Клеа Саймон - A Spell Of Murder

“Yeah, we still don’t have the good flavor,” Harriet mumbled as she lapped.

“That’s not…” Clara gave up and sat, looking anxiously up at her person.

“You don’t want that?” Harriet didn’t wait for an answer, and Clara ceded the space in front of her dish, following Becca, who was pacing around the apartment. Not that her person noticed. In fact, twice Clara had to jump out of her way as a foot came dangerously close to her tail.

***

None of the activity served to distract Becca, however, and the calico grew increasingly worried about her person, whose unsettled behavior led to another fitful night. By the next afternoon, Becca’s edginess had agitated all three cats. It was bad enough that she had tossed and turned in bed, but as Wednesday progressed, Becca wouldn’t even sit still with her computer. Instead, she seemed to be avoiding the warm machine, and that meant naps for her pets were limited as, by silent accord, they kept watch, circling her until Becca, in her preoccupation, actually stepped on Harriet’s tail.

“I’m going to make a tree house for myself!” The fluffy feline licked the appendage furiously, more because of the insult than any real injury. “I’ll climb way over all your heads!”

“Harriet, please,” Clara pleaded.

Laurel only rolled her blue eyes. “The day you climb is the day I eat a bug.”

Clara opened her mouth—and quickly shut it. Laurel prized her reputation for finickiness, and it would do none of them any good for Clara to point out that her seal-point sister had done just that last summer, when a particularly tempting moth had gotten inside.

When the doorbell rang late in the afternoon, Clara breathed a sigh of relief. Any interruption had to be better than this ongoing nervous activity. At this rate, Clara thought, they’d all be hissing at each other by nightfall.

“Maddy.” Becca sounded a little breathless, the result of all that pacing, Clara reasoned to herself. “Come in.”

“Becca.” Her friend seemed tired too, and dropped her bag on the floor before slouching onto the sofa. Done with her dinner, Laurel came over to investigate, sniffing delicately at the leather bag. Harriet, Clara noted with a touch of dismay, was still in the kitchen, cleaning up the crumbs of the other cats’ meals.

Becca settled beside her friend but didn’t relax. Clara didn’t know if Maddy could tell, but to a cat, it was easy to spot the tension in her person’s posture. “So, you knew Suzanne,” she said.

It wasn’t a question, but Maddy nodded slowly. Becca drew her feet up beneath her. If she could curl up into a ball, she would, Clara thought, and jumped up beside her. “Maddy?” Her voice was tight, as if she needed to swallow. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

Her friend turned to her with a look of such horror that a slight moan escaped from Becca’s opened mouth. “No, Maddy. You couldn’t have…” She shook her head slowly, as if to ward off the awful truth. “The cake server…”

“I couldn’t? Oh, no!” Maddy reached out to grab her friend’s hands. “No, Becca. No matter what I felt, I, well, it was almost like I forgot.”

“You forgot?” Becca was breathing easier, but her brows were knit in confusion.

“I’m sorry.” Maddy didn’t look any more comfortable. If anything, she seemed to sink further down on the cushions while her friend waited. “I wanted to tell you.”

“What, that you worked with a member of my coven? Jeff’s new girlfriend? The woman who was killed?” Becca tried out the options, rejecting each in turn. “But you couldn’t have known what was going to happen—so, why didn’t you say anything?”

Maddy twisted in her seat as if she could avoid Becca’s gaze. “I told you I kind of knew who she was, when I ran into them in the Square. But it was before that—before I realized who she was—I mean, in your little crew…” Taking a deep breath, she began to talk again, and as if a dam had burst, this time, the words rushed out. “It was right after she started, in February. She was standing in the lobby when I went for my lunch break and I thought I’d ask her to join me. Just to be friendly. Only there was something about the way she was standing, kind of fussing with her hair before she put her hat on, and I realized she was probably waiting for a date. Well, I hung back for a minute—just to see—and, sure enough, her date showed up.”

Maddy fell silent, as if the flood had left her exhausted. “It was Jeff, Becca,” she said at last. “She was waiting for Jeff.”

“But…February? We were still…” Becca sputtered. “Maybe they were friends. I mean, they probably knew each other.”

Maddy’s face told the story. “Knew each other? Becca, honey. He was a creep. I always felt something was off about him, but I didn’t know what to say.”

“Maddy, you don’t know.” A note of desperation had crept into Becca’s voice.

“I know you don’t kiss your casual acquaintances.” Her friend delivered the coup de grace. “Not like they did, anyway.”

***

Maddy left soon after. She would have stayed—had wanted to comfort her friend, it was clear to see—but Becca shooed her off. “I can’t,” she said as she pushed Maddy’s bag back into her arms. “I need to process this, but I can’t—not now.”

Maddy had protested. “Come on, kiddo,” she’d said. “Let’s go to a movie. Or better, to that cupcake place in the Square.”

“No, I’ve got…an appointment.” The way she stumbled over the word had Maddy looking at her funny.

“You’re not doing that witch thing tonight. Are you?”

“We…we need to meet. To talk about Suzanne—and to figure out what’s going on,” Becca confessed. “I mean, for closure and everything.”

“Becca, honey.”

“Please, Maddy. I’ve got to get ready.”

Maddy looked like she’d swallowed a bug, and not a very tasty one at that. Still, she allowed herself to be hustled out the door with a final protest. “Call me, Becca?”

Only then did Becca allow herself to collapse, throwing herself on the sofa with a sob.

“Jeff.” One word said it all, and Clara brushed her head up against the hands that covered Becca’s head, hoping to offer the comfort of soft fur. A slight thud behind her alerted her to Laurel’s arrival. For once, she was pleased to note, her sister didn’t dish up any snark and instead stretched out alongside the crying girl. Before long, Harriet joined them, landing with an audible grunt. Despite—or perhaps because of—her hogging of their dinner, she accepted the remaining position, by Becca’s feet, lending her warm bulk to the sisterly effort.

This wasn’t their usual mode of magic. But Clara could feel the purr as it rose between them, and if the three felines couldn’t right all the wrongs of the world—or of a certain faithless boyfriend—they could at least set a certain cosmic vibration in order. In their presence, Becca went from tears to silence and then, Clara suspected, a short nap. When she sat up, about an hour later, her breathing had returned to normal. And although her eyes would be swollen for some time, as she wiped her face, she glanced around with clarity and maybe even, Clara thought, a new purpose.

She also, on seeing the clock, began to panic. “Seven thirty!” She jumped up, discomfiting the cats.

“Ungrateful,” grumbled Harriet. Becca had been careful not to kick the plump cat as she rose, but she had straightened out the cushions behind her, which Harriet had arranged for peak comfort.

“Typical,” noted Laurel as she stretched. The Siamese sister knew what all the fuss meant and was readying herself to be admired.