Page 42 of Witch and Tell

“It’s no secret that I’ve been looking for Ian, but it wasn’t to kill him.” To my horror, I was getting choked up. I paused to calm my breathing. “And, thankfully, Ian is still alive. So I was released.” I let out a long breath.

The crowd froze for a moment, taking this all in. Then, someone spoke. “That doesn’t leave you off the hook. By your own admission, you were hanging out in the woods.”

“Plus,” an older man said, “there’s still a body.”

“I’m not certain who was found in the woods or how and why he died. I had nothing to do with it,” I said. “I want to know as much you do—more, really.”

A mother took a long look at me, then pulled in her school-aged daughter close. “Come on, honey. We’re go ing home.” She shot me an accusatory glance and left.

“What if the dead guy is someone you’ve been seen with?” a man asked. He leaned against a shelf, arms folded. I remembered him checking out a series of automotive repair manuals last spring.

“You mean, what if it’s Tyrone Beaudrie?” I asked. I, too, had the same suspicion. “Has anyone seen him lately?”

“You were looking for him,” Ruth Littlewood said. I hadn’t noticed her come in.

“I was. Yes. And I didn’t find him.”

“He wasn’t at the café this morning,” someone said.

“Or at the Empress,” someone else added. “I heard some of his crew complaining about needing him. He was a no-show.”

I pondered this only a split second before I asked, “Ian. Where is he?”

Chapter Twenty-three

As was true at the library, at the café I was the center of attention. The moment I entered, forks were dropped and voices stilled. Chairs scraped the lino leum as diners turned to look at me. From behind the cash register, Darla mouthed, “Tuna melt?” and I nodded.

“Has anyone seen Ian?” I asked. “I know he’s around.”

“He hasn’t been here,” a Tohler volunteered.

“Or at the This-N-That,” Patty said.

“He might be home.” That comment came from a girl’s voice. Buffy stepped forward. “Me and Thor could find him.”

“For a fee,” several people said.

I opened my purse and fished out a twenty-dollar bill. “Here you go. I need results before”—I glanced at the cat clock on the wall, the clock with the tail as a pendulum. Strange that Wanda hadn’t insisted yet on its removal—“before two o’clock. Think you can do that?”

A cape and a blur of pink glitter made for the door. Buffy and Thor were on the job.

Buffy and Thor found me at the library not long after lunch, Thor twirling his cape in one hand. I was in my office, finishing my tuna melt and ruminating on the disaster in which I now found myself. The puzzle was coming together, and I didn’t like where the pieces lay.

An unidentified dead man had been found in the witch’s circle. Tyrone Beaudrie was missing. Ian Penclosa had vanished and reappeared. Tyrone and Ian were from the same hometown. Could Ian have killed him?

“We got results,” Buffy said.

“An hour early,” Thor added. “How about a bonus?”

I set my bread crust on my plate, and Rodney roused himself from his nap on the windowsill long enough to sniff at the remains.

“I paid more than twice your usual rates,” I said.

“This was a rush job,” Buffy pointed out. “It deserved a premium.”

“No messing around. Where’s Ian?” I said. “It’s a matter of life and death.”Possibly Tyrone’s, I thought,but the kids didn’t have to know that.“Like in the Camelot classic comic books you’ve been reading, Thor.” The library had a full collection. They’d been Sam’s when he was a boy. “Sir Lancelot didn’t monkey around on his horse asking for money. He got things done.”

Thor let his cape drop from his hands. “All right.”