by Delia James
“Yeah, well . . . are you sure the . . . copies . . . are in the house?” I helped myself to rice and chicken tikka so I had an excuse not to be looking at him right then.
“Where else would they be? Unless she had a safe-deposit box or something?”
“Not that I know about.” I pushed the basket of naan toward him. Brad shook his head.
Then I remembered something Frank had told me. “I do know Dorothy’s computer got stolen. Was that you?”
“No. I was too slow. I’ve been trying for months to find out who took it. It’s been making me crazy. I’d hoped for a while it was one of her . . . in-town people.”
“By hers, you mean Dorothy’s?”
“Of course Dorothy’s.” He frowned hard at me, and I forked some food into my mouth to keep myself quiet. “But when nobody lowered the boom, I figured it was pretty obvious who actually got hold of it.”
No! No, it really isn’t! I screamed in my mind.
“Well, there are two of us now.” This time, Brad did help himself to a wedge of the buttery flatbread and nibbled the corner. “We should be able to pick up the pieces pretty easily. What took you so long to get here?”
I shrugged. “I had stuff to tie up, and I thought . . . things here might take a while.”
“You got that right.” Brad tore his piece of naan in half, popped one piece into his mouth and chewed, for a long time. “So, okay, if you got the keys from Dorothy, we should be able to get back into the house while—”
“Actually, I’ve got some good news.” If I was playing the coconspirator, I might as well go all the way. “Frank Hawthorne is going to rent me the house.”
“What? You’re kidding.” All the blood drained from Brad’s face, and I got the slow, creeping feeling that I’d just made a terrible mistake.
“We’re drawing up the lease tomorrow.”
Brad swore. He stared and he swore again. “That means they’re gone!” he croaked. “He got them, or he knows where they are!” He shoved his chair back and climbed heavily to his feet, getting ready to leave in some kind of panic before I’d even kind of found out what he was talking about.
“Brad, please, calm down. You . . . we can’t be sure he found anything.”
“I can’t be sure? He hasn’t let anybody near that house for six months and then you show up . . .” He stared at his hand, which still clutched that piece of naan. “You show up and he’s renting it out and oh, my God, I’m such an idiot!” He swore again and hurled the bread down onto the table. The hostess and the waiter were staring at us from the podium by the door. “Dorothy would have told you about me! I should have known something was wrong when you didn’t come straight out and say it!”
“Look, Brad . . .”
“Is there a problem, sir?” the waiter asked smoothly as he hurried over to us. He was only about as tall as Brad, but he was in much better shape, and right then, much calmer.
“No,” I said quickly. “Sorry. Thank you.”
The waiter looked at me, and he looked at Brad. Brad sat back down, slowly. Over his shoulder I could see the hostess pull a cell phone out of the podium drawer and flip it open.
“You’ve got to calm down, Brad,” I said evenly. “Otherwise they’re going to throw us both out.”
Brad clenched his fists and made an effort to control himself. He actually shuddered doing it. Then he leaned across the table until we were almost nose to nose. “You lied,” he whispered furiously. “You’re not working with Dorothy! You’re working with Frank!”
“I’m not working with anybody.” Except, of course, I was.
“Then who the hell are you?” He grabbed my wrist and squeezed hard. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m just trying to help, and you really want to let me go right now.”
I tensed myself, getting ready to put that self-defense class I took at the YMCA into action. I also clutched the wand under my napkin. The hostess had turned away from us and was talking into her phone.
This time, I felt it, that warm, prickling current. Something in the air around me shifted and Brad’s panicked grip loosened.
I pulled my hand away, gently. “Look, Brad. I can tell you want to talk to somebody about . . . all this. That’s why you’re here. Whatever you tell me, I promise, it won’t go any further without your say-so.” For your family’s sake, if nothing else.
There it was, the pricking under my skin, the shifting in the air. I felt it stretch out, and I willed Brad to trust me. I wanted him to trust me. I needed him to. It was important.
Tears glittered in his eyes. Then the air shivered and the connection broke.
“I know I’m a freakin’ coward and I look like some kind of idiot,” he whispered. “But you better keep your mouth shut. I swear that if you bring my name into whatever game you’re playing, I can still break you, and Frank. You tell your new landlord that.”
He stomped out, shoving his way hard through the door. I fell back in my chair, crumpling my napkin in my hands.
The hostess closed her cell phone and turned to greet the new family who’d come through the door. The waiter brought me my check and offered to wrap up the rest of my dinner to go. I couldn’t blame him. I didn’t want me in here anymore either.
• • •
IT WASN’T UNTIL walking—okay, tiptoeing—through the door at McDermott’s that I realized I’d left my carryout bag on the bus.
I tried to shrug it off, but somehow it really bothered me. You know how it is, when you’ve got so many big things going wrong that somehow it’s the last little thing that seems to bring the world crashing down.
“Anna?”
I jerked around, wobbling dangerously on the stair. Roger came into the foyer from the threshold of the great room, drying his hands on a striped dishcloth. He wore a green polo shirt and jeans and his dark hair was tousled. He looked so intensely nice-guy normal, it was almost embarrassing. Here I was worrying about witches, theft and murder. He was probably worrying about whether his quiche was going to gel, or whatever it was those sneaky quiches did when you weren’t looking.
“Good day?” asked Roger, like his quiche hadn’t a care in the world.
“Oh, yeah. It was just . . . long.” I started up the stairs. I needed to be away from this guy and all his normalcy. I was tired, I was confused and I was entirely without the tikka masala that had been supposed to make things better.
“You do remember I know what’s going on, don’t you?” said Roger to my back. “We’re here if you need to talk.”
He was trying to be nice. Considerate. I made myself smile. “Thanks. Really. But what I need right now is some space.”
“I understand. Call down if you need anything else, okay?”
Up in my room, I closed the door and locked it. I pushed back the curtains on the window and checked the sill. There was no evidence of Alistair. At that moment I didn’t know whether to be relieved or worried. I dropped my stuff and myself down on the bed.
I had wanted Brad Thompson to tell me what he was doing in Dorothy’s house, and he had, except now I was more confused than ever. So confused, I’d tried to use magic to get Brad to tell me more, and it had kind of spectacularly failed to work.
“So what was that?” I asked the world in general as I ran both hands through my hair. “A lesson in being careful what you wish for?”
“Merowp.”
I jumped and tumbled over on the bed. Alistair was sitting on the windowsill, tail twitching back and forth and big blue eyes blinking calmly.
“Jeez, cat!” I pressed my hand against my chest. “You can’t do that!”
He blinked again. Do what? Then he jumped down and stuffed his face into my purse.
“There’s no food in there,” I told him. “I left it on the bus.” I might have been a little grumpy when I said it, but I w
as tired. Tired of turning all this mess over in my mind. Tired of talking to nobody but the cat.
“Mmmrp.” Alistair gave my purse a shove, knocking it off the bed and, incidentally, spilling the entire contents onto the floor.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” I bent down to start scooping things back in, but Alistair was already in the middle of the mess. He was batting at a scrap of paper with his paws, and of course it was getting away from him. Therefore, it must be chased after, and pounced on, and swatted for good measure, because clearly it was a most dangerous scrap of paper.
I shook my head. Julia was right. Whatever else he was, Alistair was still a cat.
I was about to drop my cell phone back into my purse, but I hesitated. What I really needed right now was to get out of my own head, which was too full of mystery, magic and murder.
“Merow,” said Alistair with an air of strained patience. The paper was holding still, but he didn’t trust it, and crouched down, ready in case it tried to make a break for it.
“That’s it, big guy; you show it who’s boss.” I hit my brother Bob’s number.
“Hey, Annie!” shouted Bob when he picked up. Members of my immediate family are the only living beings allowed to call me Annie. “How’s it going? How’s Portsmouth?”
“Hey, Bobby,” I answered him. “Portsmouth is great . . . In fact, I’m thinking I might stay for a while. If everything is good there. How’s Dad?”
“Dad’s great. Watching the Red Sox.” I heard a shout behind me, but I couldn’t tell if it was good or bad.
“Hello, Annie!” shouted Dad. “Whaddaya mean he was out! The ump’s blind!”
“Instant replay doesn’t lie, Dad,” I heard my sister-in-law, Ginger, reply. “Hi, Annie!”
“Hi, Ginger!” I shouted back, picturing my brother’s grimace as he yanked the phone away from his ear.
“Instant replay my . . . ahhh, hooey . . . ,” grumbled Dad.
“Hooey!” The shout came from my small, enthusiastic, and consistently oversugared nephew, Bobby Britton III. “Hooo – EEEE!”
“Tsk, tsk, Robert Sr.!” cried Ginger. “Look what you’re teaching your grandchild!”
I was smiling. I couldn’t help it. “You guys clearly got it under control,” I said to Bob.
He laughed. “For certain values of control. You sure everything’s all right? You sound kinda down.”
“No, no, I’m fine. I just . . . I wanted to check in.”
He was willing to let it go, and, as it turned out, so was I. We would work our way around to touchy subjects later. Right now, we could chat about the usual small family matters; who’d heard from whom most recently, how things were going in preschool and whether Ted was finally going to propose to his girlfriend.
Eventually we ran out of gossip, or Bobby wanted to get back to watching the Red Sox trounce Satan’s baseball team (otherwise known as the Yankees), or both. “Good to talk to you, sis,” he told me. “Let us know what your plans are. And hey, you know if there really is anything wrong, me and Ted will be up there in a hot minute, right? Nobody messes with our sister.”
“I know.” Darn it, big brother, I do not need your protection, I thought. Except if that was how I really felt, why was I smiling and feeling that odd prickling behind my eyes, not to mention an easing of the tension in my shoulders? “I’ll call back soon.”
We said good-bye and I hung up. I was still smiling. Whatever happened before, whatever happened next, I was still Annabelle Amelia Blessingsound Britton. I had my Yankee pride and my New England stubbornness, and I was a long, long way from being alone. For starters, there was Martine, who would have skewered me for ever doubting she had my back. Behind her, and me, stood the whole Blessingsound Britton clan. No matter what I faced, my family was with me. All of them.
“I needed that,” I told Alistair.
Alistair wasn’t paying any attention to me. He was still glowering at the Very Dangerous Scrap. “Merow!” he snapped.
I laughed and rubbed his ears to apologize for not taking his paper-chasing prowess seriously enough. Then I heard footsteps outside and a soft knock on the door. I shot a look of inquiry at the cat, who responded by vigorously cleaning his tail. I went and unlocked the door, but there was no one outside. Somebody had been there, though, and they’d left a small folding table, a tray with a covered dish and a note:
YOU LOOKED HUNGRY.
I bowed my head and started laughing. I couldn’t help it. Julia said I had no mystical destiny. She was wrong. I was clearly destined to be fed by compulsive cooks.
I did pick the tray up and carry it inside.
“If it’s quiche I really am leaving,” I told the cat as I lifted the cloche. It wasn’t quiche, but it was some lovely roast chicken and green salad and new potatoes. And a cup of that amazing blackberry grunt.
“Hungry, Alistair?”
His nose shot up in the air. “Merp!”
I carefully shredded some of the chicken to make sure I didn’t get any accidental bones, forked the results onto my napkin, and set it on the sill. The presence of chicken apparently changed Alistair’s mind about just how dangerous that paper was, and he leapt up onto the sill. The cat ate. I ate. It was simple and delicious, and I felt better. I was also able to start thinking again. If talking to a cat can be considered a sign of thinking.
“So, did I really screw up today, or what?”
Alistair, however, was too busy nosing the napkin to see if he’d left any shred of chicken to venture an opinion.
I pulled the wand out of my purse and turned it over in my fingers. It was a beautiful thing, and it felt warm and comfortable in my hand. I traced the delicately carved pattern with my fingers, following the branches as they turned from bare to blossoming to full leaf. I circled the tip of my finger around a crescent moon, a half-moon and a full. I peered at the Latin inscription of what Julia had called the threefold law.
Quod ad vos mittere in mundum triplici. What you send into the world comes back threefold.
I closed my fingers around it. What had I sent out into the world when I had tried to use the wand, and the magic, on Brad? I wanted him to calm down. I wanted him to trust me. Talk to me. I wanted him to open up, whether he wanted to or not.
My thoughts skidded to a halt. Wasn’t that exactly what Julia had tried to do to me when I first walked into Midnight Reads? And how had I reacted? Angry, hurt, betrayed, because this woman I didn’t even know had tried to trick me. And I’d just tried pretty much the same trick on Brad, and it hadn’t work any better.
I swore and laid the wand down on the nightstand. In its place, I dug my new sketch pad out of my backpack. I started scribbling down everything I could remember about what Brad had actually said to me. It was me, of course, so there were also plenty of doodles, a caricature of Brad sweating bullets and tearing a piece of bread in two, and stacks of documents with question marks floating in the air around them.
Brad was looking for copies. That implied there were documents of some kind out there. Dorothy had copies of important documents, and Brad knew about them, but he didn’t know where she had hidden them. He wanted to find them so badly he broke in to her house, more than once. He’d planned on taking her computer but somebody beat him to it. Which implied that there was at least one other person who found these documents—whatever they were—of vital interest.
“Merow!” Alistair jumped onto the bed and ducked his head under the paper, pushing it up. “Merow!”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake.” I picked the scrap up. I intended to roll it into a ball and toss it for him to chase, but I stopped. This was the photo of me I’d found on Dorothy’s altar.
My fingers tingled.
“Mrrp,” said Alistair, curling his tail around his feet, like he was satisfied.
I stared at my photo, and my photo stared back. I turned the paper over.
On the other side, I saw what had once been part of a car ad. But along one edge there was some very small handwriting that I hadn’t noticed before. It was so small, in fact, I had to bring it almost to my nose and squint before I could read it.
“Aka Dorothy Gale.”
“Merow!” announced Alistair proudly.
I stared at the cat. I stared at the piece of paper in my hands. This was a clue. This was absolutely and without a shadow of a doubt a clue, deliberately left for me by a woman who knew she was in danger.
The problem was, I had no idea what it could possibly mean.
25
THE BUSINESS ADDRESS of Enoch Gravesend, Esq., LLC, PLLC, and M-O-U-S-E, for all I knew, turned out to be a Federal-style house in Portsmouth’s historic district. This basically meant it was a pale yellow box of a building with a peaked roof and shuttered windows. The office was on the left-hand side of a flagstone foyer, and it contained everything you could possibly want from a lawyer’s office: wood paneling, overflowing bookcases, solid, comfortable chairs and a broad desk with a green blotter and a green-shaded lamp.
“Ah! Miss Britton! Come in, come in!” The lawyer himself came out from behind that expanse of antique oak to shake my hand and pull back the chair Frank hadn’t claimed. “Please, do sit down.”
Like me and Frank, the gray-haired and portly Enoch Gravesend was a card-carrying member of Ye Olde Family Name Society (New England branch). He also had more than enough personality to handle it. Enoch wore a linen suit and bright blue vest with gold buttons. His face was ruddy and his handshake delicate without being limp. I’m not a fan of the theatrical, especially in a lawyer, but Enoch’s smile was instantly charming.
“Now.” Enoch settled himself back in his padded leather chair. “Let’s see where we are. Miss Britton, how long were you thinking of staying with us?”
“Errrm . . .” I let my glance slide sideways toward Frank. It felt strange to be sitting in a lawyer’s office with someone I’d only just met. Personal somehow.
“I see,” said Enoch gravely. “Perhaps three months, then?”