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

  There was a good chance that that was indeed what was going on at the cinema.

  “That’s the last time I leave my wand home,” I said quietly.

  My eyes were wide and staring. I blinked a couple of times and felt how dry they were.

  “You were tired. It’s perfectly understandable that you’d take one night off from using your wand,” said Charlie.

  I shook my head. “It’s clearly too risky to leave it behind. Something could have happened in there.”

  There was no sign of any ghosts when we reached the farmhouse; even Paws was missing from his usual crate under the porch window. I figured they were all out back by the shed, and I was in such a hurry to see them that I didn’t bother going inside. As I trudged around the side of the house looking for them, my roommates left me to it and went into the farmhouse to shower.

  The night was clear and sparkling with colder air. The stars were bright in the sky.

  I did indeed find the ghosts gathered near the shed. Mr. Bone was speaking with Mrs. Goodkeep, and the tea ladies were sitting at a table with Karen presiding over them with an iron glare. Paws was hanging around nearby, trying to negotiate with the mice for a game of catch the mice. They weren’t making the negotiations easy.

  Gary and Tank appeared to be playing catch with a melon. I don’t even know.

  None of them stopped what they were doing when they saw me. I was too boring and dull to bother with.

  But they weren’t too boring and dull for me to bother with, and I had no compunctions about interrupting their frolics.

  “I need to talk to a couple of you. Preferably the two with the most knowledge of ghost behavior,” I called out.

  Karen looked at me judgmentally. “I suppose that would be me. I don’t have much interest in assisting, however.”

  “Try to be helpful,” Mr. Bone encouraged her.

  She sniffed. The other tea ladies looked on, obviously hoping for fireworks between Karen and me.

  “You know I know everything,” said Paws. As he trotted away from them, the mice first looked relieved and then proceeded to roll their eyes and make fun of him. From a safe distance, of course.

  “When that poser proves not to know as much as he claims, just let me know,” Tank called out from where he was standing with Gary. I nodded to him as Paws and I converged on Karen and the other two tea ladies made themselves scarce, taking the tea with them.

  I sat down, while Paws jumped onto the table.

  “Your feet had better be clean,” said Karen.

  “Don’t speak to me as if I’m human,” said Paws.

  “If I were doing that I’d dumb it down more,” said Karen.

  “Okay, okay. Unnecessary. You were once human, you know,” I said. I scrubbed at my face. I was almost too tired for this.

  “Yes, but it was so long ago,” she said.

  She sounded just the way my grandmother always had when speaking about unruly teenagers.

  “You could tell me everything you know about angry ghosts,” I said.

  “Haven’t you been living with some for years?” Karen said, pointing at Paws.

  “Some could say the same about you,” he shot back.

  “I’d like to see you try,” said Karen.

  “Could you please try to be serious? I’m being serious, and I need help,” I said.

  “Could have fooled us,” said Karen.

  I started to push back from the table. The day had been too long; I had no energy for this. I was already tired all the time because of what had happened with Jasper, and I didn’t need this ghost pile-on as well.

  Sensing my frustration, Karen relented. “Okay. Okay. I think I can.”

  “What did you have in mind?” Paws said.

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “There are different problems you can have with ghosts who aren’t settled. I’m surprised you haven’t had a run-in of that kind until now. I guess you’ve been too busy dealing with murders,” Paws said.

  “You have solved a lot of murders,” Karen agreed.

  I told them exactly what happened at the cinema, how everything went fine when we first got there, but how, when we were preparing to leave, something deeply unsettling had happened. I told them about the films being turned on and the clicking and the crying.

  They listened in silence, then pondered for a while.

  “That’s one upset ghost,” said Karen at last.

  “Just one?” I asked.

  She glanced at Paws, who said he wasn’t sure how many. “You’d really need to meet them to find out. There might be more than one, but usually it’s only one. If they weren’t lonely they wouldn’t be so angry.”

  “It was an awful lot to engineer for just one,” I said.

  “Maybe the ghost has made a friend,” said Paws.

  “But what could cause them to be so dissatisfied?” I asked.

  There were plenty of ghosts of people who’d been murdered who just went on about their ghostly existence and didn’t worry about the murderer. I had met one not too long ago, a ghost named Burke who was perfectly happy to recline in a hammock while his murderer walked free.

  “Murder would do it,” said Karen.

  “I’ve never come across a murdered angry ghost before,” I said.

  “They’re all different, just like when they were alive,” Paws said. “Still, I see your point. It could be something even more upsetting than murder that set this one off. As they’re tied to their bodies, they’re also tied to places. The cinema must be a place of great importance for this ghost for some reason.”

  That all made so much sense that I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if Paws was on the right track. But that just made it all the more important that I speak with Gerry, Liam’s mom, as soon as possible. There was really no time to waste. If we were going to get the cinema building cleaned out, we had to do something about the ghost. Conversely, if we didn’t figure out how to address the ghost’s concerns—whatever they were—I had a feeling its demonstrations would only escalate, and who knew how long it would take us to get the project finished.

  If we could finish it at all.

  “Thanks for the help,” I said, meaning it. “Paws, I’m going to need you to come with us to the cinema in the evenings from now on. It’s important that we find this ghost as quickly as possible. I don’t think we’ll be able to get any work done until we do.”

  Paws agreed. He was perfectly happy to seem more important than the other ghosts. Karen, for her part, didn’t care one way or the other. All she wanted to do was sit around gossiping to the other tea ladies. How could she gossip about what I was up to if she was with me?

  I made my way inside at last, telling myself I’d fill my friends in on everything I had just learned in the morning. At the moment I only had enough energy to take a shower and fall into bed. I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow, and I did not dream.

  Chapter Eight

  I was too tired to make myself some breakfast the next morning. For that matter, I was even too tired to make coffee. All I wanted to do was get back to Bright Lights and continue working. The noise the night before had been spooky, but I couldn’t be deterred by some weird films and a bit of wind.

  I was a witch. What kind of witch would I be if I got scared away by a few noises in an old abandoned building? It wasn’t as if I didn’t know better than anyone that those noises could mean a supernatural presence.

  So it came about that I stumbled downstairs half asleep, went into the kitchen, stared blankly into the fridge, and wished my personal chef would appear and make me scrambled eggs with peppers. That was about all the energy I could muster: enough for wishing.

  In the end I decided to get breakfast at the Daily Brew and write it off as a necessary extravagance. Charlie was still intent on finding reactions to Hansen’s article, an agenda that would dovetail nicely with my intention of buying my coffee in town.

  For once it wasn’t Mrs. Barnett
working, it was her niece Bridget. Bridget was in her early twenties and had just finished college. She had always been quiet, whispering her responses when anyone spoke to her. But despite the fact that she was shy, she was very smart and very capable. Mrs. Barnett said she wasn’t the kind to pick favorite family members, but if she had been, Bridget would definitely have been her favorite niece.

  Bridget smiled at us as we entered the Daily Brew. The little bell on the door jingled and the aroma of coffee made my knees weak.

  “I wondered if you three would come in before your cinema work,” she said.

  So word had gotten around. Plus, Bridget had apparently become slightly chattier since she graduated from college. Now she was willing to say an entire sentence.

  “We definitely need coffee, too. There’s a lot more going on in there than we expected,” said Charlie.

  Bridget nodded and smiled.

  “There’s so much history in that building,” continued Charlie when Bridget reverted to form and kept quiet. “I can’t believe old towns have such rich treasure troves of antiques just waiting to be found.”

  “Not just found, but cleaned and moved. That’s why they asked for our help. They needed the young muscle,” I said, and held up my arm. “Liam’s helping us, but we’ll probably need more help when it comes time to move the furniture out.”

  Bridget giggled and Charlie rolled her eyes.

  Bridget’s head snapped up at the sound of Liam’s name. When she noticed that I noticed the reaction, she quickly looked down again to finish gathering our baked goods. But she couldn’t help but comment in the end.

  “His store is the most beautiful place in all of Mintwood,” she gushed. From someone who barely spoke, this was high praise indeed.

  Charlie, who hadn’t seen the earlier exchange, was caught off guard. Most people described the view from Mintwood Mountain as the most beautiful place in Mintwood. Either that or one of the lakes. I could see her pondering what Bridget’s enthusiasm might mean as we walked over to a table.

  Once we were seated, we got to talking about what had happened the night before. We were careful to keep our voices down. We wanted to get to the library as quickly as possible, so we didn’t need anyone asking us questions and distracting us.

  Liam had let us know that Gerry would be meeting us at the library. She’d said that that was the only way she’d be able to explain everything, because there were materials at the library that she wanted us to see.

  That sounded ominous, but I couldn’t wait to hear what she had to say.

  When we finished our coffee and rolls, we returned the mugs to Bridget and headed out of the café.

  As usual, the library was quiet first thing in the morning. Several early risers always gathered at the door to start the day, but the casual library-goer was not on the move yet. The ones who showed up early had questions to answer on the Internet and newspapers to sit quietly and read. It was very peaceful, the library.

  Gerry was waiting for us outside; she waved as we walked up to her.

  “I hear you all had a lot of fun last night. Liam is sure the place is haunted. He has no idea how right he could be,” his mother said dryly.

  “It certainly was an adventure. Not one that I would care to repeat any time soon, actually,” said Charlie.

  “I can see why you’d feel that way,” said Gerry. “But come on into the library. I’ve already asked for some of the old newspapers to be gathered for us. You may have heard some of the story, but I thought it would be best if you could see the articles for yourself.”

  The library’s trove of historical articles was the backbone of many of our investigations. Given that we were dealing with ghosts of people who had usually lived in another era, the library was our best window into who those ghosts had been while they were alive, and what had happened to them all those years ago.

  “Here they are. Let’s go into this room,” said Gerry, leading us into a small room set off from the rest, where you were allowed to speak quietly and use the table to spread out the library materials we wanted to explore. The room wasn’t usually occupied first thing in the morning. Not only that, it had a beautiful, partly stained glass window that allowed the morning light to stream in. That was where the three of us settled.

  Gerry had already amassed a pile of newspapers as long as her forearm, and now she sat down next to it. Charlie was practically salivating.

  “Before we start looking through the papers, I should probably tell you about the cinema. Do you know anything about the ownership or what happened to the building over the years?” Gerry asked.

  “We know it was started by a husband who lost his wife,” I said, and Gerry nodded. “Then it passed to their son, who eventually passed away himself.”

  “Correct,” said Gerry. “He did pass away at a very old age, and he died in the theater. Some people thought he hadn’t died of natural causes, but there was no proof, and finally the rumors just died out.”

  Charlie and I exchanged glances. That was news indeed! We hadn’t heard the rumors; for that matter, we hadn’t even heard that he’d died in the building. That fact certainly put a new light on our experiences of the night before.

  “Given what Liam told me about what happened last night, it sounds as if there’s a very real possibility that the son, the second Mr. Curtain, was murdered, and his ghost lingers,” Gerry said.

  “Why would someone have murdered him?” I asked.

  “No one ever came up with a motive,” said Gerry. “That’s partly why the theory that his death wasn’t natural didn’t gain any traction. This all happened when I was in my twenties, and I remember it very well. We were all sad for Mr. Curtain, but we were also concerned about what would happen to the theater. I used to go there about practically every week, and so did a lot of other people.”

  “You had to stop going once he died because the theater closed?” Charlie asked.

  Gerry nodded. “Mr. Curtain didn’t have any heirs. Some people tried to come up with a way to buy the theater, but the legal situation was so complicated that they finally gave up. We were all sad when the place closed, especially since Mr. Curtain had created a stellar lineup for that fall. Several really cool movies were scheduled, but after he died the whole line-up was canceled. The mayor at the time, Julious, gave a speech at the funeral. Mr. Curtain really was a pillar of the community.”

  “How old was he when he died?” I asked.

  “Well on into his eighties. He was one of our oldest residents. Everybody knew him. He still spent every day at the movie theater. If you ask me, that’s exactly how it should be. He loved it there, and the rest of us loved it right along with him.” Gerry smiled at the memory.

  “What were the circumstances of his death?” I asked.

  Gerry frowned. “That’s what I couldn’t remember. I thought the papers might say, which is why I had you two meet me here. All I remember is that rumors went around that his death wasn’t from natural causes. We didn’t even have a police department in those days. We weren’t exactly likely to find out what had happened,” she said.

  “We should probably get to work, then,” said Charlie excitedly.

  And so we did.

  After an hour of looking through old newspapers, we had found several articles related to the Bright Lights Cinema. We each read several until we were satisfied that we had gathered as much information as we could.

  In summary, it went like this. Mr. Curtain had been running the cinema for getting on for fifty years when he passed away. He had been in search of an heir to leave the place to when he died. He had a cousin who was interested, but the cousin had changed his mind and moved away. The town of Mintwood had gone through various options for how to solve the problem of the cinema should there not be an heir. For example, they had considered buying the place from Mr. Curtain when he retired. Those options were still on the table, and then he passed away with nothing decided. His death came as a shock to everyone. As far as any
one knew, he hadn’t had any health problems.

  The article about Mr. Curtain’s actual death was long and detailed. It was clear from the vividness and detail of the information that the author had spent a lot of time at the cinema.

  When he passed away, Mr. Curtain had just been finalizing preparations for the upcoming festival. Several movies were scheduled to be shown that weekend. He had stayed late on Thursday to get everything ready. At the time he had two assistants, Honey and Helen, whom he had sent home, asking them to return early the next day to help with the final preparations.

  When they had arrived in the morning, they saw his truck parked in the same spot it had occupied when they’d left the night before. They thought he might have fallen asleep at his desk, since he had done that in the past. When they entered the building, they couldn’t find him at first. They thought he might have gone to the diner down the street to get breakfast, and it was only after they stopped looking for him that they came upon his body in one of the projection booths. There were no signs of foul play, and given how old he was a heart attack wasn’t unlikely.

  The case was closed, and soon afterward the cinema itself. Eventually the building was bought for back taxes by the nameless person who owns a lot of the Main Street, and that was that.

  “There used to be a diner downtown? That would be so cool,” said Charlie, sounding disappointed that there was one no longer.

  “The downtown has changed a lot since I was younger. When I was a kid there wasn’t much downtown at all,” said Gerry. “Most of the changes have been for the better. I do wish they’d have been able to keep the cinema open, though. Everyone in town would have loved that.”

  “Where are Honey and Helen now?” I asked. Maybe they could shed some light on that night by telling us something the papers had left out.

  Gerry frowned. “Honey’s around. I’m not sure about Helen. Honey lives in Pennwood.”

  Pennwood was a bigger town not far from Mintwood, the site of Jasper’s and my wonderful first date at the Cozy Bucket. I winced at the reminder.

  “We should probably talk to Honey. See if she can tell us anything about the cinema,” I said.