Chapter 12
Chapter twelve
“What’s going on?” Ange asked as we left the café.
I hesitated. Cosmo shot me an inscrutable look.
Was he warning me to keep my mouth shut?
Or to pick a better location? This was Ange, for goodness’ sake.
We’d had each other’s back since the first week we met, and she shut down the town bully with a zinger for the ages.
Billy the bully. He’d thought I’d be fair game, as the new girl in town. He’d thought wrong.
I dragged myself back to the present. “Do you have an hour to come look at the library with me? I want to get everything ready for the re-opening, including your meditation group.” I’d raised my voice a little, although I had no idea why I wanted any potential eavesdroppers to know that there was nothing to see here, or to wonder about.
It was only a gut feeling that I needed to cover my tracks.
Ange was only too happy to agree.
We settled into the reading nook. It still needed vacuuming and dusting, but everything else looked the way it always had.
I could almost hear the rustling of pages, the drawn-in breaths of the kids listening to a story, and the slow shuffle of steps on creaking floorboards as readers browsed in the shelves.
Ange took off her shoes and sat cross-legged on the sofa. She frowned. “Something’s off with the vibrations.”
“It is?” Did she sense something wicked coming from the crime scene next door?
She placed one hand on her heart and the other on the belly and took a couple of deep breaths. “Oh yeah. And it’s you. What’s going on, Bex?”
Apart from me being a witch? I thought. Maybe I should leave that part out. Ange would be cool with it, but it wouldn’t be fair to ask her not to tell Nick, and Harper, and Reina. Or maybe I didn’t want her to know because I still felt like an imposter.
Cosmo nodded at me. So, instead of spilling the beans I only said, “It’s Jake’s murder. Shouldn’t the detectives have a suspect by now?”
“You can’t expect miracles. Isn’t the trail supposed to be cold after 48 hours? Maybe if they’d suspected foul play straight away.” She frowned. “It’s a pity Nick wasn’t called in. Doc Hansen is a nice guy, but he’s way past retirement age. He should have noticed something was off.”
I’d thought the same.
She continued. “Or he didn’t care to take a close look and was only too happy to sign the death certificate, after everything.”
“What does that mean?”
“His son had some beef with Jake.”
“Why? I thought the Hansens are pillars of the community. The Jake I knew never picked a fight without a good reason. Unless he changed a lot.” Wasn’t growing crankiness a sign of beginning dementia?
Although Aunt Violet hadn’t mentioned any worries about Jake, and she’d visited him regularly, to play Scrabble.
“That’s the problem. You remember that precious car of Jake’s?”
“Who doesn’t?” My ex-husband had developed into a car snob as soon as he hit forty and the “manopause”, as I thought of it. From then on, horsepower, torque and price tag mattered to him. That’s why he now drove a Cadillac CT5, and I had a ten-year-old Subaru hatchback.
Yet even I wouldn’t have minded Jake’s classic black Chevrolet Corvette.
It was a wildly impractical car, considering the average rainfall in the Pacific Northwest, but it was also jaw-droppingly gorgeous.
Jake had kept it in perfect shape. Every first Saturday of the month, he’d polished it until it gleamed. He’d rarely driven it though.
“This is just between you and me, right?” Ange lowered her voice.
“Pinkie swear.”
“Doc’s grandson took it out for a joyride. A harmless dare among his friends, from what I heard. Only Jake didn’t quite see it that way, especially since the kid dinged the door.”
“I have to say, I agree with Jake. What did he do? Report it to the police?”
“He was going to. Except the dad and Doc pleaded with him, not to ruin the kid’s future. That police report would have sunk his chances to get into an Ivy League college.”
“And he agreed?” That didn’t sound like Jake.
She threw up her hands. “No idea. The next thing, he was dead, and Doc appeared mighty relieved.”
A nasty suspicion formed in my mind. “That’s a motive.”
“It could also mean nothing. There were a number of people he’d rubbed the wrong way with his rule-enforcing.” She didn’t sound convinced. “I don’t want to start any rumors.”
“Neither do I. But I don’t think anyone in town will have any peace until the case is solved.” I shivered. “I’m having nightmares over it. It’s like him trying to reach out to me.” That was as far as I could safely go with telling her the truth.
“We could ask the cards,” she said. “It might be a little uncomfortable for Nick if his wife starts to meddle in a case his senior partner was taking care of, but nobody will know if we do a phone-in with the oracle.”
I grinned. Whatever happened, Ange’s weird phrases never disappointed.
She opened her purse. “Darn. I left my Tarot cards on the table. The one at home. Do you have a deck?”
“Let me check.” I pulled up the long inventory list on my computer.
“Nothing on here, I’m afraid.” I tried to remember if I’d seen Tarot cards in the secret room.
Again, I came up empty. If only I could ask Cosmo.
Because the question was, did Tarot cards not work or did my aunt the good witch simply have no need for them?
“We could do a session tonight,” she suggested. “Cards first, and a visit to the Blue Moon after?”
“Great. Can you ask Nick discreetly about Doc and his wrong cause of death?”
“I’ll do my best. He’s home for lunch, so I better run and throw a pizza in the oven.”
With a huge sense of relief, I watched her climb into her car. With Ange, Harper, and a talking familiar by my side, we’d sort out this mess lickety-split, if the police hadn’t done so already.