Pride and Premeditation

by Samantha Silver

  “I knew I could count on you,” I replied. “Where does Polly live?”

  “Sapphire Heights,” Cat replied. “We’ll take my car, it’s only about a ten minute drive, but it’s a bit far to walk.”

  I nodded as we made our way to the parking garage where Cat kept her car. Outside of the main village area, Sapphire Village consisted of a number of small residential neighborhoods, each one of them named after some sort of gem. Sapphire Heights was at the far northern end of town, and when we got to the address, I had to admit, I was impressed. Polly lived in a huge log cabin that looked like it had been built about twenty years ago, but despite its age was still very impressive. After all, the logs used to build it were absolutely huge.

  “She can’t own this place, surely,” I said to Cat as we made our way up the gravel driveway and toward the front door.

  “I doubt it,” Cat replied. “More likely she and a handful of other people rent it out. It’s how a lot of young people here tend to live, by sharing these huge houses that are for rent. Eventually, the ones that want to stay buy a place of their own, the ones that don’t move on.”

  We knocked at the front door, and sure enough, it was answered not by Polly, but by a guy wearing only boxers who looked like he’d just gotten out of bed, despite the fact that it was nearly five o’clock.

  “Yeah?” he drawled in a strong Australian accent.

  “Is Polly home?”

  “I dunno. Probably. Come in and have a look. Her room is down the hall, first on the left,” he said, opening the door wide for us. Obviously, security was a heavy priority for this guy. Cat and I slipped past him and went down the hall, knocking on the door in question.

  “Who’s there?” I heard Polly’s voice reply.

  “Hi, Polly? It’s Cat and Alice, from the bookshop. We just wanted to see how you were doing.”

  I raised my eyebrows at Cat as we didn’t hear anything in reply, but a moment later the door open. Polly’s eyes were red; she had obviously been crying.

  “That’s so kind of you,” Polly said. “Please, come in.”

  Cat and I made our way into the small room. Despite the size, it was well organized, with a tiny desk in the corner and a chair next to the bed. Polly plopped herself down onto the bed, while I took the desk chair and Cat sat on the other one.

  “Have you heard anything else about the investigation?” Polly asked. “Do the police know who killed Ness yet?”

  I shook my head. “Sorry, we haven’t heard anything.”

  Polly sighed. “I just can’t imagine who would have done this to her. Who would have wanted to hurt Ness?”

  “We were hoping you could tell us,” I said softly. “You’re sure that there was no one Vanessa was having problems with?”

  “No, of course not,” Polly replied. “I’m telling you, everyone loved Ness. Well, not everyone. Her fiancé, Kyle, he had an ex-girlfriend, Tammy Jones.”

  “Oh yeah, I know Tammy a little bit,” Cat said, nodding.

  “Yeah, well when Kyle dumped her, she definitely did not get over it well. And when he started dating Ness, things got pretty bad for a while. I think the police were even involved. But there’s absolutely no way Tammy was involved in what happened; she wasn’t there that night at all.”

  I nodded. Whoever had killed Vanessa had to have been part of the book club group.

  “That makes sense. But Tammy wasn’t happy?”

  “Oh, she was livid,” Polly said. “She would throw eggs at this place in the middle of the night, and once she spray-painted “homewrecker” on the logs. The landlord wasn’t happy about that, let me tell you. But there was no proof Tammy had done it.”

  “Wait, Vanessa lived here?” Cat asked.

  “Yes, her room is just down the hall,” Polly nodded. “We’ve been roommates since we got out of high school.”

  “Would it be all right if we had a look at her stuff?” I asked, and Polly looked at us closely.

  “You’re trying to figure out who killed her, aren’t you?” she asked.

  I nodded. After all, why bother denying it? If Polly knew we wanted to help, maybe she’d be more willing to let us look around.

  “Sure,” she said, standing up. “But the police haven’t looked around yet, so don’t move anything, ok? Chief Griffin called this afternoon. They’re coming by tomorrow morning to look through the place.”

  “Of course,” I nodded. “We just want to do what’s best for Vanessa.”

  Polly opened the door to the bedroom and led us down the hall into Vanessa’s room. Where Polly’s room was neat and organized, Vanessa’s, well, wasn’t.

  Clothes–I couldn’t tell if they were dirty or clean but I had a feeling it was both–were strewn around everywhere. At least three shirts hung from the closet door, a pair of jeans dangled from the end of the bed, and I was pretty sure Vanessa’s floor was exactly where all the socks that had gone missing in my life eventually found a new home.

  There were at least four glasses on the nightstand, each with a different volume of water in them. The walls were decorated with posters, like Vanessa had been fifteen years old. The windowsill held a dead cactus. Who managed to kill a cactus?

  “I’ll be back in my room,” Polly said. “I don’t like being in here. It reminds me so much of her.”

  “Thanks, Polly,” Cat said quietly as the two of us moved further into the room. Polly closed the door behind us.

  “Well, searching Polly’s room would have been way easier,” I muttered as I waded through the clothes-covered floor.

  “Hold on,” Cat said. “Come here for a sec.” I made my way toward my cousin. “Give me your hands.”

  I did as she ordered. “What’s going on?”

  “The cops are going to be here tomorrow, and we don’t want them knowing we’ve been going through anything. I’m going to temporarily make our fingerprints disappear.”

  Cat closed her eyes then and I relaxed, feeling a flow of energy moving from Cat’s fingers into my hands. The ends of my fingers began to tingle with a strange energy, and a minute later, when Cat opened her eyes, I looked at my fingers. They were completely smooth. It was actually kind of creepy in a way; I never really realized just how normal fingers looked when they had an actual texture to them.

  “Well, that’s super weird,” I muttered.

  “Definitely,” Cat replied, making her way to the nightstand and rifling through the drawers. “But the alternative was bringing gloves, and I didn’t think of it. I had no idea Vanessa lived here.”

  I made my way to the large armoire in front of the bed. It was topped with a bunch of costume jewelry, as well as a framed picture showing Vanessa and Kyle, arm in arm along the beach, smiling wide. They looked so happy, it was a little bit sad. Even though from what I’d heard, Vanessa was definitely not the nicest person, that didn’t mean she deserved to die.

  “I found her iPad,” Cat said. “It doesn’t even have a password on it.”

  “Good, hopefully her email has death threats or something in it,” I replied. “That would certainly make our job easier.”

  I began rifling through all of Vanessa’s things in the armoire. The first few drawers only had clothes in them–how many could one girl need?–but when I reached the third drawer, my fingers wrapped around a bottle of pills. I pulled them out of the drawer. No, it wasn’t a pill bottle, it was smaller than that.

  The glass bottle was about the size of a small paint container, but it was definitely pharmaceutical. As soon as I read the label on the front, I froze.

  Potassium cyanide. Warning: fatal if swallowed. A large skull-and-crossbones was on the other side of the label, just in case the reader hadn’t gotten the message.

  “Uhh, Cat? We have a little bit of a problem here.”

  “What’s that?” Cat asked, looking up from the iPad, her eyes widening as she saw the bottle now sitting in my palm. “Oh. Yup, that’s a problem.”

  “What on Earth is this bottle doing h
ere?”

  Why was a bottle of cyanide–presumably the same one that had killed Vanessa–now sitting in the middle of her bedroom?

  Chapter 7

  “I think we need to consider that maybe she killed herself,” Cat said quietly, but I shook my head.

  “No, that makes no sense. This is a vial of liquid potassium cyanide. How would she have gotten the vial to the book club, poisoned herself, and then brought it back here and hidden it before dying? It just wouldn’t have been possible.”

  “Of course. But what if the cyanide wasn’t in the coffee, like we assumed? What if she put enough of it in a pill, or something, and took it that way?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “We could always try and get that info from Chase; he would have had her coffee tested.”

  “That said, I agree with you. I don’t think it’s likely she killed herself. I think we should assume someone planted that cyanide there.”

  “But who would have access to this place?” I asked. “To be honest, the person with the easiest access to Vanessa’s room, without being caught, would be Polly.”

  Cat’s eyes widened. “You can’t seriously think she did it.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, yeah, she’s broken up about it and stuff, but what if it’s not because she’s mourning for her friend, but because she feels bad for having done it? Maybe she regretted it instantly, but then couldn’t take it back, and then obviously couldn’t tell anyone, so she’s hiding her guilt behind grief.”

  “I think you’re reading too many detective mysteries at that bookshop of yours,” Cat said, folding her arms. “But whatever the reason, we have to put that cyanide back. Chase will find it in the morning.”

  I nodded. “We’ll see what he thinks. It could also be a different bottle of cyanide.”

  Cat raised an eyebrow. “If you asked me how many bottles of cyanide were sitting around in people’s drawers in Sapphire Village, I would have definitely guessed zero. The idea that there are two of them is completely ridiculous.”

  I snapped my fingers. “Hold on. You still have that iPad, right?”

  Cat nodded.

  “Well, I assume cyanide isn’t the sort of thing you can just pop down to the local pharmacy and buy, right? She would have had to have ordered it online. Can you check Vanessa’s emails and see if there’s a record of her buying it? If yes, then she probably committed suicide.”

  Cat tapped away at the screen for a couple of minutes as I took a picture of the cyanide vial with my phone before putting it right back where I had found it. After all, while we might have been investigating a murder that we weren’t really supposed to, I was definitely not going to interfere with the actual police investigation.

  Not to mention, I absolutely did not want to be anywhere near actual cyanide.

  “Nope,” Cat said, shaking her head. “I don’t see anything here. It doesn’t mean she didn’t delete it, but there’s no record of her having ordered cyanide online.”

  “Ok,” I said. “So we should assume that someone else planted it here?”

  “I think so,” Cat agreed. “Which means, we need to find out if any of the people from the book club have been in this house. Other than Polly, that is.”

  Before leaving, Cat took my hands in hers once again and reversed the fingerprint removal spell. I had to admit, having fingerprints back felt good. It was really weird, having perfectly smooth skin, and I didn’t like it.

  We made our way back to Polly’s door and poked our heads in. She was lying on the bed, just staring at the ceiling.

  “Did you find anything that might help?”

  “We’re not sure,” Cat said. “Has anyone else from that night been here since the murder?”

  Polly shook her head. “No. Vicky was here about ten days ago, she needed to pick something up for school, and Michelle is friends with Tom, one of the guys here, but she hasn’t been here in about a week either.”

  “So you’re one hundred percent sure no one from that night could have come in this morning, or last night?” Cat confirmed.

  “Definitely not. I was going to go in to work, but at the last minute I called in sick, so I’ve been here the whole day. And of course, I was here all of last night as well. I came straight home after it happened. I just couldn’t bear to be anywhere else.”

  “Of course,” I said sympathetically.

  “You can ask some of the others. I don’t know if they saw anyone. But I definitely didn’t.”

  “Ok, thanks for your help, Polly. We’ll let you know if we find out anything,” I said, closing her bedroom door behind us.

  We asked the same guy who let us in if anyone had come to visit the night before, but he confirmed what Polly had said. The only person who had come to visit in the last twenty-four hours had been us.

  We left the house with a lot more questions than when we’d arrived.

  “Can we stop by the cupcake shop? I need to check on some stuff,” Cat said as we drove back to the village. “We can use my portal to get into Brixton Road.”

  “Sure,” I agreed. I preferred to use Cat’s portal to mine anyway; being in the walk-in fridge of the cupcake shop made it a lot more hidden than mine, which was in the middle of the bookshop. I always closed the blinds before using it, of course, but I still didn’t like how open it felt.

  Just then, my phone binged, indicating I’d gotten a text.

  Sorry, been super busy with the investigation. Want to grab a quick coffee tomorrow? It was Chase.

  Sure, I texted back, my lips curling into an involuntary smile. It was nice that he was making time for us, even in the middle of an investigation. Plus, I’d be able to tell him what we had found out about Vanessa getting Iris fired from her job.

  By the time Chase and I had organized to meet at one of the local cafés at seven thirty the next morning, Cat had parked the car and we’d walked back to the cupcake shop.

  “I don’t even know how many cupcakes to make for tomorrow,” Cat complained. “If I’m not going to get many customers, like today, I might as well halve all of my figures. Maddie texted me and told me we had four dozen unsold cupcakes today. That’s unheard of!”

  “At least the food bank is going to be happy,” I said. Cat always took all of the extra cupcakes at the end of the night to the local food bank rather than throwing them out.

  “I wouldn’t even be surprised if they refuse them,” Cat muttered, the frustration in her voice evident.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll find the killer,” I said to Cat softly. I knew we were going to. We had to. But right now, we also had to convince Peaches to come back and join us in the plan to draw out the Others and defeat them, once and for all.

  The two of us climbed into the walk-in fridge, and I had to admit, after the heat of the day, the cool air felt extremely nice on my skin. As soon as Cat tapped a certain tub on the top shelf, a purple oval appeared in the middle of the fridge. I was used to the portals by now, and without missing a beat, stepped inside of it.

  For a split second, I felt like I was in the middle of a tornado. But, before I knew it, I found myself spat out of the other side of the portal, sitting on the grass in the park in Brixton Road where all of the portals had their exits.

  The sky tonight was a gorgeous, deep red color. The stars that twinkled in the sky regardless of the time of day shone brightly against the deep scarlet tone of the sky, and I was still admiring the view when Cat popped out next to me.

  Despite the dark color of the sky, everything was still light out; I imagined that was some more Brixton Road magic. This was the place where all the magical residents of Sapphire Village who didn’t want to actually live among the humans came to live, and it was basically like a real-life Candyland.

  The roads were bouncy, like walking on a trampoline, and covered in giant pastel-covered dots. It was as though someone had taken a box of M&Ms and dumped them all over the road.

  I was a really big fan of whoever had designed this place
; it was way more interesting–and far more fun–than hanging out somewhere normal.

  Cat and I bounced along the road until we made our way to where Cat’s mom lived, along with our Grandma Cee. Peaches had moved back in with them a couple of months ago, after splitting her time between Brixton Road and Sapphire Village, when we had been attacked by the Others.

  To be honest, I couldn’t really blame her, and I felt like we had our work cut out for us trying to convince her to come back to Sapphire Village and use our own bodies as bait.

  In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I thought it might have been a bad idea, too.

  Chapter 8

  As we made our way closer to the house, I noticed Peaches sitting in the front yard, an easel in front of her, pointing her fingers toward it from time to time. She looked almost identical to Cat, except that her hair was, well, a gorgeous pastel peach color instead of lavender.

  I tried not to focus on the marshmallow-like tree that had once broken my fall after I’d lost control of a broom during a flying lesson and almost died.

  It wasn’t exactly something I wanted to relive.

  “Millions of peaches! Peaches for me!” Cat sang out, and Peaches looked up at us, frowning.

  “I’m happy to see you, but you know I hate that song.”

  “Awww, but the millions of peaches are free!” Cat replied.

  “Yeah, well, maybe if you hadn’t used that line all through high school to insinuate I had rather loose morals,” Peaches shot back, and I grinned. That sounded exactly like something Cat would say.

  “Well, it’s water under the bridge now. How are things going here?”

  Peaches sighed, turning away from her painting. I shifted over to get a good look at it, and my eyes widened. It was an incredible abstract painting of colors that almost looked as though they were just a reflection in the water, and every time I moved, it was like the colors changed. As someone who didn’t have a creative bone in their body, I was very impressed.