Just Horsing Around

Chapter 4

I opened the front door and immediately heard a plate smash in the kitchen. Uh oh, what was going on? Rushing through to the kitchen, I found my sister Charlotte grabbing the broom while my best friend Sophie looked both sheepish and frustrated.

Sophie’s dog Sprinkles and my cat Bee were both in the living room, both of them watching what was happening over the top of the couch cushions, out of the line of fire of any spare glass. Sprinkles and Bee, together in harmony? Something was definitely going on here.

“Hey guys,” I greeted. “What are you doing?”

“They’ve decided to see if Sophie is actually a witch, and it’s not going well. Sprinkles and I are fearing for our lives. Our lives!” Bee howled from her spot on the couch, and I had to supress a smile. My little black domestic shorthair definitely had a flair for the dramatic. But at the same time, really?

“Seriously?” I asked Charlotte, who simply shrugged her shoulders.

“What?”

“Is Bee telling the truth? Are you trying to see if Sophie has magical powers?”

“Of course we are,” Charlotte replied. “After all, it’s obvious she does. She can talk to Sprinkles.”

“So what exactly was this?” I asked, motioning to the poor fragments of what had formerly been a desert plate, now lying shattered on the ground.

“Well I was trying to see if Sophie could do a simple floating spell,” Charlotte started.

“And?” I asked, actually curious about the result.

“Do you really need to ask that?” Sophie asked. “It failed, so Charlotte floated the plate in the air and tried to see if I could keep it hovering instead of having to start the spell from scratch.”

“And you can see how well it went for them,” Bee added unhelpfully from her spot on the couch.

“Wow. Well, I can honestly say that I was not expecting this when I came back here.”

“Our other option was to come and spy on you and Jason on your date, so you should probably be pretty thankful Charlotte came up with this idea,” Sophie offered, and I laughed hollowly.

“Well, you would have been disappointed,” I replied.

“No!” Sophie said. “Was it you? It’s always you. Oh my God, you two are perfect for each other, stop sabotaging everything good that ever happens to you.”

Did I mention that Sophie also had a flair for the dramatic? I laughed and shook my head.

“No. Nothing like that. Although I’m pretty sure I should be insulted. But the date didn’t happen at all.”

I explained my afternoon to Sophie and Charlotte and watched as their mouths dropped open more and more.

“I can’t believe you’re actually a suspect in a murder!” Sophie exclaimed. “What kind of moron would suspect you?”

I shrugged. “I have no idea. I mean, I didn’t even know her!”

Charlotte shivered suddenly. “But so it means that someone who was on the property at the time of the murder is definitely the person who did it?”

“I mean, it has to be. Unless there was some super James Bond style plot to get onto the grounds undetected, but from what Susan told me, that would be pretty much impossible.”

Sophie grabbed her phone and started texting frantically.

“So chances are you’ve met who it is.”

I shrugged. “Well, maybe. I don’t know who else was on the property. But I imagine I met most of the people around.”

“You have got to stop getting into these situations, Angela,” Charlotte scolded suddenly, putting her hands on her hips. I threw my hands up in the air.

“Do you think I asked for this? I was just supposed to go in, take care of Touch of Frost, and get out, then go on my date with Jason. Which was cancelled while he desperately tries to get a story into the paper tomorrow, and I get interrogated by some cop.”

“And that cop is a class-A ass, apparently,” Sophie added, looking up from her phone. “I just asked Taylor about him.” Taylor Shaw was a police officer here in Willow Bay. Sophie had been dating him for a couple of months now, which by her standards made it one of her longer-term relationships. “Taylor can’t stand him. Says they guy’s full of himself, doesn’t listen to anyone else, and pretty much should have retired ages ago. But Wawnee can’t force him out. Taylor says if anyone’s going to screw up a murder investigation, it’s him.”

I put my head in my hands. “Great, this means I’m definitely going to jail. He’s going to think I did it for some dumb reason, and that’s going to be it for me.”

“Good,” said Bee from her spot on the couch. “You should be in jail, you lied to me about the dog staying here forever.” Apparently the truce between her and Sprinkles was over now that the magic experimentation had ended for the night.

“If I go to jail, Bee, then there won’t be anyone to feed you,” I retorted. “Then what will you do? You can’t operate the can opener on your own.”

“Charlotte won’t let me starve. Or I’ll find a different family. A better family, that doesn’t betray me by bringing a dog into the household.”

I rolled my eyes. “I told you, Bee, Sprinkles isn’t my dog. You’re still my pet, my only cat. Sprinkles is Sophie’s. And you’re lucky anyone wants you at all, you big drama queen.”

Bee replied by jumping onto the desk and knocking over a glass of water that had been sitting on it.

“Evaporao,”I said quickly, pointing at the water, focusing every ounce of mental power I had on the liquid falling towards the floor. In a flash, it disappeared. You learn to master the evaporation spell when you live with a cat. Bee glared at me, and I glared back at her.

“I’m so sorry to be a bother,” Sprinkles said shyly from his spot on the couch. “I don’t mean to intrude.” He was the sweetest dog on the planet.

“It’s alright, Sprinkles,” I told him, going over to the couch and giving him a pat. “You’re not intruding, Sophie invited you to live here with us, and you are very welcome here,” I told him. “No matter what someone else might tell you.”

Bee huffed her disapproval and went to hide inside the little box on top of her scratching post.

“Anyway, this isn’t about you,” I shot at her. “I’m the one in trouble here.”

Sophie came over and gave me a hug. “Don’t worry, Angie. You’re not going to jail. I won’t let him put you there. We can always poison him.”

I couldn’t keep myself from laughing at Sophie’s suggestion. She was always the type to go from zero to one hundred, with no in between.

“Or,” Charlotte added, “rather than actually committing murder, we can figure out who did it. After all, Angela’s getting pretty good at that sort of thing now.”

Sophie and I both looked up at Charlotte in surprise. Charlotte, actually suggesting that we investigate a crime? That was unheard of! Charlotte was the one who always thought Sophie and I were ridiculous, that we were putting ourselves in way too much danger.

“What?” Charlotte asked, noticing our looks of obvious disbelief.

“Well if you’re suggesting it, we definitely have to do it,” Sophie said.

“Yeah, for sure,” I agreed.

“I’m just looking at this logically,” Charlotte argued. “If there’s no way that police chief is going to figure it out on his own, and there’s a chance that Angela might get caught up in this when she’s completely innocent, well, the best way to fight is by finding out who the killer actually is.”

“We don’t disagree with you, Charlotte, we’re just surprised that you actually agree that this is the right course of action,” I told her. “Anyway, if you two don’t mind, I’m going to bed,” I said. “I’m way too tired to deal with anything right now. I’m starving and I don’t even have the energy to eat.”

I made it to my room, shut the door and was asleep before my head even hit the pillow.