by B. T. Alive
Chapter 28
We walked down Main Street to Ambrose’s office. Although we exchanged warm greetings with a few lingering locals under the lamp lights, inside I felt dark and cold.
Mostly, this was probably the whole “getting attacked by your evil magical uncle and having to escape at top speed in reverse, with a stick shift” thing. I filled Tina in, and of course, she was super sympathetic.
“Oh, you poor sweetie,” she said. “As soon as we catch this murderer, I will totally teach you to drive stick.”
“Um,” I said. “Thanks.”
She squinted at me. “Is that all, though?” she said. “I feel like there’s something else.”
“Rim shot,” Keegan chirped.
“Honestly?” I said. “Your mom was kind of freaking me out.”
“Really?” Tina said. “You’ve never seen her in Delphic Oracle Mode?”
“Ah, no,” I said, my heart sinking. “So that’s… fairly common?”
“Oh, all the time,” Tina said. “Especially at night. The few times I tried to do slumber parties as a kid… total disaster.”
“Great,” I said. “So that means she’s probably right about Ambrose?”
“Definitely,” Tina said. “If she thinks she felt all that from Mr. James, there’s no way she’d make a mistake.”
“Fine,” I said. “Then we’d better record this. Use your phone.”
“What?” Tina said. “We can’t—”
“Tina, he’s a freaking lawyer,” I said. “Even if we do manage to get him to slip up, he’ll talk the sheriff out of it unless we have proof.”
Tina sighed. Although she was holding Keegan with one hand, Tina reached into the pocket of her super cute slacks, pulled out her phone, and swiped around. She tapped a red button on her screen labeled “RECORD”, and then she slipped the phone back into her pocket.
“Will it still pick up what we’re saying?” I said.
“It’ll catch plenty,” Tina said, with grim assurance.
We reached the office of the lawyer and I rapped on the door. The bulb in the nearest lamp light had burned out, and the Victorian windows and brick facade seemed hostile and menacing in the shadows.
When the door creaked open, Ambrose James scowled. Behind him, an office lamp cast his face into stark lines and grooves, making him look haggard and old.
“This is quite irregular,” he said. He eyed Tina, then me, and then Keegan in Tina’s hand.
“Horrid bird,” Keegan chirped.
Ambrose startled. Behind his glasses, his eyes went wide.
“Mr. James,” Tina said. “I know it’s late, but we need to talk. We’ll only be a few minutes.”
“I’d prefer to make an appointment,” he said, eyeing the parrot.
“Please,” Tina said. “We have new information about Una’s death.”
Ambrose stiffened, and he studied her face with a narrow gaze. Then he nodded and waved us in.
His office was lit by a single lamp. The light pooled around him as he sat behind his desk, but it lapped out into darkness on the bookcases. Somehow the mildew smelled more intense than I remembered, as if it came out of hiding at night.
As we took our seats, Ambrose steepled his fingers and inclined his head toward Tina.
“Please proceed,” he said. “Though I am unclear as to why you’re choosing to consult with me.”
“Because you’re the one who was seen,” I said. “Going to Una’s house the night she died.”
The old lawyer’s eyes bulged, and he hissed in a sharp breath.
Beside me, Tina stifled a gasp, though I couldn’t tell whether she was feeling a wave from Ambrose or just peeved that I’d slammed our ace right down on the table.
“Where did you hear that?” Ambrose said, with slow deliberation.
“We also heard she’d rejected you,” I said. “She could be one mean old cat.”
“Summer!” Tina snapped.
Fine, she could be all shocked if she wanted to, but we were never going to get a rise out of this guy trying to tiptoe him through traps. He’d spend decades honing his skills at evasion.
Unfortunately, he’d apparently also honed his skills at self-control.
“I need you both to leave,” Ambrose said, with utter calm. “Now.”
“Mr. James, please—” Tina said.
“So you’re not even going to bother to deny it?” I said.
“I allowed you in here out of courtesy,” he said, with such understated, statesman-like indignation that I quailed a bit. Had I made a huge mistake?
Then I remembered why I’d come here in the first place: Aunt Helen. Who was a freaking empath. An empath beats a lawyer any day.
“You must have been furious,” I said. “Una wouldn’t even reject you to your face.”
“Who told you?” chirped Keegan.
Now Ambrose couldn’t hide his jerk of surprise. He pushed back in his chair, facing us all with fear in his eyes.
“I’m calling the sheriff,” he said.
“Please do,” I said. “He’ll be very interested to hear about your surprise last visit to Una that night.”
He had lifted the handset from his desk phone and was dialing a number. “You’re trespassing, and I will press charges,” he said.
“And we’ll press the point,” I said, “that you were seen entering her home after Cade had left for the movie.”
“I never went in!” he snapped.
Silence. He froze, holding the handset in midair, clenching his jaw.
I was more shocked at his admission than I’d expected. Helen hadn’t actually said what time she’d gotten her vague empathic inklings, so I’d been taking a gamble. Until that moment, I hadn’t quite believed that this respectable old lawyer could really be guilty.
Tina was wincing. She looked about to cry. She had to be feeling some overpowering secret emotion from the frozen lawyer… but what was it? I couldn’t tell.
“I swear to you,” said Ambrose James. “Ms. Graves didn’t even answer the door.”
“Of course not,” I said. “She was passed out. But you had the code.”
“That’s nonsense,” he snapped. He slammed down the phone and jabbed an accusing finger at my face. “Ms. Graves was intensely private. I did not have that code, I could not have entered that house, and your implied accusation is thoroughly, utterly, false.”
“Three,” chirped Keegan.
The blood drained from the lawyer’s face.
“Three,” Keegan chirped again. “Three five eight two six zero one. Three five eight two six zero one. Three five eight—”
“Whoa,” I breathed.
“This is a setup,” Ambrose rasped. He jabbed his finger at me again, but it was shaking. “You got the code off your paramour, you trained this performing animal…”
He turned to Tina, who was wincing in pain and rocking a little.
“You know me, Ms. Meredith,” he said, and his voice was abruptly pleading. “You can’t think—”
“You were so angry,” Tina said, flat and strained. “You wanted her dead.”
“Ms. Meredith!” he cried. “Tina! My God, what are you saying?”
“I think she’s said enough,” I said, and I zapped the cold skin of his shaking hand.
Ambrose James slumped on his desk.
“Summer!” Tina gasped. “Why’d you do that? Is he okay?”
“Are you serious?” I said. “This guy’s a murderer! You said so yourself! Do you want him to remember what Keegan can do?”
“Okay, okay,” she said. She was breathing hard. “He must have been remembering… he was so enraged…”
“Yeah, he’s not going to be thrilled with us either,” I said. With a tremor of dread—no one’s died yet, but my zaps can occasionally be more intense than I planned—I bent close to the slumped man and listened. “He’s fine,” I said. “He’s breathing, and his eyelids are fluttering. We should go. If we’re lucky, he’ll forget we were even
here.”
“No. I’m calling the sheriff,” Tina said, and she pulled out her phone and started dialing. “We stay right here until the sheriff has him arrested.”
“Yikes,” chirped Keegan.
“Are you sure?” I said.
“He admitted he was there,” she said, as she pressed the phone to her ear. “He lied about the code. We’ve got it all on record.”
“You’re right,” I said. “Geez. It’s over.” I looked at the man, who was starting to stir and mutter on the desk. His eyes were mostly closed, but his face was still clenched with anger and fear. To my surprise, I felt sorry for him.
But something in the twist of his mouth still made me cold.
“Sheriff? Sheriff Jake? There’s something you need to hear,” Tina said.
Then she caught her breath, and her face creased with concern.
“Tina?” I said. “What is it?”
“Oh, no,” she whispered. She closed her eyes tight and shook her head.
Part IV
Chapter 29
We hurried out before Ambrose had fully woken up. I hated to leave him unguarded since he might bolt, but from what he’d started to murmur as he woke, it was clear he’d assume he had fallen asleep at his desk. The best way to catch him was to keep him thinking that his secret was safe, and that Cade was going to take the fall… until the moment the sheriff walked in with his handcuffs.
There was just one problem. The sheriff couldn’t get out of bed.
“He sounded awful,” Tina said, as she led the way down Main Street toward the police station. “He kept coughing and coughing. He could barely talk.”
“He’s been sick for days,” I said. “It’s probably just the flu,”
“No,” she said. “This is different.”
“How do you know?” I said.
“Because shifters don’t get the flu!” she hissed.
Even though it was quite dark, and the sloping street was silent and empty, the word shifter still caught in her throat.
“Why not?” I said, lowering my voice.
“Because why would you shift into a body with the flu?” she said. She was nearly whispering, and I could barely hear her voice as we fast-walked through the still night. “He can restructure his entire nose. He’s not going to give himself post-nasal drip.”
“Then why is he coughing?” I said.
She clamped her lips, like she was trying not to cry.
“Tina,” I said, doing my best to sound encouraging, even though she was scaring me. “Is it… is it something that’s going to spread?”
“No,” she huffed, irritated. “Not unless you’re a shifter.”
“Oh,” I said, chastened. “Really? It’s like a special…”
“Shifter sickness,” she said. Her face was grave. “It’s very rare, but when it happens…” She shook her head.
“Will he be okay?” I said. “Can’t Cade—”
“He could,” she snapped, with a bitter disappointment that startled me. “But he’d be terrified of a mistake. The whole problem is that it’s all so delicate.”
“What do you mean?”
“Even in ideal health, a shifter has a system that’s barely stable, or at least in high tension,” Tina said. “The ability to transform your entire body means that the equilibrium is fragile. That’s what shifter sickness attacks. You start to… lose control.”
“Oh my gosh,” I said. “You mean, his body is… changing? Like how?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Let’s just get there.”
The Wonder Springs police station was a converted old brick Victorian house, with a wide wraparound porch and modest gables and turrets. Even now, as I hustled toward it in the night with anxious concern, I couldn’t avoid my usual thought that it looked much more like a bed and breakfast than the seat of the town’s little jail.
I wasn’t entirely wrong. The topmost story had a couple of apartments, including the residence of Sheriff Jake. With the station positioned near the entrance to Main Street, the sheriff spent even his nights on guard, sleeping like the town’s faithful watchdog.
An old outdoor staircase in the back, with wooden steps and a shingle roof, twisted up to his living quarters. Tina led the way, taking two steps at a time.
“It’s open,” the sheriff called, when Tina knocked. “Come on in, I’m in the back.”
We entered. The apartment was small and sparse and old, and it smelled like newspapers and late-night beers and the ghosts of a cigarette habit that he’d probably quit in the ’80s. I glimpsed a kitchen counter and sink in one corner, perfectly neat, and a beige couch piled high with a mess of newspapers. Then we were walking into the sheriff’s bedroom, and I forgot to be curious about his pad.
He looked pretty bad, even after you adjusted for seeing the guy flat on his back in ratty old striped pajamas, without his nifty hat and uniform and gun. If they were doing another remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, he could totally snag the role of the secondary grandfather, the one who never gets out of bed. Ever.
At least, that’s what I thought at first. Until he lifted his head and pinned us with a fiery glare.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he rasped to Tina. “I’ve been pushing this old carcass too hard, that’s all. And now it’s caught up to me.”
“Can I get you anything?” Tina said.
“Yes. That evidence,” he said. Then his mustache crinkled in a half-smile, and his eyes threw a twinkle that was alarmingly reminiscent of his son. “Unless you two were telling tales just to wrangle a chance to see me?”
“Oh, definitely,” Tina said, with a smile. But then her smile faded, and she swiped her phone and played the track of our meeting with Ambrose.
When it finished, the sheriff closed his eyes and knit his brows, and his breaths were slow and thoughtful.
“My mom’s the one who felt him walking,” Tina said. “But he admits it, he admits it right there. He was at Una’s house.”
“Cade did not tell us that code,” I said. “And Ambrose had all kinds of motive; Una told it all to Harriet—”
“I’m thinking,” the sheriff said, very quiet.
We waited. Tina sat on the edge of his bed. I stood by the doorway.
After what was probably two minutes, but felt like half an hour, Tina suddenly beamed and clasped his sleeve. “Really?” she said.
The sheriff startled, then blinked up at her and chuckled. “I don’t expect I’ll ever get used to that,” he muttered.
“Sorry!”
“But yes,” he said. “I need to make a couple calls, but I’m feeling… very optimistic.”
“Yay!” Tina cried, and as for me, a knot unclamped in my stomach that I hadn’t even felt was there.
“Can we go let Cade out?” Tina said.
“Not yet,” he said. “I’d rather make sure this is airtight.”
“You’re going to make your son wait in jail?” I said.
Sheriff Jake gave me a huffy frown, but then he looked at Tina and softened. “Why don’t you both go tell him the good news?” he said. “Imelda’s down at the desk… I notice she’s been inspired to put in a lot of overtime since she’s had Cade as a captive audience.”
“Uh oh,” Tina said, with a theatrical glance at me. Then she patted the sheriff’s shoulder. “You look better,” she said.
“Of course I do,” he said, and I had to agree. His eyes were brighter than when we’d come in, and his sallow cheeks had bloomed with a healthier flush. “A few more visits from angels like you two, and I’ll be back on my feet and ten years younger.”
Tina smiled. “We’ll be back,” she said. “Get some rest.”
“Don’t you worry—” he started to say, but the last word cracked into a wrenching cough.
It was a deep, rasping, wet cough, an explosive volley fired from his depths. Then it repeated, louder and louder, incessant and relentless.
Tina pressed a hand to her own chest and strug
gled to take normal breaths.
“Go,” croaked the sheriff, in between coughs.
“Come on,” I told her. “Don’t make him watch you suffer.”
Tina gave a small groan of resistance like she wanted to stay, but then she nodded.
And then she glanced again at the sheriff, and she gasped. “Summer… look…”
The sheriff was just hacking at the peak of another cough. At the cough’s worst moment… his nose changed.
It shimmered… black and wet and shiny at the tip, cleft between huge nostrils and edged with a thin sheen of sprouting fur.
Then he breathed in, gasping down air. His face smoothed back to human skin.
But he coughed again.
Chapter 30
Tina and I left. He wanted us to.
But we waited out on the stairs until we were sure he’d stopped coughing and we could hear his regular breathing, calm and human.
As I walked down the stairs, I gripped the railing hard. My legs were feeling numb and shaky.
“Cade can heal him,” Tina said, as we walked around the porch to the front door. “He’ll take care of it, when he sees his condition.”
“He’d better,” I said.
“Creepy creepy cough,” said Keegan. And for once, I didn’t mind him speaking my thought.
The front door had a chrome buzzer and intercom system that probably predated the Nixon Administration, and when the secretary Imelda had buzzed us in, I surmised that she probably did too. She sported a huge puffy hairdo, abundantly dyed to keep its glossy Hispanic black, and she tinkled when she moved with rings, bracelets, and necklaces, a glittering light show of middle-aged bling.
The foyer had been remodeled with a reception wall and window like you might see at a hospital, and Imelda gave Tina a warm smile of recognition through the glass. She folded shut a glossy magazine. (The cover story title was, “Scholarship Secrets: How to Hunt the Big Payouts the Other Moms Are Missing.”)
“Cade will be glad to see you,” Imelda said to Tina, with a micro-glance at me. “That other woman’s been in there for over an hour.”