Page 31 of Justice & Liberty

Hex sighed at her, ever the long-suffering older sister. “It’s mostly milk, it’ll make you sick to your stomach.”

“But Ilikeit,” Bee whined.

“A little,” I agreed. “I’ll bring you a little bit. But Hex is right, and you shouldn’t be eating it.”

“You eat ice cream even though it makes you sick sometimes,” Bee argued, determined to have her say, even if it was by way of something as irrelevant as an ice cream headache. Maybe I’d turned her into a sophist while getting my philosophy degree.

Great.

All thoughts of the argument fled my mind when I turned up my driveway, though, and found a cop car sitting near the house. What the heck?

Like the cops in South Liberty didn’t have enough to do today, looking into Ephraim Collins’s death. Why would they be bothering me? I sure hadn’t killed him. I hadn’t even seen him since I was a teenager, mean old mostly-shut-in that he’d been.

So I pulled up and parked in my driveway, casual as possible, then hopped out and let the cats out the passenger side, though I kept an eye on the cop car as I did so. While the cats were hopping out next to me, a tall older man stepped out of the sheriff’s car.

Literally, then, it was the sheriff’s car, because this was Pat Parker, the man who’d been sheriff in South Liberty for as long as I remembered. He looked a little like an old movie cowboy, with thick silver hair and what might even qualify as a handlebar mustache in the same shade. He was tall, but not one of those scarily tall guys, maybe just under six feet.

His smile was warm, and it did calm me somewhat. He wouldn’t smile at me if he were here to give me trouble, would he?

“Miss Jones,” he said, and his tone was all aww-shucks—he even ducked his head. “Not sure if you’ve heard about all the hubbub in town today, but it seems that Ephraim Collins went and got himself poisoned.”

I blinked in shock for a moment. Was he...was he saying I had something to do with it? No, he wouldn’t smile at a murder suspect, would he? Maybe he’d been poisoned with one of Mom’s—one ofmy—teas.

“I do hate to be a bother,” he continued, “but sometimes your mother, Miss Abernathy, that is, would help us out a little around the station with situations like this.”

Situations like this.

Murder? I couldn’t remember the last time we’d had a murder in South Liberty. If that had ever happened.

As though reading my mind, he winced. “Well, mostlywith situations a little less dire admittedly, but she was a great help, and I wanted to come by and see if—if maybe you were open to offering a little aid and direction to the sheriff’s office, times like this. Using those special skills, like your mother had.”

Help. He was asking me, random citizen, to help him solve a murder. Because Sabrina’s grandfather had been poisoned.

I blinked for a moment, just staring at him in shock, but then...what could I say? No? Oops, I’m not actually much of a witch like my mom was, so I don’t know what I can do?

That was the issue, really. I had no idea what I could—or couldn’t—do. Not the first clue. So before I agreed to do anything, I needed to figure out just what I was able to offer in a situation like this.

Assuming that was what he was asking.

But...what else could he be asking me for? I had a degree in philosophy, not criminal justice. Not forensics, or whatever science it was that cops got their degrees in.

I’d been quiet too long, though, and the cats were looking up at me like I had gone nutty. “I’ll, um, see what I can do,” I finally told him. “I’m not Mom, but I’ll do my best. Should I just come down to the station, or...”

He beamed at me, like he’d been offered a gift, and with the white mustache and hair, well, it put me in mind of Santa Claus, even though the sheriff didn’t look like he’d ever so much as seen a bowl full of jelly. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a card, holding it out to me. “You can,” he offered, “but I’m not always there. This is my number. You call anytime, day or night, and I’ll be happy to hear from you.”

Gingerly, I reached out and took the card, like it was a snake that might bite me. It just had his name and title, along with a number for the office, and one that was labeled “cell.” And just like that, I had the sheriff’s personal phone number.

Weird, and kinda squicky.

But he’d always seemed like a decent person, if not ever the one I most wanted to see. So I nodded and slid the card into the outside pocket on my purse. “I’ll let you know if I learn anything,” I promised.

I didn’t know if I expected to learn anything, but I certainly would tell him if I did.

“Much obliged, Miss Jones,” he answered, tipping his hat, and we were right back to that initial cowboy impression.

He went and climbed back into his car, and drove away as the cats and I watched.

I was just turning back toward the house when motion nearby caught my eye. The neighbor—specifically, the woman I remembered from my childhood. She was stalking through her yard with purpose, right up onto my grass, where Laverne was picking her way through the leaves looking for...whatever it was chickens looked for.

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