Page 22 of The Claiming of the Shrew (Fated Mountain Lodge #4)

LEAH

“When I said you could sleep in my room, I didn’t say you could have sex in my bed,” Joy muttered, busily buttering a muffin.

“I didn’t have sex in your bed. We were in the other bed.”

“There’s a perfectly good honeymoon suite right here in this hotel!”

“We had sex there too,” Leah said, gazing into a distant corner of the hotel dining room over the top of her demolished pancake stack while she thought about the giant bed in Fawkes’s room.

“I don’t want to hear about it.”

Leah gave her sister a pointed stare. “If you want me to believe you and Bar are chastely using two beds like a 1950s TV couple, you appear to have overlooked an important bean-sized flaw in your argument.”

Joy made a face at her, then seemed to realize she had nearly wrecked her muffin by over-buttering it, and placed it delicately on the edge of her plate. “You’re taking precautions, right? Did you use protection?”

“And you say I don’t have a verbal filter! Are you going to have ‘the talk’ with me in a public restaurant? You know I’m an adult, right?”

“We’re not having ‘the talk.’ I’m just making sure you aren’t making unwise life choices.”

“As opposed to your very similar choices?” Leah asked archly, with a look at Joy’s midsection.

Joy sipped her cup of chamomile tea. “I’m your big sister. I always make excellent choices.”

“Yeah, I remember what that Christmas when you met Bar was like.”

Joy looked up and grinned. “I think you’re being paged.”

Glancing around, Leah saw Fawkes waving at her from the door of the restaurant.

He had brought her coffee and breakfast in bed, which had delighted her endlessly, and then had disappeared for a while, after they had plotted in bed (among other things also done in bed).

Fortunately Joy hadn’t returned from her Bar-related field trip until after he’d left.

“See you later. I believe Detective Shrew’s duty calls.” Leah stuffed a huge bite of pancake into her mouth and bounded to her feet.

“I hope Fawkes loves a woman in uniform,” Joy said. “Don’t forget to call backup this time if you need it.”

Leah hopped swiftly over to the door, chewing and swallowing hastily. Fawkes was waiting for her, grinning in welcome. He greeted her with a swift kiss, and Leah snuggled up to him.

“Did you have a nice breakfast with your sister?” he asked, placing a hand at the small of her back.

She still couldn’t get over the casualness of their sensual touching, the delight of it.

Her shrew screeched once and then, astonishingly, settled down, as if it too was enjoying being snuggled up against him.

“Yes, but I wondered where you were. Are you going to enlighten me anytime soon?”

“Right now, actually.” He used the hand on her back to guide her to fall into step with him. “Maggie’s in her trailer right now. I’ve been staking it out for the last couple of hours. I thought about confronting her there, but I figured I’d get you first.”

She bounced a little. “Did you find out what she turns into?”

“Yeah.” Fawkes grinned. “She’s a magpie.”

“ No .”

“Well, we knew she was some kind of bird.”

“A magpie.” She shook her head. “Where is the jewelry now?”

“Hester has it. I got back the two pieces I was hired to retrieve, and she’s returned the pieces she knows were taken from her guests. She’s the only other person who knows that Maggie might be the culprit, unless she’s told someone else. Well, Mauro probably knows.”

“What about Ralph?” Leah asked as they walked swiftly out to the campground “What happened to him?”

“He was given the boot while we were ...” He squeezed her waist briefly.

“Halstadt drove him to the nearest town and turned him loose with his suitcases. Honestly, it’s kinder than he probably deserves, but calling the police would just risk exposing too much of this situation that shifters can’t talk about.

If he comes back looking for revenge, we can bring the law down on him like a ton of bricks. ”

“It’s all right,” Leah said. Her anger at Ralph had faded now that she was safe. “He was pretty awful, but hopefully he can find somewhere he might be less awful. Or at least a job that’s not in theater.” She looked up at Fawkes. “What are we going to do about Maggie?”

“I don’t know. Let’s see what she says first.”

The door of Maggie’s trailer was closed, but as they approached, Leah heard rustling and thumps from inside.

Fawkes touched his finger to his lips and leaned close to Leah’s ear. “I’m going to walk around the outside and close any open windows. Wait a minute and then knock on the door. If she tries to attack you, I’ll be there in a split second.”

He slipped off, and Leah waited a moment, then stepped up to the door and knocked. The noises from inside stopped.

“It’s Leah. I just want to talk.”

A moment later, the door opened. Maggie was wearing a one-piece, easy-on easy-off dress and was barefoot, which suggested she’d shifted recently. She looked tired, pale, and worried. There was an open suitcase on the floor behind her legs.

“This isn’t a good time,” she said in an unfriendly tone.

“Oh, I think it’s a great time,” Fawkes said, looming behind Leah.

Maggie let out a cry. She scrambled backward, and an instant later, as Leah and Fawkes stepped inside, her dress collapsed and a large black and white bird fluttered out. Fawkes slammed the door before she could get to it.

The trailer was too small to have individual rooms, but it had a curtain closing off the sleeping area.

The bird struggled through that, and then there was a bonk and a despairing squawk.

When they arrived on her heels, Fawkes in front of Leah, Maggie had shifted back and was kneeling on her bed, naked, opening the window with human hands.

“Stop that,” Fawkes said. He pushed her against the wall with a hand on her shoulder and closed the window again. “You’re not going anywhere. But we aren’t planning to hurt you. We know you’re the jewel thief. What in the world is going on with you?”

Maggie looked wildly from him, to Leah standing just inside the curtain. She was trapped. Taking a long breath, she pulled a blanket off the bed to cover herself.

“Let me get dressed,” she said quietly. “I’ll make some tea. I’m not going to run. I’ll tell you everything.”

A few minutes later, they were at the trailer’s small fold-down table, Fawkes and Leah crowded together on the seat toward the door, and Maggie, dressed again, on the other side.

She had made three cups of tea and opened a box of cookies which she hadn’t touched.

Leah, thinking of Gloria’s makeup being tampered with, didn’t sample either the cookies or the tea, and she noticed Fawkes also ignored them.

She still wasn’t sure Maggie hadn’t been involved somewhere .

“So we’re pretty sure you left a bunch of jewelry in my room to throw suspicion on me, and made up a reason to get Leah thrown off the set so she’d stop looking into it,” Fawkes said. “Does that sound about right?”

Maggie looked down at her tea, with both her hands wrapped around the cup. “It sounds like you already have all the answers, so why haven’t you called the police yet? I know you’re a P.I. As soon as Leah started hanging around with you, I looked into you, too.”

“Is that why you put the stolen stuff in his room?” Leah wondered if they’d already been moved when she and Fawkes were searching the rooms. They must have been. The jewelry might have been in Maggie’s room just hours earlier. They had been so close!

Maggie looked away.

“Yeah, but why?” Fawkes asked. “You steal stuff and then do what with it? Turn it in for the insurance or something? Just carrying it around with you is an awful risk.”

“I ... need it,” Maggie said. She swallowed. “I’m a magpie. They love shiny things. You both have inner animals that sometimes urge you to do things, right?”

“Sometimes,” Fawkes said warily, and Leah thought of him bringing her trash the other day.

Her shrew was still unusually calm and subdued, which it was starting to look like would be a regular thing in his presence.

Not that it couldn’t still bounce around and shriek like a toddler in a ball pit.

She could unfortunately relate all too well to having an impulsive shift animal that wanted her to do unwise things.

Maggie shuddered a little. “I try to handle the urge. I really do.” She looked wistful. “It’s just that sometimes things are so shiny”

“You’re a kleptomaniac magpie?” Fawkes asked. He sounded skeptical. “I mean, my raccoon loves to rummage in garbage cans, but I don’t find myself dumpster diving every time I walk past the kitchens.”

“I tried to control it,” Maggie protested. “For years. It’s just gotten worse and worse. I lost a few different jobs for stealing, and others because I was afraid someone would find out about it.”

“Was that your plan here?” Leah asked. “You were going to run before we could turn you in?”

Maggie looked at the open suitcase and ran her hand through her hair. “I guess so. I couldn’t think what else to do. But I’m so tired of it.” She looked at them with a resigned attitude. “I guess it’s up to you now. Who have you told?”

“No one, yet,” Fawkes said. “Hester knows, and she has the rest of the stolen stuff. I already got back the pieces that I was here for.” He took Leah’s hand. “Honestly, I still don’t know what to do. Leah, what do you think?”

Leah squeezed his fingers. “I don’t want you to have to leave either, Maggie.

If we have to bring in a new director a day before the play opens, it’s going to be a disaster.

We need you. But we also need you not to go around stealing anything that isn’t nailed down.

Is there some kind of therapy for magpie kleptomaniacs? ”