It Must Be Magic (12 page)

Sidestepping away, she fiddled with the cellophane.

“Lili.” His voice was a puff of air stirring her hair, her female parts, her nipples once again aching little points.

She looked down. Even he would see them through the soft material of her blouse despite her bra. She wanted more of what he’d given her, wanted him inside her, all the way.

Yet she’d probably regret it when they were done, because there was one question she didn’t know the answer to. She needed an answer before she let him in.

“I know you think the police won’t believe me about Fluffy.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder and tipped her head to look at him. “But do you believe me?”

He scanned her face, her forehead, her eyes, her cheeks, then his gaze rested on her lips, and his focus on her mouth bore a carnal edge that stole her breath.

“I don’t know,” he said.

Neither his voice nor his words bore a trace of carnality, yet if she touched him, she knew he’d take her right on the kitchen floor. He’d given her a glorious release, but he hadn’t had his. And he wanted it. She could scent his male need in the air, and like an aphrodisiac, it sent her blood rushing straight to her center.

It said something about his depth of feeling that he wanted her without being sure of her. That wasn’t good enough for Lili. She had to know he believed in her before she committed herself to a relationship with him. He’d given her a sweet taste, but the full meal could cost her so much more.

“If you don’t believe Fluffy told me, then how do you think I knew the body was out there?”

He touched her with the tip of his finger, tracing her lower lip. She wanted to suck him inside, take what he offered and worry about the consequences later. So she dug her nails in her palms, and the slight pain kept her from throwing herself at him.

He smoothed the back of his fingers across her cheek and into her hair, then cupped her nape, almost as if he needed to hold her still before he answered.

“Maybe you already knew the body was there.” He shook his head when she opened her mouth. “You didn’t have anything to do with how it got there, but you could have found it.”

“But then why would I say Fluffy found it?”

“To provide concrete proof that you could talk to animals.”

She took a moment to digest that before a phantom hand closed over her chest. The fact that he could even think it, let alone say it, squeezed the heart out of her. Somehow, it was so much worse than a simple matter of disbelief.

“So, not only am I a liar, I’m repulsive enough to use a cat, a little girl and an old man to further my own sick need for acceptance.” She didn’t jerk his hand away, didn’t even pull from his oddly tender grip. “If I’m that bad, I don’t know why you wouldn’t think I killed him. To make sure there was a body to find.”

He squeezed her neck, as if trying to remind her he had his hand on her and he wasn’t letting go. “It isn’t that bad.”

“How could you even bear to touch me? Or kiss me? How could you make me come like that, as if you —” As if he cared.

He used that gentle hand to pull her closer, then tipped her head with a thumb under her chin. “Lili, it was an idle thought that ran through my mind. I was merely trying to find an explanation for the unexplainable.”

He didn’t get how bad it was. Worse than being Dirk’s circus freak. Worse than Norton locking his puppy away from her.

He’d made love to her with his touch, if not his whole body, then he’d torn a hole right through her, but she didn’t scream at him. She didn’t cry.

“Tanner, do you think you could leave now? I’d like to enjoy my cup of tea alone and properly digest what you’ve said.”

She’d save the crying for later, when she figured out whether she’d recover or not.

“T
HAT WAS FAST.
” R
OSCOE PULLED
out beers for the boys.

Tanner was next door visiting Lili — hohoho, that was a boon Roscoe hadn’t expected — and Erika was upstairs watching TV. Actually, she was trying to calm Fluffy down once again. That cat had the most nervous constitution, even before his night up in the tree. Why, as soon as he’d heard Chester’s car in the drive, he’d bolted. He was getting downright paranoid over people in the house.

However, with Tanner and Erika out of sight, Roscoe smelled an advantage coming his way.

“I heard it on the police scanner,” Linwood said as he scraped a chair along the linoleum and sat. “So, I called up Chester and we grabbed Hiram, too.” In his haste, he’d forgotten to put on his medals. He kept them in a wooden box on the top shelf of his closet. He claimed they shouldn’t be exposed to the light any longer than necessary, though he usually found it essential to wear them everywhere he went.

“Linwood wants to know the whole story,” Hiram groused. “He’s an old busybody. You’d think the man had female genes.”

“Take that back, Hiram.” Linwood shook his fist. “You were the one who suggested we rush right over here.”

Roscoe handed round the beers, then pulled out the only empty chair at the kitchen table, set his foot on it and leaned on his knee.

“So you want the scoop. What’s it worth to ya?” He liked being the center of attention. More, he liked having the upper hand. Especially with Hiram, who usually had the upper hand on all of them.

“You’re dying to tell us, you old faker.” Chester wiped a speck of foam from his chin.

So he was — faking it, that was. He was dying to tell all, because a plan had blossomed the moment he’d heard that old Lincoln crunch the gravel in the drive. Chester and Linwood were the biggest gossips in town. And they loved their morning gabfests down at the Coffee Stain.

“Well, it started with Lili.”

“Who’s Lili?” Chester asked.

Roscoe resisted rolling his eyes. “You met her last night, the one that looked like Deanna Durbin.”

“Oh yeah. She was a pretty little thing.”

“And she talks to animals.”

Hiram harrumphed. He was a good harrumpher. “Get on with the story.”

And Roscoe began to explain.

By morning, everyone in Benton would hear that Lili had known about the body before it had been found. Tanner would be put to the test. The sheriff would start asking questions about Lili, and Roscoe was sure Tanner wouldn’t simply throw her to the wolves. He’d have to protect her. Not that Lili would really need protection. After all, she was innocent. Gresswell would figure that out almost the minute he started talking to her.

It was a devious plan. But his son needed a lot of help figuring out that Lili was the perfect woman for him. And the perfect mother for Erika.

C
HESTER
P
AWSON’S
L
INCOLN SAT
in the driveway behind Tanner’s sedan. If he hadn’t been blocked in, he was sure he’d have climbed behind the wheel and taken off into the night so he could get his head screwed on straight.

She didn’t cry. She didn’t yell. Her very lack of reaction showed how badly he’d hurt her. She’d kicked him out with only two sentences. The Lili he knew would have taken at least five.

He should have lied. Sometimes there was an excellent reason to lie. When your honest thoughts would hurt. Or maim. He’d just maimed Lili. In his search to justify why he simply couldn’t believe in her, he’d maimed her.

Tanner pushed back through the hedge. He couldn’t leave it that way. Not after she’d gone off in his arms and blown the top off his world. He knocked on her back door. Both the kitchen and the porch light went out in response. He opened the screen door and tried the knob. It was locked.

“Lili. Open up. We need to talk about this. I’m sorry.” Dammit, he shouldn’t have left in the first place.

Something thumped the porch and a large object slinked across the wood slats and stopped right at his feet. Einstein the cat. Tanner sidestepped to let it by. Only it didn’t crawl off the other side of the porch and into the night. It sat. And looked at him. The moonlight revealed wide green eyes, a hint of long canines, gray tail twitching back and forth, back and forth.

He could swear it was talking.

You are scum.

Tanner couldn’t agree more.

He needed to talk to Lili, to explain. He went around front. The cat followed, jumped up on the porch railing and stared. It was unnerving. Tanner tried that door, too. Also locked. Then he stepped back off the porch and looked up at the second floor. The hall light went out, then the bedroom light, or at least what he assumed was her bedroom, and the house lay in darkness. Silent as a tomb.

Until the cat jumped down from the railing with a thump.

“I didn’t think what I said was that bad.”

Einstein blinked, opened its mouth wide, its teeth pointy and sharp, and yawned. Then it flopped onto a back haunch, raised a hind leg in the air and starting licking itself.

There was a definite message in that.
Kiss my ass, bud.

The best he could do was tell Lili he was sorry. He was a dolt for ever voicing that thought aloud.

The problem was he still believed he’d found a damn good explanation for how she’d known the body was out in the woods.

L
ILI DIDN’T CRY AFTER TANNER
left last night. Locking her doors against him and shutting out all the lights had been liberating, giving her back a measure of equilibrium. But it didn’t provide any answers as to why his words hurt
this
badly. She was used to inspiring a whole host of reactions to her ability, some of them not very nice, but she’d always been able to put the unpleasant experiences behind her and move on. Why couldn’t she do that with Tanner?

Over tuna-fish sandwiches and a soda, he’d offered her the world. He’d asked for her help with Erika. He’d trusted her with
the
most important person in his life. Sure, he’d gotten squirrelly again, but that was understandable. Lili had gotten squirrelly in the field, and it had taken
hours
to recover.

But she’d thought they were past that. The way he’d touched her, he had to be past that. But it didn’t mean a thing to him.

She’d been thought of as a crackpot, whacked-out weirdo before, but never a devious, lowlife user.

She had to stop thinking about it.

This morning she had more important things to do than dwell on Tanner’s opinion of her. Which was why, at ten minutes after eight, Lili loaded Einstein into the front basket of her bike and took off for town. In deference to the cool spring air, she’d worn a heavy fleece sweatshirt, but her legs were bare from the tops of her tennis shoes to the bottom of her capri pants. It really was easier riding her bike in pants rather than a skirt. She did a good job of tucking it away from the bike chain, but sometimes…She had ruined a couple of skirts.

As Lili pedaled down the hill, Einstein put her head into the wind like the hood ornament on a car or the carving on the prow of a Viking ship. They were off to find Lady Dreadlock, and Einstein was going to do some cat-to-human interpreting. Lili was glad she hadn’t told Tanner about the woman last night. She’d figure out Lady D. on her own. If she learned something the police needed to know, she’d tell them. She didn’t need Tanner’s permission to do what she knew was right.

And Tanner was
not
going to stop her.

Like a simmering pot, Lili felt her own anger just below the surface. It wasn’t like her. She hated it. Anger was a useless emotion. Tanner made her feel a lot of things she wasn’t used to feeling. That gave him way too much power.

With the light green at the bottom of the hill, Lili took the corner too quickly and the bike wobbled. Einstein hunkered down and sent an unmentionable image.

At only a little after eight on a Sunday morning, minimal traffic cluttered the highway winding through the redwoods. The bike lanes were wide, the speed limit was only thirty-five, and there was a separate bike path to cross the twin bridges before you got into Benton. Early morning joggers ran the track at the high school, and the church parking lot was filling up for the half-past eight service. On Sundays, the Coffee Stain opened at 6:30 instead of the usual weekday 5:00 a.m. start, and the aroma of fresh, rich, dark, yummy coffee wafted through the open doors as Lili rode past.

Work first, then she could reward herself with a mocha. She’d stuffed a few bills in her pocket.

The parking spaces along the front were filled; a dog was leashed to a tree and a man exited carrying a holder of cups, but Lady Dreadlock was not haunting the coffeehouse sidewalk. One spot down, a million more to go.

Lili pedaled round the cars in front of the Copper Penny diner, the only other place open at this time of the morning. After that, the street was empty. She made her way down to the end of town, past the sheriff’s department, then back along some side streets. She hooked a right at the intersection where the sidewalk ended and rode at the edge of the gravel beneath the trees that hung over the street like an arbor. The lots along Maple Street were smaller than in the hills where Lili now lived, and most had grass, tended gardens, large, shady oaks and white picket fences. She passed her old house where she’d had a flat on the top floor. Someone had put out a planter of geraniums. A small pang wedged up under her breast. She hadn’t expected to see a change in only one week.

But she had Wanetta’s house. A home that was hers.

The road dead-ended into a walking entrance to the county park. Lili stopped the bike before it, in front of the halfway house, an old Victorian renovated a few years ago.

She’d saved it for last because, well, walking up the front steps and knocking on the door felt the most confrontational. White rattan chairs sat haphazardly on the front porch, though no one was sitting outside right now. The house was dark blue with white trim, three dormer windows perched along the roofline, but not even a curtain fluttered with a sign of life.

Einstein raised her head, sniffed, then jumped from the basket, landed gracefully and sauntered toward the park entrance.

“We are not looking for gophers now. I need to see if she’s in the house.” Einstein twitched her whiskers, then headed into the park.

“You’d better be smelling her,” Lili muttered, but it was also a relief not to have to go pounding on the front door.

She followed Einstein, wheeling her bike through the gate. She did not listen to Tanner’s voice in her head saying she was stupid. Under the trees, the earth smelled…earthier. Wildflowers were starting to bloom, yellow, white, blue, a few orange poppies were scattered about, and the new ferns were a lush green. Lili had the urge to pick some for her next tinkering project.

Ignore it, babe. We’re on a mission.

Einstein didn’t have to tell her. This was
her
mission, after all. Suddenly Tanner’s words hit her again. Was she out here because she
did
need to prove something to him?

No, she was on a humanitarian effort. To save Lady Dreadlock from herself. Or the police? Or…aw, hell, why couldn’t she stop thinking about Tanner? About the sweetness of his kiss, his spicy male scent, the rough texture of his fingers…and the slam of what he really thought of her.

She walked the bike, trailing Einstein’s straight-up tail along the narrow path. The grasses snicked over her bare calves and left burrs in the hem of her capris.

Then Einstein veered to the right, stopped next to the huge trunk of a mighty oak, swished her tail and sat.

She’s here.
An image of dreadlocks whispered through Lili’s mind.

What’s she doing?
Actually, she imaged a question mark, but Einstein was excellent in extrapolating.

Come and find out.

Said the spider to the fly. Lili pushed down her kickstand, left the bike behind and leaned around the oak by Einstein.

Lady Dreadlock sat cross-legged on the ground, her hands resting palm up on her knees, her fingers lightly touching. And oh, Lord, she was naked. At least she wasn’t facing them. A pile of clothing lay on the forest floor beside her. A big pile. Probably everything she owned.

I can’t talk to her naked.

You’re not naked.

Not me. Her.
Lili felt a blush of heat rise to her face.

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m naked. What’s wrong with being naked? As I recall, you were bare-assed last night.

Oh. Oh. That was a low blow. She’d never have expected it from her cat. Einstein’s whiskers twitched. Then she padded into the small clearing. Lili looked around to make sure there wasn’t any poison oak. That poor woman, if there was. The ground was littered with leaves and dead ferns, and a small votive candle burned on a cracked saucer.

Why, Lady D. was meditating. Lili could now hear her soft, musical hum. A sweet sound that seemed almost a part of the breeze passing over her, it wasn’t a tune so much as a series of tones that melded with the forest around her and the earth beneath her. It touched something deep inside Lili and brought an immediate mistiness to her eyes.

Lady D. was brown all over — not that Lili looked
all
over — and thin, so thin. Her arms were like sticks, and her collarbones stark against her leathery flesh. It wasn’t so much starvation of the body as starvation of the soul.

The woman was gaunt with self-loathing. Lili couldn’t say how she knew it. It didn’t come from Einstein. It was as if the woman’s aura actually spoke to Lili and in the swirling mass of purple darkness surrounding Lady Dreadlock eddied a profound sadness, a devastating fear. It was almost choking.

Einstein lay down and stretched her forelegs out like a sphinx. Her tail, a sticker in the tip, twitched, then settled.
Ask her about the puppy.

What puppy?

Einstein gave her the dunce cap.

Lili sat cross-legged on the ground at the base of her own oak and studied the woman’s profile.

“I’m sorry about the puppy,” she said, using a soft voice in keeping with the sanctity of the forest.

“I knew what you were,” Lady D. said.

Lili tilted her head.
I know what you are.
That was what the woman had always started with. But this time her tense was past, and it changed everything. She was talking about a specific event.

Lili said what felt natural. “I didn’t mean to hurt the puppy.”

“God was watching you.”

Again, that odd past tense. Lady Dreadlock had seen her with a puppy. Yes, Lili remembered the first time the woman had confronted her. Lili had been talking to a puppy outside the Stain. The poor little thing couldn’t understand why he’d been tied to a tree as if he were unloved and unwanted.

“You knew what I was doing, didn’t you?” Lili kept speaking with the same, soft tone.

“God thought you were bad.”

“For talking to the puppy?”

Lady Dreadlock turned her deep, soulful brown eyes on Lili, and for the first time, Lili didn’t see the censure she’d always believed was there.

“Don’t let God punish you.”

There was an unspoken statement, but Lili heard it, knew in her heart what the rest of it was.

Don’t let God punish you the way He’s punished me.
That was what Lady D. meant.

“God didn’t punish you because you can talk to animals. That’s God’s blessing. Einstein, tell her.”

Lady D. tipped her head and looked at Einstein. Then she closed her eyes, and her head bobbed slightly, rhythmically. It was the oddest feeling. Lili couldn’t interpret a thing, and she suddenly realized this was how it must look to others when she talked to animals. Not Einstein, because they’d been together so long and understood so quickly. But other animals, the ones Lili had to concentrate with, turning inward, blanking out everyone around her. And coming off looking as if she were crazy.

She suddenly saw what all three of them would look like to the outside world beyond this small clearing surrounded by trees and ferns and wildflowers. How she sounded to Tanner with all her talk about animals and Bigfoot.

Einstein slanted her eyes at Lili.
She doesn’t believe us.

Of course she didn’t. If Lady Dreadlock had been talking to animals as long as Lili had, whatever she’d come to believe about herself was ingrained.

Lili didn’t know how to help her. “You’re not bad, and God’s not mad.”

Einstein made a noise at her very poor rhyme. Lili admitted it sounded ridiculous, but it had slipped out.

Lady D. merely blinked in the same fashion as Einstein.

“Okay. So, that’s not going to work. Maybe you should tell me your name so I can stop calling you Lady Dreadlock.”

It was like talking to a blank wall. Lady D. was only capable of a variation on the theme of being bad and God punishing her.

Maybe Lili could talk to her social worker. She was pretty sure they had social workers at the halfway house.

Ha! She could hear herself explaining that the reason the woman seemed as if she was off her rocker was that she couldn’t come to grips with her ability to talk to animals. Then they’d be putting Lili herself into the halfway house.

All right, this would take some serious consideration. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and mental illness wasn’t cured with a half hour feel-good talk in a forest.

Right now, there was another immediate issue.

“Did you see something bad happen in the meadow?”

The blank wall stared back.

“Send her an image, Einstein.”

The two of them did that weird communication thing again. And it was bizarre, sort of voyeuristic. Lili wished Lady Dreadlock had her clothes on, because being naked added to the weirdness.

She did see Fluffy, as an emasculated feline. Really, Einstein needed to get over this little problem she had with Fluffy.

“Was it on the night in question?” She sounded like a lawyer.

Can’t quite tell.

Lili pressed her lips together. Lady Dreadlock had seen Fluffy, and since Fluffy had stuck by the house for the last three days, the meeting had to have taken place sometime while he’d been out
that
night. Or coming back in the morning.

“Did you see it?” she whispered to the woman. “Do you know what happened? Do you know who did it?”

Lady D. shivered, closed her eyes, then leaned forward and blew out the candle.

Lili looked at Einstein. Einstein stared back.

Lady Dreadlock knew something. As much as Lili hated causing the woman problems, let alone the ramifications to the halfway house, she had to tell the police.

“H
OW’RE YOU DOING THIS MORNING
, kiddo?”

Erika’s voice came from somewhere amid the jumble of pillows and the thick comforter.

Tanner sat on the edge of the bed and pulled back the lavender bedclothes so he could see her. Instead, Fluffy gave him a gloomy gaze. Tanner bit back his immediate retort. Erika wasn’t supposed to have the cat
in
the bed, but yesterday had been an unusual day, to say the least, and his daughter obviously needed the cat’s comfort as much as it needed hers.

“Where are you under there?” Tanner poked around.

The comforter flapped back to reveal his daughter’s blond head and a set of dark circles under her eyes that made her look like a zombie. Her gaze was as gloomy as Fluffy’s.