Pawsitively Secretive

by Melissa Erin Jackson

  Connor’s attention was across the street anyway, where a news van was parked. A group of people were clustered together, talking in even more hushed tones than the police nearby.

  “Friends of yours?” she asked, after hitting send on her message to Kim.

  “Hmm?” he asked, and turned to her, as if emerging from a daze. “Oh, uh, yeah. My editor is over there with a few co-workers.”

  “You can go,” she said, when it became clear that he very much wanted a change in company. “Kim should be here soon.”

  “I just want to check in really quick,” he said, but he was already moving away. “I’ll be right back.” Then he hurried across the street, not sparing her a second glance.

  That Connor Declan was an odd duck.

  She watched how he’d grown decidedly more animated as soon as he was around his colleagues. Then her gaze snagged on a man off to the right of Connor’s group. There was nothing remotely familiar about him, but she supposed there could be people from nearby towns here. A friend of one of the out-of-town cops, maybe. But something about the guy seemed off. He was dressed casually enough and appeared to be alone.

  Instead of checking his phone or awkwardly making eye contact with strangers—the nervous energy of someone who was in an unfamiliar place surrounded by unfamiliar people—this man seemed too calm. Amber thought of the men in movies who were dressed a little too nicely and then strolled into the wrong part of town and were immediately labeled as cops by the locals. That was what was wrong with him. He seemed too alert, too calculating. As if he owned that little strip of sidewalk he stood on.

  He must have felt her gaze on him, because his sliced over to her. She could only hold it for a moment, and then she swallowed and looked away. She pulled out her phone, but she didn’t see any new messages from Kim. When she looked across the street again, the well-dressed man was gone. She scanned the sidewalk but couldn’t spot him.

  The only consolation she had was that she didn’t think he was a Penhallow—but given the way her last couple of months had gone, she couldn’t be truly sure of anything.

  She scanned her side of the street, hoping for some sign of Kim. To her right, the gaggle of officers was still deep in conversation with the mayor. And beyond them, making their way up the sidewalk, were … Jack and Larry Terrence.

  Oh crap.

  She took several steps back until she was pressed against the outside wall of the bar. She hoped the cluster of uniformed officers shielded her.

  Please go into the Siamese. Please go into the Siamese.

  The brothers stopped just past the patio and peered into the bar. Amber couldn’t hear anything they said, but she saw Larry shake his head. Then they kept moving toward her terrible hiding place. She tried to assess, on a scale of one to ten, how embarrassing it would be if she dropped to her knees and crawled under the officers’ legs to hide, like a bored kid hiding from his mom in a turnstile of clothing at a department store.

  No more than a six, right? Anyone who knew the details of her recent past with Jack Terrence would likely assist her.

  Closer. Closer. Amber took in Jack’s handsome face—his dark hair and his day-old stubble. Oh, the stubble was new. And it was working.

  No. She quickly shook her head. No, he’s not a good match for you, Amber. Stop ogling his pretty face.

  Larry spotted her before Jack did, and Amber froze. He smiled at her tentatively and raised a hand in greeting. Poor Larry had seen Jack and Amber go from smitten to cold-as-ice in the matter of a day and neither Jack nor Larry had any idea why—both for different reasons.

  Kim! Where are you? Save me!

  Her phone chirped in her hand at that moment; a message from Kim. Parked but still need to walk to the Siamese. Oh my God, Amber, there are so many people here! This is wonderfully terrible.

  “Dang it, Kim,” she muttered to herself.

  Amber was going to be forced into another awkward conversation with Jack, which would be made even more awkward by the presence of his brother. Up until now, Amber had done a rather bang-up job of avoiding Larry Terrence altogether. Which was sad, as she and Jack’s brother had just been forming a friendship.

  But Amber had a knack for making lots of almost friendships. It was the real, lasting ones that she struggled with.

  Panicked, her gaze swung back to the chief and his fellow officers. On impulse, she tapped into her already haywire magic and, with a tiny flick of her wrist, sent a burst of air toward the chief’s currently exposed neck. He gave a shiver and looked over his shoulder—whether he had sensed her magic, or he had instinctively turned to find the source of the gust, she couldn’t be sure. All that mattered was that he’d noticed her.

  She gave him a pointed look that hopefully made him think she had something truly urgent to share with him. His brows bunched up, but a moment later, he placed a hand on the mayor’s shoulder, said something close to his ear, and then broke away from the group to move her way. The timing was perfect: just beyond the chief’s broad frame, she saw the Terrence brothers come up short. Then a pair of women a few feet away waved them over. Jack hardly paid Amber another moment’s glance as he greeted the women, but Larry squinted at her suspiciously.

  “Amber?” the chief asked, craning his neck so his face was in her line of vision. “Earth to Amber.”

  She focused on him. “Sorry. Hi.”

  “Hi.” Standing to full height, he cocked his head. “You all right?”

  “Eh.”

  He chuckled. “Fair enough. Well, I’m glad you’re here. I have a … favor to ask of you.”

  “Oh?”

  He glanced at the officers to her right, then lightly jerked his head to the left. “Come with me.”

  She did so, his big frame shielding her from the Terrence brothers as she walked by. She could feel Larry’s gaze on her; she did her best to ignore him.

  Amber and the chief walked halfway up the sidewalk, the crowd much thinner here as this was not only getting too far from the Siamese, but it was exceedingly farther from Blue Point Lane.

  “There’s an alley coming up here in a second,” the chief said in a low tone. “Turn in there.”

  He was creeping her out a little. She thought of the mud on his shoes and pant hems, and a lump formed in her throat. Had they already found her? Had her body been discovered in the woods during a preliminary search and the police had been debriefing the mayor on how best to tell all these people the worst possible news?

  After turning left into the alley, they silently walked to the end of it. When they reached it, Amber whirled to face him. “You found her, didn’t you?”

  He cocked his head again. “What? No. Actually, the opposite. We canvassed the woods last night and came up empty. We’ve been in and out of this area since four this morning. A couple of officers from Portland brought in sniffer dogs. Nothing. Whether that’s because there’s nothing to find, or because the rain washed away any hint of evidence …”

  Amber’s shoulders sagged and she rested her back against the brick wall behind her. “So what’s with the clandestine alley meeting?”

  “Normally, we would never let civilians canvass what could potentially be a crime scene. At least not this soon,” he said. “The mayor called that town hall meeting without consulting the department first. Once we found out about it, we did our best to conduct our own preemptive search. We tried calling this off altogether, honestly. I dang near begged him to. Asked him to give us a week, then three days. He won’t budge. I could fight him on it—the guy isn’t above the law—but I’m not sure raising a stink is worth it at this point. I’m trying to make the best of an already bad situation.”

  None of that answered her question, but she let him keep talking.

  “He threatened to get a gang of private investigators in here if we didn’t step up the search. We’ve barely had time to breathe; most of my officers haven’t slept. We’re doing all we can,” he said, and she noticed the bags under his eyes then. “I
’ve met my fair share of up-and-up PIs, but I’ve met some real sleazebags who will do anything they think is necessary to get the information they’ve been paid to find. Depending on who he gets in here … well, they could make things even more difficult for us.”

  “And this is where the favor comes in?”

  He nodded, then glanced behind him down the length of the alley, the mouth of which was still deserted. All she could see was part of a large white van on the opposite side of the street. He turned back to her, then leaned a shoulder against the wall, blocking her from view, she realized, from anyone who might walk by.

  Though, at this point, she was sure everyone in Edgehill had seen the two disappear into an alley together and were already speculating that she and the chief were doing something inappropriate down here.

  He quickly reached into a pocket and pulled out a plastic zipped bag with a tube of lipstick in it and handed it to her.

  She took it cautiously. Lady in Red, said the round label on the base.

  “This is Chloe’s,” he said. “I was thinking you could do one of your … what do you call them … locator spells on it?” He said the last few words in a hushed whisper as if they were the foulest of curse words.

  “Really?” she asked, blinking rapidly.

  “Really,” he said. “Between the mayor’s influence, the growing media interest in this, and the threat of possible PIs invading the town, we need something to appease Frank enough to get him to back off a little. If something truly terrible did happen to Chloe, things could get ugly here.”

  She looked down at the tube in her hand. “Can I touch the actual canister? The more direct the contact, the better.”

  He sighed. “Can you magic away your fingerprints afterwards?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Groaning, he said, “I feel like I’m setting myself up for disaster here, but yes. We need a lead. Anything. Your fingerprints being on her lipstick could be explained away by that conversation you had in the bathroom with her at her house. Maybe you touched it then.”

  Amber nodded. “Okay, give me a second.”

  He blanched. “You’re going to do it here?”

  “Oh, don’t get your panties in a twist,” she said, smiling to herself at the appalled expression on his face.

  Opening the bag, she reached in to take out the thin gold canister. Then she folded and stuffed the empty bag into her pocket. With a calming breath, and the canister held between thumb and forefinger, she closed her eyes.

  “Is it … is it working?”

  “Shh!” she said. “I haven’t even started yet.”

  Conducting a locator spell varied in difficulty depending on what—or who—she was looking for. The spell used to find her cell phone had been conducted so often, it had become second nature, hardly needing a full thought. All she had to do was picture her cell phone and her magic did the rest.

  When it came to people, however, how much the person wanted to be found—assuming they could be found at all—had a way of interfering with even a perfectly executed locator spell. Amber supposed she could still locate Chloe if she had met her end, but it would depend on how long it had been since she’d passed away. Her magic could latch onto what remained of Chloe’s life energy, but only if that energy was still there to find. Amber had been able to tap into Melanie’s life energy at least partly because Melanie’s body had been preserved in the morgue. Amber couldn’t say the same for Chloe.

  Her stomach roiled.

  Blowing out another steadying breath, she told herself to concentrate. The chief staring at her wasn’t helping, and her magic felt as jittery as the rest of her.

  Memory magic is your birthright, she reminded herself. You inherited memory magic from the Henbanes.

  When she instructed her magic to remember her conversation with Chloe, suddenly she was there again. Rain lashed the bathroom window. Chloe, alive and healthy, sat on the closed lid of the toilet, while Amber stood with a hip resting against the counter. Amber focused on Chloe—her heart-shaped face and light brown hair and eyes. The way she was prone to turn beet red when embarrassed.

  Though her mind told her she stood in a bathroom in the Deidricks’s house, she could still feel the lipstick tube held tight between two fingers. The brick wall against her back. The chief’s piercing gaze boring into the side of her head.

  Where is Chloe Deidrick? she asked her magic.

  She was pulled, almost literally, out of her memory and the Deidricks’s bathroom. Her eyes snapped open and she involuntary took a step forward. The feeling was similar to what happened after she conducted a spell for her cell phone; a tug in the direction of where the item was hidden. Except this was ten times stronger.

  She wasn’t sure how long she could fight it. What if she started sprinting down the sidewalk toward the location, unable to get her feet to listen to her?

  “Is it happening?” the chief asked.

  “Yeah,” she said. “It’s strong. How soon can you get this search started? My magic won’t let up until I find what I’m looking for. It’ll get more insistent until I do.”

  “I can get them moving in ten,” he said. “That enough time?”

  “Guess it’ll have to be,” she said, wincing slightly. She felt like a piece of metal being yanked toward a powerful magnet.

  “On it,” he said, then jogged away. Thankfully he slowed to a causal strolling pace once he reached the mouth of the alley, which hopefully made their alley meeting slightly less suspicious looking.

  Though, didn’t people who had secret meetings always leave a place separately to keep people from making assumptions? Which was exactly what would happen anyway. Great. She really hoped the chief’s wife didn’t catch wind of some kooky rumor about her husband and Amber having a secret romantic rendezvous in an alley on the morning of a search for a missing young girl. It sounded tacky on so many levels.

  As much as she had grown to like—and trust—the chief, he was one of the last people she had romantic feelings for, regardless of the fact that he was married, and she adored his son Sammy.

  But none of that would matter if some busybody got it in his or her head that Amber and the chief were up to no good. People were already starting to make wild speculations about the rapid shift in their relationship from animosity to best buds.

  Thankfully, she’d only heard one person suggest that perhaps she and the chief had an “enemies to lovers” kind of chemistry that had finally tipped over to the “lovers” side. Amber gave a violent shudder.

  Her magic tugged her forward, reminding her that she had more important things to be worried about right now.

  Just as the chief had done before her, she slowed when she reached the mouth of the alley, gave herself a little mental pep talk, and then strode out onto the sidewalk, turning right. She had almost reached the assembled group outside the Sippin’ Siamese—the mayor was standing on a table in the patio of the bar and had just brought a megaphone to his mouth—when her phone gave a chirp.

  She pulled it out to see several missed texts from Kim.

  Where are you?

  Someone said you and the chief just snuck off together?

  The chief is here and looking very haggard and you’re nowhere to be found!

  Amber?

  Amber fired off a quick reply, wincing as her magic gave her another yank. She stumbled forward a half step but held her ground. I’m outside the Siamese now. Where are YOU?

  “Thank you all for coming this morning,” the mayor said into the megaphone.

  There were at least one hundred people here. Amber could only imagine how much damage this many pairs of feet could do to potential evidence—none of that had occurred to her until the chief had said as much.

  Amber stood at the back of the group assembled on the sidewalk and had to rise onto her tiptoes to see over the sea of heads. Soon there was a minor disturbance in the group ahead, and Amber soon realized it was because Kim was making her way through the cro
wd against the flow of traffic to get to her.

  When Kim broke free, she let out a puff of air. “Oh my God, Amber. I never thought I’d find you in all this madness.” Her friend wore jeans, black boots, and a puffy black jacket. Her long brown hair had been stuffed up inside a fuzzy pink knit cap, which was held down by a pair of plush white earmuffs. It wasn’t nearly cold enough for such attire, and she looked a bit closer to a snow bunny ready to lounge in a ski cabin than she did someone preparing to trek through mud in mid-March, but nonetheless Amber was happy to see her.

  “Sorry,” Amber said. “I had to talk to the chief.”

  Kim wrinkled her nose. “So I heard. Too bad he’s a happily married man. He’s just kind of hot. I like the idea of you snagging someone like that.”

  Amber took Kim by the elbow and gently turned her around so she was facing the same way as the rest of the crowd. “I much prefer having your company.”

  Kim beamed.

  “These fine officers here,” the mayor said, pulling their attention toward the bar’s patio. They both stood on tiptoe to get a better view. The mayor motioned to the group of officers huddled just outside the gate of the patio. Several waved a hand in acknowledgement at the residents waiting on either side of the street. “These officers will be sending people out in waves and will be giving you assignments on where best to search. There are a lot of you here, so please be patient while they sort everything out. For now, they’ve asked me to have everyone on this side of the street start making their way toward Blue Point Lane. Those across the street will get their time as well—just hold tight.”

  The mayor put the megaphone down on the table, then jumped off.

  Amber’s magic gave another lurch and she let out an involuntary grunt.

  Kim cocked her head. “You okay?”

  Amber rubbed her stomach. “Just nerves, I think.”

  “Oh my God,” she said. “Me too. I had this really weird dream last night about Chloe. Well, at first I didn’t know it was Chloe, because she was in the form of a pink duck, but eventually …”