Perilously Fun Fiction: A Bundle, Pauline Jones [top 100 novels of all time .txt] 📗

There was something very soothing about having her hands in moist brown soil. All the things that worried at her Seymour imperturbability couldn’t seem to get a foothold on her thinking here, where the present was hard to separate from the past.

She looked at Boudreaux. “I’ve done this before, haven’t I? Worked in the garden with you, I mean?”

Boudreaux nodded, the wrinkles carved into his sun-scorched skin deepened by his delighted grin.

“I can’t believe how much I’d forgotten about this place.” Luci picked up a hand rake and started smoothing the disturbed dirt. And how much I never knew, she added to herself. She gave Boudreaux a speculative glance. Might he know the secret of her paternity? He’d been around at the critical time. It was worth a try—if she still wanted to know?

She raked a little harder. “I’ve been thinking a lot about the past.” Her rake caught on a large clump of dirt. “I know it’s not very Seymour of me.” She whacked the clump with the rake and the clump partially fell apart. “But there’s part of me that’s not Seymour, isn’t there?”

She looked at Boudreaux, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at the ground. Luci looked down, too. Amid the broken pieces of the clump of dirt there was a gleam of gold. Luci exchanged a puzzled look with Boudreaux before picking it up. She had to use water from her bottle to wash away the dirt that clung to it before she could see what it was.

“It’s the Seymour family crest,” she said. She frowned. “But the only person who wears it is—”

She looked up at Boudreaux. They both looked at the dirt, then at each other. “Mickey isn’t going to like this.”

Boudreaux muttered an emphatic, mostly incoherent agreement.

Mickey hadn’t expected the interview to go well, but he’d thought it would go. Somehow the tables had been turned. He shuffled his feet and avoided Miss Theo’s gaze. “Your cake, ma’am?”

Delaney rubbed his temple like it pained him. Maybe he won’t be so quick to espouse the cause of eccentrics, Mickey thought with perverse satisfaction. He lowered his head when Miss Theo gave him a severe look.

“My cake. Which has mysteriously disappeared.”

“Oh. That cake.” He gave Delaney a help me look.

He squared his shoulders and stepped into the line of fire. “I’ll dust my men for crumbs, ma’am, but I’m afraid we may have to wait for weight change to find the perpetrator.”

Her smile took them both by surprise and was potent enough to remind Mickey of Luci.

“I can see why Gracie likes you.” Miss Weena and Miss Hermi both giggled their agreement.

“She does?” Delaney said with revealing hope. Not that Mickey hadn’t suspected Delaney was badly smitten. He got a goofy look every time Gracie’s name was mentioned. He gave him a pointed nudge. Delaney started and cleared his throat. Due to his large chest, it was an impressive sound.

All three old ladies looked at him like inquiring birds.

“Yes, dear boy?” Miss Theo asked. Miss Weena patted her bun and then sidled closer to him with a simpering smile.

“About Reggie. We need to find him—”

“Um, I think I know where he is,” Luci said from the doorway.

Mickey hadn’t seen her arrive, so he didn’t get time to prepare himself for the sight of her in her grubby shorts, her skin still dewed from her recent earthy efforts. His throat dried up and closed like a noose drawing tight, leaving Delaney to ask the obvious.

“And that would be?”

“We already told them,” Miss Weena said, “that he’s in Cleveland, Luci dear.”

“Actually...” Luci’s gaze was all sympathy when it met Mickey’s, giving him some warning of impending doom. “I think he’s under the bougainvillea.”

Miss Theo blinked her surprise. “How odd.”

“Not really,” Miss Hermi said, going immediately defensive. “He’s very fond of the bougainvillea.”

Mickey looked at Delaney. “I’ll flip you for who gets to call it in and who has to go look under the bush.”

Mickey lost the toss. He knew he would. It had been that kind of week, he decided as he followed Luci outside to see Reggie’s remains while Delaney went to call it in.

“How do you know it’s Reggie?” Mickey asked, for something to say rather than a strong desire to know.

“I don’t know. Not for sure.”

Mickey stopped and looked at her. Big mistake. Her grubby, slightly damp tee shirt hugged her breasts. Her shorts hugged her hips and generously left ninety percent of her legs bare. The muggy confines of the garden immediately got several degrees hotter. He tugged at his tie, but that wasn’t what was tightening his throat—and parts much lower.

As if she knew he couldn’t talk and why, she put a bit more distance between them. “I found this.” She extended a grubby hand to him, opening it to show him what looked to be a small piece of jewelry.

Mickey picked it up, his fingers brushing against her palm for a heated moment before he could break the contact. He looked at it for a long moment before his vision cleared enough to start showing him detail.

“Looks like some kind of animal head surrounded by leaves—” he managed to say almost calmly.

“It’s a weasel head. And poison oak.” A brief pause, then she added, “The Seymour family crest.”

Mickey looked at her warily, as his brain pulled up her comments about Reggie from last night. “The family crest? You mean—”

“I’m afraid so.”

He wanted to toss it down and rub his hands down the sides of his pants. He wanted to toss her down, too, and make love to her until his blood quit running hot for her. He did neither. “According to his file he—”

“I know.” She looked down instead of at him. He appreciated her tact.

Mickey swallowed. It had to be asked. “Was it still—”

“No.” She seemed to be looking everywhere but at him as they approached the bougainvillea. “At least, not after I raked—”

He tried not to flinch, but he wasn’t made of stone.

“Sorry.” She