Both Charlie and Greer seemed satisfied by this response.
I was, too. “Thank you,” I whispered, finally starting to feel some relief.
I knew I wouldn’t feel entirely better until we told Detective Cutter and Gerry was officially cleared, but we were now well on our way.
“What happens now?” Charlie asked, glancing over at me. But Mike already knew what was coming.
“There isn’t anything else I can tell you,” he said. “Tell Jackie I’m very sorry for what happened. I’ve heard about the Poofing process,” he added, glancing warily at Paws. “If you just give me a minute I’ll get my things and we can get on with it.”
After all this time and effort, giving the ghost another minute didn’t seem like too much to ask.
He disappeared into the next room while the three of us waited. There was a bit of light coming in from the far-off street lamps and the moon was almost full, casting a comforting white glow from high above.
“This is a nice little house. It’s a pity it’s falling into disrepair,” mused Charlie. “Maybe I can tell Hansen to do an article about it and someone will buy it and fix it up.”
“Now you’re going to order him to write certain articles?” Greer quirked her eyebrow at her friend.
But we didn’t get to hear Charlie’s response, because just then there was a bang and a flash of light.
The night was suddenly lit by dark ghosts.
Charlie cried out as ethereal forms stormed around us.
We all ducked, landing on the floor with a thud here and an ouch there.
I didn’t recognize any of the ghosts attacking us, and there was no sign of Mike Lorry anymore.
“I thought this might happen,” Paws hissed, his fur suddenly standing on end as he raced to protect us. “We were led into a trap and now we must fight honorably for our lives.”
“It’s like he’s narrating his actions in the third person,” Greer muttered.
Paws had been missing during the confrontation with Wendell, but he was here now, his green-jeweled necklace swinging wildly.
I was surprised to see that the dark ghosts shied away from the angry cat. A dark ghost dodged Paws and darted for me instead, so that I had to duck and roll.
We were pathetically outnumbered and in grave danger. “Run,” Paws yowled. “There’s too many of them.”
Before we left, Charlie grabbed an old lamp and chucked it at the nearest ghost. Of course, a real physical object like that sailed right through him, but it did take him by surprise as it flew past.
When the lamp shattered, the crash confused everybody so much that the pandemonium stopped for an instant.
“We have to find Mike,” I yelled. “He can’t get away with what he did to Jackie.”
“And now he’s led the dark ghosts right to us,” Greer cried.
They were swarming the little house until I couldn’t see a corner where they weren’t lurking. Gasping, with Paws leading the way, we made a mad dash out of the condemned building.
“Did you have any idea that Ellie had created this many dark ghosts?” Charlie gasped.
“No,” I cried.
“It’s like she has a army,” said Charlie.
My friend wasn’t wrong.
The Beetle was sitting idly in the parking lot, with no idea that something was now terribly wrong and we’d have to drive for our lives!
“Get to the car,” Paws yelled.
“Not without Mike!” I skidded to a halt and glanced behind me.
The dark ghosts were in disarray, but that wouldn’t last long.
Across the street I saw a flash that turned out to be a lighter ghost than the ones that had just surrounded us.
“There,” I cried and pointed.
“Oh, goodness, why can’t we just go eat some cat food and call it a night,” Paws demanded as I took off. “My paws are too delicate for dashing!”
I’d gotten all the way across the street when I realized that I was the one carrying the car keys. I spun around, caught Greer’s eye, and tossed them to her.
She knew what to do, so at least my friends would be safe.
The dark ghosts were just starting to stream out of the house as Greer and Charlie jumped into the Beetle.
“Fine, I’ll speed it up, but I’m not happy about it,” said Paws, racing past me on the very tips of his toes.
Not being as fast as a ghost cat, I fell behind in a hurry. When I next caught sight of him, Paws was between the two houses where I’d just seen Mike the ghost disappearing.
I tore off after him down the unfamiliar streets, but it was useless. Even as a living cat he would have been plenty faster than I was, but as a ghost cat he was out of sight before I could even get moving.
I was slowed down even more because I was trying to run quietly so as not to wake up the living people in the darkened houses up and down the street.
That was a joke.
As I rounded the corner of the house there was no sign of ghosts. “Paws,” I whisper-yelled.
Nothing.
“Paws,” I tried a little louder, but then lost my nerve. I was standing next to an open window and I had no way of explaining why I was standing in someone’s yard in the middle of the night.
Then I saw a flash that made me dart forward. Mike was trying to get away, but Paws was hot on his heels.
I finally remembered to draw my wand.
There was a field ahead of us, and then the woods. Once I got around the next shed, nothing but open ground stretched in front of me until it met the line of trees in the distance. Mike was making for the woods, but I could see a ghost tail sticking up in the middle of the field. Paws was right behind him.
Grass scraped against my legs as I ran. I tried to keep an eye on where my feet were landing while watching the escaping ghost at the same time. It wasn’t easy.
Overhead, the moon was high and bright, casting an eerie glow onto everything in sight.
I took a deep breath and looked down.
The moon was reflecting in my green necklace, making a small, pale, glowing orb. A sparkle darted just out of reach in the dew and I felt the necklace start to come alive.
Magic was all around me.
Was it the moon, or my imagination?
My wand was sparking and I raised it up. “Stop!” I commanded Mike.
Shock of all shocks, he did.
“You can’t run,” I told him.
“Want to bet?” he demanded.
Paws took a flying leap, literally, and landed on Mike’s shoulder.
“I win,” said Paws.
Mike stopped moving. Paws’ and Mike’s sparkles were melding together, giving the strange impression that the cat was part of the human ghost’s shoulder.
Mike didn’t appear to like it one bit.
“You have to pay for what you did to Jackie,” I said.
“It was an accident,” Mike moaned.
“And the dark ghosts?” I asked.
At that, he shrank. “They said you were mad and I wouldn’t want to be Poofed, and if I just told them where you’d be they could protect me,” he said. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“What kind of idea does it seem like now?” Paws asked menacingly.
“Not great,” admitted Mike, looking hopefully over my shoulder to see if there were any other ghosts coming.
There weren’t.
“They left you,” I said.
“Yeah, it looks that way,” he admitted. “I didn’t want to go with them anyway.”
“You had to go with them?”
He nodded.
The night was cold and the chill that ran down my spine didn’t help. Until we came along, Mike had been destined to be just another of Ellie’s dark ghosts.
“Time to go,” said Paws.
Mike closed his eyes. “I really am sorry,” he said, and then they were gone.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Now all I had to do was clear Gerry’s name o
nce and for all, though at the moment that seemed like it was going to be easier said than done. My car had driven off without me, and cell reception in Pennwood was nearly as bad as in Mintwood. Not to mention that I was probably steps away from a bunch of hostile dark ghosts.
This night was not turning out the way I had planned it.
I wandered the shadowy streets for a while, then Paws reappeared with a satisfied look, his mission accomplished. His good mood didn’t last, though; he soon started complaining about needing a new pedicure after this evening.
Eventually I heard a truck driving up from behind us, so I moved as far to the side of the road as possible so as to be out of the way.
I heard the truck slowing, so I tried to get farther off the road, but the truck seemed to want to keep pace with me.
When I finally glanced up and saw Jasper rolling down his window, and heart started fluttering.
“What are you doing here?” I asked him.
“You’re truly the sweetest,” said Paws. “You’re rescued and all you can do is gripe.”
“I can’t think of anyone else who does nothing but gripe,” I said through gritted teeth.
Deacon was sitting in the passenger seat and gave me a little wave.
“Good to see you, too,” he said.
I blushed.
“Greer called me,” said Deacon. “She couldn’t get through most of what she wanted, but I did manage to gather that she’d forgotten you here and could we please bring you safely home.”
“That sounds like a lot,” I said.
“Reception was better where I was,” Deacon said, not specifying where that had been.
“I’d love a ride home,” I said.
“Finally, my knights in shiny black trucks,” said Paws.
The street was still quiet, the homes still dark, and there was no sign of any dark ghosts.
So why did it feel like there were still eyes on me?
Deacon and Jasper offered to come in when we got home, but I told them I was tired and had to get to bed. They didn’t ask me what I’d been doing in Pennwood, and I was grateful for that. I was also grateful that Deacon didn’t tease me about my date with Jasper.
Charlie and Greer were waiting for us in the Beetle, but they got out of the car when they saw us drive up. We stood there awkwardly for a moment, then Jasper said he’d see me soon and started to turn the truck around. Greer waved at Deacon as the guys drove off.
“Let’s get to work,” said Charlie, cracking her knuckles.
Armed with the new evidence, all I had to do was prove that Mike had been the one to commit the crime.
He hadn’t really been out of town that weekend, and oddly enough, that sounded a lot like Gerry’s situation. She too hadn’t been doing what she’d said she was doing that night, but in her case it was because she was a witch, not a thief.
Mike hadn’t been doing what he’d said he was doing because he was sneaking in to steal items from the barbershop. Jackie had been waiting for her dad to pick her up and had seen Mike – her good friend – in the shop. She hadn’t had a secret meeting planned after all. She had gone in, slipped, and hit her head.
Fatally, sad to say.
Mike had told the police that he’d been at a casino that weekend, but in reality the casino had been closed due to a water leak. I was sure that if his story about the casino was true, there would be a newspaper record of it.
Despite the late hour, Charlie wrote up a blistering article, all about how Mike could have committed the murder instead of Gerry. He knew how to plaster a wall, she wrote, whereas poor Gerry had been a young girl in the seventies who would never have been able to accomplish anything like that.
Then she sent her article off to Lena and went to bed.
Tomorrow was a new day, hopefully the one when Gerry would be proven innocent.
I took my time going down to breakfast. Late the night before, Charlie had convinced Lena to run her article in today’s Gazette on an emergency basis. It hadn’t been an easy sell, because Lena was convinced that Gerry was guilty. In Lena’s mind, the sensational articles she’d been printing since Liam’s mom’s arrest weren’t far from the truth.
Charlie had persisted as only Charlie could, and Lena had relented in the end. A lot of Mintwood residents would be waking up to a surprise this morning.
When I finally came downstairs there was still no sign of Greer, but Charlie was sitting by the back door dressed in dark jeans and a pink sweater, her blond hair swept up into a ponytail.
Charger greeted me expectantly and trotted over to the door, so I let him out and sat down to the paper.
“How’s the article going over?”.
“Pretty sure if we had cell reception my phone would be blowing up,” said Charlie, laughing.
“Have you heard from Liam?” I asked.
“He’s on his way over,” said Charlie. “He sounded jubilant.”
“We’ll have to see Gerry later and tell her everything,” I said. “We should also take her to say goodbye to Jackie.”
Given that Gerry was a witch, she’d be able to see Jackie in her ghost form without any special arrangements. I thought it would be nice if the two friends could see each other one last time.
As we sat there chatting, the house phone rang. Charlie sprang up to answer it, figuring that every phone call would have something to do with her explosive claim that Gerry was innocent in the death of Jackie Morris.
While I waited to see who was calling, I went to let Charger back in. The dog’s tail was wagging delightedly now that there were humans around, but my attention was pulled away by my curiosity about the phone call.
“Hello?” Charlie said into the receiver.
I watched as her face changed.
“Morning, Detective Cutter,” she said, her eyes locking on mine. She was gripping the phone with white knuckles. She listened to a long monologue that I couldn’t hear, then said, “Yes, I understand,” nodding her head and then listening some more.
When she finally hung up the phone, I raised my eyebrows at her.
“Detective Cutter wants to be quoted in tomorrow’s article,” said Charlie with satisfaction.
“He agrees that Gerry is innocent?” I asked hopefully.
“He thought my article this morning was very compelling. She was never officially charged with anything, just arrested and questioned, so he’s backtracking now. He has to investigate our claims, but once he confirms them, Gerry should be in the clear. Whoever would have thought that a casino’s records from decades ago would mean the difference between the mystery of Jackie’s death being solved or not!”
So that was it, another case solved.
“We’ll go over to Gerry’s later to tell her,” I said. “We can take her to see Jackie then. Hopefully she won’t have left yet.”
Ghosts followed their bodies most of the time, and now that Jackie’s had been found, she was going to be properly buried. Her best friend would be glad of that, at least, after all these years.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Liam came bursting into the house with flowers and muffins not long after Charlie hung up the phone. He was so happy, he teared up. Then he made us promise to go visit his mother as soon as we could,.
We went that night after Greer came home from work.
Gerry must have been watching for us, because she came out onto the porch before we were even out of the car.
She looked better than I’d seen her since before her arrest. There was more color in her cheeks and her eyes were bright again. As usual, she was decked out in head-to-toe purple, even including her shoes.
“Lemmi! Charlie! Greer! Wonderful to see you! Charlie, come here so I can give you a hug,” she said, her arms outstretched and a big smile on her face.
Charlie was bashful, but she hugged Liam’s mom back with feeling.
“All three of us did it, not just me,” she said shyly.
“Oh, I know that! You must have done some work
tracking Mike Lorry down. Goodness, I can’t believe it! He was the one who killed Jackie? I want to hear everything,” said Gerry, ushering us in as quickly as she could.
We stayed at Gerry’s house for a long time, telling her all about tracking Mike down and what he had told us. She was more shocked by the minute.
“I can’t believe Mike put Jackie in the wall. But I believe him when he says it was an accident. He was always a sweet guy, and he liked Jackie, so I wouldn’t have expected him to hurt her. Still, stealing from the barbershop! I can’t believe it! And then not coming forward . . .” She shook her head. “Poor Jackie.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through all this,” I told her.
Gerry smiled sadly. “I just wish we had Jackie back. I miss my friend.” She paused and looked at me. “I know you’re the Witch of Mintwood and all, so I wondered if maybe you wouldn’t mind, if you could maybe grant permission . . .”
“I was thinking the four of us could go downtown and find Jackie so you can . . . see her,” I finished lamely.
Gerry’s whole face lit up. She said, “I would like that. I hope she isn’t too mad at me.”
“I don’t think she’s mad at you at all,” said Charlie. “You’re best friends.”
“Liam is so happy. He really does have the best of friends in you three,” said Gerry, continuing to smile.
She’d held it together while she was a murder suspect, pretending she was fine. Now that the weight was off, she was letting us get a glimpse of just how relieved she really was.
It didn’t take us long to reach downtown Mintwood. The streets were lit with string lights, even though the holiday season had long passed. There were a few people around, but since the shops were closed for the evening, Mintwood Main Street was mostly deserted.
“It looks like Miss Violetta is at home,” said Charlie, pointing up toward one of the hair stylist’s windows.
Sure enough, the lights were on, and even as we watched, several people passed by the window. “She’s having a party,” said Greer. “I guess she doesn’t have to worry about fitting in anymore.”
Witch Raising Situation (Witch of Mintwood Book 5) Page 18
