at her and said, “Hey, thanks, that actually cheered me up. I’ve been standing here wondering how long I need to keep the dunce cap on.”
“The DNA was Rachael’s,” the detective said. “But it had been planted by someone who isn’t that good at such things.”
“Fingerprints, maybe moved with something like Scotch tape?” Rachael guessed.
“How the hell do you even know that?” Edward demanded.
“Because I forgot and then forgot I forgot.”
“In English, por favor?”
“I left my travel guide in her office.”
“Whose?”
“Mrs. Cain’s. The woman at the chamber of commerce. The one who got things ready when she knew I was coming. The one who set me up for murder. The one who lifted my DNA from anything in her office I’d touched and brought it to crime scenes and”—Rachael spread her hands and looked wry—“spread the wealth.”
“But . . .” He looked around. The rest of them looked just as blank as he felt. “But why?”
“I don’t know.” Rachael moved—flowed, almost—to her feet. If he’d blinked, he would have missed it. Girl could move when she wanted to. “But I’m going to go ask her.”
Forty-eight
“It’s over, you know.”
Mrs. Cain sighed. “Yes. I know.”
“Even if you hadn’t called, I’d have come for you.”
“I know. I didn’t think it would really work. I told him that.”
Rachael’s head began to throb in time with her heartbeat. “But you did it anyway, Mrs. Cain. You did it anyway.”
The older woman’s head came up proudly. Rachael had never seen her in casual clothes: black jeans and an orange long-sleeved T-shirt. Athletic socks. Tennis shoes. “I was asked. They were family. What else could I have done?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe not committed multiple murders?”
“You should see the smug look on your face right now. Pretending if your precious Michael asked you to kill, pretending it’d turn out any different.”
I am dealing with a crazy person. “If that’s what you want to think.”
“It isn’t what I want to think,” Rachael flashed. She’d crossed her small living room in half a blink, more than a little annoyed she’d allowed this person into her den. “It’s what is. I didn’t call you to sit in judgment.”
“Then why did you?” The time. She had to be careful of the time. Edward would miss her soon. Worse: the queen might. She did not want the queen of the vampires anywhere near Pack business. Bad enough that Cain had pointed fingers that led vampires this far . . . and hopefully no further.
“I must know. I felt I—we—had been careful.”
“He wasn’t careful at all. And you knew that.” She tilted her head, studying the other woman. “What an odd time to start lying.”
“I was never much good at it.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” she said dryly. “You covered pretty well before . . . half-truths got you through it. If you were tense about the murders, you saw me when you could explain how you were tense about something else.” The new ad campaign. Deadlines. An old Pack trick, but a good one—scents can’t lie, but you can misrepresent their source.
“It was the only thing I could think to do.”
“When you were pissed I was going to see the vampire queen, you discussed it when I would assume you were pissed over a possible scuffle for territory. You were mad; I knew you were. But you were mad because trying to make friends with the vampires was not the plan. If your goal was to sow mistrust, the last thing you wanted was open communication between their people and ours.”
“You have a reputation for being standoffish,” Mrs. Cain said sharply. “Frankly, it never occurred to me that you would be so sociable.”
“I’m thrilled to disappoint you.”
Cain muttered something that sounded like itch. (It probably wasn’t itch.)
“You knew I’d smell a lie on you . . . so each time you had to lie, you made sure you had an explanation.”
Cain just looked at her for a long moment. Annoyance. Shame. Irritation. “Yes, which brings me back to my question . . . how did you know I was involved?”
“Who else would it have been, Cain? I’ve been in town less than two weeks, and besides my landlords and Edward, you’re the only one I know here.”
“Except for the vampires,” she snapped.
The time. Keep an eye on the time. “The pool of suspects was quite shallow.” Murder mysteries are never like this. There’s usually more than one suspect. Ah, now I’m sounding like Edward . . . clearly, I fell for