Pawsitively Swindled

by Melissa Erin Jackson

  With a sigh, she finally turned away and followed her aunt and sister, leaving her parents behind.

  Chapter 23

  A full week went by without incident. The boomerang spells hadn’t been triggered on the grimoires from a Penhallow finding their new hiding place in Quill; none of the dots on the map showed any signs of strange behavior other than how much Molly Hargrove flitted about both Marbleglen and Edgehill; and Amber felt no closer to figuring out how to help Simon. Jack provided a distraction, at least, and they’d gone out a couple of times for long dinners where they tried to talk about anything other than Simon’s quickly approaching court date.

  There were only three days left now and Bianca had grown increasingly awful, buried as she was under the fear that her father was destined for prison, and therefore she took it out on anyone else on the planet who so much as looked at her wrong. Sometimes she called Amber just to complain about things, no matter how mundane. It was exhausting.

  So, as Amber was in the process of closing up shop for lunch, and the bell above the door chimed, she hadn’t expected anyone other than a late-arriving customer trying to squeeze in some quick shopping when Amber was desperate for something to eat. Amber thought she’d locked the door after the Bowen sisters had left. Willow was out to lunch with an old high school friend and Aunt G was upstairs watching the maps. Turning toward the door, a “Sorry, we’re closed!” poised to come out of her mouth, she came up short when Bianca Pace strolled in. With Amber’s aunt and sister in town, the need for mapsitters had decreased; Amber had no idea what Bianca could be doing here. Amber hoped she hadn’t shown up just to complain about something in person.

  “Hi,” Bianca said. She wore a black pencil skirt, a teal-colored blouse, and shiny black pumps. A very large, likely designer, handbag hung off her bent arm. Her raven-black hair was stick straight today. “Do you have lunch plans?”

  “I guess I do now?” Amber said, forcing a smile.

  Bianca nodded once. “I can explain on the way.”

  Without another word, Bianca strode back outside. At a loss, Amber hurried behind the counter to grab her own purse, then locked up and followed Bianca, whose white BMW was parked in the lot beside Amber’s new car.

  “That yours?” Bianca asked, angling her head toward it. “It’s cute. That’s the starter car I had in high school.” Then she unlocked the BMW with a press of a button on her key fob and slid in.

  A month ago, Amber would have been offended by that, but Amber had gotten used to her. Perhaps dealing with Edgar’s brash and honest personality had worn down Amber’s sensitivity.

  As Bianca pulled out onto Russian Blue Avenue, Amber asked, “How’s Simon doing?”

  Bianca shrugged one shoulder. “He’s doing okay. I mean I’m more stressed out about how close his court date is getting than he is. He seems to have great faith you’ll figure this all out.” She shot Amber a quick look that expressed how much Bianca didn’t agree with her father’s assessment of Amber’s skills. “He’s finished, like, a million wreaths at this point. I’ve been allowed in a couple times since you were last there; the house is starting to look like a forest or something—branches and dried leaves and pine cones are everywhere. He hasn’t shaved in weeks. He’s allowed out of the house as long as it’s to the store or something, otherwise he’s constantly being watched. He spends a lot of time in the garden, I think mostly in a passive aggressive move to give Wilson a sunburn. They might be bonding though. Yesterday they built a planter box and Dad said he even made Wilson laugh once.”

  “That’s definitely a small miracle,” Amber said, remembering the stone-faced officer quite well. “So … uhh … you said you’d explain something on the way?”

  Bianca nodded. “Right. So, about three weeks ago, I started a ‘Justice for Simon Ricinus’ social media page. I wasn’t sure it would do much good since most of the people in Marbleglen seem to have written both me and my dad off, but I thought some of our old contacts from Wendel might see it and help. I trust witch law enforcement a heck of a lot more than non-witch right now.” A muscle in her jaw twitched. “Anyway, yesterday, I got a message from a woman who claims she works for Victoria Sullivan.”

  “No way,” Amber said. “Where does she work?”

  “Get this: the Belhaven Crime Lab,” Bianca said. “Misty is an intern in a forensic science program and Victoria has been training her. Victoria Sullivan is the lab’s lead analyst.”

  “Whoa,” Amber said.

  “Yeah. She said she didn’t want to tell me anything else over the phone, but was happy to talk in person,” Bianca said. “She’s apparently obsessed with something called Coffee Cat, so that’s where we’re going.”

  Amber let out an involuntary grunt. “They have a gingerbread latte that will change your life.”

  “I’m not really into artisanal coffees,” Bianca said, sniffing once. “I like my coffee a certain way. No frills.”

  If Amber remembered correctly, the last time Bianca Pace ordered a coffee, it had been at Purrcolate, and the request had been so elaborate, not even Jack knew how to make it.

  Coffee Cat was currently busier than Amber had ever seen it—even the minimal outdoor seating was taken. It was a popular place, especially with tourists, and this was the time of year for it, but Coffee Cat, much like Purrfectly Scrumptious, had won a “Best of Edgehill” designation at last month’s Hair Ball. It was nice to see that the award, even though the commemorative stickers weren’t gracing shop front windows yet, was already increasing business for people across the town.

  By the time they’d placed their orders, a table had miraculously opened up near the detailed chalk cat mural. Amber and Bianca sat in awkward silence for a couple minutes, partly because it was noisy in the café, and partly because Amber didn’t have a clue what to talk to Bianca about most of the time.

  “Oh, I think that’s her,” Bianca said. “She said she was in a pink shirt.”

  Amber turned in her seat. A woman stood near the door who looked like it was taking everything in her power to not just about-face and walk right back again. A look Amber knew all too well thanks to all her time spent with Edgar lately. She was about five-foot-five, had shoulder-length wavy black hair, a thin, angular face, and she was tightly clutching the straps of her purse with both hands as she scanned the crowd. She didn’t look like she could be a day over twenty-two.

  Bianca stood and raised a hand as if she were hailing a cab on a street corner in New York, but it got the woman’s attention, and she let out a little “oh,” before nodding and weaving her way around the haphazardly scattered furniture and the line of people placing their orders.

  When she reached them, the woman said, “Hi. Uhh … Bianca?”

  Bianca held out a hand. “Yes. Pleased to meet you, Misty. This is my … uh … friend, Amber.”

  “Hi, Misty,” Amber said, wondering if the word “friend” is what had tripped Bianca up, or if it was Amber herself. “Did you want anything to drink?”

  “Oh, I’ll get something on my way out.” Misty visibly swallowed, then slunk into the remaining chair before the round table. She still held fast to her purse.

  “Thank you for meeting with us,” Bianca said as she sat, hands folded primly on the table, the picture of professionalism. It was her festival director pose. Her “I’m here to get things done” pose.

  Misty seemed to shrink under the intensity of it. She was a petite female version of Edgar.

  “So, Misty,” Amber said, turning toward her and trying for a friendly, light tone to counterbalance Bianca’s overall vibe. “What was it about Bianca’s post that made you want to reach out to her?”

  “Oh,” she said, focusing more on Amber now than Bianca, “well, umm … I work at the Belhaven Crime Lab. Well, I don’t work, work there. I’m an intern. I’ve only been there for about six months. People think it’s weird, but I’ve always wanted a job in forensics,” Misty said.

  Amber, though she wasn’t looking
at Bianca, sensed the woman’s growing impatience already. As discreetly as possible, she held up a hand to shush her. Misty was clearly shy and needed a little time to warm up to get comfortable. “I don’t think that’s weird at all. I think it’s really cool you’re pursuing something you want despite what others might think about it. That takes guts.”

  Misty flushed and ducked her head. “Thanks.” Yep, she was just like her cousin. Misty cleared her throat. “Anyway, I’m being trained by Victoria Sullivan. It’s weird though, ’cause her name on all the plaques and whatnot at the lab are Jane Lyles, because that’s her ‘real’ name. She’s Jane Victoria Lyles, but she just got married recently and is just now starting to go by her preferred name. Anyway, Victoria is the lead analyst there. I work as her assistant, mostly. I clean up stations and prep samples and things like that, but Victoria does the actual testing.”

  Amber and Bianca’s drinks arrived and Misty instantly felt silent, flushing again. They’d both gotten the gingerbread latte. Bianca eyed hers dubiously. Misty, however, looked like she wanted to dive headfirst into Amber’s glass.

  Amber pushed it toward her. “Take mine. I’ll grab another when this place calms down a bit—if it calms down.”

  “Are you sure?” Misty asked, but she was already reaching for it. She then downed half the glass.

  Bianca had been about to take a prim sip of her own drink but halted to offer a semi-disgusted look over the rim of her glass at Misty’s apparently abhorrent table manners. Then Bianca took a sip, looked into the glass briefly, her eyes wide, and then downed half of the contents.

  “Okay, fine, you were right. My life has been changed.”

  Satisfied, Amber turned back to Misty. “You were saying you’re Victoria’s assistant?”

  “Oh right,” Misty said, a little more relaxed now. “I get kind of overlooked because I’m small and quiet and do my best to stay out of people’s way. And I haven’t really made any friends there yet. Anyway, three weeks ago, the day after the shooting, I was eating lunch behind the building. There’s this really friendly squirrel back there and I’ve almost got him to where he’ll take a peanut right out of my hand. So I was out there doing that when I heard Victoria talking to a man out back. They didn’t see me. I was a little too far to hear what they were saying, but I saw the guy, the cop—a big bald guy, but he still had a ring of red hair around his head—hand something to Victoria and then he handed her an envelope that was really thick. I heard him say, ‘Same rate as usual, right? I threw in a little extra so we can get the results faster.’ Then Victoria put the envelope in her pocket and the guy left. It just seemed really weird, you know? But I’m new to all this, so I thought maybe cops sometimes pay labs a little extra to expedite samples if it’s a really high-profile case or something.”

  Misty blew out a little breath and polished off the rest of her drink. She swiped at her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “When I got back into the lab after lunch, a couple of the lady techs were talking about how much they don’t like Daniels. I don’t think he and Victoria dated or anything—they just work together a lot. They all say he creeps them out,” Misty said. “Victoria came in a few minutes later and told me that we had a rush order on a sample, so we had to add it to the batch that she already had scheduled. A whole bunch are tested at once—like up to fifty. By then, I knew enough about the protocols of how much of each blood from the original sample is taken out and put into a smaller vial, and how the gas chromatograph works and all that.”

  “Gas chromatograph?” Bianca asked.

  “Oh, sorry, that’s the machine that heats up the blood and separates compounds like alcohol,” Misty said. “So, every once in a while, something gets messed up in the process. Like, one time the machine ran out of helium and that ruined the whole batch of samples and we had to start over. One time one of the techs didn’t put the smaller vials in the chromatograph tray in the right order and all twenty-nine samples got paired with the wrong results. We caught it in time, but you know, when you’re working with that many samples at once, sometimes mistakes happen. It’s almost good when they do, for me anyway, because I’ll be more prepared later.

  “I really, really want a job in forensics, though. Like this has been my dream since I was five. So I was really excited when I got this internship and I’ve been super careful every day and taking notes on everything. In the six months I’ve been there, samples have just … vanished three times. One time, I could have sworn that Victoria took twice the amount of blood from a vial but the results were given to two defendants—meaning one sample got tested, but someone got the results from someone else’s blood. When I pointed that out to her, she screamed at me for like ten solid minutes. I cried through half of it. She said if I ever questioned her ability to do her job again, she’d terminate my internship. When I went back to check later, the levels in the main vials had evened out again. I thought maybe I’d just imagined it.”

  “And something like this happened with Simon’s sample?” Amber asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Bianca sat up a little straighter at that.

  “I don’t usually pay much attention to specific names, since we process so many at once, but when she didn’t think I was paying attention, I saw her pull a vial from her pocket and place it with the others that were getting tested that day,” Misty said. “When she left the room to make a call, I checked the main vials and figured out which new vial was Simon’s. Again, I didn’t know if what I saw behind the building was normal somehow. I already knew that Simon had already been arrested, of course. I didn’t really have any feelings about that either way, but when I found out that Daniels had become the new chief of police, alarm bells went off in my head. But, I mean, who was I supposed to talk to about any of it?

  “Plus … on the day of Simon’s arraignment, which I’m pretty sure was a Thursday, Victoria called me into her office and said she’d seen me earlier behind the building eating lunch and asked why I was out there. We got to talking about how shy I am and all that, but she asked me a couple different times if I’d been out there when Chief Daniels came by to talk to her on Tuesday. More alarm bells went off.

  “Then she told me she thinks I’ve got real promise in the field, she’s impressed with how strong my attention to detail is, and if I keep working as hard as I have been, she’d be happy to give me a glowing recommendation when the internship is over. She even said that she’s got a contact at the Oregon State Police Forensic Lab, which is the biggest crime lab on the west coast, the literal dream. But …” Misty sighed.

  “All these great things would only happen if you kept your head down and your mouth shut?” Amber asked.

  “Yeah, exactly,” Misty said. “And she never point-blank threatened me or anything, but I knew what she was saying without her saying it directly. Just like all the ladies at the lab know Daniels is gross even if he hasn’t done anything. Sometimes you just know.”

  Amber and Bianca both nodded.

  “I knew, deep in my gut, that something bad had happened with Simon, but I didn’t know what to do about it. I’m just an intern with no evidence,” Misty said. “And then I saw Bianca’s post about her dad and how he’d stopped drinking when he was twenty-five, so it was probably very likely Victoria dry-labbed his sample and reported that he’d had over the legal limit of alcohol in his system.” She shook her head lightly. “That’s when I knew how bad this thing really was and I knew I had to try to talk to you.” She offered Bianca a sad little smile.

  Bianca had softened considerably over the course of Misty’s account and she tentatively reached out a hand across the table to the younger woman, palm up. Just as tentatively, Misty placed her hand in Bianca’s. With a light squeeze, Bianca smiled sadly at Misty, too. “Thank you for this, truly. I kept wondering if I was just in denial—that maybe I was just so … scared and sad that maybe he really had done what people are saying about him. And then I felt terrible for thinking it. So … as
odd as it may sound, you gave me back my faith in my own father.”

  Misty’s eyes welled up. With a pat to the back of Misty’s hand, Bianca let her go.

  “Are you not worried that talking to Bianca might jeopardize your internship?” Amber asked, hoping it came across without an ounce of judgement.

  Misty sniffed. “I quit yesterday. Sorry. I guess I should have said that sooner. It’s hard to think of not going there every day. Anyway, a second intern started a couple days ago and another sample mysteriously vanished. She laid into that guy so hard, he almost started crying. I know firsthand how rough it is to get torn a new one by that lady. All I could think was that someone else had paid her off to dry-lab another sample and she was throwing blame on the new guy to keep the heat off herself and I got so angry that I quit on the spot. Then I sent out a bunch of new applications and that email to Bianca.”

  “I was right,” Amber said. “You’ve got guts. People are making a mistake when they overlook you.”

  Misty ducked her head. “I want to be in forensics to help people, not hurt them. Dry-labbing is as bad as it gets. So, Bianca, if you need me to talk to your dad’s lawyer, or law enforcement in Marbleglen—whatever you want. Just tell me. If I can help shut Victoria down too, that’s even better.”

  Bianca grinned at her. “Well, in that case, I’m going to go buy you another gingerbread latte.”

  Chapter 24

  After another round of lattes, the women exchanged numbers and hugs, then they parted ways. Amber and Bianca stood at the curb, watching Misty walk away.

  “The lunch hour is almost over,” Bianca said. “Did you want to eat actual food, or …?”

  Amber’s stomach rumbled at the prospect of lunch, but both Bianca’s expression and tone made it quite clear that dining somewhere with Amber wasn’t on her list of things she wanted to do today.