by Nova Nelson
Except Roland was no longer there.
Well played. Posit an idea like that and then leave me alone with my thoughts. Well, fine.
I sipped my tea and focused instead on the fact that I now got the bacon all to myself.
See? There are perks of spending your nights completely alone.
Chapter Nine
“I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me to visit her home,” Landon said the next afternoon as we made our way into Erin Park. “This is good thinking.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s like that, is it?” Grim asked, padding along beside me. “Gonna take credit for Roland’s idea.”
“What am I supposed to do? Tell Landon about that? You’ve seen how violently he blushes. If I told him even the smallest bit about my relationship with Roland, his head might actually explode.”
“Good point. And we don’t want to see that happen?”
“Bad dog!” I flicked Grim behind the ear.
“What’d he do?” Landon asked.
“Don’t worry about it.”
Landon had secured a spare key from Grace’s neatly organized desk at the Catacombs. Apparently, part of her borderline OCD was that she kept a back-up of everything. She was, after all, one of the Catacomb’s top employees, and the place lived and died by triplicates, even if it could rarely find any of them when requests to view them were filed.
Her home was a compact stone cottage wedged in the middle of a long row of houses. Landon claimed he’d only visited it before to walk her home when the two of them stayed late at work, but I was starting to suspect that more had gone on between them that he wasn’t telling me. Perhaps it had only ever been one-sided.
A chilly autumnal wind blew sideways down the street and I pulled the front of my overcoat shut, shielding against the cold.
I waited a few feet behind Landon on the doorstep as he stuck the key in the lock and paused. “Is this an invasion of privacy?”
“Nah,” I assured him, even though, yes, it was an invasion of her privacy. But if she were dead, she wouldn’t mind, and if she’d left without telling anyone, what could she expect her friend to do?
We crept inside. “Grace?” he called. There was no answer. “Hm.”
“What?”
“Normally Daisy, her familiar, greets me when I enter. She must not be here either.”
“Maybe they’re both dead,” Grim offered unhelpfully.
“Should we take a look around?” I asked.
Landon nodded and we split up to search the one-story home. It didn’t take long, and a minute later I caught up to him in her bedroom. “Find anything?” I asked.
“No, but, um, would you mind looking in her dresser?” He nodded toward the large oak piece, and I nodded. Poor guy was too nervous to look in her underwear drawer.
I started at the bottom, where she kept her heavier items—jeans, a couple casual sweaters, and a throw blanket. Everything was neatly folded, though she didn’t have many clothes. While I could respect that in a person, it likely differed drastically from the rest of her superficial circle.
When I opened the top drawer, my mouth fell open. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
“What? What is it?” Landon asked anxiously, reacting to my openmouthed astonishment. He stepped forward hesitantly.
“She folds her underwear,” I breathed. “Who does that?”
Landon took a quick step back and averted his eyes. “Who doesn’t?”
I tossed a glance his way. “You do, too?”
He nodded like, of course.
“Is this something people do?”
“Adults,” he said. “Yes.”
No way. Wasn’t buying that. I’d been an adult for a while, and at no point had I possessed the time or desire to neatly fold my underwear. Grace had also gone the extra mile and sorted them by fabric and color.
“Are you done staring at her undergarments?” Landon asked impatiently. “This is definitely an invasion of her privacy.”
“Don’t get your panties in a twist,” I said, chuckling. “Get it?”
“You would have to be an idiot not to.”
I shot Grim a glare where he waited in the doorway of Grace’s bedroom.
“Yes, I get it. Now, would you please close—”
Something caught my eye. If she hadn’t gone to the effort of the color sorting, I think I would have missed it, but as it were, the white paper stood out where it was wedged between two folded pairs of black panties.
“Hello there,” I said, slipping it free. It was as neatly folded as the rest of the drawer’s contents, and I carefully pulled it open. Any paper worth hiding in an underwear drawer was worth taking the time to read.
“What’s that?” Landon asked.
I saw the heading and answered, “A letter.”
Landon moved behind me to read it over my shoulder, but not before sliding the drawer shut.
Grace,
You can’t keep doing this to me. They don’t have to accept it. If you don’t want to keep this up, I can’t make you, but don’t tell me how I feel. I meant what I said. We can make it work. This town can burn down for all I care, as long as I have you.
Love,
Fritz
“This is interesting,” I said, rotating to catch a glimpse of Landon’s reaction. His eyes were wide and he swallowed hard. “Landon,” I said, “you don’t ever go by Fritz, do you?”
His eyes jumped from the letter to my face. “What? No! This isn’t from me.”
“Know any Fritzes in town?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t even know she was seeing anyone.”
Poor guy. Tackling this mystery was supposed to make him feel better—taking action on a problem was often more important than solving the problem. But I was starting to suspect that it would only make him feel worse in the short term, especially if we discovered more secrets of Grace’s life. Maybe she wasn’t who everyone thought she was. It could happen. People put up walls all the time.
I would know. I’m an emotional mason myself.
“This could be old,” I said. “Maybe this is from an ex.”
“Maybe,” Landon said.
The precise meaning of the letter would take some time to decipher. “We should take this with us,” I said. “We can read it over a few more times and—”
“No!” he said, aghast, yanking the letter from my hand. “We can’t take her personal items. What if she comes back? How will we explain it?”
I knew exactly how we would explain it: Oh hey, Grace. You disappeared and didn’t tell anyone where you were going, so we took it upon ourselves to try to find you in case you were in trouble. In the process, we went through your personal items and pulled a few things that seemed like clues. To be fair, we wouldn’t have had to if you’d simply told someone where you were going.
But Landon’s stony face made it clear he wouldn’t budge on that. I had an idea, though. “Donovan did this copy and paste thing with his wand once. Couldn’t you do that so we have a copy to look at later?”
He hesitated, but then nodded minutely. “Yeah, fine.” He smoothed out the letter, pulled out his wand, and extracted the words from the page so that they shimmered in midair. Then with a flick, the handwriting disappeared into his wand. “There.” He neatly folded the letter and handed it back to me, nodding at the drawer.
I managed not to roll my eyes at his persistent reluctance to even get close to her underwear and tucked the letter back where I’d found it.
We resumed the search of her bedroom for a few more minutes, but Landon’s heart wasn’t in it. More than likely, he didn’t want to find anything that proved Grace wasn’t exactly the woman he’d thought she was.
That didn’t seem fair. It was like Landon needed who she was to be easily definable. In an ideal world, though, Grace should’ve been allowed to be the kind of person who keeps duplicate keys, follows the rules, and folds and sorts her underwear and a woman with a robust roman
tic life. Rarely, though, did women feel like we could be that openly multidimensional if we wanted to be respected.
But at the same time, I couldn’t blame Landon for feeling disappointed that the woman he thought she was might not have been the full story. It’s never fun to discover a person you care about has been hiding things from you.
Poor Tanner.
I mean, Landon.
Silly me.
Roland was right, it seemed. To know someone, you had to know the environment they built for themselves. And the fact that Grace had hidden the single obvious sign of her romance with this Fritz person deep within a drawer in her own home told me that whatever affair she was or had been carrying on with was one she felt ashamed about. It was something she felt the need to hide, even from herself, in some respects. She lived alone; she could’ve left the letter sitting on her kitchen counter and no one would have seen it. But she hadn’t. She’d tucked it away, hidden from sight in her everyday life.
Landon did one last pass in the office, either because he didn’t trust my thoroughness or because he felt more comfortable discovering any possible secrets that might be kept in the space reserved for Work Life Grace. As with everything else in her home, the office was tidy, organized, minimalistic.
“This is strange,” Landon said, staring down at the large calendar on her desk.
I approached and looked at where he was pointing. Whereas the rest of the calendar leading up to the date he indicated contained a detailed breakdown of her goings on, mostly work, all those after it were blank. I hadn’t noticed that, so perhaps he was right to assume I could have been more thorough.
And in the square he pointed to was nothing more than the date listed in the top corner and a single time: 6:47 a.m.
No name or location attached. Just the time.
“That’s the day after anyone last saw her?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“Whatever happened to her that day, it was scheduled.”
“I would expect nothing less.”
The specificity of the time lodged itself in my brain. She was meticulous with her scheduling, but she’d broken down every other day into five-minute increments at the very least. There was 6:10 cook breakfast and 7:45 leave for work. None of the times ended in anything other than a five or a zero, except the one.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“Don’t know. It depends on how far in advance she writes out her schedules. If she just does it at the end of each day for the following day, then it makes sense that the rest would be blank. But if she plans it out way in advance, like I suspect she does, then it means she had no plans after that date.”
“I don’t know what to make of that,” I said.
“Me neither. But if you don’t mind, I think we’ve intruded enough, and I could probably use a drink.”
Because we were already in Erin Park, Sheehan’s was only a short walk, and as we left Grace’s home behind us, I mulled over what we knew so far. Landon walked silently beside me, his hands in his pockets, and Grim took up my other flank.
“We need to figure out who this Fritz person is,” I said. “If we can just figure that out, we could talk to him or her and—”
“You think it might be a her?” he said quickly, perking up. “Yeah, maybe it was just a friend. Maybe Annabel or Jackie goes by Fritz.”
I didn’t want to squash the note of hope in his voice, so I didn’t mention that it was equally possible that Creepy Uncle Hunter went by that name and the dynamics of Grace’s circle were even stranger than we’d originally thought.
“Good point, Landon. That could definitely be it.”
“Something smells like unicorn swirls,” said Grim.
“I know that, but give the guy a break. We can bring him back down to reality later.”
“Or her dead body can.”
“It’s like you want her to be dead. Why is that?”
“Misery loves company.”
“I think you’re just not brave enough to hope for the best.”
Grim wagged his tail at that. “You got me. Total coward. Guilty as charged. I marked the edge of the freaky tunnel to another realm in the Deadwoods, but I’m too scared to think that a nerdy witch with a wild streak might be alive. That makes a lot of sense. Was that your powerful Insight at work, or was it all you and your superior understanding of emotions?”
“Alright, alright. Knock it off.”
“Why would I do that? Besides, I think you’re afraid to admit that she might be dead.”
“And why would I be afraid of that, oh master of complex emotions?”
“Because it would mean you dragged Landon into this to avoid dealing with your own pain and it resulted in giving him false hope that caused him even worse agony when the obvious outcome was revealed.”
We reached the front patio of Sheehan’s. Grim wouldn’t be coming inside, and I wasn’t sad about that. “Don’t you have balls to lick?”
He wagged his tail again. “Yes, thanks for asking. But I prefer to save them for the end of the day. Helps me wind down.”
When I gagged, he protested with, “What? You started it.”
Chapter Ten
When Zoe Clementine and Oliver Bridgewater walked into Medium Rare for lunch the next day, I hurried to pick up the table before Tanner could. Zoe was a generous tipper and Oliver always tipped exactly twenty-five percent (the standard in Eastwind, which was another reason why I loved this place), but it wasn’t the tip I was after.
It was a tip.
Specifically, some insight into who the Fritz from the letter could be.
Once I greeted them and took their drink order, I asked, “Hey, you go to Coven meetings, right, Oliver?”
“Often. Or rather, whenever I’m not tutoring, which is not that often lately.”
“Would you say you know most of the witches in the Coven?”
He nodded. “Inside and out. You thinking about becoming more active?”
I chuckled. “Hellhound, no. But remember that surprise visit the other night?” I asked, grinning at Zoe, hoping to convey that, no, I wouldn’t elaborate, and, yes, I was sorry about that.
“I do,” he said curtly.
“I’m looking into that after all. And I’m wondering if you know of a witch named Fritz.”
“Hmm.” He shook his head. “No, don’t know any by that name.”
“Not a last name or a nickname?”
“What about Fitzgerald?” Zoe chimed in. “That’s kind of close.”
“Yes! Tell me about Fitzgerald,” I said. It wasn’t a far hop from that to Fritz. I could see nickname potential.
“Not much to tell,” Oliver said. “Skipper Fitzgerald is a West Wind in his hundreds who lives out on a farm adjacent to Whirligig’s Garden Center. Mostly keeps to himself.”
Zoe nodded along, grinning widely. “He lets some of the older large animals at the sanctuary graze on his land in their final days. Very sweet man.”
“Sounds like it,” I said, “but probably not who I’m looking for.” Grace might be more full of secrets than the ocean is water, and I would still have a hard time believing she was carrying on a romance with a farmer in his hundreds.
When I brought back the drinks, Zoe had slipped off to the restroom, so I was free to bring up another subject with Oliver, one I’d mostly forgotten about until I saw him relating to his other private student. “Have you done it yet?”
My timing wasn’t ideal; he was sipping his water through a straw, and my question caused him to choke. A trickle of water ran out between his lips.
He managed to swallow. “Done what?”
“Have you told her how you feel?”
He cast me a dark look. “Nora, I think I made it obvious how I feel when I kissed her, and she made it crystal clear to me how she felt when she pushed me away. Now I know you think she’s into me, but if that’s the case, why are we spending all our time talking about the curriculum when we get together?”
His eyes shot open wide at my bluntness. I probably should’ve been more delicate with him, but the morning hadn’t fostered that sentiment in me. And besides, was he really going to sit around doing nothing and let a possibly amazing relationship pass him by? I suspected more strongly by the hour that that was what Landon had done with Grace, and look where it got him.
“Just tell her how you feel. It doesn’t have to be complicated. Start out small and specific. ‘Hey, Zoe, you look beautiful today,’ and ‘I love the care you give to your animals,’ and ‘let’s cut the intellectual foreplay and make a whole circle’s worth of babies.’ ”
“Nora!” he hissed, horror-stricken.
“I’m just saying. You never know what might happen. I thought her brush with death might do it for you, but apparently you need a little extra push.”
“And you’re the one to do the pushing?”
“If no one else will, yes.”
Zoe slipped back into the booth. “What’d I miss?”
“Just talking about the daily specials.”
“Oh,” she waved it off. “We don’t need that. I’ll have the Hearts of Arellio salad, and Oli will get …” She squinted at him. “Right! The sunrise burger, with the bacon brussels instead of fries. Is that right?” She addressed her question to him, and he nodded.
“Got it,” I said, feeling quite satisfied with myself. “Anything else I can get for you, Oli?”
He grunted, apparently conceding that maybe I was right and he needed to buck up and ask out the poor woman, who’d memorized his favorite foods, on a proper date.
“That will do it,” he said.
Once the order was in, I bussed a few tables and in walked Stu Manchester, a little later than usual, but there all the same. It occurred to me that if Stu didn’t stop by after his shift someday, I would immediately assume he was dead.
“Morning, Ms. Ashcroft.” He rocked onto his usual seat at the countertop.
“Real business or town drama?” I asked, dragging a rag over the surface in front of him to clear a few crumbs from the previous guest.
