15. Quoth

In line at Ollie's to get our morning coffees, Heathcliff stared at the blinking dot on the tracking app Morrie set up for our main suspect on his phone, and muttered under his breath. Heathcliff muttering wasn't exactly a new thing, but I sensed a tension in him that had to be about Morrie abandoning us to help Mina.

"There are two of us," I said uneasily. "We don't need Morrie for this."

"Hmmmph."

We stepped up to the counter, and I ordered for both of us. I glanced at Heathcliff, but when he didn't look up from his phone, I paid for us both, too, and snuck in a cream doughnut with a big dollop of raspberry jam on top. Mmmm, raspberries. I was starving.

"She just appeared on the camera leaving the house." Heathcliff tucked his coffee under his arm as he allowed me to lead him around the tables and out of the shop. "She's dressed in her Sunday best. But is she going to church service? She's getting in her car."

"She only lives two blocks from church," I reminded him.

"Exactly. I think that we split up." Heathcliff tossed his phone at me. I managed to catch it, but not without sloshing hot coffee over myself. "Make that bring me an Uber. I'll go to Lachlan Hall. You follow Dorothy. And text Iwan back. He heard about the chocolate shipment from Mrs. Ellis and he thinks no one will be there to pick it up, so he's offered to head over, since he has something to do. That boy is too useful for his own good."

I stared at the phone. "But how will I contact you?"

He lifted my phone from my pocket. "Problem solved. Now, get going."

I took a long, sad glug of my coffee, then tossed it in a bin as I walked towards the church. People were starting to arrive for the Sunday morning service, but the churchyard was relatively empty. I snuck into the bushes as I navigated the Uber app and called Heathcliff a car. Then, I knelt on the ground and forced my shift. My bones cracked and snapped as my body rearranged itself, and the familiar itchy sensation crawled over my skin as my feathers poked through.

When I was fully bird, I used my beak to pull my clothes into a neat pile, picked up the phone in my talons, and took off. The heavy phone messed with my navigational capabilities, and as I half-soared, half-lurched over the village green, I saw Heathcliff getting into his Uber. I dived for his head, forcing him to dive for safety.

Serves you right for not learning how to use your own phone,I thought.

"I heard that, birdie," he yelled out the window as the car took off.

In my talons, Heathcliff's phone beeped. If I kinked my head to the side, I'd just be able to make out the map of Argleton with the little dot showing Dorothy Ingram's car. She was on the road heading towards Lachlan Hall, but she could be going anywhere. I had to quickly snap my head back as I listed too far to the right and nearly crashed into a power pole.

I'd forgotten to text Iwan before my shift, but we still had twenty minutes before our trap was sprung. I'd be able to text him once I was out of the sky. I checked the map again, flapping my wings harder so I could keep up. Hopefully, Dorothy would stop soon. This phone was heavy, and my flying was erratic and a bit terrifying.

I caught up with her vehicle on Baddesley Road, a long country lane with tall hedgerows on either side. There were another couple of cars a bit further up ahead, possibly delegates or staff for the National Trust conference. I could see Heathcliff's car a little behind hers. Dorothy passed the turnoff to the farm shop, which meant that she had to be heading to Lachlan Hall…

Except that she turned into a narrow country track, her tiny car bumping along the dirt road. The track looked to be part of the woods on the edge of the Lachlan estate. I had to get beneath the tree canopy to follow her, and the phone was now so unbearably burdensome that I settled for landing and dragging it along the ground.

Where is she going?

She came to a locked gate. A sign on the gate read:

PRIVATE PROPERTY. TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED

HUNTERS, PLEASE LEAVE WOODS AND GATES AS YOU FIND THEM

I hid in the bushes and watched Dorothy Ingram get out of her car, unlock the gate, and shut it behind her before driving on.

The phone vibrated in my talons. Someone was calling. It was probably Heathcliff trying to call me to tell me he'd made it to the hall. I drew back behind Dorothy's car so she wouldn't hear it.

After a couple of miles, Dorothy pulled into a small clearing in front of a dilapidated hunting bothy. A second car was already parked beside it. I watched Dorothy get out and go up to the door of the bothy. She had a key for it, too. She let herself inside.

A moment later, I could hear her voice, raised with concern.

Something was wrong.

The phone vibrated again. I dragged it even further back into the woods, in time to see Dorothy flee from the bothy and back into her car. I forced my shift and huddled, naked, beneath an old oak and picked up the phone. My own name flashed across the screen. Heathcliff.

I pressed it to my ear. "I followed Dorothy to this old hunting bothy in the woods on the Lachlan estate, but?—"

"Never mind that," Heathcliff snapped. "I'm in the loading bay now. We have a problem."

My chest clenched. "Has the saboteur struck again?"

"It's Iwan. I just tripped over his body. He's been hit over the head by your large decorative urn, and he's not breathing."