It Must Be Magic (13 page)

“You okay, sweetheart? You slept pretty late.” Erika was usually the first one up on a Sunday morning, but when the downstairs grandfather clock had struck eight, Tanner had felt compelled to come looking for her.

“It took a while to calm Fluffy down last night.” She scratched the cat’s head. “He’s better now, though.”

Yeah, because it’d been treated like a king instead of a cat. “I know you’re worried about Fluffy.”

“I’m worried about Lili, too.”

“Lili?”

“I heard you and Grandpa talking last night. Do you think the police will believe she had something to do with the murder?”

Damn. His little girl didn’t miss much, which was why he should have kept his mouth shut with her in the house. No wonder she’d been virtually silent at dinner. He’d tried reassuring her last night when he’d tucked her in, but he hadn’t realized the bent of her thoughts.

He’d been thinking about other things, dammit. Lili.

With that serious gaze, his daughter seemed so adult. Lili was right. Erika was on the cusp of womanhood, and he hadn’t paid attention to it. He didn’t want her to grow up. He didn’t want her to turn thirteen. At twelve, she was still a child. With the teenage years, all hell broke loose, and she wouldn’t be his little girl anymore.

What was he supposed to say when she — gulp — started. He couldn’t even say the real word for it, so how was he supposed to talk to her about it?

He’d have to get some feminine influence in her life, as Lili had suggested. He wasn’t sure anymore if
Lili
was the right influence. Too much had happened since he’d asked for Lili’s help yesterday. Maybe he should ask someone from the Big Sisters organization, someone older and wiser who couldn’t talk to Fluffy.

“You do think the police will suspect her, don’t you, Dad?”

“What do you think, Erika? What will the police say?”

She rolled and gathered Fluffy close. The cat stuck its front legs out, stretched, then sprawled on the bed. “Well, on TV, the police always look for ulterior motives,” she said over the cat’s immense belly.

“This isn’t TV.”

“But
you
think she has ulterior motives.”

He’d brought this on himself. “Remember what I told you yesterday before Lili and I went out? You have to decide for yourself. I can’t tell you what to think about Lili. And I don’t know what the police will say.” He folded Erika’s hand into his. “I do know I don’t want to see her hurt, and that’s part of why I didn’t say anything.” He’d been harsh yesterday, throwing edicts at his daughter. Erika was getting to the point where she needed explanations, especially since he’d introduced her to lying.

“Well, she sort of comes off as an airhead when you first meet her. But then she grows on you. Now, I really think Lili’s a good person. And when there’s a little bit of evidence
for
someone and a little bit of evidence
against
them, you have to go with that feeling in your tummy and believe in them.”

His daughter was a better person than he was. If he’d been thinking like Erika, he never would have crushed Lili last night. Maybe he wouldn’t even have had the thought in the first place.

“I’m proud of you for making up your own mind based on such a good rationale.” Even if it did involve gut instinct. Sometimes that
could
be the most important sense. Then again, sometimes not.

“Well,” Erika said, “that’s why we should do everything we can to help her.”

“We will, sweetie.”

“So I think I should tell you that Grandpa told Chester and Linwood and Hiram that Lili knew about the body before you found it.”

He jumped off the bed as if a bomb had exploded under him. “What?”

“So the police are going to know about that soon, too.”

The next body found out in the woods was going to be Roscoe’s. Because Tanner was going to kill the old man.

“W
HERE WAS YOUR HEAD
, R
OSCOE
?”

Roscoe waved his spatula, and a few drops of waffle batter spattered on the floor. He decided he’d clean it up later. “They won’t say anything. I told them to keep it on the Q.T.”

“They do not know how to be quiet.”

“Don’t you like them?”

“They’re not a bad bunch, but Chester and Linwood are like gossiping old ladies, usually harmless, but this time…” Giving Roscoe a sharp look, Tanner let the words trail off.

True, true. Hiram wasn’t so bad, mostly because his position up at the college required a certain amount of decorum, but Chester and Linwood…ah yes, they’d do Roscoe’s dirty work.

“You worry too much, Tanner. You’re going to give yourself a heart attack. I’m making waffles. Do you want me to whip up some cream?”

“And waffles with whipped cream
won’t
give me a heart attack?” Tanner turned a circle in the middle of the kitchen floor, dragging a hand down his freshly shaven face. “Roscoe, what did we talk about yesterday? Protecting Lili, remember?”

Heeheehee. Perfect, perfect. Tanner was reacting just as Roscoe wanted him to. “She’ll be fine. It’s not as if she did anything wrong, so what’s the big deal? The police aren’t going to hustle her off to jail and shine bright lights in her face until she confesses all under duress.”

“I can’t believe I’m having to say this to you. Even Erika has more sense.” Tanner threw his hands up in the air and puffed out a disgusted breath. “I’m going over to warn Lili. While I’m gone, I want you to call your buddies and tell them if they open their mouths, they’ll have to deal with me.”

Roscoe mopped up the batter he’d spilled. “Will do. Why don’t you invite Lili for waffles, too?”

Tanner gave him a look and slammed through the screen door.

Perfect. Something had gone on last night while Tanner had been over at dear Lili’s, if that shell-shocked look he’d returned with meant anything. Something more would go on this morning.

He’d have to make sure that little smartie-pants upstairs got with the program. She might have spoiled the whole thing with her big mouth. Roscoe had had it in mind that Tanner would hear about it down in town. He smiled.
All’s well that ends well.
He was sure Erika would fall right in with his plan.

After all, she’d gobbled up that book Roscoe happened to see hidden behind the couch. If she played her cards right, the name of the book would soon be
Erika’s New Mom.

Now, he had to make sure Tanner invited Lili along on their excursion down to the Boardwalk the next night for Erika’s spring break from school, which started tomorrow.

If Tanner didn’t invite her, Roscoe would issue the invitation himself.

S
O SHE’D GO TO THE POLICE
, but first Lili needed mocha fortification at the Coffee Stain. She coasted along the sidewalk, then skimmed to a stop by the front window, swung off the bike and flipped down her kickstand.

She bent close to Einstein. “I’ll be right back. Do not talk to any strangers.”

What about people I know?

“Don’t get smart with me.” Then she scratched behind Einstein’s ears and kissed the tip of her nose.

A hush fell as she passed through the open door. It was darn hard for ten people to fall silent all at once, and that wasn’t counting Manny and the girls behind the counter. Lili got a bad feeling.

Seated at a table for two in the back against the wall, she recognized Chester and Linwood from Roscoe’s the other night. Hey, maybe this was an opportunity to offer them Cy and Rita. After her mocha was in her hands, of course. Lili smiled and waved. They stared with big, wide eyes.

The whispering at the other tables started. A woman punched in numbers on her cell, never taking her eyes off Lili. So how did she get the number correct? Whatever. Lili shook her head. She knew hardly any of these people by name, but most of the faces were familiar. In a short while, the day trippers from over the hill would be arriving and the place would be hopping, but for now, most were locals.

Lili squeezed between the big ficus and the couple waiting at the drip coffee counter, the rich scent of coffee heady and mouthwatering. But the middle-aged couple — the one couple she didn’t recognize — stared.

She sidled past the Danish counter and got in line behind a large man she knew was a contractor. She’d seen his truck around. There were two other customers ahead of him, a man and a teenage girl with a nose ring.

Manny’s voice boomed out. “We can’t let our celebrity wait in line, and honey bunch, the mocha is on the house today. I’m even going to make it a triple shot.” Manny waved her forward and the three in line ahead of her backed up against the refrigerated drink unit to give her plenty of room. As if she were a rock star. Or a suspected serial killer.

“Get this little lady’s triple shot white mocha foaming, sweetie pie.”

“Sweetie pie” had a dolphin tattoo above her butt cheek and her hip huggers were low enough to show it. Lili didn’t have a clue what her real name was.

“So, honey bunch, tell me why you were holding out on me.”

Lili felt her eyes go as wide as Chester and Linwood’s had been.
Please, don’t let it be.
She was hoping and praying it wasn’t so. “Holding out on what?”

“Don’t give me that crap. You’re going to be on
Oprah.
” He circled his hand in the air. “Better yet, you’ll have your own show. You’ll be like those ghostbuster guys where people call ’em up from all over the country and pay them the big bucks to solve their ghost problems. They drive some cool vans, too.”

She was overheating in the heavy fleece she’d worn against the morning chill. “Manny, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Oh, but she did. Tanner was going to annihilate her.

“Don’t play possum, honey bunch. You found that body out back a’ Buddy Welch’s place after a cat told you it was there.” He raised his hands as if he were standing in a pulpit instead of behind a cash register in the Stain. “Isn’t that the damnedest thing, folks? A cat told her there’d been a murder, and she went right out and found the body. And the murderer, too.”

Manny was teasing, laying it on so thick it was worse than giving Einstein peanut butter. But Lili felt breath on the back of her neck. The large contractor. She hugged closer to the register. Her temples started to throb. The couple at the drip counter grabbed their cups before the coffee had even finished dripping, snapped on their lids and rushed out the door backward as if they were afraid to take their eyes off Lili.

“Now the cops,” Manny went on, “have got Buddy Welch in their sights. He’s a menace. Bet it was some trespasser, and he blew the guy’s head off. You’re a hero, honey bunch.”

Oh, oh, it was worse than she thought. “He wasn’t shot.”

Manny wasn’t listening to anyone but himself, and his voice got louder as the espresso machine built up its head of steam. “I’m sure they’ll be arresting him right after the sheriff gets back from church.” He leaned over the counter and chucked her under the chin. “I’ll never doubt you again. The next time you tell me a cockroach talked to you in my place, I’m damn well gonna get out the bug spray.”

“I was joking about the cockroach.” But how did Manny know about the body? About Buddy? About any of it? Lili glanced at her watch. It wasn’t quite nine-thirty yet. Then she turned slowly to the pocket of tables along the wall, to one suspiciously empty table. Chester and Linwood were gone. But they were Roscoe’s friends. And Roscoe knew…

Tanner was going to annihilate her
and
Roscoe.

Something bumped Lili’s bare leg between the top of her socks and the bottom of her capris. A furry cat head. Einstein smiled up at her. Oh yeah, cats could smile, bared teeth and all. The little rat was having fun watching her predicament.

“I thought I told you to stay in the basket.”

“See. She’s doing it, folks, right before your very eyes.”

I suggest you get out front. Pronto.
Lili saw herself being catapulted out the front door.

She tapped the counter, then backed away. “You know, Manny, I’d better skip the triple shot. Too much caffeine. Not to mention all that chocolate.”

When she turned, she saw Tanner outside the front window. Standing by her bike. Staring right at her. That was not a happy-camper look on his face. Well, she wasn’t going to let him intimidate her.

But she did need fortification.

“On second thought, Manny, could you make that a quadruple shot?”

L
ILI WORE A THICK SWEATER
yet her calves were bare, and she wrapped her hands around her huge cup of coffee for warmth. Or as if it were a ward against Tanner’s wrath.

Was he truly such an ogre? Yeah, actually he was. At least he had been to her.

It wasn’t cold, but the spring chill wouldn’t completely wear off until noon. Keeping her eyes on him, Lili blew through the hole in her coffee lid, then sipped.

“Fancy meeting you here,” she said.

“No accident. I saw the cat.”

Einstein blinked its green eyes and crawled between the wall and Lili’s front tire, the spokes caging her in, or protecting her against the coming fireworks. The cat had jumped from the bike’s basket, hackles raised, before Tanner had gotten out of his car.

Right after his talk with Roscoe, he’d gone over to Lili’s. The doors were locked, and when he’d seen her bike missing from the front porch, he’d been consumed by an overpowering anger. First, that she could be so stupid as to leave her house when there was a murderer loose who, because of Roscoe’s idiocy, undoubtedly knew or would know that Lili had seen him, even if through a cat’s eyes. Okay, she didn’t know what Roscoe had done, but she did know there was a murderer loose. Second, that he himself could get so worked up about something that was nothing because who in their right mind — if a killer could be in his right mind — would worry about what Fluffy saw anyway, so honestly, what was the danger? And third, that he couldn’t stop thinking about her, worrying about her, wanting her, regretting what he’d said last night and regretting that he hadn’t made love to her when he’d had the chance.

He was over the anger now, after half an hour of driving around looking for her.

Lili flicked her braid forward over her shoulder and played with the end. It did something odd to his insides, the brush of her hair on her cheek, back and forth, back and forth. It was mesmerizing. Lili constantly had that effect on him.

“I think you should know,” she said.

Tanner cut her off. “I already know.”

“How?”

“Roscoe. And a bit of deductive reasoning.”

“But do you know the same thing I think you know?”

In the midst of crisis, she wrenched a laugh from him.

She stared at him with those guileless lilac eyes. “I wasn’t trying to be funny.”

“I know. Let’s walk down the street a bit.” Right now they were framed in the front window of the Coffee Stain as if they were contestants on the latest reality show.

She stopped in front of the currently closed Mane Man barbershop next door. “This is far enough.”

Einstein inched from the front tire to the back tire and kept up the glare. That cat really didn’t like him. Or it loved Lili a helluva lot. Or both.

Tanner played her word game. “So, tell me what you think I know.”

She tipped her head slightly as if she appreciated his effort. “Everyone at the Stain knows about Fluffy and me.”

“You’re right, I knew that.”

“But did you know the police know, too? At least that’s what Manny says.”

Tanner tried not to react. He certainly didn’t want to get mad, but how the hell could news have traveled so fast? Oh yeah, Chester and Linwood and half an hour at the Coffee Stain on a Sunday morning. It made perfect sense.

Lili blinked at him. “You didn’t get mad.”

“I’m turning over a new leaf.”

She beamed at him. Beamed, no less, like a hundred-watt bulb right in the eyes. “That’s wonderful.”

It was as if last night hadn’t happened, as if he hadn’t trashed her feelings nor taken her to those exquisite heights. The former was good, the latter untenable. He didn’t want her to even remember what he’d said, but he sure as hell wanted her to have
some
emotion about what they’d done.

“Okay. Here’s the thing.”

She was irrepressible, undaunted, unquenchable. And irresistible. He expanded his chest with a deep breath, then let it out long and slow.

“Sorry. I forgot I wasn’t supposed to use that expression.”

“Spit it out, Lili.” Damn, she made him want so much more. In the midst of murder and mayhem right in his own backyard, Lili made him
want.

“I should have told you yesterday that I saw Lady Dreadlock in the meadow the day before. But I needed time to think about whether I should say anything to anyone at all, not just you. Then this morning, Einstein and I talked to her, and now I know I need to say something.”

He pulled her to him and kissed her full on the lips. Hard.

“Why’d you do that?” she asked when he let her go, her gaze wide, her eyes glassy.

“Because if I didn’t, I would have had to yell at you. And I don’t feel like yelling even though I am pissed.” It was a relative term. He was torn between shaking some sense into her and kissing her until she couldn’t think straight. Or he couldn’t think straight. “Why the hell didn’t you say that yesterday?”

He knew the answer with gut-clenching clarity. Deep down, Lili didn’t trust him, not to believe in her, not to protect her and not to hurt her.

They’d have to talk about what he’d said last night. Only not now in the middle of the sidewalk outside Mane Man. Church was out, and the street was starting to fill up with cars and the sidewalks with people, strollers, bikes and skateboards.

“Scratch that question. I don’t care why at this point. Who is Lady Dreadlock?”

When she finished telling him, he was more confused than before she’d started explaining. Lili did that to a man, turned his thought processes inside out and upside down.

“So, let me paraphrase. This crazy woman —”

“She’s not really crazy —”

He held up his hand. She shut her mouth. “This crazy woman has been hassling you for months, but you haven’t reported her to the police. Then you saw her in the woods the evening you went
alone
to look for the body. Now she’s told you that she talks to animals, and she saw Fluffy the morning after the supposed night that my cat saw a murder. Have I got that right?”

“Well, it’s right except the part about Lady D. telling me. She told Einstein, and Einstein told me.”

He wanted to bang his head against the concrete wall next to Mane Man’s front window. If he’d thought he was having trouble with the one thing — Fluffy telling Lili about a murder — then he was facing a catastrophe with the rest of what she’d said.

He would, however, persevere. “So that’s all of it?”

She chewed her bottom lip. “Um, yeah, I think that’s it.”

“You’re not forgetting to tell me anything on purpose?”

“Definitely not. That’s everything. But you’re talking to me as if I’m a child.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. That was unconscionable.”

“And I don’t think you mean that.”

“Lili.”

“But we can talk about that later.”

They’d talk about a few things of his choosing, as well. “All right. Then let’s get over to the sheriff’s department.”

She looked at him over the rim of her coffee lid.

He was forced to ask. “What?”

“Aren’t you going to yell or freak out or something?”

“No.”

“Why not? Maybe I’m making up the thing about Lady Dreadlock to get more attention.”

So. She hadn’t gotten over his miscalculation of the prior evening. He wouldn’t have believed her to be so adept at hiding her feelings.

“Lili, about last night —”

She put a hand over one ear and her coffee cup to the other. “I don’t want to hear it. I’m so over last night. Let’s talk to the sheriff.”

She might be over it, but Tanner knew he wasn’t. Not by a long shot.

S
HERIFF GRESSWELL’S
DESK was the size of a postage stamp and his office was, comparatively speaking, a postcard instead of an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven envelope. If the sheriff had been taller than five-ten and bigger than one-hundred-sixty pounds, he probably wouldn’t fit through the door. But then the sheriff’s department was housed in a one-story office building with a tax firm on one side and a holistic healing center on the other. They didn’t have a jail — they had to take criminals down to the municipal building — and when they called out the SWAT team, the members mobilized in the parking lot. It didn’t accommodate much more than the SWAT van itself. When the nondenominational Bible school across the highway had complained, the city council had asked the SWAT to mobilize outside the high school gym, but that had proven distracting when school was in session so they were back to using the parking lot, and the church just had to suffer.

Thank God they weren’t mobilizing today.

Sheriff Gresswell scratched a hand through his short but explosively curly gray hair. Lili thought she heard a few strands snap. He still wore his Sunday best.

He spoke to Tanner. “I was going to drop by your place today. To clear up any loose ends.”

Lili felt those loose ends tightening around her neck like a noose. Why hadn’t Tanner lost his cool with her? She’d have felt better. He’d kissed her instead, and she didn’t know what that meant. She would have been more comfortable tackling Sheriff Gresswell on her own, but there was no way Tanner would let her get away with that. They’d stashed her bike in the back room of the flower shop — which was closed on Sunday — rather than stuffing it in his trunk, and left Einstein in the shop’s front window surveying the street from beneath the philodendron leaves.

Tanner didn’t think bringing a cat along was going to help Lili’s case.

“Do you have any idea yet who he was?” Tanner asked.

“Not yet. All the medical examiner can tell us is that he was a Caucasian male in his early twenties. We took his prints.” He glanced at Lili. “What there was of them, at any rate.”

Oh. Oh. She didn’t want to think what
wasn’t
there.

Turning back to Tanner, the sheriff said, “We’re running them through the system, but so far no matches.”

Then he smiled at Lili. A nice smile, with nice white teeth and plenty of crinkles at his eyes. He had the lined, weathered face of a man who spent time outdoors, but he didn’t have the worn crags she would have expected in someone who spent his days and nights dealing with teenagers playing with drugs, spouses beating on their loved ones and bodies that had lain out in the elements long enough to attract the vultures.

Maybe he had a loving wife who soothed those lines and crags away. Or maybe he needed a cat. Bash would be perfect for him. After a hard day battling criminals, he’d be glad to come home to a cat who only wanted to love and be loved. Now, however, wasn’t the time to bring Bash up.

“Speaking of loose ends, Sheriff.” Lili tapped her finger on the arm of her chair. Though they’d gotten past the loose-end thing, it still felt like a good jumping off point. “There was something I forgot when I talked to your deputies yesterday.” That wasn’t a lie. She hadn’t remembered Lady Dreadlock being in the field until she and Tanner had been on their way back home.

Tanner shifted in his chair, putting his elbow on the armrest close enough for his body heat to reach out to her. It was comforting. Sheriff Gresswell raised a bushy gray eyebrow.

Lili wanted a fortifying sip of coffee, but instead she plunged on. “When I was out walking in the woods Friday night, I saw someone. I don’t know her name, but I’m sure she lives down in the halfway house at the end of Maple Street, and she was in the field where we found the —” she gulped “— well, you know, and she might have seen something that could be helpful to you.”

The sheriff’s expression seemed a little wiped clean. No smile, no frown. He didn’t even roll his eyes at her. “What does this
someone
look like?”

Translation: “I believe in
someone
like I believe in Bigfoot and little green men.”

Still, Lili answered his question. “She’s got a big bunch of dreadlocks.” She waved her hands around her head, as if that would help the sheriff see. “You know, where they twist up their hair in long tails.” Rat’s tails, she thought, but didn’t say. “And she wears lots of layers of clothing.”

Lili was thinking of how to describe the clothes when the sheriff said, “That’s Patricia.” Then he actually smiled. “But we fondly call her Patsy.”

Lili took that in. Wow, after all these months, the woman had a name, though Lili thought she looked more like a Lady Dreadlock than a Patricia, or even a Patsy. And the sheriff
believed
her. At least about Lady Dreadlock being real and not Bigfoot or a little green Martian.

“What makes you think Patsy saw something?” He could have asked what she thought Lady D. had seen, but he didn’t lead Lili.

His deadpan expression didn’t give her any clues. Was Manny right? Did the sheriff know about her, about Fluffy? Had news traveled that fast, from the Stain to the church to the sheriff’s department in an hour? Then again, she didn’t know how early Chester and Linwood had arrived to spread the tale. They could have been up at the crack of dawn — elderly people sometimes didn’t need a lot of sleep — and down at the Stain by opening bell.

Not that it mattered. Since the sheriff asked, she’d have to explain, which started with what she’d been doing when she’d stumbled over Lady Dreadlock. Otherwise the rest of it wouldn’t make sense. Not that it would make a whole lot of sense anyway. She wished they hadn’t left Einstein behind at the shop. She could have used some moral support. Lili glanced at Tanner. Her heart rat-tatted in her chest, and she’d expected a go - ahead - and - get - yourself - out - of - this - one look. Instead, his eyes held an intense blue warmth. The rat-a-tat beat harder.

Tanner might not believe her himself, but here in the sheriff’s office, they were playing on the same team. For a moment, she gave herself up to the startling warmth in his gaze.

Then she started to stumble through her story. “Well, you see,
I
was out there because I had this feeling that something
else
was out there. Because…you see…it’s like this…” Okay, so how
was
she supposed to explain it?

Tanner simply took over. “What Lili means is that she telepathically communicates with animals, and my daughter’s cat indicated to her that it had seen something happen out in the woods on Wednesday night. Lili went out by herself to try to validate what the cat told her —” he turned and focused on Lili with a sharp look before going back to the sheriff “— which, incidentally, I told her was not a smart thing to do. That’s how she ran into this Patsy person. However, after that run-in, Lili didn’t find what she was looking for, so yesterday, we went out together and had more success than Lili had on her own.”