Whether or not Jones was being clever, I needed to be. It would be a good idea for me to appear to go after an obvious suspect to hide my real investigation. But who made for a good patsy? Gregor?
“I probably ought to check some of those employee files we dug up on our last case,” I said to Rod as we made our way down the stairs toward our respective offices.
“You think someone Collegium-linked is behind this?” he asked.
Boy, did I. But we couldn’t talk about that in this building. “I have some theories. Hey, we should all get together for dinner tonight.” I turned pointedly to Owen. “Your place.”
“It’s kind of a mess,” he began, but then he realized what I meant. “Yeah, okay. Just us three?”
“For now, I think. I’d rather keep everyone else out of this.”
Having a clandestine meeting at his place meant Owen actually left work on time, for a change. I wondered if that might look suspicious. I know if I were observing Owen and saw him leave the office at five, I’d wonder what was going on. Having a wedding to plan gave us some cover, but was it enough?
We picked up Chinese on the way home, and Rod arrived soon after we did. “I suppose you’re wondering why I called you together,” I couldn’t resist saying once we’d served ourselves.
“I really am,” Rod said.
“I have a suspect.”
“Why didn’t you say something when Jabez Jones was grilling us?” Rod asked.
“I’m not really ready to make it official.”
“Now I’m intrigued,” Owen said. “Who is it?”
“Matilda Mayfair,” I declared triumphantly.
I was a little surprised when neither of them protested or said I was totally off-base. “I could see it,” Owen said, nodding. “But what makes you suspect her?”
“Did you notice that she wasn’t dancing, either? She was just behind us on that video that Jones showed us.”
“She might have been shielded by our spell,” Rod said.
“There were people dancing between us and her,” I said. “Matilda looked like she was doing a spell, but I can’t tell when it started, whether she was just doing a spell to shield herself or if she was already doing magic before the dancing began.” I pulled up the footage on the laptop I’d borrowed from work. The wizards leaned close to study it as it played.
“Looks like a spell,” Owen confirmed. “But I’m not seeing enough of it to know exactly what she’s doing.”
Feeling somewhat vindicated, I continued. “But there’s more. Her family’s business took a big downturn after we busted up the Collegium. They’re selling off property to make ends meet.”
Rod rubbed his chin as he thought. “You think they want to go public with magic?”
“It would open up new markets for them. We’ve been looking at this as an ideology thing, but maybe it’s a simple case of follow the money.”
“And if it’s some magic watchdog group that busts the secret open, the Mayfairs don’t get the blame,” Owen concluded. “Even better if they can pin it on me.”
“Oh! I didn’t think that they might be doing that deliberately,” I said. “Do you think she’s targeting you?”
“A lot of these incidents have happened when I was present. That’s one thing Jones is right about. I know I’m not doing it, but it might not be a coincidence.”
“That really complicates things,” I said. “I’ve already been warned to tread lightly and have rock-solid evidence before I speak up, even within MSI.”
“How do you plan to go about getting evidence?” Owen asked.
I sighed heavily. “That’s the tricky part. But it does get easier if they’re targeting you. Then we’ll know to keep an eye on you.”
“You’re using me as bait?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Well, when you put it that way …” I teased. “Maybe we could also trace who’s sending the information to Carmen, the reporter.”
“If I know anything about these people, they’ll cover their tracks. They may not be as wealthy as they used to be, but they still have plenty of cash to throw around,” Rod said. “They’re probably not getting their own hands dirty. Mattie may have been at that concert, but I doubt she’s been physically present anywhere else.”
“I’ll have to check on that,” I said. “When I was studying footage from other events, I hadn’t met her yet, so she’d have just been a face in the crowd.”
“Maybe I should get in touch with her,” Owen said. “She gave me her card, so she’d be expecting to hear from me.”
“I wonder what that’s about if she’s framing you,” Rod said. “I doubt you’d have even suspected her if she hadn’t approached us at the festival.”
“I wouldn’t have had the slightest idea who she was,” I said. “But getting in touch with Owen would make it easier for her to know where he’s likely to be. She’s been lucky so far.”
“Really lucky,” Rod said, frowning. “How has she known where you’d be?”
“To and from work is easy,” Owen said.
“Yeah, but not the schedule,” I said. “You’re pretty erratic about that. But there was the scuffle at the nightclub—I saw those people who might have been linked to this at the magical club, so it would have been easy for one of them to follow us away from there and start something when we were present. The bike incident in the park and the festival would have been harder to set up.”
“The disappearing car had nothing to do with me, and I’m sure there have been plenty of other incidents where I wasn’t present,” Owen said. “I think it’s more likely to have been a coincidence than a deliberate targeting.”
“Maybe it was, but that may be why she approached you now,” I said. “She may know you’ve been suspected, and now they want to pin it on you. If you meet up for drinks, coffee, or whatever, you can pretty much bet that there will be a big public display of magic nearby.” I gasped as I got an idea. “And it would be interesting if that reporter got called to the same location. That might give us something to go on.”
“So you are using me as bait,” Owen said with a grin.
“The idea of you,” I corrected. “You don’t have to show up. You have some kind of crisis along the way and are running late.”
“It’s still not real evidence,” Rod said. “It might confirm your suspicions, but we’d need to find a paper trail or catch her red-handed, with multiple witnesses and no other good explanation for what they see. And make sure those witnesses can’t be bought. There’s a good chance their stories would drastically change before any hearing.”
“Well, do you have any ideas?” I snapped in frustration.
He shrugged. “Not really my job. You’re the investigator.”
I mulled it over as I picked at my dinner. “I think maybe you should hold off on calling her,” I said to Owen. “You said you were never good friends, and you didn’t exactly act enthusiastic when she gave you her card. It might come across as fishy if you suddenly got back to her a couple of days after you ran into her, and so soon after you were targeted by an investigation. In the meantime, I’ll at least make a show of looking into some of the other known magical agitators. Who knows, maybe I’ll come up with something, but at least it won’t look like I’m focusing on her. If she really wants something from you, she’ll probably arrange to bump into you again, or she’ll track you down and call you.”
“And you should be careful when you’re in public,” Rod added. “You don’t want to be suspected of stirring up trouble.”
“So, I should stay at home or at work?” Owen said, perking up.
“You don’t have to act like that’s a reward,” Rod said.
“I think it sounds lovely, myself,” I said. “We’ve picked a band, so we don’t really need to go out anymore.”
“Other than, you know, for fun,” Rod said.
“Depends on what you call ‘fun,’” I said with a grin.
“We picked a band?” Owen asked.
“Yeah, I liked the one from the festival. I guess I forgot to say anything in all the excitement. Is that okay with you?”
“They were good. People could dance to them, I guess.” He grinned. “Even without magic forcing them to do so.”
“And you didn’t tell me you could dance.”
“I was taught. That doesn’t mean I can do it.”
“You can try for the wedding.”
“Yeah, Owen. For the wedding,” Rod echoed. He got up and went to the stereo, where he sorted through stacks of CDs, selected something, and loaded it into the machine. A slow big band song came on. “This isn’t exactly what you’ll have, but the sound may be similar. Let’s see what you can do.”
I was the one who balked. “He may have been taught to dance, but I never was.”
Rod came over to me, took my hand, and pulled me out of my chair. “It’s a foxtrot. Very simple. Like this: slow, slow, quick, quick. For you, it’s back, back, side, side.”
I didn’t move smoothly, but we made it around the living room without me falling over or stepping on his feet. When we got back to the dining table, Owen came up behind Rod, tapped him on the shoulder, and said, “May I cut in?”
I felt a lot more nervous when he put one hand on my back and took my hand in his other hand. I wasn’t sure why, since he was the one I was marrying. I guess I was more concerned about doing it right with him. In spite of his protestations about his dancing ability, he was pretty good, possibly even smoother than Rod. We moved together well. I got so caught up in being in his arms that I was startled when the song ended and Rod said, “There, was that so hard? Should I put on another song?”
“No, we’re fine,” Owen said before I could answer. I wasn’t sure whether or not I wanted to stop dancing. It had actually been kind of nice.
“I don’t know what your problem with dancing is,” I said as we returned to the table. “You were pretty good at it.”
“He doesn’t like doing things that make him feel like people are watching him,” Rod answered for him.
“Then you’re in trouble because people will be watching you at your own wedding, no matter what you do,” I said. “Just pretend it’s a presentation or demonstration for work. You’re showing off a spell you developed.”
“You know, there might be a market for a dancing spell,” Owen said, and I recognized the dangerous spark of inspiration in his eyes.
“No! Not now. Someone’s obviously come up with a dancing spell. That’s the problem,” I scolded.
“Well, it wouldn’t be a spell to force people to dance. It would just allow people to be able to dance—sort of like training wheels for dancers, or an autopilot. It might be something we could show off at the wedding, a favor for our guests.”
I started to protest, but Rod put a hand on my shoulder and leaned down to murmur in my ear, “Hush. This may be the only way you’ll get him to do a public first dance at your wedding, if he’s thinking of it as doing a demo of his latest invention.”
“He does know it won’t work on me, right?” I replied. “I’m the one who could use some magical help.”
A ringing phone interrupted the conversation. Owen went to answer it. I forced myself to eat instead of straining my ears to eavesdrop. Whoever he was talking to, he didn’t act particularly excited about it. He gave a lot of monotone one-word answers. Probably some kind of survey, I decided. He was too nice to just hang up on them like most people did.
When he returned to the table, though, he looked a little pale, which was a stronger reaction than I’d expect from a survey. “What is it?” I asked.
“That was Mattie,” he said, sounding stunned. “She wanted to get together and catch up.”
“Aha! I knew she was up to something,” I said.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said. “I can’t imagine any other reason she’d want to get together. If she changed her mind about me because of my success, I’d have thought she’d have contacted me more than a year ago, before all that stuff about my parents came out. If she was being a supportive friend, she’d have reached out last year.”
“Well, what did you say?” I asked.
“I said we could have lunch tomorrow.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Rod asked.
“We were talking about using me as bait earlier.”
I sat up straighter. “Okay, we need to plan for this. Rod, you’re our illusion expert. Can you disguise yourself to be at that place to keep an eye on her? I’m worried about bringing most of the security people in on this, but I may see about getting our formerly homeless guys on the case. They can lurk outside. They don’t know about that family or any of the magical world politics, so we can trust them. She met me—not that I think she paid any attention at all to me—but maybe I can send Trish in. It would be good to have an immune in there. And I’ll check in with Carmen to see if she’s had any news releases.”
“What do you think she’ll do?” Owen asked, sounding amused.
“I’m worried she’s setting you up to be the patsy for the latest magical demonstration. Which is why you’re not going to be able to make it to that lunch.”
We didn’t have a lot of time to put our plans in motion. I backed down from the idea of bringing our new recruits in on the operation, mostly because I didn’t want to put them in the position of hiding things from Sam. But Trish eagerly agreed to go to lunch at the selected restaurant, and Rod didn’t have to be persuaded to disguise himself and keep an eye on Matilda.
My part of the plan was a little more challenging. I had to come up with a good reason to contact Carmen and ask her if she’d heard anything more about magic events. The tricky thing was that I’d downplayed all her suspicions. Why would I ask her for updates on something I’d showed no signs of believing in?
The solution came when someone handed me a flier just before I entered the subway station on the way to work the morning of Owen’s lunch. I glanced at it and saw that it was a notice about a “Public Event that Will Change the Way You See the World” scheduled for that evening at City Hall Plaza. That sounded like an excuse to call Carmen.
I’d already programmed the station number into my cell phone, and once I got to my office, I called it, hoping she’d be at work. She was. “Hi, this is Kathleen. From the meeting and the concert,” I said, hoping she’d remember me.
“Yeah. Hi. What’s up?” she said, sounding wary.
“I’m sure it’s going to be something silly, but I just got a flier for some public event at City Hall Plaza this evening and was wondering if you’ve had any news releases tipping you off about anything lately.”
“Nope. Do you know what the event’s about?”
“Just something that’s supposed to change the way you see the world.” But the proximity to MSI headquarters was a little worrisome. “I guess they stopped sending you news releases, huh? Nothing else going on today?”
“Not that they told me about. Are you planning to go to the thing tonight?”
“I may check it out, just out of curiosity. It’s near where I work.”
“Maybe I’ll see you there.”
“Maybe.”
I ended the call, feeling some relief about Owen. If Matilda was behind all this stuff, and if she was going to frame him, she’d have invited the reporter to be present, I was sure. Maybe she really did just want to catch up with an old classmate. Maybe her family losing its money and prestige made her more sympathetic with Owen’s situation. Maybe she was trying to recruit him to the dark side.
About an hour before Owen’s meeting with Matilda, I went out to walk the perimeter around the restaurant area and make sure nothing had been hidden magically. I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or even more worried when I didn’t come across anything untoward. No magical creatures skulked around outside the restaurant. I didn’t see any people I recognized from the anti-magic meeting or any other events. I was probably the most suspicious-looking thing around, as I lurked s
o that I could watch the doorway and maybe get a glimpse through the windows. I saw Matilda arrive, her perfect blond hair swishing back and forth behind her shoulders as she walked. She was a bit early, but Rod and Trish were already in place.
Now to see what she’d do. This was about the time that Owen was supposed to call and apologize about something coming up.
Therefore I almost blew my own cover when Owen approached the restaurant and I barely stopped myself from shouting, “What do you think you’re doing? That wasn’t the plan!” Okay, so there were no reporters present, and I didn’t see anyone who looked like they might be ready to cause trouble, but that was no excuse not to follow the plan. And he accused me of being reckless!
I just had to hope that Rod and Trish would be able to manage whatever happened inside. I couldn’t see either of them from my position, but I did see Owen take the seat across from Matilda. It was sheer agony waiting through the lunch. I felt like the poor little match girl, watching through the windows while they lingered over a fancy lunch as I ate my sad sandwich alone outside. I knew that whatever his reason for not sticking with the plan, it was only for work, but I still didn’t like it. I was no longer at all jealous, but I was angry about him being used. And I was sure she was using him. The only question was how and why.
I felt like at least two hours must have passed before they emerged from the restaurant, him gallantly holding the door for her. She did that double air kiss thing that struck me as awfully pretentious before they went their separate ways. I was torn between following her and confronting him, but he approached me after she got into a cab, which settled the issue.
“What were you thinking?” I demanded. “The plan was that you weren’t going to show up.”
“Change of plans,” he said, but the flush that spread upward from his collar contradicted his nonchalant tone. “It was pretty clear that nothing was going to happen. The meeting wasn’t public enough for a big magical event they could pin on me, there were no media present, and it looked like your sweeps of the surrounding area hadn’t turned up anything. So I figured the meeting was about something else, and we might as well know what it was.”
Enchanted Ever After Page 18
