“I get it, but if you ever get to that point, I could really help you.” He fishes out a business card from the inner pocket of his suit jacket and hands it to me. “I could arrange for free rent for a prime locale on Main Street. It’s not near the water, but you’d get lots of exposure.”
“Is this the same Main Street that has the broken sewer pipe? Sounds like we’d be awful close to the water,” I tease.
He chuckles. “That’s all been fixed now. We don’t have any place in Catfish Cove that makes muffins of your caliber. Trust me, you’d make a killing over there.”
“Thanks. If Sarah and I ever think of expanding, we’ll definitely consider your offer.”
His cell phone pings. “Oops,” he says, glancing at his screen, “that’s Brittany. I’m wanted back at the office.”
I hand him his bag of food. “Enjoy.”
He waves goodbye on his way out the door.
The last customer walks out at two thirty. I quickly snap on the Closed sign.
“I’ll do cleanup,” Sarah offers. She hesitates on her way back to the kitchen. “Lucy, what’s going on? You seem kind of excited about something.”
When I was ten and just starting to get really good at my human lie-detecting skills, I vowed I was only going to tell people about my gift on an absolutely strictly positively need to know basis. And with the exception of Travis’s dad, I’ve done exactly that for sixteen years. I only told Travis because he’s a cop and, just like I thought, he didn’t believe me. But now I have to tell Sarah. It’s not fair to her otherwise.
I spill my guts to Sarah about everything, including how Paco is a ghost whisperer and I’m a human lie detector. I end it all with my big plan to catch Tara’s killer. She sits on a stool in the kitchen quietly absorbing it all.
“What do you think?” I ask nervously. “Still want to be business partners?”
“And friends,” she adds with a smile.
“So you believe me?”
“I’ll be honest, I was beginning to wonder how you were able to solve all those other murders. It all makes sense now.”
“And you don’t think I’m … odd?”
“Only in the best of ways.” She reaches out and hugs me. I heave a huge sigh of relief. Truth be told, I’d expected this because Sarah is completely awesome, but a tiny part of me was still afraid it all might be too much for her. “So how does it work?” she asks.
“I’m not really sure. Generally, there’s some kind of physical sensation when I catch someone in a lie. Mostly tingling in the back of my neck, that kind of thing. The bigger the lie, the more intense the reaction.”
“Wow. That’s really fascinating.” She becomes pensive.
I know what she wants to ask me, so I’ll beat her to the punch. “No worries. I pretty much tune out all the little stuff and only concentrate on the really big lies.”
“Little stuff?”
“Yeah, you know, like, ‘Wow, Lucy, that’s the best blueberry muffin I’ve ever eaten!’”
We both laugh because Sarah knows exactly how I feel about blueberry muffins. They’re my weakest link, because my heart just isn’t in it.
“And Paco? How does it work with him?”
“That I’m not sure of. I just know that he can sense when there’s a dead person around.”
“Like the kid in The Sixth Sense?”
“I don’t think so, at least, I haven’t seen anything in his behavior that makes me believe that. It’s more like recently dead people.” I go on to explain how it works with the barking and how he leads me to their bodies. “Maybe there’s a window of time where he can sense that they’ve died. I don’t know. The Sunshine Ghost Society wants to borrow him f
or a séance, but they can forget it.”
“And your family and Will and Travis and his dad are the only ones who know about this?”
“And now you. Travis knows, but he doesn’t believe it.”