Mind Tricks (28 page)

“Why didn’t you just tell the
police what you know?”

A short pause. “You’re so naïve.
Jake and I are competitors, Emma. Anything that hurts his business helps mine.
And this murder investigation has hurt his business—badly. I planned on telling
the police, of course, should he ever get arrested.”

What a prince.

“I’ll meet you at your house in a
few hours. Would you please give the phone back to my daughter?”

Emma handed the phone to Cynthia
and then wiped her palms on her shorts. Wiping off the muck of dealing with
that guy.

Cynthia squealed, “Thank you,
Daddy.” Then she knocked Emma’s cell phone out of her hand and stamped on it,
sending shards of plastic and metal skittering across the floor. “No need to
call the police now,” she said, throwing Emma a triumphant look.

What a grade-A bitch. Emma narrowed
her eyes. “If you set foot on my property again, I’m getting a restraining
order,” she told the girl. Then she turned to Ian. “I’m leaving. Are you
coming, or do you want to stay and have Cynthia give you a ride home?”

She tried to keep her tone as
neutral as possible. She’d promised herself long ago that she wasn’t going to
get involved in Ian’s love life or let it affect their professional
relationship. He would see Cynthia for the brat brat she was, or he wouldn’t.

“Nah, I’m going with you.” He
nodded to Cynthia. “Bye.” The heavy finality in that one syllable was
unmistakable.

“Ian, wait…” she wailed, but he
didn’t falter as he preceded Emma down the hall to the front door. Emma lifted
Brutus past the broken glass thrown like confetti on the welcome mat, and then
the three of them were outside in the sunshine, the dog’s big black tail
feathering in the traffic-induced wind.

Almost immediately the dog gave a
testing tug against her hand on his collar, always ready to escape. She laughed
as she shoved him into the backseat of her car. “No running off this time, my
wandering friend. We’re going home.”

• •

Mickey didn’t mince words as he met
Jake on his doorstep. “I think the police have a warrant for you.”

Jake’s heart stuttered like a car
engine on a cold morning. He’d be half expecting it all week, but for it to
finally happen… “Jesus Christ.”

“You should call your lawyer,”
Mickey stated as he led Jake inside. “And then turn yourself in. Here, call
from my study.”

“Christ,” Jake said again,
following him automatically. The briefcase banged against the study doorway as
he took the turn a little too tight.

The briefcase. Maybe the briefcase
held the proof of his innocence.

“Help me look through this,” he
told Mickey, swinging the case up onto his uncle’s desk. “There might be
something in here that could help.” He popped the clasps open and then unfolded
the case. A dozen file folders slid around, chased by a tube of lipstick.

Jake handed half the folders to
Mickey before pawing through his own stack. Advertising rates from
Yachting
magazine…some clippings on
wooden boat sales…information on next big boat show in Florida—

Mickey waved a file at him. “This
said ‘New Business’ on the outside, but inside it has details about Selkie’s
business, not Woodhaven’s. Are you planning on buying Selkie or luring away
some clients?”

“Not that I know of. And that
wouldn’t be part of Ginny’s job anyway.” Jake took the file. Sure enough, inside
there were spreadsheets about Selkie’s boat sales, both year-to-date and last
year’s, broken down to include each customer name, boat purchased, date
purchased, when and where first contact had been made with the client, and
payment specifics. “Where the hell did she get this? And
why
did she have it?”

“Maybe she had a friend over there
who smuggled it to her, and she was planning on giving it to you.”

“As a peace offering, after she’d
spread the rumors about Woodhaven’s cash flow problems? That’d be nice, but
industrial espionage, even if it benefited me, would hardly convince me of her
future trustworthiness.” Jake was still reading the printouts. “Hey, here’s a
client we nearly had sewn up a month ago. Looks like Bill Monroe whisked him
out from beneath our nose.”

“Maybe the industrial espionage she
was doing wasn’t
for
you,” Mickey
said slowly, “but
on
you.”

• •

Brutus let out an insane amount of
barking when the doorbell rang.

“Hush,” Emma ordered him. As usual,
he ignored her. Finally she grabbed his muzzle and gave him the evil eye.
“Hush,” she repeated. When she removed her hand, he dropped his head but stayed
blessedly quiet. Had she really wanted him
back
?

She pulled open the front door.
Bill Monroe, unsmiling, stood there, much earlier than she’d expected. He’d
said he’d be over in a few hours, not fifteen minutes. She hadn’t even had
enough time to call Jake to tell him she’d found Brutus.

“Heck of a day,” Bill said.

Because his daughter had dognapped
poor Brutus. Did he expect her to feel sorry for him?

Realizing her attention was off
him, the stupid dog barked again.

Make that
bad
Brutus.

“Come on in,” she said to Bill,
waving him toward the kitchen. This should take only a minute, but to sign and
swap papers on the front porch made her feel like she was doing a drug deal or
something.

Bill looked around as he walked
through the lower level of the house. “Nice place. Seems a little big for just
one person. Do you plan on sticking around for a while?” he asked.

Kind of an odd question, given that
she owned a business here. “Yes, as far as I know.”

“Great, great.” But he sounded
distracted. Then he turned in the kitchen and focused on her. “Here are the
papers we discussed.” He held out an envelope, his eyes intense.

An itchy feeling clawed at her
back. She should have asked Ian to stay with her.

She pasted a smile on her face and
reached out. “Thanks.”

Instead of simply passing her the
envelope, Bill wrapped both his hands around her outstretched one, like he was
giving her a preacher’s handshake.

And she saw blood.

Blood
sticky on her hands. Blood mixing with the summer-night downpour. Blood
speckling Ginny’s face as she whimpered, “Bill, no…”

Emma jerked her hand away and
flailed backward until the small of her back slammed against the counter.

Bill wasn’t nearly as disturbed as
she was. “So Cynthia was right.”

What? She scuttled sideways toward
the dining room, but Bill calmly shoved the small kitchen table into the
doorway to block her. “No, we need to chat a little bit more.” Then he moved to
cut off any dash she might make for the back door.

Crap crap crap crap crap. She
flicked a look behind her, but she’d done the dishes right after eating dinner
last night, and no big sharp knives were lying out on the countertop. She’d
never do the dishes on time again.

“So, what do you know?” he asked.

“Not much. I don’t even know what
you’re talking about, Bill.” Maybe he’d swallow her bluff.

“Uh-huh. So why did you suddenly
try to run?” He smiled, but it was like the smile of a doll, painted on flat.
“So, Emma…what do you know?”

“Nothing! You just startled me.”

Brutus slunk into the kitchen under
the table. Bill glanced at him. “Call off your dog.”

“First, that dog doesn’t listen to
a single word I say. Second, call him off from what? He’s just walking around.”
She thrust her palm toward him. “Give me those papers to sign, Bill, and then
leave. You’re starting to freak me out.”

Holding the envelope out of reach
with one hand, he stretched out the other hand to her. It was clean now, but
she could vividly remember the image of it slick with new blood. “Want to touch
me again, Emma? Want to see what happened that night?”

• •

The outside edges of Jake’s vision
pulled in and darkened to the deep gray of storm clouds. What the hell? He shut
his eyes and sucked in deep breaths as dizziness made his stomach do a
tailspin.

“Jake?” Mickey asked. “You okay?”

The wooziness lifted. “Yeah, fine.”
He’d felt like he was going to pass out for a second there. Not his usual
reaction to stress. Not his usual reaction to anything, really.

Refocusing, he waggled Ginny’s file
folder at Mickey. “So you think Ginny was spying on us? For…? Oh. For Bill.”

It made perfect sense—if you had no
care for ethics. Working inside of Woodhaven, Ginny could feed clients’
information to Bill so that he could poach them. And she’d also grabbed the
chance to spread some rumors about Woodhaven’s cash flow, undercutting the
company even further.

“Either she hated me a lot,” Jake
said, flipping through more spreadsheets, “or Bill was paying her a lot. Or
both.” He closed the folder and tossed it into the briefcase. “Problem is, all
this doesn’t help proved I didn’t kill her. If anything, it gives me more of a
motive.”

“Then leave the files here. I’ll
make a nice little fire with them tonight.”

“Thanks, Mickey.”

“Better call your lawyer now,
though, about the warrant.”

“Right.” He stood and went over to
the phone on Mickey’s desk, but the number he dialed wasn’t the redoubtable
Marilyn Howsing’s.

The phone rang, rang, and rang, but
Emma didn’t pick up; her voice mail did. He clicked the phone down without
leaving a message. Then he called her cell phone. Again, she didn’t pick up.

The wooziness swirled around and
through him again. He sucked in a double lungful of oxygen and tried to shake
off the weakness, but a belly-twisting feeling of illness lingered. “I’m going
over to Emma’s.”

“Now?”

“Yeah, now. Something…” This was
kooky, but he continued: “Something feels wrong.”

“Jake, you’re going to want to
rethink that.” And Mickey reached into his desk and pulled out a gun.

• •

Bill took another step closer, his
hand still outstretched. “Come on. You want to look. I can tell.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking
about.” That was her story, and she was sticking to it.

Frustration made his eyes narrow.
“I knew a guy who was once a cop, and one night over some beers he told me the
secret to carrying out a successful murder was to never, ever tell anyone about
it. Because once you let the secret out, it can go anywhere. And it usually
eventually goes to the police.” He shook his head. “I thought keeping Ginny’s
death a secret would be easy. But it’s not. It pushes at the back of my teeth,
wanting to get out. I have to clench my jaw whenever I talk to anyone—my
daughter, my friends, the lady at the checkout at the grocery—so that I don’t
say a word about Ginny.”

He blew out a breath and then
smiled. A real smile this time, full of such ease and gratitude that Emma felt
herself relax a fraction. “But I can tell you,” he said. “Because I’m going to
have to kill you, too.”

• •

Jake backed up a step. “Put that
away.”

“But if you must go over there,
take this.” Mickey offered him the bulky black revolver.

“I haven’t fired a gun in years.
And never a handgun. Jeez, Mickey, I’d probably shoot my foot off while trying
to undo the safety.”

“Kids these days,” Mickey said in
disgust, shoving the gun back into his drawer.

Red and blue lights strobed across
the wall, making the serene study suddenly look like a disco.

“Gotta go,” Jake said. He nodded at
the briefcase. “If you could just toss that behind the couch or something…”

And Jake ran out the back door.

Bushes slashed at his ankles and
knees, and one evil root tried to leap up and trip him as he dived into the
maze of forest between Mickey’s house and Emma’s, but he tucked his chin down
and kept running. Behind him, a hoarse voice shouted, “Stop!”

Right.

Even as he pumped his legs harder,
he knew evading arrest wasn’t the hottest idea in the world. Marilyn Howsing
was going to be pissed off when she found out, but whether this killed his
chances for bail or not, it didn’t matter.

He just needed to get to Emma’s
house. To Emma. It was that simple.

Once he got there, he’d figure out
how to deal with the police and the rest of this mess.

Hopefully.

• •

Knee
him in the balls.

She’d taken a half dozen
self-defense classes back in Maryland, when the nastiness had begun, but the
only advice she could remember was to grab her attacker’s shoulders for support
and ram her knee into his testicles. But Bill was a little too far away for a
grab-and-knee, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to voluntarily move closer to
him.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Bill said.
He sounded annoyed again.

“You just told me you’re going to
kill me. It’s a lot to digest.” Stall him. Maybe more self-defense moves would
come back to her. “Why did you kill Ginny? Was it an accident?”

He gave her an indulgent smile.
“You’re a sweet girl, Emma. No, it wasn’t an accident. But it wasn’t planned,
either. Back in January, I convinced Ginny to give me information on
Woodhaven’s customers, past and potential. She gave me a list, I gave her some
money, and I got a few new customers. Not a bad deal, for five thousand
dollars.”

January was right after Ginny and
her boyfriend in Boston had broken up and around the time Jake had made it
clear he had no plans to be her new boyfriend. Had that helped her slide toward
such dishonesty? Or had she always been the type willing to screw over someone
else for her own gain?