by Sharon Pape
“All right, that’s fine.” I offered her my arm to lean on, but she stalked off ahead of me, clearly angry with the whole world.
“I’m perfectly capable of moving under my own steam,” she said, her chin thrust upward in a petulant, so-there manner.
I knew Tilly needed to recover from her rage at her own pace. The best thing I could do was give her the time and space. I followed her back to the car without another word. I slid under the steering wheel, and she more or less fell into the passenger seat. We sat there beside each other in unhappy silence. I glanced at my watch. A quarter past eleven. Lunchtime was quickly approaching. In planning this little adventure, I’d taken into account the probability that the staff took their lunch hour in shifts. Otherwise the monitors would go unmanned for a period of time. The first lunch hour might begin as early as eleven thirty. If Tilly had fulfilled her mission before the debacle, I’d need her to point out that individual. I gave her another five minutes to sulk, and when she still hadn’t said anything, I dove in.
“Aunt Tilly, the first lunch shift could be leaving any minute. If you found the person at the Harkens monitor, I need you to point him or her out to me.” Tilly was staring out the windshield, eyes glazed over. If I knew my aunt at all, she was busy planning her revenge. First things first, I told myself. I’d tackle the revenge issue later. I reached over the center console and gave her arm a firm but gentle shake. “Tilly.”
She exhaled a long sigh and turned to me, her eyes finding their focus and her face relaxing into a much more Tilly expression. “I’m fine, dear,” she said, “and I got a good look at our mark. In fact, from the moment I walked in there, I sold my act like a pro.” Her chest puffed up with pride. “I had no trouble recognizing the view from the Harkenses’ building on the screen. There was a man at the console, his back to me as I’d feared. I used my little mistaken identity ploy to get a closer look and was into my apology when a mouse scurried out from beneath his desk, headed straight for me. Well, you know how it is with me and mice.” I did. Only too well. “I screamed and ran like the dickens. Avery called for security and after they caught me, he accused me of industrial espionage. But the important thing is that I shouldn’t have any trouble pointing the guy out to you. His name’s Todd Spivak, going by the name plaque on his desk. I noticed it right before the mouse . . .” She shuddered at the memory.
I was having a hard time not laughing at the image she painted. A giggle escaped my efforts, which made her start giggling too. From there it was a runaway train. We were doubled over, until tears were rolling down our faces and my stomach ached. I had trouble catching my breath. “What would I do without you?” I said, keenly aware that we were the sum total of family in this world.
“Did you bring along something to nibble on while we wait?” Tilly asked hopefully. “It seems acting and doing the fifty-yard dash can work up an appetite.” I apologized for not thinking to bring refreshments. “That’s okay,” she said, opening her purse. “I think I have a muffin somewhere in here.” Before she was able to find it, the doors to Third Eye opened, and employees started trickling out and heading for their cars.
We’d almost given up on our guy being part of this first wave, when he came through the door a few minutes after the rest of his colleagues, moving like a man on a mission. “There he is,” Tilly said. “In the blue shirt and black pants.” An unnecessary description, since he was the only one leaving the building at that point.
He’d already reached the first row of cars by the time I climbed out. I had to run to intercept him. “Excuse me,” I called out.
He slowed his pace, but didn’t stop. “Yes?”
“I wonder if you can help me out?” He looked more annoyed than curious, but he stopped. Tilly had clambered out of the car and was making her way toward us, no doubt ready to steal the answer if need be.
He glanced in her direction, frowning as if he knew something was up, but couldn’t put it together. “I’m late for an appointment,” he snapped, “I don’t have time for this.”
“One question,” I begged. If I’d known how to bat my eyelashes, I swear I would have. “Please, if you could answer one question.”
Suspicion narrowed his eyes. “You a reporter?”
“No, I have a small business in New Camel.”
“All right. What is it?”
Since I couldn’t ask outright if he’d helped the killer, I asked the one question he might answer. “Do you know why you were targeted with that phony emergency call?
“You sure sound like a reporter,” he grumbled, starting to walk away. Although Tilly had reached us, she looked as if she was running out of steam.
“I swear to you, I’m not a reporter. I’m here trying to keep my friend from being arrested for murder.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, quickening his pace.
I fell into a trot to keep up. “Why were you targeted?” I don’t know if it was the desperation in my voice, but he stopped and turned to me, so abruptly that I almost plowed into him.
“I have no idea,” he said, his words clipped with anger. “For all I know she pulled the number out of a hat. And if you don’t leave me alone this instant, I’m calling the cops.” He plucked his phone from his shirt pocket to back up the threat. Tilly must have put on her after-burners, because she caught up to us at that moment, wheezing and sputtering.
“Okay, okay,” I said, backing away from him. “Sorry to have bothered you. I didn’t mean you any harm.” Of course I couldn’t speak for Tilly. She was concentrating on the man with such intensity, I was worried she might give herself, or him, a stroke in the process.
“Stay away from me,” he said, wincing as though in sudden pain. He stumbled away from us and down the next row of cars.
“He’s definitely trying to hide something,” Tilly said between labored breaths. “He’s built the equivalent of a moat with alligators to thwart any intrusion. Did he tell you anything useful?”
I put my arm around her shoulders and we headed slowly back to my car. “Not as much as I would have liked, but more than he thinks he did.”
Chapter 32
“Are you sure Spivak said she?” Tilly asked. We were in my car on our way home from Third Eye. She was searching her purse again for the elusive muffin.
“There isn’t a doubt in my mind,” I said. However, now that I’d had a few minutes to think about it, I was having doubts about the importance of the word.
With a little cry of triumph, Tilly pulled the sandwich bag containing the muffin from the depths of her purse. She opened the plastic bag and held it out to me. “It’s carrot, have some.”
I glanced at the bag. The muffin hadn’t fared well in her purse, disassembling into a pile of muffin crumbs. I declined, not hungry enough to try to eat it while driving. She shrugged and popped a piece into her mouth. “If the caller was a woman, wouldn’t that eliminate all the men on your list of suspects?” she asked after swallowing.
“At first I thought so,” I said. “It seems to me a smart killer would try to limit the number of people involved in his plot. The more people involved, the greater the risk. Based on that, the killer is most likely the one who bribed or threatened the employee into helping and later called in the fake emergency to provide him with an alibi.”
“Makes sense to me,” Tilly said, having finished off the muffin in record time. She brushed the crumbs from her hands. “So why don’t you sound so sure about it now?”
“When it was just a theory, I was totally onboard with it, but now that I’m trying to apply it to real life . . . I don’t know.”
“You’re worried the killer isn’t necessarily all that smart,” she said, hitting the nail squarely on the head. “I can’t believe I forgot to bring along the thermos of iced tea.”
“You’ll be home in a few minutes,” I promised. She was right. I had no way of knowing if the killer was, in fact, smart about his crime. Emotions can make anyone act stup
idly. I’d read stories about police committing crimes and making the same stupid mistakes as the average criminal. I decided my theory was toast. But instead of being upset about it, I was relieved. Eliminating the men from my suspect list would have narrowed the field to Ronnie and Elise. And no matter how I looked at it, Elise had the more believable motive for committing murder. So, welcome back, guys.
After dropping Tilly off at home, I went straight down to Main Street to open my shop. Sashkatu would have to cope with sleeping away the afternoon at home with the other cats, instead of on his tufted window seat in the shop. I peeked into Lolly’s shop and found her alone, restocking empty trays in the display cases.
“It looks like you had a busy morning,” I said, after a quick cheek-to-cheek greeting. “Unfortunately I forgot to put my clock sign in the window before I left this morning.” Some people, like Beverly, would have asked where I went, but Lolly wasn’t one of them. She respected boundaries. It was one of many things I liked about her.
“Not to worry. I fielded a lot of inquiries about your shop. Since it’s not like you to be gone the whole day, I told them to try again this afternoon.”
“Thanks, you’re such a good friend.”
“Hey, it was good for me too. I’ve never known a customer to come in here to ask a question and leave without making a purchase.” She took a plump, sugared apricot dipped in dark chocolate from the tray she was working on and handed it to me in a small square of tissue paper. “I bet you haven’t had time for lunch.”
I laughed. “This should have enough calories to keep me going until dinner.” I thanked her again and walked across the side street that separated our shops. While I waited for customers to arrive, I made my way through the aisles, dusting and moving products that were out of place. Most shoppers were good about putting items they’d decided not to take, back where they found them. But there were always the few who couldn’t be bothered.
With my hands busy, my mind was free to problem solve and the most immediate problem I had involved Elise. When I’d asked Ronnie if she left the office before Elise on the day Jim was murdered, she claimed she had. I had yet to pose that same question to Elise. I dreaded asking her more than I dreaded a root canal. Make that ten root canals. Without benefit of Novocain. Asking her would be akin to saying I had my doubts about her innocence. How did you mend a friendship after that? She might claim to understand my reasoning, but the damage would be done. Things would never be the same between us again. That simply wasn’t acceptable. I needed a more subtle way to find out, without actually posing the question. If that failed, I might be desperate enough to consider letting my aunt poke around in her mind.
I finished primping the shop, but I was no closer to a perfect solution for my talk with Elise. I was headed back to my desk to tackle the books when Morgana and Bronwen popped in for a visit. I told them about my dilemma with Elise, then gave them a rundown on how the investigation was going, including the information I gleaned from visiting Third Eye.
“Maybe we should have installed the cameras when we added the alarm system,” Morgana said.
“No need to worry,” I assured her, “the new wards I put in place seem to be holding.”
“Even so,” Bronwen said, “when it comes to safety, one must do all one can.”
“Technologically as well as magickally,” my mother put in.
“That goes without saying,” my grandmother added.
“It never hurts to reiterate and reinforce.” Morgana’s tone had taken on a sharper edge. If I was any judge of my progenitors, sparks were about to fly.
“Reiteration can be tiresome and result in losing one’s audience,” my grandmother said with a snap to her words.
“Okay, hold it!” I said with my own punch of attitude. “Why do the two of you still spend all your time together, when it’s clear you get on each other’s nerves? Surely you can put some distance between yourselves and stop the endless bickering.” A stunned silence followed my outburst, and it occurred to me that I’d never spoken to them in such a way. I never would have dared. But they no longer lived on this plane, and the balance of power was shifting in our relationship. I thought about apologizing, but I wasn’t entirely sorry for what I’d said. It was Bronwen who wound up breaking the ice.
“Although I didn’t care for your tone, Kailyn, you may have a valid point.”
“It’s true,” Morgana acknowledged, “we have a lot of issues to work on. We’ve been avoiding them, because it means letting go and moving on.” Her voice cracked, “and we are so deeply tied to you and Tilly.”
My mother had always been self-possessed. I couldn’t remember ever hearing her sound this vulnerable. “I know it’s been hard for you,” I said gently, “dying the way you did. But losing both of you has been hard on me too.”
“Of course it has,” Bronwen said. “All our unfinished business, the difficulties with our magick, dumped on your young shoulders. Then the murder. You’ve handled it all better than we could have hoped.”
“Better than we would have,” Morgana said generously.
“Well, I don’t know if I would go that far,” Bronwen muttered.
Morgana’s cloud flashed red with anger. “If you have something to say, mother, by all means—” And they were gone.
I was bewildered by their departure, until I heard a voice coming from the doorway behind me. “Incredible—was that magick or a hologram?” Although the voice was soft in tone, it was unexpected. I must have jumped a good ten inches. Had I been a cat, I might have forfeited a life in the process. I came up with a smile and turned around. The woman in front of me was elderly and petite, dressed in classy beige linen pants and a white silk blouse. Her eyes were fixed on the spot where my family clouds had been.
“A hologram, exactly!” I said, glomming onto her word as if it was a lifeline. “We’re experimenting with new advertising techniques.”
“Oh,” she said with a sigh, “I was hoping it was real magick.” She held out her hand. “Nice to meet you. My name is Cecelia.”
“I’m Kailyn,” I said, taking her hand in mine. She looked so deeply disappointed that I found myself saying, “Cecelia, can you keep a secret?” If Bronwen and Morgana knew what I had in mind, they’d be horrified. But this was my time and I wanted to flex my muscle.
“I’ve kept more secrets than you can imagine,” she said with a sly smile and a wink, “but that’s all you’ll get out of me.”
I went to the doorway and poked my head outside. There were people out on the street, but no one on my block. I had a few minutes. I came back in and looked around the shop, deciding on the chair next to the counter about four yards away. I focused my mind on it and tugged. Nothing happened. I hadn’t moved anything of that size and weight before, but I wanted to give Cecelia more of a show than levitating a little pamphlet. This was clearly going to take more concentration. I blocked out all the external distractions: the hum of the air conditioner, the buzzing of a fly, the ticking of the clock, the rumble of a car driving by, until nothing existed in time and space but the chair and me. I visualized my energy as a brilliant spear of light. I threw it across the room to the chair and after three tries, I hooked into it. I tried pulling it toward me, pulling it, pulling it . . . When it shuddered and inched forward, I nearly lost my focus in the brief second of triumph. But I held on. The chair moved again, slowly at first, then with increasing speed as if it were barreling down a hill at me. I tried to stop it or at least slow it down, without success. I stepped out of its path, but the chair made a course correction and continued straight for me. I’d set it in motion with me as its target and it was sticking to that program. I had no choice, but to wait for the chair to reach me. Although I put my hands out to act as a buffer, the chair slammed into me with such force, it knocked me to the floor.
Cecelia was cheering and applauding like a child at her first circus. She probably thought the crash at the end was an intended part of the act. “Amazing! Simply a
mazing! I always believed real magick existed, yet after all these years of searching for it, I’d all but given up on ever finding it. What a pity my late husband wasn’t here to see this. The fool was always telling me I was nuts.” She laughed and chattered on in that vein, as I pulled myself to my feet. “Oh my goodness,” she interrupted herself, “you’re bleeding. Are you okay?”
I looked down at my right leg. A trickle of blood was oozing from my shin where the chair had slammed into it. A small enough price to pay for my victory. I pushed the chair back to its spot by the ordinary method. I found a tissue behind the counter and wiped away the blood, which had stopped flowing by then.
After my little command performance, Cecelia was eager to try all the products her friends had been raving about. I totaled up her bill and filled three of the tote bags with her purchases. She’d bought more than anyone, at least in my lifetime.
“I’ll help you get these into your car,” I said. “Is it parked outside?”
“Give me a minute,” she said, walking out the door. She returned with her chauffeur, a large man with a jolly face, dressed in formal livery. He picked up the heavy bags as if they were filled with popcorn. Before Cecelia followed him out, she turned to me and whispered, “Thank you for entrusting me with your secret. Now, if you don’t mind a bit of advice from an old lady, you ought to work on some magickal brakes, before you try that again.”
I was still laughing when my mother made an encore appearance. Great, I thought, here comes another lecture on the perils of showing off my magick.
“Kailyn,” she began, “I’ve been thinking about your situation with Elise and I have a suggestion for you.” My mother hadn’t seen me doing battle with the chair? “Let Elise know about Ronnie’s claim that she left the office first. That way you’re providing Elise with information she needs for her own defense. And how Elise reacts to the news may give you some insight into the truth.”