“So?” I said. I wasn’t catching on. Maybe it was just too early. The sky was still dark; the sun had not even come up yet.
“Dogs have very good noses,” Skili said. “She probably detects the smell of werewolf on that shoe. Shifters have a very distinctive smell. Especially werewolves. Or so I’m told.”
“Interesting,” I said.
“She must be thinking of the pack she spends time with,” Skili said.
We watched Blueberry stuff her face into the shoe with so much excitement it seemed that if she could actually crawl inside of it, she would. Her whole nose disappeared into it.
I poured my tea, and then settled into a chair. As I sipped it, I typed up a text to my witch sisters—at least the ones who were in town, Penny and Annie:
Morning ladies! I had a breakthrough on the case last night. Someone tried to shoot The Miser. Don't worry, he’s okay. And it turns out Polly is a werewolf! We just don’t know where she is right now. I’m guessing she’s hiding out, in wolf form, in the woods. Who wants to help me search?
I hit send and then waited for responses. Penny’s response came in first.
Count me in! I love me a good werewolf search. Let me finish my coffee and I’ll be right over.
I sent her a thumbs up.
A few minutes later, a response from Annie pinged into my phone.
I would love to help, but unfortunately I’m tied up at the cafe until four. I will certainly help out after that, if the search is still on. Good luck, girls, and be safe!
I sent her a heart, and Thanks Annie!
Next, I checked the calendar that Cora set up for my massage booking. I saw that I had three in a row booked, starting at one, plus a few custom mud baths that needed to be set up in the afternoon as well.
“Totally doable,” I whispered aloud. I got up to grab an apple from my cooler. I didn’t feel like cooking up anything fancy for breakfast. My mind was so busy, I couldn’t settle down enough to think about preparing a meal. I finished the apple quickly and then sat sipping my tea.
As I sipped, I thought over the plan for the day. I hadn’t seen Hal since we parted ways the night before. If he caught Polly, wouldn’t he try to tell me? My living quarters were pretty obvious. I figured his absence probably meant that he’d had about as much luck as I the night before—which was none. And that meant that Polly was still on the loose.
Penny and I had to track down Polly. But how?
A few enthusiastic yips from Blueberry caught my attention.
I turned my gaze to her and watched as she knocked the red orthopedic sneaker over with her paw, and then buried her nose even deeper into it.
She really loves the scent, I thought.
Suddenly, I had an idea.
I sat up a little bit straighter. It was then that I saw Penny approaching. She held two to-go cups from the Death Cafe. She was wearing her green messenger bag, and her familiar Turkey’s calico ears were poking out of it in a place where the top flap was slightly open. Then his paw emerged, and he slinked out of the bag. He trotted over to Blueberry to check out the shoe with her, and Penny handed me a cup.
“I got you a Funky Buddha drink,” she said. “With a sugar-free chai tea, an extra shot of espresso, and soymilk. And Annie says hello.”
She eyed the sneaker. “Is Blueberry taking her love of fashion to a whole new level?” she asked as she watched Blueberry stick her front paw into the shoe, in an attempt to roll it over.
I shook my head “No,” I said, “That’s Polly’s shoe.”
“Polly, King Midas' wife? The secretive shifter? The possible killer? The one we have to track down today?”
I nodded. “That’s the one!” I said. “And I just had an idea about how we can track her down.” I sipped my drink gratefully. It was nice of Penny to bring it to me. My tea was delicious and all, but there’s something about sipping espresso-infused, silky soy chai that really makes me feel ready for anything.
“What’s your idea?” Penny asked.
“I think that Blueberry might be able to lead us to Polly,” I said. “She really likes the scent of Polly’s shoe. I should have let her smell it last night, but I didn’t think of it. I stuffed it into my pocket before she got a good whiff. Last night I think she caught the scent a few times, even without being primed for it first. She was zigzagging all over the trail, pulling me along.”
I sipped my drink excitedly, thinking about Blueberry’s behavior the night before. I remembered the way she sometimes sped up, as if eager to get somewhere.
I went on. “But I got so tired, we had to call off the search. I think that If we head out into the woods, Blueberry could use her nose to sniff out Polly’s hiding place. Skili just reminded me that dogs are good sniffers, and of course we know how much Blueberry loves shifters.”
Just then, Turkey turned his head to look at me. He glared in my direction.
“What?” I said to Penny. “What did I do? Why is he looking at me like that? Come on Turkey... I’m your Auntie Marley. We’re friends.”
Penny lowered her voice to a whisper, and guarded her mouth with her hand as she said, “He doesn’t like it when you infer that dogs are in any way better than cats.”
I held back a giggle. Turkey was still glaring at me. I spoke up, “And if Turkey helps us with the search, too, we’re sure to succeed,” I said in a loud, clear voice. “Because everyone knows how brilliant cats are. Smarter than dogs, I’d say.”
“Oh, definitely!” Penny agreed loudly.
Turkey swiveled his head around, and returned his attention to the shoe, which he batted with his paw. Our little act seemed to satisfy him, and I was happy about that. There’s one place I don't want to be, ever, and that’s Turkey’s bad side. There’s really no telling what that cat is capable of.
“What do you think?” I asked Penny. “Will it work?”
“Yes! I am one-thousand percent sure it’ll work,” Penny said enthusiastically. “You cracked this case wide open, Detective Greene, and now we just have to tie up the loose ends. Let’s catch ourselves a killer!” She held up her hand, and I jumped out of my chair and gave her a high five.
“I’ll grab Blueberry’s leash!” I said. “I think she has a sparkly lime green one which will match her bow.”
“Perfect!” Penny said. She reached into her messenger bag and started rummaging around “Oh, before I forget, I picked up your mail on the way up here. I was getting my own, so I just asked for yours, too.”
I rolled my eyes. “When is our post office going to stop giving our mail out to whoever asks for it? That has to be against the rules.”
“Ha! The Hillcrest Post Office actually follows the rules?’ Penny said. “That’s not going to happen anytime soon.” She handed me a stack of envelopes.
I flipped through them and saw the usual bills. I knew Cora would scold me if she saw me set them aside without at least opening them, but she wasn’t around. I was about to add them to my already large pile of unopened mail, when one caught my eye. “URGENT: Action needed!” it said right above my address.
I placed the others on the table, and then peered closer at the urgent one. I saw a government address in the top corner as the return address.
I felt a little knot in the pit of my stomach.
It’s okay, I tried to tell myself. This is totally cool. No big deal. Those red, all-caps, block letters can’t scare me.
Even as I tried to tell myself this, my body disobeyed my mental commands. My hands started shaking and I felt my blood pressure spike.
“Everything okay?” Penny asked. “Are you ready to start our murderous werewolf search with our trusty sniffer-dog, Blue? Come on! This is going to be so much fun!”
There’s a reason that Penny has been my best friend since I was five. She’s weird, just like me. Only a weirdo would think going out to the woods to hunt down a murderous werewolf would be fun. Seeing as I’m unconventional too, we’ve always gotten along.
However, I
was too upset about the letter to feel excited.
“Seriously, Mar,” Penny said. “You okay? You look pale.”
“I—I think so,” I said. I reached for my Funky Buddha espresso-spiked tea and took a sip. I hoped that the warm, frothy, sweet drink would soothe my nerves, but it did not. The jolt of espresso only set my nervous system even more on edge.
“It’s just—this letter looks important,” I said. “Cora said it was bad for me to always ignore the bills that come through. I think this one has to do with the money that I owe to the government. Maybe I’d better open it.”
“Cora is Miss Responsible,” Penny said. “You don't have to open it right away. I always wait until I’m in a really, really good mood before I face my finances. Jumper Strongheart has a whole book about it. He says that you should only pay bills when you’re feeling grateful. He said something about how cave people used to get stressed when they had to run from lions, and that these days we don’t have to run from lions but we do have to deal with things like bills and... uh... something about cortisol. I don’t remember exactly. The point is, Cora’s not here right now, so you should do whatever you want.”
I reached out to set the envelopes down. “Sometimes we think so much like each other, it’s scary,” I said.
“You know what they say,” Penny said. “Great minds think alike!”
For once, she’d gotten a saying right.
Before the mail hit the camp table, I hesitated. I couldn’t just set the letter down. “I’ll just take a peek at it before we get going,” I said. “That way I’ll have an idea of what I’m dealing with. Maybe it’s not so bad.”
“Suit yourself,” Penny said with a shrug of her shoulders. She flopped down into a camp chair to wait as I read my mail.
With trembling hands, I tore the envelope open and pulled out a sheet of paper. The word URGENT was stamped across the top in those same panic-inducing red block letters. My heart pounded in my chest, even more violently than it had the night before after I heard the sound of that gunshot.
If I’d been in another state of mind, I might have wondered about the strangeness of it all—how that red font could scare me more than the sound of a firearm being dispelled.
But I wasn’t in the mood to feel wondrous. I was too scared.
I scanned the typed text.
To: Marley Greene
Notice of intent to seize your property.
Amount due IMMEDIATELY : $12,349.15
This is a notice of intent to seize your property. As we notified you before, your taxes have been unpaid for two years. If we don’t receive the full amount within thirty days of this notice, we may seize your property as levy to pay the taxes that you owe.
I felt a chill run through me. My hands shook like leaves. I scanned a list of numbers to the left of the text. It looked like I owed late property taxes and tax on the money I’d inherited from my grandfather. I suddenly regretted all the times I’d ignored calls from my accountant and lawyer in Melrose.
It’s okay. I can fix this, I thought. It says I have thirty days after the notice was sent. My eyes flitted up to the date in the corner of the letter. “June 14th,” it said. I quickly ran the numbers in my head, and then gulped. The letter must have sat in my box for a long time thanks to my laziness about picking up my mail. It had been 30 days since it was sent.
If I understood the letter correctly, the government was going to take my land away—and that included my center—if I didn’t pay by the close of the day.
After all I’d gone through with my center, was this how it was all going to end? Some ridiculous tax mess up?
I looked up at Penny. I felt fear pouring through my eyes, and she picked up on it, too. “What is it?” she asked quietly. “What does it say?”
“It—it says that I owe a bunch of money,” I said.
“Ha!” Penny said with a grin. “They have no idea who they’re dealing with. You’re a millionaire, Mar! Just use some of your inheritance money to pay for it.”
“I can’t,” I said glumly.
Penny was still grinning. “Come on!” she said cheerfully. “Of course you can! What, you lost your checkbook or something? You don’t have a pen? What is it?”
“No, Penny, there’s... there’s nothing left in my bank account.” I hung my head, and looked down at the letter in my hands. I didn’t focus on the text, I just stared blankly at the page. I felt ashamed of my lack of financial sense.
“That’s impossible!” Penny said. Her voice was still bright, but it faltered a little bit. I felt her eyes on me as her voice softened. “Isn’t it?” she said. “I mean... did you really spend it all... did you?”
I nodded. “I donated most of it,” I said. “To environmental causes. It just felt like the right thing to do. And then I used the rest to get this place up and running.”
“Yes!” Penny said. Her obsession with self-development, and her guru Jumper Strongheart, makes her almost annoyingly positive sometimes. “That’s right, the center!” she said.
I felt her hand on my shoulder. She gave it a few pats. “The center must be turning a profit. All these guests pay good money to come here, relax, heal, and learn from you and the speakers you hire. You could use some of that money to pay off your debts.”
I shook my head again. “The guests only have to pay a deposit. They don’t owe the full payment for a year after their retreat takes place. I think most of what we earn goes to pay Geoff, Margie, and our guest speakers. At least, Cora mentioned something like that to me at one of our meetings, once. I wasn’t listening that carefully. I think there’s some money in the business account, but to be honest, I don’t even know how much. It’s so hard to understand.”
“Marley, you have to try,” Penny said. “I know you don’t like business, and you don't like mundane things like paying the bills. You’re a dreamer—you always have been. You’d rather have your head in the clouds than here on earth.”
I frowned. Penny was just stating the truth. She wasn’t trying to give me a hard time. Yet her words really bothered me. I felt them trigger something deep down inside of me—something I didn’t want to look at.
I knew, deep down, that I had my head in the clouds a lot. Maybe that’s why going to stay at the Lazy S Inn was so tempting to me.
I didn’t want anything to do with the icky, earthy, mundane things like paying bills. But I didn’t want to admit to that.
“I’ve been pretty grounded lately,” I said sullenly. “All I’m doing is dealing with stressful issues here. Believe me, I’d love it if I could just hang out with my head in the clouds, daydreaming the day away. But ever since I opened this center, I’ve been faced with one issue after another. And now this.”
I tossed the paper down on top of the other bills with disgust. “I’m tired of it,” I said. “I honestly don’t know how much more I can take.”
Penny stepped back a foot. It doesn’t happen often, but when I do slip into a foul mood, she knows me well enough to give me space. She pressed her lips together. I sensed that she wanted to talk, but she was holding back.
And I was glad about that. I just wanted to stew in my frustration for a minute. I walked over to my van and went inside. I rummaged through the bag of supplies that Cora had given me, and found Blueberry’s lime green leash. The fact that it was going to match the bow she was wearing didn’t give me nearly the jolt of joy that it had earlier in the morning, before I’d read that darn letter.
I was still stewing over the notice as I clipped Blueberry to her leash and then led the way off of the lot. Penny followed behind me, along with Turkey who was back in her bag. Skili soared above, also giving me plenty of room. I let Blueberry zigzag along the trail with her nose to the ground. Every once in a while, she took off with a burst of speed, and I knew she was hot on Polly’s scent.
Slowly, as we hiked, my foul mood started to lift. The day became warmer and brighter. I was still discouraged, frustrated, and not nearly happy, but I wa
s at least not going to snap at whatever anyone happened to say to me.
Penny must have sensed this, because she quickened her step so that she was walking by my side. “How are you feeling?” she asked.
I sighed. “Okay, I guess,” I said.
She looked sideways at me. “That letter really shook you up,” she said.
“Yeah, it did,” I said, my voice flat. “It just seems to me that if it’s not one thing, it's another.”
“I guess that’s just part of the excitement of being alive,” Penny suggested.
“It’s exciting alright,” I said, thinking about the way my heart had pounded as I read the warning letter. “If I don’t pay twelve thousand dollars by tomorrow, the government is going to take my land.”
“Well then, we’re just going to have to make sure that you pay,” Penny said. “No matter what. I know Turkey’s been doing well with his ad agency. We have some funds saved up. He also has quite an online shopping habit these days, and he’s been investing heavily in his education—he says it will pay off in the long run—so we just have a few grand in the bank. But you can have all of it.”
“Thanks,” I said. I thought of the bag of gold that The Miser had dangled before me like a carrot when he was trying to get me to help him. “If we manage to figure out who’s after The Miser, he’ll pay us for helping him,” I said. “The gold he’s offering is worth twenty thousand.”
“Problem solved!” Penny said, her eyes wide. “That’s perfect!”
“But we haven’t solved the case yet,” I said. “Even if Polly is the one who is attacking The Miser, we don’t know where she is right now, and we haven’t apprehended her.”
“Look at you!” Penny said proudly. She elbowed me. “Using the terms and everything! You’re right—we have to apprehend the perp. So come on, gang! Let’s go catch ourselves a killer!”
With that, we all started walking just a little bit faster. We had work to do. I shoved the warning notice into the back of my mind, and focused on the task at hand. It was time to track down Polly.
Chapter Fifteen
King Midas' Magic Page 11
