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

alone any guests. Gracie was already in bed this evening. She’d stirred when he bent to kiss her round flushed cheek, then subsided back into her intense three-year-old sleep.

He found he didn’t mind the late supper with his wife. She looked the same as the first time he saw her, standing in the airport looking around, her green eyes wide and interested. Her dark hair was a bit longer than back then perhaps, but her jaw was still square and determined and her mouth still lush and full and very kissable.

And he knew for a fact that her legs still stopped traffic.

As if she felt his gaze, Luci looked up, her quick smile sending a shiver down his back, despite six years of marriage.

“How’s the new partner working out?”

Mickey frowned, then shrugged. “He’s okay.”

He missed Delaney. Didn’t understand why he and Miss Gracie had to take a vacation. It’s not like they got tired. The dead didn’t get tired. And they couldn’t send postcards telling their friends where they were. Even dead, Delaney was the best partner he’d ever had. Actually, in some ways he was a better partner now that he was dead. The ability to pass through solid objects, such as walls, gave them a definite edge against the bad guys.

“They’ll be back.”

Mickey looked up. “I know.”

Luci grinned. “No, you don’t. Every time they go anywhere, you worry they’re going to go toward the light.”

Mickey grinned reluctantly. “What if the light sucks them in?”

Luci’s brows arched. “It didn’t suck the aunts in.”

Mickey tensed, his hand going to his cell phone. It was still there, not under the phlox. “Have they been back?”

He was always afraid they’d come back and do something to his computer. Or his television. Or the air conditioning. They’d been anti-technology in life. Didn’t expect dying to change that.

Luci shook her head, her lips curving up again.

“You worry too much.”

“Is that why you’re not telling me what you’re worried about?”

Her eyes widened.

Even after six years, she thought that just because he was a guy, he was totally clueless. Every now and again he got a clue. It was one of the requirements of being a homicide detective.

“You know I have ways of making you talk,” he added, arching his brows devilishly.

Now Luci grinned. “Really? Cool.”

“That’s why you won’t get to see them until you talk.”

She gave an exaggerated sigh. “Not sure there is anything to tell.” She frowned, tracing a pattern on the tablecloth with her finger. She looked up, her expression rueful. “You worry about Delaney going toward the light, while I—worry about becoming my aunts.”

“Eccentric? Or…crazy?” He covered her hand with his and pulled her onto his lap.

“Crazy. Let’s face it, I’m already eccentric.”

She had a point.

“So, what makes you think you’re crazy?”

She rested her head on his shoulder and sighed.

“I thought I saw a body in the new freezer. Charles Stewart. The guy in the Miss Weena suite.”

“But you—didn’t?”

“When I came inside to call you—he came in. Said he was cold and needed a sweater.”

“I’m guessing you went and looked in the freezer again— and…”

“No Charles Stewart.”

Mickey frowned. It wasn’t like Luci to make a mistake like that. Granted, she was eccentric. All the Seymours were, but Luci also had a large dose of her cop dad in her genetic makeup, as leavening for Seymour weird. And she was a fully trained police officer. She’d been Chief of Police in Butt Had, Wyoming, for three years prior to their marriage.

“How long were you in the house?”

“Maybe five minutes. Stopped to talk to Saffron for a minute.”

Probably more like ten. Saffron was the polar opposite of Louise—though Mickey didn’t miss Louise’s chalkboard—her method of communication—or the sound of her chalk against it. Just thinking about it sent a chill down his back again.

“Just close your eyes and let yourself relax.”

Mickey’s voice was calm and reassuring in her ear and Luci tried to quiet her mind. Her thoughts tended to spin in several directions at once. She’d never been that good at focusing.

“You’re opening the lid to put your stuff away. Now open your eyes and look. Are they in the same place you put them?”

Luci did as directed, staring down into the freezer, trying to keep the memory of what she’d done in front of her mind.

“As far as I can remember, it’s the same.” The freezer had some baskets that she’d piled her stuff in. The body had been under them. If someone had—moved it, all they’d have needed to do was lift out the baskets, then replace them. And if Charles Stewart were actually dead. Which he wasn’t. She looked at Mickey. “At least he wasn’t a naked hallucination.”

“That would actually make more sense than one of your guests,” Mickey pointed out. “That would be a flash back.”

“But he’s not dead.” She looked at the house. The light was on in Miss Weena’s room. “Not even a dead man walking. Just a man getting ready for bed.”

She turned and slipped her arms around his waist. She liked hugging him. Her knees went weak. Who’d have thought she’d go nuts for a crisp, clean guy with blue eyes? Not that she expected to go nuts for any guy. It had been a long-standing family tradition for the Seymour women to eschew marriage for a life of extreme eccentricity. Luci’s feet had been firmly set on the family path until she ran into Mickey and found herself wondering if traditions could be set aside—if a Seymour woman could change.

The answer to both questions had been a resounding yes— thanks to a pointed nudge from her dead aunt, Miss Gracie. She’d given up true love for tradition and died to regret it. Happily, she’d found romance in the afterlife with Delaney after he got shot.

Luci leaned her cheek against Mickey’s chest, listening to his heart thumping in her ear.

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For not believing I’m crazy.”

He kissed her. “One thing I’ve learned from hanging around you, the obvious answer isn’t necessarily the right one.