Tabitha stared after him, a pained look on her face. “I can’t believe Craig was involved.”
“It was probably innocent,” I said. “But some kids on campus are saying he was in with the group who set the cow on fire.”
“Nothing’s innocent about arson,” Tom growled. “And like you said, if you two heard the rumors, the police will too.” He rose. “Thanks for letting us know. I don’t like being caught flatfooted, especially not by the police. If Craig knows anything, we’ll get to the bottom of it.”
My mom smiled. “I’m sure you will. Now, there are a few details we need to go over about the cow. Some people want to rebuild it. I know the city council is concerned about the cost of another conflagration. What are your thoughts?”
Tom left the room while Tabitha and my mom discussed cow pros and cons for a good fifteen minutes. The only conclusion they came to was that they needed to call a full committee meeting on the matter.
Rising, we muttered our thanks and goodbyes.
My mom and I stopped in their driveway.
“That went well,” my mother said. “All things considered.”
“Considering we practically accused their son of arson, yeah,” I said.
“They’re good people,” my mom said. “They were bound to be defensive about their son, but they understand that the truth has to come out—for his sake. We need to talk to Dean Pinkerton.”
I jammed my hands in my pockets. “I don’t suppose you know him too?”
“Of course I do. This is a small town, and he’s on the Christmas Cow committee this year.” She smiled. “I suppose you’d like me to set up a meeting.”
Resigned, I moved toward the Lincoln. “I suppose I do.” If Slate found out what we were up to … But of course he’d find out. And the thought of his upcoming disappointment bothered me more than it should have. But my mother and I were in this together now. I couldn’t abandon her.
I paused beneath a walnut tree. “What about Tom Wilde? Is he on the committee?”
“No, but Tabitha is.” My mom kept walking and rummaged in her purse for the keys. “There’s always someone from the town council involved to help with the permitting. Every time the fire department is called out, it costs the city money.”
“Why? They have to pay them whether they’re putting out fires or not.”
My mom aimed her fob at the Lincoln.
There was a bloom of flames, a rush of heat, and I was flying.
seven
Time slowed. I could see bits of metal flying past me. And then I whumped to the ground and the air slammed from my lungs. I lay for a moment, stunned, and then panic set in.
I scrambled to my feet. “Mom? Mom!” Oh God, where was she? I looked around wildly. The Lincoln was an inferno. “Mom!” I trotted drunkenly, shouting.
“Here,” she called, her voice faint.
I found her beside a blackberry bush, her blue eyes wide and dazed. “My Lincoln. I just had it detailed!”
I laughed, an odd shaky sound, and clapped my hands to my mouth. “Are you all right?”
She patted her blue jacket, matted with dirt and leaves. “I think so. I’m a bit sore, but that’s all. Have you called 911?”
“Not yet—”
“For heaven’s sake—”
“I was looking for you!”
“Well, you’ve found me. Where’s my purse?” She patted the nearby bracken. “I’ll make the call.”
Tabitha and Tom raced down the porch steps. Tom grabbed a garden hose and turned it on.
In spite of her heels and skin-tight pink dress, Tabitha made good time reaching us. “You’re alive. I can’t believe it. When I looked out the window and saw …” Gulping, she pressed a hand to her chest.
“We’re fine.” My mom rose and brushed off her jeans, but her hands trembled. “I was just looking for my purse so Madelyn can call 911.”
“We’ve already called them,” Tabitha said, gazing in horror at the fire.
Tom sprayed water on it, but the fire blazed merrily, a thick column of black smoke rising into the air.
Tabitha coughed and covered her mouth. “Come inside,” she said.
A siren wailed in the distance.
“I really need to find my purse.” My mother turned toward the blackberry bushes and peered beneath them.
“I’ll look over there,” Tabitha said and strode away, scanning the bushes.
“It has to be near where I fell,” my mother said. “Help me look.”
On our knees, my mother and I scrounged beneath the vines.
“Here it is!” Triumphant, my mother raised her purse. She frowned. “It’s scratched. I won’t be able to fix that.”
“A scratched purse is the least of our problems,” I said.
“I realize you’re used to this sort of thing—”
“What? I’m not used to it.”
“But my life has been more cloistered.” Her blue eyes glinted. “Still, this is invigorating, isn’t it?”
“No!”
“Now I understand why you and your brother were always traveling to those scary countries.”
Smoke billowed our way, and I coughed. “We found it!” I shouted to Tabitha. She waved to us and walked to her husband, who was still spraying the car.
“We’ve made someone nervous,” my mom said.
The sirens grew louder, and I stared at the burning car, still not quite able to believe what I was seeing. “Yeah. And we haven’t spoken with that many people.”
“So our attacker is either Penny, one of the Wildes, or Belle. Or the killer is afraid I saw something that night and is stalking me.”
That was what I’d figured too, and my stomach knotted with fear. How was I going to keep my mom safe from a deranged killer? She needed police protection. Did San Benedetto even have a big enough department for that?
I rubbed my temple, sickened. A bomb. Someone had actually planted a bomb in my mom’s car.
On the bright side, we were alive and unhurt. If we could put someone in blue on my mom’s tail, it might keep her nose out of the investigation.
The sirens neared.
“You’ve been very cool under fire,” my mom said. “Your father would be proud.”
I didn’t feel cool. Nausea clutched my throat. If we’d been inside the Lincoln, or even a few feet closer …“I could say the same of you.”
“I’m furious,” she snapped. “I loved that car. Your father bought it for me.”
I swallowed, a lump forming in my throat for a reason that had nothing to do with fear or smoke.
My mother sighed. “But I do have insurance.”
A police car roared up and parked well away from the burning Lincoln. Its siren cut. Gun drawn, Laurel Hammer stepped from the car and glared. “Everyone all right?” she shouted.
“We’re all fine,” my mother hollered back.
“Good.” But when she neared us, the blond Amazon looked disappointed. She scanned the area. “Get back! What are you thinking, getting so close to a car on fire?”
We weren’t that close. The heat from the fire assured that. But Tom dropped the garden hose, and we migrated toward Laurel’s police car.
“What happened?” the detective asked.
I gulped. “I think … I think it was a bomb.”
“A bomb?” Her expression was skeptical.
“We heard the explosion from inside the house,” Tom said. “That gas tank didn’t just ignite. It exploded. Look at the shrapnel.” He pointed to a fender, high in a walnut tree.
A fire truck roared up. Men in yellow hats leapt from it and moved to secure a hose to the truck.
Laurel whirled on my mother and me. “What are you two doing here?”
“I had business with Mrs. Wilde and thought it was high time Madelyn
met her,” my mom said. “Shouldn’t you be securing the crime scene?”
I cringed.
Laurel stared at us. Behind her, the air rippled with heat, distorting the country house, the trees, the field. “Funny how the Wildes are both connected with the Christmas Cow.” Her blue eyes narrowed. “It’s almost as if you two are investigating my case. And that would be illegal.”
“We needed to decide what to do with the metal skeleton,” Tabitha said.
“I do confess, however,” my mother chimed in, “that we were distracted by talk of the murder.”
“We’re not calling it a murder yet,” Laurel said.
“I thought since the Wildes’ son, Craig, goes to the local junior college, he might have heard something about who was involved in the prank.”
Tabitha shot my mother a look.
“But I was mistaken,” my mom continued. “And this incident makes it clear that it wasn’t a prank at all.”
“Does it?” Laurel asked.
Three black-and-white patrol cars pulled up. Uniformed officers piled out.
The detective walked over to her colleagues. “Treat it like a crime scene and include the field.” She motioned to the empty land filled with tall brown grass. She pointed to the Wildes. “Go inside, please. I’ll talk to you shortly.” To one of the policemen, she said, “You. Stay here. Watch these two.”
The other officers nodded and hurried off.
“All right,” Laurel said to us. “You two stay put until an officer gets a chance to talk to you.” She strode down the drive after the Wildes.
“I think she enjoys bossing you around,” my mom said in a low voice.
“No kidding.”
“You really shouldn’t have set her hair on fire that one time.”
“I didn’t,” I huffed, sucking in another lungful of smoke. I was actually sweating, so I unzipped my thick vest. “It was an accident.” I hadn’t even set that fire. I only ran into it to save a thankless GD, and the detective had followed me.
“And running over her foot?” my mom added, gazing ruefully at her car.
“It’s not my fault she didn’t set her parking brake.”
“She said your cat released the brake.”
“Come on. My cat? Even if GD was somehow responsible—and I’m not admitting he is—what does he know about how cars work? It couldn’t have been intentional.” Though now that I thought about it, GD was sort of involved in the bad things that had happened to Laurel recently.
I shifted.
Nah. Coincidence. That was all.
My mother shifted her weight too, her sensible shoes crunching on the gravel driveway. “Still, he is your cat.”
“I didn’t put him up to getting into her car. And cats don’t really belong to anybody.” GD had made it clear I was his servant, doomed to feed, water, and clean up after him until he got bored with the situation.
“Animals pick up on human emotions. He knows how you feel about Laurel.”
“Trust me, Mom. Even if he did, he’s not going to exact revenge on my account. He only barely tolerates me.”
“And do you want revenge on Laurel?”
For bullying me in high school? For stuffing me half-naked into a gym locker so tightly that the fire department had to cut me out? “Of course not. She was a kid and so was I. None of it matters anymore.”
“None of what matters?” Detective Slate asked.
I jumped, yelped.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you. What happened?”
I stepped closer and my ankle turned on an uneven stone. Slate caught me in his muscular arms, and my breath quickened.
Pulse erratic, ankle throbbing, I stepped away. “Whoops.” I wobbled to his nondescript sedan and leaned against it. “We were leaving the Wildes’ house, mom hit the fob, and the car just … exploded. Detective Hammer was first on the scene. She’s talking to the Wildes in the house.”
He gazed at the Lincoln, now a smoking black ruin. The firemen continued to train their hoses on it, however.
My mother drew a cell phone from her purse. “I’m calling the insurance company.” She walked a little ways away.
“Detective Slate,” I said in a low voice, “I’m worried about my mom. Someone is targeting her.”
He placed a broad hand on my shoulder, and warmth flowed from his touch. “I’ll make sure she’s okay,” he rumbled. “Did she see anything at the attack on the cow that she hasn’t told me about?”
“I don’t think so. She takes her civic duty seriously, and she’s really upset about the murder.”
His dark brows drew downward. “Is that why you two are here?”
My shoulders slumped. I couldn’t lie. Not to him. Not when my mom’s life might be at stake. “There’s a rumor going around that some kids from the junior college were involved in the attack, and that Craig Wilde might be involved. We thought if this was a prank gone wrong, his parents should have the opportunity to talk him and his buddies into coming forward voluntarily.”
“You talked to him?” Slate asked, all business.
I nodded, a dull, weighted feeling spreading through my chest. He had every right to be angry with me. I wanted to take it back, fix things. But I couldn’t, so I plowed on. “Mostly we talked to his parents.”
“What did Craig say?”
“He denied it and stormed from the house.”
“So he could have set the bomb.”
“Yes, but—”
“It wasn’t Craig,” my mother said, returning to us and tucking her phone into the purse.
“Why not?” Slate asked.
“Because we could have been killed,” she said. “Craig’s either a prankster or he’s a killer, not both. If he was involved in the Christmas Cow arson, then it was a prank gone wrong, because he had no reason to kill Bill Eldrich. Setting a bomb in my car was attempted murder.”
“I’m sorry to say I agree. But we don’t know if it was a bomb yet.”
“It was,” I said. “Cars don’t just blow up on their own.”
“May we leave?” my mother asked in an indistinct voice. “This has been very upsetting, and I think I’d like to lie down.”
I glanced at her. Her face was pale, the lines deepening around her eyes and mouth. “Mom, are you all right?” I touched her arm.
“Of course, dear. Only tired after all the excitement.”
Worry spiraled inside me. I’d already lost one parent. My mother wasn’t that old, but getting knocked down by a bomb blast could do anyone in. And she tended to burn the candle at both ends.
“I’ll have a patrol car take you home and drop Maddie at the museum,” Slate said. “But later we need to talk, Mrs. Kosloski. An officer will stay parked outside to make sure you’re safe.”
“Thank you, Detective,” she said faintly.
“Just a minute.” He went to speak to an officer just stepping from his car.
“Well, this is inconvenient,” my mother said.
“They’re giving us a lift.”
“And putting me into protective custody. Bad enough I can’t follow up on our latest lead without a car. How am I supposed to do anything if I’ve got a cop following me?”
“You can’t.” I smothered a grin. For the afternoon at least, my mom would be out of the line of fire. I, however, wasn’t going to let it go. This had become personal. “Look, I’ll go talk to Dean Pinkerton by myself. I’ll tell you what he says.”
“He’s not going to speak with you. He doesn’t know you.”
“I’m not socially inept.”
“Of course not. But one must finesse these things. I need to be there. I bring authority.”
“If he doesn’t take me seriously, then he won’t be worried about letting things slip.”
“Mmm.”
“I’ve done this before,” I said.
She tapped her chin. “You say you’ll report back?”
“Of course I will.”
She smiled. “Yes, I think that just might work.”
“Good,” I said, relieved. “I’ll go alone and report to you what I learn.”
“No, you won’t. I have an idea.”
My stomach curdled.
eight
Harper rushed from the front door of the museum to the squad car. “Are you all right? What happened?” Her breath left a trail in the air.
“I’m fine,” I lied. A low-level fear jangled my nerves, made my pulse throb unevenly. I thanked the cops and they continued on, my mother staring plaintively out the rear window as if she were a prisoner.
“Why are the police driving you to work?” Harper’s long navy coat drifted about the ankles of her pinstripe pantsuit. A burgundy scarf was knotted around her neck.
Stopping beside a plum tree, I explained. The afternoon sky was as gloomy as my thoughts, a solid mass of gray.
Harper sucked in her breath. “That’s serious. Really serious. You both could have been killed.”
“I know. I still can’t quite believe it happened.” But my mom and I were alive and unhurt, and I’d hang onto that.
“What do the police have to say? Are they giving you protection?”
“They’re giving my mom protection. It was her car, and she was the witness at the Christmas Cow attack.”
“The killer thinks she saw something.” Harper rubbed her face. “Unbelievable. A car bomb in San Benedetto. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I wasn’t hurt. It’s shaken me up, but that’s all. What are you doing here?”
“I stopped by Adele’s to drop off a tea recipe. I guess I could have emailed it, but I needed to get out of the office. And I still don’t know what to get her for Christmas.”
I nodded. Harper was involved in an Italian witch tradition and had amassed an impressive collection of kitchen witch recipes, including teas. “You’ll figure something out.”
“What are you getting her?”
“A tea-themed tarot deck and a book on the history of tea leaf reading.” Also known as tasseomancy.
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