“Kitty!” Ignoring the pounding that continued on the door, Becca knelt. With one hand on the plump marmalade, who sat up and licked her chops, she looked down at the little puddle—and the pendant lying there.
“What?” She reached for it, still kneeling. “Suzanne’s necklace?” And whether it was because of the accumulated evidence or that Laurel’s furious concentration had finally gotten through to her, she looked up, then, at Kathy. “Kathy?” Her voice was sad rather than angry. Solemn, rather than scared. “Why?”
The other woman only shook her head. “She was going to ruin him,” she said, as if her conclusion were obvious, her voice barely above a whisper. “She was going to ruin Trent! He’s special. You know how precious he is. She was going to expose him. Tell everybody that he was writing checks on Larissa’s account—taking her money to buy presents for his other little chippies.”
“Oh, Kathy.” Sorrow infused Becca’s voice. “She wouldn’t have ruined him. She couldn’t have. He and Larissa have an understanding. She’d have forgiven him. She already has.”
“Police!” The pounding more insistent. “We’re coming in!”
“Hang on!” Pendant in hand, Becca rose, heading toward the door. “I’m sorry, Kathy,” she said. She didn’t see the other woman reach once again for the knife.
“Becca!” Clara mewed one last time, but her soft cry was drowned out by the pounding on the door. Laurel, by then, was concentrating so hard her ears stood out sideways and her blue eyes crossed. Even Clara could feel the vibrations emanating from the determined seal point—urging Becca to turn. To look.
For a moment, Laurel’s thought bomb seemed to be working. Becca paused, as if confused, her hand on the front door even as the cops called out one more time. But it was too late. Kathy was coming up behind her, knife raised. So Clara, shading herself as quickly as she could, dashed in front of the onrushing woman, sending Kathy flying and the knife clattering down. And Harriet, who knew in her proud marmalade heart that she had done quite enough with her normal digestive processes, did not deign to provide a pillow and simply sat and watched as Kathy fell sprawling to the floor.
Chapter 40
What happened next was hectic, and—their jobs done—the cats did their best to scurry out of the way. With a gasp, Becca turned, having unlatched the door. Two uniformed officers pushed in.
“Are you all right, miss?” The first officer bent to help Kathy to her knees. “We received your call. Are you the victim of an assault?”
“Bruce, wait.” His partner nodded toward the knife, which was still spinning on the floor, just out of reach of the prone woman’s hand, and then to Becca, who was backing away in horror.
“Ma’am?” The second officer reached to support her as she collapsed against the wall. She looked up, stunned, then held out her open palm—revealing the crystal teardrop.
“This was Suzanne’s. It’s kind of sticky.” She apologized as a look of wonder came over here. “Did you—did I summon you?”
Clara closed her eyes, even as Laurel yowled in protest. Harriet, meanwhile, waddled over to the sofa, where she settled on her pillow, as proud as could be.
***
Twenty minutes later, the events of the last few minutes had been sorted. Becca still had the wet dishcloth in hand, and Kathy wasn’t even denying what she’d done.
Instead, as she was escorted down to the waiting cruiser, she seemed to be attempting a justification for her actions—from the murder of Suzanne to her attack on Becca.
“You don’t understand!” The redhead could be heard through the open window. “I did it for Trent.”
Her voice faded as the cruiser took her away. But as Becca turned back toward her dishes, a shadow fell across the floor. The rumpled detective stood in her open doorway, scowling.
“Ms. Colwin?”
Becca gasped, and the cats looked up.
“Detective Abrams!” She spoke quickly, before she, too, could be cuffed and escorted out. “I’m so sorry I didn’t call you back!” Reacting to her agitation, Clara approached and circled, determined to do whatever was necessary to protect her person from this latest threat. “I got your messages, and I meant to get back to you, honest.”
“Excuse me?” The detective asked, a puzzled expression creasing his lined face further. “What are you talking about?”
“You, or your office, kept calling me and I never picked up. I knew I had more information, but I wanted…” Becca stopped, unsure of how to proceed. “I thought I could find out more. That is, before I came in.”
The edge of the detective’s mouth twitched. “Before you came in?”
“I never meant to evade justice.” Becca swallowed hard and stared in amazement as that twitch evolved from the ghost of a smile into a full-fledged grin. “I should have called back.”
“You mean, you should have responded to my secretary.” He nodded, as if suddenly everything had become clear. “Yes, you should have. She was getting desperate to reach you. We’ve had your hat for over a week now, and this beautiful spring weather can’t last forever.”
***
The resolution of the case was sad, but not surprising, and Becca kept her pets informed by reading aloud the daily updates in the news.
At first, Kathy, on the advice of her attorney, claimed self-defense. She argued that Suzanne had attacked her when she’d gone to talk to her about her “ridiculous” suspicions and that she’d simply wanted to reason with the other woman, whom she accused of slandering the man she described as their coven leader. It was a reasonable defense, Becca mused as she read. Although no eyewitness had placed her in the Cambridgeport walkup, a plethora of evidence—including, Becca read, smudged fingerprints on the cake knife—had already made her a suspect, and the district attorney had been in the process of building the case when she had called from Becca’s apartment.
“They could have said,” Becca muttered. Clara, for once, was grateful for her own inability to respond.
Of course, the fact that the redhead had lunged for Becca under a similar circumstance made that defense a little less plausible, and soon after, she had her lawyer claiming temporary insanity—and citing the hot-bed atmosphere of the coven and its unhealthy influence on its youngest member as a contributing factor.
That accusation more than anything else had served to bring the coven back together. Marcia forgave Trent his ill-timed pass, and the handsome warlock appeared to have recovered from his humiliating exposure. It helped that Larissa had given him a new gift—an intricate chain for his amulet.
But it wasn’t Trent, ultimately, who had prompted Suzanne’s request that last night. At least, that’s what Becca concluded.
“Suzanne wanted a casting out spell because of Kathy.” Becca had pieced it together in the intervening weeks. “She knew about Trent—about the money—but it was Kathy who was spreading rumors. Setting us all against each other. Suzanne might not have known who was stalking her. She certainly didn’t know how dangerous Kathy was, but she knew the coven ‘pet’ was a bad influence, and she wanted her gone.”
“Makes sense to me.” Ande had joined her friend over tea—mint, this time—to debrief her as the case unfolded. The accountant had been giving testimony about what she’d found in the coven’s accounts and had come over after the trial had adjourned for the day to find Becca and all three cats waiting for the latest.
“I didn’t know the half of it, but working for Reynolds, Suzanne must have figured out the connection,” Ande explained as the cats looked on. Laurel’s mouth opened slightly, taking in the tea’s aroma, while Harriet began to shift, eager for the talk to give way to eating. “She heard enough to know that Larissa was Reynolds’s ex and that she was desperate for money. Reynolds had been telling her in no uncertain terms that she had to get rid of her ‘boy toy’ before he’d give her any more. I guess Larissa was claiming that she’d been ripped off because she was embarrassed.”