Spooky Spider Read online

  Cookie gave me a very hard look. I had said something I shouldn’t have. Again.

  I closed my mouth with a snap.

  “If you don’t mind heading inside, I’ll come find you when I have a minute. We need to deal with this scene first,” said Grant. He clearly didn’t want us to say any more foolish things in front of his deputies, nor did he want to appear weak by tolerating Cookie’s refusals to tell him information that was vital to the investigation. Given that she was an old lady, he couldn’t very well try to force her to tell him anything.

  Basically, our sticking around was a lose-lose situation for him.

  Cookie and I headed inside, with Lark following behind us. I noticed Jason giving her a look as she left, but she seemed oblivious.

  Pep had already gone inside to find the ghosts, vampires, le-haunts, and skeletons. They would be wondering what the hum of activity out front was, and it was best to get them the news as soon as possible.

  “Looks like we have to make lunch ourselves,” said Cookie.

  Chapter Six

  In the kitchen we found that Audrey had left a lot of food, as she usually did when she wasn’t going to be around to cook. It looked like a sweet gesture, but it was really so that no one would be tempted to cook for themselves. Audrey most emphatically did not want anyone using her kitchen tools or equipment.

  Rose had trailed along behind us, quite satisfied with herself after the reaction she had provoked in Grant. This time she was wearing a pink dress with white flowers on it. Sometimes I wondered where she got this stuff, and how she found the time to change outfits so often; I figured I’d probably never find out.

  “Can I have some cheese?” Rose asked.

  “What did you do to earn cheese?” Cookie said.

  “I didn’t scare Grant too badly,” said the cat.

  “I suppose it’s a start. We can’t scare him off before he’s married Jane,” she said.

  I rolled my eyes.

  Once Pep had joined us, we gathered around the table to enjoy the sandwiches and small chocolate cake that Audrey had left.

  “Any news?” Pep asked.

  “Cookie is lying to Grant. So, no,” I said.

  “These sandwiches are small. I’ll take two,” said Lark. “I’ve really been neglecting the work I had to do today. But hey, another murder at the mansion! Too bad we can’t tell the customers about it. It would give our credibility as a haunted house quite a boost.”

  “Maybe you missed your calling at business school,” said Pep.

  “We have a thousand acres and several hundred supernaturals, basically a small village. A murder here and there can be expected. Besides, two of the victims were visitors,” said Cookie.

  “And if anyone has any sense, they’ll never visit here again,” I said.

  “Why is that?” asked Cookie innocently, as if she genuinely didn’t understand.

  Of the three of us cousins, Lark tended to be the most easily frustrated by how obstinate Cookie could be. Now she rubbed her temples.

  “This will be good practice for Jane’s fledgling detective agency,” said Pep.

  “I don’t know that I’ll get to do any detecting with Grant living here,” I grumbled.

  So far I had heard about a couple of murders in the region, but that’s as far as I’d gotten. Each time, the next thing I knew Grant had solved the cases. Unless somebody came to me specifically, I wasn’t sure how I’d ever be able to investigate another murder. I wasn’t even allowed to go haunt hunting.

  “Are you all right?” Lark demanded, giving Cookie a curious look.

  “I feel weak,” said Cookie dramatically.

  “Did anything happen? Are you scared?” Pep asked.

  “My feet are going numb,” said Cookie.

  “Should we get a doctor?” Lark asked.

  “For what?” Cookie asked.

  “No wonder Audrey wanted us to keep an eye on her,” said Pep.

  “Why do you people keep ignoring my questions?” Cookie asked.

  “Because they’re all ridiculous,” I said.

  “You can’t tell an old lady that,” said Cookie.

  “How could Audrey possibly know that someone was trying to murder Cookie?” I wondered.

  “She’s met her,” said Lark.

  Steve opened the door and said, “Incoming.”

  “Nice little bell system we have,” Lark commented.

  The kitchen door swung open and Grant walked in. “Afternoon,” he said. “We aren’t anywhere near finished processing the scene. I just thought I’d check and see how you’re doing.” He glanced around at all of us, but his gaze eventually rested on Cookie.

  “If by that you mean you’ve come to try and get information out of me, I’ll be happy to tell you anything you want now that your lackeys are out of hearing,” said Cookie.

  Grant gave a sharp nod. “I would appreciate it. What can you tell me about the delivery that you didn’t before? What was the piece of paper on the ground?”

  I told him what the piece of paper on the ground had said. “Right after I read it, the paper burst into flames.”

  “Do you have any idea who was trying to kill you?” he asked Cookie.

  “As I already told Jane, it’s really more people than I can keep track of,” said Cookie.

  Grant’s expression was unreadable. “You said he was here yesterday, too?” he asked.

  “Yes, that’s right,” said Cookie with a twinkle in her eye. Obviously, she was looking forward to knocking Grant off his stride.

  Usually when you told somebody that people were out to kill you, they were impressed. Grant maintained a sense of composure that I’m sure Cookie saw as a challenge.

  Now I was the one who wanted to rub my temples.

  “Do you have any idea why he had to come back today?” Grant asked.

  “He was supposed to deliver wine yesterday, but he didn’t have it in the truck. He said he’d bring it back today,” said Cookie.

  Grant frowned. “Why do you suppose he didn’t just kill you yesterday?”

  “Probably because Jane was there,” said Cookie matter-of-factly.

  All eyes turned to me.

  “I believe he did have the wine yesterday. He just didn’t want to try to kill me when there were two of us. So he lied and said he’d bring the wine back today, hoping Jane wouldn’t be around when he came a second time,” Cookie explained.

  “That makes sense. Two witches are a lot scarier than one. Jane would be an unknown quantity,” Grant mused.

  “Are you saying I saved your life?” I asked Cookie.

  She was in the middle of taking a sip of tea and nearly spit it out. “That is to presuppose that this delivery carrier could have taken my life. I would argue that he couldn’t. Your presence merely delayed the inevitable.”

  “But he wasn’t murdered yesterday,” I pointed out.

  “So, you’re saying he came back today to give himself a second chance to kill Cookie, which gave whoever killed him a second chance to do that,” Pep said.

  “I wonder if we could just keep to answering questions for now, and leave the speculation for later,” said Grant, his appearance of calm showing its first crack.

  “You don’t want Jane’s help solving this case?” Cookie asked.

  “I don’t usually work with civilians,” said Grant. He didn’t say it harshly, but I still didn’t like it. Not that it surprised me, but I was still annoyed. Grant had shown a reluctance to let me be involved since the first investigation he’d done at Haunted Bluff. It was all too much like my mother’s reluctance to let me hunt. I didn’t appreciate the barriers from either of them.

  “Have you notified your mother of what’s been going on?” Grant asked.

  “You mean that there was a delivery here, and instead of getting wine we wound up with a dead body?” Cookie said before I could answer a question directed at me. “We’re all prime suspects because we don’t know who else could have killed the de
livery guy?”

  “Some version of that, yes,” said Grant dryly.

  “Must have slipped my mind,” said Cookie.

  “I have a feeling not much slips your mind,” said Grant.

  “I confirm or deny nothing,” said Cookie. “Now if you don’t mind, we have a lot to do today. Supernaturals need to be tended to and this is an awfully big place. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but we have some pretty demanding tenants.”

  Now Grant’s eyes did spark in amusement, which amused Cookie in turn. “Oh, who might those be?” he inquired.

  My grandmother merely looked demure.

  “I want to say something before I leave,” said Grant, gathering attention like the sky gathers clouds before it rains. “Whoever killed this delivery driver must be brought to justice. I want no stone unturned. We cannot have assassins driving around our countryside. Whoever did this is going to regret it. Understand that.”

  Grant took a sandwich to go and didn’t linger. He had to get back to his deputies and then get investigating.

  The four of us also got back to work. With everyone else gone, there was a lot to do. The haunted house had to be cleaned and prepped and the supernaturals tended to.

  There was a task for everyone.

  Chapter Seven

  I worked hard until dinner, but I couldn’t get my mind off what had happened in the courtyard. Murder has a way of sticking with you. Pep’s screams kept reverberating in my head, the glint of the knife in Blu’s chest kept flashing through my mind, and I smelled the faint tang of blood even though I knew there was no blood anywhere near me. A couple of times I even felt myself getting short of breath.

  “Is it true?” asked one of the ghosts.

  I gasped and nearly screamed. The sudden movement made my shoulders ache, and I realized how tense I’d been since the discovery of Blu’s body. It didn’t help that I was cleaning the cleaver kitchen, a feature attraction of the haunted house that was usually the domain of the skeletons. But they were currently in the woodworking shop and couldn’t help me with this task.

  “Is what true?” I asked.

  “That a vampire was murdered out front,” she said.

  “Yes, but the vampire didn’t live here,” I said.

  It just occurred to me to wonder where Blu did live. Grant was probably on his way there right now.

  “No one is safe here,” said the ghost who had spoken.

  “Everyone is safe here since the Root of All Evil left,” I said.

  As the day wore on, several more supernaturals appeared and asked me the same question. Erica, the de facto leader of the skeletons, wasn’t happy about the goings-on at Haunted Bluff, and she never missed an opportunity to give a speech.

  “So there’s been another murder,” she said, her arms clicking as she crossed them over her chest.

  “This is a place with a lot of supernaturals. There’s going to be a murder from time to time,” I said.

  Oh, no. I had resorted to sounding like Cookie.

  She sniffed. “That doesn’t mean it’s safe. In fact, I’m getting the distinct impression that it isn’t. By the way, there’s noise in the mailroom.”

  I froze. The mailroom was what we called the room that led down to the basement, otherwise known as Down Below, which was off limits under any and all circumstances.

  Down Below was a world of its own, a huge labyrinth of rooms and corridors. Filled mostly with darkness, it also sheltered a gang of criminal supernaturals. The way it worked was that when supernaturals didn’t make it as employees of the haunted house, they disappeared Down Below, never to be seen again.

  Until recently.

  A couple of times.

  Mostly whenever they were chasing me.

  So, after I finished cleaning up the meat cleaver kitchen, I went downstairs to see what all the noise was about.

  It turned out to be Peter, banging on the connecting door.

  I opened the mailbox and read the note inside, which was short and to the point:

  “Missing dweller. Need help. Peter.”

  Despite my attempt to be quiet, someone on the other side of the door had heard me, probably because he had his ear pressed against it.

  “Jane? Is that you? Did you read my note?” Peter asked through the door.

  Peter was an eccentric skeleton who lived Down Below; Lark, Pep, and I had met him on a visit to the basement a while back. I wasn’t entirely sure what he’d done to land himself in the criminal underworld, though it had undoubtedly been serious. I was also pretty sure it had something to do with stealing a priceless crown, since the members of the gang were forever attempting to steal this or that.

  Usually “this” happened to glitter and so did “that.”

  Since he now resided Down Below, Peter had definitely gotten caught at some point in his career.

  “I don’t know how I can help,” I said through the door.

  “Can you and Pep and Lark come down? I promise you’ll be safe this time,” said Peter.

  I swallowed hard. But really, I only debated for a split second. Of course I wanted to go back Down Below. “I’ll get them.”

  I dashed away without waiting for a response. Pep had been working in the gift shop and Lark in the ice cream parlor, so between the two of them and their specialized duties, I had been left with the more general house-cleaning chores.

  My cousins, however, were plenty eager to set aside their tasks and join me for a trip Down Below. Lark ran off to get something, then met us in the hallway outside the mailroom.

  Even with reinforcements, I was starting to get nervous as the three of us walked back to the mailroom. It was as if my mother was going to come home at any moment and catch us doing something we shouldn’t. The very walls were telling me not to risk it.

  But Peter needed my help, and since Peter had helped us when we needed it, I felt as if we owed him.

  Not to mention the sheer irresistible curiosity that Down Below inspired.

  Down Below was the criminal underbelly of the supernatural world. Under the “leadership” of the ghost Fudgy Bail, its denizens ran an extensive gambling operation and stole priceless jewelry and antiques that they then sold onward to willing buyers.

  What I wanted to ask them, and in particular their leader, was how they had managed to be unaware of the Root of All Evil taking shape at Haunted Bluff.

  If Down Below ran every criminal operation in the supernatural world, they should have seen the Root of All Evil coming.

  Shouldn’t they?

  The very fact that Down Below was still allowed to operate should have given them a hint that they owed it to the witches and warlocks to pass on what they knew.

  Which they had not done.

  That seemed immaterial to what was happening today, but what kind of an investigator would I have been if I didn’t try to uncover the connections between seemingly unrelated things?

  The fact of the matter was, Fudgy Bail was not going tell me a thing about the choices he had made. If he didn’t want to reveal information about new supernatural criminal organizations to the rest of us he wouldn’t, and that was that. In the absence of any way of getting answers out of Fudgy, I would just have to make do with going Down Below to see what was happening for myself. Since Peter was offering us the opportunity to do that, and he claimed to need our help, we were going to help him.

  “Do you have the supplies?” Pep asked.

  We were standing at the door in the mailroom with all the locks on our side of the door thrown open. Now all we had to do was walk through the door.

  The three of us stood rooted to the spot.

  “What supplies?” Lark asked.

  “Flashlights. Provisions. Matches. Stuff like that,” said Pep.

  “I have a flashlight in my pocket,” said Lark.

  Pep stamped her foot. “We have to be better prepared than that. I thought you were in charge of getting supplies.”

  Lark grinned. “I am. I just wante
d to see you squirm.” She pulled two more flashlights out of her pocket and handed one to each of us. Pep rolled her eyes but didn’t comment. I tucked my flashlight into my hoodie pocket and tried to gather my courage.

  If everything went according to plan, I wouldn’t need a flashlight. The only trouble was that everything rarely went according to plan at Haunted Bluff Mansion, and almost never went according to plan in relation to Down Below.

  “Ready?” I asked my cousins over my shoulder. I was standing in front of the door and preparing to knock, with Lark and Pep a step behind me on either side.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” Pep muttered. Lark said the same thing.

  The knock sounded loud to my ears. We stood there and waited, but not for long. The door was yanked open and Peter pulled us inside without so much as a hello.

  The mailroom was dimly lit to begin with, but Peter clearly wanted to avoid and kind of daylight at all.

  Directly on the other side of the door was a set of stairs. In one hand Peter held a fiery lantern to light our way, with the other he held a bony finger to his lips.

  I shook my head at him. He had assured me that we’d be safe, and he was already warning me to be silent. Who was he worried would figure out we were there? He shrugged and fixed his top hat. Then he started down the stairs and motioned for us to follow him.

  We did.

  Peter led us through the labyrinth of tunnels that crisscrossed the basement. Twice he stopped and motioned for us to hide inside empty rooms. A gathering of Down Below dwellers would walk past talking amongst themselves, usually about the latest technology they could use to steal things. One mentioned a machine that counted cards. They were going to send a group of ghosts out to destroy every single one of them in the state, so no one could cheat at their casino.

  I shook my head. Now I could see why Peter wanted us to hide.

  If the other supernaturals knew we were Down Below, listening in on conversations about their nefarious plans, to say they wouldn’t be happy about it would understate the case quite seriously.

  The labyrinth of underground tunnels was so extensive that I was lost almost immediately. I could only hope that Pep and Lark had a better sense of direction than I did, or that Peter wasn’t lying to us about our safety. Yet for some unfathomable reason I did trust the weird skeleton who had befriended us.