Witch Way to Mintwood (Witch of Mintwood Book 1)

by Addison Creek

  It was strange suddenly being friends with a Wolf. My grandmother had always hated them, and although I hadn’t shared her sentiments before, I had still known we couldn’t be friends, not really. But now . . .

  As I drove away I glanced back at the upstairs barn windows. This time there was no sign of Morton and Morris.

  My grandmother was gone. I was sad about it, but if I was going to be the Witch of Mintwood, as crazy as that sounded, I was going to have to forge my own way.

  Which meant that tomorrow I’d be having lunch with Jasper Wolf.

  Paws had appeared in the passenger seat as soon as I started the car. The sparkling cat swished his tail as we pulled out into the road. “I knew it would be fine all along,” he said, and stretched with a self-satisfied air.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I was so tired when I got home that I could barely stand up straight. My mind was still trying to process what had happened at the Muddled Avenue Cemetery and then at the Babbling Brook Barn. At the cemetery I had met several characters I hadn’t expected, including the adorable old dog Funnel. What was more, Hank had introduced me to Mr. McCoy, who thought he’d been targeted, and after speaking with him I thought he might be right. There was no proof that his murder and the current mystery surrounding the missing Pier Pearl and its owner were connected, but something told me they were. The disappearance was too much of a coincidence otherwise.

  Then there’d been my visit to the barn. If I were being entirely honest, I wasn’t surprised that Morton and Morris had backed out of defending the Babbling Brook Barn. I understood where they were coming from. They were young and they wanted to have a good time, and they weren’t getting it at the deserted old building. Still, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little sad about it.

  My run-in with Jasper Wolf was the most unsettling encounter of the night. I had no idea what to make of him. My grandmother had thought very poorly of the Wolfs, but Jasper had never been anything but nice to me, and now I had agreed to have lunch with him the next day. And not just anywhere, but at the hub of activity in Mintwood where everyone would see us. He had suggested the place, for all the world as if he didn’t mind being seen with the rumored Witch of Mintwood.

  Unfortunately, as I dragged myself out of the car I discovered that my night wasn’t quite over. Mrs. Goodkeep stood on the steps, her trusty ghost broom slung over one shoulder and a sour expression firmly on her face.

  “About time you showed up! You avoiding me?” she demanded.

  “No more than usual,” I told her, sighing wearily.

  How had my grandmother taken the constant excitement? Not only did she see everyone in a small town, but the ghosts all came to talk to her as well.

  “Good. I see you told that little minx your secret. Mighty shame. Means she’ll be sticking around. We’ll see how well she likes that.”

  “She’ll like it just fine or I’ll know why,” I said darkly. Meanwhile Paws had dashed out of the car and made a point of sauntering around the yard, just far enough out of Mrs. Goodkeep’s reach that she’d think twice before chasing him.

  “I’m really tired. Maybe you could yell at me tomorrow?” I said, rubbing my eyes.

  “You mean while my great-great-granddaughter is still missing?” Mrs. Goodkeep hissed. “I think not! We’ll talk now, right this instant, thank you very much. What are you doing to find her?”

  “I talked to Mr. McCoy at the cemetery,” I said.

  Mrs. Goodkeep drew back from me as though she’d seen a mouse that Paws was chasing.

  “You did what?” This was not the reaction I was expecting. I had thought she’d be happy that I’d spoken with Mr. McCoy, since it might bring me a step further toward knowing who would have such an interest in the Pier Pearl that they’d be willing to kill and kidnap for it.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” I said.

  “Just find my great-great-granddaughter and stop asking foolish questions,” she said angrily. “The nerve.”

  “No,” I said. “There’s more to this than you’ve admitted, and I want to know what it is!”

  Mrs. Goodkeep pulled her furs around her shoulders and drew herself up, glaring imperiously down at me.

  “How dare you imply anything of the kind?” she demanded. “How dare you question me? You’ve barely been the Witch of Mintwood for a month and yet you have the nerve to imply that I’m lying? I’ll not stand for that!”

  I stumped into the house feeling very strange. Now it turned out that Mrs. Goodkeep was keeping something from me, and I was starting to wonder if she was exactly who I thought she was. Maybe it was time for Charlie to get me some old newspaper clippings about her as well.

  I rolled over the next morning and covered my head with a pillow. I hadn’t gotten enough sleep, and all I wanted to do was stay in bed until noon. Unfortunately, Charlie had just walked past my door yelling for me to get up and meet her for breakfast because she needed to talk to me.

  Moaning and grumbling, I stumbled downstairs. If Greer had been cooking, well . . .

  The day was gray and the skies were threatening rain.

  Relief washed over me when I saw two bowls of cereal waiting, but I needed more pillows per roommate if I was going to get any sleep.

  “Sorry for dragging you out of bed and not offering a hot meal this morning,” said Charlie, “but I have to get to work. My editor’s going crazy with this breaking story about Gracie being missing.”

  She looked at me hard, then continued. “My editor doesn’t know anything about you. The story says an ‘anonymous source’ let Detective Cutter know that Gracie was missing. You aren’t mentioned by name, which is strange.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief over my cereal. “That’s good,” I said. “I was starting to think everyone would know it was me.” I thought about walking around town and getting the strange looks that would follow, and shook my head.

  Charlie was looking at me with much that kind of look now, as a matter of fact.

  “What?” I said.

  “It’s just that I’m suddenly living here and keeping a lot of secrets,” she said. “I know you have the whole ghost thing, but if my editor ever finds out you knew about Gracie . . . and I knew you knew . . . “

  “They won’t,” I said. “I promise. As the Witch of Mintwood, I want to keep out of the limelight as much as you want me out of it. Witch is not a good front page look.”

  Charlie gave me a light smile. “Okay, good. No exclusive interview for you.”

  “Surely not,” I said, laughing. “Keep to the barn story, and hopefully we’ll find Gracie soon.”

  Charlie shivered. “Yeah, who would do that to her? I suppose there are a lot of people around here who wouldn’t say no to the Pier Pearl, but why take Gracie too?”

  I shook my head. I had no idea, but I intended to find out, not least because I didn’t want to have any more late night conversations with Mrs. Goodkeep while she was wielding a broom.

  “We’re still on for tonight, right?” Charlie said. She’d already finished her cereal and was standing up to go off to work.

  I blinked in confusion. “Tonight?”

  “Yeah, roommate meeting,” she said. “I’m so excited. I haven’t been able to do this since college.”

  After Charlie left, I finished my cereal and went searching for Paws. In daylight hours he was best found in dark places. When I didn’t find him in the basement, I trotted up to the attic. It took several deep breaths and a little self-to-self pep talk before I pushed open the door to my grandmother’s sanctuary. I had barely come up here since she died.

  “Paws?” I whispered. There was a window at the far end of the stuffy room, but it was covered in two layers of thick black material to keep the light out. Paws was sleeping on a cushion in the darkest corner. I could see his sparkles rising and falling as he slept.

  “Paws?” I tried again. The cat opened one eye and grunted.

  “What?” he grumbled into his fur.

/>   Paws kept his head down as I went over and stroked his shoulders. He was still half asleep, but I asked my question anyhow. “Do you think Gracie is still alive?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Paws, “she is, and I know you’ll find her. Buck up, kid. Is all of that what you wanted to hear?”

  I smiled even though Paws couldn’t see me do it, because his head was still buried. “It helps, yeah. I just can’t figure it out.”

  “It’s best to start at the beginning,” he said.

  “I read the articles about McCoy and I talked to him,” I said. “That’s the beginning, isn’t it?”

  “No,” said Paws, burying his wet nose further down in the cushion, “it isn’t. Try harder.” He clearly wanted to be left alone.

  Recognizing that the conversation was over, I left the attic quickly, trying not to look left or right. I went down to the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea, because everything was better with tea, from decades-old unsolved murders to rom coms.

  Greer was in the kitchen wearing a bathrobe and a don’t-talk-to-me face, so I left her alone, made my tea, and took it out to the back porch. What had Paws meant by saying that McCoy’s death wasn’t the beginning? How else was I supposed to figure out why he’d been murdered, and why the culprit had tried to make it look like the Pier Pearl, and not the murder, was the point of the crime? Why hadn’t the police ever caught the culprit, anyhow, I asked myself. It made no sense. There had been a murder and a spectacular robbery, and they had caused a brief sensation and then disappeared from the air waves.

  I was halfway through my cup of tea when Greer wandered out to join me, her face having softened considerably from a few minutes ago.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “How was your night last night?” she asked.

  “Good,” I said. “I think I made some headway in this whole Gracie business, but not enough to solve the mystery. Or mysteries.”

  Greer nodded thoughtfully as she cradled her tea. “Can’t she just stay missing?”

  I laughed. “Unfortunately not.”

  “I thought not,” said Greer. She fidgeted and I waited. She obviously had something to say.

  “Sometimes I don’t think I did the right thing, dumping Deacon,” she said unexpectedly.

  I sat still. Now was the time to just listen. No one could tell Greer what was in her own heart, she had to figure that out for herself.

  “It just feels like so much has changed, and I’m changing too. With Deacon I always felt like I had to be a certain thing, but now, thinking back on it, I wonder if I was the one putting that pressure on me to be something I wasn’t.”

  “Did he always encourage you to follow your dreams?” I said.

  Greer nodded. “He never put any kind of pressure on me. I mean, look at him. He just did his thing. He never worried about what anyone thought, and I felt like I always worried about what his parents thought and what mine thought . . . “

  “Did you ever talk to him about it?” I said.

  Greer shook her head. “Never had the nerve.”

  “He was your boyfriend,” I said. “You should be able to talk to each other, or it isn’t worth it.”

  Greer quirked an eyebrow at me. “Unless that’s not the basis of the relationship.”

  I rolled my eyes and Greer laughed.

  “You’ve been broken up for months now,” I said. “I think if you were ready to move on you would have.”

  “We were together for years,” Greer pointed out. “I just think that sometimes I didn’t give him enough credit.”

  I nodded, not knowing what to say. Greer had to make her own choice about Deacon and their relationship, and I had to let her do it.

  “Thanks for listening,” she said, standing up. “I know I have to figure myself out first before I can be happy with someone else, but the thing is . . . well, never mind.” She waved her hand, rolled her eyes, and wandered back toward the house.

  As I watched her go, I thought about making our own decisions, about having something that was important but not necessarily treating it the way we should, or valuing it the way it should be valued.

  And then I knew what Paws meant.

  Where had the Pier Pearl come from in the first place?

  I shot out of my chair like it was on fire. I had to get to the library, and fast!

  The library was a short drive from my grandmother’s farmhouse and down the way from The Daily Brew, where we had agreed to meet for lunch. The other bit of news in the paper was that the Twinkle Costume Shop was the latest robbery victim, so I figured I could pop into the shop afterwards and see how Liam was taking his theft. I imagined not well. There would probably be a dark atmosphere, dramatic music, and sobbing, all to go along with the promise of revenge.

  The library was just opening as I arrived. The place was so small it was only open a couple of hours at a time, but the stone building was beautiful. In the old days, when stone was hard to build with but incredibly sturdy, the townspeople of Mintwood had decided to house their prized possessions – their books – in the safest structure possible. A painting of Mrs. Goodkeep hung prominently in the library, but the collar of her coat was too high to let me see if she was wearing a necklace.

  Not having much time, I sprinted inside, then skidded to a halt in surprise. There were already several people sitting there, reading quietly, and my banging inside only made them glare at me. Feeling self-conscious, I tiptoed up to the front desk and asked how far back their newspapers went.

  “What do you want to see?” asked Mr. Fool, who was the librarian on Mrs. Snicks’ day off.

  When he came back, he was carrying several copied sheets of paper. “I was sorry to hear about your grandmother,” he whispered. “SHE was a great lady.” Then he wandered off again without a word of explanation.

  Having no time to ponder whether he was taking a dig at me while complimenting her, I riffled quickly through the papers, which turned out to be copies of copies of old newspaper clippings. The library’s old newspaper viewing machine (I’m sure it had a name, but what was it?) had broken down, and this was the best they could do for now.

  The very last one was the picture I was looking for. It was a shot of an old mayor’s induction ceremony, and it included Mrs. Goodkeep, facing the camera and smiling like crazy. (I knew which one was the mayor because there’s an official walking stick that’s presented to each mayor when he or she assumes office.) She wore a fur coat and hat, but around her neck was something I had just recently seen in police photographs.

  It was the Pier Pearl.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Having found the first picture of Mrs. Goodkeep, I spent some time looking for others and found a couple more of her taking part in what looked like a women’s lunch. She wore the pearl in all of them. I knew that was going to make me late to my lunch with Jasper, but I wasn’t exactly eager to get to lunch anyhow. Jasper had said that we should talk about my protest, but I was nervous. I knew I was close to caving and stopping the protest.

  The article that accompanied the picture of Mrs. Goodkeep had gone on to mention that her husband had bought her the Pier Pearl as a wedding present. He had found it on his world travels and brought it home for his bride, and she treasured it ever after.

  I definitely needed to have a little chat with Mrs. Goodkeep, because just as I’d suspected last night, she was holding out on me. She had started this whole saga by saying that Gracie was in danger, but was Gracie in danger, or was it the Pier Pearl that was in danger? Either way, Mrs. Goodkeep had held out on me by not even mentioning the pearl. Maybe she thought it wasn’t relevant . . . or maybe something else. And I was definitely going to find out which it was.

  But I had to put all of this out of my mind for now, because I needed to talk to Jasper about the barn and how it was a terrible idea that he wished to tear it down and leave it in a heap of rubble.

  Jasper was already at a table by the window when I
got there and collapsed into a seat, still flush from my victory in figuring out Mrs. Goodkeep’s secret.

  Two steaming mugs of tea sat on the table between us, and I picked mine up and sniffed. “Lavender tea is my favorite,” I said. “How did you know?”

  “Um, the stockpile of it on the shelves in your kitchen was a clue,” he said. “It could have been Greer’s favorite, but she strikes me as more like a vanilla spice kind of tea drinker.”

  I liked that Jasper paid attention to what I liked, not to mention that he thought about my friends and what they might like for tea choices. I was fleetingly tempted to ask him about Greer and Deacon, but then I thought better of it. I was doing an excellent, and very difficult, job of staying out of it, and I didn’t want to ruin that impressive streak now.

  I took a sip of tea and relaxed back into my chair. “Have you already ordered food?”

  He shook his head and we went and ordered together. I got the vegetable soup and half sandwich, and he got a sandwich. As we waited for our order to come out I said, “Have you heard about the robberies?”

  He nodded. “That’s why I was driving past the barn last night. I was worried it would be a target. Turns out I was right, just not for the reasons I thought.”

  He clearly didn’t buy my flimsy explanation about why I’d been there, but given that I couldn’t really tell him the truth, it would have to do.

  “Anyway, thanks for meeting me,” he said as we sat down with our food a few minutes later. “Hopefully Detective Cutter will arrest whoever’s been robbing places soon.”

  “Liam’s liable to have a fit if he doesn’t,” I said.

  “Liam runs the costume shop now? I can see him doing that. He wore the best costume at every Halloween and masquerade dance when we were in school,” said Jasper, smiling as he reminisced, something I avoided like the plague. “Want to stop in at the shop after lunch? It’d be great to see him again after all this time.”