It Must Be Magic (4 page)

He thought she had a good heart. Wow. But he wouldn’t let her talk to Fluffy.

So, after work, she’d have to go into the woods alone, though she did feel like Little Red Riding Hood. Hopefully the Big Bad Wolf wasn’t out this evening. If she thought too seriously about what could really be out there, she got…freaky. Sick and scared. It was so much better to treat what Fluffy had seen as if it were something on one of those TV forensics shows.

Maybe it
was
all a mistake. She’d made mistakes before. Still, she had an obligation to check it out. Bumping the Coffee Stain’s door open with her hip, she bounded through. If she didn’t hurry, she’d be late to work.

“I know what you are.”

Lady Dreadlock — Lili had no clue what her real name was so she’d made one up — stood immobile on the sidewalk, right between Lili and the haven of the flower shop two doors down. A steady stream of cars passed on the road as commuters headed out to the highway; the coffeehouse doors whooshed open and closed behind her and the bank’s ATM was doing a brisk business, but Lili felt isolated by the woman’s dark, beady stare. Her eyes reached soul deep, and Lili suspected the woman didn’t like what she saw.

The lady’s once-white skin was tanned to the color of worn leather, and the sun had etched deep crags into her face that made her look twenty years older than she probably was, which, Lili guessed, was somewhere around her own age of thirty-one. Shoulder-length dreadlocks sprouted from her head like Medusa snakes. Lili couldn’t tell if she was blond or the sun had simply bleached the color from her hair and eyebrows. The toes of her tennis shoes were missing, and her white socks were dingy. Despite it being a somewhat warm April day, the woman wore a vest, over a sweater, over a shirt, all covered by a raggedy coat.

“God is watching you,” Lady Dreadlock intoned.

After three months of this, Lili hadn’t figured out why God was watching her. She’d tried to feel empathy for the woman, who wasn’t right in the head. She lived in the halfway house on the other side of town, and it was obvious that at some point she’d been homeless. She deserved Lili’s sympathy. But why pick on
Lili?
The woman never asked for money, never got closer than four feet, never touched Lili. But her voice was so…there.

“Good morning. Nice seeing you. I’m going to be late for work.” Lili always tried to be polite. She figured if she said
beat it,
the situation would only deteriorate.

Lady Dreadlock pointed at the sky. “God thinks we’re bad.”

Was that the collective “we,” or Lili and the dreadlock lady?

Lady Dreadlock bent at the waist, bringing her face closer to Lili’s, though without invading her personal space. “Be careful,” she snapped, “or God will punish
you.
”

Then, after uttering her last enigmatic proclamation, the woman shuffled off in the opposite direction, muttering to herself, and, if she was true to form, Lili wouldn’t see her for another couple of weeks. The woman never hurt her, never physically threatened her, she merely
said
things, always the same things. God was watching. God would punish. And that was about it. In three months, the refrain had not changed one iota.

Lili couldn’t figure out how to help the lady. She could help cats, dogs, hamsters, rabbits, the occasional horse — though she’d never tried goldfish or snakes, and what about that infestation of carpenter ants from the oak trees around the house? — but she couldn’t help Lady Dreadlock. It left Lili feeling helpless and inadequate, because she
wanted
to help.

She juggled her mocha and Danish, unlocked the front door of Flowers By Nature, scrambled inside, then locked it again until opening time. The perfume of tens of different kinds of flowers soothed her, along with the aroma of damp soil in the potted plants. She loved the scents after the store had been shut up for a night, like a jungle after a hard rain, semidark and earthy. Plants and flowers ringed the small shop, with a center aisle of arrangements and two stone pathways on either side leading to the back. With the light hum of the refrigerator units along the end wall, it was never quiet, but Lili sometimes thought she could almost hear the flowers talk.

“You should call the cops on that woman.”

Lili shrieked and almost dropped her coffee.
That
certainly wasn’t a flower talking. “Don’t scare me like that, Kate.”

Kate Carson, her boss, counted cash at the back by the register, several blond curls escaping the stylish knot on her head. Kate wore her hair up — it gave her three extra inches of height above her own five foot three — but by noon, the mass of curls would have fallen past her shoulders.

“How can you keep track of the cash and scare me at the same time?” Lili lost count if someone talked to her, which was why she liked to get in early and have everything set up before anyone else arrived for work.

“I’m an excellent multitasker.” Kate also had eyes out the back of her head. That was the only explanation for how she’d even seen Lili with Lady Dreadlock outside the Stain. Kate licked her index finger and started on another stack of green bills. Her red lipstick matched her nail polish.

Kate could rub her tummy and pat her head at the same time. Lili couldn’t. A couple of years older than Lili, her boss was expert at a lot of things. The name of the shop, Flowers By Nature, was Kate’s brainchild, and it was perfect. In the five years Lili had worked for her, Kate had gone from one employee to three designers, a clerk to process the phone and Internet orders, a teenager to clean and prep flowers for the cooler, two delivery guys, and besides Lili, a part-time salesgirl.

“I thought I was opening for you today.” They were closed on Sundays, but Lili worked the other six days a week, though only half days on Tuesday and Saturday. She always opened the shop. Opening was her favorite time of day. “I would have brought you coffee if I’d known you’d be here.”

“I felt lazy sleeping in.” Kate flipped her wrist and glanced at her watch. “Had to be up early anyway. A couple of meetings, one at Swann’s and another wedding. ’Tis the season.”

“Ooh, you’re going to Swann’s.” Lili waggled her eyebrows.

“Do
not
give me a look. I’m not interested in Mr. Swann.”

Kate had a goal — growing her flower business — and she didn’t let growing a relationship get in her way. Lili had thought about giving her one of the cats for company, but the only living things Kate wanted in her condo were of the variety that had their roots in soil. Kate dated, she liked men, but she always had her eye on the objective.

Lili thought she was missing out on a great opportunity. “He’s such a hottie.”

Joseph Swann had dark mahogany hair and lapis-blue eyes. Lili’d tried to see if he wore colored contact lenses or if the color was natural — because it was almost…unnatural — but she never had figured it out.

Kate straightened the stack of cash, pushed the bills into the register drawer, then stared down her nose at Lili. Despite being shorter, it worked. “I am not, repeat
not
dating a man who touches dead people.”

“Just because he runs a funeral home doesn’t mean he actually touches them.” Lili liked to think the crinkles at his eyes were laugh lines, but she hadn’t seen him laugh much, which was expected since he dealt with grieving families all the time. That must be the worst, your whole job spent working with people who were crying, shell-shocked or inappropriately happy because Grandpa had left them a chunk of money in his will. Or mad as a rattler because he hadn’t.

That didn’t make Joseph Swann a bad guy. “Give him a shot.”

Kate bared her teeth. “No!” Then she started on the coin count. “Now, about calling the cops.”

That was the thing about Kate. You couldn’t sidetrack her. She always came back to her original point if you didn’t let her make it the first time.

“You know I can’t call the police. If there’s a whiff of trouble again at the halfway house, they’ll shut the place down like they did when Elvira Gulch complained about that man peeing on her roses.” It had taken six months to reopen the home after all the red tape. “Those people need a place to live.” Although Lili agreed it wasn’t right for him to pee on the roses.

“Her name isn’t Elvira Gulch.”

“But she reminds me of the wicked witch on her bicycle when she tries to take Toto to the pound. I hear that music playing every time I see her. Doo-dee-doo-dee-doo-doo.”

Kate laughed. “You are so funny. But you need to do something about that woman hassling you every day.”

“It’s not every day. Only every couple of weeks.” Whenever the woman happened to catch her alone on the sidewalk. Lili had first encountered her while she’d been soothing a puppy’s nerves when his owner had tied him to a lamppost outside the Coffee Stain. The poor little thing had been experiencing separation anxiety.

And Lady D. had started experiencing
something
toward Lili.

“It’s scary,” Kate said.

It wasn’t so much scary as unsettling. Lili wasn’t afraid. Not in an oh - my - God - she - might - have - a - meat - cleaver - in - her - purse kind of way. Lady Dreadlock didn’t have a purse.

The woman didn’t terrify her as much as Fluffy’s images slamming into her mind had done. That was something she had to take care of ASAP. Or at least before the sun went down. “Can I leave a little early today, Kate? I’ve got some errands I want to run, and I don’t like riding my bike home after dark.”

“At least you’re sensible about
something,
and yes, I can lock up tonight.” Kate was the
best
boss.

“Thanks.” Lili scuttled past into the back room before Kate could return to talk of the dreadlock lady. The back area was much bigger than the front of the shop since that’s where the majority of the work was done and the flowers were stored.

“You’re avoiding the issue,” Kate’s voice followed.

Lili set down her coffee and Danish. The issue. What was the issue? Lady D.? Or Fluffy and what he’d seen? Or Tanner Rutland and what he wasn’t willing to do about it?

She poked her head out the door. “Can I ask a question?”

Kate glanced over her shoulder. “You can ask whatever you want. After I hear it, I’ll decide whether I want to answer.”

“Deal.” She took a deep breath and spilled the whole story. “Erika Rutland is the girl who lives next door to me, and her cat saw a murder in the woods, and the body hasn’t been discovered yet, so I can’t go to the police because they won’t believe me unless I find the body, but Tanner — that’s Erika’s father — won’t let me talk to the cat or Erika about it, so I have no idea where the body is, and what would you do in my place?”

Kate smacked a roll of quarters on the counter and poured them into the cash drawer. “How old is this Tanner guy?”

“Thirty-five, thirty-seven, something like that.”

“Is he a hottie?”

He was definitely a hottie — better than funeral director Joseph Swann — but Lili didn’t see what that had to do with Fluffy and the murder. “
Hottie
would be a good word to describe him.”

“Then it’s easy.” Kate lifted a shoulder. “Seduce him.”

“Seduce him?”

“He’ll be putty in your hands.”

“Hmm. I never would have thought of that.” That was what Lili admired about Kate. She thought outside the box. And she didn’t even ask for further details on a pretty darn convoluted story. Lili wasn’t sure if Kate actually believed she could talk to animals, but that was the other great thing about her boss. Kate never judged. She was a go-with-the-flow kind of person. Except about Joseph Swann’s career choice.

“I’m full of amazing ideas.” Kate raised one perfectly penciled eyebrow. “And modest, too.”

“I bow to your genius. Guess that’s why you’re the boss.”

It might work. If she didn’t find anything out in the woods when she went for her hike after work, she’d seduce Tanner Rutland into giving her access to Fluffy.

With Tanner, the idea had certain exciting side benefits.

Lili ducked through the door in search of her Danish and coffee.

Kate’s voice pursued her. “And don’t do anything silly like traipsing out into the woods to search for a body on your own.”

Darn. Why did Kate have to bring up common sense?

“T
HAT CONCLUDES OUR BUSINESS.
How about lunch?”

Joseph Swann was tricky. He never asked her on a date, but over the last couple of months, he’d slipped invitations in as part of their business arrangements. Kate Carson wasn’t fooled. He was after her for more than a spinach salad. She was flattered, but the man was a no-go.

“Thanks, but I’ve got another meeting right after this.” Besides, she had to get back to Flowers By Nature. Lili had her a trifle worried over this latest animal communiqué. While not a careless person in the main, Lili had an obsession with helping animals, which sometimes blinded her to everything else.

Kate busied herself putting her files back in her briefcase. Joseph Swann didn’t make her nervous, nor did his office. There was nothing particularly funereal in it. He sat behind a standard dark wood desk, something rich-looking but not too rich. His chair was leather, but well used. There were filing cabinets along the wall and bookcases filled with compendiums whose titles she’d never bothered to look at. Instead of a conference-style table, he had a black leather sofa, two matching chairs and a coffee table. The corner of the room housed a small coffee stand with ceramic mugs rather than foam cups. And though pastel watercolors on the walls soothed, as did the blue-gray carpet, it wasn’t as if he had piped-in organ music or brochures of caskets on the table.

He steepled his fingers, rested them against his lips and eyed her over the tops. “You’re lying.” His voice had a soft, almost singsong quality to it, as if he were amused by her continued efforts to resist his invitations.

She didn’t expect him to be so open about it, but it was exactly what she
should
have expected from him. Joseph Swann was actually witty and charming, soft-spoken as befitted his profession, and devilishly handsome. His most stunning feature was his square jawline. Kate couldn’t say why it fascinated her more than his mahogany hair or his lapis-blue eyes, to use Lili’s description. Kate had to admit the man was sexy with a six-foot, well-maintained body, as far as one could tell on someone who primarily wore dark suits with the jacket buttoned, a white dress shirt and a charcoal-striped tie. It was that jawline that did it for her. Strength, maybe that was it. Whatever. The problem between them was not his jaw; it was the whole dead-people issue. Though he often made her laugh, a man who spent the majority of his time around dead bodies couldn’t be normal.

She gave him a prissy, prim stare to mask the smile that threatened. “I am not lying, and I resent your saying that.”

He smiled. “No, you don’t. You think it’s entertaining that I keep asking even after you’ve turned me down…what?” He spread his hands. “Five times?”

“Six, counting this one.” She couldn’t help the answering smile. If only he didn’t do what he did. He also struck her as a relationship kind of man, which didn’t fit her life plan.

“Maybe I should have told you right up front that I’m not into necrophilia.”

She snorted. He really was amusing. At first, she hadn’t thought he’d had a sense of humor at all, especially considering his career selection, but little by little, she’d realized he had a droll wit that caught up with you a few lines later.

“I don’t have sex with dead people. I prefer live women.”

Kate outright laughed. “Prefer?”

“Maybe I should have used another word. I like women who are of the living, breathing variety.”

She’d worked with him two years; he was one of her best customers. While many of the bereaved wanted to handle the flower arrangements themselves, some wanted everything done by the funeral home, an “I can’t bear to think about that now” mentality that Kate understood completely. She knew he wasn’t hers exclusively; he used plenty of other florists, but she did feel she got special hands-on attention, especially over the last couple of months. And he always threw in a few zingers during their dealings. Probably to let her know
he
was a live one. Versus a dead one. This conversation, however, took the cake. “Is this like cop humor, making a joke out of a morbid thing?”

“I don’t think what I do is morbid.”

“You work with dead people.” Her voice rose a tad with incredulity. “That’s morbid.”

“I primarily work with their loved ones. It’s a very different thing.”

“Yes, but —”

He held up his hand. “Why don’t we talk over lunch, get it all out in the open and ease your fears about it?”

“I don’t have fears about it.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Now you sound more like a psychiatrist than a mortician.”

“I’m not a mortician. I’m a funeral director. See, there’s your first misconception. And funeral directors do need to have a handle on the psychology of the situation. I’ve been to a few seminars on dealing with the emotional end of the business.”

“Mr. Swann —”

“You always call me
mister
when I’m trying to ask you out.”

“I’m not dating you.” Then she realized that was a bit too strong. “I’m concentrating on the flower business right now. Dating is low on my list of priorities.”

He went on as if she hadn’t even spoken. “Most women fall into two categories. Either they’re utterly fascinated with what I do, want to hear every dirty detail, and sometimes I think
they’re
into necrophilia, especially when they ask me not to move during…uh…certain activities.”

She covered her eyes, inhaled a deep breath and laughed again. He was irresistible in a rubber-necker kind of way. “I’m not one of those women.”

“Then there’s the other kind. They’re terrified something might rub off on them. Fear of dying and all that.”

“I’m not that kind, either.”

“Then go out with me.”

“I don’t have time for dating. I’ve got a business.”

He shrugged. “All right, I’ll settle for sex. I promise not to ask you to do it in the embalming room or in a coffin.”

She wanted to roll on the floor laughing. It was the most surreal conversation she’d had in her life. Except when her mother had made Kate accompany her to the funeral home to make arrangements for her inevitable passing. “Mr. Swann —”

“At least call me Joe.”

“All right, Joe. We’ve worked together for two years. Why are you pushing this
now?
”

“The nesting instinct. It’ll sneak up on you. You’ll see some stranger walking down the street and bam, it’ll hit you. Before you know it, you’ll be dating him, then marriage, then children. I see you with —” he shrugged, eyeing her “— two. I want to make sure you give me a chance before you meet him.”

Where did the man come up with the idea? About
her,
of all people? “That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

He spread his hands. “Is it?”

“I don’t have a mothering bone in my body.” She was a driven businesswoman like her mother. But her mother had succumbed to the biological-clock tick when she was thirty-eight. She hadn’t needed a husband, though she had wanted a child. That wasn’t going to happen to Kate, but she steered clear of the future family-man type to be sure.

He smiled. “Then just having sex is fine by me.”

She found him attractive and funny, but his profession — yuck. “It’s not a good idea to have sex with my biggest customer.”

“You have an answer for everything.”

“You’re right. I do. I’m exceptionally flattered, though.”

“I haven’t given up. I will keep asking.”

“No means no, Joe.”

“If you’d said I made your skin crawl, I’d be willing to accept that no means no. But you didn’t.”

“Is that all I have to do?”

“Yes.”

She thought about it. She really, really did. But he didn’t make her skin crawl, far from it. She wasn’t that mean or unfeeling to actually say that out loud, anyway. Maybe she enjoyed the chase, too. Not that she’d give in, but as long as he knew the score up front, what was the harm? “No —” she put a finger over her lips “— means no.”

“It’s only a matter of time before you succumb.”

Cocky bastard. Still, she liked him. She wouldn’t date him or have sex with him, but she liked him nonetheless.

A
PRIL WAS USUALLY A RAINY
month, but this year hadn’t brought the typical deluge, so the meadow was dry, the late evening sun was warm and the breeze whispered through the long grasses. For the first time ever, the soft shush raised goose bumps along Lili’s arms, and she kept looking behind her as if Fluffy’s murderer would jump out of a gopher hole. Though she hadn’t bothered to change her skirt, she’d worn her hiking boots in case she stepped into one of those cavities. Boots helped avoid a sprained ankle.

She realized now, she wanted to avoid a lot more than that. Meadow, forest, oak tree. That was what Fluffy had shown her. She’d made it to the middle of the meadow, then gotten scared. Actually, she’d been scared when she’d left her house, tramped through her backyard and hit one of the narrow trails that wound through the trees. To the south, east and west, the semicircle of surrounding houses was separated from the meadow by a ring of forest that took a few minutes to traverse. To the north, it was woods all the way to the summit. As the crow flies, most of the houses were well within walking distance, even Buddy Welch’s. Luckily, she’d never seen him out here. Sometimes she wondered if he was nothing more than an urban legend. Then again, encountering Buddy Welch was better than scanning for — gulp — vultures flying overhead. She didn’t want to find a body, not now, not ever, at least not while she was alone.

“This is really stupid,” she whispered to herself. Seducing Tanner Rutland into letting her communicate with Fluffy was a darn sight better than trying it on her own.

Several yards away, Einstein’s tail cleared the waving stalks as she jumped at something, probably a gopher poking its head up. It was said that you couldn’t walk a cat the way you could walk a dog, but Einstein often accompanied her on hikes. She also quickly disappeared when something caught her fancy. Even as Lili tried to keep her eye on it while she walked, the cat’s tail was swallowed up by the long grass.

Her boot caught on something. Then she tripped. Over a body. And screamed.

And kept on screaming when it sat up.

“I know what you are,” it droned as it rose to its feet.

Lili started to breathe again. It wasn’t a dead body, it wasn’t a ghost. Not even Bigfoot.

It was Lady D. Normally Lili would have been nervous, but when she’d been terrified she’d tripped over a real body, tripping over Lady Dreadlock was the lesser of two evils.

“It’s a gorgeous day, isn’t it?” Lili rolled to her hands and knees, then got to her feet and backed up several steps. She didn’t feel comfortable with the woman standing over her. Her relief at not having tripped over a real body quickly receded. It was bad enough seeing the woman in town, but out here…alone? It was creepy. Where was Einstein? And what was the woman doing out in the wide open spaces when her usual haunts were in town?

“God is watching you,” Lady D. said, her usual refrain.

Lili almost mouthed the woman’s next words aloud, but the empty meadow was way too empty to start antagonizing her. “It’s a lovely day for a hike.”

“God thinks we’re bad.” She pointed at the darkening sky.

Standing alone in the middle of the field with nothing around but big trees and long grass and the sky overhead, Lili wished she’d reported the woman the way Kate had told her to.

Could dreadlocks look like a helmet from a cat’s-eye view? Actually, no. Not in any way, shape or form could the woman’s hair be covered by a bowl-shaped helmet the size Fluffy had seen.

“Be careful or God will punish
you.
” This time, Lady D. pointed her finger at Lili, her fingernail short and ragged.

Maybe it was the quiet, the lack of traffic and passersby, or the fact that her last mocha had been about nine hours ago, but Lili couldn’t take it anymore. She didn’t care about being polite or nonconfrontational. She cared about the empty meadow, but if the woman was going to threaten her, she had to at least know why. “What do you know? You always say that, and you never tell me
why.
What have I done that God’s so mad at?”

The woman smiled, the leathery texture of her skin creasing her mouth and deepening the grooves meandering down her face, then she stared at something over Lili’s shoulder. “Ask the cat.”

The cat? In three months, it was the first thing the woman had ever said that wasn’t part of her script. Lili wanted to hear more, but Lady Dreadlock turned and glided away.

“Wait. What’s that supposed to mean?”

Lady D. ignored Lili, trailing her fingers along the tops of the grass, until she reached the edge of the forest and it sucked her into its depths.

Einstein appeared, sitting down in the trampled grass.

“Where have you been?” Lili almost shrieked.

Important things to do.
An image of a field mouse popped into Lili’s mind.

Lili simply plopped down in the middle of the grass and closed her eyes. “This was a stupid idea.” She cracked one eye open. “And don’t you dare give me the dunce cap.”

Einstein yawned. Which
was
better than the dunce cap.

“If there is something out here, I shouldn’t be looking for it by myself.”

Einstein lifted a paw and licked the pad.

“What do you think she was doing out here?” Then she flashed an image of the dreadlocked woman.

I’m a cat. How would I know?
For once, Einstein gave herself the dunce cap.

“Well,
she
told me to ask you.” What did that mean, anyway?

Einstein merely blinked. She couldn’t figure out Lady Dreadlock, either.

Lili sighed and wrapped her arms around her knees. “Do you think we could be wrong about what Fluffy saw?”

We?

Then Lili rolled to her feet. “There’s only one thing to do.” Whatever was necessary to get Tanner Rutland on her side. “I’ll have to seduce him.”

Einstein started a hacking cough.

“I was kidding.”

Liar, liar, pants on fire.
She saw an image of a woman cupping the rear of her burning jeans. “Let’s go home. I’ll think about it all later.” After a salad and a cherry cordial chocolate kiss.