Клеа Саймон - A Spell Of Murder

“What the—kitties?” Becca looked up, broken stems in her hand, just in time to hear the buzzer. “Jeff!” She opened the door, reaching up reflexively to smooth her hair, and only succeeded in dropping some pale pink petals in her brown curls.

“Here, let me.” In lieu of a more traditional greeting, Jeff leaned over and picked out a few blossoms as Becca sputtered. “Cats got at the flowers again?”

“Yeah, they can’t seem to resist.” Becca turned toward the kitchen, where she dumped the ruined bouquet rather unceremoniously in the trash.

“I don’t know why you bother.” Her ex followed, stopping only when he saw the vase, where the one rose had somehow survived. “Oh,” he said, the reality dawning. “You didn’t…”

“A friend brought them.” Becca focused on cleaning up the rest of the debris. “Just a thank you gesture.”

“Silly girl,” Laurel mewed as she leaned her tan side against Jeff’s shin. “We got him to notice them, didn’t we?”

“Becca doesn’t play those kinds of games.” If looks had claws, Laurel would have felt Clara’s. “So that’s why you trashed the place.”

“Huh.” Harriet sat staring up at Becca. To her, a human in the kitchen meant only one thing: food. “She just attacked them because she could.” Of course, the bouquet had been on a high shelf. Becca has grown rather used to the cats’ tricks, at least, the non-magical ones.

“With everything going on, I took the day off,” Jeff explained as he extricated himself from Laurel and reached out to Becca. “I wanted to see you. I mean, that—it—must have been so awful for you.”

“Yeah, it was.” Becca fussed a bit more with the dustpan, chasing the last few petals with the brush as they skittered away like so many moths, before giving up. Standing, she turned to face her ex. “Saturday was possibly the worst day of my life, but today hasn’t been great either.”

“Oh, honey.” He reached to embrace her.

“Don’t!” Her raised hand stopped him short. “Jeff, you can’t—I didn’t even know about you and Suzanne before…before Saturday. You can’t just waltz back in. Not now, that she’s…”

“Becca, it’s not like that.” His arms had dropped to his sides, but he showed no sign of retreating. “I told you. I’d broken it off with Suzanne. We were over.”

“Yeah, well, that’s not what the cops think.” Her voice had an edge that set Clara’s ears back.

He shook his head as if bewildered.

“They accused me of stalking her,” Becca said.

“Oh.” That one syllable was enough.

“Jeff?” It was the warning voice. The one Becca used with the cats when they got too close to a candle.

“It’s just—” He paused and his boyish face assumed a hangdog look. “They came by to talk to me this morning. They had a lot of questions, and they seemed to know we’d, uh, gone out a few times. They seemed to think it was somebody Suzanne knew and, so, well… Anyway, I’d told them that Suzanne had been freaked out recently. That she was worried that someone was following her. I didn’t know that they’d think it was you.”

“So that’s why you took the day off. I think you’d better start at the beginning, Jeff Blakey.” Becca nodded toward the living room, but from the way she was standing, arms crossed, she wasn’t thinking of her guest’s comfort. “And this time, don’t leave anything out.”

***

“I didn’t mean to get you in any trouble.” Twenty minutes later, they had moved to the couch, though Becca was keeping a cushion— the cushion—between them. At some point during Becca’s retelling of what had happened and Jeff’s apologies for what he’d said, Harriet and Laurel had given up and gone to seek out real moths, leaving only Clara to listen in. “It was all that stupid group—your witch group.” His voice dripped with contempt. “The coven she was so proud to be part of.”

Becca held her tongue, but a more sensible man would’ve noted her expression.

“I mean, who believes in magic in this day and age?” He was digging himself in deeper.

“What do you mean?” Clara saw the effort it took for Becca to keep her voice level. Maybe Jeff did too, because he sighed and pushed his hair back before trying to explain.

“Well, like, Suzanne told me there were some issues. I guess she’d gone out a few times with someone in the group? Anyway, he’d given her this necklace. You know, that glass thing she always wore?”

“The crystal teardrop?” Becca had only seen it briefly, but she could visualize it. Her hand moved up and she touched the hollow of her own throat.

“Yeah.” Jeff nodded as he watched the movement of Becca’s hand. “That’s the one. She was really careful about taking it off before you guys met, though. Said it would bring down bad juju or something. What kind of craziness is that?”

“Really.” Clara knew there was more to this. Becca did too, from the way she stared at her ex. “Bad juju?”

“I don’t know. I thought maybe it was a jealousy thing. You know, ’cause she’d dumped the guy. Then I thought, well, maybe it was some other ex. But the group is mostly women, right?”

She nodded. “So you told the cops that I was stalking your new girlfriend. Making me the prime suspect for her murder.”

“Oh, Becs, I’m sorry.” His arm went up on the sofa back, so Clara jumped to the space between them and settled in. One couldn’t be too careful. “It was just the first thing I thought of—I never meant for them to suspect you.”

Becca shot him a look Laurel would have been proud of but held her tongue.

“Really,” he said, leaning over Clara. The cat yawned and stretched to her full length. “I meant what I told her. I’ve really missed you.”

“So you keep saying.” Becca stood and walked to the door, arms once again crossed across her body. She didn’t need Laurel to suggest that it was time for Jeff to leave. “And maybe it’s even true. But all that means is that maybe you had reasons of your own to get rid of Suzanne.”

Chapter 15

“And I left my hat at the police station too!”

Becca was leaning on the door, having just ushered Jeff out. But all her resolve seemed to crumble once her ex was gone, and she collapsed on the sofa with a wail that brought her three pets running.

It wasn’t just the hat, of course. Even Harriet recognized that, as much as she had liked to sit on the velvet topper—when it was dry—and who now offered her bulk as comfort. It’s hard when your heart has been broken, Clara figured as she rubbed her head against the prone girl. It’s harder still when your ex suggests you have a motive for murder—and you realize he might have done it himself.

But the Becca who sat up, dislodging Harriet, and wiped her face seemed more clear-eyed than the love-struck girl of only a few minutes before. And after she blew her nose, she pulled her laptop computer toward her and began typing.

“I don’t know if Jeff meant to get me in trouble,” she said, glancing over at the calico cat who had sat beside her, grey tail coiled neatly around her white paws. “But he’s forgotten that I’m a researcher. If someone really was stalking Suzanne, I bet I can find out who.”

Her typing was interrupted by the phone. Not that she answered it—not right away—but she did reach for the device. The observant feline watching her could tell by the way she bit her lip that she was considering letting it go to voice mail—yes, cats know about such things—before, on the sixth ring, she picked up.

“Hey, Kathy. I mean, merry, uh, meet?” She made the effort to put some cheer in her voice. “What’s up?”