Chapter 19 #2
The next thing I knew, Ange and Harper grabbed me and lowered me flat onto the sofa with my feet propped up by a couple of cushions. A crochet blanket was wrapped around me.
"I only need a moment." I sat up and tried to push myself upright.
"Stay down. You almost blacked out," Ange ordered. "Shall I give Nick a call?"
"Heavens, no. He's got more than enough to do. I think it's only... the lack of sleep and everything. I haven't been doing too well since Aunt Violet, you know."
I lifted my hand. It was still shaking slightly, and the veins stood out.
"If I could have another cup of tea..."
"Of course. When did you last eat something?" Harper asked.
I started to think back. I'd had breakfast, and now it was evening.
"No wonder you're feeling faint," Reina chided when I told them. "I can have something brought up from the kitchen, or we could put a lasagna in the oven. Good idea?"
"Do you want to sleep here?" Harper asked. "Your room is still waiting for you."
"No, I think... Cosmo still needs feeding, and I'll be fine."
"You need a break," Reina said. "A real break. We can play detective when you feel better."
"It's not playing," Ange said. "But you're right."
It turned out, a slice of lasagna and a round of Scrabble helped me feel better.
But I still started to feel faint whenever we tried to get back to the topic at hand. "It's no use," I said. "I need to go home."
"I'll take you," Reina said, fetching my coat.
"What about my car?"
"I'll drive it," Ange said. "And then Reina can take me back.” She furrowed her brows.
"Let me know if you don't feel better in the morning, because Nick will absolutely have no problem paying you a house call.
I assume you don't feel like spending hours in a waiting room with people dissecting everything your aunt ever did. "
"It's all insane," Harper protested. "As if Violet Walker had ever done anything but good in this community. She was practically the guardian angel of Willowmere."
"Yeah, well," Ange said. "You know people. Memories only last so long, and whatever they heard or saw or thought last sticks in the mind."
Reina wrapped me in my coat. "Let's get this girl home."
Back in my bedroom, Cosmo circled me.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Checking you out. You were in a much better shape when you set off."
I mumbled, "Maybe I should have listened to you."
"Naturally," he retorted. "But what makes you realize the wisdom of my words?"
"I tried to do the whole 'divine the meaning' thing, you know."
"I don't," he said.
"You told me I would feel it when I was getting close to something. So, I juggled. And listened to my gut."
"And what did your gut say?"
"That I'm fit to drop."
"I see that."
I fell asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow. I could have sworn that the cat was purring softly.
A lullaby, maybe?
Whatever it was, it worked like a charm.
I woke up with a clear head, a clear mind, and a sense of purpose.
While Cosmo and I enjoyed breakfast—pancakes and berries for me, a can of tuna for him—I told him everything.
"So, you dropped the ball, literally, on a couple of things?”
“But I caught it when I mentioned silencing Jake or money as possible motives. And then, as soon as the words ‘love’, ‘hate’ and ‘revenge’ fell—boom. I almost fainted from the pain. Which makes me believe that was it." Too bad those were also the most common motives for murder.
"But before that, you caught the ball?" he inquired.
"I did, although it might have simply been because I was getting better. Tossing one ball isn't really that hard."
I produced the stress ball that Reina had gifted me. She had decided I needed it. I weighed it in one hand while I speared the last bite of pancake with the other. Then I put down the fork, swallowed the delicious morsel, and demonstrated my throwing and catching skills.
To be fair, they still needed a little bit of work. But because I'd been smart enough to put aside my plate, the ball only bounced off an empty saucer. No harm done.
I wiped my mouth and folded my napkin.
"What you and I, my friend, are going to do now," I said, "is search the garden for clues."
He sat upright and licked the last drops of tuna off his whiskers.
"What kind of clues?"
I allowed myself a little smug smile. For once, I was ahead of him.
Overnight dew and persistent drizzle let droplets fall onto my head whenever I brushed against a twig.
Cosmo stepped gingerly, clearly not liking the dampness, until I offered to pick him up and carry him.
"That is not necessary," he said.
"Good. Because I'd much rather you keep an eye on the ground, and I take the higher levels."
"What exactly are we looking for?"
"Well..." I stopped, adjusting the hood of my parka so it offered me protection from branches and thorns. "The person who stole the foxglove probably did not approach openly from the street, right?"
"Possibly."
"Which leaves two options. Either they cut across from Jake's place, or they came from the woods and the lake.
Considering that my aunt hasn't cut back any of this wilderness for ages, it stands to reason that there might be a few broken branches, trampled plants, or whatever, because there is no proper clear path. "
"Smart thinking," he said.
"Thank you. But if we don't find anything, it's more likely that the person used the path from Jake's. Which brings us to your mysterious stranger." I paused. "Nope," I said. "Not a single twinge as I mentioned them."
"That's not to be expected unless you really hit on something new," he told me. "Otherwise, you’d be stumbling all over the place whenever you repeat something, which, considering that you're a human, is most of the time."
"You're such a bundle of joy," I said. "Somehow, you were a lot nicer when you didn't talk to me."
"I'm trying to help you. I'm your mentor. I need to point out these things to you."
His paw touched my leg. His huge eyes begged me to forgive him. I relented. “I understand your point.” I marched on for a few steps. Then I spotted something.
"Yes!" I punched the air, careful not to hit a tree branch. "I just found the very first broken twig!" It hung at an odd angle, and a few inches away, there was another one. I couldn't tell for sure how old these breakages were. But I snapped pictures from all different angles.
Then I used a pair of pruning shears to cut off the second branch and slipped it into a Ziploc bag.
"Here's more," Cosmo said.
His tail twitched furiously.
I bent to inspect his find—a thorny twig belonging to berries, I assumed. I took more photos.
We moved on, further and further into the wilderness that my aunt's backyard had evolved into. We found traces that somebody had pushed their way through, right up to the fence.
"What now?" I asked the cat. "Shall we go over and look on the other side, or shall we move on towards Jake's place?"
We decided on the second option. At least now we knew that somebody had been here uninvited.
"Darn," I muttered the moment we set foot on the part of Aunt Violet's garden that led towards Jake's.
More broken twigs and a trampled plant or two meant that either we were dealing with one intruder—one who came from Jake's place and escaped towards the forest and the lake, or the other way around—or we were dealing with two different people.
"At least we have collected some evidence," I said.
I stowed away the Ziploc bags in the kitchen downstairs. I decided against the potting shed because it only had a very flimsy lock.
I had just finished washing my hands and brushing my muddy nails when the doorbell rang. Who could it be?
The answer was not what I wanted to hear.