Mind Tricks (6 page)

• •

Emma crammed the pillow over her
head, threatening her ability to breathe, but the damn dog’s wet muzzle managed
to sneak through and dollop a mixture of cold snot and saliva on her cheekbone.

“Argh!” Sitting up straight, she
glared at Brutus’s dark form barely outlined by the moonlight. “Can’t you just
sleep? And let me sleep? Is that so much to ask?”

Her bedroom door was a tad too
warped from the steam heat that warmed this place in the winter to close within
its frame, and Brutus kept coming in and checking on her—every ten minutes. At
this rate, she’d go insane from sleep deprivation and kill the mutt. She was
going to have to throw him outside and hope that he didn’t launch an escape
from his kennel.

Wait—the guest bedroom door closed…barely.
Slipping out of her sheets, now garnished with dog drool, Emma moved through
patches of moonglow on the floor and out into the hall. Even in the dim light,
she could see the sheets thrown back on the guest bed, a reminder of its most
recent inhabitant.

It was a warm night, but suddenly
her arms goose pimpled. Sure, she would be sharing sheets with Jake Vant, but
long after he’d left them. Not exactly a reason to get all girly and giggly. If
he were still in the bed, on the other hand…

She squeezed her eyes shut and then
opened them again. Sadly, Jake didn’t magically appear, sprawled in slumber the
way she’d last seen him here.

Anyway, he was a jerk, she reminded
herself. A stunning lack of social life was the only reason she was thinking
about him.

 
Entering the room, she snapped the door shut
behind her a split second before Brutus could shove his clammy muzzle through.
She flopped on the bed. Thank God, peace and solitude at last.

Experimentally, she sniffed the
pillow. Wasn’t Jake’s scent—woodsy or tangy like the ocean or something virile
like that—supposed to cling to the pillows and sheets for days afterward? All
the books said so. But she couldn’t smell anything other than the faintest
whiff of fabric softener. She should be thankful that at least the pillow
didn’t smell like dog.

Jake Vant. It didn’t take a
fortune-teller to figure out he was going to be trouble. Maybe not
deliberately, but trouble all the same. Already she’d let him get a little
closer than anyone else in town, despite his skeptical attitude.

Well, if he showed up again, she’d
be mightily surprised. The last thing a suspected killer needed was to be
connected to a wacko.

And the last thing she needed was a
desperate man finding out her secret.

• •

The next morning she nearly killed
herself stumbling over Brutus lain out like an extra-lumpy bearskin rug in the
hall. After dragging on some sweats, she led Brutus outside to the leash line,
where he galloped to the end before being stopped with a jerk.

A blistering shower and two cups of
high-octane coffee scraped away the morning cobwebs. Ian would be arriving in
any minute, and she needed to talk to him about Jake’s presence in her house
yesterday, clear up any misconceptions. Platonic—that’s all her and Jake’s relationship
was. Maybe even acerbic. She was a sober-minded businesswoman, and she didn’t
date suspected murderers, no matter how good-looking. Nor did she date men who
thought she was a con artist. Two strikes against Jake Vant.

But just as Ian came through the
back door, the phone rang, and Emma had to talk to a client about rescheduling
an appointment.

After she jotted down the new date
in her schedule, Emma pulled on a pair of rubber boots and then joined Ian at
the kennels out back.

They walked around the enclosures,
eyeballing the dogs for any problems before they went in to feed them. Ian had
dressed for the hot and humid weather, wearing a tank top that showed the
freckles on his skinny pale shoulders and shorts that looked comical with the
knee-high rubber boots he was wearing.

He pointed out a shallow hole
inside one of the kennels. “Look, Goldilocks is digging.”

“Just what we need: another dog
who’s watched
The Great Escape
too
many times with her parents.”

“I’ll spend more time exercising
her today. Maybe she just has too much energy.”

“Good plan.”

They walked in silence for a few
moments. How to introduce the subject?
So,
Ian, speaking of getting exercise, that
wasn’t
what I was doing with Jake yesterday….

But Ian did the job for her. “I
didn’t know you were a friend of Jake’s,” he said, glancing at her quickly and
then looking away. “So if I said anything yesterday about him that pissed you
off, I’m sorry.”

Oh, jeez. The poor kid had probably
stayed up all night, worrying if he’d offended her.

Moving on instinct, she wrapped one
arm around Ian’s shoulders and pulled him into a half hug. She’d forgotten to
seal off her mind, though, and his thoughts abruptly cascaded into her like
confetti thrown from a cruise ship.

…idiot…think
before you open your mouth…Cynthia was surprised…Jake’s known as a smart guy,
so it makes sense he’s with Emma…is she angry?…

She breathed out slowly and removed
her arm. All right. So now she knew she definitely hadn’t lost it. She’d
wondered yesterday if perhaps her ability to read people had faded, since she’d
had so much trouble with Jake. But there went that theory. In fact, if
anything, her gift seemed stronger after being sent into hibernation for so
long.

Damn
it.
She squeezed her eyes closed for a half second, hoping Ian believed it
to be a strong blink against the morning sun and not her forcing back sudden
tears. Was she ever going to be normal? Ever be able to touch someone without
having his or her thoughts thrust into her head?

“Ian, I’m not pissed off.” Deep
breath. Another smile at him. “I wouldn’t even call him a friend, really. But
he can’t—” She snapped her mouth shut. Jake blanking out about the night Ginny
was killed was his private information, not something she should spread around.

She took a different tack. “You
know how I sometimes do energy work on animals to help them relieve stress?
Well, I was doing something very similar to Jake. With his friend being killed
the night before last, he was pretty stressed. And he fell asleep in the middle
of it.” There: that should scotch all the
he-fell-asleep-in-the-middle-of-having-sex-with-her rumors.

“I didn’t know you did bodywork on
people, too,” Ian said. He looked impressed.

“That’s because I don’t. It was an
experiment—and one I don’t think I’ll do again.”

“Well, you must be good, if you
relaxed him enough to make him fall asleep.”

Narrowing her eyes, she studied
Ian’s expression. Nope, no sarcasm. “Thanks, but I think he was pretty tired,
too. Anyway, don’t worry about offending me. He’s not a friend. I doubt we’ll
even see him over here again.”

• •

 
“Hi,” Jake said as soon as Emma opened the
door.

Emma’s eyes widened, but Jake
couldn’t tell whether she was unpleasantly shocked or pleasantly surprised to
see him on her threshold. Given how they’d left things yesterday, he’d be
deluded to imagine that she was speechless with delight. Before she could tell
him—again—to get out, he said quickly, “Want to go to lunch?”

She gave him a suspicious look.
“With Mickey, too?”

“Nope. Just you and me.”

“Why?” she asked baldly.

Because he was desperate. Because
his brother was in a coma, his buddies had abandoned him, and Mickey wasn’t
answering his phone or—as Jake had just discovered two minutes ago—at home.
Emma was close by. She’d helped him yesterday, as she’d pointed out.

“I need to talk to the waiter who
served me and Ginny two nights ago to see what he remembers. But I’m not sure
he’ll talk to me if I approach him alone. And”—this was outright flattery, but
he gave it a shot—“you seem like a good judge of character, so I want your
opinion on his trustworthiness.”

“Plus,” she added, “Mickey’s not
around.”

Ouch. “Plus that. Where is he,
anyway?”

“Yoga. Where he goes on Mondays and
Thursdays every week. He stopped in this morning for a cup of tea before
heading over there.”

Yoga? He hadn’t known his uncle was
taking yoga.

Emma shifted. “Listen…”

Uh-oh. He’d given enough sales
pitches to recognize a prelude to saying no. “Of course lunch is on me. The
food there is fantastic.”

She squinted at him distrustfully.
Flattery and cajoling weren’t working. Damn it, what would it take to get her
to go with him? He’d called the Waterview this morning and learned Mark’s shift
ended at two. It was twelve thirty now. He didn’t have the time to scare up
someone else to go with him.

There must be
something
she needed.

Wait—he remembered seeing Excel
charts on her living room table yesterday afternoon when they’d done the grand
tour before she’d put him to sleep, and Mickey had mentioned to him that Emma
wanted to expand her kennel business.

“Let’s make a deal. You go with me
to lunch, and tonight you can pick my brains about expanding a business. I took
Woodhaven from being a ten-million-dollar business operating in the red to a
thirty-million-dollar business firmly in the black.” Not bragging—the
straight-out truth. And watching his business suffer now was almost as painful
as being under suspicion of Ginny’s murder.

Her mouth pursed but she didn’t
reply at once. Good, she was wavering. Unfortunately, he didn’t have anything
more to toss on to tip the balance his way. Maybe he could give her puppy dog
eyes, the way a college girlfriend of his had done to him when she wanted
something. Nah. He’d look and feel ridiculous. Plus, if there was one thing a
kennel keeper was immune to, it was puppy dog eyes.

She sighed. “I know that I’m going
to regret this, but all right.”

He nodded shortly to conceal his
relief. “Great. Let’s go.”

“I need to grab my purse and tell
Ian I’m going out.” She paused. “Why don’t I meet you at your car?” And she
shut the door in his face.

With nothing to do but wait, he
leaned against the car and tilted his face up to the sun. He needed to get out
of the office more, to soak up the beauty of summertime Maine. But not under
these crappy circumstances.

 
When Emma came out the door, he was swamped by
the strange feeling that instead of going out to investigate Ginny’s killing,
they were going out on a date. After a moment, he figured out why. She’d
changed out of her worn jeans and T-shirt and put on a pair of dark blue slacks
and a rust-colored silk shirt that clung to all the curves the T-shirt had hidden.

A date. That would be an
interesting twist on things. And not a bad one. If she wasn’t someone who
bilked pet owners out of their money, that is. Of course, if you were silly
enough to believe in pet psychics in the first place, maybe you deserved to
lose a few bucks.

“So,” he said as soon as they were
on the main road between Camden and Baymill, “I don’t even know that much about
you.” On a normal day, he’d add,
You
could be a murderer for all I know
and then give a chuckle to break the
ice. But not today. “It’s funny, since you live so close to Mickey.”

Funny, but in a the-joke’s-on-you
sort of way, because he’d gone out of his way to avoid her. That clingy silk
shirt was telling him he’d been an idiot.

Eyes
back on the road, sonny, or you’re going to crash into a tree.

“I saw you at the Christmas Eve
party,” she reminded him.

“Right, but for just a moment.
There were tons of people there that night.” And he hadn’t wanted to spend any
time with Mickey’s weirdo scam artist neighbor. “Are you originally from
Maine?”

“No.”

And…? Jake waited. Silence filled
the car.

“I grew up in North Carolina
mostly,” she finally added. “Spent a few years in Maryland.”

“Is your family still in North
Carolina?”

“No; in New Jersey. We moved there
when I was in high school.” A shadow flickered through her eyes. “They still
live there.”

Good. This was practically a real
conversation. “How did you decide to come to Maine? We’re notoriously
traditional here. I believe some even call us narrow-minded. I’d think it’d be
a tough location for a pet psychic.”

“Please don’t call me that. I’m not
psychic.”

He took a quick glance at her. Her
mouth was tight, her shoulders slightly hunched. “Everyone calls you that,” he
objected.

“They’re wrong.”

“Then how do you advertise
yourself?”

“I don’t advertise.”

Jesus. Jake rolled his eyes. “When
you speak to people about your
gift
,
what do you say?”

“I tell them I’m more attuned to
animals than most. It sounds less…scary.” She suddenly twisted in her seat to
face him. “Look, being sensitive to animals’ thoughts isn’t a gift. People
think you’re a little weird. Not to be respected; weird.” She silently
challenged him to deny it, but he couldn’t. Didn’t even want to. That’s exactly
what he thought. “And if you’re a psychic, you’re a straight-out freak.”

“Oh, come on. There are plenty of
people who claim to be psychic—”

“Claim to be, but who aren’t, so
very few people are bothered by them. But true mind-reading would really
disturb people. It would scare them.” She fixed her serious eyes on him. “How
would you feel if I could read your mind?”

A chill settled at the base of his
neck, and he gave his shoulders a twitch. Reactionary, petty, and even
downright mean thoughts skittered through his brain daily. No one else needed
to know that he could be so small-minded. Still: “Today, I’d be delighted.”