“We’re talking about it now. You may be good with dots butI’m the one with the talent for reading crime scenes. Face it, Wells, you’re going to need me to help you find your uncle and my aunt. Besides if you don’t hand over one of the passes, I’m going to head for Fool’s Gold Canyon anyway.”
He considered her for a long moment. “That sounds a lot like blackmail.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not blackmail, it’s a statement of fact.”
Without a word he handed one of the passes to her. She tucked it securely into a pocket and took a moment to survey the room.
“Aunt Bea, what on earth have you gotten yourself involved in?” she said quietly.
“The wind is picking up,” Luke said. “You need to get busy and clean up the scene so I can drive you back to the shop before the storm hits.”
She hesitated. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea to scrub the evidence. I know it’s only paranormal evidence, not the courtroom kind, but still, we’re talking about murder.”
“If you don’t clean the place there’s a very good chance that one of two scenarios will play out. The Foundation may get tipped off about what went down here and send out some crime scene readers of their own, in which case there’s a high probability they will conclude that your aunt was involved.”
She grimaced. He was right. The last thing she wanted to do was bring the heavy weight of the Foundation down on a Harper.
She took the chimes and mallet out of her pocket and prepared to neutralize the dark energy that seethed in the floorboards, walls, and ceiling. It was exhausting but it was much less stressful than reading the scene and there was virtually no psychic blowback—just a few bad dreams.
She paused before striking the note that would enable her to slip into a light trance. “You said there were two possible scenarios. What’s the second one?”
Luke smiled a very cold smile. “The second scenario is that the smoking ghost or someone else involved in this situation will come around looking to get rid of people who know too much.”
He was right, of course. If she had been thinking clearly she would have arrived at the same conclusions.
“Okay,” she said. “But for the record, I hate cleaning.”
She tapped the chimes with the mallet, found the right note, and went to work.
Five
“Deke and your aunt apparentlyhave had a long-standing personal relationship,” Luke said. He smiled a little as he put the SUV in gear and drove away from the cabin. “Wait until my grandmother finds out. She’ll be pissed. She married into the family, so she’s not a Wells by blood, but somewhere along the line she became more of a Wells than the rest of us, including the Boss. Family is everything to her, and that means holding on to the old feud.”
“I’m still in shock myself,” Sophy said. “My sister will be stunned. But Chloe is out of the country working in a collector’s private library on an island in the South Pacific. It’s very hard to get in touch with her. But that’s a problem for another time. We need to stay focused.”
“Agreed,” Luke said.
Bruce was in the back seat, but he had both front paws braced on the console, his head thrust between the two humans. Luke suspected he had chosen the position because it enabled him to get closer to Sophy. From time to time, she raised a hand and ruffled the fur behind his ears. The dog practically groaned with pleasure.
I should be so lucky, Luke thought.
He tightened his grip on the wheel. She was right. Time to focus. He was good at that. As far as his family was concerned, it was his only real talent.
Sophy was all business now. She sat, square-shouldered and tense, in the passenger seat. Evidently she had decided to pretend nothing unusual had happened between them when she had emerged from the trance. He wasn’t sure how to deal with that.
The aura-resonating experience had been a first for him. He was still feeling some of the afterburn—a disorienting sense of discovery and an intimate connection that went beyond the physical.Dad and the Boss said it would be like this.
Both men had also warned him that situations like this could go full fubar.
What if Sophy had not experienced the same exhilarating rush of bone-deep awareness? What if she had been oblivious to the moment of resonance between them? Maybe it had amounted to nothing more than a few sparks as far as she was concerned. A momentary distraction.
Talk about a depressing answer to theWas it good for you, too?question.
He had not been entirely blindsided tonight. On some primal level he had been anticipating fireworks from the moment Sophy opened the door of the Shop on Hidden Lane and glared at him through her black-and-crystal-framed glasses. Something deep inside had stirred.
She had been dressed in gray joggers and an oversized sweatshirt. Her autumn-brown hair had been caught up in a careless twist on top of her head and secured with a large tortoiseshell clamp. The style emphasized her strong, feminine profile. He hadn’t been able to see much of her figure because of the shapelessclothes, but that hardly mattered, because he’d been transfixed by her intense hazel eyes.
“You must be Wells,” she had said. “You’re late. I expected you a couple of hours ago.” She eyed Bruce. “That dog should be on a leash.”
