No Saving Throw

by Kristin McFarland

  She waved a hand. “Your dad’s on his way.”

  “Does he know you’ve been detaining me?”

  “This isn’t Guantanamo Bay, Miss Sinclair. He’ll be here any minute.”

  I shouldn’t have gotten involved. Any moron would have been able to tell me that. Jordan already had. At this rate, I was going to end up the Ned Stark of my own fumbling research, unemployed if not decapitated, and the people I loved left to pick up the pieces—literally.

  But I wondered why the vandalism at my store had been the tipping point—had something else happened that had suddenly put me under suspicion? Had there been something else at Meghan’s store that had led them to believe it was me? I shouldn’t have gone there that morning. Her employee had probably called Meghan as soon as I left, and Meghan in turn had called the cops. That made sense: when the new vandalism popped up right around the same time, the cops decided it was time to bring me in, scare me straight.

  That totally hangs together, I told myself.

  Too bad I didn’t believe it.

  The door banged open, saving me from any further existential crises of self-doubt. My dad stormed in, angry tax attorney attitude dialed to eleven. You don’t mess with Ronald Sinclair or his clients—and his daughter was another matter entirely.

  “How long have you detained this woman?” he asked Detective Keller.

  “About forty-five minutes,” the detective said, unperturbed.

  “And do you have any cause for detaining her? A warrant?”

  “She came in voluntarily.”

  “After her store was vandalized—she reported a crime, she didn’t commit one.” My dad hauled me out of the chair. “Come on, Autumn, this is ridiculous.” He pointed a finger at Detective Keller. “I’ll be reporting this to your supervisor. You’ve been interrogating her without a lawyer. You’ll be lucky if you’re not thrown off this case.”

  Wow. Thanks, Dad. I trotted after him as he stalked out of the little interrogation room. Detective Keller called over my shoulder, “Don’t leave town!” and my father waved a dismissive hand back at her.

  He didn’t slow as he began walking me back to Independence Square Mall.

  “Why were they keeping you?” he asked, his breath puffing in the cold air.

  “Uh, they think I’ve been helping two of the gamers cover up their part in the murder—oh, and that I vandalized Meghan’s store to scare her out of the grant running. And maybe to frame her? Detective Keller was pretty unclear.”

  “Does she think you vandalized your own store?”

  “Yep.”

  “That’s an awful lot to prove.”

  “I know, right?” I took a giant step over a frozen puddle on the sidewalk in front of City Hall. “They’ve got nothing.”

  “That’s almost certainly true, but they’re fishing.”

  “Why do you think they want to say I’m framing Meghan?”

  My dad stopped walking, and I almost ran into him. No one else stood on the sidewalk, and tiny pellets of frozen rain hit our coats. “Why do you think they want to say you’re framing Meghan?” my dad asked.

  “Well, you know, the usual. Old drama, the grant stuff, mutual dislike. Plus, I sell that fake blood in my store. It’s convenient.”

  “What do you know about the vandalism that happened at Meghan’s store?” He started walking again, more slowly this time.

  “I saw a photo, not much more. There was a broken doll, some fake blood, a message. ‘You’re next, bitch.’ It was pretty similar to what was at my store.”

  My dad glanced at me. “Uh-huh. And where were you when it happened?”

  “That’s the trouble—I was at Craig’s.”

  “Craig’s—Meghan’s Craig?”

  “Yep.”

  “Huh.” My dad fell silent, striding past the jewelry store and the big antique store that took up two store fronts on the east side of the square. An old woman passed us, her head wrapped in a flowery scarf that didn’t look warm enough by half. Everyone wanted to pretend it was spring, but winter still had us tight in its grip.

  “What?” I asked. I was breathless from the cold, from half-jogging to keep up with him, and surprised at his intrepidness: Ronald Sinclair, closet Keith Mars. “What are you thinking?”

  “Well, Meghan wouldn’t like that, would she?”

  “No, but how could she have known?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” We stopped for a crosswalk, watching the traffic whiz by, heading toward campus. “If someone set it up, it’s someone who knows a lot about you and Meghan’s history. Who would know that but also know your gamers? Who would have a reason to harm one of them?”

  “I have no idea. No one could have had any reason to harm Wes. He was the world’s most inoffensive kid.”

  “You think? There was nothing he could have known, nothing he could have seen?”

  “I don’t know. We haven’t been able to account for at least twenty minutes that last night. He did overhear Meghan and Craig arguing. But Craig was with me when Meghan’s shop was vandalized. And he was with Donald the night of the murder.”

  The little green man on our light lit up, and my dad led me across the road at a jog. “What about the gamers? Do any of them know about your rivalry with Meghan?”

  “Probably. It’s not exactly a secret. Everyone knows about the grant stuff.”

  We came to a halt on the other side of the intersection, the awning of Independence Square Mall mere yards away. My dad rubbed a hand over his forehead. “I know you don’t want to admit it, Autumn, but it might very well have been some of your customers who killed that boy, who have set all of this up. Who else would know what to use? You’ve been getting cards from some game, right, with the faces scratched off? Those aren’t well-known items.”

  “There wasn’t one at Meghan’s, though.” And maybe Spellcasters wasn’t well known, but the cards were hardly specialty items: you could buy them at any big box store, even some grocery stores. But they probably looked unusual, even highly specific, to someone who didn’t know our world well, to someone like my dad. Or to someone like Meghan.

  “Maybe because she wouldn’t get it,” my dad said, as if on cue.

  And I had to admit, maybe he was right—maybe I was looking for a more complicated explanation when logic said the simplest one would do. Maybe Paige and Nick were just guilty, period.

  12

  BACK AT THE STORE, Bay and Hector were repairing the mess the cops had left when they came to investigate the vandalism. The fake blood was gone, the scrawled words on the door erased. Someone had put Wes’s memorial back together, more or less, but it seemed like a mockery now, especially since I knew it had been hiding a threat to me and my store.

  Hector wasn’t even supposed to be there on a Monday—he had to be skipping class. I put the closed sign in the door and called them both to join me at the register. Bay had filled Hector in on the vandalism, but I told them both about the cops’ new suspicions.

  “Wait,” Hector said. “Those Spellcasters cards were supposed to be threats?”

  “Apparently. Autumn queen and all.”

  “So—what, the samurai knight was me?” He snorted. “Dude, I’m not even Japanese. That’s so racist.”

  “Beside the point, Hector,” Bay said. She rounded on me. “Does this mean you’re a suspect now?”

  “Not officially, no. But I’m pretty sure they want me to turn on Nick and Paige. Those two look the most suspicious, and it would get this case off their laps. If they pressure me enough, maybe I’ll cave and hand them a real suspect.”

  “They can’t have enough evidence,” Bay said. “Especially if they’re forcing you to fabricate some.”

  “What does Jordan have to say about all this?” Hector asked.

  “I have no idea. I haven’t seen her. But she did warn me not to get involved with the investigation.”

  “Do you think they’re p
unishing you for it or something?”

  “No. Not really. I think they’re just desperate for a lead, and Nick and Paige are the best they have.”

  “What about Cody?” Hector said. “We still have no idea what he was up to that night.”

  “It’s a good point,” Bay said.

  They both looked at me so hopefully, their young Padawan faces alight with the zeal of the just. They wanted to prove their friends innocent just as much as I had—did—but I was losing hope. A part of me just wanted to give up on finding out anything more about Wes’s death, to leave the investigation to the professionals, to focus on keeping the shop in business and nothing more.

  Cody was a convenient alternative to the police’s theory about Nick and Paige, but I had no idea how we’d learn anything more about his whereabouts without inventing some sort of truth serum to make him fess up.

  “If you guys want to talk to him, I say go for it.” Couldn’t hurt. Probably.

  Hector beamed. “Excellent.”

  Bay was not so easily satisfied. “What are you going to do?”

  “Nothing. I’m going to get the store cleaned up, I’m going to call Wes’s parents and plan a little memorial party, I’m going to figure out what companies we need reorders from, and then I’m going to pay the electric bill.”

  “What about the grant?”

  I shrugged. “That’s done with, unfortunately. I think all I can do for now is try to keep myself out of jail.”

  “What about our investigation?” Hector asked.

  I bit back a snarl. The investigation seemed to be hurting more than it was helping. Our attempts to investigate—so far—had yielded nothing. All we had learned was that two couples had been fighting the night Wes died, and that whoever had committed the murder wasn’t afraid to threaten others to cover his tracks.

  My despair must have shown on my face because Hector’s merriment faded. “You want to give up, don’t you?”

  “Shut up, Hector,” Bay hissed. “She’s just having a shit day.”

  He didn’t tell her to put a dollar in the jar. They both stared at me, looking like kids who had seen through the wizard’s giant illusion face to the man pulling the levers. My shoulders slumped. “Guys, I just don’t see the point anymore. I won’t make up a story for the cops, but I think maybe it’s time we stop trying to protect Paige and Nick. Wes is dead. We can’t change that. And, unfortunately, even if we don’t want to believe it, we may have been protecting his killer all this time.”

  “You don’t believe that,” Hector said.

  “It doesn’t matter what I believe. I have to put this store before anything else. If I get in trouble, the store goes down, too. You two would be out of a job, and there would be no game store nearer than Milwaukee. That’s not what I want.”

  “It’s not what we want, either,” Bay said.

  “But—Cody,” Hector said. “And Meghan. You know there are other possibilities. It wasn’t Paige and Nick.”

  “If we know it, the cops know it, too,” I said. “There must be some reason they think it was Paige and Nick, some piece of evidence or some part of the time line we don’t know about. They’re not complete idiots, whatever Jordan says about her coworkers sometimes, and we have to trust that they’ll do the right thing.”

  “The grant board didn’t do the right thing,” Bay said, as if that was evidence that the police also wouldn’t do the right thing.

  “Maybe not. But I think the jig is up. I’m not sure what else we can do.” I tried to put an authoritative note of finality in my voice, to close the conversation for good, but I felt as though my willpower had been snapped with poor Princess Leia’s neck. Unfortunately, I could feel irrational anger stepping in to take its place. This day had pushed me about as far as I was willing to be pushed.

  “There’s plenty we can do,” Hector said stubbornly. “We’re not going to let them make you into some kind of scapegoat.”

  I opened my mouth to reply, but his words cut me deep. They wanted to protect me as much as I wanted to protect them. Maybe I wasn’t as alone in this as I felt.

  Someone knocked on the mall door at that moment, sparing me from having to say something sappy.

  It was Donald. Great. I trotted to the door and turned the locks. Donald swallowed repeatedly as he waited, and when I opened the door, he stepped through sheepishly, his hands thrust in his pockets, looking as out of place as a Twilight fan at a Buffy convention. “Hello, Autumn,” he said.

  “Donald.” Frost rimmed my voice. I would not forget his failure to stand up for me in the morning’s meeting.

  “I see everything has been cleaned up out in the hallway,” he said lamely. His eyes scanned the store, taking note of the hastily rearranged shelves, the items stacked on the floor, the dust bunnies holding court where a large shelf had once stood. “Did the police get what they needed from in here?”

  “I think so.”

  Bay and Hector lingered at the register. Bay’s eyes were wide, but Hector’s narrowed visibly as he took in Donald’s uncomfortable appearance.

  “This whole thing has gotten—ugly.”

  “I’ll say. It’s cutting into my business now. We’ve been closed since it happened.”

  Donald cleared his throat. “About that.”

  Shit. I knew this was coming. Panicking, I said, “Why don’t we step into my office?” At least I could spare Bay and Hector an argument they wouldn’t win.

  Donald nodded. He followed me around the mess. I tried to give my employees a reassuring smile as I opened the office door, but it came off more sickly than confident. I stepped into my small, messy office. Donald followed, looking painfully awkward.

  “You want me to close,” I said.

  “Not permanently,” he said defensively. “Just—for a week or so while the police finish their investigation.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “Why, in particular?”

  “You’ll find in your lease, there’s a clause about maintaining safe conditions in the space. It gives me, the landlord, permission to close your store if—”

  I waved a hand. “No. I mean, why. Why now? What pushed you to make this decision?”

  He swallowed convulsively. “Well, the vandalism.”

  “Now that I’m a victim, you want me to shut down?”

  “It’s not that—well, people hear rumors, and there’s always been animosity between you and Meghan—”

  I threw up my hands. “So, naturally, everyone assumes I vandalized my own store to make myself look innocent.” I realized I was pointing at myself, and I dropped my arms to my sides, clenching my fists to keep myself under control. “You actually think, Donald, that I would do something like that? Why does no one think Meghan did it, that I’m the one being framed here? One of my customers, my friends, is dead.”

  “I’ve thought of that,” Donald stammered. “Believe me. That’s what I mean, about the safety of the store. If you are being targeted, that means more things could happen—you and your customers are not safe!”

  I took a long, shaky breath. “Donald, I won’t be safe if you shut me down, even for a week. This was supposed to be one of my best months this year, and you’re cutting my business altogether. I will sink. Especially if word gets around that I’ve been shut down because you—and the police—think I’m going around threatening people, abetting murder.” Really, his opinion mattered as much as the cops’ did. Donald ran the White Lake small business community: he headed the Chamber of Commerce, he organized the studio walks and craft fairs, he hung the Small Business Saturday banner across Main Street every year on Black Friday. Without his support, I was dead, no saving throw.

  “I’m sorry, Autumn. You know I don’t want to do this, but I’m under a lot of pressure—” He broke off, swallowing. “You’re not the only one who will suffer,” he told me again.

  I wanted to punch him, but instead I counted to five, slowly, in my head: on
e-Mississippi, two-Mississippi. As I fought to stifle my hissy fit, though, I sorted through the situation. Donald was under pressure. Meghan didn’t have to close her store, even though she’d been threatened, too. Our little private investigation had been busted by the cops. Someone had threatened me, my business. The committee kicked me off the grant program. And now Donald was forcing me to close up, to get out of the building until things settled down.

  Someone was covering something up, and I needed to know what. Maybe I’d come too close to something. Maybe Wes had, too. Hector was right: there was plenty more we could do, and scapegoat wasn’t quite ready to be spitted for the fire.

  “What about the memorial?” I kept my voice calm.

  “Hmm?”

  “We were planning a memorial for Wes. I’d hate to cancel that. It seems disrespectful.”

  Donald hesitated, then shook his head. “I don’t think it’s a good idea under the circumstances.”

  I nodded. “Okay.” That was all the permission I needed. “I guess that’s that.”

  “I hope you understand, Autumn. I am doing what I think is best.”

  “I know you are.” I opened the door to let him out. “We’ll just clear up the mess here and then take a few days.”

  “Good, good. Hopefully things will move quickly, and you can reopen soon. I’ll stay in touch.”

  “Thanks, Donald.” I couldn’t keep a note of sarcasm from my voice, but I walked him out like a good girl. He apologized the whole way, even when I shut the door in his face. He could apologize to my hastily scrubbed door if he wanted, see if it understood any better than I did.

  When I turned back to the counter, Bay and Hector looked livid.

  “They’re shutting us down,” Bay said.

  “Yep.”

  “For how long?”

  “Indefinitely—a few days, a week? It’s in my lease that Donald can. He says it’s for the safety of my customers.”

  “Bullshit,” Hector said. No one said a word about the swear jar.