“Things were happening fast,” I said. Something glinted on Adele’s finger. “Is that a …” I shook myself and refocused on Kendra and her deadly bow.
“You’re engaged,” my mother said, not sounding at all surprised. And suddenly, I knew what secret of Dieter’s she’d been holding over his head. “Congratulations.”
“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Kendra’s fingers slipped.
Time slowed.
I swear, I tracked the arrow in flight. Followed its trajectory. Pushed my mother aside. Another bolt of heat grazed my shoulder and I cried out, tumbled to the ground.
Then time resumed its normal gallop. People were shouting, running.
“Madelyn!”
I sat up and clutched my shoulder. No arrow protruded from my jacket but the shoulder was torn, and my hand came away spotted with blood.
My mom sat back on her heels and gulped. “Oh, thank God.”
I looked at Kendra. Oliver had wrapped his arms around his mother in a restraining hug. The bow lay in the loose dirt.
Police raced toward us.
Harper squatted beside my mother and I. “You two okay?” she asked.
“Harper?” I blinked. “How?”
“I ran into Leo outside the museum. He suggested we collect Oliver along the way.”
I saw Adele and her mother embracing. Mr. Nakamoto clapped Dieter on the back.
“You’re bleeding,” Harper said.
“It’s only a scratch,” my mother observed as she helped me to my feet.
“Yeah,” I said. “A scratch.” I’d ask Harper if she’d cursed that arrow later, when my mother wasn’t around. Not that I believe in curses, but that shot had been terrifyingly close.
Cars lined the road, filled the driveway to the development. Waitresses in poodle skirts from the Wok and Bowl. Dean Pinkerton, arms akimbo, glaring at Kendra while Laurel cuffed her. Women from Ladies Aid directing traffic.
Mason roared up on his motorcycle. He ran to Belle and swept her into his arms.
Herb stepped from his battered yellow bug. Gawping, he removed his coke-bottle glasses, cleaned them on his shirt tail, and replaced them on his nose. Penny shook her head, her grape-cluster earrings quivering with sorrow. The owner of the Bell and Brew stood with his hands on his hips. A cluster of ghost busters I knew milled around the worksite. I won’t say the whole town had turned out, but it was well represented, and I laid a hand over my heart.
My vision blurred. I’d spent most of my adult life away from home—first in college, then working overseas. Because of my wandering, I’d never felt a part of a community, hadn’t even known what I’d missed until this moment. “All these people risked themselves to help us.”
“Unlikely,” my mother said. “Most came to gawk at our little disaster.”
My highfalutin’ reflections crashed to earth. “We’re like the Christmas Cow.”
“But some came to help,” she said. “And that matters.”
I looked around, searching the crowd for Jason.
He wasn’t there.
thirty-two
I sat alone in the police station’s cinder-block interview room and eyed the table. A metal bar for handcuffing prisoners protruded from its top.
And since I’d been sitting there a long time, my thoughts wandered to my truck. Because the truck had stalled, I hadn’t been on the spot when the cow was attacked. Because it had stalled again, I’d been forced to face my fears and jump on a motorcycle to save my mom. So many little things had happened—like a museum door that strangely opened when Jason showed up—and I’d assumed they were random. It was almost as if a benign force had been showing me the way.
Nah.
I crossed my arms and leaned back in the metal chair. They couldn’t keep me here much longer. Not even Laurel could find something to charge me with today. I shifted. Could she?
The heavy metal door opened and Jason strode into the room. He carried a thick manila folder beneath his good arm.
I rose, the room suddenly seeming brighter. “Jason.”
“I heard what happened,” he said, pulling me into a one-armed embrace. He touched the tape on my cheek where the arrow had grazed me. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Has Tom been released?”
“Yes, though he may be in some trouble for that false confession.”
“He was trying to protect his son. What are you doing here?”
“I’m back on duty.”
I studied his chiseled, dark-skinned face. His brown eyes snapped with electricity. “Something’s happened,” I said. “Aside from my mom getting kidnapped. What is it?”
“When I left you today, I drove to the Falls’ house.” He dropped the file folder on the desk and papers spilled out. Some I recognized—old documents from the deaths in the 1980s. “When I got there, Jennifer Fall was tipping her husband head-first out a second-floor window.”
I gasped. “Did you—”
“I arrived in time to stop her. The doctors think he was drugged. She tried to claim she was pulling him back inside, but we’ve got her. You stopped more than one murder today.”
“You stopped her.”
“But I couldn’t have done it without you.” Jason exhaled, a long and contented sigh. “We make a good team.”
“I think so too,” I said slowly, warming. My parents had been a team. Team was good. Especially when my teammate was standing so close I could feel the energy radiating from his lean body. Especially when my teammate was crazy sexy. And especially when he was good and honorable and kind. I swallowed. “So Jennifer did kill her first husband in the ’80s.”
“She’s not admitting to it, but we’re reopening the case. Husband number two is still pretty groggy, but we’ve already got enough from him to put her away.”
“Why did she do it?” I asked. “For his money?”
“That’s what we think. And we’ve impounded those hat pins as evidence and called the two women in who were supposedly bitten at your museum. The hat pins look like a match for the supposed bites.”
“So she revived the curse for cover.”
“Pretty crazy, right?” Jason shifted his weight. “But I’ve got some bad news for your museum. I saw those women talking to a reporter outside the station. I think the press is going to run with the fake-curse angle.”
“It doesn’t matter if the bells are cursed or not. As long as there’s a story and GD is cleared, people will come to see the museum.”
His hands fell to his sides. “If I’d known about Kendra, I wouldn’t have left you alone there today.”
“How were you to know? You saved a man’s life. My mom and I are okay. It’s all good.” And for the first time in a long time, I believed it was all good. The museum would be successful. The people I loved would be happy, and so would I.
“I can’t tell you how I felt when I returned to the station and heard the calls coming in about you.”
“Calls? Plural?”
“Half the town called to report the kidnapping.” He grinned. “Worst-kept secret ever.”
I’d been a little annoyed at how word had spread about Mason’s visit to my apartment. But a wildfire-like spread of gossip wasn’t so bad when confronting a killer. “That’s life in a small town.”
“I suppose Laurel’s already told you that you shouldn’t have raced after your mother,” he said.
“The phrase interfering with a police investigation may have been said a few dozen times.” But since there hadn’t been a police investigation of Kendra until after Cora called the police, I wasn’t worried. Much. I rubbed the back of my neck. What jury would convict me for trying to save my mom?
“I suppose you want out of this place,” Jason said.
Now that he was here, I was in no hurry. But I nodded.
“You�
��re free to go.” He smiled at me and began gathering the scattered papers. “The DA will no doubt have more questions later, but you know the drill.”
I hesitated at the door and turned. “Jason?”
He looked up. “Yeah?”
“You know, we could maybe go out some time and talk about things that aren’t crime-related.”
He took my hand and pulled me toward him. “I’m counting on it.” And he kissed me.
My head whirled, my knees going weak.
He released me and we both stared at each other, dazed. Our relationship had been moving so slowly, I’d almost missed what it was becoming. But I wouldn’t take it for granted again.
Jason cleared his throat. “You’d better get out of here before Detective Hammer changes her mind. She really wants to charge you with something.”
“You know where to find me.” I floated out the door and into the grim linoleum hallway. My mother and I were alive. Kendra wouldn’t be shooting anyone else. And Jason … as far as I was concerned, today was a Christmas miracle.
In the reception area, my mom sat ramrod-straight in a plastic chair. When she saw me, she leapt to her feet. “Madelyn, thank heavens. I was beginning to think they were going to charge you for interfering. You shouldn’t have come for me.”
I hugged her. “Of course I was going to get you.”
Gently, she pushed me away. “No, I mean you really shouldn’t have. You could have been killed.”
“But we weren’t.”
“This was all my fault.” My mom looked away, her hands curling inward. “Ironically, if I’d been more like Kendra, you would have been safe.”
“A greedy killer?”
“A greedy killer who made sure her son had an alibi by keeping those Tahoe receipts.” She jammed her hands in her jacket pocket. “And I thought she was just coddling Oliver.”
“What happened?” I asked. “How’d she get hold of you?”
“I went to ask Kendra where she’d heard that you were on the scene when Tabitha was discovered. I wanted you to be out of it and safe.”
“So instead of me annoying the killer until she tried to kill me, you thought you’d do it?”
“I wasn’t trying to annoy her, just trip her up and get something we could use. I guess I wasn’t as subtle as I thought. I never believed Kendra would insist on dragging you into her net. But I should have. You were the one out front, asking questions. She assumed if I had the answers, so did you.”
“Mom, I helped you investigate because I wanted to. I probably would have gotten involved in any case.” And in that moment, it was true. “Let’s grab some eggnog.”
We walked out of the station and paused on the brick steps. I drew a deep breath. The fog had dissipated, and the night wasn’t quite thick with stars—we were too near the city lights of Sacramento for that. But there were lots of them, and they went on forever.
the end
About the Author
Kirsten Weiss writes paranormal mysteries, blending her experiences and imagination to create a vivid world of magic and mayhem. She is also the author of the Riga Hayworth series. Follow her on her website at kirstenweiss.com.
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