“You can’t!” Eve gasped. “You can’t. He’ll make them bring Adam in for questioning, and then Adam will hate me. He’ll kill me!” She realized what she had just said and started to laugh, but it was a sad and bitter laugh.
“Eve, I can tell Jeremy to talk to Adam himself and to be careful. He isn’t Joe, Eve. He’s not a cop anymore. But…you have to be careful. I mean, honestly? I don’t believe it. I’m sure Adam can be a pain—he’s a man, for God’s sake,” she said, trying to lighten the tension. “But I have to say something to Jeremy about this.”
Eve shook her head vehemently. “Couldn’t you…couldn’t you do your thing?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your thing—where you commune with the earth, or your mind, or whatever it is you do for Joe when you let the spirits talk to you.”
Rowenna groaned inwardly. “Eve, I’m not a psychic. I’m not sure I even believe in psychics.” Though given what she’d been through recently, she was getting closer to believing all the time.
“You keep saying that!” Eve snapped. “But you’re lying to yourself. I don’t care what you call it, but you…know things. And if you let yourself, you could see what happened that night. And you could find Mary, too,” she added stubbornly.
“Eve, if there was any possible way for me to find Mary Johnstone, don’t you think I would have done it by now?” Rowenna demanded, exasperated.
“Adam said he found you in the cemetery last night,” Eve said accusingly.
“Yeah, well, I thought I was being followed.”
“And you thought the cemetery would be a good place to hide?” Eve asked, nakedly skeptical.
“It was…a series of circumstances,” Rowenna told her. “And stupid.”
“But it’s daylight now,” Eve told her.
“So?”
“Please, let’s go there. It’s day, people are out. You can try to figure out what happened. You can pretend it’s Halloween and see what happens.”
“Nothing will happen,” Rowenna said tensely, lowering her head and shivering.
She had to admit, she’d been thinking that she needed to go there. Not by night, not when she thought that she was being chased and no one else was around. In daylight. And with or without Joe, who still wanted to get her out there, too.
Even if this was a day cursed with a gloomy pewter sky.
“Please. Before we say anything to Jeremy about Adam. You said you’d do anything possible to find Mary Johnstone.”
Rowenna let out a sigh. “All right.”
“Thank you,” Eve breathed in genuine relief. “Let’s go now.”
As Eve spoke, Rowenna’s phone rang. She answered it by rote.
“Hey, where are you?” Brad asked. “I actually came back to the museum early, thought I’d poke around, and Dan told me you’d headed over to Eve’s.”
Rowenna hesitated, thinking it might not be a bad thing if he went with them.
“Who is it?” Eve whispered.
“Brad,” Rowenna mouthed in return. “Should I…?”
“Bring him? Yes. Tell him to meet us outside Red’s.”
“Brad, meet me outside Red’s. I mean, meet us. Eve’s with me.”
“Okay. Why?”
“Just come,” Rowenna told him.
“Now,” Eve begged.
“Now,” Rowenna said.
“All right, I’m on my way,” Brad told her, and hung up.
“Let’s go!” Eve insisted.
Determined, Eve headed back out to the front of the store. She paused, collecting one of the little bags of herbal spells near the door. “It’s for long life,” she told Rowenna.
“Let’s hope,” Rowenna muttered.
Just as they reached the door, Adam entered. He was frowning. “Why is the Closed sign on the door?” he asked irritatedly. Then he noticed Rowenna and smiled.
Great, Rowenna thought. He thinks I’m telling his wife she’s lucky to be married to such a great guy who loves her so much, and really I’m planning to go to the cemetery to try to figure out if he’s a murderer or not.
“Ro and I were going to hop out for coffee, and I didn’t know when you’d be getting back,” Eve lied easily.
“Oh.” Adam seemed to accept that happily enough. “Well, have fun. Bring me back a cup.”
“Sure,” Eve said curtly, and swept past him.
Adam stared at Rowenna in confusion. Her smile felt too wide and plastered on, as if she’d just had a triple dose of collagen injected.
As she slipped by Adam, she brushed against him, and thought, Adam? A killer?
He couldn’t be.
But she couldn’t forget what Brad had said about her friends at the bar the night before.
“They’re kind of scary-weird.”
And then, “One of them could be the Devil.”
Thank God, Rowenna thought, when she saw that there were lots of people thronging the mall. And she was even more relieved, when they took the turn for the cemetery, to see that there were still plenty of people in the area.
The tourist tram went by, and she could hear the conductor cheerfully passing on information to the riders.
Outside Red’s, they waited for a few minutes for Brad to arrive. “Why didn’t you just have me meet you at the shop?” he asked.
“She doesn’t want Adam to know what we’re doing,” Rowenna explained.