by Harper Lin
I did show Peanut Butter the pendant, though. He said that it reminded him of the four-sided dice that Jake’s nephew and his friends played with.
I remembered those. Min Park, who was Mrs. Park’s son, had been such a great fan of those fantasy adventure tabletop roleplaying games when we were back at school. Once Bea’s brain ate up all the guidebooks, she became the most annoying player: a total stickler for the rules. She was better at running the game, telling the players what was what, instead of playing herself. With some actions, we rolled dice—six-sided, ten-sided, twenty-sided dice—to determine whether the characters we played would succeed or not. The four-sided dice were more painful to step on than a Lego brick.
Of course, those medieval fantasy games had magic, and I might have let it slip once that how we played out magic use from reading the guidebooks wasn’t how magic “really” worked. Min Park was a good friend, but I think he dismissed that as my taking a fictional entertainment medium too seriously.
I realized then that I hadn’t made a lot of friends since Min left. I hadn’t noticed because I had my family, and I wasn’t as much of a social butterfly as Bea. Maybe animal communication spoiled me, because even when something gets in the way, there’s nothing clearer than a pure thought, a pure emotion, a memory, or a mix of the three just dropped into your mind. I wondered if I could try something new more often. Meet new people or meet familiar people in new ways.
All right, maybe I didn’t mull over all of that at the time. If I did, it would have been pushed to the back of my mind, considering the much bigger concern about who knew the Greenstone legacy that we’d tried to keep so private.
When evening fell, Bea fried up some ground turkey and potato wedges. Jake called to say he would be working overtime that night. I gave Marshmallow some of the turkey just to get her to eat something. After taking the afternoon off to rest, I was feeling better, but Marshmallow still felt terrible.
The Unusual Suspect
The next morning, Marshmallow was too sick to get up. We weren’t sure if Bea using magic healing for what could be a symptom of magic burnout would make it worse, so Bea took her to the vet, and I took Bea’s claim letter to the insurance company’s office after Bea told me that we had gotten clearance from the fire inspector. I was still feeling tired, too, and delivering a letter sounded like it would be less trouble.
Oh, if I’d only known!
The rain that had threatened to break the day before had passed. That day, the sun blazed in an uninterrupted expanse of blue sky, and the wind blew just enough to keep the day cool.
Most of the townspeople seemed to be in a great mood that day, whether they were in Old Wonder Falls with the cobblestones and mom-and-pop shops or at the town square with the asphalt and the view of the franchise grocery store branch and the falls. The same chipper cheer, I imagined, would be going on in the fisheries and farms and where the fruit orchards met the forest.
That day, it would have been so nice to be one of those ordinary people instead of pretending to be one—albeit one filing an insurance claim.
Inside the insurance office, I bumped into Nadia and Naomi LaChance, twin sisters who had been friends of Bea in high school: mathletes and drama club, respectively. Nadia spoke at a much lower register than Naomi. Nadia had dyed steel-blue hair and a tattoo of a waterfall that blossomed over her shoulder and ran down the length of one arm all the way to her knuckles.
Naomi—who used wooden pencils to keep her black hair in a bun, and who wore oversized button-down shirts belted around the waist as if they were dresses (hmm, I should try that out sometime)—was there to get the money to repair her car.
Old Mr. Leary, who had driven into the headlight of Naomi’s ladybird-patterned Volkswagen Bug the week before, was in the office with Mrs. Sutherland, the insurance agent. Well, one of the insurance agents.
I asked who else I could talk to who wasn’t already with a client, and the office assistant—a lanky, swarthy boy in his late teens named Cody who was very soft-spoken and formal—directed me to the office of Mr. Nguyen instead.
“It’s Miss Greenstone, sir,” Cody announced.
Mr. Nguyen, a hefty man who was about Aunt Astrid’s age, momentarily seemed relieved then tried to muster up some anger. He wasn’t a good actor. He craned his neck past the desk, past the man in the long, dark coat standing in front of him. “Cody, I thought I told you I was in a meeting!”
A familiar, gravelly voice replied, “Oh, no, this is a lucky coincidence. I should be asking you these questions, directly…” The figure turned to reveal Blake Samberg. “Cath, isn’t it?”
“What are you doing here?” I asked, too tired to be irritated.
“I was just asking Mr. Nungooyen—”
“‘Ngwhen,’” Mr. Nguyen corrected.
“—what you stood to gain from a fire at the Brew-Ha-Ha.”
I gave a slow, disdainful blink. “Lost time. Days, maybe weeks, without customers to keep our business going—when, I might add, it was going great—”
“It was a very successful business,” Mr. Nguyen said, backing me up.
“There goes your insurance fraud theory, Detective.” I added, sarcastically, “What a shrewd use of human resources, too, killing our star chef. Great way to run a food business!”
Blake nodded at Mr. Nguyen. “Right.” Then he nodded to me. “Thank you both for your time.” He made for the door.
As he passed by me, I asked, “What, that’s it?”
“I believe you.” Blake shrugged his shoulders, palms up and out towards me. “We’re following every lead in this investigation. I just had to make sure this wasn’t one.”
And he left.
“Now you wait just one hot minute—!” I left Bea’s letter on Mr. Nguyen’s desk as Mr. Nguyen signaled desperately at Cody to send the next client in.
Blake Samberg just rubbed me the wrong way. He was presumptuous, insensitive. Not the most unpleasant person I’d ever met, but he sure could find a spot in the top three. I couldn’t have been more relieved that he would be out of my sight.
So why was I following him? Why was I stopping him? Well, I still had questions. “Would you care to update a surviving victim of this crime? What other leads are you talking about?”
Cody lent an arm to old Mr. Cartwright, who had a prosthetic leg—the real one had been lost decades ago in an attack by a mountain lion—and they hobbled slowly into Mr. Nguyen’s office. When the door shut behind them, Blake spared a glance at the LaChance sisters, who tried to look uninterested in our conversation.
“It wasn’t asphyxiation,” Blake murmured. “You think Ted asphyxiated? No, he burned. The fire started in the oven, and someone made sure that Ted was right in front of it.”
I took that information in and exhaled the shock and horror. “Who would do that? Ted was a big, buff guy—who could do that?”
“He had a concussion before the fire started. That’s a mercy. But someone really wanted to make sure that he was dead. Jake’s running a background check on the victim as we speak, to see if he had any enemies back in…Quebec, was it?”
“Or his hometown in France. Only his dad was Canadian; his mother was from…I forgot the name, somewhere in France…” No, I thought. This couldn’t be personal. I could only think that Ted had come in early and caught the thief in action. The fire was just a way to get rid of a witness. Oh, Ted, I’m so sorry you got caught up in this… “Do you think that someone from his past could have found him without anybody in this town noticing?”
“We have a prime suspect,” Blake told me.
“You do?” Every intuitive fiber in my body screamed that he was on the wrong track.
“Does the name Min Park ring a bell?”
The Park family managed the grocery store that had the view of the falls. Min had gone away for university, and life just got in the way of letter writing. His mother had been there on the morning of the fire, and she’d made sure that Aunt Astrid and I were oka
y.
“He’s in town?” I hadn’t even known that.
We used to be so close. My intuition clouded over, embarrassed, and curled up in the corner of my mind like a cat that missed a mouse.
“In police custody by now, or should be. I got the text message from Jake while I was in Mr. Nguyen’s office. Witnesses saw him at the scene of the crime, before the fire.”
“No,” I said. “No, there must be some mistake. Min Park left Wonder Falls fifteen years ago for university. Ted came to town a couple of years after. They couldn’t have met—not here, at least.”
Blake got a notebook and pen out of his coat pocket. “Would you testify to his character, then?
“What’s relevant to the case?” I asked. “The Min Park that I knew couldn’t wrestle his way out of a wet paper bag. I know this because some schoolyard bullies”—ones that were more physical than Darla had been—“once trapped Min in a giant paper bag and threw him into the pool beside the gym. I can’t even remember how that happened, or why he literally couldn’t punch his way out. It was so long ago.”
“It was a long time ago,” Blake agreed, scribbling something on his notepad.
I insisted, “Min didn’t do this. I knew him in grade school. He’s a good person.”
“Well,” Blake said as he folded his notepad again and pocketed it. “Most people are good people in grade school. I’m not saying there aren’t bad seeds, but life is hard for everybody.”
I couldn’t imagine Ted and Min facing each other down—what, in some gun duel at high noon, somewhere in the Mexican desert, with their cowboy hats on? Ted’s bullet grazes Min, who falls with a shout and plays dead as Ted saunters away in his chaps and boots. Min’s fallen cowboy hat rolls away with the tumbleweed in the breeze, and then when he’s sure Ted’s gone, he picks himself up, holds his wound, looks to the sky, and swears vengeance—
Okay, maybe I could imagine it, but obviously that didn’t mean it could have really happened. It just meant that I was weird and crazy.
“I have to interrogate him anyway, now—just to be sure.” Blake said, bringing me back to earth. “You’ve convinced me of your innocence. That only works on you. Do you understand?”
He delivered the last line with such grimness that I couldn’t help but meet the sharpness and challenge of his gaze, and I wondered when I would get sick of our staring contests. “No,” I answered. “This is about my family, my friends, in my hometown, and my life. I don’t stop fighting just for my innocence and protection. I fight for everyone’s!”
“Good,” Blake said, with a shade of … disappointment or maybe worry. “I’ll just make sure that they’re worthy of your loyalty.”
“How can you possibly make sure of that?”
“It’s my job. I work with the proof.” He turned to walk out.
I almost stopped him, but I caught sight of Nadia’s girlfriend coming down the hall. It was Ruby Connors, who’d been Darla’s best friend at school, and—judging by her tailored blazer, hot-pink plaid A-line skirt, and stiletto heels—they still at least went shopping together.
I couldn’t conceive of Min holding a grudge against Ted, but some people did hold grudges.
“Did you know about this?” I demanded, striding towards the three of them.
The twins began to object too loudly, but Ruby objected at just the right volume for someone who’d just come in and had no idea what was going on.
“Min Park.” I told them, “He’s back in town, and he’s under arrest—or under interrogation, whatever—for burning down the Brew-Ha-Ha.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Ruby said. Her manners always came off as just a touch too deliberate. She had a wide-eyed, expressive face and coquettish mannerisms that showed up in tiny ways: the way she walked, the way she flipped her hair. It had always gotten on my nerves. “I mean, you’re like his best friend.” Oh, and her presumptuous blanket statements.
“And your brother,” I told Ruby, “was his worst bully. You’d think after fifteen years, he would have given up on it and moved on, but if the first thing he does—”
Nadia got between us, saying, “Now hold on a minute—”
“—is call the cops on Min for some trumped-up charge. If he’s still got Min in his crosshairs as if we all haven’t grown the hell up—”
“I saw him!” Cody exclaimed, as if he’d been saying it in his own soft voice the whole time I was railing at Ruby. “I was at the Brew-Ha-Ha before the fire. I saw him. I told Detective Samberg yesterday.”
I turned to Cody and tried to calm down. He was just a kid, after all. “How did you know it was Min Park?”
Cody twisted his fingers together nervously. “I didn’t know. I just said who I saw. This tall Asian man in a three-piece suit and classy shoes. It didn’t look like someone who’d caused an accident. It looked like he knew what he was doing.”
I didn’t want to call Cody a liar, but my tone might have been on the sarcastic, incredulous side. “What were you doing up and about at that time?”
“I was coming back from the lake.”
“And why were you at the lake?”
“I was doing some research on glow-in-the-dark jellyfish and algae.” Without my asking, Cody supplied, “Not for school. I just like it, even though I knew I had work today.”
Ruby chimed in, “Oh, but you’re too young to be living on coffee!”
Glow-in-the-dark jellyfish and algae? I was sure that this wasn’t the climate for those things, if they did exist, but I’d have to ask Bea later on.
“Umm…” Naomi hmmed, in the way she did when she was calling attention to herself but really didn’t want to. “I was at the Parks’ grocery store that morning, and Mrs. Park was saying something about heading over to the Brew-Ha-Ha to talk sense into her son.” She flinched when I glowered at her. “I told Detective Samberg that yesterday, too. He asked who could have been there so early, and I answered! I’m sorry, I thought you already knew he was in town.”
Ruby cleared her throat. “Can we get back to the part where you chewed me out for something my brother did? I am really not involved with his life anymore.”
“Or any of her family,” Nadia added, taking Ruby’s hand.
“Not that that’s any of your business,” Ruby added, primly. “You shouldn’t just jump to conclusions and yell at people, Cath.”
I felt like a jerk all of a sudden. “I’m sorry. It’s been a really awful couple of days and—that’s no excuse, I’m sorry. It’s just that nobody’s telling me anything.”
Ruby seemed to accept my apology. “After the stuff’s been filed for Naomi’s car, why don’t you come with us for lunch? It doesn’t have as many kinds of tea and coffee as the Brew-Ha-Ha, but there’s the Night Owl café—you know, part of the Night Owl bookstore? And their shepherd’s pie is pretty good.”
“Thanks,” I told them, “But that sounds more like Bea’s thing, and she’s taken my aunt’s cat to the vet…where I’m supposed to meet her after this. Maybe next time?”
“Just call us when things settle down,” Naomi said.
When I got out of the town square, it was still sunny and windy. I pulled out my cell and gave Bea a call.
“Mission accomplished,” I droned. “How’s Marshmallow?”
Bea answered, “I looked in on healing her, and it just looked bad enough that I wasn’t even going to try, so the vet just put her on a drip and started a round of antibiotics. Maybe all the stress yesterday lowered her natural immunity or something. She’s an old cat.”
“Guess who I ran into?”
“Oh! Umm, uh… Min Park!”
I was startled. How did everybody else know these things? “How did you know that he was back?”
“Internet. You should really get on a social network, Cath—any social network. Any at all.”
“Well,” I said, feeling in my pocket for the chain and the triangular pendant. The inside of the pocket had rubbed most of the soot off, showing symbols on the faces
of the pendant. I rubbed my fingers along the chain to shine it up even more. “Some welcome home he got—Detective Samberg was at the insurance office, and he told me that Min’s being taken in for interrogation.”
The following syllable was low, loud, and long with Bea’s disbelief. “No!” The next was a chirrup. “Seriously?”
“I’ve got to go over there,” I told Bea. “Would you check in on you mother for me, after you’re done at the vet’s?”
“Of course I will.”
“Great. I’m going to get to the bottom of this.” I ended the call and stood up, then sat back down. Bea knows better the connection among the physical, the mental, and the magical when it comes to health. Magic burnout left me feeling dizzy if I moved too fast.
Sometimes those old feelings of being orphaned just come up again and overtakes me. I don’t even realize it, so I just take for granted that I have to go some things alone.
I thought that I was going to be the one to solve this mystery. I thought, with my best childhood friend as the prime suspect, that I had to be the only one. I was swallowing my anxiety that I really didn’t have what it took.
I’ve walked a delicate balance all my life, and in two days, that tightrope had turned into more like a hamster wheel lobbed over the edge of a waterfall. I thought that I had to be the one to break it open.
I forgot that I did have a family, and that with them, I’m never really alone.
Scratching Post
Peanut Butter takes to being alone much, much worse than I do. It’s a good thing, really, that Treacle always finds ways inside Bea’s place that the feral cats of the neighborhood can never manage. Treacle might only keep doing that because he considers Peanut Butter a lot of fun to mess with, but he’s never gone too far with that. Besides, Peanut Butter appreciates the company.
That day, Treacle stayed with Peanut Butter even though he would have rather been somewhere else. That wasn’t usual for Treacle. Peanut Butter was content just to have Treacle around until Peanut Butter heard the scratchy popping of another cat’s claws against the carpet.