“It was bad.” I clicked faster, the sound of my heels on the sidewalk satisfying some small need for violence. Soon it would be too slippery for such pleasures. “Drew thought I’d lost my mind.”
“The spontaneous outburst put the floral nail in the coffin of sanity,” Mr. Bixby said, chuckling. He was pulling on the end of the lead with Bijou. “I admire your talent for making a statement, Janelle.”
I ignored him and handed his leash to Ren, which left her managing more than forty pounds of canine competition. For the moment, I needed a break.
“You can’t stay mad at Bixby,” Sinda said. “He’s your destiny. I felt it years before I knew you. That’s why I made your pendant.”
Touching it again now, I felt its warmth under the cool metal. “He’s so annoying. Wasn’t that interrogation stressful enough? The cops were basically accusing me of killing Angus MacDuff.”
“They’ll move on,” Sinda said. “It’s happened before, remember?”
“Lazy police work.” Bixby panted from below. “Going after the low-hanging witch.”
I glared at him, knowing he could feel it if not see it. “You’re already in my bad books and you want to throw forbidden words onto the fire?”
“In for a penny, in for a pound. Was any real harm done?”
“Yes, wiener boy.” Bijou wasn’t panting at all, thanks to her longer legs and elegant stride. “You embarrassed Witchy in front of the love of her life. Like it or not, they’re fated.”
He turned his muzzle to her and lost ground instantly. “How would you know, silly poodle? Janelle and I are already fated. You heard Sinda.”
“I’ve been around this block more than once, little sausage. Unlike you, I paid attention to romance. It’s a powerful force. That’s why I fully support Renny and her sweetheart, Ethan.”
Ren, Sinda and I exchanged curious glances. We knew Bixby and Harold had lived only once before. It sounded like Bijou had more incarnations behind her. Maybe I wasn’t the first or only route back for canine souls.
“Thank you, Bijou,” I said, taking her leash from Ren. “I appreciate the reassurance.”
“Always, Witchy. You gave me Renny-Ren-Ren. My destiny.” Her light giggle was infectious. “When you calm down you’ll see it was funny.”
Hiccupping flowers into existence wasn’t the worst thing I could do. But hiccupping them into the pockets of police officers wasn’t good, either.
“Past funny and into slapstick,” Bixby said. “Watching Jimmy try to get away from that bloom was a highlight of my second life.”
Ren gave his leash a little jerk. “Never mind, Bixby. This has been quite a day already. Don’t make it worse.”
Chief Dredger had been surprised but not terribly concerned about his flower. I got the sense he’d seen stranger things happen in his long policing career in Wyldwood Springs.
Drew was perplexed, mostly because his sunflower resisted all efforts to be uprooted.
And poor Jimmy… He’d taken off into the stacks squeaking like a ghost was after him. In fact, it was. Skye enjoyed herding the junior officer with a cold breeze at his heels.
“That part was awesome, I admit,” Bixby said. “Hope Jimmy gets nipped.”
All three humans burst out laughing and the dogs joined in. A middle-aged couple split apart to give us a wide berth on the sidewalk. Raucous amusement made people almost as uncomfortable as opportunistic flora.
“The police don’t know you’re behind the sunflowers,” Ren said, when the laughter subsided. “Normal people wouldn’t expect a hiccup to produce such things. At worst, they thought you were tipsy, and the paramedics confirmed you were fine.”
There was a bruise on my temple from my fall, so the paramedics had decided I might be mildly concussed and sent me home with information on warning signs.
“Were floral eruptions on the list?” Bixby asked.
“One more quip and I’m dropping you at animal services,” I said, switching out leashes with Ren. Although Bijou was happy to help me in any way she could, I felt her anxiety at being disconnected from Renata. Logic told me Bixby felt the same way and expressed it with verbal tomfoolery. He always told me that’s what I needed and he was probably right.
“There’s no probably about it,” he said, reading my mind. “Without me, you’d stay mired in embarrassment and we have a crime to solve.”
“Why do we have to solve it?” I asked. “Angus is a powerful warlock who held his own against Ruthann and Liberty, remember? We only prevailed because I exploited his weakness for his daughter.”
The dog glanced back at me. “Exactly. You figured out how to disable him. Might have been better to dispatch him permanently. Would have saved trouble now, agreed?”
“I’m one of the good guys. I don’t kill people.”
One of the good guys who said awkward things out loud. A distinguished silver-haired gentleman stepped into the road to avoid me.
Bixby shouted after him, “She said she doesn’t kill people, coward.”
“Stop it, wiener,” Bijou said. “Witchy may not do that on purpose but it could happen again by accident if you get her too flustered. Remember your job.”
Sinda and Ren looked at me quickly. Again, the sometimes giddy poodle surprised us. Every day with these dogs brought new discoveries.
“I’ll try to keep my accidents to floral explosions, Bijou,” I said. “But thanks for reminding me of the potential for unintended consequences of my ailment. Liberty did cause at least one person’s death that way. There may have been more.”
The hilarity had faded out like a short-lived flower and we walked on in silence.
Finally, Sinda asked, “You really saw nothing of use in Angus’s mind?”
“Nothing. As in no memories past the early part of the wedding. It seemed like most of his life had been wiped clean, like a computer hard drive.”
“Except for what someone wanted him to remember,” Bixby pointed out.
