13. Chapter 13
I gripped the side of the mirror, directing my thoughts to Mr. McFarland. Specifically, my suspicion that he was a crook. The glass from the mirror disappeared and I saw him and a rough-looking woman with dreadlocks and layered skirts, glaring at each other.
“That’ll be another fifteen thousand dollars,” McFarland said, his voice hard.
“I don’t have that kind of money,” the woman said, throwing her hands in the air.
“I’m sure your pack will find a way to come up with it. Unless you’d like me to tell the authorities that a clan of coyote shifters are running an illegal fight club.”
Her shoulders sank. “Fine. We’ll get you the money.”
“See that you do,” he said, his face completely devoid of compassion.
The image blurred, and McFarland and an old man stood in his office at The Trinket Trove.
“I didn’t mean to hurt anybody,” the old man said. “I’ve gotten myself a wolfsbane supplier and I’m going to be able to keep myself from shifting now.”
“Even so,” McFarland said. “Your kind aren’t allowed to live in society. And my silence has a price.”
The old man hung his head.
Apparently Mr. McFarland was blackmailing a lot of people.
I turned my thoughts to how Genevieve worked for him, hoping the mirror would show me more about her.
The image shifted to a young woman with a short, brown bob and deep brown eyes.
Was this Geneveive? She handed him a large box. “I’ve got some more artifacts for you.”
“Wow, Geneveive, that old lady is quite the gold mine, isn’t she?” McFarland laughed.
Genevieve plucked a figurine of a phoenix from the box and handed it to Mr. McFarland. “She is. But she’s starting to notice some of her things have gone missing. She’s sharper than I thought.”
“Well, you’re still a few thousand dollars away from paying off your debt, so if I were you, I’d keep finding magical items to steal.”
Genevieve bit her lip. “What about her mirror? That has to be worth a lot.”
“I’ll assess it and let you know,” McFarland said.
Their images faded from view.
I turned to Jack who was waiting patiently for an update. “He’s been blackmailing people,” I said.
The mirror sent me a slew of images of different people being blackmailed: a few witches, a vampire, even a pixie. I turned my thoughts back to Genevieve and the mirror showed her standing in the office, worry etched into her brow.
“I’m out,” she told Mr. McFarland, crossing her arms across her chest. “She’s getting too suspicious. I think she’s going to turn me in to the cops.”
“You can’t just get out,” he said. “I have so much evidence of you stealing magical items.”
Genevieve’s eyes grew wide.
“Get me one more big item and I’ll erase the evidence I have against you. You’ll be free.”
She clenched her jaw. “Fine. One last job.”
I turned my thoughts to Mr. McFarland killing Geneveive but the surface of the mirror became reflective again.
Jack whistled low when I told him what I’d seen. “I’m increasingly glad you’ve got me to protect you. Reggie McFarland is clearly not a good man.”
“No, he’s not. Which is why we’re going to go talk to him.”
“Why?” Jack crossed his arms. “Why not go to the police and let them look in the mirror?
“If I tell the cops about it, they will seize it. And to be honest, I don’t trust them to use it well. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want the complications that a magic mirror would introduce into the way investigations take place. Magical items like this are illegal for a reason.”
“Then why not destroy it?”
I glared at him for the implied judgment in that question. “Because this mirror belongs at Catherine de Bourgh’s.”
He slapped his palms down on his thighs. “All right, then. I guess the next step is to go to The Trinket Trove and see what we can find out from Mr. McFarland.” He rose and headed for the stairs.
“If we’re going to the antique shop, why are you going upstairs?”
He turned and gave me a mischievous smile. “Because if we’re going to be holding an interrogation, I’m going to wear a suit.”
A few minutes later, he came down the stairs in a slate gray Armani suit that was perfectly tailored to his body. My mouth dropped open. “You’ve been holding out on me.”
“If I’d let you see all my fancy clothes, you would have figured out that I’ve got money.”
I squeezed his biceps. “That’s quite the long con. Did you go shopping for your discount wardrobe just for me?”
“No. Believe it or not, I do wear regular clothes most of the time.”
“Regular clothes?” I scoffed. “Never heard of them.”
I kept one hand in his on the drive downtown, relishing the feel of his warmth.
“I’m really glad you’re not actually my employee,” I said as I parked the car.
“Me too. But when we’re inside, keeping you safe is absolutely my priority. You can worry about the interrogation, my mind will be focused on any potential threats.”
I kissed him on the cheek before getting out of the car.
Jack walked in front of me and held the door open for me. “Good Morning,” Mr. McFarland called, then saw me. “Oh good, I have an offer for you in regards to the mirror.”
“No, I’ve got an offer for you ,” I said. “Tell me about your dealings with Genevieve Charbonet and I won’t take the mirror to the chief of police and show him how you’ve been blackmailing people.”
The color drained from his face. His gaze darted from me to Jack’s menacing form behind me and back again.
“Follow me.” Mr. McFarland led us into a cramped office. He sat behind a cluttered desk and gestured toward two chairs. I sat but Jack stood behind me, his arms folded across his broad chest.
McFarland cleared his throat. “Genevieve didn’t work for me. She brought me items of interest and I paid her for them. I didn’t ask questions about where she got her supply. If they were stolen, I certainly didn’t know about it.”
I rolled my eyes. “Please. You knew perfectly well where she was getting those items. And she was doing it to pay a debt to you.”
“Fine, I knew she was stealing the items, but I didn’t know the details.”
“Because you didn’t want to know,” I said.
He shrugged. “It was better for me not to know.”
“And yet you used the magic mirror to make sure you had incriminating evidence against her.”
“It was an insurance policy. I needed to have a way to protect myself in case things went sideways.”
“You mean you needed to have a way to blackmail her and ensure that she kept coming to you with her stolen goods.”
“It was good for business.”
“But then you lost the mirror.”
He leaned back in his chair. “By which you mean you stole it.”
“I didn’t steal it. My assistant paid a thousand dollars for it.”
“Semantics. So, now that you know how much I value the mirror, I suppose I’ll have to raise my offer. I’ll give you forty thousand dollars for it.”
I scoffed. In truth, forty thousand dollars would go a long way toward living independently, but I needed to maintain the facade of the rich girl who couldn’t be bribed.
“I’m not here to sell you back the mirror. I’m here to find out why you killed Genevieve.”
He looked me straight in the eye. “I didn’t kill her.”
Jack scoffed “Likely story.”
“She was valuable to my business, bringing me my supply of rare magical items.” He held up his hands. “I had no reason to kill her.”
A disappointing truth dawned on me, but I pushed it aside to get one last piece of information from him. “Why was she glamoured to look like me?”
He pursed his lips, debating.
My patience was wearing thinner than a low-quality T-shirt. “You know what, never mind. Tell that to the cops. I’m so over this.”
I spun on my heel as if to go, but he bought my bluff. “Because I wanted to sneak her into Netherfield.”
I turned back to him. “You cast the glamour on her. That’s why it didn’t fade after her death.”
“Yes.”
“But the guest list was hardly exclusive, why would she need to look like me?” Anger awoke in the pit of my stomach as the realization dawned on me. “So she would have freedom of movement in the house. You were going to rob Charles. That was the last big job you were talking about.”
“Finally, you understand,” he said, his oily voice failing to sound disarming. “Seventy-five thousand for the mirror.”
“The lady says it’s not for sale,” Jack said menacingly, opening the door for me.
I turned back to Mr. McFarland. “I don’t have it anymore. I’ve placed it with a client, one whose house you’d have quite a difficult time infiltrating.”
His face turned red but I flitted through the door and Jack shut it firmly behind us. Weak sunlight crept from behind clouds that were darkening by the minute. A squirrel ran in front of us, its bushy tail blowing in the wind as it scampered up a tree.
“Back to square one,” Jack said. “If McFarland didn’t kill Genevieve, who did?”
I let the disappointment I’d been shoving down rise back to the surface.
“Someone she had been stealing from, who has since become very nervous about people touching her things. Someone who didn’t need the strength to bludgeon Genevieve with the Celtic knot because she can move objects with her mind.
Someone I’d considered to be my friend.”
His eyes widened with understanding as I revealed what I’d figured out at The Trinket Trove.
“Gladys killed her.”