by B. T. Alive
She’d walked at least five steps before she remembered to turn back and add, “Wonderful to meet you too, Summer! I love that shade of red!”
“It’s natural,” I said, flatly.
“Oh!” she said, with a patronizing smile. “Good for you!” And she pressed off into the crowd.
“Great family,” I said to Cade, as we snaked our way out into the packed aisle. “What’s this Paris woman like? A stripper?”
“Hey!” he said, with real anger.
“I was just following the geometrical progression of outfits,” I said. “I’m sure she’d be very high-class.”
“Drop it, Summer. You don’t even know these people.”
“And whose call was that?”
Cade was frowning back over his shoulder, prepping his devastating reply, and so as the crowd around us shifted, he managed to plow right into my unfortunate boss, Frannie.
She shrieked with pain.
“Oh my gosh, I am so sorry,” he blurted, as he shielded her from the press and gently took her shoulder.
She was clutching her forehead and moaning.
“Oh no!” Cade said. “Did I hit your head?”
“No, no, I’m sorry,” she said. “You startled me, that’s all.” She winced and gave him a rueful smile. “I’ve had this migraine since the movie began. I thought I could tough it out, but I should have just gone home. You’re fine, Cade.”
“I wish I could help,” Cade said.
I dug an elbow into his suit-coated side. (This was the closest we ever got to “touching”. Oh, the romance.)
Cade didn’t flicker a facial muscle.
Hmm, had he even felt me? His lats, or whatever those side muscles are called, had felt like they were made of granite. Maybe if I “nudged” him with more emphasis—
He flicked me a warning glare.
“I wish you could help too, Cade,” said Frannie. She was shielding her eyes and breathing slow. “It’ll pass, though. It always does. Go on, don’t keep that Jamie Graves woman waiting.”
I cleared my throat.
“Oh, I wasn’t here with Jamie—” Cade began.
But Frannie had already slipped away.
We didn’t talk again until we’d gotten out to the street. As the cheerful Wonder Springs people swirled off in chatting clusters into the night, Cade and I marched on the cobblestones in stonier silence.
At last, Cade said, “So that guy who was like the nice old grandfather with the harmonica… was that the same actor who played Mr. Potter?”
“Oh, come on, Cade,” I snapped.
“I’m just saying, that guy had range—”
“Why didn’t you heal Frannie?” I said.
“What?” Cade looked bewildered. “You’re mad about that?”
“I’m not mad,” I barked. “All you had to do is touch her, Cade. Migraines are the worst. No one would have noticed.”
Now he was frowning, walking on the empty, darkened street with his shoulders hunched and stiff. “We’ve talked about this, Summer. You know what’s at stake.” He turned off down the alley that led to the orchard path.
“Oh, so I’m walking you home?” I said, stumbling after him in my stupid heels. At the mulch path, I nearly tripped, so I slipped the dumb things off entirely. The cool, moist wood chunks bit into my bare feet. “You’re really out of practice with this date thing.”
“Am I?” he said. “What was I supposed to say to her, Summer? Hey Jamie, old friend who’s also my boss’s niece, we’re going to need at least one empty seat between us, maybe more—”
“The boss’s niece,” I said. “Right. What did you even say to Una last night? Did you even tell her? Do you even care?”
Cade halted. The stop was so abrupt that I had to lurch to avoid him. His face was taut with frustration, and the branches cast leafy shadows on his cheeks, whipping in a frenzy in the breeze.
“Fine,” he said. “Come meet her.”
And he walked off into the trees.
“What? Now?” I said, striding after him. “I met her yesterday.”
“No, you zapped her. She forgot.”
Around us, the trees opened into a clearing, surrounding a house that belonged in a fairy tale. The old-fashioned kind, that ends badly.
The Graves mansion was an imposing abode, with sharp Victorian gables and high slate roofs that dated to the Civil War. The bones of the place were as strong as ever, but generations of Graves had been careful to keep it renovated with taste and style. The entire place had been freshly painted within the last few years; right now the colors seemed dark under the moon, but when I’d glimpsed the place in the past from afar in the daylight, the accent colors on the sills had looked almost whimsical, with a garish purple for the lower-story windows, and a maudlin turquoise for the windows of the upper floor. It looked like a makeup job that the woman is daring you to mock.
“Cozy, isn’t it?” Cade said, as he leapt lightly up the porch steps and slipped in his key. The front door was a thick wooden slab, but it swung open without a sound into a dark foyer. Instead of turning on a light, Cade strode to a small glowing security panel and keyed in a code.
I followed him in and stood in the darkness, feeling the cavernous space open round me in the shadow.
Then a sharp odor bit into my nose.
“Cade?” I said. “What’s that smell?”
Cade frowned and sniffed. “That smells like gas.”
“Like the stove?” I said, but he was already striding off down a hallway.
“Una?” he called. “Una?”
He was yelling now, flicking on lights and magicking into being these huge, extravagant rooms on every side. I followed his rising voice, padding down a plush carpet hallway that ended in a massive master bedroom. Cade was bent beside a king-size bed, his hand on the shoulder of the sleeping Una. On the giant mattress, her body looked tiny, draped in the white silk sheet, and her face was pale as marble.
Cade turned to face me, and I already knew.
“She’s dead,” he said.
Part II
Chapter 10
An hour later, we were standing out on the porch, waiting for Sheriff Jake to come back outside. The night had turned chilly… or maybe I was just still cold from what I’d seen.
Cade was standing at the porch’s farthest corner, gripping the rail and staring out into the night. Ever since the sheriff (who, you remember, was also Cade’s dad) had told us to wait out here, Cade hadn’t said a word.
I felt trapped and powerless, like I was watching Cade through foot-thick glass, and he was strapped to an operating table, surrounded by ghouls with masks and knives. I had no words to console him, and when I’d tried to touch his back, he’d shied away.
The space between us might as well have been miles.
I sat in a porch swing and rocked slowly, taking in the view of the orchard. From here, it was spectacular, even at night; the trees wound in inviting paths, stretching away down an abundant slope. The fireflies were stunning, swirling in the darkness like miniature galaxies, sparkling fierce life around the house of death.
I wondered whether Una had ever liked to sit here, sipping a morning coffee and watching the sun glisten on her little queendom. To my surprise, my heart shivered with a pang of loss.
I’d barely known the woman, and all I had known was that she’d seemed to hate me and was ruining my relationship. But in this moment, I thought I might glimpse how she must have felt. To be so near to Cade, yet a million miles away.
Sure, if she really felt like that, it was her own dumb fault for moving the guy into her freaking house. She had to know it could never be. But still… I imagined sitting here, alone, knowing that Cade was upstairs, that I’d make him breakfast, that I would have done anything to win his heart. And he’d come down and smile and seem to give me all his courteous attention, but all the while he’d be yearning to escape me to the woman he really wanted.
Crud, was I crying?
N
ot much, but I wiped my eyes. I don’t know where you are, Una, I thought. But I hope we’re cool.
The old phrase popped into my head, rest in peace. It had always bugged me. If there was an afterlife, I hoped it was considerably more exciting than the image it conjured of infinite rows of old people finally getting a solid nap. I mean, when Jesus came back all Undead and freaked out his crew, didn’t he walk through the wall? And then fly home?
But now the word peace struck a different chord. Maybe it meant peace with others… all the old feuds and pains finally laid to rest. That, I could get behind. “Rest in peace, Una,” I muttered.
Not if I was murdered, I thought.
Wait, what? Where had that come from? Hadn’t I meant, not if she was murdered?
And how could this possibly be a murder? Those gas stoves leaked all the time. It was just a tragic accident.
Except… the sheriff was taking quite a while in there. Why was he taking so long, unless…
Mr. Wilson’s prophecy looped in my head. Oh, crud.
The front door opened, and Sheriff Jake clomped out. For a man who could shift into a bloodhound, he looked like something the cat dragged in. Even on his good days, his resemblance to his son Cade was heavily obscured by an extra thirty years of regular drinking, plus a mustache that could stop a bank robbery on its own. But tonight, his eyes were tired over saggy jowls, and he snuffled his wide, red, irritated nose like a man coming down with the flu.
Even though I was preoccupied with Una’s tragedy, I couldn’t help noticing that he still looked as sick as he had the other night as a dog. I knew almost nothing about how shifting worked, but it seemed odd, even concerning, that he’d still have a cold after changing forms. And couldn’t Cade at least have healed his own dad?
The sheriff gave me a curt nod, then eased himself down beside me on the seat.
“Are you all right?” I said. It wasn’t like him to creak around like this; despite his age and weight, I’d seen him lope after a running suspect like, well, a bloodhound.
“Peachy,” he grumbled, with an impatient wave, and he swiped at his huge nose with a handkerchief the size of a flag. “They’re still in there with the body, but I need you two to sit tight.”
“Why Summer?” Cade said, from the far end of the porch. “You already asked her everything, Dad. Let her get home.”
“I’m fine,” I said. I turned to the sheriff. “I can stay as long as you need.”
“Why do you need anything?” Cade said. “It’s not a crime scene.”
The sheriff scrunched his bushy eyebrows.
“Oh, come on, Dad,” Cade said. “This is already awful enough… can you just, can you not…”
“Had she been drinking?” said Sheriff Jake.
Cade flinched. “What?”
“You heard me,” the sheriff muttered, with the hint of a growl.
“I don’t…” Cade flicked me a glance. “I mean, when I left, it wasn’t even eight o’clock.”
“Please answer the question.”
“I think so. Probably.”
“Probably?”
“Yes, probably. She had a bottle of red and she’d retreated to her room,” Cade snapped.
Sheriff Jake arched his eyebrows. “Retreated?”
Cade flicked me another glance, then crossed his arms. “Dad, you know her. She… she didn’t have the best coping mechanisms.”
“And was there any incident in particular with which she might have needed to cope?”
“She had a list. At all times,” Cade said. “And she’d hide away and sleep it off.”
“So she was asleep when you left?”
“What?” Cade startled. “I don’t know. I have no idea.”
“You said she’d sleep it off.”
“Yeah, she would, as a habit. I don’t know about tonight.”
“Why not?”
“I was getting ready for this date!” Cade said. “Not snooping around listening for whether she’d already passed out. Why does it matter? She must have gone under some time. Otherwise she would have smelled the gas. Right?”
“You would think,” said the sheriff.
“Dad,” Cade said. “Where are you going with this?”
His father didn’t answer. But his eyes slid toward me in a sideways glance.
My stomach lurched with a sudden premonition. I knew exactly where he was going with this.
“Dad, no,” Cade said. “Please don’t tell me that you’re not only trying to turn this into a homicide, but you’re also going to try to blame Summer? Again? Did you not learn your lesson last time?”
“Not Summer,” the sheriff said.
Cade looked blank.
“We’ve got a bit of a puzzle, son,” the sheriff said. “Una had a state-of-the-art security system. No one could have broken in without triggering an alarm.”
“So?” Cade said.
“So you were the last person to see Una Graves alive,” the sheriff said. “And as far as we know, you’re the only one besides her who knew the entry code. I’ll double-check, but I have the impression that she didn’t even trust her own relatives with that code. Only you.”
Cade stared, finally getting it.
“If this was murder, son…” Sheriff Jake raised his head. “You’re the prime suspect.”
Chapter 11
The next morning, I woke up an hour before my alarm.
(Which, by the way, is an authentic, wind-up, bell-and-clapper antique that Grandma dug out for me from some nook in the Inn. It clangs like a cartoon fire engine and it’s completely Touch-proof… which, on some mornings, is infuriating.)
Anyway, I woke up early, and I was surprised I’d slept at all. Una was dead? Cade was suspected of murder? This was a nightmare.
Of course, I could tell that Sheriff Jake didn’t truly believe that his son was a monster. But as he’d said last night, the odds were high that no one else knew the code to enter Una’s house, not even her niece Jamie or that other relative who was flying in.
And the problem was: the sheriff had found the source of the gas.
It wasn’t a leak. It was a knob on the stove. Turned to the max.
I’d had a gas stove in my first apartment, and I remembered that flutter of anxiety I’d had every time I turned the knob to light the flame. You had to turn the knob and then just wait, while some click-click-click-click mechanism deep in the stove released the deadly gas. And when you’d finished your cooking, if you ever didn’t turn the knob all the way back off, the gas would fill your house without a sound.
Which is exactly what had happened with Una’s stove.
Cade argued that she must have tried to use the stove after she was already drunk. A reasonable hypothesis, especially since the sheriff had also found a fresh bottle of wine in her bedroom, drained to the last drop.
But the stove top was utterly clear.
If she’d really been trying to make a pot of tea or fry herself up a snack, she hadn’t thought to take any steps besides twisting the knob of the stove.
On the other hand, what if she’d been dead drunk, passed out in her bedroom, and Cade had known it? All he’d have had to do was to give the knob a flick… and then lock the door on his way out.
Of course, I didn’t believe this for a second.
For one thing, it would pretty much be the stupidest murder ever. He could at least have gone to the trouble of popping a kettle on the stove for appearances.
But far more importantly, this was Cade we were talking about. Yes, I’d only known the guy for a couple of months, but still, it was unthinkable.
Even if that stupid rhyme wouldn’t leave me alone.
There were plenty of other people around here whom I “trusted” besides Cade who might commit murder. Right? I just had to figure out who.
And fast.
See, Wonder Springs was this lovely, law-abiding town… so law-abiding that we only had the one sheriff. He was it. Our entire law enforcement team.
The point is, our lone sheriff was now the sole investigator in a possible murder starring his only son.
Not a great look as far as potential bias.
And knowing Sheriff Jake, he would way overcompensate. He might not actually get his innocent son convicted just to prove he was impartial… but I was sure he’d waste precious time doing excruciating due diligence that centered around Cade, while the real killer, if there was one, had all the time in the world to cover their tracks. The sheriff had a one-track mind when he went into “investigation mode”; this, I knew firsthand.
So I had to get to work finding Una’s killer. Now.
Besides, I actually did have some experience solving murders. Only a couple months back, I really had caught a killer myself.
Well, with Tina’s help. And Grandma. And our mind-reading telepathic parrot.
But still. Who else in Wonder Springs could say they’d legitimately solved a murder? Maybe not even Sheriff Jake himself.
(Yes, we do have a mind-reading parrot. His name is Keegan. I hate him.)
Looking back now, it occurs to me that, if it was a question of bias, I wasn’t exactly neutral myself. Funny how I managed to miss that.
My first task was to let my boss Frannie know that I’d be taking some unpaid time. Although it was early, I headed straight to the purse shop, hurrying down Main Street in the chilly, pink sunrise. Just as I expected, Frannie was already at her counter, laying out the cash from the register in neat, careful piles.
She wore more eye shadow and mascara than usual. But I could still tell that she’d been crying.
I’d forgotten. She was Una’s friend. Maybe her only friend.