, right?”
“I don’t know,” Ruprecht said, speaking up now that he had swallowed the last bit of his cupcake. “It was a flash in the pan. He wanted to drill, but everyone was against that, and I guess it turned out that he couldn’t drill anyway. He had some people come in, guys in big trucks with hard hats, real official type stuff. They said he didn’t have enough on his land to warrant drilling.”
“I just googled it on my phone,” I said. “He owned a lot of land. One hundred acres.”
“It was at the edge of his land, I think,” Ruprecht went on. “The signs just stayed up because no one felt like bringing them down, I guess.”
I was deflated. “I thought I was onto something,” I said, my head down.
“Hey, we have three good suspects, don’t we?” Thyme said. “One of them is surely the culprit. Let’s just stick to our plan, and do some recon after we close for the day.”
I almost teased her for saying a word like ‘recon’. “Actually,” I said, “I found out more.”
“What is it?” Thyme asked.
“Guess who owns the land right next to Brant’s?”
Everyone shrugged.
“Melanie Simpson,” I said, nodding as their jaws dropped. “Right next to his land, five hundred acres of it. It’s likely the bulk of the gas is on her land.”
“His fiancée?” Ruprecht asked.
“Yep,” I said.
“And how did you find all of this out?” Mint asked.
“Google, of course.”
Thyme laughed. “You’re turning into quite the detective.”
“I know!” I said. I was quite pleased with myself.
“You know, Melanie and Brant couldn’t have been more different,” Mint told me. I still had not met the woman who had been willing to marry Brant.
“That’s true,” Ruprecht said, picking up the thread of discussion. “No one was really quite sure how they met. It’s not like we talked about it much, but it is a small town, and Brant was well known to everyone. Something of the town celebrity, what with his car lot, and having those tasteless commercials that seemed to be more of a parody than anything. He did well for himself, at least.”
“So we thought maybe that was it,” Mint said. “Melanie was after his money. She was so quiet though, and well, shy, I guess you could say. She’s lived here for years, and I’ve maybe spoken to her five times, if that. It’s hard to say that about anyone here. We all know each other, and everyone knows everyone’s business. You just hear things. Well, hearing that Melanie and Brant were engaged, that was literally the first major thing I’d ever heard about her. I’m not even sure what she does for a living.”
“Whatever it is, it must keep her well to do,” Thyme suggested. “That’s a lot of land she owns, next to Brant’s land.”
“Maybe she inherited it,” I said, thinking of my own recent situation.
Everyone nodded.
“She seems very environmental, though,” Thyme added. “Melanie, I mean. She always has her own reusable bags at the grocery down the street, that sort of thing, and she drives a hybrid car.”
“That’s true,” Ruprecht said. “She likes to read, and comes into my shop to buy antiques. I guess I see her more than anyone in town, but she doesn’t really speak.
She’s friendly enough, but doesn’t go out of her way for small talk. Brant, on the other hand…”
Mint interrupted him. “I’m not even sure he could read, and he never shut up.”
The others laughed, but it was a laugh that trailed off somewhat awkwardly. Brant had been a pain in the butt, and didn’t have a lot of supporters in town, but still, the man was dead now, and the four of us standing in the cake store knew he had been murdered. Whatever kind of man he was when he was alive, his death at least deserved respect.
“So what do we do now?” I asked. “Is she on our list?”
“Our suspects list?” Thyme asked.
“Yeah,” I said, looking from face to face.
“I think we should add her,” Ruprecht said with a nod.
“I don’t know,” Mint said. “So she owns land next to him. That might even be how they met. But what would she want him dead for? Because of the land? The gas? She herself wouldn’t want to drill, and there’s a chance she has the land with all of the gas on it anyway. I don’t know. I don’t see the connection, really.”
I looked at Thyme. She nodded. “Let’s add her. I mean, it’s always the spouse, isn’t it? In the movies?”
The others laughed, but then Ruprecht spoke up. “This isn’t a movie, though,” he said in a solemn tone. “We need to be careful. This is real life, and someone murdered someone, and we might be on the trail of that killer. Who knows what’s going on in their mind? Who knows what they could be capable of? We have to stay quiet, and do this right.”
“So what’s the next step, then?” I asked.
“Recon,” Mint said with a smile, using Thyme’s line. “But now we have another suspect.”
“We could each take someone,” Thyme suggested. “We could spend some time tailing each one, to see what they do.”
