Mistress of Magic (8 page)

“I will try to keep my food on my plate,” she promised.

He shrugged. “Hey. There’s not much you can do to bother me.” He leaned forward and whispered softly, “I mean, after all, I’m out with you already. And look at the way you’re dressed.”

Her cracker went slicing through shell again. This time the entire claw went flying up. It landed in his water glass.

“I wasn’t drinking it anyway,” he assured her quickly.

“I wasn’t apologizing,” she said.

“The waitress is coming. Sure you don’t want anything?”

“Yes. I want to be eating with that elderly gentleman over in the corner there. Or with that couple with the toddler spitting applesauce over his bottle.”

“I meant, do you want anything to drink?”

“No!”

The waitress brought his beer. Reggie turned to her. “I’ll take whatever you have on draft.”

“Can I, er, help you with that lobster?” Wes asked Reggie politely.

“No!”

The waitress brought Reggie’s beer quickly, set it down and departed even more quickly. Reggie instantly picked up and swallowed down a long draft, eyeing him with a great deal of hostility over the rim of the glass.

She set the glass down with a little smack against the table. “There. Is that an improvement?”

“Hey,” he murmured lightly, lifting his hands palms upward, “anything is an improvement.”

She picked up her lobster cracker with a vengeance. Her eyes were flashing a beautiful emerald color.

Dinner could get very dangerous, he warned himself.

“You insisted on dinner,” she reminded him. She had managed to get the tail section of her lobster split. She set into the white meat with the little three-pronged fork she had been given. She speared a morsel of meat and set it delicately in her mouth.

He found himself staring at her mouth. She went for another bite, finding the meat, dipping it into the melted butter, placing it in her mouth.

A little sheen remained on her lips from the drawn butter. He found himself still staring at her in fascination. Growing warm. She had a beautiful mouth.

Just as he had earlier, he mused that it was really the kind of mouth that almost asked to be kissed. Beautifully defined. Full. Sensual. Glistening now, and so enticing that he almost reached out a finger to touch her lips.

“You did, remember?”

“What?”

“You insisted on this dinner. If you’re not pleased—”

He forced his eyes from her mouth and focused on his beer glass. He drew his fingers idly around the rim. “Oh, I’m pleased. Just as pleased as punch.”

She stopped chewing. She leaned forward. A stray tendril of ebony hair had escaped from the saloon girl’s knot at her nape and danced softly against the ivory beauty of her face. She spoke softly, huskily. “All right. I’m supposed to be grateful for what you did for Max, I suppose. I am grateful. But you’re supposed to be Max’s friend. You’re supposed to support him. You did, it’s done. We’re all grateful.”

He sighed and leaned closer to her. “Reggie, I do have faith in Max. That’s the point here. If Max isn’t guilty of an evil deed, then it seems that someone else is.”

“What do you mean,
if?
” she asked, blinking. Ink-dark lashes fell over the beautiful green of her eyes, then rose again. “We know that Max—”

“We both agree that Max is innocent,” he said. “But since we agree that Max is innocent, then we have to assume that someone else is guilty.”

“But—” She faltered for just a second. “But we’re not even sure that anything has happened to Daphne—”

“Oh, come off it! Or save it for the press,” he said.

Her cracker was in her fingers again, and her fingers were very tense. Oh, no. Lobster shell was flying again, and this time it wasn’t coming his way.

A piece of Reggie’s claw went flying up, up.

It landed with a soft thud right in front of the little toddler who was busy decorating his Sesame Street bottle with his applesauce.

The child looked up instantly, a huge smile spreading across his cheeks.

His parents were not so amused. Startled, they both stared toward him and Reggie.

“I’m so sorry—” Reggie began.

“You can dress her up,” Wes said with an exaggerated sigh, “but you still can’t take her anywhere! Ouch!”

She had kicked him beneath the table.

It didn’t matter, but the toddler’s parents were laughing. “Hey, it’s a perfect ending to a perfect meal,” the young father said wryly. The couple were standing, extracting their son from his high chair. “Hey, you’re Regina Delaney, aren’t you?” the man asked.

Reggie nodded slowly. Wes was startled at the emotion that swept through him as he saw the wariness in her eyes. She was instantly afraid and defensive.

“Is this a publicity thing?” his wife asked, indicating her costume.

“No, it’s, er—”

“It was a late night,” Wes supplied.

She should have been grateful. She kicked him beneath the table anyway. “I can answer for myself!” she reproached him softly. She glared at him, then smiled at the couple. “It was a late night,” she said pleasantly.

“Poor thing, you do look tired!” the woman said.

Reggie was tensing again, aware of the couple’s obvious curiosity.

“Oh, no. I think it’s her age. She’s just haggard-looking all the time now,” Wes said, sitting back.

She glared at him. With a look that could kill.

“Thirty,” she said lightly. “You do have to watch out for it. It’s downhill all the way after.”

“And she should know. She’s thirty-three,” Wes supplied.

The couple laughed. “I don’t think you look haggard at all!” the woman said.

Neither did Wes.

The woman continued. “Why, every time we’ve seen your picture in the news, my Joe here has commented on what a beautiful woman you are. And your brother, of course, is divine. And—” she hesitated a second, flashing a quick look at her husband “—and you should know that all the local people here are a hundred percent behind you and your brother. The park is wonderful. We love to go there. Our boy—” she glanced down to the baby in her arms “—our boy just loves the little people rides, and he’s crazy about Dierdre and Dolly and David and the rest. And long before this, we’ve seen all the good that your brother tries to do, and we’ll just never believe evil of him, we won’t—”

“Martha!” the man said.

“Well, it’s true!”

Reggie’s lashes were over her cheeks. Then she looked up. “Thank you!” she said quietly. “Really, thank you. That means so much.”

“Martha, let’s leave them to eat in peace now,” her husband said.

Wes laughed. “Don’t worry about leaving us in peace. We’re the ones who pelted you with the lobster shells, remember?”

The couple laughed. Reggie narrowed her eyes. They all said good-night to one another.

“You really do have to try to control your temper while dealing with lobster claws.”

“Why?” she murmured, her eyes widening as she stared at him. “When I have such a stalwart and charismatic man to come so chivalrously to my defense?”

He laughed. “The most stalwart of defenders has to admit to the truth. You did pelt them with lobster shells.”

“Shell. One lobster shell.”

“Yes, but we’re worried about headlines here, right? Can you imagine this one? R. Delaney Grows Violent In Lobster House. Eighteen-Month-Old Baby Attacked By Crimson Claw!”

“I didn’t attack a baby.”

“You were aiming at me?”

“I wasn’t aiming at anyone!” She suddenly clenched her hands together in her lap. “Oh, can’t you please just go home?”

He shook his head, suddenly serious. “Reggie, you know I can’t.”

“But—”

“This isn’t just going to go away.”

“The police are on it.”

“Yes, and the police are on dozens of other crimes, too. I can’t just let the board go on accepting Max’s position. He has to be proved innocent. Not because of the law. But because of people. And this is a point that goes full circle. If Max is innocent, someone else is guilty. Reggie, has it ever occurred to you that you—and Max—could be in danger?”

“No,” she said flatly. “Daphne was a wretched bitch. It was amazing that she and Max ever married in the first place.”

“So tell me what you know.”

She frowned, her eyes widening. He clenched his teeth suddenly, wishing he wouldn’t react to her on such a gut level. Every once in a while he would just be looking at her, and in his mind’s eye, she’d be half naked again. Then all naked …

But it wouldn’t be just the flesh that would get him. It would be the sound of her voice, the emerald sizzle of her eyes. Whatever, he really couldn’t explain it. There’d just be fire, shooting through him.

“About Daphne?”

“About Daphne. Max. Everything.”

She shook her head slightly, then took a reflective sip of her beer.

Foam clung to her lips for a moment. She caught it with the tip of her tongue.

Part of his stomach seemed to fall to his feet, and every limb and protrusion of his body went tense.

“Well,” she murmured dryly, “Max even knew that she was a witch. He said that he married her for the sex.”

“I can see that,” Wes grunted. “Go on.”

“They were just ill-suited. Max is very big on his charities. Daphne wouldn’t have loaned her own mother a dime. She didn’t care for the puppets—but she did love the prestige.” She stared at him suddenly, pointedly. “But then, you should know this better than I. You went to their wedding. I didn’t. He married her on such quick, wild impulse, I wasn’t able to attend.”

“Tell me about her disappearance.”

“I’m sure you’ve seen the police reports—”

“I want to hear it from you.”

She sighed, setting her wrists on the table. “All right. Cut and dried. As fast and as completely as I can. I didn’t discover her gone—neither did Max. I barely saw her in the past year. Admittedly, Max did upon occasion. At the divorce, he had given her a nice settlement. He just wanted out. But they had been married. If she was in trouble, Max came. And she called. I don’t think she had ever really believed Max would divorce her. Family and commitment mean so much to him.”

“What one never has …” Wes murmured.

“Exactly,” Reggie said coolly. “If her pipes were leaking, Max went over. Or he sent someone over. But on the day she was discovered missing, neither Max nor I was ever near her. She’d had a meeting with a reporter from that wretched
Tattler
paper. She was going out in her yacht on the lake in the morning. She was to meet him at one. At two o’clock, the reporter was sitting in front of her apartment door, still twirling his thumbs. Finally, he called the police. They called Max. Max didn’t know anything. Ozzie Daniels—the reporter—managed to get them to call the manager and enter Daphne’s apartment. It was found in total disarray. And of course, no sign of Daphne.”

“And the little yacht?”

“
Daphne’s Dare
. It was found later the same day, sunk in the lake. The experts say a tiny hole had been bored, then filled with a resin. The boat didn’t begin to sink until she was way out in the deep when the purposely poor caulking began to dissolve in the water.”

“And that’s it. That’s all they have,” Wes mused. He knew the story. He’d gone to the police station before he’d come near Max, the park or Reggie.

He had just wanted to hear it from her. And he had wanted to hear the nuances in her voice. There were so many things he could learn from Reggie that he’d never learn from a black-and-white typed police report.

“They found prints,” he said.

“Yes. In her apartment. Daphne’s, mine—I had been there a few times.”

“And Max’s.”

“Yes, and Max’s. And Ozzie’s and Rick Player’s and even Jesse’s. She had a party once, and had someone con them all into coming. The prints were all there.”

“You really hated her, didn’t you?” he asked.

He hadn’t even seen her pick up the lobster cracker again. It crunched loudly.

A shell flew across the table. A mangled claw landed in his plate.

He looked at her.

“Can’t finish it all, huh?”

“Are you accusing me of something?”

He smiled slowly. Her eyes were flashing. More dark hair was tumbling down. He was growing distracted. And damnably hot tremors were racing through his bloodstream.…

For a brief moment he closed his eyes. God, he should feel good. Really good. If he could just forget the rest, and let the feelings wash over him! It had been so long since he had experienced anything like this.

Even if it meant pain to come. Even the pain would be good. So much better than the numbness, the coldness, the emptiness that had haunted him for so long now.

“Are you?” she demanded.

“Reggie, you’ve got to look at everyone. Don’t you see, to clear Max, you find the real perpetrator of the crime.”

“There may not have been a crime—”

“You mean that Daphne may have trashed her own apartment and sunk
Daphne’s Dare
herself.”

“Exactly.”

“It’s possible.”

“Possible, but—”

“Give me a list. Give me a lineup of people who knew and loved her.”

“Hated her.”

“Fine.”

Reggie stared at him balefully then set her cracker and lobster down. Her wrists rested tensely on the table.

“All right, let’s see. There was Rick Player. He was always hanging around Daphne. He loved to be at the same spot with her any time Max might be around. He liked to torture Max.”

“Did Max care? Was he bothered by Player’s attention to her?”

Reggie shrugged. “I don’t think so. He seemed free from her once the divorce was over. But it was hard to tell.”

“So go on.”

“Um … ah, then there was Ozzie Daniels.”

“The sensationalist reporter?”

Reggie nodded. “He could have been a good reporter, I think. A really good one. Except that he was given much more money for working on a scandal sheet and given a free rein to do what he pleased. Daphne was a weak link to him. She’d always give him some kind of a story.”

“What kind of a story did she intend to give him the day she disappeared?”

Reggie shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said.

“Sounds like this Ozzie Daniels needed her around. She was good for him. And it sounds like Rick Player liked her, too.”