A Familiar Tail (5 page)

6

SINCE THE COTTAGE
shutters were closed, the inside was quite dim. It took a lot of hard blinking before my eyes adjusted. I was standing in a black-and-white kitchen that looked like it had last been updated sometime in the 1930s. It still had the deep enamel farmhouse sink, a wooden floor and tile countertops. Only the stove and refrigerator were from the current decade. The garden window bowed out to make room for a cozy breakfast nook with built-in benches. It was easy to picture the generations of Portsmouth housewives who congregated there for tea and gossip.

And one of them had been Dorothy Hawthorne. She had tended that magnificent garden, picked those apples, and sat here with her cup of tea. Unless she was a coffee person. I wondered what she'd looked like. My brain conjured up a vague Miss Marple sort of image, with white hair, a tweed skirt and big gloves, but somehow that didn't seem to go with the house. Old-fashioned and cozy it might be, but this was not a tweedy sort of place.

I wondered where Dorothy had died, and how. I hadn't
thought to ask Sean, and Valerie had left before I could really get up to speed on my prying. But I did wonder all the same, like I wondered what it was about her death that made “some people” think it was murder.

Curiosity is a terrible thing. You can be having the strangest morning ever and it still whispers tender words to you, like,
You're already inside. A quick look around can't hurt anything.

“I am not doing this,” I muttered as I stepped quickly across the kitchen, almost but not quite tiptoeing. “This is somebody else. This is not me. Annabelle Amelia Blessingsound Britton is way smarter than this.”

A swinging door led into the hushed dining room. White sheets covered the chairs and a table and what I took to be a sideboard. The sun shone through a three-paneled stained-glass window set high in the right-hand wall, casting a pattern of red and green tulips onto the carpet. Another door led out to a front parlor. The walls were lined with built-in bookcases, and at the front of the house there was another bay window, this one with a lovely, deep window seat. I passed by the ghostly shapes of more sheet-covered furniture. A pocket door let me into the dark-paneled foyer with its bare floor and simple staircase rising along the opposite wall.

The stairs were at least as steep as the ones at McDermott's. I looked up and saw a railing surrounding the stairwell above that would have been perfect for kids to peek through. Only instead of any giggling kid, it was Alistair who looked down between the spindles.

I meant to tell the cat, and myself, that this was it. No farther. This might not technically be breaking and entering, because the kitchen door really had been open, but it was definitely trespassing. Dorothy Hawthorne might be dead, but the place belonged to
somebody
. They'd left all this furniture. Hadn't Sean the Bartender mentioned a nephew?
Whoever he was, he probably wouldn't appreciate my little sightseeing tour.

On the other hand, the state of the garden and the presence of a loose cat said the nephew didn't come around that often.

“Okay, one quick look upstairs and then I'm gone,” I told the cat, or maybe myself. “Like into-the-next-county gone.”

By the time I got to the top, though, Alistair had vanished again.

I looked around and saw that a total of four doors opened off the short hallway, two in front of me and one at either end. At the same time, all the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. My heart raced too, but not from the climb. That sense of being on the edge was as heavy up here as the smell of warm dust and Murphy Oil Soap. There was something in here. I was getting close. I felt it.

“But close to what?” I murmured.

The minute the words were out of my mouth, a fresh Vibe hit. A sense of expectation surged through my skin and my bones. No, not expectation; something stronger. Eagerness. This house not only welcomed me; it had been waiting for me.

Panic hit hard enough to send the hallway reeling. I pressed my hand hard against the wall. I made myself take a deep breath and hold it. I let it out slowly and paused. And breathed in and held it. And let it out and paused. My heart steadied, and the shock of this new, unexpected and very specific Vibe receded, at least a little.

“Okay, cat,” I said. “I get it. Really. You wanted me in here. This . . . this house wanted me here. Here I am. Now,
where are you
?”

Alistair howled, and I about jumped out of my skin. It sounded like he was right over my head.

“Okay, okay,” I gasped. “So, there's an attic, right? A house like this is bound to have an attic. Perfect place to hide a cat.”

Fighting to regain at least some of my hard-won control, I faced the pair of doors in front of me and picked the one on the right. I put my hand on the knob and rattled it. Locked. A quick check showed the knob was an elaborate, old-fashioned piece of brass hardware, complete with a keyhole you could have spied through. It was also well past the limits of my skill with a nail file.

“So what now? Do I say ‘open sesame'?”

Surely it was a coincidence that right then I felt the knob turn. There was a click. I lifted my hand away. With a long, low creak of antique hinges, the door drifted open.

Alistair sat calmly at the top of a short flight of stairs, entirely unharmed and untraumatized. In fact, his tail swished back and forth as if to say,
What took you so long?

“You, cat, are a big fat liar, and you have lured me here under false pretenses.”

Alistair shrugged, a long ripple of feline shoulders and smoke-colored fur.

I sighed. “Okay. Let's get this over with.”

“Mrrp,” replied the cat noncommittally. Not that it mattered. I was climbing the stairs anyway.

Dorothy Hawthorne's attic, like her garden, was something out of a fairy tale. Fortunately, it was a cobweb-free fairy tale. There was one big central space, and the slopes of the roof's gables created four low nooks, one in each direction. The pattern of light and shadows looked strange, but that was because while each one of those nooks had a small window, those windows were all at knee height. The central space, where the sloping roof was highest, had been set up as a study, complete with low shelves of leather-bound
books and an antique desk topped by a green-shaded lamp. Alistair, perfectly at home, jumped from the desk chair to the desktop and down to the floor again. Then he paced across to what at first glance looked like just a table covered with a green cloth.

But as my gaze followed the cat, I saw it was something else altogether.

That green velvet cloth was decorated with elaborate Celtic knotwork. On it, a white candle in a silver holder stood next to a bundle of dried herbs. I smelled sage and rosemary and lavender and wondered if they had come from the garden. There was a silver cup, too, with some pale cloudy liquid in it, and a little silver dish of something that looked like sugar, or maybe salt.

In the table's exact center lay a length of carved wood and a small square of paper.

“Mar-oow,” explained Alistair as he plumped down next to me and began washing his tail.

I picked up the carved stick. I'd never seen anything quite like it. It was maybe a foot long and as thick as my thumb. The pale wood had been carved with a twisting pattern of blossoms, branches and moons—crescent, half and full. Then, as I peered more closely, I realized there were letters carved among the flowering branches as well.

“Quod ad . . . ,”
I read as I turned it, trying to follow the spiraling words,
“vos mittere in
mundum triplici.”

Latin.

There are few advantages to studying classical art. One of them is that you can piece together most stray Latin quotations you come across. “What you send out into the world comes back in triplicate?” I said.

Alistair swatted at me gently with a paw.

“Hey!” I shouted, and then bit down on my next words. I was supposed to be sneaking, right? I moved to put the carved ornament back, but my hand froze. I now saw something else. The velvet cloth that covered the table didn't have
just Celtic knotwork for its pattern; there were stars printed on it too. Specifically, five-pointed stars inside golden circles.

Pentacles.

In art school, we'd learned that pentacles were early Christian symbols for the Virgin Mary. These days, though, they were usually symbols of something different—witchcraft.

I backed up an involuntary step. This wasn't a table and it wasn't some random collection of knickknacks put together by an eccentric old cat lady.

This was an altar. A witch's altar.

“Oh, no,” I croaked. “No. This is not happening.”

Except it was. I was in a witch's attic, and next to me was a vanishing cat. I was holding what could only be a magic wand, and my Vibe and I had been brought to this place by a whole series of very, very strange coincidences.

Alistair meowed and head butted my shins.

“What?”
I demanded, because being freaked-out makes me short-tempered. “Has little Timmy fallen down the well?
What?
”

Have you ever heard the noise an indoor cat makes looking out a window at the birds? That set of sharp, creaking, grumpy sounds that must mean something truly insulting in the ancient sparrow dialect? That was the noise Alistair made at me as he jumped onto the altar and off again.

That piece of paper I'd noticed fluttered to the floor. I picked that up, too, and I froze. Again.

The paper was a photograph that had been neatly clipped out of a magazine. I even knew which magazine—
New England Arts Monthly
. They'd published an interview with me about freelance artists and the growing independent publishing industry last summer.

My photo had been on Dorothy Hawthorne's altar.

That was when I heard the footsteps.

7

I WHIPPED AROUND,
reflexively stuffing the magazine photo into my purse. Alistair darted between my legs and skidded to a halt at the top of the stairs, his ears pressed flat against his skull.

Down below us, someone was walking. The steps were quick and light, but not light enough to keep the old floors from singing out their warning. Then the tone of the steps changed to hollow thumps. Hollow thumps heading up the stairs.

Alistair hissed, arching his back and puffing up from ears to tail like a Halloween nightmare. Spitting with fury, he dove down the stairs. I shouted, certain he was going to plant his face in the door. But the door opened and the cat streaked through.

In the next heartbeat, somebody hollered in surprise and pain.

I bolted through the open door and into the hall. At the
top of the stairs, a man staggered sideways, clutching a screwdriver with one hand and his knee with the other.

“Ow! Damn it! Ahgh!”

Alistair ducked behind me and hugged the carpet, growling low in his throat, his eyes opened so wide I could see the whites. I gaped at the cat and the stranger, not sure which was the bigger threat. This was when I realized I was still clutching the wand.

The man straightened up enough to meet my gaze. He was a white guy. Middle age had hit hard, leaving gray streaks in his sandy hair and lines on his sagging face. The mustache might have made him look younger once but now just looked like it was trying to hide something.

Alistair hissed again. What color there was in the guy's face drained away and he lifted his hand—and that screwdriver. For the life of me, I don't know what made me do it, but I raised the wand and pointed it right at him, like I was channeling Hermione Granger and all the kids from Hogwarts.

“Don't even think it,” I said.

The mustached man swallowed. He teetered backward, and then he turned and ran down the stairs.

“Hey!”

I stuffed the wand in my purse and ran after him. Maybe I was worried he'd been hurt by Alistair, who had inexplicably gone into attack mode. Maybe I had some weird feeling of ownership about this house. I mean, I had broken in first. Maybe I was just too startled to think straight. I didn't know then, and I'm still not sure. I did pound down the stairs just in time to see the stranger slam out the front door.

I darted across the threshold and onto the front porch. That was when I heard another set of footsteps and a new shout. Hard hands grabbed me and whirled me around. Now I was staring up at a second stranger.

I think I said something like, “I . . . uh . . . er . . . ack!”

“Who the hell are you?” he—whoever he was—demanded. “What are you doing in my house?”

He was taller than me. His black hair waved back from his broad forehead and his eyes glittered an intense and angry blue. Under better circumstances, I might have realized how much he looked like a cross between Benedict Cumberbatch and Cary Grant. Just then, though, I was completely caught up in realizing that he wasn't letting me go and that he'd said this was his house.

“Frank Hawthorne.” I'd blurted the name out. Sean had said that was the name of Dorothy Hawthorne's nephew. Who else would be in this empty house? Aside from me. And Mr. Mustache. And Alistair, of course.

Frank, if that's who he was, let go of one of my arms, but it was just so he could dig his hand into his sports jacket pocket, presumably looking for his phone. “I'm asking you again, who are you and what are you doing here?”

I quickly decided to go with the truth—some of it, anyway. It might buy time before he called the cops. “I, um, I came in after the cat. Alistair? I heard him yowling. I thought he might be hurt or something and the place was all shut up and . . .” I let that sentence trail off. It wasn't going anywhere interesting anyway. “Then I heard somebody else in the house, and . . .”

“What? Crap! Not again!”

The man whipped around and ran into the house, leaving me on the porch with only one question in my head.

What do you mean “not again”?

There were two things I could have done here. One of
them was actually smart. I did the other, though, and followed Frank Hawthorne through the door he'd left open.

Don't tell me you're surprised.

Frank was in the dining room. He'd thrown the sheet back from an oak sideboard and pulled open the top drawer.

“All here,” he muttered.

“I didn't see the guy carrying anything when he ran out,” I said. “Except a screwdriver.”

Frank jumped. I braced myself for a fresh, and justified, round of shouting, but all I got was the sound of teeth clicking together as he clamped his jaw shut. Moving very deliberately, he closed the sideboard drawer and then locked it with the old-fashioned key hanging on the ring with his car keys.

“What did you say your name was?” he asked as he pulled the dustcover back into place.

“I didn't. But it's Annabelle Britton.”

He nodded. Then he brought a black notebook out of one jacket pocket and a pencil out of another. He flipped the book open and started writing.

There is a special sinking feeling you experience when you realize your bad ideas might be about to come home to roost. “Umm . . . are you a c— Police?”

“Journalist,” he answered, which was only marginally better.

“But you are Frank Hawthorne, right?”

His pencil stilled. “And you get to ask that because?”

“Because for all I know, you could be burglar number three. This house is getting a lot of foot traffic today.”

The man ducked his head, and although it was tough to tell in the dim light, he might have been trying not to laugh. He also put down the notebook and pencil on the dining table so he could flip open his wallet and hand me his driver's license. Sure enough, the photo that stared out of the plastic rectangle matched the man in front of me, and the
name typed alongside was Darius Francis Samuel Hawthorne.

“Old family name?” I asked.

“Old family name,” he confirmed. “‘Frank' was always the least bad of the possibilities.”

“I feel your pain.” I also handed him back his license.

“So, you believe I'm me?”

“If you believe I'm me.”

“Deal.” He held out his hand, and we shook. He had a nicely judged grip, not too firm or too delicate. “So, now that we're all friends, you're going to tell me what you're doing here, right?”

I didn't exactly cross my fingers then, but I thought about it. “I really did follow Alistair. Valerie McDermott—I'm staying at McDermott's B and B”—I waved in the general direction of the backyard—“asked me to keep an eye out for him. She said he'd been missing, so when I saw him hanging around her back fence, I decided to see if I could find out where he went.”
Please don't remember the gate was locked.

But if Frank remembered, he wasn't letting on. He just kept making his notes. Watching somebody write down what you're saying is surprisingly nerve-racking. I wonder if he knew that. Probably he did.

“Half the town's been trying to get hold of Alistair since the funeral. Why are you the one he comes out for?”

“Half the town has not fed him brisket tacos from the Pale Ale. And even then, he wouldn't exactly let me hold on to him.”

The corner of Frank's mouth turned up into a smile that was not entirely voluntary. “Sounds like Alistair. Grab the food and run.”

“That's what Valerie said. Anyway, when I got to the house, the back door was open and I heard Alistair inside. I was afraid he might be in some kind of trouble.”

“You heard him?” Frank quirked an eyebrow at me.

“He was crying . . .”

Right on cue, an earsplitting, breathtaking, heartrending howl with no visible source split the air.

“Like that,” I finished limply, but Frank had already started for the kitchen at top speed. Of course I followed. I am nothing if not predictable. “Where is he?”

“Basement.” Frank pulled open the door. “The vents in this place are sound conductors. He used to sit down there and howl just like that if I forgot to clean his litter box.” Frank thudded down the dim stairs and there didn't seem to be any reason not to head down behind him.

Until I got to the bottom, and the Vibe hit.