Leighann Dobbs - Mystic Notch 01 - Ghostly Paws (6 page)

I stared at the door. Was that a warning … or a threat? I couldn’t tell by his tone or the look on his face and I didn’t have much time to think about it because just then I heard another crash and Pandora’s wail.

I ran to the back of the store. Pandora sat amidst a pile of books … again. The same darn books.
 

“Really?” I bent down to put the books back. “What is wrong with you?”

Nothing. I’m trying to give you a clue.
Her meows almost sounded like words as I put the books back in their place.

“Now, no messing with these books again.” I tapped my finger on her pink nose.
 

She looked at me defiantly, reached out her paw and pulled a book off the shelf.

I rolled my eyes. “Cut that out!” I picked up the book and shoved it back into its spot.

“Mew!” She pulled it out again.

I felt my temper starting to rise. What was up with her? I glanced at the title as I picked up the book to put it back, yet again.
Murder Weapon Mayhem
. How appropriate, given what was going on with Lavinia.

I slid the book back in place.
 

“Wait a minute … murder … weapon.” I looked at Pandora, who stared at me expectantly.

“Of course!” I snapped my fingers and stood up. “Why didn’t I think of that before? Lavinia said she was whacked on the back of the head, which means that somewhere out there is a murder weapon that might have a clue to the murderer … all we have to do is find it.”

***

The rest of the day was uneventful. I spent most of it trying to decide where to search for the murder weapon. As the day drew on, doubt bloomed in my gut. The warnings I’d had from three people—well, two people and a ghost—echoed in my head.
 

It could be dangerous to look for the murder weapon on my own, but I couldn’t very well tell Augusta I knew someone had clonked Lavinia on the back of the head.
 

It was up to me to find the murder weapon. I wasn’t sure how I’d explain finding it to Augusta, but I was sure I would come up with something.

Of course, if I knew what I was looking for, it would make it a lot easier to find. Something heavy that one could easily use to whack someone else on the back of the head with.
 

I figured the best place to start was the library, so I closed up shop at five and headed down the street with Pandora following me … well, I should say in front of me. The cat had the strangest way of following me by walking ahead of me. I had no idea how she knew where I was going, but somehow she did.

I thought back to the morning I’d found Lavinia. Impossible to believe it was just yesterday, but it was. She hadn’t been dead long when I’d found her, so that meant the killer had to make his—or her—escape through town in the morning hours. If I were a killer, I’d want to ditch that murder weapon as fast as I could, which is why I figured it would be somewhere near the library.

As I stared at the gothic stone building, I realized the killer wouldn’t have come back out the front. There were too many people around on Maine Street.
 

“Meow.” Pandora peeked out from the side of the library, then turned, her tail flicking like a finger beckoning me to follow her.
 

“Good idea, Pandora.” The killer would have gone out the only other door, which was in the back. I followed her around the corner of the library. I’d never been behind the building before and was surprised that the area behind it was so small. It was paved, and there was a dumpster that I hoped I wouldn’t have to jump inside of to find what I was looking for.
 

I chose to look everywhere else first. I walked around the edge of the pavement and looked in the corners of the building. I was squatting down, the side of my head almost on the ground so that I could peer under the dumpster, when I heard a low, guttural animal sound coming from behind me.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I jerked my head around to see Pandora, her back arched, having a stare down with another cat. The other cat was a raggedy looking ginger-colored thing with wild yellow eyes. Three other cats stood about five feet away behind it.
 

I’d heard there was a feral cat colony around here and I guessed these cats were part of it. I noticed a small black and white kitten that couldn’t have been more than six months old with a torn-up ear and my heart tugged. They looked well-fed, though, and I wondered briefly how they found shelter and what they ate.

I stood motionless, not knowing exactly what to do. Pandora and the other cat must have come to some sort of agreement, because they stopped making their noises and the other cat and his minions backed up.

Pandora trotted off after them and I could just barely make out a trail into the woods. The train tracks were back there somewhere—it would be a perfect get-away route for the killer! The tracks wandered behind several buildings then crossed Main Street at the other end of town. The killer could have run down them, then popped back out onto the street as if he had never been near the library.

I rushed in after Pandora, scanning the ground for something that could be the murder weapon.
 

She stopped in front of me and that’s when I saw it.
 

It had been thrown off to the side and was half-buried in the leaves, but I recognized the part of it that was sticking up … it was the heavy metal embosser Lavinia used to emboss the pages of the books with the library insignia. The library had three of them and, apparently, no one had noticed one was missing.

I stepped off the trail toward the embosser, bending down to get a better look. Yep, that was definitely the library’s embosser. A thread of navy blue fabric caught on one of the screws flapped in the wind … and was that blood on the side?

My heart thudded in my chest as I reached out to pick it up …

“Stop right there! Put your hands in the air, stand up slowly and turn around!”

Chapter Nine

A steely gray glare coming from the broad shouldered behemoth who was holding the gun on me rooted me to the spot. Adrenalin shot through my body as my mind registered a chiseled jaw, trim waist and sheriff’s uniform.
 

Sheriff’s uniform?

Augusta was the sheriff here, and this guy sure as heck wasn’t Augusta.

“Who the hell are you?” I probably should have asked more nicely, but I was mad … and a little scared.

His left eyebrow quirked up and I thought I saw a smile tease the corners of his lips.
 

“I might ask you the same,” he said, his eyes shifting to the embosser still lying on the ground. “What are you doing here and what is that you were bending over?”

Panic lapped at my stomach as I considered how to explain exactly what I was doing there. I certainly couldn’t tell him I was looking for the murder weapon since I wasn’t supposed to know there even
was
a murder.

“Meow!”

I shot the cat a grateful look. “My cat … I was here looking for my cat.”

As if on cue, Pandora trotted over to my side and rubbed her face against my leg.

Relief washed away the panic as a familiar figure came around the corner—Augusta.
 

“Willa? What’s going on here?” Augusta looked from the behemoth to me, her brow wrinkled in confusion.

“You know her?” Behemoth asked.

Augusta sighed and holstered her gun. “You can put your gun away, Striker. It’s my sister.”

“Who the hell is
he
?” I asked Augusta, gesturing toward Striker with my chin. I still had my hands up because the behemoth was still pointing his gun at me.

“This is Eddie Striker.” Augusta nodded toward Striker. “He’s the sheriff over in Dixford Pass. I asked him to help out since I don’t have much experience with homicides.”

“Homicide? So Lavinia
was
murdered.” I tried to sound surprised.

Augusta shifted on her feet. “Yes, I suppose I can tell you since it’s going to come out sooner or later. The medical examiner determined she was hit on the head with something. That probably didn’t kill her, but it stunned her and the push down the stairs finished her off.”

“Poor Lavinia,” I said.

Augusta narrowed her eyes at me. “So, just what are
you
doing here behind the library?”

“What are
you
doing here?” I asked, wondering if they’d come to the same conclusion I had and were also looking for the murder weapon.

“I asked first,” Augusta replied.

Striker was sliding his eyes back and forth between us, an amused expression on his face. I was not so amused that he still had his gun aimed at me.
 

“Pandora ran back here and I was trying to get her,” I lied. Was I in store for some bad karma for lying to my sister? Probably.

“Are you sure that’s all it is?” Augusta looked at me suspiciously. “I know how you have a habit of sticking your nose into investigations.”

“Can I put my hands down?” My arms were starting to hurt, plus I wanted to avoid addressing Augusta’s comment. It was true, I
did
have a habit of investigating on my own from my years of training as a crime journalist.

“Yes,” Augusta sighed.

“No!” Striker shot Augusta a look.

I held my hands halfway up, my eyes wavering between the two of them.

“She could be a suspect. I caught her bending over that.” Striker nodded toward the embosser.
 

“What is that?” Augusta walked over and bent down to inspect it.

“It’s the embosser from the library. I saw it when I came back here after Pandora. I was going to pick it up and return it to the library when King Kong over here tried to shoot me down.” Another lie … bad karma was coming my way for sure.

Augusta took a plastic bag out of her pocket and deftly bagged the embosser without ever touching it with her fingers.
 

“Did you touch this?” She held the bag up in front of my face.

“No.” At least I wasn’t lying that time.

“Okay, I think we can let her go,” Augusta held her hand up to squelch Striker’s protest. “Striker, she’s my sister. She found Lavinia and called it in.”

“She found the body and now I catch her bending over the murder weapon? In Dixford Pass, she’d be my number one suspect,” Striker said incredulously.

“I’ll vouch for her. Let’s take this to the lab. I think I see blood on the corner.” Augusta turned to walk away and Striker reluctantly lowered his gun and followed. When they got to the corner of the building, Augusta half turned back toward me.

“Willa, you can put your hands down now,” she shot over her shoulder. “Oh … and don’t leave town.”

***

I walked to the parking lot, Pandora trotting at my side with a satisfied look on her face.

“Well, looks like we found the murder weapon,” I said to her as I started the Jeep.

She ignored me, curled up in the passenger seat and went to sleep.

I thought about the murder weapon as I drove home. I couldn’t really picture the perfectly-coiffed Ophelia smashing Lavinia on the back of the head with the embosser, but she was the only lead I had.

The embosser had blood on it. There was no doubt in my mind it was the murder weapon. I remembered the thread of navy blue fabric that was caught on one of the screws.
 

Was the fabric already on there or could it have come from the murderer?

Who else would have been in the library that morning and why? Did Lavinia have any enemies? Or was the intruder after something in the library, anyway? What would someone want in a library? All that was in there were books, and as far as I knew, none of them were valuable. Could there be something else of value in the library?

I pulled into my driveway and walked into the house like a zombie, exhausted from thinking.

 
As usual, Pandora sped ahead of me, making a beeline for her dish.
 

“Are you hungry?” I asked the obvious as I searched in the cupboard for her favorite food. “You deserve a special treat, since you led me to the murder weapon.”

I studied the cat as she ate. She
had
led me to the murder weapon, which was rather odd. But who was I to talk about odd? I talked to ghosts and that wasn’t exactly normal.
 

I wished Lavinia’s ghost would appear now. I had some questions for her. Maybe if I called her out?

“Lavinia?” I ventured.
 

No one appeared.

“Lavinia, I have some questions that might help solve your murder.”

Still nothing. Darn ghosts, appear when you don’t want them to and then they aren’t around when you need them.

I opened the fridge to rummage for something to eat and spied Elspeth’s apple pie—the perfect supper for a crazy day like today.

I cut an extra-large piece and topped it off with vanilla ice cream. Sitting at the table, I stretched my leg out on the chair and dug into the pie. The apples practically melted in my mouth, the sugar and cinnamon tantalizing my taste buds. The crust was perfectly crunchy and Elspeth had sprinkled it with large sugar crystals for an extra boost. The slightly melted ice cream added the perfect creamy complement.

I finished the pie and brought the plate to the sink, suddenly feeling exhausted. Limping up the stairs, I threw on pajamas and slid into bed with a good book about a pirate in 1820s England.
 

Pandora positioned herself at the foot of the bed. Her greenish-golden eyes glowed in the dark, watching me as I fell into a deep sleep.
 

In my dream, I was taken aboard a pirate ship against my will. Not that I minded, though … the pirate looked kind of like Striker and I vaguely remember half-hoping he would ravish me like the pirate in my book had ravished the heroine. It was incredibly real and I slept deeply without moving a muscle.

So deeply, in fact, that I would never have noticed if someone snuck in and did a thorough search of my house and barn.

Chapter Ten

I got to the bookstore early the next day. Pandora settled into her cat bed in the window and I started sorting and putting away the books that had accumulated, which included a boxful from an internet auction I’d won and a pile of old books I’d picked up in my travels.