Chapter Forty-Five Mini
FORTY-FIVE MINI
Mr. Willy, sir?”
Mini yanked off the mask and shrugged out of the heavy leather coat.
She’d thrown them on when she heard the footsteps, the only way she could think to hide herself.
The coat smelled awful, rancid. The mask didn’t smell, but it was still worse, scarier.
All her regular Mini thoughts had fluttered away like frightened birds as soon as she’d pulled it on.
“Mini?” he said from the top of the steps.
“I’m sorry if I scared you,” she told Willy.
“My God, did you ever, Mini. But I scared you too, I reckon. You’re about the last person I’d expect to see here.” He sat, thumping down on the stone steps that led into the root cellar. She could smell the liquor on him, on his breath, seeping from his pores.
“I was looking for clues,” she told him, a little embarrassed.
“Clues?” He looked at her, his face serious, not teasing at all. “Mini, how did your family get the mark?”
“It was my fault,” she confessed. “I saw him. I was hiding in the bushes.”
He frowned at her, working his jaw like he was chewing on something. “What did you see?”
“A man. Wearing this”—she gestured to the mask and coat she’d just taken off, piled next to her on the floor of the cellar. “And he was riding Stella. She belongs to old Mr. Holland. I figured it out when I saw the red paint on her yesterday.”
“Mmm,” he said, rubbing his beard.
“So all that is proof,” she said, feeling quite triumphant, like a regular detective on the verge of cracking a case.
“Proof of what?”
“That he’s just a man. Not the actual knackerman crawling up out of his grave coming for us all. And I think I know who he is,” she added, stepping closer to him.
Willy’s eyes got big. “Do you now?”
“When the knackerman was at my house that night, he dropped an old-fashioned pocket watch. Then I found out it belongs to Jack St. James—even though it used to belong to Thomas Endicott, it’s got his initials on it!
Miss Prentice, she recognized it right away, and said that the watch is his.
” She was talking fast, the words flying out like bees leaving a hive.
Willy’s face looked dark, serious. “And where’s the watch now?”
“I brought it to Mr. St. James, at the motel. I wanted to be sure.”
“Oh, Mini,” Willy said, shaking his head.
“He got real angry and shouted I should keep my mouth shut. This must be where he comes to put on the costume, to stash all the stuff he picks up. I think we should tell people. Go back into town and tell everyone that Jack St. James is the knackerman! He’s been stealing all the offerings and scaring people and—”
Willy cut her off. “It’s not that simple, Mini.
You’re not seeing the whole picture. Just a piece of it.
” He picked up the mask and looked down into the two dark eye sockets, gave a visible shiver.
Mini didn’t like the way he looked so worried, scared even.
Maybe he did believe. Or maybe, she thought, he was scared of something else. She eyed him suspiciously.
“Mr. Willy, sir, you haven’t explained yet what you’re doing up here.”
“Well, I came here because I think I know a way. A way to save you. And the strangers. And anyone else he goes after. I think I know a way to end it all.”
Willy stood up, swaying a little on his feet, and Mini was scared he might come tumbling down the stairs. She helped steady him.
“You okay, sir?”
“Fine, Mini. Just fine.”
His breath was hot and boozy, like a fire-breathing dragon.
“How?” she asked, unable to keep the doubt from her voice.
“I have a plan. But I need your help. I can’t do it alone. Will you help me? Will you help poor old Sad Willy?”