Praise for the work of Sandra Steffen

“Steffen is one of those authors whose characters and their emotions ring true, which makes each book a heartfelt treat.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

“Steffen’s characters are thoroughly and thoughtfully conceived…the charm of this tale lies in her lovely portrayal of complex family relationships.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Cottage

“Sandra Steffen is a veritable master at creating characters. On a scale of 1–10, a 15!”

—ReaderToReader.com

“Steffen knows exactly how hard to tug on readers’ heart-strings for maximum effect.”

—Booklist

“A powerfully riveting story that pulls the reader in from page one and doesn’t stop…one of the most original plots I’ve ever seen…flawless characterization.”

—Romance Reviews Today on Come Summer

Sandra Steffen

Slightly Psychic isn’t Sandra Steffen’s first venture into tales about unexplainable psychic phenomena. Child of Her Dreams, one of her earliest novels (about a woman who is clairvoyant), won the 1994 National Reader’s Choice award. Since then more than thirty-five of Sandra’s novels have graced bookshelves in the United States and a dozen foreign countries. When she isn’t writing, she’s either thinking about writing or honing her slightly psychic abilities on her ever-growing circle of friends and family.

Slightly Psychic
Sandra Steffen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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From the Author

Dear Reader,

I’ve just filled three hundred pages, and now, when I’m all out of words, I wish for a few more to tell you how pleased I am to be able to entertain you with my newest creation, Slightly Psychic. Goodness, I have goose bumps!

Partway into telling this story, I almost had to change the title to Slightly Superstitious. First my computer had a motherboard problem (oh, the angst!), then a few weeks ago it shut down and refused to restart. It seems the fan fell off inside. Since I’ve never thrown salt over my shoulder and my cat is black and brings me nothing but joy, I’m sticking with my original title. After all, we make our own luck…but all women (and some men) become Slightly Psychic eventually. I have a hunch you already knew that.

I’m off to buy a new computer so I’m ready when the inspiration for my next novel washes over me. Meanwhile, I would love to hear from you. Since I’m not proficient in deciphering telepathic messages, please write to me via my Web site, www.sandrasteffen.com.

Until next time and always,

Sandra

For the newlyweds

Brad and Kelli

“For those who believe, no proof is necessary.

For those who don’t believe, no proof is possible.”

—Author unknown

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 1

Lila Delaney waited to look the detective in the eye until after he ushered her into the small, cluttered office at police headquarters in Hartford. He watched her closely as she took her seat at the marred, Formica-topped table. A second detective adjusted the blinds before dropping to the chair opposite her. They didn’t believe what she’d told them over the phone.

“You said you know where Holly Baxter is,” the first one said the instant introductions were out of the way.

Lila’s reply was an anxious little cough that did nothing to alleviate the nerves jumping in her stomach. She hadn’t expected this to be easy. After all, she wasn’t a world-renowned psychic who could foretell the future. She simply had an unexplainable intuition that came in handy when helping her friends make career choices or find a lost pet. She’d never tried to help the police find a missing person. Of course, until this week, she’d never experienced a vision of this magnitude, and she’d certainly never ignored her own voice of reason, the one telling her to run, race, bolt in the opposite direction. Instead, here she was in Connecticut preparing to tell the authorities what she knew.

They wouldn’t have agreed to her request for a meeting if their meager leads hadn’t fizzled. The fact was, they were desperate to find Senator Charles Baxter’s twenty-two-year-old daughter, Holly, who’d been missing for four days. Foul play was suspected, and everyone feared the worst.

“On the phone you said you saw Holly in your dreams.” The older of the two, Lieutenant Owens was doing the talking, Detective Malone the smirking.

Lila couldn’t decide who they reminded her of. Not Batman and Robin or the Lone Ranger and Tonto. Fred and Rickie? Ralph and Ed? Her longtime fiancé Alex Richardson often complained that she watched too much late-night television. He was due back from Dallas tomorrow. Surely if he were here, he would have tried to talk her out of this.

“Ms. Delaney?”

Hearing her name startled her. Recovering, she said, “My vision was similar to a dream, except I was awake when I saw her.”

Owens strummed his fingers on the tabletop. Malone leaned back in his metal chair, bored. Lila could only sigh. Trying to make a nonbeliever believe was like trying to make a color-blind man see yellow, green and blue.

Leveling both men an I’m-not-enjoying-this-any-more-than-you-are stare, she said, “Look. I’m a busy psychologist with a successful practice. I didn’t have to come here, and I want your word that you won’t exploit me or my efforts to help.” She waited for Owens to nod before she continued. “I believe Holly Baxter is being held in an old stone inn deep in the Hartford countryside.”

The detectives couldn’t help leaning ahead in their chairs. “What do you mean she’s being held?”

“Her hands were cuffed.”

“But she’s alive?”

Lila had seen Holly Baxter writhing, an expression of intense pain on her young face. Closing her eyes on a feeling of deep and imminent sadness, she said, “I believe she is, yes.”

“Where is this inn?” Malone asked, speaking for the first time.

This was the part Lila most dreaded trying to explain. “I don’t know where it is, exactly.”

“Oh, for crying out loud. She’s wasting our time.”

Malone was going to be no help whatsoever. Turning to his partner, Lila said, “I’m pretty sure I’ll know it when I see it.”

She wasn’t the only one who was surprised when he said, “Let’s go.”

Twenty minutes later she was sitting in the passenger seat of an unmarked police car heading out of Hartford. Other than occasional static on the police radio, not a sound came from the interior of that car. Keeping her mind clear of doubt, she concentrated on the falling leaves and the shadows cast by the evening sun. Every so often she told Detective Malone to turn right or left. She lost the trail a few times, and had to ask him to turn around. Each time they neared an old house that had been converted into a bed-and-break-fast inn, he slowed slightly, waiting for her to say something.

At one point she happened to notice him looking in his rearview mirror. A bundle of nerves, she glanced over her shoulder in time to see a Channel 4 news van round the corner behind them. He swore under his breath, but it was too late to turn back because goose bumps skittered up and down her body, and her earlier vision shot through her mind.

“Turn here,” she said louder than before.

He swerved. Barely keeping the car out of the ditch, he made a right onto Hampton Road.

“There,” she said, motioning to a narrow driveway between crumbling stone pillars. Her stomach was on fire, and she felt an eerie sense of déjà vu as they pulled through the open gate.

“That looks like Holly’s car,” Detective Owens said, pointing to the back corner of a blue Beamer, all that was visible behind an overgrown hedge near the back of the property.

“Room number six,” Lila whispered, squeezing her eyes shut against the image playing behind them.

“Stay here,” Owens ordered, getting out. But she followed anyway.

Malone radioed for backup.

“And you—” Owens glared at the news team. “Stay out of the way or I’ll throw you in jail for obstructing justice.”

The news team gave the detectives a head start before closing in, leaves crunching with every step they took. Lila followed far more furtively.

“Police!” Malone yelled. “Open up.”

A woman screamed.

Malone kicked in the door. He and Owens entered, pistols drawn. The cameraman crowded closer. Holly Baxter screamed again.

Peering around everyone else, Lila stared at the naked man in the king-size bed. “Alex?”

“Lila, what the hell?” He grabbed the sheet to cover himself.

“You’re supposed to be in Dallas.” Her voice seemed to come from far away.

“You know him?” Lieutenant Owens asked, his gun still pointed.

Holly Baxter nodded slowly.

And Lila heard herself say, “He’s my fiancé.” Shuddering violently, she added, “My ex-fiancé, it would seem.”

Holly blushed scarlet. Alex looked shell-shocked. Somewhere, someone chuckled.

The room spun, and Lila spun with it. A strange silence was falling all around her. She felt herself falling, too, and all the while she was aware of the cameraman capturing everything on film.

CHAPTER 2

Six months later

The people gathered on the sidewalk in one of the oldest neighborhoods in Providence held morning newspapers and coffee mugs instead of microphones or cameras. They stood talking amongst themselves, two here, three there. There wasn’t a member of the press among them. Lila Delaney was old news.

Two teenaged boys carried boxes containing all that remained of her life and her work here in Rhode Island. Everything fit neatly in the back of one compact U-Haul trailer.

A cheerless gray drizzle began to fall, sending the neighbors back inside their well-kept, closely spaced houses, so that only Lila and the young men wrestling her garden statues up the ramp of the rented trailer saw the taxi pull to a stop at the curb. One of the teenagers whistled under his breath as a svelte blonde dressed all in black got out. If anyone had been looking, they would have seen Lila’s face brighten, too.

Penelope Bartholomew was always a sight for sore eyes.

Carrying herself with the regality inherent in the DNA of the naturally wealthy, Penelope, nicknamed Pepper years ago, stopped a few feet from Lila. “I go to Europe for eight months and all hell breaks loose for you.”

Lila still cringed at the memory of her fast, humiliating and thorough downfall.

“They really sold T-shirts that said My ex-fiancé, it would seem?” Pepper asked after the two old friends had hugged.

Lila shuddered. “Coffee mugs, too.” It had been the most coined phrase and biggest publicity circus since Who Shot JR? and Where’s The Beef?.

“I can’t believe you didn’t call me.”

“Would you have talked me out of it?” Lila asked.

“When have I ever been able to talk you out of anything?” Pepper’s bright pink umbrella went up like a splash of color in a black-and-white photograph. Holding the umbrella over both of them, she said, “I recall talking you into a few things, though. Remember the time I persuaded you to attend that Harvard Fly Club party with me?”

Who could forget? Convinced her boyfriend was cheating on her, Pepper and Lila had gone dressed as guys. When they’d gotten caught, Pepper’s parents had threatened to dissolve her trust fund over the incident. Although they would have liked to somehow blame it on Lila, they knew their daughter. Still, who could fault Mary Bartholomew for wanting her youngest to choose friends who came from old money and had grown up someplace suitable, such as the Cape or the Hamptons? Instead she’d brought home a waif from Chicago who had large hazel eyes and strange ideas about the universe.

Lila said, “We made quite an entrance that night, didn’t we?”

Pepper nudged her with one shoulder. “If it hadn’t been for your C cups, we would have fooled those fly-boys. But pooh grand entrances. I hear nobody makes grander exits than you, and on national television, no less.”

Some grand exit.

Shuddering again, Lila turned her attention to the clanking and banging coming from the trailer. “Please be careful with Apollo. He belongs to my mother.”

Pepper hid a yawn before saying, “There’s a twenty in it for whichever one of you would be so kind as to move my bags from that taxi to the backseat of Ms. Delaney’s car.”

While the quieter of the two fetched Pepper’s bags, his friend said, “Are you here for a séance? Or are you pa-psychic, too?”

His cocky grin faded fast when Pepper stared at his fly and chanted something that sounded like a Romany curse. He loaded the last statue by himself, and barely waited for Lila’s payment.

The moment the boys were gone, Lila said, “He has no idea you just told him you liked his shoes. For the rest of his life, he’s going to believe any problem he has in bed is your fault.”

“What man doesn’t blame poor performance in the bedroom on a woman?”

Lila considered several clinical responses, then dismissed them all. Why bother? Her license was useless, her clinic as broken as she was. Taking a moment to note the dark circles beneath her friend’s eyes, she said, “Mom sent you, didn’t she?”

“You know your mother.”

Yes, Lila knew her mother. Rose Delaney had come barreling into Providence in her ’89 Buick as soon as the media frenzy exploded last fall. Despite the fact that she was five feet tall and wore house sweaters when it was ninety degrees outside, she’d parked herself in a rocking chair in Lila’s living room, a big stick within easy reach, just in case a reporter tried to come through the door. She’d taken charge of the phone, too, and had shaken her fists at the curious passers-by, pointing her finger and shouting, “Shame on you.”

Lila hadn’t dared have the nervous breakdown she deserved, if for no other reason than for fear of further upsetting her mother. But the night she’d overheard Rose telling someone from the Leno show, “Be kind to my girl, she’s a sensitive, artistic soul,” Lila had pulled herself together and told her mother she had to go home.

She should have known Rose would call Pepper. But Lila’s intuition had self-destructed, or as one late-night comedian had put it, her mother-board had crashed.

“What are you really doing here, Pepper?”

“I’m going with you. Where are you going, anyway?”

“To Murray, Virginia, a little town in the Shenandoah Valley, but—”

“Murray, Virginia, prepare to meet two fierce, badass, former Radcliffe girls!”

Lila tucked her shaking hands into her pockets and refrained from stating the obvious: these days, she was about as fierce as a day-old kitten.

She stepped into the drizzle and opened the car door. Pepper lowered the umbrella and slid into the passenger seat in seemingly one motion. The woman was liquid. At least one thing hadn’t changed.

“You’re serious?” Lila asked before starting her car. “You flew three thousand miles to make this trip with me?”

“Don’t you want me to come with you? Far be it from me to go where I’m not wanted.”

Since when? Lila thought, but she said, “I’ll let you in on a little secret. Your arrival is the first thing that’s happened these past six months that has anything to do with what I’ve wanted.”

Shaking her head, Pepper said, “If your mother had her way, heads everywhere would roll. She’d start with the media, move on to the police, and then to some DA who doesn’t believe in ESP. She has another fate in mind for your lying, cheating, no-good former fiancé. I never liked Alex.”

Pepper didn’t like most people, a trait that stemmed from being born rich and never knowing whom she could trust. Such were the problems of the filthy rich.

Casting one last look at the brownstone that had served as her home as well as the place she’d counseled patients these past ten years, Lila pulled away from the curb. It wasn’t easy not to cry, but she’d already cried a river in that house.

“I believed I could help the police find that young woman,” she said.

“The little hussy, you mean.”

“I thought she was in trouble, and in pain. How was I supposed to know the reason she was writhing was because she was having sex with Alex?”

“It was probably more out of boredom than anything,” Pepper said dryly.

“You can’t imagine how much fun late-night comedians had at my expense.”

“Want me to put rats in their closets and spiders in their pantries?”

Lila hadn’t planned to smile. “You would do that for me?”

“What are friends for?” Lila and Pepper had spread their wings in opposite directions after college, but no matter how many miles or months separated them, something clicked each time they reunited. It was the kind of relationship they both accepted and appreciated. Moving her seat back to make room for her long legs, Lila’s friend—perhaps the only friend she had left on the planet, said, “There are roughly five hundred miles between here and Murray, Virginia. That should give you plenty of time to tell me what happened. Start at the beginning. And, Lila, try not to leave anything out.”

A horn blared. Lila jumped. And Pepper swore. In French. It was almost like old times.

“The speed limit on Skyline Drive is thirty-five, lady!” the balding driver of a huge motor home yelled as he passed.

Lila thought the horn was rude and the yelling was unnecessary. Gripping the steering wheel with both hands, she kept her eyes on the road and tried not to envision tumbling down the side of the mountain to a fiery death.

“We were just lapped by a camper van,” Pepper said drolly. “How humiliating. You should let me drive. The last time was a fluke. Now that I’ve adjusted to being back in the States, I’m sure I’ll remember to drive on the right side of the highway.”

Lila was tired, but she wasn’t that tired. Besides, there was no place to pull over. If she could have pried her hands off the steering wheel, she would have crossed herself. And she wasn’t even Catholic. “I’m no stranger to humiliation, remember? I’m going to be fine eventually.”

“Damn right you are.”

“This is just a setback. I’m relatively intelligent.”

“Relatively? You have a degree from one of the most prestigious universities in this country.”

“In my experience,” Lila said, “the two hundred million or so people living between New York and L.A. aren’t terribly impressed by Ivy League degrees these days.”

“What’s this world coming to?”

Now there was a question.

“But, Lila, you and I both know you didn’t do any of it for recognition.”

Lila shrugged, for none of it mattered anymore. Her visions were gone, her peers weren’t speaking to her, and no one wanted to be counseled by a woman who’d had no idea her fiancé was cheating. How could she have missed that?

She glanced in the rearview mirror. The eyes staring back at her were dull and somewhat blank.

The motor home took the next exit. Beyond it, the curves slackened and the highway began a gradual descent. The drive had been tedious and draining, but most of it was behind them, for they were over the mountains now, and were entering the Shenandoah Valley. Every inch of the descent brought a welcoming relief she hadn’t expected.

The windows were down, and Lila was vaguely aware of a warm breeze and the lush rustle of leaves recently reborn. It reminded her that all was not lost. She had a destination and a place to live. The knowledge brushed at the emptiness. She had a place to live.

“Tell me more about this windfall of yours,” Pepper said.

“There isn’t much more to tell. It still seems incredible to me that Myrtle Ann Canfield left her property and all her worldly possessions to someone she never even met.”

“Incredible? Maybe. Highly suspicious? Definitely.”

Lila didn’t like the sound of that, but she drove on, her little car diligently pulling her U-Haul trailer, down, down onto the rolling valley floor. There, two-lane roads meandered through quaint small towns named Fishers Hill, Lacey Spring, New Market and Weyers Cave. Between each town, roads curved and dipped past historic Civil War markers and poultry farms and apple orchards awash in white blossoms. It was all so utterly charming it almost made her believe it might be possible to find peace here.

She dug out the driving directions written in Myrtle Ann’s own hand, and followed them to Old Cross Road. A sign at the corner read Murray, Virginia, 2 miles. Below it, Welcome had been stenciled, as if in afterthought. And beneath that someone had tacked a handwritten cardboard sign. Parade Friday. 5:00. Don’t be late.

Lila stared at that welcome sign as if it had been written just for her. “I knew I could put my faith in Myrtle Ann.”

“I still say there has to be a catch.”

“I don’t think a dead woman would lie.” And then, because she wasn’t sure of much anymore, Lila added, “Do you?”

“That’s your area of expertise.”

Some expert she’d turned out to be. “Myrtle Ann Canfield came into my life just as she was leaving her own, and in doing so she breathed hope where I needed it most. Because of her generosity, I’ll live at The Meadows of Murray, the place Myrtle Ann cherished.” She pictured it in her mind, a tranquil gentleman’s farm with straight fences and rolling hills of pastures and a meandering stream. Perhaps she would raise horses, or maybe she would stretch a hammock between two trees and sleep the summer away. Sleep was definitely first on her agenda. Doctor’s orders.

“That old woman didn’t leave her property to just anybody,” Pepper said. “She left it to you. She must have seen you on television, and probably read about you in the checkout lane. I’m your new voice of reason, and I’m telling you, a person doesn’t leave her home and surrounding eighty acres to a perfect stranger out of the goodness of her heart. There has to be a string attached.”

Lila didn’t like the sound of that, either. Reminding herself that Pepper had always been a pessimist, she forced herself to focus on her driving as she followed Old Cross Road west. X marked the spot on Myrtle Ann’s map. A faded shingle bearing letters barely discernible as The Meadows marked it at the side of the road.

The driveway was long and narrow, flanked on both sides by wind-battered oaks and willows. Perhaps in another lifetime it had been a working farm. Decades of storms had taken a toll on aging trees, and time on rotting fences. Mother Nature had been responsible for those changes. Lila wondered who was responsible for the recent improvements, for some of the fallen limbs had been cut, split and neatly stacked, weeds mowed, new fence posts contrasting with old.

Chickens squawked, scattering out of the driveway as Lila approached. A goat stood watch from the roof of a rusting car. She counted two more junked cars nearly covered by rambling roses, and other mounds of debris hiding in weeds. Beyond the house were several outbuildings weathered to a dull gray. In the distance she saw more trees, a pond and what appeared to be a small cabin.

Pulling to a stop near the main house, Lila got out. She wondered if Pepper was right that Myrtle Ann Canfield had left everything to her for a reason. If so, what on earth could that reason be? Why not leave her beloved homestead to someone stronger, emotionally and physically? At the very least, why not leave it to someone with enough money to finish the clearing and mending?

Why her?

She tried to go to that place she used to go where the air held a low vibration and the universe made sense. Raising her gaze to the sky, she lowered it again, her inner voice mute and her heart beating too fast.

Insects flitted and a soft evening breeze fluttered weeds against her ankles. Spring had been stubborn about arriving in the northeast. Here it already felt like early summer. She stood in the fading twilight for a long time, staring at the house that was now hers. It was a sprawling two-story, its white paint peeling in places. Somebody had washed the windows and trimmed the rosebushes and planted flowers in front of the porch, as if in welcome. It was Lila’s second welcome to Murray.

She tried the bottom step. When it held her weight, she took the next one. At the top, she made a sweeping survey of every inch of The Meadows in plain view. It was nothing as she’d envisioned, and yet it was a peaceful place, and peace was all she wanted or needed.

Key in hand, Lila unlocked the door. Without saying another word, she and Pepper went in.

Joe McCaffrey had seen the lights in the main house last night. He supposed it was inevitable that the peace and quiet wouldn’t last, just as it was inevitable that the new owner would notice The Meadows had another resident.

He’d known Myrtle Ann had left the property to a woman from up north, a Yankee, she’d called her. That was all Myrtle Ann had had to say on the subject.

Seeing the new owner picking through boxes in her U-Haul trailer last night, he’d kept his lights off. This morning he faced the fact that he couldn’t keep his presence a secret indefinitely. Before she got spooked and called the police—that was all Joe needed—he washed up and changed. He even shaved, although why he bothered, he didn’t know. Evidently it was important to look his best while being evicted.

He’d been staying in this old cabin by the pond almost two years now. It had an antiquated refrigerator and stove, running hot and cold water, a huge monstrosity of a bed, one table, two chairs, one bathroom, one mirror, which was one mirror too many most days.

Staring at his reflection this morning, he rolled up his shirtsleeves, then held his right hand palm-side up, slowly squeezing his fingers into a fist around an imaginary ball. The tendons in his wrist tensed and the muscles in his forearms coiled in anticipation.

He could almost hear the fans, thousands of them. “J.J.,” they’d called him. His mother had called him Joe-Joe, short for Joseph John McCaffrey Jr. To everyone else who’d known him growing up in Murray, he’d always been Joe. Not just Joe. Joe-the-boy-wonder-McCaffrey, Murray High’s all-star pitcher. He’d starred in college, too, and then during a short stint in the minors, followed by his lifelong dream, the majors. One thing had led to everything, and everything was what he’d had: a beautiful wife, beguiling daughter, thriving career, home, hearth and happiness. It was all gone now, except his daughter, but she’d changed, too. Who could blame her? Murray, Virginia, wasn’t exactly a forgiving kind of town, and it sure as hell never forgot.

The signs marking yesterday’s parade route had gone up all over town a week ago. Signs were unnecessary. The route hadn’t changed in fifty years. But Murray was big on tradition, and it was a tradition to put up signs. The theme every year was the same, too. Peace in the valley. For a long time he’d been part of the tradition, riding in the parade with some of his old high school teammates when his schedule allowed.

He scowled, not because he’d lost his place in the limelight, but because he’d lost everything else. All because Noreen went missing one day. Husbands were always prime suspects in such cases. It didn’t matter that there wasn’t enough evidence for a trial. There wasn’t even a body. A trial wasn’t necessary in Murray, and living within spitting distance of the town’s suspicions was both his punishment and their comeuppance.

To hell with it and to hell with them.

Staring hard at his reflection, at his narrowed eyes and the furrow between them, at the grim line of his mouth and the stubborn set of his chin, he flung the towel over the bar and tucked in his shirt. Peace. His scowl deepened as he headed up to the main house to introduce himself.

Joe Schmoe.

CHAPTER 3

Joe knocked on the front door, the side and the back. Cradling his sore knuckles, he backed up, oh for three.

He was trying to do the right thing. The car and trailer were parked in the driveway. Where was she?

When Myrtle Ann was alive, he’d always rapped twice before entering. She’d never locked her doors, and knocking had simply been a courtesy, for despite waning eyesight and an increasing dependence on her canes, the old woman always knew he was there. Said she could smell him the way she could smell an approaching storm.

Myrtle Ann Canfield had been a cagey old bird, an odd duck by Murray standards, a case of the pot calling the kettle black if there ever was one. Old age had shrunk her body and lined her face so deeply she’d looked a hundred for as long as Joe had known her. She’d never been one for gossip, preferring quiet companionship to idle chatter. Every once in a while she’d let something personal slip. Looking back, he realized those instances had been more carefully orchestrated than he’d realized at the time. She’d buried her husband fifty years ago and never seen fit to remarry. She and Joe had understood one another there. She hadn’t had an easy life, but she’d once said it had suited her.

He hadn’t expected to miss her.

But she was gone, and some law firm in Rhode Island had commissioned the local locksmith to change the locks in the main house when someone new inherited the old place. Joe had most likely already overstayed his welcome. No matter what they said about possession being nine-tenths of the law, the cabin by the pond wasn’t his.

Hoofs clattered up the steps, and the world’s most ornery goat butted Joe from behind. Giving the animal a guiding shove, he said, “Get off the porch, Nanny. Go on. You know better.”

“So her name’s Nanny.”

The soft, plaintive sound drew Joe around. The woman stood in the doorway, her light brown hair hanging past her shoulders. He couldn’t tell how old she was, mid- to late thirties, maybe. She was barefoot and sleepy-looking, her dress long and loose and the color of burnished copper. Over her shoulders she wore a sweater that was severely wrinkled, as if she’d just pulled it from a packing crate. Slipping her arms into the sleeves, she said, “She wouldn’t tell me.”

“Who?” he asked.

“The goat. You called her Nanny.”

He found himself staring at the open door, puzzled. “That old relic is solid mahogany and has been sticking for years. How did you open it soundlessly?”

“Some things respond best to a gentle touch.”

Something erotic seared the back of his mind. Dousing it at the source, he looked at her again.

She pulled the door shut as quietly as she’d opened it and joined him on the side porch. “What are the others’ names?”

“The others?” he asked.

She motioned to the goats.

His father had been telling him he was becoming a hermit. Obviously, Joe had lost whatever paltry conversational skills he’d once had. He sure wasn’t following her very well. But he tried. “That big one there? He’s the only male. His name is Buck. The other two are Mo and Curly. Myrtle Ann’s doings, not mine.”

She seemed to take her time absorbing that. “Is there a Larry?”

He shook his head. They’d gotten off track. Drawing himself up and slightly away—how he’d gotten so close, he didn’t know—he said, “I’m Joe McCaffrey. I’ve been looking after the place and feeding the animals for Myrtle Ann the past few years.”

She nodded slowly without taking her eyes off him.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

He wouldn’t have thought it was a difficult question, but she swallowed and took her sweet time replying. “Just really, really tired, so please don’t feel obligated to kill me with kindness.”

Kill her? Something inside Joe curled up like a sail furled inward. Did she know who he was? What people said? What it had cost him?

“It was a bad joke, Mr. McCaffrey.”

The flatness was gone from her voice. In its place was a soreness he recognized all too well.

“I didn’t mean to insult you by implying you’re an ax murderer. I don’t think Myrtle Ann would have let someone she didn’t trust feed her animals.”

A lot of people believed differently. Uneasy, he backed up a little more. Did she know or didn’t she? She continued watching him, her hazel eyes guileless, causing him to wonder what, if anything, was going on behind them. “Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked.

“Don’t worry,” she said, “I’m not a murderer, either.”

The notion hadn’t occurred to him. “That takes a load off my mind, ma’am.”

The “ma’am” must have done it. Her eyes widened, and he saw a lighting in them. Maybe she was just tired. Not that it mattered. She wouldn’t want him living in the cabin now that she owned the place.

“Do you have a name?” he asked.

“Everybody has a name, Mr. McCaffrey.” She was looking at Myrtle Ann’s goats as if she’d never seen farm animals up close.

Again, he waited. Finally, he decided to try another tack. “Have you had a chance to get acquainted with your own private piece of paradise?”

“I’m trying not to rush it.”

She was teasing him. He had to look closely, but it showed in the softening of her mouth and the gentling of her expression.

A rooster crowed from the roof of a Studebaker nearly covered with vines. When the woman glanced at her watch, Joe felt compelled to explain. “That’s Louie. His internal clock’s a little off.”

This time she smiled. “That sounds like my old college roommate. She’s sleeping inside, still on Paris time. I take it you’re also responsible for mending the fences and stacking that wood?”

He couldn’t bring himself to ask her to consider letting him continue. To beg. A man had his pride. So instead, he went down the remaining steps and asked, “What are your plans?”

The question brought Lila up short. It occurred to her that she probably should have asked for some identification. Joe McCaffrey didn’t look untrustworthy, and it was obvious that he was trying to keep a respectable distance between them. Extremely polite, he wore battered work boots and blue jeans faded nearly white at the major stress points: knees, seat and fly. His T-shirt was gray, his cropped hair the color of freshly ground coffee beans. There were three lines across his forehead and two more framing his upper lip. The lower half of his face was shiny, as if he’d shaved before coming over. He’d taken some trouble with his appearance before meeting her. That said something about him. She wasn’t sure what.

How did people do this? How did they make assessments, judgments and decisions without the universe’s input?

Lila had come to Virginia to learn.

“My plans?” she asked, wondering how long it had been since he’d asked the question.

“What are you going to do with the place now that it’s yours?” he asked.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about that. Myrtle Ann Canfield was a generous woman.”

“Yes, she was,” Joe said quietly.

They stared at each other. He was the first to shift awkwardly, drawing away.

One of the goats butted a post. The chickens clucked nearby and the rooster crowed again in the distance. Lila felt overwhelmed. “I’m a city girl.”

“Not anymore.”

She pondered that. From here she could see much of her property. There was a stand of pines to the west and a cabin near a pond, and a rowboat was tied to a dock. The grass had been mowed around the cabin just as it had been around the main house. Despite the recent improvements, orderliness began and ended there. She’d envisioned a gentleman’s farm with painted white barns and fields of grain swaying in the breeze and perhaps a small garden where vegetables grew in neat rows and hills where fruit trees stood watch like guards of the property. Instead, The Meadows was overgrown and unkempt, animals roamed freely and a rooster crowed long past dawn. She wasn’t quite sure what part Joe McCaffrey played in all of this. He seemed standoffish and emotionally wounded. But who wasn’t?

“I have no idea how to care for these animals.”

“It isn’t difficult.”

“Would you show me?” she asked.

A muscle worked in his cheek. “Before I clear out, you mean?”

“Clear out?”

He gestured to the cabin. “I’ve been living there almost two years now.”

She stored the information. This inheritance may have been a godsend, but it hadn’t come without responsibilities. The trip had exhausted her, and she had no idea what she was supposed to do next. She tried to go to that place she used to go where white energy radiated and the universe was orderly and systematic and she simply knew. When she’d lost her intuitive abilities and they’d declared her a fraud, the late-night television moguls had joked that there was a hole in her cosmos.

Maybe there was.

“I need help.”

“Do you need a doctor?” Joe asked.

Feeling herself blushing, she wondered how long she’d zoned out this time. “Not that kind of help.” Goodness, she was going to scare him away. Suddenly she was terrified she already had. “I was referring to the animals and all the rest.”

He studied her, causing her to remember she hadn’t combed her hair. She only hoped he could see past her bare feet and dishevelment.

“I would appreciate it if you would consider continuing whatever arrangement you had with Myrtle Ann.” When he said nothing, she prodded, “Would you?”

“You aren’t asking me to leave?”

“You don’t want to leave?”

She held her breath.

He held her gaze.

For the first time she noticed that his eyes were brown. All three lines in his forehead were engaged in his scowl.

Shaking his head as if to clear it, he said, “I’ll stay.” And then, more quietly, “For now.”

Relief rained down on her. Before she started laughing uncontrollably, she turned toward the door, but changed her mind. Instead of going inside, she eased around the corner of the house and back onto the side porch where she could watch him walk away.

“Mr. McCaffrey?” she called after some time had passed.

Turning, he faced her, feet apart, hands on his hips.

“Since I can’t restore order to the universe, I’m going to restore it to The Meadows. This was once a working farm. I think it needs to be again. Do you think Myrtle Ann would mind?”

“She left it to you, didn’t she?”

“I hope that hasn’t caused problems for you.”

“Believe me, it was no skin off my nose.”

She stared at him, and Joe found it unnerving. The breeze fluttered the hem of her skirt and lifted her hair away from her face. She looked like someone from one of the old legends that abounded in the valley. He was pretty sure she was smiling.

“I’m very glad to be here,” she said, “And I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.”

She slipped soundlessly out of sight around the corner of the house before he thought to mention that he still didn’t know her name. By then it was too late. He should have told her about the rumors. It was too late for that, too. Besides, it was only a matter of time before she went into town and heard them for herself. Wondering if she would still want him living in her cabin then, he continued on toward the pond. For the hell of it, he picked up a stone and flung it, sending it skipping across the surface on his way by. He heard it skip across the water, but he didn’t stick around to count the ripples or watch the stone sink.

The old-fashioned screen door bounced as it closed behind him. Looking around, he caught his reflection in the mirror inside. After a time, he shrugged, for it was official. The new owner of The Meadows of Murray was a loon.

She was going to fit right in.

“So you’re the new owner of The Meadows.”

It was the third time it had been said in exactly that way, the third time Lila and Pepper exchanged a quick look, the third time Lila nodded.

The cashier at the grocery store had watched them closely as she’d said, “I heard somebody new was moving in.”

The attendant at the gas station where she’d dropped off the U-Haul trailer and filled up her gas tank had asked what she planned to do with the place. Like the others, the waitress leaning in to take their orders right now said, “Have you met Joe yet?”

Pepper’s sharp kick under the table kept Lila from replying.

“Lila and I don’t quite know what to make of him.”

“Then you’ve heard.”

Pepper smiled encouragingly at the waitress. Again, Lila felt a sharp nudge under the table.

Joe McCaffrey had unloaded the trailer while Pepper slept. After a brief discussion, he and Lila had decided that he would stack everything except the garden statues on the back porch until she made room in the house. He hadn’t come inside, and Pepper hadn’t ventured out.

“Nobody wanted to believe it at first,” the waitress exclaimed. “Not of one of our own.”

Pepper shook her head. “I can only imagine how you must have felt.”

While Lila pulled a face, one of the other customers called, “Trudy, can I get a refill up here?”

The heavyset waitress tucked her pencil over her ear and said, “I’ll be right back.”

Rubbing her sore shin, Lila waited until Trudy was out of hearing range to whisper, “You haven’t met Joe.”

“Trudy doesn’t know that.” Pepper had slept hard. Despite the crease still lining one cheek and the traces of jet lag in her voice, she was suddenly wide awake. “She’s dying to tell us something. Who are we to deny her?”

Lila felt a vague sense of unease. She didn’t like gossip, but Pepper was right about one thing. Everyone they’d encountered seemed to want to tell them something about Joe.

She and Pepper had found this little diner on Rebellion Street in the middle block of the downtown district of Murray. The courthouse claimed the most prominent position at the head of the town square, the post office and usual law and insurance offices nearby. Evidently, the chains hadn’t made it this deep into the Valley, for there wasn’t a Starbucks or Baby Gap to be found. Instead, there was a charming old-fashioned five-and-dime, a card and gift shop, a bookstore, three bars, a dress boutique and a huge antique store. Lila would have enjoyed browsing, but Pepper had needed coffee, industrial strength, which reminded Lila. “You haven’t touched your latte.”

Pepper took a cursory sip. “Here she comes. Let me handle this.”

The waitress returned, topping off their water glasses and spreading the cutlery. “Where was I?”

“You were telling us how nobody could believe it about Joe.” Pepper’s tone invited trust.

Falling for it, Trudy said, “It may have been a crime of passion, but murder is murder, isn’t it?”

Not even Pepper could form a coherent reply.

Trudy didn’t seem to need one. “We all assumed he would leave town after, well, you know, after the body never turned up. Instead, Myrtle Ann asked him to come live at The Meadows. The place went to seed for more than twenty years. Stone walls crumbled and more limbs fell with every passing storm. Out of the blue, she asked Joe to start clearing the pastures. Some people think she knew she was dying. Went to her maker on her way back from the mailbox. Folks still find pieces of her mail spread far and wide by the wind that day. It was junk mail mostly, beggin’ letters, she used to call them. She must have sent a donation to every charitable organization on the planet. A lot of people wondered if she’d have any money left.” Trudy looked at Lila shrewdly. “Are you a relative of Myrtle Ann’s?”

Lila floundered. How could she tell this woman that she’d never even met Myrtle Ann Canfield? It was Pepper who finally answered. “Lila has an interesting family tree, but at least her family doesn’t treat her like a puppet on a string the way mine does. Getting back to Joe, why do you suppose Myrtle Ann asked him to start clearing the pastures?”

“You know how old people get,” Trudy said. “Joe took good care of her, I’ll give him that.”

“Joe McCaffrey, a suspected murderer.” Pepper made a tsk, tsk sound. “I’ve read that a lot of serial killers are good to their mothers. Ow. I mean, ooh la la.” It was Pepper’s turn to rub her sore shin.

Trudy peered in both directions before lowering her voice, but even her whisper was strong enough to penetrate steel. “They say he hasn’t set foot in his house since it happened.”

“Why do you suppose that is?” Pepper asked.

“Guilt, most likely. The police finally took down the yellow tape they’d strung around his big, fancy house just west of town. Poor Chloe. Her mother missing and her father the prime suspect in the case.” Trudy shook her head. “She must be thirteen now. Hardly ever comes home from that fancy boarding school Noreen sent her to before she disappeared. Can’t say I ever liked the woman myself. That doesn’t make it right, does it? It’s always the husband, though, isn’t it? It’s a shame, such a shame. He was our star, too. Had an arm on him like nobody else. Man, that boy could pitch. Went pro practically right out of college. He always did have a temper. Guess it got the best of him.”

Someone called Trudy’s name, and the waitress was forced to get back to work. Stirring more cream into her coffee, Pepper all but gloated. Lila didn’t like what her friend was thinking, and it had nothing to do with psychic awareness.

“I believe we’ve just stumbled upon Pearl Ann’s string.”

Although it went against her better judgment, Lila said, “Her name was Myrtle Ann, not Pearl Ann.”

Pepper patted her mouth with her napkin. “A burned-out baseball player with a missing wife and an intuitionist who needed a place to go. Quite a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”

“I’m not an intuitionist anymore. What good could I be to a man suspected of killing his wife?” Lila felt a heavy, sinking feeling, as if she were being sucked into something she couldn’t control or foresee.

“Gretel Ann was brilliant.”

“Myrtle Ann was brilliant, you mean.”

Pepper smiled, victorious. Picking up her coffee again, Pepper had the good sense to wipe the grin off her face.

It saved Lila the trouble.

CHAPTER 4

“Pepper, what are you doing?”

“I’m checking to see if Joe’s cabin’s locked. What does it look like I’m doing?”

Lila glanced nervously over her shoulder because that was exactly what it looked like Pepper was doing. “Did you hear something?” She wished she hadn’t kept her voice so quiet. It made her feel like a conspirator.

“Relax,” Pepper said. “Joe isn’t home, remember?”

Relax? On each of the five days since their arrival, Lila had taken relaxing walks through the orchard, along the lane and into the back pasture. She wasn’t sure why she’d refrained from making the pond and cabin a destination, but she most certainly was not relaxed about what Pepper was proposing. “We can’t go inside.”

“Sure we can.”

“It’s trespassing,” Lila insisted. “For your information, I have every intention of leaving the note on the door.”

“For your information, one can’t trespass on one’s own property. You might as well put the note inside, out of the weather.”

Lila squinted into the sun. “Out of what weather? It’s another glorious day.”

But Pepper wasn’t listening. “It isn’t locked. Aren’t you curious about how a man who killed his wife lives?”

“We don’t know he killed his wife.”

“We don’t know he didn’t. No one’s heard from Noreen McCaffrey in two years. Not even her own daughter. Not so much as a peep.”

“They haven’t found Noreen’s body,” Lila said. “Maybe she’s alive.”

“Then where is she?”

That was the million-dollar question.

Pepper went inside, her loose-fitting black summer slacks and tank fading into the shadows. Drawing the door closed, Lila taped the note to it and called through the screen in a nearby window, “What if he catches you?”

“He’s established his pattern.” Pepper’s voice grew muffled. “Every day he works on fences or buzzes through tree limbs or hauls away junk from nine in the morning until four-thirty in the afternoon. And then he goes somewhere, and we don’t see his lights come on until the wee hours of the morning.”

Lila had to take Pepper’s word for that, because she’d been sound asleep at that time of the night. She used to be a night owl, but since her public disgrace on national television, she’d taken to going to bed early.

“There isn’t much in here,” Pepper called. “Just some old furniture and a stove right out of the dark ages.”

Lila knew better than to ask her what she’d expected. After listening to the local gossip on Saturday, they’d visited an old schoolhouse-turned-library where they’d discovered a vast though unorganized collection of newspaper and magazine articles regarding Noreen McCaffrey’s disappearance and the investigation that had followed. There were several quotes from highly respected people and some damning evidence pointing directly at Joe. Like most people, Pepper had a morbid fascination with it all. Staring at those grainy photographs had left Lila with the lingering feeling that she was looking at a part of someone’s life that should have remained private.

Although she’d seen Joe from a distance several times, they hadn’t come face-to-face since that initial meeting the morning after her arrival. Lila had spent her time since then either sleeping or getting acquainted with the animals and the farm. By Wednesday, she’d grown bored with long walks and decadent naps, and had aired the house and begun the arduous task of sorting through drawers and boxes of Myrtle Ann’s old letters, receipts and recipes. Much of it was tedious, but it kept her busy. Until her brief and humiliating jaunt into police identification work, she’d operated a counseling clinic where people came and went all day long. She’d never been rich, and her savings account was dwindling. She missed helping her patients discover ways to fix the problems in their lives. It was too bad she had no idea how to fix the problems in hers.

“Is something wrong?”

She could have handled the deep voice spoken so close to her ear, but the large hand on her shoulder sent Lila straight into the air. Heart pounding, she spun around and tried to breathe.

Joe McCaffrey stood between her and the sun, a muscle working in one cheek. Other than a small splash in the pond behind him, the early evening was quiet.

Lila could only imagine how this must look. “I didn’t hear you drive up.”

“I parked by the big house. I tried knocking. Now I know why you didn’t answer.”

“I was just leaving you a note.”

He reached for the sheet of stationery taped to his door, his forearm brushing her hair. He went perfectly still at the contact, his face two feet from hers, his gaze going from her eyes, to her mouth, and finally away.

He drew back far enough to open the note and scan it. Stuffing it into his back pocket, he said, “You might as well come in.”

He eased around her and gave the door a little push. If he noticed it hadn’t been latched, he didn’t mention it as he went in.

It was only after she followed him inside that she spared a thought for Pepper. From her position near the door, she could see most of the interior. The kitchen and living areas were separated by a wood-stove open to both rooms. Three doors led from the main area. One was closed, and the other two rooms appeared to be a rustic bathroom and a bedroom. There was no sign of Pepper anywhere.

Lila heard the clank of an old-fashioned refrigerator opening and closing. Moments later Joe returned with a two-quart jar in his hand.

“Bud Streeter drank his last paycheck again. His oldest boy sweeps floors and washes glasses at McCaffrey’s Tavern. He won’t let me give him money he hasn’t earned, but he takes the goats’ milk home to his two younger brothers. I planned to run it by you first, now that the place is yours.”

She had trouble talking around the lump that had formed in her throat. “That’s fine. Of course it’s fine.”

Neither of them seemed to know what else to say.

He finally gestured for her to precede him. Outside, he said, “Don’t worry about your friend. She sneaked out the back door while you were guarding the front.”

Lila stopped in her tracks. Joe didn’t stop at all.

Hurrying to catch up, she considered apologizing. Discarding several explanations, she finally opted for the simple facts. “Pepper and I will be gone for a few days.” She had to practically run to keep up. Wanting to explain, she said, “She’s convinced we both need a project. She’s researching a career change.”

If he spoke, it was lost in the breeze. After that, she conserved her energy for the fast trek. They went their separate ways where the driveway forked, she up her porch steps, he to his Jeep parked in the shade.

“Mr. McCaffrey?” she asked as he opened the Jeep’s door. “May I call you Joe?”

He turned to look at her, one foot on the ground, the other on the running board. Taking his pause as a yes, she said, “I think it’s nice, what you’re doing for that boy and his family.”

He seemed as surprised as he was uncomfortable with the praise. Just when she’d given up all expectation of receiving any kind of reply, he said, “I hope your friend’s career change doesn’t involve spy work or private investigation.”

For some reason, she smiled. “So do I.”

He glanced back the way they’d come before saying, “I would have locked the door if I’d wanted to keep people out.”

Obviously a man of few words, he got in and drove away.

Watching the trail of dust on the road, Lila thought about that goat’s milk and Joe’s unlocked doors. In the back of her mind, she wondered if she dared believe that actions spoke louder than words.

Joe wiped the pretzel crumbs and cigarette ashes off the counter, cringing slightly when he reached too far. The soreness in his arms and shoulders was almost welcome, for it gave him a focus other than the announcer’s voice booming over the TV.

The usual Thursday night crowd was here, a dozen in all. That number would double on Friday and Saturday, and by Sunday it would taper off to five or six. McCaffrey’s Tavern had been in Joe’s family for four generations, as much a tradition in Murray as the ball game droning from a high shelf behind the counter.

He’d grown up on the second bar stool from the left, his feet swinging as he slurped root beers and crunched on bar nuts, his eyes trained on the baseball players who’d seemed larger than life. He had precious few memories of his mother, who’d died when he was six. His father had raised him, and people used to say he’d done a damn good job of it. Opinions had a way of shifting overnight. Joe Sr. still helped out at the bar most afternoons, but these days his step was heavier and his shoulders stooped.

“Swing and a miss!” The announcer drew the call out the way announcers always did.

It never used to annoy Joe.

It was the bottom of the fourth. The Cougars were behind, and everyone in the tavern was grumbling about it.

A hush fell suddenly. Joe looked up, straight at the reason. Lila Delaney and her friend were sauntering toward him.

The next batter took a practice swing; the poker game continued at the back table, but Joe wasn’t fooled. Every person in the room kept one eye trained on the two women sidling up to the bar.

The blonde wore red, Lila beige chinos and a soft-looking knit shirt the color of walnut shells. Keeping her voice too low for anyone else to hear, she said, “Pepper has something she wants to say to you.”

Pepper Bartholomew leaned closer. “Lila wasn’t guarding the door. Not that it wouldn’t have been nice.”

Lila nudged her.

And Pepper said, “I owe you an apology. I’m sorry you caught me snooping.”

She winked, causing Joe to wonder if she was apologizing for snooping or for getting caught. If she hadn’t been so upper-crust, he would have called her expression sassy. She was taller than Lila and probably paid a small fortune for the clothes, the manicure, the platinum jewelry and that perfectly tousled hairstyle.

“Hey, sweetheart,” Bud Streeter said, doing something disgusting with his tongue. “Why don’t you bring a little of that honey down my way?”

Joe wouldn’t have wanted to be on the receiving end of Pepper’s arctic glare. Not that Bud didn’t deserve worse.

“Would either of you ladies care for a drink?” Joe asked, quietly diverting their attention. “On the house.”

“Perhaps another time,” Pepper said before steering Lila back the way they’d come.

At the door, Lila looked over her shoulder at Joe. The smile she gave him felt like a small act of kindness in a vicious world.

As talk resumed throughout the bar, Bud slid his empty glass across the counter. “Looks like you’ve got yourself a couple’a new pieces of ass to choose from.”

“Watch it, Bud,” one of the women patrons warned through a haze of cigarette smoke.

Bud’s laugh was derogatory and grating. “The blonde’s flashier. Probably be fun to ride. But the brunette’s got a bigger rack. That one looks familiar.” He bit into a pretzel. “Don’t that one look familiar? Where have I seen her?”

Drunk or sober, Bud Streeter was a mean man. Joe would have liked to ban him from the bar, but at least when Bud was here, he wasn’t getting trashed in front of the television in his trailer and yelling obscenities at his three boys. If it hadn’t been for those three innocent kids, Joe wouldn’t have blamed Bud’s wife for leaving him.

Picturing his own little girl in his mind, Joe felt a pang of remorse and regret. Chloe was thirteen, and he hardly knew her anymore. A bar was no place to raise a daughter. She was better off with her friends, her teachers and the headmistress at her boarding school in Philadelphia. She would probably grow up sophisticated and smart, and none of the credit would be his.

Joe looked around McCaffrey’s. The room was long and narrow, with low ceilings, dark-paneled walls and darker corners. The clientele paid cash and didn’t tip. They hadn’t been impressed when he’d made the majors, and they didn’t care what people said about him now any more than they cared about anything else. It wasn’t that they were down on their luck. Most had jobs; some had families. What they lacked was life.

This damn sure wasn’t the life he’d chosen.

Once, he’d had dreams. These days, his contribution to society was putting up with snide comments from the biggest loser in town.

The notion made him pause. When had he stopped thinking of himself as the biggest loser in town?

Something warm and wet grazed Joe’s neck.

Fighting his way through layers of sleep, he rolled over, the sheet tangling around his legs. As he did every night after work, he’d driven back to the cabin and stood in the shower, letting the warm water carry the secondhand cigarette smoke and grime down the drain. Leaving the low window open by his bed, he’d crawled naked between the sheets, seeking oblivion.

Again, warm lips nuzzled his neck.

Easing away from those soft kisses, he groaned. Although daylight was trying to penetrate his eyelids, he wasn’t ready to wake up. He turned away from another wet kiss, then slipped back to sleep, wondering who’d sneaked into his hotel room this time. It must have been one hell of a game, because his whole body hurt. He always ached after a game, his pitching arm and shoulder especially. The party afterward must have been intense, because he couldn’t even remember who they’d played.

Whoever was in his bed with him was persistent.

“Sorry, honey,” he mumbled. “I’m married.”

Damn groupies, anyway.

Reality landed hard in his mind. Bolting upright, he clambered out of bed so fast the tangled sheet came with him. One of Myrtle Ann’s goats watched from the open window.

“Damn it, Curly!”

The stupid goat licked the windowsill, and Joe cursed again. Erasing from his mind all memory of the erotic dream from hell, he reached for his boots and jeans.

Lila was closing the gate when she noticed Joe leading the last missing goat by a leash fashioned from his belt. “Thank goodness you found her,” she said. “I managed to get these three back in the corral and was wondering where that one had gone.”

He put the goat with those already inside the enclosure. The others frolicked, but the white one nuzzled Joe, who moved away, out of its reach.

“I think she has a crush on you.”

He mumbled something unintelligible under his breath then clamped his mouth shut. An awkward silence followed.

Finally, she said, “Pepper and I got back late last night. Neither of her business ventures turned out as she’d hoped.”

“She had two?”

“There’s an arena football team for sale in South Carolina and an alpaca ranch for sale right here in Virginia.”

“Does she know anything about football or alpacas?”

“Well, no, but that never stopped her in the past. Clinically, she’s the spoiled daughter of extremely wealthy parents. She has two perfect older sisters, a workaholic father, a perfectionist mother and a controlling grandfather.”

“Just your average all-American family.”

Lila was tempted to smile. The sun had burned off the fog here, but it swirled in the foothills in the distance, filtering light and obscuring the mountains from view.

Resting his forearms on the fence he’d recently mended, Joe said, “A few nights ago, Bud Streeter recognized you. I didn’t tell him he was right, but I thought you should know. Word’s out.”

“It isn’t exactly a secret. The media made sure of that. How long have you known?”

“It took me a few days to place where I’d seen you. I catch a lot of late-night TV at the tavern.”

“It seems we’re both famous,” she said.

“More like infamous.”

They looked at each other, both curious, but neither willing to voice their questions out loud.

Eventually, Joe said, “Not much happens in small towns, but what you hear makes up for it.”

“This is my first exposure to life in a small town. Myrtle Ann must have seen me on television. Pepper thinks that’s why she left The Meadows to me. You cared for her and this property. I don’t understand why she didn’t leave it to you.”

“I don’t need it. Noreen’s disappearance cost me my reputation, my concentration and my future, but I’m far from destitute.”

Turning her back on the animals, Lila surveyed her new home. The rising sun backlit the uneven lines of the house and accentuated the sag in the porch roof. The imperfections made the house look almost human, like lines on a wizened old woman’s face. Standing near the fence, the breeze in her hair and dew wicking into her canvas shoes, she’d never been so appreciative of someone she’d never met. “Thanks to Myrtle Ann, I’m not destitute, either.”

“Still,” he said, “now that people know who you are, they’re going to talk. The former psychic and the burned-out baseball player suspected of killing his wife.”

After another awkward silence, Lila said, “As long as it’s just idle gossip.”

Why that struck either of them as funny, she didn’t know, but she started to laugh, and so did he. Once they started, neither could stop. She snorted embarrassingly. He roared, even more out of practice than she was. They were bad at laughing. It made them laugh harder, until they were holding their stomachs, chests heaving, guffawing until they hurt. Oh, it felt good.

Lila had often counseled patients through grief and despair. How many times had she reassured them that one day they would be able to laugh again and mean it?

“My mother is going to be happy to hear I’ve taken my own advice,” she said, drying her cheeks with her fingertips.

She wound up telling Joe about the times her mother had stood up to obnoxious reporters and Lila’s former patients who’d threatened to sue. Looking back, she didn’t know how she would have gotten though the ridicule and media circus without her fierce, slight, eccentric mother.

Lila had read the newspaper accounts of Joe’s baseball career and his volatile relationship with his wife. She knew he had a daughter, but she didn’t recall reading anything about any extended family. As a counselor, and as an only child, she was always curious about families. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“Just my dad and my daughter. Neither of them are one hundred percent certain I didn’t do it.”

She could have done quite well without that particular bit of information. She must have looked at him for a long time, because he glanced nervously at her, prompting her to ask the question on her mind. “Why did you move here?”

“What do you mean, why?”

“You have a beautiful house in Murray. From what I hear, it has every imaginable luxury.”

He stared across the meadows, past the fruit trees and the pond, to the mountains, more visible now. “Noreen had to have that house, so I had it built for her. There’s nothing for me there. Besides, it doesn’t have this.”

Lila was looking at him, not the view. “There’s no peace there,” she said quietly.

A muscle worked in his jaw. “That’s right, there isn’t.”

She understood, and it should have scared her. The fact that it didn’t should have sent her sprinting back to the house. Instead, she watched him walk away.

It didn’t take him long to reach the pond. He picked up a stone on his way by, and with a flick of his wrist that was probably second nature, he sent it skipping across the water. Strangely, he didn’t stick around to count the skips or watch it sink.

The screen door bounced three times, but Lila didn’t take her eyes off the pond. The water glinted in the morning sunshine, the surface now rippling in five places, spreading outward in a perfect, silent rhythm, propelled by a force too gentle to feel and too powerful to control. By the time the ripples touched the grassy edges on all sides, the middle was smooth again. Like those ripples, Joe was a power unto himself, too. Maybe everyone was.

She came out of her stupor to see that Pepper was on the porch. Tall, svelte and sleepy-looking, her friend stared toward the cabin, a quilt wrapped around her shoulders, both hands around a cup of steaming coffee. “There went one fine specimen of a man. It almost wouldn’t matter if he did it.”

“I don’t think he did.”

Pepper turned her head slowly, her short blond hair sticking up on one side. “Oh no?”

Not one to waste precious energy on pretense, Lila only shrugged.

“You’re falling for him,” Pepper said.

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“Think about it, Lila. He has nothing to offer you, at least nothing except heartache, and maybe an early death.”

“It’s not as if I’m planning to propose. Believe me, Alex cured me of the very idea of marriage. I just don’t think Joe hurt his wife.”

“Why don’t you ask him?” Pepper said. “No, wait, the police already did.”

“And he said he didn’t kill Noreen.”

“I’d say that, too,” Pepper grumbled.

“I think he’s telling the truth.”

“Oh, God.”

Lila shrugged all over again.

“He’s dangerous, Lila.”

She didn’t think so. What’s more, for the first time in months, she felt revived and regenerated, not in a psychic sense, but in a living, breathing, female sense. “If you believe he killed Noreen, why are you still here?” she asked, joining Pepper on the porch. “Why aren’t you afraid?”

Pepper didn’t seem to know what to say.

“That’s what I thought,” Lila said. “Besides, you’re the one who told me I needed a project.”

Letting the quilt slip from her shoulders, Pepper said, “So take up knitting or go back to school. If anything happens to you, your mother is going to have me drawn and quartered.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to me.” Scooping up the quilt and handing it back to Pepper, Lila added, “You’re staying, then?”

Pepper followed her inside, muttering all the way to the kitchen where she topped off her coffee. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. It seems I’m, or rather, I’m not, um, let’s just say I’ve run into a little difficulty regarding my finances.”

“What sort of difficulty?”

Pepper pulled a face. “My family has cut me off.”

“You mean financially? What did they do? Freeze access to your trust fund? And you didn’t tell me?”

Sighing, Pepper said, “You have enough problems of your own. Besides, it’s only until I agree to assume my rightful place in the bowels of monotony. I told my grandfather not to hold his breath, and he told me to stop acting like a spoiled little heiress. At that point, I probably shouldn’t have reminded him that I’ve been taller than him since I was thirteen.”

Oh dear. Pepper’s grandfather had a very serious Napoleon complex. “He really froze access to your trust fund unless you do as he says?”

“And my dad’s backing him up. My mother doesn’t like it, but everyone knows Grandfather and Daddy run that show.”

“You’re welcome to stay as long as you need to, but I have to remind you I don’t have much money, either.”

“I know. I have a little money left in my emergency fund, but it’s going fast. This may sound drastic,” Pepper said, “But I think I’m going to have to get a job.”

“You’re going to go to work?”

“It isn’t as if I don’t want to work,” Pepper said, justifiably defensive. “It’s just that Kelly Rippa already has my dream job.”

Lila made a clicking sound with her tongue. “There is no justice. But don’t worry, we’ll think of something.” Suddenly this felt like old times, and she added, “We’re in for an interesting summer, there’s no doubt about that.”

“If we’re lucky,” Pepper said drolly, “we might even both live to tell about it.”

“I don’t believe in luck.”

“I know. You believe in destiny.” Pepper sipped her coffee thoughtfully. “If we’re destined to spend our summer here, we’re going to need more information about Noreen McCaffrey.”

We? Lila nudged her friend away from the coffeepot and helped herself to a cup.

Pepper’s expression was composed as she focused her attention on the situation. And Lila knew that even this early in the morning, Pepper was formulating a plan.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

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