Pawsitively Swindled

by Melissa Erin Jackson

  In another of her rare vulnerable moments, Bianca said, “We have a little over two weeks to get something my dad’s lawyer can use against these guys. My dad won’t last long in prison …”

  Amber hoped they could find that something before it was too late for Simon.

  Chapter 17

  The following day at The Quirky Whisker, Amber put in a morning shift that had been so busy that Lily, Ben, and she had hardly had a chance to sit down. So when Lily and Ben left for lunch and Amber flipped the sign to “closed” and locked the door after them, she considered foregoing lunch entirely in favor of a nap behind the counter. Though her ankle felt better, it was still a bit swollen, and when she was overly active, as she had been today, it grew increasingly unpleasant to put weight on it.

  She plopped onto a stool behind the counter instead of going upstairs right away. Tom would be furious with her for being late with his lunch, but Amber wasn’t sure she could weather stairs right now. Oh, if only she really could fly.

  Grabbing her phone out of her purse for the first time all day, she saw she had two missed calls and three texts from Bianca.

  You’ve been approved to visit Dad.

  I left you two voicemails.

  Hello?

  Amber called her back without listening to the messages.

  Bianca picked up right away. “Where have you been?” she whispered.

  “Working,” Amber said. “Here and Meow season is in full swing.”

  Bianca grumbled something under her breath that sounded disparaging to cats, and Amber almost hung up on her. “Anyway. When can you come by?”

  “In about an hour? I need to eat lunch,” Amber said, and her stomach rumbled its agreement.

  “Lunch is on me,” she said. “Text me what you want, and I’ll have it waiting for you.”

  “Why are you whispering?” Amber asked, whispering now too for some inexplicable reason. Whispering made this discussion of lunch sound like a covert spy operation.

  “I’m hiding in the back room at Dad’s,” Bianca whispered. “His officer is a nightmare. He hardly lets Dad pee. I thought parole officers were supposed to just check in periodically. I swear this guy is here more than I am!”

  “How am I supposed to do a memory spell then if this guy is breathing down my neck?” Amber asked.

  “I don’t know. Dad says you’re the daughter of some famous witch,” Bianca said, sounding mildly annoyed that she had to explain this to Amber. “You’ll figure it out. Text me your order. See you soon.”

  The call disconnected and Amber sighed loudly. “Sorry, ankle,” she said. “We’re on the move again.”

  She got up the stairs well enough and fed the cats—only receiving minimal grief from Tom. Getting back down resulted in a lot of wincing and even more cursing. By the time she got to Simon’s house, her ankle was throbbing, her stomach was growling, and she was in a grumpy mood. Hobbling up to Simon’s front door, she vowed that if Bianca gave her an attitude for any reason, Amber had every right to clock her in the face. She also better have heeded Amber’s instruction to not put mustard on her sandwich or Amber very well might suffer a mental break.

  But Simon answered the door and his smile made some of the irritation warring with hunger in her stomach lessen a bit.

  “Thank you so much for coming by,” he said. “I know it’s a lot to ask you to come over here in the middle of the day when you have your own problems to deal with.” Then he lowered his voice a fraction. “I’m at my wit’s end already, Amber. I … I can’t go back there.”

  A little more of her irritation ebbed away. “We’ll figure this out.”

  He nodded once and then stepped back to let her in. “Bianca is out getting everyone sandwiches. I made some lemonade and cookies for us.”

  As Amber walked in, she glanced down and spotted the thick black band around Simon’s left ankle above one of his house slippers. The chunky black box on the side had a periodically flashing blue light.

  “Officer Wilson?” Simon called out as he closed the door and then made his way past Amber, heading into the kitchen. “My guest is here.”

  Amber stepped over the threshold into the now-familiar kitchen and found an expressionless man sitting at the far end of the table with a sweating glass of untouched lemonade in front of him. The table, unlike the last time Amber was here, had been cleared of Simon’s wreath-making supplies.

  “Hi,” she said to the man. “I’m Amber Blackwood.”

  He was round-faced, and had his gray hair cut into a military buzz cut with a tidy mustache. He stared at her with dead black eyes. If it weren’t for the occasional blink, she would have thought him a disgruntled statue. He wore a white button-up shirt lined with thin blue pinstripes. A small black notebook poked out from his breast pocket. He pulled the notebook out now and flipped it open, consulted it, and then looked up at her. “Amber Blackwood. Aged thirty-two. Owner of The Quirky Whisker in Edgehill, Oregon. Parents deceased. Younger sister Willow and guardian Gretchen Blackwood, both of whom live in Portland, Oregon.” He glanced down at his notebook again for a moment. “You’re a … toy maker. What connection do you have to Simon here?”

  Amber blinked rapidly at him. “I uhh … we both enjoy geocaching and met during a meetup group.”

  “Ah,” he said, with no inflection to indicate whether that was a “how interesting,” “that checks out,” or “I see you are a filthy liar and I will have to throw you out of here on your butt now” kind of “ah.” It was merely an acknowledgement of new information. “Please proceed as if I’m not here,” he said, returning the notebook to his pocket. “You cannot leave the house to hunt for caches, of course. Ha.”

  Amber smiled awkwardly, her cheeks twitching with the effort, assuming that last part had been the man’s attempt at making a joke, but it had been delivered with all the joy of a scoop of ice cream tumbling off its cone and splatting on the ground.

  Just then, Bianca arrived and announced that she had sandwiches, salads, and chips. Amber had never been so happy to hear the woman’s voice.

  The four of them sat around the table and ate mostly in silence. It was hard to make small talk on the best of occasions, but it was even harder with people who you hardly knew while also being watched by the human equivalent of a vulture who was just waiting for you to make a fatal mistake so he could rend the flesh from your bones.

  “So, uh … Dad …” Bianca said, finally breaking the silence. “A few days ago, Amber and I ran into Molly Hargrove.”

  Simon stilled, a chip halfway to his mouth. After a moment, he popped it in his mouth, wiped his hands on a napkin, and said, “Is that so?”

  “Were you two really working on an article together?” Bianca asked.

  Simon sighed. “Yes. She seemed to think I had information on the police department. She’d more or less asked me if I was her anonymous source, and because I wanted as much information about Jameson as possible, I let her believe it. Well, I … how do you say … convinced her I was her source.”

  He cut a look to Amber and she knew that meant he’d cast a spell on Molly to get her to believe she had the right person.

  “Did you find out anything?” Bianca asked, arms folded on the table as she leaned toward her father a fraction, seemingly forgetting that the vulture-statue was taking in their every word.

  “Have you heard of Stone Gate Farms?” Simon asked.

  Amber and Bianca shared a wide-eyed look.

  “They want to buy up a bunch of land in Marbleglen,” Amber said.

  “Yeah. And the guy who is trying to broker the deal is a guy named Randy Tillman. He’s shrewd and relentless—a lot like Molly, actually,” Simon said. “When Tillman was first getting started as a land developer, he wanted to distinguish himself from his successful father. About thirty years ago—when Tillman was in his twenties—there was a property in Arizona that land developers were salivating over. It was a twenty-six-acre amusement park with a Wild West theme. It had bee
n going steady for a good eighteen years, but the owner, Hugh Woodbury, was older, in failing health, and didn’t have anyone to pass the property onto. Hugh was willing to sell the property for five million so he could retire in peace and easily afford his medical bills, but his catch was that the new owner had to agree to keep the amusement park running as is.

  “The location also had a restaurant with a liquor license, so developers thought this would be a perfect spot for a concert space, especially since it was right off the highway. The old guy turned everyone down.”

  “Until Tillman?” Amber guessed.

  “Until Tillman,” Simon said. “Somehow Tillman convinced Hugh not only to sell the property for four million, but Hugh signed a contract that Tillman could turn the property into anything he wanted. A week later, Hugh died.”

  Amber and Bianca both gasped.

  “There are still people to this day who are convinced Tillman did something to Hugh. Hugh was older, had no living relatives, and was starting to go downhill health-wise. Maybe Tillman was just incredibly persuasive and Hugh’s death was a coincidence.”

  “Sorry,” Amber said, trying to get back to where this all started. “What does this have to do with what happened to Jameson?”

  “Jameson was the anonymous source to Molly,” Simon said. “Not me. I asked him as much at that dinner party and he confirmed it. That’s one of the few things I remember before the black hole starts.

  “Anyway, Jameson found out about this shady deal of Tillman’s—a long string of shady deals—and saw what was unfolding with Joe Cooper and started to worry Tillman was going to go after Cooper the same way he’s been rumored to have gone after Hugh.”

  “Oh,” Amber said.

  “Yep,” said Simon. “My bets are on Tillman being the shooter.”

  “Do you know who Victoria Sullivan is?” Bianca asked. “She’s one of the people who signed an eyewitness statement saying you were the shooter.”

  Simon’s jaw tensed for a second and his nostrils flared. “That’s the weird thing—I don’t think I even know who she is. The name isn’t really familiar, but my memory isn’t the most reliable right now. All I know is that she’s got to be connected to Cooper and/or Stone Gate Farms. What we need to do now is to figure out who wanted this deal so badly that they’d be willing to kill Jameson and frame me for it.”

  The vulture-statue grunted in disapproval. If Amber had to guess, she’d say Wilson thought Simon was as guilty as they came. His flat dark eyes were focused squarely on Simon. A rush of words suddenly poured out of Simon’s mouth.

  Amber recognized the spell a second later.

  Another grunt sounded from Wilson. Amber saw one of his eyes twitch slightly and then he pulled his small notebook out of his pocket and consulted it for a moment.

  “Please proceed as if I’m not here,” Wilson said, immediately returning the notebook to the front pocket of his shirt. “You cannot leave the house to hunt for caches, of course. Ha.”

  Simon had just erased Wilson’s memory of that conversation.

  Amber was still reeling from that when Simon casually asked her if she liked her sandwich and if she’d like anything else.

  “N-no, thank you,” she managed. “That was really good. Thank—”

  “Officer Wilson?” Simon asked, cutting Amber off.

  The man cocked his head slightly. “Yes, Mr. Ricinus?”

  “Sleep.”

  Wilson’s eyes rolled back in his head and he tipped backward, his chair—with his considerable weight still in it—crashing to the floor.

  Amber and Bianca both yelped and jumped to their feet.

  “Quick!” Simon said. “Help get him back up. We’ll have at least half an hour to do this before he comes to.”

  They all hurried over to the man who was snoring like a drunk elephant. Bianca and Amber took either side of him, and Simon stood behind. On the count of three, they got the chair back on its four legs—how the thing didn’t shatter under the guy was a miracle, as far as Amber was concerned. Simon gently eased the man forward so his temple rested on the table’s surface, his arms hanging limply on either side of him.

  “Bianca,” he said, “you stay here and watch him. Holler if he wakes up prematurely. Amber and I will be in the back office. We’ll soundproof it.”

  Bianca crossed her arms and glared down at the snoring man. Amber couldn’t be sure if the scowl was due to disdain for Wilson’s existence, the fact that he might wake up at any minute, or that she was being left out of Amber’s attempt to unlock Simon’s memories.

  “This way,” Simon said, and quickly walked out of the kitchen.

  Amber shrugged helplessly at Bianca, then followed him.

  They headed back toward the front door, then made a sharp left into a narrow hallway. There was a bedroom on the right, followed by the bathroom, a second bedroom, and then an office at the end of the hall—which shared a wall with the kitchen. A doorway directly across from the one they’d just walked into led outside, the blinds on the one window drawn closed. A futon draped in a brown tartan blanket rested against the leftmost wall, and a long desk rested against the right. The dark screens of two computer monitors sat on top of the desk, the keyboard hidden beneath on a rolling tray.

  Simon closed the door, uttered a spell, and the sounds of the outside world were shut out, just as they had been when Zelda Rockrose had conducted a similar spell in Sorrel Garden. “Okay, have a seat,” he said, motioning to the futon. “Just, uh … give me a second. This is the most magic I’ve used in a while and it’s giving me a bit of a headache.” He wheeled over his black desk chair, stopped a foot away from her, flopped into it, and rested his elbows on his knees. His eyes closed and his chin hit his chest. He clasped his head in his hands.

  Amber sat on the futon, her hands pressed together and squeezed between her knees. Simon looked so … defeated already. Defeated and exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with his magic use. She’d already prepared herself for how to break the news to him if her memory retrieval spells revealed nothing. Perhaps he was preparing himself for this possibility, too.

  Though time was of the essence—because goodness knew how Wilson would react when he suddenly woke up face down on the table—Simon still had his attention focused on the ground.

  “Why do you think they would choose to frame you?” Amber asked.

  Simon looked up at her then, his forehead pinched. “That’s what’s keeping me up at night even more than the fact that I might rot in prison for something I didn’t do. I was causing a stink in town, sure, and Jameson and I clearly didn’t get along, but why him and not me? Did they find out that he was the whistleblower? Why am I still here and he’s gone?”

  Amber frowned. “Does Molly have any idea who her real source is?”

  “I don’t think so, no.” Simon’s eyes were suddenly red-rimmed. “What if I really did this and I don’t remember? I know Bianca believes I’m innocent, but even I’m starting to doubt myself. I can’t trust my own mind anymore.”

  Without Edgar here to guide her, Amber’s faith in her abilities was wavering even more than Simon’s faith in his innocence. What if she tried this and got sucked into the black hole in Simon’s mind? What if her magic got fused with Simon’s the way Neil Penhallow’s had with Edgar’s, and then she became trapped in Simon’s head?

  He held out a hand. “I fully understand that this might not work. But I have to try.”

  Amber nodded, then fished a folded-up piece of paper out of her pocket. She’d copied it out of her grimoire; it was the same memory spell she used on Alan Peterson’s business card. All she needed to do was slot in the time, date, and location of the memory she wanted to see. “Once I start, I need you to think about Chief Jameson’s house. Every detail you can think of, okay? Your focusing on the location will help guide me to the right place.”

  Simon’s skin had gone a little sallow, but he nodded.

  Lying the spell flat on her knee, Amber held
out her hands for Simon to hold. Once she’d uttered the spell and added in the necessary parameters, he closed his eyes as he conjured up images of Jameson’s house.

  The shape of a house—maybe a light beige, maybe a dark tan—formed in her head. A stretch of sidewalk leading up to a black front door. A well-kept lawn.

  And then it felt as if Amber had been kicked squarely in the gut.

  She and Simon gasped as magic vaulted out of their hands, pushing Amber back so forcefully that the back of her head collided with the metal frame of the futon, and Simon was hurled back, the desk chair’s wheels sliding across the wooden floor and slamming him into his desk. He swiveled just in time to catch one of his monitors before it pitched off the desk and tumbled to the ground.

  Amber’s heart thundered as she idly rubbed the tender spot on the back of her head. “Well, I guess that’s out.”

  Simon righted the screen and then slouched in his chair now. He faced her, his feet splayed wide, but he wasn’t looking at her. “This is proof I was roofied, though. This is unfortunately what happens a lot in assault cases in hybrid communities. The best way to tell if a woman has been roofied is to get a witch to perform a memory spell on the witch victim. If the magic kicks them—almost literally—out, then she was drugged. It’s a more effective test than blood or urine, but of course we can’t use this as proof in a non-witch court.” He released a gusty sigh. “I don’t know what to do now.”

  “Do you have anything from that night?” Amber asked. “Even the clothes you were wearing might work.”

  Simon sat up a little straighter, thinking. “The clothes I wore that night got confiscated, because apparently there was blood and possible gunpowder residue on them. But—ah! My cell phone. It was in my pocket the whole time.” He got up, broke the soundproofing spell, and darted out.

  Though the house was quiet, the everyday noises—did the air itself have a sound?—crashed back in.

  Simon was back in under twenty seconds. He handed her his phone.

  Just as she’d done with Simon’s hands earlier, Amber repeated the same spell. She braced herself to be violently kicked off the doorstep of the memory again, but her mind filled with hazy images instead. Amber was learning that when she did spells like this, she often ended up reliving the memory of the object itself. So she only saw what it had seen. Even if the “it” in question didn’t have eyes.