by Sharon Pape
Travis ordered roast beef and cheddar on a Kaiser roll. We both opted for bottled water. He led the way to the table in the corner. Wasn’t that the table Beverly had mentioned? People have little habits they’re not even aware of—in poker they’re called tells. Preferring corners was clearly one of Travis’s. We unloaded our trays and started eating.
“Do you still want to canvas the apartments on either side of Ava’s?” he asked. “It might net us some specifics about the arguments she had.”
“We already know what they were fighting about. We can always circle back to it if we’re stuck.”
The teenage boy who bussed the tables offered to take our trays away. We handed them over. As he turned to leave, he gave Travis a chin thrust. “Like your style man.” If he were of an older generation he might have added a strategic wink only Travis could see.
It was doubtful he was talking about Travis’s establishment beige chinos and blue polo, his conservative hair, or table etiquette. He was clearly referring to his style of juggling women. It was the opening I needed. “What an odd thing for that kid to say.”
Travis took a long drink from his water bottle. “Who knows what kids today are thinking.” I couldn’t decide whether to ask him outright about seeing Whitney or wait and see if he’d back himself into another corner. It really wasn’t much of a choice—I don’t like playing mind games, especially with someone I care for.
I put my sandwich down. “I think he was congratulating you about having lunch yesterday with Whitney and with me today.”
“Possibly,” he said, studying me like I was an abstract painting he was trying to interpret. At least he racked up a point in my book for not denying it. “Was I expected to clear it with you?” And instantly lost two points for attitude. I hadn’t counted on such a defensive answer. It might mean he was more invested in her than I’d thought.
“No, I’m just surprised you didn’t mention it.”
“I didn’t mention it, because it didn’t mean anything.”
“See, that’s where we disagree. If it didn’t mean anything you would have told me. You tell me if you saw an interesting bird, if you lost another sock in the drier, if someone brings in donuts and you were able to resist having one. The fact that you didn’t, well…”
Travis sighed in the way men sigh when they think women are being difficult. “To be honest, I was trying to avoid this.”
“How’s that working for you?” I heard the sarcasm slither into my voice, but I didn’t care.
“Look, she called and asked if we could meet for lunch to catch up on old times. She’s not trying to pick up where we left off.”
“Did you seriously expect her to tell you if she was? I’m sure you would have realized it eventually—about the time they started playing the wedding march.”
“You’re not giving me much credit.”
“I’m giving you a lot of credit—for recognizing how poorly you treated her, for feeling guilty about it, and for wanting to make amends. But take it from a woman, that’s what she’s counting on.”
“I’m a good judge of character too, Kailyn, and I’m telling you that you’re wrong.”
“When is your next date?” I asked in a cool measured tone.
“There isn’t one. For that matter, yesterday wasn’t a date either.”
“All right, when will she be back in town?” I could play semantics too.
“In two weeks, specifically to check on how her design plans are being implemented.”
“Did she say something like ‘let’s touch base then?’”
He hesitated. “No, not exactly in those words.” If he didn’t see it yet, he never would.
I wiped my mouth and screwed the cap on my water. “I don’t seem to have much of an appetite after all,” I said, standing.
Travis sprang out of his chair and put his hand on my arm as if to stop me. “I don’t want to leave it like this.”
“Like what?” I said softly. I’d had my back to the small dining area and when I turned I was surprised to see that half the tables were now occupied, with more patrons at the counter ordering. From what I could tell, everyone was either in conversation with their seatmates or on their phones. No one appeared to be interested in Travis and me. I was glad we weren’t in New Camel.
“With you upset and angry,” he whispered.
“No, don’t try to make this about me. You have to decide how far you’ll go to make things right with Whitney.” I turned and threaded my way between the tables to the door.
Chapter 36
I tried not to think about my relationship with Travis, which only made me think about it more. I wrote a spell that failed to banish it from my thoughts. I asked Tilly if she knew of one that might work. According to her, no one in my family had been successful in that endeavor. Apparently matters of the heart were impervious to magick. Merlin offered up the one he’d created to help King Arthur win Guinevere’s love away from Lancelot. After some questioning, he admitted that it hadn’t worked and that it had turned him into a frog for the better part of a night. He said he couldn’t get the taste of flies out of his mouth for months. That settled the matter. The risk-reward ratio was too great to even contemplate.
It didn’t help matters that Travis and I were still partners in the investigation to clear Lolly and her daughter in the murder of Ava Duncan. There was too much at stake to shut down that facet of our relationship while he decided where his heart lay. Before the Whitney issue arose, we had planned to drive up to Hassettville to try to talk to Angie’s mother in person. When I called Travis to settle the details of the trip, our conversation was awkward. Thankfully the trip up there was under an hour, so we didn’t have to deal with hotel accommodations. I ached for things to go back to the way they’d been, but that wasn’t possible if Travis didn’t know his own mind. I was starting to understand how Bronwen and Morgana must have felt when their husbands opted for a simpler life with less complicated women.
With the weather warming, bus tours were beginning to fill my calendar. Travis’s schedule was even more hectic. Since we were both free the next morning, we agreed there was no point in waiting. With any luck, I should be back in time to open for most of the afternoon. I wouldn’t even have to disrupt my aunt’s day with the care and feeding of my felines. As if I’d summoned her with my thoughts, she twirled into my shop through the connecting door to show off her new pale yellow spring muumuu. It was the perfect foil for her bright red hair.
“Look, it’s so light and airy, it floats,” she said, losing her balance and teetering first to the left and then to the right. I ran from behind the counter to try to steady her, but only succeeded in joining her in a heap on the floor. “All that whirling around made me dizzy!” she giggled. “Remind me never to do that again. Are you okay, dear?”
“I’ll be fine,” I said, getting to my feet and trying to help her up.
Merlin ambled into my shop with a half-eaten mini pie in his hand and cherry juice in his beard, making him look like a down-on-his-luck vampire. “What was that crash I—? Why are you on the floor, Matillda? You know how hard it is for you to get up from there.”
“I like a challenge,” she said wryly. “Do you think you could put down the pie for a minute and help me up?”
He set the pie carefully on the counter and had Tilly off the floor in no time. “In spite of his appearance, he’s surprisingly wiry,” she said in answer to my stunned expression. I helped her into the customer chair. Merlin retrieved his pie and hurried back to Tilly’s shop before he could be asked to do anything else.
“How is the great search going?” I asked her.
“Nowhere. It’s going nowhere. On the positive side, I am helping to support the oil companies.”
“How much longer are you going to drive him around looking for a reason the ley lines may have shifted?” Although I had
suggested the idea, it had to be hurting her bottom line. Psychic readings aren’t the type of work you can delegate to an assistant.
“I don’t know. It does seem to have stopped his sleepwalking, except for the incident the other night when I found him in the kitchen eating the seven-layer cake I made for Lolly’s birthday. He claimed he was sleepwalking and sleep-eating, but I don’t buy it.”
* * * *
I made sure I was ready when Travis picked me up at ten o’clock. I slid into his SUV and immediately noticed that there were two coffees-to-go in the cup holders. Mine had decaf written in pen on the lid like it always did. He only drank what he called hi-test. I didn’t know what to make of it—an olive branch? But there wasn’t going to be any reconciliation unless he was ready to leave Whitney in his past. I’d realized back in college that dating more than one man at a time was not for me. And I expected to be the only woman in a man’s life. If Travis and I were to work things out, I’d have to make that clear.
* * * *
We were both on our best behavior during the drive, the conversation polite and suffocating. I had to open my window for fresh air. The investigation seemed to be the least emotionally charged topic we could discuss. We went over everything we had on each of the suspects, hoping to catch something that had escaped us before. Lolly had the best alibi. She’d been at the Camel Day Fair at the time of Ava’s death and the other merchants could vouch for her. Although she’d had a bitter argument with Ava, we were pretty sure Duggan didn’t know about it or he would have interrogated her again. Her daughter, Danielle, was a different story. Ava was having an affair with Dani’s husband, providing her with a great motive. Unfortunately, Dani had no equally great alibi. In fact, she had none, unless the checkout clerk at the grocery store remembered seeing her on that day at that time.
The list continued with Liam, who stood to lose his inheritance if Ava told their parents about his continued gambling. Brock, Ava’s ex-boyfriend, had been stalking her since she broke up with him. Angie rounded out the list, but we hadn’t been able to find a reason, let alone a motive, for the way she’d suddenly turned against Ava. To complicate matters, Angie had disappeared with her kids a month before Ava was killed.
We had no trouble locating the Neumann home. We drove by once, without stopping, to get a general impression. It sat on a block of small colonials and ranches that were probably built by the same developer long enough ago that some of them had fallen into disrepair. The Neumanns took care of their property. The grass had been mowed, all the bushes were neatly trimmed and the flower beds were freshly mulched. The vinyl siding was a slate blue, the trim and shutters a sparkling white. A late model gray sedan was parked in the driveway. There was no way to tell if another car was behind the closed garage door. Since it was a weekday, we’d just have to hope that Christopher Neumann was at work. If he was home, our chances of talking to his wife Susan were slim to none.
We parked at the curb and walked up the brick path to the front door. Travis rang the bell. There was a peephole through which we were no doubt being eyed. When the door opened, it revealed a well-groomed woman on the cusp of sixty. She regarded us warily, her eyebrows pinched over the bridge of her nose.
“Can I help you?” She sounded poised, but wary.
“Susan, I’m Kailyn Wilde. We spoke on the phone the other day.” I held out my hand. She placed hers lightly in it as if she was afraid I might grab it and drag her away.
“I remember. You shouldn’t have come here. If my husband were home…” her voice trailed off.
“It’s important we speak to you. We’re afraid Angie may be in danger.” I’d tweaked the truth to appeal to Susan’s maternal instincts. Even if she knew her daughter was safe at the moment, my concern might raise just enough doubt in her mind that she would want to hear more. She looked from me to Travis and back to me, clearly uncertain about what to do.
“Anything you want to discuss with me, we can discuss right here,” she said finally. It wasn’t ideal, but I had no problem conducting our meeting on her doorstep.
“Susan,” I said, getting down to business, “do you know where your daughter is?”
“We’re not asking you to tell us where she is,” Travis interjected. “We just want to know if she’s all right.”
She shook her head. “We can’t be sure. I haven’t slept properly in weeks.”
“Have you heard from her at all?”
She hesitated and when she spoke, her voice cracked and tears welled up in her eyes. “She’s called a couple of times to tell us not to worry. We live in limbo—day and night—waiting for her to call again.”
I opened my purse and rummaged in its depths until I found a packet of tissues. I offered her one, which she took with a thank you. She dabbed at her eyes and nose. “Have you filed a missing person’s report with the police?”
“Oh no—she made it very clear that if we went to the police it would put her in jeopardy.”
“We’re not with the police,” Travis assured her. “We’re private investigators. You have our word that we wouldn’t do anything to compromise your daughter’s safety. We just want to talk to her, because she might have information that could help us.”
“My husband wouldn’t even want me talking to you. He believes family matters are only discussed within the family.”
Instead of repeating the same request six different ways, I tried another tack. “Are your grandchildren with her?”
“Yes—I… I probably shouldn’t be telling you any of this,” she fretted.
I didn’t have to be my aunt to predict that any moment now Susan was going to send us away. I tried one more question. “Did Angie tell you why she left her job and her life in Watkins Glen?”
“No, all she keeps saying is that the less we know the better it is for everyone.” Susan checked her watch again. “You have to leave now. I have nothing more to say.”
As the door swung shut between us, there was the unmistakable sound of children giggling. Susan made a heroic effort to mask the noise with a loud coughing fit and throat clearing that didn’t bear the slightest resemblance to giggles.
“I’m sure you heard that too,” Travis said as we walked down to the car. “It seems Susan lied about at least one thing—she definitely knows where her grandkids are. And if they’re staying here, you can bet Angie will make an appearance sooner than later.”
Chapter 37
We’d only driven a few blocks, when Travis hit the brakes. I looked around to see why he’d stopped in the middle of the road. No kid on a bicycle was flying out of a driveway. No one was trying to cross the street. No dog was chasing a runaway ball. “What’s wrong?”
“Any chance we could hang out in Hassettville and keep an eye on the Neumann house? I think we’d have a good shot at catching Angie when she comes home from work.”
It would mean keeping Abracadabra shuttered all day and asking my aunt to care for the cats if I wasn’t home by their dinnertime. But as long as Travis and I were in Hassettville, it seemed foolish not to try waiting for her. It could be weeks before we both had the time to come back. And if she was amenable, there was a lot we could learn from her. When Tilly heard my request, she said she’d be delighted to open my shop for the afternoon. It would be a welcome reprieve from driving around searching for something that might not even exist.
“I figure Angie’s at work,” Travis said. We were seated in a booth at the diner in the small business district of Hassettville. We needed a decent lunch to carry us through our stakeout. I put down the menu, defeated by too many choices.
“It makes sense. She has two kids, and kids come with a lot of expenses. She can’t expect her parents to take on that burden at this stage of their lives.”
“We probably don’t have to stake out the house much before five.”
“Some offices close at four or four thirty,” I
pointed out. “I wouldn’t want to miss her by half an hour after waiting all day.”
The waitress came by before I’d settled on what I wanted. Travis ordered a bacon cheeseburger with fries. I wasn’t in the mood for anything that heavy. At the table next to us, I saw a woman digging into a Belgian waffle with two huge scoops of ice cream—bingo. I hadn’t indulged in one since last summer and now that the weather was milder it seemed like the perfect time. I caught Travis grinning at me. “Do you have something to say about my lunch?” I asked after the waitress walked away.
He shrugged. “Just that you’re like a little kid when it comes to ice cream.”
“Or like an old wizard,” I added. Travis opened his mouth as if he was about to say something, then closed it again. We were both having trouble finding a neutral topic of conversation now that we’d talked the investigation to death. The other tables near us were having no such problem, which made our situation even more distressing. A niggling little voice in my head told me the ball was in my court. I could end our estrangement if I wanted to. But the voice was wrong. Until Travis could leave Whitney in the past, I had no play.
Out of desperation, I dredged up a question. “So—how are your folks?”
“Good—they’re good,” he said, grabbing onto it like it was a lifeline. “Have you heard from Morgana and Bronwen recently?”
“No, they must be busy. It seems the hereafter has quite a curriculum.” And we were back to uncomfortable silence. I hadn’t thought much about it before, but one of the best things about diners was the speed of their kitchens. In less than ten minutes our food arrived, rescuing us. When you eat without chatting, it’s astonishing how little time it takes. Travis was down to his last few fries. I still had a quarter of my waffle, but I’d finished all the ice cream. Now what? He suggested a movie at the mini multiplex. I couldn’t come up with a better plan, so off we went. There were three movies to choose from—war movie, chick flick, dumb comedy. Dumb comedy won by a landslide.