Mind Tricks (17 page)

“Yeah, Mickey said that.”

A long pause. The woman wasn’t
making this any easier than it had to be, was she? “Well, let me tell you where
to send the poster,” he said. As he reeled off his e-mail address, he thumbed
the power button of his computer to turn it back on.

“Okay.”

Silence again. He could hear her
breathing, so he knew she hadn’t given the phone back to Mickey yet.

Here was his chance—his golden
chance to find out how her screwy mind worked. “About last night—”

She said at the same time, “Why are
you helping me?” And she didn’t sound curious. She sounded suspicious.

Jake choked on the rest of his
sentence. “What?” He felt his face flush. The heat spread down his body like a
rash, and suddenly he was wickedly pissed off. “Because I like Brutus. And
because I liked you, too, until you weirded out on me last night. What’s with
you, anyway?” He dug his fingers into his forehead and exhaled. “Just e-mail me
the poster. I’ll put a few up tonight on my way home. Don’t worry—no thanks are
necessary.” And he slammed the phone back into its cradle.

The phone rang almost immediately.
Mickey, no doubt, planning to berate him. He growled into the receiver, “Jake Vant.”

But it was Roger Fills, the owner
of Seacastle. “Jake! Glad I caught you at the office. You and me, both still at
our desks and working hard, huh?”

“Right.” Jake’s e-mail binged. A
message from Emma Draper, with an attachment. So she wasn’t too proud—or too
crazy—to turn down his help. Anger sizzled like a white-hot coal in his throat.

Roger chuckled. “How are your
parents? Good?”

Life was too short to have to deal
with bullshit, either from women or from his business competitors. “They’re
great, Roger, but they’d probably torch Woodhaven for the insurance money
before selling it to you, to be dead honest.”

A pause, and Roger chuckled again.
“Interesting negotiation tactics. But—”

“Seriously.”

Roger stumbled over his next words,
clearly thrown. “You’re not even giving me a chance to tell you my offer.” He
sounded astonished. Perhaps he’d been so successful with Seacastle that he’d
stopped spending time with blunt, opinionated Mainers and had gotten used to
smooth-talking city people with too much cash on their hands.

“I don’t want to waste your time,
Roger. It’s extremely unlikely that my parents will accept any bid from you.
But go for it: Tell me your offer.” Jake clicked open the attachment on Emma’s
e-mail to see a poster with MISSING in big letters at the top and a picture of
Brutus that she had somehow obtained. A few more clicks, and the printer in the
hallway began to spit out sheets of paper.

Roger named terms that were
somewhat better than his last offer but still nothing Jake would recommend his
family sell Woodhaven for. “All right. Thanks,” Jake said. “I’ll tell you
tomorrow what they say. Minus their swearing. Good night.”

“Wait! Jake, this just isn’t like
you. Has Bill Monroe been talking to you?”

“About what?” Pure evil made him
add innocently, “About his buying your company and merging it into Selkie?”

“No!” The tone fell partway between
horror and indignation. After all, Monroe’s boatbuilding business was smaller
than either Woodhaven or Seacastle. But it was general knowledge that Monroe’s Selkie
was cash-rich: always a great bargaining chip.

“So you aren’t interested in
selling? Okay, I’ll mention that to Bill if the subject comes up. Talk to you later,
Roger.” And he hung up on Fills’s garbled good-byes.

Yep, he was evil. But it might keep
Fills off his back for a few days.

Since his e-mail was still on, he
opened up a new message, addressed it to Mickey and his parents, and typed in
Fills’s offer. He added:
I already told
him that it was unlikely you’d consider this an attractive idea, but let me
know what you really think. It’s a decent offer, but I believe we could get
quite a bit more if we were interested in selling. Still free, Jake.

No, the last bit was too
self-pitying. He deleted it, typed,
Love,
Jake
, and sent it off into Internet land.

Turn off the computer again; shut
off the lights. The workday was over. Now it was time to find a missing dog.

As he opened the door to his car,
the posters of Brutus wedged under one arm, he remembered that Brutus wasn’t
the only thing that had gone missing from Emma’s home.

Why had someone stolen the
Woodhaven backup DVDs?

• •

Emma handed Mickey’s phone back to
him, trying to keep her feelings off her face. But her hands were shaking. Jake
had sounded so angry. And, beneath that, hurt.

“You look like you could use some
of my Maker’s Mark,” Mickey said. “I can run back home and grab a bottle.”

“No, thanks.” That made Jake’s
final words grate in her skull:
No thanks
are necessary.
“But I have a few beers here. Want one?” Even if he didn’t,
she wanted them to leave this room, where too many memories from last night
still lurked among the couch cushions.

“I’ll pass, but you have one.”

On her way to the kitchen, she
noticed a text box was on her computer screen. It must’ve popped up after she’d
sent Jake the poster of Brutus.
Add to
address book?
it asked, showing Jake’s email address.

Her fingers tightened on the mouse
and then clicked YES. If Brutus remained missing, she might redo the poster and
send it to Jake again. Beggars couldn’t be choosers when it came to allies.

Ian was hanging up the phone as she
entered the kitchen. “That was my last bright idea,” he said, slumping into a
chair. “I called Bob Reynard, the town mailman, to see if he’d seen Brutus.
After all, dogs are attracted to mailmen, right? But Bob hadn’t seen him.”

Emma was startled into a short
laugh. “That’s brilliant, Ian. Total genius.”

“Yeah, but it didn’t lead anywhere.
We still haven’t found Brutus.”

She couldn’t argue with that, so
she popped the caps off two bottles of beer and handed one to Ian. Mickey
lounged in the doorway.

“We’ve called the police, the local
pet shelters and vets, Brutus’s owners’ neighbors—in case he decided to go home—and
now the mailman. We’ve plastered every phone pole within five miles with his
picture.” Emma sagged back against the kitchen counter and took a long swallow
of her beer. When she could speak again, she asked Mickey, “Any advice?”

“Well, it sounds like you’ve been
doing what conscientious people do when a pet gets lost. But do you think
Brutus is really lost? From what you were telling me earlier, it sounds like
you believe he was taken.”

“Yes, I think he was taken. But I
was hoping he might have escaped, or been set free a few miles from here.”

“Hmm. So, you can’t…?” Mickey
waggled his fingers next to his temples—international sign language for Do
Psychic Stuff.

“Read Brutus? No. I think he’s too
far away right now.” She rubbed her fist across her forehead. “I’ve been
driving around all day, hoping to locate him just by getting close to him and
reading his thoughts. That didn’t work either.”

“Were you randomly driving, or
being more systematic?”

“Oh, I was trying to be systematic,
but these roads aren’t exactly laid out on a grid system, you know. Plus, it’s
hard to drive and concentrate on mentally finding Brutus at the same time, so I
had to pull over every half mile or so to focus. That took up a lot of time. I
managed to cover only three-quarters of Baymill, and there are at least five
other towns I’d like to search.”

“Tomorrow I can drive you,” Ian
said. “I’d like to.”

Mickey cast Ian a speculative
glance. “Shouldn’t someone be here, manning the phone?”

“Everyone we contacted today has my
cell phone number,” Emma interjected. “And it’s on my answering machine, too.”

“Sure, but people don’t always
listen to messages, do they? When I go out of town, I leave a message asking
people to contact me on my cell phone, but I always return to a dozen messages,
many of them repeated calls. Lots of people just tune out, wait for the beep,
and leave a message like ‘Why haven’t you called me back?’”

She herself had been guilty a dozen
times or more of doing that; her sister had given her a minor tongue lashing
about it only last month. Emma made an apologetic face at Ian. “I think you’re
stuck here tomorrow. Sorry.”

“Isn’t Ian always stuck here?”
Cynthia asked, breezing in through the back door.

Emma bit back
Knock next time.
Not a conversation she wanted to start in front of
visitors.

Cynthia dropped a kiss on top of
Ian’s head and then nodded to Mickey. “Hey, Mr. Vant. How are you doing?”

Lord above, take notice. The girl
apparently did have some manners.

“Fine. You? And how’s your father?”

“He’s kicking Woodhaven’s butt in
boat orders these days, he tells me,” she replied, flopping down in a chair at
the table.

Mickey blinked.

“Cynthia…” Ian said, sounding
embarrassed.

“Well, he is,” she said, reaching
for Ian’s beer. “Part of it’s because people don’t want to buy their boats from
a killer, but a lot of it is because my dad is good at what he does.”

Emma regained her voice. “Cynthia,
that was insulting.”

“It’s not an insult if it’s true,”
the girl said triumphantly. “Then it’s just the truth.”

Emma could feel her hands shaking
again, but this time it was from anger igniting every vein in her body. Too
much. On top of everything else, Cynthia’s bitchiness was just too much. “First
of all, you don’t know if it’s the truth. Second, you didn’t say it because you
thought it was the truth, but because you wanted to shock Mickey or make him
feel bad.”

Cynthia’s mouth dropped open.
Though Emma kept her focus square on the girl, she could see in her peripheral
vision Ian close his eyes and his shoulders lift and fall in a sigh.

“I’m sorry,” Emma continued, “but I
don’t allow people to insult each other in my house. So you can either
apologize to Mickey and stay, or you can leave.”

Cynthia shot to her feet, rocking
the table. Foam spilled over the lip of Ian’s beer bottle and slid down the
cool glass. “Fine. Bye.” She jerked her head at Ian. “C’mon, let’s get out of
here.”

Ian rose more slowly. “See you
tomorrow, Emma. Thanks for the beer. Bye, Mr. Vant. I hope you have a good
night.” Giving both of them a nod, he followed Cynthia out the door and into
the encroaching dusk.

Cynthia’s shrill voice drifted
through the open window. “Can you believe the nerve—” Then Ian cut her off, his
low words unintelligible as the couple walked away.

“What a spoiled little princess,”
Mickey said. He gave Emma a little salute. “Thanks.”

“Any time.” She grimaced.
“Actually, her attitude has bothered me for a while, and it really started to
annoy me during the last few days. Because of that”—and because she had an
inch-long fuse after sleeping with a killer and having her dog kidnapped—“I may
have stomped on her too hard.”

“Didn’t seem too hard from my
perspective. And maybe Ian will give her a good talking-to as well. She didn’t
listen to you, but she might listen to him.”

“Maybe.” She hoped he’d at least
resist any ultimatum Cynthia might make demanding that he leave his job here.
It wasn’t just that Emma was been counting on Ian to run the second kennel—an
expansion that was now in serious jeopardy. Ian was a friend. If he left, there
would be a large hole in her life.

Another large hole, that is.
Somehow, in just three days, Jake had made a place for himself, too. She
snorted. Too bad he had to be a murderer. How could a psychic be so wrong about
people?

“Are you going to be all right here
alone tonight?” Mickey asked.

“Sure.” The smart thing would be to
beg a bed at Mickey’s. But independence and stubbornness insisted that she stay
here. And what if the kidnapper came back to take more animals? If she wasn’t
here, he could wipe out her entire kennel—her whole life. As soon as Mickey
left, she was going to grab a few hours’ sleep so she could keep watch over her
kennels throughout the night.

“Do you have a gun?” Mickey asked.

“No.”

“Want one?”

“No!” She imagined herself
patrolling her property, face blackened with greasepaint, a 9 mm pistol at the
ready. “I don’t even know how to shoot.”

“Right. Better not, then. But if
you’re staying here tonight, consider bringing in one of the other dogs here
with you. A yappy one.”

“Good idea.”

“I’ll be off, then.” But Mickey
lingered in the back door for a moment. “Tomorrow’s Saturday. Do you want to
meet for breakfast at Teague’s Bakery? Nine o’clock? After that, I’ll drive you
around while you search for Brutus.”

Gratitude swept through her, nearly
pulling her emotional footing away. She forced her eyes wide to scare
encroaching tears back where they belonged. “That’s lovely, Mickey. Okay,
Teague’s at nine tomorrow.”

As soon as Mickey left, Emma
prepped her coffeemaker with water and grounds and then set the timer for
midnight. She was going to need some chemical assistance to make it until dawn.

• •

Its windows and doors flung open to
the late June morning, Teague’s Bakery exhaled the scent of coffee and cinnamon
rolls onto the street. She’d had more than enough coffee during the past nine
hours, but the rolls smelled like a slice of heaven served on a plate.

She’d almost called Mickey to
cancel breakfast or to reschedule it at her house—Teague’s was one town over, and
a sleepless night was hanging heavy on her eyelids and shoulders. But the sight
of missing posters for Brutus fluttering on the lampposts in the town center
had brightened her mood and eased some of her weariness. Ian must’ve been busy
last night.