Watchful Wisteria (Wisteria Witches Mysteries Book 4)

by Angela Pepper

  My mind floated back to the DWM Monster Manual.

  When I got up for my second cup of coffee, I asked my father, “Do you think you were attracted to my mother because her red hair reminded you of happy family cuddles in a fox den?”

  Without looking back at me, he said, “Someone’s been reading a certain piece of literature written by that insufferable prat, Jorg Ebola.”

  I scowled at the rust-colored hair on the back of his head. Had he snuck into my room while I was sleeping and taken the book from under my face, read it, and then returned it to pillow position? That seemed unlikely, but then again, he was Rhys Quarry. The more time I spent in his presence, the more memories came back. I recalled him getting us backstage at events thanks to his “special handshakes,” which contained wads of cash, and I also recalled us being escorted back out again by security.

  One time, he’d coached me into faking a seizure, just to get us through a long line at the circus. But I couldn’t tell Zoey about any of these things, because I knew how wonderful and fun they would sound to her young ears. Everyone loves a rogue, and Rhys Quarry was the original rogue.

  I forged on with my line of questioning. “When you met my mother, was it love at first sight?”

  Zoey chimed in. “Was it?”

  “Yes.” He flipped the final pancake onto a platter and brought the stack over to the kitchen island. “Zirconia Riddle loved me the instant she laid eyes upon me.” He tossed a fox-shaped pancake onto my plate. “And that was before she’d seen my incredible pancakes.”

  The fox-shaped pancake was perfect. He added the second part, the moon the fox was jumping over. It was the most perfectly round pancake I’d ever seen.

  “That’s a lovely pancake,” I admitted.

  “Tasty, too,” said Zoey.

  “I should hope so. I stole the eggs from a farmer early this morning.” He winked at me.

  Zoey said, “No fair. You said I could watch you shift the next time you do it.”

  “I was only joking, Zozo.” He reached over and ruffled her hair, messing it up spectacularly. If I had done the same thing to Zoey that early in the morning, I’d have gotten a finger bitten off. But Zoey just grinned.

  My father sat on a stool across from me and began putting butter and syrup on his star-shaped pancake.

  Zoey was already on her third pancake.

  Rhys kept watching me with those twinkling green-gold fox eyes of his.

  “Zara, if you do happen to have a copy of Second Year Intermediate Economics, I could broker a sale for you. The book is hardly worth reading, let alone keeping around collecting dust on your bookcase.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “If it’s so worthless, who would buy it?”

  He tilted his head to the side nonchalantly. “The information is pedestrian and outdated, but the volume has a certain sentimental value to collectors.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind if I happen to come into possession of a copy.”

  He locked gazes with me. “Which hasn’t happened yet?”

  “Nope.” I picked up my knife and cut the head off my pancake fox in one stroke. “Tell me about your accomplice,” I said. “The one who paid the vet bill.”

  He blinked three times.

  “Don’t play me for stupid,” I said. “You wouldn’t have had your assistant pay the bill if you didn’t want me to know about it. This conversation we’re having right now is also part of your big plan, but I don’t even care. I still want to know who he or she was.”

  He gave me a sidelong look. “What if I were to tell you I have no idea who or what you’re talking about?”

  “I wouldn’t believe you for a minute.”

  He nodded slowly. “Tell me what you know.”

  I glanced over at Zoey, who was listening with interest. She hadn’t heard this part of the story yet.

  “Rhys, do you remember the talking blue jay in the forest?”

  He winced. “Vaguely.”

  I explained to Zoey, “The blue jay knew my name. It also told me to be careful. Then it flew off.”

  She asked, “The blue jay was a shifter?”

  “That would explain its human intelligence.” I turned back to look at my father, who was frowning thoughtfully. Almost convincingly. Oh, he knew, all right.

  “Interesting,” he said. “Everything was a blur to me at that point. I don’t remember any birds.”

  “Except the one who attacked you,” I said.

  “Right,” he answered, a little too vehemently.

  “How’s your memory of your time inside the vet clinic?”

  “Hazy,” he said. “The doc gave me some good drugs.”

  “Did you happen to see someone come in and pay your bill?”

  He blinked. “Huh?”

  “When I went in to pick you up, the vet assistant told me the bill had already been paid by some benevolent stranger.”

  “That’s nice,” he said. “What a lovely town, full of nice people.”

  “Rhys.” I tried to stare the truth out of him. “It wasn’t some random nice person. It was someone who does magic. They must have cast a glamour disguise, because the assistant’s description of the person, who I can only assume is some accomplice of yours, kept changing.”

  “How curious,” he said neutrally.

  Enough playing dumb, I thought. You don’t get to crash into my life uninvited and lie to my face.

  I cast my convincing spell.

  The air tightened up around us.

  I smiled at my father and said, “You will remember. You want to tell me who it was.”

  His face relaxed, and he blinked at me. In a robotic voice, he said, “I want to tell you who it was.”

  “Yes,” I said, artfully strengthening the convincing spell that had worked so well the night before on the Thai restaurant’s owner.

  The air seemed to grow very tight around us. My spell was straining to break his will. It wasn’t meant for brute force like this, just for mild suggestion. I felt something snap, and I couldn’t tell if it was my father’s will or the spell shorting out.

  He tilted his head. Heavily, he said, “It might have been my associate, Reynard.”

  Zoey bounced on her barstool. “The French word for fox is renard. Pawpaw, is your friend a fox, too? Is he related to us?”

  The heaviness lifted from Rhys’s voice as he told Zoey, “Reynard is no friend. Just an associate. And the less you know about her or him, the better.” He frowned at me. “I probably shouldn’t have told you this much, but that convincing spell of yours is very good.”

  “Spell?” I tried to feign ignorance, but it’s hard to feign ignorance while gloating.

  He groaned and adjusted his seat on the stool. A trickle of sweat ran down the side of his face.

  “You could help your old man,” he said, looking at my beheaded fox pancake and then up at me. “I could use you as backup for a meeting with my associate, Reynard. You wouldn’t need to do anything out of the ordinary. Just stand there and look scary.”

  “No way.”

  His lips curled in a smirk. “Very good. I’ll need you to look scary, just like you’re doing right now. It’s exactly the right sort of crazy eyes for this situation.”

  “I don’t have crazy eyes.”

  My teen daughter snorted.

  I blinked away my crazy eyes. “Whatever you’ve got going on, I want nothing to do with it. This town is where I live, and I’ve already had too much interaction with the local police this week. Remember that woman you bit yesterday? She’s probably already filed a report on me.”

  Zoey’s eyes grew as big as saucers. “Pawpaw bit someone?”

  “I was in fox form,” he said dismissively, as though that explained everything. “People should know better than to taunt a fox.” To Zoey, he said, “It was nothing. How about you? Got big plans for the day? Big Thursday plans?”

  “High school,” I answered on her behalf. “And she’s not playing hooky, so don’t even think ab
out roping my daughter into your schemes.”

  He made a pouty face.

  “I’ll unblock your number from my phone,” I said. “If you go on your own and get arrested, I promise to bail you out.” I held one hand up. “I promise.”

  He held one hand to his chest and pretended to blink back tears. “Unblocking my number and bailing me out of jail? You’ve made me the proudest father in the whole world.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  He reached for another pancake off the stack. Casually, he said, “By the way, speaking of the police, you’re currently under surveillance.” He lifted his nose and sniffed. “Your man has circled around to the front sidewalk again.”

  Chapter 11

  Someone was watching my house. As soon as I popped my head out the front door, he tried to hide behind a utility pole.

  “Bentley, I can see your big butt,” I called across the street. “If you want to be sneaky, you need to lay off the rainbow sprinkle donuts.”

  Detective Bentley stepped out from behind the pole and pulled his gray suit jacket closed in a self-conscious, protective motion. He looked about as happy to see me in front of my own house as he did when I beat him to Chloe’s bakery and snagged the last sprinkle donut.

  “My butt’s not big,” he said with a frown big enough for me to see across the street.

  “Are you sure? Lift your suit jacket and show me the junk in your trunk.”

  He started to turn but then stopped.

  “Don’t be shy,” I teased. “I bet you have a nice tush underneath that jacket. What a waste you’re keeping it to yourself.”

  “You’re a wicked woman, Zara Riddle.”

  I closed my door behind me and crossed the street so we could continue the conversation about Bentley’s butt without the whole neighborhood hearing.

  He gave me one of his steely, serious looks. “I still weigh exactly the same amount as when I finished my training at the police academy. Every morning, I do the same number of one-handed pushups.”

  I leaned back and looked him up and down. “I guess you’re right. Everything is where it should be. In fact, you have the classic proportions of an Old Hollywood leading man. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were cloned from the cellular material of Cary Grant.”

  “You’re saying I’m a clone of Cary Grant?”

  “Do you have evidence to the contrary, Detective?”

  His thick, dark eyebrows knitted together in a pensive, Cary Grant-esque expression.

  “Let’s go back to you insulting me,” he said. “This complimentary side of you is much worse.”

  “Ouch.” I glanced over at my house, which seemed to be a more vibrant shade of red that day.

  The house had changed on the outside. It was taller by the height of one step. Crazy house.

  I turned back toward Bentley’s steely gray eyes.

  “Detective, there must be a reason you’re loitering around here on Beacon Street. Has there been a ghastly crime?”

  “Maybe.” He pursed his lips and looked up at the tree branches above us.

  I followed his gaze to the leafy canopy. “Let me guess. You’ve come to rescue a kitten who’s stuck up in a tree. You should have brought a ladder.”

  The leaves rustled, and a blue jay dove down from the branches. He landed on Bentley’s shoulder and cocked his head at me. My fingers tingled with energy. The blue jay could very well be the same one I’d seen yesterday in the woods. Blue jays are known for their boldness, but landing on a person’s shoulder was extremely bold.

  Bentley’s eyes widened. He didn’t move, except for his eyes. The blue jay’s perky crest rose up as though in greeting.

  I asked, “Friend of yours?”

  He slowly turned his head to face the bird. “Hello,” he said.

  “Hello,” answered the bird.

  Bentley slowly turned his head back to face me. “I could swear this bird just said hello.”

  “Blue jays are members of the corvid family. Like ravens, they’re capable of speech, but it’s just mimicry. They don’t understand the words they’re saying.” I studied the blue jay, who seemed to be listening and understanding. In fact, the bird was listening more attentively than most humans. “Probably,” I added.

  Bentley jostled the bird by moving his shoulder gently. The bird dug in tighter, the tips of his claws disappearing into the wool of the police detective’s dark-gray suit jacket.

  “He must be someone’s pet,” Bentley said. He swiveled his head toward the bird again. The wrinkles on his forehead eased as curiosity replaced shock. “Hello, Mr. Blue Jay. Would you like a peanut?”

  The bird bobbed his whole body up and down. “Peanut! Peanut!”

  Bentley reached into his suit jacket pocket and pulled out a peanut, still in its shell. He held it out to the blue jay, who snapped the peanut up. Rather than flying off with the treasure, the blue jay stayed on Bentley’s shoulder and began dismantling the peanut, expertly separating shell from nut.

  The look on Bentley’s face was one of wonder. I saw a glimpse of the child within him, the person he was before he became so serious, before he became Steely Bentley, the rules-enforcing striver.

  As the blue jay consumed the peanut meat, Bentley murmured soft sounds of encouragement. The talk became mushier as it went on.

  “Get a room,” I muttered.

  Bentley chuckled and handed me a peanut. “Here. You give him one.”

  I showed the peanut to the blue jay but didn’t hand it over yet. “Do you two know each other?”

  The bird squawked, “No!”

  I said, “Methinks he doth protest too much.”

  “No,” the blue jay squawked.

  I lifted the peanut tentatively. The blue jay snatched it up and began ripping through the shell.

  Bentley asked the bird, “Do you have a name?”

  For the third time in a row, the bird squawked, “No!”

  “My daughter went through that phase,” I said to Bentley. “Every question got a no. It’s called the Terrible Twos for a reason.”

  To the bird, I said, “I bet your name is Reynard.”

  The blue jay watched me with beady black eyes for a few seconds before answering in a hesitant tone, “No.”

  “He paused,” Bentley told me. “I think you’re onto something.”

  I pointed my finger at the blue jay. “Reynard, I know all about you,” I said.

  The bird’s blue-feathered head crest rose up aggressively. “Reynard,” he squawked. “Reynard! Reynard!”

  “That’s right,” I said. “I’ve got your number, Reynard.”

  The bird let out a squawky laugh. He shook his wings, darted his beak at a spot above Bentley’s ear, and then took to the sky, still laughing.

  Bentley’s eyes couldn’t have been wider if he’d had his eyelids propped up with sticks.

  “Did he hurt you?”

  Bentley rubbed his head. “He didn’t draw blood. He just yanked out a strand of my hair.”

  “You’ve got more than enough to spare.” Bentley’s hair was thick and dark, with a widow’s peak on his forehead and just a few flashes of silver at his temples.

  When I first met Detective Bentley, I’d thought of him as a silver fox. Now that I knew more about the magical creatures around me in Wisteria, I wondered if my subconscious has been giving me a hint. Was Bentley supernatural? Did he do some of his best detective work in the form of a silver fox?

  In fairy tales, Reynard is a fox who’s also a trickster. I’d been looking at the bird when I’d tried the name, but had I been watching the wrong creature for a reaction? Was Bentley’s first name Reynard?

  “You’re staring,” Bentley said. “Is there something in my hair?”

  “No. I was just thinking that your hair would make excellent nesting material.”

  He gave me a crooked frown as he kept rubbing his head. “Who’s Reynard?”

  “You tell me. You’re the detective.” I watched him c
losely. “Is it you?”

  He tilted his head, glanced at my house and then at me. “Who’s that man staying at your house?”

  I turned to catch a glimpse of Rhys peering out the open door. He immediately stepped back and shut the door.

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but that’s my father. He’s visiting. His, um, traveling circus is getting some wagon wheels fixed so he decided to drop in on me.”

  “Ah.” Bentley made a slow, exaggerated nod. “Your father is with the circus. You know, I always figured your family had a circus connection.”

  “You think?” I smiled and adjusted the collar of my clown-costume blouse.

  Bentley flicked the peanut shells off his shoulder. “The circus connection explains why I saw you yesterday with that red fox wrapped around your shoulders. You scared the beans out of poor Margaret Mills. I had to talk her out of pressing charges.”

  Margaret Mills must have been the rhinoceros-like woman I’d saved from getting run over by a bus. She wanted to press charges against me? How ungrateful. Of course, she wouldn’t have been in danger if she hadn’t been fleeing my snapping, snarling, fox-shaped father.

  “So, that’s why you’re watching my house,” I said. “You’re on a fox hunt. You should have brought some beagles and a horse. Plus bugles. Is that right? Beagles and bugles? That almost sounds like a tasty snack mix. Hey, you start up the movie, and I’ll open this box of Beagles and Bugles.”

  Bentley was anything but amused. “Ms. Riddle, it’s against city bylaws to keep wild animals in a residence.”

  “I’m sure it is,” I said. “Which is why it’s a good thing I don’t have a fox.”

  “There was a red, furry thing wrapped around your shoulders yesterday. Even from across the street, I know a fox when I see one.” He stopped talking to take a breath. Amusement flitted across his face. He was enjoying this, enjoying grilling me. “I suppose you’re going to tell me it was a red scarf, something from your always-surprising wardrobe?”

  “Maybe it was a red scarf. Who are you going to believe, Detective? Sweet little ol’ me, or your lying eyes?”

  His eyes flicked over to my house and back again. “My eyes never lie.”

  “Go let yourself inside,” I said airily. “You could search the place from top to bottom. I promise you won’t find a red fox, but while you’re at it, perhaps you could get to the bottom of something for me. Where do the unmatched socks disappear to? Does the dryer eat them?”