by Amity Allen
I sprinkled a bit of the concoction on the cat. He proceeded to hiss at me.
Be gone wicked dander.
I ask it be replaced with a loving, helpful spirit.
Turrico Joyeux Macoidees Felinis Zee
Heck, these were some weird words and they certainly didn’t roll off the tongue.
When I got to the end, nothing happened.
“Meow!”
“Okay, okay. I’ll try again.” This time I tried to channel my mother. I used a stronger voice, and I read out the spell louder and as I got to the end, I poured the concoction on the cat’s back.
As soon as the last syllable was out of my mouth and the last drop hit the cat, the air sparked with a charge like an electric current. The cat growled a low, guttural protest.
It was over in an instant, and he didn’t look any different.
“Are you okay?” I asked, a tightness in my chest.
He let out a long mewl.
Unsure what to do, I opened the door to the cage—and he bolted out of there like a shot.
By the time I got to the entrance to the attic, he had already gotten down the ladder though I wasn’t sure how. I rushed after him, hurrying down the ladder, and when I finally caught up with him, he was standing outside my bedroom door.
How he knew this was my room I’ll never know, but somehow he had understood what Cricket said about him being able to stay there. I could tell.
“I guess this is your new home,” I said, opening my door.
Without as much as a meow, he proceeded to jump onto my bed, curl up in the middle of it, and fall asleep.
I’d have to do a test later to see if he made people allergic so I could determine if the spell worked, but either way, it appeared as though I’d gotten myself a cat.
“Hey, quick question,” I said, the minute Niall Goodnight answered the phone. It was the next morning, and I was wasting no time taking advantage of the small opening he’d given me in the familiarity department.
“Poppy?” He seemed surprised to be hearing from me.
“Yes?”
“Uh, nothing. What’s the question?”
“Did y’all ever figure out who sent the email to Heather Morgan about Allessandra Gustavez’s birth certificate?”
“We did.”
“Let me guess. Tippy Bradshaw, right?”
“How’d you know that?”
“I’ve got mad detective skills. Surely you’re catching on to that by now.”
He laughed. “I am.”
“That’s all. Thanks a bunch,” I said, then hung up.
I knew it.
Tippy Bradshaw had something to do with Heather Morgan’s death. Now I needed to find some proof.
That afternoon, I commandeered an enormous arrangement of gladiolas and stuck it in the back of the delivery van then offered to take the rest of the deliveries for the day.
“See how helpful she is?” Skylar noted.
Mads nodded, barely looking up from her tablet.
They were growing accustomed to me doing all the deliveries, and I liked it.
It got me out of the shop, kept me from getting bored.
After I finished all of the deliveries on my list, I drove over to the Bradshaws’ upscale neighborhood. We had Tippy’s address on file since we’d delivered flowers to them before.
I liked their house—a Cape Cod with thoughtfully planned landscaping and blooming flower boxes. It said look how stylish I am without being ostentatious. The small subdivision consisted of about twenty houses situated around a central man-made lake. The sort of place that had a long list of covenants and restrictions.
I drove past the house once, did a circle of the neighborhood and came back by.
Casing a house was a new experience for me so I was kind of awkward about it, tentative and unsure of my plan. After I finished my second tour of the neighborhood, I parked the van a few houses away and settled in to observe.
A large SUV was parked in the driveway. I needed to figure out how I could get into their house and spy a little bit. Originally, I had thought about bringing them flowers, which was why I had the big arrangement with me, but once I brought the flowers to the door, I wasn’t really sure about my next move.
I’d heard stakeouts could be boring and it didn’t take long for me to realize this for myself.
Even though I’d brought a bunch of snacks, I’d already eaten the beef jerky and string cheese. Now I was down to the Skittles—and it had only been fifteen minutes. I should have brought an orange. Or an apple. I made a note on my phone for future reference.
More snacks. Oranges. Apples.
Maybe sunflower seeds or snacks that take some work.
I was thirsty, but I was afraid to drink too much water or I’d have to go to the bathroom.
Oh dear. I should have thought about that before I started this stakeout.
I made another note to self to go to the bathroom ahead of time.
Maybe Mads was right. I wasn’t really a detective. Just because I played one on TV and I had a brimming curiosity—that didn’t make me a real sleuth. If I had played a doctor, I wouldn’t think I could do surgery, would I?
I was probably better off letting the police handle this matter.
My bladder felt as full as a tick, and I dreaded the idea of having to drive all the way back to work in that condition.
What the heck? I might as well give Tippy the flowers I had in the back. And I could ask to use their bathroom.
Not that there would be a lot of clues to Heather’s murder in there, but at least I’d feel more comfortable on my drive back to the shop.
I drove the van into the Bradshaws’ driveway and parked next to the SUV. Moving gingerly so as not to upset my bathroom situation, I got out of the vehicle, went around to the back, opened the van doors, and got the flowers.
I strode up the front walk, peered through the hot-pink gladiolas to find the doorbell and pressed it with my index finger.
After a few minutes, the door opened. “May I help you?” Tippy Bradshaw stood there in a typical stylish mom outfit complete with perfect hair and makeup, yoga pants, tank top and fitted sports jacket.
“I have flowers for the Bradshaws.”
“Oh! It’s Poppy Parker, what a surprise. Thank you.” The door opened wider. “Come on in and put them down.”
“Sure.” The arrangement obscured my vision so I peered down at the floor and followed her feet into what looks to be a living room.
“You can set those right over here.” She indicated a coffee table, and I leaned over and set the flowers down on it. When I stood up, I glanced around the room, taking in my surroundings.
A little boy who looked to be about five or six came into the room and stared at me shyly.
I smiled, which made him blush then turn away.
“Peter, where is your other shoe?” Tippy asked. “We need to go pick up your sister in five minutes. We can’t be late. Come on.”
She turned to me. “I’m sorry. Just a minute, let me get you something.”
I waved her off. “That’s not necessary.”
“Nonsense. Just a minute.” She walked over to the adjoining kitchen and grabbed her purse off the island.
“But I can’t find it, Mommy!” Peter wailed.
Tippy dug through her purse and pulled out her wallet. “Have you looked under your bed?”
“Yes,” the child whined.
“What about in the bathroom?”
“It’s not in there.”
Tippy pulled out a bill and came towards me.
“Have you checked all the bathrooms?”
“Yes!” He wailed again.
Tippy handed me a five-dollar bill.
“Thank you.”
The whole time mother and son had been having the lost shoe conversation, I had been taking in the situation. They would be leaving soon to go pick up Dimples. I assumed Mr. Bradshaw was at work, and I noticed that at the back of the house the
y had a sliding glass door. “Could it be outside?”
Both mother and son stared at me as if I had grown an extra head. Certainly my comment into their family shoe crisis had been intrusive, but the awkward moment passed when Peter said, “It might be. I was playing on the trampoline earlier and I took off my shoes.”
“Then go look out there and look!” Tippy said, exasperated. Then shook her head at me as if to say “kids, right?”
I grinned back as if I knew anything about kids.
My bladder was now about to burst, but I had already interrupted their conversation, and I dreaded asking. But I dreaded having an accident more.
“I hate to ask . . .”
Tippy’s frown told me it had been a mistake to open my mouth, but it was too late now.
“But could I please use your restroom? I’ve been out doing deliveries all day, and I’m so sorry. It’s just caught up with me.”
“Down the hall. First door to the left. But please make it quick, we have to go pick up my daughter,” she said impatiently.
I went to the bathroom and took care of business as quickly as possible and washed my hands, all the while admiring the festive wallpaper that adorned the walls. I could really appreciate someone who spent time making their guest bathroom extra nice. When I came out, I was greeted by Tippy holding her car keys at the ready, purse slung over her shoulder.
Peter sat on the floor, tears streaming down his face. “I can’t find it,” he wailed.
“We have got to go!” Tippy trilled.
“Thank you so much. Sorry to have bothered you,” I said.
“Oh, that’s okay,” Tippy said. “Now I can say that I’ve had a TV star in my house who used my guest bathroom.”
I wasn’t sure if she was being facetious or not. “I can see you’re in a hurry.”
“Yes, my daughter’s music teacher goes bananas if you’re late for pick up.”
Peter wailed louder. “I don’t want to go!”
“I could stay with him until you get back, if that would help,” I said, offering up a long shot. “You’re my last delivery of the day.”
Her mouth formed a grateful “o.”
“Would you really? I’ll only be gone for a few minutes. Ten to fifteen. Twenty tops.”
I hadn’t expected her to take me up on my offer, but this was perfect!
“Absolutely! I love children. We’ll have fun, won’t we, Peter?”
He stopped crying, but eyed me suspiciously.
“Yes, Poppy, I’ll take you up on it. Be back in a jiffy,” Tippy floated out the door without even giving me her phone number to call in case of emergency. Now that was a mom who needed a break.
It was funny how people trusted celebrities automatically. They felt as if they knew you because you’d been in their home on the TV. It made for a weird world, but today I was super grateful for it.
And Tippy was obviously grateful for a few minutes to herself, so it was a win-win situation. I heard her peel out of her driveway. Wow, she had been running late.
Turning to Peter, the cogs in my brain whirred to life. I had fifteen minutes for a snooping session without having to commit the crime of breaking and entering if I could occupy this kid. How in the world was I going to do that?
“Okay, Peter, how do you feel about a game of hide and seek?” I envisioned him hiding from me while I searched his house with a perfectly good explanation for my intrusive behavior—I was looking for Peter, I’d say if I got caught.
I was already patting myself on the back for my brilliance when he crossed his arms over his chest. “No! I’m way too old for that game.”
“Huh.” I chewed my lip, trying to come up with another plan. Through the window I could see a cool rock-climbing wall and the trampoline, but if I sent him out to play on those, I’d have to watch him to make sure he didn’t fall or get hurt. No, I needed something safe and that would hold his interest. “Do you like to watch TV?”
“Nah. TV’s boring,” he sulked.
“Okay . . .”
He shrugged casually as he said, “Do you have a phone?”
Aha! The little devil was trying to con me out of it when I could tell he had something impish in mind.
“I do. Why? Do you like to play games?”
His eyes lit up and he nodded fiercely. Jackpot!
“As a matter of fact, I do, and it’s got this great fish game on it. Here I’ll show you.” I opened the app and started to show him how to collect gems from the different fish, when he pursed his lips and gave me a patronizing “I got it.”
Wow. Put in my place by a six-year-old. Little kids and their electronics. I suddenly felt about seventy years old.
But in seconds he was engrossed. Where to start my search and what was I even looking for? I wasn’t sure, but I thought the best place to start would be the home office. Geez, I hope they had a home office.
I made my way to the hallway where I had previously used the restroom, calling over my shoulder, “Peter, I’m going to look around more for your lost shoe, okay?”
“Okay,” he called back. Good. That would give me an excuse to look around the house and that game would keep him busy for a while.
Fortunately, all the doors in the hall were open so I could see inside the rooms. There was a frilly yellow bedroom with posters of Kid Network TV stars on the walls and twin beds filled with stuffed animals. I assumed that was Dimples’ room.
Next to it was a room with a race car bed and about a million Legos on the floor—Peter’s.
There was only one more room at the end of the hall. It had to be the master. In the middle was a king sized bed and the bathroom and closets were towards the back of the room on the right. I decided to start back there.
The bathroom had an enormous spa tub with jets and candles all around it—the sort of place one might imagine in a hotel suite on TV. Romantic.
Go Tippy.
A pair of Mr. Bradshaw’s underwear and discarded running shorts lay across the side of the shower door. Eww.
I’ve got to get out of here.
They didn’t seem to have a home office, and I didn’t see anything even mildly incriminating.
Just when I was about to give up, I saw a little armoire in the corner that had a pull-out surface that looked like it could be used as a desk.
Aha. Tippy’s stylish version of a home office. Clever.
I walked over to the desk and picked up a few of the pieces of paper sitting out. Bills—electric, water, Internet. A progress report from school. Looked like Dimples had straight A’s. That kid was going to go far, no doubt about it. Nothing else exciting amongst the stack of papers.
I don’t know what I’d expected to find—a hand-signed confession from Tippy that she murdered Heather? Receipts from blackmail payments sent to pageant directors to ensure her daughter’s victories?
Hmm. There might be some evidence in her check register . . .
Two checkbooks were shoved in the little compartment behind a small cabinet door. I riffled through them. The first one was a joint account held by Mr. And Mrs. Bradshaw, while the other appeared to be a trust account for Dimples. There was probably one for Peter around as well, but I didn’t see that one.
I opened the back section of the register and prayed Tippy was the kind to keep a detailed record of the checks she had written.
Bingo! There it was.
A list of all the places she had written checks to for the past eighteen months or so.
I scanned the entries, flipping the pages, looking for something with Heather’s name on it. All I found in that regard was a payment for the entry fee for the Bloomin’ Belles Beauty Pageant for three hundred dollars. The other recent expenses were checks for fees related to the pageant game. There were a couple of checks to a pageant coach whose name I didn’t recognize. I could tell because there was a memo at the bottom that said “pageant coaching.” One to Skylar for hair and makeup. But nothing to Heather Morgan.
As I lo
oked back, I found that as of about six months, ago there was a payment to Denise Tellerman’s ranch for $1800.
Cosmic Cowpies! That was a lot of money
Flipping even farther back, I noticed that each month before that, there was a payment of at least $1800 to Tellerman Ranch. Beside each of those, there was a notation: “horseback riding lessons.” Occasionally there was an extra check written to the ranch for anywhere from one to eight hundred dollars.
With the bill being so high, it made me wonder if the Bradshaws might have also boarded an animal at the ranch in addition to the riding lessons. In any case, when Dimples left horse riding to become a pageant kid, she put a significant dent in Denise Tellerman’s income.
Before I had a chance to process this new information further, I heard rattling at the front door.
No! No! No! Internal alarm bells screamed inside my head. I didn’t want to get caught in Tippy’s bedroom. She would find that suspicious even if I told her I was looking for the lost shoe. I had to get out of there immediately.
Keys jangled as Tippy dropped them on something by the front door. “Poppy! I’m back!”
My stomach started doing a freaky dance, and I had to force myself to take a deep breath and think.
You could always use your powers, a voice in the back of my mind said.
I considered it briefly, but decided against it. For starters I wasn’t sure if I could make them work right, but I also felt bad about using them to get out of trouble for snooping. I’d find another way.
As fast as I could, I put the papers and checkbook back where I found them and bolted out of the bedroom.
Tippy was standing in the hallway, and when she saw I was coming out of her bedroom her face crinkled with displeasure.
“Hi!” I said to her, then calling past her, “Peter! You were supposed to come find me.”
“Huh?” he said from the living room.
“We were playing hide and seek. He was supposed to come find me, but I guess he forgot,” I said conspiratorially to Tippy.
She put her hands on her hips. “He’s sitting in there playing with a phone. Is it yours?”
