Moonstone Shadows Page 9

  She had the photos. She didn’t need the painting any longer—unless she wanted to be sucked in. And she did, so very very badly. . . “What if I’m a magnifier?” she asked. “Maybe it’s not the painting. Maybe it’s the two of us together.”

  “Magnifier?” In irritation, as if she’d said a bad word, he glanced over his shoulder but didn’t halt his steps toward the back room. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  But she heard the. . . alarm? . . . in his tone. Aaron wasn’t dense. If that painting had an impression he could feel, he knew what they’d done.

  She knew how to dig down to get what she wanted. “I told you earlier, some of us have the ability to enhance the gifts of others. If the painting speaks to you, maybe I’m helping you access those impressions better.” She searched her memory for passages of description about how magnifying worked.

  “You faint every time we touch,” he said in scorn, reaching the door between the shop and his storage room. “You probably just fainted and sucked me into your dream world.”

  “That’s an outright lie,” she shouted after him.

  Huh, she never shouted. But her hand was steadier for having done so. She could hear him unrolling wrapping paper or bubble wrap or whatever he had back there that crackled. She studied the image on her phone. She needed it on a bigger screen.

  She needed to see inside that damned jewel box.

  She could still smell the wood smoke and hear the whisper of the wind in the trees. It had been a beautiful night. Had she ever sat outside and simply enjoyed the beauty of nature and companionship?

  Quite definitely not. For one thing, it was damned cold at night in Keegan’s lonely outpost. She’d have to have gone to the pub for companionship, and she wasn’t much of a drinker or conversationalist. She preferred the company of books.

  She was making excuses. She’d had opportunities. She simply hadn’t been interested. Her head was too full of books to allow in anything extra, like people. She needed to experience more of life.

  Aaron returned without the painting. She felt a deep, abiding disappointment—in herself as much as in the missing art.

  “Tell me about magnification,” he demanded.

  She shrugged. “Like all else, it works differently for each individual. Generally, there has to be an element of closeness, if only to discover the ability. One sibling might interfere when another is accessing their gift, and bang, something super exciting happens. It’s not always a welcome perception. Try to imagine some of the impressions you’ve encountered over the years, and then magnify them ten times.”

  “What we just experienced was sensation enough not to want to do it again,” he said grimly, picking up the tea tray.

  “Coward,” she murmured into her cup. She wasn’t a bold sort of person, but he aggravated her in ways she couldn’t explain. And if she was to set a new course of experiences, she really needed to do it again.

  Grimly, he held out the tray for her empty cup and stalked to the back room again.

  So, she’d seen the painting. It hadn’t told her how to find the stone—her one and only hope that there was a way of surviving whatever was eating her brain. Now what?

  The shop door opened and Tullah, the tall voodoo queen from the thrift store, stalked in, radiating energy. Wearing a bright red and orange halter dress that emphasized her muscular shoulders and arms, she strode with hip-swinging grace through Aaron’s inventory in Hannah’s direction. “You’re playing with fire, Librarian.”

  The vibrations they’d been giving off must have been powerful enough to reach the psychic. Hannah knew that no one completely understood how Tullah’s mind worked. Tullah never explained. She let Cass rule the Lucys, but from what she’d read, Hannah was fairly certain Tullah was equally receptive.

  Before Hannah could respond, Aaron returned carrying a ragged sock monkey. His chiseled face was cold as stone. “Magnify this,” he demanded, nodding at Tullah but glaring at Hannah. “Tullah will see that we return.”

  She didn’t want to touch a dirty stuffed creature. It probably held nightmares. But if Aaron could hold it. . . If her time here on earth was short, she wanted to experience more than books in her head.

  Fortifying herself with a deep breath, she wrapped her fingers around a torn paw.

  Nothing.

  Aaron’s hard brown hand covered hers.

  Pain, anguish, toxic chemicals stinking in the hospital air. The agony of helplessness.

  Ten

  Clutching Money Monkey, her once ivory skin sunken into shadows beneath her cheekbones, Natalie whispered, “Let me die.”

  Angrily, Aaron shook off the transparent hand clinging to his.

  Instantly, the heart-shattering episode vanished, returning them to the dim, dusty shop where the librarian stood, stunned and blinking.

  He’d seen Natalie again and not died of anguish. Maybe he was healing. Maybe.

  Refusing to be called coward again, he shoved the stupid stuffed monkey into a dresser drawer and glared at Tullah. “Well, what happened?”

  Hannah dropped down on the settee again. If the prim-and-proper teacher could see what Aaron saw on that velvet-covered cushion, she wouldn’t sit there so readily.

  If he took her hand, she would apparently see what he saw. Deodamnatus. He resisted.

  “You both froze,” Tullah said succinctly. “Your souls, your ectoplasm, your life force, whatever you want to call it, departed your bodies, but you didn’t fall. Very interesting. I hope it was worth it because that way lies madness. I have a store to tend. Quit acting like children and do not summon me that way again. You disturb the universe.”

  She turned around and marched out.

  “And that’s why I don’t need a magnifier.” Aaron refused to feel sympathy for Hannah’s pale face and shocked expression. He’d needed to make her understand why he would never get personally involved again.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said abjectly. “She was so beautiful and in such terrible pain! I thought they gave pain medication to make the end easier. No one should suffer like that.”

  “She saved the pills and took them all at once. It wasn’t pretty. She begged and pleaded until I had to read the books and tell her how to do it. I am not a coward. If I were a coward, I would have taken the pills myself and never have to remember that moment again. I do not want to remember it ever again. So you need to go play schoolteacher and leave me alone. There will be no more magnifying anything.”

  Because, judging from those brief interludes they’d shared, he was damned certain that transporting themselves back in time would create psychic bonds he didn’t want.

  “We’ll have to solve Mrs. Kennedy’s murder without your help,” she said sadly. “I don’t know how you live like that. I’m so sorry I pushed you. I don’t know what came over me. I just wanted to be useful for a change.”

  She stood up and headed for the front door, shoulders slumped.

  He felt like a rat. He’d felt worse. He watched her go. The sooner she moved out, the better off they both would be.

  They’d traveled back in time. He didn’t doubt it for a minute. The impressions had been too vivid, beyond anything he’d ever experienced.

  The images he received from objects never contained smells or sounds or anything other than a vivid impression of emotion and an act, usually violent. He had a few pieces that reflected passion, like the loveseat, or the happiness of a new mother with her infant, or a man on the brink of proposal, but happiness was usually like water or perfume that spread thin and evaporated so he could only sense the emotion.

  Unpleasant scenes, however, were corrosive acid, so destructive that they etched the object with the memories of the hatred and violence that caused a finger to pull a trigger or a hammer to hit a skull.

  With Hannah, he not only saw but sensed the whole memory—and it didn’t have to involve violence or any other emotion. Probably not real time travel, but as she said, a magnification of the vibrations he picked up. And
in Natalie’s case, he had the memory to accompany it.

  Could they solve murders that way?

  No, quite definitively no. He didn’t take Tullah’s warning lightly. He’d almost lost his soul when Natalie died. Prison had leached the life out of him. He was just now starting to find his feet again, to feel as if he might build what passed for a normal life. He wouldn’t jeopardize that or the strange female whose shadowed eyes spoke of the mysteries of the northern isles he’d once called home.

  Needing normality, Aaron sat at his desk to update his website. Before he had time to immerse himself, Walker called to warn him that the sheriff was sending a man to question him about last night.

  So much for feeling as if he might have a normal life. Aaron flung his keyboard in his desk drawer. Anyone with a prison record had a target on his back, no matter how respectable he made himself. Walker might understand that Aaron would never kill a woman. A deputy steeped in law enforcement tradition only knew what he saw on paper.

  He welled with resentment when the uniformed officer finally entered. Quelling the negativity, Aaron finished dealing with a customer, then turned to the uniformed intruder. He refused to offer his hand to shake. He didn’t want to know where the deputy’s hand had been last.

  The cop went through the usual list of identifying questions, leaving the best for last. “You served time in prison for art fraud and theft?”

  “I did. I don’t believe that has anything to do with Mrs. Kennedy, since I assume that’s why you’re here.” Deliberately dismissive, Aaron sat down again and removed his keyboard from the drawer.

  “Not much difference in art theft and jewelry theft, is there?” the deputy asked. “I’ll need a time line of your activities between ten and eleven last night and the names of witnesses.”

  “I was with Monty and Kurt Kennedy in the bar at the lodge, as I’m sure they told you.” He hadn’t been looking at his watch, but he knew there was a time gap between the time he’d left them and the time he’d found Carmel.

  “They said you left before eleven,” the deputy persisted.

  The bell over the shop door rang. A wind carried in the fresh scent of sunshine and evergreens. He’d never noticed that before. Aaron looked up to see the librarian bearing down on them with golden fire lighting her eyes. Interesting. Most of the time, she looked so bland as to be invisible, but there was a dragon princess in there somewhere, if her expression now was any indication.

  “They don’t believe my whereabouts when Mrs. Kennedy was killed,” she said in a tone of cold steel. “We’re the ones who reported her screams and called the police, and they don’t believe me!”

  Aaron refrained from lifting a questioning eyebrow. There had been no “we” to it. She’d apparently run to the reception desk to fetch Roper and the Kennedys. He’d been outside, looking for evil demons. Apparently, he hadn’t known what one looked like, because he’d passed half a dozen people and not one appeared to be a killer.

  “You’re saying this gentleman was with you before the call was placed?” the deputy asked, rightfully dubious.

  “I stopped at the bar just as he was leaving. I’d wanted to go swimming, but the pool closes at ten, so I thought I’d have a drink. Aaron persuaded me otherwise. He was escorting me back to my room when we heard the screams. I heard running footsteps but saw no one. I’m not that familiar with the lodge,” she stated indignantly. “So it’s not as if I knew where to go except back to the lobby.”

  As much as he hated being defended by a woman, Aaron saw Lucy connivance for what it was. They were circling the wagons against outsiders. Since he knew he hadn’t murdered Carmel and neither had the librarian, he didn’t correct her take on things.

  “There are two halls crossing the main one,” Aaron said, drawing out the explanation to see where it would lead. “And outside doors at the end of every corridor, including Carmel’s.”

  “But you went looking anyway,” she said accusingly. “You could have been killed!”

  She was a pretty good liar for looking so guileless. What the hell had driven her to defend him? He was sure he’d find out in due time.

  “I didn’t know anyone was being murdered. I just assumed that someone so weak they made an old woman scream wouldn’t be difficult to tackle,” he said, as if he’d ever tackled anyone in his life. “But I only saw people sticking their heads out to see what the racket was about.”

  “You’ll have to talk to the people in those rooms,” Hannah told the deputy, still looking huffy. “And look for someone who actually needs to steal things, if indeed, anything was stolen. I’m new here, and even I know Mrs. Kennedy was not liked by many people.”

  “You’re the one she was yelling at in front of a whole party of people, aren’t you?” the deputy asked, accusation in his voice. “Maybe you took a dislike to being thrown out of the lodge. Maybe she saw you and started yelling again.”

  Ah, now Aaron got it. She’d been wandering the halls alone when the deed was done. She needed his alibi as much as he did hers. Fair enough.

  “The Kennedys assured me that I wouldn’t be thrown out, that their mother could be irrational. Besides, I have plenty of other places to go. I wasn’t in the least worried. But knowing there’s a killer at large, I’m concerned about finding him, and that won’t happen if you’re focusing on innocent people just because they’re easy targets. Surely you have forensic evidence that can provide more information than we can. Would you like some tea?” She turned her big fairy eyes to Aaron.

  He assumed she wanted tea, so he nodded. “Please. Officer, would you care for tea?” He could feel generous now that Hannah had verbally slapped the poor man around a bit.

  “No, thank you,” the officer said grumpily. “And forensics has found evidence of the entire lot of you all over the room, so none of you are off the hook.” He shoved his notepad in his belt, nodded, and strode out.

  “Mariah send you?” Aaron asked, rising from his desk chair and following Hannah back to his electric kettle.

  “Just about everyone in town sent me,” she said with a half laugh. “And the other detective was even more obnoxious than this poor man. They really do think they can find a killer just by accusing us of being there. Thank all that’s holy that Mariah just had the baby and wasn’t there too. If they’d discovered who she really is, they’d hound her out of spite.”

  “And you’re so sure that I didn’t do it?” he asked, adding leaves to his teapot while she ran the water.

  She flicked on the kettle switch and shot him an impatient look. “You proved you could have robbed the woman blind any time she left her room. You didn’t have to kill her. And you had less reason to want to kill her than I did. So unless you happened to be in her room while she shouted at someone outside, and decided you were tired of listening to her, I’m just not seeing you as killer, no.”

  “Under your scenario, there should be two people who know what happened—one outside and one in. Since I was outside, maybe I’m covering for the person inside.” He poured the boiling water over the leaves in the pot. “Lunch? I can call Fee and have someone deliver it.”

  He must be out of his mind, but her performance just now had left him gobsmacked. People didn’t come to his rescue often. The librarian had hidden depths behind the round cheeks and flat expression.

  “Maybe you thought Carmel deserved what she got and that her killer shouldn’t suffer? Why do I feel as if that’s unlikely? And Fee said she was sending over sandwiches.” She washed out their cups in the small sink.

  “Maybe I’m not likely to let a killer go, but I can think of a few dozen people around here who’d be quite happy to see Carmel dead and believe whoever did it had been well-intentioned. I probably saw half a dozen locals roaming the grounds as I circled the lodge.”

  “Have you told Walker who you saw?” she demanded.

  “I did, and it’s none of your business.”

  Aaron left her to contemplate that while he rummaged in his
desk drawer for cash and met the café’s runner at the door. The kid was the one Hannah had been brought in to teach. Zeke beamed at the tip and ran off again. Amber’s nephew was an ambitious brat.

  Hannah had set up his poker table with cups, teapot, and napkins by the time he returned with the brown bag. He’d given up telling the café’s cook what he wanted within days of Fee’s arrival. She always knew what he needed better than he did.

  The way he felt right now, he hoped the sandwich was raw bloody meat.

  “It’s happening anyway, isn’t it?” he said gloomily, removing the sandwiches and identifying his by the rare roast beef. Damn, the cook was good.

  Hannah looked up questioningly from her bean sprouts.

  “We’re stuck working together in hopes of getting the law off our backs. It’s not a big deal for you. I’m pretty sure no one will believe you arrived from Scotland to murder Carmel. But it’s a pretty damned big deal to me. I’ve spent the last decade re-establishing my reputation. Even if they can’t convict me, they can ruin my business with suspicion. I don’t want to drag you into this, but if you can magnify or enhance what I feel. . .”

  “We need some way of doing it without actually leaving our bodies,” she said, sipping her tea with a delicate pinkie lifted, for all the world as if she were a Regency countess. “I was hasty in my eagerness to try again, I apologize. I’ve never been gifted, and the experience was rather thrilling.”

  “More thrills than you’d like if we happened to see a murder,” he said gloomily. “Is there a means of enhancing my psychometry without getting ourselves trapped in another dimension?”

  “I don’t recall anything specific to our cases. Ives occasionally nullified some of the worst aspects of Malcolm gifts, but I’d say Ives DNA is in your blood already, and it didn’t help.”

  “Ives DNA? What makes you think that? I know I’m distantly related to Keegan somehow, but I don’t know from which side.” Aaron had known Keegan was related to the Marquess of Ashford, Earl of Ives and Wystan, but he’d assumed the connection was distant.