“You said your father hasn’t really discussed cases with you?” the chief asked. “Does that mean he has told you work-related things recently?”
“Kinda,” Wilma said, chewing on one of her cuticles. “He’s only really ever brought up one. And I can’t even say it’s a case ’cause I don’t have a lot of details or anything. It’s just a name Dad brought up a lot in the last couple weeks. He said there’s some guy named Joe Cooper who’s on the department’s short list, but that Dad didn’t like what was happening with Cooper. Whatever was going down, it felt even too shady for Dad, which is saying a lot. He kept saying this Cooper guy was going to be the reason Dad got out of the force. I don’t know if Cooper was threatening him or if Cooper found out something about the sleazy officers who work for Dad, or if it was something else—but Dad didn’t like it, whatever it was. If Dad didn’t like it, and then he wound up dead …” Wilma shrugged helplessly. “It all just feels really bad, you know? I’d never heard Dad talk like that before—that he needed to get out of the force, I mean. If I didn’t know better, I’d have said Dad was spooked. And my dad didn’t get spooked.”
“But you don’t have any idea what this specific trouble was?” the chief asked.
Wilma shook her head. “No, sorry. It was always a rollercoaster with Dad. Half the time when I talked to him, he was drunk. So normally I wouldn’t put too much stock into what he said, but he called me so many times in the last couple months. Like even creepy Daniels knew there was something weird about that. Dad was a mess of self-loathing when he was sober. Just … too much of a coward to own up to the fact that he’d screwed up with me and Mom. Too much of an ego to be vulnerable or whatever. He’d obviously wanted me in his life, though, ’cause he kept calling me. I think I was all he really had by the end. But he also knew where I lived, and I still never saw him. He never said sorry. He just called when he was drunk, rambling about this Cooper guy and how he was going to be the end of him. It just feels like it’s gotta mean something. Especially because it seems like Daniels was fishing for information about Dad’s work. Cooper was the only guy Dad talked about. Never that Simon guy.” She shrugged again. “I know that’s not a lot to go on. And sorry I made you come all the way out here for this. I just felt weird talking about it on the phone.”
“Please, don’t apologize,” the chief said. “You have to do what makes you feel safe. I’m glad you could take the time to meet with us. This definitely gives us a place to start.” He nodded at Amber. “Cassie and I here will see what we can scrounge up about Cooper. I’m helping Mayor Sable out in any way I can even if this is beyond my jurisdiction, so I would appreciate it if you kept this meeting between us. Especially as far as Cassie is concerned.”
“Oh, trust me,” Wilma said. “I’m not saying nothing to no one. Not in this town.”
“So what made you take the risk to call Chief Brown?” Amber asked. “You’re not worried Daniels will find out about it?”
“I kinda worried about that, yeah. But I just couldn’t live with myself if I thought I could help Simon from going down for something he didn’t do. I know it sounds like something from that board game Clue, but someone at that dinner party killed my dad and pinned it on Simon. Figure out who all was there and you’ll have your list of suspects.”
Based on what Molly had said, the party had dwindled down to no more than ten by the time Molly had left. Amber wondered if her magic could somehow get her such a list.
“That’s a good idea.” The chief stood, still holding his cap, and Amber followed suit. Rounding the coffee table, the chief stuck out his hand toward Wilma. “If you think of anything else, please let me know.”
“Yeah, of course,” Wilma said, standing as well so she could shake his hand.
Scooter, alert to the movement in the room, leapt off his makeshift bed and was bounding around again.
“I know you and Dad weren’t super close,” Wilma said to the chief, “but I know he always liked you. You seem like a good guy.”
“That’s very kind of you to say,” the chief said, stuffing the cap back over his blond hair. “We’ll be in touch, okay?”
When it was Amber’s turn to say goodbye to Wilma, she grasped Wilma’s hand and smiled, doing her best to seem ethereal and psychic-y. “It was nice meeting you. I hope when we meet again, we’ll have some more information for you.” But when Amber tried to let go, the girl held firm. Amber’s brows ticked up in question.
Wilma shot a look at Chief Brown who was a few feet away at the front door, currently distracted by Scooter. The chief was busily rubbing the dog’s belly, as Scooter had very dramatically draped his little body across one of the chief’s tennis shoes, tongue lolling out the side of his mouth.
“I know you’re helping Chief Brown, and Chief Brown is helping Mayor Sable,” Wilma said softly, hand still holding Amber’s, her voice low. Amber leaned in to hear her better. “But the mayor was at that party, too. Don’t rule her out.”
Chapter 10
It wasn’t until they were back in the chief’s car and heading away from Wilma Jameson’s run-down little apartment complex that the chief spoke. “What did Wilma say to you when we were leaving?”
“She seems to think we can’t trust Mayor Sable either,” Amber said.
The chief hmm-ed. After a minute of thought, he said, “Well, she’s our main entrance into this case at the moment. I’m involved solely because she said, ‘I could use some help on this.’ She was an added resource for us when we were on the hunt for Chloe. I would think she wouldn’t be recruiting outside help if she was neck-deep in whatever this is.”
“Do you think she assumed you might be the same breed of cop as Daniels and she didn’t really expect you to dig too deep into this one?” Amber asked.
He let out another hmm. “Holding onto a healthy dose of skepticism when it comes to her wouldn’t be a terrible idea.”
Since he was clearly bothered by the idea of Mayor Sable being as sketchy as Daniels, Amber changed the subject. “Any idea who Joe Cooper is?”
“Not a clue.”
She chewed on the inside of her cheek. “What do you think about pulling Alan Peterson into this?”
“My gut tells me something is very, very off here in Marbleglen,” he said.
“So is that a yes or …”
“Call Alan,” he said. “Tell him as little as possible, though. He’s a good PI. He’s a big reason why we found Chloe. But … if Daniels is as sketchy as we think, we want Alan to make as little a splash as possible to not tip this guy off until we know what we’re dealing with.”
Amber nodded. “I can tell him I’m calling him on behalf of Bianca; I’ll leave you and Mayor Sable out of it entirely.”
“Good,” he said.
“I have one other suggestion, but I’m ninety-nine percent sure you won’t like it,” Amber said.
The chief sighed. “What?”
“I think what Wilma said about the game Clue makes sense,” she said. “If Simon really was roofied, the person who actually killed Chief Jameson was at that dinner party. He’s trying to make arrangements for me to come visit him, but even if I’m able to use memory magic on him, it might not work. Manufactured drugs and magic aren’t a good combination. That black hole in his memory might stay that way.”
“Good to know,” he said. “We also need to figure out if a single person was responsible for Jameson’s murder and framing Simon, or if it was a group effort. Both will be hard to prove. What’s your detestable suggestion?”
“If I can get into Jameson’s house, I can see for myself who was there,” she said. “A memory reveal spell could potentially show me the crime itself, too. The objects in that house won’t have compromised memories.”
“Not happening,” he said. “Not right away, anyway.” He wagged a finger at her. “No breaking and entering, Amber Blackwood! I will arrest you for that.”
Amber wrinkled her nose and crossed her arms. “Fine.”
&nb
sp; “I didn’t say no forever, but all of that is a last resort,” he said. “We’re going to stick to old-fashioned sleuthing—and a little witchcraft—until we have a better sense of what’s going on.”
When he pulled into Parking Lot C, the chief cleared his throat, halting Amber from getting out of the car right away. He turned in his seat a little.
“What?” she asked, massaging her cheeks. “Is there something on my face?’
“The nose is almost yours again.” He chuckled a little awkwardly. “I … uhh … I just wanted to apologize if I ever made you felt unwelcome in Edgehill. I know I was … not the most agreeable person for you to deal with when I first started here. I still have flashbacks of the day I came to break the news about Melanie Cole’s death. Instead of treating you like a person who just found out a close friend had died, I confronted you. I offered you accusations instead of compassion—or even the benefit of the doubt. My gut told me something was different about you and I jumped to nothing but terrible conclusions.”
Amber was shocked into silence.
A faint tinge of pink colored his cheeks. “You’re a good person and I should have seen that first, not that you’re … odd. And don’t get me wrong, you’re still very odd. But it’s endearing now. Mostly.”
“Thanks?” she managed, laughing. “If it makes you feel better, you’ve made up for it tenfold. I mean, we’re basically best friends now.”
He rolled his eyes. “Way to kill the mood, Blackwood.”
“That’s what all the boys tell me.”
He barked out a laugh.
Smiling, she climbed out of the car. “Talk to you later, chief.”
She was just about to shut the door when he said, “Oh, and Amber?”
She peeked her head back into the car.
“I hope you choose Jack Terrence, too,” he said. Amber’s face flushed furiously as she remembered that the chief had heard Larry Terrence tear her a new one over her on-and-off-again flirtation with his brother. “You two would be good together.”
“Noted. I’m leaving now. I am mortified beyond words.”
Laughing, he said, “My work here is done. Besides, isn’t this what best friends do?”
She grinned. “I suppose it is.”
Amber worked the afternoon shift in The Quirky Whisker training her new seasonal employee, Ben Lydon—the young man who, at last month’s Hair Ball, had won the Best of Edgehill award for design. He would be creating this year’s logo and commemorative pin for the Here and Meow Festival. Ben’s parents owned Mews and Brews, a restaurant which boasted artwork that fused cats with famous movie scenes. Ben had drawn all of it.
The interview process had been quick. Ben called The Quirky Whisker a few days ago asking if she was hiring, she’d said yes, and then asked him when he’d wanted to start. Finding Chloe Deidrick last month after she’d been kidnapped had, in large part, been a group effort. Ben had played a role by helping law enforcement narrow down the list of potential usernames that might have been associated with the mystery boy Chloe had been talking to on an anonymous chat app.
A benefit of living in a close-knit town like Edgehill—at least in Ben’s case—was that Amber knew the twenty-two-year-old well enough that she didn’t hesitate for a second to hire him. Plus, if they worked together, it would give her enough time to really suss him out to decide if she liked him for Chloe. If so, she would sing his praises to the girl at every opportunity.
Ben was a quick study, and by the last hour of the shift, he was ringing customers up with minimal help from Amber. And, despite being lanky, semi-awkward, and a bit tongue-tied with women, he was unendingly charming.
At the end of his shift, she sent him on his way, leaving her to close up shop on her own. He would be working with Daisy in the morning—Lily had a dentist appointment. Amber and Lily would be working afternoon until closing.
She straightened up, locked the shop, and made her way upstairs, where the cats eagerly awaited dinner. It wasn’t until she’d fed them, showered, and eaten a sandwich that she searched for Alan Peterson’s card. She found it buried under a pile of plastic elephant trunks.
It was after eight, but Amber already knew Alan kept strange hours. She supposed most private investigators did. She dialed his number.
“Alan Peterson,” he said in greeting.
“Hey, Alan,” Amber said. “This is—”
“Amber Blackwood,” he said. “How’s it going? Chloe okay?”
“Oh, yeah, she’s fine,” she said quickly, detecting the faint sign of worry in his tone. “Well, as well as she can be, I guess. She’s been seeing a therapist.”
“Good to hear,” he said. “What can I help you with? Need me to tail that Connor Declan guy?”
Amber froze. “No, why?”
“During my stakeouts all over Edgehill, I saw that guy watching you on more than one occasion.”
Shaking her head to will her mind off the topic of Connor Declan, she said, “No, this is about something else. Did you hear about the murder of Chief Jameson in Marbleglen?”
“Can’t say that I did.”
Amber told him about the growing movement against the chief and his officers by the community-run safety group which was headed by Simon Ricinus, the closed-door dinner party, and the death of Chief Jameson. “My friend, Bianca Pace, is Simon’s daughter. She’s convinced he’s being framed but isn’t sure why. The only lead we have at the moment is that before he died, Chief Jameson was caught up in something with a guy name Joe Cooper. I was wondering if you could help me find out who this Cooper guy is.”
“I could do that,” Alan said. “I’m in between cases at the moment, so I can get started soon. I’m not cheap, though.”
Amber had been expecting this. She supposed she and Bianca could split the cost of Alan’s fees for at least a week. “How much?”
“Can you put in a good word for me with Ann Marie?”
Amber almost fell off her couch. “Your payment is a date?”
“Don’t sound so shocked,” he said. “I’m … not always that great with women.”
Alan did have a tendency to be brutally honest. One day last month, Amber had tried to tail Alan, unsure of the PI’s motives. The chief had been leery of any PIs called in to work the Chloe case, which had made Amber even warier. In short order, Alan had caught on to her following him and had let himself into her car while she’d been staking him out. Amber remembered the conversation well.
“I can’t stress this enough,” he said, “you are terrible about being inconspicuous.”
“Terrible seems a little harsh,” she said.
“Terrible is being generous.”
She also remembered the first time she’d spoken to Alan during the Job and Career Fair at Edgehill High, when she’d been working alongside Ann Marie as she and Amber tried to get as many student volunteer sign-ups as possible for the upcoming Hair Ball, and the Here and Meow. Alan had instantly turned into a charismatic, self-deprecating flirt in Ann Marie’s presence—though Amber had thought then that it had all been an act on Alan’s part as a means to gain information—and Ann Marie had turned into a puddle of goo at the man’s feet.
“Private eyes need love too, Amber,” he said now.
She snorted. “Do you even know anything about Ann Marie? Wait, that’s probably not a good question to ask a PI.”
“I haven’t gone snooping in her trash, if that’s what you’re asking,” he said. “From being in town during the month I was around for Chloe’s case, I gleaned that she’s not seeing anyone right now. That’s all I know. I promise I’m not a creep. But she’s gorgeous and I’d like to take her out sometime if the idea of grabbing dinner with someone like me doesn’t completely freak her out.”
“Have you freaked out many women?”
“I’ve freaked out enough,” he said. “I hear ‘intimidating’ and ‘borderline rude’ a lot.”
“Is ‘borderline’ their word or yours?” she asked.
&n
bsp; She could hear the smile in his voice. “That’s not nice, Amber. I’ll call you if I come up with anything.”
Amber woke with a start. Her skin was clammy and her hair was matted to her forehead. Sighing, she checked her phone. It was just after five in the morning. As Amber groaned and lay back on her pillow, Alley—who had been asleep on the other pillow—reached out a paw and gently tapped Amber’s cheek. It was Alley’s way of asking if Amber was okay. Unfortunately, Alley had to “ask” this a lot lately.
After assuring Alley she was fine, Amber eased out of bed, lightly draping the blanket over Tom so he wouldn’t protest about being too cold in her absence. Then Amber padded over to her dining room table. The only good thing about the nightmares was that once Amber was up, she was up. And once she was up she needed a distraction—namely the growing pile of toy orders she had to fill, both for the upcoming Edgehill High graduation, and, more urgently, the Here and Meow.
Amber had been fast at work for a solid two hours when her phone lit up from her nightstand. She wasn’t surprised to see Edgar’s face scowling up at her.
“Hey,” she said.
“Should I be concerned that you don’t sound the least bit groggy this early in the morning? Part of the fun of calling you at this hour is how mad you are.”
“You’re awful,” she said. “I could ask you the same thing, though. Are you not sleeping either?”
“Not much, no,” he said. “Anyway. I know you’ve got a lot going on right now, but I think it’s time to try phase two of Magic Cache. We need to get the grimoire out of your apartment and somewhere safer.”
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