Bridget had been looking at a bunch of papers on her desk.
The image had brought up the memory of visiting the ghost in his office. Mr. Curtain had also had a bunch of papers on his desk, yet somehow I had managed not to look at a single one of them yet.
I flicked on all the lights I could find. Even in daylight this place was dark.
I straightened my shoulders and told myself to get it together. I was the Witch of Mintwood.
Apparently that didn’t change how creeped out I was.
Nevertheless, I pulled myself together and walked faster toward Mr. Curtain’s cramped office, my heart racing.
The cinema was quiet and deserted. With all the kittens now in good homes, even the subtle signs of the little animals were gone.
There was no sign of Mr. Curtain in the office, but the surface of his desk was still obscured by piles of papers. When I looked more closely, I wasn’t surprised to see a pile of Mintwood Film Festival pamphlets right on top of one of the piles. He had been murdered just before the festival, and from the way he had been fussing over the papers when we’d seen him in the office, it was still haunting him, even if he didn’t realize it.
I sat down in his chair and started skimming the pamphlet. On the front was a cute sketch of a car pulling up outside the main entrance of Bright Lights, filled with laughing people.
There pamphlet included a full schedule for the weekend. I didn’t recognize most of the films, but one thing stuck out.
The opening night film was about Mintwood!
That film must hold the key, if only I could find it!
I went back to where we’d found a bunch of old film rolls, and sure enough, in the very darkest corner was a box of film that said “Festival” on it.
The box was old and falling apart in my hands as I tried to lift it, but when I opened it the rolls of film appeared to be intact. I started pulling them out as quickly as I could without damaging anything, and it wasn’t long before I found the one marked, “Opening Night: Mintwood Memories.”
This was it!
I looked around the small room.
Now all I had to do was wait until Corey Curtain appeared, which wasn’t likely to happen until night fell. He could tell me how to watch the film, and surely I would then find out what someone in Mintwood all those years ago had wanted no one to see.
Then I would find a murderer.
I decided that I should leave Bright Lights after my discovery. In order to watch the film, I’d have to work a projector, but there was no way I was going to figure out how to operate one of them without Mr. Curtain. I thought about going to ask Honey, but I wasn’t sure she’d know anyway, so I decided I might as well head out for a while until I could come back and watch the movie.
Once I had the film in my possession, I pushed myself to my feet. Might as well try to get some cleaning done before dinner, dusk, and my return to the theater.
As I left the booth, I heard a clang. I froze and listened, but there was only silence.
Except: my heart was pounding.
Okay, I was being silly. There weren’t even kittens in the theater anymore. Just wind and an old building.
I took another step.
I stumbled.
The lights went out.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Without the emergency lights on, everything went black. Despite the fact that it was a brilliantly sunny day outside, there was no way for even a thread of light to get inside and light my way.
I swiveled around, holding my arms out from my sides to make sure I didn’t crash into a wall, a chair, or who knows what else. I stumbled forward as silence rang in my ears.
I was all alone. I definitely should have waited to come here when Charlie wasn’t hot on the trail of the latest newspaper story and Greer wasn’t at work, but it was too late to remedy that now.
A deep breath rattled through my lungs. It was broad daylight outside, and I was totally being silly. The power had probably just cut out. This building was so old, a power failure for no particular reason wasn’t out of the realm of possibility.
Going very slowly and feeling my way, I managed to get to the back of the theater. I only stubbed my toe once on the way.
Just as I reached the door and was preparing to push it open, I heard footsteps coming from down the hall.
For a split second I tried to pull back into the safety of the theater, but it was too late. The door was already open, and down the hall a beam of light was sweeping from side to side. I covered my eyes, since they had already grown used to the blackness around me and the sudden light was blinding me.
Then I tried to stumble away.
Someone had a flashlight!
There was someone here!
“Who’s there?” I called out.
“Who are you?” the male voice answered.
There was something familiar about that voice, but I couldn’t quite place it.
Whoever it was, it definitely wasn’t any of my friends. Hansen, Deacon, Liam, and even Jasper were all elsewhere.
I squinted at the light again.
The beam stopped moving and was pointed toward the ground, so now I could see a bit.
The guy standing there looked familiar, but it took me a breath to recognize him.
“Simon?” I frowned. He was the guy I’d seen crushing on Bridget recently. What had I heard about him?
I thought and thought as I stared at him and tried to figure out what to do next.
He was visiting and . . . he was a descendant of a mayor!
“I . . .” he paused and frowned. “A voice came to me when I was half asleep and told me I had to come here. I thought I dreamed it, but the voice said I had to get a special roll of film with the name, ‘Mintwood Memories.’”
He pointed to the canister I held in my hands, with the label clearly marked.
My heart sank.
In the darkness I could barely see him, but I remembered not liking the look of him before.
“This is mine. You can’t have it,” I said quickly.
Simon cocked his head to the side. “I’m pretty sure I can. I need it. Maybe I can’t say why, but you’re going to have to hand it over. My family’s honor depends on it.”
“Are you the grandson of Mayor Julious?” I asked him.
His expression hardened. Clearly I’d struck a nerve.
“Yes, of course I am. Everyone knows that,” he scoffed at me.
My eyes narrowed. He certainly thought well of himself.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist that you hand over that film canister,” he demanded.
I took a deep breath and clutched the canister all the more tightly. There was no way I was going to hand the film over. Not without a fight, anyhow!
I was tempted to use magic, but then this Simon would know my secret. If I did something witchy, he’d know it came from me. So I asked myself: what were my non-magic options?
Frowning, I glanced over his shoulder. “What is that down the hall?”
Simon’s eyes hardened. “Look, the voice this morning said I had to get the canister. Just hand it over. There’s nothing behind me.”
“Sure, I’ll hand it over,” I said. I started to walk slowly toward him and felt sweat break out over my whole body.
When I got near enough, I held out the canister, but before he could take it Simon had to juggle the flashlight so that he could hold two things at once.
At the last possible second, when his attention was distracted, I kicked him!
Yes, that’s right. Me, Lemmi: I kicked him. In the shin!
Then I ran for my life.
I careened down the stairs. My hand found the railing and I tugged myself down faster. I heard Simon yelling from somewhere behind me.
At the bottom of the stairs, I suddenly registered that there were people standing there looking very surprised.
In a blur, I tried to slow down.
The only trouble was that I was moving
very, very fast, so instead of slowing down I tripped and landed on the hard floor.
The film canister went flying into the air.
My eyes fought to find Simon rushing after me, and when they focused on him I saw that his expression was filled with panic. Then, flying out of nowhere (actually, probably just one side of the stairway), came Tom.
Simon noticed Tom just about when I did.
The object of Tom’s chase had no time to maneuver out of his way.
“Are you okay?” Charlie was hauling me to my feet.
Standing nearby were Liam, Bridget, and Greer.
“What’s happening? What are all of you doing here?” I said.
“We thought we’d join you for lunch. We stopped in to see what Liam was up to, and he was on his way over as well. Bridget and Tom came along to see the place. Are you okay?” Greer asked.
“Yes.” But actually, I felt dazed.
I looked over at Simon and Tom. The detective’s assistant was glaring at his captive in a scene that was like something out of an old movie.
There was plenty of dust to settle. Literally.
Tom and Simon’s scuffle had roiled the dust that had accumulated for decades when the theater wasn’t being visited, much less cleaned. I coughed and waved my hand in front of my face, then realized that it was better just to be still and let the dust settle again.
As Simon was led away Tom said, “I’ve been wanting to do that for a while.” Then he started listing charges. They ranged from “foolishness” to “chasing my dear friend Lemonia.”
His lovestruck eyes flicked to Bridget once, and her blush deepened.
Among other realizations, I was crystal clear on one thing.
We now knew who the gloves Tom had purchased were for.
We went back to the Twinkle and spent the afternoon discussing the case over tea. Unfortunately, civilians had been dragged into the middle of the solution to the magical mystery, so we had to tiptoe around all sorts of things.
All I said was that Simon wanted to steal some of the old things from the cinema, and he’d been particularly interested in one specific old film. Bridget was especially surprised, because Simon wasn’t the film type, or, she thought, the thieving type.
I completely left out that he was a descendant of Mayor Julious, nor did I mention that the former mayor had killed Mr. Curtain over a dispute of whether to show the film.
After a couple of hours, Charlie said she ought to get back to work. Then she changed her mind and declared that talking with us about the Bright Lights case was work.
Only at dinnertime did we all disperse.
“Food waits for no criminal,” said Liam dramatically as he let us out of his store.
We got home and filled Paws in as we ate dinner. Once we were well fed and it was dark outside, we went back to the theater. We had promised Tom that we wouldn’t do that until Simon could be interviewed, but we had lied.
We wanted to talk with Mr. Curtain about what had happened long ago, and today. Amends needed to be made, and Charlie in particular wanted to find out what would make Mr. Curtain happy.
On the way downtown, we dropped Paws off at the cemetery. Out of the goodness of his twisted heart, he let Tank accompany him. Just this once, because Paws had a Poof to perform.
A Poof was a ghost punishment, a sort of ritual that Paws was allowed to perform because of a complicated set of circumstances that I could never quite remember.
Mayor Julious was going to be Poofed. We still didn’t know the full story; I hoped Mr. Curtain would give it to us later that evening. But we knew enough to go on with. Paws would see to it that we weren’t troubled by Mayor Julious again.
After dropping off Paws, we went on to the cinema. I worried about having a residual reaction to having been chased, but I felt fine walking into Bright Lights.
When we finally found Mr. Curtain, he was in his office once again, gazing at the stacks of papers he couldn’t truly handle any longer. We crowded in and told him what had happened with Simon.
“That film was literally the death of me,” he said, shaking his head. “It was a sort of history of Mintwood, warts and all. It told a series of little stories, each illustrating something about the town. Some of the stories were quaint and sweet, some a bit dark, but all in all I thought it showed the character of the place in a way that would make people more curious than not.”
“That’s not what Mayor Clabberd said,” I burst out, suddenly remembering our original conversation about cleaning out the theater. “He said that after you died and the festival was cancelled, Mayor Julious went all around town saying how upset he was that that film hadn’t been shown. But that was just his cover-up for what really happened!”
Mr. Curtain shook his head sadly and said that sounded about right. Mayor Julious had always been ambitious and domineering, but he, Mr. Curtain, had never thought he would have stooped so far as murder. Then he remembered that the mayor had invested heavily in several tourism-related business, and shook his head again.
Charlie brought us back to the present by asking what Mr. Curtain would most like us to do now that we knew the full story. He said that what he wanted was for everyone to know how much his parents had loved each other and loved Mintwood. He also wanted people to know how much they had loved movies.
The upshot of it was that Charlie would interview Mr. Curtain and write a series of articles in the Mintwood Gazette. “I’ll claim I found his journals in all this mess. That way I can quote him,” she said gleefully. “If that’s okay with you?”
Mr. Curtain was totally delighted.
That Saturday night we had a special re-opening at Bright Lights. For one night only, we were going to show a picture in the theater again. The three of us worked around the clock to get the main theater clear of debris, and by Saturday we were exhausted but happy.
Deacon had helped when he could. When he wasn’t there, Mr. Curtain had stuck around directing us in our cleaning efforts. Liam was there a lot too, and sometimes he got a little confused. Greer had a hard time pretending the ghosts weren’t there when they actually were.
The evening of the re-opening finally came. Excitement was in the air as everyone in town streamed into the old building. There were oohs and aahs of excitement at the sight of the main lobby, which was a gorgeous relic of another time.
Standing with us to greet everyone was Honey, who was delighted that we wanted to open the theater for one last celebration. Tears of joy shone in her eyes as she greeted customers who had been regulars all those years ago. She had even known Evenlyn, and she told me how much my grandmother would have loved this. That was something we both knew to be true.
Tom and Bridget came, along with most of the rest of Mintwood. Apparently Tom’s problem lately had been that he was utterly in love with the quiet girl. Bridget’s problem was that she wanted desperately, more than anything in the world, to work at the best store in the history of stores: the Twinkle Costume Shop.
Liam’s store was so popular that he had decided to bring someone else on board and had offered Bridget a part-time job. He was very excited about it, to say nothing about how Bridget felt.
Looking around the theater and seeing the people of Mintwood gather, after all our hard work, made my chest fill with happiness.
Watching in the wings was Mr. Curtain. He looked delighted too.
There might be a lot of turmoil in Mintwood, but Mr. Curtain had gotten the movie-worthy ending he deserved.
The End
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By Addison Creek
Witch of Mintwood Mysteries
Witch Way to Mintwood
Witch Some Win Some
Spell by Midnight
A Witch on Mintwood Mountain
Witch Raising Situation
Witch Way Round
Witch Wish Way
White Witch Wonder
Muddled Mintwood Murderer
Wonder Wand Way
Witch of Mintwood Mysteries 1-3
Witch of Mintwood Mysteries 4-6
Witch of Mintwood Mysteries 7-9
The Jane Garbo Mysteries
Spooky Business
Spooky Spells
Spooky Spider
Spooky Spindle
Jane Garbo Mysteries Books 1-3
Wonder Wand Way (Witch of Mintwood Book 10) Page 18
