Fangs and Frenemies

by Cherry Andrews

  “Er, thanks.” I was honestly grateful. And really not wanting to delve into the smell thing.

  “Why don’t we plan our interview strategy? Who’s up first? Who really strikes you as the most suspicious person?”

  “Hmm,” I said, trying not to think of the elephant in the room. I wasn’t 100 percent certain Kade was innocent. But since he was a shifter, the toffee chews wouldn’t work on him so it was a moot point. I decided to steer clear of this delicate territory, for now. “Well, there’s Drew. The husband.”

  “No offense to the bakery, but a dude that rich would never deign to come down from the Heights and mingle with rank and file Blue Mooners. Not even for one of your Gran’s cinnamon peach scones which are to die for.”

  “His mom came to pick up the cake,” I said, remembering with some shame how gracious she’d been. “Her driver and assistant went with her but she was personally involved.”

  “Huh.” That stumped her for a moment. “I guess you’re right, I’ve always seen her around here and there. Even Fred shows up sometimes. But Drew’s generation seems different. Have you noticed no one ever sees him walking around downtown? He must have assistants who shop for him. We’re going to need a special strategy just to talk to the guy.” She sounded doubtful. “Even talking to one of his assistants would be tough I bet.”

  My mind flashed back to the wedding. “There’s this group,” I said. “They call themselves The Help.” I told her about how long they’d been working for the Kensingtons and their peers in the Heights. “They meet Thursday nights for beer, here at The Barrel. And I’ve been invited to stop by.”

  “That’s only two nights away. Definitely go to that and learn as much as you can. Great idea!”

  I ducked my head at the praise. “So, what were the other names on the police list?”

  “Oh you’re going to love it.” Max chortled like she couldn’t even get it out without laughing. “Jenna Jeffries . . . and Britt Hansen.”

  “No.” I gasped. “Ashlee’s best friends!”

  “Almost too delicious, isn’t it?”

  I knew exactly what she meant. All those years when Max and I struggled to get by as lonely outsiders, the popular crowd seemed like one big happy family, their life an endless beer-soaked reunion, sisterly bonds tight as my neck muscles. I thought back to Britt barking orders to Jenna at the wedding. What if all along, our trio of tormenters couldn’t stand each other, and their friendship was just bs? What if one of them had killed Ashlee?

  “There’s no way it could be Jenna,” Max added.

  “Why couldn’t it? She’s hardly a nice person.” I shuddered at the memory of Jenna’s cold, shaking hands yanking down the zipper of my dress. Come to think of it, why were her hands so shaky? Oh yeah, fear. Fear that I was “a spy.” “She’s also paranoid. Do you think too much kale can make you paranoid?” I asked hopefully.

  Max shrugged. “I find it hard to believe that a criminal mind lurks within Jenna.”

  “Oh right, because she’s as dumb as a post.” I seagulled a fry and settled back in my seat, feeling smug and like I might have it in me to be a real detective. “That leaves Britt Hansen. She’s pretty smart. Or at least not incredibly stupid.”

  “More importantly, she’s devious.”

  “The two of you could stand to be a little more devious.”

  At the sharply amused soprano voice, I looked up to see Britt Hansen herself standing in front of us, balancing two cobalt-blue plates of wings. I hadn’t even noticed that the child-waiter’s shift ended.

  “That one’s not my fault,” I whispered to Max. “You didn’t warn me.”

  “Because she wasn’t anywhere near us,” Max growled back.

  “Nope,” Britt concurred. “I could hear you two geniuses loudly gabbing about your ‘investigation’ and your magical powers clear from the other side of the room.”

  Max clutched her character sheet tightly, like she was considering using it again to explain away our odd conversation. But it wouldn’t help, of course. Once, ten years ago, Britt had seen magic—mine—up close and very personal. Her look of repulsed horror was even harder to take than the screaming and four letter words. Had to gave her some credit, though, she seemed calmer about the whole idea now.

  “So?” Max set the crumpled page on the table. “What business is it of yours, Brittany?”

  Emboldened I added, “And since when do you work at The Barrel, anyway?”

  “Ladies, I can assure you that the answers to those questions are connected.” Britt sighed a long-suffering sigh. “I drove back to town last weekend to go to an old friend’s wedding, and got stuck in town indefinitely. For reasons you two apparently know about.”

  “Oh wow, the sheriff literally told you ‘don’t leave town?’” I would never stop being awed by the unfolding glamorousness of her life. “Like on a TV show, but for real.”

  “Yes, Hazel. Just like a TV show.” Britt looked at me as if I had all the brain power of a lobster. “Anyway, my cousin Stephie owns this place, and she’s letting me work here temporarily. While I’m stuck in town. I already know the ins and outs because I waitressed here the summer I was eighteen.”

  And it was annoying how much she still could pass for an eighteen-year-old small-town waitress, I thought. Her honey-blond hair was up in adorable, youthful pigtails and her petite form perfectly filled out the requisite white Drunken Barrel T-shirt with its picture of a winking cartoon wine barrel, its mouth an “O” that leered up at the full moon.

  A blue moon with a butt cleft drawn in the middle.

  Keep it classy, Drunken Barrel.

  Britt bit her pouty lower lip. “I don’t know exactly what you two ladies are up to . . . and it sounds incredibly amateurish and risky . . . but I want in.”

  Max and I looked at each other, shocked.

  “What?”

  “You want to hang out with us?” I wasn’t proud of the little squeal that escaped me, but this odd girl out’s heart was skipping beats at the idea of a popular girl asking to join us. Thinking back, I’d never really hated Britt Hansen. Well, ok, I had. I totally had. But my hate-on for her was only wounded love. I’d always wanted Britt and her friends to treat me with kindness and respect, yet none of them ever had.

  Till now.

  Max’s death glare told me great minds didn’t always think alike. “I’ll go deal with our tab.” She already had her wallet out. “Come on, Hazel.”

  I hesitated. Max was my ride home. Trixie had been towed to a shop in the next town over and she wouldn’t be back for a day or two. “Are you sure?” Wasn’t Max being a little hasty? “Maybe Britt has useful info. A fresh perspective. And she’s nice to us now, see?”

  “She is working you, Hazel. The way people like her always do.” Max’s voice held more patience than usual, like she was talking to a child. It made me miss her usual blunt-as-a-spoon style. “Don’t you find it suspicious that she’s never given us the time of day before, and now she wants in on our party?”

  “That’s not suspicious,” Britt protested. “That’s called growing up.”

  “Yeah, well, your timing’s pretty hinky.” Max folded her arms. “Couldn’t you grow up before your buddy Ashlee disappeared into thin air?”

  “Shoot!” I snapped my fingers. “Britt did want to talk to us before, at the wedding. I totally forgot to tell you. She specifically asked me to say hi to you.”

  “To me, why?” Max narrowed her eyes. “What’s your game, Hansen?”

  “To be honest, I assumed you’d mellowed out some.” Britt shrugged. “Guess I was wrong.”

  While Max stormed off to throw cash at the bartender, Britt lingered by our table. “Isn’t some part of you curious about what I could offer your team?” she said. “My powers of persuasion alone would put you two leaps and bounds ahead. I mean, take you. You’re sweet, Hazel. This whole town trusts you not to poison their muffins. But you have about as much presence as a jar of apple butter. No offense.”r />
  “None taken. I love apple butter!” On muffins especially.

  “Of course you do, honey.” Britt flashed a look of queenly amusement that reminded me eerily of high school. “Now, me, I can make people do things. People would follow me anywhere, it’s crazy. Not to toot my own horn, but I just have that something. I’ve got It. I’ve got it going on. I’m an It Girl. Face it, you two need me.”

  Tentatively I asked, “What about the hungry customers who need those hot wings?”

  Britt rolled her eyes. “My freedom is at stake here, Hazel, not some Yelp review. Now what would it take for you to give me a chance?”

  I shook my head. “Max has made it pretty clear she’s not—“

  “Stop hiding behind Max and answer me.”

  Man, Britt sounded eager. Bossy as ever, but also a little desperate. It stuck me that for the first time, I had leverage over a popular girl.

  “At the bakery, we give away free samples of our new products.” I could hardly believe I was saying this to Britt Hansen. “Give me a sample of what you’d have to offer our investigation.”

  Irritation flared Britt’s perfect button nose. “Really, you’re making me try out for your amateur detective club? Ugh, fine. Here’s something.” Britt leaned down and whispered in my ear. “Max was right, Jenna’s too fluffy-headed to carry out a murder. Turns out she can’t even make out with a married man without doing her drunk cheerleader mating call shriek loud enough for me to hear. Oh yes, our dumb little Jenna’s been having an affair with Drew Kensington. I heard them doing it in the dressing room at his wedding.”

  I swallowed, stunned. “No. Way.”

  “Way. They never lost touch, not even while she was married to that other guy. What do you want to bet they’ve been each other’s designated side dish since then?”

  “Get away from my partner.” Max was back, shoving Britt’s shoulders from behind. To my surprise, Britt didn’t even drop her plates. The little blonde pixie was a lot stronger than she looked.

  “Think about it, Hazel.” Another queen-of-the-school grin at me, and she jetted off with the rapidly cooling chicken wings.

  Someone was getting a two-star Yelp review tonight.

  Chapter 9

  On the short car ride to Filbert Road, I caught up Max on everything Britt said to me.

  “She really seems desperate to join forces with us,” I said.

  Max made a face like she’d smelled dog poop. “How do you know she’s not trying to sabotage our efforts? She could be involved in Ashlee’s disappearance or is covering up for the real culprit.”

  “Then why would she give me such a hot tip about Jenna and Drew?” I was really proud of how I’d finagled that.

  Max scoffed. “You really believe her crazy story about Jenna having an affair with Ashlee’s new husband?”

  I remembered Drew gently helping Jenna to her feet at the wedding, the grateful way she looked up at him. “Actually, I do. I saw those two together. They looked . . . you know how people look when they know each other pretty well and there’s an attraction?”

  “Comfortable? But also, uncomfortable?”

  “Bingo.”

  Max bit her lip. “All right. I trust your hunch. You think you can get Jenna to the bakery and give her a special scone?”

  Jenna worked only six blocks away from the bakery. As a trainer at Swole Tim’s gym. “No chance she’d go near a scone. Not even if it was gluten-free.”

  “Then we’ll have to tail her, old-school detective work. While she’s at work tomorrow, I’ll slap a spy cam with a GSP tracker on her car. It’ll let us know where she goes when she goes out.”

  I squirmed in my bucket seat. That GSP and camera business was exactly the type of nerdery Max got excited about. But it made me uncomfortable—not least of which because, it would make Jenna’s paranoid ravings that I was a spy accurate.

  Then I realized Max was fairly itching to break into Jenna’s house, probably in bobcat form. The car tracker was a compromise, for my comfort. I sighed. “I’ll cook up a few vials of truth serum, er, ramble juice, so we’re stocked up for the scones.”

  “Great,” Max said. “I’ll design a coupon, advertising them as free on Friday.”

  “Has a nice ring to it,” I said, thinking that if free didn’t draw people in, nothing would.

  Max pulled up to my house and put the car in park. “I’ll post it to the blog tomorrow morning. Get ready. You’ll have droves on Friday morning.”

  “Fingers crossed.” I opened the door and stood, only to trip on something light but bulky on the floor mat. A legal folder, but now it was empty.

  A chill went up my back. I held up the folder. “Is this Kade’s?”

  Max groaned. “How’d you guess? He treats my car like it’s an extension of his apartment. Oh, and Saturday night he took it without even asking—rude. That’s why I had to ban him from driving Mustang Sally.”

  The wedding. It was Kade in the car . . . had to be. But where had he gone?

  Kade was a shifter. Had he changed form to hide from me? Obviously I hadn’t checked the car floor, but you’d think a bobcat would be too big to fit in there, even crouched into a ball. I wanted to ask if the de Klaw siblings had the ability to shift into baby bobcats—bob kits?—but Max wasn’t dumb. She’d sniff out the suspicion in my question.

  Vowing to pin her down about Kade another time, I waved as the Mustang drove off.

  Then I dug into my satchel for my key ring, looked up . . . and screamed.

  A man, hulking and hunched over, was blocking my front door.

  “Haze,” the man croaked.

  I screamed again, tumbling backward into a pile of maple leaves I’d raked over the weekend. Midtumble, my brain registered that the man—who was now rushing to my side—was Bryson.

  “You weren’t answering texts.” He helped me to my feet. In the moonlight, I could see the concern in his blue eyes, as well as something else—hurt. “I brought over the caramel ice cream to feed you. But it melted.” He held up a sad minitub of Ben and Jerry’s.

  “Oh geez. I’m so sorry, Bry.” How could I have forgotten to text him that our date was off? Worst girlfriend ever. “My phone ran out of juice while I was out with Max, and—”

  “Who’s this Max guy?” His mouth twisted with an anger I’d never seen before.

  “It’s a woman,” I corrected him quickly. “Maxine De Klaw.”

  He blinked, looking confused. “You’ve never mentioned her before. Is she a friend of yours?”

  “Honestly, that’s a complicated question.”

  “Wow. Ok . . . ”

  I realized he was getting the wrong idea again. “No, we’ve never been more than friends,” I said. “But sometimes we’ve been less. A whole lot less.”

  “It’s just you never mentioned this person. You don’t talk about your friends. I sort of thought . . . never mind.”

  “That I have no friends?”

  “No, not that . . . ” His tone said, yes, that.

  “Well, I don’t have a lot of close friends right now. But I should have told you about Max, because we were very close once.”

  Suddenly it occurred to me that Bryson and I had never done that thing all couples eventually must do. Introduce each other to your people.

  He was new in town. But what was my excuse? I had no doubt most folks in the Bay wished me well, but I lacked besties. Didn’t help that there were no other Green Witches in town around my age. And friendships with ordinals required too much lying.

  But it wasn’t just that I hadn’t introduced him to Max. I hadn’t even told him about who I was in high school: “Goody Two-shoes,” a shy, eager to please middle sister and baker in training. He knew nothing about how Max stood by me against the popular bullies who preyed on me. Max was the only one who stuck up for me, who showed up for me . . . until the night she didn’t.

  I fingered my engagement ring nervously. Forget how well did I know Bryson . . . how well did Bry
son know me? All that time I’d spent crushing my lips against his was like medicine to me, but in retrospect some of it would have been better spent getting to know each other.

  I was marrying a near stranger.

  The stark revelation overwhelmed me, and I focused my attention on turning the house key in the lock. Bryson followed close behind me and said nothing. Weird how small and silent my house felt after the cavernous buzz of the bar. It felt eerie, being alone in the dark with his looming, silent presence. What if the rest of our lives together felt this empty?

  They would, unless I dared to let him in.

  “Bryson, there’s a lot you and I don’t know about each other,” I blurted out, just to kill the quiet. I flipped on the main light switch and set my satchel on its hook. “I don’t even know where you grew up. What your family’s like. Or what you did before you became a therapist . . . this year.”

  It felt refreshing to be this assertive, even if it didn’t feel quite like me.

  I looked over to gauge Bryson’s reaction. It was lukewarm. “Tell you what, Haze. On our next date, I’ll break out the family photo album. Talk about my career woes. But you’re the one who stood me up tonight. So, maybe we should talk about what I don’t know about you?”

  “All right.” I swallowed. “Max and I, we were like sisters in high school. Then . . . something happened. We had a falling out.” Call me insecure, but I didn’t want to say she dumped me. In case that made me seem more dumpable, in general. “Anyway, she’s worried to death about her twin brother Kade—”

  “Yeah, well, I was worried about you,” he cut in sharply. “You two were out awfully late. And you’re not the kind of woman who likes to go out at night to begin with. You’re my little homebody.”

  I opened my mouth to argue that I’d had a pretty good time, considering. But that would not help matters. “You’re right.”

  “And it’s not like you to ignore texts, either. How did I know you hadn’t disappeared like Ashlee?”