Pawsitively Swindled

by Melissa Erin Jackson

  Amber watched her go, still reeling from everything Molly had said.

  Oh, Simon, what did you get yourself mixed up in?

  They polished off the rest of their waffles in silence, paid the bill, and then Amber and Kim drove Bianca back to her apartment. When Amber pulled up out front, Bianca seemed a little reluctant to get out.

  Finally, she said, “Thank you both. Honestly. Even if Edgehill is a blight on this earth, you two are all right.”

  Amber bristled, but when she turned in her seat to glare at Bianca, the woman was grinning at her. “You’re not so bad either. What time did you want to head out in the morning?”

  “Text me your address. I’ll pick you up at seven,” Bianca said, and Amber sighed. She had to be presentable at seven? Bah.

  Bianca gave Kim’s shoulder a quick squeeze, said, “Thanks again,” then got out and slowly made her way up the steps to her apartment.

  A glance at the dashboard clock told Amber it was just after midnight. She yawned so deeply, her eyes watered. Perhaps the trick to a full night’s sleep was being so tired, she could hardly function anymore.

  “All right, out you go,” Kim said. “I’ll drive us back.”

  Amber couldn’t argue with her. Once Amber had settled into the passenger seat and Kim started the drive back home, Amber was plagued by what Molly had said.

  Then in a fit of rage—helped along by opportunity—Simon takes matters into his own hands and ends the Chief Jameson Problem with a bullet to the chest. Bam! He snapped. It’s the quiet ones you have to be leery of, right?

  There was the logical, straightforward answer, and then there was the conspiracy theory. But what if the conspiracy theory was true?

  Chapter 8

  The drive to the Lincoln County jail Thursday morning was awkward at best. Bianca had offered Amber a wide, tired smile, and a “Good morning” when Amber had climbed into her white BMW waiting at the curb, but she’d hardly said anything since. Amber wasn’t sure if it was because Bianca wasn’t a morning person or because she was so uncomfortable with this whole situation that she didn’t know what to say now.

  Amber didn’t know her well enough to know if letting her stew in her embarrassment was better than forcing her to confront it, so Amber just stayed quiet.

  It took an hour and a half to get to the jail—a massive boxy structure made primarily of concrete. Where one would expect to find wide windows on most other buildings, here there were large red squares of brick. The only windows on the main building were small rectangular slats.

  Bianca didn’t say anything as she found a parking spot, or when they went through the particulars of getting checked in. She did, however, remain ramrod straight and hardly seemed to blink. Amber wondered if her jaw hurt from how tightly she kept it shut.

  Amber and Bianca were eventually led down a sterile-looking hallway with white linoleum flooring and too-bright fluorescent lights to a door marked “Arraignment Room.” It was a small space with nothing in it other than three rows of plastic chairs, stark white walls, and a pair of flat-screen TVs mounted on the wall at the front of the room. The chairs—which didn’t have legs—were mounted on metal beams that were bolted to the ground, eight per row. The unblinking eye of a camera was perched on the wall between the TV screens.

  There were a few people already inside. Amber wasn’t surprised to see Molly Hargrove there, but the low growl that came out of Bianca clearly indicated that she was. Molly, who sat front and center, looked up from her conversation with a young man next to her when Amber and Bianca walked in. Molly made a move to stand up, but Bianca held up one perfectly manicured finger, halting Molly mid-rise. The message was clear: Not today, Hargrove.

  Wisely, Molly sat back down.

  Amber followed Bianca to the back of the room where Bianca took a seat.

  Bianca wrinkled her nose. “Ugh. This place is even drearier than the DMV.”

  Settling into an uncomfortable chair next to Bianca, Amber had to agree.

  The TV on the left featured an empty judge’s chair, a golden seal on the wooden wall behind it reading the “The Great Seal of the State of Oregon.” The screen on the right showed a small wood-paneled courtroom. A podium stood at the start of a narrow aisle flanked by rows of wooden benches. To the far right was the hint of what looked like a jury box, but the angle of the camera didn’t allow Amber to see all of it. A few people sat in the benches and an armed guard stood beside the closed courtroom door, stance wide and hands clasped in front of his waist.

  Within a few minutes, an older man in a black robe—maybe in his late sixties—took his place in the chair before the Seal of Oregon. Bianca sat up straighter.

  A man and a woman were each arraigned before it was Simon’s turn. When he was led into the room cuffed and in an orange jumpsuit, Bianca let out a soft gasp and pressed a hand to her mouth. Wordlessly, and without looking at her, Amber held out a hand. Bianca clasped it with her free hand and squeezed hard.

  Moments after Simon took his place in front of the podium before the judge, the door to the viewing room opened and in walked Chief Daniels. Amber’s eyes widened, and she gave Bianca’s hand a squeeze of her own.

  Stiffening, Bianca lowered her hand from her mouth and whispered, “Guess he’s here to make sure the cover-up is complete.”

  Amber wondered why he wasn’t in the courtroom for this—but perhaps he hadn’t been the arresting officer.

  Chief Daniels only had eyes for the screen. He didn’t even sit down, just took a wide stance—much like the armed guard in the courtroom—and crossed his arms over his chest.

  As the judge went through the details of the case, Amber watched Simon’s face. It was the same, kind face she remembered, same salt-and-pepper hair, laugh lines around his eyes and mouth, and calm demeanor. He looked like the kind of man who made wreaths and worked in his garden, and did his best to stay a fixture in his adult daughter’s life.

  Was it also the face of a murderer?

  Amber supposed murderers came in all shapes and sizes, regardless of their hobbies.

  The judge asked for Simon’s plea, and he predictably said, “Not guilty.”

  Chief Daniels scoffed.

  Bianca squeezed Amber’s hand a little tighter.

  When it came time to set Simon’s bail, the judge said, “The crime you are accused of committing, Simon Ricinus, is one most heinous. Because of the nature of this murder, as I understand it, I set your bail at—”

  Amber cocked her head when the judge abruptly stopped talking, one eye squinted shut and the heel of his palm pressed against his temple. He shook his head slightly, then ever so slowly, the man relaxed. He dropped his hand back to the bench, his shoulders dropped from their hunched position by the man’s ears, and his features sagged into a neutral position.

  “But,” the judge said, his forehead scrunching up, “because you have shown that you are not an immediate threat to yourself or society at large, I will set your bail at twenty thousand dollars and sentence you to house arrest until your court date in three weeks.”

  “What?” Chief Daniels shouted, hands on his head now. Amber wondered if the man wished he still had hair so he could pull it. “It should have been the maximum bail! Two hundred and fifty thousand, not twenty!” He cursed very loudly and then stormed out of the room.

  Amber and Bianca shared a wide-eyed stare.

  “My dad is coming home?” Bianca asked, bewildered. Then, voice lowered, she said, “Thank you. I don’t know how you did it, but thank you.”

  Amber shook her head. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “What … then how did …”

  They turned back to the screen where Simon was getting the details of his house arrest. When that was done and he was led back the way he’d come, Simon stopped abruptly to look at the camera. Amber stilled, feeling as if Simon were looking directly at her. Like he somehow knew she was there.

  Three weeks, he mouthed, then nodded and allowed himself to be
escorted away.

  “Oh crap,” Amber said. “Your dad put a spell on the judge.”

  Somehow, after all that, Amber had to return to Edgehill and The Quirky Whisker that afternoon as if nothing had happened. Bianca had dropped Amber off at home and then had rushed back to Simon’s house to tidy the place up for his arrival. From what they gleaned, Simon would be able to sleep in his own bed by that evening.

  That must have been one heck of a spell.

  After Amber had closed up shop for the night, she still hadn’t heard from Bianca. Worse still, Amber had to drive across town to Purrcolate for another joint meeting of the two committees.

  One day, Amber mused, she would be able to walk into Purrcolate without some intense emotion raging inside her. Though she and Jack had forgiven each other, she hadn’t seen him since the night he came by The Quirky Whisker to talk to her. She wasn’t avoiding him now. She replied to his texts—she was still ignoring the ones from her aunt—and answered his calls, but they were friendly chats, nothing more. For now, Amber was okay with that. Her stomach was still in knots, though.

  The familiar scents of brewing coffee and baking scones greeted her when she walked in. As did the cheery Jack, who waved at her from behind the counter.

  “Hey, Amber,” he said, waving her over.

  The knots in her stomach tightened when Larry, Jack’s brother, came out the swinging doors of the kitchen, whistling to himself—only to have the tune die on his lips when he spotted Amber. Instead of giving his usual friendly greeting, he nodded at her once, like the polite gesture you would offer a stranger, and then focused on the display case of pastries.

  Sighing, she met Jack at the other end of the counter, near the register. If he was fazed by his brother’s reception, he didn’t show it. He propped one hand flat on the counter and the other on his hip. As his gaze roamed her face, a bit of his good cheer faded.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. “I know this is exactly the wrong thing to say to a woman, but you look really tired.”

  She smiled weakly. “Kim and I had to rescue a drunken Bianca Pace from herself last night. Didn’t get in until late.”

  His dark brows shot toward his hairline. “Your life is more exciting than mine. Last night, I went home, kicked up my feet, put on a movie and … promptly fell asleep on the couch. I woke up in the middle of the night in a pool of my own drool.”

  Amber laughed. “Very attractive.”

  He flushed. “Is Bianca okay?”

  “As good as she can be,” Amber said, not wanting to get into the details yet.

  “That’s good.”

  “Yeah.”

  An awkward silence descended on them.

  Jack rubbed the back of his neck, looked at her, and then looked away. “Hey, I was wondering if—”

  “Amber?” Kim called out, her head poked out of the conference room door.

  Taking a step back, Amber made eye contact with her friend and waved. Then did her best to angle a discreet nod in Jack’s direction.

  “Oh,” Kim mouthed dramatically and backed into the conference room again.

  When Amber returned her attention to Jack, he was nearly the color of a strawberry. “You were wondering if …?”

  Jack waved a hand dismissively. “Eh, don’t worry about it. Sounds like you’re needed in there.”

  With an awkward nod, Amber said, “Right. Okay. I’ll talk to you later, then.”

  She hurried past the display case where Larry was still busily laying out pastries. Neither one verbally acknowledged the other, but Amber felt Larry’s eyes on her the whole way.

  While the first meeting with the Floral Frenzy Committee had devolved into a shouting match, Amber hoped this one would be more civil. Kim led the Here and Meow from one side of the table, while a fifty-year-old posh and polished man named Harlo ran the Floral Frenemy side.

  The two leaders hashed out quite a few details in short order. Everyone took copious notes. No foul names were called. No arguments started. Then they switched to the topic of the parade.

  Amber still wasn’t sure how she felt about the mayors deciding that Edgehill and Marbleglen showing a united front would be a good PR move for Marbleglen, as a way to combat the widespread rumors of not only a crime spree, but now a murder in the quaint town.

  It was more or less a PR stunt, to be honest, Molly had said.

  It was more work to keep up the “safest town in Oregon” designation than Amber realized. She’d figured the extent of it had been to “be so condescendingly superior that criminals are too scared to even set foot here.”

  Every year, the kickoff event for Edgehill was a huge cat adoption event. Nine Lives Cat Rescue spent all year rescuing cats from kitten mills, taking in cats from overpopulated local shelters—especially adult cats—and welcoming every black cat they could find. Because there was still a stigma attached to black cats, they were offered at steep discounts, or in exchange for a donation to Nine Lives.

  The yearly event had grown in popularity alongside the Best of Edgehill competition—partly because the social media team at Nine Lives were geniuses … the plethora of cute kitten photos didn’t hurt either—and hundreds of kittens and adult cats found forever homes just before the cat-infused whirlwind of the three-day festival started. Amber always volunteered at the black cat event, and it was a small miracle when she managed to come home without another cat one to join her pair at home.

  For Marbleglen, their event was a flower-laden parade. While they hoped to someday have a parade that could compete with the likes of the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, California, or the Corso Zundert Flower Parade in the Netherlands, this year they only had three floats, each one standing nearly ten feet tall.

  “We started decorating the first float last weekend,” Harlo said. “We’ll need at least two, preferably three more weekends in order to complete the rest. We have about thirty guaranteed volunteers, but we’ll need quite a few more if we want to be done in time for the festival. We’re also a little behind schedule on starting the Edgehill float because we’re waiting for another shipment of tapioca pearls. We underestimated how many we needed.”

  Amber didn’t have the faintest clue what a tapioca pearl was.

  “We have a volunteer pool of about a hundred people right now,” Kim said. “We’ll contact everyone and see who is able to help out this weekend.” She shot a quick glance down the table at Ann Marie and Chloe, the faces of volunteer services, who nodded and scribbled notes on the sheets in front of them.

  “Excellent,” Harlo said. “We’ve been meeting on weekends at 10 a.m. and working for six to eight hours. We’ll meet on Sunday this week for our first joint session, but both days for the remaining weekends after that. We provide a catered lunch. I’ll text you the location of the float barn.”

  “Great,” said Kim. “You were able to design a float to feature cats so last minute?”

  Harlo nodded. “Just barely. That’s why you can’t start until Sunday. Our engineers needed an extra day. That’s the one we need the tapioca pearls for. We’re giving two of the three cats several patches of white around their faces and stripes down their backs. The third one is going to be almost all black. We have buckets of black onion seeds. We were thinking that we could have several live cats on that float as well—with handlers, of course, but it would be the most obvious way to combine our floats with your adoption event.”

  “I love it!” Kim said.

  After a few more particulars, the meeting started to wind down. People relaxed in their seats, and several others reached across the table to snag one of Jack’s blueberry scones.

  “Do you guys know how Bianca is doing?” Chloe asked. “I mean … she’s probably really freaked out right now.”

  Everyone seemed to still. Leave it to a teenager to shut down every adult in the room with a single question.

  Harlo opened his mouth, then shut it again. The pair of brunettes to his left looked at each other, shrugged sli
ghtly, and winced. The only other man aside from Harlo slouched in his seat a bit and fiddled with his pen.

  Finally, one of the women said, “I texted her this morning, but she didn’t reply.”

  In a tone that surprised even herself, it seemed, Kim said, “Have any of you gone to see her? Ask how her dad’s arraignment went?”

  Kim herself knew how the arraignment went, because she’d called Amber this afternoon on her lunch break and said, “Tell. Me. Everything.” When Amber told her that she was sure Simon had bewitched the judge, Kim had shrieked, “I hate that I had to work!”

  “Oh, did the arraignment happen already?” someone asked now.

  Everyone else offered the same round of shrugging shoulders, diverted eye contact, and fidgeting.

  “I know she can be … difficult,” Kim started.

  Harlo snorted. Then he immediately sighed and scratched at his temple. His dark hair had started to go gray there. “Bianca Pace isn’t really the type of person who needs people. She never gives off the impression that she wants anything to do with any of us outside this committee. I know that sounds harsh, given the circumstances, but you don’t know Bianca Pace the way we do. She’s got her husband to help her through this, anyway.”

  The rest of the Floral Frenemies nodded solemnly.

  A hollow sensation filled Amber’s stomach. Kim leaned forward to look past Ann Marie who sat between them, and they shared a frown. These people didn’t know Bianca at all. Recalling how quickly Bianca could flip between a normal human being and ice princess extraordinaire, Amber knew Bianca had, at least in part, caused these people to think the worst of her.