A Familiar Tail

by Delia James

  I thought about how Frank had said Brad would drink when he had trouble. I thought about how I’d started Frank looking for Brad. And how in my vision, Vibe, whatever it was, Brad had been so very drunkenly glad to see a good friend.

  Downstairs, the front door creaked as it opened and thumped softly as it closed.

  Alistair meowed and sprang to the windowsill. “Merow,” he said again, and I understood him perfectly. He meant, All clear.

  I kicked back the covers and scrambled to my feet. “Come on, big guy. We’re getting out of here.”

  Don’t tell me you’re surprised.

  36

  ACCORDING TO THE GPS, I had to drive to the offices of Maitland and Associates, LLC.

  I unearthed my straight black skirt, pink blouse and conservative pumps. I dressed and brushed my hair in between gulps of oatmeal and bites of toast. Maybe I wasn’t ready to stay in bed, but I didn’t want to pass out again either.

  I had no idea whether I’d find Brad at work. And if he was there, I had no idea whether he’d talk to me. I didn’t really care. I just wanted to know he was safe. Okay, that wasn’t the only thing, but it was the most important thing. Julia, Val and the rest of the coven were out combing the river and beaches. This was the base left for me to cover. Yes, Julia had called, and yes, she’d been told he wasn’t in. But that was before. He might be there now. There were lots of reasons he might be running late. Construction season was under way, and the traffic was heavy on the highways. Also, he had been out drinking. Maybe the reason Colin was so upset when Julia called was that his dad was still in bed with a hangover and Colin was trying to protect him but was angry about needing to.

  What I saw, what I drew; it didn’t have to be about last night. It didn’t have to have happened yet. Maybe, maybe we could prevent it. And if we couldn’t, it didn’t mean that the friend, the silhouette I’d drawn, was Frank. It could have been anyone. Right?

  The offices for Maitland and Associates turned out to be in a brand-new office building, one that was as much glass as it was brick. Solar panels glinted on the slanting roof. The atrium was all big windows and terra-cotta tile with metallic abstract art pieces hanging on the walls and planters filled with fichus and hosta and peace lilies arranged in the corners. I found Maitland and Associates on the building directory and rode the escalator up to the second floor. My palms were sweating, despite the air-conditioning. Part of this was because I was still feeling the aftereffects of the visions I’d called down. Part of it was because I was absolutely sure I was getting close to the heart of the mystery.

  Last night, I’d asked myself why Brad was interested in copies and not the originals. As I lay there in bed, looking at that movie photo, I’d come up with two answers to that question:

  1) The originals had been destroyed.

  2) Brad already knew where they were.

  If the real answer was choice two, I was hoping I’d be able to find out at this office, whether Brad was there to tell me about it or not.

  I walked into the bland gold-and-brown reception area. Its furniture was modern and generic. The atrium’s abstract art had been replaced by landscape photographs—all fields and wooded hills, presumably waiting for houses and shopping malls.

  “Can I help you?” asked the perky brunette receptionist.

  “I’m here to see Brad Thompson,” I said in my best professional tones.

  Her perfectly made-up face fell. “I’m sorry, but Mr. Thompson isn’t in yet this morning. Did you have an appointment?”

  Time for Plan B. And yes, I had one. It started with a smile.

  “No, no appointment,” I told her, and hoped I sounded casual. “I was just coming in to pick up some papers. He hasn’t left anything?”

  The receptionist pulled some manila folders from her in-basket and checked the labels. “What name did you say?”

  “Gale,” I answered. “Dorothy Gale.”

  Because “aka” stands for “also known as.” I checked. And while I was at it, I ran a search on Dorothy Gale and found out that “Gale” was the last name of the very famous Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.

  The receptionist set the folders down. I tensed and waited to find out if I’d jumped to the absolutely wrong conclusion.

  “I haven’t got anything here,” she said. “Maybe he left it in his office. If you wait here a moment, I’ll go see.”

  “Thank you.”

  The receptionist disappeared into the side office, and I gripped my purse strap, struggling to stay calm. This was ridiculous. There was no way Brad had left important documents here. I’d told myself that the best place to hide important papers would be with a whole bunch of other papers, but nobody would really do that, would they? I was wasting time. I should be out helping to find Brad. Or at least Frank. I didn’t know where he was either, and that might also be extremely important for all kinds of reasons.

  That was when a door did open and Ellis Maitland walked out. He was in the act of straightening his blue silk tie.

  “Miss Britton.” He smiled, but his eyes slid across me, looking over my shoulder toward the door, like he thought there might be somebody else behind me. “Good morning! To what do we owe the pleasure?”

  I was ready for this. I hadn’t expected to walk into Ellis Maitland’s office during business hours and not see the man himself.

  “Good morning, Mr. Maitland.”

  “Ellis,” he corrected me.

  “Ellis. I was just stopping by to talk with Brad, but I understand he’s not in yet.”

  Ellis hesitated, just a little. His professional smile flickered. “No, I’m afraid he’s not. Is there something I can help you with?”

  “Maybe. I was hoping to talk about some commercial space.”

  I had thought his eyes would light up, but it was exactly the opposite. What I got from Ellis Maitland was a very suspicious frown. “Really? I was under the impression you didn’t plan on staying in Portsmouth that long.”

  “Well, I’ve been thinking it over and I’ve decided it’s time for me to move past freelance work. A woman’s got to think about her future.”

  This was when the receptionist walked back out of Brad’s office with a thick manila folder in her hands. “Here you are, Miss Gale . . .” She saw the boss and stopped.

  Ellis Maitland had inherited a whole lot of his mother’s self-control, because he barely blinked. “What have you got there for . . . Miss Gale?” he asked.

  “Some papers Brad left for her,” answered the receptionist, her eyes darting from Ellis to me and back again. “Since he wasn’t in yet . . .”

  “Of course. Why don’t you give me those, and Miss Gale and I can go over them together?”

  She handed him the file and smiled. And Ellis smiled and gestured toward his office. I smiled and walked through the door. What else was I going to do?

  Ellis closed his office door behind me, and I heard the snickt as the lock turned. He circled me to stand behind his desk. I felt his gaze like a cold weight the entire way. I pressed my hand against my purse, trying to feel the wand I’d tucked inside, but my hands had gone cold and I couldn’t feel anything at all.

  Ellis rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on, Miss Britton. I’m not going to bite. Just . . . sit down. Please.” He gestured to the squared-off chairs as he took his own seat in the padded leather chair behind the desk. He laid the file on the desk in front of him. “Now, what’s this visit really about?”

  Well? I asked my inner Nancy Drew desperately. She, of course, chose this moment to clam up. Think, I ordered myself. Think about this man in front of you, about what you know about him and . . .

  I had it.

  “It really is about finding commercial space.” I folded my hands over my purse. “It’s also about Frank Hawthorne.”

  “Frank? What about Frank? I thought from the way you were talking
the other day, you two were . . . close.”

  “No. Nothing like that. I think he really just rented me the house to make you angry, and because he was out of options.”

  Ellis nodded. “That could be, but it doesn’t explain why you’re here now.”

  Now was the time for a small, but sharp, burst of honesty.

  “You know some people think Dorothy Hawthorne was murdered?”

  Ellis didn’t even flinch. “Some people have too much free time.”

  “My grandmother is one of them.” This was true. Now, Grandma B.B. only thought this because I’d told her, but we didn’t need to go into that.

  “I thought your grandmother hadn’t been in town for years.”

  “It turns out she and Dorothy were still in touch. Grandma B.B. was worried about her.”

  Ellis narrowed his sharp eyes at me. He tapped his fingers against the folder, considering. Considering what? What did he see? I pressed my hand against the purse, but there was no sensation of magic. Somebody didn’t believe hard enough, and it was probably me.

  “I don’t want to get Brad in trouble,” I said. “But he knows something about Dorothy and Frank. He tried to tell me about it the other day. I thought maybe it involved the house, and he might have something here at the office . . .” I gestured toward the folder.

  Ellis didn’t like this either, but he did believe it; at least, he seemed to. “And you didn’t consider coming to me directly?”

  “I probably should have, but there’s the possibility that, well, murder has happened.”

  “Suddenly everybody has to start acting like we’re in an episode of Columbo. I understand.” He sighed. “All right. Let’s see what we’ve got here.”

  The Dorothy Gale file was a thick one, full of documents of various colors and sizes. I watched him flipping through pages of what I assumed were contracts of some sort. There was a lease, and a mortgage, and a purchase agreement, but that was all I could see. I’m pretty good at reading upside down, but not fine print legalese.

  As he leafed through the contents of that folder, Ellis Maitland’s frown deepened. The office was absolutely silent except for the rustling of the pages and a sense of concentration so thick I thought one of us might suffocate. I knew I was having a tough time breathing. I glanced toward the door. I glanced at the clock. When was the phone going to ring? When was somebody going to call and say they’d found Brad and he was okay? Heck, at this point, I’d even be glad to see Alistair appear, although he’d be awfully tough to explain. I didn’t care. I just wanted to know.

  At last, Ellis closed the folder and slid it into the center drawer of his desk. Then he got up and walked over to the window. He stared out across the parking lot for a very long time.

  “These . . . people who think Dorothy was murdered,” he whispered. “Is one of them Kenisha Freeman?”

  “I can’t say for sure,” I said. Noncommittal was rapidly becoming my middle name. “Is . . . What have you found?’

  He turned around, and one look at his face told me he’d made a decision. “Can I trust you, Miss Britton?”

  There aren’t a lot of ways to reply to that question when you’re being asked it by a virtual stranger. But there was only one answer that would get me the answers I needed. “Yes.”

  “The papers in here, they’re—well, I’ll spare you the technical details—but they’re all real estate documents. I expect you noticed that.” He gave me a brief, and not very warm, smile. “They are also all signed by my mother.”

  My thoughts, which had been racing through a thousand different possibilities, skidded to a dead halt. And those possibilities? They evaporated into a big cloud of smoke. Poof.

  “I don’t understand,” I told him. “Your mother’s a wealthy woman. Your family is supposed to have some serious real estate investments of its own. What’s wrong with that?”

  “I handle the family investments, Miss Britton,” Ellis snapped. “These”—he gestured toward the desk—“these purchases, and . . . other things . . . they haven’t gone through this office, or any office I know about. So, I have to ask, What’s my mother been doing? And why does Brad Thompson have the documents?”

  “Brad was asking me if I’d found some copies at Dorothy’s house . . .”

  “What’s in that folder are originals. Brad thought Dorothy had copies of something? Copies of what?”

  “That he didn’t say.”

  “And you haven’t found anything?”

  “Not yet.”

  “And you haven’t heard anything about this from Frank?”

  My skin started to prickle, and it wasn’t just from the air-conditioning. Something was wrong. I felt it in my hands and the back of my neck.

  “Those documents,” I said slowly. “Could Brad have gotten them, I don’t know, under the table somehow?”

  Ellis stared hard at me. The bluff and hearty real estate agent was entirely gone. This was an executive manager in front of me now, and he looked like he wanted more than anything to fire me out of his particular shark tank.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I mean, if these documents came to light, could they be . . . damaging?”

  “You want to know if they’re fraudulent somehow,” said Ellis slowly. Since that was in fact one of the things I wanted to know, I nodded. “You’re suggesting my mother may have been committing fraud and that Brad was going to . . . what? Blackmail her?”

  “It might be blackmail,” I said. “Or maybe he was just going to give the papers to Frank so he could publish the story.”

  I’m sorry, Brad. I’m sorry, Dorothy. I didn’t want to believe it. But after seeing the way Dorothy had so carefully written the people who disagreed with her out of her life, I had to consider the possibility.

  No, I didn’t forget that Elizabeth Maitland had lied about how she got that letter she showed me. There was another possible explanation for that.

  Ellis looked at his desk again, like he was seeing the folder through the dark wood. Slowly, a grim, cold smile spread across his handsome, trustworthy face. I shivered.

  “It is possible,” he whispered. “Very, very possible.” He lifted his eyes to mine. “I need to call my mother,” he said. “Find out what she’ll tell me about . . . this.” He gestured to the drawer and the folder. “I don’t expect it’ll be much.”

  “Brad . . .”

  He shook his head. “If he tried to tangle with my mother, then I’m very sorry for him. She doesn’t like to be crossed, as I expect you noticed. It may be . . .” He paused and then shook his head. “Anyway. I need to call her. You’ll excuse me.”

  “Of course,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say, and I got to my feet and turned toward the door.

  “Miss Britton?” said Ellis to my back. “I’d appreciate it if you kept quiet about this. At least until we’ve talked with Brad. I want to give him a chance to explain.”

  I nodded and I smiled and I got out of there as fast as my little black pumps and pencil skirt would allow.

  Back in the Jeep, I sat for a long moment, just trying to fit all the pieces together.

  Elizabeth knew Dorothy was capable of carrying a grudge. She showed me a letter that suggested blackmail. She said she’d gotten it from Ellis. Ellis did not seem to know anything about it. There was another place Elizabeth could have gotten a letter like that from.

  Julia Parris. Julia was ready to defend Elizabeth to the other members of the coven. She had not wanted to take sides in the old feud. What if she had found out Dorothy had finally carried her old grudges too far? She might have gotten hold of the letter, by fair means or foul.

  Or magic. After all, Grandma had called magic “the ways to get and guard.”

  I could see Julia taking that letter up to Elizabeth in her lovely sitting room. I could underst
and neither one of them wanting to tell me the truth about it, because I had been brought here by Dorothy, and Julia was torn in her loyalties, and Elizabeth was wounded by years of distrust.

  It all fit, except for one thing. I could not envision any circumstances under which Julia Parris would help cover up a fraud. Especially when that fraud was tied so tightly to murder.

  Something here was still seriously out of whack.

  I dug my phone out of my purse and hit Valerie’s number. I figured Val would spend less time chewing me out for leaving the house than Julia.

  “Hello?” Val answered her phone. “Anna, is that you?”

  “I know what Dorothy was doing,” I said, to forestall that chewing out I mentioned. “Well, I don’t know know, but I kind of know.”

  “And you’ve kind of stopped speaking English,” said Val.

  “Dorothy was working with Brad Thompson to get hold of a bunch of suspicious real estate documents. Those were the copies he was looking for. Now . . .”

  “Anna,” Val cut me off, but softly. “Brad Thompson’s dead.”

  37

  “HE WAS FOUND in the river. Beside his car.”

  Kenisha was reading from her notebook. The coveners and I all huddled together in the front parlor. We’d pulled in every chair from the dining room so there’d be enough seats. Martine was there too. I’d called to tell her about Brad because when you’ve just found out about a death like this, you kind of desperately need to talk with your best friend. She’d insisted on coming over, especially when she heard the coven would be here too. I mentioned her usually needing to supervise lunch service right about now. Her answer was unprintable.

  The coffeepot was out and everyone had a cup, but no one was drinking. Thanks to Roger and Martine, we had plates of sandwiches and pastries, but no one was eating, either. We all just sat and listened to Kenisha read her notes.