| |
“I wanted you to be the first to know,” he said when I picked up. “We have made an arrest in Reverend Castle’s case. And it doesn’t have a thing to do with our wedding, either.”
Well, that was good news. “Who did you arrest?”
“Actually, I can’t take the credit for this one. It was a deputy of mine. And, believe it or not, my dispatcher.”
As if calling her his dispatcher did any good. He might as well say her name, but then he tried not to in my hearing. Something about that Trixie really got under my skin. Especially once she had started making moves on my man. Not that the moves had gotten her anywhere, but still.
“Oh?” Even I could hear the ice in my tone. “I’m still waiting, you know.”
“Sorry. I’m afraid you aren’t going to like the answer. I know I sure didn’t. They arrested Blake Mallard. Sam’s dad.”
“What the...” I took a deep breath. “I hope they had a very good reason for doing so.”
“They did. According to... okay, Trixie... according to Trixie, she’d been hearing rumors that Reverend Castle was dead sure that Sam was his child. And, per the rumor mill, Castle was thinking about making a claim. She and Alphie, who I guess she’s dating now, by the way, went to have a talk with him. They took a glance in his car before going in and saw a heavy-duty flashlight with what looked suspiciously like blood on the handle.”
“Just lying there in plain view, was it?” That didn’t sound right. Mallard had struck me as a man who would do whatever it took to protect his family, yes. But he also hadn’t struck me as a man who was stupid. If he’d gone to this extreme, which I had to say I highly doubted, I just couldn’t see him leaving the weapon out in plain sight.
“I’ll admit, that part bothers me too. And of course, Blake denies it all. But it was blood, Opal, and the handle of that flashlight matches up pretty darn well to both head wounds on our victims.”
“And what could the man possibly have against Kenny Driscoll?”
“Don’t know the answer to that yet. This all just happened in, like, the last half hour. I just wanted you to know.”
“Well, thanks for that.” I hesitated. “I have to ask. Was the car locked?”
He grunted. “Yeah, that was my first question too. It was. So it isn’t likely that the flashlight was planted. Not too many people know how to break into a car without leaving a single sign of the entry.”
“You did, last year when Ruby locked the keys in my car.”
“Ah, so you heard about that, huh?”
“I did.”
“Well, okay, so few people other than car thieves, locksmiths, and lawmen know how to break into a car. Happy?”
Not really. I still had my doubts as to Mallard’s guilt.
“Make sure you’re in on the questioning, okay?”
“Already planning on it. Which, by the way, I need to get to. See you tonight, Opal.”
I stared at my phone for a minute after he hung up. This didn’t feel right. Not at all. Something was very, very wrong with this picture.
Okay, I could see Mallard getting desperate if he thought Castle had a chance of taking baby Sam. But surely the man didn’t have a prayer’s chance of actually doing that. And wouldn’t he have to produce some kind of proof in order to get a paternity test to prove it? That wouldn’t have gone over well with his congregation. Especially if he forced Cassidy’s hand, and she offered her side of the story.
Nope. Not a lick of sense to any of this.
I walked in and plopped down on my sofa to have a hard think on things. Even if Mallard had done dirty old Reverend Castle in, what would have been his motivation for killing Driscoll? Come to think of it, what on earth could possibly have motivated anyone to do that second murder?
Unless... he knew too much. So what did he know? Well, he knew about that girl showing up on Castle’s doorstep claiming he was her father. That was something. But how would anyone know he knew that? Unless he told more than me about that story. And, as there weren’t any names involved in the telling, I just didn’t see how the man posed a threat to them.
Unless they thought he knew and just wasn’t saying? Too many 'unlesses' in there to make sense of things.
And that right there was when I remembered Amie’s call. What was it she had said? There were two people in the area at the time Castle went to meet his maker?
What if...
I grabbed my laptop and booted it up to check my email. The videos were right there, just as she’d promised.
The view was a little blurry, but the picture was clear enough to just make out the person walking toward the church. Kenny Driscoll. The camera was facing him, so his face, slightly blurry though it was, was front and center. We weren’t so lucky with the second person. They were headed the other way. Away from the camera. That meant their face was away from the camera.
Or at least it was until they turned to stare after Driscoll.
My sheriff had the totally wrong person in his holding cell. And the right person had helped put him there.
Trixie.
***
MY FIRST THOUGHT WAS to call Orville. He had to know, and he had to know now. Unfortunately, he didn’t answer his cell phone. And when I called the station, I was told that he was in an interrogation room and couldn’t be bothered right now. Then they hung up on me.
And no, it wasn’t Trixie. I guess Orville was right. She wasn’t the only one there that didn’t care much for me right now.
Well, there was only one thing for it. If I couldn’t talk to the man over the phone, then I’d just have to go there in person. I grabbed my laptop and my purse and headed for the car.
I didn’t make it any further than that. Lucky for me, and possibly the person under my car, I saw the boots sticking out before I got in and started the engine. Otherwise, we both probably would have met the Goddess today.
When I caught a glimpse of the boots, I backtracked. Hard. But she must have been paying attention. And she was younger and far faster than I was. She rolled out from under the vehicle and took me down in a flying tackle as I went up the porch steps. If I survived this, which was in no way guaranteed, I’d be covered in bruises tomorrow.
Trixie was no lightweight. And even if she was working as a dispatcher now, she had graduated from the academy. She knew how to take a person down. Knew how to keep them down too.
I wasn’t going anywhere. And as she was holding both my arms up over my head, I wasn’t in the position to do any magic either. I kind of needed my hands for that. She must have done her research.
That’s when I realized just how stupid I’d been. Trixie hadn’t had to do any research at all. Her mother was a powerful witch in her own right. And a seer to boot. If Trixie showed up here at my doorstep, then I was guessing that just maybe she had inherited that very special gene.
The problem with that was that it took a very special witch to handle that very special gene. All the others? It drove coco for cocoa nuts. From the look in Trixie’s eyes as she stared down at me, she was one of the latter.
Too bad for me.
“I kind of figured it’d be you that figured it all out, and I was right. Imagine my consternation when I got the vision, just when everything was lining up so darned perfectly. If you’d only stayed out of this like the sheriff asked, you’d have never seen this coming.”
I swallowed. “You planned on killing me all along, didn’t you?”
She laughed. Oh yes, the girl was definitely loco. “Of course. I don’t much care what the future tells me. You aren’t the right match for Orville, witch. He belongs with me. End of story.”
Even as she was glancing around her, most likely trying to figure out the best way to end me, my mind was going strong. What life-saving spell could I cast without my hands? The answer, sadly, was none. Any spell, regardless of hands, would require words. I highly doubted I’d much more than open my mouth to start the necessary chant before my life would end. One way or another.
“He’ll know it was you, you know. Orville is a smart man. He’ll figure it out.”
That got me another wild laugh. “Even if he does, it’ll be too late for you.”
My cellphone rang in my bag. Not that I could very well answer it. But the ringtone told me all I wanted to know. It was Orville.
Too bad I wasn’t going to get to say goodbye.