Page 29 of Lion's Share
So that was why I was at Feathers and Fur the next morning, puttering around and straightening up things, wondering if I’d still made a mistake by coming in. Saturdays could either be crazy-busy or completely dead, the way they were at this particular moment, and it was sometimes hard to tell which kind of day I was going to have until I got to work.
Well, at least I would only be there for three hours. Just from ten in the morning until one in the afternoon, which would still give the people of Silver Hollow enough time to stop by and pick up that flat of cat food right before they ran out, or hurry in to get a replacement chew toy after their dog destroyed the last one.
The bell on the door jingled a little before noon, and I looked up from the batch of new leashes I’d been tagging while I stood at the counter.
A woman stood just inside the entrance. She had blonde hair pulled into a tight knob of a bun at the nape of her neck and the kind of strong features the people of my grandmother’s generation might have called handsome rather than pretty. Even though she wasn’t wearing an obvious badge, her tailored black jacket and pants and crisp, light blue collared shirt practically screamed FBI.
My stomach sank, even as I told myself it was inevitable that she — or her partner — would stop by at some point. At least they’d seen Tory first, and she’d been able to warn me they were making the rounds, so I wasn’t caught completely flat-footed.
“Hi, there,” I said, doing my best to sound friendly and not as though I was hiding enough secrets for multiple FBI investigations. “Can I help you with something?”
The woman’s gaze tracked from the shelves of dog and cat food and supplements and treats over to me. In contrast to her hair, they were dark brown, and I wondered if she bleached it.
“Your name, please?”
She’d said “please,” but I knew that was only a formality.
Still, my identity was such common knowledge that I realized I couldn’t hand her a lie.
“Sidney Lowell,” I said. “This is my store.”
At once, the woman’s dark eyes narrowed. “‘Lowell’?” she repeated. “Your mother and grandmother went missing earlier this year, correct?”
Again, nothing I could hide, not when the story had been all over the papers and the FBI had been called in to help with the investigation. I didn’t recall this woman being part of the team that searched the forest, but she’d probably been briefed about the operation before being assigned here.
“Yes,” I replied. “The store has been in my family for more than sixty years, so when my mother and grandmother disappeared, I came home to handle things until they got back. I was going to school at UC Davis.”
“To get your DVM,” the woman said, confirming my belief that she already knew far more about me than I would have preferred. Her head tilted to one side as she added, “Do you have any evidence to suggest they’ll return?”
Her tone was so neutral that I couldn’t really take umbrage at those words, but irritation flared anyway. However, I knew I couldn’t lose my temper. No, I needed to be exactly what I seemed — a woman grappling with recent loss, but with no ulterior motives, no secrets to hide.
“‘Evidence’?” I echoed, then shook my head. “None at all. I guess I’m just going on faith right now. Since none of the investigations turned up any remains or any evidence of foul play, I’m going to keep believing they’re out there somewhere and will come home when they can.”
The female agent’s gaze remained stony, but she didn’t appear eager to contradict me. Most likely, she was telling herself she didn’t need to go down that path, not when my relatives’ disappearance wasn’t the reason for her being in town right now.
“And you are?” I went on, figuring I might as well know who I was talking to. I’d given her my name, but she hadn’t seemed inclined to provide me with hers.
“Special Agent Rebecca Morse,” she said, pulling out a thin black leather wallet and briefly flashing me her credentials. “We’re in town investigating some unusual phenomena.”
“Such as…?”
She returned the wallet to her jacket pocket. “The electrical and cellular disturbances.”
I put my hands on my hips and said with a wry smile, “Isn’t that something PG&E or the various cell phone companies should be dealing with?”
“Under most circumstances, yes. But in the case of Silver Hollow, the companies in question have already ruled out any sort of mechanical or technical causes.” She paused there, dark eyes looking as if they wanted to drill right inside my skull and see what I was hiding in there. “Have you seen anything unusual over the past few weeks?”
Bursting into wild, hysterical laughter probably wouldn’t be a very good response. The grainy image from the trail cam footage of the griffin exploding into the forest through the portal and the subsequent battle with the unicorn wanted to play in my head, and I tried to shove it away as best I could.
“Not really,” I said, hoping I’d mixed the proper amount of concern for our beleaguered electrical grid with utter innocence as to what could possibly be the cause. “I hope you get to the bottom of it, though — all these glitches are really getting old. And I’m sure people are going to start arguing about updating the power system here in town all over again, even though everyone knows it just isn’t in the budget.”
Now Agent Morse’s expression had turned ever so slightly distant, as if she knew she needed to be paying attention to me but had absolutely no interest in small-town squabbling over city expenditures.
Which was exactly the reaction I’d been hoping for.
“Nothing at all strange?” she pressed, although again, the tone of her voice seemed to tell me she was asking the question because she was expected to ask it and not because she thought I’d provide any useful information.
I opened my mouth to say no…and then it was as if an inner monologue started running in my mind, one I knew wasn’t mine.
