Pawsitively Swindled

by Melissa Erin Jackson

  “Not in Oregon,” Bianca said. “He’s got to pay the full amount to get out.”

  Amber frowned. “Where are you?”

  “Why. Do. You. Care?” Bianca let out a long, bitter laugh. “You know, you not caring shouldn’t surprise me. No one cares. I thought I had friends in this town. But I clearly don’t. First sign of a scandal and they all tuck tail and run.”

  “I wouldn’t keep calling you if I didn’t care.”

  Bianca was silent for a few beats. Her voice was soft and a little robotic as she said, “I think I know who’s doing this to Dad. If no one is going to be an advocate for him, then I will.”

  Amber’s stomach flipped. Bianca was unmistakably going to do something stupid. Was she out now heading for the supposed framer’s house? Could Amber figure out where this person was before Bianca got there? Hurriedly, Amber grabbed her laptop and set it up on the coffee table, shoving aside her toy-making supplies as she did. Then she took her Marbleglen map out of the drawer, laying it out near her computer. She hit a key to wake up the screen. “Who?”

  “Officer—now Chief—Nicolas Daniels,” Bianca said with a finality that Amber didn’t like at all.

  Amber typed the guy’s name into her search bar. It didn’t take long to find the now-familiar smiling face of a middle-aged man in uniform on the Marbleglen Police Department website. This picture, rather than her distant view of him while he was on stage, revealed that while he was mostly bald, his thin sideburns implied he was a redhead. He had a faint smattering of freckles along his nose and cheeks. His eyes were a dull green.

  “Why do you think it’s him?” Amber asked, then put the phone on speaker.

  While Bianca talked, Amber—using the picture of Daniels and the map—mentally uttered the spell and scried for the man’s location. A dot popped up on Larkspur Lane.

  “It’s no secret he’s wanted the chief’s position for ages,” Bianca said. “Everyone, even Jameson’s own staff, thought the guy should go. Maybe they decided to finally clean house.”

  Trying to think of anything she could to keep Bianca talking, Amber asked, “Do you think Daniels would do the deed himself or would one of the officers down the totem pole be recruited to help him?”

  Keeping the phone on speaker, Amber opened her text threads and found the one with Kim. It was just after nine in the evening. She hoped her friend wasn’t busy. She knew asking Kim to help her with this was risky, as Kim hated Bianca Pace even more than she hated Marbleglen, but there weren’t too many people Amber could contact at random like this.

  Kim! Are you busy?

  “I guess it could have been a lackey,” Bianca said, some of the conviction leaving her voice.

  Amber then conducted a second locator spell, this one on Bianca. It took a few tries—Bianca didn’t currently want to be found, but Amber figured that Bianca being rather drunk helped make it easier. A second dot appeared on her map. Bianca’s dot was a few blocks from Simon’s house. Had she been at her dad’s with a bottle of wine or seven, gotten drunk, and then decided to take her accusations to Daniels? Amber supposed it was a small blessing that the woman was on foot and not that her grand plan was to slam her car into Daniels’s living room.

  “Which lackey could it be?” Amber asked.

  Bianca started running through her theories, but Amber wasn’t really listening.

  Kim had replied. Nope! What’s up?

  I’ll explain better later, but the person accused of murdering Chief Jameson is Bianca’s father. She’s currently very drunk and is going to confront the new chief who she thinks is framing her dad. We need to go get her.

  1. Boo! Why did it have to be her? 2. Where is she?

  Not sure yet. We can use my magical GPS to help find her.

  Cool! Leaving now!

  Amber darted around her studio apartment while Bianca’s tinny voice rang out in the dark room. She pulled on a mostly clean pair of jeans, slipped a hoodie over her head, and put on tennis shoes. Grabbing her purse, the magicked map of Marbleglen, and her phone, Amber hurried down the stairs. Luckily Bianca was both so drunk and so caught up in explaining her myriad theories that she hadn’t yet figured out that Amber was planning to ambush her.

  Kim pulled up just as Amber got outside. Taking the phone off speaker, Amber stuck her phone in the front pocket of her hoodie, then ran around to the driver’s side and tried to come up with the most diplomatic way to say, “Please let me drive because your driving makes me incredibly nervous.”

  Amber pulled the map out of her purse and unfolded it. “Wanna keep track of the map for me? This dot is Bianca and this one is Daniels. We need to get to the Bianca dot before she does something kooky.”

  “Ooh!” Kim said, eyeing the map in delight. Putting the car in park, she flung open her door, took the map from Amber, and then hurried over to the passenger side.

  Once inside Kim’s car, Amber took out her cell phone and pressed it to her ear. She immediately winced; Bianca was in mid-rant.

  “—who are you talking to!”

  “Bianca, I—”

  “You can’t stop me! Daniels needs to pay for this.”

  “Bianca, just—”

  The call ended.

  Crap. “Crap!”

  Tossing her phone and purse to a bewildered Kim, Amber took off down Russian Blue Avenue.

  “Tell. Me. Everything,” Kim said.

  Amber did, speeding through the mostly quiet streets of Edgehill.

  Kim did her best to stay silent as she listened to Amber talk, saying only, “Shut the front door!” where appropriate.

  Once they were in Marbleglen, Kim gave Amber instructions on how to get to the Bianca dot. It didn’t take them long to find her. She was wandering down the sidewalk ahead of them, walking in the same direction as Amber was driving. Her jet-black hair was pulled into a high, messy ponytail, and she wore what looked like a pair of maroon silk pajamas and fuzzy brown slippers.

  Amber sped up and pulled alongside the woman, rolling down the passenger-side window. She felt like an absolute creeper.

  Kim leaned out a bit. “Bianca?”

  The black-haired woman’s head quickly whipped in their direction, shock widening her eyes. When recognition set in, Bianca frowned and faced forward again. After a beat, she suddenly shouted, “You can’t stop me!”

  Then she broke out into a run.

  “Oh, crap!” Kim said. “Pull up to the corner. I’ll get out and try to head her off. I just need you to know that I’m not above tackling a drunk woman to the ground.”

  Amber managed a faint laugh, then hit the gas. This stretch of road was lined by hedges, so even if Bianca decided to take a shortcut, she’d have to launch over the bushes to do it. And, given that she was currently running with all the grace of a newborn giraffe, Amber was fairly certain they could catch her.

  Whipping around the corner, Amber hit the brakes at the end of the sidewalk. Kim threw her door open and was off like a shot, barreling toward Bianca. Amber climbed out and ran back the way she’d just driven, with the hedge-lined sidewalk to her left, assuming that once Bianca’s drunken brain registered that someone was barreling toward her, she’d about-face and go the other way. Amber needed to get behind her before she did so.

  Amber had just passed Bianca who was running haphazardly in the other direction, when the woman yelped. Bianca did her best to stop, but her slippers didn’t have much traction. Kim had reached her, but both women were squared off now, arms out and bodies hunched toward the ground as if they were in a boxing ring. Since Bianca was distracted, Amber beelined for the knee-high hedges to her left. She cursed under her breath as she waded through, her tennis shoes doing little to help her. She nearly pitched over headfirst onto the sidewalk when a branch tried very hard to keep her shoe. Just as she’d freed herself and made it to the sidewalk, Bianca finally decided she was no match for Kim, let out a battle cry, threw something that very much looked like a flask, and then ran in Amber’s direction. />
  “Ugh!” said Bianca, coming up short again. Her eyes were bloodshot and puffy. “Not you, too! Leave me alone. You made it perfectly clear that you don’t want to help me. I’m doing this on my own—without help from a witch. A useless witch who won’t use her magic to help an innocent man!”

  Amber glanced to her right, toward the house they stood outside of. The front door was a few feet from the sidewalk. Then she looked left.

  “Oh, what?” Bianca asked, arms outstretched. Her voice got a little louder with every sentence. “You worried someone will hear? You’re worried everyone will know your little secret? Hmm? Is that it?”

  Amber shot a glance at Kim over Bianca’s shoulder. Kim had closed the distance once Bianca’s back was turned to her. “Get ready to catch her.”

  “Catch me?” Bianca asked. “What are you going to do? You going to—”

  “Bianca, sleep,” Amber said.

  Bianca’s eyes immediately rolled back in her head, but Kim already had her arms sliding under the woman’s shoulders to catch her.

  “Oof! She’s heavy!” Kim said, stumbling as she tried to keep the dead-weight woman upright. Then she whisper-hissed, “This is the second body I’ve helped you move in a month!”

  “Shh!” Amber said, hurrying forward to grab Bianca under her knees. “I really hope no one sees this.”

  They turned sideways so they could carry Bianca back the way Kim had come, to the car waiting for them at the end of the sidewalk, Kim’s door still open. If Amber had known she would need to move a body, she would have picked a better parking spot.

  They worked quickly, but someone could look out a window at any moment. What if someone came home from a late night at the office and saw two women stuffing another into the back of a car? Amber and Kim might end up dealing directly with an irate neighbor rather than the police, as it sounded like Marbleglen had lost faith in the police department in general. But even if Amber and Kim were cleared of the suspicion of being a crime duo, there was still a scandal here. Two members of the Edgehill Here and Meow Committee carting off the unconscious body of the leader of the Marbleglen Floral Frenzy Flower Committee? Neither Amber nor Kim would ever live it down.

  After getting Bianca into the backseat without triggering a baseball-bat-wielding vigilante, Amber and Kim climbed in front. Amber slammed the door and then thunked her head onto the headrest.

  Kim let out a gusty “Hoo boy! What a night!” as they closed the doors of the car, all three safely inside. After a beat, she said, “Now what? We don’t know where she lives.”

  “We need to sober her up—partly so she can tell us where she lives and partly so she’s less likely to angrily scream to anyone listening that I’m a witch.”

  “Waffles,” Kim said.

  “What?”

  “We need to get her some waffles,” she said. “It’s basically been scientifically proven that waffles are a balm to the soul.”

  Amber was almost positive that wasn’t true, but her stomach rumbled at the mere mention of them.

  Kim nodded, as if she were agreeing with Amber’s stomach, and buckled her seat belt. “For all her faults, Bianca Pace is very shrewd. She’s going to be horrified by her behavior when she sobers up. I can almost guarantee it. We just need to get her less drunk and full of waffles so we can get her home and she can sleep this off. Maybe we can help her figure out the grand conspiracy tomorrow, but for now, all she needs is waffles.”

  As Amber pulled out onto the street, and Kim pulled out her phone to find the nearest late-night diner, Amber said, “Thanks for helping me. I know Bianca isn’t your favorite person.”

  Kim waved the comment away. “It’s true; she’s not. But no one deserves to go through something like this alone. It doesn’t matter if her dad is guilty or not, or how much I like her.”

  “You’re kind of great,” Amber said.

  Kim looked up from her phone long enough to smile at her. “I agree.”

  Kim gave Amber directions to a diner that was open twenty-four hours. Calluna’s Corner was situated halfway between the Rhododendron and Lilac Gardens, on the east side of town. It was, according to Kim, just a hop, skip, and a jump from Lake Myrtle. The lake was a tourist destination, as the famous marbled rhododendrons grew most prevalently there.

  Located at the back of a small strip mall that was fairly dead, Calluna’s Corner was the only place open at a quarter to ten. Still, at least a dozen cars were parked out front. Amber found a spot far away from the late-night diners, in an obscure location near a wall and partially blocked by a row of hedges.

  Leaving the car running, Amber threw it into park, unstrapped her seat belt, and turned her attention to a wide-eyed Kim in the passenger seat. “Okay, when I take the sleep spell off her, she’s likely going to come out swinging. These things wear off on their own in half an hour or so, but since she’s pretty sloshed, it might take longer if we let it fade naturally. Waking someone from a sleep spell too early is like throwing a bucket of cold water on her head.”

  Kim just stared at her.

  Amber sat back a little, suddenly self-conscious that all of this had already gotten too weird for her friend.

  “Everything you just said was the coolest thing I’ve ever heard,” she said. “It’s like I’m in a movie!”

  “I need you to focus, Kim!”

  She sat up straighter and nodded vigorously. “Focus. I can do that.”

  Amber blew out a steadying breath and then turned to face their sleeping captive. She lay sprawled on her side, one arm flung over the seat with her knuckles resting on the floor. The cuff of her long-sleeved silken maroon pajamas rested against her wrist. Her cheek was smashed against the dark fabric, and several strands of her jet-black hair had come loose from Bianca’s already messy ponytail and lay strewn across her face. She snored softly.

  Waking her up was sure to be traumatic for all involved, but Amber wanted to get her tucked away safely in her own bed as soon as possible, and with a close friend informed of the situation so he or she could be there the next time Bianca cooked up another scheme that involved too much alcohol and wild theories.

  And in order to do all that, Amber needed Sleeping Beauty to be awake.

  “All right,” she said. “Remember: this will be like waking up a bear—a drunken bear.”

  Calling on her magic, Amber reached between the front seats and placed her hand on Bianca’s. The contact gave Amber’s magic a little jolt. Wake up, she told her magic, and that same jolt gave Bianca a zap, too.

  Sitting bolt upright, she gasped awake—like a drowning victim breaking the surface a mere moment before perishing. She coughed and clawed at her throat and then froze when her wild eyes focused on Amber.

  Then she screamed. A blood-curdling, I’m-looking-at-a-demon scream. Then Kim screamed back, hands balled into fists and pressed tight against her cheeks as her gaze zipped from Bianca to Amber and back again.

  Good grief!

  “Relax! Both of you!” Amber yelped, her shoulders pulled up to her ears.

  But they just kept screaming. Bianca, hands clutching her temples, squeezed her eyes shut.

  The frenetic energy in the car was driving Amber’s magic absolutely batty. It felt like a physical thing thrashing around under her skin, as if it also wanted to scream and was frustrated that it lacked a mouth.

  Amber needed to release it before she started screaming too. She also needed to calm Bianca down. Bianca was scared and alone. She’d had a plan—albeit a terrible one—that had likely made her feel a tiny bit better. Bianca had been sure that her father was innocent, and that Chief Daniels had something to do with the frame job. Since the police of Marbleglen were either corrupt, incompetent, or both, Bianca felt the need to take care of this problem herself. Maybe she’d come up with the plan while drunk. Or she’d needed to be drunk to have the courage to see it through. Either way, Amber and Kim, by ambushing Bianca, had taken that little bit of control away from a woman who likely wasn�
�t used to being without it. And now she was falling apart.

  Amber needed to get Bianca to snap out of this.

  With her attention focused squarely on Bianca—which was difficult while sitting in the front seat—Amber said, “BIANCA!”

  The screaming continued, but it forced Bianca’s eyes to pop open. Once she had eye contact, Amber poured her magic into a truth spell.

  “Do you, Bianca Pace, believe that Nicolas Daniels killed Eric Jameson?” she asked.

  “I don’t know!” Bianca wailed, then abruptly stopped screaming. Which made Kim stop, too. The admission caused Bianca to deflate, and she slumped against the backseat as if the words had knocked the air from her lungs. Amber’s ears were thankful for it. Bianca gently gripped her own throat; Amber wondered if it felt raw.

  Bianca worked her jaw, staring at Amber with something close to hate now. “Don’t use magic on me without permission.” She said the word “magic” as if it were the foulest of curse words. Moments later, her bottom lip started to shake. She pressed a hand to her stomach and let out a low, keening wail. “I know you don’t have any reason to believe me, but my father didn’t do this. He’s going to rot in prison if I don’t do something.”

  “I still don’t know what it is we can do; that hasn’t changed,” Amber said. “But we want to try, okay? I can talk to Chief Brown again. He—”

  “No cops,” Bianca snapped.

  “Oh, he’s one of the good guys!” Kim said. “Truly. He knows Amber’s a witch and everything. He lets her help her on cases sometimes.”

  Bianca, eyebrows raised, turned her focus to Amber in a silent question.

  “It’s true,” Amber said.

  Bianca scooted forward on the back seat, both hands gripping the headrest on Kim’s seat as she focused a very pathetic puppy dog look at Amber. “Will you please go with me to the arraignment tomorrow?”

  “Bianca, I don’t know—” Amber started.

  With face scrunched up in what looked like something close to pain, Bianca said, “I … I’m not asking you to go as a witch. I just need a friend tomorrow and I figured out very recently that I don’t have any. Things got real and the only people who came to save me were strangers whose birthright it is to hate me.”