Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Part of me had wanted to say the hell with it and close the pet shop that Saturday — it would only be open for a half day anyway — but Ben told me we needed to act as normal as possible.
“If there weren’t FBI agents wandering around and asking questions, then I’d say sure, don’t bother to go into work tomorrow,” he’d said after I broached the subject not too long before I headed home the previous night.
“Right now, though, I think it’s better if we stick to our normal routines as much as possible. ”
And although I’d wanted to protest, deep down, I’d known he was right.
So that was why I was at Feathers and Fur the next morning, puttering around and straightening up things, wondering if I’d still made a mistake by coming in.
Saturdays could either be crazy-busy or completely dead, the way they were at this particular moment, and it was sometimes hard to tell which kind of day I was going to have until I got to work.
Well, at least I would only be there for three hours.
Just from ten in the morning until one in the afternoon, which would still give the people of Silver Hollow enough time to stop by and pick up that flat of cat food right before they ran out, or hurry in to get a replacement chew toy after their dog destroyed the last one.
The bell on the door jingled a little before noon, and I looked up from the batch of new leashes I’d been tagging while I stood at the counter.
A woman stood just inside the entrance. She had blonde hair pulled into a tight knob of a bun at the nape of her neck and the kind of strong features the people of my grandmother’s generation might have called handsome rather than pretty.
Even though she wasn’t wearing an obvious badge, her tailored black jacket and pants and crisp, light blue collared shirt practically screamed FBI.
My stomach sank, even as I told myself it was inevitable that she — or her partner — would stop by at some point. At least they’d seen Tory first, and she’d been able to warn me they were making the rounds, so I wasn’t caught completely flat-footed.
“Hi, there,” I said, doing my best to sound friendly and not as though I was hiding enough secrets for multiple FBI investigations. “Can I help you with something?”
The woman’s gaze tracked from the shelves of dog and cat food and supplements and treats over to me. In contrast to her hair, they were dark brown, and I wondered if she bleached it.
“Your name, please?”
She’d said “please,” but I knew that was only a formality.
Still, my identity was such common knowledge that I realized I couldn’t hand her a lie.
“Sidney Lowell,” I said. “This is my store.”
At once, the woman’s dark eyes narrowed. “‘Lowell’?” she repeated. “Your mother and grandmother went missing earlier this year, correct?”
Again, nothing I could hide, not when the story had been all over the papers and the FBI had been called in to help with the investigation. I didn’t recall this woman being part of the team that searched the forest, but she’d probably been briefed about the operation before being assigned here.
“Yes,” I replied. “The store has been in my family for more than sixty years, so when my mother and grandmother disappeared, I came home to handle things until they got back. I was going to school at UC Davis.”
“To get your DVM,” the woman said, confirming my belief that she already knew far more about me than I would have preferred. Her head tilted to one side as she added, “Do you have any evidence to suggest they’ll return?”
Her tone was so neutral that I couldn’t really take umbrage at those words, but irritation flared anyway. However, I knew I couldn’t lose my temper. No, I needed to be exactly what I seemed — a woman grappling with recent loss, but with no ulterior motives, no secrets to hide.
“‘Evidence’?” I echoed, then shook my head. “None at all. I guess I’m just going on faith right now. Since none of the investigations turned up any remains or any evidence of foul play, I’m going to keep believing they’re out there somewhere and will come home when they can.”
The female agent’s gaze remained stony, but she didn’t appear eager to contradict me. Most likely, she was telling herself she didn’t need to go down that path, not when my relatives’ disappearance wasn’t the reason for her being in town right now.
“And you are?” I went on, figuring I might as well know who I was talking to. I’d given her my name, but she hadn’t seemed inclined to provide me with hers.
“Special Agent Rebecca Morse,” she said, pulling out a thin black leather wallet and briefly flashing me her credentials. “We’re in town investigating some unusual phenomena.”
“Such as…?”
She returned the wallet to her jacket pocket. “The electrical and cellular disturbances.”
I put my hands on my hips and said with a wry smile, “Isn’t that something PG&E or the various cell phone companies should be dealing with?”
“Under most circumstances, yes. But in the case of Silver Hollow, the companies in question have already ruled out any sort of mechanical or technical causes.” She paused there, dark eyes looking as if they wanted to drill right inside my skull and see what I was hiding in there.
“Have you seen anything unusual over the past few weeks?”
Bursting into wild, hysterical laughter probably wouldn’t be a very good response.
The grainy image from the trail cam footage of the griffin exploding into the forest through the portal and the subsequent battle with the unicorn wanted to play in my head, and I tried to shove it away as best I could.
“Not really,” I said, hoping I’d mixed the proper amount of concern for our beleaguered electrical grid with utter innocence as to what could possibly be the cause.
“I hope you get to the bottom of it, though — all these glitches are really getting old. And I’m sure people are going to start arguing about updating the power system here in town all over again, even though everyone knows it just isn’t in the budget. ”
Now Agent Morse’s expression had turned ever so slightly distant, as if she knew she needed to be paying attention to me but had absolutely no interest in small-town squabbling over city expenditures.
Which was exactly the reaction I’d been hoping for.
“Nothing at all strange?” she pressed, although again, the tone of her voice seemed to tell me she was asking the question because she was expected to ask it and not because she thought I’d provide any useful information.
I opened my mouth to say no…and then it was as if an inner monologue started running in my mind, one I knew wasn’t mine.
…such a waste of time. The electromagnetic anomalies don’t appear to have manifested in anything other than annoying but manageable outages, and it’s clear that none of the people here know a damn thing.
We need to go into the forest and start looking around there.
If Rosenthal really thinks that’s the source of the anomalies… .
And then it was gone again, almost as if someone had just changed the channel or maybe shut it off entirely.
For a second, I stood there frozen, not wanting to acknowledge what had just happened.
Had I actually heard Rebecca Morse’s thoughts in my head?
No, that must have been my imagination playing tricks on me.
“Well, Ms. Lowell,” she said as she extracted a card from a different inner pocket of her jacket, “here’s my card.
Please reach out and let me know if you think of anything you might want to report.
The more information we have, the sooner we can get to the bottom of what’s happening with your electricity and phone service. ”
“Sure,” I said, and took the card from her.
Like me, she didn’t seem to spend much time on manicures, since her nails were neatly kept but short and without even clear polish on them.
“Nothing comes to mind, but since I’m as tired of all these interruptions as everyone else, I’ll be sure to reach out and let you know if I think of something. ”
“I appreciate that.”
She offered me a thin smile and went outside, letting the door bang shut behind her with a discordant jangle of the bell hanging from the handle.
I released a breath and closed my eyes.
What the hell was going on with me?
Unfortunately, I didn’t get much of a chance to get my bearings after that unsettling visit, because Eliza came in only about fifteen minutes after Agent Morse left.
She was looking less than thrilled with life, although I had to hope that wasn’t because she’d suddenly developed mind-reading abilities like I had.
“Frigging Linda Fields,” she said without preamble, and I blinked.
“What?”
Eliza planted her hands on her slim hips. On Saturdays, she only served breakfast, so she was out of the café by usually around eleven or eleven-thirty. “I just found out through the grapevine that Linda Fields plans to run against me.”
“But….” I let the word trail off because I wasn’t actually sure what I’d intended to say. Trying to recover, I said, “I thought you were running unopposed.”
Her mouth pursed. “So did I. But I guess Linda doesn’t like the idea of someone running Silver Hollow who’s as anti-business as I am.”
“You’re not anti-business,” I protested. “You’re a business owner, for God’s sake. And you’re always in the thick of it when it comes to arranging bake sales or raffles or whatever to help with raising money to beautify downtown.”
Although Eliza didn’t exactly roll her eyes, I got the feeling she wanted to. “Yes, but that’s all local, small business stuff. Linda’s still convinced that all we need is to get one good chain hotel next to the highway and we’ll be knee-deep in tourists.”
I could only imagine what Mabel Whitaker might have to say about that. “We’re not exactly a Days Inn kind of place.”