Spell by Midnight (Witch of Mintwood Book 3) Read online

  “If you don’t learn these spells, nothing stands between the farm and another, stronger attack,” said Paws.

  “You have to start somewhere,” said Gary. “Somewhere, for witches, is always the beginner spells. Spell One, Spell Two, Spell Three. There is the act of performing a spell to do something, and then there is the act of simply using your magic. The hardest part to get over is using your magic.

  “Once you pass that hurdle, you should have some basis for performing any other spell, including advanced ones. Now what I suggest you do is put your nose back in that book and read it through until you can perform magic.”

  Finished with his lecture, Gary sat back and folded his arms over his chest, not looking the least bit amused.

  “All right, fine,” I said.

  I stuck my nose back in the book and started to read. From what I could gather, there wasn’t one set wand motion that produced a spell, but there were a lot of motions that definitely wouldn’t produce a spell. I spent the first couple of hours learning those. Shaking the wand up and down or side to side, or just bopping it once, never worked. What did work was holding it almost perfectly still, sometimes at a slight upward incline, and allowing whatever wind might be around to move it gently from side to side.

  “Always use the elements that are at your disposal,” said Paws.

  “What if there are no elements at my disposal?” I said.

  “For those occasions I suggest you get better at this,” said Paws.

  “Spells One, Two, and Three might be easy to say, but they certainly aren’t easy to perform,” I said.

  That night I flopped into a chair and stared at the fire, wishing I could conjure a pot of tea. Maybe that wasn’t covered until the middle spell level or something.

  “You look tired,” said Charlie, glancing up at me. She had a stack of books next to her that she was poring through.

  “I am tired,” I said. “I’m glad I found the wand, though.”

  “If you hadn’t, we’d be in a lot of danger,” said Charlie. “You saved us.”

  “I haven’t saved anyone yet, but hopefully the ghosts will be satisfied.”

  “You’ll be fine,” said Charlie, beaming.

  I stared into the fire for a while longer, then Greer came in from the kitchen with tea and I perked up a bit.

  “Your tea,” she said.

  “You’re the best,” I said. “I really needed this.”

  Using the wand felt like one of the most ridiculous things I had ever done. I told myself I would just have to get used to waving a stick in the air and saying words and having something actually happen.

  “How’d the day go?” said Greer. “You look like a used mop.”

  “My wrist hurts,” I said. “Gary says it hurts because I’m a fool.”

  “That means you’re doing it wrong,” said Paws through the window.

  “Thank you, peanut gallery. You are more than welcome to take the night off,” I said.

  “More tomorrow,” said Paws. “Maybe you’ll actually perform a spell, although I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence! I really appreciate your support,” I shot back.

  “Best comeback you’ve had since I’ve met you. Could be because you haven’t had any comebacks since I met you,” said Paws. I was about to issue another retort when he yelled, “MICE!! MICE!!” and took off after them.

  “If only Greer was so easily entertained,” said Charlie woefully.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The discovery of the identity of the body led to another flood of sensational headlines, the most prominent among them the following:

  BODY IN SILO IDENTIFIED. CORONER SAYS MURDER

  I had thought I’d have to spend a lot of time at the library to find out everything I could about Hank Smith, but Charlie had been doing my work for me. The day after Deacon came and told us about the identification of the body, the Mintwood Gazette printed a detailed article about Hank Smith’s disappearance and a detailed obituary as well.

  I got quite a bit of new information from Charlie’s article.

  Hank Smith had had no children; in fact, he hadn’t been married. His only family was the cousin with whom he ran his real estate business, who lived in the town of Pennwood, about twenty minutes away. Hank Smith had owned a house on the lake, and he wanted to add the barn to his portfolio. He apparently dreamed of developing the lakefront property as some sort of resort. It had been assumed, or suspected, that when he had concluded that he wasn’t going to get the barn, he gave up and moved away. Without any close family, he hadn’t been particularly missed.

  His long-serving secretary, Juliet, had received an email from him saying that he was first going for an extended stay in Europe and then intending to move there. She was devastated at the time, and was now being interviewed by the police. Further details had not been released.

  The article concluded by saying that Hank Smith had been a pillar of the community who was ruthlessly murdered, and it was time for justice at long last. Of course, the Mintwood police department was on the case, and citizens could expect results soon.

  Knowing who the body in the silo belonged to was a start, and I hoped that the new information would lead to possible motives for killing Mr. Smith.

  Charlie’s article was only the beginning, though.

  Another article focused on strange happenings at the barn since the body had been discovered, reporting that it wasn’t unusual to find the work of vandals there. Graffiti and threats, not to mention the smell of rotting vegetables, had all conspired – according to this writer, anyhow – to make it very difficult to imagine how the barn was going to be able to open as a wedding venue.

  Shocked, I glanced back at the byline to see who had written the piece. The author turned out to be Dorothy Sounds, the woman who had confronted us while we stood outside the silo waiting for Jasper and Deacon to come back up.

  That made me sit back, thinking hard. Charlie was going to be upset, since she had promised Jasper she’d try to keep the negative press to a minimum. But as we were reminded often enough, Charlie had no control over what Lena decided to print.

  The next day, I decided that I ought to pay a little more attention to the women who seemed to have overrun Mintwood, and that meant going downtown. I could stop in and see Liam and try to get information about the strangers in the process. Maybe a few of them would even be in his store again.

  Charlie and Greer were working, so I tended to my demanding pet sitting duties in the morning and headed downtown for the afternoon. Besides checking out the out-of-towners and visiting Liam, I had a lot of new information about Hank Smith to mull over.

  Sure enough, the streets of downtown Mintwood were still populated with the women who’d been milling around for the past few days. Better prepared this time, I was hoping for a chance to examine them surreptitiously.

  While I picked up a copy of the Chronicle, I took note of the fact that many of them were wearing feathered hats. While I picked up a piece of trash from the sidewalk, I saw that many of them were wearing fancy shoes. While I got my morning coffee, I noticed that many of the oddly dressed women were drinking tea and trying to pretend they weren’t looking at me over the rims of their mugs.

  I was about to confront a short, very wide woman in a flowered dress, unseasonable for the cold weather, when something made me turn around. Through the café window I saw the Fan Lady in all her black glory.

  Without a second thought I left my coffee in the café and went dashing outside. A sudden surge of pedestrians made me lose track of the Fan Lady for a split second, then I saw her walking down the street near the key shop.

  The last thing we needed, I told myself, was to have the Fan Lady in cahoots with Frannie, one of the sisters who owned the key shop. I hurried after her with even more urgency, but she had a good start. Just before she disappeared down the alley next to the building, she half turned her head and smiled.

 
She knew I was chasing her! And she was running away, despite the fact that she was wearing heels!

  How rude.

  No matter how hard I tried to make my way through the thick crowd, catching up with her proved impossible. It was as if she was moving with the power of magic.

  By the time I reached the alley, I was panting. I leaned over to brace my hands on my knees and started looking around. There was no sign of the Fan Lady down the narrow space between buildings.

  I had failed to catch her, but I could be sure of one thing: the Fan Lady was a witch.

  And she had come to my farmhouse. For me.

  “We have to get Deacon out of the house,” said Greer in an urgent tone of voice as she walked into the living room late that night.

  “Maybe take him to a movie?” said Charlie. “Does he like shopping?”

  “I suggested a hike for tomorrow,” said Greer. “We’re all going. Jasper too.”

  “What about me makes you think I like hiking?” wondered Charlie.

  “We have to support Deacon. I invited Liam. He’s in as well,” said Greer.

  “It’s a regular party. Should I invite Hansen?” I asked innocently.

  When Charlie gasped, I gave her a wicked smile.

  “You’ll do no such thing! We have to keep him away from Jasper at all costs. If we don’t, I might lose my job,” said Charlie.

  “When you put it that way, it sounds serious,” I said. “I guess he can’t come.”

  “Where are we hiking?” asked Charlie, looking suspiciously at Greer.

  “We’re all really busy, so it can’t be too far away. I figured we would also have time to do some research on this Hank Smith character. Not that Charlie’s exhaustive pieces in the Gazette aren’t telling us a lot, but maybe we can look into who else besides the Grates might have an apparent reason to want him dead, and where they might be now. I think we should grab some lunch and head to Mintwood Mountain.”

  “Ohhh, I was afraid of that. Do we have to hike there?” asked Charlie.

  “Where else would you suggest?” said Greer. “It’s small, so even someone who hates the outdoors and sweating as much as you do shouldn’t mind. And it’s close, which is good, because, even though I’m repeating myself, we’re all really busy.”

  “Fine, but we’d better not run into anyone. I can’t have people see me hiking and thinking I like it,” said Charlie.

  “Certainly not,” said Greer, “that would be terrible.”

  “I’ll have to dig out my hiking boots,” said Charlie, angrily snipping a stray thread off the blouse she was repairing.

  “When do you ever have to dig anything of yours out?” Greer asked.

  “Whenever I intentionally bury it at the back of my closet,” Charlie shot back.

  After Charlie disappeared into her room, Greer sat down on the couch and sighed.

  “I saw the fan woman again today,” she said. “Deacon saw her too. He said she was really sweet to him in a weird sort of way. She offered to sell him a fan, then winked when she saw that he was with me.”

  “Who do you think she is?” I said.

  “I have no idea, but I don’t like it. I have a feeling she’s dangerous,” said Greer.

  “I have that feeling too,” I said.

  I quickly told Greer about my own encounter with the woman downtown.

  “Do you think she’s related to all the other strange women around here?” said Greer.

  “She could be. I wouldn’t be surprised,” I said. “Were any of the other women around when you saw her?”

  Greer shook her head. “That in and of itself I thought was strange. Like they were afraid of her or something.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  I got up bright and early the next morning. I had decided to head over to the Mintwood Long Term Storage Facility on the edge of town, where Hank Smith’s old company papers were stored. As usual, Paws was put out that he couldn’t go, but since it was daylight there was really very little point, because ghosts were so difficult to see in daylight.

  The business Smith had owned still existed, and Charlie had discovered that the files from the era when Mr. Smith was alive were stored in the facility, as well as on a hard rive. The police had the hard drive, so we decided to go to the source before the police decided to close it off.

  Greer didn’t want to come. It was before her usual wakeup time, and she’d said that if we were hiking later that day, she’d need all the rest she could get.

  “I talked to one of the secretaries, a woman named Julia,” Charlie explained as I drove the Beetle across town. “She’s a fan of my work, so she had no problem putting me on the list of people approved to get into the storage unit. She wants this mystery solved as much as we do. It’s a little irregular, but if it helps us find a killer it’ll be worth it.”

  “I’m sure there are tons of old company papers to sift through, but it’s worth a shot. Someone wanted him dead, and we have to figure out why,” I said.

  “Right. No one really benefited from his death, except that his business partner didn’t have to buy him out. But even then the company nearly went into financial collapse when he disappeared to ‘Europe.’”

  The storage facility was deserted when we arrived. It didn’t matter; Charlie had wheedled a set of keys from the secretary, so she simply proceeded to find the right unit and let us in.

  We opened the garage-type door to rows and rows of boxes, stacked so high the tops of the piles were over our heads.

  “Oh, boy,” I said.

  “Don’t suppose there’s a spell for all this?” said Charlie hopefully.

  “Even magic would run away from this,” I said with confidence.

  “Julia, a secretary at the real estate company, said we should try the boxes in section E, row 11,” said Charlie, moving into the unit and walking up and down the aisles.

  “This is taking forever,” Charlie complained after a while. We had already been there so long that even if we found the tight box, we weren’t going to have a lot of time to look through it.

  “It’s difficult to shift all of these containers,” I muttered.

  We both sat down and stared at the storage unit.

  “Um, Charlie, did you put that box back property?” I asked suddenly.

  “Of course, why?” Charlie huffed.

  “Because it’s about to topple over!” I cried.

  Sure enough, the stack we’d just been looking through slid sideways and fell. With a cry we both shot forward.

  As we scrambled to try and put the boxes upright again, Charlie gave a triumphant cry. The boxes in the row that had just slipped were the ones we were looking for. We’d found Section E, row 11.

  The boxes were in great condition, without any sign of weather damage. Charlie grabbed a box and brought it to doorway of the storage unit.

  “I should have brought a foldout table or something,” she said with a little sigh.

  I grabbed a second box and we both sat down on the cold concrete and started to sift.

  “Look at this,” said Charlie after she’d gone through nearly an entire box. “This says that Mr. Smith and his cousin, Horace, were dissolving their company, and that Mr. Smith would become the sole owner. That seems strange.”

  “The name Horace Smith is ringing a bell, but I can’t for the life of me think of why,” I said.

  I knew the reason the name sounded familiar wasn’t about to come to me, so I kept looking through my own box. All the papers were about deeds, deeds, and more deeds. Some related to sales that hadn’t gone through, but even then there was a lot of information about each property.

  “It looks like every investment he considered had its own folder,” I said.

  “Is there any sign of a Babbling Brook folder?” Charlie wondered. She started sifting faster, then went to grab more boxes.

  The very next box she opened had the folder we were looking for.

  “Wow, it was really a bidding war. Both the Smiths
and the Grates had gone way over the asking price. I guess they both really wanted it.”

  “Why do you think Horace Smith didn’t approve the sale after his cousin disappeared?”

  “I guess it was Mr. Smith who really wanted the property, and not his cousin,” shrugged Charlie. “Look at this,” she added, reaching to show me a sheet of paper. “The farmer who owned the place had accepted the Smiths’ offer before Hank Smith disappeared. If he had been around, the Grates never would have gotten the property at all.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  Charlie and I exchanged concerned looks. We had come to the storage unit to find proof that the Grates wouldn’t have wanted Mr. Smith dead, and what we had found pointed in the exact opposite direction. What was worse, the police were probably figuring out the same thing right about now. All we had found was more evidence that Deacon’s parents had had a good reason for wanting Mr. Smith out of the way. If he hadn’t died, he would have gotten the Babbling Brook Barn.

  We didn’t stay much longer, since we were already late to meet Greer, Jasper, and Deacon for the hike. Liam was coming separately, but by this time we knew that he too would be waiting when we arrived.

  Of all of us, Liam was the only one who had dressed flamboyantly. I wasn’t sure where he’d found his socks and backpack, but it was clearly a place that embraced tie-dye for hiking.

  When I had told Paws we were going hiking, he nearly keeled over laughing. Mintwood Mountain was awesome if you liked mountains, but I had never really been known as the outdoor type. I was less assertive about it than Charlie, but Paws knew me well.

  Even so, when we finally met the others and I saw Deacon looking so drawn and fretful, I was glad we had agreed to go. He clearly needed the distraction.

  Jasper, who had a lot of worries of his own, also seemed determined to have a good time.

  No one had much to say for a good long stretch after we left the trailhead. The steep path had us all panting, with no breath to spare for talking. Deacon was the most subdued, but the higher we got up Mintwood Mountain the clearer his eyes became and the happier he looked. It was cold out but sunny, and we were dazzled by the view every time we came to an opening in the trees.