Wonder Wand Way (Witch of Mintwood Book 10) Read online

  “At dinner I’d usually go grab something at the convenience store. They sold sandwiches and odds and ends. I’d bring it back here and eat it between seatings. I could have done the same as usual that night, but I don’t honestly remember. My breakfast and lunch were a constant, though.”

  “So, if somebody was trying to poison you they’d have a hard time knowing where you were having dinner,” I said.

  “Of course. Sometimes I’d go to somebody’s house for dinner, too. Most people in town knew me and liked to hear stories of the old days. My father told great stories about Bright Lights in its heyday, and I remembered most of them.

  “We used to get movie stars here, don’t you know. Everyone liked to hear about that. Usually once or twice a week I’d go over to a friend’s house for dinner, then come back to Bright Lights for the evening. That’s actually why I first hired help. I wanted to be able to make dinner plans and leave the theater in good hands for a couple of hours. I didn’t want to close midweek and have people miss their picture,” he explained.

  “Is it possible that you went to someone’s house for dinner the night you died?” I asked.

  “Of course it’s possible. It’s downright likely. Thursday nights were one of the main nights I liked to go. I just don’t remember who would have been hosting. I probably wouldn’t have mentioned it to anyone, either. It wasn’t as if I had anyone to tell. I’m surprised my host didn’t come forward after I died, though, so maybe I hadn’t gone anywhere that night,” he said.

  “What was going on around town at the time of your death? How was Main Street doing in general?” I asked.

  He couldn’t tell me anything very specific, but he clearly had a good memory of what Mintwood had been like back then. At this point in the investigation, you never knew what might prove useful, so I wanted him to tell me anything he could remember.

  He sighed and smiled. “The downtown was really thriving. After years of there not being a lot of shops, several had opened all at once. It was glorious. People would drive from neighboring towns to visit. They could get breakfast and do a bit of shopping. Maybe they could get a lunch date for a picture. The state in general had become more of a tourist destination in the summer. All the businesses were doing well. I remember we were having a debate about the speed limit, too,” he said.

  “Some things never change,” said Charlie dryly.

  Just recently the town had had a debate about the speed limit. We had a group that was always trying to get it changed; no matter how many times they failed, they didn’t give up the quest.

  “I’m trying to get to the bottom of what happened to you. Given how long ago it was, it might take some time,” I told him. “If you think of anything else that might be helpful, please let me know.”

  He nodded. He had clearly enjoyed our chat. “Will do.”

  “Do you mind if we keep clearing out Bright lights?” I asked.

  He sighed and looked down at his ghost hands. “I don’t mind. I’d like to see the place cleaned up a bit. Hopefully it doesn’t get torn down. What happened with it wasn’t what I wanted, but everything changes over time. With no one to take over, I can’t say I’m surprised it’s been used as storage and fallen into disrepair. I like to think of it as protecting the treasures of old.”

  “There certainly are a lot of treasures here,” I said.

  Just then there was the sound of a door shutting.

  “Who’s that?” Charlie asked.

  “Probably Liam,” said Greer. “He was supposed to come by tonight.”

  “Right. We should probably go meet him so he doesn’t come looking for us,” said Charlie. Then she turned to Mr. Curtain and added, “He’s one of the ones who really loves this place. He thinks it’s the cat’s pajamas.”

  Honolulu twittered a laugh.

  “That’s so funny I forgot to laugh,” Paws said, looking sour.

  We said goodbye to Mr. Curtain and he made us promise to search him out if we found out anything about his death.

  The fact that he thought his passing was suspicious didn’t necessarily mean anything, but I still had a bad feeling about it. The situation would have been clearer if someone had taken over the theater after he died. If the location had been sold to a big developer and turned into something fancy and new that made someone a lot of money, I would have been a lot more suspicious.

  As it was, the building had just stood empty for all of these years. The real question to answer was why.

  Paws and Honolulu didn’t join us in heading off to meet Liam. Instead, the two ghost cats disappeared again. Honolulu said goodbye to us as they trotted away. Paws did not.

  Liam was just coming up the stairs as we reached the main corridor on the second floor. He saw us and waved with his free hand; in the other he was carrying a supply of garment bags.

  “I might get going on stuff I wanted to take away,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about it all day. At first I thought I should wait, and then I was like, ‘Why?’”

  “Good to see you, too. I hope you had a great day,” said Greer dryly.

  He threw his head back and laughed. “I’m SO sorry. I’m just so excited. I love my work and I love what I do. I haven’t been so distracted since I opened the shop. This is a big deal.”

  “Like I said, you should take anything you find that you’d like to keep. As you can see, there’s plenty of stuff,” I said.

  “I think we should have some kind of festival this summer. We should showcase the antiques and the vintage clothing. Maybe have a long yard sale,” Liam said, setting the garment bags down and spreading his arms as wide as he could.

  “One thing you we should is invite estate agents here. There’s an awful lot of nice furniture. I’m not sure what Mrs. Cook wants to do with the money, but I’m sure she’ll think of something,” I said.

  “I’m surprised you don’t have people beating on the doors as we speak,” said Liam. “André was saying he thinks there might be important paintings here.”

  Charlie rolled her eyes. She didn’t have much patience for the art gallery owner. “He probably thinks there are and he probably wants them for free. Hansen will probably do a write-up about it.”

  “Speaking of Hansen, when are you going to invite him here?” Liam asked.

  “Who said I was going to do anything of the kind?” she huffed.

  “Of course you are. He’s always around Mintwood. He’s one of the crowd now. He probably really wants to know what’s going on at the cinema, and he’s a good guy. Why do I feel like I have to convince you? I like him,” Liam said.

  “Everybody likes him. I really don’t get it,” Charlie muttered.

  “Don’t worry. Someday you will,” said Liam. “Shall we get to work?”

  We got to work, but it wasn’t to be for long. Charlie set about helping Liam gather clothing he might want to sell in his shop. Greer and I continued to move boxes around.

  Almost before we got going, I started hearing a strange noise.

  Given that I had heard a lot of strange noises since we started this process, at first I ignored it. The ghost who lived in the building was no longer angry at us, and other ghosts weren’t likely to show up and surprise us. There was always the chance of a dark ghost attack, but I had a feeling they wouldn’t search me out in a movie theater. It was too close to something that resembled fun, and they might be in danger of being exposed to some culture.

  But the noise continued, and after a while I asked myself why, just once, we couldn’t come here without something creepy happening.

  Okay, not creepy: maybe it was the leak in the roof. Or maybe a loose or squeaky board was shifting somewhere. It was really nothing to worry about.

  “Do you hear that noise?” Liam asked at last, sounding fed up.

  At that, we all stopped what we were doing and looked at each other. Now that Liam had mentioned it, I wished I had said something sooner. If the noise was being caused by something supernatural, it would be a
lot to explain to my friend.

  “I keep hearing something. I don’t know what it is,” said Charlie.

  “Should we be worried about it?” Greer asked, looking directly at me.

  I shrugged. “I doubt it. Just in case, though, let’s have a look around.”

  We were going to have a chance to split up into pairs of two again. That seemed to be developing as a theme for this project.

  Even as I told myself not to feel afraid, I began to worry. We were in an otherwise empty building by ourselves. If Ellie chose to attack with dark ghosts, we would have a difficult time defending ourselves.

  But at the very moment when I was thinking that gloomy thought, we found out exactly what the noise was coming from. Trotting through the still-open door of the main theater came several small animals.

  Six, to be exact.

  Kittens.

  The old theater was officially overrun with cuteness.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Needless to say, the discovery of so many little animals changed the course of the evening dramatically. They were all meowing their heads off, except one that kept swatting at the others’ tails instead. Six kittens were a lot to wrangle, but the four of us did try.

  As we tried to catch them, they glared at us as if we were supposed to be feeding them.

  If the cats insisted . . .

  Greer wasn’t a fan of cats and wasn’t thrilled. Charlie and Liam thought they were adorable.

  Liam found a big box and poked enough holes in it so that an elephant could have breathed comfortably. Then we began the painstaking process of gathering the kittens one by one.

  In the middle of this incredibly difficult process, the ghost cats returned.

  Paws didn’t improve situations at the best of times, and with six meowing kittens this was definitely not the best of times.

  “What ARE those?” he cried, appalled.

  The cats couldn’t see Paws, but they clearly sensed a wave of judgment washing toward them. They meowed even louder.

  “Don’t be mean! You’re scaring them,” Honolulu chided him.

  “They’re scaring me!” Paws whined back. “Are they large rats?”

  “You know exactly what they are,” I told him in a huff as I picked up a particularly vocal gold and white cat.

  “I do not. I’ve never seen such ugly things in my life,” he said.

  “He’s a cat. You used to be one as well. Stop being so judgmental. These little guys are probably why there are no mice or birds around,” I said.

  I gently placed the gold and white cat in the box. He looked up at me as if he were trying to decide whether he’d be able to jump back out of the box or not.

  I saw the moment on his little face when he decided he could indeed jump. His tail started wagging to get ready. I quickly closed the lid.

  “Yes, exactly,” said Paws. “I now know who to be angry at. I spent the entire night looking for mice and I haven’t been able to find any. And it’s obviously because of them!”

  “That’s not how you spent the entire night. You also had to look for Mr. Curtain. On top of that you listened to our conversation,” Greer said.

  “This place is not the best. I’m so sorry I invited you to such a waste of time,” said Paws, turning to Honolulu.

  He was tottering on the edge of having a meltdown, but Honolulu didn’t care. She just continued to smile and coo over the kittens through the giant breathing holes. Liam was doing much the same thing.

  I had to admit they were adorable.

  “What do we do with them?” Charlie asked.

  “We could bring them home for the night. I think it would confuse Charger, but he’d love them in the end,” said Greer.

  “We should take them to the animal shelter. They can check them out and decide what to do with them,” said Liam.

  I had never been to the Mintwood animal shelter, which was surprising given all the work I did with animals. We discussed it for a while, but in the end we agreed that Liam’s idea was a good one. If the kittens needed housing we could always offer it later. How they’d handle an old farmhouse, I wasn’t sure. But I’d worry about that if and when the time came.

  Liam offered to drive the box of kittens to the shelter. This many kittens arriving all at once in a small town shelter would be a big deal, so he figured the sooner the better.

  We three roommates decided to head home.

  It was going to be a long night.

  It didn’t take us long to form this plan and agree to go our separate ways. Liam was looking forward to getting the cats to the shelter so they could be checked out as quickly as possible.

  That was really the most important thing.

  Even if they had somehow managed to catch mice, they still might be hungry. They also might have fleas, which Liam was concerned about.

  We gathered our possessions and headed downstairs to the lobby and out to the street.

  “I’ve never seen so many kittens in one place before,” Liam said. He was clearly in love with them, staring reverently into the box as he also tried to walk up the street. We had closed the lid so the kittens couldn’t get out, but Liam could still see inside. The kittens mewled, not happy about being carried despite the fact that Liam was trying to be gentle.

  But of course it was scary; the little creatures didn’t know where they were going and were suddenly high up and being jostled along in the dark.

  “You think they have a mother?” Charlie wondered. “She doesn’t appear to be around.”

  “It looks like she disappeared and left these babies all by themselves. No wonder they sought us out. They were hoping to be mothered,” said Liam.

  “I don’t think anyone sees Greer as motherly,” said Paws.

  “Nobody was expecting you to make that joke,” said Greer.

  “I wasn’t joking,” said Liam, frowning.

  “Of course not,” Charlie said.

  “Who are those people?” I asked, trying to deflect attention from the confusing—to Liam—conversion that involved a speaker he didn’t know was there.

  I had just caught sight of two figures walking in the shadows further down Main Street. This was surprising, because every other time we had left the movie theater at night the street had been empty.

  These two were a tall man and a woman in a dress, who was shorter. I couldn’t see their faces, but they were walking close together. For a heart-stopping moment I thought the man might be Jasper.

  In my current depressed state of mind, was I going to think that any man looking happy without me was my boyfriend? It was an upsetting thought.

  Then, just as the pair came into the light of a street lamp, the woman threw her head back and laughed at something he was saying.

  “That’s Bridget,” I said. The guy didn’t look familiar, but he was tall and had red hair.

  “The guy’s name is Simon. His grandfather used to be the mayor here. I think he’s just visiting,” said Liam.

  “He looks like a tool,” said Paws.

  “What does a tool look like?” Greer asked.

  “What are you talking about?” Liam asked.

  Greer bit her lip. She kept forgetting that Liam couldn’t see the ghost cat trotting alongside us. Paws looked smug for getting Greer in trouble.

  It was tempting to think that Paws meant “tool” literally, as in “hammer” or “screwdriver” or “power saw.” But I knew he didn’t. He meant that the guy looked like a rich jerk.

  “He kind of does, though,” Charlie acknowledged. At that very moment, Simon had a cocky smile plastered on his handsome face. What was less easy to figure out was how Bridget felt about him.

  It was none of our business in any case, so we continued on our way to the Beetle, while Liam, who always parked behind the Twinkle, waved goodbye and headed over there with a chorus of kittens in his arm.

  “Hopefully they’re all in good health and can find proper homes,” said Charlie, looking after him.

&
nbsp; “I guess it’s nice that we have a ghost cat, since I’m allergic to real cats,” she added.

  Greer and I looked at her in surprise.

  “You never mentioned that,” said Greer.

  “No? I don’t think about it much. I like cats, but I sneeze up a storm if I’m in the house with one for too long,” said Charlie.

  We were just passing the town hall when Tom came hurrying out. His head was down and he didn’t look pleased. He saw us just before he ran into us and skidded to a surprised stop.

  “Hey. Sorry, I didn’t see you there,” he said darkly.

  “Everything okay?” Charlie asked.

  “Oh, um, sure. Fine. Why?” he asked. He glanced over his shoulder in the direction where Bridget and Simon had just disappeared.

  “Just curious,” I said. “How did those gloves you bought work out?”

  His eyes widened. “What gloves?”

  “The ones from Liam’s,” I said.

  Inspiration dawned. He still didn’t look happy.

  “Right. They were fine,” he muttered. “Not that interesting. Sorry, I have to get going.”

  “Good to see you,” said Charlie. But she was speaking to Tom’s back, since he was already retreating.

  “We should really make a list of suspects,” said Charlie once we were settled in the car and on our way home.

  “Suspects for what?” I asked.

  “The murder. Mr. Curtain was definitely murdered,” said Greer.

  “Why do you think that?” Charlie asked.

  “Because Mr. Curtain thought he was,” said Greer.

  “The first thing we have to do is find out if there’s a motive,” I said.

  “What else have we found out about what was going on in town around that time?” Charlie asked.

  “We know that business in Mintwood was booming,” said Greer.

  “Right, but that only makes it more likely that shop owners would want the theater to stay,” said Charlie.

  “Right. If a developer was going to come in, they would have done so right after his death. There was plenty of space for other shops, so that couldn’t be it,” Greer mused.