“What was it?”
“A chest full of cash!” She lowered her voice. “I shouldn’t yell, but I’m so excited. I’m blowing this town for good.” Her smile lifted on one side. “You think Parisians like psychics?”
“How did the money get there?”
“It was Aunt Ginny’s. I’m sure. She’s probably been squirreling it away for years. She left everything to me, you know.”
Sailor’s whining rose in pitch. Rodney had wandered to the edge of the sitting room and sat down. His gaze bored into the dog.
“You’re sure? I mean, that sounds risky, leaving cash under a trailer.”
“Don’t worry. I called Bert. He’ll tell me it’s legit. What do you think I should pack? Can I bring Sailor overseas? I’ve got a lot to figure out.”
I bemoaned the loss of my magic. The books around me rustled in their shelves. Ask us, they said. We’ll tell her what she needs to know. You can help.
To shut them out, I called to mind the drowsing court from “Sleeping Beauty.” I could do this. I could keep my power at bay.
“Come upstairs to the travel section. I bet there’s something up there to get you started.”
After leaving Lalena and Sailor on the window seat with a ten-year-old Fodor’s Guide and a Paris map, I took the central staircase to the ground floor. Halfway down, I heard sobbing coming from the kitchen.
I stuck in my head, but saw no one. Another sob accompanied by a shuddering breath. Rodney pushed open the door to my office, where Roz was curled up on the armchair, her face in her hands.
Uh-oh.
“Go away,” she said.
“It didn’t go so well?” This was probably not the best time to tell her about Lalena’s discovery.
Rodney leapt to the chair’s arm and bumped his silky head against her ear. Without turning her head, she reached out an arm and felt along the desk. I pushed the box of tissues toward her, and she plucked one.
“He ran off like his pants were on fire. I don’t think he’ll ever leave his cottage again.” She honked into the tissue.
“Are you sure?”
“Sure?” Her voice rose. “Am I sure? He tossed a sack of tulip bulbs in the air and hightailed it. You might want to put away his garden tools so they don’t rust. It looks like rain.”
I wanted to put an arm around her, but was afraid she’d throw it off, and, rightly, too. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what to say. I let you down.”
She heaved a sigh. “I’m an adult. I make my own decisions. This has been coming for a long time, I guess.” Her eyes were swollen and red and so, so sad.
“I’m horribly sorry,” I repeated. “Do you want to take the rest of the day off? Maybe go home and read something comforting?” That’s what I’d want, at least.
“Go home and pack is more like it. I’m too humiliated to stay. Right now, I need time alone. Shut the door behind you.”
I meandered back to the circulation desk and absently refiled the cards patrons had left on top of the file. Wasn’t there some way I could use just a bit of my magic to help people like Roz without blowing up the house? Frustration boiled in me. If only my mother hadn’t made Grandma put that spell on me. She’d have been able to teach me how to work magic. I’d have the muscles to control it.
“Josie?”
I lifted my head from the index card I’d been twisting in my fingers. Sam, rumpled and smiling slightly, stood in the doorway. The smile meant trouble. Now what? I smoothed the card and gestured him in.
“Any news?” I asked.
“The reporter you called, the one from the Washington Post. He’s been in touch with the Bureau. The story’s set to run tomorrow.”
“Oh.” The word left my mouth in a wisp.
“I thought you’d better know. We could see results as soon as tomorrow night or the next morning.”
I nodded numbly. I’d asked for it. Strange as it seemed, I wanted him to stick around a few minutes longer. Losing my job, crushing Roz’s fantasies, and shutting down my magic was a lot to deal with on my own. “Have anything good to read? Maybe another Hardy Boys?”
“Funny you should mention it. I was just thinking about that.”
I led him to juvenile fiction in Thurston Wilfred’s office.
“They’re all on the shelves, except number sixteen, for some reason,” I said. “A Figure in Hiding.” Now, wasn’t that apt.
“Oh. I have that one. Since I was a kid, actually. I think it’s in my old closet.”
“Hey,” I said, “did you hear about Lalena Dolby’s money?”
“No. Tell me.”
“You know her, right?” I didn’t know who he knew and who he didn’t.
“Sure, Bert’s sister. Lalena. I remember her from elementary school. She was a few years behind me.”
“She found ten thousand dollars in cash under her trailer. The trailer she inherited from her aunt.”
“I would have thought Aunt Ginny would have kept her money in the bank. She did the books at the mill for years.” He fingered the spine of one of the Hardy Boys mysteries and pushed it back onto the shelf. “She found it, huh?”
“By chance, when she was weeding a flower bed.” I didn’t want to get her in trouble. “She seemed sure it had belonged to her aunt. Plus, she said she was going to clear it with her brother.”
“Hmm.” He smiled, and his features sharpened.
This change in Sam from lazy to focused—and unhappy, the smile was a dead giveaway—was fascinating to watch. I wondered what he was like at meetings. Did he daydream, or was he as keenly aware as he seemed now? Cogs turned in his brain, that was clear. What they produced, I had no idea.
“Sam?” I said.
He snapped back to the moment. “I’ll get back to you soon. In the meantime, don’t open your door to strangers.”
When he left, I wandered to the front desk as two teenaged boys and a bearded man walked past. Don’t open my door to strangers? That’s just about all anyone was these days.
CHAPTER THIRTY
This could be my last normal morning, I thought as I roused myself from bed. Today the Post’s article came out. Today I officially jumped from the frying pan into the fire.
The rising sun pinkened the window. I felt around for Rodney, but he wasn’t on the bed. He’d stopped sleeping with me.
As I was stepping out of the shower, the phone rang. I wrapped myself in my chenille bathrobe and hurried barefoot to the kitchen to catch it.
“Josie!” Mom said before I even finished my “hello.”
She would have read the story by now. I imagined her pouring coffee into her favorite mug with Letty’s photo on it and preparing to fold back the page with the crossword puzzle. Then, eyes widening, seeing the article and shouting for Dad.
“What were you thinking?” she asked me. “I thought you went to Oregon to hide. But here you are, quoted by name.”
“I did.” This could be a long conversation. With my free hand, I filled the coffeepot with water and shook ground coffee into its filter. “I know what I’m doing, Mom.”
“They’ll come after you, honey. Look what happened to Anton.”
“Believe me. I know. You have to trust me on this. I can’t say much, but I’m . . .” I searched for the right way to get the idea across. “I’m not alone.”
“What does that mean? You’ve shacked up with some guy?”
“No! That’s all I can say. How’s Dad?”
“You’re changing the subject.” Another of Mom’s patented sighs whooshed through the phone lines. “At least there’s one good thing. Your father and I searched the atlas last night, and we’ll be danged if we can find Wilfred.”
“It’s not incorporated anymore. Anyone with a computer could find me, though.” Coffee burbled comfortingly into the carafe. “I wonder, do you—?”
“Have I had any flashes about you, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“The usual one. Nothing new. It’s m
ore of a feeling than something specific, but it worries me a lot.”
I pulled the bathrobe closer. The flutter on my birthmark was as light as a mosquito’s wings. “You’re still having that vision?”
“Yes. It’s back. It caught me last night again. Oh Josie. Why did you go and talk to that reporter?”
I hated to think what she’d do if she knew I’d actually called him first. “It’s inevitable. This whole situation. It needed to come to a head. I’m not being stupid about it, though. You have to trust me.”
“When are you getting a regular phone? I’d feel better if I could keep in touch with you. You don’t even have an answering machine.”
“I’ll be home soon, Mom. It can’t be too much longer now.” I cleared my throat. “Mind if I stay with you?”
“Of course not. You’ll want to make sure your apartment is safe before you return.”
“Actually—” I didn’t want to say it.
“You lost your job, didn’t you?” Having a witch for a mother had its advantages, I was learning. “Oh honey. We’ll figure it out. You’re—” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “You’re still using the spell I taught you, right?”
“Yes.” Yes, and the world is duller, including the sip of coffee I’m about to take. But it can’t be helped. “Don’t worry. It’s all legit. No magic here.”
* * *
Dressed and caffeinated, I walked down to Darla’s for breakfast, as planned. The morning was cool and damp, and the air smelled of fir bark and the river.
I could understand how Sam would miss this part of the world after living in the concrete-paved mayhem of Los Angeles. I would miss it, too.
There were only a few cars in the parking lot, but the diner was warm and noisy, its windows steamed from conversation and platters of hash browns and eggs.
“Speak of the devil.” Duke swiveled on his stool with the grace of Gene Kelly and faced me. “I saw the news on TV and picked up the article on my phone.”
“Why didn’t you tell us you were a fugitive?” Darla said.
I took a stool a few down from Duke. “Maybe for the same reasons you didn’t tell me the library was set to be demolished.”
“Ha-ha,” Mrs. Littlewood said from her stool at the counter’s far end. She was working her way through a dieter’s special of cottage cheese, a hamburger patty, and a pineapple ring. Her bird-watching binoculars rested on the stool next to her. “Touché.”
“Maybe I should order in extra provisions. We might be getting some press,” Darla said.
“A great opportunity to feature the new retreat center,” Duke said. When no one responded, he continued. “So, you were hanging out in the Library of Congress and you overheard this senator’s aide cutting a deal with a lobbyist?”
“That’s the gist of it.” I waved away Darla’s offer of coffee. I needed to keep the jitters to a minimum. “Poached eggs, please.”
“We have some good salmon today. I’ll give you a sliver on the side.”
“If I were you, I’d be scared to death,” Duke said. “Government’s a bunch of crooks. Who knows who they’d send after you?”
“And what might happen when they did,” I said, thinking of the woman’s body I’d found.
“Girl has a point,” a woman I recognized from the knitting club said. “When’s the last time you went down to those bushes along the river?”
“Hush, Marcia,” Darla said.
“There are good folks in government,” Ruth Littlewood said. “Bad folks, too. Like just about everywhere, I suppose.” She waved her fork toward the river. “This town is built on them. The Wilfreds didn’t do us any favors.”
“Sam’s not so bad,” I said. “I don’t know about his family, but Sam signed off on the agreement because he thought he was doing something good for the town.”
“Yeah, he’s an all-right guy,” Duke said.
Both Darla and Mrs. Littlewood looked at us as if we were a cat and a dog holding hands.
“He’ll have to prove it,” Mrs. Littlewood said. “Anyway, I want to hear more about this graft story. Insider stuff. Your colleague disappeared, is that it?”
“I really don’t have much more to add, and I need to keep my mouth shut, anyway. It will all end up in court. In the meantime, as long as there’s a library, I’m staying right here in Wilfred.” The was the line Sam and I had prepared.
“That’s it, then?” Duke said. “Nothing?”
Darla topped off coffees down the counter. “Leave her alone, Duke. It’s not like we don’t have enough news in Wilfred to talk about. There’s the library, for instance. I have a good feeling the judge will see what a huge benefit it is to us.”
“You haven’t heard anything yet from him?” I asked.
“Not yet.” Darla kept her gaze on Duke. “Soon, though.”
“What good’s a library when you don’t have enough money to get a new roof? When people are leaving town faster than they’re moving in?”
“Enough already,” Mrs. Littlewood said. “I can quote both of you and have the argument myself. How about Lalena’s money? Did you hear about that? Found ten thousand dollars under the trailer. Planning a trip to Paris.”
That got people’s attention. At this moment, the diner’s grapevine was so heavy with fruit that I feared it would topple. It was about to get heavier.
The front door opened to Craig Burdock, rumpled and needing a shave. He took an empty stool and slipped off his shoes, rubbing his feet together.
The diner fell silent as patrons set down their forks, wiped their mouths, and watched.
“Craig. How are you?” I asked finally.
“Fine,” he mumbled.
Darla slid a platter of biscuits and gravy in front of him. Surprised, Craig looked up, but didn’t question his luck. He tucked in.
“Hey,” Duke said. “That was my order.”
“Craig needs it worse. The food at the county jail’s awful.”
“What’s he doing on the loose, anyway? I can’t believe he made bail. No bondsman would trust him for half a mil.”
“He’s right here, Duke,” Ruth Littlewood said. “Don’t talk about the boy like he can’t hear you.”
But Craig did appear to have shut us all out. He shoveled mammoth bites of sodden biscuit into his mouth and stared somewhere in the vicinity of the shake mixer.
“Craig,” Darla said, “It’s nice to see you—”
“Not,” Duke said under his breath.
“—but I can’t help but wonder what mercy brought you here.”
“The sheriff made a mistake. They let me go.” He said all this without turning once toward us.
“A mistake?” Ruth said. “I didn’t think the Dolbys made mistakes. Unless he was sore at you over his sister and it clouded his judgment?”
“I still can’t believe she found that money,” Darla said. “Who’d have known Ginny could have saved up ten thousand dollars?”
Craig’s fork hovered midair before dropping to his plate. “Lalena found ten thousand dollars?”
“Now, don’t you get any ideas. She broke up with you for good reason,” said Darla, hand on hip.
“Where’d she find it?” His words came thoughtfully.
“Why?” Darla said while Duke said, “Under her trailer.”
Craig looked from Duke to Darla and back to Duke. “Just now? Like, this week?”
Darla shot Duke a warning glance. “What’s it to you, Craig?”
He dropped his gaze to his plate and threaded a piece of biscuit through the amber gravy. “No reason,” he said firmly and picked up the sausage patty, ripping off half with his teeth. Once he swallowed, he wiped his fingers and dropped a few bills on the counter while he slipped his feet into his boots.
“Leaving so soon?” Ruth said.
“Yeah.” He looked at each of us in turn, a smile growing. “Tell the sheriff I said hi.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
After breakfast, I trudged up the hill to t
he library. I’d accomplished my part of the plan. Everyone at the diner knew I would stay in Wilfred and carry on as usual. Any reporter—or fixer sent by Bondwell—who stopped by would know how to find me.
As I passed Big House, I waved. Sam waved back from a second-story window. He was on his phone. It felt good to know he had my back.
Yes, we had a plan, and, yes, so far everything was going fine. I was drawing out the enemy. Now it was the job of Sam and his colleagues to trap him.
One thing Sam had assured me was that it was unlikely I’d be approached at the library during working hours. To be safe, I’d always want to have someone within earshot. Right now, that person was supposed to be Roz. Frankly, after my failed advice about Lyndon, I wasn’t sure Roz wouldn’t happily push me in front of anyone waving a gun.
With that on my mind, I unlocked the library’s front door. We were officially open for business. Patty from the This-N-That shop was waiting with an armload of westerns to return.
“About time you showed up,” she said.
“I’m five minutes early,” I told her. “Come on in. I set aside the latest Evan Lewis for you.”
Lights were already on, which meant that Roz was here. I’d have to see her sooner or later, so I might as well get it over with.
She was shelving books in the history and natural science room and had her back toward me.
“Hi, Roz. How are things today?”
She responded with a grunt and refused to face me. I guess that meant Lyndon hadn’t pledged his love since the day before.
“Lalena Dolby found ten thousand dollars under her trailer,” I tried.
Another grunt.
“Craig Burdock is out of jail. I saw him down at Darla’s.”
This one didn’t even get a response. Either Roz already knew, or she didn’t care. The first plan Sam and I had come up with had me spending the night at Roz’s. I’m glad we came up with a backup.
“Roz, I’m so sorry. I should have minded my own business. What do I know about love, anyway? Will you forgive me?”
“There you are.” Lyndon’s voice. He stood in the doorway with a toolbox. I flinched as I heard first one, then several, books hit the floor.
Bait and Witch Page 19