Chapter 18
Thea managed to sleep in the little holding cell they kept her in, but not very comfortably.
Still, she was deeply sunken into a dream about falling endlessly into a warm feather bed when there was a strange rattling. Her eyes opened to find Blaine opening the cell door.
Thea sat up quickly, a hand flying to her hair to straighten it. Unfortunately, it seemed that the project would have to wait until there was a mirror. She could already tell her curls were unruly and mussed.
Why did she have to keep encountering Blaine first thing in the morning?
“All right,” he said. “Get on up.”
He looked almost as tired as she felt, and it occurred to Thea to wonder whether it was normal for him to be on shift all night and still be there in the morning. Or was he working overtime for the sake of the case?
“Can I go now?” she asked. “I live with my grandma, you know. She’s going to be really worried about my well-being.”
Unfortunately, that probably wasn’t true. Granny would probably mistakenly assume that Thea was out and about with Pippa and had stayed over.
“Not just yet,” Blaine said. “Paperwork’s been done and all that, but we’ve got a couple more questions. Shouldn’t take long, though, if you wanted to call for a ride now?”
Sheepishly, Thea nodded. She wanted to protest her innocence again, but she knew she’d worn Blaine out last night doing just that. This morning, he looked attentive but rather cold, and she didn’t think she ought to push her luck.
“Should we call your grandmother to come and get you?”
“No, no,” Thea answered. “She’s at her pilates class right now anyway.”
Blaine’s eyebrow twitched but he didn’t say anything.
“Here, if you give me my cell phone back I can call someone to come get me.”
So Blaine led Thea over to his own desk and dug her phone out from a drawer. She was moved to see that, at some point in the night, he must have taken the trouble to charge it up, because the battery was at full power.
Blaine left her seated near his desk while he fetched them both some coffee from the break room. Thea lingered, at first not sure whom she should call.
Finally, she settled on Jesse. He was due to be opening up A Stitch in Time soon, anyway, so he was probably up and about already.
“You’re where?” he asked when she explained what she needed from him.
“I know, I know,” she said with a sigh. “Look, I’ll explain everything. And I’m so sorry to ask. But my car is way back at the house, and....”
“No, don’t you worry at all, I’m already on my way.”
Jesse was true to his word. Thea had scarcely begun to sip the coffee Blaine brought her when he arrived.
Right as Jesse was walking up to Thea at Blaine’s desk, the station door breezed open again. Thea and Jesse looked up, curious, to see that another deputy was leading someone in handcuffs into the station.
It was Miranda Hoff.
Jesse’s face fell. “Miranda!”
Miranda looked up. Her face looked puffy with tears and her eyes red-rimmed. “Oh, Jesse,” she said, relieved. “I’m glad to see a friendly face here.”
“What happened?” Jesse asked, crossing to her.
The deputy leading Miranda eyed Jesse but didn’t stop him.
“I’ve been arrested,” Miranda said, groaning.
“Arrested?” Jesse asked. “That’s ridiculous!”
Blaine meandered in from the other room, seemingly ignoring Jesse and Miranda. Instead, he gestured to Thea to stand. She did so, taking her coffee cup with her.
“All right, I’ve got it all set up in the interview room,” he said. “Finally ready to take your official statement about last night.”
Thea followed Blaine down a corridor, leaving Jesse to fuss over Miranda.
“Was there more evidence than just the fact that the knife was found in her yard?” Thea asked Blaine.
He shot her a tight-lipped look. “You know I can’t talk about any of that with you, right? Here, come on in. Sit down.”
She sat where he directed, then looked around the bleak, windowless space. “‘Interview room’ is just a nice euphemism, I see.”
“Just a little privacy,” Blaine said.
“So there’s no one back there?” Thea pointed to the suspicious mirror along the wall.
In return, Blaine pointed to the camera on the ceiling. “There’s definitely someone in that, though. So answer me carefully, hmm?”
Reluctantly, Thea nodded.
“Okay. Why don’t you start with explaining why you were at Miranda’s house last night.”
Thea paused. She couldn’t very well tell the truth—that she’d asked her cat familiar to scry on the murder weapon and had been led straight to it. Even if Blaine believed her, it wouldn’t fly with whoever else was looking on.
“Late-night walk.”
“Did you know or ever, to your knowledge, interact with Rebecca Smith?”
“Not before the day she was killed, no.”
“Where were you on the night of the murder?”
“My grandma would have gone to bed by then, so I guess I was hanging around at home with my cat,” Thea answered. “You can ask her, if you like.”
Blaine knew his colleagues would think Thea was making a flippant joke, but he didn’t laugh. He probably could ask the familiar—which meant that Thea was providing a real alibi.
The doubt he’d been carrying all evening eased a little, along with the tension in his chest. He hadn’t liked suspecting Thea, and he was glad to hear she was innocent.
Still, he had some standard questions to ask her. He finished the interview quickly, and much more pleasantly than it had begun, then thanked Thea and led her out.
“All right,” he said, turning to Miranda, who was seated on a bench next to Jesse, looking terrified. “You next.”
“Can I keep her company?” Jesse asked. “I think it would be good for her to have a familiar face around.”
Blaine knew the others wouldn’t like it. But Miranda was looking pretty shaken, and he thought maybe it wasn’t the worst idea to have Jesse around, even just as he warmed her up.
“As long as you don’t talk,” he told Jesse sternly. “And you leave as soon as I’m sick of you.”
Jesse mimed zipping his lip and nodded.
Thea opened her mouth to speak, but Blaine cut her off with a sharp shake of the head.
“Don’t even ask,” he told her, voice friendly but stern. “It’s out in the car with you. You’re not welcome to keep poking your nose into this investigation, you hear me?”
Chapter 19
So Thea had gone from waiting cramped up in the cell to waiting cramped up in Jesse’s car. It wasn’t much of an improvement—but at least in the car there was a radio.
The local NPR station, which was run out of the college Jesse attended, was playing some kind of Schubert concerto, and Thea was strongly considering trying to get a few more minutes of sleep. No sooner had she thought it than she felt it coming on. She tilted the seat back, closed her eyes, and drifted off.
“SORRY TO KEEP YOU WAITING.”
Jesse’s voice jerked her out of her dead slumber. She sat up and levered the seat straight again.
When she finally focused and looked up at him, Thea could see Jesse was smiling at her as he buckled up in the driver’s seat.
“I’ll bet you’re feeling pretty antsy to get out of here, aren’t you? What do you say I take you home? I feel like we should have a little chat. I want to tell you about what I saw in there.”
“What about A Stitch in Time?”
“You really feel like working today?” Jesse asked her.
Reluctantly, Thea shook her head. “No,” she said. “I feel like making hot cocoa and curling up in the middle of a thousand blankets.”
“Mhmm, I thought so. Now let’s go make that dream come true, what do you say? I’ll open
up the shop once I’ve got you good and settled. Any people out poking around for an early-morning set of colored pencils are just going to have to wait the extra twenty minutes. And later, if you feel like coming in, you can.”
Already he was pulling out of the police parking lot, directing the car towards Thea’s house.
“So, what did Miranda say?” Thea asked once they were on the road.
“I mean, she said she didn’t know anything about the knife or why it would end up in her yard like that.” He shrugged. “It’s pretty clear to me that it was planted, don’t you think?”
“It certainly sounds possible,” Thea mused.
Of course, there was the possibility that Miranda was the killer. But Thea didn’t want to bring that up with Jesse right there. It was very considerate of him to have picked her up without, as yet, asking any questions about why she had spent her night in a jail cell. She certainly wasn’t going to push the point.
“You know, I actually thought Blaine was really impressive.”
“How do you mean?” Thea asked.
Again, Jesse shrugged. “Oh, you know. Cool, and caring, and patient. I mean, Miranda was seriously upset in there. As soon as he started questioning her she kind of fell to pieces, crying and all that. She was gripping my hand so hard I thought she might break it.”
He shook out his hand, as if to jar the circulation in it.
“But Blaine was really nice to her. Didn’t go for the whole intimidation factor or anything like that. And when Miranda said she didn’t know how the knife had gotten into her yard... I don’t know, I guess I expected him to dig in. And it wasn’t like he didn’t ask follow-up questions, but he just... it seemed almost like he believed her.”
“So you think Blaine believes the knife was planted, too?” Thea asked. “Or is he still looking at Miranda as a main suspect?”
“Oh, no, I think Blaine and the others definitely think Miranda’s a major suspect,” Jesse confirmed. “They probably won’t let her go until the knife is examined for prints, at least. I’m not happy about that, but I guess I understand why it’s got to be that way.”
There was a brief silence. Thea understood that Jesse wasn’t going to ask her about the night before and the circumstances that had led to her getting booked. She wasn’t sure whether she wanted to tell him.
Finally, though, she relented, deciding that she wanted her friend’s help figuring out everything that had happened—and that he couldn’t possibly do that if he didn’t have the whole picture.
Jesse listened patiently to the entire story about how Thea and Sybil had scried for the murder weapon. He didn’t cut in, even when Thea told him how she’d been caught red-handed, holding the knife in Miranda’s yard.
“Well maybe that’s why Blaine half-believes the knife was planted,” Jesse joked finally. “He thinks he saw you planting it.”
“I don’t know what he thinks,” Thea admitted. “This morning, I swear I got the sense he really did suspect me. But I might have set him a little at ease.”
“How so?”
“Well, he asked me whether anyone could give me an alibi for the time of the murder. I told him Sybil could.”
Jesse’s eyebrows rose. “And he took you seriously?”
Thea shrugged. “He’s a local boy from way back. He’d know I’m a witch—or at least, he’d strongly suspect it. I guess he does know, if he understands that I’m telling the truth when I say he can ask my cat.”
“Well, the Beals are kind of famous in supernatural circles, thanks to your aunt,” Jesse remarked. “And your mom’s side, too, I guess, with your grandma. But does that mean that Blaine is supernatural himself? He’s not a witch or warlock, I don’t think. I’d have sensed his magic, then.”
“Yeah, I don’t know,” Thea admitted. “I’m sure he’s pretty good at keeping it on the down-low if his colleagues at the station don’t know.”
Still, she couldn’t help but admit that she was curious.
Granny would probably know.
Granny knew everything.
Thea would have to find a way to ask, one that wasn’t too obvious. Of course, Thea’s curiosity was purely professional—she was embroiled in a murder case and Blaine was solving it—but Granny wouldn’t see it that way.
Granny would probably think Thea was asking for personal reasons. Reasons that had to do with Blaine’s handsome, cut jawline or his piercing eyes.
No, Granny would have it all wrong.
So maybe it was better for Thea not to ask, after all.
Chapter 20
After Jesse dropped Thea at home and stayed a while to make sure she was all right, he headed off to open up A Stitch in Time.
As soon as he was gone, Thea headed for the shower. Sybil wasn’t anywhere to be found. Thea assumed she must have gone out meandering, which she did sometimes. Thea had the power to call Sybil to her magically anytime she needed—but right now Thea was grateful to be alone for a while.
Instead of napping again after her shower, Thea fiddled with Granny’s elaborate espresso machine and made herself a latte. She was sipping it when Granny came back through the door, fresh from pilates class.
“And how’s my little girl this morning?” Granny asked, dropping a kiss to the crown of Thea’s head as she walked past. “Out late last night, weren’t we?”
Thea blushed. “Nothing to worry about,” she answered brightly, hoping not to invite any further questions. “Hey, on an unrelated note... you know Blaine Coburn, right?”
Granny blinked at Thea as she stored her workout gear in a nearby closet. “You went to school with him, didn’t you? And wasn’t he the handsome deputy who stopped by the other morning?”
Thea couldn’t keep from blushing farther. “Do you happen to remember if he’s... well, you know...?”
Granny cocked an eyebrow. “Do you mean, ‘one of us’?”
Thea nodded.
“Yes, as I recall, he is. Some kind of shifter—a bear, unless I’m greatly mistaken. I remember his poor mother, back in the day... she had such difficulty teaching him control. Before he started school, she was always coming into the library asking for advice, for resources... poor woman was worried he’d change shape in the middle of the classroom!”
If Blaine was a shifter like Pippa then that accounted for his knowledge of the supernatural world. Thea wondered how she’d never known this about him back in school. She might have felt less irritated by his handsome jock demeanor if she’d known that he, like her, was carrying around a secret side none of his mundane high school friends were allowed to see.
This revelation made her wonder about Blaine now. Did he know that Rebecca Smith was a witch, and that her family’s supernatural side might have had something to do with the blood feud—and even, potentially, with her death?
THEA DIDN’T SHOW UP at A Stitch in Time until nearly noon. When she walked in, Zach and a few of his friends were there, making purchases.
Zach gave Thea a sad smile when he caught her looking curiously at the bags he was holding.
“Instead of having a funeral, Rebecca’s family is hosting a celebration of life for her,” he explained. “Everyone’s getting together to redo the gazebo. Repair, repaint, replant all around it. That kind of thing.”
“That sounds really nice,” Thea said sincerely.
“It is,” Zach agreed, then gestured at something behind Thea. “And the Mayor is helping out.”
Thea felt a sudden pang in her chest as she turned around to find Mayor Tiegen Beal standing behind her, a forced smile pasted onto her face. Tiegen was wearing one of her trademark tailored dark skirt suits, looking very much like she had never held a paint roller before in her life, and, after this strange moment was over, had no plans ever to hold one again. She held the roller far away from herself, as though worried of smudging her clothes, even though it was clearly a brand new one that had never touched paint before.
“Yes,” Tiegen said in her neutral politician’s v
oice. “I offered to assist in funding when it came to gathering... supplies.” She set the roller onto the counter delicately and then dusted off her hands. “And, of course, we’ll be renaming the park in honor of the Smith family.”
Thea raised her eyebrows. “That’s really nice of you, Aunt Tiegen.”
“The Mayor’s your aunt?” Zach asked. “That’s cool.”
“Yes,” Tiegen replied. There was a chill in her voice Thea wasn’t expecting, and it gave her a sense of foreboding. “And if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to talk to my niece for just a second.”
Before Thea could stop her, Tiegen was steering her away from the others, into the corner of the shop where the glitter glue display was set up.
Tiegen looked around to make sure no one was within earshot, then turned to Thea and huffed out a long, cool sigh. “Now, would you mind telling me why on earth you spent the night in the police station? Why didn’t you magic your way out of the situation?”
Thea forced a smile. She had her answer to where Sybil had snuck off to. She had probably gone straight to Tiegen’s from Miranda’s yard and explained everything that had happened.
“I’m grateful you’re concerned, I really am,” she said. “But everything turned out alright. Other than a kind of cramped night’s sleep I’m doing okay. I don’t even think the police are considering me a suspect right now, anyway.”
Well, that might have been an exaggeration, but at least Tiegen seemed relieved.
“Can I get back to my customers?” Thea asked, and Tiegen sighed and let her go.
Jesse was just ringing up Zach’s large order when Thea rejoined them and offered to take over. Jesse thanked her gratefully and went off to take his long-delayed break.
“To be honest,” Zach said to Thea in an undertone when she stepped up behind the counter, “I’m a little nervous about this event.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well, I’m glad Rebecca’s friends are going to be there. Because the truth is that some of Rebecca’s family members don’t like me very much.”
Familiar Magic (Tabby Kitten Mystery Series Book 1) Page 7