by Sharon Pape
After fifteen minutes, Frieda announced that they had another fifteen to buy what they wanted before they were moving on. The women took off in different directions, baskets in hand, like participants in a scavenger hunt vying for a prize.
Frieda was the first one back to the counter with her goodies. “I noticed that one member of your group is missing,” I said as I rang up her purchase.
“Ruth,” she said. “She’s afraid of her shadow. Always has been. What can you do?”
“I could give her a spell to build her self-confidence.”
“Ah, and there’s the rub,” Frieda replied. “She’d be too afraid to try it.”
I handed her the credit card receipt and a pen with which to sign it. I let go of the pen a second before she had it firmly in her grasp. We juggled it between us for a few seconds before it fell into the narrow space where the counter was separating from its backing.
“I’m sorry,” Frieda said, leaning on the counter to peer into the crevice. “Maybe I can get it out with a coat hanger. I’m really good with a coat hanger.”
“It’s not a big deal,” I assured her. “I’ve been meaning to have that fixed.” I plucked another pen off my desk and made sure she had it in her hand before I let go. I rang up the five other purchases, thanking each woman for her patronage. Even if they lived too far away to come back anytime soon, word of mouth accounted for a lot of my business.
After they left, I went through the shop, straightening up. There were only a few items in the wrong places. Frieda’s group was more thoughtful than most customers. I was about to poke my head into Tilly’s shop to get the name of her handyman when a thought struck me, parading through my mind in glaring neon letters. How had Travis and I not realized it sooner? The counter would have to wait a while longer to be fixed. I grabbed my purse, set the alarm, and raced out the back door.
Chapter 34
I called Travis as I dashed home to get my car. His phone went straight to voice mail. I told myself not to worry. He must have turned if off so it wouldn’t interrupt his interviews with Rusty or Patrick, but I wasn’t very convincing. I ran up the driveway, clicked my car open, slid under the steering wheel, and fired the engine. I backed into the street and slammed on the brakes. I had no idea where to go first. What would I do if I were in Travis’s position? I’d start with Rusty, who lived farther away, and then hit Patrick’s shop on my way home. Of course Travis lived in Brooklyn, but I was certain he’d head for my place so we could strategize. I couldn’t waste any more time second-guessing myself. I might already be too late. No, no more negative thoughts. I shook my head hard enough to cause whiplash and put the car in Drive. Rusty’s house it was.
It seemed like every slow driver on the road had conspired to detain me. The ten-minute trip took twenty, my belated epiphany playing over and over in my head. “I have another one right here,” I’d told Frieda when the pen fell into the crevice. “Another one right here.” The bullet didn’t come from the .45s that were tested. But what if Rusty or Patrick had another gun, a black-market gun, bought for the sole purpose of murder? The police might not think about searching for a second weapon when the owner of the registered gun had obeyed the law to the letter. I recognized that there could be other people with black-market .45s in our area, but as Travis had pointed out, you eliminate the ones you know before you start knocking on every other door in town, which was next to impossible anyway without benefit of a detective’s shield.
I kept trying Travis’s number as I drove. Still no answer. I jerked the car to a stop in front of Rusty’s Cape Cod and looked around. His pickup was in the driveway. Travis’s car was nowhere to be seen. I ran up to the front door and rang the bell. I heard it chime inside.
“What do you want?” Rusty yelled without opening the door. He must have seen me through the peephole, or he would have asked, “Who’s there?” His naked hostility made me think he’d already had a visit from Travis or was possibly holding a gun to Travis’s head during our little exchange.
“It’s just me, Kailyn,” I said to remind him he’d known me forever. I tried to sound childlike and harmless. Nothing to worry about from me.
Rusty wasn’t impressed. “Like I said, what do you want?”
“Can I come in? I only need two minutes of your time.”
“Go away.” Someone innocent might have added, “Or I’ll call the police.”
“I want to help you, Rusty.” Silence from beyond the door. “Together we can come up with a plan.” I didn’t like lying, but if there could be such a thing as gray magick, why not gray lies for when the truth just wouldn’t do? “Rusty?” Still nothing. I didn’t dare leave until I’d at least established that Travis was not being held captive there. I was about to circle the house on the off chance that Rusty had forgotten to close the blinds when the door swung open and I was face-to-face with the janitor, only the screen door between us. His skin was a mottled red, his eyes sunken in dark circles. Grief over Amanda or the stress of being a suspect or both?
He regarded me warily. “You’re not coming in. You can talk to me from out there.”
“Okay,” I said, listening hard for any sound that could mean Rusty wasn’t alone in the house. “Has Travis Anderson come by to see you today?”
“What’s it to you?”
“It’s just that he’s a reporter, and if he doesn’t show up for work, the police and the media will be all over the place looking for him.”
“Yeah, so?”
“I’m afraid for you. If his boss knows he came to see you...”
“I didn’t do anything to him. Why can’t you all just leave me alone?” He started to close the door on me.
“Rusty, wait. I’ve given this a lot of thought. If you were somehow involved in John Doe’s death, I’m sure you had a good, solid reason.” I didn’t mention Amanda, afraid the implication would be like throwing a lit match into gasoline. “We have to make sure you present your side of it in the best possible light. And it’s extremely important for you to stay out of trouble while the investigation is ongoing.”
“I didn’t hurt anybody,” he said. “Go away.” He sounded like a broken man. It was hard to tell through the screen door, but I thought I saw the reflection of tears in his eyes. This was the Rusty I remembered from my childhood—all bluff and bluster.
I found myself believing he was innocent. I hoped I wasn’t wrong. I hoped he wasn’t one terrific actor. I told him I’d be in touch and got back in my car. I drove straight to Patrick’s store, breaking every speed limit. I pulled to the curb and parked directly behind Travis’s car. I’d found him. But I didn’t know if he was alive or dead.
I took the steps up to the porch, where Patrick and I had shared some delicious lunches. He’d lived in New Camel for as long as I could remember and was still married to his high school sweetheart. By all appearances, he was a great father to Chris, even if some would take exception to the skeet and target shooting. The Patrick I knew was too smart to risk losing his family and the life he’d built for any reason. But prisons were full of smart people who’d done exactly that and lost it all.
The shades in the store were drawn. I couldn’t remember if he always lowered them against the late-afternoon sun. It was one of the million things you see on a daily basis but don’t absorb. Like white noise. I turned the doorknob, but it wouldn’t budge. My heart, already on a hair trigger, leaped to attention. Don’t panic, I told myself. As old as the knob was, the mechanism might simply be stuck. But what if Patrick had locked it on purpose? I seemed determined to panic. I rapped on the glass part of the door until my knuckles hurt. I shouted Travis’s name. I put my ear to the door but didn’t hear anything. If there were innocent explanations, they eluded me.
I considered opening the door with the spell I’d adlibbed to escape the abandoned candle shop. But Patrick was probably in there, and he’d find out a lock couldn�
�t stop me. I’d forfeit an important weapon in my arsenal. I couldn’t stand there dithering either. Travis’s life could be hanging in the balance. I centered my focus on the doorknob and was halfway through the first recitation when Patrick opened the door.
“Kailyn,” he said, looking surprised to see me. “Are you all right?” He didn’t wait for me to reply before adding, “I didn’t hear you at first because I was in my office. I’m locking up early to take Chris to the dentist; my wife is down with a bug.” His words were hurried, and he already had on a down vest. He looked like someone rushing off to pick up his son.
I’d raced down there loaded for bear, and it took me a moment to readjust my approach. “I...I saw Travis Anderson’s car out front,” I sputtered. “His mother called me when he didn’t answer his cell. His father was in a bad accident.” Patrick seemed to be buying the story, or his eyebrows had knit together with a good imitation of concern.
“Travis is in my office. I’ll take you right back there,” he said with an appropriate touch of urgency. First, he reached around me to relock the front door. “Closing up for that dental appointment,” he reminded me when he saw the questioning look on my face. “Travis was in the area,” Patrick said as he led the way to his office, “so he stopped in for a few minutes.”
He made it sound as if Travis was an old friend who dropped by on a regular basis, but Travis had never mentioned that he knew the antiques dealer. This was all wrong. I knew it in my gut. I had to get out of there and call the police. But Patrick had relocked the door, and I wouldn’t make it through even one recitation of the spell before he’d be on me. Even so, it was my only option. No one else knew where we were. I’d considered running into Tea and Empathy to tell Tilly, but she was in the middle of a session, and I didn’t want to interrupt or frazzle her. If she lost focus, her readings tended to be subpar. With the clarity of hindsight, I realized I should have told Elise. Now there was no one to raise an alarm or mount a rescue.
Patrick glanced over his shoulder, no doubt checking to see if I was still following him, and caught me assessing the distance to the front door. He whirled around and grabbed my arm. “You’re not going anywhere,” he said, dragging me the last few yards to the closed office door. He pulled his key ring from his pants pocket and unlocked it. Who locks in a friend? On the other hand, there was no reason to lock Travis in if he was already dead. My heart lightened with hope.
Patrick threw the door open, revealing a large, expensively appointed office dominated by a heavy desk with intricate carvings. Travis was sitting in a back corner of the room, his hands bound with cord that lashed him to the back of the chair. His mouth was covered with packing tape. When he saw me in the doorway, his shoulders slumped.
“You wanted to see Travis,” Patrick said when I hesitated in the doorway. “In you go.” He ground the business end of a gun into my back as encouragement. I hadn’t seen the gun before. He must have had it tucked into the back of his pants under the down vest. It was probably the black-market .45. “Go ahead, tell him about his father’s accident,” he said, pushing me into the room.
Travis’s eyes sought mine for confirmation. I had to relieve his mind. “There was no accident,” I admitted.
“Just like I thought,” Patrick said. “Go sit in the chair in front of the desk.” He must have seen enough TV and films to know he should keep Travis and me apart or we might try to untie each other bonds.
When I was seated, he grabbed the ball of cord off his desk and started tying me up the way he had Travis. I realized he didn’t have enough hands to tie me and hold onto the gun. He must have set it on the floor at his feet. I had no way to reach it, but maybe with telekinesis I could draw it to me.
“Don’t try anything,” he warned me. He must have been feeling vulnerable matching wits with a sorcerer. “I can have it back in my hand and kill you both in five seconds flat.”
I’d already come to that conclusion myself. “I guess that’s the gun you used to kill John Doe,” I said, “but for the life of me, I can’t figure out why.” I knew I shouldn’t be baiting him, but I was as angry and curious as I was afraid. I glanced over at Travis. His eyes wide, he was shaking his head at me, begging me to leave bad enough alone.
Patrick’s response was to slap packing tape over my mouth, rip it off with what felt like ten layers of skin, and reposition it with a slap to secure it. Message received. He wasn’t a fan of smart-ass remarks. In spite of everything, I was having trouble accepting that this was the same man I’d known all my life and not some evil twin or alter ego.
He sat on the edge of his desk staring at us and chewing on his lip as if trying to figure out what to do next. “Sit tight,” he said, chuckling at his pun.
He locked the door behind him, making me wonder if he knew more about my abilities than I imagined. I had no idea how long he’d be gone, but I had to assume this would be our only chance to get away. My last effort to teleport myself had proved I wasn’t strong enough yet. I’d been lucky my cell structure hadn’t come apart halfway through it. And that was under ideal circumstances. Here it would have to be my last resort.
With our unknown deadline ticking down, I remembered that Morgana had created a spell to untangle her necklaces that were always getting knotted together. It might work with the cords binding our hands. I did my best to adapt it to our current needs and recited it three times in my head since saying it aloud wasn’t an option:
Let loose the knots.
Free all tangles.
Release all bonds
That bind us here.
The cords should have fallen from around our hands, but nothing was happening to mine. My back was to Travis, but I had to assume that if it worked on him, he’d already be busy untying me. This was a bad time to be striking out. What had I done wrong? I ran through the words again scrutinizing each one. I finally seized on the only thing that could possibly be off. If it didn’t work now—no, it had to work now, I told the doubting voice in my head.
Let loose the knots.
Free all tangles.
Release all bonds
That bind me here.
The cords loosened and fell away, freeing me from the chair. I jumped up and ran over to Travis, whose eyes were wide with amazement and a spark of hope. Standing behind his chair, I wrapped my arms around his chest and recited the spell again, changing the word me to him. The second the cords fell away, he was on his feet, peeling the tape off his mouth. He tried to remove my tape gently, but we didn’t have the time to finesse it. I pushed his hand away and pulled it off myself. Raw skin was a small price to pay for my life. But without more traditional weapons, we were a long way from being safe.
Chapter 35
Travis and I made our way quietly over to the door to listen for any noise that meant Patrick was still in the shop. I decided if we didn’t hear anything for five minutes, I would attempt to open it. At first there was complete silence beyond the door, but just as I was starting to recite the spell, a heavy door creaked open and slammed shut. The dialogue that ensued was conducted in harshly whispered words I couldn’t make out. I looked at Travis to see if he understood any of their exchange, but he shook his head. It occurred to me that the second man could have been Patrick’s accomplice in the John Doe murder and any number of other crimes we weren’t yet aware of. In any case, it was difficult not to be disheartened. With two of them to defeat, our odds of surviving dropped substantially.
The dialogue came to an abrupt end, after which there was the unmistakable sound of rubber-soled shoes approaching the office. There was no point in going back to our chairs. Patrick would immediately notice that we were no longer bound.
“We need something we can use as a weapon,” Travis whispered. The footsteps were coming closer. We were nearly out of options. He picked up the chair where he’d been tied, struggling under its weight and bulk. He carried it across the ro
om to the hinged side of the door, where he’d be hidden when it was opened. There was no time for me to rummage through the desk for scissors or a letter opener. Instead, I focused on my chair and gathered my telekinetic energy.
The key was inserted into the lock, the doorknob turned, and the door swung open. Patrick hesitated in the doorway as he took in the fact that we were free. A boy Zach’s age pushed past him to see why he’d stopped. Travis remained hidden. At the exact moment when they passed the door and would be able to see him, he hefted the chair over his head. Both were in my sights too. I unleashed my energy, sending the chair careening across the floor with so much force that it slammed into their legs, knocking them down like bowling pins.
As they fell, Travis brought his chair crashing down on their heads, the force cracking off three of its wooden legs. They were conscious but dazed. Travis and I made a mad dash for the door. I was able to skirt them safely. Travis wasn’t so lucky. Patrick grabbed his ankle, twisting it at a horrible angle and bringing him down so hard I cringed.
“Run. Get out of here,” Travis shouted at me, but it was already too late.
Patrick was on his feet, gun in hand. He jammed the barrel into Travis’s temple. “You take one more step, witch, and he’s dead.”
The teen hauled himself off the floor, holding his knee. “Dad...stop!” he cried. “I told you...no more.”
Patrick wheeled on his son. “Shut up. Just shut up and let me handle this!” He turned to me. I was frozen in the limbo of the doorway. I wanted to go for help, but I didn’t want to leave Travis. Besides, even if I did make a run for it, Patrick might shoot me in the back and then shoot Travis. He really couldn’t afford to let either of us live.
“I will kill your reporter friend,” he said to me, enunciating each word with a hostility that chilled me. This was not Patrick. This was a rabid distortion of the man.