by Ami Diane
“I prefer to think of my observations as stakeouts.”
She shook her head. At least that explained her ghost. “Hey, I got a question for you.”
“Sorry, I don’t have time. Got an article to write.” He took a quick step, but she grabbed the back of his coat, stopping him in his tracks.
“Marty, Marty. Is that any way to treat an old friend.”
“I barely know you.”
“I just have a couple of questions about your fishing club. First, how many members does it have?”
He licked his chapped lips, and his eyes darted all about, anywhere but at her face. “I don’t recall.”
She clicked her tongue. “I wonder if Jackson’s home. You know, he lives just through the forest over there. What do you say we take a gander that way?”
“Alright, alright. The last count was over twenty.”
Over twenty. That was almost double the size of PMS.
“Next question. You all have meetings, right? I’m assuming they’re monthly…?”
He breathed but didn’t respond, so she gave a slight tug to his jacket again. “I wasn’t kidding about that Mud Butt potion.” The fabric wrinkled under her grip.
“Weekly,” he squeaked out.
“Is that so? Last question. Well, questions, really. It’s a two-parter. When and where is the next meeting being held?”
“Come on, I can’t tell you that!”
She said his name like it was a warning.
“Whatever you do to me, it won’t be half as bad as what they’ll do if they find out I told you.”
“They won’t find out.”
“But suppose they do?”
Libby considered this. “I’ll tell them I followed one of them to the meeting. We did suspect Brent of Bea’s murder. I’ll say we were following him.” At the journalist’s hesitation, she released him. “I don’t want to get you in trouble with them. I like you, trespassing on my property aside. You’re not like the rest of them.”
What she meant as a compliment, he took as an insult. He wilted like leaves under a summer sun. Clearly, he wanted to be considered equal to his fellow coalition members.
“Why do you want to know?” he said finally.
“No nefarious reason. It just doesn’t seem fair that you all know where and when our meetings are—despite us changing locations each time, I might add—and we know nothing about yours.” Her reasoning was weak, she knew, but he didn’t ask any follow-up questions.
“It’s easy when we follow you there. Many of you could use lessons in shaking a tail.”
“I’ll spread the word.”
“If you want to know so badly, why not just follow one of us?”
“I don’t have an entire week to devote to stalking you, no offense.”
“Really?” he said. “Because last I checked, you were unemployed.”
That was true. She did seem to have free time to kill lately. “Nevertheless, you could save me a lot of time.”
She draped her arm around his shoulders, an easy feat considering they were almost the same height. “What do you say, ol’ pal?”
He shrugged her off. “Fine. Whatever. But you didn’t hear it from me.”
Despite them being alone on the top of the small cliff, surrounded only by forest and gulls, he looked around before leaning in. She could see the spot he missed shaving, smell the ham and cheese sandwich he had for lunch.
“It’s tonight at an abandoned warehouse by the docks. Eleven o’clock.”
“An abandoned warehouse. Really?”
“What?”
“Isn’t that a little, I don’t know, cliché?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t pick it.”
“Fair enough.” She thanked him before turning away.
“Ms. Slade,” he called out, his voice nearly swallowed by a gust of wind. “If you go tonight, don’t get caught. And if you get caught, I’ll deny we ever had this conversation.”
She brushed the side of her nose twice in a conspiratorial way, like in old movies, and followed it up with a wink. The moment she closed her front door and leaned against the inside of it, she pulled out her cell phone and called Marge.
“You free tonight around eleven o’clock?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
JASPER STARED, UNBLINKING.
“No,” Libby said. “No more treats.”
The raven performed a bobbing dance that was probably meant to entice her to comply.
“Your wiles don’t work on me, bird.” She went back to reading the book cradled in her lap. Not even a minute later, the bird landed on her shoulder, hitting her cheek with one of his black wings. “Ow! Why don’t you go sit on a scarecrow or something?”
Marge called out from the other side of the house.
“In here,” Libby replied, standing. Her hopes that the movement would jar the bird loose were dashed.
“Marco?” Marge hollered.
“Polo,” she answered, stepping into the kitchen. “Orchid, down.” The cat sat perched on top of the refrigerator again. Were all of the animals in her house losing it?
She fished the treats off the top of the appliance and dropped one to the floor. Jasper let out a loud, indignant caw in her ear.
“Yeah, yeah. It’s not fair.” She didn’t have to drink Pet Whisperer to know what he was upset about. With his claws digging into her shoulder, she caved and fed him a couple of treats, as well, dropping them on the floor in the library.
He swooped down and practically attacked them. Finally free of the raven, she returned to the kitchen and found Marge leaning against a mechanical bull where her table had stood a few seconds before.
“That was in the garage.”
Marge’s hand ran down the side of the bull. “You know Arlene got this for fifty bucks at a garage sale?”
“Really? She paid a whole fifty dollars for that? Someone took her in.”
Marge shrugged. “You ready?”
“Sure. I’m driving.” Libby reached for her keys, but Marge stopped her.
“We can’t go like this. If we’re spotted, we’ll be recognized immediately.”
“I had planned on wearing a hat,” Libby said defensively. “Besides, it’ll be dark.”
Shaking her head, Marge pushed off from the mechanical bull and opened her purse. One after another, she placed vials and tinctures in a line on top of the counter.
Libby’s mouth moved in silent words as she read the labels. They were an array of beauty products, ranging from hair dye to hair length to skin tone. There were even augmentation bottles that either enhanced or reduced.
Libby picked up the enhancement one and raised an eyebrow in the apothecary’s direction.
“It’s not what you think,” Marge said. “When disguising yourself, those two are useful for making your features smaller or larger. Ears, eyes, and such.”
“Sure, sure.”
“Although, they’re used for other parts, too.”
“I really don’t want to know more.” She waved her hand at the collection. “None of these interfere with each other? No adverse reactions?”
“Nope.” Marge hesitated. “Well, a couple. But I’ll let you know beforehand.”
Reaching out, she picked up a glass bottle at random, uncorking a sky blue opaque liquid. Two drops fell onto Libby’s hair.
Libby used her cell phone to watch the change. Instead of blue hair as she’d expected, the potion shrank her strands into a pixie cut. Before she could comment on this, however, Marge attacked the top with a spray bottle.
Her coif transitioned into a bright red color far too similar to a certain plaid pattern for Libby’s comfort. Next, Marge approached her with a small spritzer bottle.
Libby recoiled when it neared her face. “What’s that?”
“Relax, Red. It’s a skin pigment changer. Pale and freckled.”
Libby had already thought her skin rather on the pale side but discovered a whole new level when she looked in her
camera after Marge finished.
“I look like a ghost.” Actually, the longer she stared, the more she looked like Ariel from The Little Mermaid.
Marge squeezed several drops of clear liquid onto Libby’s mid-section over her sweatshirt.
“What the—what’s that?” In answer to this question, her stomach expanded several inches. Slowly, the rest of her puffed up to match. “I feel like a marshmallow.”
“Well, you are no longer recognizable.” Marge scrutinized her handiwork.
Her eyebrows scrunched up. She dabbed a couple of drops of plum-colored potion onto Libby’s nose then nodded in satisfaction.
Warmth tingled up Libby’s nostrils then spread, the sensation similar to a nosebleed. Her nose felt swollen, and when she looked into her phone, found that it was, indeed, several sizes larger.
“Now you’re unrecognizable.”
Libby prodded the most recent augmentation while Marge underwent a similar procedure. “How long’s this supposed to last?”
“Oh, about three hours, give or take.”
Libby didn’t like the sound of “give or take.”
“Here’s a silly question: why didn’t we use these disguises when poking around Brent’s trailer? Or at the used car lot?”
Marge cleared her throat and turned away, mumbling something.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t catch that.”
Sighing, she said louder, “Appearance modifiers are sort of in the gray area of potion-making. They’re not exactly banned, so much as strongly frowned upon. Why brew a potion that can drastically alter your appearance?”
She was tempted to ask why Marge had made one in that case. “I suppose there really isn’t a good reason unless you’re hiding from someone.”
“Right. And with all of the identity theft happening nowadays, it’s best to avoid using them or risk getting banned from the society.”
Libby swallowed and eyed the slew of border-line dark potions littering her counter. “I take it no one else knows about all of these?”
“Arlene knew.”
The gravity of that statement thickened the air. Marge had let her in on a secret that only her best friend had known.
While the apothecary finished her makeover, Libby visited her lab and retrieved Max’s pet potion. When she returned to the kitchen, she shook the mixture in her hand.
“There’s a problem. We only have enough for one more dose—” She stopped in her tracks. A complete stranger stood in her kitchen.
Libby stepped close enough to see the woman’s pores. “Nicely done.”
“Pardon? I’m looking for the lady who lives here.”
Libby’s stomach plunged to her feet, then it hit her that the woman’s voice sounded familiar. “Very funny.”
“I had you for a minute,” Marge said, her eyes dancing.
“Not at all. I knew it was you the whole time. You can’t disguise that shrill voice of yours. It’s like nails on a chalkboard.”
“Very mature.”
Aptly disguised for their stakeout, they headed out after grabbing Max from the fenced-in backyard where he’d been digging holes. All three piled into Marge’s car because the gear they needed to complete their ruse was already packed in the trunk.
“You know where this warehouse is?” Libby asked after triple-checking that her seatbelt was fastened.
Marge skidded out into the lane, squinting at the road.
“Your lights aren’t on.”
“Thanks.” The older woman flicked on her headlights. “There are a few abandoned warehouses at the edge of the bay he was talking about, but it shouldn’t be too hard to find them. Just follow the stench of prejudice.”
“And by ‘stench of prejudice’ you mean the string of twenty-odd people?”
Marge nodded before yanking on the steering wheel to dodge a pothole. Flecks of rain spattered the windshield. The older potionist rolled down her window and kept one hand on the steering wheel while the other reached around and unstuck her windshield wipers.
The wipers made an elongated squeak on their first couple of passes, then they moved back and forth in time with Max’s thumping tail in the back seat.
They traveled north of Libby’s home, up the peninsula where it thinned like an aged finger. By the time they pulled into an industrial-looking area, darkness had turned to night and descended over Oyster Bay. To the east, lights from the town reflected off the bay while to the west, waves from the Pacific Ocean thundered over the rocks that created the tip of the peninsula.
Marge slowed, searching for the best spot to hide the car.
The serenity of the moment was broken when she attempted to wedge the vehicle between an old building and a rusty shipping container.
There came metallic grinding followed by a pop as the shipping container took off Marge’s side-mirror, leaving one mirror left for the entirety of the car.
“Brake!” Libby yelled, her hands pressed against the dashboard.
With a grinding thud, they came to a stop.
Libby took in a shaky breath. “I bet your mechanic loves you.”
“I’ve been keeping Ol’ Tom in business for years.”
“That’s not something to brag about,” Libby said, unbuckling.
Outside, the pavement glittered from ocean spray. One lone street lamp glowed a couple of blocks away, throwing the majority of the abandoned shipping yard into darkness.
“I’m second-guessing our cover.” Libby followed Marge to the trunk. There was a loud click as it popped open, and the apothecary lifted out a crab pot. She shoved it into Libby’s arms then carried a second one. “Do people even crab at night?”
“Sure they do.”
“You’ve no idea, do you?”
“None whatsoever. This was Bruce’s stuff.”
They lugged the gear past another dilapidated building opposite them and to a dock that stretched out on the bayside of the peninsula. After tying off the lines, they tossed the pots into the ink-colored water with two loud splashes. Red and white marker buoys bobbed in the water above the pots.
They waited in silence a moment, looking around for any movement amongst the shambles of broken-down buildings behind them.
“Hey, weren’t we supposed to put bait in the pots?”
“I put some in yours before handing it to you.” Marge leaned against the wooden railing. The meager light limned the new profile of a shrunken nose and elongated chin.
For Libby, it was hard to stand next to someone who appeared like a stranger and to remember that she was a friend in disguise.
Down at their feet, Max panted, turned a circle, then plopped down. His tongue lolled out as his nose tilted into the breeze.
Libby’s phone vibrated with a missed call. She glanced at the notification before shoving the device back into her pocket.
“Your ex again?” Marge asked casually.
Libby nodded before remembering how dark it was. “James.”
“Well, we got time to kill. How about you tell me what happened between you two? I know the broad strokes, how he wouldn’t follow you up here and such.”
“That’s the sum of it, really. I told him I needed to move up here, that it might help solve my mother’s murder, but I couldn’t tell him why.”
For some reason, the silence that followed felt tense.
“What?” she finally asked when Marge didn’t speak.
“I’m just, working it out is all from his perspective. You out of the blue move to Washington, claiming it’ll help solve a murder when, as far as he knows, your mother had no ties to this state, right? How much notice did you give him?”
Libby swallowed. “A week maybe?”
“So, you tell your fiancé a week before you’re leaving that you’re moving. Did he have a job?”
A knot formed in Libby’s stomach. “He works at a tech company as a software developer.”
Marge faced her. “Let me get this straight. You gave him a week’s notice to quit what sou
nds like a lucrative job and move. Without discussing it first. Then when he didn’t agree, you broke up with him?”
“Well, when you put it like that….” Libby’s arms wrapped around herself to stave off the cold air whipping in from the Pacific as much as to protect herself from the onslaught of questions. “It wasn’t exactly like that.”
“How exactly was it?”
She stared out at Oyster Bay, not arguing.
“Did you two discuss long distance at all?”
Libby shook her head. “I didn’t know how long it would take me to find Arlene’s potion and if I’d be able to sell the house again after I did.” Marge’s eyes narrowed, locking with hers. “Alright, fine. I didn’t want to move back to Oregon. I knew when I packed my suitcases that I wasn’t coming back.
“Every place I went, even the freaking grocery store, reminded me of her. I grew up there. I needed a fresh start, where I could turn a corner and not be slapped in the face with memories.”
Marge’s tone turned gentle. “Did you tell James that?”
The back of Libby’s eyes stung, and she blinked rapidly. “No,” she said weakly.
In her quest for a fresh start, she had purged her life of all things old and familiar, and that had included her fiancé. He’d been a family friend, and his roots were intertwined with hers. A fresh start meant no past, no attachments.
How had she not seen that before?
Marge was right. She’d been unfair to James, truly and utterly unfair.
“Someone’s coming,” Marge said, pulling Libby from her quagmire of dark thoughts.
Chapter Twenty-Six
TWIN HEADLIGHTS BARRELED into the shipping yard and passed them. From the dock, they had a perfect view of the vehicle as it pulled to a stop.
“We need to get Max closer,” Libby whispered.
“Why are you whispering?”
She straightened and said in her normal volume, “I don’t know.”
“Quick.” Marge elbowed her. “Give me that pet potion.”
“What? Why do you get to be the one to drink it?”
“Because we don’t know how it’ll interact with our disguise potions.”
It was a moment of bravery and sacrifice on the apothecary’s part, and Libby didn’t argue as she handed over the vial. Marge knocked it back like a tequila shot, swallowing the contents in one gulp.