It Must Be Magic (21 page)

“Then I guess you should have said you’d help her. That’s what any red-blooded male would do for the woman he loves.”

“I’m not in love with her.”

“Oh.” Roscoe thinned his lips. “So last night was just casual.”

Dammit. “Never mind about last night. I’m concerned about right now. Where’s Fluffy?”

“Upstairs with Erika.”

“Why isn’t she playing outside?”

“Because you said she couldn’t leave the house unless I was with her, and I needed to get a jump start on dinner. We’re having pot roast.”

He didn’t care what they were having for dinner. Instead, he bounded up the stairs to Erika’s room. If Lili had gotten that child to sneak out of the house with her…Erika lay facedown on her bed reading a book, Fluffy curled up beside her.

“What’s wrong, Dad?”

He didn’t even want to think about the storm cloud riding his features. “I was looking for Lili.”

“She’s at her house. I saw her come home. I thought she might come over here, but she didn’t. I guess she’s busy.” Too busy to play with Erika was the sentiment that didn’t get said.

His blood pressure had risen steadily since the moment he’d made that call to the flower shop. Now it felt as if his heart was going into fibrillation. Like the day he’d found Karen gone.

He tried very hard not to yell. “
When
did you see her?”

“I guess it was half an hour ago.”

Lili hadn’t taken Fluffy. Her bike was locked to her front porch. Her back door was open.

So where the hell was Lili?

He was getting a really bad feeling.

H
IRAM BATTLE HERDED THEM
through the woods to the edge of the meadow as if he’d walked these paths a million times. With his murderous walking stick. Well, the stick wasn’t murderous, he was. He’d repossessed it from Lady Dreadlock.

He set Lady D. in front, Lili next, then followed at the rear of the column. With the gun.

“Where are you taking us?”

Lili felt totally exposed in the field, the long grasses brushing her calves. He couldn’t shoot them both at once, but
one
of them would get shot if she tried to make a break for it out here. She couldn’t outrun the range of his bullet. If by some miracle she could, that left Lady Dreadlock all by herself. Lili couldn’t choose between her life and Lady D.’s.

Maybe she could jump him, a surprise attack. He’d probably shoot her the moment she turned around and launched herself at him. But if she waited, crossed the field the way he wanted her to, maybe she could look for an opportunity to hide, then run for help. If he didn’t shoot them in the same spot he’d killed that young man. Because that was the spot they were now making a single-file beeline for.

So far Lady D. had simply followed orders, her pace slow yet methodical as she muttered to herself about God’s punishment.

Lili’s only real hope was that Einstein got to Roscoe’s and Roscoe called the police. Except that the only two people Einstein could actually
talk
to were with Hiram Battle.

“Obviously I didn’t go far enough into the woods last time.”

So, he did plan on taking them deeper into the forest. Good. That gave her more time to think of something. It also meant it would take Einstein longer to track her. If anyone understood Einstein and actually followed her.

Didn’t Lassie always run home, bark wildly so that her humans knew something was wrong and followed her?

Einstein couldn’t bark.

Lili had to stop catastrophizing everything. It didn’t do a bit of good. It stole all her hope, and hope was the only thing she had. Instead, she thought getting Hiram to talk was a good idea. At least then she’d be able to gauge how close he walked behind her. “Who was he? The man you killed, I mean.”

“A student of mine.”

“Why’d you kill him?”

Lili didn’t expect him to answer. She expected him to jab her in the back with the gun and tell her to shut up.

But Hiram didn’t. “He was going to blackmail me.”

“You could have called the police.”

Hiram huffed, a guttural sound that rattled in his throat. “Then I would have had to tell them why he was blackmailing me.”

“Right. So why
was
he blackmailing you?”

She almost felt his snort of disgust against her hair. He walked so closely she was surprised he didn’t step on her heels.

“I killed him to keep it a secret, so why would I tell you?”

“Because you’re going to kill us, too. Aren’t you?” Her voice rose on a hopeful note.

“Well —” he sucked in a breath of air “— yes.”

She ought to feel more afraid, but there was a surrealistic quality to everything. She felt every gnat flit across her skin, every burr that worked its way down into her boot, the sting of the branch scratches on her arms. She heard every separate bird chirp, the buzz of bees, the strident caw of a crow. Yet it didn’t seem…real. She kept thinking that this couldn’t be happening.

Maybe it was better not to be terrified. Maybe it was like the ninety-pound weakling who lifts a car off a child, then collapses when the danger is over. Lili would collapse later.

If there was a later.

“You
should
tell us why we’re going to have to die.” She took the chance of looking behind her. Big mistake. All she saw was the gun in his hand. It seemed a lot bigger than it had before. A slight tremor ran the length of her body. “It’s only fair, you know.”

Hiram Battle took several seconds to think about it, all the while Lady D. keeping to her slow, methodical pace, then he said, “He wrote a book.”

“That doesn’t sound like blackmail.”

“It was about two college professors, best friends, both writers. One of them wrote the most beautiful, lyrical book you could ever imagine. It was a masterpiece. But he died in a hit-and-run accident.” His inhale was audible, as stark as a crow’s caw and the chatter of the squirrels across the open meadow.

Ahead of Lili, Lady Dreadlock muttered something about paying the price for being evil.

“Then what happened in your student’s book?” She was beginning to feel the shudder of fear in her belly. Maybe she should have kept her mouth shut.

“The professor, the dead man’s best friend, whose manuscript was a pile of crap, put his own name on his colleague’s work and sent it to a publisher.”

Okay, she was starting to connect the dots. “And it got published.”

“Yes. It did. He received accolades, lots of money, a tenured professorship, but he never sold another book. Everything he wrote was as big a pile of crap as his first work. He never measured up to his dead friend.”

She swallowed. “It was just a book, Professor Battle.”

“It was my life.”

Lili felt his roar past her ears. Deafening. It wrapped around her vitals and squeezed. A flock of birds burst into the air, screeching.

Lady D. tripped, fell on her knees and stayed there.

The gun wavered in Hiram’s hand. “Make her get up.”

Lili bent down and gently took the woman by the arms, helping her rise.

“I’m so sorry,” Lady Dreadlock whispered. It was the first time Lili had heard her say the word
I,
at least when it wasn’t in an apocalyptic sense. It was the first time she ever saw what looked like coherence in the woman’s eyes. She opened her mouth to tell Patsy to run, but Hiram shook the gun in her face.

“Get away from her. And keep walking.”

They were going to die. Unless Einstein did something, talked to someone. Maybe Erika. Erika would believe with childlike enthusiasm. Then she and Roscoe would call the police, and Einstein would follow their trail.

But she and Lady D. would be dead. Time was running out.

“How much money did he ask you for?”

“He didn’t ask for any money. But I knew that was coming. He wanted me to dangle with fear waiting for his demands, then he’d bleed me dry and tell everyone what I’d done anyway. Do you know the worst?”

Lili hissed as she felt the barrel of the gun jab her back. What could be worse than this? She started to panic, tamped it down. They were closing in on the tree line ahead. If they made it to the overgrown trail on the other side, she could dive into the bushes, then hit the dirt running…if she could keep Hiram talking long enough. “What
was
the worst?”

“In the book, he said I ran Foster down. He said I killed him. I never did. I wouldn’t. Foster was my best friend, and I thought his book was so good it deserved all the recognition it could garner.”

Yet Hiram had put his own name on the work. He’d stolen the recognition. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to make that point right now.

“So I had to get rid of Avery before he told anyone.”

Hiram’s deductive reasoning seemed logical. For a sick mind, or someone who was so obsessed with his reputation it was all that mattered. Hiram Battle didn’t have anything besides his reputation.

“How did you lure Avery out here?” Avery. That was the poor victim’s name. Saying it aloud was like paying him homage. Even if he was a blackmailer, except that he hadn’t actually blackmailed Hiram yet. There had only been the potential.

“I told him I’d give him a critique of the work while we walked.”

“In the dark?”

“I gave him a flashlight to use on the path.”

Lili counted the steps in her mind until they reached the forest again. “If he truly intended to blackmail you, wouldn’t he think you’d try something out there in the dark?”

“He didn’t know I knew what he was up to. He thought I was a senile old man who didn’t have the strength to hurt a fly.”

Until Hiram beat him to death with his walking stick. Okay, she was full-fledged scared now. Desperate.

Hiram would shoot her dead the minute she made a break for the underbrush.

T
ANNER HAD NEVER FELT
SO helpless in his life. Except the night he’d come home to a dark house and a note from Karen telling him she’d left Erika with Wanetta next door and would be back in six weeks after she’d learned how to access her latent psychic talents.

Helplessness led to either mind-numbing anger or action. Tanner chose action. He called Gresswell, told him Lili was missing, demanded he search for her, then slammed the portable down on the kitchen table. And powerlessness set in again.

“Are you sure you didn’t see her leave, Erika?”

“No.” Erika hung her head, Tanner’s spiraling mood affecting her. “I only saw her come in. I swear, Dad. I’m not lying.”

Roscoe glowered at him.

Jesus. What was he doing? He put his hand on Erika’s head. “I know you’re not lying. I’m just worried. This isn’t like Lili.”

What the hell did he know about what Lili was like? He’d met her a week ago and made love to her twice.

He tipped his head back. God. He’d made love to her and felt as if he knew everything. This wasn’t like her. She wouldn’t simply take off.

He’d never believed Karen would do it, either, after he told her leaving two-year-old Erika for six weeks was abandonment in a child’s eyes.

Behind him, there was a great crash, and the screen door shook in its frame.

“What the —”

They all turned…and stared.

Einstein — at least he thought it was Einstein — embedded all twenty claws into the screen, hanging from the upper part of the door like an animal skin staked out to cure.

Then she dropped down with a thud and threw herself against the metal protector at the bottom. Again. Then again.

Roscoe was first to open the door, sending the cat sprawling across the back porch. She lay there a moment as if stunned, then jumped up, ran inside and bit Tanner on the ankle. Finally she sat on her haunches staring up at him with huge pupils surrounded by only a rim of green.

He knew the cat hated him, but there was a weird franticness to her actions. She turned, ran full-tilt into the bottom of the screen again, rolled with the backward momentum, then flipped around and sat on her haunches in front of him.

Him.

Not Erika or Roscoe.

“She’s trying to tell you something, Dad.” Erika’s hushed voice whispered through the kitchen.

“What?” Tanner was equally hushed. It wasn’t a matter of belief or nonbelief. The cat
was
trying to tell him something.

“Maybe she knows where Lili is,” Roscoe offered.

Tanner furrowed his brow, stared hard at Einstein and murmured, “Show me.”

The cat was off like a shot. Roscoe barely had time to open the screen door before she rammed her head into it again.

“Call Gresswell back. Tell him to get over here now.”

Then Tanner followed. Through the hedge, across Lili’s backyard and out the gate to the path.

He had the gut-wrenching sense that Lili’s life depended on his believing in Einstein’s feline intelligence.

L
ILI HAD TWO CHOICES, AND
neither of them were good. When they entered the woods, she could hope for an opportunity to make a break for it. That was her primary brainstorm while crossing the meadow, but the closer she got, the more the idea started to fall apart.

On the downside of that option, first, Hiram could shoot her before she got away; second, if she got away, Hiram could shoot Lady D. Oh, and third, if Einstein did convince someone to look for them, they’d never find the spot where the small group entered the woods.

Way too many downsides to that option.

So, the other option: turn and take a stand. Refuse to move. Downside, Hiram could shoot them both now. Except that he didn’t want to. He’d have to drag their bodies. He was old and frail, and she knew he didn’t want to do that.

Shoot us now. Or shoot us later.
Option one had three downsides; option two had only one.

Lili gulped in air and half turned, keeping Lady D. in the periphery of her vision. The abrupt action took Hiram aback, and the gun rose slightly in the air, but she’d gotten ahead, and he was now too far away for Lili to launch herself at him. In that moment of indecision, she lost the opportunity as Hiram leveled the gun once more.

She gave herself Einstein’s dunce cap.

“Keep moving.”

“No. We’re not going anywhere.”

“Don’t make me have to shoot you out here.” The gun quavered ever so slightly.

She was at least right about that. Hiram didn’t want to kill them here. Behind them lay a long trail of tamped-down grasses. Their path would be clearly visible to anyone looking for them.

If Einstein brought help…

“Let us go, and we won’t tell anyone what you did.”

He scoffed deep in his throat. “Right.” He stabbed his walking stick into the ground and shook his gun hand at her. “I have nothing else to lose. I
will
kill you if you don’t get moving and worry about how to get rid of your bodies later.”

Lady D. sank down into the grass as if her legs wouldn’t hold her. Lili had always believed the poor woman didn’t understand anything if it wasn’t inside her own head. Patsy understood the most important thing right now. They were going to die if help didn’t come, or Lili didn’t
do
something.

“Miss Goodweather, I don’t have anything against you personally. I did think you were the one who stole my cane the other night, after Roscoe told us all about you and your talk of bodies and murder and that damn Fluffy cat. I broke into your house the next day to look for this.” He shook the walking stick at her. “I even tried to steal Fluffy, in case you
could
talk to him, but the little monster scratched me as soon as I put my hand through the screen.” He held out his arm to show a long cat furrow. “That cat never did like me.”

Hiram had been behind everything that had happened.

“I realize my mistake now,” he went on. “It was her.” He shot a glare at Lady D. “I saw her staring at my house this morning, but by the time I got outside, she was gone. I looked everywhere. I swear I did. I honestly hate to have to do this to you, because I see now that you’re completely innocent. You didn’t witness what I did, she was the one. It’s all her fault. So I’m sorry that you’re going to have to pay the price, as well.” He hefted the gun. “Please, let’s not make this any more difficult than it has to be.”

With that speech, she understood he didn’t
want
to kill her. If she let him go on, maybe he’d talk himself out of it entirely.

“Though if you hadn’t interfered and found the body, Avery would have been merely another missing person on the books.” His eyes narrowed. “Yes, if you hadn’t interfered, his body would have been animal fodder, and no one would ever have known what happened to him. They’d never have been able to connect him to me. But now —” he shrugged, and something truly vicious rose in his eyes “— now I realize
you
fucked everything up.”

Uh-oh. Lili’s mind froze as if she’d eaten too big a spoonful of ice cream.

She’d let him go on too long.

Lady D. moaned mournfully.

“Get the hell off my property.”

Lili almost fainted. Buddy Welch stepped out of the forest, his shotgun to his shoulder, one eye squinting down the sight, his face the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen in her life.

Except that Buddy never carried a loaded shotgun.

T
ANNER DIDN’T HAVE TIME
to be angry with Lili now. First he’d make sure she was okay.
Then
he’d get pissed.

He broke through the trees, almost blinded by the bright sun. Until he shaded his eyes. Lili, her black hair flying in the breeze, stood on the far side of the meadow. Tanner couldn’t make out who she was with. He tipped his head. Hiram Battle? And someone down on the ground. Jesus. Another body?

Einstein barreled straight across the field like a fur ball out of a cannon. Why he didn’t barrel out there behind Einstein, Tanner wasn’t sure, but some instinct pushed him to run in a crouch around the perimeter, closing the distance quickly, keeping his eye on Lili.

What the hell was going on out there? What was Hiram holding?

Buddy Welch stepped from the woods, shotgun to his shoulder. Christ. The old man had lost his mind for sure this time. Hiram Battle would have a heart attack. Worse, Lili could get hurt.

Then he saw Lili tip her head to the side, like an animal cocking its ears, and Einstein’s tail fluttered in the grass like a flag. Tanner knew in his gut the cat was telling her help was on the way.

They were too far from the forest edge for a sneak attack. He wouldn’t get away with the surprise. The best he could hope for was that Buddy didn’t have a loaded gun.

Tanner rose to his full height and pushed through the long grasses. Lili saw him first. Though she didn’t move a muscle, he knew, as if they communicated on a level somewhere above or below the surface.

“Buddy,” he called out, “we’ve already had this discussion. Put down the damn shotgun.” It wasn’t loaded, he
knew
it wasn’t loaded. He hated having it pointed at Lili anyway.

Lili put two fingers to her mouth, then pushed her hand out at him, palm out. Stay back? Shut up?

Tanner wasn’t about to do either.

Concentrating on the danger Buddy posed — because the shotgun
might
be loaded — he didn’t pay attention to Hiram or the dreadlocked woman crouching on the ground like an Aborigine. Her head bobbed slightly, swaying as if caught by a breeze. Thank God she was alive at least.

“Stop right there or I’ll shoot her.”

He should have paid attention to everything. Hiram Battle held a gun in his hand. Tanner didn’t think it was a nonfunctioning relic from the Korean War. That was Linwood Daniels’s bailiwick.

His heart seized, and Tanner stopped in his tracks. This was his worst fear, his biggest nightmare. Lili with a gun on her and this time, it
was
loaded, he knew in his gut. It seemed like forever, but almost as if he could hear the tick of his watch, it was only a couple of seconds. He’d freak later. Now, he had to take charge.

Tanner drew his head back and sneered. “Hiram, what do you think you’re doing?”

Einstein’s green eyes flicked to him, and he could have sworn something that looked like a dunce cap floated across his mind. It was a dumb question, of course. Lili had led him to a body that had lain only paces from the spot in which they all stood; Hiram Battle had a gun, he also had Lili and Lady Dreadlock — or Patsy or whoever the hell she was — pinned down and he was threatening to kill. Duh! Hiram was a murderer.

Asking a dumb question, however, bought him time. He hoped.

Until Hiram exploded, his face a frightening apoplectic red. “What the hell are you all doing out here?”

A man out of control with a gun in his hand couldn’t be good. Then again, losing control might lead him to making a mistake Tanner could take advantage of.

If he himself didn’t make a mistake first out of sheer terror. His only shot was distraction, with Buddy Welch’s help. That was exactly what Buddy gave him.

“This is my property, old man,” Buddy said, though he might actually have been older than Hiram. “I’m the only one who gets to hold a gun on someone. You put yours down. Now. And I won’t shoot you.”

Tanner shook his head. “Looks like you’re outnumbered, Hiram. I’d drop it.”

Hiram shook the gun. “His isn’t loaded. Everyone knows he never loads it. Except the trespassers.”

Buddy smiled, an evil, delighted, maniacal rising of his eyebrows and a flare of his nostrils. “It’s loaded today.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Tanner inched closer, hoping the rustle of the grass was covered by the volume of the argument.

“Want me to shoot first so you can find out the hard way?” Buddy threatened.

“Yeah, go ahead, you filthy old geezer.”

“Now that’s not nice.” Buddy grinned and spat in the grass.

Tanner covered another yard.

The dreadlocked woman raised her arm slowly, like a grim reaper, and pointed at Hiram. “God will punish you.”

“Shut up, bat.” Hiram was snarling now.

The woman rose to her feet, a smooth, graceful motion belied by the dirtiness of her clothing and the ancient leathery texture of her skin.

“Hiram,” Tanner commanded attention, “are you going to try shooting us all? One of us will get you before you make it through all four.”

At least the man had his sights on Tanner now, instead of Lili. “I called Gresswell.” Tanner pointed in the general direction of the houses. “They’ll be here soon. You can’t hide what you’ve done.” He spread his hands. “Why not give it up now before you make everything worse?”

“Let me blow him away.” Then Buddy cursed.

Tanner shot him a glare. Lili bit her lower lip, her eyes a deep, frightened purple.

“Hiram, give me the gun.” Palm up, Tanner waggled his fingers. “Roscoe will be real disappointed if you kill me. I don’t think he’ll ever forgive you.”

For one heart-stopping moment, Hiram Battle’s eyes flared with something dark and terrifying. A spark of malice. His face tensed and twitched. Tanner was sure someone was going to die.

“Shit,” Hiram spat out. “This is not my fucking day.” Then he threw the gun on the ground.

The fist on Tanner’s vitals eased. A wash of relief almost brought him to his knees. He looked at Lili, and he wanted to drag her into his arms, touch her, make sure every limb was intact, every atom of her safe. And when that was done, he’d throttle her for getting herself out here in the first place.

L
ILI DIDN’T START SHAKING
until they got back to the house and Tanner had helped her clean the scratches on her arms. Now she couldn’t stop trembling. Sheriff Gresswell had arrived in the meadow shortly after Tanner had. He hadn’t handcuffed Hiram. He’d treated him with respect. A deputy had taken Buddy’s statement right there in the field and another had followed them home, to her house, not Tanner’s, and taken their statements. Lady Dreadlock — Lili really needed to start calling her Patsy — had gone with the sheriff and the others. Lili knew there’d be more questions, tomorrow and in the days after. And people would stare at her as if she were a freak.

Exactly as Tanner was staring at her now that they were alone in her house. In the almost three hours that had passed since the moment Hiram Battle had dropped his gun in the grass, Tanner’s eyes had gotten darker. And colder. More distant.

He hadn’t hugged her, hadn’t even touched her since cleansing her tiny cuts, and that wasn’t the same thing. She’d needed comfort, but he hadn’t
touched
her in three hours. It felt like forever since relief had flooded her at the sight of him walking toward her through the grass.

At least Einstein wasn’t giving her the dunce cap. Instead, the cat had purred in her lap the whole time they’d sat at the kitchen table while the deputy had been here.

“I guess it’s okay now for me to stay here tonight.” She tangled her fingers in Einstein’s fur. “Now that we know Mr. Battle is the culprit.”

Tanner didn’t say a word. He gave her “the look.” The personification of disapproval.

Don’t let him intimidate you. He was as scared out there as you were.

Lili tipped Einstein’s head up and gazed into her frank green eyes. “Tanner’s never scared,” she whispered.

Tanner’s scared of everything, especially you.

“How do you know that?”

“Stop talking to the cat. Talk to me.”

Lili looked up. “I did talk to you. You didn’t answer.”

He drummed his fingers on the table. “Why did you go out there alone?”

“I told the police that. Because I was afraid Lady — I mean, Patsy — would disappear again.”

“It was stupid.”

“I know that. But I didn’t have time to think it through. I had to act.”

“There’s always time to think things through.” He shot her a stony look. “You had plenty of time to think through not telling me that you only work half days on Tuesdays.”

She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, then let it plop out again before she bit down. She could tell him all sorts of things, such as he hadn’t asked, she’d forgotten, she didn’t want to bother him, she hadn’t lied to him per se. It wouldn’t do any good. “I know you told me not to take Fluffy out, but I felt I had to do something. And I didn’t see that there would be any harm in it. I especially never intended to take Erika with me. I know that’s what you’re thinking.”

The stone in his eyes turned diamond hard. “Do you really want to know what I’m thinking?”

You’d better say no, babe.

She couldn’t heed Einstein’s warning. She had lied to Tanner, and she’d gotten into big trouble. If Tanner hadn’t shown up, if Buddy hadn’t pulled out his shotgun, well, she and Lady D. might very well have gone the way of Avery Able. That was the student’s name. He wasn’t a body anymore. He was a real person. And she’d made a huge mistake even if she hadn’t intended what had happened.

She took a deep breath. “Yes. I want to know what you’re thinking.” She tried not to wince. She was brave and independent. She could face up to her mistakes in Tanner’s eyes.