A Familiar Tail Read online

  Somebody must have answered, because Frank started talking. “Hello, Enoch? Hi. Listen, I think I’ve found a solution about what to do with Aunt Dot’s house. Yeah, I know, about time. No, not selling after all.” He kept his gaze fixed on Ellis. “I want to do a summer rental. Yes, I’ve got somebody in mind.”

  Now Frank was looking at me.

  I opened my mouth, and I closed it again. Ellis Maitland let his head fall back, so he was staring up toward the sky in a wordless plea, or maybe curse; it was hard to tell from this angle.

  “Yes, I need a lease,” Frank was saying to whoever was on the other end of the line. “That’s why I’m calling. Yes, I know it’s still Sunday. Can you draw something up for me? No. She’s . . . a friend of the family. We can be a little loose, can’t we? No, I didn’t say she was family, just a friend.” He paused again. “Thanks, Enoch. I owe you. Ha-ha, yes, I’ll see it on the bill. Bye.”

  He hung up and put his phone in his pocket.

  “Well,” Ellis snapped. “That’s that. You sure showed me, didn’t you, Frank?” The edge on his words could have cut glass. “Hope it works out for you. Good luck with him, Anna.” I shook his dry hand. “I did talk to my mother about you and maybe mending fences. I’m sure you’ll be hearing from her.”

  He gave us both a final nod before he turned away and strode up the stairs, back stiff, fists curled, like he was heading into a fight. Or heading away from one.

  I thought about how he said, “Good luck with him.” Not “with it” or with “the house,” but with “him.”

  “You know Elizabeth Maitland?” Frank asked me.

  I ignored the question. There were far more important things for us to talk about. “When did we decide I was renting your house?”

  Frank had the grace to at least look abashed. “Yeah, sorry about that. But it just hit me we could kill two birds with one stone. If you’re living in Aunt Dot’s house, you have unlimited access, and you can invite anybody in you want, right? Like all Dorothy’s old friends, for—I don’t know, tea and a cozy chat? Does anybody do that anymore?”

  “I’ll check my Miss Manners. But there is no way I can afford to rent a whole house in Portsmouth for a week, let alone the summer.”

  He shrugged. “It’ll only be a nominal rent, if any. After all, you’re doing me a couple of major favors. You’ll be taking care of the house, and you’ll be finding out what really happened to Aunt Dot.”

  “So . . . you’re really hiring me?”

  “I guess. Kind of. Not that I’d be able to really pay you or anything . . .”

  I was back to looking in the bottom of my coffee mug. I had no idea what to think or to feel just then. I already didn’t like this mess. There were too many lies being told. There were also way too many people circling around those lies, looking for openings and answers.

  And all this activity centered around that house, and the murder of an old woman.

  What if you don’t like what I find? What if I don’t like what I find?

  “Anyway,” Frank said, “if nothing else, I’ll finally be able to get Ellis to stop badgering me.”

  I thought about those mortgages on the house. I thought about how if I said yes to this, this guy became my boss. And my landlord. “You still haven’t actually asked me if I want to go along with any part of this.”

  “I said I was sorry.”

  I looked at him. I reminded myself that at bottom he was a guy and probably couldn’t help himself. It was at that moment that Alistair strolled back out from the crates he seemed to have adopted as his personal fortress. He stopped next to my chair, sat down with his tail curled around his paws and also looked up at Frank.

  “I see I am outnumbered.” He sighed. “Okay. You’re right. I’m sorry. I should have asked you first. Both of you,” he added to Alistair. “Anna, would you please consider staying in Aunt Dot’s house for the summer? It’d really help me out.”

  It was a good idea, darn him anyway. It would be a perfect cover for me and for anybody else I wanted to be in Dorothy’s house looking for whatever clues there might be. It would also be an excuse for me to keep in touch with the man sitting across from me, in case some of those clues led back to him. There were only a couple of problems:

  1) I would be sleeping in a house with the deepest, coldest Vibe I’d ever experienced.

  2) At least one person I’d met recently had reason to believe that my new landlord (and kind of employer) was a murderer.

  Alistair, as if sensing my discomfort (which, let’s face it, he probably was), got up and rubbed himself against Frank’s ankles and then gave me a look full of feline meaning and import.

  “Okay,” I said slowly. “But, I warn you, I can’t be sure what I’m going to find out. You really might not like it.” And I really might not, either.

  “But at least I’ll know,” he said softly. “I owe Aunt Dot that much.” Frank pulled his phone out to check the time. He also swore. “Look, I’ve got to get back to work. Who knows what else Magda’s been doing while I’m gone.” He wrote an address down on a page of his notebook, tore off the sheet and handed it to me. “Meet me here at nine tomorrow?”

  I took the paper and looked at the address. I also made up my mind.

  “Okay,” I said as I stashed the sheet in my purse. “See you then.”

  Frank said good-bye and started up the stairs toward the square. I sat and watched him go, but I didn’t really see him. In my mind’s eye, it was Ellis Maitland walking away again. I heard his protest that he wanted to help and his revelation about the second mortgage on the house.

  “So,” I breathed to myself, and to Alistair, if he was there to hear. “What have we got? One. Brad Thompson, who works for Ellis Maitland, broke in to that heavily mortgaged house with a screwdriver.” And, incidentally, A.B. Britton had failed to mention this fact to her new . . . what? Landlord? Employer? Client? Why had she done that? But I knew the answer. It hadn’t changed. Something was wrong with Brad, and it was wearing down his family. I wanted an answer for them before I opened my mouth and maybe made things worse.

  “Two. Ellis Maitland wants to find out if there’s something going on between me and Frank, possibly involving Brad and the house. Why?”

  No answer came to this question, not from inside or outside.

  “Three. Dorothy Hawthorne stopped talking to her best friends before she died. She was showing signs of something that might have been dementia. Or . . .” I swallowed as several of the things I’d just heard all dropped into place. “Or it might have been fear.”

  22

  I GRABBED UP my backpack and trusted Alistair to follow if he felt like it. I needed to get to Midnight Reads and find Julia. There were questions she could answer for me, including, but not limited to, just why she thought Frank Hawthorne might have murdered his aunt.

  Then there was that skinny goldfinch. I was really starting not to like that bird.

  It was a short walk from the coffee shop to the bookstore. Downtown Portsmouth is convenient and dangerous that way. But the minute I put my hand on the doorknob and looked through the window, I saw I had picked a very bad time to arrive.

  Julia stood by the BEACH READS table, leaning heavily on her cane and saying something to the woman in front of her. It took a second, but I recognized that other person.

  Julia Parris was arguing with a perfectly turned-out and perfectly furious Elizabeth Maitland. I could hear the rhythms of their raised voices through the door glass but couldn’t make out any of the words. Mrs. Maitland gestured harshly, and Julia stabbed one long finger right back. Max and Leo flanked Julia’s ankles, their necks and noses thrust forward. Neither one of them had his tail wagging, and somehow they looked a lot less adorable and goofy than they had the other day.

  Mrs. Maitland turned on her heel. I ducked back from the door, suddenly not wanting to be seen
, but not at all sure why. She stormed out past me, setting the bells jangling and clanking in her wake, and strode down the street, her back perfectly straight. Julia came and stood by the window, her face twisted up in a hard, angry knot.

  Max put his paws up on the door and barked. Julia jerked her head around and saw me. She closed her eyes briefly, maybe asking for strength, before she beckoned me inside.

  I went in and closed the door behind me. Softly.

  “Dissatisfied customer?” I asked.

  “No. No. That was . . . personal. It’s all right, boys,” she murmured to the dachshunds, who had started snuffling around her shoes, whining and wagging. “Really. It’s over.”

  “That was Elizabeth Maitland, right?” I asked. “I met her briefly at the Pale Ale. Mm . . . somebody said you two didn’t get along.”

  “Who told you that?” she snapped. I stood there and didn’t answer. Julia rubbed her eyes. “We have certain disagreements, but Elizabeth remains a sister witch, and that’s a special relationship, as you will find out.” She paused, clearly shaking off the last of her bad temper. “So, Anna.” She folded her hands on her cane. “What can I do for you?”

  Where to begin? I hitched up the strap of my backpack. “I wanted to let you know I’m staying in town, at least for the summer, and . . . I talked with Grandma B.B. last night.”

  Julia said nothing. Her face went very still. Even the dachshunds stopped snuffling.

  “She told me about you and Dorothy. And Elizabeth. And the . . . feud.”

  Julia’s face remained unreadable. She also glanced toward the door, but at the moment, everyone on the sidewalk was strolling right past. “It’s good that you know.”

  “I’ve also just talked to Frank Hawthorne. He asked if I’d be interested in renting Dorothy’s house for the rest of the summer.” Which was mostly true. It would take too long to go into the details of how he’d asked right now.

  I don’t know quite what I was expecting when I dropped this little bit of news, but it wasn’t to see Julia flush bright red.

  “Did he say why?” she croaked.

  “He said he wants me to help him find out who killed Dorothy.”

  The black-and-tan wiener—Leo, I remembered—yipped sharply. Julia scooped him up in the crook of one arm and turned away. Leaning on her cane, she limped over to the counter. I followed slowly. A battered blue calico dog bed waited beside the counter, and she deposited Leo in it. “Stay,” she murmured. Leo ignored her and scrambled out to join his brother on sentry duty by her ankles.

  Maybe these two had more in common with Alistair than I thought.

  “Did . . . Did Frank tell you I think he killed Dorothy?” asked Julia.

  “Yeah, he did. Is it true?”

  “Is it true that I think it, or is it true that he did it?” She crossed to the shelf labeled NEW ARRIVALS and began minutely straightening the bright hardcovers.

  “Both, I guess.” It was strange to see her being so hesitant. After our first meeting, I’d come away with the idea that this was a woman who could look anything in the eye.

  That anything, however, did not include me, at least at the moment. Instead she moved to the children’s nook, picking up drawings left behind on the table. I set my backpack down by the register and started gathering the scattered crayons and loading them back into their boxes. The scent instantly reminded me of rainy afternoons. Hope and my brothers might be glued to their game systems, but if I had my crayons, I had the whole world.

  “I need you to understand something, Anna,” Julia said at last. “When you told us Dorothy had definitely been murdered, the bottom fell out of my world. This is my home. I live here; my family has lived here for generations. If Dorothy was murdered, then someone in this town who I know—perhaps a friend or a colleague, or a child I have watched grow into an adult—deliberately took her life.” She pulled a fresh pack of construction paper out from under the counter. “This is not easy.”

  It also didn’t answer my question, but I kept my mouth shut. Julia had something she needed to say, and I needed to give her the time to say it.

  “Frank shares a lot of Dorothy’s energy and passion. He has never shown any interest in magic, but he is another crusader. Like her, he never lost the notion that he could make this corner of the world better. The paper became his way to help and protect. He’s poured everything into it. Maybe too much. I talked to Dorothy about it.” Leo yapped and nudged her shin. Julia sighed. “Oh, all right. I argued with Dorothy about it. I thought she should try to moderate Frank’s crusading ideals, temper his dreams with reality. But Dorothy thought he should be encouraged.”

  “Ellis Maitland said Dorothy took out a second mortgage on the house.”

  Julia nodded. She pulled the big box of Legos out from under the play table and started tossing stray pieces back into it, making the plastic bricks rattle. “To help Frank finance the paper. This was after she took out the first one to help him through school.”

  I crouched down and picked up some red bricks off the carpet. Max waddled over and started nosing around under the shelves for runaways. “Where’s his father?”

  “Goodness knows,” Julia answered bitterly. “On the road somewhere. Darius is the eternal salesman, always chasing some new deal and leaving Dorothy to take care of things at home. Half the time I’m not even sure what he’s selling.”

  “So Frank always depended on Dorothy.”

  “Sometimes without considering what his dependence cost her. She never had any children, just Frank, and . . .” Julia shook her head as she pushed the Lego box back into its place. “When it became clear that Dorothy was not going to listen to me, I confronted Frank directly. I told him he was asking too much of Dorothy. That he should consider what she needed for a change. We argued. More than once, I’m afraid.”

  “Do you think that was maybe what she’d been so secretive about? Maybe she was over her head financially with the loan payments, and she didn’t want to tell you because you’d blame Frank.”

  Julia hung her head. Max and Leo crowded close. Leo got up on his hind legs and rested his paws on her shins. She made no move to push him down. “It’s possible. In fact, I’ve been afraid of something like that.” She touched the corner of her eye.

  There was a Kleenex box beside the register. I handed one to Julia, and she accepted it with a tiny nod of thanks.

  “Julia . . . you said you didn’t know for sure Dorothy had been murdered. Why didn’t you . . .”

  “Work a spell?” Julia finished for me. “Use my magic?”

  “Well . . . yeah.”

  “I tried. I spent months trying to find a scrying . . . that’s a way to conjure a vision of a place or event. But I can’t clear my mind enough. It’s all . . . jumbled. Even Maximilian and Leopold couldn’t help.” She lifted her head. “I’ve been very much hoping you can.”

  “I don’t seem to be making a very good start.”

  “On the contrary, you’re making an excellent start. Just your presence here is forcing things into motion.”

  “What if that motion turns out to be a train wreck?”

  Julia smiled, and that strength and confidence I’d seen during our first meeting all came rushing back. “It will be better than being permanently stalled on the tracks.”

  I was going to have to think about that, because I wasn’t sure I agreed. But there was something else I needed to say first. “Julia, Frank was the one who came up with the idea of me living in the house. That’s got to be an argument for his innocence. It’d be too risky to get somebody looking into a murder you committed.”

  “Or a perfect way to control the inquiries, not to mention to feed the investigators misinformation.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.” And I did not like thinking of it now. I shivered, and I wasn’t the only one. Leo and Max both shook themselves and
suddenly had their noses to the floor, snuffling around for something unseen.

  “What is it?” Julia asked me quickly. “Do you feel something?”

  “No, not really. I . . .” I swallowed. “Is there anybody in your coven who has a yellow bird as a familiar?”

  Yes, that was me, asking that question with a straight face. Day. Difference. Dealing with it.

  “No,” said Julia. “No, there is not.”

  Max was growling at the darkness under a bookcase and scrabbling at the boards. I shivered again.

  “Are you sure? Because I’ve been seeing that bird a lot, and Alistair doesn’t seem to like it much.”

  “Alistair, for all his other fine qualities, is still a cat. He doesn’t like any bird much.” Julia smiled. Leo barked sharply. “You’re right,” she said to the dog, and then to me: “Have you ever heard of medical students’ disease?”

  “It’s something that happens to young doctors, right? When you start reading about all kinds of diseases, you start thinking you’ve got all kinds of symptoms.”

  “Something like it can happen when you start practicing the craft, too. You start attributing everything you see to magic. In your case, you’ve got more reason to do so than the average new witch. Wait one moment.” She, and the dogs, went back into the religion and philosophy section and pulled a couple of books off the shelf. “Why don’t you take these to read? They’ll help ground you in some basic principles about the craft, at least the way we practice it in our coven.”

  “Thank you.” The first book was The Spiral Dance by Starhawk. I’d heard of that one. The second was Ways of Magic: History and Practice. I slid them both into my backpack.

  “Of course, these are both just overviews. To really understand you should read . . .” She hesitated.

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m still getting used to this. When you take possession of Dorothy’s house, you should find a set of books in her attic. Her Books of Shadow.”