Miss Spelled (The Kitchen Witch 1) (12 page)

Chapter 23

The dirt road was bumpy, and the recent rain had made it even worse. Large ditches, carved out of the hard packed surface by water, crisscrossed here and there.

“I don’t think your car was made for off-roading,” Thyme said, gripping the hand support near the passenger window on the ceiling.

“Me, either,” I said. I grimaced as we bounced upward over a severe bump. As the dirt path turned this way, the trees began to thin until they were suddenly gone altogether. I could see a wide open paddock in front of us, with long grass and little blue wildflowers.

“Wow,” Thyme said.

I agreed. “It’s beautiful here.”

There were two structures standing in the clearing, a semi-standing burned down house, and further on, a dilapidated wooden barn that was lurching precariously to one side.

“What happened here?” I asked Thyme.

“Nothing,” she said. “This is typical of old farms in the country. They just let the old farmhouses and barns fall down. You see it everywhere.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said. I pulled the car to a stop between the barn and the burned-out husk. The barn was bare timber, and the rusted iron roof was missing in places. One door was shut and the other one was wedged open. It must have been open for some time, as a young gum tree was growing through the middle of it.

The barn was dark in some places, but a shaft of light fell through a hole in the ceiling, providing enough light. It was full of stuff, including a faded green tractor that looked like it hadn’t been used in thirty years. To the right were pens of sorts, divided by low wooden walls. I could imagine that pigs had been kept in there. At the back of the barn was a ladder leading up to the roost. I could see the remains of some old moldy hay up there.

“I’m going to look up there,” I said, pointing to the ladder.

“I’ll check these boxes,” Thyme said. “Be careful, though. The wood up on that level is probably rotten, and I don’t know if that ladder’s safe.”

I pulled a face. “I’ll see if the ladder’s going to hold my weight, and if it will, I’ll only climb to the top and have a look.” The ladder was old. I tested my weight on the bottom two rungs and they looked sturdy enough. I gingerly climbed up it, worried my foot would go right through a rung.

When I reached the top, I gripped the edge of the timber boards that made up the upper level. There were a few bales of rotten hay, their edges white with mold. There were also gaps in the floorboards, so there was no way I could go to that side of the platform. However, there was an old shelf in front of me. It held some old jugs and some old bottles, along with one big bottle labeled ‘Lucijet.’ I’d come across that one in my googling of discontinued poisons. It was a deadly poison formerly used for dipping sheep to rid them of lice, back in the day. I figured that a farmer of decades ago had kept the poisons up here to keep them away from kids. I only hoped he hadn’t kept the ladder up there then.

I moved forward to look at the poisons, and pushed the Lucijet aside. I was debating whether to inch forward further, when a bottle caught my eye. It was a six-sided bottle and it had fallen down behind the container of Lucijet. I learned forward as far as I could, and my fingers closed around the bottle. I pulled it out to take a closer look.

My heart missed a beat. The top of the label said ‘Poison’. Across the middle was a black banner, and on it in white reverse writing was the word ‘Thall-rat.’

“Thyme, come here!” I called out.

“What is it?”

“Listen to this,” I said. I read aloud. “The original thallium sulfate rat poison that kills quickly. Rats cannot detect Thall-rat because it is tasteless and odorless.”

“Hand it down to me,” Thyme said. “Be careful.”

I handed it down to her and then carefully climbed the ladder.

Thyme shook the bottle, and I could hear liquid sloshing within it. “Is Melanie the murderer?” I asked her.

Thyme shrugged.

“But why would she just leave this stuff here, on her land?” I asked. “The cops could’ve easily found it.”

“But they didn’t,” Thyme pointed out. “Obviously they don’t suspect her. Obviously they haven’t searched here. And here’s another thing. What if she really doesn’t have anything to do with this building? I mean, I know she owns the land, but it doesn’t look like anyone’s been in here in years. This is a really old bottle. People really used to use this stuff.’

“True, and there were various poisons and herbicides up there in the loft,” I said. “It could have nothing to do with her.”

“Do you believe that?” Thyme asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “There seriously were a lot of poisons up there.”

Thyme looked worried. “I suppose we shouldn’t have touched that bottle.”

I hit myself on the forehead. “I’ll put it back. I’ll wipe our fingerprints off it first.”

“If the cops do a search, they won’t find Melanie’s fingerprints on it,” Thyme said.

I pulled a face. “Good point. She’d be stupid to leave her own fingerprints on it, though.”

I climbed back up the ladder, wiped the bottle clean, and put it where I’d found it. “Why would she kill him?” I asked Thyme as soon as I got back down the ladder. “We still haven’t figured out that part.”

“What if we were thinking about it all wrong?” Thyme said. “We know she would never drill for that gas. Maybe Brant was going to marry her, so he would legally be able to drill here. Remember, he didn’t have enough on his land.”

I nodded. “That makes sense.”

“He’s a charming guy when he wants to be, so they say,” Thyme continued. “At any rate, he was a good salesman. So he sells himself, makes her fall in love, but then somehow she finds out he wants her land, specifically to drill for the gas?”

“So she knows she has the thallium in her old barn and decides to kill him?”

Thyme shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. But it’s all starting to fit, don’t you think?”

I had to nod. “It really is,” I said. “And if the thallium’s just left here, along with a lot of other old poisons, she can pretend she had nothing to do with it. It would even help maybe to look like someone was framing her.”

“It’d be a good story for the police at least,” Thyme said.

“But is Brant wanting to drill on her land enough of a reason to kill him?” I asked. “Some of these other people’s lives were ruined by Brant.”

“I think it’s enough of a reason for Melanie,” Thyme said. “She’s an environmentalist. She’s well known around town for it. She takes all of that stuff very seriously. She would be so adamant against drilling.”

“Why not just call off the engagement?”

Thyme held up her hands. “I don’t have a clue. So what do we do now? Do we go to the police?”

“I don’t think we can,” I said. “Can we? ‘Oh hey, we’ve been breaking into people’s places, and we found this!’ They would lock us up.”

Thyme nodded. “You’re right.”

“And it’s still not enough to go on, but it’s a good start.”

“All right,” Thyme said. “Let’s keep looking in here.”

“I might go and look in the house,” I said.

Thyme shook her head. “Be careful in that place, will you? It might fall on you.”

“I will,” I said with a smile.

The house was an empty shell. It looked as if it had burned down many years ago. As I turned to go back to the barn, I had the unmistakable feeling that someone was watching me. The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

I walked forward a bit, and spun in a slow circle, my eyes on the trees at the edge of the clearing. I didn’t see anyone. And then I thought I saw movement, over near the dirt path that led to the road. Maybe there was a flash of blue, someone’s shirt. I couldn’t be sure. I couldn’t even be sure I had seen someone. Perhaps it was a kangaroo, but they are not blue. Yet I distinctly had that strange feeling, and thought I saw something.

As I watched, I thought I heard a car start in the distance. I stayed quiet, straining my ears, hoping to confirm what I thought I was hearing, but I couldn’t. I had no way of knowing if I had really heard an engine. I felt uneasy.

“That was fast,” Thyme said, as soon as I stepped into the barn.

I considered telling her what I had felt and what I had thought I heard, but I decided there was no point freaking her out. It was probably my imagination, after all.

“Nothing there,” I said. “All destroyed. It was just an empty shell.”

Thyme nodded and stood up straight. She had been kneeling in front of the boxes. “Just a lot of junk,” she said. “Old rusted tools in one box, old rabbit traps in another.”

I nodded. “Want to get out of here? We did good.”

“Now we just have to figure out our next step,” Thyme said.

“I’m starting to think that’s all detective work is,” I said with a smile. “Finding something really small, and then spending days figuring out what to do with it.”

Thyme laughed. “If that makes you a good detective, then we’re great ones.”

As we drove back to the road, I looked for any evidence that another car had been there. I saw nothing, but then again, what would I see? It hadn’t been raining, so there was no way I would see tire tracks on the hard ground. Once back on the road, I turned in the direction of town. I didn’t see another car until we reached the edge of town. I kept glancing in the rearview mirror as I drove, expecting to see someone following me, but no one was.

Had I seen someone? I was still on edge. I felt as though someone had been watching me. I thought I had seen someone in blue, cutting through the eucalyptus trees near the clearing.

Chapter 24

I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned on the bed as I stared at the walls and ceiling. The day’s events kept playing through my head on an infinite loop. That’s what I got for going to bed so early.

“Any suggestions?” I asked the ceiling as I lay there. Oh gosh, I was rapidly becoming a crazy cat lady, having long conversations with my cats, and now I was even talking to my house.

I wasn’t quite sure what I expected, anyway. A cup of tea to appear? Some sort of creak or rumble in response? I smiled at myself and shook my head. I had no idea how to begin processing this whole new twist on my world. Living houses, love potions, magic, a house with feelings?

I sighed and got out of bed. I pulled on my robe as I made my way toward the kitchen. If I wasn’t going to get any sleep, I could at least get some paperwork done. Even with the lack of business, there was always some sort of paperwork to catch up with, and Aunt Angelica had done it all by hand. I was trying to convert the hard files onto an online file, in the hope I could get the system into some sort of order before things got busy.

I wondered what I was going to do about Melanie and the Thall-rat. Or was this just a red herring? Was the real murderer Dermott Smith, Bill Gafney, or Jason Mackay? Who knows, maybe even one of those men had planted the Thall-rat in Melanie’s barn to frame her.

Should I go to the police? And how would they react to me searching Melanie’s barn? I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to avoid trespassing charges.

I wondered why such an avid environmentalist would have poisons on her property to begin with. I had always assumed that environmentalists were big on protecting animals, even rats. It seemed strange to me that Melanie didn’t get rid of the stuff, but then again, she had a whole collection of poisons there. Did she even know it was there? Perhaps not. It didn’t seem right that an environmentalist would have a deadly poison collection.

I stared at the half completed file on my computer, trying to concentrate on my work, but I was unable to shake off an uneasy feeling. I rubbed the back of my neck.

Should I call someone? I picked up my phone and thumbed through my contact list. I did not have the slightest idea if Thyme stayed up late. I supposed she might. There was a reason this was called the ‘witching hour’, right?

I finally decided against it. If I had been trying to sleep and someone called at this hour, I would have been irritated. It wouldn’t be right to assume that Thyme was available to chat just to help me shake off the undercurrent of anxiety that was plaguing me. It wasn’t her problem that I was having trouble settling down.

“I know you’re there,” I called up at the ceiling. “What’s going on?”

“Perceptive,” a cold voice stated.

I suppressed a scream. I whirled around to seek out the source of the voice.

“Don’t move,” a menacing yet familiar voice spat.

My heart pounded. I froze, my hands hovering in front of me. There was a woman standing in the doorway leading into the living room, and there was a pistol aimed in my direction. A chill coursed through my veins as I willed my eyes to come into focus.

“Melanie?” I stared at the dark-clad feature. What was Melanie doing in my house? What was she doing with a gun? She was part of all those anti-everything rallies. Why would she have a gun, of all things? “What are you…?”

“Shut up.” The edge in Melanie’s voice sent cold chills down my spine. “Just shut up and tell me what you know.”

I flinched and heard a faint whimper in the back of my throat. What was she talking about? And what was with the crazy eyes? I was afraid to ask what she wanted. I was afraid not to respond. What should I do?

My mind refused to answer. All I could see was a woman pointing a gun at me, spitting out commands and vague demands. She looked like she might even be looking for an excuse to pull the trigger.

“Tell me now,” Melanie snapped.

“What do you want?” I asked timidly. I couldn’t get out of this situation if I didn’t know what Melanie wanted. What could she possibly want from me?

“Tell me what you know.” Melanie enunciated each word slowly, as if she were speaking to a simple mind. Her face contorted in disgust as she kept the weapon trained on me.

“Know?” I blinked at her.

“Don’t play stupid. I saw you at the barn.”

“You did?” I said, and flinched as the woman gave me a scathing sneer.

“Yes, you idiot,” Melanie snapped. She looked nothing like the woman I had been keeping an eye on. Her hand wasn’t wavering on that trigger, despite how long she had been holding it. She looked like she was very comfortable with a weapon, and she looked way too comfortable pointing it at me.

The woman gave a long suffering sigh. “Why couldn’t you keep your nose out of my business? Come to think of it, how do you even know about that particular poison? You can’t tell me some lousy cook actually knows about outdated poisons?”

I shook my head quickly, my throat tight as the woman stared at me with the same compassion as a spider for its prey. As Melanie’s face grew redder, I thought I had better answer her question. “Yes, I did find the Thall-rat in your barn. I didn’t go to the cops, though. No one would believe us anyway, right? We can’t go to the cops without proof. So no one has to…”

“You stupid, stupid little cow.” Melanie snatched my phone from me and flung it at the wall.

“Why did you kill him?” I asked, hoping to distract her. “He was marrying you.”

“He was marrying my land.” Melanie snarled as her finger tightened on the trigger, glaring at me with visible disdain. “He said he’d cleaned up his act. He said that he was going to help me clean up this town. He said that he was an environmentalist now. We talked for hours about new eco-cars and how to bring them to town. A Green Initiative. I thought he
understood
.”

I nodded as she lowered her hands slightly, hoping that her outpouring would calm her down. “He lied,” I said.

“Yes. I fell for it, too,” Melanie stated in such a calm tone that the hairs on the back of my neck rose in alarm. “Him being a rising environmentalist. Him loving me, I let it all slide. I took it all on faith. Then I saw him sneaking around and kissing Kayleen, the mail lady. I realized he wasn’t as invested in the relationship as I was.”

The woman slowly started to pace the room, keeping the weapon trained on me. “So I looked around for his plans. I was going to break off the engagement and put him out of business with his own project. I was going to let him feel the price of betraying me, but I didn’t find any hybrid cars or reforestation projects. When I looked at his emails, there he was chattering to some people about my land.” She let out a sigh. “He was getting legal advice about how long he’d have to be married to me before he could take a share of my land upon divorce. I’d tell you to remember that, if I thought you were going to be around to take the advice to heart.”

I felt a knot of dread at the woman’s calm assessment.

Melanie gave a rueful smile. “He was already arranging to exploit the coal seam gas on my land. I couldn’t allow him to destroy a whole ecosystem to make a profit. He was killing the planet. Then I found those old poisons in the barn. It was like a sign. Poison the man who was intending to poison the town by allowing coal seam gas. I started off with small doses. I kept hoping that maybe he would have a change of heart and transform before the wedding. And then after a while, I knew he wasn’t going to change. He was just too far gone.”

Melanie’s eyes took on a glassy sheen as she smiled.

A wave of panic washed over me. I took a short breath and squeezed my eyes shut. The others had told me I was a witch. If only I’d learned some spells by now. I opened my eyes when Melanie screamed. In my despair, I had forgotten about the house.

“What’s going on?” Melanie asked frantically. “What is this? Stop!”

The pistol was on the ground, right beside Melanie. The woman was staring around herself, paling as she shoved at an invisible barrier. “Help, somebody,” she begged as she slammed her shoulder into an invisible wall, looking like a mime artist, albeit a noisy one, as she stumbled around in the middle of the room.