Wisteria Warned

by Angela Pepper

  “What is it?”

  “I’ve seen things in this town that can’t be explained,” she said. “Strange things.”

  I pressed my lips together to keep from making noise.

  “And?” He shot me a look of dry amusement. It was funny, in a cruel sort of way, to be in on the town’s secrets when other people were not.

  “Never mind,” she said. “I’ll keep going through the files to see if there’s anything else connected to the Tate family.”

  He thanked her again, and ended the call.

  Without further discussion, we both stepped out of the car and walked up to the front door.

  My imagination fired up a playful image of something happening across town at Temperance Krinkle’s house: a pair of two-inch-tall wooden people suddenly materializing on the front step of the dollhouse that Lund and his technicians were analyzing. Wouldn’t that be a surprise!

  The door opened. The man who opened the door, presumably William Tate, took one look at us and said, “We don’t want any, thanks.”

  He closed the door.

  Bentley knocked again.

  The man called out, “And we’re atheists.”

  Bentley, who had apparently received this sort of treatment before and wasn’t at all surprised, knocked on the door a third time.

  On the other side of the door, the man groaned. “Seriously?”

  “Sir, we are with the Wisteria Police Department,” Bentley said. “We are canvassing the neighborhood about a non-emergency matter. We’re following up on the incident from Halloween before last. May I trouble you for a moment of your time?”

  The door opened again. “Hang on,” the man said. “Now the land line’s ringing. Everything happens at once around this place.” He yelled over his shoulder, “Billy? Luke? The phone’s ringing. Can’t you hear anything over that video game?” He shook his head and said to me, “They have one job: answer the phone and the door. Do you think I can get them to do either?”

  Before I could answer what was probably a rhetorical question, Mr. Tate retreated into the house, waving us to follow him in. He grabbed the ringing phone from a hall table.

  I stepped inside, then turned and looked back at Bentley. Would he be able to enter the home without a verbal invitation?

  Just then, Tate called out, “Come on in.” He spoke into the phone with an agitated, “Hello. Tate residence. William Tate Senior speaking.”

  Bentley stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

  The interior of the Tate house looked exactly as it had in the dollhouse version of the home, right down to the color of the flooring, which was an amber-hued type of bamboo. I hadn’t seen many bamboo floors. It was very modern, though some parts of the house felt old. They must have had the flooring installed at the same time they’d removed the back wall of the home and replaced it with glass. Most of the walls were a pale cream, but one had been painted a deep purple. Aubergine, I thought. It was a nod to the name of the street, the sort of whimsical thing an interior decorator might think of.

  The dollhouse also had an aubergine accent wall. Had the wall been a clue? Were the crime scene technicians supposed to have seen the purple wall and connected the home to Aubergine Street? The idea was awfully far-fetched, but magic did have a mind of its own—as well as a wicked sense of humor.

  We stood and listened to one side of Tate’s phone conversation: “No, she’s not back yet.” There was a short pause, followed by a light laugh. “I’m sure they got held up at the off-leash dog park. It’s a beautiful day, Mr. Linklater. And, now that I think about it, Veronica did mention she was meeting with a new client this morning. An extra dog can slow down the routine.”

  A longer pause. “Yes, I understand your dog needs special medication, and that you’re on a tight schedule. My wife is quite aware of that.” Tate shot us a wide-eyed look to let us know that the person on the phone—his wife’s dog-walking client, by the sound of it—was being needy.

  Tate continued, “I’ll have my wife call you the minute she gets home. In the meantime, you should check your back yard again and see if your dog isn’t hiding under something.” Another pause, then, “Listen, I’d love to help you out, but now isn’t a good time. Someone from the police department is here.” He turned to lean over and hang up the phone, but paused. He straightened up, frowning at us. He listened for a moment.

  Then he slowly took the phone away from his ear and held it out toward us.

  Frowning, Mr. Tate said, “He asked to speak with you.”

  Bentley took the phone and identified himself to the caller.

  I waited all of two seconds before losing my patience and doing what any witch would have done if she were in my kitten heels.

  I cast a spell to listen in on the phone call. It was an inversion of the sound bubble. My home-brew version acted as a tunnel, or a funnel, depending on the size of the source. It carried some—but not all—of the sound vibrations from the source, which in this case was the caller’s voice coming from the phone speaker—directly into the caster’s ear.

  The spell cast without a hitch, and I was in, so to speak. It was now a conference call, witch style.

  “I had a feeling something like this was going to happen,” the male caller was saying. “Corvin has been careless lately. He shouldn’t have revealed himself like that. Did Zara tell you all about it?”

  I understood at once that the caller was Chet Moore, and the dog he’d been phoning about was Corvin. The bad feeling in the pit of my stomach spread.

  “No,” Bentley said. “This is... the first I’ve heard about this matter.”

  “He shouldn’t have told anyone,” Chet said, sounding frantic. “I know he’s close to Zoey, and she’s like a sister to him, but he still shouldn’t have done it. Not without permission from myself and Chessa. Now his secret is getting out all over the place, and, wouldn’t you know it, he’s gone missing. This better not have been his idea. When I get him back. I’m going to redefine the concept of being grounded.”

  My heart raced as the whole picture clarified. Veronica Tate, a dog walker, was missing, along with at least one client’s dog. That dog was the hellhound shifter who lived next door to me. Questions bubbled up. Why did Chet have a professional dog walker taking Corvin for walks? Was it because he couldn’t be seen with a dog but no son some days, and a son but no dog on others? That made sense to me, a woman who refused to leave the house with her daughter in fox form.

  Bentley continued to listen to Chet, giving only short answers due to the proximity of Mr. Tate, who was now pacing nervously. Tate breathed heavily and alternated between pushing one hand back over his hair and checking his cell phone in the other.

  On the phone, Bentley calmly assured Chet that he understood the gravity of the situation, and that everyone at the station would be put on the case immediately. “All resources will be directed to the case,” Bentley promised.

  “What case?” William Tate demanded. “There’s a case? Has something happened to my wife?” He gave me a pleading look. “What’s going on? You two aren’t here about the Halloween toilet papering, are you?” He suddenly grabbed my hands in his. “Talk to me,” he demanded.

  At the instant his fingers made contact with mine, I lost the sound tunnel connection with the phone call. But I’d already heard plenty, and now, like Bentley, I also understood the gravity of the situation.

  Veronica Tate had disappeared, along with Corvin Moore.

  Chapter 16

  Once Bentley and I discovered that Krinkle’s crime prediction had come true, the WPD “training exercise” turned into a full-blown missing persons investigation.

  I did what I could as a witch. I cast threat-detection spells around the Tate residence and neighborhood, kept an eye open for ghosts, and even used my bluffing spells to question Mr. Tate and the two boys, with Bentley’s assistance.

  None of the three remaining Tates knew anything about the disappearance of Mrs. Tate, or the identity
of the new client she had been planning to meet that day. The only secret the family was keeping involved an incident in which someone intentionally soiled the guest bathroom’s frilly towels. It had been the younger boy, and both the older brother and father knew about it, but none had discussed the matter until my magic had unsealed their secrets. Disgusting though it was, if the towel thing was the Tate family’s darkest secret, it didn’t seem likely the woman’s disappearance was related to any criminal family dealings.

  After a few fruitless hours at the Tate home, Bentley had to take some meetings without me, and sent me off on my own. I didn’t wanted to go home, because who could just go home when a child was missing? But I did have magic books at home, and research could be helpful, so that was where I went.

  I planned to look up information about Animata, dollhouses, hellhounds, and anything else that might be connected to the Tate investigation.

  *

  Zoey’s wasn’t home when I got to the house, and the resident wyvern didn’t show his scaly face.

  I found Boa upstairs, curled up on Zoey’s bed, and told her I was home. She twitched one ear as if to say that was all well and good, but she hadn’t noticed I was gone in the first place.

  I made a pot of coffee, noticing how much the simple act of following the routine to make coffee put me at ease. It was no wonder people were always offering each other cups of tea or coffee during stressful situations. The world could be crashing down around you, but a steaming cup in your hand said that maybe things weren’t so bad. Night would come, and then daybreak, and then more simple routines to pull you back into your life.

  I fixed up a big mug of coffee, and went downstairs.

  Our house hadn’t had a basement when I’d purchased it. But my house was no ordinary house. Rooms rearranged themselves without notice. The basement had manifested without warning, conveniently enough at the same time a certain dark-loving wyvern had been looking for a new hangout.

  The dungeon-like space had resisted all attempts to make it brighter. With Zoey’s help, I had applied two coats of heavy duty primer to the stone walls, only to have the primer disappear overnight, slurped back into the walls.

  We changed tactics, hanging big decorative canvases on the stone walls, only to find them missing the next day, and a pile of ashes on the floor.

  That was when I’d sensed a novel way to solve another problem. After Zoey had gone to sleep, I snuck her hideous floral lamp down to the basement. However, unlike the two coats of primer and the decorative canvases, the lamp had been perfectly intact the next morning. Not just intact, but gaudier and more floral than ever. It even seemed to be heavier. Before, it would have rated a seven out of ten for bludgeoning, but now it was closer to an eight.

  Zoey realized the lamp had gone missing from her bedroom, stomped down to the basement, and scolded me as she repossessed the monstrosity.

  And so, besides the addition of a few more books, the basement lair remained exactly as dungeon-like as the day it had magically appeared.

  I settled in at my desk and dove into research mode.

  I took a brief break when Zoey got home. I broke the news about Corvin to her, had a light dinner, then settled back in for more reading.

  At some point, I must have dozed off.

  I woke up to the sound of something ringing. I jerked my head up quickly, and nearly fell off my chair.

  My basement lair was cozy enough despite the decoration, but the darkness did lead to napping. And one of my reference tomes in particular amplified the nap factor. In fact, the onset of sudden napping was a known side effect of consulting Zarnov’s Big Book of Mythical Bedtime Tales. The book’s stories were equal parts terrifying, informative, and—weirdly enough—sleep-inducing. Also, the pages themselves puffed up to form a pillow whenever they detected contact with a face.

  The ringing sound that had woken me grew more insistent. It was my laptop, sitting on top of a stack of old books. The sound was an incoming video call from my aunt.

  I answered groggily.

  “Zara?” The redheaded older woman on the screen leaned forward, her familiar features taking up the whole display. “Are you in some sort of dungeon?”

  “Just down here in my new-old basement,” I said.

  Zinnia had been there several times, so she readily accepted my explanation about where I was.

  With the mystery of my location resolved, my aunt peppered me with new questions. “Why do you look so tired, Zara? What’s happening there? Why did you let me go away on vacation for so long? Don’t answer that, actually. I don’t want to know. Where’s Zoey?”

  “One question at a time.” I yawned and stretched on my chair. “It’s been a long day, and I’m afraid good ol’ Zarnov’s took me down about half an hour ago.” I slapped both of my cheeks to wake myself up.

  “Where’s Zoey?” Zinnia repeated.

  I didn’t want my aunt to worry, but there was no point in lying to her. After hearing the news about Corvin, my daughter had run out, too anxious to stay indoors when she could be looking for him.

  “She’s sniffing around town, checking the Moore boy’s favorite hangouts. I’m afraid he went missing earlier today.”

  “Floopy doop,” she said, just like I knew she would.

  “Don’t make me laugh, Aunt Zinnia. This is serious.” I paused to double-check that our communications link was secure. It was, so I continued. “Corvin was in his animal form when he went missing. He’s a hellhound, by the way. Did you know about that?”

  “A hellhound? How interesting. That does explain a lot about the Moore boy.”

  “I know, right?” I went on to tell her about how Chet had been dropping off his adopted son, in dog form, with Veronica Tate for regular outings. Chet did it so Corvin could freely trot around town while spending quality time with a dog pack. According to the boy’s father, it was beneficial for Corvin’s social skills as a human to spend time with other dogs, even if they weren’t hellhounds like him.

  I backtracked, telling Zinnia about that morning’s meeting with Temperance Krinkle, and confirmed that my aunt didn’t know the woman personally. If anything, Zinnia was offended by the idea that she would be acquainted with someone like Krinkle. It might have been the way I described Krinkle as being around Zinnia’s age. Zara tries to be a good witch, but Zara enjoys teasing Aunt Zinnia about her age.

  Once she’d calmed down about the age thing, we covered what happened after we’d identified the missing woman as Veronica Tate, and the dog she’d been walking as Corvin. I relayed the result of my spells, leaving out the specifics about the Tate Family Guest Towel Soiling Incident.

  The full WPD would be working around the clock, using their standard missing person protocols. They were canvassing all of Veronica Tate’s family, friends, and dog-walking clients. So far, Tate appeared to be as normal as a person could be, considering she lived in Wisteria.

  Veronica Tate, age thirty-nine, didn’t have any known enemies, addictions, or financial problems. She was a hard-working mother of two who ran a dog-walking business during the day. She had several university degrees, specializing in antiquities and ancient languages, but hadn’t done much with her degrees except have them framed for the wall.

  Phone records revealed she’d recently had a few incoming calls from a pay phone. The pay phone was situated in her neighborhood’s grocery store, right next to the bulletin board where she advertised her dog-walking service. All of the dogs she had been walking that day were back with their owners, except for Corvin.

  “For all we know, the kidnapping had nothing to do with Tate,” I said to my aunt.

  Zinnia made a soft noise of agreement.

  I went on. “She could have been an unfortunate bystander during a dognapping—or, should I say—a hellhound-napping.”

  “And there’s been no ransom demand?”

  I shook my head. “But on a positive note, at least I haven’t seen her ghost yet. Let alone—” My throat tightened. Let
alone the ghost of Corvin Moore. Perish the thought! As much as he gave me the creeps, I’d gotten used to the little guy. The idea of something bad happening to him made my whole body hurt.

  “Just because you haven’t seen her spirit doesn’t guarantee she’s still alive,” Zinnia said sharply.

  “I know!”

  Then, softer, she said, “But I understand what you are saying, Zara. That is a good observation. We ought to always stay positive and not give up hope.” She gazed down and touched the corner of her eye with one finger. “That poor little boy. He must be so frightened.”

  “What should I do next? Should I consult all the others in the coven?”

  She looked up, directly into the camera. Her lips pursed. She said nothing.

  “You know that I know there’s a coven,” I said. “I also know that you’re in it, and so is Maisy Nix, and her niece. I already talked to Maisy this morning, and she didn’t have much to say about the case. Who’s the fourth member? Is it someone who can help find Corvin?”

  Zinnia’s pinched lips nearly disappeared. “The value of that particular person’s help is greatly exceeded by her skill as a hindrance. That witch is a walking hindrance.”

  “Ouch. Sounds like you two don’t like each other much.”

  “On the contrary,” Zinnia said lightly. “She’s my best friend.”

  “And yet you call her a walking hindrance?”

  Zinnia’s tightly pressed lips curved into a smile. “She’s not always a walking hindrance. Sometimes you have to load her onto a heavy duty furniture dolly and wheel her around.”

  “If you’re trying to make me implode with curiosity, it’s working.”

  Softly, she said, “We’ll discuss matters of the coven when I get home.”

  “No more secrets,” I said. “You lied to me. You told me you weren’t part of a coven, that witches didn’t have big, warty noses, and that they didn’t keep black cats, or ride around on broomsticks. But then your coven buddy, Maisy, took me on quite the broomstick ride. What else are you hiding from me? If I break into your house right now, am I going to find a warty-nosed house sitter looking after a dozen black cats?”