Pawsitively Secretive

by Melissa Erin Jackson

  Turning onto Sphynx Way, Amber also realized she had no idea what Alan’s car looked like. The street was deserted—no moms pushing strollers down the sidewalk or people out walking dogs—so she pulled over, noting that Alan was still at least a block away, and cast a quick set of glamour spells, turning herself back into Cassie Westbottom. Then she started her slow creep down the street, hands gripping the steering wheel with her chest pulled toward it. Hopefully Cassie merely looked lost, as opposed to suspicious.

  Looking left and right, she finally spotted Alan parked on the right side of the street, baseball cap on and pulled low. He was reading a book, but Amber knew that was likely a ruse. As she went by, she scanned the houses around them, wondering who lived here.

  And then, two houses up on the left, she saw a door open, and out walked Chief Brown dressed in plain clothes. Her eyes widened and she quickly averted her gaze, hoping he wouldn’t see her. Seconds later, Sammy went bounding out of the house, his wild blond curls bouncing around his head. He went tearing off down the sidewalk, Chief Brown following behind at a leisurely pace, calling out for his son to slow down. Sammy went from full-out run to a light jog, then grabbed a large stick off the ground and started to wave it around like a sword.

  Amber watched all this from her rearview mirror as she slowly crept down the street. She pulled over and slunk down in her seat, hand shielding her face. The chief didn’t notice her as he walked by on the opposite side of the sidewalk. Amber supposed he was home to help give Jessica a bit of a break while she was home with the newborn. Given how wildly Sammy was flailing his way down the sidewalk, she supposed Jessica could use all the help she could get.

  Once the father-and-son pair had rounded the corner—heading, Amber guessed, to Balinese Park—Alan’s car, several lengths back from hers, pulled out onto the street and drove past her.

  Why was he tailing the chief? But then Amber remembered how he’d questioned what his and Amber’s relationship was. Amber shielded her face as he went by, and once he was past her, she pulled out too. Alan parked by the small pond on the south side of the park, where he had a clear view of the chief and Sammy in the play area. Sammy had found a friend and the two were chasing each other around the grass. The chief sat on a bench and watched, looking perfectly content.

  Nothing of note happened during the forty-five-minute park trip; the chief had hardly even checked his phone. Then the pair walked back, Sammy still skipping ahead but with at least a little less energy. Instead of following Alan and the chief back to the chief’s house, Amber stayed put parked beside the park, casting the glamour spells again—like retouching makeup—to make sure her Cassie face stayed in place a while longer. She supposed she could have glamoured herself to look like someone else entirely, but with her glamour skills being so lacking, she was nervous about pushing it. She watched the map, and only started her car back up when the Alan dot was once again on the move.

  This time, she followed Alan to the police station. Amber was glad now that she had Cassie’s face on instead of her own. If someone saw her following the chief around, it would only give credence to the affair theory: obsessed Amber Blackwood keeping tabs on her lover. She shuddered.

  Two hours into being parked on the side of the road outside a restaurant that didn’t open until four P.M., Amber wondered how PIs did this. She had joked with the chief about becoming a witch PI, but how long could someone spend sitting in a parked car before she went loopy? Or overdosed on sugar? She’d already eaten two cupcakes and three granola bars. She’d had two bottles of water and one secret coffee from Coffee Cat, and now very much needed to pee. She would be a terrible PI, she decided.

  Remembering then that she had an unfinished candy bar in her purse somewhere, she pulled her purse into her lap and rooted around. She found a small tin of mints—empty. She tossed it over her shoulder in frustration, only realizing a moment later that this wasn’t her car. In addition to her wallet and phone, there were wads of small note paper, a few pens, and three tubes of lip gloss. No candy bar. She unzipped an inner pocket, finding both her collection of new spells and her rubber cat. No candy there either.

  Then she checked—

  She yelped as her passenger side door opened and Alan Peterson plopped down beside her. Clutching her purse to her chest, she resisted the urge to whack him in the head with it.

  “Is there a particular reason why you’ve been following me all morning, Miss Blackwood?”

  Crap. Her glamour had worn off. She wasn’t sure if it had happened during the two hours of boredom, or suddenly from the shock of the door opening—like being scared out of your hiccups.

  “Is your ego really that big that you think I have nothing better to do than follow you around?” she asked, her voice only a little shaky.

  He cut her a sideways look that very clearly said he didn’t believe her for a second. “I would suggest you get some more practice under your belt before you try tailing someone who does this for a living. You’re very bad at it.”

  The nerve.

  “Why are you following me?” he asked.

  “How long has Karen Reed been your client?” she countered.

  He cocked a brow at her. “I told you I’m not going to divulge my client’s identity.”

  Amber knew that was because he didn’t know his client’s identity, but she figured he must have done some research; his curiosity about who had hired him had surely piqued his interest, hadn’t it? “Who else would have a vested interested in Chloe Deidrick, as isolated as she is here, other than family?”

  He stared at her a beat, gaze roaming her face. “How do you know Chloe’s aunt?”

  So he did know. That, or she’d just confirmed his suspicions.

  “I don’t know her,” Amber said. “But she’s family and she’s never believed that Frank wasn’t involved in her sister’s death. She’s likely worried Frank has done something to Chloe, too.”

  “Then why did she contact me days before Chloe went missing?” he asked.

  Amber’s head reared back a fraction. Before Chloe went missing? How would she have known then that Chloe was in trouble? Had Chloe contacted her before all this and when communication stopped, Karen got worried?

  But unless Chloe had explicitly told her aunt that she felt like she was in danger, hiring a PI seemed like an extreme step.

  Amber cycled through the last vision she’d gotten from the premonition tincture. Whoever had taken her wanted Chloe to question her father’s character. Someone had it out for Frank. Could this same person have contacted Karen, too? Sowed the seeds of doubt enough that it made her seek Chloe out, and then shortly after finding her, Chloe went missing?

  “Karen was tipped off,” Amber said. “Someone warned her something was going to happen to Chloe, so she hired you to figure out what was going on. Was she already missing by the time you got to Edgehill?”

  “She had actually called someone else first. When the colleague of mine found out about the nature of his job, he called me and put me in contact with Karen. I mostly work in the Pacific Northwest. I had been working a job in California when Karen called me. I got up here as fast as I could, but, yes, Chloe had already been taken by the time I got here.”

  Amber nodded to herself.

  Alan watched her. “Who are you, Amber? I mean … what’s your vested interest in all this?”

  “I’ve known Chloe for most of her life,” Amber said. “Why wouldn’t I be worried about her?”

  “Most people in these situations don’t go through this much trouble,” he said.

  Amber pursed her lips.

  “It all just seems a little fishy,” he said, gaze focused out the windshield now, his tone flat and a little disinterested. “The mayor’s beloved daughter goes missing, he calls for a public search almost immediately, you and the chief are seen sneaking off together just before that search starts, he gives you something, and then you practically sprint right to the location where the missing girl’s phone
is.” He turned his intense gaze back to her, though his tone remained level and even. “Makes me wonder what you three are up to here … what Frank Deidrick might have done, and what you and the chief are doing now. Maybe you’re not actually worried you said something to Chloe that aided in her decision to run away. Maybe you actually did something to her. Or maybe you knew where to find the phone because Frank or Owen did something to her, and you were paid to ‘find’ it. Does one of them have something on you? A secret they’re holding over your head?”

  All Amber could do was gape at him.

  “What I can’t figure out it is why the chief of police would target a seventeen-year-old. He doesn’t seem like the type to have a thing for young girls—so I doubt it’s that,” he said. “My bets are on Frank. Frank gets help from the chief—either directly or bribes him—to get rid of his daughter, and then the chief ropes you in because you owe him something.” He tapped a nostril. “I keep thinking your payment might not be in cash.”

  Did he honestly think she was a drug addict? Goodness.

  Given what he’d seen—or thought he’d seen—happen in the alley between her and the chief, she couldn’t exactly blame him for coming up with such a wild story, but she was still mildly offended.

  “At first glance, I wouldn’t have pegged you as a fan of the nose candy, but I’ve known successful CEOs—millionaires—who hit the white stuff on a regular basis and you’d never know,” he said.

  “Whoa. Geez,” she said, hands up, turning more fully in her seat to look at him. “Look, I’m not on drugs. And even if I was—which I’m not—Chief Brown would be the last person I’d get them from. You’ve been watching him for days, I’m guessing? Has he once given you reason to suspect he’s up to anything criminal?”

  The hint of a smile tugged at his mouth. “Not once.”

  Amber pursed her lips. “I’m just confirming all kinds of theories for you, aren’t I?”

  “One after the other,” he said. “So, what, you’re just a busybody citizen going out of your way to help the police on this case, or are you one of these people obsessed with true crime and now you’re testing out your so-called knowledge in the real world?”

  “You’re not very nice.”

  “It’s not my job to be nice.” He sized her up again. “You clearly have good instincts, but if you’re thinking of changing careers from toy making to crime solving, you really need to consider an internship somewhere. Likely for a long time. I can’t stress this enough: you are terrible about being inconspicuous.”

  “Terrible seems a little harsh,” she said.

  “Terrible is being generous.”

  She pursed her lips again. She’d never once considered herself interested in true crime or a job solving it, but she was offended he thought so little of her. Though, at what point had he noticed her? Had he only noticed her once she was Amber, or had he noticed Cassie, too? Terrible at being inconspicuous. Had he—or anyone else today—seen her use her glamour spells? She thought she’d been careful, but what if she hadn’t been?

  Though, she supposed, maybe she’d only been painfully obvious to someone who was trained to notice things out of the ordinary.

  “You really think my instincts are good?”

  “Yep,” he said, focused out the windshield again. “Based on my conversations with my client, I’d deduced she was Chloe’s aunt or maybe a distant cousin. I hadn’t come anywhere close to a name. What do you know about the Reeds?”

  Amber chewed the inside of her cheek. I promise we’re on the same side here, he’d said to her the morning of the job fair. On a whim, she mentally recited the truth spell she’d used numerous times over the last few weeks. She, Willow, and Aunt Gretchen had needed to be extra cautious with everyone they’d met, not knowing who might have been the Penhallow in disguise. Amber didn’t know how effective a spell for truth would be on a man who wasn’t even using his real name, but she hoped it would work anyway.

  “Alan Peterson,” she said, magic humming beneath her skin, “why did you take the job to find Chloe Deidrick?”

  “I took this job because my little sister was kidnapped when she was eight,” Alan said in a flat, even tone. “I was fourteen and in charge of keeping an eye on her while my parents went out to run errands. Miriam and I had begged my parents to let us stay home; I promised to look after her. After they’d left, a few of my friends came over and we went up to my room to play video games. Miriam asked to play too, but I told her to leave us alone. So she went out front to ride her bike. When my parents came home an hour later, Miriam’s bike was lying in the middle of the road and she was gone. They found her body in the woods two weeks later. Missing children cases don’t come to me that often, but when they do, I always take them. Every success is my way of apologizing to my sister who I’ll never see again.”

  Amber’s mouth had dropped open sometime during the course of his confession—a confession that poured out of the man’s mouth so quickly, she wondered if it had been primed and ready, just waiting for someone to ask him the right question.

  “Oh my God, Alan,” Amber said. “I’m so sorry.”

  He stared at her as if he’d just found out that she was the monster who had kidnapped his sister. “What did you just do?”

  Amber cocked her head, doing her best to sound innocent. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve told that to almost no one and I just … blurt that out to you when I’ve talked to you less than an hour combined?” His eyes were red-rimmed—whether he was going to cry or go into a rage, she couldn’t be sure. She was scared of both possibilities.

  “I know the Reeds live in Montana,” she said, barreling ahead to hopefully distract him from strangling her here in her rental car—she figured the fee for cleaning up blood was exorbitant. “Karen had one sister, Lilith Reed, who died almost seventeen years ago. I believe Lilith changed her name to Shannon Pritchard and lived her life in seclusion after that. Why … I don’t know. For a while, I thought it was because she was scared of Frank. Now I’m not so sure.”

  He had still been gaping at her, but he sobered up soon enough, snapping his mouth shut. “Why don’t you suspect him anymore?”

  Amber didn’t know how to explain that she’d seen enough through her magic tinctures to know the person who kidnapped Chloe was doing so as a way to punish Frank. “I’ve talked to several people who know Frank well enough to know he keeps a pretty set schedule. If he had stolen away his own daughter, he wouldn’t be able to keep her locked in the house. The police have now done two full searches of the place. If that girl was in the house, they would have found her by now. Which would mean he would have to be keeping her somewhere else. If he was suddenly making routine stops to a second location or a storage facility, someone in town would have noticed. You would have noticed.”

  Lips pressed into a hard line, he nodded.

  “In order to find her, we have to figure out who the mayor’s enemies are,” Amber said. “They know Chloe is his world, so they took that from him. I just can’t figure out why.”

  Though he did so reluctantly, Alan shared his list of suspects with her—people he believed would have it out for Frank Deidrick. Two of her suspects were on that list, too. First was Victor Newland and the second was Johnny, the mystery boyfriend.

  “What’s your connection to the Newlands?” Amber asked, remembering the disdainful look Victor’s daughter had angled at Alan the day of the job fair. “Dawn doesn’t seem to be your biggest fan.”

  Alan sighed. “Remember when Victor abruptly dropped out of the race months before the election?” When Amber nodded, he said, “Frank’s team found out Victor had been involved with a young woman close to his own daughter’s age. Frank went to Victor privately and told him if he dropped out, he’d keep the affair to himself.”

  “Oh wow,” Amber said.

  “The news still made it to his wife though and she agreed to couples counseling and the like, and Victor said he would work on his marr
iage. So Frank kept the news to himself, Victor dropped out, Frank won virtually unopposed,” Alan said. “Victor’s wife, months later, hired me and said she thought her husband was up to no good again. Turns out she was right. I presented the evidence and she left him, but she did so in the middle of the night, leaving her daughter behind and not leaving so much as a forwarding address. Dawn, I imagine, is furious with both her parents, but for different reasons, so she projects that anger everywhere else. Like on me.”

  Amber winced. “Guess that explains why she’s such a little monster. I would be too in those circumstances.” After a pause, she said, “What do you know about Johnny?”

  “Not much,” he said. “Of the few kids from Edgehill High I’ve been able to talk to, they all agree that this Johnny kid wasn’t from here.”

  “Did you hear about the hack?”

  Alan cocked his head. “What hack?”

  Amber recounted, to the best of her limited ability, what Bethany had told her. “The list got pulled down, but maybe it’s still possible to find it.”

  “I made a dummy Scuttle account,” Alan said, wincing slightly. “But no one will talk to me on there. They all said I sounded like a cop.”

  “Who’s terrible at being inconspicuous now?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said, waving away her comment. “Any idea what her handle on there was?”

  “No, I didn’t think to ask Bethany that,” Amber said. “How does that whole anonymous thing work? Don’t you have to put in your name and email address when you sign up? That information was what was on the list the hacker compiled.”

  He stared at her for a beat, as if he thought she was quite simple. “First of all, just because it asks for your name, it doesn’t mean you have to give your real one. It’s also very easy to create an email address you use solely for sites like this. You don’t have to input a phone number when you register. Scuttle is built on a platform of privacy for its users, so not even they keep records of all the interactions. Photos and videos sent through there aren’t stored anywhere. It’s great for kids, since it’s a safe space they can talk to each other where adults aren’t going to cramp their style—mostly because the adults don’t know it exists, let alone how it works—but it also means child predators have figured out how to pretend to be teenagers and then lure vulnerable teens into very dangerous situations.”