Pawsitively Secretive

by Melissa Erin Jackson

  She stopped by Purrfectly Scrumptious first. Betty’s entry into “Best of” would be three flavors of cupcakes: Chocolate Chocolate Surprise, Raspberry Rhapsody, and, of course, Oreo Dream. For samples, she was making bite-size cupcakes of each flavor. With 100 confirmed attendees, she would make 650 total mini cupcakes, so each person could have a second if they wished, plus a few extra in case any were damaged in transit. Amber was certain there wouldn’t be a single one left by the end of gala, damaged or not.

  After Amber had taken her notes and pictures of the three full-size cupcakes Betty had displayed specifically for this meeting, Amber started to pack up her things.

  Betty wrung her hands. “I know you can’t tell me anything about what the others are presenting, but do you really think I have a shot?”

  “Absolutely,” Amber said. “And not just because you’re my friend.”

  She exhaled deeply. “Thanks, sugar. Well, I better let you go finish your rounds. I need to figure out the best baking schedule for 650 cupcakes!”

  Next, Amber hit the two pizza places. One was best known for its calzone, while the other had a to-die-for deep dish pizza. As Betty had done, there was a full-size available for Amber to sample, take notes about, and photograph. For the gala, there were mini calzones on the menu, as well as a small side salad topped with the restaurant’s signature Italian dressing. The other would offer small slices of their pizza and breadsticks. Each restaurant would be serving vegetarian, cheese, pepperoni, and chicken and pesto options. The attendees would vote on which restaurant did each flavor best.

  There were salads, quinoa bowls, and plant burgers at the Milk Bowl and Holly’s Harvest; elaborate burgers and sweet potato fries from Brew and Mews; and decadent sandwiches from Catty Melt, the bread toasted a golden brown and topped with a thin layer of melted cheese.

  For her one nonfood-related business category, Amber swung by Angora Threads to see three upscale dresses made by both Letty Rodriguez and her son, Diego. Their competition, the Shabby Tabby, made more ready-to-wear items—everything from pants to sweaters. Amber left with a vintage-looking dress from Angora that was covered in black smiling cat faces and had a thick band of black that marked off the empire waistline, and from Shabby Tabby, she left with a jumper made of a dark blue material with wide pockets in the shorts. An intricately designed cat adorned one of the pockets, stitched with white and gray thread. The cat was perched above the pocket, its nose focused on what might lay inside, its striped tail arched over its back like a miniature cane. For the gala, models would give the attendees a mini fashion show. The Shabby Tabby owner made sure to let Amber know that they would have an array of models of all body types to help show how widely accessible their clothes were.

  Next came the horrible Paulette at Clawsome Coffee, who sneered at Amber the moment she walked in, though she tried to hide it. The last time Amber had seen Paulette, the older woman had disparaged the late Melanie Cole for awarding the Terrence brothers the opportunity to offer after-race treats to the 5k runners the morning of the Here and Meow—and Paulette had done so with so much venom, Amber had stormed out of the coffee shop without her order. She hadn’t been back since.

  Amber and Paulette kept their exchange icy but professional. Amber felt a sense of smug satisfaction that Paulette clearly wanted to wag her tongue about whatever slight she thought had befallen her now, but had to keep her mouth shut if she didn’t want to ruin her chances at winning the “Best of” designation for coffee. Amber knew that if Paulette lost to Purrcolate or Coffee Cat, she was even more likely to suffer a coronary than Chief Brown was over Amber’s interview tactics. Paulette almost assuredly would blame Amber for her loss—as if Amber had any say in who won. But if thinking Amber held any kind of authority when it came to assigning a winner made Paulette keep her nasty comments to herself—that anyone on the Here and Meow Committee did—Amber wouldn’t correct her.

  Coffee Cat would be offering their toasted marshmallow mocha, white chocolate toffee nut latte, and gingerbread latte as their three samples. Samples for guests would come in small shot glasses adorned, with the café’s logo, which guests could take home with them.

  During her discussion with the café’s owner, Amber had tried the gingerbread latte and it had been so good, her knees had nearly buckled.

  As she left, she smiled to herself, knowing Paulette had little chance of winning this year.

  Which left Purrcolate as her last scheduled visit for the day. Her reasoning had been that if this went horribly awry, she could drive straight home rather than having the bad experience distract her during her other meetings. Armed with her clipboard and the knowledge that she’d faced down Paulette “the She-Demon” Newsom without losing her cool, she marched into Purrcolate for the second time in two days.

  When she walked in, Jack was behind the counter as usual, and grinned at her. “Hey.”

  She approached the counter with all the bravado of a turtle scared into its shell. “Hey,” she said, glancing around for Larry. Then she spotted him on the other side of the café, chatting with a couple sitting at one of the tables.

  “I’m just about ready,” Jack said, redirecting her attention. “I was thinking it might be best to do this in the back room?”

  Amber swallowed. “Sure. Whatever’s most convenient.”

  Within a couple minutes, he had ushered her around the counter—in the opposite direction of the conference room—and had lifted the flap in the counter’s surface to let her behind it with him. He guided her past a pastry display case on one side, and the coffee and espresso machines on the other, and then toward the swinging black door in the back wall. He pushed it open with his back, smiling at her as he did so, and the ever-present smell of baking scones enveloped her.

  She followed him into the kitchen; she’d never been back here before. Against the right wall was a large sink that was flanked on either side by shelving. The rolling cart on the right had large glass containers of what looked like flour and sugar, and clear plastic bins filled with a variety of mixing bowls. Above that were three large mixers lined up in a neat row. Various baking utensils and knives hung on the wall above the mixers. The set of shelves on the other side of the sink was packed tight with colorful rows of plastic bins, bottles, and jars of ingredients.

  The wall to the left was taken up by the ovens, currently baking scones and other pastries to golden perfection. Beside the ovens was a tall shelving unit, the racks lined with cooling treats.

  All the equipment and furniture were made of stainless steel, except for the massive wooden table in the middle of the room, the underside of which had large tubs of more dry ingredients in them. Two people in white aprons were busy working at the table. A woman was using a giant stainless steel mixer, while a man rolled out dough on the flour-covered surface of the table. Knives, spatulas, mixing bowls, and a dish of chocolate chips littered the work surface. At the end of the table was a plastic cover positioned on top of what Amber assumed was a plate.

  “Hey, you two, can you give us a few minutes?” Jack asked.

  The pair stopped what they were doing and looked up.

  “Oh, for the Best of Edgehill, right?” the woman asked, wiping her hands on a towel hung from her apron’s waist. “You got this, J.” She smiled warmly at Amber, then made her way out the swinging door.

  The guy wiped his hands, too, then walked past Jack, placed both hands on his shoulders and gave them a squeeze and a shake. “Good luck, man.”

  After the door had swung shut behind him, Jack motioned for her to follow him to the end of the table where the covered plate waited. They stood side by side before it. Amber put down her clipboard and fished a pen and her camera out of her purse.

  Placing the camera on the table, she asked, “You’re submitting three scone flavors for the competition, right?”

  “Yep,” Jack said. “I’ve finally settled on lemon seed, espresso chocolate chunk, and glazed gingerbread.”

  Ambe
r willed her mouth to stop salivating. After all the food and sugar she’d consumed today, she didn’t need any more. But good grief, glazed gingerbread? How was she supposed to not eat ten of those? Just as she had with the others, she wrote down the three flavors, the number of each he planned to bring with him, and what his refrigeration and plating requirements were.

  When she was done, he said, “Scones, milady” and dramatically removed the cover from the plate. The lemon poppy seed and espresso chocolate chunk scones were both topped with a zigzag of white frosting, while the gingerbread scone was covered in a thin sheet of glaze. He’d garnished each one—thin curls of lemon rind for the first, a small stack of chocolate squares and espresso beans for the second, and a dash of colorful sprinkles over the third.

  “This is beautiful,” she said, unable to help herself. “Is this the plating you plan to do for each guest?”

  “Yep,” he said, “though the scones will be half the size.”

  Amber picked up her camera and snapped as many photos as she could from as many angles as possible, worried she wasn’t doing them any justice. When she finished, she found him watching her, that familiar little smile on his face—the one from when he’d still had the “middle-school level crush” on her, when things had been full of hopeful maybes and had been far less complicated. Her bottom lip quivered a fraction, a sure sign that she would cry at any moment, and she took in a deep pull of air. “Okay, I think I have everything I need. Thank you so much for meeting with me,” she said quickly, stuffing camera and pen back into her purse.

  “Would you like to try one?” Jack asked. “I made the gingerbread one especially for you, actually. I just had a feeling it would be one you’d like.”

  Goodness, she needed to get out of here. But that scone did look amazing.

  They reached for it at the same time, their hands colliding over the plate of beautifully plated treats. Their fingers tangled for a moment and they froze, gazes finding each other instantly. Just as quickly, they jumped apart. Not from embarrassment, but because they’d been zapped—like from static electricity.

  It sent Amber’s magic reeling and she stumbled back a step from the table. Her magic thrashed under her skin, like it always did in highly emotional moments. It instantly pulled up memories from the night at Edgar’s. The sleep spell she’d put on Jack, being chased across Edgar’s property in the dead of night by Kieran Penhallow, the cursed witch’s magic crushing Amber’s throat with an unseen hand.

  Normally she only had to relive those memories in her nightmares.

  “I’m sorry,” Amber said. “I have to go.”

  She’d only made it a few steps when Jack called out to her. “You forgot this.”

  Turning, she found him holding up her clipboard stuffed with all her notes from the day. She met him halfway and took hold of the board, but Jack didn’t immediately let go. It forced her to look into his green eyes, his black brows bunched together over them. The way he looked at her was different than it had been minutes ago—that goofy hopefulness was gone and replaced by something else.

  When she gave the board another tug, he relinquished his hold. “Thank you,” she muttered before she hurried out of the kitchen, along the length of the counter, ducked underneath the flap, and headed straight for the door, doing her best not to knock anyone off his feet in her haste to get out of the café.

  Even after Amber made it back outside, the cool air washing over her blazing hot face, her magic didn’t calm. Being outside did, however, remind her that she hadn’t sampled any of Purrcolate’s coffee. Maybe Ann Marie could come back later in Amber’s stead; Amber couldn’t go back in there—at least not right now.

  She wondered if something Jack wore—a watch or belt or even his shoes—still held onto the energy from that night. By coming in contact with her, it had released the pent-up energy he’d been unknowingly storing, waiting for someone like Amber to unleash it. There had been so much of it. It had likely just felt like a static shock to him—like scooting across a carpet in socked feet and then touching something metal. To her, it had been like a quick, sharp lightning bolt to her system. If that zap had been any more powerful, or had lasted longer than a millisecond, it would have knocked her clear off her feet.

  Now her magic was energized and frenzied. Restless. Phantom fingers grazed her neck, circled it, squeezed. She anxiously rubbed a hand over the skin, mostly to assure herself that she was in this parking lot alone. Nothing was touching her.

  She’d need to perform her color-changing spell on the rubber cat toy a few dozen times to dispel just a fraction of the wild, agitated magic flowing through her, and to quiet the torrent of memories that had been exhumed like a body from a grave.

  But, even more than that, she needed to stay the heck away from Jack Terrence.

  Chapter 16

  Saturday evening’s premonition tincture showed Chloe in the same windowless room, her back to the wall and her knees pulled to her chest. Four knocks on the door from the outside; four slaps on the wall from Chloe’s open palm. A plate of food and a glass of water were pushed into the room, just as usual, but this time, instead of any form of reading material, a single cupcake on a small plate was slid across the floor.

  When the door closed and the lock engaged, Chloe didn’t scramble off the bed with the same haste as she had in the previous visions. Slowly, she tossed back the comforter, padded across the cement floor on bare feet, and squatted before the offering. The cupcake looked to be plain white cake topped with vanilla frosting. These were no professionally made cupcakes; they were homemade. A small note was tucked under the treat.

  “Happy birthday, Chloe!” the note read. “Now we can begin.”

  As Amber’s eyes opened to the bright sunlight of Sunday morning, she knew Chloe Deidrick would turn eighteen tomorrow, and, for some reason, her being of legal age was tied up in why she was kidnapped.

  After her weekly early Sunday morning breakfast date with Edgar, Amber put in a half day at the shop alone, allowing the Bowen sisters to have an open morning, before she headed out to her only Here and Meow errand for the day. Though her appointment was at Mews and Brews, she didn’t immediately get out of the car when she parked in the lot. Instead, she called the chief’s office, rather than his cell phone as usual. She needed him to have access to his files and computer for this call.

  He picked up almost immediately. “Chief Brown speaking.”

  “Blackwood speaking,” she replied.

  She could hear the hint of a smile in his voice when he asked, “What can I do for you, Amber?”

  “I have a weird request.”

  “Most of your requests are weird.”

  She decided to ignore that. “When’s Chloe’s birthday?”

  “Why—” Then he stopped himself. “Give me a second …”

  Amber did her best not to fidget as she waited.

  “April 26th.”

  “And what’s today’s date?”

  “Amber,” he said, “did you hit your head?”

  “Humor me.”

  “March 25th,” he said.

  “Chloe’s actual birthday is tomorrow,” she said. “And whoever took her knows that. Who would know information like that? Have you found out anything interesting about the Reed family?”

  “Not really,” he said. “Karen Reed is a schoolteacher in Montana. Her husband is a successful contractor. They live in a modest home. They’ve got a college-aged kid, but he’s there on a sports scholarship. Football, I think.”

  “And Lilith?” Amber asked.

  “Haven’t had much luck finding anything about her,” he said. “What makes you think Chloe’s birthday is tomorrow? Wait … the premonition tincture again?”

  “Yep. Why do you suppose the date used as Chloe’s birthday is a month off? Same date, just a different month.”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Do you think Frank knows?” She supposed it was possible that the kidnapper was wrong, or messin
g with Chloe’s mind, but given the effort the kidnapper put in so far, Amber was willing to bet this person had done extensive research. “How could Frank be off on his daughter’s birthday by a whole month? That’s strange, right?”

  “Yes,” he said slowly, drawing the word out, like he was puzzling something out while he spoke. Then his tone changed, as if he’d been leaning back in his chair and now was sitting up straighter or hunched toward the phone—a conspiratorial tone. “All right. Let’s run with this a little bit. I know you have reason to believe Frank isn’t guilty of harming Chloe, but the fact that he called for a search—a public search—for her so soon after her disappearance still rubs me the wrong way. The best way to destroy evidence is to have a sea of well-meaning civilians go tramping through a place. He either wanted evidence destroyed or he knew there was something out there to find. Whether he wanted more manpower out there to help ensure the thing was found, or something else, I don’t know.”

  “What do you think happened?” she asked. “That someone tipped him off? Called him and told him there was something to find out there?” It was possible that this same person tipped off Karen Reed, too. But why?

  “Maybe,” he said. “He’s just normally such a levelheaded, by-the-book kind of guy. I don’t think he’s ever gotten so much as a parking ticket. So the rash move to completely bypass my department was not only out of character, it was reckless, especially given the circumstances. Granted, without that reckless move, her cell phone never would have been found … not that we’ve been able to recover anything from it yet.”

  “But if it weren’t for my locator spell, it’s likely no one would have found anything that day—especially not her cell phone. Not for a long time, anyway.”

  “True,” he said, punctuated by a weary sigh.

  “What if he’d been forced to make that rash decision?” When he didn’t reply, she assumed he was going to continue to humor her. “Okay, so let’s say someone called the mayor and said you have, I don’t know, twelve hours to find a present I left for you in the woods. Maybe this person threatens Frank by saying, ‘if you don’t do x, y, and z as soon as possible, I’ll hurt your daughter.’ Frank panics, knowing your police force isn’t big enough to canvass the entirety of woods in time, so he mobilizes the town to help him instead.”