“I think this has to do with that man she was out with the other night.” This was for Laurel, whose tail lashed once, back and forth, in interest.“He’s been texting her. Though it could be a shopping trip.” That was for Harriet. But the plan almost backfired.
“Wait a minute.” Harriet wasn’t usually that quick on the uptake, but when food was involved she didn’t let much get past her.“You’re just saying that…”
“Look, if you want to join me, you can.” Already, Becca’s footsteps were growing fainter.“I’m simply worried about her. And she is our responsibility.”
Harriet looked at Laurel, and Laurel stared back. Clara held her breath, whiskers trembling. Becca was almost out of earshot already. But the little calico had hit on the one truth that all real cats know. Laurel lifted her paw, and in a flash, Clara was out the door, ignoring both its wooden solidity and the latch that had locked it shut.
“Make sure she brings back treats!” Harriet called after her youngest sibling, but she was already gone.
***
Quickly fading her orange patches to grey, Clara did her best to blend in with the morning’s shadows. Still, in her haste, she nearly tripped a young mother, busy with her toddler, and had to act fast to dodge a bike messenger cutting across the sidewalk to avoid construction. Her haste paid off, however, as she caught a whiff of Becca’s clean, warm scent and—soon after—the sight of her dark curls bobbing through the crowd.
“Maddy’s right,” she was saying to herself in a voice too soft for any human ear to catch. “I need to get back to work—at least on my own work. It’s too easy to rely on web searches, and how can I expect anyone to hire me if I don’t keep up with primary sources?”
Her musing and her stride were cut short by the buzz of her phone. For although the young woman kept up her jaunty pace as she fished the device out of her pocket, a quick glance at the screen stopped her cold.
“No!” she exclaimed before even answering. “I’m just—no.” She shoved the phone back into her pocket and shut her eyes. By the time she opened them, a few seconds later, her phone had ceased its buzzing. “I’ll call them back later,” she promised out loud. “Even the police can’texpect everyone to take every call.”
But it was with a more tentative step that she set out. And when a car drove slowly by, she stopped once more. Black and white at its ends, with a slash of gold in the middle, it resembled nothing so much as a calico like herself, Clara thought. Only the sight of the vehicle—or maybe it was the words written on its side—had Becca gasping.
“They can’t…” She paused, her thought unfinished, and turned slowly to check out the road behind her. “Are the police following me?”
Clara had never really envied either of her sisters their particular powers before. Right now, though, she wished she were better at suggestion. Watching her person, frozen with indecision—or could it be fear? —was heartrending. Surely, the appearance of the cruiser, coming right after that rejected call, was coincidental. Besides, she thought, no one could suspect the sweet young woman of murdering her friend, no matter what her unfaithful ex may have suggested to the police.
“Jeff.” One word, spit out like a pill, and Becca turned to walk quite purposefully in the opposite direction. As Clara realized where she was heading, she had to wonder if perhaps she possessed some of Laurel’s skill after all.
***
“Jeff Blakey, please.” Becca stood at the steel and glass front desk of the Kendall Square startup. Before the purple-haired receptionist could do more than open her mouth, she continued. “Tell him Becca Colwin is here.”
“Right away.” The receptionist, who couldn’t have been much more than Becca’s age, bent her over the phone and turned away as much as she dared. “Jeff?” Clara, if not Becca, heard her quite clearly. “There’s a girl here to see you. I think she’s upset.”
“I’m not…” Becca bit back the end of her sentence and began drumming her fingers on the hard surface. “Thank you,” she said when the receptionist looked up again, the jewel in her pierced nose glittering.
“He’ll be right out.” The receptionist blinked and then turned quickly away.
“Maybe he does think I’m dangerous.” Becca’s faint murmur was nearly drowned out by the tattoo of her drumming, but she kept it up until her ex pushed open a glass door to step into the reception area.
“Becca.” He flipped his hair back. “I wasn’t—did we have a date?”
“I need to speak with you.” Becca pointed to the office exit. “Now.”
***
“Why did you think it was someone in the coven?”
Jeff had appeared surprised when Becca stopped immediately outside the tech central building. When she turned to confront him in her sternest voice, he could only blink in astonishment.
“Jeff Blakey, you answer me.” Becca had her arms crossed as she questioned her ex and her stance wide, almost as if she would block him from walking on. “What made you think it was one of us?”
“I don’t know.” The lanky young man looked down, his hair falling once more in his eyes. “I was just talking, I guess.”
“Just talking?” Becca’s eyes narrowed, rather like Laurel’s, her usual smile long gone as her mouth settled in a firm line. “To the police?”
“Well, I told you what Suzanne said.” As he spoke, Jeff glanced back at his office, though whether he was afraid of being overheard or hoping for an opportunity to bolt back in was beyond Clara. “You know, about someone following her. And I didn’t want the police to think it was me.”
“You didn’t mind them thinking it was me though.” A bitter note had crept into Becca’s voice. “And they evidently believed you. Did they just take you at your word?”
“Oh, honey.” Instead of answering, he made the mistake of reaching for her. Laurel couldn’t have slapped him down that fast. “I’m…I’m sorry, Becca. I wasn’t thinking. I thought I was in the clear, and so when they called me in again, I guess I panicked.”
At that, Becca stared at him so hard that Clara began to wonder if her person really did possess magical powers.
“Be honest now,” she said, folding her arms again. This time, Clara saw her make a discrete sign with her hands that she knew her person had first seen in one of her books. “Did you hurt Suzanne?”
“No, I did not.” He actually faced her as he spoke and that, more than any supposedly magical gesture, convinced Clara, if not Becca, that he was most likely telling the truth.
Or at least part of it.“So, why, Jeff? And don’t hold back.”
The young man before her sighed, as if he could deflate and disappear, and then craned around once in a fruitless search for an escape.“Okay, I hurt her. But not like that!” He rushed to counter Becca’s panicked response. “Look, I wasn’t the best—I should never have been with her. I was thinking about you, really. And I thought she had picked up on that.”
Becca waited, her skepticism showing on her face.
“She said something about how she’d found out something—something unexpected.”
“Did it have to do with money?” Becca interrupted. “With funds going missing?”
“Maybe. No. I don’t know.” Her ex looked thoroughly miserable. He didn’t even bother brushing away the hair that fell, limp, over his eyes as he slumped forward. “All I know was that she said she’d stumbled on to something that was supposed to be a secret.
“She never told me what it was.” He spoke softly now, as if talking to himself. “I thought it was about me. About something I’d done, and then, adding it together with her saying that someone was following her, I thought that maybe you–”
“A secret. And you thought—” Realization was dawning on Becca as she recounted what her ex had said. “You didn’t want me coming over to your place that Saturday. You thought that I might have been stalking Suzanne, and that the cops might have thought you were. And for all your protestations, it seems you must have an alibi that you don’t want to tell me about. Jeff Blakey, you were cheating on Suzanne too. Weren’t you? That’s why she took down all her photos from Facebook. Photos of the two of you. She dumped you—and you, you had another girl at your place on the Saturday that Suzanne was killed. Maybe even when you called me.”