Hai jumped up to take his dishes to the sink. Walker didn’t seem to notice—women had waited on him all his life, Sam knew. He had some adjusting to do if he expected her to play housewife. She crunched her lettuce and focused on the doll.

  “Do you think it was stolen and someone meant to retrieve it before Aaron picked up the trunk?” She deliberately didn’t mention the doll, although she wasn’t certain why since Sister Golden-Hair sat in the living room.

  “I won’t know until I learn its origin. If Aaron and your friends can’t detect the paranormal source, it looks like old-fashioned footwork for me.” Walker, too, wasn’t mentioning the doll while Hai banged around in the sink.

  “You need to let Mariah do an online image search. She’s good and she’s fast. The mouse Keegan made for her should keep her grounded if she has someone to yank her back to reality every few minutes.” Sam took her plate to the sink. Mariah had a bad habit of falling down computer rabbit holes—rather literally, if essence could be called literal.

  At Sam’s approach, Hai stepped away from the sink to wipe the table, leaving Sam with the dirty pots. Fair enough, she guessed, since Hai had done the cooking—even against Sam’s express wishes.

  “The refrigerator is in your love and relationship corner,” Hai said stiffly. “It is very bad feng shui. This house is not harmoniously designed. The bedroom should be where the kitchen is.”

  “I will paint the refrigerator pink and keep my underwear in it,” Sam promised, tongue-in-cheek. She’d learned the fixes for her unharmonious house when she’d read up on feng shui to impress Jia.

  Leaning back in his chair, Walker eyed Sam’s breasts and grinned. “Do I get to choose the piece that goes with my morning coffee?”

  “Chi is serious business,” Hai stated with a pout. “Stifle chi, and you stifle your life. You must welcome the good energy, keep out the negative. I can do that, if you will listen.”

  Walker set his chair back after Hai scrubbed the table. “We believe you. Sam and her friends feel the energy here too. You know more than they do about directing it, but you have to be realistic.”

  “I must order what you need,” she demanded. “Painting a refrigerator pink is unharmonious. I will buy red metal heart magnets. That is realistic.”

  “That’s an excellent idea,” Sam said soothingly. “I will lend you my tablet computer, and you can research lists of what we need and where to find it. I know we need a round, tall bistro table and chairs in here so Walker is comfortable and the chi can circle around it.”

  Hai didn’t appear mollified, but Walker stood, filling the small kitchen with his sturdy shoulders. “I’ll walk you back to your apartment. My hours are unpredictable, so let me buy your groceries. You can fix your own meals and draw up your design for our approval.”

  Sam hid a snicker while Hai sputtered at Walker’s high-handedness. Walker was accustomed to taking charge. Sam had learned to stand her ground. Poor Hai didn’t know how to push back.

  While Walker took their guest up to Cass’s guesthouse, Sam straightened the chaos Hai had created in their bedroom. Instead of experiencing warm, welcoming energy, she only felt frustration and bitterness. Odd, because she normally only sensed earth energy, and that only when she was outside with her walking stick. So maybe the energy the Lucys felt was chi and Hai had really stirred it up.

  The doll began to cry again. Giving their pillows an extra fluff, straightening the bedcover, Sam deemed the room respectable and returned to the front room for the doll. Did Walker really have a safe to put her in? In LA maybe. It seemed a shame to lock the poor thing in a dark box.

  She frowned at the dangling empty carrier on the door hook. Had Walker moved the doll before he left? He hadn’t been too eager to touch it.

  The crying came from behind her—where Walker had turned their leather furniture to face the TV again. Sister Golden Hair rested among the decorator pillows in the recliner.

  Sam was rocking the doll when Walker returned. He picked the doll up by the back of its dress and dropped it back on the recliner. Before she could protest, he grabbed Sam’s waist and kissed her.

  She responded eagerly, then remembered the topic she’d been dying to spill. Shoving him away, she announced happily, “I got the grant!”

  Because Sam was so excited, Walker swung her around and let her dream happily about salaries and funding and what she wanted to do to improve Hillvale’s dying economy. He loved that she was willing to make the world a better place. With Sam’s joyful eagerness to ease his doubts, his empty heart filled, and he was happy for the first time in a long time.

  He wanted Sam to always be happy too. Except, the next day, when Walker reported to his meager office over the town hall, his qualms returned.

  Since he was a child, his one aim had been to seek justice for all. He’d graduated college with honors, attended the police academy, and taken up his late father’s executive shoes at the family-owned investigative agency. He was accustomed to the authority of running a large firm with a large budget to bring down corporate criminals.

  Sam had gone a long way toward healing the agony and self-hatred he’d suffered after his son’s death. Hillvale had offered him the opportunity to focus on more personal crimes instead of corporate ones. He enjoyed helping people directly instead of from behind a desk. But now. . . he was investigating talking dolls, for pity’s sake.

  He was glaring out his office’s one window—his LA corner office had a view of the ocean—when Mayor Monty carried up their morning coffee and local gossip from Dinah’s café.

  “Heard Sam got the grant to explore Hillvale’s agricultural potential.” Monty set the mug on the white rings left by countless other mugs. “Is that how she and Val plan to set up the farm trust—as an actual farm? That won’t bring zip to the town coffers.”

  “I’m staying out of it,” Walker warned.

  “Can’t blame you there, I suppose,” Monty said, sipping his coffee. “It would be like trying to tell my mother that we need to pay debt instead of buying new furniture.”

  “It’s her money,” Walker agreed.

  “But you’re the one with the inside influence on how that farm will be handled. The town can’t keep running on hot air. We need tourist attractions, a golf course at least, to start generating cash, not vegetables.”

  “You’d need to buy the mountain. New ideas required, Mayor.” Walker sipped his coffee and watched the street scene below.

  “Just let me know what they’re thinking so Kurt and I know whether to sell and run. I’m not wasting the rest of my life trying to keep this town alive when the population cuts its own throat.” Monty slammed out the door.

  Sounded like the mayor was suffering the same existential crisis as Walker—did they really want to spend the rest of their lives giving CPR to a town on life support?

  Walker watched Sam emerge from the café, gesturing enthusiastically to several friends who followed her out. His heart lurched dangerously just watching her.

  She deserved happiness. She wanted to stay in Hillvale.

  How wise was it to marry her if he needed to leave?

  Four

  Humming to herself, Sam dug a hole on the upper ridge above the vortex where she’d been working compost into the ground all summer. Even with her paranormal gift for growing things, she didn’t have much hope of having a verdant garden in time for her wedding. Oh well. Someday, this might be a wedding garden, and in the meantime, the birds would love it.

  She had no desire for wedding cakes and churches. She wanted family and flowers. Her Hillvale “family” had enthusiastically taken charge, leaving her just to buy the dress and provide the flowers. She’d ordered a gown online and was as ready as she’d ever be.

  She saw Cass strolling down the path from her house. The vortex was Cass’s meditation place, but she’d agreed to allow Sam to plant the area.

  “It’s too early to plant,” Cass called as she took a seat in the natural amphitheater around the energy source that might be chi. “There won’t be rain for months.”

  “I’ll water the new plants until they settle in. I’m only using ones that are thriving in gardens around here, so I think they’ll be okay. I wish I sensed water energy on this side of town the way I do over on the resort.” She patted dirt around the blue elderberry.

  “I thought your grant allowed you to study water conservation? Couldn’t you run gray water?” Cass chose a shady seat under one of the native oaks.

  Sam began digging another hole. She couldn’t read emotion like Teddy and wasn’t psychic like Cass, but she could read Walker pretty well. He wasn’t as excited about her grant as she’d thought he would be. “Something is bothering Walker,” she admitted. “I’m afraid to commit myself to five years up here if he’s not happy.”

  Cass was silent so long that Sam had an entire batch of lupines planted before her aunt spoke again.

  “You belong here,” she said emphatically. “If he loves you, he knows that.”

  “My gift isn’t specific to Hillvale,” Sam argued. “I can design landscaping or create environmental impact studies anywhere. No one ever notices that plants grow better than normal when I care for them. My gift is practically invisible. I could work in the Yosemite burn areas!”

  Cass gazed toward the land stretching beyond the vortex, the farm that Sam and her aunt Val had inherited—the land for which the grant applied in hopes of improving Hillvale. Cass didn’t even have to speak to make Sam feel guilty.

  “The Kennedys haven’t asked me to help their burn area,” she said defiantly. The resort land had suffered from fire a few months back. She was itching to work on it. “And the town probably wants to use the farm for condos and tourist attractions, not my environmental suggestions. I’ll hold out for an area where we can grow fruits and vegetables, but that’s all I can do.”

  “You’re a natural leader, child. One day, I won’t be here. What will happen to Hillvale then? What will happen to Tullah and Amber and the others who come after them, the ones who rely on us to understand their differences?”

  To the gifted eccentrics who had nowhere else to turn—Cass was piling on the guilt.

  Was she being selfish in marrying Walker and putting him—and herself—first?

  Sam dropped dudleya into a hole for the hummingbirds and hoped it would survive if she wasn’t here to look after it.

  After she watered the plant in with the last drops in her bucket, she looked up, and Cass was gone. Cass wasn’t given to long conversations. She’d made her point. Now Sam had to sleep on it.

  Picking up her utensils, she traversed the vortex. Not carrying her crystal-handled walking stick, she didn’t sense the energy much, but in this peaceful place, it was usually a positive influence. Maybe she should take up meditation, but that’s what gardening was to her. Leave it to Cass to set her happy thoughts into a negative whirl.

  The cottage she and Walker rented had a small shed that held her basic equipment. Sam cleaned off her tools and put them away before braving the house, where she’d left Hai busily rearranging their few rooms.

  At least their guest had left the living room furniture turned in the right direction, she noted as she entered. Sam had borrowed a small can of silver paint so Hai could paint Walker’s Rolodex and use it in place of the coffee machine. He wasn’t thrilled with having all his addresses in the living room, but even though their cell phones couldn’t call anyone, he had most of the numbers in his. So he didn’t complain too loudly.

  The coffee machine still evidently offended Hai, though. It had traveled to the corner behind the trash basket this morning. Admittedly, it took up what little counter space they possessed, but since neither she nor Walker cooked, it hardly mattered in the general scheme of things. For the sake of peace, Sam left it on the floor and went in search of Hai or the doll. She’d left them together when she’d set out with her plants. It was a trifle worrisome that she heard nothing from either of them.

  And equally worrisome that she expected a doll to call for her!

  She found Hai in their tiny office, tapping away on the notebook computer Sam had loaned her. The baby carrier hung in the closet, but Sister Golden Hair wasn’t in it.

  “I’m going to shower and head down for the lunch rush at the café. May I get you anything while I’m down there?” Sam asked.

  “There is no hardware store,” Hai said dismissively. “I must go into a real town to choose paints and buy supplies. When do you have a day off?”

  If she accepted the grant, she could quit the diner and go anywhere she wanted, anytime she liked. Sam kept telling herself that Dinah needed her, but the tourist season had been slow. After Labor Day, it would be slower yet. There were so many better things she could be accomplishing if she accepted the grant. . .

  “I’ll take you down to Baskerville tomorrow, after breakfast. Are you sure you want to paint? Moving all this furniture will be a pain.”

  “It is necessary. The chi here is choking. It needs guidance. And I must dispel the ghosts haunting you.”

  “I like my ghost. She helps me in the garden. Where’s the doll? Did Walker find her owner?”

  Hai glanced up in puzzlement, then over at the closet. “I put her in the fertility corner. I thought you did not like it there and took her.”

  The fertility corner? Geez, she hoped Walker didn’t hear that one. He’d freak.

  “Oh well, she can’t have gone far.” Sam left their guest searching for useless objects on the internet while she showered.

  By the time she arrived at the café, Walker had already claimed a seat at the counter. For someone who managed a stoicism to match Buddha’s when he wanted, he looked a bit harassed. Sam kissed his cheek and circled around the counter to don her apron. “Did you find the doll’s owner?” she asked as she began pouring water for waiting customers.

  “We’re still running through inventories, why?” Walker tore into his sandwich as if he were a ravenous lion tearing a limb off its prey.

  Sam raised her eyebrows at his ferocity but shrugged. “I didn’t see her in the house, so I thought you’d carried her off.”

  “Not me. Ask our wedding gift. She put my gun safe in the trash after you left this morning.”

  Mayor Monty took the stool beside him and chuckled. “Is this the gift who is supposed to feng shui Hillvale? Maybe she could stash a few of our locals in a dumpster.”

  Monty had once been a quarterback. Beneath his polo shirt, he was wide-shouldered and muscled. Only these days, he wore a perpetual day-old scruff and his light brown hair flopping in his face. His appearance was more stoned slacker than the intelligent man who had helped his brother turn the town around these past years.

  Sam slapped a water glass in front of him. “You may have Hai anytime you like. But she prefers thinking small.”

  “Then she ought to be right at home in Hillvale. We’re small,” Monty said as Sam turned to the pass-through to pick up an order.

  “Maybe Aaron came to get the doll,” Walker suggested, ignoring Monty. “The thing is probably worth a fortune. She’s safer with him.”

  “Hey, Sam, are you planning a winery on the farm? Is that what your grant can do?” one of the locals called from a booth.

  “Winery needs water,” she called back. “I’m not planning anything for the farm until the town decides what it wants. The grant is all about wise use of environmental resources on arid land, and how to make it productive.”

  “How about you use it on the resort, find water for a snow machine,” Monty suggested.

  As suggestions piled up around them, Walker looked even more grim. Sam watched him worriedly as she took orders. Did he not want her to help the town?

  Back at his desk with the town’s ancient printer spitting out gray images of dolls, Walker scowled at the tap of footsteps on the stairs. He wasn’t in any humor for more suggestions for Sam’s grant money.

  To his surprise, Fakhri Darwish, second in command of Walker Research strode in. Fakhri had worked his way up under Walker’s father. Lately, silver had started streaking the older man’s thick black hair. Fakhri essentially ran the firm’s operations, leaving Walker to handle the executive decisions. His employee’s expensive suit and Italian shoes looked exceedingly out of place outside the LA office.

  Walker stood up to offer his hand to a man he greatly respected. “Fakhri, what brings you to my outpost? I thought everything was running smoothly.”

  “That’s because you are not in your office to know what is going on. It’s been months since you came here to investigate your father’s disappearance.” Fakhri glanced in distaste at the one dilapidated office chair. Arranging the drape of his trousers, he took a seat without it being offered. “So, this is what you abandon LA for?”

  Walker settled behind his desk. “No, I abandoned LA for a woman and peace of mind. I have a telephone, a fax, a computer, all the same equipment as I did in LA. You can still communicate. Or can you only talk over expensive dinners and martinis?”

  He could be as blunt as Fakhri. That was one of the many reasons he liked his firm—the people who worked there.

  Fakhri grimaced. “You never understood the nuance of communication. It is in the half-said sentences, the gestures, the expressions. . .”

  “It was never necessary for me to understand them. I have your reports to give me the facts. I have my brain to question those facts. I have agents who are excellent in understanding nuances and reporting them. I sit in an office, Fakhri, you know that. So what is this really about?”

  “Maybe you do not wish to sit in an office anymore?” he asked. “Maybe that is what this is about.” He gestured at the barren square of Walker’s current workplace. “You wish to get away from your desk and do your own detective work. I congratulate you on your success in uncovering your father’s killer, by the way. That was good work.”