“Can I see it?”
She dug around the bag and came out with a syringe. I examined the clear plastic tube, the plunger, the needle protected by a long, thin cap.
Suddenly, I knew why my fingerprints had been on the syringe that had been used on Kyle. I’d touched it. At his tree house, the morning I’d found his body. It had been the object on the floor near his nightstand, and as I’d gone to pick it up, it had rolled out of my grasp. Then I’d been distracted by Harper and forgotten all about it. Until now.
“My dear, what’s wrong?” Cherise asked. “You’ve lost all color in your face.”
My mind raced to connect the dots. If the syringe had been at the tree house, it should have been logged into the evidence locker by the police. How did it get into the Dumpster behind Starla’s?
I could only come up with one conclusion that made sense, and it alternately made my blood boil and my heart ache from the fallout it would cause.
“Darcy?” Cherise gently tucked my hair behind my ear. “What’s wrong? Did you jab yourself?”
I gave my head a shake. “No.” I handed her the syringe. “Just feeling the sting of ultimate betrayal.”
Pepe stopped reading and glanced at me over the top of his glasses. My heart thrummed with the theory my brain was piecing together. How oblivious I’d been to what was right in front of me this whole time! Only I hadn’t been able to see it, but not because of a Mirage Spell. No, this was because I never dreamed a person could stoop so low. I’d been so naive. But how far did the betrayal go? And could I prove it?
“Maybe you should lie down,” Cherise said.
“I’m all right. Really.” I had to deal with this, but there was time for that.
Pepe went back to reading, managing to keep his voice mellow and melodious.
“How is she?” I asked, motioning to Mrs. P.
“Her heart is weakening quickly. She fainted earlier and gave Pepe quite the scare.”
Cherise patted my hand, then squeezed it. Her gaze was soft, her tone gentle as she said, “Eugenia’s time has almost come. It won’t be long now.”
Pepe stopped midsentence, glanced at us, then went back to reading, his voice cracking slightly.
“There’s nothing you can do?”
She shook her head. “I’m very sorry.”
Not as sorry as I was.
Cherise leaned in. “Pepe hasn’t left her side.”
Which meant it was going to be all that much harder for him to say good-bye when the time came. My chest ached. “He’s a good friend.”
Poor Pepe. It was unusual how close he’d grown to Mrs. P over these past few days, but there was no denying that he had. “Indeed.”
“I’ll stay with her tonight as well and try to make her as comfortable as possible, but Darcy, it’s time to gather her loved ones to start saying good-bye.”
It hurt to even contemplate.
“If you’d like, I can make some phone calls. . . .” Cherise offered.
Numbly, I nodded. “Thank you.”
“Is that Darcy I hear?” Mrs. P murmured.
I popped off the couch and made it across the room in two long strides. The bed dipped as I sat on its edge. “I’m here.”
Mrs. P smiled tremulously as I took hold of her hand. She said, “I’m glad I didn’t miss your visit. I’m like Rip Van Winkle these days. Zzzzzz.”
“Better than Ichabod Crane,” I said.
She laughed, but even her cackle had lost its luster. “Ain’t that the truth.”
“Do you need anything?” I asked. “Something to eat? To drink? A puzzle?”
Smiling, she patted my cheek. “I’ve got everything I need. But, doll?”
Worry had crept into her sleepy eyes.
“What?”
“I don’t think I’ll be able to make your birthday dinner.”
I knelt next to the bed. “We’ll bring it here. No problem.”
With a tip of her head and a knowing look in her eyes, she said, “Just in case that doesn’t work out, I just want you to know that I hope all your birthday wishes come true. They’re magical you know, birthday wishes, so make sure you come up with some good ones.”
“I will,” I promised.
Tears pooled on my lashes as her eyelids fluttered closed again, and I glanced at her chest to make sure it still rose and fell. It did. She’d fallen back to sleep.
My gaze met Pepe’s and I feared that what I saw in his eyes—the raw sorrow—was mirrored in my own gaze. There was nothing I could say to offer comfort. Not when my own heart hurt so much. I stood up and whispered, “There’s something I have to do, but I’ll be back in a little bit.”
Mrs. P’s eyes slowly opened. Her sleepy gaze fastened onto my face and she smiled again. “Leaving without saying good-bye, doll?”
“Never.” I barely choked out the word.
“Good, good.” She reached for my hand. “But instead of saying good-bye how about we say ‘see you later’ instead? Good-byes always seem so sad, and I don’t want you to be sad.”
Gently, I squeezed her gnarled fingers and forced the words from my parched throat. “I’ll see you later, Mrs. P.”
“Ain’t that better?” she asked Pepe.
“Oui,” he murmured, polishing the lenses on his glasses with the hem of his vest. “Much better.”
I bent and gave her velvety soft cheek a kiss, waved to Cherise, then turned and walked out of the room.
In the hallway, I leaned against the wall, took a deep shaky breath, and let the tears fall.
Chapter Thirty-three
With pieces of my heart breaking off with every breath I drew in, there was only one place I wanted to be.
With Nick.
It was such a startling revelation that I stopped short and my feet nearly flew out from beneath me on the slippery sidewalk. I grabbed onto the Pixie Cottage’s picket fence and held on much tighter than necessary for a simple stumble.
Because it was more than a tumble. My whole world had just shifted a bit.
I knew I cared for Nick—deeply. But I hadn’t realize just how much I’d come to depend on him over the last few months for comfort, support . . . love. I was so used to being independent, not needing a man—not needing anyone, really—that I’d barely noticed how I had fallen head over heels in love with him.
I loved him.
“Love,” I murmured, testing the word aloud.
It sounded right. It sounded better than right. It was perfect. And I had to tell him.
Shoving away from the fence, I started jogging toward Nick’s house. I was halfway down his street when I noticed him running toward me. It was like something out of a Hollywood cliché, two lovers with outstretched arms racing in slow motion toward each other in a field of wildflowers, with orchestral music rising in crescendo. But right now, cliché or no, amid snowbanks instead of wildflowers, my broken heart fluttered, and grew full to bursting with each and every beat.
Until . . .
“Grab him!” Nick shouted.
Confused, I slowed to a stop. The crescendo faded away.
“Grab him!” Nick yelled again, motioning to something darting into the street.
My romantic vision evaporated as I saw what he was pointing to. Clarence was dodging between parked cars. “For the love,” I cried, borrowing Harper’s favorite phrase. I pivoted, leapt a puddle, and jumped in front of the dog.
He spotted me and started wagging his tail. Maybe he did like me better than Glinda. Smart little guy. But then he heard Nick’s footsteps and scampered away again.
I gave chase, Nick hot on my heels. “Clarence!” I called.
The puppy stopped, turned, wagged. Snow covered his snout, making him look like he had a white mustache.
I held up a hand to Nick, motioning for him to stop so he wouldn’t startle the dog again. I crouched down. “Here, Clarence. Come here, buddy.”
More wagging, but he didn’t move.
I duckwalked closer to him an
d held out my hand for him to sniff. His little nose shot into the air, nostrils flaring. His rear wiggled.
“It’s okay, Clarence. Remember me?”
He took a step toward me, then looked back over his shoulder as though seeing his freedom slipping away. Just as he was about to dash off, I dove at him. I came up with a wiggly puppy and a face full of snow.
Nick leaned down and brushed snow off my cheeks.
Clarence licked my face.
I looked between the two of them and giggled. That giggle blossomed into a laugh. “Wildflowers!” I cried.
“Wildflowers?” Nick repeated, puzzled.
“And crescendos.” And before I knew it, I was laughing so hard I couldn’t catch my breath.
Suddenly, I found myself hiccupping. Then the tears came, and I couldn’t stop them from falling. And just like that, my heart finally cracked.
“Darcy?” Nick gathered me into his arms, Clarence wedged between us. “What’s wrong?”
I tried to talk, but I couldn’t get the words out past the tightness in my throat. It had all come crashing down on me, the emotions from this week. Starla’s devastation. Mrs. P’s illness. My theory of what happened to Kyle . . .
Nick whisked tears from my face as fast as they fell. “Come on, shhh,” he soothed, helping me to my feet.
Clarence licked my chin, Nick’s hand, the snow from his nose.
I sniffled and snuffled as we walked back to his house, and I brokenly told him about Mrs. P.
“Is that why you were running just now? To tell me?”
“Kind of. I needed . . .”
He nudged my chin so I’d look at him. “Needed . . . ?”
I needed to tell you I love you.
“Darcy?”
I tried to look deep into his brown eyes, but moisture in my own made them blurry. Say it. Just say it. “I needed . . . you.”
“Me?” He thumbed another tear from my cheek.
I nodded.
Taking deep breaths, I tried to pull myself together. Nick stared at me for a few seconds, then leaned in and kissed me. Which made me lose my breath all over again.
When he pulled away, I saw sadness had darkened his eyes.
“Mimi and I will go to see Mrs. P as soon as Mimi gets home from school.”
“She’d like that,” I said, stepping onto the porch. Loud woofs echoed through the door, and Clarence instantly perked up and barked back, an adorable arf.
“These two are apparently BFFs now,” Nick said, eyebrows raised.
“Mimi been teaching you teen lingo?”
“Always.” He went in ahead of me to get Higgins under control, but as soon as I was inside, Clarence wiggled and squirmed until I set him down. He went straight to Higgins, and the two circled and sniffed.
Nick hung my coat on the newel post and ducked into the powder room. He came back with a handful of tissues. “I take it you and Clarence know each other?”
“We go way back,” I said, wiping my eyes, my nose. I couldn’t stop sniffling. “He’s a licker.”
He laughed. “There are worse things. Well, your old friend came to visit Higgins. He’s not wearing a collar and took off when I tried to get him into the house.”
“What happened to your collar, Clarence?” I asked him.
He stopped sniffing Higgins and glanced at me. After deciding Higgins was more interesting, he went back to his exploration.
“He had one,” I said, shrugging. “It was blue. It was really loose, though, so it probably slipped off when he ran away. I heard he’s an escape artist.”
“Who does he belong to? I’ve never seen him around here.”
“I’m not sure. I met him through Glinda.” I bit my cheek at the name. “She said she was watching him for a friend.”
“I’ll call her,” Nick said, picking up his cell phone from the console table by the door.
I sat on the sofa and dropped my head back on the cushion. Hellish day. Hellish, hellish day. I didn’t quite know how to break my theory on Kyle’s death to Nick.
“She’s not answering her home line,” he said. “I’ll try her cell.”
“Look.” I nodded toward the dogs. They lay in a heap of gold and rust on Higgins’ dog bed, plumb worn out.
“I’m not keeping him,” Nick said, hanging up the phone. “She’s not answering her cell, either.”
“She’s probably still with the Chadwicks. I saw her with them earlier at the funeral home.”
He glanced at his watch. “It’s a little after one. Kyle’s service is probably just wrapping up.”
“I called the number on Clarence’s tag the other day, but hung up before anyone answered. It’s still in here.” I wiggled my cell from my pocket and eyed his watch. It had triggered another memory, another piece of the puzzle. I found the number in my log and handed him my phone.
Blowing out a breath, he glanced at my cell phone. Then looked back at me. “This is the number from Clarence’s tag?”
“Yeah,” I said, wondering at the strange tone in his voice. “Why?”
“I know this number. I’ve dialed it a million times over the last few days.”
“You have?”
“Darcy, this is the number Liam dialed the other night while at As You Wish.”
“Well,” I said, shaking my head. “I wish that surprised me. It doesn’t.”
“Why’s that? Because it’s pretty shocking to me. That dog probably belonged to Kyle.”
“Because,” I said, “I think I was wrong about Liam. Glinda is the one who framed Starla.”
* * *
“Why?” he asked. “Why do you think Glinda did it?”
“I realized today why my fingerprints were on the syringe.” I walked him through how I’d found the syringe at Kyle’s tree house. “I actually don’t think she meant to incriminate me in any way. I just think she pocketed the syringe when the police arrived that morning—probably didn’t realize she’d dropped it the night before. She didn’t have any way to know my prints were on it.”
“Why weren’t her prints on it?”
“Probably wiped it clean after injecting Kyle, then accidentally dropped it in her hurry to empty the tree house.”
He paced. “It seems like a stretch. Liam could have found the syringe, too, and taken it.”
I understood his reluctance to accept my theory. As much as he didn’t want to admit it—maybe even to himself—he’d trusted Glinda. Maybe not as a person, but as an officer. “When? I touched it. Then the police were there. . . .”
His jaw set.
“Plus, remember the other day, when you told me about Kyle’s belongings in the evidence locker?”
“Yeah?”
“You said he had a watch. Did it have a silver face with a black leather strap? Big numbers on it, all jumbled instead of being clockwise?”
One of his eyebrows rose. “How’d you know that?”
I let out a breath. “Because Glinda brought it to the funeral home this afternoon.”
His shoulders stiffened as I told him about the way she’d come in with it.
“Kyle really wanted his ring to give back to Starla,” I said. “I guess Glinda decided to grant his dying wish. And while she was there, she took everything.”
I bit my lip. “Do you know if Glinda was on duty the day Kyle escaped jail?”
His gaze whipped to me, and he muttered a string of curse words under his breath.
Wincing, I said, “I take that as a yes?”
“I only know this because I was just reviewing his file. She had nothing to do with his intake, but she was there, working a desk at the time. And, surprise, surprise, some of the video cameras in the station that day didn’t work properly, so we never knew exactly how he got out.”
The same way the camera didn’t work the day someone cast the Mirage Spell in the evidence locker.
“She double-crossed me,” he said, his voice full of disbelief.
“Yes.”
His eyes dr
ifted closed. “How’d she get Kyle to Starla’s?”
It was the one piece I still wasn’t sure about. “I’m still trying to figure that one out.”
“We need to talk to her.”
She wasn’t going to like that. “When?”
Anger set his lips into a grim line. “Now.”
Chapter Thirty-four
My mind still spun as Nick and I drove over to Wickedly Creative. Clarence bobbled on my lap, but I kept a tight hold on him as he pressed his nose to the Bumblebeemobile’s window.
I was trying to figure out how Glinda had gotten Kyle to Starla’s house and kept going back to Vince’s video of the brownstone that suggested the Special Delivery Spell.
But that spell didn’t transport people. Only objects.
I was missing something, I could just feel it. It was making me crazy. Maybe Liam helped her in some way. . . . I sighed. Clarence looked back at me and licked my face.
“If he was Kyle’s dog, maybe he needs a new home. I’ve been thinking that Missy needed a playmate.”
“What would Tilda think of that?” Nick asked.
“Maybe Higgins would like a new roommate. Seeing as how they’re already BFFs.”
He glanced over and humor took some of the edge off his anger. “I’m not keeping him.”
“Maybe Harper would take him. . . .”
“Maybe he doesn’t need a home. One of the Chadwicks would probably want him.”
Cars lined the lane in front of the Chadwicks’ farmhouse—where the postfuneral reception was probably being held—so Nick turned into the parking lot adjacent to the studio.
“If that was the case,” I said, “then why did Glinda have him—”
“Well, well,” Nick said, cutting me off. “Look at that. I think we’ve found your explanation.”
Glinda and Liam were locked in a tight embrace. It wasn’t just any ol’ hug. It was a nose to toe, full body press. When they heard the crunch of tires on the gravel lot, they split apart.
Glinda, at least, had the grace to blush.
Liam just looked angry with the world.
She had to have been the woman sharing pillow talk with Liam the night Pepe was spying. Then something else he’d said nearly made me laugh out loud.
There was an enormous yellow beast with big brown eyes and sharp teeth watching me watch the room.
The Goodbye Witch Page 26
