Free Witch Is When I Said Goodbye (A Witch P.I. Mystery Book 10) by Adele Abbott Page A

Jill.”
    “That’s Winky. He lives here.”
    “How sweet. They don’t allow us to have pets at the local history museum. If they did, I’d take my dog, Barney with me. Would you like to see a photo of him?”
    “Sure.” I just can’t get enough of dog photos.
    “There he is.” She produced a tattered photo from her purse—no smartphones for Felicity.
    “He’s very handsome.” For a flea-bitten old mongrel. “Look, Felicity, I just wanted to apologise for storming in on you like that the other day.”
    “Don’t worry about it.” She waved my apology away. “I’m sorry that I was so distracted. It was that peacock. You saw it, didn’t you?”
    “Yes, of course.”
    “I’m so relieved to hear you say that. By the time I’d fetched security, it had disappeared. He probably thought I’d imagined the whole thing. I still can’t understand how it got into the building.”
    “It’s a mystery.” I really should be on the stage. “But then, they’re strange creatures, peacocks.”
    “I wrote to my supervisor to ask him if you could try out the typewriter, but I’m afraid I haven’t heard back yet.”
    “Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t matter now.”
    “It’s probably just as well because there was a problem with it. If I remember correctly, the letter ‘O’ had partially worn away. It looked almost like a ‘U’.”
    What? Not when I tried it, it didn’t. Not that I could tell Felicity that.
    “Are you sure? I thought those old manual typewriters were indestructible.”
    “I’m positive. We tested it when we were setting up the office. I typed ‘The lazy black fox jumped over the quick cat’. Or was it ‘the slow brown fox jumped over the quick dog’? Something like that. The letter ‘O’ looked just like a ‘U’.”
    “Is it possible you hit the ‘U’ key by mistake?”
    “No. I tried the letter ‘O’ several times, and each time it came out like a ‘U’.”
    Felicity went back to join her colleagues in the outer office, and left me wondering what on earth was going on. I’d been absolutely sure that the typewriter in the museum had been the one used to type the notes left with the victims, but when I’d tested it, the letter ‘O’ had been fine. And yet, according to Felicity, the letter ‘O’ had been worn. How could that possibly be?
    And then the penny dropped.
     
    ***
     
    Daze was all by herself in Cuppy C; she looked down in the dumps. To be fair, she was never a smiley, cheery, laugh-a-minute kind of girl, but today, she looked particularly fed up. She was at a table next to the window—staring down into her coffee cup. She hadn’t even noticed me come in.
    “Hi, Daze.”
    “Oh, hi, Jill. I didn’t see you there.”
    “Do you mind if I join you?”
    “Sure. Pull up a chair.”
    “I’ll just get a coffee first. Do you want anything?”
    “No. I’m okay, thanks.”
    She definitely sounded out of sorts, so I asked the twins if they had any idea what was wrong.
    “She’s been like that since she came in,” Pearl said.
    “Yeah, she’s been very quiet.” Amber glanced across at Daze. “We didn’t like to say anything though. That would be asking for trouble.”
    “I’ll see if I can get to the bottom of it.” I glanced at the display of cakes. “Where are all the blueberry muffins?”
    “We’re all out, sorry. We’ve got double chocolate, though.”
    “Go on then. I’ll make do with one of those.” The hardships I had to endure!
    Back at the table, I decided to bite the bullet, and try to find out what was wrong.
    “Are you sure you’re okay, Daze? You seem a bit down in the dumps. Is Blaze okay?”
    “Yeah, he’s fine. He still insists on wearing those stupid luminous catsuits. He thinks I don’t know, but I have my spies.”
    “Is that why you’re so down?”
    “No, of course not. That doesn’t bother me. That’s just Blaze being Blaze.”
    “What is it then?”
    “It’s something and nothing really. When I signed up