It Must Be Magic (18 page)

Roscoe was going to
know.

She stuffed her legs into her capris, zipped them, fumbled with the top snap, dragged a sweater over her head and shoved her feet into a pair of sandals she found by the dresser. She didn’t have time for a bra. Any second, the banging would wake Tanner, and she wasn’t ready to face him and Roscoe together.

Lord, what had they done? What had
she
done? Stupid girl, she’d wanted and she hadn’t even thought about the consequences afterward. Okay, she had thought about them and shoved them aside. For her, it had been cataclysmic, but Tanner was a man. Men didn’t do the cataclysmic, happily-ever-after thing with a woman like her, a mentally misdirected cat person.

Her sandals made way too much noise on the hardwood as she took the stairs, but it couldn’t be helped. An indistinguishable shape shadowed the opaque glass in the front door. Why would Roscoe come to the front instead of the back?

She threw open the door and realized immediately what an idiot she was.

Buddy Welch stood on the front porch, minus a gun, but that didn’t make Lili feel any better. His white hair, what there was of it, stood on end, and his long beard looked as if he never combed it, if one was supposed to comb a beard. Cheeks ruddy with either the cool night air or too many bottles of beer, he narrowed a set of piercing eyes at her. A person could write him off as a crackpot except for those eyes. Buddy Welch saw it, analyzed it, cataloged it and stored it.

Lili felt like a rabbit in his sights.

“I hear you’ve been telling people I killed that body.”

She held on to the door ready to slam it if he jumped at her. “No. I never said that.”

“But you told the police that cat of yours saw me do it.”

“I didn’t say that, either.”

First his white eyebrows went up — what he’d lost from his head seemed to have cropped up in his eyebrows — then he narrowed his eyes. “Then what the hell
did
you tell them?”

“That we saw you in the field right before we found it. The body, I mean.”

“Then why’s that no-good weasel Gresswell asking to see my military collection?”

“Um.” She lifted her shoulders. “I don’t know.”

His fingers, crippled with arthritis, flexed at his sides. She couldn’t be sure whether it was a sign of aggression or because he needed to exercise the stiffening digits.

“Fluffy’s my cat, not Lili’s.”

She hadn’t heard Tanner on the stairs, but thank God he was here. And dressed, right down to his shoes. She might not know how much their intimacy had meant to him, but she was glad she didn’t have to face down Buddy Welch alone.

“I told the police you were in the field yesterday, so if you’ve got a bone to pick, pick it with me, Buddy.”

Tanner pushed his hand through the fall of hair at her nape and pulled her close. She felt impossibly small and wonderfully protected. It was nice having a man around. Specifically, it was nice having Tanner around.

She shouldn’t get used it. Tanner could run hot, then just as quickly hit cold.

“I’m just saying,” Buddy went on, “I don’t appreciate being made a target merely because I happen to have guns in my house. Charlton Heston was head of the NRA and he played Moses.”

Lili wasn’t sure what guns and Moses had to do with each other. And people said
she
didn’t make sense. Buddy, however, had the sharp look going, and she was sure Moses and the NRA held great meaning in his world.

Tanner met him glare for glare. “We don’t care about your guns. But Miss Goodweather feels threatened, and if you don’t get off the porch, I’m calling the police.”

“I’m not threatening her.”

“You pointed a gun at her yesterday.”

“It wasn’t loaded.”

“Doesn’t the NRA say you aren’t supposed to point guns at innocent persons, loaded or not?”

Buddy cocked his head. “You mean a gun that’s loaded or a person that’s loaded?”

“Let’s not play word games, Mr. Welch.”

Take him to Fluffy.

Lili turned to find Einstein sitting on the bottom stair.

If Fluffy squawks, it means he’s afraid of the old man. Not that he doesn’t squawk at everything because he’s a wimp, but…

Einstein stared at her with one raised brow, not an easy feat for a cat. She was definitely learning human speak through body language.

Lili turned her chin up. “Mr. Welch, how about a test?”

Buddy narrowed his eyes. “What kind of test?”

“We’ll let Fluffy sniff you, and if he doesn’t get all weirded out, then that probably indicates you aren’t the killer.”

“Define ‘weirded out.’”

Lili sighed. “If he doesn’t claw, hiss or run for cover.”

Buddy considered that a moment, his lips pinched.

“Agreed. But he better not be sniffing around my privates.”

“Um, I’m sure your privates are safe.”

“If he scratches there, my future generations will be lost.”

He had to be at least seventy. Or older. If he didn’t already have them, Lili feared there were no future generations in his future.

“Deal,” Tanner said.

So they all trooped out the front door and down the porch steps, Einstein right behind them.

Oh man, Fluffy’s gonna have a fit. Teehee.
If a cat could grin, Einstein was doing a perfect Cheshire imitation.

With the sun long gone and the wind kicking up, it was cool and Lili was glad for her sweater. She wished she’d had time for the bra. There was something about going to Tanner’s without all her underclothes in the proper place that made her feel hinky.

Especially after what they’d done. As if Erika and Roscoe had X-ray vision and would
know.

Now that really was hinky.

W
AS SHE WEARING A BRA
? It was hard to tell through the thick sweater. Dammit, he shouldn’t be looking, anyway.

The scent of Roscoe’s baking cookies made Tanner’s mouth water. The scent of Lili covered him and had him wanting her all over again. What they’d done was supposed to have settled the ache, but the more he had, the more he wanted. Like an addiction. They hadn’t finished what they’d started down at the flower shop. Hell, no, they’d only begun.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept so deeply, even for so short a period of time. It was the loss of her warmth against him that had woken him, though he’d only just risen from her bed when he’d heard Buddy’s voice.

The two stolen hours, however, were gone. There would be no climbing back into Lili’s bed and having her again.

Reality had intruded.
If
you could apply the term
reality
to letting a cat sniff a man as a way of figuring out if the guy was a murderer.

Roscoe had groused that his cookies would burn without careful attendance, and Erika had run upstairs for the ever-disappearing Fluffy.

Now, with the cat in her arms, Erika hunkered down on the back porch while Buddy Welch waited on the path at the bottom of the two steps. She didn’t let Fluffy go, and her entire body was tensed like a gazelle ready for flight. The evening breeze blew through her hair.

“Are you sure about this, Dad?”

“We’re all here to protect Fluffy, sweetheart.”

“Einstein suggested it,” Lili added. “I’m sure she had a good reason. She always has good reasons even if she is a cat. She’s very smart. I honestly think she must have been someone like Marie Antoinette or Cleopatra in a past life.”

“Those ladies lost their heads,” Tanner drawled,

“Cleopatra,” Erika piped up, “was killed by an asp.”

“Watch your language, Erika.”

“Not ass, Dad, asp. It’s a snake.”

“Hmm, for a second there, I thought you were developing a lisp. Now put Fluffy down and let’s see what happens.”

The sooner this was over, the sooner he could…well, he couldn’t do what he truly wanted to do.

He shouldn’t have done what he’d already done.

He’d do it again the first chance he got. It was more than physical. His mind had started to crave as much as his body. He was addicted to Lili. It was the only explanation for why he couldn’t keep his mind on what he should be doing.

Erika stood and let the cat fall from her arms in a move they’d practiced many times, or perhaps it came naturally. Fluffy simply dropped down with a long, slow glide while Erika let his back legs slide through her fingers until his front paws landed on the porch.

Then he padded to the stairs, jumped both at once, and proceeded to wind in and around Buddy’s camouflage-clad legs.

“He knows you.” Lili looked from the cat to Buddy’s smug smile.

Buddy had known exactly what the cat would do from the moment Erika had brought Fluffy out on the porch. “He comes through the woods all the time and onto my property.” He reached down to scratch Fluffy’s head. Even at this distance, Tanner could hear the cat’s motor running.

Buddy’s house, if it could be called that since it was reputed to be more of a shack than a bona fide dwelling, lay just on the other side of the meadow. As the crow flies — or the cat walks — it was damn near right next door.

“I thought,” Tanner queried, “you didn’t like trespassers.”

Buddy curled his lip. “Animals aren’t dirty, no-good human beings who destroy the environment.”

“So,” Tanner said, turning to Lili, “is it conclusive proof?” Not that the examination could be totally conclusive since it was merely an animal doing a sniff test.

Lili quirked her mouth. “His aura looks decent.” She closed her eyes. Tanner could almost see the invisible feelers reaching out to Fluffy. He got that strange voyeuristic sensation he’d had in the bedroom. He realized now it was much the same look she wore on her face when she strove for orgasm. Lili put all her concentration into everything she did, right down to the way she’d exploded in his arms.

She opened her eyes and looked at him. Her gaze shivered through his body all over again, the way it had at the moment of her climax, the way she’d locked down and forced him to come at the same time.

“For now, he seems pretty good,” she said.

Nothing was good. His life had changed irrevocably the moment he’d set eyes on her. After tonight, there was no going back.

Right now, he didn’t have time to think about what that meant, to Lili, to him or to Erika.

“What did Fluffy say?” Why did it always give him the heebie-jeebies when he asked that question?

“He goes to see Buddy all the time. I can’t quite tell for sure, but I think he was coming back from Buddy’s when he got stuck in the tree.”

Tanner inclined his head to Buddy. “Did the cat visit you on Wednesday?”

“Couldn’t say for sure. I don’t keep track of what day it is, you know. But he was around for a few days, then, poof.” Buddy whooshed a hand through the air. “I stopped seeing him.” He nudged the cat with his toe. “Wouldn’t have known it was him accusing me of murder, either, if I hadn’t come over here.”

“I told you he didn’t say that.” Lili tapped her foot on the porch. She didn’t like to be constantly contradicted.

Fluffy suddenly stretched and climbed the side of Buddy’s legs, sinking his claws into fatigues that were obviously too thick to allow penetration. Buddy scratched between the cat’s ears.

Lili twirled a long lock of hair around her finger. “Mr. Welch, do you need a cat of your own?”

“I’ve got plenty of wild ones I feed.”

“But wouldn’t you like one you can actually pet and who’d come inside the house with you? Even sleep right beside you?”

Buddy tipped his head from one side to the other. “Maybe.”

“I have the perfect cat for you.”

“A Tom? I don’t want some prissy female coming in and trying to take over.”

“I promise he’s not a prissy female. His name is Ghost because he hardly comes out of hiding. He loves mice and lizards, but not birds, and he’s been fixed. I know that with a loving owner, he’d get over the need to hide all the time.”

“I suppose. But if he’s a nuisance, I’ll return him.”

“Guaranteed.”

Ghost. Tanner hadn’t heard that one mentioned. “Is that the white one?”

One half of Lili’s mouth quirked. “Yeah. The white one.”

She was remembering exactly what he was remembering.

She turned back to Buddy with that secret smile playing across her lips. “I’ll give him a chance to say goodbye to the others and we’ll bring him over in the next day or two, if that’s okay.”

“You gonna tell the sheriff I didn’t do it?”

She smiled. “I’ll say you got Fluffy’s seal of approval.”

Roscoe came to the back door. “Milk and cookies, anyone?”

Erika bounced inside, followed by Fluffy, followed by a sneaky Einstein.

“You’re welcome to join us,” Tanner offered.

Buddy harrumphed and climbed the steps.

Lili looked at Tanner, and her hesitancy was as palpable as a touch. He held out his hand, and that simple action brought a stunning smile to her lips.

He was getting in too damn deep, with no way of getting out again that wouldn’t hurt someone, most especially Lili, but for the life of him, he wanted that smile on her face and the feel of her hand in his.

He just didn’t know how much more he wanted. For a man who prided himself on knowing what to do and when to do it, this lack of decisiveness was unnerving.

T
ANNER WOULD BE LATE TO
work, but no way was he letting Lili ride her bike down to the flower shop. His gut screamed that he was being overprotective, and slightly irrational, but he’d lain awake most of the night alternately fantasizing about having her naked in his bed or finding
her
body out in the woods.

So here he was cocooned in his car with her at eight-thirty on a Monday morning getting drunk on the scent of her flowery perfume and the sound of her voice. Concentrating on what she said didn’t factor into the equation, at least not until she turned and tucked a long leg beneath her. While her gauzy skirt covered her to the tops of her hiking boots, it emphasized what lay beneath. The gorgeous body he’d touched last night.

Dammit, he needed to stop thinking about that.

“I thought about it all night long,” she said.

He’d thought about it all night long, too. Every detail, every sigh, every gasp of pleasure.

“And I’ve got it all worked out,” she went on.

He glanced at her, then turned back to the road. He got the feeling she hadn’t been thinking about the same thing he’d been thinking about.

“I’ve ruminated about Fluffy’s reaction to Buddy, and it came to me that Fluffy can find the killer. He can sniff people, and we’ll judge his reaction.” She beamed. “What do you think?”

He thought it was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. They were supposed to walk around town letting Fluffy sniff everyone, and when that didn’t work, they’d knock on doors?

He stopped for the light at the bottom of the hill. “I’m not sure you’ve considered all the problems with that plan.” That sounded diplomatic enough.

She tossed her hair over her shoulder. “I know it’ll take time, and it might look a little funny, but we’ve got to do something to help Sheriff Gresswell in the investigation.”

Traffic was light on the highway into town. School was out for spring break so he didn’t have to contend with scads of moms dropping their kids off at the school complex.

“You’re assuming whoever did it actually lives in Benton,” he went on, in a very reasonable voice under the circumstances. “It’s more likely that it was a stranger. No one’s going to kill someone right in their own backyard.”

“What about Reggie Demming?”

The sheriff’s deputies had gone to investigate Reggie’s uncontrolled burn and had found his neighbor under the bonfire. “That was an unusual circumstance.”

“So is this.” She looked at him with lashes slightly lowered, and he thought of her in full orgasm.

Thank God they were almost to her shop, and he could put off the discussion. He wasn’t one to put things off, but he also hated telling her no. He’d done a lot of that recently. “We can talk about it tonight.”

“I want to get started today. I’ll ask Kate if she’ll let me off early. There’s no time to waste on this. A murderer is out there, and it’s our civic duty, our
humanitarian
duty —”

He was going to have to lay down the law. “No.”

“What do you mean, ‘no’?”

He pulled into an available parking space and shut off the engine. “Lili, it doesn’t make sense.”

“It makes perfect sense.” She tipped her head and pursed her lips. “It’s the only option we have.”

“We have the option to let Sheriff Gresswell do his job, and that’s the option we’re taking.”

“But, Tanner —”

“But, Lili.” And he stared her down. “Roscoe’s planned a trip to the Boardwalk since Erika’s out on spring break, and that’s what we’re doing. We’re not carting Fluffy all over town getting him to sniff people.”

She chewed on the inside of her cheek as if that would hold in the million other things she wanted to say. “All right.”

That was the scariest part, the way she acquiesced so easily. “Promise you’re not going out killer hunting.”

She blinked. “I promise.”

“You said that too quickly.”

She pursed her lips once more, then batted her eyelashes. “I promise I won’t take Fluffy out for any sniff tests today.”

“Thank you. I’ll pick you up at six.”

“I can get Kate to take me home.”

No freaking way. He didn’t trust her to actually go home unless he was there to make sure she did. “I’ll pick you up because I won’t be working late tonight.” He’d already had that argument with Roscoe. He had the first pass of the financials to review, auditor meetings and an investment banker coming in, but Erika was his number-one priority, and Roscoe had planned this outing for weeks. Erika was counting on him, and he would make it home on time come hell or high water.

“Erika would like you to go with us to the Boardwalk.”

Lili had one hand on the door grip and her purse clutched to her chest, her gaze fixed on the door handle. “What about you?”

“It’ll be the first step in our plan for you to be a womanly influence in her life.”

Her hair fell across the side of her face as she nodded. “I’ll see you tonight.”

Then she slipped out of the car, leaving him with the feeling that he hadn’t won the battle at all.

Lili would somehow get around the promise she’d made, but for the life of him he couldn’t figure out the loophole in it.

I
T DOESN’T MAKE SENSE

Translation:
She
didn’t make sense. That was what Tanner meant.

And this whole debacle was going to get her fired.

Lili shoved the cash drawer closed. “I’m sorry, Kate, I don’t know what’s happening to this town.”

Kate stuck her mechanical pencil behind her ear. “Hey, hon, it’s been great for business.”

The shop’s front entrance had been like a revolving door all morning, and the activity hadn’t slackened after Lili had returned from lunch. All she’d wanted was a moment’s rest, but once outside she’d been accosted on every street corner. It was actually safer inside the shop.

To top it off, Sheriff Gresswell hadn’t laid eyes on Lady Dreadlock.

“Most of them haven’t even bought anything. They only want to know about the murder.”

Kate
kachinged
the cash drawer once again and pointed. “More than half bought something, even if it was only one flower.”

The door opened once more with a tinkle of bells. Lili closed her eyes and tried to meditate away her tension. She was a sideshow freak, an oddity they all came to stare at. She would have handled it better if Tanner didn’t feel exactly the same way about her.

“No,” Kate’s stern voice cut through Lili’s self-pity.

Lili opened her eyes.

“No means no, Joe.” Kate was in the midst of staring down Joseph Swann. Lili was sure he hadn’t said a word. But at least Kate had started calling him Joe.

In a dark suit, he looked the epitome of a conservative funeral director, but a mischievous smile curved his lips and his lapis eyes twinkled with humor.

“Six o’clock,” he said. “I’ll pick you up here.”

“I said no.”

“But you didn’t mean it.”

Kate folded her arms, pursed her lips and tapped the toe of her high-heeled shoe on the floor. “You’re becoming a pest.”

Lili flashed her eyes between them as if she were watching a tennis match.

“I know. That’s why you’re going to say yes, so you can get rid of me. I promise that if you don’t have a good time, I won’t ask again.”

Kate puffed out an irritated breath. “
Ever
again?”

He nodded, still smiling. “
Never
again.”

“You win.” Kate pointed her finger at him and narrowed her eyes. “I’m only doing this to get rid of you once and for all.”

“You’re a difficult woman.”

“Then why do you keep asking me out?”

“I enjoy a challenge.” Then he smiled.

Lili was dazzled by it, though it paled in comparison to Tanner’s smile. At least when he wasn’t handing down orders.

Their arms folded in identical fashion, she and Kate watched Joe leave. A mighty fine sight indeed.

Lili tapped an index finger on her arm. “Why are you so dead set against going out with him? Besides the dead thing.”

The tinkle of the bells had faded when Kate finally answered. “There’s something wrong with him. I know it. I feel it. No normal man takes six rejections and comes back for more.”

“I think he’s kinda cute.”

Kate rolled her eyes. “You would.”

It hit Lili the wrong way. “What’s that supposed to mean?” She wasn’t easily offended, but today her heart was sore and her psyche was a tad fragile.

“It was a figure of speech, Lili. What’s wrong? It’s more than everyone in town stopping by for a lookeeloo.”

Lili felt almost mutinous. “I’m tired of being a circus freak. I’m a person, too, you know.”

Kate turned her head slightly and gazed out of the corner of her eye as if she suddenly thought Lili had lost her marbles for good. Then she backed up a couple of steps and stuck her head into the back room. “Sasha, could you watch the front for a few minutes? Lili and I need to have a private talk.”

“We don’t need a private talk, Kate.”

The front door bells tinkled yet again. Sasha, her pink-frosted hair flying, rushed forward to help. Her enthusiasm was so great, she made a used-car salesman seem timid. Sasha loved being a designer, but she adored working with people.

“Oh, yes, we do.” Kate grabbed Lili’s arm and pulled her through the back-room door.

The odor of garbage faintly perfumed the alley out back. “It would have smelled better if we’d stayed inside.”

“I don’t need any prying eyes for this.”

Lili was taller by two inches despite Kate’s heels — how she managed to walk around in those stilettos all day, Lili had never figured out — but Kate managed to stare her down.

“What has gotten into you? I know this murder business is terrible, but, Lili, you’re scaring me. In all the years we’ve known each other, I’ve never heard you sound so negative.”

“I’m not negative. I’m tired of people looking at me like I’m a freak. And not believing me. And telling me what to do. And ma —” She cut herself off before she got carried away, revealing how far things had gotten out of control with Tanner.

“Lili, you need to accept who you are. Sometimes I actually think you’re ashamed of your ability.”

Kate could have a laser-sharp gaze when she wanted to. She’d used it on Joseph Swann, and she was using it right now. Lili felt it slice right through to what was really bothering her,
Tanner’s
inability to accept who she was. Yesterday he’d said he had faith in
her,
and it had seemed the most wondrous thing. Today, though, he wanted to subjugate her again.

“Kate, do you believe I can talk to animals?” She’d never outright asked before. Sometimes she felt Kate merely humored her. Kate certainly never contradicted her, but then Kate had never stated her thoughts about it unequivocally. Their discussions were couched in what Lili believed about herself, not what Kate believed.

Kate was an eye-contact kind of person. She didn’t use iffy body language. She didn’t use it now. “I like you. I trust you. If my life depended on whose hand I grabbed to pull me out of a raging river, I’d grab yours.”

Lili’s heart turned over. “Thank you, Kate. But do you believe?”

In her bones, her belly, like an ache at the back of her eyeballs, Lili knew Kate was going to say what Tanner said.
I believe that you believe you can do it.
Or something like that. It wasn’t the same thing as actually believing.

Even as Lili steeled herself, Kate did the most unexpected thing. Never a touchy-feely kind of person, she took Lili’s hand in hers. “I believe you when you tell me something is true. And therefore I believe you can talk to animals.”

Wow. “Without any proof?”

“I’m not sure how you could give me proof, Lili. It’s like aliens and ghosts — anything can be manufactured to make it
look
like it’s real.” She touched Lili’s arm. “But I
know
you, and I believe in you.”

Lili’s eyeballs started to ache all over again and this time it was to stop giddy tears from slipping down her cheeks. “That’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said.”

“All you had to do was ask me, hon.”

“I guess I should have.” It was amazing what someone else’s support could do for a girl.

“That’s why I’ve always thought you should start an animal-whispering business like that guy on TV. You could make a very good living.”

Lili gasped. “I couldn’t charge for it.”

“Why not? Don’t you think doctors should charge for their services? And what about policemen and firemen? Or the guy who empties the septic? You think they should all give us their essential services simply out of the goodness of their hearts?”

“They have to go school to learn what they do. Well, maybe not the septic guy.”

“People have to live, Lili.” Kate shrugged. “I’m not saying you should charge extortionist rates, but if you had a business and you advertised, you could help so many more people and animals than you do right now. Isn’t that worth something?”

“I’ve never thought of it that way.”

“Well, I have, though I’ve never wanted to say it, because it’s your life and you should choose how you want to live it. But I think you’re missing a good opportunity here.”

“I’ll think about it.” Lili couldn’t see putting herself out on that kind of limb. Hopefully Kate would forget about the whole scheme. Except that Kate never forgot anything.

Kate, ever the businesswoman, started making plans. “You could advertise that you make house calls.” She put her fingers to her lips. “We have to come up with a perfect name.” She tapped Lili’s shoulder. “Let me think about it. Something catchy and unique. We’ll have to get some referrals, and you’ll need a business license, and we’d better go back inside before Sasha wilts all the peonies with her black magic.”

Lili wasn’t so sure about the business license, advertising and catchy name. She wasn’t the businesswoman, Kate was. But she did feel terribly grateful that Kate…cared.

“Have I ever told you you’re the best boss a girl ever had?”

“Yeah, you have. Every time you want to leave early.” Kate grinned. Actually it was a grimace. “This time you’re going to have close for me while I get rid of that pest Joseph Swann.”