Chapter Sixteen
A t last, it was my day off. Tyrone Beaudrie had promised to have a list of his crews ready for me by noon. Until then, there wasn’t much I could do, except ponder the meager information I had about Ian’s disappearance and look for Lise. That, and fret about tonight’s meeting about the library.
I set off toward the retreat center, taking the long way through town so I could formulate an approach if I was unlucky enough to run into Wanda. It was a fine morning, and the breeze off the river was refreshingly cool. Rodney scampered ahead as I wandered down the hill and into town.
Walking was a good time to think, and I had a lot to think about.
The distance between Sam and me continued to eat at me.
He wouldn’t answer my texts, and last night he wouldn’t even make eye contact.
I could show up at his house and demand an explanation for why he so suddenly lost interest, but I knew the answer.
Once I’d opened up about being a witch, he wanted no part of me.
This realization stung. If he wasn’t a big enough man to talk to me about it, I needed to let him go. Yet I couldn’t.
Babe Hamilton—Aunt Beata—also haunted my thoughts.
As if reading my mind, Rodney stopped nosing a Douglas fir and examined me.
My great aunt, here in Wilfred. Here and deliberately hampering my magic.
How had she found me? Buffy and Thor said she hadn’t shown up at the This-N-That yesterday.
I felt strong in my power again but feared she was planning another assault.
Then there was this mysterious meeting tonight about library “issues.” Why hadn’t Wanda talked to me before going public?
Her growing friendship with Ruth Littlewood concerned me, too.
Ruth was a formidable opponent. If they both took a position I didn’t like, such as banning Rodney from the library, I’d face a tough battle.
Libraries should be supportive, nurturing spaces, not hotbeds of controversy.
As this thought passed through my mind, I saw another poster outside the P.O. Grocery advertising tonight’s meeting.
My wandering led me to the lot behind the church cemetery, where Lyndon and Roz’s house was being built.
Just last spring, the lot was a stretch of mud with a dilapidated outhouse covered in blackberry vines— and hosting human bones.
All evidence of crime was now replaced with a fresh foundation and the exterior shell of a bungalow-style house.
Duke and Desmond were setting a window at the house’s rear.
“Hello, Josie,” Lyndon said. He was kneeling next to a potted tree peony. “Looking good, hey?”
“You’ll have everything closed up well before the rain starts,” I said. “Have you seen Lise Bloom, the woman staying at the retreat center?”
“Nope,” Lyndon said.
Roz leaned out the window opening nearby. “Look,” she said. “My office.”
Rodney jumped to the window ledge. I leaned near him to peer inside at framed-in walls and a concrete floor. It was easy to imagine Roz’s desk against the window and bookshelves along the walls.
“Lyndon is planting a peony tree so I have something to inspire me while I write.” She cast a dreamy glance toward him. Her gaze drifted to Rodney, and her expression snapped to seriousness. “Have you seen the notices around town? About the library meeting?”
“I ran into Wanda last night. I’m not worried about it,” I said with more conviction than I felt.
“I wouldn’t be so cavalier.” Roz crossed her arms and leaned on a wall stud. “I heard her at the café last night. People are listening to her.”
“Do you know what she’s so worked up about?”
“Cats. She says they’re a plague on society.”
Rodney backed up and jumped off the window ledge. He wanted no part of this conversation.
“That’s crazy talk. I think she’s scared of them. She wouldn’t tell me about her agenda for the meeting, but my guess is she wants to ban Rodney from the library.”
“It’s worse than that. She says cats are predators and terrorize birds.”
“Ruth Littlewood would be sympathetic,” I said. That explained their secret tête-à-têtes.
“Ruth’s not the only bird watcher in town.
Marcus Dortmunder, besides having two budgies, has always hated cats, ever since Snowball—that was before your time—got in through his kitchen window and stole a pork chop he’d broiled for his and Evelyn’s anniversary dinner.
Plus, Katie Linn heard a story about cats smothering babies in their cradles.
She said her husband’s sister’s mother-in-law’s neighbor found her Maine coon in the baby’s crib.
The baby was okay, but who knows what might have happened?
Those are big cats.” Roz snapped open her fan and batted it in the air.
At this point, the fan was less about hot flashes and more a tool to emphasize her glass-half-empty opinions.
“I wouldn’t dismiss Wanda. She’s surprisingly convincing when she’s worked up. ”
“Do you know anything about her? Why is she in Wilfred, anyway?” I asked.
“She’s a birdwatcher, like Ruth. Obsessed with hawks,” Duke said. I hadn’t known he was listening. “Flamenco dancer, too. Plus an ace kickboxer. She needed to get away from a relationship gone bad, so when I saw the opening at the retreat center, I thought of her right away.”
“I saw her dancing at the retreat center,” I said. If Wilfred had taught me anything, it was a lesson all librarians should know: never judge a book by its cover.
“Clever, Wanda is,” Duke said. “Ever since she was a kid. She made tap shoes out of a pair of oxfords by driving nails into their heels. Bam, bam!” He mimicked thrashing a hammer into a shoe. The violence of his demonstration made me jump.
Roz pointed a finger at Duke. “See? Don’t underestimate her.”
“What has she got against cats?” I asked Duke. “She seems afraid of Rodney.”
He leaned his level against the house. Desmond stepped forward to listen. “Oh no, it’s not fear. She detests ’em.”
“I figured that out,” I said. “What I want to know is, why?”
“It didn’t used to be that way,” Duke said. He shifted foot to foot in a way that signaled he was settling in for a story.
“Tell me more,” I said.
“She used to have a cat, a tabby named Tabby. Tabitha, for real.” He looked up to make sure I understood.
“Tabby the tabby cat. Got it,” I said.
“Wanda loved that cat. The cat slept in her bed, followed her everywhere.”
“What happened?” I guessed that the cat ran away— or worse.
“Tabby moved out. My brother Arthur got a dog, and Tabby wouldn’t stand for it. She moved in with the neighbors, a sweet old couple who fed her chicken livers.”
“Cats do that sometimes,” Desmond noted.
It would break my heart if Rodney ever got it into his head to move. “That’s why she hates cats.”
“Nope,” Duke said. “She was deathly allergic, so it wasn’t a big loss.”
“Cut to the chase, Duke,” Roz said.
“Wanda, see, got engaged to a veterinarian. Not long ago, just after she left the army. She met him flamenco dancing.”
Wanda in the army? Somehow it fit. “Go on.”
“He brought cat hair and dander home every day. She was miserable. Her eyes swelled up, she talked funny because she was congested, and she had terrible headaches. She told him he had to stop treating cats, just stick to dogs, but he refused. They canceled the wedding the morning of the ceremony.”
“You’re kidding,” Roz said.
“That’s awful,” I said.
“Not so awful,” Duke said. “I never liked the guy. If you ask me, he was looking for a reason to dump Wanda, and the cat bit was his excuse.”
“But to leave her like that, with the dress in the closet and the invitations sent and accepted?” Roz said. “No wonder she left town.”
“Wanda begged him to change his mind. She got allergy shots and everything, but he wouldn’t budge. Not six months later, he married the owner of four longhaired Persians. From then on, she’s loathed cats.”
Roz pushed back from the open space that would soon be her office window. “Kickboxing, Josie. Just saying. You’d better take her seriously.”
Roz’s warning ringing in my ears, I wandered past the Wallingford Guest House and waved at the owner’s daughter, who was twirling two batons in their front yard.
“Hi, Ellie. Have you seen the lady staying at the retreat center?”
She spun and caught both batons before responding. “Nope.”
From there I passed to Wilfred’s main drag and cast an eye toward the This-N-That. It wasn’t yet open, so I didn’t need to fear Babe Hamilton’s presence.
The café’s parking lot was packed, and the café would be full of families loading up on breakfasts of Darla’s waffles, omelets, and famous shrimp and grits.
The patio was busy, too, and I gave it a wide berth when I saw Wanda at a table near its edge, surrounded by a group in noisy conversation. No Lise.
With Wanda occupied, I could safely look for Lise at the retreat center.
Maybe she’d returned. I took a left toward the entrance to the Magnolia Rolling Estates just beyond the café to use as a shortcut through the meadow.
Ian’s trailer lacked signs of life. The windows were dark, and his van hadn’t moved. Poor Lalena. I knew her anguish.
Similarly, the curtains were drawn at Babe’s trailer. I felt a twinge of foreboding with no logical reason behind it. Babe’s spell was broken. I was safe. Or was I? Another thought crossed my mind: Had I ever seen both Babe and Lise in the same place?
The meadow was still damp with morning dew, but the sun on my shoulders told me it wouldn’t be for long. Rodney ran ahead of me and pounced on something I couldn’t see before a quick bout of zoomies in the buttercups.
I took the path over the levee dividing the river from the millpond and came out near the stone patio in front of the retreat center.
Lise’s car was in the lot. The center’s lobby door was unlocked, so I entered its main room, taking in the building’s cathedral ceiling and shoulder-height fireplace.
“Lise?” I called out. No response.