Spell by Midnight (Witch of Mintwood Book 3) Page 3

  We peered down into the darkness of the circular wooden frame. My stomach started to roll with the smell, and I knew something very bad had happened in that dark space. Someone had to go down there immediately.

  I quickly stepped back from the door and looked at Jasper. “I think you should go and investigate what that smell is,” I said.

  He looked surprised. “Corey went down a few months ago and didn’t find anything. No one’s been down there since then, so I don’t understand what the smell could be.”

  “I know!!” Charlie sounded excited and happy for the first time since the door had been opened. “I bet it’s a dead animal.”

  Everyone looked at her in relief. “Of course, it’s a dead animal. Something probably got trapped down there. It’s sad, but not terrible,” said Deacon.

  We all laughed nervously.

  Charlie’s explanation seemed totally valid, and we all wanted to believe it. But I was sensing a former ghost presence, and it worried me. Don’t ask me how I was doing it, because as Paws never tired of reminding me, I hadn’t been keeping up with my witching studies. One way or another, though, I knew that smell was not coming from a dead animal.

  “Maybe you should just go check. At the very least you’ll know what kind of animal it is, and if you’re lucky you’ll be able to see how it got in, so you can block the hole. You don’t want this to become a regular thing,” I said.

  Jasper looked down at the suit he was wearing and Deacon ruefully did the same.

  “We really aren’t dressed for the job, but luckily we both keep extra sets of clothes here at the work site. I guess we could change quickly?” said Deacon, glancing at Jasper.

  “Really, I think it’s silly to go all the way down there during your party. I think you could at least wait until tomorrow. Whatever’s down there has waited for a long time already,” Macy twittered.

  “I don’t think it should wait,” I said.

  “We’ll go down quickly,” said Jasper. “No problem. Lemmi’s right. I should find out what the smell is.”

  He and Deacon walked away without another word. I knew he had an office somewhere in the building, and I assumed they were heading there to change into their extra clothes.

  We didn’t have to wait long before they came back dressed in old jeans and work-worn shirts. Jasper’s hair was tousled, while Deacon was busy putting his back into a smooth ponytail. They each carried a large, powerful flashlight.

  “I’m not even sure we can get down there with the smell that bad,” said Deacon.

  We all stepped back as the two friends made their way to the silo door. Deacon beamed his light down and shook his head. “It’s still hard to see. There are a couple of crates sitting on the dirt floor, and the right side seems a little lighter. It must be open to the elements a bit.”

  “The silos were in worse shape than the barn itself,” said Jasper. “We’re still discussing whether and how to preserve them. In the meantime, as I said, they’re dangerous.”

  He seemed so concerned that we understand the safety issue that I suddenly got a horrible feeling in my stomach. Jasper kept saying how dangerous the silos were – and he was about to go down into one of them!

  “Maybe you shouldn’t go, then,” said Macy. “I don’t want either of you to be in harm’s way.”

  “We’ll be fine,” said Deacon brightly. “We’ve been in worse spots than at a party with a bunch of pretty women.”

  Greer bristled, but kept quiet. It was clear that sometimes Deacon’s patience with her wore thin, and when that happened he’d say things just to confirm that she still cared. With Greer it was always a little difficult to tell.

  The silo had a crude ladder made of small boards nailed to the wall. Deacon slung the flashlight over his shoulder on its strap, turned to face us, and carefully stepped onto the first rung of the ladder.

  “Holding?” Jasper asked.

  “Feels sturdy enough,” said Deacon. “If Corey got down here it shouldn’t be that big a problem.”

  “I’ll follow you,” said Jasper as Deacon disappeared into the darkness.

  Jasper stepped toward the ladder, but before he could even take a step, Deacon coughed.

  Jasper stopped and called out over his shoulder, “You okay down there?”

  The muffled reply was something like, “Yes, but the stench!”

  Jasper pulled his shirt up to cover his nose and mouth and started descending slowly. We could still hear Deacon coughing in the muffled distance.

  “On the ground,” Deacon called. “I’m not going to last long down here.”

  There was a second thud as Jasper also landed.

  Then there was silence.

  The five of us stood there, no one saying a word. Macy had decided not to look at us; apparently that was her way of letting us know how badly she disapproved of this idea and how disappointed she was in us for encouraging it.

  After what must have been only a few moments, but seemed like hours, a scuffling sound behind us made us all turn around.

  Sibyl Sounds was walking toward us. Sibyl was a member of the town council, and as such she’d been an integral factor in Liam’s victory in the window display competition. She was one of the previously mentioned fancy pants wealthy women who lived around the lake.

  She was also terrifying. Wealthy, widowed, and elderly, she was involved in most of the fundraising that went on in Mintwood. No one did anything without her say-so, and she knew it. Her approval had been crucial to making sure Jasper’s barn project moved forward. So far she had championed the idea, but you never knew when the winds would change with the autocratic old woman.

  “What are you doing up here? Why is that door open? Where is Mr. Wolf?” she demanded. She wore a large coat draped over her shoulders, and big boots.

  “Um,” I said.

  Charlie, who was standing closest to the door, nudged the silo door closed and said, “Nothing, we were just looking around the loft. Not sure where Jasper’s gotten to. He’s so popular, everyone wants to talk to him.”

  Ms. Sounds eyed us skeptically. “Sure, sure. It’s nice up here, after all. Everyone having fun? Everyone donating to the cause? Good. If you see Mr. Wolf, please let him know that I would like to speak with him,” she said.

  With one last skeptical look, she turned around and walked back downstairs. We all breathed a sigh of relief; that was apparently one thing the five of us could agree on.

  “Good thinking,” said Greer as Charlie pulled the silo door open again.

  “What on earth is going on down there?” I yelled. I was starting to get concerned. I thought surely Jasper and Deacon would have complained when Charlie closed and then opened the door.

  “We’re coming up in a minute,” said Jasper after a long pause. He sounded strained. I glanced back at the stairs to make sure Ms. Sounds was gone, but there was no sign of her.

  “Do you need help?” Charlie called down into the dark hole.

  “No, we’re good. Just wait a second. We’re coming,” this time from Deacon. We waited as we heard them start up the ladder.

  Jasper appeared first, taking a deep breath of air that didn’t stink, at least as compared to what he’d been inhaling inside the silo.

  “It’s a body,” said Jasper, his face very grim. “It’s definitely human.”

  Chapter Four

  My insistence that the smell coming out of the silo wasn’t normal, and must be investigated immediately, turned out to be a mixed blessing.

  As my grandmother always told me whenever I was stubborn, being stubborn gets you in trouble. When she was stubborn, of course, she was just standing up for her principles.

  Obviously.

  Deacon and Jasper came up hacking and coughing, with their eyes watering.

  Mayhem ensued, as it should when a body is discovered in an unassuming and formerly cute silo.

  Deacon looked at me in wonder, then shook his head and said, “We would never have found the body if it w
eren’t for you. At least not for a few months, since we weren’t going to get to this until spring.”

  “Yeah, that’s Lemmi, always so helpful,” said Greer, slinging her arm over my shoulder. The women of Moody and Marble glared at me and started talking increasingly excitedly in stereo.

  At first it was all Jasper could do to keep them from screaming. When he got them calmed down, he went downstairs and quietly and politely closed the party. He apologized for shutting the barn down early and said there was an emergency. Macy, Mildred, and my friends and I didn’t leave; we just stood there waiting for him to finish. We all wanted to know who had died, and how.

  Most of the other guests had left by the time the police arrived, so their evening hadn’t been ruined. For everyone who remained, the terrible news was hard to handle.

  “There’s a chance the death was an accident, right?” said Greer.

  “For sure. Someone could have fallen, someone who was homeless could have wandered in there for warmth and died of natural causes,” said Charlie. Her face was white, and there was a slight sheen of perspiration on her forehead. It was clear that even she thought her justifications were far-fetched.

  “No one is going to know anything until the body is examined. And for that we need Detective Cutter to come back. It’s too bad he left the party early,” said Jasper. He was all business, but it was obvious that the discovery had upset him terribly. Someone’s life had been lost for some unknown reason, and on top of that the barn would now always be tainted with tragedy.

  Detective Cutter, in all his skeptical pomposity, wasn’t happy about having to come back to the barn he had so recently left. He found us sitting downstairs around one of the deserted party tables.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” he grumbled as he trundled in.

  Jasper took him aside and explained what had happened, while the rest of us gazed gloomily at the dirty plates. Jasper had asked the servers to go home early along with everyone else, even though they were supposed to do the clean-up. He’d promised to pay them extra to come back tomorrow, assuming the police would even allow it.

  When Detective Cutter saw that I was there, he looked less shocked. Jasper noticed him eyeing me and gave me a look that said we were going to talk about it later.

  I spun around and gave the wall a look that said, “Not if I can help it.”

  “I’m shutting this place down right now. Everyone out. We need time and space to investigate. Missing person. Someone dead. Ugly business.” Detective Cutter was pivoting around and waving his hand as he talked, as if anyone else was still there to be ordered out. When he finally glared at us directly, we stood up and filed toward the door. “I know where to find you and I’ll be interviewing all of you as necessary, although it doesn’t sound like you know much,” he said.

  Jasper looked at Charlie ruefully as he led us to the door, “I guess you have to write about this in the Gazette tomorrow?”

  “You better write about this in the Gazette tomorrow. This better be front page. It’s awful and it has totally ruined my night,” said Macy.

  She was very dramatic about it and none of us liked her any better for it, to put it mildly.

  Even her business partner looked a little disgusted. “Someone died, Macy. You’re upset about the smell?”

  Points for Mildred.

  The two partners wandered away, leaving the rest of us standing near the barn door. I wasn’t surprised at all to see that they drove a BMW.

  Charlie had been trying to look diplomatic, as always. But after Macy milked such a horrible situation for all it was worth, and for the sake of her own self-absorbed drama, Charlie was having a rough go of it.

  Everyone – except Macy, apparently – knew that this was a big deal, even by Mintwood standards. Finding an old car in a lake with the body of a woman who had accidentally driven off the road had nothing on this.

  “I have to write about it, but I’ll still try to keep the focus on the fundraiser. We really don’t know anything yet. The body could have been there for fifty years for all we know. It’s not as if a murder was committed here. At least we don’t really know. Yet,” said Charlie. We all knew that even she didn’t believe what she was saying.

  “Are you referring to the looks Greer’s been giving Macy?” Deacon asked.

  “Oh, have those been out of the ordinary?” said Charlie.

  “Anyhow, you’re right, we don’t know anything,” said Jasper, “but that’s part of the problem. People love to speculate, but until we know who died and when, it’s going to put a cloud over this party. Obviously finding out who the victim is and possibly returning him or her to family members is the most important thing, but after that I’m concerned about the barn. Tonight was a great fundraiser, and I don’t want all of that work to be lost.”

  “I know you don’t, and I’ll do my best,” said Charlie. “But you have to understand, this is big news. I’ll handle it with care and I’ll be sure to write a lot about the fundraiser and how important it is. I’ll even tell people where to go to donate.” Charlie finished with a look that was both apologetic and pleading, but we all knew that she would do what she had to do.

  “Thanks, I appreciate it,” said Jasper. He looked stressed and unhappy, and I wanted to go to him and wrap my arms around him and tell him it would all be okay, but I couldn’t do that for any number of reasons.. I didn’t, in fact, know any better than anyone else whether it would all be okay.

  The three of us made our way to the car through the dark, empty parking lot. Night had fallen, and there were a million brilliant stars overhead.

  “This would be a beautiful scene if we hadn’t just discovered a body,” said Greer.

  “I hope the person wasn’t murdered,” said Charlie.

  “What other explanation is there?” said Greer.

  “Probably none,” I said gloomily.

  “Anyhow, you know what this means?” said Charlie.

  “Means about what?” I said.

  “We should’ve let Paws come,” she said.

  Although I didn’t want to admit it, she was probably right. There was no ghost in the silo, and there should have been.

  Chapter Five

  I didn’t sleep well that night, and judging by the looks on my friends’ faces when we straggled into the kitchen the next morning, they hadn’t either.

  Greer was shuffling her feet, but then again, she was up before noon. That was far worse for Greer than it would have been for Charlie or me. Charlie, who was usually blindingly chipper first thing in the morning, was subdued and quiet as she sat staring broodingly at her coffee mug. I felt like I’d been run over by Charger, Greer’s black lab.

  When we’d gotten home the night before, I had narrowly managed to avoid telling Paws what had happened, mostly because he’d been preoccupied with the mice on the lawn. I knew I’d have no such luck today. He had to know, and I wasn’t looking forward to the explanation.

  The Mintwood Gazette wasn’t pulling any punches. The headline this morning blared, “Death at the Babbling Brook Barn.”

  “I wish I could read the newspaper and hope for new information about what happened last night,” said Greer. “But since Charlie wrote all the articles, I know I’m not gonna look at the front page and magically know what happened to the body in the silo.”

  Our journalist housemate rolled her eyes, “Tell me about it. I had to leave stuff out and it kills me. This time I did say I’d been on the scene. Everybody saw me anyway, and for readers who didn’t, it makes me sound a lot more authentic. I wish Lena wasn’t titling the articles so sensationally, but there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “Maybe the detective will know who the missing person is by now,” said Greer hopefully.

  Charger came bounding into the kitchen just then and wound his way through our legs. Greer patted the dog affectionately on the head as he settled down next to her.

  “I told him he had to call me when he was ready to release any
new information, especially if he found out who the deceased was,” said Charlie.

  Greer and I exchanged skeptical looks.

  “Do you think he’s going to do that?” I asked.

  “No way, which is why I’m going to go stake out his office at the police station,” Charlie said. Getting up from her chair, she grabbed her tote bag and travel coffee mug and waved goodbye.

  Greer poured herself another cup of coffee, while I went and grabbed a bowl in preparation for oatmeal. But before I could get any further, I heard a commotion from the direction where Charlie had gone. Greer and I had the same thought: we were worried about Charlie, so we took off for the front door.

  Charlie had opened the door to find someone walking up the slanted front steps and blocking her from leaving. The noise we’d heard was Charlie sounding startled.

  A woman wrapped in a black coat was making her way toward us. Everything else she was wearing black, too, and her long pointy fingernails were painted black to match her outfit. She wasn’t noticeably taller or shorter than any of us, but there was something strange about her. She wore a medallion around her neck of a kind I had never seen.

  “Morning,” said the woman, who looked to be a couple of years older than my grandmother had been. She gave us a bright, pearly smile. “Looking to buy a fan?”

  “Huh?” we all said at the same time. Despite the wind and the cold weather, the woman wasn’t the least bit windswept or ruffled. She was also driving a ridiculously nice car that she had parked next to my ridiculously old Beetle.

  For a second we just looked at her. I for one was sure she was kidding, but what the joke was I had no idea.

  “It’s cold out. Why are you selling fans?” Charlie finally said.

  “It’s a new gig,” said the woman, sweeping a nonexistent strand of hair out of her face. Her hair was something else. It was straight as straw and so blond it looked white. I was sure she must dye it.