Scarlet Nights: An Edilean Novel Read online

“Only if it’s a romantic comedy. They’re my favorite.”

  “That’s odd. I would have pegged you for a Jason Statham fan.” She held up a copy of Shank. “But if you don’t like it, I have a couple of Katherine Heigl films around here somewhere.”

  “I’ll suffer through another action film if I have to.” He walked toward the couch, where a huge bowl of popcorn was on the coffee table. “How’s your neck?”

  “Washed, so you can draw in your fangs.”

  “Fangs aren’t the part of me that needs drawing in,” he said as he sat on one end of the couch and patted the seat beside him.

  Sara picked up the bowl of popcorn and put it next to him.

  With a grimace, he said, “Give me that” as he held out his hand for the remote.

  Sara suppressed her laughter and sat down as far from Mike as the couch allowed.

  In the main house next door, Jocelyn sent a text message to Tess:

  DID YOU KNOW YOUR BROTHER IS FALLING IN LOVE WITH SARA?

  Immediately, Tess wrote back:

  I’M GOING TO SPEND TOMORROW AT ONE OF THE CATHEDRALS HERE PRAYING IN THANKS. WHAT ABOUT SARA?

  SHE TREATS HIM LIKE HE’S ANOTHER COUSIN.

  CONTRIVE TO GET HIM UNDRESSED.

  Joce looked up at Luke. “You said you saw Mike at the gym. Did you happen to see him with his clothes off?”

  “Not something I would pay attention to, is it?”

  “So what’s he look like naked?”

  “Fat. Big belly. Scrawny legs. Not a muscle on his body.”

  Joce texted back to Tess:

  WILL DO. YOU REALLY ARE MY BEST FRIEND.

  11

  MIKE LOOKED FOR Sara across what he’d been told was Nate’s Field, but he didn’t see her. “Maybe I should look for a woman so angry her hair is on fire,” he muttered as he remembered what she’d seen that morning, of his sitting on the edge of Erica’s desk and openly flirting with her.

  Across the open field were about a dozen men wearing leather tool belts as they built the pavilions for the coming fair. If he weren’t going to spend a second day searching Merlin’s Farm he’d be helping them. Maybe he’d be able to tomorrow, he thought. Jocelyn had sketched some designs for the fortune-telling tent, and she’d given them to Sara to replicate. Mike and Sara laughed that Joce had won the argument over her participation in the fair.

  “She won’t be in any danger, will she?” Sara’d asked. “I mean this Mitzi person won’t bash Joce on the head to get the cards?”

  “And miss out on what she really wants—whatever that is?” Mike asked. “No, I don’t think she will.”

  Mike didn’t say so, but he didn’t want Sara in direct contact with Mitzi. But he did want to obtain as much DNA as he could. His new plan—which he didn’t tell Sara—was to get the notorious Erica to help out. She would call as many women of the appropriate age as possible to come into the shop, fit them with dresses, and get them to drink the free wine from a paper cup. She would write the name of the woman on the cup and bag it. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

  Mike had asked a couple of people about Erica, and if she was half as sexually voracious as he’d heard, he knew how to deal with her. He’d persuaded a lot of women like her into doing what he wanted.

  Earlier that morning, on the way to the gym where he was to meet Luke, Mike had stopped to talk to Sara’s mom and got her to agree to keep both Sara and Brewster Lang busy all day so Mike could search the farm in peace. Ellie said she’d give Sara the job of making wreaths for Luke’s booth for the fair, but that Lang was about as easy to trap as a greased eel. She promised to do her best.

  Mike had gone from there to the store that Sara owned with Stefan. Mike had left the quaint little town center of Edilean, where people felt as though they’d stepped back in time, to the inside of a store of all chrome and glass. He couldn’t help it as he glanced back through the front windows to reassure himself that he was still in Edilean. The town’s building codes hadn’t allowed the outside to be changed, but the inside was utterly modern. Mirrors were everywhere, as were gold fixtures and silk-upholstered seats. Mike glanced at a price tag: $1,200 for a simple white blouse.

  No wonder the town of Edilean hated Vandlo. The clientele this type of store would bring in weren’t the ones who’d contribute to the town. No, they’d just park their expensive cars, get what they wanted, then leave.

  As Mike looked around he saw what people like the Vandlos would think was high class, but he didn’t see anything that reminded him of Sara. He hadn’t seen her apartment yet, but he doubted if it was like this place.

  “May I help you?” a young woman asked.

  Mike looked her up and down. Her all-black attire was more appropriate for New York than Edilean. “I need to see Erica,” he said.

  An hour later, he was leaving the store. Everything with Erica had gone just as he’d planned, and he’d managed to coax her—fortyish and desperate—into taking over the job with the women. The problem came when Sara, carrying a load of clothes, had walked into the store before he was finished.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sara leave, and he could tell from her quick step that she was angry. He’d wanted to go to her, but at that moment he couldn’t stop what he was doing with Erica. In fact, he’d had to spend extra time soothing her to get her back in the correct mood after Sara’s unexpected appearance. He knew that what he was doing with Erica might not look like business to Sara, but it was, and he had to continue.

  So now, everything was arranged with Erica. At the end of the day an agent would pick up the bags containing the cups and take them to a lab. Their great hope was that one of the samples would be a relative of Stefan’s.

  With Lang being kept busy at the Farmers’ Market, all Mike had left to do was calm Sara down.

  “My salary ought to be doubled for this job,” he muttered as he walked across the fairgrounds. A few people raised their hands to acknowledge him, but Luke knew what Mike wanted. He pointed to the shade trees along one edge. Mike saw Sara’s golden head bent over what looked to be a few tons of weeds.

  She glanced up, saw Mike, started to smile, then her face changed and she looked down again.

  Around him, men he didn’t know looked at him with curiosity, and Luke slapped him on the shoulder in sympathy.

  “Good luck,” Luke said, laughter in his voice.

  Mike went to where Sara was sitting, her lap full of wire and long stalks of purple-flowered stems. He wondered if she’d speak to him.

  He shouldn’t have worried.

  “You were disgusting,” Sara said, her upper lip curled into a sneer. “You were sitting on the corner of Erica’s desk like some 1950s secretary. And you were leaning over her and using that weird voice of yours to … to flirt with her.”

  “Yeah. So? What’s your complaint?”

  “That’s no way to conduct business, that’s what. You know how this town gossips. If you didn’t care about how people see you, you should have thought of Tess. She’s going to be living here. With her children.”

  “So how should I have done it?”

  Sara couldn’t contain her anger. “In a businesslike way. Sit in a chair in front of the desk and talk to her in a respectful way.”

  “You wanted me to politely ask her to do your work? To spy on her own clients? And to gather information for a federal investigation but keep her mouth shut about it?”

  Sara was aghast. “You told her about Mitzi?”

  “Of course not. I told her I’m from the U.S. Bureau of Health and Disease—which doesn’t exist—and I’m investigating an STD outbreak. It seems that everyone in Edilean is sleeping with everyone else.”

  “You didn’t say that!”

  “I did.”

  “Do you have any idea what people are going to say when they hear such a lie?”

  “Who’s going to believe what an outsider like Erica says? And for that matter, I’m not sure she’ll tell anybody. Besides, Erica strikes