Mind Tricks (9 page)

Great—just great. Now his dad had
his feelings hurt. Jake shoved his phone back into his pocket. “My parents,” he
said shortly when Emma turned back to face him.

“I figured that out.” Her mouth
pursed. “Are they really more interested in the business than in you?”

“No.” Funny, after that
conversation, how he was so sure. But they were his parents, after all. He knew
their strengths as well as their flaws. “If chucking Woodhaven into the harbor
meant that I could shake this murder investigation, they’d do it in a heartbeat,
no regrets. But that’s not a bargain they can make.” Whether he’d be so
sanguine about giving up Woodhaven after slaving over it for eight years, he
wasn’t so sure.

“So they’re offering to help you
with the business while you deal with the police?”

“Right. But I think they’re just
trying to help any way they can.” Which didn’t make him feel any better about
yelling at his dad. Crap.

“Hey, Mr. Vant.”

Jake turned. Mark was loping toward
him from the employees’ entrance off the side of the Waterview. Drifting to
Jake’s side, Emma stopped close, her shoulder briefly brushing against his arm.

“Hi, Mark,” Jake said as the kid
slid to a stop in front of him. “Thanks for coming to talk to us.”

Us.
Had a nice ring to it.

“Do you know Emma Draper?” Jake
asked him. “She lives over in Baymill.”

“I’ve heard of her, but never
really met her.” Mark regarded her with open curiosity. “You’re the pet psychic
lady, right?”

Emma gave Mark a sweeter smile than
she’d given
him
when he’d called her
psychic. “I don’t predict the future or anything like that. I’m just more
attuned to animals’ thoughts and feelings than most people.”

“Cool. You’re like that babe on
Star Trek: The Next Generation
. She
could sometimes read aliens’ feelings, which I guess is basically the same
thing as what you do.”

“Basically,” Emma agreed. “No
aliens, though.”

“So.” Jake made a grab at the
conversation’s reins. “The police must have asked you if you saw someone drug
my drink, right?”

“Yeah. I didn’t, but it wouldn’t
have been that hard to, I don’t think.”

“Why not?”

“You had a lot of people over at
your table, remember? I swear, almost everyone in the room came by at one point
or another to say hi.”

Jake shook his head. “I remember
almost nothing about that night.”

“Oh, right. The Rohypnol.” Mark
made a face. “Duh. Okay, let me think for a second. I saw a bunch of people who
were at lunch today, too: Mrs. James and Mrs. Jeffries. And your uncle Mickey
was there, too, but I don’t remember if he left before or after you arrived. I
also had a party of ten that were drinking like fishes, so I was concentrating
on them.”

Mickey had been at the Waterview?
Why hadn’t he mentioned that? Maybe he assumed Jake remembered.

“You know,” Mark said, breaking
into Jake’s thoughts, “the police also asked me if I thought the Rohypnol might
have been meant for Ginny instead of you. But I don’t think so. You were
drinking red wine, and she was drinking martinis. It’d be hard to confuse the
two.”

Martinis? Ginny usually drank vodka
tonics—light on the vodka. “How many martinis did she have?”

Mark shrugged. “Oh, three, maybe.
That wouldn’t be a lot normally, but she tossed them down pretty quickly, and
you guys ate only bread and salads before you got up to leave. I tried to—”

“Whoa—back up. We didn’t have dinner?”

“No. You ordered dinner—”
 

Yes, a steak. He remembered that.

“—but after her second martini,
Ginny canceled the order, said you were going to just do appetizers before you
went back to your place for dinner.”

Back to his place for dinner? He
caught Emma giving him a sidelong glance, and he flushed, even though he had no
reason to.

Leaving the Waterview after salads
didn’t make sense. He’d expected his conversation with Ginny about the
cash-flow rumors to be a long one, not one dealt with in twenty minutes. And
not one he would have had while cooking a cozy dinner at his town house. He and
Ginny had done dinner at his place a few times, but only when she was still
with the guy in Boston. After she’d been single, he’d avoided inviting her
over.

“And I was okay with that?” he
asked Mark.

“You didn’t object, but, well, you
looked pretty wasted—from the Rohypnol, I guess. Ginny wasn’t much better after
her martinis. I offered to call you a cab when you were done.”

“Did you?” Jake demanded. If they’d
taken a cab somewhere, it could be traced.

“No. After you paid the bill, you
both left before I could suggest a cab again.”

Damn. He thought for a moment. “And
when we left, you still believed we were going to my house for dinner?”

Mark nodded.

Christ, no wonder he was square in
the police’s sights.

Jake took a deep breath. He had to
ask the next question. “Were Ginny and I arguing about anything?” Had he even
started the conversation about the rumors?

Mark half closed his eyes and
tilted his head back, obviously trying to recall details from that night. “I
don’t think you were fighting. You looked a little pissed off when you came in,
but I figured that was because you were wet from the rain, and you told me
you’d had to park way over on Chester Street instead of in the lot.”

“Do you—” This was hard to say out
loud. “Do you think the police believe I killed Ginny?”

Squinting a bit, Mark said, “I
don’t know, Mr. Vant. They talked to me about you getting drugged for a really
long time. But they also looked at the credit card receipts and our reservation
book to see who else had been there that night. And I heard that they took our
security tapes of the parking lot. Not sure why they would do that, if you were
parked on Chester. Still…” He made an apologetic face. “Of everyone who was
here two nights ago, they seemed most interested in you.”

Not a surprise, but he felt like an
extra fifty pounds had just been slipped onto his shoulders. “Okay. Thanks for
telling me all this. I appreciate it.” Jake held out his hand, and Mark,
brightening, shook it.

“Sure thing, Mr. Vant. If I think
of anything else, I’ll let you know.”

Emma also reached out to shake
Mark’s hand. Maybe Jake was succumbing to jealousy, but she seemed to hold the
kid’s hand a second or two longer than necessary. “Nice to meet you, Mark.”

“You, too. See you soon.” Giving a
little wave, Mark hopped on his bicycle and rode off, cutting expertly through
the throngs of tourists cluttering the harborside pathways.

His brain buzzing with this new information,
Jake got back into the car. Emma slid into the seat opposite him, and within
ten minutes they were free of downtown Camden and returning to Baymill.

“At least we know the police aren’t
looking at only you,” Emma said, breaking the silence.

“No, but they’re looking at me very
closely.” He lifted his eyes to the rearview mirror. A car was behind him, but
far enough back that he couldn’t make out the color, only that it was dark. The
police in an unmarked car, tailing him? He wouldn’t be surprised.

He glanced at Emma. “I don’t know
why I was bringing Ginny back to my place. That hadn’t been my intention when I
walked into the Waterview that night.”

She scrutinized him. “All right,”
she finally said.

He let out the breath he’d been
holding. “Do you think that Mark might have been lying about that?”

“He’s not lying.” She sounded one
hundred percent certain. “As for her going to your place…Maybe you and Ginny
had, you know, gotten back together.”

“No. There’s no way. I’d just
learned that Ginny had been spreading rumors that Woodhaven was short of cash.”

“Why would she do that? She was
working for Woodhaven.”

“Good question. And one I was going
to ask her at dinner. I absolutely wasn’t going to ask her if she wanted to go
out with me again.” He snorted. “Or bring her home for the evening. I liked
Ginny, but I’d never been tempted to go out with her again.”

Emma cocked her head. “And never
been tempted to sleep with her? You can do that without dating.”

Damn it, he was flushing again.
“She was fantastic-looking, so of course I sometimes thought about sleeping
with her. I’m a guy. But it wouldn’t have been smart. She was my employee, for
one thing.”

“Maybe you fired her, then realized
your no-having-sex-with-employees rule didn’t apply any longer, and—”

“I wouldn’t fire her for trying to
ruin my business and then try to get her in bed,” he interrupted, not bothering
to hide his irritation. “Give me a little credit.”

She nodded. “Sorry. Anyway, none of
this gets us any closer to figuring out where you were that night.”

Frustration tightened like a noose
around his throat. “I’d hoped we’d learn that Mark had seen someone drop a pill
into my wine. Or I’d imagined that he might mention a detail from that night,
and the rest of my memories would come shooting back.”

Emma gave him a doubtful look. “Can
it even work that way? I mean, you didn’t get knocked on the head; you were
chemically impaired. Maybe the drugs distort the memories even as they’re
coming in, so what your brain records is already damaged.”

Thanks, that was an uplifting
thought. “So you’re saying that you think pursuing my missing memories is a
wild-goose chase?”

She tapped her forefinger against
her chin thoughtfully. “No, I think you should be pursuing your missing
memories. Even if you don’t find them, you might find someone who can place you
elsewhere when Ginny was killed—give you an alibi.”

“Or find someone who can lead me to
who really murdered Ginny.”

Emma blinked. “Is that what you’re
doing? Trying to track down a killer? This isn’t an Agatha Christie novel or a
movie. Bad people are…bad.” She shivered, even though it was the hottest day
they’d had so far all summer. “They hurt people. I don’t want to offend your
macho sensibilities, but we should concentrate on finding you an alibi and leave
the killer to the police.”

We.
The magic word again. And one that smoothed out the jagged emotions swirling
through the car.

He pulled into her driveway and
then walked her to the front door. “I have to get back to the office,” he
apologized. Though what he was apologizing for, he didn’t know. She probably
didn’t want him hanging around her house all day.

“Sure. And I have work to do here.”
She paused, her hand on the knob. “Are you still interested in coming over
tonight? To look at my business?”

She put an odd emphasis on
business
, and he felt his lips twitch.
Was Emma afraid he might have something other than business in mind?

If so, she was right on target.
Whether he kept those non-business thoughts in his mind or acted on them,
though, he hadn’t quite decided. Now wasn’t the best time for pursuing an
unexpected attraction.

“Sure. What time?”

“How about seven thirty? It’s late,
I know, but my busiest hours are early morning and early evening, when people
drop off or pick up their pets. And not all owners are available during the day
to bring in their pets for readings, so I do some readings then too. Saturdays
and Sundays, in fact, are my busiest days, and—” She stopped and gave a quick,
almost nervous laugh. “I’m rambling.”

He had a million things to do
today, not least of which was find a better lawyer. But he didn’t leave.

“So, seven thirty?” He was
stalling, trying to figure out his next move. Should he offer to shake her
hand, as he’d done with Mark?

Before he could decide, Emma shoved
her hands into her hip pockets.

Well, that left him with only one
other good option. He cupped her silk-covered shoulders with his palms, leaned
in, and dropped a quick kiss on her mouth while her hands were still trapped in
her pockets, unable to bat him away.

“See you later,” he said, stepping
back. If he arrived tonight to find the doors locked and the lights out, he’d
know he’d just made a serious mistake.

“Uh, okay. Sure.”

As he got into the car, he let
himself grin. Instead of looking offended or annoyed by his fast kiss, Emma had
looked…stunned. And when he stretched his arm out the window to give her a
good-bye wave before he turned onto the main road, she slowly raised her arm to
wave back.

Emma groaned, stretched, and stood,
the doorbell’s ring still ricocheting through her house. She’d been reviewing
the business’s numbers for hours, pulling them into shape for Jake. Her
shoulders felt like a pair of sandbags.

A figure stood outside, barely
visible through the glass blocks set on each side of the front door. Must be a
new UPS driver or someone filling in for her usual guy.

She pulled open the door. It wasn’t
a new UPS man. It was a fifty-something white man with blond-gray hair cut
close to his head and blue eyes that seemed to pin her in place. Even though he
wasn’t uniformed, his whole bearing screamed
Police
. Her eyes dropped, and sure enough, there was a badge on his
belt.

Another man, also in plainclothes,
stepped out of the gathering shadows to join him on the stoop.

The first man smiled, but it was as
warm as a punch to the stomach.

“Emma Draper?” he asked. “I’m
Detective Cooperman, and this is Detective Millhouse. Could we ask you some
questions?”

It didn’t take a genius to figure
out what sort of questions they wanted to ask. “Um, sure. Let’s go into the
kitchen.”

She checked her watch as she led
the way down the hall. Seven o’clock. Jake would show up soon. God, he’d be
upset if he arrived and found the police here. She had to get these guys out
fast.