by Ami Diane
“There was just one. I only heard them; I didn’t see them. They were downstairs in my kitchen.”
He emerged, a pistol in one hand, the barrel pointing down and his finger off the trigger. “Stay here. Lock the door behind me and call 911.”
“I don’t have my phone.”
“Use my landline.” He pointed towards the kitchen then plunged into the night.
Libby turned the lock with a click. Guilt and fear gripped her at the deputy’s departure. That independent streak in her, that part of her that never wanted to burden others, was not okay with him going it alone—especially on her behalf.
She swallowed and forced herself to locate the phone. This was his job, what he was trained to do, she reminded herself. What did she know about facing off intruders? Except to grab a vase and flee, apparently.
She quickly located his phone, set the vase on the counter, and dialed 911. Almost immediately, a dispatcher picked up the line, asking what her emergency was.
The words tumbled out and over themselves, and she had to repeat them a few times before the babble became coherent.
Once the dispatcher took Libby’s name and said she’d alerted a patrol car in the area, Libby hung up. She leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. Jackson should be back by now, shouldn’t he?
She wandered into the living room, hoping to distract her mind from the horrible images it was currently conjuring up.
The living room was cozy with a hint of a nautical theme. On an end table sat a couple of photo frames.
Picking one up, she nearly dropped it when she saw who was in the picture. Deputy Jackson wore a button-down shirt and stood next to a familiar, dark-haired—albeit vapid—beauty.
“Julie,” she whispered. Were they an item?
She looked up as if expecting the apothecary clerk to step out of the hallway at any moment. Of course, Eric Jackson wasn’t single. No one that good-looking and decently kind was.
The next photo was more telling and made her back-peddle on her assumption. In it, Eric and Julie stood side-by-side again, sporting rounder faces full of youth. Center and behind them stood an older woman, her hands on both of their shoulders. A perfect little family.
Now that she saw Julie and Eric closer together, the resemblance was so obvious, she wondered how she’d overlooked before. Both had inherited their mother’s dark hair, but Julie got the woman’s eyes while Eric held her smile.
The knob on the front door rattled, causing her to drop the frame the few inches to the table. She stood it upright and ran to unlock the door.
Her fingers gripped the lock. “Who is it?”
“It’s me,” Jackson’s voice came out.
She let him in. His hair, if possible, had gone wilder, reaching for the ceiling.
He marched inside before closing the door. “The other uniforms showed up, and we swept your place. We didn’t find the intruder. They must’ve bolted before I got there. Any idea how he got in?”
“He?”
He shrugged. “Or she.”
Libby had heard the intruder speak, but it had been whispered curse words from several rooms away, too difficult to tell the gender of the speaker.
“I’ve no clue how they got in.”
“And your alarm didn’t go off?”
It took her a moment to realize what he meant. Her possibly-non-existent house alarm she’d made up to cover Marge’s crazy banshee potion.
Libby scrambled for a good excuse and did her best to look sheepish. “After that racket it made, I turned it off until I could get it fixed.” She hated lying to him but couldn’t see any way around it.
“I noticed your back door isn’t very secure, either. If it’s alright with you, tomorrow, I’ll cut a piece of wood that you can stick in the track for the sliding door. That way, if someone ever jimmies the lock, it’ll stop them from getting in.”
She told him she’d appreciate a stick for the door. “Do you think that’s how they got in?”
He gave her a funny look, hesitating before he responded. “The backdoor was unlocked when I got there”
Her mouth fell open and her insides went cold as she whispered, “But I locked it.”
“You sure? Sometimes, I could swear I do something then, come to find out, I didn’t.”
“I appreciate that, but this isn’t one of those times. I may not remember what I had for breakfast yesterday, but I definitely remember locking up last night. I laid Orchid’s litter box out, then I flipped the lock right after that.”
Worrying her lip, she sank to the sofa, the adrenaline finally wearing off. She was exhausted, but the thought of returning home just then sent her blood pressure skyrocketing.
He spoke, and it wasn’t until he said her name that she looked up from her million-mile stare at the floor. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
He sat on the armchair across from her and seemed to sense what she was thinking. “If you don’t feel comfortable going home tonight, you can sleep in the guest room. Tomorrow, though, I want to go over there with you so you can tell me if they took anything.”
She nodded slowly, her eyelids feeling heavy.
“Can you think of any reason why someone would want to break in?” There was something in his tone. Something weighted.
She shook her head. The guilt she’d felt earlier returned with a vengeance. The intruder had to be after the potion book. It was the only logical explanation which made the deputy’s job that much more difficult because she couldn’t tell him her suspicions. Now, more than ever, she suspected another PMS member behind it all.
Assuming the two murders and breaking and entering were, in fact, related, what recipe could someone possibly want strongly enough to kill over? She’d been through that entire book. Sure, there were some really cool potions, like Bottom’s Up (floating potion) and the Pet Whisperer one, but not one great enough to kill over.
“Do you think what happened tonight is related to John’s death?” she asked.
“It’s possible.” He ran a hand down a stubbled jaw, and the lamplight caught the blue shadows under his eyes.
It was time for both of them to go to bed, but she needed to tell him one more thing while he was receptive and vulnerable and while she still had courage.
Besides, she wasn’t sure she could ever sleep again. She shuddered to think of what might have happened if Jasper hadn’t woken her up. The raven would be getting extra treats for the next several months.
The deputy climbed to his feet.
“Deputy—”
“Everybody calls me by my last name.”
“Jackson, who ruled Arlene’s death natural?”
His eyebrows rose a fraction. “The coroner. Why?”
“It’s just—it’s coincidental isn’t it? John getting killed on my property. The intruder in my house. And Arlene’s death. All within a month of each other.” Her shoulders rose in a slow shrug. “Call it a hunch. Call it intuition, but maybe the coroner could do some kind of reexamination?”
He didn’t outright dismiss her which she supposed was something.
“It’s not a bad idea,” he said finally. “I’ll consider it.” He tipped his head toward the hallway. “Guest room’s the first door on the right. The bed’s already made up.” He nodded a goodnight and dragged his feet over the rug, the bottoms of his pajamas wet and muddy.
CHAPTER 14
ALTHOUGH LIBBY’S SLEEP was brief (four hours), the fact that she was able to sleep at all came as a pleasant surprise considering what she’d just been through. She admitted, only to herself, that it had been a comfort knowing the lawman was only a hallway away.
After both she and the deputy drank copious amounts of coffee, they sauntered back to her place. A rare, morning sun poked through the glowing green canopy overhead. In the daylight, the woods were far less creepy. There was still a magical haunting quality about them, just without the horror movie feel.
As they reached her lawn, he frowned down at her
feet. “Where are your shoes?”
“Invisible? I’m just kidding. But that’d be kind of cool, wouldn’t it?” She should try to coax that invisibility potion recipe from Marge that she’d mentioned offhand. “I was in too much of a hurry last night to grab them.”
Overhead, a dark bird dove through a flock of seagulls, sending them scattering and screeching madly. Jasper’s shadowy body floated from the flock, around a bigleaf maple in her backyard, then alighted onto the patio.
She hoped he’d fared the night alright. He was a bird, after all, but not one accustomed to the great outdoors. If she were to drink the Pet Whisperer potion, she had no doubt that the first several minutes of their conversation would be taken up by his berating of his new “brute of a human” as he’d called her.
As if reading this thought, he cawed indignantly at her approach. “Same to you, too, buddy,” she muttered before begrudgingly remembering that he had saved her life.
“You talk to your pets?”
“Sure. No more than most people, I suppose.” She side-eyed him. “It’s not weird is it?”
“Only a little.” The corner of his mouth quivered. If he only knew the half of it.
She stepped over Orchid’s litter box and opened the back door. Jasper swooped in, followed by a bleary-eyed, freshly shaven Jackson who paused in the doorframe. His fingers ran along the catch.
Shaking his head, he joined her in the kitchen, their steps clicking over the linoleum in the morning stillness.
“I see you still haven’t moved your chandelier.”
Libby glanced at the light fixture, an island of broken crystal amongst the barren floor. “Yep.”
She’d tried. Lord, had she tried, but the sucker was attached with thick bolts, and she had yet to locate a power drill. She was a breath away from taking a sludge hammer to the thing.
“When you find something that looks cool and works, why mess with it?”
He shot her a dubious look but didn’t comment further on the matter. “Last night was the first time I’d been inside this place.”
“Really?” They floated into the library, her eyes scouring the shelves. If something were missing, she wasn’t sure she’d notice, having just moved in. Plus, most of her time had been spent in the laboratory. And with the tendency for objects in the house to spontaneously relocate, how would she know if something had simply moved or been pilfered?
“Yeah,” he continued, “Arlene kept to herself, mostly. I got the impression she was kind of a hermit.”
Probably because she was hiding this crazy house and its secret room from outside eyes.
Passing through the oblong room on the bottom floor, the purpose of which she had yet to figure out—either family room and woman cave—a blur of fur caught her eye in the entryway.
“Orchid! Where have you been, you naughty kitty?”
The cat came running to her, long-furred belly swishing from side-to-side as if she hadn’t seen Libby for weeks. Scooping her up, Libby spent the next few moments scratching the cat under the chin, then behind her ears, then back to her chin. All the while, the deputy looked on with a bewildered expression.
“You two want to be alone?”
“Don’t cheapen our special bond—ow!”
Orchid had had enough loving and wanted down. Libby placed the cat on the floor, muttering about the she-demon spawn under her breath.
After that, they stepped through the living room doorway which had recently reappeared. They floated through the room, down the hallway, and landed back in the kitchen—their tour of the downstairs complete.
“I really don’t see anything missing down here.” She rested her hands on her hips, surveying the kitchen.
Air rushed into her lungs as she bolted for the fridge. “Please be here, please be here…” She tore open the freezer door and let out a loud breath, grinning back at Jackson. “I was scared they’d nabbed my corndogs.”
He blinked at her for several seconds before responding. “You thought a thief broke in to steal some food?”
“Why not?”
“Corndogs?”
“Have you had one? They’re delicious.”
“I’ve had a corndog before, yes.”
“I don’t think you have. Not this brand, anyway. If you had, you’d understand why it’s worth breaking and entering a home to steal. Want one?” Cold air rushed out of the still-open freezer as she pointed to a box.
He stared at her for a count of at least three Mississippis before finally shaking his head and turning to face the sliding door. He then proceeded to retrieve a measuring tape from his pocket and get the length for the stick of wood he was going to cut for the track.
“I take that as a no.” Libby shrugged, unperturbed as she pulled out a corndog for herself. More for her.
While eating the hotdog on a stick, she locked the cat door. The feline could go out after Libby had used the Pet Whisperer potion and they’d had a long chat. She’d already wasted so much time getting to this point, she really didn’t want to use up any more searching for the furry vagabond.
Jackson slid the measuring tape into his pocket. “You want to take a look upstairs and see if anything’s missing before I head out?”
“Sure.” She doubted there would be but felt it best to check anyway.
A quick jaunt upstairs found nothing amiss—or rather missing. She found plenty of things amiss. The linens were now in the bathtub. The house had moved one of her Phalaenopsis Blumes, commonly known as the moth orchid, from downstairs to the desk under one of the windows. And oddly enough, the living room sink had moved to the upstairs bathroom—right next to the other sink.
“Nope. Everything seems fine,” she said, strolling back into the kitchen. She immediately pulled out her coffee pot and set to work filling it with water. “You want more coffee? It’s the least I can do for commandeering your bed.” The back of her ears felt instantly hot. “Just to clarify, I meant your guest bed.”
He chuckled, moving towards the sliding door. “Thanks, but I’ll grab something at the office.”
“You work on Saturdays?”
“I do when there’s a killer on the loose.”
“Right, of course.”
“I’ll be by later with the stick.” He gestured at the door before opening it.
She started to grab coffee grounds from the cupboard then changed her mind. As rabidly eager as she was to speak with Orchid, another conversation had to come first. A more recent murder had taken place, and a best friend needed to know the truth.
Libby stepped out of Thanks a Latte, carrying a lemon poppyseed scone in one hand and a cinnamon dulce latte in the other. Enough stalling. It was time to be like a fibrous root system and suck it up.
Or… she could take a long walk on the beach. Feed the seagulls. Maybe drive to Canada.
She shook her head, took a deep breath, and pointed her shoes north. When she reached Mother Nature’s Apothecary, the same sickly woman was coming out as she was going in.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Libby said, smiling and holding the door open again.
The lady gave her a polite chuckle and one of those genuine smiles that showed lots of gum.
As the door closed in the shop, Julie looked up from her nail file.
“Lisa.”
“Close. Libby. I’ve been in a few times, remember?”
Julie studied her a moment. “Are you the one with the wort down—” She pointed towards the floor, at least that’s where Libby was telling herself the gal was pointing.
“Nope. Definitely not me. We’ve literally talked before.” She took a bite of scone, relishing the rich flavor, then spewed crumbs as she asked, “Is Marge free?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is she in her office?”
Julie blinked, then her eyes traveled the walls before settling on the desk—the bare surface with nothing on it.
“Can you buzz her on the intercom?” Libby jabbed her sco
ne at the phone in case the young woman didn’t know what the device looked like.
“I don’t know how to work the buttons.”
Libby gaped at her before snapping her mouth shut. “Know what? I think I’ll just go back and check.”
Julie flashed a wide grin, seemingly relieved she’d been helpful.
“Oh.” Libby retraced her steps. “Just curious, I never got your full name?”
“Julie Jackson.”
“As in, Eric Jackson’s… sister?”
“You know booger butt?”
Libby choked on a bite of scone. “Booger butt?” She grinned wickedly from ear to ear. “Julie, you just became my new best friend.”
The assistant’s cheeks flushed. Ducking into the hall, Libby strode to Marge’s office, all the while, devising various scenarios in which she could casually use the nickname on the deputy.
It wasn’t until she stepped into the office and found Marge sitting behind the desk filling out paperwork that the cold reality of why she was there came back to her like a punch to the gut.
After greeting the potionist, she said, “Hey, I didn’t know Julie was the Deputy Jackson’s sister.” She sat in her usual spot without waiting for an invitation.
“Who? Booger butt’s sister?” Marge caught Libby’s expression and laughed. “I heard Julie tell you. That’s really going to come in handy.”
“Oh, I know. I’m thinking of taking out an ad in the Oyster Tribune. It’s only fair to be sure others know.”
“Absolutely.” Marge set her paperwork aside then folded her hands. “Everything okay? You look tired.”
“That’s just the eyeshadow.” Libby studied her coffee cup. She’d taken the last bite of her scone in the hallway. “I am tired, actually. I had quite the night.”
She launched into a brief account of the break-in. When she finished, the older woman’s eyes were so big, Libby feared they’d pop out of her head.
Marge swore. “It’s a miracle you got out. When I think of what could’ve happened….” She let the thought die on her lips.
