“Maddy?” She’d grabbed up the phone without glancing at it.
“Sorry.” Even before she saw Becca’s shoulders’ drop, Clara knew. It was her person’s ex.
“Jeff.” No greeting, nothing cordial, and a new note—defiant—had crept into Becca’s voice. “What do you want?”
“Look.” His voice had an edge of panic. Or maybe it was desperation. “I’m sorry, all right? I was a lousy boyfriend and I’m sorry. I really—I guess I was afraid of the commitment, or of how I felt about you.” Laurel couldn’t have rolled her eyes any harder. Jeff must have heard something because he suddenly broke off. “Look, Becca, don’t hang up. I’m sorry, okay? I mean it. And when I told you that I’d broken up with Suzanne, I meant I was going to. That going out with her was a mistake, and even before she found out I was your boyfriend, I was going to end it.”
“So she was the one who ended it.” The words leaked out as sharp as Laurel’s claws. “Of course.”
“I was going to stop seeing her. Really.” She didn’t respond, but before he could hang up, he tried one more time, his voice pitched high and desperate. “You’ve got to tell the cops that, Becca. I mean, I had no reason to want her dead.”
Chapter 25
“Excuse me?” Becca’s default mode was polite. “I, wait, what?”
“Just, don’t take our relationship stuff to the police, okay? This is serious.”
Polite, but still furious.“Jeff Blakey, if you think that I’ve been airing my personal laundry to the police…” She stopped with a sputter. Her outrage was convincing, but Clara could tell that, for the moment at least, the angry young woman standing before her was concerned that she’d done just that.
Luckily, her ex didn’t know her as well as her cat did. “I’m sorry, Becca, but I think someone’s been telling them things, and, well, you’re the only one who makes sense.”
“Oh?” She leaned back against the sofa, waiting.
The answering sigh would have been audible, even to non-feline ears.“I thought I was in the clear, but then I was called in to answer some more questions about Suzanne, and it was kind of obvious they came from someone in your, you know, your group.”
“The coven?” Becca straightened.
“Uh-huh. There was a lot about if I knew how often you guys got together, and what was my involvement. I told them I didn’t know anything. That you and I had broken up before you got really into all that Wicca stuff. But this one cop, he kept pushing. Asking me why I was, you know, seeing two of you, and what that meant.”
“What that meant?” Becca pronounced the last word as if it tasted bad, and Clara licked her whiskers in sympathy.
“You know.” The man on the phone was at a loss to explain. “What was it about your witchy stuff that attracted men. Whether you girls had some kind of competition going.”
“Uh-huh.” Becca bit her lip. “And you think that this means that they suspect you?”
“What else?” His voice was cracking. The fatigue had broken through into desperation. “They questioned me for more than an hour.”
“Uh-huh.” The way Becca was nodding, Clara knew she was digesting his words slowly, as if they were a bit of gristle. “Maybe you’re right, Jeff. Maybe they were trying to get you to confess to being something more than just a nasty cheat.” A sputter came through the line, but Becca kept talking. “But if you ask me, what they’re doing is something else entirely. I think they’re asking you about me and my friends for a different reason. I think they suspect one of us in the coven.”
Jeff had the grace not to sound too happy about that idea. Or maybe, Clara thought, the callow young man simply lacked the sense to follow Becca’s reasoning. All she could tell for sure was that despite some vague protests, Becca was able to get him off the phone fairly quickly. And if Clara had worried about her person’s lack of drive before, now she faced the opposite fear. Instead of settling back on the sofa, where Laurel was snoring gently, Becca became a whirlwind of activity. Picking up the few dishes she’d used, she muttered to herself like a discontented cat, until, finally, she disappeared into her bedroom and began throwing clothes around, emerging at last in an all-black outfit that seemed at odds with the beauty ofthe day.
“Okay, kitties.” Laurel had woken and joined Clara in staring at their human. Even Harriet roused herself to look up. “I’m going to be out for a while, but don’t worry. I’ll be back in time for dinner.”
“Really?” Laurel yawned and began to groom, her spirits if not her fur unruffled by the turn of events.“Do you think she expects us to respond?”
“I don’t know,” said Clara as she checked her own tail and whiskers.“But I fear she’s going hunting, and not for the kind of prey that would feed any of us.”
***
Her coat neatly groomed, Clara waited by the door until Becca left, slipping out only after the dark-haired girl, so as not to cause her concern. But as she followed her person’s rather hurried steps, the little calico began to have apprehensions of her own. Becca was upset, that much was evident. That she had felt spurred to action by the phone call—or maybe both phone calls—was also evident. What Clara wasn’t sure of was what her person intended to do about it.
Surely, the cat thought as she trotted to keep up, Becca wasn’t going to meet Jeff. Nor would she likely be heading back to the police, not after what she’d said on the phone. Cats may not understand the ins and outs of law enforcement, but they tend not to believe in closed doors of any sort, as anybody who has cohabited with a feline knows.
Still, the determined young woman marched on, her slight stature giving her an edge as she wove through the workday crowd. For her cat, it was a bit more difficult. Keeping herself semi-shadowed meant she had to be more careful of feet as she ducked and dodged down the crowded city sidewalk. When Becca turned off the busy main street, her pet breathed a sigh of relief. Even magical cats have a hard time out in the world. But as Clara looked around, the realization of where her person was headed made her catch her breath in a way no near miss by a pointy toe could.
Suzanne’s apartment. The triple-decker with its fresh coat of paint looked as cheery as could be on this sunny day. Still, Clara was grateful when her person stopped short of walking up to the clapboard building and mounting its three white steps. Not that she was easy with the way Becca stood on the sidewalk opposite, considering.
“I wonder who lives downstairs?” Becca voiced her thoughts. “And what they heard?”
This, her cat knew, could not end well. Surely, if the police were talking to Becca’s ex, then they must have interviewed the neighbors as well.
Of course, being a cat—and a shadowy one at that—Clara could check out the two lower apartments. In fact, she realized, it wouldn’t be difficult to slip inside the front door and at least take in the scents of the inhabitants.
The first floor, she could tell right away, was the home of an older woman. Even from here, she could sense that simply from the combination of aromas: peppermint tea and the sharp tang of a muscle rub, leavened with the not unpleasantly musty smell of old books. The couple on the second floor were likely academics, she figured, from the amount of paper rustling in the slight breeze that made its way inside. They’d been gone for several days, Clara gathered from the dearth of any other sound, as well as a certain stillness of the dust. Probably since Suzanne had been found there, she realized. Cats, like most humans, have an aversion to violence, but the parti-colored feline couldn’t quite understand why people would leaveafter an attack. Surely, that young couple—French, she decided, from some faint herbal quality to their kitchen—must have realized that the violence above them was over by the time they took off.
All she would have to do would be to cross the street. Clara took a deep breath. Cloaked as she was, no car would see her. Dare she risk it? For Becca she would, she decided, and glanced up at her person, only to see that she’d extracted her phone from her pocket.