“What a waste,” I said. “Now I’m hungry for donuts.”
Bentley raised an eyebrow. It was the you-just-had-lunch look.
The receptionist said, “If you go to the large meeting room right now, you can help yourselves to whatever’s left over.”
“Perfect,” I said, heading toward a hallway that was full of people with white-painted faces and striped shirts.
“It’s the other direction,” she called after us helpfully. “Up the elevator, on the top floor.”
I changed direction, as instructed.
Once the elevator doors closed, Bentley said, “Tell me what’s going on. Did you cast a spell? What did you find out?”
“I didn’t cast any spells,” I said. “Don’t you want a donut?”
He didn’t find this very amusing.
“It’s a gut feeling,” I explained. I remembered what Kathy had said about witches putting too much stock in feelings, and brushed the insult aside. I had my reasons, and my logic. It just happened to manifest as an intuitive feeling before I figured out the rest.
Bentley was giving me a skeptical look.
My brain finally caught up to what my gut was thinking, and I understood my impulse. “A couple of people might still be up there,” I said. “If I know anything from the community meeting spaces at the library, it’s that people love to linger after a meeting. The receptionist said everyone from the meeting left already, but how would she know for sure? This place is a zoo, between the art classes and the pool, and whatever those people in the mime makeup were doing.”
“They were miming,” he said.
“But not very well,” I said.
“Well, no. But not everyone is excellent at everything they do.” He paused. “Not like some of us.”
“Was that a compliment umbrella that you just opened over both of us?” My gaze dropped from his silver eyes to his mouth. His very attractive mouth. The elevator hummed as it climbed up three floors. I couldn’t stop looking at the detective’s mouth.
Bentley must have noticed me staring. His voice low and husky, he said, “What else did you and Maisy talk about in the ladies’ room?”
“Witch stuff.”
“Such as...?”
The elevator dinged, and the doors open. I charged out, skipping toward the meeting room. Bentley followed in a brisk but professional walk.
I pushed open the door to a big room. A big, empty room. “They’re all gone,” I said dejectedly. “So much for my gut feeling.”
I walked over to the refreshments table. Some donuts had been left behind, but none of the good ones with the rainbow sprinkles.
Bentley walked toward the large window. “Zara,” he said, his voice tinged with excitement. “What’s that over there?”
I joined him at the window and followed his gaze. Immediately, I saw what he meant.
From the third floor of the community center, we had a perfect view of several residential streets lined with houses, including one that appeared to be missing a wall. Someone had built the house—or renovated it—to have one side that was almost entirely glass. From where we stood, we could see directly into the home’s back yard and the house itself.
I gasped. “That looks exactly like a dollhouse.”
“And not just any dollhouse. It’s the same one we saw at Krinkle’s house.” He squinted, then took a step back. “Do you see what the family is doing in there?”
I squinted, but squinting could only do so much. “No.”
“I can.”
“Then your eyesight must be a lot better than mine. There’s too much glare on the glass for me to see inside.”
He turned and looked at me. “My eyesight is better than yours.” His cheeks rippled as he clenched his jaw.
My gut felt heavy. My arms were heavy at my sides. He’d seen something bad. I’d been joking about donuts, and staring at Bentley’s mouth, and I hadn’t been thinking at all about that family in the house. That poor family.
I asked, “Did you see the mother inside the house?”
“No. Just the father and two boys.” He looking out at the house again.
I turned and squinted. I still couldn’t see past the glare on the glass. My head felt dizzy. In half an hour, when the sun shifted, I might have been able to see inside. But we probably didn’t have half an hour.
I remembered the enchanted sight-enhancement gel I kept in my purse. I could apply the goopy gel to a pair of sunglasses, and that would allow me to see past the glare, but there was no need. Bentley could see for me. He was my seeing-eye-creature-of-the-grave. All I had to do was ask.
My voice was hoarse. “What are they doing now?”
“One of the boys is sitting at the dining room table. He has stacks of books next to him.”
“But it’s the summer.” I pressed both hands flat against the meeting room’s window, framing the dollhouse between my thumbs and fingers. “The summer! He shouldn’t be doing homework. This isn’t right. We were supposed to have more time. You promised we had more time.”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” he said, then, “It’s happening.”
It was happening.
Chapter 15
The glass-walled house was within walking distance of the community center, but we took Bentley’s car so we would have it in case we needed to leave the house in a hurry.
While he drove, he called in to the WPD and gave an update about where he was heading.
“The address is 2319,” he said to the young woman on the other end of the call.
He cruised slowly past the house, which we’d had to identify from the alley side, since the front looked just like the others up and down the block. He parked up the street, out of sight of the residence. The block was lined with sturdy-looking trees—the kind that had thick branches perfect for hanging rope swings. In fact, the tree we parked under had a rope swing on the sidewalk side.
The person on the other end of the call was Persephone Rose, the junior officer who’d come to see me at the library earlier in the week. She answered over the car’s speakers. “Why does that number sound familiar?”
I said softly to Bentley, “It’s because she looked it up on a license plate for the Greyson case.” I remembered it clearly because 2319 was my favorite four-digit number. When viewed in a mirror, it spelled the word PIES. Sometimes I remembered the number incorrectly, as 5319, which was almost the same, but with a backwards S.
Persephone Rose asked, “Is there someone else in the vehicle with you?”
“Yes,” Bentley said. “Ms. Zara Riddle is assisting me this morning.”
“But you told me—”
He cut her off with a gruff command. “Do you have that name for me?”
There was the sound of keys being tapped, then, “The residence at 2319 Aubergine Street belongs to William and Veronica Tate.”
“Anything on them or the address?”
“Looks like the house was vandalized two years ago.”
Bentley gave me a look, then told her, “Go on.”
“It... was... nothing,” she replied, her voice having that flat detachment of a person multitasking, skimming text, and summarizing. “Halloween before last, some local teens hit the trees in front of the house with toilet paper. It wasn’t targeted at the Tates. The kids did half the block before Detective Fung rounded them up with the help of Old Man Wheelie.”
“Thank you for that,” Bentley said. “I’ll report back after I speak to the Tates.”
“Wait,” she said hurriedly. “Do you really think someone’s going to kidnap that woman? I’m so confused about what’s going on. Is this a training exercise or not?”
“I don’t have a crystal ball,” he replied tersely, then he looked over at me.
I held my hands up and mouthed the words me neither.
“Detective Bentley?” Her voice was weak, fragile. She sounded like a kid asking their parent for one more glass of water, stalling for time because they’re afraid of
the dark and the monsters in the closet.
“What is it?”
“I’ve seen things in this town that can’t be explained,” she said. “Strange things.”
I pressed my lips together to keep from making noise.
“And?” He shot me a look of dry amusement. It was funny, in a cruel sort of way, to be in on the town’s secrets when other people were not.
“Never mind,” she said. “I’ll keep going through the files to see if there’s anything else connected to the Tate family.”
He thanked her again, and ended the call.
Without further discussion, we both stepped out of the car and walked up to the front door.
My imagination fired up a playful image of something happening across town at Temperance Krinkle’s house: a pair of two-inch-tall wooden people suddenly materializing on the front step of the dollhouse that Lund and his technicians were analyzing. Wouldn’t that be a surprise!
The door opened. The man who opened the door, presumably William Tate, took one look at us and said, “We don’t want any, thanks.”
He closed the door.
Bentley knocked again.
The man called out, “And we’re atheists.”
Bentley, who had apparently received this sort of treatment before and wasn’t at all surprised, knocked on the door a third time.
On the other side of the door, the man groaned. “Seriously?”
“Sir, we are with the Wisteria Police Department,” Bentley said. “We are canvassing the neighborhood about a non-emergency matter. We’re following up on the incident from Halloween before last. May I trouble you for a moment of your time?”
The door opened again. “Hang on,” the man said. “Now the land line’s ringing. Everything happens at once around this place.” He yelled over his shoulder, “Billy? Luke? The phone’s ringing. Can’t you hear anything over that video game?” He shook his head and said to me, “They have one job: answer the phone and the door. Do you think I can get them to do either?”
Before I could answer what was probably a rhetorical question, Mr. Tate retreated into the house, waving us to follow him in. He grabbed the ringing phone from a hall table.
I stepped inside, then turned and looked back at Bentley. Would he be able to enter the home without a verbal invitation?
Just then, Tate called out, “Come on in.” He spoke into the phone with an agitated, “Hello. Tate residence. William Tate Senior speaking.”
Bentley stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
The interior of the Tate house looked exactly as it had in the dollhouse version of the home, right down to the color of the flooring, which was an amber-hued type of bamboo. I hadn’t seen many bamboo floors. It was very modern, though some parts of the house felt old. They must have had the flooring installed at the same time they’d removed the back wall of the home and replaced it with glass. Most of the walls were a pale cream, but one had been painted a deep purple. Aubergine, I thought. It was a nod to the name of the street, the sort of whimsical thing an interior decorator might think of.
The dollhouse also had an aubergine accent wall. Had the wall been a clue? Were the crime scene technicians supposed to have seen the purple wall and connected the home to Aubergine Street? The idea was awfully far-fetched, but magic did have a mind of its own—as well as a wicked sense of humor.
We stood and listened to one side of Tate’s phone conversation: “No, she’s not back yet.” There was a short pause, followed by a light laugh. “I’m sure they got held up at the off-leash dog park. It’s a beautiful day, Mr. Linklater. And, now that I think about it, Veronica did mention she was meeting with a new client this morning. An extra dog can slow down the routine.”
A longer pause. “Yes, I understand your dog needs special medication, and that you’re on a tight schedule. My wife is quite aware of that.” Tate shot us a wide-eyed look to let us know that the person on the phone—his wife’s dog-walking client, by the sound of it—was being needy.
Tate continued, “I’ll have my wife call you the minute she gets home. In the meantime, you should check your back yard again and see if your dog isn’t hiding under something.” Another pause, then, “Listen, I’d love to help you out, but now isn’t a good time. Someone from the police department is here.” He turned to lean over and hang up the phone, but paused. He straightened up, frowning at us. He listened for a moment.
Then he slowly took the phone away from his ear and held it out toward us.
Frowning, Mr. Tate said, “He asked to speak with you.”
Bentley took the phone and identified himself to the caller.
I waited all of two seconds before losing my patience and doing what any witch would have done if she were in my kitten heels.
I cast a spell to listen in on the phone call. It was an inversion of the sound bubble. My home-brew version acted as a tunnel, or a funnel, depending on the size of the source. It carried some—but not all—of the sound vibrations from the source, which in this case was the caller’s voice coming from the phone speaker—directly into the caster’s ear.
The spell cast without a hitch, and I was in, so to speak. It was now a conference call, witch style.
“I had a feeling something like this was going to happen,” the male caller was saying. “Corvin has been careless lately. He shouldn’t have revealed himself like that. Did Zara tell you all about it?”
I understood at once that the caller was Chet Moore, and the dog he’d been phoning about was Corvin. The bad feeling in the pit of my stomach spread.
“No,” Bentley said. “This is... the first I’ve heard about this matter.”
“He shouldn’t have told anyone,” Chet said, sounding frantic. “I know he’s close to Zoey, and she’s like a sister to him, but he still shouldn’t have done it. Not without permission from myself and Chessa. Now his secret is getting out all over the place, and, wouldn’t you know it, he’s gone missing. This better not have been his idea. When I get him back. I’m going to redefine the concept of being grounded.”
My heart raced as the whole picture clarified. Veronica Tate, a dog walker, was missing, along with at least one client’s dog. That dog was the hellhound shifter who lived next door to me. Questions bubbled up. Why did Chet have a professional dog walker taking Corvin for walks? Was it because he couldn’t be seen with a dog but no son some days, and a son but no dog on others? That made sense to me, a woman who refused to leave the house with her daughter in fox form.
Bentley continued to listen to Chet, giving only short answers due to the proximity of Mr. Tate, who was now pacing nervously. Tate breathed heavily and alternated between pushing one hand back over his hair and checking his cell phone in the other.
On the phone, Bentley calmly assured Chet that he understood the gravity of the situation, and that everyone at the station would be put on the case immediately. “All resources will be directed to the case,” Bentley promised.
“What case?” William Tate demanded. “There’s a case? Has something happened to my wife?” He gave me a pleading look. “What’s going on? You two aren’t here about the Halloween toilet papering, are you?” He suddenly grabbed my hands in his. “Talk to me,” he demanded.
At the instant his fingers made contact with mine, I lost the sound tunnel connection with the phone call. But I’d already heard plenty, and now, like Bentley, I also understood the gravity of the situation.
Veronica Tate had disappeared, along with Corvin Moore.
Chapter 16
Once Bentley and I discovered that Krinkle’s crime prediction had come true, the WPD “training exercise” turned into a full-blown missing persons investigation.
I did what I could as a witch. I cast threat-detection spells around the Tate residence and neighborhood, kept an eye open for ghosts, and even used my bluffing spells to question Mr. Tate and the two boys, with Bentley’s assistance.
None of the three remaining Tates knew anything about the dis
appearance of Mrs. Tate, or the identity of the new client she had been planning to meet that day. The only secret the family was keeping involved an incident in which someone intentionally soiled the guest bathroom’s frilly towels. It had been the younger boy, and both the older brother and father knew about it, but none had discussed the matter until my magic had unsealed their secrets. Disgusting though it was, if the towel thing was the Tate family’s darkest secret, it didn’t seem likely the woman’s disappearance was related to any criminal family dealings.
After a few fruitless hours at the Tate home, Bentley had to take some meetings without me, and sent me off on my own. I didn’t want to go home, because who could just go home when a child was missing? But I did have magic books at home, and research could be helpful, so that was where I went.
I planned to look up information about Animata, dollhouses, hellhounds, and anything else that might be connected to the Tate investigation.
* * *
Zoey wasn’t home when I got to the house, and the resident wyvern didn’t show his scaly face.
I found Boa upstairs, curled up on Zoey’s bed, and told her I was home. She twitched one ear as if to say that was all well and good, but she hadn’t noticed I was gone in the first place.
I made a pot of coffee, noticing how much the simple act of following the routine to make coffee put me at ease. It was no wonder people were always offering each other cups of tea or coffee during stressful situations. The world could be crashing down around you, but a steaming cup in your hand said that maybe things weren’t so bad. Night would come, and then daybreak, and then more simple routines to pull you back into your life.
I fixed up a big mug of coffee, and went downstairs.
Our house hadn’t had a basement when I’d purchased it. But my house was no ordinary house. Rooms rearranged themselves without notice. The basement had manifested without warning, conveniently enough at the same time a certain dark-loving wyvern had been looking for a new hangout.
The dungeon-like space had resisted all attempts to make it brighter. With Zoey’s help, I had applied two coats of heavy duty primer to the stone walls, only to have the primer disappear overnight, slurped back into the walls.
Wisteria Witches Mysteries Box Set 3 Page 68
