Page 18 of For the Love of Lilah
“No.” He’d learned to flow with Coco’s rambling thought patterns. “Would you like some coffee?”
“Oh, that’s sweet of you. I believe I will.” She sat while he got up to pour her a cup. “They’ve literally transformed the billiard room already. Of course, we’ve a long way to go—thank you, dear,” she added when Max set a cup of coffee in front of her. “And all those tarps and tools and lumber make things unsightly. But it will all be worth it in the end.” As she spoke, she doctored her coffee with cream and heaps of sugar. “Now, where was I?”
“A marvelous idea,” Suzanna reminded her, putting a restraining hand on Alex’s shoulder before he could fling any soggy cereal at his sister.
“Oh, yes.” Coco set her cup down without taking a sip. “It came to me last night when I was doing the tarot cards. There were some personal matters I’d wanted to resolve, and I’d wanted to get a feel for this other business.”
“What other business?” Alex wanted to know.
“Grown-up business.” Lilah dug a knuckle into his ribs to make him laugh. “Boring.”
“You guys better go find Fred.” Suzanna checked her watch. “If you want to go with me today, you’ve got five minutes.”
They were up and shooting out of the room like little bullets. Surreptitiously Max rubbed his shin where Alex’s foot had connected.
“The cards, Aunt Coco?” Lilah said when the explosion was over.
“Yes. I learned that there was danger, past and future. Disconcerting.” She cast a worried look over both her nieces. “But we’re to have help dealing with it. There seemed to be two different sources of aid. One was cerebral, the other physical—potentially violent.” Uneasy, she frowned a little. “I couldn’t place the physical source, though it seemed I should because it was from someone familiar. I thought it might be from Sloan. He’s so, well, Western. But it wasn’t. I’m quite sure it wasn’t.” Brushing that aside, she smiled again. “But naturally the cerebral source is Max.”
“Naturally.” Lilah patted his hand as he shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Our resident genius.”
“Don’t tease him.” Suzanna rose to take bowls to the sink.
“Oh, he knows I don’t just like him for his brain. Don’t you, Max?”
He was mortally afraid he would blush in a minute. “If you keep interrupting your aunt, you’ll be late for work.”
“And so will I,” Suzanna pointed out. “What’s the idea, Aunt Coco?”
She’d started to drink again, and again set the coffee down untouched. “That Max should do what he came here to do.” Smiling, she spread her manicured hands. “Research the Calhouns. Find out as much as possible about Bianca, Fergus, everyone involved. Not for that awful Mr. Caufield or whatever his name is, but for us.”
Intrigued, Lilah thought the idea over. “We’ve already been through the papers.”
“Not with Max’s objective and scholarly eye,” Coco pointed out. Already fond of him, she patted his shoulder. Her interpretation of the cards also had indicated that he and Lilah would suit very well. “I’m sure if he put his mind to it, he could come up with all kinds of wonderful theories.”
“It’s a good idea.” Suzanna came back to the table. “How do you feel about it?”
Max considered. Though he didn’t put any stock in tarot cards, he didn’t want to hurt Coco’s feelings. Besides, however she had come up with the idea, it was sound. It would be a way of paying them back and a way to justify staying on in Bar Harbor a few more weeks.
“I’d like to do something. There’s a good chance that even with the information I gave them the police won’t find Caufield. While everyone’s looking for him, I could be concentrating on Bianca and the necklace.”
“There.” Coco sat back. “I knew it.”
“I’d wanted to check out the library, the newspaper, interview some of the older residents, but Caufield shut down the idea.” The more he thought about it, the more Max liked the notion of working on his own. “Claimed he wanted everything to come out of the family papers, or his own sources.” He moved his cup aside. “Obviously he couldn’t give me a free hand or I’d find out the truth.”
“Now you have a free hand,” Lilah put in. It amused her that she could already see the wheels turning. “But I don’t think you’ll find the necklace in a library.”
“But I may find a photograph of it, or a description.”
Lilah simply smiled. “I’ve already given you that.”
He didn’t put much stock in dreams and visions, either, and shrugged. “All the same, I might find something tangible. And I’ll certainly find something on Fergus and Bianca Calhoun.”
“I suppose it’ll keep you busy.” Unoffended by his lack of faith in her mystical beliefs, Lilah rose. “You’ll need a car to get around. Why don’t you drop me off at work and use mine?”
Irked by her lack of faith in his research abilities, Max spent hours in the library. As always, he felt at home there, among stacks of books, in the center of the murmuring quiet, with a notebook at his elbow. To him, research was a quest—perhaps not as exciting as riding a white charger. It was a mystery to be solved, though the clues were less adventurous than a smoking gun or a trail of blood.
But with patience, cleverness and skill, he was a knight, or a detective, carefully working his way to an answer.
