A Familiar Tail

by Delia James

  I started to protest that I could pay for my own coffee, but Frank held up his hand. “This is a business meeting. What can I get you?”

  I ordered a cappuccino. Frank ducked into the low doorway and returned a few minutes later with a mug of what looked like solid black coffee, and my cappuccino in a wide-mouth cup. The barista had drawn a fern leaf with the milk foam. I have never figured out how they do that. Foam is not exactly a stable medium.

  “So, would you be surprised if I said I’d been checking up on you?” Frank asked as he gulped down a good quarter of a mugful of solid black coffee. I watched, fascinated and appalled.

  “I’d be surprised if you hadn’t,” I said when I could speak again. “What did you find out?”

  “Let’s see . . . Annabelle Amelia Blessingsound Britton?” He pulled out his notebook and laid it on our marble-topped table so he could flip one-handed through the pages. “Graduated State University of New York at Buffalo with a BA in fine arts and a minor in business. Not your usual combination . . .”

  “I figured it’d take a while to make it as an artist, so I needed a backup plan.”

  “It seems to have worked. You freelance, specializing in book covers and illustrations for independent authors, and commercial art like posters and murals, but you also have some gallery shows to your credit”—Frank turned a page—“and some good reviews from critics and a few specialty publications. Probably not married . . .”

  “Definitely not married.”

  “No arrests, no outstanding warrants, no mortgages or bad car loans, no debts in collection . . .”

  “You can find that out?”

  “I am a trained professional. Want to know your age and weight?”

  “No, but I’m thinking of canceling my HeyLook! account.”

  “Too late.” He tucked the book away and took another long swallow of black coffee. I winced. The man must have a cast-iron stomach. “But the long and the short of it is, you probably are who you say you are.”

  “Just like you.”

  “Just like me, and more importantly, you do not seem to be making your money or reputation off bogus psychic predictions or ghost hunting.” Frank leaned back and crossed his ankles. A few sparrows switched positions on the guardrail, and several others fluttered away, maybe heading out to get reinforcements. Frank just kept looking at me. His pose was relaxed, but that relaxation wasn’t genuine. His whole attitude remained as closed and as neutral as his expression. Two plump women in purple T-shirts and bright red hats trotted down the stairs from Bow Street and ducked into the vintage store. Frank waited until the door shut behind them.

  “Are you sure about what you said?” he asked quietly. “You’re certain Aunt Dot wasn’t alone when she died?”

  “Positive.” I paused. “You do believe me, right?”

  “Yeah.” Frank stared out across the river. “I wish I didn’t, but I do.”

  It was a long moment, and several more sips of coffee (well, sips for me, gulps for Frank), before either one of us spoke again.

  “Did you know your aunt was a witch?” I asked softly.

  To my surprise, Frank laughed loud enough to scatter the sparrows.

  “Are you kidding? Everybody knew. She was proud of it. She had a Web site and a HeyLook! page, for Pete’s sake, Northeastwitch.com. Dressed up in the pointy hat and green makeup every Halloween. You should have heard her doing her Wicked Witch of the West imitation: ‘I’ll get you, my pretty.’” He hooked his fingers into claws.

  “And your little dog too?”

  He chuckled. “Especially the little dog.”

  “But did you know she actually . . . worked magic?”

  Frank considered his mug for a moment. “I knew she thought she did. I saw one or two things that made me wonder. And then there’s Alistair, who is definitely not a normal cat and never has been.” He took another swallow of coffee. “So, let’s say I’ve got an open mind on the whole magic question.” He paused. “How about you?”

  “Me?”

  “Are you a witch? Is that why you were able to . . . do that thing you did down in the basement?”

  It was a serious question and it deserved a serious answer, especially after that “thing I did” down in the basement. “I’m not really a witch, yet. But I’m exploring the possibilities.”

  He nodded. He also took a deep breath and let it out again. There was something opening up inside him. I couldn’t tell if he liked it, and I was pretty sure he couldn’t either. “But you still don’t have any idea who it was with Aunt Dot when she died?”

  I shook my head. “Sorry.”

  He nudged the handle of his empty mug back and forth a couple of times. “Could you find out?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know, and if I did find something . . .” I met his gaze. It was surprisingly easy this time. “I don’t know if it would be anything that would stand up in court.”

  He nodded and nudged the coffee mug handle again. I resisted the urge to tell him to stop that.

  “Are you asking me to take a look?”

  He nudged the mug handle back. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

  “Why? You don’t know me from Adam’s off ox. I could be anybody.”

  “Ah, but you’re not.” He patted the pocket with his notebook in it. “You’re Annabelle Amelia Blessingsound Britton, and your grandmother was friends with Aunt Dot, and Alistair likes you.” He paused. “And you’re not me.”

  “Sorry, but why is that important?”

  “Because Aunt Dot’s friends don’t like me very much. At least, some of them don’t.”

  “By some of them, you mean Julia Parris?” I guessed.

  Frank nodded. “Julia, among others. They won’t talk to me about what Aunt Dot was doing those last weeks, or much of anything else. It’s made it hard for me to find what I need on my own.”

  “Okay. I’m going to ask the obvious question. Why don’t they like you?”

  “I’m going to give you the obvious answer. They think I’m the one who killed Aunt Dot.”

  21

  HERE’RE A FEW things I’ve learned when it comes to talking about murder:

  1) As a topic, it generates more than its fair share of long pauses.

  2) Long pauses, in turn, generate copious amounts of staring into the bottoms of cups.

  3) When you’re tired of staring into the bottom of your cup, across the river is a decent substitute.

  4) There are a lot of really fat sparrows in Portsmouth.

  I was working through option number three on this new list, and realizing the full truth of number four, when I heard myself ask Frank, “Is there a reason somebody might think you murdered your aunt?”

  “Probably because I inherited the house, and everything else. Probably because . . .” He sank into another of those long pauses. “Because they know Aunt Dot and I were fighting over it right before she died.”

  “Which it? The house?”

  “The house. The money.” He swirled the last of his coffee before he gulped it down. “Aunt Dot was . . . on edge a lot during those last weeks. I thought she might be having health issues.”

  “Like with her balance?” I said. There is such a thing as a look of pure poison, and Frank was leveling it at me now. “Sorry,” I mumbled. “That was inconsiderate of me.”

  His expression said he agreed, but he shrugged again. “For the record, what I was worried about was dementia. She’d stopped going out. She wasn’t keeping her usual appointments with her book group and her garden club. Those can be signs.”

  “So, you wanted her to move?”

  “Move, or at least get an aide. We would have found the money. But she insisted everything was fine, and we argued.”

  “Did you tell Julia about this?”

  “I tried to.” He frowned at the bottom of his mug,
as if disappointed that it was not spontaneously generating more coffee for him. I understood the feeling. “Julia doesn’t believe me.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. She won’t talk to me, remember? But a couple of her good friends were talking to you last night at the Pale Ale.”

  “You know where I was last night?” That snapped my head back around. Several consternated sparrows took off for less disturbing begging grounds. “Gosh. That’s in no way creepy. Or stalkerish.”

  “I was in the bar having a beer with some of my staffers,” answered Frank calmly. “We were celebrating getting the latest issue to bed, and I saw you there. Right out in public and everything.”

  I folded my arms and went back to looking out over the river. I also wondered how I’d missed seeing him. It seemed a big thing to miss. I tried telling myself, Well, the bar was awfully crowded last night, and I was a little distracted. I have no idea whether myself planned on buying that or not, because movement caught my eye. A teenager careened down the cobbled river walk on his battered bicycle, causing the sparrows to launch themselves off the guardrail. When the birds reassembled, they had a new friend: a surprisingly skinny goldfinch.

  My heart thumped, and I groped for my backpack. “Sorry,” I muttered.

  “Phone call?” asked Frank.

  “Something.” But the flurry of wings sounded behind me, and I glanced back. The sparrows, and the skinny finch, had all taken to the sky again. But this time it wasn’t any kid on a bike scaring them off. Alistair galloped out from under the wooden crates like a furry gray avenger. Sparrows chirped and birdy-cursed and Alistair meowed. He also retreated under our table and wrapped himself around my ankles.

  “Again? You’re kidding me,” breathed Frank. “You are really, absolutely effin’ kidding me.”

  There was no answering this, largely because it wasn’t very coherent.

  “Hello, Alistair.” I lifted the cat onto my lap. He meowed complacently and rubbed his face against the table edge.

  Frank opened and closed his mouth several times, before he apparently decided to give in and accept the situation. “Hey, Alistair.” He scratched Alistair behind the ears. “Where’ve you been, huh? I’ve been worried about you.”

  The cat proceeded to demonstrate his repentance by sticking his face into my empty cappuccino cup and licking up the remains of the milk foam.

  “Your human concern is touching,” I translated as I petted Alistair’s back, “and has affected him deeply.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m used to it. We pretty much grew up together.”

  Alistair meowed again, possibly in confirmation. Then he leapt off my lap and darted back under the stack of crates.

  “What the . . . ,” began Frank. Then his face twisted up. “Oh, for Pete’s sake.”

  I twisted around in my chair in time to see Ellis Maitland trotting down the stairs from the square.

  “Hello, Frank,” Ellis called. “Magda said I’d find you here.”

  “Magda should remember who’s signing off on her summer internship,” Frank muttered, but when Ellis held out his hand, Frank shook it, mostly as a polite reflex, I thought. “What can I do for you?”

  “Mind if I sit?” Frank clearly did mind, but he nodded anyway. Ellis pulled up a chair from the other table and sat. Today’s suit was crisp, creamy linen, which is really tough for a guy to wear without looking like an escapee from a Southern Gothic.

  “Good to see you again, Anna.” Ellis offered me one of his professional smiles. I smiled back, but it was like Frank’s handshake, a polite reflex. I also snuck a glance toward the crates. If Alistair was still lurking, I couldn’t see him.

  “I just wanted to apologize,” Ellis was saying to me. “Brad shouldn’t have come at you sideways like that.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Frank before I could even get my mouth open.

  Now Ellis frowned and turned to me. “You didn’t tell him Brad caught up with you last night at the Pale Ale?”

  “No, she didn’t tell me,” said Frank. He was going to have to stop stepping on my lines, not to mention frowning at me like this was all my fault.

  “We hardly spoke,” I told him. “Mostly I was looking at a watercolor painting his wife, Laurie, did. He gave me a card, in case I wanted to see some properties later. But that was it.”

  “Really?” Ellis settled back, crossing his legs at the knee. “Oh, well, I must have misunderstood.”

  “And just what was it you misunderstood?” asked Frank. He’d tucked his hand into the pocket where he put his notebook but seemed to think better of it and brought it out empty.

  “Oh.” Ellis waved his hand vaguely. “I thought Brad said he’d been talking with Miss Britton here about Dorothy’s house.”

  The silence couldn’t have lasted more than a couple of seconds, but it felt much longer.

  “Why would Brad Thompson tell you he’d been talking about Dorothy’s house?” I asked.

  “Brad works for me.” Ellis tilted his head toward me. “You didn’t know that?”

  “No. I’m new around here.”

  Ellis chuckled. “You’re not new. You’re back. Whole different kettle of fish.”

  “Not that I ever actually lived here,” I reminded him.

  He shrugged. “But your family did once. With the old families, you can never really get away, can you?” The way he said “old families” made my neck prickle. It reminded me too much of the conversations with Julia and Val. Was he trying to tell me he knew Grandma B.B. was a witch, like Julia? Not to mention his mother, Elizabeth?

  “Brad’s not in any trouble, is he?” asked Frank abruptly. “I’d hate it if he was on the outs again over Aunt Dot’s house.”

  I gripped my cup and ordered myself not to make a sound, no matter how startled I was. Why would Frank care about Brad Thompson? Were they friends? If they were, what was Brad doing breaking into his friend’s house?

  That was when I remembered I had so far neglected to tell Frank I knew who the second burglar was.

  Ellis’s eyebrows shot up in an attitude of surprise that was at least as genuine as his smile. “Huh? Brad in trouble? No, no, of course not. Brad’s a good man. Focused. Works hard. No. It’s all good there. I’m just a little confused; that’s all.” He leaned his elbows on the table, which brought him in close enough for me to smell his aftershave. “Why would Brad think you, Anna, would have anything to do with decisions about Dorothy’s house?”

  A fresh silence settled over us, with both men waiting for me to fill it. My options for that, though, were really limited. I was not going to tell Brad Thompson’s boss he’d been doing a little casual B and E on the weekend. Not even to see his reaction, although I had a feeling that reaction would be truly interesting and informative.

  “What confuses me, Mr. Maitland, is why this is your business,” I said. “It’s not your house.”

  “No, but Brad is my employee, and what he does affects my business.” Ellis spread his hands. “You may be just passing through, but I have to live here. If I get a reputation for sneaking around, nobody’s going to want to deal with me. So, maybe Brad thought there was some connection between you and Frank that he could work on to get hold of the house, you know, maybe score some points with the boss.” He gestured toward himself. “But if that’s the case, he’s stepped over the line, and I want to know about it.”

  He was fishing for something. I knew it, and from the look on Frank’s face, he knew it too. I knew something else too.

  Somebody around here was lying.

  Either Brad had lied to Ellis, or Ellis was lying to the both of us right now. But was this really about the house, or could the cause be something to do with Dorothy herself? Both Julia and Frank said Dorothy had grown secretive before her death and practically barricaded herself in her home.

 
; The home Ellis Maitland was so very interested in.

  “I’ve known Brad a long time, Ellis.” Frank’s eyes narrowed slowly. I would have given anything to know what he was thinking right then. “If he’s stepped over a line, I’ve got to ask myself, when did he decide to take that risk? It didn’t come out of nowhere.”

  “That’s something I’ve been asking myself.” Ellis’s answer was smooth, and was not, I noticed, a real answer. “Anyway, it won’t happen again.” Ellis climbed to his feet and slapped Frank’s shoulder on the way up. “I’ll have a word with Brad, and we’re all good, right?”

  “But you still want the house.”

  Ellis threw up his hands. “All right, yes! I still want the house. Because I want to help, Frank. What’s it going to take to get you to believe that? Are you going to live in that house? No, or you would have already moved in. Can you afford the mortgage? Oh, excuse me, mortgages, because Dorothy took out a second there, didn’t she? No, you can’t afford it, because you’re pouring every penny into that paper of yours.” He stabbed a finger behind him. “Dorothy’s house has been empty for six months and counting. No matter how often you’re over there, it’s going to start falling apart. Now, if you hurry, and if you get yourself a decent agent, you might still catch some of the summer buying season. If you don’t, it’s going to be standing empty over the winter. After that, no matter how good the location is, you’re going to be taking a hit on the sale price. Look, cards on the table, okay?” He glanced at me. “You don’t mind, do you?” He pulled out a notebook, wrote something down, tore out the sheet and handed it to Frank. Frank unfolded the paper.

  First, his eyes popped. Then he frowned, hard.

  “Final offer,” said Ellis. “After this, you never hear from me again.”

  Was it just me, or did that sound as much like a threat as a promise?

  Frank folded the paper up and slid it into his pocket. Then he pulled out his cell phone and hit a number. All the time, he kept his eyes on Ellis Maitland.