Deja Moo

by Kirsten Weiss

  “Company?” Cora asked. “Well, I suppose I … But I wasn’t invited.”

  Leo brightened. “They said I could bring a guest.”

  “Well.” She fussed with a filmy violet scarf. “My children aren’t coming to visit this year. They’re busy with their own families. So I could come. But I’m sure your cousins meant for your plus-one to be a younger friend or a girlfriend.”

  “They said guest,” he said, gruff. “Besides, you’re family too.”

  She blinked rapidly. “Oh. What a lovely idea. Then I’ll go with you to Eureka. And now I need a hostess gift too. I have to buy some wine.”

  “I’m surprised you don’t have a cabinet full of it.” I drew wrapping paper from beneath the register and spread it atop the counter.

  “Good wine,” she amended.

  The wall phone rang and I reached for it. “Paranormal Museum, this is Maddie speaking.”

  “Madelyn, this is your mother,” she said, her voice strained.

  Phone cradled to my ear, I packed the fairy in its box. “Hi, Mom. What’s up?”

  There was a long pause.

  “Mom?” I waited. “Mom …?” Had her phone battery died?

  “I have your mother.” The voice was mechanical, like one of those voice-scrambly things you hear on TV shows. The hair on the back of my neck lifted. “If you want to see her alive again, come to the corner of Walnut and McKay.”

  The gears in my brain locked. “What?”

  “Come alone. If I see any police, your mother dies. You have fifteen minutes.”

  “But—”

  The voice hung up.

  I swayed, dizzy. “Keys.”

  “Madelyn, you’re white as a sheet,” Cora said.

  “Leo, I need the keys to your bike.”

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Kendra Breathnach’s kidnapped my mother.”

  thirty

  GD leapt onto the museum’s counter and touched my hand lightly with his paw. He angled his head as if concerned, and hysterical laughter bubbled in my throat.

  I swallowed it down.

  “Kendra Breathnach?” Paling, Cora tugged on her scarves. “Kendra? The developer?”

  Stomach roiling, I grabbed my black vest off the wall peg and slipped into it. “There’s no time to explain. Leo, keys.” Cora would argue or insist on coming if I asked for her car keys, and I knew Leo’s bike was close.

  He tossed them to me and I caught them in both hands.

  “You two have to tell the cops what’s happening,” I said. “Try to get through to Detective Slate.” I scribbled his number on my yellow pad. “He’s no longer in charge, but he’ll make sure the police take action.”

  Cora shook her head, her loose, gray hair tumbling around her shoulders. “But—”

  “I’m on it.” Leo pulled his cell phone from the pocket of his leather jacket.

  “Not yet,” I said sharply.

  His dark brows pulled downward.

  “Kendra said no police.” In a shaky hand, I scrawled the address on a piece of paper. “This is where she told me to meet her. Give me fifteen minutes before you call the cops.”

  “Maddie,” Cora said, “I understand how you must feel, but—”

  “It’s my mom. I have to go.” Breaking free, I raced to the bookcase and pressed the hidden latch.

  It swung open.

  “Maddie!” Leo shouted.

  I turned, and he tossed me his helmet.

  “Thanks.” I raced down the tea shop hallway and nearly knocked a waiter flat.

  “Wait! Maddie!” Cora shouted behind me.

  I burst through the metal alleyway door.

  Belle jerked up short, but not quick enough for me to avoid her. I ricocheted off her shoulder.

  “Sorry.” I brushed past the hairdresser.

  Belle turned, her brown eyes wide. “Maddie, I have to tell you—”

  “Glad you’re back,” I said. “Can’t talk now.”

  Cora ran into the alley. “Maddie, you can’t go alone!”

  An elderly woman shook her cane at me. “Young lady—”

  “Sorry!” I jumped onto Leo’s motorcycle.

  “But Maddie—” Whatever Belle would have said was lost when I roared down the street. No experience is wasted. Thank you, Mason, for teaching me to ride. Let me be quick enough to save her.

  I drove as fast as I dared, at the edge of the acceptable limit in town. But once I reached the open fields and straight country roads, Leo’s bike flew, and I claimed the center of the road.

  Horn bleating, I veered around a truck loaded with onions. I’d eaten up too much time explaining things to Leo and Cora. But they were my insurance now that they knew the truth.

  I hit a pothole. The shock jolted my bones, snapping my teeth shut.

  Cora and Leo would follow my instructions and tell the cops. And no matter what happened—nothing would happen, my mom would be fine. But Kendra had already killed two people, all because she wanted the area around her development to be rezoned. Bill Eldrich had wanted to save those dairy farms. He had influence over Tabitha—they were having an affair—and Tabitha had backed him, signing her death warrant.

  I roared past an orchard, its skeletal branches scraping the bottom of the low fog. The engine’s vibration rattled through me.

  Kendra wouldn’t hurt my mom before I arrived. She’d wait to make sure I was in her clutches. She had to. My eyes burned, and I told myself it was due to the onion truck.

  Kendra must have overheard the boys planning the attack on the Christmas Cow—all the planning had happened in her garage—and she’d decided to take advantage.

  I screeched around a corner, my rear wheel skidding, one foot on the ground, and narrowly avoided a vineyard signpost.

  Why had it taken me so long to figure out it was Kendra? She’d asked me about my finding Tabitha’s body at the Wine and Visitors Bureau the morning after the body was discovered. But my role hadn’t been in the paper. Only the cops and my mom and Penny knew I’d been on the scene, and I couldn’t imagine Penny telling her. The only way Kendra could have known was if she’d been there too.

  A gust of wind buffeted me from the side, and I felt the bike tilt beneath me. I jerked upright, over-compensating, wobbled, and continued on.

  What the hell had my mom been thinking, confronting Kendra?

  I knew what she’d been thinking—that none of this was evidence. So she’d confronted Kendra to get some.

  I sucked in deep gulps of air, steaming the helmet’s visor, and tried to calm myself. It didn’t matter how this had happened. What mattered was what happened next. I could stop this. I had to believe that or I’d never pull it off.

  I passed the sign for the agrihood. The nearby fields had been scraped clean of vegetation, leaving flat, barren tracts of earth. Ahead, the street signs for Walnut and McKay came into view, and a construction site littered with equipment.

  The bike skidded to a stop beside a trailer. Expecting an arrow at any moment, I knocked the kickstand into place and swung myself off the seat.

  Before me was a deep, muddy pit the size of a building—for a parking garage? A swimming pool? An excavator rumbled at the edge of the pit, its bright yellow paint nearly blinding against the iron gray sky. Its arm angled away from the pit, but no one manned the machine.

  Overturned mounds of dirt, like graves, littered the field. I’m not too late. Please, don’t let me be too late. A sickening tug in my gut pulled my attention toward the sad mounds of earth, ideal for dumping a body. I swallowed a hard lump and looked toward the trailer. Kendra wouldn’t be lurking in a dirty pit. And Kendra was the one I wanted.

  I ripped off the helmet and set it on the bike. “Mom?”

  No one answered.

  I slunk to the t
railer. My back to the corrugated metal, I edged around its side. I scanned the open ground, reached up with one hand, and rattled the door handle above me.

  Locked.

  My chest ached. I jammed my hands beneath my arms. Mom, where are you? Safe, safe, she had to be safe. Kendra had chosen the perfect daytime murder site. No one was around. I stared at the grumbling excavator.

  Nausea clutching my throat, I hurried, bent double, to the excavator.

  No body sprawled in the pit beneath its arm. My legs wobbled with relief.

  I clambered into the excavator’s seat and turned the key. The machine coughed and its rumbling stopped. Silence fell like a shroud across the development.

  From my vantage point, I could see more gaping grave holes. Not graves, stop thinking about graves.

  A murder of crows shot from behind a pile of dirt. I started. Their cawing shattered the air.

  “Mom?” I croaked. Slithering from the excavator, I stumbled toward the mound of earth the crows had abandoned. A piece of fabric fluttered in the breeze.

  She’s not there. It isn’t her. A smell, sour and cloying, rose from the opposite side of the mound. Throat tight, I circled around the small pile of earth.

  A garbage bag, sliced to ribbons. Rotting food and cardboard spilled from its black plastic.

  And that was all.

  I blew out a shaky breath.

  So where was my mother? Kendra had lured me out here, presumably to put arrows through us both. What was she waiting for?

  I prowled the development, skulking around mounds of dirt, past empty pits. “Mom?”

  Kendra was playing with me. With us. My mom was still alive. She had to be.

  Blood pounded in my ears. “I’m not taking another step!” I screamed. “I know you’re here. Show yourself!”

  My shouts fell flat, absorbed by the loose earth.

  The door to the trailer opened and my mom tumbled out, her hands raised.

  “Mom!”

  I raced toward her across the uneven ground.

  Kendra emerged on the trailer steps. “Some detective. You can’t even figure out how to open an unlocked door.”

  thirty-one

  Hands raised, my mother walked forward.

  My knees buckled and I nearly fell. She was okay. I wasn’t too late.

  Kendra marched ten feet behind my mother. She held a complicated-looking bow with wheels and cables. It was aimed at my mother’s back.

  My mom shook her head.

  I rushed forward and hugged her.

  “Really, Madelyn. What were you thinking? You should have called the police. And was that a motorcycle I heard you arrive on? You know how dangerous they are,” she said, her voice thin and shaky.

  “It’s okay,” I said, then louder: “Kendra, the police know everything. Don’t add two more murders to your jail sentence.”

  She tossed her head, her blond hair dancing in the breeze. A quiver of arrows was strapped to her back, the strap rumpling her thick navy blazer. “Why not? What does it matter at this point? Besides, I went to all the trouble of digging your graves.” She nodded to the excavator.

  “What happened with Tabitha?” I asked, stalling and edging in front of my mother. “We know why you killed Bill Eldrich. It was the zoning, wasn’t it?”

  My mom stepped sideways, making a target of herself again.

  Kendra sneered. “My demographic is wealthy retirees from urban areas. They don’t want to live next to a bunch of cows. Bill was in the way, after I’d invested all of that money—mine and others’. He had too much influence over Tabitha.”

  Delay. Delay and figure out some way to get out of this. But what? I hunched my shoulders, trying to make myself smaller. “Why shoot Tabitha? Was she going to keep blocking your purchase of the dairy farms? Or did she figure out you’d killed Bill?”

  “Kendra panicked,” my mother said. “She’s been following you all along, and she got nervous when she saw us talking to the Wildes.”

  “Got nervous?” I asked. “She tried to blow us up!”

  “She knew Craig might blow the whistle to you about Oliver’s involvement. And she lost control when Tabitha began putting the pieces together.”

  “It wasn’t panic,” Kendra said. “Tabitha knew I had a motive and the know-how. We learned to shoot together in scouts. She collared me outside my office last week. It was clear from her questions she knew too much.”

  “So you lured her to the Visitors Bureau with a phony meeting?” I stepped in front of my mom. She immediately shifted right, and my nostrils flared. Would she stop making herself a target?

  One corner of Kendra’s mouth angled upward. “I told her I’d see her after the committee meeting that night. She was so panicked about forgetting a meeting, she didn’t bother to check if it was legitimate.”

  “And then you followed me to the Visitors Bureau,” I said. “That’s how you knew I was there when Penny found Tabitha’s body.”

  Kendra drew back the bow.

  “Leo and Cora were with me when you called the museum,” I said. “They’ve called the cops. They’ll tell them all about you and this kidnapping.”

  Kendra froze, the arrow drawn, poised. “You’re lying. Your museum is closed today. No one else was there when I called.”

  “They stopped by when they saw me inside,” I said. “Of course I told them about your call. I wasn’t taking any chances after you set that bomb in my mom’s car. Did you get the explosives from your construction site?”

  “Where else? Maybe I overreacted, but I didn’t like the questions you were asking. But I was careful today. I used a voice-changing machine. You couldn’t have known it was me.”

  “I knew,” I said. “Just like my mom did.”

  “I do hope you know where you’re going with this,” my mother murmured.

  “All you could have told them was that you heard a voice over a machine.” Kendra tossed her hair. “Your friends won’t be able to prove it was me.”

  “I didn’t tell them you used a machine to distort your voice,” I said. “I told them you called, and that you’d kidnapped my mom. By now they’ve told the police everything, and given that you tried to run down one of their detectives with a stolen car, the police are out for blood.”

  “Then I’ve got nothing left to lose.” Kendra drew the bow string back farther.

  “Stop that!” a quavering feminine voice called out.

  Belle Rodale and the old lady I’d nearly flattened in the alley ambled around the corner of the trailer. They moved at a glacial pace, the old woman leaning heavily on Belle’s arm.

  I gaped. “Belle?”

  “Cora told us what was going on, and I volunteered to follow you. I figured I owed you.” Belle angled her head toward the old woman. “Mrs. Pagliochi drove. Sorry it took us so long.” Slow, she mouthed.

  Kendra didn’t lower her bow. “I’ve got plenty of arrows. Get over there.”

  “I don’t think so, young lady.” The older woman’s voice quavered, but the stare over her spectacles was long and hard. “We’ve had quite enough murder in this town. Now put down that bow.”

  There was a blur of movement and something zinged past me, burning my cheek.

  I gasped and clapped my hand to my face. Warmth trickled between my fingers.

  “That was a warning shot,” Kendra said. “Now get over there.”

  To my horror, she’d already nocked a new arrow to the bow. It was aimed straight at me. Damn, she was a good shot, I thought, depressed.

  “Mrs. Pagliochi is right,” Belle said. “Everyone knows what you’ve done. Even I knew, and I’m not from around here. You may as well give up.”

  “What will your son think when he learns the truth, Kendra?” my mother asked.

  “Leave my son out of this,” Kendra snarle
d. “I’m doing this for him!”

  Cora strode around the side of the trailer. Her long pastel scarves fluttered in the breeze. “There you are!”

  I moaned. Cora too? At least she’d had the sense not to bring Leo.

  “Now stop this, Kendra,” Cora said.

  “Stop telling me what to do!” Kendra shrieked.

  “You might as well drop the bow,” Cora said. “I’ve called the police and told them what you’re up to and where you are. They’re on their way.”

  “I told her to come alone,” Kendra said, her brown eyes wild. The bow shook. “Alone!”

  My mother gripped my shoulder. “But that’s not how a community works. We take care of ourselves, and we take care of each other.”

  “And we don’t like people shooting up dairy farmers and town councilwomen,” Mrs. Pagliochi warbled.

  “You people are crazy,” Kendra shouted.

  A gray Volvo roared down the road and skidded into the drive. Oliver, Leo, and Harper jumped out.

  “Mom!” Oliver shouted. “What are you doing?”

  The bow wavered. “If we don’t get the new zoning,” Kendra said to him, “we’ll lose everything.”

  Oliver’s lanky frame sagged, anguish scrawled across his sunburnt face. “Is it true?”

  “I gambled all we had on this development and more,” Kendra said.

  Her son shook his head, his face paling. “Not the development. I don’t care about the money. You killed those people? Mom, you need to stop.”

  A siren wailed.

  Harper’s lips moved, and her fingers made a quick gesture. Wildly, I thought she might be cursing Kendra.

  “Oliver, get in the car and go home.” Kendra’s bow dipped.

  Tearing my attention from Harper, I grabbed my mom’s arm and focused on Kendra’s bow hand.

  “No, Mom,” Oliver said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Kendra burst into tears.

  “Is this a private party?” Dieter asked. His hand gripped Adele’s as the two strolled toward us. A long line of cars roared down the road.

  “The entire town knows what’s going on out here.” Adele brushed a hank of her silky black hair over one shoulder. “Cora announced it in my tea shop.” She turned to me. “Though you should have told me.”