“Leave!” I cried, keeping my wand pointed at him as the merry wind continued to blow.
Wonder of all wonders, Wendell left.
I turned my attention to Tank, who was rolling around on the grass. His paws had turned black and he made a sad little sound as I knelt beside him. His rabbit ears were listless.
“You’ll be okay,” I assured him. I had no idea if it was true.
Gary now showed up from his hiding place in the shed and carried Tank into the living room. His shimmering was dim as I dashed up to the attic, where my grandmother’s spell books were still hidden. I grabbed the nearest one on ghosts and raced back downstairs.
Charlie and Greer had been in the kitchen, but the commotion had brought them to the living room, where we all found Tank curled up with his paws returning to something like their normal color.
“I think he’s going to be okay, but another minute and we would have had a big problem,” said Gary, still looking worried.
“Good,” said Charlie. “What happened?”
I told them. Both Charlie and Greer gasped.
“We knew we couldn’t let him get into the house again,” said Tank. “We couldn’t fail the farmhouse, or you.”
“We need a spell to protect us from dark witches,” said Greer.
“I thought we had one,” I muttered, leafing through my grandmother’s book.
“I’m just going to take a quick nap,” said Tank, letting his eyes close.
The rabbit slept on, the ghosts quieted down, and Charlie and Greer went to bed. Not long after they left, I heard snoring from Tank, who sounded like a foghorn amplified by a funnel.
Shaking my head and trying not to laugh and wake the rabbit, I stayed up for hours reading my grandmother’s spell books. I ended up spending the entire night looking for a spell to keep dark ghosts off my property.
Eventually I found something that might work, but it looked complicated, and it wasn’t the only agenda on my list for the coming days.
Tomorrow I’d have to go and find Mike the barber, or, to be more accurate, his ghost. He had committed murder and covered it up all those years ago, and now Gerry’s freedom hung in the balance.
It was my job to make sure she didn’t go to jail, but in this case no one was going to jail, because Mike was now a ghost.
I just had to find him and prove it.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Charlie bustled into the living room, which was set up with all of her notes from the Case of the Skeleton in the Hair Salon Wall.
“Mr. Snicks gave me the plans for the cemetery, but I’ve been all through them and I don’t think Mike was buried there,” she said, spreading the plans out on the table and forcing Greer to save the cookie she’d set on a plate. Charlie didn’t appear to notice.
“See?” Charlie pointed. There were three Mikes, but none of them was the right one.
“He ended up opening a barbershop in Pennwood, didn’t he?” I asked.
Charlie nodded. “I got those too,” she said, grabbing even more papers and spreading them all over the table.
Greer, who had just set her coffee down on top of the first map, was forced to grab it up again.
“Unfortunately,” said Charlie, “he isn’t in this one, either.”
We all lapsed into silence, trying to imagine where Michael Lorry might have been buried. We had to find Mike the ghost, otherwise all was lost.
“I think I read somewhere that he was born in Caedmon,” said Greer, jumping up. She started to flip through one of our stacks of papers until she found the one she wanted.
“Here it is,” she said triumphantly, returning to her seat. “He was born in Caedmon. Do we have those plans?”
Charlie glared at her. “I’m prepared, but I’m not that prepared.”
“Sorry, maybe you aren’t as good at your job as you thought,” Greer shrugged.
“I’m better,” Charlie said.
“We can just call the cemetery,” I said, getting up and heading to the phone.
When no one answered the phone at the Caedmon cemetery, we were back to square one.
“Now what?” Charlie asked.
“I have to check on Cesar, so I’ll just swing around to the cemetery in Caedmon on my way home,” I said.
“We’ll be here,” said Greer. “I still have a cookie to eat.”
After I checked on Cesar, I drove over to Caedmon. The town was larger than Mintwood, and the cemetery was bigger than ours as well. But there were no other cars in the parking lot as I got out and started wandering around in the warm afternoon sunlight.
I was just wondering if this was another wild goose chase when a voice spoke from nearby.
“Can I help you?” said a man in overalls leaning on a shovel.
I told him what I wanted and he nodded. “I know right where it is,” he said, and led me to a simple grave in a quiet corner.
So, I had found Mike Lorry’s grave. Now I just had to come back at night to have a chat with his ghost.
That night my friends and I headed out to the Caedmon Cemetery, taking Paws along with us. Much to Paws’ annoyance, we stopped to pick up Funnel the ghost dog in the Mintwood Cemetery along the way. Funnel was only too happy to go on an adventure with us; he didn’t get out of his cemetery all that often.
“We need a ghost who can introduce us,” I explained to the irate ghost cat.
“What do I look like, Jell-O? I’m a ghost,” he sputtered.
“Yeah, but you can’t introduce us. No one likes you,” Greer pointed out.
“I’m surrounded by dogs,” Paws said in frustration.
I had never been to the Caedmon Cemetery before, and the Caedmon ghosts gave me very funny looks. Their skepticism eased up once Funnel explained who I was and what we needed, but it turned out that Mike wasn’t even there; he had gone into hiding.
At least, so said his friends at the graveyard in Caedmon, who wouldn’t have even talked to us if Funnel hadn’t been with us.
“You’re the Witch of Mintwood! What do you think you’re doing here?” demanded one of the them.
“Dancing on my head and spitting wooden nickels, obviously,” I informed him.
I kept moving.
“Who are you?” asked a curious ghost.
“She’s the Witch of Mintwood and you’ll treat her with respect,” said Funnel in his slow voice.
Silently, I thanked him.
“I could tell you about Mike,” said a friendlier voice.
We turned in the direction of the voice, which turned out to be coming from a grave just to the left of Mike Lorry’s.
“Mikey is usually here, but he’s been gone for a couple of days. A visitor left the newspaper where he could see it and he got really upset,” explained the old man who lived in the grave next to his.
That was all I needed to hear. I thanked the man and we all headed back to the car. There was no time to waste.
“Where do you think Mikey went?” I wondered. We had to find Mike before he caused any more trouble.
“Somewhere familiar,” said Charlie. “You said his business in Caedmon?”
“Yeah, he started his own barbershop after the one in Mintwood closed, and he worked there for a long time. The place closed after his car accident,” said Greer.
Charlie gave her an impressed look.
“I did some more reading,” Greer shrugged.
“Where is his former shop?” I asked.
“Right off Main Street,” said Greer. “Pickle Avenue.”
“Because of course it is,” I said, rolling my eyes as we climbed into the Beetle.
We dropped Funnel off at the Mintwood Cemetery with thanks. He had to get back, he said, because he was missing the weekly cribbage game.
After that it didn’t take as long to reach the site of Mike’s shop.
I parked the car in a hurry and the three of us got out, with Paws trailing behind. The building, which looked like an old house, was boarded up and the whi
te paint was peeling. The grass was overgrown and there were no other houses nearby, just empty lots.
“The place simply shuttered after Mike died,” said Greer, who clearly took pride in the reading she had done.
“I just saw a flash,” said Charlie, ducking low.
“We really need a way to send ghosts away. I feel useless,” said Greer.
“I’ll look into it,” I promised, drawing my wand after making sure there was no one around to see me.
“Front door’s locked, but it’s a pretty old knob,” said Charlie.
“I’d rather not break in. Let’s see if any of the other doors or windows are open,” I replied.
“It’d be nice to have some break-in success. I feel like the more we try, the more we’re thwarted in our efforts,” said Charlie.
“Is she really saying she’d like her efforts at breaking the law to be successful?” Greer tried to clarify with a glance at me.
“Yes, that’s what I’m really saying,” Charlie snapped.
“Paws, I don’t suppose you’d like to go in and scope it out for us first,” I wondered.
“Definitely not,” said the cat. He was hanging back this time, checking the street. If I hadn’t known better I would have said that he was also worried about dark ghosts. “Tank isn’t this good a scout, now, is he?” Paws muttered.
If we stayed on the street much longer we were likely to get caught, but we were saved by Charlie calling excitedly, “Back door’s open.”
“Let’s go,” I said.
We entered Mr. Lorry’s house through the back door and found a long hallway leading toward the front, with the kitchen to the right and what looked like an office on the left. The place smelled like dust and I fought back a sneeze. Long shadows hid the furniture, and the house felt like it had been empty for a long time.
Charlie looked at me questioningly. I pointed to the office and we headed that way, with Paws trotting in front of us. Despite his caution outside, it was clear that he had managed to shake off his bad mood of a few days ago. We had a case, and that made him happy.
Charlie, Greer, and I waited in the doorway until the ghost cat gave us the all clear, then headed in to find an incredibly cluttered room furnished with three desks, two chairs, and every inch stacked with papers.
“This house is a mess,” Charlie whispered.
Beyond the office was a small dining room, and I made for that without stopping to delve into the mess of paperwork in the office. I was just about to walk through the door when I heard a thump. Surprised, I jumped, nearly knocking into Greer.
In trying to avoid falling into my friend, I hit a stack of papers, which wobbled for a split second, then toppled over. One stack hit a second stack, and then papers and boxes were falling all over the place.
Greer and Charlie tried to get out of the way, which only made the racket worse. For a small space of time the three of us were frozen in our places, watching the chaos descend.
Once everything had calmed down, we exchanged glances.
“So much for being quiet,” said Charlie.
“So much for the element of surprise,” said Greer.
“So glad I’m not klutzy,” I muttered.
Suddenly, there was a noise.
We weren’t alone.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Then a squeaking sound made us freeze, as out of the basement came a ghost wearing spectacles and a cowboy hat. He looked to be a few years older than Gerry, which would fit age-wise. He stopped short when he saw us. Clearly he was considering running, but then decided better of it.
“You caught me. I’ll come out now,” said the man. “But why are you in my house?” The ghost was large and square, with a shirt that didn’t quite fit anymore.
“Ghosts can’t own homes,” said Charlie factually.
The ghost sighed visibly.
“I’m Lemmi. I’m the Witch of Mintwood,” I said, stepping forward and trying to look friendly. “Are you Mike?”
“Witch?” the ghost gasped.
“Yes,” I said.
The man’s shoulders drooped further. “Oh, very well. I am indeed. I knew it was only a matter of time before you came along.”
“You mean after you read about the skeleton in the wall and went into hiding?” Charlie asked.
Mike flinched. “Maybe best if we go into the living room and relax,” he said, and started around the corner.
The living room was in the front of the house, across the hall from the barbershop he had operated.
“Did you live here and work here as well?” I asked as we followed him. The house was still dark, but there was enough light to see where we were going.
“Sure did,” he said proudly. “Know this place like the back of my hand. It really cut down on rent as well. There’s not a very big profit margin in cutting hair, so if I’d had to pay for two places I never would have made it.”
Mike was eyeing Paws with concern as he talked. He didn’t say anything out loud, but I had the distinct impression that he wasn’t a cat person. I tried not to hold it against him.
The living room furniture was covered in white sheets that looked like they’d been collecting dust for decades. Which of course they had. Greer pulled one of the sheets back, examined the couch closely, and decided that it was clean enough for us to sit down on.
“You know why we’re here, do you?” said Charlie, tiring of the small talk.
“I do,” said Mike, sighing again. “I expect you discovered what happened to Jackie all those years ago.”
“We know she fell and hit her head,” I said. “But when we heard you hadn’t been where you said you were the night she disappeared, I started to wonder if you hadn’t been secretly going to meet her after all.”
“I wasn’t going to meet Jackie. We were friends but not that close. Keith had a thing for her and I wasn’t going to stand in the way. What actually happened was that I was stealing from the barbershop and Jackie happened to see me,” said Mike miserably.
“Stealing?” Charlie demanded, shocked at the unexpected turn in the story.
“That’s right,” he said. “Stealing. I wanted to start my own barbershop business, but I didn’t have the money, so I figured I’d take a couple of things from the Mintwood place. It had long since closed, and the family was fighting. Who would know the difference? I knew I’d put the stuff to good use.”
“Jackie caught you while you were in the old barbershop taking stuff that didn’t belong to you?” I said.
“She didn’t tell you?” he asked sharply. Clearly he had only confessed because he thought I already knew what had happened.
“She doesn’t remember that night,” I said.
He paused, but then decided to go on. “I see. Well, she saw me through the window and came in to see what I was doing. We were friends, so she didn’t realize I was stealing, and she snuck up on me just to surprise me. She succeeded; I was so surprised that I jumped. There weren’t any lights on, because what kind of thief would I be if I turned the lights on, and when I jumped I scared Jackie and she turned. The floor wasn’t very clean and she tripped . . .” Mike’s eyes were distant and sad, remembering that night.
“You didn’t call for help?” Greer sounded appalled.
“She was dead,” he said. “If she’d been alive I would have, honest, but when I realized that she was dead . . . I panicked. If I reported that she was there, I would have gotten get caught.”
“This is morbid, but . . . why didn’t you just leave instead of putting her body in the wall?” Charlie demanded.
“No idea,” said Mike. “I was foolish, as you can tell. I never meant to hurt her, though. I would never hurt a hair on that girl’s head.”
Despite the runaround he’d been giving us for days, I believed him.
“Why didn’t you come find me sooner?” I asked.
“I heard that the Witch of Mintwood had died,” he explained. “I thought maybe after a while all the excitement w
ould just die down and I’d go back to the cemetery.”
People kept telling me that. “When the old one dies there’s always a new one,” I said.
“I’ll try to remember that,” he told me.
“Pretty sure it’s too late now,” said Greer.
“What about the articles in the archive?” I asked. “A lot of them have been deleted. Do you have any idea why?”
Mike paused. “I had hoped you wouldn’t notice that. Yeah, that was me. They were records of me trying to get back into the barbershop, and I figured it would be best to erase them. That wasn’t hard either. The library doesn’t exactly have top-notch security and I didn’t think anyone would ever miss them.”
His erasing the record of his arrests had also served to scrub the mentions of Newman, which is what had caused me to be suspicious of Detective Cutter.
“That’s an awful lot of trouble to go to on the small chance that someone would read those articles someday,” said Charlie.
“I wanted to keep my barbershop,” said Mike.
“I need you to give us a way to prove what happened to Jackie,” I said.
Mike’s eyes widened. He clearly hadn’t thought of that possibility, and he didn’t like it much.
“W-why?” he asked.
“You thought we’d just show up here, have a little chat about all the laws you’ve broken, and waltz away?” Paws demanded.
“You, at least, would trot,” said Greer. “Let’s be honest.”
“Right, the lady says I would trot. We would trot and waltz away and leave you in peace?” said Paws, for once accepting that he and Greer were on the same side.
“I thought maybe something like that could happen,” acknowledged Mike. Ghosts faces couldn’t turn any paler than they already were, but his had definitely gotten slacker.
Paws leaned forward menacingly and Mike shrank away.
“Wrong,” hissed the cat. “Justice will be served.” Then he turned to me and added, “I always wanted to say that.”
“So no one else is sent to prison for what happened to Jackie,” I said.
“Oh, very well. The place where I said I had stayed all that weekend was closed, so I couldn’t have been there. You can look it up,” said Mike. “Also, I had spent the past three summers plastering, and I did a professional job on that wall.”
Witch Raising Situation (Witch of Mintwood Book 5) Page 17
