“The first place we have to go is the motel so you can meet Nita.”
“Is she a suspect?”
“No, but she’s my best friend around here, and wouldn’t it look funny for me to show off my handsome New York boyfriend to everyone in town without first introducing you to my best friend?
Besides, something weird happened at the motel a few nights ago. A window disappeared entirely, like that time you made the restaurant windows vanish. There wasn’t any broken glass lying around, and nothing was stolen.”
“The motel is the pink place on the north side of town, right?”
“That’s it.”
“You must really like it, then.”
I groaned. I’d clearly never live down the pink room. At least Owen was showing signs of a sense of humor instead of being more stone-like than Sam.
Nita was sitting behind the front desk, reading a pastel-covered book with a stiletto-clad foot on the cover. She glanced up when the front door bell jingled, took one look at Owen, and her jaw dropped.
It seemed to take her a full minute to realize I was with Owen, and then she looked even more shocked. Owen, as usual, blushed furiously, which had the effect of making him even more adorable.
“Hi, Nita,” I said, wondering if I needed to do CPR or at least check for a pulse. “You’ve got to meet Owen, my friend from New York who’s here for a visit. Owen, Nita and I have been friends since fourth grade.”
Owen hit her with one of his heart-melting smiles and said, “Nice to meet you.”
“Huh? Uh, New York, yeah,” she stammered. Then she pulled herself together. “And you left New York? With him there? And you never told me about him?”
Owen’s blush deepened. “It’s a long story,” I explained. “I didn’t really want to talk much about it.”
Her eyes got even wider, then she narrowed them meaningfully at me. In other words, we would be talking later. Now recovered fully and back to her usual perky self, she asked Owen, “So, how long are you in town?”
“A few days.”
“Do you need a place to stay? We have vacancies. Lots of vacancies.”
“Mom already got him,” I said. “He’s in Dean and Teddy’s old room.”
“I’ll have to talk to her about competing with me, but I don’t blame you. We don’t have breakfast here. I’m still trying to convince my dad that we should turn it into a bed-and-breakfast.”
I looked over and saw that the window was back in place, the plastic gone. “Hey, you got the window fixed.”
“Yeah, Ramesh must have done it last night when he got bored enough—goodness knows the night shift gets boring. It was like that when I took over this morning.”
Owen wandered over to the window in question and placed a hand on the glass, as if out of idle curiosity. While he was occupied, Nita flipped up the desk gate to run into the lobby, grab me, and pull me off to the far corner. “Oh my God, Katie, he’s, like, gorgeous! Why didn’t you say anything?
I knew it was a broken heart! And now he’s come to get you! You’ll have to tell me everything when you get a chance.”
“Later,” I promised her. Then I raised my voice to a normal speaking level. “I guess we’d better move on. I’m showing Owen around the town today.”
“And hiding out from your mom, I bet,” Nita added. “How big a family dinner did she try to plan for tonight?”
“The works, but we scored a one-night reprieve.”
She smiled up at Owen and extended a hand to shake his. “It was very, very nice to meet you. Have fun!” As we left the lobby, I glanced over my shoulder to see her miming, “Call me!”
“Well?” I asked Owen once we were in the car.
“Magic,” he confirmed. “It was sloppy, oozing all over the place, but I think I recognized the remnants of the spell.”
“So if our guy isn’t actively, knowingly using bad magic, he’s at least trying to use magic to commit crimes. Why else would he have removed the motel window? He was probably trying to rob the place, but Nita almost caught him.”
“This could get ugly,” he muttered.
“Next stop should probably be the pharmacy,” I said. “There are a couple of possible suspects there, and that’s the place where Mom thought Gene was getting prescriptions for free. But I think that if anyone in that transaction was using magic or would use magic to shake people down for money, it was Lester, the pharmacist. He’s a mean old skinflint. Think Scrooge before the ghosts, only with less hair and with a stockpile of drugs.”
