Slightly Spellbound (17 page)

Mercutio cocked his head and meowed.

“Oh, good,” I said with a smile. I liked having all my guys safe and accounted for.

 • • • 

“I’VE GOT TO go back to the woods for my cell phone,” I said with a shake of my head as we entered Bryn’s home. “Should’ve already gone.”

“Because you’ve had so much free time on your hands,” Bryn said.

“Gotta make time. Without a cell, it’s like living in the dark ages.”

We went upstairs, stripped, and crawled into his bed. Within a couple minutes of closing my eyes, I was deep in dreamland.

I woke before Bryn did. I gave him a soft kiss and climbed over Mercutio. That’s an advantage of having a king-sized bed. There’s room for the king and a bunch of other people.

Bryn opened his eyes. “You’re up,” he murmured. “You need to call Vangie. She left a message around five a.m.” He rolled to the phone and got me into the voicemail.

“Hello,” Vangie said. “This is Evangeline Rhodes. This message is for Tammy Jo Trask. Hello, Tammy Jo. I’ve discovered something very important! I’ve tried calling you on both your phones to no avail. I really hope you haven’t been killed! If you’re alive, call me back right away!”

I tried calling Vangie’s cell, but the call went straight to her voicemail.

“Hey, it’s Tammy Jo. I’m alive. Call me back at Bryn’s.”

Bryn, still exhausted, went back to sleep. I ventured downstairs, wondering what Vangie had found that was so important. If I didn’t hear from her soon, I’d have to drive to Dyson to the Bay Window Inn, where she’d said she was staying.

I made ham and eggs and tea and toast. I put everything on a tray and carried it to Mr. Jenson’s room.

I knocked softly and found him awake and dressed in pajamas and a bathrobe. He coughed but had a little more pink to his cheeks.

“Morning, Mr. Jenson. I brought you some tea and breakfast. Can I come in?”

“Oh, Miss Tamara, that’s very good of you, but we can certainly have breakfast in the kitchen.”

“But I’m already here,” I said. “You sit yourself down.” I nodded toward the small table and two chairs in the corner of the room. He moved slowly, and I noticed the way he braced himself with a white-knuckled grip on the chair before he sank into it.

“What did Dr. Suri say? Did he give you some medicine?”

“He did.”

I poured us each a cup of tea, adding honey and milk to mine. Mr. Jenson usually takes his straight up, but I had a small creamer that was a quarter full of Irish whiskey next to it.

“Would you like a teaspoon of whiskey in your tea? For your cough?”

“I would,” he said. “And better make it a tablespoon.”

I added some and stirred. He settled back as I buttered the toast and added honey to mine and blackberry jam to his.

Once we were all set, I munched toast and told him about our night. He listened, occasionally asking a question or murmuring his surprise about the goings-on. He ate slowly, but well enough to reassure me.

“It sounds like it was quite a harrowing night. It’s a relief at least to know that you had each other.”

Collecting the tray, I agreed. “Bryn and I make a good team. You go back to bed for a bit. The house is squeaky clean, and I took care of Bryn’s breakfast. This afternoon, you should take a slow walk around the house for some exercise. It doesn’t do to lie up in bed all day. ‘Bad for the bones,’ my granny Justine used to say.”

Mr. Jenson smiled at me as I set the Dallas newspaper on his bedside table with another cup of hot tea. “Your grandmother sounds like a wise woman.”

“Never knew her to be wrong,” I said, giving his pillow a fluff. “You rest up. I’ll see you later.”

I took the tray to the kitchen. After everything was in a sink of soapy water, I picked up the security phone. “Pete, it’s Tammy Jo.”

“Good morning,” he said. Pete and I had gotten off to a rocky start when he’d first been hired, but we’d settled that and got along fine now.

“If I’m not back by the afternoon, will you help Mr. Jenson take a walk through the house? He might be weak and I want someone with him.”

“Sure. Where are you going?”

“Here and there.”

“Don’t forget to turn on your cell phone.”

“Yeah, I’ll see about that, too,” I said, and he heard the pause.

“Have a heart. He won’t be happy if he can’t reach you.”

“I’ll do my best. Tell him there’s a plate for him in the microwave. There’s plenty for you, too, if you’re hungry. Actually, I’ll leave him a note on his dresser, so he won’t be mad at you for letting me take off without saying where I’m going.”

“He wouldn’t get mad at me personally, but when he’s pissed, the whole house is tense. Everyone prefers it when you’re here.”

“Except when he and I fight.”

“Those flame out quick enough. You guys are good together. All the stuff you did when he worked that big case? The devil’d be wearing ice skates before my girl would set an alarm to make me dinner during an all-nighter.”

“How many times a week do you laugh at her jokes like she’s the funniest girl in the world? Or give her a present just because it’s a Tuesday?”

“Hell, never,” he said with a laugh. “Maybe I should, but she’d probably think I was up to something.”

“No doubt. But she’d still like it.”

“You’re probably right. See why we all like it when you’re around?”

“Later, Pete.” I hung up with a smile and a roll of my eyes. Bryn’s guys were well trained. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe that Pete had grown to like me, but roughneck Texas boys weren’t known for laying it on so thick. I’d bet my double boiler his boss had put him up to that bit of sugar. The message, loud and clear, was that everyone at Casa Lyons wanted me there. And darn Bryn’s clever lawyer tactics if that didn’t just warm my heart.

I wrote a note, gave Bryn a kiss on the cheek and one for Mercutio. Then I went out and stole Bryn’s car.

19

VANGIE HADN’T CALLED me at Bryn’s, and I decided not to wait any longer. It would be safer for everyone if I found out right away what she’d discovered about her stepfamily. It would also be safer for her and her fiancé if they relocated immediately to Bryn’s house.

Dyson was a cute little town, but it had nothing on Duvall. We had rivers and creeks, a magic tor, and several different prosperous businesses; Dyson had one main source of jobs, the branch of a big chemical company that I felt pretty sure was poisoning their lake given the weird reaction their cows had to drinking the water. Half were barren and half produced more babies and milk than anybody had ever seen. The citizens of Dyson didn’t say a word. As long as their own kids were healthy and folks had work, they claimed it was fine by them.

Dyson had a honky-tonk, a ten-room motel, two diners, and a horse stable and cattle ranch. They also had the biggest collection of chemical hazmat suits in a hundred-mile radius. No, they weren’t worried about that chemical plant at all.

As I rolled into town, I realized I wasn’t the only one whom Bryn’s fancy car reminded of a spaceship; everyone on Dyson’s main street stopped to stare as I passed. It wasn’t the car to drive when I wanted to keep a low profile.

I pulled into a parking spot in the motel lot and watched the car door open. It moved vertically, like it was being held up and therefore reached for the sky.

I climbed out. The clear, sunny day made the grass look extra green. I smiled at the collection of chirping birds in the trees. It was like a movie scene. It could almost have been spring, except for the chill.

As I got closer I waved at the small white-flecked black birds decorating the trees in front of the motel office. Those sparrows were adorable. I hurried forward when I spotted a beautiful blue jay nearly twice their size about to dive-bomb them. Blue jays are pretty, but they’re bullies. When the blue jay attacked, though, the little birds swarmed and pecked at it, going for the eyes. My jaw dropped as the startled blue jay fled, little dots of blood on its face.

The sparrows settled back onto the branches and tweeted away like they hadn’t just been in a big bird fight. I loved that they’d stood their limbs against a bully, but that hardly seemed like normal behavior for little birds. Yeah, I had my worries over the chemicals that were in the Dyson drinking water.

The motel office had a bay window, as its name advertised, but the window faced the parking lot. I was no architect, but that seemed like a waste of a view to me. I strolled inside the office where coffee brewed and Danish was piled high. What the motel lacked in architectural sensibility, it more than made up for with pastry hospitality. I snagged a cherry Danish and bit into it. Not from-the-oven fresh, but tasty nonetheless.

Multicolored posters advertised bus tours to Dallas and one to, of all places, Duvall. I stared at the Duvall poster, which talked about sampling local pastries that were too good to be true, visiting haunted sites, traveling the flood route, picnicking on the “magical mountain,” and driving by the mansions of the rich and dangerous whose secrets put all the reality shows to shame. Visits to the Armadillo Ale brewery and the Glenfiddle Whiskey Castle with tastings were included.
Learn all there is to know about our unusual neighbors to the west in one jam-packed afternoon and evening.

“Good morning and welcome to Dyson,” the young guy behind the counter said. He arranged a couple of welcome packets that he’d been bending down to get when I’d walked in. “Will you be needing a room? And if so, would you like a lakeside view? It’s only twenty dollars extra, and now that the ducklings have hatched, there’s a complimentary bag of day-old bread to feed them. They come right up to shore for it.”

I was really tempted to go feed those ducklings, but I couldn’t spare a half hour. I frowned. What was wrong with my life that I couldn’t make time for baby ducks?

“I’m actually here to see about a friend of mine. Her name is Evangeline Rhodes.”

“Miss Rhodes, you say?” he asked, flipping through a handwritten register book. “Oh, yes, she’s our guest in number four, lakeside view.”

I glanced out at the full parking lot. “Has your business picked up since the Duvall flood and fires?”

He nodded. “We’re very sorry for Duvall’s misfortunes, but it has meant a lot of business and tourism over here. Are you from Duvall? Wait, you’ve got red hair. Are you
the redhead
?”

“The redhead?” I echoed, taking a step back.

“Tammy Jo Trask, ghost whisperer, pastry princess, and femme fatale?”

“Femme fatale? Who called me—I mean her that? I’m sure that’s an exaggeration. I’m sure she’s just an average small-town girl.”

His right hand popped up with his phone, and he aimed it at me. I had to dive through the door to avoid having my picture snapped.

“Femme fatale,” I grumbled as I hurried to the metal stairs.

A pair of middle-aged ladies in khaki pants and hiking boots walked briskly toward the motel. They lifted binoculars that hung around their necks. As they peeked through them, I thought for a minute they were spying on me, but then I realized they were looking at the birds.

C’mon now
, I admonished myself in my head.
They’re just bird-watchers! Don’t go getting paranoid.

“Look at the coloring, sister,” one of the ladies said. “Definitely
Ammodramus maritimus nigrescens
, common name dusky seaside sparrow.”

“I know they look like dusky seaside sparrows, but they can’t be. Seaside sparrows are extinct. The last one died in captivity in 1987 at Walt Disney World.”

“And yet here they are! An entire group! This will put Dyson on the bird-watching world map.”

I smiled.
Well, what do you know
, I thought, proud of Dyson for having something no one else in the world had. And also proud of those little birds that weren’t supposed to exist anymore. Good for them for deciding not to be extinct.

I climbed to the second story and hurried to number four. A row of cute sparrows sat on the rail and tweeted at me cheerfully. “People have tried to make me extinct, too,” I told them. “Hasn’t worked,” I assured them as I rapped on the door. I glanced over my shoulder, relieved that the young man hadn’t come out of the office.

Number four’s door opened, and a man with blond highlights, a narrow nose, and a cleft in his chin answered. His flawless skin looked like it had been taken from a rubber mold. I studied him, wondering if he’d had plastic surgery. If so, I thought maybe he shouldn’t have. His features were smooth and perfect, but the proportions were off. His nose bugged me. It was small, like it would’ve fit better on a ten-year-old girl than a man.

“Hello,” he said. He had an appealing radio announcer kind of voice.

“Hi there. I’m Tammy Jo. Are you Jackson?”

“I am. Come in,” he said, motioning me inside. He wore an oxford shirt with a Polo logo and matching cologne. “Where’s Evangeline? Has anything happened?”

My stomach lurched. “Why are you asking me?”

“She went to meet you,” he said.

“She did?”

“Yes, after she returned from Dallas.”

“When did she leave to meet me?”

“Three—possibly four—hours ago. She doesn’t sleep much when she’s agitated or excited about something. I told her it was too early to disturb you, but she wanted to go to your town bakery and was convinced that you’d be awake early.”

“I tried her cell this morning. She didn’t pick up.”

He frowned, drawing his thick and well-groomed brows together. “Well, she doesn’t always answer right away if she’s distracted. She’s probably gotten sidetracked. It happens. She loses track of time and disappears for hours.”

My heart thumped in my chest, and I ordered it to calm the heck down. Vangie had ignored my calls the day before, and she’d been perfectly fine. For all I knew she’d been waiting for me and had fallen asleep in her car. Or took up residence in the bouncy castle again for a nap.

I called Cookie’s Bakery. The morning rush kept Cookie hopping, but she did bark into the phone that no strangers had been in. I sighed and hung up, glancing back at Jackson.

“Well, I’d really like to talk to Vangie, to be sure she’s okay. My cell phone’s growing grass in the woods—long story—so could you call Bryn Lyons’s house or have Vangie call it when you talk to her?” I took the small pad from the table and wrote Bryn’s number and address for him. “In fact, you can just go on over there whenever you’re ready. Did Vangie talk to you about staying at Bryn’s until after the wedding?”