Stranger Danger (Lucy McGuffin, Psychic Amateur Detective 4)

“Because the hair on the back of your neck told you?”

“Basically, yes.”

He sighs. “Lucy, we’ve been through this before. I admit, you’ve got great instincts, but there’s no way you can always tell if someone is lying or telling the truth. Statistically, it’s impossible.”

“Is everything always so black and white with you? Don’t you think that maybe there could be an alternative explanation for some things?”

“Not in my line of work. You’re either guilty or you’re not.” He breaks off a piece of his muffin and offers it to Paco, who gobbles it down. “Here’s one thing we can agree on. You were ri

ght about this little guy. He wasn’t trained as a cadaver dog.”

“What finally brought you to your senses?”

“I’ve researched pretty much every program out there, and none of them has ever used this kind of dog before.”

“So how do you account for Paco’s ability to—wait.” A tiny spider of fear crawls up my spine. “You really did investigate this?”

“I told you I was going to look into it.”

Before Paco came to live with me, he was owned by Susan Van Dyke, whose murder I solved. But his history before Susan is unknown. According to Susan’s staff, she found the dog wandering down the street without a collar and unchipped. Who was his original owner? What if he or she shows up on my doorstep one day wanting Paco back? I could never give him up. Not after everything we’ve been through together.

“Stop investigating,” I say firmly.

“No worries. I’ve already figured out how Paco finds”—he makes air quotes with his fingers—“the dead bodies.”

“Oh, yeah?” This should be interesting. “How?”

“Since Paco is with you most of the time, it only makes sense that he’d come across the dead bodies because you’re the one who’s finding them. And you’re finding them because you just so happen to be in the right place at the right time.” He then proceeds to go through, one by one, all the bodies I’ve found, starting with Abby Delgado, the victim from my first murder investigation, and “logically” explains it all. I wonder how long it took him to come up with all this.

I give up.

I’m never going to convince Travis that I’m a human lie detector or that Paco sees ghosts, so I’m not going to try anymore. Which answers the question I’ve been struggling with these past couple of weeks. Any chance that Travis and I could end up together is gone. There’s absolutely no way I can be with someone who doesn’t believe me when I tell them the most essential thing about myself.

It all makes sense. I’ve always believed that Will is my soul mate. I’ve been in love with him forever. He’s my best friend. When I was seven, he saved me from a squirrel attack, which is no small thing. And most importantly, he’s always believed in me. Maybe not completely, since he never told me he was J.W. Quicksilver, but he’s never questioned my abilities.

“What’s wrong?” asks Travis. “You look like you just found out there was a national ban on muffins.”

“What?” I shake myself back into the conversation. “Nothing’s wrong. Except that the man we saw tonight is not J.W. Quicksilver.”

“Not that again. Exactly how do you know this?” he challenges.

This is where things get dicey, because I can’t prove it without telling him about Will, so I try another tack. I tell him all about Hoyt Daniels and the publishing scam he and the fake J.W. are running.

Travis considers this a few moments. “That does sound shady, but it doesn’t prove that he isn’t J.W. Quicksilver.”

“Think about it. Why would a famous author like J.W. Quicksilver need to take people’s money? It makes no sense.”

He pulls out his phone and studies the picture of the fake J.W., then starts typing in a few notes. “And the guy in the line who tried to get you to buy into this scheme said his name was Hoyt Daniels?” I nod. “Okay. I’ll run that name through a few programs and see what I can come up with.”

“Really?”

“Sure. But only because, like you said, the whole thing sounds like a con. That is the kind of evidence I can work with, Lucy.”

Right. As opposed to the “woo-woo” stuff.

“Are you still going to Betty Jean’s book club meeting tomorrow night?” he asks.

“Oh, you better believe it.”