by Tegan Maher
"That's a great place for it," I told her. "And it even matches the rest of your furniture in here. It was meant for you."
"It was," she said. "You have no idea how much I love it. Thank you."
"You're welcome. Happy birthday, even though we'll see you for it, too." I brushed my hands together. "Now, do you have any tea?"
"If I didn't, I'd make a jug."
We headed to the kitchen, talking about what all had happened after they'd left Saturday night.
"And the lady who was running the fair—the one we saw talking to that guy—got up and gave this weird thank-you speech. It was weird," Hunter said as he pulled out a chair at their table and reiterated what she'd said.
Moira crinkled her brow as she poured us all a glass of tea. She pulled a bottle of scotch out of the cabinet and splashed couple fingers into a salsa bowl for Max, who practically rubbed around her legs like a cat. "That is odd. I wonder what her purpose was?"
I lifted a shoulder. "I don't know, but it sure didn't make her look good. There's somethin' not right with that woman."
"So what's with the table?" I asked. The last time I'd been there, they'd had a cute glass-topped one, but they'd replaced it with a long, farm-style one similar to the one I had at my place.
They looked at each other, then Moira nodded.
"We've kinda become Switzerland," TJ said.
Hunter dropped his brows. "Switzerland?"
"Yeah," Moira said. "Apparently, since she was a healer, Nora sort of played the role of a remediator between, well, everybody, and now they expect me to fill her shoes."
"Wait," I said, "Who's they?"
TJ shrugged. "Everybody. The werewolves, other witches. Whoever."
Hunter leaned forward with his elbows on the table, and I could see him thinking. "So, you just let them meet here to settle disputes on neutral ground, or you act sorta like the magical sheriff?"
Moira heaved a sigh. "We're not sure, yet. All we know is that so far, we've had a couple of squabbles, and people have asked for our help resolving it. It's not really a formal thing yet, so we're trying to figure out how we want to steer it."
"Just speaking from experience here,” he said, “so do with it what you will—be careful getting between two people or groups. You may end up having to pick a side at one point, then things'll get ugly."
TJ considered his words. "I'm glad you spoke up. I hadn't considered that, but I can see it becoming an issue. I already feel like I'm reading the Cliff's Notes on the whole magic thing, and the extra pressure isn't helping."
Her aunt Nora—the direct opposite of Addy in both appearance and personality, but not sass—popped in right then, almost directly in front of me, and I sloshed my tea.
"That's what I've been telling her too, sugar," she said, floating over to Hunter. She looked at me over her readers as I grabbed a paper towel off the counter and sopped up my tea. "It's not like you haven't see a ghost before. You should be used to that by now."
I scowled at her. "I'll tell you the same thing I tell Addy every time she pops in and I spill somethin' or about jab my eye out with my mascara wand. There's no way to get rid of the startle reflex. It's called a reflex for a reason. Y'all could be nicer and do like Cheri Lynn does most of the time—fade in so we know you're comin'."
"Pht," she scoffed, flapping a wrist at me. "What would be the fun in that?" She turned to TJ. "Anyway dear, the handsome sheriff here has a point. You need to consider your alliances carefully. And to do that, you need to get to know about them, and learn all you can about their histories around here, and in general, too. Don't make any decisions until you know what you're getting yourself into."
Moira nodded. "I agree. Right now we don't have many answers. Hell, I'm not even sure what questions to ask!"
That sounded like a hot mess to me, so I just told them good luck, and offered my help should they need it. I had to wonder what I'd gotten myself into when I did, though. I'd be asking myself that same question a few months down the road, but of course, I didn't realized that then.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
SINCE IT WAS GETTING into late afternoon and we were still an hour from home, we didn't dawdle long. As we were pulling out of her driveway, I thought I caught sight of a huge dog running through the tall grass on the other side of the road.
Prejudiced though it may seem, the idea of werewolves sent a little tingle of fear, or maybe foreboding, down my spine. That was a being that could turn lethal fast, and I worried that TJ and Moira would be in something up to their elbows before they even realized they were standing in a swamp.
I pushed it from my mind; there wasn't anything I could do about it, and I had plenty of other things on my mind that were more pressing.
We were about halfway home when Hunter's phone rang. He motioned to it and I picked it up out of the cup holder. Blane Scottsdale. I told him, then answered it because he asked me to.
"Hey Sheriff. Everything okay?" I asked.
"Uh, is this Sheriff Woods's number?"
I laughed. "It is. He's just drivin' and asked me to answer when he saw it was you. This is Noelle. I'm gonna put you on speaker, unless you need to speak privately. It's just the two of us here," I said. When Max glared at me, I shrugged and mouthed what. "Well, except for my ass that is." I made a face at him and then Hunter glared at me.
I cringed when the sheriff said, "Beg pardon?" in a tone an octave higher than normal.
"Sorry. I meant my miniature donkey."
"Oh. Yeah, I forgot about him. He rides in the truck?"
Sometimes I forgot how it probably looked to other people, but it just didn't feel right making him ride in the back. Not that he'd go for it anyway. "Yeah. He's a bit of a diva." Another glare from the peanut gallery and I gave him my most smarmy grin.
"Ok, then. And speaker's fine, because if Keyhole Lake is anything like Coatesville, the rest of the town probably already knows, anyway."
"Knows what?" Hunter asked, leaning closer to the phone.
"We had another murder." He sounded exhausted and I could almost picture him running a hand over his face. "Al Cassidy, the man who everybody said used Earl's recipe, was found shot dead in his food truck. Looks like it happened sometime right before the party go swingin’."
I glanced at Hunter, who looked as worried as I did.
"So what do you need me to do?" he asked.
Sheriff Scottsdale said, "Just make sure Earl stays in town until I can get over there to question him and Bobbie Sue. I was at the party and saw him, but they've put the time of death at around mid-morning, which means it could have been just about anybody." He took a deep breath.
Truth be told, I don't know what to do with any of this. It's now spread to three counties. I didn't have enough on anybody to make an arrest stick for more than twenty-four hours and now every suspect I have is scattered hither and yon."
"Did you hear the weird speech Gregoria Stanton gave?" I asked. "It was creepy."
"Creepy? She just thanked everybody and apologized for what happened."
Hunter looked at me and shook his head. We were viewing the speech through a different lens than the sheriff was. We knew she'd threatened the Cassidy guy, so the speech looked much darker from our perspective. But had no way to share than information without outing Max. And that wasn't even a possibility.
"Still," I said, "it seemed like there was more to it than the usual thanks for coming, see ya next year message. The way she said she took care of it was unusual, don't you think?"
He lifted a shoulder. "I didn't find it strange, but I did follow through. Ms. Stanton said she disqualified both men and canceled the checks."
"Oh." I felt silly now that he put it in that light.
"I know you want to clear your friend, but I've already cleared her. Anyway, Hunter, would you please make sure Earl doesn't leave? I barely have enough staff to cover my shifts, let alone send somebody over there."
"It's no problem, Blane. Earl's not goin
g anywhere. He's got his family and his business. I'll make sure of it."
They said their goodbyes after Sheriff Scottsdale promised to keep him posted, and I ended the call.
"My word's no good, but why didn't you tell him about the flash of yellow you saw?" Max asked, still pouting.
"What flash of yellow?" I asked. All I'd mentioned at the time was that was that it had been a menu; I hadn't said anything about it being a yellow one.
"I saw it too. Out of the corner of my eye. Except from my angle, it wasn't the menu. It was farther from us than the menu was."
Considering, that made sense. Something that would have blended with the poster because it was at the same eye level to me would have been two different movements to Max—one lower, one higher.
"Then why didn't you say anything?" I asked.
He shrugged a furry shoulder. "I didn't think any more of it than you did. But now that we know Aly-boy was murdered, it's a little more relevant. After all, we'd just passed his truck when we saw it."
I concentrated, trying to remember how close to it we'd been and he was right. Then I tried to compare the yellow to what Gregoria Stanton had been wearing. It could definitely have been her. I glanced at Hunter. "Now what do I do? He already thinks I'm trying to throw her under the bus. If I call back now, he'll think I'm crazy, especially since I didn't actually see anything other than a flash of yellow."
He pressed his lips together and thought for a minute. "Honestly, if it were me, I'd think you were making it up. I hate to say that, but considering he probably believes that's what they were talking about when we saw them together, it would seem to me that you were grasping at straws to save Earl's butt. Or to deflect attention away from yourself. He doesn't know us. I don't think any good would come of it."
"What a mess." I racked my brain trying to figure out a way to prove she did it.
"It's just my opinion, but she seemed familiar with him," Max said.
"How so?" Hunter asked.
"If they didn't know each other, I wouldn't think they would have been so clandestine. And the way she spoke to him wasn't exactly professional."
"He has a point." Hunter glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. "I wouldn't perform any sort of official business like that. It was kinda shady."
Since that was about all there was left to say about it, conversation drifted toward more personal topics, but my subconscious was still trying to cram all the pieces into a neat little puzzle that made sense. Not that it worked.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
IT WAS ALMOST DARK when we got home. Gabi ran out to greet us when we got there, excited to show me the check she'd made at the show that weekend. They'd placed in a couple different classes and took first in another, so even though it had barely covered her entry fees and travel, she was proud of herself.
"And you should have seen Mayhem!" she said as she helped us carry boxes out of the trailer. "He was like a prince among men. By the end of the weekend, he had half the folks there eating out of the palm of his hand. Or to be more precise, he was eating out of theirs!"
I slid Anna Mae's two boxes into the back seat of my truck to return to her the next day and grinned. "I'm happy you had such a good time and won some cash, to boot."
She looked down and puckered her mouth. "Yeah, but I didn't feel right leaving when Ranger was missing, especially since it was my fault he was gone."
"Your fault? I thought Mayhem let everybody out." Gabi always felt personally responsible for his shenanigans even though it only took one forgetful moment to give him a window.
For example, the morning he'd let everybody out, Shelby had fed, but she must have forgotten to latch the extra clip on the gate. Before Mayhem had come to us, we'd always just looped a rope around the post, and that had been fine. Mayhem figured that out in the first two days he was there, so we'd had to start clipping it. He really did earn his name.
"Yeah, I know, but still," she said.
"But still, nothing. I've thought about installing a gate at the end of the drive, and should have done that the first time he opened the gates." I made her look at me. "This is not your fault, got it?"
Hunter was unhooking the trailer. "Speaking of, has anybody heard anything else from whoever it is that left the note?"
She shook her head. "Not a peep. Shelby went through all of Will's current patients and none of the numbers start with 3-3-7. None of the farms around here have any idea who it may be either."
"I'll have Marissa run it in the newspaper tomorrow. Maybe whoever it is will see it." Marissa ran the Keyhole Lake Tribune, a weekly paper that featured local goings on, along with an Ask Marissa column where people could ask advice about anything from their love lives to their health conditions.
We'd gone to school together, though she'd been a couple years behind me, and she'd inherited the paper from her parents. The income from the trader that accompanied it made her a nice living, but she'd told me more than once that the advice column bored her to tears. I guess you could only phrase exercise more and leave his/her cheatin' ass so many ways.
She'd probably put us on the front page to help us get the word out.
We headed into the farm just as Shelby made it home.
"Hey brat," I said as she pulled her hair out of her ponytail and grabbed a Coke outta the fridge. "How'd work go?"
She flopped into the chair beside me and rolled her eyes. "I have no idea how they do that day in and day out. Just one weekend was enough to send me over the deep end. People are so whiny. There were a dozen times when I wanted to tell somebody we were a restaurant, not a freakin' soup kitchen. They find the dumbest things tryin' to get their meals free. Cheapskates!"
I smiled. "Bein' the boss ain't all it's cracked up to be, huh?"
"Not by a long shot," she said, taking a swig of her coke.
Max popped his head up from where he'd been napping and looked toward the front door. "Incoming," he said, then plopped his head back down when an old Ford truck rattled up the driveway and stopped in front of the house. By the time a grizzled old man managed to open the door and climb out, we'd made it outside to greet him.
He had a full head of snow-white hair and a face that spoke of years spent outdoors. A plump lady with smiling eyes and the soft-looking skin that comes with age climbed out the other side.
Holding my hand out, I introduced myself, then Shelby and Hunter.
"Harry Stewart, and this here's my wife Stella."
"Mr. and Mrs. Stewart," I nodded, "It's a pleasure. How can we help ya?"
"Actually," he said, "I think we can help you. That is, if you own a big ole red gelding."
"We do!" I said. "Please tell me you're the one who left us a note."
He rubbed his ear. "I did, but if you got the note, why didn't you call?"
Shelby reached into her pocket and pulled out a piece of paper torn from a pocket notebook. The whole bottom half of it was a blue smudge. "Sorry about that! Our mailbox leaks and by the time I got it, it'd rained."
"Harry," Stella said, her brows drawn, "if I've told you once, I've told you a hundred times to get rid of that blue marker and use a pen like grownups do!" Even when she was scolding him, she looked too kind for it to be anything other than the mild sniping of a couple who'd been together for many years.
His face pinked. "Sorry about that. I guess I never gave no thought to what would happen if'n it got wet."
"Well, we've caught each other now, and that's all that matters," I said. "We have an escape artist here, and he amuses himself by letting himself and all his pasture buddies out every chance he gets. Along with any other havoc he can reach."
The old man's eyes twinkled. I used to have a critter just like him. Called him Trouble. Gabi, who must have heard us and was standing on the porch, said, "Mine's name is Mayhem!"
"You don't say?" Harry glanced toward the barn, wistful. "Would you mind showin' him to me?"
Stella swatted him on the arm and gave him a pointed look.
He cleared his throat. "Oh yeah," he said. "She knows how distracted I get around critters."
"Really, it's no problem," Gabi said, and his face lit up.
Stella's softened and she shooed him toward the barn. "Go on, then."
Gabi grinned and motioned for him to follow, and the rest of us trailed behind. Mayhem's stall was at the end—we'd moved him from the left to the right a few months ago when we'd found a body in the left one, and none of us were quite up to messin' with that just yet.
Harry held his palm out flat so Mayhem could sniff him, then ran his hand across his nose and cheek once the horse okayed it with a snuffle. The old man grinned like a kid in a candy store when Mayhem stretched his black-and-white face toward his pocked and started lipping him.
"You are a smart one, aren't you?" Harry asked, fishing a sugar cube out of the pocket. He glanced at Gabi. "May I?"
She laughed. "If you don't, he'll figure out a way to come out and get it himself."
Harry held his palm out with the sugar cube on it and his smile was nostalgic as Mayhem lipped it off and crunched it up. "We had a farm up in Kentucky for years. I worked as an exercise groom at one of the bigger tracks, but then I got old and just kept a handful at home and did a little trainin'."
Mayhem nuzzled his pocket. "You want another one, boy?" he asked, and when Mayhem nodded his head up and down, he laughed and hooked another cube out of his pocket.
"My mama got sick several years ago and we had to move over to the other side of Keyhole Lake to take care of her. Had to sell the farm along with all my critters to pay for her treatments. It never leaves ya though, the horse fever."
The sad, faraway look on his face as he rubbed Mayhem's crooked blaze made my heart hurt, and I moved to change the subject to something happier for him. "So where did you find Ranger?"