by Delia James
9
I SLEPT LATE the next day.
This was not surprising, considering that it was one a.m. before I actually pulled my Jeep into my own driveway. Even then, though, I couldn’t go straight to bed, no matter how much I wanted to. I absolutely had to call Julia.
She answered on the first ring. “Anna, I’ve been waiting for you. Tell me what’s happened.”
Since this was Julia I was talking to, I knew any attempt to soften the blow would only make things worse. “Ramona Forsythe is dead.”
Julia was quiet for a long time. “She was murdered,” my mentor said at last, and it was not a question.
“Yes.”
More silence followed, and when Julia spoke again, her words were filled with a flat, hard rage that I hope I never hear directed at me. “Who did this to our sister?”
“They don’t know, and I don’t know,” I told her. “I got a Vibe, a strong one. Somebody was there when she died, but I couldn’t get a handle on . . .” I had to stop and swallow. “On who it was.”
“Tell me everything, from the time you left the shop. I take it this was what had upset Alistair so badly?”
“Yes,” I said. Then I told her how Kenisha had used her dowsing ability to find where Alistair was, and how we’d gotten inside the building and found Ramona dead and Ruby missing. I explained about the phone calls and the appearance of Pam Abernathy. Julia listened silently. I could picture her expression, still and steely.
“I will have to think about what you have said,” she told me. “And I will need to speak with Kenisha. We cannot let the death of one of our own go unanswered.”
A chill ran up my spine. This was not a conversation Kenisha was going to want to have. “Um, Julia, I think Kenisha’s going to be a little busy for a while. Maybe—”
“Thank you for calling, Anna. We will speak again in the morning.”
My mentor hung up before I could mention that it already was morning. I stared at my phone for a while. I rubbed my forehead and stared some more. Then I dialed another number.
This time I got voice mail.
“Hi. This is a recording of Sean McNally. If this had been an actual Sean McNally, you would not now be getting directions to leave a message.” Then there was the beep.
“Hi, Sean,” I began. “Sorry about—” There was a click and the sound of fumbling and rustling.
“Anna?”
“Oh, hi, Sean. Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you up . . .”
“Bartender, remember?” he said, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “This is practically lunchtime for me. I’m glad you called. Is everything okay?”
I’m pretty sure I’d been planning on telling a small but reassuring lie. Now that I had Sean’s voice in my ear, though, I couldn’t go through with it.
“Umm . . . no,” I said, and gave him a slightly edited version of the story I’d told Julia.
Like Julia, Sean listened until I was finished without interrupting.
“Are you all right, Anna?” he asked when I’d finally run out of words.
“Yeah. I think so.” I ran a hand across my hair, which was badly windblown but still crispy from all the spray I’d put in it to try to hold the twist in place for the party. “Mostly.”
“Do you want me to come over? Or call Valerie for you or something?” he added quickly. Because Sean knew I was still coming off a bad relationship and because he was a gentleman. Which was lovely and considerate, and it made me smile.
I suddenly realized I did want him to come over. A lot. I wanted to see his smile and his twinkly blue eyes. I wanted to tell him everything that had happened and to hear what he had to say about it.
I jumped back from that feeling like Alistair from a bathtub full of cold water.
“Thanks,” I said, and even though he couldn’t see me, I mustered a smile. “But I’ll be fine. Strong, independent artist girl here, remember?”
“Never doubted it for a minute. Will I see you tomorrow?”
“It’s already tomorrow.”
“It isn’t tomorrow until you’ve actually been to bed.”
I rubbed my face and tried not to chuckle. “And this is, what? How bartenders keep time?”
“Yep. So. See you tomorrow?”
“Definitely.” And I meant it. I might be frightened of how much I meant it, but that didn’t change anything.
“Get some sleep.”
“You are not the boss of me. And you too.”
We said good night and I went upstairs, and, unusually, I left the light on in the hall while I changed into my pajamas and climbed into my bed. I lay awake for a long time, listening to the wind under the eaves. My house sighed and creaked and settled, in the slow, punctuated rhythms I was getting used to. It’s all right, it seemed to be saying. You can sleep. I’m on watch.
Which was of course purely a trick of my imagination. At least, I was pretty sure it was. On the other hand, the cottage had belonged to my predecessor in the coven, Dorothy Hawthorne. Dorothy was not only a powerful witch; she had a wicked sense of humor. I blinked toward the framed movie photo I kept on the wall—it was that scene from the movie The Wizard of Oz where the Wicked Witch of the West is skywriting SURRENDER DOROTHY.
Dorothy had died before I arrived in Portsmouth, and I’d helped her nephew, Frank, prove that her death had been a murder. My stomach curdled. I really was not at all sure how I felt about being in the middle of yet another mystery.
It’s all right, whispered that voice in the back of my mind again. I might not entirely agree, but I felt obscurely better anyway. I rolled over, pulled the covers up to my ears and went to sleep.
• • •
WHEN I DID finally peel an eyelid open, the ancient digital clock at my bedside read 9:30. For a morning person like me, this was classifiable as a crime against the whole day.
I threw back the covers and shoved my feet into my sheepskin slippers so I wouldn’t have to put them on the floorboards. I love my cottage. It is dramatic and beautiful and snug, with an amazing spiral-patterned garden out back. It’s also a hundred years old. During that time, it’s developed some quirks, including a persistent draft across my bedroom floor. Both Sean and his father, Old Sean, had turned their attention to it, but neither one of them had been able to track down the source. Old Sean had started to openly speculate that it might be all in my head. My coven sister, Allie Paulson, though, assured me it was just that the house was just cranky, and while it loved me, it also liked to make sure I was paying attention.
I didn’t actively doubt her, but I had decided I was going to put this assessment on the shelf with all the other things I needed to get used to.
I showered, dried, brushed what needed to be brushed and changed into flannel-lined jeans and a fleecy sweatshirt with the words NEW ENGLAND GIRL: WARMTH IS OVERRATED on the front. I had shuffled all the way downstairs to my kitchen before I realized what was really wrong. I turned around in a circle.
My familiar was nowhere to be seen.
Normally, Alistair would have slept on my pillow or my stomach, and he would be right here, right now, complaining about the fact that I hadn’t gotten his breakfast fast enough or was unreasonably trying to make him eat kibble instead of scrambled eggs or tuna fish.
I looked automatically at Alistair’s food bowl. That was empty. I was sure I’d filled it before I left for the party, so he’d been here at some point.
My snug, lovely, reassuring cottage suddenly felt disconcertingly empty.
I told myself it was nothing. I mean, Alistair might be magical and highly intelligent, but in all the ways that counted, he was entirely a cat. He came and went as he chose. I was just rattled by last night’s events. Discovering a body had that effect on a person, with or without a possible cat-napping thrown in.
I started the coffeemaker. Ever the opti
mist, I looked in my fridge to see if I had anything edible. My grocery shopping is a highly irregular activity and my cooking skills nonexistent. Today, though, I was in luck. I found some bagels and cream cheese and peanut butter. I pulled them all out, because I am all about the healthy breakfast.
I popped two bagel halves into the toaster. Alistair still wasn’t anywhere in evidence. No worries, I told myself. None at all. There’s an explanation. He might be out with Miss Boots, or chasing that rabbit out in the garden that will not get the message.
I filled his bowl with the last of the Best Petz Kitty Kibblez and rattled it.
“Alistair? Breakfast!”
No answer. No big gray cat popped onto my windowsill or strolled in from the living room.
I put the bowl down. “I got half a can of tuna,” I tried.
Still no answer.
Now I was worried.
“Come on, big guy,” I muttered. “This is not okay.”
And still no answer, at least not from my familiar. My toaster, on the other hand, popped. I spread the bagel halves with cream cheese and peanut butter, set them on the table in my breakfast nook and went to get the pot of coffee and a mug.
I sat down and stared at my breakfast. The house was too quiet. My head was too full. I missed my grandmother. I wondered how much longer it would take her to pack up her things in Arizona and move up here. I’d offered to go with her, but she insisted she was more than capable, thank you very much. Emphasis hers. Grandma B.B. spoke in italics.
I missed Valerie too. Most mornings we wound up sitting together in my kitchen or hers. I didn’t immediately reach for the phone, though. Early November was the break between the leaf-peepers and the winter tourists and sports season. This meant it was a slow few weeks for the B and B, but not for Valerie and Roger themselves. They needed the time to repair and restock, not to mention continue the major project of readjusting their lives around little Melissa. Roger was also in the middle of planning a total blowout Thanksgiving Day feast for his family, which included about twenty people flying in to meet the baby. By the time he was done, there wasn’t going to be an unrelished cranberry or unbaked pumpkin left on the whole East Coast.
The thought of food reminded me that there was somebody else I needed to call. Martine. In fact, I probably should have called her last night. I gave up on my bagel for the moment and dug my phone out of my purse.
This was when I found out I also had fifteen voice mail messages, and most of them were from Valerie. My thumb wavered between buttons before I decided on the phone call. Val’s messages had waited all night. They could wait two more minutes.
I hit Martine’s number and waited while it rang.
“This better be good, Britton,” announced Martine after the third ring. “And it also better be about why you left the party last night.”
“I don’t know if ‘good’s’ exactly the word,” I told her. “But otherwise, yeah.”
“The sound you hear now is me being patient.”
Actually, the sound I heard now was the bang, clatter and shout of a restaurant kitchen in the middle of lunch prep. But I figured I didn’t need to mention this. I took a deep breath and got ready to tell the whole story about what happened to Ramona again. Of course, that was the moment Alistair chose to pop onto the kitchen counter.
“Gah!” I remarked.
“Britton?” shouted Martine in my ear. “Anna? Are you all right?”
“Yeah, sorry. Alistair’s been . . . gone all morning. He just, uh, got back.”
My cat twitched his whiskers and jumped down to his food bowl. He sniffed dubiously at the Kibblez.
“You snooze, you lose,” I muttered.
“I beg your pardon?” said Martine.
“Sorry, I was talking to Alistair. It’s the Best Petz stuff.” I lifted the bag to show him. “Look. Ruby likes it.”
Alistair put his nose in the air and stalked away into the living room.
“You do not need me on the phone to talk to your cat.” A distinctly dangerous note had crept into my friend’s voice.
“Sorry. You remember that one time when you told me if I didn’t call you right away when . . . certain kinds of stuff . . . happened, you’d stop talking to me?”
“Yeah?”
“This is me making sure you don’t stop talking to me.”
“You’re coming over here. Now.”
I agreed that I was, because Martine’s tone did not encourage argument. I hung up. I turned around.
“Alistair!”
My cat looked up from the half of my peanut butter and cream cheese bagel he was busily licking. “Merow?” he asked, clearly confused by my reaction.
“And just where were you all night, young man?” That was when I realized I had both hands on my hips and was glowering. At my cat. For an answer, Alistair blinked at me, his blue eyes as wide and innocent as any Disney cartoon’s.
“Merp?”
I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. Alistair went back to his breakfast, which used to be my breakfast.
“Cats,” I muttered.
“Merow,” agreed Alistair.
10
MARTINE HAD TOLD me to get over to the Pale Ale. Valerie and the rest of the coven needed to hear about what had happened to Ramona. Fortunately, I was going to be able to kill two birds with one stone, or at least one phone tree.
Less than half an hour later, I was sitting with a substantial portion of my coven around a table in the private dining room at the Pale Ale.
Martine’s restaurant is the kind of place the guide books and tourism Web sites label a landmark. The boxy, slate-roofed brick building has stood on its Portsmouth street corner since colonial times. Martine got the head chef job last spring. Since then, she’s been busy turning the historic tavern into what she calls a locally sourced, nose-to-tail, farm-to-table “experience.” She spends her off-hours going through the oldest cookbooks she can find, looking for recipes. The results were pretty amazing, such as the walnut cake in front of us and the mugs of spearmint and comfrey tea that we were all hunching over instead of coffee.
“We” meant Allie Paulson and Trish Robinson, as well as Val, with little Melissa on her shoulder. Allie had arrived shortly after Val and the baby. The fact that Allie owned her own housekeeping service gave her a certain amount of flexibility during the workday. Right now, she had the sleeves of her white blouse rolled up to her elbows and looked ready to physically move anything or anybody who might be even thinking about getting in her way.
Trish, in the meantime, was bravely trying not to sneak peeks at her smartphone.
Shannon and Faye Yu were both on shift over at the hospital and so couldn’t be there. Kenisha wasn’t there either, which didn’t surprise me. When you are a cop in a small department, a murder and potential cat-napping will tend to make you kind of busy.
But Kenisha wasn’t the only person still unaccounted for.
“Have you heard from Julia this morning?” I asked Val between bites of Martine’s walnut cake, which was taking the place of the bagel Alistair had appropriated. “I tried, but I only got voice mail.”
“I got hold of her just before I left,” said Val. “She said she was fine.”
“She would, wouldn’t she?” murmured Allie.
“I don’t know when I’ve ever heard Julia say anything else.” Trish turned her phone over a couple of more times. “Whether it’s true or not.”
“She did promise to call back.” Val patted Melissa on the back, but she also looked anxiously toward the door. I found myself wondering what else Julia had said to her this morning.
“And she knows we’re all here,” I added. “I called her too.”
“Funny, so did I.” Allie drummed her blunt, strong fingers on the table so hard I was surprised she didn’t leave dents.
Trish turned her phone over again.
That was when Martine pushed through the door from the kitchen. “Okay, things are holding steady in there.” She dropped into one of the empty chairs and poured herself a mug of hot tea. “So, Britton, what have you got yourself into this time?”
With that, and some additional cake and tea, I told them all about finding Ramona dead and Ruby missing. I added a description of Pam’s arrival, and, after some hesitation, the phone call I’d listened to, as well as the one that had come to Ramona’s phone from Kristen Summers. My coven sisters and my friend, and even baby Melissa, listened with various expressions and exclamations of surprise and disbelief.
When I finished, a thick cloud of silence settled over all of them. Well, almost all of them.
“Ppppbt,” said Melissa. She had this way of puckering up her mouth that made me feel like she wanted to talk to the management, because this ride was not quite what the brochure promised.
“Ah, ah, manners,” said Val, giving the baby a little bounce. “Sorry, Anna, it’s not you. She’s been gassy all morning.”
“Aww, that’s okay, isn’t it, bubby?” I touched her button nose. Fussing over the baby was a lot more comfortable than thinking about Ramona’s death, or why Julia hadn’t shown up yet.
“Mmm-ma-mmm. Ppppbbt,” Melissa answered.
“You’re going to have trouble with that one.” Trish chuckled and turned her phone over one more time. “She definitely knows her own mind.”
“It’s an independent streak,” retorted Val loftily. “Just like her mommy. Right, peanut?”
“Pppbut-um,” said Melissa, and to emphasize the point she shoved her fist into her mouth.
“Val, do you know if Julia and Dr. Forsythe were close at all?” I asked.
“Not really,” Val told me. “Dr. Forsythe was from one of the old families, but she was never part of any coven. She always said if she was going to take care of people’s familiars, she needed to stay . . . neutral.”
“Why neutral?”
Val’s face crinkled up in disbelief, but she quickly smoothed the expression away. “I forget how new you are around here.”