A Catastrophic Theft

by P. D. Workman

  “I don’t know what she did with it. I’m not suggesting anything. That’s the full account of what I know about the emerald necklace. I saw her with it on. At home and at the dance. I never saw it again.”

  “Was she wearing it when she went home?”

  “I assume so.” Reg closed her eyes, trying to visualize it. They had come back home in the same limousine as had picked them up before the dance. It hadn’t been completely dark inside the car. But it hadn’t been daylight either. Reg pictured Sarah sitting beside her. But she couldn’t remember with clarity anything that had happened after her encounter with Corvin. She had been tired and confused and Sarah had helped her to the car and then home. “I can’t picture it. I really don’t know.”

  “What happened at the dance?”

  Reg searched Jessup’s face for some sign that she already knew what had happened. Sarah must have told her, or she’d heard about it from someone else. It was a close-knit community, and gossip traveled fast. The air waves must have been buzzing with word about what had happened to Reg going back and forth.

  “It was just a dance.”

  “I don’t think so. Something happened.”

  “Well, it’s true that it wasn’t like anything I’ve ever been to before. The outfits, the decorations, the food and drink. It was all amazing. Like an old English ball.”

  “Sounds amazing. Some of the parties out here really are phenomenal. After a while, you tend to forget how over-the-top it is compared to community center sock hops around the country.”

  “I don’t think I could ever get used to it.”

  “But that still doesn’t tell me what happened.”

  “We went, we had food and wine, networked, danced, and eventually came home.”

  “And what happened?”

  “I just told you.”

  “Was it Hunter? I noticed there was… something going on between the two of you. Hunter said he’d screwed things up.”

  “Yeah, he did.”

  “What happened?”

  “It’s got nothing to do with Sarah’s necklace.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that. I want a full picture of what happened that night.”

  “It’s personal.”

  There had been enough people who had caught at least a glimpse of what had happened that Reg was sure it wasn’t something she could ever keep private, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t try. It was her life. She was entitled to some privacy.

  “I’m not going to tell anyone else,” Jessup said. “I want to know what happened and what you can remember. It’s important. You were the only other person that I know of who can confirm that Sarah still had the necklace when the two of you got home.”

  “I told you I can’t remember.”

  “Then tell me what you can remember. That will help to clarify it.”

  “Do you really have to know? Can’t you just leave it?” There was a lump in Reg’s throat. She wasn’t going to cry in front of Jessup. She didn’t cry in front of the police. Unless it was because she knew it would work in her favor—that was different.

  “Just tell me,” Jessup urged. “Pretend it’s just you and me and you really want to tell someone about it.”

  Reg sighed heavily and tried to swallow the lump in her throat. She looked up at the ceiling, willing her eyes to stay dry.

  “Corvin talked me into dancing with him. I made a deal with him. That I’d only dance if he promised not to glamour me.”

  Jessup didn’t tell her that it had been stupid to try to bargain with someone like Corvin Hunter. He would never hold up his end of the deal.

  “I told him that if he used any of his magic on me, then he didn’t have my agreement to give him my powers. No matter what he could get me to say, I didn’t give my permission.”

  Jessup’s brow furrowed as she thought about this. She nodded slowly, a hint of a smile on her lips. “Very tricky,” she approved. “If he couldn’t use his powers on you, he would never be able to persuade you to give up your gifts willingly.”

  “That was the plan.”

  “And he agreed?”

  “Not at first. To start with, he got mad, said it wasn’t fair, had a little temper tantrum, and went storming off.”

  There was no hiding Jessup’s grin at that. While she sometimes hired Corvin as an expert consultant on a case, there was no love lost between the two of them, and she kept a very tight rein on him.

  “After a while, he came back,” Reg went on. “He had calmed down and he said he agreed with my terms. Just dancing, no magic, no trying to get my powers. He just wanted to dance with me.”

  Jessup nodded slowly.

  “I even asked Sarah. She said she’d keep an eye on things. That I would be safe as long as I was around people. He wouldn’t do anything to me while everyone was watching.”

  “Creatures like him don’t operate in the light,” Jessup agreed.

  Reg pondered for a moment on Jessup’s use of the word creature instead of person. Sarah had called him a beast and an animal. Reg herself thought of him as a predator. A big cat or other hunter. He did seem far closer to an animal than a human sometimes. He’d referred to it as his nature, and Reg knew that his gnawing hunger was only too real.

  “So we danced… and it was wonderful. Like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.”

  “But…?”

  Reg shrugged helplessly and shook her head.

  “But he broke his word?” Jessup prompted.

  “Yes.” Reg could barely whisper it. “He said he couldn’t help it. That I was just too enticing. We walked out on the porch for air, and as soon as we were away from other people…”

  “How did you manage to resist him?”

  “The fairies. Lord and Lady Bernier and their entourage. Lord Bernier said I was protected by the fairies.”

  “Because you were contaminated with Calliopia’s blood.”

  Reg nodded. “I didn’t know that at the time. Lord Bernier rescued me before Corvin could steal my powers away again. Corvin was furious. He made me… he forced me to feel his pain. His hunger. It was awful. I thought it would kill me.”

  “To someone who isn’t accustomed to it… it probably would.”

  “Lord Bernier threatened to kill Corvin… so he finally took the feeling away.”

  “That really is awful, Reg. I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

  For a minute, Jessup was Reg’s friend. Someone who cared about her and how she felt. But then Reg forced herself to remember that she wasn’t just having tea with a friend. It was a police interrogation, no matter how well it was camouflaged.

  “So… Lady Bernier gave me some kind of restorative. I don’t know what was in it, but it only took a few drops… and then Sarah got there… and we went home…”

  Jessup considered this. “So you were ensorcelled by Hunter, given his pain, and then administered an unknown potion or drug that might or might not have been an intoxicant.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s no wonder your memories of what happened after that are a little muddy.”

  Reg gave a little laugh. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “You and Sarah were probably both a little off kilter after all of that.”

  “Yeah. I don’t know how she was feeling, but I was pretty rough. And my hand was still bothering too,” Reg ran her thumb over the healing wound. “You remember how bad it was.”

  “It was bad.”

  “We got back to the cottage,” Reg remembered, “and that was when Starlight came back. And he dragged this big clump of yarrow back in with him. Like he left just to find what we needed to treat the cut.”

  “Sarah came here before she went home.”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you searched to make sure she didn’t drop it here? Or outside?”

  “I haven’t. I didn’t even think about that.”

  “And did you say you came back in a limo?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sarah
never mentioned that. We’ll need to check with the limo service too. Make sure she didn’t drop it in the car.”

  “Wouldn’t they have called her if she left something in the car? Or else they would keep it and deny they ever saw it.”

  “If it went down the crack in one of the seats, it might not have been found. It could still be in the car.”

  “Okay, I guess so,” Reg agreed.

  “Are you going to seek it for her, like you said?”

  “Yeah. If I can.”

  “When?”

  Reg looked toward the main house. “I don’t know. I thought she would have been over here before now. She usually stops in for a visit. She didn’t today.”

  “She’s in pretty rough shape. She might not have felt up to it. And…” Jessup gave a grimace, “…I might have told her not to talk to you until I’d had a chance to interview you.”

  ⋆ Chapter Seven ⋆

  R

  eg clenched her teeth. Fury flamed up in her chest. She was so angry she could hardly breathe.

  “Why? You really think I stole her emerald?”

  “You are the newcomer here. The emerald has been in Sarah’s possession for many years without incident. And you do have a history.” Jessup tried to meet Reg’s eyes, but Reg avoided her gaze, too angry and anxious to pull off a bluff.

  “What history?”

  “You’ve used the name Reg Rawlins before. You’ve left a trail.”

  Reg pounded her fist into her other hand, turning her anger and accusation onto herself. Why had she returned to that name? Nostalgia? Sentimentality? How stupid to go back to her childhood name just because seeing Erin had stirred up memories. Of course Jessup had run background on her. She’d probably done it before she’d talked to Reg the first time, accusing her of perpetuating a fraud by offering psychic services. She’d known then about Reg’s checkered past. Maybe even about the heirlooms that had disappeared from Bald Eagle Falls, financing Reg’s journey to Florida.

  “I didn’t steal Sarah’s emerald.”

  “You had opportunities. At the party, in the car, back here, or in the main house.”

  “Don’t you think I’d be out of here if I’d stolen a stone like that?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  At least there was that. But whether Jessup believed she had taken the necklace or not, she was still investigating. She still had to look at Reg and to find either a way to eliminate Reg or evidence that she had committed the crime.

  “It was someone else,” Reg insisted. “Or else she just lost or misplaced it.”

  Jessup nodded. “We’re investigating all angles.”

  “So are we done? Or do you need a lie detector test? Or maybe you want to search the place to make sure I don’t have it in the back of a drawer somewhere.”

  Jessup’s eyes narrowed as she studied Reg. Reg could sense her doubt and suspicion. It would have been obvious even to someone without any psychic powers. She was worried that Reg was throwing out a bluff. That she did, in fact, have the necklace secreted away in some drawer.

  “I do think we should make sure Sarah didn’t lose it here. It sounds like there was a good amount of confusion when the two of you got back from the party. Maybe she took it off without thinking, or maybe the clasp broke or was not done up properly.”

  It was a good way for Jessup to get Reg to consent to a search without accusing her of stealing it. And it would only allow her to search the more public areas Sarah would have been in. Not the bedrooms.

  “Okay. We’ll look together.”

  Jessup glanced at her sideways. Of course, she was right to be suspicious. After a glib tongue to talk people out of their money, sleight of hand was a con man’s most valuable tool. If Reg did have the necklace, she could pick it up and pocket it even with Jessup working side-by-side with her. Reg was at least that good. If Jessup were going to keep up the pretense that she was just helping Reg see if Sarah had dropped the necklace and not that she was doing a police search of Reg’s home, she couldn’t object.

  “Alright. Why don’t you walk me through what happened from the time you got home. Maybe right from getting dropped at the curb. We’ll retrace Sarah’s steps and see if it triggers anything or we can find it along the way.”

  Reg acquiesced. They walked outside and around to the front of the main house. Jessup actually did walk right up to the curb, while Reg hung back at the sidewalk impatiently.

  “Where along here were you dropped, do you remember?” Jessup asked, looking at the sewer grates.

  Reg hadn’t even thought of the possibility that the necklace could have dropped through a grate. She had recently learned about pixies living underground with tunnels that connected to the older parts of the sewer system. Was it possible that one of them could even have magicked it away from Sarah, causing it to drop down into their dirty little hands? Reg remembered the way that the necklace Sarah had given her as a ward against Corvin had simply slipped off in her hand when she decided she no longer wanted it, despite how impossible it had been to remove it earlier in the evening. Magic could certainly be used to unfasten a necklace.

  “Uh… I’m pretty sure our door was aligned with the front door of the house.” Reg walked over to the point at the curb, staring at the house and trying to picture it in her mind. “The driver would have expected us to go straight into the house, so he would have dropped us right here.”

  She looked down at the gutter and measured the distance to the nearest sewer grate. It seemed too far for the necklace to have traveled without a good deal of assistance. Jessup walked over to it anyway and shone her light down the hole. Reg tried to see without crowding Jessup. But there was nothing but the debris she would have expected. It didn’t look like it had been disturbed. There were no footprints. No glint from the gold or gemstone.

  “I don’t see anything,” Reg said.

  “Nor do I. Did you go into the house before the cottage?”

  “No. Straight back to the cottage.”

  They walked back around the house to the back yard in silence. Reg tried to remember every impression of that night. Every sight, sound, and smell.

  “I guess we were about here when we saw Starlight.”

  “He was outside.”

  “Yes. He’d escaped the day before. Or two days. I don’t know what time it was. I tried to go pick him up…” Reg took a few steps to demonstrate, “but he didn’t want to be caught. So I stayed back from him and went into the house to get some tuna to tempt him in.” Reg looked down at the pathway and the lawn. “I had taken off my shoes in the car, so I was barefoot. I stayed on the stones.”

  “And Sarah?”

  “My back was to her. I went into the cottage first, and she was out of my sight for a few minutes while I called Starlight in… she came in, and then he did, dragging that yarrow plant.”

  Jessup looked down at the ground, and walked in widening circles, scanning for any sign of the jewelry. Reg didn’t have any confidence that she would find it. She was sure Sarah hadn’t lost it in the back yard. She walked back into the cottage, looking around with fresh eyes, trying to remember each move they had made that night. Dealing with Starlight and the yarrow plant, getting to bed.

  There really wasn’t anywhere Sarah could have dropped her necklace without Reg noticing it either that night or afterward. But she looked along the floor under the edges of the cupboards anyway, looked behind the sink in case Sarah had taken it off and put it down while dealing with the yarrow, checked in random drawers and the freezer. She wasn’t feeling a tug toward it, as she often would if she were looking for an object. No instinct as to where it might be.

  When she turned back around, she was startled to see Jessup standing there watching her, a frown on her face.

  “I don’t know where else to look,” Reg said. “We were just here, in the kitchen, and then she went back to the house when I went to bed. I can’t remember her wearing the necklace, but I would have noticed if it had been missing
, don’t you think? If it had fallen off or she had taken it off, one of us would have seen it, wouldn’t we?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. You had a pretty traumatizing night, and she would have been distracted. She might have taken it off absent-mindedly when you left the party, or when she was working in the kitchen here. She might have put it into her purse and forgotten about it. Who knows?”

  “Did you ask her if she put it in her purse?”

  “Yes. She said no, and she checked, but what if she used a different purse than she thought she did? She’s not a young woman.”

  “But she wouldn’t have forgotten that.”

  “In my experience as a detective, anyone can forget anything. Especially women going through hormonal changes like pregnancy or menopause.”

  “Ugh. I wouldn’t want to be the one to ask Sarah that.”

  “I haven’t. I’ve been trained in negotiation, but not with angry menopausal witches. Forget that. I’ll use my investigative skills.”

  Reg laughed.

  “Well…” Jessup took a cursory glance around the room. She clearly knew there was no point in conducting a search of the kitchen and living room when Reg had entered the cottage ahead of her. “Shall we see if Sarah wants you to seek the emerald?”

  ⋆ Chapter Eight ⋆

  R

  eg’s heart was thumping as they walked up to the house and knocked on the back door. She had never been so anxious about trying to locate a lost object before. Sure, there had been plenty of times when she’d been really desperate to find something, but that didn’t compare to her fear that she might no longer be able to find things. She hadn’t found the knife that Jessup had asked her to seek. Was that because of her history with the knife? Because someone powerful was hiding it from her? Or had she just lost the ability?

  “It’s going to be fine,” Jessup assured her. “Once the emerald is found, I’m sure everything will go back to normal.”

  Reg cocked her head at Jessup, frowning. Everything would go back to normal? What exactly was she talking about?