Ghostly Paws (Mystic Notch Cozy Mystery Series) (21 page)

Did he knock me out, somehow? How had I gotten here? And where was I? I assumed it was the Bates’ basement, but since I didn’t remember getting here, I supposed it could be anywhere.

But what did it matter? No matter where I was, I needed to get out. Fast.

I walked over to the door and pushed. Naturally, it didn’t budge—I couldn’t be that lucky. I pulled on it with as much force as I could muster, but it was solid … and locked tight.
 

I paced the perimeter of my ten by ten cell, studying the floor and ceiling to see if there were any cracks or openings I could wriggle out through. There were none. I tested every bar with my good hand until it stung from pulling on the chipped, rusty iron. None of them budged.

A sigh of frustration escaped my lips as I leaned against the wall. The hard, cold stones chilled my back as I sunk down to the floor.
 

My heart plummeted as I realized I was now trapped by the person who had killed Lavinia. I hugged my knees to my chest, put my head down and cried.

***

“Meow.”

I lifted my head from the crook of my elbow, and brushed away hot tears. Did I just hear a cat? I thought about Pandora and my heart twisted.
 

Looking out at the edge of the darkness, I saw something slinking about. It
was
a cat. Not Pandora, though. This cat was white, with mocha colored markings.

“Here, Kitty,” I put out my hand and made clucking noises.

The cat turned to face me, her pale blue eyes studying me intently as she crept closer.

She snaked her way throughout the bars and came to me, rubbing her cheek against my hand.

“Hi, there. Who are you?” I wondered. Was it Derek’s cat? Now that I knew Carson was the killer, maybe Derek had been telling the truth. I wondered if Derek had been involved, too.

“Oh, well, what does it matter now?” I asked the cat as I found comfort in stroking the silky fur behind her ears.

As the cat’s purring relaxed me, I worried what would happen to Pandora if I didn’t make it out of there. I was glad she was safe at the animal hospital. If not for the break-in, she would have been at the bookstore with me and who knows what might have happened to her.

This brought my thoughts to what had happened in the store. It had all been about that old book. The book Lavinia had told me to protect.
 

I remembered how Bing had wanted the book, but I thought he was the enemy and ran from him. My stomach twisted … I’d practically delivered the book right into Carson’s hands, and now if something bad happened because of it, it was all on me.

I couldn’t just sit here and let that happen. I had to do something.

I stood suddenly, causing the cat to let out a startled mew. I rushed to the door of my cell, the cat trotting in front of me, seeming to know where I was going before I even got there. I pressed my face against the bars, above the lock and looked down, trying to get a look at the lock opening.

The Bates mansion was over three hundred and fifty years old and the cell had probably been here for that long. The lock was original—a simple device that could be opened with a skeleton key. My years as a crime reporter had garnered me a lot of skills, not the least of which was basic lock picking.

I knew how to pick one of these. I just needed something long and straight. I searched my pockets, coming up empty.
 

“Damn!” My arms fell against my sides in frustration.

“Meow!” The cat had left the confines of the cage and was playing with what looked like a big dust ball. I watched as she batted it with her paw, sending it rolling and then pounced on it over and over again.

That gave me an idea.
 

Scanning the floor, I saw a long flat piece of metal that would make a perfect lock pick. It was too far for me to reach, but I might be able to use one of the tricks I’d learned from Bing to get the cat to do my work for me.

One of Bing’s favorite tricks was to make things look like they floated in air. He used a fishing line for that, the line seeming invisible. I didn’t have fishing line, but I had something Bing always said would work just as well—my hair.

The strands were thick, and the corkscrew curls made it look shorter than it actually was. I plucked a few strands out, pleased that I got two of the white ones, and tied them together. Then I picked a few pieces of straw from the corner and tied that to one end.
 

The dangling straw caught the cat’s eye and she left her dust ball and trotted into the cell. Standing up on her hind legs, she batted at it.

“You like?” I squatted down and threw the straw end out. The cat skittered after it, pouncing on it. I jerked it out from under her and she skittered again.
 

I reeled in my new cat toy and went to the edge of the cell. Sticking my hand out through the bars, I tossed the toy out toward the metal piece. It landed just beyond it. Perfect.

The cat pounced on the toy, her front paw hitting the metal piece and sending it sliding toward the cell. Not far enough, though. I jerked the piece toward me and she hit the metal again, inching it closer. A few more well-placed tosses and the metal piece was within reach.

“Thanks, Kitty.” I stretched my fingers through the bars, ignoring the throbbing pain of my burned fingertips, and grabbed the metal piece.

Standing, I poked my hand out so I could put the metal into the lock. The cat sat on the other side of the door, staring at me intently.

I dug the metal piece around. Turns out it’s a lot harder picking a lock from the inside. After about five minutes of fiddling, I heard a satisfying click.
 

I pushed the door and it swung open.

Chapter Thirty-One

I stepped out of the cell, my heart thumping as my eyes darted around the room, or at least the part of the room I could see.
 

Which way should I go?
 

My senses told me I was in a basement because the air had that dank, damp underground feeling. But there were no windows like a regular basement.

My stomach tightened as I looked into the dark. I had no idea what I would find there, but there certainly wasn’t any way out from where I was standing.
 

I forged ahead.

The cat stayed with me, following by my side. I had no idea what I was looking for, but maybe I could find a door that led outside. Or upstairs. Although, if I was in the Bates mansion as I suspected, going upstairs could be fatal.

“Mew.” I heard the soft sound behind me and realized the cat had stopped. I turned, barely able to make her white form out in the dark. She was standing next to the wall … no, not next to it—half-way inside it!

I bent down to find a crack in the wall. It was about five inches, big enough for the cat to wriggle through. She disappeared behind it, the reappeared a few seconds later.

“Meow!” She jerked her tail at me.

“Sure, I’d love to follow you, but it’s too small. Guess I shouldn’t have had dessert last night.” I stuck my arm through and tried to wedge my shoulder in. It just wasn’t big enough.

I pulled my arm out … or tried to. It was stuck.

“Meow.” The cat weaved around my ankles.
 

“Yeah, thanks. This is just great.” I jerked my arm and it came free, but not before I felt the stones shift slightly.
 

Was it my imagination … or had the opening widened?

I put my arm in again and this time more of my shoulder fit through. I wriggled and pushed. Pain shot through my bad leg as I used it for leverage, but it worked. The crack opened up enough for me to fit and I slid in.

I was in a narrow passageway. The cat flicked her tail impatiently before me as I stifled a sneeze from the dust tickling my nose. I could barely make out a set of stairs in front of me. At the top, thin slats of light that I assumed were coming from between the boards that made the passage allowed for minimum visibility.
 

Where was the light coming from?

The cat started up the steps and I followed.
 

We got to the top and there was an intersection. I peered through one of the lighted gaps into a large kitchen. It was empty, but the stainless steel appliances gleamed on top of black and white checked tile.
 

I limped a few more feet and peeked through another gap. This one revealed a sitting room decorated in pale blue. I realized I must have been in a secret passageway somewhere inside the house. All I needed to do was find a way out, hopefully in an unoccupied room with a door to the outside so I could make a clean get-away.
 

“Mew.” The cat sat up ahead. Looking at me, then at the wall. At me, and then the wall. Clearly, she was trying to tell me something.
 

As I tiptoed up to her, I could hear voices. My blood chilled when I recognized one of them as Carson Bates.

The gap in the boards in front of the cat looked different from the others. It was a door. A secret doorway that led into the room. Pressing my face against one of the slats, I looked into an ornate library.
 

Bookshelves lined the walls. Two tufted leather sofas sat facing each other in the middle of the room. A large stone fireplace filled the opposite wall.

Idris Bates stood at the end of one of the sofas. Hadn’t Derek said he was sick? He looked fine to me. Felicity sat on the sofa, her white, flowing dress spread out on the seat on either side of her. Carson stood at the fireplace.

“I can recreate these and we can turn things in our favor. We’ll
own
this town.” She pointed toward the coffee table, her wide sleeves fluttering around her wrists.
 

My eyes slid to where she pointed and my breath caught in my throat. The book Carson had taken from me lay on the table, the binding open to the middle, revealing the ink covered parchment pages.

“I don’t know, Felicity. Your spells have mostly backfired, so far.” Idris Bates looked at his daughter-in-law disapprovingly.
 

Carson coughed over by the fireplace, and the two other Bates’ looked at him. “We need to make use of what’s in the book if we plan to turn Mystic Notch to our side.”

My eyes slid from Carson to the book. I had no idea what he meant by ‘turn Mystic Notch to our side’, but I had a pretty good idea it wasn’t anything I would like. It all hinged on the book and I was the one that had screwed up and let Carson get ahold of it. If anything bad happened in Mystic Notch because of it, it would be my fault.
 

I had to make things right.

I was contemplating just how to do that when a hand clamped over my mouth and pulled me back down the passage, stifling the scream that tried to burst from my throat.
 

***

“Shhh … I’m on your side.”
 

Really? It doesn’t feel like it
, I thought as I clawed at whomever it was, my eyes darting wildly as he pulled me into a little alcove.

“I’ll help you get the book.”
 

That got my attention. I stopped struggling and tried to turn to see who it was.
 

“Promise you won’t scream if I let go,” he said. “If you do, the rest of them will come running and it won’t be a good ending for you.”

I nodded.

He let go, and I whirled around to see Derek Bates standing there with a hopeful look on his face.

“You!” I hissed.

He crossed his arms over his chest.
 

“I should be taking that tone with
you
,” he whispered. “You accused me of killing Lavinia.”

“Well, considering what I’m finding out about your family, I’m wondering if you had a hand in it,” I whispered back.

The cat weaved around Derek’s legs mewing softly. So, it
was
his cat. He must have been telling the truth about his reason for being in town the morning of Lavinia’s death.

He saw me looking down. “Yes, this is the cat I was taking to the vets. Do you believe me?”

I nodded. “But your family …”

Derek brushed his hand through his hair. “I didn’t want to believe one of them could be the killer, even though I had my doubts. But now, with that book and all … well, you can see why I rushed you out of the house the other day.”

“Sort of,” I said, still not sure what the Bates family was up to. Where they witches? And whose side was Derek on?
 

“I saw Carson sneak in with the book. I knew he had you downstairs. I was actually on my way down to let you out,” Derek frowned at me. “How
did
you get out, anyway?”

“Would you believe magic? But not the black kind. I picked the lock and your cat led me to this passage. So you’re not in on any of this with your family?” I still wasn’t sure I believed him, but I had to ask.

“No.” His face turned hard. “I’ve always been different. The black sheep of the family, so to speak. I tried to ignore their darker side—I suppose I love them in some way, but this thing with the book. I just can’t let them unleash evil on Mystic Notch.”

Unleash evil? That sounded bad. I was pretty sure I didn’t want that to happen either.

“Okay, what do you suggest we do?” Just a few hours ago, I thought Derek was the killer and now I was considering joining forces with him. I didn’t see that I had too many other choices.
 

“We need to get the book away from them. They think you are still locked up downstairs, so we have the element of surprise on our side.”

“And just how do you propose we utilize that?”

“I have an idea.” Derek glanced down the passage toward the library where we could still hear the soft hum of conversation. “Here’s what we’ll do.”

***

My nerves tingled with anticipation as I stood at the secret door, looking into the library through one of the gaps in the boards. It looked like I was seeing the room through a tunnel and I realized that my view was between two books—the door must have been cleverly built into one of the bookcases.

I shifted my position to relieve the pressure on my leg as well as to be able to get a better view of the book on the coffee table. Reminding myself to breathe, I placed my hand—the one that wasn’t burned—on the panel that would slide the door open while I waited for Derek to create the distraction that would allow me to slip into the room and steal the book.