by Delia James
“You know,” he said slowly, “one angle worth looking at is that Dr. Forsythe’s death might not actually be related to Ruby’s disappearance.”
I admit I stared at him. My jaw may also have dropped, just a little. “Seriously?”
“It’s a possibility,” he said. “And it would explain why there’s been no ransom demand. Ruby wasn’t actually stolen. She just ran away. Ramona was part of one of our older families, and there are some old feuds that go way back.”
Our eyes met. Frank had not inherited the family’s magical streak, but he was a witch’s nephew, and if he didn’t know absolutely everything about his aunt’s magic and her coven, he knew a whole lot.
“That’s not the first time somebody’s said that,” I admitted.
“Thought so.” Frank nodded. “Well, look, tell Val to try not to worry too much. Probably the killer, and the cat, will be found soon, and this”—he waved toward the windows—“will all be over. But whenever anybody asks, Val and Roger should say they can’t comment because they don’t want to interfere with the investigation, but like everybody, they want to see Ruby home and safe, so they urge anybody with information to call the police, and not—and I cannot stress this enough—not the local paper.”
The phones all rang again, emphasizing the point.
“I should get back to work.” Frank pushed himself to his feet. “If Val needs someone to help tell her story, I will see she gets a fair hearing.”
“Thanks,” I told him as I gathered up gloves, purse and nerve. “I told her she could count on you.”
He nodded. “All part of the service.”
I got up to go, but as I did, a new question formed in my head, driven by the TV talk show I’d watched with Valerie.
“Frank? I don’t suppose . . . Have you checked into Pam Abernathy’s background at all?”
“Pam Abernathy?” Frank’s eyebrows rose. “Her agency’s got the Attitude Cat campaign, right? Is there a reason I should look into her background?”
“Um, maybe?”
Frank scrubbed his head, disarranging his dark curls even more. “Heaven preserve me from vague sources.”
“Sorry. But—” I began, but I was interrupted by a fresh burst of telephone ringing, accompanied by Maria’s exasperated shout.
“Chief! We need you, like, now!”
Frank muttered something under his breath. “Coming!” he shouted. “Let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help.”
“Thanks.”
I said my good-byes and left Frank to the mountain of fast-moving news that had dropped on him and his people. I had other things to do. Maybe Frank was right. Maybe Ruby hadn’t been cat-napped and maybe Ramona had been killed because of something else. Before any of us could know that for sure, though, there were possibilities to be eliminated. Some of those possibilities clearly involved Cheryl Bell, who I just happened to know was right this minute having an important brunch meeting over at the Harbor’s Rest.
18
MARKET SQUARE WAS a zoo.
All kinds of people, tourists and locals alike, were looking between the bushes, into the planters and under the benches. Hipster kids had their phones out, scanning the surrounding area like they were looking for rare Pokémon. Old ladies clustered together waving colored pom-poms and catnip mice on strings. The lampposts were hung with hand-lettered posters that said things like ATTITUDE CAT COME HOME! and PORTSMOUTH STANDS WITH ATTITUDE CAT.
I was beginning to understand Frank’s need for so much extra coffee.
My Jeep was parked nearby, but I didn’t get my keys out. This was probably not smart. What would have been smart was to go back home and wait for Alistair to bring me some good news. I had done enough this morning. I could check in with Valerie and make sure Kristen had arrived okay. I could work on my coloring book. Work-life balance was important.
Of course that’s not what I did. I headed up Bow Street for the Harbor’s Rest.
Like the Pale Ale, the Harbor’s Rest was a Portsmouth landmark. It had been built back in the Gilded Age—a huge white wedding cake of a hotel, with its own marina on the river, and a restaurant that had fed everybody from Babe Ruth to four generations of Roosevelts.
When I got there, the restaurant was smack in the middle of Sunday brunch. Long tables had been set up and filled with pastries and salads, and covered warmers held eggs, bacon and three different kinds of potatoes (I took the ones with cheese). There was an omelet station, a carving station and a dessert table with four different kinds of cheesecake.
I could have set up a cot and lived there happily for a year. Which I didn’t. I did, however, help myself to eggs and bacon, fruit salad and an almond croissant in addition to the potatoes—because, hey, you gotta live a little—and carried them over to my table by the window.
I’d barely sat down at one of two open tables by the windows when a cat—a delicate marmalade with expressive gold eyes—hopped up on the chair across from me.
“Meow?” She blinked.
“Hey, Miss Boots!” Miss Boots was the hotel’s cat, the latest in a line of Harbor’s Rest felines that stretched back seven generations. I happened to know that she wasn’t supposed to be in the dining room. But then, I kind of wasn’t either, so I figured we could keep each other’s secrets safe.
“Merow?” She slid under the table and rubbed up against my ankles.
“No, sorry, Alistair’s not here,” I told her, and gave her ears a scratch for good measure. Alistair and Miss Boots had recently struck up a . . . well, friendship. I wasn’t sure it was a good idea, especially since I knew he’d also been keeping company with Frank Hawthorne’s cat, Colonel Kitty. But I also figured they were all adult felines and didn’t need a human interfering with their social lives.
Yeah, life with a familiar is more than a little strange some days.
Seeing that her boyfriend wasn’t going to suddenly put in an appearance, Miss Boots sauntered off to look for more interesting company, or maybe a dropped bit of bacon. I settled in to enjoy my brunch—at least, as much as I could while keeping one watchful eye on the dining room.
I thought I’d see at least some of the reporters who were so busy following the Attitude Cat story, but I was wrong. The people around me were mostly families, with a scattering of couples grabbing a quick weekend away in the off season. This just made it easier to spot Cheryl Bell when she walked in, and to see that she wasn’t alone.
A short, square man with a bristle-brush haircut and bulging arms that strained the seams of his dark blue sports coat walked half a step behind Cheryl, surveying the place like he owned it. Which I’m sure he thought he did.
Cheryl Bell was standing on the restaurant threshold—beaming, in case anyone wanted to take the picture—with Lieutenant Michael Blanchard of the Portsmouth police.
I choked on my potatoes au gratin. I also did something I never would in a million years have believed myself capable of. I ducked down under the table.
Yes, it was ridiculous. Yes, I regretted it immediately. Or at least, within thirty seconds, while I crouched there in the dark, clutching my napkin. I’ve got only one defense. Lieutenant Blanchard did not like me. He’d accused me of interfering with his cases more than once. I could say he had no reason to, but that wouldn’t be quite accurate. If he saw me now, he’d assume I was doing it again. Of course, he’d be wrong this time, but I was never going to be able to convince him of that.
And hiding under the table is going to help, how, exactly? I asked myself. I waited for an answer. I didn’t get one.
Okay, Anna. You’re going to get up, casually. You dropped your napkin. That’s all. Ready? One, two, three . . .
“I suppose I should thank you for agreeing to see me, Lieutenant Blanchard. I still think it would be better to have this conversation in private.”
I froze, right where I was
.
“You can just cut that out right now, Cheryl,” answered Blanchard. There was a pleasant smile in his voice, which just made the words cut that much deeper. “I already know what you want.”
From under the hem of the long white tablecloth, I saw two pairs of shoes—a woman’s black boots and a man’s black dress shoes—maneuver around the chair legs at the next table.
“I’m sorry?” Cheryl answered. She added something else, but I couldn’t hear it. Another pair of black shoes, these purely practical lace-ups, stepped into my line of sight. The server asked if they’d like coffee and told them that the drinks special was the House Spicy Bloody Mary.
No, no drinks. Yes, they’d both be having the buffet. The server left. I inched my way forward and banged my head on the table leg. And bit my tongue to keep from exclaiming about it.
“. . . You know you are not going to be able to snow me, Cheryl,” Lieutenant Blanchard told her, oh so pleasantly. “We’ve known each other way too long for that. You’ve got something you want to say, but you don’t want it on the record. Okay. I’m here, I’m listening, but nobody is going to get to throw the words ‘secret meetings with a potential suspect’ around during one of my investigations.”
Cheryl said something, but I couldn’t hear it. I strained my ears, or at least I tried to. What actually ended up happening was my toes started to curl. I suddenly missed the Seacoast News, where the eavesdropping was a lot more comfortable.
There was a long pause. “All right,” Cheryl said. “I’m talking to you now because . . . well, because I want to make sure things don’t get . . . complicated between us.”
“You mean now that there’s a murder in the middle of your property dispute?”
“That’s exactly what I mean, Michael. I’m already having to defend myself to the media.”
“Which is my problem, why?”
“We’re old friends, Michael. I just wanted to make sure that we still understand each other.”
“In what way?”
“I know how much you want to lock up the right person. And with my very public involvement in this case, I might just be able to help you do that, when you need it most.”
“Just like old times?” he inquired softly.
“Exactly. But that is if, and only if, no misunderstandings crop up.”
There was another pause. I ducked my head to try to peer under the tablecloth hem. I saw a chair scrape back and a pair of men’s black shoes move.
“Sorry,” said Lieutenant Blanchard. “I’ve got a lot to do, Mrs. Bell. But I will think about what you said.”
“That’s all I’m asking, Lieutenant.” I could picture the thin, sharp smile and the clenched jaw.
“You have a good day, now.” The black shoes walked out of my line of sight.
19
AS SOON AS I got back to my Jeep, I called Kenisha’s private number. Which only got me her private voice mail. I left a message. Then I hung up and dialed Frank, which got me the exact same result. So did the calls to all three of Valerie’s numbers.
Swell.
I drove home slowly, because I needed time to get my balance back. Finding Cheryl meeting with Lieutenant Blanchard had thrown me for a bit of a loop. Finding out that I was perfectly willing to hide under a table to listen in on their conversation had thrown me for a bigger one.
Finding out that the two of them knew each other, and that Cheryl seemed ready and willing to commit perjury if Blanchard needed it, was making me positively dizzy.
Why would she do that? The answer sure looked obvious. Cheryl knew she was a prime suspect in both the murder and the (theoretical) cat-napping. She wanted somebody else, anybody else, to get the blame.
Still, it was an awfully drastic step to take just because you might come under suspicion. Which must mean that Cheryl was trying to cover up something worse. Blanchard had to realize that. So was he really listening to her? Was he really willing to use a lie to help arrest the person he wanted to convict, even if that person wasn’t the real killer? Or was he just stringing Cheryl along to see what would happen? From what I knew of Lieutenant Blanchard, it might be either.
What do I do? I asked my inner Nancy Drew. There’s got to be something. But this time, Inner Nancy had no answers.
I stopped at the Market Basket to pick up coffee, cheese and crackers, granola bars and grapes and the very last bag of Best Petz Kitty Kibblez on the shelf. Apparently there’d been a run on Attitude Cat products.
When I carried the bags into the kitchen, though, there was no one around to appreciate my efforts.
“Right,” I muttered as I set the bags down in an empty kitchen. “You better be on the case, big guy. I could really use some good news.”
Merow.
I froze.
Merow! I turned around in a full circle, but I didn’t see Alistair anywhere. Was I imagining that? Or was he, literally, getting into my head?
Maow. This time I was able to identify the wobbling, tinny sound. I put my hand on my heart and heaved a sigh of relief. Alistair was in the basement. The cottage’s old vents carried sound through the whole house like a megaphone. There were times when Alistair would, I swear, deliberately sit under the vents and sing me the song of his people. Usually when I’d forgotten to clean the litter box.
A minute later, Alistair came galumphing up the stairs. “Well?” I asked. “Any luck finding Ruby?”
He ignored me and paced up to his food bowl. When he saw the kibble, he sniffed once and turned his back.
“Seriously?” I asked him. He swished his tail back and forth a few times.
“Well, you’re not getting tuna,” I told him. “Ramona said cat food is better for you, so you’re just going to have to get used to it.”
Alistair lifted his head. “Maow?” he said, but it wasn’t to me. He was looking at the phone on the wall. I didn’t even have time to open my mouth before it rang.
“Maow,” he announced, satisfied.
“Alistair. You know how I hate it when you do that.”
Alistair displayed his concern for my feelings by twitching his ears and jumping up onto the table in the breakfast nook.
I picked up the phone. “Hello?”
“Hi, Anna!” announced my sister-in-law’s voice.
“Ginger, hi!” I said back, although not without a twinge of guilt. There’d been so much going on, I’d almost forgotten that Thanksgiving was coming up, fast. “How’s everything?”
“Pretty much as usual.” There was a crash and a wail in the background, followed fast by some indulgent laughter and the sound of my father’s voice saying, “Upsy-daisy!”
“I can tell.” I smiled. It had been more or less decided that my father, Robert Sr., would move in permanently with my brother Bob (Jr.) and his wife, Ginger. Their three-year-old son, Bobby III, was delighted.
“You’ll never guess who we heard from,” Ginger said.
Despite this prediction, I decided to take a stab at it anyway. “Hope?”
Hope was my younger sister and our family wild child. She’d given up on college at about the halfway mark and instead thrown herself into a rotating series of passions, odd jobs and truly odd boyfriends.
“Hope!” agreed Ginger. “She’s going to be here for Thanksgiving!”
“Wow. That’s great. But I thought she was touring with her band.”
“Well, it seems there was a little disagreement about money and . . .”
I felt my eyes start to roll. I tried to stop them and failed. “Where is she?”
“Somewhere around Topeka.”
“As in Kansas?”
“Yep.” I could picture Ginger nodding vigorously. “She says not to worry.”
“Of course she does.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Well, it’s going to be an . . . eventful Turkey Day,” I said,
and then almost wished I hadn’t. I had my own bit of drama planned for the big day.
“You are still coming, aren’t you?” asked Ginger anxiously.
“Of course I’m coming! Why wouldn’t I?”
“Well . . . I called Grandma B.B., too, and she didn’t sound so sure.”
“Grandma B.B. told you I might miss Thanksgiving?” What would make her say something like that?
“No, no, sorry. Not you. She said she might not be able to get back in time.”
I closed my mouth.
“Yeah,” said Ginger into my pause. “That was more or less my reaction. She said she was having some trouble wrapping things up in Arizona. Something about the lease, and the moving company . . .”
“And I bet she also said not to worry, and that she was sure everything would be just fine, but just in case . . .”
“Um, yes.” Ginger sounded like she didn’t know whether to be amused or afraid. “Actually, that’s exactly what she did say.”
I muttered something, which my sister-in-law, who had the unenviable job of being a diplomat in a family full of Brittons, tactfully ignored. “Is everything all right between you two, Anna?” Ginger asked instead. “I mean, when you told us Grandma B.B. was moving back to Portsmouth, we were all so excited . . .” She let the sentence trail off.
It had come as a huge surprise to my family when I announced I was settling down in Portsmouth. Up until then, everybody assumed that, like Hope, I was going to remain a drifter. But my putting down roots in New Hampshire hadn’t been as big a shock as Grandma B.B.’s deciding to move back. Grandma had left Portsmouth shortly after she got married and stayed away for more than fifty years.
None of them knew that Grandma had left town because of a feud between the old magical families, because none of them knew about the old families, or that Grandma B.B. was a witch.
Or that I was planning on filling in this little gap in the family history over mashed potatoes and green bean casserole.
“No, nothing’s wrong between me and Grandma. Everything’s fine,” I told Ginger. There was silence, and to my carefully tuned ear, it sounded highly skeptical. “Really, I swear. Everything’s fine. I’ll call her and see what’s up, okay?”
