by Sharon Pape
I was so engrossed in Travis’s confession that I nearly went airborne when the theme from Star Wars rang out. He pulled out his cell and listened to the caller for all of twenty seconds. “Got it,” he said before clicking off and turning on the engine.
A groan almost escaped my throat, but I managed to swallow it. I was learning to dread the music. Whenever I heard it, Travis had to leave. I was Pavlov’s dog, minus the all-important reward. I didn’t say it to Travis, not even in a joking way. News happened when it happened. It didn’t run on a schedule. If I wanted him in my life, I had to learn to live with the interruptions and sudden changes in plans. The way he was learning to live with magick. “What’s happening?” I asked as he pulled away from the curb. I doubted it could be as important to me as the story of him and Ryan.
“The ME is going to release a preliminary report on Ryan’s death at four.”
“That’s fast. Doesn’t it take longer for the toxicology results?”
“Maybe he found something he doesn’t want to hold back until then.”
“I guess I can watch on my phone,” I said, thinking out loud. “Unless I have a customer.”
“Not a problem. I’ll call you as soon as I’m off the air. If you don’t answer, I’ll leave a message.”
“My very own breaking news report. I must really rate.”
“Don’t let it go to your head,” he said, hitting the gas. “I’ll just have time to drop you back at your shop and make it to the press conference. Listen, I wanted to let you know that Ryan’s wake is tomorrow evening; the funeral’s the next morning. It’s in Huntington, out on Long Island, so I don’t want you to feel obligated to attend.”
“I’d like to be there for you,” I said. “Besides, what will your folks think of me if I don’t come at such an important time?”
“They know you have a business that would have to close if you were out of town. And they know you never had a chance to meet Ryan. My mom actually made me promise I would tell you to stay home and take care of your business. She said it’s ridiculous for you to travel so far. But she and my dad would like very much to meet you someday in the near future.”
“That’s very thoughtful of her,” I said, “especially when she has so much to deal with.”
Travis shrugged. “She’s pragmatic, always has been. She deals with life head-on.”
“But what about you? Don’t you need some emotional support?”
“The best thing for me is to get back to finding the killer. That’s my way of honoring Ryan. And you’ve already done a lot to help.”
“If you change your mind, all it takes is a phone call and I’ll be there.”
“I know you would.”
“By the way,” I said a minute later, “what type of business do your parents think I own?”
“I told them it was a magic shop, but when they asked if you sold magic kits and tricks for kids, I didn’t correct them.” He stole a glance at me. “I’m sorry. I’m not quite ready to enlighten them.”
“You did the right thing,” I said. “My family prefers to reveal ourselves to the least number of people possible.” Besides I didn’t want to scare his parents off before I met them.
Chapter 8
I couldn’t recall a weekday in the late afternoon when I’d ever been so busy. None of my customers seemed to care about the four o’clock press conference. Then again, they probably didn’t know about it. The only reason I knew was because I was dating a reporter. I could have tried to watch some of it on my phone, but I didn’t want anyone to think I was rude or not sufficiently interested in their patronage.
Most of the customers who came in at that hour were locals who’d run out of the products they used. They didn’t require anything of me, beyond the financial transaction. I would have preferred to be swamped with questions, anything to keep me from dwelling on Travis’s confession and the press conference I couldn’t watch. I almost kissed Milton Hagadorn when he marched up to me and said he needed help.
He came in occasionally with his wife Dara, but I’d never seen him here alone. They were a strange couple. Opposites are supposed to attract, but they stretched the theory to its limits. They were both in their forties. Milton had the manner and style of a much older man, while Dara dressed and acted like a girl of twenty. She babbled nonstop; he was miserly with every word that passed his lips. She loved to dance; he was married to the history channel and reading nonfiction. Yet something had bound them together for over fifteen years. If I could bottle that essence, I’d be a wealthy woman.
“Can you be a little more specific?” I asked, coming from behind the counter.
Milton glanced around us like a spy worried about being overheard, then leaned closer to me and whispered, “My hemorrhoids are killing me. Dara told me to come here for something natural.”
I whispered back, “I have just the thing. Wait here and I’ll get it for you.” When I returned to the counter, I found Milton squirming in the customer chair trying to find a comfortable position. I handed him the bottle. “This has several natural components. Most people find relief with it.” Or so my grandmother had claimed before she shuffled off, leaving hemorrhoids and other human woes behind.
Milton hauled himself out of the chair, issuing an elderly sort of grunt. I scooted around the counter to ring up his purchase. “How is Dara?” I asked, putting the bottle into a mini tote.
“Same bundle of energy as always,” he said. “She’s at the gym as we speak.” He shrugged, as if to say beats me, and ambled off.
At four-twenty, Travis called from his car. He didn’t sound happy. “That was fast,” I said.
“The ME spoke for all of two minutes. He said his preliminary findings were consistent with accidental choking. But he stressed that he was still awaiting the results of lab tests. Translation—he was covering his ass in case he turns out to be wrong. The scuttlebutt is that Mayor Tompkins and Police Chief Gimble requested the quickie press conference to allay the public’s fears of another killer in their midst.”
“It’s understandable, given that this little town has had two murders in a few months.”
“There’s only one little problem—he’s wrong.”
“Look at it this way,” I said, “if the police believe Ryan choked on that burger, they’ll call off their investigation. You and I will have freer rein.”
Travis’s tone lifted. “True. I just don’t like the way they’re sweeping Ryan’s death under the carpet in order to ease the mind of the public.”
“They probably don’t even know he was vegetarian,” I pointed out.
“They would if they bothered to talk to anyone who knew him. Listen, I’ll swing by your house later, unless you have other plans.”
* * * *
Later proved to be after eight o’clock, because he was needed back at the newsroom first. The cats had eaten on time, but I was famished by then. I ordered Chinese, far too much of it. When I’m that hungry, everything on the menu seems critical to my survival. I added the dishes Travis liked, in case he hadn’t eaten yet. I brewed tea, Tilly’s special tummy-tamer blend. It cuts right through greasy food like magick.
Travis and the delivery boy arrived at the same time. From what I could gather, Travis must have intercepted him and paid for the order, because when I opened the door, he was the one holding the food—a whole carton of it. I was baffled for a moment, until I saw the delivery car pulling away from the curb.
“I was going to call for Chinese when I got here,” Travis said, stepping inside and planting a hello kiss on my lips. “You must have read my mind.”
“Not I—Tilly is the family psychic. I can barely read my own mind.” I followed him into the kitchen, the aroma of the food so dense and rich I felt like I could take a bite out of the air itself. I pulled paper goods out of the pantry.
“You have no idea how relie
ved I am to hear that,” he said. “The idea of my girlfriend poking around in my head would be disturbing and more than a little embarrassing.” He set the eight containers of food on the table and dropped the carton onto the floor.
“Embarrassing? Just what do you have going on in that brain of yours?” I poured the tea and brought the mugs to the table.
“That’s none of your business,” he said with a grin. “But if you play your cards right, you might find out one day.”
“I can hardly wait,” I said. I took the chair beside him and helped myself to a spare rib. While we ate, I brought Travis up to date on the latest happenings in New Camel. I told him about Merlin’s campaign to change the name of the town and the flag he made from the purloined muumuu. Merlin’s exploits were always good for a laugh, until they blew up in our faces. I described Lolly’s new dark chocolate cranberry fudge for the coming holiday season. “I’ve been thinking,” I said, after we pushed our plates away. “I should have a copy of Ryan’s disk. It would make the investigation more efficient. Besides,” I added, in case he felt proprietary about it, “I helped you steal it.”
He wagged his head. “I don’t know, Ryan entrusted it to me. He showed me where he kept them because he was concerned something might happen to him. Giving them to you would be breaking his trust.”
I felt my hackles rise. “Seriously? Have you forgotten we’re partners? Not to mention, I could have gone to jail for what I did?”
“Oh wait, that must be why I’ve already copied it for you.” He stood up and pulled the thumb drive out of the pocket of his chinos. He handed it to me with a “gotcha” grin.
“You’re incorrigible.”
“On so many levels,” he said, pulling me into his arms.
“Whoa, I believe you still owe me the rest of the story about you and Ryan.”
He let me go with a sigh and followed me into the living room, where we sat on the couch, our legs so close they might have been tied together for a three-legged race.
“Okay, where did I leave off?”
“When Ryan didn’t come home that Christmas, you realized he’d become part of the family in spite of your worst intentions.”
“Right. So after the holidays, I took a trip to Penn State to hunt him down. I apologized for being a jerk and asked for his forgiveness. I half expected him to haul off and punch me in the face. I deserved that much and more. But he didn’t. He said, ‘Whatever man, don’t sweat it.’”
“That was it?”
“I know, surprised the hell out of me too. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t like we became instant buddies after that. It took time, but over the years, little by little, we found our way to a real friendship, a brotherhood.”
“Your parents must be devastated by his death,” I murmured.
“They are. They don’t believe it was accidental either. But as much as they want justice for Ryan, they’re against me getting involved in the investigation.”
“You have to look at it from their perspective,” I said. “They’re afraid of losing you too.”
“I get that, but how do I walk away like he meant nothing to me? And after we’d finally found our way to each other?”
I had no answer for Travis. I empathized with his parents and worried for his safety. But I also understood his need to find Ryan’s killer. “Tell me about your brother,” I said. “I’d like to know more about him if I’m going to be part of this quest.”
“I think this will give you some insight into him. A couple of years ago, we were hanging out, watching football, drinking beer and somehow or other the conversation got around to his folks. Before that I’d avoided the topic, because I didn’t want to upset him. But he brought it up himself. He said his parents’ sudden deaths tore away the ground beneath his feet and reshaped his outlook on everything. If life was so risky and random at its core, tip-toeing carefully through it, afraid of your own shadow, wouldn’t buy you an extra hour, an extra minute.”
“That helps explain the career path he chose. It’s interesting that you both wound up in journalism.”
“In very different ways,” Travis said. “I followed the conventional route, scrabbling up the network ladder. Ryan didn’t want anyone telling him what to do or how to do it. He went strictly freelance. He chose what stories to investigate and always had takers for his ‘Beyond the News pieces’—that’s what he called his investigative reports. There were bidding wars for a couple of them; he won awards too.”
“Do you think he was still competing with you?”
Travis shook his head. “Judging by the crimes he dug up, the type of people he antagonized and made enemies of, it was more like he was competing with death.”
Chapter 9
The next morning I was up before the sun and the rest of my household. Curiosity about the contents of Ryan’s disk had pulled me from a disjointed dream in which Merlin and Ryan were beta testing a time travel machine. If Travis was right, the disk could tell us what his brother had been working on and it might even point us in the direction of his killer. Given that Ryan had been living in Watkins Glen for the past month, it seemed likely that the subject of his investigation was somewhere in the greater Glen area. Not even Travis had been privy to more details than that. He said his brother observed a strict code of silence about his investigations, until they appeared in print or on the air. Ryan claimed it wasn’t a matter of trust. It was simply human nature that people with the best intentions often let information slip.
As I emerged from my warm cocoon under the quilt, the air pricked my skin like the spray of a cold shower. My grandmother Bronwen had had the heating system updated decades ago, followed by new windows guaranteed to stop the continuing loss of heat. They didn’t. Morgana had tried caulking and having extra insulation blown in. And when that still didn’t fix the problem, we had a parade of experts troop through, all of whom concluded that old houses were leaky as sieves. One went so far as to cavalierly suggest tearing the place down and rebuilding it the right way. He was shown the door with the help of a magickal push that made him stumble over his own feet. Morgana took the matter into her own hands and spent most of her free time trying to create a spell that would resolve the problem. Five years ago we thought she’d finally succeeded, but it turned out the spell made the house so airtight that we all nearly suffocated in our sleep. If not for Sashkatu sounding the alarm, the Wilde family and its magickal bloodline would no longer exist. At the time of Morgana’s death, the problem had yet to be solved. I continued to make do with thick quilts, warm robes, and lots of Tilly’s hot teas. There was never any question that the house would remain inviolate for future generations of Wildes.
When I’d crawled under the covers the previous night, I’d made the tactical error of leaving my robe at the bottom of the bed. Now there were two cats curled up on it. If I woke them, they’d start thinking about breakfast and I wanted to spend the quiet time before dawn on the computer. I exchanged my nightgown for an ensemble of ratty old sweats on the floor of my closet. I’d been meaning to throw them out, but they were handy and warm. If I fussed about for something more stylish, I’d probably wake all the cats.
I pulled on thick socks and padded into the smallest of the four bedrooms that had been used as a home office as far back as I could remember. I’d kept everything pretty much the way Morgana and Bronwen had left it, with the exception of installing a computer there. I plugged in Ryan’s thumb drive. There was only one file on it. He probably used a new drive for each investigation. I clicked on the file and found a meaningless list of dates, locations, and names. Although Ryan would have understood his notes, to me it was like staring at a jigsaw puzzle without a picture on the cover to show me what the puzzle should look like in the end. My phone beeped with a text from Travis, asking if I was up yet. Perfect timing, maybe he could help me make sense of it. I called him back.
“I’m not o
nly awake,” I said,” I’m stumped.”
“Tell me about it,” Travis said. “I just looked at his disk.”
“Do you happen to speak Ryanese?”
“Not a word, but it’s a starting point. We have to find out what these people have in common.”
“Did you notice that the dates are months, even years apart?” I asked.
“Yeah, whatever Ryan was hunting happened over a relatively long period of time.”
“Maybe he saw a pattern involving these people,” I said, thinking out loud. I was so thoroughly engrossed in our conversation that I was startled to find myself staring into Sashkatu’s face. He parked himself on the keyboard and eyed me balefully. He must have climbed up the bookshelf and walked across the window sill to reach me. The others wouldn’t be far behind. Dawn was breaking and stomachs would soon be grumbling for breakfast.
“Let’s start with the names and see what that nets us,” Travis said.
“Okay, I’ll try to find out if the list refers to people who are alive or dead.” Google and Facebook should be good places to start.
“Let me know what you find. I’m going to be chasing down a story about political corruption in Albany.”
“That doesn’t sound like much fun,” I said.
“Depends on how you look at it. I have a lot of fun receiving the paychecks. Especially when a stack of bills comes in.” Sashkatu started to chatter at me and batted at the phone in my hand. His gang of five chimed in. “What on earth is going on over there?” Travis asked.
“A feline uprising,” I said as another cat scrambled onto my lap.
“I’ll let you deal with the mutiny. We’ll talk later.”
I powered through my morning routine, intrigued by the clues and where they might lead. But it was hard not to dwell on the sobering fact that Ryan’s death lay at its core.
* * * *
“Kailyn,” Tilly called as she came through the connecting door. “Oh dear, oh my, Kailyn.” The timbre of her voice was the perfect soundtrack for hand-wringing. I was restocking products in the second aisle. I set down the jar I was holding and intercepted her on her way to the counter. She was wearing the turban she used for dramatic effect when giving a reading. Paired with her bright sneakers and bedazzled muumuu, she looked like the one who flew over the cuckoo’s nest.