5 Beewitched (29 page)

With that reassurance, Patti flipped off the light, pulled away from the curb, and did a U-turn. Then she turned right on Main, where everything was closed for the night except Stu’s, where (judging by all the cars outside) quite a few customers were hanging on to the very last of the weekend. Hunter’s bike wasn’t outside the bar, meaning work had slowed his progress (thanks to Patti), so time wasn’t running out for me yet.

“Okay, let me get this straight,” I said, trying to recap all the twists and turns of the story Patti had related by phone as she drove from the jail to pick me up. “The gist is—you nabbed the computer, Lucinda chased you, you managed to toss the computer in a bush without her seeing you do it, then you got away, but you snuck back for the computer, thinking ‘mission accomplished.’”

“Right.”

“Then when you thought you were safe and were almost home, out of nowhere flashing lights and a siren went off behind you. You attempted to outrun a Waukesha sheriff’s deputy, but he ran you off the road.”

“Right. Or almost right. I wasn’t really trying to outrun him, just buying some time while I prepared to chuck the evidence out the window.”

“How is that even possible while steering?” I attempted to figure out the logistics of doing that but gave up.

“You’d manage, too, if you were about to get arrested with stolen goods.”

“We’ll be lucky if her computer is all in one piece after the abuse you subjected it to.”

Now Patti slowed down near a farmer’s field. “It’s somewhere along here. And quit worrying. I wasn’t going very fast when I threw it. Besides, I wrapped it in a blanket before I tossed it. I’m not a complete idiot, you know.”

Maybe not a complete one, but a partial one for sure. “Are you telling me the cop didn’t see what you did?”

“That cop looked about twelve years old and was too full of himself to see past his own shiny badge. You’d think he was our police chief’s over-bloated relative, that’s how self-important he was.”

I shook my head in amazement. Why did Patti get all the breaks? If it had been me, I wouldn’t have escaped from the witch let alone snuck out of criminal charges. Not only had Patti bamboozled a very crafty witch, she’d also gone on to dupe the police. Then she said, “Over there. That’s it.”

I couldn’t see a thing in the dark (was the woman nocturnal?), but Patti pulled into a ditch, stopped the car, killed the lights, and said, “Over to your left. Go get it, and make it quick before someone comes driving along and spots us.”

“Why aren’t you getting it yourself? You’re the one who threw it.”

“Because I’m driving the getaway car. Hurry!”

I ended up tripping over the bundle and fell to my knees. Wouldn’t you know Patti just happened to have wrapped the thing in a black blanket, too? I got up, snatched up the blanket and its content, and ran for the car. Out of my peripheral vision I spotted headlights coming from the opposite direction.

Patti’s car window slid down.

“Throw it in!” she yelled, an uncharacteristic trace of panic in her voice.

Apparently I take orders without question when under perceived distress, because I did just that. Pitched it through the window, blanket and computer tumbling onto the seat.

My hand was on the door handle when the car started moving forward. “No time!” Patti was still yelling. My brain registered what she was doing while my legs tried to keep up. In spite of my effort to leverage myself through the window, she left me there in the ditch, eating her dust, roaring away in the dark without any lights.

What on earth had just happened? Had I just been used and tossed aside? Had her whole scheme been designed to pump me for information then abandon me? Leave me out in the cold (literally)? It was frickin’ freezing out here!

I glanced down the road in the opposite direction, saw brake lights go on from the vehicle that had passed us, then the car turned around and came at me. I prepared to stick out my thumb to hitch a ride. Ha, I’d teach Patti to treat me this way. Wait until I get my hands on her. And I’d turn state’s evidence against her for breaking and entering, too.

Suddenly, the approaching car turned on its lights and siren. Oh geez. Please don’t be . . . Johnny Jay.

“Fischer,” he said as he pulled alongside me, looking puzzled for a change. “Where’s your vehicle?”

“What vehicle, Johnny?”

Now he had on his standard mean face, the one I knew how to handle. “It’s Police Chief Jay to you.”

Did we have to go through this same spiel every single time?

“And don’t play dumb with me.”

“I’m not playing.” That didn’t come out quite right. Although if I told anybody what had just happened, they might label me with a big “dumb” stamp on my forehead.

I blinked and looked at my surroundings as though just now realizing I was in a strange setting, and I set my facial expression to major confused. “How did I get here? Last I remember I was watching television. Either I have amnesia or I’ve been sleepwalking. I do that sometimes.”

The police chief got out, slammed his door hard, and stalked over to me. We went nose to nose. “So you’re out in the middle of nowhere and expect me to believe that hogwash? That’s the trouble with you, Fischer. You’re the town’s biggest liar. Now, what was going on and who was driving that car?”

At least Patti hadn’t driven off with my phone. So instead of arguing with him, I called Hunter.

“Where are you?” I wanted to know.

“Finishing up some paperwork. Why?”

“The chief is harassing me for no reason again.”

“What did you do this time?”

“Nothing. But I need a ride home. He has me trapped out in the middle of nowhere and I’m scared.”

Johnny rolled his eyeballs. “Give me that thing.” He grabbed it out of my hand. “Wallace, is that you? Figures . . . She’s up to something . . . No, I don’t have cause . . . No, but . . . I don’t do favors for you Wallace, you should know that by now . . . Well if something happens to her out here, why should it be my responsibility? . . . Fine!”

He ended the call and handed back the phone.

“Wallace seems to think I have a duty to make sure you get safely back to Moraine.”

I grinned. It was true. I happened to be a taxpayer and had rights.

“So get in the backseat and shut up. And this isn’t a cab service. You’ll walk from the southern edge of Main.”

“If something bad happens, I’ll have your badge.”

The chief snorted and did exactly as he’d threatened—he dumped me on the outskirts of town, then turned around and headed for the police station.

I hadn’t dressed for an outdoor stroll, so by the time I arrived home I was shivering from the cold, brisk hike, cursing the chief, saving a few choice words for P. P. Patti, who had once again left me high and dry. At the same time, though, once I’d calmed down, I realized that if I’d been in her shoes, behind the wheel, and I’d seen Johnny Jay bearing down on us, I’d have done exactly the same thing.

The only difference would have been that Patti would’ve somehow plastered herself against the rear bumper, maybe crawled onto the hood and hung on for dear life. She’d have made sure she got away, too.

Instead of standing there, dazed and confused like you-know-who.

To every person out there, for every time I’ve unkindly and thoughtlessly declared, “Well, she sure isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer,” I apologize profusely.

Facts are facts, no matter how brutal. I sure wasn’t as sharp as I liked to think, either.

• • •

I didn’t have to be a magic practitioner or own a
crystal ball to forecast the immediate future. Once I made it back to Willow Street, I found Patti waiting for me in my living room, sitting calmly on my sofa. She’d also had the nerve to help herself to my microwave popcorn, which she’d slathered with way too much butter and salt. “You borrowed a lightbulb from me last week,” she said in her defense.

I made a mental note to never ask to borrow a single item from her ever again.

“Want some?” she said, offering me the greasy bag.

I ignored her generosity with my popcorn. “So you spotted the chief driving toward us?”

“And I had to act fast. Aren’t you going to congratulate me for once again using my fine mind to get out of a jam?”

“You might have let me get into the car before taking off.”

“My survival instincts kicked in. It’s automatic. Nothing I could have done differently. Besides, you look like you handled yourself just fine.”

“You didn’t even consider coming back for me?”

“You’re a survivor just like me. Why should I hold your hand? You don’t hold mine when I need
you
. And if you want, I can delve into our past and dredge up bunches of examples.” There was the P. P. Patti whine.

The black blanket was at her feet. I picked it up and carefully unwrapped it to find that our prize (the laptop) was also covered in a black pillowcase. I kept unwrapping, hopeful that when I opened it, it wouldn’t be damaged beyond repair.

It wasn’t. The screen was all in one piece and actually lit up when I powered on the machine.

We were back in business.

Which brings me to the matter of our current investigative techniques—Patti’s and mine versus, for example, Hunter’s. Or even Johnny Jay’s. Or my mother’s, or a professional private eye’s for that matter, which my mother sort of is based on how many times she’s caught me in one act or another. Patti and I need to work on finesse if we are going to continue to handle this highly sensitive situation. We have to make more of an effort to become:

• adroit instead of clumsy
  
• skillful rather than inept
  
• clever instead of practically brain dead
  
• elusive versus incarcerated
  

But I couldn’t verbalize any of this because after brief consideration I decided that I was perfectly normal and on the good side of all those finesse moves. It was Patti who had to make more of an effort.

Besides, after blowing her own cover with Lucinda and the Waukesha sheriff’s department, and almost ruining our chances of discovering evidence with the police chief, here the woman sat, free as a bird and wily as a fox, if not wise as an owl.

“Hunter could come home any time.” I thought I should mention it, for both of our sakes.

So we hustled over to her house with me toting the laptop and Patti handling the bag of popcorn. We plopped down on her sofa.

Patti wiped her buttery fingers on a napkin, then took the computer from me. Hacking is more her thing than mine. I mostly use computers to record inventory at The Wild Clover or to search for new flip-flops online.

“It’s password protected,” Patti said, chewing her lip in concentration. “But don’t worry. I’ll figure it out eventually.”

“How soon?” I asked, not liking the sound of
eventually
.

“It’s already late. Come back in the morning.”

There wasn’t another choice. The laptop was going to be slow in giving up its secrets.

Back at home I got ready for bed, tucked my mojo bag under my pillow (because I really, really want my secret wish to come true), and made up a mental list of questions that needed answers, without bothering to determine whether they were important to the case. Since their relevance was a big, fat unknown, I decided to assume everything could be a critical component. My short list:

• Who had Rosina been speaking to on the phone? I needed the name of the witch who canceled at the last minute. I felt certain it was a missing piece of the puzzle.
  
• Why had Rosina’s personal information been erased from her phone and by whom? Had Greg tampered with it on his way over to my house?
  
• Who had Rosina gone to meet in the corn maze that night? Find that out, and we’d have our killer. With any luck it was NOT Al. With all the people out at the farm, someone must have seen something. Note to self—ask Hunter about that.
  

My list seemed to be in ascending order of importance. Rosina’s phone history had to be a big clue since someone went to such lengths to protect it. And the clandestine meeting in the corn maze had to have been with the person who stabbed her to death. It remained to be seen whether the missing number thirteen had any relevance.

So I had three questions and decided that tomorrow I’d stay positive and start knocking them off, one by one.

I must have dozed off because the next thing I knew, Hunter was sliding into bed beside me and wrapping his strong arms around me in a spooning bear hug. I snuggled in, and we talked quietly about our day. To be on the safe side, since I didn’t want to accidently blab certain parts of the day’s events, I mostly encouraged him to talk about himself, which isn’t a hard thing for a woman to get a man to do. Then I told him how Greg Mason had come by with his aunt’s personal effects, and we’d discovered that her phone had been tampered with, and all her personal information was gone. Hunter surprised me by replying, “I have the phone company printout for that phone number. You treat me right, and I’ll let you have a peek at it in the morning.”

Well, well, well. But first:

“Mom and Tom are getting married Tuesday, so Grams doesn’t have time to invite everybody in town.”

“Uh . . . that doesn’t give me time to ask off from work.”

“It’s going to be short and sweet—a few vows, a little reception. Besides, that’s not true. You can come and go as you please.”

“You think so, do you?”

“You’re not getting out of this.”

“Does that mean I get to see you in your bridesmaid dress?”

I groaned at the image of that puce monstrosity. “On second thought . . .”

Eventually we got around to Al Mason, and an opportunity presented itself for me to ask if anybody had seen anyone near the corn maze.

Hunter’s answer was a negative, either no one had or they weren’t admitting to it during interrogations. Even Al, the number one suspect, denied being there.

So if my man with all his resources hadn’t been able to solve that one, I doubted that Patti and I could.

We’d have to find another way.

Thirty-four