Chapter 15

CHAPTER 15

F ifty thousand dollars in twenty-dollar bills. That's what was in the Gourmet's Delight box.

The same amount that Max had found in Ozzie's go bag. I wondered if there were fifty-thousand-dollar Easter eggs stashed throughout the building. The thought was both cheering and annoying. This would have been easier if you'd put it all in one place, Ozzie.

I heard somebody knocking on the shop door, which was the last thing I needed. If it was Harvey, I was going to be rude.

"Put it all back in the box and hide it somewhere until I get back," I told Poppy, who nodded and started to repack the cash in the box.

She was learning new skills. That was good.

I walked into the shop from the kitchen, prepared to be hostile, but when I raised the door blind, it was Lian.

"Mei called me from school," she said as I opened the door for her. "She said that Poppy left early. Is she all right?"

Mei was Lian's daughter and Poppy's best friend, and I thought it was sweet of her to care so much that she'd call her busy mom; Lian was the good lawyer in town with a lot of clients from all over. (The other lawyer in town was Barry Mason, Ozzie's old mouthpiece and a graduate of the witness protection program. Barry wasn't incompetent—he had a lot of clients from all over, too, just sketchy ones. A real criminal/lawyer.)

I nodded. "She's getting there. She's still dealing with the town-of-retired-spies thing." Lian already knew about Rocky Start because her background had been in the CIA, working with Max's jackass boss, Herc, who was also her baby daddy and had exiled her to this place but who now wanted to get to know the daughter he'd ignored, the jerk. Hey, we all make mistakes when we're young and fall in love. Ask me how I know. "Poppy just needs some non-trauma time, so finding out about Melissa was hard for her."

"What about Melissa?" Lian said, frowning.

"Somebody killed her," I said. "Max and Pike found her."

Lian stared at me for a moment. " Killed her? Melissa is dead ?"

"Yep."

Lian pressed her lips together, her razor-sharp mind processing all of that. "And Max is leaving," she said, zeroing in on the important stuff, as usual.

"Well, he was, but now he won't leave Poppy with a murderer running around Rocky Start."

"There are always murderers running around Rocky Start," Lian said, but she said it absent-mindedly, as if thinking of something else. "I don't suppose you killed her so Max would stay?"

"If I was going to kill somebody, it wouldn't have been Melissa," I told her, thinking of my suitors. Especially Harvey.

Lian nodded. "Well, it's sad, but it's not the first time. The past catches up with people here. Oz always took care of cleaning it up. I think Max can handle it." She thought some more. "But not Pike. He's past it. We really do need to keep Max here."

"How?"

She fixed me with a stern eye. "Get creative, Rose."

"Right," I said, not believing that creativity in the sheets would keep Max and having a hard time being practical about violent death, especially when it was somebody I knew. I mean, Melissa and I had not been close, but she'd been part of the town, standing there in her window, surveying everybody that went by. If you wanted to know about something on the street, Melissa was your woman.

Which, I now thought, might be the reason she'd been killed.

Lian's attention was caught by something outside, so I looked, too.

"Well, hello, good-looking," Lian said as a man got out of the spaceship he'd parked in front of Oddities. Okay, it was probably some kind of vehicle, but it was all clean lines and stainless steel, and I was willing to bet that anybody driving anything like that had issues. And money.

The guy was noteworthy, though; he strode across the walkway, confident and sure. He was medium height and light-haired, probably late thirties, early forties, and his eyes were that sexy, sleepy blue that makes some people weak at the knees, which I noticed as he came into the shop and smiled at me with straight, white teeth. He looked very Ralph Lauren: faded jeans, white t-shirt, worn brown leather jacket, an All-American Boy.

Outsider, I thought. We're not supposed to get strangers in Rocky Start. Because we don't want strangers in Rocky Start.

The Outsider smiled at me, very good-looking with the teeth. "Good morning. Are you the proprietress?"

Proprietress. Really? "I am."

He nodded. "So, you're Rosalie Malone?" he said, and I froze. I don't care if people come in to buy teacups and ashtrays made out of used combat shells (Ozzie's craft), but strangers should not know my name.

Lian stepped in between us and stuck out her hand. "Hi, I'm Lian Kwan. And you are?"

He took her hand, smiling at her, too, and she smiled wider. She has a thing for younger men. Herc had really turned her off older guys.

"I'm Rowan Masters," he said, and Lian's smile froze. "But you can call me Rowan."

Lian carefully took her hand back. "Rowan Masters. The investigative journalist."

No, I thought. Oh, hell , no.

He nodded, still smiling. "That's me." He turned back to me. "You are Rosalie, right?"

I flashed my best Cheery Boost smile—I really am going to stop doing that now—and took the hand he held out. "My friends call me Rose."

"I'm Rowan." He ducked his head a little, and his smile deepened. Very white, very even teeth. The better to bite you with .

I held onto his hand as I reached out with my other and patted his jacket front. "Beautiful leather."

He looked taken aback as he said, "Thank you," and then Lian said something to distract him and he turned to her and I had his wallet, which I dropped into one of the pockets on my apron as I stepped back. (Work with a lying, cheating magician for twelve years, you get very good at sleight of hand.)

"So, Rosalie," Rowan began again, turning back to me.

"Rose."

"Rose," he went on, "I understand your friend who owned this shop, Ozzie Oswald, died recently. I'm sorry for your loss."

"Thank you." I frowned at him. "Did you know Ozzie?"

"No, but I'd heard of him." He smiled again. Teeth. "I understand he had quite the send-off."

Ozzie's funeral had been a well-attended Viking farewell, his body sent out into the lake in a burning boat, pushed out by kids dressed as zombies, so somebody might have mentioned it to this guy. Ozzie had wanted it to be memorable, after all.

"I was wondering if we could talk about him a bit." Rowan moved a little closer now, smiling like we were buddies.

"No." I shook my head. "No. It's too upsetting." That wasn't a lie, his questions were upsetting me.

"What story are you working on now?" Lian said to him, trying to distract him again, not looking at me. "Your last book was on serial killers that you thought were still out there, right?"

Oh, well, just hell. The chances that there were killers in Rocky Start who'd never been caught were . . . pretty good.

"A new book." Rowan's smile faded as he got serious, which actually made him more attractive. Not so shiny. "I'm playing with some ideas, waiting to see what comes together. It's a process."

"Another serial killer book?" Lian asked.

Rowan shrugged. Beautifully. "Who knows?"

"Your last one was interesting," Lian said. " The Serial Killers Nobody Knows . Creating paranoia everywhere. So why are you here?"

"Rumors," Rowan told her and turned back to me.

"What kind of rumors?" Lian persisted.

He shrugged. "This and that. Sources can be vague."

So can you , I thought, wondering how I was going to get him out of town before he heard about Melissa and went asking the local populace if they had any ideas on the subject.

"I very much doubt there's a serial killer hiding in Rocky Start," Lian was saying brightly. "Very small community. Known each other for years."

Rowan smiled at her again. "I didn't say it was another serial killer book."

"You didn't say it wasn't," Lian said, flashing a little bit of lawyer.

He turned back to me. "So about Ozzie Oswald."

"Ozzie was seventy-eight and died two weeks ago," I told him. "He was most definitely not a serial killer." I think. Depending on how you define "serial killer."

"Of course not," Rowan said. "How exactly did he die, if you don't mind me asking?"

"He was seventy-eight. He had heart problems. He died. Cremated. Ashes at the bottom of the lake. You don't think he was the victim of a serial killer, do you?"

"Again," Rowan said, "I didn't say I was writing a book on serial killers."

He stared at me, and I thought, Zebra.

Ozzie had always said: "Rose, if you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. Unless you see stripes, then come get me." And now Ozzie was dead, and as far as I was concerned, Rowan was Stripe Central.

"I really don't want to talk about this," I told the zebra. "Would you like to buy a teacup?"

But I was thinking, Max, there's a zebra, thereby joining everybody else in making Max the new Ozzie. It was kind of the way some men couldn't tell blondes apart. In my case, it was dark, armed, uncommunicative bastards with dicey pasts. Seen one, seen ‘em all.

"The odd thing about Ozzie Oswald," Rowan was saying, "is that it's as if he didn't exist before coming to this town. He's an anomaly and I've found those often lead to interesting and unexpected things."

"Nothing interesting about Ozzie." I spread my hands. "Just a great, grumpy old man." And, in spite of myself, I found my throat catching because, damn it, he had been a great, grumpy old man.

"Tell me more, please," Rowan said. "He sounds fascinating."

Okay, the obvious solution was to get this guy the hell out of town. If he found out about the subculture here, he'd have a whole new book to write. Of course, the chances that he'd live long enough to write it once the subculture found out what he was doing were slim to none. I was going to have to get rid of this guy to save his life.

"We could just talk," Rowan was saying.

"I'm not much for talking and I really do have work to do," I began and then the door opened and Max walked in and I saw him through Rowan's eyes.

He looked like a movie serial killer: tough, rough-looking, steely-eyed, grim, the kind the heroine falls for when he keeps saving her ass even though he's not a long-term prospect. He looked damn good except for the bruise on his forehead that was turning purple, and he still had blood on his cheek from the scrape.

His boots squishing was just weird.

"I couldn't possibly talk to you," I told him. "My boyfriend wouldn't like it. You really should leave."

I turned to Max and smiled, my eyes wide open in the universal back-me-up look, and he gave me back his what-the-hell stare.

But then he turned to Rowan, the Outsider, and said, "I'm the boyfriend. Go away."

Except for the boyfriend part, he sounded exactly like Ozzie.