Stranger Danger (Lucy McGuffin, Psychic Amateur Detective 4)

“Don’t think for a minute that either Billings or I buy that lost lamb routine of yours. What are you really doing here?”

“Talk about ingrates. Next time I’ll bring my muffins to the fire department.”

“Lucy.”

That one simple word does me in. I can’t lie to Travis. I just can’t.

“Okay, you got me. I talked to Archie Clements. But don’t get mad at Rusty. I totally tricked him into helping me.”

Travis looks like he’s mentally counting to ten. “You tricked him?” he says in an eerily calm voice. “Why am I not surprised by this? I’d ask what you think you’re doing, but I already know. How many times do I have to tell you to leave the police work to the actual police?”

There’s a knock on the door. Without waiting for a response, Agent Billings walks inside. “I want to know what you two are talking about. Unless … ” She looks at Travis the way I look at a new muffin recipe I’m thinking of trying out. “Am I interrupting something personal?”

My female instincts kick into high gear. “Yes,” I say.

“No,” Travis says, at the same time.

“Which one is it?” she asks.

None of your business. “Are you going to take Archie Clements back to Virginia with you?” I ask.

“That’s the plan. Why are you interested in Clements?”

“Lucy just spoke to him,” says Travis.

Billings snaps to attention. “Really?” She takes the chair behind Zeke’s desk and motions for me to sit down as well. “I want to hear all about it.”

I cautiously take a seat across from her. “Why I should I tell you anything?”

She narrows her eyes at me. “Because I’m a special agent with the FBI and it’s your civic duty to aid me in any way I see fit. I’ll be honest, in my ten years at the Bureau, I’ve never met anyone more intuitive than you. Do you know how long my team and I were after El Tigre?” she says, referring to the code name for an assassin sent to kill a mob witness here in Whispering Bay. “In just a few days you were able to sniff out that sociopath. I never asked you how you did it. But I’m asking you now. How did you do it?”

Like I’m really going to tell her that I’m a human lie detector and that my dog is a ghost whisperer. “Just dumb luck, I guess. Plus, Paco helped out.” It’s the truth. Sort of.

“You mean your dog? I saw him out front with the receptionist. He was rolling around on the ground. I hardly think that chihuahua is a canine Sherlock Holmes.”

You’d be surprised.

“What do you want to know?” I ask.

She pulls a file out of her tote and hands it to me. A photo of a younger Archie wearing glasses and dressed in a business suit is stapled to the top of a rap sheet. “Archie Clements and Jefferson Pike ran a real estate swindle on the Eastern seaboard. They were good. Good enough to elude us for years. Archie has never been violent, and now his partner is dead. So what happened here in Whispering Bay to change all that up?”

“You think Archie killed Jefferson?”

“That’s what I want you to ask him. I have a feeling that you might be able to tell us if he’s lying about that.” She stares at me like she can see right through me. It’s probably some kind of FBI mind trick, but it works. I’m not the only one in the room who’s intuitive. Agent Billings’s feelings are right on.

I look at Archie’s picture again. Just like his professor disguise, he pulls off the mild-mannered businessman well. “What would be his motive for killing Pike?”

“What’s everyone’s motive? Money. We figure that over the years, the two of them have hustled at least ten million off their victims.”

Ten million dollars. Holy wow.

“But that makes no sense. If Jefferson Pike and Archie Clements had ten million dollars stashed away, why come here and pull a small-time publishing scam? What they got here was peanuts compared to ten million.”

“Exactly. This sting was unusual for them. For one thing, the potential money to be made was low, and the publishing angle is something they’ve never done before. They were on their way to Key West and then eventually the Cayman Islands when they stopped here in Whispering Bay. They could have argued about the operation or the money. Or any other number of things.”

“I’m still confused. Why do you want my opinion again?”