It’s A Plunderful Life Read online

  I wanted to help, but I didn’t know much advanced first aid. Besides, it looked like Mom knew what she was doing as she lifted Diana’s eyelids to check her pupils, murmuring soothing words the whole time. While she did that, though, I could see about getting to the bottom of what was going on at the park. I drifted over to Mr. Mancuso. “What did you tell her not to eat?”

  He gave another great blow into his handkerchief, then wiped his nose. “The fruit. There was this basket on the drawbridge with her name on it when we got in this morning. Didn’t say who it was from, though. I told her to throw it out, but she said she knew who sent it.”

  I waited, but Mr. Mancuso didn’t continue. “Who?”

  He shook his head. “She wouldn’t tell me. Just said it was a friend.” His voice broke. “Then she took a bite of an apple and started convulsing.”

  Well, that was horrifying.

  I looked around. There, by the corner of the counter, lay an apple, with one bite missing.

  A shudder passed over me. I told myself I was being stupid. Sure, Diana, with her dark hair and red lipstick and pale complexion, looked an awful lot like a real-life Snow White. And she was lying there, in a dreamless sleep like death—

  Had Diana been poisoned?

  But what kind of poison worked almost instantaneously like that?

  It was probably a coincidence. It could easily have been a seizure that just so happened to occur as she took a bite of that apple.

  But the sparkly gold ribbon on the fruit basket glittered malevolently, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was tied to the busted pipes in the pump station and Mother Goose’s severed brake lines.

  It sure did look like whoever was out to hurt us had finally gotten lucky.

  “Diana!”

  I looked up to see Peter rushing in, his earnest face white. Toni stood, moving aside to let Peter kneel by Diana’s head. I slipped closer to my sister, putting one hand on her arm. To my surprise, she didn’t jerk away. “You okay?”

  She shook her head, and I cursed myself for asking such a stupid question. Of course she wasn’t okay. “Can Mom do anything to help?” I whispered. Surely there was a spell for such a moment as this, some type of healing magic that would make everything right again.

  But Toni looked up at me, her eyes hot with unshed tears and anger. “You really don’t know anything, do you?”

  “No, I guess I don’t,” I said. And it felt awful. I wished I could remember everything I’d learned as a child, wished I knew the ins and outs of this magic business. It seemed unfair that one spell could remove all my memories of magic but nothing could wake Diana up.

  Luckily, the paramedics showed up just then, and Toni went to help my mother to her feet, supporting her with one arm around her waist. It was a relief to have professionals there, their movements brusque and business-like. Watching them take Diana’s blood pressure, it seemed even more ridiculous to think that one bite of an apple might have been the cause of this.

  Diana would be fine. Any minute now the paramedics were going to stand up and announce that there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for what was going on.

  “Oh, yes, we see this all the time,” one of them would say.

  Only they didn’t. Within a few minutes, the paramedics had Diana bundled onto a stretcher. Just before they whisked her off to the hospital, Peter bent over and placed a very careful kiss on her forehead.

  I’m not going to lie—I was holding my breath. I know it sounds stupid, but, I mean, if it had been the apple that did this, then was it so farfetched to imagine that maybe, just maybe, it might be Prince Charming who fixed it?

  Maybe Peter wasn’t exactly what I pictured when I thought of Prince Charming, but clearly Diana found him attractive.

  So I was disappointed when nothing happened. Diana’s eyelids didn’t so much as flicker.

  I sighed.

  Then the paramedics loaded Diana into the ambulance and left, siren wailing ominously.

  “Mrs. Hollingsworth?”

  A tall woman with short, curly red hair, cat’s eye glasses, and a Gallows Bay police uniform approached my mother. Her mouth was soft with sympathy, but her eyes were sharp, taking in the park lobby, the gift shop, the distraught staff. “I’m Officer Melody Simpson. Is there somewhere we can talk privately?”

  18

  My mother instructed everyone to stay in the castle until Officer Simpson told us we could leave. Then she disappeared into her small office with the police officer.

  “I should make a sign for the front door,” Toni muttered.

  I glanced at the door, where a police officer stood, nodding as Mr. Mancuso repeated the fruit basket thing. “I don’t think we’re going to get many visitors today.”

  “Still…” She moved behind the counter and rummaged around until she found a sheet of paper. Grabbing a nearby Sharpie, she stood there, pen literally to paper, staring at the growing splotch the tip of the marker made on the blank page.

  I wandered over, still replaying the morning’s events over in my head. “So much for true love’s kiss,” I muttered.

  Toni looked up sharply. “What?”

  “When Peter kissed her, I thought…” I lifted one hand helplessly. “It’s stupid.”

  “I’ll say.” She finally lifted the pen, studying the ugly mark left behind on the paper as if it might give her some inspiration for what to write. “Peter’s not her true love.”

  “Isn’t Peter her boyfriend?” Maybe I was confused. I struggled with mom brain sometimes. Maybe I’d mixed some names up again, like that time I told Margot and Georgie that I really liked that one actor, Bandersnatch.

  Boy, had Georgie enjoyed informing me that I meant Benedict Cumberbatch.

  “No, Peter’s her boyfriend.” Toni nibbled her bottom lip as if debating whether to say more. Then she sighed heavily. “She was seeing someone else too,” she said, her voice so low I could barely hear it.

  Before I could process that, Mr. Mancuso and the police officer by the door came into the gift shop. “There’s the apple,” Mr. Mancuso said, pointing at the fallen fruit.

  Toni stepped away from the counter, grabbing my arm and drawing me out of the shop. She found a corner where we could be a decent distance from any other staff members. “No one was supposed to know, but I stumbled on them one day when I was doing some housekeeping. They were using one of the guest cottages.” Her hand tightened on my arm, and her pale eyes blazed. “Mom would fire her if she knew about this.”

  The guest cottages. Of course. That was what Diana was doing there that day. Not looking for an earring. Meeting some guy. “Understood.”

  “He’s an older guy.” Her voice dropped even further. “Married.”

  Oh. Well, then.

  “I tried to get her to stop seeing him,” Toni went on. “I told her it was a bad idea. I tried to keep her busy whenever Peter wasn’t around. That’s why we crashed your stupid girls’ night. I thought if I made her do stuff that she would…” She trailed off.

  That she would just stop seeing her married man.

  Well, that explained a lot.

  I thought of that single apple. “Toni,” I whispered. “This means someone had a motive to hurt her. More than one person, actually.”

  She drew back. “What are you talking about?”

  “She was having an affair. That would upset a lot of people. Peter, her other boyfriend’s wife. Hell, even her older man might have a motive if she threatened to tell his wife.”

  “You watch too many crime shows,” she scoffed. “That doesn’t happen in real life. People fool around. It happens. Maybe some people wouldn’t be happy if they knew about what she was doing, but no one from Gallows Bay is going to hurt Diana just because she’s sleeping around.”

  “Be careful,” I said. “I know it’s easy to think you know people, but you’d be surprised by what people you think you know can do.” I thought about Brad, his sweet smile, his eyes with those ridiculously lo
ng lashes. He’d seemed so happy—right up until the moment he yanked the rug out from under me.

  Toni looked like she wanted to argue—although frankly that was how she always looked when we spoke—but just then my mother stepped out of her office, closing the door behind her. Her face was ashen, and she paused for a moment, one hand still resting on the doorknob. With her other hand, she pinched the bridge of her nose. Then she took a deep breath and looked around at the anxious staff members scattered about the lobby.

  Seeing us, she made her way over.

  “What happened? Any news? Is she going to be okay?” Toni asked.

  Mom held up her hands. “She’s in a coma, but she’s stable. But, yes, there’s news.” She put one hand on her chest as if to steady herself. “They can’t say for certain yet, but the doctors suspect that Diana may have ingested something.”

  “Ingested,” Toni said slowly.

  “They think she may have been poisoned.”

  Toni looked like Mom had punched her. “Poisoned?” she said. “But who would…?” And then she met my gaze. “I need to talk to that police officer.”

  Mom rubbed her arm. “Yes. They’re going to take statements from everyone.” Then she wrapped her arms around us, squeezing us both. “In the meantime, we’re going to just have to be strong for everyone and do what we have to do.”

  “Which is?”

  My mom’s eyes were bright with tears. “We close down the park. It’s now an active crime scene.”

  19

  No change.

  That was the news my mother and Toni brought home from the hospital, day after day. Not only could the doctors not wake her up, they couldn’t even figure out what poison they were dealing with. Nor had any tests done on the apple determined what she had ingested.

  If she had ingested something at all.

  Three days into Diana’s coma, I found my mother poring over the books Vivian had brought me in Kurt’s study. Her face looked tight with worry. “Mom? You okay?”

  She looked up, her eyes squinty with fatigue. “Yeah, I’m fine.” She waved one hand over the material in front of her. “I don’t like any of this.”

  “What is it?” I asked, moving closer. Kurt was taking his daily nap, and Ichabod was watching TV downstairs, which left just Squashi in the study with my mother and me.

  “All of this. I’ve read through everything I can find on Ichabod Frowd’s life, and I can’t find anything obvious that might be holding him here.”

  “So?” I dropped into a spare chair.

  “So, why is he here?” She paused, then looked at me closely. “You’re sure you didn’t summon him? Even accidentally?”

  “How would I even do that?” I asked, holding up my hands.

  She sighed and sat back. “There are spells. Sympathetic magic, that sort of thing.”

  “Well, I can assure you, I didn’t perform any spells that might have summoned him from the Great Beyond.”

  She tapped her pen on the desk blotter. “That’s what worries me. There’s something dark out there, something that wasn’t there before. And Ichabod showing up at the same time…”

  “What are you saying?”

  She sighed again. “I’m saying that it’s possible something evil has awoken, and that somehow Ichabod is tied up with it.”

  “You think Ichabod is involved in this evil?”

  “Far from it. I think he’s here in response to the evil. The universe loves balance.” She gestured at the books on the desk. “The man was a pirate hunter. His story is all bound up with some of the worst men in history.”

  I stood up and moved around behind her, looking down at the open book she had been reading. “You think a pirate is haunting the Enchanted Forest?”

  “I know it sounds ridiculous.” She removed her reading glasses, their multi-colored rhinestones winking in the overhead light. “But I just know that there’s something wrong here.”

  “Could a ghost do the kinds of things that have been going on here at the park? Cutting brake lines, poisoning cast members? Wouldn’t a ghost just do spooky stuff?” I thought back to that snapping twig in the dark. Surely that had been a real, live being, not some scrap of ectoplasm. Ichabod might talk a lot, but he never made noise when he moved around.

  She set the glasses back on the bridge of her nose. “No, you’re right. I’m just nervous, I guess. I’ve told the employees we’ll keep paying them until we reopen, but the police can’t tell me when they think they’ll conclude their investigation. I hate to worry about the park while Diana is still in a coma, but if this goes on for too long, it’ll bankrupt us.” She pressed her lips together. “There are a lot of people that depend on us for their livelihood.”

  I thought about Viv’s comment about the town. “I’ll talk to Ichabod, see if I can get anything useful out of him.”

  My mother nodded. She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it. “Just,” she said finally. “Just be careful.”

  I grinned. “I’m always careful.”

  She shook her head and returned to her books. “I have a sinkful of dishes that say otherwise.”

  I could have sworn the last time I walked past the family room, Ichabod had been enjoying a program about the Hoover Dam on the History Channel, but I found him watching some trashy reality show with wide eyes. When I walked in, a look of relief crossed his face.

  “Madame, I apologize to you. I have assumed you were a poor example of womanhood, but now that I have witnessed how other members of your sex act, I see that you are a model of restraint and discretion.”

  I grimaced. Members of my sex? Wasn’t that just like Ichabod? Even his compliments were highly insulting. “I don’t like it when you talk about women that way.”

  He folded his arms across his chest. “And yet these women speak of each other in the coarsest language imaginable, and that is acceptable?”

  “I wouldn’t call it acceptable, no.” Dammit, he had a point. I trotted out one of my go-to Mom lectures. “But, Ichabod, we can’t control other people. We can only control ourselves. Other people may say things that are unkind. That doesn’t mean that we should say things like that, too.”

  “I see,” he said, holding one finger to his mouth. “So, as an example, if you heard that Mistress Toni said something disparaging about you, you would feel duty-bound to speak only kind words about her in response?”

  “What did she—?” But the gleam in his eyes gave him away. “Teasing people isn’t kind either.”

  He chuckled, a rich sound that made me realize I’d never heard him laugh before. Captain Ichabod Frowd had a sense of humor? Who would have guessed?

  “I apologize for the jest, Mistress Cass.” He floated a little higher off the floor, his eyes back on the TV. “While you are here, I also have some questions about something called implants.”

  I coughed. “You’re getting quite the education, aren’t you?”

  “I admit that I am impressed by the world of knowledge you have available to you through your myriad inventions.”

  I really didn’t want to spend the afternoon trying to talk to the biggest prude I knew about boob jobs. “I’m not sure you’re ready to learn about implants,” I said.

  He looked a smidge regretful. “That may be. As I understand them, they seem quite salacious.”

  “That’s one word for them.”

  I picked up the remote and clicked the TV off. Definitely enough television for him for now.

  “Ichabod, I need to talk to you about something.”

  He flitted around the family room. “I don’t suppose it is about something called extensions?”

  “No, it’s about you.”

  He stopped, his back to me. “As I feared.”

  “You don’t want to talk about yourself?”

  He turned, his profile stiff. “It is not that. It is just that I have had more memories return to me, and they are unpleasant.” His eyes got a faraway look in them, and he smiled a little. “Mos
t of them, anyway.”

  “I’m sorry.” I wished I could take some of the pain from him, but I needed to talk to him about the capture of Christopher Durus, and I was pretty sure that fell under the category of unpleasant memories.

  “And there is another thing…” He drifted around the room, his hands skimming through the air above the end tables, the back of the couch, the clock on the wall. “I am learning a great deal about your time. But I know that I do not belong here. At some point we will discover the reason why I have been brought to you. And then…” He held one finger aloft and swirled it in the air, a ghostly magician miming the saddest trick of all.

  He didn’t want to leave. “I’ll miss you, too,” I said.

  He moved closer. He was taller than me, or at least he was at the moment, hovering over the floor. Looking down at me, the lines around his eyes crinkled as he smiled. “I believe you are telling an untruth, madame.”

  “Maybe.”

  But I wasn’t. As obnoxious as Ichabod could be, he was growing on me.

  Besides, I hadn’t even shown him the Victoria’s Secret catalog yet.

  I wasn’t sure which of us would enjoy that more—me because I would love to see his face when he saw women in their lingerie and angel wings, or him because deep down he really wanted to look at women in lingerie and angel wings.

  His eyes were fixed on my face, and it occurred to me just how close we were. I mean, I couldn’t actually feel his body heat—you know, because he didn’t have any. But his face looked a lot less judgy and a lot friendlier as he gazed down at me, his hair tied back in that ponytail. If he let his hair down, would it fall straight or wave a little, maybe just around his temples, where streaks of gray gave him some added gravitas? The loose, blousy shirt was open at the neck, revealing a wedge of lean muscle, and his breeches fit close around his narrow hips.

  Really, he had kind of a Fabio look going on, if Fabio had dark hair and was a couple decades older and was terrified of a woman’s bare ankles.