“Well, when I said I’m learning about herbalism, I really meant it. I mean, I’m going to.” The shop girl exhaled noisily. “Okay, I bought a plant, right? I was at that Spirit of Change festival and it was really pretty. It had these blue flowers and spikey leaves, and I figured this placecould use some livening up. So I brought it in. I mean, I knew it had power. The lady who sold it to me said it was a healing plant. I thought it looked nice in the window.”
Becca waited without comment.
“Then Elizabeth, you know, Margaret’s sister? She came in all furious, talking about how my new plant was poisonous and how could I leave it where a child could get at it, and blah-blah-blah. She showed it to me in one of those books.” A pointed look at the packed shelves. “Hey, there’s lots there. I can’t read everything. Anyway, I was going to take it home, only then it disappeared.”
“You said some things had gone missing.”
“Yeah, okay, one thing—my plant. Maybe someone took off with it. It was really pretty. But I can’t help but think Elizabeth, that old witch—I mean, in a bad way—took it. I’d told her I was going to take it home.”
“She may have seen it as a danger.”
“I guess.” Gaia didn’t sound convinced. “Anyway, I got so mad and then, well, Margaret started sniffing around, and I thought I might need some leverage. I figured she’d found out about Frank, though we were already basically over and—”
“Hang on.” Becca reached into her bag for a pad. “When did this all this happen?”
Gaia rolled her eyes.“I don’t know. Maybe, like, five days ago? Yeah, I got it last weekend and that old—Elizabeth saw it, like, right away.”
“So you thought about it for a few days?”
Gaia winced.“It wasn’t like that. Only, it wasn’t until, like, Friday that Frank started wigging out on me. Talking about taking off for Mexico or someplace. I wasn’t going to go with him, but I figured something had happened.”
“So you saw him on Friday?”
“Barely.” The aggrieved girlfriend. “I mean, he said he had to go back to work. That’s usually what he tellsher.”
Becca bit back her response.
“I mean, I’d made the place nice and everything.”
“The candle that I asked you about?”
A shrug.“Maybe. They all cost too much anyway. But he wasn’t into it. Just kept going on about having to take care of something. Told me to be ready to go.”
“And were you?”
“You kidding? I know about their arrangement. I figured he was just trying to scam some more money out of the old bag. I mean, he was just wigging. And his old lady was already all over me, so…” Another shrug, like the response was self-evident.
“So you came to see me, to put the blame on her.”
“Look, I was under a lot of pressure. But I’ll be okay now, I think.”
“You think you’ll be okay?” Becca tilted her head. “What do you mean?”
“I wasn’t making it all up.” Gaia leaned in. “I mean, Tiger says he’s still worried about me, but really…after the latest?”
Becca waited. Clearly, the woman in front of her was drawing out her story for dramatic intent.
“Maybe you didn’t hear, but the neighbors are saying that the wife is always the obvious suspect.” When Becca still didn’t respond, Gaia went on. “Of course, they don’t even know about her sister, most of them. Everyone just knew Margaret and Frank weren’t getting along, and that she had a temper. Though they could’ve been in on it.”
“You think she—theymade him have a heart attack? They brought it about?” Becca’s voice trailed off. Clara looked up, waiting. Surely, her person was going to bring up the previous night’s discussion. The subtleties of poisonings seemed inconsequential to a cat. The only real way to dispatch something was with a good, fast shake. But cats would never be so brutalto one of their own, anyway. And secretly, Clara had always been grateful for that one mouse’s speedy retreat.
“Some heart attack.” A dramatic eye roll dismissed that. “Tiger thinks there’s something else going on, maybe something with Frank’s business, such as it is. Some kind of conspiracy, even.”
Becca looked faintly green, but Gaia didn’t seem to notice.
“Makes me kind of glad her old witch of a sister got rid of my plant. Right? Because otherwise they might be looking at me.”
“I–I guess.” Becca’s brow furrowed, as it did when she was thinking.
“So, we can toss this, right?” Gaia poked at the baggie as if it were a hairball. “I mean, I’ll pay you for your time.”
“You don’t have to.” Becca sounded relieved. “Though maybe Tiger should talk to the police. I mean, if he’s seen someone suspicious hanging around…”
“Yeah, that’s not going to happen.” With a shrug, the goth girl dismissed her sometime boyfriend’s concern. She seemed lighter now and was already turning toward the shelves behind her, ready to re-start her day. “He’s a bit of a drama king, anyway.”
Her own concerns dismissed, the young woman didn’t seem to think anything of it as Becca nodded and left the shop without another word. Clara, however, thought the behavior odd. As she watched, Becca strode, quickly but not breaking into a run, back toward the end of the block. Before Clara could catch up, however, she stopped cold, inches from a dark opening in the brick wall at the edge of the storefront. Carefully shading herself, Clara passed by and immediately saw what had caught Becca’s eye.
A shadow—no, a person had slipped into the yawning alley and was moving slowly along its wall. That had been what Becca spied outside the window while Gaia had been going on about the store’s owner, Clara realized. Someone walking too slowly and too close to the store to be an ordinary pedestrian.
Clara kicked herself for not paying attention. She could have easily slipped out and followed the figure in the shadows. Even if she couldn’t have passed along her findings to Becca, she might have prevailed on Laurel to convey some message. Only now, it was too late. There was no way that Clara was going to leave her person.
Instead, she stood by, guarding faithfully while her person waited, frozen in place, as the figure crept to the end of the alley. For a moment, he was caught in the sun—blond-tipped hair, denim jacket, and eyes wide with fright as he turned the corner and disappeared.
Chapter 14
“No!” Clara wailed as Becca took off down the alley.“Becca, don’t!” Of course, being a cat, her mewl of horror came out as a caterwaul—a faint one at that, her ordinary cat voice muted by the magic that helped her blend into the shadows around her. More like the wheeze of a passing bus or the squeak of a bicycle’s brakes than a cry of panic, her yowl blended in with the street noise of the busy Monday morning and died away, unnoticed.
Not that this mattered. Even if the young woman in the alley could have heard her terrified pet, she wouldn’t have understood her. Not unless Clara could suddenly assume Laurel’s gift of implanting ideas in a human’s mind, her pet thought with growing frustration.
But Clara had no time for envy or even the most natural sibling resentment. And so, although her own fur was standing on end with fear, Clara darted after Becca, determined to do what she could to aid the person she loved.
“Bother!” Unseen by Clara, Becca stopped short, and only by a quick leap sideways did the little cat manage to avoid colliding with her at the passage’s end. Panting, more from the stress than the exertion, the calico looked up as her person craned her head, peeking beyond the brick wall. Thealley, Clara could now see, opened onto a paved lot, barely big enough for the two cars and the dumpster parked there. Unaware of the faithful feline nervously shadowing her every move, Becca slipped out to make a careful examination of the space. She started with the cars. As Clara watched, the young woman crouched beside the first, rising up so that only the maroon cloche and the few curls that escaped were visible as she peered through the windows. She needn’t have been so careful. These vehicles were empty; their passenger compartments gave off no vibrations, their engines cool and still. Clara could have saved Becca the effort—and the worry—of examining them so carefully had she been able to communicate with her person.