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brUNCH BUNCH

A hand shook me awake. “Selena! Selena!”

Air rattled in my throat as I pulled in a gasp and opened my eyes. Calvin was leaning over me, face urgent with worry.

Calvin. Oh, dear Goddess, he wasn’t dead.

My arms went around him, and he pulled me close, holding me as I fought to pull more oxygen into my heaving lungs.

“Bad dream?” he asked, and I nodded, even as I continued to cling to him.

He was real. I had to keep reminding myself that he was real.

“The worst dream,” I said. “Thank you for waking me up.”

Strong, gentle fingers pushed at my disheveled bangs. “You kept making these little meeping noises, but then you tried to scream and were breathing like you’d just run a marathon, so I thought it was better to rouse you.”

Thank the Goddess for that. I wasn’t sure whether experiencing a terrifying dream was enough to cause a person to die of fright…and I never wanted to find out. Still holding on to him, I said, “Yes, it was much better that you woke me up.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

I looked at him, at his worried dark eyes, at the long black hair that was trying to escape the band he used to keep it confined while he slept. Although I knew now that it had only been a dream, some part of me worried I might give the horrible visions of the nightmare strength if I uttered them aloud.

So I shook my head and replied, “Not really. Let’s go back to sleep.”

No further dreams haunted my sleep that night, but when I woke up the next morning, I couldn’t quite shake a troubling thought from my mind.

What if the same person who’d placed the hex on my car had also sent that nightmare to me?

I wanted to tell myself that was ridiculous, but I knew better. It was easier than some people might think to conjure a particularly bad dream and send it to roil the thoughts of an enemy.

But I wasn’t anyone’s enemy. I was just…Selena.

Pregnant women have awful dreams all the time, I thought. It’s all those hormones messing with your brain.

Maybe that was true. Nevertheless, I was very, very glad that I’d be staying at home with Calvin today.

I did my best to shrug it off, and he seemed to guess that I wanted to put the nightmare well behind me, so he didn’t ask. Instead, we watched TV together in the living room, unpacked the last few bibs and bobs for the nursery that had arrived this week but hadn’t yet been set in their proper places, and even went and sat in the sun for a while after lunch, since it had turned out to be an unseasonably warm day and we wanted to enjoy it.

“Maybe we should plant some grass there,” Calvin said, indicating the cactus-studded gravel wilderness that stretched beyond the patio. “Otherwise, there isn’t much room to play in the yard.”

No, there wasn’t. And although I knew the baby wouldn’t be toddling for a while yet, eventually we’d need to come up with some way to make our yard more kid-friendly. I’d always loved its wild beauty, but I also realized that it didn’t offer many opportunities for a child to play safely.

“That’s probably a good idea,” I said. Yes, the property was xeriscaped to conserve water, but one patch of grass shouldn’t be too much of a drain on the well. We could find a variety that was drought-tolerant and hardy, something that would provide a soft surface without requiring the kind of upkeep that grasses from other parts of the country would have needed in our hot climate. “Is there still enough time to plant?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Calvin replied. “I never worried about that kind of thing before now.”

“Well, people are just setting out their spring plants,” I said. “So we’re probably safe. Maybe it’s something you can look into on Saturday while I’m at brunch with the girls.”

My husband nodded. “That could work. Maybe Tom will want to come along to the garden center. Does he know anything about growing lawns?”

The elegant Mediterranean-style house my mother and Tom shared in Woodland Hills definitely had beautiful grounds…but he also employed a gardener to make sure the grass was always a perfect, shimmering green. Maybe he’d mowed his own lawns back before his plumbing supply business really took off, although I had to believe those days were far enough behind him that he might not remember all that much.

Still, it would be kind of an outing for the guys. Tom had mentioned going up to Payson to golf, but Calvin had diplomatically shot down that idea, saying he didn’t want to be that far away from me when I was so close to my due date.

Calvin hated golf, but he also didn’t want to offend his father-in-law.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “But I’ll ask my mother if he’s interested in giving you some advice.”

My husband seemed fine with that idea, and a while later, we headed back inside. Although I’d been doing my best to avoid my phone and allow Chloe to handle her first day at the store on her own, my willpower failed then, and I picked it up when I went into my office so I could give her a quick call.

“Once in a Blue Moon, how can I help you?”

It was exactly the same way I always answered the phone when I was at work, and I couldn’t help smiling — even as I lowered myself onto the couch and heard it creak slightly under my weight.

Maybe it would be a good thing if this baby came early. Beached whales had nothing on me.

“Hi, Chloe, it’s Selena,” I said. “I just thought I’d check to see how things were going.”

“Oh, fine,” she replied. “It’s been kind of steady all day but nothing too crazy.”

“And there hasn’t been anything…strange?”

Her voice sharpened slightly. “Should there be?”

I hadn’t told her about the hex because I hadn’t wanted her to worry any more than she already was. “No, no,” I said hurriedly. “I suppose I’m just a little on edge. I’ve tried using the Tarot to help me figure out who killed Jack, but I didn’t get anything definitive.”

“Same here,” Chloe said. “Usually, I’ll get a pull that provides some illumination, but nothing seems to make much sense to me. No dreams, either.”

I supposed I should have guessed that my little sister would also have turned to the cards for some insight into the identity and motivations of the murderer. While she didn’t have as many years of experience as I did, that didn’t mean she wasn’t capable of using that particular method of divination. As to why she hadn’t experienced any true dreams during this episode, I couldn’t say for sure. I honestly didn’t know how often she had them, and frankly, after the nightmare I’d suffered the evening before, I wasn’t about to wish vivid dreams on anyone.

“Well, if it’s supposed to come, it will,” I told her. “The universe has its own timing, and we can’t force it.”

“Maybe,” Chloe responded, although now she sounded almost dubious. “Right now I’m just waiting to hear from Alec. He said he was going to make his case to the judge at two o’clock today.”

That was only about forty minutes from now. I was surprised she’d been able to concentrate at all, with such a momentous decision hanging over her, but maybe it had helped to be at the store focusing on customers rather than brooding over what the judge might or might not say to determine her fate.

“I’m sure it will all work out fine,” I said. “And I won’t keep you. But call me as soon as you hear something, okay?”

“I will,” she promised. “Or at least, I’ll call you after I call my parents. Talk to you soon!”

We ended the call there, and I set my phone back down on the bookcase where it had been sitting. As I did so, my gaze moved to the shelf that held all my Tarot cards.

Should I try again?

Or maybe it was time to deploy my pendulum, although working with it could sometimes be tricky.

I stood there for a moment, hands on my hips — which definitely felt a good bit wider than they had six months ago — and held myself still, letting the calm, lightly incense-scented air surround me and bring me to a place where I could make the right decision. Off to one side, a clock ticked, its rhythmic sound almost hypnotic.

All right, the pendulum it was.

Both my favorite fluorite pendulum and the pretty mat with butterflies and twining leaves that I used for divination in the springtime sat on a separate bookshelf, so I gathered them up and took them over to the altar. After I set them down, I got out a lighter and touched its flame to the incense cone that sat waiting in a celadon bowl. At once, the faint scent that always seemed to drift on the air in that room grew stronger as smoke began to swirl upward.

Once again, I let myself stand there quietly, allowing my thoughts to begin to slow so they could formulate the correct questions to ask. Working with a pendulum meant framing everything in questions that could be answered with a simple yes or no; while there were pendulum mats out there printed with all the letters of the alphabet and sometimes numbers one through ten, I’d never had much luck working with them to get more precise responses.

No, it was much easier to keep things to a set of simple binary equations.

Which meant I couldn’t ask who had killed Jack Speros. Instead, I had to come up with a way to make the questions I asked point back to either yes or no.

Did Jack Speros know his killer?

The fluorite pendulum had been dangling motionless over the mat, but now it swung hard over to Yes.

Not much doubt in that answer. I hated to ask the follow-up, but I would have been remiss if I didn’t.

Did Chloe Fairfield kill Jack Speros?

The pendulum sailed back and forth just as hard this time, except it went in the other direction, right over to No.

That it was so emphatic in its reply made me feel a lot better. No, I really hadn’t thought Chloe could be the murderer — not just because I’d seen her aura and knew hers wasn’t the soul of a killer, but also because the simple physics of the case indicated that someone barely five foot five and who maybe weighed a hundred and ten pounds on a good day certainly wasn’t capable of throttling a healthy young man with six inches and at least sixty or seventy pounds on her.

Still, even though I was very, very glad that my sister hadn’t been involved in Jack’s death, the mystery had only deepened.

He’d known his killer…which meant it couldn’t have been anyone local. Not that I’d truly suspected such a thing, since he knew no one here except Chloe and there wouldn’t have been any reason for the murder, except possibly a break-in and a burglary gone wrong.

That theory didn’t make any sense, though, because there hadn’t been any sign of forced entry.

I ran a hand through my hair, feeling the silky strands fall back on my shoulders, heavy and straight. Once or twice I’d thought about cutting it shorter, since I’d heard horror stories about long hair and grabby baby hands, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do that.

No, I’d just resign myself to ponytails and messy updos for the first couple of years.

All right, so a stranger had come to Globe for the sole purpose of killing Jack Speros. But why? According to Chloe, he wasn’t a person who had any real enemies…except possibly Bryce Arsenault…and no one should have had any motive to get rid of him.

And if her accounts of how he’d been desperate to get her back after she broke up with him were correct, it wasn’t as if we were dealing with some kind of love triangle here. There hadn’t been a desperate third party who’d decided to drive to Globe and pull some kind of Fatal Instinct maneuver. Then again, people kept all sorts of secrets from one another. Even if the suspect wasn’t some woman who’d had her own designs on Jack, that didn’t mean there might not be someone in his past…like Bryce Arsenault…who had a vendetta against him, for whatever reason.

The problem was, I didn’t know even where to begin to look for such a person. Chloe had offered me one possible suspect, but she obviously hadn’t been able to think of anyone except Bryce who’d had any kind of negative interactions with her ex-boyfriend.

Both my feet and my head were starting to hurt. Although I wanted to solve this mystery, I also wanted to make sure my child had an easy, drama-free entrance into the world.

Which meant it was time to sit down on the couch for a while.

I headed into the living room, where Calvin was sitting in one of the armchairs, reading. Always nonfiction, though, this time a book about the Pueblo revolt in New Mexico.

He set it aside as I entered and gave me an expectant look. “Everything okay?”

“It’s fine,” I said. “Chloe said Alec is going in front of the judge shortly to try to get the case dismissed. And I tried working with my pendulum, but all it would tell me is that the killer is someone Jack Speros knew and that it definitely wasn’t my sister.”

“Well, that’s something, I suppose,” Calvin replied. “At least that means it wasn’t anyone here in Globe.”

A conclusion I’d already drawn, which meant I didn’t have a whole lot to go on right now.

“It’s too bad his parents are so hostile toward Chloe and her family,” I said next. “Otherwise, I might try to talk to them and see if they could provide any clues. Unfortunately, I have a feeling if I tried to reach out, they’d just shoot me down.”

“Probably,” Calvin agreed. “They seemed pretty set on wanting to pin the blame on your sister, even though it’s obvious she didn’t have anything to do with their son’s death.”

“And I’ve already talked to Chloe, and she doesn’t seem to know anything.” I paused there, knowing I was starting to sound a little whiny. Not that anyone could blame me, given the circumstances, but since there wasn’t much point in going over the same ground for the tenth time and expecting something different, I decided to leave it alone. “I suppose we just need to wait and see what the judge says. If he makes this whole thing go away, then it’s sort of a moot point, I guess.”

Calvin inclined his head ever so slightly. Not a large gesture, but we’d been together long enough that I knew what he was thinking. Even if the judge dismissed Chloe’s case, I’d have a hard time letting all this go…especially since in my heart of hearts I knew that the hex on my Jeep and Jack’s murder were related, even if I hadn’t been able to put the pieces together yet.

And while I thought there might be a number of people out there who had a bone to pick with me for sending their relatives to prison, I couldn’t see how they could be involved in any of this, not with all the dark magic that seemed to be flying around town.

Then again, I supposed a practitioner of that sort of magic might want to keep it on the down-low.

Calvin’s phone rang then, and he fished it out of his pocket. “Calvin here,” he said, then paused, as though allowing the caller to go into detail as to their reason for reaching out. He murmured, “Mm-hmm,” a couple of times, which didn’t help at all to illuminate what the person was saying on the other end of the call. Once they were done, though, he said, “Thanks,” then ended the call and returned the phone to his pocket.

I sent him an expectant look, although I managed to refrain from asking, Well?

“That was Ben,” he told me, the amused light in his eyes letting me know he’d seen right away how hard it had been for me to prevent myself from asking who the caller had been. “He was able to find Bryce Arsenault. He never came back to California, but is still living in Vermont, where he’s finishing up his final year of college. He also works in the school’s library.”

That all sounded pretty respectable to me, so I wasn’t sure I could buy into the idea that Bryce had followed Jack to Globe to carry out his bloodthirsty revenge for what had happened at Cal State Northridge almost four years earlier. Then again, if I’d learned anything since I moved to Arizona and started solving mysteries, it was that people weren’t always who they appeared to be on the surface.

Did Bryce’s evil side include scratching evil sigils on my car?

I wasn’t at all sure about that.

“And he’s been in Vermont this whole time?” I pressed. “No unexpected trips to visit family in California?”

“Ben didn’t say,” Calvin replied. “But I’m sure if there had been any evidence of recent trips like that, he would have mentioned it.”

Most likely. I didn’t know Ben Ironhorse well, but he seemed like a thorough kind of guy, not the sort of person who would leave loose ends dangling.

“Then I suppose that’s that,” I said, trying not to sound too defeated. After all, while it felt to me as though Bryce Arsenault was a dead end, I still couldn’t say for sure that I was ready to write him off as a suspect.

“I suppose so,” my husband replied, and seemed content to leave it there. Or at least, he could tell my brain was still churning away at the problem, trying to poke it from all sides to see what it might eventually reveal. I supposed I should be relieved that he would never tell me what to do…unless he thought my actions might endanger the child I was carrying.

And that absolutely wasn’t going to happen. The accident had been close.

Too close.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to focus on reading, so I turned on the TV and watched one of my home decorating shows on Discovery+. However, I kept the sound low enough that it wouldn’t disturb Calvin, who’d picked his book up again when he realized I wasn’t in the mood for further conversation.

And when my cell phone rang, I immediately took the remote and paused the show I was watching, then grabbed the phone and put it to my ear.

“Hey, Selena,” Chloe said, sounding breathless. “The judge dismissed the case!”

I blinked. Even though this was the outcome we’d all been hoping for, I still couldn’t help being a little shocked that it had happened so quickly. “That’s great news!” I replied.

“It is,” she said, although something in her tone didn’t sound quite as happy as I’d thought it would be.

Maybe I shouldn’t probe…but leaving things alone really wasn’t in my nature.

“Did the judge put any stipulations on the dismissal?”

“No,” Chloe said quickly. “He said there wasn’t enough solid evidence to merit continuing with the case against me, and he threw out the whole thing. It’s just….”

The words trailed off, and I heard a distinct sigh come through the phone’s tiny speaker.

“Just what?” I asked.

“It’s just that….” Her words faded again, but then she continued, her voice sounding a bit stronger. “It’s just that this way, people won’t know for sure that I’m innocent. I could tell that some of the customers who came to the store this morning thought the whole thing was kind of shady, since they kept giving me the side-eye when they thought I wasn’t looking.”

“You said it was quiet at the store this morning,” I responded, my tone growing a little sharper.

She sighed again. “It was. And I mean, it wasn’t as if anyone came right up to me and called me a murderer to my face or anything. But I still got the vibe, you know? And since I’d really like to stay here, it’s going to be hard if there are a bunch of people in town who think I got away with murder.”

“They’re not going to think that,” I said at once. “Judge Adler doesn’t pull any punches. If he thought the case merited going to trial, he would have said so. People will understand. And they’ll also know that I wouldn’t have you working at the store if I didn’t trust you.”

Even as I spoke, however, I had to wonder how accurate my words truly were. After all, I’d kind of blown it with Melanie Knowles. Yes, I’d figured out her villainy in the end…but only at the last minute. There definitely could be a subset of Globe’s population who might still think my judgment was a wee bit faulty.

Well, I’d worry about that later. The important thing was that Chloe wouldn’t be going to trial, and that took a lot of pressure off all of us.

“You think so?” she asked, the plaintive note in her voice telling me she wanted reassurance more than truth right then.

“Yes,” I said firmly. “I do.”

Even though they were relieved that Chloe had been exonerated, the Fairfields decided to extend their stay in Globe a few more days. Whether that was because they expected their daughter to change her mind about living here or whether they wanted to be absolutely sure everything was settled with her before they headed back to Southern California, I didn’t know for sure.

“But they’re not pressuring me or anything,” Chloe said as we drove over to my mother and Tom’s place for our girls’ brunch. She’d insisted on being my chauffeur, even though it was at least ten minutes out of her way to pick me up at the house.

I hadn’t argued too much, though, since I was supposed to stay away from behind the wheel and I could tell she was eager to help. Calvin would have driven me, of course, but this just made more sense, especially since he’d already set out to meet Tom at the local nursery.

And I had to admit it felt good to put the murder investigation and my worries about the hex on my car aside for a while, and to simply be with good friends. My mother had outdone herself with the flowers and the table settings…although I had a feeling Victoria had offered some helpful advice along the way.

Everyone was there — Josie and Hazel and Victoria, and Terry Woodrow and Sofia Barnes and Joyce Lewis and Chloe herself. Once again, I wondered whether I should have invited Heather to brunch, even though I understood that we barely knew each other and it might have been strange to attend a brunch thrown by the woman who’d had a child with her husband so many years before.

Doubt was cast aside as everyone congratulated Chloe on having the charges dismissed. She flushed and then looked over at me, saying, “It was very good news. But this brunch is supposed to be about Selena, right?”

“It’s about getting together with friends and family,” I replied. “I’m not interested in being the center of attention.”

Victoria smiled. “You’re sure about that?”

“Positive.”

Her blue eyes twinkled. “Then I guess this is a good time to share the news. Archie and I are having a baby, too.”

Of course the table had to erupt in congratulations, with everyone asking her when the baby was due.

“Early October,” she said. “Just a week or so after Hazel.”

“It sounds like we’ve got a real baby boom going on here in Globe,” Hazel added, and Josie beamed.

“And that’s a wonderful thing. It will be so amazing to have all my good friends expanding our little family here that much more.”

It would. I looked around the table at all the smiling faces there and thought that Chloe had made a good choice. No, we didn’t have L.A.’s glitz and glamour, but we had a real community, one that was much more welcoming than I might have thought at first, considering the way Henry Lewis and I had butted heads from almost the very beginning. He’d come to accept me, though…well, mostly. And Sofia was doing very well, even though she’d only been here a few months. No romance in her life yet, but I supposed that was okay. It was going to take a while to undo the damage inflicted by her controlling, murderous ex-partner, and for now, she was just focused on making her charming brewpub one of our little town’s premier destinations.

We were all exactly where we were supposed to be.

But that didn’t mean I didn’t intend to find out who really killed Jack Speros…even if I had to continue the investigation from a hospital bed.