I opened my mouth to ask how on earth a casual conversation turned into sharing about a woman’s fibroids, but then I remembered that with my mom involved, anything was possible. Especially if there were more moms out there like her.
“You can’t just take this for granted all your life, you know, that’s all I’m saying,” she said, and she actually patted my stomach with a hint-hint smile on her face.
“I’ll keep it in mind, mom,” I said, trying to keep my expression flat, exchanging a look with Lara, who was very obviously stifling a laugh.
“And moon knows Xander is on board,” she added, and I had to excuse myself to go to the bathroom to save myself from having a meltdown.
But as I washed my hands a few minutes later, something my mom said made me slow down and think over her words more carefully.
I dried my hands off quickly and headed back to the kitchen, where I saw Lara scrolling through her phone alone.
“Where’d mom go?” I asked, peering around cautiously as if she could have been lurking behind a corner with more romantic candles and pamphlets about pregnancy or something.
“Oh, she’s still here,” Lara said, looking up. “She just said she thinks she forgot something on the deck out back last time she was here, and she wanted to go get it. I think she actually has some flower vases she wants to secretly plant around the place. You’ve got my sympathies, Arti.”
I groaned. “How come Diana doesn’t get this treatment? I never hear mom riding her about giving her some grandkids. Maybe having flocks of schoolkids is a good enough placeholder.”
“Well, you’re the one running the B&B,” Lara pointed out with a smile as she poured herself a second glass of wine. “You’ve got the whole domestic thing going on already, so she probably sees herself in you.”
I genuinely hadn’t thought about it that way, and I felt a real smile come across my face. “I guess that’s a nice thought.”
“That, and while your sister sounds like a wonderful person, ‘former mayor and current principal of the town’s only school’ doesn’t exactly scream ‘approachable and dateable’, and I don’t think Diana’s interested in changing that image anytime soon.”
“She’s got life figured out, yeah,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “I think I could use another glass of that wine.”
Lara poured me one and I remembered what had occurred to me in the bathroom.
“By the way, Lara, you’ve spent some time talking to Daphne - what was it she said she was recovering from here?”
“Fibroid removal,” Lara said. “What Celeste said reminded me. I thought it was a funny coincidence - not that fibroids are funny, but you know.”
“Right,” I said, nodding. “That’s what I thought too, I just needed someone to back me up on it.”
“Why?” she asked. “Is that strange?”
I paused, thinking over my words carefully. “What are the chances…” I started, then shook my head and started over. “Hear me out here. Daphne has a sister who lives in town, so she has roots in Moonlight Cove. So, what are the chances her mom also lives here?”
Lara’s eyes widened. “You’re saying Daphne might be the daughter with fibroids your mom was talking about?”
“And if that’s the case, Daphne’s mom and my mom were talking about how it affects your ability to have kids,” I said, starting to pace as my mind raced. “So that was clearly on Daphne’s mom’s mind - assuming it actually was her mom. What are the chances?”
“Steep,” Lara admitted. “But not too steep.”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” I said, getting more excited by the minute. “And remember what Daphne was telling us about having kids when the search first started? It’s on her mind, too.”
“Yeah,” Lara said, looking excited. “You don’t think…?”
I looked to the door to the back deck to make sure mom wasn’t coming back in, then glanced at the front door to make sure Daphne’s return wasn’t imminent. I turned back to Lara and leaned in on the counter with a conspiratorial whisper.
“Tina Frost is six years old. She’s a young kid, impressionable, and still in her formative years. Daphne just went through surgery that could mean she can’t have her own kids, and it obviously bothers her. And yeah, all that could be coincidence, but…”
I took a drink of my wine, pausing. Lara was looking at me as if she’d be on the edge of her seat if she wasn’t standing up. And yes, I chose that moment to take a drink purely for dramatic effect.
“The morning that Tina disappeared was the morning that Daphne was supposed to leave.”
Lara audibly gasped, and I had to fight to keep a smile off my lips. This was serious subject matter, but getting that kind of reaction out of an actress felt nice and validating.
“If she was already leaving, maybe she meant to take Tina with her as she went, except Xander put up the quarantine, leaving her stuck here with us,” Lara nodded, seeing exactly where I was going with the thought.
“Meaning she had to hide Tina somewhere,” I continued.
“But she’s not here, surely,” Lara said. “We would have noticed if there was a six year old in this house. It’s big, but it’s not that big.”
I nodded. “ I know. Keep Daphne or my mom distracted when either of them gets back,” I said, taking out my phone and holding it up. “I’ve got a phone call to make.”
Lara nodded, biting her lip as I hurried up the stairs.
“Good luck,” she called after me quietly.
Chapter 19
I tapped my foot impatiently as I held the cell phone against my ear. I was shaking ever so slightly, overwhelmed with the rush of adrenaline that came from potentially deciphering a serious puzzle. If I was right, well, this could be a major break in the case. Major enough to possibly get Tina back home with her parents soon.
Still, it was wild to think that all this time, the person responsible for the quarantine, for the town-wide search party, for the suffering and panic of Mr. Frost and Ms. Rhodes could have been living under my own roof. I felt a pang of guilt for not seeing it sooner. I had ignored the evidence right in front of me. But my moon, Daphne had just seemed so sweet and harmless. How was I supposed to know she was a calculating predator? I reminded myself, though, as I listened to the phone line ringing, that perhaps she was both. Daphne was both a sweet, kindly woman and also the kind of woman who would react poorly to the bad news that she might not ever conceive a child and do something drastic.
After all, wasn’t that what people were talking about when they said desperate times call for desperate measures? Perhaps in Daphne’s mind, she was doing the best thing she could for herself. Now I just needed to get to Xander fast, so we could act upon this new revelation before it was too late. Who knew where Daphne was going tonight? What she was up to?
What was she really capable of?
“Come on, Xander, answer the phone,” I muttered. Finally, there was a click and the sound of a phone almost being dropped.
“Xander?” I said.
“Yeah, sorry. I had stepped away for a moment to grab my dinner from the microwave, I apologize,” he said quickly, sounding flustered.
“The microwave?” I repeated, wrinkling my nose. “Xander, if you need someone to bring you a real meal once in a while, you have my number.”
He chuckled. “Careful what you promise me or before long I might actually take you up on that,” he teased. “But I assume you didn’t call me up to judge me for my culinary decisions, did you?”
“No. I did not. Actually, I have something kind of big to tell you,” I said, my heart starting to race. I could hear him chewing faintly.
“Is everything alright?”
“Yeah. Well, no. Kind of. Right now it’s okay here. But I think I may or may not have been accidentally harboring a criminal all this time, Xander,” I confessed. He started coughing and nearly choked on his gross microwave meal.
“You what, now?”
“Okay, so I kn
ow exactly how crazy this might sound to you, but I have a feeling my guest here at the B&B might be involved in the Tina Frost case,” I told him, lowering my voice. I knew Daphne wasn’t in the house, but I still felt uneasy talking about this so openly. If the woman was willing to kidnap a child and attempt to flee the region with her, who knew what else she was capable of? Wiretapping the house? I didn’t want to take any risks.
“Wait. Who are we talking about? Not Lara Lancaster, I assume,” he said.
I snorted. “No. My moon, of course not. It’s Daphne. Daphne Wright,” I said. “The middle-aged woman staying here. She was visiting her sister here in town, and I guess her mother, too. She’s been recovering from a surgery to remove fibroids.”
“Wait, wait. Slow down, Arti. Surgery to remove what, now?”
“Fibroids,” I said impatiently. “On her uterus. So Daphne comes to town to convalesce and recover from surgery to remove fibroids from her uterus. Having those fibroids means that she most likely would have gotten bad news from her doctor about her reduced chance of fertility.”
“How do you know all that?” he asked.
“What part?”
“About the fertility,” he clarified. I could almost hear him blushing through the phone. I smiled. Moon help me, this was a weird conversation to be having with the man I might possibly be sort-of-kind-of dating.
“It’s just, like, something you know about as a woman,” I explained hastily, then moved back to the topic at hand. “Anyway, so she’s been hanging out with her sister, Desiree, who lives here in town. And the reason I know that Daphne has been worrying about her inability to conceive is because today, during the search party, my mom made some new friends.”
“Yep. Sounds like her.”
“Exactly. Well, turns out that she befriended a woman who told her all about how her daughter has fibroids and probably won’t be able to give her a grandchild. Which, incidentally, is probably part of why my mom has been so persistent about my needing to date you and eventually give her a grandchild,” I said, instantly wincing when I realized what I’d said.
There was a pause before Xander replied. “Okay, um, that is a conversation for future us. We’ll skip that right now. Sound good?”
“Yes. Yes, please,” I said awkwardly. “Alright, so I’m thinking what are the chances that it could be someone else? I mean, really. It has to be Daphne, right?”
“It’s kind of a big leap to go from being sad about not having a child to flat-out stealing one from someone else,” Xander reasoned.
“I know, I know. It sounds crazy. But I mean, wouldn’t you have to be a little bit crazy to kidnap a little kid in the first place? Who in their right mind would do that?” I countered. “Besides, Daphne was supposed to leave the morning Tina was taken. She had actually left, and then came back when she found out the quarantine spell had been put in place. Maybe she was on her way out of town, and happened to come across Tina walking to school. She could have acted on impulse and just taken her, planning to be far away by the time anyone realized Tina was gone, but it didn’t work out that way. But I know Tina’s not here at the B&B. That’s the only thing.”
“Good point. Okay, so here’s what I want you to do: stay right there. Act natural. Is Daphne in the B&B right now?”
“No,” I said.
“Shoot. Where is she, then?”
“She went out on a walk, she said. But I think--”
“--that she’s going to visit Tina wherever she has her stashed away,” Xander finished.
“Yes, exactly.”
“Now, do you have any idea where that might be?”
I frowned. “No. Not yet.”
“Okay. That’s fine. We’ll start there. I’ll be over in a few minutes,” he said. “Just hold down the fort until I get there, Arti. And please be careful. If Daphne is capable of kidnapping a child, there’s no telling how dangerous she might actually be.”
“Right,” I said. “See you soon.”
“Soon,” he repeated, and hung up. I sat down on the edge of my bed, feeling overwhelmed. This was all happening so fast. Luna came plodding into the room and hopped up into my lap, looking concerned.
“Is it true?” she asked. “I overheard all of that. Daphne is really the bad guy?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I think so.”
She shuddered. “Ugh! And to think I let that woman pet me!”
I smiled in spite of myself. “Yeah. She fooled us all.”
Xander must have broken a thousand broom-traffic laws to get to the Manor, because it seemed like only a minute or two had passed before I heard him knocking at the door downstairs. I rushed down to answer it and he immediately hugged me, which was such a shock that I went ramrod stiff.
When he released me, a bright fire burned in his eyes. “I’m so happy to see that you’re alright.”
I gave him a quizzical smile even as I blushed. “I’m fine, Xander. Seriously.”
“Good. Good,” he said, ruffling his fingers back through his hair. “Now, first things first: I want to search the B&B from top to bottom.”
I blinked confusedly. “What? You think Tina might be hidden here?”
He nodded. “Just in case, Arti. This is a big house. There have got to be some hidey-holes. Let’s go.”
Lara came in and joined the effort, the three of us searching every nook and cranny of the house for signs of a hidden child. Even the cats joined in. But we found nothing. Twenty minutes later we stood in the kitchen, all of us looking utterly lost. I made a pot of fresh coffee, assuming that sleep was already out of the equation for tonight.
As Xander sipped his black coffee, he spoke. “Okay, so what else do we know about Daphne Wright? You said something about her sister?”
“Yeah,” I said. “She has a sister in town, Desiree. Apparently she works at a nursery across town. You know, the one close by the… oh my moon.” I trailed off as my eyes went wide.
“What is it?” Lara asked.
I looked at both of them, stunned at my realization. “The nursery. It’s near that tree - the tree where we found Tina’s backpack.”
Xander instantly got on my level. “You think the sister is involved.”
I nodded. “Yes, possibly. It would make sense. As soon as Daphne found out she was trapped in town, she would have known she couldn’t bring Tina back to the B&B. Maybe she took her to her sister, instead.”
“Right, and then Desiree took care of Tina,” Xander added.
“Now we know where Tina might be: the nursery,” I exclaimed. Xander set down his coffee cup and grabbed me by the hand.
“Let’s go, now,” he insisted.
“Lara, hold down the fort, act natural if she comes back,” I called over my shoulder as Xander pulled me out the door. He took his broom and hopped on, gesturing for me to get behind him. I slid up against him, wrapping my arms around his muscular torso as he kicked off and the broom went rocketing down the street at breakneck speed.
“I think your broom has a little more horsepower than mine,” I said loudly, trying to talk over the loud rush of wind around us. I shivered for a few moments in the cold before I remembered to cast the insulation spell, warming us both. It didn’t take us long to get all the way across town and pull up to the front of the nursery. And just as I suspected, the lights were still on, even though it was long after sundown by now and the place would have closed for the night hours ago.
“We’re here,” Xander said gruffly as the broom came to a halt. He jumped up and helped me down, too, setting the broom against a tree. “Be careful, and be ready to cast a spell. We don’t know what Desiree might do.”
I nodded, fear gripping my heart as I held my hand in front of me, finger at the ready. I crept along behind him as we sneaked around to the back of the building, pressing ourselves against the trees for sale lined up against the building. By straining my ears, the sound of faint noises coming from inside the greenhouse reached me. They were soft sound
s: music playing, shuffling footsteps, and what sounded like a child’s voice singing along with the music. My heart skipped a beat as Xander glanced back at me, and I knew he could hear the same thing.
“Reseraroa,” Xander murmured as he pointed his finger at the door. It unlocked itself easily and the door creaked open. The singing inside stopped, and so did the footsteps. Xander gave me a silent nod and we both burst through the door, fingers up.
In front of us was a little girl with dark hair in two neat braids, complete with ribbons at the end. She stared up at us with wide, cinnamon-brown eyes, a look of pure surprise and fear on her sweet little face. She dropped the doll in her hands and it fell to the floor. I dared not move for fear of scaring her further.
“You’re not Desiree,” the little girl murmured.
“No, we’re not,” Xander said in a quiet voice, slowly kneeling down. I followed suit, looking around carefully to make sure we weren’t about to be ambushed. The little girl backed away a little bit, looking at us with suspicion.
“Are you going to take me away, too?” she asked, the sadness in her voice breaking my heart. I managed to give her what I hoped was a reassuring smile.
“No, sweetie. I promise. What’s your name?” I asked gently.
She stood up straight, putting on a brave face as she answered, “Tina Leigh Frost.”
Xander and I grinned, relief washing over us to see the little girl looking healthy, even if she was definitely a little traumatized.
“Tina, my name is Arti, and this is my friend Xander, who works with the police. We’re going to take you home to see your daddy. How does that sound?” I asked her.
Her face lit up like fireworks. “Yay!” she exclaimed, rushing into my arms with such force she almost bowled me over. I could feel my heart thumping like crazy as I stood up, cradling the six-year-old to my chest. Xander patted me on the back.
A Perfect Spell Page 14