Murder By Muffin (Lucy McGuffin, Psychic Amateur Detective 3)

“You wish.”

Will grins, then he takes a good look at me, and his smile slowly fades. “You look exhausted. Go upstairs and nap. I’ll take Paco for a walk.”

Walk is one of the words that makes Paco go bananas. He runs around in a circle, chasing his tail with excitement.

“I’ll take you up on the walk, but I can’t go to sleep just yet. Like I said, I need to make a special batch of muffins for Tara.” I tell Will about my argument with Tara and how I ordered her out of The Bistro. “My apple walnut cream cheese muffins are her favorite, so I’m going to make a super-special batch. Just for her. That ought to put her in a forgiving mood.”

“Okay, but promise me once you’re done, you’ll get some rest.”

“Promise.” I hand him Paco’s leash, and the two of them head out the kitchen door and into the bright, late-afternoon November sunshine.

I chop up a couple of apples and make the cream cheese mixture that makes up the heart of the muffin, mix up the dry ingredients and assemble it all into a tin that makes six extra-large muffins. I place it in the oven to bake just as Will and Paco return.

“Smells good,” Will says appreciatively.

I set the timer. “Twenty-five more minutes till they’re done and I can go to bed.”

“Why don’t you go upstairs now? I can take the muffins out of the oven for you.”

I hesitate because the idea of hitting my bed is super tempting, but I just can’t. “Thanks, but I need to follow through on these.”

I know it’s just muffins, and I’m sure they’ll turn out fine, but what if they need an extra minute or two in the oven to set just right? Will wouldn’t know the difference, but I would, and these muffins have to be absolutely perfect. I want Tara to take one bite and know deep in her heart that she’ll never eat another muffin as good as mine.

It’s complete vanity on my part, but I can’t help myself.

Will fills up Paco’s water bowl, then pulls out a stool and sits down to face me across the stainless-steel kitchen counter. “So tell me about your interview with The Gazette. When can I expect the story to come out?”

“Allie said it would be in next weekend’s edition. And the interview went okay, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“I had to be careful not to give too many details, you know, on account of my gift.”

Will’s face fills with understanding. Will is one of the few people who know about my ability to tell when someone is lying. He also knows that Paco is a ghost whisperer. He didn’t believe me at first, but after our near-death experience with El Tigre, he’s totally on board the Paco train.

The one thing that Will doesn’t know,

however, is that he’s the only person I’ve never caught in a lie. Not that Will doesn’t lie, because, let’s face it, we all lie.

I think the reason I can’t tell when Will is lying is because he’s my soul mate. Yep. That has to be it. Only he thinks I can tell when he’s lying, and I want to keep it that way because if Will knew he was the only person I’ve never caught in a lie, he’d figure out my feelings for him.

“I hear Betty Jean is practically begging you to come back to her book club,” Will says.

Betty Jean Collins is a regular here at The Bistro. She’s a member of the Gray Flamingos, a local senior citizens’ activist group, and is a real character. She hosts a weekly book club on Thursday nights, and I’m the only person under the age of sixty who’s ever been invited to join. She told me she invited me because she wanted to “shake things up,” but I suspect the real reason is because she wants free muffins. After I missed my first meeting (for totally legitimate reasons), she kicked me out of the club, but now that I’m semi-famous, she’s been after me to rejoin.

“Yeah, Betty Jean wants me back all right, but I’m not sure if I’m going to take her up on it.”

“Oh?” Will asks, amused.

“I should turn her down, but to be honest, I’m having too much fun with her right now. I told her I’d join her book club on one condition. If she gets J.W. Quicksilver to attend a meeting.”

Will snorts. “Good luck with that.”

J.W. Quicksilver is the pen name of a reclusive best-selling author who writes spy thrillers. The whole town is obsessed with his books, including my parents. I’ve only read one, Assassin’s Honor, but it was a doozy—lots of action, lots of violence, lots of hot sex (which, yuck, is totally ruined for me now that I know my parents read it too).

According to Betty Jean, J.W. never makes public appearances, but she’s determined to have him at her book club, so she’s been emailing him nonstop. Poor man. I can’t help but feel sorry for him, because once Betty Jean makes up her mind about something, she’s relentless.

Strangely enough, when I first brought up J.W. Quicksilver, Will claimed that he’d never heard of him, but I think that’s a lie because how could you work around books all day and have never heard of a national best-selling author?