by Harper Lin
“Is it really that cold? I barely noticed.” She tugged up the massive collar around her ears. “Just a small coffee with an orange-and-cranberry muffin. I’m actually meeting with my ex-husband.”
“So there’s still a little blood left in that corpse?” I knew it was mean and petty, but so was Darla, so I didn’t see any harm.
“Shows how much you know. Darren Castellan has been trying to win me back ever since he signed the divorce papers.” She flipped her long black hair behind her. “This is just another one of his emergency lunches at Arons in which he tells me that he still loves me and wants to give us another try.”
She just had to drop the name Arons. It was just the chicest restaurant in town. Everyone who wanted to be seen was seen there. To sit at the bar and order a Coke would cost about twenty-five dollars and require reservations two months in advance. Naturally, I’d never been there.
“Well, good luck with that,” Bea said cheerfully, handing Darla her change.
“I don’t need luck. I always have the upper hand.” Without a thank-you, she turned and stomped out the door.
“Calm down.” Bea smiled at me. “You know she just does that to aggravate you. I bet she’s not even going to Arons. She just got all dressed up to make it look like she was going somewhere. She’s probably heading back to her house to sit and eat her muffin along with a tub of rocky road ice cream.”
I had to laugh. “I just can’t let it go completely. Just when I thought I could totally forgive Darla for the torture she put me through, she shows up. It’s very hard to not walk up and slap her.”
“She’s got your number, Cath,” Aunt Astrid said as she took her seat at her table for two next to the counter. “Don’t you think it’s about time you change that number?”
“Maybe. But she’s one of the few people I love to hate. The rest I just hate.”
“You don’t hate anyone,” Bea said soothingly. “You are one of the most lovey-dovey people I know. Underneath that hard exterior is a gooey, chocolaty, sweet center of love.”
“You’re on crack.” I grabbed a handful of forks and napkins and began to place them on all the tables.
“I saw you give Blake some honey and extra butter. Oh, try this tea. It goes so well with the muffin.” Bea teased in a singsongy voice while shaking her hips and batting her eyelashes.
“Blake is like that obnoxious cousin you only see at family get-togethers and is cross-eyed, but you try to be nice and pretend you don’t notice.”
Aunt Astrid laughed out loud.
“Besides, Tom and I have been seeing quite a lot of each other. I don’t have time to worry about Blake. He’s got you and Jake and, my gosh, Aunt Astrid, could you fawn all over him a little bit more?”
“What are you talking about?” She shrugged.
“You are always making a fuss over him.” I smirked. “You don’t try to hide it. It’s quite a spectacle.”
“He’s a bachelor. He’s got no family. And he’s a cop.” Aunt Astrid counted off on her fingers. “That’s dangerous for a man already. A man who thinks he doesn’t have anyone worrying about him is lost. He’s got to know there are people who want him to come home safe every night.”
I couldn’t argue with that. As much as he annoyed me, I wanted him to come home safe every night.
6
Lost in the Shadows
The rest of the day, I kept an eye out for Treacle. He and I had devised a grand plan to do a little snooping around the Elderflower homestead. I told him to just get in and get out, but my cat never followed directions to the letter.
When he still hadn’t arrived at closing time, I was beginning to worry. I panicked when I didn’t find him at home either.
“Treacle, didn’t I say no unnecessary risks?” I tried to communicate to him.
I grabbed the flashlight I kept by the front door, snapped it on, and went to the door that led to my laundry room. My house didn’t have a full basement. Instead, it had a second level below ground big enough for the washer and dryer, a small freezer, and boxes of holiday decorations. The floor was concrete. The walls were dreary. I kept meaning to brighten it up a little with some paint or wall hangings or something but hadn’t gotten around to it. The worst part of my secret room was that the light switch was all the way on the other side of room.
“Treacle?” I could see my breath in wispy steam. The window I left open for the cat was too small for a person to get through, but it was just right for the cat.
I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. When I swung the beam of light around, there was nothing there. As I focused on the corner, something else moved on the other side. The flashlight beam cut through the darkness, but still I saw nothing. Taking a deep breath, I stomped angrily over to the light switch and flipped on the overhead light. The room looked exactly the way I’d left it a couple days earlier after doing my laundry.
“Something is off.” But I couldn’t place it. I shined the flashlight behind the washer and dryer and freezer and boxes of decorations but found nothing but old spider webs, dust bunnies, and the occasional stinkbug carcass. When I shined the beam up to the window, two green eyes flashed at me.
“Meow!”
“Treacle! Get in here! I’ve been worried sick.”
“I need your help.” He panted. He wouldn’t slink through the window to jump in and onto the floor.
“What is it, honey?”
“I can’t make it.” He collapsed.
“Treacle!” I shouted. Before I knew what I was doing, I had dashed up the stairs and out the front door to the tiny window at the back of the house. There was my cat, lying in the cold, brown grass. I scooped him up in my arms and quickly folded him into my shirt. “What happened to you?”
Once inside my house, I kicked the front door shut with the back of my shoe and brought Treacle into the kitchen.
“Are you all right? You’re frozen to the bone!” I set him down on the table and grabbed a tea towel to rub his cold, wet paws. “What in the world happened? I was expecting you at the café. If I didn’t think to go check in the laundry room, you might have frozen to death out there. Oh, my poor kitty.”
It didn’t take long for Treacle’s purring to start. He shook his head a couple times and sat up.
“I kept getting lost in the shadows,” he finally said, giving my hand a tired nudge with his head. “I went to the Elderflowers’ house. As it turned out, there is a familiar living next door.”
“Well, that was lucky.” I scratched him behind the ears before pushing myself up from the table to get a small saucer for some milk.
“Yes. His name was Hines. He had a cat door. I’ve always thought those were a little too fancy for me. But some felines like them. Hines was a Siamese. They are always a little high maintenance. Anyway, he said the woman next door…”
“Mrs. Elderflower?”
“Yes, Hines said she would come out of the house at night, yelling and cursing. Then she’d run from the back porch to stand under the light on the detached garage. She’d just stand there under the light at night, cursing.”
“That poor woman. It sounds like dementia.”
“That does. But the weird shadow forms don’t.”
“What are you talking about?”
Treacle went on to tell me that Hines saw strange shadows on the Elderflower property.
“He said that sometimes at night he’d see them move out of the corner of his eye but that only once did he see the eyes.”
“Eyes?”
“He thought it was a rat. Rat eyes glint red sometimes. But these were too big. By the time Hines could get a good look, whatever it was disappeared.”
“That’s weird.”
“Hines also said that, during the day, the house seemed like it was under a perpetual cloud. Like the sun just couldn’t reach it.”
“Did he say anything about the family other than Mrs. Elderflower?”
“The only thing he said about the family w
as that Mrs. Elderflower wasn’t the only one who would have episodes in the yard. The daughter did too.”
“Which daughter?”
“He didn’t say.”
“So. You want to tell me what happened to you?”
“I’m not really sure. All I know is that I kept getting lost in the shadows.”
“On the way home?”
“Yes. When I left, Hines went back into his house. I saw something move near the neighboring house.”
“The Elderflowers’ house?”
“Yes. I thought it was a mouse. When I went to inspect it, I couldn’t find anything at first. But you know how it is, Cath. You just take a few more steps. You don’t always think about the steps you’ll have to take back.”
“Didn’t I say, ‘Don’t take any unnecessary risks’?” I scratched him behind his ears and stroked his back.
“Would it help if I told you I wanted to bring the mouse home for you?”
“No. So what did you see?”
“Nothing. You know how your eyes need a second to adjust when the sun is glaring down in the summertime and all of a sudden you step into a dark place? It was like that. Except my eyes never could adjust.”
“For a cat’s eyes never to adjust, that had to be some serious shadow.”
“It was. It was like a living thing. I had to try to retrace my steps out of there. But the shadow never lightened. That’s why it took so long to get home. I was feeling my way through smoke.”
“How long were you outside the window?”
“A long time.”
“Why didn’t you just jump in?” I placed a saucer of milk in front of him.
“Because I was afraid if I jumped into the shadow of the laundry room, it would swallow me up.”
I wrapped my arms around him and squeezed.
“You’re home now. Home and safe.” I gently gave him a headbutt. “Next time I say don’t take any unnecessary risks, listen to me, okay?”
“I learned my lesson.”
I cranked the heat up, tossed a couple of extra blankets on the bed, and let Treacle snuggle into them while I took a hot shower. While the water warmed me up, I thought about what Treacle had said.
Wonder Falls had some interesting patches of weird property. There was the Suicide Bridge and the road that led to it that I hoped to never see again. There was the old Wonder Falls Orphanage that had sent a shiver up my spine. That my family and I were the only ones to know about the strange goings-on didn’t change the fact that some old bits of land in Wonder Falls had loose soil on top. Some recent activity might have drummed up a resting spirit.
My heart sank a little as I stepped out of the shower and wrapped myself in a towel. It wasn’t looking good for Evelyn. So often, teenagers turned to magic in an attempt to get ahold of their lives. And ninety-nine percent of the time, they had no idea what they were doing. They didn’t consult anyone who might. Then they ended up unleashing a nightmare.
It was still too early to tell if she’d unleashed a nightmare. I scolded myself for being so dramatic. Still, with the death of her mother and a father who was too scared of her to stop her, I was convinced that Evelyn needed my help.
After I got into my warm flannel pajamas and went to my bedroom, I found Treacle sleeping peacefully. I turned on the television, and the original black-and-white version of Cyrano de Bergerac was on. Even though I thought I was too tired to read the subtitles, I managed to stay up to watch the big-nosed hero spill his heart out to Roxanne. They were in love with each other, flaws and all, for only the last few minutes of his life.
Okay, so I did cry when he drew his sword to fight his old enemies of cowardice and jealousy and despair. It made me think of Darla when she came to the café in her fur coat and perfect makeup.
“Don’t let yourself fight cowardice and despair in the last few minutes of your life, Cath.” I turned off the television and snuggled around Treacle, who had become an adorable black, fuzzy ball that weighed as much as a wet sandbag smack dab in the middle of the bed. When I touched him, his motor instantly kicked on.
“You’ve been through enough,” I whispered. “I’ll sleep around you.”
It didn’t take long for Treacle to get too hot in the blankets with my body generating even more heat next to him. I felt him stand, stretch, and yawn before venturing to the pillow and curling up around my head.
Sometime in the night, he started to growl. It was a deep growl from the back of his throat. But when I popped my eyes open, he’d already lowered his head and gone back to sleep.
7
Dead Spider
The next morning, I woke up early to find Treacle sitting on the kitchen counter, looking out the window.
“Good morning. See anything good out there?”
“No.”
“Well, no news is good news, I say.” I stroked his head as I walked past to the fridge to pour myself some of Bea’s freshly squeezed orange juice. She’d given it to me to make sure I got my vitamins during the cold snap we were having.
“Can I stay at Bea’s today?”
“Of course.” I pouted. “You okay?”
“I’m just a little jittery from yesterday. I’m wondering if I didn’t catch something, being out in the cold so long.”
“Honey, don’t say that.” I stroked his head. “The last thing either of us wants is a trip to the vet’s office.”
“Tell me about it. I think some company and a little rest will do me a world of good. Peanut Butter can do all the talking. I’ll listen and doze off.”
Peanut Butter was Bea’s feline. He was a young cat but had proven to be an excellent familiar, and his powers, although not as strong as Treacle’s yet, were well on their way.
I quickly got dressed, pulled my hair back in a sloppy ponytail, and scooped Treacle up in my arms, tucking him into the folds of my coat. It was early enough that I knew Bea hadn’t left for the café yet. Plus, Jake’s car was still in the driveway. What I didn’t expect was for Blake to answer the door.
“What are you doing here? Did you guys have a sleepover?” I quipped as I stepped inside, then I wiped my feet and set Treacle down on the hardwood floor. He quickly trotted up to Peanut Butter for a quick hello. I watched as they absconded to the front room, where a fire was crackling in the fireplace.
“They just got home,” Bea called. I followed her voice and saw Jake sitting on one of the stools at the island in the middle of Bea’s kitchen while she bustled about, pouring another cup of coffee for me.
“You just got home from where?”
“Collins Funeral Home,” Blake said as he placed his hands on my shoulders to move me out of his way. He motioned for me to take a seat next to Jake as he stood sipping his own cup of coffee. I climbed up on the stool and looked at Jake.
“Details.”
“You won’t believe this.” Bea placed a bowl of dried fruits and nuts in front of me. I grabbed a handful as if it were popcorn and waited for Jake to debrief me.
“We had no idea what to expect when we walked into the funeral home,” he started. “I was sure Mr. Collins was going to break down into tears as he led us to the cremation room.”
“Was Mrs. Elderflower being cremated?” I asked.
“She was supposed to be. But that was all halted when we found… what we found,” Blake answered.
“So, since the Elderflowers agreed they would rent the casket for the viewing, the body was—”
“Wait. They did what?” I was sure I heard this wrong.
“They rented the casket.” Jake smiled as he watched the expression on my face.
“That’s a real thing? You can rent a casket and put a dead body in it?”
“Of course.” Blake said. “A cheap casket runs almost six thousand dollars. The cost of a casket can easily reach ten thousand dollars if the family wants to include all the bells and whistles.”
“The Elderflowers aren’t rich people,” Bea added. “This probably made the most sense to t
hem.”
“Gosh, I wonder how many bodies were in that casket before Marie. No chance of cross-contamination with the evidence?” I asked innocently. Jake and Blake looked at me as if I’d just tried to tell them how to wear their badges and load their weapons. “Sorry. I watched an episode of Law & Order the other day.”
“Anyway, when Mr. Collins and his assistant went to remove the body from the casket to place her on the belt to be cremated, that was when they saw it.” Jake set his coffee down and shook his head.
“Saw what?”
“Well, first, there were strange tea leaves found caught in Mrs. Elderflower’s teeth and in the back of her throat. We took those to be analyzed. But then Mr. Collins discovered two of her toes had been cut off,” Blake answered.
I gasped and clamped my hand over my mouth.
“That isn’t all,” he continued. “Whoever did this crudely hollowed out a small area in order to insert something into the cavity.”
“What did they insert?” I quickly looked at Bea. “Do I want to know?”
“It was a small piece of parchment wrapped around a dead spider and a kernel of corn.”
I looked at Bea, who returned my knowing glance.
“Any idea what that means?” I asked.
“Not at the moment,” Blake said. “But we’ve got the research department looking into it.”
“The research department? Good. That ought to do it. Sorry, Bea. Thanks for the oats, but I’ve lost my appetite. Have you guys got any leads?”
“Just one,” Blake answered. “Mr. Collins said that Evelyn Elderflower was the last person to leave Marie Elderflower’s body. He said they left her alone for over ten minutes and they didn’t want to rush her. How do you tell a teenager that they’ve got to say goodbye now? That there is another family coming in to grieve their loss? It provided her with the perfect opportunity and just enough time.”
I slumped as I heard this.
“Have you talked to her yet?” I asked.
“We left word with her sister Fern. She seems to be the most levelheaded at the moment.”
