Marissa hunched a shapely shoulder. “Why not? Everybody knows he’s a murderer.”

  The sergeant shook his head. “Not a good idea to mess with Dufray. Thirty-three weeks of allegations, and plenty of similar stuff in his past. Mostly it’s people’s imaginations running wild, but some of it might be true. Why take chances?”

  “You believe that bullshit?” She added uneasily, “What could he possibly do to me?”

  “Hard to say till it happens, ma’am. If you have any nightmares, if you get the feeling of being haunted or pursued, let us know.”

  “So you can do what?” cried Marissa.

  “Take note,” said the chief. “Gather all the information we can.”

  “This town stinks!” Marissa swept toward the exit. “Everybody in the whole place is perverted or insane. I’ll find Johnny if it’s the last thing I do.”

  “Not if Constantine killed him, you won’t,” Jeanie said as the front door closed behind the blonde. Back at her desk, she took another call. Her voice caught Gideon as he reached the door to the back. “This one really is yours.”

  “What are you setting me up for this time?” Gideon demanded. “After yesterday, I’m really not in the mood.”

  “You have to be for this one,” Jeanie said quietly. She handed him a slip of paper to read.

  Gideon blanched. “Shit.”

  “She’s not there, though,” Jeanie said hopefully. “There’s no reason to suppose anything’s happened to her. Oh God, poor Vi.”

  “Get a crew over there.” Gideon slammed the door behind him.

  Jeanie’s voice floated in pursuit. “This totally sucks. And I didn’t even get to tease him about the vibrator.”

  Ophelia sat on one of the logs ringing the small parking lot and waited for Gideon to show up. The sickening smell of death, the horrifying, enticing aroma of blood, and the fury over her trees roiled inside her brain. No one except another vamp would understand; her turmoil wasn’t like a normal person’s, and she hadn’t even been able to vomit. The cop had come to check her out and all she’d been able to manage was “Lucky thing I had lunch hours ago.”

  “Luckier than those folks over there who called me,” said the cop, a bashful young man named Turlow. “I hate to have to bother you with this, ma’am, but can you identify the body in your truck? Gretchen, sit!”

  Ophelia suppressed the urge to scream. Who cares who he is? He ruined my trees!

  Normal women didn’t freak out because a dead body had broken a few branches. Normal women probably fainted at the sight of so much blood. But then, normal women didn’t sprout fangs at twelve years old, either. And sensible women didn’t evade police questions.

  Well, she’d never earned either descriptor. She shuddered. “You saw that god-awful mess. His own mother wouldn’t recognize him.”

  “All right, ma’am, if you’d just sit down over there and wait, please,” the cop began. He eyed her shotgun warily, ignored the nutria, and because he clearly couldn’t help it, blurted, “What are you doing with Gideon O’Toole’s dog?”

  “He loaned her to me,” Ophelia answered. And felt terrible.

  “He’s a…a friend of yours?” A flush crawled up the poor man’s ears.

  “Oh, yes,” she said with a sweet smile that told a lot of lies. And she felt even worse.

  She sent him away and sat with the dead nutria across her knees and Gretchen beside her, unaccountably on edge as she waited for Gideon to show up. She’d have to tell him, of course, and if her assumption was correct he’d be pissed as hell with her for getting involved in the blackmail case in the first place, but how could she have known? And why should she care? It wasn’t as if she had anything to do with this murder. Pure coincidence, that some bozo had dumped the body in her truck.

  Goddamn it, why had some bozo dumped a body in her truck?

  Far more unsettling, why was she so uncomfortable about seeing Gideon again?

  When he arrived, he left his car by the road and strode onto the scene like some cool, dark, and capable god. Ophelia’s heart leaped, and Gretchen’s whole body hurtled toward him. He greeted his dog with a firm hand, gave Ophelia the briefest of businesslike nods, sent Gretchen back to her, and turned to the other cop.

  Ophelia sat on the log and stroked the furry body of the nutria as Gideon conferred with Turlow, with the couple who had found the corpse, then with the crime-scene people when they showed up. The couple was allowed to leave, and Turlow got a roll of yellow tape and began laboriously ringing the parking lot. Gideon never once looked Ophelia’s way, just directed the crime-scene people and poked at the body and probably hurt her trees even more, until Ophelia longed to strangle him.

  Gretchen edged closer and snuffled anxiously at the nutria. “Your priorities are so right,” Ophelia said. “The hell with him. Let’s have supper.” She grubbed in her pocket for a jackknife, sawed off the nutria’s tail for the bounty it would fetch, and slit the corpse from throat to anus. More blood and gore. So there.

  She scooped the entrails behind the log for scavengers to feast on, then hacked off the head and tossed it to Gretchen. “Help yourself,” she said, and suddenly Gideon was standing over her.

  “What are you feeding my dog?”

  “Nutria head,” Ophelia said without looking up. “Yum.”

  “Gretchen certainly seems to think so.”

  He was pissed off, she realized. “Be thankful I didn’t give her the guts.”

  “Turlow thinks you’re my girlfriend.”

  Ophelia glanced up long enough to see that the expression in his eyes matched the sarcasm in his voice. Okay, that was why she was on edge. She’d sure screwed up this one. “Because of Gretchen. He implied you wouldn’t loan her to just anybody.”

  “I can see why it might be convenient for you to pretend to be my girlfriend under the circumstances—”

  “What circumstances?” Ophelia said hotly. “I didn’t kill that guy!”

  “—but this is a murder investigation, Ophelia. It’s best to stick to the truth.”

  Ophelia’s insides heaved, but she came up with a shrug. “Says the corrupt cop. Anyway, I didn’t exactly pretend to be your girlfriend. He made an assumption, and I couldn’t see any advantage in denying it.”

  For way too long, Gideon said nothing, and Ophelia felt lousy and said nothing either. She sawed at the nutria and took a deep breath. “Listen, I’m sorry I shot at you last night. I know you meant well.”

  “I’m sorry I harassed you,” he replied immediately. “You can pretend to be my girlfriend if you like. Even if I don’t get to sleep with you, it makes me look like one hell of a stud.”

  Ophelia responded with a tiny chuckle.

  “Turlow also says you don’t know who that is in your truck.”

  Ophelia peeled the hide away from the nutria’s belly. “Unfortunately, that’s another impression I gave him.”

  “What the hell?”

  “Since he’s not easy to recognize in the condition he’s in,” Ophelia said, her voice tensing, “and since I wasn’t a hundred percent sure, and since Officer Turlow had already said you were coming, I thought it best to wait and tell you. In case you wanted to handle it your own way.”

  “Damn it, Ophelia. Move over.” He sat on the log next to her, his warm, firm body touching hers. She closed her eyes to sense him better and sighed. “Who is it?” he asked.

  “Judging by his size, his hair, and his clothes, it’s the guy who was manning the photo shop when I dropped off the film this morning. The only thing I couldn’t check was whether he had a tongue ring. It was hard to tell whether he even had a tongue.”

  “Fuck,” Gideon said.

  “That’s what he suggested,” Ophelia said. “He was a bit of a slime, and he might have been the blackmailer, but I don’t suppose he deserves to be dead, and for sure not like that.” She sliced off a strip of bloody meat and fed it to Gretchen. “On the other hand, I would cheerfully gut the bastard who put him in my truck and killed one of my new trees and damaged another.”

  Gideon said, “I wish I could deal with it my own way, but this is a murder. A bloody, brutal murder. I need you to put the rest of that animal down and come look at your truck again. I know it will be unpleasant, but—”

  “I can handle it,” Ophelia said in a tight voice. “If I put the nutria down, Gretchen will eat the rest. It’s my supper.”

  “You eat nutria?” Gideon’s expression said it all.

  “Sorry. Yes.” Ophelia licked her fingers, one by one. You want the truth, well, here it is.

  “Whatever floats your boat.” A laugh crept into his voice. “Let me get you a bag for it. Come on.” He led the way to his Mercedes, and she picked up the shotgun and followed. He held open an empty Wal-Mart bag for her to put the nutria in. She licked off the knife and returned it to her pocket.

  “Put the nutria in the trunk,” Gideon said. “The shotgun, too.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you shouldn’t be shooting nutria here. This is a public park.”

  “You know perfectly well I was carrying it for protection,” Ophelia retorted. “And I did not shoot the nutria.” But she supposed it wasn’t the right moment to make a fuss, so she laid the gun in the trunk. “Damn it,” she added, back at her truck. “Those maple trees cost me eighty bucks apiece. I can’t sell damaged trees!”

  “Forget the trees for the moment,” Gideon said. “Look over the whole truck bed and tell me if you see anything that doesn’t belong to you.”

  “Besides the body?”

  “Of course, besides the body.”

  “I can’t forget the trees,” Ophelia said. “That’s money wasted, money I don’t have.” She surveyed the bed. “The tools are mine. The cypress mulch and pine straw are mine. The empty pots and flats are mine. Those bits of foam rubber sticking to his clothes are not mine. The dirt and debris in the bottom is, unless some of it was on his body before it got dumped here. The goddamn broken trees—”

  “When was the last time you saw the truck bed without the body in it?”

  “At the nursery where I bought the healthy, uninjured trees,” Ophelia said. “I drove straight here, but I didn’t look in the back when I arrived. However, I think if someone had dropped a body from on high, I would have noticed the thump.”

  “Let’s hope so. Nothing that’s not yours, then?”

  “Not as far as I can tell unless I take everything out of the truck, but it’s getting dark and I have to go home and do an estimate.”

  Gideon put an arm around her shoulders and steered her away from the pickup. “I’ll take you home. We’ll have to keep the truck for now.”

  “What?” Her rage was enough to turn every head of the crime-scene crew, as if they hadn’t been turned already. Well, except maybe the one woman on the team, but even she was gawking now. “Gideon, I need my truck! This is my livelihood you’re talking about, not to mention two trees I need to plant tomorrow. You can’t just take it away!”

  “I’m sorry,” Gideon said, “but the bed of your truck is evidence. We’ll process it as quickly as we can. And we’d better get moving”—he raised his voice—“because it’s getting dark and it’s about to rain.”

  “For fuck’s sake, Gideon—”

  “For fuck’s sake, Ophelia, I have no option here! Give me your key. I said I’ll take you home.”

  “Thank you very much,” she replied, her voice quavering. “But I don’t want you anywhere near my home.” She stormed toward his car. “Give me my gun and my nutria. Do I get to take my notes out of the front seat of the truck, or are you confiscating those, too?”

  “The whole truck. I’ll bring you what I can in the morning.” He made no move to open his trunk. “In the meantime, I need your truck key.”

  “In the meantime you can fuck off. Give me my shotgun. I’ll walk home.”

  “I haven’t finished questioning you,” Gideon said.

  “You…you…” She couldn’t find words. “Questioning me? You know perfectly well I didn’t have anything to do with this. That’s the most blatant excuse for harassment I’ve ever seen!”

  “Ophelia, I don’t want to bring you to the station. I’d much rather go eat with you somewhere pleasant where we can have a discussion instead of an interrogation.”

  “That’s bullshit and you know it. You have no right to take me to the station. You have no probable cause—”

  “A body in your truck and your lack of cooperation give me plenty of probable cause.”

  She gaped at him, dizzy with the shock. “You—you actually suspect me of killing him?”

  “Of course not, Ophelia, but this is a murder and I have to follow procedure. Either way, you leave this scene without your truck and with me.”

  “You bastard!”

  “If you say so.”

  Ophelia stamped her foot and glared at the gravel, fighting the fangs, her breath coming way too fast. “You leave me no choice.”

  “I’m glad you recognize that.” Gideon unlocked the Mercedes and opened the passenger door. For the third time, he asked for her key.

  She separated the truck key from her ring and, letting her breath out in a long, slow hiss, controlled the urge to throw it across the parking lot into the gathering dusk. She dropped it into his hand.

  “Thank you,” Gideon said. “Get in. I won’t be long. Gretchen!” He whistled, and the dog hopped into the backseat. He handed Ophelia his own keys. “Turn on the radio if you like. There are CDs in the holder, too.”

  He shut the door, and once again, unaccustomed tears filled Ophelia’s eyes. She swallowed them and turned in her seat to dig her fingers into Gretchen’s fur. The dog snuffled and licked the tears off her cheeks. Ophelia blew her nose on her T-shirt and sank back into the soft leather upholstery. She took a deep breath. And another. And one more.

  Maybe it was the removal of all options for control over anything but herself, maybe it was the comforting male scent of Gideon’s car, maybe it was because it was Gideon’s scent and Gideon’s car and no one else’s, but when finally he got into the driver’s seat, Ophelia was fast asleep.

  She clawed up out the depths of despair with a long, eerie whine that made the hair stand up on both Gideon and his dog. “Oh God, no—I didn’t, no please, no please!” she cried, the words tumbling one over another in a harsh, anguished voice. She sat up, her eyes flashed open, and her face and body twisted and arched toward Gideon in a wide-mouthed roar of terror.

  “Ophelia, wake up!” Gideon rotated the steering wheel and grabbed at her flailing arms. Gretchen launched into a fury of barking and flung herself at the gap between the seats. The seat belt slammed Ophelia back into the seat just before she tore someone, anyone, to bits.

  “Oh God oh God oh God what happened what did I do what did I say?” Her hands flew to her face. What with the rain and the glare from the headlights and trying to watch the road, surely he hadn’t seen!

  “You had a bad dream,” Gideon said slowly, pushing his dog out of the way as the car lurched to the side of the road.

  Think! “It wasn’t a dream, it was a night terror.” Her heart beat frantically. She had almost killed him. If not for the seat belt…“It’s not about anything, or—or at least I never remember anything. I just wake up completely psyched out. What did…what did I say? What did I do?”

  Gideon told her. Her chest heaved and her heart battered against her ribs, but she hadn’t said anything that mattered.

  “Does this happen often?” he asked.

  “It depends.” She huddled in her seat, half-turned away. “Usually it means I’m…oh, emotionally overwrought. I never know when to expect it, but it’s not that big a deal.”

  Gideon got the car back on the road. “Where do you want to eat?”

  Somewhere safe. “Tony’s,” Ophelia said.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Tony hadn’t looked like a wuss in only boxers and a pink scarf. Now, in jeans and a black tee that emphasized his heavily muscled arms, he was formidable. He left a gaunt, black-draped woman at the bar and boomed, “Ophelia!” He wrapped a strong arm around her and, with only a fl ick of the chin to acknowledge Gideon, led them to the private patio off the kitchen where Gideon and Constantine had dined the night before.

  “What’s going on?” Tony kicked the door shut, holding Ophelia way too close for Gideon’s taste, a tender smile on his battered, ex-bruiser’s face.

  Ophelia laid her curls on Tony’s broad chest. “It stinks. This is Gideon O’Toole. He’s a cop and I’m sort of under arrest.”

  Tony bellowed a curse, let Ophelia go, and rounded on Gideon, who stood his ground.

  “She’s not anywhere near under arrest, and she knows it.” Gideon’s eyes left Tony’s alarmed scowl to settle on the exasperating girl he at times liked far too much for his peace of mind. Other times, like now…“Grow up, Ophelia.”

  Tony glanced from Ophelia’s furious face to Gideon’s impassive one. The door opened and the woman in black came through, nostrils flared, a sinister hiss issuing from scarlet lips.

  “Beat it, Sonya,” Tony said. “I’ll get back to you.”

  “Tony,” Sonya said, “I need you.” The hiss morphed to a pitiful whine. “I need you now.”

  Tony shoved her out and slammed the door in her face. “What’s this all about?”

  “He forced me to come here,” Ophelia said. “He said the alternative was going to the station to be interrogated.”

  “Here was a better choice.” Tony tossed a menu in front of Gideon and fixed the scowl back on him. “You ate here with Constantine last night. Then you showed up with him at Vi’s.” When Gideon nodded, Tony added, “Order something. Drink?”

  Gideon ordered a pesto pizza and a beer.

  “Aren’t you on duty?” Ophelia mocked.

  “You’re driving me to drink,” Gideon replied.

  Tony laughed and said, “Your usual, baby?” and left to place their orders.

  Ophelia perched on the edge of a chair and looked at her hands, and Gideon slouched on the other side of the table, watching. He couldn’t ask her about what he thought he’d seen—which was impossible. It was dark. It was a trick of the light from the dash. She had him so fucked up he was imagining things.