First Among Equals

by Katherine Hayton

  “Nothing.” The clerk shrugged. “I’ve just been following the case a bit. Nothing else happens around here, so it’s been a big deal.”

  The girl glanced around the shop to ensure no one else was nearby. “I heard you turned over photos to show Trisha’s son egging Roger’s car.”

  “That’s not your busi—”

  “He was in here a few weeks ago,” the clerk interrupted. “The kid, that is, not Roger. He wanted to buy one of those DIY paternity tests.” She lowered her voice still further. “I think he thought his mom’s boss was his daddy.”

  Willow wasn’t sure if the crawling sensation in her stomach was horror at the thought of what the clerk was telling them or fear that as soon as they left the shop, she’d be sharing Willow’s business with everybody else.

  Harmony appeared to be of the same mind.

  “You can’t just go talking to random people all about your client’s business,” she reprimanded the girl. “There’s a certain measure of trust needed to be involved in medical care. If your boss found out what you were saying, it could well be the end of your job.”

  The girl just stood back a step, scrunching up her nose. “That kid Mael wasn’t a client of ours. We don’t sell anything like that.” She paused for a second, putting a finger up to the side of her mouth to pick at a healing scab. “In fact, I’m pretty sure he stole some of the candy we keep at the front of the store on the way out. I figure I can say anything about him I like.”

  Willow linked her arm through Harmony’s. “Well, you can’t. And I’d better not hear any gossip about me coming out of this store, or I’m going straight to your manager with a complaint. Really, you should know better.”

  The girl turned her back on them, making busywork of stacking shelves already full of product.

  As the pharmacist had returned from his foray out the back, they wandered up to his counter again. “I’m sorry, we can’t do anything else without a prescription. If you call on this doctor, though, she should be able to help. She deals with a lot of allergies—mainly to do with pollen and that sort of stuff—but I’m sure she deals with animal reactions, too.”

  Willow took the card out of his hand, and they got out of the drugstore, vowing not to go back unless it was a dire emergency.

  Back home, Willow applied the creams, immediately feeling itchier as a result because she was touching the rashes. “If you weren’t so cute,” she told Mavis, “then you’d have to watch your back!”

  Just as Harmony was excusing herself to go home to her to-be-read stack of books, Reg pounded on the door.

  “I’ve got the cat house in the car if you can give me a hand,” he announced cheerily. “Great! You’re here too, Harmony. That should cut down on the time it takes to reassemble.”

  He chattered the whole time they were taking the odds and ends that formed the contraption out of his car. When it was piled in her lounge, Willow had trouble believing so much equipment had come out of his small vehicle.

  “It’ll be great fun for her, I promise,” Reg said, setting to work. Harmony and Willow could only stand back until he’d put enough together for them to get the idea of the final shape.

  When they were only halfway done, Mavis expressed an interest.

  “Could be that she smells our old cat in there,” Reg speculated, pausing and rocking back on his heels for a minute while the group watched the kitten.

  “Or she just really loves what you built for her,” Willow said, throwing an arm around his neck and giving him an awkward hug.

  Considering the shade his face went, Reg hadn’t been the recipient of a hug in quite some time.

  “This will be great for keeping the cat hair off the furniture and making most of the spaces safe.” Harmony was struggling to fit one of the long hosepipes into a red wooden box housing a scratching pole. “You’re a genius, Reg.”

  “It’s not my idea,” he said, blushing even more. “My wife dragged me to a cat fair one weekend, and we saw something similar there. It was so far out of our price range that we didn’t even consider it, but I made it for her on the sly. My wife loved that cat, and she loved me for making this.”

  “I love you for making this, too,” Willow said, and Harmony chimed in with her agreement.

  “Well, I spent my life as a handyman and groundskeeper for the school. I’m glad those skills came in useful elsewhere.”

  “I still need to get some books out of the library on housetraining.” Willow stood up and stretched out her back, the cries adding to the stiffness in her hip joint. “I’m not sure it’s fair to leave Mavis in her own house when she doesn’t have the know-how to keep it clean.”

  “This’ll help with that,” Reg said, dropping down to roll one of the long tunnels over to terminate in the laundry room. “If she can get out here to access the litter box, that makes it easier for her to learn.”

  “Oh,” Willow said, heading for the bedroom. “I just remembered, I was going to look for Molly’s camera for you to use until the police give yours back.”

  “Too late.” Reg opened his coat and pulled the camera out of one large inside pocket. “They returned it to me this morning. Said they’d got all the photographs off it so didn’t need the equipment anymore.”

  “That’s good. Did you get to keep the photos you took, or are they gone forever?”

  “Nah. They’re still on here. Look.” He tipped the camera screen toward them so they could see the flying egg that had so briefly been a UFO.

  “Here’s one of Jimmy, in case you were still wondering.” Reg tilted the camera on a new picture, this one clearly showing the man with his sandwich board display.

  “What on Earth does the poor guy have on his feet?” Harmony exclaimed. “They look like reflective orange sneakers.”

  “Hm.” Reg stared at the screen for a while, holding the camera farther and farther back to let his eyes adjust. “Can’t say I’ve noticed them before. To be fair, I’m usually staring at the sandwich board rather than looking at his feet.”

  Willow peered at the image. Reg had caught it at such an angle that the man’s head was completely cut off. The shoes did look a very peculiar choice. Young looking, though she supposed that might have something to do with the size of the man’s feet. They were tiny.

  When she’d been modeling in Europe—too many years ago to think of now—there’d been a woman she worked with who was the same five-foot-eleven as Willow, but with feet so small, they looked like a doll’s. Each time they went shoe shopping, she’d end up in the child’s department. “Even when the adult section carries my size,” she used to grumble, “the women’s shoes all look like a kid’s shoe, so I might as well start off there.”

  A knock sounded on the door, startling Willow since practically everybody she knew was already standing in her lounge. She walked over slowly, trying to get a peep outside through the lace curtains. Whoever stood outside was too far over to get a glimpse of, though. She needed to get one of those magic eyes installed.

  “Sheriff Wender!” Willow took a step back in surprise. “I thought you’d finished up with me for the day?”

  The sheriff took his hat off, working the brim between his hands and looking somewhat sheepish. “Can I come in?”

  “Of course,” Willow said, stepping back and then lunging to the side as Mavis ran into view. “Not so fast, little kitty!”

  “This is just a courtesy call, although the news will probably get out into the community fast enough.” The sheriff hesitated again, looking behind him at the door, then staring down at his feet.

  “Out with it, Jacob. I have other things I want to do today.”

  Willow’s stern voice seemed to jolt the man into action. “We’ve arrested Trisha Layton for the murder of Roger Randall. We’re not releasing the story to the press yet, but…” He shrugged, and the group nodded. No keeping secrets in a small town, especially with Mary-Jo’s penchant for gossip.

  “Are you sure, Sheriff?” Willow began to w
ring her hands together, distress leaking out of her. “I was just chatting with her this morning at the station, and the woman really seemed an unlikely suspect to be committing murder!”

  “Nevertheless, she confessed to the crime, so we’re as sure as it’s possible to be.” The sheriff nodded his head firmly. “I was there in the interview room when she spilled everything. I’m convinced she did this terrible thing.”

  “I suppose anger can make people do some strange things,” Harmony said, putting an arm around Willow’s shoulders. “I don’t really know Trisha, but she did seem nice.”

  The sheriff sighed and nodded his head. “I’d have had a harder time believing it if I hadn’t heard her admission with my own ears. Anyway—” he turned back to the door “—I just thought you should know.”

  “Thanks for thinking of me, Sheriff Wender.” Willow saw him to the door, keeping an eye on Mavis as she did so. “It’s very kind to keep me in the loop.”

  He nodded his goodbye and walked down to the car while Willow closed the door. The news had left her feeling empty rather than satisfied. As she looked back at her two friends, she just wanted them gone so she could sit alone and have a good cry.

  But they were there for her, and Willow wasn’t about to chuck them out. Instead, she clapped her hands together.

  “Let’s get this contraption finished, shall we?”

  Chapter Twelve

  Once they’d finished, Mavis was ecstatic at her new home. She trotted along the tunnels and played in the active stations with vigor. Watching her, Willow felt like a proud parent overseeing their child at a play park.

  “I can’t thank you enough for this, Reg,” she said, settling a cup of tea in front of him. “If Mavis interest in her house stays, then it should take care of the worst of my allergies.”

  “You should still make that doctor’s appointment,” Harmony said with a stern tone. “Entrapment only goes so far.”

  They were laughing when the sound of breaking glass stopped them cold. A shadow passed on the wall. Somebody was sneaking about outside!

  Putting a finger to her lips, Willow stepped close to the door out of the kitchen. A muttered curse gave away the position of her intruder—they were right by the door.

  She gripped the handle, paused for a second, then threw the door open with her full weight behind it. Halfway through its opening arch, a bent-over figure stopped it dead on its hinges, and his strangled cry told Willow she’d managed to get him good.

  “Who are you, and what are you doing sneaking around outside?” Willow shook her fist in the air in emphasis but given the man—all dressed in black—was hunched over cradling his lower abdomen, it was a wasted effort.

  She took a step back, exchanging puzzled glances with Harmony and Reg as they pushed outside. “I don’t know what’s the matter. I just got him with the door.”

  “Come on, son,” Reg said, patting the intruder’s shoulder. “Walk it off.”

  Willow and Harmony turned in unison to stare at the offending door handle. Until now, Willow had never realized it was at groin level.

  “Hm. Well, you shouldn’t be sneaking around out back of people’s houses, young man.”

  “This is an active crime scene,” Harmony added for good measure.

  Reg just shook his head. “Give him a few minutes more, I reckon. He needs to catch his breath.”

  Harmony folded her arms across her chest and muttered, “He needs to… What about what we need?”

  Willow looked along her left at the path and immediately wished she hadn’t. Her memory quickly filled in the details of Roger’s body lying there, a garden fork sticking straight up out of his chest.

  She tipped her head forward, blinking rapidly to clear the image away. To her right, the sight of the long grasses and wildflowers soothed her.

  “It’s the Layton kid,” Reg called out, still stroking the teenager’s back. “What’s your name again, son? Mali? Malcolm?”

  “It’s Mael,” the boy choked out, hands still cupped gently in front of his groin. “My name’s Mael Layton, and my mother’s been falsely accused of a crime. I wanted to visit the crime scene to see if there’s evidence showing she didn’t do it.”

  Willow stepped forward and nodded. “I agree with you,” she said, ignoring the raised eyebrows of her friends, “I don’t believe your mother did it. Now, do you want to come inside and have a cup of tea? There’s nothing out here worth looking at.”

  Later, gathered around the table, everyone had taken the tea break to recover. Mael stared at the strange conglomeration of tubes and wooden boxes that formed Mavis’s new accommodation but didn’t ask.

  “I saw your mom in the sheriff’s office earlier today,” Willow said when the quiet had stretched out long enough to get on her nerves. Typically, she’d be happy to sit in companionable silence, but there was an urgency beating through her veins, saying they needed to get this thing sorted and the time to do that was now.

  “How’d she seem?” Mael asked. His face was pale, and Willow thought it couldn’t all come down to the unexpected knock she’d delivered to him. The boy mustn’t get out in the sun enough. Back in her day, at this time of year, she’d only just be starting to lose her summer tan.

  “She was nervous but seemed positive. We talked about you a little bit.”

  “What about me?” Mael’s eyes looked dark under the droop of his black fringe.

  “Just about how my friend was the one who caught you on camera and got you in trouble in the first place.” Willow nodded to Reg, who held the offending item up in plain view.

  “What d’you mean, caught me?”

  “Don’t start lying to us, son,” Reg said in a fatherly tone of voice. “All of us here know what you did.”

  Mael’s face turned from pale to flat-out white. “The only thing I did was chuck a few eggs at a mean guy’s car. He deserved that!”

  “And that’s what we meant,” Willow said, disturbed at Mael’s distress level. “What did you think we were going to say?”

  “I dunno. That you saw me heading off toward Roger’s office to kill him? Something like that. Someone’s been lying about me to the police. Otherwise, my mom would never confess to something she didn’t do.”

  Mael’s deduction suddenly made Trisha’s confession seem entirely sensible. Willow nodded and closed her eyes. “Of course!”

  “Of course, what?” Harmony turned to her with a frown.

  “I couldn’t work out why that sweet woman who loved Miss Walsham Investigates as much as I do would confess to such a terrible crime.”

  “I doubt it has to do with a television show,” Harmony said.

  “But it does.” Willow opened her eyes and clutched her friend’s hand. “That’s exactly what she’s doing. I told her to think about the show when she was in the interview room—that’s what helped me get through. And she did it!” Willow’s excitement evaporated as she thought the results through. “She just picked the wrong show.”

  “What do you mean?” Mael was staring at her in confusion, a look echoed on Reg and Harmony’s faces.

  “It’s in the third season, second episode. A woman confesses to a crime to protect the real killer, who turns out to be her son!”

  For a minute, Reg and Harmony turned to Mael in horror, Reg pushing back his chair to get out of reach.

  Willow laughed and shook her head. “No! I don’t think Mael did it any more than I think Trisha did. But she’s covering for him because she thinks he might have done it.”

  “Why would she think that?” Mael picked at a spot on his cheek, looking distraught.

  “Because I told her you’d been out that night, vandalizing Roger’s car. The poor woman must have thought the police had more evidence on you than they did.” Willow slammed her palm down on the table. “I bet that new detective let her think it, too. He’s a nasty piece of work.”

  “What do we do now, then?” Mael looked around the table. “The police won’t believe us
without any proof.”

  “I have proof,” Willow declared. “Let’s get down to the station right now and get your mother out.”

  “You understand that someone knowing the details of a TV episode doesn’t constitute proof of innocence,” Sheriff Wender said.

  Willow shook her head. “I don’t understand anything about that. The show was on TV, and it was on while Roger Randall was being murdered. You’re the one who told me his watch stopped at the time of death. Has that changed?”

  Harmony tugged at Willow’s arm, but she shook her friend off, not turning.

  “That might have been an alibi thirty years ago,” the sheriff said in a tired voice. From the bags underneath his eyes, he hadn’t slept a lot the night before. “Ever since they invented video recorders, though, it’s hardly the same.”

  “Does she even have a video recorder?” Willow demanded. “Until you can prove otherwise, then I think you need to give her the benefit of the doubt.”

  “We have a time-lapse thing on our smart TV,” Mael admitted, hope draining out of his voice. “It doesn’t prove anything, though. Mom can barely operate the dishwasher, and it’s only got three buttons—she’s never touched anything on the telly remote apart from the channel and volume.”

  “Can you prove that?” The sheriff turned his exhausted gaze on Mael, who reluctantly shook his head. “No. So, until we have something better to go on, then your mom’s confession stands.” He turned to go, then half-leaned back, dropping his voice to a low whisper. “I’m sorry about your mother. She seems like a nice woman.”

  “She is a nice woman,” Willow insisted, but she was just speaking to her friends. The sheriff had closed the door behind him. She pursed her lips, frowning in worry. “This is going to be harder than I thought.”

  “What if she really did it?” Reg said.

  Willow and Mael turned glares at him in unison, and he held his hands up, palms facing them. “Okay. Sorry. Just a thought.”

  “If she confessed because she thought you did it,” Willow said to Mael, “then maybe we just need to show your mom you didn’t, and then she’ll withdraw her confession.”