Out of Body

by Stella Cameron

  “Only if you marry.” This time Uncle Pascal did shout. “Which you show no signs of doing.”

  Winnie made sounds like a crying piglet and Marley whispered, “Hush.”

  “We don’t know what I may do one day,” Sykes said. “You can’t take the risk of trying to leave things with me.”

  Marley was grateful that her brother didn’t grin when he said that. He often announced that his parents’ dysfunctional marriage was a warning and he intended to stay single. “Have you met someone?” Uncle asked.

  “I meet lots of people,” Sykes said. “And I could meet a woman I want to…It could happen that I find a woman I really like one day.”

  Marley had been holding her breath, hoping Sykes would say the B word. She should have known better. “Someone to bond with,” she prompted, energized by her own daring.

  Sykes gave her a withering look. “If I ever feel the slightest hint of a bonding, you will be the last to know.” He spread his broad artist’s hands and looked at the ceiling. “Bonding. Now we’re really heading into the weeds with all this. It isn’t as if I live like a monk, and I’ve yet to feel shivers up my spine.”

  What he meant was that as long as there was no bonding between him and a woman, a casual relationship worked just fine for him. “Is there someone now?” Marley asked. She made big eyes at Sykes.

  He shook his head as if weary and didn’t answer.

  Uncle Pascal lost interest in the exchange and paced again. “I want to spend more time training,” he said. “And collecting. I’m sick of sending someone else after rare finds when I’ve hunted them down. It annoys me more all the time. I want to be free to travel the world myself.”

  “We can’t solve that here and now,” Sykes said. “Did you want to talk about something else?”

  Marley felt sorry for their uncle, but she saw Sykes’s point of view. Why would he want to give up total freedom to watch over the Millet fortune—whatever that consisted of these days.

  “The code,” Uncle Pascal said, his chin jutting fiercely. “It’s simple enough, but I’m not sure how careful everyone’s being about the most important rules. First—Only use your powers for good.”

  Marley nodded and saw Sykes do the same.

  “Second—Never invade another family member’s mind without an invitation,” Uncle continued. “If you begin to intercept accidentally, leave.”

  She didn’t remind him he’d come close to doing that last night. True, he had made a tentative approach at first and waited for her to acknowledge him, but finding her like that, remotely, had been over the top, even if he had been worried about her. But she took some comfort in knowing he’d had to go to Sykes for help and he wouldn’t make a habit of that.

  “Three—Don’t act alone if you could be in danger.”

  That was the rule he wanted to skewer her with. She didn’t look at him.

  “Marley?” Uncle said. “What have you been up to? Why were you with someone who frightened you last night?”

  “He didn’t,” she told him promptly. In fact, Gray had terrified her. She would never forget the shock of seeing those pale marks on his face and remembering at once the man she’d seen in the unknown place.

  “Isn’t there another rule about telling each other the truth?”

  Marley ignored Sykes’s interference.

  Uncle Pascal stopped in front of her and peered down. “I know what I felt and it was fear. Explain yourself.”

  For the good of a serious cause she would not betray the trust Belle had placed in her. “I don’t get out enough,” she said. “Last night I went to find some good jazz and ran into someone I know.”

  “That’s a stretch,” Sykes signaled.

  “It takes a stretcher to know a stretcher,” she told him.

  “But you weren’t comfortable,” Uncle Pascal said. His tone eased and he became the concerned surrogate dad he’d been to her for years. “You know I worry about all of you, especially you girls. This hulk can take care of himself.” He gave Sykes’s shoulder a glancing punch.

  “What is going on with you?” Sykes asked Marley. “You were edgy with your friend Gray. You’re into him, though.”

  “You’re imagining things. I can handle it.”

  “Would you ask me to come if you needed to?”

  She glanced at him and felt Uncle Pascal grow edgy.

  “Later,” Sykes said. “Uncle’s feeling left out.”

  “Marley?” Uncle Pascal was still waiting for her answer.

  “I am dealing with something unusual,” she admitted. Truth between them was their accepted strength as a family. “I want to continue on alone, but I promise I’ll ask for help if I have to.”

  Uncle Pascal turned to Sykes. “You were there. What did you think?”

  “I wasn’t there long,” Sykes said, his blue eyes guileless. “Marley knows she shouldn’t take stupid risks.”

  Marley’s brother looked at her and she caught her breath. She had forgotten the man she’d seen right before she traveled, completely forgotten him. And now she had only the faintest recollection of his brief appearance. She tried to recall the sound of his voice but couldn’t. But had he been like an older version of Sykes?

  “Are you being careful, Marley?” Uncle Pascal asked.

  She nodded vaguely. Who was the man and why had he been there?

  A jarring ring intervened. Uncle Pascal had one of the first dial telephones, a 1919 version he liked to call “a useless invention.” He did laugh at himself over that.

  “Who?” he said into the mouthpiece. “Do I know you?”

  Marley accepted Winnie onto her lap again. Sykes swayed, a sure sign he was anxious to be off.

  Uncle Pascal grunted into the phone and signaled to Marley. “For you,” he said.

  This time she hauled her dog under one arm and went to take the instrument. “Hi.”

  “You called?”

  She knew Gray’s voice. And she had called him while she’d still been groggy and flaked out in her workroom, but she’d hung up before he could answer. When she punched in his number she had actually wanted to ask him to come at once so she could tell him what had just happened. She barely stopped herself from reaching out to him for help. Her reason unnerved her; she had a hunch he was an okay guy. Just thinking the word hunch gave her chills. The Millets didn’t have hunches, they had clear insights. Nothing was clear about Mr. Disappearing Scar Face.

  “You called me,” Gray said, prompting her.

  “That was a mistake.”

  “Too late,” he said and didn’t sound as if he were joking. “Your sister said you were upstairs with some of your family members. She said I could wait for you down here in the shop.”

  13

  Gray heard Marley coming before he saw her, or rather he heard her dog snuffling, and its nails clicking on old oak stair treads.

  Marley’s slim feet and ankles, and her knees appeared, then the rest of her followed rapidly. She wore a paint-daubed blue denim smock buttoned to the neck. Other clothes bunched underneath. One look at her face and he was glad the sister who let him in had locked the door behind her again. He would rather not be interrupted at the moment.

  “How did you get in here?” Marley asked. “We’re not open.”

  “A gorgeous redhead let me in,” he said.

  She bared her teeth and muttered, “Willow,” in a threatening tone. “She’s never careful enough.”

  Gray wanted to move on. “Have you been to bed?” he said. “You don’t look good.”

  She didn’t even smile at his gaffe. “Yeah, I know. Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “True,” he said, jerking his head back as if she’d struck him. “You’re in a great mood, too.”

  Marley gave him an uncomfortably direct look. She came closer, then closer. Without another word, she came within kissing range although he was damn certain that wasn’t on her mind.

  Bucking the urge to ask what she was staring at, Gr
ay held still. While she peered at him, he took advantage of getting up close with her.

  When it came to women, he considered himself an animal-magnetism type. Plenty of all the good female stuff appealed to him—long legs, big eyes, soft mouths of the lips-to-lips touchable kind. This woman bedeviled him. The big, green eyes sucked him in and he’d really like the full mouth to suck him in. He’d seen her legs and, considering her lack of height, they were long and meant to be looked at. Marley had very nice breasts and yesterday he’d seen that she had curvy hips, but she was small.

  What did you call it when a female made a man want to be careful with her, and have hot, sweaty sex with her at the same time? Unhinged was the word that came to mind.

  His heart was pounding and he had an inconvenient stirring. Inconvenient and intoxicating. He was grateful her interest was in his face, not in his lower regions—although the rogue side of him wanted to see her reaction.

  The examination had gone on too long for his health. “What?” he said and could not believe it when his voice cracked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  Marley just about leaped back a step, and another. “I want you out of here,” she said, turning red. “Go on. Leave. I don’t know what you’re up to, but I don’t like it. Out.”

  He barely managed to keep his hands from his face to check for lumps, bumps or missing bits. “You were really staring. Come on. Have pity on a man and let me in on the secret.”

  “There isn’t one.” She drew herself up, but rather than make her look fierce, she seemed embarrassed. “I’ll see you out.”

  Instead he sat on a chair with a square seat, arms that joined at one corner, and no back unless you sat sideways against one of the arms. Damned uncomfortable it was, too, but he was making a point.

  “That’s a valuable chair,” she said. “You’re not supposed to touch things like that…not like that.”

  “I can’t imagine wanting to get anywhere near it,” he said, getting up. “It looks like a mistake and it’s damned uncomfortable.”

  She puffed and said, “It’s a sword chair for a gentleman wearing a sword. Not that you care. This isn’t the best time.”

  “You bet it’s not,” he told her. “Our mutual friend Detective Archer hauled me out of bed before six this morning and you know I hadn’t been there long enough.”

  Apparently the “don’t touch” rules didn’t apply to the dog. Wagging her tail, and her entire body with it, Winnie wiggled to jump onto one of those fainting couches. This one was covered with some faded gold brocade Gray wouldn’t want draped over a birdcage—not that he had a bird. He looked pointedly at the dog. Marley smiled indulgently at her pet.

  “I thought you’d like to know what Nat Archer had to tell me?” Gray said.

  As if only just waking up, Marley blinked rapidly, started to stretch but changed her mind when the smock rose higher on her thighs. She gave him a panicky look. “Not here,” she said, glancing up the stairs. “I’ll call you later, okay?”

  “And hang up like you did the first time? We need each other. Get used to it.” He checked out the frilled pink material poking from the hem of her smock. “Did you come right down from bed? I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

  “You’ve got to leave,” Marley said.

  “There’s nothing about me that’s going to upset anyone,” he said.

  Her hair looked wild…and appealing. And her sleepy, half-lidded green eyes were pure, sexy come-on, not that she could mean to send him that kind of impression, not given the way she was talking to him.

  “Seriously,” he continued. “I think you’re telling the truth. You know something useful about what’s going on in this town and I want to help you follow it up.”

  “You want to pick my brains,” she said shortly. “I don’t know if I should trust you at all and you can’t blame me for thinking that.”

  He thought for a moment. “No, I can’t. But what other choices do you have, unless you’re planning to forget these desperate women you supposedly saw? Missing women. Don’t you feel responsible?”

  Whatever she thought about his question didn’t make her happy. She bit into her bottom lip, then said, “I can get someone down here to help me anytime I want to,” and the way she said it sounded believable. “Come with me. But remember what I’ve just told you. Someone will come if I need them.”

  From that he was to take it that if he put a foot wrong with her, all hell would break loose? He started toward her. “Should I bring your dog?”

  “Don’t touch Winnie,” she said, her eyes narrowed. “She’ll do her own thing.”

  Sure enough, the instant Marley turned to walk back upstairs, Winnie followed, bustling past Gray and eventually leading the way for Marley, as well.

  On the third-floor landing, a small recess held a door with stained-glass panels. Marley used an old-fashioned key on the lock then pushed the door open. “Come in,” she said without looking back at him. “Please don’t touch anything. My projects are fragile because they’re old. And they’re in bad shape. Or most of them are.”

  Don’t touch was definitely her favorite phrase today.

  From where he was looking, Gray didn’t see anything worth calling a “project.” Furniture, mostly with flaked finishes peeling off, a huge blurred mirror with a frame that had once been gilt, assorted picture frames with similar problems, boxes, chests, a grandfather clock—there were dozens of pieces jumbled around. Peeling surfaces in various finishes were all they had in common.

  “I restore them,” Marley said, cutting off the obvious question. “Now, keep your voice down and tell me what the detective said to you.”

  He wondered if she was naturally blunt. She as good as ordered him to spill information. “It’s dark in here,” he said, and didn’t add that it was dusty and smelled of turpentine.

  “I like it that way.”

  “Can we at least get away from the door?” he asked. “Better yet, we could go out for coffee. I haven’t had nearly enough yet.”

  “Chocolate,” she said vaguely and her eyes lost focus.

  “Okay, chocolate then. You have chocolate and I’ll have coffee.”

  She snapped her attention back to him. “This way,” she said.

  Almost running into the dog, he did as he was told and Marley led him to a furnished space at the far side of the junk. An old, brown leather recliner with a table beside it, a padded stool losing its stuffing, a large cabinet, and a workbench with a little red house on top were what he noted first. Jars of brushes, palette knives, pencils, jars of varnish and pigment and a host of other painting supplies, and dozens of tools overflowed from shelves and rested in muddled piles on the bench.

  “How do you find anything in all this?” he said, then wished he hadn’t.

  “I know exactly where my things are,” she told him tartly. “I’d only have a problem if someone tried to organize me, but that isn’t going to happen.”

  The lamp she turned on cast minimal yellowish light over the chair and table.

  She sat in the chair, a recliner, and pushed back to shoot out the footrest. He guessed that meant she wouldn’t mind if he used a stool beside her chair, which he did. Immediately Marley jumped up again and went to the cabinet. After rummaging around inside, she returned to make herself comfortable with a big box of chocolate-dipped pralines on her lap.

  “Want some?” she asked, offering the box.

  It was the friendliest sign she’d given him so far. He wasn’t a sugar guy, but he took a piece of the candy. Meanwhile, Marley rapidly ate a piece and washed it down with whatever was in a glass on the table.

  “Mmm,” she mumbled, part of another praline already in her mouth. She put her shooting chair in reverse again, gave him the box of pralines and returned to the cupboard. More rustling followed.

  “Here you are.” She exchanged boxes with him and resumed her seat. “Those are chocolate-covered coffee beans and they pack a wallop. They’ll keep your eyes open
for a week.”

  Gray doubted that, but smiled at her and chomped some of the beans. Maybe she was right—he did begin to feel a slight buzz. Or was that from the headiness of being alone with Marley Millet? He had difficulty not staring at her—especially at her legs, which were even more displayed now that she was sitting.

  He studied a bean between finger and thumb. “We’ve both got the same addiction, y’know,” he said, waiving at the box of chocolates. “It’s all about caffeine.”

  “There are different ways to get it,” she said, smiling, turning her expression into pure charm. “Chocolate is queen. Don’t argue, just take it from me. Now, what did the detective say?”

  His plan had been to say just enough about the meeting at Ambrose’s to get her talking about what she thought she knew. “Why don’t we try to stay focused,” he said.

  “Meaning?”

  “Tell me more about what you actually…saw.”

  She sighed and rested her head against the back of the chair. “I already told you. Liza and Amber. In a place I can’t locate.”

  She chewed her bottom lip again and this time it suggested she had more on her mind than she was saying and it worried her.

  “Shirley Cooper wasn’t a singer,” he said. “She worked as a maid at a club.”

  “So she probably has nothing to do with Liza and Amber,” she said.

  He wanted to be sure of that, but wasn’t, not entirely. “She could.” It would make him feel less of a suspect if the three were connected. Damn, he didn’t want to think about the other two being dead.

  “Do they have any suspects in Shirley’s killing?”

  He shrugged. “Sounds like her boyfriend has been told not to leave town, but that doesn’t mean much.”

  She reached for the glass again. When she drank, her sleeve slipped up her forearm. Glaring red welts showed on the inside of her wrist.

  “Those are nasty,” he said.

  Marley looked blank.

  He turned over the hand that rested on her thigh. More wide scrapes disappeared beneath her cuff.