Mind Tricks (2 page)

Ian was young, sure, but he was her
right-hand man and smart to boot. And if her plans for business expansion
unfolded as she hoped, six months from now Ian would run her second kennel in
the town next door.

“Heard the news?” Ian asked,
standing and following her into the kitchen.

She refilled her mug from the
coffeemaker. “No. What?”

“A woman was murdered over in
Camden last night.”

Camden was two towns away. A
tourist destination right on the water, it was more upscale than most of the
surrounding towns, and it suffered from some thievery, but Emma couldn’t
remember anyone being killed there since she’d moved to Maine. “That’s terrible.
Did they catch the guy?”

“Hey. It could have been a woman
who killed her. An equal opportunity feminist.”

Emma made a face at him. “Well, was
it?”

“I don’t know. Last I heard, the
police hadn’t arrested anyone.”

“It was probably her husband or
boyfriend.”

“Ha. The reason why you don’t date
is finally revealed: You’re afraid of being murdered.”

“I don’t date because I haven’t
found anyone I want to date.” She managed to keep a sober face while delivering
that whopper. She’d met a handful of men whom she would have dated in a
heartbeat. Jake Vant had been at the top of that very short list until he’d
revealed himself to be so narrow-minded about her job.

Not that he was the only one. In
fact, all the men she liked weren’t interested in getting close to a pet
psychic. She didn’t have to enter the minds of any of them to know that they
considered her a scam artist.

Her job was only the first
stumbling block, though. Even if she managed to convince a guy that she was
legit, she wasn’t sure she could sleep with him. So much skin on skin, feelings
and sensations rushing through her like a riptide—

She shook herself back to the
present. “So who was killed?”

“Ginny Lamberton.”

The name tickled her brain, but
nothing popped free. “The name is familiar, but I don’t think I know her.”

“Yeah, I never met her either, but
she worked for Jake Vant’s boat building company, Woodhaven. I heard Jake was
the last one seen with her before she was killed. Whoa, Emma. Are you all
right?”

Somehow she’d ended up sitting in a
kitchen chair. Good thing—otherwise she would’ve landed on the floor.

She
had
met Ginny. The memory that had been dodging her had finally
surfaced. Ginny Lamberton was the statuesque woman Jake had brought to Mickey’s
Christmas Eve party.

Emma wrapped her arms around
herself. An emergency, Mickey had said. Jake couldn’t remember what he’d done
the night before.

God. Had she shared her morning
coffee with Ginny Lamberton’s killer?

“It doesn’t look good,” Jake said
bluntly as soon as Mickey opened the door.

Grimacing, Mickey stood aside to
let him in. “We should have expected the police to get a search warrant for
your house. That you’re not in handcuffs is a good sign, though. What did
Halliburt say?” Shutting the door behind Jake, Mickey led the way to his
library.

Not that Jake needed leading. He
and his brothers had been running in and out of this house for most of their
lives, and he knew every warped floorboard and the contents of every cupboard
better than those of his own town house in Camden.

But…that painting in the hall was
new. And it looked like Mickey had reupholstered the sofa and chairs in the
library. How long had it been since Jake’s last visit? Weeks? Guilt steamrolled
over him, and he scowled. No, months. He had turned down a few dinner invites
from his uncle, telling himself that he’d make it up to Mickey when he had more
free time. Well, if the police had their way, he would soon have plenty of free
time, just no freedom to use it.

He shoved that thought away. Mickey
was right: If the police hadn’t arrested him after searching his house, then
they hadn’t found anything immediately incriminating. And that was good.

A few other things weren’t so good,
though. “I know Halliburt’s a friend of yours,” he said to Mickey, “and he has
a great reputation in legal circles, but he’s not the right guy for this. For
me.”

“Why not?” Mickey asked as they
both settled into seats, Mickey at his desk and Jake on the newly recovered
couch.

Jake rubbed the bridge of his nose.
Damn, he needed sleep. “He hasn’t made any backup plans. Halliburt’s whole
defense argument is that if I was drugged, then clearly I didn’t do it. Would I
kill Ginny—” His throat closed up, chopping off his words.

Ginny was dead. In the craziness of
his near-arrest by the police, the blood tests at the hospital, the bizarre
early morning encounter with Mickey’s pet psychic, the police’s search of his
home, and his discouraging meeting with Halliburt, the reality of Ginny’s
murder hadn’t had a chance to sink in.

He shuddered. The police had shown
him a picture of her body, crumpled and lifeless as a discarded newspaper. He
and Ginny had left the restaurant together—several witnesses had said so,
though he couldn’t remember it. But where had they gone? Where had he been when
she’d been murdered? Had he tried to defend her? If he had, he’d done a
terrible job. Her shredded white blouse had been soaked with blood.

His stomach twisted. Ginny had been
a friend. Not a close friend, but more than a coworker. Their friendship was
the reason why he’d decided to talk to her over dinner instead of in his office
to find out why she’d been spreading rumors about Woodhaven having cash-flow
problems.

He hadn’t stabbed her. He knew that
without a doubt, even if he couldn’t depend on his memory to back him up.

“Would I kill Ginny,” he finally
continued, “and then drug myself, trying to establish an alibi of helplessness?
Halliburt thinks a jury, should it come to that, would consider the scenario
absurd. But the police don’t think it’s absurd. And the DA probably doesn’t
either, though she’s more cautious than they are, which is the only reason why
I’m here talking to you.”

“Did the police take anything from
your house?”

“My laptop. Like I’d typed in a
plan for killing Ginny and then saved the date on my computer.”

“More likely they’re going to check
which web sites you’ve visited lately.”

Jake snorted. “Good luck to them,
if they’re looking for cheap thrills. Spreadsheets, sales reports,
brochures—that’s all that’s on there. No downloaded porn.”

Watching the police go through his
things was like witnessing his own house being robbed. As Detective Cooperman
had hauled his laptop out of the house in a box, he’d given Jake a smug smile
as if quite aware of Jake’s fury.

Mickey tapped his fingers on his crossed
knee. “And you still don’t remember anything?”

“I remember meeting Ginny at the
Waterview. Things get fuzzy after that.”

“The lab at the hospital found
Rohypnol in your blood test—the police can’t deny that. They were the ones who
brought you to the hospital before taking you to the station.”

“No, but they’re not interested in
denying it. They’re interested in proving that I was being very smart by
killing Ginny and then drugging myself in an attempt to make people believe
that I, too, was a victim.” He tried out a laugh, but it had a ragged edge that
grated inside his skull. “Normally I’d be flattered that I’m considered so
wily, but this isn’t a normal situation.”

He rested his head against the sofa
back and closed his eyes for a moment. Five minutes of sleep—that’s all he was
asking for. Or five hours. He needed his equilibrium back. With every word he
spoke, every thought that burned through him, he felt himself tilting further
toward a black emotional abyss.

“Have you considered seeing a
hypnotherapist?” Mickey asked. “To try to draw those memories out?”

Jake’s eyes popped open. “Next
you’re going to be pushing a psychic on me again.”

“If I knew another one, maybe I
would. Why are you so against nontraditional remedies?”

“Because they don’t work. Remember
Marcus telling our family he had ‘the sight’? But the kid couldn’t even pick a
winning lottery ticket when Grandpa handed them out at Christmas.” Nor had
Marcus warned them against the accident that had put their brother Daniel in a
coma.

Mickey frowned. “I worry about
him.”

“Me too.” No one had heard from
Marcus in months or even knew where he was. Jake’s younger brother had
hightailed it out of town the day after the family had received the news that
Daniel would never wake again.

“But hypnotherapists are more
mainstream these days,” Mickey said, turning the conversation back. He smiled.
“Not just for alien abductees anymore. Lots of people use them to stop
smoking.”

Yeah, Jake remembered that Hardy at
work had credited hypnotherapy with helping him kick the habit. “Right now,
I’ll try almost anything. I saw your pet psychic this morning, didn’t I?”

“While under the misapprehension
that she was a so-called real doctor, if I recall correctly.”

Jake felt himself flush at the
light chiding in Mickey’s voice. He tried to defend himself. “Is she
any
sort of doctor?”

“She helps others. That’s all I
need to know.”

In other words, no. Not that he’d
expected to hear that Emma Draper had a Ph.D. in astrophysics or medieval
literature. She didn’t have the pasty-skinned look of someone who liked to
spend time on book study, preferring instead practical, hands-on training. A
bit like himself, actually.

As he recalled, she had fairly nice
hands. Warm but not clammy, firm and reassuring. They’d shaken hands upon
meeting at Mickey’s Christmas Eve party, and she’d told him that she worked on
healing animals. He’d thought,
Lucky
dogs,
a moment before mentally connecting her with the pet psychic/New Age
healer Mickey had as his neighbor. After that, he’d stayed as far away from her
as possible.

“Do you know any hypnotherapists?”
Jake asked. Mickey probably knew a half dozen. His open, friendly manner drew
people to him like they were magnetized, the normal folks as well as the kooks.

“One or two. Would you be willing
to meet with one?”

At this point he would let a monkey
try to read tea leaves if he thought it might bring back his memories and prove
his innocence. “Sure. Why not.”

At his desk, Mickey punched in a
phone number, listened for a bit, then slipped the receiver back into its
cradle. “Joe must be on vacation at his cabin upstate, because his message
basically said not to expect him to call back soon. I’ll leave a voice mail on
his cell phone just to be sure, but that cabin doesn’t have a cell tower within
fifty miles.”

“Do you know anyone else that’s
local? Or even in Boston?” He couldn’t go anywhere—the police had made that
plain, their flat eyes reinforcing the message coming from their mouths—but
someone could travel up here to hypnotize him or mesmerize him or do whatever
needed to be done.

“Let me check my files.”

Jake blinked. “You have files on
these people? What are you, the FBI?”

“I’m organized,” Mickey said. “How
do you think I keep track of where to send Christmas cards?”

“Well, if I can’t find out what
happened last night, you’ll have to change my address to inmate 55387 at the
state prison in Warren.” He tried to make it sound like a joke, but instead it
snapped out like a whip. Damn it, he shouldn’t be venting his fear at Mickey.
His uncle had done nothing but help him all day. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to take
your head off.”

“No problem.” Mickey paused. “Have
you called your parents?”

“Not yet.” He’d been putting it
off, first imagining that the police would clear him right away, and then hoping
that his lawyer would have a good playbook for dealing with the suspicions that
had fallen on him. Now, though…

“Do you want me to call them?”
Mickey offered.

“What I want is for this whole
thing to go away so that no one has to call them!” He took another breath.
Calm down.
If he wigged out, he wasn’t
sure he’d be able to grab his sanity back again. “But since that isn’t going to
happen, I’ll call them when I get to the office.” He definitely needed to phone
them before any of their old neighbors or friends in town got wind of the
investigation and called them, looking for more information or to give support.
His parents would never forgive him if they were caught unawares like that.

“You’re planning on going in to
work?” Mickey glanced at his wristwatch. “It’s three o’clock. Why not just
knock off for the day?”

For one thing, he worked most
nights until seven or eight, so starting work at three would still give him
four or five hours to catch up on what had happened at Woodhaven today. For
another, Woodhaven wasn’t just a job. It was the family business that supported
him, his parents in Arizona, part of Mickey’s lifestyle, and his brother
Daniel. Mickey knew that. Third, work would take his mind off this horror show
that had become his life. “Once word gets out, my customers will start calling.
I should be there to reassure them.”

“No one expects you to be at
Woodhaven today, Jake. Not even twitchy customers.”

Jake stood, ending the debate.
“Thanks, Mickey, for everything.”

“Hey, that’s what I’m here for:
everything. I’ll phone you when I come up with another hypnotherapist.”

“Great.” He let himself out of his
uncle’s big house and headed for his car. A hypnotherapist. His father would
find that interesting—he went in for spooky stuff and delighted in the idea
that Sasquatch and the Loch Ness monster might actually exist.
People have to be reminded that they don’t
know everything that goes on on this planet,
he’d said to Jake a number of
times.
Our ignorance is colossal.