Читать книгу That Olde White Magick - Sharon Pape - Страница 15

Chapter 7

I stood at the screen door, watching the animals disperse. Their numbers had dwindled by a third as the police rolled into town. Two patrol cars led the way, followed by Detective Duggan’s unmarked car. I recognized Curtis in one of the patrol cars, but I didn’t know the officer in the second car. Maybe it was close to the shift change, so both men had heeded the alert. Or maybe Duggan had requested more muscle. They stopped near the animal-control van. The driver, who’d been waiting in the van, emerged and met the police in the middle of the street to provide what I assumed was an update.

Tilly shuffled over to me in her slippers, her preferred footwear at home. Soft and unstructured, they were kindest to her feet. Her time in the kitchen seemed to have restored her to an even keel, but I could tell by the way her gaze was flitting around that panic was hanging out just beneath the surface.

“Kailyn, what are you doing?” she asked. “Don’t stand there like we’re expecting the cops.”

“But we are expecting them. Let’s face it, Aunt Tilly. We’re the only sorcerers around here, and as far as we know, this bizarre migration of animals has occurred only on your block. In fact, most of the creatures were encamped on your lawn.”

“I still think we should play it cool, like we’ve been busy inside and didn’t notice what was happening out there.” As she was speaking a large raccoon ambled up to us from the direction of the stairs. Tilly flattened herself against the wall in the narrow foyer.

“Right,” I said, “we have no idea what’s going on. And this fellow just happens to be our pet.”

“Merlin!” Tilly shrilled, causing the hissing and growling animal to turn its masked eyes to her. She clamped her mouth shut.

The wizard came out of the bathroom, wrapping a poultice around his injured hand. He stopped short when he saw the raccoon. “Egad. Who thought it wise to let that creature in?”

“Exactly what we want to know,” I whispered.

“Ah,” Merlin said, lowering his voice too. “Mayhap it climbed in when I opened the bedroom window earlier to freshen the air.”

My aunt’s eyes bulged with disbelief. “Mayhap?” she said, nearly losing control of her voice. “Close it this instant.”

“I’ll be of more use getting rid of this chap,” he countered.

This was no time for an argument. “Aunt Tilly, go close the window,” I said, hoping nothing else had climbed in.

She bobbed her head, apparently relieved that I’d taken charge. She slid along the wall until she was a safe distance from her uninvited guest; then she hobbled toward the stairs. I backed out of the foyer to watch Merlin deal with the raccoon from a safer distance. He fixed his eyes on the creature, who seemed unable to turn away. They remained locked together like that for a minute or so, communing or communicating in some way I didn’t understand. When Merlin looked away, I could tell the connection was broken. The raccoon seemed to lose its balance from the abrupt release. It swayed on wobbly legs before finding its equilibrium again and shaking its head as if it had been roused from sleep.

Merlin opened the screen door. The animal lifted its snout to the air wafting in and, after a moment’s hesitation, headed outside to join a group of its brethren in their retreat. Merlin appeared altogether pleased with himself as he passed me on his way to the kitchen. He’d clearly forgotten about the greater havoc he’d created outside. Or the fact that I would have to answer to the police for it.

Duggan appeared on the other side of the screen door, as if I’d conjured him up with my thoughts. “Hello again, Ms. Wilde,” he said too amiably for my comfort. “I’d like to speak to you and your aunt. May I come in?” He reminded me of a junkyard dog whose wagging, come-hither tail was all a ruse to lure you closer so it could sink its teeth into you.

“I suppose so,” I replied. “Come on in, and I’ll get her.”

I could have flat out refused. No judge was going to grant a search warrant based on the suspicion that we were behind the sudden influx of animals, but I didn’t need any additional demerits in Duggan’s mind. I considered asking him to have a seat in the living room, but the more comfortable he was, the longer he might stay. I left him in the foyer and went after Tilly. She was in the kitchen removing a blueberry pie from the oven. Merlin was watching from the table, a plate in front of him and a fork in his hand. Since he’d been living the modern American lifestyle, he’d gained enough weight to make his burlap pants split their seams multiple times. Tilly always stitched them up again because he refused to wear twenty-first-century clothing at home.

She set the pie on a cooling rack, wiped her hands on a dishtowel, and turned to me. “I know. I’ve been summoned. That man has a voice that rattles the timbers. It’s a good thing I baked. At least we’ll have some comfort food to restore us after our grilling.”

“I think it’s best if we keep Merlin out of this,” I murmured.

She nodded, leaning down to whisper in his ear. “Don’t touch the pie; it has to cool. Just stay here and be quiet and you’ll get the first piece. Will you do that for us?”

“I shall be as quiet as a mouse,” he whispered. “You won’t know I’m here.”

If only, I said to myself. I hooked my arm in my aunt’s and told her to follow my lead with Duggan.

He was standing where I’d left him. “All right, Detective, now that we’re here, what can we do for you?” I can do sociable as well as anyone.

“As you’re both aware, I have a murder case to investigate. The folks in this town are scared; they want the killer behind bars. I don’t have the time or patience for nonsense like this...this animal thing.” His upper lip started to curl, but he quickly shut it down. I wondered if there had been complaints about his attitude and if Police Chief Gimble had taken him to task about it.

“I understand,” I said. Tilly echoed me.

“Good. Let’s try to make this quick then. Do either of you know how all those animals came to be congregated on your street?” Although his tone was polite, it had a peculiar undercurrent, as if he’d actually said, “I dare you to explain away this one.”

“I’ve been wondering that myself,” I replied. I’d decided our best defense would be to answer his questions with some of our own. I was waiting for the right moment.

He looked from me to Tilly and back again. “You mean to tell me that neither of you did anything that might have lured those animals here?”

I gave him a beats-me shrug. “I’m sorry it’s not what you want to hear, but that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“Then how do you explain it?”

He was studying us like he was trying to detect the lie in our eyes. Time to turn the tables. “Seriously, Detective,” I said with a smile, “are you saying my aunt and I have magickal powers? That we’re some kind of animal whisperers?”

Duggan opened his mouth to answer me, but his brain didn’t seem to have come up with a response, so he let it fall closed again.

“Maybe what happened here should be chalked up to a mystery of nature,” I continued. “For all we know, it will happen again this time next year. We may be witnesses to a new pattern of animal migration.” I stopped myself short before I became too fanciful and overplayed my hand.

Duggan’s eyes narrowed. I imagined the debate raging in his head. How hard could he come down on me without being chewed out again by his boss?

“I’m going to let it go this time,” he grumbled, turning his failure into a magnanimous gesture, “but remember, I’ve got my eyes on you—on both of you.”

“Good to know,” I said, holding the screen door open for him. He hadn’t asked about Merlin, and I certainly wasn’t going to remind him. But it might not have been an oversight on his part. When he first met the wizard, he made a snap judgment about him. I’d seen it written plain as day on his face. He believed Merlin was the addled and eccentric black sheep in my family. And I had no plans to disabuse him of that notion anytime soon.

The last of the wild animals were heading away, probably wondering why they’d come here in the first place. After closing and locking the front door, Tilly fell back against it, looking weak with relief. After a few seconds, she straightened up. “Let’s go see if that pie is cool enough to slice!”

I glanced at my watch. It seemed like I’d been away from my shop for the entire day, but in reality it had been less than two hours. I made an executive decision. There was time for a quick piece of pie before I headed back to work. Tilly deemed the pie ready to eat, even though it was still venting steam and didn’t hold together properly when she put the knife into it. None of us cared about the aesthetics. I think we would have sucked it up through a straw if we had to.

The day’s events had made two things crystal clear to me: life was unpredictable enough without the added stress and craziness Merlin brought to it, and it was up to me to figure out a way to send him home, whether or not he wanted to go.

* * * *

I wasn’t back at work for long when Paul Curtis stopped in. I almost didn’t recognize him out of uniform. He looked younger, like the boy next door, in jeans, a polo, and sneakers.

“Hey, I just wanted to see how well you weathered Duggan. He can be tough when he’s stressed, and right now there’s a lot of pressure on him to catch Amanda’s killer, not that I’m trying to defend the guy, you know, though it probably sounds that way.” He was rambling like an awkward teenager.

“Thanks for checking on me,” I said, “but as you can see, I’m none the worse for my talk with Duggan. He did try to bite my head off, but I guess it was just too hard.”

Curtis laughed. “Listen, I was wondering if you’d like to go to lunch sometime. With me, I mean.”

I wasn’t surprised by his invitation. It had been a long time coming. But I hadn’t worked out how to respond. I couldn’t cite my relationship with Travis as a means of letting him down gently because I didn’t know if Travis and I still had a relationship. Then there was the more central issue—sure Curtis was nice enough, but I wasn’t particularly attracted to him. I hadn’t even worked out what I should call him. Until then I’d thought of him as Officer Curtis, but in his civvies, talking about a potential date, it had to be Paul.

“Here’s the thing, Paul,” I said, trying out his name, “I’m just coming out of a relationship, and I’d hate to ruin our chances by starting over when my head and heart aren’t in the right place. May I have a rain check?”

He looked disappointed but not crushed. “Yeah, sure, whenever you’re ready, just give me a call.” He took one of my business cards from the counter, asked for a pen, and wrote his number on the back for me. He asked if my aunt had recovered from the shock of finding Amanda. I asked how he liked working with Duggan, and we shared a couple of laughs at the detective’s expense. I felt like we’d left things between us at a good place.

A steady parade of customers kept me from dwelling too long on my love life or my lack of one. Toward the end of the day, Nancy Clemens walked in. She and Clifford, her husband of sixty years, were the “mom and pop” owners of The Soda Jerk. The diminutive couple had moved to New Camel and opened the café/soda fountain more than thirty years ago. As a kid, I remember always seeing Nancy behind the counter, making her extravagant ice cream concoctions. Clifford preferred socializing with the customers but was quick to roll up his sleeves if they were short-handed. It had become a rite of passage for teenagers in New Camel to wait tables there. The summer I did my stint, I walked my feet off and still managed to gain seven pounds.

“Hi, Mrs. Clemens,” I said, coming around the counter to give her a hug. I didn’t see her or her husband much anymore. Their son and daughter-in-law had taken over the day-to-day operation of the café around the time they’d turned eighty.

“How many times have I told you to call me Nancy?” she scolded me, her blue eyes twinkling with good humor. “Mrs. Clemens was fine when you were a kid, but you’re an adult yourself now.”

“Okay, Nancy,” I said, “but my grandmother would have had a meltdown if I’d done that when she was alive.” For all I knew, she was having one at that very moment.

“Bronwen was a fine woman but a little behind the times. Informality is the order of the day. I firmly believe that if you don’t adjust, you go the way of the dinosaurs.”

“What brings you in today?” I asked.

“Goodness,” she said with a chuckle, “I almost forgot. Clifford has a cold and all the cough medicines he’s tried upset his stomach. So I said to myself, Nancy, you need to take yourself over to Abracadabra, and Kailyn will know what to give him.”

“Colt’s Foot should do it,” I said. “Have a seat here while I grab it for you.”

“You’ve put in a chair. What a grand idea.”

It took me a full five minutes to locate the right jar. Whenever Merlin helped around the shop, I had trouble locating things. I finally found the Colt’s Foot on the shelf with jars of Bearberry and Lion’s Mane. He must have decided to group together all the herbs with animal names.

“Sorry that took so long,” I said, putting the jar down on the counter. “I have a new helper who gets creative when he restocks the shelves.” Nancy started to push herself up from the chair. “No hurry, sit a while longer” I told her. “I’ll ring this up whenever you’re ready.”

“Thank you. It does feel good to get off my feet. Don’t get me wrong, Cliff is a wonderful man, but when he’s not feeling well, he keeps me hopping.”

“Hopefully this will do the trick. It acts like an expectorant and a cough suppressant. Just make a tea with it.”

. “It’s not actually made from a horse’s hoof, is it?” she asked hesitantly.

“No, not at all. It got the name from the shape of its leaf. Someone thought it looked like a colt’s foot, I guess.”

“That’s a relief. Tell me, has there been anything more about Amanda’s tragic death?”

“Not that I know of, but everyone I speak to seems to have their own theory on the killer’s identity.”

“Interesting,” Nancy said. “I believe I know pretty much everyone in this town, but I can’t imagine any one of them doing such a terrible thing. Of course Clifford says I’m the same naive kid I was when we met.”

“Does he have a suspect in mind?”

“Well, to be honest, he’s never much liked our mayor.”

“Do you know why?” I’d never heard anyone speak badly of Lester. He was a bit smarmy for my taste, a typical glad-hander who had sailed into the mayor’s position because no one else wanted the job. To his credit, during seven years in office, he’d held onto the good will of the majority of the electorate.

“Cliff is sure he’s on the take.”

“Does he have evidence?” I asked.

Nancy giggled. “He claims he has a sixth sense, but I’ve known the man for over sixty years, and I’ve never once seen it in action.” She glanced at her watch and sighed. “As lovely as it is to sit and chat, I need to be getting back to him.”

I rang up her purchase and put it in one of our reusable mini totes. “Let me know if the Colt’s Foot does the trick,” I said, handing it to her, “and give your husband my best wishes for a speedy recovery.”

After she left, I sat in the chair she’d vacated. I had to get busy interviewing possible suspects. We had to find the killer before tourists chose another quaint town to visit, one that didn’t have murder victims cropping up on a regular basis. First thing in the morning, I would go over to Winterland. The manager of a ski resort shouldn’t be too busy to see me on a hot day in August.