Out of Body

Chapter 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, Gray 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.

“What?” She seemed confused.

He was confused. “How did you do this?” Where he touched her, his fingers throbbed faintly.

“Don’t you know you’ve scratched yourself badly?” he said. Gently, he ran his hand along her arm. Last night he’d put his hands on hers to show her he was cold. As soon as he did it he wondered why he felt compelled to touch her, and why he didn’t pull back right then. Instead of letting go, he had held tighter and felt tingling, but nothing like what he experienced now.

The sensation quickly became intense, close to pain, like the heavy pulse of arousal when he was close to a climax.

“These must hurt you,” he said, and the huskiness in his voice was obvious, even to him.

The color of Marley’s eyes changed through shades of green, growing darker. He leaned closer, and he thought she moved nearer to him.

“They’re nothing,” she said, pulling away. She tugged her sleeves down, but her face had turned pale.

Gray took a deep, calming breath. “Did you clean them?” he asked.

As quickly as she’d paled, Marley’s face glowed red. He recalled that redheads blushed easily. She didn’t answer him and she probably wished he would forget what he had seen.

Could someone have deliberately hurt her? Women often denied abuse. He’d seen enough of that as a cop.

In one corner, a deep stone sink stood on metal legs. “Why don’t we wash those?” he said.

Marley sat quite still. “They’re all right. I don’t think the skin’s broken.”

He hopped to his feet and found the clean handkerchief he carried out of habit. There was only cold water. Sticking his head under the faucet sounded like a good idea, but he doubted Marley would be impressed. He soaked the cloth and returned to her. When she didn’t move, he took hold of her right wrist and dabbed the wounds.

No blood came off on the cloth. He repeated the process with the other wrist with the same result—no blood. Through his thin linen handkerchief he could feel the swollen welts.

“Thank you,” she said when he finally finished. “I’d forgot. I slipped in the courtyard.”

Gray didn’t believe her and he wanted a closer look at her arms. She wasn’t going to let that happen. He didn’t recall seeing the same type of marks before.

The dog whined and Marley patted her lap. Winnie jumped up. A grown man shouldn’t envy a dog, but Gray just might. Having Marley stroke him all over could be heaven.

He got an instant, erotic reflex.

“I’m considering trying to do remote drawing,” she said quietly. “They use it a lot in law enforcement.”

He wanted to know who “they” were, but kept his mouth shut, hoping she’d continue. No one he knew had ever used a psychic on a case—with or without remote drawing. That didn’t mean it hadn’t happened.

The faraway expression on Marley’s features seemed to mean she’d as good as forgotten he was there.

Since last night his hands had warmed up, but the quivering he still felt along his tendons wasn’t normal. A prickling sensation, a shooting thrill, hit hard enough to wind him. Objects around him grew fuzzy at the edges. He wondered if he could be ill, but no, this wasn’t any illness, or not the kind most people thought of.

She was aware of him again, piercingly intent on his face. What was she thinking? He couldn’t unlock his gaze from hers. She stared inside him—or he felt she could? Did she know what he was thinking? An impulse to make his mind a blank didn’t work. Instead he got a vivid image of her holding up her arms, untouched arms. In his mind, she screamed and drew them back. There were the marks again.

He had no idea why he would imagine that.

“Talk to me more about Detective Archer,” she said. “You were going to.”

All he sensed now was that she wanted to change the subject.

“I think it was all about warning me off,” Gray said. “He knew I was at Scully’s last night. With you.”

She blinked slowly, like someone as tired as she obviously was. “Does that mean Danny called him? I didn’t believe him when he said he would.”

“I’m not sure. But someone did,” he said.

“Who?”

Nat hadn’t told him to keep quiet, but then discretion was taken for granted. But if he wanted something from her, he’d have to gain her confidence. Shared information could help.

“I hope you won’t say anything about this. It was a child who called. A boy who said the people he was with would make him suffer if I didn’t back off asking questions about…this case.”

Her study of him lasted seconds too long. “About Amber,” she said. “That’s what you almost said. Does the boy belong to Amber? Does she have a son? Was it him?”

She was telling him, not asking him. He was certain she already knew Amber had a kid. “Ask Nat,” he told her, and she nodded as if he had agreed with her “guesses.”

“I’ve got to go back there,” she said.

“Explain what you’re talking about.”

Marley looked past him and he swiveled around. The crowded workbench was the only thing between him and a wall.

“I have to be alone.”

“So you can try to see what you said you saw before?” he asked. “I don’t get any of it.”

“No.” Her eyes widened and he could have sworn she was listening closely for something. “I’ve never looked for them before. They come to me when they want to.”

“Who?” He wanted to go with her wherever she was going, and to hear what she heard.

Flickering overhead drew his attention to the ceiling. Green, glowing streaks wavered there. Blue mixed with the green and he couldn’t look away.

His cell phone vibrated in one of his pockets. Vaguely, he wondered how long ago that had started.

“Answer your phone,” Marley said.

“How—” Instinctively he knew it was best not to ask her how she knew his phone was vibrating. He pulled it out and answered. “Yes.” The readout showed the Caged Bird, a jazz club he liked a lot.

Bernie Bois answered and his message was short, and sweet to Gray’s ears. “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll be around later.”

Marley gathered her hair at the nape of her neck. “You feel good,” she said to him. “It’s making you smile.”

“Remember Pipes Dupuis?” he asked.

She frowned. “Oh, of course. She’s the other missing singer.”

“Not anymore,” he told her. “She sings at the Caged Bird and she just showed up there.”