Mind Tricks (24 page)

“Were you there alone?” Emma asked
Mickey.

He smiled. “No. I was on a date. A nice
guy, but one date was enough.”

“You probably weren’t paying too much
attention to the people there that night, then,” Emma said, sounding
disappointed.

“Well, as I might have suggested, it
wasn’t a great date. I actually spent a decent amount of time watching other
people because the conversation wasn’t a thrill a minute. Why?”

“Someone there must’ve drugged Jake’s
drink. Did you notice who stopped by Jake’s table?”

Mickey stared at both of them, his
astonishment plain. “No one had to stop by Jake’s table.” He shook his head.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you hadn’t realized this: Ginny’s the one who had the
best opportunity to drug Jake.”

“Of course,” Emma breathed beside
him, and Jake felt her grip on his hand tighten.

Ginny had drugged his drink? “That
doesn’t make any sense,” Jake objected. “What’s the point? So that I’d be
helpless when she got stabbed?”

Emma half turned on the couch so
that she was facing him. “Maybe she realized that you’d found out she was the
one spreading the rumors about Woodhaven going broke. And she guessed you were
going to fire her. To save her job, she drugged you so that she could seduce
you. If you two slept together, you’d have a much tougher time firing her.”

“Seems kind of complicated,” Jake
said doubtfully.

“Perhaps. But the other option—that
the killer drugged you—never made sense. Drugging you was a risky way to frame
you. And if you’d been drugged by accident—say, if you’d taken the drug meant
for Ginny—the killer would have realized that pretty quickly. Ginny
half-dragging you out the door would be a big tip-off that his plan went wrong.
I think Mickey’s right: Ginny drugged you.”

Jake grimaced. “So her killer could
be anyone. We’d been assuming that the killer knew me or Ginny, but if it was
simply a coincidence that Ginny drugged me and her killer happened to come
along that night, then I’m screwed. We have no leads at all.”

They sat in silence for a long
moment.

“Maybe there’s another explanation
we just don’t see yet,” Mickey offered, but he didn’t sound hopeful.

Beside him, Emma covered a yawn
with her hand. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m not bored; I just didn’t get a lot of
sleep last night.”

“Any news on Brutus?” Mickey asked,
leaning down to rub Lindy’s head.

She shook her head. “Nothing. The
dog just vanished.”

No—someone had broken into Emma’s
home, and then the dog had vanished. Jake slid a look at her. She probably
wouldn’t appreciate a he-man protection routine from him, but he didn’t like
thinking of her alone in the house, with her dog gone and someone able to
easily get inside.

Well, that was easily solved. He’d
invite himself over.

Jake stood and glanced out the
window at the darkness coating Mickey’s backyard. “I’m tired, too, so let’s
call it a night. Thanks for hearing us out, Mickey.”

His uncle’s eyebrows twitched when
Jake said “us,” but he didn’t comment. “That’s a good plan. It can be a long
drive back to Camden in the dark.”

Jake nodded. Not that he had any
intention of going back there tonight, if Emma was agreeable.

• •

Emma’s spine tightened as they
stepped onto the wooded path between Mickey’s house and her own. She’d never
felt nervous when taking this walk at night before. But she’d never had her dog
kidnapped from her home before, or been involved with a man who’d witnessed a
murder.

Within a few moments Mickey’s porch
light was eclipsed by the tree trunks, like a lighthouse beam swallowed by
deadly fog. As her eyes adjusted, the path whispered out before her, a ghostly
gray ribbon threaded through the black background. She put her right hand up by
her face to make sure she didn’t slap herself silly on an invisible branch.

Jake’s warm hand closed around her
left, infusing her with a sudden burst of reassurance. “You okay? You’re
awfully quiet.”

With anyone else, she would have
deflected the question, turned the conversation to another topic. But this was
Jake. She could trust him. Maybe even rely on him.

“With all that’s gone on in the
past week, the woods are making me nervous. It’s so dang dark.”

“Good,” he said.

She nearly jerked her hand away.
“Good?”

“Because it’s the perfect
opportunity for me to say, ‘Honey, can I stay with you tonight?’ And maybe get
a yes in reply.” He paused. “Since you can see what I’m thinking, you must know
that I want to spend as much time as possible with you—even time when we’re
both unconscious. Plus, I’m worried. I don’t want to leave you alone.”

She let her hand relax in his
again. It had been a long time since she’d had anyone aside from her family
worry about her. Maybe never, even. “In that case, yes.”

He swung their hands between them
like kids did on a playground, and the black belly of the woods seemed to
lighten a little.

“Someday,” he said, “I’d like to
tell Mickey about your mind-reading skills. Not tomorrow, not next month, but
whenever you’re ready. I know he’d be supportive, not freaked out.” Wryly, he
said, “He’d be more supportive and less freaked out than I was, that’s for
sure.”

She laughed. “You’re doing all right.”

“Who else knows? Your family?”

“Yes—my sister, Jennie, and my
parents. And my brother-in-law, who was more skeptical than you, if possible,
but has finally come around. My nephews haven’t been told, I don’t think.
They’re too young. A few people from college.” Too many people. “An entire town
in North Carolina.” Not that they’d believed her. And Trisha had paid the
ultimate price for that disbelief.

The last thought almost halted her.
When had she stopped berating herself for Trisha’s suicide and decided that the
townspeople were the ones to blame?

She took a deep breath and prodded
at her memories of Trisha. Instead of the usual hot, acidic guilt, a
rough-edged regret surged forward in her heart. Regret that she hadn’t been
able to convince anyone that Trish’s dad was a monster. Regret that she and
Trish never had the chance to swap college stories, drink martinis together
while wearing high heels, and share advice about boyfriends.

But not guilt. Not anymore.

Maybe it had taken another death to
wake her up. Or maybe it was Jake’s acceptance that had started to heal that
wound.

“Those are all the people who
know?” Jake asked.

“Plus a bunch of people in
Maryland,” she added. A bunch of jerks.

“So it’s not exactly a secret.”

Whoa—she needed to stop that train
of thought immediately. “It’s a secret here,” she said firmly. “That’s the
decision I made when I moved to Maine. I get into too much trouble when I tell
people. Maryland proved that.”

“What happened?”

Tales of stalkings and violence
weren’t really the best ones to tell while walking through the night-blackened
woods, but Jake strode beside her, trustworthy and strong.

“In Maryland, being a psychic—not a
pet psychic, but a human one—was my side job. One of my many side jobs. I
interpreted dreams, did a little energy manipulation…and sometimes helped a
local private investigator with his marital infidelity cases.” She turned her
head to look at Jake, but his face was a pale thumbprint against the forest,
and she couldn’t read his expression. She could look in his mind, of course,
but she needed to stay out of there if they wanted to have a normal
relationship. “I know, it was kind of sleazy, but I wasn’t making a whole lot
of money, and I needed the work. I didn’t sit around in short dresses at bars,
trying to pick up these guys. I would follow them into a 7-Eleven or the
hardware store or the grocery store, then touch their arm or hand while I asked
them where the orange juice was, or something. My expertise wasn’t used to
convince the spouse who’d started the investigation but to help the
investigator figure out how to pursue the case.”

“And then someone found out.”

She sighed. “Right. One of the PI’s
partners told his girlfriend, and she told one of
her
friends, and it finally reached the ears of the local paper’s
reporter, who hadn’t broken a real story in years. I refused to comment, but it
didn’t matter. Plus, I was already advertising myself as a psychic of sorts, so
I couldn’t exactly refute that part.”

“What happened?”

Her voice sounded unnaturally flat
even to herself. “Later that week one of the cheating husbands spray-painted my
car. I called the police, and they picked him up, but it was just the beginning
of the vandalism, hang-ups in the middle of the night, and other stuff I had to
deal with.” She shrugged, her shoulders stiff. “One night someone lit my
garbage cans on fire. As soon as they were put out, I tossed my stuff in the
back of my car and left town.”

Jake’s hand tightened on hers. “I
promised earlier not to tell anyone about your telepathy,” he said. “Even
Mickey. And I meant it.”

“I know.” She did know, because his
sincerity was nearly singeing her skin.

The trees in front of them were no
longer a solid wall but had outlines. They must be approaching her house, where
the woods thinned and allowed moonlight to splay in patches on the earth.

“I’m sorry you went through that,”
Jake said, “but I can’t be sorry that you ended up here.”

She had to smile. “Embroiled in a
murder investigation, with my dog kidnapped?”

He snorted. “Hardly.” He wheeled
her around and pulled her into his arms. “I meant
here
.” His mouth brushed one, two feather-light kisses against her
lips before he descended deeper even as she rose up on her toes.

“I’m very glad I’m spending the
night,” he whispered against her mouth as he pulled away a few moments later.
He got them walking again, and it was a good thing that he now had his arm
slung around her waist, for her knees were definitely trembly.

They broke out of the woods and
onto her lawn fringed by the flicker of waltzing fireflies. “Home, sweet home,”
he said, and smiled down at her.

• •

The ringing of the phone jerked
Jake awake. He blinked, trying to focus in the blackness. Emma curled against
him, warm and soft. It was darker now than it had been when they’d gone to bed
and, well, not immediately gone to sleep. The moon must’ve set.

Another ring cut through the
silence. Emma groaned and rolled toward the phone on the night table. “Hello?”
she answered. “Oh, hi, Mickey.” A pause. “Yes, he’s here.” She handed the receiver
to Jake and then flipped a pillow over her head.

His lungs had trouble pulling in
enough air. This couldn’t be good. Maybe one of his parents had had a heart
attack, or Daniel had slipped out of the half-death of his coma and into full
oblivion. “What’s wrong?”

“Thank God! Do you know how much of
a scare you gave me?”

“I gave you? You’re the one
tracking me down in the middle of the night. What’s going on?”

“Jake, your condo is on fire.”

The fire howled in the night,
gorging on not just Jake’s condo but the other three in the same building. Emma
could taste the heat and cinders in the air, and she took another step
backward. They had been able to see the glow while still a mile away, and Jake
had gone silent for the last few minutes of the drive.

A low babble filled in the spaces
between the crackling of the flames. It seemed like hundreds of neighbors had
trotted outside to watch the display. “Better than fireworks,” she heard one
boy say to his mother in awed tones. Emma winced.

Jake hadn’t heard the comment; he
was still busy talking to a fire official, who was taking notes.

Farther down the street and within
the loose cordon the firefighters had set up, a figure began to walk in Jake’s
direction. Oh, great. Detective Cooperman.

Despite the billowing heat, Emma
suddenly felt cold. She’d assumed that the fire was an accident—a dropped
cigarette or a stove left on. But Cooperman’s presence signaled the possibility
of more.

She held her breath as Cooperman
approached. Jake had his back to the detective and didn’t see him. But just
before Cooperman reached Jake, the detective veered away.

Straight toward her.

“Ms. Draper,” he said, his smile as
brief as an eyelash flicker. If he was trying to pretend to be friendly, he had
some work to do on his people skills. “Are you here with Mr. Vant or just an
observer?”

“We drove here together from my
house.” She might as well be up front about it. Both the fire department and
the police would ask Jake why he wasn’t in his condo when the fire began.

Cooperman’s gray-blond brows
jumped. “Fancy that. Yet you told me you didn’t know each other well.” And he
looked her up and down.

She wasn’t sure if the scorching
heat on her cheeks was from the flames weaving heavenward or indignation. A
delightful choice: she could be a liar or an easy lay. “Well, that was several
days ago. Things have changed.”

“Mmm. Here’s the thing. You also
told me that you and Mr. Vant barely even spoke to each other until
after
Ms. Lamberton was killed. However,
a few people have told me otherwise—said you’d been friends for a while.”

But that just wasn’t true. “Who?”
she demanded.

Cooperman shook his head, and his
barely believable pose of friendliness dropped away, leaving his eyes cold as
bullets. “Doesn’t matter who. What matters is that you lied to me. Which means
you’re hiding something.”