Page 42 of The Claiming of the Shrew
“Right now, actually.” He used the hand on her back to guide her to fall into step with him. “Maggie’s in her trailer right now.I’ve been staking it out for the last couple of hours. I thought about confronting her there, but I figured I’d get you first.”
She bounced a little. “Did you find out what she turns into?”
“Yeah.” Fawkes grinned. “She’s a magpie.”
“No.”
“Well, we knew she was some kind of bird.”
“A magpie.” She shook her head. “Where is the jewelry now?”
“Hester has it. I got back the two pieces I was hired to retrieve, and she’s returned the pieces she knows were taken from her guests. She’s the only other person who knows that Maggie might be the culprit, unless she’s told someone else. Well, Mauro probably knows.”
“What about Ralph?” Leah asked as they walked swiftly out to the campground “What happened to him?”
“He was given the boot while we were ...” He squeezed her waist briefly. “Halstadt drove him to the nearest town and turned him loose with his suitcases. Honestly, it’s kinder than he probably deserves, but calling the police would just risk exposing too much of this situation that shifters can’t talk about. If he comes back looking for revenge, we can bring the law down on him like a ton of bricks.”
“It’s all right,” Leah said. Her anger at Ralph had faded now that she was safe. “He was pretty awful, but hopefully he can find somewhere he might be less awful. Or at least a job that’s not in theater.” She looked up at Fawkes. “What are we going to do about Maggie?”
“I don’t know. Let’s see what she says first.”
The door of Maggie’s trailer was closed, but as they approached, Leah heard rustling and thumps from inside.
Fawkes touched his finger to his lips and leaned close to Leah’s ear. “I’m going to walk around the outside and close any open windows. Wait a minute and then knock on the door. If she tries to attack you, I’ll be there in a split second.”
He slipped off, and Leah waited a moment, then stepped up to the door and knocked. The noises from inside stopped.
“It’s Leah. I just want to talk.”
A moment later, the door opened. Maggie was wearing a one-piece, easy-on easy-off dress and was barefoot, which suggested she’d shifted recently. She looked tired, pale, and worried. There was an open suitcase on the floor behind her legs.
“This isn’t a good time,” she said in an unfriendly tone.
“Oh, I think it’s a great time,” Fawkes said, looming behind Leah.
Maggie let out a cry. She scrambled backward, and an instant later, as Leah and Fawkes stepped inside, her dress collapsed and a large black and white bird fluttered out. Fawkes slammed the door before she could get to it.
The trailer was too small to have individual rooms, but it had a curtain closing off the sleeping area. The bird struggled through that, and then there was a bonk and a despairing squawk. When they arrived on her heels, Fawkes in front of Leah, Maggie had shifted back and was kneeling on her bed, naked, opening the window with human hands.
“Stop that,” Fawkes said. He pushed her against the wall with a hand on her shoulder and closed the window again. “You’re not going anywhere. But we aren’t planning to hurt you. We know you’re the jewel thief. What in the world is going on with you?”
Maggie looked wildly from him, to Leah standing just inside the curtain. She was trapped. Taking a long breath, she pulled a blanket off the bed to cover herself.
“Let me get dressed,” she said quietly. “I’ll make some tea. I’m not going to run. I’ll tell you everything.”
A few minutes later, they were at the trailer’s small fold-down table, Fawkes and Leah crowded together on the seat toward the door, and Maggie, dressed again, on the other side. She had made three cups of tea and opened a box of cookieswhich she hadn’t touched. Leah, thinking of Gloria’s makeup being tampered with, didn’t sample either the cookies or the tea, and she noticed Fawkes also ignored them. She still wasn’t sure Maggie hadn’t been involvedsomewhere.
“So we’re pretty sure you left a bunch of jewelry in my room to throw suspicion on me, and made up a reason to get Leah thrown off the set so she’d stop looking into it,” Fawkes said. “Does that sound about right?”
Maggie looked down at her tea, with both her hands wrapped around the cup. “It sounds like you already have all the answers, so why haven’t you called the police yet? I know you’re a P.I. As soon as Leah started hanging around with you, I looked into you, too.”
“Is that why you put the stolen stuff in his room?” Leah wondered if they’d already been moved when she and Fawkes were searching the rooms. They must have been. The jewelry might have been in Maggie’s room just hours earlier. They had been so close!
Maggie looked away.
“Yeah, but why?” Fawkes asked. “You steal stuff and then do what with it? Turn it in for the insurance or something? Just carrying it around with you is an awful risk.”
“I ... need it,” Maggie said. She swallowed. “I’m a magpie. They love shiny things. You both have inner animals that sometimes urge you to do things, right?”
