A Witchy Business (Harper Grant Mystery Series Book 1) Page 5

  “I don’t want to retaliate. I just want people to think I’m normal,” I said, but I couldn’t resist looking over my shoulder at the diminutive, grey-haired Mrs. Townsend.

  Fifty shades of Grey? Really?

  “Now, behave,” I warned Elizabeth again as we reached the door to the police station.

  Abbott Cove’s police station is tiny. It’s made up of only three offices, and one tiny jail block tagged on the back.

  They didn’t even have a receptionist most of the time, so I walked past the reception desk, which was empty, towards the wooden door, bearing the brass plaque with Chief Wickham’s name on it.

  Before I could knock, the door opened, but it wasn’t Chief Wickham staring down at me, it was Joe McGrady.

  I supposed I shouldn’t really have been surprised to see him since he did work there.

  “Hello, again,” he said. “Can I help you?” He was holding a mug of coffee and leaned back against the door frame, looking at me suspiciously.

  “Yes, actually you can,” Elizabeth said behind me. “You can stop sitting around here, sipping coffee, and go and find my killer!”

  I tried my best to ignore Elizabeth, but it really wasn’t easy.

  I smiled up at Joe. “I just popped in to see Chief Wickham.”

  Joe stepped aside and opened the door for me. Those sparkling blue, suspicious eyes didn’t leave me for a second.

  Chief Wickham looked up from his desk. “Oh, Harper. I hope nothing’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” I said, walking into his office and hoping Joe would leave us alone.

  Joe McGrady made me nervous, which made me more apt to make a mistake and speak aloud to Elizabeth.

  “I was hoping to find out how you are getting on with the investigation. You know Grandma Grant lives alone, and it’s not nice to think a killer is lurking in our little town.”

  Chief Wickham gestured for me to sit down in the seat opposite his desk, and as I did so, he said, “Yes. It’s making everyone nervous. We’re not used to cases like this in Abbott Cove.”

  The chief’s cheeks were flaming red, and his gray hair stood on end as he raked his hands through it in frustration just as the phone rang.

  “Excuse me, Harper. I need to take this.”

  “Of course.”

  I hadn’t realized Joe was still in the room, so when he leaned down and whispered in my ear, sending a wave of tingles along my skin, I jumped.

  “The chief is fuming. They want to send out the state police to handle the investigation, and he is taking it as a personal affront.”

  “Thanks for the warning,” I said in a low voice.

  Joe left us to it, closing the door behind him just as Chief Wickham slammed down the telephone.

  “They’re sending a police investigator. What do they think I am? Chopped liver? I’ll show them, Harper. You see if I don’t. I’ll solve the case before the investigator even gets here.”

  “I’m sure you will, Chief Wickham. If anyone can, you can.”

  Maybe I was overdoing the compliments a little.

  “I wondered,” I began. “Was Elizabeth murdered in the school field? I mean, I didn’t see any blood so —”

  I was asking because I thought if we could find the site of Elizabeth’s murder, it could trigger her memory.

  Chief Wickham walked around his desk and placed his ample backside on the corner of the desk.

  “There wasn’t much blood,” he said. “She was strangled with a piece of wire.”

  “Strangled!” Elizabeth practically screamed the word. “Oh, oh….I think I’m going to faint.”

  As she began to fall backward, my arm shot out as I tried to save her, but then my hand froze in mid-air, and I clasped my hands together and put them in my lap.

  Elizabeth couldn’t faint. She was a ghost. And even if she did and fell on the floor, it wasn’t going to hurt her.

  “I was trying to swat a fly,” I said to Chief Wickham by way of an explanation.

  He was staring at me, his eyes wide with surprise.

  “Do you think whoever strangled her was local?” I asked.

  Chief Wickham shook his head. “I know you’re concerned, Harper. We all are. But I can’t talk about the ongoing investigation with you, I’m afraid. When I have news to share, I’ll let the whole community know. But you can rest assured I’m on the case.”

  The chief winked at me.

  I guess that was it then. That was all I could do for now. I wasn’t going to get any more answers from the chief, but at least we now knew how Elizabeth had been murdered.

  Elizabeth was lying on the floor, sprawled out dramatically, but when I stood up and didn’t pay her any attention, she opened one eye.

  “Well, honestly. I can’t believe the lack of sympathy I get,” she muttered as she picked herself up from the floor and followed me out of Chief Wickham’s office.

  Chapter 10

  “What do we do now?” Elizabeth asked me. Her shoulders were slumped as she hovered from side to side, looking very upset.

  “I suppose we keep looking for clues,” I said. “We need something to jog your memory. Perhaps we should go to your house?”

  “My house? I can tell you for certain I wasn’t killed there. Since my Robert retired, we’ve been inseparable. Nobody would have dared try to strangle me at home.”

  “Still, maybe familiar surroundings could trigger something?”

  To be honest, I couldn’t think of anywhere else we could go.

  Elizabeth nodded. “Well, I would like to go home. Although I’m sure it will be very upsetting to see Robert and Robert Jr so distraught over my passing. They must be missing me terribly.”

  We took a right on Main Street and headed back into the residential section behind the library.

  Elizabeth’s house was on Wisteria Avenue, which was lined with a collection of one-story houses, built twenty-five years ago when the town had expanded.

  All of the front lawns were carefully manicured, and people in this neighborhood took pride in maintaining their houses to an impeccable standard.

  “Here we are.” Elizabeth beamed as we stopped beside a white picket fence. “What are you going to do, Harper? Are you going to knock?”

  I stuffed my hands in the pockets of my jeans. I should have thought of that. I should have brought a casserole or something and offered my condolences.

  But then again, Robert had seen Elizabeth fly off the handle over my inability to serve her iced tea promptly, so I wasn’t sure whether he would consider my condolences genuine.

  “Perhaps I could just stand out here,” I said. “You go and take a look inside.”

  “Well, if you’re sure.”

  Mr. Townsend chose that moment to walk past with his little Pomeranian.

  He tipped his hat to me, and wished me good afternoon, as I leaned down to pet the dog.

  Elizabeth happily hovered up to the front door. Instead of just floating through, which of course she could do now that she was a ghost, she peered in through the window, which I guessed must be giving her a view into the kitchen.

  As Mr. Townsend and his dog walked away, Elizabeth let out a bloodcurdling shriek.

  I raced up the driveway to join her. “What’s wrong?” I whispered urgently.

  But Elizabeth was too distraught to answer. She pointed at the window.

  I looked inside, but I didn’t see anything terrible. I couldn’t see anything that could have upset her so badly.

  Robert Naggington was wearing an apron and standing beside the stove. Next to him on the counter, he had a variety of different spices, and a strong smell was wafting through the window.

  I turned back to Elizabeth and shook my head, trying to keep myself hidden behind the frilly, white curtains.

  “What is the matter?”

  This time, Elizabeth Naggington found her voice. “He is cooking a curry!”

  I nodded. “And?”

  Elizabeth widened her eyes as if s
he couldn’t believe I was being so thickheaded.

  “Robert knows he isn’t allowed to cook curry in the house. The smell will linger for days!”

  I raised an eyebrow, opened my mouth and then closed it again. If I reminded Elizabeth Naggington of the fact she was now dead and wouldn’t be bothered by the smell of the curry in the house, it would be a little insensitive.

  At just that moment, Elizabeth’s son stepped into the kitchen.

  He looked very like his father, only a little broader and about twenty pounds overweight.

  “Ah, Robert Jr!” Elizabeth beamed with pleasure at the sight of her son. “He’ll sort this out. Just you watch, Harper. He’ll tell his father to stop it immediately. He knows they’re not allowed to cook curry.”

  But instead of saying anything of the sort to his father, Robert Jr walked over to the refrigerator and took out two bottles of beer. He handed one to his father and smiled.

  Father and son popped open their beers, clinked the bottles together, and both took a long swallow straight from the bottles.

  I thought Elizabeth was going to have a choking fit. “No, don’t drink out of the bottle! Get a glass!”

  I could hear Robert’s muffled voice from where I stood hidden by the frilly yellow curtains around the kitchen window. “I’m cooking a curry, son. Would you like some?”

  “No!” Elizabeth shouted. “Tell him no! Tell him he is expressly forbidden from cooking anything like that in my kitchen!”

  “Thanks, Dad. That smells great.”

  Elizabeth’s jaw fell open as she hovered by the window gaping at the scene.

  I didn’t think watching them was helping. It wasn’t providing any clues as to who killed Elizabeth, and Robert and his son were obviously reveling in their newfound freedom, which was hurtful for Elizabeth to see.

  “Come on,” I said. “This isn’t much help. Let’s try something else.”

  “But they’re eating curry!” Elizabeth whined.

  “I know, but there’s nothing we can do about it now, is there? Let’s try something else.”

  I walked away, hoping that Elizabeth would follow me. Luckily she did.

  I shoved my hands in the pockets of my jeans as I walked down the driveway and sighed. I didn’t know what to try next.

  “I can’t believe it,” Elizabeth muttered as she floated along beside me. “I’ve only been dead a day. I expected them to show a little more respect than that. You know, now that I think about it, I’m sure Robert cooked curry when I was away visiting my sister in Australia. I was sure I could smell something when I returned home, but Robert told me I was imagining things. Of all the sneaky, rotten—”

  I tried to change the subject to keep Elizabeth’s mind off it. “Well, what should we try next? We still need clues if we are going to find out who killed you.”

  Elizabeth shrugged. She had lost interest in the hunt for her killer and was far more interested in what spices Robert had been using.

  “I always had to cook him the blandest food due to his poor digestion, but did you see how much chili powder he added to the pan? Well, he’ll be suffering the effects later, mark my words, Harper.”

  As I couldn’t rely on Elizabeth to come up with any theories, the only chance I had of helping her, was to come up with one of my own.

  “What would you usually be doing this evening?”

  “You mean if I wasn’t a ghost?”

  I nodded.

  “I’d be at the book club in the church hall,” Elizabeth said sadly. “We were going to be talking about a Nicholas Sparks book this evening.”

  “Right,” I said. “Well, let’s go there now and see if we can find anything that can help us work out what happened to you.”

  Elizabeth gave me a sideways glance. I think she was starting to doubt my investigative skills. I couldn’t say I blamed her. I just hoped that Chief Wickham and Joe McGrady were having more luck than me and discovered her killer soon, so Elizabeth could find closure and move on.

  “They’ve probably canceled it out of respect,” Elizabeth said pointedly. “I imagine they are too upset to go ahead as if nothing had happened.”

  “Perhaps,” I said and bit down on my lower lip. Elizabeth certainly had a distorted view of how people saw her. “Why don’t we give it a try? They may have decided to go ahead as a way to remember you.”

  Elizabeth thought about that for a moment and then nodded. “I suppose you could be right.”

  She didn’t sound convinced.

  Chapter 11

  We reached the church hall just as dusk was falling.

  We followed the winding path, which snaked through the graveyard and led to the church hall, which was a small wooden construction tagged on to the back of the church.

  The wind had picked up, and orange and red leaves swirled about us.

  “Heaven knows what book they’ll pick next without me to guide them,” Elizabeth said. “Honestly, some of their previous suggestions were really quite questionable.”

  As we walked around the side of the church, we could see that the lights were on and shining out from the church hall windows.

  “Maybe I should go in, introduce myself and ask some questions?” I said.

  I hadn’t enjoyed peering in through the kitchen window of Elizabeth’s old house. I kept imagining someone was about to tap me on the shoulder and demand to know why I was spying on a grieving widower. The last thing I wanted was to get caught spying on the Abbott Cove book club.

  “Yes, perhaps.” Elizabeth sounded distracted, which was odd for someone trying to track down her killer.

  I expected her to be a little more interested in the investigation.

  “But before you go in, let me just have a quick listen to the potential books they’re discussing for next week.”

  Elizabeth sped off, and I sighed, trying to follow her quietly.

  I had no idea how I would explain myself if someone found me crouching beside the church hall window.

  When I reached Elizabeth’s side and ducked beneath the windowsill, I was surprised to see her face was tense.

  “What is it?” I whispered.

  She flapped her hands at me to get me to shut up, and I realized she’d overheard something said by the ladies inside that she didn’t particularly like.

  I straightened up and tried to peek through the window.

  Most of the women gathered around in a small circle in the center of the church hall, I recognized. They all had books on their laps, but rather than talking about the actual stories, they were having a good old gossip… about Elizabeth Naggington…

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if it was her tongue that got her into trouble. She was always saying nasty things about people.”

  Those words came from Ethel Goodridge, a sweet, elderly woman, who was known in the neighborhood for making the best apple pie.

  Mrs. Townsend spoke up next, “If you ask me, she brought it on herself.”

  Elizabeth gasped beside me. “Of all the low-down, nasty things to say… And besides, nobody did ask her.”

  Victoria Andrews, the former principal of Abbott Cove School, spoke up, holding the book up in the air. “I really do think we should get back to the matter in hand, ladies. It’s really unkind to be speaking about poor Elizabeth like this.”

  “Yes, you tell them, Victoria,” Elizabeth waved her fist in the air and turned to me with a smug smile on her face. “See, Harper, there are some good people left in Abbott Cove.”

  Unfortunately, though, nobody paid Victoria Andrews any attention.

  Tabitha Grewark, leaned forward, her eyes gleaming, enjoying the salacious gossip. “I heard that someone finally got sick of her nasty, bullying ways. It looks as if she picked on the wrong person to bully…”

  There was a hush around the group, followed by murmurs of agreement.

  I turned to see how Elizabeth was coping with this. My mother had always told me that eavesdroppers never heard good things about themselv
es, but I doubted that would be much consolation for Elizabeth.

  Before I could ask if she was okay, Elizabeth zoomed off, moving much faster than I could.

  Ducking down and hoping that no one would hear or see me, I tried to chase after her.

  It was growing dark and difficult to see, but I made my way around the graveyard until I finally saw Elizabeth in the far corner, underneath a cedar tree, sobbing.

  I felt very sorry for her. This had been a cruel wake-up call. She really had no idea how her rudeness and bullying had affected people over the years.

  I wrapped my arms around myself and hugged my coat against me tightly as the wind whipped my hair around. It was definitely getting chilly.

  The leaves rustled beneath my feet as I walked over to join Elizabeth.

  “Is that really how people see me?” she asked between sobs.

  I held up my hand, ready to pat her on the shoulder in an attempt to comfort her when I remembered that I couldn’t do that to a ghost.

  I lowered my hand. “Elizabeth, try not to let it upset you. You can’t change anything now. The important thing is to concentrate on finding who killed you so you can move on.”

  She turned to me with red-rimmed eyes. I hadn’t realized ghosts could cry. “I thought they were my f…f… friends.”

  I sighed. No one liked to hear horrible things like that said about themselves, even if they were true.

  “Hey,” a voice behind me said.

  I turned around so quickly, I stumbled. Talk about a guilty reaction.

  It was Joe McGrady.

  “Hi,” I replied, looking around wildly for Elizabeth, who seemed to have vanished.

  “Who were you talking to?” Joe asked.

  Oh, darn, he’d heard me. How on earth was I going to get out of this one? But before I could think up an excuse, Joe’s eyes drifted down to the gravestone beside my feet.

  “Ah, apologies. I just saw someone moving about in the churchyard and thought I’d better investigate, what with the murder and everything.” He nodded at the gravestone. “I’m sorry. Someone close? Your parents?”