“We’re okay.”
Shoot, we were better than okay. The weight of that night had been with me for decades. It was mighty nice to have it finally lifted off my shoulders.
It kind of felt like I could conquer the world right now. But I’d settle for bringing Archie home.
Chapter 21
At least we rested well that night. Or at least I did. Baby Pearl even took it easy on us and slept through the whole night. Her very first time doing that too.
Not that I was complaining.
Bridget woke me with her demand for food. That bird was better than any alarm clock. I fed her, went to the restroom, and then started a bottle for baby Pearl. I barely had it warmed when Nancy met me in the kitchen, rubbing her eyes. She always insisted on giving baby Pearl her first meal of the day.
She reached out for the bottle. “Thanks, Mom.” She took the bottle and went in to collect baby Pearl. I watched her climb the stairs back up to her room with the baby in her arms.
All I could do was watch. I greatly feared if I tried to move or speak, I would shatter with all the emotion I was feeling.
Nancy had called me Mom. That was huge.
I’m not sure how long I stood there with my gaze up those stairs, but eventually Sapphire came in search of her first hot cup of caffeine for the day.
“Are you okay, Opal? Did something happen?”
I shook my head. As big of a deal as this was to me, I didn’t want to spoil it by letting the others in on it. This was between Nancy and me. But dash it all, the girl had called me Mom. It was like the opening of a door in our relationship. A big thick door too. One that led into a mansion of possibilities.
Forcing myself to come back to earth, which wasn’t easy, I asked Sapphire to go ahead and put a full pot on. I had a feeling, good night’s rest or not, we would need it.
The day promised to be a full one.
I hesitated to call Patricia this early, but the truth was, I was simply too curious to wait. She picked up on the first ring.
“I kind of figured you all would be up early, what with a baby in the house and all,” she said.
“Seven days a week. I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“Nope. When I’m working a case, I don’t sleep all that much. I crash pretty hard when it’s over, though. Once we get Arch home, don’t think I’m trying to avoid you, okay? I’ll just be sleeping for a day or two.”
“Got it.” I paused for just a second. “You have any luck sniffing out a clue last night?”
Patricia blew out a breath through the phone. “Unfortunately, no. It would have gone a whole lot better if I could have gotten there earlier. But with the police, the crime scene investigators, the coroner and his crew? There were way too many scents to get a lock on one that shouldn’t have been there.”
“Well, dang.”
“Dang, indeed.” There was a brief silence. “Opal, can I call you back? The council is calling me.”
We hung up just as Sapphire’s phone went off. I fairly ran for it. She met me halfway to retrieve it. A glance at the screen showed Archie’s name.
“Patricia’s taking a call from the council. Something’s up.”
Sapphire swiped the phone to pick up the call. “Are you okay?”
She listened for a minute before I got impatient and motioned to my ear. I wanted to hear the conversation too, dang it. She hit the speaker button as Archie was in mid-sentence.
“... my spell journal with a note confessing to taking it. The note wasn’t signed, so we still don’t know who took it. But the good news is that the council should have to let me go now.”
Personally, I was thinking he was giving the council, and namely Crystal, far too much credit. There really did need to be some changes in our ruling body. Soon, too.
“That’s wonderful, Archie! I’ll be up to get you as soon as I can get dressed and get Opal’s keys.”
He laughed. “I’m eager to get home too. But you might want to wait until I get the official word that they’re cutting me loose. I wouldn’t want you to waste a trip.”
“If I see you, it wouldn’t be a waste, dear.” She paused. “But I understand what you’re saying. Call me just as soon as you get the word, okay?”
“I will. Love you, Saff.”
“Love you too, Archie.”
They had barely hung up when my phone went off. It was a three-ring circus of cell phones. Patricia. I hurriedly answered. “The council is letting him go, right?”
“No. They are not.”
Crap.
“But Archie just called and said they delivered the spell journal to the council with a confession. What right can they possibly have now to hold him?”
“The note wasn’t signed, Opal. According to Crystal, one of us could have sent the journal and note to try to clear Arch.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!”
“Unfortunately, I’m not. Crystal will drag this out for as long as humanly possible. I think she sees it as a way to get back at the Minehearts and Ravenswinds for their role in last month’s little fiasco.”
“Our role? We bloody well saved the council!” Not to mention, quite possibly, the entire world. “How can she fault us for that? She should be thanking us!”
“Well, that isn’t her view on things. She’s still thoroughly ticked off that we didn’t bring her in on the take-down.”
“How could we when we thought she might be behind the whole thing?”
“I know that and you know that. Crystal? She can’t comprehend it.” A brief pause. “And now poor Arch is paying the price. At this point, I don’t know what it will take to get her to cut him loose.”
I glanced over at my sister, who was still dancing around the room, confident that everything would be back to normal by nightfall. I hated to be the one to break the bad news to her.
“This has to end.”
“Agreed. Today is definitely the day to pull out all the stops. I say we visit every single person on that list. But first, I think a trip to the council is in order. I want to see that journal and note myself.”
“We’re at the farmhouse. You coming to us?”
“Already on my way. See you in about fifteen.”
I disconnected the call and took a deep breath. Then I walked over to my still dancing sister and put one hand on each of her shoulders. “Sapphire, there’s good news and bad news.”
She stopped dancing, and her face went flat. “They aren’t letting him go, are they?”
I shook my head. “They are not.”
Sapphire didn’t question me. For one, she knew that I wasn’t the one with definitive answers on that. “And the good news?”
“We’re doubling down our efforts today. We aren’t going to stop until we can shove proof of Archie’s innocence under Crystal’s nose. Proof that even she can’t deny.”
She nodded, but she really didn’t take it as good news. I might have oversold that part of things. It was only mediocre news at best. I mean, it’s not like anything was really changing. We’d been giving this our all ever since the council took Archie.
We weren’t about to stop now.
WE WORKED AS A TEAM getting the kids up, fed, and ready for school. Sapphire took over the breakfast part of things. Usually, weekday mornings at the farmhouse meant cereal, toast, and orange juice. Not with my sister in residence. But truthfully, I wasn’t complaining.
One, her food was always good. And two, it helped to distract her for a while. Sometimes, distraction was a good thing. Like when a crazy witch with a grudge was holding your husband for ransom.
A ransom without demands that we could meet. Yet. That would change.
Orville arrived just as Kimberly was leaving with the kids. I’d called him beforehand, so he knew exactly what he was walking into.
“We still splitting up today?” I asked. One person couldn’t be in two places at the same time, and I knew that he really wanted a talk with Flynn. Hence the question.
He shook his head. “Not at first, no. I want a gander at that journal and note.”
“What about Flynn?”
Orville took a deep breath. “The boy alibied out. I ran the time of death by the Oak Hill jail. When Goldman was murdered, Flynn Tomlin was still sitting in their county jail. You just can’t get a stronger alibi than that.” He looked glum. “Good thing I’m not a betting man, because after talking to Fran and Shyla last night, I’d have put good money on that boy being the killer.”
“As would I. So, back to square one, are we?”
“Looks like.”
Even though we were all going to the same place, we took two cars. I kind of thought Sapphire would dig in her heels about staying with Archie a lot longer than they had allowed us to last time. And the rest of us had work to do.
Patricia took Sapphire with her. I rode with my man.
“Any other good suspects you all are looking at?” he asked.
I thought about it. “Well, before all this with Goldman and Flynn came up, we were looking pretty strong at Daniel Davis. He’s a young upstart of an attorney trying to get his foot in the door at the firm.”
Orville arched an eyebrow at me. “Merlin could use the help right now, couldn’t he?”
“He could. If the boy was competent as a lawyer. Which I highly doubt. I think the boy is sadly lacking in street smarts. An attorney’s got to have more than book smarts to handle cases in court.”
“Yes, they do. But if he isn’t street smart, he wouldn’t know that, would he?”
“He would not.”
“So, after we visit with Archie and see what there is to see, if nothing jumps out to lead us in another direction, we go to see Mr. Davis?”
“That’s a plan.”
The rest of the way, we rode in silence. We were both all caught up on the entire Archie thing now, and we wouldn’t know where to go next until we saw what that parcel the council received contained. Hopefully, whoever was behind all this would have been nice enough to leave us a clue.
If not, Daniel Davis was back up to bat.
Chapter 22
When we finally got shown in to see Archie, he wasn’t alone. And it wasn’t just the Shaman with him, either. Merlin was there, huddled with Archie in a corner of the room going over paperwork.
He looked up as we entered, then bent back down to his task.
Sapphire, the dutiful wife if ever there was one, didn’t interrupt them. But she did sit next to her husband and put her arm around his waist. After all, she had come a considerable way to see him.
Luckily, it looked like they were wrapping things up. It didn’t take long before Merlin started gathering the papers back up to go into his briefcase.
And if they were done, I had a burning question to ask.
“What happened with young Davis and that interview yesterday?”
Merlin looked at me. And if ever a man looked guilty as sin, he did. “He’s not the one behind this.”
I frowned at him. “You do know that now we’ve ruled out Flynn Tomlin, Davis is our best suspect, right? What makes you so sure?”
Color rose to Merlin’s cheeks, and he gave a sideways glance to the Shaman who was sitting quietly off to the side to give us all the illusion of privacy. Such as that was. No way would the council let us be alone with the man.
It rather surprised me that Crystal hadn’t changed the guard. But then, knowing the Shaman, she had probably tried. And been unsuccessful too.
“I will say that I know the boy to be innocent. I’d even swear to it,” his voice dropped considerably, “on my magic.”
My eyebrows flew upward and, Goddess help me, but I glanced over to the Shaman too. He was still just as calmly reading as he had been before. That was good. Either he hadn’t been paying attention to our conversation (ha!), or he hadn’t gotten the full meaning behind Merlin’s words.
Or perhaps he had. After all, sometimes rules are meant to be broken.
Because I was fairly certain from Merlin’s flushed face and his words that the man had cast a truth spell on Davis. It would have been the easiest and surest way to get to the bottom of things.
Unfortunately, truth spells, along with love spells, were strictly forbidden by the council. Using magic to manipulate another person’s mind or emotions was a big no-no in the witch world. That’s one of the reasons you should be very leery of bottled love spells. They’re all as useful as lipstick on a pig. Because no true witch with the ability to brew one would take the risk.
We all (minus poor Orville, who most likely didn’t have a clue what Merlin’s words meant) stared hard at Patricia.
She fidgeted, then shrugged. “You gotta do what you gotta do.”
This from a council enforcer? Oh yes, she was an ex-enforcer now, wasn’t she? But somehow, I thought that maybe her words spoke to more than just her current status. I thought that just maybe, in Patricia’s past, she might have bent those rules herself.
Not that I bloody well cared, because to me, the woman was right as rain. You gotta do what you gotta do.
Bottom line, we were fresh out of suspects. Daniel Davis wasn’t our man, after all, and Flynn Tomlin had just about the best alibi a man could have. We needed another look at that list of suspects. Not that I expected it to yield any better results than we’d already gotten from it at this point.
I dug the list out of my bag and turned to Archie. “Have you given any thought to anyone else that might have had access to your office and that blasted journal? Anyone not already on our list?”
He shook his head. “I can’t think of a single other soul. As I’ve said before, the office is my private domain. I don’t meet with clients there. That’s what the conference rooms are set up for. Besides the whole privacy thing, they have the recording equipment already set up and ready to go.”
“Okay. Did you ever meet with Flynn Tomlin in your office?”
Archie just looked at me like I was repeating myself or something. “He was a client, so no. We held all of our meetings in the conference rooms.”
Something about his words struck a nerve, and a tiny door opened in my brain. “What about his dad?”
I heard Patricia suck in a big breath of air, even as all eyes turned to Archie.
“As he is an old friend and not a client, yes, I met with him in my office.”
“And do you remember ever seeing your spell journal after your last meeting with him?”
He looked away. “I do not.” He paused, closing his eyes. “Goddess help me.”
He might have said more, but I couldn’t tell you if he did. I was too busy jogging out the door after my man.
Once we were buckled in, Orville spared me a glance. “This was all about biding time to let them escape. And it just might have worked. How much you want to bet that we are about to visit an empty house?”
“No bet here. I think that’s a fair assumption.” I hesitated. “It’s also a fair assumption that if we can’t track them down before they leave the country, Archie’s confinement will not be a short one. We need to end this.”
Orville nodded. “Plus, the whole getting justice for Mark Goldman and the others in this whole mess.”
I thought back to Fran and Shyla and their turned upside-down lives. “Yeah. That too.”
We were wrong about one thing. The Tomlin house wasn’t totally empty when we got there. A maid answered the door.
“I’m sorry. The Tomlin’s left this morning to visit Mrs. Tomlin’s sister in Georgia.”
Sure, they did. Only one minor problem with that statement. By the terms of the bond, Flynn Tomlin wasn’t allowed to leave the state. They were running, all right. And time was running out for Archie.
Orville turned to go back toward the car, but my witch’s intuition kicked into gear big time. I grabbed his elbow to stop him, then turned to the maid.
“Look, I will be honest and upfront with you. The Tomlins aren’t planning to come back, and I need to get into their house f
or a few minutes. I won’t take anything valuable, but I need to look around. They have caused a lot of trouble for my family, and I need to stop them. Please. Will you help?”
She looked at me and then at Orville. Finally, she nodded and stepped back. I kind of thought that meant that she knew my words were true. Whether they’d told her they were gone for good, or not, the girl still knew it.
As we walked in, Orville whispered in my ear. “Mind telling me what this is about? Time is important, you know.”
“Believe me, I’m aware of that.” I turned to the maid. “Where is their downstairs bathroom?”
She pointed to a door, and I walked over and entered. The size of the room was approximately the size of my entire apartment at the farmhouse. The Tomlins didn’t live small. And before you start to wonder why they were willing to leave all this, I’ll tell you. That bond to get Flynn out of jail hadn’t come cheap, even with Archie’s help. This house would belong to the bond agent in very short order. Unless, of course, we stopped them. At that point, who knows what would become of the place?
My eyes searched the room and finally fell to a hairbrush on the large marble counter. I called back to the maid. “Does any of the staff ever use this bathroom?”
She spoke from the doorway. “Never. We have our own, much smaller facility.”
I’d figured as much, but I had to be sure all the same. Reaching down, I plucked several strands of hair from the brush and then walked out.
After thanking the maid, we got back in the car.
While I’d been collecting the hair, Orville had been on the phone. This wasn’t his jurisdiction, that is true, but my man is a lawman through and through. He called in the local authorities to alert them to what we knew.
“You okay if I head to the airport now?” he asked. “Or do you need more hair or something?”
“Go ahead. I can do this on this road.”
His eyes widened as I took out the spell bag and dropped in the hair. But he wasn’t waiting around for the result, either. We were almost to the interstate on-ramp to the airport when the spell kicked in.
Witch Reborn Box Set: Books 1-3: Includes Gemstone Coven Holiday Shorts 1 & 2 Page 31