Chapter 19

CHAPTER 19

A fter lunch, I made Max take two Tylenol and go to sleep. His head must have really hurt because he didn't even try to get me in bed with him, although he did choose my bed, not the one across the hall. He just groaned when his head hit my pillows, and when I checked on him half an hour later, he was out cold, Maggs curled up next to him. For right now, sleep was the best thing for him.

So a little before three I told Poppy I was going out, gathered my stuff, and headed to Coral's to see if Rowan Masters was there.

He was sitting at a table by one of the big street windows, one of Coral's large cups of caffeine in front of him. He rose as I came near the table and pulled out a chair for me, one with its back to the window right next to him.

I took one across from that. Sit with my back to the window? Ha. There's only so far I'll go to bask in famous and pretty.

He sat back down. "Sorry. Most people don't want the sun in their eyes." He was framed in the sunlight, which appeared like a halo around his head. Evidently God did his lighting.

"So, Rowan, what are you doing here?"

"Just exploring a quaint little town and meeting its fascinating citizens. Although I understand there was a death in town last night. Melissa Merriweather." He nodded over his shoulder down State Street. "Ran a funeral parlor. Did you know Ms. Merriweather?"

I stared at him for a minute. Two weeks ago, I would have smiled and chatted and tried to manipulate him into telling me the truth. But that was two weeks ago, two weeks I'd been dealing with suitors who didn't listen and Max who didn't talk. I was getting tired of this crap. And I had the pepper spray to prove it.

"Listen to me," I said, serious as a heart attack. "I am tired of people patting me on the head and ignoring what I need. And now you're one of them, ducking my question. I don't believe you just happened to wander into this town. Why are you here?"

"Do you know how Merriweather died?" he said, evidently not having heard a word I'd said.

"How did you know Melissa was dead?"

"There's a note in the window of her shop," he said. "It reads ‘Closed—Owner Dead.'"

" What? " I frowned, wondering what idiot had put that up, and then I realized it was most likely Sid. He probably thought it was funny. Because he was a jerk. "Why do you want to know about Melissa? Is that why you're in town?"

He shrugged. "I wanted to talk to her. Funeral directors see a lot of interesting things. Maybe notice a pattern."

"A pattern? We've only had one death." This week. "Don't serial killers kill more than once? Isn't that why they're serial? Instead of mono?"

"Monokillers?" Rowan chuckled, which was annoying. Why do chucklers always sound so patronizing? "Her death could be the start. Or there could be kills elsewhere and this is the first here in Rocky Start."

I shook my head. "Tell me what you're really doing here or this conversation is over."

He shifted in his seat. "What about your boyfriend? He looks a bit rough around the edges."

"Answer me or I'm gone."

He shook his head, too, mirroring me, something I knew all about from my years with my manipulative ex. "I'm worried about you, Rose. Max Reddy doesn't exist, as far as my search could determine. No social media. No bank records. Nothing. You should be careful."

"I don't have time for this." I stood up, tired of all the fencing.

He sat back. "I'm doing exactly what I said, researching to see what turns up. And look what happens when I get into town: The funeral director dies."

"She died the night before you got here. Which is why I don't believe you just wandered into Rocky Start by accident." I shoved my chair under the table and turned to go.

" Wait ," he said. "I followed a lead to this town. I thought there was a story here. And nothing I've learned so far has convinced me otherwise." He leaned forward again, smiling that smile, his blue eyes on me, and I thought, Stripes . "You should be careful, Rose. You don't know?—"

I interrupted him. "What lead?"

Coral interrupted us then with a cup of tea for me and a pot of coffee to refill Rowan's mug. The fact that she did it herself and didn't send Anita told me she wanted to know what was going on.

"Can I get you anything else?" she said as she put the Lemon Zinger in front of me and began to pour for Rowan.

He smiled at her. "Would you like to join us?" He got up and pulled out the chair across from me, the one with its back to the window, and Coral pulled out the one next to me and sat down, also facing the window, so I sat down again, too.

"And where is the delicious Max?" she asked me. For an ex-spy, Coral is subtle like a rock.

"The delicious Max is sleeping off his headache."

"Ah. Good." She turned to Rowan. "So what are we talking about?" she said, no flirt in her voice at all.

"Serial killers," I said. "And Rowan is refusing to answer my questions."

Rowan opened his mouth to say something non-informative but shut it when Coral said, "‘Serial killer.' Such an imprecise term."

He raised his eyebrows, staring deeply into Coral's eyes now.

Fat chance, buddy, I thought. She sleeps with spies and killed her first man at fifteen. Your blue eyes won't faze her.

"Imprecise?" he said.

"Well, what does it mean?" Coral shrugged elegantly. "If a person kills more than one victim, it is not automatically a serial killer driven by uncontrollable impulses, correct? It is just someone who's very active."

"Active?" Rowan said.

"What if this person who kills more than once is killing on orders?" Coral said. "That is not a serial killer, that is an assassin. A very old profession. Possibly the second oldest."

"So humanity's first impulse was sex and the second was to kill?" I said. That made sense. In the past, I'd often wanted to kill after sex.

"You don't think assassins are serial killers?" Rowan said, sounding truly interested. "I never thought of the distinction."

Coral, the retired assassin, brushed that away. "Assassins are highly trained professionals. Serial killers are hobbyists. They tend to act emotionally, impulsively, even those that plan out their kills, because they cannot control the urge, so they leave a pattern. An assassin can never be impulsive." She fixed him with her gaze. "And they try not to leave a pattern, although some do have a signature."

"Serial killers are hobbyists?" Rowan repeated, and he wasn't dismissive, he looked like he was seriously thinking about it, turning the idea over.

Coral waved that away, too. "There are no serial killers in this town," she said firmly, pointedly leaving open the question of assassins.

"So you don't think the same person was targeting Melissa and Max," Rowan said.

"What happened to Max was at best a prank," Coral said. "If it was a real attempt on his life, you cannot leave such an important thing up to chance, hoping your target is on a bridge by a certain time, hoping that the river will take him. You make sure the deed is done."

"So it was a bridge that failed somehow," Rowan said and I realized he'd just gotten the answer to the question he'd asked me out of Coral. "How exactly?"

Coral ignored that. "I would view Max's accident more as a warning or perhaps an incentive to leave town." She nodded toward me. "There are several men courting Rose at the moment."

"There are?" He didn't say it in a surprised way, more making note of it.

The street door opened and Lian came in and waved to us, much too enthusiastically. She was wearing a pink tailored business suit that fit her perfectly. Way too much for Rocky Start.

"I saw you through the window," she called gaily to me.

Rowan stood. "Please join us," he said, pulling the same chair out, and Lian took it with her back to the window without hesitation. It was next to him, and that was evidently where she wanted to be.

Rowan looked at me and then Coral and then Lian and smiled. I could practically hear the gears in his brain working: Whatever Rose and Coral are, Lian is not.

Wrong, buddy. Lian is ex-CIA. She just wants to sit close to you. And I'm just a magician's ex-assistant, wouldn't hurt a fly.

"Oh." Lian took a wallet out of her jacket pocket. "I think this belongs to you," she said, handing it to Rowan. "You must have dropped it at Oddities."

Rowan took it and looked at me. "I must have."

"You should be more careful," I said virtuously.

"In the future, I will be."

He started to put the wallet in his pocket, and I said, "Shouldn't you check to make sure everything's all there?"

He smiled again—he was giving those suckers away like they were peanuts—and said, "Oh, I think the people who had it are trustworthy." Then he transferred the smile to Lian and said, "Thank you," and she damn near fell into his coffee cup. For a tough, no-nonsense lawyer with a shady past in espionage, she sure was easy to seduce.

The door opened, and Poppy and Marley came in, Marley smiling and Poppy looking better than she had when I left. So, progress.

"About Melissa Merriweather," Rowan said. "Was there anything missing?"

"Missing?" I repeated. "Like?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. Something personal. Close to her. Like?—"

Then the street door opened, and Max came in.

He looked at the table and shook his head as he came closer.

"I was trying to get some information here," I said to nobody in particular, "and then all these people showed up."

Max looked at me. "I turn my back for one minute."

"You took a nap. Which you needed." I stood up and looked at Rowan. "Don't come back to Oddities unless you intend to come clean. I'm tired of men who don't communicate."

"She really is," Max said.

I took his arm. "It's been fun, but the boyfriend needs me, so I must go."

Rowan protested as Max ushered me to the door.

I whispered, "I think I was getting somewhere with him."

"That's what I was afraid of," Max said. "Stay away from that guy. Between him and Harvey, I don't know about you." He looked over at Poppy and Marley, now deep in something sugar-frosted. "They were arguing, I could hear them upstairs."

"Well, they're okay now." I steered him toward the door before he threatened Marley with death. I waited until we were out on the street and then I said, "You have a point about Harvey. He came into the shop and kept trying to touch me. Ick."

Max stopped in his tracks.

"He's so hot for the money Ozzie might have left that he's hallucinating. Do you know, he actually asked me if I'd found any gold ?"

"There's a rumor there's gold in the shop, too?" Max said, looking grim again.

"Well, I've never heard it," I told him, tugging him toward Oddities. "Come on, back to bed."

He sighed, looking more tired than I'd ever seen him. "Not yet. I need to go see Dottie."

I stopped, appalled. "Why? "

He shook his head. "I'll explain later."

" No, " I said. "You don't ever do that to me again."

Max had that patient look that men get when they think you're being a pain in the ass, the look I interpret as "What do I have to do to still get laid tonight?"

"Don't do what?" he said.

"That ‘I'll tell you what you need to know when you need to know it,'" I snapped. "That ‘Unless it's food or sex, you're not part of my life' crap."

Max woke up on that. "I have never said?—"

"It's not what you say that matters, it's what you do." I faced him, right there on the street. "You're treating me like I'm nothing if it's not about sex or food. Seriously, Max, when have you ever involved me in anything else if we weren't under actual fire? And even then, you told me what to do."

"And you told me different, and I changed my plan," Max said. "What do you want, Rose?"

"I want to be a partner, not a service provider."

He closed his eyes. "Can this wait until later?—"

"Until this latest catastrophe is over? No. It's my catastrophe, too."

"It's not really your sphere of competence, either," Max said, exasperated. "Can we do this inside Oddities? Rowan Masters is watching through the window. You're getting his hopes up."

"No. You're blind, Max, you only think in your . . . ‘sphere of competence.' You think any problem can be solved by shooting at it. I have many skills, Max, and some of them could be useful here, but you'll never know if you keep patting me on the head and telling me to keep the door locked."

He gave me another "I'm being extremely patient" look. "So Cheery Boost is going to nail this killer?"

I looked at him then and thought, He'll never change. He'd been a Master of the Universe too long in a violent world where he really could solve a problem by shooting it.

"Fine," I said, starting toward the Oddities door, and he said, " Wait a minute. "

"Oh, I'll still sleep with you tonight," I said, defeated. "Because I really enjoy that, that's good for me. And I'll make you lasagna because you need fuel and I know you're working to keep me and Poppy safe. It's good that we've defined our non-relationship. I'll stop asking for more." I opened the door to the shop.

" No, " he said and then stopped because he'd been loud. So not Max. "No," he said again, not so loud, and pulled the door shut so we were still outside. "That is not what I want, that is not what we have."

"Maybe not from where you're standing," I said. "But that's exactly what we have from where I'm standing."

He looked at me for a moment, took a deep breath, and said, "Okay. Please come with me to Dottie's." He thought about it for a second. "She'll be more apt to talk if you're with me, anyway." He frowned a little. "I don't think she likes men."

"Being married to somebody like Lionel tends to do that to a woman." I took a minute to wonder if he was just humoring me and decided I'd take it anyway. "I'll come with you. But first we get your coat out of the dryer."

"Yeah, that would be good," he said.

Okay, the last thing I wanted to do was talk to Dottie Ferrell, but that was better than waiting for Max to come back and not tell me what happened. He was giving me what I'd asked for. Who knew? Maybe I'd be brilliant at this, whatever "this" was.

At least it was progress.