Nine Lives (Lily Dale Mystery #1)(92)

Bingo. She’s right. She can see it in his eyes. Slowly, aware of the gun, she gets to her feet.

“It’s why you tore out the page in her appointment book right before she died, isn’t it? Because your name was on it.”

“Nope. Sorry, Nancy Drew. You’re wrong. My name wasn’t on it.”

This time, he isn’t lying. The way he says it, with the emphasis on the My, drives home the truth.

“Oh, that’s right. You don’t believe in this stuff. But your wife does. Eleanor had the appointment. And Leona told her something she didn’t want to hear . . . or was it something you didn’t want her to know?”

He laughs. “You can think whatever you want. I don’t care.”

“Sure, you do. Because it’s all true. And if I know what really happened, then who else does?” She shrugs. “You can get rid of me, but what about everyone else?”

He glares at her.

She’s getting to him.

“This town is filled with people who somehow know things, Steve. It doesn’t matter how they know—parlor tricks, magic, spirit guides. But they know. You can run—you’re always running, aren’t you? You love to run. Every single day. But sooner or later, the truth is going to catch up to you. And when it does . . .” She shakes her head sadly. “I just feel sorry for your family.”

“You know nothing about my family.”

“I know that your wife loves you. Eleanor believes in you, no matter what you’ve done to her.”

“What are you saying?”

She isn’t quite sure—but obviously, she’s struck some kind of chord with him.

“Your wife and I had a nice little chat about you.” She almost added the other morning but thought better of it. Why pinpoint the time? Why not pull the rug out from under him and let him think it transpired since he last saw Eleanor? If he needs information Bella alone can provide—if only to know what to expect when he returns to the guesthouse—then he’ll have to keep her alive. At least, for now.

“What did she say?”

“What do you think she said?” Bella returns.

“So she knows? Is that it?” Panic is creeping over him.

“Did you really think you could keep secrets from her, Steve? After more than twenty-five years of marriage?”

He rakes a hand through his hair. “How much does she know?”

“Everything,” she says simply. “Leona, Bonnie . . .”

He shakes his head impatiently. He knows she’s bluffing.

But somehow, she has to keep him talking, keep him convinced that she knows what they’re talking about when it’s all she can do to maintain her own composure facing a loaded weapon.

“Do you mean your other secrets?” she asks, her thoughts careening through possibilities. “Are you talking about what Leona told her in that last reading, back in June?”

“Of course not. She didn’t tell her ‘everything.’ She barely told her anything. I was sitting right there the whole time.”

“Wait—are we talking about the same thing? When you were in Lily Dale, in June?”

“We weren’t here in June.”

“No, I know, I meant . . . I meant the phone reading. In June.”

Bingo.

“I heard Eleanor’s side of the conversation,” he says. “Leona kept talking to her about Paris and April—and of course Eleanor thought she meant the city and the month.”

Paris. April.

Bella remembers now that Eleanor had told her about the trip she was so certain her husband was planning to surprise her for their silver wedding anniversary next spring.

“All that time—six years—Leona never brought them up in a reading. Don’t think I wasn’t worried that she would. Don’t think I didn’t do everything in my power to keep Eleanor away from her—from Lily Dale. But my wife has a mind of her own.”

Good for her. She’s going to need it, Bella thinks as he talks on.

“And then out of the blue—bang. There they were: Paris. April. Maybe it was because I’d just seen them the night before. Who knows? But how long do you think it would have been before Leona brought them up again? And next time, she might have figured out who they are.”

Who they are. Not what.

Paris and April are people.

Six years . . .

I have a little girl the same age . . .

One of them is his daughter, she realizes. Her name is Paris. Or April. The other must be his mistress.

A secret like that could destroy a man like Steve Pierson if it ever got out. If his job—his reputation, his livelihood, his future—is on the line because the taxpayers don’t agree with him over the school budget, imagine what they’d do if they discovered he has a love child with another woman.

“It was only a matter of time before Leona figured it out and told Eleanor. That’s why . . . that’s why I had to make sure that wouldn’t happen.”

“Eleanor knows anyway, Steve,” Bella tells him. “About April and Paris.”

“Who else knows?”

“You mean besides me? And poor Bonnie?”

“Not poor Bonnie,” he snaps. “The woman was a nuisance. She should have known better. At that hour, all I wanted to do was drink my coffee in peace and then go for my run. And then she shows up and starts telling me that she’d been channeling Leona’s spirit and that she thinks she was murdered. She was insisting that we call the cops. And the more I say that’s crazy—she’s crazy—and tell her to shut up, the more she badgers me. And then I see the way she’s looking at me and I know . . .”