Page 85 of A Spell of Midlife Mayhem

The inspector continued. ‘Fortunately, Ms Bishop got the number plate. When the constable on duty looked it up, they found it was registered to a person who lives at the address you gave me, Ms Nicholls.’

I remained tight-lipped. What could I say that wouldn’t make me sound like a stalker?

‘But of course, it was you driving the car, wasn’t it, Ms Nicholls? You’ve been driving it to work, including today.’

‘Yes, it was me.’ There wasn’t any point in denying it.

‘You did what? Drive here today or follow your colleague home last night? Or both?’

‘Both,’ I admitted weakly.

‘And that included stopping for twenty minutes while she grabbed a bite to eat before you continued to follow her. I think Ms Bishop and your other colleagues want an explanation for this behaviour, and I’m here to make sure you give them one.’

‘All right. I’ll explain.’

‘This has better be good, Heather,’ Penny said. ‘It gave me the chills when I noticed someone tailing me. I thought—I thought the murderer might be coming after me as their next victim, like in one of those serial killer books.’

Oh, the drama, Penny. Play it up. ‘I didn’t mean to give you a fright. It’s about the stolen spell book.’

‘What about it?’ Lydia asked, looking up for the first time.

‘I discovered where it had been hidden in the house after the murder. The dust was clearly disturbed. The spell book wasn’t taken from the house until later.’

‘Are you still trying to do my job?’ Inspector Pentecost asked.

‘As far as I know, you didn’t search the house for a book missing from the library.’

‘No one told us it was missing until you remembered to mention it the next day,’ she shot back. ‘Besides, we’re investigating a murder. The theft of a book doesn’t concern me.’

‘What missing book?’ Penny asked. ‘And what’s it got to do with me?’

‘An old witch’s spell book was stolen. The one that Ronald—Mr Morris—was studying.’

‘So what?’ Melissa said. ‘Why did you follow Penny home? That’s just creepy.’

My face reddened. Yes, they thought I was a stalker. Or worse. ‘As I said, the book was hidden in the house and moved later. It can only be one of us who moved it.’

‘And you thought it was me.’ Penny’s voice was ice cold. ‘How dare you?’

I shook my head. ‘I thought nothing except I had a crazy idea that if I followed one of you, then I might find the stolen spell book.’

‘You might.’ Penny’s tone had ice on it. ‘Well, you were right about one thing. It was a crazy idea, and it gave me a scare, Heather.’

I squirmed a little but tried not to show it. ‘I’m sorry. It was wrong of me to do it.’

‘You’re damn right.’ Penny’s nostrils flared.

Lydia stood. ‘I’ll consider this incident as you being overzealous, Heather, and I’ll overlook it. We’ll put it behind us.’ She glanced at Penny, who took her time to nod in agreement. ‘We work as a team here, and that means trusting each other. I understand your desire to solve the mystery and find the stolen book—we all like a little mystery, but usually that’s in a book or on television. So, forget your investigation and focus on what you were hired to do—be part of our team managing this house. If you can’t do that, you can’t work here. Consider that a warning.’

Inspector Pentecost added, ‘Leave the detective work to the police. That’s our job.’

I’d really screwed up. My intuition, and logic itself, told me one of my colleagues must have stolen the witch’s spell book. Almost certainly, that meant one of us was Ronald’s killer, and it wasn’t me. I didn’t want to drop this, but if I wanted to keep my job and regain the trust of my colleagues, I had to. Or at least pretend to do so.

‘I apologise. I’ll abandon the Sherlock Holmes activity.’ And now I was a liar too.

‘I don’t think I’m required here any longer,’ the inspector said. ‘I need to get back to the investigation.’ She strode towards the door, but paused right beside me and turned to whisper in my ear. ‘Which you have interrupted. If there’s another incident like this, I might charge you with wasting police time.’

I shivered at her breath on my face as much as her words.

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