Library Cat Magical Mysteries Box Set (Books 1-3), page 18
“Terror?”
“Yeah, like a terrorist attack,” I said. “That’s the definition. Random, senseless violence to cause fear and intimidation.”
“I’m not sure if a few missing screws count as a terrorist attack,” he said.
I pushed my chair back, about to leave. “I knew you wouldn’t take it seriously.”
“Hey,” he said, taking my arm. “Wait a sec. I do. The last thing I want is for you to get hurt.” His thumb gently caressed the inside of my wrist for half a second before he let go of my arm altogether. “For anyone else to get hurt,” he backpedaled. “There’s already been one death. That’s more than enough for my liking.”
“Sure,” I said.
“You don’t have any ideas, do you?” he asked. “This case is dangerously close to going cold.”
I thought about the High Adept and her daughter. Lorelei had buried the obelisk from Professor Florian’s desk. Lady Hildegarde had been writing him checks every week. Was that evidence enough, or would I sound desperate? And the white sports car that almost ran us over on the sidewalk? Had that been Florian’s widow? Or just some teenager sending a text and not paying attention to where he was going?
How much could I tell Rend without sounding totally nuts?
“Did you get the report of the reckless driver?” I asked. “We had an incident. A crazy driver on Canal Street. They almost hit us. I told Kong to file a report.”
“I saw that,” Rend said. “I sent out a few extra Werewolves on patrol that night. No one saw anything. No other reports.”
“Whitney was there. So was my niece.”
“I’m not saying you were making it up,” Rend said. “I just said that we couldn’t find the driver.”
“Okay, sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to be defensive. I’m just on edge.”
“I am too,” he said. “But don’t worry, we’ll find out what’s going on and who’s trying to intimidate you. But Francie, if your theory is right, that means the killer is trying to stop you from snooping around. That means you’re close. Think. Who have you been investigating?”
“I haven’t been investigating,” I said. “I’ve just been asking questions here and there.”
“If you say so,” Rend said. Kit brought his sandwich and lingered while she gathered up my used plates, pretending not to be eavesdropping. We waited in awkward silence until Kit finally took the hint and returned to the kitchen. “You didn’t have anything to do with this?” He plopped that day’s edition of the Birth Canal Bugle on the table. It was already opened and folded up to show Professor Florian’s obituary.
“Not really,” I said.
“You didn’t go with Fintan to interrogate the widow?”
“I went with him,” I said. “But I didn’t interrogate her.” That was the truth. Rend grumbled.
“This sort of thing is the reason why bookshelves are falling on you,” he said.
“So it’s my fault?”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, it is. If you could just keep out of it, you’d stay safe.”
“I can’t keep out of it. It was in my library. I was accused. I didn’t want to get wrapped up in the whole thing.”
Rend took out a handkerchief and blotted his forehead. “Fine,” he said. “My turn to apologize for being defensive. I’m as frustrated as you. This is my town and I can’t keep it safe.”
“You’ll find the killer,” I said.
“I hope so,” he said. He took a bite of his sandwich and I looked at the newspaper. Next to the obituary was a small piece about the Academy students’ tribute to their professor. “You know, there’s one angle we haven’t looked into.”
“What’s that?”
“That Florian was having an affair. I’ve been asking around and no one had seen anything, but still, that would make sense.”
“It would,” I agreed.
“Because, you know, forbidden love. That can mess someone up. Really torment the soul.”
“Is that so?” I said.
“Well, you know,” he said. “I’m getting older now. I haven’t got a lot to show for it. No… legacy. Werewolves. We’re all about our pack, loyalty—family. But sometimes people just can’t be together.”
“You sound like you’re trying to convince yourself,” I said.
“Like maybe there’s too big an age difference,” he said.
I thought back to that one night. A twenty-five-year-old Francie and a thirty-five-year-old Rend Redclaw. How his beard had tickled against my neck in the most exhilarating way. How, despite being the toughest man in our town, his lips had been very, very soft.
Twenty years ago in Saguaro Estates. Standing together in a darkened living room after I’d read to his mother and she’d drifted off to sleep. He’d thanked me for volunteering, for helping the residents.
Then he’d kissed me.
And we never spoke about it again.
“There’s not an age difference now,” I said. “I’m not anyone’s version of robbing the cradle.”
“You ever wondered why I never took a mate?” he asked.
“Um,” I said. I had, but I wasn’t going to admit it.
“As the leader of the pack, it’s my duty to take a mate and sire offspring.”
“That’s a romantic way of putting it,” I said.
“With a female Werewolf,” he said. “There’s no half-breeds in our pack.”
“Then find yourself a nice young lady Werewolf who can whelp you litter after litter,” I said. I hadn’t meant it to come out so bitter, but there was no denying the frustration I felt.
“I’ll see you around,” he said. He stood up, leaving some cash for Kit on the table.
He left me sitting at his plate. He’d only taken a few bites of his sandwich and hadn’t touched his drink.
I, on the other hand, was still starving and needed to replenish my vim. I ate his sandwich and drank his bramble-hide juice. I didn’t care for the sandwich, but I ate it anyway, methodically chewing and swallowing but deriving no joy from the act. Something about the rhythmic and mechanical way I was eating, it freed up my brain to see a connection.
Lady Hildegarde. Professor Florian.
Had they been having an affair?
Had she been paying him to keep quiet?
It would explain Lorelei’s angst and why Lady Hildegarde was doing everything to keep her daughter happy—and quiet. It would explain why Lorelei had stolen from Florian. She probably had spite for the man who was breaking up her parents. Lady Hildegarde also had access to the Archives. Plus, he’d threatened to go to her immediately after I’d banned him during our altercation. Maybe he had gone to her.
Maybe she was the last person to see him alive.
Still reeling from the revelation from Rend—feeling both reckless from his confession and powerful from destroying the cursed book—I decided to pay Lady Hildegarde a visit.
Chapter 28
The last place I wanted to be was in Lady Hildegarde’s plaid office, but I needed answers.
“Excuse me?” I asked. I tapped on the open door. Lady Hildegarde was hunched over a parchment, scraping her quill on the rim of the inkpot. We have ballpoint pens; I’m not sure why she was using a quill, other than vainglory.
“What is it?” she said. She’d only been in town a few months as our High Adept, but already she was no fan of mine.
“Were you having an affair with Professor Florian?” I blurted out. There was no time left for subtlety or magic spells. I knew it was like using a sledgehammer to hang up a picture frame, but I was worn out, frustrated and most of all scared—yes, scared that a killer was on the loose in town.
“I’m writing an important letter to the coven council,” she said. “And you’re trying to get me to puke all over the parchment?”
“So that’s a no?”
“I’m a married woman,” she said.
“Then why were you paying him a hundred dollars a week?” I asked.
“You think he was my… my… gigolo?” She could barely say the word. Not that I blame her. Professor Florian was not exactly what Lizzie would call a stud muffin.
“I think he was blackmailing you,” I said. “Why else were you paying him out of your personal account?”
She set down the quill on the blotting paper. “How did you come by this knowledge—and more importantly, don’t you think the Werewolf Law Enforcement Brigade would be interested in your methods?”
“I didn’t do anything illegal,” I said, hoping that ignorance of the law was an excuse.
“The payments were for tutoring,” she said. “Lorelei needs to bring up her grades if she’s to succeed at the Academy next year.”
“Tutoring,” I said. “Him? In history?”
“He’s well-versed in all topics at the middle-school level,” Lady Hildegarde said. “I chose him for his brash demeanor. Children these days are coddled too much.”
Funny, seeing as how she has protected her daughter from the consequences of her bad behavior every step of the way. But I held my tongue.
“I saw her bury an obelisk,” I said. “It looked like something from Florian’s desk. When I was walking home one night, I passed the Spell Field. She was hiding it. I don’t have to tell you the cause of death.”
“I doubt a girl could have wielded enough force to bludgeon a grown man to death,” she said. “Lorelei the murderer? You’re really grasping at straws, aren’t you?”
“I never thought it was her,” I said. “But an adult? A woman with strong magic? She could have. And then handed the murder weapon to her daughter to dispose of.”
“That you would accuse me of making my daughter an accomplice to murder is absurd, but I take no offense. A small mind as yours has been pickled by years of reading those absurd dime store novels. But to accuse my daughter of theft? That is an offense I will not tolerate.”
“It’s what I saw,” I said.
“Lorelei!” she shouted. A small door next to the bookshelf swung open. Lorelei must have been in the adjoining office all this time.
“What?” she asked.
“Did you bury an obelisk on the Spell Field?”
“Yeah,” she said.
I shot the High Adept a look, but she only rolled her eyes at me. I know, for middle-aged women we were both being really mature.
“Where did you get it?”
“Stole it,” she said. Lorelei confessed to stealing an expensive artifact from an Academy professor as if she was confessing to not eating all her vegetables at dinner.
“But why on Earth would you do such a thing?” Lady Hildegarde said. Her voice cracked and she licked her lips. This revelation had not gone over so well.
And maybe that was Lorelei’s intention all along, to get a rise out of her mother. Heaven knows that Lizzie pulled enough stunts like that when she was a teenager.
“It looked expensive,” Lorelei said.
“You were going to walk into the second-hand store in town and sell it?”
“Obviously not,” the girl said. “eBay is the way to get top dollar.”
“You could have asked for money,” Lady Hildegarde said. “Are you in some sort of trouble? Is it drugs?”
“No,” Lorelei said. She refused to meet her mother’s eyes now and toed a knot in the wood floor. “This was just fun. The old jerk didn’t even notice it was gone. You know what he said? He said I was too stupid to learn trigonometry. I might not know the Pythagorean Theorem, but I know how to create a diversion and steal a priceless antique. He’s the stupid one, leaving valuables out like that.”
“We’re going to have to do something about this,” Lady Hildegarde said. “Be a dear, Francie, and let me handle this family issue privately.”
Whenever anyone asks you to Be a Dear, they’re always going to ask you to do something you don’t want to do at the very least—and something morally iffy at worst.
Maybe it was the frustration over not being able to find the killer. Maybe it was my secret suspicion that Lady Hildegarde was canceling the Spelling Bee because she was afraid Lorelei would lose. Or maybe it was just my protective streak from when I witnessed Lorelei and her cronies bullying Sophie at the Spell Field. Either way, I was feeling petty.
“I seem to remember,” I said, “a citizenship clause. Students must maintain good behavior on and off campus. Serious crimes and misdemeanors would be grounds for immediate expulsion.”
“She’s not at the Academy yet,” Lady Hildegarde said. During this whole exchange Lorelei was leaning against the wall looking bored. No stranger to discipline, she. Very illuminating.
“But she’s a pre-Academy student and the standards are aligned to allow for a seamless matriculation to—”
“Enough,” Lady Hildegarde said, narrowing her eyes. “No one likes a know-it-all.”
“I read a lot and remember what I read,” I said. “That’s not a crime. Unlike stealing priceless artifacts from Academy professors. Dead Academy professors.”
“Let’s cut to the chase,” Lady Hildegarde said. “What do you want? Money for the library? Oh, I know, your niece. She’s from some hick town in Kentucky, right? I’ll fix it so she wins the Spelling Bee and gets the full scholarship. How about that? Everyone wins.”
I’d be a liar if I said that I wasn’t tempted.
“Sophie’s going to win the Spelling Bee no matter what,” I said. “Fair and square.”
Lady Hildegarde stiffened in her seat. Lorelei yawned.
“We can—” she started to say, but this time it was me who interrupted her.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell,” I said.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Don’t thank me,” I said. “I’m not doing you any favors. You keep doing stuff like this, it’s all going to come out in the wash.”
- - -
It was dark when I finished up, and I went to Lizzie’s house to get Sophie. This was the day that wouldn’t end. Lizzie had texted me earlier and said she’d cooked chicken mushroom bulgur wheat, so I didn’t have to worry about feeding Sophie. Hopefully she had a plate left for me. Kong would be disappointed, but I thought he had some leftover salmon in the fridge I could heat up for him.
I was exhausted, so I took my car, carefully looking out for a white muscle car but not seeing any. I pulled into the driveway. I could barely muster the energy to kill the engine and walk up to the door. If it wasn’t for the promise of being fed, I would have stayed in the running car and laid on the horn until she brought Sophie out.
I knocked on the door and it took Lizzie a minute to answer.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “I’m here to get Sophie.”
“What are you talking about?” Lizzie said. “Did you get bonked on the head?”
“Lizzie,” I said. “You’re not making any sense. I’m here to pick up Sophie. You’ve been watching her all day. You texted me earlier and said you made chicken mushroom bulgur wheat.”
“Yeah,” Lizzie said. Her knees buckled and she had to grab onto the doorjamb for support. She squeezed her eyes shut and began to cry. “But you came to pick her up an hour ago. Didn’t you? Please say you did.”
Nausea filled my stomach like a bubbling toxic stew that was going to eat me alive.
“No,” I said. “I’ve been busy all day. Who got her?”
“I don’t know,” she sobbed. “This is all my fault. I swore it was you. Same car. Same long hair. You honked and rolled down the window and waved. I sent her out and watched her get in the car.”
“Let’s call Rend,” I said.
I felt disconnected from it all, as if I had just stepped into a movie and was acting out the part. Lizzie was wailing and her husband had to come out to try to calm her down. My tongue was as thick as a chicken cutlet as I tried to explain to the law enforcement dispatcher what happened.
My investigation stirred something up. The killer’d been paying attention to my every move.
Somehow, I got so close to uncovering it that they got spooked. They tried to run us over on the sidewalk. But that didn’t work.
So they took Sophie.
The only problem was I had no idea who it was.
I was so close, but nothing made sense, none of the pieces fit.
And now Sophie’s life depended on my ability to figure it out.
Chapter 29
All I needed was a whalebone leg to complete the picture. I paced up and down the stacks, running my hands through my hair. If I’d had a crew, I’d have been barking orders at them.
Instead I was inside with a ghost and a cat.
“Will you sit down?” Kong said.
“I can’t,” I said.
“Then let’s go home,” Kong said.
“I can’t go home either,” I said. The Werewolf Law Enforcement Brigade was combing through my house for clues. Rend had told me to wait here while he took a band of his best officers and looked for Sophie. Lizzie had been in near hysterics until a healer came and administered a calming potion. When I’d left her, she was sitting on the couch with her husband, zoned out and ready for sleep.
I was trying to figure out what the killer wanted. I didn’t think he actually wanted to kill her. That didn’t fit. This was all a scare tactic. I was the target. I was the one getting too close. So why not come after me? Why her?
“At least take this time to work on your Latin,” Kong said. “It will take your mind off things.”
I could barely concentrate on taking two steps without tangling my feet and falling on my face. How was I going to focus enough to distinguish between cogito and cognatus?
“Now?” I said. “Are you nuts? I’m not in the mood for your humiliating insults.”
“Recite the conjugations of dare,” he said. “It will help clear your mind. And nothing is more humiliating than being the victim of a freeze spell and non-consensual medical treatment. Except maybe when Sophie put those wigs on me at the tailor shop.” He shuddered. “Come along now. Dare. Infinitive form of to give. Go.”
